World of Warcraft

[Totenkindly]

Welp, I got ONE of my four Pandara world-boss mount drops last night -- I almost missed it and had to look twice since I was on a routine.

Sha of Anger dropped the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent. (It's the same model as the Jade Cloud Serpent, the Azure one you get for Lord of the Reins, and the golden one you can buy after you hit exalted with the Emperor on timeless Isle.) I got it on a bonus coin roll.

It's a mount owned by about 100-150 accounts out of every 1000, but the drop rate is estimated to be at 1/2000.

Based on the kills across my character pool in the WoW statistics panel, I had 135 kills on the Sha of Anger, so toss in coin rolls (maybe 70% of those?), that puts me around 230 "tries" which is actually really great. I have seen people claiming to have farmed this boss (including coins) anywhere from 2000-7000 times before succeeding, if they did.

Photo courtesy of Ophyra, Rage Warrior



EDIT: Also, here's a mount I ran across over the weekend, while waiting for a rare to spawn. Saelki (my pally) is looking on in jealous rage at this beautiful golden-armored horse with fluttering white filigree wings... and when I looked it up, it looks like it's been retired. It was just a promotional for a year's annual pass or something back in 2011 (when I don't think I was playing). They were so stringent about it, it accidentally opened up in NA when they made it available in Taiwan or Singapore a few years later, and they refunded everyone's money in NA who managed to snag it from THAT promotional and took it away. It's called "Tyrael's Charger."

 

[Totenkindly]

Ok, few things

1) How in the HELL did I miss this thread? WoW is only one of my favorite games ever

2) Well done on the mount collection!

Thanks! I am up to about 310 now, there's another bonus mount at 350. I have about five more I'm working towards with questlines (from Legion or Draenor).

3) Good choice on Horde characters, yet another reason why I like you so much

it's funny, I did start with Alliance but once I stared playing Horde I don't really enjoy Alliance that much -- usually when I'm playing the alliance, I feel like a spy now. (Horde Sympathizer, covert!)

4) Unfortunately I don't have too much to contribute to the general thread.

Why?

Well, for starters, I am the filithiest of casual players. Not in a guild right now because I can't ever seem to find one that players a lot at the weird times and hours I play. Also, I don't care much for raiding so that excludes from a lot.

Yeah, I'm pretty bad that way too. I have randomly joined guilds who invited me, and only one has been useful. Typically I join and everyone else leaves. I stay in just to get the perks but that's all.

I also really don't do raids anymore. Going out with the one active guild last month was the first Raid stuff I've done for months and months. I usually just run dungeons and low level mythics at best, usually I'm just doing world solo questlines, world bosses, the two main warfronts, and world PvP. Plus still a large effort of past expac xmogs/pets/mounts/toys. Plus Horrific Visions / Assaults.

I did do a little bit of pet battling because I was forced to, to get certain mounts. It was okay. I don't care enough for it to focus on it, but I learned enough to achieve other goals.

That all being said, *VERY* excited for the Shadowlands expansion. I purchased the physical Collectors Edition and I gobble up every piece of news from Belluar, Taliesin, Preach and find myself waiting for the pre-patch so I can start leveling up some of the alts I want to play (Got all of the Allied Races and leveled 6 of them to max for their heritage armor and absolutely CAN.NOT. run around character through that same convoluted gauntlet again)

I have read pretty much nothing aside from the bare general understanding of it, and I have not played on PTR either because I wanted it to be fresh.

TBH, I feel the opposite -- while I think the level crunch and improved leveling is a great idea, I feel overwhelmed at them changing everything again and having to relearn the game after having honed all my builds for the last two years and having a full roster of characters at my disposal. Also it sounds like the changes are exclusionary, a choice made earlier in the process limits later choices.

I feel like I am not going to do much with it until Icy Veins or other sites can provide clearer advice on class/build styles. There's probably some stuff out there now but I haven't read it yet.

Anyway, if you do want to do stuff let me know.

 

[Totenkindly]

The current holiday up is Brewfest 2020. It runs from this past sunday until the end of NEXT week (so around two weeks).

This has been the year I've basically been clearing out all the achievements and gear from the holiday events, it looks like there's probably twelve during the year. Some are smaller events, some are the large typical ones. (For example, after Brewfest I'm pretty sure is the Halloween event, near the end of October.) Each event has achievements to complete, along with xmogs, occasional mounts, pets, toys, and maybe titles, plus fun crap gear that you can save and use during the year. (For example, I still have snowballs + pumpkin heads left from events 10-11 months ago). Any progress you make (that isn't captured in an achievement) is unfortunately lost until next year's revisit, which means any of the holiday currency you acquire to buy things from the vendors.

I got into this originally when i realized that most of these events have unique hearthstones that you can acquire, to change your hearthstone animation. Despite playing WoW originally back in 2005-2006 (and then on and off), i only realized this about a year or two back, so my goal this year was to get the unique hearthstones and then it became a "might as well do everything, then be done with it" thing. And I think I only missed one of the minor events this year. I think the lunar festival and the torch festivals are the most arduous for achievements and thus titles, because you end up having to visit most of the regions on both continents and more as part of the achievements.

Brewfest is much easier, and has a lot of crap, and typically you can get a ton of the holiday currency in one-time only quests each year, which means a character can afford to buy one of the larger items but then maybe only scrape together to get one other large thing at best over two weeks. So this is why you do it with multiples, due to diminishing returns -- you can get all the currency you need for a toy or gear piece (100-200 tokens) within two days on a character for Brewfest. It's just more bang for buck. Since I have a good ten or more characters I can use, this isn't a big deal. I already bought the hearthstone and one of the outfits, but there's 6-7 toys left + a few pets. THe thing is, once you get these, you're forever done unless they add more to the next version of the holiday (which they haven't done much of). So really it's a temporary endeavor.

Each holiday usually has a PUG dungeon boss to beat daily, which takes about 3 minutes (depending on the queue size, sometimes it takes longer to get in), with potential drops. Usually for top-level characters they're a waste aside from any special drop like a mount that could be tied to the boss. For example, I got a few epic trinket drops... one or two of them were really great ones in terms of the trinket abilities --but they are specced 40 iLevels below the typical range of characters completing this expac, which means they are virtually worthless at this point. What gives, Blizz?

 

[Totenkindly]

So I had touched on this before, but there are various inequities in Horde/Alliance experience. It's all over the place.

For example, the Brewmaster festival takes place right outside of Orgrimmar for Horde (so it's convenient) but outside of Ironforge bfor Alliance (so it's more of a pain to reach and get back from -- you either have to tram it, or hearthstone it somehow, or hit up the portal room). Also, the ram race is more interesting and fun for Horde -- it's a little more complex and you can benefit from skill, whereas the Alliance version is straight forward and rather boring, and it looks like they even dropped one of the apple barrels. As another point, the visit to three cities to zap the pachyderms (for 40 tokens, so it's a significant holiday quest) is easier for Horde. This is one of those instances where Horde seems to have a better deal.

On the other hand, for Heroic Warfront Darkshore, Alliance is so much freaking easier even though it would have been easy to have them be comparable -- so I think they just did this on purpose, to lower the bar for ally players? The most egregious point is the final boss. For horde, no matter your item level (and i don't care you are i440 or i470), if you ignore the fire mechanics you will DIE in about 2 seconds of flame damage, it doesn't matter how tough you are. It's still routine this late in the expac to have 2/3 of your raid die because idiots ignored using the dropped blades to blow holes in the fire walls, etc. and otherwise had fire appear under their feet randomly and kill them because they were focused on something else for a second or two. Meanwhile, for ally, you don't have to do mechanics at all. You can be i440 and just stand there and let the magic walls of soldiers run through and barely have your health bar dented. It's absolutely ridiculous to the point of being offensive, although I take much more satisfaction over surviving on Horde end boss -- it's more of an achievement, you can pretty much walk through the alliance version with your eye shut aside from making sure your healers are healing your leader during the first boss. ALliance is the only time I have ever been on a failing raid; the DPS weren't doing enough damage, and the healers were not healing our leader despite multiple in-game warnings ("YOUR LEADER IS CRITICALLY WOUNDED!") and the leader died, and we were all booted out of the warfront and had to reorganize the raid. People were livid, since aside from the game warnings the PLAYERS were screaming "HEALERS -- HEAL THE LEADER!!" in chat during that fight.

I think playing both sides, also, of world PvP assaults, Alliance had a bit better positioning of the assaults to their cities. All are still manageable, although the Alliance Drustvar encounter was the worst in the early part of the assault season. (It was typical for the assault area to be easily swarming with 40-50 ally at any given time, and Horde who showed up were more in the 2-8 quantity... so you're hosed.) Since you cannot do quests in a raid aside from killing boss mobs, you couldn't do the assault quests directly; you either had to have a few horde teams running (5 players each) who were also loosely organized in a 'raid group" unofficially, or you had to raid, wipe out every ally you could find, then hurry and do the quests before they mobilized. But if you were raided in from another shard, and you left the raid group, you were sent back to your own shard, where the ally had not been wiped out. Anyway.... I think that was all set up to encourage more ally world pvp. I think the inequities in other zones were more easily remedied. And Drustvar got a LOT better once the later patches rolled out, with attention shifted to Nazjatar and then Mechagon and finally Vale/Uldir, because there was a lot more to do besides just the assaults and quantities of Ally attendees dropped to a more equitable matchup with Horde.

There might have been something else Horde was given the better setup for, but I do not currently recall what it was.

 

[Totenkindly]

Will the prepatch go in today (which also necessitates the removal of Corruption, which will change the game and mark the passing of a number of BFA achievements / mounts / etc)?

It will be a bummer, Corruption has broken the game -- but man, it has been glorious to be a god for a few months. THe content I've been plowing through, dropping random meteors on heads and stat proc buffs, etc. For those of us geared out with max corruption (My pally has a horrendous amount of corruption, maybe 150? But she's resistant at max, 125, so... not a lot of actual corruption in effect. Which means she's got multiple Infinite Meteors and Mastery buffs in place.)

Anyway, back to prepatch: I am guessing not.

It SHOULD have gone in today but I think Blizzard was overly optimistic on setting an Oct 26-28 release for SL, which is earlier than normal -- and they are apparently still having troubles and are testing in PTR. This week they are removing all characters from PTR, because it's been creating problems in testing all the fixes they have made (with the test characters who have been around for awhile no longer reflecting all the PTR corrections). I think it was dumb for them to push for an earlier release date, they really need to get SL right -- and it's a lot of changes from BFA, in ways that BFA was not as much a change from Legion. They need to nail SL.

We'll see. I did notice a lot of background downloads, though, last week from the Blizzard panel.

My Ally rogue (whose main use was when she was my main for Pandaria) is now up to 116. After she's done, I will work on my Horde Blood DK and Horde shaman. I've never leveled a DK before, and I'm running a tank build for leveling because Blood is super-durable and AOE, so for a tank it can do a decent amount of damage output.

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, there is it: Shadowlands is delayed. I was thinking they weren't ready.

prepatch is October 13 (not this Tuesday, but the following), with no scheduled date for SL yet.

Announcement is here:
An Update on Shadowlands


-----

Meanwhile my ally rogue just hit 120, so i geared her up for two hours and will probably jump over to my horde panda blood death knight (currently mid-60's).

 

[Stigmata]

Well, there is it: Shadowlands is delayed. I was thinking they weren't ready.

prepatch is October 13 (not this Tuesday, but the following), with no scheduled date for SL yet.

Announcement is here:
An Update on Shadowlands


-----

Meanwhile my ally rogue just hit 120, so i geared her up for two hours and will probably jump over to my horde panda blood death knight (currently mid-60's).

I'm kinda glad they delayed it tbh. It seems like the expansion was on the way to being rushed while still being raw in the middle, and I'm glad blizzard has somewhat learned their lesson from prior expansions. I've been debating whether or not I should level my last two characters (druid and mage). I really have no intentions of ever investing any degree of time into gearing them up, and would moreso being doing it just because. The mage is 114 and the druid is 103, so it's not like it would require a great deal of time to do so.

 

[Totenkindly]

I'm kinda glad they delayed it tbh. It seems like the expansion was on the way to being rushed while still being raw in the middle, and I'm glad blizzard has somewhat learned their lesson from prior expansions. I've been debating whether or not I should level my last two characters (druid and mage). I really have no intentions of ever investing any degree of time into gearing them up, and would moreso being doing it just because. The mage is 114 and the druid is 103, so it's not like it would require a great deal of time to do so.

I mainly did my rogue because I had no one to open chests on ally side. It doesn't take long, if you run assaults and the special one time high xp quest areas.

Normally their expacs drop in Nov. It felt like they were rushing this one. Now they are just back on regular rollout.

 

[Stigmata]

I keep saying I want to have my characters on alliance side just because I've played horde for so many years, but honestly Horde races, as a whole, look so much better. I may just so some race changes on my horde characters to do away with some of my blood elfs.

 

[The Cat]

I keep saying I want to have my characters on alliance side just because I've played horde for so many years, but honestly Horde races, as a whole, look so much better. I may just so some race changes on my horde characters to do away with some of my blood elfs.

also isnt the alliance kinda...dicks?

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, I've had encounters with crap from both ends. Maybe more with Ally, but I also play Horde more often so there's more chance. (I had two encounters this week with Horde behavior -- one 120 Horde hunter actually stalked my <120 rogue through SS and killed me, although there were no quests up for him to benefit from in doing so, and I was under 120 so I don't think he gets honor either from that... it was just pure griefing, and I jumped to another toon and left him there since he was camping my body; the other, again I got ganked by a whole party of Horde camping a Loh WQ outside Tiregarde Sound, which sucked because it was an easy rotation of Tortellan quests I wanted a ring from and I ended up just not bothering because I couldn't get the quest completed and it was late. That was a little more allowable since I was in WM and the CTA this week is Tiragarde... it's just it was midnight my time and usually most people do CTA during the weekly assault window).

Then again, i've had some real crap happen from Alliance, and I also think the ONLY time I've lost Heroic Warfront Darkshore was on an ally team, on the very first boss despite multiple warnings from game and raid on what to do. It actually kicks everyone out of the raid, and I had to find another one and restart. That still kind of rankles me, lol.

It's kind of fun playing Alliance simply to hear what they say about Horde in chat. I've been murdered by Horde when in Alliance guise, I always want to throw up my hands into the secret Horde sign to show them I'm a sympathizer but oh well, I guess I'm still contributing to the cause in some way with my life offered up.

 

[Stigmata]

also isnt the alliance kinda...dicks?

Well, I've had encounters with crap from both ends. Maybe more with Ally, but I also play Horde more often so there's more chance. (I had two encounters this week with Horde behavior -- one 120 Horde hunter actually stalked my <120 rogue through SS and killed me, although there were no quests up for him to benefit from in doing so, and I was under 120 so I don't think he gets honor either from that... it was just pure griefing, and I jumped to another toon and left him there since he was camping my body; the other, again I got ganked by a whole party of Horde camping a Loh WQ outside Tiregarde Sound, which sucked because it was an easy rotation of Tortellan quests I wanted a ring from and I ended up just not bothering because I couldn't get the quest completed and it was late. That was a little more allowable since I was in WM and the CTA this week is Tiragarde... it's just it was midnight my time and usually most people do CTA during the weekly assault window).

Then again, i've had some real crap happen from Alliance, and I also think the ONLY time I've lost Heroic Warfront Darkshore was on an ally team, on the very first boss despite multiple warnings from game and raid on what to do. It actually kicks everyone out of the raid, and I had to find another one and restart. That still kind of rankles me, lol.

It's kind of fun playing Alliance simply to hear what they say about Horde in chat. I've been murdered by Horde when in Alliance guise, I always want to throw up my hands into the secret Horde sign to show them I'm a sympathizer but oh well, I guess I'm still contributing to the cause in some way with my life offered up.

I've actually encountered way more elitist assholes on Horde side (granted I play on Illidan-US, which is one of the top US horde servers and has always been home to several really really good guilds and a bunch of mediocre ones who think themselves better by proxy) than alliance, but I've also played with a bunch of really terrible players on Alliance side. I've played both factions at max level, though, and alliance seems to cater more both ends of the age demographic spectrum (the really young players or the really old players), whereas horde seems to attract more of the 18-34 crowd of better individually skilled players but much more bad behavior. Granted, this is obviously just a generalization but I wanted to give my two cents.

I want to go back alliance for a change of pace but honestly I'm not even sure what races I'd make my characters -- the only thing that appeals to me on alliance side would be Humans. I don't really like the space goats (Draenei) and the night elf well has been poisoned by how many new characters roll nightelf and give a bad impression upon the race. I refuse to ever play a gnome, and dwarfs aren't much better.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, I can't say I've played high-end raid and dungeon content, so I really haven't interacted much with the potentially elitist horde players. I run across it most when either doing the Mythic dungeon world quest that pops up occasionally or TW'ing events, but I'm seeing a lot more leveling folks nowadays. Still, I run across players that know the game a lot more than others. (I had the tank in one TW'ing Pandara dungeon give shorthand expectations that most people didn't follow -- he even told us to pop Shroud at one point, and I kinda guessed he was talking to me since I was a rogue -- but the rogue is an underused alt, I never had anyone pop Shroud there before, and frankly never use Shroud so I'm not super-familiar with the details of its working. I figured after 20 seconds he was talking to me and popped it -- and then the group fucked it up anyway by leaving the boundaries of it, and the tank was groaning... lol)

I mean, let's face it -- typically because of the races offered and themes of the game, I think Alliance covers a far larger diversity of players. It's just the way it is. They've been trying to shade Horde as "not evil" thematically in the storylines, which has been helping; but realistically, if we tally up how many times major horde figures have gone batshit crazy, which side has been treated worse by the writers? The recent bit with Sylvannis committing genocide so to speak didn't really help either. But that's multiple stories where the horde leader ends up being a big bad of some kind in the campaign storylines. I guess Arthas went all Lich King but it was really clear he was rogue; the horde races have been more confusing in their portrayal I think.

Anyway, it's like anyone outside the game of any age who would decide to fight with the elves and dwarves (traditionally associated with the good guys) like out of LotR would automatically see the orcs and similar monster races as evil, as they were in LotR. It's a perception and stereotype thing. THe Alliance races are "prettier" so you get a wider diversity of player age and gender and type, I think, who want to feel "good". Horde did get blood elves (which of course was an obvious attempt to make the Horde less monster-appearing) but they are basically the snobby high elves cliche, so....

So yes, as you said, you get the people more interested in play skill, character builds, precision, probably on the horde, and they are a more targeted age range. Meanwhile I think you get a much wider age range and the more "relaxed" type of player, RP'ers, etc, absorbed in the Alliance.

I think I just crack up when I go into either chat and hear the same complaints about how horrible the other side is in terms of their morals and fairness of play. I could copy-and-paste conversations from either side and just repost in the other. But I would say I tend to hear more bitching about the opposition's lack of skill from the Horde (about Alliance), whereas I think Alliance has bitched more about Horde ruthlessness?

I actually like the Lightforged and regular Draenei a lot. They're kind of my "blood elf" weakness on the Alliance end, for some reason I'm kinda "eh" on Night Elves. I did like the larger human template race they introduced in BFA, and I appreciate that my human females there aren't wispy little things. I'm not really fond of the other Ally races though. About as far as my enjoyment with Gnomes goes simply about picking a class that seems to jar with the size and cuteness -- like a tanky warrior or a flurrying monk.

I'm still toying with changing my belf rogue into undead and incorporating it into a fictitious backstory of some kind. I like trying to have at least one of every class and race but try to mix it all up rather than playing pure racial talent mechanics. (I have a Nightborne arms warrior rather than leaning into the magic that Nightborne give bonuses for. I guess I will say at this point I do favor Arms in terms of play enjoyment, I always feel like the attack chain for Fury feels "fuzzy" to me and needs time to ramp up.)

 

[Totenkindly]

I seemed to have just bottomed out on WoW. No real motivation even with my weekly grid runs of various world bosses for mount drops. I just don't much care at the moment. They're having TW'ing this week (WoD) and I typically plan to just run a dungeon on all my toons to get the 500 TW currency to buy things -- but I have already bought all the mounts and major toys and xmog stuff so... I just am not motivated.

Last night I did start leveling my panda Blood DK, solo, through Northrend. It's kind of fun, I guess, just to learn the class. I have to keep remembering as a tank doing damage I benefit from just aggro'ing more than I'm used to, versus being a rogue or some solo DPS'er where I have to aggro with more finesse. Also, it's okay for my health bar to drop to mid-level, because I basically am able to mitigate and force the needle to hover in the middle. Currently at 68.

 

[Stigmata]

Decided to roll some fresh toons on Alliance side yesterday. Made a Male space goat Draenei Paladin (there's about a 99% chance this gets changed to Human once I hit max level. I thought I could do it -- I thought I could play something outside of the norm for me. Everytime I see this character I think of the "look at my hoovessss" cartoon drawing from Freddy Got Fingered) and made it from like 1-30 in like 2 hours just continually dungeon spamming once it hit level 15. The pacing and reduced GCDs on retail just make the game so much faster and more engaging, versus classic where everything just feels like a needless long and painful exercise in the depths of which a normal, well-adjusted person can tolerate self-harm.

I just can't believe how fast and how easy it is to level in Retail. I had about 4 pieces of heirloom gear, coupled with the 100% bonus EXP buff, I was getting like 3 levels per dungeon. I may just end up using the time between now and Shadowlands launch to remake all the characters I care to play on retail Alliance and just write off my old Horde toons.

 

[Totenkindly]

LGBTQ themes in WoW Shadowlands | TechRadar

Flynn Fairwind and Mathias Shaw??? Lol. But I hate Shaw, he was such a bastard in Horrific Visions!!

 

[Totenkindly]

I mean, I'm sad to see you dump Horde, but yes.... leveling is so much easier in retail than classic, and you can use tricks like dungeons and assaults and the special quest zones to level even faster along with heirlooms. Plus if you pick up professions, you get xp from gathering.

I did 10 levels in about 2 hours the other night on my shaman just questing in the Barrens plus brewfest.

But yeah to get heirloom armor xmog, yeah, pick the race whose armor you want, hit the min level to get it. Then swap races to what you want to play.

I did try classic but the leveling was painful.... and my friends just weren't around to spend the time with.

 

[Stigmata]

I mean, I'm sad to see you dump Horde, but yes.... leveling is so much easier in retail than classic, and you can use tricks like dungeons and assaults and the special quest zones to level even faster along with heirlooms. Plus if you pick up professions, you get xp from gathering.

I did 10 levels in about 2 hours the other night on my shaman just questing in the Barrens plus brewfest.

But yeah to get heirloom armor xmog, yeah, pick the race whose armor you want, hit the min level to get it. Then swap races to what you want to play.

I did try classic but the leveling was painful.... and my friends just weren't around to spend the time with.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the Horde. I love my undead rogue and warrior, my Orc shaman, ect. I just need a change if I'm gonna be able to tolerate playing the game. I've been playing Horde since the beginning of BC (I did take a few month's hiatus from horde to play an alliance rogue in SSC/TK in bc raiding) almost exclusively until now. I'd almost forgotten there was another faction given how lopsided the numbers from Horde versus Alliance is on my server.

That said, Classic is just excruciating for the sake of fleeting nostalgia. All classic does is help me realize why certain things were changed and how much better the overall game is now as opposed to then. The only thing I don't really like about retail is how streamlined everything is, to the point where the communal aspect of the game is all but lost, but even that's not really the end of the world.

That all said, female characters seem the only ones that are tolerable on alliance. My next characters will probably be a Female Draenei priest and/or shaman.

 

[Totenkindly]

Don't get me wrong, I still love the Horde. I love my undead rogue and warrior, my Orc shaman, ect. I just need a change if I'm gonna be able to tolerate playing the game. I've been playing Horde since the beginning of BC (I did take a few month's hiatus from horde to play an alliance rogue in SSC/TK in bc raiding) almost exclusively until now. I'd almost forgotten there was another faction given how lopsided the numbers from Horde versus Alliance is on my server.

I don't know what the actual PvP battlegrounds and stuff balance like. I'm on two old servers (Sentinels for Horde, Feathermoon for Alliance), and when I try to do open-world PvP events like the assaults, though, I typically have to leave my server and join groups elsewhere since there's few opposing faction showing up for the regular events on my starting server.

That said, Classic is just excruciating for the sake of fleeting nostalgia. All classic does is help me realize why certain things were changed and how much better the overall game is now as opposed to then. The only thing I don't really like about retail is how streamlined everything is, to the point where the communal aspect of the game is all but lost, but even that's not really the end of the world.

Right. I really like the mechanics bent and progress -- retail seems very goal-oriented.

Classic is not very goal-oriented, it's more like ambling through rural American gothic or something. No one is in a rush, it's for all the folks to hang out and talk about "remember when" while occasionally doing a quest together, etc. At least, in terms of the attitudes of the people I've found there. More of the "online hangout" approach to RPGs. Certainly you can't find it in the mechanics or the leveling progress, etc.

That all said, female characters seem the only ones that are tolerable on alliance. My next characters will probably be a Female Draenei priest and/or shaman.

Woot! Space Goats for the win!

 

[Totenkindly]

I had been thinking of doing further Horrific Visions run to earn another socket or two, or at least pick up a 465 or 470 item... but I haven't felt very motivated...mainly because I realized even if I get something I can use, they're going to start dropping new gear in Shadowlands and my old gear will be outscaled as soon as the expac drops. So is there a point in trying to squeeze out an extra item with 5-10 iLvls? Probably not.

Instead I've been leveling a few more characters. I got my horde panda Blood DK up to level 90 a few minutes ago -- I played for a few hours today and blew through 10 levels of Pandaria like that. (Even if some players don't like the expac, it's so darn easy to level 80-90 in Jade Forest in the current setup.) I also got my horde vulpera shaman up to level 45 pretty quickly last night from mid-20's.

Over on alliance, I pushed my low 50's velf priest up to 60, so at least she has flying now. It's a huge quality of life jump.

pretty much haven't bothered with anything else.

---

Anyway, another thing for my characters is that I got bored with armor and have often run them with a casual look. Plate wearers are the hardest (legs are usually pretty plate-like in appearance unfortunately) but cloth and leather have more options. I also finally did the brawler season and ran a bunch of random fights to get as many shirt drops as I could (and now I think I have all but four of them?)

For example, here's my pally and my rogue:

The rogue get-up cracks me up. But I think it's fun since everyone else is typically looking all decked out in overdone armor. My demon hunter in leather usually looks even more night-clubby.

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Another fun thing I was starting to play with -- there are various toys that let you look like monsters. (One of them even looks like a guardian flame knight I think that's conjurable.) I have found looking like something other than a typical PC when you are PvP'ing in open world at least sometimes leads to you being ignored a bit more, they think you're just an NPC sprite or something. Last week, someone cast a murloc costume on me (my ally pally) which lasts an hour of gameplay, and I was more often ignored again in open world PvP... It was amusing. Also amusing is the /dance feature for murlocs -- they basically do the shark-and-jets thing from West Side Story... jazz fingersnaps with their hands low to the ground, then these wide-splayed arms and then quick pirouettes. I wonder what other racial dance things there are?