What has the elusive Keen been up to these past few weeks? Honestly, I'm immersed in WoW. There are those who will exclaim, "Heretic! That's not old school! It's a filthy themepark! Wow sucks!" While my enjoyment of WoW for the past 10 months feels strangely hypocritical, given I've had years of nothing but horrible things to say about the game for so many years, they've done a lot of things right in Battle for Azeroth.
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I'm having so much fun playing WoW -- despite so many people having issues with it -- that I thought it would be quite a trip to actively WoW-blog for a while. There's plenty to say that I haven't seen well represented by a typical player like myself.
We're currently in patch 8.1.5, and the next patch (8.2) is slated to come out at the end of May or the beginning of June.
The State of Raiding
Currently there are two raids in this "tier":
- Battle for Dazar'alor
- Crucible of Storms
BoD is the typical raid with several bosses, while CoS is the Trial of Valor style (only 2 bosses). BoD has been out now for three months, so we're definitely coming up on the time for a new raid.
Raids do not drop set items anymore, and there aren't random legendaries to be found. That's why I like it so much more. The gear from raids does have a few unique azerite traits (like talents on your gear), but so far they aren't mandatory for my classes -- of which I play maaaany.
I'm a "heroic" raider, meaning I'm content to never try Mythic difficulty. This provides me with just enough challenge to not get bored, while still being very doable. My guild is suuuper casual, so we progress slowly. I'm fine with that -- we raid 2 nights a week for an hour and a half to two hours a night. Very, very little.
I don't need gear from M+. Why? Well, read on.
The State of Mythic+
Though I do not play Mythic raids, I certainly dive deep in the Mythic+ dungeons. My group is currently playing in the +15 range right now. I love these because of the individual skill and team-based play.
The gear I get out of M+ is actually better than the gear I get in heroic raiding. In fact, I'm as geared as a mythic raider now.
Some people HATE how gear works in BFA. They feel like there's no point to raiding if there are no sets. People are also hating on the fact that open-world content will soon provide an increase item level from emissaries and other activities -- "It trivializes the raids!" To them I say, "so what?" I haven't raided for gear in BFA.... pretty much ever. All of my raiding has been for the enjoyment of killing a boss with friends.
Whether gear comes from raids, M+, the open world, crafting... I just don't care. I love that I have access to gear up.
The State of the Story
I'm enjoying this story, though it has taken its sweet time unfolding. Strangely, I feel like the story took a massive hiatus since BFA's release. We've been dealing with such miniscule details throughout Uldir and BoD, though those little details have given decent background. Only now in the grand scheme of CoS have we started to set the story's forward momentum.
We'll start to see why Sylvanas is acting the way she is, and eventually here we'll start to unfold a few new major plot points as we enter the second half of this expansion.
How the Heck has Keen Played WoW for 10 Months?!
I ask myself this question regularly, and I think it all boils down to having something to do. It's rare that I log in and have nothing to do. I like M+ dungeons A LOT and could run them non-stop. The dungeons in BFA are awesome. I enjoy my casual raids. I enjoy playing alts and gearing them up. I enjoy the content they add once a month or so. I enjoy trying to earn gold (since I missed the Draenor gold farm).
Looking ahead, 8.2 has more content than 8.0-8.1.5 combined. This content will easily carry me another six months.
Next up, we'll take a look at my characters and my thoughts on class design.
Glad to see you are enjoying it, wow might not be breaking any grounds in the mmo genre but it delivers a quality experience imo.
But I miss having a WAR to be excited about, without the let down on release of course 😛
Amen to that.
I miss the excitement and the passion we can have about an upcoming launch. The ones currently in development have been there for so long (and haven’t shown enough to get excited about).
I can see why people like it, but I personally dislike M+ a lot. Or at least that it is the defacto way to run dungeons at cap.
I wish they would have done it without timers, or as side content like the challenge runs used to be, or while still letting regular old dungeon running remain meaningful. As it stands now there is zero reason to run heroics and the only reason anyone does M0s is for mount drops or world quests.
My raid group fell part mid-BfD and I’m currently playing FFXIV, but I like what I’m seeing so far with the 8.2 stuff coming out. I truly believe that how gear works right now is very very bad for the game but that is a whole other discussion.
The timer is largely meaningless, though, except for advancing to a higher level key. Without that, people could cheese their way (even more than they do) to a higher key by not having to complete the dungeon in a timely fashion.
Regardless of the time it takes you to complete it, a 10 gives you the same ilvl gear if you finish on time or not. If you fail the complete the dungeon on time, there are simply fewer pieces of loot inside (from 3 guaranteed drops to 2 guaranteed drops).
Heroic is worthless because… well, it’s trivialized within minutes of hitting cap. Rather than give people a reason to run it, they should just remove normal and mythic and simply go to a “dungeon level” system.
I think it’s fascinating that you (and sooooo many people) dislike how gear is handled this expansion. But gear being this way is the only reason I play. If I had to farm raids for gear drops and couldn’t achieve the gear by playing how I want (M+), then I’d have quit 6 months ago.
I was doing my +10 every week for the chest, I just found it tedious more often than not. Bliz managed to make some really unfun affix combos this expansion. Like fortified underrot or motherlode anything. Sanguine waycrest or tolbarad. Ugh. But I still did it because of that damn chest.
When I say “how gear works” I don’t mean that M+ shouldn’t give gear, I mean things like titanforging and the weekly chest giving a level of gear far above the level of difficulty required to obtain it.
I go back and forth on Titanforging. I love it when I get one, but when my luck sucks I hate it as much as I hated the random legendaries and tier sets. It certainly helps my alts gear up when I run a M+5 and get a 415.