Monday, August 18, 2014

Monday Random Beta Thoughts

- This will be spoiler free so you can feel safe if you are trying to keep from reading stuff.

- Although I have to ask how you manage to stay spoiler free while still reading anything wow related.

- It is almost impossible.

- I've given up a long time ago on trying to wait on information.

- Okay on to the beta and I've only got one real complaint with warlords thus far.

- They destroyed professions.

- There is little, if anything, I like about them.

- I was so happy to have the new crafting stash in out banks.

- Pay 100 gold to open a 98 slot bag you can put crafting materials in.

- Things now stack to 200.

- Awesome right?

- How about no.

- Making up an example here.

- Lets say it took you 1 herb to make a potion.

- Now it takes 10.

- Lets say when you picked an herb you got 1 herb.

- Now you get 10.

- You see what they did there?

- They increased what we collect by 10, increased what we use by 10, and effectively our old stacks of 20 were increased by 10 so we end up with a net result of being in the exact same place we were.

- I thought the idea of letting things stack higher was so we could take up less space.

- Not the same amount of space.

- And that is not even where the profession clusterfuck ends.

- Remember how they said you can craft stuff straight from your bank and you no longer need to carry around the crafting materials?

- Doesn't work for garrison work orders, which is where I find myself using the vast majority of my crafting materials.

- And lets talk about that space.

- I am not even level 100 yet and my crafting bag is completely full, yes, all 98 slots.

- The idea was to give us more space, not bog us down with massive amounts of materials so we are back where we started from, with no space.

- Blizzard once again proves they fail at math.

- You can not train professions in warlords either.

- If you want to get to level 700 you need to get a drop that allows you to do so.

- I got the drop for cooking, first aid, herbalism and fishing pretty quick, but I still have not gotten the archeology one, and I am 98, and I got the alchemy one too late that I can no longer learn it.

- I am guessing that archeology has not been added yet.

- I am guessing that the alchemy one is a bug that will not allow me to learn it because I already upgraded my garrison.

- I am sure that will be fixed before launch, as they say beta is beta.

- Would really be screwed up if you could only learn alchemy if you have a level 1 garrison.

- Just annoys me that there is always a question mark while in my garrison and no one to turn it in to.

- I thin that bugs me more than not being able to learn alchemy.

- I can;t go around having any quest undone.

- Even in beta.

- I put in a report on it of course, that is what I am on beta for.

- There are lots of beta bugs.

- There are horrible respawn timers.

- There are dreadful pathing issues.

- There are graphical glitches.

- There is everything you would expect from an early beta.

- Sadly this is a late beta.

- Biggest beta annoyance?

- Every time the server kicks everyone we log back in in stormwind.

- Son of a bitch, can't you just log me in back where I logged out.

- Once yesterday I spent 2 hours trying to complete one quest.

- Not because of bad spawn timers or hard to do questing.

- Because every time I worked my way back there the server went down and I came back in in sotrmwind and had to head all the way back to where I was.

- One interesting thing I noticed however.

- After getting logged off once while on a flight path and ending up in stormwind while still on the flight path mount and I could not get off of it or do anything else I decided to run back to where I was questing when I finally got it working.

- It was faster to run to the quest I was working on than it was to take a ground mount.

- Compare.

- Flight path vs ground mount in a place where I do not know the layout yet.

- Which should be faster?

- Ground mount was not only faster, it was much faster.

- Being I finally got on the beta I can say I figured out why there is no flying in warlords.

- The world is small.

- I am not talking small as in "not large" I am talking small as in I can get from one end of a zone to the other end in a minute or so at most on a ground mount, for every single zone.

- Normally you can not even transverse a zone that fast even on a flying mount.

- I think that might be reason number one that they do not want flying mounts in game.

- They do not want people to realize how small the world is.

- They failed.

- That first time I ran from where I zoned in to a quest in the middle of the next zone over faster than the flight path took me there I noticed how small the world was.

- Oh, back to gathering for a minute.

- WTF is with the fish on this planet.

- They gave us more bag space so they decided to give us 5 versions of every type of fish?

- Please blizzard, bag space is too much of a problem already, I do not need 5 versions of every type of fish out there.

- Heck there probably are more than 5 for all I know.

- Between the types of fish you catch, the bait you can use for them, and the "prepared" version of them there are too many to begin with.

- I do not even want to think about what other types there are.

- And I am not even counting the enormous or lunker ones I have not seen yet.

- So there are more.

- Gee thanks blizzard, more junk to clutter up my bags.

- Do we really need 5 or more of the same exact fish?

- No, we do not, thank you very much, remove that annoying bit of game play now before it goes live.

- And speaking about bag space.

- Toy box rocks, a really great addition.

- So I have one question about it.

- Why are none of the new toys allowed to go in there?

- Okay, a couple have, but my bags are already filled with toys that I can not put in my toy box.

- If I throw them away will I be able to get them again later as the mob is no longer a silver dragon mob to me?

- I think that is a fair question.

- And what is with all this awesome gear that drops off the silver dragon mobs that is soulbound.

- Make them BoA like the mists ones.

- Seriously, does my hunter need a shield, a mace, leather, cloth, etc.

- No, buy I might have some alts that could get use from it.

- Just creating vendor trash.

- The least you could do is make mobs drop class specific stuff.

- If I kill a silver dragon mob on my hunter and it is going to drop something soulbound it should be mail, with agility, or something else hunter can use.

- Not like it is needed while leveling.

- I am 98 now and still wearing my SoO gear, have not even replaced once piece yet.

- However I was tempted with 1 582 trinket with multi strike.

- Playing as survival right now and they need multi strike.

- I can not tell you how survival feels just yet for a few reasons.

- One is I have the 4 piece still, so it is not a real representation of how the class will play.

- Two there is some major input lag.

- I lead with a gliave toss and sometimes it takes 2 seconds for it, and every single shot after it, to go off.

- Can not really say if a class players fluid without being able to play fluid to begin with.

- Three, everything is different while leveling.

- I will say I miss kill shot while questing.

- Sure I never used it on normal mobs but I was so used to using it on the rares I often find myself hitting 7.

- That is where I had my kill shot.

- You would not think removing something like that would throw someone off but it has with me.

- I used to feel like "the mob is dead" when it got in kill shot range, now I feel like, this is still going to take a while.

- Even if there is no difference because kill shot hit like a wet noodle and explosive shot was actually a DPS increased over kill shot.

- There was something about seeing it light up that made you feel as if the fight was about over.

- I miss that, but I will get used to it.

- Or maybe I won't.

- Who knows if I will even play survival when I get to 100.

- Any spec is fine for leveling.

- Hunters rock no matter what flavor they are.

- And looking around the beta you can see that most people agree with that.

- I would say that 80% of the people I saw while questing where hunters.

- I saw Bendak from Eyes of the Beast over there.

- He was AFK or I would have stopped and said hello.

- Pet classes are so much fun to level.

- Outside of the horrible respawn rates which I am sure will get fixed, the questing seems to roll along nicely.

- Yes, we are getting to some of the good stuff here.

- There is a deeper story line you can follow and it flows okay.

- Yes, just okay, not very good but acceptable.

- But on beta it usually comes down to one of two things.

- Stuff spawns so fast you can not leave an area.

- You have to start backing out because as you are killing they are respawning.

- Or you run around for 10 minutes looking for mobs.

- Had one quest take me a half hour to complete.

- Mobs where that scarce.

- And there were only 2 or 3 other people in the area.

- I would hate to see that quest go live with that spawn rate and 100s of people trying to do it at the same time.

- The ones that are nicely balanced on the beta move by smoothly.

- There are quests you can pick up that are not story bound all over the place.

- Just while running around I came across quest markers all over.

- It was nice.

- Grab it if I want to, skip it if I don't.

- There are more than ample quests.

- You will not have an issue leveling even if you decide to skip some.

- The pop up event quests are not worth doing.

- Sure, they offer a nice chunk of gold and experience but every single one of them suffered from the same issue so far, at least that I have noticed.

- None of them have ample mobs.

- It is just another way of giving a quest without you picking it up from a quest giver.

- It seems like it gives a lot of experience but it really doesn't.

- They usually ask you to kill or collect 3 different sets of things, the same as you would get from 3 quests.

- So the fact it offers you triple what I quest would give you means nothing, because it is what three quests would be anyway.

- The one good thing about them is that you do not need to run back to turn them in.

- Got to love that.

- But I think you can easily skip them and let others fight over the spawns and come back for them later if you are like me and want to complete everything.

- The silver dragon mobs are the same.

- If it is in your way, kill it, but do not go out of your way for it.

- So far while some have dropped some cool things, none of them drop anything you need to level.

- They respawn fast.

- And some you can not attack right away, or at all it seems, so in the end going out of your way to find them will waste valuable leveling time.

- You can always go back and get them, they are always up.

- I missed a few and decided to stand there and wait for them to respawn.

- Less than one minute later they were back.

- So far I have only met one that gave me a hard time.

- And hard time is the understatement of the century.

- The guy WTF owned me.

- Not once but three times.

- And he was owning everyone else too.

- Eventually we got it down, me and 7 of my closest beta buddies, meaning 7 random people that happened to be trying to kill it at the same time as me.

- We had to zerg it, people saw me attack and they joined in.

- I died but because it was still in combat he stayed tagged.

- When I got back other had died, and we kept doing that, running back, dying, running back.

- I think I died 3 more times during the fight we downed it.

- It was not some simple silver dragon mob, it was a mini world boss.

- I think it was slightly over tuned.

- Heck, if I could not solo it, there is an issue with it.

- Some people in general were saying they soloed it.

- Not sure how, but maybe if they had lots of healing and were a tank.

- But the second it got its hands on me I was dead, and even if I lived, I was near death.

- Yeah, over tuned.

- Only died 2 other times while leveling.

- One because of jumping into trouble and being at low life.

- I was an idiot, should have disengaged to not take damage.

- But I did not factor in for the server lag and hit it when it looked like on time for me but was actually 2 seconds after I landed.

- Oops.

- The second to to major respawn lag.

- Was fighting 3 mobs and doing fine one second and the next second there were something in the realm of 15 mobs on me.

- I hit feign death as fast I could but the DoTs were on me already, I was dead and just had not realized it yet.

- Over all the leveling experience has been fun and not at all challenging on a hunter.

- But what would you expect, hunters are the best leveling class in the game.

- A friend on beta asked me, when did I get the heroic warforged belt, I do not remember winning that.

- I said, you didn't, your normal gear is now called heroic gear and your heroic gear is now called mythic gear.

- Now to garrisons.

- I must say it is not exactly what I expected, but then again I expected a lot.

- They are however interesting.

- Not exactly sure what the purpose are for them other than just keeping us busy.

- I like the follower missions, it is like a mini game.

- I just never have enough missions for all my followers.

- I never have any missions of the right level for my followers.

- And I rarely ever have a follower who excels at a particular mission.

- I guess in time that will happen.

- Just seems like busy work at the moment.

- I did get a few nice little toys from it.

- Including a neck piece that says if I wear it in the most mundane places I could find treasure.

- Not sure what it does yet, but I will wear it to get treasure if need be.

- Some of the followers surprised me.

- Like I would have never guessed Fiona, from the plaguelands, was a holy priest.

- And she has the ability lone wolf.

- Wolf... worgen... lol

- Come on, don't tell me I am the only one that found some humor in that.

- And I would have never guessed someone that travels with a caravan of people would be a lone wolf.

- And Nat Pagle is a marksmen hunter.

- I guess that makes some sense.

- He hunts fish.

- Guess we have another famous hunter to add to my list.

- Just wonder why I need to get to 700 fishing before he will join me.

- After all he is my best friend.

- My personal best friend.

- You would think that if he came through the portal he would be hanging with me from the get go.

- We have been tight for so many years, from buying bait from him, doing quests for him, since I was in my 30s level wise he and I have been tight.

- And now that I am some commander type, with my own mini stormwind, instead of joining me he wants me to be max level fishing first.

- Dude, we are both hunters, we are friends, I should not need to prove myself to you.

- No worries, when I get you I will station your ass at the fishing shack and you will live out your days there.

- First daily fishing quest for me?

- Go fish up something in forstfire ridge.

- Hey, did you see the colors all over this place, they are blue, hint hint.

- I needed to fish up the fish then use the fish then hope they dropped eggs when I used them.

- I fished up small ones, large ones, bait ones, and converted some to ones.

- Yeah, as I mentioned before, to many fish for just one type of fish.

- Once again, blizzard, fix this crap.

- There is absolutely no reason to have so many types of fish for all being one type of fish and clog up our bags with that crap.

- Speaking of clogging up bags.

- Toy boys is nice, but how come none of the new toys go in there?

- Did I mention that already?

- Well, it deserves being said again.

- It is a great question.

- The old alliance thing that turns you into a furbolg for 3 minutes and has a one minute cooldown goes in the toy box.

- Freaking awesome.

- I can now be a furbolg on all my characters, not just my main who still had it from the quest that is since removed.

- All furbolg, all the time.

- I did one quest where I was turned into an Arrakoa for a short time.

- I want to be an Arrakoa hunter.

- There animation for it looks great.

- And the rolls on their back make it look like they have a quiver.

- It is as if they were meant to be hunters.

- Too bad if they add them as a race they would not be hunters.

- I do not think I have ever seen one as a hunter.

- Doesn't mean it could not be done however.

- Back to garrisons, I really do like them.

- But I have to be the one that asks the question.

- If blizzard is all about getting people back in the world, why did they give us a place like garrison where we have no reason to go out in the world.

- I think I have spent more time on my garrision than I have leveling.

- I would have been 100 already if not for dilly dallying around in my garrison all the time.

- Even just riding around it I liked it.

- And I can stay mounted in my buildings.

- Well, they are my building and if I want to stay mounted I should be able to.

- My buildings, my rules.

- I am the king here.

- One more thing to bitch about.

- Orcs.

- Seriously, I am about as sick of orcs as I could be already.

- I can not imagine an entire expansion of this BS.

- Worst part is we are fighting orcs and the horde are orcs, so I have to pay attention before I go head first into a village.

- If could be the new enemy orcs, as in the bad guys of the expansion, or the old enemy orcs, which chould flag me and lead me to a quick death.

- I think that is the thing I like least about it.

- Just orcs everywhere.

- I am already sick of it and the expansion has not came out yet.

- But then again, I was already sick of it before I got on beta, so this just made it worse.

- They could have stood with mixing it up a bit more.

- Sure the orcs are the bad guys, but they could have added more side bad guys.

- Maybe someone that knows lore can explain something to me.

- How do the AU Draenei have anima golems from ToT?

- If they are from Draenor and never been to Azeroth, then they surely have never been to Pandria and by connection never been into ToT so where did they get them?

- They are not Draenei inventions, at least I did not think so.

- Did the blood elves bring them and give them to the AU Draenei, that is the only thing that would make sense to me.

- Maybe I missed something somewhere.

- Easy enough to miss I guess.

- Just do not see how they would have tech from something they have no possible way to have known about.

- If anything playing on the beta has not increased my desire to play the expansion.

- It has done the exact opposite.

- So far I do not see anything really interesting.

- But I am a sucker for mini games, so I will be building my garrison and maxing out all my followers.

- But one thing that REALLY pissed me off.

- To get one of the building I want for my garrison I need to PvP?

- Seriously blizzard, WTF is wrong with you.

- Did you not noticed that adding PvP into PvE content does not work?

- Did you learn absolutely nothing from the legendary quest line?

- This is one of the biggest F yous from blizzard to their players.

- If you want that building in your garrison, you need to PvP.

- And we are not talking just win a few battle grounds, we are talking 5,000 kills in Draenor.

- It is not like something you can knock out over a weekend.

- Change this now blizzard, before it goes live.

- If you insist in tying PvE content (garrisons) to PvP content, make it something simple that can be done over a weekend by people that do not even PvP.

- Make it 100 kills, not 5000.

- Seriously blizzard, don't be stupid with that crap again.

- I'll probably play next weekend again and get to 100 and then see what else the expansion has.

- I have made, and sent, a huge list of bugs to blizzard.

- And a huge list of suggestions.

- All in all, warlords looks good for a very early beta.

- But it sure does not look like something that is expected to be released in less than three months.

- And it sure as hell does not look like the people on the math team have a clue what they are doing, talking about the profession crap.

- Either way, there is still some time for them to change some of that stuff but I do not expect it.

- For some reason blizzard will never get math.

- Some people just can not understand some things.

- Blizzard will never understand math.

- And on the final note.

- I do not even want to think about doing all the archeology achievements without flying.

- I do not give a crap you want to hide how small the world is blizzard.

- Flying is required at max level to enjoy the game.

- Otherwise I might as well just sit in my garrison.

- In the end, flying is the only thing that would get my out of my garrison.

- Oh, and we have new home cities?

- Now I understand why they changed them.

- Might as well not waste too much time on them when no one is going to spend any time in them.

- Given the option, my garrison that has everything I need for the most part and NO trade chat, or a city that is crowded and with trade chat, my garrison wins, hands down.

- Have a great day.

24 comments:

  1. ok, I got down to the bit about 98 slots costs 100 and a little beyond where you had to find drops that say "congrats, you can now craft to lvl 700". Pure damned bullshit. Then I stopped reading for I don't want to be punching my monitor.

    I bit and bought the new add-on. I can see my money is wasted.

    Thanks for the heads up, GE.

    As usual I have nothing to add. But where is blizzard trying to head with half baked ideas on crafting? Who are they trying to please with this new crafting? Those who play Eve Online or Everquest?

    As far as fishing (I read about this mess (lol, get it, mess, fishing???) over on El's and though I know he is happy, I keep wondering why anyone would want Bass Tour Tournament inside a simple MMO like WOW. So, when I saw that, I knew the writting was on the wall without having to read any other bog.

    But like i said above, I bit on the add-on. Bought it, havent used anything yet - mounts, insta-60 or what have you.

    I did make 2 hordes, both hunters of course. a Tauren and an orc, forgot their names, though. :-(

    the tauren is lvl 25 and the orc is 21.

    One question - is this 98 slot storage for 100gold (thats a lot) a one time buy or can each toon have it and have it more than 1? Also is it for 1 crafting spec or ? or this question covered in the other questions? Please do try to read thru what I am asking and don't be concentrating the question, as I have no clue what I am after here. :-)

    -roo the confused

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    1. Never spend real money to buy an add on. They are never worth it and usually you can find something just as good for free. Not to mention paying for an add on might be against the ToS. I know selling it is.

      Want more weird profession stuff?

      I need ore and meat and fish to make potions now. Not herbs. Can you believe that?

      It is a one time cost for each toon so each toon can have one.

      I plan to make each toon be the horder for specific types of stuff but I can tell you already, I am going to fill those super fast.

      My herbalist has already herbed over 20K herbs and that is just while leveling and I have also mined nearly 6K ore and, get this, I am not even a miner. I got that from my garrison. So you can pick herbs and mine at your garrison no matter what professions you have. I think the mines are spawning WAY too fast right now.

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    2. now pray tell, how else is one to get the add-on without paying money for it? I haven't seen anyone giving away for free WOD, unless it is someone wanting your info so they can rob you blind.

      ok, so one is going to need a garrison no matter what, huh?!? And how does one get a garrison started? (and please no south park jokes).

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    3. Do you mean beta invite or do you mean an add on like recount or healbot?

      You can download the curse client for addons. You do not need to pay for the advanced one. You can get addons with that.

      If you mean beta invite, then maybe I can see how someone can sell one.

      The garrison starts basically on its own. Once you are finished with the lead in quests the first thing you do when you get to Draenor is start your garrison. You can not miss the quest. It is directly tied into the game now. No skipping it.

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    4. no add-ons, the roo doesn't believe in them. however the game add-on will be needed if you want to get to 100. What in the good name of hebsus were you referring too?

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    5. Ah, you mean the expansion. Got ya. I misunderstood. I already pre purchased mine. I'll play even if I am not all that excited about it. I still like the game. However I do believe I have reached the point where if my friends leave I probably will follow.

      I am too old to find a new guild and make new friends. I am not the type that is quick to make connections. The last thing I would want is to ever have to go through that again and try to find new people. So basically as long as the people I am friendly with play, I will.

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    6. Oh, as for what I was talking about it is that some addons like to charge people to allow them to download them. That is now allowed. Blizzard does not mind people making addons and sharing them but they do not want anyone to sell them.

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  2. On 5000 kills in Draenor: unless Ashran counts, it's gg, 5000 kills is a hell of a lot, telling you that from experience. In order to have 5000 kills in the world now you have to be either (a) a member of the so called "world PVP" guild that raids PVP towers and cities, or (b) a truly dedicated ganker who was ganking for years.

    I hope they sort out professions.

    All in all, I am not expecting much from WoD, but from what you say, it's pretty bleak. How small are the zones exactly? How small is SMW compared to Pandarian zones? I get that it is smaller than Jade Forest, but maybe something like Krasarang?

    Thanks a lot for the post, very interesting.

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    Replies
    1. I only have a character with over 5000 kills and that is my oldest character. My priest, whom I leveled in wrath to 80 through PvP does not even have 5000 kills. That is completely out of line for a PvE part of the game.

      How small are the zones? I'll use this as an example, the point I kept getting sent back to stormwind and having to go back was on the west size of gorgron. I was able to zone into shadowmoon, which was close to gorgron, and travel on ground mount all the way past all the mobs, a few of which dismounted me, stunned me or disoriented me so I had to fight them and stopping to pick herbs to the west side of the next zone in less than 5 minutes. Is that small enough for you? If I did not stop I could have probably done it in 2 minutes. I don't think there are any zones in warcraft that can compare to how small the zones feel. Even the ones with lots of annoying mountains you need to run around feel kind of quick and easy. All in all, for an expansion designed for no flight (and I feel playing it that we will never get flight) this is the perfect size.

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    2. I have a hunch Ashran will count, probably any new Draenor BGs also. Otherwise yeah, 5k randon wpvp kills would take longer than 2 years.

      I have 23k honorable kills on my main. I think 6k of them are from BGs over the course of my 7 years playing. the remaining 17k are from Wintergrasp. I played WG a lot in wrath, but even so, its around 90 battles.

      So I wouldn't be too worried about it, when you are in raids the HKs rack up very fast, and I expect a month or two of going to Ashran every other day for a hour will get you 5k kills.

      Of course, if you hate pvp entirely, well, that sucks. Maybe that building isn't for you.

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    3. 5K for someone like me in ashran is beyond believable. If I get 2000 over the course of an entire expansion it is usually a lot. And being battlegrounds are not going to count "on" draenor I have no prayer of doing it. Maybe, just maybe if they changed it to "during" draenor I might have a chance but even at that for a non PvPer 5K is impossible.

      I know people that have been playing since vanilla, people with vanilla ranks, that do not even have 5K. It is way over the limit.

      My main has never amassed 5K in a single expansion before. I did wintergrasp normally, did TB normally, and never came close to 5K in a single expansion and those were in raid groups. Ashran will not have raid groups. So you are on your own unless you make or join your own group.

      Quite honestly, if they want everyone to participate make it 500 max. 100 would be more reasonable. 100 in ashran. That way even non pvpers have a chance. Either way there is no reason what so ever that a PvE thing should require PvP. They should have learned better from the legendary quest line.

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    4. Which garrison building is it that needs 5k kills?

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    5. Gladiator sanctum. I believe if you want the rank 3 building you need the achievement for 5000 kills in draenor.

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    6. I'm looking at the garrison preview on wowhead, and I don't see anything that needs 5k pvp kills.

      Gladiator's sanctum lvl 4 requires 4k broken bones. 3-6 broken bones are dropped every time you get an honorable kill in Draenor.

      So, if those stats are correct. Worse case scenario you need 1334 kills to unlock it. Best case you need 667 kills to unlock it. Most likely somewhere in between.

      I think the gladiator's sanctum is pretty much designed for pvpers, and around 800-1k kills doesnt seem like too much for that group.

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    7. Edit: Gladiator's Sanctum lvl 3*

      Here is the link to what I looked at. I'm not in the beta, so this is all I have to go on.

      http://www.wowhead.com/guide=2456/guide-to-garrisons-in-warlords-of-draenor

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    8. I'll have to look later when I get on. I could have easily read it wrong and it is 5K broken bones and not 5K kills. I can see how I could have easily done that. If what you said is true that it is bone and they drop at a higher rate, then it would not be so bad over all but still has no place in a PvE based thing.

      Maybe they are doing it to get PvPers into other parts of the game or to give PvEers into PvP. Both are noble endeavors. However I believe that every thing should be capable of getting from either aspect of the game. I don't see what would be so hard about making it 5K broken bone OR level 5 (for example) in the brawlers guild. So both styles of players can get it.

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    9. I could see it one of two ways.

      1. They did it expecting only pvpers to get the gladiator's sanctum to lvl 3. So it is kinda an achievement for a pvper. Strictly pve players are expected to choose a different building.

      2. They did it to try and encourage more people into Ashran. By giving rewards that require you to wpvp in Draenor, you basically need to go to Ashran on a pve realm.

      I learn towards the former situation. I think this because there are so many good options for medium buildings and only 2 plots to build them. As much as I would like the gladiator's sanctum. I don't think I'll be able to take it on my main. Too many necessary choices for production. Trading post and Inn feel mandatory for me.

      So, I think Blizz has given us a plethora of options, and they probably dont feel like they are forcing pve players to do pvp. Im sure their answer to this will be "Choose a different building. We gave you lots of choice."

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    10. Draenor IS bigger than pandaria. Heck it was even shawn that it's almost as big as northrend (guy did sandbox fly-over over the differents continent and timed it). I'm in beta aswell and feel the world is so much bigger than pandaria, but moving around on a ground mount is easier.

      To each his own feeling I guess, but one thing is for sure, it was demonstrated with timed video and all that dreanor size is second only to northrend by not much. The layout is just more ground-friendly.

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    11. @Troutmonkey

      I agree, I believe it is 2 and they are trying to get more people to use ashram. They seem to try over and over to get more people into PvP and it never happens. Why don't they give it up. PvP will always be there if people want to do it, just let them get into it if they feel like it.

      That is the beauty of PvP. It does not need content updates. As long as you want to fight and someone else wants to fight you have content. Content in PvP is the other person, not where you fight.

      @Anon

      It does not even feel close to the size of pandaria. In the end it is the "feel" that matters. No matter what I say or what that video says. When something feels small, it is small. There is no arguing that one.

      You nailed it with the layout is more ground friendly. Perhaps that is why it feels smaller. It is also the topic of my next post which I will be adding today.

      Back to topic, I would question that timed fly over however. Was the flying mount moving at the same speed? That would make a major difference.

      As I mentioned as one example I went from one end of a zone to the other end of a zone faster while stopping a few times faster than it would take to get from one end of a zone to the other on pandaria. That is knowing the best route in pandaria and not having a clue where I am going on Draenor.

      Draenor is smaller, there is no doubt in my mind. Also, just to note, being it is like a starfish shape it could appear to be larger because there are huge gaps of water that the eye picks up as part of the shape when in fact they are just empty space and should not be consider as size of the continent.

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    12. I am sure someone could truly map it but it is not worth the time. Perhaps someone will one day.

      In the end, it sure fells smaller, a hell of a lot smaller. That is mostly do to the design of it. They made a serious effort to make us not feel the lack of flight and in the process made the world seem smaller on the ground while doing so.

      What is the saying, cut off your nose to spite your face? It feels as if everything they do seems to fit that.

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  3. The not being able to access the mats in the mat tab from garrisons is a bug, surprise surprise, per a blue response. So that's something at least. Shame on the toy box not adding some of the new toys. I'm excited to get the furbolg on all my characters tho now :)

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    1. Nice to see that one is being fixed. Found and reported another one yesterday that was fun. I was able to place 22 work orders at the same time by pressing enter faster than it took to register. You would not believe the size of the shipment sitting outside my enchanting study. It was huge.

      A couple of the toys might have been over looked. I had a few I could add but a few I could not. The only one off the top of my head that I can recall that made no sense was one that makes it look like you are blowing bubbles. Not sure why that is not a toy.

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  4. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    Overall, I really wish you had not gotten your beta invite for I could have done without this report on it. Slowly, with a release date announced, I was beginning to convince myself that there was enough to do on 10 new levels that I would be able to bring myself to get my own copy of WoD and maybe even a couple of copies for both my accounts. Now, I am not so sure.

    Honestly, the garrisons don't attract me at all. Honest player housing built to last beyond WoD would, but this garrison is simply a bad idea given flesh. It would have worked if they had made it a guild thing, basically a guild base and had kept the guild leveling system and extended it to work with the new guild garrison establishment around the game worlds of Azeroth, Outland and now Draenor.

    The business of the reagents is particularly disturbing and may make the joy I find in learning the various crafting skills and gathering skills rather much less. I found I did not enjoy the cooking change in MoP as much as many have, but I will say it probably is a good system with some diversity in it. If I had or will have the patience to give it a try, I am sure I would enjoy it a bit more than I have to date. But the changes in cooking sound mild compared to the changes coming in WoD based on your limited reporting above. I hope that Blizzard has done a better job by release date than what you have describe to me so far.

    Really the only reason to me so far for getting the expansion is the 10 extra levels. I want to keep my promise to myself. from back in Vanilla, that I would get my main(s) to level 100. Beyond that, I really don't see any appeal in WoD to date, aside from the changes in storage capacity.

    I hope I am wrong and that I find WoD a wonderful version of WoW, but I don't think that will be the case as it currently stands.

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    1. Sorry, did not mean to depress you. There are good points to it and some smoothing out that will still be done. But yes, over all the expansion does not look like it has anything worthwhile to offer. Not even garrisons, and I really like those, are worth it. I hate the idea we do not get to take them with us after all that work building them up. As I have said so many times before, blizzards is horrible when it comes to thinking things out. They always make everything as if it is the last thing they will ever released and do not think of the future with their design.

      Case and point, that cooking in pandaria. If you do not do all that "way of the ..." crap there is no way to get cooking up now. At least not that I found. So you have to go back to mists and farm millions of materials to make that stuff. It is them not thinking about the future of the game again.

      I hope I am wrong too, but if the leveling experience is blah, and it is, and the features are lacking, and they are being only garrisons where added, it does not bode well. I read on the forums left and right already people saying, what is there to do at 100. There is no direction at 100. There are no dailies, there is nothing to do. Now think, these are people that are probably 100 for a few days on beta because they keep resetting characters. If they are bored off their ass in 2 or 3 days at 100, what do you think it will be like live? Not looking good for our game.

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