Their martial training is primarily for their own benefit, they use it to improve themselves and cleanse themselves with the end goal of becoming an ascended.
Their job is ferrying souls past the Veil, not being a military.
Not just an official army, its their own and only purpose for existing at all in this cosmic machinery.
If we call the Kyrians a second standing army just because they a fighting force, then might aswell proclaim all covenants an army as the Venthyr got the Stone Legion and the fae have the Wild Hunt.
Formerly known as Arafal
"A youtuber said so."
"... some wow experts being interviewed..."
"According to researchers from Wowhead..."
Fair enough if you enjoy Draenor but the more I think about it, the levelling really wasn’t as good as people seem to think. The only decent zones were Shadowmoon, Frostfire and Spires. Talador was a complete mess, Gorgrond suffered from a late rewrite and Nagrand was underwhelming with the majority of the zone reserved for apexis dailies with no story.
As contentious as the expansion is amongst the community, I still think BfA is the superior levelling experience within a bubble of Zandalar and Kul Tiras.
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You’ve surmised my thoughts on Draenor to a tee.
I guess no build today. Still hoping for beta to start before the month ends.
The only thing I look forward now are raid tests.
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Jade Forest questline: you are sent on an urgent mission to rescue the prince. First thing you do is machinegun a Horde base. Then you drink dreambrew and get an epic vision of war and meet Lorewalker Cho aka Jim Cummings aka Winnie the Pooh and he sounds great. Then you go rescue Admiral Taylor from maneating monkeys and meet the fish people, who were the former emperors of Pandaria. Then you play as Rell Nightwind's crew of operatives in a series of four fun missions (also has replay value because on the other side you find out that Amber didn't shoot Socks. It was the Horde sniper). Then you go to a Panda village and meet the people there, and then kill a creepy Jade Witch who was turning children into garden lawn statues. Then you go to Tian Monastery and get a humorous introduction to three kung-fu masters, then beat them up, and then win a 100 man gauntlet and get certified. Then Admiral Taylor calls you back to the fish village and you arm them for war and march out to fight the Horde, and then a humongous evil goo monster erupts from the ground.
Waking Shores questline: you sail to the Dragon Isles, get off the boat and then follow the weakling drakonoid around, fight some fire vrykul. Then you collect bugs or fight air/water elementals or something for some four legged dragon wearing glasses who talks about the environment. More fighting fire giants. Weakling Drakonoid dies an admittedly heroic death but that was about it for her. Then you get to the Ruby Life Sanctum and get to listen to Alexstraza overenunciate every line. Then Raszageth attacks and you have to listen to the annoying majordomo. You kill some dragons and then do a dungeon where you're fighting Peta or Team Plasma from Pokemon BW, except these guys come from nowhere and you don't understand how so many people think the Titans are bad or whatever and are fighting against dragons who have saved Azeroth over and over. Moving on. Wrathion comes back and he's cool and has assembled his own army offscreen, and you're about lead this epic castle assault when some background NPCs from long long ago show up and upstage you. More fighting fire Vyrkul. Wrathion and the other dude have a stare off and then that's it, on to the next zone.
Valley of the Four Winds: adventuring with the charming crew of Chen Stormstout and his rambunctious niece, and later joined by the funny Mudmug. Funny segments such as rescuing a kidnapped Pandaren girl from giant rabbits who get excited that she tosses carrots at them, or Li Li remarking on the sidequests you're doing. Stormstout Brewery is hilarious. Also some informative segments with the silk moths and different types of grains. Fun kung-fu martial arts training sequence. Cool final battle at the end where all of the NPCs you met come together and you use your kung-fu train to punch a giant bug kaiju from the inside.
Onharn Plains: you go to an encampment of mongol centaurs and the girlboss is constantly talking down. You slowwwwww walk to a river and camp there and fight some bugs and lizards before slowww walking more to the larger encampment. You go inside the big tent and then there is a fight with other centaurs all of the sudden. They all look the same. Then you go to burial mounds and fight ghosts or something. You meet a weakling centaur shaman. Then you go looking for the spirit bird that has been trapped and fight more centaurs and primalists and air elementals. Then you do a dungeon but I forgot what happened in it. Then you go down the cliffs to the Emerald Dragonflight area and fight more elementals and centaurs, and then at the end you click on the four centaur leaders as they present feathers or something to the emerald dragon lady.
Townlong Steppes: after having been attacked by the Yaungol, you and the panda military spearhead a fierce counterattack across the wall and massacre a lot of fire wielding oxen. Then you and Taran Zhu go around recruiting an A-team to go hunt and kill a giant Sha monster.
Azure Span: you follow some weakling Tuskarr men around. Kalecgos shows up and you roll a ball or control a giant treant and kill rothide gnolls, then you go to the Tuskarr village and get an unearned cinematic, and the tuskarr girl is lecturing this old war veteran dragon as if he's a teenager with no life experience. Then you meet Khadgar again and shoot down some dragons, and then after that you go to a tower and fight a big battle against an army of incoming elementals and then Raszageth flees.
In the MoP questlines, there is almost always something interesting happening. There is either tension from fighting some enemy or you are discovering something brand new and want to learn more about it. Also the characters talk like actual people rather than sissies or overenunciating their lines like a drama kid. In Dragonflight you spend a lot of time doing stuff that isn't important, and you are dealing with familiar overexposed factions like dragons, or boring old factions like centaurs or vrykul. Nothing to get on the edge of your seat and become curious about.
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I agree that WoD has a very strong levelling questline in that feels like you're playing through a cinematic RPG/game, but that is also to its detriment. In WoD, there aren't strong selfcontained zone storylines. You have to do the whole thing to get a payoff, whereas with MoP there is almost always a payoff at the end of each zone storyline.
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I've always felt that Pandaria was the strongest continent as it felt the most real, like a populated place. In Jade Forest there are houses everywhere. It feels like an actual country. VotFW and Kun-Lai don't have as many houses but still feel somewhat populated. There are also shrines and tablets and so on everywhere. Whereas in other continents, it feels like there is only one village and then maybe one or two enemy mobs villages and that's it per zone. They don't feel like lived in places. And the Dragon Isles are supposed to be the seat of the Dragon Empire but you go outside of Valdrakken and only find a few small encampments.
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If the writers remembered Azerite then there would have been dried up Azerite on the surface of the Dragon Isles and NPCs talking about how all of this stuff erupted from the earth recently. But they didn't do that, so I suspect the writers want to forget about it.
Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss; 2024-05-28 at 10:21 PM.
DF stories didn't even have a common theme, it was all so random and relied on past lore too much while pandaria was almost 100% new, perfect for new players. The primalists and djaradin as enemies are an asspull with no lore while all the enemy races in pandaria have their own cool lore.
I hope the devs themselves are playing remix and realizing how bad DF is to make the world soul saga closer to pandaria quality.
And I'd say the kul tiras islands are pretty good as they felt lived in as well, with a great main city and different cultures. Too bad it's only three zones and is one half of an expansion release, exclusive to alliance and is not explored further in the next patches. BFA was a mess of too many different stories told at the same time while focusing on none.
Some nice bit of world building in the IoD world event.
We got the name of the watcher that tyrannized the Earthen and, at least according to the play, he's alive and banished/imprisoned somewhere.
Good guy Archaedas also appears.
Formerly known as Arafal
You being unable to see a totally obvious edgelord behaviour as edgelord doesn't make it not edgelord mate. None of us are "playing the bad guy" either - I can't even think of a time in WoW when you do when you're not either reliving some historical event, or in the DK starting zone, where you're not under your own control until the end. Instead a bunch of clumsily-written quests in Cata and MoP (specifically - less so other expansions) attempt to temporarily force you into being the bad guy, before acting like it never happened.
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There's some really incredible revisionism going on. Playing through Pandaria I'm seeing a lot of tedious and badly-implemented quests, a lot of very questionable writing and juvenile thinking (some that isn't, to be fair), a lot of lore absolutely as bad as stuff people complained about in SL and so on, and we're just seeing people pretend it's good because it's old. Literally things the same exact people boosting MoP here have complained about in other expansions are being praised in their posts now. It's just incredible hypocrisy and two-faced-ness.
I'm sure we'll see the same with Shadowlands Remix in like 2032 or whatever.
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I think most of what you're saying is revisionist nonsense (and I say that playing the same stuff in Remix, just I'm not very impressed with most of it), and you spiced it up with a bit of cheap homophobia, which was really classy, but this is the one thing which is actually true - that it feels more like there are actually people living there.
I don't think the DF criticism is valid - why would dragons need tons of houses? There aren't even very many of them. They have a few impressive towns/cities. But Pandaria feels vastly more like a real place with people living in it than pretty much any other expansion, except maybe BfA, which is kind of similar (but still a little underpopulated).
"A youtuber said so."
"... some wow experts being interviewed..."
"According to researchers from Wowhead..."