Episode 294, "327 stairs"

World of Warcast: A World of Warcraft Podcast

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Ren
Have 1 level 117 prot paladin and 1 level 114 subtlety rogue
Disappointed by pickpocketing
Noticed small amount of voice recycling - some of the voices/sayings of the Vulpera are identical to those of pandaren children
Navigating the ziggurat: 8 level changes and 327 stairs between the main level and the profession trainers
Fossilized Raptor mount now has apparent hip problems
Technical issue: keep having problem where my xp bars aren’t showing xp -- just showing rep and artifact power %. Temporary fix: open Rep pane, toggle one of the reps “show as experience bar” on/off. Problem seems unrelated to mods, as it does it even when all mods are off

Mike
Burning the horde in the Clearcut was fun :D
Dinged 120 on Sunday - it was faster than expected.
Marie Davenport is the best grandma in WoW
WITCHES!
Drustvar is amazing
Trying to get geared up for heroics - currently 301
Have not finished all zones. Still four whole zones to complete
New trick - group members kicking themselves to beat the timer.
Got into a dungeon where three people left, no tank
Next dungeon got me three pieces.
Tailoring has slowed.
Still have to deal with enchanting. Haven’t taken a good look at it.
WQs open after two Zandalar zones are quick-finished, then one solo island expedition, THEN the third, THEN friendly rep.

This Week in WoW
PvP Brawl: Gravity Lapse event
Seemingly not going for weekly stuff for another few weeks into the expansion at least

News and BfA

Do the city quests first - leads to other benefits
Example: Pests in northern area of Horde city called the Zocalo - be sure to pick up
“Pests” - gives you access to Jani, the Loa of Scavengers. As you’re out and about, you will sometimes get a whisper from her that you’ve found a “shiny trinket” - find her trash pile to get a treasure chest
Horde - starts in the Zocalo, the northern part of the city, so do this right away.
Alliance: starts in Shatterstone Harbor in Vol’dun, so you don’t get this one til later
Changing and advancing professions in BfA
Advantage to changing: you can start along with everyone else
When you change the profession, you have to click TWICE - once to get the initial Vanilla levels, and then a second time to learn the Zandalari profession
Check to make sure you pick up all your level 1 abilities and recipes - you get them automatically sometimes (cooking) and not other times (gathering professions)
Worth getting your other profession alts at least started in the city - early level stuff can be useful, such as the level 1 Rubellite recipe in JC (Insightful Rubellite - +5% xp) and the Zandalari tradeskill glove enchants. Rubelite currently selling for around 70g on Whisperwind AH; Zandalari tradeskill enchants are pretty cheap also if you don’t want to DIY
Developer Q&A with Ian Hazzikostas: some highlights
Feral druid AOE tuning has been improved but isn’t finished yet.
120 power setback is noticeable - looking in future expansions to smooth it out so you don’t feel like hitting max level is a huge backward jump
Autoaccept removed from groups: development believed autoaccept for groups and using addons for searching for groups created an imbalance between those who used addons and those who didn’t. (Ren does not approve)
AH is showing its age, particularly on high pop servers.
Search options too limited
May introduce deposits that would reward people with bulk pricing -- higher deposits for people who post a single stack of a stackable trade good (what could go wrong?)
Community moderation coming in the next patch
Azerite armor will be tradeable starting after next week’s patch (“they don’t want players to abuse the system to look for the best possible class/trait combination to loot a certain piece of azerite armor”)
AP needed to advance your Heart of Azeroth will be reduced
New models incoming for goblins and worgen (please fix hats!)
Is this expansion “alt friendly”?
Takes me about 20 minutes to get from beginning of entry quests to in the first inn, bound, and basic professions upgraded. Multiply that by 13 level 110s and that’s over 4 hours just to get everyone in the game. Not even counting the 1 Horde and 1 Alliance character I needed to take through the whole thing.
Are side quests a problem?