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Little things to love

August 16, 2018 by Grace

Some BfA spoilers here.

This post is dedicated to some of the little things I’ve enjoyed about Battle for Azeroth so far. I already mentioned Dolly and Dot, and the adorable alpaca song, but there are so many other charming little moments in this expansion. For example, in my screen shot above, you can see Spitzy, the adorable sea slug I’ve adopted and who rides on my head. Who needs a bird when you can have an adorable sea slug friend? I never got into all the hype about Pepe, but Spitzy here? We’re friends for life.

Next up is this quest chain. I love the whole “science vs. voodoo” aspect, and the ending is sweet. The extra cool thing about this chain was getting a letter in the mail after finishing it, letting me know the whole “experiment” was successful.

Another fun quest chain here, helping out skeletal pirate trolls. Or pirate skeleton trolls? Troll skeleton pirates? Whatever they are they were great!

What have been some of your favorite little moments so far?

Dungeons on Day 1

August 15, 2018 by Grace

I played a ton of WoW yesterday, exploring the new zones and slowly working my way toward the new level cap. When I got my first “go run this dungeon now” quest I was excited to see it. Sadly the character I’m leveling is in a solo guild, and the few friends I have that are actively playing wanted to wait until they finished their zone story before running the dungeon. I’d rather see this stuff with friends, so I waited.

When I eventually leveled up a bit more a new dungeon unlocked. THE MOTHERLODE!! There’s not really any story leading up to this one other than a quick conversation with Gallywix. I was a bit too eager so I decided to take my chances and pug it.

Other than on my “pug story” leveling priest, this is the first time I’ve healed a dungeon as disc in forever. Luckily the practice I got from pugging vanilla dungeons seemed to be enough for me to figure things out. In fact, healing this dungeon was a breeze. It was probably because the tank was 120 and had obviously already been chain running dungeons for a while by the time I healed them.

I don’t have any screen shots of this dungeon to post here because of course the tank chain pulled so fast I could barely keep up. The healing was easy because of their level and gear, but it was frustrating anyway. I had no clue where I was going. I didn’t have any time to look around at the instance or at the map. Nobody explained anything about the boss fights (at least they were pretty straightforward). I expect this kind of thing to happen eventually, but on literally day 1 of a new expansion I guess I was hoping for a different experience.

We all survived, and nobody was rude or anything, so I guess I should just count it as a win. Still, I want to be able to take some time, take some screen shots, and enjoy the newness of the expansion while it lasts.

Battle for Azeroth: First impressions

August 14, 2018 by Grace

Last night might have been the most chill expansion launch I’ve ever experienced. I hung out in Discord with just a couple friends and we explored on our own while chatting with each other. Nobody was racing to get to 120. I stayed up until around midnight, and got to 112. Both friends had left long before that. It was nice to take my time to read quests and watch cutscenes without feeling like I was getting left behind.

And oh, there are a lot of cutscenes this time around! When it launched, Legion felt like the most cinematic expansion ever, and BfA is already blowing it out of the water on that front. In the few hours we played last night, several comparisons were drawn to FFXIV and its frequent cutscenes. I hope they continue to find a good balance with them throughout the expansion. Cutscenes give more story and flavor, and they help you feel connections to the characters you are meeting. Too many cutscenes, however, can lead to boredom and frustration when you are on a roll and trying to level.

I’m not going to talk about the story too much since I haven’t even finished one zone yet. I am relieved and not too surprised that, at least at the start, we’ve left the faction war behind and are focusing on local concerns for the Zandalari. If I could just wander the continent with Meerah and Dolly and Dot, solving problems and fighting monsters with no horde vs. alliance conflict in sight forever I’d be pretty happy.

So that sums up my first evening with BfA. What do you folks think so far?

Pug tales volume 3

August 13, 2018 by Grace

These are a little bit delayed since I had a few other things I wanted to post about. I have been running these vanilla dungeons pretty steadily so far. With the expansion upon us, I’ll have to set this project aside for a bit.

Gnomeregan: This group had a monk tank and a pally that pretended to be a tank. Even though the pally kept pulling everything went fine. Well, except for the fact that I forgot to turn in one step of the quest chain in there, so I didn’t get the quest to kill the last boss. This is possibly my most hated classic dungeon, but I felt like I hadn’t completed it without doing the quest so I went back a second time. I’m glad I did because the second group was super fun. People were chatty, emoting and dancing and having a good time. We even killed one of the extra bosses and people were happy to do it instead of complaining about wasting time. It was definitely the best group I’ve had so far, and I was actually sad when we were finished.

Scarlet Halls: Fast, quiet, no-nonsense group with a warrior tank. There were a few spots where the whole group was taking damage and I didn’t feel like I had enough tools to handle it well, but I did at least handle it. It is very strange to me how different the lengths of some of these vanilla dungeons are now. Blackfathom Deeps seems to go on for days, but the two Scarlet dungeons are over in just a few minutes.

Scarlet Monastery: Paladin tank this time. The group was very “gogogo” but given how short the dungeon is I didn’t really mind. The only time it caused trouble was when I stopped to turn in a quest and everyone ran on without me. Line of sight is still a thing, so one person died. If people pull without looking to see if they have a healer then I can’t be bothered to muster sympathy for them