Back In The High Life Again

My name is Bob, and I am recovering Altoholic. It is 10 days since I last played World of Warcraft. This is a state of affairs that I never expected to find myself in. I have played solidly for 7 or 8 years and have never deliberately stopped playing this game, of course I have been on vacation, but I was always desperate to log back on.

Today is patch day 5.3 is available in Europe, and I am wondering why I should bother to logon tonight. The issue is whether my current disenchantment will be solved by the changes. What is it that is stopping me playing?

1. Alts, MOP goes down in the History of WoW as the least Alt friendly expansion.
2. Gearing, Rep and Dailies. These are clumped together because that is what Blizzard did in this expansion. Gearing needs Valor, and Valor needs Rep, and Rep means Dailies.
3. LFR, LFD and Queueing, Everything involving group content means long waiting times, with the exception of Scenarios.

It is not the most comprehensive list ever compiled but it gets down to the core issue that everything involves sucking the fun out of the game. What is in the new patch that fixes these issues?

1. New Scenarios, this is a good start, new content with minimum queue times, extra Valor on offer
2. Quest Campaign Escalation, more new content
3. Lorewalker Cho, not sure what this is, but it sounds like additional content with more Lore and Archaeology maybe
4. New Battleground, not of any immediate interest.
5. Wrathion questline, moving closer to the Legendary
6. Brawlers Guild, not currently a member
7. Class Changes, no real game breakers there, just minor balancing, mostly for PvP
8. Quests, No prerequirement to be Revered with Golden Lotus, for August Celestials and Shado Pan dailies. Minor change that should never have been in place to start with.
9. Quests, A test of Valor reduced from 6000 to 3000. A move to help Alts
10. Quests, Strength of One's Foes, Sigil of Power and Wisdom, drop from all bosses in Mogu'shan Vaults, Heart of Fear, and Terrance of the Eternal Spring. I had no idea that they only dropped of selective bosses. Might explain why some people drop out of LFR after a boss kill.
11. Creatures, Lesser Charms are going to drop of anything Level 90 and above. Are we really short of these at the moment?
12. Rare Spawns will now drop Brawlers Guild invites.
13. Loot Specialisation, will allow for the collection of Off-spec equipment, which is a welcome change.
14. LFR Bonus rolls, will have a new system to prevent a long running streak of bad luck
15. PvP changes, that will encourage people to enter without a full set of the latest Conquest gear.
16. XP requirements for 80-85 reduced by 1 third. This is Blizzards latest move towards making the content more Alt friendly.

There are plenty of changes that sound tempting, but not actually there is not a huge amount of new content.

I started this post pre-patch and will finish it having spent 2 nights on the new content. I sampled one Heroic Scenario, 2 Scenarios as part of the Cho Lorewalker new questline, Helped out in the Barrens/Durotar and finished with a nice pair of boots for helping an old man up a mountain.

From what I have read since there is possibly a bug, because I did not get any quest for the Battle of Sen'jin Village. I did get the Weekly quest, for collecting 150 Oil, Lumber, Stone and Meat and in case you are unaware it comes with a nice title, Hordebreaker.

 

One of the big new features, which was not documented is the use of Radical Mojo, which is the currency of the Darkspear Rebellion. I have on seen it awarded as part of the Weekly Quest Battlefield:Barrens. It would have been nice to have seen this currency as Bind on Account instead of Soulbound, because this gear is aimed well and truly at the Alt end of the market. Those new Level 90's that have access to the new improved levelling curve will be able to combine the Radical Mojo with the Kor'kron gear that drops fairly regularly. The result is iLevel 489 gear for:

• Belt
• Boots
• Chestpiece
• Gloves
• Helm
• Leggings
• Spaulders

Sadly you can only get one piece a week, and I don't expect many people will be making boots when the Path of the Last Emperor is awarding iLevel 502 gear.

 

Having completed Battlefield: Barrens, it appears there are 3 ways to gather the resources.

1. Visit the 4 areas in the Barrens and kill mobs and loot crates
2. Escort a caravan of your faction, or destroy a caravan of the opposing faction
3. Kill Rares

The easiest method appears to be the Rares. They frequently appear, and are trackable on the Map. Simply fly around help everybody else involved in the kill and then loot the body. They do have a nasty sting in the tail and they recommended to do in a minimum party of 3. I presume they are like the Isle of Thunder Rares and they get more Hit Points when there are more people attacking.

 

For now I am back, and I will review the patch again in a few days, but I can see at least a month of fun ahead levelling 6 more characters at my own pace.