f13.net

Eight expansions later, we're out of big bads to fight. The legion's dead, it's army that made every expansion's big bad happen is gone, so now we're just going back to Orcs and Humans and doing fan-service like nobody else can do.

- Artifact weapons are gone. Everyone's getting an artifact necklace to cap their power throughout the expansion.

- No new classes, but six new alt-races for people to play with, each with their own racial passives and active.

- They're gonna try reviving 3-man scenarios from MoP, but they think it'll work this time because they've figured out how to add RNG to each scenario's generation/goal/monster/everything.

- New social stuffs. Voice-chat integration with all the things, cross-server communities that can be character-specific and you can be in multiple social groups.

- Next 7.3.5 patch will roll out zone scaling from Legion to all of the zones, within reason. Examples cited were BC and Wrath content scaling from 60-80, Westfall would be like 10-40, etc.

Everything else is the same as before, just newer/more of.

Oh, and another stat-squish, because I for one am tired of talking about item levels in the thousands.  :uhrr:

If only Legion hadn't become such an alt-unfriendly game, THEN I might give a shit about WoW.

I miss my chars but no way am I paying for a crappy ex-pac again

Yep. The alt unfriendly nature was what killed it for me too.  I enjoyed the game otherwise but once I hit cap with one it felt like I was fucking myself by not farming more Ap and focusing there.

The single best feature of the next expac is basically removing world pvp by making it opt-in even on pvp servers. Fuck that noise and the instagib gank squads with flying mounts rode in on.

(I used to play on a shithole of a pvp server with like a 7:3 faction ratio if it wasn't obvious  :awesome_for_real:)

I just resubbed about a month ago, so I'm not exactly up to speed yet, but there's a lot of meh here.


This is damn stupid.  You're telling me I'm going to drop Frostmourne to pick up some random green I found off a boar in the first zone?  Come on.  See, this is why this artifact weapon stuff was a stupid idea.  I notice that they don't mention anything about the class halls, either, meaning all this stuff is going to be a massive waste of time, like the garrison in Draenor.  Did they not think there was going to be another expansion, or what?  Just nobody gives a shit that they're flushing millions of dollars worth of work down the toilet every time they do this?  What are they going to do for the next expansion, "your new necklace ran out of batteries, now you get a legendary... um.... pair of boots?  Yes, legendary boots!"


Probably the best feature for me.  The new trolls might be cool, and I like the way the nightborne look, though right now the entire game is full to the eyeballs with elves.  No idea what void elves are supposed to be, or lightforged dranei.  Though the leveling experience right now is a complete goddamn mess so bringing up an alt is going to be a chore.


Goddamn it.  I HATE level scaling.  What is the goddamn point of getting stronger if everything else gets stronger at the exact same rate as you do?  And all the new zones are linear as hell, so unless there's some special "skip the Jade Forest" quest line it doesn't really matter.


Uhm, I hope it turns out better than the last one.  The leveling experience right now is a joke.  That one dev quoted in the Legion thread talking about how being able to kill mobs in one or two global cooldowns breaks the game almost made me drop my monocle, because that's basically how 91% of the game plays right now.  My druid in Pandaria can three-shot one enemy to build his combo gauge, and then one-shot the next.  My L50 Monk can do one of his "spam attack to build points" attacks I forget the name of and then one roundhouse kick thing and that will take them to dead, or within one autoattack of dead.  My hunter wipes out every mob in a forward arc with one cast of barrage whenever it's off cooldown.

And then you get to level 100 and suddenly everything scales with you and you can't kill anything fast anymore.  GREAT.

The PvP focus for this one has me a bit worried.  They tried to do that in some places in the previous expansions (especially Pandaria) and it's by far the worst written content I've seen in this game.

Any word yet on if we'll have to finish ten thousand raids to unlock flying for this one?  I still don't have any of the achievements, and unlocking it is a damn boring slog on the old content.

Artifact weapons weren't sustainable. Power levels were getting out of control, buffs to abilities unlocked by AP were silly when you can just get everything, and relics sucked. Aside from that, they do this with every expansion; find a new carrot-on-a-stick to keep you going. It may very well be boots next time.

Level scaling will allow you skip the Jade Forest. You could potentially go anywhere in MoP for that level range, or maybe stay in Cata zones, move to WoD zones...details are still being ironed out.

They have said in Q&A at BlizzCon that they learned a lot from the first stat squish and they want to do a better job this time of making things scale better. Addressing things like only seeing a +2 Intellect change when going from BC gear to Wrath gear, etc.

Some more details:

- PvP servers are gone. This will allow them to cluster/cross-zone merge all the servers. Opt-in to PvP will now be the only way, and you can now only toggle your PvP flag on or off in main cities. Doing PvE content while flagged for PvP will grant you bonuses to XP, rewards, and other fluff to entice you to participate. They talked about how this will "set the foundation for a new open PvP era" or some shit.

- Void Elfs will work like Worgen. They go "full-void" when in combat, and appear more elfish when out.

- They're going to use sharding tech to devastate Teldrassil and Lorderon. New characters will still start in these areas and not see any change, but 110+ characters will see the changes; Teldrassil will be gone, and the Undercity will belong to the Alliance.

- Flying in BFA will work the same as Legion. No changes here; go do all of the content at least once before they let you defeat the point of all those hours devs spent designing shit.

As excited as I am about the classic servers, nothing I see here sounds even remotely like a step in the right direction.

I don't know how people aren't bored of horde vs alliance round 53, but this time we mean it. Those scenarios and warfronts also look kinda sketchy. Getting rid of PvP servers will be a godsend to my alts stuck in PvP server hell.

Wut?

I've missed quite a lot. Too bad they're shit about actually putting lore IN GAME anymore so there'd be no reason for me to return to learn it.

The described event is what's kicking off BFA. Sylvanas burns down Teldrassil, so the Alliance moves to take back Lordaeron. It's what's happening in the BFA cinematic intro they put out Friday at Blizzcon.

Yes, but why did she do that? And fuck their horde-love. Another reason I'm done is I already know how this plays out in the end. Horde isn't wiped-out or aren't the villains they have acted like.

They could have been made sustainable easily, especially if there's another stat crunch coming.  Just cap artifact levels, give players an item that brings their weapon to max, and then when the expansion hits take that max value as the baseline for a new artifact weapon system (one which hopefully doesn't involve rubbing a million easter island heads on it to get a 2% damage increase).  And for me it's less about the idea that they're keeping us on the treadmill (I am not hugely concerned about losing all my artifact levels or anything with an expansion) and more about the lore aspect.  The last two expansions have been heavy on the "you're the big head badass now and everyone looks up to you, you cool guy you" vibe and it feels really stupid to just dump all of that every expansion.  And dump it in the stupidest way possible, too, just by adding a "does not work outside of Draenor / Broken Isles" tag on everything.  No explanation as to what happened to your garrison or the dozens of people you were theoretically responsible for, no justification behind selling Ashbringer to the drinks vendor at the starting town beyond "it's got kind of lame numbers now compared to this new stuff".  Just forget about it, not important.  It's just lore shit, who cares about that, right?


Unless they rework the quests, though, it's all still linear.  I tried to skip Jade Forest on one of my latest characters, level scaling wasn't the issue since you can instagib anything that's non elite anyways so I thought "why not."  Spent the better part of an entire afternoon trying to see that one zone in the middle of the map.   Ended up getting one shotted by invisible PvP flagged level 110 guards three times (I think maybe they were part of some other phase I wasn't seeing, but they could still see me for some reason), wandering up and down the entire length of that stupid wall that bisects the ENTIRE CONTINENT (no, you can't fly until level 90, of course) falling off of cliffs about four times trying to find a way across the mountains, almost dying of exhaustion once, and spending most of the rest of the day listening to monsters chewing on my ass as I rode past.  And when I finally DID get there, I had no idea where to start or what to do. 

It's not just that the monsters are higher level in the later zones, it's that the entire expansion is designed with the idea that you'll start at one end of a path and move along it.  Legion handles it well, since it was designed to, with each zone being it's own contained thing, but I'm not sure how well they can just backfill it in to the old expansions where that wasn't the case, unless they're willing to put some work in to fixing their obsolete content which they have not not seem inclined to do so far.


Small increments I have no problem with, it's the steps back that made me scratch my head.  My Druid has a level 175 staff from Northrend that deals about 47 DPS, and he just finished a Cataclysm quest to give him a level 272 staff that deals 22 DPS.  But, maybe they'll do better this time.  Here's hoping.


Hmm, that's actually pretty cool.  I like those kinds of racial quirks.

I don't care for the order halls, was just another way for them to get you to login rather than meaningful content and I'm glad they're making the new artefact necklace cross specs so you don't have to level it for each speech which really annoyed me about Legion.

The problem is that once they started with the first expansion that gave us an extra 10 levels, they had to stick with that system each expansion otherwise people would say they were releasing less content (they already got some flak for only doing 5 levels in Cata and MOP even though it was all relative, you still do the same number of quests, if not more). This is the main cause for this huge power scaling issue which has led to 2 stat squishes. Artifact weapons have just amplified the issue by a factor of 10.

I resubbed for a month. I am not sure what is going on in the Argus despite the intro to it quest thing to open it up. I'm just playing to open up Broken Isles flying.

There are too many currencies and factions.

Today's patch will introduce level scaling. I'm so confused about that. I liked it in Legion but what does this do for transmogs, getting low level crafting mats, etc?

Warlocks seem to dominate bgs.

Speaking of pvp, I am so glad that pvp servers are going away.

Toys like the flaming piccolo or the train no longer affect people not in your group/raid.

By the end of your second week the currency/faction stuff sorts out. Argus is somewhat like a mini-expansion, where the mats, factions and ilvl of everything renewed. Most of the prior content is only slightly relevant now, though World Quests are still good.

I've been playing again for the past month or two - having a lot of fun with Raid Finder, which allows me to experience the content without spending four evenings a week trying to see it. I can see all the weekly raids in about 3 hours time if it all goes well.

My priest is already exalted with all the factions, but I was doing pathfinder 2 on my hunter (who is only revered but more fun to kill things with).

I also have a druid and a warlock to play, once I get flying, to focus on, since BM hunter, while fun, seems a little underwhelming. What is the most bang/buck in terms of getting equipment these days - not raid level, but LookingForRaid level. (Heroics are so trivial now - maybe those for gear?). I'm not sure what's been raised in terms of ilvl.

I wonder what happens to those raids and stuff with level scaling. Am I back to square 1 for any faction I don't have? Do I have to slog through equivalent level mobs now to get rep? (Like that burning zone in cataclysm with the giant tree.)

Dungeons and older raids will still have a max level that you can overlevel on. This includes the zones. Vanilla stuff caps out at 60, so if you're 110, you're still going to hit stuff just as hard as you were before.

Since dungeons now scale, this means you can LFG for every vanilla dungeon simultaneously from 15-60, every BC and Wrath dungeon from 60-80, and so on. Even DPS shouldn't have to wait forever now.

I have kind of mixed feelings about how all this is shaking out right now.

I really hate the idea of level scaling in general, and it slows down leveling a LOT now, so that's bad.

But I can't argue that the old system felt flat out broken, with players being able to one or two shot most enemies, and at least now it feels more like the combat is, I think, supposed to feel.  And it's nice being able to choose where you level now, Cataclysm and Pandaria were kind of screwed before since you could blow through the entire 5 levels of the expansion in one zone.  So that's good.


That's good... I hear the new races for the expansion are all going to require that one of your existing characters has exalted rep with their faction, which suggests to me running a lot of 5-mans for old stuff like Zandalari troll rep, so if we can still solo it that's a relief.


Once I hit 110, I just do the Argus quests and farm veiled argunite and get that 910+ stuff from the vendor on the Vindicaar.  It's fairly easy to get to level 900 with that plus the occasional world quest for the 870 gear to cover the gaps.  You only need, I think, 890 to queue for the final raid in LFR.

My paladin, who has never done a raid except for LFR, is ilvl 930.  It was a little time consuming but not very hard to do.  We will shortly be able to buy legendary gear with a new currency that shouldn't be too hard to obtain.

Pre-orders are now available with the lvl 110 character boost and allied race unlocks.

Well, most of the races. I wanted to be a Dark Iron :(

Also, female Void Elfs need to have their crit screams/grunts nerfed. Annoying AF.  :uhrr:

Full disclosure, I've been done with WoW since Wrath, but I think I've bought most of the expansions (after the rush) and bopped my way through them in a very casual way... mostly just sightseeing a new class or the new mechanics ... but not invested in any particular way.

So, as I look to see what's new in the next expansion, I confess that I'm completely put-out by this:

"New Playable Allied Races: With pre-purchase, you can start to gain favor with the Highmountain Tauren, Lightforged Draenei, Void Elves, and Nightborne to unlock playable characters."

I can't think of a less appealing thing to make me think about coming back... my experience with grinding Reputation, er, favor, in WoW over the past, what, 15-years? is quite possibly the worst thing I've ever done.

Possibly they are putting some sort of cool wrapper around the whole "gaining favor" thing, like the Class outposts from the last(?) expansion - which I'll confess to liking - but if that's the case, don't make me think I'm going to grind favor to come back to try a new race.  But then, if the biggest draw are new Races for Alts, and people come back for Alts... why can't I just start an Alt?  As of now, I wouldn't go near this.

Ok... maybe I just don't understand what they are saying anymore...


With pre-purchase, you can experience Azeroth as one of Battle for Azeroth’s new playable Allied Races. Earn the respect of the Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne for the Horde, and Lightforged Draenei and Void elves for the Alliance, and you’ll unlock the ability to create characters of that race.

Each Allied Race has its own unique set of requirements to fulfill before you can unlock them, such as completing quests or earning reputation. Once you fulfill these requirements, you can embark on a quest to recruit the race to your faction. If you level up an Allied Race character all the way from their starting level 20 to 110 without boosting, faction/race-changing, or having levels granted to you through the Recruit-A-Friend program, you’ll earn that race’s distinctive Heritage Armor set—cosmetic gear that you can use on any character of that Allied Race you play in the future

Maybe someone here can translate.

It's how Blizzard is handling the content drought between now and September; offering a rep grind for new races and fluff before everyone can just have them at expansion launch.

That seems odd even by Blizzard standards... if the expansion is 6-months away, are the races already "in game" such that a "small" (tm) grind gets you the unlock in, say, 2-weeks... or is it a 5-month and 29-day grind to get what returning scrubs get on day one?  Presumably somewhere in between?

I think it'd be better if they weren't gated by rep. Hopefully they'll at least nix that requirement once BfA launches. I've personally been exalted for ages but anyone who hasn't been dutifully logging on is going to have to wait. That said, as far as grinds go, I would consider it pretty light in terms of time invested actively playing. The hardest is Argussian Reach and even that one you can just take it easy and do WQs once a day/do Class Hall missions for rep tokens/do the weekly fuel/invasion quest and be exalted in a couple weeks.

If you've been playing even casually since legion released chances are high that you would already have everything already unlocked or close to it.  The only way it would be a grind is if you just started playing now and if that's the case you might be better served waiting until the new expac releases to come back.

Yeah, the reputations are the same ones we've been grinding all expansion so if you're currently playing you probably have them.  If you're not currently playing, you're going to need to level to 110 first, and that's going to be a bigger time sink than the rep grind, probably.

I suspect the idea is that the current allied races are for the current players, and the unreleased ones (the trolls and dwarves) will be available for everyone (I mean, hopefully, since the new races are kind of the only interesting thing I've heard about this expansion).  They've also hinted that there will be more races on the way.  Though it sounds like they really want people to level these characters through the old content, since you don't get the heirloom armor if you use a paid level boost... which means you've got a pretty rough slog ahead of you if you're planning on going that route, on top of the grind to unlock them in the first place.

I just rolled a fresh Shaman from 1-60 and used my pre-order 110 boost on him.

The 1-60 track is just as easy as before, if not easier. Just follow the questing trail. You don't have to change zones anymore to ensure you're getting the most amount of XP. I was 50 and still trudging through Western Plaguelands getting decent XP.

One of the nicest parts of the level scaling is you can pick an expansion when you get to that level and do more of it. So once you hit 60 you can choose burning crusade or lich king and do that till 80. Once you are 80 you can chose to do cata or pandaria. Gives some better replay of alts too as you can more easily pick a totally different path for leveling. Once you hit WOD you can blow through that really fast as the garrison xp potions still exist so 90-100 is probably one of the faster leveling parts in the game currently.

I dunno, I'm running in to a lot of weird difficulty spikes that weren't there (or weren't as noticeable) a month ago.  Does the scaling change depending on your class?  Because I'm hitting encounters on my Monk that I seriously don't think I can win in my DPS spec, so I have no idea how classes that don't have a tank spec are even supposed to beat some of these quests.  In WoD it seems like every other quest has some kind of miniboss or named monster and it's kind of a crapshoot as to "can I take this without dying in DPS spec".

One other nice thing about the level scaling is that it looks like they got rid of red gathering skills... like how in WoD you could walk in the door with 10 herbalism skill and still pick any flower, you just wouldn't get as much as someone with 600 herbalism.  It looks like they did the same thing for most of the gathering skills across all levels now, which is really nice because it means you don't have to waste all that time running around zones fifty levels below you because you outlevelled your tradeskills and everything in your current zone is too advanced to touch.

I have leveled a shadow priest to 70 and a dk to 93 in the new scaling overall its pretty good they have made a few tweaks in some areas where stuff was out of wack. There are some oddities like these fucking rams in the howling fjord that have a special that is not scaling correctly and they just cave your skull in when they do that move. But they have been doing a lot of hot fixes tweaking random stuff like that as it blips up. With my void elf I have not yet hit anything really out of wack questing up difficulty wise.

A question about allied races.  Can you unlock them with the requirements spread out amongst your different characters or does it have to all be done on one?  Reason I'm asking is that my hunter has the Broken Isle rep stuff done (including the Suramar story) but my paladin is closer to exalted with the Argus factions.  I really, really do not want to either have to grind out Argus rep with my hunter or go through the BI rep grind with my paladin again, esp. the Suramar quest line because fuck ever doing that again.

As far as I know, it's supposed to be achievement based and account wide.

So, if once character gets the achievement, it counts for all of them, but you have to do the whole achievement on one character.  Like, you can't do half of the Highmountain quests on one character and the other half on another character and have it count for that "did all the Highmountain quests" achievement, but once you DO get the achievement on one of your characters it works for the entire account (even for characters on the other faction).

So, as long as one character has the rep, that should be enough, as far as I know.  

Though in your case, I'm not sure that's a problem, since each race only needs one rep and one quest achievement to unlock as far as I know.  If you have one character who's done the Suramar quests, that would be a requirement for unlocking the Nightborne, but I don't think you need it for any of the other races and I don't think you need any Argus rep to unlock the Nightborne.

edit: What I'm trying to say is that there are two achievements to unlock each race: one to get exalted with a faction, and one to do the quest line associated with their zone.  You theoretically could split that in half, with one character doing the rep grind and one doing the quest grind, if you wanted.  But you can't split it so that one character will do half the quest grind and another character will do the other half of the quest grind, or something.

As was mentioned, if you play even semi-regularly you’ll have the rep.  I’m levelling a lightforged disc priest, she’s gone from 20 to 71 just doing the zones around Ironforge, hellfire peninsula/zangarmarsh, and dungeons as they pop.  Being a healer, queues are quick, but there’s a lot of alts being levelled.  I expect that to drop off hard eventually.

Dungeons are a mixed bag.  In part that’s because of people who try to tank like they’re end-game geared, pulling multiple packs and/or not using cooldowns.  At times though it feels like there’s some internal issue—two groups that should perform roughly the same in the same dungeon, and one will struggle considerably more with taking/dealing damage for no real discernable reason.

Or maybe it’s just typical shitty WoW stuff  :awesome_for_real:

I enjoyed Legion simply because I had a dedicated group of 5 to play with.  The WoW culture is so toxic and judgemental that running Mythic + with a pug is a nightmare.  I find that I leave Wow when my friends leave WoW. 

If any of you guys wanted to form a regular 5 man to level or do content, just let me know.  I've played most roles except tank and would enjoy the upcoming content with a regular group of chill, non-judgemental adults.

My gear is shit, and I'm not 110, but I'm on late PST if anyone's around. Walrusinc#1969

At least we can finally get a f13 Community going in the next expansion. You know, so the five or six of us that play can group or something.  :why_so_serious:

Many of the achievements are account wide.

This Legion Attunement tool is very useful.

https://www.wowhead.com/attunement (https://www.wowhead.com/attunement)

In case it was missed, this year's April Foolery was on point.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=283182/world-of-warcraft-8-0-41-patch-notes-fun-micro-holidays-dance-battle

August 14th, 2018. BE THERE  :drill:

http://www.wowhead.com/news=283329/world-of-warcraft-battle-for-azeroth-release-date-is-august-14th

http://www.wowhead.com/news=283328/battle-for-azeroth-collectors-edition-rewards-and-faq

http://www.wowhead.com/news=283326/bfa-press-event-talanji-cinematic-8-0-pre-patch-maghar-and-dark-iron-unlock-sche

There's a lot of :mob: over the new Azerite armor/talent system. Apparently, Bliz is thinking that it's a good idea to go back to having multiple gear sets, because that's totally why they homogenized gear stats a couple expansions ago.

 :uhrr:

I'll direct you to here for more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/89q323/we_need_clarification_on_azerite_armor_because/

Couple weeks out from the 8.0 patch going live. New content is looking fab.  :grin:

Well, this pre-patch experience is going about as well as I expected. :oh_i_see:  I'm stuck at the server list and can't log in.  Check that, I can't even get that far now.

 :awesome_for_real:

Buddy at work has been playing since Wrath and I'm the only person he knows who played during Vanilla so he's been trying to recruit me to resurrect my old account. So I did last week without telling him and been playing the free 20 levels trying shit out again. Just texted him complaining about the patch day (trolling him more like it) and how I'd like to get the expansion but can't if Blizzard after 14 years can't get their shit together.

Hilarity ensued.

I'm looking forward to trying out war mode, I like quite a few of the ideas they've implemented.  World PvP has never quite been the same since flying mounts came about but hopefully it feels a little like the old PvP server leveling experience.

I really don't like the customer support now. There basically is none. I'm stuck on a quest in Jade Forest that won't complete and the quest is a chain that gates the entire rest of the zone. Tried all the usual tricks (deleting folders, reset UI, etc.).

So I just have to move on to a new zone which isn't really too big a deal but I like Jade Forest for leveling new toons through. There's no way to actually talk to someone to confirm the issue though. Bug submission has no feedback, so I'm throwing the ticket into the aether hoping it gets heard.

Reddit posters have been busy compiling a list of issues with the new expansion. (https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/900wiu/blizzard_the_80_patch_is_a_level_of_quality_that/)

You'd think after all this time that Blizzard would have their act together.  I guess we'll find out at release.  Ok, not me directly.  I'm done with WoW.

I'll probably do what I've done the past few expacs.  Check out the story, level a few alts then quit after 3-6 months.  WoW just doesn't have the longevity it once did for me.

Soooooooo ... this is out.

I'm reserving judgement on the new artifact system, but it seems okay.  As your neck piece collects Azerite ranks, it unlocks bonus powers on ALL Azerite items (so far: chest, head, shoulders).  They feel like mini-set bonuses but you get them for having azerite ranks, not collecting gear pieces.

Kul Tiras is better than expected.  Quests are decently engaging.  I mean, its still "kill 10 rats" but the zone design is some of the most pleasant since Grizzly hills in Wrath.

Proudmoore Keep is not great as the continent hub.  (Dont know waht the Horde hub is like, sorry)  Lots of stairs and turns.  Stuff is harder to access than it needs to be, because ATMOSPHERE.  I get it, we're running clandestine operations out of a shady waterfront office, but move that shit closer to the flightpoint.

Or better yet, reactivate the mobile app.

Pretty much agreed on all you said there. Grizzly Hills was my favorite thematic zone in WoW and Kul Tiras is maybe my new favorite. There seems to be less silly humor (so far, actually no humor at all) which will likely change but is also welcome.

Everything seems simplified: artifact weapons condensed into the necklace, no profession quests, quest progression.  So far, so good. 1hr waits for dps on normal dungeons is not fun at the moment though.

Horde hub is a nightmare of stairs and levels - I mean, it's a troll pyramid - ZG on steroids. That said, it's not terrible in setting.... just in movement. Flying would make it trivial so I can see gating that right now.

Surrounding areas seem decent enough. Heavy jungles with lots of reskinned dinos. It's enjoyable - but I'm rather biased as the whole reason I resubbed was because of the Zandalari troll playable race

Whomever designed Temple of Sethraliss has earned a radioactive molten enema.  It's absolute shit of the highest order.

The rest is ok.  If you're alliance you'll probably want to turn off world PvP, the horde imbalance is obscene. The measly 10% bonus is not worth the camping and stupidity.

I haven't had War Mode on even a single second, even on opening day when it would've been totally safe to do so. I just despise World PvP on principle. I like the dungeons so far. Waycrest Manor is a bit of a maze but I really like the aesthetic. I'm still somewhat reserving judgement until M+ is released since having to pull for percent will really change how the dungeons play out, as well as the Fortified/Tyrannical buffs making certain trash/bosses a nightmare.

Told Barad was pretty meh, but Waycrest and Freehold are a bunch of fun. I also like the island expeditions, except for the bitchy max-level players.

"ugh, two low levels"
"have you done these before"
"welp, gj losers"
"great, another loss"

And we ended up winning it, but he was so worried about bitching us out he didn't lead us and spent more time complaining than fighting things. Fucking toxic people, especially the ones that played beta and rushed to max level. To expect everyone to know everything eight days after the expansion launched is fucking stupid.

I had War Mode on and I only got jumped maybe 5 or 6 times and never got camped.  The pvp skills you can use while leveling (except in dungeons) were nice benefits, too.  You are right, though.  For some reason all the cool pvp kids go Horde.  And is it just me or do the new dungeons seemed filled to the brim with trash mobs?  I don't remember having to wade through so much trash just to get to a boss in the Legion dungeons.

I turned Warmode off, and have really enjoyed leveling up Alliance side. I like the scenery, the stories are ok, the music is enjoyable. The artwork and voice-acting seem done by Disney (20th Century Disney, not 21st Century Disney).

I'm a little surprised (and disappointed) that there's nothing about the burning of Teldrassil since the pre-launch event. It's as though it happened in an alt universe.

It does seem like there is more trash in dungeons - and more packed into smaller zones in the open world.

Crafting seems meh.

Crafting is meh. Like, I don't even know why they bother anymore with it; either make it useful like it did back in vanilla/BC or something.

Ready to tackle Uldir tomorrow.

Late to the party on this one, I guess.  Played a few hours, questing seems pretty fun so far, as Xanthippe said the music is pretty good (WoW has always had surprisingly solid music, in my opinion) but the first few hours are such a chore.

Starting out, they give you that completely useless splash screen that tells you three things and gives you no context for any of them so you don't know if they apply to you or what they even mean.  They also don't mention some fairly important things like, hey, we switched off your artifact weapons, and also all the abilities they gave, and you have a bunch of new abilities sitting in your spellbook that you don't have on your taskbar now.  Also we rearranged your taskbar.  I especially like the bit where it gives you a "click here to get the quest to go to the new zone" box, and if you don't click it, it gives you the quest anyways.

Then they throw you immediately in to a multiplayer scenario.  I haven't had a chance to fight ANYTHING yet, I haven't played this game in like a year, I just had to respec all of my talents, I have no idea what I'm doing, so the only available option to start this new expansion is to do an instance with a bunch of other players, sure, why not.  They keep throwing story in my face and it's just so bad.  Like, I guess the Horde is back to just being the villains again, which is annoying, but I could live with it if we were at least FUN villains (like the destruction side in Warhammer Online) but we aren't.  It's like half of the writing team at Blizzard is still trying to write the Horde as some morally complex grey faction, and the other half is like "eh, orcs are like, monsters, or something, right?  Fuck it, we'll just make the Horde mustache twirling cartoon villains" and neither half talked to the other.  "Are we really doing the right thing," wonders one guy while he's flooding the battlefield with plague juice to turn the enemy soldiers in to shambling undead atrocities slaved to the will of the banshee queen.  "We did burn down Darnassus (WTF, game, another thing that might have been nice to mention on that splash screen) for no reason aside from being assholes, but remember that real strength comes from HONOR!" It's just so stupid.  And of course you, the player, have no choice over anything you do, you have to agree to do all this stupid petty bullshit like you're completely on board with it and SO HYPED to finally be taking the fight to those Alliance jerks(?) because we're obviously so personally invested in the political horseshit of an imaginary world.  Can we go back to saving the world or something?  I liked saving the world.

Then, after completing that, IMMEDIATELY I have to run across the world to Silithus where I have to talk to Diamond Dwarf about how Azeroth is in pain etc. etc. etc. and after clicking on a skill box five or six times I get some super amulet, and then I am IMMEDIATELY shunted back to Orgrimmar ("let me send you back to your allies" said the voice actor, who wasn't budgeted to say different sets of lines for each faction).  Wouldn't it have been better to stick this at the beginning?  Give the player the amulet, THEN send them on this bullshit war story?  You wouldn't have to yo-yo them between Silithus and Origrimmar and completely mess up the pacing and flow of this story you're ramming down the player's throat?

Then it's back to Sylvanas for another instanced follow the leader quest where you're breaking someone out of Stormwind.  This quest lasts roughly thirty years and involves following around two trolls and listening to all the Alliance people recite crappy monologues about how much they hate you and how shit you are as you RP walk behind the guys you're escorting.  First part is breaking them out of the stockades, and the first prisoner you run in to is Saurfang, who was captured during the Undercity scenario and is all "how long have I been down here, I've lost track of time".  Jesus, reel it in, drama queen, you've been captured for maybe an hour.  Could have delayed that revelation and used Saurfang's capture to build some tension, but fuck it, we've got ten pounds of story and we're dumping it all on you right now.  Then there's a tedious "escape" sequence where an NPC tells you to do something and you do it and then an enemy says "NOT SO FAST" and does something to stop you so another friendly NPC has to tell you do do something to stop them and that happens over and over again until you win.  You also get to play the fun game, "who the hell do they want me to fight".  Some enemies are standard enemies that you can kill no problem.  Some enemies are difficult and might kill you if you pull two at once.  Some enemies will just one-shot you.  About half of them have that "elite enemy" gold snake border, but some of them you can kill and some you can't.  Also, they're all visually identical.  So, have fun with that.

Once that's done, you can finally start playing the game (after meeting with the troll king, establishing the embassy, taking two tours, listening to Sylvanas' passive aggressive boyfriend throw sarcasm at you, etc.) and it's not bad, but goddamn, that is one seriously uninspiring introduction.

The good news is that you have to do most of it for each of your alts, so you'll have it down pretty well after the third or so.

There's a lot to like here and I'm having fun, but they have changed all the classes to a point enough that I don't feel like any of them fit me. Nothing is really grabbing me and I'm just kinda going through the motions. Which is sad, really. The zone themes are great, but as my toons hit 120 they all start to feel really weak. So mentally I have this challenge as if at 111 I was a superhero taking on 5+ mobs on my DK, but at 120 2-4 mobs can end really poorly for me if I don't use ALL my abilities in rotation. I'm guessing it gets better as dungeon/raid gear comes in, but as a fresh 120 I'm not having fun.

it does get better pretty fast.  I play an affliction warlock, and it took for-fucking-ever to kill anything when I was iLvl 270-ish.  A few non-heroic dungeons and a ton of dailies, and I'm up to about 325, and stuff goes down at a decent rate.  Once you get some iLvl 340 gear (Revered with the various factions), you'll be back on track.

This expansion is officially finished. All of the limitations that were imposed on content and systems over the course of the last couple years have been removed in the last week:

- All of the caps on currency/reagents for Horrific Visions are gone and they boosted currency acquisition rates from quests
- The cloak can now be upgraded to the max rank 15, and can have it's resistance boosted further week after week now.
- Essences can now be acquired for little to semi-little effort on alts, as long as you've done the hard work on at least one toon, regardless of tank/heal/DPS spec

Combined with the 100% XP boost that's going on from now till April 20th thanks to coronachan, it's a good time to play and prep for the next expansion. Leveled a Warlock from 20 to 90 in 10 hours /played over the last two days with heirlooms.

Bliz is actually trying to keep current content somewhat fun/relevant.

- The currency they added so you could buy essences on alts can now be used to buy additional HV runs, and coming soon: a rotating list of corruptions that you can augment your non-corrupted gear with.
- The amount of quest items needed to upgrade your cloak per rank have been reduced at the upper tiers to one full-run per rank.

The catch here is that they're multiplying the amount of currency you need for those rank 3 essences by 5, while also increasing the amount of currency you get from the sources of currency by 5 as well. This is address people that have been hording the currency for the last couple months so they're not suddenly more OP than anything.

Targeted corruptions is dope. Min/maxers will have a field day gaming the system, and it gives me a little more incentive to do these HV runs on my Horde DK alt.