Artifact appearances are not that easy to unlock. The initial ones and then the "heroic" versions you get for finishing your class campaign are obtainable by practically anyone, but unlocking others requires either some dedicated non-LFR raiding, extensive PvP, or completing very difficult artifact challenges (to be fair, I haven't actually attempted any of the challenges yet, as I'm told that the one I most want, the Protection Paladin one, which is also for my main character, has a recommended item level of 915, which I'm 9 points short of.)
However, each artifact has a hidden appearance, and this can sometimes be the easiest to acquire. That being said, it's also sometimes infuriatingly difficult.
One of the major reasons for this is that almost every hidden appearance involves getting an item or items with an extremely low droprate.
Only two that I know of can be acquired with no real preparation or really luck. Beast Mastery Hunters simply buy it from a vendor, while Havoc Demon Hunters must fight a somewhat challenging enemy over Felsoul Hold in Suramar. Technically, Demon Hunters are supposed to acquire an item that has a low droprate within the Hold to give to an NPC who will fling you up to the flying enemy, but you can actually jump down from Obsidian Overlook in Highmountain and glide into the felbat's pocket of air.
A number require reputation, or a reputation in conjunction with a drop.
And some are either just a rare drop or an entire quasi-quest series that are all about rare drops.
The Corrupted Ashbringer look is the one I've done that was the most infuriating, requiring a number of rare drops (some but not all of which could be acquired on the Auction House) and then waiting for an extremely rare enemy to pop up in Western Plaguelands, and then having to fish potentially a thousand times out of the Throndoril River between WPL and EPL.
At the moment, I have the following hidden appearances acquired. Note that if you unlock alternate colors for one hidden appearance you actually get them for your other specs as well, meaning that only the "base" color truly requires you to get that hidden appearance item. I'm only listing the ones for which I have the base color.
Paladin: Protection, Retribution
Death Knight: Blood, Frost, Unholy
Warrior: Arms
Hunter: Beast Mastery
Shaman: Enhancement
Demon Hunter: Havoc
Rogue: Subtlety (just got this the other day.)
Druid: Restoration (likewise)
Monk: Brewmaster
Mage: Frost
As of yet, I don't have any for Priests or Warlocks, though for Warlocks I'm 2/6 skulls found for the Demonology appearance and I have the initial quest item for the Affliction item (obtained while farming Eredar skulls.)
Monday, July 31, 2017
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Archdruid "Mount" and Reflections on the Broken Shore
All right! That's all of them.
Druids don't get a mount, exactly, but instead get an altered Flight Form, which is a sort of horned owl. If you like the old form better (and I might, to be honest) you can talk to an NPC near the Shrine of Aviana in the Dreamgrove to swap back. It appears that the color scheme of this is based on race, not class, as my Night Elf shifted from Balance to Feral and had the same color. I also imagine that it won't apply to low-level alts as it's not really a mount in your collection like the other ones are.
The quest chain involves attempting to defend her Shrine on Mount Hyjal and then going to Azsuna with Thisalee Crow in order to recover the idol a Dreadlord steals.
Like the 7.0 class campaigns, the mount quests are a bit of a mixed bag. Some, like the Death Knight one, feel totally in-tune with the class identity and are really a lot of fun, while others feel a bit generic (the Priest quests for example could have been for any class.) They also vary widely in difficulty. The Shaman one is extremely quick and easy whereas the Rogue one is genuinely difficult in a way that will never get easier, as it'll always require you to (eventually) have to sneak into the enemy faction's most popular auction house.
Some classes have mounts that change based on your spec, while other classes get a baseline mount and then alternate color schemes that can be purchased with order resources only once you unlock Concordance of the Legionfall on the spec's artifact (so far I've unlocked the Protection and Retribution Paladin mounts and the Subtlety Rogue one.) And some classes simply get one mount that always looks the same and that's it.
Of course, getting all these mounts means I also had to do the Legionfall campaign twelve times. I have to say that compared with the Suramar quests or what I've seen of what we're getting in 7.3, the Legionfall "campaign" really feels a lot more like the kind of guided-tour quests that we got on the Timeless Isle - not really any plot, but rather a series of quests to introduce you to the features of a zone with several different weird little systems going on.
I'm hesitant to say that the Broken Shore lacked plot - after all, the expansion's introduction took place there, and that was maybe the most exciting way they've ever launched an expansion. Alliance players also get a nice character moment through quests surrounding Anduin and his grief over his father (made more poignant to me due to my going through a similar situation.)
Still, the Broken Shore felt light on revelations, and the campaign felt a little more chore-like than a grand adventure to quest through. Also, they really should have had us kill the rare elites before having us do the Sentinax quest, as those guys consistently drop beacons.
I haven't even attempted any of the artifact challenges yet (I'm sort of waiting to overgear them) but I hope that after people head to Argus that the building rotation doesn't slow too much.
Druids don't get a mount, exactly, but instead get an altered Flight Form, which is a sort of horned owl. If you like the old form better (and I might, to be honest) you can talk to an NPC near the Shrine of Aviana in the Dreamgrove to swap back. It appears that the color scheme of this is based on race, not class, as my Night Elf shifted from Balance to Feral and had the same color. I also imagine that it won't apply to low-level alts as it's not really a mount in your collection like the other ones are.
The quest chain involves attempting to defend her Shrine on Mount Hyjal and then going to Azsuna with Thisalee Crow in order to recover the idol a Dreadlord steals.
Like the 7.0 class campaigns, the mount quests are a bit of a mixed bag. Some, like the Death Knight one, feel totally in-tune with the class identity and are really a lot of fun, while others feel a bit generic (the Priest quests for example could have been for any class.) They also vary widely in difficulty. The Shaman one is extremely quick and easy whereas the Rogue one is genuinely difficult in a way that will never get easier, as it'll always require you to (eventually) have to sneak into the enemy faction's most popular auction house.
Some classes have mounts that change based on your spec, while other classes get a baseline mount and then alternate color schemes that can be purchased with order resources only once you unlock Concordance of the Legionfall on the spec's artifact (so far I've unlocked the Protection and Retribution Paladin mounts and the Subtlety Rogue one.) And some classes simply get one mount that always looks the same and that's it.
Of course, getting all these mounts means I also had to do the Legionfall campaign twelve times. I have to say that compared with the Suramar quests or what I've seen of what we're getting in 7.3, the Legionfall "campaign" really feels a lot more like the kind of guided-tour quests that we got on the Timeless Isle - not really any plot, but rather a series of quests to introduce you to the features of a zone with several different weird little systems going on.
I'm hesitant to say that the Broken Shore lacked plot - after all, the expansion's introduction took place there, and that was maybe the most exciting way they've ever launched an expansion. Alliance players also get a nice character moment through quests surrounding Anduin and his grief over his father (made more poignant to me due to my going through a similar situation.)
Still, the Broken Shore felt light on revelations, and the campaign felt a little more chore-like than a grand adventure to quest through. Also, they really should have had us kill the rare elites before having us do the Sentinax quest, as those guys consistently drop beacons.
I haven't even attempted any of the artifact challenges yet (I'm sort of waiting to overgear them) but I hope that after people head to Argus that the building rotation doesn't slow too much.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
What to Keep From Legion
"Best" expansions are obviously a matter of opinion. There are some people I'm sure who absolutely adored Warlords of Draenor. But the general consensus in the past has been that Wrath of the Lich King, or for some people, Burning Crusade, was WoW's best expansion. I lean more toward Wrath, given its introduction of the Death Knight, the iconic Scourge antagonist (not to mention the glory that was Ulduar) and the general way in which raiding was accessible to casual guilds so that normal players could really experience endgame content.
Legion is the first expansion since Wrath that rivals it, and could take its place.
Legion brought a ton of cool new features with it, and has generally been pretty exciting for long-term players, introducing a ton of elements that we've been waiting to see for a long time. I think (normal +) raiding is more accessible that it has been since Wrath, and generally there's just a lot of stuff to do.
Obviously not all features that came with Legion can come with us. And some, like Demon Hunters as a playable class, are a feature that will obviously continue to be a part of the game for the rest of its lifespan.
But let's take the less obvious stuff that I'd like to see in future expansions.
Level Scaling:
Now, first, a caveat: one of the downsides of level scaling is that leveling zones don't have a real story flow. In Draenor, Alliance players at least got to see Y'rel go from a prisoner forced to work in mines for the Shadowmoon clan to rising as the Draenei's greatest hero and eventually becoming an Exarch. When zones can be done in any order, there's not really room for continuity between them.
That beings said: having the entire Broken Isles available for top-level content has really made open-world questing at the level cap a far more interesting and diverse experience. I think that if Blizzard wanted to have each new "continent" scale up to its expansion's level cap, I'd be fine with it.
On the other hand:
Top-Level Quest Zones:
Historically, when a zone was meant for players of at the level cap, it tended to have very little in the way of story. Now, Broken Shore kind of falls into that pattern. But Suramar and what I've seen on the PTR for the three Argus zones is much more what I've been wanting ever since they started talking about Vale of Eternal Blossoms when Mists was announced.
The joy of questing is about playing through an interesting story, and Suramar's Dusk Lily resistance was a fantastic story. Having a questing zone where you can make use of your raid gear to show off just how much of a badass you've become is a lot of fun, and something I hope they do more of this kind of thing.
Class Order Content:
I'm a little worried to see that there's nothing as of yet in the 7.3 PTR about class-specific content. While designing 12 different experiences can sometimes dilute the creative resources (and certainly some class campaigns were a lot more interesting than others) I think that keeping class orders and their order halls relevant would be a really fantastic thing for the game.
So often one can feel a little out of place - my Undead Rogue sometimes feels strange in the spikes and animal hides of the Horde's typically Orcish environments, but the Hall of Shadows is much more his kind of place (especially the treasure room.) Order halls are a great way to remind you of your class identity and feel at home, and quests surrounding those orders is a great way to reinforce the idea of your class.
Mainhand/Offhand coming as one:
This is really a consequence of the artifact system, but not having to worry about getting a sword to go with my shield is a real relief. I could imagine future weapons coming in sets. This one's minor.
Many Artifact Traits:
I know artifacts are a Legion-only feature, but a lot of the traits introduced with them would be great additions to the baseline specs or as talents.
World Quests:
World quests are a really far superior version of Daily Quests. Not having to pick them up at a hub and only having to do four of a larger number to get your "big reward" of the day makes it feel a lot less like a chore. Plus, having voice-acted introductions instead of quest text is a good way to get you into the questing quickly.
Legion has brought a bunch of cool new features, and while some are destined to wind up left behind on the Broken Isles, I think that many have earned their places in future WoW content to come.
Friday, July 28, 2017
Battlelord, Huntmaster, Grandmaster, and High Priest Mount Quests
Oh right, I was doing a quick rundown of these quests.
With only the Druid to go (waiting on world quests now) I have, over the past few weeks, gotten the mounts for Warriors, Hunters, Monks, and Priests. Let's take a look!
Battlelord:
This is one of the simpler ones, though like the Mage, it involves a couple of somewhat tricky combat encounters. You need to make ample use of mobility and survival abilities (and interrupts!) to make it through yet another trial that Odyn is putting you through (seriously Odyn, you're like an emotionally distant father for whom nothing is ever good enough.)
The mount itself is a much more up-to-date Proto-drake model that changes colors based on your spec. Arms gets red, Fury black, and Protection purple (not sure why they chose those. I'd think Red was the obvious fury color, and given that Arms has a partially Old-God-corrupted sword and Protection has a shield made from a scale of Deathwings, it seems really obvious that they should get purple and black, respectively. But oh well.)
Huntmaster:
This actually involves Odyn as well, and sends you to the Fields of the Eternal Hunt, where you track down various beasts of legend (using your Beast hunter tracking you can easily find tracks or leavings of various kinds.) Ultimately in culminates in the discovery of the ancient Wolfhawk spirit, and you get a mount of that kind.
The Wolfhawk mount comes in various colors that, like the Paladin mounts, require you to fill out the upgraded artifact tree to get. However, Beastmasters don't get a recolor but instead get the ability to tame a wolfhawk pet (I'm not sure yet where to find these guys, but I'm a ways from finishing the artifact.)
Grandmaster:
Monks get a relatively lengthy quest chain taking you through a fair amount of Kun Lai Summit at the behest of Master Bu as you attempt to track down Ban-Lu, a son of Xuen's who has served many Grandmasters through the past.
Ban-Lu does not change appearance and there are not variants on that appearance, but the baseline's very pretty. Additionally, Ban-Lu will speak with you occasionally as you ride him, which is kind of fun.
High Priest:
Brann and Magni contact you when you start the mount quest, taking you to a long-lost Titan vault that contains the last three remnants of the Seekers, a kind of Owl/Gryphon hybrid that apparently once served the Titans. As often happens, you presence activates some sort of defense protocol, and so you have to fight off waves of Titanforged (Watchers, Golems, and Earthen) before you take the Seekers into your custody.
There's one seeker for each spec, with the "void-corrupted" one going to Shadow Priests. Like the Warrior, Death Knight, Shaman, and Mage mounts, this changes automatically based on spec.
With only the Druid to go (waiting on world quests now) I have, over the past few weeks, gotten the mounts for Warriors, Hunters, Monks, and Priests. Let's take a look!
Battlelord:
This is one of the simpler ones, though like the Mage, it involves a couple of somewhat tricky combat encounters. You need to make ample use of mobility and survival abilities (and interrupts!) to make it through yet another trial that Odyn is putting you through (seriously Odyn, you're like an emotionally distant father for whom nothing is ever good enough.)
The mount itself is a much more up-to-date Proto-drake model that changes colors based on your spec. Arms gets red, Fury black, and Protection purple (not sure why they chose those. I'd think Red was the obvious fury color, and given that Arms has a partially Old-God-corrupted sword and Protection has a shield made from a scale of Deathwings, it seems really obvious that they should get purple and black, respectively. But oh well.)
Huntmaster:
This actually involves Odyn as well, and sends you to the Fields of the Eternal Hunt, where you track down various beasts of legend (using your Beast hunter tracking you can easily find tracks or leavings of various kinds.) Ultimately in culminates in the discovery of the ancient Wolfhawk spirit, and you get a mount of that kind.
The Wolfhawk mount comes in various colors that, like the Paladin mounts, require you to fill out the upgraded artifact tree to get. However, Beastmasters don't get a recolor but instead get the ability to tame a wolfhawk pet (I'm not sure yet where to find these guys, but I'm a ways from finishing the artifact.)
Grandmaster:
Monks get a relatively lengthy quest chain taking you through a fair amount of Kun Lai Summit at the behest of Master Bu as you attempt to track down Ban-Lu, a son of Xuen's who has served many Grandmasters through the past.
Ban-Lu does not change appearance and there are not variants on that appearance, but the baseline's very pretty. Additionally, Ban-Lu will speak with you occasionally as you ride him, which is kind of fun.
High Priest:
Brann and Magni contact you when you start the mount quest, taking you to a long-lost Titan vault that contains the last three remnants of the Seekers, a kind of Owl/Gryphon hybrid that apparently once served the Titans. As often happens, you presence activates some sort of defense protocol, and so you have to fight off waves of Titanforged (Watchers, Golems, and Earthen) before you take the Seekers into your custody.
There's one seeker for each spec, with the "void-corrupted" one going to Shadow Priests. Like the Warrior, Death Knight, Shaman, and Mage mounts, this changes automatically based on spec.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
The Unexpected on Argus
Much of the experience of coming to Argus is what you'd expect: this planet has served as the capital world of the Burning Legion for 25,000 years. That means a lot of it is fel-blasted and swarming with demons. Many of those demons are the eredar - it's their homeworld, after all. And given that the Legion's creator/leader/god is a Titan, there is actually a slow-build to a reveal of Titan influence. I don't yet know how much the Titans' stuff (like what we saw in Northrend) is visible on Argus, but even though he's evil, Sargeras is undeniably a Titan, and thus brings with him the crazy magi-tek trappings.
But there are other elements at play that I think bear talking about. Are these hints of what is to come? Potentially. The Warcraft cosmos will need to move onto other subjects with the Legion taken care of, and I think we're seeing some of that now.
Spoilers to follow.
But there are other elements at play that I think bear talking about. Are these hints of what is to come? Potentially. The Warcraft cosmos will need to move onto other subjects with the Legion taken care of, and I think we're seeing some of that now.
Spoilers to follow.
Monday, July 24, 2017
The Potential Horror of a N'Zoth Expansion
We're in the middle of Legion - the second raid tier is open, with half the LFR wings available, and a third coming on Tuesday. This is the biggest expansion in terms of lore and stakes that we've had (though the stakes are generally pretty high.) Given that the expansion has built up to the ultimate confrontation with the Burning Legion, with the spoilers coming out of the PTR's version of Antorus, the final raid of the expansion, suggesting a truly significant dynamic shift will occur within the Warcraft cosmos.
I don't know what will come in the expansion after next, but I have a strong feeling that we're going to be dealing with N'zoth, the last remaining undefeated Old God in Azeroth's surface.
First off, the game has not definitively said that C'thun or Yogg-Saron are not simply dead. There are hints that their presences linger, such as C'thun's ability to mutate Cho'gall in Cataclysm and the appearance of Faceless creatures in Ulduar during the Legion launch quests.
But N'zoth is certainly still around.
Datamining has suggested that Kul Tiras might be a future zone in expansion seven, or even possibly a continent (though while I think Blizzard is wary of having a true archipelago lest zones feel totally disconnected like in Cataclysm - which explains why the Broken Isles is really more like the Broken Isle - I still think it makes more sense for an expansion containing Kul Tiras to have other famous islands in the South Seas.) We can extrapolate a lot of potential elements to an expansion that would contain Kul Tiras: It's likely that Azshara and her Naga will play a significant role, given their dominance of Azeroth's oceans (also, the Naga presence in Tomb of Sargeras and Azsuna seems like a good reminder of their threat to prepare us for a more heavily Naga-themed expansion.) Now, Azshara is linked to two major evil factions. The first is the Burning Legion, but we will obviously have dealt with that and will be sick to death of fel green stuff. The other major evil faction she associates with is that of the Old Gods, and particularly N'zoth.
N'zoth is the most aquatically-themed Old God, and its appearance in Hearthstone suggests that it's the basis for the look of Kraken. We also know that N'zoth had been kind of the custodian of the Emerald Nightmare (even though Yogg-Saron was its creator - given N'zoth's predilection for fighting Yogg-Saron and C'thun, I wouldn't be surprised if N'zoth usurped the Nightmare from Yogg-Saron.) If we ended the Nightmare by slaying Xavius, that could mean that N'zoth, who had been occupied with "dreaming" up the Nightmare, might now have awoken (I also think that the Pillars of Creation probably did something to unlock the prisons of the Old Gods, but that's like a couple other articles I've already written.)
We also, (SPOILERS,) see a group of Ethereals practicing void magic on Argus - sort of a shocking thing, given that Argus is the Legion's headquarters and they're theoretically all anti-Void. I don't know what we'll discover about the Void in 7.3, but this seems like a very standard "set it up to pay it off" kind of thing in a late expansion patch.
Now, while void magic of Ner'zhul's and these ethereals' style looks very different than Old God stuff, the truth is that the Old Gods were created by beings in the Void, and that they're really one and the same.
An Old God-centric expansion would have to deal with void magic, and the link between the gross, tentacles-and-goo feel of Old Gods with the cold and cosmic Void could be explored in an expansion that focused on them.
Personally, what I would love to see is at least one zone that leans heavily into Lovecraftian horror.
Blizzard is actually quite good at making gothic settings. Gilneas, Tirisfal, and most recently Black Rook Hold have all demonstrated a great sense of the macabre (I also love the aesthetic of Helheim, though that's not exactly gothic, but certainly spooky.)
Lovecraft built on the foundation of Poe-style gothic horror, but added super-creepy aliens (and if you're not familiar, no, not little green men, but more writhing masses of tentacles and stuff like that.) The Old Gods are obvious homages to Lovecraft, but while Blizzard has gotten the weird, ancient and hidden civilization feel and certainly the creepy tentacle stuff, they've only rarely ever linked the Old Gods with the kind of madness it instills in populations. I would love to have us arrive in Kul Tiras and discover that there's some kind of creepy oligarchy that has developed in the absence of Jaina or any other Proudmoores that have the island on lockdown, and that there's a scared populace who are being dominated by a terrible cult (those same oligarchs.) The zone could then have you investigating this oppressive oligarchy and discover that they've actually sworn themselves to N'zoth, and he is slowly transforming them into aquatic beings - not unlike how he did this to the Night Elves to create the Naga or how Dagon turned the population of Innsmouth into weird hybrid fish-people in Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
World of Warcraft is generally a pretty bright and cartoony game, but I think that this makes the moments of creepiness hit that much harder. Diablo is kind of wall-to-wall gross monsters, and thus they don't really have much of an impact. But given that I imagine a South Seas expansion (if indeed that is what we are getting) will mostly be familiar Naga, maybe Zandalari Trolls, and other less horrifying stuff, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have one zone really delve into just how horrific the Old Gods and the Void truly are.
I don't know what will come in the expansion after next, but I have a strong feeling that we're going to be dealing with N'zoth, the last remaining undefeated Old God in Azeroth's surface.
First off, the game has not definitively said that C'thun or Yogg-Saron are not simply dead. There are hints that their presences linger, such as C'thun's ability to mutate Cho'gall in Cataclysm and the appearance of Faceless creatures in Ulduar during the Legion launch quests.
But N'zoth is certainly still around.
Datamining has suggested that Kul Tiras might be a future zone in expansion seven, or even possibly a continent (though while I think Blizzard is wary of having a true archipelago lest zones feel totally disconnected like in Cataclysm - which explains why the Broken Isles is really more like the Broken Isle - I still think it makes more sense for an expansion containing Kul Tiras to have other famous islands in the South Seas.) We can extrapolate a lot of potential elements to an expansion that would contain Kul Tiras: It's likely that Azshara and her Naga will play a significant role, given their dominance of Azeroth's oceans (also, the Naga presence in Tomb of Sargeras and Azsuna seems like a good reminder of their threat to prepare us for a more heavily Naga-themed expansion.) Now, Azshara is linked to two major evil factions. The first is the Burning Legion, but we will obviously have dealt with that and will be sick to death of fel green stuff. The other major evil faction she associates with is that of the Old Gods, and particularly N'zoth.
N'zoth is the most aquatically-themed Old God, and its appearance in Hearthstone suggests that it's the basis for the look of Kraken. We also know that N'zoth had been kind of the custodian of the Emerald Nightmare (even though Yogg-Saron was its creator - given N'zoth's predilection for fighting Yogg-Saron and C'thun, I wouldn't be surprised if N'zoth usurped the Nightmare from Yogg-Saron.) If we ended the Nightmare by slaying Xavius, that could mean that N'zoth, who had been occupied with "dreaming" up the Nightmare, might now have awoken (I also think that the Pillars of Creation probably did something to unlock the prisons of the Old Gods, but that's like a couple other articles I've already written.)
We also, (SPOILERS,) see a group of Ethereals practicing void magic on Argus - sort of a shocking thing, given that Argus is the Legion's headquarters and they're theoretically all anti-Void. I don't know what we'll discover about the Void in 7.3, but this seems like a very standard "set it up to pay it off" kind of thing in a late expansion patch.
Now, while void magic of Ner'zhul's and these ethereals' style looks very different than Old God stuff, the truth is that the Old Gods were created by beings in the Void, and that they're really one and the same.
An Old God-centric expansion would have to deal with void magic, and the link between the gross, tentacles-and-goo feel of Old Gods with the cold and cosmic Void could be explored in an expansion that focused on them.
Personally, what I would love to see is at least one zone that leans heavily into Lovecraftian horror.
Blizzard is actually quite good at making gothic settings. Gilneas, Tirisfal, and most recently Black Rook Hold have all demonstrated a great sense of the macabre (I also love the aesthetic of Helheim, though that's not exactly gothic, but certainly spooky.)
Lovecraft built on the foundation of Poe-style gothic horror, but added super-creepy aliens (and if you're not familiar, no, not little green men, but more writhing masses of tentacles and stuff like that.) The Old Gods are obvious homages to Lovecraft, but while Blizzard has gotten the weird, ancient and hidden civilization feel and certainly the creepy tentacle stuff, they've only rarely ever linked the Old Gods with the kind of madness it instills in populations. I would love to have us arrive in Kul Tiras and discover that there's some kind of creepy oligarchy that has developed in the absence of Jaina or any other Proudmoores that have the island on lockdown, and that there's a scared populace who are being dominated by a terrible cult (those same oligarchs.) The zone could then have you investigating this oppressive oligarchy and discover that they've actually sworn themselves to N'zoth, and he is slowly transforming them into aquatic beings - not unlike how he did this to the Night Elves to create the Naga or how Dagon turned the population of Innsmouth into weird hybrid fish-people in Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
World of Warcraft is generally a pretty bright and cartoony game, but I think that this makes the moments of creepiness hit that much harder. Diablo is kind of wall-to-wall gross monsters, and thus they don't really have much of an impact. But given that I imagine a South Seas expansion (if indeed that is what we are getting) will mostly be familiar Naga, maybe Zandalari Trolls, and other less horrifying stuff, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have one zone really delve into just how horrific the Old Gods and the Void truly are.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Questions About Weapons After Legion
Artifact weapons are one of the key features of Legion. So much of character power has been focused on improving artifact weapons. The artifact trait trees are similar to the old talent trees in that there are a lot of flat bonuses to various abilities, and that allows relics to be more interesting than a simple item level upgrade.
Leaving artifacts behind at the end of Legion is going to be very strange.
I don't know the exact calculation, and I'm sure it varies based on the strength of various bonuses, but I would bet that if we were suddenly to use ordinary weapons at the same item level of our current artifacts, the result would be a very significant drop in damage output, healing, or survivability. There are the obvious 20ish% bonuses to every major ability, but also rotation-smoothing abilities and passives (I remember my friend who plays a Balance Druid was considering changing specs after eight years until he got the Scythe of Elune and thus access to the New Moon/Half Moon/Full Moon spells.)
In a game where everything needs to be balanced and scale, Blizzard is forced to sort of break things in order for the cool solutions they've come up with to have problems to solve. But this also means that following Legion, they'll either need to fully integrate the artifact traits (with a bit of culling and adjusting of course) or they'll need to seriously rebuild a lot of abilities to compensate for the lack of these traits.
A number of active traits could easily be reimagined as talents. For instance, Frost Death Knights' Sindragosa's Fury is a seriously iconic ability (borrowed from Arthas in Heroes of the Storm) that I could very easily see becoming a high-level talent, and that could probably go for a lot of these artifact abilities (and a number of them are either lore-specific enough or less centrally related to the spec that losing them wouldn't be such a problem.) Some, like Unholy's Apocalypse ability, or the Balance Druid's moon cycle, seem like they ought to become baseline for the spec.
This isn't even touching on passives, which could similarly be baseline or talents.
Another thing to consider about weapons is weapon sets. If you have a shield, off-hand item, or off-hand weapon, in Legion the set comes together as a single item that simply fills in both slots on your character panel. Now, everyone has the pain/pleasure of mismatches thanks to relics, but relics are perfectly cumulative. In the past, an Enhancement Shaman would generally want to put the better weapon in the main hand, but this meant Lava Lash could lag behind based on disparity between weapons.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing weapon sets come in pairs in the future - if I get a good shield, it comes with a good axe/sword/mace. You would obviously preserve them as separate items for transmog purposes, but it could simplify loot tables and make it less penalizing for dual-wielders to gear up.
The last big question is about Warglaives. With Demon Hunters they introduced a whole new weapon type that is only accessible to that class. In an expansion where Demon Hunters' weapon progression is pretty strict (you basically get three sets of weapons not counting your off-spec artifact,) that's pretty easy. But are raid bosses going to be dropping Warglaives in the next expansion? And is it ok that that's a weapon only one class can use?
Now, to be fair, bosses already (well, not this expansion, but in prior ones) drop bows, guns, and crossbows, which as of Mists of Pandaria can only really be used by Hunters. So perhaps Warglaives will be in a similar spot. The only difference is that Demon Hunters can technically just use Swords and Axes, meaning that while Hunters are forced to use those class-exclusive weapons, having Warglaives in the future would simply mean that Demon Hunters get additional options that other classes don't.
In Warlords, at least in Hellfire Citadel, Blizzard was playing with the idea of having a lot of these weapons and items be sort of spec-agnostic, complementing the changes they made to armor. For instance, shields all had both Strength and Intellect on them so that they could be used by tanks as well as casters. Artifact weapons don't need to worry about that, but I wonder if we'll see an expansion of this idea in expansion seven.
Leaving artifacts behind at the end of Legion is going to be very strange.
I don't know the exact calculation, and I'm sure it varies based on the strength of various bonuses, but I would bet that if we were suddenly to use ordinary weapons at the same item level of our current artifacts, the result would be a very significant drop in damage output, healing, or survivability. There are the obvious 20ish% bonuses to every major ability, but also rotation-smoothing abilities and passives (I remember my friend who plays a Balance Druid was considering changing specs after eight years until he got the Scythe of Elune and thus access to the New Moon/Half Moon/Full Moon spells.)
In a game where everything needs to be balanced and scale, Blizzard is forced to sort of break things in order for the cool solutions they've come up with to have problems to solve. But this also means that following Legion, they'll either need to fully integrate the artifact traits (with a bit of culling and adjusting of course) or they'll need to seriously rebuild a lot of abilities to compensate for the lack of these traits.
A number of active traits could easily be reimagined as talents. For instance, Frost Death Knights' Sindragosa's Fury is a seriously iconic ability (borrowed from Arthas in Heroes of the Storm) that I could very easily see becoming a high-level talent, and that could probably go for a lot of these artifact abilities (and a number of them are either lore-specific enough or less centrally related to the spec that losing them wouldn't be such a problem.) Some, like Unholy's Apocalypse ability, or the Balance Druid's moon cycle, seem like they ought to become baseline for the spec.
This isn't even touching on passives, which could similarly be baseline or talents.
Another thing to consider about weapons is weapon sets. If you have a shield, off-hand item, or off-hand weapon, in Legion the set comes together as a single item that simply fills in both slots on your character panel. Now, everyone has the pain/pleasure of mismatches thanks to relics, but relics are perfectly cumulative. In the past, an Enhancement Shaman would generally want to put the better weapon in the main hand, but this meant Lava Lash could lag behind based on disparity between weapons.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing weapon sets come in pairs in the future - if I get a good shield, it comes with a good axe/sword/mace. You would obviously preserve them as separate items for transmog purposes, but it could simplify loot tables and make it less penalizing for dual-wielders to gear up.
The last big question is about Warglaives. With Demon Hunters they introduced a whole new weapon type that is only accessible to that class. In an expansion where Demon Hunters' weapon progression is pretty strict (you basically get three sets of weapons not counting your off-spec artifact,) that's pretty easy. But are raid bosses going to be dropping Warglaives in the next expansion? And is it ok that that's a weapon only one class can use?
Now, to be fair, bosses already (well, not this expansion, but in prior ones) drop bows, guns, and crossbows, which as of Mists of Pandaria can only really be used by Hunters. So perhaps Warglaives will be in a similar spot. The only difference is that Demon Hunters can technically just use Swords and Axes, meaning that while Hunters are forced to use those class-exclusive weapons, having Warglaives in the future would simply mean that Demon Hunters get additional options that other classes don't.
In Warlords, at least in Hellfire Citadel, Blizzard was playing with the idea of having a lot of these weapons and items be sort of spec-agnostic, complementing the changes they made to armor. For instance, shields all had both Strength and Intellect on them so that they could be used by tanks as well as casters. Artifact weapons don't need to worry about that, but I wonder if we'll see an expansion of this idea in expansion seven.
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