World of Warcraft: Current Year

Im unsure if its just the free weekend, but Im not sure if the FOH guild on Hyjal is deleted or its just that I didnt buy a token to play and so it wont let me interact with the guild stuff? Either way, I dont know why it would matter since we havent really done much of a guild thing since Legion. I still havent cared enough to buy the expansion, myself.

The expansion just seems to be missing "something"... or, its just the direction the devs are taking it is too big of a departure and its making it feel alienating to me. You have your Raid pillar, which is supposedly going to be brought down in difficulty. Thats fine, I havent cared about Mythic raiding since WOD. Mythic+ goes up to +20 now for rewards. You have half the DF dungeons that you do during leveling and a mix of older expansions dungeons for Mythic + and they'll switch them up .. per season, iirc? I've enjoyed the bit of the raid Ive done and the DF mythic+ dungeons. There are obvious dungeons that people are going to delete their key if they get it, though. Not because its hard, but because I can already tell that a couple of them are going to be fucking slogs on your 20th+ clear.

Then, they have the Over World pillar, where you gain rep in the Covenant style similar to SL's. Pair that with the overhauled (pretty good, actually) professions and you have the "option" to play that content instead of the first two pillars. Dragon Flying has a lot of puzzles etc. that you can do for rewards, too. I suspect itll end up being for casuals and hardcore alike. Casuals only doing it, and hardcore doing it when theyre waiting to do a Mythic+ or raid.

Other than that, the story.. just seems fucking uninteresting, second rate "How to Train a Dragon" kind of lame (as the cinematic linked above shows). Theres a dragon aspect that just pops up out of nowhere as the new big bad and it looks fucking retarded. Theyre going for some kind of cartoon look without the Warcraft stylization and its just so fucking noticeable that its kind of a turn off. I'm sure this elemental ratatouie dragon or w/e its called will lead to something bigger, but its just not very interesting as it presently sits.

What Ive been struggling to understand about the expansion is.. where the fuck all the extra devs work went too? There is plenty to do for the first couple weeks, just like SL's - but ... the team was doubled since then, so.. wheres the extra content? Are they already working on 10.1? Im just expecting more from a launch because what Ive seen so far just isnt that much.

I think the guild disappeared because I was seeing guild message of the day from legion and now none of my guys are in that guild

Someone must've disbanded it or kicked everyone in the last few days.

Daidraco said:

What Ive been struggling to understand about the expansion is.. where the fuck all the extra devs work went too? There is plenty to do for the first couple weeks, just like SL's - but ... the team was doubled since then, so.. wheres the extra content? Are they already working on 10.1? Im just expecting more from a launch because what Ive seen so far just isnt that much.

Click to expand...

This is what the retards online have been begging the game to be for years: A contentless expansion so they can be done within a month and go play other games. People are going to be raid logging in record time.

It's just the continued MOBA-ization of the genre because people think any amount of time or effort means the game "doesn't respect their time".

there's plenty to complain about when it comes to modern day... well, anything... so it would be easy to sit and complain about all kinds of stuff from blizzard, and plenty of us already have. in that context, i'm not really going to add any fuel to the fire and just point out what i like. i played the dracthyr and i like it. soaring is fun and i imagine dragonriding will be too if it's just soaring but more. the invasion is what it is, and that's a plus or a minus depending on what you're arguing. i wasn't really planning on playing the expac, this would have been the first expac i didn't buy, but with the free weekend and being bored enough with everything else, i figured i would get a month out of it and be happy.

the best so far for me is the talent trees. there are obviously some winners and losers when it comes to classes, but even ret paladin, whom i know a lot of people are upset with, i feel like there's some really interesting talents to take. there are some hard choices and they feel meaningful (the little bit i played). there are obviously some talent choices that are just extra percentages, but even then they feel like meaningful upgrades as opposed to the +1% from years ago. and there's a lot of talents that synergize together. there's a search bar at the bottom and you can type in an ability and any talent that affects that ability will be highlighted, and there's usually 4 or 5 talents spread around the tree that have an affect on each other.

well done on the talents, if nothing else, i guess

Daidraco said:

What Ive been struggling to understand about the expansion is.. where the fuck all the extra devs work went too? There is plenty to do for the first couple weeks, just like SL's - but ... the team was doubled since then, so.. wheres the extra content? Are they already working on 10.1? Im just expecting more from a launch because what Ive seen so far just isnt that much.

Click to expand...

Dragonflight was made during a pandemic, a shift in industry mentality to WFH, a massive sexual allegation lawsuit that resulted in a lot of senior leadership leaving.

That generally results in massive technical debt for any company, and I bet you anything 6 months of the expansion cycle were getting people relearning core systems.

I still get Actiblizz recruiters aggressively targeting my linkedin and now my work email. They haven't finished filling talent. I've been ignoring them until I see if the Microsoft acquisition goes through, as I don't want to go there, get hired, then get laid off in an acquisition as someone who isn't a C-level exec.

They haven't finished hiring as they have historically had a problem attracting talent. Especially in the last 5 to 10 years. No one wants to be in Irvine living in parking lots, and that's the reputation Blizzard has/had. Unless you were management, you were underpaid.

They only recently started hiring at normal tech company salaries (~180k-ish for a senior engineer remote) and they used to snub people with lowball offers during previous management runs (Senior Software Security Engineer @ ~108k or so)

Yeah it looks like either someone took contol of the FoH guild and cleaned house or killed it. I have The Mistwalkers (of course), an alliance guild on Hyjal if anyone is looking for a guild to check out the expansion.

Hit me up as Nyarlathotep if you want

Braen said:

Yeah it looks like either someone took contol of the FoH guild and cleaned house or killed it. I have The Mistwalkers (of course), an alliance guild on Hyjal if anyone is looking for a guild to check out the expansion.

Hit me up as Nyarlathotep if you want

Click to expand...

The steps to take over the guild wouldnt be possible - it would have defaulted to an officer (Me, since I had been online in the last 90. Maybe BoozeCube ? I cant think of who else was an officer.) before going to someone in a lower rank. So it just leads me to believe Alkorin killed it. Or we could really get the conspiracy going and say that Blizzard found out that Fires of Heaven on Hyjal was loosely associated with Furor and nuked it! ... That'd be a fun article to read, anyways.

If I decide to play, I'll petition to have it restored as an alt guild. Not a big deal either way though, since out of the 1200-1300 members it had, only a handful will probably play DF. I just currently have no desire to play DF unfortunately.

There also is the Mistwalkers community group. Message me there if I happen to be on an alt or offline

If you are in your 30s-40s the Pre Patch quest is an easy way to hit 60 before the expansion hits. I took a 50 to 60 in about an hour yesterday.

You also get tokens to turn in for ilevel appropriate gear for leveling up in the Dragon isles. Takes about 500 tokens to full gear a toon and those drop pretty fast

Rajaah said:

Got to level 58, still in the first area of Shadowlands. Two questions:

-How the hell do I get out of the first area of Shadowlands and see the rest of it? Is it completely locked behind the main quest?

-How do you get flight in Shadowlands? Cause at this point I'm thinking my best odds of actually seeing the expansion's zones is to just fly through them.

Click to expand...

First area was the Maw? Or are you talking about Bastion? Once you get to the town in Bastion, you're pretty much done with the area. On your first chracter in SL's, you have to do the whole story. You sound like you're doing all the side quests, though. Skip them. As for flying, bad news:

How Do You Unlock Flying in Shadowlands?​

You must first reach Renown 44 and complete the Covenant campaign. Then, you must complete 4 chapters of the Chains of Domination campaign (up to "The Last Sigil"). Then, you will receive Memories of Sunless Skies and unlock account-wide flying in the Shadowlands zones. Players with Expert Riding skill can fly in Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and Revendreth. However, note that flying will not work in the The Maw, Oribos, and Korthia.

In Patch 9.2, you must earn another achievement to unlock flying in Zereth Mortis. You will find more information below.

I was logging in to check out server activity, and it seemed alk gave ownership to some random person and left. Guild disappeared a few days later.

Daidraco said:

First area was the Maw? Or are you talking about Bastion? Once you get to the town in Bastion, you're pretty much done with the area. On your first chracter in SL's, you have to do the whole story. You sound like you're doing all the side quests, though. Skip them. As for flying, bad news:

How Do You Unlock Flying in Shadowlands?​

You must first reach Renown 44 and complete the Covenant campaign. Then, you must complete 4 chapters of the Chains of Domination campaign (up to "The Last Sigil"). Then, you will receive

Memories of Sunless Skies and unlock account-wide flying in the Shadowlands zones. Players with Expert Riding skill can fly in Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and Revendreth. However, note that flying will not work in the The Maw, Oribos, and Korthia.

In Patch 9.2, you must earn another achievement to unlock flying in Zereth Mortis. You will find more information below.

Click to expand...

For shadowlands flying, the biggest issue was the renown barrier to do your covenant quest line, but now renown drops pretty quickly. I hadn't finished the kyrian campaign and wanted to do it during the free weekend. I went from 22 renown to 50 Saturday morning.

If you have gold just buy a set of ilvl 233 armor at 60 (maybe 10-15k), can do the prepatch invasions to get 252 gear, and the new uldaman dungeon gives 278 gear (and a 278 weapon the first time you do it from quest).

Uriel said:

If you have gold just buy a set of ilvl 233 armor at 60 (maybe 10-15k), can do the prepatch invasions to get 252 gear, and the new uldaman dungeon gives 278 gear (and a 278 weapon the first time you do it from quest).

Click to expand...

No need to spend 10 to 15k, just do the invasion for invasion currency, then buy the 252 gear.

There were so many people doing the invasions, gear didn't matter, just join a raid though the LFG tool, if you are 60, and go around taping and looting things. Heal specs are the best for shit gear toons, but even shit geared hunters can go around pulling mobs into the group.

A couple of months ago, wasn't interested in Shadowlands, but I've watched a bunch of videos now that it's close, and must say, really impressed with many of the changes. All my characters are in the 40s, just where I left them a month into BFA, and what with Chromie & Invasions, it should be a snap to get several to 60 and geared in the next few days.

Still have the free SL 50 boost from that recent giveaway, probably going to use that on a Shaman. Enhance is looking like it could be a blast to play this time around. Even though I don't usually get too excited about the story/lore, a return to Titans / Dragonflight themes is a welcome change in my book, see where it leads.

Shouldn't be too hard for me to pretend that BfA and SL never really happened. It's been just over 4 years, time to drink the Kool-Aid once again!

Burns said:

No need to spend 10 to 15k, just do the invasion for invasion currency, then buy the 252 gear.

There were so many people doing the invasions, gear didn't matter, just join a raid though the LFG tool, if you are 60, and go around taping and looting things. Heal specs are the best for shit gear toons, but even shit geared hunters can go around pulling mobs into the group.

Click to expand...

Exactly this. You can get enough tokens to fully 252 gear a toon a a couple hours of just tagging mobs.