Insanely Reconsidering WoW

Huntn said:

Thanks! Got the quest off the Hero Board in Stormwind and went to Hyjal. When I fly over Stormwind, I'm still amazed! Now, what's the easiest way back to Stormwind? Is it to fly over to Dark Shore and catch the boat? I read online that some players keep their Inn in Stormwind, and there is a pool somewhere in SW that will portal you back to Hyjal or is that to Vash?

Btw, I dropped by in Dalaran expecting to see daily dungeons, but they seem to have gone away... There was a guy there offering up Naxx.

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I'm of a slightly different opinion. I would go to Vashj'ir and do the starting quest until you get the underwater mount. The starting cut scenes and the visuals make Vashj'ir a place you want to experience. As far as leveling, do it in Hyjal once you checked out Vashj'ir. Note - The hunter's ranged combat and pet make the 3D combat in Vashj'ir easy.

As far as getting back and forth,

1) Hyjal : Complete the starting quest and you should get a portal connecting your capital with Hyjal. There is also a flight point next to the starting building in Hyjal.

2) Vashj'ir: Complete the starting quest and you should get a portal connecting your capital to Vashj'ir. You also could actually survive a flying trip to the mainland from Vashj'ir.

Ive just got 10 day trial from Blizz to try the Draenor. My god, how addictive the levelling is! One more quest, one more quest, all the time!

Garrison is fantastic addition to game, however i think that if you will run out of things to do in Garrison it will be boring as hell.

Graphical style is really god, however... Insanely GPU taxing on OSX.

MBP Mid 2012 with GT650M. Graphics set to Fair(2nd lowest setting) and 1440x900. I was building a Forge in Garrison, and the FPS was between 3 and 6. Yes, between three and six FPS.

It could be throttling however, but whole computer lagged insanely.

Anyways, one of best games right now on the market.

koyoot said:

Ive just got 10 day trial from Blizz to try the Draenor. My god, how addictive the levelling is! One more quest, one more quest, all the time!

Garrison is fantastic addition to game, however i think that if you will run out of things to do in Garrison it will be boring as hell.

Graphical style is really god, however... Insanely GPU taxing on OSX.

MBP Mid 2012 with GT650M. Graphics set to Fair(2nd lowest setting) and 1440x900. I was building a Forge in Garrison, and the FPS was between 3 and 6. Yes, between three and six FPS.

It could be throttling however, but whole computer lagged insanely.

Anyways, one of best games right now on the market.

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I just logged into the 10 day trial to try it out on my account but how do you get to the new stuff, all I have is an UPGRADE button to the left of character screen, and that takes me to my Battlenet account screen to buy the upgrade, so how do I try Draenor ?

Washac said:

I just logged into the 10 day trial to try it out on my account but how do you get to the new stuff, all I have is an UPGRADE button to the left of character screen, and that takes me to my Battlenet account screen to buy the upgrade, so how do I try Draenor ?

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Log into game, get on your 90th level character, you get the quest to go to Blasted lands, then you get another quest for going through Dark Portal, and you get an hour or so quest line-event for establishing you on Draeonor.

I was a bit sceptic about it, after 3 quests, but in the end its really great event.

And, like ive said, questing is addictive. You will not go past 90th level, cause exp bar will stop just 1 exp before 91st, but at least you will establish your garrison.

koyoot said:

Log into game, get on your 90th level character, you get the quest to go to Blasted lands, then you get another quest for going through Dark Portal, and you get an hour or so quest line-event for establishing you on Draeonor.

I was a bit sceptic about it, after 3 quests, but in the end its really great event.

And, like ive said, questing is addictive. You will not go past 90th level, cause exp bar will stop just 1 exp before 91st, but at least you will establish your garrison.

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Ah, there is the problem I have no 90th level character

Playing PVP in Stormshield.. It's a blast.

Huntn said:

I restarted WoW in the Cataclysm part of the game, got to the underworld zone (rift?) and hated that, got to 85 and was just about to jump to Pandara when I found this longish hunter quest in Stormwind (only for hunters?) that takes place in Stranglethorn. I'm loving that!! One of my favorite zones.

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Did you ever get a chance to check out Vashj'ir and get your underwater mount ?

I agree with you on Deepholm except it's really nice for mining and skinning.

I need to somehow block threads like this as I also have that little voice in the back of my head telling me to play again.

I've not played for about 8 years but every time I hear "WoW" I get even more curious how the game is these days. By the way, would a character from back then be accessible still?

eattherich said:

By the way, would a character from back then be accessible still?

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Yep, Blizzard is evil .

Huntn said:

How did you play it before, casual or hard core addicted? By your description, I assume the latter.

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Good question. Well, it was more than casual but I was at university so I also had quite a bit of time to play. For now, I think I'll keep my distance from it but I'll likely break at some point. I'm really enjoying Shadow of Mordor on my PS4 right now (and I'm quite busy with work) so I'm luckily busy.

eattherich said:

I need to somehow block threads like this as I also have that little voice in the back of my head telling me to play again.

I've not played for about 8 years but every time I hear "WoW" I get even more curious how the game is these days. By the way, would a character from back then be accessible still?

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If you played from the vanilla and TBC, you'll definitely see a very different game. The RPG elements are totally wiped out, class trees are over-simplified, itemization has became a flat one-way street, and the raid encounters are all about fast arcade-type reactions more than ever.

Definitely, there are lots and lots to do now, but if you come from the RPG side of the game, this is now gone, in the favor or the fast and easy casual type of play.

I've got to level 100, got PVP full dressed and now I hate the game. Nothing changed, it's all the same. Gear + abuse of CC's = win. They changed diminishing returns on cc's again making them as bad as they were in Pandaria. Maybe just my opinion but too repetitive and not much fun anymore.

I did play heroes of the storm. Kind of fun, also repetitive, but it's one of those you log in, play for 10 minutes and then quit feeling good.

Huntn said:

That's me, casual... Loving the Jade Forest, 100% soloable so far (not counting 5 player instances) while recognizing this is part of the previous expansion, not the current expansion. Is the current expansion area (WoD) this easy?

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Absolutely easy. Although you might find annoying the lack of flying mounts, but that's a step towards the right direction, in my opinion. Makes the terrain and the enemies between you and your destination more meaningful. It's very suggestive how getting things back towards vanilla, makes the game a bit better.

On the casual part, though, I've found the garrisons to become a huge time-sink, after a while. This might be not-so-great if you want to keep your WoW gaming on a short time-frame. Also, they isolate players too much, for an MMO game.

WoD Impressions

Huntn said:

That's me, casual... Loving the Jade Forest, 100% soloable so far (not counting 5 player instances) while recognizing this is part of the previous expansion, not the current expansion. Is the current expansion area (WoD) this easy?

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I would rate WoD as follows (note: I'm horde and this is my opinion)
8/9 out of 10: Initially leveling to 100. It has a great story and leveling the first garrison to 3 can be fun.

5/6 out of 10: Leveling alts. They do have a few different quest alternatives but the only way to really level is through questing. The exp gained in instances has been greatly reduced making questing the only choice. Going through the garrison again on alts can be painful .

3 (non-raiding) / 7 (raiding) out of 10 after level 100:
Plusses: Everything in this expansion was geared towards helping players that raid.

Negative:
- No justice or valor points and heroics drop subpar equipment. This causes many people to not run heroics and huge queue times for people who do
- Content (There isn't much to do besides garrisons (you are probably tired of them at this point), PvP, or raiding.) Even players that raid are complaining they have nothing to do the non-raid days.
- Professions. You can only really craft one piece of equipment every 2 weeks. Characters are limited to 3 pieces of crafted gear. No more sockets for gems (except very high level raid gear) so the jewel crafting profession is useless except for making necklaces / rings (which count towards the 3 piece limit). Enchanters can only enchant rings, necklaces, weapons, and cloaks.
- Garrisons. I think as it is, the garrison are mostly a negative. As others have stated, everyone sits in their garrison and there is no interaction. It takes the M out of MMO .
- No Flying. Gathering is mostly dead in this expansion (except skinning) so you don't need a flying mount for it. The pathing (at least in the horde area) is pretty bad and makes ground traveling very annoying.

To anyone who has not played the WoD expansion, I recommend giving it a try. You should enjoy it but don't assume that you will stick with it once you get a few characters to 100 (unless raiding is your primary goal).

Huntn said:

When I played originally in beta, retail, I was about 85% solo, and partied up when I needed help. This time I'm 100% solo outside of the 5 person instances. Recently joined a 1000 member guild on Dalaran and was shocked that the vast majority of them are playing under level 50. I had a level one player trying to party with me, lol. I'm L87. I'm up for 5 man instances but usually go the PUG route using the group finder which is a great convienence. I've only activated one of my toons, so I'm restricted as far as helping the low guys.

One thing I've seen in other MMORPGs is level scaling which is a great idea. As I remember Final Fantasy has it. If you are a level 80 and join a L20 dungeon to help out your abilities are scaled back to that level. I'll laugh if you tell me WoW has it.

You are right about flying, it does allow you to avoid the perils. I love flying, it's convienence, the sights, but does insulate you from the dangers on the ground, which these days don't seem all that dangerous.

After doing my vision quest, I was sitting in The Temple of the Jade Serpent, (Jade Forest, Pandaria) looking out over the water meditating, enjoying the sights and ambient sounds, why quest? I really hope that one day when WoW has basically run its course, that they turn it into a big sandbox although they'll most likely have to dial back the subscription, lol. PS, no desire to play a panda toon.

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Unfortunately, there's no such feature as level scaling in dungeons, as of yet (like Rift and other MMOs do). I guess Blizzard could easily add it, but WoW (again, unfortunately, imho) concentrates around leveling fast in order to reach max level ASAP. So, there's no real investment on lower level gameplay. On that part, I really enjoyed Rift much more, as you didn't feel the obligation to rush on leveling.

For Pandaria, I'd suggest to try and go to Siege of Orgrimmar raid as it concludes nicely the story line of this expansion (after beating the final boss).

Also, the legendary cloak quest can be fun, but it requires various raids all over the expansion in order to complete it, so not sure if there are still enough people for this.

Multiple level 100's now....and the pathing is so annoying when riding mounts that I leveled my warrior almost completely in dungeons by tanking. Rested XP gives about 20% per run.
I understand the need to make people not fly to see all the work they put in, but after leveling one toon to 100 I don't need to see it again. On top of that, riding while leveling is VERY annoying compared to Pandaria, Northrend, and even Outland. I can't stand it.
I'm sitting on a 92 shaman at the moment that I really want to level, but just can't seem to do so b/c of how much I hate riding in Draenor. I've went from 91-92 off of Garrison XP missions for my followers....haha.

Plus, they wanted us out in the world, which is why flying hasn't been enabled (and isn't in patch 6.1 like they said they might) but really everyone is just in their garrisons most of the time.


The Highmaul raid is alright. I like the ogre setting. The shared loot with world bosses sucks. You only get loot from one of them per week instead of being able to go to each one and try and get loot, which would ultimately be a good thing b/c it gives you more to do after 100.


Some of the aspects of garrisons are great (extra mounts, transmog gear, some follower missions, etc.). But they destroyed professions with this (especially mining and herbalism).

I like the dungeons but there is no reason to do them after your gear is adequate as they reward nothing else. No valor or justice so they are pointless eventually for your toons. This is leading to longer and longer queues.

LFR is nice and easy and quick. A pleasant change from MoP as this is just filler gear for people who do organized raiding.

Story is very 'bleh'. Instead of pushing the main story line along in Azeroth they've detoured us for something that feels meaningless. All of this could have been shown in a Caverns of Time raid or multi-dungeon situation. I find myself not caring about the story at all in this expansion (a first for me).


At this point the only reason I am playing is to raid with the guild b/c I lead the raiding and organize it for everyone. We've been a guild since TBC and some of us were in the same guild together in vanilla. So as long as they play, I'll keep going. But if we were to stop raiding together I'd cancel my subscription that moment.


Overall I give this expansion a 5/10. We are in the first patch and that should be one of the most exciting times, but this one just drops the ball. By the end of MoP I wasn't enjoying it that much but for the first year I loved it. Not the case with WoD.

I would say that if you are a hardcore player and want to spend lots of time with a game, avoid this one. If you will only casually play a few hours a week and don't mind the subscription, then you will probably enjoy this expansion.

Soon as Tanaan Jungle opens up flying will be enabled.

Huntn said:

I love Pandaria! <gush>

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Did you get your farm yet ?