World of Warcraft: The War Within

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have finished the Hallowfall sidequests. Overall pretty decent, most engaging sidequests of the zones thus far.

I was disappointed in how the cathedral dungeon was handled, though. It gets very little buildup. You're in the cathedral grounds preparing a funeral when suddenly the people on the grounds start attacking you, and then you go back to the general in Mereldar and says "there is a schism!" (between what? What is it about?) and then she sends you into the dungeon, and you just kill a lot of people and then fight a prophetess/priestess at the end who is talking about how the Arathi are going to take over the world, and then you get a floating NPC head saying "we must be tolerant of others and not adhere to dogma" and the end. ???

Also, demonization of the resurrection, with them rezzing people as shambling corpses and the designated "good guy" NPC crying out as to how that is wrong. Why can't they actually rez people like what Inquisitor Whiteman did in Scarlet Monastery?

It is also interesting how none of the prior zone storylines or sidequests have taken me to the other dungeons besides the Rookery. No quest to go to Cinderbrew Meadery, or the Ringing Deeps dungeons.

Teha is correct. The stuff the Steelstrikes carted out on display (spices, weapons, and rope) are nothing special, and the surface merchants would probably lose money having to pay for that stuff to be transported up to the surface. I'm surprised no one called out the many Arathi airships flying around in the background. The Alliance propeller gunships are probably fuel guzzlers and too expensive to build and operate for merchants, but these gasbag airships would probably be cheaper, and probably safer and more sophisticated than the Horde goblin airships. Perhaps the surface merchants could commission the Arathi to build more of them. The Alliance and Horde managed to get their airships down into Deepholm so it doesn't seem preposterous that airships could be built down in Hallowfall and then flown up to the surface people and handed off. Or if they can't be done, then perhaps the Arathi could buy/rent a shipyard on the surface and begin building their airships for clients from there.

We formed a raid group and spread out across the map looking for a rare spawn that drops a mount. Goodness gracious, I have never seen this much bitching about a rare before. Back in 2013 when we were camping Huolon, if people missed it, they shrugged. No biggie, he'll respawn in an hour. But here people in /general chat wanted to have a congressional hearing about "people doing full DPS and not waiting for others" and asking people to get blacklisted.



Azj-Kahet

I have finished the Azj-Khat storyline. Haven't done all of the sidequests yet as the story was urgent, and I really wanted to finish the levelling campaign ASAP I so Sparks of Life would start dropping from War Mode, which need to buy PvP gear. War mode seems to pair nicely with gathering professions as you spend most of your gameplay out in the world anyway.

Missed opportunity to have intestinal, organic "black blood" areas be a full zone unto themselves, with the player travelling down through old god organs and intestines. Feels like a waste to have it only be a small part of the Azj-Kahet zone.


The City of Threads is pretty cool. Spent a lot of time wandering around looking at the doodads and talking to the NPCs.

You already shot at Xal'atath at the start of the expansion and it did nothing to her. Should have aimed one foot to the left instead and shot the enemy commander and demoralized the army. Worst of all, Anduin, why are you (*sigh* once again...) trying to save our enemies? You are sabotoging our team and a liability to the war effort. Get out of here. You might have honor, but your enemies do not. Anything goes for them, and you can't hold back at that point.

Why didn't she think of her son? Also, another cutscene with no build up and bad dialogue.

Too much dramaqueen stuff going on with Anduin, Alleria, and Xal'atath.

I am pleasantly surprised that the questing hasn't ended here. After finishing Azj-Kahet, it sends you back to Dornogal to start the levelcap storyline. In Dragonflight, you finish Thaldrazus and then that was it besides doing the raid.

 

[Reever]

I am pleasantly surprised that the questing hasn't ended here. After finishing Azj-Kahet, it sends you back to Dornogal to start the levelcap storyline. In Dragonflight, you finish Thaldrazus and then that was it besides doing the raid.

I actually found the post levelcap storyline more interesting than the campaign. Especially the bit with Lilian Voss and Azj-Kahet. I just wish they had the full storyline complete so we could actually make an Earthen but don't mind me. I'm just old and expecting shit I paid for on release.

well one day you'll realize that the entire shadowlands backlash was a dei psy-op takeover and you fell for it

I didn't realize you were talking about aesthetics . In that case I don't necessarily disagree with you although I don't love Shadowlands aesthetics that much. I liked revendreth but was indifferent to the other ones.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Level cap campaign:

It has been only two or three days since Dalaran crashed, and Jaina and Thrall portalled back to Orgrimmar and Stormwind. In Mists of Pandaria, Admiral Taylor had the world's state of the art airship, and it still took her several days to get from the Jade Forest to Stormwind, and then it took the Horde and Alliance's navies months to assemble and then sail to Krassarang Wilds. There is no possible way the Horde and Alliance navies could have mobilzed and then sailed to Khaz Algar in 2 to 3 days. If they were all on board airships and Jain and Thrall took whatever was already available on standby, then perhaps it could have been done.

Whoa, is that Redhorn? Dezco's son? At long last? I remember being excited when he was datamined in Dragonflight, but come the actual expansion I looked around and never saw him. Sadly you can't talk to Kor here. Last we knew, Dezco was forced by Chi-Ji to give his baby son away to the Golden Lotus. Don't know if Kor is still with them and he is here as a representative of the Golden Lotus (didn't see any other NPCs) or if he got released and joined the Horde.

I'm liking these aerial combat abilities. Hope I can keep them.

Not fond of this "traditionalism is bad, Titans bad" narrative.

I am a little peeved they showed me a prerendered cutscene and then it still had the "World of Warcraft: The War Within" branding at the end. Tacky. Guys, you don't need to sell me the expac. I already bought it. I am playing it. Kindly take this branding out of my face.

If Xal'atath is manufacturing an army of Ascended who can dash at near lightning speed, then she would have easily won by now. The fifty of these guys seen in the Ansurek video could slit the throats of our army in seconds.

Oh gee, yet another "bad male leader" who has to step down and be replaced by a new young girl.

More cultural revolution nonsense.

Looks like that's it until next week.

 

[mediocrepoet]

So this thing launched a week ago and you're already done with it other than now they're drip feeding some sort of weekly questline?

 

[Maculo]

The “tradition bad” is indeed getting old and tired. I don’t know how many times Blizzard can keep copying the same quest.

Of all the in-game cutscenes, I thought the one where Xalatath possessed/juiced up the ascended was decent. I just wish the fight that followed was harder.

I have been trying to find my alt after Blood DK, and so far I really like
mistweaver. It has its weaknesses, but I have not grow tired of it as much as the other healers.

mediocrepoet, some of it is time gated, whereas some quests are reputation-gated. It is a mixed bag. Mythic 0 and the raids don’t release until September 10th. I suppose it gives everyone time to get their alts/professions up.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So this thing launched a week ago and you're already done with it other than now they're drip feeding some sort of weekly questline?

Yeah. Finished the levelling questline, and I am 4/5ths done with the levelcap questline. I am guessing the last last 1/5th will unlock tomorrow after the weekly reset (they did this with the 10.1 and 10.2 questlines, which were stretched out across two weeks). It will probably be Arathi stuff as the level cap questline has touched upon the three other zones and factions. And then the only thing left to do will be the raid which launches in 8 days, and then once I beat that, that will be it content wise for 6+ months until patch 11.1.

I just wish the fight that followed was harder.

Same. It is disappointing how easy the questing and delves were. I was never in danger of dying. My only deaths thus far have been from doing the free-for-all PvP up at the Priory. Even Dawntrail had more threatening story instances.

 

[J1M]

I don't trust Metzen. He tends to self insert way too much and from what I recall he put Thrall together with Aggra. He'll probably agree to have Anduin to be married to Faerin. I already see forced celebrations of how good they supposedly work together on the official forum and Twitter.

She looks less disgusting in-game than the cinematics but she still looks revolting. Do I feel bad for heavily scarred and mutilated soldiers? Sure.

Would I lie and say they look great if they're missing an eye and an arm whilst also being heavily scarred? No.

The logical trajectory would be to have Anduin marry Tess given how strong a part Genn played in Anduin's life in recent years.

They won't do this but I think a plot where Anduin has to marry and produce an heir with someone in the context of an arranged marriage could be an interesting plot hook for court intrigue quests. The one armed half elf would be a terrible choice for his true love though. It should be a horde character.

Reminder that Metzen didn't have much influence on The War Within. It was 10 months into development when he came back, and from what I've seen was twisted into the start of a trilogy via xalatath getting credit for the other villains.

 

[mediocrepoet]

They won't do this but I think a plot where Anduin has to marry and produce an heir with someone in the context of an arranged marriage could be an interesting plot hook for court intrigue quests.

You think Blizzard will feature a heterosexual white male in a loving relationship that involves procreation?

That really would be a change of pace.

 

[J1M]

They won't do this but I think a plot where Anduin has to marry and produce an heir with someone in the context of an arranged marriage could be an interesting plot hook for court intrigue quests.

You think Blizzard will feature a heterosexual white male in a loving relationship that involves procreation?

That really would be a change of pace.

I clearly said they wouldn't do it and it would not be loving.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Reminder that Metzen didn't have much influence on The War Within. It was 10 months into development when he came back, and from what I've seen was twisted into the start of a trilogy via xalatath getting credit for the other villains.

I do not believe that WoW's story "will get better once we start seeing the fruits of Metzen's input" or some such. As much Metzen's name is thrown around a lot, he was not the sole creative voice in Warcraft. Metzen never had dictatorial control over a game's story like a JRPG director. Metzen didn't want Blood Elves in the Horde but was vetoed because Asian players wanted beautiful characters to play as, and Blizzard wanted to level the Horde population out. Metzen didn't want playable Death Knights but was overruled because the devs thought it was cool. Metzen wanted Starcraft 2 to be a story heavy game, a "Gone with the Wind in space", but then couldn't get the other devs on board with that. And so on. It sounds like he would have been much happier had he been creating visual novels where he had full control and only had to commission an artist and composer to create art assets and music tracks. And from the recent interview, Metzen came back to an even more "democratized" WoW dev team. I think we're just going to see more of the same like we've seen for the past 10 years of WoW. Metzen is just there to give Blizzard a little bit of extra "win back the fans" clout and to be their hype man at Blizzcon.

 

[mediocrepoet]

They won't do this but I think a plot where Anduin has to marry and produce an heir with someone in the context of an arranged marriage could be an interesting plot hook for court intrigue quests.

You think Blizzard will feature a heterosexual white male in a loving relationship that involves procreation?

That really would be a change of pace.

I clearly said they wouldn't do it and it would not be loving.

So more of the same then. Bold prediction.

Tbh I'm not sure why I still kinda sorta hope the WC plotline gets salvaged somehow even though I know it's not even sort of the same company anymore. Nostalgia, maybe.

 

[Reever]

Metzen didn't want Blood Elves in the Horde

based

 

[Maculo]

Pugging is why I both love and hate this game sometimes. I was healing Ara Kara, and the bear tank single pulled for the majority of the instance….until the hallway to the third boss. For context, there is a long hallway filled with eggs that summon an add upon touch. Further, there are mobs with an AOE knock back, and so an unlucky knock back can launch players into various eggs, thus creating a swarm of adds. Circling back to this bear tank, he decided to pull the entire hallway, including packs of the knockback adds that we didn’t even need to pull, and that resulted in a constant chain of knock backs into more and more eggs….

It was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

 

[Rövtomte]

Is NI- Lothar well written? Asking for a friend.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is NI- Lothar well written? Asking for a friend.

Faerin? I was surprised. Her ugly cinematic model set bad expectations that she would be a girlboss, but ingame she's actually a very pleasant girl. Probably tied with Baelgrim and Vizrek as my favorite new expansion characters. Actually it's rather jarring when a cutscene happens, because her sweet voice and her ugly model do not match at all. Should have had a cute girl model. The actual annoying girlbosses in the expac are Adelgonn, Moira, and Orwenya.

 

[Maculo]

Is NI- Lothar well written? Asking for a friend.

I concur with Val the Moofia Boss about her voice. I found it to be sweet and soft, which is strange to match against her model.

My guess is that character was originally planned as the general, but Blizzard split the character in two. In my mind, this explains why she acts like a new recruit and yet looks like ….well, the general/frontline fanatic.

Otherwise, I am not fond of the character (the voice actress can stay though). She is meant to be the lead Arathi character for the zone and yet she doesn’t embody the faction’s ideals very well. The Arathi are a fanatical militaristic empire, and yet Faerin stands apart as open minded, compassionate, and bucks the hierarchy. It’s like Blizzard got cold feet and needed a character to tone it down. Imagine if Maiev and/or Tyrande were introduced only to immediately criticize Elune as too harsh. We barely get to know the faction and yet we already have a counter-culture character.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Finished the level cap campaign.

The Nerubian invasion of Arathi was pretty underwhelming. It just flying around killing a dozen mobs and then bursting down three officers and that was it. Didn't feel threatening or like a huge invasion like the end of Hallowfall/start of Azj-Kahet with the wall collapsing, villages being overrun, airships bombarding hundreds of incoming spiders, the airships being boarded by Nerubians, etc.

In the scenario at the Priory, it was very frustrating that the NPC party members kept wandering off. My light meter is running out and I need Faerin to place down that light AoE to keep me alive as I am being eaten by void magic, and I look around and I can't even see where she is. Where did she go?

Boggles my mind this multi-billion dollar game can't afford good writers to write dialogue. The cutscenes are always Hollywood trash.

Questline ends with Anduin sitting down on a rock pouting for the Nth time.

 

[J1M]

Finished the level cap campaign.

The Nerubian invasion of Arathi was pretty underwhelming. It just flying around killing a dozen mobs and then bursting down three officers and that was it. Didn't feel threatening or like a huge invasion like the end of Hallowfall/start of Azj-Kahet with the wall collapsing, villages being overrun, airships bombarding hundreds of incoming spiders, the airships being boarded by Nerubians, etc.

In the scenario at the Priory, it was very frustrating that the NPC party members kept wandering off. My light meter is running out and I need Faerin to place down that light AoE to keep me alive as I am being eaten by void magic, and I look around and I can't even see where she is. Where did she go?

Boggles my mind this multi-billion dollar game can't afford good writers to write dialogue. The cutscenes are always Hollywood trash.

Questline ends with Anduin sitting down on a rock pouting for the Nth time.

Only had a week to work on that quest!

 

[Vyvian]

Finished the level cap campaign.

The Nerubian invasion of Arathi was pretty underwhelming. It just flying around killing a dozen mobs and then bursting down three officers and that was it. Didn't feel threatening or like a huge invasion like the end of Hallowfall/start of Azj-Kahet with the wall collapsing, villages being overrun, airships bombarding hundreds of incoming spiders, the airships being boarded by Nerubians, etc.

In the scenario at the Priory, it was very frustrating that the NPC party members kept wandering off. My light meter is running out and I need Faerin to place down that light AoE to keep me alive as I am being eaten by void magic, and I look around and I can't even see where she is. Where did she go?

Boggles my mind this multi-billion dollar game can't afford good writers to write dialogue. The cutscenes are always Hollywood trash.

Questline ends with Anduin sitting down on a rock pouting for the Nth time.

It's crazy how WoW twitter is gassing up this story like it's something incredible.
It could have been with competent writing, all the ideas and the foundations are good but the content is grim. I guess they weren't kidding when they said this trilogy would be inspired by the Marvel movies.

 

[Just Locus]

It's crazy how WoW twitter is gassing up this story like it's something incredible.

What's crazier is that people are falling for it.

 

[mediocrepoet]

How does the hero talent tree feel? As far as I can tell, it looks like just picking the one that goes with your spec (or gimping yourself). Is that right or does it actually do something interesting?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

How does the hero talent tree feel? As far as I can tell, it looks like just picking the one that goes with your spec (or gimping yourself). Is that right or does it actually do something interesting?

Each specialization has the choice between two hero talent trees. I am playing Frost Death Knight. so I have the choice between Deathbringer and Rider of the Apocalypse (that one allows you to fight while mounted on a horse - you can't change the mount - and allows you to sometimes summon the Four Horseman NPCs). I haven't been paying attention to the meta at all. Before TWW launched I look up the Hero Talent abilities on youtube, and the double scythe ability is what stuck out to me.

My experience with Deathbringer was that the first talent at level 71 gives you the core new ability/passive that the tree revolves around (in this case, the bomb/DoT you plant on the target). IIRC at level 75, I had enough points to go to the bottom of the hero talent tree and buy the last talent, which then gave me the signature double scythe ability after the bomb DoT explodes.

Most of the nodes in the hero talent tree are whatever, don't remember what they do. The only two I remember (besides the first and last ones) is the one that gives a 10% passive damage reduction, and the choice node between Swift End which reduces your Bomb/DoT from 45 seconds to 30 seconds, or Painful Death which allows you to use the double scythe attack twice (so you can scythe four times in a row) and gives your bomb/dot a chance to reapply after using the double scythe attack, meaning you can sometimes just be scything for several seconds if the RNG is in your favor. Obviously picked that one.



From what I remember of the Hero Talents:

Rider of the Apocalypse DK: you ride on a horse in combat while outdoors. You passively summon one of the Four Horseman every once in a while, and then can have all Four Horseman at once for a bit.

Lightsmith paladin: you can press a button to throw down an armament that another player can run over to get a buff. They only glow for three seconds, nothing visually cool like conjuring weapons other players can pick up like in GW2.

Templar Paladin: your attacks will sometimes spawn yellow hammers that fall on your enemies.

Herald of the Sun Paladin: you can conjure a small laser dot on your enemies.

Diabloist Warlock: every minute you get a special temporary demon summon, rotating through Overlord, Mother of Chaos, and then Pitlord.

Colossus warrior: Gives an extra big damage ability.

Slayer warrior: More execute procs and better bladestorms.

Mountain Thane warrior: Thunder clap replaces whirlwind for fury and becomes stronger for Prot. Passive lightning damage procs.

Conduit of the Celestials monk: occasionally small versions of the four August Celestials will poof out of thin air and do some stuff and then poof out with no dressup animation to cover the spawn/despawning.

Master of Harmony or Shado-Pan monk (can't remember): your attacks will occasionally do a conal AoE shockwave right in front of you.

Keeper of the Grove druid: you can occasionally spawn treants to help you out (IIRC wasn't this a talent resto druid had circa MoP or Legion?).

 

[Thalstarion]

Is NI- Lothar well written? Asking for a friend.

Better than expected but still subversive and mediocre.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Keeper of the Grove druid: you can occasionally spawn treants to help you out (IIRC wasn't this a talent resto druid had circa MoP or Legion?).

Resto had tree form, but iirc the dump a trio of treats on a guy was a capstone balance nuke before they reworked it with the sun power moon power thing.

Could be wrong, it's been an age, but I think so.

 

[abija]

Is NI- Lothar well written? Asking for a friend.

The character is absolutely retarded. Suest of them all. I barely pay attention to the story and she's already very annoying.