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Coming back after 2 years. What's new?
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Post by
Denkou
Hi Wowhead!
After 2 years of being away from the game, I've decided to come back, mainly out of boredom. I started with vanilla WoW in 2006 and played through and raided in every expansion other than WotLK. I had cleared all of Heroic T11 content in Cataclysm before I quit. I also did a bit of PvP but was never hardcore dedicated to it - I obtain Legionnaire in vanilla and was on ~1900 rating teams throughout arena seasons.
Basically, I just want to know what are some of the big changes that I need to be aware of? I want to hit the ground running when I start, and I feel it would be a bit impractical for me to sift through the patch notes of every patch I've missed just to try to catch up. I've heard they've gotten rid of some stats (expertise?), and I hear all this talk about LFR and flex raiding, which I have no clue about. I just want to get up-to-speed about some of the major changes before I start playing again tonight, just general gameplay stuff.
Thanks guys!
Post by
motashi
Realms being crowded from connected realms.
Post by
cephadex
Hi Wowhead!
After 2 years of being away from the game, I've decided to come back, mainly out of boredom. I started with vanilla WoW in 2006 and played through and raided in every expansion other than WotLK. I had cleared all of Heroic T11 content in Cataclysm before I quit. I also did a bit of PvP but was never hardcore dedicated to it - I obtain Legionnaire in vanilla and was on ~1900 rating teams throughout arena seasons.
Basically, I just want to know what are some of the big changes that I need to be aware of? I want to hit the ground running when I start, and I feel it would be a bit impractical for me to sift through the patch notes of every patch I've missed just to try to catch up. I've heard they've gotten rid of some stats (expertise?), and I hear all this talk about LFR and flex raiding, which I have no clue about. I just want to get up-to-speed about some of the major changes before I start playing again tonight, just general gameplay stuff.
Thanks guys!
Remember LFR from Cata, and how it had DS? Well, now it has a lot of other raids too. Other than LFR each raid is available also on normal, and heroic difficulty; the raid Siege of Orgrimmar is also available on flexible mode. In flexible you can have varying number of players over 10 and the boss difficulty adjusts accordingly.
There's pet battles which is like Pokemon
You can get extra rolls on raid loot with tokens you can get weekly at your capital city
At level 90 just head to a place called the Timeless Isle and you'll be geared in no time at all
then head over to the tavern in the mists to begin a quest chain to get a legendary cloak that gives you pretty wings on your back
Horde has a new warchief
There's transmogrification, where you can turn your gear to look like other gear just for aesthetics
if you have too much money and nothing to do with it, there's something called the black market auction house
Jaina Proudmore is all kinds of pissed off now (but I guess I'd be pissed too if my ex turned into a lich king)
There's something called the Brawlers' Guild (like Fight Club)
There's something called Proving Grounds (supposedly tests how well you play your role)
Oh and there's pandas
Post by
Alkony
Expertise and Hit are being removed in the next expac, so they're still around.
One change is that there are no set teams for Arenas. Each character has its own rating and you just have to group up before joining Arena.
Scenarios are new. They are 3 person random group content that rewards some valor, justice and sometimes gear. They're fairly easy to do, since there's no controls over what roles join, so you can do them with no tank or healer. Only available at level 90.
Rare spawns in Pandaria show up on your minimap as a skull.
LFR is basically the same thing as the LFG/LFD tool they added in WotLK, but for raiding. You join the queue for a specific wing (usually 3 or 4 bosses) and are grouped with 24 other people to make a 25 man raid group. It's fairly easy, especially if you use the in-game dungeon journal to look up bosses before hand.
Flex was only added for the most recent tier. It lets you have a group of varying size from 10 to 25 and is slightly easier than Normals. More changes with raid tiers are coming in WoD.
Talents changed. You have 6 levels, and at each level you get to pick one of three options. Most blatant choices from the previous model (+5% crit or not?) have been folded into the base class and the talent choices are supposed to be situational and dictated by your play style.
Hope that helps, welcome back!
Post by
503532
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
cephadex
Low level content is face-roll easy. Monsters and mobs that used to be elite (the ones that are still in the game) are now half the size, hold out their hands with loot, and cry upon seeing you: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE... DON'T KIIIIILL ME. JUST TAKE MY LOOT AND GO! BUT PLEEEASE DON'T HURT ME... PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!"
Bind on Acount (BOA) gear makes everyone OP, and NPCs fall over dead when you pass wind. And everyone thinks they're a tank... to which you may say: "Well it was always like that!"; except in this case, because they don't die when attempting to pull things, there are no consequences, and they keep doing it even if the healer stops healing them... a bad habit that carries into lvl 90 content, and only stops if they're actually dumb enough to try it in a REAL normal mode raid.
There's no more night time. It's amazing! Somehow Blizzard made the sky dark at night, but everything below it daylight! But you can just blame it on magic.
I'll see if I can come up with a few more new things for ya. :P
Over all, most of the changes are awesome. But the few that are really annoying are REALLY ANNOYING! and will probably not be fixed. Fortunately, however, Blizzard give me my Ra'Sha's Sacrificial Dagger for when it gets to me. :D
He's only been gone for two years, most of that stuff was already going on back then (faceroll easy stuff, etc).
Post by
Denkou
Haha, yeah, all the faceroll ezmoad stuff came in Wrath, so I'm already used to that.
So after a couple of days of playing, I have to say that I'm enjoying the game, although it is very different. I'm not a big fan of the new talent trees. I know they wanted to remove unnecessary talents and make every talent more viable, but I kind of liked all the choices we had before. What surprised me was how much they nerfed glyphs, in the sense that most of the minor ones are purely cosmetic now.
I do like how questing feels. It feels more like pre-Cata style questing, where for instance you would have multiple quests sending you to different areas of a zone at the same time and you can choose which quest chains you want to do first, whereas in Cataclysm I felt that the game held your hand throughout the questing process and forced you to do them in a certain order.
Since I'm still leveling up I can't comment on anything other than that right now. I don't think I like the theme of the expansion much, though, maybe because its not part of the "original" lore that I know from the original Warcraft games. I'm really looking forward to WoD and seeing Draenor.
So far so good, though. I purchased the expansion last night (I was playing on a 10-day MOP trial) so it looks like I'll be sticking around for awhile.
Thanks for all your input so far!
Post by
503532
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
PhantomScourge
Pandas have been in lore since WC3.
Post by
Denkou
Yeah, and the lore surrounding them was hastily written. They were originally added as an April Fools joke and Blizzard had no intentions of making them a real part of lore until the fans kept bugging them about it and they eventually wrote them in. So yes, they were around in WC3, but I still find it hard to take them seriously.
Blizzard may have given them an expansion and came up with lore to make them "official" in the Warcraft universe, but to me, the "original" lore will always be orcs, humans, the Burning Legion, etc. Nothing against the pandaren themselves, I find them to be quite funny (some of the quest text is hilarious), I guess what I'm saying is I miss fighting demons and stuff.
Post by
Adamsm
I guess what I'm saying is I miss fighting demons and stuff.We haven't been fighting demons for almost 4 years now. And we didn't really fight demons during Vanilla either.
Post by
Jkpman
I guess what I'm saying is I miss fighting demons and stuff.We haven't been fighting demons for almost 4 years now. And we didn't really fight demons during Vanilla either.
So fighting the rage, anger, fear and hate the Sha bring (inner demons) doesn't count?
Now forgive me but I'm not a huge lore nerd so I probably got this wrong, but isn't Garrosh kind of possessed in MoP and isn't possession kind of a demonic thing?
Post by
Adamsm
I guess what I'm saying is I miss fighting demons and stuff.We haven't been fighting demons for almost 4 years now. And we didn't really fight demons during Vanilla either.
So fighting the rage, anger, fear and hate the Sha bring (inner demons) doesn't count?
Now forgive me but I'm not a huge lore nerd so I probably got this wrong, but isn't Garrosh kind of possessed in MoP and isn't possession kind of a demonic thing?
Not in the Warcraft universe as the only Legion race capable of possessing actually kill the target and use the body as meat puppet(that's the Dreadlords); and he's not possessed, everything he's done in MoP has been his own decisions, up and including using the Heart. The Sha are tied to the Old Gods, who are the enemies of the Legion....well and everything else.
Post by
Jkpman
I guess what I'm saying is I miss fighting demons and stuff.We haven't been fighting demons for almost 4 years now. And we didn't really fight demons during Vanilla either.
So fighting the rage, anger, fear and hate the Sha bring (inner demons) doesn't count?
Now forgive me but I'm not a huge lore nerd so I probably got this wrong, but isn't Garrosh kind of possessed in MoP and isn't possession kind of a demonic thing?
Not in the Warcraft universe as the only Legion race capable of possessing actually kill the target and use the body as meat puppet(that's the Dreadlords); and he's not possessed, everything he's done in MoP has been his own decisions, up and including using the Heart. The Sha are tied to the Old Gods, who are the enemies of the Legion....well and everything else.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up.
You have an answer for everything Adamsm. :)
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