Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Exploring Azeroth: Escaping the Frenzy, Embracing the Journey in WoW

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 61

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What if farming transmogs and mounts could offer you a serene escape from the frantic pace of FPS games? That's just one of the intriguing aspects we'll explore in this episode of Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth! Join us as we kick things off with the latest World of Warcraft news, including updates on the War Within dungeons, the formidable world boss Shirai, and this week's exciting brawl, Fact House. You'll gain insights into the Warband system, a topic of curiosity and concern for many players, especially those eyeing older content. We'll shed light on its current focus on reputations and the work in progress to make it more seamless for previous expansions, enhancing your gaming experience.

As we journey further into Azeroth, we'll unravel the motivations that keep players engaged with current content and the allure of achieving accolades in the game's prime. Whether you're a nostalgic player reminiscing about the slower pace of past expansions or someone who relishes the rush to the top, there's something here for everyone. We also reflect on how gaming dynamics have evolved and why it's essential to savor the present offerings at your pace. To wrap up, I extend heartfelt gratitude to all our listeners and urge you to stay connected through our vibrant social media channels. Let's keep this community thriving by sharing the podcast with friends and fellow adventurers!

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

Thank you do. Hello, and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft, so grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be going over a few things for newer players, but these are also some things that potentially can relate to others, uh, who are more experienced to the game. Um, that being said, we obviously have the weekly news, as always. The war within dungeons are your uh, bonus events for this week. Why have I done that the other way around? I will never know. Um, the war, then dungeons are your bonus event for this week. This means that you get an extra piece of loot for completing these dungeons. And shirai is your world boss for the week. This boss is located in? Where is it? Uh, oh, my god, am I crazy, not hollow fall the one before that? Ringing deeps. There we go, we got it. Um and uh, this is basically at the, located at the very bottom of the ringing deeps. It's a monstrosity, very nice and easy to get some gear from, so make sure you do that.

Speaker 1:

Fact house is your brawl for the week. This is essentially a 15 versus 15 arena where essentially the first team to get wiped out loses. It's a very simple brawl, but it is a very effective brawl. I find it very fun. I think a lot of ranged classes find it very fun in comparison to, maybe, melees, because melees kind of get dunked on a little bit in there. I'm not going to lie. But yeah, this is your brawl for the week and I would recommend doing it. I think that it is a very enjoyable one and I do think that there is a lot that can be said for it. So, without further ado, these are more of the simpler some like some things that people post on the forums. There is a uh section that is dedicated to new slash returning players and I want to be able to help out wherever I can for these people. So we'll start off with something very simple.

Speaker 1:

Um hi, I haven't played the game since early bfa and I'm a bit confused because it looks like I've lost all the campaign progress from legion and bfa. Oldham and the veil don't appear to be corrupted. Legion world quests aren't showing apart from my warrior which I played at the time. All of my artifact weapon appearances are lost and such, but at the time I still have corrupted gear in my backpack. I have my legendary cape and necklace and when I tried playing through the BFA campaign again, the quest showed that my warband had already completed every single quest. Also, I still have the achievements about completing them.

Speaker 1:

So I guess my question would be does the warband system not apply to older content? If so, why does it say warband completed on quests? Am I missing something? So warband is a bit weird at the moment.

Speaker 1:

Um, reputations are the main one that warband kind of focused on, and it hasn't done this for earlier uh expansions yet. I'm not sure how early this is, but I think it's before legion. Um, I kind of want to say, I want to say before legion. It doesn't have anything that's like reputation wise or anything along them lines that's shared, but I think that they are working on that, if I'm not mistaken. I see like bits and bobs about it every now and again. So I think that very much so. It's just they haven't gone around to doing the older content stuff like um wall of the drain or um you know back from there. So I think this is nothing to worry about. I think it's a bit of an annoyance because there is a lot of spaghetti code that can get mixed up when doing sort of these warband situations, and I think you're going to see a lot of that. That happens throughout the next coming year maybe, where they're trying to tidy it up almost as they're going forward with the warbands the warbands but um.

Speaker 1:

As for bfa stuff, now it should go off based to your main or it should go based off of your main essentially, and who has the most progress now for bfa, yes, if you did the storyline, it will class it as completed. You can still complete this storyline via your other characters, but it will give you a small notification at the end of each quest where it was like you have already completed this quest or your war band has already completed this quest. That just shows as a little marker where your characters basically were um, because when you stop seeing that like sign or message at the bottom of the quest is well, that's it really, isn't it? That's where you got up to um, but essentially they are cleaning it up. It isn't a flawless execution of the warband system. Yet the current um expansions and the most recent ones that they've done it really well, obviously because they had to.

Speaker 1:

People still farm that a lot more so than the like other reputations, mr Pandaria and stuff. Although I do think that the reputations for BFA and stuff aren't linked as well, because I look to get a toy which is the Proudmoore music box from BFA and any Proudmoore Admiralty rep and I have one character that's really high reputation with this and everyone else isn't and it isn't shared. So a bit of a bummer for me, but I don't think it might not be shared. The reputations, the quests might be and it might say that oh yes, you have completed this. Because I would imagine somewhere in all of that spaghetti code is a list of every achievement or not achievement quest that you have completed. Because when you complete a quest the quest disappears, doesn't it for you, like in World of Warcraft. So it must check a box somewhere in that code saying completed and that must be against your account or character, and then it's picking it up via the warband. That's kind of my guess about it.

Speaker 1:

Ultimately, the warbands are still relatively new. There's going to be a few things that aren't perfect with it. The best thing that you can know about warbands is that there is warband gear that you can transfer between your bank. For your warband. There is the current expansions reputation that is shared. This is the same with, maybe, dragonflight I want to say dragonflight am I crazy for thinking it's shared with dragonflight as well? I'm gonna go with that. And then you also have other bits and bobs, like achievements and stuff like that, or cosmetics that you can now send over to characters in your war bank and those that are in your war bank or war band um that you get from raids. So say, you're a cloth wearer and you loot some plate in a raid, you can actually learn that transmog, which is really really cool. Um, as for older content, I think it's just the quests that it sort of has registered for now on the account, but they're looking at doing reputations in the future. How far in the future, I can only speculate, but hopefully very soon, because I want that proud, more admiralty rep, and you know I'm not going to be denied that. I'm not going to be denied that music box.

Speaker 1:

Essentially, the next one is going to be a bit more detailed. Now this one is for sort of older players as well, I think. So hello there. The title might be a bit misleading. The title was how can I get back into WoW? Same as the category I posted this in, but I'm not allowed to post in other categories and, furthermore, missing the words to describe my dilemma properly. But I'm going to try.

Speaker 1:

I loved playing WoW back in the days, but since retail became I don't know retail, okay, since retail became World of Warcraft, I guess it kind of feels numb to me to play any new expansion. It feels like a race for a few months instead of a steady and meaningful progression that lasts even when the next expansion comes out. How it was back in these, back in the days, um, okay, so I don't know how to explain this to you. The progression is gear. The progression is always going to be gear and then, at the end of gear, it's going to be what you can do with that gear. So, for an example piece, we have PvP. You get honor gear and then you go into conquest gear and then, when you're full conquest gear, what do you do? You push your rating and then that's like the sort of progression that you want.

Speaker 1:

Okay, in classic, you leveled up, you got a piece of gear. That gear stayed with you for a while, sure, but you switched it. You did switch it? You, you did, unless you played nax ramus. At the end of classic, you switched that piece of gear. Okay, and what do you do after that? If you've got your best in slot gear, you have completed the game. So what's the fun in that then?

Speaker 1:

Um, as for new expansions coming out, this is always going to be the same no matter what burning crusade, wrath of the lich king, there's always going to be better gear, because it allows people to progress and it gets that sense of feeling that you are progressing your character when you're upgrading your gear and stuff like that. It gives people a reason to come back to the game. So let's carry on. So all my progress is kind of worthless with every new expansion. That's the same with classic and like retail, because they want to make it easier for newcomers, uh, to get into the game. They don't have the play, they don't have to play the expansions before to get on my level and such. I'd rather have an end to all that. I'd rather have an end to all the expansions and instead have it like that again. Otherwise my motivation to play the latest one is very low.

Speaker 1:

Okay, firstly, yes, newer players can catch up to your gear, but if you're doing plus 10s, let's say, let's do, let's do mythic plus 10s. Okay, plus 12s. Whatever you're doing, you're going to be getting 620 item level gear. Okay, let's say 620. I don't know the exacts, but that is it. If this person is brand new, how long do you think it will take them to figure out their rotation, their damage, their enchants, their gems, their everything, and do a mythic plus 10 to get their first piece of 620 item level gear? This isn't even including making the character leveling, learning the class, learning a different class if they wanted to. You know many different aspects of wow. It's going to take a while, isn't it? And then when they even complete that dungeon, they might not be on the same skill level as you because you have more experience in the game as a whole. So there's different elements to this. It's not just gear, okay, it's not just gear.

Speaker 1:

Um, even if we don't mainly talk about gear progression, why should I farm my transmogs and mounts in the latest expansion? Because you enjoy the game, because it's something chill to do, rather than, you know, play an fps shooter that obviously you don't really enjoy and it's very intense for you. It's more of a calming thing to do to go and farm some mounts and transmog. I don't know if I could just wait until the next one comes out and have it way easier to farm the stuff for uh of one, way easier to farm the stuff off the one before with way higher item level, and out of the new one. So, okay, this is one hell of a mouthful of a sentence. I get this person might not be english or native english speaker, so I'm trying not to shit on that and how they've uh made up their sentences essentially, but nevertheless, what I would say to this is you farm things in the current expansion because it gives you something to do. It gives you a reason to log on. You enjoy farming it. You don't want to do something. That's a bit of a slug fest for you.

Speaker 1:

I log on to retail to do pvp. Some people log on to do pve. Some people. If they were forced to do pvp instead of pve, they would log off. They wouldn't enjoy it. So why would they do it? You know it's one of them things. You don't play a game to play the elements that you don't enjoy. You play a game to play the elements that you do enjoy. It's ridiculous, um, and everybody can do that. While starting as a newcomer on the latest expansion, all my achievements I actually did while playing that expansion with everybody else when it came out basically rendered useless in terms of having a scale that is the same for everybody.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yes, a lot of achievements can be earned after the expansion has gone. But you're telling me gladiator titles, you're telling me mythic dungeon titles. You're telling me ahead of the curve, raiding titles. You're telling me stuff like wow's 10th anniversary, wow's fifth anniversary. You're telling me you can get all of these achievements still in the game because you can't. You go back, you log on right now and you go and get a shadowlands gladiator title that you hadn't gotten, or legion one, or warlords of draenor one, or even a burning crusade one, because I bet you can't. I bet you can't do it because it is physically impossible. So there are achievements in the game that are lucrative, achievements that allow you to show sort of some of your prowess within the game and your time spent within the game. So, yes, a lot of the achievements are shared, but at the same time, these are normal achievements for the most part, anyway. For the most part.

Speaker 1:

Um, oh god, where was I way higher item level. Oh my god, where actually was I? So I think I've lost it. Uh, I want to make it easier for newcomers get into the game, otherwise motivation, okay, here we go. Uh, essentially. So I thought about maybe trying out classic, wow then. But now I read that gdkp stuff which might have been good, a good method once, but became more or less an inflation mechanic for the game. I don't really get why people need this. People are too greedy and want to play classic but still rushing it like they play retail.

Speaker 1:

Back in the days when I played real kata, I never heard heard of that, or maybe I missed it because I was mainly playing with friends of my school. Okay, I don't know how to say this. People who say back in the day or back in my day, yes, we might, we understand that it was back in your day that something happened. I get that and I'm glad that you can reminisce, but it isn't back in your day anymore. Okay, I could say back in my day when I played Legion, which is eight years ago, nearly eight years, you know, I could say we were level 110 and the honor level system came out and that was really good because you had 50 levels of honor levels and you had to progress to earn certain talent points. Now, don't get me wrong, it was an awful system. But just here, like just play along with it, I could say back in my day it was one of the best systems that blizzard had ever made in the game.

Speaker 1:

Again it doesn't mean anything because it's not in the game anymore. They've adapted it, they've changed it so like gdkps weren't a thing, because people didn't understand the game, people didn't have a good enough pc to do these sort of things, people didn't have sort of a team speak good enough, people didn't understand online like interaction as a whole. Back in 2004 yet it was still relatively new to people, so people wouldn't have understood this or had the technology or the means to do gdkps the way that they do now. And yeah, it's absolutely crazy to compare it to something that is nearly like two decades old. Decades right Is decades. 10 years, oh God, did I mess up? No, centuries are 100. Yeah, it's decades, I am correct. Yeah, it's coming up to two decades old. World of Warcraft you can't compare it, you just can't. And this guy mentions Cataclysm. That's over a decade old. Ok, that came out in 2010. That's 14 years old. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy, although I do agree with him.

Speaker 1:

People need to slow down in the game. People do look to rush it and I think people rush it because they think, oh my God, I need the best gear, I need the best everything. When I think people need to take a step back and actually just enjoy the game for how it is now. Um, but yeah, look, you can't stop the player base from doing what they want. You can only control what you want to do and with all the guides out there, people will just be like on autopilot. It's like, okay, I need to do this dungeon for this piece. It didn't drop, I leave, cool, you know that sort of stuff. It is ridiculous. Um, where was I back in the days when I played real kata? I never had that, or maybe missed. Yeah, yeah, okay, I also read that blizzard forbid gdkps in season discovery.

Speaker 1:

Did they forbid that uh stuff in classic, or is it still a thing in Classic? I don't believe it's a thing in Classic anymore. Not to my knowledge, I don't see many posts for it in looking for groups, so I don't think it's a thing anymore. In my honest opinion, how can I play Season of Discovery if they still do the GDKP stuff in Classic WoW, if they still do the GDKP stuff in Classic WoW. Season of Discovery is something completely different to Classic World of Warcraft. I think this guy needs to understand that they're two different things. Season of Discovery is a sandbox mode that has different runes, where you can take spells from other expansions and put them onto your character. Stuff like that. Classic WoW is Classic WoW.

Speaker 1:

You have Cat cataclysm classic and then you have classic era. I believe classic era still has gdkps. I could be completely wrong. I've not checked in a very long time on that online servers. So, uh, classic cataclysm does not, though I do not believe it does. I can't find it in the launcher menu.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's so for classic uh or for season of discovery, what you need to do is on the battlenet launcher you click world of warcraft and there's going to be three options. There's going to be world of warcraft, the war within world of warcraft, cataclysm classic and then then World of Warcraft Classic. You're going to click Classic and then you're going to go into the Realms and that is where you will find Season of Discovery. For those that do not know, I know many of you might have another option on that and I want to excuse myself in advance if my option might set you up or if I misunderstood something. I'll be happy to hear myself in advance if my option might set you up or if I misunderstand something, misunderstood something, sorry. I'll be happy to hear out your perspectives and explanations for this and maybe get some good vibes on the game again.

Speaker 1:

Greetings um, I don't think he means greetings, I think he meant sincerely or regards or something. Um. But yeah, look, feeling of progression is going to be in every single expansion that World of Warcraft has, and it's been in the expansion since Classic. Ok, from getting your very first dungeon piece in Deadmines or wherever you might have gone, ragefire, chasm, wherever, or all the way to getting a new ring in Stratholme In Classic. I had a Dead Minds ring, which is the lavish jeweled ring which had six intellect on it, all the way up until I was about level 50 on my mage in Classic, genuinely, and that was a nice feeling to get rid of that ring. But at the same time I didn't feel as complete when it comes to gearing in classic when it did.

Speaker 1:

In comparison to retail, I would say, um, so look, there's many different aspects to World of Warcraft but I feel like some people don't realize that point of new expansions is to have that sort of accomplishment of gearing up, of progressing. Your battle pets, your PVP prowess your gear, your PVE prowess you know multiple different things, even just collecting transmogs and mounts. You know these things are something that people just want to do during the game and if that's how they want to spend their time, that's fair enough. I think you need to find what you enjoy and try not to get caught up in what others might think of what you're doing, whether it be very slow paced, like leveling just at a different rate to everyone, or doing dungeons at a different rate in comparison to like what you might do at the end game. Some people might not like battle pets I think very few people do but people do them still and then people do enjoy it and fair play to them. I think that's very good. I think that everyone has their own place within wow and their own thing to do within wow. You just need to find it and enjoy that aspect of it. You won't enjoy every aspect of World of Warcraft, but I think that's the best thing that you can do essentially in this instance.

Speaker 1:

That is where I will end it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening over there. But once, thank you all very much and go eval a friend, goodbye all. Thank you.