Tag: WoW

A Battle for Azeroth: Bringing it All Together

On August 13th (or 14th depending on where you were in the world) at 6pm EDT, Blizzard Entertainment released the latest expansion to World of Warcraft–the seventh expansion to be released for the nearly fourteen-year-old game. While WoW may be nearly thirteen, the Warcraft franchise itself is nearly twenty-four, as Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was released in 1994. As one of the longest-running MMOs, WoW and its universe clearly has to be doing something right.

In order to tie everything we’ve talked about so far together, I’m going to end by looking at the success of World of Warcraft not only as a game, but the ways in which they engage with their players in order to ensure success and account for the possibility of failure. Rather than only doing one or two things right, World of Warcraft is in fact, doing a lot of smaller things right, so that when failures come (*cough* Warlords of Draenor *cough*), the game continues to survive.

As I mentioned in the second content post of this series, I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since the early months of 2007. Eleven years of content, of characters, and of social situations, and yet, I continue to come back, why? Probably for the same reasons everyone else does–Blizzard has gotten me successfully engaged.

One of the first areas I noticed the depth of my emotional and psychological investment in Azeroth was when I was faced with having to switch factions last year. While I have played both sides of the faction divide over the years, I’ve always only played seriously on the Alliance. My first characters were Alliance, and most importantly, my now-main character was Alliance.

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A Draenei restoration shaman, to be exact. 

I swapped to my Draenei shaman not too long after learning the ropes of the game. By the time Patch 2.3.0 launched in November of 2007, I had gotten my bearings and was actively clearing raid content with my original guild. After we eventually got into Zul’Aman, the raid launched with 2.3.0, it became apparent that we would need a specific kind of class in order to complete it. That class was a restoration shaman. I offered to swap classes from warrior and never looked back. Suffice to say, my main character Shebalo and I have been through a lot, and she’s become an an extension of myself more than I had realized.

After re-rolling to a healer class, my ambitions soared. I got involved with more difficult content, and eventually joined Hello Kitty Club, who I’m still with today, after a lot of on-and-off periods. During one of those off-periods last year, I was part of a splinter group from HKC. We were comprised of the most ambitious and skilled of our raiders, who ultimately decided that the only way we could continue to progress through current Mythic (the highest difficulty) raid content was to swap to Horde on Akama, where there would be more bodies to recruit. Many of my peers easily made the change, quickly swapping to whatever Horde race they decided fit them best.

I, on the other hand, struggled. And naturally, thanks to running my Twitch, I recorded it. And so, for a very brief period of time, I was a Troll restoration shaman.

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It never quite felt right, and the emotional turmoil I went through to swap sides, is visible throughout the two-hour plus highlight video. I felt my emotions welling up as I tried to transfer, bought the wrong transfer, ticketed Blizzard to get the right transfer–all the while dreading what I was about to do. It wasn’t just about leaving my guild home, it was going against my very in-game identity to become the opposite side.

In that moment, Azeroth was a very real place (Ruch 2009). It was not simply a place filled with pixels where I passed through. It was a place I “lived” in, a place I experienced the passing of time through, it was very real.

While I never really participated in roleplay within the game on Shebalo, over time, I built a headcannon about her movements through Azeroth, about her place, my place,in the community and the world. We were one in the same, and much like my aversion to playing Renegade Sheppard in Mass Effect, so too was I against playing something I didn’t feel to be me.

Despite a lack of active roleplay, I did (and continue) to consider how my character might react given in-game situations. In particular, during the last expansion Legion, players were finally able to visit Argus, the former Draenei homeworld. Naturally, when this first launched, I was still playing on the Horde and it felt as though something was missing. When Argus had been announced at a previous BlizzCon, I had already started to think about what it would be to “return home” as my character. As a Troll, this no longer applied.

What this suggests is that the avatar is neither entirely “me,” nor entirely “not me,” but a version of me that only exists in a particular mediated context. When that context, and with it the avatar, ceases to be, that part of the self dies as well. That part of the self, expressed and projected through the avatar in a shared virtual world, is as much a creation of the group as the group is a creation of the individuals within it (Pearce 119).

I went through many crises of identity while playing Horde side on my main character that truly demonstrated to me just how much I had invested not only in the game, but also who I was in the game. When I finally switched back to Alliance, everything just felt right. I quickly was able to re-select the face and attributes of the model I had used for so many years (with backup screenshots just in case).

Heading into Battle for Azeroth, I don’t think I could have had it any other way.

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For the Alliance!

My time spent on Shebalo wasn’t just about my own relationship with my character, but also with my community. As I discussed in the previous post, I was lucky to find such long-standing friendships through Hello Kitty Club. Not only did we experience the rise and fall of our raiding progression (Juul 2013), we also spent extensive time exploring the virtual-physical world of Azeroth together, well into the late hours of the morning. Blizzard is well-known for including reclusive Easter Eggs, abandoned content, and memorials throughout their games (Gibbs et al. 2012), WoW being no exception. While we explored the world, we learned about the game and each other. We were able to interact without the chaos of raid combat, and friendships increased.

Over time, people have come and gone from our guild, but there’s a large core that’s remained the same. We interact on various social medias, and over time, have repeatedly brought each other back into the game. Beyond the itch to play, the promise of social interaction with a known group of engaged individuals, helps to keep us engaged in the content.

Our stories are not unique, and in truth, it’s probably one of the biggest features that keeps World of Warcraft so popular over time. So long as your social group stays, so too are you likely to as well. Combined with guild meetups and bringing virtual friendships into the tangible space, things become even more real and engaging. Conversely, if you only play alone, or have lost touch with the friends you used to play with, the draw to stay in Azeroth is likely lessened. The “massively multiplayer” component is not only important from a gameplay perspective, but also affects our engagement with the world. When the novelty wears off, when you can’t possibly fathom running your face into the same boss for another week in a row, friends and social experiences keep you engaged. Because of this, over the years, even in the recent Battle for Azeroth expansion, Blizzard continues to strive to increase friendship and community engagement.

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World of Warcraft also succeeds at keeping players invested in line with the Sunk Cost Fallacy. After nearly fourteen years of running, it’s hard for players to turn away from their digital investments. Astonishingly, it’s also probably how World of Warcraft has retained their subscription fee, while other MMOs continue to drop theirs. Like an un-used gym membership, I have known countless people over the years who retain their WoW subscriptions, even when they play rarely-to-never, “Just in case” they want to return. It’s not even just subscription fees, the cost of accumulated expansion costs, in-game services (server transfer, faction transfer, race change, etc.), memorabilia, paratexts (novels, table books), and virtual goods (pets, mounts, etc.) are compounded into the real-world costs and fears of value loss.

To further encourage people to invest in their time with the game, Blizzard has also offered alternative sources of funding like the WoW token, which can be bought and sold with real money, for in-game currency, and vice versa. This has allowed people to invest more time into the game, by accumulating digital wealth, so that they can spend it on “real-life” costs, like subscription fees and Battle.Net currency for other Blizzard games.

Blizzard also continues to update the base value of the game, so that it is affordable for new and returning players. In July, they announced that new and returning accounts would be able to play all the way through Legion content with just a subscription. No longer are players required to buy-in to the game, or its previous expansions. Instead, the entire world of Azeroth is available to players up and until the most recent content, Battle for Azeroth. In this way, Blizzard capitalizes on existing players’ social capital, as well as WoW’s reputation as an MMO, to encourage new players or returning players to re-invest in the virtual landscape.

Finally, one of the ways in which Blizzard continues to enrapture their audience is through their extensive worldbuilding and storytelling. Not only are there the narratives which occur within the Warcraft games, but Blizzard also releases paratextual books, audiodramas, cinematics, and comics to expand their world.

World creation has become a core feature of many recent digital games, and this fits hand-in-glove with the generic features of fantasy; the carefully crafted, extensive worlds found in massively multiplayer role-playing online games such as Guild Wars, EverQuest II, and World of Warcraft offer players the opportunity to inhabit such worlds wherein they play and interact with others in the guise of heroic adventurers. It can be said that most popular cultural artifacts are reliant on intertextual features for the generation of meaning and recognition…these [contribute] to the high-fantasy ambience of the game, even if at times more quotidian aspects come to the fore, and provides in different ways the means of locating players meaningfully in the game world (Krzywinska 123-124).

Alongside the game’s paratexts, the world itself is filled with extensive quest-text, cut-scenes, cinematics, flavour text, lost pages, monuments, memorials, and Easter Eggs to discover. The cities are busy with NPCs (and ideally players as well), and increasingly lively, as Blizzard continues to make NPCs more immersive, including models, postures, and voice acting.

Further still, painstaking detail is put into not only the textural features of the world’s story, but also in its audio-visual aspects as well. Vast sweeping landscapes, digital sunsets, fanciful festivals, and haunting melodies encourage players to explore and to stay a while. There’s always the suggestion that there’s just a little bit more below the surface–some rare secret you might just get the chance to discover. There’s even an entire discord community devoted to just that prospect.

All of these contributing factors combine to keep World of Warcraft not only afloat, but sailing through the vast sea of other MMO efforts. In a genre that’s largely perceived of as dying, or at least who’s future survival is constantly questioned, Blizzard continues moving forward. In addition to the areas covered here, they also continue to innovate and improve upon game mechanics, player quality of life features, and storytelling ability. It raises the question, if all of this is not only the reason for their success, but also demanded by our current video game marketplace. The ability to hook and maintain investment of such a large segment of the globe for nearly fourteen straight years is an impressive feat.

Blizzard’s ability to continually engage with and emblaze their World of Warcraft community members is readily demonstrated through their cosplayers, Role-Players, fan-writers, community leaders, and gaming participants. How many other games do you know of that start real-life virtual protests of a fictional characters’ actions, thanks to another fictional character’s rebellious actions? Further still that the #NoHonorNoPauldron movement even charged-up players who don’t play anymore?

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Whether it be a calculated advertising tactic, brilliant storytelling, or just dumb-luck side effects of a highly effective gameplay experience, Blizzard’s ongoing development of World of Warcraft and it’s virtual universe shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. They’ve survived a number of setbacks, but they continue to push forward and to learn from their mistakes, thanks to their successes in encouraging multi-faceted levels of player interest and emotional investment in Azeroth.

Essentially…

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– Gibbs, Martin et al. (2012) Tomestones, Uncanny Monuments and Epic Quests: Memorials in World of Warcraft
– Juul, Jesper. (2013) The Art of Failure
– Krzywinska, Tanya (2008) World Creation and Lore: World of Warcraft as Rich Text in Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg eds.
– Pearce, Celia (2009) Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds
– Ruch, Adam (2009) World of Warcraft: Service or Space?

Social Creatures

As much as our identities are bound up in the games we chose to play (or not to play), so much of the gaming world is tied to gaming culture and identity. As I quoted Flanagan in the previous post, the current gaming norm of “white dude” bro culture is a very intimidating one for interested parties to try and break into, if they don’t speak the language. Even when you do know the lingo, and are accepted in, there are more things at work than just social inclusion.

Given the fact that playing Ultima Online is very time-consuming and also requires a degree of financial investment, the users must assume they will benefit in some way. A recurrent theme in our interviews with the players, as well as in several items of the questionnaire, was the social experience of gaming. About two-thirds of the players mentioned the potential to interact with several thousand fellow players or participating via ones’ character in a virtual “society” as an essential motive to log onto Ultima Online. Compared to this, motives related to the individual such as mastering “quests” or the improvement of skills play a subordinate role. Surprisingly, only a quarter of those surveyed regarded climbing up the hierarchy of players as a very important incentive (Kolo and Baur 2004).

Despite their study being over ten years old, many of their findings still hold up strongly in the current online gaming landscape. Alongside social interaction within video games, particularly MMOs like World of Warcraft or web-based shooters like Fortnite or Overwatch, there’s also vast fan communities online, user-created content development, and an explosion of live-streaming. In this way, we become invested in the games we play not only because we like them, but because we like the people who like them.

Isolated individuals are given access to people that help them not feel alone. Isbister sums up the importance of sociality and gaming it up well:

The isolated gamer sits alone, face illuminated by the blue glow of the screen, lost in a solitary trance. It’s a familiar image from movies, TV, and popular culture in general. But the stereotype of the pasty-faced, antisocial game addict belies what we actually know about gamers. In fact, the majority of people who play digital games play them with others. 1 This shouldn’t be surprising: from playground tag to chess, card games, and board games to Minecraft and Call of Duty , the long history of games is primarily a story of rules and equipment created to engage people together socially. When we humans play (aside from the occasional game of solitaire), we usually play together. So before we can grasp the emotional impact of digital games, we need to understand what happens in social games more broadly (44).

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A contest, a guild, a dream.

I started playing World of Warcraft sometime before the launch of Patch 2.1.0, which included the infamous Black Temple. It was my first MMO and I knew pretty much nothing about them. I had previously dabbled in Champions of Norrath online play on my PS2, and played countless single-player RPGs beforehand, but I had next to no bearings heading into Azeroth. I started playing because of my friend, and a free week trial. I got addicted, they didn’t. I learned the ropes the hard way, in a “git gud” environment. My original character was a warrior who didn’t know how to tank, and occasionally wore leather when I should have been wearing all plate. I was a mess. Eventually through coaxing, meeting good people, and joining a helpful community, I grew and became a better player. Eventually, through social networks on Akama-US, and after re-rolling to a restoration Shaman, I joined one of the top-3 raiding guilds on the server, just in time to see Black Temple and The Sunwell while they were still current. And the rest is history…well Hello Kitty Club history.

I’ve been with the same guild, more or less, ever since. Late night Ventrilo chats were replaced with late night Discord chats, but a large portion of our core remains. The guild has fallen apart in the virtual space, only to be bound back together again an expansion or two later, all the while our social ties went on through Facebook and other social media. Many people in the guild, myself included, stay in the game, and keep returning to the game, because of this community we’ve built. Many of us have met in person, or created lasting bonds outside of the game. Some of us have been friends longer than some of my friends in my “real” life. We’ve been through things together and the game wouldn’t be the same without them. “There is something deeply satisfying and bonding about over-coming a challenging mental and physical situation with someone else, especially if it requires close coordination” (Isbister 45).

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HKC at BlizzCon 2017

Our friendships have come a long way, as all internet friendships have. In the early days of WoW and other online gaming communities, it was not unheard of to be scorned or cautioned for having web-based friends. It didn’t matter that people were connecting across the globe or with mutual interests–they were unknowns and scary. “Ubiquitous connection has dramatically changed how we communicate with one another on a day-to-day basis, shaping how we understand community and copresence. Texting, Twitter, and Facebook, email, and blogs offer countless ways to check in on someone–or on many someones. Game developers have interwoven networked communication and the sense of copresence it creates deep in the experiences that they offer players today” (109). Beyond simple communication tools, developers are including gifts for friends, friend bonuses, and other incentives to bring the social into the gaming space–to become even more invested in their worlds.  Pokemon Go recently added these kinds of friendship-incentivizing features and might have helped to re-invigorate the game as a result.

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Internet-based games are not the only place where the importance of social play occurs of course. Franchises like Super Smash Bros. persist in a world of web-ready content, pushing the importance of split-screen or same-room play. “When players in a room together laugh, jump, and tease each other, the power of games to drive connection, empathy, and closeness appears right before your eyes” (109). While our views of web-based communities may be shifting, the importance of an in-person all out brawl has not changed. Arguably, it’s also at the root of attending e-sports championships. There’s something to be said for the energy of cooperative or competitive gaming, that just can’t be conveyed through digital media–at least not yet.

What’s more, is that in-person gaming is something which ties itself into nostalgic memory. Four kids surrounding a singular tube-screen, facing off in Goldeneye; a group of high schoolers creating a local LAN party for a Quake tournament; a controller smashed in anger after getting run off the course in Mario Kart 64; another group huddled around a single player, waiting for their chance to hold the controller, as they progress through Final Fantasy 7. These group displays of cultural bonding and belonging are very much a byproduct of the tangible world. As much as players can join each other in the virtual space, the visceral reactions can only be fully felt alongside on another in person.

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However, that doesn’t stop people from trying to catch a glimpse into other people’s gameplay habits or experiences. One of the last ways I want to consider the social realm in this series, is to consider the case of live-streams. The rise of bandwidth availability and video prevalence on the internet has helped to facilitate a surge in video game streaming. However, while videos of “talking” cats and falling toddlers, ala America’s Funniest Home Videos makes sense as a translation to the internet, live-streaming is a curious social engagement.

What distinguishes Twitch.tv from other video hosting and streaming websites with videogame content, including YouTube.com, is the presence and participation of the players and viewers…With its strong reliance on participative engagement, even single-player games become a social activity. It is difficult to find streams on Twitch.tv without, at bare minimum, an audio feed of the player, and the chat box is constantly updated with messages from eager viewers. In a mass medium most often considered inhuman, robotic, or purely digital such as videogaming, Twitch.tv has foregrounded the human element (LaRell Anderson 2017).

As LaRell Anderson discusses, Twitch.tv provides videos of games, but (and most importantly) also of players. Countless games are being played simultaneously on Twitch, and it’s a graball of personality and popularity as to who gets the most viewers for that game. From the outset, there’s a lot of potential to draw connections between live-streaming and spectator sports. However, the primary difference in Twitch streaming is the interactivity. According to LaRell Anderson, “while the chat box supplies plentiful opportunities for viewers to address the streamer/player, it does not inevitably signify an interaction between the two…[instead] the physical feedback provided by the streamer through the video stream transforms the interaction into something human and recognizably physical. The eye movements to read chat messages, the head shakes, the hand gestures, and the various non-verbal communication cues present in face-to-face communication all denote that the interaction is between people instead of from a content creator to a nameless, anonymous audience.”

While Twitch (and now YouTube) live-gaming streams do not fully replace the living room experience, it seems to help facilitate the kind of participatory nature that those experiences provided. While some streams may be as simple as helping a streamer get through a difficult puzzle, ala the group surrounding the Final Fantasy VII player, some streams even encourage playing with viewers. In this way, the boundary between virtual and real is again blended, and the engagement is intensified. A potential gamer may have no interest in playing Dead by Daylight on their own, but when faced with the possibility of earning a place to play alongside one of their favourite streamers, their opinion may altogether change.

Much like the group huddled around a single copy of Final Fantasy VII, live streaming also helps provide access to game content for those who might not otherwise be able to afford it. Living vicariously through the engagement of another player’s entertainment, may be the only way that individual can experience the content.

To this end, we must then consider the importance of monetary investment and gaming engagement [Part 4].


– Isbister, Katherine (2016) How Games Move Us
– Kolo, Castulus and Timo Baur (2004) Living a Virtual Life: Social Dynamics of Online Gaming (Game Studies)
– LaRell Anderson, Sky (2017) Watching People is Not a Game: Interactive Online Corporeality, Twitch.tv and Videogame Streams (Game Studies)

Why I Timewalk

Sure, the gear and vendor goods are great for a while, but what’s the real reason to keep coming back to Timewalking?

World of Warcraft has changed a lot over the past thirteen years. While some of you have been with the brand since the beginning, others have only recently come into the fold. I’ve been playing WoW since Burning Crusade, specifically, right before the “Black Temple” raid patch dropped. For a long time, I felt as though my WoW-cred was lessened for having not played since Vanilla, like so many of my compatriots, but I have increasingly been feeling my in-game age for a while, particularly thanks to Timewalking.

Longtime Azeroth citizens will likely understand this scenario. You’re going through an old raid showing a new friend your favorite encounters. While the graphics may be a little more dull, and the encounters a lot faster, you find yourself constantly spouting things like: “Well we used to have to pull the boss this way…”, “We needed four tanks for this…”, “Back in the day, you’d never get away with…”, and so on. Even running through leveling dungeons before Timewalking, I found myself making these kinds of statements, or at least conveying how much more “difficult” things used to be, be it due to player strength, gear level, or boss tuning.

Among many other things in WoW, raiding, used to feel more epic, and likely some of that was due to exclusivity. While I am all for the advancements in LFR raiding, there was something to be said for the very first time I stepped into Black Temple and stared Illidan in his blindfolded eyes. The music was building, the tensions were high, and I had no other way of seeing it than with 24 of my soon-to-be closest WoW friends. I’m glad that raiding reaches more people nowadays than it ever did, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel as though something epic about those old encounters has been lost.

Enter Timewalking. When it was released back in the expansion-that-nearly-not-be-named Warlords of Draenor during June of 2016, people were psyched. The ability to go back to old dungeons and clear them out as though we were back at level 70/80 again? Nostalgia abounded left and right, and people were lining up to get their new-old trinkets from the Timewalking vendors. As Timewalking has progressed, we’ve received the addition of Mists of Pandaria dungeons, in addition to the promise of more dungeons as the game progresses. Most recently we heard that Patch 7.2.5 will contain a new addition, Timewalking Raids, namely, Black Temple.

As fun as walking down memory lane with 4 potentially random individuals was, the prospect of Timewalking raiding is all the more enticing. While the current system allows you to queue as you would any other dungeon, Timewalking raids will behave a little differently and require a pre-formed group in order to be tackled. While I’m incredibly excited to waltz into the darkened halls of Karabor once again as my level-70 resto-shaman self, I can’t help but fear that the pre-grouping requirement will reduce the number of people running the raid during the Timewalking period, and with Timewalking only being around a limited time per month (and even more limited to get back to Burning Crusade content), it remains to be seen how Blizzard will handle the accessibility of the revisited content.

Timewalking is a unique experience unto itself in Azeroth. At once, those of us who have been a part of the story since the dawn (or nearly) of the title get to experience a wave of nostalgia through mimicked past experiences. Comparatively, new players bear witness to content long gone and yet experienced anew. Many newer players I’ve spoken with about Timewalking love the system and thoroughly enjoy being able to experience the older content at a relative difficulty, after missing it when it was “current”.

While I play for the nostalgia, and the ability to use all of my pre-Legion legendaries again, I also Timewalk to show my newer friends the “old” days, rather than just talk about it. New experiences and old memories collide in the “Halls of Stone.” I watch my group members perform old mechanics (because in Timewalking they kinda matter) in “The Shattered Halls”. I remember how much I hated doing the challenge mode version of “Shadowpan Monastery” all over again. Awash with emotion when they’re here, and all the more grateful they’re not around all the time, Timewalking dungeons are straight out of the Timeless Isle. Something ephemeral that drifts in and out of view. Shifting faces and eras as it guides us to look back and remember.

While some people run them for their normal-current raid tier box, I’m sure there are plenty of others who play like me, who relive the past through these encounters, and queue with bittersweet thoughts in mind. While the shiny loot is great, it’s the experiences that keep us coming back. Black Temple Timewalking will likely not bring me back to my bright-eyed days as a young shaman, but I can dream, and I can remember.

Why do you Timewalk? Or do you not participate at all? Let us know in the comments below, or join in the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, or Discord.

There’s Only So Much Time in the World (of Warcraft): AP & You

From pet battles, to PVP, to end-game raiding content, there’s always something to do in World of Warcraft. But is that becoming a problem? The new artifact power system has hindered a longstanding past-time in-game, namely, alt-play. Have you felt the burn?

It all seems well and good. Each new artifact weapon is laden with lore and excitement. You’re encouraged to explore every avenue of story (even if you don’t fully read it) as you progress your character. For lore buffs and altoholics, this makes alt-leveling seem all the more APpealing. But that, of course, is before you see the endless sea of grinding that you have to do to get them up to snuff in the current grind that is artifact power.

Hello, fellow gamers. I’m Shebalo, and I’m an altoholic.

I’ve had alts for years. Ever since Wrath of the Lich King and some untimely real-life issues, I spent a great deal of time in front of the screen. I’ve continued to roll over each of my alts to the next level cap as a new expansion became available. Some expansions have seen easier alt progression than others, but for the most part, getting them to max level and caught up to a useful amount of power wasn’t all that difficult. I have fond memories of how easy it was to gear freshly minted 90s with Mists of Pandaria‘s Timeless Isle gear. Bind on Account bundles of joy helped make even the meekest alt into, well, at least a slightly less meek creature. Some 500 days played across this one server (not including alts which have been deleted over time), and I might finally be reaching my wit’s end. As you can see, I currently have five level-110 characters, with none seriously contending for sixth place. Why is that you may ask? Namely, artifact power and catch-up difficulties.

Catch-up mechanics do exist, but they’re not as helpful as you may think.

I gained access to the highest level artifact research available pretty quickly when the option was released in Patch 7.1.5. All of my alts were happily whisked away to the land of high levels of AP gain, and it was wonderful…for a time. While the initial boost of AP gain is great for alts to catch up to basic levels of talent tree progression, the fact remains that there’s still quite a distance to be covered to get beyond the 30~ talent range (pre-7.2). Additionally, the current patch has changed such that the next set of traits and artifact knowledges decrease the incentive to grind out AP, making it even harder to catch up in a shorter period of time. While there are certain AP “chunks” available (Mythic Plus 10 or higher, some World Quests, Broken Shore special table quests, etc.), most of us are left wanting for a better method of AP acquisition before reaching to the new research levels. As of right now, in short, it just doesn’t feel worth it.

AP scaling before 7.2 source

While we wait for more artifact research to be available on our mains, many of us are finding ourselves farming for a resource with very minimal return for the time invested. While this will improve with time, there’s more going on with the AP requirements than just a lack of return for what we’re putting into it, and that’s player burnout. One of the main reasons I stopped curating my alts this expansion was the inundation of grinding I’m facing on my main. As a mythic raider, it constantly feels like I’m behind on things I need to stay on top of in order to squeeze that extra percent out of my weapon or gear. While the need to farm Mythic Plus dungeons isn’t there yet so far this patch, I know the time is coming. The fact remains that I, like so many in my guild and others that I’ve spoken with, faced that grind in the previous patches in order to attain the coveted 54th point. We slaved for weeks, for hours, often neglecting more “fun” things to do in game, in order to achieve min/max success. Was it worth it? I don’t really know. Bosses die, parses are had, but in the end, many of us look at a new grind with disdain—whether it be the new traits on our mains, or the original ones on our alts. When rolling an alt in Legion, you need to re-grind your AP (with some tome help at least if your main has high research completion), your reps, your gear, and your class campaign. While endless content is great for mains, it puts alts in a chokehold, and there’s very little to help alts out in categories outside of basic AP assistance and easily acquirable but Bind-on-Pickup items on the Broken Shore.

Some people just want to watch the world (of Warcraft) burn.

My alts, like your alts, will live on in time. While the daunting tasks of AP farming and alt catch-ups are ominous at this time, if you like alts, chances are you’ll eventually come back around to them. This could happen during the inter-expansion lull, during a guild hiatus, or even perhaps due to class-breaking changes on your main. Alts exist for a reason, and even if you may just be exploring them for the first time this expansion, there is hope. Blizzard continuously cites a desire to help alts this expansion, after repeated requests from the playerbase. Let’s hope they continue to listen, and continue to help. I have a lot of lore to soak up through my alts this expansion, and I’ll dance my way through the burnout, even if it kills me.

How are you dealing with AP requirements and burnout? Do you feel like it’s still relevant to farm, or are you biding your time doing other things until artifact research catches up? Let us know in the comments below, on Facebook, Twitter, or Discord!

Heroines of Warcraft: Around the Well of Eternity Edition

This week, we visit the Well of Eternity…

In honor of Women’s History month, beginning March 8th, we’ll be running a series of editorials surveying the lore and history surrounding some of Azeroth’s most notable heroines and figures. This week, we visit the Well of Eternity…

In World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1, we were told that the night elves came about as a race descendant from dark trolls who found their way to the Well of Eternity. At the Well, they discovered Elune and would be forever changed. Through the twisting powers of the arcane font, the trolls were transformed into Night Elves, or Kal’dorai “Children of the Stars”. From that race would be born many strong leaders and figures who have come to make their mark on World of Warcraft lore, good and evil alike. Their notoriety has reached beyond just Warcraft and has found its way into countless tie-in novels, and other Blizzard titles. Let’s take a closer look.

QUEEN AZSHARA

“It was during this era of unprecedented growth that the night elves’ most prolific leader came to power. Her name was Queen Azshara. Through her unbridled ambition, she would elevate her peolpe to extraordinary new heights…and sow the seeds of their destruction” – World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 1, 94

Many people have known and been defeated by the Burning Legion. Queen Azshara, however, is the only one (that we’re aware of) to look at them as an opportunity to find greater power, and an equal in the Dark Titan Sargeras.

It’s not surprising given Queen Azshara’s position within the Kal’dorei world. They adored her—perhaps a little too much to be considered outside the realm of a spell. She was powerful and people fell at her feet. Those who disobeyed were met with exile and steep punishment. She was born with golden eyes, something the Kal’dorei believed would predict greatness in her. While her greatness and ambition brought about the War of the Ancients (and the initial attack of the Burning Legion 10,000 years before the game starts), her fate was not sealed that day.

As the Well of Eternity exploded at the hands of rebellious Night Elves during the Great Sundering and the water rushed around her, the Old Gods whispered to her and offered her more power. More importantly, the power to survive. Azshara accepted and was twisted into a Naga along with her followers. She would continue her efforts for power and domination secretly below the waves of Azeroth’s tremulous seas.

A grand sorceress even before the Old Gods gave her more power, Azshara’s motives remain unknown at this time. She pops up briefly during our trip through Azuna, but we’ve seen little direct contact with their agents since Cataclysm. It raises the question of what she may be up to, now that her would-be consort Sargeras has come knocking on Azeroth’s door?

TYRANDE WHISPERWIND

“For her part, the priestess Tyrande emerged as one of the greatest members of the Sisterhood of Elune…In time, Tyrande would be come the high priestess of Elune, the revered leader of her sacred Sisterhood.” – World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 1, 100

Born of the same generation as Azshara, Tyrande remains the modern-day Night Elf faction leader of what remained after the Great Sundering. A former general for the sentinels, she has remained in power ever since Azshara fell below the waves. Along with her mate Malfurion Stormrage, she helped to transform the Night Elf people and their ways, in efforts to repair their civilization, and to purge it from behaviours which they believed had drawn the Burning Legion to Azeroth in the first place: Arcane magics.

As part of this, Tyrande was forced to ban Arcane magics used within the Night Elf civilization. This population of scattered elves was comprised of the victorious rebels under Tyrande’s forces, as well as those who had seen the light after following Azshara, and wished for things to return to normal. Many of Azshara’s former followers had been grand masters of the arcane and struggled with leaving the spell-type behind. They began practicing their arts in secret, but were eventually uncovered. Initially their sentence was death, but Tyrande proved slightly more lenient and instead exiled them. This group would eventually become the High Elves, and later the Blood Elves we know today.

Tyrande has been a major feature in pretty much every major battle since the Great Sundering, including in the original Warcraft III title. She was paramount in the Battle of Mount Hyjal, in helping with the Scourge Invasion, and is an ongoing presence in the struggle for Azeroth’s survival since the launch of World of Warcraft. Most recently, after the events in Val’sharah, Tyrande has aided players in taking back the Nightborne city of Suramar in the questlines leading to the launch of the Nighthold raid.

Despite so much tragedy, Tyrande stands as a beacon for her people—as steadfast as a sentinel, and beaming with the light of Elune. Few characters have seen as much as she in 10,000 years, and further few still who would continue to push forward in faith of a better tomorrow for Azeroth and their people.

 

GRAND MAGISTRIX ELLISANDE 

“Grand Magistrix Elisande, feared that the Legion did not have the Highborne’s best interests in mind. The monstrous demons had already destryoed much of the night elves’ glorius empire and poisoned the surounding land with their fel magics. Elisande’s distrust of the Legion only deepened…” – World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 1 – 103

We see very little of Grand Magistrix Elisande in comparison to the others on this list. While Queen Azshara herself has graced the pixels of World of Warcraft even less than Elisande, her presence and her story were more widely spread. Unsurprising given her legacy. Elisande, on the other hand, has an equally important story to tell.

When we see Elisande in the most recent expansion, she is pushed to the edge. Having rebelled 10,000 years ago in order to save her people, she sealed herself and her followers away in a prison of their own making. Saved from the Legion and the Great Sundering, yet forced to live in a never-ending cycle of what they had already built. No room to expand, no fresh water, or fresh food to sustain themselves, they were forced to live from the Nightwell’s energies alone and changed into the Nightborne. While her initial actions came out of a distrust of Azshara’s motives and the Burning Legion, she ultimately found herself in much the same position she originally rebelled against. After 10,000 years in solitude, Gul’dan breached the barrier surrounding the city with little effort. Shaken, Elisande was given three days to chose whether to allow the Legion in or face destruction. By now, I’m sure you know the rest.

When you face Elisande in the Nighthold raid, however, she is remorseful at the end of the battle. Rather than kill her, she offers us her aid in defeating the Legion. Having taken the only course she believed would save her people, much like she had done before the Great Sundering, Elisande becomes a sympathetic character. She was not out for power, nor for taking the Nightwell for herself. Like Tyrande, she was only interested in saving what she could before the Legion took everything else. She succeeded to some degree, but at what cost? We have an expansion to learn what help Elisande may or may not provide in fighting the Legion as time goes on from our encounter with her.

Do you have any favourite Night Elves, Nightborne, or Highborne? Let us know in the comments below, or join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, or our forums!

Famine & Flood: The State of World of Warcraft

Whether you’re raiding, PVPing, or pet battling, Legion offers a lot to do. But is it too much?

Whether you’re raiding, PVPing, or pet battling, Legion offers a lot to do. But is it too much? If you’ve been playing World of Warcraft for a long time, you’ve experienced the content ebbs and flows of Blizzard’s patches. With Legion’s most recent Patch 7.1.5 drop, it’s hard not to feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of content flowing in.

Warlords of Draenor was not a great expansion for content releases. Much of the content originally planned was either scrapped or drastically changed in order to meet ever condensed release schedules. It’s predecessor Mists of Pandaria however boasted a great start to the expansion, dropping content patches like hotcakes. Unfortunately for MoP, content stretched to a famine after the release of the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, a patch which left players wanting for over a year before Warlords finally dropped.

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So far Legion appears to be following a similar release schedule to MoP. From the outset of Legion’s release, there has been a steady flow of content for players to indulge in… perhaps a little too much content. For hardcore players, at the release of the expansion, it was nearly impossible to even consider focusing on anything but your main character. Between world quests, reputation grinds, and professions, there was a near overwhelming amount of things to keep oneself occupied. As raids opened up, arena seasons started, and new storylines were released, Blizzard has kept the river flowing. While the content may not necessarily be up to your speed, the fact remains that there is a lot to do.

Might there just be a little too much going on? While Blizzard has made efforts to try and help alts and new players catch up to current content levels, it can at times feel like there’s too much to do. However, it might just be in how you look at things. In past expansions, at max level, you pretty much logged in just for raids, dailies, or even your daily dungeon and that was it. Now for many players there is a greater variety of things to do. World quests have given a breath of fresh air to the old daily structure, allowing the freedom to not log in every day with only a minor loss to progression, as emissaries last for up to three days. Weekly events and micro holidays help players interact with the world in new ways, and change up the face of the game. Even if you don’t like what’s going on this week, usually something will be coming along soon to carry you away.

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In looking at how much Legion has to offer, it is hard not to draw parallels to MoP. We were fanned with content during Mists, and we were left with a drought in the end. Had Blizzard have paced their content releases a bit more steadily throughout Mists, the content drought would not have lasted nearly as long and might have left people feeling better about the expansion when transitioning into Warlords (which was effectively another drought). It is not surprising then that many fear that Blizzard’s content releases may run out of steam before the next expansion drops, leaving us caught in the content desert as we wait for new things to do.

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While an inter-expansion lull is always expected, one would hope that Blizzard has learned a thing or two about helping ease the transition. While the time between expansions is often a good time to catch up on things you might have let slide (pet battles, Brawler’s Guild, or transmog collections), these are often not the things which keep people subscribed. Legion doesn’t appear to be singing its final swan song anytime soon, and it’s current content trajectory appears to be solid. While players may feel a little overwhelmed with what’s currently on their plates, and the impending menu Blizzard has in store, we can hope that our Warcraft overlords have learned proper content pacing techniques. Not too fast, not too slow, but just right: the Goldilocks schedule. Something we’ll hopefully get to see after our coming trip to Argus.

How do you feel about Blizzard’s content releases so far in Legion? Do you think things are happening too fast? Are you bored already? How did you handle past expansion droughts? Let us know below, or join in the conversation on social media!

What Comes After Legion’s Success?

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With the success of World of Warcrat newest expansion, what should Blizzard do next?

Continue reading “What Comes After Legion’s Success?”

5 IPs That Should Be MMOs

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Recently, The Elder Scrolls made its transition from single-player campaign to a full MMO experience but there are plenty other franchises could be successful online communities. 

Continue reading “5 IPs That Should Be MMOs”

Odyn’s Conflicting History, and the Trial of Valor

Today, November 8, marks the release of the next mini-raid “Trial of Valor”. Whether the you’ve ferverously read World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 1, simply experienced the Stormheim questline, or are genuinely curious as to why Odyn has us fighting to prove ourselves, yet again, this post’s for you.

Odyn is kind of a jerk. Actually, Odyn is an egotistical jerk. So why are we insistent on helping him? It all lies in his origins, his history, and the legacy of the Titans.

Continue reading “Odyn’s Conflicting History, and the Trial of Valor”

Blizzard Releases The Emerald Nightmare

Today marks the unlocking of the first raid to hit the Broken Isles since Legion‘s launch back on August 30th. Normal and Heroic difficulties of the seven boss raid are available to raid teams as of today. Mythic and LFR: Wing 1, will open up next Tuesday. For a full breakdown of all the reasons we’re heading into the Emerald Nightmare today, check out Blizzard’s Raid Preview: 7 Eerie Reasons to Enter the Emerald Nightmare on the official website. If you’ve been itching to take down Xavius since finishing Val’Sharah, you’ll finally get the opportunity.

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Also included in this week’s unlocks for World of Warcraft are world bosses and Mythic + 5-man dungeons. In addition to loot, the world bosses will help players earn new artifact appearances via Unleashed Monstrosities, and may even drop hidden artifact appearances for some classes. Additionally, if you’ve been looking for a little more prestige and difficulty out of your 5-man experiences, you can start collecting Mythic Keystones to make your runs just a little more involved. A full preview of the system was also offered on the official website just last week. Some dungeon modifiers include increasing health and damage by bosses (Tyrannical), constant player-damage (Decay), and an all-time tank favorite where tanks generate less threat (Skittish). Various achievements will be rewarded according to Keystone use and progress, in addition to the improved loot the reward system includes.

Finally, for those who run to the beat of a different World of Warcraft drum, today also marks the start of Legion‘s first PVP season. Are you going to start raiding today? Let us know in the comments, or talk to us on Twitter and Facebook.

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