Resubbed - damn it's well done

[WindupAtheist]

Gonna necro this thread to babble about lore since that's what it had mostly turned into last time it was active.

So I just now finally got around to watching the Ulduar trailer. I still don't like his anime hair, but I think I love Varian Wrynn now. It was just so satisfying to hear someone deliver the usual "We need to work TOGETHARRR!" speech that crops up whenever anything threatening happens, only to have him go "You know what? Blow me!"

And here's hoping Hellscream Jr. puts Thrall out of his misery soon and leads the Horde back to being malicious badasses instead of whiny hypocritical saps.

[Paelos]

If they could both cut down Jaina and Thrall at the same time, it would make my fucking day. Both of them don't get it. At all. We're worried about an old god locked away in some remote mountain? Really? I think we've dealt with these fuckers before and it didn't go well for Mr. Tentacles.

[Merusk]

The harbinger of Cthulhu is srs bzns.

[Fordel]

What's sad about Yoggy there, is he is in the wrong place.


We were supposed to kill him down in AzjolNerbubiantown, which was supposed to be it's own leveling zone and dungeon/raid hub.

[Paelos]

That would have made about a BILLION times more sense.

[Merusk]

Yeah, especially with that mind-bender guy in OK.

[Fordel]

Cut for time etc, so we weep instead.


Really, it's interesting/sad how much 'lore' gets mangled due to the reality of having to actually release stuff.

[WindupAtheist]

If they could both cut down Jaina and Thrall at the same time, it would make my fucking day. Both of them don't get it. At all. We're worried about an old god locked away in some remote mountain? Really? I think we've dealt with these fuckers before and it didn't go well for Mr. Tentacles.

Yeah, and I gotta tell you, I was just waiting for some long tiresome "Alliance and Horde work together with lots of mistrust" retread storyline. Instead Varian just goes "Oh blow it out your ass, I hope the Dire Threat of the Week fucking eats the lot of you!" and ports out. I loved it.

[WindupAtheist]

Hate to double post, but I've been looking and apparently that new Arthas novel confirms that Sylvanas wants to wipe out humanity as well as the Scourge with their plague and is down with the whole "Death to the living!" thing. Putress cut loose at the wrong time and under the wrong authority, but any lingering claims of the Forsaken not being total psycho villains (silly as those claims were) have gone out the window.

[Kail]

And here's hoping Hellscream Jr. puts Thrall out of his misery soon and leads the Horde back to being malicious badasses instead of whiny hypocritical saps.

Hellscream can choke on a dick.  First time you meet him, you're running around Nagarand saving his ass from every damn thing, and he's sitting back at camp going "YOU ALL SUCK, YOUR EFFORTS ARE WORTHLESS, ALL IS FUTILE BECAUSE MY MUMMY IS SICK" and Thrall has to jog all the way from Orgrimaar to Garadar to slap him back into line.

And then you get to Northrend, and he's all "You reek of... fear.  You won't last long."  The fuck?  In between the time you saw me last (remember, when I was saving your ass) and the present, I pretty much busied myself kicking the shit out of the top ranking porkchops of the Burning Legion, you douche.  I'm not going to get all fucking trembly at some clockwork gnomes or whatever.  And his brilliant tactical strategy is "WE ARE HORDE, WE NEED NO TACTICS, RAARGH, WE WILL SMASH EVERYTHINGAAAAAAAARGHAGHblgraaaand by 'we' I obviously mean 'you' because my ass is not leaving this fortress."

Fuck Hellscream.

[Hindenburg]

Yeah, and I gotta tell you, I was just waiting for some long tiresome "Alliance and Horde work together with lots of mistrust" retread storyline. Instead Varian just goes "Oh blow it out your ass, I hope the Dire Threat of the Week fucking eats the lot of you!" and ports out. I loved it.

Ahm, Garrosh did that first?

Also, both were manhandled by the mage in the purple armor.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Seconded. Fuck hellscream and the worg he rode in on, he can suck my forsaken balls.








Death to the living.

[Koyasha]

Hellscream and Wrynn are both caricatures these days.  It's the only way they could get the story to make some semblance of sense and have the Alliance and Horde fight each other when they keep also introducing these massive 'bigger than both of you put together' threats.  Continuing to throw in all these uber-threats that eclipse Horde vs. Alliance make it necessary to also throw in caricatures like Varian and Garrosh to keep the conflict alive.

Otherwise, even after the Wrathgate, the logical thing for Alliance to do would have been to stop working directly with the Horde, but maintain their distance and non-agression in order to not be forced to fight a multi-front war.

[Paelos]

Remember the good old days where they didn't force us to all co-exist in the same 100x100 yard area as the capital city? You know, when the factions actually had cities and shit? Those were nice.

[Hindenburg]

Nostalgia: it's crazy.

[Paelos]

So you prefer Dalaran to the IF days?

At least only one faction was fucking up the works then.

[Fordel]

The only thing I dislike about both factions being in Dalaran, is the fact it's Dalaran.

"Hi we are clearly an Alliance faction, and the Horde spends an odd 20-30 levels in direct conflict with us, but it's cool, come right on in greenies!"

[WindupAtheist]

Otherwise, even after the Wrathgate, the logical thing for Alliance to do would have been to stop working directly with the Horde, but maintain their distance and non-agression in order to not be forced to fight a multi-front war.

Then get ganked from behind while the Horde has a big chuckle over it. Broken front.

[jpark]

Overall I love this expansion.

The Nordic theme with the northern climate is so "cool" :P

I found this far more immersive than the landscape of BC.

Some of the phasing used with quests is wonderful.  Fun stuff.

I do miss more intricate 5 man runs and harder fights.

[Malakili]

Some of the phasing used with quests is wonderful.  Fun stuff.

This, however, is actually my least favorite part.  They've basically said, forget the idea of a persistent world, in favor of everyone getting to experience story line quests.  I guess that sounds good on paper, but to have people be able to be, not only in different places in the world, but in different times essentially, based on what quests you've finished, annoys me to no end.  I mean, I've long ago realized that WoW is just a well executed series of minigames, and that I need to stop wishing for a PW game from them, but it still irks me on some level.   Its also annoying when I'm leveling an alt with full rested and doing a lot of dungeon runs, and I don't do a ton of quests, which means I'm stuck out of phase will most of my guild.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There's really only one or two places where you'll ever be 'out of phase' with people. To me though this doesn't detract from the idea of a persistant world at all. Let's say for instance they didn't do instancing and just made it like other games where instead they just put a key on the ebon hold so you had to do all those quests to get the key instead of helping take over the hold yourself.

Which option is more epic and adventerous? People see phasing as some sort of alternate reality when all it is, is a new take on gating content.  If you want to argue that is breaks immersion, how immersion breaking is 39 of my friends able to walk into a giant cave with a black dragon inside but I can't, just because I don't have an amulet to pass the invisible magic barrier?

I think phasing for the most part is really great so long as it's doable solo or the group parts don't require you all be on the same step.

[Fabricated]

The lore still seems straight forward enough to me. I fucking hate Wrynn's design though.

WotLK's biggest fault so far to me is that it has some fucking amazing setpieces that it uses...once, then you get back to fetching shit. The Arthas questline in Icecrown turned me 180 from being bored with the quest design in Wrath.

[Dren]

I think phasing for the most part is really great so long as it's doable solo or the group parts don't require you all be on the same step.

From my experience, this is how it was implemented.  I really don't get the complaints against it at all.  The only time you need to group for the quests in the phased quests is on bosses that are persistent for everyone.  Just group up and do them.  Phasing doesn't get in the way of it at all.

[Draegan]

I'll stick this question here.

I have my hunter/priest dual box up to 34ish right now but I'm thinking ahead about leveling my priest solo from 60-80.  I havn't leveled a priest since 2.0 and I'm curious to know if shadow is still hands down the best leveling spec?  Can dsc or holy offer the same leveling speed and efficiency?  Only reason that I ask is that I'd like to avoid shadow since I've done it before, but I'll take efficiency just to get into the expansion content faster.

Bonus question:
I'm leveling up a hunter with my priest and I havn't played a hunter since sometime in vanilla WOW.  Got my gorilla pet.  Whats a good pet talent path for him?  I'm basically doing armor/speed then thunderstomp when I get there for AOE tanking.  I'm assuming thats the way to do it but looking for affirmation.

[proudft]

A disc/holy build w/reflective shield and the smite damage bonus stuff in holy is not too terrible.  I leveled with it on my priest solo 60-70 (low 60s was actually MORE dps than shadow, which kinda blew my mind).  It was pretty lazy; shield, holy fire, shadow word pain if you feel saucy, smite until monster dies on your shield.

As I got up to 70, shadow started to improve in comparison, but I wanted just one sort of do-it-all build, so I stuck with it.  

I switched to shadow for like 70-72, and it was noticeably faster at that point.  So you probably will want to switch eventually, unless you're more patient than me.  (At 72 I picked up a hunter partner and just went to holy/eat bon-bons.)

[K9]

Shadow really starts pulling ahead once you fill out the talent tree. That said, as holy I was bombing around from 70-73 pulling massive packs and AoEing them down with holy nova.

[Draegan]

Sounds good.  Now I just have to make money for mounts, dual talent spec, and everything else.  I'm pretty poor.

I'm not looking forward to attempting to make gold for all of this.

Hit 60.
Grind Herb/Mining to 300
Hit 70 (herbing and mining on the way)
Hit 80 (herbing and mining on the way)

Quests alone from 60-80 should net me... 4-5k gold maybe?  Hopefully?  Selling everything else should get me halfway to epic flyer/talent spec.

[Rasix]

Herbing/mining is incredibly annoying to have. You can't track both. Might want to pair one of them with skinning.

Of course, if you get both up, it makes picking an actual profession that much easier.  (Protip: any mining based profession is very costly to raise (well, engineering isn't so bad) even with mining providing most of the mats.

[Draegan]

I've done mining/herbing on almost every toon except the last one I had where I attempted to get JC up and gave up in the late 200's.  I don't have to much of an issue with it.  You can get addon databases with all the placements anyway.

[Thrawn]

Haven't played since about the time Black Temple was released, think I'm going to give the WolTK trial a go next week when I have off work and see what kind of changes I've been missing.  (and hopefully not get addicted to raiding 40hours a week again in the process)

[Malakili]

Haven't played since about the time Black Temple was released, think I'm going to give the WolTK trial a go next week when I have off work and see what kind of changes I've been missing.  (and hopefully not get addicted to raiding 40hours a week again in the process)

I resubbed about 2 months ago.  The leveling content is very nice the first time, and decent the second time (and I wasn't inspired enough to go for number 3).  The classes have been someone homogonized in terms of utility, so that specific class make up is less important in group situations.  Dual spec is very nice for flexibility, though less important if you are a "pure" class, like Warlock, Mage or Rogue.  The non-raid end game content is pretty solid, but it won't last you real long.  I've got my druid totally decked out in best in slot gear for every slot for pre-raid gear, and my mage is well on his way.   I'm actually thinking abotu cancelling again just because the endgame is extremely repetitive, and since I am in a raiding guild but not raiding anymore because I burnt out last time I played and have no interest in going through that process again I'm generally not even doing that repetition with people i know anymore.

Anyway, its definitely worth getting and playing for a bit, but I will say that it probably won't keep you intersted past a month or two unless you 1) raid 2) alt like a mofo, or 3) are an achievement whore.   If you do one of those 3 things,  you'll fall right back into playing a ton, even after you've maxed out one of your characters.

[apocrypha]

I'd agree completely with everything Malakili said there but I'd add that if you limit yourself to 1 or 2 hours a day then the burn-out is a lot less likely to hit. I know that may sound obvious but the design of the game makes it very easy to find you've played for 4+ hours without noticing and that way lies boredom fast.

I'm lucky, I have a built-in physical "stop playing now!" pain clock which limits me to an hour at a time and it's great. It's just enough time to feel like I've got somewhere but it leaves me wanting more.

Another thing I can recommend is finding a friend who also wants to play and doing RAF with them. I've done that with my brother and 1-60 with new characters was fun and super fast and now we can go hit an old-world instance once a week or so with one of my 80s for shits'n'giggles. They're lots of fun (mostly, stay out of Maraudon ffs!) and fast without all the time wasted putting a group together. 

[Thrawn]

How good/bad is the 70-80 grind?  Remember this is from someone who hasn't seen a single thing in WotLK at all.  Probably be doing it on my paladin.

I'm sure I'll roll up a Death Knight at some point as well since it's something else I haven't tried.

*edit* Wait..WoW has achievements now? 

[K9]

Just did it on my Shaman, it's really not too bad. You'll never run out of quests and there's multiple zones for each level bracket so you can move around to get a change of scenery. If you can get instance runs on rested xp, and do the instance quests you'll go faster; but you don't have to rely on instance runs to level. It's definitely better than 1-58 or 58-68.

You'll also make a ton of gold. I made enough going from 70-80 to buy flying, a mount and cold-weather flying at 77; then I made another 1K going from 77-80 which went on dual-spec.

[Malakili]

How good/bad is the 70-80 grind?  Remember this is from someone who hasn't seen a single thing in WotLK at all.  Probably be doing it on my paladin.

I'm sure I'll roll up a Death Knight at some point as well since it's something else I haven't tried.

*edit* Wait..WoW has achievements now? 

Its not bad at all.  There are 2 choices for which zone you can start in Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord.  You can easily go from 70-72 in just one of them, but  I suggest going doing all of one of them and some of another, so that you hit 73 at least before going to the next zone (Dragon blight).   You can hit 80 fairly easily without going to the last zone (Ice Crown), which you should try to do, so you can get boat loads of gold for doing all the quests there at 80.

Death Knight is also fun (their starting zone is very excellent, so its worth making one just for that if nothing else).   They significantly eased the 60-70 grind, as well, so that'll be a lot less of an issue if you want to level your Death Knight up.  (I just made one last week, and leveled from 58-63 - just in Hellfire Peninsula).

Yes, there are achievements now.  I don't particularly care for achievements, though some people really go all out for them.  If I happen to be in a position to go for one, I generally will, but I don't go out of my way.  They have achievements for everything from "Become a grand master in a profession" (which you'll probably hit straight away if you train as soon as you get to Northrend) to "Complete Naxxramas with only 20 people or less in the raid" (instead of the normal 25).