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The RWF was a small debacle this season, with both Echo and Liquid fairly vocal about the number of terrible bugs and general tuning problems. There was also the fairly ridiculous spectre of Mythic Raid splits, meaning much of the ‘race’ was just watching players run their 15th character through the raid for gear.

In the end it was yet another victory for Liquid, though Echo killed the boss about an hour after the US team, so they theoretically ‘won’ based on timezone. But of course that’s not how it works.

More interesting than the race itself is the aftermath: it appears that the two main contenders (and Method) are finally sitting down and trying to nut out a way to make the race more sustainable: less splits, less characters, etc. And, maybe, just maybe, a way to level the timezone playing field?

The big Warcraft news is of course Forever, which has created quite the impact. I’ve been delighted to discover some old bloggers crawling out from beneath the woodwork as a result—the benefits of maintaining an ancient RSS feedlist means they have popped up quite unexpectedly. Garwulf at Huntsman’s Lodge was the biggest surprise—I remember downloading his UI and learning a lot about both Hunters and how to make a more usable interface.

There’s also the amazing spectacle of The Forever Open, a US$100k 1v1 tournament that is being played out in the beta of all things. It has attracted a huge number of streamers and players, all inside an unstable environment that is changing each day with hotfixes and patches. People are min-maxing and gold-buying and creating general havoc, all on characters that will be wiped in ~30 days. Forever must be doing something very right.

It will be fascinating to see if Blizzard can save Forever from the over-complexity of Retail, and just how the promised ‘horizontal not vertical’ content growth will work. There are plenty of templates of course, from GW2 to Final Fantasy XIV, and Holly Longdale is probably the best leader Warcraft could have for this kind of venture.

Our retail team are all interested in playing, and thankfully Horde is the faction of choice (though there are some diehard Alliance players who may defect). It will be a good test of Forever’s appeal to see if everyone sticks with it, or if the lack of convenience wears the welcome thin. I almost feel sorry for the Retail team at the moment: they are buried under the Forever news. The Last Titan will have it’s work cut out to attract players back, let alone the final patch of Midnight (surely finally fighting Xal’atath should be enough of a draw?).

I suspect a large number of players will drift back when faced with the Classic-style slowness of Forever. Others will love that same simplicity.

I can’t wait to roll up a Tauren and start galumphing through old Mulgore again, complete with the never-launched-always-wanted Plainsrunning racial trait, which gives up to a 30% movement boost the longer you stay, well, running. Flavour over balance is very appealing, and hopefully that’s what Forever sticks with.

Three launch raids was certainly an interesting tactic, and I think it worked for the most part. It was fun to progress a story through quite different environments, though the one-boss Dreamrift was barely a raid. It might have been fun to have a old fashioned (mini) reputation grind behind each Raid, only unlocking the next once complete, but I can understand the modern player-base might not accept such a fake wall.

The Voidspire was an good raid with interesting bosses, and March on Quel’Danas, despite only having two bosses, was excellent. Belo’ren was a visually spectacular boss, and Midnight Falls a suitably complex finale. Having said that, Blizzard seem to have even further nerfed Normal raiding as we one shot L’ura to complete the raid trio.

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The Race to World First was entertaining, starting with controversy when Mythic Alleria Windrunner, the final boss of Voidspire, fell almost instantly. A repeat of the anticlimactic finish to Undermine threatened, but the Race was saved by an epic and super close progression through March. Liquid completed their sweep, barely, as Echo were again pipped at the last¹.

The next race starts in a few days, hopefully another close one. Having a US and EU team as the front horses means there’s pretty much always something to see no matter the hour. And I’m looking forward to Dratnos and Tettle’s recaps which are always entertaining and educational (here’s a primer for the race as a start).

The zones in Midnight are fine, if a little disappointing in that much of it is a reworked Eastern Kingdoms. Zul’Aman surprised me by being the most interesting zone, the Trolls never having grabbed me. The story of re-establishing the Loa was great, as was seeing a grudging respect evolve between the Alliance Elves and Horde Trolls. Not convinced yet on the Harandar ancestry revelation, but perhaps it will work out.

I found myself a little detached from the world and wasn’t sure why until I realised it was because we were flying from the start. Jumping directly from quest to quest without having to gallop along overland made the entire thing a bit flat. Why explore when you could plonk down directly on the objective. Someone (Dratnos?) suggested a possible solution to this, which is an Achievement that could be granted for levelling without flying (and, obviously, awarding a ground mount for completion!). Fly your first character through everything, then spend a leisurely time with an alt learning how the land’s heart beats.

Overall I have found Midnight to be on the wrong side of too much. There are now so many sub-tasks, systems, and complications that it is overwhelming. Delves, Prey, M+, Abundances, The Arcantina, Omnium Folio, Altar of Corrosion, Cursed Surges, Prey, Weeklies, Dailies, Bonus Rolls, oof. Then the sub-patches introduced even more, from Void Assaults to Ritual Sites to new mini-zones to the one-boss Sporefall ‘raid’ (so far the two single-boss raids haven’t deserved the label).

It became so much that I immediately stopped playing after the Raids were done. Even the lure (ahem) of the Abyss Anglers wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

I wonder if the Blizzcon rumoured Classic+ is an opportunity to reset this chaos and return to a more straight-forward approach to systems. We can only hope.

Alas we were stopped short of getting a second AOTC by Nexus King Salhadaar when the DPS check outpaced our gear by about 15%. Even with the late nerfs coming in most of us had hit a gear wall and the deadline struck before we could.

As compensation we instead did the entertaining Glory of the Omega Raider achievement instead. A lot of fun, with Soul Hunters again a highlight: everyone in the raid having to be blindfolded for a full minute (thank goodness for being overgeared in Normal!). The most challenging was Fractillus, a doddle to kill normally but the Hard Mode was Breaking the Fourth Wall which meant allowing four walls to build before breaking any. It needed some math and positional genius, and luckily we had one in our raid: thanks Illandri!

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That closed out the War Within, an expansion that started and ended well, with a skippable middle. Midnight is next and until then I’ll be taking a break from Warcraft.

This had Blizzard’s desired consequence of sending everyone into every old raid and dungeon with a rare mount drop, completely destroying M+ and Raiding numbers for the duration.

Running four characters through old and new Karazhan, Firelands, and Tempest Keep led to me adding OG Midnight, Ashes of Al’ar, Flametalon of Alysrazor, and the Smoldering Egg of Millagazor. I jumped into Zul’Gurub and picked up a Swift Zulian Panther for good measure.

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The only things that didn’t drop despite trying were the new Midnight from Legion Kara, and Sharkbait from Freehold.

All of this was terrific! Mounts for everyone!

Except.

Except I almost feel embarrassed to use the Ashes of Al’ar. There are people who spent actual years trying to get this to drop, and deserved the awestruck looks when Al’ar took to the sky (those skytrails!). Similarly with the pair of Firelands mounts: they’re so ostentatious that it feels cruel to have received them so easily.

This is of course fairly ridiculous, given modern Warcraft’s predilection for giving away things once considered precious. I suppose it’s an interesting psychological study: guilt about getting something too easily. And I was genuinely pleased for a guild friend who had run hundreds of weekly Icecrown Citadel runs to finally be able to mount Invincible; genuinely deserved.

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For now I’ll stick with my lovely Onyx Netherwing Drake, hard earnt during Burning Crusade by throwing hundreds of boots at hapless peons.

Largest boss ever? We are so back.

One thing that caught my eye in the Blizzard post about interior decorating was that there would be meta-specific décor on offer:

One thing we’d like to give you a heads up about here is that we intend to offer décor rewards for past expansion “meta-achievements” (A World Awoken, Back from the Beyond, and A Farewell to Arms are the three currently available). If you think you might be a décor completionist, it’s worth starting these in your downtime!

I’d recently finished off the Dragonflight meta when this was announced and enjoyed it so this was a klaxon call to try the remaining two.

As mentioned in the last post, Battle for Azeroth seemed too high a mountain, but I was pleased to find I was had completed around 75% of the Shadowlands meta. So back to the land of the dead I went.

Shadowlands has been much maligned, sometimes deservedly so, but I have been pleasantly surprised revisiting it. That’s probably largely because the majority of the grinds were behind me, but it really was an impressively content-full expansion—maybe too much content.

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Four full zones on launch, each with a completely self-contained and unique aesthetic, plus Oribos, and the dreaded Maw and Torghast. The patches brought more still with Korthia and Zereth Mortis. Within each zone there is an entire standalone storyline (that occasionally cleverly meshes with the others) that has its own very distinct flavour. Each of the zone Covenants then have their own game-within-a-game, from the Ember Courts of the Venthyr to the Stitching of the Necrolords. It’s overwhelming and quite different to the far more streamlined and less individual zones we got with Dragonflight and now The War Within.

I found that my main characters naturally fell into a matching Covenant, which I’m sure is by design. Rogues to Revendreth, Warriors Maldraxxus, Hunters in Ardenweald, and Paladins to Bastion (of course). When I swapped my Paladin to Necrolord it felt so wrong I had to swap back and wheel out my Warrior instead. I imagine all classes felt drawn to a specific Covenant, which speaks to the cleverness of the design.

The raids are some of the best I’ve played; Castle Nathria is near perfect as a Gothic Chapel, and Sepulcher has several of the most iconic bosses in Warcraft history (looking at you Anduin and Halondrus).

Going back the Maw made me re-evaluate what Blizzard accomplished there. It feels like a legitimate and interesting take on what a hellish Warcraft Limbo would be like, without being simply fire and brimstone (though there is plenty of that). A river of lost souls, towering constructs, bizarre creatures and punishing landscapes. Even Torghast has moments, particularly when you can one-shot your way through everything. They really tried to do something different and I think it works.

Dragonflying everywhere makes questing much more tolerable; it shrinks the world significantly and that’s important, because one of the real drawbacks of Shadowlands is the amount of zone-to-zone travel that is required. Some of the daily quests would send you to all four zones, forcing you to travel through Oribos each time. There is an awful lot of waiting.

Another thing you need an awful lot of for the meta is Anima and Lost Souls. Thankfully I had a cache of Anima on my Paladin main which could be freely transferred (after Blizzard fixed the woeful Covenant locks that Shadowlands launched with), because having to grind thousands would probably have sunk this mission. But as it stands, after a few weeks I only have one Necrolord daily, one Venthyr Court, and a bunch of Night Fae dailies to complete the meta—now I just need Blizzard to deliver the Revendreth décor we all deserve.

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Strange that Player Housing would be the thing to make me take a fresh look at Shadowlands, but I’m glad it did.

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The Queen fight was a good final boss, and suitably difficult on Heroic (unlike Normal). Each phase took time to learn, and had enough mechanics to keep it interesting and require a good 10 minutes of focus: one slip and it was a wipe. As always seems to happen, on our victory run everything just fell into place, particularly on the final platform. We’d only seen it a few times, wiping shortly after the implosion each time, but the last run our comms were good and everyone reacted and adjusted perfectly. Very satisfying!

I had cold feet Undermine(d) when it was announced, but wanted to give it a fair chance. The intro sequence was tolerable, but as soon as I reached the city of Undermine I was out. It felt too much like an uncomfortable analogue of the real world and not somewhere I wanted to spend time. I want fantasy and escapism, not squalid shanty-towns and petty greed. So I stood down from raiding and let the rest of crew go for it (with great success!).

To fill the time I finished off the Dragonflight meta, principally to earn a very good dog indeed.

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It was also fun scooting around Dragonflight again, the zones are all lovely and it was refreshing being outdoors—even the Forbidden Reach was quite fun, despite it being a bit of a dead fish on release. The meta was surprisingly easy to achieve, with only a few long Rep grinds thankfully.

Some of my guild have been working away on the Battle for Azeroth meta instead thanks to the Jani mount that turns you into a Raptor, complete with weapon. I’m sorely tempted but getting 1 million(!) Azerite from Island Expeditions (I think I’ve run…3?) makes me shudder.

For now my Warcraft playtime is almost zero as we wait for 11.2 and what is hopefully a return to epic storytelling and consequential raiding, not just meeting the new boss, same as the old boss.

I swapped to Protection Warrior, suiting up one of my original BC characters. He had been sulking for some time having been beaten down by Halls of Reflection back in WotLK. Warrior is very fun, Charging and Heroic Leaping all over the place, and the class fantasy is spot on: a lot of armour, a shield, and a one handed weapon. Even the brown class colour is good (though Paladin pink is still the winner).

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We cleared Normal mode without any trouble, one-shotting all the bosses until Silken Court, which took 23—a sudden escalation in difficulty. It was a surprise to one-shot Broodtwister Ovi’nax and Nexus-Princess Ky’veza, having watched how hard they were on Mythic during the RWF, but Normal obviously doesn’t compare. Even Queen Ansurek only took 5 attempts.

I had fun levelling up my boss kill videos this tier, finally graduating from the built-in Windows video editor to DaVinci Resolve. It’s vastly better, and surprisingly not as complicated as I feared. Lots of fun effects and a strong editing timeline, plus finally exporting in HD.

Normal being so easy led to the decision to really push for Heroic this time. It was a shock to find that the first four bosses were also a pushover in Heroic, allowing us to farm two vault slots each week for a month or so to prepare for the last four. Only Bloodbound Horror caused occasional wipes due to random bad mob placement, but the rest were easy-mode.

Luckily the challenge comes with Ky’veza onward. That’s a fun fight, requiring careful gravity management and plenty of precision movement. Still it was only 15 battles over a few weeks before we had her.

Broodtwister was our first real wall, ending up needing 48 attempts. Chaos fights are our weakness, and that one is the definition of chaos—things can get very rapidly out of hand if you miss a single egg-break assignment, or let the small spiders overwhelm you as they multiply. So it was a nice pre-Xmas present to finally kill her on our last raid night of the year.

That leaves Silken Court and Queen Ansurek to finish (before 11.1 in ~March) to claim a guild-first Ahead of the Curve.

It’s been fun following along with Nogamara’s Heroic progression which is almost exactly mirroring ours. They’re on Silken Court too, and also struggled most with Ovi’nax. Hopefully both guilds will make it to the end before Season 2!

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The War Within has been a good expansion so far. As everyone has said, the Warband feature is the standout, making a huge difference to managing multiple characters. Gearing an alt is so much more straight-forward, and the 20th anniversary event has meant levelling a character is lightning-fast.

The zones are fun and different, though I wonder about too much underground after a while. Being out on the Isle and seeing the sky is refreshing after tootling around in the caves for a while.

I love the kobold culture they’ve created, and really wish the Undermine(d) 11.1 patch had been kobolds instead of Goblins. I’m not a fan of the Goblin culture as depicted—environmental vandals with their noisy smoke-belching mounts, money-grubbing, selfish. The kobolds on the other hand are brilliant and fun, with their candles and joy at discovering a piece of junk out in the world.

The expansion does feel a little bit stalled at the moment, despite the launch of Siren Isle (with its lacklustre ring), but Plunderstorm returns in January to distract everyone before Season 2. I’m a little worried by the proposed Prot Warrior rage nerfs, but that’s Warcraft for you—won’t take long to find out. Hm. Maybe I should gear my Paladin and Monk and Druid in the meantime just in case…

In some ways it was a bit of a let down: it was too easy¹, with even penultimate boss Tindral only taking a single attempt, and Fyrakk four. Four runs for the final boss of a tier is a little ridiculous.

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It’s clear Blizzard has decided Normal Raiding should be a pushover even for casual weekly guilds like ours. Which means Heroic is the new Normal, while Mythic is still nigh-impossible: some Race to World First guilds took over 1000 attempts to clear Mythic Tindral before nerfs!

(Speaking of RWF, this was one of the great tiers: watching Echo and Liquid neck-and-neck on Tindral and Fyrakk was amazing and really either guild could have grabbed the win. A great relief after the stunted Aberrus race. Grats to Echo for retaking the crown (and for the welcome return of Scripe’s headset smashing victory cry!).

In Aberrus our guild made a late push into Heroic for the first time, advancing all the way to Sarkareth before we ran out of time to get Ahead of the Curve. This time we would have plenty of time to get the AotC achievement, but strangely my motivation to continue vanished after the Normal clear. Despite raiding being my favourite WoW activity, the idea of eking out gear point-by-point to run the same-bosses-but-harder was a grind too far. As a consequence I stepped down from Heroic progress, which was a hard decision but I think the right one. I’m looking forward to being jealous of all our raiders on their Heroic mounts :-)

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Dragonflight has been an excellent expansion with plenty of content, but interestingly for the first time in a long time I found myself drifting way from following the storylines closely, and I didn’t bother with all the collectibles and side quests as the point releases rolled out. I was finding that the scaffolding behind an MMO like Warcraft was starting to show through a bit too much: point releases with predictable and easy gear catch-ups, ilvl increases because things have to go up, strange loot blockers and rules (e.g. not being able to upgrade with higher level tokens without also grinding lower level ones), etc.

Ironically enough I think the announcement of the Worldsoul Saga expansions is a key reason for my disenchantment, despite (or because of?) the Saga plans sounding excellent. Knowing it would be a nigh on a year before genuinely new content arrived, with only fated raids to fill the gap, was pretty demotivating. Blizzard obviously realised it was a big ask to keep people subscribed for that long a gap without a new raid, and their 2024 timeline was a good attempt at filling the void with promised activities, but in the end I think I felt that maintaining interest for that long was too hard.

The bug may bite again after a short break, but for now Warcraft is on hiatus until the War Within gets close. After all that was a killer cinematic!

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I generally don’t pay much attention to reviews of games, but I do remember that the reaction to TLoU2 on release was quite extreme: debates about excessive violence and the paradoxical way the game tries to condemn violence at the same time as forcing the player to participate in it. It’s a fair criticism, but opening that kind of debate is something that art does—it’s really down to whether the attempt works.

And for TLoU2 I think it does. Just.

Most of the violence is no worse than the first game, though just as depressing. It’s bizarre and counter-intuitive to be brazenly killing so many humans given the framing (and even title) of the game, but it is a game. Action games demand relentless murder, for better or (often) worse, and TLoU2 is an action game despite the heavyweight storytelling.

And just like the first game, the storytelling is the saving grace. It’s brutal and unforgiving, even drifting into absurdity at times, but the core story of loss and revenge and futility is very powerful. The surprise point-of-view switch is very daring given the potential for it to backfire disastrously, but somewhat miraculously the developers make it work despite the huge emotional heft that remains from the first game.

In many ways TLoU2 veers away from it’s core remit of zombie survival horror. In the sequel the zombies are almost inconsequential—it’s the humans that matter. There are still moments of classic jump-scare zombie gaming (the basement of a hospital the best shudder-filled example), but it’s the humans who provide the true horror, the tension, and all of the story beats. I guess that was true of the back half of TLoU too, but here it really is about the myriad ways humans can be awful to each other.

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The violence is sometimes unwatchable. There are two or three horribly brutal moments that scar your brain and won’t go away, even months later. The game tries to balance them with semi-absurd scenes of mass destruction and impossible odds, but those scenes were generally forgettable and sometimes even a mistake, unnecessarily removing some of the tightly scripted tension.

I think this is especially true of the fourth act, which is disappointing and feels like a real stretch. It is probably the main reason the criticisms came strong and hard. Unlike the extra acts of both Red Dead games, it feels tacked on and unexpected in a bad way—too long and the nihilism would have been more appropriate earlier in the game to give the player a chance to come to terms with it. As it stands we are forced into a very dark sequence that made me put the controller down and hope that by not engaging some other resolution might be possible. Alas no.

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It’s a depressing world the game depicts, one of little trust and even less hope, but you can’t help feeling the deep emotion and desperate connection the characters seek. You live and breathe their every hope and disappointment, their fury and need for resolution, their loves and their hatreds. One line in particular stopped me in my tracks, and has lived with me ever since:

“We let you live and you wasted it."

Gut wrenching.