Twinsies!

I finally have a bat like Vivianne, except mine's a plauguebat which I'm guessing's why it has extra arms? Still, though, my first bat! It's exciting! Until I begin endlessly farming multiple recolors of the mount from various rares. (I'm looking at you, Blistermaw.)

SOMETHING'S NOT QUITE RIGHT...

The thing is, I hate being manipulated emotionally. I am typically cynical and skeptical of most things, particularly when it’s meant to evoke an emotional reaction. I’ve already been evaluating what both sides are doing and why, and I feel like motivations are weak on both sides but more believable on Sylvanas’ part thus far. I don’t know why Anduin makes the uncharacteristic move to interfere and sabotage the Horde’s mining operation in Silithus or why he acts like it represents an open declaration of war on the part of the Horde. But then, I don’t really care about Anduin in particular. Maybe he’s working though his daddy issues, it’s just not my concern or interest.  Sylvanas anticipating Anduin’s rush to aggression seemed odd, but I don’t really know the timeline. Maybe my character talked to her after she discovered Anduin had sent spies and saboteurs. Blizzard likes to pit the factions in conflicting storylines (airship attack in ICC, anyone?) so it’s difficult to parse out canonically what is happening when.

The Warbringers: Sylvanas cinematic was upsetting. Mainly because I felt the intent was to make me angry at Sylvanas, and at the same time her action (reaction, even more stupidly) was such a ridiculously stupid move militarily that I felt like the entire cinematic was inexplicable. The consensus of people upset with the cinematic seems to be that it represents shitty writing on Blizzard’s part. That is such an amazingly unsatisfying answer to me, and I sincerely hope and choose to believe that a more complete picture will emerge as the story progresses to launch.

Here is what I know:

    NElf:  “You can kill us, but you cannot kill hope.”

                Sylvanas: “Can’t I?”

By burning their tree? Uh…no? No, you can’t. I know this, there is absolutely no way that Sylvanas does not know this. As a matter of fact, she acknowledges it in a subsequent quest later: “The Alliance will retaliate. They will come for us. For me. For you.”

EXACTLY. Burning Teldrassil won’t kill hope, but it will galvanize and unify your enemies against you, so there’s that. 

She then attempts to rationalize the attack: “But they ARE bleeding. Their anger will prove a weakness, not a strength, in the war to come.”

Uh, no. Just… no. The entire theme of Warcraft from the beginning has been “Unite, or die”. The Orc clans had to band together, different races formed the Alliance, both sides worked together to defeat the Lich King and the Burning Legion. It’s just ridiculous to imagine that THIS time, the Alliance will actually be weaker as a united group who now has one clear purpose. 

Here is what I think:

                This is not Sylvanas. I know that sounds like a hypothesis crafted by Ancient Azerothian Theorists, and I am usually the first person to answer those hypothetical questions “Could it be possible that…” with “No. No, it couldn’t. Just no.” I am, again, cynical and skeptical and if the actions taken by Sylvanas in that cinematic made any damn sense at all, I wouldn’t be grasping at straws. Honestly, though, I kind of have no choice, because there aren’t clues being dispersed to discover what is actually going on, or some group of insane super-sleuths like the Lucid Nightmare group would already have figured it out. Seriously, the puzzle that led to that mount involved using the damage of three pet battle attacks. I pet battle all the time and I couldn’t tell you the amount of a single hit. Or most of the names. Really, it’s kind of frustrating that these people aren’t working on solving climate change or something because holy shit.

Or:

                Sylvanas is being controlled by something or someone else. Mind control is a priest thing, yeah? It doesn’t seem like Anduin’s style, but then again, neither did the spying/sabotaging in Silithus, so maybe? Maybe someone not involved, though, that just wants the two sides to fight. Velen? I don’t really see what would be in it for him. Is Wrathion still wanting a war after Legion? Or is he satisfied with the way everything turned out? He definitely wouldn’t have a problem with meddling, though. 

 

That’s all I've got. I really hope it doesn’t turn out to be another “Hush, Tyrande” or “I’m just proud of my king *sob*” because I wasn’t prepared to like BfA but that doesn’t mean I want to hate it, either.

Unfinished Questlines

I'm planning on writing about this week's prepatch quest (as soon as I finish doing the quests and get a good screenshot), but in the meantime I thought this was funny:

On my way over to the this week's new quest I noticed this old quest along the way that my Shaman had apparently never completed. Better late than never, I guess? Assuming I ever get around to it, anyway.

#ImStillWithHer

So, I am not a real fan of the faction conflict in Warcraft and I play both factions. But Jaina's purge of Dalaran in Mists made my Alliance toons feel less relatable, and Legion's faction bickering cemented my feeling that the Horde's actions just made a lot more sense to me. And so the pattern continues, because faction conflict right after the joint defeat of the Burning Legion makes absolutely no sense, but at least I can believe that Sylvanas is mistrustful, pessimistic, and prefers to be proactive rather than reactive. On one hand, her belief that Anduin will attack the Horde unprovoked seems a little batshit-crazy, but at the same time, by playing Alliance toons I know that Anduin sends SI:7 to spy on the Horde in Silithus and his champions to sabotage the Horde mining operation (killing goblins incidentally), which does seem to be batshit-crazy. 

Then there's the War of the Thorns (Week 1) quest text, such as: 

Is there really a good reason (besides "NElves") all of the Alliance quest text reads like racist propaganda? It seriously makes me feel sick to my stomach. The Horde text doesn't sound like this. When I see Alliance quest text like "we are not savages like our enemy", it reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode where Picard is being held captive by a Cardassian, who brings his daughter in where Picard is being kept. The daughter asks if humans have children, and is told "Yes, but they don't love their children as we do." (paraphrasing, I'm not going to look it up.) It's just not a good feeling, and probably is the reason I played my Alliance toons very little in Legion. So I guess if Blizzard's goal is to force us to take sides, then mission accomplished. I'm not going to abandon my Alliance toons, but I won't be able to play them without a significant amount of eye-rolling. And if they were allowed to defect then they would all be saying:

Too Long in the Spin Cycle?

Ghost Raptor before the patch:

Ghost Raptor after the patch:

Well. At least it matches how puny my DPS feels post-patch. Yay?

I Am Not a Fan of Change

But I am trying. So, the things I like about the pre-patch: 

1.

It shows your pets when you switch them now! Or this may be an addon I have, I'm not completely sure because I had to disable around half of them the first time I logged on. But it's kind of cool either way!
2. I did three emissaries this morning and had over 1000 wakening essences so I went to see what class legendary I would get when I rolled the dice, and SURPRISE! I get to pick a legendary roll item for whichever class I want now! Nice! Also, and this doesn't really count as a change but it does have to do with the shitty talent changes that I am unhappy about so I may as well count this as
3. since it's a discovery that makes a shitty change not-so-shitty. So, in addition to a roll item for whichever class you want, you can also buy any specific legendary for your class. I already have all of them in void storage, but I noticed that Soul of the Farseer gives you the talent Echo of the Elements, which means I can have it and still choose Elemental Blast on that talent tier, which is awesome because I was really missing it in my rotation*!

I don't want to enumerate the changes I am unhappy with because I'm really, really trying to be as positive as I possibly can, and I've been bemoaning the loss of Gusto for a long time already. I'm going to play Elemental Shaman regardless so I may as well try to figure out how to do that the best that I can. But since I suck at positivity, I have to say I'm surprised that Stormkeeper didn't get a name change to go with the new icon when it was added as a talent. I'm thinking more along the lines of StormBorrowerIfItsOKICanWait. I can see how that might be a little cumbersome, though.
My brother thinks the change to Flame Shock is good because Elemental Shaman aren't supposed to be running around dotting everything anyway, but it's really disappointing to lose an instant cast that used to mean I could tag maybe three falcosaurs before an Alliance hunter barraged them all, but now means that all I can do is stand still and cast, mostly finishing off kills for said Alliance hunter. I can't get the hang of the cooldowns, either, because now. everything. feels. so. ungodly. slow.

I did find out that I'm still able to grind Honor and get the final tint for my artifact weapon, so that's another thing I'm happy about! So I guess that makes it

4. things. However, I have to get to Honor level 80 and I'm at 54 (took me forever to find that out) and doing all of the PvP WQs and one extra prior to reset this morning didn't net me a single Honor level, so apparently this is going to take forever. But it's PvP week so we'll see.

*R.I.P.

SHOO BEE DOO, SHOOP SHOOP BEE DOO

I noticed the Reins of Poseidus on the AH for less than half of the 100k it had always been listed for, back when 100k was a lot of gold, so I went ahead and picked one up. Now I don't have to be in Vash'jir to call upon my Sea Pony.