Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Modern WoW has finally become the casual-friendly game it promised to be.

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 97

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World of Warcraft's latest expansion The War Within has dramatically improved the game's accessibility for returning and casual players, abandoning problematic borrowed power systems in favor of more flexible progression options.

• Shadowlands forced weekly grinds through the covenant system with 80 Renown levels and limited catch-up mechanisms
• The War Within removes borrowed power for permanent progression systems
• Delves offer customizable solo content with scaling difficulty and meaningful rewards
• Players can progress at their own pace without strict time commitments
• Story Mode raid allows solo players to experience narrative conclusions with NPC allies
• Community toxicity remains an issue, particularly in normal difficulty group content
• Creating your own groups is recommended to avoid gatekeeping and impatient players
• Finding reliable companions transforms the multiplayer experience

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Speaker 1:

Music. Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. Grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this midweek episode. We'll be going over a few bits and bobs. We're going to be looking at returning players on the forums. We're going to be looking at some PvP. We're going to be looking at general problems as well, and this is obviously tough to put into a category. I would say it's a very variety sort of um thing I'm doing, and these are problems that I've said many times, but they do need to be addressed multiple times again and again, because they are consistent problems and they are ones that I've certainly picked up on, you've probably picked up on. So yeah, let's get straight into it. So, essentially, we start off very light-hearted. Returning players in uh war within is it worth it? Hey, I'm thinking about returning to wow. With the current expansion on sale, is it worth returning?

Speaker 1:

I quit around late shadowlands due to not having much time to play. How is the game more casual, friendly now compared to previous expansions? So he quit when gearing was at its all-time worst, I would say. Shuttle land was one of the toughest gearing experiences that recent world of warcraft expansions have had. The difference in sort of getting up to your end game let's say so for retail end game is the name of the game. Essentially, you're looking to gear the best that you can get, the best talents and all that stuff potentially. Now you obviously aren't forced to do this, but you know, if you want to, with Shadowlands what you had to do was gear. Then you had to upgrade the gear. Now you still have to do this in the War of In, but it's a lot more streamlined gear. Now you still have to do this in the war of him, but it's a lot more streamlined now and it's very much um.

Speaker 1:

Shadowlands was the first implementation of this upgrade gear and it just wasn't perfect. Um, I can't speak much about the pve side of gearing, um, but I remember bits and bobs of shadowlands. Now the biggest problem was the covenant system. The covenant system in Gearing and for Endgame in general was you had 80 Renown levels that you had to level up and you leveled these Renown levels via doing weekly quests, via doing multiple different things, and you got probably two to three, I think it was renowned on a weekly basis by doing certain quests and different objectives within the world of Warcraft. Now, these weren't looked into much further than that. The problem with this was there was no catch-up system. The catch-up system that was implemented came very late, in shadowlands. It was very late actually. I think it was like 0.25 patch or 0.2 patch, so literally a patch before the end of the expansion.

Speaker 1:

And to go up 80 renown levels, um, when you get like three renown each week, uh is tough to do. It is very, very tough to do because you're immediately nerfed on your damage, your abilities that you can utilize, because you've got certain abilities at certain renown levels and you've got certain big buffs at certain renown levels. So, at level 10 or something, renown, you unlocked a slot that you could put in, essentially a defensive, a utility or a sort of endurance, like conduits they were called, and this had a big impact on how tanky you were, how much utility you brought, et cetera, et cetera. And then, when you got to level 40 renowned, you got a new ability. This would be your covenant ability, this would be your flesh craft, your no. Well, it wouldn't be your flesh craft and stuff. It would be something that increases the potency of these abilities, and if you didn't have these, you're a major disadvantage because, especially in like pvp, for example, this is the biggest one flesh craft was an insane. In like pvp, for example, this is the biggest one. Fleshcraft was an insane.

Speaker 1:

Ability for pvp is now what that was. It was a maldraxxus p or a covenant talent. This is one that everyone got, okay. So you had one baseline um ability that you got for picking a covenant, which was soul shape, uh, fleshcraft, what? Uh? The kyrian steward. And you had the door of shadows for venthyr. These are staple points that you, every single class, would get, and then you would get your own ability depending on what class you were. So for druids it was convoke, the spirits, orters it was the Hunt for Night Phase and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

Now, fleshcraft was very, very big in PvP, mainly because there was an ability in it when you got to a certain renown level where it would grant you immunity to CC whilst you were channeling the ability, and this isn't like a small immunity. This is three seconds of immunity and it's pretty impactful. Now this is really big and this is the problem that shadowlands had was that you couldn't catch up to these renown levels as quickly. You really really couldn't, and it's just so much better in terms of you don't have to worry about this stuff. Now it is not borrowed power anymore. This is what makes the end game and the gearing a bit easier, because you aren't using borrowed power systems anymore, which is really really good.

Speaker 1:

Um, also, not to mention the actual gearing itself for pvp. I've gone over it many times. But you had to get to a certain uh rating to upgrade your gear and obviously, when you got closer to that rating, people might have already had that upgrade. So you're already fighting at a disadvantage kind of deal. Um, not, yeah, it's. It's a bit ridiculous. This is also like I'm.

Speaker 1:

I'm comparing it to Shadowlands, because this is when he stopped Shadowlands. You very much couldn't switch out your covenant as easily easily, because you had to restart your renown system, which I've just explained is a ball ache in itself to do. Um, but yeah, that again, that didn't come into play until late in shadowlands, where everyone was um able to buy a certain item that allows you to get up to renown level 40 or 60 or something, but that was super late. So gearing wise very much easier, um, but casual friendly as well. Um, it's a lot more casual friendly. So shadowlands forced you each week to do your weekly quests, okay, if you didn't, you were actively weaker than every single character that did them the week previously. Okay, and this is because it gave you renown, which gave you stats, which gave gave you different benefits depending on the level of your renown, and stuff like that. Now, for Dragonflight, you actually don't have any of this. And for more casual, friendly players, you can do Delves. These Delves are actually quite a good way of making gold or getting some gear. They do scale very quickly and this allows you to.

Speaker 1:

If you really wanted to do very intense delves as a casual player, on like when you have your time, like to play the game, and what I mean by this is with a mythic dungeon. You're obviously needing five people, one of them being yourself, so four other people, and you have to either gather this group together and you've got to go to the dungeon and complete the dungeon. Some people might not even complete the dungeon. They might leave before, they might rage, quit. You know all of that. For a delve, if you've got two hours, you can go. Yeah, I'll do a tier eight delve, which is pretty tough. Okay, it's pretty tough.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you complete the tier eight and you're like I think I can do a tier nine or ten, and then it's like, yeah, okay, I'll try it, and then you spend like your time like doing that for the next two hours and that's what you enjoy doing, like with the time that you have, because it is very casual, friendly, you can choose how easy or difficult these delves are for just yourself and you can customise your like brand essentially, build a brand is how I like to refer to it as and you can make him a tank, you can make him a healer, you can make him a DPS and you can really kind of say or you have a very big choice to make when doing these delves just for yourself. You don't have to just walk in and it's sort of boring and your mind like is just blanking out because these are tough like uh, what? What would they be called? Not encounters that?

Speaker 1:

Tough things to do within the game that allow you to actually express how you want to play and really do push you to the limits on the higher level delves that you're doing. So it is a lot more casual, friendly. You can do what you want, and in these delves, you do get gear at the end as well as gold, as well as like different profession, mats and stuff, and it's actually very rewarding. And this is a very casual, friendly thing because you can literally just walk in as and when you want. You don't have to wait for anything to be open. You don't have to wait for it to be empowered or bountiful. You can literally do every like any delve, any time of the day, as many times as you want. You are not forced to do anything at all, and this is the best part about delves it is very casual, friendly and this is what they made it for, which I think is a very good thing. I think that they have done very well in that regard.

Speaker 1:

And another thing that goes under the radar is the story mode raid, because the story mode raid what it is essentially is you just kill the last boss of the raid, but you do it with npcs. You're not doing it with actual players. This means that you aren't subject to going into looking for group, forcing someone to invite you almost and, you know, maybe having the chance of getting kicked or yelled at because you're doing too low damage or not enough healing or the mechanics wrong, etc. Etc. You can go in there with a party of npcs and kill the boss and see the end game cut cinematic, as well as complete the final quest of the uh zone, which I think is really really cool. So it is more casual friendly in this regard in comparison to when Shadowlands was out, because it didn't have this feature.

Speaker 1:

This is the first. This is the first iteration of this feature. It arrived in the War Within, it arrived in the very first patch of the War Within and I think it's something that is very underrated and actually not appreciated enough. In my honest opinion. I think it is very more casual friendly. I think Dragonflight was casual friendly, but I think this is even more so casual friendly because you have Dells that can boost you up to this PvE item level that you might want, you might not. You can make gold from Dells, you can make gear or get gear from Dells. Dells are the way to go if you are a casual player. It really really is. So I think that's kind of what I have on it.

Speaker 1:

I don't really want to get into the pve as much because I don't want to say anything, that might just be completely wrong, but no matter what, it is a hundred times better than what Shadowlands, like casual friendly player base, is looking for, because Shadowlands was not casual friendly at all. It really really wasn't. So I would say that it's a hundred times better than what it was back in Shadowlands, which is great. That's very good and I think that that's what needs to happen essentially. Next, I want to go into this one that kind of links with it. But day one, normal sweating is wild.

Speaker 1:

Recently returned, like a few weeks ago, um, and was super excited for undermined as I was looking. As I always loved goblins, this guy's completely different to me. Um, made a fresh goblin rogue and have and have had fun playing it. Decided to check out the new ray today. That's really good. I'm really glad that this guy's come back and he's enjoying it. Made a fresh Goblin Rogue and have had fun playing it. Decided to check out the new raid today. That's really good. I'm really glad that this guy's come back and he's enjoying it.

Speaker 1:

My God, do people hate having fun in this game? That's the next line and I do agree with him. You might think that I want to argue this, and I do at some point. But I do agree with him that so many people kind of hate the game, or they don't hate the game, they hate the people that they're trying to play with. But the thing is, if you hate the people that you're playing with, then you shouldn't be playing in MMO, which is ridiculous. Multiple groups fell apart after a single wipe. People complained about other people's item level. People upset that people don't have every mechanic memorized on literal day one.

Speaker 1:

I think that it's tough. You can go in there with very I believe you can go into a raid with very minimal knowledge and be able to do the raid. I believe that and I know that because last uh, last patch, I had a guild that I joined every now and again for pve and they were a very good guild, very, very good guild. And this guild did normal and started to do heroic and they even wanted to do mythic, but they didn't. They just didn't have the numbers. Um, I helped them with normal clears, I helped them with heroic clears. I was literally just like if you need any help, if you need the numbers, invite me, I'm good to go. Um, I walked in, didn't know any sort of tactics and did the raid. Very simply, you know it really wasn't that tough raid. Very simply, you know it really wasn't that tough.

Speaker 1:

Um, I think that people need to take a bit more of a relaxed approach to it, especially if it's on normal. Look, if you're doing heroic progress or mythic progress, yes, you would expect people to know their stuff okay, that's fair enough. But on normal, people are just looking to maybe get some gear, maybe just to see the bosses have some fun, etc. And that's what normal is, in my opinion, same with looking for rage. You should just be having fun and messing about.

Speaker 1:

Basically, worst one for me was just a normal clear getting to third boss and having someone literally pull out my DPS in chat and vote to kick me. It was our first wipe on the boss and I was focused on learning mechanics although I'm also new to the spec and learning my rotation. This is fair enough, but you, I don't know, it's a tough one. If you're going into a raid setting, you would understand that people have some good understanding of their rotation. Okay, now, look, I don't know what this guy plays, but I'm going to assume it's a rep paladin, because he has posted this as a rep paladin. Okay. So in my honest opinion, you're they kind of have a point because you don't need to learn your rotation as a rep paladin. You have very few buttons, and I mean that as nicely as I can. You don't have a lot of buttons, so your rotation is a lot simpler than most. Okay, now I get wanting to learn the mechanics and you're a bit scared, so you might not be hitting the boss as much or focusing as much on that, which is fine. But you would need to see the uh details and the damage breakdown or the like logs ascension and see where they came in damage for me to give a accurate response on this, which I can't.

Speaker 1:

But look, in normal sometimes people are obviously going to call out others when they wipe. And it's shit, it really is shit. They're always going to be looking at who's bottom DPS if someone's not healing enough, and you know multiple bits and bobs. If someone wipes the raid, it's like, oh, get them out of here. They don't know the mechanics. And the raid it's like, oh, get them out of here. They don't know the mechanics. And it's like, well, they'll know. Now they've just wiped the raid doing this mechanic badly, they'll know not to do that next time you know it's one of them things. It's stupid. Um, I'm just looking for advice on what to do here. The campaign literally requires killing a raid boss. But looking for raid is only first few week bosses. This week people are sweating normal so hard. It's not even fun to try to progress.

Speaker 1:

Mythic Pugs are impossible to get into if you aren't playing a meta spec or overgeared. So I can't gear that way. I know I can do some gearing in Dells to try and push my item level up a bit, but aside from that I guess I just have to wait to progress. So firstly, depending on the boss, you can do the story mode of the boss, and I believe it's to kill Gallywix. I have no idea, I would assume it does. But you can do the story mode of the raid and this is located outside the raid instance. Ok, so it's not directly outside the raid instance. There's usually like a little bit of distance from the directly outside the raid instance. There's usually like a little bit of distance from the npc in the raid instance. Um, but yes, you can do this.

Speaker 1:

As for gearing, maybe the the best way to get into mythics is to make your own. Okay, if you make your own and start inviting people of lower item level, that you would think, oh, I don't care about item level, we'll get the like job done, that's fine. But if you make your own and then you're suddenly like, oh, this guy's item level is too low. Oh, this guy's like an ellie shan, all I want is like a rep paladin or a warrior or whatever you know, then suddenly you're thinking the same way as these people who are making the mythics. So it's not really fair, is it to call them out but not call yourself out on it? And don't get me wrong, I've done that. I've done that when I've made mythics.

Speaker 1:

Genuinely, the higher you get, the more meta you want to get, which is fair. I think. Lower mythics I couldn't give two shits Anything below a five. I'll just be just be like yep, you've signed up, enjoy, it's one of them. Things. Anything like above an eight plus is when I'm like okay, I'll maybe consider like mythic or like meta comps being better.

Speaker 1:

But I'm really not too bothered and, to be honest, last season I really didn't care what was meta, what wasn't, I just invited something or someone who looked good. Essentially it's like yeah, you're a decent mythic rating, you've got good gear, sure, come along. As long as we had a heroism in the group, it didn't bother me. So it's tough, it is tough to gear. Um, so it's tough, it is tough to gear. But my honest opinion of it and my sort of idea make the mythic groups yourself. Okay, try and find one or two people that you can always like do a mythic group with and that have that as a sort of baseline or a foundation for going forward, because this, I think, is the best way to gear, and this is what I did last season as well.

Speaker 1:

I found a small group of people that were doing mythics. This is from the same guild and I enjoyed their company. I enjoyed playing the mythics with them and we had a very good, solid, like sort of a group of five in the end and it was very fun. Now I know that this isn't available to everyone, finding a group of five people to do a mythic with, but if you can even find just one person and have them as sort of like your mate that you can talk to, have fun with while doing the mythics, that's good enough. Honestly, I promise you that is good enough.

Speaker 1:

Um, so that's my advice make your own mythics, in my opinion, and if that isn't working, I I really don't know what to say to you. Um, I really, really don't. Uh, I cleared dells easily, so I guess I'm just lost as to how I'm supposed to learn group content when it's gatekept trying to find a guild. But my work schedule makes it difficult. It's because it's the state of the season or start of the season, and should I just cancel my sub? I had assumed people would be enjoying the raid and learning it at the same at the start of the season, but some people but people seem to be treating normal pugs like they're pushing for server first. I just want to enjoy my gobo themed patch.

Speaker 1:

I think that it's a mix. I think, yes, people want to just do the raid and get it over with, and people rush that content, which I don't agree with. I really don't agree with that. Personally, I think that the content that's released is going to be released for a while, so there's no need to rush the content. And this is why people get annoyed and it's like, oh, the game's dead because people have rushed the content. And this is why people get annoyed and it's like, oh, the game's dead because people have rushed the content and essentially um done everything that then needs to be done. And it's a ridiculous thing. But if you're saying you cleared delves easily, you tell me, are you clearing like plus or like 12 delves constantly, every day, like with ease? It's not taking you like a while. If so, then fair enough.

Speaker 1:

But for mo, for group content, you need to have the patience, because there are so many people out there that want the best specs, the best classes, the highest item level. You know, they want you to know all the mechanics, they want you to be the best at your class and all of that shit. And it's just like, yeah, whatever, um, make your own group. Genuinely I cannot stress this enough make your own group and then go from there, start that up, because once you've made your group a few times, you'll get a few pieces of gear and then you can start, um, looking to join other groups because you've got a higher item level and stuff. And then it's like, oh, okay, they might accept me now, and if that doesn't work, keep making your own group. Then you get to dictate who joins, who leaves, uh, who you kick, etc. Etc. Now everyone has a right to play the game how they want.

Speaker 1:

I don't personally agree that people should be sweating the content on the first few weeks. Genuinely, unless you are race to world first sort of level, I don't think you need to sweat the content on the first few weeks. I think it's ridiculous. But look, that's all I can help with. People need to be more patient in the game. They really do, because it is ridiculous and I think that that patience is lost. Um, and it's an actual art form to have in the sort of mmo games now and the people will act like dickheads. People will be stupid, and I don't get it when it is a mmo, a multiplayer online game. Um, it just baffles me. It really really does. So I don't get what people are on about, but I think that people do need to be a bit more chill when it comes to these sort of things.

Speaker 1:

Um, I get if you're doing heroic progress, mythic progress, whatever it might be, but enjoy the game. Don't treat it as like oh my god, I have, I have to do this. Have fun with the game, and I think that's what a lot of people have missed out on over the past few years of playing World of Warcraft genuinely. This goes for classic as well. This isn't just a retail thing. So many people mid-max classic and it's like, yeah, great, you're mid-maxing like a 20-year-old game.

Speaker 1:

Now I get people do it, but not everyone is doing it. If that makes sense, not everyone is going to be doing it. So I don't know. Enjoy the game. That's all I can say. But that is where I will end it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the social medias, stuff constantly happening on there, as well as the Etsy shop multiple things being put up when they're completing stuff. A Charlemagne weapon was actually recently done and put up on Etsy, so do check it out. It's really cool. It's one of my actual better pieces of to this date and I'm really happy with how it turned out. But thank you all very much once again and go avala friend. Goodbye all. Thank you.