The Queue: Desideratum

It’s not a secret that I was both very happy with and very disappointed with Warlords of Draenor. I felt, and I still feel, that the 90 to 100 game was nearly perfect — the premise was executed well, it was easy to follow considering it was an alternate timeline we were visiting, the voice acting was superb. The cracks only started to show once I hit level 100 and it felt like there wasn’t anything else to do once I got there. We never got to see the zone I was the most excited about, for example. Farahlon never made it to the live game, and we never even tried to explore the southern continent on the original Draenor maps Blizzard produced for Warlords.

Time has, to a degree, vindicated Warlords — without it, we wouldn’t have had Legion, and this has been exactly what we needed from an expansion. I’m a bit leery that Battle for Azeroth has some huge shoes to fill in that regard. But as of right now, I’m sitting here remembering Warlords of Draenor and how that expansive, broad, astonishing world ended up not quite measuring up. Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe my expectations were too high.

Let’s talk about stuff.

It doesn’t surprise me at all. Azshara was one of the most powerful mortal spellcasters ever to exist, so astonishingly powerful that when Mannoroth met her he realized he couldn’t take her. Her breadth and depth of power was so vast that he estimated it would take someone on the level of an Archimonde to balk her, and he wasn’t even sure about that. Note, Mannoroth was utterly subservient to Archimonde, so imagine how disconcerting it would have been for him to admit to himself that his master might not have been able to defeat a mortal woman in combat.

Azshara herself felt that only Sargeras could possibly be her equal. She did not worship Sargeras as a god, she didn’t seek to serve him — she believed herself to be his peer. And she may not have been far off. Please keep in mind this was before the Old God N’Zoth rescued her from drowning when Zin-Azshari ended up on the bottom of the sea, so between the gift of the Old God and the 10,000 years that have passed, she’s had plenty of time to grow in power. As powerful as Sharas’dal is, Azshara wouldn’t see herself as needing it, or anything else. She is all sufficient to any need she may have.

So yeah, I have no problem with her taking this awesomely powerful Artifact weapon and just sticking it with some servants to watch. She’s just that arrogant.

Look, I used to be the guy who played to grind out every last fragment of efficiency from the game. I still remember the effort I put in to get my tank’s health up for tanking Kael’thas in Tempest Keep. I went all out — gems, badge gear, you name it and I went out and got it until I had more health on a Warrior tank than our Druid tanks, and that’s back in BC when being a super-high health mana sponge who dodged all attacks was how Druids tanked. But I managed, because we needed a kill, and I was determined to get it for us.

Eventually, all players move from “I must do everything possible even as the reward for the time I’m putting it decreases” to “Eh, I’ll do some quests and then log” in my experience, if they didn’t start at the second. It’s just the nature of the game. Players who aren’t happy doing that grind? They’ll stop, one way or another. Blizzard doesn’t need to alter the formula here — it’s self correcting.

He doesn’t die in the Nether.

Even on Mythic, he doesn’t die until after he returns to Draenor, because he sends Gul’dan through a portal from Draenor, and then dies.

UsagiSennin is right. The events of Legion require Archimonde to have sent Gul’dan to Azeroth, as we see in the cinematic. We clearly see Archimonde do this from Draenor itself.

Let me answer your question with a question — are you spending money or converting in-game gold to Blizzard account balance via tokens? Because I know a lot of players who will be doing exactly that, and thus, not spending a dime of their own money to get their Allied Race alts boosted.

Now, does that make it any less of a cash grab? I honestly don’t know. But then again, I also don’t care. If Blizzard was truly going around trying to milk every last drop of money out of us, they’d do stuff like make the Mobile Auction House a paid service and watch the money roll in from the dedicated AH players who would have eagerly spent money every month to keep that functionality. A lot of the reason for level boost prices is to disincline players to use them — they knew that players would just run out and buy more copies of the game to get the level boost and trade alts between accounts once they were leveled, so they let us buy the level boost itself and priced it at about the same price as a new copy of the game.

If Blizzard wanted to roll around in our money, they’d drop the price to $40 and watch as altoholics blitzed them spending $120 to level three alts at once. Heck, the existence of Heritage Armor shows that they wanted to give you a reason to level your Allied Race character to max. If they just wanted you to spend money and skip all that, they have ways to get you to do it.

I mean, I’m going to have to roll like six new Warrior alts. I get that it’s a bit of a slog. But Blizzard letting you spend money on level boosts and race and faction change isn’t a bad thing in my opinion.

See, I have some feelings that are contradictory about all this.

Like that Mag’har Heritage armor, with the chestplate that’s basically just a ring and would look awesome for a shirtless mog? Well, great, if you’re planning on  playing a Mag’har. Otherwise? Useless.

And because you have to level to get it, it means my Lightforged Draenei won’t be able to get it for a while yet, and it’s not even a good look for him because he’s a Warrior anyway.

I understand they wanted it to be an incentive to level, but in the end I’m dissatisfied with it. Making it so any Orc could wear the Mag’har set or any Human the Kul Tiras set would at least reward you on your main for leveling the alt all the way, yeah? I’d think that would be enough.

Okay, that’s the Queue for this week. If you follow me on Twitter, you know why I’m a bit groggy tonight. Gonna go rest now. Take care everyone. See you next week.