Warlords of Lame-or?

Well met adventurers! As I was working on last weeks review of patch 6.2, I started thinking about I honestly felt about Warlords of Draenor so far on the whole. Any time a new patch or expansion goes into a testing phase, players become excited. They become excited for new things to do, new bosses to defeat, and new places to explore. However, this time around, it sort of feels like we are excited for 6.2 primarily because it could serve as a break in the monotony we've been feeling for most of this expansion. I'll elaborate on this more later on in the post, but for now I want to focus on the things that Warlords of Draenor has gotten right.

The Good:
The Leveling Content: The entire leveling process from 90 to 100 was exactly what I have been looking for from World of Warcraft since Cataclysm. The 1-60 revamp was excellent, but players who were already max level didn't get to experience it fully. Even when playing an alt, the leveling process has become so accelerated that you need to stay in a zone well past level in order to see how the story of the zone plays out. Mists of Pandaria leveling was alright, but other than the Jade Forest quests, too much story telling was left to the level 90 daily progression. Warlords of Draenor did a near perfect job of walking you through the zone in a way that felt complete. The zones are beautiful and unique, while at the same time feeling familiar to the Outland zones we know. You had an indicator in the quest log that told you when you finished all of the story quests, and when you looked at the zone map you weren't leaving too much behind if you decided to move into the next zone to pick up the story there. The amount of XP gained in a zone was the amount you needed to level out of the zone without making you grind mobs for the extra half level. Also, the cinematic tied to each zone really made it feel like a story was being told. There were some points that could have used a little more help. Orgrim Doomhammer was inserted and taken out of the storyline very abruptly and somewhat unceremoniously. We didn't spend nearly enough time dealing with Shattrath, but I'll touch on that later. Save a few blemishes, the leveling process did a great job of making us feel like we were a part of Draenor.

Raid and Dungeon Quality: The dungeons this expansion hit it out of the park in my opinion. The zones were beautiful, they had a story being told, and they had us deal with characters we know. Some may say that taking out Ner'zhul in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds was too low key and doesn't give the character the attention he deserves. I'd argue that if we were to devote a raid to each of these warlords the expansion would last 3 years and we would all be burnt out by the end. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to fully explore each of these warlords and learn their entire stories, but that kind of time just isn't available. Auchindoun feels like a holy site under siege by Gorefiend. Even Grimrail Depot, while somewhat tedious to run, was implemented well and achieved the fantasy of fighting on a moving train. The raids we've seen so far in Warlords are equally well done. Highmaul feels like an ogre city and the progression through it feels like we are working our way to the top to find and defeat the leader. We take down the denizens of the lower city, then fight our way through the bodyguards of the Imperator, then we take down the man in charge himself. Fighting ogres isn't the most exciting raid theme in the world, but as a beginning raid to get people up to speed in raiding it does a great job. Then we come to Blackrock Foundry. The Iron Horde is producing weapons here to supply their army against us and for their attempted invasion of our Azeroth. I have to commend Blizzards design on this raid because that's exactly what it feels like. There is the giant furnace powered by a fire elemental being used to fuel the forges. There are conveyor belts of weapons running from the furnaces. There is a train depot bringing shipments to the Iron Docks for distribution. The whole instance really feels like it's a massive forge fueling an army. And obviously it culminated in an awesome encounter with one of the warlords. There are some things to criticize obviously, as nothing is perfect, but I will touch on that later as well. All in all, Warlords has an excellent set of dungeons and raids so far. I'd even go so far as to say that Blackrock Foundry is close to my top 5 of raids all time.

The Garrison: This is sort of a split feature for me in terms of whether it is a plus or a minus. I chose to put Garrisons in the good section because I think the feature as whole is a good thing. Much of the negative feeling associated with garrisons so far has been due to the effects they have had on gameplay, not necessarily with the garrisons themselves. It feels good to have my own base of operations, and to finally feel like I'm important to the story after saving Azeroth SO many times. I enjoy the perks of being able to customize my buildings to suit my gameplay. Some buildings allow me to teleport around the continent, while some buildings allow you to do quests for forgotten secondary characters and receive cool items and followers. The garrison campaign quests are a great storytelling device (Azuka Bladefury is an awesome new character in a world full of familiar faces). Garrison invasions are a fun, quick way to  get a rewards while also reminding us that we aren't in our world and it is dangerous. There are some places to improve obviously. The mission table takes us out of the fantasy of the garrison being a place for us to lead our forces against the Iron Horde. It's nice to see our followers walk around our garrison and interact, but the only way we see them actually accomplish anything is through a quick attack animation upon mission completion (and that's only if you don't use Master Plan, and who isn't using that at this point?). It just feels like the mission system takes away from the immersion that the rest of the garrison does a great job with. The rest of the downsides I'll talk about next.

The Bad:
The Garrison Downsides: Blizzard had expressed their concerns about implementing player housing in the past. It's been a question posed at every Blizzcon before Warlords announced the garrison feature. Blizzard was concerned that it would be an extension of the capital city problem where players just hang out in the capital city until it's time to do a raid or dungeon, then they just go back to Orgrimmar or Stormwind. And they were right. We queue for dungeons and battlegrounds from our garrisons and get teleported back when were finished. The apexis dailies help a bit but don't do enough. At Blizzcon 2013 we were told that we would be able to build our garrison in any zone in Draenor that we chose. I understand the issues that may cause and why they eventually chose to go the way they did instead, but even something as small as being able to change the look of where our garrison is located would have helped to break up the monotony of being in the same place all the time. Professions suffered as a result of garrisons as well. In order to create diversity in small building choices, any player was given the chance to build any profession building. A paladin can build a forge without being a blacksmith and craft plate gear for themselves. There are 10 choices in small buildings currently. Eight of them are profession buildings and the other two are the Salvage Yard and Storehouse. Without being able to make any of the profession buildings, players would end up with buildings for their two professions and one of the two others. Not a lot of diversity and Blizzard wanted everyones garrison to feel somewhat unique. This, along with every player having access to ore and herbs in their garrison, made professions somewhat trivial. The benefit of having any given profession was decreased by giving everyone access to 70% of what those professions had to offer. As an expansion progresses, the value of professions decreases. Gear becomes available to players through new avenues, and as a result less crafted gear is needed. There are some exceptions like enchants and item upgrades but that doesn't eliminate the issues the garrison options create.

Ashran: I want to preface this section by pointing out that I don't PvP. I have queued for Ashran a total of 3 times. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that Ashran is kind of a mess. Blizzard  set the player limit in order to improve on the Wintergrasp experience of Wrath of the Lich King. Faction imbalance cause one side of the battle for Wintergrasp to be massively outnumbered and receive a huge health and damage buff to compensate. Unfortunately, the buff wasn't enough most of the time and the lower population faction would be locked out of some parts of content. While I applaud Blizzard for preventing that issue, having a world event gated by a queue prevents people on both sides from being able to access the content and that's not a place a game designer wants to be. PvP has enough of a barrier to entry as it is and it doesn't need to be compounded upon. Additionally, Ashran has sort of become a game of keep away as I understand it. Faction death balls rush from one bonus objective to another, avoiding the other team entirely, in order to maximize Conquest Point gain. THE PvP zone has become a PvE zone with the option of trying to interact with the opposing faction. Ashran was hyped up to be a huge PvP zone with constant objectives and things going on. It was meant to be an improvement on Wintergrasp and Tol Barad and instead took a step backward. Now it looks more like a Alterac Valley sprint to the faction leader. I'm confident that Ashran is also not living up to Blizzards expectations, and I think my next item has something to do with it.

Warspear/Stormshield: When Warlords of Draenor was announced, the original faction capitals were Bladespire Citadel in Frostfire Ridge for the Horde, and Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley for the Alliance. The quests to reclaim both of these locations are still in place and happen early in the questing process, right around the same time we get our quests to visit the current factions hubs in Ashran in fact. I think as the garrison feature grew (and eventually even took over patch 6.1) Blizzard realized that they would serve as the factions base of operations as opposed to any specific Draenor city. They were right, but only a form of self fulfilling prophecy. All the quests that tell move us to the next zone or story point, tell us to return to our garrison when they could easily tell us to return to Karabor. The Frostwolves and Draenei are our only true allies in taking on the Iron Horde,  and rather than treat them as allies who have integrated themselves with our cause,  they become basically nomads jumping from one quest hub to another. We should have had fully realized capital cities that had the look and feel of the continent we have come to explore and save. Instead, we were given a plot of land on a distant island and threw up huts and buildings to serve whatever random purposes we needed. And as a result, Ashran was shrunk down to accommodate two faction capitals. I think this change during the development process was the biggest mistake Blizzard made with this expansion. The original cities could have helped to separate some of the garrison importance while reinforcing the immersion in Draenor. Blizzard increased our characters importance at the cost of several other pieces of content.

Daily Quests?: This is a bit of a minor gripe but it's worth pointing out. One of the major complaints of Mists of Pandaria was that there were so many daily quests and that they felt mandatory. And they were mandatory for more that one reason. If you wanted access to the best enchants or BOE gear you had to grind multiple reps to exalted, and you had to do the same if you wanted to see the story develop. Blizzard took that criticism to heart, but as they have in the past, they took it too far. Now we get one apexis daily to choose every day along with some pet battle quests or dungeon quests from the Inn if you have that building in your garrison. To compound the issue, all of the apexis quests are the same thing. You kill mobs and click on items to fill up a bar. What you are killing is irrelevant. They all feel the same and they don't tell you anything about what's going on. I talked earlier about how Shattrath was underutilized. We spend a couple of quests in Talador dealing with the invasion of the Burning Legion, then we fight a few dozen of them off when we choose that apexis daily. That's it. Why not implement a quest chain similar to patch 5.1 where we have 2-3 quests to do every day, then once a week we get a story quest that tells us something about the Legion's plans. You could even go with every two weeks if you wanted to spread things out like the garrison campaign did. This again comes back to the garrison issue. We need more reasons to be out in the world besides farming for savage blood and farming mobs for horrible rep grinds.

Well that ended up being longer than I thought it would. As I said last week, I'm optimistic that 6.2 will bring some improvements and some enjoyable content to the game, but I will do another one of these posts as we get toward the end of Warlords to see if those improvements were enough.

Thanks again for reading,
Chris

Warlords of Draenor 6.2

Welcome back friends! Sorry I missed posting last week. I've been sick as a dog and spent 4 days or so mostly in bed. Fortunately, patch 6.2 for Warlords of Draenor dropped on the PTR this week, which gives me plenty to write about to make up for it. Fair warning, some of the things I touch on may be spoilers for some of you, so precede at your own risk.

Patch 6.2, unnamed as of now, will let us follow Gul'dan and the Iron Horde back into Tanaan Jungle.   It's very much the same jungle area from the Warlords starting experience, but with some new areas to explore as well as a new daily quest hub. Most exciting of which is Hellfire Citadel, our new tier 18 raid zone. As many of you may remember, Hellfire Citadel was a dungeon and raid zone in Hellfire Peninsula during Burning Crusade. It held 3 dungeons, Hellfire Ramparts, the Blood Furnace, and the Shattered Halls (featuring our timelines Kargath Bladefist), and one raid, Magtheridon's Lair. As a side note, it seems silly to call it Magtheridon's Lair when he is being held captive there by the fel orcs to drain his blood. Hellfire Citadel in Tanaan Jungle has a similar look to it, obviously minus the red tint of shattered Outland, however this time it has become Gul'dan's hideout used as a fortress for the demons of the Burning Legion. Of course, as the biggest bad asses Azeroth has to offer, it's our job to storm the Citadel and take out the Legion's forces concluding with our favorite tree lover, Archimonde. As someone who began playing in Burning Crusade, but wasn't current with raiding for Mount Hyjal, I'm excited for a chance to take this guy on. The other bosses are just as exciting. A newly Fel-corrupted Kilrogg, a soul-gorged Gorefiend, and a reanimated Mannoroth! A great way to get me excited about a raid is to introduce interesting bosses for me to kill. While I enjoy Blackrock Foundry a lot, it is a little boring at times killing mostly orcs with different jobs. There is some diversity to the bosses, but not as much as there seems to be in Hellfire Citadel. 

There are goodies to earn in the new raid other than shiny new loot of course. There is a follower to earn similar to Aknor Steelbreaker in the Flamebender Ka'graz in BRF. We also will have a chance for a Felsteel Annihilator mount which is an awesome reskin of the Sky Golem mount in the form of the iconic Fel Reaver from Burning Crusade. Players who finish the Glory of the Hellfire Raider will be rewarded with the Reins of the Corrupted Dreadwing, a Fel corrupted version of the Warlords Deluxe Edition mount reward. All in all Hellfire Citadel seems like a great raid tier that I'm extremely excited for.

Once again, our Garrisons will be getting another update. This time we will need to add on a shipyard in order to make our way to Tanaan and confront Gul'dans apparent naval force. I don't have much information yet on how all of this plays out, as the PTR is currently bugged and won't allow quest progress. I'm going to try and progress through it and see how it all ties together because it all just seems a bit clunky to me right now. Adding in naval missions doesn't feel interesting to me. There is already barely a difference between the different types of missions outside of what rewards they give, and I'm skeptical that naval missions will feel any different. 

We will also be getting Mythic difficulty 5 man dungeons as well as Timewalker dungeons. Mythic 5 mans are interesting to me simply because its another attempt from Blizzard to keep 5 man dungeons relevant after the initial launch of the expansion. Challenge modes have help somewhat but the rewards become less and less worthwhile as the expansion goes on. Right now Mythic dungeons will reward 680 gear with a  chance for 700 gear off of the last boss of the instance. This will prove useful for most raiders who aren't farming Mythic BRF. However, once we have a few weeks in Heroic Hellfire Citadel the reward for these may not be worth the effort anymore. Timewalker dungeons are definitely cool. Scaling down to current item level for Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King dungeons is an interesting test of what the technology is capable of and how much external tuning is required. Dungeons in BC were tuned and designed around different sets of truths, and the same is true of WotLK. As the game grows and changes the basis on which things are designed changes. The danger is that the games current state requires too many changes to be made to previous content as it is made current. If Blizzard has to spend time rebalancing old content for the Timewalker feature, it may be too burdensome for us to see a Timewalker Black Temple run or something along those lines. I'm optimistic that that won't be the case but its something to keep an eye on. 

I'm going to keep it to a short post for now. I will be putting some time into writing up a sort of mid-expansion report card for Warlords of Draenor. I want to take the time to talk about what I like so far and what things have missed the mark. It's a subject which everyone has some thoughts on so please check back and take a look and let me know what you think. 

Thanks again for reading, Chris

Blackrock Mountain Review - The Good Stuff

Welcome back friends!

I've been playing a ton of Hearthstone lately. Some of it has to do with the fact that I got my fix of Sylvanas in Heroes of the Storm, but mostly, it's because Blackrock Mountain is coming. Last time I did a partial review of the cards we had been shown up to that point. This time I just want to stick to the cards I think will have a real impact. In my opinion Blackrock Mountain is bringing a bit less to the competitive scene than Naxxramas did. But who could have expected the effect of 30 cards in Naxx. Sludge Belcher, Loatheb, Zombie Chow, Shade of Naxxramas, Kel'thuzad, Mad Scientist, Webspinner, and obviously the mess that was Undertaker, have all made huge waves at one point or another. I'll start with the class specific stuff I think will see some play.

Fireguard Destroyer fits a spot that Shaman desperately needed some help. They have often struggled in the 4 drop spot and have been forced to play an excessive number of 5 drops and 3 mana overload spells. Even if this guy only gets 1 extra attack it's ahead of budget for a 4 drop and all that's left is to decide how much the Overload affects it. The downside is sometimes you will get 4 attack and play into your opponents Big Game Hunter (Shaman usually is light on targets) but those situations will be few and far between. I like the role this guy fills for shaman, giving it earlier board presence without relying on Flametongue Totem to make it's trades.

Demonlock has been around since GvG in one shape or another. Some versions were running Imp-losion and Mistress of Pain to control the board early, before Mal'ganis and Jaraxxus closed things out. Lately, we have transitioned into a hybrid Handlock/Demonlock that plays more to the late game.  Demonwrath fits more in the former but could see play in both. A 3 mana Consecrate is nothing to scoff at. Especially when you don't have to worry about killing all the Imps you just made. Warlock does have a lot of competition in board sweepers with Hellfire and Shadowflame. I think all 3 have their upsides and the deck they are going into will decide which will see play. People are expecting BRM to usher in a very controlling metagame. If that doesn't end up being the case Demonwrath will go along way to keeping the hyper aggressive decks in check.

Paladin is being hyped as the class to truly take advantage of the dragon synergy theme of BRM and it's primarily due to this card. 5/5 for 5 is the stats we're looking for, and it comes with upside to boot. There is no shortage of Dragon cards with high cost and high upside that let you take advantage of this Battlecry. A turn 7 Ysera, or turn 6 Chromaggus (who we will get to in a minute) can have a huge effect on a game. We'll see exactly how the decks shape out but I expect to see a lot of Paladin on ladder the week Dragon Consort is released. 

Chromaggus creates some interesting situations that we don't have a chance to see often. Similar to Duplicate and Echo of Medivh, it allows us to play 3 more of the same card in a game. Any time a card allows you to break the rules of the game it's worth paying attention to. This holds true in most games. Magic players may remember when the "Wish" cycle was released years ago. Being able to access your sideboard mid-game created avenues to win games that normally didn't exist. We get in habits of trying to bait the Black Knight or a Shaman's last Hex before playing a high impact minion. What happens when your opponent has a second Black Knight because of this core-hound dragon? Chromaggus has the size we want as well. Not enough power to get killed by BGH, and 8 health to not easily be taken down in combat. This is by no means a card for every deck, but it should see play in midrange and control decks, especially ones that have consistent card drawing engines.

This is the best card in the set. Expect to see this in any deck that doesn't want to win the game before turn 7. Similar to how Chromaggus lets us break the 2 card maximum rule, Thaurissan lets us break the 10 mana per turn maximum rule. I expect the Dark Iron Emperor to slide into decks the same way Loatheb did after Naxx. I can't overstate how powerful the effect on this card is. If your opponent gets 2 turns worth out of this with more than 3 cards in hand, expect to fall way behind. Decks like Freeze Mage, Combo Druid, and maybe even Malygos Shaman, will make this guy a lynchpin. Being able to play an Alezstrasza and an Ice Block in the same turn, Force of Nature and double Savage Roar in the same turn, or Malygos and multiple burn spells, sign me up. It is also going to become much more difficult to track what your opponents care capable of on a given turn. All that being said, kill this guy as soon as you can.

I'm sure other cards will see some competitive play. Quick Shot is right up Face Hunter's alley. Both Volcanic Drake and Hungry Dragon will probably find decks. Maybe even Nefarian will find a home. I'm excited to see what Blackrock Mountain does to the game, and I'm excited to dive in.

Thanks for reading. See ya next time.

Chris