Being Saleh: Longer and Harder

Oh, hi!!

So it's been a long time since my last post, being a dad is one of the cause but I'm kinda jumping between games this past year, most of them are JRPGs, several FFXIV, WOW, and ESO sessions and on some month: not playing anything at all.

But enough all that, today I want to talk about WOW, you know, yes it's still exists :D

As Legion expansion entered it's final chapter as of the release of patch 7.3.5, and the end of the third invasion of the burning crusade: I finally leveled up my paladin, my sixth level 110 toon

The most controversiaI thing in this patch and subject to most debate on online forums is probably the world zone scaling, it basically a guild wars 2 type of character syncing only this time it's the world that leveled up with you instead of you leveled down to match the zone's recommended level. Blizz initially did this for the Legion expansion area but now it's live for all WOW area: So what's this thing did for the players?

Basically it gives freedom for new characters to choose where they want to go to level up, the wow vanilla zone (Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor) is designed for player level 1-60, the Outland and Northrend is now a level 60-80 zones, Cataclysm and Pandaland is 80-90 zones, while the dreaded Draenor is still a level 90-100 zone. The scaling also means the level 1-100 dungeons are now also scaled to player's level, making them more challenging a.k.a as my lazy self said (without any body part references): longer and harder, making players leveling is now a return to the classic way: questing.

As I read the patch notes I realized this is the thing that I can get behind to, but I still wonder... so I decided to tackle them out, I started a mage, the class that I avoid like a plague, decked him with full heirloom gears, I rolled a goblin which can't leave their initial area until the storyline is completed (btw this is my third goblin) my goal is of course: max level -- with this much handicap

I (finally and blisfully) left lost isle when my mage reached level 20, then I browsed the war board on ogrimmar, the usual route for goblins on this level is aszhara but since I have the quest achievement I decided to go to stonetalon instead, skipping ashenvale (which I completed on my warlock many many years ago). From Stonetalon i continued to Desolace, completed them both, then I hightailed to Feralas, Felwood, and a bit of Winterspring, after I dinged 60 with some help from dungeon quests (they gave decent exp but the dungeon itself is not) I decided to quit... at least for now

So what did I get to level the worst class (for me at least) on the worst looking race from 1 to 60? The leveling process itself is a mixed bag, but remember that those area is from cataclysm era so the story felt a little outdated, I mean I still love them and find the forgotten little bit of the story, like uniting the centaur on desolace is great, but still... it's somewhat off... I can't really put my finger on what's wrong, it just feel... odd, could be because I'm playing a mage though.

But nevertheless i dinged 60 so let's mix things a bit, I have a level 60 pally from... I can't remember actually, on this level I can choose outland or northrend content, and because outland kinda sucks i decided to go to northrend, so Howling Fjord is next and the next thing happened I blew my way to level 75 completing it and lo!! it feels great, but then I made a mistake by choosing Icecrown as my next leveling field, it was exhausting since the quests required you to fly back and forth across those walls, although it feels epic but it was tiring, i dinged 80 without completing it and decided to go to Pandaria instead of Cata zones.

I have all the loremaster title for the xpacs started from cataclysm, so I'm completely familiar with them, my 80 to 90 is spent most in Jade Forest and some Valley of Four Winds, my 90 to 100 is spent on the dreaded Frostfire Ridge and a little bit of Gorgrond, garrison helped out a bit. From this experience I saw that 80 to 100 is faster than my other leveling process, and it's not too bad after all, all the nostalgia is strong within this process.

I also decided that my not-to-feel-good leveling process from 1-60 is because I'm not good with ranged casters :D

So what's the overall conclusion from all this all-new-butsomewhatold leveling process thingie? I honestly don't have one, but I'd like to try again on my all new fresh void elf/zandalari troll toon when Battle for Azeroth rolls in, that might be a proof that this patch is good enough for me.

And yes I dinged max level on my pally, I already told you on the first lines of this post :P

Being Saleh: Proceeding into Legion, You are (not) prepared

So at the end of patch 7.0, what have I found out about legion?

"Gating" Content
Apparently this was a big deal, as I mention before in order to unlock world quests you need to be friendly with all five major faction in Broken Isle, but it's just rep grind by questing, every faction story quest can give you up until at least honored, but since world quest is considered major content Blizz changed it so you will just have to go to Dad Khadgar and talk to unlock it.

Suramar world quest is still "gated" behind the story campaign, but the (optional) mythic only dungeons (Arcway and Court of Stars) are now account wide, if you have attuned to them in the past it will now accessible to all your characters, the Good Suramaritan achievements needed to unlock the Broken Isle flying (part 1) is still "gated" behind reputation, you'll need a little before exalted to unlock the final quest. 

But rep grind is good, I still like to take things slow and I don't think it was a gated content at all, I guess grinding 9.898.983.245-ish Ketra Orc in Lineage 2 really build your character :P




Social Life
Okay here's the thing, I mostly stayed far away from writing about social interaction in WOW, because my social interaction with random people ranged from "git gud, go kill yourself" to "LOL LOL LOL". I joined a guild in the end of WOLTK, a small one with only five active (extremely casual) members (and a very drunk guy), I never came back after we take a very long Christmas break, after that when I started a warrior I'm basically guildless on my playtime through the three expansion.

Actually not, I did joined a guild at the end of MOP, it's started with a conversation with a friend in a different server about how he might came back and need a raid partner, so I leveled a horde monk as a healer, but he never came back so I decided to join a local (almost casual) guild, stayed for like a month, take another long break (6 months), login, and found out the guild has been moved to another server in order to raid mythic (looks like PVP server had their own disadvantages)

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

In legion I asked my friend to let me join his guild, a decent raiders guild although it has many members, my motivation to join a guild is to expand my WOW social experience, a project that I have been cultivating from the end of MOP (since I want to see how the community has changed since Blizz made everything more accessible and guild an incentive) and  then it goes down with my former guild, but Warlords of Draenor is not exactly a good expansion so.. that's that, and I started from scratch again.

Being a person with erratic online time (and unpredictable logout time) My guild raid experience is consisted only in three Emerald nightmare boss kill, but it was a good run, I also noticed that normal group experience is somewhat a rarity among talks in guild, aside from my friends abandoned the normal runs and being a strict "only above heroic" content-- usually it was mythic (with at least +1 mythic keystone), I was once asked I have a mythic keystone which is somewhat hilarious since I never entered any mythic dungeon (unless you count my experience checking in the arcway entrance, the one with the blobs) but in his experience it's probably me who is  an old creep odd since I never tried out mythic while so many talks in guild revolving on that and the content was out months ago (although mostly looking for tank and healer and I'm neither both) but I guess it was better than say... being called "lol where have you been that you didn't even touched months worth of content" (which is also hilarous since i don't need to be somewhere to "not doing this old content" but I probably playing Candy Crush Soda at those time), also I got kicked from my FFXIV guild by being offline for four months (was playing Tales of Zestiria, good game, don't watch the anime)

I still want my room back....

Anyway, back to running months ago content: PUG-ing always an option though, with those premade group options (and now: quick join) it becomes clear why people burn through content quickly, but to me being in a guild now is a part of my continuous experience in WOW and to complement the LFG and LFR system, so I won't premade with random stranger unless I'm playing an alt. I'm also glad that ele shaman is one of the worst neglected class in WOW which --combined with my lazy-ass playstyle-- contradict everything people expected of me. But I won't expect anything from MMO people, my days of two hours alone in Jin'do the PUGbreaker taught me that people in MMOs are impatient dicks drogbars, and it's fine because hey, after two hours I finally downed that guy (with the 10th-ish PUG group) and live to see another day of one hour queueing plus two hours waiting, that's something worth writing and talked about rather than "oh we downed this boss, move along" -kind-of-social-relationships, if people can be comitted to such things as 15 hours raiding a week (which is IMO an equivalent of a part time job) I can commit to being an arrogant toerag waiting for guild people to fill my "obsolete content" groups

And also gaze at the greatest Hydaelyn crystal impersonator

Ok, let's continue this oddly satisfying rant on the next patch

Being Saleh: A Relic Reborn

I think I'll just post this thing here

That Dullahan doesn't stand a chance

That is Curtana, Paladin's Relic Weapons, it's kinda like Legendary Weapon but Relic is upgradeable, on this patch it's +1, on the next: +2, and so on, +1 is simple since you can buy all the stuff with money and dungeon tokens, I really hope +2 and the next will feature more intense solo and group battle since I must admit in order to obtain this baby I was carried through hardmode primals by hardcores =))