Neglected content

It was encouraging to see Blizzard in their Legion Dev Update admitting to their neglect of old world levelling. They have previously brushed off any questions relating to improving it by saying 'we have new stories to tell', focusing on end-game and expansion content. But when what gets delivered there is not up to the standards set in the past, or takes an exorbitant amount of time to deliver, the excuse doesn't hold water and the whole game looks lacklustre.

I haven't had any desire to play vanilla servers, so the whole episode regarding Nostalrius and pristine servers didn't really pique my interest. But it looks like that has helped put the spotlight on what is now a terrible levelling experience, so I'm glad people are fighting for it, and hopefully some good can come from it on the live servers.

Whether you like levelling now or not, it was where so many of us first fell in love with the game. When introducing a new player to the game now, you have to make so many excuses for it, with the promise of it getting better once you reach the current expansion. Blizzard appeared to focus on the boosted experience, but WoD did not deliver enough to justify it. The same player base won't keep playing the game forever, it has to get new blood to persist, and it is hard to see a new generation of players coming through and falling in love with what exists post boost, or the mess that exists before it.

Watcher summed it up well when he said that the pacing is off, that you spend more time running around than anything else. The XP nerfs and bonuses are both a blessing and a curse; if you want to get to end game asap, levelling is an obstacle and the reduced XP makes it quick, but it is also a large part of what makes levelling so bad. Most people that want to level quickly will spam queue dungeons, where (particularly before Cataclysm) they are so easy they can just be rushed through, requiring no coordination or communication - it's just a power grind. If you don't take this path, you'll find a disjointed mess of zones that are outlevelled after a handful of quests, story arcs that never get finished as you are moved on quickly, time travelling back and forth as you traverse expansions, the rewards are mediocre to non-existent, and the whole experience is lonely and unchallenging. On one character I levelled from 85 to 90 in the first half of The Jade Forest, after which I discovered I was still wearing vanilla gear in a number of slots, including white ilvl ~30 boots.

There is so much once-great content in the old world that could continue to be enjoyed by players, with a little love. This extends to old dungeons and raids. I have long held the opinion that allowing old instances to become completely trivial is not a positive thing. I am not flatly against the idea of dungeons and raids becoming soloable, but bosses should not fall over before they can even complete their pull emote. All the effort that went into making a cool boss fight, the mechanics, animations and effects, voice acting, everything goes to waste. You cannot experience them again, just like you cannot experience the levelling zones like you did in the past.  It is no wonder people want vanilla servers.

Timewalking dungeons have provided a glimpse of what could be possible, to experience at least some semblance of the original encounters, and the zone scaling in Legion also shows promise. If these could be expanded game-wide in some fashion, it would go a long way to improving the dormant parts of the game. I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

I personally wonder whether there could be a tradeoff for using XP boosts. For example, heirloom pieces could either have strong stats, OR have XP bonuses. Perhaps if the amount of XP required was returned to old levels, you could make a deal with a goblin to sacrifice all of your non-XP quest rewards for an XP multiplier. Not really a punishment for the first 60-70 levels, but again, rewards could be tweaked. In the days of 10 million gold cap, a handful of silver for low level quest completion could probably be bumped up a bit.

I also think that if you want to power level through dungeons that's fine, dungeons could even have increased XP over questing... if they were challenging. That would go hand in hand with a foundation concept of MMOs, grouping up with others to defeat difficult objectives for better rewards. Perhaps as a start, heirlooms should not scale beyond an instance's base level. For example, if you can queue for RFD at 40, heirlooms should function as if you were level 40 in that instance, regardless of your actual level.

Uphill battle(grounds)

Another three weeks of mostly battlegrounds. A quick update on my status: up to 40+ wins in each of the 5 battlegrounds, with the following win ratio:

	Full games	Part games	Overall
Win	122	8	130
Loss	85	29	114

40% of the way in, and I am losing enthusiasm. I'm still really enjoying doing battlegrounds when queueing with other people, but not so much when solo queueing, so my progress has definitely slowed down. I even did a raid on my alt just to break the monotony. But I am happy with the win/loss ratio even if - as per my last post - it is definitely influenced by winning/losing streak bias.

I'm considering trying enhancement again to see if that reinvigorates the motivation. I calculated that I'd need 10250 conquest to swap my weapons and intellect pieces for agility gear, and I've got just over that much banked. But I'm not confident it will change anything.

As elemental, I constantly need to remind myself that the people I'm beating soundly are most likely ungeared. In many situations, ele can be useful - for example, if you are lucky to get instant empowered earthquakes around large flag fights, they can turn the battle - but geared, skilled players of other classes can make you look silly at current damage levels. I think the most frustrating comparison is lack of escapes, even temporary ones. If you get set upon by a number of people, your defenses are inadequate, compared to the effectiveness of immunities or stealths that other classes can utilise to escape death, receive heals and reset the fight. The primary defensive you have is kiting, which just doesn't work with the abundance of slows, or when trying to defend a flag out in the open.

From what I've read elemental continues to be fragile in Legion, but may get some more damage potential, numbers pass pending. If it is bottom of the heap again, I'd be really disappointed, but would definitely prioritise changing spec over changing class, as I did in WoD.

Between queues I have been camping the Timeless Isle, hoping to collect the remaining pets and finish off the bigger bag achievement. I'm happy to say I've finally got the Gu'chi Swarmling, Ashleaf Spriteling, and Death Adder Hatchling, and I am down to one item left for the achievement: the Rain Stone from Zesqua. Hopefully I will get that very shortly, because I'm tired of camping that too.

With those pet gets, I'm sitting at 676 unique pets, 25th on the server on Warcraft Pets. I still have a few to obtain or level, but even with those I won't be able to get much higher on the ranking without dropping a lot of money, which I am not willing to do, unlike some as Dark Legacy illustrated well this week.

Battleground progress

I started keeping track of wins and losses after my last post to see how I was faring. It has been two weeks. I'm now up to ~23 wins in all 5 battlegrounds. Doesn't sound like a lot but I've added about 50 wins, or an average of at least 3 wins a day - which is probably more than what I can sustain if that takes 6 battlegrounds to achieve.

I've been separately recording win/loss for full games, and for games that I enter part way through - and I have only been recording games where I queue by myself. This will highlight the benefit of queueing with at least one person, because you effectively always get fresh games.

	Full games	Part games	Overall
Win	37	3	40
Loss	31	17	48

So it looks like 1 in 5 games I might get put into an in progress loss. That's not too bad - it was worse early on, with an overall win rate of roughly 25%, but it's balanced up since. There is definitely a trend where Horde and Alliance do better at different times. It isn't clear what drives that, but for example I won 7 from 9 before shutdown on Tuesday, couldn't win anything the same time the next night, but won most the night after. Generally though, if I play during the day (Oceanic time) it is pretty bad for Horde. Fortunately my usual play time is nights, due to work.

The stats might be biased by these trends, in that if I lose 4 or 5 in a row I might say to myself 'today is not a good day' and quit, whereas if I win 4 or 5 games I'll keep going if possible.

Battleground binge

I only played WoW for a short time at the start of Cataclysm, and returned half way through the last patch of Mists of Pandaria, so I had a big hole in my progression, almost the size of two expansions. Catching up PvE content like dungeons, quests and raids is pretty easy, because they don't scale. I've done most of that, short of some difficult achievements like Getting Hot in Here and Show Me Your Moves! Catching up archaeology, fishing, and pet battles was a massive grind, but I have done 95% on those fronts as well. The area where I am still largely lacking progress, is in battlegrounds, but specifically those from Cata/MoP as I had completed Battlemaster back in Wrath.

I don't know why, perhaps just boredom, but over the past couple of weeks, my desire to do battlegrounds has come back with a vengeance.

I've previously gone back and finished off Tol Barad, but for the 5 battlegrounds since Cata (Battle for Gilneas, Twin Peaks, Silvershard Mines, Temple of Kotmogu, and Deepwind Gorge) my tally of wins was effectively zero. I've got up to a dozen wins for each on my hunter, as I've been PvPing on it this expansion, but I'm now back on my shaman, committed to earning achievements on my main.

I first did Ashran and the Gladiator Sanctum nemesis quests on my hunter, which I still believe was the right decision at the time, but I've since gone and done them again on my shaman, so perhaps it was not the best decision. I feel these battleground achievements are an even bigger task so it's not one I'd want to repeat later - 550 battleground wins = 1100 battlegrounds at 50% win rate. Doing 3 battlegrounds a day, it would take a year to complete.

I quickly realised that queueing for random battlegrounds just wasn't going to cut it. When you don't need half of them, but can only blacklist two - inevitably AV and IoC - then any benefit of faster queues or bonus rewards goes out the window. Queueing specific battlegrounds is better, but sometimes the queues for particular bgs just won't pop, and it is harder to convince people to come with you if you are cutting the rewards. Not that there's anyone in my guild at the moment with a tenth of the fervour I currently have for battlegrounds. My GM can't say no, but I'm not at the top of a long queue of people she can't say no to. And it is hard for me to find other like-minded people, so I'm just solo queueing it. The problem with that is, every 2nd queue pop is putting you into an in-progress game, replacing someone who quit because it's going to be a loss. After a few of those, my patience starts dissipating.

I was expecting a pretty bad time, from personal experiences to community perception, of Alliance dominance and shaman (elemental in particular) weakness. I toyed with switching to enhancement for PvP, as that is the generally better rounded dps spec, but decided against it for various reasons. The reality is... it all seems true, but it's somewhat muted.

Faction wise, Alliance do still seem stronger, but it ebbs and flows. If I ignore the games I enter that are already losses, my WL record improves significantly. There absolutely are times when you will be lucky to win one at all, but tonight for example, I entered 6-7 fresh battlegrounds in a row, and won most of them, before things started to turn sour.

Same goes for playing elemental, there absolutely are players who make the spec feel completely broken. Feral druids are the worst; but they aren't the only class I've seen competent players negate or passively heal my damage, and/or out-damage my healing surge spam. On the other hand, the strength of the team, and present numbers, matters more, and sometimes I get to be quite tanky, and sometimes I put out lots of damage. I recognise this is likely down to gear, but the point is, I usually only do terribly when the team does, and that is fine. I don't feel like a hindrance, which is more than I can say for elemental at the start of WoD, and why I can get enjoyment out of it.

So after a couple of weeks, my progress is 12-13 wins in each of the 5 battlegrounds. My shaman has caught up to where my hunter is, and I think I will be able to keep up this kinda pace until the Legion pre-patch hits - from there who knows. But if you are Oceanic/US and happen to see this and want a reliable evening bg partner, hit me up in the comments.

Tracer's butt

Yeah I'm going there. I haven't been following Overwatch's development closely. It seems to me like a modern TF2, which I never felt compelled to play even after it went free to play. The player characters, however, were strong, one of the key factors to its success, and as a result have found their way into all sorts of other games and media.

One thing they weren't, as has been highlighted on numerous occasions since its release, was significantly diverse; despite a range of backgrounds and accents, they were all male, and mostly white. This is not a problem for me, it is not what I look for in a game, in the same way it wouldn't concern me if they were all female, and/or all non-white. Equally, a diverse cast is fine by me. Irrelevant, even. The only issue I see for developers is falling into the 'characters you can identify with' trap, where in trying to deliver identifiable characters for a broader range of people, you simply highlight the minorities that you don't cater for. Taking this approach, you cannot please everyone.

But I digress; for Blizzard, in [current year], I don't think there was any option but commitment to diversity for Overwatch.

And so we come to Tracer, the unofficial poster girl of Overwatch's diversity, and specifically, her tooshie. A number of people have found they identify with Tracer, and one such person came across a pose accentuating her rear end, that conflicts with their found identity. Rather than accept it as an insignificant point of difference, choosing to use a different victory pose, or dis-identifying with that character, they call for it to change. Blizzard, having been burnt by these type of people and their demands in the past, appear to capitulate by ignoring all the negative comments, approving the OP's request, and closing the discussion.

The community erupts, naturally, and we go from a situation where almost nobody was thinking about Tracer's butt, or considering her in a hyper-sexualised context, and now everybody is, examining it to the nth degree. She is now a sexual character - you have put her in the box that you didn't want her in. People are now actively debating whether, as a 26 year old, this fictional female would ever flaunt her sexuality. Congratulations.

I admit it is almost entirely down to how Blizzard handled it, and not the OP. If they had decided internally that the pose didn't suit her and replaced it with something else, rather than bringing attention to the request, there would have been no issue. Or at least nothing for the community to grasp onto.

Instead, the response, an unreserved apology and change of position, left the impression that they were at fault, that issues hold more weight if they are PC, and as a result, that the community holds sway over Blizzard on such matters. Unlike far more substantial controversies such as RealID, Diablo's RMAH, and removal of flying in WoW, where they stood fast. Kaplan's follow up explanation, and reopening of the discussion, helped - but it was forced by the community reaction. They had to own the decision to prevent future repercussions, but it was largely seen as PR and the damage was far from undone. Oops.

And so, the debate rages on. Is it a sexual pose? I don't know, is it when another character does it?

Probably not. Is it because of what she's wearing? Should figure hugging clothing be replaced? For all characters, or just females? Can large tattoed biceps and pectorals not be sexualised?

Compare the following: on the left the normal stance from behind, in the centre, the 'problematic' pose, and on the right, the same pose but from a slightly different angle.

Splitting hairs here. Why is only the centre inappropriate? This argument could, and inevitably will, go on for days. That's as far as I'm going to participate, as someone with no emotional investment in the character, or even the game. It certainly isn't going to influence my decision to purchase, and I think anyone who states they won't purchase on the back of this alone, are either overreacting or pulling their own leg. Either way, it's an idle threat, one that would not concern Blizzard one bit.

It's unfortunate that increasingly, in all walks of life, threats from the PC crowd are not treated in the same manner.

I'll leave with the following relevant video from Maddox, recalled when I read a comment or two that stated Tracer was 'presenting' /lol

Off season

Obviously not finding much to write about at the moment. My WoW time has been decreasing and not particularly interesting; completing nemesis in Ashran again, this time on my shaman, and a lot of pet collecting and levelling. I've finally caught all the old world pets, and there's now less than 100 pets I don't have, but most of those are store bought, promotional, recruit-a-friend rewards, and collector's edition pets that I simply won't be getting. So I'm waiting for the next pet bonus week to get back to pet levelling, and in the meantime I've run into a progression brick wall. Most of what I need to do is in battlegrounds, and trying to accomplish anything there solo is not enjoyable (especially as Horde), so I'm sticking to our one PvP night a week.

In the meantime I've been playing a fair bit of Pinball FX2 - I simply love this game. I'm not brilliant at it, but with persistence and time, can get respectable scores. I've also played a bit of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the first time in a couple of years. By the time I'd ranked up in freeplay (as I found out, now required to play competitive games) and played ~15 matches, I'd started losing interest. You need to play a lot to improve and rank up, and playing the same few maps with (at my skill level) a fair share of unpleasant people, it gets boring.

Draenor Curator

Finally finished up archaeology in Draenor today, getting the last Pristine artifact. Such a relief, and not quite as arduous as I was dreading - but still a big commitment. A newish player in our guild asked what the reward was, to which we answered nothing but achievement points. They then asked what do achievement points get you - an innocent question, but one which puts the whole task in perspective :p

At first I was spending my solved crates on Explorer's Notebooks for the missions, even after completing Arakkoa, but once I had also completed Ogre I switched to using Draenor Archaeologist's Maps and ignored any dig sites that weren't Draenor Clans, using the Archy addon. I saved the remaining crates for the Pandaria artifacts I still haven't completed.

Total number of solves required were as follows:

• Arakkoa 82 (126 all up by the time I switched to Draenor Clans only)
• Ogre 217
• Draenor Clans 333
• Total 632 (676 including surplus Arakkoa)

The macro to count the number of solves for you is here, you must have the completed artifacts pane open, and if you wish to see all races, not just Draenor, change the 13 to a 1:

/run for r=13,15 do local c,t=GetNumArtifactsByRace(r),0 for i=1,c do local _,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,n=GetArtifactInfoByRace(r,i) if n>0 then t=t+n end end print(GetArchaeologyRaceInfo(r)..": "..t) end

Whilst grinding this out, I was looking for an image that showed the location of all the digsites in Draenor and wasn't able to find one, so I started taking screenshots and sliced them together. This may not be absolute, but it contains all the sites I got for the last ~250 solves.

Location of most/all Draenor archaeology dig sites.

Last week I also finally got round to finding a decent image for a background to brighten up the blog look a bit. The image credit may not show depending on screen resolution, in which case it is by Tontokawa.