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.
Today is the official start of developer appreciation week in Blaugust Reborn, but I am not sure if I can muster any measure of a post that requires that much forethought. I am not entirely certain if I am just dealing with allergies or if I have picked up some sort of a summer cold… but whatever the case I am miserable. I wound up going home around one yesterday when the meeting that I had to be there for… got rescheduled. I am in that state where my throat is so raw that it is gagging me, which is not super fun to randomly find yourself in that state. I’ve largely been avoiding doing anything serious and instead just casually leveling on the warrior.
It is unfortunate because I know I have friends who are chomping at the bit to chain some dungeons… but I am just not confident in my ability to function in a group setting right now. At this point I have finished Vol’dun and managed to get 113.5 roughly in levels and 5 in artifact power. I have not done the faction campaign stuff at all, and in truth have largely been avoiding it. I went into this expansion expecting for it to be pvp all the time… and have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of faction nonsense that I have had to deal with at this point. I am afraid doing the faction specific campaign will ruin that little bit of joy I am having.
I am absolutely loving seeing what the Troll Empires were like during their strength rather than the broken down outposts that we usually encounter in game. I say outpost… because seriously Zul’Gurub feels like a backwater as compared to Zuldazar. The temple city is amazing… even though I keep finding myself getting lost trying to traverse it and remember where the various things are that I need to interact with. I spent ten minutes last night trying to remember how to get back to the throne room for example. We largely picked Vol’dun as a way to get the desert content out of the way, since those zones tend to have a lot of oppressive sameness. However as you can see from the above screenshot… there is a lot of stuff going on in that zone that makes it feel less like the traditional MMO desert.
The outfit I am wearing is supposed to be plate armor… so I am not exactly sure why there is a prominent target telling the monsters fighting me where exactly to strike. I am sure on male characters this looks like awesome troll armor, but instead I sorta get a cool looking dress…. with midriff exposed. I started playing my Orc Female characters largely because I got tired of the Horde Hunch, where pretty much most of the traditional male horde races have a hunched over thing going on. It has been a great experience other than dealing with the fact that so much of the plate armor has weird pieces missing for no apparent reason. Maybe I am secretly protected by the mystical power of the male gaze?
I am trying really hard not to transmog as I level, but that may or may not last much longer. I wonder if you poke her in the belly if she will go “Tee Hee” like a really gruff orcish Pillsbury Doughboy. Video linked for the sake of anyone who has no clue what the Pillsbury Doughboy is… and why you would be poking one.
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?
Last night was the launch of Battle for Azeroth the new expansion for World of Warcraft, and as I said yesterday it sort of snuck up on me. Blizzard was doing a global release for the first time in my memory meaning that while a lot of the world did in fact get the game on August 14th… the United States got it in the evening of the 13th. So it was in fact midnight CEST on the 14th for Europe but for me personally it launched at 5pm my time. I was not however sitting at the keyboard waiting for the gates to open as it were… because it was 5 before I managed to get to town from work. That then triggered the whole list of things I need to do when I first get home as well as nomming some tasty noms… finally ending up at the keyboard around 6ish.
At that point I was pleasantly surprised that I got right in with zero queue or waiting. There were reports of folks having some issues with the login server, but thankfully I had none of those issues and effectively sailed right in. I even tempted fate about 8:30 last night and decided to swap from my desktop upstairs to my laptop downstairs… and even at that point I was able to log straight in without much issue. I am not sure if this is a smaller than normal launch day, or if they were just really that prepared for the launch. Whatever the case it went smoothly and collectively myself, Grace and Mor decided to get the desert zone out of the way first and spent the rest of the evening roaming around Vol’dun.
For my troubles I managed to get my amulet-of-not-artifact-power to level 2 just barely shy of level 3, collected 2 pieces of the upgradeable gear that has talent point unlocks on it, and dinged 111 with about halfway to 112. I consider it a very productive night given that I did not take any time off from work and really didn’t “grind” that hard at anything. I believe both Grace and Mor are further ahead than me, but at some point I will catch up and hopefully reach the first dungeon unlock, though in truth I didn’t notice if there was one we could queue for already or not. I am surprised at just how much story there is in this expansion… like not just text story but I seem to be drowning in really awesome cut scenes. If the rest of this expansion carries on the same way as the beginning has… it is going to maybe be one of the better expansions in World of Warcraft history even with the questionable PVP narrative.
The above video is going to be a bit of a spoiler, but if you care to watch… it features my favorite moment so far in Battle for Azeroth. Meerah the awesome Vulpera responsible for driving the caravan around Vol’dun serenades her pair of Alpacas. Dolly and Dot are the best and are probably going to be the break out hit from this expansion. It reminds me a lot of the singing Quaggan from Guild Wars 2, and is similarly memeable. Meerah herself was apparently voiced by the very amazing Deva Marie, so extra awesome bit about the quest. ~Dolly and Dot are my best friends~ ~they pull my wagon through dunes of sands~ ~they have small teeth and they love to eat…~ then sadly the song is cut off by a mean ole troll who doesn’t appreciate awesomeness.
I am hoping we get a lot more Meerah, Dolly and Dot as I go further into this zone.
Follow Up to Yesterdays Post
As a follow up to yesterdays post about Monster Hunter World PC… when I took a break to move downstairs to the laptop I decided to fire up the game there to see what sort of settings I would have to play on to get the game functional. What you are seeing is MHW on Low settings and 720p resolution and even then… I was only managing to see about 25 fps. For reference the gaming laptop I have is in the top bar of the site but also linking it here. As far as the stats go… it has:
Intel Core i7 4th Gen 4720HQ (2.60 GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 2 GB GDDR5
16 GB Memory
1 TB HDD
128 GB SSD
The game is effectively unplayable given that I am only seeing 25 fps in town and even then it wildly fluctuates down into the teens and up into the thirties. Essentially hopefully you can make your own determinations as to how well the game is going to run on your system between the two baselines I have given you. Now the positive is… steam does allow you to return games if you end up trying it out and it simply not working at all. Personally right now I am streaming Monster Hunter World through Parsec on my gaming desktop upstairs when I am playing downstairs on the laptop. This is honestly the way I am gaming most of the time these days and is probably going to keep me from upgrading that laptop anytime soon.
