Where are you?

That is an excellent question that you left in a comment two months ago, Kring. I am not particularly anywhere. This blog has been mostly about my thoughts on WoW, with other non-MMO games sprinkled in because I can't always write posts that people care about. Lately I've not played much WoW, by which I seem to mean nearly a year. The rest of this post is pretty much going to be me complaining about Warlords of Draenor.

I have been playing WoW again, but only because it is free. Thanks to the token things, I can buy game time with gold. Gold is something I have. So I am playing, but rather half-heartedly.

In vanilla I often heard raid or die. That was, of course, stupid. There was plenty to do beside raiding. There were an abundance of quests. Leveling took a while, so it's not as if everyone had a dozen 60s. That is a slight exaggeration, I only have a paladin, two rogues, warlock, priest, and a death knight at 100. That's only 6 max-level characters. It's not the most I've ever had, but it's partly because I very much do not want any more. I barely play the ones I have.

The unfortunate situation is that WoD is pretty much garrisons, raiding, and LFR. And also Tanaan, which you need for oil for your garrison and gear so you can skip LFR. I don't find garrisons very rewarding.

Garrisons aren't much fun for me at max level. I enjoyed building it up. Then it becomes a static ore-printer. Occasionally I'll run through the garden and mine, set up another couple days of work orders, and then stop caring again for a week. I'll set up follower missions somewhat regularly, since they're mostly just "click button, wait to collect gold".

Raiding isn't really in the cards for me. My tendency to want to be prepared for everything, while useful at work, makes raiding far more stressful than it needs to be. Throw in a touch of social anxiety and I'm out of the raiding game for the foreseeable future.

LFR is garbage. I've complained about it elsewhere for years. It's not much different. This time it gave me a legendary ring. It doesn't even give me a cool animal head on my back.

Tanaan is fun on a weekend when I have some time to burn. I like grabbing a few dailies and finding a group for Throne of Kil'Jaeden.

So I play a little here and there. I'll play alts, but any time it starts to be fun I remember where I'm headed: for my seventh time through Shadowmoon, followed by Terrokar. Plantland to the north is terrible as Alliance, but seemed better as Horde.

So, that's where I've been: half-heartedly playing Warlords of Draenor because it's free. Who'd have thought I'd look back and think that Pandaria was actually a pretty decent expansion: Pandas got a whole lot of story, the plot made sense, and it didn't at all build up expectations for something great, so I wasn't ever even the slightest bit disappointed. On the plus side, I like Timewalking, though I wish it had more dungeons in it.

On the plus side, I started playing Minecraft again, finally got Dragon Age 2, and tried a few strategy games: Europa Universalis IV (now with 4x the Europe!), Crusader Kings 2 (twice as much murdering of babies for minor provincial gains), and Galactic Civilizations III (I never played the earlier ones, so for all I know it's only 2.5 times as civilized).

Molten Core: How bad could it be again?

[edit] My friend pointed out that, to accurately picture this group, every 75 seconds or so, everyone dies, and every 5 seconds, someone dies.

My friends hadn't done MC, so I got on my warlock and we queued up together. The queue took 45 minutes when we were all DPS, then two friends switched to tank/dps and we got in it 18 minutes, though seconds before it popped one of them gave up and left. Turns out it was lucky timing for him.

We zoned in to a fresh run. We pulled the two giants and that went okay, with some slight issues because I suspect the healers weren't awake yet. Shit happens. Half the raid promptly runs off to the side to try skipping trash. Against my better judgement I join them. They proceed to aggro a lava giant, annihilator, and two core hounds. And obviously wipe.

We come back and my friend, a tank, starts to single-pull trash. People yell that we should jump (because that went so well). Then, rather than waiting for the core hound to patrol back, or the surger to patrol back, we get a firelord. And then the next patrol grabs the other. And the other patrol. We wiped.

As we came back in we had about 3/4 of the raid and the core hound was near us. I ran up and grabbed it, before it could patrol away and right back into us again. One of the tanks suggested that someone - they did not specify who should do this - should engage in sexual relations with my mother in a particular fashion. I died; no one else did. Beside the pulls that I specifically directed my tank friend to make, this was the only pull that did not result in a wipe. People still yelled at me.

My friend continued on with the careful pulling until we reached a crossroads with two patrolling tanks and a bunch of trash ready to join in any bad pulls. The mother-fornication-suggesting tank proceeded to pull the two giants on the left, and then not pull back far enough. So we get the core hound from the bridge. And then the one from the right, which brings with the firelord and annihilator that we'd encountered while jumping to skip trash.

This was when I apologized to my friend for suggesting that we go. Then we left. This was the single worst experience I'd ever had in WoW, with a concentration of rudeness and poor play that I have never seen before.

I've run into rudeness and poor play. I've seen the degradation of PUGs over the years. But something about MC has taken this to another level. Does anyone have any theories?

Get back to where you once belonged

I have a love-hate relationship with the timer on missions. The missions themselves are fine, good even, but that timer...

On one hand it can make me feel rushed. I have some quests that I want to to, and I have half an hour to do them, otherwise I feel like I'm wasting valuable clicking on followers time. But then there's the travel time, so I don't want to rush out and rush back, or in all my hurry I'd be wasting even more time.

Then they decide to switch it up, they being the mysterious forces that manipulate small events against us. They steal our socks and give us hat hair. This time it's a 45 minute quest. I go out and do a fishing daily and some fishing fishing and a kill everything daily. I have a few minutes to spare. The archaeology site is across the zone, so I'd use up half my time just getting there. So now I wait. Or do I go farm? Maybe hit a few mining nodes? Or just wait.

On the other hand, it can be nice to have that out and back again feel. I'm going on my own mission and I have a particular amount of time to complete it. Having that timer means that I have to think about what I'm going to do. I define a goal, figure out whether I can complete it, and set out to do just that. That can be a welcome change from wandering off and wondering what I'm going to do, only to end up doing nothing because I had all the time in the world to figure out what to do.
 
The endless outdoor nature of leveling, of chaining quests back to back, doesn't fit well with missions. Either the missions break the flow or there's this glowing reminder during the quest that you're missing something. At the more free form level cap, where activities aren't so often lines of quests, having some sort of structure to the time is to be appreciated.

Brb, phone timer is going off; my alt's missions are done.

The new Molten Core is the first genuinely bad experience I've had this expansion

I'm not saying this expansion is perfect, but overall I've had fun and there haven't been many things that I've pointed at and said "this thing is reducing my fun." And then I queued for the Molten Core raid.

I was immediately dropped into a trash pull in progress, and it was not going well. A bunch of bosses were dead already, which made it odd that they were fighting at the entrance. And chat, chat was filled with people yelling. All of it was wrong. Somehow they'd become convinced that AoE attacks cause lava spawns to spawn or clone. Or maybe that AoE attacks did too little damage, which is true, but the better way to phrase that is "focus fire". People spent the entire rest of the raid yelling about how AoE attacks are terrible.

I opted to entertain myself by chatting with someone who had been there in vanilla and understood the absurdity of the situation. I might have also claimed that AoE attacks make Onyxia deep breath more often. I had just as much evidence as anyone else in the raid.

It was a slow, bumbling process of 40 people slowly bumbling their way toward bosses, without any idea of how they worked. People kept yelling nonsense directions in raid chat.

Apparently they'd been there for hours. I was sick of it after a few minutes, but I figured I'd see it through to the end. I got a hat and a mount. Wee.

Then I did things that were fun, such as heroics and follower missions. I'm going to have a hard time picking my favorite heroic, but so far, Shadowmoon Burial Grounds is winning.

We are the Warlords of Draenor

Orcs have warchiefs, not warlords. So who are the warlords? Us, of course. We are the warlords.

It was inevitable. We'd spent years gathering powerful magical items, built up reputations, amassed fortunes. And finally, we have our own private armies. People are seeing that when they throw their lot in with us, they get results, and tend not to die as often as when they go alone, or even join a faction. Notice how when followers join they don't say "I want to join the Alliance!" They say "I want to join you."

One could argue that we're more like Colonel Kurtz. We were sent out in an official capacity, and then took our mission to heart, seizing power locally in order to accomplish the goal given by our superiors. And then promptly went insane with power.


However, we are still in direct contact with our factions, receiving intel and the general strategy, rather than being off in the jungle while Sartin Meen tries to kill us. Those are how I interpret quests and follower missions; they can't quite tell us what to do, but they can reward us well and try to point us where they want us to go. However, before you think we are part of the organized military, we don't receive any sort of ongoing material support; it's all based on specific missions, making us appear more like an warlord for hire. Everything else is generated locally, from the production we set up and manage (gathering and work orders).

I rather like this situation. It feels as if we're finally getting our due. We used to run around murdering for trinkets and armor, then get called heroes, but rarely did our factions reward us for our deeds. Now we've set up our own armies and can finally take what we've earned. The mines we liberate send their ore to us. The soldiers we rescue join us. This world that we're pacifying is ours. We are the warlords of Draenor.

The best laid plans fall before the might of the overlooked detail

I had it all figured out.

I was mere hundreds of experience away from level 100. I had to make it count and I had the means to do it: N.U.K.U.L.A.R. Target Painter. What could possibly go wrong?

I rode out of Telaari Station in Nagrand and found the nearest rare. I got line of sight and painted the area. Not the target itself; the AoE is pretty big.

Ten seconds later the area was covered in ash. A windroc was dead. My skin was charred. And that was it. Redclaw the Feral still lived.

It turns out that this is not a ground-penetrating weapon. It explodes on impact, blowing up everything outside the cave and leaving him entirely unharmed.

I returned to my garrison and resolved to find another rare, outdoors, with no pesky layer of invincible terrain to save it. While I was there I checked on my completed follower missions, and hit 100.

The Victims of the Stat Squish

When you hear the One Ring, do you think, "To rule them all?" Well you're wrong! Everyone knows that The 1 Ring is, "Not quite as good as the 2 Ring". Thankfully, it can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, which does not exist, so everything is fine.

The 2 Ring is, obviously, "Vastly superior to the 1 ring." It was a glorious sight to behold, with a magnificent 22 of every stat. What paladin could ever say no to a ring with strength, stam, intellect, and agility... and I guess spirit is allowed to be there. Alas, the fires of Patch Doom (6.0) have damaged it. Now it is a mere 10 of every stat. It's not the 10 ring! The 10 ring is a terriying thing to behold. This is just... a joke, killed by so-called "updates". Just like this. REND IS SUPPOSED TO BE BAD. *ahem* The worst part is that they were so close. All they had to do was make it The 01 Ring and everything would be okay.

This brings us to the last one, The 5 Ring. "This ring appears to have eaten the 3 and 4 rings." It has 17 stam, 17 crit, and 17 haste. Add up all the digits and you get 24, which is 6. 5+3+4 is 14 which is 5. Basic math says that this patch ruined everything.

I take it back, there is SO MUCH to complain about.

What's there to complain about?

I love a good complain. Change anything and I bet I can complain about it. And that's why the pre-warlords patch has me so angry. I'm at a loss for legitimate complaints. Oh sure, I have a few, but it's just not enough for a frothy-mouthed rage.

As might be expected, I'm a bit peeved about the switching of UBRS. And at first I found it to be terribly boring. Then I remembered an old pet peeve: people who watch TV while playing: paying no attention, making mistakes without even noticing), and generally making me wonder why they're even logged in. I'd become one of those people.

Pausing Netflix, I turned the sound back on, and focused on the game. Suddenly I could heard what I'd been missing, and generally notice. I pulled more carefully, rewired the gun turrets to help us, and soaked in as much fun as I could. Turns out, there's actually a bit of fun to be had. Maybe when it isn't half an instance I'll enjoy it more. In the meantime, it's nice to run a place where I can actually die if I play badly. I need to remember to bring my ring from LBRS to see if I can get a second Vael.

On the other hand, I like how the weird squish-non-squish has screwed up the already-broken tuning of old raids. Everything dies as if it were meant to be soloed, perhaps because Blizzard realized that people are typically running these solo or in small groups. I wouldn't say they're "tuned" for that, not in the sense that they're remotely challenging for such groups. It was fun to be able to just run straight into some of these places and knock them out without trying to rally friends to the cause, what with their annoying habits of having lives outside of outdated raids.

The invasion event was mildly interesting, though also almost an exact copy-paste between Alliance and Horde. Oh no, my filler content wasn't carefully customized for each faction! At this point the Iron Horde seems somewhat generic, but it probably doesn't help that I've seen literally nothing about the expansion outside of the game and whatever I saw on wowhead while looking for UBRS loot.

People in trade are mad about the squish, or some ability being removed, or... something or other. It's an enlightened bunch. Someone claims the squish ruined everything. As best as I can tell, in practical terms nothing changed, except that my Thunderfury, due to a fully-powered proc, seems to work just fine. (I got buffed! Wee!) I am still in the habit of trying to refresh Inquisition. I asked in trade if hunters still need mana; someone replied that they never needed mana. Jokes are wasted on some people.

I'm glad to have an enchanter; strange dust is selling well in pairs, thanks to the Fire and Poetry event, though I'm guessing that will slow down as people finish the quest. And then pick up again as people realize they haven't finished the quest.

Trolls look weird when they run.