A collection of Oddities, Rants, and other funny things about the World of Warcraft
“I’m going to make my OWN Horde. With blackjack. And hookers.” – Garrosh Hellscream, probably.
No Campfire can best him, no Shadow Hunter troll can dissuade him, this time Garrosh Hellscream is out to prove he is the one true Warchief the Horde needs AND deserves… by emulating it in Democracy 3.
To find out more about the 2010 Warchief Election at https://oddcraft.wordpress.com/category/other-stuff/warchief-election-2010/
If there’s one thing we nerds enjoy, it’s canon. Is this canonical? Is that? Is my OTP canonical? How does X fit into the canon? One need not look any further than the reaction to the announcement that the Star Wars Expanded Universe being retired into the Legends label to see how much a concise and clearly stated canon can matter to people. So there gets to be this mindset among fans of just about anything that whatever is stated to be canon is something akin to a holy text that must be viewed as complete and immutable from whatever state a fan finds it in. And that last bit is important because what eventually sets the bar as ‘betraying’, ‘contradicting’ or ‘ignoring’ canon depends a great deal on exactly what state the canon was in when and how you first were exposed to it.
After all, while the Green Lantern Corps was introduced in 1959, the concept of the Emotional Spectrum and the other Lantern Corps like the Red Lanterns, or the Sinestro Corps, didn’t come into being until 2006, despite it beings established that these things were in existence all along but the Green Lanterns may not have been aware of them. If you were a fan before Geoff Johns’ new interpretation of the Green Lantern universe, you might find this idea a bit on the heretical side. After all, how could the Guardians not know/expose this info? How come it took decades of issues before it was revealed that Parralax was a big space bug that was sealed away and they knew about it but kinda didn’t want to bring it up? On the same hand, if you came after that or say first got interested in Green Lantern due to the Green Lantern Animated Series – then the Emotional Spectrum and the other Lanterns are just part of the universe to you. Easy peasy.
Already we can see that time and method can dictate the view of what is considered to be canon and what isn’t. Will new Star Wars fans a decade from now when the JJ Abrams Trilogy comes to a close even think that the Legends novels were anything more than interesting What-If stories? That the Yuuzhan Vong are nothing more than glorified fanfiction characters? Perhaps. But aside from fan-interpretation and viewpoints of canon, what about when canon is changed by the ones who created it?
If you want a good example of fans getting upset at a ‘violation’ of canon by the ones who write the story themselves, look no further than our good friends at Blizzard Entertainment. Almost every expansion is met with cries of ‘That’s not what this character would do’, ‘Blizzard doesn’t care about their own canon’ or ‘This violates their own lore’, etc. I’ve played World of Warcraft since 2006 off and on, and I’ve seen these complaints so many times I’ve lost count. But it always comes back to this idea that what WAS should be preserved in a little box, and left to the point where it is never changed or influenced. Heck, I remember people complaining about the difference in characterization between Warcraft III and Vanilla WoW, almost like there was some sort of inexplicable 5 year jump mentioned in first few seconds of the opening cut scene. These characters change, the situation changes, and the world moves forward. The Forsaken were pretty much born out of Sylvanas’ quest for revenge against the Lich King. You can’t very well expect them to stay the same after their sworn mortal enemy is dead.
There’s also the issue of the fact that since WE are aware of all the details of the story and lore, we often will forget that the characters don’t. A character may not know the truth of all the details, or even heard the news if its something that happened on the completely other side of the planet and thus will act according to what they know and not what WE know. The concept of ‘metagaming’ can extend to fiction too, ya know. So while things sometimes look like a violation of canon, it can honestly sometimes just be a matter of ‘the characters wouldn’t know that’. Back to World of Warcraft for example, it’s stated in some places that the Eredar corrupted the Titan Sargeras into turning evil, it’s later revealed upon meeting the Draenei – an exiled faction of the Eredar – that it was actually the reverse. Sargeras had corrupted the Eredar. Is this a retcon? Yes, but does it break canon? No. No one who originally told the tales of Sargeras & the Eredar would have been in the position to know the facts of the tale. They are legends and fables, passed down for generations. Now when they meet the Draenei? Well, heck, Velen was THERE. He knows. Now he’s explaining it. Now you have the myth, and the fact. That’s developing canon, not violating it.
Wanting a canon to stay rigid, to have nothing new enter or depart the scene and for characters to stay the same as when we first fell in love with them just is flat out bad for storytelling. Is BioWare futzing with their own lore with TOR? Yes. Yes they are. The story is moving forward, a new enemy is appearing from beyond the borders of the galaxy and using a vastly different technique of force wielding to pursue a mission of galactic conquest. Honestly, from a personal standpoint, it’s not nearly as conflicting as say KOTOR to KOTOR2 when in the space of 5 years the entire Jedi Order was completely wiped out leaving only a few stragglers like the Exile around. No wonder they decided to set SWTOR 295 years later. Yeesh.
Now I’m not saying there aren’t ways you can mess up canon. Even Blizzard has admitted to messing up with mixing up established facts and they have employees devoted to entire task of keeping this stuff straight. But there’s a difference between ‘This never before explained thing has appeared and is attacking’ or ‘This ancient prophecy we just uncovered is coming true!’ and things like ‘Superman was never from Krypton, he’s from Snorglack-VII and always has been. Ignore what we said earlier.’ (And heck there are even acceptable ways to do that with continuity reboots, and elaborate explanations, that might reek of B.S. aren’t technically violating canon.) There are times when you just screw up and forget that you’ve already established some detail, and there are times you introduce retcons that will devastatingly run in contrast to how a character is viewed (Did you Batman ALWAYS hated rock music because his Dad told him it was bad the night they died?) but there is also just the idea that you are expanding the story and the universe.
As fans we sometimes have the tendency to get a bit zealous with our devotion to what we know. We like the permanence of the whole thing. It feels good. But that’s not necessarily what’s best for the story. For a story to grow, canon must be altered and expanded. Maybe there were 9 planets, but due to later revelations there are now 8 (or like 25). Canon must always be somewhat flexible in order for things to move forward. And I think we as fans need to be flexible with it.
Thanks for reading.
So, apparently WoW Insider is no longer a thing. Shut down by AOL along with Massively and several other gaming blog sites. While this blog has long since stopped being exclusively a World of Warcraft blog, WoW Insider was still a daily visit for me to keep up on the going on’s and the various fun in the form of articles like The Queue or the Tin Foil Hat editions that reveled in speculation about the game’s lore. It was also where this blog’s predecessor OddCraft got its first big break, being shared along with other bloggers in a series of posts about the various other blogs in the community. Now it never got me a boost to internet stardom, but it was pretty much the largest exposure I had ever gotten as a blogger at that point. I’ll never forget that kindness. To this day I still occasionally got hits from WoW Insider for the WoW Ironman Challenge. So the legacy lived on far longer than my old blog did.
So this post is for all of the great people who worked at WoW Insider. It was a great ride. Thanks for years of enjoyable reading.
EDIT: Apparently, I spoke a bit too soon! Lots of the great folks who staffed WoW Insider have launched a new website called Blizzard Watch. It’s supported by Patreon too, so if you wanna show your love there’s a way. I wish them all the best in this new site!
Orcs orcs orcs ORCS orcs? Orcs orcs, orcs orcs… ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS! Orcs orcs orcs orcs orcs orcs? Orcs! Orcs Orcs Orcs. Orcs orcs. Orcs, orcs orcs orcs orcs orcs orcs orcs? Orcs orcs. Orcs orcs. Orcs orcs orcs orcs, orcs orcs orcs. Orcs orcs Hellscream orcs. Hellscream orcs orc orcs. Orcs orc ork ork orcs. Orcs orc orcs orc goblins? ORCS!
Orcs orc orc ork orcs. Orc orc orcs? O-R-C-S. Orcs orcs orky orcs! Orcs orc Garrosh? ORC. Orc orky orcs Grom! Orc orc orcs orca orc orky orky GUL-ORCING-DAN? Orcs orc orc orc orcs orc orcs ork. Orcs orc ork orcs Hellscream orc Bladefist? ORC! Orks orcs orc orc Mork ork? Orcs orcs… orcs orc orc orcs… orcs, ORCS, HELLSCREAM!
Grom orc, Garrosh orc, orc orc orcs pork. Orc orcs orc orc. Orcs, orc orc orcs orc ork. Thrall orc? Kek. Orc orcs orca orcs ork ork. Zug zug.
Kek.
Believe it or not, enthusiasm comes fairly easy to me. A well cut together trailer will do the trick without incident. Some good news or an awesome character design can spur my wheels to pre-order. Heck, one glance at the Crusader on the character creation screen and a mere hour playing with Loot 2.0 not only had me dropping cash to pre-order Reaper of Souls but also nab the digital deluxe edition while I was at it. I am exceptionally easy to please, and like to think I maintain a level of optimism and excitement for things I enjoy.
That being said, let’s talk a moment about Warlords of Draenor, the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft.
I have never felt this lack of excitement for a WoW expansion. NEVER. Even expansions that seemed dubiously “not up my alley” like Cataclysm was able to get my smile on with stuff like the remade old world. But Warlords? Man oh man and I struggling to find something to get happy about. There’s Garrisons I suppose. Player housing has always been a dream of mine, and then combining it with a potentially more elaborate (or just as likely identical I suppose) version of SWTOR’s crew skills (which I liked). That’s something right? There’s also new models. They are very cute. Puff the Death Gnome will be adorable, I just know it.
But then I hear things like “plan is no flying at ship and see how it plays out” or the big proud emphasis on NO dailies whatsoever with everything being based around a Timeless Isle like system of dynamic events. Man, you just took all that Garrison happy and beat it into the ground with a Gronn sized club. No amount of gnome cute can help that. Maybe a kitten?
Even a free level 90 doesn’t seem that tempting to me, even with all my alts. It’s clearly not an offer designed for me, and I recognize that. But likewise it feels like this entire expansion is pretty much one giant bag of nope for Vry. Flying? Gone, potentially for the whole expansion. Dailies? Gone. There goes my favorite way of experiencing the world. Timeless Isle random events are so short lived that there’s no time to join in if you aren’t constantly camping or getting lucky. At least in Guild Wars 2, the events seemed to be spaced out with spawns and objectives or multistaged, and had a teleportation transit system that gets me most places in a blink of an eye. Warlords seems to be more so “Events will die quick, so always be ready, and if you aren’t within 1 minute of it via ground mount, just forget it.” I hope that isn’t true, but I haven’t seen anything to support otherwise.
I honestly don’t care much about the whole Proving Grounds Silver to do the dungeon finder, despite that the fact that it still reeks of pointless exclusionary tactics, because you would supposedly be able to gear up for LFR in normals, and I don’t do anything BUT LFR anymore in terms of raiding, because I got sick of watching guilds implode and explode because of raiding.
So what am I trying to say? That my long drawn out love affair with WoW is over? Well, maybe not that extreme. I might pick up Warlords on a black friday sale or something and give it a whirl, then level up my main-ish-es. But really, yea. This will likely be the first expansion launch I’m not going to be there for. I’ve found other MMOs that I have fun with, and WoW seems to be going in a direction that quite honestly isn’t fun for me. If others find it fun, more power to you. But I’m gonna sit this one out it seems. Maybe just maybe I’ll get lucky and the next expansion will have gnome lore. Till then, expect more focus on stuff like The Old Republic, Final Fantasy, and more Lets Plays. Sorry devoted WoW playing readers, but you know regardless if I’m playing or not I’ll still be weighing in on any big news that goes down.
(Okay, honestly. I think we can trace all of WoW’s problems to Basic Campfire NOT getting to be Warchief. Don’t you?)
Yea, yea. I told you I’d have them posted and I ain’t no liar! Except all those other times. But those weren’t lies. They were just coming Soon(tm) and then we were shelved because we didn’t feel the reward of reading those posts was worth the time investment in developing them.
CAN YOU TELL I’VE BEEN OBSERVING BLIZZCON?
Okay, let’s get this right out of the gate:
Chromie & Mekkatorque crash the Costume Contest: Oh they didn’t even get the honorable mention, but this pair won my heart. The gear shield, the wrench mace, the pure unabashed gnome love. There was nothing to not appreciate about these two. Especially since, unless that was damn impressive make up, they looked to be a bit up their in the years. Older WoW players cosplaying GNOMES? SOLD!
Conan O’Brien Attacks Arenas: If you didn’t have a chance to watch the Arena matches, you probably missed this. Thankfully my girlfriend caught and showed it to me because oh my titans it was hysterical. Conan O’Brien commenting on Arena matches without a clue in completely serious deadpan voice. Jay Mohr WISHES he could have touched this performance. The best part? “Of course I know what the global cooldown is. I find it condescending that you would even think I wouldn’t know that. Now tell me who won the match because I don’t have a clue.” Oh I won’t be forget those guffahs anytime soon.
Chris Metzen’s Voice: THAT VOICE.
Garrisons: I’ll talk more about this further down, but I have always wanted a chunk of a MMO world to call my own. A place that I could customize to some extent and make it feel like it was mine. Well, Garrisons are it. And just when I thought it was “oh that’s cool, all the need is like a trophy wall where you can unlock and show off cool stuff” BAM. That’s in there too.
NOTE: This section of my reactions contains SPOILERS for the story elements of the next expansion. If you wish to avoid that, skip to the next sections where I simply discuss the mechanical changes to the game. If you don’t want that spoiled either, you probably should just stop reading now.
So from how they’ve been describing this one, I’m guessing it will be uh… Savage? So for those who haven’t heard the big WoW news, the next expansion is the speculated Warlords of Draenor. Essentially the set up is thus: Before standing trial, Garrosh escapes and with the aid of an unknown time traveler (Some have guessed Wrathion, I suspect Kairoz) and traveled back to around 2 years before the orcish clans drank the blood of Mannoroth on Draenor. From there he has begun to unite the clans into a single ‘Iron Horde’ and rebuilt the Dark Portal to serve as a time/space gateway to modern present day Azeroth to conquer it with a united Horde in its prime just like he was told in the bedtime stories.
I don’t really have that much of an issue with that plot. It actually kind of seems like a cool next chapter in the tale. Unlike a lot of people, I haven’t had the issues with Garrosh’s characterization. He’s an orc that idolizes the Horde of yesteryear, who completely missed out on all the bad crap that happened because of it, and wants to recapture that old Horde bad asses-ness. The time travel aspect does intrigue me though. The Devs were quick to point out that Time Travel is more of a ‘How’ and not a ‘What’ of the expansion, and as such will not be the main focus. Still I’d love to see some Bronze Dragonflight in-fighting, rips in space and time appearing as events, and things like that. It will be nice to go back and see some older aspects of Warcraft lore fleshed out with a more modern problem we are trying to solve.
Some of the questing news intrigued me as well. The idea of sparse questing, icons on the map where significant story quests are located versus the optional side chains, and more focus on leveling through random events (ala the Timeless Isle) or dungeons is calling a lot of flashbacks of Guild Wars 2. That’s not bad, I suppose. But I am curious how it will work. Will leveling become a tedious mob grind because everyone is hunting events so fast that there is no chance to grab them unless you are camping them like on the Timeless Isle? Will the hidden treasures be character specific like on the Timeless Isle?
On the note of quest, I suppose the announcement of ‘hardly any dailies’ isn’t much of a surprise. Blizz seems like it always acts in giant swings of a pendulum. People complain about nothing to do? HERE’S A ZILLION DAILIES! Oh, that’s too many dailies? NO DAILIES AT ALL! Which is sad for me, because as I’ve noted so many times I actually liked having the dailies to do. It’s something I actually enjoyed. Except the Golden Lotus which just felt unbalanced and long.
OMIGAWD THE SKY IS FALLING! SELLING LEVEL 90’S! PAY TO WIN! PAAAAAY TOOOO WIIIIIIIN! Okay, okay, joking aside I actually dig on this idea. Skipping right to the current content is great for those who have fallen behind or those of us who were tired of dragging every alt they want to play with through a gazillion levels. Maybe the lower level content is fun for the first few times, and I will happily say the story stuff is fun to experience pretty much always for me. It DOES get tedious. And it is a bit of a disuasion to those who look to come back and think “My buddies are all 90, my highest toon is like 64. Why bother? I’ll always be behind them now.”
Is there room for abuse in buying 90s? I suppose. That really depends on how you define abuse. Is it going to ruin the game for me if other people can just drop wads of cash to boost their army of alts? I honestly can’t say that it will. I tend to worry about my gameplay and not what other people are doing. So if they want their sparkle ponies (okay, I do have one of those. It’s name is Twilight DOOMSPACKLE. Capitalized just like that.), or level 90s, or anything like that – let them. I personally don’t care.
All I can really say is FINALLY. Player Housing comes to WoW at last. And right on the heels of hearing a rumor that a dev mentioned that ship customization in SWTOR will likely never happen due to the fact it is used in so many cutscenes (*sneez*BS!*/sneeze* Oooh pardon). Not only will you be able to access other professions, send your followers on missions – even offline – that might result in loot for you, and customize an entire town to suit each character needs and wants, then add things like trophies and other vanity things earned by acheivements and whatnot to make it look cool. Add a dash of being able to bring your friends in to see it and you’ve got a killer feature that has my attention instantly. THIS is what makes the expansion worth it for me. This is everything I’ve been wanting for years!
Adding a toybox for all the fun items, and an heirloom interface for truly account wide heirlooms? Potential for built in tabard storage?! AND TALK OF FUTURE POTENTIAL IN A DIABLO III LIKE TRANSMOG SYSTEM WHERE YOU DON’T HAVE TO KEEP THE ITEMS TO TRANSMOG THEM (Granted, won’t be there for the expansion launch, but they’re still talking about it at least) ?!?!?! It’s like christmas for the backpack space starved Vry and his minions of ever collecting crap alts. This will free up so much bag space reserved for my toys and hopefully tabards. Plus allow me to use those heirlooms on the three different servers I play on! Oh happiness! Oh joy of joys!
Some of the other things they’re adding is just slightly more conveinent stuff like letting crafting mats stack up to 100 to save space and the ability to craft from the bank. It’s nice and all, but I wish they’d just rip off the account bank from Guild Wars 2 that has specific slots for each type of crafting item separate from your normal bank, let you craft from that, and have the button in your bags to automatically deposit all your crafting goods to that crafting bank from anywhere in the world. That’s convenient! But one step at a time I suppose. I guess just mimicking their questing system is enough for now. Hee hee.
Wow. Talk about an overhaul. This is really where Blizz stands out in comparison to companies like EA/Bioware Austin stand out. The massive sweeping changes to things like the core mechanics and gear in their game. For instance: Hit, expertise, dodge, parry? All gone. Intellect plate? Gone. Now your armor changes primary stats to fit your spec. A pally’s armor will instantly go from strength to intellect if they swap specs from Retribution to Holy. And if that’s not convienent, I don’t know what is. Instead it seems that the focus is going to be creating diverse bonuses to gear. Not everything has a gem slot. Gem slots don’t give bonuses, aren’t part of the budget, and gems are gonna be way more powerful. Not everything can be enchanted. Enchants will be diverse and powerful and give more selection to the items that can be enchanted. Items will have tertiary stats like life stealing, cleave (adds AOE damage and heals), movement speed, or sturdiness (no durability loss) and won’t be included in the item budget.
Honestly what it sounds like is that items will have a randomized ‘third spot’ for things like tertiary stats or a gem slot or an enchantment slot. Kind of like in Diablo III (honestly, WoW seems to be borrowing a lot from Diablo III in this expansion. Not bad at all either.) Which makes me wonder if this will apply to raids too outside of tier armor. Like one week you get Shatterstorm, Bad Ass Sword of Some Orc with a gem slot, the next week Shatterstorm, Bad Ass Sword of Some Orc with the Cleave stat drops instead. None of these are part of the item budget, so you could have a set item with a randomized spot on it so there’s more variety in the items that drop.
Finally, the item squish is happening. But they’re assuring everyone that they are gonna to take care to make sure that solo-ing old raids and whatnot continues to be a viable past time what with its recent rise in popularity with transmog and battle pets since the first time they talked about the item squish (when soloing old raids was something that they didn’t mind but weren’t gonna go out of their way to support with future changes). Honestly, I am indifferent to the item squish. Big numbers, little numbers, as long as the bosses die I’ll be fine with it.
The big changes here is the whole LFR/Normal/Heroic (Formerly LFR/Flex/Normal) is all flex, with the super heroic “Mythic” mode being 20 person only. I don’t do heroic raids. I just don’t. Never have. Unless it’s two expansions old and I’m farming titles, chievies, mounts, or transmog stuff. My bigger question is that all non-Mythic modes will be ‘Flex’ and scale from 10-25 people. That includes LFR. Does that mean as long as we have 10 people in the LFR group that the stuff will scale to it? I can see that being good and bad honestly. As a primarily LFR raider (Yes it’s raiding. I’m a raider. I enter a raid where raid is a group that exceeds the group size of 5.) I can see having a flexible size being great for late nights when gathering 25 isn’t nearly as easy as it would be at peak hours, but it also means that as long as there’s 10 people in the group, there’s less safety from being kicked. No more is there this “Oh if we kick them, we’ll have to wait for more people.” Oh no. Now it will scale. Kick all you want, and we’ll keep plowing through. It’s a double edged blade for sure.
If you want to see the thing that flat out sold me on the next expansion, here:
Oh yes. New gnomes. I’m there.
Warlords of Draenor seems to be a pretty cool expansion. It’s not a “THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING!” expansion like it kind of felt with Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria were. Which is good. Because those expansions didn’t change everything, so maybe a little less hype and a bit more ‘Ooh this will be neat’ this time around will do the game some good. This expansion FEELS like an expansion, and not a revolution. And that’s okay. I’ll be interested to see where it goes and what happens as we move forward to it. It definitely has some features I am looking forward to trying, and is whispering of some very big changes to questing that I am excited to see.
I know I didn’t really go into Starcraft or Diablo III: Reaper of Souls much here, because honestly I don’t follow them nearly as much as I do with WoW. There’s a Diablo III expansion coming, it’s adding a bad ass transmog system that WoW needs to steal like yesterday. Starcraft II has a third installment coming. I don’t think they announced anything about it. There ya go.
Guess I spoke too soon?
“Your Garrison will be woven deeply into the storyline of Warlords of Draenor, beginning when your faction leader commissions you to establish a beachhead on this alien world—but the ultimate fate of your personal fortress on Draenor is entirely up to you.“
I don’t have the slightest clue if this is going to tackle some of my issues with the story telling mechanics that I discussed in my previous post, but it definitely seems to be pointing in a good direction. Hears hoping. I’ll have my full thoughts on the Warlords of Draenor posted later, but I really wanted to point this one out!
With my recent return to Star Wars: The Old Republic, I keep finding myself mentally comparing things to World of Warcraft. I have no ill feelings toward WoW in my heart, and it still stands as a fun game. In fact, I will be one of the first to defend Mists of Pandaria in a conversation. After all Mists has done wonders for the way that Blizzard has decided to portray story in their games. However, there is something that has been gnawing at me since I’ve come back to SWTOR. Where do I fit in the story?
Dating back all the way to the Ruins of Ahn’qiraj, WoW has had an ever shifting sense of perspective that seems to draw less on the player characters being heroes and more that they are the upper echelon of the nameless grunts. More and more the stories, especially for raids, have focused on large organized armies assaulting the dungeons/bosses/whatever to accomplish the goal, with you simply being the tip of the spear (or in some examples the rest of the arrowhead with an NPC being the tip). No longer are you the hero, but simply the ones more likely to survive out of a massive attack by a hundreds if not thousands.
For example, the Shattered Sun Offensive’s assault on the Sunwell, the Ashen Verdict’s battle in Icecrown, the Guardians of Hyjal in the Molten Front and assaulting the Firelands, backing Thrall and the Aspects during Deathwing’s Fall, The Sunreavers or Kirin Tor breaking through the Thunder King’s walls, and the entirety of the Alliance or the Darkspear Revolution during the Siege of Orgrimmar.
In each of every one of those examples, you are not the heroes or saviors. You are simply one part of a much larger effort to defeat the enemy. This has even extended into questing in Mists of Pandaria, where it no longer matters if you’ve killed C’thun or defeated Kel’Thuzad the master lich twice, you are just another nameless faceless piece on the board along with so many others. Now this isn’t universal either. There have been raids and dungeons throughout the expansions that have you and your group as a small team working your way into a dungeon to silence a dark big bad all on your own. Historically, these usual are the first tiers of raids in each expansion. Karazhan, the Molten Core, Blackwing Descent, Mogu’shan Vaults… there’s no army with you for these. It’s just you against the dark. Imagine if all of Ironforge joined together for a massive assault against Ragnaros with an army that took over the Dark Iron cities with Magni leading the assault. Magni who steps on Majordomo Executus’ tail and demands to be let into the Firelord’s chamber. Magni who proclaims victory once the Hand of Ragnaros is firmly planted in the earth and the enemy vanquished. Would that be better?
Compare this to Star Wars: The Old Republic where you are cast in the role of the hero for the entirety of the narrative. YOU the Jedi Knight confronts and battles the Sith Emperor. YOU the Bounty Hunter who wins the Great Hunt and goes after the Supreme Chancellor single handedly. YOU the brave imperial that freed the Dread Masters from their prison. The game devotes itself to you and you alone being the central figure of your tale. Compare Rise of the Hutt Cartel Imperial Side to the Horde side start of Mists of Pandaria. In both, a small tactical squadron lands in the area to cut a swathe of it and get what is of interest to their respective faction. The big difference is that in Mists, you are a lackey to General Nazgrim who is leading the team. You report to him and he tells you what to do. In the Rise of the Hutt Cartel, you are the leader of the small team. Mostly guiding the narrative and giving the orders to your subordinates who provide support and information to you, their leader, to help carry out the mission. Star Wars: The Old Republic goes to great lengths to make you feel like you are the star. Even in the Operations (Raids) and Flashpoints (Dungeons), you are treated by the NPCs like they HAD to get you because you are the best of the best and only you are capable of handling this problem, not because hey, you’ve got a better health pool than the grunts, so you make it to the end.
However, that’s not without it’s drawbacks either. When you see five bounty hunters rocking the ‘Champion of the Great Hunt’ title, it breaks the illusion a bit since your brain stops for a second and goes, “Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t I win that?” And the answer is yes, yes you did. This isn’t the worst thing ever, but I will admit it’s a drawback to the immersion. But ultimately it comes down to experiencing the story and the feel of leading the narrative along. I say feel, because honestly there are no dead ends, and no real way to break off the rails that Bioware has laid down for you. This may cause issues with role playing a character when everybody has followed the same path, but I’m not a real hardcore role player in game so I am not even gonna attempt to go down that road.
So which one is better? Well that’s for each to decide for their own. I personally enjoy feeling like the hero and leading the story forward, but I can see that there’s an allure to the whole thing. And honestly, when you sit and look at all the NPCs that are aiding in raid boss kills or massive armies tackling the citadels of evil, that’s really our fault from the get go. Since I can remember I’ve heard things like “It’s ridiculous that X boss can be killed by 10/25 nobodies.” Well, okay then. We’ll have a somebody do the killing. You just help. And it’s not for me. I won’t lie, it makes World of Warcraft – a game I LOVE the lore to enough to create an entire site like the old Oddcraft blog and do things like the Warchief Election – a little bit harder to get in to and enjoy.
So what about you? Which form of storytelling do you prefer and why? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this, Internet.
It’s been just over a year since World of Warcraft died. Or at least that’s what people on the forum tell me. I can still log in it seems, and I see people running around. Maybe that’s the WoW afterlife. Doing the same thing you did before WoW died. Kinda like Dawn of the Dead and that damn mall. But with WoW. And unlike the time WoW was ACTUALLY overrun with horrible zombies. I miss that event.
Anyway, the big raid has come, we have a new “warchief” (I’m still unsure if he’s a warchief or just the leader of the Horde. There’s a subtle distinction there that I might go into in another post) and we’ve learned what Wrathion was all on about this whole time. Everything’s all tidied up now, eh. So it’s time to look back and talk about what I really loved and hated about this expansion.
Let’s start on the positive with the things I actually really liked:
Grummles: Is there anything these little guys don’t make better? They brought a smile to my face every time I ran across a camp of them. From their on-click statements that make to giggle to the demanding of a replacement yak at the “Yak temple” in Townlong, the grummles never got old, never got on my nerves, and still get me to smile and laugh every time these little trailblazers speak up. Especially the munchies crunchies bit since they do always remind me of Gurgi from Disney’s version of the Black Cauldron.
The Story: Everyone who reads this site or knows me online should know that oh man did I ever not like the story of Cataclysm. The whole thing just felt like a giant let down. Oh sure, the 1-60 revamp was top notch in terms of storytelling, but 80-85 was a completely divided up mess. The events of Mount Hyjal had nothing to do with Deepholm or Uldum. The conflict between the two factions that the entire 1-60 revamp spent building up has practically non-existent except for moments of Vashjir and the Twilight Highlands. So would Mists be able to pull it all together and deliver a cohesive story? The answer was Hell freaking yea! The Shas, the killik swarms being early, the yuangol pushing outward into Kun-lai? All connected. The battle in Krasarang and the story of the Divine bell? Wonderfully delivered. And I will be one of those people who defends the Garrosh turning evil story and go on record as saying it was wonderfully told from Burning Crusade straight to the Siege of Orgrimmar. The only story hiccup I didn’t like? Well… I’ll get to that in the Worst section.
Pet Collecting: I am a collector at heart. I collect things in games, out of games… furbies (currently at like 30 of them), so when they added a metric crap ton of new pets to collect, I absolutely fell in love with running around and getting them all. Oh sure, a lot of them were just look alikes or reskins of other pets, but that was fine. It was something to collect! And it could be done on my time and didn’t require a group! …Until Throne of Thunder. That’s got to be the dark spot with the whole pet collecting craze is when they made them raid drops. Why? WHY? Even if you could do it in LFR, the drop is so low on some of these that you’ll be running them into the next expansion getting them to drop. You know, the old raid pets were fine. It gave you a reason to go back to old stuff that could quite honestly be solo’d most of the time. But Throne of Thunder? COME ON! /sigh. Still it provided hours upon hours of entertainment just collecting these little things and unlocking achievements with it.
The Seat of Knowledge/The Farm: Well after the last one on the list, I’m guessing you can probably figure out why this one is a two-fer. Yes, they both involve collecting things. But more importantly they collect things in the actual world that you can see. It’s not just an UI option with a list. I can actually go to the farm and see the yak that was given to me, the cat wandering around, oh and there’s the dog I saved and fed, and the nice little house that was decorated for me by my friend. That’s a nice feeling when you can tangibly see the reward in the world around you. Even if no one else but you can. It feels awesome to walk into the Seat of Knowledge and see the intact artifacts I found lining the walls in shining displays. Now if only Blizzard would get it together and do player housing where I can customize it too. Put trophies from defeated raid end bosses on the wall, and my old armors on mannequins for having a complete set. I would just die for that. But the Seat and the Farm is about as close as we can get so far and I love it.
The Pandaren: Much like the grummles, I found the Pandaren a joy to just mingle with. The NPCs are given so much enjoyable life throughout the Jade Forest and Valley of the Four Winds that they have permanently embedded themselves snug into my heart. I still find myself saying “Slow down… life is to be savored!” to people in my best pandaren voice. Of course, it would be unbecoming to talk about the pandaren and not mention the tragic ending to the tale of Aysa and Ji. I won’t go into detail for those who wish to avoid spoilers for the Siege, but oh man. The feels. There are so many of them. Large quantities to be sure. Surplus sale for all these feels. That’s how many. Who knew those two bit characters from all the way back at the Wandering Isle would show up again at the end of all things? And who could of predicted such a sad way for it to end? Still, overall the pandaren have that love of life that I can only wish for.
Golden Lotus Dailies: You know, I actually liked most of the dailies in the expansion. I didn’t have the driving hatred of them that so many did. It was a fun thing to do everyday. With one exception. The Golden F-ing Lotus. Maybe it was the fact that as soon as you thought you were done, another link in the chain was added? Maybe it was because you could only do the hubs in order? Or maybe it was because all the mobs seemed ridiculously tough for a fresh level 90 and are still some of the toughest non-dungeon/raid mobs around? I did not lament seeing them go when the Vale blew up. I usually avoided them using the farm and dungeon finder when I could on alts. Sure it takes longer, but less of a pain. These dailies just sucked, and the fact that were smack dab likely to be the first thing you tackled at level 90 I can see how many people grew to hate dailies in general.
The Throne of Thunder: Behold! The one storyline that Vry actually hated in the expansion! Yea, I didn’t like the story for the Throne of Thunder very much. Mostly it came from the fact that the actual villain wasn’t very well established. Oh sure, during the quests in Kun-Lai we HEAR about all the evil stuff he did way back when, but what does he do when he comes back? Runs off to his island fortress and then… nothing. We actually go up to his house and start poking the hornet’s nest with a sharp stick for not much reason either. He hasn’t done anything since coming back to life to warrant this reaction! I know, I know, better safe than sorry but it stills feels like an over-reaction. So what does the terrible Thunder King do? Well, he came back from the dead. He uh… sent his lackies? And then he totally like broke that bridge and dropped us into a sewer level. And sewer levels suck! He must die!
I had hoped that Lei-Shen would get a bit more fleshed out as to why he’s a threat during the dailies, kind of like how the Landfall dailies showed the story of the Divine Bell and what not. Nope. Just the Sunreavers and Kirin Tor fighting to take over the island or each other. That’s all. Lei Shen shows up once to send a lackey at you ala Rita Repulsa but that’s about it. What a fricking let down for what seem to be a great build up for a new threat.
Battlefield Barrens: Oh geeze. The grindfest that was Battlefield Barrens. It’s like a TV show that had a really great premiere followed by having the same rehashed formulaic episodes week after week until the season finale/next patch. There was nothing exciting or interesting about Battlefield Barrens other than it wasn’t a daily. It was a weekly! I supposed it had those tap-to-anyone-who-damages-it boss mobs that would spawn. That was a neat mechanic. But all it did was give you more resources. The same resources you got from everything else. And you just grind them. Then turn them in. That’s it. That’s all it was. It just seemed like small potatoes considering what it was building up to. Heck, the new scenarios gave us more plot than the battlefield barrens quests did. Mechanically cool, but extremely underwhelming. The whole thing felt like a technology test for the Timeless Isle.
Pet Battling: Oh I love pet collecting. But I hated battling. Especially the trainer battles. Right around the end of Outland going into the Northrend, the strategy quickly changed from ‘level up your favorites and battle with them’ to ‘prepare three precise pets at ze proper level with ze proper abilities to ensure victory over ze veak minded fools!’ It make me miss pokemon where yea, if I didn’t have an optimized team I’d be at a disadvantage, but it didn’t mean a guarenteed butt whoopin! See even the final bosses in Pokemon Red/Blue only used like level 60 or something pokemon. So if you were determined and had a lot of time on your hands like High School Vrykerion did, you could level any team up to 100 and have a good chance of winning. But with the trainer battles here, by the time you’re hitting Outland they’ve started using level 25 pets. That’s max level. You can’t out level the battles from that point on. So it’s level the right pets or gtfo. I decided to gtfo. I still haven’t beaten that undead using punk in Crystalsong Forest. Go level three rare quality turtles to 25 to win. F. THAT.
Pride: The ever looming question in the expansion was the identity of the seventh Sha. Oh there were plenty of guesses, mostly around the seven deadly sins but heck if I know why since ‘Doubt’ and ‘Fear’ are not deadly sins. But it was eventually revealed that it was of course, Pride. Now my problem isn’t with Pride being the seventh sha. It’s the other stuff surrounding it. Pride was the Sha that Shaohao could not defeat. His pride took the form of the Mists that cut off Pandaria from the world. So why did the Sha of Pride let the Horde and the Alliance in? I mean, if the mists were his pride that would mean the Sha of Pride would be able to manipulate it yes? That’s how all the other Shas seem to work. Using your doubt, fear, hate, etc to take control of you. So why let them in? To unleash havoc? How would they know they’d unleash panic? To unleash the Sha? Well, they do release ONE Sha. But timeline indications seems to imply that the others may have been active long before the Horde and Alliance found Pandaria. Especially Fear, who has been causing a good deal of trouble.
So what’s the deal with the whole pride thing? It’s stated that Shao Hao possibly parted the mists because his people had grown stagnant and fallen to their own Sha. Well, that means Shao Hao was in control of the mists? Did that mean he conquered his pride? In the Seven burdens of Shao Hao he says he creates the mists because he people needed time to prepare and learn the lessons he did. So if they grew stagnant instead, why did he wait to part the mists until now? Why did Yu-Lon say that they parted for a reason involving you (the player)? GAAAAAH! IT JUST RAISES TOO MANY QUESTIONS! Nothing else in this expansion has made me pull my hair out more than that. The puzzle of pride. Truly it is good until it is bad.
So that’s my best and worst of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. Overall, it was a pretty good expansion. Not my favorite, but far far FAR from the bottom of my list. What were some of your best or worst moments this expansion?
Thus far in my MMO career I’ve primarily bounced back and forth between two games: World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Oh sure, I’ve dabbled here or there in other games. Occassionally I still jump in and have a swim in the waters of Dungeons & Dragons Online (Less so now that they’ve decided to abandon Eberron for Forgotten Realms, but I could write a whole other post – and might – about that beef), and my copy of Guild Wars 2 still sits firmly installed for when I just want to wander and have fun.
So now the pendulum has swung back and I’ve decided to wander back into TOR for a bit. Why? Well, I won’t speak ill of patch 5.4 for World of Warcraft because by no means do I feel it was bad, but for the moment there’s not a lot of time investing fun to be had beyond leveling alts. The Raid Finder (aka the only raiding Vry does anymore because every raiding guild I’ve ever run with boils down to petty drama bulls*&%) is more frustrating than anything when the wings are just opening. People rushing in like cattle to the slaughter. Best to wait until everything opens up and people start getting used to the mechanics and fights before wading into the thick of it.
The Timeless Isle however IS content I can sink my teeth into. It’s fun and open. I like just wandering in circles and seeing what I can find. I LOVE the trivia daily as you can imagine. But the problem with the Timeless Isle right now is that it’s pretty much the ONLY thing to do outside of Proving Grounds (Solo) and raiding (slaughter house), so the Island is PACKED. And the problem with the island being packed full of players running around and killing everyone and everything in sight is that the place becomes so ridiculously overfarmed the only chance to do anything is just to chest hunt. Hey! A rare is up! Oh, it’s dead before I can reach it because 100 people were camping it. Oh another one! Hurrry scurry murray hurr- Oh, dead again.
Then if you’re lucky to find the Island at a time when it’s NOT busy as hell, good luck having the killing power to take down the big game. I mean, I enjoy the fact that I can at least kill my 20 elites in peace, and maybe actually tag an albatross, but at the same time it seems like some of the bigger mobs require a group effort to bring down. So when the island is bare, you’ve got yet another problem.
Really, the only solution I’ve come to with the island is that it’s great fun, and will continue to be great fun when I’m killing things on it next expansion when I’m 95 in bad ass gear cutting my way through it solo because no one needs to gear up alts anymore. AKA the “How Vry plans to do the Isle of Thunder achievements” plan.
However I don’t plan to just abandon World of Warcraft for months on end. Oh heck no. I’ve been having a ball just going back and leveling my alts. My monk just made it to Northrend, and for the first time in a good long time I get to explore the Alliance side stories in Northrend. Which despite all the talk of Horde bias in recent years, the Alliance stuff in Northrend is REALLY good story-wise. The Cult of the Damned infiltrating their ranks in the Borean Tundra, recovering the Ashbringer for Tirion in the Howling Fjord, reuniting with the Westfall crew in the Grizzly Hills… there’s a lot of good stuff there.
Meanwhile it SW:TOR there’s a lot to catch up on. I came back to just miss the bounty hunter week so I’m curious to try that out. I just finished up my Makeb reputation and am currently setting all my 55’s to complete the Section X one before moving on the new Czerka area. And I’ve started a bunch of alts fresh to try out some new experiences in the game (Light side inquisitor, good guy agent, bad guy jedi, greedy bounty hunter) as well as have a refresher for the class storyline reviews. Which for those who haven’t seen yet, you can find spoiler-free paragraph long class storyline summaries here now. I’ll be doing more reviews soon hopefully.
I know TOR has gotten a ton of crap over it’s short life, but I still find it quite enjoyable to play. Okay, not every aspect of the game is amazing. The cartel market constantly swings between “That’s AWESOME” and “You’ve got to be kidding me” for one. But they’ve also done some pretty cool things. Like the new flashpoints, while devoid of fun conversations, are designed to be done with any combination of classes and roles. 3 tanks and one healer? Cool. 4 DPS? Fine. (On the Hard mode, it’s still the typical 2 DPS/1 Tank/1 Healer arrangement, but that’s fine) This is pretty much like WoW scenarios. Which I love. Like a lot.
But when it comes down to it, the stories in TOR is what keeps me coming back to it over something like Guild Wars 2 or DDO. I had 10 – TEN – different playthroughs of Mass Effect 1 & 2, 6 characters in Dragon Age 2, and yes, I loved ME3 ending and all. Is it any shock that playing through the class stories and seeing how different choices play out is really fun for me? Even if there’s a ton that’s the same every time? Plus they’ve done a great job of fixing up a lot of the annoyances in the game that were there at the launch. The group finder works great, the later worlds seem to be retuned a bit, and the legacy unlocks and new travel consoles make getting around much less of a head ache. The only thing that still drives me nuts is that with F2P or preferred, you only get 5 on-site rezes per character. Then you have to go back to the med center always unless you buy more. Really? Can’t you just put a ridiculous cooldown on that one instead? Like you can only on-site rez once per 4 hours for F2P, or 2 hours for preferred if you don’t have a medi-droid contract (first 5 is free, then you have to purchase further medi-droid contracts in the market. Or else you go on a wait list – aka long cooldown).
So if you happen to be on Begeren Colony, keep an eye out for the Vrykerion legacy running around.
Vrykerion 