Wednesday, October 29, 2014

RPG Journal: Boost to 90

After going back to WoW last time, I had a ~1 month AFK, because the free 1 month subscription from coming back ran out. It was a tough decision to pre-purchase the new expansion Warlords of Draenor and go back to WoW.

Game Summary

Warlords of Draenor sets the story after Garrosh's defeat by both Alliance and the Horde. He escaped the trial with helps from the Infinity Dragon Flight, Kairoz, and Wrathion. He time-travelled back to an alternative Draenor, and over there helped free the orcs from the fate of serving the Burning Legion. instead, the orcs formed a war machine, the "Iron Horde", and reopened the Dark Portal to attack present Azeroth.

The pre-release events are already happening in the game; The Iron Horde has arrived in the Blasted Land and both Horde and Alliance are sending their best troops there to hold back the Iron Invasion.

Gameplay Journal

I boosted my lvl14 Goblin Rogue. I've always wanted to play a rogue, and Goblin just seem to be a fun race.

The boosted lvl90 character starts at the event at Blasted land. During the quests there I acquire my rogue skill sets incrementally. 

Afterwards I was free to roam the earth however I want, so I checked out some areas in Mist of Pandaria, did a transmorg run in Black Temple with my old friend, ran through couple lvl90 raids, and did some questing in MoP to learn more about the lore.

Highlights and thoughts


- Great idea to introduce the skills slowly and point out their categorization as oppose to allowing the player everything from the beginning of the boost.
- While it doesn't make a difference on goblins or pandarens, new models of other races look good and feel good.
- Running through old contents is great fun. It serves as a break from the massive difficult intense 25 man raids. It also allows you to have a smaller, closer group and do stuff.
- I GOT TO MEET SHAO HAO OMGASLKJFHKALSJBVASIUVIWEWA anyway that was quite an epic introduction to the Pandaren lore and history. It is safe to say I did not see that coming, and it is one of the in-game moments where mechanics, role-playing and narrative combine so perfectly.

- Lorewalker Cho serves as a good NPC to walk you through the lores. See What i did there?
- New Talent system is great. Previously the talent system is very hard to change around, and serves more as a theorycrafting game. Once a patch comes out, there will be a period of time when everyone is trying out new talents. But once some optimized talents come out, there's no game, only research. In this new talent system, changing talents only require a simple item, and there's no more "optimal" talent system, since talents are more about specialization and uniqueness rather than "raising attack by another 3 percent". Now that talents are not interdependent on each other anymore, it's also easier to make these decisions solely depending on the playstyle rather than calculation.
- Scenarios are very enjoyable story-wise, although they still run into the problem of conflicting interest of players who want to experience the story/immersion v.s. players who just want to be the very best, the first that ever was.

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