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Husky_Khan

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder


www.windowscentral.com

Here's when World of Warcraft: Shadowlands goes live per region

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is releasing at the same time around the globe, coming to most countries on November 24 and the Americas on November 23. Here's when you'll be able to enjoy the new expansion based on where you live.
www.windowscentral.com

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands drops today and I haven't played the game in years but noticed this was the 8th expansion for the MMORPG.

Also... Grinding to Level Sixty? I must've missed a level cap crunch awhile back lol.
 
Val the Moofia Boss

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Husky_Khan said:
Also... Grinding to Level Sixty? I must've missed a level cap crunch awhile back lol.
Click to expand...

The level squish happened a couple weeks ago with the prepatch.

Starting with Wrath of the Lich King, it started becoming difficult to recommend WoW to new players, because all of the fun was at the endgame. No one does old content at level, and WoW didn't really have any interesting questlines until Wrath. So in order to have fun, you pretty much have to rush through leveling as fast as possible until you reach the current expansion content.

Wrath also added LFD, which allowed you to just sit in town queued for a dungeon while you alt + tab out and browse the internet until your queue popped, which was far and away the fastest way to level up. So people weren't really incentivized to do the questlines in the world anymore, unless they wanted to do it for the story (again, no decent stories until Wrath) or for a cosmetic reward. Furthermore, in Cata and MoP, the exp rates were changed so that even if you did a zone questline for the story, you would often outlevel the zone long before you finished the story, so you had to either decide to stick around for the story for subpar exp gains, or drop the story and go on to the next zone to keep leveling at a decent speed via questing, and at that point you mind as well just go back to town and queue for LFD anyway. And with each expansion added, the process only became longer for new players, so it became really hard to get new players up to level cap. It also didn't help that for years, the free trial only went up to level 20, which was not representative of the endgame experience at all, so people often just quit.

So with the WoD expansion, the devs decided to just give everyone a boost to level 90 so they can start the latest expansion's content right out the gate. This introduced new problems, where the story is extremely schizophrenic. "What is the Horde and the Alliance, and why should I care? Why are we going through this portal to this other planet? Who is Garrosh and why is he important?". WoD's questing content was actually pretty good, but then Legion came, and the questing was... pretty bad for new players. There was no linear story and each zone story was self contained, so the story was even more schizophrenic. "Wait, what happened to that Gul'dan guy at the beginning? I thought we were going after him? Why are we pulling weeds in the mountains?".

Another huge problem was alts. Even once you got your first character to level cap, in WoW it is extremely desireable to have at least another character, so you can do other faction content and be able to play any role in the game. And you only get one level boost per expansion, so you have to - you guessed it - arduously level up your alt character from 1 to level cap through an extremely schizophrenic experience.

So with Shadowlands, the devs have redone leveling. You now pick an expansion (ie, Mists of Pandaria), and then level up from 1 to 50 going through that expansion's story. And then once you hit 50, you're off to the latest expansion's content, Shadowlands. The story is still pretty schizophrenic, and if you haven't been keeping up since the beginning, you probably have to consult Nobbel87's videos to understand what is even going on. But at least you don't have to spend upwards of 100-200+ hours leveling to the content you actually wanted to do in the first place anymore. It takes you about 10-25 hours to get from 1 to 50 (older expansions take longer, new expansions are faster to level up through). And then the Shadowlands questing is done in about 10 hours.
 
Husky_Khan

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Actor David Harbour talks about how he lost a year of his life back in 2005 to World of Warcraft.

PC Gamer said:
"In 2005 I played the shit out of this game! It ruined my life for like a year. I mean, I was like out of my mind. I was wildly addicted to this videogame. I was a Night Elf warrior called Norad, and he was second tank of my whole guild."

Day, no stranger to WoW herself, asked if Harbour was a raider, and he quickly confirmed that he was, while his co-star Winona Ryder stared at him silently, with an intent look of concern fixed on her face. Harbour then explained that while World of Warcraft ruined his life, it took another, very different game to make him realize it.

"It's so funny, because I also played The Sims. You ever play The Sims?" he went on. "You could be an actor on the Sims. You can progress in your career, but what you have to do is, like, work on things. You have to work on your speech and on your body, right?

"I remember my avatar got to a certain level in his career, and I kept trying to get him to work on his speech. He was like a supporting player, but I wanted him to work on his speech and his body, and all he wanted to do was sit around and play videogames. And then I was like, whoa who whoa whoa, I had this vortex moment where I saw my life before my eyes."
Click to expand...



Meanwhile Winona Ryder asked the question, very slowly, "What... is... World... of... Warcraft?" and had a baffled/cringe look on her face the entire time.

 
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