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.

WOW Notes

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft almost exclusively, every day.  It’s easier to write about games I’m not so familiar with for some reason than ones I know really well.

My current main character is a Paladin who has swept through the world up to Draenor without trying to complete any areas or quest lines, I’ve just kept her moving.  It is an appealing playstyle, but not one I could do with all of my characters.  Just getting to maximum level might be a little empty if you don’t have any tradeskills (which she doesn’t), and you are not up to the proper level for the area with mining and herbalism, her two professions.

It was always my plan to slow down once I got to Draenor, and do everything that can be done in Draenor (which is a lot).  I made it through each area, with every quest and Objective completed, through Spires of Arak.

You get the offer to go to the Broken Isles at level 98, and my character’s gear level certainly wasn’t up to going there.  Still, by the end of Arak I was level 100(?), and my habit of using this character to make money fast wasn’t being satisfied by Draenor’s quests, not quite.

At a still terrible item level of (eek, I know) approximately 524, I tried out the beginning scenario for Legion.  With only my character and one other person, it went pretty slow, but it was doable, no death.

I decided to get crushed by the Class Quest, but no, I steamrolled it. It was easier for her than for my main Paladin who had an easy enough time, with better gear, but not quite that easy.

Legion continues to be a struggle for me to play through, so I’ve been sending the secondary Paladin to Tanaan, working on Garrison Follower Missions, Naval Missions and the Fishing Dailies.  Then I send her to Dalaran to work the Class Hall missions, and out into Azsuna for quests.

As I’ve played through Tanaan and done quests in the Broken Isles she’s now at 701 item level and is having an easier time.

It occurred to me this week she is catching up with my Blackwater Raiders characters, and could surpass them.  That doesn’t seem right, does it? So I’ve picked my Paladin and Druid to go neck and neck on BWR towards 110, finally.

The Druid just finished Val’sharah.  Stormheim, coming up.  I have my main Paladin working in Highmountain, and I can barely stand it.  The Taurens all sound like the adults in the old Charlie Brown specials.  Wah, wah ,wah…  It’s a little better as you get away from Thunder Totem, the quests less…whiney…

Sliding in for some quality crafting time is my Gnome Engineer on BWR.  My son was looking for Heirlooms you could get with certain guild achievements, so I ground her up in crafting from where she was, in the mid 500s to over 600.  I moved her through Pandaria and into Draenor to get the craft skill up.  Engineering has the BEST STUFF.   I’m not pushing her through Draenor, but am working on her Engineer Dailies there.  I really want to be able to make some of the Pandaria recipes, including a big flying balloon thing that takes a billion Trillium, which I’ve found none of so far in Pandaria, but I know it’s in Darkmoon Crates often enough, so I’ll continue her through Pandaria rather than Draenor till she gets that thing.

Blingtrons!  I love seeing them, but who knew they fight each other when placed near each other and gain some sort of points for being the tough Blingtron on the block.   I always thought people were being nice when they say a Blingtron is outside the bank, blah blah, but maybe they’re fingering the little guys for some bully Blingtron to come and take them out.

Might I say I’m proud of this little gnome.  She’s the first Gnome, the first Warrior, the first Engineer among all my characters to make it to Draenor and have her own cozy spot in the world.

The game has a lot of layers…

Legion: So The Plan Was…

I meant to just start out in Legion with my Tailor and Alchemist from the two servers where I have high level characters.  Those are usually the most useful crafts in any game, in my experience.

I’d have a Feral Druid and a Frost Mage in one place, the other would be a Hunter and a Druid. 

Once I started the Artifact Quests aka the Class Quests, I found them to be really interesting, and different from each other so I’ve been working on the quests for each class where my characters are at 100.  Only two of them went in with ilevels over 680.  One was around 650, a couple in the 620s.

The plan then was to get them through their quest series, establish them in their Order Halls, set them in place all over the Broken Isles.

Two characters had a pretty easy peasy time of it.   Others, not so much.

Druid

My Druid sailed through–the one at 680.    I like the Emerald Dream area, it suits the Druid well.  Bad news, in addition to her Aluminum Mask Face, in Feral form she now looks like Scar from the Lion King.  I just can’t look at my character anymore.

Warlock

My Warlock with only 654 hardly took any damage.  It was over so fast I thought something was missing.

The Warlock Class Hall looks like hell, literally, and I’m not happy the entrance is in the Underbelly.  Why not a portal or some other location?

Paladin

My Paladin with an iLevel of 625?  Did get killed a couple of times, but her healing abilities, though not feeling as powerful as they once were, kept her alive and she made it.

I honestly thought it was odd to have the class order hall in the Plaguelands of the Eastern Kingdoms.  Why not somewhere on the Broken Isles?  However, when I walked into the vault, and saw the rather wonderful underground setup, I was amazed.  I thought the entire ceremony of induction, and the quest line for her were really quite touching.

Demon Hunter 

Not a fan of the Demon Hunter quest or the hall itself.   Lesson learned in the artifact part, you have to kill every single mob in the place before you get the Boss.  Zzzzzzz.

I dislike circular structures, whether they be buildings or in game cities and the Demon Hunter Hall is a circle.  I really really don’t like having to float over to the place from the edge of Dalaran every time you go there.

Hunter

The Hunter quest is good except for the middle part where you’re in Ulduar.  It just doesn’t feel like a Hunter-y place.  I would rather that she could choose a Bow over a Gun as her weapon.

The Hunter Order Hall area is great though, and really feels evocative of the class.

Frost Mage

My Frost Mage at about 625 has not been able to beat the boss in her quest yet.  In any other area of Azeroth, she could start questing in the new area, level up, get a few pieces of upgraded armor, and go back in after the (Redacted).  

 The Nasty Boy

No no. If you can’t complete this, no order hall, and thus no way to get to the Broken Isles.   I came so close a couple of times.  Changed my rotation and talents.  Used every skill she has.  She’s died at least ten times.  Soooo.  I sent her to Tanaan, cone of shame city.  Except, every objective area had people there and all the mobs were dead.  I got a single piece of useable armor.  Then I thought to look at her shards and went to the Stormwind Vendor and bought a few pieces and whoa now 647.  Babaloooey.   Additionally, my hard working alchemist gathered enough materials to send her a few Legion level Healing Potions and Rejuvenation potions.  I am hoping they aren’t on the same timer, as often they are not.  If she can get down to the nub with bad butt boy, and use one of those, she’s got his horsehairs in a snipper.  Hahaha.  Sorry, really frustrated on this one.

Rogue

The very best quest and order hall goes to the Rogue.  The entire thing is so well thought out and written just brilliantly.  My Rogue is an Assassination Rogue, also with a low ilevel.  She had no trouble though, except for figuring out the how of her quest.  It really was a puzzle, and it was a case of observation, and timing and use of her skills.   I was stuck at the last part trying to get into the Stormwind Keep.    I logged out and sent another character to fly around the keep to see if there was another secret type entrance I never knew was there.  Nope, you have to go right in the front door.

I really hated to see all the guards in my beloved Stormwind out to kill me, it was sort of jarring.

So you think that was super good as a quest and a tale and you get back to Dalaran and there’s more to the story.  So cool.

Also in the Underbelly, this has a secret entrance from a Dalaran shop with a door that swings out just for Rogueish types.  So immersive.

Onward into the Breach (I think that’s the phrase)

I still have a boosted Elemental Shaman to do.  I thought I should auto-level a class who has lagged behind forever.  Problematically, they’re level 100, but you still aren’t familiar with how to play them well, so she may get trapped in Class Quest Hell too.

Everyone is getting sent to various lands.  I think it is just great not to have to drag every character along the same path.  They’ll all get there eventually, but the game play for each of them is so different, we shall see.   I stop to fish with everyone.   I would like to start cooking quests, but am not seeing any available.  You can get Legion level Archaeology just by working a dig site.  Good to know.   I find myself switching between characters several times during the evening, so maybe they’ll all get to the top around the same time.