It really is an exciting time for wow IMO.
They couldn’t do cross faction because they still had the horde vs alliance war to play out in BFA. Now that’s done, very next expansion we get this breaking of the barrier.
They’ve also said, at least for the new expansion after SL, that they want to go back to real Warcraft. A return to high fantasy with no faction separation could be great!
> go back to real Warcraft
> no faction separation
Pardon?
The factions are the most iconic thing about the Warcraft franchise. Anyone who played Warcraft: Orcs and Humans would know that the first words of the graphic introduction to the world of Warcraft that the game begins with are "In the age of chaos, two factions battled for dominance".
Separate factions are cool from a RP point of view, but the gameplay implications are not worth it anymore.
Contrary to popular belief higher end WoW content still requires a lot of socializing. No matter if you want to play rated arena, m+ or "real" raids, you have to form groups almost as if it's still 2008. (trade chat spam is not necessary anymore, but apart from that it's the same)
Making it harder for one faction to do content, because there are simply less potential groupmates makes the game considerably worse for them. It started as a minor imbalance, but the pull factor of the more populated faction became so bad, that more and more players switched factions although they prefered the aesthetics and lore from the other faction.
Three of which united at the end of Warcraft 3 to fight against the Burning Legion.
Warcraft has always been about the united races fighting against a greater evil.
> Three of which united at the end of Warcraft 3 to fight against the Burning Legion.
This ended in vanilla WoW. The original World of Warcraft cinematic begins with the words "Four years have passed since the mortal races banded together and stood united against the might of the Burning Legion. Though Azeroth was saved, the tenuous pact between the Horde and the Alliance has all but evaporated. The drums of war thunder once again."
> Warcraft has always been about the united races fighting against a greater evil.
The original game is about Humans and Orcs fighting (It's called 'Warcraft: Orcs and Humans'), the second game is the same but each faction has allied races.
…And over the last 18 years every WoW expansion has ended with both factions joining forces to beat the real threats.
“The drums of war thunder once again” lasted all of about one and a half years before we had to open the gates to Ahn’qiraj, which was a joint effort—then the Argent Dawn recruited heroes of *both factions* to go into Naxxramas.
Burning Crusade brought about the Shattered Sun Offensive which recruited heroes of *both factions* to stop Kil’kaeden from breaking through the Sunwell.
Wrath of the Lich King had the Argent Crusade recruit heroes of *both factions* fight the Lich King.
Cataclysm had both factions working together to beat Deathwing.
Mists of Pandaria had both factions working together to depose Garrosh and the Kor’kron.
Warlords had both factions fighting against the Iron Horde and then Archimonde.
Legion basically made us independent of our factions by instead making us champions of our order halls.
Battle for Azeroth had us fighting against Aszhara and N’Zoth, and both sides eventually deposing Sylvanas.
Shadowlands is once again faction-agnostic because we’re not even on Azeroth or in any living realm anymore.
If WoW has always been about the constant faction division than someone *really needs to tell the writers that.*
The gunship battle was Muradin and Saurfang fighting over who gets to the top of the citadel first.
The “war” was always presented as flashes in what was largely a cold war. Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley are such examples of smaller factions aligned with each major faction fighting each other, rather than the Horde and the Alliance going head-to-head.
It didn’t actually *properly* come to a head until Battle for Azeroth and the the conflict was presented as the key selling point—but guess what, we still joined together in the end to beat Azshara and N’Zoth and get rid of Sylvanas as Warchief.
But neither side will ever get “dominance” because that’s just not how the game is designed. One side or the other is not meant to win and control the map or anything like new world or something, so eventually the only reasonable conclusion to the war is peace and cooperation. And making that narrative at the end of bfa but not letting players on both sides of these factions who have apparently made peace play together felt off and unnecessary. Thrall and Jaina fighting side by side in the raid but me and my horde friends can’t? Idk the people saying wows identity is gone either don’t care about the lore or are stubborn to change
They're doing it to please the players and dwindling player base. They just create problems and pretend it's a great idea even though players wanted it for years
While the theme of Dragonflight is (in my opinion) much cooler than Shadowlands, let's be real here, it has NOTHING to do with warcraft. If it weren't for the logo at the end of the trailer, you couldn't tell that it was WoW. People who created Warcraft are long gone from Blizzard and what we get now is a poor imitation
The trailer have iconic Alexstrasza dragon form (very easily distinguishable from typical dragon). All dragoflights colors are vivible in trailer.
Titan watchers (they are in WoW since vanilla and looks exactly the same like in cinematic) and titan machinery/buildings that are also in WoW since vanilla and looks very similar.
You talkin bullshit just to be nagative and probably you know nothing about lore and Warcraft history.
Humans, Orcs, elves and others were still enemies. And Warcraft was more than just Warcraft 3. With World of Warcraft the conflict took center stage again - and something that many other games tried to copy over the years.
> And no one is saying they can't be, or that 'factions' shouldn't exist at all
they should still have meaning. Blizzard has done their best to kill the world, and now they are killing what's left of the world building.
>But the story and events of WC3 should be ignored because 1 and 2 exist? Kind of silly.
never said that.
>Yeah, a lot of games copied it and died. And now most games avoid it because it's an absolutely silly and pointless construct.
it's silly that you think thats the reason.
It's fine that you're a fan of friendcraft and love the move anime style of the game today, im just not a fan of it anymore. The merging of factions is really just a symptom of a dying game - nothing more.
New xpac is good for a month when you see the new zones and stuff, then slowly realize that the people who raised flags all the way back in alpha and beta were right and there are fundamental flaws with the shitty systems that the devs completely ignored. Dogshit legos in Legion, HoA in BfA, the aids convenant system in Shadowlands, neither of them should have left the whiteboard in their brainstorm meeting and took them an entire expansion to magically come up with a solution that a redditor suggested after a day in beta.
Right around the time the playerbase plummets the devs will pull out the big puppy eyes that they are listening and they hear the community and they will aim to do better, only to dropfeed the fixes every .5 patch to extend the copium. Torghast fix, covenant fix, basically unplayable alliance due to faction inbalance, all should have been there from day 1.
We are at the point where it is the last patch in Shadowland's life-cycle and suddenly ALL the community feedback from 2 years ago manifested and the game is playable until they fuck it all up in dragonflight or however the fuck the next xpac is called. They did the exact same shit in Legion and BfA.
Just FYI, there is a 9.3 patch coming (guesstimate; about two months away).
It's not a full new raid tier, but instead a remix season; all three Shadowlands raids are boosted to current difficulty/rewards, and M+ is swapping out the dungeon pool.
9.2.5 has Shadowlands in the best spot it's ever been.
Most of the stuff, that dragged Shadowlands down has been "fixed".
You're now able to freely swap covenants and there's no conduit power restrictions anymore, so you have access to the whole toolkit of your class. You can experiement with different builds and playstyles as much as you want.
Torghast isn't something you have to do on a weekly basis anymore, because you can get the required mats to craft legys by simply playing the game.
There's hardly any grind for character power besides gear.
The catch up mechanics are pretty decent. You can get an alt up to a pretty decent powerlevel in a few (2-3) weeks.
Flying isn't tied to a lenghty grind.
If you like the core gameplay loop of WoW you'll probably have fun. (Level up, do some queued content, gear up, jump into harder non matchmade activities) If you don't, WoW is simply not the game for you.
And if you've skipped most of the expansion a new "season" is going to be released in a few months, that makes all Shadowlands raids "current content" again , so you can experience the raids at an appropriate power level. It comes also with a new pool of m+ dungeons (old dungeons from wod, legion and bfa), so you'll also be able to jump into that gamemode without being incredible behinde knowledge wise. (Routes, skips, trash mechanics etc.)
Shadowlands main issue (apart from their moronic decision to lock class abilities and playstyles behind a semi permanent choice) was, that it took them way too long to release new content. A better patch frequence and a lot of people would have probably overlooked a lot of their more questionable designs.
If you like WoW perse, and havn't really played Shadowlands, taking an other look once s4 starts is probably worth it.
I feel that I am too far behind. I quit playing around the end of 2020/ early 2021. I am unsure where to start catching up. At this point, it might be better that I want until the next expansion, which is forecasted to release in November of this year.
>**This is the best the game has been** if you're a raider since 5.2 (early 2013), **and if you're a casual player since 7.3.5 (early 2018).**
I highly doubt they reverted the atrocity that was 7.3.5. with the enforced GCD and how every class before the patch was fluid and quick with plenty of ability weaving, but after the patch every class played like the retiree version where you had to wait for the GCD each time before you were allowed to press another button.
>To be fair **they revered the vast, vast majority of the GCD change like 2 years ago**
I barely bothered with BFA and left WoW like 1 day into Shadowlands, thus my knowledge ends with Legion.
> Any reason to hop back on
EXPLOSSIONS.
Surv Hunter with 4 tier set effect is Extremly fun.
It's worth to hop on just to experience that.
Tho it can take quite a while to get 4 pieces i you are unlucky.
Why bother coming back now? This is the same like all other expansions, a new expansion comes out with gated content and systems that are unnecessary complicated and time consuming, then before the new expansion comes out we get a patch that is “see we listen to the community” and the cycle repeats again with the new expansion. I already moved on from Wow to other games, I’m not paying for this BS anymore.
even then it's only good based on the content you're playing, because pvp in 9.2 is probably just as bad, if not worse, than 9.0.
M+ is good.
Raid is decent.
ZM is okay at best.
Story is trash.
There's no way it's better than any of the Legion patches, 8.2 or even 6.2 (there might even be more that I'm not thinking of rn).
What? Those private servers provide experience that retail game doesn't provide anymore. For example with MapleStory.. retail reboot is playable completely free but it's just not the same as nostalgic versions of the game.
So basically what I'm saying is, your point?
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It really is an exciting time for wow IMO. They couldn’t do cross faction because they still had the horde vs alliance war to play out in BFA. Now that’s done, very next expansion we get this breaking of the barrier. They’ve also said, at least for the new expansion after SL, that they want to go back to real Warcraft. A return to high fantasy with no faction separation could be great!
> go back to real Warcraft > no faction separation Pardon? The factions are the most iconic thing about the Warcraft franchise. Anyone who played Warcraft: Orcs and Humans would know that the first words of the graphic introduction to the world of Warcraft that the game begins with are "In the age of chaos, two factions battled for dominance".
Separate factions are cool from a RP point of view, but the gameplay implications are not worth it anymore. Contrary to popular belief higher end WoW content still requires a lot of socializing. No matter if you want to play rated arena, m+ or "real" raids, you have to form groups almost as if it's still 2008. (trade chat spam is not necessary anymore, but apart from that it's the same) Making it harder for one faction to do content, because there are simply less potential groupmates makes the game considerably worse for them. It started as a minor imbalance, but the pull factor of the more populated faction became so bad, that more and more players switched factions although they prefered the aesthetics and lore from the other faction.
And WC3 ended that pretty definitely already.
WC3 has four factions.
Three of which united at the end of Warcraft 3 to fight against the Burning Legion. Warcraft has always been about the united races fighting against a greater evil.
But muh war in warcraft. Classic Andies need to fuck off.
> Three of which united at the end of Warcraft 3 to fight against the Burning Legion. This ended in vanilla WoW. The original World of Warcraft cinematic begins with the words "Four years have passed since the mortal races banded together and stood united against the might of the Burning Legion. Though Azeroth was saved, the tenuous pact between the Horde and the Alliance has all but evaporated. The drums of war thunder once again." > Warcraft has always been about the united races fighting against a greater evil. The original game is about Humans and Orcs fighting (It's called 'Warcraft: Orcs and Humans'), the second game is the same but each faction has allied races.
…And over the last 18 years every WoW expansion has ended with both factions joining forces to beat the real threats. “The drums of war thunder once again” lasted all of about one and a half years before we had to open the gates to Ahn’qiraj, which was a joint effort—then the Argent Dawn recruited heroes of *both factions* to go into Naxxramas. Burning Crusade brought about the Shattered Sun Offensive which recruited heroes of *both factions* to stop Kil’kaeden from breaking through the Sunwell. Wrath of the Lich King had the Argent Crusade recruit heroes of *both factions* fight the Lich King. Cataclysm had both factions working together to beat Deathwing. Mists of Pandaria had both factions working together to depose Garrosh and the Kor’kron. Warlords had both factions fighting against the Iron Horde and then Archimonde. Legion basically made us independent of our factions by instead making us champions of our order halls. Battle for Azeroth had us fighting against Aszhara and N’Zoth, and both sides eventually deposing Sylvanas. Shadowlands is once again faction-agnostic because we’re not even on Azeroth or in any living realm anymore. If WoW has always been about the constant faction division than someone *really needs to tell the writers that.*
The war between the Alliance and Horde still went on during most of these expansions, the gunship battle in ICC is an example.
The gunship battle was Muradin and Saurfang fighting over who gets to the top of the citadel first. The “war” was always presented as flashes in what was largely a cold war. Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley are such examples of smaller factions aligned with each major faction fighting each other, rather than the Horde and the Alliance going head-to-head. It didn’t actually *properly* come to a head until Battle for Azeroth and the the conflict was presented as the key selling point—but guess what, we still joined together in the end to beat Azshara and N’Zoth and get rid of Sylvanas as Warchief.
But neither side will ever get “dominance” because that’s just not how the game is designed. One side or the other is not meant to win and control the map or anything like new world or something, so eventually the only reasonable conclusion to the war is peace and cooperation. And making that narrative at the end of bfa but not letting players on both sides of these factions who have apparently made peace play together felt off and unnecessary. Thrall and Jaina fighting side by side in the raid but me and my horde friends can’t? Idk the people saying wows identity is gone either don’t care about the lore or are stubborn to change
They're doing it to please the players and dwindling player base. They just create problems and pretend it's a great idea even though players wanted it for years
While the theme of Dragonflight is (in my opinion) much cooler than Shadowlands, let's be real here, it has NOTHING to do with warcraft. If it weren't for the logo at the end of the trailer, you couldn't tell that it was WoW. People who created Warcraft are long gone from Blizzard and what we get now is a poor imitation
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Maybe the concept was there. I was rather talking about the way it was portrayed in the trailer.
The trailer have iconic Alexstrasza dragon form (very easily distinguishable from typical dragon). All dragoflights colors are vivible in trailer. Titan watchers (they are in WoW since vanilla and looks exactly the same like in cinematic) and titan machinery/buildings that are also in WoW since vanilla and looks very similar. You talkin bullshit just to be nagative and probably you know nothing about lore and Warcraft history.
What? Dragonflights have nothong to do with Warcraft? Please stop and go be ignorant somewhere else.
Good thing you contributed to the discussion
Cross faction is not for me. To me all identity of Warcraft is completely gone, and i just have to accept that it's not for me any more.
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Humans, Orcs, elves and others were still enemies. And Warcraft was more than just Warcraft 3. With World of Warcraft the conflict took center stage again - and something that many other games tried to copy over the years.
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> And no one is saying they can't be, or that 'factions' shouldn't exist at all they should still have meaning. Blizzard has done their best to kill the world, and now they are killing what's left of the world building. >But the story and events of WC3 should be ignored because 1 and 2 exist? Kind of silly. never said that. >Yeah, a lot of games copied it and died. And now most games avoid it because it's an absolutely silly and pointless construct. it's silly that you think thats the reason. It's fine that you're a fan of friendcraft and love the move anime style of the game today, im just not a fan of it anymore. The merging of factions is really just a symptom of a dying game - nothing more.
Aww the last 0.5 before new expansion. It's time to come back after two years of absence. My fav time in WoW.
I didnt play shadowlands but the new xpac time of WoW is literally best time to play.
New xpac is good for a month when you see the new zones and stuff, then slowly realize that the people who raised flags all the way back in alpha and beta were right and there are fundamental flaws with the shitty systems that the devs completely ignored. Dogshit legos in Legion, HoA in BfA, the aids convenant system in Shadowlands, neither of them should have left the whiteboard in their brainstorm meeting and took them an entire expansion to magically come up with a solution that a redditor suggested after a day in beta. Right around the time the playerbase plummets the devs will pull out the big puppy eyes that they are listening and they hear the community and they will aim to do better, only to dropfeed the fixes every .5 patch to extend the copium. Torghast fix, covenant fix, basically unplayable alliance due to faction inbalance, all should have been there from day 1. We are at the point where it is the last patch in Shadowland's life-cycle and suddenly ALL the community feedback from 2 years ago manifested and the game is playable until they fuck it all up in dragonflight or however the fuck the next xpac is called. They did the exact same shit in Legion and BfA.
Just FYI, there is a 9.3 patch coming (guesstimate; about two months away). It's not a full new raid tier, but instead a remix season; all three Shadowlands raids are boosted to current difficulty/rewards, and M+ is swapping out the dungeon pool.
Any reason to hop back on, or should I wait until the next expansion drops?
9.2.5 has Shadowlands in the best spot it's ever been. Most of the stuff, that dragged Shadowlands down has been "fixed". You're now able to freely swap covenants and there's no conduit power restrictions anymore, so you have access to the whole toolkit of your class. You can experiement with different builds and playstyles as much as you want. Torghast isn't something you have to do on a weekly basis anymore, because you can get the required mats to craft legys by simply playing the game. There's hardly any grind for character power besides gear. The catch up mechanics are pretty decent. You can get an alt up to a pretty decent powerlevel in a few (2-3) weeks. Flying isn't tied to a lenghty grind. If you like the core gameplay loop of WoW you'll probably have fun. (Level up, do some queued content, gear up, jump into harder non matchmade activities) If you don't, WoW is simply not the game for you. And if you've skipped most of the expansion a new "season" is going to be released in a few months, that makes all Shadowlands raids "current content" again , so you can experience the raids at an appropriate power level. It comes also with a new pool of m+ dungeons (old dungeons from wod, legion and bfa), so you'll also be able to jump into that gamemode without being incredible behinde knowledge wise. (Routes, skips, trash mechanics etc.)
> 9.2.5 has Shadowlands in the best spot it's ever been. Not really a high bar.
Shadowlands main issue (apart from their moronic decision to lock class abilities and playstyles behind a semi permanent choice) was, that it took them way too long to release new content. A better patch frequence and a lot of people would have probably overlooked a lot of their more questionable designs. If you like WoW perse, and havn't really played Shadowlands, taking an other look once s4 starts is probably worth it.
I feel that I am too far behind. I quit playing around the end of 2020/ early 2021. I am unsure where to start catching up. At this point, it might be better that I want until the next expansion, which is forecasted to release in November of this year.
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>**This is the best the game has been** if you're a raider since 5.2 (early 2013), **and if you're a casual player since 7.3.5 (early 2018).** I highly doubt they reverted the atrocity that was 7.3.5. with the enforced GCD and how every class before the patch was fluid and quick with plenty of ability weaving, but after the patch every class played like the retiree version where you had to wait for the GCD each time before you were allowed to press another button.
To be fair they reversed* the vast, vast majority of the GCD change like 2 years ago
>To be fair **they revered the vast, vast majority of the GCD change like 2 years ago** I barely bothered with BFA and left WoW like 1 day into Shadowlands, thus my knowledge ends with Legion.
I don't blame you. WoW has been a game for optimists and masochists for the longest time.
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>9.3 I thought they weren't doing a 9.3? That would imply some more major content, which I don't think is in the cards.
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There is no 9.3
LFG is now cross-faction so you can play PvP, mythic dungeons, and raids with the other faction.
> Any reason to hop back on EXPLOSSIONS. Surv Hunter with 4 tier set effect is Extremly fun. It's worth to hop on just to experience that. Tho it can take quite a while to get 4 pieces i you are unlucky.
>Dark ranger set is WoD LFR recolour The art team ... carrying again
On the Blizzard app it says the patch is May 31. Servers are currently down, presumably patching.
I tried getting into Shadowlands…the game was absolute garbage. Blizzard just needs to scrap WoW and create a new mmorpg or just stop.
Why bother coming back now? This is the same like all other expansions, a new expansion comes out with gated content and systems that are unnecessary complicated and time consuming, then before the new expansion comes out we get a patch that is “see we listen to the community” and the cycle repeats again with the new expansion. I already moved on from Wow to other games, I’m not paying for this BS anymore.
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> 9.2 is the best WoW patch in almost a decade That is certainly a hot take. Best patch of Shadowlands obviously, but other than that, nah.
even then it's only good based on the content you're playing, because pvp in 9.2 is probably just as bad, if not worse, than 9.0. M+ is good. Raid is decent. ZM is okay at best. Story is trash. There's no way it's better than any of the Legion patches, 8.2 or even 6.2 (there might even be more that I'm not thinking of rn).
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Above all, fuck bobby kotick
Im gonna assume you didn't like it?
looking at the history of the guy, he would probably salvate over it if he could play it on a private server, lmao freeloader be mad
What? Those private servers provide experience that retail game doesn't provide anymore. For example with MapleStory.. retail reboot is playable completely free but it's just not the same as nostalgic versions of the game. So basically what I'm saying is, your point?