double post for extra derp
If I have a choice between riding the bus to school or trudging five miles uphill both ways through the snow to school ... what time does the bus come?
I kinda love snow days though.
Gimme classic wow (hopefully I've correctly understood your metaphor).
If anyone is looking for an Alliance Tank, whisper me 
I'm at ilvl 389 if that mean anything, but always on for the ride if time permit.
8.2 previews are out today in all the usual places. As expected, there's a ton of new stuff -- new areas, new reps, more mounts, flying (but after grinding out more reps), etc etc etc. It's a major content patch, in other words.
A couple of small but CRUCIAL things jumped out:
* Your waterstrider mount won't walk on water any longer unless you slot it as such. Mounts will come with slots (I think it's one slot for all of your mounts, tbh), and you can choose to equip a waterwalking dongle.
* Gnome heritage armor! Which is great, as my latest alt is small and puntable.
* Heart of Azeroth (neck piece) now has slots. It looks like it'll work like the Netherforge Crucible from Legion.
No ETA. 8.2 goes on the PTR next week, I think, and then it's the usual test-n-wait.
* Your waterstrider mount won't walk on water any longer unless you slot it as such. Mounts will come with slots (I think it's one slot for all of your mounts, tbh), and you can choose to equip a waterwalking dongle.
They've also said if you have the waterstrider mount they'll mail you the water-walking item for free. I hope it works on my cloud disk thing. That's a neat mount but it behaves a little unusually; it goes away if I go underwater with it so I'm worried that the water surface might dismount me.
* Heart of Azeroth (neck piece) now has slots. It looks like it'll work like the Netherforge Crucible from Legion.
That one had you pick 2/5 options per relic and you had to destroy the old relic when you upgraded to a new one. Everything I've read about this BFA system says that you get to keep these doodads when you remove them and they can be swapped in and out like talents.
Neither of the water strider mounts are easy to acquire, even now, because they are both based on grinds that do not become easier if you are over leveled for them or have the real cost reduced by gold inflation. It would be EXTREMELY infuriating to lose the benefit I earned for getting it.
As for the new heart mechanics, it sounds like you acquire the equivalent of talents that you can slot freely into one active slot and several passive slots once you've gotten them. it also sounds like they are going to widely vary how you can get them and not in a random way, so if you want to get every one, you are going to need to excel in every aspect of the game. Personally i'm fine with that. I think the people who complain about not being able to collect everything while not participating in raids or mythics or PvP are being kind of whiney and entitled.
I didn't have much trouble doing the water strider mount, but that's because by the time I discovered I could spend timewalking dungeon currency on Anglers reputation I already had most of what I needed. So really I just hadn't known I was grinding. Getting the Shado-Pan hat? That feels like a grind.
I didn't have much trouble doing the water strider mount, but that's because by the time I discovered I could spend timewalking dungeon currency on Anglers reputation I already had most of what I needed. So really I just hadn't known I was grinding. Getting the Shado-Pan hat? That feels like a grind.
... ... ... i didn;t know you could spend timewalkers currency on anglers rep... *&^^&*(&^*&*&^*%^*&^&*
actually not really, i got in when it was still current content. Kind of like my nether drake that i worked every day for MONTHS to get and now is pretty common.
At least my violet protodrake still means something...
ok im done bragging now
Enix wrote:* Your waterstrider mount won't walk on water any longer unless you slot it as such. Mounts will come with slots (I think it's one slot for all of your mounts, tbh), and you can choose to equip a waterwalking dongle.
They've also said if you have the waterstrider mount they'll mail you the water-walking item for free. I hope it works on my cloud disk thing. That's a neat mount but it behaves a little unusually; it goes away if I go underwater with it so I'm worried that the water surface might dismount me.
Enix wrote:* Heart of Azeroth (neck piece) now has slots. It looks like it'll work like the Netherforge Crucible from Legion.
That one had you pick 2/5 options per relic and you had to destroy the old relic when you upgraded to a new one. Everything I've read about this BFA system says that you get to keep these doodads when you remove them and they can be swapped in and out like talents.
Thanks for clarifying all that. My brain just sees NEW TRINKET SYSTEM and stops processing much beyond that. Once upon a time I dug deep into stuff like this. Now, meh. It's all I can do to find time to play, much less obsess over all the possible nerfs and buffs. I'm glad other folks are paying close attention!
P.S. @Thrawn: OMG the nether drake grind. I think I did it at level when getting destroyed out there was a real possibility (and when lots of other folks were camping those eggs). The nether drakes are still some of my favorites, tho.
P.S. @Thrawn: OMG the nether drake grind. I think I did it at level when getting destroyed out there was a real possibility (and when lots of other folks were camping those eggs). The nether drakes are still some of my favorites, tho.
The bootarang quest is still one of my favorites in all of my time in wow.
Been recovering from a surgery and re-subbed because I needed a physically passive distraction that did not take too much mental energy either. Geared my monk main up a bit through war fronts and WQ, got my pally to 120 and unlocked the dwarven heritage armor. Then got a bit bored. Decided to dust off my very first main, a druid. I had used my Legion level boost to get him to 110 but never played him. Anyhow ... feral is absolutely awesome for open world leveling! I cannot believe how much the class has changed. The last time I put time into this character was mid-TBC, when the only viable spec was resto.
I geared him up with heirlooms and for the first time enabled war mode for the 20 percent XP boost. With the cloak and pants I think the bonus is 35 percent. Will probably hit 120 before I clear the first zone (Drustvar).
Have been thinking of restarting, but the last time i played on a free 7 day come back to your old characters, I just got depressed as no one I know plays any more 
Maybe after December when I am done with school and only have my full time job to contend with.
Have been thinking of restarting, but the last time i played on a free 7 day come back to your old characters, I just got depressed as no one I know plays any more
WoW is very solo friendly these days. You can be as social as you want, in other words.
Unrelated: This latest weekly maintenance made the new BfA even more alt-friendly. The emissary quests are dropping i395 gear, which is great except for the fact that I already have i400 boots, thanks very much. Maybe one day I'll replace these garbage trinkets I'm running with.
Anyone have any advice on finding better weapons that don't involve Mythic+ raids?
Blizzard Watch predicts that Patch 8.2 will emerge sometime in late June / early July. This next patch will be a big one.
Meanwhile, I have really enjoyed my latest leveling project, which includes building both a farm and a garrison. I guess I could hustle my new rogue to Boralus, but where's the fun in doing all those WQs?
Some breaking WoW news: Classic will come out Aug. 27. There's apparently a website (www.wowclassic.com, tho it's not live) and an opt-in beta.
I am mildly intrigued, mostly only so I can replay the Duskwood zone and visit Loch Modan before the Cataclysm wrecked it. Otherwise, I'm not interested in walking uphill both ways until Level 40.
What is it with Blizzard and those august release dates :/ Last two expansions were august too. Right after summer vacations. Shame on them.
Definitely interested in playing. Even if I am sure I'll burn out on the experience really fast.
It’s something I’ll dip into for a bit for the nostalgia at some point. I think there’s more about Vanilla that I don’t miss than I do, though. My ideal WoW was somewhere a little later on.
How Vanilla is it exactly? Like busted over powered Windfury proc'cing off itself Vanilla or just before BC Vanilla?
In the end I can't imagine theres a huge audience for this.. 40 player raids were awful.. forced holy trinity spec's were awful and in general the game was filled with unneccessary downtime and raids that had WAY to many trash mob packs.. like who the F wants to actually do the BWL Supression room again on purpose?
You're not hardcore!
Unless you live hardcore!
How Vanilla is it exactly? Like busted over powered Windfury proc'cing off itself Vanilla or just before BC Vanilla?
In the end I can't imagine theres a huge audience for this.. 40 player raids were awful.. forced holy trinity spec's were awful and in general the game was filled with unneccessary downtime and raids that had WAY to many trash mob packs.. like who the F wants to actually do the BWL Supression room again on purpose?
Out of curiosity I'd like to understand this as well. In addition to Shaman, Warlocks and Druids were flat out broken for much of vanilla...and not in a good way. I remember getting raid invites and then being told to sit in the corner and spam drain mana on bosses.
How Vanilla is it exactly?
Blizzard has announced Classic Wow won't be plain vanilla. They'll use a modified version of Patch 1.12. Here's the official announcement. I say "modified" because Blizzard is having to tune some things under the hood. It turns out that both PCs and computer architecture have changed somewhat since 2006.
I get the nostalgia factor but I'm probably going to be a mild pass on Classic.
Hard pass on classic. If it was so awesome we would still be playing it.
I've watched Asmongold stream it the last couple of nights. While it looks just like the original WoW, it destroys all interest I had in playing it and going back to those times. Definitely better left a memory for me.
This is amusing. Rose-colored glasses?
Here's something interesting: Blizzard is considering a level squish.
No, not an iLevel squish that they've done once (or twice?) before. A character level squish. As in max character level won't be 120. It'll be X, which will be less than 120 (or 130, if they kick that can farther down the expansion road).
Yeah, they have talked about it for quite a while. But sounds like they are pretty close to making a decision to do it now.
I think it would be a weird/confusing - even more so when you now have a classic version of the game running another lvl system.
If they want to arbitrarily change things to make lvling smoother with more meaningful impact each time you lvl up, just give 5 lvls per ding or something up until the most recent expansions.
I think they should just change the way the XP bar is displayed. Show me a line with bubbles, kinda like the default UI. Except each bubble is an "empty" level, and when the bar fills that's when I get a new skill or talent choice.
The whole concept of levels eventually becomes meaningless in mature MMORPG’s. You have this arbitrary leveling process to reach max level where the real leveling begins by increasing your gear score.
At this point the game should consist of a intro to each class that teaches a newbie about the mechanics of a particular class then dumps them at “max” level and proceeds to bring on the real grind
At this point the game should consist of a intro to each class that teaches a newbie about the mechanics of a particular class then dumps them at “max” level and proceeds to bring on the real grind
I'd be surprised, tbh. Leveling is central to the WoW experience. Blizzard has done a ton of things to speed up the process, but I don't see it being ditched altogether.
If your counter is "Well, leveling is a pointless exercise in grinding," I'd say once again that leveling is central to WoW. 
8.2 comes out June 25. At the link, there's a 2-minute video on the features in the new patch.
Here's the Wowhead roundup of key features.
This is a big one. Buckle up.
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