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

[sonofzeal]

Long time casual player here, been grinding up from 1 in bits and pieces on a dozen lowbie characters, but finally got my "main" into Warlords of Draenor content and omg I'm loving it. Blasted through Frostfire Ridge, gotten all the way up to lvl 100.

Now I've got a choice - stay playing WoD and continue to level up, or level-lock myself at 100 so I can do it "properly".

Suggestions?

[Psyren]

Oh hey, I think we're just under the necro limit!

Long time casual player here, been grinding up from 1 in bits and pieces on a dozen lowbie characters, but finally got my "main" into Warlords of Draenor content and omg I'm loving it. Blasted through Frostfire Ridge, gotten all the way up to lvl 100.

Now I've got a choice - stay playing WoD and continue to level up, or level-lock myself at 100 so I can do it "properly".

Suggestions?

I see no reason why you would want to stay in an old expansion any longer than absolutely necessary myself. Even if WoD were anywhere near as good as Legion, the real fun is at endgame imo. You can always come back to WoD content at max level and actually be the superhero everyone treats you as.

What race/class/spec is your main?

[The_Jackal]

Oh hey, I think we're just under the necro limit!

I see no reason why you would want to stay in an old expansion any longer than absolutely necessary myself. Even if WoD were anywhere near as good as Legion, the real fun is at endgame imo. You can always come back to WoD content at max level and actually be the superhero everyone treats you as.

What race/class/spec is your main?

I'll second Psyren here, in a rare display of... what's the opposite of contrariety? At any rate, WoD's leveling campaign I thought was pretty good, but Legion's is no worse, so I don't think you're doing yourself any favors by putting that off. You can always go back and finish your Garrison and all the zone quests at a later date, and it doesn't feel profoundly worse flying through them with your BFA demigod-level powers. Plus there are still ways to make useful things in your garrison.

As Psyren points out, endgame in WoW is where the game design efforts are placed most, so if you really want the experience, get to the level cap, qualify for raiding, gear up and join a guild. It can be hard to find a good one, but defeating on-level raid content is one of the most satisfying things you can accomplish in gaming.

[sonofzeal]

I've been playing infrequently since Classic, but have never once had any character at whatever the current level cap was. I have, however, put a lot of time into Warcraft 1-3, so I've got a pretty strong connection to the history and lore. And this character in particular was made during Cataclysm, loathed Garrosh, and (RP server mind) strongly advocated for Trolls and Tauren to break off from Garrosh's horde entirely. To now have Vol'jin as Warchief and be running around with Thrall, Durotan, and Rexxar is giving me far too much glee. I hit lvl 100 in Frostfire Ridge alone, but want to keep the story as intact as I can because it's the story just as much as the gameplay that I'm loving.

This character is a Troll Druid. They were Feral for most of their career, but even though I'm almost purely PvE on this character, I've ended up going Resto (with Feral Affinity) and I'm loving the flow of it. Rejuvinate, hit an enemy with a few dots before they close, cat out and bite face, with multiple defensive buffs and loads of healing if I get low. My damage output seems reasonable and I can effectively tank most threats through self-healing and barkskin, and on tougher fights will end up switching forms repeatedly to get all my hots and dots going while energy recharges, then blow out the combo meter with a big burst of damage. I've never had any other character past lvl 70 so I don't know if others are this engaging at this level, but the ability to finesse my rotation on the fly without having to use tones of buttons is great.

Anyway, for the moment I intent to stick with WoD content for story reasons even if going Legion would be a big boost in power. I will eventually go, but... not yet.

I know very little about garrison optimization though. Got a Lumber Mill, Tannery (I have skinning / leatherworking), and Enchanter's Hut but am regretting the latter choice. I'm on my way to Garrison lvl 3, but 5000 and 2000 supply will take me a bit. Any suggestions for making the most of my garrison?

[Psyren]

I skipped WoD entirely so I can't help you with your garrison I'm afraid. Wowhead seems to have a guide, but given that it's several patches old I have no idea which parts might still be accurate or even helpful.

I've been playing infrequently since Classic, but have never once had any character at whatever the current level cap was. I have, however, put a lot of time into Warcraft 1-3, so I've got a pretty strong connection to the history and lore. And this character in particular was made during Cataclysm, loathed Garrosh, and (RP server mind) strongly advocated for Trolls and Tauren to break off from Garrosh's horde entirely. To now have Vol'jin as Warchief and be running around with Thrall, Durotan, and Rexxar is giving me far too much glee. I hit lvl 100 in Frostfire Ridge alone, but want to keep the story as intact as I can because it's the story just as much as the gameplay that I'm loving.

Well, if that's the case I'd recommend even more strongly getting to max level. Blizzard is experimenting with some systems in BFA that seemingly allow for a true schism within the Horde, and being able to align your character for or against some of the faction's more extreme views. It also continues Vol'jin's story in interesting ways from the abrupt hiatus in Legion. Beyond that, I don't have much.

[Traab]

Personally, my vote goes with play it through at least once per faction unless you have a specific reason to want to level cap as fast as possible. Even playing it through wont take that long, and honestly, I enjoyed the zones and such while I played through them. If all you care about is getting the phat lewts at the endgame by all means skip it. If you enjoy the lore, dont. I honestly prefer the alliance side of things in warlords story wise but the horde side is pretty good too.

[Spore]

You basically need 30 days worth og daily resets to get the most out of it. I recommend the War Mill (for transmogs), the Stables (for mounts) and your crafting skill hut (to cheaply train up your crafting).

[Psyren]

Personally, my vote goes with play it through at least once per faction unless you have a specific reason to want to level cap as fast as possible. Even playing it through wont take that long, and honestly, I enjoyed the zones and such while I played through them. If all you care about is getting the phat lewts at the endgame by all means skip it. If you enjoy the lore, dont. I honestly prefer the alliance side of things in warlords story wise but the horde side is pretty good too.

My thing though is twofold - first, again, the lore of WoD is that you are the super-elite general that everyone needs in order to survive there. So coming back at 110-120 to do all the story quests actually feels more accurate to me, than doing it with every trash mob being a challenge. And second, you have to do all the story missions to unlock Draenor flying anyway (thus getting all the lore and cinematics), with another part being a huge rep grind in Tanaan Jungle that you can make a hell of a lot faster by being able to solo the 4 world bosses that patrol the zone.

In other words, coming back to unlock flying is a lot faster than trying to do it with an at-level character, and then you can enjoy Draenor 10x more.

You basically need 30 days worth og daily resets to get the most out of it. I recommend the War Mill (for transmogs), the Stables (for mounts) and your crafting skill hut (to cheaply train up your crafting).

Ooh, is there a guide for the kind of mogs and mounts you can get from your garrison?

[Spore]

Transmogs: https://de.wowhead.com/guides/transm...ison-buildings

It is honestly just a scrap farm.

Mounts: https://de.wowhead.com/guides/vanity...m-the-garrison

Looks complicated but it is basically you daily feeding and training the mounts plus catching new ones. Pretty cool RP for my troll hunter imho (I use the grand wyvern from that still).

[The Glyphstone]

You must be German, since you linked to the German-language mirror of Wowhead. Or possibly Dutch, the two look quite similar to me at first glance.

[Spore]

Just remove the DE or put EN

[Anteros]

So I logged in for the first time in about 10 years and holy **** I'm lost. I was apparently at the bottom of the ocean for some reason? None of my skills do what I remember, all of my items and bags are gone, and I have no idea where to even start to look for some direction. They really need to introduce some sort of "here's what you missed" questline for returning players.

I guess I could make a new character and start from scratch but the whole reason I reinstalled the game was nostalgia. Not much point if everything's different and I can't even play my old character.

[Lord Raziere]

So I logged in for the first time in about 10 years and holy **** I'm lost. I was apparently at the bottom of the ocean for some reason? None of my skills do what I remember, all of my items and bags are gone, and I have no idea where to even start to look for some direction. They really need to introduce some sort of "here's what you missed" questline for returning players.

I guess I could make a new character and start from scratch but the whole reason I reinstalled the game was nostalgia. Not much point if everything's different and I can't even play my old character.

ten years?

you want wow classic, this game has undergone so many changes that you will not recognize anything about wow (I'm currently not playing it myself because I can't pay for the subscription) from ten years ago.

particularly if your from before the Cataclysm expansion. that basically revamped the entire 1-60 world. you basically missed all the plot and I doubt you'll like any of it.

[Anteros]

ten years?

you want wow classic, this game has undergone so many changes that you will not recognize anything about wow (I'm currently not playing it myself because I can't pay for the subscription) from ten years ago.

particularly if your from before the Cataclysm expansion. that basically revamped the entire 1-60 world. you basically missed all the plot and I doubt you'll like any of it.

The last expansion I played was Lich King. Classic isn't out until august, so I couldn't play it even if I wanted to. Happily, money isn't a huge issue for me so I thought I'd pick up a subscription and check things out, even though I probably won't keep playing. If nothing else I'm hoping to run through the old zones and just see what's different. I certainly won't dive into it like I used to and raid or anything.

[Lord Raziere]

The last expansion I played was Lich King. Classic isn't out until august, so I couldn't play it even if I wanted to. Happily, money isn't a huge issue for me so I thought I'd pick up a subscription and check things out, even though I probably won't keep playing. If nothing else I'm hoping to run through the old zones and just see what's different. I certainly won't dive into it like I used to and raid or anything.

yeah.....long story short: world got screwed up by Deathwing, Horde went through multiple warchiefs who screwed up things, Sylvanas is in charge last time I checked and predictably screwed everything up, Alliance got Varian back but then Varian died, Anduin is now king of Stormwind and is now a tragic peace-seeking war movie protagonist, Horde and Alliance keeps fighting one another but had to team up to win against an external threat like, three times except for Legion where they didn't team up and instead various neutral class-based organizations Charity Groups defeated the Legion instead.

thats basically what transpired in a nutshell: a long list of screw ups.

[Anteros]

That's more or less what I'd gathered, thanks. I did a quick fly through of some of the old zones and I'm not really seeing any big differences. I'm actually surprised how little changed given how heavily they marketed Cata as changing everything. It's neat to be able to fly through the old zones though.

I do have to give Blizzard credit on their world design. Even 15 years later, their game feels more like a living breathing world than any other MMO I've played. It's actually amazing how much better it is than something modern like FFXIV where there are invisible walls everywhere and the world doesn't feel open at all.

I'm gonna see if one of my friends wants to make a new character, and if not I'll probably go ahead and cancel the sub. Not exactly money well spent, but it's just 15 dollars and I've been curious for a few years now.

[Seerow]

That's more or less what I'd gathered, thanks. I did a quick fly through of some of the old zones and I'm not really seeing any big differences. I'm actually surprised how little changed given how heavily they marketed Cata as changing everything. It's neat to be able to fly through the old zones though.

now
The biggest changes were upresing everything (which was a huge deal 10 years ago, may not really be noticable today if you had not logged in in 10 years), and most of the early zones had their questing totally revamped to give a smoother leveling experience. If you really want to see the changes, rather than just doing a quick flyby, I'd recommend making that new character you mentioned.

Or you can check out a list of the changes here: https://www.wowhead.com/news=174523/...d-zone-changes

[Resileaf]

So I logged in for the first time in about 10 years

I can just imagine your character waking up from a coma, shouting "WHAT YEAR IS IT?!" and being confused at all the new stuff they've missed.

[Psyren]

Did you pick up the BFA expansion too or just resub? If you did, you get a free boost to 110 and that's honestly where I'd recommend starting. Everything outside the faction war stuff has been pretty decent story-wise. And WoW still has the best raiding in the biz if that's your bag.

And speaking of bag:

...all of my items and bags are gone,

Unless these were quest items (which no longer show up in bags at all), this sounds like you got hacked and stripped or something. I'd put in a ticket if you can remember what's missing. Do you still have all your gold?

[Sian]

Did you pick up the BFA expansion too or just resub? If you did, you get a free boost to 110 and that's honestly where I'd recommend starting. Everything outside the faction war stuff has been pretty decent story-wise. And WoW still has the best raiding in the biz if that's your bag.

And speaking of bag:



Unless these were quest items (which no longer show up in bags at all), this sounds like you got hacked and stripped or something. I'd put in a ticket if you can remember what's missing. Do you still have all your gold?

Then again, unless it was really rare vanity items, it’ll likely either be worthless or replaceable in no time

[Anteros]

now
The biggest changes were upresing everything (which was a huge deal 10 years ago, may not really be noticable today if you had not logged in in 10 years), and most of the early zones had their questing totally revamped to give a smoother leveling experience. If you really want to see the changes, rather than just doing a quick flyby, I'd recommend making that new character you mentioned.

Or you can check out a list of the changes here: https://www.wowhead.com/news=174523/...d-zone-changes

I made a new character and played for a few hours last night. So far the differences are...non-existent? I mean, it's Orcs and Wargs in the starting area instead of Defias and Wolves but functionally it's the exact same quests with a (very) slightly different coat of paint. The biggest disappointment is how easy everything is though. You should not be able to solo Hogger as a level 8 while only losing 1/3rd of your life, or faceroll 5 mobs at the same time with no danger, and I did both of those things. If you tried that in Vanilla you wouldn't even get one mob down. One of the biggest complaints that I've seen about WoW over the last decade is that the game turned into a theme park with no danger or difficulty and so far it seems that's true.

I can just imagine your character waking up from a coma, shouting "WHAT YEAR IS IT?!" and being confused at all the new stuff they've missed.

Pretty much. Although I do wonder how he survived in a coma at the bottom of an ocean for all those years. Or how he got there in the first place.

Did you pick up the BFA expansion too or just resub? If you did, you get a free boost to 110 and that's honestly where I'd recommend starting. Everything outside the faction war stuff has been pretty decent story-wise. And WoW still has the best raiding in the biz if that's your bag.

And speaking of bag:



Unless these were quest items (which no longer show up in bags at all), this sounds like you got hacked and stripped or something. I'd put in a ticket if you can remember what's missing. Do you still have all your gold?

The only part of WoW I ever enjoyed was questing through the world and exploring. Paying money in order to skip all of the content that I already paid for and jump to the endgame grind is not something I'll be doing. If leveling isn't enjoyable I just won't play rather than pay extra money to skip it.

I don't really remember what I lost so it doesn't matter too much that my bags were empty. The gear is meaningless so that's whatever...although my bank used to be full of novelty items and nostalgic gear from vanilla and it's annoying to lose those. The biggest annoyance was that the bags themselves were missing. I don't think it's worth opening a ticket since I'd be hard pressed to even remember the names of more than a few of the items without a lot of Googling, and I doubt they would restore them anyway.

[Lord Raziere]

I made a new character and played for a few hours last night. So far the differences are...non-existent? I mean, it's Orcs and Wargs in the starting area instead of Defias and Wolves but functionally it's the exact same quests with a (very) slightly different coat of paint. The biggest disappointment is how easy everything is though. You should not be able to solo Hogger as a level 8 while only losing 1/3rd of your life, or faceroll 5 mobs at the same time with no danger, and I did both of those things. If you tried that in Vanilla you wouldn't even get one mob down. One of the biggest complaints that I've seen about WoW over the last decade is that the game turned into a theme park with no danger or difficulty and so far it seems that's true.

well...I can't say your wrong, but imagine trying to level from 1-120 with your desired level of difficulty, it still takes forever with the leveling made to be smoother from 1-60 but 60-80 is still pretty much the same as it was back in the day and bit of a slog to get through in comparison. open world questing is pretty much all solo stuff now, and if you want groups and more difficulty, you queue up the looking for group finder to get a group to run an instance. pretty much all difficulty is reserved for the latest expansions now. heck, during Legion we used to be even MORE powerful due to artifacts but then everyone got nerfed in BfA.

and even when you get to the cap, all we've got to occupy ourselves are tedious grinds to up reputations for rewards and stupid azerite gear. make mes wish there was another way to get those allied races.

[Anteros]

well...I can't say your wrong, but imagine trying to level from 1-120 with your desired level of difficulty, it still takes forever with the leveling made to be smoother from 1-60 but 60-80 is still pretty much the same as it was back in the day and bit of a slog to get through in comparison. open world questing is pretty much all solo stuff now, and if you want groups and more difficulty, you queue up the looking for group finder to get a group to run an instance. pretty much all difficulty is reserved for the latest expansions now. heck, during Legion we used to be even MORE powerful due to artifacts but then everyone got nerfed in BfA.

and even when you get to the cap, all we've got to occupy ourselves are tedious grinds to up reputations for rewards and stupid azerite gear. make mes wish there was another way to get those allied races.

It's a difference in perspective for sure. For me, there's no rush to get to the level cap because questing, leveling, and exploring is the part of the game I enjoy. So I wouldn't mind the prospect of leveling up taking a few months because that's exactly what I'm looking for in a game. To explore a fantasy world with my friends. What I'm not looking for is a grinding checklist where I do the exact same quests and raids every day, which is why I checked out during Wrath after dailies became a thing.

I understand that a lot of people enjoy feeling powerful, and being max level with all the best gear is what drives them, but to me it's meaningless without actually enjoying the journey to that point. I imagine a lot of players feel the same way, which is why so many people play on private servers or are clamoring for classic.


On a semi-unrelated note, it seems like they really stripped out the RPG aspect of the game. There don't seem to be any meaningful build choices at all other than pvp talents.

[The Glyphstone]

The opposite, for some people. Talents are meant to be situational and playstyle flexible, instead of the old paradigm where you just took your +1% points on the way to talents that mattered. Now they all matter, and you're encouraged to change them at need unless you're a raider following the 'optimal' loadout.

[Anteros]

The opposite, for some people. Talents are meant to be situational and playstyle flexible, instead of the old paradigm where you just took your +1% points on the way to talents that mattered. Now they all matter, and you're encouraged to change them at need unless you're a raider following the 'optimal' loadout.

It doesn't seem like a meaningful decision to me if you can just change them out on the fly, but I'll admit I'm obviously not very experienced with it.

[The Glyphstone]

It doesn't seem like a meaningful decision to me if you can just change them out on the fly, but I'll admit I'm obviously not very experienced with it.

I guess I mean more that the talents themselves matter. Old style had 51 point trees, but only 2 or maybe 3 of those 51 actually changed your gameplay in any way. The rest were filler with miniscule stat increases. Now you only get..8? talents, but every single one of them will alter or improve your playstyle the way an old 20/51 talent did.

[Anteros]

I guess I mean more that the talents themselves matter. Old style had 51 point trees, but only 2 or maybe 3 of those 51 actually changed your gameplay in any way. The rest were filler with miniscule stat increases. Now you only get..8? talents, but every single one of them will alter or improve your playstyle the way an old 20/51 talent did.

I don't share that opinion. Sure each individual talent point didn't mean much, but together they added up to lots of different and unique builds. Plus, it was just nice to have something to look forward to each level.

[Spore]

On one side I like being able to adapt. On the other I usually just pick the good talents with the lowest mental maintenance because my head sure is occupied with other things during a raid encounter to be honest. But that might be the casual healer in me speaking. I don't do well in progress situations. I prefer security and (over)healing to mana efficiency and maximum healing capacity.

[Anteros]

I've been questing a bit more and one new mechanic that I do really like is the possibility to get a randomly higher tier of item on quest rewards. Apparently it's a low level mechanic only, but I think it's a neat idea that allows a bit of individuality to characters when you end up with a slightly different load-out than someone else your level. They should implement it on higher levels as well.

[The Glyphstone]

I think that sticks with you all the way to the end. Not sure what its called in BoA, but Legion had Warforged and Titanforged gear that was a random.chance to upgrade of almost any piece of max level gear, either boss drops or quests. Irrelevant when you dont raid, but its there.