Blog Archives
WoW Legion PvP Overview
As many of you are aware, the coming of Legion means the end of PvP as you know it. Also, as many of you might be aware, Blizzard likes to, well, “borrow” certain ideas and concepts from other video games and incorporate them into their own. With that in mind, hey look at how Legion is changing PvP in a way that I’m sure is not intentionally copying Call of Duty.
Bellular, being just that damn awesome (and having access to the Legion Alpha of course), fills us in on what kind of changes we can expect from the PvP scene (and how it somehow does not include a noscope 360 Headshot… yet).
Star Wars Transmog
Spellfire Longswords make great Lightsabers.
As you may have noticed in the past little while, I’ve been working on getting more of a Star Wars feel on some of my characters. Today, Bellular helped fuel my issues by releasing a video with some Star Wars inspired WoW Transmogs.
Check it out. Enjoy. Take notes. Start farming.
May The Force Transmog Be With You.
Frost Death Knight Artifact Quest
Let’s go through some of the obvious bullet points here:
- I enjoy playing Death Knights.
- I have several Death Knight characters on my account.
- I plan on playing a Death Knight in Legion.
Now let’s go through some other factoids.
- I don’t have access to the Legion alpha.
- I am okay with this.
Some people might find that last bit kind of odd. But I don’t have the patience for testing, and I certainly don’t want to play a buggy game. I’m okay with waiting until the expansion goes live, and even then I wouldn’t mind waiting a few days just to have things a bit less congested.
Now even though I’m not playing any part of the expansion, I like hearing about things that should be going live when everything is done testing. Things like artifacts, aka the only weapon we’ll be using in Legion.
Bellular released a very impressive video regarding the Lich King Artifact Quest for Frost Death Knights. It was impressive for a couple of reasons. First, the quest looks easy enough to do. Second, the graphics and animations look much better than they do currently.
So check out Bellular’s video – Frost Death Knight Lich King Artifact Quest.
WoW Subscription Drop
As you might have heard from, well, all over Twitter and the various WoW news sites, Blizzard released some Q1 numbers and guess what? Yep, they dun lost about 3 million subscribers in three months. In three months, Blizzard managed to drop back to their Mists of Pandaria numbers pre-WoD. Yes, there’s always a drop in subscriptions during an expansion, but three million in three months? That’s pretty steep.
So why? Why did so many people pull the plug on WoW? I put the question out on Twitter and got much of the same responses:
Now as someone who has just hit 100 on their eighth character (WTF is wrong with me), I feel much of this pain. I’m a casual player. A dirty casual, some take a great deal of pleasure in pointing out. Doing garrison missions on eight characters is just mind numbing. Log in, click a couple of buttons, gather gold and gear, and log out. Garrisons were interesting at the beginning, a fun little distraction. But it slowly evolved (or not so slowly, given the dropoff in three months) into a chore. Blizzard has used a retention mechanic to keep people logging in, and players have slowly resented it.
That feels like a theme with this expansion, really. Players resent a game function and Blizzard rubs salt in the wound. People are pissed at the lack of flying, Blizz tells them “Hey guess what, we’ve got another patch coming and still no flying. Nope, probably not in the next one either. Keep climbing trees and getting all the cute little treasures we’ve left for you.” People complain that garrisons are becoming a chore, so Blizzard gives them MOAR CHORES!
Now you’ve got garrison missions in two zones! Fun!
Honestly, it feels like Blizz has really dropped the ball on this. Leveling was easy, which is something I am thankful for. But there’s a reason I didn’t stop at two max level characters. If you don’t raid, what else is there to do at level 100? Apex crystal missions to get gear you can also get from doing nothing (aka garrison missions)? Sure, maybe if I have four hours an evening, every evening, I might care about mulling about trying to build reps for some kind of reward. I don’t know. Personally, it feels like the part of the game that gives me the most reward (gear and gold) is something I don’t even need to do. I don’t need to play my class at all. I could do it on my bank alt.
Bellular covered this topic in one of his recent videos. This video, actually.
I’ve touched on my disappointment in a previous post. I just hope Blizzard comes up with some compelling content that can staunch the bleeding and keep people from leaving the game in droves. But things like this –
– is not going to do it.
Alliance Speed Leveling 90-100
This has been a busy couple of weeks for me. I’ve recently started a temporary training position for a new job, which means working a new schedule. It’s shift work too, which brings more time off but less things like sleeping and forming coherent sentences without a metric ton of coffee in my system at any one time.
I also started leveling up two Alliance characters on a new server.
My DK was already 90, so he got to dip his toes into the Draenor pond. I’ll just say this – for a guy who hates the snow and cold like I do, leveling through the Alliance’s Shadowmoon Valley was a breath of fresh air. At least, it was for the ten minutes I was there. I actually had to go back because I missed a quest that rewarded me with a follower. It was in the first town in the quest chain once you leave your garrison. I’d left my garrison and went to the next zone, not town. So I had to backtrack.
How did I get going so quickly? First, I beefed up my plate heirlooms to cap at 100 and geared the DK accordingly. Next, I knew I wanted to use the Potion of Accelerated Learning. The trick was getting one hundred garrison resources. My DK took a stroll around the scenic countryside and murdered several rare mobs, scrounged up a few treasures, and got enough resources to buy the potion. Twenty percent XP buff from the potion, about 45% from heirloom gear, 200% from rested XP, and I knew I’d put on levels.
Ready to rock, I had two choices – clip through quest chains, or engage in some bullet leveling.
My selection: Click-click-boom, baby. And Bellular gave me the ammunition.
Naturally Elvine gets credit too.
The good news is that I went from 93 to 100 in a few hours. The bad news is that I don’t have the garrison resources, or gold, to get my garrison to Level Three. Also, I’m looking to apply to a new guild and now that my Alliance DK is 100 I’m going to have to quest anyway to get his rep up.
Speed may not kill, but it can hurt your rep. And your wallet.
And your garrison.
Rokk Talk 