WOW

Tales from too many pugs

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I wanted to try to keep from completely bouncing off of WoW after all my feelings about the War of the Thorns content. I decided that leveling something new from scratch would be fun and would keep me far away from the pre-expansion stuff for a while. Because I’m full of terrible ideas, I’m trying to level a priest via pugging dungeons.

Tales from too many pugsThis is DiscGrace, my new blood elf disc priest. It’s been a few years since I really played a priest, but in my heart my undead priest will always be my main. Now I’m trying to re-learn how to disc while subjecting myself to the best and worst of pugs in WoW. Either I’m going to get super good at priesting, or I’m going to ragequit MMOs for a while. At least I’ll get some good blogging out of it.

I leveled to 15 questing in the blood elf starting area. I like how quiet it is there, and how much has stayed the same since I first started playing the game. Once I could queue for dungeons I started running them and only questing a little to fill in the down time. I’m going to try to run them all in order if I can.

Deadmines: This was a reasonable group. I had a very nice bear tank. I was frustrated for a while because you don’t get atonement until around level 20, so I had to heal “properly” for this one. I hadn’t run many dungeons since the leveling changes last patch, so the time to kill the bosses was surprising to me. Other than that this was a smooth run.

Ragefire Chasm: Another reasonable group. I could get used to this. I had a monk tank this time. They were a little bit slow to pick up aggro but other than that there were no problems. People even said thank you when we were done!

Shadowfang Keep: My first wtf moment of this experiment. I’m amazed it took this long. Had a pally tank and a monk that kept rushing ahead and pulling. I finally had atonement at least and kept everybody alive fine even through some big pulls and various kinds of stupid. The wtf moment came about halfway through when the pally asked me “don’t you know how to atonement heal?”. That’s…what I was doing the whole time? Apparently they were mad that my largest heal on the meters was my shield, and nothing I could say seemed to placate them so I just gave up. Even the annoying monk that kept pulling stood up for me which was a shock. I ended up keeping my mouth shut for the rest of the run and just kept healing the same way I had been the whole time. Very odd.

So far I’ve made it to level 22 with only one relatively small incident. I’ll call that a win. I’m sure things will keep getting more interesting as I move into more complicated dungeons. Anybody want to take bets on how far I get before I get sick of pugs and give up?

More thoughts on WoW’s story

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With all the continued discussion of WoW’s story lately I wanted to spend a couple more minutes working through my feelings. I want to try to convey a bit more clearly why I am so unhappy. Spoilers for WoW’s current story, cinematics, etc. ahead.

Say what you want about Blizzard’s choices for WoW lately, but they sure have people talking about the game. Amongst my friends and people I follow on Twitter I’ve seen many different reactions and perspectives. A small few seem to love this story, but most seem unhappy with it for one reason or other. Quite a few of my Horde friends are going through the same kinds of feelings we all experienced when Garrosh was warchief. This isn’t my Horde. Why would the other faction leaders go along with this? These feelings touch on one of my biggest problems with the current story: we’ve been here before.

The Horde has had a blatantly evil leader who went against tradition and honor and needed to be overthrown. As a Horde player it felt crappy then, and it feels crappy to see the same wheels in motion now. I hated practically everything about Garrosh’s story, from the moment Thrall chose him, through Cairne’s death, to the confrontation in SoO, and Thrall’s final kill steal in Nagrand. The only good thing that came of all of it was that Vol’jin ended up in charge. He was a cool lore figure, a pragmatic leader, and of course he barely got to do anything before he died.

Vol’jin’s death at the start of Legion felt almost like an afterthought. It was something to balance Varian’s more noble and cinematic end, and it was a plot point to cause faction strife. The circumstances of his death were designed to give the Alliance cause to suspect betrayal, and to put the most divisive figure possible on the throne. And Sylvanas didn’t even want to be there.

Forgive me for being bitter after seeing the Horde led into ruin, our capitol city sacked, our most promising leader killed in service of faction conflict, and our most interesting (IMO) leader stripped of all complexity and turned boring, rash, and ready to re-live the mistakes of the past.

And here’s the piece that frustrates me about the folks asking for calm, to wait and see, to trust that it will get better. I’ve done that. It got me through Garrosh, with hope that things would change and there was room for more interesting story to grow. It got me through pissed-off Jaina, obnoxious orc bros, and Illidan the chosen one, and it left me here, exactly where I started.

Even if this all turns out to be (insert lore conspiracy theory that fixes this somehow), it doesn’t change that Blizz chose to set things up this way. They chose to tell this story that they’ve already told me before. They chose to stoke faction-based strife that I never cared about much and am actively sick of now. It doesn’t change the fact that since MoP I feel like they keep putting up bigger and bigger warning signs that this game is not for me. All I can do is try to figure out if this is the moment that I finally start heeding them.

August 2018 Gaming Goals

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Happy Blaugust everyone! Before I dig into this week’s theme, I wanted to keep up my monthly tradition of evaluating my goals, seeing how badly I failed at meeting them, and then steadfastly creating new ones anyway. Note: I wrote most of these goals before seeing the new quest content in WoW yesterday. I’m not sure if I really want to follow through with them anymore but I’m putting them here anyway because I don’t have any other goals in mind right now.

July Goals:

WoW: Finish one priest transmog set from WoD and the last one I need from MoP. Done! I’ve completed all the variants from MoP and the LFR set from Blackrock/Highmaul. It feels like cheating since I had most of it already from garrison missions but I’m still counting it as a win.

Level one allied alt to 50. Maybe?? Does boosting count? I boosted a highmountain tauren. I still want to level one normally so I can get the heritage armor though.

Figure out who my main will be for BfA. Done. Sort-of. I boosted that highmountain druid on a new server so I can potentially raid with Belghast. I think I would still be agonizing over my choice but the free loot faucet from the pre-launch event was enough to force me to choose so I didn’t miss out.

August Goals:

WoW: Complete at least one more WoD transmog set. I know I’m going to put this aside for a while once BfA launches but I’d like to finish one more before I do.

Complete “Raiding with leashes IV”. I am only missing the pet that only drops from 10N Lich King. I hate trying to get it because it feels like I’m wasting an attempt at Invincible, but I really want to finish this achievement so I can get my celestial bunny.

Level my druid through BfA. This is a no-brainer.

D3: Unlock adventure mode on a HC character. My hardcore mode achievement list is shameful. Although I’ve leveled to 70 with friends using their adventure mode, I never actually unlocked it myself. Time to fix that.

War of the Thorns part 2

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Spoilers for the WoW War of the Thorns questline.War of the Thorns part 2

Welp.

Other folks have talked about this more eloquently. I can only express my hurt and rage.

I went into this knowing what would happen to Teldrassil. I kept hoping that Blizz would surprise us, that something actually interesting would happen, that someone unexpected would be responsible for the burning of that tree. But no. Blizz took what was hands-down my favorite character in the game, stripped away all her depth and complexity, and made her a boring villain. While the Jaina animated short was cool but filled me with unease, the Sylvanas one just made me sad. Not sad at the story, but at having to mourn my fandom. I can’t get excited about my favorite character anymore. Not because she’s evil, she’s always been evil. Because they turned her into something boring and lifeless in service of a faction war that I actively hate.

War of the Thorns part 2

The flaming wreckage of any fucks I had to give about WoW’s story.

After the long quest chain last week, we barely had anything to do this time around. As much as I didn’t really want to be complicit in burning Teldrassil, having everything reduced to the cutscene and taking away any player agency* doesn’t feel good either. At least the Alliance side got to spend a few moments trying to help people evacuate.

I’m just heartbroken and disgusted by this whole thing. Even WoD didn’t make me want a refund on my pre-order so badly. This pre-expansion event has effectively killed any desire I had to actually play the expansion. If this is what we can expect from the storytelling in BfA, count me out.

*I mean they could have at least let us kill Malfurion!