A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

Tag: World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

WoW: Return from the Shadowlands

Return from the Shadowlands

We are at the end of another expansion. I cannot believe I will soon be entering the 10th expansion of this game. While I have taken a couple of breaks, here and there, I have played through all of the content of each expansion since I started playing back in Vanilla. Not Classic! Classic is not as good as Vanilla on any day. As our heroes return from the Shadowlands, let’s reflect on this ninth expansion.

Keep in mind that, as I am writing this, the pre-patch has not yet launched. However I do not expect the events of the pre-patch to affect my final thoughts of the Shadowlands expansion. In my opinion, the pre-patch is content that is linked to Dragonflight and is, therefore, exempt from this expansion.

WoW: Blizzard’s Timing Sucks!

How long have we been waiting for the 9.1 patch? Shadowlands released on October 13th and the patch comes out tomorrow. So that’s approximately 260 days! I’ll admit, if I didn’t have alts I like to level, I would have suspended my account again and played something else. Yea, yea, “but the pandemic!”. I work as a developer too in an enterprise environment and we work just fine remotely. In fact we haven’t pushed a deadline or missed a deadline during the whole pandemic. Using the pandemic as an excuse isn’t valid to me.

A Month Ago Or A Week Later

Then Blizzard finally announces the release date of 9.1; which is tomorrow. However the new mythic dungeon and the raid won’t be available until the week of the 4th of July holiday in the U.S. In general I don’t think Blizzard should be releasing patches in the summer because that is the most popular time people take vacations. I know, that’s selfish. I’m frustrated because I swear Blizzard knows my vacation schedule. It never fails they always release a raid at the worst possible time for me.

When would I have liked to have seen the patch? A month ago! At least! Granted I was trying to level as many alts as I could before 9.1; but I would have rather gotten a decent start on the content before a vacation. I would have been content if they released the patch next week (with the raid starting the following week). Since even Tazavesh isn’t available until the same week, the only content to work on is flying and furthering Covenant Renown.

And no, I refuse to play Classic. I’ve already done that and I never wanted to go back and do that shit again. Maybe if you hadn’t wasted all those developers are this Classic crap, 9.1 could have been finished sooner. It’s called “prioritizing!”

This is really frustrating, Blizzard. I’m mildly unhappy.

“git gud!”

duke-nukem-sm If zombies attack the world, everyone will run and hide. Except for us gamers, of course. We’ve been waiting for this all our lives!

 

Shadowlands: Torghast First Impressions

Torghast First ImpressionsThis is my first Shadowlands post since it’s launch. While it seems logical that I would first talk about leveling, instead I decided to skip to Torghast. This is a brand new game mechanic Blizzard introduces in this expansion. We saw something similar in the Battle for Azeroth 8.3 patch with the Horrific Visions. In fact, I almost suspect that the Horrific Visions were the “beta test” for the Torghast mechanic. I haven’t spent a lot of time in there yet but I thought I would share my Torghast first impressions.

An Ever-Changing Dungeon

There was a lot of build up about this place. Blizzard was pretty clear that it will be essential to our raiding progression. Initially I was skeptical. While the horrific visions weren’t terrible, eventually I became bored doing them every week (and, ultimately, I stopped doing them altogether). The engineers at Blizzard have definitely raised the bar with Torghast.

Basically Torghast is a type of dungeon divided into six wings, each with eight layers consisting of six floors per layer. You can complete Torghast solo or you can go as a group. Every trip into Torghast is different. Statistically you should never experience the same trip twice. As you progress each floor becomes more and more difficult until it becomes too difficult, for your current gear score, to complete. This has not yet happened to me so I don’t know if its actually true. If you complete the third layer on one wing, you can go immediately to the third layer in another wing. I’m not sure how this works when the remaining layer’s become available. Completing the layers awards you Soul Ash which you need to construct legendary gear. As far as I can tell, Torghast does not drop gear.

No Gear?? What’s the Point??

I, honestly, struggle with this concept. It’s probably the one negative to Torghast, especially for alts. Obviously, for my raid toon, this provides the ability to craft gear that will give me a significant advantage in the raids. The amount of Soul Ash you get is capped each week so going in weekly will help craft your legendary gear (and upgrades) sooner rather than later. I rarely, if ever, raid on my alts so getting a legendary for them is simply cosmetic. Does this mean I will still do Torghast on my alts? Probably, because the challenge could be fun, however its not going to be something I do every week on every alt.

So far I like Torghast; more than I thought I would. I’m glad there is a cap each week so I don’t feel obligated to do it every single day, each week. It would get pretty old, really fast if I had to do it that frequently. Granted we are just beginning week 3 so the question is will I continue to enjoy Torghast? Or will the interest wane over the next couple of months? It’s difficult to say. Perhaps I should consider a follow up post in the spring to discuss how its going. I’m also going to predict that something will change about Torghast in future content patches to keep it interesting. We’ll see.

What are your Torghast first impressions?

duke-nukem-sm If zombies attack the world, everyone will run and hide. Except for us gamers, of course. We’ve been waiting for this all our lives!

 

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