The Halls of Blood wing of Hellfire Citadel is actually more or less the "Orc wing" of the instance. All the bosses are (or at least used to be) Orcs. As we push on, we'll be fighting primarily demons (though I expect Orcs will still make up a lot of the trash.)
The trash here is mostly self-explanatory and not terribly difficult. You'll have some long hallways to fight through, but typically with small and sparsely-placed mobs, so it's not the BC-style trash gauntlet you might expect.
Hellfire High Council:
I'll abbreviate the three bosses in this council fight to Dia, Gurtogg, and Blademaster, as that's probably how you'll do it in the raid. Tanking these guys is fairly simple - there's no tank-swap mechanic, so instead you'll just have one tank pick up Gurtogg and Blademaster and the other grab Dia. I don't know that Dia's particularly dangerous (I was tanking the other two) but she does have some kind of damage-reduction aura, so you'll want to tank her away from the other two bosses.
A lot of this fight depends on the rest of the raid.
Gurtogg should die first, as he stacks up a permanent max-health reduction on everyone. He will stack up an acidic wound debuff on the tank as he attacks. However, he'll occasionally fixate on a random raid member. That person should book it (seriously, people in my raid were just letting him wail on them, which is bad for them and for the tank.) You want to get as much distance from Gurtogg as you can during the fixate so that you have time for the acidic wound debuff to fall off.
Blademaster will throw swords at random people and he'll occasionally split into different mirror images. I believe all the images need to die before he comes back. They can't really be tanked, so just dodge the blades they throw (there will be an arrow to indicate where they're coming from) and help out the DPS in taking them down.
Finally, Dia, who you'll be attacking last, does one major raid-wide thing, which is putting a mark on various targets and then casting Reap, which causes them to spawn a void zone where they're standing. Raid members with this mark should run to the edge of the room to drop them off. She'll also summon giant voidwalker beast things that will float across the room. I think you just don't want to be in their path (think Onyxia's Deep Breath.)
This is one of those fights that gets simpler as it goes and is not terribly hard.
Kilrogg Deadeye:
This is the only one we wiped on (though we came close on Gorefiend.) It's more or less a battle of attrition.
The job of the tanks is actually quite simple. Apparently we did it wrong, but I don't know if it made all that big a difference. We just had me tank the boss while the other tank picked up big adds. Apparently you're supposed to swap on the big adds, but oh well.
The big challenge with Kilrogg himself for a tank is making sure you get your active mitigation ability up before he does Shred Armor, otherwise you'll get a stacking debuff that increases damage done. However, if you're comfortable with active mitigation, this shouldn't be too hard. Simply bank resources so you always have one available. As a Paladin, I'd always wait until I had five Holy Power before I used Shield of the Righteous so that I could quickly get the one HoPo I needed if I had a Shred Armor coming. If you can tank Rukhran in Skyreach properly, you can manage Kilrogg.
The raid is responsible for making sure you don't get too many big adds. Part of the reason this fight will last so long is that adds need to be prioritized. Normal-sized Orcs will rush toward the blood circle to get turned into berserkers. DPS needs to make sure they die before they do. Kilrogg will also fling blood at random players (there's an arrow to indicate its path, which I assume means that you don't want to stand in the way,) which will spawn a blood pool and a little blood add that needs to die.
Some of the normal-sized orcs will jump directly into the blood circle, not giving you time to kill them. So you will occasionally have to pick up big adds.
Finally, Kilrogg will occasionally create three little runes for Visions of Death, which will detonate after a while if people aren't standing on them. Those who do will be transported to a vision of their own demise and have to fight off demons in another room. As a tank, I didn't experience this, so I'll have to talk about it when I do the DPS impressions.
Overall, Kilrogg's a pretty long endurance fight.
Gorefiend:
Gorefiend is also largely about adds. He has two distinct phases.
During the main phase, he'll melee the tank and eventually mark players and the current tank with Shadow of Death. When this gets applied, the other tank should taunt and the first one should prepare to get sucked into Gorefiend's stomach.
Inside, there will be a number of adds to kill, but tanks should focus on the big, hostile one. Interrupt its casts and DPS it as best you can. When it reaches something like 50%, you'll want to run to the center of the stomach room to be transported back into the main room. Pick up that add again and kill it.
While not tanking the boss, you can help kill adds.
After a while, Gorefiend will run out of energy (runic power?) and he'll begin Feast of Souls. During this phase, he'll take extra damage, so DPS will pop Hero/Lust and do as much damage as they can to him. In the meantime, tanks should spread out and intercept the little glowing souls that shoot toward the boss. You'll take a bit of damage, but intercepting these will prolong the phase, allowing your raid to kill him more quickly.
As I understand it, tanks should only get Shadow of Death once per main phase, so you'll have plenty of time for the debuff to wear off as long as both tanks are kept alive.
Dem Bloody Halls:
Perhaps the overarching theme of this wing is that you're totally in the hands of your raid. Each of the fights is rather simple to tank, and you won't be moving around all that much. There are lots of adds, but only a few actually need to be tanked. If I recall correctly, we'll have two weeks of this and Hellbreach before we head on over to the third wing, then another two weeks before wing four and another two weeks before taking on Archimonde himself.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Sunday, July 12, 2015
A Tale of Two Frosts (Death Knight, to be Clear.)
While casters can pretty much pick whatever combination of weapons, off-hands, and shields will provide the greatest spellpower, most physical specs are limited to a single load-out - there are sort of genres of weapons that they'll use, but a Retribution Paladin, for example, is always going to be using a two-handed strength weapon, and an Assassination Rogue is always going to be dual-wielding agility daggers.
While Monks are kind of a whole other story (and one I have far less experience with,) there are two melee DPS specs that have options for weapons.
Fury Warriors can go between what used to be called "Titan's Grip" and "Single-Minded Fury," choosing to go with two-handed or one-handed weapons in each hand. Various passives ensure (or at least try to ensure) that, despite having less stats and lower base weapon damage, a Fury Warrior who chooses to use smaller, faster weapons will still be able to do the same amount of damage. The Fury rotation remains more or less the same - you still want to stack up critical strike rating so that Bloodthirst triggers Enrage as often as possible. The two styles play very similarly, and really only vary in terms of rhythm.
Frost Death Knights, however, feel quite different depending on your weapon choice, to the point where they're nearly different specs. These used to have their own fun names - Threat of Thassarian for dual-wielding and Might of the Frozen Wastes for two-handers. (Really, I wish they'd bring back some of old passive abilities that got merged into active abilities or turned invisible. It provided flavor and it also made it way easier to understand a spec.)
The central mechanic of Frost is Killing Machine - a proc activated on occasion by (main-hand) auto attacks. This makes the next Obliterate or Frost Strike a guaranteed critical strike. The big reason why this divides Frost Death Knights is that other passives buff one ability or the other depending on what loadout of weapons you're using.
Those who use a two-handed weapon focus on Obliterate, a two-rune, purely physical attack that hits like a truck, particularly when you crit with it. Dual-wielders instead buff Frost Strike, a... strike that deals frost damage and costs runic power rather than Runes.
This difference creates a kind of avalanche of differences. The Frost mastery simply increases frost damage dealt by the Death Knight, which makes it more valuable for Dual-wielders, but it does nothing for two-handers' most powerful attack. Because Dual-wielders can safely invest more in Mastery, they then deal greater AoE damage through Howling Blast - one of Frost's most potent AoE tools.
Thus, there's an inherent imbalance - Dual-wielders will suffer less if they gear for AoE than Two-handers. In fact, during Mists of Pandaria, a Dual-wielder who stacked up enough mastery could simply spam Howling Blast rather than ever spending runes on Obliterate, using the orphaned Unholy Runes for the occasional refreshing of Blood Plague or throwing down a Death and Decay. Their rotation was essentially identical for single-target and AoE situations.
Before we ask how to fix this, we should wonder whether it should be fixed at all. Would it be ok for Frost to be better at AoE when dual-wielding? Perhaps two-handers could be compensated by having better single-target balance - but that opens a can of worms. Given that DPS matters most on bosses, and usually it's single-target damage that counts the most (though perhaps more accurately it's single-target damage that people pay the most attention to) it could be dangerous to enshrine one style over the other for that situation.
There are a couple issues of "good feeling," though, that are of course very subjective. As someone who prefers the rhythm of two-handed frost, it's always a little frustrating that Mastery doesn't affect my biggest ability. Usually they make Mastery more interesting than a simple "+damage" stat by having it affect only your biggest abilities - like Retribution's Hand of Light.
But the issue with Frost's Mastery is also that it makes gearing within the same spec pretty significantly different. If you want to swap out your weapon load-out, you'll need to re-gem and enchant your stuff to maximize your damage. It also makes Frost's stat attunement, Haste, kind of anticlimactic for dual-wielders who focus on Mastery (at least last time I checked, which was admittedly a while ago.)
The Archimonde trinket in Hellfire Citadel gives Obliterate a Frost Component, and I could see this being a kind of "try out" for a change to the mechanic. If Obliterate dealt Frost damage, it could make Mastery a good stat for all Frost Death Knights, and would do a lot to balance out their AoE damage.
Another alternative would be to unify the preference of Obliterate or Frost Strike - if both types of Frost preferred Obliterate (which has a ton more flavor than Frost Strike,) neither would be pushed to stack mastery. On the other hand, this difference in style is something that makes Frost a fairly unique spec, and surely there would be people upset that their style got taken out in favor of the other one.
A modification to Obliterate - either adding frost damage or making the entire thing do frost damage (though it's the only physical ability you use other than auto-attack) - would do a lot to emphasize the "frost" aspect to Frost Death Knights. And once they do that, they could start working on getting the "death" aspect back into the spec.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Warcraft Movie: Beyond Orcs and Humans?
Today at Comic Con they unveiled some of the footage of the practically-finished Warcraft movie. The film won't come out for just under a year (going big, they can really only do a summer blockbuster or a holiday release, and Star Wars is going to own this winter,) but they revealed some of the movie to the few lucky folks at Comic Con. Hopefully we'll get to see some actual footage online soon (probably not until Blizzcon,) but there have been a few accounts from the crowds (and some quickly-shut-down smartphone videos.)
What intrigued me is that one article describing the footage mentioned that Gul'dan is seen sucking the souls out of "awkward purple humanoids." That sounds a whole lot like Draenei (and while they're typically more blue than purple, it's pretty close.) The Draenei are, of course, a huge part of the lore surrounding the formation of the Horde, though they were not introduced until WCIII: the Frozen Throne - and it wasn't until Burning Crusade that they established/retconned the Draenei to be the uncorrupted Eredar - Akama and his folks during the Kael'thas/Illidan campaign in WCIII were depicted as what we'd call Lost Ones post-BC.
The original Warcraft game focused entirely on Orcs and Humans (there might have been an Ogre somewhere in there,) but of course the lore has expanded dramatically in the twenty years since then, meaning that the filmmakers have plenty of other races to work with. Along with the Draenei (and as a huge Draenei fan I can't tell you how cool it is to hear that they might have an appearance in the movie, however fleeting) it sounds like we'll at least see some of the High Elves. I'd expect the Dwarves, and possibly Gnomes, Goblins, and even Trolls to potentially make an appearance.
From the sounds of it, the settings look quite CGI-ish, which is a shame (though I do remember them talking about having built real sets for Stormwind Keep and one of the squares in the city.) This might be unavoidable, given that half the cast is Gollum-style CGI-people.
In terms of plot, there's not a whole lot beyond Orcs realizing their world is dying and some of them saying "hey, this Gul'dan guy might have the right idea!" Draka does mention she's pregnant - so I guess you can count Thrall as being in the movie, albeit in fetus-form.
What intrigued me is that one article describing the footage mentioned that Gul'dan is seen sucking the souls out of "awkward purple humanoids." That sounds a whole lot like Draenei (and while they're typically more blue than purple, it's pretty close.) The Draenei are, of course, a huge part of the lore surrounding the formation of the Horde, though they were not introduced until WCIII: the Frozen Throne - and it wasn't until Burning Crusade that they established/retconned the Draenei to be the uncorrupted Eredar - Akama and his folks during the Kael'thas/Illidan campaign in WCIII were depicted as what we'd call Lost Ones post-BC.
The original Warcraft game focused entirely on Orcs and Humans (there might have been an Ogre somewhere in there,) but of course the lore has expanded dramatically in the twenty years since then, meaning that the filmmakers have plenty of other races to work with. Along with the Draenei (and as a huge Draenei fan I can't tell you how cool it is to hear that they might have an appearance in the movie, however fleeting) it sounds like we'll at least see some of the High Elves. I'd expect the Dwarves, and possibly Gnomes, Goblins, and even Trolls to potentially make an appearance.
From the sounds of it, the settings look quite CGI-ish, which is a shame (though I do remember them talking about having built real sets for Stormwind Keep and one of the squares in the city.) This might be unavoidable, given that half the cast is Gollum-style CGI-people.
In terms of plot, there's not a whole lot beyond Orcs realizing their world is dying and some of them saying "hey, this Gul'dan guy might have the right idea!" Draka does mention she's pregnant - so I guess you can count Thrall as being in the movie, albeit in fetus-form.
The Mystery of the G-Man
I'll confess here that I haven't really played all that much of the Half-Life games. I got through a decent chunk of 2, but to be perfectly honest, something about the art direction and the speed of the action actually made me feel nauseated - which is odd, because I can't think of any other game that has given me motion sickness (I don't even get it when reading in a car.)
It's a shame, because I know it's a fantastically popular game, and one of the biggest fan speculation stories in the gaming world is when Half-Life 3 is going to come out, if ever. It's also a shame because Half-Life is one of the few FPS games that focuses on the single-player campaign these days, when so many are all about online multiplayer (I'm also a big fan of the Bioshock games.)
But perhaps the biggest shame in my inability to play them is that Half-Life has one of the most intriguing characters in video games - the G-man.
For those of you not familiar, the G-man is a character who pops up very sparingly in the Half-Life series, but he tends to have his biggest moments in major climactic scenes. At the end of the first game, he takes the player character, Gordon Freeman, away, stashing him on something that looks like one of the trams at the Black Mesa facility, but is traveling through some sort of starscape. The second game has him sending you on your way almost two decades later, in which the "tram" you were on kind of bleeds reality into a train taking you to "City 17," where you discover that in the years you've been missing, Earth has been conquered by an inter-dimensional empire known as the Combine.
After you spend the game blasting away the Combine forces, the G-man appears again, freezing time to pluck you up right before a massive explosion would kill you.
The G-Man look human - he wears a suit and carries a briefcase, and has an old-school crew cut hair style. But there's something... off about him. His face is asymmetrical (which is of course fairly common in the real world but less so in video games) and his speech patterns are highly unusual.
And he can warp reality around himself. The Half-Life games take place entirely through the first-person perspective, and interacting directly with the G-man can be very strange. For example, the beginning of Half-Life 2 sees the G-man waking you up from your long hibernation, but as you look at him, it's as if the positive space of his face is actually the negative space in the darkness around you - a window into the train that you find yourself. These sorts of shifts in perspective happen a lot when you talk to the G-man - it's really cool and mega-creepy.
On top of that, the G-man is hidden throughout the games, often visible in the distance across long expanses or even on the screen of a malfunctioning television screen.
One thing remains certain: we really have no clue what the G-man is.
The series has its share of interdimensional monsters, but the G-man seems to almost transcend that category. Barring some more out-there theories that the G-man is some kind of future post-human (or even, more whacky, a future Gordon Freeman himself,) the G-man's human appearance is almost certainly a lie. But what is he then? There's a definite Lovecraftian quality here - that he might just be incomprehensible to human eyes.
We also really don't know where he falls on the good/evil spectrum. Gordon Freeman would, I imagine, have a lot to hate about the G-man, given that he kept him imprisoned for, like 17 years (though how much of that time Freeman actually experienced is questionable - given that he didn't age a day) and how the G-man dumped him out into a situation that required Freeman to shoot his way through an entire city of bad guys and monster aliens.
But on the other hand, he has certainly seemed to undermine the Combine - dispatching Gordon Freeman against them (which works way better than you'd expect) and does seem to be furthering humanity's interests. Still, he's super freaking shady.
Of course, the thing about the G-man that's perhaps frustrating is that any real explanation is almost sure to be a let-down. And that means that we probably won't ever actually get an explanation, even if Half-Life 3 does eventually wind up happening. It's probably for the best, though, because a lack of an official explanation means that we can come up with our own headcanon versions.
(I'm always a big fan of post-human time-travelers guiding their own evolution, but that's just me.)
It's a shame, because I know it's a fantastically popular game, and one of the biggest fan speculation stories in the gaming world is when Half-Life 3 is going to come out, if ever. It's also a shame because Half-Life is one of the few FPS games that focuses on the single-player campaign these days, when so many are all about online multiplayer (I'm also a big fan of the Bioshock games.)
But perhaps the biggest shame in my inability to play them is that Half-Life has one of the most intriguing characters in video games - the G-man.
For those of you not familiar, the G-man is a character who pops up very sparingly in the Half-Life series, but he tends to have his biggest moments in major climactic scenes. At the end of the first game, he takes the player character, Gordon Freeman, away, stashing him on something that looks like one of the trams at the Black Mesa facility, but is traveling through some sort of starscape. The second game has him sending you on your way almost two decades later, in which the "tram" you were on kind of bleeds reality into a train taking you to "City 17," where you discover that in the years you've been missing, Earth has been conquered by an inter-dimensional empire known as the Combine.
After you spend the game blasting away the Combine forces, the G-man appears again, freezing time to pluck you up right before a massive explosion would kill you.
The G-Man look human - he wears a suit and carries a briefcase, and has an old-school crew cut hair style. But there's something... off about him. His face is asymmetrical (which is of course fairly common in the real world but less so in video games) and his speech patterns are highly unusual.
And he can warp reality around himself. The Half-Life games take place entirely through the first-person perspective, and interacting directly with the G-man can be very strange. For example, the beginning of Half-Life 2 sees the G-man waking you up from your long hibernation, but as you look at him, it's as if the positive space of his face is actually the negative space in the darkness around you - a window into the train that you find yourself. These sorts of shifts in perspective happen a lot when you talk to the G-man - it's really cool and mega-creepy.
On top of that, the G-man is hidden throughout the games, often visible in the distance across long expanses or even on the screen of a malfunctioning television screen.
One thing remains certain: we really have no clue what the G-man is.
The series has its share of interdimensional monsters, but the G-man seems to almost transcend that category. Barring some more out-there theories that the G-man is some kind of future post-human (or even, more whacky, a future Gordon Freeman himself,) the G-man's human appearance is almost certainly a lie. But what is he then? There's a definite Lovecraftian quality here - that he might just be incomprehensible to human eyes.
We also really don't know where he falls on the good/evil spectrum. Gordon Freeman would, I imagine, have a lot to hate about the G-man, given that he kept him imprisoned for, like 17 years (though how much of that time Freeman actually experienced is questionable - given that he didn't age a day) and how the G-man dumped him out into a situation that required Freeman to shoot his way through an entire city of bad guys and monster aliens.
But on the other hand, he has certainly seemed to undermine the Combine - dispatching Gordon Freeman against them (which works way better than you'd expect) and does seem to be furthering humanity's interests. Still, he's super freaking shady.
Of course, the thing about the G-man that's perhaps frustrating is that any real explanation is almost sure to be a let-down. And that means that we probably won't ever actually get an explanation, even if Half-Life 3 does eventually wind up happening. It's probably for the best, though, because a lack of an official explanation means that we can come up with our own headcanon versions.
(I'm always a big fan of post-human time-travelers guiding their own evolution, but that's just me.)
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Hellbreach DPS Perspective
I've now run the first LFR wing of Hellfire Citadel on several toons - a Death Knight, Rogue, Mage, and Warlock, in addition to the tanking Paladin. Admittedly, on at least two of those characters as I recall, I came in on the last boss, but I've got a good idea of how the fights go.
Hellfire Assault:
The first fight is, sadly, a pretty dull affair. The only non-boss boss fight I remember really liking was the Icecrown Gunship Battle, with the awesome jetpack mechanic. On LFR especially, this fight's basically an AoE fest - though killing the warlocks who do Metamorphosis will help reduce damage to the raid.
As soon as one of the Fel siege engines goes down, be sure to grab the ammunition box - chances are someone else in your raid will get it first, but you don't want to be in one of those situations where everyone figures someone else is doing it. This is of course how your end the fight, so it's a high priority.
Iron Reaver:
This is the real raid-killer of the wing - not because the mechanics are particularly difficult to deal with, but because it's a fight that requires the raid to spread out, and in the uncommunicative manner of LFR, your healers will probably not be very well-distributed to cover everyone.
The Reaver also moves around a lot, so you'll need to constantly readjust, making sure you're in range of the Reaver and also not crowded up with your allies.
Finally, spend all your "not standing in fire" attention on the air phase killing bombs. It's your only real job (again, other than not standing in the fire) and will save the raid a bunch of pain.
Also, sometimes DPS gets hit with Artillery. Be sure to run away and, if you have one, pop a survival cooldown before it hits you.
Kormrok:
If you pull it off well, you can skip the green-pool phase entirely just by killing the boss before he gets to it.
On the orange pool phase, be sure to run away from the tank when they get their debuff, as they won't be able to run away from you. Also, pop the exploding runes before they hit the raid - the faster you do, the less damage you'll take.
Purple phase will be fairly simple - just take the effort to dodge the waves. You might have to drop what you're doing in order to do this, but it's better to live longer with slightly lower dps than to die and produce no further damage.
Last Note on Loot:
As with all the wings in LFR HFC, the final boss of each wing drops gear that's ten item levels higher than the other bosses, so if you're planning on spending your bonus rolls in LFR, you're best served saving them for the last boss of the wing (the set pieces also drop off these bosses.)
Hellfire Assault:
The first fight is, sadly, a pretty dull affair. The only non-boss boss fight I remember really liking was the Icecrown Gunship Battle, with the awesome jetpack mechanic. On LFR especially, this fight's basically an AoE fest - though killing the warlocks who do Metamorphosis will help reduce damage to the raid.
As soon as one of the Fel siege engines goes down, be sure to grab the ammunition box - chances are someone else in your raid will get it first, but you don't want to be in one of those situations where everyone figures someone else is doing it. This is of course how your end the fight, so it's a high priority.
Iron Reaver:
This is the real raid-killer of the wing - not because the mechanics are particularly difficult to deal with, but because it's a fight that requires the raid to spread out, and in the uncommunicative manner of LFR, your healers will probably not be very well-distributed to cover everyone.
The Reaver also moves around a lot, so you'll need to constantly readjust, making sure you're in range of the Reaver and also not crowded up with your allies.
Finally, spend all your "not standing in fire" attention on the air phase killing bombs. It's your only real job (again, other than not standing in the fire) and will save the raid a bunch of pain.
Also, sometimes DPS gets hit with Artillery. Be sure to run away and, if you have one, pop a survival cooldown before it hits you.
Kormrok:
If you pull it off well, you can skip the green-pool phase entirely just by killing the boss before he gets to it.
On the orange pool phase, be sure to run away from the tank when they get their debuff, as they won't be able to run away from you. Also, pop the exploding runes before they hit the raid - the faster you do, the less damage you'll take.
Purple phase will be fairly simple - just take the effort to dodge the waves. You might have to drop what you're doing in order to do this, but it's better to live longer with slightly lower dps than to die and produce no further damage.
Last Note on Loot:
As with all the wings in LFR HFC, the final boss of each wing drops gear that's ten item levels higher than the other bosses, so if you're planning on spending your bonus rolls in LFR, you're best served saving them for the last boss of the wing (the set pieces also drop off these bosses.)
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Hellfire Citadel the Final Raid, 6.2 Likely the Final Major Patch
Blizzard has confirmed what we likely expected, which is that Hellfire Citadel will be the final raid of Warlords of Draenor, and that it's unlikely we'll get another major patch before the next expansion.
Let's start with the potential bright side: Blizzard said that they might make the expansion shorter if they were confident the next expansion could be delivered more quickly, and this seems to indicate that they are confident.
But to undercut that optimism: if they had only planned out two raid tiers and one major patch, even if they found themselves pressed for time, it would be very difficult to derail the expansion development in order to put people on designing a new zone like Farahlon (which seriously, of all the zones in Draenor I wanted to see... gah.) We just won't know how successful this strategy will be until we get a release date for expansion six. But I'm not really ready to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt here, because every expansion since Wrath of the Lich King has gone for roughly a year after its final patch. Expansions take a long time to plan out, and even if they've won themselves a head start that will allow them to release expansion six "one tier earlier," meaning some time next summer, that's still a year of no new content and is just as much of a problem as we had in 3.3, 4.3, and 5.4.
But on top of that, there's the disappointment of Draenor. For the record, I think that most of Draenor's content was superb. The leveling experience was the best they've ever done, and while there were definitely fewer dungeons than I'd like, they were pretty much all interesting and fun to run. The endgame content was problematic - Blizzard's insistence on making the Garrison functional rather than decorative was a big mistake if you ask me. Garrison maintenance replaced going out into the world to gather resources for professions and follower missions, while profitable, didn't have terribly engaging gameplay.
The biggest problem, though, is that in WoW, we pay for expansions and for subscriptions. If expansions came free with the subscription like patches, I'd have little to complain about, but the chunk of content that is Warlords of Draenor, whatever its merits may be, is just plain smaller than what we've gotten previously, and yet we paid more for it.
And this is a big reason why I'm not a fan of the "quicker expansion cycles." One should also be able to settle in to an expansion - the effect of gear inflation can get out of control, but a little allows players to feel massively powerful, which is one of the appeals of any RPG.
It's a shame, because I'd like to focus on 6.2, which, if you look at it in isolation, is a perfectly good patch with a lot of cool features. But I worry that we're going to be stuck in Tanaan for over a year waiting on an expansion that will only wind up having a single raid tier.
Let's start with the potential bright side: Blizzard said that they might make the expansion shorter if they were confident the next expansion could be delivered more quickly, and this seems to indicate that they are confident.
But to undercut that optimism: if they had only planned out two raid tiers and one major patch, even if they found themselves pressed for time, it would be very difficult to derail the expansion development in order to put people on designing a new zone like Farahlon (which seriously, of all the zones in Draenor I wanted to see... gah.) We just won't know how successful this strategy will be until we get a release date for expansion six. But I'm not really ready to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt here, because every expansion since Wrath of the Lich King has gone for roughly a year after its final patch. Expansions take a long time to plan out, and even if they've won themselves a head start that will allow them to release expansion six "one tier earlier," meaning some time next summer, that's still a year of no new content and is just as much of a problem as we had in 3.3, 4.3, and 5.4.
But on top of that, there's the disappointment of Draenor. For the record, I think that most of Draenor's content was superb. The leveling experience was the best they've ever done, and while there were definitely fewer dungeons than I'd like, they were pretty much all interesting and fun to run. The endgame content was problematic - Blizzard's insistence on making the Garrison functional rather than decorative was a big mistake if you ask me. Garrison maintenance replaced going out into the world to gather resources for professions and follower missions, while profitable, didn't have terribly engaging gameplay.
The biggest problem, though, is that in WoW, we pay for expansions and for subscriptions. If expansions came free with the subscription like patches, I'd have little to complain about, but the chunk of content that is Warlords of Draenor, whatever its merits may be, is just plain smaller than what we've gotten previously, and yet we paid more for it.
And this is a big reason why I'm not a fan of the "quicker expansion cycles." One should also be able to settle in to an expansion - the effect of gear inflation can get out of control, but a little allows players to feel massively powerful, which is one of the appeals of any RPG.
It's a shame, because I'd like to focus on 6.2, which, if you look at it in isolation, is a perfectly good patch with a lot of cool features. But I worry that we're going to be stuck in Tanaan for over a year waiting on an expansion that will only wind up having a single raid tier.
Grab the Tinfoil: Theories on Demon Blood, Ancients, and Kil'jaeden's Obsession
I was fighting the Fel Iron Horde today and I was thinking: what exactly is the difference between this Horde and the one from our timeline?
Obviously, our Horde drank the Blood of Mannoroth and reaped the consequences, but it seemed to work a bit differently.
The influence of the Burning Legion is extremely apparent in Gul'dan's Iron Horde. Tanaan Jungle has undergone a transformation that is reminiscent of our Shadowmoon Valley. Indeed, it even seems that Gul'dan B is seeking out the Cipher of Damnation - an absurdly powerful spell that clearly transcends worlds, as it was used by Emperor Thaurissan on Azeroth to summon Ragnaros to the Molten Core. The Cipher's use on Outland created the volcano called the Hand of Gul'dan (the spell always seems to involve summoning a planet's resident most-powerful-fire-elemental and then creating a volcano) and turned Shadowmoon Valley into the burned-to-a-crisp hellscape it is today, severing the bonds with the elements that had been so important to Orcish culture (I'd wager this act of destabilization probably contributed to the destruction wrought by Ner'zhul - as if Gul'dan perforated the planet and Ner'zhul ripped.)
The Fel Iron Horde is filled with the look of demonic power - green fire is just about everywhere, and the demons aren't really hiding. In fact, the Shadow Council is not particularly shadowy right now - Gul'dan is recognized as the Warchief, instead of making Kilrogg his puppet Warchief like our version did with Blackhand. Of course, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that it's Archimonde, instead of Kil'jaeden, who is in control of the Horde. In our timeline, Kil'jaeden probably pushed Gul'dan to use subtlety to make the Horde feel as if they were in control of their own actions and conquering for their own purposes. Archimonde has never placed as much emphasis on subtlety (see: destroying Dalaran the moment he was summoned in the Third War,) and so has cast aside all pretenses that the Iron Horde is anything other than a small branch of the Burning Legion.
The other things is that the Fel Orcs just look different. These Orcs aren't green, nor are they red, but are instead a weird sort of grey. In our timeline, the color-changing nature of Mannoroth's blood seemed to work by first making the Orcs red immediately after drinking it, but then leaving them Fel-green afterwards - almost as if most of the blood got burned out of their systems. Essentially, the green skin of orcs is indicative of some kind of chemical (or magic equivalent of chemical) change where the blood loses its potency, but the consumed material remains. This would also explain why even non-blood-drinking Orcs like the Frostwolves would also get this condition, as there would be so much blood in the environment that non-potent blood remains would gradually work their way into anyone who spent much time around it. The blood only really provides its "beneficial" properties while it's fresh, and this manifests in the bright-red skin coloration that we saw in Grommash and his forces in Warcraft III as well as Kargath's Fel Horde in Outland, who were drinking the blood of Magtheridon, rather than Mannoroth, but still a Pit Lord.
Why is Kilrogg B, and his line of Fel Orcs, grey then?
The answer may lie in the fate of Mannoroth. While Blizzard has effectively extended the dreadlord immortality functionality to all demons (and opening a whole can of worms by revealing that there's only one Twisting Nether shared by all universes,) it clearly takes a lot of time and energy for a demon to manifest a physical avatar with which to interact with the world. Gul'dan might have thus saved Mannoroth some time by reassembling his physical body that was killed by Grommash and Garrosh in the Warlords of Draenor cinematic. But because this body is kind of undead as far as demons go, the blood has turned - begun to decompose in some way.
So perhaps these Fel Orcs are grey because... the blood they're drinking is rotten. More rotten than it is already, given that it's freaking demon blood. Gul'dan's still green because he drank it while it was still fresh and Mannoroth was still alive. Anyway, pretty gross no matter which way you look at it.
Speaking of things that come back from the dead:
I've pointed out a few times that the way that demons come back from the dead is almost exactly how it works for elementals. We fought Ragnaros in the Molten Core, but "killing" him there really just sent him back to the Firelands. One can think of it this way: the elementals and demons that we interact with in the physical world are not the actual beings, but are really kind of remote controlled units - avatars - that these powerful magical creatures use to manifest. Killing an avatar is a pain to the person whose avatar it is, but it's just a setback - in time, with effort and resources, they can build a new avatar.
We've seen evil things do this (demons) and morally neutral things do it too (elementals.) But what about good things? The Naaru clearly go through cycles of light and dark, but on the rare occasions where a Naaru truly dies, it seems to leave a body behind. M'uru's spark was used to reignite the Sunwell. Of course, one could argue that this was sort of akin to just cycling back to the Light side, but let's set Naaru aside for a moment.
There are plenty of "big bad" supernatural villains in Warcraft, but they usually have a good counterpart. Naaru seem to be the direct opposite of Void beings (which, despite being favored by Warlocks as minions, are explicitly not demons.) The Titans are often juxtaposed against either demons or Old Gods, but they treat the OGs more as their direct opposition - demons only really became a threat to them after one of their own turned evil and enlisted their aide. But the third category of "big powerful good guys" might be the best fit for the demons' opposite numbers. And in fact, the biggest war against them in our history is named after the big fighters on our side: the Ancients.
In Mount Hyjal, you're tasked with holding of Twilight's Hammer until Jarod Shadowsong and the other Ancients are able to finish bringing Cenarius into the world. But Cenarius was dead: he was killed by Grom Hellscream during the Third War after the Warsong Chief had a relapse and drank Mannoroth's blood again.
In fact, the Ancients don't seem to stay dead, really. Ursoc died during the War of the Ancients, but he was also in Grizzly Hills, getting corrupted by Yogg-Saron until we were able to kill him, which then freed him.
This all seems to point to the idea that the Ancients we interact with are really just avatars. And there's a perfectly convenient place for their true essences to inhabit - the Emerald Dream. In a very odd way, it might be that Demonology Warlocks who transform into something resembling a Dreadlord are actually more or less doing the same thing that Druids do when they transform into something resembling Ursoc or Ursol.
This would of course have huge implications. If the Emerald Dream was created by the Titans, then it would stand to reason that they created the Ancients as well. Could it be that Elune is actually a Titan - not a construct like Freya, but an actual Titan? One whose role is to oversee the Ancients? (We know that the Celestials are basically the same kind of thing as Ancients, and I think it would make sense if the Loa were as well.) It would definitely explain Elune's place in the Warcraft cosmos and also justify why she, instead of anything encountered on Azeroth (barring the Old Gods,) is referred to as a literal goddess.
But getting back to Draenor and our current struggle:
Someone in some comment section (sorry, I don't remember where, but I would assume Blizzard Watch) pointed out that on the Warlords of Draenor site, Yrel is described as having a "dark secret." (Actually I can't seem to find where, but let's just roll with it.) Yrel, so far, really hasn't revealed any such thing. Beyond some early doubts at her ability to lead, she has been an exemplary Draenei Paladin, and went from acolyte (albeit one being personally trained by Velen himself) to Exarch in a fairly short amount of time.
Yrel is very young for a Draenei - she was apparently born on Draenor, which means she's less than three hundred years old. For context, many Draenei (including all Draenei Death Knights, given Valok the Righteous' attempts to talk sense into you before you are forced to kill him) personally remember Argus, the planet they left behind 25,000 years ago, making Yrel less than an 80th the age of my Death Knight (even if we ignore the fact that he could well have been several thousand years old when they left.)
But given how absurdly long Draenei live, it's possible that they don't really age. It might make sense that as a species, the Eredar just hit adulthood and as long as they don't get hit with any big infections or injuries, they'll continue to live indefinitely. Sure, Velen looks "old," and he almost certainly is, even by Draenei/Eredar standards, but this might be explained in other ways. Archimonde and Kil'jaeden are probably around the same age as Velen, but they look fine (though they're also demons now, so who the hell knows?)
Ok, onto the crackpot theory, and this is cribbing a bit from the commenter who I really wish I could credit: Suppose Yrel's lying about her age and who she really is. What if, rather than 300 years old, she's actually more on the order of 25,000? What if she really does have a dark secret, and that secret is a key to the Horde's creation? What if she is Kil'jaeden's daughter?
We don't use the word Eredar to describe the Draenei that much because it tends to be associated more with the Manari Eredar demons who are arguably the top-ranking demons in the Burning Legion. But it might be more accurate to call the Draenei Eredar than their demonic kin. Kil'jaeden, before accepting Sargeras' deal, would be indistinguishable physically from the Draenei. It's not that crazy to think that maybe he had a family. Of course, most likely his family would have gone with him, getting transformed into demons and joining the Legion.
But among the Eredar Triumvirate that oversaw a practically utopian society, the two closest members were Velen and Kil'jaeden, calling each other brothers (and to be fair, I'm only assuming this is metaphorical.) If Kil'jaeden had a family - a daughter - one could imagine Velen acting in a kind of avuncular capacity. And when Velen was granted his vision by the Naaru, he presumably tried to convince his fellow leaders of the dire threat Sargeras posed. But clearly Archimonde and Kil'jaeden were not willing to listen.
But maybe Velen turned instead to Yrel (who in this hypothetical is Kil'jaeden's daughter.) Unable to convince the father, Velen succeeds with the daughter, and Yrel comes with Velen and the other Draenei as they flee Argus.
The pursuit of the Draenei has always been Kil'jaeden's obsession, while Archimonde has been fairly apathetic toward them. You could explain this as simply a difference in personality, or even the sense of betrayal Kil'jaeden felt at Velen's dissension.
But if Velen "stole" Kil'jaeden's daughter, well. That would be a hell of a motivation to scour the universe for the Draenei, and ultimately led to the transformation of Draenor and Azeroth in turn. And it would also make Yrel's journey more exciting - here, the daughter of perhaps the most notorious Eredar in history, has overcome the doubt she felt because of her history and has come to lead her people as their greatest champion. She would be the successful foil to Garrosh Hellscream, managing to overcome the shadow of her father by accepting that she is not the same person. And it would also set up an amazing confrontation later on... if we can set aside the crazy alternate-universe nature of this story.
(Ok, clearly there are some problems with this theory - like Yrel's sister Samara (though there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea that Kil'jaeden has two daughters) and more importantly, the fact that plenty of Draenei know Yrel and would probably remember seeing her for thousands of years if she were lying about her age.)
(Ooh! Ooh! In an older voice file, she refers to Velen as her uncle. Maybe this was a plot they considered doing but then decided against it?)
Damn. Can we bring Yrel back with us? I mean, she's probably needed by her people, but I just think she's so cool.
Obviously, our Horde drank the Blood of Mannoroth and reaped the consequences, but it seemed to work a bit differently.
The influence of the Burning Legion is extremely apparent in Gul'dan's Iron Horde. Tanaan Jungle has undergone a transformation that is reminiscent of our Shadowmoon Valley. Indeed, it even seems that Gul'dan B is seeking out the Cipher of Damnation - an absurdly powerful spell that clearly transcends worlds, as it was used by Emperor Thaurissan on Azeroth to summon Ragnaros to the Molten Core. The Cipher's use on Outland created the volcano called the Hand of Gul'dan (the spell always seems to involve summoning a planet's resident most-powerful-fire-elemental and then creating a volcano) and turned Shadowmoon Valley into the burned-to-a-crisp hellscape it is today, severing the bonds with the elements that had been so important to Orcish culture (I'd wager this act of destabilization probably contributed to the destruction wrought by Ner'zhul - as if Gul'dan perforated the planet and Ner'zhul ripped.)
The Fel Iron Horde is filled with the look of demonic power - green fire is just about everywhere, and the demons aren't really hiding. In fact, the Shadow Council is not particularly shadowy right now - Gul'dan is recognized as the Warchief, instead of making Kilrogg his puppet Warchief like our version did with Blackhand. Of course, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that it's Archimonde, instead of Kil'jaeden, who is in control of the Horde. In our timeline, Kil'jaeden probably pushed Gul'dan to use subtlety to make the Horde feel as if they were in control of their own actions and conquering for their own purposes. Archimonde has never placed as much emphasis on subtlety (see: destroying Dalaran the moment he was summoned in the Third War,) and so has cast aside all pretenses that the Iron Horde is anything other than a small branch of the Burning Legion.
The other things is that the Fel Orcs just look different. These Orcs aren't green, nor are they red, but are instead a weird sort of grey. In our timeline, the color-changing nature of Mannoroth's blood seemed to work by first making the Orcs red immediately after drinking it, but then leaving them Fel-green afterwards - almost as if most of the blood got burned out of their systems. Essentially, the green skin of orcs is indicative of some kind of chemical (or magic equivalent of chemical) change where the blood loses its potency, but the consumed material remains. This would also explain why even non-blood-drinking Orcs like the Frostwolves would also get this condition, as there would be so much blood in the environment that non-potent blood remains would gradually work their way into anyone who spent much time around it. The blood only really provides its "beneficial" properties while it's fresh, and this manifests in the bright-red skin coloration that we saw in Grommash and his forces in Warcraft III as well as Kargath's Fel Horde in Outland, who were drinking the blood of Magtheridon, rather than Mannoroth, but still a Pit Lord.
Why is Kilrogg B, and his line of Fel Orcs, grey then?
The answer may lie in the fate of Mannoroth. While Blizzard has effectively extended the dreadlord immortality functionality to all demons (and opening a whole can of worms by revealing that there's only one Twisting Nether shared by all universes,) it clearly takes a lot of time and energy for a demon to manifest a physical avatar with which to interact with the world. Gul'dan might have thus saved Mannoroth some time by reassembling his physical body that was killed by Grommash and Garrosh in the Warlords of Draenor cinematic. But because this body is kind of undead as far as demons go, the blood has turned - begun to decompose in some way.
So perhaps these Fel Orcs are grey because... the blood they're drinking is rotten. More rotten than it is already, given that it's freaking demon blood. Gul'dan's still green because he drank it while it was still fresh and Mannoroth was still alive. Anyway, pretty gross no matter which way you look at it.
Speaking of things that come back from the dead:
I've pointed out a few times that the way that demons come back from the dead is almost exactly how it works for elementals. We fought Ragnaros in the Molten Core, but "killing" him there really just sent him back to the Firelands. One can think of it this way: the elementals and demons that we interact with in the physical world are not the actual beings, but are really kind of remote controlled units - avatars - that these powerful magical creatures use to manifest. Killing an avatar is a pain to the person whose avatar it is, but it's just a setback - in time, with effort and resources, they can build a new avatar.
We've seen evil things do this (demons) and morally neutral things do it too (elementals.) But what about good things? The Naaru clearly go through cycles of light and dark, but on the rare occasions where a Naaru truly dies, it seems to leave a body behind. M'uru's spark was used to reignite the Sunwell. Of course, one could argue that this was sort of akin to just cycling back to the Light side, but let's set Naaru aside for a moment.
There are plenty of "big bad" supernatural villains in Warcraft, but they usually have a good counterpart. Naaru seem to be the direct opposite of Void beings (which, despite being favored by Warlocks as minions, are explicitly not demons.) The Titans are often juxtaposed against either demons or Old Gods, but they treat the OGs more as their direct opposition - demons only really became a threat to them after one of their own turned evil and enlisted their aide. But the third category of "big powerful good guys" might be the best fit for the demons' opposite numbers. And in fact, the biggest war against them in our history is named after the big fighters on our side: the Ancients.
In Mount Hyjal, you're tasked with holding of Twilight's Hammer until Jarod Shadowsong and the other Ancients are able to finish bringing Cenarius into the world. But Cenarius was dead: he was killed by Grom Hellscream during the Third War after the Warsong Chief had a relapse and drank Mannoroth's blood again.
In fact, the Ancients don't seem to stay dead, really. Ursoc died during the War of the Ancients, but he was also in Grizzly Hills, getting corrupted by Yogg-Saron until we were able to kill him, which then freed him.
This all seems to point to the idea that the Ancients we interact with are really just avatars. And there's a perfectly convenient place for their true essences to inhabit - the Emerald Dream. In a very odd way, it might be that Demonology Warlocks who transform into something resembling a Dreadlord are actually more or less doing the same thing that Druids do when they transform into something resembling Ursoc or Ursol.
This would of course have huge implications. If the Emerald Dream was created by the Titans, then it would stand to reason that they created the Ancients as well. Could it be that Elune is actually a Titan - not a construct like Freya, but an actual Titan? One whose role is to oversee the Ancients? (We know that the Celestials are basically the same kind of thing as Ancients, and I think it would make sense if the Loa were as well.) It would definitely explain Elune's place in the Warcraft cosmos and also justify why she, instead of anything encountered on Azeroth (barring the Old Gods,) is referred to as a literal goddess.
But getting back to Draenor and our current struggle:
Someone in some comment section (sorry, I don't remember where, but I would assume Blizzard Watch) pointed out that on the Warlords of Draenor site, Yrel is described as having a "dark secret." (Actually I can't seem to find where, but let's just roll with it.) Yrel, so far, really hasn't revealed any such thing. Beyond some early doubts at her ability to lead, she has been an exemplary Draenei Paladin, and went from acolyte (albeit one being personally trained by Velen himself) to Exarch in a fairly short amount of time.
Yrel is very young for a Draenei - she was apparently born on Draenor, which means she's less than three hundred years old. For context, many Draenei (including all Draenei Death Knights, given Valok the Righteous' attempts to talk sense into you before you are forced to kill him) personally remember Argus, the planet they left behind 25,000 years ago, making Yrel less than an 80th the age of my Death Knight (even if we ignore the fact that he could well have been several thousand years old when they left.)
But given how absurdly long Draenei live, it's possible that they don't really age. It might make sense that as a species, the Eredar just hit adulthood and as long as they don't get hit with any big infections or injuries, they'll continue to live indefinitely. Sure, Velen looks "old," and he almost certainly is, even by Draenei/Eredar standards, but this might be explained in other ways. Archimonde and Kil'jaeden are probably around the same age as Velen, but they look fine (though they're also demons now, so who the hell knows?)
Ok, onto the crackpot theory, and this is cribbing a bit from the commenter who I really wish I could credit: Suppose Yrel's lying about her age and who she really is. What if, rather than 300 years old, she's actually more on the order of 25,000? What if she really does have a dark secret, and that secret is a key to the Horde's creation? What if she is Kil'jaeden's daughter?
We don't use the word Eredar to describe the Draenei that much because it tends to be associated more with the Manari Eredar demons who are arguably the top-ranking demons in the Burning Legion. But it might be more accurate to call the Draenei Eredar than their demonic kin. Kil'jaeden, before accepting Sargeras' deal, would be indistinguishable physically from the Draenei. It's not that crazy to think that maybe he had a family. Of course, most likely his family would have gone with him, getting transformed into demons and joining the Legion.
But among the Eredar Triumvirate that oversaw a practically utopian society, the two closest members were Velen and Kil'jaeden, calling each other brothers (and to be fair, I'm only assuming this is metaphorical.) If Kil'jaeden had a family - a daughter - one could imagine Velen acting in a kind of avuncular capacity. And when Velen was granted his vision by the Naaru, he presumably tried to convince his fellow leaders of the dire threat Sargeras posed. But clearly Archimonde and Kil'jaeden were not willing to listen.
But maybe Velen turned instead to Yrel (who in this hypothetical is Kil'jaeden's daughter.) Unable to convince the father, Velen succeeds with the daughter, and Yrel comes with Velen and the other Draenei as they flee Argus.
The pursuit of the Draenei has always been Kil'jaeden's obsession, while Archimonde has been fairly apathetic toward them. You could explain this as simply a difference in personality, or even the sense of betrayal Kil'jaeden felt at Velen's dissension.
But if Velen "stole" Kil'jaeden's daughter, well. That would be a hell of a motivation to scour the universe for the Draenei, and ultimately led to the transformation of Draenor and Azeroth in turn. And it would also make Yrel's journey more exciting - here, the daughter of perhaps the most notorious Eredar in history, has overcome the doubt she felt because of her history and has come to lead her people as their greatest champion. She would be the successful foil to Garrosh Hellscream, managing to overcome the shadow of her father by accepting that she is not the same person. And it would also set up an amazing confrontation later on... if we can set aside the crazy alternate-universe nature of this story.
(Ok, clearly there are some problems with this theory - like Yrel's sister Samara (though there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea that Kil'jaeden has two daughters) and more importantly, the fact that plenty of Draenei know Yrel and would probably remember seeing her for thousands of years if she were lying about her age.)
(Ooh! Ooh! In an older voice file, she refers to Velen as her uncle. Maybe this was a plot they considered doing but then decided against it?)
Damn. Can we bring Yrel back with us? I mean, she's probably needed by her people, but I just think she's so cool.
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