Problem with Warlords Premise

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I’ve been doing some thinking, some pondering, some soul-searching over the plot line of the new expansion… and I really don’t think I like what I know so far. In previous expansions, we fought incredibly powerful and epic enemies. In BC, we fought Illidan who was a massively powerful mage who dedicated his life to power and combat, was granted extra power by demons. He was the first of his kind – a demon hunter and was thousands of years old. We may or may not have been prepared. In WolLK, Arthas was a Paladin, who was effectively merged with a Shaman/Warlock, infused with demon power, given amazing gear and had the power over death. Come on. In Cataclysm, Deathwing was the freakin’ aspect of earth granted power by the titans and corrupted (and possibly empowered further) by old gods. In MoP… we got an orc who only a few years before was basically mopey kid in Outlands who couldn’t have fought off the average basic campfire. While the enemy in Warlords doesn’t seem to be quite as insignificant as Garrosh, I don’t expect the epicness of previous expansions. There will be spoilers below, continue at your own risk. Also, check out the end of the post for the Warlords trailer. (more…)

Achievement Unlocked – Has No Life

all classesThere comes a point where an achievement toast might start to sound a little judgmental, even condescending. Like, “Ding – You’ve clearly not been outside in a while, but grats on all those 90’s”. So, well, yesterday I finally hit 90 on the last class available, my Blood Elf Warlock. Which, is even more excessive because I have 2 level 90 druids. That makes 12 total level 90 characters. My days /played is probably pretty atrocious at this point. But what the hell, at least it’s not the Insane title, right? With some of the achievements in game that require massive amounts of play time (250k honorable kills, for instance), I wonder why there isn’t an achievement for having all classes to max level. There’s one for 5 classes. There’s one for 1 on each faction. It takes far more time to get Loremaster than to level 11 classes, so it isn’t that Blizzard is afraid of requiring that much time invested. So what gives?

Anyway, who know Blizzard’s logic for achievements. But, kidding aside, I’m actually pretty happy to be done with the leveling process. The initial gearing process is actually pretty fun because literally every drop is an upgrade and the timeless isle, while grindy if you stay there too long, has been a veritable smorgasbord of loot. Since I’ve been out there enough on other characters already, each of my recent 90’s (mage, shaman, lock) have been at least 490 item level in under 1 hour /played at level 90. Of course, in the nature of MMO’s my goal itself becomes cyclical very quickly. I wanted to get my characters max as fast as possible as I could stomach so I could start gearing them to be able to kill flex Garrosh. I want to kill flex Garrosh for the heirloom weapons. I want those heirloom weapons to make leveling in Warlords of Draenor easier. So… I’m leveling to gear up to kill a dude to get items to make leveling easier. Such logic. Wow.