World of Warcraft: Current Year
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Chris
Potato del Grande
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They could have made it one item that gives 10,000 anima or more to make a splash.There's a quest to kill him.
77 gold, 22 silver, and 2,000 anima.
Could also be a nice catchup mechanism for people beating him on raid finder.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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This actually sounds like it might be pretty accurate. The Void Lords were always the endgame and they're overdue for a dragon-centric expansion and more elemental planes.
Aren't there still 2 or 3 other Old Gods still out there too? Like N'Zoth showed up, but none of the others. So 12.0 will probably be about them. Who knows though. I'd actually be surprised if the game lasts until 13.0 but we'll see.
Rajaah
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I know Shadowlands is subpar and all that but I'd like to check it out some time in the next couple months, if only to blow through the leveling content.
Three classes I'm considering, how are they doing at this point?
Arcane Mage - Think this is the BFA character I got to max level anyway
Affliction Warlock - Never played one of these, I like Necros in EQ, so I could heroic up one of these if Shadowlands includes a heroic boost
Boomkin Druid - Is this even still a thing? Never played one of these either, always wanted to
I'm inclined to go with Lock or Druid, unless Shadowlands doesn't include a level boost, in which case I guess I'll stick with Mage. Can't decide which of these I'd prefer, but I guess gun to my head I'd pick Affliction Warlock unless it's terrible now.
Fourth option is to just not bother with Shadowlands at all, but I've played every other expansion and I'd hate to miss out on one entirely.
Three classes I'm considering, how are they doing at this point?
Arcane Mage - Think this is the BFA character I got to max level anyway
Affliction Warlock - Never played one of these, I like Necros in EQ, so I could heroic up one of these if Shadowlands includes a heroic boost
Boomkin Druid - Is this even still a thing? Never played one of these either, always wanted to
I'm inclined to go with Lock or Druid, unless Shadowlands doesn't include a level boost, in which case I guess I'll stick with Mage. Can't decide which of these I'd prefer, but I guess gun to my head I'd pick Affliction Warlock unless it's terrible now.
Fourth option is to just not bother with Shadowlands at all, but I've played every other expansion and I'd hate to miss out on one entirely.
Fadaar
That guy
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I thought there were 5 but turns out only 4, so we've now taken care of them all. Cthun in vanilla, Yogg in WOTLK, Y'Shaarj was... already dead? fused with Garrosh? fuck I don't remember how Pandaland went, and N'Zoth in BFA.
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Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Runnen
Vyemm Raider
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I'm not sure how dead they are though.. the lore tidbits in game mention they're neither living nor dead, but are outside the cycle entirely (not being from this universe).
During Legion we went back to Ulduar on some quests and Yogg-Saron was clearly still having his presence felt, even the NPCs say he's been regaining strength since his defeat.
We killed C'thun but then his tomb is right next to the humongous sword draining the living blood of Azeroth which we know is a super source of energy, so I'd guess he's been drinking that with a straw during the whole BFA/Shadowlands thing.
G'huun was indeed an attempt at making an artificial Old God so I'm not counting it either.
Y'shaarj was already mostly dead when we encountered him in Pandaria, and with his heart destroyed at the end of Siege of Orgrimmar, I'd say he's gone for good.
N'Zoth is kind of a mystery though. On the one hand we seemingly vaporized him with an azerite-fueled superlaser, but on the other hand what we fought didn't really look like the whole thing. I mean, in BFA you literally see N'zoth's huge ass tentacles under the Shrine of Storms in the dephts, he's spread out over the ocean, and then you fight this piddly thing at the end of Ny'alotha.. plus it's called the city of dreams in various lore tidbits, so maybe we saw what we wanted to see.
Also, Xalatath (the priest dagger) is still out there, and we know she's related to the Old Gods too or may have been one herself previously.
A lot of that is a way to bring back rather popular villains, and I'll admit I'm myself waiting for an Old God centric expansion, I think the Black Empire patch was a mistake if it's all they intend to do with it, it could have been made into a whole expansion concept to deal with them for good I think.
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Runnen
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As for the Jailer's final cinematics, they're just mostly disappointing, but that's par for the course in this expansion.
The Jailer himself is not an interesting character, his original design is a blatant ripoff of Zebuxoruk from EQ's Planes of Power (wearing rags, bare chest, chains motif) and then his armored design is what you get when you imagine the Lich King on steroids, cartoonishly exagerated.
His motivations are cliché upon cliché for the little we know of them, he just wanted to unite the universe against a "coming threat (tm)", and when they wouldn't listen he decided forcing everyone with Domination was the way to go, and was imprisoned for the attempt. See also Palpatine creating the Galactic Empire to face the Yuuzhan Vong, or a myriad other villains who did the same thing.
Plus they also tried to cram as much of the past stories as possible into the Jailer's 34D chess, so it looked silly pretty quick when you figure out he's been behind the Legion, the Old Gods, the Emerald Nightmare, the Scourge, the Dreadlords, and he killed Batman's parents. All along making past fan-favorite villains into pawns or diminishing their impact in the story. The cinematic intro to the last raid could have been a redo of "Agatha All Along" with the Jailer dancing.
Thing is, Zebuxoruk also showed up out of nowhere in EQ, like the Jailer in WoW, but his backstory was pretty cool as we found out he was a mortal that gained god-like powers because he learned the language of the gods, and was imprisoned because he wanted to reveal the secrets to all of mortality so the other gods would not be worshipped anymore, and thus lose the source of their powers... and was imprisoned for it. It made for a pretty compelling story, the players versus the gods.
In WoW, we find out the entire pantheon of death was 3D printed in the latest zone, and even Zovaal himself was just a defective robot who had free will where the others were content with performing their appointed tasks. In fact, it looks like all the pantheons are 3D printed since they mention there's six Zereth zones.. this makes not only the Shadowlands very much not interesting, but also seriously diminishes the rest of the story so far in my opinion.
The Jailer himself is not an interesting character, his original design is a blatant ripoff of Zebuxoruk from EQ's Planes of Power (wearing rags, bare chest, chains motif) and then his armored design is what you get when you imagine the Lich King on steroids, cartoonishly exagerated.
His motivations are cliché upon cliché for the little we know of them, he just wanted to unite the universe against a "coming threat (tm)", and when they wouldn't listen he decided forcing everyone with Domination was the way to go, and was imprisoned for the attempt. See also Palpatine creating the Galactic Empire to face the Yuuzhan Vong, or a myriad other villains who did the same thing.
Plus they also tried to cram as much of the past stories as possible into the Jailer's 34D chess, so it looked silly pretty quick when you figure out he's been behind the Legion, the Old Gods, the Emerald Nightmare, the Scourge, the Dreadlords, and he killed Batman's parents. All along making past fan-favorite villains into pawns or diminishing their impact in the story. The cinematic intro to the last raid could have been a redo of "Agatha All Along" with the Jailer dancing.
Thing is, Zebuxoruk also showed up out of nowhere in EQ, like the Jailer in WoW, but his backstory was pretty cool as we found out he was a mortal that gained god-like powers because he learned the language of the gods, and was imprisoned because he wanted to reveal the secrets to all of mortality so the other gods would not be worshipped anymore, and thus lose the source of their powers... and was imprisoned for it. It made for a pretty compelling story, the players versus the gods.
In WoW, we find out the entire pantheon of death was 3D printed in the latest zone, and even Zovaal himself was just a defective robot who had free will where the others were content with performing their appointed tasks. In fact, it looks like all the pantheons are 3D printed since they mention there's six Zereth zones.. this makes not only the Shadowlands very much not interesting, but also seriously diminishes the rest of the story so far in my opinion.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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It never ceases to amaze me how much WoW ripped off of EQ without getting sued, or even anybody really noticing. I mean they came out with a purple crystal zone called Heart of Fear at the same time that EQ's endzone was a purple crystal zone called Heart of Fear. Pretty much all the druid spells in classic are lifted directly from EQ, right down to Starfire being their big endgame nuke. Second expansion is an ice continent (okay this one is probably a coincidence). Every EQ class (besides Enchanter and Bard, too complex for the WoW demographic) are represented in WoW.
Warrior - Arms/Prot Warrior
Berserker - Fury Warrior
Necromancer - Affliction Warlock
Mage - Destruction Warlock
Wizard - Mage
Shaman - Shaman
Druid - Druid
Rogue - Rogue
Ranger - Marksmanship Hunter
Beastlord - Beast Tamer Hunter
Paladin - Paladin
Shadowknight - Death Knight (Blood/Unholy)
Monk - Monk
Cleric - Priest
WoW does have some entirely new concepts like Feral Druid, Demonology Warlock, Demon Hunter in general, and a couple others I'm forgetting probably.
Still wondering if anyone has any input on the Affliction Warlock or Boomkin Druid (or Arcane Mage) as far as Shadowlands goes. I'd say 60% chance I'm going with the 'Lock and 20% chance for the other two.
Is there any particular need to play both sides in Shadowlands? I know the last few expansions had slightly different zones for the two sides, so I'd run Mage on Alliance side and Demon Hunter on Horde side. I guess I could do Horde Warlock and Alliance Druid this time out? Except I probably only get one heroic character boost with the Shadowlands purchase, so more likely I'd need to just pick one. I've played Alliance to death so I'll probably do an undead warlock just to do something new, plus Orgrimmar will bring back memories of when I first played and was Horde all the way.
Runnen
Vyemm Raider
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There is zero difference between the Alliance and Horde for Shadowlands, except the NPCs you'll start the quest line with (Nazgrim in Orgrimmar, Whitemane in Stormwind). Everything else is seen through the main group of heroes that has NPCs from both factions (Baine, Thrall, Jaina, Taelia) and neutral NPCs (Bolvar, Darion). The zones and covenants are also neutral and you'll have the same content as Horde or Alliance, so you can play whatever you like.
You'll be leveling your first time by doing the campaign across the four main zones of the Shadowlands, though you'll probably hit 60 somewhere around the end of the second zone or early in third zone if you do every quest and bonus objective, your mileage may vary.
For covenants, just pick whatever flavor you like to begin with, and you'll gain the ability to switch freely down the road once you get to max level and make some progress into your covenant's campaign and renown.
Once you're at max level, you'll gain access to the Korthia campaign, and then the Zereth Mortis campaign which is the current content of patch 9.2.
If you intend to play alts into Shadowlands, you won't have to do the story campaign again if you don't want to, you can also choose the Threads of Fate leveling that lets you level through Shadowlands by doing World Quests, dungeons, Torghast runs and bonus objectives while also gaining progress on your covenant that you can pick right away.
As for your question on affliction warlocks, I have one (an alt but I still play him quite a bit) and I really like him. I'm not a raider and I don't do mythic dungeons so I can't speak about how competitive the spec is, but it's great for soloing content in the world so that's what matters to me.
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Goonsquad Officer
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I think zebuxorek was in the origional pantheon in the eq1 manual. But no one imagined him being used well
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You can't sue anyone for ripping you off when you ripped off those things from somewhere else first yourself.
Ever heard of Sojourn? It's called TorilMUD now. Current classes there should be:
- Cleric
- Shaman
- Druid
- Invoker
- Enchanter
- Illusionist
- Elementalist
- Necromancer
- Psionicist
- Warrior
- Paladin
- Blackguard
- Rogue
- Ranger / Dire Raider
- Bard / Battlechanter
Last I checked Boomkin was pretty FotM/meta, and you can heal and Tank if needed. Great utility.
Affliction Warlock is bottom of the barrel IIRC. It's Demo Warlock or go home.
Arcane Mage is pretty ok, but I personally fucking hated the playstyle.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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Imagine if they had a Black Empire expansion where Xalatath revives them all and the zones they are connected to get revamped. Could even have Ahn'quiraj, Azol'nerub and Nyalotha zones.
This stuff writes itself... it's amazing how incompetent they are.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Nera already answered, but EQ1 ripped their shit from MUDs and D&D.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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Yeah, I care much more about open world fighting than I do about endgame raid metas, so warlock is probably fine.
Intredasting. Now that I think about it, I used to play a game called Terris (think it's Legends of Terris now) that also had quite a bit in common with EQ despite being a text MUD. I played that on and off in 97 and 98 then graduated right to EQ and a lot of things were really similar like the two main human capitol cities being on either side of the main continent and hybrid classes like Ranger that had scaled-down versions of other class' spell sets in addition to melee abilities.
Yeah, people have covered why already, but I think there's more mileage to be had with the Old Gods in their "true forms" on their home planes. I mean EQ has reused Cazic-Thule in like 6 expansions. Since 12.0 is a question mark I'd put them there.
10.0 - Dragons
11.0 - Elemental Planes
12.0 - Old Gods in their home planes
13.0 - Void Lords
-then just leave the game to its own devices and start working on Universe of Starcraft or something.
Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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Fuck all this creationism shit. Dragon Isles is a nod to BWL/Onyxia and is w/e I guess? But here is the expansion I wanted:
Now that the scourge have left huge swaths of land unclaimed, you see a huge reemergence of forgotten factions that were pushed back to near extinction levels from the scourge.
Expansion Release #.1.00 : The Plague Lands are relinquished and the Forsaken move their new capital to Stratholme. PL is now called the original name "Eastweald" and the North Lands are implemented for the Scarlet Crusade. The bloodline of Menethil is reestablished and Lordaeron is rebuilt. Undercity is now a dungeon and there is a push from both the Horde and the Alliance to cleanse the corruption that was brought upon the area by Sylvanas. Scarlet Crusade is ever vigilant against he encroachment of the Forsaken and fights back. Five new Dungeons in total, one in UC, call back dungeon in Scarlet Monastery, two in Eastweald (one against scourge, one against Scarlet Crusade), one in Northlands against Scarlet Crusade AND scourge which is a lead up to the Scarlet Crusade raid zone.
Patch #.1.5 : The rise of trolls - Silvermoon starts to rebuild and reclaim its lands. The remaining trolls of Zul'Aman and the Zandalari rise up against Silvermoon's push. One new dungeon in Silvermoon based on the Scourge, and one new mini raid against Trolls in Zul'Aman (possibly a call back Raid).
Patch #.2.01 : Nerubians have emerged and have started to retake their domain by force. The Gundrak Trolls are in direct opposition of this encroachment and have went to war with the Nerubians. The beaten back Zandalari trolls have united with the Gundrak Trolls and fight over in phased areas of Northrend. New under world zones to explore under Northrend. Two new dungeons dealing with trolls and scourge, guest appearance by Dragons in Northrend and Azjol Nerub. One new Raid zone where we fight the unfinished/cut content of the Gundrak raid.
Patch #.2.5 : The revitalized presence of the alliance and Horde in Northrend has caused the Vrykul to retaliate against our presence as they retake the lands that once belonged to the scourge. The Vrykul are undertaking a ritual using stolen ancient technology and only the Dwarven bloodline can use it. New phased open world content. One new mini-raid. "The Vrykul succeeded in their ritual using dwarven technology, but it went awry." At the end of the raid, all of Azeroth shook and we get a cut scene ending at the gates of Ironforge.
Patch #.3.01 (Possible finale): Iron Forge is under direct assault from within. Fire elementals are spewing out of the depths of Iron Forge and no one can get close to where they are coming from. One new dungeon (scenario?) grind, similar to the Corruption scenario grind, where we fight back the elementals. The Hall of Thanes is an ancients facility and we're trying to fight back an elemental Ragnaros equivalent ancient. New raid, new dungeon, long grind.
Expansion Release #.1.00 : The Plague Lands are relinquished and the Forsaken move their new capital to Stratholme. PL is now called the original name "Eastweald" and the North Lands are implemented for the Scarlet Crusade. The bloodline of Menethil is reestablished and Lordaeron is rebuilt. Undercity is now a dungeon and there is a push from both the Horde and the Alliance to cleanse the corruption that was brought upon the area by Sylvanas. Scarlet Crusade is ever vigilant against he encroachment of the Forsaken and fights back. Five new Dungeons in total, one in UC, call back dungeon in Scarlet Monastery, two in Eastweald (one against scourge, one against Scarlet Crusade), one in Northlands against Scarlet Crusade AND scourge which is a lead up to the Scarlet Crusade raid zone.
Patch #.1.5 : The rise of trolls - Silvermoon starts to rebuild and reclaim its lands. The remaining trolls of Zul'Aman and the Zandalari rise up against Silvermoon's push. One new dungeon in Silvermoon based on the Scourge, and one new mini raid against Trolls in Zul'Aman (possibly a call back Raid).
Patch #.2.01 : Nerubians have emerged and have started to retake their domain by force. The Gundrak Trolls are in direct opposition of this encroachment and have went to war with the Nerubians. The beaten back Zandalari trolls have united with the Gundrak Trolls and fight over in phased areas of Northrend. New under world zones to explore under Northrend. Two new dungeons dealing with trolls and scourge, guest appearance by Dragons in Northrend and Azjol Nerub. One new Raid zone where we fight the unfinished/cut content of the Gundrak raid.
Patch #.2.5 : The revitalized presence of the alliance and Horde in Northrend has caused the Vrykul to retaliate against our presence as they retake the lands that once belonged to the scourge. The Vrykul are undertaking a ritual using stolen ancient technology and only the Dwarven bloodline can use it. New phased open world content. One new mini-raid. "The Vrykul succeeded in their ritual using dwarven technology, but it went awry." At the end of the raid, all of Azeroth shook and we get a cut scene ending at the gates of Ironforge.
Patch #.3.01 (Possible finale): Iron Forge is under direct assault from within. Fire elementals are spewing out of the depths of Iron Forge and no one can get close to where they are coming from. One new dungeon (scenario?) grind, similar to the Corruption scenario grind, where we fight back the elementals. The Hall of Thanes is an ancients facility and we're trying to fight back an elemental Ragnaros equivalent ancient. New raid, new dungeon, long grind.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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Just occurred to me. With the new level squish, 60 is the max level as of Shadowlands. If it continues going up by ten levels per expansion, then four more expansions (what that guy predicted) will put the level cap at exactly 100 for the final expansion. I feel like this is too perfect to be a coincidence. I wish EQ would have called it a day at 100 myself and just expanded sideways from there with AAs/gear.
10.0 - Dragons (61-70)
11.0 - Elemental Planes (71-80)
12.0 - Old Gods in their home planes (81-90)
13.0 - Void Lords (91-100)
Question, if I heroic up a character for Shadowlands, they start at 50 right? I mean I'd consider starting at 1 with my warlock if I had more free time, I miss Silverpine and Tirisfal a lot.
10.0 - Dragons (61-70)
11.0 - Elemental Planes (71-80)
12.0 - Old Gods in their home planes (81-90)
13.0 - Void Lords (91-100)
Question, if I heroic up a character for Shadowlands, they start at 50 right? I mean I'd consider starting at 1 with my warlock if I had more free time, I miss Silverpine and Tirisfal a lot.
