An Alternate Azerite Design

I've been musing over ways that Azerite gear could have been improved. As I've said before, it falls a bit short, but doesn't seem like it is that far from a good system.

For me, the biggest flaw is the link between the Azerite item and the Azerite necklace. It seems kind of awkward that your necklace level determines the power of the item you just got. I suppose it makes sense as a catch-up mechanic, but it still seems not quite right.

Here's my proposal for a different, but similar, design:

• Azerite gear has the current ring and trait structure.
• The first ring is always unlocked.
• Each Azerite piece has an independent AP bar and levels.
• When you earn AP, each piece you are wearing gains the same amount of AP separately.
• When a piece's AP hits the next level, the next ring unlocks.
• The weekly AP requirement for level reduction applies to the gear pieces.
• The amount of AP required to level an item might vary with the tier. I.e. i325 gear would level up faster than i355.

Basically, Azerite items have levels, and they level up as you earn AP while wearing them. They always start at level 1, and you always have to level them up. At some point, though, they will hit max level.

I think this mechanism, having to level up Azerite items separately, is more obvious and intuitive. It fits in with all the fantasies of levelling up and improving gear. It kills the awkward tie in between the necklace level and the gear level, which behaves oddly when the two are not in sync.

It also gives you many smaller goals, as you try and level up specific items.

There are three problems I see. First, having to wear the item might be harder for specs you don't play a lot. Personally, I'm not too fussed about it. I don't think it's wrong for you to have to tank to improve your tanking items. You could always reforge the piece to your main spec, level it up, and then reforge it back.

The second problem is that this does require more data. Each Azerite piece needs to store the current AP, as well as a level scheme. I don't know if requiring this extra data would have performance implications. This may have been the reason that Azerite gear levels were tied to the necklace in the first place.

The final problem is that the hardcore might insist on having every Azerite piece and levelling them all up. My inclination is to let them. Stopping the hardcore from being hardcore is not worth the effort.

I think this scheme preserves a lot of what is good about Azerite gear, but makes it work in a more consistent and intuitive fashion.

Upcoming Azerite Changes

Blizzard announced some upcoming Azerite changes:

We need to make Azerite Armor more available, for all types of players, through a method everyone can utilize. So we’re actually looking at Emissary rewards for that. The plan is to make Azerite Armor rewards from Emissary quests scale all the way up to 370 (based on your item level), which gives everyone a new, reliable source for appropriate gear. Further on, we’re looking at making some further improvements to the ways Emissaries reward gear, but getting more Azerite Armor in your hands is the higher priority for the immediate future.  

When we add new Azerite Armor in what we’re calling “BfA Season 2” (starting with Siege of Zuldazar and its corresponding Mythic+ and PvP seasons), we’re going to add another outer ring to those pieces of gear that has two spec-specific trait options for each spec. This effectively means that your favorite traits will be available on a lot more items, while also opening up a lot more options across the scope of all of your Azerite pieces (and thus, we hope, create more interesting decisions). 

We’re also going to continue to work on the individual traits themselves. We’ve done some basic tuning so far, but we’re taking the lessons we’ve learned from these first iterations forward, and Tides of Vengeance will bring new traits into the pool that reflect that. Our goal is to make the more generic traits be decent middle-of-the-road options for when you want to use a single piece for multiple situations or specs, but make sure the spec-specific options (which are generally the more interesting traits) win out in their respective environments.

The first change is interesting. I had assumed that raiding was giving out enough Azerite pieces, but apparently it isn't. So Azerite gear is getting tied to Emissaries, and getting given out to every one. The downside of using Emissaries, though, is that you can't target specific pieces.

The second change makes it more likely that you'll get your "best" trait, as each piece will have 3 different specialisation traits in total. Though I foresee a lot of complaining from the people who have unlocked only one outer ring.

The final change is a good one as well. I like the general traits for leveling, because you can use one set of Azerite armor and swap specs. But it is kind of a letdown to use a general trait on your spec-specific Azerite gear.

I do wonder how this will interact with the Uldir-specific traits like Archive of the Titans, which enable the stacking Uldir buff. Will the next raid tier not have this catch up mechanism?

Uldir Progress and Holy Paladin Build Thoughts

My guild has continued to push deeper into Heroic Uldir (and get our feet wet in Mythic Uldir).

Heroic Vectis

We finally got a good strat down. We use 3 groups, 2 ranged and 1 melee, and split up the three vectors. It's ironic, because this was more or less the strat we started with, but then discarded and went through two or three other strats before coming full circle back to this one.

Heroic Zek'voz

This fight doesn't feel too much different from normal, at least for healers. The pattern of rings you have to run out of is different, but that's about it. I think there's some nuance with how the adds have to be killed, but I don't really worry about it.

Mythic Taloc

We killed it for the first time last week. I stepped out as we were at 21 people and had 5 healers. I got a kill this week, though.

Mythic Taloc is very similar to Heroic Taloc. There's two new mechanics, one where some players have to spread out, and one where the players who don't need to spread stack on the tank. We cheese the second mechanic with a paladin tank and Blessing of Spellwarding, though. With that and bubble, the paladin can solo two casts, so the raid only has to stack for one or two.  There's also more lasers on the elevator ride down.

All in all, it's not too difficult. We one-shot it this week.

Heroic Zul

Last week we wiped and wiped on Zul. Last night, we had 15 minutes left after Zek'voz, so we cleared the trash in the hope of BoEs. No BoEs dropped, but we had 5 minutes left in the raid when it was clear. So we did a pull for fun.

And we killed Zul! I think the key was that our dps went up a bit, and we didn't try to time the transition. Last week, we were trying to time the transition perfectly, but it never lined up and Zul kept gaining stacks as we delayed. At the end, we'd have 15 stacks of the DoT, and still transition poorly. This time we just transitioned and cleaned up and kept going, and we only had 10 stacks.

So now we're looking at Heroic Mythrax or Mythic Mother. I'm not sure what our target will be.

Holy Paladin

Last night I tried a new build focused on tank-healing. I took Awakening and Divine Purpose, and Beacon'd one tank and focused the other. I am not really sure how it did. By the meters, it seemed worse than last week. But we one-shot pretty much everything last night. We did have five healers, so maybe they carried me.

Last week I was using the standard two-beacons and heal non-tanks strategy. But I ended up direct-healing the tanks a fair bit. So this week I tried to lean into that. Maybe I'll see how the new build performs on the new progression fights.

Proposed Changes for Azerite Armor

As you know, I don't think Azerite Armor is a bad system. But a lot of the community seems to disagree. Here are some ideas for tweaks to smooth down the worst of the rough spots:

• Reduce the Azerite level requirement of the first ring to 1. 

This would mean that the first ring is always unlocked. Since the majority of the Azerite armor's power is in the stats and first ring, it's pretty much always an upgrade. The inner rings can fill in as you upgrade your necklace, and give you small improvements as you play.

• Set the reforge cost to a flat 100g. 

Right now, the reforge cost starts at 5 gold, and doubles whenever you reforge. It goes back down after 3 days of not reforging. The intent is clearly to allow you to correct mistakes fairly easily, but dissuade you from constantly flipping the same piece of gear between specs.

However, I think the hardcore are simply eating the cost of reforging, flipping between specs anyways, and then complaining about the costs on the forums. Setting the cost to 100g discourages casual reforging, but lets the hardcore be hardcore if they really want. 100g is cheap enough that an extra World Quest will cover the cost. This also simplifies reforging.

• Add a chance to get Azerite Armor when doing a Mythic+ of a given level for the first time each week. 

The way I envision this working is an extra loot roll, where you can only get Azerite armor. You get one loot roll for each "level" of Mythic+. For example, the first time you do a +7, you have a chance to get a normal Mythic 7 piece of gear, and you have an independent chance to get an i370 Azerite Armor. The second time you do a +7, even if it is a different instance, you only have the chance to get regular Mythic 7 gear.

So this basically gives you 3 chances per week to get Azerite Armor of a given tier. For example, do a +7,  a +8, and a +9 to get i370 Azerite Armor. That's roughly comparable to a heroic raider's chance of getting a piece of Azerite Armor in a raid. But it keeps Azerite gear from being completely farmable and making Mythic+ mandatory. And since this is a separate roll on top of the current system, it doesn't reduce the amount of gear you get running Mythic+.

It also minorly encourages doing a few different levels of keys, which I think is probably a good thing for the Mythic+ system.

Those are the three changes I would have Blizzard implement. I don't think they help people who fundamentally oppose Azerite gear, but I do think they smooth out the most serious rough spots.

War Mode Imbalance

I came across an interesting post on Reddit, Warmode is fastly becoming unplayable by Alliance players:

I have two 120 character I play everyday. One horde and one alliance. Both with war mode on all the time because I like world PvP. With the Horde character it's almost always peaceful. I attack almost any Alliance I come across, but there are just too few of them. 

But when I log on my Alliance character, dear God. Champions of Azeroth quests are the worst, with 10, 20 hordies against me alone. It doesn't matter if I'm playing on an Alliance dominated realm (77% at level 120, according to Realmpop), because the horde comes from many different realms.

And here we have the latest in a long history of examples, dating from Ultima Online, that when given a choice, people choose the non-PvP option, especially when it's likely they will lose.

So how would we fix this, or at least bring it up to reasonable parity?

Here's my idea:

• Balance War Mode zones to be equal Horde and Alliance. Move all unmatched Horde players into empty zones without Alliance. Better some Horde have no Alliance to kill, than all Horde. These Horde would still get the War Mode bonus.

• War Mode raids automatically get moved into an empty zone. As well, the War Mode bonus stops applying in raids.

Basically, we are trying to guarantee two things. First, War Mode is always equal in terms of numbers. Second, War Mode is about individual and small group combat.  There's no more forming a large raid and steam-rolling all the opposition.

I think those two guarantees would be enough to allow Alliance to feel like there is a level playing field, and make them more willing to try War Mode. Restricting War Mode to small groups also feels more even.

The downside, though, is that you do give up the raid vs raid clashes, as in the old days of Southshore and Tarren Mill.  It also would make Capital City raids, to kill faction leaders, rather weird. You might need special rules for faction zones.

But I think it would improve the day-to-day experience of War Mode in the regular leveling and expansion zones.

Seasonal Alts

In the Reddit AMA, Watcher discusses alts:

We're often torn when it comes to questions about alt progression, alt catch-up mechanisms, or account-wide systems. Philosophically, what's the point of an alt? For one group of players, the primary desire is to jump into participating in endgame activities from a different perspective (a PvP alt, or a healer alt for a change of pace from your usual DPS main, or whatever). In that context, almost any required progression can feel like a nuisance - an obstacle in the way to the desired endpoint of being raid-ready, or arena-viable. 

For another group of players, an alt represents a fresh set of goals to pursue after reaching a point of diminishing returns on a main, whether that's someone who hits max level and then promptly begins leveling another character, or someone who doesn't have many available gear upgrades left on their main and hops over to an alt where progress can once again come quickly. For this type of player, the more things are account-wide, the fewer new goals they have to pursue.

This is a good point on how there are two groups with opposing desires when it comes to alts. Fortunately, Blizzard has a game which has already solved this problem: Diablo 3.

Normally, new characters in Diablo 3 share a lot of elements: access to followers, crafters and recipes, and a common stash. But Diablo 3 also has "seasonal" characters, which are a new character which does not share anything with the others. The character lasts for the season, and at the end converts into a normal character.

This might be a good system to bring to WoW. Allow people to create seasonal characters, which:

• cannot use heirlooms
• cannot receive mail from non-seasonal characters
• cannot trade with non-seasonal characters
• cannot access guild banks
• do not share currency or reputations
• cannot be boosted

Then allow normal characters to share reputations, and maybe other elements like a common bank stash, or even currencies.

Throw in some achievements, and maybe a pet or mount reward for levelling a seasonal character from 20 to 120 (start at 20 so that you can level Allied races). Maybe automatically give out an old tier set cosmetic armour. That's enough of an excuse for people to try out seasonal characters.  You can link the seasons to the PvP seasons, as they already exist.

I think this would solve the issue between the two groups of people who want to create alts. It would also create a new track of gameplay for people who are so inclined.

Personally, I really like Diablo 3 seasons. It gives you a reason to start a fresh character and level it to max, as well as several points where you can stop and feel satisfied with what you've accomplished. Seasons would be a good system to port to WoW, especially with all the new Allied Races.

More thoughts on Island Expeditions

Since my last post on Island Expeditions, I've done a bunch more. I do them on Heroic difficult now. Most of the time we win, but I have had a couple of losses. Here are a few more thoughts on Island Expeditions:

• Island Expeditions are a lot more tractable when you start with a clear plan. I usually play with random groups, so it's very hit and miss. Generally, you follow the one person who's most willing to charge ahead. But I did a couple of expeditions with guild members, and we started with a very simple "Go for the X to the east, hitting diamonds, skulls, and quests along the way". Somehow just having that plan at the beginning made the expedition much easier to handle. It was a lot easier to predict where the team would stop and in which direction they would go.

• Island Expeditions need more varied palettes in flora and fauna. Really, you should be able to identify the island just by the view from the ship at the start. Instead, your first sight is always a tropical beach with some crocodiles. This adds to a feeling of sameness with expeditions. Blizzard should have started with fewer, more distinctive islands.

• Having Azerite elementals is a mistake. Right now, you run from a beach with crocodiles and end up in an area with Aerite elementals. This adds to feeling of sameness. Both the beginning and end of your charge are the same in every island. Start on a beach with crocodiles, run to the Azerite elementals. As well, you have to fight the Azerite elementals in world quests as well, and they're relatively uninteresting mechanically.

• Island Expeditions should focus on skulls. In contrast to the elementals, hunting skulls is fun. They're always different creatures, with different abilities and minions. Remove the red X deposits, or have them spawn with a random skull and greatly empower the skull enemy.

• Encountering the enemy Horde is odd. Maybe this is just coincidence, but in both of my losses, we never encountered the Horde. It feels like, in an average pickup Heroic group, the Horde's ability to collect Azerite outstrips ours. But we can kill them, and set them back enough to pretty much guarantee victory. It's always a close game until the Horde is encountered. It's slightly annoying too, because after you kill them once, they keep coming back and making things take longer. So it feels like you want to see the Horde, because it guarantees a victory, but it also guarantees that the rest of match will take longer and be more annoying ("Sneaky Pete!"). I don't really know how to fix this, or even if it is something that should be fixed.

• I would like to see a variant that wasn't a race. Perhaps something where all the enemies are tougher and deal more damage, but a single death is automatically a loss. Though that might make tanks and healers mandatory. Perhaps disallow tank and healer specialisations, since every class has a damage specialisation.

Those are some more thoughts on Island Expeditions. After playing several, they're reasonably fun. I do enough to get the weekly quest, and I like doing that. However, I think a few tweaks here and there, especially a greater focus on the skull enemies, could make Island Expeditions better.

Reddit AMA with Ion Hazzikostas

On Friday, Reddit had an Ask Me Anything with WoW's Game Director Ion Hazzikostas (WatcherDev, formerly Gurgthock from Elitist Jerks). It's a very interesting read. Watcher talks a bit about all the perceived issues with the new content in BfA.

For some reason, Reddit (and MMO-Champion) seem to have a lot of issues with Battle for Azeroth. I am not really onboard with the majority of their complaints.

To me, the "meat-and-potatoes" of BfA, the questing, the dungeons, mythic+, the raids, are the best they've ever been. That's where I spend the bulk of my time. A few of the newer "side-dishes" could probably be improved. But even then I don't really think any of them are outright bad. I think the complaints are overblown, and more a community circle-jerking than serious issues that greatly affect players.

Reading Ion's responses, though, I do think that the WoW team is not paying enough attention to "first impressions". They seem to be designing for the steady state, how things play months into the expansion. That's probably good, as it's been a flaw in the past. Something seems amazing on first glance (say Legion legendaries) but five months down the line every one hates it.

But the WoW team are stumbling on the new mechanic's first impression. People look at the new element, or try it once, and aren't excited. This is a real problem that the WoW team needs to address.

The other major issue I saw is that Blizzard is moving to a model where class specializations have strengths and weaknesses. But they have not communicated to use exactly what strengths and weaknesses our specializations actually are supposed to have.

Having strengths and weaknesses doesn't bother me, as I play a Holy Paladin. We're pretty much the archetype for a specialization with true strengths and weaknesses and have been for most of the game's history. We're strong in single/double target healing, and bad at healing many targets at once. So I'm used to it. But I can see how the specializations (especially DPS) which were well-rounded are now disconcerted that they don't have mobility, or lower AoE damage, etc. compared to their compatriots.

I do think that Blizzard should explicitly lay out the expected strengths and weaknesses of each class specialization.

In any case, the AMA with Ion is well worth the read.

Venturing into Heroic Uldir

This week, we decided to go into Heroic Uldir after killing the first 7 bosses in Normal. We didn't actually get attempts on Normal G'huun. I rather think we won't actually attempt it until we get stuck in Heroic. The lure of higher item level gear is too strong for our leadership.

Heroic Taloc

This fight was more or less the same as Normal, except there are laser beams below the elevator as it descends. You have to look below the elevator to see where the beam is, and make sure you avoid it as the elevator goes through it.

In our first attempt, I think everyone was trying to look for the beams. We successfully avoided them all, but the adds on the elevator wiped us. In the second attempt, we paid more attention to the adds and did the fight successfully.

Realistically, if you move as a group, you only need a few people watching for beams. The rest of the group just follows them around while focusing on adds.

Heroic Mother

This fight has a new mechanic in the second room where lasers come down from the ceiling and there is a row of swirlies which mark the safe spot. In the first attempt we all thought the swirlies denoted danger, and got wiped out by the lasers.

We also killed Mother in the second room, and never moved to the third room, where I gather there is another new mechanic.

Heroic Fetid Devourer

This guy hits like a truck. The mechanics are fairly straightforward, but it's pretty much a gear check for your tanks and healers. And in a way, dps as well, as you need to kill the boss before you run out of cooldowns.

We even lost the Thrash tank near the end, and then starting bleeding dps as different melee would run in and try to pop cooldowns to take the Thrash attack.

Heroic Vectis

This is fight we're currently working on. Unfortunately, the strategy we're following requires some choreographed movement to deal with the blood vectors safely. Choreographed movement is a great weakness of ours. So I don't think everyone in the raid really understands it.

We'll see how it goes next week.

I wonder if we will drop Normal and continue working on Heroic. We have three bosses worth of loot, and I think we could to five. That's enough for a reasonable farm, and we'd be able to get back one and a half raid nights to work on Heroic.

Azerite Armor

The major new mechanical system in Battle for Azeroth is Azerite Armor. It's kind of a cross between Legion legendaries and artifact weapons. Like artifact weapons, you empower your neckpiece by collecting Azerite Power. Then your head, shoulders, and chest are special pieces which have abilities that unlock based on your Azerite level. You can usually choose one ability from four or so choices.

There are three or four rings which can be unlocked. The first ring has abilities which modify your powers. The second-last ring has defensive abilities, and the last ring gives +5 item levels. Raid gear has a second outer ring with offensive passives.

However, unlike legendaries, it's not a completely random system. Specific pieces have specific abilities, so you can farm exactly the abilities you want. Azerite pieces also don't warforge, so you don't have to worry about getting a better version.

It's not a bad system, but it isn't a great system either.

The greatest flaw is that it's not an exciting system. It's a very "Spike" system, to use Magic: the Gathering terminology.[1] A Legion legendary drop was an event. It was rare, and was raw power compared to normal gear. The only problem was that some legendaries were much more valuable than others. A similar thing happened with Artifact weapons. Getting one was another event, and then you unlocked this giant tree of abilities which you worked on filling out. The anticipation of having a completed weapon was very attractive.

Compared to those systems, Azerite Armor lacks sizzle. Most of the power is in that first ring, so it's very front-loaded. The final reward, +5 item levels, is useful, but rather boring.

The other issue with Azerite Armor is that there is a corner case which is a bad experience if it happens to you. If your necklace is behind on Azerite levels, and you loot a very high ilevel piece, none of the rings are unlocked, and the armor feels useless. It's not quite as bad as getting the "worst" legendary, though. Your comparative power to other players is still the same, and you can leave the armor in your bags until you achieve the required level and you've got an instant upgrade then.

For the most part, though, I think Azerite Armor will play well. It will give players something achievable to chase, kind of like set gear, but without the massive gap between those who have the item and those who don't. It's also different from normal armor, where you chase secondary stats. You also get to collect different sets of Azerite Armor for different specs, but you can get by with only those 3 pieces (and trinkets and weapons).

It's just a very boring system, compared to the pure excitement of the Legion gear systems. Azerite Armor may very well be better in day-to-day play, though. It might have been better received if Azerite Armor had been the mechanic for the next expansion, to put some space between it and Legion.

1. "Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory."

Uldir First Impressions

The first raid of Battle For Azeroth, Uldir, has opened.

From the Alliance perspective, this raid is a little weird because it seems to be tied entirely to the Horde story line. The Alliance are basically tourists following Brann Bronzebeard on his eternal quest to release more Old Gods into the world. I guess this is one drawback of having two very different faction stories in the expansion.

My guild has decided to be a little more hardcore this expansion. We're looking at raiding 3 nights a week, and ultimately aiming to move into Mythic difficulty. I'm going along with it, but ultimately I am doubtful of things working out. I don't think we're really prepared for the roster management that Mythic requires. I also think we're pretty weak at time management, movement, and positioning. Attributes which Mythic will stress. But maybe attempting Mythic will force us to realise that and improve those weaknesses.

In any case, we tried Normal Uldir to start. We killed the first five bosses on Tuesday. They're all pretty decent.

The second boss, Mother, is particularly interesting because you have to slowly funnel raiders from one room to the next, while still handling mechanics and leaving enough dps on the boss in the previous room. It will be quite interesting to see pick-up groups handling this.

On Wednesday, we killed the sixth boss, Zul. This one took us quite a while, as it involves a lot of target switching. It's a pretty interesting fight overall, though. The boss takes control of people and forces them to jump off the platform. You have to cleanse them before they reach the edge. That creates adds which need to be purged/dispelled to be defeated. Interesting mechanics which I don't think we're really seen before.

The seventh boss, Mythrax, is funny because you have to jump down into his room, and that automatically starts the fight. We had an attempt or two which happened because someone overshot the edge and fell down too early.

For holy paladins, I have a feeling BfA is going to be a return to focused tank healing. Stand within 10 yards of your tank so you get full mastery and aura and keep them alive.

All in all, Uldir looks like like an excellent raid instance, and a great start to raiding in the expansion.

Mythics in BfA

I did several Mythics last week.

In general, they aren't that difficult with a tank that pulls safely. You know, pull back to the group so other groups don't get accidentally pulled, use crowd control occasionally, etc.

Trash can be difficult, especially if you get multiple packs at once. I would rotate cooldowns for the trash packs to make life easier. Avenging Wrath - Holy Avenger - Blessing of Sacrifice - Holy Avenger, one per trash pack, was a good pattern that made healing easier.

I strongly recommend Beacon of Virtue for Holy Paladins as well. There's a lot of group damage going out in heroics.

The only bosses that I found unusually difficult were the Triad in Waycrest Manor and the end boss of Shrine of the Storms. Triad you can jump instead of moving, and using Heroism on the second witch got us past that.

Most of the bosses are mechanics checks. Do the mechanics correctly and the fight is easy enough.

One trend I found is that a Brewmaster Monk tank is bad sign in a group. I don't know why, if they are underpowered, or if it's a difficult class to play, but all the dungeons where I had a Brewmaster tank were a lot more difficult than they needed to be. They also seemed a lot more resistant to pulling safely than the other tanks, for some reason.

Kul Tiras

I finally finished Kul Tiras story. It was a solid ending, and quite enjoyable. I really liked Siege of Boralus as well. Using the main city as the dungeon was lots of fun. I did it at i315 with a group in Party Finder who were looking to finish the quest as well.

All the Kul Tiras zones were good. I liked how there was a main story quest line through the zone, but it only took about 40-50% of the quests, with the remainder being side quests to flesh out the country.

I did Tirgaarde Sound first, which focused on the Ashvane company. Then Stormsong to find the fleet, and finally Drustvar. I would recommend switching Drustvar and Stormsong, and going Tirgaarde Sound to Drustvar to Stormsong.

Drustvar was really interesting as well. In many modern books and movies, it feels like witches are usually portrayed as misunderstood, and the prejudice and ignorance of the peasantry is the real evil. Also shades of feminism conflicting with an evil patriarchy, or men being threatened by women with power.

Drustvar played it straight. Witches exist and they are evil. Burn them in righteous fire. It actually felt quite refreshing, and oddly unique. And you get an "Inquisitor" title, excellent for paladins.

All in all, Kul Tiras is an excellent country for World of Warcraft. It actually feels kind of daunting to realize that I still have an entire second country still to do.

Warbringers: Azshara

Last week Blizzard released the final Warbringers video, this one focusing on Queen Azshara:

It's a great video, and does an excellent job of showcasing Azshara's arrogance, and how that trait is almost admirable. The portrayal of N'Zoth is also also very well done, creepy and effective.

I've mentioned before that one thing I enjoy in movies and other media is a good introduction of a villain. This dual introduction of Azshara and N'Zoth is one of the better ones I've seen, revealing both their characters and establishing their power with beautiful efficiency.

One criticism I've seen on the forums is that N'Zoth "outplayed" Azshara, and didn't actually give up anything of value. I think it's best to think of these magical bargains as binding on both parties. If Azshara had made the first bargain, she would have been a literal slave, unable to disobey N'Zoth. Instead she successfully bargained for both power and free will, a triumph indeed.

Ranking the Warbringers video, Jaina's is definitely the best. Azshara's comes in second, and Sylvanas's is last by a wide margin.

Dungeon, Island Expedition Impressions

Dungeons

I have almost finished the Kul Tiras story. I'm have to do the Siege of Boralus dungeon. It would have been nice if Blizzard had actually noted that Siege was a Mythic-only dungeon in the quest text. It was very confusing.

Actually, this is a bit of a general problem so far at max level. Blizzard isn't providing obvious directions that I think should be provided. For example, emissary turn-ins. I finished a Champions of Azeroth turn-in and I had no idea where Magni was. Apparently there's a portal to Silithus in Boralus? When did that happen? Same thing with the Tortollan emissary.

Dungeons so far are interesting. I finally got to i305 and started doing heroic dungeons.

It's kind of weird doing the Horde dungeons. Normally during an expansion, I've done all the quests beforehand and know the story for each dungeon. But now you enter a Horde dungeon, and there are trolls and gold and dinosaurs running around, and you have no idea why. Especially when a boss is talking smack to you.

If the tank pulls one pack at a time, heroic dungeons are pretty easy, even at minimum item level. If she pulls multiple packs, all bets are off.

I did get my item level up to 312 or so, thanks to a couple lucky drops. Perhaps that's enough to start tackling Mythics, at least with my guild.

Island Expeditions

I also did an island expedition on Normal difficulty. I'm not too sure what to think. The thing is that we were rushing to gather Azerite so fast that you couldn't really understand the nuances of the place. Apparently the opposing faction NPCs have really cool AI or something, but everything went by in a blur, so I'm not sure what really happened.

I kind of wish it wasn't a race, and there was more room to slow down or be strategic. But I don't really know how you would accomplish that. Maybe increase the damage and disallow resurrecting when you die.

The only thing I noticed about the Horde NPCs (a blood elf mage team, I think) was that they jumped an awful lot while fighting. So kudos to Blizzard for successfully imitating human PvPers.

Battle for Azeroth: First Impressions

It's pretty late for a first impressions post, but I played a lot on launch week (though I didn't take time off or anything). Then I went on vacation for a week and didn't play at all. So now I'm back, and currently behind everyone in my guild. Oh well, they can carry me for the first couple weeks of raiding.

Some scattered impressions:

• There is a ton of content. I'm still not finished with Kul Tiras on Coriel, though I'm close. Then there's the whole Horde side to go. It really feels like two expansions in one.

• There seems to be a lot of angst about level-scaling. Honestly, I didn't really notice any real change from 115 onwards. Before 115, Coriel out-geared the mobs, so it was a bit faster.

• Azerite gear and mechanics seem okay to me. I do think that Azerite gear makes a bad first impression, especially compared to the artifact weapons in Legion. Maybe I'll expand on this later.

• I actually like the talent setup a lot, at least for Retribution. I've been playing around with the options, and they all play slightly differently. Inquisition, no Inquisition, Wake of Ashes, no Wake, more or less Art of War procs, faster Crusader Strikes, Divine Purpose procs. You can tailor your rotation to just how you like it. I use faster Crusader Strikes, Wake of Ashes, and no Inquisition. Fairly straightforward, with a small amount of procs to make life interesting.

• At least, you can tailor your rotation if you don't care about absolute max damage. For raiding, you'll probably get stuck with the cookie cutter build. But for levelling and solo play, it's quite good.

• There are a lot more cutscenes than I expected, and it's nice to see that a lot of them feature your character.

• Normal mode dungeons are pretty solid, though best with a steady tank instead of one who pulls everything. For some reason, out of all the tanks, Brewmaster monks seem the most impatient to me. Which is rather ironic.

• Professions are pretty good. I really like having a separate rating for each expansion, rather than one giant bar. It also looks like Blizzard has made the ranks easier to get. In Legion, it kind of felt like Blizzard expected Rank 2 to be the standard, and then Rank 3 was a bonus that a given character might or might not have. However, everyone got upset when they didn't get Rank 3.

The Siege of Lordaeron

The introductory scenario for Battle for Azeroth is the Siege of Lordaeron. The Alliance attacks the Undercity. This scenario was very well done, presenting the battle from both the Horde and Alliance perspectives.

The Horde portion of the scenario even has a small moral choice. Sylvanas uses the Blight, and the  Horde players can either attack the Alliance with a blight-sprayer, or just rescue their own soldiers. Despite a lot of the forum anguish, the vast majority of people in my raid gleefully blighted the Alliance. Though one person said he regretted it afterwards.

The Alliance gets to battle Saurfang, and then Anduin echos Arthas in Warcraft III with his entrance into the throne.

Horde-side, the conversation (not in the video) between Sylvanas and Saurfang was spicy. It drew gasps in raid chat.

Ah, there's the Sylvanas we know and love. Arrogant and snarky. I bet these videos greatly restored her status among Horde players.

For the most part, these scenarios are excellent. Putting major content into the game instead of novels or other secondary media. Blizzard also interleaved game-play and cut-scenes very well.

About the only criticism I have is that the Alliance seems curiously unprepared for the Blight. Here's how I imagine the planning session went down:

King Anduin Wrynn: Our siege towers and armies are ready. Let us march on Lordaeron! Any final concerns? 

Sky Admiral Rogers: Sir, what about the Blight? Do we have a plan to deal with it? 

Anduin: I don't think Sylvanas will use the Blight. 

Rogers: The Forsaken used the Blight at the Wrathgate. They used it at Gilneas and Southshore. Why would the Forsaken avoid using the Blight now? 

Anduin: You know, Sky Admiral, I don't think we will need a flying ship in this battle. I'm leaving you behind to guard Stormwind.

And that's why our beloved Sky Admiral Rogers wasn't at the Siege of Lordaeron.

Cinematic: Old Soldier

Blizzard released a coda to the War of Thorns: "Old Soldier"

This cinematic focuses on Saurfang's reaction to the Burning of Teldrassil. It also features a young troll nicknamed "Zappy Boi", who first appeared in the Battle For Azeroth trailer.

The cinematic is quite well done. Technically excellent and a nice look at the Horde. It's somewhat surprising that they went for a full cinematic here, as those are usually reserved for trailers.

If there is any problem here, it really harkens back to an old post I wrote, Alliance vs Horde Storyline Favoritism. In that post, I wrote:

That sets up two stories: a civil war within the Horde, and the Alliance attempts to finish Garrosh. Of those two stories, the civil war is always going to be the more interesting story.

You can see the same pattern repeating. The civil war story is more interesting, and has more focus than the other story. We will see what Blizzard does with the Alliance though. If they will introduce an internal conflict for that faction.

A lot of people are predicting a repeat of Pandaria. At the end of the expansion, Sylvanas will become a raid boss and new Warchief will be chosen.

My prediction, however, is that Sylvanas stays Warchief throughout the expansion. The Horde rallies behind her, and unlike Garrosh, she does not turn on them. I think Blizzard will keep the faction war "hot" for the next few years, and the best way to accomplish that is to leave Sylvanas as the Horde leader.

War of Thorns: Conclusion

Last week, Blizzard released the second part of the War of Thorns, including the Warbringers: Sylvanas cinematic. They started off quite well in the first week, but did they manage to stick the landing?

And the answer is "No!" It's been a while since we've seen a game writing team face-plant so spectacularly. Not since Mass Effect 3, in fact.

In my opinion, the problem is the writers' use of emotion. Emotion must be anchored in reason. If emotion is divorced from reason, the character is irrational. And no one likes following irrational leaders. It's especially bad for Sylvanas, who's basic character is the cool, calculating, ruthless archetype. A night elf talks smack to Sylvanas, she gets mad, and burns the tree in a fit of anger? That's so far out of character that it's just senseless.

I'm not objecting to Sylvanas burning the tree, by the way. It was almost totally what I hoped for. (A pity the Horde did not have a quest to light the torches and fire the catapults!) If only Sylvanas had said something to the night elf like:

I am not wasting a Horde army in a pointless occupation. Nor will I watch them be bled by your sentinel "resistance". Burn the tree.

That sort of attitude would have been totally in line with the existing characterization of Sylvanas, and lead to the same result.

Other than the cinematic, the conclusion to the War of Thorns was short but decent. The final Alliance quest, where you try to save as many night elves as possible before being overcome by the fire, was excellent. A great use of standard quest mechanics to drive home the point.

War of Thorns: Alliance Part 1

A quick post on the first part of the Alliance pre-patch quest.

The Alliance story was okay. It was very reactive to what the Horde was doing though. As such, it didn't feel as purposeful or as forceful as the Horde story was.

I did also try some World PvP in Darkshore. I joined an Alliance raid which ran around the zone a lot. Unfortunately, I think we were in an instance that did not have an opposing Horde raid. So all the kills were isolated overrunning of individuals or small groups. Not really that exciting.

In any case, the next part of the story releases today. We'll see how things turn out and find out who really burns Teldrassil.