Ever wondered why leveling in World of Warcraft’s retail version feels like a breeze compared to the classic experience? Join us at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind as we dissect the striking differences between retail and classic leveling. From the thrill of overcoming challenging mobs to the underwhelming ease of the retail journey, we leave no stone unturned. Plus, we tackle the aesthetic dilemmas of zones like Ringing Deeps, where visual clarity competes with the underground atmosphere, and debate the delicate balance needed to keep players engaged and immersed.
We also dive deep into the evolving mechanics of WoW, contrasting the current leveling system with beloved expansions like Wrath of the Lich King. Addressing forum criticisms and baseless trolling, we underline the necessity of constructive feedback, especially when it comes to the experimental Season of Discovery in Classic WoW. With a call to action for listener feedback, we explore the future potential of this unique mode and look forward to hearing your thoughts. Don't miss this thought-provoking discussion, and be sure to connect with us on social media to stay updated with our latest content!
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
Ever wondered why leveling in World of Warcraft’s retail version feels like a breeze compared to the classic experience? Join us at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind as we dissect the striking differences between retail and classic leveling. From the thrill of overcoming challenging mobs to the underwhelming ease of the retail journey, we leave no stone unturned. Plus, we tackle the aesthetic dilemmas of zones like Ringing Deeps, where visual clarity competes with the underground atmosphere, and debate the delicate balance needed to keep players engaged and immersed.
We also dive deep into the evolving mechanics of WoW, contrasting the current leveling system with beloved expansions like Wrath of the Lich King. Addressing forum criticisms and baseless trolling, we underline the necessity of constructive feedback, especially when it comes to the experimental Season of Discovery in Classic WoW. With a call to action for listener feedback, we explore the future potential of this unique mode and look forward to hearing your thoughts. Don't miss this thought-provoking discussion, and be sure to connect with us on social media to stay updated with our latest content!
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
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. I grab a bottle or a pint to sit back and enjoy this week's episode. We'll be looking at a couple of the forum posts and essentially we'll be going over one to do with retail and one to do with a season of discovery. The season of discovery one is very short. The retail one is a lot longer, so let's jump straight into it.
Speaker 1:
The first one I want to touch on is retail. So leveling, I am not engaged. My character is so powerful I can't even cast my rotation and every time I gain a level I I do get weaker but honestly can't even tell because of how insanely strong I am. To begin with. Why are mobs doing three second casts, dealing 40k damage on me when I have 1.5 million health? Why do they have a quarter of my health, even when they are full mobs? This is insane.
Speaker 1:
I am inclined to agree, to be honest, for the first part of this statement. So mobs in retail are a lot weaker in comparison to those that are in classic. But retail's game isn't about the leveling experience. It's about about the end game product, and the end game product is mythics, raiding and PVP, and this is the obviously the end game, or retail Retail is very much all about that. Classic, on the other hand, is the opposite. Classic is all about the journey, it's all about the leveling experience and the mobs that they can bring. But I do agree with it. I think that mobs in retail should be a bit tankier and they should be, uh, tougher to kill, because it allows people to test out their rotations and basically learn the class that they're playing, rather than steamroll everything and you finally get to do your endgame content. But it's boring because, oh, your full rotation isn't as enjoyable as you thought it was. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:
The Ringing Deep looks like it's filled with sunlight. Have you ever heard that the sky is blue due to Rayleigh scattered through the sun and therefore no sun slash, not blue air, what I don't know. Now I know you're presented this as a positive, as we don't know, as we don't like being underground, while also making the underground expansion. This I do not understand. It's like you're unwilling to commit to your own ideas and it doesn't look good, it looks stupid. It should be bright, sure, that's no problem, but just putting sunlight with barely any source in here just doesn't look good.
Speaker 1:
That, the ringing, oh no, the ringing deeps, is this second uh zone. That's underneath. No, not chasmadan um, I forget the name of the aisle. It's the second zone that you're going to be entering in.
Speaker 1:
Essentially and I can kind of see his point it shouldn't be bright because there is technically no light source. It should be more of the like how duskwood was going to be. So what duskwood was going to be was very dark and you would need professions in order to see, because there were professions where you could craft your own torches and stuff like that, where it would have lit up the area around you, and that's what duskwood would have been. It should be a zone where the candles are sort of lighting your way and if you go off the path it is a bit darker and it is a bit more tough to see. That's my honest opinion with it. But honestly, people need to see. So if you just have a zone where it's completely dark and people aren't able to see their characters or what is happening, then people aren't able to see their characters or what is happening, then people aren't going to enjoy it. It's as simple as that. I understand that, like the whole ambience of it or ambience ambience of it doesn't feel right. But you know, come on, it's a game. People have to see their character. People have to see what is happening around them, what mobs are around them, their layout of the land and stuff. Otherwise they're just not going to enjoy it. There's nothing to explore because you put it all on the map before I even get a chance to find it organically all towns, all important quests and everything else. The random quests that are discoverable are generally poorly made. Even the ones with the grandma telling me stories bored me to tears. What's the grandma telling him stories? I want to do that quest. That sounds really cool For those who don't find questing enjoyable.
Speaker 1:
I'm one of these people. I don't find questing as enjoyable as other people. But try and read the quests, people. But try and read the quests. Actually try and read the quests and learn what is happening within the lore itself, because that will engage you a bit more in it. But I can understand if you're not sort of a quest person in these sort of games. I'm just following the arrow, while getting slightly peeved that sometimes there's a silence mechanic. Everything I do instantly destroys an enemy. Everything centres around me, scales around me. There's no reason to speak to anybody, no reason to explore. Multiple times I've entered dungeons and been immediately capable of destroying everything because suddenly it scaled down to me being solo. I get it's a quest thing'm supposed to explore, right? What fun comes from exploring the dungeon with friends if everybody have already been, have already seen it solo? So what they're doing is, I think they're pushing more of the narrative, or the lore narrative in dungeons and raids. Hence why they're doing the solo raid thing, um, where you can do it as a five player group or whatever it is. Um, this allows people to just experience the lore of the raid without actually having to do the raid as a normal raid, if that makes sense. Um, so I think that's what they're doing. Uh, like, in the coming expansion.
Speaker 1:
I don't feel strongly towards anything that he's saying. I can kind of understand it from a point of view, but from my perspective, if you want to do quests that are that require groups, you'd want to go on to sort of classic era or hardcore wow or anything along them lines, because nothing scales to your level at that level or in them wows. So you're going to be looking at more classic era, in my honest opinion, and that's where you should be going for these types of quests, because that's just where they sort of live. Now Retail doesn't have. I'm never surprised at finding anything except these worthless chests all over the place. I don't have to pay attention to the story. I can't make any choices. I constantly feel uncomfortable with the choices I am forced to make.
Speaker 1:
What you mean, like in classic, where you have to kill 40 boars just for no reason. Or in the humans case, you have to literally go and kill the leader of the defias. You know the people who built stormwind city after it collapsed to the orcs. The reason that you know you're killing them is because the nobles of stormwind have been lied to by a black dragon and essentially told that they shouldn't be paid and they are simply just stonemasons who wanted to be paid by these rich people in Stormwind. But the rich people kind of went no, we're not paying you. And then you know the Defias, or the stonemasons guild as they were known, turned into the Defias and were like well, we're just going to sort of be dicks then, and now you're just slaughtering them. But I suppose you're okay with that decision in classic, right? You know, if you're not reading the quests then you're not understanding what's actually happening. This guy probably reads all of the or doesn't read the quest in classic, and yet he's fine with every decision that's being made there. It just makes no sense. It really doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:
Where was I? Sorry, I feel like the true strengths of Wo forced allies with all manner of creatures who were willing, who were always my sworn enemies are blowing it all up and making the whole experience super, super, super awkward. All the good stuff is completely buried. I never feel threatened due to flying mounts plus invisibility. Even when I occasionally pull a level 80 rare mob which, by the way, I love I can just run away, invis, mount up and get out okay.
Speaker 1:
Yes, this has happened throughout world of warcraft and as wow has expanded, you've obviously got new abilities. But ever since wrath of the lich king, mages have had invisibility. So since Wrath of the Lich King, which, you know, a lot of people deem as one of the better expansions, you could always do this. If you pulled something accidentally, you simply blink away, invis and then fly away. You could do that in Wrath, you can do that in Cataclysm it it's a Pandaria Wall of the Drain or you know, you name it. You could have done it. The only expansions that you couldn't was Classic and TBC, so I'm not too sure about your worry there.
Speaker 1:
In my opinion, and I think you know, that's always going to be a problem You're always going to have spells that can get you out of trouble in any sort of MMO. So you can't really balance it around that, can you? It has all the things that make retail leveling bad, but dialed further up. This is a big. This is a game design issue, not a content issue. I'm probably too late, way too late, but this is just not it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:
As a WoW player for 20 years, invited in late vanilla alpha, this, I think, is the first leveling experience where I have to question if I can even do it Torturously. Perhaps I will try. I'm invested, but I can't lie. This is pretty pathetic. I don't really know what his point here is. I get that he's not engaged in the leveling, but what was engaging about? You know, dragon flight leveling. What engaged him about dragon flight leveling?
Speaker 1:
He needs to give points. Okay, um, these points are in comparison to what he enjoys. So, let's say, because the first point that he made was that mobs had 40k or dealt 40k damage and he had 1.5 million health, okay, I currently have, let's say first, um, as soon as dragonflight released, you would have about about 80 to 100k I think it was around, and the mobs would do about 5k damage. You know something along them lines. They weren't any threat by themselves. So what's the difference? Why did he enjoy that but not the war within, like alpha leveling it's?
Speaker 1:
You need to give your points as to why you would enjoy your leveling experience in comparison to why you're not enjoying it, because all you've said is it's bad, it's bad, it's bad. You get these shitty chests. Um, the rares aren't anything to be worried about because I can just invis, you did all of this in like dragonflight. So what's the difference? It makes absolutely no sense. He needs points. He needs punctual points where it's. This is what was good and this is what I enjoyed and this is how it's changed. Hence why it's bad, you know. So I was scared to fight these mobs like in dragonfly, but now the normal sort of mobs that you come up with or come up against um in normal questing are a lot weaker, hence why I don't feel as scared, hence why it twice more boring. You know multiple things like that. Um, yeah, he just needs to make more points, essentially, once I actually make, like, get his point across. It is ridiculous.
Speaker 1:
Moving on to the next one, is that this person I actually know, this person who was posted on the forum, I actually know I'm not going to give their name because they are essentially just a troll and they are essentially just, well, in my opinion, just scum, um, that's the best way to put it. But essentially it's about season of discovery. How do you, uh, how do you people still play sod? A lowest effort, disaster in every regard. It was obvious since the reveal at blizzcon, yet you keep playing this. You, you people, are the problem. Enjoy your recolored armor sets, I guess. Lol, classic is dead. You folks deserve the garbage. No-transcript is essentially just one of the trolls that I met back in Classic or who was on my realm. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 1:
Season of Discovery, I will say, is not for everyone. I think that it's certainly a unique taste. It's a different twist on Classic and I think that if they re-released Classic again that everyone would get bored immediately and be like why isn't there any changes? This is to kind of dictate or see how people would react if there were changes in classic now. Could season of discovery have been better? Yes for sure. Is it good? That's for the individual to decide. Is it something that is going to provide good information, to blizzard on what is good about it and what is bad and what the player base would want and what they wouldn't want absolutely?
Speaker 1:
But to make a post like this where there's just no context at all, there's just people like this guy just slandering everyone and saying why do you still play it and stuff. We could say the same to why he still plays like classic. Wow, it's because he's stuck in his old ways and because he only wants to play a certain like character and spec and just be an absolute dickhead. Really, it's absolutely ridiculous. Um, he is a troll. He just simply is a troll. So don't feed it, don't do anything like that. But it's just ridiculous. Like, why would you spend your time essentially writing this post when it has nothing like good about it, there's no information about it, there's no point to it, there's no nothing. Now you could obviously argue, argue. Why am I even talking about it? Well, because gives me some content to talk about it and it's someone that I actually knew from back in 2019 not personally, but they were on my server and knew of them essentially, and they were just dickheads. They were just a dickhead. Um, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy that this person's still going and is still the exact same. It's someone who you don't want to interact with and essentially just stay clear of. They're just a troll, um.
Speaker 1:
But as for sod, phase four is looking good. I think that phase four will be really, really enjoyable for those that still play season of. I might jump in and just level. I won't be doing the raids or anything, I might just level very casually, but it's looking good. I genuinely think that people who play SOD will enjoy the content at level 60. That's Molten Core, blackwing Lair. You know all of the old raids plus new ones, potentially Karazhan Crypts, maybe a Scarlet Monastery raid, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:
Hopefully, it's really good and those who play Season of Discovery will enjoy it, and I hope that it all goes well, in my honest opinion, for Season of Discovery, because I think that it's something that can be good, but it just I don't know it. It needs something. It just needs something extra. For me anyway, I know some people say that it's got enough and if that's fair enough, if they enjoy it, they enjoy it. That's where I'll end this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening over there and do check out the top of the description. You have something that you can leave a review, criticize, praise. Any ideas that you want to hear from a next podcast point of view, drop them there and I'll get right on them. But thank you all very much once again and go have a valour friend. Goodbye all, good night, thank you.
