Cross-Faction Instances Coming Soon TM
After years of people asking the wow team has finally announced they will be adding cross-faction instances to World of Warcraft. Starting with the 9.2.5 PTR they will test this option for premade groups for raids, dungeons, and rated PVP.
This will be completely optional by just checking a box when looking for a group or looking for people in premade group finder. This also will not be like mercenary mode for battlegrounds where you change factions and races. This is true cross-faction, you can be a human and group up with an orc.
Now with this said the blue post that was posted today did note that some legacy raids would not work with a cross-faction group. They all seemed to make sense like Battle of dazar'alor which heavily relies on the faction divide. ICC is another one that will not work because of the gunship battle, and Trial of the Crusader. Pretty much if the faction divide is the core piler of the content then it will take more time to get cross-faction play to work.
All this being said, this will not change anything in the open world of the game. So if you have war mode on the opposite faction is still game. Cross faction play is more for the end-user, not lore. The Horde and Alliance still have their uneasy armistice and the drums of war will once again thunder. But for you and me if we need an extra body for raid our friends on the opposite faction can help us out.
Maybe one day the Horde and Alliance will find true peace, for now, the faction divide is still a pillar of Warcraft but for gameplay sake, the developers will make a slite change of course and allow us to play together.
Mechagon and Nazjatar 8.2 PTR Screen Shots
Some screen shots form the Mechagon and Nazjatar on the 8.2 PTR.
Rise of 8.2
The WoW team dropped a big info dump about the 8.2 patch coming to the PTR. This patch is a mega patch that will not just add to the story of Battle for Azeroth but will even change one of its most hated systems. The Twitch stream they did was hosted by Senior Game Designer Jeremy Feasel. Now let’s try to squeeze all the information into a signal post.
In 8.2 we will be exploring the two new lands of Nazjatar and Mechagon Island. Nazjatar will be the focus of the patch. Like any new area we will be building up forces, and making new allies. They are adding a new system called Combat Allies. These allies will be powerful friends to have along side you and will gain experience. You will be exploring and questing threw the now risen city of Nazjatar the home of the Naga. You will be teaming up with one of two factions to make your way to the Eternal Palace. This will be the raid for 8.2 where we will confront Queen Azshara. This area will have new world quest, and rare spawns that act kind of like mini world bosses.
Mechagon is a long-lost island of the Mechagnomes. The gnomes here are half gnome half robot. They are led by King Mechagon. This area is a gnomish island where you will be helping to rebuild a mechagnome town. This area will have its own new world quests and have special rare spawns, like the old Timeless Island in Pandaria. The island will also have a new mega dungeon, much like return to Karazan in legion this will be an 8 boss mythic only dungeon. In the dungeon you will be making your way to King Mechagon to stop his plan to detonate a bomb that will turn everyone into robots.
One of the biggest changes coming to the game will be a change to the much hated Heart of Azeroth. You will be helping to rebuild the chamber of hearts. The Heart Forge will be the new focal point of the necklace. Like in legion where you had some kind of place to put your artifact when you added power to it. Now you will be doing this with your Heart of Azeroth. Once you place it there you can unlock traits with some passive abilities and some will have active abilities. From their description of this new system it seems like artifact system 2.0.
For PVP players you will be getting a new arena called the Robodome. PVPers will also be getting Ashran as epic battle ground, and mounts for season 3 of Battle for Azeroth. They will be adding new content for war mode as well.
We are not done yet because in 8.2 you will be able to unlock flying in both Kul’Tiras and Zandalar, when you complete path finder part II you will be rewarded with a new robot parrot mount. On the subject of mounts they are adding something new called mount equipment. These items can be equipped to your mount journal and can give your mounts special abilities. One of those abilities being water walking. Any mount can walk on water or many other things. If you are a fan of island expeditions, they will be adding two new islands.
They dumped a lot of information on us today. For those of you who want to see this content before released you can hop on to the PTR and try it out next week. An official launch date for the patch was not mentioned. You can watch todays stream in its entirety here. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/409517953?t=29m44s
Lightborn Undead
The other day was April fools and many places did joke posts. The wow team had there April Fools patch notes and even Wowhead got into the spirit with fake 8.2 PTR data mining. One of the things that were “found” in this data was a new allied race light bound undead.
Now as far as I know this is an April Fools joke and light bound undead is not coming to the game as an allied race in 8.2, but they might be coming to the game someday soon. For those of you who don’t know in the book Before the Storm Calia Menethil (whom you might remember from the priest order hall in Legion) was killed in the chaos of the undead and human get together in the Arathi Highlands. She was then taken to the priest order hall where Saa’ra rises Calia back to life as the first ever light bound undead.
The light born has been referenced recently in game. The 8.1 War campaign ends with you doing the quest fate of Jaina where you attend a meeting about the aftermath of the raid. At one point Anduin askes asks Jaina how she is doing and she says " So much transpired while I was away. Anduin... I've heard rumors about an old friend of mine-- Calia Menethil. What happened in Arathi?" All of this could only mean that the light bound undead will be a major faction going into the future of the game. My guess we will be introduced to the light bound undead by the end of Battle for Azeroth. Of course in the book, Caila Menethil was the only one but some time has passed and there could be more now.
With all that being said, what would light bound undead be like in WoW? Well, I would think they would be like the light forged Draenei, where they look just like Draenei but they have cool looking light tattoos. But what if the WoW team wanted to do something different and made light bound undead a neutral allied race. Much like the Pandaren, you would get to choose to side with the Horde or the Alliance.
This would make sense for the narrative they explored in legion where light and void are not necessarily good or evil. Thus the light bound undead not be Horde or Alliance and would choose. Before you say “but horde already has undead why would they have light undead too” well the Alliance already had Draenei but we still got Light Forged Draenei as an allied race.
Now I’m going to go one step further, what if light forged undead became a normal race attached to a new hero class. They could be some kind of super priest or light mage. They could say being risen as an undead by the light caused their powers to become stronger. They would still be neutral. Now I know this is unlikely but since we just got Deamon Hunters in Legion so getting another Hero Class is unlikely plus it would just add to the growing problem of class balance. I just really want a range Hero Class.
8.2 could hit the PTR anytime now and I'm sure we will not see light born undead. I truly think we will see them soon in the game and then further in the future we will be able to play them. They might even be the key to saving Azeroth herself.
A Case for Mega Timewalking Week
Another timewalking week has come and gone. Once again I find myself thinking of the same thing I think of every time this event comes up. Why can’t I queue for the timewalking I want. What I want to propose is having a mega timewalking event.
When timewalking came out we had two events, Burning Crusade, and Lich King. It made sense to have one when the event came up. Now we those two, Cataclysm, Mist of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor coming soon. That makes five different timewalking events. With five different events it can be months before the one you want comes up again. It’s nice that they use a standard currency with time-warped badges. If you want a toy or a pet from the mist event and Burning Crusade is coming up, you will be waiting at least a month or more before you can redeem your badges.
I would love it if they combined all the timewalking events into one event. When the timewalking event happens, all the vendors would be up. You would be able to pick the timewalking dungeon you want to do. Most importantly you would be able to spend your badges the way you want to spend them.
I don’t feel like this would be a hard change to make for Blizzard, and I feel like it would make a lot of people happy. I’m sure they will be adding more timewalking raids, and this one week would allow for more choice. I would like to see them make this change sooner rather than later. I feel like it will get to a point they won’t have a choice.
Uldir a Review
Oh boy, the first of Battle for Azeroth is in the books now. We are well into the Battle of Dezarlor. Now is a good time to look back and talk about how was the first tire of the expansion.
I have to start off and say this was not my favorite raid ever. I've never cared much for the Uld type raids like Ulduar. They have always seemed like busy work to me and this time it was a little more relevant to the story. They could have started the expiation by doing two different raids. Like have Uldir as horde centered raid and have Crucible of Storms for the Alliance. But that is not what they did.
If you like Old Gods and bugs then this might have been the raid for you. Being the first raid tier we had plenty of game bugs to go with the creepy crawly kind. We had useful ones. Like as a mage being able to use frost orb to reset MOTHER to skip the trash you have to do to open the door to get to her. Some halted progression for some. a big problem they had, was a design problem. Some bosses were designed with certain classes in mind or in some cause required. This is fine when you are doing mythic raiding and have at least one of every class.
I know with the team I raid with, we got to Zul on heroic and we ran into the issue. We felt we needed a Death Knight to pull adds in during the fight. From all the kill videos we saw most of those groups had a Death Night but we didn't and we were hindered by that. I then finally had to team up with another raid team to get past him. Until that point, we had to get more geared and learned other fights. The other bosses went down as they should Zul was the one that had us and others were in our same boat.
This was also the first raid tier where we didn't have tier gear sets. Instead, we had Azerite gear, which had its issues. For most people, the problem was grinding out Azerite. Other people have the issue with the traits on the gear. The fact that some of the best in slots came from doing mythic plus dungeons and not from the raid itself.
The mythic world first race took only a week and a day for Method to beat. I mean the where other guilds but come on we all knew Method was going to get it. Though the race in this expansion docent end with world first it's the first 100 this time around. The hall of fame is a new thing the WoW team is trying. Once 100 Horde and 100 Alliance guilds have cleared mythic then cross realm mythic raiding is turned on. It only took the Horde until 10/14/18 to get their 100 but allianced lagged behind not getting their 100 until 11/5/18. So it was 2 months before cross-realm mythic raiding could happen. As a non-mythic raider it docent effect me. But I do feel like this is a bad system. Nowadays with cross-realm normal and heroic raiding, and sharding. Why does it matter if everyone is on the same realm for the hardest raid content. Mythic raiding should be cross realm from the get-go. Though I do like the hall of fame and they should keep it as a bragging rights thing. But lose that as a rule for cross-realm raiding.
Uldir was a mixed bag of problems. But once things had been hot fixed and people got the hang of it, Uldir was an average raid. I doubt anyone will look back at this raid with fond memories of the bosses. It will be the first raid where we got to see the changes from legion to BFA take effect. We are currently in the next raid and I think this one might be the most beloved. But we will have wait and see.
Lets talk about Jaina
Last night I was up thinking random things, as usual for me. One of the things that went threw my mind was, where did Jaina go after she left Dalaran and what does the future have in store for her? As I thought of it I wanted to cry.
For as long as I can remember I have always liked playing mage/wizard characters in fantasy games. Part of it goes back to what made me want to play MMORPGs which was .hack//sign. Incase you have never herd of this show before, it is a anima where a boy playing a MMORPG called the world finds out one day he cant log out of the game and that he is now part of the game. Him and some friends he meats along the way try to find away with in the game it self to help him logout. This show made me want to one day play something like Everquest, though at the time my computer couldn't even run the sims online let alone something like ever quest. So I kind of played Runescape.
The other thing that drew me to this class I think is mages tend to be intelligent, always studying or reading books. Since about 1st grade Iwas pulled out of class to be part of smaller groups to learn reading and math. I was a slow reader and math just seemed impossible to me. By 4th grade I was in special ED classes. I would go to my home room for attendance and then shortly after I would be pulled out to go to my special ED class and then I would return for things like science and social studies. I always felt embarrassed it just made me hate school more having to leave my friends for half the day cause the school decided that I wasn't smart enough to learn what they where learning. It didn't get better in middle school and in high school. I was too embarrassed to do my homework infant of them because I was doing math that they learned in elementary school and middle school. No mater what I just felt dumb and I think being able to escape to be a intelligent class in a fantasy world appealed to me.
I would guess it is no surprise then that Jaina Proudmoore is one of my favorite WoW charter. Even after what happen to her at ttheramore. She kind of goes off her rocker intides of war and then by the end she strikes a balance between her old self and still being untrusting tords the horde. I think this cut seance from Mist of Pandaria land fall best shows this:
Of course as you may or may not know shortly after she goes back off her rocker and kicks the sendori out of Dalaran and any other horde. This made me uneasy but didn't make me hate her. I just felt sad for her. Its hard to truly feel angry at her or to hate her because knowing what happen to her in tides of war it almost feel justified. But even being an alliance player I know overrating the horde off athorth is wrong.
Now this brings us to legion where we see she’s back to being off her rocker again and khadgar has us go with him to meet with the conical of 6 to let the horde back in the kKrin Tor, of course Jaina doesn't like this and leaves the kirin Tor and khadgar takes her spot as leader. Well where did she go? Well what I hope happens is maybe we will help her find that balance again. I would think something like a caverns of time raid or dungeon where we go back to when she was about destroy Orgrimmar with the focusing ires. The current Jaina could be watching this play out on the back of a bronze dragon. Then at the end we of course don't kill her and the current Jaina relearns what she learned that day all over again and agrees to go back to Dalaran and help us fight the Legion.
That is what I hope will happen with her but I feel like that isn't what will happen. What I hope docent happen but I feel like will happen is, after she left Dalaran she was tricked into serving the legion. Probably like how they tried to trick khadgar in the mini series Blizzard did before legion. We will probably fight the fell corrupted Jaina in a raid or dungeon and killer. Just typing that makes me feel emoshnal and want to cry. I really feel like this is what will happen to her. I hope for the first scenario where she lives.
Im sure as this expansion goes on we will find out what will happen to her I just hope the next time we see her we are not killing her. Now that I have this random thought out of my head what do you think will happen to Jaina?
Septmeber Lets Play and Legion App
A few things I want to talk about today. The first thing being that the lets play for this month is going to be Halo CE. I did a lets play of halo 5 last year when I got my xbox one, and since then I have been wanting to do a lets play of halo 1. So that is what Im going to play this month for the lets play. Also I brought back quest to rank 20, which is my hearthstone series.
Now lets talk about the new legion companion app that came out today. The app lets you view missions your champions are on and lets your complete them as well as send them on new missions. The app also lets you view and change your class hall traits and view what world quests are available. Its a grate app Ive only been using it for half a day but its been useful having it pop up on my phone that a mission was done and just be able to open the app see if they succeeded at it or failed, then send them back out on another mission. Then when I can get on wow all the rewards are in my bag or mailbox if my bag is full.
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1125608061
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blizzard.wowcompanion&hl=en
Thats about all for now I hope people enjoy Halo CE and the legion app.
Artifact Weapons and Class Halls
Since I got my beta invite about a month ago I have been doing videos of each class and specialization Artifact Weapon. Which also means you also get to see how you get to the class hall as well.the other day (8/23/16) I released the last of these videos. I chose druids to be the last one mostly because they have 4 specs. My thought in doing this series was since I got into the beta so late that doing simple videos of the artifact weapons would be something useful even after legion launches in just 1 week.
Image by Justice Hopkins
Her patroon: http://www.patreon.com/echoofjustice
On that note it feels surreal that in a week we will be out of garrison and into our class halls/dalaran. After doing each artifact weapon quest for every class and spec I can say they all are fun and in some cases give you chills. There where a few I was disappointed with but they still where fun. My favorite quest I would say was the fire mage one. Which for me will be my main spec in legion among other mages.
If you would like to watch them all here is the link to the play list: .
I hope everyone enjoys and finds these videos useful in getting ready for legion. Until next time guys byeeee.
My thoughts on the Broken Shore
The broken shore quest has been out for almost a week now and so if you haven't played it yet or seen the cut scenes on YouTube you might want to do that. For the rest of us that have let's talk about it. I know for me it was a emotional experience.
From the moment you get to Stormwind harbor and see all the ships ready to head to the broken shore you know this isn't going to end well. Then you start preparing by shining your armor and eating your last meal, your last fricken meal they don't expect you to come back. How many quests start off like that. I can only think of one maybe 2 other quests that have sent you on a supposed suicide mission.
Once you get to the broken shore things seem a bit more darker when you see all the sunken ships and the beam of fel energy blasted into the sky. If deathwing didn't fuck up Azeroth environment I'm sure fel energy isn't good for the atmosphere. But hey they do give us some hope the horde and alliance working together to fend off the legion. Right? Oh wait never mind the horde retreat (for good reason) and force the alliance to do the same. Though our retreat isn't as clean as the hordes and Varian is left killing a fel reaver and making his final stand.
I played the broken shore quest a bunch of times when it was on PTR but on there they didn't have the cut seances implemented so I had sit there wondering what happen. I knew already that Varian died. When I finally saw it on Tuesday I was not prepared for the manner in which he would die. Being devoured by fel till he just exploded it was just horrible. But at the same time how else could you kill off a warrior like him. It worked how they did it, having him make the ultimate sacrifice not just for the alliance but the horde as well.
The Horde also lost a leader at the broken shore. Voljin was injured at the broken shore which caused sylvanas to call for a retreat. The Horde also gets another cut seance after the broken shore, showing voljin naming salvo is as the new Warcheif of the Horde. Though watching the cut seance I noticed Ban Bloodboof looking a bit more shocked than the other leaders that she was named Warcheif. I think maybe he thought he would make a better Warcheif.
I know for me the death of voljin wasn't to emotional for me. Maybe because I mostly play Alliance or it could be because it feels like he was only Warcheif for like a day, but it didn't make me want to cry like Varians death did. Also their are rumors that Voljin isn't really dead, though that is something I'm sure we will find out in a later patch if that is true.
Overall the broken shore is one of the best per expansion content and could stand on its own but I didn't even talk about the invasions the dredlord infection thing. They really did a good job with this content. We also should be getting he Karazan and uldur quest line soon. I'm excited for that and for the expiation to finally be released at the end of the month.