Bump da bump for those who have wandered away as the expansion ages.
Blizzard has introduced Mists of Pandaria: Remix.
Basically, another chance to do the MoP expansion leveling a fresh character, but with a few twists:
You start out OP, level up and get a bit weaker (currently 66, no struggles with quest mobs). Remix characters are locked to Pandaria for the duration of the event.
Raids and dungeons are level-scaled. At 25, you can run the first raid. At 35, the second, and so on. Enough players have reached disgusting OP levels of power, so raids are fast - maybe ten minutes per LFR wing. Raids also have daily lockouts instead of weekly.
Gearing and currency has changed completely. Instead of farming dungeons and raids for top-tier gear, once at 70, you just upgrade your gear using “bronze”, the only* currency in the remix. Gear itself has some stats, but the majority of the gear power comes from gems that drop and can be combined diablo-style. As you level, your gear contains more sockets.
When I said bronze is the only currency, I’m serious. There are the charms of good fortune for repeating dailies and reputations, and gold for…flight paths, but everything else uses bronze.
All of the MoP items, toys, gear appearances, and rare drop mounts are for sale for bronze, as well as a bunch of new remix-only items. A few are gated behind achievements, but the achievements are fairly simple, and I completed one just by playing.
You receive a cloak at the beginning that you upgrade throughout the remix. Complete a dungeon? Here’s a random upgrade via “thread” (main stat, secondary stat, stamina, XP%). Threads also randomly drop from mobs. Stats are already reaching thousands in main stats, health measured in millions, etc. Depending on how far your cloak is upgraded, any other characters have a boosted cloak at the start.
At the end of the remix (August 19th, I think), all remix characters become regular characters with ilvl 415 gear.
So, figured as I opened the thread now quite some time ago, I should include the notification of World of Warcraft: The War Within (the next expansion) is scheduled to go Live August 26 20204. So just about 10 weeks from the date of this post.
I am not done with Dragon Isles. I realize there are people with nothing better to do than grind for 12 hours a day but life keeps interfering with my hobbies. This is all moving too fast.
Oh, opinion for the thread. As I stated in the OP, I started a new thread for this expansion, since there had been a separate one for each prior. But it’s not exactly the most active thread, should we instead just ask the mods to modify the title to “World of Warcraft: Dragonflight and Beyond” and keep it as a general “modern” WoW thread? Or would someone like to create a new one for The War Within in a few months?
Well, I’m currently playing WOW The War Within (I delayed to let the crazy finish) although I’m very heavily distracted by the 20th anniversary event going on, but with what I’ve seen so far, I’m at least somewhat pleased. Minor spoilers ahead:
Seeing Magni being depressed after years of listening to “Azeroth’s crying out in Pain” B/S, seeing some of the old backstory about Earthen, Titans and Dwarves is also nice. Some of our core characters actually stepping up again after years may be nice, although as usual, they seem to be unworthy of all the praise they get - once again, the PCs are handling it all. The new Hero talents are… interesting? They at least don’t dramatically change the game, but reward one of two possible emphasis on your playstyle so different ones may work better for you than others.
Mostly still distracted by the 20th Anniversary stuff, which includes Timewalking of classic dungeons and a redone Black Rock as a raid. If you had end game gear (454+) from Dragonflight, you’ll be in good shape for several levels, and otherwise the quests rewards will get you up to speed in no time. Be ready for the return of some of the older enemies from games past that had been forgotten.
Mechanics wise, everything is VERY similar to Dragonflight, same sort of weekly board for heroic dungeons, raids, PVP with the same tiers, and gear is in sets of 8 steps upgradable via both the new currency and tokens, so if you like that about the last expansion, it’s largely unchanged.
And yes, per the poll, I’ve flagged the thread to update the title rather than take the time to create a new one as we had a multi-way tie.
I’m on my 7th and soon to be 10th 80 char. Not doing the later character classes, monk was just a rogue (and the tank and healer totem mechanic was weird), Demon Hunter was weird in general, and Evoker was mainly a really crap mage. Never got any of them at all (they sit at 70 though).
This time around I LOVED the frost mage. It was only class which felt like a true DPS punching holes through elites which others struggled hugely with.
The delves, well, they’re ok, but not too bothered. I wish timewalking was Cata or WOLK, those were the best instances, the classic ones are all mazes where I never can work out which way to go when tanking.
So a couple of updates, especially for those thinking of coming back to the game.
Good news, if you like doing dungeon content, but find the community toxic, most -new- dungeons are now easily done (on normal) with the NPC options for the rest of the party. They started this in Dragonflight, but it’s slightly better in The War Within. The NPCs are better tanks, do better damage as DPS, and heal better than they did in Dragonflight.
Good news, that there are -more- quality rewards (weekly Vault rewards) for doing individual or world content, not just raids and heroics. So you can do the new Delves with or without friends and still hit reasonably good gear, if more slowly than raiders.
Good news, that if you liked the style and story of the Dracthyr (the new dragon-esque race from Dragonflight) you can finally make them something OTHER than the evoker RCC. Which is very good, because that little thing made absolutely NO sense in Dragonflight, since there were plenty of non-evoker Dracthyr NPCs.
Bad news - the grouping community, especially LFG/LFR is getting ever more toxic. Blizz in it’s efforts to keep content flowing has, IMHO (of course) been giving certain classes and roles everything they’ve ever wanted to the point that all groups should just be tanks. They’re always in the top 3 or so as DPS and HEALS in your average group. So they pull everything, get everyone else killed (especially in Timewalking with old mechanics like stuns and silences) and will bitch endlessly if you question them. Combine that with the absolutely BORKED scaling (you’ll see a level 11 tank do 95% of the damage in a mixed level party as an example) and my earlier points about just playing by yourself makes sense.
Feel free (if anyone else is playing) to share your experiences, likes and dislikes. I more or less like the story, more so than Dragonflight, and like the callbacks to earlier eras of the game. But TBH, if I was paying for the game with real cash and not in-game cash, I would be questioning the value if not for the weekly get together with online out of state friends.
I largely gave up on the LFG dungeons outside of holiday specials like the Headless Horseman a couple expansions ago. I see those places when my top level characters can solo lower content.
That said, solo play is far better than it used to be, long ago. I’m still enjoying the game.
Very true that. I spend about a year playing the WoW Classic mode when it first came out, and I was -smart- (and remembered when I played Vanilla live those many years ago) in going with a heavy-beastmastery hunter. It was then, and remained one of the easiest soloing classes. And it was still a chore to level without a groupfinder, or a guild. I did actually get into a guild before I stopped playing, and raided Molten Core!
Still, I’m very glad that almost all the content is now available even if you don’t want to deal with the other people. I mentioned the dungeons, but I forgot to mention that there’s now Story Mode if you want to see the raids as well!
Oh, and something else to sink your time in. It took over 20 years, but WoW is planning on finally catching up with other games and finally going with player housing. Based on my experience in Rift (for MMO) and Fallout 4 (for single player) I expect a LOT of my time, gold and Blizz bucks going into this one!
I haven’t played in… wow, it’s been longer than I thought. I last played in Legion, so 8 years ago!
But for me, what made the game great was playing with people you “knew” as guild mates or just by meeting them in /LFG. You learned how to work as a team: stuns, silences, whatever it took to finish the run.
It seems like at some point the combination of making it easy to play solo and making the group game so toxic took away most of what made it fun.
Does anybody still play with a group of people they know, learning the raids and dungeons as a group? Or is it all LFG and solo play now?
Strictly IMHO, there are older, casual players who still play with close friends. There are tons of casual and RP guilds as well, which may have some raiding wings.
Most active raiding guilds do it for profit (selling runs) or are very progression focused, but they normally have strict times and application requirements.
What you’re talking about here:
Was exactly like what WoW Classic was like in the first year or so, with practice runs, guildies helping get alts geared, etc. I don’t think that’s as much of a thing with the progression “classic” realms anymore, but I haven’t done classic since they forced those realms into BC.
I just loved being on Vent (see how old I am?) chatting with folks I’d been playing with for years. We weren’t great, but we got stuff done eventually, and it was just fun. Then somehow LFG and LFR (which seemed like great ideas at the time) just made it all worse.
Anyways, I had been toying with trying it out again especially with the 20-year event coming up, but wanted to gauge the situation before diving in.
Does the game still deliver on the “epic moments” front? I’m talking about things like approaching the Dark Portal for the first time, or the Lich King final cinematic.
What expansion is “Classic” in now? WOTLK? Or have them moved on to Cataclysm?
Maybe just letting things lie in the past is better. Nostalgia is preferable to disappointment.
I’m interested in naming names here as to the classes…
I played 10 of the normal classes to 80, and have left the extras (Monk, Evoker and that other one, oh yeah, Demon Hunter) to rot (at 70, so did it last expansion though).
This time through the warrior was an absolute breeze (sometimes Fury, sometimes Prot) as usual, pet classes as normal (easy), some weaker than usual (Elemental Shammy), usual relentlessly crappy (Shadow priest and Balance Druid), couple of normal as usual (Rogue, Prot pally), Blood DK usual boring and unkillable, but one class shone which is hasn’t done for years. Frost Mage, rocked the dps, I could solo elite special ones down in 3 seconds with the cooldowns and barely died at all (versus pretty much all the time for the last five expansions).
