Between Avengers: Endgame (seeing it Thursday, please don't spoil it!) the final season of Game of Thrones, and much later in the year, Star Wars Episode Nine, we're getting a lot of long-running series coming - if not to and end, then to some major climactic moment. Obviousy, the MCU will go on from here, and I imagine they'll make Star Wars movies as long as they still make money.
But Magic is also going through a huge culmination with the War of the Spark set.
Now, I haven't been a regular Magic player since college, and there was a big gap through much of middle school and high school where I wasn't playing. The last time Magic had such a major event was the Invasion block, in which the plot of the Phyrexians invading Dominaria came to a head, and we saw a massive culling of important characters including Urza himself, who had more or less been Magic's main character up until that point.
While Invasion was followed up by the related Odyssey and Onslaught blocks, which told stories of a sort of post-apocalyptic Dominaria - one that had survived the Phyrexians but was deeply scarred by the conflict - Magic started doing far more new settings after that, starting with Mirrodin. Since then, there's been a tendency to do a new plane each year, sometimes returning to popular locations like Ravnica or Innistrad. Indeed, Mirrodin itself has become New Phyrexia, allowing these one-time big bads of Magic to potentially rise again.
But in more recent years, it's all been about Nicol Bolas, the Elder Dragon, an evil planeswalker who's also one of Magic's oldest characters, having been introduced as one of the Elder Dragon Legends in the Legends blocks (which first introduced things like multicolor cards and the mechanic that would eventually become the Legendary supertype.)
But Bolas was more or less just one of five names back then, and it was only in more recent years that they've really driven home how important a character he is. (Kind of sucks of Palladia-Mors, Chromium, Arcades Sabboth, and Vaevictus Asmadi, who never became as prominent as Nicol Bolas, though they at least got new cards in a recent set.)
After several sets in which we've seen Nicol Bolas acquire his massive undead army in Amonkhet, secure loyal minions in positions of power within the guilds of Ravnica, acquire the Planar Bridge in Kaladesh, get the Immortal Sun from Ixalan, and ensure that Lilianna's contract defaults to him on their home plane of Dominaria, the War of the Spark sees Bolas enact his grand plan to become something like the pre-Mending planeswalker he once was, and maybe even more powerful than that.
It's funny, given that I haven't actually played Magic since Planeswalkers as a mechanic were introduced, but this set really emphasizes an Avengers-like confluence of storylines as I believe every planeswalker we've seen before (and isn't dead) shows up on a new card. They've had to make simpler planeswalkers to allow them at lower rarities.
In a way, I think this is closest to Endgame (which again, I haven't seen yet) in that the series is obviously continuing - Magic is still going strong - but this is the end of a many-year arc and has seen some long-established characters (including, I believe, one of the original post-mending Planeswalkers they introduced when the mechanic was first put in the game) lost.
I don't know if it's quite the cast-obliteration that Apocalypse was (while I think that set came out in 2000 or 2001, it was still close enough to the 90s that bleak and edgy was very much in vogue,) but it definitely seems like it's the biggest moment in the Magic story in nearly twenty years.
Which seems to be what 2019 is all about.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
Did Legion Spoil Us For Class Content?
Legion is, to my mind, the best expansion World of Warcraft has had - and it took a lot to unseat my previous favorite, Wrath of the Lich King. I guess I really like expansions that add hero classes? (Actually yes - I really love hero classes. My DK and DH are 2nd and 3rd priority characters, and might be 1 and 2 if I didn't have such a strong sentimental attachment to my Paladin. I'm pretty sure my actual alignment in real life is Lawful Good - although the personality quiz I just took on the D&D website gave me True Neutral, so...)
Anyway, Legion had a lot of things going for it. For one, it had essentially the biggest bad guys in the Warcraft cosmos as its villains, and went farther than Burning Crusade did by having us actually land a decisive victory against them, rather than just turning back an invasion.
It also had some interesting zones and stories - even stuff that was unrelated or tangential to the Legion, like the Nightmare (which I'd put more in the realm of the Old Gods, even if Xavius kind of straddled the line there) or Helya, which both had really cool aesthetics and lore to them.
But I think that if there was any really profoundly interesting aspect to the expansion, it was class content.
Obviously, artifact weapons were a big part of that - from well-known pieces like the Ashbringer or the Doomhammer to new stuff like Xal'atath or the Maw of the Damned, we got a whole bunch of weapons that had really interesting stories that tied into class identity. But we also got the Class Halls, with their associated campaigns, that let you do things that felt particularly right for your class. While Shamans were calling upon the various elemental lords, Death Knights were going around raising people from the dead to become apocalyptic horsemen. Sure, not all the campaigns were equal in quality (I'm a little peeved that the Paladin and Priest ones were basically identical, and just like I think the Dark Brotherhood quests in any Elder Scrolls games are always the best guild chain, the Rogue campaign in Legion was *chef's kiss,*) but each gave you an opportunity to feel not like a generic adventuring type, but someone of your class.
Now, obviously, this meant twelve times as much content to produce as usual. Even before Legion was over, we had basically finished with class content once we got our special mounts in 7.2.
But even though I think it's awesome that they made entirely different leveling experiences for Alliance and Horde in BFA (something very laudable in an expansion that, on whole, has left me somewhat underwhelmed,) I miss these moments of class identity.
I've been playing a lot of D&D lately (in case you couldn't tell from this blog,) and one of the great benefits of a TTRPG where your dungeon master is tailoring the adventure to the players is that you'll get stories and activities that are tied directly to the backstory you've come up with. Obviously, you can't do that in an MMO like WoW. But giving us these specific things to do makes the world feel a little broader, a little more flavorful.
Anyway, Legion had a lot of things going for it. For one, it had essentially the biggest bad guys in the Warcraft cosmos as its villains, and went farther than Burning Crusade did by having us actually land a decisive victory against them, rather than just turning back an invasion.
It also had some interesting zones and stories - even stuff that was unrelated or tangential to the Legion, like the Nightmare (which I'd put more in the realm of the Old Gods, even if Xavius kind of straddled the line there) or Helya, which both had really cool aesthetics and lore to them.
But I think that if there was any really profoundly interesting aspect to the expansion, it was class content.
Obviously, artifact weapons were a big part of that - from well-known pieces like the Ashbringer or the Doomhammer to new stuff like Xal'atath or the Maw of the Damned, we got a whole bunch of weapons that had really interesting stories that tied into class identity. But we also got the Class Halls, with their associated campaigns, that let you do things that felt particularly right for your class. While Shamans were calling upon the various elemental lords, Death Knights were going around raising people from the dead to become apocalyptic horsemen. Sure, not all the campaigns were equal in quality (I'm a little peeved that the Paladin and Priest ones were basically identical, and just like I think the Dark Brotherhood quests in any Elder Scrolls games are always the best guild chain, the Rogue campaign in Legion was *chef's kiss,*) but each gave you an opportunity to feel not like a generic adventuring type, but someone of your class.
Now, obviously, this meant twelve times as much content to produce as usual. Even before Legion was over, we had basically finished with class content once we got our special mounts in 7.2.
But even though I think it's awesome that they made entirely different leveling experiences for Alliance and Horde in BFA (something very laudable in an expansion that, on whole, has left me somewhat underwhelmed,) I miss these moments of class identity.
I've been playing a lot of D&D lately (in case you couldn't tell from this blog,) and one of the great benefits of a TTRPG where your dungeon master is tailoring the adventure to the players is that you'll get stories and activities that are tied directly to the backstory you've come up with. Obviously, you can't do that in an MMO like WoW. But giving us these specific things to do makes the world feel a little broader, a little more flavorful.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Blizzcon 2019: November 1st and 2nd
Blizzard has just announced the dates of this year's Blizzcon, and it'll be the first two days of November.
So, what do we expect, announcement-wise? Let's go franchise by franchise. Obviously, they could start a new one - Overwatch was a big expansion of their brand (and weirdly inspired a whole genre of animated porn, which... congrats? Maybe?) But Blizzard is fairly conservative with its IPs, and so I'm going to assume we'll see updates by existing franchises.
Warcraft:
This will be the main event - it's an odd-numbered year, meaning that we're due to get the announcement of a new WoW expansion to be released about a year later. By then 8.2 will have been out for a while, and we'll either be in the middle of 8.3 or it'll be coming soon. I think it's hard to judge BFA given how overwhelmingly popular (and in this player's opinion, superlative) Legion was, but it's pretty clear that WoW is holding to its pattern of kind of alternating between really good expansions and not so good ones. If that pattern holds, the next expansion will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion. Where it stands among those (and again, if it does fit that pattern) remains to be seen, and its announcement is not going to tell us that. Legion was announced at Gamescom to a stereotypically dispassionate German crowd, and enthusiasm was probably tempered by the real disappointment of Warlords of Draenor, but wound up being what I think a lot of people consider WoW's best expansion.
An expansion announcement is coming - the question is what we think it will be about - I'm crossing fingers for a Death/Shadowlands expansion, but we'll see. Could be anything from Dragon Isles to a risen Black Empire.
Outside of WoW, if WCIII Reforged isn't out yet, we'll probably get updates on that, and possibly hear about similar treatments to the earlier games.
Overwatch:
Overwatch is one of the games they have that has pretty regular updates, so I'd expect more heroes and maps and events, probably with a new animated short. We'll also probably get more of the eSports angle with Overwatch League (to be honest, I'm about as interested in eSports as I am in regular sports, which is not very much.)
Heroes of the Storm:
While it's slowed down, HotS will, like Overwatch, probably get some continuing updates. New heroes, new map, maybe.
Hearthstone:
Again, a game that gets regular updates, so I'd expect a new expansion announcement.
Starcraft:
Big shrug here. I think this franchise, despite being one of its most historically popular, is kind of in stasis. The story was finished pretty emphatically in Starcraft II, or at least seems that way. I really don't follow this one, so apologies if I've forgotten something.
Diablo:
Ok, here's the interesting one: I've never seen such a negative reaction to a game announcement as Diablo Immortal, the anger over it seeming to shock the developers who announced it. I get that it wasn't the game people wanted, but it's especially bizarre that, according to Kotaku, Blizzard has actually been working on a Diablo IV, yet did not announce it.
Announcing that it's in development - even if it's a super-early stage - would probably be a good move and give players something to look forward to. I think Blizzard underestimated how skeptical old-school gamers are of the microtransaction-fueled mobile gaming market. Anyway, if there is to be a new main-series Diablo game, giving players something to look forward to would probably be good. Hell, I'm still feeling the high of hearing Elder Scrolls VI announced and I don't think we've gotten a single detail about that game in over a year.
So, what do we expect, announcement-wise? Let's go franchise by franchise. Obviously, they could start a new one - Overwatch was a big expansion of their brand (and weirdly inspired a whole genre of animated porn, which... congrats? Maybe?) But Blizzard is fairly conservative with its IPs, and so I'm going to assume we'll see updates by existing franchises.
Warcraft:
This will be the main event - it's an odd-numbered year, meaning that we're due to get the announcement of a new WoW expansion to be released about a year later. By then 8.2 will have been out for a while, and we'll either be in the middle of 8.3 or it'll be coming soon. I think it's hard to judge BFA given how overwhelmingly popular (and in this player's opinion, superlative) Legion was, but it's pretty clear that WoW is holding to its pattern of kind of alternating between really good expansions and not so good ones. If that pattern holds, the next expansion will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion. Where it stands among those (and again, if it does fit that pattern) remains to be seen, and its announcement is not going to tell us that. Legion was announced at Gamescom to a stereotypically dispassionate German crowd, and enthusiasm was probably tempered by the real disappointment of Warlords of Draenor, but wound up being what I think a lot of people consider WoW's best expansion.
An expansion announcement is coming - the question is what we think it will be about - I'm crossing fingers for a Death/Shadowlands expansion, but we'll see. Could be anything from Dragon Isles to a risen Black Empire.
Outside of WoW, if WCIII Reforged isn't out yet, we'll probably get updates on that, and possibly hear about similar treatments to the earlier games.
Overwatch:
Overwatch is one of the games they have that has pretty regular updates, so I'd expect more heroes and maps and events, probably with a new animated short. We'll also probably get more of the eSports angle with Overwatch League (to be honest, I'm about as interested in eSports as I am in regular sports, which is not very much.)
Heroes of the Storm:
While it's slowed down, HotS will, like Overwatch, probably get some continuing updates. New heroes, new map, maybe.
Hearthstone:
Again, a game that gets regular updates, so I'd expect a new expansion announcement.
Starcraft:
Big shrug here. I think this franchise, despite being one of its most historically popular, is kind of in stasis. The story was finished pretty emphatically in Starcraft II, or at least seems that way. I really don't follow this one, so apologies if I've forgotten something.
Diablo:
Ok, here's the interesting one: I've never seen such a negative reaction to a game announcement as Diablo Immortal, the anger over it seeming to shock the developers who announced it. I get that it wasn't the game people wanted, but it's especially bizarre that, according to Kotaku, Blizzard has actually been working on a Diablo IV, yet did not announce it.
Announcing that it's in development - even if it's a super-early stage - would probably be a good move and give players something to look forward to. I think Blizzard underestimated how skeptical old-school gamers are of the microtransaction-fueled mobile gaming market. Anyway, if there is to be a new main-series Diablo game, giving players something to look forward to would probably be good. Hell, I'm still feeling the high of hearing Elder Scrolls VI announced and I don't think we've gotten a single detail about that game in over a year.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Uu'nat, Herald of the Void
As often happens the first day of LFR, I got in on the second boss of the new two-boss raid. Crucible of Storms actually has a fairly long stretch of tough trash before the final boss, as you fight essentially through a part of N'zoth's body to get to the chamber where the quests that led up to it took place.
On LFR, Uu'nat is not terribly complicated form a tanking perspective. In fact, the best advice I can give following our run was that tanks should actually just not use the special item that you are given - the Trident will create an absorption shield that is useful for surviving massive raidwide damage, but the price you pay is that when it expires, any remaining absorption it has is dealt to the raid as frost damage. Because LFR damage is relatively low, you're unlikely to burn through the shield fast enough, and so when it expires it will just kill everyone.
There's actually a mechanic that makes it easier on the tanks, which is that when you get the tank-swap debuff, the N'raqi adds will actually fixate on you - making it pretty easy to round them up. The main thing is that you need to keep them away from the boss so they don't reduce the damage it takes.
Honestly, there's a lot going on here that I think as a tank I didn't get much of a chance to witness, but the lore implications are really interesting.
Over and over, our interactions with N'zoth suggest we're actually doing what he wants us to do. Uu'nat even resignedly says that they'll have to find better champions if he wipes the raid - as if his purpose is to prove you worthy to N'zoth.
Now, we've gotten some spoilers from the 8.2 PTR that suggest we've been mislead throughout this expansion, though it remains to be seen exactly how the various aspects of the story feed into one another.
I do feel 95% convinced N'zoth will be BFA's final boss, but given how this is an eons-old eldritch abomination who, even among other eldritch abominations whose M.O.s are subtle, behind-the-scenes manipulation, is famous for clever tactics and subterfuge, I really have to wonder if we can ever be convinced we're actually foiling his plans.
Let's get into spoiler territory: (SPOILERS FOR 8.2 AHOY)
On LFR, Uu'nat is not terribly complicated form a tanking perspective. In fact, the best advice I can give following our run was that tanks should actually just not use the special item that you are given - the Trident will create an absorption shield that is useful for surviving massive raidwide damage, but the price you pay is that when it expires, any remaining absorption it has is dealt to the raid as frost damage. Because LFR damage is relatively low, you're unlikely to burn through the shield fast enough, and so when it expires it will just kill everyone.
There's actually a mechanic that makes it easier on the tanks, which is that when you get the tank-swap debuff, the N'raqi adds will actually fixate on you - making it pretty easy to round them up. The main thing is that you need to keep them away from the boss so they don't reduce the damage it takes.
Honestly, there's a lot going on here that I think as a tank I didn't get much of a chance to witness, but the lore implications are really interesting.
Over and over, our interactions with N'zoth suggest we're actually doing what he wants us to do. Uu'nat even resignedly says that they'll have to find better champions if he wipes the raid - as if his purpose is to prove you worthy to N'zoth.
Now, we've gotten some spoilers from the 8.2 PTR that suggest we've been mislead throughout this expansion, though it remains to be seen exactly how the various aspects of the story feed into one another.
I do feel 95% convinced N'zoth will be BFA's final boss, but given how this is an eons-old eldritch abomination who, even among other eldritch abominations whose M.O.s are subtle, behind-the-scenes manipulation, is famous for clever tactics and subterfuge, I really have to wonder if we can ever be convinced we're actually foiling his plans.
Let's get into spoiler territory: (SPOILERS FOR 8.2 AHOY)
Monday, April 22, 2019
Preparing a Level 18 One-Shot
I've been DMing for a few years now, but it's only been the one campaign, and because we're an RP-heavy group and I'm still figuring out how to give out quest XP (and really thinking next campaign is going to be milestone-based leveling) the party is only level 8 (one member is still level 7.)
But one of my friends has a level 18 character she never gets to play, and so I offered to run a one-shot.
Given that I've wanted to run a game set in Ravnica since before the book was even announced, I figured I'd take this opportunity to make a Ravnica-set one-shot. Thus, while the friend whose request prompted this one-shot is going to be from her pre-established Forgotten Realms origins, the other characters will all be lifelong Ravnicans, with memberships in the guilds.
I don't think anyone I know actually reads this blog, but just for safety's sake, Jane, Tim, Adam, and Reed (and Codee if you wind up joining this game,) please read no further!
SPOILERS FOR THOSE SPECIFIC PEOPLE TO FOLLOW
But one of my friends has a level 18 character she never gets to play, and so I offered to run a one-shot.
Given that I've wanted to run a game set in Ravnica since before the book was even announced, I figured I'd take this opportunity to make a Ravnica-set one-shot. Thus, while the friend whose request prompted this one-shot is going to be from her pre-established Forgotten Realms origins, the other characters will all be lifelong Ravnicans, with memberships in the guilds.
I don't think anyone I know actually reads this blog, but just for safety's sake, Jane, Tim, Adam, and Reed (and Codee if you wind up joining this game,) please read no further!
SPOILERS FOR THOSE SPECIFIC PEOPLE TO FOLLOW
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Dwarf Heritage Armor
I got my Hunter - once my 2nd most important Alliance character - to 120 and was able to do the Dwarf Heritage Armor quest (he's a dwarf, in case you couldn't tell.)
Oddly, there's actually not an achievement attached to this quest chain, but you do get a very cool-looking set of armor (that, admittedly, would probably look most appropriate on a Plate-wearing character - but heritage sets do tend to skew toward one type of armor or another.)
Anyway, you begin by finding a table in the Gol Bolar quarry in eastern Dun Morogh, which you take to Brann Bronzebeard. You then travel into Old Ironforge and find the chambers of Aegrim Bronzebeard, an ancient ancestor of the royal brothers' who was the last to have a set of mountain king armor. The armor he wore has broken apart, and you need to reforge it. The problem is that the metal requires the Great Forge to be far hotter than it currently is.
For that, you go to Ulduar where Ignis the Furnace Master - rebuilt and freed of Yogg-Saron's corruption - can be recruited to stoke the flames. The problem, then, is that as a normal dwarf you can't actually survive the heat required to forge the armor. Brann enlists the Earthen named Bouldercrag to help perform a ritual on you that essentially allows you to keep up your Stoneform for a longer period of time - long enough to forge the armor.
With all the preparation in place, the Great Forge is cleared so that you can Ignis can make the armor. Presenting it to Muradin, you gain access to this cool transmog set on all Dwarf characters on your account.
It's a pretty simple series of quests, and while it's fun (especially to get use out of Old Ironfroge, and really just Ironforge itself, which I have a nostalgic love for since prior to Cataclysm it was kind of the main Alliance city) this isn't a super deep-dive on Dwarven lore. Bringing the Earthen in is cool, giving us a reference to the dwarves' titanic origins, but if you're looking for a massive lore drop, this isn't really what you'll get.
Still, the armor looks great, and I'm wearing it proudly on my little dwarf.
Oddly, there's actually not an achievement attached to this quest chain, but you do get a very cool-looking set of armor (that, admittedly, would probably look most appropriate on a Plate-wearing character - but heritage sets do tend to skew toward one type of armor or another.)
Anyway, you begin by finding a table in the Gol Bolar quarry in eastern Dun Morogh, which you take to Brann Bronzebeard. You then travel into Old Ironforge and find the chambers of Aegrim Bronzebeard, an ancient ancestor of the royal brothers' who was the last to have a set of mountain king armor. The armor he wore has broken apart, and you need to reforge it. The problem is that the metal requires the Great Forge to be far hotter than it currently is.
For that, you go to Ulduar where Ignis the Furnace Master - rebuilt and freed of Yogg-Saron's corruption - can be recruited to stoke the flames. The problem, then, is that as a normal dwarf you can't actually survive the heat required to forge the armor. Brann enlists the Earthen named Bouldercrag to help perform a ritual on you that essentially allows you to keep up your Stoneform for a longer period of time - long enough to forge the armor.
With all the preparation in place, the Great Forge is cleared so that you can Ignis can make the armor. Presenting it to Muradin, you gain access to this cool transmog set on all Dwarf characters on your account.
It's a pretty simple series of quests, and while it's fun (especially to get use out of Old Ironfroge, and really just Ironforge itself, which I have a nostalgic love for since prior to Cataclysm it was kind of the main Alliance city) this isn't a super deep-dive on Dwarven lore. Bringing the Earthen in is cool, giving us a reference to the dwarves' titanic origins, but if you're looking for a massive lore drop, this isn't really what you'll get.
Still, the armor looks great, and I'm wearing it proudly on my little dwarf.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
A Level Squish Without the Level Squish? A Proposal:
After two stat squishes and the revolutionary level-scaling introduced at the end of Legion, Blizzard has shown itself willing to do some radical things to keep WoW's 15-year history from overwhelming the game's systems.
Leveling from 1 to the level cap was, in the first few expansions, designed to take roughly the same amount of time. In Vanilla, the climb to 60 was a serious one (and indeed, was considered to be a big chunk of the game's purpose - raiding was for a small minority of players until they realized how popular raids were getting, and later expansions' greater focus on the endgame took some time to develop.)
The initial solution to this goal was to simply reduce the amount of experience one needed to level up in old content. If it used to take you X weeks to hit level 60, it would now take you somewhat less so that, with the new content, you'd spend the same amount of time trying to hit, say, 70.
Cataclysm saw two developments here: first off, three expansions in, the original 1-60 range was starting to feel like a smaller chunk of the overall leveling process. We also, with the revamp to the Old World, got much more solid quest coverage at all levels. Before Cataclysm, once you hit around level 40, you might do a couple quests in Tanaris and then run out because while there were more to do at level 45 or so, you'd still be level 41 or 42 when you'd finished the existing ones. The expectation was that you'd either grind or, more efficiently, grind dungeons (which were more structured and had the added benefit of boss loot.)
Cataclysm created a world in which there was always a quest to do that could level you up, and far more quests in every zone. That, coupled with the lower experience amount you needed per level (which got lower and lower as more expansions came out after Cataclysm) meant that you'd shoot through zones, all your quests turning green or even grey before you were halfway through the zone's story.
Level scaling fixed this to a certain extent. You were free to spend all the time you wanted in, say, Silverpine Forest, even if traditionally, you were supposed to be on your way out at level 20. Now, you could be level 55 and still have plenty of reason to keep questing in that territory.
Leveling actually slowed down somewhat with this scaling - the power of heirlooms was reined in, and monsters were buffed, while experience requirements to level up were either unchanged or even made larger. The intention here was that, while it would take longer to level up, you'd enjoy it more because there was actually a challenge to it.
I think that this has been a partial success, but there's another issue that it doesn't address.
By the time expansion eight comes out, Cataclysm will have been out for ten years (yes, we're all super old.) This blog started at the tail end of Cataclysm, which also makes me feel old. The point is: while the Cata-era quests are all well and good and still massive improvements over the vanilla design (even if I do miss the scarier Western Plaguelands and the dry Thousand Needles - though I love the "new" one as well) for most veteran players, these quests are old hat, and even if they were absolutely the pinnacle of quest design, we've been through them so many times that they're still kind of a slog to get through.
So how does one make leveling more fun?
First off, you could just not incentivize it. Right now, the main reason to level up the old fashioned way is to get Allied Race heritage armor sets. I've gotten three - Lightforged Draenei, Void Elf, and Nightborne - but barring some similar incentive, I really don't imagine I'll feel super motivated to do this again on any non-Allied Race character unless we get a new class that starts at level 1, like the Monk.
Between character boosts you get at each expansion (I have three and I have used none of them) and just the fact that players who have played for a long time tend to already have a ton of alts leveled up, we don't really need to do much leveling outside of the new content.
But if we want to make that process both enjoyable and less daunting, what might we suggest?
First is the purely numerical option: halve the XP required to level from 1-110.
This could very well result in leveling being a shocking parade of dings, but with level scaling, that's less of a problem. With the level cap now at 120, we're at fully twice the level cap we initially have. And when you factor in the fact that 80-85 and 85-90 are full expansions' worth of leveling content, you could argue that the level cap really ought to be 130. With so many levels to go through, seeing those dings come fast and furious will probably make those numbers feel less daunting.
Next, I think they should really consider expanding level-scaling.
As it stands, you have a couple different level brackets:
1-60 is "Vanilla" content (of course, it's really the Cataclysm revamp, but you get the drift.)
58-80 is Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content.
80-90 is Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria content.
90-100 is Warlords
98-110 is Legion
110-120 is BFA.
So obviously the first thing I'd do is make 90-110 a mix of Warlords and Legion, just to continue the idea of giving people options. While Warlords' strongest suit was its 90-100 leveling, I think I'd love to just jump into Legion content as soon as I could.
But beyond that, I'd also try to create more of an overlap. I think it's fine to have a minimum level for certain content - you shouldn't go to the Broken Isles at level 30. But I think a greater overlap would really help certain stretches.
For instance, right now the 58-80 stretch, through BC and Wrath, is the slowest part of the process. It's not terribly surprising, given that this represents the oldest part of the game that exists. Not only do they both have old-fashioned quest design (though I do think Wrath's was a big improvement over BC's, which still have a lot of "go everywhere in this zone and kill a million of these guys" quests) but their age also means we're done them all many times for over a decade.
I think the 1-60 experience is not terrible, and if we were to reduce the amount of XP you needed to make it through them, there would be barely any reason to complain.
So first thing, I'd make the vanilla zones scale up to at least 70. Give us some more time to finish out the many available zones there, and let us decide how much time we want to spend in BC/Wrath.
The remaining strategy would mostly involve extending the scaling cap on each expansion, creating more overlaps and thus more player choice.
So I'd like to see scaling that looks like this:
1-70: Vanilla
58-85: BC/Wrath
80-100: Cataclysm/Mists
90-110: Warlords/Legion
110-120: BFA
Naturally, you'd want to see the current expansion be relevant for its entire level range, but the understanding would be that once expansion nine was out, BFA and expansion 8 would be paired up in its level range, and Legion/Warlords would scale up to 120.
The whole point here is to give players the opportunity to both remain in content they enjoy longer and to skip stuff they're less interested in. Yes, there will be a ten level range where you do need to be doing BC/Wrath stuff, but that's literally half as much as you currently have. And if this came with an XP squish, those ten levels could fly by very quickly.
And on the other hand, if you really wanted to replay through Outland - maybe you haven't done so since 2007 - you could potentially spend 27 levels there.
These numbers are, of course, open to tweaking. The primary goal would be to create more overlaps. You could even argue for letting players access content earlier than you ever could before - going to Outland at level 40, for example (though I'm not prepared to argue that quite yet.)
Squishing XP can have consequences, but I think that level scaling gives them a great tool to prevent them from being too bad. Expanding scaling could help deal with it if entire continents start to go green too quickly the way that zones did prior to the scaling solution.
Leveling from 1 to the level cap was, in the first few expansions, designed to take roughly the same amount of time. In Vanilla, the climb to 60 was a serious one (and indeed, was considered to be a big chunk of the game's purpose - raiding was for a small minority of players until they realized how popular raids were getting, and later expansions' greater focus on the endgame took some time to develop.)
The initial solution to this goal was to simply reduce the amount of experience one needed to level up in old content. If it used to take you X weeks to hit level 60, it would now take you somewhat less so that, with the new content, you'd spend the same amount of time trying to hit, say, 70.
Cataclysm saw two developments here: first off, three expansions in, the original 1-60 range was starting to feel like a smaller chunk of the overall leveling process. We also, with the revamp to the Old World, got much more solid quest coverage at all levels. Before Cataclysm, once you hit around level 40, you might do a couple quests in Tanaris and then run out because while there were more to do at level 45 or so, you'd still be level 41 or 42 when you'd finished the existing ones. The expectation was that you'd either grind or, more efficiently, grind dungeons (which were more structured and had the added benefit of boss loot.)
Cataclysm created a world in which there was always a quest to do that could level you up, and far more quests in every zone. That, coupled with the lower experience amount you needed per level (which got lower and lower as more expansions came out after Cataclysm) meant that you'd shoot through zones, all your quests turning green or even grey before you were halfway through the zone's story.
Level scaling fixed this to a certain extent. You were free to spend all the time you wanted in, say, Silverpine Forest, even if traditionally, you were supposed to be on your way out at level 20. Now, you could be level 55 and still have plenty of reason to keep questing in that territory.
Leveling actually slowed down somewhat with this scaling - the power of heirlooms was reined in, and monsters were buffed, while experience requirements to level up were either unchanged or even made larger. The intention here was that, while it would take longer to level up, you'd enjoy it more because there was actually a challenge to it.
I think that this has been a partial success, but there's another issue that it doesn't address.
By the time expansion eight comes out, Cataclysm will have been out for ten years (yes, we're all super old.) This blog started at the tail end of Cataclysm, which also makes me feel old. The point is: while the Cata-era quests are all well and good and still massive improvements over the vanilla design (even if I do miss the scarier Western Plaguelands and the dry Thousand Needles - though I love the "new" one as well) for most veteran players, these quests are old hat, and even if they were absolutely the pinnacle of quest design, we've been through them so many times that they're still kind of a slog to get through.
So how does one make leveling more fun?
First off, you could just not incentivize it. Right now, the main reason to level up the old fashioned way is to get Allied Race heritage armor sets. I've gotten three - Lightforged Draenei, Void Elf, and Nightborne - but barring some similar incentive, I really don't imagine I'll feel super motivated to do this again on any non-Allied Race character unless we get a new class that starts at level 1, like the Monk.
Between character boosts you get at each expansion (I have three and I have used none of them) and just the fact that players who have played for a long time tend to already have a ton of alts leveled up, we don't really need to do much leveling outside of the new content.
But if we want to make that process both enjoyable and less daunting, what might we suggest?
First is the purely numerical option: halve the XP required to level from 1-110.
This could very well result in leveling being a shocking parade of dings, but with level scaling, that's less of a problem. With the level cap now at 120, we're at fully twice the level cap we initially have. And when you factor in the fact that 80-85 and 85-90 are full expansions' worth of leveling content, you could argue that the level cap really ought to be 130. With so many levels to go through, seeing those dings come fast and furious will probably make those numbers feel less daunting.
Next, I think they should really consider expanding level-scaling.
As it stands, you have a couple different level brackets:
1-60 is "Vanilla" content (of course, it's really the Cataclysm revamp, but you get the drift.)
58-80 is Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content.
80-90 is Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria content.
90-100 is Warlords
98-110 is Legion
110-120 is BFA.
So obviously the first thing I'd do is make 90-110 a mix of Warlords and Legion, just to continue the idea of giving people options. While Warlords' strongest suit was its 90-100 leveling, I think I'd love to just jump into Legion content as soon as I could.
But beyond that, I'd also try to create more of an overlap. I think it's fine to have a minimum level for certain content - you shouldn't go to the Broken Isles at level 30. But I think a greater overlap would really help certain stretches.
For instance, right now the 58-80 stretch, through BC and Wrath, is the slowest part of the process. It's not terribly surprising, given that this represents the oldest part of the game that exists. Not only do they both have old-fashioned quest design (though I do think Wrath's was a big improvement over BC's, which still have a lot of "go everywhere in this zone and kill a million of these guys" quests) but their age also means we're done them all many times for over a decade.
I think the 1-60 experience is not terrible, and if we were to reduce the amount of XP you needed to make it through them, there would be barely any reason to complain.
So first thing, I'd make the vanilla zones scale up to at least 70. Give us some more time to finish out the many available zones there, and let us decide how much time we want to spend in BC/Wrath.
The remaining strategy would mostly involve extending the scaling cap on each expansion, creating more overlaps and thus more player choice.
So I'd like to see scaling that looks like this:
1-70: Vanilla
58-85: BC/Wrath
80-100: Cataclysm/Mists
90-110: Warlords/Legion
110-120: BFA
Naturally, you'd want to see the current expansion be relevant for its entire level range, but the understanding would be that once expansion nine was out, BFA and expansion 8 would be paired up in its level range, and Legion/Warlords would scale up to 120.
The whole point here is to give players the opportunity to both remain in content they enjoy longer and to skip stuff they're less interested in. Yes, there will be a ten level range where you do need to be doing BC/Wrath stuff, but that's literally half as much as you currently have. And if this came with an XP squish, those ten levels could fly by very quickly.
And on the other hand, if you really wanted to replay through Outland - maybe you haven't done so since 2007 - you could potentially spend 27 levels there.
These numbers are, of course, open to tweaking. The primary goal would be to create more overlaps. You could even argue for letting players access content earlier than you ever could before - going to Outland at level 40, for example (though I'm not prepared to argue that quite yet.)
Squishing XP can have consequences, but I think that level scaling gives them a great tool to prevent them from being too bad. Expanding scaling could help deal with it if entire continents start to go green too quickly the way that zones did prior to the scaling solution.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
N'zoth, Sylvanas, and What Comes After BFA
Probably the two most popular theories on what expansion eight is going to be about are either the Shadowlands or the Old Gods.
What's kind of interesting about this is that that direction largely depends on what BFA is not about.
Sylvanas and N'zoth appear to be the two main contenders for BFA's final boss. In Nazjatar, we fight Azshara, who - while not necessarily good friends with N'zoth - serves the God of the Depths. It would not be terribly shocking to me if in some subtle ways, N'zoth has been the one to manipulate this war into being - to divide Azeroth's heroes and ensure that our conflict means we cannot do a very good job of fighting him.
Frankly, I imagine that the remainder of BFA will largely revolve around taking the fight to N'zoth. The most likely trajectory (and I'll issue this caveat - I'm usually wrong about these things) is that we'll spend 8.3 fighting our way into Ny'alotha for a final confrontation with N'zoth, who will be the expansion's final boss.
Indeed, Sylvanas' taking up of the Blade of the Black Empire (notably not Xal'atath, though, as this is a separate entity that is now going around in the stolen body of a Blood Elf cultist) could signal that she intends to siphon N'zoth's essence into the dagger - on one hand trapping him but on the other hand giving her a great deal more power (and possibly destabilizing Azeroth further.)
But it's also possible that the expansion will push us instead to a confrontation with Sylvanas. Might we find ourselves fighting the Warchief - between Horde rebels and a vengeful Alliance?
The reason I find the latter possibility very unlikely is that we did exactly that in Mists of Pandaria. Yes, in some ways Sylvanas is very different from Garrosh, but the way she has remade the Horde in her image and driven many of its leaders to either openly defy her or consider behind her back that a change might be necessary means we're treading some similar ground.
Blizzard needs to make this a different story than Garrosh.
But let's entertain both possibilities, starting with the latter.
If Sylvanas is taken down by the end of BFA, it will likely mean we have not dealt with N'zoth, and given his strong presence in BFA, it would seem that the Old God ought to be ascendant. One could imagine a Black Empire expansion - one in which N'zoth attempts to reestablish dominion over the surface of the world, and we could see all manner of Rl'yeh like cities and environments (side note: I think I've said it before, but while initially they claimed Ahn'qiraj was a former Titan facility, now that we have some concept art of the Black Empire and a glimpse of it in Azshara's Warbringers short, it seems pretty clear Ahn'qiraj is just a ruined version of what must have been C'thun's capital city prior to the Titans' arrival.)
That could be a cool expansion, to be sure, and I could even see it showing a resurgence of C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and even maybe Y'shaarj (by the way, does it annoy anyone else that it's pronounced like it should be "Ya'sharaj?")
On the other hand, if we go with the former scenario, which I think is more likely, we will probably deal with N'zoth at the end of BFA - though to what extent we truly "deal with him" is an open question. It's hard to portray a being as million-year-old master of manipulation and schemes and just have us kill the dude once his patch number is up, but the demands of an MMORPG sometimes lead to such things. I think that having him defeated, but instead of dead being trapped in that knife would be A: pretty cool and B: give us a chance to have Darin DePaul speak to us if we ever get our artifact weapons back. (Another side note: I really hope we get more of the friendly, higher-pitched voice that N'zoth uses when speaking to Azshara through the fish. WoW sometimes overuses the deep, low, booming voice for big bads, and I think that N'zoth is way creepier when he uses that first voice. It's like how I find C'thun's voice way cooler than Yogg-Saron's. That being said, the Lich King's voice is perfect.)
Anyway, if N'zoth is defeated or destroyed at the end of BFA, I could see Sylvanas become public enemy number one. As someone who has been undead for all of WoW and is now getting bolder using necromantic powers, it seems very likely she could use the Shadowlands to escape into.
While the Shadowlands is in many ways the dark reflection of the Emerald Dream (so is the Nightmare, sort of, but in a different way,) it's not clear that the Shadowlands have any of the problems that kept Blizzard from building an entire expansion around it. The Shadowlands could easily have inhabitants and cities and such.
Indeed, BFA has actually seriously diversified the kind of things we might find there. Between Bwonsamdi's loyal spirits, the Drust, and all the Scourge-affiliated undead, it would not be hard to flesh out the Shadowlands as a weirdly vibrant place with all manner of creatures and people for us to meet.
Frankly, I think that WoW has always done well with creepy and macabre stuff - I think part of it is the way that its colorful and cartoonish art style keeps it from getting too overwhelmingly grim. So I would be super on board for a Shadowlands-themed expansion. And Sylvanas would be a great gateway NPC into it.
What her fate is, ultimately, once we get there is something I won't begin to speculate about. I hope it's not some Horde NPC killing her in a duel like last time. Indeed, I'd kind of like to see what happens if Sylvanas becomes her own, independent force - not a leader, but a rogue NPC who is extremely dangerous but not necessarily our adversary. Indeed, I think I'd like to see her as more of an Illidan-like figure (the Legion version,) where any interactions we have with her are fraught with animosity that has to be stifled in order to get things done.
Obviously we're still months away from the reveal of the next expansion. We don't even know when Blizzcon is this year yet (or if it will be announced at a different convention, like how Legion was announced at Gamescom to a typically reserved and skeptical German audience) and we don't know where 8.3 will fall in that cycle, which is obviously something we'll need to see before we can speculate with much confidence about expansion 8.
What's kind of interesting about this is that that direction largely depends on what BFA is not about.
Sylvanas and N'zoth appear to be the two main contenders for BFA's final boss. In Nazjatar, we fight Azshara, who - while not necessarily good friends with N'zoth - serves the God of the Depths. It would not be terribly shocking to me if in some subtle ways, N'zoth has been the one to manipulate this war into being - to divide Azeroth's heroes and ensure that our conflict means we cannot do a very good job of fighting him.
Frankly, I imagine that the remainder of BFA will largely revolve around taking the fight to N'zoth. The most likely trajectory (and I'll issue this caveat - I'm usually wrong about these things) is that we'll spend 8.3 fighting our way into Ny'alotha for a final confrontation with N'zoth, who will be the expansion's final boss.
Indeed, Sylvanas' taking up of the Blade of the Black Empire (notably not Xal'atath, though, as this is a separate entity that is now going around in the stolen body of a Blood Elf cultist) could signal that she intends to siphon N'zoth's essence into the dagger - on one hand trapping him but on the other hand giving her a great deal more power (and possibly destabilizing Azeroth further.)
But it's also possible that the expansion will push us instead to a confrontation with Sylvanas. Might we find ourselves fighting the Warchief - between Horde rebels and a vengeful Alliance?
The reason I find the latter possibility very unlikely is that we did exactly that in Mists of Pandaria. Yes, in some ways Sylvanas is very different from Garrosh, but the way she has remade the Horde in her image and driven many of its leaders to either openly defy her or consider behind her back that a change might be necessary means we're treading some similar ground.
Blizzard needs to make this a different story than Garrosh.
But let's entertain both possibilities, starting with the latter.
If Sylvanas is taken down by the end of BFA, it will likely mean we have not dealt with N'zoth, and given his strong presence in BFA, it would seem that the Old God ought to be ascendant. One could imagine a Black Empire expansion - one in which N'zoth attempts to reestablish dominion over the surface of the world, and we could see all manner of Rl'yeh like cities and environments (side note: I think I've said it before, but while initially they claimed Ahn'qiraj was a former Titan facility, now that we have some concept art of the Black Empire and a glimpse of it in Azshara's Warbringers short, it seems pretty clear Ahn'qiraj is just a ruined version of what must have been C'thun's capital city prior to the Titans' arrival.)
That could be a cool expansion, to be sure, and I could even see it showing a resurgence of C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and even maybe Y'shaarj (by the way, does it annoy anyone else that it's pronounced like it should be "Ya'sharaj?")
On the other hand, if we go with the former scenario, which I think is more likely, we will probably deal with N'zoth at the end of BFA - though to what extent we truly "deal with him" is an open question. It's hard to portray a being as million-year-old master of manipulation and schemes and just have us kill the dude once his patch number is up, but the demands of an MMORPG sometimes lead to such things. I think that having him defeated, but instead of dead being trapped in that knife would be A: pretty cool and B: give us a chance to have Darin DePaul speak to us if we ever get our artifact weapons back. (Another side note: I really hope we get more of the friendly, higher-pitched voice that N'zoth uses when speaking to Azshara through the fish. WoW sometimes overuses the deep, low, booming voice for big bads, and I think that N'zoth is way creepier when he uses that first voice. It's like how I find C'thun's voice way cooler than Yogg-Saron's. That being said, the Lich King's voice is perfect.)
Anyway, if N'zoth is defeated or destroyed at the end of BFA, I could see Sylvanas become public enemy number one. As someone who has been undead for all of WoW and is now getting bolder using necromantic powers, it seems very likely she could use the Shadowlands to escape into.
While the Shadowlands is in many ways the dark reflection of the Emerald Dream (so is the Nightmare, sort of, but in a different way,) it's not clear that the Shadowlands have any of the problems that kept Blizzard from building an entire expansion around it. The Shadowlands could easily have inhabitants and cities and such.
Indeed, BFA has actually seriously diversified the kind of things we might find there. Between Bwonsamdi's loyal spirits, the Drust, and all the Scourge-affiliated undead, it would not be hard to flesh out the Shadowlands as a weirdly vibrant place with all manner of creatures and people for us to meet.
Frankly, I think that WoW has always done well with creepy and macabre stuff - I think part of it is the way that its colorful and cartoonish art style keeps it from getting too overwhelmingly grim. So I would be super on board for a Shadowlands-themed expansion. And Sylvanas would be a great gateway NPC into it.
What her fate is, ultimately, once we get there is something I won't begin to speculate about. I hope it's not some Horde NPC killing her in a duel like last time. Indeed, I'd kind of like to see what happens if Sylvanas becomes her own, independent force - not a leader, but a rogue NPC who is extremely dangerous but not necessarily our adversary. Indeed, I think I'd like to see her as more of an Illidan-like figure (the Legion version,) where any interactions we have with her are fraught with animosity that has to be stifled in order to get things done.
Obviously we're still months away from the reveal of the next expansion. We don't even know when Blizzcon is this year yet (or if it will be announced at a different convention, like how Legion was announced at Gamescom to a typically reserved and skeptical German audience) and we don't know where 8.3 will fall in that cycle, which is obviously something we'll need to see before we can speculate with much confidence about expansion 8.
The Run-Down on Mount Equipment
In 8.2, you'll have a new slot in your mount collection where you can place Mount Equipment. The intention of this change is that players who either don't have the Water Strider from the Anglers back in Mists or are sick of that blue bug will have the opportunity to get the same effect, as well as some others, on other mounts.
The feature unlocks at level 110, but this unlocks it for all characters 20+ (aka: the level where you first get mounts.) So while you will need to have a character who is at least to Legion's level cap, all your alts should then have access to it.
The three pieces of mount equipment will be:
One that allows the mount to walk on water, like the Water Strider,
One that prevents you from getting dazed and dismounted from enemy attacks,
And one that will deploy a parachute if you dismount while in the air.
They have also said that if they come up with other ideas, they might expand these options.
Mount equipment will be made by professions, and are intended to be relatively cheap and easy to produce.
You will have one equipment slot for all your mounts, so you can't make one mount your water mount, one your daze-proof, and one your parachute one.
The Azure Water-Strider will no longer inherently have water-walking, HOWEVER, those who have it already will get a free water-walking piece of mount equipment in the mail, and can purchase new ones that are account-bound for 40 gold from the Anglers quartermaster in Pandaria.
Some mounts will not benefit from mount equipment: the Sky Golem, for example, already has the inherent benefit of allowing you to gather herbs with it, and as such will not get other benefits.
Other effects, such as a Death Knight's Path of Frost or a Shaman's Water Walking will, however, stack, so if you are a Blood Death Knight you might just use the parachute one as you'll have daze immunity anyway as a tank and Path of Frost to give you water-walking.
Equipment will work like gems, so equipping one piece will destroy the previous one.
The feature unlocks at level 110, but this unlocks it for all characters 20+ (aka: the level where you first get mounts.) So while you will need to have a character who is at least to Legion's level cap, all your alts should then have access to it.
The three pieces of mount equipment will be:
One that allows the mount to walk on water, like the Water Strider,
One that prevents you from getting dazed and dismounted from enemy attacks,
And one that will deploy a parachute if you dismount while in the air.
They have also said that if they come up with other ideas, they might expand these options.
Mount equipment will be made by professions, and are intended to be relatively cheap and easy to produce.
You will have one equipment slot for all your mounts, so you can't make one mount your water mount, one your daze-proof, and one your parachute one.
The Azure Water-Strider will no longer inherently have water-walking, HOWEVER, those who have it already will get a free water-walking piece of mount equipment in the mail, and can purchase new ones that are account-bound for 40 gold from the Anglers quartermaster in Pandaria.
Some mounts will not benefit from mount equipment: the Sky Golem, for example, already has the inherent benefit of allowing you to gather herbs with it, and as such will not get other benefits.
Other effects, such as a Death Knight's Path of Frost or a Shaman's Water Walking will, however, stack, so if you are a Blood Death Knight you might just use the parachute one as you'll have daze immunity anyway as a tank and Path of Frost to give you water-walking.
Equipment will work like gems, so equipping one piece will destroy the previous one.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
The Fate of Baine and the Horde
Finding out that one needed to defeat Jaina (if winning that raid fight can really count as a defeat - she successfully delays the Horde forces from harrying the Alliance and then bamfs out of there) in order to progress on the Horde war campaign (oddly, Alliance players do not have to set foot in the Battle for Dazar'alor to get their equivalent quests,) I did the quests that lead to the fateful meeting between Baine and Jaina off the coast of the ruins of Theramore - appropriately enough on my Tauren Shaman (though don't get me wrong, my Undead Rogue is long past thinking the Banshee Queen needs to have a convenient accident that might give the Horde a leader with a more sustainable leadership style.)
While I haven't finished the follower mission that allows you get the last chapter of this story on the Horde side, I do know how it ends thanks to the Alliance quest that has you spy on the meeting.
Ultimately (and I don't count this as spoilery as it's been out for a while,) Sylvanas blames Zelling as a traitor and loyalist to Kul Tiras and has him summarily executed, though not before this provokes Baine to claim responsibility for Derek's release.
It seems pretty clear at this point that, even if Derek does not believe himself to be a sleeper agent, he almost certainly is one. Many of the guards on the ship - Forsaken ones - simply surrender and flee rather than die to protect the prisoner. Only the Dark Rangers and the officers on the crew - perhaps chosen as those loyal enough to die in order to sell the deception - actually die to the Horde player and Baine's assault.
In fact, Sylvanas might have even gotten the idea from the Alliance, who sent Telaamon and a sizable number of troops on a suicide mission through Nazmir, where their purpose was to draw the Horde's main troops north and distract them while the true assault hit Dazar'alor at its harbor.
Which means that, in all likelihood, Baine got played. Sylvanas is ruthless and cunning, and even if the latter attribute has been told rather than shown for the most part, we know that she never hesitates to sacrifice something for the win - like her own home city, for example.
Of course, the Battle of Lordaeron shows that Sylvanas' diabolical plans don't always really work. Sylvanas had intended to decapitate the Alliance with Lordaeron, trapping Anduin, Genn, and Alleria in a blight-blasted chamber where they would almost surely die. She didn't account for Jaina, who turned what had been a big sacrifice play into, at best, a slash-and-burn retreat.
The Derek gambit is, of course, directed at Jaina. But how successful is that likely to be?
Let's make the assumption that Derek is a perfect sleeper agent - he believes that he has complete control over his own undead faculties, and genuinely wants to be reunited with his family, but when triggered by a subconscious suggestion - maybe with a Manchurian Candidate-like code phrase - he will go into killing mode, attacking his loved ones when they are vulnerable.
This only works if the Proudmoores act naively. Jaina, the moment Derek arrives, is immediately suspicious. While she softens once Derek speaks (interestingly, it's his acknowledgement that he was meant to be a weapon against them that she seems to develop some trust for him,) those of us on the Alliance side see that he's not going directly to Boralus to hang with the fam - instead, Jaina is sending him to meet an "old friend" who has been through something similar.
In-game, we've heard nothing of Calia Menethil's fate, except for some vague references to the massacre in Arathi Highlands. But Calia's status as a sort of "lightforged undead," meaning that she was raised not through traditional necromancy, but instead through the Holy Light, yet still seems to be sort of undead, means that there's another side to the undead coin that could mean the conditioning and brainwashing Derek has likely undergone might be undone by something that Sylvanas did not anticipate.
So that's a plot to keep your eyes on.
But what of Baine?
Baine is a man of honor, representing the spirit of his people. Grimtotem aside, the Tauren have always been the most unambiguously good members of the Horde. The Tauren have always seemed the most likely to be able to broker peace with the Alliance - especially given that they were on friendly terms (even if not direct allies) with the Night Elves for ages before the arrival of the Orcs.
With Vol'jin dead, Saurfang gone, Lor'themar still holding grudges, and Thrall sort of politically irrelevant (though we are seeing a new model for him in 8.2, so who knows?) Baine is the most likely advocate for offering the Horde a different leadership direction - one that hold to the ideals of honor that Sylvanas clearly has no interest in whatsoever. But that honor has caused him to do something rash - he has gone to consort with Jaina Proudmoore, and his timing could not be worse. Even if, as an Alliance player primarily, I generally think Jaina has been justified in most of her actions (purging the Sunreavers wasn't great - the ends were justified, but not the means,) she did just lead an assault that killed King Rastakhan, meaning that Baine has just gone and consorted with someone who has become a hated enemy of the Horde's newest and most important new allies.
So, the High Chieftain of the Tauren Tribes is now a criminal and a prisoner. This presents a couple problems:
First off, Baine is, or at least was, popular within the Horde. His father is a beloved hero and he was seen as keeping up the tradition of honor among the Bloodhoof. Likewise, while he did betray the Warchief, Sylvanas is not exactly the most popular Warchief they've ever had (maybe that's Vol'jin?) Especially given the disappearance of Varok Saurfang, the Horde is in an uncertain position (and let's not forget that after Dazar'alor, the Alliance is winning - both sides say as much.)
Also, the Tauren are leaderless. With Baine in chains, what does it mean for the status of the Tauren within the Horde? One of the few politically intelligent things Garrosh did was to give the Tauren a privileged status after his accidentally dishonorable killing of Cairne. But now, the moral heart of the Horde is going to be alienated and isolated and without a clear authority figure.
The player character is also notably not punished for these actions. Sylvanas clearly figured out it was Zelling and Baine behind Derek's escape (and planned for it, one would assume.) One would think, then, that she also knows we were part of it as well. But did she tell us that it was all part of the plan? No. We're the only ones who seem to have faced zero consequences. When is that other shoe going to fall?
Sylvanas' tenure as Warchief does not seem sustainable. But this expansion has also done a hell of a job creating a real mess when it comes to what the better alternative would be. In Mists, Vol'jin was leading a revolutionary resistance that, while it received aid from the Alliance, was still fundamentally independent of it, and thus only the most jingoistic Garrosh-loyalists could claim anything other that that Vol'jin was fighting to change the Horde from within.
Sylvanas must have paid close attention. The most obvious contenders who could replace Sylvanas in some sort of coup are finding themselves compromised. Saurfang was clearly unleashed by the Alliance in order to create a challenge to her - and while that might work, if that fact is exposed it will create some big problems for old Varok. Likewise, Baine, who could have made a good argument for himself as someone who embodied the true honor of the Horde, has now incriminated himself. There is no clear untainted Vol'jin analogue who could simply take over from Sylvanas.
Sylvanas' story is still in the "everything going exactly according to plan" stage. But compelling villains work best when they are challenged. Take Walter White from Breaking Bad, one of the best villain protagonists of recent years. He was constantly on the edge of catastrophe, which made his survival all the more impressive. I'm fine with Sylvanas being clever, but I want to get a little more insight into her process, and see what happens when something doesn't go the way she wanted it to.
Likewise, I really want to see a more active role for the Alliance. While Jaina's story in Kul Tiras has been great, and it was immensely satisfying to see the Alliance successfully deceive the Horde, I wish we could get some of this intrigue and intra-faction challenge and conflict on team blue. There's potential there with Tyrande's invocation of the Night Warrior, but we have yet to see exactly how that will play out. (Side note: there was some recent text datamined that, at least by my interpretation, suggests that N'zoth actually wants our help to fight Elune, which... would be some crazy stuff.)
While I haven't finished the follower mission that allows you get the last chapter of this story on the Horde side, I do know how it ends thanks to the Alliance quest that has you spy on the meeting.
Ultimately (and I don't count this as spoilery as it's been out for a while,) Sylvanas blames Zelling as a traitor and loyalist to Kul Tiras and has him summarily executed, though not before this provokes Baine to claim responsibility for Derek's release.
It seems pretty clear at this point that, even if Derek does not believe himself to be a sleeper agent, he almost certainly is one. Many of the guards on the ship - Forsaken ones - simply surrender and flee rather than die to protect the prisoner. Only the Dark Rangers and the officers on the crew - perhaps chosen as those loyal enough to die in order to sell the deception - actually die to the Horde player and Baine's assault.
In fact, Sylvanas might have even gotten the idea from the Alliance, who sent Telaamon and a sizable number of troops on a suicide mission through Nazmir, where their purpose was to draw the Horde's main troops north and distract them while the true assault hit Dazar'alor at its harbor.
Which means that, in all likelihood, Baine got played. Sylvanas is ruthless and cunning, and even if the latter attribute has been told rather than shown for the most part, we know that she never hesitates to sacrifice something for the win - like her own home city, for example.
Of course, the Battle of Lordaeron shows that Sylvanas' diabolical plans don't always really work. Sylvanas had intended to decapitate the Alliance with Lordaeron, trapping Anduin, Genn, and Alleria in a blight-blasted chamber where they would almost surely die. She didn't account for Jaina, who turned what had been a big sacrifice play into, at best, a slash-and-burn retreat.
The Derek gambit is, of course, directed at Jaina. But how successful is that likely to be?
Let's make the assumption that Derek is a perfect sleeper agent - he believes that he has complete control over his own undead faculties, and genuinely wants to be reunited with his family, but when triggered by a subconscious suggestion - maybe with a Manchurian Candidate-like code phrase - he will go into killing mode, attacking his loved ones when they are vulnerable.
This only works if the Proudmoores act naively. Jaina, the moment Derek arrives, is immediately suspicious. While she softens once Derek speaks (interestingly, it's his acknowledgement that he was meant to be a weapon against them that she seems to develop some trust for him,) those of us on the Alliance side see that he's not going directly to Boralus to hang with the fam - instead, Jaina is sending him to meet an "old friend" who has been through something similar.
In-game, we've heard nothing of Calia Menethil's fate, except for some vague references to the massacre in Arathi Highlands. But Calia's status as a sort of "lightforged undead," meaning that she was raised not through traditional necromancy, but instead through the Holy Light, yet still seems to be sort of undead, means that there's another side to the undead coin that could mean the conditioning and brainwashing Derek has likely undergone might be undone by something that Sylvanas did not anticipate.
So that's a plot to keep your eyes on.
But what of Baine?
Baine is a man of honor, representing the spirit of his people. Grimtotem aside, the Tauren have always been the most unambiguously good members of the Horde. The Tauren have always seemed the most likely to be able to broker peace with the Alliance - especially given that they were on friendly terms (even if not direct allies) with the Night Elves for ages before the arrival of the Orcs.
With Vol'jin dead, Saurfang gone, Lor'themar still holding grudges, and Thrall sort of politically irrelevant (though we are seeing a new model for him in 8.2, so who knows?) Baine is the most likely advocate for offering the Horde a different leadership direction - one that hold to the ideals of honor that Sylvanas clearly has no interest in whatsoever. But that honor has caused him to do something rash - he has gone to consort with Jaina Proudmoore, and his timing could not be worse. Even if, as an Alliance player primarily, I generally think Jaina has been justified in most of her actions (purging the Sunreavers wasn't great - the ends were justified, but not the means,) she did just lead an assault that killed King Rastakhan, meaning that Baine has just gone and consorted with someone who has become a hated enemy of the Horde's newest and most important new allies.
So, the High Chieftain of the Tauren Tribes is now a criminal and a prisoner. This presents a couple problems:
First off, Baine is, or at least was, popular within the Horde. His father is a beloved hero and he was seen as keeping up the tradition of honor among the Bloodhoof. Likewise, while he did betray the Warchief, Sylvanas is not exactly the most popular Warchief they've ever had (maybe that's Vol'jin?) Especially given the disappearance of Varok Saurfang, the Horde is in an uncertain position (and let's not forget that after Dazar'alor, the Alliance is winning - both sides say as much.)
Also, the Tauren are leaderless. With Baine in chains, what does it mean for the status of the Tauren within the Horde? One of the few politically intelligent things Garrosh did was to give the Tauren a privileged status after his accidentally dishonorable killing of Cairne. But now, the moral heart of the Horde is going to be alienated and isolated and without a clear authority figure.
The player character is also notably not punished for these actions. Sylvanas clearly figured out it was Zelling and Baine behind Derek's escape (and planned for it, one would assume.) One would think, then, that she also knows we were part of it as well. But did she tell us that it was all part of the plan? No. We're the only ones who seem to have faced zero consequences. When is that other shoe going to fall?
Sylvanas' tenure as Warchief does not seem sustainable. But this expansion has also done a hell of a job creating a real mess when it comes to what the better alternative would be. In Mists, Vol'jin was leading a revolutionary resistance that, while it received aid from the Alliance, was still fundamentally independent of it, and thus only the most jingoistic Garrosh-loyalists could claim anything other that that Vol'jin was fighting to change the Horde from within.
Sylvanas must have paid close attention. The most obvious contenders who could replace Sylvanas in some sort of coup are finding themselves compromised. Saurfang was clearly unleashed by the Alliance in order to create a challenge to her - and while that might work, if that fact is exposed it will create some big problems for old Varok. Likewise, Baine, who could have made a good argument for himself as someone who embodied the true honor of the Horde, has now incriminated himself. There is no clear untainted Vol'jin analogue who could simply take over from Sylvanas.
Sylvanas' story is still in the "everything going exactly according to plan" stage. But compelling villains work best when they are challenged. Take Walter White from Breaking Bad, one of the best villain protagonists of recent years. He was constantly on the edge of catastrophe, which made his survival all the more impressive. I'm fine with Sylvanas being clever, but I want to get a little more insight into her process, and see what happens when something doesn't go the way she wanted it to.
Likewise, I really want to see a more active role for the Alliance. While Jaina's story in Kul Tiras has been great, and it was immensely satisfying to see the Alliance successfully deceive the Horde, I wish we could get some of this intrigue and intra-faction challenge and conflict on team blue. There's potential there with Tyrande's invocation of the Night Warrior, but we have yet to see exactly how that will play out. (Side note: there was some recent text datamined that, at least by my interpretation, suggests that N'zoth actually wants our help to fight Elune, which... would be some crazy stuff.)
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Blizzard's Final Boss Coyness
WoW's first three expansions centered around powerful big bads - yes, Burning Crusade had something of a bonus-half-tier that made Illidan its penultimate final boss and you could argue that Halion was the true final boss of Wrath, though I would fight you if you made that argument - and built the story around an eventual confrontation with them.
BC took some criticism due to the fact that you basically didn't see Illidan until you got to him in Black Temple, and while his influence is felt, the actual status of the larger Illidari coalition was not super clear - like how Kael'thas and Vashj seemed to only sort of maybe have any loyalty to him, and the former certainly not in the end.
Of course, BC still largely operated on the notion that NPCs in WoW only existed in one place at a given time, with Thrall's arrival in Nagrand as a surprising fist-pumping moment (little did we know that showing Garrosh that his father was actually a hero was maybe the worst thing Thrall ever did - other than make the dude Warchief.)
Wrath corrected for this by having Arthas show up in practically every zone at least once, making it very clear that the entire expansion was leading up to the big fight with the Lich King. Some people complained that it required him to do an evil laugh and leave without killing us for no apparent reason, though I preferred the hands-on style.
Deathwing anchored Cataclysm by striking a bit of a balance - interestingly, his most common appearance was outside of any quests and instead saw him fly across a zone and torch everything and everyone in his path.
The point is, in these expansions, we knew what fight we were building up to the whole time.
Mists changed things by presenting no obvious final boss in the early patches. Blizzard ultimately wound up revealing Garrosh's final boss status right around the time the expansion launched, but since then the company has been reluctant to tell us.
Warlords seemed to me like it was building up to a fight with Gul'dan - especially after Blizzard acknowledged that it would be pretty unsatisfying to have us fight another Mr. G. Hellscream as final boss two expansions in a row. The result, however, was the rather "out of the green" arrival of Archimonde, who had had basically no presence in the expansion prior to that, and we only found out in the lead up to the final patch of that truncated expansion.
While Legion was a far better expansion, the final boss also sort of came out of the blue. We had only just gotten confirmation that Azeroth was a nascent Titan, and now, in the final hour, we suddenly discovered Argus was as well. Fighting a Titan was a decently sufficient final challenge for the expansion, though I think a lot of us were looking forward to fighting Sargeras himself.
In BFA, we've similarly been given no explicit message about the final boss. That being said, the leading contender is looking more likely now than ever before.
Spoilers to follow:
BC took some criticism due to the fact that you basically didn't see Illidan until you got to him in Black Temple, and while his influence is felt, the actual status of the larger Illidari coalition was not super clear - like how Kael'thas and Vashj seemed to only sort of maybe have any loyalty to him, and the former certainly not in the end.
Of course, BC still largely operated on the notion that NPCs in WoW only existed in one place at a given time, with Thrall's arrival in Nagrand as a surprising fist-pumping moment (little did we know that showing Garrosh that his father was actually a hero was maybe the worst thing Thrall ever did - other than make the dude Warchief.)
Wrath corrected for this by having Arthas show up in practically every zone at least once, making it very clear that the entire expansion was leading up to the big fight with the Lich King. Some people complained that it required him to do an evil laugh and leave without killing us for no apparent reason, though I preferred the hands-on style.
Deathwing anchored Cataclysm by striking a bit of a balance - interestingly, his most common appearance was outside of any quests and instead saw him fly across a zone and torch everything and everyone in his path.
The point is, in these expansions, we knew what fight we were building up to the whole time.
Mists changed things by presenting no obvious final boss in the early patches. Blizzard ultimately wound up revealing Garrosh's final boss status right around the time the expansion launched, but since then the company has been reluctant to tell us.
Warlords seemed to me like it was building up to a fight with Gul'dan - especially after Blizzard acknowledged that it would be pretty unsatisfying to have us fight another Mr. G. Hellscream as final boss two expansions in a row. The result, however, was the rather "out of the green" arrival of Archimonde, who had had basically no presence in the expansion prior to that, and we only found out in the lead up to the final patch of that truncated expansion.
While Legion was a far better expansion, the final boss also sort of came out of the blue. We had only just gotten confirmation that Azeroth was a nascent Titan, and now, in the final hour, we suddenly discovered Argus was as well. Fighting a Titan was a decently sufficient final challenge for the expansion, though I think a lot of us were looking forward to fighting Sargeras himself.
In BFA, we've similarly been given no explicit message about the final boss. That being said, the leading contender is looking more likely now than ever before.
Spoilers to follow:
Friday, April 5, 2019
Critical Role Kickstarter Hits Final Stretch Goal of $8.8 Million with Nearly Two Weeks Left in Campaign
The fine folks over at Critcal Role are all voice actors, with a number of credits in famous cartoons and games (in WoW, for example, the cast includes Illidan Stormrage, Jaina Proudmoore, Turalyon, Rexxar, and Darion Mograine) launched a Kickstarter campaign a few weeks ago with the goal of creating an animated special featuring the characters from their first D&D campaign as featured on the Critical Role streaming show.
The goal smashed records, reaching full funding for their initial goal in less than an hour and reaching about five times that in the first day.
The special has transformed into a 10-episode series, first telling an original story as the initial special and then animating the Briarwood arc - a fan-favorite stretch of campaign one that really saw the show come into its own.
Hitting this final stretch goal means that this entire season of the animated show will be completed, and there are also a number of fun things for the stream. Critical Role has historically done a number of one-shots (games that exist outside of the primary campaign, often with new characters and sometimes using different game systems, usually with one of the players trying their hand at DMing/GMing.) We will have a couple of these, including one featuring popular guest-characters from the first campaign as well as one DM'd by Ashley Johnson - Critical Role's oft-absent (because of her main-cast role on the New York-based TV show Blindspot) cast member.
It seems to be very exciting for these people who have spent their careers voicing other peoples' creations to be able to now see characters they created and developed take animated form. And for those of us who have spent more time with these characters than even those we've seen in long-running television shows (at least in terms of hours,) it will be quite fun to watch their exploits polished in quality animation.
And hey, I believe this is the most well-funded creative project in Kickstart history, which is a nice feather in the cap for those of us who love D&D and its potential for storytelling.
The goal smashed records, reaching full funding for their initial goal in less than an hour and reaching about five times that in the first day.
The special has transformed into a 10-episode series, first telling an original story as the initial special and then animating the Briarwood arc - a fan-favorite stretch of campaign one that really saw the show come into its own.
Hitting this final stretch goal means that this entire season of the animated show will be completed, and there are also a number of fun things for the stream. Critical Role has historically done a number of one-shots (games that exist outside of the primary campaign, often with new characters and sometimes using different game systems, usually with one of the players trying their hand at DMing/GMing.) We will have a couple of these, including one featuring popular guest-characters from the first campaign as well as one DM'd by Ashley Johnson - Critical Role's oft-absent (because of her main-cast role on the New York-based TV show Blindspot) cast member.
It seems to be very exciting for these people who have spent their careers voicing other peoples' creations to be able to now see characters they created and developed take animated form. And for those of us who have spent more time with these characters than even those we've seen in long-running television shows (at least in terms of hours,) it will be quite fun to watch their exploits polished in quality animation.
And hey, I believe this is the most well-funded creative project in Kickstart history, which is a nice feather in the cap for those of us who love D&D and its potential for storytelling.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Azerite 2.0 and Patch 8.2
Azerite Armor was meant to be BFA's evolution of Legion's artifact weapons. Indeed, it was meant to be an improvement on the system. In practice, however, Azerite has wound up being one of BFA's most unpopular features. Blizzard is well aware of this fact, and as such, we'll be seeing a vast reworking of the system in 8.2. How exactly that's going to work is, I'm sure, a bit of a work in progress, but the current idea is the following:
Customization is going to shift away from individual pieces of Azerite gear and move instead into the Heart of Azeroth necklace, which will get is own branching tree of traits - presumably something similar to the Artifact weapons (pre-Netherlight Crucible.)
Azerite gear itself will now simply have its traits unlocked immediately. I don't know if you'll still be choosing from a number of them, but the level of your Heart of Azeroth will not have any bearing on whether those traits are unlocked.
Some traits (I don't know if it will be on armor pieces or the necklace or both) will be active abilities.
The intention of these changes is to still give you a progression path - unlocking higher HoA levels to get more player power - but to no longer punish players for getting a new piece of gear - this will prevent you from getting new shoulders in the Azshara raid, for example, and have to grind out more just to get the same traits you had on your Dazar'alor piece.
I think it's a noble goal, but I also think that it is still missing a key thing that made artifact weapons fun.
Blizzard tends to have an attitude that gameplay trumps all things. Their attitude has tended to be that any new feature needs to be fully integrated into the core gameplay and player power for it to be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I think this often steers them in the wrong direction.
Never has this been on display more than the Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor.
While they walked it back later, they did pitch Garrisons as WoW's equivalent of player housing. Around this time, Wildstar - one of the many would-be WoW killers that never took its spot - had a robust and customizable housing system in which players got to put together their character's home with a lot of unlockable furniture and architectural features. Ultimately you simply got a bigger rested experience bonus based on what you put there, but it was a chance for players to express themselves and become more invested in the personalities of their characters.
Garrisons, on the other hand, were made with a single set of architectural styles - standard Human and Orc looks cribbed from Stormwind and Orgrimmar respectively. Indeed, while Horde professional buildings got a bit more specificity, like the Alchemy Hut being Forsaken themed or the Engineering building Goblin-themed, the Alliance had only basic human designs and human NPCs at their buildings.
While a couple decorative features were added, at best these were superficial decorations. My undead rogue, who would have loved a gothic castle-looking garrison, was instead left with standard orc spikes.
On top of this, because the design was that the only buildings you could pick out would have functional services, some game systems suffered as a result. Professions all became gated behind one-a-day reagents you had to make that you could make slightly more of if you had the associated building. Likewise, there was no incentive to look for ore or herbs out in the world because you could just go through your Garrison's facilities. And then, as a result, other professions needed to use those resources to justify, say, a Tailor/Enchanter having a mine and and herb garden.
It became a solution in search of a problem.
And on top of that, the dream of having a space that players could make their own was never realized - Lunarfall and Frostwall were really just Lunarfall and Frostwall, not "my character's own idiosyncratic fortress."
To return to the point here:
Artifact weapons were, I would posit, not popular because of the systems they came with. Sure, artifact power was a way you could keep progressing even if you didn't get gear drops. But you know what the real reason we loved them so much was?
They told a story.
People engage with games for different reasons, to be sure. A lot of people like games as a kind of mathematical, mechanical challenge. But even if you look at a game like chess, which is really almost purely a logical/strategic challenge, there's still a flavor to it. It's not just a bunch of pieces with different rules attached to them - it's the story of two clashing kingdoms at war.
RPGs take the notion that a game tells a story and put that at the forefront. We're excited to fight, say, Azshara, not because she's the final boss of BFA's middle-tier raid. We're excited to fight her because she's a figure who has been so important to the fictional history of the world of Warcraft.
And with artifact weapons, we got to wield these weapons of legend - the Doomhammer, the Ashbringer, the Scythe of Elune, or, sort of, Frostmourne. We got to feel like we had now stepped into this role of being part of the grand story. Most of the artifact weapons were invented for Legion, and yet there was enough care put into each of them that almost all really had something of a personality (especially the three that literally had a personality.)
Now, had artifact weapons been simply what they became post-8.0, only going up in item level as you progressed through the expansion, would they have been as popular? Probably not. But the mechanics enhanced the story - the fantasy - of it.
Azerite armor has the following problem: I get why the Heart of Azeroth is important, even if it's really ambiguous whether it's even supposed to be unique (lorewise.) But why do the shoulderpads and helmets you get on Kul Tiras just happen to interact with this necklace when the ones on the Broken Isles didn't?
There's just not a lot of story to it.
And I think that's been part of the problem with BFA. On one hand, there's some really interesting plotting going on, seeing the way that both Zandalar and Kul Tiras - and the major players in both - have been acting in the face of this big war. But after Legion, when there was so much to discover that the mechanics existed to support, it still kind of feels shallow.
To step into another game:
I haven't really played Magic: The Gathering much since college, but I've followed it since then. One of the most popular sets (and settings) they came up with was called Innistrad - Magic tends to jump around to different planes (aka worlds) with each set, returning to the popular ones. Each plane has a theme that can be broken down into a couple words. Innistrad was the Gothic Horror setting. And when the approached that set, they started with "top-down" design. The idea was that, rather than coming up with some cool mechanic and then figuring out some lore or flavor to justify it, they would instead come up with a good gothic horror trope and then try to portray that through mechanics.
The result was one of their most popular sets.
Now, Magic certainly succeeds as well when they go the other way - my favorite Magic setting, Ravnica, created its ten iconic guilds simply by building around each two-color combination of Magic's five colors.
But the point there is that even if they started with a mechanical conceit, Ravnica has gone on to be an extraordinarily flavor-rich setting, to the point where they have now introduced it as an official D&D setting as well - a game that has no concept of "colors" the way that Magic does.
So, to boil this down into a thesis: Game mechanics are crucially important to making a game work, but they are still ultimately in service of another thing, which is player investment. I think Azerite Armor has failed so far in part because of mechanics, but more crucially because it isn't a very compelling story.
Customization is going to shift away from individual pieces of Azerite gear and move instead into the Heart of Azeroth necklace, which will get is own branching tree of traits - presumably something similar to the Artifact weapons (pre-Netherlight Crucible.)
Azerite gear itself will now simply have its traits unlocked immediately. I don't know if you'll still be choosing from a number of them, but the level of your Heart of Azeroth will not have any bearing on whether those traits are unlocked.
Some traits (I don't know if it will be on armor pieces or the necklace or both) will be active abilities.
The intention of these changes is to still give you a progression path - unlocking higher HoA levels to get more player power - but to no longer punish players for getting a new piece of gear - this will prevent you from getting new shoulders in the Azshara raid, for example, and have to grind out more just to get the same traits you had on your Dazar'alor piece.
I think it's a noble goal, but I also think that it is still missing a key thing that made artifact weapons fun.
Blizzard tends to have an attitude that gameplay trumps all things. Their attitude has tended to be that any new feature needs to be fully integrated into the core gameplay and player power for it to be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I think this often steers them in the wrong direction.
Never has this been on display more than the Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor.
While they walked it back later, they did pitch Garrisons as WoW's equivalent of player housing. Around this time, Wildstar - one of the many would-be WoW killers that never took its spot - had a robust and customizable housing system in which players got to put together their character's home with a lot of unlockable furniture and architectural features. Ultimately you simply got a bigger rested experience bonus based on what you put there, but it was a chance for players to express themselves and become more invested in the personalities of their characters.
Garrisons, on the other hand, were made with a single set of architectural styles - standard Human and Orc looks cribbed from Stormwind and Orgrimmar respectively. Indeed, while Horde professional buildings got a bit more specificity, like the Alchemy Hut being Forsaken themed or the Engineering building Goblin-themed, the Alliance had only basic human designs and human NPCs at their buildings.
While a couple decorative features were added, at best these were superficial decorations. My undead rogue, who would have loved a gothic castle-looking garrison, was instead left with standard orc spikes.
On top of this, because the design was that the only buildings you could pick out would have functional services, some game systems suffered as a result. Professions all became gated behind one-a-day reagents you had to make that you could make slightly more of if you had the associated building. Likewise, there was no incentive to look for ore or herbs out in the world because you could just go through your Garrison's facilities. And then, as a result, other professions needed to use those resources to justify, say, a Tailor/Enchanter having a mine and and herb garden.
It became a solution in search of a problem.
And on top of that, the dream of having a space that players could make their own was never realized - Lunarfall and Frostwall were really just Lunarfall and Frostwall, not "my character's own idiosyncratic fortress."
To return to the point here:
Artifact weapons were, I would posit, not popular because of the systems they came with. Sure, artifact power was a way you could keep progressing even if you didn't get gear drops. But you know what the real reason we loved them so much was?
They told a story.
People engage with games for different reasons, to be sure. A lot of people like games as a kind of mathematical, mechanical challenge. But even if you look at a game like chess, which is really almost purely a logical/strategic challenge, there's still a flavor to it. It's not just a bunch of pieces with different rules attached to them - it's the story of two clashing kingdoms at war.
RPGs take the notion that a game tells a story and put that at the forefront. We're excited to fight, say, Azshara, not because she's the final boss of BFA's middle-tier raid. We're excited to fight her because she's a figure who has been so important to the fictional history of the world of Warcraft.
And with artifact weapons, we got to wield these weapons of legend - the Doomhammer, the Ashbringer, the Scythe of Elune, or, sort of, Frostmourne. We got to feel like we had now stepped into this role of being part of the grand story. Most of the artifact weapons were invented for Legion, and yet there was enough care put into each of them that almost all really had something of a personality (especially the three that literally had a personality.)
Now, had artifact weapons been simply what they became post-8.0, only going up in item level as you progressed through the expansion, would they have been as popular? Probably not. But the mechanics enhanced the story - the fantasy - of it.
Azerite armor has the following problem: I get why the Heart of Azeroth is important, even if it's really ambiguous whether it's even supposed to be unique (lorewise.) But why do the shoulderpads and helmets you get on Kul Tiras just happen to interact with this necklace when the ones on the Broken Isles didn't?
There's just not a lot of story to it.
And I think that's been part of the problem with BFA. On one hand, there's some really interesting plotting going on, seeing the way that both Zandalar and Kul Tiras - and the major players in both - have been acting in the face of this big war. But after Legion, when there was so much to discover that the mechanics existed to support, it still kind of feels shallow.
To step into another game:
I haven't really played Magic: The Gathering much since college, but I've followed it since then. One of the most popular sets (and settings) they came up with was called Innistrad - Magic tends to jump around to different planes (aka worlds) with each set, returning to the popular ones. Each plane has a theme that can be broken down into a couple words. Innistrad was the Gothic Horror setting. And when the approached that set, they started with "top-down" design. The idea was that, rather than coming up with some cool mechanic and then figuring out some lore or flavor to justify it, they would instead come up with a good gothic horror trope and then try to portray that through mechanics.
The result was one of their most popular sets.
Now, Magic certainly succeeds as well when they go the other way - my favorite Magic setting, Ravnica, created its ten iconic guilds simply by building around each two-color combination of Magic's five colors.
But the point there is that even if they started with a mechanical conceit, Ravnica has gone on to be an extraordinarily flavor-rich setting, to the point where they have now introduced it as an official D&D setting as well - a game that has no concept of "colors" the way that Magic does.
So, to boil this down into a thesis: Game mechanics are crucially important to making a game work, but they are still ultimately in service of another thing, which is player investment. I think Azerite Armor has failed so far in part because of mechanics, but more crucially because it isn't a very compelling story.
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