Warcraft | Superior Realities

I’ve been pretty diligent about blogging on the various class stories in World of Warcraft as I’ve completed them, but along the way I’ve neglected to talk about the rest of my adventures in Azeroth. It’s time to rectify that, so without further ado, I present you my thoughts on the Tomb of Sargeras, Argus, and more.

If you’re not up to date on the 7.2 and 7.3 content that’s currently been released, here be spoilers.

Tomb raiding:

When you think about it, it’s pretty strange it’s taken so long for the Tomb of Sargeras to appear in WoW, isn’t it? It’s been an important location in Warcraft lore since the 90s.

Anyway, it’s a good raid. I like it. It’s the first raid I’ve done in a long time that feels truly epic and important, and it’s got a lot of fun boss fights.

I was a mixed on Kil’jaeden being a mid-tier boss. He’s the sort of character who’s usually reserved for an end of expansion encounter, and even then, I’ve spent a long time thinking we players should never have the chance to defeat him (Sunwell doesn’t count since he hadn’t even fully entered Azeroth).

But his fight does feel suitably epic and intense, and I realized that I was still thinking of the old Kil’jaeden, the one from before the great Draenei retcon that blew up lore as we knew it.

He used to be this immortal avatar of evil, the personification of darkness itself. But after the retcon, he’s now just another warlock. An ancient and unusually powerful warlock, yes, but still, just a warlock. He’s not the legendary figure he once was.

So I guess it’s okay for him to be ganked by a gaggle of random mortals halfway through an expansion.

His death cinematic and the reveal of Argus was great, too, though I wish they hadn’t gone through with sticking Argus in the sky for everyone even if they haven’t done the fight yet. Rather spoiled the reveal.

Mind you, it’s impossible to ever avoid spoilers where WoW is concerned. No one in the community — including the devs themselves — has any respect for that sort of thing.

The hand of fate:

Due in large part to my enmity for the Draenei, the seemingly inevitable journey to Argus is something I’ve long-dreaded. I remain relieved that it’s merely a patch and not a full expansion.

As I’ve played through it, I’ve gone back and forth on my feelings on it.

The defeat of the Burning Legion is not something I ever expected or wanted to see, but it does seem increasingly likely that’s where we’re headed. The whole appeal of the Legion was that they were nigh-unstoppable. You could fend them off — you could save your world — but you could never hope to end their threat entirely.

But now we’re invading their home turf, and it looks like the Legion will soon be a thing of the past.

I was also initially bothered by how many non-Legion Eredar — Broken and Army of the Light alike — have apparently survived and continued fighting the Legion all this time.

I can think of no better symbol of how utterly the Legion has been defanged. They were introduced as the end of all life, and now it turns out they couldn’t even stamp out all resistance on the world that is their base of operations. They’re not very good at this, are they?

But then I realized that the Legion has been neutered for a long time now. I keep wanting them to be as terrifying as they were in Warcraft III, but the fact is that ship has sailed.

When I consider the damage that’s been done to the Legion’s lore over the years, Argus is about making the best of a bad situation. Seen through that lens, it’s doing a very good job, and if you let go of the Legion as the Ultimate Threat and view it simply as a threat, it’s actually a great ride.

Argus is a scary place. The mobs are pretty tough by WoW’s meager standards, there are elites and mini-bosses everywhere, the environments are hellish, and overall you really do get the impression that this entire planet wants to kill you. It’s one of those places where you feel like a complete badass just for setting foot there, and I haven’t gotten that feeling this strongly since Icecrown.

I’ve heard some people say that Argus is a pain to navigate, and that’s probably true for someone who can’t double jump and glide, but I brought my demon hunter there, and for her, Argus is a playground. I can get almost anywhere by finding a cliff and gliding. It’s wonderful.

Right now, the place is teeming with players, so there’s a great “D-Day” feel to the place, too. This is definitely one of those moments where I’m glad to play MMOs. Single-player games just don’t capture quite the same feeling, no matter how many NPCs you cram in.

I’ve enjoyed the story, as well. Even the Draenei stuff, mostly.

It probably doesn’t hurt that Argus paints the Draenei in an incredibly bad light. Now that we know many of their people stayed behind to fight, the Draenei are no longer these saintly embodiments of all goodness and virtue. Suddenly we realize they’re the deserters who left their friends and family to die. Dare I say, do the Draenei have nuance now?

I was a bit suspicious around the reintroduction of Turalyon and Alleria, given how forced Khadgar’s sudden return to the spotlight has felt, but whacky timeline issues aside, I’m finding their stories very intriguing (especially Alleria’s, not surprisingly).

The most interesting thing is that I get the distinct impression their story doesn’t end with Legion’s. In fact, it seems like it’s just getting started…

I just hope Alleria doesn’t wind up too anti-Horde. I mean, historically, she’s been extremely anti-Horde, so it would make sense, but I’d like at least one Windrunner sister to find a place among the Blood Elves. It’s hard for me to get over Vereesa betraying her own people, and whatever Sylvanas may have been in life, it’s clear she no longer feels any loyalty to Quel’thalas.

I want a Windrunner I can cheer for. I don’t want to have to choose between how much I like Alleria and how much I like the Blood Elves.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty happy with Argus, and in fact I’m probably more content with WoW now than I have been in a very long time.

Odds and ends:

Few other random things to note.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very underwhelmed by the soundtrack in the two most recent WoW expansions. This is a shame because the music used to be a huge part of the game’s appeal for me.

Somewhere along the line it occurred to me to wonder if there was an add-on that could customize the in-game soundtrack. Turns out there are several. I picked Epic Music Player. You can use it to import your own music, but I’ve been content to just play with the existing WoW soundtrack, which is all pre-loaded into the add-on.

I set up customized play-lists for each Legion zone, drawing on my favourite tracks from Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and Mists of Pandaria, plus some of the better Legion songs. These playlists activate automatically as soon as I enter the corresponding zone.

It’s done wonders for my enjoyment of the expansion, honestly. It’s amazing what a difference a good soundtrack could make.

In other news, I’ve gotten some interesting cosmetics recently.

I’m not much of a mount collector, and while the grind to unlock them is relatively tame, I haven’t the patience to get every single class mount. But as you can see, I did decide to grab the paladin class mount on the grounds that it’s gorgeous (I’ve already had the raven mount for rogues for a while, and I love it).

I especially like the red and grey tint for the paladin mount, as it matches my transmog very well. It leaves silver hoofprints when it runs. It’s lovely.

Also on the subject of mounts, I finally pulled the trigger and got myself the Grand Expedition Yak from Pandaria. It costs almost as much as a full WoW Token, but being able to access a vendor or change my outfit anywhere in the game is a wonderful convenience.

And the Grummles amuse me. It seems very surreal running through the horrors of Argus with the little guys. “WHERE IS YOUR LUCKYDO NOW?”

Finally, as a PSA, it seems the drop rates for many hidden artifact appearances were greatly increased in 7.3. Did someone say…

…Thunderfury, Hallowed Blade of the Windlord?

Seven down, five to go.

The latest class story under my belt in World of Warcraft is priest, meaning I have now finished the campaigns for all three cloth classes, as well as all four of my Blood Elf characters (I think we should all be impressed that only 1/3 of my characters are Blood Elves).

As I suspected, the priest story and the paladin story are pretty much the same thing, with exactly the same ending. There’s even a few cases where NPCs called my priest “highlord,” which is the paladin title.

I think this was a disservice to both classes. The paladins got robbed of a proper ending to their own story, and the priests miss out on some important aspects of the plot, like where Lothraxion comes from and how Delas became a paladin.

And if you play both, it’s just repetitive.

As with the paladin story, there’s also some things that are glossed over that really shouldn’t be. Oh, hey, here’s zombie Alonsus Faol and Arthas Menethil’s sister the rightful queen of Lordaeron, but let’s not for a moment acknowledge what a massive deal that is or explain in any way where they’ve been all this time.

The one thing I really did like about the story was the bit about Natalie Seline, as it is (I think) the first actual canonical lore we’ve gotten around the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow and shadow priests in general. It was all too brief, though.

My main motivation for playing a priest, beyond my general desire to finish as many class stories as possible, was because shadow has access to one of the most exciting artifact weapons: Xal’atath, Blade of the Black Empire.

Xal’atath is somewhat unique in that it is arguably the only artifact that is both a completely new addition in Legion, and a big deal in the greater lore: an ancient sacrificial dagger dating back to the Black Empire itself, the nightmarish civilization of the Old Gods that dominated Azeroth before the coming of the Titans.

Beyond that, Xal’atath is not simply a weapon. She is a sentient being with a malevolent will all her own. She will even whisper to you as you play, providing tantalizing insights to all that is happening… if you’re willing to take her at her word.

This, however, did prove something of a disappointment simply because Xal’atath’s dialogue is far less frequent than I had expected. It reminds me waiting on party banter in Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s almost always interesting when it comes up, but each bit of dialogue can be few and far between.

I do love her voice acting, though. The actress did a great job. Far from the gravel-voiced snarls of most Warcraft villains, Xal’atath’s voice is calm, soothing, even seemingly reasonable.

It’s so easy to forget just what she is and what she represents. It’s easy to understand how so many people have fallen under sway down through the countless millennia.

It does make me a bit sad for the limitations of an MMO. I’d love to see Xal’atath’s story continue. I’d love to see her ultimately betray the player, and perhaps become a dungeon or raid boss. It would be interesting to see just what her true form really is.

But all of that is extremely unlikely to ever happen, because she’s an item that the player controls and relies on. Even when artifacts are no longer relevant (still a terrible idea, by the way), lots of people will still be transmoging their weapons into her, I’m sure, and people who don’t play priests likely won’t know who she is. So in likelihood her story ends here.

Playing a priest was also somewhat interesting from a gameplay perspective. If you’ve read Superior Realities for a long time, you may remember priest was the very first class I ever played in World of Warcraft, though I quickly lost interest in it. I always found it tedious at low levels, but the concept of a class blending the powers of Light and Shadow has continued to appeal strongly in theory, and I often thought I might like it better at high levels.

Now, I had the opportunity to put the theory to the test, having skipped straight to level 100 with my free boost from Legion. I’m not sure if it’s because of being high level or the class changes that came with Legion, but I did definitely enjoy being a priest much more than I ever have before, though it’s still not going to go down as my favourite class.

At least in the current version of things, priest is a rather strange class. Holy is the vanilla healer spec of all vanilla healer specs, but discipline and shadow both feel rather unusual.

I still feel that WoW’s UI isn’t a good fit for the kind of damage-healer hybrid discipline is, but despite that, I found it growing on me. It’s certainly a refreshing change of pace, and closer to the kind of balanced support playstyle I feel MMO healers should be.

Shadow I maintain mixed feelings on. I like the general idea of building to voidform and then trying to maintain it as long as possible, but it’s tuned in such a hectic and unforgiving way that the playstyle feels very rushed. It’s exhausting after a while. I would like to see insanity built and spent at about half its current rate, making voidform a rarer but more satisfying experience.

Finally, this was a very visually appealing class. The big caster animation update happened about halfway through my playthrough of the class campaign, and I’ve been loving the new effects and animations for everything.

Beyond that, priests have always been one of the luckiest classes when it comes to things like tier sets, so I’ve been having a grand time coming up with all sorts of pretty outfits for her, as you can see from the screenshots (click them to view full size).

My backstory for the character is that she made a secret and desperate pact with the Void when the Light abandoned her people, a pact she now deeply regrets, so I’m trying to make all of her outfits hide her face in some way. She must always conceal the shame in her expression, and the madness in her eyes.

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Warcraft

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