World of Warcraft

[Stigmata]

Also I'm extremely butthurt about the Shadowlands 9.2 ending cinematic with Anduin.

Absolutely butchered everything Arthas' character has meant to the Warcraft series. At the very end, all we get to sum up his character arc is a lousy nonsentient blue whisp? What did Arthas do to hurt you so badly, Blizzard writers?

Furthermore, you basically have redeemed Slyvanas after she pretty much went on a genocidal world tour for two whole expansions, only for that to be erased in a 3 minute cinematic. Unbelievable. Some my claim it to be cheesy, predictable and unnecessary but I totally wanted a Arthas redemption arc -- I don't see why he gets so villified when he was supposedly equally under the influence of The Jailer the same way Sylvanas was.

Even in the Shadowlands Afterlife: Bastion teaser, when Devos and Uther claim Arthas' soul, his dying words are "father, is it over?", implying his will was not his own. We know Arthas was cast into the Maw, and it just seems like a travesty to have that be the end of his character be so...unceremonious

 

[Totenkindly]

Also I'm extremely butthurt about the Shadowlands 9.2 ending cinematic with Anduin.

Absolutely butchered everything Arthas' character has meant to the Warcraft series. At the very end, all we get to sum up his character arc is a lousy nonsentient blue whisp? What did Arthas do to hurt you so badly, Blizzard writers?

Furthermore, you basically have redeemed Slyvanas after she pretty much went on a genocidal world tour for two whole expansions, only for that to be erased in a 3 minute cinematic. Unbelievable. Some my claim it to be cheesy, predictable and unnecessary but I totally wanted a Arthas redemption arc -- I don't see why he gets so villified when he was supposedly equally under the influence of The Jailer the same way Sylvanas was.

Even in the Shadowlands Afterlife: Bastion teaser, when Devos and Uther claim Arthas' soul, his dying words are "father, is it over?", implying his will was not his own. We know Arthas was cast into the Maw, and it just seems like a travesty to have that be the end of his character be so...unceremonious

I was wondering how you (and others steeped in WoW lore) would respond to that, I know people have been vocal from both sides since 9.2 hit. I just watched the cut scenes this past week because I doubt I'll ever do the raids through, not in the near future anyway.

I went back and read the lore about Arthas after, which is pretty long and fascinating. I missed Lich King and most of the earlier lore and only recently pieced it together, so Arthas didn't mean as much to me... but I was really into Sylvanas and have a similar response. I remember being pissed off about the tree burning which the Horde was stuck to go along with. (When I had a chance, my main was a defector to the cause.) She just seemed to do crazy stuff and they didn't know how to handle her. The only thing I thought was interesting was at end of BFA where it seemed she might not be evil as much as her undead status driving her mad and she was seeking for a way to destroy everything "to break the prison she was trapped in." [It was like Smith in the Matrix telling Morpheus that rather than enjoying being a gatekeeper of the system, he hated it and felt trapped and wanted out and THAT was why he wanted the codes to Zion... Not because of his duty, but his existence had become loathsome.]

Instead we got this bullshit where Sylvanas was just serving a worse big bad which seemed so dumb to me. I kind of feel like they destroyed her character needlessly and then gave her a barely average redemption arc (I think the Uther stuff is the only thing that made it work as it did) and then keep letting her talk -- I heard someone say she "monologed Arthas to death" as a joke, but that is pretty much how that scanned, she has no right to talk there and also it made the whole story about her, not Arthas. Your last words are correct and they drew parallels between him and Anduin. I doubt I'll be able to see Sylvanas in the future now without feeling shame and disappointment.

I don't know wtf they are doing.

 

[Totenkindly]

Put in my cancellation today. Unfortunately they had just billed me for a six month in early Feb (arrrg). But I got to bitch on my cancellation request about the crappy storylines / character property ruination, the constant cycle each patch of creating new ways to boost gear, which is just redundant and annoying, and finally how they trashed ret pally in the new expansion so the main high-level content I wanted to do I probably won't be able to get into high-key PUGs for.

To add insult to injury, I had to sit on the cancellation screen for a bit due to something coming up, so I typed in my input after the page had been open for about 20-30 minutes, and then when I completed it (without it telling me anything was timed out or warning that I should refresh the page first), it just didn't process any of my data and I lost everything I input. It didn't even give me clear response that it didn't register, I just noticed my subscription hadn't canceled and I went back in and did it all over again. Pretty lame.

 

[Totenkindly]

Just watched Asmongold's comments about the Anduin and Jailer cinematics. I am in general agreement. I actually really like the first half of the first one (regarding Anduin) where his dad appears to him and he splits the swords, but the whole part about Arthas is pretty awful in the sense somehow Anduin and Sylvanas get a free pass because they were supposedly under the control of the Jailer but Arthas doesn't, even though he was also in the Jailer's thrall? It's contradictory... and of course esp to have Sylvanas wax on like that makes it even worse. At least they could have given lines to Jaina to make them less jarring.

I'm really shocked at how bad the "concluding" cinematic is, with the Jailer. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't explain anything really, I didn't understand why Denathrius was in it, I'm just kind of surprised they didn't put together a great cinematic to end the actual conclusion of the entire expac (and actually of a number of expansions, since they decided to fold in a bunch of expacs as the machinations of the Jailer.) So underwhelming.

Asmongold is definitely a drama queen (I say that without judgment, I find him amusing to watch) -- "We could have had Thanos, instead we just got a defective Biolocle!"

 

[Stigmata]

Just watched Asmongold's comments about the Anduin and Jailer cinematics. I am in general agreement. I actually really like the first half of the first one (regarding Anduin) where his dad appears to him and he splits the swords, but the whole part about Arthas is pretty awful in the sense somehow Anduin and Sylvanas get a free pass because they were supposedly under the control of the Jailer but Arthas doesn't, even though he was also in the Jailer's thrall? It's contradictory... and of course esp to have Sylvanas wax on like that makes it even worse. At least they could have given lines to Jaina to make them less jarring.

I'm really shocked at how bad the "concluding" cinematic is, with the Jailer. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't explain anything really, I didn't understand why Denathrius was in it, I'm just kind of surprised they didn't put together a great cinematic to end the actual conclusion of the entire expac (and actually of a number of expansions, since they decided to fold in a bunch of expacs as the machinations of the Jailer.) So underwhelming.

Asmongold is definitely a drama queen (I say that without judgment, I find him amusing to watch) -- "We could have had Thanos, instead we just got a defective Biolocle!"

The Jailer in general is just such an underwhelming villain for the scope at which he has affected the Warcraft story with the latest retcon. Is it conceivable that there would be some otherworldly person who created Frostmourne, which corrupted the wielder and granted them the power to raise the dead? Sure -- I can get on board with that. But there's just so much of the How? that doesn't get explained.

Given just how much the Nathrezim have corrupted in the Warcraft universe (There's an ingame tome which reveals that these dudes literally have had a hand in corrupting just about every opposing force in Warcraft, including the Titans and the Void Lords), having their leader effectively reduced to an early tier raid and being killed off seems like a colossal failure. Also, Denathrius really seemed to have no motivation outside of being a pawn for The Jailer. The Jailer seems to go on about this big grandious plan, but again, for what purpose? So much left unexplained, yet all you're left feeling with is a feeling of "well, where do we go from here?"

Also, someone at Blizzard has a huge hard-on for Sylvanas, presumably the same person that had a huge hard-on for Garrosh. The amount of time and expansions that these two have spent at the focal point of, for effectively no real reason, is appalling, and the fact that Arthas, who is arguably the most iconic and recognizable character in the Warcraft universe, is written off like an afterthought, is just such an egregious offense.

I agree that the first half of the trailer was cool, and when they seemingly linked things together with both Saurfang and Varian (the only two people who have ever wielded that sword in their separated form), was really good. Everything after that is pure garbage, though.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Just doing an occasional check-in on this thread.

I'm still tanking PUGs in the lower-level (Cataclysm) dungeons. I love doing dungeon pick-up groups. Each and every run is a learning experience, given the newbs who don't know the dungeon, crappy healers, roaming guards, fears, etc. It's fun. And it's nostalgic, since I'm currently tanking in old dungeons that I used to run years ago as DPS.

I try to fit in a quick run or two after dinner each day. There's no wait in the queues since I'm the tank, so it's not a big investment of time. I focus on a single dungeon, run it repeatedly across multiple evenings, see all the possible things that can go wrong, and learn how to prep the battles for difficult or unpredictable fights. That way I end up learning the dungeons down to a level that I never knew in the past as DPS. I even take notes so that I can come back to old dungeons months later and still tank them perfectly.

It's just something to do after dinner: It's high-energy, high-immersion, and gets my blood running. Since I'm tanking, I can set a fast pace: Get in and get out. After a quick dungeon or two, I'm awake, feeling good, and ready to shut down WoW and work on other projects.

I don't get into the story line or quests or crafting or whatever. I haven't even upgraded to the latest expac. I just do a run or two in the low-level dungeons and then shut off WoW and move on to other stuff. For me it's just a quickie bit of entertainment to look forward to right after dinner.

 

[Totenkindly]

I think of all three roles, Tank demands you have the most detailed understanding at ground level of the dungeon and encounters. (Then healer -- at least in terms of mitigating aka (de)buff and healing; then DPS, where you're just trying to dump as much damage on things while also avoiding damage and locking down what you can to reduce load on tank/healer.) I have run some things solo in tank mode -- current content, I've done Normal Plaguefall, Necrotic Wake (well, until the final boss where he resets as part of the mid-encounter mechanic), and Spires -- and it's actually really instructive to teach you the dungeon. If you miss a mechanic, it's made obvious to you; and you become aware of all the stuff the tank was mitigating that maybe you missed before.

Yeah, tank (and healer) has an easiest time in the queue. When I'm doing special event dungeons, where I know the encounter and it's not essential to play it perfectly (like the holiday minibosses), I queue as tank or healer if I can to avoid any wait. Glad you have been enjoying it; I know the TW cataclysm dungeons pretty well at this point but probably not all of them.

----

Two more mounts down over the weekend, unexpectedly -- Drake of the Four Winds (from Ishak in BFA Uldum) and Mawsworn Soulhunter (from SL Maw: Shadehound hunt). They were just a "chip away at it and it'll drop" scenario. I got both in 44 attempts (although Soulhunter is only about 1 in 50-60, while Drake is about 1 in 100). Now I'm back to just farming three Pandaria mounts + Ruhkmar from WoD. (I'm mostly just doing Ruhkmar right now.)

The soulhunter would have been a big deal in SL 9.0 because only 3 mounts worked in the Maw, and this was one of them. Oh well.

I also ran the Mythic Dungeons event twice (to get an iLvl 265 drop from Heroic Sepulcher) and somehow got lucky -- my Arms Warrior and my Ret Pally both got i265 2H weapons out of it, which was a real shock and a huge boost for both. I might run again on my Frost DK today before it ends. [For comparison, my iLvl on the Warrior was only 239, and my pally was at 249.] Ret Pally, specifically weapons are the best gear boost you can get, then focus on BiS trinkets.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

[snipped...] I have run some things solo in tank mode -- current content, I've done Normal Plaguefall, Necrotic Wake (well, until the final boss where he resets as part of the mid-encounter mechanic), and Spires -- and it's actually really instructive to teach you the dungeon. If you miss a mechanic, it's made obvious to you; and you become aware of all the stuff the tank was mitigating that maybe you missed before. [...snipped]

Yes, this. ^^^

Ne-Aux makes me fast in a big fight. I'm great at maneuvering, rounding up lots of mobs, keeping threat, and wearing them down.

But weak S gives me trouble sometimes. Sometimes I keep having trouble with one particular fight over and over in the same dungeon. So eventually I'll play it over in my mind, and suddenly it will come to me: Use the terrain to set up the fight better!

Because of weak S, I just don't notice the details in the terrain or in the placement of the mobs that would aid me, until I really sit down and think about the fight afterwards.

But figuring that stuff out is half the fun. Each dungeon has a little trick or two hidden somewhere. And I love it when I eventually get a difficult dungeon all figured out and can do a fast, smooth run even with a weak PUG.

Cool mount pictures, by the way. You must have quite a collection by now!

 

[Totenkindly]

I think officially it is 477 mounts and counting... durrr

But I think the total number of mounts in the game is around 775.

The bad thing recently is that they are just resorting to recolors a lot recently. Eh. The blue unicorn mount (which flies) for reaching 100 Exalted reps was a real prize -- and then in SL they put out about 8 flying unicorn recolors, one of which is close to the one you actually had to work really hard to earn. That kind of thing is disappointing.

One I would have really liked to have (I see it in game occasionally) is one you could only get from buying an annual pass in 2011: Tyrael's Charger. There's nothing else like it in-game and has spectral/angel like wings.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Nice! I think I recall that charger, or at least I remember those wings.

I don't do collectibles myself. I just have the basic horses, rams, elekks, mechanostriders, etc. For flying mounts I just have a bunch of gryphons of various colors and a flying carpet or two.

But it's fun to see collectors show up in Stormwind on exotic mounts.

Another thing I enjoy seeing is matched sets of armor, either original gear or transmogs. I used to craft a lot of armor in past years, and over time I got a pretty good eye for armor sets. So when I see someone sporting interesting armor or robes or whatever, I'll do a quick inspection to see if it's a set of some kind.

Like I said, though, I don't do collectibles myself. My own toons are dressed in whatever motley assortment of armor and weapons that they encounter as loot. Or standard-issue heirlooms. I think I've only ever transmogged two pieces of gear. Those two particular pieces of gear had great stats but they were so atrocious-looking that I had to change their appearance before I could put them on.

 

[Totenkindly]

Basically I will do xmog runs for particular pieces of armor if I think it looks nice -- or if I think I can match it with something to make a nifty ensemble. Sometimes I use actual built-in sets for use when I'm in a hurry, to match everything, but I will use the customizable set collections in the xmog builder to save certain ensembles when I can.

When I did those gamer personality tests, I basically get high scores in:

- Exploration
- Customizing/Expression
and then some powerbuilding

so I guess it makes sense.

Funny enough, I never tried blacksmithing until my most recent alt. I should probably just take a few days at some point to boost the skill levels and see what gear is crafted.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

[snipped...] Funny enough, I never tried blacksmithing until my most recent alt. I should probably just take a few days at some point to boost the skill levels and see what gear is crafted.

Many years ago I used to craft and sell items on the AH for income. Now there's no need. The random green armor and weapons that I loot in dungeons routinely sells for hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of gold on the AH. I'm not sure why that's the case; maybe fewer people are doing the low-level dungeons now, which makes low-level armor and weapons scarcer. In any case, I now get way more income just from scrounging green loot in dungeons and selling it on the AH than I ever could from crafting.

I still craft and sell a couple high-end items when mats are cheap on the AH. But other than that, I'm not doing much on the crafting side.

Anyway, I already leveled my crafting professions up into Pandaria in past years. That more than covers the personal needs of my low-level tank (which is level-capped at 19). Aside from the usual blue armor and weapons, my tank just needs a set of enchantments, buffs, and potions, a loot-a-rang for quick looting, and a spinal healing injector as a back-up healing potion. And then it's good to go.

By the way, I'm happy to hear that you got the guild thing straightened out (reference to your blog).

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Over the last couple weeks I've been seeing updates to the lower-level dungeons. A few mini-boss fights that used to be easy and boring have suddenly turned tougher. Mainly there are more adds, or the existing adds have gotten bigger and tougher.

It's a little jarring to go into a routine tank-and-spank and suddenly find myself overrun with adds out of nowhere. I just had a wipe in a fight where I've never previously had any problem. And last week I wiped on a roaming mini-boss who was suddenly roaming in a different area from usual.

But it's just a couple mini-boss fights here and there, so far. I rotate through the lowest 20 or so dungeons every few weeks just for fun, and I found a total of 4 or 5 more difficult fights on my rotation over the last couple weeks. And the changes have only occurred in the last couple weeks; prior to that, it seems like the content was unchanged from years ago.

I welcome the changes. Suddenly those particular fights are more interesting and need to be approached a little differently. And it's nice to see that the designers are tweaking or updating some of the old content. And it's fun to go through the old dungeons, encounter an occasional surprise, and try to figure it out on the run.

ETA: And in Deadmines, Cookie (the final boss) has a new cauldron or cooking pot or whatever. It's about three times bigger than before. It doesn't change the mechanics of the fight at all, and it's the only change in Deadmines that I noticed. But it's a pretty obvious cosmetic change. I guess it's a signal from the developers: A warning that they're doing some tweaking.

 

[Totenkindly]

Ran Mythic Spires +2 last night as Arms Warrior since a Fury Warrior in my guild had a keystone. We did the rest PUG (bear tank, hunter DPS, priest healer).

Halfway through, the Hunter went AWOL. No DC, no sign that he was bumped, he just... stopped playing. We figured this out after a fight or two where his DPS meter just didn't register and we realized he wasn't playing (or talking). We still had two bosses left at that point. Also because it was Mythic + with a timed key, they don't let you bump and/or replace players.

Coupled with that, while the Tank knew how to tank, he didn't know the dungeon and/or hadn't done keys much because there are some routine skips in Spires and he didn't take any of them -- he just plowed straight through some groups we could have avoided and/or didn't do the regular group/pillar move on the regular mobs before the third boss. No biggie, just it was clear he hadn't run the dungeon much if at all. (This might be typical too on Mythic +2, often people will run alts -- but I've never tanked it BUT have done DPS on it far more than enough to know the typical routes.) He also had to be told to pull the bosses out of energy pools on the ground because we couldn't get to them without dying.

So it was me and the Fury Warrior, and we were about on par, because we kept trading off on DPS lead from fight to fight. Also, he died a few times but I never died -- although the healer had to save my bacon once. (I got spam healed before I could kick in my DR.) It was kind of neat to see how the two Warrior specs were pretty close in output depending on the fight.

There is a huge DPS check with the third boss. Damn. He's located on a wheel-shaped floor with the boss at 12 o' clock (so you clear part of the wheel getting to him). During the fight, he will slowly ruin the terrain with energy pools so the space is no longer reasonably usable -- a good group clusters the pools (which we did) so they overlap as much as possible, slowing the rate at which terrain fills. Well, normally you can kill him and only fill up the space from 11 o' clock to 1 o' clock or so. We ended up needing to eat up all the space from 10 o'clock to about 3-4 o'clock. [Was glad we had cleared that spot on the way in, so no pickup mobs.] Such a long fight, it's normally about 90-120 seconds and it took us 4.5 minutes.

Then the final boss (Devos) was the same, we got the boss without major issue but a fight that normally takes about 2.5 mins took about 4.5 mins instead, we had about 4-5 cycles through instead of 2.

Great for learning your spec, though. less clutter/saving by other players, more needing to watch yourself and do your rotations correctly. At this point I know my set well enough i can look at the preferred rotations and see how to adjust my play.

That hunter is on everyone's shit list though.

Over the last couple weeks I've been seeing updates to the lower-level dungeons. A few mini-boss fights that used to be easy and boring have suddenly turned tougher. Mainly there are more adds, or the existing adds have gotten bigger and tougher.

That's interesting, is this in Retail or Classic again?

I wasn't aware of any changes, although all the junk recently with the harassment/political issues sent the devs pouring through old expacs to change some things -- maybe they made additional changes as well.

There were some notable changes to older content when they did cataclysm but those were more... notable and expected.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

That's interesting, is this in Retail or Classic again?

The changes are in Retail. I haven't done Classic in ages. (The pace in Classic is way too slow for me now, after all these years of Retail.)

It's funny, because the changes are mostly subtle. At first, I thought it was just me: When I would get a few extra adds in a fight, it was easy to blow that off and chalk it up to one of the team members accidentally pulling them. And if a mini-boss was patrolling in a new spot outside her normal area, I figured maybe it was just a fluke.

But I've gone through the same dungeons a couple times now, and I'm pretty sure I'm seeing changes to 4 or 5 miniboss fights that used to be among the easiest. Now I find that I have to take time and set them up properly or they can be surprisingly tough.

And Cookie's cauldron: The top of the cauldron used to be as high as my character's hip. Now it comes up to my character's head.

If you haven't done the lower-level dungeons in a while, the changes probably wouldn't even be noticed. But I've been going through these same 20 or so dungeons repeatedly in rotation since October of last year, and a couple mini-boss fights definitely seem different just in the past 2-3 weeks or so. Now I find that I need to set up the fights more carefully. As I said, I like the changes. It has made those particular fights more interesting.

I wasn't aware of any changes, although all the junk recently with the harassment/political issues sent the devs pouring through old expacs to change some things -- maybe they made additional changes as well.

That's a good point. I heard about those particular changes: Taking down risque pictures on walls, etc. I agree with your thinking: Hunting down those particular changes would have forced the developers to interact more closely with the old content for a while. Maybe it caused them to look at some of the old mini-boss fights with a fresh perspective.

 

[Totenkindly]

Really interesting. yeah, I wouldn't notice because I don't run old expac dungeons on their level, I just blow through them solo for xmog gear at level 60 aside from doing the TW dungeon events. (And there's only 5-6 of them from each expac.) So you'd have to queue and run them at the appropriate levels to notice.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Yep. Queuing for old expacs and doing them at the appropriate level is mainly for newbs, or power-leveling new alts, or nostalgia freaks like me.

Surprisingly after all these years, the old Cataclysm dungeons are still fairly high-volume. Even for DPS, the queues move pretty fast (at least during prime time).

 

[Totenkindly]

Yep. Queuing for old expacs and doing them at the appropriate level is mainly for newbs, or power-leveling new alts, or nostalgia freaks like me.

Surprisingly after all these years, the old Cataclysm dungeons are still fairly high-volume. Even for DPS, the queues move pretty fast (at least during prime time).

What server are you on? I'm on Sentinels which is rather dead and overfilled with Alliance. But maybe a different server would have more active population for old content.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Quel'Dorei, on the Alliance side.

Horde used to have the edge on Quel'Dorei server in past years; at least they seemed unbeatable in PvP. But I don't know about currently. Things have definitely changed over time.

But whatever. Queuing for old-content dungeons seems to work okay for me on Quel'Dorei server, and that's all I really care about for the moment.

 

[Totenkindly]

Jamie Lee Curtis to officiate her daughter's wedding dressed as a World of Warcraft character

Jamie Lee Curtis to officiate her daughter's wedding dressed as a World of Warcraft character

www.yahoo.com

Even if it is Jaina, I forgive her because she already did an orc shammy.

Jamie Lee Curtis Went To The 'Warcraft' Premiere Dressed As An Orc Even Though She Isn't In It. 100 Points.

Kudos to Jamie Lee Curtis, who went to the premiere of 'Warcraft' in costume as an orc.

www.nme.com

I generally like Duncan Jones' films, but WoW was kinda meh. It didn't help that I was pretty tired of all the orc rehashing in end of Pandaria and then all of WoD.