World of Warcraft: Current Year

Just got this email from blizzard :

You've proven your valor in the battle for Sanctuary in Diablo? III. Now take your skills to Azeroth with a FREE digital copy of World of Warcraft? Battle Chest?, which includes 30 days of game time*, The Burning Crusade? and Wrath of the Lich King? expansion packs. Act fast, as you must claim your digital copy on or before Dec 24, 2012.

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You know, there's a bunch of things that drive me nuts, but one of the ones that keeps cropping up is mobs that don't drop loot. If you're making me grind them for a quest or daily, and they have the same amount of hps and abilities as other shit, they shouldn't just vanish.

I'm not exactly hard up for loot or exp, (although a chance at motes would be nice) but killing things and getting neither exp or loot is fucking annoying. I always skip the mine dailies for shieldwall because nothing down there save the faction objections drop anything. Waste of my time!

Ao-_sl said:

Wait, where the fuck did this take place? Am I missing a fuckton of lore (I missed MoP release)?

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in the pre-MOP event Garrosh bombs Theramore Island with a mana bomb, and the head of the Kirin Tor (?) sacrifices himself to save Jaina and other alliance dudes.

In the patch 5.1 the new Shieldwall/Defiance faction unlocks a long-ass (personal) story quest line with about 12 steps in it, each one unlocking every 1-3 days depending on rep. A lot of shit happens in it, and its different for horde/alliance. Garrosh solidifies himself as a big bad meanie, Jaina has had enough of his shit, Varian turns out to be a pretty reasonable guy, his kid is in serious trouble, and the head night elf chick is a cunt.

There are also a couple of scenarios that further the story too. Its all good stuff, may not be the most imaginative lore but it does push forward a story in a way Blizzard hasn't really done in wow so far, reminded me a lot of SWTOR. Thats why I always roll my eyes when people exclaim MOP is the worse xpac, its really the best one Blizzard has ever done and the range of things to do is impressively massive - brawlers/pet battles for solo skill, heroic raiding with only 20-30 guilds downing heroic sha so far? for group play. Patch 5.1 came out a little over 3 months after xpac release, if they can put out 5.2 in a similar timeframe it will be quite a feat.

No way dude, MOP is the worst expansion ever according to all of the people who haven't played it.

I'm really enjoying it as a casual pace and I got a lot of derision from my swtor guild...who used to be my wow guild...its a good xpac.

I think we're stretching it with "best expac ever", considering MOP really pushes a lot of things that run counter to what people often say they want from an MMO. (And if you aren't playing casually, this xpac left you feeling alienated.)

I'm not sure I know which one is the worst; the lore isn't bad in MOP, but WOTLK I think was way better. The heroics/instances aren't terrible, but scenarios are fairly shitty content that you'll do once for achieves, so what you're left with is heroics that don't hold a candle to TBC. Admittedly, they changed the formula, and challenge modes are awesome, but I feel a little let down in this respect. It's all the same few instances, just you choosing to do it in a specific way.

They push daily quests and rep, both of which were fine in small doses and done correctly, though they did neither.

Pet battles are tons of fun, but it's pretty much a carbon copy of pokemon that they managed to copy with errors.

I also don't really understand what the big thing about Brawler's guild is? I'll do it until I can get clock'em, and then I'm out. Our server has a small group of people who are really into it, and when you visit you'll see them, but things like invitations on the BMAH aren't even being bid on.

Best or worst xpac is all opinion; the things that I've had the most fun with are the throw backs to EQ honestly. I've farmed all of the rares for glorious and I'm one item away from the Relic Hunter title. I don't touch many of the dailies, and the dailies are a large part of the content. Shieldwall dailies are utter shit - they're only good because I want my trinket/ring, and occasionally I get a real quest that gives me 440 rep instead of 165, and that's encouraging. Whoever designed the dailies inside the fucking shrine should be shot.

So really...it's all completely biased. I like parts of MOP, but personally, it's far from the best xpac, if for no other reason than everything you do clearly shows their goal for all of the activities they have you do:

Subscribe longer.

For the record, I liked TBC for hard instances/raid dungeons. I like WOTLK for questing and lore and for some relatively cool new functions. Cata had a bunch of cool class abilities, and the entire world changing was great. MOP has...asian themed lore and music, and pokemon.

Give me an xpac where they combine all that shit and I'll go for it.

I imagine if you're playing super casually like posters above claim it's great, since the xpac heavily relies on you doing the same things over and over again; for people who want to put a lot of time into it, they'll burn out quickly. But anyone who logs in, does a bit here and there, and has something to shoot for, you're mileage probably greatly varies.

PALADINS still OP

So... soloing patchwerk 25, tips? my DK gets blown up by hateful strikes

army of the dead with no taunt glyph?

I missed Vanilla, but I'd still rank Wrath and TBC above this. Cata was ok. I actually had a love/hate relationship with destroying the old world because I'm not much of an alt guy so I wanted that nostalgia even if the quests sucked.

I'd say TBC = WOTLK > MOP ~ CATA. I didn't have near as much hate for cata as some but I did take breaks.

I LOVED wrath simply becaus I love all things undead, lich king, etc. Loved TBC because it was my first.

Needless_sl said:

So... soloing patchwerk 25, tips? my DK gets blown up by hateful strikes

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Are you doing it as blood spec? You should win easily if so. If still losing, it could simply be gear level.

I really don't get the love for TBC heroics. It was bring 2 mages or rogue and mage and win. I think people forget how tedious it got keying via shattered halls executioner runs, then you outgear the place after 1 raid tier and its boring content you do for badges. Least with challenge modes they scale your gear so it never gets any easier.

Anyhow raid wise, best tier probably. The encounters are far superior and varied to any other tier including Ulduar, however I liked the scale and scenery of Ulduar better, but these bosses are far better. Rewards make sense and the gear is itemized well, and there has been minimal bugs and it has been tuned correctly for the most part. No I am not talking about LFR get over it.

BTW Vex I believe Krugen and I are far from casual and we both find this expansion great. I have no idea what game you are playing if you liked Cata more then this. I got all my reps up to exalted 1 day after the person who got server first all reps got his, and haven't touched a daily sense because frankly I have no reason to. Log in do a heroic or two, do farmville, raid if raid day log out. If that's "casual" so be it.

As a LFR only this expansion is pretty great. I can do raids, farm, play alts, and still hit the valor cap easily. I really don't understand the hate for scenarios. They're short, give out good valor, you can really push them hard to see how well your min-maxxing, and are pretty unique with some of the bosses. I prefer them to doing the daily heroic.

Do you rate expansions when they came out or after the last patch ? TBC was the last one where I actively traveled through the world daily, but 2.0 was fucking awful once you hit 70 as melee. Kharazhan was the last instance that smelled of vanilla with heaps of tiny details and useless rooms. Ulduar is still probably the best raid they put out and WotLK questing was pretty tight. I'm actually looking towards the next expansion to see what they are going to do with GW2's dynamic events, because if they rip off one feature, it's going to be this one. Or jumping puzzles.

The only negatives I have with the new stuff is they missed an opportunity to address skill bloat (and made it far worse for some, holy BM hunters), and they turned PVP into a a 51/51/51 fest where everyone seems to have all of their CC without giving up much in the way of damage or survival to get it.

And of course the lv90 mage talents are flat fucking dumb and add a level of complexity and frustration that the game simply does not need.

But great raid tier. And yes, if you compare where this expansions is -now- vs all of the others, its not much of a contest.

TBC suddenly your raid roster was cut from 40 to 25 and it didn't even open with raid zones, just Gruul and that guy nobody ever killed because he was a pile of horseshit. (and Kara? I forget) And the tuning of all of the raids was awful.

Lich King you had Naxx + two bosses for - holy shit - six months!? And sure, Ulduar was the pinnacle of WoW before super easy mode / easy mode / HOLY FUCK HARD mode but it started the ball rolling. And once hard modes became a thing you had FOUR lockouts per week to contend with. Fucking trial burned me right the fuck out.

I don't recall where around here 10 mans were put in but they should have never existed - at least not as mirrors of the 25m raids. Karazahn was the model they should have followed. They cause too much drama and annoyance in guilds built for raiding 25m, and they are just a giant assfuckery of tuning. Throw in LFR and there are 5 versions of every encounter ffs.

Cata.. well cata wasn't bad at the start I guess. The zones being spread out in random places was dumb. I was just stuck in a guild full of fucking trolls that were too cool to help on trash or listen to raid instruction or shut the fuck up during fights so raiding was just miserable and I quit.

Is it just me or are the models for the bosses lack luster sans the shas

The daily quests do suck, but really aren't that bad to get through. You really only need revered with Golden Lotus and Klaxxi to start, then August and Shado Pan next. The only ones that I really really hate so far are the PVP faction ones. It seems to me if they wanted to cap the amount of rep one can earn in a day they could have at least thrown a few different options into the mix. Maybe rotate through dailys one day, dungeons another and then LFR or something another. Really though, they aren't exactly necessary to raid or anything.

The heroics are ok. Pretty much on par with WotLK heroics imo. I wish they would have put in some sort of good use for JP though. Converting to honor is about the best option but if you don't pvp you'll maybe use them to upgrade any blues you still have (offspec set or something) but upgrading seems pointless on gear that usually doesn't last long.

I've done the majority of stuff with guild groups though this time around and had a good bit of fun. Dailies seem like much less of a chore with a group. We also group queue into LFR on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then raid over the weekend so for the 20-25 hours a week I put into WoW, I am usually enjoying the majority of that time. My advice to anyone who thinks WoW is "the most antisocial game evar!" would be to find a guild that is active in your time frame, join up and do shit together. This is a good expac for it.

Re: boss models - you mean as opposed to using the generic drake model for like half or BWL or any other dragon themed instance?

I like Cata for fleshing out the old world a little more though.

For raid sizes, probably should've just done 20m with normal and heroic then lfr/n/h. Much less painful that way. Only 1 size and three modes versus 2 sizes and 5 total modes to balance. Lfr killed the reasoning for 10m anyway