Returning to WoW after 18~24 months...

I was in the same boat about a week ago. I have 1 of each class and about 7 of them are 85. Rest between 30-60+. I decided to level my 85 mage. I played a mage since friends and family beta and always seemed to be the best at them. Frost spec seems the strongest for leveling. It's all about control. The water elemental is a pain but having that extra frost nova is handy. I had no problem leveling 85-90 and once I hit 90 the daily rep grind starts. I lasted about 3 days doing dailys and grinded out my cloud serpent mount. I don't mind doing dailys but most of the factions in Pandaria have a rep and valor requirement to buy gear and it sucks. I have never been into pvp in this game so the main way to get valor is to do dailys for +5 valor each quest, gold and 1 lesser key for raid finder rolls. You need 50 lesser keys to turn into 3 greater? keys for raid loot rolls. My ilvl is still too low to even get into the lowest raid finder so all I can do is run dailys and random heroics till I can get in.

I was about to quit again but decided to start leveling up my warlock. I know locks have gotten better and easier to play this expansion but I'm still not comfortable playing one so I shelved him. I have a lvl 30 priest and started leveling that in the meantime. Disc healing at low levels is fun in the dungeon finder with the right mods (clique).

The thing that I'm starting to hate about WoW is it's starting to suffer from ability bloat, just like EQ2. Some classes just have to much shit to focus on to play well. You can get by but to really play at a high level you need tons of macros and addons and 100% focus on the game. I'm getting to old for this shit I guess.

Also the server I'm on is a ghost town. This seems to be the norm though for all but the oldest servers from launch. A server that shows medium pop is actually low/dead. Stick to full or high pop servers if you don't want to pay $25 later to transfer.

MMORPG's need to evolve and soon. I started with UO then EQ and have tried all the (shitty) ones in between. There has to be a company out there that can break the mold and come up with something new that people will want to play for more than a month before moving on. The market is there and people are hungry for a new experience.

Rhuobhe_sl said:

Go play star wars

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Archangel_sl said:

Thanks guys; I do appreciate the tips and the links. The last time I really played was in a raiding guild rotating through Kara, Mag/Gruul, and Naxx when they were intro'd in...what, Lich King? Christ, maybe it's been longer than 24 months. I had a peek in at Cata when I got a free 7 days, and got so traumatised by the incompetent f-wits in the mess that was whatever the hell LFG was supposed to have been that I didn't play past that 7 day period.

I think I'm going to take everyone's advice and play pretty much as a solitary newbie, but I joined a level 25 guild that raids a lot, but has a casual players division, which was a nice surprise; now I can get the guild bonuses and protections--pity their tabard is ugly as hell.

I've chosen Fire as my main spec, with:
Blazing Speed
Flameglow
Frost jaw
Cauterise
Living bomb as my talents, thinking they will be of more blanket use to protect my scrawny blood elf arse against whatever the giant pandas have to throw at me.

Just got the breadcrumb quest someone talked about, so time to grab some caffeine and dive in.

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I think the best thing they've done with MoP is that you actually have to progress through old content to get to the new stuff. They drop helpful one shot quests like the new boots one but for the most part to do the Throne of Thunder you are going to have to do Heart of Fear. So once you hit 90 start doing the scenarios and heroics to gear up then hit LFR as soon as you can. The only dailies that you will need to do are the Isle of Thunder ones since you will get coins through various means there to give you rerolls on loot in LFR.

Cybsled_sl said:

Beware, that quest is hardcore.

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Hardcore for the WoW population or hardcore for this board?

Mr Creed_sl said:

There'll be plenty of WoW threads for years, come 2015-2020 everyone playing now will bring it up in each new game thread and tell you how much better it was back in 2004-2013 in the golden days of WoW. Hell it already started with the rose-colored glasses not only bringing up EQ but also a so-called WoW-vanilla. Can this thread now be about WoW nostalgia instead of explaining panda land?

(guilty myself, sue me)

Although I do look forward to an MMO that engages me enough to play it longer without breaks, too.

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The difference between those rose colored glasses that see EQ Vanilla as the greatest game of all time and the rose colored glasses for WoW vanilla is that many of us have played in the last 3 years on a third party EQ server featuring just vanilla and made it to high level. I have no idea if such a thing even exists for WoW.

Hardcore for the WoW population or hardcore for this board?

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Both. You need a specific spec, glyph layout, need to pre-pot+get other specific mats, and you also probably need to make a bunch of custom macros since you're basically controlling an enslaved pet while DPSing the boss and trying to burn down waves of adds (some adds dispel your enslave, which is "fun"), while at the same time trying to avoid instant-gib mechanics from the boss.

No one is just going to walk in and one-shot it. It's basically a 1-man heroic difficulty raid.

Cybsled_sl said:

Both. You need a specific spec, glyph layout, need to pre-pot+get other specific mats, and you also probably need to make a bunch of custom macros since you're basically controlling an enslaved pet while DPSing the boss and trying to burn down waves of adds (some adds dispel your enslave, which is "fun"), while at the same time trying to avoid instant-gib mechanics from the boss.

No one is just going to walk in and one-shot it. It's basically a 1-man heroic difficulty raid.

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Is there a 1000 page whine thread on the bnet forums about it being too hard?

Cybsled_sl said:

Both. You need a specific spec, glyph layout, need to pre-pot+get other specific mats, and you also probably need to make a bunch of custom macros since you're basically controlling an enslaved pet while DPSing the boss and trying to burn down waves of adds (some adds dispel your enslave, which is "fun"), while at the same time trying to avoid instant-gib mechanics from the boss.

No one is just going to walk in and one-shot it. It's basically a 1-man heroic difficulty raid.

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Having done the quest this is a pretty accurate description. Its not something you can just re-up and do. It is actually difficult. On the other hand it is very rewarding imo. The only sense of accomplishment that I have gotten higher than finishing this quest was killing that cunt Vashj

kudos_sl said:

wait for...TESO.

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Itzena_sl said:

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Twice in one page.

TESO is going to be terrible.

Everything is going to be terrible, gamers and game designers aren't the ones designing games any more.

Quineloe_sl said:

The difference between those rose colored glasses that see EQ Vanilla as the greatest game of all time and the rose colored glasses for WoW vanilla is that many of us have played in the last 3 years on a third party EQ server featuring just vanilla and made it to high level. I have no idea if such a thing even exists for WoW.

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If a WoW vanilla emu server doesnt exist already it's just a matter of time, 10 million people popped their MMO cherry on WoW and see vanilla/tbc the way you see EQ. I dont care for emu servers at all but i sure liked the WoW of 2004/05 more then I like it's currrent incarnation (or rather, the cataclysm variant, that was the last time I used one of those "come back fo free" week offers).

Came back to WoW a few weeks ago, and I'm having a good time. As said, this time I took it slow, messed around on a lot of alts, and am having a good time.

Decided to take my Druid to 90 first, and just a couple days ago hit 90. Continued to gear up in Dread Wastes, so I could hit heroic dungeons, and now I'm just getting into the Kirin Tor scenarios on IoT. I assume this leads to the dailies?

Will do the new Barrens scenario for some more loot, while continuing to queue as DPS for heroic dungeons. Before long I'll break 460 ilvl gear, and queue up for LFR.

Actually treating this game as a casual game, and not a hardcore, with casual play times, has made it much more fun for me.

account just went inactive but if you are just starting up again and plan to be casual then this is the right time. There seems to be a mind numbingly large amount of stuff to do for casual play.

Archangel_sl said:

Thanks guys; I do appreciate the tips and the links. The last time I really played was in a raiding guild rotating through Kara, Mag/Gruul, and Naxx when they were intro'd in...what, Lich King? Christ, maybe it's been longer than 24 months. I had a peek in at Cata when I got a free 7 days, and got so traumatised by the incompetent f-wits in the mess that was whatever the hell LFG was supposed to have been that I didn't play past that 7 day period.

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If the last time you played and your guild was doing entry BC raids AND Naxx, then that sounds more like 6-7 years ago was the last time you played. 24mths ago was like between the time most people were finishing up Firelands and Dragon Soul was getting released.

I was too twitchy from GW2 pvp that I kept trying to dodge roll, and they had revised a couple of the classes I had played since that time. I just couldn't get into it.

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Monks get roll and it lets you dodge lots of TERA/GW2 style-attacks in MoP ;P Admittedly I did miss that about TERA, so it was nice that monk sort of replicated that mechanic a bit.

Man what happened to insta ques? Tried queing with my 15 priest and after 10+ minute no group. Logged on my 70 paladin qued as tank and healer and same deal.