Bored Druid Thread: The Next GenerationFollow

Roll hunter. Hunters are made of awesome. Edit: especially female orc hunters.

Edited, Dec 3rd 2013 10:17pm by Aethien

Work has been super busy for me. I got a load of new cases assigned to me in an area I only have passing familiarity with, so I have to get familiar with the cases, the new people I have to deal with, and the area involved, in addition to doing the work. So my para came into my office today as I was taking, literally, a five minute break which got interrupted by a phone call. I had ZAM open. I finished my call and spoke with her about a very serious issue on a particular case and she walked out. The entire time she was standing next to me, directly in front of my comp screen.

I had a thread open and was at a point where Shaowstrike had posted something. You remember his avatar - the Sarah Palin look-alike with the flag draped over her shoulders. And the cleavage that could hide the entire Cincinnati Reds Baseball Team.

Ah well, it's not like I need people at the office to take me seriously or anything . . .




EDIT: Dammit, it's Shaowstrike, not Shaostrike. Don't tell him!



Edited, Dec 3rd 2013 10:26pm by cynyck

its a minor glyph, that i felt was required.

i was guardian / resto before i stopped playing.

Tree of Life, as it is now called, is a talent, if I remember correctly.

You can get a minor glyph that allows you to change into the old Treant permanently, but it's purely cosmetic. I'm one of the few who didn't like being stuck in Tree Form, so I'm okay with that.

Yes. You're outdated. Get back in the game, newbcake.

 

So, funny story entirely at my expense.

This morning, my alarm goes off, and I wanted to get to work early so I get up right away. Throw a cup of water in the dryer to de-wrinkle my clothes, eat breakfast, take my antibiotic, tame my beard, take a very hot shower (because it was freezing).

I'm still super cold, so I'm completely bundled up and ready to leave for work. I walk outside, and it's pitch black. I always leave before dawn, but it's usually a very, very dark grey out. Not quite this dark.

So for the first time, I look at the clock. It's 1:30 a.m.

For some @#%^ing reason my phone decided it would be fun to play my alarm at 12:30. I HAVE NO CLUE WHY. I didn't set a new alarm - it's set to go off on the weekdays unless I turn it off.

I got a little bit of sleep between then and 6:00, when I got up to leave.

I am so @#%^ing tired.

[EDIT]

Right now, you can get current for $10, I think. I believe Cata is lumped in with the MoP purchase. If not, it's $5.

As for PUGs, my experience so far is that, like with WoW, the only thing that actually matters is the skill of your healer and tank. But I haven't really done heroics dungeons, yet. So it's fully possible they're actually far tougher and damage matters.

Still though, this expansion (to me, so far) has 3 defining traits for dungeons.

1. Holy hell spell effects. There's just way too many particles on my screen at any one time. Between boss effects (which are many), and all the character effects (which all seem brighter and bigger nowadays), and Frost Mages being more common (all I see), there are many more spell effects going on. Makes it really hard to see what's happening.

2. LOTS of ground AoE. It seems like every boss has A LOT of local area ground AoE. I hate it. It makes playing melee so annoying. That one boss with the water in the jade serpent dungeon is a competitor for least favorite encounter in all of WoW (excepting vehicle fights).

3. Gimmicks. It feels like every fight has one. And because, theoretically, players are better at handling them, they've ramped them up. But my experience is that this makes encounters more annoying, not more difficult, and it's really been a downer for me.

Like, you end up spending more time taking out the stupid orbs that have a local area AOE and can pull your party around the battle field, into the AoE. But that just means that your ranged spends little time on the boss. It doesn't really affect the encounter much at all. Maybe the Heroic has an enrage timer, too? But, really, it just means that some of your party don't really get to fight the boss at all. And that kinda sucks.

Edited, Dec 4th 2013 11:00am by idiggory

Digg, I agree that dungeons have become gimmicky. Fortunately, none of it matters when a raid-geared player can practically solo a heroic 5-man now.

Ran a 5-man heroic where our Elemental Shaman, who had queued as healer, ran ahead and pulled groups, nuked them down, and proceeded to tank the boss. 200k DPS. Go team.

Well, Timeless Isle seems to exist for the sole purpose of getting you raid geared, or nearly so, as soon as you hit 80. I'm like 10 ilvls short of LFR queues. Whether or not you like that is up to you.

My BIGGEST problem so far is one that's been a smaller problem since Wrath (though I feel like it was complained about enough with Cata that it's not acceptable here). The world feels so freaking empty. There's such extensive phasing, plus an already lower number of people, that seeing another player is actually noteworthy outside of Timeless Isle. Add in the fact that, now, you're going to be raiding/running dungeons far more with strangers than ever before, and the concept of a server seems like a huge hindrance in ways it didn't used to.

I know they've announced ways to solve this with WoD, but it actually is surprisingly jarring. Once upon a time, quests that followed the lines of "Outsiders?!?!" were funny, because you'd be surrounded by other players. Now, it's jarring to see a quest where they just sort of accept your presence, because it actually seems odd for them to have seen your kind before...

You wouldn't think this would be so bad, but the effect is that it shrinks the world in a really unfortunate way. Competing for quest mobs was far, far better.


That said, I expect MoP has another year being current, no? The next expac would likely be November.

Naxx - June
Sunwell Plateau - April
ICC - December. Ruby Sanctum added in a minor patch in June (which was clearly meant to just tide people over until Nov).
Dragon Soul - November. Nothing between that and MoP (September - first to break the Nov release).

So, okay, maybe not November. But if they hold to the new trend, you have 10 months of the current expac left. I couldn't see you getting this before June, though.

They said another content patch would delay WoD. So that either means no new raid, or they'll release something small like Ruby Sanctum under the current patch (4.4.2 or whatever the hell we're on).

Either way, there's plenty you have to do to prepare for WoD. Pet Battles are shaping up to be a worthwhile area of the game, because of the team building aspect. And having a lot of pets up there in levels will do nothing but help you later on.

That said, I don't intend to stick around for WoD. I'm mostly looking for something to do right now. And you can easily get into the raid content right now, play until you're bored, and leave again. It's not a huge time sink to get raid-ready.

[EDIT]

I'm using integrated graphics on an i5-2300 Sandy Bridge Intel Processor, and it handles MoP just fine. Not on max graphics, but more than acceptable. I imagine you're rig would work.

Edited, Dec 4th 2013 1:43pm by idiggory

To be clear, I'm not trying to entice you back into the game. I'm having fun enough, but I could easily leave right now. I'll probably force myself to finish the story stuff, mostly just because. But I could easily leave at any time, which is (to be fair) an odd but probably healthy feeling with a MMO.

But if you're interested in getting into the game, having some fun, and quitting whenever you feel like it, I think it's in a decent spot for you to do so. It won't take you long to hit 85 if you jump in a guild and use the exp benefit from it. You can easily get heroic-geared in an hour or less on Timeless Isle, and it won't take you much longer to get raid geared. Maybe no longer, if you're slightly luckier than me with drops.

And apparently everything this expac is trade-able, so no grinding rep for unique enchants and such. Just run a quick reforge sim then gem, reforge, and enchant your gear, and you can easily be raiding in two weeks or less on an existing 85 character.

That said, if you're not that interested in coming back, I quite honestly haven't seen much I want to be lauding huge praise on. I'm happy people are still liking the game a lot, but I'm not one of them.

What the expac does well, it does really well. But pet battles is a really big part of what I think it's doing really well. There's little I'd say it does a distinctly poor job with. Mostly it's "huh... okay" to "okay, that was fun."

I do feel oppressed by dailies though. That's a big issue. They removed the 25 limit, and there are TONS of dailies for various factions. Granted, they removed a lot of the reason to want to rep besides aesthetics, but still. Just doing all the farm dailies and the Timeless Isle ones is MEEEEEEEEH to me.

They did sort of expand exploration in MoP... kind of. It's not actually all that special, though.

EQNext exploration does sound fun. I absolutely love the idea of a world that's changing. Rivers moving, bridges breaking, trails getting overgrown, etc. Sounds like so much fun.

Wildstar is also taking a critical look at exploration with their path system. Essentially, when you create a character, you choose a path for them - soldier, scientist, explorer, and... builder? Or something. This creates custom content for you as you level, and you get a very different experience from someone who is on a different path.

Scientists are for people like me, who want to know the lore and story behind everything and like exploring and story stuff. I get to analyze artifacts and things for data, explore ruins for scientific advancements, etc.

Explorer (or whatever it is called), is more for the parkour-loving players. The ones who want to go out and explore the world, but less about "I want to go see Uther's statue" and more in the "I'm going to get to the airport" style. Their path might lead them to otherwise unaccessible tunnel systems to explore, they get climbing puzzles, PVP races and PVE time trials, etc. They're the ones who are going to see a rock pillar system and get custom content to drive them to the top of it.

The builders actually build things like bases and quest hubs out in the world, which creates unique content for them and other people. They aren't limited to these, either, but it seems like they can actually create towns. So over time, zones will probably fall in and out of favor, as the builder players move around. And what they can set up seems dependent on what kind of infrastructure other builders help them set up, and probably changes depending on what services they want to offer.

Soldiers are for the people who just want to kill ****. They get boss battle content, quests that involve enemy hordes, and things like that.

I'm excited to try it, and hope it works out. The premise of letting people build quest hubs and the path system makes it sound like they're using a lot of custom content generation systems. Like I find myself in a set of ruins, and what I research there sends me to a new set of ruins. But en-route I run into an enemy-constructed base and that changes my quest path towards researching opposing-faction tech stuff. Etc.

I'm trying not to hype it too much in my mind, but it's hard. They make a really great trailer.