World of WarCraft: Legion, breakdown and thoughts

 The Burning Legion has returned!

WE ARE NOT PREPARED!

Now that THAT is out of the way, I can resume.

It all started nicely. 6PM, Blizzard's GamesCom stream started, I got lost into all the information that was in front of me that I forgot that I have a Blog and Facebook page where I could write down few words in order to, maybe, get more readers. I started spamming our Facebook page and then I realized what time it is... Time to go to work, so... With me being late, you could have already snatched all these news from MMO-Champion and WoWhead but, regardless, I will post a breakdown of things that are interesting to me.

Next expansion's name will be "Legion" and new continent will be The Broken Isles. You guessed it right, we will finally be battling against The Burning Legion. Gul'dan has survived the encounter against Archimonde in Hellfire Citadel and has sinister things on his mind.

First off, we all know that during The Burning Crusade expansion, we killed Illidan. After Adventurers (Players) dealt with him, it was not explained what happened to his body. When it was announced at BlizzCon 2013 that Illidan may return because, as Chris Metzen stated, he is a "sucker for good redemption story" there have been theories about Illidan's soul being stored in Reliquary of Souls and that that was the way he will be "resurrected" into the lore, however... As it turns out, legend holds that Warden Maiev Shadowsong took his broken body to the Vault of the Wardens so that Illidan's dark, lingering soul could suffer the rest of his eternal sentence, along with his followers, the feared Illidari. Justice to be forever served…

Level Cap is increased to 110 and this expansion introduces 2nd Hero Class: Demon Hunters. As my friend said "As a Warlock who enjoyed playing with a Hunter, that sounds really interesting..." (greetings to Tsuki). Back when all was in it's speculation phases about Demon Hunters being next Hero Class, my hope about their introduction was something similar to the story of Knights of the Ebon Blade and their separation from The Lich King. Story starts when you are a member of Illidari forces and then through quests you get to the point where Illidan is dead. Using in consideration that faction has no leader, player choses to align himself with Alliance or Horde. That was my speculation but we will see how will they make it because it was announced that Demon Hunters will have a unique starting experience and that they will start at a high level.

It was announced that DHs will have 2 specializations. Havok (DPS Spec) and Vengeance (Tank Spec), they will have horns (with no horns as an option) and variations of tattoos on our bodies. Main resource for fueling Demon Hunter's spells will be Fury with Double Jump feature and Spectral Sight that will allow you to see through walls.

Garrison and Followers are a feature that are being brought to The Broken Isles in a form of Class Orders. You will be the leader of your Class Order and it will work in a similar way to Death Knight's starting zone where only members of your Class can visit your Order. Shaman's Order will be in a cave near The Maelstrom (because, Elements), Paladin Order will be under Light's Hope Chapel (because, Light), Warlocks will be on a Legion Portal World (because, they are dark and twisted bastards)... You aren't gathering Followers but Champions and they won't be arsed to be your slaves and do everything for you. They will help you find things and then you will need to get your shit yourself.

It looks like, instead of The Park in Stormwind, Dalaran will be flown to The Broken Isles, it will serve as main hub of the expansion and we will FINALLY see Alleria and Turalyon.

It was said that "we will be shocked"... What did Jaina do this time? She lost it, didn't she? Using in consideration that Khadgar is presented as the leader of Kirin Tor and Jaina dropped of the face of the earth... It's quite possible.

As we all know, in present Lore, Emerald Dream and it's corruption has happened so... "We go to Val'Sharah, a forgotten Druid refuge. The place Malfurion became the first Druid. We face Xavius, who is trying to unleash the Emerald Nightmare into our world. We enter Black Rook Hold." Is Xavius attempting to corrupt the Emerald Dream again? They already told the story about it through books and this would make a lot of sense if it was connected to Alternate Universe because, according to AU timeline, that part of the story didn't happen yet.

Another introduction are 36 Artifacts, one for each Character Specialization. Retribution Paladins will seek [The Ashbringer], Enhancement Shamans will be looking for [Doomhammer], Mistweaver Monks will go to Pandaria and look for Emperor Shaohao's [Sheilun, Staff of the Mists], Fire Mages will be burning people for [Felo'melorn], Feral and Guardian druids will be set on a path to get [Fangs of the First Nightsaber] which will allow them to customize their form.

Frost Death Knight will seek out [Frostmourne]'s shards in Icecrown Citadel and reforge them into a pair of Runeblades, [Icebringer] and [Soulreaper].
Blood Death Knights will be sent on a path to obtain [Maw of the Damned], two handed axe that steals the life force of it's enemies, bleeding dry anything it touches.
Unholy Death Knights get [Soulrend] (not much info about it so far).

This totally sucks because I had hoped (and still do) that Unholy Death Knights will get to reforge THE Frostmourne. Frost DKs go to Icecrown Citadel and look for Frostmourne's shards. They get them and out of those shards, they forge two Runeblades? Why? There has been several instances where shattered sword was reforged back to it's former glory, prime example being [Quel'Delar], a weapon of legendary fame.

In another news:

• Overwatch was added to our Battle.Net launchers;
• Patch 6.2.2 was flagged as "Release" on PTRs and we will get Mercenary Mode and Flying in Draenor really soon;
• WoW is down to 5.6 Million Subscribers which is down 1.5 million from the Q1 2015 call that listed WoW at 7.1 million subscribers.

For now, this is what interests me the most... If you want a detailed breakdown of news, check out articles of MMO-Champion, WoWhead or simply watch the recording of the stream...

One more thing. Webpage for Legion is up and running. You can grab wallpapers and learn few more things that weren't mentioned here...

Until next time...

The Hinder-lands...

Another zone bites the dust, another selfie is forgotten....

Starting the day off with a dungeon, we end up in Maraudon, a dungeon I personally really like, but Exodiä clearly hates. Luckily, it's a dungeon that's seperated into 3 different areas now, which means it takes no time at all. I do not like that direction, but I am not one to argue quickly.

Afterwards we entered the Hinterlands through a secret Dwarven tunnel, and cleared some quests at Revantusk, where the innkeep keeps losing his lunch... But good god, the Jintha'Alor quests were quite a pain. Up and down the same damn pyramid-style hill.... not something we enjoyed... though still better than Ghostlands.

We even made our first honor kill here when we were attack by a Druid. Overall there was a lot of alliance activity, but not much conflict. Eventually we summoned and murdered a spider... all in a day's work.

Arathi Highs and Lows

Good lord this zone.

Arathi Highlands used to be a zone I didn't mind that much back in the days... that has changed. There were roughly 30ish quests, but there was such a massive run around to get from one side to the other, only to walk back again... and again... and again. Last few quests weren't too bad at Faldir's Cove, but that didn't make up for the entire hassle.

At least the quests were limited in number, which another zone could learn something from.

Selfies are scheduled soon(TM).

Hillsbrad Foothells

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Redub never posts anything unless it's about the questing. Yes, we once again finished a zone, this time being Hillsbrad Foothills.

First of all, we had a special overleveled "guest" with us, Illinä, a blood elf mage. He's an old buddy of ours (and a massive wanker), and wanted to tag along from now, so we let him.

Starting off strong with one of the best quests so far... Being a quest giver. We met some... interesting characters along the way, some Dumasses, some Kingslayers, all idiots. All cumulating with the 'blowing up' of the "fingers" of Hillsbrad and the slaying of the D-1000... We'll be back to this zone, but not before we head on to Arathi Highlands and beyond.

As always, in case you missed our stream and want to catch up, here is a video of the session.

Two zones with one session.

We've made a big push this time. Neither the Scarlet Crusade in Tirisfal nor all those damn Worgen in Silverpine could (Shadowfang) Keep us down.

After finishing off our business in Brill, we were sent to the Bulwark. Lilian Voss apparently has some daddy issues, but she got over them. Afterwards, some worgen tried to infiltrate Brill, but we stomped them out.

Then came the time for Silverpine. Garrosh is still the warchief for some reason, and he called Sylvanas a bitch... it was AWESOME. After meeting Hatchet and complaining there was no Crank, we set off to the Sepulcher. That however, I would not consider the main event. We got sent back into Alliance territory into the Ruins of Gilneas to take care of business there.

Most shockingly, however, was the quest at the end of Silverpine. Not wishing to spoil, the plot twist, which was kinda obvious, was still a surprise to me. Eventually we wandered off into Hillsbrad, where we will be welcomed into the machine, next time.

And though we forgot it during the stream, we did make selfies of the zones. Tirisfal's was taken on the throne of Lordaeron, and Silverpine's was taken at Shadowfang Keep.

WE'RE BACK!

For those interested (if anyone is even watching this wretched blog) we are going live in few minutes.

We'll be resuming our session where we left off few days ago, Tirisfal Glades. Conclusion of that zone, hopefully.

If you ARE interested, then fire up your browsers and head to our Twitch Channel.

Look at all...

As a Gamer, this is a really nice time-period to be living. Looking back at current releases and games released in past year (or so), The Evil Within's hype dropped down, Dying Light still looks interesting and I love upgraded mechanics "transfered" from Dead Island games, Batman: Arkham franchise is getting better with each and every sequel (and a prequel), The Witcher 3 was reviewed as "one of the best games ever made" by GameSpot, GTA V for PC was released and Modders are having a blast with it and Assassin's Creed franchise just won't die (talk about milking a cow) as they released a next installment titled "Syndicate"...

As someone who likes playing games, I am thrilled by some announces and disappointed by others.

Back when Assassin's Creed's first game was released, it was good. Game became better (both Story wise AND mechanic wise) with Assassin's Creed II (and it's stand-alone expansions) but then, you could see that developers started choking out when Assassin's Creed III came out. They finished the original trilogy by killing off Desmond, the main protagonist, and then started "milking the cow" I mentioned earlier with each subsequent game that has the name "Assassin's Creed" in it. I didn't play anything past Revelations (except Rogue), and from what I've seen on YouTube (and reading the stories), in my honest opinion, III was mediocre, Black Flag was interesting, Rogue is (although having THE best optimized engine for PC and I can play it, surprisingly) the most boring of them all. The best example of the developers choking would be Unity and (although glitches were Patched), boy, did the reviewers and YouTubers had a field day with that game. Syndicate is a next chapter and we'll see what it brings.

The reason I mentioned The Evil Within is because there was a big ass hype going around the game when it was announced and even bigger hype after first level playthrough was released on the Showcases. Why? Because Shinji Mikami was behind the development process. For those that don't know, Mikami is father of Resident Evil franchise and, using in consideration what CAPCOM did with it, hype was there with a reason. Until the game was released... He was involved in development of Resident Evil 1 through 4 (and that was the last "true" chapter of the franchise) and I gotta say that, as someone who was loved RE 1 through 4, I was disappointed when The Evil Within, which was announced as successor to Resident Evil by some people, didn't turn out to be better than RE4.

Batman: Arkham series is one of the best action games made. I played Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and I liked the games for every minute I played them. RockSteady really did a nice one with this series. Sadly, I didn't play Arkham Origins nor will I play Arkham Knight for reasons I will explain later...

The Witcher is the game that I fell in love with after first few minutes into the game. I've heard my friend talking about the game when it was released back 2007., and being an RPG lover I decided to give it a try and I was hooked ever since. Assassins of Kings made me love the story even more and watching Gameplay videos for The Wild Hunt made me (figuratively) jizz in my pants.

Another fantasy universe I adored is Mass Effect. A complex trilogy (with 3rd game a bit bleaker than first 2) with fascinating storytelling and vivid characters. Played and re-played all games a few times already with plans to do it again soon... A "must play" game for everyone that loves Action-RPG. New game set in this universe was announced back in 2012 with planned release in 2016. Not much is known about the game at this point but, hopefully, it will be awesome as previous ones.

There are really nice games being released but, the reality of the situation is far more grave for most of us. As technology gets better with each passing month, our gaming rigs are becoming more and more out of touch and some of us simply can't keep up. When I bought my PC, it was a mid-entry gaming PC. AMD Athlon64 4000+, 3GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 8600GTS, WD 320GB 7200rpm and it serves me well even now with few modifications. By today's standards, my gaming rig became obsolete about 2 years ago when Crysis 3 was released and my PC started dropping frame rate on the first mission. About a year before that, my 8600GTS burned out and started showing artifacts on screen. After spending some time with inferior 6600GT (borrowed from a friend) I bought GT440 that I am currently using (rest of the configuration was not changed). I did, however, notice that I could not play games the same way I did when I had 8600GTS even though GT440 is newer and superior.

Games have lower FPS, they tend to stutter, loading time is bigger and that makes me think that it wasn't just my 8600GTS that broke that day however, living in a country that makes it hard to find stable employment, it is impossible for me to replace anything. And, once again, awesome games got released and are about to be released. Starting with The Witcher 3. I guess that's one of the reasons why I talked Redub into hosting these streaming sessions. Seeing how some streamers earn, literally, shitload of money and the fact that I love playing games as much as them, I figured that I will get to be as half as entertaining as they are at some point.

Ghostlands: Done. Next stop: Tirisfal Glades

The adventures of  Exodiä and Maruta continue!

We created a YouTube channel where we can archive our "travels". Sadly, we forgot to turn on Archiving option on Twitch during our time spent in Sunstrider Isle / Eversong Woods can be considered a "lost footage". We do, however, have archived videos of our progress after that zone. With few days in between the start and the end, due to schedule incompatibility and real life obligations, we successfully completed Ghostlands last night and, like with Eversong Woods, we marked our departure from Ghostlands with a S.E.L.F.I.E... Which got photobombed.

We then followed quest givers and class quests that we were offered which lead us through Orgrimmar, Shadowfang Keep and ultimately brought us to Tirisfal Glades. We are about half way there and our heroes are currently resting within Gallows' End Tavern in Brill.

In case you are interested what we went through, here are our documented journeys so far.

 

And, by the way, this was my experience bar (as mentioned at minute 32 in Tirisfal Glades video) where I needed 1 experience point for Level Up.

Intermission. Kinda...

I'd like to apologize for the lack of streaming in the past few days. I know that most of the streamers treat this as their jobs but, for us, this is just playing for fun and, it will most likely, remain that. We have Real Life obligations that can't be postponed and a bit of a scheduling conflicts that will, hopefully, be resolved soon.

We are still very young at all this and, I know that we don't have a Fan Base but, I'd like to ask those interested to "Favorite" our Twitch Channel so that you will be notified when we go live. You can also Bookmark this Blog because we will be posting here regardless of what :).

Also, I'll be posting a bit of our history tomorrow. How we got to know each other, origin of our "Group" name and such so... Tune in.

1 down, many more to go.

Well, we have started. Our lovely team of Blood Elfs marched through their starting area, completely wrecking everything in sight. From Sunstrider Isle to Fairbreeze Village and Farstrider Retreat, no quest was too small or opponent too strong.

Ending up at level 12 in Tranquillien, Ghostlands, we've stopped for the day. But not before taking a selfie at the border.

(✌ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞ TwoDumbFucks doing Horde Loremaster 1-100 (✌ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞

So... With a help of a friend, Redub, we are gonna stream some gameplays... Our channel name is UnitedBreakers, named as an homage to a name of the guild that we were both in. We will start with Horde Loremaster Leveling 1-100...

Choice for playing Horde characters is because we will be focusing on Loremaster Achievements (Questing) from the very start. Both of us play mostly on Alliance side, my Loremaster "chasing" is a work in progress on my own and since Redub did that with Alliance characters, twice, we will be experiencing the story from Horde perspective.

Since we play on different realms, I am on Sylvanas-EU and he is on Moonglade-EU, our characters will remain on realms we played until now because of easier transfer of resources (if needed).

I also added widget to the stream that can be found on the top right side of the blog so... Enjoy the streams.

Watch live video from UnitedBreakers on www.twitch.tv