Monthly Archives: November 2017

The Real Reason I Don’t Do Voice Chat…

Are beings like this guy:

Hard to see him, I know, but he’s like Insta-Death Man.   I threw about 7 characters at him today.  By the time I got to my Warlock, and was killed killed killed as soon as I was back to life, and I was swearing like I do…it occurred to me just how bad it would be for me to be heard by others during fights like this.  Tsk. 

My Paladin (lvl 108) and my Demon Hunter (who I’ve let flounder at lvl 104) acquitted themselves well against him.  The Demon Hunter actually got more hits in than any other character.  I’ll have to move her forward.

I have to say these bosses are different than any I’ve encountered in dungeons.  I want to say Real Suckers, but of course I’m too polite.

Blizzcon: Opening Ceremony

I’m finally getting around to watching the Blizzcon Virtual Ticket videos.  I’ll do brief notes after I see them.   Most are about an hour each, so I’m going to be spreading them out.

I’m glad to be a Virtual ticket holder for many reasons, one being not needing to try to get into panels among a crush of 30,000 other people.   The main hall was immense, yet there were people throughout the convention center and another building watching the opening ceremony on screens.  I wonder what you had to do to get into that main hall.

I only peeked at, then fast forwarded through (another Virtual Ticket bonus) an Esports video, followed by presentations on Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Overwatch.  Just not interested in any of those.

Then J Allen Brack comes out and the World of Warcraft music starts, and it’s the magic you’re looking for.   It was fun to see him launch right into his coy presentation of the Vanilla server announcement, the crowd went wild by the time he was talking about chocolate ice cream.   I like the video for the Classic Server, and within this context it was even better watching it, and seeing all the iterations of Wow be rolled back to a time I never knew, but even the brief glimpse of the dwarf outside Ironforge looked really exciting and heroic.  I can’t wait to see the old Azeroth.

The crowd received the Battle For Azeroth announcement with great enthusiasm.  I like the cinematic for it, and I admired Sylvanas in it for sheer boldness and a desire to not be defeated.  That flip over to the seige tower, yow.   Anduin has bugged me since Pandaria (selfish whiner), but the kid did good here.  There’s a hero in there after all.

The other panels I’ve marked to watch are:

What’s Next World of Warcraft
Boss Design
Live Q and A Wow
Art of Wow
Wow Gameplay Systems
Voices of Blizzard: Women of Warcraft

Blizzcon Reveals, Initial Thoughts

I bought my first ever virtual tickets this year and was unable to watch yesterday at all, and today doesn’t look good either.  At least I can still see them and catch up.

Battle For Azeroth Expansion    My first thought was “well that’s the most boring expansion idea ever.”  I never played Warcraft 3 or any of the previous Warcraft games, but it seems as if they may be trying to bring elements of the RTS games to WOW, which may be interesting if they pull it off. I’ll wait and see how it plays out.

Classic Servers!!!!  There’s the glorious reveal.  I never played a single moment of Vanilla WOW, so I don’t have any expectations that it has to be some particular variant, I’m just really excited to see what earlier incarnations were like.  I’ve never seen Thousand Needles when it wasn’t underwater.  I’d loved to see Auberdine restored.  It still makes me sad whenever I send a character through the area.

Auto-scaling everywhere.   I thought Auto-scaling would be a good thing, but in truth, I feel like I’m treading water and never getting anywhere in Legion.  I like getting new skills as I level.  Gawd, don’t let there be some Artifact Weapon equivalent so you don’t get to level up yourself (that’s how it feels) but your boring weapon gets all the goodies.

PVP Servers gone, except now they’re everywhere.  I put my characters on non-PVP servers so they don’t have to be vulnerable to some nitwit with bullying issues.  I hate as it is that you can be flagged PVP under certain conditions.  In my mind, the only pvp that should occur on a non-pvp server is in instanced battlegrounds, or instanced anything not part of the general world.  If this change removes the chance of being accidentally or otherwise flagged pvp, then fine.

Those are the biggies.  More after I get a chance to watch the panels.

Side note:  I actually liked Anduin Wrynn in one of the cinematics for the first time since Pandaria when he was a selfish, thoughtless boy endangering his own people as they tried to find and “save” him.  Mass rez!