(Spoileriffic if you haven’t finished the pre-BfA scenarios!)

The Battle for Lordaeron scenario is really great, probably the best in game story telling I’ve experienced. There is a real sense of urgency and panic, plus it’s the first time the scale of the Horde and Alliance battle has really sunk home. This is no skirmish, this is a real war.

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There are a lot of great moments and reveals in the storytelling. When Sylvanas unleashes the blight (another unforgivable act), the player is given the choice of taking a mask and healing the infected Horde warriors, or taking a can of blight and spreading the disease further. It was great to be given the option to do good in the face of the horror - thanks Blizzard.

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Baine makes his first serious appearance, and has a wonderful moment of Sophie’s Choice which only made me respect and love him more. His facial animation is perfect, bearing witness to his frustration as he is forced into an impossible decision thrust upon him by Sylvanas. And, being Baine, he of course chooses correctly.

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And I even warmed slightly to Sylvanas again when she sat slouched in the throne room and gently mocked the ‘little lion’ boy king. When she’s at her arrogant best, she’s something to behold. Pity that same arrogance has led her - and the Horde - so badly astray. could not find image

Jaina was a revelation for me - not having played Alliance I hadn’t ever experienced or realised her power. Though the floating ghost boat thing? Not a fan. And I’m not sure the status of Undercity at the finish, but it doesn’t look like either side ‘won’.

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I also wasn’t sure what had happened to Saurfang, which was a blip in the Horde side storytelling I think, but apparently he’s locked up in Stormwind Stockade. My level 10 Alliance Spy Guild will have to go in there and rescue him!

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As part of the new Alliance group, we decided a new server was a good idea, so everyone was starting from more or less scratch - 6 slot bags, no money, and if we were lucky, a tough hunk of bread. It would equalise the playing field a bit for our new recruit too. With the group up and running as of last night, it was time to setup the Guild.

After collecting all the signatures, we formed the Guild to much celebration. I went to create the Guild Tabard but it cost 10 gold to create. 10 gold! I only had 22 silver, so the crest would have to wait for some auction house ore sales to start rolling in - or so I thought.

One of our members came online, signed up, and suddenly advised everyone that the Guild Bank now had… 100,000 gold in it. One. Hundred. Thousand. Along with piles of 30 slot bags, etc. I was stunned, and didn’t quite understand how that was possible on a new server with new characters.

Then one of the other guildies clued me up: the WoW Token. They’re currently selling for ~190,000 gold, so there’s the answer to our guild riches. I’d never really considered the implications of the Token until that moment. I knew about them, but mostly thought they were used by auction goblins to buy free game time. But of course the free game time transfers gold to the seller.

It’s quite a game changer. I was quite pleased with how my Horde main had found her way to ~250,000 gold over the course of her career in game. But that is kind of rendered inconsequential when you can buy yourself that much in an instant. I felt a bit grumpy about it, as it seems a bit like cheating, but was reminded by a guildie that ‘we play for fun not purity’. Those that enjoy endless free bag space and rolling in cash can partake of the new found riches, and those that like the slower grind of gathering and auctioning and a hefty Coldridge Mountaineer’s Pouch can follow that path. And bag rage isn’t exactly ‘fun’.

So I withdrew 10 gold and made the tabard. But as for my personal accounts: as of tonight I have 25 silver, and feeling pretty chuffed with that. Time to mine some more ore!

For a few years, my group of roleplaying friends fell hard into Warcraft, peaking in WotLK before real life got in the way. Since then some have played continuously, others dip in and out, and some have retired for good.

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But one DnD veteran never played, for one reason or another. He’s something of a completionist, and lover of RPGs, which meant it was hard to see how a basically bottomless MMO could fit into his schedule. A small chink in that armour appeared recently when we almost played Secret World Legends together, but it was barely an MMO - which is why he 99% completed it and I bailed.

Every so often - normally around expacs - someone has tried to cajole, peer pressure, or sweet talk him into playing WoW, but never with any success.

Until now.

I’m not sure if it’s because of swirling storyline controversy (which means Sylvanas is trending in his non-MMO news feed!), or the when-it’s-ready no-show for the Vanilla servers, or just the relentless ‘first taste is free’ tempting from the rest of the group. Whatever the reason, we’re thrilled he’s going to give it a try.

Of course the first thing we veterans did was start imposing ideas and rules for how to level, when to stop, what you could and couldn’t do, etc. No heirlooms, only levelling in dungeons, maybe even ironman? Oh and I’ll send him some bags and gold, and and and…

We quickly realised though that all those rules were to make it more fun for us, the long term players looking for that spark, chasing the dragon again, somehow rediscovering the shock of the new. Bhagpuss discussed this phenomenon very nicely in a recent piece:

Some people like to know how magic tricks are done. For them, understanding the mechanics make the whole thing more fascinating, not less. For most, though, once a trick’s explained, it’s dead. Explain enough tricks and all of magic dies. Which is why you need to be careful and cautious when showing someone around the back of the set. If you reveal all the trapdoors and uncover all the mirrors there’s nothing much left but dusty boards and flat canvas. At least let the newbie see the trick done properly, once.

So the new plan is: relax. Take it slowly. Look around rather than relentlessly ahead. We’ll venture into 5-mans when the time is right, and take them at a leisurely pace. And soon enough BfA will provide plenty to be going on with too. Our friend will get to have his moments of wide eyed exploration and discovery, and we’ll be there to enjoy some of the reflected glory.

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Plus: his condition for playing is that we should roll Alliance, which for a dedicated Horde group is very likely to provide the shock we are seeking!

One of the keys to playing an MMO effectively as a raider or mythic dungeon runner has always been getting your rotation right. Making sure that you fire off key skills at the right time, don’t waste cool downs, and combo your best abilities correctly. After every major patch there is always a new rotation to learn and action bars to configure to ensure optimum key pressery.

BfA is no different, so I’ve set about researching the new best-in-class rotations for my Hunter. I’ve never professed to be anything beyond a ‘Normal’ level player, but I still like to try and make sure I’m not doing anything obviously stupid, and preferably doing most things right. There are a lot of great guides out there, from Icy Veins to Wowhead to individual class masters like Bendak at Eyes of the Beast.

I usually try and cobble together talents and rotations that combine passive skills along with the more fun active talents, and then hotkey them in some semblance of the correct order. This time however I stumbled across a really interesting post on the AskMrRobot blog, which examines Simple vs Complex rotations, and the effect on DPS as the rotation gets increasingly involved.

Using a Marksmanship Hunter as an example, they discovered that the difference between a simple rotation and a very complex one can be as little as 1-3%. Even the difference between the simplest possible rotation and the most complex was only ~10%. I found that amazing to read, and somewhat liberating as a casual player.

Obviously if you’re a progression raider that 10% difference is immense, but for the Normal and even Heroic players, if you can pare it down to a 3% difference then it seems very safe to choose. As AMR points out, the major benefit of simpler rotations is that you can focus better on the boss mechanics, and you’re more likely to be able to maintain your rotation in the face of the chaos of a boss fight:

Simpler rotations aren’t just easier to do, they are also more robust. They can stand up to the interruptions from a real boss fight, like movement, knockbacks, and switching to adds that need to be nuked down. A lot of complex rules lose all of their benefit when these types of interruptions happen and either offer zero DPS gain, or in some cases, cause a DPS loss.

Again, great news for the casual player who still wants to be effective!

Which makes me happy to turn to Icy Vein’s ‘Easy Mode’ guide (despite the slight but ridiculous shame that comes with associating with ‘ezy’ play), or Wowhead’s Levelling Build when designing my BfA setup.

Looks like another case where the old saying might be true: the simple things in life…

With Blaugust fully rolling now, I thought it might be ok to post a meta post about blogging - or more specifically questions about blogging and commenting. (I guess this could be better asked on the Blaugust Discord, but I don’t really use or get Discord, and anything posted there is only visible to the Discorders. Which is why blogging is so great - it’s public and a permanent record).

One of my biggest confusions with blogging is commenting. Whenever I see a post that stirs the imagination, I think about commenting, but then decide it would be better to make a full post here. The logic is normally that there is too much to write in a comment, and comments tend to be seen by a tiny fraction of blog readers. On the other hand, comments can be the heart of a blog. It’s how you know people are reading, and reading enough to care to respond. Veteran blogger and Blaugust mentor Bhagpuss is pretty clear on the matter:

I one hundred percent recommend and advise any reader to comment, whether or not they also blog or plan on starting. Comments are the life-blood of blogs. Bloggers love comments and commenting leads to blogging. Do it!

But! He also goes on to say:

I’ll start commenting and within a few sentences it will occur to me that a) the comment is going to run long - most likely very long - and b) it would make a perfectly adequate blog post! At this point, out of blogging solidarity and politeness, I usually change the comment to something along the lines of “Great post! I was going to comment but then I realized I ought to make it into a post over at my blog”.

This is exactly what happens. Though I rarely get as far as starting a reply.

Is the best etiquette to post a reply, but link to your post if you make one? That sometimes seems like it might be a bit rude, hijacking someone else’s post, but it does seem a good compromise? I certainly like seeing a link posted as it leads me to find great new bloggers, or great posts from existing blogs. It might also be the only way to guarantee the author knows you have posted a response.

The state of link-backs seem perilous at best, which is a real shame. There could be terrific post somewhere engaging with one of yours, but you may never see it. Interested in thoughts on this - feel free to comment or post a response! And then comment. With a link. Argh!