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[xaritscin]

I liked Desolace a lot, also the desert zone north of where all the Ahn'Qiraj shit is. 

Moghjubar's right I feel, I still get the occasional urge to go play WoW, to feel that animal-brain pleasure of seeing a crowd of golden question marks after a long questing session (been playing a little Rift, and the blue quest-complete icons just aren't the same) or the joy of 20% crit chance on my PvP warlock for fist of the gods shadow bolts, but at some point when I was playing I pulled off the pretty outer layer and saw the machinery beneath and it just killed the game for me, really killed almost all MMOs for me.

TBH what kills WoW is the power creep and the leveling progression (this includes raid and dungeons along with PvP material), out of that, quests are a 50/50 thing, for the most part the fun content tends from exploring the world along with the professions, engineering specially is my favorite, collecting pets and mounts is also a good time killer.

but again the world is very bland, they say to add more dinamic content but that leveling treadmill has to stop, WoW has enough content to  burn, what they need to do is cut the power sink and distribute it equally for each expansion content, this means buffing old content instead of adding more.

and also give new mechanics, the garrison stuff sounds nice, but it would have been better if they would have made it a guild thing, and add personal houses for characters. we dont even know if there will be a pvp stuff in that system.

blizzard always gets to do really nice zones but at this point, WoW has to change of paradigm, or they'll keep loosing subs more than they can recover.

in fact i would say that they should take the themepark approach out of the window and start to transform the game in a sandbox.....

[Baneling]

To be honest a lot of the mechanical changes I've been hearing about seem like very, very good things.

For one thing, arena PvP is being put onto an equal-gear level, so there's no more "hahaha gotta do your ten arena games per day to be able to get decent gear to be able to win anything like consistently".

Stats are being streamlined. Hit and expertise will be level/skill(talent?) based, rather than gear based, meaning no more "gotta reforge your gear for half an hour to get hit cap and still have all your other stats too!" Same for dodge and parry.

New minor stats will be added - avoidance, speed, lifesteal and cleave. Avoidance is damage reduction from AoEs, speed is movespeed, lifesteal is lifesteal and cleave is unclear thus far. Possibly a chance for normal attacks to have a cleave effect.

Stat squish is happening! Basically, the absurdly large numbers are being reduced a LOT. As far as I know, this means the coefficients are going up a bit and the numbers are going down more - this means presumably that there is going to be a hell of a lot of rejuggling of numbers of level 80+ content, as equipment has to be rebalanced, enemies have to have health and damage rebalanced so they aren't absurdly powerful compared to enemies and so on.

Models and stuff are being prettied up and from seeing them this is very much a thing I am in favour of.

Think that's about it that I know of? Overall the things being changed actually seem like good choices.

Also to note is that apparently the fellow who was lead designer for TBC has come back - considering the general opinion that TBC was awesome then it started going downhill, this seems like a good thing.

[xaritscin]

those are good changes too, but it needs more than that if blizzard wantes to remain on the top....

[Mech#4]

I like the updated character models. Comparing the old ones to the Pandarians, even the models from Burning Crusade they did need a bit of a fix up. Nice to see they've improved the facial expressions as well, and the undead actually look like the bones are sticking out of them rather then being glued on.

[Sonlirain]

What annoyed me in WoW was the ridiculous drop in power for everyone after new content hits as literally everything is much better than the "junk" you have by several magnitudes unless you have top tier gear from the previous xpack (and even that gets replaced by non heroic blues).
Basically the jumps in item quality at levels 58-60 (entering outland) 68-70 (entering northrend) ETC.

Also anyone wondering what the hell will happen (or what is happening) during this expansion?
I guess we're going back in time... but weren't we supposed make sure the past remains unchanged even if it means letting BAD things happen (CoT instance with Arthas where the players must make sure that he survives the !FUN! and go further into genocidal rage later).

Now if we're messing with time then:

A: Someone is helping the Draenai and the players both horde and alliance must make sure the goats get kicked off durotar so hard they fly into space and faceplant on azeroth.

B: The Alliance is evil this time and decides to mess with time for some reason while the good horde asists the demon infused blodthirsty ork psychopaths in goat genocide (all to preserve the timeline of course!)

C: Screw time or anything we said about CoT. Alliance sides with the goats while horde parties with soon to be fel orks and may the biggest sockpooper win.

Also... how many skills per class are there now?
I remember that by Wrath i had 3 bars full and almost no easy to acces keys availble on my keyboard to spare and since blizzard has the tendency to add 1-2 skills for every class per expansion i'm quite sure you'd have to buy a mouse that resembles a cellphone just to have most important skills on hand.

[Azated]

I've played WoW off and on for the last four or five years. The most fun I had was adventuring with friends or guildies. I feel the cross-server LFG stuff ruined it for me because the people you spend three hours fighting with are just going to vanish when that boss loot pops and a hunter needs on armour he can't even wear.

Honestly, the only reason I'd go a back to playing WoW (or any other MMO for that matter) would be if some people I knew wanted to start a guild or something together. It's just no fun soloing, even though it's entirely possible.

[Mech#4]

If I remember right, there was a complete overhaul of skills come Cataclysm where all the classes had their skills and base mechanics changed and shuffled around.

From what I remember of Warlocks: The soul gems are now an auto replenishing resource that gets used to boost some abilities, they can still be gained through soul drain but aren't actual items in your inventory now and you can have up to five of them.

A number of skills were made exclusive to certain builds. So as an Affliction Warlock I didn't have Immolate anymore but Unstable Affliction got changed quite a bit. I really can't remember specifics, sorry.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#Va!

There's a link to the Warlock skill and talent trees. Oh yes, talents are extra modifiers you choose every few levels that compliment some of your abilities.

[Vgray]

From what I've read, Garrosh is messing with the past.

[xaritscin]

From what I've read, Garrosh is messing with the past.

he escapes from his trial in pandaria, then via a traitor from the bronz dragonflight, travels to the past with zaela the leader of the dragonmaw clan, to stop the orcs from drinking demon blood, only guldan and his clan become "fel orcs" and instead of an horde managed by the legion, an iron horde is reborn with technology from the present. this change in time creates a diferent timeline which doesnt affect the current events, but garrosh has created a connection with the original timeline azeroth on his contemporary time via the dark portal. it is unknown at this point how will then be the travel to outland if the dark portal is already used for traveling to the alternate draenor.

but no, we wont save the future, we will save the present. unless the alliance and the horde stop garrosh, the new iron horde will ravage azeroth outside from the dark portal, and its stated that he would even try to conquest other worlds then.....

the situation in alternate draenor will be that the iron horde is trying to conquest the whole planet, the draenei have been mitigating the fight and are the main faction fighting them. the frostwolf clan didnt agree with the offer to join due to more important matters, the idea is that the horde will join the frostwolfs (basically thrall meets his dad), while the alliance will join to the draenei (velen and kadgar will be present there, it is unknown if the velen showed is the alternate one or the modern, kadgar should be supposed to be the modern one too i guess, vindicator maarad will be there too)...

the alliance will have the priviledge to have its base in karabor, AKA the old Black Temple.......the horde will have its base in a fortress that lies in frostwolf territory....

all the map of draenor is similar of course to outland, save that razors edge mountains arent present and are replaced with two regions, fields of farahlon the region which would become netherstorm hasnt been announced yet, zangarmarsh is a sea which separes nagrand from the frostwolf territories. it seems there wont be a deathwing's lair, since that was before the first opening of the dark portal, i suppose that his island in the original timeline is the new PvP zone announced.....

[Lightning4]

it is unknown at this point how will then be the travel to outland if the dark portal is already used for traveling to the alternate draenor.

They're thinking of shoving old Outland in CoT.
I guess it makes sense, given how disconnected it is now from current events. I think they've already killed off every quest that sends you back out of Outland to Azeroth.
Solves at least one instance of Garrosh existing in multiple places at once.

Doesn't solve all of the awkwardness, but it's a start. Northrend has some of the same problems now.

[Cthulhu]

I really like the level 90 boost feature.  Like, if anything got me to play WoW again it would be that.  I'm not grinding through 90 levels of shit I've seen several times and didn't interest me much the first time around.  I'm not gonna finally get to 100 like I did with 60, 70, and 80, and think about all the crazy events and shit I missed because I was out in the woods cutting off boar penises and selling them to make enough copper just to survive.

That's always one of the most demoralizing things about MMOs, grinding my way along and being aware that crazy shit is happening but knowing I have to keep grinding for another 40 or so levels before any of that shit will be available to me.

[xaritscin]

I really like the level 90 boost feature.  Like, if anything got me to play WoW again it would be that.  I'm not grinding through 90 levels of shit I've seen several times and didn't interest me much the first time around.  I'm not gonna finally get to 100 like I did with 60, 70, and 80, and think about all the crazy events and shit I missed because I was out in the woods cutting off boar penises and selling them to make enough copper just to survive.

That's always one of the most demoralizing things about MMOs, grinding my way along and being aware that crazy shit is happening but knowing I have to keep grinding for another 40 or so levels before any of that shit will be available to me.

that's why non level based progression is better, the problem is you still loose time, even in EVE, you are limited by the skills you have trained there........e.e

[Urist McScoopbeard]

woah, did I hear something about streamlining stats?

Goddamnit, I hate that. I really enjoy seeing a screen of numbers that tells me "I'm a badass", the more simple it becomes the less appeal it has!

[Baneling]

The stats being streamlined are ones that are annoying as all hell because the way they work it's basically required to spend vast amounts of time reforging stuff to have stats that are JUST SO to not get dicked over.

Things like hit rating in PVP, where you have to reforge pieces of equipment to see what you can afford to swap out for more hit to have +5% so you never miss anybody.

Actually meaningful stats like the four new ones I mentioned in my previous post are being added, though, so if you're looking for a screen of numbers that say "Who's badarse? YOU ARE" then you will likely get more from those, I think.

[Cthulhu]

So the new expansion and the urgings of a friend have made me do what I thought I'd never do.

I came back.  Recovered my account and got a MoP ten day trial.  My 80 death knight in heroic tier blues and purps was hijacked by Chinese gold farmers who vendored everything, geared him up in AH greens, and sent him out to farm elementium.  I feel fucking violated, dude.

I started a new guy on a new server, an undead warlock. 

My impressions of the current state:

Holy shit inflation, holy shit leveling curve.  When I first started playing (Vanilla WoW) it took me a few weeks to get my first character to level 25, and I think I farmed my first actual gold coin around level 25.  This guy I got to level 25 in like three hours, and had 130g.  Low level mats were always expensive to take advantage of people powerleveling their professions, but with the leveling changes and heirlooms almost everyone does that shit.  Individual scraps of linen cloth are going for more than a gold coin each on the AH.  Don't bother with first aid, do RFC a couple times and AH your way to wealth.

If you've never played before you'll probably still take a while to get there just because you're getting your bearings and exploring, but if you know what you're doing you should be level 60 in less than a week, even playing casually.

They somehow managed to make low level BGs even worse.  They've always been twink city, but it's pretty much impossible to make a meaningful impact on the game now without a full set of heirlooms, you will literally get one-shotted.  Don't even bother.

Talent changes are the best thing to happen to WoW, fuck the haters:

If you haven't heard, talents were completely overhauled.  Where previously there was a standard set of three talent trees like every other MMO, now you just pick a spec and it gives you a new set of abilities to go with your choice.  I'm plaing a warlock so I'll give it in warlock terms.  Demolocks get-- lol nevermind who gives a fuck about demo.  Affliction locks get agony (which is no longer a curse, which means the other curses are actually useful now outside specific situations), unstable affliction, soul drain, and some other abilities based around dropping lots of dot shadow spells on the enemy.  Just like old affliction warlocks, really.  Destrolocks are awesome.  You trade shadow bolt for incinerate and corruption for immolate, you get conflagrate and some other spells, and instead of soul gems you get burning embers which can be consumed to buff our spells.  Also m'fuckin' chaos bolt.

Basically as far as specs go, there's no real meaningful difference between the old way and the new way.  You still pick a spec and mostly stick with it (There were some hybrid builds before, but it's not a massive loss compared to what we've gained), you have fewer spells but all of them are useful and have very nice synergies going.  You no longer have every actionbar filled to the brim with abilities, and your spellbook isn't clogged with 50 spells that aren't useful to your spec/aren't useful at all ever.

Instead of the old talent trees you have talent tiers that unlock every fifteen levels, with three choices in each tier.  That was a little offputting at first, but it just means that instead of getting a tiny, barely noticeable (aside from a few disproportionately impactful exceptions like Nightfall or Felguard) boost every level, you get huge and important boosts every fifteen levels.

I actually love all the new changes and I'll definitely be subscribing once the trial runs out.  WoW's a very old MMO and to me these changes have brought it back to 2013, cutting the fat out of the game and streamlining it.

My biggest complaint is that they've killed low level content even more.  That's always been the case with the new expansions, but between heirlooms, faster leveling, and instant dungeon spam, there's no pretense left of things not just being a dead sprint to 85.  And even that's not that terrible really.  I mean, it's not like I'm jonesing to collect some boar tusks.