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World of Warcraft |OT3|

...

If you guys wanna go level multiple characters to 18 for the achievement, go ahead.

The Dwarf Female I needed took an hour waiting for one to log on and tracking it down. A lot less time and effort than leveling one to 18 especially since I was multitasking.

I'm not denying that it's easier to track them down rather than level one yourself (unless you were getting desperate on the last day or two and your server is pretty desolate.) It just happens to be an option that's available.

It is probably a bit harder now to do all these race/class holiday achievements now without Dalaran being a central multi-faction hub, although battlegrounds are still an option to find at least some quickly if you can't find people on your own server.
 

C.Dark.DN

Banned
I'm not denying that it's easier to track them down rather than level one yourself (unless you were getting desperate on the last day or two and your server is pretty desolate.) It just happens to be an option that's available.

It is probably a bit harder now to do all these race/class holiday achievements now without Dalaran being a central multi-faction hub, although battlegrounds are still an option to find at least some quickly if you can't find people on your own server.
I was telling him you can't just create them, you have to level them, which I'm not going to do that.

I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't know the trial/starter edition level cap.

Yeah, it is harder now.

Speaking of things that are harder, I should have killed all the city bosses years ago.
 
I was telling him you can't just create them, you have to level them, which I'm not going to do that.

I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't know the trial/starter edition level cap.

Yeah, it is harder now.

Speaking of things that are harder, I should have killed all the city bosses years ago.

I randomly joined a For the Horde group about a month ago, assuming it was going to fail before even downing one.

Shockingly, we actually downed all 4. It certainly helps being on Illidan, though, where the H:A ratio is extremely in the Horde's favor.
 

Rokam

Member
So I was really worried about tanking the 2nd half of LFR DS, but wow that was pretty easy. Other tank even died on Ultraxion and still had no problem, but sadly the only piece of gear I saw that I could need on besides off spec shit was tier chest. Worst drops ever :(.

Also Kalimdor is terrible for leveling, that is all.
 
So I was really worried about tanking the 2nd half of LFR DS, but wow that was pretty easy. Other tank even died on Ultraxion and still had no problem, but sadly the only piece of gear I saw that I could need on besides off spec shit was tier chest. Worst drops ever :(.

Also Kalimdor is terrible for leveling, that is all.

Kalimdor truly is shit

EK for life ~
 
I randomly joined a For the Horde group about a month ago, assuming it was going to fail before even downing one.

Shockingly, we actually downed all 4. It certainly helps being on Illidan, though, where the H:A ratio is extremely in the Horde's favor.


It helps to have a good leader too. There's a guy on my server that goes by the name of Alienshark who I'll join just for fun if I see he's putting it together. Helps he's in a PvP orientated guild. *chuckles*
 

Ashkeloth

Member
So, WoW-GAF, I've recently been thinking about coming back to this game and need some advice as whether or not I actually should (For future reference, I'm in EU).

Like pretty much everyone at this point, I've had a WoW account in the past (or two, more specifically).

First one was back in vanilla days. I played a Night Elf Druid to level 40 and got bored of it because to be honest I just picked the druid class on a whim because shapeshifting seemed cool at the time. There wasn't much more thought to it than that (I was 14 at the time, so cut me some slack).

I returned to the game in '07. BC seemed quite interesting and I think WotLK had at least been announced so I was quite hyped again. I Played a Human Paladin up to level 64, before getting bored of the slow level progression in Nagrand. If I recall correctly, it was when some explorer dwarf or gnome or something similar asked me to kill a ton of wild animals. As a Protection Paladin with no group, this would've taken forever and overall was a slap in the face as to the tedious nature of WoW's questing system of the time.

Recently, I've dwindled my backlog down to all but 50-hour+ long RPGs and so I figured if I'm going to be playing games of that length I may as well be doing something where I can communicate with other people and generally have more fun as well, which led to the idea of coming back to WoW (that and I adore playing hand-to-hand classes in any and all RPGs and MoP looks to scratch that itch pretty well, Kung-Fu Panda stuff aside).

The issue I have myself thinking about, however, is that I have never once raided. A lot of people say that WoW only begins at max level and on my other characters of old I never once reached max level and got in a raid. I've heard the community in this game can be pretty harsh if you don't do your job properly (and sometimes even if you do), and so I ended up wondering if my general inexperience will hinder me. I'm a good learner and I can take criticism, but if there's no one willing to teach me then there's no point to it. I also can't magic great gear onto my character or make gold appear from thin air.

Another note on my inexperience with this game is that I never bothered to do PvP of any kind back in the day. At all. Ever. I'm still of that kind of mindset, since I really enjoy working with other people rather than against them, but don't know how necessary PvP really is in this game or even how it functions properly.

Furthermore, I tried recovering my old accounts (both of them) a while back, thinking about getting in on this whole Scroll of Resurrection thing going on at the moment and also saving money. It turns out they've both been hacked and banned ages ago, which means that I'll have to splash out the full £50 or so for the game and all of the expansions and essentially start anew.

If I do come back, I'm thinking of playing a Draenei Paladin since I find the whole space-goat thing a really unique twist to the traditional fantasy setting and I enjoy being able to tank and support people at the same time.

So, WoW-Gaf, I ask you the question - Is it worth it for me to come back given my lack of PvP and raid experience?

Finally, if anyone has any useful links to guides, wikis etc. that could help me get up to speed with how much this game has changed since BC days and what would be expected of me at max level, along with what I should be aiming for in regards to talent builds, stats etc. it would be greatly appreciated, as would a good EU server recommendation (Preferably PvE).

I looked into other MMOs and only Guild Wars 2 seems relatively appealing of the bunch and it still seems to have a bit of the focus on PvP that its predecessor had, albeit with a more fleshed out PvE experience now, but that doesn't even have a release date yet and frankly I need something to do now. If anyone has any other MMO recommendations though, feel free to shoot them off if you don't think WoW is for me.

Thanks in advance to anyone that actually took the time to read this overly long post and help me out.
 
Hm well I would say give the free trail ago and see how it goes? but youve enver managed to reach cap so im not really sure. 80-85 is abit of a mission but thats only if you have done it before. The quests ar ealot more engaging compared to vannila/BC even wrath to be fair.

I can send you a recruit a friend, I play on Horde side Kazzak (transfered last month) and it supposedly the "best" Eu server for horde.

PvP is the easiest to get into now as its easy to gear for (though I wish I could have tri spec or PvP and two PvE ones) as I do like it but dont want to give up tanking or easy farming spec.

Maxdps, noxiose (I think its called) and wow head are about all you need to learn your class well enough to level and run dungeons.

Pm me if you want RAF :) Oh and im sure you can pick up Vannila/BC/warth for under £20 now..
 

Nelo Ice

Banned
Man first time ever randomly queuing with another rogue and a belt upgrade i need drops in well of eternity and he wins it even with one of my friends rolling for me =(.

Also man talking with my old friend from back in the day I should have never left lol. I was in like THE top raiding guild on my server if I bothered to l2p instead of just quitting I could've had such a baller ass warrior.
 
Just note, that if you do come back now, there are dozens of new mechanics and the like you'd have to learn, many of which will change drastically (e.g. talents) when Mists releases several months down the line.

That said, I'll let others handle the rest of the question - I'm up late (U.S.) and have a headache, but I can't fall asleep.
 

Ashkeloth

Member
Hm well I would say give the free trail ago and see how it goes? but youve enver managed to reach cap so im not really sure. 80-85 is abit of a mission but thats only if you have done it before. The quests ar ealot more engaging compared to vannila/BC even wrath to be fair.

I can send you a recruit a friend, I play on Horde side Kazzak (transfered last month) and it supposedly the "best" Eu server for horde.

PvP is the easiest to get into now as its easy to gear for (though I wish I could have tri spec or PvP and two PvE ones) as I do like it but dont want to give up tanking or easy farming spec.

Maxdps, noxiose (I think its called) and wow head are about all you need to learn your class well enough to level and run dungeons.

Pm me if you want RAF :) Oh and im sure you can pick up Vannila/BC/warth for under £20 now..

Downloading the free trial now. I guess it's as good a place to start as any. I just fear that since it only goes up to 20, I could end up spending all this money after enjoying leveling and then get to the endgame and realise I hate it.

Looked up Maxdps. Seems to be a site that just cuts all the annoying parts of WoW where you have to research for ages on forums and just straight-up tells you what is the best build for each tree and what gear you should be aiming for for the best results. Extremely useful would be an understatement

Wowhead was around the last time I played so I'm pretty familiar with it.

I also looked into RAF (which is recruit-a-friend, from what I can gather). It seems interesting and beneficial to all parties involved. I enjoy taking my time through PvE content so the EXP bonus isn't that appealing to me, but that can be avoided by not partying up (Plus it's kind of impossible if I roll an alliance character anyway, unless the game really has changed massively since I last played). I figure that if nothing else you'll get a rocket and some granted levels out of it if I decide to stick around (and am reading all of this right) which is the least I could do for the help. The only issue I have is - does it lock me to the same server as you? As you can see I like my PvE and am more of an alliance guy, which means it would be pretty bad if it did.

As for the pricing - I was just planning on buying the digital versions from the Blizzard store to save myself some time if I did decide to purchase it. Not sure if it's the cheapest route, but it's certainly the easiest and most secure.

Just note, that if you do come back now, there are dozens of new mechanics and the like you'd have to learn, many of which will change drastically (e.g. talents) when Mists releases several months down the line.

That said, I'll let others handle the rest of the question - I'm up late (U.S.) and have a headache, but I can't fall asleep.

I pick up new mechanics pretty fast, and wasn't too familiar with the old ones either having never really experienced the depth of the old versions. It's less "coming back" and more "starting up" at this point I figure.
 

Boken

Banned
I think getting into raiding isn't too hard - no matter your prior experience. So if you're worried about PVE end game, don't be.
 
There are always guilds who are low on the progression scale looking for people, so it shouldn't be too hard to snag a spot in a guild like that.

I always liked joining a guild working on progression rather than those who already are on farm.
 
There is basically 0 barrier to entry to end-game now, because of LFR (looking for raid) and the heroics. It's not like it was in vanilla and BC at all.

There is a dungeon finder feature in which you can queue up and get into groups automatically. You can queue solo or with 1-4 other friends, and the tool will fill the empty slots with other players. If you want to tank, you can do a bunch of these as you level up for practice. All the dungeons before max level are now very easy and a tank will have instant queue times.

Once you get to max level, and feel like you have sufficient practice as a tank, you can queue for the heroics. For a tank, you can't use the PvP crafted gear loophole too much, that DPS can use, to get into the heroics, because it's very bad for tanking and you'll struggle without excellent healers. But using just a few pieces of it, along with the gear you get from normal dungeons from 80-85, you can tank the regular heroics, or you can just queue as DPS. Once you're in those, the progression path is very straightforward. Use the boss loot from heroics and the dungeon currency you get to gear up for the 4.3 Twilight heroics, and use the epic gear from that to get into LFR.

If you're starting from scratch, you'll find that 1-59 is a completely redone experience from vanilla, and also pretty fast. Outlands is also really fast, and you can pretty much bypass it by leveling through the dungeon finder, which is what I do since I'm sick of it. If you've never gotten past level 64 though, you may want to do some of the zones.

Also, tanks do a crap-ton of DPS now, while you're leveling in dungeons you will actually out DPS most of the DPS classes because of how AOE tanking works. Maybe even on bosses. Pure DPS classes only really pull ahead at max level end-game stuff.
 

Ashkeloth

Member
Thanks for all of the help guys.

Just loaded up the starter client now, but are there any specific EU PvE realms I should avoid as an Alliance player? This is one mistake I don't want to make since I'd lose all of my character progress if I chose poorly. I don't want to be stuck on some realm with 75% Horde population making PvP completely unviable if I do decide to do it.

Game is recommending Hellscream, but the population is listed as "new players" which leads me to believe it's probably pretty empty.
 
The only bad point on tanking is people expect you to know everything about everything at heroic.
Dps can sign up and AFK for all I know but if im not pulling fast enough or I don't know the mechanics for a fight, god knows you'll hear about it. So It can be pretty rough your first few times through. The easy way to do it is run it as dps first.

As far as I know with RAF you don't need to do anything and you are free to play wherever you want.
Also unless you want to play wolfman or goblin you can buy just van/bc and get a good few weeks playtime before needing wotlk and cata.


Don't go for anything other than High pop in my opinion. No idea about alliance server though. Come be a cow pally instead ;)
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
The only bad point on tanking is people expect you to know everything about everything at heroic.

The best part is leveling a tank and not remembering where to go in the low level dungeons. So you're just walking around getting lost while you have 4 people thinking you know where you're going.
 

strafer

member
I just finished the worst group in the history of PUGs.

We had a tank in Balance Spec /w intellect and cloth gear.

A healer with Resurrection Sickness and in Feral Combat Spec.

And finally a Rogue with heirloom cloth shoulders.

According to the tank he had been playing for a year.

I facepalmed through the entire dungeon.
 
I just finished the worst group in the history of PUGs.

We had a tank in Balance Spec /w intellect and cloth gear.

A healer with Resurrection Sickness and in Feral Combat Spec.

And finally a Rogue with heirloom cloth shoulders.

According to the tank he had been playing for a year.

I facepalmed through the entire dungeon.

Wat.
I'd have been out in a flash.
 
I just finished the worst group in the history of PUGs.

We had a tank in Balance Spec /w intellect and cloth gear.

A healer with Resurrection Sickness and in Feral Combat Spec.

And finally a Rogue with heirloom cloth shoulders.

According to the tank he had been playing for a year.

I facepalmed through the entire dungeon.

I'm actually pretty impressed if you completed a dungeon with a Balance tank and a Feral healer with rez sickness.

Unless it was like Ragefire Chasm.
 
The best part is leveling a tank and not remembering where to go in the low level dungeons. So you're just walking around getting lost while you have 4 people thinking you know where you're going.

Uldaman! I get lost almost every time. It's not like I've run it more than once (or twice at most) on each character.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
A friend of mine PMed me two days ago, pretty much asking me if I bought one of those Soul of the Aspects pets and I told her no. She teased me and told me I should check my mail but two days later, I've still got nothing :(

Did I get trolled or does it take some time for it to actually arrive?
 

Andiie

Unconfirmed Member
A friend of mine PMed me two days ago, pretty much asking me if I bought one of those Soul of the Aspects pets and I told her no. She teased me and told me I should check my mail but two days later, I've still got nothing :(

Did I get trolled or does it take some time for it to actually arrive?

Ask her about it.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Okay I guess I'll just have to do it :3
 

Andiie

Unconfirmed Member
The best part is leveling a tank and not remembering where to go in the low level dungeons. So you're just walking around getting lost while you have 4 people thinking you know where you're going.

Sunken Temple was the worst for this. I could never remember which order the different areas were done. I went in there so many times but every time was the same.
 
The worst part was stopping for loot in that upper area, checking out your gear to figure out if it was an improvement, and then when you look up everyone is gone. So, which of those six stairs did they take? And when they did, did they stop at the middle section or go all the way down?

"Umm, guys?"
 

Prodigal

Banned
Does the Real ID system only allow people from different realms to queue for dungeons together? As in a friend and I from 2 different realms couldn't go run BT together for mog gear.
 

TimeKillr

Member
The best part is leveling a tank and not remembering where to go in the low level dungeons. So you're just walking around getting lost while you have 4 people thinking you know where you're going.

See, all those things people are saying (Uldaman, Sunken Temple, Gnomer) are bad, but...

Blackrock Depths is by *far* the biggest offender. Even with the dungeon finder, you have *no* clue which one you queued for, and getting in there is a complete fucking maze.

I mean, I love the place because it has so much to explore, but there's like 4 paths to the middle of the dungeon from which it then becomes linear but it's ridiculously complex. Do you start in the middle, left, right, through the arena, or maybe not, etc.

The only reason a bunch of people know it a bit better is because it's the original entrance to MC.

The Lower Blackrock Spire is also pretty fucked up. Lots of different paths, and while there's only one optimal path it's pretty difficult to make out.
 

Entropia

No One Remembers
Does the Real ID system only allow people from different realms to queue for dungeons together? As in a friend and I from 2 different realms couldn't go run BT together for mog gear.

You're not able to queue for an old raid like BT/FL/MC/BWL/etc, but if you zone into the same raid you will see each other and can run it.
 
See, all those things people are saying (Uldaman, Sunken Temple, Gnomer) are bad, but...

Blackrock Depths is by *far* the biggest offender. Even with the dungeon finder, you have *no* clue which one you queued for, and getting in there is a complete fucking maze.

I mean, I love the place because it has so much to explore, but there's like 4 paths to the middle of the dungeon from which it then becomes linear but it's ridiculously complex. Do you start in the middle, left, right, through the arena, or maybe not, etc.

The only reason a bunch of people know it a bit better is because it's the original entrance to MC.

The Lower Blackrock Spire is also pretty fucked up. Lots of different paths, and while there's only one optimal path it's pretty difficult to make out.

By far the most confusing!!
Fun though so I didnt did mind going all over the place when levelling!
 
Sunken Temple and BRD were amazing back in vanilla. And Maraudon. So ridiculous...

Now you just faceroll through BRD and I actually got to see the end end boss, but it's still confusing as hell to navigate. I remember when each of those trash pulls of dark iron dwarves was an ordeal itself, with CC and tip-toeing around the packs to not pull adds. Fucking Lyceum.

I really do like dungeons like that, and I felt like the ZA and ZG remakes in 4.1 captured some of that spirit in 5 mans. The "here is a living settlement or city of trolls" feeling, just like BRD captures that "dwarf city" feeling so well.
 
I spent hours and hours in maraudon back in the vanilla days, combat rogue so i needed the thrash blade. And duo'd the plant boss for the phytoskin shoulders with a druid.
 

Ultratech

Member
Yeah, Sunken Temple, BRD, and LBRS were the biggest offenders to me back in the day.

I got LBRS more or less figured out now, but ST and BRD still confuse me every once in a while.
 

TheYanger

Member
Yeah, Sunken Temple, BRD, and LBRS were the biggest offenders to me back in the day.

I got LBRS more or less figured out now, but ST and BRD still confuse me every once in a while.

ST was nerfed with Cata cause of you whiners :( Trust me, you have it figured out now.
 
The one really positive change is now you remember bosses for their mechanics whereas before, bosses might as well have been larger trash mobs. Only a few stand out for me, like Princess Fatty in Maraudon.

On the other hand, you remembered the whole instance for it's thematic top-down design and flavor.

In MtG terms, WoW has moved from designing top down flavor-driven cards to bottom up mechanics-driven cards. It's a change not everyone is going to appreciate.
 
And entering the new ZA and especially ZG blew me away the first time I entered them. Place is absolutely insane and we need more places like them. Mini bosses, people everywhere, "puzzles / platforming", etc... I love the boulder path and the fire wall in ZG. Plus, ZG is filled with bosses I actually like to fight.

Sunken Temple was the worst for this. I could never remember which order the different areas were done. I went in there so many times but every time was the same.

You're opening up old wounds mentioning Sunken Temple around me. If that dungeon never comes back in it's full glory I'm going to be sad.
 

TheYanger

Member
The one really positive change is now you remember bosses for their mechanics whereas before, bosses might as well have been larger trash mobs. Only a few stand out for me, like Princess Fatty in Maraudon.

On the other hand, you remembered the whole instance for it's thematic top-down design and flavor.

In MtG terms, WoW has moved from designing top down flavor-driven cards to bottom up mechanics-driven cards. It's a change not everyone is going to appreciate.

Good analogy, agree as far as design is concerned. Disagree that old bosses had no mechanics to remember though. Sure, the game has matured greatly in that regard, but higher level vanilla dungeons had extremely memorable bosses still mechanically imo (seven dwarves, Baron Rivendare, the banshee chick in strat, Darkmaster Gandling...I could probably name tons from back then). Sure, a lot were random tank and spank stuff, but when a dungeon has like 10 bosses I think there's some slack involved. Now they'd just be minibosses or trash. I mean this was the era when the only heavily scriped bosses even in raids were Ony and Rag.
 

C.Dark.DN

Banned
Vanilla bosses are just faceroll now, making them essentially trash. The mechanics mean nothing, just like they mean nothing when soloing old raids.

But, tons of bosses had memorable mechanics back in vanilla.
 
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