It doesn’t exclude female characters. Anticipating Moira exploding or something.
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Reminds me when I was levelling through Hallowfall and someone was upset that they killed off a certain character to be replaced by another.
was it the guy voiced by Nathanos’ VA 'cos I’m upset whenever any of his characters die
Nah, they complained a certain blond hair king was going to be ‘replaced’ by Faerin. End of Hallowfall CS I imagine.
the golden rule of tv - if you don’t see the actual death on screen, it didn’t happen
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I’ve finished all the main story content there is so far and I’ve found TWW to be… adequate. Not amazing, not much that left me especially hyped, but it didn’t feel like wasted time.
The story and character development, particularly with Isle of Dorn, felt unsubstantiated it. NPCs just came to realisations without much to inspire it in the story.
I really liked Faerin though, she’s cool.
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Yeah. I thought the differences between the Earthen sects would be more consequential than they actually were, especially when they were emphasized so much at the reveal. it was a little disappointing to see their long-ingrained disagreements resolved in a matter of minutes.
The Arathi have being my favourite so far. I only worry about the sorts of tired old cliché’s we’ll see when it comes to roleplaying with them.
I was worried they’d be awful deus vult bait, but the actual personality of them seems much more chill thankfully.
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I will preface my rant with acknowledging that I have not played through the War Campaign on the beta and the fact that this expansion, together along with the next two, will be bite-sized in terms of the amount of content we are getting compared to several older ones.
Nonetheless I can’t shake the feeling how utterly wrong the pacing of the Azj-Kahet storyline is. We got an introduction to the Nerubians in the Dalaran starter quests, after which they essentially vanished bar a few token appearances in the first two zones, then showing up in force at the end of Hallowfall. At this point we lose Anduin, our player characters get marooned within enemy lands and things look dire.
Then we get back on our feet with the help of the bat people, get invited by the Nerubian Rebel force and establish a foothold within the next 10 minutes. We then also establish contact with another conspirator 10 minutes after that, followed by us breaking out and aiding several prisoners in escaping from the Nerubians. 10 minutes after that we get an invitation from the third main conspirator within the City itself, get greeted by Anduin and then receive our third pheromone dose so we don’t get gibbed by the locals on sight.
The questing experience afterwards is us basically destroying the loyalist bases both within and outside the city, including the two dungeons that target the Transformatory at the top and the Black Blood harvesting operation at the bottom tier of the city. We dismantle the means of Ansurek creating more Ascended Nerubians as well build up a rebel foothold essentially across the zone. We assert our dominance at breakneck speed and it really just makes the Kaheti look like disconnected idiots (with how we can mostly freely frolic around in their own capital and disrupt every loyalist establishment within).
I can understand how this happened, given that their queen and her court are our entry raid loot pinatas, but this just compounds this issue. It all reminds me of how the Iron Horde were established as a real threat, only for us to mostly steamroll them from our wooden garrisons on Draenor.
It’s not like Blizzard hasn’t done better with the same material though. The entire Nightfallen/Nightborne storyline has the exact same beats, but that insurrection and rebellion campaign was handled through three patches (iirc the Trial of Valor patch came with some Nightfallen content) and there was a sense of escalation of how the Nightborne/Felborne and the Legion cracked down on the populace, even destroying the district where we had a rebel cell. Nighthold as a raid at the end of that even felt like a decent payoff.
My headcanon is that Azj-Kahet was meant to be a similar zone to Suramar, max level and the fifth area we would visit and we would have gone to the World Roots or whatever place the Harronir belong to as the fourth zone instead after we get saved. This got scrapped and we instead get some vague references to Harronir culture and three optional questlines related to them. That also feels very awkwardly tacked on.
Meanwhile even the Arathi get a much better introduction and world building and that’s basically crammed into a smaller storyline than the Kaheti one.
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I don’t understand why they haven’t turned the new profession systems into something evergreen, the fact that the whole thing basically restarts each expansion feels like a waste of time that I don’t want to bother with. Why do I have to get through the process of this boring grind to once again unlock things I could already do in Dragonflight, like being able to mine while mounted? It doesn’t feel good that you have to do the same thing to get the bonus you lost just because it’s a different continent.
And why isn’t this thing account wide? If I have mining on two characters, I shouldn’t have to go through the grind seperately on two characters, it’s dumb. It’s these kinds of ancient hamster wheel design choices that make me not want to get invested in this game again.
Otherwise the expansion is… fine, so far. It’s a solid leveling experience with some really nice zones and music, but nothing that typically isn’t a highlight in other expansions. Hero Talents are pretty disappointing so far, in that based on the two classes I tried so far I didn’t have much of a choice - one set of talents offered a decent twist to my gameplay and a satisfying button to press, while the other didn’t and felt very boring. Even the cooler set of talents still has those boring “5% increase to x” nodes though thankfully they don’t seem that frequent.
Delves are a decent idea but feel terribly undercooked, though I only tried a handful. They’re way too short, don’t really feel like an adventure where you’re rewarded by your curiosity and desire to explore but rather a linear, by the numbers mini dungeon or scenario. I mean, some of the scenarios that were part of the main campain were more engaging.
As for the story, it certainly feels a lot more engaging than Dragonflight but that’s not saying much. The new characters come and go, they’re not particularly memorable. I like the worldbuilding that the Earthern and Arathi have. The stakes, in typical fashion, are handled rather poorly and Xalatath isn’t a particularly engaging villain, she’s just there in the background to do stuff that other villains in the past have done, corrupt this, corrupt that and occasionally taunt one of the ‘main characters’. It’s all very safe, treated ground.
So yeah tldr: the art team is breaking its’ back from having to carry Blizzard again.
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Probably so people wouldn’t make an even larger alt army (as they already have) with the new Concentration to gain a leg up over anyone with fewer characters. You can also just RP it as ‘new stuff, so can’t do it from mount yet until I’m better at gathering new stuff’. 
yeah no thanks, I don’t want to RP something that’s a pointless and annoying grind that I already had to do, if anything it’s quite immersion breaking actually 
losing any sort of power/convenience/whatever because there needs to be a new grind to re-acquire it always feels bad
imagine if they reset your skyriding talents and you’d have to re-gather the glyphs since “it’s a new land, you need to learn how to fly on it” or some nonsense
and necessary adjustments could have been made to adress that, this is simply an example of the [old wow design mindset] persisting to artificially extend the hamster wheel playtime
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Can you tldr what is concentration?
idk I’m on poor person’s TWW edition
(From what I’ve gleaned it’s basically an iteration of Inspiration from DF, but Better™.
You have a limited quantity of concentration - no idea if it restocks fully or just a set amount every X days (not sure if it’s like, 2-3 days or a full week) - and you can spend some of it to guarantee you’re crafting something at the next level of quality.
So why you’d have an alt army is because you have only a limited amount of concentration, having multiple alts with same professions means you can craft more higher quality items and make more money.)
So, I might’ve missed it, but I am not for certain;
But do any of the Earthen react to (Dark Iron) Dwarves? Like at all?
And what about (Mecha-)Gnomes?
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Not as far as I know. They barely react to the Dwarven main characters, which is strange as I don’t believe they were aware of the Curse of Flesh?
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I’ve just landed and done the first quests but I’m really disappointed if Khadgar’s really dead… it was underwhelming. When Varian died I fell a few tears because it was really emotional and (at least what I remember) more build up to it. This happened so fast and then boom magic void bomb, I don’t know, he’s been a huge character and deserved a more epic finnish. Also I don’t want him gone, he’s annoying but brings a lot of character to the game imo.
So pretty much just finished campaign and all I can say is Alleria has done nothing but absolutely ruined the whole expansion with how she acts and how she tries to be.
She has absolutely tarnished every plan for her own selfish gains especially the stealth mission you do in the City of Threads.
Just another Windrunner with main character syndrome. 
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So the Earthen went against the Titan Edicts and thus we get Talos’ lost brothers from Dragon’s Dogma 2 slowly marching towards Khaz Algar.
Does this mean that every Oathsworn has become Unbound and we only got two cadres of Earthen now? What was even the point setting up their culture this way when the Horde and Alliance unmakes it a day after we land on their shores and turn their city and its outskirts into a giant war camp?
Khaz Algar is under siege, under lockdown!