So we finally get to go fight Nathanos! You know, I didn’t like him much during Battle for Azeroth, but this fight made him grow on me immensely. I think the arrogant attitude seems cooler when I get to fight him. I enjoyed the little callbacks to vanilla. And I especially enjoyed how he doesn’t hide from us. I should have seen it coming, but why would he care if he knows he’ll just get killed and be sent straight to the Shadowlands?
And Tyrande! I’m looking forward to her character. She certainly kicked ass in the cutscene. Did you see that little smirk as she killed him? It was amazing. I usually avoid story spoilers, so I don’t know if she has more character progression in the next expansion. I hope so.
Brewfest, along with Hallow’s End, is one of my two favorite in-game holidays in WoW. I enjoy doing some of the activities even without consideration of rewards. Although I admit I miss the colored steins we used to get.
I purchased the new rewards available this year – the Bottomless Brewfest Stein, Tabard of Brew, Brewfest Reveler’s Hearthstone, and the Garland of Grain as well as a dress I missed last year. I didn’t play my alts as much previously and probably didn’t care about a dress with my main being a male.
This is my paladin, Illuminnae, with the dress, the Garland of Grain that looks like a pretzel on her head, and the new stein.
I also really loved the new Brewfest Chowdown minigame – a sausage eating contest! Plus, the trophy you get for winning five times, which can be seen above, makes everyone near it drunk!
I hope Hallow’s End gets something new this year too!
The Trial of Style was last week, and I participated for the first time. It was a lot of fun! You can see my first place “Fun & Flirty” outfit above along with gem’s third place entry.
Here’s a better look at my “Fun & Flirty,” haha. I just went with lots of pink and some booty shorts!
This is my second place “Winter” outfit.
Here’s one of gem’s second place outfits.
This is gem’s first place “Tabard” outfit.
My first place “Zen” outfit was pretty unoriginal.
My first place “Tabard” outfit was based on the tabard we got a few years ago during the Olympics.
I had a lot of fun with the Trial of Style, and it wasn’t hard to earn all the rewards. I’ll definitely be participating next time!
Patch 6.0.2, The Iron Tide, brought a number of changes and a bit of new content.
Iron Horde Invasion
The Dark Portal turns red, and the Iron Horde begins to attack. The Horde and Alliance settlements in the Blasted Lands fall, and we’re tasked with cleaning up. It was interesting, but it seemed to lack zest. It was just a bit anti-climatic. I never really got the feeling that we were in much danger. The questline did more to introduce mechanic changes than anything else. For example, quest objectives are clearly marked on the map and are outlined differently in the world. This includes locations that are targets for items; instead of going to where you think you need to plant a flag and clicking it, you right-click the outline of a flag. I like it. Still, I would have liked the event to feel more important. I think what I liked most was Thrall’s new model. He’s finally integrating the aspects of being a shaman and a warrior. Awesome.
Updated character models
I didn’t care previously, and I still don’t think this is a big deal. I’m looking at numbers. I’m watching health and mana, looking at buffs and debuffs, and tracking adds. I’m not looking at my cloak. At first, I certainly did. My troll runs stupidly. Honestly it seems normal now though.
Upper Blackrock Spire
It’s much more straight-forward, but it didn’t seem like it was anything special either. I suppose that could make sense because it’s only the first half, but why show us the first half if the first half isn’t awesome?
Mechanics
Flexible raids are great. Losing Renew and Void Shift sucks. Having to choose between Spirit Shell and Power Infusion sucks. Losing Heal wasn’t a big deal.
Stat Squish
Now we’re even more OP in earlier content. That’s cool.
Void Storage and Toy Box
Oh, goodness. This was awesome. With a whole new Void Storage tab and the nifty Toy Box, I actually have free bag space again, allowing me to go do past raids for transmog. It’s wonderful. I don’t understand why they didn’t try to patch this in a couple months ago so we could actually do something in WoW. I can’t say enough good about this, although I know I’m going to fill it up soon. Mmmm old tier sets.
My progress
What have I done in the patch? I did the questline and UBRS of course. Besides that, I’ve mainly been going after old tier sets. That’s what I was doing months and months ago before I filled up all my bags, so it’s nice to be able to continue it again. I also got my heroic Siege of Orgrimmar heirloom – the staff. Unfortunately, I was hoping for the mace or offhand. The mace is shaped like a Horde symbol, and the offhand is a book with the Horde symbol on the cover. Maybe I’ll get one of them in normal mode!
It’s been a while since I posted, but what kind of WoW blogger would I be if I didn’t talk about this cinematic? Like most of Blizzard’s lore-rich trailers, this really got me excited. I enjoyed the fact that in both the original timeline and the Warlords of Draenor timeline, Grom gets to kill Mannoroth. I also particularly like Garrosh saving him. And Grom’s last lines? “We will never be slaves. But we will be conquerors.” That’s a terrific line, especially the pause between sentences.
Not all of the dungeons jumped out at me, but two really did – the Iron Docks and Grimrail Depot. I guess I like industrialism, but how could you not like Grimrail Depot? Part of it is actually on a train. Now I realize that when it comes to gameplay, it’ll all likely feel the same. Similarly, the idea of fighting on Deathwing’s back was really cool, but when it comes time to do it, I’m so focused on mechanics and numbers that it feels the same. Still, I really like this.
The 10th anniversary event sounds cool too. Tarren Mill vs Southshore is a great PVP throwback, and I’m super interested to see a deathmatch-style battleground. All I really want to do when I PVP is fight, so why has it taken so long to get a deathmatch battleground? Temple of Kotmogu is close. I’ll be curious to see what this is like.
Molten Core is also a pretty iconic raid to reinvigorate also. It’s a 40-man LFR, so everyone at endgame should be able to see it easily. And a Molten Corgi? Adorable.
My only issue is that it’s for max level characters. Warlords of Draenor drops 11/13/14, and the anniversary event starts within a week and a half or so. Does that mean we’ll need to rush to level 100?
@Celestalon Hey celestalon when warlords hit are we going to be in a rush to get to lvl 100 for the anniversary? because it seems like it
Brewfast has always been one of my two favorite holidays – the other being Hallow’s End. (It’s too bad they’re so close together.) The year before last, I obtained my Brewfest Ram. I still needed by kodo, so I continued to run Direbrew daily.
This year, I got my Brewfest Kodo! It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I do like it a lot actually. The next day, I realized it was a bittersweet victory. Now what do I do with Brewfest? I have every token reward except for on the drinking hat, and I actually had that previously and destroyed it. I have my Wolpertinger, which I do love. Now I had both mounts. Was this is for the holiday? There wasn’t even a stein this year! I think I’ll do the ram riding, calling through Orgrimmar, Dark Iron fight, and Pink Elekks on Parade quest once each just for the experience. I really wish Blizzard had continued to update the stein yearly though!
The Darkspear Rebellion was very exciting. Yes, it was pretty short, but I like that. You can see all the content in the day, but you can grind some more if you’d like. You can watch me experience it in the video below. Of course, the video and this post contain huge spoilers. I’ve also cut a lot of the repetition from the video. Below I first explain the lore and story involved before giving my opinion and feedback. Click here to jump straight to my feedback.
After witnessing events elsewhere on Azeroth with Lorewalker Cho and his dream brew, I was sent to Sen’jin Village. Vol’jin is there planning a rebellion against the Warchief, Garrosh Hellscream. With him are Thrall and Chen Stormstout. You’re tasked with collecting some supplies from the new Kor’kron camps in the Northern Barrens.
After completing this task, I returned to talk with Vol’jin, Thrall, and Chen. The Warchief, or at least his Kor’kron, figured out what was happening and led an attack on Sen’jin Village. Unfortunately for them, we were able to defeat them. As they fled, Vol’jin suggested we let them run because they’d be executed by Hellscream for doing so.
Vol’jin’s next move was to plan on attack on Razor Hill, using it as a staging ground before laying siege to Orgrimmar. Thrall parted ways with the rest of the rebellion at this point, believing that some of his previous advisers, such as Eitrigg and Saurfang, must not support Hellscream. Vol’jin told him that he’d be killed upon setting foot in Orgrimmar, but Thrall felt he had to try anyways. He told Vol’jin to watch over Aggra and his boy if he’s killed. gem watches from her direhorn, propped up cutely on the stairs.
After taking Razor Hill, the rebellion sets up camp at a watchtower just north of the city. Baine Bloodhoof arrives, happy to see Vol’jin alive. He offers to join the rebellion. I was tasked with two new objectives – to steal many more supplies from the Kor’kron and to speak with the Old Seer currently climbing Mount Neverest in the footsteps of the last emperor.
First, I went to the Northern Barrens to collect materials from the Kor’kron and to kill the Kor’kron commanders. Once that was done, I headed to Kun’Lai Summit.
I helped the Old Seer, Seer Hao Pham Roo, climb the mountain, during which he explained how when he was young he would have had trouble performing the climb. For example, he says, “My, you are strong! When I was young, I might have doubted that we could do this. But now, I have no doubts at all.” In fact, he mentions overcoming anger, violence, doubt, despair, hate, and fear.
Upon reaching the summit, he explains. “You see, when I was young… when I was young… when I was young… I was EMPEROR.” He transforms in the spirit of the last emperor, describing his remaining vice – his pride. He explains that his pride cloaked Pandaria in the mists. He thought they could solve their problems without outside help. Now he believes that old enemies must work together, and that proud races must admit that they need help. He then disappears.
Upon completing all the tasks of the Darkspear Rebellion, I became Darkspear Revolutionary Devee. (If I was a member of the Alliance, I would gained “Hordebreaker!”)
My opinion and reaction
I’m incredibly happy with the Battlefield Barrens event. The lore was fantastic, and experiencing it was a ton of fun. The only grind is collecting supplies for the weekly, but that really only took an hour or so. Of course, if I choose not to do it again, it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal. The conflict rose at a great pacing as well. First, we attacked the Kor’kron haphazardly. Next, they attacked Sen’jin Village, and we defended. Finally, we led a full assault with a marching army upon Razor Hill. Very cool!
All three leaders of the primary Western Horde were there – Vol’jin, Thrall, and Baine. They even mentioned that Lor’themar agreed with the rebellion but was still busy and that Sylvanas agreed but was too far away. It was nice to see Baine show up despite there still being tauren within Orgrimmar. The dialogue between Thrall and Vol’jin was also touching. I know I’m a sap for lore and story, but I really enjoyed it. I hope Blizzard wasn’t foreshadowing Thrall’s death, but in all honesty, I was expecting his death at the end of Cataclysm already. Many people love Thrall, and many people are sick of seeing him. Killing him could be a fitting solution. The people who are sick of him won’t need to see him anymore. The people who love him will have him go out at a high point in his life and can remember him as a great hero.
The quest with the Old Seer was simply amazing. I didn’t even realize he was talking about defeating the sha as we climbed until I went back to watch my own video. And when he transformed into the Emperor, I was at a loss of words. I know that sounds silly, but I have a low tolerance for “awesome,” and this was super awesome. A lot of people were expecting a final Sha of Pride, but it’s nice to see it confirmed. And it’s definitely true that Garrosh has been acting more prideful and much less honorable than previously. When did the mists part, anyways? Could the Sha of Pride have left Pandaria, parting the mists, near the end of Cataclysm – right around the time Garrosh Hellscream began planning the destruction of Theramore? It could explain his change of behavior!
Last week we broke through the walls of the Thunder King at the end of Isle of Thunder’s Stage 2 in the scenario Tear Down This Wall!
This week, we continued our assault. At the end of Stage 3, we mounted an aerial assault in the solo scenario To the Skies! We now control of the Thunder Forges!
I love the use of these scenarios to progress the story. However, I believe that they should be repeatable some how in case we want to see the story again. The stages are unlocking at the perfect pace. I still have time between stages, but they’re unlocking fast enough that they make me want to do dailies another couple times to see what’s changed.
While working on the Darkmoon Faire last week, I purchased that ugly mount along with three pets – Darkmoon Turtle, Darkmoon Zeppelin, and Darkmoon Tonk. In doing so, I earned Menagerie! Of course, if you look closely at the chat window in the screenshot, you’ll see that Moogle had to show me up!
It took until patch 1.6.0 for Blizzard to release another raid. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this isn’t because Blizzard wasn’t releasing content. They were just more lenient about what constituted a full patch number. In the last post, I talked about the 1.5.0 – Battlegrounds trailer. It was bad.
If you watched the Assault on Blackwing Lair trailer, you’ll see that this is bad as well. I’m positive that Blizzard knew how to make good trailers at this time. They did it for previous games, and they did it for the launch of World of Warcraft. Why does this one look like amateur machinima? Why is there a jerky camera? Everything’s in-game; there’s not even any voice work. It’s probably worth noting that this patch also introduced the Darkmoon Faire, although the trailer doesn’t address it at all.
Of course, maybe it’s redeemed by the character jumping around randomly around 0:15 to 0:17 on the left! Blizzard also uses this raid to reinforce the importance of the Black Dragonflight. In fact, having multiple Black Dragonflight raids so close together probably contributed to them seeming more important than they were, because they did take a backseat for a while afterwards. It was also interesting that the first three raids (and a few dungeons) were all within Blackrock Mountain. That was an incredibly important place for a long time. Besides PVP, it was the location of endgame World of Warcraft.
The Darkmoon Faire was only recently revamped, and it’s much more fun and impressive now. I was very excited for the first few months, but its attraction is already wearing thin. I’ll most likely stop caring about the dailies once I purchase all the mounts and pets. Luckily, there are a few things that Blizzard could do to improve the Darkmoon Faire even further.
More Games
First and foremost, the faire needs more games. If the size of the island and “under construction” tents are any indication, Blizzard plans this as well. However, players will eventually tire of these games as well. Right now, the Darkmoon Faire is exciting because of its limited availability. It can only be accessed one week per month, making it more shiny and new when it’s around. This should be taken a step further. Every month when the Darkmoon Faire is available for a week, it could feature five random games of the pool of 10 to 15. The five wouldn’t change over the course of the week, but next month they could be different. Because it’s different, it’s unlikely that on the second month it would be a brand new five. This would definitely keep the Darkmoon Faire fresh. As the number of total games grew, the amount offered per week could also increase. If there were 30 games total, maybe the faire would feature 10 every week, allowing you to do 10 dailies each day.
High Scores
Next, the games need to be actual games and not just quests. They seemed like games at first, but there’s no way to know if you’re doing better than last time. The game should track your high score. It’s Hammer Time; He Shoots, He Scores!; and Tonk Commander could each track how long it takes you to finish the game. Target: Turtle could track how many tosses it takes you to get three to land on the turtle. The Humanoid Cannonball could, I suppose, the number of shots out of the cannon you use. If this system was introduced, it would give players a fun reason to continue trying these games – to beat their previous high score.
The Darkmoon VIP Card
Lastly, I think the daily system should be changed. Really this is something I’d like to see everywhere, but I’ll take it as a change to the Darkmoon Faire. Each day you should be allowed to complete each daily once for free. Each week (that the Darkmoon Faire is open) you should be able to complete each daily seven times. After you’ve used your free play, you could use a “Darkmoon VIP Card” to play the game again. This would still count toward your weekly limit.
We’ll examine how that would work. Let’s say I can play every day that the faire is open. I would simply play each game on each day, and it would be exactly like it is currently. Now let’s say I can play only on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesday and Thursday I can only play for a short period of time, but I can play all day on Wednesday. In this scenario, let’s say I play It’s Hammer Time once on Tuesday. That would use one free chance at that daily for that day and bring my weekly total for that daily to 1/7. (To be clear, the totals would be per daily. The other games have their own total and daily freebie.) On Wednesday, I have a lot of time to play. I play it once to use my free chance. That makes me weekly total 2/7. Then I play it another four times, using four Darkmoon VIP Cards. Now my total for the week is 6/7. Why didn’t I play it a seventh time? Because I can still play for a bit on Thursday, so I might as well do it without using a Darkmoon VIP Card. On Thursday I go ahead and play the game, using my free chance. Now the total is finally at 7/7. Even if I suddenly find myself with free time on Saturday, I wouldn’t be able to play that game again.
Obviously I’m inspired by the “daily” heroic, which is now simply a bonus for the first seven of the week. However, I’ve made a change. Blizzard wants people coming back to play repeatedly. My Darkmoon VIP Card system encourages players to play daily to avoid using Darkmoon VIP Cards, while still allowing people who don’t have time to play daily the opportunity to get their total amount of tries into a limited game time. There’s still the question of how Darkmoon VIP Cards are earned. They could be awarded randomly on completion of the games, awarded absolutely each time a certain score is beat in certain games, or sold for gold. They could even be purchased with prize tickets, although I’m not sure how I’d feel about that.
Conclusion
I love the Darkmoon Faire. I love the feeling fun and mystery. And I don’t want that feeling to go away. I want to like and enjoy the Darkmoon Faire. The Darkmoon VIP Card would be a large change to the system. More games would take more development time. However, surely the high score system couldn’t be that much work. Add the high scores into our characters’ statistics page! The timed games would be easy!
Look who Mooglegem and I finally ran into in Mount Hyjal – Mankrik! He was the last person at whom we needed to /wave!
We finished the rest of the Molten Front a long time ago, but Mankrik always eluded us. A few days ago gem had the idea to just keep the quest in our quest logs and to visit every day. She pointed out that it would be faster than actually doing the quest every day. I know that should seem obvious, but I didn’t realize our guardians would still change. Yeserday we logged out while in the quest area, and today when we logged into the game, she had Mankrik with her!
I really enjoy events such as holidays, the Argent Tournament, the Darkmoon Faire, and the Molten Front. At the same time, I have some issues with them. Blizzard wants people logging into the game daily and these events (through the use of daily quests) force players to do them daily. I like participating in world-changing events and rare holidays, but I don’t always have the time to play daily. What can be done about this?
We can breakdown events into three types: there are events that happen once, events that are always accessible, and events that re-occur monthly or yearly. I don’t have a problem with events that happen once. In fact, these are the most exciting. Admittedly, I’m sad I missed so many, but that’s what makes them so awesome. I wasn’t max level until Wrath of the Lich King, so the first in which I participated were Zalazane’s Fall, Operation: Gnomeregan, Elemental Unrest, and even, I suppose, the Battle for the Undercity. These are very exciting in and of themselves, but the fact that they’re time-sensitive makes them seem more important. These are now events the occurred in history, and I was part of them. A great part was that I simply had to experience them. I didn’t have to experience them, and experience them, and experience them, and experience them.
By contrast, holiday events and events that are always accessible have dailies that require you to perform the same tasks repeatedly. I think events like the Molten Front and the Argent Tournament work better than holidays. Some of this is due to the fact that they’re not time-sensitive. There’s no reason to force me to do either of them daily. If I do, I progress faster. That’s great! But if I don’t, that’s okay. I get to go at my own pace. I think Blizzard also did an excellent job designing both of these. I liked progressing through the tournament. It was also a way of making things feel less tedious. In actuality, I was just doing another jousting daily, but the story allowed me to feel like I was moving through the ranks of the tournament. The Molten Front took this further with the phasing world. It was excellent.
Holiday events are terrible. I feel that I must participate daily. Let’s take, for example, the Headless Horseman. I need to fight him daily because I want his mount. The same goes for many other holidays as well (such as with Coren Direbrew during Brewfest). Then there are vendor rewards that require a huge amount of some sort of token. These are the worst in my opinion because I have to do a bunch of dailies everyday. I either have to to do some math to determine just how many I can miss or, more likely in my case, I do everything I can until I hit that magic number.
I have some proposals for improvements. One option is to allow the tokens to be obtained some infinitely-repeatable but very slow way. Doing the dailies would be best, but you don’t need to feel bad about missing some, because you can always get more tokens. Of course, then you’d have people that would do it non-stop on the first day. To combat this, you could have a second token that you can only get once per day. What if the holiday mount’s price tag was three daily tokens and a bunch of the other? It would be easiest to just play daily the entire week, but if you’re going to miss a bunch of days for some reason, you could grind the rest as a long as you actually played on three days.
This still seems flawed. Another thing that would be helpful would be for each day of the event to give you another opportunity to do a daily (or holiday boss or whatever). This opportunity would not expire at the end of the day. A week long event would give you seven chances to do the boss. You could do it once per day. You could do it seven times on the last day. You couldn’t do it seven times on the first day because you hadn’t earned the opportunities. This is the method I like best.
Most importantly, can’t Blizzard just make events that are more fun and varied? What if the Darkmoon Faire had 30 games but only 5 were randomly available each day? This would give a better reason to play than grinding for pets, mounts, or gear. Or how about high scores for certain quests/minigames. Most of the Darkmoon Faire games could have high scores saved. How about There and Back Again, the Brewfest keg delivery quest, or This One Time, When I Was Drunk…, the quest to defend against the Dark Irons?
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
