Let’s Catch Up!

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I took a little hiatus from responsibilities for the past few days to catch up on some work and other RL things. I’m back in action now, so let’s catch up on a few things!

What is Keen Playing?

I’m playing WoW, obviously. There’s a lot to say here, but I’ll try and condense it down into the highlights.

My Paladin is iLevel 340 something. I had horrible luck on the first world bosses and received no loot. My luck has also been pretty darn bad in Mythic+’s, and I’ve only found a few upgrades. I’m also carrying around a few lower iLevel pieces of gear (like 325) because I haven’t found a better item. Realistically, though, I’m plenty geared for what I want to do right now.

Raiding is going pretty well. Our casual guild fielded quite a few on the first night we raided, and had a little bit of an attendance issue the second night because of multiple RL injuries and issues that came up — I think Football didn’t help either. I got 2 drops so far, and I really like the boss fights. The setting isn’t my thing, but the mechanics are fun.

This whole Warfront system is too convoluted. The Horde got it first, but haven’t unlocked it yet. Once they do, they get to have it open to them for 7 days. Meanwhile, we sit here doing nothing. Once they’ve unlocked it and 7 days pass, it’s our turn again. So if you do the math… the soonest I will actually be able to enter a Warfront and see what they’re like is September 22. Someone tell me if I’m wrong? I’ll only get to see them every 3 weeks. That’s… silly. I do hear they drop lots of 340 gear, so that’s a nice alt catchup mechanic?

As I mentioned last week, I unlocked Dark Iron Dwarves. Doing so rendered most of the WQ’s completely useless to me. I won’t shed a single tear — I seriously dislike World Quests. I’m pretty sure that I don’t even need to worry too much about Champions of Azeroth rep, either. Now it’s just a matter of grinding Azerite Power for my necklace. The solution? Warfronts will probably drop a lot during the week they’re open, as perhaps even during the turn-in phase a week prior. There’s also the weekly expeditions… and a few WQ’s maybe if I’m bored?

I decided to boost my Dark Iron Dwarf Warrior to 120. I’m not going to worry about the heritage armor, but instead I’m going to try and get the Blackrock armor from WoD. A little transmog hunting is actually enjoyable.

My Warrior is level 113 now, and I’m playing around with specs. I love how Fury feels, but people keep saying how bad it is compared to Arms. I’ll make my own decision, but will likely fall where I feel the power is at.

Overall, I’m still very much enjoying BFA. My friend says he feels like there isn’t much content. Without a doubt I can understand where he is coming from. He enjoyed WQ’s in Legion and now they’re sorta useless once you outgrow them. He doesn’t like Island Expeditions (neither do I), is worried about the Warfronts (so am I), and obviously there’s only so many dungeons and raids one can do. So while there isn’t actually a lack of content yet, there’s an end in sight for some. Given my progression rate, I’ll have A LOT of time before we finish up Heroic Uldir, and I still want to dungeon dive a bit.

How’s your WoW experience going so far?

This ended up being a little longer than I thought, so I think I’ll do another post tomorrow talking about some games coming out.

  • I admit I’m having mixed feelings about BfA. On one hand, I love the setting. I think the zones & music are the best they’ve been since Mists of Pandaria. I also like the return to a more “grounded” narrative of Alliance vs Horde. It all works really well for me.

    Mechanically though, I don’t like where we’re going. I’ve been bouncing between a few different classes trying to find something really fun. Unfortunately for me the specs I play mostly seem worse than their Legion iterations. I’ve spent the most time with my Balance Druid and it was just way more fun in Legion.

    The Heart of Azeroth and Azerite armor/traits are “meh”. I can’t say I really care about any of it. With Legion it was exciting to level my artifact, and the traits felt meaningful – especially the golden traits. With this system none of the traits seem that interesting and it leaves me not caring at all about azerite. It’s also not a great feeling to get a gear “upgrade” in ilevel but have no traits unlocked.

    Island Expeditions are boring. At this point I’m only doing them for the 1500 7th Legion rep. Once I have Dark Irons unlocked, I will stop doing them. I don’t care about Azerite.

    Warfronts. Oh dear. As Alliance, the feature starts with watching the Horde contribution timer go up for a week. Once it hits 100% I expected something to happen. Instead it unlocks a new 7 day timer. When this completes it will unlock a 3rd (!!) week long timer, allowing us to contribute mats for rep/Azerite. Once you actually get to play the warfront it is an easy 20-30 scenario where you run around killing a bunch of trash mobs and get 340 loot at the end. One piece of 370 the first time you do it. So you can spam this scenario for 1 week out of every 4 for free 340 loot.

    I have a 120 Horde alt, so I was able to do it a few times yesterday. It isn’t bad, but it just isn’t exciting either. It also completely dominates any other gearing method for new 120s. If you hit max level now, there is no reason to ever set foot into a regular, heroic, or Mythic+0 dungeon. I suppose whether you think that is good or not depends on you.

    This is a long rant, sorry. I do like WoW, and I don’t really intend to stop playing. I just don’t see this expansion being one of my favourites unless some changes come in future patches.

    • I can’t disagree with anything. You’re not ranting. You’re basically stating facts.

      I feel the same way, and my Discord pals and guildies all say the exact same things.

      BFA, though fun and not something I’m going to stop playing, isn’t going down as one of the better expansions.

  • Unpopular opinion: I love warfront timings. It sucks if you want content now now now. But I will be playing this for 2 years, so I am quite content I won’t have to do warfronts every week. Once every month suits me perfectly on a long term view.

    Azurite traits are boring as fuck, and I miss legion weapons, but not the AP grind. Due to the weapons being important the grind was way more important and I was forced to grind a lot more. I have 3 340-355 characters in less time than one cost me in legion.

    Expeditions are fine to do, and on mythic difficulty quite challenging, but the way the rewards work (only get something meaningful for doing 4 or 5) just forces them to be a mandatory grind instead of something to do when interested. And since the reward is a quite large amount of boring azurite power, it makes the expeditions even more boring. Sadly enough they are very efficient for azurite power.

    The dungeons are great, love m+. M+ really makes the game for me.

    WQ I am fine with, yes, they become less useful, just like dailies were before. They are as good as in legion, and better than dailies were before. But since I find Azurite traits before I very happily don’t feel forced to farm them like I had to do in legion for the weapon. I do emissary and some fun or good rewards now.

    For me the current expansion is better than legion, because none of the grinds feel mandatory as they did in legion, and as such I can just do what I find fun without having to worry about grinding things. I just run m+ with guildies/friends and massively enjoy that.

    • I agree with pretty much everything except for maybe the Warfronts. I want some fun distracting content, and I was hoping Warfronts would be the answer.

      I too love M+ — more than raiding — so I have content.

      I’m also a big fan of the lesser grind.

  • Don’t forget Little dragon’s cafe came out, and Spyro remaster in less than two weeks! ^_^ Nintendo is releasing a special Evee or Pikachu themed Switch November 16, and oh my goodness, they are cute!

    I’ve been replaying Stardew Valley a bit, and have been loving the quiet break from Monster Hunter world. 🙂

      • No problem. I figured! I know cause my Wife originally wanted it as her anniversary present but now it comes out too late and I feel it’s always better to know ahead of time instead of dinging out when you don’t have it the day you expect it.

    • I’m super excited for Spyro! It’s on my list of games coming out this year that I want to play. My wife and I recently put over 110 hours into a Stardew Valley playthrough as well. 😀

  • Keen, Im reading that the 340 gear dropping at War Fronts are being eliminated and Alliance will not be given the same opportunity that Horde had. Some Horde friends tell me they geared up several alts as well. Doesn’t seem fair to me.