Why were we motivated to war with the Horde in MoP? Because Garrosh & Theramore. An Orc.
Who stole the Divine Bell, spurring the content of patch 5.1? Orcs.
Why did we have Sha troubles in Pandaria? Because Orcs.
What character drove most of the narrative in Pandaria? Garrosh. An Orc.
Who was the major antagonist in patch 5.3? Orcs.
Who was the major antagonist 5.4? Orcs.
Who precipitated WoD? Orcs.
Who were the main antagonists in WoD? Orcs.
It's been several years of every scrap of narrative being driven by Orcs. It's bland, it's creatively bankrupt, it's boring. There hasn't been an overarching story line driven by anything other than an Orc since WOTLK.
1) Old gods and bugs
2) Demons
3) Scourge
4) Dragons
5) Sha + old gods (arguably Orcs)
6) Orcs
7) Demons.
I think a lot of the "heavy Orc" feeling has to do with how long the Siege of Orgrimmar dragged out followed immediately by a continuation of that orc storyline. Maybe it should have been the Siege of Thunder Bluff
So far Legion is shaping up to be a refreshing change of pace. Elves, Titans and Demons is a good theme, and some bright High Fantasy raid would be a good visual shake up to all the rocks, iron and fire.
AU Gul'dan finding MU Illidan that already absorbed the power of dead MU Gul'dan feels a bit like a convoluted comic bookery, but ok.
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited August 2015
The complaints I'm talking about are from people complaining about the racial type of content no matter what the content is. "Ugh trolls. Ugh pandas. Ugh orcs. Ugh fire. Ugh elves. Ugh demons. Ugh Egypt, Ugh dragons." etc. The kind of people that complain just to complain. Like, if you're (general "you're" not pointing to anyone here) gonna be that kinda person, at least make the complaints valid.
I've played WoW almost nonstop since mid BC, Orcs haven't taken up that much space to me. And even when one race or antagonist is set as the target, there is still a diversity added to it all. It's never been just one thing. I think what some of the people making the complaints I mentioned are really saying is that they want to see more of underdeveloped races/cultures, and or completely new things.
For instance WoD returns the Arakoa, seeing them in their uncursed from, learning more about their history and culture, and more is very intriguing. I would have liked to see even more from them and hope we do in the future. I'm pretty sure Prime mentioned something along the lines of "Arakoa playable race please!" and I would be so game for that.
Also the Horde players steal the bell, so on my Tauren, I snuck into Darnassus and stole that thing. Still under orders though, so it changes nothing in regards to your point.
I absolutely love some of the "sub-plot" races and lore. You can tell that some writer, somewhere inside the halls of Blizzard, has put tons of love and work into creating believable, immersive parts of this world that most players might never even give a second glance at, or just blast through the areas looking for exclamation points, quest marker targets, and question marks before cruising on through to the next area.
Not many PvPers on IC, but there's a bunch of new info on Legion PvP.
Legion PvP
There won't be gear with Resilience, PvP Power, dual item levels, or gear specifically made for PvP.
The team doesn't want people to feel that they must have PvP gear to participate in PvP.
When you enter a battleground or arena, the game will set your stats from your spec, not your gear. This means all of your stats will come from a template specific to your spec. If one spec isn't doing well in PvP, their spec's template can be tuned individually.
PvP talents plus the spec stat templates will allow the team to tune balance in arenas and battlegrounds much better than they ever have been able to do before.
PvP right now uses gear as a progression system. Once players get their full set of gear, many of them are done.
PvP Talents try to take the place of the progression that came from gear.
Trinkets, set bonuses, and enchants will not be active in PvP.
Right now players stack enchants, set bonuses, and trinkets, lining them all up at once to do a lot of damage. Outside of when all of those are up, players don't feel like they are doing much damage. This should help to make sustained damage a bigger part of PvP.
Once players reach the max PvP level, they can reset it to gain a Prestige level. This gives access to different cosmetic rewards.
When a player reaches PvP level 10 (roughly 20% of the way there), they will have unlocked an option in every row.
The CC break trinket has become very important in PvP, so adding it as a PvP talent will offset the loss of active trinkets. There will be some other options in that row that might be useful, such as reducing CC times by 20%.
The team hasn't decided exactly what they are going to do with the Human racial. They could leave it alone and offer a different talent in that row to Humans. The racial plus the new options could be too good.
As you get better gear, your stats are increased a smaller amount. For example, every 5 item levels may give you a 1% stat increase. This way gear still will increase your power, but it won't give you a huge advantage.
There are plans for players to be able to get great gear from PvP, but it may not be as easy as it is today. It may be easier for high rated players to get better gear than more casual players.
You won't have to raid to get the best gear for PvP.
Warlords PvP
Spectator mode and the new player run tournaments have been exciting.
The team was happy with how skirmishes worked out. It gave players who didn't have their arena partners online the opportunity to play some arenas, as well as other players that wanted a break from leveling or gearing up.
Battleground strongboxes worked out well. Players were able to get different gear in a more unpredictable way.
The Group Finder was a great addition. It allowed people to find others to play with.
Ashran fell short of where the team and players would have liked to see it go. During the ramp up to Warlords, there were a lot of people excited about a new world PvP zone that had a large area and epic battles.
The team didn't execute on that idea. They have tried to make changes based on player behavior and feedback, making mistakes along the way. They have done things like putting exclusive rewards in Ashran to make them feel special, which resulted in lots of negative feedback.
The current state of Ashran can be fun for people that are interested in that type of experience. The people who don't want to do Ashran don't have to.
They have learned a lot from the experience about rewards and driving players to fight each other. Hopefully next time the team tries something like Ashran they can execute better.
The dual item level system worked, but it was ugly. Players had two item levels on their gear, with their item level increasing suddenly in combat, which means they couldn't see their states. PvE gear also hit the invisible item level ceiling. Players who didn't PvP full time still felt compelled to go and get PvP gear so that they could do PvP. It was a cool system, but it fell short in a lot of ways.
Hmmm...Maybe I'll try PVP again with this patch. Seems more intriguing if I don't have to show up and feel underequiped without PVP gear.
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited September 2015
DragonCon Panel news in the same style has Thrax's post for consistency.
Demon Hunters
* Demon Hunters currently planned to start at 98.
* Demon Hunters can use 1H Swords, in addition to Glaives.
* Demon Hunter Metamorphosis is a short transformation with inner demon visuals, not continuous form.
Stats
* Multistrike is gone, other secondary/tertiary stats are changed.
Professions
* Profession questlines set to return.
* Exploration and Dungeons important for Professions.
* Very little or no cooldown gated profession materials for crafting.
* Stage Upgrades work differently - destroy old item, get Obliterium material to create better item.
* Still use some WoD settings like max of 3 crafted items on at a time, and being able to work the current game recipes at rank 1.
Transmog
* Transmog system in Legion is similar to Diablo and possibly account-wide.
For those that don't play Diablo, whenever you loot an item, it's appearance will be permanently saved to your transmog library. Imagine a transmog tab in the collections menu.
* No extra Void Storage tab planned--transmog system should help with bag space.
Classes
* Classes in Legion emphasize fantasy of specs and some are even getting renamed.
* Survival Hunters, who are melee in Legion, get Harpoon ability to draw mobs towards them.
* Some classes/specs get new resources. Shadow Priests get Insanity for example.
Other
* Adventure Mode may be coming to Legion - no details, but something that may be discussed at BlizzCon.
* A previous tweet stated no major glyphs, but was clarified to say there were simply no new major glyphs.
2
ChoochK-Pop authority™, Pho KingMadison Heights, MIIcrontian
Stats
* Multistrike is gone, other secondary/tertiary stats are changed.
What the fuck?? /gamequit
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
Since it wasn't elaborated upon, I'm guessing Blizz is thinking something like "It's basically just another form of crit. We don't want redundant stats."
I know for Mistweaver's it's another form of Spirit since Mana Regen potential skyrockets with it. I feel that use of it is pretty interesting though I could easily see them swapping the mechanic's rule to "Based on crit chance" instead of "based on Multistrike chance." Not sure how I feel about it overall.
They'll definitely be elaborating on that change in the future.
@RahnalH102 said:
There are multiples of those air ships, may not be the Stormbreaker.
Rahnal pls
Also, I was unaware there was more than one until right now, when I looked back over my whole wow career. I can legitimately only think of the broken airship in Deepholm - all the other airships I think of have been the Stormbreaker.
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited November 2015
I know of 4 for Alliance, and 6 for Horde.
I will now go on an adventure to get the names and we shall see.
Edit: 5 instances of an Alliance airship that I know of. 2 cases it's the Stormbreaker in Icecrown. The Skyfire shows up twice, in Dragon Soul, and on the Wandering Isle (Panda starting zone). The one in Deepholm is unnamed apparently.
If they only made 3 and never recovered the one from Deepholm, then yes that's the Stormbreaker. I highly doubt they would only make 3 though.
1
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited November 2015
Also some notes about Legion from today's presentation:
On leveling:
Leveling zones and dungeons will scale to your level.
This enables you to progress through the zones and story in whichever order you want.
Though the rewards scale, they do not scale to 110
Surumar does not scale. Will only be 110.
5 leveling dungeons.
On Endgame Questing
Blizz says they are trying to get the best of both worlds of the MoP and WoD dailies.
Areas on your map will be marked, daily and weekly, head out and do what you want.
Things like mini-games, professions, and world bosses will also be used in this system.
On Endgame Dungeons
5 Endgame dungeons.
Challenge mode will work like Greater Rifts from Diablo.
You get keystones for these Challenge Modes. The keystone will have a varying level to it. This determines the difficulty of the dungeon, and thus the quality of the rewards.
The difficulty is tweaked in both increased health & damage, and a variety of other modifiers such as "all mobs in the dungeon now deal double damage when below 30-35% health."
Intend for Challenge modes to be on par with raiding.
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited November 2015
Second and last day of BlizzCon notes:
On Professions:
Profession UI Upgrade
The above point includes a favorites tab, an unlearned tab, and an expanded window for less cluttered viewing.
You're only able to learn a couple recipes from your trainer at the beginning.
Some recipes will have ranks, up to Rank 3.
These ranks make the recipe more efficient to make.
Most recipes will be acquired either trough a questline specific to your profession or by world/dungeon drops and exploration.
Mining and Herbs nodes are shared now.
Similar WoD style upgrade path, but through only 1 shared material.
Main way to get this material is by breaking down equipment for it.
Trying to make each professions products special and unique.
Examples include Engie goggles being made of gun parts and have an active to shoot at a target.
Jewelcrafters gear will come with a guaranteed socket and possibly with a class specific bonus.
No more Major Glyphs. Important major glyphs are baked into abilities now. Minor glyphs are staying but are consumables applied to the spell/ability.
On Gear and Stats:
Fleshing out the world drop system.
Wants this gear to be relevant throughout the expansion.
Is random, small chance drop but can be targetted.
These world drops will be Legendary and offer strong effects depending on playstyle, role, class, or spec.
Example: "Everytime your DoTs/HoTs tick, they have a chance to tick for the full initial value instead of the regular tick."
All Legion items can be affected by the Warforged system.
Duplicate loot on Personal loot can be traded to those eligible.
Multistrike removed because they felt it was just another form of Crit.
On Transmog:
Reaffirmed what they said before.
The look will be added to your Wardrobe collection when the item in question becomes Soulbound.
Wardrobe is account-wide.
Addtional Transmog UI. Looks like "MogIt" addon (shows the item on your model instead of just the items icon.)
"Outfits" feature - Saved sets that can also be shared easily. Can be made spec specific.
Shirts, tabards, and weapon enchants will now also be transmoggable.
Quest history will be scanned and all possible transmog rewards, whether you choose that item or not, will be added to the wardrobe. (omigosh I can get my green WotLK Nesingwary cannon back!)
Old vanilla quests/deleted quests will also be counted.
Shoulders can now be hidden.
On Class Changes:
Goal for this expansion was to make all the classes and specs more defined and unique.
Most specs are changing up to various degrees. Survival, Shadow, Demonology, Subtlety, and Outlaw specs are changing up the most.
Outlaw is what Combat rogues are changing into. Supposed to embody the pirate/thief/bandit/etc fantasy.
Subtlety is supposed to be "a true ninja".
Shadow Dance as a passive - 20% chance per combo point spent to reenter stealth, and that stealth does not break on damage. Also - Shadow strike teleports rogue to target and does double ambush damage.
Shadow Priests now use Insanity instead of mana or orbs.
Builds up though attacks. Attacks grow stronger as Insanity increases until Priest enters Void Form.
Void Form greatly increases damage and interactions of abilities until it depletes.
Demonology will be about summoning and empowering demons. Restarted from scratch. Is all new.
All Warlocks are back to Soul Shard system.
Survival hunters are melee and pet. Some of it's unique ranged abilities from before are being moved to Marksman.
Death Knights only have 1 type of rune now.
Only Restoration shamans will have mana now. Enhancement and Elemental will use a build-spender resource based on Maelstrom Weapon.
Discipline Priest healing will be more about the damage.
Buffs allies. Said allies get healed based on how you attack.
Will still have absorbs. They won't be as strong as now.
Base Druid abilities pruned per spec. No basic resto/boomkin/bear abilities when in Cat spec.
New "Affinity" talent row for Druids. Give you abilites based on "spec" choosen.
Example is Bear can choose Cat or Boomkin Affinity, so that when not currently tanking a boss or mob, can pack on the dps.
Guardian Druid's tanky-ness will be about more health and toughness rather then dodge.
Innervate returns but only to Boomkins.
Boomkins get a mechanics redesign. Goal is to play the game not the "UI game." Now have builders and spenders with different ideal uses.
Fury Warrior charges (as in "ammo" not 'dash") are pruned.
Arcane charges are now a resource for Arcane mages in additoin to mana.
Also get a new mastery that increases total mana.
On Talents and Spec Changing:
No more themed rows. The above Druid Affinity row being a pseudo-exception intent wise.
Parts of similar themes are now spread out throughout the tree. If you want to be a CC master, you can take all the CC talents available.
Rows now try to follow a "Active vs. Proc vs. Passive" style.
Much more spec specific talents. About 2/3s of the talents per tree should be spec specific in Legion.
They like how Fury warriors have it currently. "Core rotation is simple but lots of engagement through talents. You can add 5 active abilities through talents that change your rotation - or opt not to."
"Now you can increase your active abilities if you want or you could take more passives. This lets players control the complexity of their spec/playstyle"
Talents may no longer have a cost to change. As they expect you to be changing them a lot per fight should you wish.
They want you to want to stay in one spec, and for most of the changing to come from just swapping talents around.
On Roles:
Tanks no longer have Resolve. Fulfilled a need that will no longer be present in Legion.
The "need" was for certain tank abilities to have a little help mattering as active mitigation.
Now they have 'em baked in or added new abilities for the spec.
The active mitigation is to be toned down a bit in Legion. They felt it mattered a bit too much in WoD.
Goal is to make it so that it's still important and a good show of tanking skill, but not unforgiving for new tanks.
Healers will be stronger damage when ti comes to damage dealing.
Keep in mind that any of this could still change between now and the summer release of Legion.
Nor was everything that was covered at Blizzcon listed here. Plenty of details I chose not to include, cause I don't know if they would matter to any of you (any holy priests out there?), or the info was already covered before.
Comments
It's been several years of every scrap of narrative being driven by Orcs. It's bland, it's creatively bankrupt, it's boring. There hasn't been an overarching story line driven by anything other than an Orc since WOTLK.
I kinda disagree a little bit; the Cataclysm storyline was driven by dragons. (In b4 green jesus)
We need a quasi techno race of enemies. *
* I have no knowledge of lore.
I straight up completely forgot about that whole expansion. Okay, so it's only been like three years since we had something besides Orcs.
THE ETHERIALS
So we have:
1) Old gods and bugs
2) Demons
3) Scourge
4) Dragons
5) Sha + old gods (arguably Orcs)
6) Orcs
7) Demons.
I think a lot of the "heavy Orc" feeling has to do with how long the Siege of Orgrimmar dragged out followed immediately by a continuation of that orc storyline. Maybe it should have been the Siege of Thunder Bluff
LEGION: BURNING CRUSADE II
So far Legion is shaping up to be a refreshing change of pace. Elves, Titans and Demons is a good theme, and some bright High Fantasy raid would be a good visual shake up to all the rocks, iron and fire.
AU Gul'dan finding MU Illidan that already absorbed the power of dead MU Gul'dan feels a bit like a convoluted comic bookery, but ok.
The complaints I'm talking about are from people complaining about the racial type of content no matter what the content is. "Ugh trolls. Ugh pandas. Ugh orcs. Ugh fire. Ugh elves. Ugh demons. Ugh Egypt, Ugh dragons." etc. The kind of people that complain just to complain. Like, if you're (general "you're" not pointing to anyone here) gonna be that kinda person, at least make the complaints valid.
I've played WoW almost nonstop since mid BC, Orcs haven't taken up that much space to me. And even when one race or antagonist is set as the target, there is still a diversity added to it all. It's never been just one thing. I think what some of the people making the complaints I mentioned are really saying is that they want to see more of underdeveloped races/cultures, and or completely new things.
For instance WoD returns the Arakoa, seeing them in their uncursed from, learning more about their history and culture, and more is very intriguing. I would have liked to see even more from them and hope we do in the future. I'm pretty sure Prime mentioned something along the lines of "Arakoa playable race please!" and I would be so game for that.
Also the Horde players steal the bell, so on my Tauren, I snuck into Darnassus and stole that thing. Still under orders though, so it changes nothing in regards to your point.
There's a third-party program that could make this happen.
You pretend that everything is a godless killing machine?
I absolutely love some of the "sub-plot" races and lore. You can tell that some writer, somewhere inside the halls of Blizzard, has put tons of love and work into creating believable, immersive parts of this world that most players might never even give a second glance at, or just blast through the areas looking for exclamation points, quest marker targets, and question marks before cruising on through to the next area.
In no particular order:
Not many PvPers on IC, but there's a bunch of new info on Legion PvP.
Legion PvP
Warlords PvP
Battleground strongboxes worked out well. Players were able to get different gear in a more unpredictable way.
The Group Finder was a great addition. It allowed people to find others to play with.
Ashran fell short of where the team and players would have liked to see it go. During the ramp up to Warlords, there were a lot of people excited about a new world PvP zone that had a large area and epic battles.
Hmmm...Maybe I'll try PVP again with this patch. Seems more intriguing if I don't have to show up and feel underequiped without PVP gear.
DragonCon Panel news in the same style has Thrax's post for consistency.
Demon Hunters
* Demon Hunters currently planned to start at 98.
* Demon Hunters can use 1H Swords, in addition to Glaives.
* Demon Hunter Metamorphosis is a short transformation with inner demon visuals, not continuous form.
Stats
* Multistrike is gone, other secondary/tertiary stats are changed.
Professions
* Profession questlines set to return.
* Exploration and Dungeons important for Professions.
* Very little or no cooldown gated profession materials for crafting.
* Stage Upgrades work differently - destroy old item, get Obliterium material to create better item.
* Still use some WoD settings like max of 3 crafted items on at a time, and being able to work the current game recipes at rank 1.
Transmog
* Transmog system in Legion is similar to Diablo and possibly account-wide.
For those that don't play Diablo, whenever you loot an item, it's appearance will be permanently saved to your transmog library. Imagine a transmog tab in the collections menu.
* No extra Void Storage tab planned--transmog system should help with bag space.
Classes
* Classes in Legion emphasize fantasy of specs and some are even getting renamed.
* Survival Hunters, who are melee in Legion, get Harpoon ability to draw mobs towards them.
* Some classes/specs get new resources. Shadow Priests get Insanity for example.
Other
* Adventure Mode may be coming to Legion - no details, but something that may be discussed at BlizzCon.
* A previous tweet stated no major glyphs, but was clarified to say there were simply no new major glyphs.
What the fuck?? /gamequit
Since it wasn't elaborated upon, I'm guessing Blizz is thinking something like "It's basically just another form of crit. We don't want redundant stats."
I know for Mistweaver's it's another form of Spirit since Mana Regen potential skyrockets with it. I feel that use of it is pretty interesting though I could easily see them swapping the mechanic's rule to "Based on crit chance" instead of "based on Multistrike chance." Not sure how I feel about it overall.
They'll definitely be elaborating on that change in the future.
Glad I just dropped 10k on gems
Another interview but not much revealed that wasn't already revealed. One thing of note is:
"The idea for Legion started 2.5 - 3 years ago and the Warcraft team debated which expansion would come first, Warlords or Legion."
Legion Pre-order available now
Noooooo the stormbreaker!
this is just the worst thing
Hey it had to go sometime!
There are multiples of those air ships, may not be the Stormbreaker.
Rahnal pls
Also, I was unaware there was more than one until right now, when I looked back over my whole wow career. I can legitimately only think of the broken airship in Deepholm - all the other airships I think of have been the Stormbreaker.
I know of 4 for Alliance, and 6 for Horde.
I will now go on an adventure to get the names and we shall see.
Edit: 5 instances of an Alliance airship that I know of. 2 cases it's the Stormbreaker in Icecrown. The Skyfire shows up twice, in Dragon Soul, and on the Wandering Isle (Panda starting zone). The one in Deepholm is unnamed apparently.
If they only made 3 and never recovered the one from Deepholm, then yes that's the Stormbreaker. I highly doubt they would only make 3 though.
Also some notes about Legion from today's presentation:
On leveling:
On Endgame Questing
On Endgame Dungeons
Second and last day of BlizzCon notes:
On Professions:
On Gear and Stats:
On Transmog:
On Class Changes:
On Talents and Spec Changing:
On Roles:
Keep in mind that any of this could still change between now and the summer release of Legion.
Nor was everything that was covered at Blizzcon listed here. Plenty of details I chose not to include, cause I don't know if they would matter to any of you (any holy priests out there?), or the info was already covered before.
Also, why Markdown no want work?
Fixed markdown.