Tali'Thread vas Clan Zorah nar BSN 6.0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBtTIaq_4AE

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D_48riDQH0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG1R5sH9yUk

"Welcome to the Roughnecks."

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gU-HF31ljo

"Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?!"

[Vol]

I didn't hear it last night so I can only assume it's either gone or dead.
I don't care about either, I am just glad it's quiet, lol.

Glad you got some sleep though! We've had major road construction for the last 2 years, it feels like, just outside. Machines shaking the ground, drilling, trucks beeping, and since it's the main road through town, they worked nights. For a while there, coming upstairs at night, there's be spotlights and highbeams pointed right through our windows.

"Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?!"

Ooooh, 12 player static defense FPS sounds _neat_. The bugs look way too sluggish, but of course, it's a balance issue and pre-alpha. But that's a great premise.

[Mazder]

Glad you got some sleep though! We've had major road construction for the last 2 years, it feels like, just outside. Machines shaking the ground, drilling, trucks beeping, and since it's the main road through town, they worked nights. For a while there, coming upstairs at night, there's be spotlights and highbeams pointed right through our windows.

2 YEARS?
The fuck are they doing building a new country?!?!

[magnuskn]

Well, first day of Dragonflight is done (I got really tired at about 08:00 p.m. due to still recovering from a viral infection I got on Saturday). Got two zones out of four done. Dragonriding is pretty fun, although I can see getting tired of it after a while. But the speed you can get up to is really good. Took me about an hour to get all the dragonriding glyphs to upgrade it to the best level and that was a pretty frustrating task. If some youtuber tells you to do it without add-ons, I highly recommend leaving a dislike on that video. ^^

The first zone had a pretty good story with the red and black dragonflight. The second... not so much. Centaurs, all the time and only at the very tail end you meet the green dragonflight. Really could have skipped that one. The third zone is starting out good with you working with the Kirin Tor, including Khadgar and Kalecgos, so I'll see tomorrow how it works out.

The thing which is getting a bit on my tits is that the crafting system was made waaaay too complicated, with a gazillion crafting materials. We'll see how it shakes out.

That being said, after I finish leveling one character, I might do something else for a while, since not only did Stellaris release its patch 3.6 today as well, Midnight Suns is also releasing very soon and the Witcher 3 gets its big upgrade on December 14th.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rWyAJJYQ80

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbcfG5U7s0c

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65lCz22aopY

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCsTzOoWZZ0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQQFM5aZn-o

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoZ3aKKpDvQ

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJVOxzjyQ0

[Dragaros]

"Don't look at Medusa! She'll make you hard! Like stone, what did you think I meant?"

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

https://mw5mercs.com/news/2022/11/75-rise-of-rasalhague

https://mw5mercs.com/dlc/rise-of-rasalhague

"Publisher Fireshine Games and developer Piranha Games have announced MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries downloadable content “Rise of Rasalhague.” It will launch on January 26, 2023 for $14.99.

Here is an overview of the downloadable content, via its Steam page:

In a conflict that pre-dates the formation of the Star League, Join Colonel Mansdottir and the people of Rasalhague in a fight for freedom and independence from the Great Houses, in a new 12 mission quest line. “Rise of Rasalhague” adds the Crusader ‘Mech chassis with 10 variants, the new Rival Mercenaries feature allowing you to interact with numerous other mercenary companies and the infamous Bounty Hunter.

Key Features:

“Rise of Rasalhague” Campaign
Witness first-hand the rise of the Free Rasalhague Republic with a new 12 mission quest line.
New Crusader Class
“Rise of Rasalhague” adds the Crusader ‘Mech chassis with 11 variants, including the Hero “Crael” variant with melee weapon capabilities.
The Inner Sphere is More Alive than Ever
Rival mercenary companies are now operating in the Inner Sphere.
Working in areas garrisoned by Rival mercenary companies can lead to friendly or hostile interventions during missions.
The infamous Bounty Hunter will pay for intel on Rival mercenaries, which can lead to valuable rewards.
Experience exciting and dynamic missions in the new Infiltration game mode.
Free Game Update
Various significant improvements to AI performance and behavior.
Redesigned ‘Mech Hanger allowing you to expand your active ‘Mech roster.
Many Quality of Life improvements making gameplay experience even more enjoyable.
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG."

[magnuskn]

Nice, more MW5 Mercenaries content. Already wishlisted.

[Vol]

2 YEARS?
The fuck are they doing building a new country?!?!

Corruption! The township had to use eminent domain to buy up a long strip of land across the street first. Houses, a catering company, some old factories. Mind you, eminent domain is supposed to be used for _important_ purposes. So they leveled it all and sold the land to Ukrainian Orthodox Jews, of all people, to build luxury condos. But construction is super slow, it's been years and they've only finished one building of several, with some not even broken ground. But all the extra people, though even if nobody wants to pay $2,000 a fucking month for a 1 bedroom they'll get reimbursed somehow, requires the infrastructure be fixed up! So they've been tearing up the road, the main road through town, to work on power, water, gas, over and over for years now. And then I find out the mayor is invested in the project, and it all comes together.

Well, first day of Dragonflight is done (I got really tired at about 08:00 p.m. due to still recovering from a viral infection I got on Saturday).

Feel better soon!

For lack of a better term, how progressive is it? I'm hearing it gets pretty, uh, unsubtle about the new direction of Blizzard, but I don't trust the messenger either.

Otherwise, first time, ever, I'm not feel even a tug to play a new expansion. Think the only other time I wasn't considering it was like...MoP, and that was because I was busy with TF2 or something. So what _is_ the story? Who is the big bad, why are they bad? Is the talent tree system as good as vanilla?

[magnuskn]

Feel better soon!

Thank you! Improving daily, although I still felt pretty wobbly after I got the dried clothes down from the attic this morning.

For lack of a better term, how progressive is it? I'm hearing it gets pretty, uh, unsubtle about the new direction of Blizzard, but I don't trust the messenger either.

Well, so far there's a mute female centaur leader who has her second interpret her hand signs, there was one obviously gay male minor NPC and when you make a new character, you can't choose between male and female anymore, but rather "body type 1" and "body type 2". Other than that, pretty much the same, including their unsubtle story writing. Oh, is the obviously evil warlike Centaur tribe going to betray all the other centaurs for power? Of course they are! Look at all the surprised pikachu faces of the other centaur tribe leaders!

Otherwise, first time, ever, I'm not feel even a tug to play a new expansion. Think the only other time I wasn't considering it was like...MoP, and that was because I was busy with TF2 or something. So what _is_ the story? Who is the big bad, why are they bad? Is the talent tree system as good as vanilla?

The big bads, so far, are big primal proto-dragons, i.e. the colleagues of Alextrasza, Ysera, etc. from back in the day, who were not down with getting empowered by the titans and doing the titans bidding and, after losing a war with the five aspects, were locked away for ten thousand years. Now one of them is free and the others probably will be free soon as well.

The talent tree system is clearly much better than vanilla. Much more significant choices, two separate talent trees (one class tree, one spec tree). It seems really hard to nail it down to one "best build" as well (although many Youtubers of course are trying to so so), which IMO is an improvement on the old cookie cutter system we had with the first two iterations over the last decade and a half.

[Mazder]

Corruption! The township had to use eminent domain to buy up a long strip of land across the street first. Houses, a catering company, some old factories. Mind you, eminent domain is supposed to be used for _important_ purposes. So they leveled it all and sold the land to Ukrainian Orthodox Jews, of all people, to build luxury condos. But construction is super slow, it's been years and they've only finished one building of several, with some not even broken ground. But all the extra people, though even if nobody wants to pay $2,000 a fucking month for a 1 bedroom they'll get reimbursed somehow, requires the infrastructure be fixed up! So they've been tearing up the road, the main road through town, to work on power, water, gas, over and over for years now. And then I find out the mayor is invested in the project, and it all comes together.

Are you in the city or suburbs?
If city that is a waste of time, should've just made decent housing/repaired what was there.
If the burb's....burn it all down.
Sprawling suburbs are a plague to the wildlife and looks like shit.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhyX2uLQZgA

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxx6tdLBgog

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0phhV8Hgkv0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAQAvyVFmUg

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAeR4A5ng10

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLvoGjTqSNs

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYt8mk-lMEo

[Dragaros]

https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/20 ... s-new-look

[Dragaros]

Finally got my hands on a League of Votann codex.
Very cool lore, both for the Squats’ history/culture and for the exotic locals and phenomenon of the galactic core.
For folks who were concerned they weren’t grimdark enough, they can rest easy. There’s plenty of ruthless and messed up shit in here, and they are very much a civilization in decline, with the worst still to come; the proverbial hammer of doom hasn’t even hit them yet, but it's coming.

► Show Spoiler

In terms of how populous they are, they’re smaller than the Imperium but bigger than the Tau.
They hate the orks the most, even their contempt for Chaos comes second. Necron disdain comes third, as they fuck over their mining operations with their tomb worlds. No tolerance for Dark Eldar as well, but they are capable of trading with and allying with regular space elves just fine, as long as there's no funny business and they honor their word. They are often good trading partners with the Tau. They have a healthy concern for the Tyranids, whom they refer to as “The Bane”; they acknowledge how dangerous they are, but view them more as an apex predator to be respected then a nemesis to be have grudges with, probably because of how impersonal an adversary they make.
They're very pragmatic in their battle strategies and tactics, unless you're dealing with a grudge, and then they'll throw all logic out the window to wreak vengeance.
Squats can be good and noble allies and brutal and merciless foes, depending on how much they want your planet and its resources or how much they like you. If it's easier or more profitable to be a trade partner, they'll go that route, but if it's easier or more profitable to just conquer your world outright and kill anyone who resists, they'll do so.
Squats can be corrupted by Chaos, but its super rare. Like the Tau, they have dim souls that don't shine bright in the warp or leave powerful echoes to become fuel for a warp entity. This is by design in their case, as the Cloneskein gene pool systems engineer them that way.
The galactic core was a nightmarishly dangerous enough place on its own, but with the warp energies of the Great Rift bleeding into it, you now have things like black holes with dark matter fangs and nebulae/pulsars with tentacles that are alive and actively try to hunt down and eat prey, which is often passing ships.
Having their minds become one with the ancestor cores upon death is kind of their idea of heaven, and benefits the collective whole as a well, as the core now has new knowledge and experiences to draw from, to better help the rest of the leagues in turn.
However, the ancestor cores are slowly going senile and/or insane, which will one day doom their entire race. Not only is the passing of time and the accumulation of too much data a problem, but absorbing the fallout of entire leagues being destroyed can cause a painful backlash that drives some cores mad. One particular core went crazy because Tyranids ate every Squat in a hold and absorbing all that agony and trauma at once fucked it up; other leagues know to avoid this core like the plague.
They have some not-so-subtle connections with the Men of Gold/Stone/Iron. They were probably a genetically engineered off-shoot of humanity made in that era designed to perform hard labor and resource gathering in deep space and high gravity environments and because they were well isolated the galactic core, they never suffered through the wars of the A.I. rebellions or the warp storms of Old Night following Slaanesh’s birth. But all this is lost to the fog of time; even the ancestor cores don’t know for sure anymore. There’s a whole bunch of myths and legends about their origins, but the Squats don’t really care which one is true, if any of them.
While the Squats generally agree that Old Earth/Terra is their likely planet of origin before they journeyed into the core, they prefer to not speak of it publicly, so as to not give the Imperium any ideas that they should be brought to heel under its banner or claim ownership of their tech and territories; the Squats prefer being independent.
Imperial scholars vary on wether to classify them as abhumans or mutants or xenos, and so some human-squat relations are totally chill, and others are fraught with mistrust and fear and hatred.
Squats and the Demiurg are one and the same; cases of misidentification and poor Imperial record-keeping thanks to the bloated bureaucracy and files being lost are to blame for the confusion. Same thing with the Imperium mistakenly believing they had all gotten devoured by Tyranids.
Their tech for warp travel and psykers is very unique.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyioBtyKHt0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0YkMFvPk3s

[Vol]

Well, so far there's a mute female centaur leader who has her second interpret her hand signs, there was one obviously gay male minor NPC and when you make a new character, you can't choose between male and female anymore, but rather "body type 1" and "body type 2". Other than that, pretty much the same, including their unsubtle story writing. Oh, is the obviously evil warlike Centaur tribe going to betray all the other centaurs for power? Of course they are! Look at all the surprised pikachu faces of the other centaur tribe leaders!

About what I've heard, though in less charitable terms. At least Blizzard Subtlety is intact

I always did like the centaur quests in Desolace, usually would pick the vaguely good guy shamanistic ones, but sometimes I'd go with the stupid angry assholes. It was a pointless choice, and bugged me to no end you couldn't max out the rep (other than a very brief period where an exploit let you, and I'm fairly sure I did it), but it was _neat_. A story within a zone that mattered to the zone, and added a little meaningful flavor.

The big bads, so far, are big primal proto-dragons, i.e. the colleagues of Alextrasza, Ysera, etc. from back in the day, who were not down with getting empowered by the titans and doing the titans bidding and, after losing a war with the five aspects, were locked away for ten thousand years. Now one of them is free and the others probably will be free soon as well.

The talent tree system is clearly much better than vanilla. Much more significant choices, two separate talent trees (one class tree, one spec tree). It seems really hard to nail it down to one "best build" as well (although many Youtubers of course are trying to so so), which IMO is an improvement on the old cookie cutter system we had with the first two iterations over the last decade and a half.

Ah. Makes sense, in the sense it doesn't rejigger the lore. What kind of power scale are we talking these days? Deathwing, Lich King, Old God?

Oooh, that does sound good. Talent trees always held an inherent appeal for me, even in D2. Cookie cutter builds are inevitable, but clever design at least makes sub-optimal choices not _that_ punishing.

Are you in the city or suburbs?
If city that is a waste of time, should've just made decent housing/repaired what was there.
If the burb's....burn it all down.
Sprawling suburbs are a plague to the wildlife and looks like shit.

Suburbs, within the NY metro area. It's nothing but suburban sprawl around here. It hurts the soul to drive around, believe me. Instead of some trees, older homes, and buildings that might've found new use, we get luxury condos for commuters. Right near the train station, but it's a 10 minute walk, so they're obviously going to drive there and clog up the roads in the morning.

Finally got my hands on a League of Votann codex.
Very cool lore, both for the Squats’ history/culture and for the exotic locals and phenomenon of the galactic core.
For folks who were concerned they weren’t grimdark enough, they can rest easy. There’s plenty of ruthless and messed up shit in here, and they are very much a civilization in decline, with the worst still to come; the proverbial hammer of doom hasn’t even hit them yet, but it's coming.

► Show Spoiler

In terms of how populous they are, they’re smaller than the Imperium but bigger than the Tau.
They hate the orks the most, even their contempt for Chaos comes second. Necron disdain comes third, as they fuck over their mining operations with their tomb worlds. No tolerance for Dark Eldar as well, but they are capable of trading with and allying with regular space elves just fine, as long as there's no funny business and they honor their word. They are often good trading partners with the Tau. They have a healthy concern for the Tyranids, whom they refer to as “The Bane”; they acknowledge how dangerous they are, but view them more as an apex predator to be respected then a nemesis to be have grudges with, probably because of how impersonal an adversary they make.
They're very pragmatic in their battle strategies and tactics, unless you're dealing with a grudge, and then they'll throw all logic out the window to wreak vengeance.
Squats can be good and noble allies and brutal and merciless foes, depending on how much they want your planet and its resources or how much they like you. If it's easier or more profitable to be a trade partner, they'll go that route, but if it's easier or more profitable to just conquer your world outright and kill anyone who resists, they'll do so.
Squats can be corrupted by Chaos, but its super rare. Like the Tau, they have dim souls that don't shine bright in the warp or leave powerful echoes to become fuel for a warp entity. This is by design in their case, as the Cloneskein gene pool systems engineer them that way.
The galactic core was a nightmarishly dangerous enough place on its own, but with the warp energies of the Great Rift bleeding into it, you now have things like black holes with dark matter fangs and nebulae/pulsars with tentacles that are alive and actively try to hunt down and eat prey, which is often passing ships.
Having their minds become one with the ancestor cores upon death is kind of their idea of heaven, and benefits the collective whole as a well, as the core now has new knowledge and experiences to draw from, to better help the rest of the leagues in turn.
However, the ancestor cores are slowly going senile and/or insane, which will one day doom their entire race. Not only is the passing of time and the accumulation of too much data a problem, but absorbing the fallout of entire leagues being destroyed can cause a painful backlash that drives some cores mad. One particular core went crazy because Tyranids ate every Squat in a hold and absorbing all that agony and trauma at once fucked it up; other leagues know to avoid this core like the plague.
They have some not-so-subtle connections with the Men of Gold/Stone/Iron. They were probably a genetically engineered off-shoot of humanity made in that era designed to perform hard labor and resource gathering in deep space and high gravity environments and because they were well isolated the galactic core, they never suffered through the wars of the A.I. rebellions or the warp storms of Old Night following Slaanesh’s birth. But all this is lost to the fog of time; even the ancestor cores don’t know for sure anymore. There’s a whole bunch of myths and legends about their origins, but the Squats don’t really care which one is true, if any of them.
While the Squats generally agree that Old Earth/Terra is their likely planet of origin before they journeyed into the core, they prefer to not speak of it publicly, so as to not give the Imperium any ideas that they should be brought to heel under its banner or claim ownership of their tech and territories; the Squats prefer being independent.
Imperial scholars vary on wether to classify them as abhumans or mutants or xenos, and so some human-squat relations are totally chill, and others are fraught with mistrust and fear and hatred.
Squats and the Demiurg are one and the same; cases of misidentification and poor Imperial record-keeping thanks to the bloated bureaucracy and files being lost are to blame for the confusion. Same thing with the Imperium mistakenly believing they had all gotten devoured by Tyranids.
Their tech for warp travel and psykers is very unique.

A clever remix of the space dwarf concept, if nothing else. But being "just before" shit hits the fan does create a tonal dissonance. The Tau have it too, but are buttressed by development. I suppose a lot of it is just _knowing_ so much, which dwarves should, but the veil of ignorance is where good stories get told. When every Guardsmen knows every kind of demon and every Chaos God and every kind of orc and met a Spess Mehrine and a Custodes and on and on, as a matter of course, it'd be boring. There's a Cain book, forget which one, where he hires a private ship to get him and the lads around, the captain didn't get his Gellar field thingy blessed recently, so it fritzes for a second, and one of the servitors on the command deck turns into a horrible flesh/metal daemon monstrosity that requires a small army to put down. Nobody knows what it is, why it happened, other than WARP BAD YO. Or how the Grey Knights have special, super-duper secret tomes of True Names, and you have to be extra super-duper pure to even read it much less say it much less face the daemon in combat to recite it, so if Squat Team 6, some dudes, roll up on that daemon and go, "Aw, yeah, coalesced sentient emotion, breached real space by ritualistic stuff, just need to use melee weapons on it because those are more psychologically personal, we'll take there of this," it'd be lame.

Well, kinda cool, actually. But you know what I mean.

[Dragaros]

A clever remix of the space dwarf concept, if nothing else. But being "just before" shit hits the fan does create a tonal dissonance. The Tau have it too, but are buttressed by development. I suppose a lot of it is just _knowing_ so much, which dwarves should, but the veil of ignorance is where good stories get told. When every Guardsmen knows every kind of demon and every Chaos God and every kind of orc and met a Spess Mehrine and a Custodes and on and on, as a matter of course, it'd be boring. There's a Cain book, forget which one, where he hires a private ship to get him and the lads around, the captain didn't get his Gellar field thingy blessed recently, so it fritzes for a second, and one of the servitors on the command deck turns into a horrible flesh/metal daemon monstrosity that requires a small army to put down. Nobody knows what it is, why it happened, other than WARP BAD YO. Or how the Grey Knights have special, super-duper secret tomes of True Names, and you have to be extra super-duper pure to even read it much less say it much less face the daemon in combat to recite it, so if Squat Team 6, some dudes, roll up on that daemon and go, "Aw, yeah, coalesced sentient emotion, breached real space by ritualistic stuff, just need to use melee weapons on it because those are more psychologically personal, we'll take there of this," it'd be lame.

Well, kinda cool, actually. But you know what I mean.

► Show Spoiler

Whats funny about the Squats' views on Chaos is that while they haven't dealt with Chaos much in the past (compared to the Imperium at least, though they're getting hit hard by them now) they knew enough to earn their contempt and avoid any dealings with the Ruinous Powers. At their first encounter with Chaos they went "Well now, that is some fucked up shit!" and never looked back. Pragmatism and common sense for the win. It's specifically mentioned that the Squats are completely dumbfounded and bewildered when they see others willingly making pacts with the Dark Gods and see mortals serving them. They can hardly believe there are folks in the galaxy stupid enough or trusting enough to fall prey to Chaos Gods' temptations. They were almost never going to get their own self-inflicted Fall/Horus Heresy moment from Chaos; the nature and structure of their society plus the rarity of a squat falling to Chaos would make it pretty much impossible. The Warp was always going to have to get them the old fashioned way.

The Tau almost had a Horus Heresy moment; Commander Farsight was going to be their Horus to bring the Tau low, but he resisted the temptations thrown at him. (So say what you will about Farsight, but he's a better man than Horus; he faced the same crossroads and choose to walk away.) Though learning the truth about Chaos and seeing that the Ethereals were suppressing that knowledge did make him go rouge and form the Farsight Enclaves. But still a better outcome than the Eldar or the Imperium.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD3YaPV7-o

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_a4lVfymo0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlD9jzXoSs8

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-cHwlzyUo0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR1X9YpoVWM

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ixRs8MX4aQ

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-Cw1SMoz8

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... -new-army/

[magnuskn]

About what I've heard, though in less charitable terms. At least Blizzard Subtlety is intact

I always did like the centaur quests in Desolace, usually would pick the vaguely good guy shamanistic ones, but sometimes I'd go with the stupid angry assholes. It was a pointless choice, and bugged me to no end you couldn't max out the rep (other than a very brief period where an exploit let you, and I'm fairly sure I did it), but it was _neat_. A story within a zone that mattered to the zone, and added a little meaningful flavor.

The entire Centaur thing just felt so out of place. You got the first zone and it's gigantic elemental protodragons trying to corrupt all the dragon eggs and then warrior society lava giants vs. the black dragonflight. And then you go to the second zone and suddenly you are dealing with really primitive hunter/gatherer society centaurs giving you lip about being not as tough as them and going on about their hunting prowess. Not to mention the unsubtle writing I already wrote about.

And after that, you get right back into the whole primalist plot to destroy the dragonflights and help out the blue dragons get together, then it's off to time-travel shenanigans with Chromie and Nozdormu (which turn on a dime between super silly to serious and back and back again).

Yeah, finished leveling now. I changed from my Demon Hunter to my Frost Mage in the middle of leveling, since I didn't have that much fun with the DH (felt very repetitive in its gameplay). However, I really burnt out on intensively playing WoW almost immediately again, so I'm going on a big vacation again for a good while, especially now with the new Stellaris patch out, Midnight Suns coming out very soon and then the Witcher 3 Next Gen Update on December 14th. And a lot of other games on the backburner.

Ah. Makes sense, in the sense it doesn't rejigger the lore. What kind of power scale are we talking these days? Deathwing, Lich King, Old God?

Hard to say with the power level, but at the least as powerful as a dragon aspect, which Deathwing was a souped up version of. And the one who got out so far apparently is not the most powerful one of them.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLZXnmLxYUw

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRcHXe4_jiw

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmFDhk6JeU4

[Dragaros]

The big bads, so far, are big primal proto-dragons, i.e. the colleagues of Alextrasza, Ysera, etc. from back in the day, who were not down with getting empowered by the titans and doing the titans bidding and, after losing a war with the five aspects, were locked away for ten thousand years. Now one of them is free and the others probably will be free soon as well.

Hard to say with the power level, but at the least as powerful as a dragon aspect, which Deathwing was a souped up version of. And the one who got out so far apparently is not the most powerful one of them.

I genuinely think this is a good hook for a very interesting dragon conflict on Azeroth, but the story will live or die depending on how it explains and explores itself, because as ripe with potential as it is, it does open itself up for quite a few questions. I thought dragons were more “evolved” than the proto-dragons: smarter, bigger, stronger, able to use magic beyond just their breath weapons, etc. I mean, Alex, Ysera, Noz, Malygos, and Neltharion were proto-dragons once upon a time, they got empowered by the Titans, not just becoming dragons, but Dragon Aspects, which are always described in the novels as being far and away the largest, most wise, and most powerful of their flights, by vast margins. I’m confused as to how non-Titan empowered proto-dragons can match an Aspect in size or strength and cunning. I know Alex and company don’t have their full Aspect power at the moment in this post-Deathwing world, but shouldn’t they still have at least tens of thousands of years worth of spellcraft and experience that these proto-dragons lack? Shouldn’t they be stronger just thanks to their superior biology alone? If this anti-Titan group of proto-dragons are so powerful, where were they when the corrupted Galakrond was threatening to literally eat all of proto-dragonkind into extinction? Couldn't Alex and company just simply team up against Raszageth 4v1 and beat her up like what happened to Deathwing in Day of the Dragon before she can release her fellow cohorts? Again, I like this set-up, I just think the story-building to support needs a little fine-tuning. But hey, even if this narrative crashes and burns in the end, it still won't be as bad as Shadowlands, eh?

[magnuskn]

I genuinely think this is a good hook for a very interesting dragon conflict on Azeroth, but the story will live or die depending on how it explains and explores itself, because as ripe with potential as it is, it does open itself up for quite a few questions. I thought dragons were more “evolved” than the proto-dragons: smarter, bigger, stronger, able to use magic beyond just their breath weapons, etc. I mean, Alex, Ysera, Noz, Malygos, and Neltharion were proto-dragons once upon a time, they got empowered by the Titans, not just becoming dragons, but Dragon Aspects, which are always described in the novels as being far and away the largest, most wise, and most powerful of their flights, by vast margins. I’m confused as to how non-Titan empowered proto-dragons can match an Aspect in size or strength and cunning. I know Alex and company don’t have their full Aspect power at the moment in this post-Deathwing world, but shouldn’t they still have at least tens of thousands of years worth of spellcraft and experience that these proto-dragons lack? Shouldn’t they be stronger just thanks to their superior biology alone? If this anti-Titan group of proto-dragons are so powerful, where were they when the corrupted Galakrond was threatening to literally eat all of proto-dragonkind into extinction? Couldn't Alex and company just simply team up against Raszageth 4v1 and beat her up like what happened to Deathwing in Day of the Dragon before she can release her fellow cohorts? Again, I like this set-up, I just think the story-building to support needs a little fine-tuning. But hey, even if this narrative crashes and burns in the end, it still won't be as bad as Shadowlands, eh?

Well, the way Blizzard is describing it, the Titans are not exactly the good guys we always thought them to be, or at least shadily tried to keep knowledge supressed about some good stuff the Old Gods did. And Raszagath can't stop going about how the aspects were the Titans lapdogs and betrayed the other protodrakes, so probably the aspects needed the Titans or their power to imprison Raszagath.

And of course it's the usual stuff, where the bad guy can pull a gigantic army of minions out of their ass at any time and the good guys always act super surprised when it happens and never know where the fuck a powerful cabal of hundreds of corrupt elemental shamans came from. One wonders what's happening at the Earthen Ring, especially since any Shaman who was played in Legion was supposed to be their boss.

Why the five aspects don't team up? Well, at least so far in the expansion they had to solve their own problems first. Alextrasza with the eggs, Wrathion with getting the black dragonflight seat of power back (and now having to contend with Sabellian for the title of aspect), Merithra against the centaur / primalist assault on their seat of power, Kalecgos empowering his seat of power and getting his flight back together and Nozdormu of course with time travel bullshit, his eventual transformation into Murozond (he has a big sad about it, basically), including the always reliable Infinite Dragonflight.

Also, Raszagath is the last boss in the first raid, so I wouldn't expect her to stick around for too long, anyway. She'll very probably release her still imprisoned colleagues and get killed off then. The speculation is that in the end Galakrond will be the final boss of the expansion.

[Vol]

The entire Centaur thing just felt so out of place. You got the first zone and it's gigantic elemental protodragons trying to corrupt all the dragon eggs and then warrior society lava giants vs. the black dragonflight. And then you go to the second zone and suddenly you are dealing with really primitive hunter/gatherer society centaurs giving you lip about being not as tough as them and going on about their hunting prowess. Not to mention the unsubtle writing I already wrote about.

I'm trying to recall when this sort of thing first started to be a problem. By Wrath, you could still argue the PC wasn't that much stronger than they were in Vanilla, story-wise. Onyxia, Nef, Rag, Kel'Thuzad, all reasonably as tough as anything you're fighting, and you don't even beat the Lich King properly. Cata, MoP, Warlords...I'd say fighting Archimonde is pretty well cosmic level, compared to anything else. Onyxia would be instantly blown up by him, while she could have a fighting chance against Mannoroth or whatever. But eh, could always handwave this stuff with the NPCs helpers and background information, but Legion is probably when the PC _had_ to be come a superhero. But the tonal dissonance has been there since BC, only amplified over time.

That said, getting lip from centaurs that shouldn't exist is silly after defeating Death-bot. Concession to gameplay, sure, but you can write your way out of that. "Oh, mighty hero, we have heard tales of your prowess, but we're simple and primitive and can't really understand the scale and things you did, so we're going to contextualize you as something we can!"

Again, I like this set-up, I just think the story-building to support needs a little fine-tuning. But hey, even if this narrative crashes and burns in the end, it still won't be as bad as Shadowlands, eh?

Sort of thing that needed to be thought out a long time ago

Remember Sylvanas losing another life in Silverpine because a brand new Undead pops her with a matchlock pistol? That's a good justification for her being terrified of true death, because that's all it took to burn another val'kyr. Shadowlands, and this dragon stuff, reads too blatantly as plot-justified characterization. Like in Legion, how strong was Ysera? Exactly as much as was needed to make the plot move and for her to die. Or when Anduin got grabbed in the Shadowlands intro, which was hilarious.