I know it's not easy to catch up on the hundreds of hours required to watch/listen to Critical Role, but damn if this latest episode didn't showcase some of the most phenomenal improv/gameplay.
The show is superlative "actual play" entertainment in large part because the players and DM really take the RP aspect of the game seriously - yes, they make jokes and such, sometimes really silly, meta jokes, but they really commit to their characters in moments where it counts.
For context... let's do a spoiler cut.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
LFR Wing 1: Ny'alotha, the Waking City
That's right! I actually went in and did LFR. I'm planning on actually seeing this whole raid while people are still running it!
As someone whose computer was new shortly after the launch of Warlords of Draenor, I was very appreciative to see that the first wing of Ny'alotha is made up of immense but rather smooth stone architecture (or cyclopean, to borrow one of Lovecraft's favorite words,) and thus my computer was able to keep things at a perfectly playable clip.
As often happens, however, my co-tank was constantly out-threating me, though after the first boss I got someone who actually knew to ease off on damage after a taunt.
The first three fights are Wrathion, Maut, and The Prophet Skitra.
The raid opens with no trash to start - just Wrathion, apparently gone mad and corrupted as you watch shadows close in on Azeroth in the background.
This fight incorporates a lot of the classic "dragon fight" mechanics that I don't think we've seen since maybe Blackwing Descent. Fire breaths, tail-swipes, etc.
It's not terribly difficult, though it can be scary as I don't know if there are any classes that can actually completely avoid the fire aoe that he drops on the ground (maybe a Demon Hunter or a Windwalker Monk.)
Ultimately, when we defeat him, we discover that this was just an illusion - N'zoth trying to gaslight us into thinking that Wrathion's corruption, and that of Azeroth, is an inevitability.
After this fight, the illusion disappears and we find ourselves in the antechamber of Ny'alotha - a dark and massive vault of stone, with pathways to the two other bosses of the wing.
Maut is a massive Obsidian Destroyer. His main mechanic to look out for is that he periodically shields himself with mana and then starts casting a devastating AoE. You need to burn through the shield asap to do so. He'll also create these void circles that silence you, but also protect you from magic. I think they do damage you, so when he casts his big spell, you want to dip into these right as he's about to finish it.
Finally, because he drains mana from the raid, you'll want to have players intercept the blue balls that shoot toward him (they take a little damage, but not much) and then have them get within range of casters (especially healers) to have the blue mana go back to them.
The third and final (well, could be final or second, as I don't think you need to do the latter two in order) is the Prophet Skitra, which is probably the most interesting fight.
Skitra's major mechanic is that he'll summon illusion copies of himself - but only half the raid sees half of them and the other half sees the other ones. Attacking the illusions will damage the raid, so instead you want to have the tanks (who are always on different sides of the illusion divide) to figure out which version of Skitra they both see - then you can attack that one and end the illusion phase, which we got I think three times on a successful kill. (We just had the other tank go and attack each illusion they saw and when they started hitting something I could actually see, I'd call it out and mark it with a skull.)
Anyway, with those three down, that's the first wing.
So far I love the look of the raid - it feels appropriately ominous, ancient, and apocalyptic. I'm eager to see the rest of it and hopefully not have my computer die when we get out and see a more elaborate skybox!
As someone whose computer was new shortly after the launch of Warlords of Draenor, I was very appreciative to see that the first wing of Ny'alotha is made up of immense but rather smooth stone architecture (or cyclopean, to borrow one of Lovecraft's favorite words,) and thus my computer was able to keep things at a perfectly playable clip.
As often happens, however, my co-tank was constantly out-threating me, though after the first boss I got someone who actually knew to ease off on damage after a taunt.
The first three fights are Wrathion, Maut, and The Prophet Skitra.
The raid opens with no trash to start - just Wrathion, apparently gone mad and corrupted as you watch shadows close in on Azeroth in the background.
This fight incorporates a lot of the classic "dragon fight" mechanics that I don't think we've seen since maybe Blackwing Descent. Fire breaths, tail-swipes, etc.
It's not terribly difficult, though it can be scary as I don't know if there are any classes that can actually completely avoid the fire aoe that he drops on the ground (maybe a Demon Hunter or a Windwalker Monk.)
Ultimately, when we defeat him, we discover that this was just an illusion - N'zoth trying to gaslight us into thinking that Wrathion's corruption, and that of Azeroth, is an inevitability.
After this fight, the illusion disappears and we find ourselves in the antechamber of Ny'alotha - a dark and massive vault of stone, with pathways to the two other bosses of the wing.
Maut is a massive Obsidian Destroyer. His main mechanic to look out for is that he periodically shields himself with mana and then starts casting a devastating AoE. You need to burn through the shield asap to do so. He'll also create these void circles that silence you, but also protect you from magic. I think they do damage you, so when he casts his big spell, you want to dip into these right as he's about to finish it.
Finally, because he drains mana from the raid, you'll want to have players intercept the blue balls that shoot toward him (they take a little damage, but not much) and then have them get within range of casters (especially healers) to have the blue mana go back to them.
The third and final (well, could be final or second, as I don't think you need to do the latter two in order) is the Prophet Skitra, which is probably the most interesting fight.
Skitra's major mechanic is that he'll summon illusion copies of himself - but only half the raid sees half of them and the other half sees the other ones. Attacking the illusions will damage the raid, so instead you want to have the tanks (who are always on different sides of the illusion divide) to figure out which version of Skitra they both see - then you can attack that one and end the illusion phase, which we got I think three times on a successful kill. (We just had the other tank go and attack each illusion they saw and when they started hitting something I could actually see, I'd call it out and mark it with a skull.)
Anyway, with those three down, that's the first wing.
So far I love the look of the raid - it feels appropriately ominous, ancient, and apocalyptic. I'm eager to see the rest of it and hopefully not have my computer die when we get out and see a more elaborate skybox!
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
How Will We Look Back on BFA?
I think it's important to remember that every expansion has its detractors. Back in 2008-2010, I remember tons of people complained about Wrath of the Lich King, saying that the raids were too easy, or that Burning Crusade had more interesting environments, or that the game had been given over to the "casuals." These days, most WoW players would rank it as one of the best expansions, if not the best one. Indeed, I think Legion is the only expansion where it seemed like the majority of players tended to praise more than criticize it while it was live - and there are certainly those who hated it.
BFA is in a weird place right now. I think that a lot of people like the current concepts that came with 8.3 - Horrific Visions, Old God ominousness. Maybe people are much more divided over Corrupted Gear (I think it's cool, personally, but I'm also not a serious razor's edge raider who is getting gear that he can't use yet because of the gating on working on the cloak.)
But BFA nevertheless does not feel like it's going to go down as one of WoW's best expansions. Indeed, some are calling it the game's worst (though I think those people must have amnesia if they think BFA could unseat Warlords of Draenor.)
In fact, let's talk about BFA's problems compared to those of Warlords.
Warlords, to my mind, had three key problems:
The first was that Blizzard had always had this ambition to come out with an expansion every year prior to Warlords, and it was with 6.0 that they attempted to actually do this. Given that, in a typical expansion cycle, the final patch of an expansion tends to come out roughly a year after the expansion came out, for Warlords, they just cut that final patch, giving us two raid tiers in place of the usual three. Blizzard couldn't actually deliver the follow-up in 2015, though (holy crap I feel old) and so, rather than speed up the expansion cycle, we just had a massive content drought. And this is before we even consider the fact that maybe, two years is actually a better interval for expansions, as one-year expansions would make every threat we face feel underdeveloped and gone too soon (not to mention I don't think players want to plop down the cash for a new expansion every year on top of subscription fees.)
Second, the story was convoluted as hell, and then didn't even make use of its most interesting elements. The eponymous Warlords - the original leaders of the Old Horde - were almost all wiped out in the first patch, and the notion that this would be an alternate path for the Horde wound up being undone as they just fell to demonic corruption anyway. The only fun time-travel trope to occur was the production of a new Gul'dan, but you could count the actual long-term impacts of the expansion on a single finger. And while yes, time travel is a hard subject to write, for those of us who love it as a sci-fi/fantasy concept, don't promise it and then totally ignore its potential. Where the Fel was the Infinite Dragonflight in all of this?
Third, Garrisons. Blizzard demonstrated how their "gameplay trumps flavor" preference for design turned what should have been a fun player-housing concept into a joyless ghost town with myriad solutions in search of problems to solve. Garrisons dragged down various systems - including gearing, kind of the most central system in the game - with them.
So let's compare those failings with BFA:
BFA does not lack for content. We got a full three raid tiers (with a starter raid and a bonus mini-raid) even if the elimination of tier gear means they're not "proper" tiers. (Also, can I just take a moment to complain that raid gear this expansion is really underwhelming aesthetically? It all looks at best like blue dungeon gear. Where's the crazy glowing bits? Where's the intricate designs and particle effects? At level 120 I'm a ridiculous battle-god, and I should look like it.) But we've also seen experiments in world content like the more free-form Mechagon world quest, stuff like the Bee mount grind, and stuff like the Nazjatar findable quests. Plus, we've got a totally different leveling story for Alliance versus Horde, and tons of story quests to take us through the War Campaign.
Story-wise, I'm very split here. I think BFA's story was one that I didn't want them to do, but that they told very well - or rather, part of it was. I know that defenders of the expansion keep telling me that Sylvanas was not Garrosh 2.0, but frankly, I disagree. Sylvanas was unexpectedly named Warchief by her more enlightened predecessor, went on to make the Horde more ruthless and expansionist, and then escalated the conflict by attacking a major Alliance settlement and destroying it with many civilian deaths. Her brutality and authoritarian tendencies inspired a celebrated hero of the Horde who had previously been partially complicit in her actions to turn from her and organize a resistance, which ultimately led to a combined force of Alliance and rebel Horde forces to the gates of Orgrimmar. Then, when she was unseated by the actions of this rebellion, she escaped punishment and broke reality in order to usher in the next expansion.
I mean... are you really telling me that this is totally different from what we saw with Garrosh?
But I think the early stuff - showing the outward appearance of Zandalari stability crumble in the face of Zul's actions and deep-delving into Jaina's psychological journey and quest to win back her peoples' trust (guys, we got a pre-rendered cinematic for a dungeon) - were really well-done. Yes, I'm sick of how my characters are forced to forget the lessons they learn every expansion about how Azeroth is safer and better for everyone when the factions learn to work alongside one another instead of murdering one another (a lesson the Horde seems to have a harder time with than the Alliance, I'll note) but the story was told well.
If anything, BFA's problem here is that, rather than not touching on enough (like Warlords ignoring any of the cool time-travel issues,) BFA basically had two major plots, and while I think it gave the faction war story plenty of material, the N'zoth story - one that I think could have underscored an entire expansion - felt short-changed, despite having three of the five raids dedicated to it (arguably four given that Uldir is basically an Old God raid.) Indeed, when you actually take a step back, this definitely was an Old God expansion. So why didn't it feel like one?
That's a genuine question, and one that speaks to the title of this post. Are we going to look back on BFA as the big Old God expansion that, in the end, it actually was? Or were there too many distractions from that plot to make it feel satisfying?
Let's talk gameplay.
If we want to talk about convoluted systems, look ye to Azerite armor.
Let's get this straight:
You have a necklace, and it upgrades with artifact power like the weapons in Legion. Ok. But in this case, the necklace's upgrades are pretty much just item level. Simpler, right?
Ok, but you also have special pieces for your helmet, shoulders, and chest that have, essentially, artifact traits that you can choose from. In the end, epic pieces wind up with two major traits, one medium trait, one minor trait, and a final item level boost, all unlocked based on your Heart of Azeroth level. Sometimes, if you get a higher item level piece, you'll need a higher HoA level to unlock the same trait. But every piece has its own array of options.
Ok, and now you also have Essences that you plug into your Heart of Azeroth that give you one activated ability and one passive one. You have a slot for the activated ability one and can unlock more slots for passives as you level your Heart of Azeroth.
Ok, and now there's corrupted gear. You have a chance to get a piece of gear with a cool effect, but it will add to your corruption level. As your corruption level increases, you get various detriments that can make things harder for you. However, you can do Horrific Visions to upgrade a legendary cloak (there's a cloak now) to increase your corruption resistance, which can negate those effects.
Horrific Visions are not time-gated, but you need to get Coalescing Visions in order to buy a Vessel of Horrific Visions to run them, and the sources for Coalescing Visions are mostly time-gated, though you could, in theory, grind like crazy, getting 3-4 per mob killed to speed you to the 10,000 you need to get a single vessel.
Are you exhausted? I'm exhausted.
There are also Island Expeditions, which are kind of like 3-player scenarios from Mists of Pandaria with a bunch of randomized elements that are designed to be the most efficient way to get Azerite.
Wait, we're not done?
Titan Residuum. Warfronts.
It's a LOT.
And honestly, while new gameplay systems can make an expansion feel different, dear lord what the hell, Blizzard?
To wrap up:
It's obviously too early to assess the longterm legacy of BFA. I haven't even touched on Allied Races, for instance, which I think are almost entirely a positive for the game (though I worry for any new player who starts in Shadowlands or later that wants to play a Mechagnome - that'll be a tough grind.) I cannot think we're going to rank this as low as Warlords given that there was, truly, tons to do this expansion. But I also think Blizzard would do well to take a step back and get some perspective on things like gameplay systems and also the sort of story that players want.
Personally, while I'm disappointed we're not getting a Necromancer class with it, I'm really excited about Shadowlands in a way that I was not about BFA. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Covenants will be cool like Artifact Weapons or a convoluted mess like Azerite gear. What I think I'm most excited about is the fact that it looks to be a massive expansion of the lore - bigger than anything we've really seen before, in fact. If this is basically World of Warcraft: Planescape, I'm super in.
BFA is in a weird place right now. I think that a lot of people like the current concepts that came with 8.3 - Horrific Visions, Old God ominousness. Maybe people are much more divided over Corrupted Gear (I think it's cool, personally, but I'm also not a serious razor's edge raider who is getting gear that he can't use yet because of the gating on working on the cloak.)
But BFA nevertheless does not feel like it's going to go down as one of WoW's best expansions. Indeed, some are calling it the game's worst (though I think those people must have amnesia if they think BFA could unseat Warlords of Draenor.)
In fact, let's talk about BFA's problems compared to those of Warlords.
Warlords, to my mind, had three key problems:
The first was that Blizzard had always had this ambition to come out with an expansion every year prior to Warlords, and it was with 6.0 that they attempted to actually do this. Given that, in a typical expansion cycle, the final patch of an expansion tends to come out roughly a year after the expansion came out, for Warlords, they just cut that final patch, giving us two raid tiers in place of the usual three. Blizzard couldn't actually deliver the follow-up in 2015, though (holy crap I feel old) and so, rather than speed up the expansion cycle, we just had a massive content drought. And this is before we even consider the fact that maybe, two years is actually a better interval for expansions, as one-year expansions would make every threat we face feel underdeveloped and gone too soon (not to mention I don't think players want to plop down the cash for a new expansion every year on top of subscription fees.)
Second, the story was convoluted as hell, and then didn't even make use of its most interesting elements. The eponymous Warlords - the original leaders of the Old Horde - were almost all wiped out in the first patch, and the notion that this would be an alternate path for the Horde wound up being undone as they just fell to demonic corruption anyway. The only fun time-travel trope to occur was the production of a new Gul'dan, but you could count the actual long-term impacts of the expansion on a single finger. And while yes, time travel is a hard subject to write, for those of us who love it as a sci-fi/fantasy concept, don't promise it and then totally ignore its potential. Where the Fel was the Infinite Dragonflight in all of this?
Third, Garrisons. Blizzard demonstrated how their "gameplay trumps flavor" preference for design turned what should have been a fun player-housing concept into a joyless ghost town with myriad solutions in search of problems to solve. Garrisons dragged down various systems - including gearing, kind of the most central system in the game - with them.
So let's compare those failings with BFA:
BFA does not lack for content. We got a full three raid tiers (with a starter raid and a bonus mini-raid) even if the elimination of tier gear means they're not "proper" tiers. (Also, can I just take a moment to complain that raid gear this expansion is really underwhelming aesthetically? It all looks at best like blue dungeon gear. Where's the crazy glowing bits? Where's the intricate designs and particle effects? At level 120 I'm a ridiculous battle-god, and I should look like it.) But we've also seen experiments in world content like the more free-form Mechagon world quest, stuff like the Bee mount grind, and stuff like the Nazjatar findable quests. Plus, we've got a totally different leveling story for Alliance versus Horde, and tons of story quests to take us through the War Campaign.
Story-wise, I'm very split here. I think BFA's story was one that I didn't want them to do, but that they told very well - or rather, part of it was. I know that defenders of the expansion keep telling me that Sylvanas was not Garrosh 2.0, but frankly, I disagree. Sylvanas was unexpectedly named Warchief by her more enlightened predecessor, went on to make the Horde more ruthless and expansionist, and then escalated the conflict by attacking a major Alliance settlement and destroying it with many civilian deaths. Her brutality and authoritarian tendencies inspired a celebrated hero of the Horde who had previously been partially complicit in her actions to turn from her and organize a resistance, which ultimately led to a combined force of Alliance and rebel Horde forces to the gates of Orgrimmar. Then, when she was unseated by the actions of this rebellion, she escaped punishment and broke reality in order to usher in the next expansion.
I mean... are you really telling me that this is totally different from what we saw with Garrosh?
But I think the early stuff - showing the outward appearance of Zandalari stability crumble in the face of Zul's actions and deep-delving into Jaina's psychological journey and quest to win back her peoples' trust (guys, we got a pre-rendered cinematic for a dungeon) - were really well-done. Yes, I'm sick of how my characters are forced to forget the lessons they learn every expansion about how Azeroth is safer and better for everyone when the factions learn to work alongside one another instead of murdering one another (a lesson the Horde seems to have a harder time with than the Alliance, I'll note) but the story was told well.
If anything, BFA's problem here is that, rather than not touching on enough (like Warlords ignoring any of the cool time-travel issues,) BFA basically had two major plots, and while I think it gave the faction war story plenty of material, the N'zoth story - one that I think could have underscored an entire expansion - felt short-changed, despite having three of the five raids dedicated to it (arguably four given that Uldir is basically an Old God raid.) Indeed, when you actually take a step back, this definitely was an Old God expansion. So why didn't it feel like one?
That's a genuine question, and one that speaks to the title of this post. Are we going to look back on BFA as the big Old God expansion that, in the end, it actually was? Or were there too many distractions from that plot to make it feel satisfying?
Let's talk gameplay.
If we want to talk about convoluted systems, look ye to Azerite armor.
Let's get this straight:
You have a necklace, and it upgrades with artifact power like the weapons in Legion. Ok. But in this case, the necklace's upgrades are pretty much just item level. Simpler, right?
Ok, but you also have special pieces for your helmet, shoulders, and chest that have, essentially, artifact traits that you can choose from. In the end, epic pieces wind up with two major traits, one medium trait, one minor trait, and a final item level boost, all unlocked based on your Heart of Azeroth level. Sometimes, if you get a higher item level piece, you'll need a higher HoA level to unlock the same trait. But every piece has its own array of options.
Ok, and now you also have Essences that you plug into your Heart of Azeroth that give you one activated ability and one passive one. You have a slot for the activated ability one and can unlock more slots for passives as you level your Heart of Azeroth.
Ok, and now there's corrupted gear. You have a chance to get a piece of gear with a cool effect, but it will add to your corruption level. As your corruption level increases, you get various detriments that can make things harder for you. However, you can do Horrific Visions to upgrade a legendary cloak (there's a cloak now) to increase your corruption resistance, which can negate those effects.
Horrific Visions are not time-gated, but you need to get Coalescing Visions in order to buy a Vessel of Horrific Visions to run them, and the sources for Coalescing Visions are mostly time-gated, though you could, in theory, grind like crazy, getting 3-4 per mob killed to speed you to the 10,000 you need to get a single vessel.
Are you exhausted? I'm exhausted.
There are also Island Expeditions, which are kind of like 3-player scenarios from Mists of Pandaria with a bunch of randomized elements that are designed to be the most efficient way to get Azerite.
Wait, we're not done?
Titan Residuum. Warfronts.
It's a LOT.
And honestly, while new gameplay systems can make an expansion feel different, dear lord what the hell, Blizzard?
To wrap up:
It's obviously too early to assess the longterm legacy of BFA. I haven't even touched on Allied Races, for instance, which I think are almost entirely a positive for the game (though I worry for any new player who starts in Shadowlands or later that wants to play a Mechagnome - that'll be a tough grind.) I cannot think we're going to rank this as low as Warlords given that there was, truly, tons to do this expansion. But I also think Blizzard would do well to take a step back and get some perspective on things like gameplay systems and also the sort of story that players want.
Personally, while I'm disappointed we're not getting a Necromancer class with it, I'm really excited about Shadowlands in a way that I was not about BFA. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Covenants will be cool like Artifact Weapons or a convoluted mess like Azerite gear. What I think I'm most excited about is the fact that it looks to be a massive expansion of the lore - bigger than anything we've really seen before, in fact. If this is basically World of Warcraft: Planescape, I'm super in.
Monday, January 27, 2020
Torn on Gating and Difficulty for Horrific Visions
I've failed Horrific Visions a couple times. It feels real bad.
With the assaults and the major Blacktalon Agent dailies, it seems you can get enough Coalescing Visions to do about three or four Horrific Visions per week, and maybe an extra one about every week or two if you're diligent about doing all the dailies in Uldum and the Vale.
Apparently those dailies initially gave 50 CVs, but now give 250, which is theoretically a good thing - more Visions - but also makes it feel five times worse to skip one of those dailies. You'd still need to do 40 daily quests to get a single additional Horrific Vision, which is why I'm not actually getting too stressed about it, though - but it's that gradual sense of losing out in the long run.
Now, the Visions themselves:
The times I've failed is when I've tried to space out my use of Sanity Restoration Orbs, saving them for when I'm really starting to run low, and then getting into some situation where I'm getting knocked into multiple groups and unable to get out of combat to use the orb (the madness effect that makes you leap from imagined fires is very frustrating.)
So there's a part of me that wishes that we could just run them over and over like the Deaths of Chromie scenario, grinding at it to make our runs more efficient and thus more capable of completing additional objectives.
On the other hand, time gating is a tool Blizzard uses for pacing purposes.
Time gating itself is a controversial tool in Blizzard's arsenal. Cynically, you might think that Blizzard does it to keep players subscribed to the game longer. Yes, you have to wait a week for the raid to reset before you can try again for the loot you want.
I'm not sure I could really put it past them to consider the monetary rewards of time gating, but I don't think it's pure cynicism either.
Gating allows them to pace content. Because WoW is a social game, they want lots of players to be playing at the same time, and that's more likely if players are playing frequently - and for longer stretches. But beyond even that, slowing down the pace allows players to relax - you might only be able to log on for an hour a night, and time gating gives you a chance to keep up with players who can play all day.
It can also make the content feel more substantial. Indeed, in 8.3, they released the raid far earlier than I expected. I'm sure in part this was because it had taken so long to get 8.3 after 8.2, but even then I'm not sure I feel it was the right choice.
Conceptually, I love the idea of Visions of N'zoth. WoW has a tendency to make its supernatural threats ultimate a kind of military engagement. The game is based on the RTS series, after all. And so you have its zombie plague organized as a military force in the Scourge. You have its demonic world-destroyers organized as a military force in the Burning Legion. And, frankly, you typically have its Lovecraftian elder gods organized as a military force in the various Aqir or N'raqi forces.
But N'zoth was never militarily strong like Y'Shaarj, C'thun, or Yogg-Saron were. The notion that N'zoth must attack people through their own perceptions really makes N'zoth very different from other Warcraft villains we've seen before.
And the idea that N'zoth is not invading with some army of Aqir (well, he is, but that's kind of a side project) but is instead doing this reality-warping, alternate-universe-dystopia-overlay strategy is just a super cool fantasy concept. (It reminds me a bit of the Phyrexians' use of the plane of Rath in the Invasion Block of Magic: the Gathering, but while Rath was actually just a physical place that carried the Phyrexian forces, Ny'alotha is a much more psychological, dreamlike realm.)
So, to be honest, I wish we had more of this before we actually got to fight and destroy him.
There's certainly aspects of this that suggest that maybe, perhaps, we should have gotten a whole expansion of this stuff (read: yes, we absolutely should have.)
But also, mechanically, while I really enjoy doing the Horrific Visions, and want to hop in immediately if I fail one, the fact that I can't does make me take it more seriously when I do get to run one.
Of course, that makes it all the more frustrating when I do make an error - pulling one too many mobs when I'm getting low on Sanity, for instance - despite the serious strategic considerations I've made.
With the assaults and the major Blacktalon Agent dailies, it seems you can get enough Coalescing Visions to do about three or four Horrific Visions per week, and maybe an extra one about every week or two if you're diligent about doing all the dailies in Uldum and the Vale.
Apparently those dailies initially gave 50 CVs, but now give 250, which is theoretically a good thing - more Visions - but also makes it feel five times worse to skip one of those dailies. You'd still need to do 40 daily quests to get a single additional Horrific Vision, which is why I'm not actually getting too stressed about it, though - but it's that gradual sense of losing out in the long run.
Now, the Visions themselves:
The times I've failed is when I've tried to space out my use of Sanity Restoration Orbs, saving them for when I'm really starting to run low, and then getting into some situation where I'm getting knocked into multiple groups and unable to get out of combat to use the orb (the madness effect that makes you leap from imagined fires is very frustrating.)
So there's a part of me that wishes that we could just run them over and over like the Deaths of Chromie scenario, grinding at it to make our runs more efficient and thus more capable of completing additional objectives.
On the other hand, time gating is a tool Blizzard uses for pacing purposes.
Time gating itself is a controversial tool in Blizzard's arsenal. Cynically, you might think that Blizzard does it to keep players subscribed to the game longer. Yes, you have to wait a week for the raid to reset before you can try again for the loot you want.
I'm not sure I could really put it past them to consider the monetary rewards of time gating, but I don't think it's pure cynicism either.
Gating allows them to pace content. Because WoW is a social game, they want lots of players to be playing at the same time, and that's more likely if players are playing frequently - and for longer stretches. But beyond even that, slowing down the pace allows players to relax - you might only be able to log on for an hour a night, and time gating gives you a chance to keep up with players who can play all day.
It can also make the content feel more substantial. Indeed, in 8.3, they released the raid far earlier than I expected. I'm sure in part this was because it had taken so long to get 8.3 after 8.2, but even then I'm not sure I feel it was the right choice.
Conceptually, I love the idea of Visions of N'zoth. WoW has a tendency to make its supernatural threats ultimate a kind of military engagement. The game is based on the RTS series, after all. And so you have its zombie plague organized as a military force in the Scourge. You have its demonic world-destroyers organized as a military force in the Burning Legion. And, frankly, you typically have its Lovecraftian elder gods organized as a military force in the various Aqir or N'raqi forces.
But N'zoth was never militarily strong like Y'Shaarj, C'thun, or Yogg-Saron were. The notion that N'zoth must attack people through their own perceptions really makes N'zoth very different from other Warcraft villains we've seen before.
And the idea that N'zoth is not invading with some army of Aqir (well, he is, but that's kind of a side project) but is instead doing this reality-warping, alternate-universe-dystopia-overlay strategy is just a super cool fantasy concept. (It reminds me a bit of the Phyrexians' use of the plane of Rath in the Invasion Block of Magic: the Gathering, but while Rath was actually just a physical place that carried the Phyrexian forces, Ny'alotha is a much more psychological, dreamlike realm.)
So, to be honest, I wish we had more of this before we actually got to fight and destroy him.
There's certainly aspects of this that suggest that maybe, perhaps, we should have gotten a whole expansion of this stuff (read: yes, we absolutely should have.)
But also, mechanically, while I really enjoy doing the Horrific Visions, and want to hop in immediately if I fail one, the fact that I can't does make me take it more seriously when I do get to run one.
Of course, that makes it all the more frustrating when I do make an error - pulling one too many mobs when I'm getting low on Sanity, for instance - despite the serious strategic considerations I've made.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Ranking the WoW Expansions So Far: 2020
I don't believe I've done this before, despite this blog being now like seven years old. Now that BFA has come out with its final patch, we've got the thing in its entirety to look at.
The following is going to be a totally subjective ranking. If you loved Warlords of Draenor (for some reason) and hated Wrath of the Lich King (for some reason,) I'm not saying your opinion is invalid, but I'll certainly disagree with you. Also, there are factors outside of the game that play into my various feelings about these expansions. For instance, I was going through a very painful period in my life in 2016 and 2017 and having a compelling escape from that was very useful to me.
I think I'm going to go from least favorite to favorite. I'm not going to be including Vanilla here because, while I did start playing before any of the expansions came out, it was only about four months before BC was released, and I don't have a very holistic experience of Vanilla to look back on.
Also, I've been playing this game since 2006, so there's obviously some nostalgia involved here. Some of the expansions really brought new things to the game that, later on, one could take for granted. So let's start:
Warlords of Draenor:
What I still consider the nadir of WoW (so far,) Warlords did have a few positive features. I found many specs fun to play in the post-Mists pruning, and of course we got the new character models for pre-Cataclysm races. Plus, there was finally a focus on the Draenei, possibly my favorite playable race, who had been kind of sidelined even in the expansion that introduced them.
But Warlords had huge problems. First, Garrisons were a total bust - initially set up as some kind of customizable player housing, they instead became a reason to just sit around and run missions without actually going out and playing. You could get very nice gear by doing essentially nothing, which meant doing something felt futile. On top of that, there were only two raid tiers, making it really just two thirds of a full expansion, but Blizzard wasn't able to follow through on the plan to make that work by actually coming out with the next expansion the following year. Thankfully, they abandoned the ridiculous goal (that they had talked about for a long time) of trying to come out with annual expansions, but Warlords suffered for it.
Finally, Warlords' story took what could have been a very cool time-travel/alternate universe-themed expansion and tossed out everything that could have made such a plot interesting, and then didn't even deliver on making the eponymous warlords interesting, killing all but two of them off in the first patch. It didn't work.
Cataclysm:
I'm a bit torn on this one: the remake of the Old World was, I think, a very important modernization of the leveling system. I might be in the minority on that point, given the popularity of Classic. But as someone who found the grinding from the old game far less compelling than the ability to truly quest all the way up to 58, I really needed this change.
The problem with Cataclysm was at the higher levels. There was practically no world content except the Molten Front in the middle of the expansion, and for a good chunk of the expansion, you basically could only run Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub - both dungeons being retreads of old raids - over and over to progress your character if you weren't raiding. Also, with raid difficulty pushed way harder than its predecessor, Wrath, a lot of the casual raiding guilds that had sprung up were sundered or demoralized in Cataclysm - my guild basically didn't do much serious raiding again until Legion.
Much like Warlords, Cata suffered from a lack of content - but at least Cataclysm had the excuse that the level designers had basically remade the entirety of vanilla on top of the new zones and content.
Battle for Azeroth:
This could go up or down in ranking with time. I was initially going to put it behind Cataclysm, but the thing is, on paper, BFA looks like an awesome expansion. Two continents, all the allied races, a separate leveling experience for the two factions, and tons of in-game cinematics and compelling characters.
So why does it not feel like a good expansion?
First off, Azerite Armor was a terribly designed system. And they were too committed to it as a central expansion feature by the time that was apparent that they were never able to fix it. Essences were a bit better, and I actually think Corrupted gear is a genuinely cool system, but Azerite Armor has actually made the game less fun to play, completely losing all the coolness factors of Artifact Weapons and keeping only the fiddly annoying aspects.
Second, BFA renewed the faction conflict for an audience that had already gotten sick of it by the end of Mists of Pandaria. On top of that, it was yet again an act of horrific destruction committed by the Horde while under the control of an unpopular and divisive Warchief against the Alliance that led to a rebellion within the Horde, making the Alliance feel like background characters... again.
But beyond that, the early focus on the faction conflict meant that its later focus - on N'zoth and Ny'alotha, felt rushed. And on top of that, the two plots didn't actually wind up having much to do with each other at all (given that it was the Jailor, and not N'zoth, who was manipulating the factions into fighting one another.)
The actual content they came out with was good, but the messy story and profoundly convoluted gameplay mechanics really undercut what could have been a fantastic expansion.
Burning Crusade:
This one's a little hard to evaluate, in part because it was so long ago, but also because it sort of established to me what "baseline WoW" was. While it grated with some, I personally loved the science fantasy aspect to it. Clearly, Illidan was done so dirty here that they had to bring him back for Legion (where they did right by him.) But BC also kind of established what it meant to be a WoW expansion.
They certainly got some things wrong, like releasing tiers 4 and 5 with the expansion, and coming out with what was supposed to be the final raid in 2.1. BC seriously shows its age these days, but just making gear that was actually useful and broadening the game to the point where, for example, classes that weren't Warriors could tank, was really great.
Mists of Pandaria:
I know a lot of people view this as the best expansion, but I disagree. Still, Mists did a few things really, really well. It was the first expansion to really truly start focusing on stuff that wasn't from the RTS games - inventing a compelling an interesting group of cultures for Pandaria, and deepening the lore of Azeroth. 5.1's Landfall patch gave us the first really compelling max-level quest narrative.
I will say that this expansion was frustrating to me as someone who loved tanking dungeons. 5-player dungeons became totally irrelevant pretty early on in the expansion, and along with them, Blizzard started to shift away from deterministic gear acquisition, which I think has been a problem ever since they did so.
But the expansion did become much more narrative-driven, which I think was a great direction to take the game.
Wrath of the Lich King:
Given that it was my favorite expansion for the better part of a decade, it almost feels disloyal to put this at #2. There were several factors that made this good: first, I'll say, was the introduction of the Death Knight, which remains one of my favorite classes (I often dream of making my DK my main, but I feel too much loyalty to my Paladin - and his many exalted reputations and other character-specific things.) But it also dialed the difficulty down to make the game accessible to mere mortals. You also had the Scourge, and Arthas, who remain Warcrafts' most iconic villains, and a narrative that kept you invested in fighting Arthas from the beginning of the expansion to the final boss fight.
Toss in Dual-Spec, Ulduar, and a system that would allow you to gear up alts even if they weren't raiding characters, and it makes sense that this expansion basically created the high water mark of WoW subscriptions (even if it didn't technically hit that peak until early Cataclysm.)
It wasn't perfect, of course - there were awkward points in the expansion, like when Trial of the Crusader - a genuinely bad raid - came out so soon after Ulduar - arguably the best raid in all of WoW - or how, yes, technically the Protection Paladin 969 rotation was a pretty dull affair. But still, it was damn good.
Legion:
I think Legion might find some detractors who fault it for having some of the issues the past few expansions have had - like its over-reliance on RNG (especially for Legendaries, dear lord.) But this expansion did so many things so right: not only did it introduce another very cool class in the form of the Demon Hunter, but it also gave you a reason to be excited about your class regardless of which one you were playing thanks to the Class Hall stuff and Artifact weapons.
Legion also gave us Suramar, which I think is probably the best quest-based storytelling they've ever done, and did something that previous max-level zones (Vale of Eternal Blossoms, I'm looking at you) failed to - which was to have a deep and involved story with compelling characters that didn't stop just because you had hit the level cap.
Plus, after the confusing stakes of its predecessor, Warlords of Draenor, Legion had a truly compelling sense of stakes.
I'll confess I think that the expansion seemed to lose a little steam after the first couple patches - The Broken Shore was really dull as a questing zone and while Argus was profoundly cool-looking, I really wish we'd gotten a Suramar level of detailed story there rather than the somewhat standard "handful of quests in the first weeks of the patch" treatment it got. And the Netherlight Crucible was kind of a portent for the crappiness of the Azerite armor system. But this expansion gave us Illidan's Rejection of the Gift, Velen's 25,000-year sigh of relief, and the entire Pantheon - Sargeras included. It was big in a way that WoW deserves to be by this point.
So.
We have Shadowlands coming out this year. Premise-wise, I'm very, very excited for it. But I do wonder where it will stand within these rankings. Historically, a lot of people agree that the even-numbered expansions (Wrath, Mists, and Legion) are usually better than the odd-numbered ones (which is clearly reflected in this list.) But while the expansion looks cool, we still have only a vague sense of its mechanics. And I think a lot of us were disappointed when there was no new class announced with the expansion - breaking the tradition of new classes coming every other expansion. Indeed, this will be the first expansion since Warlords with no new major character types (i.e. race or class.)
I'm hoping it will rank up there with Legion and Wrath, and I'm tempted to imagine it could on the strength of its aesthetics and its narrative ambitions. But it truly remains to be seen.
The following is going to be a totally subjective ranking. If you loved Warlords of Draenor (for some reason) and hated Wrath of the Lich King (for some reason,) I'm not saying your opinion is invalid, but I'll certainly disagree with you. Also, there are factors outside of the game that play into my various feelings about these expansions. For instance, I was going through a very painful period in my life in 2016 and 2017 and having a compelling escape from that was very useful to me.
I think I'm going to go from least favorite to favorite. I'm not going to be including Vanilla here because, while I did start playing before any of the expansions came out, it was only about four months before BC was released, and I don't have a very holistic experience of Vanilla to look back on.
Also, I've been playing this game since 2006, so there's obviously some nostalgia involved here. Some of the expansions really brought new things to the game that, later on, one could take for granted. So let's start:
Warlords of Draenor:
What I still consider the nadir of WoW (so far,) Warlords did have a few positive features. I found many specs fun to play in the post-Mists pruning, and of course we got the new character models for pre-Cataclysm races. Plus, there was finally a focus on the Draenei, possibly my favorite playable race, who had been kind of sidelined even in the expansion that introduced them.
But Warlords had huge problems. First, Garrisons were a total bust - initially set up as some kind of customizable player housing, they instead became a reason to just sit around and run missions without actually going out and playing. You could get very nice gear by doing essentially nothing, which meant doing something felt futile. On top of that, there were only two raid tiers, making it really just two thirds of a full expansion, but Blizzard wasn't able to follow through on the plan to make that work by actually coming out with the next expansion the following year. Thankfully, they abandoned the ridiculous goal (that they had talked about for a long time) of trying to come out with annual expansions, but Warlords suffered for it.
Finally, Warlords' story took what could have been a very cool time-travel/alternate universe-themed expansion and tossed out everything that could have made such a plot interesting, and then didn't even deliver on making the eponymous warlords interesting, killing all but two of them off in the first patch. It didn't work.
Cataclysm:
I'm a bit torn on this one: the remake of the Old World was, I think, a very important modernization of the leveling system. I might be in the minority on that point, given the popularity of Classic. But as someone who found the grinding from the old game far less compelling than the ability to truly quest all the way up to 58, I really needed this change.
The problem with Cataclysm was at the higher levels. There was practically no world content except the Molten Front in the middle of the expansion, and for a good chunk of the expansion, you basically could only run Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub - both dungeons being retreads of old raids - over and over to progress your character if you weren't raiding. Also, with raid difficulty pushed way harder than its predecessor, Wrath, a lot of the casual raiding guilds that had sprung up were sundered or demoralized in Cataclysm - my guild basically didn't do much serious raiding again until Legion.
Much like Warlords, Cata suffered from a lack of content - but at least Cataclysm had the excuse that the level designers had basically remade the entirety of vanilla on top of the new zones and content.
Battle for Azeroth:
This could go up or down in ranking with time. I was initially going to put it behind Cataclysm, but the thing is, on paper, BFA looks like an awesome expansion. Two continents, all the allied races, a separate leveling experience for the two factions, and tons of in-game cinematics and compelling characters.
So why does it not feel like a good expansion?
First off, Azerite Armor was a terribly designed system. And they were too committed to it as a central expansion feature by the time that was apparent that they were never able to fix it. Essences were a bit better, and I actually think Corrupted gear is a genuinely cool system, but Azerite Armor has actually made the game less fun to play, completely losing all the coolness factors of Artifact Weapons and keeping only the fiddly annoying aspects.
Second, BFA renewed the faction conflict for an audience that had already gotten sick of it by the end of Mists of Pandaria. On top of that, it was yet again an act of horrific destruction committed by the Horde while under the control of an unpopular and divisive Warchief against the Alliance that led to a rebellion within the Horde, making the Alliance feel like background characters... again.
But beyond that, the early focus on the faction conflict meant that its later focus - on N'zoth and Ny'alotha, felt rushed. And on top of that, the two plots didn't actually wind up having much to do with each other at all (given that it was the Jailor, and not N'zoth, who was manipulating the factions into fighting one another.)
The actual content they came out with was good, but the messy story and profoundly convoluted gameplay mechanics really undercut what could have been a fantastic expansion.
Burning Crusade:
This one's a little hard to evaluate, in part because it was so long ago, but also because it sort of established to me what "baseline WoW" was. While it grated with some, I personally loved the science fantasy aspect to it. Clearly, Illidan was done so dirty here that they had to bring him back for Legion (where they did right by him.) But BC also kind of established what it meant to be a WoW expansion.
They certainly got some things wrong, like releasing tiers 4 and 5 with the expansion, and coming out with what was supposed to be the final raid in 2.1. BC seriously shows its age these days, but just making gear that was actually useful and broadening the game to the point where, for example, classes that weren't Warriors could tank, was really great.
Mists of Pandaria:
I know a lot of people view this as the best expansion, but I disagree. Still, Mists did a few things really, really well. It was the first expansion to really truly start focusing on stuff that wasn't from the RTS games - inventing a compelling an interesting group of cultures for Pandaria, and deepening the lore of Azeroth. 5.1's Landfall patch gave us the first really compelling max-level quest narrative.
I will say that this expansion was frustrating to me as someone who loved tanking dungeons. 5-player dungeons became totally irrelevant pretty early on in the expansion, and along with them, Blizzard started to shift away from deterministic gear acquisition, which I think has been a problem ever since they did so.
But the expansion did become much more narrative-driven, which I think was a great direction to take the game.
Wrath of the Lich King:
Given that it was my favorite expansion for the better part of a decade, it almost feels disloyal to put this at #2. There were several factors that made this good: first, I'll say, was the introduction of the Death Knight, which remains one of my favorite classes (I often dream of making my DK my main, but I feel too much loyalty to my Paladin - and his many exalted reputations and other character-specific things.) But it also dialed the difficulty down to make the game accessible to mere mortals. You also had the Scourge, and Arthas, who remain Warcrafts' most iconic villains, and a narrative that kept you invested in fighting Arthas from the beginning of the expansion to the final boss fight.
Toss in Dual-Spec, Ulduar, and a system that would allow you to gear up alts even if they weren't raiding characters, and it makes sense that this expansion basically created the high water mark of WoW subscriptions (even if it didn't technically hit that peak until early Cataclysm.)
It wasn't perfect, of course - there were awkward points in the expansion, like when Trial of the Crusader - a genuinely bad raid - came out so soon after Ulduar - arguably the best raid in all of WoW - or how, yes, technically the Protection Paladin 969 rotation was a pretty dull affair. But still, it was damn good.
Legion:
I think Legion might find some detractors who fault it for having some of the issues the past few expansions have had - like its over-reliance on RNG (especially for Legendaries, dear lord.) But this expansion did so many things so right: not only did it introduce another very cool class in the form of the Demon Hunter, but it also gave you a reason to be excited about your class regardless of which one you were playing thanks to the Class Hall stuff and Artifact weapons.
Legion also gave us Suramar, which I think is probably the best quest-based storytelling they've ever done, and did something that previous max-level zones (Vale of Eternal Blossoms, I'm looking at you) failed to - which was to have a deep and involved story with compelling characters that didn't stop just because you had hit the level cap.
Plus, after the confusing stakes of its predecessor, Warlords of Draenor, Legion had a truly compelling sense of stakes.
I'll confess I think that the expansion seemed to lose a little steam after the first couple patches - The Broken Shore was really dull as a questing zone and while Argus was profoundly cool-looking, I really wish we'd gotten a Suramar level of detailed story there rather than the somewhat standard "handful of quests in the first weeks of the patch" treatment it got. And the Netherlight Crucible was kind of a portent for the crappiness of the Azerite armor system. But this expansion gave us Illidan's Rejection of the Gift, Velen's 25,000-year sigh of relief, and the entire Pantheon - Sargeras included. It was big in a way that WoW deserves to be by this point.
So.
We have Shadowlands coming out this year. Premise-wise, I'm very, very excited for it. But I do wonder where it will stand within these rankings. Historically, a lot of people agree that the even-numbered expansions (Wrath, Mists, and Legion) are usually better than the odd-numbered ones (which is clearly reflected in this list.) But while the expansion looks cool, we still have only a vague sense of its mechanics. And I think a lot of us were disappointed when there was no new class announced with the expansion - breaking the tradition of new classes coming every other expansion. Indeed, this will be the first expansion since Warlords with no new major character types (i.e. race or class.)
I'm hoping it will rank up there with Legion and Wrath, and I'm tempted to imagine it could on the strength of its aesthetics and its narrative ambitions. But it truly remains to be seen.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
The Fate of Azeroth, the Titan
There are going to be spoilers here for the end of the Ny'alotha raid, which I have not yet entered (though I'm going to make an effort to actually do it at least on LFR this time, having more or less skipped Dazar'alor and definitely not having done any of the Eternal Palace, which I feel weirdly guilty about.)
The final raid of BFA, Ny'alotha is the alternate-universe created by N'zoth that he wishes to basically overlay onto ours, completing the corruption of Azeroth in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, we've recalibrated the Forge of Reorigination to fire as a weapon, targeting N'zoth himself.
SPOILERS AHOY (likely for the last time - we'll have the old Spoilers Ahead warning for Shadowlands.)
The final raid of BFA, Ny'alotha is the alternate-universe created by N'zoth that he wishes to basically overlay onto ours, completing the corruption of Azeroth in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, we've recalibrated the Forge of Reorigination to fire as a weapon, targeting N'zoth himself.
SPOILERS AHOY (likely for the last time - we'll have the old Spoilers Ahead warning for Shadowlands.)
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Horrific Visions
Let's get this out of the way:
Horrific Visions, the big non-raid gameplay system they've introduced in 8.3, is a bit convoluted.
You basically need to do Assaults, Daily Quests, and those specific dailies where you go into a different horrific vision in the various assault zones to farm Coalescing Visions.
(Brief aside: I think the quests where you go into the Ny'alotha version of the Vale or Uldum are a little confused, aesthetically. They seem to only pop up when it's the Black Empire assault in that zone, which already makes things dark and filled with gross flesh monsters and floating obelisks.)
Once you get 10,000 Coalescing Visions (an amount that makes the 5-10 you get off a single creature feel negligible) you can trade them in for the key item you need to start a Horrific Vision.
It seems like we'll alternate between Stormwind and Orgrimmar each week.
If you haven't done this yet, here's how it works:
Once you've gotten through the quests to get your legendary cloak, you can brave the visions. While inside, you'll see a sanity meter that slowly depletes over time, capped initially at 1000. Each vision is divided into five areas, with three different levels of corruption.
Cathedral Square and the Valley of Strength are both starting areas for the respective visions. Here, sanity drains at a baseline of 4 per second. Other areas drain it at 8 per second, and then 12 per second. Additionally, each zone has a different "insanity effect," which will generally make things more inconvenient but sometimes also provide an opportunity to get a buff.
You can do these with 1-5 players, though so far I have only done them solo.
You can sort of choose your difficulty by venturing into various areas within the vision. To end it successfully, you'll have to fight the final boss - Alleria in Stormwind or Thrall in Orgrimmar. The first few times you go in, you'll want to stick to the first area and head for the boss more or less immediately.
If you drop to zero sanity or zero hit points, the vision ends early, potentially robbing you of your rewards (I was very sad to mess up on my last one on my paladin today and not get his reward.) I believe that if you play as a team you can revive other players, but the instance scales in health and damage the more players you bring.
Wrathion sends you to collect an item off the various zone-bosses (at first he just has you go after Alleria/Thrall) to upgrade your cloak. There is also a currency you'll earn with each creature you slay in the instance, which then allows you to upgrade a talent-tree to improve your chances in the visions.
So far, I've enjoyed them, though it is a bit frustrating when you screw up and don't get your prize, which feels like a major setback given the timegating on the currency you need to buy the key. In case you couldn't tell from that sentence, it's also quite convoluted.
But I will say that the visions themselves are pretty cool places to explore. The Stormwind one in particular has had some very creepy, nightmarish things. The whole premise is that this is the dark world that N'zoth wants to kind of overlay over the real Azeroth - it's a vision of the dystopian future should N'zoth succeed.
In the visions, not only has Alleria gone mad and sacrificed her son Arator to the Void (and seems to have mortally wounded her husband Turalyon,) but there are also details like all the orphans from the Stromwind Orphanage singing and playing around the dead orphan matron. There's even a rat around the Stormwind canals that, if attacked, cries out for you to stop, but attacks you so you can't. When it dies, it turns into (if I recall correctly) Topper McNabb, a well-known Stormwind citizen to anyone who's hung out in the game. Then a cat comes out, thanks you for killing him, and begins to eat.
I keep thinking about how cool it would have been if this kind of nightmare-version of Azeroth had been a bigger part of BFA. I'll maintain that mechanics have generally been the expansion's biggest issue (I'm so eager to ditch Azerite gear once Shadowlands comes out,) but I also think that the choice to split the narrative between the faction war and the Old God stuff left both halves (well, especially the Old God stuff) unsatisfying.
You almost wonder if they should have made this all about the faction war and then have the big reveal that N'zoth was behind it all along only come at the very end, leading into a Ny'alotha expansion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for Shadowlands, but it seems like there's the seed of a really great expansion in this patch, but one that will never sprout.
Horrific Visions, the big non-raid gameplay system they've introduced in 8.3, is a bit convoluted.
You basically need to do Assaults, Daily Quests, and those specific dailies where you go into a different horrific vision in the various assault zones to farm Coalescing Visions.
(Brief aside: I think the quests where you go into the Ny'alotha version of the Vale or Uldum are a little confused, aesthetically. They seem to only pop up when it's the Black Empire assault in that zone, which already makes things dark and filled with gross flesh monsters and floating obelisks.)
Once you get 10,000 Coalescing Visions (an amount that makes the 5-10 you get off a single creature feel negligible) you can trade them in for the key item you need to start a Horrific Vision.
It seems like we'll alternate between Stormwind and Orgrimmar each week.
If you haven't done this yet, here's how it works:
Once you've gotten through the quests to get your legendary cloak, you can brave the visions. While inside, you'll see a sanity meter that slowly depletes over time, capped initially at 1000. Each vision is divided into five areas, with three different levels of corruption.
Cathedral Square and the Valley of Strength are both starting areas for the respective visions. Here, sanity drains at a baseline of 4 per second. Other areas drain it at 8 per second, and then 12 per second. Additionally, each zone has a different "insanity effect," which will generally make things more inconvenient but sometimes also provide an opportunity to get a buff.
You can do these with 1-5 players, though so far I have only done them solo.
You can sort of choose your difficulty by venturing into various areas within the vision. To end it successfully, you'll have to fight the final boss - Alleria in Stormwind or Thrall in Orgrimmar. The first few times you go in, you'll want to stick to the first area and head for the boss more or less immediately.
If you drop to zero sanity or zero hit points, the vision ends early, potentially robbing you of your rewards (I was very sad to mess up on my last one on my paladin today and not get his reward.) I believe that if you play as a team you can revive other players, but the instance scales in health and damage the more players you bring.
Wrathion sends you to collect an item off the various zone-bosses (at first he just has you go after Alleria/Thrall) to upgrade your cloak. There is also a currency you'll earn with each creature you slay in the instance, which then allows you to upgrade a talent-tree to improve your chances in the visions.
So far, I've enjoyed them, though it is a bit frustrating when you screw up and don't get your prize, which feels like a major setback given the timegating on the currency you need to buy the key. In case you couldn't tell from that sentence, it's also quite convoluted.
But I will say that the visions themselves are pretty cool places to explore. The Stormwind one in particular has had some very creepy, nightmarish things. The whole premise is that this is the dark world that N'zoth wants to kind of overlay over the real Azeroth - it's a vision of the dystopian future should N'zoth succeed.
In the visions, not only has Alleria gone mad and sacrificed her son Arator to the Void (and seems to have mortally wounded her husband Turalyon,) but there are also details like all the orphans from the Stromwind Orphanage singing and playing around the dead orphan matron. There's even a rat around the Stormwind canals that, if attacked, cries out for you to stop, but attacks you so you can't. When it dies, it turns into (if I recall correctly) Topper McNabb, a well-known Stormwind citizen to anyone who's hung out in the game. Then a cat comes out, thanks you for killing him, and begins to eat.
I keep thinking about how cool it would have been if this kind of nightmare-version of Azeroth had been a bigger part of BFA. I'll maintain that mechanics have generally been the expansion's biggest issue (I'm so eager to ditch Azerite gear once Shadowlands comes out,) but I also think that the choice to split the narrative between the faction war and the Old God stuff left both halves (well, especially the Old God stuff) unsatisfying.
You almost wonder if they should have made this all about the faction war and then have the big reveal that N'zoth was behind it all along only come at the very end, leading into a Ny'alotha expansion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for Shadowlands, but it seems like there's the seed of a really great expansion in this patch, but one that will never sprout.
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