That's what I like best about gaming too. Not pushing buttons and watching what's going on on screen. Sometimes I bring popcorn.
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
Val the Moofia Boss
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,238
Dragonflight expansion review
I will be reviewing Dragonflight for its RPG aspect. WoW has been a lackluster MMO for the past decade and Dragonflight does not change that. Unless you're diehard into doing the same raid or half dozen dungeons over and over again for months on end, then the only real question is whether or not the RPG - the questing content - of Dragonflight is good.
The expansion comes with five zones. The expansion's story begins in the Dracthyr starting zone, the Forbidden Reach, so that should be done first. You get to return to the Forbidden Reach later at level cap, where it exists as another lackluster immitation of Timeless Isle where you fly around in a zerg and kill rares for catchup gear. The Forbidden Reach is visually boring. It's just a desaturated, forested island with some mountains.
The story starts off engaging enough. The Dracthyr - the secret army of Neltharion aka Deathwing - wake from their stasis, and they have to fight a lost contingent of the Blue Dragonflight who are still acting under orders from Malygos, unaware that their leader died in 2008. Then the villains of the expansion are introduced, the Primalists, who want to revert the world back to before Titans altered it. Nothing amazing but the story moves quickly enough and the gameplay is engaging.
The next zone is the Waking Shore, the best zone in the expansion, with the turquoise rivers flanked by orange and green rock pillars to fly through. There is a little bit of mechanical depth here as one area of the zone is multilayered, with some mobs to fight and treasures on layers above that you have to fly to. The story keeps its momentum here, as you adventure with other preestablished characters, and with interesting Black Dragonflight drama towards the end.
The third zone, the Ohn'ahran Plains, is where the questing experience begins to fall apart. First, the environments are uninteresting. They're just plains to soar over. The story comes to a screeching halt, as you abruptly stop adventuring with the characters you were invested in trying to stop the Primalists, and instead start doing trivial stuff for centaur tribes. The Primalists eventually come back into the narrative, but you fight some random lieutenant nobody cares about, and I didn't really care the people I was fighting with. The only thing I really liked was the skybox.
The Azure Span is a visual improvement over the Plains, with tall trees to fly through, though it isn't multilayered like the Waking Shores was; there is no stuff up in the trees. There is a high fantasy area that rehashes the Crystalsong Forest/Borean Tundra with pink crystalized trees, but sadly it is very small.
Sadly, the story continues to mostly suck here. The main character of this zone is Kalecgos, who sounds like a wimp. On that note, adventuring with wimpy NPCs is a running theme throughout this expansion. You feel like more of a babysitter trying to assauge pathetically insecure people rather than a badass hero who has spent 15 years slaining villains on a quest to save the world from another. The zone climaxes in a neat fixed camera battle.
The last levelling zone is Thaldrazus. Unfortunately most of the zone is untraverseable mountain cliffs that you can't land/walk on and would slide down to your death if you tried, so the actual playable area is quite small, taking place either in boring stone architecture, or in the Bronze Dragonflight's area. The Bronze Dragonflight's fortress looks a little cool, though it's another Temple of Karabor situation where you can't actually go through doors and explore inside.
Overall the environments look fine, but are blown away by the high fantasy setting of the previous expansion, which had islands floating in a sky dimension and with threads of anima floating overhead and hyperspace flightpaths.
As for the story, once again you have to put up with a wimpy NPC for most of the questline. However, the final stretch of the questline is cool, as you get to travel through time.
Once you finish Thaldrazus, you are then immediately directed to do the first raid, the Vault of the Incarnates. There is no meaty story to sink your teeth into like with MoP's or WoD's legendary questlines which began after finishing the levelling experience.
I completed the raid on normal difficulty. The raid takes place almost entirely in black and red underground caves, with only a couple rooms that look visually different. The boss fights I liked were the ice spider, and Dathea. I liked the ice spider fight because you are fighting her while ascending a spiral staircase, and she tries to yank you off of the staircase. The Dathea fight takes place on a circular platform (Boring!) but has you dodging the tornadoes that zip across the room, and then there is the part where you have to position yourself to get knocked off the platform to another platform to fight adds. The Raszageth fight was also sorta decent. The other boss fights were forgettable.
After you kill Raszageth, you are then directed to go back to the Forbidden Reach and do an hour long questline. The story is really bad. There is much drivel about "you chose compassion over violence" and etc. Sanctimonious cutscenes where they are whisper talking and having subtle facial gestures. It's trying too hard to be prestige television. These moments have not been earned. Up until now, Embebrthal has had a grand total of... a minute and a half of screentime across the entire levelling experience, including the Dracthyr starting zone. The game has not endeared me to Emberthal or has gotten me invested in... whatever is going on with him.
I still have no idea what is going on with the villain Sarkareth. In the Dracthyr starting zone, he shows up and then blurts out that he hates Neltharion and the Dragon Aspects for no reason I could decipher, and now he is trying to inspire Dracthyr by appealing to Neltharion's vision for them and wants to fulfill that. Maybe the writers have this grandiose storyline in their heads, but it's just not getting across through the game to its audience.
Once you finish the Forbidden Reach, that's it for story. Dragonflight's main story is 13 to 14 hours long. I had other issues with Dragonflight's narrative.
There are sidequests, but I found most of them to be boring and not worth doing, though they award rep so you mind as well do them anyway if you want to buy dragon customizations from particular factions. There were a handful of somewhat interesting sidequests, such as the one with the kids and the injured baby proto-drake, or the one with the old dwarf/dragon reminiscing about the old days.
That's Dragonflight's questing content. I didn't really enjoy them narratively, but I did like seeing the new zones and I like WoW's combat, so overall okay.
Dragonflight introduces a few GW2-styled events, though they are nowhere near as well designed or as enjoyable. The Storm's Fury event has you spend 10-15 minutes standing in front of a portal, mowing down endless mobs of enemies, and the end boss fight takes too long. The soup event in Iskaara boils down to running around buying stuff from NPC vendors for 15 minutes. Due to their length, the events are very exhausting. They are novel to check out once or twice, but I wouldn't do them again.
The Dragonriding is fun enough. It visually does not feel as good as GW2, where the flying mounts there had far more robust animations that sold the act of flying, whereas WoW's dragonriding mounts do not and have some pretty janky transistions. Also doesn't help that WoW does not have a dive button, so you can't see the picturesque horizon while descending; you have to angle your camera towards the ground. I played a Tauren, and 3 out of the 4 dragonriding mounts looked comically small, so I was forced to stick with the Proto-drake mount. Another issue with Dragonriding is that you can easily ascend however much you want. You can spam the ascent button 8 times in a row, so you can soar over the land below. It ends up feeling like boring old flying as the ground moves slowly below and the skybox above does not move. To really sell the feeling of flying, there should have been a world to fly through. Either restrict how high the player can ascend like in GW2 so that they actually fly through the environment (you do this in the Waking Shore before you have all of the Dragonriding talents unlocked), or add stuff high in the sky to fly through, like fleets of large airships, anima threads, floating islands, clouds, etc.
I like that when you mount your dragon, it flies down to you, though I wish it also flew away when you dismounted like in GW2, rather than the mount instantly disappearing. (WoW on top, GW2 below).
After you've finished the story, did the raid, and saw the event, your only options are to:
Miscellaneous:
There has been a QoL improvement with the addition of Work Orders. If you wanted a crafted armor from an old expansion for transmog, or an old pet or a mount, etc, it was unlikely you would find it on the auction house, and if it was it was listed for ludicrous prices. You had to ask in trade chat hoping a crafter would bother with you. Now you can just acquire the mats and then put up a work order and tip 100 gold (you casually get thousands of gold from doing world quests so 100 gold isn't a big deal anymore), and all a crafter has to do is see the work order and press a button and its crafted.
Tauren players can finally transmog their two handed weapon to look like a log.
Another FOMO subscription retention gimmick has been added: the trading post. Every month, a NPC sells new stuff you can't otherwise get like new transmogs, collector's edition pets, quivers on your back, etc. You buy this stuff with a new currency that is easy to get (you get a monthly stipend, and can get more buy playing the game), but once the month is over, that stuff is gone.
I have been getting performance issues in the Dragon Isles, particularly Valdrakken. I have a Nvidia 3070 Ti, and I am getting 40-50 FPS. Historically WoW's performance sucks in foilage heavy areas such as Val'sharah, Suramar, or Ardenweald, but I'm getting 40-50 FPS being out in grass plains with no trees around like the Waking Shores or the Ohn'ahran Plains. The only reason I can think of for this is perhaps the game is rendering the entire Dragon Isles at once. Players are zooming around at 800% movement speed so perhaps there would be visually issues if zones were loaded as you got closer. I also had texture issues running the game with DX12 enabled, and had to take it down to DX11, which further decreased performance quality. Yes, my drivers were up to date and I did a scan of the game files.
I intend to remain subbed for another month to check out the 10.1 patch, which will introduce a new underground zone, new quests, and a new raid. Once I finish the story and beat the raid, I will unsub and probably won't come back until the 11.0 prepatch draws near to finish the story and do the raid will people are still doing it.
Overall, I'd say that if you like WoW's combat and pretty visuals, then check out the expansion. Maybe wait for a sale. If you don't like the gameplay then don't buy.
I will be reviewing Dragonflight for its RPG aspect. WoW has been a lackluster MMO for the past decade and Dragonflight does not change that. Unless you're diehard into doing the same raid or half dozen dungeons over and over again for months on end, then the only real question is whether or not the RPG - the questing content - of Dragonflight is good.
The expansion comes with five zones. The expansion's story begins in the Dracthyr starting zone, the Forbidden Reach, so that should be done first. You get to return to the Forbidden Reach later at level cap, where it exists as another lackluster immitation of Timeless Isle where you fly around in a zerg and kill rares for catchup gear. The Forbidden Reach is visually boring. It's just a desaturated, forested island with some mountains.
The story starts off engaging enough. The Dracthyr - the secret army of Neltharion aka Deathwing - wake from their stasis, and they have to fight a lost contingent of the Blue Dragonflight who are still acting under orders from Malygos, unaware that their leader died in 2008. Then the villains of the expansion are introduced, the Primalists, who want to revert the world back to before Titans altered it. Nothing amazing but the story moves quickly enough and the gameplay is engaging.
The next zone is the Waking Shore, the best zone in the expansion, with the turquoise rivers flanked by orange and green rock pillars to fly through. There is a little bit of mechanical depth here as one area of the zone is multilayered, with some mobs to fight and treasures on layers above that you have to fly to. The story keeps its momentum here, as you adventure with other preestablished characters, and with interesting Black Dragonflight drama towards the end.
There is also a small high fantasy area that has been twisted by the Primalists, which looks cool.
The new capital city is Valdrakken. I am not fond of the dragon's boring stone architecture that can be found through the expansion, but Valdrakken looks okay. The exterior looks great with the pink trees and the glass buildings and the dozens of NPC dragons flying around in the background against the pretty skybox. The interior of the Seat of the Aspect has some colorful stained glass.
The third zone, the Ohn'ahran Plains, is where the questing experience begins to fall apart. First, the environments are uninteresting. They're just plains to soar over. The story comes to a screeching halt, as you abruptly stop adventuring with the characters you were invested in trying to stop the Primalists, and instead start doing trivial stuff for centaur tribes. The Primalists eventually come back into the narrative, but you fight some random lieutenant nobody cares about, and I didn't really care the people I was fighting with. The only thing I really liked was the skybox.
The Azure Span is a visual improvement over the Plains, with tall trees to fly through, though it isn't multilayered like the Waking Shores was; there is no stuff up in the trees. There is a high fantasy area that rehashes the Crystalsong Forest/Borean Tundra with pink crystalized trees, but sadly it is very small.
Also, another cool high fantasy area twisted by the Primalists.
Sadly, the story continues to mostly suck here. The main character of this zone is Kalecgos, who sounds like a wimp. On that note, adventuring with wimpy NPCs is a running theme throughout this expansion. You feel like more of a babysitter trying to assauge pathetically insecure people rather than a badass hero who has spent 15 years slaining villains on a quest to save the world from another. The zone climaxes in a neat fixed camera battle.
The last levelling zone is Thaldrazus. Unfortunately most of the zone is untraverseable mountain cliffs that you can't land/walk on and would slide down to your death if you tried, so the actual playable area is quite small, taking place either in boring stone architecture, or in the Bronze Dragonflight's area. The Bronze Dragonflight's fortress looks a little cool, though it's another Temple of Karabor situation where you can't actually go through doors and explore inside.
Overall the environments look fine, but are blown away by the high fantasy setting of the previous expansion, which had islands floating in a sky dimension and with threads of anima floating overhead and hyperspace flightpaths.
As for the story, once again you have to put up with a wimpy NPC for most of the questline. However, the final stretch of the questline is cool, as you get to travel through time.
Once you finish Thaldrazus, you are then immediately directed to do the first raid, the Vault of the Incarnates. There is no meaty story to sink your teeth into like with MoP's or WoD's legendary questlines which began after finishing the levelling experience.
I completed the raid on normal difficulty. The raid takes place almost entirely in black and red underground caves, with only a couple rooms that look visually different. The boss fights I liked were the ice spider, and Dathea. I liked the ice spider fight because you are fighting her while ascending a spiral staircase, and she tries to yank you off of the staircase. The Dathea fight takes place on a circular platform (Boring!) but has you dodging the tornadoes that zip across the room, and then there is the part where you have to position yourself to get knocked off the platform to another platform to fight adds. The Raszageth fight was also sorta decent. The other boss fights were forgettable.
After you kill Raszageth, you are then directed to go back to the Forbidden Reach and do an hour long questline. The story is really bad. There is much drivel about "you chose compassion over violence" and etc. Sanctimonious cutscenes where they are whisper talking and having subtle facial gestures. It's trying too hard to be prestige television. These moments have not been earned. Up until now, Embebrthal has had a grand total of... a minute and a half of screentime across the entire levelling experience, including the Dracthyr starting zone. The game has not endeared me to Emberthal or has gotten me invested in... whatever is going on with him.
I still have no idea what is going on with the villain Sarkareth. In the Dracthyr starting zone, he shows up and then blurts out that he hates Neltharion and the Dragon Aspects for no reason I could decipher, and now he is trying to inspire Dracthyr by appealing to Neltharion's vision for them and wants to fulfill that. Maybe the writers have this grandiose storyline in their heads, but it's just not getting across through the game to its audience.
Once you finish the Forbidden Reach, that's it for story. Dragonflight's main story is 13 to 14 hours long. I had other issues with Dragonflight's narrative.
- I wasn't fond of Khadgar coming back for a 3rd expansion. If an old expansion NPC were to be brought back, I would have rather it had been Thrall, who would have actually had been relevant to an expansion about elemental magics and dragons given his role in Cata.
- You visit the Dragon Isles, but nobody acknowledges that there were three global disasters that should have affected them (the Cataclysm, the Legion invasion, and Azerite bursting out of the ground).
- There has ostensibly been a five year timeskip, but you certainly don't feel it. The only reminder was seeing Hemet Nessingwary being retired and driving wagon carts.
- Aggregate negative of sheer number of wimpy NPCs I had to put up with. It's like the people in Warcraft forgot how to speak authoritatively.
There are sidequests, but I found most of them to be boring and not worth doing, though they award rep so you mind as well do them anyway if you want to buy dragon customizations from particular factions. There were a handful of somewhat interesting sidequests, such as the one with the kids and the injured baby proto-drake, or the one with the old dwarf/dragon reminiscing about the old days.
That's Dragonflight's questing content. I didn't really enjoy them narratively, but I did like seeing the new zones and I like WoW's combat, so overall okay.
Soup event in Iskaara.
Dragonflight introduces a few GW2-styled events, though they are nowhere near as well designed or as enjoyable. The Storm's Fury event has you spend 10-15 minutes standing in front of a portal, mowing down endless mobs of enemies, and the end boss fight takes too long. The soup event in Iskaara boils down to running around buying stuff from NPC vendors for 15 minutes. Due to their length, the events are very exhausting. They are novel to check out once or twice, but I wouldn't do them again.
The Dragonriding is fun enough. It visually does not feel as good as GW2, where the flying mounts there had far more robust animations that sold the act of flying, whereas WoW's dragonriding mounts do not and have some pretty janky transistions. Also doesn't help that WoW does not have a dive button, so you can't see the picturesque horizon while descending; you have to angle your camera towards the ground. I played a Tauren, and 3 out of the 4 dragonriding mounts looked comically small, so I was forced to stick with the Proto-drake mount. Another issue with Dragonriding is that you can easily ascend however much you want. You can spam the ascent button 8 times in a row, so you can soar over the land below. It ends up feeling like boring old flying as the ground moves slowly below and the skybox above does not move. To really sell the feeling of flying, there should have been a world to fly through. Either restrict how high the player can ascend like in GW2 so that they actually fly through the environment (you do this in the Waking Shore before you have all of the Dragonriding talents unlocked), or add stuff high in the sky to fly through, like fleets of large airships, anima threads, floating islands, clouds, etc.
I like that when you mount your dragon, it flies down to you, though I wish it also flew away when you dismounted like in GW2, rather than the mount instantly disappearing. (WoW on top, GW2 below).
After you've finished the story, did the raid, and saw the event, your only options are to:
- Do the latest raid over and over for months on end, progressing through the difficulties from normal to heroic to mythic.
- Do the same half dozen mythic+ dungeons (the enemies have randomized abilities and you try to complete the dungeon as fast as possible) over and over again until the next expansion.
- Do PvP until you get bored. No, Dragonflight does not add any new PvP content.
- Unsub.
Miscellaneous:
There has been a QoL improvement with the addition of Work Orders. If you wanted a crafted armor from an old expansion for transmog, or an old pet or a mount, etc, it was unlikely you would find it on the auction house, and if it was it was listed for ludicrous prices. You had to ask in trade chat hoping a crafter would bother with you. Now you can just acquire the mats and then put up a work order and tip 100 gold (you casually get thousands of gold from doing world quests so 100 gold isn't a big deal anymore), and all a crafter has to do is see the work order and press a button and its crafted.
Tauren players can finally transmog their two handed weapon to look like a log.
Trading post.
Another FOMO subscription retention gimmick has been added: the trading post. Every month, a NPC sells new stuff you can't otherwise get like new transmogs, collector's edition pets, quivers on your back, etc. You buy this stuff with a new currency that is easy to get (you get a monthly stipend, and can get more buy playing the game), but once the month is over, that stuff is gone.
I have been getting performance issues in the Dragon Isles, particularly Valdrakken. I have a Nvidia 3070 Ti, and I am getting 40-50 FPS. Historically WoW's performance sucks in foilage heavy areas such as Val'sharah, Suramar, or Ardenweald, but I'm getting 40-50 FPS being out in grass plains with no trees around like the Waking Shores or the Ohn'ahran Plains. The only reason I can think of for this is perhaps the game is rendering the entire Dragon Isles at once. Players are zooming around at 800% movement speed so perhaps there would be visually issues if zones were loaded as you got closer. I also had texture issues running the game with DX12 enabled, and had to take it down to DX11, which further decreased performance quality. Yes, my drivers were up to date and I did a scan of the game files.
I intend to remain subbed for another month to check out the 10.1 patch, which will introduce a new underground zone, new quests, and a new raid. Once I finish the story and beat the raid, I will unsub and probably won't come back until the 11.0 prepatch draws near to finish the story and do the raid will people are still doing it.
Overall, I'd say that if you like WoW's combat and pretty visuals, then check out the expansion. Maybe wait for a sale. If you don't like the gameplay then don't buy.
Last edited:
Val the Moofia Boss
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,238
I have obtained this season's PvP Vicious Sabertooth mount, 2 days before the end of season deadline. This is my fifth Vicious mount.
I was concerned that I had only managed to reach a rating of 1,650 this season. I knew that I had attained the rank of Blood Guard (rank 1,700) on my Death Knight during Legion, so I thought I had performed worse, since I had a 43% winrate this season (46 wins over 105 games). I looked through my old WoW screenshots to verify... and was surprised that I actually did better this season. On my DK that earned Blood Guard, he had 40 wins over 105 games (38% winrate). I don't understand why if I had done worse on my DK, why I had attained 72 higher MMR on him than I did on my Paladin now. Either the formula has changed or the active PvP playerbase has shrunk and that has skewed the MMR calculations. Given that I'm noticing the same people, I'm guessing the RBG playerbase has definitely shrunk, though it's not GW2 levels of bad.
The armored Pern-style dragon mount you can get from next week's PvP season looks very tempting, but you have to win 50 games while at 2,400+ MMR to get it.
I can't remember if arena wins is faster (assembling a 2v2 or a 3v3 arena group takes only a few seconds) but my experience doing arenas to get Vicious mounts during MoP and Legion was awful. There is no comradery between people whatsoever. It is the epitome of a mercenary experience. Most of the time, people don't want to get into Vent or Discord and you get crushed by the premades of people who are. Long losestreaks are demoralizing. At least with RBGs, the nature of the game mode pretty much forces people to talk to each other and start getting to know each other a little bit, and losestreaks aren't so bad when you're chilling with other guys over voice.
Otherwise, I've been RPing again. The Moon Guard RP server has been hosting a cross-faction campaign against the Primalists. The Primalists in our RP felt far more threatening and imposing than they did in Blizzard's content. In our campaign, the Primalists are such a threat that the Horde and Alliance mobilize their armies and fleets to the Dragon Isles.
A Horde army leaves Orgrimmar for the Dragon Isles on day 1 of the campaign.
Alliance forces assembling in Stormwind Harbor on day 1.
Horde on their ships sailing towards the Dragon Isles on day 2.
Alliance on their ships.
We encounter turbulent seas and spot storm clouds as we approach the Dragon Isles. We receive word that the Primalists have launched a preemptive strike on our fleet. Lighting strikes down gunships with hundreds of soldiers on board. The coalition's forces break up into multiple groups to respond to the many different crises occurring simultaneously.
Map showing the position of various forces as we landed on D2.
My character joins the D-day landing on the Waking Shores. We trudge inland through the mud under as a pitch black sky punctuated by lightning. We struggle to retain control over our frightened steeds. We stumble upon the dead bodies of our brothers. We become enshrouded in dense mists and can't see more than a few feet in front of us. An unnatural wind sucks the very air out of our throats. We are kneeling on the ground, gasping for breath. Frostbite is setting in on our extremities. A massive storm elemental that we can barely see through the wind and rain manifests before us. We are eviscerated by glass and sand and small rocks. The sheer hurricane force launches even heavy orcs and Tauren back, sending a trail through the mud. We turn around and run for our lives. Squadrons of gyrocopters are hurtling towards the earth and impact into the rocks all around us. A menacing voice booms like thunder through the mountains, mocking the spawn of the Titans...
Anyway, don't see myself hanging around for more than a month or two.
Last edited:
Abesolus
Novice
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2023
- Messages
- 14
i've been following this thread for sometime now, and i decided to create an account, ffs this is the last starw, fucking filler raid tier with garbage last boss, who is basically a furry dragon, i started playiung back in 2014, stopped and then came back when they gave shadowlands, even brought DF, the devs are hacks
https://youtu.be/kXAnLzt22Ug
https://youtu.be/kXAnLzt22Ug
Val the Moofia Boss
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,238
My PUG is currently on the final boss of the raid. We got him down to 40% on our first try, guessing we'll get him down within the hour. We were stumped on Zskarn for an hour and Neltharion for two hours. Raid performance improved when the raid leader began cursing and yelling at his raiders like a drill sergeant and threatening to kick them. "YES SIR RAID LEADER!". Rest of the raid has been a breeze.
Story wise, he's a meh villain. You beat him up not once but twice in the questing experience (as in he's kneeling on the ground at your mercy), and twice you and the other characters just stand and watch as he runs away proclaiming that this isn't over. He isn't threatening at all, and it feels weird that the raid is about chasing him rather than the big evil dragon rampaging outside. Only cool thing about the villain is his boss room. After that, I'll just have to do the Fryak Assault event and then I will write up my review of the patch.
Last edited:
I'm so happy I've never played WoW. Thank you god.
Val the Moofia Boss
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,238
Dragonflight patch 10.1 review
The zone and the first half of the zone questline released last week. The second half of the questline, the raid, and the Fryakk Assaults didn't release until yesterday.
The new zone, Zalarek Cavern, is... decent? Probably the best looking Dragonflight zone with the orange lava rivers, the yellow sulfur, the turquoise crystals, the purple plants, etc. However, the zone isn't very fun to adventure through gameplay wise, unlike the multi-layered Tangled Depths or Draconis Mons from GW2. The underground area is does not feel as grandiose as it could have been compared to other fantasy underground areas, be it Draconis Mons, or the Hidden World from HTTYD, or even the Underbog and Azjol Nerub from WoW's earlier expansions. Neltharion's citadel, Abberus, does not feel imposing either.
The zone is very good for open world PvP, though, since the low ceiling means that it is unlikely your enemies can escape from you by simply ascending infinitely. They are likely to get dismounted by your wingshredder or airborne tumbling. I am disappointed how unimmersive the war supply mode crate is delievered, though. The plane spawns 5 feet in front of a cavern wall, flies the same path of south to north through the cavern, drops the crate, and then despawns 5 feet in front of the northern cavern wall. The plane either should have flown through the cavern entrances, or the crate should have been delievered by a Dwarven digging machine.
The map transition isn't perfect, as often times I see the end of the cave wall before it disappears. Yes, my game is installed on an SSD. Nice piano, though.
A 5th species of dragonriding mount has been added, called the Slitherdrake. Once again, we have the key feature of the expansion, the dragon mount, and it is too small for Tauren players. Still forced to use the Proto-Drake. No real choice or personalization to be had here. It's a shame, because I love the way the Pern-styled dragons look. Would have loved to have used one. Maybe 10.2 will introduce another dragonriding model and it will be probably scaled?
Questline
The mole people are nice. I'll take Honeypelt over that irritating Goblin from Nazjatar.
I have never met this man in my life. EDIT: oh, is he from that questline about the comedy duo of a human and a blood elf that ended with the elf sacrificing himself inside a tower?
Sarkareth isn't a threatening villain when we get a cutscene of a girl stomping on his glove device.
Hated the gratuitous Emberthal wank and the constant putting down of Wrathion and Sabellian.
More fire Vrykul... *snore*
Ebyssian should have died, either from the impact of crashing into the earth or the profuse bleeding from the serrated spear being yanked out of his body.
The mole village should have been turned into a smoking crater. The scene doesn't have much impact when there are only five dead bodies and all of the other vendors are manning their stalls selling stuff like normal and the buildings are still intact, not even caved in.
Looks like after you return to Alexstraza the story becomes either timegated and/or locked behind another reputation grind.
*Sarkareth gets beaten up a second time, as aforementioned*
More cringeworthy dialogue between Emberthal and Ebyssian.
If Neltharion had a loyal army of Black Dragonkin who would do ANYTHING he asked, why didn't he call upon them in Cata?
Wrathion never got focus this patch.
New raid: Abberus, the Shadow Crucible.
The raid is... I'm not sure how I feel about it.
First of all, it is yet another underground fortress/fire themed raid, in a game that is already heavily oversaturated with them. Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Grim Batol, Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, Firelands, Siege of Orgrimmar, the ogre mines dungeon from WoD, Blackrock Foundry, and so on. It is also mono-themed all the way through, unlike the great raids like ToT or SoO that have a lot of variation in environments and themes.
A raid about exploring a dark laboratory sounds cool. Unfortunately, the actual raid is you running through huge, empty hallways, nothing immersive like Karazhan.
Lots of asset reuse here. Generic fire elemental boss, another hydra/core hound boss, more fire vrykul bosses, yadda yadda.
Some of the AoE timings feel unfair. An AoE appears beneath you, and you have a fraction of a second to begin walking out of it, or you will be one shotted.
The hardest boss thus far has been Zskarn. Rest of the raid thus far has been a breeze.
This was a 5 or 6 hour long raid. I cannot recall any music from this patch. It's all forgettable crap. Very disappointing given how great this franchise's music once was.
Doesn't Neltharion's ghost showing up contradict the afterlife lore introduced in Shadowlands? He should be some Bastion temple or repenting in Revendreth. Or he was turned into anima and is powering one of Mikanikos' robots. Not that I'm complaining. Best to pretend Shadowlands never happened.
It's disappointing that the questline promises that you're going to venture into Abberus and fight alongside Wrathion and Sabellian... and then you don't fight with them in the raid. They just stand off to the side and watch as you do the battles.
One of the raiders in our PUG was muted, and apparently that prevented the raid leader from listing us in LFG to recruit replacements. Every time we needed to recruit more people, the raid leader had to kick the muted player out of his party (which in turn kicked him from the raid instance), recruit the raiders, then invite the muted raider back in, and since we didn't have a warlock we had to wait for the raider to run all the way back to where we are. We had to do this 10 times. What an incredible waste of time and stupid programming.
The PUG leader cursing and yelling at his raiders like a drill sergent and threatening to kick them seemed to have improved the PUG's performance. "YES SIR RAID LEADER!"
The last boss room where you descend into outer space like in Genshin Impact was cool.
The raid leader is telling me to play a 100 APM rotation imported from Icy Veins that I'm unfamiliar with and deal big DPS or he's going to kick me. He's watching the DPS meters like a hawk and is shouting "why aren't the adds dead yet? They need to die now or we wipe! Come on guys or I'm going to have to kick people!". I have procs popping up all of the time and I can't look away from my glowing hotbar. I am stacked on top of a raid of players who are throwing out heal effects and damage effects, on top of the boss who is fire breathing on our raid and dropping dark purple puddles and spawning dozens of dark purple adds who are using dark purple attacks on us. I cannot possibly see this tiny, dark purple orb through all of this crap. And then I get blamed and called a moron for a bomb I wasn't even carrying.
Welp, I'm done. Got Sarkareth down to 40% when our PUG disbanded. Tried joining Sarkareth PUGs but it seems people don't want ilevel 401 ret paladins. Guess my only hope would be to have joined another fresh run and hope it made it to Sarkareth all the way through, which I'm not doing. I am not a raider and I don't do mythic+, so I won't be able to get into PUGs later on when people start setting higher ilevel requirements unless Blizzard adds catchup gear towards before the next raid tier drops. Doubt I will beat Sarkareth until 10.2 rolls around.
Watched the raid ending cutscene on Youtube. It's funny how Wrathion and Sabellian teleport into the boss room as if they were there during the fight all along (last I checked they were still frozen in Neltharion's room). In retrospect, I suppose the same thing happened with Khadgar and Kalecgos in Vault of the Incarnates.
Fryakk Assault
Seeing Fryakk devastate the zone like Deathwing was cool. I thought that the event was that you were going to fight him. It's called a "Fryakk Assault" but you don't get to fight the titular big bad?
I was led to believe that the Fryakk Assault would be another GW2-esque event that had a beginning, middle, and end, like the Iskarra Soup event or the Primalist Future or the Assault on Dragonbane Keep. Instead, it's just an always on mosh pit, like the Legion assaults. That's disappointing. It does at least vaguely feel like a war is going on (still makes no sense where all of these Primalists are coming from), though the fire and ash effects disappear once you step 2 feet out of the assault area.
So Baine and Mayla are here in the plains fighting against Fryakk's forces. I guess that next week, the Azure Span will have Khadgar and Kalecgos? Thaldraszus will have Nozdormu and his wife? And the Waking Shores will have Alexstraza, Wrathion, and Sabellian?
So... that's it? That's the patch? Darn. Not even a new battleground. Doesn't seem to have longevity.
Future
Welp, none of the three Primal Incarnates died this patch. The roadmap shows that 10.1.5 will come with world events. Perhaps one of the Incarnates will die in that? 10.1.7 will come with quests so maybe another incarnate will die in that. And then the last Incarnate dies in the 10.2 raid? I know that people were speculating that zombie Galakrond would be the final boss, but IDK how he could be fit in at the rate the story is dealing with the Primal Incarnates.
What on earth is the 10.2 zone going to be? Are they going to whip out another offshore island like Isle of Thunder/Isle of Giants/Timeless Isle? Or is the zone going to be in another dimension, like the Void? Or they could do the GW2 thing and have a map set on top of zombie Galakrond's rotting body? Or maybe an enlarged Primal Incarnate that has feasted on incredible power? Too cool for current Blizzard, probably.
The zone and the first half of the zone questline released last week. The second half of the questline, the raid, and the Fryakk Assaults didn't release until yesterday.
The new zone, Zalarek Cavern, is... decent? Probably the best looking Dragonflight zone with the orange lava rivers, the yellow sulfur, the turquoise crystals, the purple plants, etc. However, the zone isn't very fun to adventure through gameplay wise, unlike the multi-layered Tangled Depths or Draconis Mons from GW2. The underground area is does not feel as grandiose as it could have been compared to other fantasy underground areas, be it Draconis Mons, or the Hidden World from HTTYD, or even the Underbog and Azjol Nerub from WoW's earlier expansions. Neltharion's citadel, Abberus, does not feel imposing either.
The zone is very good for open world PvP, though, since the low ceiling means that it is unlikely your enemies can escape from you by simply ascending infinitely. They are likely to get dismounted by your wingshredder or airborne tumbling. I am disappointed how unimmersive the war supply mode crate is delievered, though. The plane spawns 5 feet in front of a cavern wall, flies the same path of south to north through the cavern, drops the crate, and then despawns 5 feet in front of the northern cavern wall. The plane either should have flown through the cavern entrances, or the crate should have been delievered by a Dwarven digging machine.
The map transition isn't perfect, as often times I see the end of the cave wall before it disappears. Yes, my game is installed on an SSD. Nice piano, though.
A 5th species of dragonriding mount has been added, called the Slitherdrake. Once again, we have the key feature of the expansion, the dragon mount, and it is too small for Tauren players. Still forced to use the Proto-Drake. No real choice or personalization to be had here. It's a shame, because I love the way the Pern-styled dragons look. Would have loved to have used one. Maybe 10.2 will introduce another dragonriding model and it will be probably scaled?
Slitherdrake
Proto-Drake
Questline
The mole people are nice. I'll take Honeypelt over that irritating Goblin from Nazjatar.
I have never met this man in my life. EDIT: oh, is he from that questline about the comedy duo of a human and a blood elf that ended with the elf sacrificing himself inside a tower?
Sarkareth isn't a threatening villain when we get a cutscene of a girl stomping on his glove device.
Hated the gratuitous Emberthal wank and the constant putting down of Wrathion and Sabellian.
More fire Vrykul... *snore*
Ebyssian should have died, either from the impact of crashing into the earth or the profuse bleeding from the serrated spear being yanked out of his body.
The mole village should have been turned into a smoking crater. The scene doesn't have much impact when there are only five dead bodies and all of the other vendors are manning their stalls selling stuff like normal and the buildings are still intact, not even caved in.
Looks like after you return to Alexstraza the story becomes either timegated and/or locked behind another reputation grind.
*Sarkareth gets beaten up a second time, as aforementioned*
More cringeworthy dialogue between Emberthal and Ebyssian.
If Neltharion had a loyal army of Black Dragonkin who would do ANYTHING he asked, why didn't he call upon them in Cata?
Wrathion never got focus this patch.
New raid: Abberus, the Shadow Crucible.
The raid is... I'm not sure how I feel about it.
First of all, it is yet another underground fortress/fire themed raid, in a game that is already heavily oversaturated with them. Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Grim Batol, Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, Firelands, Siege of Orgrimmar, the ogre mines dungeon from WoD, Blackrock Foundry, and so on. It is also mono-themed all the way through, unlike the great raids like ToT or SoO that have a lot of variation in environments and themes.
A raid about exploring a dark laboratory sounds cool. Unfortunately, the actual raid is you running through huge, empty hallways, nothing immersive like Karazhan.
Lots of asset reuse here. Generic fire elemental boss, another hydra/core hound boss, more fire vrykul bosses, yadda yadda.
Some of the AoE timings feel unfair. An AoE appears beneath you, and you have a fraction of a second to begin walking out of it, or you will be one shotted.
The hardest boss thus far has been Zskarn. Rest of the raid thus far has been a breeze.
This was a 5 or 6 hour long raid. I cannot recall any music from this patch. It's all forgettable crap. Very disappointing given how great this franchise's music once was.
Doesn't Neltharion's ghost showing up contradict the afterlife lore introduced in Shadowlands? He should be some Bastion temple or repenting in Revendreth. Or he was turned into anima and is powering one of Mikanikos' robots. Not that I'm complaining. Best to pretend Shadowlands never happened.
It's disappointing that the questline promises that you're going to venture into Abberus and fight alongside Wrathion and Sabellian... and then you don't fight with them in the raid. They just stand off to the side and watch as you do the battles.
One of the raiders in our PUG was muted, and apparently that prevented the raid leader from listing us in LFG to recruit replacements. Every time we needed to recruit more people, the raid leader had to kick the muted player out of his party (which in turn kicked him from the raid instance), recruit the raiders, then invite the muted raider back in, and since we didn't have a warlock we had to wait for the raider to run all the way back to where we are. We had to do this 10 times. What an incredible waste of time and stupid programming.
The PUG leader cursing and yelling at his raiders like a drill sergent and threatening to kick them seemed to have improved the PUG's performance. "YES SIR RAID LEADER!"
The last boss room where you descend into outer space like in Genshin Impact was cool.
The raid leader is telling me to play a 100 APM rotation imported from Icy Veins that I'm unfamiliar with and deal big DPS or he's going to kick me. He's watching the DPS meters like a hawk and is shouting "why aren't the adds dead yet? They need to die now or we wipe! Come on guys or I'm going to have to kick people!". I have procs popping up all of the time and I can't look away from my glowing hotbar. I am stacked on top of a raid of players who are throwing out heal effects and damage effects, on top of the boss who is fire breathing on our raid and dropping dark purple puddles and spawning dozens of dark purple adds who are using dark purple attacks on us. I cannot possibly see this tiny, dark purple orb through all of this crap. And then I get blamed and called a moron for a bomb I wasn't even carrying.
Welp, I'm done. Got Sarkareth down to 40% when our PUG disbanded. Tried joining Sarkareth PUGs but it seems people don't want ilevel 401 ret paladins. Guess my only hope would be to have joined another fresh run and hope it made it to Sarkareth all the way through, which I'm not doing. I am not a raider and I don't do mythic+, so I won't be able to get into PUGs later on when people start setting higher ilevel requirements unless Blizzard adds catchup gear towards before the next raid tier drops. Doubt I will beat Sarkareth until 10.2 rolls around.
Watched the raid ending cutscene on Youtube. It's funny how Wrathion and Sabellian teleport into the boss room as if they were there during the fight all along (last I checked they were still frozen in Neltharion's room). In retrospect, I suppose the same thing happened with Khadgar and Kalecgos in Vault of the Incarnates.
Fryakk Assault
Seeing Fryakk devastate the zone like Deathwing was cool. I thought that the event was that you were going to fight him. It's called a "Fryakk Assault" but you don't get to fight the titular big bad?
I was led to believe that the Fryakk Assault would be another GW2-esque event that had a beginning, middle, and end, like the Iskarra Soup event or the Primalist Future or the Assault on Dragonbane Keep. Instead, it's just an always on mosh pit, like the Legion assaults. That's disappointing. It does at least vaguely feel like a war is going on (still makes no sense where all of these Primalists are coming from), though the fire and ash effects disappear once you step 2 feet out of the assault area.
So Baine and Mayla are here in the plains fighting against Fryakk's forces. I guess that next week, the Azure Span will have Khadgar and Kalecgos? Thaldraszus will have Nozdormu and his wife? And the Waking Shores will have Alexstraza, Wrathion, and Sabellian?
So... that's it? That's the patch? Darn. Not even a new battleground. Doesn't seem to have longevity.
Future
Welp, none of the three Primal Incarnates died this patch. The roadmap shows that 10.1.5 will come with world events. Perhaps one of the Incarnates will die in that? 10.1.7 will come with quests so maybe another incarnate will die in that. And then the last Incarnate dies in the 10.2 raid? I know that people were speculating that zombie Galakrond would be the final boss, but IDK how he could be fit in at the rate the story is dealing with the Primal Incarnates.
What on earth is the 10.2 zone going to be? Are they going to whip out another offshore island like Isle of Thunder/Isle of Giants/Timeless Isle? Or is the zone going to be in another dimension, like the Void? Or they could do the GW2 thing and have a map set on top of zombie Galakrond's rotting body? Or maybe an enlarged Primal Incarnate that has feasted on incredible power? Too cool for current Blizzard, probably.
Thanks for the write up, Val the Moofia Boss. Rating was about WoW, not your post.
Abesolus
Novice
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2023
- Messages
- 14
i know, the thing that kept me playing was wanting to get that feeling i had when i began to play, kinda like final fantasy X, its a large world, full of stuff to discover, once that feeling is gone it never comes back.
Late Bloomer
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2022
- Messages
- 3,947
You can get that old tcg mount Blazing Hippogryph for linking your blizzard account to twitch so they can data harvest more data and then watching 4 hours of Dragonflight on twitch. I get a feeling some cucks in this very thread will be happily doing this. Enjoy. Oh, it would appear the first one is a hearthstone animation that is happening right now. Have fun, simps.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/wor...-twitch-drops-get-your-blazing-hippogryph-now
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/wor...-twitch-drops-get-your-blazing-hippogryph-now
Absinthe
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2012
- Messages
- 4,062
Play a new MMORPG. There's the Mabi Pro server to play Old-school Mabinogi (aka Mabinogi Classic) before they proper fucked it with an ill-advised overhaul. If you want a large world that's full of stuff to discover I think it does the job. It also has a combat system that actually makes player skill a real factor.
Val the Moofia Boss
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,238
The racial fantasies started getting really diluted during Legion. Cataclysm allowed Taurens to play as Paladins, but Blizzard went through the effort of explaining that Taurens are only paladins mechanically, and that lore wise they (the Sunwalkers) did not become Light worshippers or wield the Light. Instead they are new Druid sect that worship of the sun rather than the moon. Then Legion happened and our Sunwalkers got shoved underneath a Church dedicated to worshipping the Light. And then a Night Elf paladin NPC was introduced and there wasn't even an explanation like he was still worshipping Elune or something. Nope, Light worshipping Night Elf paladin. And then it go worse from there. There was a Dreadlord was a part of the Army of Light!
So since 10.0 then. Not only rogues but also mages and highmountain priests... holy cow indeed.
Pika-Cthulhu
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2007
- Messages
- 8,150
Considering that the Naaru are basically giant crystals, wouldnt a sufficiently talented chemist be able to grow more of them? A divine alchemist, making light sources grow? Gnomish paladins next?
This is so sad...
Gnomes building their own god ala the Dwemer.
Random Codexer being more creative with the lore than Blizzard by jesting and spending no effort on it. Classic.
Sarathiour
Cipher
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2020
- Messages
- 3,276
as if this game wasnt a joke as it is right now, guess what? they are butchering the lore even more, welcome, tauren warlocks, night elf warlocks, pandaren warlocks, lightforged draenei warlocks
God, this is truly the worst timeline
Dr1f7
Scholar
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2022
- Messages
- 1,509
creativity is problematic and toxic
Turbo normie
Scholar
The Naaru are made of autism. The crystal aspect is just the packaging.
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.