I already mentioned this in my last post, but I did want to go into a bit more detail about it. In the "This Week in WoW" news post from last Monday, Blizzard announced the date on which Season of Discovery is meant to progress into its second phase as a bullet point - pretty low-key if you ask me.
The three important things to know about the next phase are:
- The new level cap will be 40.
- The new dungeon-turned-raid will be Gnomeregan.
- The new PvP event will take place in Stranglethorn.
The last point isn't officially mentioned in the text, however the article's header art features a human in front of a red-tinted Stranglethorn backdrop, and the same image was also used in the Twitter announcement. Aggrend also replied to a curious poster who asked whether this was going to be similar to the Ashenvale event by saying that it was going to be "completely different".
A guildie linked a YouTube video that was talking about this announcement and which had a dedicated segment about how seemingly everyone thinks that this makes phase one way too long, and I'm glad that the most upvoted reply in its comment section basically disagreed with that sentiment, because my own feeling upon hearing about the upcoming release was: what, already?
I'm not blaming Blizzard; I'm sure straddling the line between keeping the no-lifers happy while also making the casuals feel included is not easy. In a way it's funny to me that I'm effectively a casual in this context, considering that I'm heavily invested in MMOs as a hobby in general. It's just that by playing more than one, and by not making Season of Discovery in specific my priority, I'm casual within that ecosystem. Many of my guildies are up to rotating four or five different characters through BFD every week, while I still only have my priest at the level cap.
And that's why I'm a bit disappointed to hear about phase two already. I've created some alts of my own to check out how other classes play with the SoD changes, but I'm not sure I'll get another one into the raid before the new phase releases. I've enjoyed having everyone be confined to the low levels together, and this is basically a stark reminder that we're getting back to the usual FOMO soon: the next phase is coming - quickly, enjoy the content before it's abandoned!
I mean, BFD drops some great loot, so maybe people will still run it occasionally while levelling up, but it won't be the same. I'm also not sure I have it in me to get super excited about the next phase right now to be honest. I love BFD and was excited to see that turned into a raid, but I'm not nearly as hyped about Gnomer, plus 25-40 is an infamously tedious levelling stretch. Considering how much slower I was to level even my one character to 25 compared to my guildies, every time the level cap goes up, it will get even harder to keep up. It's kind of a reminder that while I've been charmed by Season of Discovery's novelty, this kind of thing doesn't really mesh too well with the way I play WoW nowadays, and there was a reason I returned to era in the first place.
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Even though I knew Gnomer was going to be the raid, I would have preferred something that everybody could easily get to, such as Razorfen Downs. Gnomer is very out of the way for the Horde to reach, unless the decision was made that Horde prefers PvP so....
ReplyDeleteAggrend also replied to a curious poster who asked whether this was going to be similar to the Ashenvale event by saying that it was going to be "completely different".
You know what I'd like to see? Have random L60s Ally/Horde NPCs spawn in various spots and start ganking random toons from the other faction. That'll give someone the real feeling of Ganklethorn.
Back to the no-lifers, even on the RP server I've seen calls in LFG for BFD runs where the raid leaders want 7/7 BFD, "Must know all the fights", and "must submit for inspection before invites." I get where they don't want people who basically want a carry, but come on. This is BFD, not Classic Naxx. I guess that I should be glad I didn't create a toon on the large SoD PvE servers, because it's likely nuts with people trying full GDKP runs.
Gnomer isn't that bad for Horde since we get a teleport from Booty Bay.
DeleteAs for "This is BFD, not Classic Naxx" - I know you didn't read the other post, but one of my points was basically that it is actually closer to Naxx in terms of mechanics than to any of the other Vanilla raids (plus there is one boss where it's expected you'll bring a specific consumable), so I can't really blame people for having some requirements for their pugs...
I'm on Wild Growth and I seldom see that retail mentality when people are looking to fill out their group. Mostly I see people specify you must have a potion for Keltris (reasonable), with people mostly asking for 7/7 experience.
DeleteCount me in as one of the folks that wishes phase one was longer. I wanted more time at 'max' level just puttering around instead of feeling like I'm taking a quick breath before starting the next breath.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, some of the folks who are all-BIS or near there with a character or two are ready to move on. I kind of understand that, but given that there's finite content with Classic Era and a time-limit with SoD I'd rather enjoy it as much as possible.
I do think, though, that Blizzard is going to keep pushing things by using a tick-tock-tick-tock model between all the versions of Wow. There will always be new content somewhere.