WoW: Warlords of Draenor

[Darth Yan]

One thing that could have been awesome is the incorporation of the ash bringer comic into the mmo. Basically, Darion, an orc warrior named Grunn'holde, a Dwarf named Brannigan, A mage named Castillien, and a blood elf named Ferallyn storm Naaxramus, and although most of them die they acquit themselves pretty well (Grunn'holde manages to take out one of the four horseman by throwing an axe into their face); Darion would have interacted with Tirion, and would have tried to help out at Light's hope. During the final showdown he tries to reach Kel'thuzad and ultimately sacrifices his life; the sacrifice then unleashes the spirits beneath Light's hope chapel and incinerates Kel'thuzad's army. Darion is than recruited into the scourge.

The guys who accompanied Darion worked in that case because a.) since we don't know a lot about them they could easily be stand ins for the pc. Since they come from multiple factions (The blood elf and the orc for the horde, the dwarf, other human and darion for the alliance) it could even avoid giving one faction the canon raid of Naaxrumus.)


If they had a.) changed it so that the sacrifice cleansed Ashbringer of its evil (since it was an act of selfish hatred that corrupted it an act of selfless love purifying it would be symmetry that isn't contrived) b.) made it so that the spirit eruption wiped out Kel'thuzad (have the souls fall upon him and annihilate him)

that would have been cool as well. Kel'thuzad hasn't really done anything since the first Naaxramus raid, so it would have ended his arc. It could have even added more tension since Darion could replace Kel'thuzad as the second in command of the Scourge.

I brought up Malak because he largely went down the path at first out of devotion to Revan (in one flashback he actually asks Revan that maybe they should turn back.) He continued down the path of his own violation, but it was largely due to Revan he set a foot on the path.

[TheFeniX]

I brought up Malak because he largely went down the path at first out of devotion to Revan (in one flashback he actually asks Revan that maybe they should turn back.) He continued down the path of his own violation, but it was largely due to Revan he set a foot on the path.

And Revan definitely shares some of the blame for what Malak turned into, even if his only "crime" was being a force of personality. But Malak was a grown man, a war veteran, and did just fine for himself. I'm not trying to absolve either Garrosh or Thrall of wrong-doing, but WRT to WoW the video-game: Blizzard seems to be saying Thrall just misjudged Garrosh when he put him in charge of the Horde. But anyone who plays the game at all knew Garrosh was the worst choice to lead the Horde for what Thrall thought it should be.

Just what the fuck was Thrall doing during MoP? When the world could actually use him to come in and say "Garrosh... dafuq?" he waits until Garrosh is 5 minutes away from ultimate victory.

Anyways, I've been trolling the forums more and more and Garrisons are going to be a major part of your endgame experience whether you like it or not. It's going to be a major nexus for almost all WoD content and will handicap you in leveling and in endgame if you decide not to grind the shit out of it. More than a few people on the official forums are of the mind that Blizzard is doing this to ensure people use them and, since doing something means you like it, to say "see guys, it was a good idea after all: everyone loves Garrisons."

No tier pieces nor decent trinkets for LFR in WoD. Dunno, whatever. Trinkets have become a joke. I actually miss my STR trink with on use being "throw a tree at someone." Best. Trinket. Ever.

[Lord Revan]

Actually Thrall present in the Horde versions of the Divine Bell and Escalation questlines

[NeoGoomba]

One thing that could have been awesome is the incorporation of the ash bringer comic into the mmo.

That would be a pretty sweet Caverns of Time instance. And they could reuse old assets without anyone really caring so long as they change up some of the asthetics.

[TheFeniX]

Actually Thrall present in the Horde versions of the Divine Bell and Escalation questlines

You happen to remember any quest names? I'd like to watch the cutscenes. I think I could just find the Horde version of the quest-chain and go from there.

6.0 is supposedly up on the PTR.

Kyle and I are talking about what happens when WoD pops. If we'll even bother with it. I think my main complaint is I have so many 90s... all on a PvP server and I'm so done with non-instanced PvP. I'm not coughing up hundreds of dollars to transfer and I liked the people we gamed with anyways. Naz was dead as Hell before the merge, so it wasn't a big deal at all, but now there's more Horde (and many more Alliance) but said Alliance generally gives no fucks about WPvP. Leveling in Cata wasn't a big deal because Prot Pallies were broken as Hell and DKs were pretty strong (plus in early cata all I did was PvP as DK).

It took me over a week playing FFXIV before I realized no one had tried to gank me. That's because they can't: there is no non-instanced PvP. And to be honest, I find I just don't care enough about running into an opposing faction to even miss it.

[Lord Revan]

Actually Thrall present in the Horde versions of the Divine Bell and Escalation questlines

You happen to remember any quest names? I'd like to watch the cutscenes. I think I could just find the Horde version of the quest-chain and go from there.

sadly no, but thrall is present at liberating Echo Isles from the Kor'Kron forces in Divine Bell questline and helps defend Sen'Jin Village from Kor'Kron in Escalation (he leaves to find allies with in the orcs after Sen'Jin Village is saved and doesn't take part in the battle of Razorhill)

[Darmalus]

Actually Thrall present in the Horde versions of the Divine Bell and Escalation questlines

You happen to remember any quest names? I'd like to watch the cutscenes. I think I could just find the Horde version of the quest-chain and go from there.

Starts here: http://www.wowhead.com/quest=32319

As far as I can gather, Thrall has effectively spent the entire Pandarian campaign chilling out in the orc starter zone trying to pretend shit wasn't going to hell.

[TheFeniX]

As far as I can gather, Thrall has effectively spent the entire Pandarian campaign chilling out in the orc starter zone trying to pretend shit wasn't going to hell.

Why do WoW heroes come off as Bi-Polar?

Anyways, from what I can tell: WoD is going to ship with 4 leveling dungeons and 4 max level dungeons. Thankfully, the max level dungeons (while 2 look like reskins) are separate dungeons. But, am I missing something: 4 dungeons for 10 levels? Cata was 5 levels and launched with 7 (I think). LK launched with 11? And they added more dungeons that weren't just level capped dungeons like Cata did with ZA/ZG and the End of Time ones. I know BC had a shitload. God damn I miss LK dungeons.

This is fucking lame. Like really lame. I don't want to spend all my time in a dungeon, but I like running them with friends. Good times and good gear. I guess since they're removing the JP/VP grind, they think that's the only reason people ran dungeons. Whatever.

[Darmalus]

]Why do WoW heroes come off as Bi-Polar?

Probably because the dev team is pretty bipolar. You like a little salt on your food (Mists Farm, old daily system)? Then have nothing but salt to eat (garrisons, Mists dailies)! And then swinging down to nearly nothing when people get sick of it.

[Kuja]

As far as I can gather, Thrall has effectively spent the entire Pandarian campaign chilling out in the orc starter zone trying to pretend shit wasn't going to hell.

Why do WoW heroes come off as Bi-Polar?

Partly it's because of what Darmalus said and the wow devs in general try to pile on whatever seems hot with the playerbase at the moment. But as to the writing itself, it's because the wow writers don't write characters. They write scenes.

Like as in, "oh dude, this scene would be totally awesome!" or "oh man, let's have this happen!" They write a rule-of-cool scene and then force some characters into it. This is why you get characters that don't seem to have any consistency - even Metzen's golden boy Thrall got the short end of the stick in Wrath, when the devs were so pumped about making Garrosh the new star that they reduced Thrall to a mumbling whiner that barely stood up to him, even when Garrosh did something as egregious as knocking Jaina Proudmoore over during the Ulduar cinematic. On the other end of the scale, when someone had the idea for splitting Thrall into four elemental parts in Cataclysm, the best person they could think to do it was Fandral Staghelm...who then all but ignores the person he has a real beef with to focus on Thrall. And this wasn't even an attempt to kill Thrall - "Death? Who said anything about death?" I guess Fandral just wanted to troll us for a few hours.

As a result, when you try to analyze characters without constantly resorting to writer's fiat...well, everyone comes off as either fucking stupid or fucking insane, developing and then forgetting character traits with the passing of a breeze. Because none of them are really people, just plot devices to get us to the next awesome scene the wow writers have planned.

Like, take the famous b-bomb in Siverpine. Blizzard was trying really hard to show Garrosh as an orc's orc, an honorable warrior who wouldn't take shit from anyone. So when Sylvanas sasses him, he shoots right back and shows us he's not going to take any of her shit-

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: With the aid of the val'kyr, we are now able to take the corpses of the fallen and create new Forsaken.
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: Agatha, show the Warchief!
The val'kyr Agatha proceeds to resurrect fallen corpses as Forsaken.
High Warlord Cromush says: ABBERATION!
Garrosh Hellscream says: What you have done here, Sylvanas... it goes against the laws of nature. Disgusting is the only word I have to describe it.
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: Warchief, without these new Forsaken my people would die out... Our hold upon Gilneas and northern Lordaeron would crumble.
Garrosh Hellscream says: Have you given any thought to what this means, Sylvanas?
Garrosh Hellscream says: What difference is there between you and the Lich King now?
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: Isn't it obvious, Warchief? I serve the Horde.
Garrosh Hellscream says: Watch your clever mouth, bitch.
Garrosh Hellscream says: Cromush, you stay behind and make sure the Banshee Queen is well "guarded." I will be expecting a full report when next we meet.
High Warlord Cromush says: As you command, Warchief!
Garrosh Hellscream says: Remember, Sylvanas, eventually we all have to stand before our maker and face judgment. Your day may come sooner than others...

He compares her to the Lich King, insults her directly and leaves with a dire warning for her future...yet do you notice what doesn't happen here? He doesn't actually tell her to stop. As disgusting and hateful as he seems to find her methods...he's okay with it, because it gets him what he wants. Because Blizzard can't actually have Garrosh tell Sylvanas to stop, they have a new awesome battleground and a new faction rivalry hanging on things. For all intents and purposes, Sylvanas sends Garrosh home with his balls in a drawer, because much as he may run his mouth he doesn't actually do a thing to stop her. The whole conversation is for nothing more than some wow writer's desire to have Garrosh drop a curse word at Sylvanas, even when the course of the conversation ends up undermining its own purpose.

[Sharp-kun]

As far as I can gather, Thrall has effectively spent the entire Pandarian campaign chilling out in the orc starter zone trying to pretend shit wasn't going to hell.

Why do WoW heroes come off as Bi-Polar?

Anyways, from what I can tell: WoD is going to ship with 4 leveling dungeons and 4 max level dungeons. Thankfully, the max level dungeons (while 2 look like reskins) are separate dungeons. But, am I missing something: 4 dungeons for 10 levels? Cata was 5 levels and launched with 7 (I think). LK launched with 11? And they added more dungeons that weren't just level capped dungeons like Cata did with ZA/ZG and the End of Time ones. I know BC had a shitload. God damn I miss LK dungeons.

This is fucking lame. Like really lame. I don't want to spend all my time in a dungeon, but I like running them with friends. Good times and good gear. I guess since they're removing the JP/VP grind, they think that's the only reason people ran dungeons. Whatever.

WoD has 8 max level dungeons (heroics), though one is redone UBRS. Cata had 9 max level dungeons (though 2 were revamped - DM and SFK).

Both had 7 new dungeons.


I'm curious how many here are in the beta? I see nothing but whining on the net, but I've had a good blast in the beta. I'm wondering if its just me liking what others don't or its just the people who whine about everything clouding it while the rest of us have a good time.

[TheFeniX]

But as to the writing itself, it's because the wow writers don't write characters. They write scenes.

If ever there was a way to sum up WoW's writing issues, this would be it.

WoD has 8 max level dungeons (heroics), though one is redone UBRS.

How many leveling dungeons?

Cata had 9 max level dungeons (though 2 were revamped - DM and SFK).

And added 5 throughout the expansion.

Both had 7 new dungeons.

From here

8 new dungeons, 3 for leveling and 3 for max-level, as well as a revamped Upper Blackrock Spire

Bleh. I like 5-man content. More than that, I like more options. Options of which the dev team seems to be ditching in favor of all LFR all the time. It makes sense: you have to fill 25-man raids somehow, and this is hard to do if you offer people other content. Even past LFR: I don't not want to normal mode all day for a chance to progress with other players.

I'm curious how many here are in the beta? I see nothing but whining on the net, but I've had a good blast in the beta. I'm wondering if its just me liking what others don't or its just the people who whine about everything clouding it while the rest of us have a good time.

Yea, you're having a good time for the first few months. How about when the only thing you have to look forward to in a 2+ years expansion schedule is more raids? I like LFR and raiding. I do not like how everything not PvP in WoW endgame has become about raiding. In LK, just running heroic dungeons, you could get some pretty good gear, enough to actually run straight to LK without any new drops and with the JP farm. In Cata, you could do the same at any raid tier with the additional dungeons. In MoP? SoO NM is 100 ilvls above what drops from MoP Heroics.

MoP dungeons drop 463 at best and no new dungeons were added because it's all LFR or bust. Yea, I enjoyed MoP, but Blizzard is already shit with content updates and what we're getting each expansion is less and less. So forgive me if I'm not all that optimistic about coming back for WoD.

[Darmalus]

6.0 patch rolls out Tuesday (14 October). I wish I had known that the treasure run was going to go away, now I'm trying to finish off those achievements by monday.

Also, rank 10 brawler. Yay!

[TheFeniX]

6.0 patch rolls out Tuesday (14 October). I wish I had known that the treasure run was going to go away, now I'm trying to finish off those achievements by monday.

My stats! My glorious stats! Hilarious that some of my worst gear became BiS (Mastery/Crit) after hit and expertise got the axe. 450 Damage on my main hand is hilarious though. I think it used to be like 15k. I'm just glad the armory updated without logging in.

But my pally still has Light's Hammer. And that's really all I'd ever want to come back to.

Also, rank 10 brawler. Yay!

Grats. Our BG was usually empty, but there were more than a few X-realm people in there when I got rank 10. Lots of high-fives all around.

[Sharp-kun]

From what I hear it may be time to dust off Thunderfury....

[TheFeniX]

From what I hear it may be time to dust off Thunderfury....

Fuck. Yer. Seriously? Don't mess with me. I've got two of those courtesy of a bajillion MC runs on my DK and pally attempting to get Eye of Sulfuras. I used it as my off-hand on trash in raids just to get people to ask "what the Hell is that?" when it procs. Since I was howling blarg specced, it really didn't gimp my DPS in AOE situations. Sadly, neither my pally nor DK do nature damage. I've also got Warglaives and since the damage is only 1/5 rather than 1/1000000000000, I could roll with those for hilarity. Demons? Ah man, I got a Demon slaying knife, it does +200 against demons!

[Sharp-kun]

From what I hear it may be time to dust off Thunderfury....

Fuck. Yer. Seriously? Don't mess with me. I've got two of those courtesy of a bajillion MC runs on my DK and pally attempting to get Eye of Sulfuras. I used it as my off-hand on trash in raids just to get people to ask "what the Hell is that?" when it procs. Since I was howling blarg specced, it really didn't gimp my DPS in AOE situations. Sadly, neither my pally nor DK do nature damage. I've also got Warglaives and since the damage is only 1/5 rather than 1/1000000000000, I could roll with those for hilarity. Demons? Ah man, I got a Demon slaying knife, it does +200 against demons!

So says MMO-Champion.

Patch isn't live here yet but I jumped on the beta and Thunderfury did seem rather good compared to my 550ish SoO weapon.

Its probably not intended and will be nerfed, but I can hope. It'll only be relevant for a month anyway.

[Kuja]

Welp, to the surprise of absolutely no one who's been paying attention to the Beta and PTR forums, the new models went live and provoked a prompt backlash from people disappointed by the various changes interpretations made by the Blizz team.


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... 093?page=1

Also not surprisingly, Bashiok decided to run damage control and promptly stuck his foot in up to the knee. Not since Lore's attempt to run damage control on the WoD capitol change have I seen so many people telling off a blue poster. I think Tuvali in particular had a good response that sums up the matter-

Sorry to hear you're not enjoying your updated character! As others have mentioned, we've added facial customization options to the in-game barbershop, which will allow you to change additional appearance options for an in-game gold cost.

With the old models looking as... old, as they did, there's always been some amount of interpretation that's going to happen from person to person as they fill in the quality-gaps, and add their own story and character to any of the looks. Where a squiggly blurry line might look like a scar to you, it might look like freckles to someone else. A furled brow is grease smudge, a wince is a grimace, or a smile is a pout. We went into the archives, back to the source material and textures, and spent a lot of time trying to ensure we were interpreting all those squiggles and smudges in a way that is as true to the originals as possible, while also updating them to much higher resolutions and levels of fidelity. No easy task, I assure you. We expect that some will have had different interpretations of those old blurry textures than the ones we arrived at, and that's why we brought some of the recustomization features in-game for "free" (small gold cost like other barbershop features), and with that you can hopefully find new combinations and options that do appeal to you.

What bothers me is the fact the art crafts made a big point of the models being WIP and asked for user feedback, only to ignore all of it outwardly. Asking for feedback, getting it, and then not even acknowledging it doesn't mesh well with what you guys were saying all that time.

There are many threads for each race consisting of multiple pages of thoughtful, constructive, detailed feedback as to how to maintain the spirit of the old models working with what the WIP stuff presented. Those saying "well you should have posted where it matters when you had the chance!" Guess what? They did! People who had no access to the beta waited until it was on PTR to give feedback, and people in beta helped out those not in beta comment on the most recent changes as well. It's been a group effort.

This has gone on for months now. To not only have no acknowledgement to the huge issues like gnome faces being permanently depressed, facial shape issues for multiple races, eye glow issues, female tauren skin patterns being taken out and replaced, removing an undead face, not giving male undeads dark eye sockets... well, it's disappointing to say the least. Your post makes it sound like the powers that be have decided that the barbershop is what they've decided to go with rather than take into account all the months' worth of feedback. Well, that is sad.

This is the pre-patch. Make it right and look into it and continue working on this stuff until it's where it should be - if nothing else, at least for the worst offenders like the female undead missing face, tauren spotted skin patterns and DK blue skin color, and the stuff like that which is unmistakably done wrong. I humbly request that you guys don't just ignore players who have loved and played these characters for 10 years. I myself am a newbie to WoW(started playing last year) and if I were in the shoes of players who have been here this long, I can't even imagine how much more upset I'd be about this.

[Kuja]

Meanwhile, Zarhym gets his ass handed to him.

[Darmalus]

I've heard this over-reliance on beta testers to effectively replace QA people is industry wide. I wonder how much work it would have been to just have one team do each dungeon, scenario and raid once to check for any mobs that managed to avoid getting squished.

On the plus side, while damn near everything is buggy as hell (my friends and I had a "who crashed to desktop the most in the first hour" contest) NPC dialog is now a separate sound channel, which is something I have wanted since forever.

[TheFeniX]

I've heard this over-reliance on beta testers to effectively replace QA people is industry wide. I wonder how much work it would have been to just have one team do each dungeon, scenario and raid once to check for any mobs that managed to avoid getting squished.

Yea, EA farmed this shit out to it's customers with SWTOR with about the same results. Reading that hilarious thread, they didn't even need to go that far with testing. If the comments are to be believed: Current content is ridiculously broken. Packs of mobs 20 levels below geared players are blowing them up. Trash in LFR is wiping groups. Leveling dungeons are cratering groups in full heirloom gear. It plays like literally no testing was done, except players are stating these problems have been known about in the beta and PTR for months. And since Blizzard explicitly states "don't report a bug more than once" you can't even continually bitch about them.

"But patches are always buggy" and the moron MVP poster talking about fucking Madden and NBA2k14 being buggy and that coding is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. Well of course they are buggy because it's bullshit from EA. "GUYS, THE GAME HAS GIGABYTES OF DATA. THEY CAN'T TEST EVERYTHING. Fucking entitled gamers..."

Really, the only thing separating this from the SWTOR forums is that Blizzard is unlikely to be as ban/delete happy as EA forum trolls (I mean moderators) are.

Shit like this is a prime example of why gaming is a joke. My primary hobby is one big fucking joke when the biggest game in the world run by the largest video game publisher in the world has the QA of Valusoft. Blizzard prints money with WoW. Name another game that could make money hand-over-fist without releasing a single content update in over a year? Yet, they farm out their testing to the customer, ignore everything they say, release horribly broken shit, then blame the customer for not doing a good enough job testing, while their fanboys mercilessly fellate them and call out legitimate critics as "big ol' meanies!." But hey, doing it any other way would cost you a raid tier.

It makes perfect sense. Because Acti-Blizz will get away with this and the WoW boulder will keep on rolling the way it always has because people will constantly put up with it. It's still the MMO with the most content, millions of people have a lot invested into it already, so why give a fuck?

The sad part is: I wish I was playing WoW right now. I love trainwrecks of this magnitude. You made my night Kuja.

[Sharp-kun]

I've heard this over-reliance on beta testers to effectively replace QA people is industry wide. I wonder how much work it would have been to just have one team do each dungeon, scenario and raid once to check for any mobs that managed to avoid getting squished.

On the plus side, while damn near everything is buggy as hell (my friends and I had a "who crashed to desktop the most in the first hour" contest) NPC dialog is now a separate sound channel, which is something I have wanted since forever.

To their credit, what I can see a lot of things have been fixed before the patch has even gone live in the EU.

[Civil War Man]

Meanwhile, Zarhym gets his ass handed to him.

In even more trainwreck news, after it was announced that the Legendary Cloak quest chain would become unavailable after Warlords launches, the devs reassured people that when 6.0.2 launched people would no longer be required to have the cloak in order to fight Ordos, even including it as a line item in the 6.0.2 patch notes. Then, when people without the cloak mentioned that they were unable to access the Ordos fight, they sent Rygarius to let everyone know that they changed their minds and didn't bother to tell anyone about it.

[Darth Yan]

One thing that could have been awesome is the incorporation of the ash bringer comic into the mmo.

That would be a pretty sweet Caverns of Time instance. And they could reuse old assets without anyone really caring so long as they change up some of the asthetics.

Well I'd have changed it (namely have Ashbringer purified at THAT moment, when Darion sacrifices his life, since an act of selfless love purifying what was corrupted by an act of selfish hatred would be great symmetry, have Kel'thuzad actually perish for good when the spirits drag him down to the fiery depths of hell for his crimes, since it would end his arc on a satisfying note rather than just leaving him hanging like Wrath did.)

[Darmalus]

Just finished the Horde-side questline in the Blasted Lands. I'll get around the Alliance side later.
Spoiler

Anyone remember the speculation about the Horde garrison there switching sides? I guess they dropped that idea. The story Horde side is that when the Iron Horde came through, they went all out for Nethergard Keep. Okrilla (the Horde commander) sent her forces to retake Nethergard when it fell to the Iron Horde. Didn't help, everyone at Nethergard died and Okrillon Hold got taken for good measure. Okrilla was the only named NPC survivor of the Horde forces in the area. You participate in the counter attack to retake Nethergard and Okrillon Hold and kill some Dreadmaul Ogres who allied with the Iron Horde.

All in all a very short set of bog-standard quests. Feels kinda incomplete, like this was only the first half.