Shadowlands: Release Date Announced (and We Were Right)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8q5gHTCFlbg

So, at Gamescom today Shadowlands was confirmed to be releasing on the 27th of October. Based on my previous prediction that ended up being confirmed today, I’m assuming the prepatch will be either September 15th or September 22nd. Nice to see we are finally moving forward with the game, however, given how limited beta access has been, I still worry that it will be truly ready. After the break I’m including Blizzards full post about the release schedule (which has a special date for North American servers).

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Shadowlands: Thoughts on the Future of Mythic+

The Mythic Dungeon Invitational

Aside from my abundant issues with the mythic + weekly cache (now the Great Vault), I’d like to share some thoughts on what running keys might be like in the upcoming expansion. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who hasn’t gotten beta access, so I’m basing my thoughts off the announced changes. Areas of consideration are the dungeons themselves, covenants, new affixes, the aoe cap, and…

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Shadowlands Beta: Who Gets In?

While, this blog isn’t quite back up and running yet, I did want to talk a little about the Shadowlands beta and the access (or general lack of) to it.

The alpha test for this expansion was almost exclusively limited to streamers, youtubers and other such content creators. In addition to those type, the very top end of competitive content players also had a high rate of invitation (as is true historically as well). At first, this made sense to me. The very best get rewarded for their accomplishments. The content creators will create content with their access. Even further, WoW streamers and high end content runners tend to be very active and are very likely to spend a lot of time in an alpha test to either get an advantage for when the expansion goes live or, naturally, to have something in demand to stream. Win, win, win, right? Maybe… Some thoughts about this, and a tip about beta access, after the break.

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Blizzcon 2015: Warcraft Movie and Legion Expansion Trailers

See the Warcraft Movie official trailer below. It’s pretty epic. Or should I say… legendary?

 

Continue after the break for the trailer for the new Warcraft expansion, Legion. Which, in my opinion is even more epic than the trailer for the movie. I would be very much okay if they just made full length CGI movies. Probably easier to do a bunch of crazy magic and monsters than mixing CGI and live action.

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WoW: Is Ashran The Worst Thing to Happen to PVP?

oc8yhNcI started out wanting to write a nice little opinion piece on the new PVP zone. Right after launch (well, after the launch DDOS/lag fest/6 hour queues fiasco) and leveling to 100, the zone clearly had some issues – but what new feature doesn’t? So, I waited. Like the first 2 hours of the queue I am currently in to get into the zone I waited patiently for issues to be hammered out, balanced to be restored, etc. But a month after the release of Warlords the zone is more and more abhorrent. It’s past the point where I can feel the issues are bugs and more so that they’re working as intended. It’s not balanced, it’s “required” (I’ll get to that) and it’s just not fun. So, instead of writing a nice opinion piece about a feature I was once so excited about – there’s a rant incoming. (more…)