Battle For Azeroth, It’s All Good, Except A Few Tweaks Are In Order

I’m pretty amazed at the quick turn for some from Battle For Azeroth is the Best Expansion Ever!, to It Stinks!  Get out the pitchforks!

It lacks the grim, “the world is about to be overrun” tone of Legion.  This is a good thing.  

Though the boisterous, rowdy sea ports of Kul Tiras are a little tinged by the horror and dishonor of Darnassus burning, and a Horde turned evil overnight, they’re not overcome.   You’re facing odd supernatural creatures, a host from the Cthulhu mythos, and naked greed.  The settings are beautiful.  The stories flow nicely in two of the areas—Stormsong still seems disjointed.

The War Campaign trips to Zandalar are thus far entertaining expeditions.

The uproar over Azerite Armor is uninteresting.   After Legion’s horrible endless grind to make tiny progress for your Artifact Weapon, throwing several billion in artifact knowledge at the things and seeing your progress bar barely move–ugh.   Now there are varied weapons with stat upgrades.  The weapons are imaginative, they look great, they fit the world you’re exploring.  You feel like you’ve gotten somewhere each time you get a new one.

What they could tweak:

Character models.   I’ve kind of adjusted to the humans, though they look like washed out Olive Oyls.  The gnomes! The sweet gnomes.   I feel so bad every time I log one in.   If they at least let you change the eye color on those dinner plate sized eyes.  My gnomes mostly had blue eyes.  Now they look like, agh I don’t know what.  The dwarves have freckles (ummmm how do dwarves get freckles alone of all those in Azeroth all of a sudden?)   Give us back the button to let them be who they were.

The appearance of nodes for herbs and minerals seems terribly infrequent.   Let’s just say it’s clear they don’t want you to have any.

Dungeons dungeons dungeons.   I finally got Tol Dagor at 115.   Mercy.   Despite the armor upgrades you may get running dungeons, I just can’t stand going through Waycrest Manor, Freehold, and Shrine of the Storm anymore.  It’s a half hour or more queue then at least another half hour in each one.   I find myself thinking I can move my character farther along faster if I don’t stop dead in the water to run one of those.   They just need more variety sooner.  Agh.

From Legion I really do miss the class quests, though the Order Halls themselves were pretty hit and miss.

Darkmoon Faire is completely messed up.  Put it back the way it was, don’t mess with it again unless you’re adding something cool.   I normally send at least twelve characters through, and I’ve done as many as twenty two in a week.   Since Battle for Azeroth’s changes have gutted it, I just let it slide by.

Patchy

Luckily I was prepared for the stat squishes, because WHOMP.   It is taking me quite awhile to go through and fix everyone’s talents and toolbars.  Luckily I did have them all written down.

Once they’re all done I’ll take everyone out in the world to see how they fare.  For hilarity, I’ll send everyone into a dungeon because you know it will be all chaos.   And a good test of how the classes now play in familiar dungeons.

I watched the opening clip, I am finally going to give Anduin a break.  He was such a selfish brat in Pandaria, and I couldn’t believe they killed off Varian to let this boy be king.  He’s got heart though.  His face during the opening sequence, when he goes to rez everyone, and in a speech he gives in Stormwind in another quest, where his voice catches as he says his father name…sniff.  Got your back, kid.

Speaking of whomps….

The new character faces are supposed to be soooo expressive and work soooo wonderfully, they won’t let you have the old character models anymore.   Blah blah mesh, blah blah everything.

Only humans, gnomes and dwarves are horrifying.  Everyone else pretty much looks the same.   Dwarves get by with the least fugly.  I think that’s how you spell that.

The Fairest Of Them All

I forgot that I hated my feral cat’s Uncle Scar form so much, that for a long time in Legion I wouldn’t play the character.  I switched to some lower level Druids to Balance  (where I also dislike the Moonkin form).

My second most powerful character is my Warlock.  She was also the the most beautiful. They may as well have wiped her from the game.  My husband said she looked like she’d fallen down an elevator shaft.  The problem is, she looks evil.  The beautiful shining heroine is gone from sight, replaced by, despite my best efforts, a witchy looking character.   Not all my characters are Warlocks, so the witchy thing doesn’t apply. They’re awful too.  I know my girl is in there somewhere.  I could start wearing her helmet all the time.   One of those nasty smoking helmets with horns, ya, that’s pretty sweet.

390 gold to change her looks, by the way.  It should be free to try to fix your character, eep.