One thing I personally find kind of off-putting about the wider retail WoW community is how a large chunk of it seems to spend more time looking forward to the next thing than actually engaging with the current content. Where the Classic community sometimes gets bogged down by nostalgia and wishing they could play the game again like it's 2006, retail content creators often strike me as the opposite, always laser-focused on what the next patch will bring, seemingly in a race to be the first to report on what's new, and by the time it actually goes live, they've already moved on again.
I've been finding it particularly noticeable recently because while we don't have a launch date for Midnight yet, I'd say the expansion is definitely still at least three months away (probably more) but I swear anything WoW-related in my feeds that's not about Classic has been about seemingly nothing else for months already. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not at all curious about what the expansion will bring, but I don't want to hear about every time an NPC passes wind in the Midnight beta either. I like having a vague idea of what's to come, plus maybe a couple of more specific things to look forward to, but primarily I want to see things for myself once the expansion launches! The other day a weird headline popped up in my reddit recommendations and all I could think was: "That sounds like it must be alluding to some major story spoiler or something; I think I'll just scroll past as fast as I can." At times, it can feel like navigating a minefield.
It doesn't help that a lot of the expansion discourse I have seen has been extremely tedious as well. To give an example, as a more casual player who uses minimal addons, I really don't think the removal of combat addons is that big a deal. There are millions of us already playing that way just fine! It's obviously going to lead to some changes, but if this game is good at anything it's constantly changing things around, so hey, it's another day ending in y. Another example would be people getting extremely up in arms about Blizzard being open about wanting to monetise housing the way pretty much every other MMO with housing monetises it. I can understand feeling a degree of disappointment if you were hoping for something better/more generous, but let's not pretend that anything they've announced is hugely surprising if you know anything at all about how housing works in other MMOs.
Meanwhile, I'm finding it weirdly challenging to find people talking about things going on in the game right now. I'd like to hear how other people are experiencing Legion Remix for example! Or if you're not playing Lemix, what are you doing? I've picked up running a few delves a week on alts again and it's wild how absurdly buggy they've been for many weeks now (in a way that actually benefits players too). Brann has become stupidly OP as one of his abilities can one-shot an entire group on tier 11, and several of the delve-specific abilities have become similarly overtuned to a ridiculous degree, such as the phase cutter ability in Archival Assault or the footbomb dispenser you can get from treasures.
At first I shrugged it off as "haha, patch day, right" but it's been literally weeks now and I'm finding it weird how nobody seems to be talking about it. Are we just keeping quiet in hopes that Blizzard doesn't notice? I would have expected their "fun detected" sensors to go off pretty much instantly, and I keep thinking that surely they must at least be aware of this bug and have it their backlog somewhere. Are they just too busy with Midnight and Legion Remix to care about things being wonky in the mainline game, where it's presumably a bit more quiet at the moment?
The funny thing is that it's only because of this bug that I've actually started doing delves on my healers again - I'd previously stopped because while they were doable, they were just too slow and tedious. With Brann one-shotting things occasionally (not all the time, but frequently enough), the pace actually feels much better and fun. I now kind of dread Blizzard actually fixing the bug and taking that away again. With how long they've left it in the game at this point, I honestly hope they just leave it in for what remains of the expansion as well. When Midnight arrives with its gear reset, it's going to be enough of a slog to get geared up and powerful again anyway.
I've enjoyed catching up with S3 content in 'proper' Retail. I think taking that few months' break has really helped, because the catch-up for the Manaforge Vandals rep is much better than the equivalent for Undermine, so that's just being a four-week project rather than fifteen weeks. Currently working through the Oasis storyline, which is quite charming if extremely goofy at times (so many bee puns!).
ReplyDeleteAny other work I'm indulging in for that side of WoW is extremely limited. I earnt enough crests to unlock a few Normal tier colourations for her tier set as I saw uses for them as part of her getup, but otherwise I'm currently not too fussed about doing much work with other characters. Getting keys with alts is just so dang repetitive, and I don't want to put myself at risk of falling into a routine of doing weekly content with five characters again anytime soon.
With the recent adjustments to Ky'vessa's look-at-assassins mechanic, maybe I'll try the ?? Difficulty of her delve at some point. Otherwise, just got the K'aresh Trust rep to get but that shouldn't take too much longer (currently rank 12).
The Normal tier appearances comment was meant to be about my monk. I don't entirely know how I managed to leave that detail out.
DeleteI've been pushing my main character in Remix. She'll be at 999 versatility this week so after getting the Mythic stuff in the Argus raid I can stop doing all the raids. Yay! I'll be set to help friends get their Mythic+ achievements once they get to the point of running things.
ReplyDeleteI'll clean up the various Argus achievements and then work on leveling one of each of the Legion classes to 80, plus do their Order hall to completion for that one achievement. I kind of want to do everything in one Remix one time. Then other Remixes I'll be able to ignore stuff I don't care about.
In the rest of the Live game I'm been mainly farming my usual stuff, though I did add the farming of the Emerald Dream rares for the druid cosmetic forms. Three down, three to (tediously) go. I am waiting on Midnight to be able to farm Amirdrassil for the one Moonkin appearance and the Mythic mount w/the druid appearance and hunter taming book.
As far as Midnight stuff goes, I'm mainly interested in systems, specifically how the new transmog system will work. Housing? Well that will be here soon enough and I know from Swtor it won't call me that much. I'm more interested in being in the same neighborhood as my friends over having a house that's 'just right'. As far as the story stuff goes, I'm avoiding that like the undead plague. ;) I want to be able to react to it with a fresh eye. As far as addons go, I'm all for killing off the boss addons and making the game be less twitchy. Let's give this old man a bit easier time in the harder content.
That's a lot of ranks of Limits Unbound! My main is only on a bit over 100.
DeleteRemind me, did you play during Legion's original run? Are you motivated by nostalgia or by having missed out the first time around?
I was doing each raid on heroic and mythic, plus the world boss until Legionfall came out. After that I just did (do) the mythic bosses on EN, Nighthold, and ToS. Given I had mostly maxxed my Infinite Knowledge combining 100 of the mementos gives me 2 or 3 ranks. I can generally get around 1,000 mementos a day. My goal had been to do 25 ranks per day once I got rolling on the Infinite Knowledge. It has been a lot of raids, but they go *fast*. Like a swarm of piranhas stripping the bosses clean.
DeleteThe amusing thing is when I've done LFR on leveling characters I see far more mechanics than I ever do in the nominally more difficult mythic. Sometimes after a difficult LFR run, I'll tank that LFR wing on my primary Remix character just to give others a smooth run. I'm at the point that as a tank I can do more dps than the next 5 to 10 LFR dps.
I did do Legion when it was current and did all the class story/order hall stories, plus unlocked all the hidden artifact appearances and 20 of the 36 mage tower appearances (before I burned out on the mage tower). So there is little I didn't have from Legion already collected. At least, as far as I had cared to collect. I did pick up a number of dungeon and open world ensembles, but I tend not to normally go after those.
I think because I picked the 'wrong' way to do MoP Remix and missed out on some things I kind of wish I had gotten, I'm pushing more in Legion Remix. I mean, I did like Legion and I do wish Blizzard did more class stories (though the disease of profession ranks can die in a fire).
All that said, I'm not sure what other expansion they can do a Remix with that would be popular enough for me to push like this again. Doing a Classic Remix might work if they put in the original mounts, Tier 3 or the Corrupted Ashbringer, but given they didn't allow the Mage Tower I just can't see them being that nice to players. Other expansions don't either have the popularity or the cosmetics to pull off a Remix. At least in my mind. I could be wrong.