Well, my return to World of Warcraft wasn’t as smooth, fun, or heralded as I expected. I haven’t used bullet points in a while.
- First off my guild of the past three expansions was gone. It wasn’t that I was kicked out of it but that it had completely disbanded. I was shocked because even my first guild – from 2007 still exists with a skeleton crew. I know this even though I have long left the server because my Potion Bank Alt is still in that guild (along with my Warrior alt.) I login once in a while to see who is still there and kicking around. I moved servers when I quit being a guild leader and followed some friends who wanted a better timezone for their playtime. Since I wasn’t leading or raiding anymore, the Mountain time zone didn’t matter (I am Eastern Standard) as I was playing WoW super casual at that time (and still am). So when I had some good gaming friends go to a new server I went with them. It also gave me a good split from a guild that I had loved for many years – but when you step down as a leader it’s hard to be in the wings, and many people send you whispers looking for advice, etc. that is better for the new leadership to handle. You feel like you are in the way. I do regret that move some days, because I left a lot of good people behind and I didn’t support them how I should have. It’s tough when “it’s just a game” and “there are real people who matter” collide.
- For some reason WoW is the only game I can’t play with the base UI. I had to download, install, update and configure no less than 17 mods to get the base UI to a state I deemed “playable”. Curse used to auto-update this for me but now they are owned by Twitch, so I had to install a new installer program. Plus, many of my favorite mods were no longer supported or updated so I had to find mods that did a similar thing. It took two of my first full play sessions to even get close to being able to play. I am still not done by any stretch of the imagination but it’s pretty close now. I think this crutch is as much my own issue as the game itself as a past raider the mods you had to have became a part of the core experience. I have had zero issues in DDO, EQ2, EQ1, TSW (etc.) with needing mods to play.
- At this stage in the expansion and where I was at there is so just so much to do and no real proper or clear path in what order to do it in – the game is pulling me in several different directions that are unrelated. There are quests to unlock new traits in my artifacts – but those traits are already unlocked (I think as a catch up mechanic?). I already spent billions on improving it then finished the quests and became able to do… what I already did. Flying in Legion does NOT have an easy catch up mechanic. I don’t know why the WoW devs hate that so much. Should be easy peasy at this point and not a month long grind. I have daily quests from Argus – an area I haven’t been to yet (want to finish off the flying part first) and they take up one of my three available daily chest slots. I had two of them going at one point. I feel like it should be more streamlined at this point.
- I did LFR to get some quests done and see the bosses – and it is embarrassingly easy at this stage. I went in without reading a single raid boss strat and killed them all. I am glad they exist. It’s pretty easy to just watch other players and react accordingly. I did some of the new 5 mans too. The best part about LFR over the 5 mans is that people talk in LFR! Sure, it’s only to complain about “noobs” and “I can’t heal stupid” but seeing chat was nice.
- Oh, I did join one of those random accept guild invites. Guild perks are a thing in WoW for rep and quest grinds in particular. Lucky for me they are chatty and seem friendly. No clue what my long term plans are – I definitely do not want to pay to transfer all my characters to my old home (Whisperwind) but if I can cross account things now to Horde side I may go next xpac as a Horde. I talk about that every expansion but never do it.
I am not loving the return. I am committed to trying to get flying. Curious to level a Monk. Going to start playing the AH to try and preserve a free subscription cost. This may be a short trip back, we will see. I was hoping to be having more fun and be more excited at this stage!
If you left at 7.2, then it’s a few days effort on the Broken Shores to get flying as you would have already completed the first part, right?
Argus is a bit weird. It’s a lot like the last patch in MoP, and removes the crazy useless grind of Tanaan jungle in WoD. Odd that it would give you the daily chests without unlocking the various drop points though…random is random?
And yeah, the catchup on AK / AP is really weird. After such a large mental scar for timegating content / grind, it’s weird to be getting billions of points for no effort. Even more surreal when you try leveling again and 100 AP is a milestone at 91.
The flying has me confused – I just need Legionfall rep to Honored but I get 75 – 150 for world quests and building the constructs (which takes 4 quests) – so 12,000 honor is a lot to get in chunks of 75-150. Am I missing something? There a faster way?
Yes, complete the main quest line for Broken Shores. Each one gives 1500 rep. The first one should be something like “get 2000 shards” or close to that.
Actually, if you look at the class mount requirements, completing that achievement will near guarantee you get flying unlocked.
OK got it sorted. I was stuck on a Sentinax quest that really sucked (get 50 things, of which, you get 1-5 from a rare drop you get farming mobs) that I was ignoring doing because of that. I found on Wowhead the best way to do it is to find a cross server group in custom search. Once that was done and I got 1500xp, it gave me another one for 1500xp. So I was just “stuck” on that one.
Yes, go to the spider area in the NW (I think it is) and there are plenty of farming groups.
You need a randomly dropped item to open portals, and those portals give you a random amount of the item you are looking for. RNG on top of RNG. The theme of the Legion grind.
There was a serious splitting of paths when I came back as, if you are 110, all of the end game content was suddenly open. You have to just concentrate on what you want to do and ignore the rest for now.
As for getting revered with the Armies of Legionfall, do the world quests when you can. When the emissary quest comes up for them, make sure you do that, because that is a big boost. Also, do the Kirin-Tor emissary quest as well when it pops, as the reward is a token that lets you boost standings with any faction you choose. And then have your followers do any quests that come up for them for faction tokens. Together that will speed things up as far as time spent focused, though you have to wait for the emissary quests to pop up.
Ah ok very helpful. And handy because the Kirin Tor one popped up for me today – which I normally would have skipped. Forgot about the rep gains!
In an ironic twist, most of the Kirin-Tor world quests are trivially easy once you have flying, but a pain until then. Still, you only have to do three.
Yes, I was slowly floating in my bubble when a fellow druid flew by and grabbed the artifact. I shook my fist like this! *shakes fist