My honest thoughts on World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and Classic (Long post)

[Northelim]

Hello everyone,

I am here to share my personal opinion, hopes, concerns and excitement for WoW: Classic and WoW: Battle of Azeroth. Now, I know there is another sub forum for WoW: Classic, but I'll be talking more about Battle for Azeroth so I decided it to post both of em here, since the main focus will be Battle for Azeroth. So shall we begin?

WoW: Classic - I'll be completely honest. When I saw chromie go back in time in the trailer and it flew by everything cinematic I kind of started to freak out in excitement a bit and thinking to myself "There is no way that it's what I think it is" and of course it was the Vanilla WoW servers officially supported by Blizzard. Once the dwarf came up on the screen with the bear I shed a few tears. I go way back in vanilla like many of you here as well and I think we all know what makes vanilla so special. It's not neccesary the nostalgia, but the experiences and people we met through our first time adventuring in World of Warcraft.

I will never forget standing on the AH bridge in Ironforge. I will never forget looking at someones epic mount and thinking to myself how badass they are and how much gold they have. I'll never forget meeting people in the game who I've created personal friendships and relationships with who still to this day are now my real life friends who I've met in person and talk to on daily basis. I will never forget being a hunter and worrying about my ammo pouch, pet happiness and having enough bullets in my inventory to shoot some horde or mobs away. I will never forget the crazy long enduring questing in Strangelthorn and the constant ganking and pvp. Ladies and gentelment I cannot believe we will be able to experience these things once again sometime in 2018 or 2019.

My 2 big questions in regards to WoW: Classic are these:

1 - I am assuming the world will be visually updated to today's standard and use the same tech as Battle for Azeroth. Yes, same old textures, but higher resolution to keep the look fresh or if this will be the original 2004 resolution textures, models etc...

2 - Is it going to be only 1 to 60? I would assume so. If it's succesful it would be interesting if they added an option to what level you can go to with the vanilla ruleset. For example, maybe you want to live the original 1-70 or experience and just stay at TBC endgame or 1-80 and stay at WotlK endgame. No clue if they will ever do this, but at this point anything is possible.

And last but not least - Not really a question but rather a statement. I cannot fucking wait to do BRD again to finish Onyxia's attunement and place her head in Stormwind raid in a 40 man Discord raid group!

Ok on to World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth



The two continents both look fantastic visually and interesting. Kul'tiras makes me think of old-school Azeroth zones but on crack with tech engine upgrades, beautiful lighting and great scenery. My personal favorite so far is the Drustvar zone. Also, both of the Islands look amazing which are Un'Gol'im and Havenswood. 6 Zones may seem a bit small at first, but I am confident in that they will be fun to play and world quest once we hit 120. Also, kudos to Blizzard for creating completely brand new human models for the Kul'turians, they look great and it's always nice to have new character models. Trolls look fantastic as well and I love their armor.

The Plunder Islands seem like a really cool feature. I am stoked to try it out and see how the advanced AI thing really works out in an MMO enviornment. They seemed to brag about it a lot and AI is one of the most hardest things to code for in game development. Looking forward to checking this out and if turns out to be successful I think this piece of content will be very addicting. Love the addition of Normal, Heroic, Mythic and PvP difficulties. I think this as a PvP activity will be a ton of fun with a tight group of your good PvP friends.

Both of the islands look phenomenal as I expressed previously. However, my biggest concern in regards to these Islands is how long before we start to see the randomization start repeating itself and spawning NPCs we already did plenty of times and how many stories can it really tell? Procedural generation has always been an iffy thing when it came to how it's designed and what it produces I am hoping that it won't get repetitive super quickly.

Warfronts are a dream come true. I am a huge WC 1-3 fan and seeing RTS elements being implemented in a fully realized 3D open world MMO environment is a sight to behold. I always enjoyed building a barracks in WC3 and massing up armies of dwarven riflemen and I can't wait to see how it turns out to be here. 20 players is a good number to play with. However, I am very confused and a bit disappointed that there is no 20 v 20 PvP mode for this. Considering this is a faction war based expansion why not give this a PvP mode as well just like to the Islands? Not sure the reasoning behind that, if someone does let me know. Also, in order for Warfronts to be successful the systems that make it work really have to be well designed and feel fun. Otherwise, it could be the Garrison 2.0 disappointment of the expansion. Looking forward to it, but very concerned about it. If this feature is successful I hope they will do something more with it in the future just like the Islands. There is great potential here for both features.

Allied Races are quite awesome. The expansion will be getting 6 allied races at launch with more to come throughout the expansion's life and possibly beyond according to what they said. Always wanted to be a Dark Iron Dwarf since day 1 and now the dream can now be finally fulfilled. I think the best looking allied race are the Zandalar Trolls tho. Void Elves look good as well and Nightborne well fuck them I hated Suramar and I hated the Nightborne so don't really care for those. Highmountain Tauren look pretty cool, but I think their antlers make them look a bit silly. Lightforged Draeni I think are the worst, looks like just a basic reskin and not many differences, but I guess same can be said about Dark Iron Dwarves. I'll have too see the racials, and their customization options to make my final judgement on what I think this best looking race. Cool feature none-less, and fantastic for alt lovers and with world-scaling in the old world and expansions this will be a perfect expansion for the alts which I believed Legion failed to do at the start of the expansion was very anti-alt.

The new social features are looking very promising. Love the addition of communities and being able to use the integrated voice chat via Overwatch system. Over the last few expansions I felt that the social aspect was really missing from World of Warcraft, but now I feel much improved and it will be fun to socialize and play the game overall.

The dungeon they showed off looked absolutely awesome as for the raid it looked alright. I am excited to see the rest of the dungeons because they all sounded really cool and I belive that Mythic+ was the best thing in Legion and I can't wait to start my dungeon runs in here as well. Also, we finally get to say hello to queen Azshara which also makes me believe that N'zoth will be the end boss of this expansion. The theme might be faction war, but I have a strong feeling there are other things going on in the background. Void themes are here as well (obviously we have Void Elves) and I think there are glimpses of Old God mobs as well in the trailer. I believe I saw some tentacle mobs, correct me if I am wrong please.

Heart of Azeroth - I'll be honest..I am not sure how I feel about this and I am still a tad confused on how this all works. If someone can explain it better to me please do so if you've done your research on it and such. I understand that this is the replacement for artifact weapon system which is completely fine with me. I am glad we have a replacement for that because I like the whole aspect of constant character progression. Now, how much RNG this will add to the gear is a different question and how important some powers will be for raids is also another question and this is what I am worried about. I think this is the least refined feature of the expansion. I had a hard time understanding while watching the Blizzcon ticket.

Overall - I think Battle for Azeroth has the potential to be the best expansion yet. Some may think it's light on content but I'll be completely honest with you Legion didn't have much going either besides doing World Quests every day and mythic dungeons. Battle for Azeroth seems more of that, but much improved and with added features such as the Island Exploration and Warfronts. World scaling to the old world and the addition of allied races is quite huge, there is a lot of gameplay there, especially if you want to unlock all the new races. Then of course if you add the new dungeons, raids and the new arena and BG I think there is a good chunk of things to do here. What will make or break this expansion are the systems and how they're designed. If they don't work together well and feel bland then this will be Warlords of Draenor 2.0. On the other hand, if everything turns out to be fun and addicting then this will be a fantastic expansion.

That's it folks, I am done.

[HumanX]

Amazing post. Nice to once in a while hear more of an in-depth opinion as opposed to constant whining on MMO-Champion. I wholeheardtly agree on the WoW: Classic thing. Huge surprise for me as well and I can't wait to dive in. As for Battle of Azeroth...I have to wait and see.

[Northelim]

Amazing post. Nice to once in a while hear more of an in-depth opinion as opposed to constant whining on MMO-Champion. I wholeheardtly agree on the WoW: Classic thing. Huge surprise for me as well and I can't wait to dive in. As for Battle of Azeroth...I have to wait and see.

Thanks buddy, appriciate the comment. Looking forward too see how the whole WoW: Classic thing develops. They said it's in development and won't be done for a while.

[Azzurri]

Nice write up! For me the announcement of upright Trolls and Orcs was enough for me.

[Northelim]

Nice write up! For me the announcement of upright Trolls and Orcs was enough for me.

Thank you!

What upright trolls? Not hunchback? I am assuming you're talking about the Zandalari Troll Race. As far as I am concered I haven't seen or heard any mention of upright Orcs. Not sure where you got that from?

[Azzurri]

Thank you!

What upright trolls? Not hunchback? I am assuming you're talking about the Zandalari Troll Race. As far as I am concered I haven't seen or heard any mention of upright Orcs. Not sure where you got that from?

Art panel q&a said upright orcs are confirmed.

Q: Will other races get Allied races that stand up straight?
A: Upright standing orcs are coming!

front page of MMOc

[Velerios]

Amazing post. Nice to once in a while hear more of an in-depth opinion as opposed to constant whining on MMO-Champion. I wholeheardtly agree on the WoW: Classic thing. Huge surprise for me as well and I can't wait to dive in. As for Battle of Azeroth...I have to wait and see.

White Knights of Blizzard:

If you like everything blizzard does: AMAZING POST!

If you dislike anything blizzard does: SENSELESS WHINER!

But to answer Northelim who created an awesome post regardless of his opinion; here are my answers to it:

Let's leave classic aside (since i've played it and as someone who leveled as a healer, i really HATE vanilla), this is about BfA: The new zones seems good (the only thing about BfA), but the most disappointing thing is that you only get 3 zones for leveling, at least if you only

Was Legion already boring; nothing beats the next xpack, when you only have 3 instead of 4 zones. And then back to the Worldquestpalooza, nothing more. Since it seems that you can only do world quests on the zones of the other factions, you don't really get the lore behind the zones, so all you get there are world quests, more world quests and even more world quests for whatever there drops

Plunder Islands are only Legion Gates 2.0, only that you arrive there with a ship. Advanced AI; not really sure if this will work at all

Warfronts seems fun the first 2-3 times, but after this... not really. It seems that blizzard makes in this expansion the same error as they did with garrisons: focus too much on this warfronts-feature. Also PvP only is liked by a minority of players. Still i can understand that the PvP-Community is exited about this; but for PvE ones it's simply non-existent content.

Allied Races; not really worth the effort they do. You especially mentioned Dark Iron Dwarfs. Do you know how they could simply implemented this: add a new skin to dwarfs and change their eyes. Fixed.
To celebrate Dark Iron Dwarfs for example is really really lazy, since it's not more than a new texture. Oh and yes, new racials. Unlocking them to level one later on makes me believe they know that there is not much to do in the endgame, so they gave us more reason to twink. This and the new design of the leveling zones...

And Hearth of Azeroth even adds more RNG in a game where everyone is complaining that there is too much RNG already. But instead they increase RNG-Effects more and more and more... but at least the Legendary-system is gone.

But still: thank you for sharing your opinion, it's definitively not mine, but it's nice to read.

[Onikaroshi]

And Hearth of Azeroth even adds more RNG in a game where everyone is complaining that there is too much RNG already. But instead they increase RNG-Effects more and more and more... but at least the Legendary-system is gone.

Wha? It removes a lot of RNG. Sure pieces have different talents, but every single piece will have the same ones, which you can look at any time, through the DJ and plan, how is that RNG? When a piece drops in a dungeon/raid/etc. you will ALREADY know the talents.

[IgnisVenom]

Thanks for this post. While I completely agree that Blizzard deserves criticism from time to time, I believe that they're getting a bit too much shit. It's a really refreshing read. I completely agree with your opinion, though, even if I didn't, I believe I'd still have to appreciate this post. Velerios also brings up some good points, I have to say. Either way, good job, OP.

[Northelim]

Thanks for this post. While I completely agree that Blizzard deserves criticism from time to time, I believe that they're getting a bit too much shit. It's a really refreshing read. I completely agree with your opinion, though, even if I didn't, I believe I'd still have to appreciate this post. Velerios also brings up some good points, I have to say. Either way, good job, OP.

No problem fellas. I think people are always a bit to quick to judge something without even giving it an honest try or some thorough research before creating a personal opinion. The expansion was just announced yesterday, there are plenty of things that are still in question. Let's play the waiting game first before we go anywhere else.