In Burning Crusade, hitting 70 meant that you could unlock the ability to fly. It was a super new thing - if I remember correctly, the only flying mounts in 2.0 were the generic gryphons and wind riders - 2.1 brought Netherdrakes and the Flying Machine (and turbo-charged variant) that I still use as my primary mount on my main.
But flight also meant that more of the endgame world content was open to you. The Ogr'illa faction required flight to complete even its unlocking quests. The Netherwing faction similarly required you to fly out to a floating island. And the Tempest Keep dungeons were all up in the air, requiring you to fly to reach them.
Wrath gave players flight at 77, and designed Storm Peaks and Icecrown around the idea that you had to fly - Storm Peaks because it was all precarious mountain terrain and Icecrown because there literally wasn't any safe place to land and set up an outpost (at least until the Ebon Blade took the Shadow Vault.)
Cataclysm was the first and only expansion to let you fly the entire time, and admittedly, it probably suffered for that. Its endgame zones felt disconnected and a bit empty.
Mists restored the BC-era idea of having you unlock flight at the level cap, but then Warlords, Legion, and now BFA have you gaining it only after you've done enough in the world on your main that it's really just for convenience's sake.
Now, I'll be curious to see how things work out in BFA. Mechagon and Nazjatar will both allow flight, but these aren't the true endgame zones - they're more equivalent to the Broken Shore. The real question is whether we'll be able to fly in whatever the equivalent of Argus will be (cough: Ny'alotha.)
I suspect we won't be able to.
Now, admittedly, grounding characters does give the designers a chance to curate the experience more. Take Nazjatar as it currently exists - as you go lower, things get darker and more dangerous. And you have those imposing water walls - the ocean itself - threatening to collapse and drown you at any moment.
And I think it's fine for zones to be designed to be seen from the ground.
But it doesn't mean you can't design zones to be seen from the air.
I don't think this will happen, but supposing we go to Ny'alotha in 8.3, I'd love to have the zone built around the idea that we're flying between the cyclopean structures. Maybe the ground isn't safe because it's swarming with N'raqi. Maybe we have to be very careful when we touch down because there are massive servants of the Old Gods - C'thraaxi or even worse aberrations - that will annihilate anyone in their path.
You could flip the script - it's not that you have to unlock flying there, but that you have to fight hard to have any sort of foothold where you can just set down and regroup.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Friday, June 28, 2019
Will It Count This Time?
The Alliance and Horde have a history of warring and then setting aside their differences to fight a common foe.
The first time this happened was the Third War - Jaina and Thrall brokered a truce after Grom was once again corrupted by Mannoroth, and there were a few years (bought with the blood of Daelin Proudmoore and many Kul Tirans) of relative detente. While skirmishes erupted in various places, it wasn't really until the Wrath Gate Incident that Alliance and Horde found themselves truly at war again, which culminated ultimately in the Siege of Orgrimmar.
While far from friendly, relations were more or less good until the battle of the Broken Shore, where the retreat by the Horde was misinterpreted as an opportunistic abandonment of the Alliance, and Sylvanas' elevation as Warchief drove tensions far higher, the Burning of Teldrassil being the atrocity the likes of which we haven't really seen since the First War (at least by either player faction.)
However, while there are way more moving parts than it's easy to track - N'zoth and Azshara being pretty big players here, not to mention whatever mysterious Shadowlands forces A: told Vol'jin to name Sylvanas his successor and B: brought him back as some kind of Loa spirit - we are seeing some members of the Horde turning against Sylvanas and entertaining notions of cooperation with the Alliance.
I know Blizzard will be quick to say it's nothing like the Garrosh situation, but it kind of is - you have a pendulum swing in the Horde toward a more militarily aggressive leader who starts off the expansion after they were named by obliterating a major Alliance city, a couple of charismatic and beloved Horde leaders standing up to them and going into hiding, some morally questionable acts from the Alliance that pale in comparison to the crimes the Horde has committed, and a showdown with the current Warchief, bafflingly named successor by a more popular and peace-minded predecessor, coming down the road.
In the recent War Campaign quests, Baine Bloodhoof is sentenced to execution for returning the reanimated Derek Proudmoore to Jaina (which I still totally think was Sylvanas' plan - not that killing Baine to make it look like it wasn't would faze her,) and members of both factions - Saurfang and Thrall on the Horde side, Jaina and Matthias Shaw on the Alliance side - go and rescue him, with Jaina teleporting everyone to Thunder Bluff.
As Thrall and Jaina - the people who first fostered peace between the two factions - contemplate whether they can truly end the faction conflict, the question raised is this: what's different this time?
After all, this would be the third "peace" between the factions, and it always seems to erupt in war again. Why should we hope this would be any different?
This, of course, also has some implications game-wise. Are we actually going to see some kind of fundamental shift in the way that player factions work?
Blizzard is pretty conservative with this sort of thing, but we have seen some very subtle shifts in recent years to allow a breakdown of the once-impenetrable barriers between the factions. Demon Hunters, for example, can all speak Demonic, which allows them to communicate cross-faction, but only with fellow Demon Hunters.
But the, Void Elves also get Thalassian as a language, which is the Blood Elf (and High Elf, not that it's a playable race) language. That means that Void Elves can speak with Blood Elves (which makes Blood Elf Demon Hunters the ultimate diplomats.)
We saw in Ashran a system to allow players to play as the other faction temporarily to address server imbalances, which is arguably the biggest step toward a post-faction world we've seen.
But one does wonder: how much would have to change for the game to really move past factions?
And should it?
In the pro column: the playerbase of WoW is nowhere near as enormous as it was in its heyday. While shardng and CRZ and the like has allowed them to pour together or separate out players to keep a decent sense of player density in the world, a game where players of different factions could play together would essentially double (on average) the number of players you can group with.
Additionally, it would allow more player agency if we had a plot and world where, say, a Tauren and a Draenei could team up. In the lore, there's tons of examples of people of both sides looking past the divide - we even have a canonical Gnome and Goblin married couple now. If I can periodically team up with Thrall on my Human Paladin, why shouldn't I be able to group up with a friend's Orc Shaman character?
Some would argue in the con column that the Alliance/Horde conflict defines Warcraft. But I'd argue that those people are stuck in the '90s. Threats like the Old Gods, the Scourge, the Burning Legion - these are the big bads that the game's story is built around. Time and time again we're reminded of the humanity (or Orcishness if you're Horde) of all the playable races, and while racial resentment is certainly a very real and very difficult thing to reckon with in the real world, one would think that our player characters, who have spent all this time going all over the world(s), would have learned to stop thinking in such myopic terms.
Or, even if some continue to do so, you'd think a significant number would have moved past it.
To my mind, the best solution would be to accommodate different attitudes. If your Night Elf can never, ever forgive the Horde for what they did to Teldrassil, I get that. If your Blood Elf will never trust the Alliance again after the purge of Dalaran, I get that. (Man, WoW's pretty rough to elves.) But rather than making the assumption for players that they hold those attitudes - that my Tauren Shaman is really jazzed about spreading blight all over Darkshore - it would be great if we could elect to focus on the bigger, irredeemably evil threats.
So what should we expect?
I'm really looking forward to Blizzcon this year, not just because I'm crossing my fingers for a spooky Shadowlands expansion (though I am) but because I want to see if Blizzard is going to do something truly bold with this "resolving the faction conflict" goal they've set for themselves, or if it's just going to be more of the same.
We need some fundamental shift to gameplay mechanics for me to buy it.
The first time this happened was the Third War - Jaina and Thrall brokered a truce after Grom was once again corrupted by Mannoroth, and there were a few years (bought with the blood of Daelin Proudmoore and many Kul Tirans) of relative detente. While skirmishes erupted in various places, it wasn't really until the Wrath Gate Incident that Alliance and Horde found themselves truly at war again, which culminated ultimately in the Siege of Orgrimmar.
While far from friendly, relations were more or less good until the battle of the Broken Shore, where the retreat by the Horde was misinterpreted as an opportunistic abandonment of the Alliance, and Sylvanas' elevation as Warchief drove tensions far higher, the Burning of Teldrassil being the atrocity the likes of which we haven't really seen since the First War (at least by either player faction.)
However, while there are way more moving parts than it's easy to track - N'zoth and Azshara being pretty big players here, not to mention whatever mysterious Shadowlands forces A: told Vol'jin to name Sylvanas his successor and B: brought him back as some kind of Loa spirit - we are seeing some members of the Horde turning against Sylvanas and entertaining notions of cooperation with the Alliance.
I know Blizzard will be quick to say it's nothing like the Garrosh situation, but it kind of is - you have a pendulum swing in the Horde toward a more militarily aggressive leader who starts off the expansion after they were named by obliterating a major Alliance city, a couple of charismatic and beloved Horde leaders standing up to them and going into hiding, some morally questionable acts from the Alliance that pale in comparison to the crimes the Horde has committed, and a showdown with the current Warchief, bafflingly named successor by a more popular and peace-minded predecessor, coming down the road.
In the recent War Campaign quests, Baine Bloodhoof is sentenced to execution for returning the reanimated Derek Proudmoore to Jaina (which I still totally think was Sylvanas' plan - not that killing Baine to make it look like it wasn't would faze her,) and members of both factions - Saurfang and Thrall on the Horde side, Jaina and Matthias Shaw on the Alliance side - go and rescue him, with Jaina teleporting everyone to Thunder Bluff.
As Thrall and Jaina - the people who first fostered peace between the two factions - contemplate whether they can truly end the faction conflict, the question raised is this: what's different this time?
After all, this would be the third "peace" between the factions, and it always seems to erupt in war again. Why should we hope this would be any different?
This, of course, also has some implications game-wise. Are we actually going to see some kind of fundamental shift in the way that player factions work?
Blizzard is pretty conservative with this sort of thing, but we have seen some very subtle shifts in recent years to allow a breakdown of the once-impenetrable barriers between the factions. Demon Hunters, for example, can all speak Demonic, which allows them to communicate cross-faction, but only with fellow Demon Hunters.
But the, Void Elves also get Thalassian as a language, which is the Blood Elf (and High Elf, not that it's a playable race) language. That means that Void Elves can speak with Blood Elves (which makes Blood Elf Demon Hunters the ultimate diplomats.)
We saw in Ashran a system to allow players to play as the other faction temporarily to address server imbalances, which is arguably the biggest step toward a post-faction world we've seen.
But one does wonder: how much would have to change for the game to really move past factions?
And should it?
In the pro column: the playerbase of WoW is nowhere near as enormous as it was in its heyday. While shardng and CRZ and the like has allowed them to pour together or separate out players to keep a decent sense of player density in the world, a game where players of different factions could play together would essentially double (on average) the number of players you can group with.
Additionally, it would allow more player agency if we had a plot and world where, say, a Tauren and a Draenei could team up. In the lore, there's tons of examples of people of both sides looking past the divide - we even have a canonical Gnome and Goblin married couple now. If I can periodically team up with Thrall on my Human Paladin, why shouldn't I be able to group up with a friend's Orc Shaman character?
Some would argue in the con column that the Alliance/Horde conflict defines Warcraft. But I'd argue that those people are stuck in the '90s. Threats like the Old Gods, the Scourge, the Burning Legion - these are the big bads that the game's story is built around. Time and time again we're reminded of the humanity (or Orcishness if you're Horde) of all the playable races, and while racial resentment is certainly a very real and very difficult thing to reckon with in the real world, one would think that our player characters, who have spent all this time going all over the world(s), would have learned to stop thinking in such myopic terms.
Or, even if some continue to do so, you'd think a significant number would have moved past it.
To my mind, the best solution would be to accommodate different attitudes. If your Night Elf can never, ever forgive the Horde for what they did to Teldrassil, I get that. If your Blood Elf will never trust the Alliance again after the purge of Dalaran, I get that. (Man, WoW's pretty rough to elves.) But rather than making the assumption for players that they hold those attitudes - that my Tauren Shaman is really jazzed about spreading blight all over Darkshore - it would be great if we could elect to focus on the bigger, irredeemably evil threats.
So what should we expect?
I'm really looking forward to Blizzcon this year, not just because I'm crossing my fingers for a spooky Shadowlands expansion (though I am) but because I want to see if Blizzard is going to do something truly bold with this "resolving the faction conflict" goal they've set for themselves, or if it's just going to be more of the same.
We need some fundamental shift to gameplay mechanics for me to buy it.
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Gnomish and Tauren Heritage
So, I still haven't gotten my Blood Elf to 120 (he's 118, so not long, if it weren't for all the distracting new stuff!) But having had my Gnome Warlock and Tauren Shaman at 120 for a while, I was able to hop on and do their heritage armor quests. (You only need to do the big war campaign stuff on one character, regardless of faction, to get the Tauren quests.)
Anyway:
Gnomes have a silly and, sort of disappointingly small-scope quest chain. Basically, you're recruited for G.E.A.R., a new kind of air force squadron. But while you're delving into Gnomeregan you find out that one of Thermaplugg's former assistants is creating an army of troggs to unleash upon the world.
Honestly, Thermaplugg's been dead since, basically vanilla. I think we could have done more interesting stuff with the fate of Mekkatorque and maybe giving Gnomes some new stuff - it was surprising that none of this had anything to do with Mechagon, for instance.
But it's silly and involves gadgets, so it's pretty Gnomish, and the armor is cool (very reminiscent of Mekkatorque's gear.)
The Tauren one, though:
With Baine free (and the state of Thunder Bluff a little ambiguous - I know that distances are farther in lore than in-game, but I'd be very concerned for the city right now) you go to Red Rock Mesa (the Tauren kiddie-pool area) and commune with a spirit guide, who warns you that there are dark forces coming from the spirit realm.
You travel back to Mulgore, which is enveloped in darkness - it's a cool, spooky effect that I don't think we've seen before in-game. Basically, it sounds like the spirit realm is out of balance, and these undead spirits (many of whom use a model we saw when dealing with Vol'jin's plot) are attacking Bloodhoof Village and Thunder Bluff.
You fight them off, but rather than destroy the leader (which is still just called something like "Dark Spirit" like all the rest of them,) the spirit of Cairne comes to tell you and Baine to let it persist, to preserve balance in the spirit realm.
It's interesting here to think that the "spirit realm" probably is the Shadowlands. While we've generally seen the Shadowlands as malevolent (to the extent we've seen it at all) it's cool to get a different perspective on it. Considering it's where the dead are supposed to go, it seems less malevolent than simply neutral, and perhaps it's just that malevolent perversions of it that strike us as evil. To borrow a concept from D&D - there are two "domains" for Clerics (think Specializations) in Fifth Edition that are kind of "dead" themed: Grave Domain and Death Domain. Death Domain is actually only listed in the Dungeon Master's Guide (not the Player's Handbook, where most subclasses are mentioned) because it's intended primarily for villainous NPCs, and is all about necromancy and inflicting death. Grave Domain, on the other hand, is more focused around protecting the sanctity of the grave, with opposition to the undead and keeping the dead at rest.
So maybe this implies that the Shadowlands themselves are not evil, it's just that things like the Lich King (or at least the first two,) Gorak Tul, and maybe whatever force is pushing Sylvanas to act the way she is (which, to be fair, might just be Sylvanas) are perversions of that realm, not exemplars.
Anyway, the Tauren armor is fantastic, complete with a massive totem on the back (it takes the "cloak" slot.)
Anyway:
Gnomes have a silly and, sort of disappointingly small-scope quest chain. Basically, you're recruited for G.E.A.R., a new kind of air force squadron. But while you're delving into Gnomeregan you find out that one of Thermaplugg's former assistants is creating an army of troggs to unleash upon the world.
Honestly, Thermaplugg's been dead since, basically vanilla. I think we could have done more interesting stuff with the fate of Mekkatorque and maybe giving Gnomes some new stuff - it was surprising that none of this had anything to do with Mechagon, for instance.
But it's silly and involves gadgets, so it's pretty Gnomish, and the armor is cool (very reminiscent of Mekkatorque's gear.)
The Tauren one, though:
With Baine free (and the state of Thunder Bluff a little ambiguous - I know that distances are farther in lore than in-game, but I'd be very concerned for the city right now) you go to Red Rock Mesa (the Tauren kiddie-pool area) and commune with a spirit guide, who warns you that there are dark forces coming from the spirit realm.
You travel back to Mulgore, which is enveloped in darkness - it's a cool, spooky effect that I don't think we've seen before in-game. Basically, it sounds like the spirit realm is out of balance, and these undead spirits (many of whom use a model we saw when dealing with Vol'jin's plot) are attacking Bloodhoof Village and Thunder Bluff.
You fight them off, but rather than destroy the leader (which is still just called something like "Dark Spirit" like all the rest of them,) the spirit of Cairne comes to tell you and Baine to let it persist, to preserve balance in the spirit realm.
It's interesting here to think that the "spirit realm" probably is the Shadowlands. While we've generally seen the Shadowlands as malevolent (to the extent we've seen it at all) it's cool to get a different perspective on it. Considering it's where the dead are supposed to go, it seems less malevolent than simply neutral, and perhaps it's just that malevolent perversions of it that strike us as evil. To borrow a concept from D&D - there are two "domains" for Clerics (think Specializations) in Fifth Edition that are kind of "dead" themed: Grave Domain and Death Domain. Death Domain is actually only listed in the Dungeon Master's Guide (not the Player's Handbook, where most subclasses are mentioned) because it's intended primarily for villainous NPCs, and is all about necromancy and inflicting death. Grave Domain, on the other hand, is more focused around protecting the sanctity of the grave, with opposition to the undead and keeping the dead at rest.
So maybe this implies that the Shadowlands themselves are not evil, it's just that things like the Lich King (or at least the first two,) Gorak Tul, and maybe whatever force is pushing Sylvanas to act the way she is (which, to be fair, might just be Sylvanas) are perversions of that realm, not exemplars.
Anyway, the Tauren armor is fantastic, complete with a massive totem on the back (it takes the "cloak" slot.)
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Nazjatar, Mechagon, and 8.2 First Impressions
I think that BFA has been lacking a certain otherworldliness. Granted, that might be more of an issue for Alliance, whose continent is a human kingdom. But Kul Tiras, while it has some elements I adore (Drustvar's whole witch-hunting and Drust thing is something I hope we see built on if we ever get that Shadowlands expansion I'm crossing my fingers for this Blizzcon, and I think the whole Tidepriest story in eastern Stormsong feels very much like the right melding of Lovecraftian horror with WoW's sensibilities - though I'd love to see it revealed that the Tide Sages' "Tidemother" was actually Azshara throughout their whole history, and she's been seeding this eldritch corruption the whole time. Their main temple is built over a fragment of N'zoth, after all, so it's pretty justifiable,) ultimately winds up feeling a bit same-y. Zandalar has some cool stuff - its environments feel very different, for one thing - but nothing's been quite as different and inherently magical as Nazjatar.
Really, I love that the entire zone is surrounded by the massive walls of the ocean, held at bay by the Tidestone of Golganneth (were we seriously not guarding that thing? Likewise the Resto Shaman mace?)
Nazjatar's geography is also hostile in that the locals clearly aren't usually forced to travel by foot. Getting flying will be a nice bonus here, though for now the tangled terrain makes it feel more threatening.
Mechagon Isle is a bit of a mixed bag. The actual rusty metal aesthetic works really well (re-using some assets from the place in Tiragarde Sound - or more likely those assets were created for this pre-expansion) though the island itself is pretty generic Kul Tiran terrain - just with a lot of the mechanical junk to give it its own flavor.
So let's talk mechanics:
First off, there are a million things in Nazjatar, but it seems the most notable so far are the upgradeable combat allies. On day one you can get one to rank 2, which I think unlocks a new ability.
There are also a lot of quests to find, including one that led up to an in-game version of the Azshara Warbringers short, which I always found really cool (especially if you interpret N'zoth as secretly having the upper hand in the negotiation but letting Azshara think she does.) It's always cool to find a location from a cutscene, and so getting to that city block where Azshara held back the ocean - just a few dozen feet from where the actual ocean is being held back much more easily with the help of the Tidestone - is a cool thing to see.
So far the "assaults" from the Naga leaders are underwhelming, given that so many people are in the zones that you're lucky to even get to any of them before they die.
We do get our new catch-up gear, and when I finally found the vendor for the Benthic gear, I was pleased to discover that you can deck out an alt pretty easily in 385 gear (though no trinkets/rings/weapons, which is a shame.) But you can also pump the currency for that into your main's gear thanks to an upgrade dude, so there will be plenty of incentive to gather a lot of those manapearls.
Mechagon seems a lot less formalized - there's a lot of stuff to unlock in terms of stuff to make on the island, including BoA rings (and possibly trinkets?) My sense is that for the most part you don't really have to focus on Mechagon as much as Nazjatar, but having two big world-zones open at once feels simultaneously a little overwhelming but probably good for long-term enjoyment.
So far I haven't gotten deep into the Heart of Azeroth changes - you have to do a relatively substantial quest chain (like an hour, maybe a little less) involving, interestingly, the Dragonflights. So... that's an interesting element to reintroduce. Where the hell has Wrathion been during all this stuff?
I'll be very curious to see what the Mechagon dungeon is like - I liked Return to Karazhan, even if half of it was a remix of the existing raid. I'll be curious to see how this "5-person raid" works with a wholly original dungeon.
Really, I love that the entire zone is surrounded by the massive walls of the ocean, held at bay by the Tidestone of Golganneth (were we seriously not guarding that thing? Likewise the Resto Shaman mace?)
Nazjatar's geography is also hostile in that the locals clearly aren't usually forced to travel by foot. Getting flying will be a nice bonus here, though for now the tangled terrain makes it feel more threatening.
Mechagon Isle is a bit of a mixed bag. The actual rusty metal aesthetic works really well (re-using some assets from the place in Tiragarde Sound - or more likely those assets were created for this pre-expansion) though the island itself is pretty generic Kul Tiran terrain - just with a lot of the mechanical junk to give it its own flavor.
So let's talk mechanics:
First off, there are a million things in Nazjatar, but it seems the most notable so far are the upgradeable combat allies. On day one you can get one to rank 2, which I think unlocks a new ability.
There are also a lot of quests to find, including one that led up to an in-game version of the Azshara Warbringers short, which I always found really cool (especially if you interpret N'zoth as secretly having the upper hand in the negotiation but letting Azshara think she does.) It's always cool to find a location from a cutscene, and so getting to that city block where Azshara held back the ocean - just a few dozen feet from where the actual ocean is being held back much more easily with the help of the Tidestone - is a cool thing to see.
So far the "assaults" from the Naga leaders are underwhelming, given that so many people are in the zones that you're lucky to even get to any of them before they die.
We do get our new catch-up gear, and when I finally found the vendor for the Benthic gear, I was pleased to discover that you can deck out an alt pretty easily in 385 gear (though no trinkets/rings/weapons, which is a shame.) But you can also pump the currency for that into your main's gear thanks to an upgrade dude, so there will be plenty of incentive to gather a lot of those manapearls.
Mechagon seems a lot less formalized - there's a lot of stuff to unlock in terms of stuff to make on the island, including BoA rings (and possibly trinkets?) My sense is that for the most part you don't really have to focus on Mechagon as much as Nazjatar, but having two big world-zones open at once feels simultaneously a little overwhelming but probably good for long-term enjoyment.
So far I haven't gotten deep into the Heart of Azeroth changes - you have to do a relatively substantial quest chain (like an hour, maybe a little less) involving, interestingly, the Dragonflights. So... that's an interesting element to reintroduce. Where the hell has Wrathion been during all this stuff?
I'll be very curious to see what the Mechagon dungeon is like - I liked Return to Karazhan, even if half of it was a remix of the existing raid. I'll be curious to see how this "5-person raid" works with a wholly original dungeon.
Monday, June 24, 2019
Can a Patch Redeem and Expansion?
While BFA has not been my favorite expansion by a long shot, I think that, conceptually, it hasn't been a total failure. Warlords of Draenor remains WoW's nadir in my opinion, given that, aside from a good leveling experience and some decent raids (but very few of them) it was mostly left a "why are we even doing this?" kind of plot. The Iron Horde never felt like much of a threat, and the game introduced a whole time-travel plot - a subgenre I'm generally very into - but didn't actually play with the time-travel-ness of it. We didn't see a single freaking Infinite Dragon the whole time!
But BFA has definitely been in the "not as good" side of expansions. Personally, I think that the leveling experience left something to be desired (stuff like finishing the main plot of Stormsong Valley before you'd seen 2/3 of the zone) and the way that we've been dragged once again into a Horde v. Alliance narrative, which once again has the Horde playing the conflicted bad guys and the Alliance playing the reactive good guys who get no real inner conflict, have been problems that prevent me from enjoying seeing places I've always wanted to see - Kul Tiras and Zandalar - as much as I want to. And then there's the Heart of Azeroth, which mechanically feels like they just took the Netherlight Crucible part of artifact weapons and none of the really flavorful, exciting, and aspirational stuff you got with the earlier traits.
BFA also had a really tough act to follow, given that Legion was the best expansion since Wrath (and, though I still love the Scourge as my favorite WoW villains, probably actually surpassed it.)
8.2 will be bringing a lot of new stuff to the expansion. Two new zones, with a raid on one and a Return to Karazhan-style mega-dungeon on the other. There will be a lot of world content as well as some new development to the stories.
And, exciting to me, there's the fact that we're focusing on an external and cool threat in the Old God-affiliated Azshara.
See, I come to WoW for some otherworldliness. Much as I enjoyed Game of Thrones (give or take a super-rushed final season) I actually prefer my fantasy to be of the high fantasy variety. I loved going to the futuristic alien world of Argus to fight space demons. To my mind, if you're going for fantasy, give us something fantastical.
And obviously, there is fantastical stuff in Kul Tiras and Zandalar. But a massive rift in the ocean, magically suspended waters allowing us to traverse this sunken land? That's what I'm freaking talking about.
I mean, to be fair, WoW has inoculated us a bit against a sense of supernatural otherness by making some inherently magical people into, well, people. The Forsaken, for example, only walk around because they're saturated in necromantic energy. And one of the things I love about the game is how it takes the "mage-punk" view of things, saying "the world is filled with magic, and this is how people have learned to live with that." It's a bit like the Eberron setting for D&D (which I'm not incredibly familiar with, but has a similar idea of magic allowing the equivalent of modern technology to exist.)
But given that werewolves and zombies are treated as normal people in this world, it means we've got to go further to really make things feel magical.
Mechanically, of course, I'll be curious to see how the changes to the Heart of Azeroth work out. The system does look a little less obnoxious - allowing people to collect the best traits and swap them out, rather than just hoping to get a piece of armor that has the right stuff on it.
But it remains to be seen just how well the patch works in giving the game a good feeling. No expansion has been without merits, but it's also a big question whether a patch can fix things, or if we'll just have to wait for Blizzcon to see what expansion comes next.
But BFA has definitely been in the "not as good" side of expansions. Personally, I think that the leveling experience left something to be desired (stuff like finishing the main plot of Stormsong Valley before you'd seen 2/3 of the zone) and the way that we've been dragged once again into a Horde v. Alliance narrative, which once again has the Horde playing the conflicted bad guys and the Alliance playing the reactive good guys who get no real inner conflict, have been problems that prevent me from enjoying seeing places I've always wanted to see - Kul Tiras and Zandalar - as much as I want to. And then there's the Heart of Azeroth, which mechanically feels like they just took the Netherlight Crucible part of artifact weapons and none of the really flavorful, exciting, and aspirational stuff you got with the earlier traits.
BFA also had a really tough act to follow, given that Legion was the best expansion since Wrath (and, though I still love the Scourge as my favorite WoW villains, probably actually surpassed it.)
8.2 will be bringing a lot of new stuff to the expansion. Two new zones, with a raid on one and a Return to Karazhan-style mega-dungeon on the other. There will be a lot of world content as well as some new development to the stories.
And, exciting to me, there's the fact that we're focusing on an external and cool threat in the Old God-affiliated Azshara.
See, I come to WoW for some otherworldliness. Much as I enjoyed Game of Thrones (give or take a super-rushed final season) I actually prefer my fantasy to be of the high fantasy variety. I loved going to the futuristic alien world of Argus to fight space demons. To my mind, if you're going for fantasy, give us something fantastical.
And obviously, there is fantastical stuff in Kul Tiras and Zandalar. But a massive rift in the ocean, magically suspended waters allowing us to traverse this sunken land? That's what I'm freaking talking about.
I mean, to be fair, WoW has inoculated us a bit against a sense of supernatural otherness by making some inherently magical people into, well, people. The Forsaken, for example, only walk around because they're saturated in necromantic energy. And one of the things I love about the game is how it takes the "mage-punk" view of things, saying "the world is filled with magic, and this is how people have learned to live with that." It's a bit like the Eberron setting for D&D (which I'm not incredibly familiar with, but has a similar idea of magic allowing the equivalent of modern technology to exist.)
But given that werewolves and zombies are treated as normal people in this world, it means we've got to go further to really make things feel magical.
Mechanically, of course, I'll be curious to see how the changes to the Heart of Azeroth work out. The system does look a little less obnoxious - allowing people to collect the best traits and swap them out, rather than just hoping to get a piece of armor that has the right stuff on it.
But it remains to be seen just how well the patch works in giving the game a good feeling. No expansion has been without merits, but it's also a big question whether a patch can fix things, or if we'll just have to wait for Blizzcon to see what expansion comes next.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Braeden Mystreile, Eladrin Sorcerer
There was an unusually quick sign-up for my local AL games, so while my Monk is sitting pretty, newly level 5 with all the fun stuff that comes with (Extra Attack! Stunning Strike!) I might not have a place at that table (which sucks because one of my best friends is the DM,) but as a back-up I've rolled a Sorcerer at level 1 to play at the tier 1 table.
My concept: The Pretty Prince of Parties:
Anyway, he's an Eladrin (which is an elf subrace from the Feywild) Noble Wild Magic Sorcerer.
He's rolling out with Ray of Frost as his main damage cantrip (the potential extra 2 damage from Firebolt seems worth trading in for the slow effect - and for whatever reason, I've always resisted fire spells as kind of "obvious," though I've also resisted elves in the past and this is my second in a row.) Other cantrips are Minor Illusion, Mage Hand, and my favorite "wait, that can't be good, can it? Oh, wait, maybe it is" cantrip from Xanathar's: Mold Earth.
For his first two spells, he's taking Mage Armor and Chaos Bolt, because I'm leaning into his insane nature.
Flavor-wise, I think his verbal component for Mage Armor is "Time to get FANCY!" and his mage armor will take the form of an elaborate long coat, wide-brimmed hat with a long feather, and a bunch of fancy jewelry, all kind of transparent green or something.
Personality-wise, he thinks that the entire material plane is one big party, and is constantly looking for a waiter to set him up with a drink.
My concept: The Pretty Prince of Parties:
Anyway, he's an Eladrin (which is an elf subrace from the Feywild) Noble Wild Magic Sorcerer.
He's rolling out with Ray of Frost as his main damage cantrip (the potential extra 2 damage from Firebolt seems worth trading in for the slow effect - and for whatever reason, I've always resisted fire spells as kind of "obvious," though I've also resisted elves in the past and this is my second in a row.) Other cantrips are Minor Illusion, Mage Hand, and my favorite "wait, that can't be good, can it? Oh, wait, maybe it is" cantrip from Xanathar's: Mold Earth.
For his first two spells, he's taking Mage Armor and Chaos Bolt, because I'm leaning into his insane nature.
Flavor-wise, I think his verbal component for Mage Armor is "Time to get FANCY!" and his mage armor will take the form of an elaborate long coat, wide-brimmed hat with a long feather, and a bunch of fancy jewelry, all kind of transparent green or something.
Personality-wise, he thinks that the entire material plane is one big party, and is constantly looking for a waiter to set him up with a drink.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
If N'zoth is BFA's Final Boss, What Comes with 9.0?
With 8.2 dropping a week from yesterday, we've got BFA's big middle patch coming up. If tradition holds, that means we'll likely be getting one final patch before the next expansion, which, again, if tradition holds, will be announced at Blizzcon this year.
With Azshara serving as the middle boss to the expansion, and given the heavy Old God-focused storyline and increased presence of N'zoth, it seems very likely that we'll be taking the fight to the God of the Depths.
For 8.3, it's rational to believe that we're going to go to Ny'alotha, though whether that's a full zone like Nazjatar (I hope so) or just the name of the final raid, we don't quite know.
Blizzard does like to pull some unexpected stuff in final patches to push us into the next expansion, and I imagine we'll get a continuation of the story even if we have a different general vibe to expansion eight.
So let's talk N'zoth and his plans.
N'zoth is a master manipulator - we often hear about how he was the weakest of the four Old Gods, and yet managed to come out ahead in many conflicts. He usurped the Emerald Nightmare from Yogg-Saron, and he's the only one not to be slain by adventurers or Titans (the degree to which C'thun and Yogg-Saron are truly dead, to be fair, remains up for debate.) So, assuming we do go fight him, what's his angle?
Here's the thing that I think is important to remember. The Old Gods were created for a purpose - to corrupt the Titan Azeroth and turn her into a Void Titan. It's debatable to what extent they have deviated from that purpose, but let's imagine that they actually never did - that even their endless wars served as an engine of corruption.
For N'zoth to put himself in a position where the forces of Azeroth are coming after him to kill him, it would seem like a real failure in his ability to plan ahead. Now granted, in a narrative where the heroes get to win sometimes, it could just be that his plans fall apart - that he underestimated us in some way.
But to my mind, I think that he's really just purpose-bound. I think that if we come and kill him, that's actually part of his plan.
BFA might see us destroying N'zoth, only for us to realize that this was his intention for us anyway. Because he's not there to build an empire or rule over the world. He's not actually there for himself. His purpose is to sow chaos and corruption, and if self-destruction suits those ends, he has no reason to avoid it.
Most villains we face have some kind of hope at self-preservation. Even Sargeras, who wanted to see the universe burned to save it from void corruption, had deviated from his annihilation plan in favor of creating his a kind of Fel Empire - where some things would survive, but would be free of the void because the Fel corruption had already taken root. Thus, rather than destroy Azeroth, he wanted to recruit her.
But the Old Gods? See, Sargeras might be evil and arguably crazy, but he's got a kind of logic to his actions. His mind is godlike in its complexity, but still built on principles we can recognize. The Old Gods, however, are utterly alien.
So what does this mean for 9.0?
I think N'zoth wants us to kill him. I think that victory in the final boss fight of BFA is going to be exactly what N'zoth wants to happen. And I think his death, or whatever that counts as for an Old God, is going to put in motion something that will serve his very purpose for being - corrupting Azeroth.
Now I'm going to get a little more speculative:
Given the prevalence of Death-related things in BFA - from the Drust to Bwonsamdi to the mysteries surrounding Vol'jin to Sylvanas to the Lich King's own freaking daughter being around - I think Azeroth is going to die if and when we kill N'zoth. I think that his essence will do something to corrupt her, and we'll basically use whatever tools we have - maybe the Heart of Azeroth - to essentially mercy kill her.
But the consequences of that are going to be horrible. We might not have a Void Titan extinguishing existence throughout the universe, but I imagine that if a spirit as powerful as Azeroth arrives in the Shadowlands - the land of the dead - it'll have some terrible effects on the world. The dead will rise from their graves and we'll be facing the threat of a zombie apocalypse that makes the Scourge look like a band of gnolls.
And so, the heroes of Azeroth will need to do the impossible - to recover Azeroth's soul from the Shadowlands, and restore her to life. Perhaps her death freed her from the void corruption, but in journeying into the Shadowlands, we'll have to face powerful forces of Death that wish to keep her there.
This is maybe a bit more wish-fulfillment, but I think the following would not be impossible:
The Shadowlands would be a spooky "continent" with a bunch of death-themed zones.
We'd fight alongside various powers like the Lich King, Bwonsamid, and Eyir as the factions with which we gain reputation.
The world design could afford to go much more otherworldly, giving us lands of ghosts and ghouls and undead stuff we've never seen before.
We could continue the story of Sylvanas Windrunner - perhaps if she is removed as Warchief, she flees into the Shadowlands, and we need to look for her.
It's an even-numbered expansion, which has historically given us new classes. I would advocate for a Necromancer - a ranged caster/healer hybrid who uses mail armor.
Give the place a real Ravenloft vibe to it - maybe the Shadowlands has some friendly figures as well as foes.
Mechanically, this has very little to do with lore, but we'd probably be getting a level squish. Maybe the cap will be 60.
Anyway, Blizzcon is still months away, but I'm eager to find out where things are going.
With Azshara serving as the middle boss to the expansion, and given the heavy Old God-focused storyline and increased presence of N'zoth, it seems very likely that we'll be taking the fight to the God of the Depths.
For 8.3, it's rational to believe that we're going to go to Ny'alotha, though whether that's a full zone like Nazjatar (I hope so) or just the name of the final raid, we don't quite know.
Blizzard does like to pull some unexpected stuff in final patches to push us into the next expansion, and I imagine we'll get a continuation of the story even if we have a different general vibe to expansion eight.
So let's talk N'zoth and his plans.
N'zoth is a master manipulator - we often hear about how he was the weakest of the four Old Gods, and yet managed to come out ahead in many conflicts. He usurped the Emerald Nightmare from Yogg-Saron, and he's the only one not to be slain by adventurers or Titans (the degree to which C'thun and Yogg-Saron are truly dead, to be fair, remains up for debate.) So, assuming we do go fight him, what's his angle?
Here's the thing that I think is important to remember. The Old Gods were created for a purpose - to corrupt the Titan Azeroth and turn her into a Void Titan. It's debatable to what extent they have deviated from that purpose, but let's imagine that they actually never did - that even their endless wars served as an engine of corruption.
For N'zoth to put himself in a position where the forces of Azeroth are coming after him to kill him, it would seem like a real failure in his ability to plan ahead. Now granted, in a narrative where the heroes get to win sometimes, it could just be that his plans fall apart - that he underestimated us in some way.
But to my mind, I think that he's really just purpose-bound. I think that if we come and kill him, that's actually part of his plan.
BFA might see us destroying N'zoth, only for us to realize that this was his intention for us anyway. Because he's not there to build an empire or rule over the world. He's not actually there for himself. His purpose is to sow chaos and corruption, and if self-destruction suits those ends, he has no reason to avoid it.
Most villains we face have some kind of hope at self-preservation. Even Sargeras, who wanted to see the universe burned to save it from void corruption, had deviated from his annihilation plan in favor of creating his a kind of Fel Empire - where some things would survive, but would be free of the void because the Fel corruption had already taken root. Thus, rather than destroy Azeroth, he wanted to recruit her.
But the Old Gods? See, Sargeras might be evil and arguably crazy, but he's got a kind of logic to his actions. His mind is godlike in its complexity, but still built on principles we can recognize. The Old Gods, however, are utterly alien.
So what does this mean for 9.0?
I think N'zoth wants us to kill him. I think that victory in the final boss fight of BFA is going to be exactly what N'zoth wants to happen. And I think his death, or whatever that counts as for an Old God, is going to put in motion something that will serve his very purpose for being - corrupting Azeroth.
Now I'm going to get a little more speculative:
Given the prevalence of Death-related things in BFA - from the Drust to Bwonsamdi to the mysteries surrounding Vol'jin to Sylvanas to the Lich King's own freaking daughter being around - I think Azeroth is going to die if and when we kill N'zoth. I think that his essence will do something to corrupt her, and we'll basically use whatever tools we have - maybe the Heart of Azeroth - to essentially mercy kill her.
But the consequences of that are going to be horrible. We might not have a Void Titan extinguishing existence throughout the universe, but I imagine that if a spirit as powerful as Azeroth arrives in the Shadowlands - the land of the dead - it'll have some terrible effects on the world. The dead will rise from their graves and we'll be facing the threat of a zombie apocalypse that makes the Scourge look like a band of gnolls.
And so, the heroes of Azeroth will need to do the impossible - to recover Azeroth's soul from the Shadowlands, and restore her to life. Perhaps her death freed her from the void corruption, but in journeying into the Shadowlands, we'll have to face powerful forces of Death that wish to keep her there.
This is maybe a bit more wish-fulfillment, but I think the following would not be impossible:
The Shadowlands would be a spooky "continent" with a bunch of death-themed zones.
We'd fight alongside various powers like the Lich King, Bwonsamid, and Eyir as the factions with which we gain reputation.
The world design could afford to go much more otherworldly, giving us lands of ghosts and ghouls and undead stuff we've never seen before.
We could continue the story of Sylvanas Windrunner - perhaps if she is removed as Warchief, she flees into the Shadowlands, and we need to look for her.
It's an even-numbered expansion, which has historically given us new classes. I would advocate for a Necromancer - a ranged caster/healer hybrid who uses mail armor.
Give the place a real Ravenloft vibe to it - maybe the Shadowlands has some friendly figures as well as foes.
Mechanically, this has very little to do with lore, but we'd probably be getting a level squish. Maybe the cap will be 60.
Anyway, Blizzcon is still months away, but I'm eager to find out where things are going.
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