WoW XX: It's Not A Recolor, It's An Original Thread

[The_Jackal]

All the demons are gone, so now the kingdoms of Azeroth must inevitably resume the cycle of violence and recriminations between the Alliance and Horde, to make sure they remain battered and war-torn when the next world-shattering nemesis stumbles into view. The Battle for Azeroth continues the story of the World of Warcraft after the races of Azeroth have triumphed over the forces of the Burning Legion. The expansion introduces six new playable allied races.

Relevant and Useful links:
Battle Net --official site
MMO Champion --news site
Blizzard Watch --more news
WoWpedia --encylopedia of the Warcraft Universe
Wowhead --search engine for pretty much anything in the game. Items, quests, achievements, enemies, everything.

Spoiler: Battletags and Servers!

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Ozryk#11320 (Feathermoon/Scarlet Crusade)

Previously, on GitP Forums.

[Icewraith]

Are mogs really that expensive? Personally I'd rather their racial be a small chance to reroll a mog they already acquired into something else from the loot table or something. Finding mogs is a bigger issue than paying for them I think.



Do you have a source for these stats? Genuinely curious, but also wondering if some of the stats might be skewed too. I mean, yeah more Night Elves are druids than Worgen, but NElf druids have also been around 6 years longer, so... I think there's more possible explanations for the figures than "eww, uggo dog people."

EDIT: Just saw your source and yeah, it bears out my fears. "It's important to remember that we're simply counting the number of characters seen for each category. This does not mean the number of players, nor the number of actively played characters. We can't efficiently get activity data yet, so some characters may not have been played for a long time." They don't focus on level or activity, so every single bank alt who's ever touched the AH or even belonged to a guild where someone touched the AH is being included, as well as every alt that never made it past the 40+ doldrums. That's a lot of noise to be drawing conclusions from I'd say.



In PvE it gives them another interrupt to add to their tanking repertoire - nothing to sneeze at in many encounters.

Speaking as someone who has had Shockwave on their action bar for most of the ability's existence, stating that an AoE stun, especially one with a long cooldown, is an additional interrupt in PvE is (IMO) way, way too strong. A Stun can be used to temporarily stop spellcasting from (most) trash and some fights with caster adds. Most bosses are immune to stuns but many still have some kind of interruptible cast. Furthermore, interrupts force the caster to move for several seconds (becasue of the lockout) while stuns force the caster to stand still (and usually immediately resume casting when the stun ends). This is a crucially important distinction when it comes to basic add control and dealing with ally damaging or mob healing/buffing ground effects. Using an AoE stun like an interrupt on threatening "trash" (higher keystone dungeons) without repositioning slightly will result in a damage spike on the tank as all the non-caster mobs affected by the stun simultaneously swing on the tank when the stun ends.

I've lost count of the number of times I've asked who has interrupts and someone volunteers a stun. If I'm asking for interrupts, it's because we're on a boss where interrupting is important and we need more interrupts than the melee and tanks can provide (or we need a backup, so I'm putting people with longer cooldown interrupts like Mages on notice).

Short-term spellcaster crowd control, stuns, interrupts.
Fruit, apples, oranges.

[Spore]

Short-term spellcaster crowd control, stuns, interrupts.
Fruit, apples, oranges.

And then there's my Disc Priests Dispel Magic

Spoiler

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[Psyren]

Remember that druids are primarily judged by the appearance of their animal forms, not their base model. Also races with instanced starting zones are offputting (to me). Troll druids spawn in the world and can immediately interact with other non-troll characters. A goblin hunter has to endure the 'funny' goblin starting zone that is nice and creative the first time you play it. And gets increasingly annoying to the point where I am angry that this stuff is considered canon.

To roll a goblin you have to play a Jersey Shore parody and a Lost parody.

I agree, instanced starting zones suck. The Worgen one in particular goes on for waaaaay too long, with multiple cutscenes. One thing I felt they did well with Draenei and Blood Elves was give you the option of exiting partway through - Draenei start crashed on Azuremyst but then they can just leave and head to Teldrassil (or whatever is going to replace Teldrassil) without finishing all the Furbolg nonsesne or setting foot (hoof?) on Bloodmyst, while Blood Elves can set out for Undercity almost immediately too.

Speaking as someone who has had Shockwave on their action bar for most of the ability's existence, stating that an AoE stun, especially one with a long cooldown, is an additional interrupt in PvE is (IMO) way, way too strong. A Stun can be used to temporarily stop spellcasting from (most) trash and some fights with caster adds. Most bosses are immune to stuns but many still have some kind of interruptible cast. Furthermore, interrupts force the caster to move for several seconds (becasue of the lockout) while stuns force the caster to stand still (and usually immediately resume casting when the stun ends). This is a crucially important distinction when it comes to basic add control and dealing with ally damaging or mob healing/buffing ground effects. Using an AoE stun like an interrupt on threatening "trash" (higher keystone dungeons) without repositioning slightly will result in a damage spike on the tank as all the non-caster mobs affected by the stun simultaneously swing on the tank when the stun ends.

It might not work in every fight, but it's still there and it does work on some bosses. I wouldn't expect (nor want) a specific racial to be fantastic in PvE anyway since then you're just punishing everyone who didn't take that race, but a situational use is fine with me.

[Spore]

I agree, instanced starting zones suck. The Worgen one in particular goes on for waaaaay too long, with multiple cutscenes.

At least it has relevant lore for the upcoming story lines. Goblins and Pandaren might as well have teleported in from cartoon dimension. (the Pandaren one is important for the faction split but come on, Ji. Using goblin explosives to remove a thorn? I almost chose Alliance on my Pandaren, and my server has 1% alliance side).

Demon Hunter is slightly annoying too. But if you watch it ironically - yes, it's that hipster saying from 2010 - with all the fellow Illidari trying to outedge each other, it is incredibly fun. I mean, it is an elite operation against the legion to get a key item. I get that 'sacrifices' are important. But the guys just dying from the fel knowledge you unearth? Couldn't this have waited? The one dude who dies to open a portal. The other one incinerated by fel magic with the spell that you learn effortlessly.

And I think I have seen as many corrupted demon hunters and imprisoned ones that I think less NPCs are free and working.

[Icewraith]

I agree, instanced starting zones suck. The Worgen one in particular goes on for waaaaay too long, with multiple cutscenes. One thing I felt they did well with Draenei and Blood Elves was give you the option of exiting partway through - Draenei start crashed on Azuremyst but then they can just leave and head to Teldrassil (or whatever is going to replace Teldrassil) without finishing all the Furbolg nonsesne or setting foot (hoof?) on Bloodmyst, while Blood Elves can set out for Undercity almost immediately too.



It might not work in every fight, but it's still there and it does work on some bosses. I wouldn't expect (nor want) a specific racial to be fantastic in PvE anyway since then you're just punishing everyone who didn't take that race, but a situational use is fine with me.

The Blood Elf racial literally is "an extra interrupt to add to your tanking repertoire" and works on all PVE fights where interrupts are useful. The point I was trying to emphasize isn't that the Tauren racial isn't useful in PVE, it's that the cases where the Tauren racial has the same use as the Blood Elf racial decrease sharply as the level of organization required for the PVE content increases.

If you pick up an apple and say "I can add this orange to my cooking ingredients"... unless you happen to be making fruit salad, you're going to be dissapointed. Especially because apple pie and orange chicken are a lot more common than fruit salad.

[Psyren]

The Blood Elf racial literally is "an extra interrupt to add to your tanking repertoire" and works on all PVE fights where interrupts are useful. The point I was trying to emphasize isn't that the Tauren racial isn't useful in PVE, it's that the cases where the Tauren racial has the same use as the Blood Elf racial decrease sharply as the level of organization required for the PVE content increases.

If you pick up an apple and say "I can add this orange to my cooking ingredients"... unless you happen to be making fruit salad, you're going to be dissapointed. Especially because apple pie and orange chicken are a lot more common than fruit salad.

...You seem to be thinking my statement was trying to contradict you or show you up in some way. That's not the case. I was illustrating your own statement ("the Tauren stun isn't as useful in PVE") by providing one example of how it could be used there.

[The_Jackal]

The Blood Elf racial literally is "an extra interrupt to add to your tanking repertoire" and works on all PVE fights where interrupts are useful. The point I was trying to emphasize isn't that the Tauren racial isn't useful in PVE, it's that the cases where the Tauren racial has the same use as the Blood Elf racial decrease sharply as the level of organization required for the PVE content increases.

If you pick up an apple and say "I can add this orange to my cooking ingredients"... unless you happen to be making fruit salad, you're going to be dissapointed. Especially because apple pie and orange chicken are a lot more common than fruit salad.

I've still never encountered a situation in which the player's execution of their core class abilities didn't utterly swamp their racials. If you know how to play a warrior, you're going to be an excellent warrior with any set of racials. There's no question that some racials are better for a certain class, but their benefit is so marginal, even in the optimal case, that they can, for most purposes, be ignored.

[Psyren]

I've still never encountered a situation in which the player's execution of their core class abilities didn't utterly swamp their racials. If you know how to play a warrior, you're going to be an excellent warrior with any set of racials. There's no question that some racials are better for a certain class, but their benefit is so marginal, even in the optimal case, that they can, for most purposes, be ignored.

For the most part this is true, but some boss mechanics proc randomly and so having a spare/emergency ability (for when your class abilities are all on cooldown) can help, especially on a progression encounter where everyone's gear isn't quite up to snuff.

Also, some class deficiencies can be helped by racials. For example, Death Knights are weak when it comes to escape cooldowns (i.e. "run over here immediately.") The Worgen racial however gives them a speed boost, which can be the difference between your tank needing extra healing (or even a battle-rez) or not.

[The_Jackal]

For the most part this is true, but some boss mechanics proc randomly and so having a spare/emergency ability (for when your class abilities are all on cooldown) can help, especially on a progression encounter where everyone's gear isn't quite up to snuff.

Also, some class deficiencies can be helped by racials. For example, Death Knights are weak when it comes to escape cooldowns (i.e. "run over here immediately.") The Worgen racial however gives them a speed boost, which can be the difference between your tank needing extra healing (or even a battle-rez) or not.

I'll concede that the active abilities have the potential to be more impactful than the passives, however, all raid content is designed with running it without any particular class, to say nothing of a particular race/class combination, and the utility of one set of racials is going to vary wildly with the encounter in question.

At day's end, however, I'm not talking about mechanics, I'm talking about human nature, and the character of the median WoW player. This is not a forum-crawling hardcore raider, this is the average scrub you'll run into in LFR. Those make up the overpowering majority of the WoW player base, and I'm pretty confident they're picking the race/class that pleases their sense of aesthetics.

[Psyren]

Oh I agree, aesthetic concerns are probably the driving factor behind race choice (both in general, and for a certain class combo.)

But you can't also correlate the prevalence of a certain race and their aesthetic qualities either. Certainly that's a factor (albeit a subjective one) but there are plenty of others, such as certain race/class combinations simply not being available, or the races themselves not being available, or specific cosmetic options for a given race that a lot of people would like not being available, or lots of people rolling a race during expansion X when it was new and shiny before swiftly getting bored with WoW as a whole, and so on. So pulling out a survey that says more alliance druids are night elves than worgen is fine and factual, but concluding that the numbers clearly mean most people believe worgen are teh uggo is not.

[Winthur]

but concluding that the numbers clearly mean most people believe worgen are teh uggo is not.

Purely objective and entirely agreeable opinion: they are. The snarl is stupid, not even dog-like and their postures are weird.

[The_Jackal]

Purely objective and entirely agreeable opinion: they are. The snarl is stupid, not even dog-like and their postures are weird.

Seconded. If you don't want to use a pejorative term, then we can go with 'human-like and not human-like' in lieu of pretty and ugly. Look, we can all agree that attractivness is subjective, but in general, a consensus forms about beauty which is based on norms.

I really liked the look of my male Undead Warrior, I think he looked hyper-metal, but I think it's fair to say that the look I chose was not popular, and my conclusions about the developer motivations which drove the new playable races they chose is driven by that popularity. That's really the only point I'm trying to make.

At least in my own case, there are other aesthetic issues which can attract me to, or repel me from, a particular racial pick. One in particular is the Draenei voice acting, in particular their 'HAH!!! HIIIIYAH!!!' spam with all their combat animations. Sooooo annoying, and unfortunate, because I really like the look of Dreanei, but not enough to put up with the constant shrieking during combat.

Or, to take another example, the incessant butt-scratching animations of the Tauren. I'm a legendary warrior of the horde, with access to mighty artifacts of yore, and yet I comport myself like a 7-year old boy with poor hygiene. Not cool.

For that matter, one thing that always annoyed me about the Night Elves (personally) was the incessant bouncing.

[Winthur]

was the incessant bouncing.

Kinda don't get what's up with that when they were kinda supposed to be those really feral badasses that gave Grommash Hellscream the greatest murderboner of his lifetime and then they bounce around a bit. Then again, I like pretty much everything about Night Elf animations, I just always wondered why this one is so odd or even in character. Then again, the general neuterization of the Night Elves (impact on the world, mannerisms, Tyrande's decision making) is a pretty huge complaint for most people I've interacted with.

I also play with stuff mostly muted because I play this game to disassociate and I care much less about sounds when I have a podcast or whatever in the background. It definitely helps me mask unsavory aspects of the game like the Human Male sounding like a douche, Gnome Male sounding way too high-pitched and hyper no matter what, Dwarf Female sounding like Nanny Ogg and pretty much all the OG Horde females sounding like a bagpipe with a smoking addiction.

The primary issue I have with WoW models is that most males look atrocious without beards. Humans have the light reflect very weirdly from their face without facial hair, Night Elves look like Smooth Squidward without one, Gnomes generally benefit a lot from visually reducing the mass of their head, Orcs without beard draw attention to their slanted mouth. Honorable mention to the Undead who look best embracing their Raziel mode and having no lower jaw.

[Psyren]

Purely objective and entirely agreeable opinion: they are.

Heh.

Seconded. If you don't want to use a pejorative term, then we can go with 'human-like and not human-like' in lieu of pretty and ugly. Look, we can all agree that attractivness is subjective, but in general, a consensus forms about beauty which is based on norms.

Right... :-\

Well, I'm not here to try and convince you that Worgen look great. I for one hate their casting animations, and the way robes look on them. Though being a druid makes that pretty moot, since I'll be laserbearchicken half the time anyway. But do WoW's humans look any better in my opinion, heck no.

[The_Jackal]

Right... :-\

Well, I'm not here to try and convince you that Worgen look great. I for one hate their casting animations, and the way robes look on them. Though being a druid makes that pretty moot, since I'll be laserbearchicken half the time anyway. But do WoW's humans look any better in my opinion, heck no.

Yes, certain races work better, aesthetically, with certain classes. I think Worgens make great rogues, and humans look pretty good in heavy plate, and yes, to Winthur with regard to facial hair. I liked my Nelf mage, I think Dwarf Hunters look cool, and I also would accept a Goblin Hunter on a motorcycle with a Devilsaur pet. Which is kind of my point, here. I'm not saying what you should like, I'm saying that my driving goal when making a character is achieving an aesthetic, and everything else kind of takes a back seat to that.

[Neftren]

For anyone stuck on Imp Mother Agatha: Lightblood Elixirs stack, so just use about ten of them and then the encounter is pretty easy.

[Icewraith]

Welp, my raid group is as progressed as it's going to be. AOTC is done, and we don't have the raw numbers or people on the same server to think about Mythic.

We should have had this several weeks ago, but were delayed thanks to 1: Heroic Coven and 2: Real Life issues. 4 hours a week!

Heroic Coven is incredibly frustrating. It's also mostly boring, with short bursts of RNG that eventually combine to screw us over. Our raid composition is also fairly bad for handling Norgannon's Army.

[MCerberus]

I've found gnome rogues to look pretty good in northrend armor and an eyepatch. They vary super wildly depending on item set though.

Anyway, Activision/Blizzard is currently on my naughty list. Is the newest expansion shaping up to be anything worth reconsidering this for?

[Sian]

It's very tentatively shaping up to at the very least not being a total dud after Legion which is widely considered the best expansion since Wrath ...

Jury is still out through since we still know so relatively little about how the meta-plot is tied together other than Alliance and Horde start hating each other again

[Icewraith]

I've found gnome rogues to look pretty good in northrend armor and an eyepatch. They vary super wildly depending on item set though.

Anyway, Activision/Blizzard is currently on my naughty list. Is the newest expansion shaping up to be anything worth reconsidering this for?

It's too soon to say anything definite about how the next expansion will shape up until it drops in a few months, the current one I think will compare favorably to previous expansions for most people. The current expansion is probably in my top three, personally. Possibly my top two.

[Sian]

my expansion rankings would probably be Wrath>Legion>BurningCrusade>Cataclysm>Mist>Warlord s ... if you were to plug in Vanilla somewhere, it would be somewhere between BC and Cata

[Psyren]

Yeah, Legion is pretty up there. The big lore payoffs, Mythic+ as a viable alternative to raiding, the varied artifact acquisition stuff, them trying (and mostly succeeding) to make each spec play differently while all being viable, and scaling the endgame area were all great additions to the formula. Class Order Halls beat the pants off of Garrisons too as collaborative spaces.

Where they stumbled, besides WoW's general flaws of uninspiring small-scale combat and being a subscription MMO with so many quality F2P options available, was in the horrendous AP grind. By the time they improved it, they had turned off quite a number of returning players, all of my friends included.

But with all those pluses I don't think I'll be back. I have no interest in "Battling for Azeroth", and certainly none for the current faction leaders eagerly charging off with their respective idiot/villain balls. Call me when Azshara shows up to take a soaking wet dump on everything so we have to join forces again.

my expansion rankings would probably be Wrath>Legion>BurningCrusade>Cataclysm>Mist>Warlord s ... if you were to plug in Vanilla somewhere, it would be somewhere between BC and Cata

My ranking mirrors yours, except I would move Vanilla down one more slot to be just above Mists rather than just above Cata.

[Sian]

My ranking mirrors yours, except I would move Vanilla down one more slot to be just above Mists rather than just above Cata.

Well ... giving it more than a quick think, I'd probably review my listing into saying that Cataclysm and Vanilla is so close as to be practically equally good/average/bad

From what we know as of yet, I'm cautiously certain that BoA would at the most pessimistic clock in somewhere between TBC and Cata/Vanilla ... and depending on exactly how strong/durable the end-game activities are, it might be up just below Legion (... the villain ball carrying on all sides would probably drag it down below Legion in any case, unless that manage to plot themselves into very good reasonings ... and probably kill off (or at least neuter) Sylvanas since she's probably the most annoyingly hyped character in the whole setting)

[MCerberus]

It's too soon to say anything definite about how the next expansion will shape up until it drops in a few months, the current one I think will compare favorably to previous expansions for most people. The current expansion is probably in my top three, personally. Possibly my top two.

That doesn't bode well, since Legion at this point was endless hype shouting, but that could just be... you know... Warlords.

As for ratings, if we're allowed to go home again:
Wrath> BC>Legion>Vanilla>Panda>Cata>Watching all the boss kill scenes on youtube > elective foot surgery>Warlords.
Without the nostalgia goggles, Vanilla and BC take a hell of a beating though. Seriously, you got one-shot by a dude whose biggest stat is spirit, cause that's all they give him, because of RNG and a 3.6 speed weapon, but win anyway because more people on your team could afford horses.

[The Glyphstone]

And let's not forget that in Vanilla, 'adds spawning in the middle of a fight' was a amazing and innovative boss mechanic to deal with.

[Spore]

The meme part of my brain wants to make a "Muscle Wizard style" Maghar Orc Priest. The lore nerd wants to create a cool Shadowmoon "void/light shaman". I also want my priest to be a golden-eyed female blood elf.

How should I decide on a main character class when I cannot even decide on a race?

[Kish]

And let's not forget that in Vanilla, 'adds spawning in the middle of a fight' was a amazing and innovative boss mechanic to deal with.

I don't think the Deadmines boss fights were really supposed to be seen as all that amazing and innovative.

[Psyren]

The meme part of my brain wants to make a "Muscle Wizard style" Maghar Orc Priest. The lore nerd wants to create a cool Shadowmoon "void/light shaman". I also want my priest to be a golden-eyed female blood elf.

How should I decide on a main character class when I cannot even decide on a race?

Wait, are Orc Priests a thing now?

I don't think the Deadmines boss fights were really supposed to be seen as all that amazing and innovative.

Cataclysm made that place downright scary

[MCerberus]

And let's not forget that in Vanilla, 'adds spawning in the middle of a fight' was a amazing and innovative boss mechanic to deal with.

Ooh, how about "we're not going to buff hunters, we'll just make sure the raid wipes if you don't have enough"