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."

Wildstar Closing, Eve Online Sold

Last week had some big news in the MMO world. NCSoft announced that Wildstar and Carbine Studios would be closing down. Eve Online developer CCP was purchased by Pearl Abyss, who make Black Desert.

Wildstar Closes

This news is unsurprising. The game never got traction. Even a switch from subscription to F2P didn't help. Apparently there was a lot of internal drama in the studio as well. There are a lot of potential causes for Wildstar's failure: the focus on the hardcore, the polarizing marketing campaigns, the telegraph action mechanics, the sci-fi'ish setting.

I think Wildstar's base mechanics just required too much intensity for an MMO. Casual play was tiring. I remember giving up at level 15 or so in the beta because it was just too much.

I also saw a comment saying something similar about high end gameplay. It was challenging enough that "farm mode" really never existed, and even high-end raiders got exhausted with the pace.

Also, being sworn at on level up really, really annoyed me. Hopefully, every game takes this to heart and never does it again.

Previous posts on Wildstar:

• Thoughts on Wildstar
• Wildstar Woes

Black Pearl buys CCP

The most amusing thing about this is that it pretty much shuts up Eve Online partisans from now on. "Oh, the game that was bought out by a Korean publisher" is a leveller in any argument.

Though, honestly, I think this was more about CCP being unable to make a second successful game and grow as a company. Eve Online becomes a division of a larger company and the stockholders get to cash out.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Eve. Everyone fears more aggressive monetization, but I think if Eve is relatively stable in revenue, that won't happen. It's quite an old game now, so I don't think anyone is expecting it to suddenly spike in popularity.

It will also be interesting to see if Eve gets a Korean version. That market might be more receptive to a cutthroat PvP game like Eve.

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.

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.