Rise of Azshara Experiences So Far

Community General Discussion
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Cross-posting my reply to another thread with a few clarity edits.

I’m seriously disliking it. The story is stupid and runs on idiotic contrivance. No showdown between the two fleets that were literally the entire reason we went to KT/Zand, Azshara has zero reason not to just re-flood the place, kill everyone, and pick whatever she needs off the corpses, Mechagon has been lost for ages within throwing distance of Kul Tiras and close enough to interfere with the sea trade routes they invented, and the war storyline basically just stopped entirely for these sideshows. Pretty much nothing about it passes the ask-an-8-year-old test.

Nazjatar is almost as much of a horrible vertical labyrinth as Suramar, with even less actual content. The mobs are absurdly dense, directly populate main roads, have arbitrarily large HP bars, and still aren’t all that dangerous, so it mostly just takes forever to whittle them down while your HP barely or never budges from 100%. Vash’jir was a better Nazjatar than Nazjatar.

Still up in the air about the essences, as nearly all of them are gated by time or BGs, but I haven’t bothered binding the one we got from the quest. Benthic looks like the entire manapearl currency will be obsolete the moment the raid hits, with basically nothing else to use it on. M+ S3 affix looks like it’s going to be a simultaneous grab bag of every obnoxious mechanic they could think of.

I’m using the last of my gold for one AH token. If the raid isn’t the most amazingly fun thing ever, I’m out. This patch doubled down to a painful degree on every one of the worst decisions of the rest of the xpac, and I’ve hit my breaking point.

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I got a question.

HOW THE HECK DID PRICELLA ASHVANE END UP IN NAZ’JATAR DESPITE BEING BROKEN FREE BY THE HORDE AND IN CAHOOTS WITH SYLVANAS.

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How did the story get to where it started at? When did Azshara get the tidestone? When did the Alliance beat the horde back enough that they were chasing the last of them across the ocean? Seriously, what is even going on?

Nazjatar is awful. Mobs aggro for no apparent reason, you get swarmed constantly, the terrain is a nightmare to navigate, some of the world quests are so ridiculously bad that I refuse to even do them (jumping jellies is a hard NO), having a Jinyu companion with a voice that doesn’t really match the character riding back and forth on my screen on a gigantic mount like it’s griefing me everywhere I go is ungodly annoying, and the character I started it on felt like a fresh 120 again the second I went out there despite the rewards not even being upgrades.

So in short… I don’t know why I’m there, or what I’m doing, and there’s nothing enjoyable about trying to find out. Frustration barely even starts to cover it, I don’t think I’ve ever hated added content this fast. It’s frustrating, it’s ugly, and it’s not fun, and the idea of beating my head against it for weeks or months as the thing to do is just…no thanks.

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The game bugged out several times trying to use my mount on water.

After I worked around the poor programming it was okay.

Seems like you are asking us to compare Mccain orange juice with a knock off brand. Its okay but its no Tropicana OJ.

I think the game needs some serious soul searching as the repeated formula is being exhausted.

I hope the new raid and dungeon really deliver. Especially the raud, raiding has been pretty underwhelming this xpac.

Thanks for trying at least.

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Haven’t been to Mechagon yet but spent ~4 hours in Nazjatar.

Can’t say I’m impressed with the art as I spend too much time watching the pathways to avoid pulling mobs or falling to death. Complete with constant camera angle swiveling and getting eye strain headaches. Guess I need to find the highest perch around and sit an look for a while.

Unimpressed with travel just like the first 2 zones of Argus. Up, down, around, over, and back again to move 10 yards. 10 minutes running circles trying to find :star: mobs that could be in caves 2 levels down or on top of rocks 3 levels up.

Mob density is bad when AoE abilities are part of your core rotation and apparently can pull mobs from 10 yards or more away in 360 degrees of your character.

Monk abilities move you up down or around in the water which makes combat annoying. Movement being roll makes dodging in water annoying.

Latency makes trying to zap arcane blobs impossible for that one runechest quest.

Combat against mobs that tickle or hurt a little but lack mechanics isn’t engaging. Combat against mobs that hurt more than a little without mechanics isn’t engaging. Particularly with inflated health pools. Combat against lethal mobs that have abilities that can’t be interrupted, are immune to stuns, or happen to often to mitigate are fine in 5 man content with a tank. Feels bad when no one else is around and you have to LFG/phase to complete.

Finding a hidden WQ is one thing. Getting a bunch of junk drops that no one understands the uses for (even on 3rd party sites) isn’t a fun kind of puzzle for everyone. Random drop items with 24 hour durations tied to playing wheel around the mrgrrl vendors but only when the special vendor is up is pretty much worthless any other day of the month.

Nazjatar would probably be okay to grind manapearls with flying or if it was totally underwater and allowed swimming like Vash’jir. Without flying it’s way too boring content wise and convoluted to travel through for the pittance of reputation offered.

edit 1:

Mandatory Follower use and leveling to progress the story, and therefore likely the rewards/WQ/Reputation? Beyond not being cool.

edit 2:

Got essence, tried the extra button a few times. It didn’t mesh with the spec at all, didn’t feel like it added any meaningful damage or mitigation, and basically didn’t feel like it added anything to the game play other than having a new button just to have a new button. Ignored it completely after the first ~5 minutes.

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To be honest? It’s annoying.

I was done questing. Now I’m not.
I was done with World Quests. Now I’m not.
I was done leveling the Hearth of Azeroth. Now I’m not.
I was done leveling my profession. Now I’m not.
I was done farming faction reps. Now I’m not.
I had three characters ready for and participating in M+. Now I don’t.

I’m not quite sure how, but rather than feeling like there’s more to do, it feels like I lost what I accomplished, and I don’t recall this happening with either 7.2 or 6.2.

Mid-expansion zones should be more of a diversion than a power progression path. See also: Netherwing, cloud serpents, Timeless Isle (catchup gear only, and maybe 1 weekly boss), Argent Tournament. Stuff to do that doesn’t interrupt dungeons and raids by saying, “Hang on, you gotta do this to operate at your best!”

It also seems as though different people are playing different zones in the same zone. I see comments about the puzzle quests in Nazjatar. I did everything I could find in Nazjatar last night and have no idea what they’re talking about.

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loved playing nazjatar last night for over 4 hours, had a blast doing everything, also had a blast in mechagon.
but now its just back to regular wqs and dailies so… not so much enjoyable

and idk where the timeless isle feeling is in nazjatar…

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I’m bloody well loving it.

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Other than a seriously over tuned battle pet WQ, I think it’s a pretty big step in the right direction. The WPVP is fantastic and the new essences add more to the gameplay. I really love the ripple in time teleport effect. I like the new puzzle WQs, I don’t like to be handed prizes for doing nothing.

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lol so you play wow only for m+ it seems
thats your problem. Wow isnt just M+, its everything else you dislike. so perhaps you need to find an other game

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Isn’t the point of an MMO to always have the road of progression? Like, you’ll never just be 100% completed with a game like this.

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I am incredibly disappointed in how you handled the Tauren Heritage quest. I have been waiting patiently for… 8 months now? Since you first released the images of the new armor. All we were told was you would need to be exalted with thunderbluff and 120. Finally after months and months it’s released and I can’t start the quest?

Why? Because I’m not exalted with ZANDALARI to start THE WAR CAMPAIGN PRE-REQUISITE. WHAT?! So I’m now locked away from my TAUREN heritage armor because I didn’t want to farm the ZANDALARI rep?!? There have been a lot of reasons to get pissed at this expansion, but I kept my sub all the way through because I could overlook them. The only thing I’ve been excited for 8 months in the making is now gated behind months more of farming world quests to get exalted.

I’m done, this is ridiculous. I’m not going to commit hours, weeks, months to farming a rep I never cared about to unlock an unrelated questline, to unlock my heritage armor.

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Azerite Armor is still a thing so it’s still a trash patch.

Content is honestly worse that the prior patches, and nothing was done in the slightest to alleviate the abysmal class design the passed few expansions have caused, yet it was talked about at Blizzcon.

Not to mention the prime reason for me to even resub was the Heritage armor for Tauren (and Classic obviously). I’m locked out of doing the quest for some reason, even though I have the two requirements already fulfilled.

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No, I play it for raids, too.

It’s just annoying that all the group content gets put on hold so everyone can spend a few weeks playing alone.

That belongs at the start of an expansion, not in the middle of one.

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How did this make it past the already low-bar you kids set on the PTR? These zones are cancer.

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So far I’ve seen Nazjatar. Haven’t been to Mechagon yet.

Nazjatar looks quite nice. As a leveling area it reminds me of the final tier endgame zones in Legion. That’s a good thing.

Some of the monsters there were quite dangerous. At one point I almost died! Found myself running from a 4.5 million health elite and 5 adds. And as I was running I kept picking up more adds. Real sense of danger there. Fun stuff!!!

I’m not very impressed with the initial Heart of Azeroth essence for arcane mages though. The firebolt it shoots has a nice graphic, but the damage is quite underwhelming. Even worse it looks like I’ll be stuck with it for all of 8.2 since according to Bloodmallet it sims the highest.

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I mean im with you there, as I also play this game mainly for raids and dungeons. But I’ve realised theres actually a ton of people that enjoy playing WoW alone and just doing the little things like wqs and such. I am like you, I enjoy group challenging content but a lot of people dont

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dont use bloodmallet, ask your class discord

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I spent 4 hours (I think) running around, taming pets, doing quests and exploring, but I did noy have time to check mechagon.

I dont like Nazjatar a bit, the terrain is a mess, Argus was decent but I just cannot stand how the naga zone is designed, way too many cliffs, the terrain is so uneven it is frustrating to go from a to b and the amount of elite mobs is way too high (along with mobs with inflated HP) but, to be honest, it is as I expected it was going to be. Elite forces all over the place in an ocean floor like zone.

My only true design compain is how both horde camp’s guards are too far away from their respective campscamps, you can easily run into them by mistake.

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I’ll like both zones far more once I can fly, to be honest. I still feel like a rat trapped in a maze, which is unpleasant. It feels like it’s going to take quite a while to get to that point though. At least I’m already friendly with the Ankoan, so I’m on my way, but there’s just so darn much to do and I don’t have a ton of time every day to do it. x_x

I just want to be able to fly already!

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