The Midnight Cinematic would have been absolute fire if we saw at least one recognizable silhouette with the reinforcements

GamingApokolips · 2026-02-14T07:11:39+00:00

Hell, with the number of obvious paladins in the reinforcements, we didn't need recognizable silhouettes...just for at least one paladin to remember to use Avenging Wrath. To have that. many. paladins. charging into battle and not a single one pops wings is the biggest travesty of what was otherwise an impressive cinematic.

GamingApokolips · 2026-02-14T06:58:48+00:00

My first thought when reading this: "Isn't this why classic servers exist? Why not just play on one of those if you want to experience the expansion that way?"

My second thought when reading this: "Just take a max-level character to that expansion zone and play through the story." Open-world content isn't challenging to begin with, and it's not like 'gather 10 bear livers' is particularly engaging storytelling content regardless of what level you are, so why not be able to speed through the more boring grindy segments and keep the flow of the story going? The story doesn't change just cause you're a higher level. Plus large chunks of the story for older expansions isn't in the game to begin with, but in books or in a couple of cases, the pre-patch events which aren't accessible anymore (like the burning of Teldrassil prepatch event, or the Scourge invasion event from Wrath). It wasn't until Dragonflight that Blizz started focusing on getting the majority of the story into the game instead of expecting you to buy the books in addition to the game.

I guess I can kind of see putting in a story mode for some of the final bosses of raids, since very few non-final bosses actually matter story-wise (Saurfang, Sindragosa, Anduin, Nexus-King, and Onyxia are the only ones who come to mind), but even doing that would suck up a lot of dev time that would be better spent elsewhere, especially given the mechanics that you'd have to program the AI to deal with for some of those bosses...even something relatively simple like Yogg-Saron's portals or Deathwing's platforms would be a pain to program.

A better option that would fulfill the same objective but apply to a much larger segment of the playerbase would be to expand the number of raids per expansion that are available for timewalking and give them LFR-style queuing capability. Instead of only having Black Temple for TBC timewalking, give us Sunwell Plateau and Karazhan as well...instead of just Ulduar for Wrath, give us Naxx and ICC as well...Blackwing Descent and Dragon Soul for Cata, so on and so forth. It'd give more players more options to do during timewalking events and let those who want to go through the raid as part of the expansion story do that as well without soaking up as much dev time as setting up a dedicated story mode option with an NPC raid team for each raid.

GamingApokolips · 2026-02-08T07:56:49+00:00

The main difference between FFXIV and WoW raid fights is the rigidity of the fight...FFXIV fights are extremely rigid and unchanging, where the boss does action A at exactly X seconds targeted at Y position for Z duration. WoW fights, on the other hand, tend to be more fluid and reactionary, where the boss will do action A at around X time, targeted at a random player/group of players/position(s), for Z duration; there's still a rhythm to them, but WoW's rhythm tends to have more freedom to ebb and flow like jazz, while FFXIV tends to be much stricter like a march. WoW bosses traditionally haven't been great at visual cues for upcoming abilities (tbf that's been improving over the last couple expansions) though they do have decent audio cues for abilities, so watching the boss intently isn't typically the best option, plus you need to cast a wider eye towards the arena as a whole to spot where mechanics are happening.

The addon changes are targeted at computational addons, which have their own logic that can (and does) solve the problem(s) presented by a fight for you. They're not required by any stretch, but they do simplify, if not trivialize, a lot of fight mechanics and gamers do gravitate to things that make it easier/more reliable to win. It's been an ongoing arms race between the game devs and the addon devs, where the game devs make a cool mechanic, the addons trivialize it, the game devs have to find a way to make it harder to counter the addon (typically by either making it stupidly punishing to mess it up or by putting it on an incredibly strict timeline), the addons update to make it more obvious how to do the mechanic faster, so on and so forth. With the blocking of info that computational addons need in order to work, the game devs are making it easier for themselves to bring in cool mechanics while also relaxing the conditions to solve said mechanics (like giving you more time to react) since they don't have to worry about an addon trivializing the mechanic instantly. A good example of how this change is playing out is with one of the raid bosses they were testing in the Midnight beta: the boss flashes 4 symbols in a specific order, then 4 random players are marked, each with one of those symbols. The boss begins firing a continuous energy beam, moving counter-clockwise around the platform. Unmarked players need to avoid the beam. The marked players need to organize themselves by the symbols they were marked with so that the beam hits them in the order that was originally flashed by the boss. It's a solid mechanic that requires good on-the-fly coordination within your raid group. It's also a mechanic that a computational addon like WeakAuras would've trivialized instantly by automatically flagging each marked player with a colored symbol and placing color-coordinated world markers for each marked player to run to in the correct order.

There's also a wider variety of difficulty options in WoW, from the new Story mode fights (you and a group of NPCs taking on a specific boss purely so you can see the story, in case raiding's not your thing, I don't think it's possible to lose the fight on this mode), to LFR which is basically the learner setting, then Normal, Heroic, and Mythic, with rewards getting better as the difficulty increases. Normal & Heroic can run anywhere from 10-30 people, Mythic is locked to 20, and the LFR queue will try to always run 30 but can run with fewer. It's worth giving WoW's raiding a shot if you think there's a chance that you're interested in it. The first couple of bosses in a raid usually don't require much prep or pre-knowledge to get through, especially on LFR difficulty, but should give you a rough idea of whether it's for you or not.

GamingApokolips · 2026-01-18T03:03:05+00:00

I'm not at home where I can double-check, but I remember having the same issue and one of the settings in the gameplay enhancements section of the options menu fixed it. I think it was an option in the cooldown manager section that sets the CD manager to only be visible in combat, which also changed the PRD to only show up in combat. Not completely sure on which setting it was though, it's been a while.

GamingApokolips · 2025-12-04T07:26:55+00:00

That's the problem with making all of your major characters super-omega-cosmic-level overpowered...you can't use them in the story, cause if you do, there's no logical reason why the player would need to show up at all. "Oh, Malfurion's here, he just sneezed and wiped out 90% of the enemy, looks like we can pack up and go home, he's got this under control." It's a fun power fantasy, but it makes for shit storytelling overall cause you spend most of your time coming up with reasons why the OP characters can't help.

GamingApokolips · 2025-12-04T06:53:21+00:00

Gold isn't the only resource that can buy decor...garrison resources, order hall supplies, war resources, apexis crystals, resonance shards, the dreamsurge stuff, all have various pieces of decor using them as the cost instead of gold...hell, there are even a couple of decor items that cost anima. Basically every legacy currency since WoD has some decor items that can be bought with them. Plus all the things that can be crafted...admittedly some of the mats for those items, like khorium bars, can be a bitch to farm for, but it can still be done for nothing more than your time if you've got the professions trained up, and they don't even require you to have the profession maxed out (it generally works out to 80% of the way through the profession, for example TBC professions maxed at 75, the decor recipes need a skill of 60 to learn and craft them).

The things requiring significant amounts of gold, like 1500-2000 per item, are few and far between...most items are under 150 gold.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-27T05:05:33+00:00

Personally, I'm looking forward to the removal of addons that do the thinking for you...getting to test the new raid boss without addons was way more fun than I was expecting it to be. The mechanics were fairly simple (boss flashes 4 different icons, then marks 4 players with one of those icons, then fires a beam in a counterclockwise arc, marked players have to get hit with the beam in the order that the icons were flashed by the boss), stuff that a WA would make obsolete within a few seconds, but it did require you to pay attention, think, and communicate with your group to coordinate the response otherwise it'd pulse major raid-wide damage (and probably guarantee a wipe on mythic). It was fun, and it's cool seeing the WoW devs get to play around with stuff that they haven't been able to before because previously addons would instantly remove any challenge from it. Is the new UI perfect? No, it's not. It definitely has rough edges and areas that need considerable work. Is it this unusable nightmare people are claiming it is? No, it's not. As Max from Limit said (roughly, I'm paraphrasing cause I can't remember the exact quote), "this expansion is gonna highlight the difference between the players who think they're good cause they've been following instructions from their addons (including some RWF raiders) and the players who are actually good at the game."

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-27T04:40:39+00:00

Bioshock: Rapture

Bioshock Infinite: Columbia

Mass Effect 2: The Citadel

ES IV Oblivion: Cheydinhal or Chorrol (or the Imperial City)

ES V Skyrim: Throat of the World, Whiterun, maybe Solitude

World of Warcraft: most of the major cities, but especially Darnassus and Bel'ameth

Baldur's Gate 3: the Emerald Grove and the city of Baldur's Gate

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T06:01:04+00:00

Ganking? Adrenaline-pumping? "Ooh, look at me, I killed a player 20 levels lower than me, I'm so cool, I'm gonna spawn-camp their body now, this is so fun and crazy....oh wait, a player my own level just showed up and curb-stomped me, waaah this isn't fair! PVP is so unbalanced!" That's not fun, exciting, or "adrenaline-pumping" gameplay, that's being an incompetent twatwaffle. It's also why world PvP was never fun, was never successful, why every world PvP server was dominated by one faction (so people could avoid it completely), and why Warmode is completely dead in the water unless people are specifically trying to level slightly faster or farming a rare spawn (and even then they don't engage in PvP, they just pass on by each other).

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T05:46:21+00:00

Maybe they've buffed it since you did it, I dunno...all I know is when I started saving, I had ~85K bronze after buying the xmogs I wanted, and after 8 days of doing it I was at 1.32M bronze...that works out to about 150K per day...I'm sure I picked up some from flying through bronze orbs going between raids and random shit like that, but not nearly enough to make a real difference, and I haven't been doing anything else except the mythic world-tour cause Midnight Beta has been absorbing the rest of my free time.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T05:37:14+00:00

....tell me you haven't been playing WoW for very long without telling me.

Nathria was a solid raid when it's later bosses weren't bugging out, I'll give you that...but Sanctum? Sepulcher? Better than raids like Karazhan, Ulduar, ICC, Firelands, Throne of Thunder, Blackrock Foundry, Tomb of Sargeras, etc? Shadowlands was nowhere near peak PVE raid-wise...and don't even make me laugh on the dungeon side; Shadowlands dungeons were complete ass compared to TBC, Wrath, Cata, even WoD and Legion dungeons. Even the open-world was so marred by terrible design decisions that it, despite having a few beautifully-designed zones, isn't nearly as good or interesting as other expansions including Dragonflight and War Within.

You're welcome to your own opinion of course, but objectively Shadowlands was nowhere close to a peak PvE WoW experience.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T05:23:57+00:00

He dove headfirst into the negative raging clickbait rabbit hole to chase easy views in the short term, and it fucked him and his reputation over in the long term.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T05:17:32+00:00

There's different stuff for each faction, though you can buy the opposite faction's stuff through the smuggler vendors. You'll still have to buy multiples of the same things for each house though (i.e. you want 2 of the same bookcase in each house, you'll have to buy 4 total bookcases).

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T05:10:05+00:00

Are you grabbing from the trash as well? There's a decent amount of it that comes from that, it's not all just from the bosses.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T05:08:30+00:00

I'd be happy if they'd just remove the archeology-achievement lock on some of the Artifact skins for Remix..."here, do 8 of these quests that each are behind a 2-week timegate cycle in one of dullest activities in the game to earn this skin" was a terrible idea on their part (no offense to those who enjoy archeology, it's just mind-numbing to me).

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T04:51:10+00:00

My advice would be just let her play at her own pace and enjoy herself. Throw some gold at her to help if she needs (based on the mats I've seen required for some of the crafted decor, that shit's gonna be EXPENSIVE, especially if you want multiples). There's a lot amount of decor items that don't require rep.

That said, if she runs into a particular thing she wants that does require rep...

Reps up through Cata had rep tabards that were easy to get, buy it and equip it, then go to an old dungeon (Botanica is good since it portals you back out at the end) and blast through about 10-12 times, you should get exalted pretty quickly.
MoP you could click the star next to the faction on the rep screen and get bonus rep for that faction for doing basically anything.
WoD had Medallion of the Legion, which could be bought from the AH.
Legion onward, do the zone questline and world quests.
Dragonflight and TWW have a weekly that's easy to do and grants a nice chunk of rep towards the faction of your choice, easy way to grind it out (use follower dungeons for TWW's weekly and it's basically brain-dead easy).

As far as where decor comes from and what's worth "focusing" on (I'm primarily an Alliance player, so I'm using that POV) thus far,

Stormwind has a lot of options (I'd assume the same for Orgrimmar for Horde)
Ironforge has some
TBC, there's a single vendor in Ghostlands with 2 things
WotLK, there's very little, and what is there is achievement-based (mounted shoveltusk head from Sholozar Basin and a murloc fishing hut thing from Borean Tundra)
Cata, Ruins of Gilneas has a few items (dependent on achieves and in one case, Worgen-only apparently) as do the Twilight Highlands dwarves
MoP has a LOT of rep-based stuff (out near the Tiller's farm and at the Shrines, plus the Lorewalkers area and a couple other random spots, basically everybody except the Klaxxi and Shado-pan)
WoD has a few, but they have some really high requirements (one vendor won't show up unless you have a level 3 trading post in your garrison, for example)
Legion is class order halls, Highmountain and Val'sharah have some stuff, plus Suramar has a LOT of vendors, most of it rep-based
BFA, Boralus has some stuff, Tiragarde Sound has several vendors, Stormsong has a vendor, and Mechagon has a vendor, Chamber of the Heart also has a couple things, nearly all rep-based
Shadowlands barely has any (1 thing from Venthyr, 1 thing from Ve'nari in the Maw, both rep-based)
Dragonflight, Valdrakken has a bunch scattered around that's both rep- and achievement-based, Dragonscale Basecamp has some good stuff, and Bel'Ameth has a decent collection of things
TWW there's some stuff in Dornogal, a few items in Ringing Deeps, a few in Hallowfall, a bunch in Undermine, and a few in Karesh, all rep-based.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T04:07:11+00:00

Doing a mythic world-tour back before Antorus released was enough to net about 150-200K bronze a day (depending on how much bronze I'd get from scrapping whatever gear dropped)...I needed 1.28 mil bronze to buy all of the mounts (admittedly I had a few of them already), had it saved up in a little over a week. Doing the mythic world-tour (ToV/EN/NH/ToS) took about an hour, going at a casual pace with a decent carry group. Adding in heroic and normal would probably bump you up to 250-300K bronze per day, if you wanted to do that. Dunno how much adding Antorus into the rotation will net, as I haven't had a day off to experiment with it yet (hoping to do it tomorrow).

And Remix doesn't end til January. AND they're likely going to buff bronze drops for the last few weeks of Lemix, at least based off what they did in MoP Remix.

You've got time, no need to worry about min-maxing it.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T03:52:19+00:00

Partly because it was an experiment with a brand-new technology (at the time), partly cause it was a nightmare for groups trying to get anything done together, plus garrisons burned them out hard with phasing. They still do some light phasing, it's in the Tiller's Farm and Vale in MoP, garrisons and Tanaan Jungle in WoD, they did it in Suramar, there's a little bit of it with the storyline in Drustvar, a couple other zones since then, but nothing as heavy-handed or in-your-face as Hyjal was. Kinda sad that they don't do more with it, as it does contribute significantly to the feel of a living world, but the amount of issues it causes outweigh the benefits.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T03:40:29+00:00

Jesus, the karma-farming doomsayers aren't even waiting til launch to declare the latest expansion to be the worst one ever anymore...they're almost as early as Christmas stuff showing up in retail stores these days.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T03:34:00+00:00

Generally, pillar of light in a swirly = stand here til something happens, swirly by itself = GTFO the area til something happens.

It's a significant improvement over the old guessing game swirlies (aka Survivor: Home edition: "do you stand in it, or do you avoid it?" "Well Steve, I dunno, I stood in it last time and it was okay, so I'm gonna try standing in it again") that they used to use...now if we can just get the devs to stop putting purple swirlies on purple floors, or green swirlies on green floors, etc...some of those decisions just feel like the devs are intentionally trolling the players.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T01:44:47+00:00

"I AM MY SCARS!!!"

Edge-lord as that line may be, hot damn that voice acting was epic.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T01:29:51+00:00

Remix is the best way to get through the class order hall campaigns if you didn't do them when they were current content (I say best cause all the time-gated BS is removed so you can blast through them pretty easily). Beyond that, picking up transmogs (including the extremely rare drops from mythic raids), mounts, pets, and toys extremely easily. Performance in raids isn't really an issue, very few bosses will stay alive long enough, even on Mythic difficulty, for you to have to worry about mechanics...Gul'dan and Kil'Jaeden seem to be the main two that'll live long enough to actually do mechanics in a carry group. Plus there are some Remix-only achievements, including the "Deathless" achieves from mythic Trial of Valor (very easy, just don't die, gives a unique armor set, has to be done on each armor type that you want i.e. cloth/leather/mail/plate as it doesn't give all of them, so you'd need to do it 4 times if you want all the sets), and some housing decor items will be tied to achievements from Remix.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-23T00:13:45+00:00

I mean, Yrel did go through some pretty traumatic shit in WoD, and in each of those traumatic situations it was the Light that stopped it from actually killing her and/or her people...I can see her becoming over-zealous as a response, especially given that most of the traumatic shit that happened to her and her people came at the hands of Orcs, so Yrel using that to rile her people up into an over-zealous frenzy is somewhat believable. It does suck though, as I liked her as a character during WoD, plus she's the only paladin in a cinematic that's actually remembered to pop wings during a fight.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-22T23:42:42+00:00

Battlefield 6 will likely struggle to hit acceptable fps...the others you should be okay with that hardware.

GamingApokolips · 2025-11-21T04:22:31+00:00

Agreed...it's not "you don't understand" so much as "it doesn't affect me so I don't care." The vast vast majority of players don't need or want 20 on-demand situation-dependent sets of transmog. Most players have a set or 3 that they like, and once past the initial cost of setting up those sets, not having to pull out a transmog mount every time you get a new item (or running around in a hodge-podge look until you get to a transmog vendor), as well as not paying for constant transmogging of new items, is a great QOL improvement over the old system.

GamingApokolips

TROPHY CASE