Board 8 > Oh hey Shadowlands launched.

(+) Yeah! (+)

After spending 5 minutes for the server to log me back in after it booted me off my character list is empty and my server isn't listed.

Another successful WoW expansion incoming.

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I give 50/50 odds that by the time this post goes through you can relog and everything will be fine.

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redrocket posted...

I give 50/50 odds that by the time this post goes through you can relog and everything will be fine.

Definitely not.

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was logged on at launch time and the quest popped instantly and i'm a few quests in now, do better red

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Man, I cant afford the timesink at the moment but I really miss leveling through a new WoW expansion.

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Steiner posted...

was logged on at launch time and the quest popped instantly and i'm a few quests in now, do better red

I was on early and got booted.

I'm in and leveling, 51 already. Most people still cant get in. Sharding is failing. My quest sequence in the Maw I ran into 0 other people. Having a shard to myself was great.

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https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/12/10

that first panel was me all day today

im at work, doin stuff. one of my staff asks me if i'm gonna play shadowlands. maybe even go home early for the launch. "Nah man, I heard Torgahst sucks now. I don't even want to play." I work later than usual and dont even sweat that I'm missing the launch even though I'm usually here the second things go live and push to max level as fast as humanly possible. I just don't even care.

I hit the grocery store. I get home and my brother asks if I'm going to jump on wow. "Eh, even my wow obsessed friends are apathetic about this expansion. I'm just gonna pass." I spend some time cooking dinner. I spend 3 hours finishing a pretty good book (Axiom's End).

Finally end up on my computer at 1030pm.

Well, I guess it's time to buy Shadowlands.

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CoolCly posted...

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/12/10

To this day I still don't know how my grades survived Cata launching right around the beginning of my finals that semester

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Probably the smoothest launch I've experienced

Logged into my character at the gallywix hot tub at 550, quest popped at 600, blasted through the intro and first zone without any problems

I think i just had the advantage of being first in line, i imagine it'll be worse tomorrow

First dungeon is acceptable. Clearly designed for mythic+. Funny moment is when they trick you into thinking you have a ton of trash left just before the second boss, and it all gets one shot by an npc. Cutest fight mechanic is the abomination hook shot

story wise, seems like they're planning on all four factions being buttholes. Maybe finding a way for Sullivan to be justified. At least, I sincerely hope the druid one isn't the lone good guy faction

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i don't trust any these factions

i don't trust the angel nazi's. the archon and her blind faith in their ideals is crazy. Angel Nazi Uther and his teacher are the craziest of all

I don't trust that that druid either. He swore he would protect Ursoc and his grove. Then one chat with his queen and he's all "aight take his energy. I'll protect this world for my queen, I swear it". Yeah, I've heard that line before buddy.

Draka seems to think she's the hottest shit in the afterlife and trusts this new lord she joined after her bros already betrayed her. As if this new lord didn't orchestrate the whole thing.

Honestly, I think i trust the smug anima vampire over these people.

I wonder if the jailer is hiring...

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Got to 60...Not the greatest leveling experience. Very barebones. They went for a more FFXIV-style story focused leveling system, no sidequests required for the most part, but kind of forgot that they need to actually make it somewhat of a compelling story. Its still very much just the usual WoW-quests. What is beyond that is few and far between.

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You can get to level 60 in like a day?

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Anagram posted...

You can get to level 60 in like a day?

from 50, yeah

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Huh, thanks.

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i mean it's a heavy day but both gilded and red have just of people I know, Gilded was 60 9 hours after release

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Attempted to do 2 world quests.

One is broken, one is a big arena group quest that is impossible because you can't group across shards right now, the transfer function isn't working.

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Also they took away the flight master's whistle and then made flight paths more inconvenient to get to. I don't quite understand the logic.

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I am almost level 53.

I couldn't get on so I played FFXV for a bit and seeing the broken stuff I am not too worried about it.


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56.5 so far, going at it kinda lazy

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hit 60 after somewhere around a dozen hours with garbage gear, wasn't keeping perfect track. i gambled (and lost) a couple of times, ending up with not enough XP for the story to keep dispensing exclamation points

design-wise, covenants are an extra evil version of the oracle/wolvar reps in wrath. i'll just say i'm very glad my days of 100%ing stuff are long past

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I'm enjoying the experience so far, story-wise I feel it's above average and more interesting than the last expansion.
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banananor posted...

hit 60 after somewhere around a dozen hours with garbage gear, wasn't keeping perfect track. i gambled (and lost) a couple of times, ending up with not enough XP for the story to keep dispensing exclamation points

I hit one exp block at 57 in Ardenweald. It was a really arbitrary block with no reason for existing. Still had a bunch of quests left that would have put me very close to 58 in the zone. Ended up hitting 60 with a comparable number of story quests left in Revendreth.

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I've already farmed one wow token from herbs, I'm hoping to amass a few before I start gearing myself out.

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@Forceful_Dragon if you are on area52 I will just give you like 2 months of tokens so you can have a bit more fun lol

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Is that a server? Because I'm playing on Baelgun but I'm not adverse to leveling an alt on another server.

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well if you just make a character I should be able to give you the gold. don't want you just farming for game time first week, that's not fun

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Eh, I'm still enjoying myself. I do a lap or two to collect mats, then do a couple storyline missions, then repeat. But I can definitely roll an Area 52 alt if you want to bankroll me, lol. Horde or Alliance?

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Got to 60 in less than 10 hours, just doing the main storyline. Finished the first 3 zones and was 3/7 on the last.

Finished off that zone and I'm going to go clear all the sidequests I picked up, run a few dungeons and then I'll probably spend the next week just playing in Torghast.

The couple runs I've done so far I've really enjoyed.

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for some people, making money is the game

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The game broke completely for me, wouldn't let me interact with anything, wouldn't let me zone. Forced to exit game. Well, it didn't save my spot in the game likes its supposed to. So back to the queue, which is just over an hour still.

Game still isn't sharding correctly either. Some are jampacked, some are completely empty. Most are completely empty.

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There aren't even enough people in these shards to do the events that spawn in The Maw. This one popped a boss that has 650k health and hits like a bus. Its basically a raid boss at this point. But the most we could muster was a group of 4.

Blizzard has something fundamentally wrong with the game here.

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GildedFool posted...

The couple runs I've done so far I've really enjoyed.

i've done 5 or 6 of the dungeons so far and the mechanic i liked the most was hooking the boss in plaguefall

and the mechanic i liked the least was the spear in halls of ascension because i was healer and had no time to look around to figure out wtf to do while everyone began taking ramping huge damage

the first set i think we saw total about 25-30 stacks of the debuff that i just rotated cleanses on. thank god for convoke the spirits

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Oh damn, the healer can be assigned that duty?

I'll have to do a little more research before hopping into the real difficulty settings. Haven't yet decided if i want to heal or tank mythic+

A couple of these dungeons have too much trash, especially that night fae one with giant grubs

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red13n posted...

The game broke completely for me, wouldn't let me interact with anything, wouldn't let me zone. Forced to exit game. Well, it didn't save my spot in the game likes its supposed to. So back to the queue, which is just over an hour still.

Out of curiosity, what server are you on? I've been playing at slightly odd hours, but emerald dream US has been okay

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banananor posted...

Oh damn, the healer can be assigned that duty?

no its like as long as you fail to complete that little bit, you just take more and more and more damage, so good healing can help a slow group get through that regardless. you still can't progress the fight with pure healing but you can pretty much infinitely delay the team wipe

that shit's gonna hurt on heroic and mythic a lot more though

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banananor posted...

Out of curiosity, what server are you on? I've been playing at slightly odd hours, but emerald dream US has been okay

Any time I've attempted to play on a high population server has been just fine. I've yet to experience one problem.
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agesboy posted...

and the mechanic i liked the least was the spear in halls of ascension because i was healer and had no time to look around to figure out wtf to do while everyone began taking ramping huge damage

As much as my instincts are to help do the mechanic yeah just heal.

Area 52 horde btw.

But server means basically nothing besides AH at this point.

Leafeon13N posted...

As much as my instincts are to help do the mechanic yeah just heal.

if everyone knows what they're doing, i can help at the start cuz resto druid is really mobile when the incoming damage isn't high

but after 4~ stacks i'm standing still except to dodge aoes

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i tentatively dub De Other Side the pug-breaker this expansion so far

pretty much every other mythic feels brute-forcable with a good healer/tank

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friends hitting 60 tonight so i'll get a taste of healing some mythics if they aren't too scared and want to gear up in heroics first

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I'm only just hitting ilvl 155 so I can join mythic queues.

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Guild was easily clearing mythics at 140+.

Pugs... I would not expect that from. I'm at a very unoptimised 174 with all the mythics done for the week.

Also, with no real grind this xpac, (Artifact weapon, Heart of Azeroth) the xpac feels very light on stuff to actually do.

And honestly, that works for me. I want to turn WoW off and not feel bad.

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I'm gong to finish the week at 179.31.

The amount of stuff to do is fine. The AP system had to go. It was awful. Most grinds right now are cosmetic items, thats how it should be.

Grinding Ve'nari rep is the only thing that feels gated but it goes by real quick once you are familiar with The Maw.

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I am at 174.75 and haven't done all my mythics. Even besides that left some stuff on the table.

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I don't know anything and haven't read the whole topic what's cool about shadowlands

the areas comprise multiple different potential afterlives that souls are sorted into and are all quite visually striking in their own way.

And at least on my server it's been quite easy to farm all the gold by staying on top of the herb markets so that's been fun too <_<

I haven't done all the available dungeons yet (just the ones that quests have sent me into for rep purposes) but they have been solid.

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Visually the game looks good and the smaller stories within the zones are fine.

My big Shadowlands complaint is the larger narrative of WoW has been terrible.

A big part of BFA was the mystery behind Sylvanas' motivation.

This is handwaived away in a single throwaway line in a throwaway dungeon with literally no connection to the rest of the world. Basically proof that Blizzard has no long term vision for the game. Which would be fine if they would just stop setting up long term narratives.

Smaller complaint is that this is the smallest in terms of world size an expansion has ever been and they've cut out travel accessibility to pad time.