Everyone has a fighting chance
Let’s look at where World of Warcraft 8.2 gets things right and where things are either a miss or just not quite right. There will be some spoilers because the story is a big part of this patch. Now that you’ve been warned let’s start with what’s right about 8.2.
World of Warcraft was the dominating MMO on the scene for years, but in the last decade or so there have been a few other MMOs which have managed to carve out a solid piece of the MMO pie. One of those, Final Fantasy XIV, has seemed to be on a real upswing lately while it feels like World of Warcraft is faltering a bit. The upswing has been steady in the last few years. Since I play both, I thought it would be a good time to look at some of the things I believe WoW could learn from FFXIV.
Back at the beginning of May, I took a look at the first go around of the new Heart of Azeroth questline and some of the early Nazjatar questing. Since then, Blizzard has wiped characters and implemented everything in a way which seems to be more representative of how they will be when 8.2 goes live. With everything having received a fair number of updates, it seemed like a good time to check back in with the PTR. I’m going to stay away from story spoilers mostly, though there will be some minor
This past week we not only found out WoW Classic will be live worldwide August 27th, but the Beta test for it has also officially started. There’s no NDA or streaming restriction on this Beta test, as is generally the case with Blizzard, but I’m hopeful this will function as a real Beta where issues which arise can be dealt with before the game goes live instead of Beta being treated more like marketing for their upcoming thing.
Earlier this week Blizzard opened up Nazjatar for testing on the PTR, and since it is another big piece of content coming with 8.2 I wanted to take some time to talk about it. Firstly, much like my post about the Heart of Azeroth changes I’m not going to discuss the story aspects of Nazjatar. I’m mostly focused on how being in the zone feels and if the new elements it brings will help everything stay fresher than it is currently.
Blizzard is capitalizing on the launch of Classic World of Warcraft this year as a way to bring players back into the subscription model for their favorite MMO. Classic WoW will build the world prior to the massive success of Burning Crusade. Many forget the early times, the struggles, and most of all the fun of attacking each other in PvP. Warcraft in its original form had a ton to offer MMOers, but will it hold up in today’s market?
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth will soon be updated to v8.2, Rise of Azshara. We know that the fight will be taken to the Queen of the Naga, once the Queen of the Night Elves and perhaps the most powerful sorceress ever born on Azeroth. She has been present, though rarely seen, throughout the history of Warcraft games. Players are confronted by her “people”, the Naga, as they level up. But who is Queen Azshara? Let’s take a look, shall we?
With the release of a ton of information about World of Warcraft Patch 8.2 recently and it being on the PTR now we can finally look at how the new Azerite system will work. Today we’ll take a look at how the system works so far and how it may help or hurt the issues we are currently facing.
On Thursday afternoon, World of Warcraft’s Jeremy Feasel spent time in a live stream to take a “deep dive” into the upcoming 8.2 Rise of Azshara content. The RoA patch will arrive on the WoW PTR next week, but not being present yet, the event was exciting to fans as it’s the first real glimpse of 8.2 so far. Most are hoping it will bring interesting new features and content to the game. We sat through the stream to provide you with all the information Feasel was willing to show.
One of my biggest struggles with World of Warcraft currently is finding stuff to do outside of raiding. I’m pretty much wholly unmotivated when it comes to everything outside the realm of raiding; which is depressing when you consider I was fully engaged throughout Legion. I never felt the grind of leveling my artifact weapons, I was pretty much always enjoying doing what I wanted to get that done. As I’m sitting here waiting for 8.2 I’m wondering, why does everything feel so difficult this time