WoW - 7 years of content in one weekend

I quit playing WoW sometime around Cataclysm. Back when everyone in the arena was a pillar-fucking frost mage, when LFR became a thing (and by 'thing' I mean massive clusterfuck of complete idios) and when I got too tired of grinding yet another set of top-tier items only to watch it become obsolete with the next content update. To be fair, the latter is simply how MMOs work, but I felt I was no longer the target audience. And that feeling was confirmed the moment they announced those fucking pandas.

So I cancelled my sub and endured seven years of family gatherings, where Claire, her sister and their mother would talk about nothing but WoW. Did you know warriors now do this and rogues can do that and now they're bringing back these guys and pandas aren't so bad and hey I got my first legendary and blah fucking blah, only interrupted by my occasional "I don't care", "I'm not coming back", "Please stop talking to me".

Fuck Pandaria with a rake!

It's one of the reasons why I hate this game so much. It's all-consuming. People get so stupidly crazy about it, they don't care whether you want to hear it or not, they don't care if you care, they just wanna talk about it. Things get really annoying when I have to listen to stories about the lore. I hate the lore. The lore is stupid. Hey, let's rip off every overused fantasy cliché ever, let's use everything in Norse mythology and change a single letter in the name of every deity, event and location, cram all the Asian stereotypes we can think of into one of the expansions and add a stupid race, which causes the community to get as racist and offensive as they can manage with their naming, that'll be fun!

I don't care about Illidan, Malfurion, Thrall, Jaina or any of these other cunts, so please shut up about it, stop talking to me and save it for a fucking blog or something. I don't read the comics, I don't give a shit about the novels and the only bit of WoW-related entertainment I willingly endure is the odd Dark Legacy strip or one of the videos by Carbot Animations. Look, I don't walk up to you and tell you how I find female armpits strangely and inexplicably arousing or how the number of "varieties" listed on a Heinz product is completely made-up, because you never asked and I presume you don't give a shit. So please extend the same courtesy to me. Shut up about WoW if I don't ask.

Wizard cat doesn't care if this offends you.

So, what the fuck am I even doing here?
Well, as you might have heard, I've been dicking around with one of thise weird little magic boxes, which let you play computer games on the go. These things run WoW and do so remarkably well. I had a fiddle with Claire's device (huehue), installed a controller add-on and the game looked, felt and played insanely good.

This blew my mind, because it goes above and beyond everything I have deemed possible in regards to 'mobile' gaming. I love my 3DS, but at the end of the day, those are games on a shitty, interlaced low-res screen with annoying jaggies and (often) simplistic gameplay mechanics. Sure, there's your Monster Hunter and Bravely Default, but you also get Miitopia and Tomodachi Life and other fun, silly time-wasters. Most of them are really great, fun games and I'm not knocking them. BUT - on a GPD Win I can play Dungeon Siege, Baldur's Gate, Wizardry 8, a modded Skyrim or stuff like Elder Scrolls Online and WoW on the go. Well, you'll want Wi-Fi for the last two, but you get the idea.

Suddenly I'm playing a fucking portable MMO. Not some dumbed-down shit like Phantasy Star Portable or Final Fantasy Explorers. Fucking WoW, playing like a 3rd person action game. And it worked stupidly well, especially on Claire's demon hunter, what with the double-jumping and gliding and shit. So I made the ultimate mistake. I went there. "You know... I've been clean since 2010, but I could totally see myself playing this on a portable device like that."

Daddy is back.

I checked back on my old account, then subbed to have access to my old characters, then set up the controller addon, played around for a little bit and ultimately put it all on the big screen. I still play it on the portable, as well, but heyho. Options and all that. I even rolled the character I was never allowed to play back in the day - a Tauren Paladin. Friends in the beta told me paladins are for pansies, so I rolled a warrior. Family told me they wanted to go Alliance, so I rolled a night elf. Now my friends and family are dead and cows can become paladins, so I could put everything into one new character. And I shall name him Impaladin. Because he's a paladin. And impales things. Cows aren't impalas, though. Ugh... this one may need some more time in the oven.

WoW runs at 45-60 FPS in 4K with all settings cranked up. WoW still looks shit in 4K with all settings cranked up, because it's so old and it was never pretty to begin with. So I lowered my expectations, went to Pandaria, being level 85 and all, and absolutely hated the shit out of it. The fucking cheesy music they play in every Chinese restaurant around here, the stereotypes, the cringy pretend accents, topped off by the dullest, most monotonous quest design you could get in an MMO. Quests always appeared in threes: Kill X guys, click Y things, rescue Z NPCs. Hand in, get three follow-up quests. Again and again. All the enemies died in two or three hits, they couldn't possibly hurt me and the only reason not to just finish the entire thing using only auto attacks is to speed things up a bit.

Transmogrification is the true endgame.

I was too stupid to bring any heirlooms or boosters and suffered through this crap for much longer than I wanted to. Orgrimmar raid was fun, though. I think I've only encountered one actual pandaren player, so far. A level 110 female panda, who could have destroyed me in one click (I'm on a pvp server), but instead of death I was treated to a /pet emote. Weird.

Warlords of Draenor was even weirder. Storm the dark portal with a huge army of NPCs, mash your AoE-button of choice, never be at risk, because you're always surrounded by dozens of virtual babysitters and get insanely powerful gear for every single quest. I liked some of the garrison stuff, even though I should have known that everything I did there was a waste of time, as the whole thing would be replaced by class halls in Legion. Quests still appeared in threes and NPCs never seemed to run out of follow-up tasks. Mind-numbingly easy and dull. I bumped into rare baddies highlighted with an asterisk on the compass. Those were fun, especially the boss monsters recommended for groups of three players. They were tough to solo, so that was a nice change of pace at least.

"FOR THE ALLI... um... actually, I think I've left the stove on."

At this point it wasn't possible for me to hate this game any more than I already did and I had alienated everyone in the guild to a point where they left me alone when they saw me log on. I jumped right into Legion when I hit level 98, then played the scenario stuff up to the part where Varian kicks the bucket. I never read the novels or comic books and the game itself did so little to make me care about the guy, I really didn't mind him dying. Massive coffin was a bit weird, considering he exploded into green goo, which was clearly left behind by the Alliance. Maybe they just put his favourite boxer shorts in there or something. Great production values, though! Cool cutscenes, finally some more story I actually got to see, even if it was all about some other guy again. WoW is always about Thrall and Arthas and Varian and a whole bunch of people and never about my character. I'm some random asshole who gets to help the main characters. Some RPG.

Fortunately, this was about to change when I got to hang out in the warrior class hall with "Odyn" and "Hymdall" and other suuuuper-inventive and original characters. That bit was cool, because for the first time, WoW was actually about my character. Go get an artifact weapon, go hire a bunch of guys and boss them around, go do some heroic shit. Still had to kill plenty of murlocs and other such boring crap, but heyho, it was still an improvement. With certain limitations. "You are my most powerful weapon", says Odyn, while my humble level 99 guy is surrounded by fully decked-out level 110 warriors with millions upon millions of HP. Yeah, I'm the tough guy around here. Sounds plausible.

The mighty Somethingsomethingstrasza, aspect of GO FUCK YOURSELF!

When I ran out of class hall stuff, I made the worst possible mistake - I picked Highmountain as the starting point for my Legion quests. This area is impossibly huge, there are 300 quests for every square pixel in the area and Blizzard are going out of their way to make you run around like an idiot as much as humanly possible. Wanna fly? FUCK YOU! You can unlock flying by solving ALL THE FUCKING QUESTS IN ALL THE ZONES! Meanwhile, enjoy walking around stupidly long, narrow, winding mountain trails, chock-full of fucking monsters, which respawn every 3-5 seconds. And once again - kill some things, click some other things, rescue some guys. Fucking everywhere. The variety was killing me!

Fortunately, after completely clearing three zones, the game allowed me to move on after only getting 'friendly' reputation with the remaining zone factions. Then I did the absolute minimum required for me to do at the Broken Shore until I was finally allowed into Argus. I was a fresh level 110 character with a gear score somewhere around... the low to mid seven-hundreds, maybe? I had a little over a million HP, with the average player around me sporting 4-8 million. That was on Sunday morning. Claire dragged me to all of my quest locations via druid taxi, grabbing every world boss, rare mob and treasure chest along the way.

The family calls it Argoose. Still not sure if that's a community thing or an inside joke.

A few hours later I had all my weekly invasions done, bought my first two level ~920 Argus items, then we flew all over the Broken Shore for a few hours to farm more chests and bosses. After spending thousands of nexus crystals or whatever it is you farm over there on level 850 gear we fired up the raid finder and played every single Legion raid. Started with the simple, harmless stuff and went all the way to Gul'dan and Kil'jaeden. For the most part, it was stupidly easy, but also a lot more fun than the casual raid back in Cataclysm. Kil'jaeden even required a bit of knowledge and I'm not ashamed to admit I caused a wipe on the first try, because I had no fucking clue what I was doing.

Raiding took about half a day, then my item level went up to just under 900. Claire needed a few heroic Legion dungeons for some quests, but it was now almost midnight, so there were no groups around. So we teamed up and 2-manned them (tanky bear druid + fury warrior). Odyn, Helya and Raven...something... vampire guy? They went down just fine with just the two of us in there. All I have to do now is find some legendaries and get a few more Argus items. I'm assuming the next content update is already being made, so my gear won't stay decent for very long. But getting from level bullshit to level awesome has never been so quick and easy before. I'm okay with that.

I'm gonna need mogging gear with higher-res textures, though.

I like to be one of those elitist dickheads, who tell everyone how "back in the day you couldn't just murder 20 mobs at once. There were lots of group quests and nobody could solo elite enemies. Maybe raiders, but noobs like you weren't cool enough to be raiders. Fucking welfare epix cunt" and all that. But to be perfectly honest, I think that right now WoW is probably the best it has ever been. Yeeees, there's a bunch of RNG, you don't know whether your next epic is gonna be just that or warforged or god knows what. Finding that next legendary may take a day, but it may also take for fucking ever. Thing is, though, everybody gets at least a certain level of awesomeness without being forced to turn WoW into a second job.

I never liked raiding with 40 people. I don't like raid guilds. And for as much as I've enjoyed my better days in the arena, having to fight week after week after week in order to keep up with the better players and to maintain a certain rating wasn't always fun. It was a chore. I went from complete worthlessness to reasonably well-geared over the course of a few days instead of weeks or possibly months. And don't gimme that "hurrdurr, back in the day you still had to work for your items" bullshit. So fucking what if you did? Folks seeking a challenge can still do the mythic raids with their guilds and get stuff, which is still a little bit more powerful and looks a little more awesome than its non-mythic counterparts. You're still the better player and it's not like the filthy casuals are taking anything away from you. You're just pissed off, because now they get to have powerful gear, too. Well boo fucking hoo!

Burn, cunt!

Legion is basically WoW 2. It brings back some of the best stuff from vanilla, BC and WotLK. The zones, signature items, bosses, even remixes of classic tunes basically remind you of everything you've done on WoW over the years. It's more of the same, but it's prettier, looks and sounds nicer. Of course this comes with the obvious downside that much of the classic content now looks really shit by comparison. Not that anyone still spends a lot of time there anymore these days, anyway.

And there's so insanely much to do! I may not give a shit about Pokémon-style pet battles, but some folks do and they've been a thing for years now. World quests and world bosses with massive rewards. The hunt for legendary items. Casual raids, which are easy to join and laughably easy to play, as well as hardcore raids for folks who seek a challenge. Claire and I are playing heroic dungeons without a group. Who knows, maybe we can take it to mythic ones when I get my legendary items. Battlegrounds now put everyone on an even level, much like Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2, so you have to win by skill (or flavour of the month) now, not gear.

It uses lots of pretty colours, too.

Finding a group for any world boss, invasion or other team-based activity only takes seconds now, thanks to the improvd LFP-tool. The auction house is more comfortable than ever, there have been lots and lots of little UI improvements over the years and WoW has never been so user-friendly and comfortable to play before, even entirely without addons.

I'm gonna get my legendary items next, gear up on Argus some more, then duel for a while, top the occasional DPS chart and that's the plan for now. Will I stick around after that? I dunno, probably not. I don't care for titles, achievements, pet battles or collecting shit. I'm playing a warrior and I wanna punch things in the face. Yet another kitten, beetle or dragon whelpling won't help me punch harder and I don't need yet another 'rare' dragon to park my ass on. I've already got 20 flying mounts and only one ass. The sheer variety and quality of content makes it easy to see why so many people are still hooked after so many years. That said, the boring, generic quest design in the open world can really kiss my ass. I know I said that having a bit of voiced dialogue in games like SWTOR or (T)ESO doesn't make a generic quest any less dull. I may have been wrong. Having a wall of text to click through before playing the generic quest might actually be worse. No challenge, no variety in quest design, no interesting story - does anyone enjoy this bit?