Quick Look: World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

@rorie looking to make a new Alliance character and would love to join the guild, what server is your guild located on?

Quest:

Save Azeroth

Reward: A safe Azeroth

0 out of 1 Azeroths currently saved

There's a total Winnie The Poo reference in the Alliance area I found yesterday. It's actually kinda cute.

Brad 100% got the right of it - WoW is the constant missed opportunity for better writing and instead, here's some old memes. I just stopped playing because of it, since Vanilla, and it's really not worth playing. The RPG of MMORPG is gone from WoW - they strip away everything from the last expansion every new expansion, there is no progression. I don't mean "oh, I have to get new gear now.." I mean, you lose abilities, the balancing is thrown into the air for every class, and there is a large period of time where you're expected to deal with being less powerful than you were yesterday as they start releasing the next expansion.

The first new content of an expansion is usually somewhere between fine and good, but Blizzard has really started to scrimp on the new content - less unique armor art, lots of clipping, way less gameplay development and balancing. If you're gonna play it, know when and where to pull your ripcord.

Fear the game that monetizes your time.

I'm sad this wasn't 1-2 hrs long.

Does Rorie have a post anywhere about which UI mods he has, specifically for nameplates and unit frames? I desire more visually clear ones than the default.

I jumped back into Legion after not playing since vanilla and enjoyed it quite a bit. They're right about the general quest design being boring, but I liked hunting mounts and progressing through dungeons and eventually to raids with my friends. That's still fun and probably always will be. I'll eventually jump into this.

It's a Blizzard thing, Diablo III was full of it as well. You can tell when exactly the achievement was added to the game.

Holy crap the art in this game is terrible lol

+ 1 to this.

I personally think the game is better than ever for those who want to explore the world and see the stories unfold (like me). I mean, that Drustvar village Brad is referring to is the beginning of a whole story arc about the Coven and the Drust - it's all there in the zone questline. If we're talking about writing, I'd say the quest and zone writing is far better than overall main arc writing which is cheesy as hell (and always was since RTS games).

The beauty of this game is that it has something for everybody. If you want to autopilot thru dungeons while watching netflix, like Rorie, - there are systems and features for that. If you want narrative and exploration - it is there. If you want hardcore raiding experience - it's there. PvP, crafting. You can do nothing other than collecting pets if you wish. Or building the perfect wardrobe. No one playstyle is forced on anybody. No other game has so many ways to play.

Sure looks like WoW and watching this did give me that warm, fuzzy feeling that I always get (to at least some degree) when a new expansion comes out. Exploring new continent and seeing the scenery is always a blast.

But it hasn't pulled me back in. Having a job definitely has something to do with it, as I just can't stay awake playing long into the night with having to wake up early and I don't really want to just play WoW after work either (because when you play WoW, especially new content, you don't just play it for an hour or two, no sir). But WoW's grip of me has also steadily weakened since WoD, so eh.

Maybe when they give me a week of gametime or I happen to be on a long vacation next year and have nothing else to play, I'll jump back in.

@eclipsingsquid: I really like ElvUI and that's what IcyVeins recommends

I'm not going to bat for or against WOW in this instance. But i do agree with that last line in your post. I lost count on the myriad of things they have completely gotten wrong over the time. It happens to all of us, but because they have such a large audience it can tarnish a game quite a lot.

Every time a new expansion comes out and this game starts getting some people talking about it I feel the urge to play it again. The only exception being the last one, that one somehow went right over my head and lives in this black hole in my mind where I keep forgetting it even exists.

So I love love LOVE that the first thing you see Brad do on the WoW video is /dance.

It's not their job to present "ALL SIDES" of anything, and they can't be held at fault if people are too lazy to look into art for themselves before parroting what a critic/pundit says about it. I can sit here and tell you a movie is one of the worst pieces of dreck I've ever seen, I could show you to the Rotten Tomatoes score where it's got an abysmal rating, but if YOU go out and say "This movie sucks" without actually seeing it, that's not really my fault or my problem.

As someone who absolutely loves the lore of stuff people don't generally care about (ask me anything about King of Fighters '94-98 and the Orochi storyline or the branching story paths of Project Justice and Tech Romancer), I'm not going to say that people who don't care about it or dismiss it are "wrong." THEY don't care, and it's not their job to pretend they do. If they did, it'd either come off as disingenuous, or the comment section would be full of people saying "WHO CARES, GET TO THE HAWT LEWT!!!" (or whatever you crazy kids are saying these days).

I get it, I really do. And I'm not trying to invalidate the fact that you care about something a lot of people don't, nor how frustrating that can be (I've been a Dragon Ball Z fan for 20 years, I've had the "All it is is people screaming like they gotta take a shit and power levels, lololololol" conversations I can handle). But expecting a website primarily driven by the personalities and honest opinions of the staff to go in-depth on something they don't care about so OTHER people MIGHT care about it isn't fair to them. And it sucks that they don't give it a chance on-video, but the fact that people parrot their opinions without having one of their own shouldn't be laid at their doorstep.

I have a shameful secret to tell everyone, I pre-purchased World of Warcraft when it came out, I had my beta code and played and was very happy, every now and then I come back and play, but not once in that entire time have I cancelled the subscription fee, I got that pretty statue they sent out. I'd hate to know how much £££ I've spent since 2005.

Absolutely me 100%, I actually reinstalled yesterday and messed around with a few characters with their free up to Level 20 thing that they have going and kept umming and ahhing, should I buy BfA, will I regret this purchase immediately after, I'm basically looking for an excuse to play again.

<Lincoln Force> - Khadgar EU still up and running??

Man if i only had the time, i would get so into this... Thats what i have said to myself for the last 3-4 expansions. So many fond memories of vanilla +3, i would love to get back in for a month or two. But the thing that always prevents me from jumping back in when a new expansion comes out, is that you dont get any playtime included with the expansion purchase. So its 50 bucks + another 12 bucks for a month of play? Nah...

Here here, that would be awesome!

Given a little time to think back on what I said (it's difficult when three people are talking in a video), I'll say that while I do often quest with something on the side monitor, I have been doing my best to pay attention to the primary quests in BfA so far. They are OK, but they do lack a lot of the intensity of what I came to expect from Legion. It's probably unfair to expect that level of pop to be replicated every expansion, but at the same time, Legion set a pretty high bar with the deaths of Tyrion, Varian, Ysera, etc., teasing at Illidan being back, and so forth. What's more is that a lot of these events were in the actual expansion or its starting quests/scenario (so far as I recall), whereas a lot of the big dramatic stuff in BfA happened in the pre-patch quests and cutscenes. There was some intense shit going on in the pre-patch, and going from that to "here are some new zones and characters you've never met before" has felt like a bit of a damp squib so far.

I can't say that I've met any really intense new NPCs thus far aside from Katherine Proudmoore, and thus far she's only been in a cutscene. I've had very little interaction with any other characters that seem important to the overall WoW storyline thus far, which is a little disappointing after the buildup to this expansion. It's fun enough to hang out with pirates and all that but without a stronger connection between the zones I'm questing in and the actual Sylvanas/Anduin stuff that is seemingly what is going to drive the next phase of the expansion it feels a bit like I'm treading water. There have been some cool moments and some fun cutscenes but I'm still waiting for that death of Ysera/Wrathgate kind of moment to keep me interested and so far I haven't found it. I like killing witches as much as the next guy but it feels like those quests are a slide back into generic fantasy rather than pushing me forward in the WoW story.

But hey, it's only been a few days since everything launched and I'm sure my opinion will change as time goes on. I'll hopefully be streaming some dungeons on Monday at 120 and we'll see if anything becomes clearer then.

While the expansion is moving along and it might not hit the same highs and lows for some, that's fine. It's very different from the previous expansions and I understand why some people are excited and some aren't.
I'm just more so irked about the part where someone says something like "I killed a witch but I didn't learn why she was being mean and that's just bad writing" when clearly, if you get deeper into the story of the zone, you do learn this. It just rattles my brain a little. You can say you don't like a game but making assumptions as to why you don't like it just feels dismissive and mean.
A better version is "The game so far hasn't been able to peak my interest lore-wise so I might have missed or not reached some plot points yet."
Like, you wouldn't start reading a book and throw it aside because the murderers intentions weren't revealed on page one. Then address the masses of fans and say "The book was poorly written!" -- I mean that's what it came off like but I might be remembering a little. There was a lot of voices.

Now I don't want to get into spoilers and WoW was spouting this happening long before it did much like the death of various faction leaders in previous expansions but - TELDRASSIL IS NO MORE! The home of the night elves is but cinders and you had to be there with the (literally) impossible mission of saving all their citizens from certain death. It doesn't take you long to realize it's hopeless so you try and save as many as you can before it overtakes you and..well, I got 14 out of 7000. The rest are dead and the game mercilessly moves on. Was it another "kill 14 bears quest"? I guess, but given the story's context it means so much more than that.

Sylvanas' arch has been very interesting and the current slaughtering of her own kind has a huge impact on some of us - especially me and my partner who read the most recent book and were both moved to tears by the attempted short-lived "reunification" of Alliance and Forsaken families. The daughter who just wanted to see her dad one more time, the woman who brought stuff to cover the scent of her rotten, decaying body - so sorely clinging to hope that maybe someone will recognize her and maybe accept her as a person just one more time before she and her sanity withers away completely.
Safe to say Sylvanas wasn't very pleased when she heard that her supposed precious forsaken had gone along with this for the chance of pretending to be human just one more time. We saw the ramifications of this as well.

Also Genn's tail thrashes with anger in that book, I mean, that's something I wish the game actually would show. Oh well.

Book and in-game BfA intro-scenarios aside, I personally think that the story in BfA can get a lot more personal than more recent expansions. The intimate stories of the people on the ground can move me more than a moon-sized sword stabbed into the core of a planet-being ever could (though that stuff was really intense and cool too).
Like Vinny said, where's the game about young Garrus solving crimes on the citadel in Mass Effect? While this isn't the major focus of BfA, I find it's shining in the more "personal" area so far.
As for major impact, we're at danger of losing Azeroth herself. She has received a grievous wound and once we settle the current problems with our allied races, I'm a very excited dog to see where the story goes next.

Fourteen years...

How is it there hasn't been a video game called Battle for Azeroth?

I’ve fallen back in love with this game. Came back for a free weekend and have been leveling up through the old content. It’s both nostalgic and a lot of varied fun.

War mode is also a great nostalgic add. The world feels so much more alive with everyone at eachother’s throats.

The business model changing will add to the success for BFA. Buy the latest expansion and have access to everything.

@rorie: thank you for bringing the GB spotlight to WoW. I do hope Brad comes around on it. It bums me out to hear how dismissive the gang is for one of arguably the greatest games of all time.

Since the hearthstone expansion and BFA pre-patch launching, I’ve played little else and cared for little else in the gaming industry. Like a moth to the flame, this video has brought me back to giant bomb content.

The pop culture references have never bothered me. I felt the same when everyone was up in arms about Borderlands 2's writing - it just is what it is to me. I don't necessarily find it funny or anything, but I don't mind it.

Also was amusing to note after hearing them talk down about the pop culture references is that Rorie's paladin's name is Dazemebro, which is a probably a parody of the "don't taze me bro" video from years back. Additionally funny to hear Brad try to pronounce it like it was a real name.

As people have already commented, Brad lamenting about no focus on dungeon story but that stuff is totally in the game. You can completely ignore it, and most people do, but it is there if you want to look for it. Every dungeon has a quest chain build-up to it, and the dungeon itself is the climax of that chain.

If Brad wants good writing, I recommend Elder Scrolls Online. I've enjoyed many of the quests in that game, especially in the Morrowind expansion that hit me with some heavy doses of nostalgia.

I identify hard with Brad here. I've never played it in its heyday, though. I always try to play for that adventure and character development stuff, and then tap out around level 20something because it stops being compelling. Same with the dungeon finder stuff, I hate it because a) I have no idea why I'm here and b) it's always way too rushed of a way to play for me. Brad namedropping Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 had me going "Oh yeah, I should probably get back to that."

Hey @rorie, would it be possible to get a list of what addons you're using?

I recall hearing people complain about how your involvement in WoW's story is that of an onlooker. Is that still the case?

One of the things I really like about FF14 is how much of the world you influence and how its inhabitants acknowledge how ridiculously powerful you become as you continue to destroy ancient gods or face off armies. You got to endure a lot of bad story to get there but damn if it isn't satisfying.

I've been a long-time WoW player, but I disagreed with Rorie on just about everything he had to say about the lore of WoW, his choice of addons, what his keybinding situation sounds like, and how he decides to tank. Also, that party's warlock's Felguard does not have a taunt, merely a threat aura, and a tank should easily be able to handle the increased threat from it.

I'm honestly confused why this Quick Look was even made if it was going to be such a negative tone even from the person who continues to play it. In any game, if you don't take the time to read quest text, listen to dialogue, or infer situational context from NPC chatter, or even boss encounters, you're just not going to draw much story from it. "Old gods, blah blah blah."

But hey. Opinions.

I don't agree with anything that was said here but I respect your opinions and I just like the fact that we have some more WoW content on GB!

So did Brad use a boost? I've been the same in that I have been on and off levelling characters in early levels but falling off. I started back up around legion, but Take. My. Sweet. Time with stuff, still haven't got 60 on a character and just use WoW as a chill out game. Since this expansion has been announced I've been trying to level up to cap to see the end game stuff.

@kalor: I was thinking the same exact thing. I would love a feature of Brad at least trying the free to level 35 trial. Or them having one of their friends on that are way into FFXIV to show them some of the later stuff.

I'm a lapsed WOW player playing from launch with Pandaria being my last expansion. I'm always interested to what WOW is up to nowadays but not really felt a need to go back.

Elder Scrolls Online had a free weekend last week and I ended up buying it and the Summerset expansion. I'd played the beta and felt that it was pretty bad with many poorly implemented systems and missing features. It's now lightyears ahead of where it was at launch, whereas this looks like more WOW and seems almost archaic in comparison.

Jeff and Brad more or less echo exactly how I feel about WoW/Warcraft at this point. I don't necessarily agree that other games have condensed/replaced the MMO, but in terms of WoW/Warcraft specifically, I don't know why they thought letting a Transformers writer take the lore and turn it into a saturday morning cartoon was a good idea, but that's pretty much were it is. That and the pop culture references which appear to be just as bad as ever. Yeah, as someone who was real into the story for WC3 (and most pre WoW Blizzard properties) seeing them trample all over the lore for a more celebrity character focus has been a damn shame. I largely can't stand much of what Blizzard puts out these days.

it shouldn't, but it really bothers me when people respond to complaints about fetch quests with, "But every game is like that!"

No, they're not. A fetch quest is specifically a mission that has you doing busywork with no plot or character development, like gathering hides for a simple thank-you or walking an item across the map for a handful of gold. If it has unique characters associated with it (that go beyond "Hey stranger, I need your help because my farm is struggling!), involved dialogue, if it helps grow and flesh out the characters involved, it's not 'one of those.'