War of Thorns: Horde Part 1

I did the first part of the pre-expansion questline, the War of Thorns, on my Horde character last night.

My first reaction:

Picture found through Google

I wrote two posts long ago which are worth revisiting in light of this questline:

• The Nature of War
• Players and the Sack of Theramore

I said that one side has to be the aggressor, and thus in the wrong in the modern view of war. In the War of Thorns, Blizzard has embraced this. The Horde is unequivocally the aggressor. Sylvannas is driven by the old vision of war as a strategic tool.

I think this is the only correct way to do faction warfare, but there are a number of Horde players who are deeply unhappy over this turn of events. Especially the Horde druids who don't want to attack Malfurion. (I, on the other hand, am looking forward to dispatching him.)

The other part is that the Horde players have their fingerprints all over this conflict. Unlike Theramore, their characters are involved from the very beginning. (And there isn't even a Kitten of the Horde to motivate them.) Blizzard finally put the major event into the game, rather than having it in a book.

I quite applaud Blizzard for taking these decisions. If you're going to do faction warfare, commit 100%.

The questline is quite good as well. It's about 45 min to 1 hour or so. Given that there's another questline on the Alliance side, I think that's a solid amount of content for a pre-expansion event.

There are also several World Quests in Darkshore after the quest finishes. Apparently Darkshore is hilarious if you have War Mode enabled, with lots of PvP going on. I haven't tried that yet, though.

I'm looking forward to seeing the resolution of the War of Thorns. I hope Blizzard sticks to their guns. Even up to having the player being the one who burns the World Tree. That would set the forums aflame.

Warbringers: Jaina

Blizzard released a new short in advance of Battle For Azeroth. It's titled Warbringers: Jaina, and it is excellent.

I really like what Blizzard is doing with Jaina Proudmoore so far. I was expecting that they would end up disgracing her character like they did with Fandral Staghelm.

Layering Jaina's anger with guilt, and having her question the choices she made in her youth, is the pitch-perfect way to handle her character. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing how her story unfolds in the expansion.

Mage Tower Challenges

I finally completed the Mage Tower for my Holy Paladin, buoyed mostly by the capped Artifact Power.

Actually, having the Mage Tower be active full-time was probably the biggest benefit. Previously, whenever I thought about doing the Mage Tower, it was never up. And when it was up, I didn't feel like doing it.

In any case, here's the Holy Paladin skin:

The healer challenge was pretty interesting. The hardest part was probably the section where you had to heal the ghosts, and it was challenging mostly because it didn't use the UI. So it felt like a completely new skill you had to learn.

The final section was rather annoying. The Ignite Soul mechanic, where your allies take damage equal to your health when the debuff expires, is supremely nerve-wracking. Especially when I realized--in the middle of the fight--that I was wearing [Highfather's Machination], which heals you when you drop below 50%:

"Alright, I'm standing in the bad, my health is dropping. I'm not healing myself. I'm down to 30%, good. Debuff expires in 3, 2, ... Wait,why did my health just jump back over 50%? OMG, everyone's dying! Heal, heal, heal!"

Ah well, it was a fun experience.

I also did the Retribution Paladin Mage Tower, fighting Sigryn's council. I think this challenge must have been very sensitive to gear level, and got significantly easier with better gear. With the level of gear I had, it was fairly straightforward once you understood the mechanics. Here's the Ret Paladin skin:

I also tried the tank challenge. It looks fairly doable. My problem is that everything is going fine, and then I get punted off the edge. That happened a couple of times, and I gave up for the night.

I think the Mage Tower Challenges were an excellent part of Legion, and I have mad respect for those people who completed them when they first came out. I also like the way Blizzard let increasing iLevel decrease the difficulty while still preserving a lot of the challenge. You still have to do mechanics correctly, even if you have more room for error. The Dev team did an outstanding job here.

WoW Classic Dev Watercooler

A couple of weeks ago, Blizzard released a Dev Watercooler for WoW Classic, talking about where the project is and some decisions that have been made.

Some thoughts:

• Blizzard has decided on 1.12 as the baseline version for WoW Classic. As much as we will all regret missing out on the days of 5 minute paladin blessings, 1.12 is a good choice. Far enough in so that a lot of the really wonky stuff got ironed out, but still with the classic feel. I understand that most of the private servers use 1.12 as well, so it is in line with community expectations.

• The team has the 1.12 code and 1.12 data. Important, because it means that team doesn't have to recreate it from old memories.

• The team has a 1.12 build running internally. This means that they have a "source of truth" for the project. No matter what path they go, they can always compare their latest version with the 1.12 build and know that they are faithfully recreating the classic feel.

• Blizzard has decided to go with the modern WoW engine, but use the 1.12 data. This is mostly good, because the modern WoW engine has all the bugfixes and is tuned for today's computers. For example, the 1.12 was 32-bit, if I recall correctly, but modern WoW is 64-bit. The only issue might be if the older data trips the modern anti-cheat measures.

There's also some details on the different formats of data. Old WoW data is apparently "de-normalized" in many ways, probably for peformance. Meanwhile modern WoW uses a more normalized form.

All in all, WoW Classic appears to be pretty far along. I wonder if Blizzard will surprise us with an early 2019 release.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

This post contains significant spoilers for Solo: A Star Wars Story.

I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story recently. It was enjoyable enough, but somewhat mediocre. However, it wasn't that far away from being a good movie.

The main actor playing the young Solo was good. He's not Harrison Ford, but it's hard to fault him for not being on that level. Danny Glover's Lando Calrissian was excellent. The other characters were okay. The new droid introduced was terrible, though.

The very beginning, Solo as Oliver Twist, was laughable. It was an interesting decision to portray young Solo as a good guy with heart of gold, who becomes disillusioned and jaded. I am not certain it was the correct decision, though. A more amoral Han, in line with his character at the start of A New Hope, might have been more interesting.

There are lots of good scenes, the sabacc games in particular were great. There were even a few good quiet scenes, which is a great rarity in action movies these days. However, I think there were a touch too many action sequences. A more rigorous edit that cut 15 minutes or so all over the place, would probably have improved the movie greatly.

One problem all the new Star Wars films have is their villains. They just aren't good villains at all. I'm not sure why Disney has such a problem writing villains in these films. SWTOR has a lot of issues, but their villains are leagues ahead of the modern movies.

The villain of this movie, Dryden Vos, is actually a great character, right up until you realize that he never actually did anything villainous. (Well, outside of shanking that governor. But then it's an Imperial governor, so maybe shanking him was a good deed.)

Seriously, Solo and his crew screw up the first job, and he gives them a second chance. He even loans them his best lieutenant to help them out. Then at the end, Solo betrays him first. Vos is really only a bad guy because the marauder chief turns out to be a young girl with a sob story. Solo allies with her despite the fact that she is responsible for the deaths of two of his first crew. It's such a blatant violation of "show, don't tell" that it seriously damages the movie.

I think the movie also suffers a bit from trying to set up a sequel. I think Han's girlfriend, Qi'ra, would have been handled in a better manner if there had been no hope of a second movie. It felt like they were trying too hard to keep her being a good person, even though it is necessary for her to betray Han to complete his character arc.

So that's what I thought of Solo. It's decent enough, with several good moments. But you can see the places where it could have been improved, and thus it's somewhat disappointing.

Redemption in Knights of the Eternal Throne

This post contains significant spoilers for Star Wars: The Old Republic: Knights of the Eternal Throne.

In Knights of the Eternal Throne, I found the way Bioware handled redemption to be very intriguing.

There are two main villains in the Zakuul saga: Arcann and Vaylin. Both are children of Valkorion and your enemies for most of the game. Arcann is Emperor of Zakuul first, until the player defeats him at the end of Knights of the Fallen Empire, at which point Vaylin becomes Empress.

In KotET, Arcann can be redeemed, brought back to the Light and becomes a companion for the player if the player desires. Vaylin cannot. However, Vaylin arguably is more worthy of being redeemed.

Here is Arcann's trailer:

And here is Vaylin's trailer:

Arcann chooses to become a villain. He makes his choice in anger and rage, but it's still his choice. Vaylin, on the other hand, is conditioned into villainy as a child. She doesn't really have a choice. Even though she probably commits greater evils.

KotET goes to significant length to lay this out for the player, including an excellent chapter on Nathema where it goes into detail about Vaylin's imprisonment on Nathema, and the experiments conducted on her there.

Yet in the end, Vaylin cannot be redeemed. This lends a small sense of unfairness to Arcann's redemption. He is perhaps less deserving than Vaylin, but gets a better end.

I'm not saying this is a negative for KotET. Quite the opposite. It was an excellent move on Bioware's part. It adds a touch of bittersweet-ness to the ending, makes it not quite so perfect and shiny. In fact, I even found myself slightly regretting redeeming Arcann because of that unfairness.

Leveling Dungeons are Fun Again!

The last time I dipped into leveling dungeons in WoW, it was a terrible experience. People in heirloom gear completely overpowered the instance, making it the zergiest of zergs. You didn't even have enough time to hand in quests.

In the leveling revamp of the last patch, heirlooms were reined in. They're still quite good, especially with the experience bonus, but they're comparable to dungeon blues.

Low level dungeons are actually a great deal of fun now. I've even rolled a newbie tank just to do instances. It's not excessively difficult, but the game rewards steady killing of group by group. Sometimes you can handle two groups, but it can be a bit stressful.

I healed a Stratholme run and we wiped a couple times due to accidentally pulling extra packs. The group even spontaneously started using crowd control to make life easier!

If you haven't tried a low-level instance in a while, I strongly recommend giving them a shot. Create an Allied Race character, and you'll start at level 20, making you eligible for instances right away. Queue times are pretty good, too. I'm seeing around 8 minutes for a DPS, 1-2 minutes for a healer, and instantaneous for a tank, of course.

Reconciling Vitiate and Valkorion

The main flaw of SWTOR's Knights of the Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne storyline is that Valkorion, the Emperor of Zakuul, turns out to be same entity as Vitiate, the Sith Emperor. This despite the fact that they have quite different personalities and contradictory goals.

The thing though, is that it almost works. It's almost convincing. I think that Bioware had taken a slightly different tack, the story would have worked much better.

First, have an expansion where Vitiate is defeated once and for all. Or if a full expansion is too much, a patch where Vitiate is banished or locked away, after the Ziost patch. As part of the story, have the player be aided by a mysterious Knight of Zakuul, maybe even Senya.

Then have KotFE happen much like it did. Only Valkorion is not Vitiate, but a Force spirit like Vitiate. Have it turn out that Vitiate possessed Tenebrae on Nathema. Having Valkorion be different than Vitiate, but knowing about him, gives Valkorion an excuse for hiding Zakuul. He was hiding Zakuul from Vitiate, but as soon as Vitiate is out of the picture, Valkorion makes his move.

In all other aspects, the story can remain much the same. I think that one change, simply having Valkorion be like Vitiate, but a different entity who was observing Vitiate, makes KotFE and KotET much stronger and more logical.

Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void

I finally finished StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. I bought it a long time ago, but got distracted and never actually started the game until a month or so ago.

I pretty much just played though the campaign on Casual difficulty, just to see the story. So the missions were pretty easy for the most part. Though the final mission of the Epilogue gave me a bit of trouble, because I completely forgot how the Zerg worked.

I really like how the basic building mechanics vary between the three races, and reinforce the style of that race as well as the gameplay. From the very first second of gameplay, that makes playing each race a different experience. An outstanding example of top-down game mechanic design.

The story was quite good. I didn't realize how much I just wanted something triumphant and heroic, and Legacy of the Void delivered in spades. Artanis was a paragon, but Blizzard did a really good job keeping him admirable. I think a lot of it had to do with how they portrayed him as an inspiring leader, making his subordinates greater, rather than having him do things himself.

I think Warcraft could stand to take a look at what Starcraft II did here. Though part of it may be that the player is playing as Artanis, rather than a separate character.

I was also reminded of the Mass Effect series. Like Mass Effect 3, Legacy of the Void is the capstone for a seminal series of games. But where ME3 stumbled (to put it politely) at the finish line, Legacy of the Void stuck the landing. Mostly, I think, by avoiding the temptation to be clever. Instead Blizzard delivered a solid, satisfying ending for one of the greatest game series of all time.

Mark Rosewater Defines A Game

Mark Rosewater is the head designer for Magic: the Gathering. He's been writing a weekly column on M:tG and game design for the last decade or so. In his latest column, What Is a Game?, he sets out his definition of a "game":

MARK'S DEFINITION OF A GAME 

A game is a thing with a goal (or goals), restrictions, agency, and a lack of real-world relevance. 

Let me walk through each part of this definition. 

A goal (or goals) 

There needs to be a point to a game. What exactly are the players trying to do? If there's a way to win the game, how do you win? If there's a way it ends, how does it end? Players in a game need motivation, they need something to direct their actions. That comes from having a goal or goals. Now the goals can be active (defeat the enemy) or passive (don't die), but they must give the players some idea of what they're supposed to be doing. 

Restrictions 

Games are about obstacles. The players have a goal, but something keeps them from simply accomplishing it. A game needs to have some challenge to it because the fun of a game comes from figuring out how to overcome those challenges. 

Agency 

A game needs to have decisions, and those decisions must matter. Having a choice where the proper way to play is always making the same choice is not really a decision, and as such is not giving the player agency. Player involvement in the game and its outcome is core to the experience of a game. 

Lacks real-world relevance 

A game is something that you opt into doing because you want the experience of playing it. Labeling every obstacle you run into in life, a game quickly robs the term of any meaning. We use the expression "play a game" because it's an activity we opt into for some gain (usually entertainment and/or education, but there are many reasons one can chose to play).

In the rest of the article, Rosewater goes through what happens if you have three of the elements, but not the fourth.  It's a creative way of examining the issue, and is very revealing.

Perhaps the most interesting section is agency. Rosewater asserts that what is important is that you believe you have agency, not if you actually have it in reality. For example, he says that Tic-Tac-Toe is a game if you believe you can win. Once you realize that you can't win, it ceases being a game for you!

In any case, it's one of Rosewater's best articles, and I strongly encourage everyone to read it.

The Most Difficult Boss Mechanic Yet

From /u/Crimsonsette on Reddit, a description of a mechanic in Construct 7, a boss in FFXIV's latest 24-man raid:

Super quick and dirty guide on math for Construct 7. 

When he casts 'Subtract', he'll bring your HP down to a single digit - make a note of what this number is. He'll also spawn 4 puddles on the ground in a line that are denoted with either 1, 2, 3 or 4 dots. Going into the puddle area will ADD that the dot amount to your HP. The main mechanic is to math and make sure that your HP will match the mechanic he's doing. 

'Divide by 3'. You need to make sure that your HP is divisible by 3, so 3, 6, 9 or 12. Go into the puddle that will add points to your HP to hit one of those numbers. 

'Divide by 4' - Your HP needs to be an even number, 4, 8, 12, 16 etc. 

'Divide by 5' Your HP needs to end in a 5 or 0. 

If you do it correctly, you'll see the check mark on your head and you'll get a damage up buff. 

After the cyclone, you'll be doing advanced math. He'll cast 'Indivisible', which means your HP needs to be a number that cannot be divided (aka a prime number). 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13.

The FFXIV playerbase does not hold out much hope for this fight. It's amusing that this is a mechanic which would be completely ineffective in WoW. An add-on would be immediately made which gives you the correct answer right away.

Knights of the Eternal Throne

This post contains significant spoilers for The Old Republic.

I played through the latest expansion of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Knights of the Eternal Throne. Actually, apparently I left halfway through the previous expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire, so first I finished that off.

I feel the same way about KotET as I about The Last Jedi. The initial setting is absurd, and is a drag on the entire story. Vitiate and Valkorion being the same entity and having two empires doesn't really fit in with the rest of the game, or the way Vitiate has been presented previously. But if you just accept that premise, the rest of the story is pretty decent.

I liked a lot of the small touches, the way SCORPIO gave the Gemini droids free will, and how Vaylin took it away from them. The ending was quite strong as well, being a family affair just as the entire story had been. Bioware made a good attempt at reconciling Vitiate and Valkorion, invoking Nathema.

It was also interesting the way the Empire, under Acina, was the faction willing to ally with you, while the Republic chose to stand aside. At first glance, it looks a little odd, but it actually fits well that the Sith would chafe more under Zakuul's rule.

The "Virmire" choice between two companions was done well. It was obvious that the companion you didn't chose was going to die, but they delayed and faked it out to create enough doubt that it was still a bit of a shock.

I did play it through on my Agent, and it was decent enough. It still felt like it would have been a better story for a force user though. Of the non-force users, though, I think the Agent is the best option, as much of that story revolves around mind control.

Speaking of the Agent, I loved the reunion with Vector. Vector was my companion of choice up until companions were taken away at the start of KotFE. The reunion was done perfectly, and it's so good to have him back.

The Traitor story that came after was a little obvious and silly (Theron's haircut!) but it was done well, and did a pretty good of resetting the setting closer to the Republic vs Empire state. It was insightful of Bioware to see that the Eternal Fleet was the only element which needed to be removed to restore the balance.

I did like how the instances had a story mode tuned for you and a companion. It's much better than the instances with the "Jesus" droid.

All in all, Knights of the Eternal Throne was a good expansion for the TOR. The story ended quite well. The real problem, though, is that I played through it in two weeks, going relatively slowly. I'm not sure there was enough content for a steady subscriber. It will be interesting to see what Bioware is going to do next.

Rift Prime

I've been playing Rift Prime for the last month or so.  I originally tried Rift back when first launched, and a lot of what I posted then still applies:

• First Impressions
• First Impressions, Part II
• Final Thoughts

Some things have changed. Rift now has a Dungeon Finder, which makes doing dungeons a lot easier. As well, Rift got rid of spell ranks, which makes leveling much smoother. They also give you several optional "automatic" builds, which you can choose and the game will guide you where the points in the build goes.

Level 20 Eth Ranger in Stonefield

A lot of things are the same as well. Warrior armor is still sketchy, the macro system is still excessive, and that third soul still does not feel quite right. I still think that Rift builds should have been two souls only.

Requires People

Rift is a game which really needs a lot of people. When Invasions pop and there are many groups running around, it's a lot of fun. But as you level, the number of people drop off, and higher level zones are a lot less interesting and lack the same energy that the lower zones have. Rift tries to encourage people to go back to old zones, and there is some level scaling, but it feels less and less effective as you level.

It's also possible that the large wave of people has gone ahead of me and has already reached the level cap.

I kind of wonder if Rift could have worked without instanced dungeons and raids. If everything was in the main world, and better gear and armor were earned through doing rifts and invasions, would that have been better in the end?

Story

Rift's story is really lackluster. It's odd, because it does feel like they put a lot of effort into it. Named NPCs pop up from zone to zone, plotlines generally make sense. It's kind of hard to put a finger on just what is wrong with the story.

I think the main problem are the villains. They're elemental invaders from another plane, as such, they're very faceless, interchangeable, and have very surface-level motivations. They just don't seem to lend themselves to good stories.

I do think there's a few missed opportunities. For example, if you character is a Defiant, you come from a future where the bad guys have won. The major villain then is a sorceress named Alsabeth. However, when go back to the past, Alsabeth is already a villain. I think there's a lot which could have been done if Alsabeth had started as a hero, as you'd be constantly waiting for her to fall.

Wardrobe

There is one system in Rift which is best-in-class. That is the game's wardrobe system.

Wardrobe system on my warrior

The wardrobe is simple and intuitive. It is extremely easy to understand and use, but it is also thorough. Every option is available, you can easily show or hide items, choose a new look, or dye gear. You can store many sets (though you have to pay to unlock them).

It's also built into the character pane, so it's always available, which is especially useful when you get a new piece of gear. You can put it on, and fix your looks right away, rather than having to go back to a vendor.

Rift also has armor "sets" for every piece in the game, from the very first pieces you wear. That adds to the whole collection aspect.

If I was making a cosmetic armor system for an MMO, I would use Rift's system as a model.

Final thoughts

I'm probably going to stop playing Rift Prime when my current time runs out. It just hasn't grabbed me. Rift isn't a bad game. It's just a "decent, not great" game. Unfortunately, that really isn't enough in this genre. To survive, I think an MMO has to offer at least one "special" thing, something it does best, and something worth falling in love with, even if other elements are subpar. Sadly, Rift lacks that one unique "special" element.

Updates

This is probably the longest I've gone between posts. I really should just sit down and write, instead of thinking about writing.

Warcraft

We're clearing Antorus every week. I guess now we're just waiting for the next expansion. The officers are trying to get a taste of Mythic, but we just don't have the numbers.  Even our heroic runs usually only have around 18 people.

Rift Prime

I finally got Trion's website to work. The adblocker I run was interfering with their payment provider. I signed up for a package, and have been leveling a Guardian Warrior. Hopefully I will go into it in more detail in a future post. But by and large, pretty much everything I said when I first tried Rift still holds. 

Which does make sense, as it is a Prime server. But that also means that the reasons I stopped playing Rift before are going to cause me to stop playing Rift now.

Other

Otherwise I'm not really playing anything. I guess Bless Online is coming out shortly, maybe I will give that a whirl.

Ahead of the Curve: Argus the Unmaker!

Yes, my screenshot skills are very rusty. This is better than the shots where I have my back to the camera.

My guild downed Heroic Argus the Unmaker this weekend!  We spent an hour trying to get our fifth kill on Aggramar, so it wasn't looking very promising.  However, our first attempt was a heart-breaking 0% wipe, so we knew it was in our grasp.

The next couple of pulls were odd wipes, including one where Argus decided to walk away from the tanks, turn around, and Cone of Death them. Finally we got a good pull where everything went well, went into the last phase, got Titanforging early, and everyone stayed alive longer than normal.

Argus is an interesting fight in that the last phase completely resets the board. Everyone who's dead comes back to life with the rest of the group and you start again cleanly. In some ways it's kind of nice, because once you've mastered the first phases, you don't have to do them perfectly while learning the last phase. A death or two here or there is perfectly survivable, and you can save battle resses for the last phase.

Now we just have to fix our issues with Aggramar. I'm not sure what's going on. I think we made some small changes which is making the fight more fragile for us.

Still, that's Legion pretty much done and dusted for us. I doubt we will try Mythic, just due to avoiding the roster hassle.

Paystyles

Imagine that there are two MMO players: Sally and Lucy. Both of them regularly play the same four MMOs: Game A, B, C, and D. However, they don't play each game equally, but for different amounts of time. Sally and Lucy spend 50% of their time in A, 25% in B, 15% in C, and 10% in D.

Both players have the same entertainment budget of $60 per month.  However, how each spends that budget is different.  Sally prefers to spend $15 on each game. Lucy, on the other hand, spends all $60 on game A, and $0 in the other three games.

Game	Time Spent	Sally	Lucy
A	50%	$15	$60
B	25%	$15	$0
C	15%	$15	$0
D	10%	$15	$0

My contention is that Lucy is a more accurate model of how most gamers want to spend their money. She doesn't mind spending a significant amount of money on her hobby. However, there is a threshold which a game has to surpass to be considered worth spending money, and all the money goes to those games which surpass the threshold (usually only one game). Even though Lucy spends 50% of her time in other games, they don't get any money at all.

Of course, if next month Lucy spends most of her time in game B, she will spend the $60 in game B.

There is a minority of gamers who are like Sally, though. Who prefer subscriptions and spreading the spending around.

I think the reason lockboxes are so popular is that they more closely match how Lucy wants to pay for her games. I think the game companies would prefer Sally and subscriptions. Witness how many games attempt to start with subscriptions but have to convert to F2P and lockboxes. The game companies are stuck with a audience of Lucys.

The common refrain in the community lately is that lockboxes are evil and predatory. The vocal community, though, tends to be Sallys. Perhaps lockboxes are empowering for Lucy instead, allowing her to spend her money exactly as she would prefer, even if Sally thinks that way is illogical and foolish.

Updates

I haven't posted in a while, so here's an update on how things are going.

Rift Prime

There's a fair amount of hype and nostalgia going around for Rift Prime. I decided to give it a whirl and downloaded the Glyph launcher again.

Unfortunately Trion's website won't let me add my credit card as a payment method for some reason. It just stalls with no errors or response. So that's the end of that plan.

World of Warcraft

My guild has cleaned up our act on Coven, even one-shotting it a week ago. Unfortunately, this has also been accompanied by serious regression on Aggrammar in the last two weeks. We've been wiping much more than we did on our first two kills, making it very hard to actually get attempts in on Argus.

We did finally get a chance to make three or four serious attempts on Argus last raid. We even had a 1% wipe.  We just have to clean up that last phase and reliably get the Titanforging buff early.  Hopefully Coven and Aggrammar will go well next week, and give us enough time to down Argus.

I also got the Lightbringer title from Argus (the zone) last week. For some reason, I could not get the hang of the goblin glider, as this was the first time I've really used it. Normally I just bubble when I need to fall a long distance. I fell off the edges of Argus and died numerous times while trying to get the hidden treasures. I finally got them all, and got a nice title for my paladin.

A Neat Ranged Paladin Idea

I came across this Reddit post describing ideas for additional class specialisations. One was for a ranged paladin, and I thought it was particularly interesting.

Normally ranged paladin variants play up the idea of paladin as holy spellcaster, the "shockadin". In the past we've even had spells like Denounce which allowed Holy paladins to try this playstyle. And it worked reasonably well for questing, but was never raid-viable. In Legion, Blizzard moved Holy paladin dps back to a melee-style, which I've found quite fun for questing. (Still not raid-viable, though.)

In any case, this ranged paladin variant isn't a spellcaster, but instead uses a two-handed crossbow. It fuses elements of a "witchfinder", inquisitor, or Van Helsing-style vampire hunter into the paladin. Having the paladin focus on a weapon reinforces the martial aspect, and witchfinders reinforce the religious overtones of the class.

Though crossbows would be the signature weapon, I imagine these paladins could also use bows and guns. It would also be nice for ranged weapons to be used by a class other than hunters. Though Blizzard would have to add Strength to ranged weapons.

A witchfinder might be an interesting idea for a new non-caster ranged class well, maybe wearing leather instead of plate. However, I wonder what specialisation options it would have. A paladin variant would be simpler.

All in all, this was a neat paladin variant, and one I'd love to see in-game.

Heroic Aggramar Defeated!

Heroic Aggramar fell surprisingly quickly.

We spent over an hour trying to get our second kill on Heroic Coven. We finally got them down and reached Aggramar with about 50 minutes left in the raid. I think we resigned ourselves to going over the basic strategy and then pulling it a few times to see the fight.

Instead we killed Aggramar in five pulls.

I think that part of it was that we use a lot of assigned CC on Coven, so it was pretty easy to do the same thing on Aggramar. Then the rest of the fight is straightforward.

I think our guild's major weaknesses are movement and spacing. If a fight doesn't require precise movement and positioning, we're decent enough. I'm not really sure how we can get better at movement and spacing. From previous guilds, it's not something which is really discussed, but more something which is done naturally.

In particular, I sometimes think that many players have a "home" position in a given fight. That's where they stand, and where they return to after a given mechanic ends. I feel that there are several players in our raid who don't do this naturally. They don't go back to a standard position, instead moving to new positions, often based on the position of different mechanics, all the time. It's not like this is wrong, exactly, but it does make their movement unpredictable. This ends up hurting us in fights where predictable movement is more useful.

Allied Races

With 7.3.5, Blizzard released four allied races if you pre-order the next expansion, Battle For Azeroth. There are two races for the Alliance: Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei; and two races for the Horde: Nightborne, and Highmountain Tauren.

Each of these races played a part in the Legion storyline, and recruiting them is a very organic development in the story. Each race requires a certain amount of reputation and achievements, which you basically have if you've been playing Legion.

I'm really happy that Blizzard chose to make playable scenarios about recruiting each of these races. A long time ago, I complained about Theramore, wishing its destruction had happened in game, rather than in an associated novel. It's heartening to see Blizzard put important story events in game, and give the player a role to play in those events. It feels like the Blizzard of a couple expansions ago would have just made the Allied races available to play, and put the story of how they joined in a novel or story online, or a cutscene.

Perhaps this change was prompted by competition with FFXIV, which is all in on the storyline occurring in game. Regardless, it's a good change. Hopefully the same thing will happen with the scenarios for Battle for Azeroth, especially the triggers for the war. I hope players have their bloody hand prints all over the burning of Teldrassil or the attack on Undercity, or whatever other events happen.

In any case, I created a Void Elf shadow priest, and have been very slowly levelling her up. She's currently level 35. I really like the scaling changes made to levelling, as well as having zone completion tied to the story lines. I've been levelling in Kalimdor, as I have not seen most of the post-Cataclysm stories there. The new levelling is very enjoyable.