What Does it Mean to Support Alts?

The Timeless Isle is perhaps the most alt-friendly piece of content Blizzard has ever come out with, save perhaps the heirloom items. You can gear up an alt to the point where they can step into the Siege of Orgrimmar raid next week on LFR without having done a single thing since hitting 90 (other that right-clicking their timeless pieces and maybe getting some gems and enchants, one hopes.) Actually, that's not true. There are no timeless weapons. But seriously, this will make things way easier on them.

One of the constant refrains we've heard from Blizzard in response to the complaints about how Mists was not Alt-Friendly was that they figured the whole point of playing an alt was to play it, and part of playing was gearing up.

So first, let's talk about why Mists was perhaps not terribly alt-friendly.

The primary culprit here is the requirement of a reputation level with certain factions before purchasing Valor rewards. In the past, reputation gear and valor gear were separate things, so if you wanted to eschew reputations, you needed only to run a bunch of dungeons.

Not only was there this sort of gating, but they also made reputations far harder to earn by putting them behind daily quest grinds. Now, as an alternative to the VP grind, I would be ok with this, but I think we first need to talk about what an alt is:

An alt is a secondary character - one who is not your first into a new dungeon or the first to be leveled up in the early days of an expansion. I don't know how other people do it, but I tend to spend one or two days working on an alt before returning to my main. I'm happy to spend a weekend running dungeon after dungeon to get them some new gear, but it's not a sustained thing.

The problem with the daily quests was that one could not do it in short bursts. You could only make significant progress if you played in sustained, long periods of time.

I actually don't mind the idea that reputation should only be gained by doing stuff significant to the given faction, but by gating time-wise through daily quests (or a single dungeon championing per day, or a single work order on the farm, which is already gated by reputation,) that's how you make things hard on alts.

If VP rewards were de-coupled from reputation rewards, or if there was a rep that was associated with the actions that actually gain you VP, and that was where the VP-cost items came from, then I'd be ok with it.

The other major culprit is LFR. Now, LFR on its own is great. In fact, it's perfect for people with alts. I am the main tank for my guild, so 99% of the time I run with them, I'm bringing my Protection Paladin. Yet if I want to play my Warlock or my Rogue, or whatever, LFR lets me go in there.

However, raiding is a huge time commitment. If you're running the raids on your main, chances are you're spending several hours there per week, whether on LFR or with your guild. Given the twenty-minute-if-you're-lucky queue times and the fact that a wing can take several hours, it's easy to feel burnt out on a raid.

In the past, dungeons were a great way to play your alts. I took tons of toons through the Frozen Halls or Hour of Twilight dungeons. Committing only 40 minutes or so is a far smaller burden when you just feel like being a Mage for a bit.

Mists has been very thin on 5-mans (something that they at least claim they're going to correct. I'd love to see a return to the number of dungeons we had in BC and Wrath.) The complete focus on raiding as the sole manner in which all toons are meant to progress is what I would call the biggest issue.

Regarding arguments that making lots of dungeons would mean fewer raids, I just don't buy it. BC and Wrath had lots of huge raids and plenty of cool dungeons, and we did not suffer for it. And the team is supposed to be even bigger now. So I don't know where those arguments are coming from. BC has 15 dungeons to Mists' 9, and yet we got Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair, Tempest Keep, Serpentshrine Cavern, Battle for Mount Hyjal, Black Temple, and Sunwell Plateau.

I'm happy that the Timeless Isle is giving people a big opportunity to gear up alts, but ultimately, I don't really think this free gear is what anyone has in mind for encouraging alts. I agree that alts should be played to gear up. The only thing that we need is better opportunities to do so.

So, in conclusion, here are my steps to better alt-friendliness:

1. Double the new dungeons in the expansion (some of these can be in later patches, with perhaps previous-tier LFR-quality gear.)

2. Make separate rep-based gear and VP gear (I know in 5.4 there is no new VP gear, but I think the point of VP gear is to protect against bad luck streaks, so I'd like them to bring it back.) The VP gear can be gated behind a reputation, as long as there are many ways to get said rep, including dungeon-running. If, say, in X.2 you come out with a new raid and two dungeons, you should have the raid and the dungeons both award the new VP rep.

3. Keep up the good work on outdoor content and Scenarios. Personally, I'm not a big fan of scenarios, but alternatives are always good. The Isle of Thunder was the best daily quest hub yet, and the Timeless Isle is an exciting experiment in free-form outdoor content. I don't want you to get rid of this, only add it on top of the stuff we've already had in previous expansions.

I'm sure there are other ideas that might pop up, but hopefully Blizzard will pursue some if not all of these avenues. Don't get me wrong, Mists has had fantastic content, but I think that opening up new avenues to empower your character and your alts will make the game a lot more fun.

Legendary Post-Mortem

While few have probably completed the very last part of the Legendary chain, which requires the defeat of Garrosh Hellscream, at this point you'll be seeing a whole lot of shining Celestial symbols behind peoples' backs, signaling that they have, indeed, completed the massive chain.

I only focused on the chain with two characters, Jarsus the Prot Paladin and Oterro the Frost Death Knight. While I had a considerably harder time getting the four Celestials on Oterro (I guess by day two they were old news?) I did eventually get both of the strength cloaks - one for tanking, one for dps.

So what do we think of this chain?

On one hand, I am very happy that the chain has been made accessible to all. If you're willing to put in the effort, you can get it. LFR has changed the face of raiding in WoW, and I'm happy that everyone gets to experience this.

The fact that this chain spans the entirety of the expansion's content is sort of a mixed blessing. I do really like that what makes this a legendary quest chain is that it truly takes you through everything. I would call it epic, but that would seem to be a downgrade. The only problem, however, is that if you're late to the game, or switch mains in the middle of the expansion, you'll probably never catch up. Even though LFR means you can go into older raids and still stand a chance of getting, say, that Crystallized Sha stuff from the Sha of Fear, some of the trials - particularly those involving the World Bosses, are going to be really, really hard later on. Getting a group for Nalak in 5.3 took me days. Imagine what it'll be like now?

We have been forced to reimagine what a legendary could be. Previously, it has always been a weapon, but now we have special gems for specific weapons, new meta-gems, and cloaks. The gems were ok (the meta-gems were far more interesting) but it's really only the cloaks that have the game-changing power that you associate with a legendary. Could they have done weapons instead? Well, that might have brought about two different problems.

One is that you'd have to itemize a ton of different weapons. In this day and age, for example, nearly every tank spec uses different kinds of weapons (still uncomfortable with haste for Prot Paladins.) The other problem is that weapons really are game-changers. Dragonwrath, for example, would boost dps by such a huge amount that raids started structuring their groups around maximizing the number of those staffs they could put in. Granted, a legendary for all classes might allow you to simply choose those who were diligent, but Blizzard probably doesn't want quite so much of a variation in power.

Some complained about the quest-chain, specifically the parts that did not involve raiding. Now, I'm not a PvPer, and I can sympathize with people who didn't want to have to do any battlegrounds to get through the 5.1 segment. However, I see this sort of chain as a way to push you to experience all the new content in the expansion. A little PvP may be embarrassing, but it's not the end of the world. You have a roughly 50% chance to win each time, so just keep trying and you'll get it eventually (for some reason Alliance had an easier time winning Silvershard Mines when I did it.)

The only real complaint I had was that in the Lightning Forge scenario, they made it doable by healers and dps, but you really couldn't do that as a tank. There was always a tank NPC that would taunt off you, so you couldn't generate the damage to get through the encounter. Thankfully, in the Celestial challenges there was an option for tanks (which I actually found far easier than the melee dps one,) but I would hope Blizzard will make sure that all three roles are given a manner in which to complete their tasks.

So, what do I think about this as a model for new legendary chains?

Honestly, while I thought it was very well done, I think I'd like to see these chains shrunk down to a single raid tier again. The catch-up required for a new player at this point is practically insurmountable (ask me again after 5.4 has been out for a long time.) It might also be fun to have some orange weapons again (though I do recognize the pitfalls.)

However, I am totally happy to see quest-chains that span entire expansions. I'd love to see something like this that perhaps involves a little less raid-grinding, and is more just a way to keep us engaged in the ongoing story of the expansion. Wrathion forced us to keep a close eye on the events of each patch (well, maybe not so much in 5.3) and I think that's a great way to make sure people are exploring the new content.

Locations in the Next Expansion

Typically, the main point of speculation in any expansion has been who the villain will be. There's a good reason for this, given that the villain often defines the rest of the expansion. Perhaps never was this more the case than the Lich King, who brought with him the clear and obvious move to Northrend and the introduction of WoW's first new class to be introduced after Vanilla: the Death Knight.

However, one of the problems with WoW is that the planet Azeroth is fairly well-defined. We began with the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, with an understanding that Northrend was up... north, and that Outland was accessible via the Dark Portal.

The past two expansions have dealt with that in different ways. Deathwing was always a prime possibility for a villain who could carry an entire expansion, but unlike Arthas and Illidan, he didn't have an entire continent that seemed to be his domain. For that reason, Cataclysm focused on "the Old World," essentially bringing the conflict to us.

Mists of Pandaria started without a clear villain, though we did know that Garrosh would eventually claim that role. However, in Mists, Blizzard kind of worked backward, first establishing the new playable race (and class) and then establishing their homeland. The Pandaren were always in this strange limbo between being canon and apocryphal, but the background that they had played with actually wound up making it into the game proper, from their love of beer to the badass Shado-Pan.

So what locations remain unexplored? Certainly, some might simply be invented, but let's take a look at places we could find ourselves in the future.

Other Parts of Outland:

Outland was shattered into pieces when Ner'zhul opened all those portals. It certainly stands to reason that there could be as-yet unexplored parts of the world. Yet what might we find there? Frankly, we only got a little of what Draenor was like pre-Burning Legion, and most of the important locations, such as Hellfire Citadel and the Black Temple have already been explored. The only missing location we had heard about beforehand was the island where Deathwing had Adamantite plates installed (before upgrading to Elementium as seen in the Cataclysm cinematic.)

Ny'alotha:

We've only heard whispers of this place, like from the Puzzle-Box of Yogg-Saron. Here's the thing, of the four Old Gods we've been able to name, two have been defeated by Azeroth's champions, one was killed by the Mogu ages ago, and the other remains at large. Where is N'zoth? What might Ny'alotha look like? I can imagine it being a strange and unsettling ruin of a city, perhaps deep under the ocean, ready to rise.

The Emerald Dream:

Man, this is the classic "why haven't we done this yet" place. On one hand, we've heard about it for years and know that there's a threat there in the Nightmare (which is either connected to Xavius, N'zoth, or both.) On the other hand, the Dream seems to be, by definition, just wilderness. It might be hard to make an entire expansion based on a place with no people.

Argus:

The Alliance has three major groups of exiles among its ranks. The Gnomes have re-taken parts of their city, but thankfully they have close friends and allies less than a mile away in Ironforge, so they're in decent shape. The Worgen (and human Gilneans) lost their country when it was ravaged by the Cataclysm and plagued by the Forsaken, but they are chomping at the bit to take it back. But then there are the Draenei, whose name literally means "exiled ones." The Draenei have been fleeing the Burning Legion for 25,000 years old - and they are long-lived enough to have remembered all those millennia on the run. The Draenei culture, which has existed probably longer than almost every other culture in Azeroth's history (the Trolls might have them beat) is built around the defeat of the Burning Legion and the liberation of Argus. We even know the name of their capital city, Mac'aree.

The Old World:

Oh yes, did you think I would leave this out? Now granted, I doubt we're going to see another expansion that does not introduce a new continent - Cataclysm was enough. Yet we do seem to keep coming back. Hell, the current expansion is about a pristine, exotic new land, but the end has us charging into one of the player factions' biggest cities.

There's still some unfinished business in the Old World. I think we can expect to deal with some of that in the future, even if it does not strictly have us questing in new zones through the old continents. I think we can expect to keep seeing scenarios and events that will take us back to these old locales.

Or at least we had better. I want to liberate Gilneas, dammit!

What the New Warchief Means for both Alliance and Horde

Ok, spoilers here. If you're waiting to progress through the whole raid to see how Garrosh's successor is chosen, then look away.

Seriously.

I'm just going to say it here.

Tell you what, I'll make a cut

The Alts are Back in Town (ow-ow-ow-own!)

Praise to the Timeless Isle!

Despite being a fun expansion with plenty to do, there is one big criticism that has been levied against Mists of Pandaria: that it is not friendly to alts.

Old strategies for keeping alts geared up have fallen by the wayside. With reputation-gated valor gear (that required doing dailies as opposed to simply championing in dungeons,) the irrelevance of Justice Points after one's initial blue gear, and a lack of late-expansion dungeons with better rewards, you really had to work pretty damn hard to get a second character geared up.

Now, there have been some nice changes, like Commendations and a limited return to faction championing, but the fact was that you really had to go through most of the same process before you could gear up.

5.4 has brought about some huge alternatives. First, and more simply, all the old 5.0 and 5.1 valor gear is now justice gear, allowing you to buy 489 and 496 epics, covering every slot. And that's not to mention the fact that these are all now unshackled from reputation, meaning you can start running dungeons at 90 and be able to gear up with these options available to you.

Likewise, Shado-Pan Assault gear, while still only available for VP, is now cheaper and requires at most friendly (with the exception of the exalted shoulders, which still cost gold.) That means that with some diligent dungeon running, you can get a fair amount of 522-level gear with only a single wing of ToT completed.

But all of that is small potatoes next to the Timeless Isle. Take your main to the Isle and before you know it you'll be swimming in Timeless armor pieces. These can be sent to alts and then used to convert into a spec-appropriate piece of gear. You might have an alt who literally just hit 90, but with a little time and a little luck, you can send them a whole ton of gear, getting them most of the way to queueing for Siege of Orgrimmar when it goes on LFR next week.

The only downside of this gear is that, like the Latent Kor'kron pieces, they have randomized stats, so you might wind up with a bunch of crit for your Elemental Shaman or a bunch of haste on your Arms Warrior. Still, it's iLevel 496, which is what you need to hit the Siege next week.

And you will get a ton of this stuff. Seriously, if you look for the little moss-covered chests that litter the Isle, you're going to be drowning in it. My plate guys were all fairly well geared, so at this point I have a ton of Timeless Bracers I don't even know what to do with.

The point here is that with a little time on the Isle, you'll be able to raise the iLevels of several alts by huge bounds.

Now, I still hope that in the next expansion they'll plan to keep releasing dungeons as the patches come out, because that's a lot easier to jump into than LFR, but over all, this is going to make the rest of Mists a whole lot of fun.

Aftermath of the Siege Revealed:

Well folks, Garrosh Hellscream has been defeated, and the two ending cinematics are now available for public consumption. Both depict the same events, but from different perspectives.

Alliance Version:



Horde Version:



To sum up:

Garrosh is not dead. Instead, defeated, he is now being sent to Pandaria to stand trial for his crimes. I think this is fantastic. We've always had supernatural villains, but it seems fitting that Garrosh, who indeed has a soul, even if he's done his best to tarnish it, should be given a proper trial and should wind up behind bars. Who knows? At some point we might even have cause to free him if he reforms. Garrosh should have always been a soldier on the front lines. Perhaps some day that will be his destiny, where he can regain his honor to atone for his sins. Not a lot of people get second chances in Azeroth. I applaud this move.

Taran Zhu, who has always been the closest thing to a leader that the anarcho-utopian Pandaren have, gets to drag Garrosh off in chains. The Pandaren are actually in a unique position, as a group that is truly neutral between the two factions, and can be trusted to hold on to a former Warchief.

But that's just part of it. Garrosh doesn't even say anything in this ending. No, what is now important is the future of the Alliance and Horde relations.

On the Alliance side of things, there's a difficult internal conflict. Varian has the Horde on its heals. Its entire leadership (even Gallywix!) is grouped together in a room with elite Alliance forces. If he wanted to, he could claim Orgrimmar for the Alliance and, as Jaina suggests, utterly dismantle the Horde.

But Varian is sick of war, and in this Siege, he's fought alongside the Horde rebellion. He's not going to be their best friends, and he lets them know in plain language that if anything resembling Garrosh happens again, the Horde is toast, but for now, he wants peace.

Wars have to end some day, and in fact it's a lot easier to end them when there's someone who can answer for the other side.

But who answers for the Horde? Thrall led the Horde during its best years, carving out a home in Kalimdor and bringing in more allies than they could have ever expected. Yet it was not Thrall who led the Horde in opposition to its tyrant. Thrall makes up for the mistake he made before the Cataclysm and does what he should have done in the first place, making Vol'jin the new Warchief of the Horde.

The dynamic has changed tremendously. The Horde is now going to have to rebuild while the Alliance can stand proud and strong. Indeed, Varian explains that while he is hesitant to mount a massive campaign to take back Azshara or invade Thunder Bluff and the Echo Isles after such a long and costly war, he is now setting his sights on re-establishing a presence at Theramore, re-taking Gilneas, and containing Sylvanas.

Vol'jin may have just become the new Warchief of the Horde, but if there's one thing that this ending cinematic establishes on both sides, it's that Varian Wrynn, King of Stromwind and High King of the Alliance, is now the most powerful person in Azeroth.

We'll have to see what happens in the next expansion to truly know what this new world will look like, but the stage has been set for a real resurgence for the Alliance.

Legendary Chain: The Timeless Isle

Now is probably the best time to work on the final part of Wrathion's Legendary Chain. If you managed to catch up, you should have your epic cloak at the ready.

There are only two simple steps to complete to get finish the legendary chain (well, to get your legendary cloak.) First, you must collect 5000 Timeless Coins. Sadly, these are consumed when you turn them in to Wrathion, so if you wanted to save them up for gear or whatever, you'll have to wait.

Getting Timeless Coins is a pretty quick process. You can do it in a single day, though some may choose to space it out a little. Simply doing the quests on the Isle (and especially killing rare spawns when they pop up) will get you to 5000 in only a few hours.

The more challenging aspect here is that you must defeat all four of the August Celestials. The good news is that when one is beaten, the next steps up almost immediately, so if you join the mob you'll have a good chance of getting all four in a row. These bosses are not trivial (and the lag will kill you) so expect a lot of graveyard zerging (the GY is very near the arena.) I expect this will be one of the harder things to do if you're late to the party, but I expect that in these first few days it will be fairly easy to get through.

Completing these tasks will have Wrathion sending you to the Seat of Knowledge, where he and Lorewalker Cho have somewhat different visions of your heroism. Wrathion then gives you the power to imbue your cloak, and a quick click will automatically power up your equipped cloak.

The new cloaks will occasionally get a little animation of your chosen celestial (Ox horns for me) and you'll get a souped-up version (automatically upgraded) of the cloak with a powerful proc. (The tanking one essentially gives you a Wrath-era Ardent Defender, making you immune to death on a 2-minute cooldown.)

With that, Wrathion gives you one final task: to defeat Garrosh Hellscream. I ain't there yet, so I'll let you know when I get there, but there are no more rewards to earn. With this cloak, you should be pretty well-prepared to enter the Siege.