WOW

AggroChat #156 – Oppressive Pacifists

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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, Thalen

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Since this will be releasing on Mother’s Day, the crew wants to wish all of the mothers that listen to the podcast a very happy one.  After a few slim weeks we once again had the full crew, which is always something to be celebrated.  I find it funny how when we have what feels like a limited amount of things to talk about, it also seems like we delve into some of the more interesting discussions.  The shows title this time comes from a game breaking bug that was introduced recently in Stellaris.  We talk a bit about Bel’s experiences starting Knights of the Fallen Empire, and this leads into an interesting talk about our thoughts regarding sequels and whether or not we want the previous cast of characters to continue.  We also talk about concerns regarding the Diablo 3 Necromancer expansion, and that ultimately leads to some discussion about Destiny 2 and the currently lack of a PC pre-order option.

Topics Discussed:  Stellaris – Knights of the Fallen Empire – Star Wars Galaxies – Sequels and Continuing with Characters – Replayability – Fallen London – Infinity – Diablo 3 – Playing Catch up in WoW – Diablo 3 Necromancer Expansion – Destiny 2

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Legion’s Profession Problems

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After my WoW alt update post last week I decided to level my druid next. I just couldn’t resist the joy of flight form, cheering many quests and sniping all the herbs. For some reason I enjoyed the process way more than when I leveled my Alliance druid. I’m not sure if it was having flying, or not being an elf or what, but I had a lot more fun. I’ve been tempted to get the new flight form glyph because it looks really nice, but I just can’t bring myself to give up my awesome bat form.

Speaking of herbalizing from the skies, I also decided to give professions another go, mostly because I knew Darkmoon Faire was coming up and I figured at least I could get 5 free skill-ups that way. Unfortunately professions in Legion are still completely awful. I wanted to focus on my priest, who has tailoring and alchemy, since she’s my most nostalgia-heavy character and those professions made me a ton of gold over the years. Sadly the biggest moneymaker she has is still probably the 30 slot bags from WoD. Meanwhile leveling tailoring requires doing the Suramar questline, which I was avoiding like the plague on my alts. I loved Suramar, but it was long and had a rep grind and I don’t have any desire to repeat it if I can help it. On the alchemy side I’ve run up against the RNG of learning upgrades. Having to make a billion potions that are too low to give skillups to try to learn new ranks that might give skillups does not appeal. On top of all of that, you also have to run multiple dungeons for each profession. At least now that I’m 110 I can be carried through heroics by people with way more gear in a matter of minutes, as long as I don’t make myself depressed by looking at the damage meters.

The huge disconnect between how easy it is to level up an alt and how annoying it is to level their professions is really messing with my normal path to expansion/patch lull enjoyment. This is the time in prior expansions where I’d be raking in gold. Sure, we all got spoiled by how easy that was in WoD, but even in prior expansions I could level an alt and be useful making flasks, bags, gems, or transmutes pretty quickly. This time around even my main only got her professions maxed by staking out the Darkmoon Faire, and my alts are getting to around rank 760 (out of 800) at best before I hit a wall of dungeons or RNG or both. It has been fun to see a bunch of the class hall stories, but feels really strange that these alts aren’t being useful like they should. All that investment into leveling alts feels very hollow if I stop logging into them as soon as I’m done with their story. Oh well, at least I can keep selling plenty of Draenor-era bags. Maybe I should park my alts back in my garrison again…


Legion’s Profession Problems

AggroChat #155 – Men Are Terrible Land

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Featuring: Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

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This week we dig more into Horizon Zero Dawn… or as it was called early in the show Aloy’s Adventures in Men Are Terrible Land.  Tam is nearing the end of the game, and Belghast and Kodra have made it a bit further… or at least enough to be able to talk about some of the things going on in the game.  Bel has fallen into a rather large Star Wars the Old Republic shaped hole and talks about his experiences with the new systems… and insane experience boost.  Grace has been playing a lot of World of Warcraft and we talk about how playing that game when you really don’t care about progression can be an extremely relaxing time.  Bel talks a little bit about Prey, or the game where you bash things with a wrench just in case they are a mimic.  Kodra has been doing some drafting of the new Amonkhet set in Magic the Gathering Online.  Finally we get into a discussion about our recent foray into Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch.

 

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WoW?! Alt Overload

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If you had told me at the start of April that I would get heavily invested in WoW again that month I would probably have laughed at you. For better or worse I’ve gotten back in the habit of messing around in Azeroth. It turns out that lifting the pressure of trying to keep up has done absolute wonders for my enjoyment of the game. I’ve still been logging onto my main to do occasional world quests and each new piece of the class quest when they are available, but otherwise it is alt time all the time.

After leveling my pally I got my warlock up next. Leveling as affliction was incredibly easy, which is good because when I swapped to demonology for the weapon quest I was totally lost. I guess it has been a while since I spent any quality time with demo. Much like beast mastery hunters they seem to have put the focus on quantity of pets instead of quality, and I am not a fan. Once I hit 110 I struggled a bit more with soloing than I did on the pally, but I’m still pretty functional. The artifact knowledge 25 token that I can buy with resources from my main makes a huge difference, as does the cheap nethershard gear from the broken shore.

My plan is to at least finish the original class hall quest line with everybody, and make progress on the class quests for the mounts as much as I can. I’m prioritizing that on my monk, and waiting to see if there are any bottlenecks in terms of difficulty or resource requirements that will make it a waste of time on alts. I’m hoping I can get at least the priest and druid ones done if they’re reasonable.

Running the same four leveling zones over and over is starting to get a bit tiresome, so I’m not sure how many more alts I’ll get to 110 before I get sick of it. I still have a lot hordies sitting at 100 and in need of love*. If I’m still motivated to play but need a break from leveling in the broken isles I can always either work on professions (hahahahahaha no…professions in Legion are awful) or level something I don’t have near 100 yet horde side. Raiding is still firmly off the table for now, because I am enjoying not worrying about the pressure of learning the fights and showing up on a schedule.

I’m still slightly baffled at how much I’m enjoying being back, but that’s the allure of comfort gaming – it works best when I don’t think about it too much.

*My current roster on my primary Horde server (yes I have even more alts at 100 elsewhere, please send help) looks like this:
Priest 110
Pally 110
Warlock 110
Druid 103 (have 110 Alliance-side)
Mage 100 (have 110 Alliance-side)
Hunter 100 (have 110 Alliance-side)
Rogue 100
Shaman 100
DK 100
DH 98
Warrior <10
Monk <10 (110 main Alliance-side)

What would you level next?


WoW?! Alt Overload