The way I look at the Earthen voices is that they are a people who seem to be becoming more than just the constructs they were and their speech patterns are still developing. The book that mentions them in the Uldaman dungeon heavily implied they were infected by the curse of flesh and that is why they have started to develop a culture, but are resistive to the curse enough that they remain mostly constructs still. You can really see it a lot in the difference between the two groups we first meet. The Unbound, those who reject the rigid preprogrammed existence of a construct talk much more natural, like the head of the Distillery you mention. The others who are more resistive to the change talk more robotic depending on how resistive they are and they actually change as they go. Perfect example of that is Baelgrim the Stormward. Like you said, he was very robotic, but only at the start. By they end as he became more accepting of the Unbound he started talking much more naturally. If you listen to them closely you can hear the scale of resistive to change to those more accepting. Those who fear the change resist it by intentionally talking the same way they always have, but they aren't really robots anymore so they have lost the tinny effect. Those who accept the change speak much more natural but only a couple are at the point where they have gone past acceptance and are just who they are. Namely Wenbrandt because making mead has become his entire existence, and the Machine Speaker's High Speaker because he was consumed by fear of death and was corrupted by Xal'atath because of it.
I think you are right. But i also think that this is not a complete black and white thing. Because some robots who act emotionally still talk robotically. But i still think this is part of their transition away from the titan templates. I wonder if this is how the "curse of flesh" started out in the beginning. Or at least similar.
There's a bit of interesting subtle storytelling with Adelgonn in the village we meet her. You can find her diary. She starts out with "Initiating communication journal" then says "Hello journal" and finally "Dear journal". Brinthe's way of speaking the longer she hangs out with Dagran changes a little too.
I just discovered that you're back at it, and I'm realizing how much I've missed The Weekly Marmot on and off over the years. I'm so happy you're back, man.
Early access also really gave crafter a huge head start at least as far as gold. And that does have a pretty big impact on the game. It gold impacts how Blizzard develops various things in the game.
I think the earthen voice acting wants to show us that some of the earthen are more machine and automatons while others have developed their emotional "human" side. I mean some of the earthen feel like they have no joy, empathy or other feelings. They are basically there to do their job. While others experience loss, act emotionally (non rationally) and search for a purpose. Maybe im crazy but i think the voice acting is one way of showing how far some of the earthen deviate from the "boring" titan template.
I think saying you’re speaking for everyone or even most on what’s fun is a bit off base. A lot of people do find it actually fun to 1 shot stuff and blast through tons of enemies. Doesn’t always need to be sterilized to the average and expected experience of what DND should play like. It was an issue that was going to fix itself, the content was clearly tuned and intended for the people that leveled 1-70 and passed from 69 into 70 with leveling gear(430 ilvl) and players in incredibly power creeped 530 ilvl gear that’s not far off of max lvl dungeon gear. If you did normal dungeons at the end of DF it went just like that too, my dps characters were even able to solo heroics easily and quickly, of course normal dungeons of the same lvl were going to be easy. Being that OP in normal dungeons has been in the game for a very long time in dragonflight
Don’t forget about EverQuest and its housing features and how Holly came over to WoW from EQ. I definitely think housing is coming eventually and Blizz will do a good job on it. Maybe next expansion?
When people are saying that there is not much to do im always super confused. They either only engage with a very small part of the game or they have a ton of free time. I mean i get it, i was a student at some point. But there is a whole new expansion to explore.
In response to the comment about heroic random queues they have had Mercenary mode for PvP Battlegrounds for a long time. So the reasoning of "An Alliance player might not want to end up in a group with horde players." They've have Horde vs Horde and Alliance vs Alliance BG's for a long time now. We haven't seen a large amount of complaints about that breaking a players fantasy of wanting the faction war/identity.
WildStar would be very "easy" for the WoW devs to see the blueprint and translate the whole system. Would also be easy to sell internally, as long as the directors agree that it will be a significant investment in resources to make it happen. But the returns on it would (I imagine) almost be similar to the impacts of transmogrification in terms of player engagement.
Wow combat is a million times better than wildstar though. Skill shots should be implemented, but the combat system should not be overhauled. I would love to see AoE CC be skill shots
Player Housing is pointless to me if it doesn't offer any gameplay advantages like vendors, portals, garden, etc. but then thats just Garrisons again and some ppl are gonna be against that. Personally, I think Garrisons were great for what they offered a player and would welcome another iteration so long as they can curb the negative effects we saw in WoD.
so far I leveled voidweaver shadow priest, slayer fury warrior, and stormbringer enhance shaman, working on frostfire frost mage next I finished loremaster of khaz algar yesterday and just unlocked Earthen, enjoying TWW a lot so far! I usually play several alts, but especially with hero talents I want to check out the new fun playstyles I keep hearing about. that'll keep me busy til the season starts for sure
Wow referencing Anarchy Online of all things for housing. Hell it was AO that first had the instanced dungeons. And theirs were scalable and customizable (there were little sliders that you could basically create the dungeon you wanted to run). That game was so ahead of its time. There are systems in that game that are only today being brought back onto other games. God I miss that game. I was there on release of that that one. Hell I was following it back when it was isometric and not 3d.
Lore being confused at fireworks going on during an American holiday is hilarious. It's one of those moments when ya feel like a developer is out of touch and then you see a normal person being out of touch too. Sometimes even the best of us miss things that are obvious.
I initially had no feeling either way when it came to early access. But, the smoothness of the servers during early access was WELL worth the money. For anyone who didn't experience early access, there was zero lag until the "real" launch.
Other players should be able to enter other Players housing even if offline and in the distant future perhaps even the unsubscribed. So think delves= your players housing, but you can also queue for specific players housing and see theirs. There can be open world areas where players have to basically wait their turn for their house to be featured. There's value in both. However I see more fulfillment with my housing always being accessible long after I'm dead, even if nobody looks at it. Certainly better than getting your house featured in the open world and nobody cares for it. Then again there may be some instant gratification from feeling like you own a part of the open world. Unfortunately the more awesome the options for player housing become the more likely people will find clever(or not so clever) ways to attempt ruining it. Which I think should be ignored. It's better than having something boring or lacks personality that's even worse. The housing needs to seem unique to the character and the player.
I think splitting or staggering the player base was the best thing they did for any launch. This was the smoothest launch of any xpac for any MMO. Idc how they do it, if people have a huge problem with it costing $ then fine, but they should always find some way to stagger the player base like this. I was enjoying 1 shorting all the mobs like it was MOP remix on my 530 dragonflight characters. I didn’t need any healer, it was literal 2 shots on bosses, lvl 80s said my dps was scaling up to 15 mil for them LOL
I'm one of those oldschool player that would rather not have crossfaction, can live with it and have lived with it in other content but doesn't mean that the faction split isn't my preferred way. Now there are ways to respect that by using a mercenary system so you can look like the other faction which I think would have been the best compromise for all content and for queued content.
Agreed on the cross faction queueing! Honestly, I think it's the minority of people who would be "offended" being grouped with the opposite faction, let them opt out if they want.
Honestly, the Earthen voices dont really bother me anymore. It's the Kobold voice. Like, what in Dante's Infernal were they thinking to let that go through?
The damage scaling issue that was nerfed was most definitely not just off in the dungeons it was content wide and even after the nerf it is not correct. My level 70 is killing same level mobs at almost 3x faster than my level 80 is killing a level 80 mob. I do understand that DF end game gear is part of it, but it still needs tweaked.
I kind of hate the housing point thing. At least on its own. Now, if you show me my friend's houses or guild mates houses (or let me choose which I see), maybe I'd be more ok with that. I do hate instanced housing more, though. To me there's no point in decorating at all if no one else gets to see it - my motivation on housing is for someone to find something kind of neat and maybe get a smile. No drive to do it for just me. (Sorry for the multiple comments, but they are all very much separate thoughts)
EASY fix for the cross faction random queuing: if War Mode is enabled you won't be grouped cross faction, if its off then you may. It's your way of saying "screw those guys this is war!" And keeping to your own lawn. It wouldnt even force unwanted pvp because you can hide in cities while queuing.
I would have to agree that the whole not being able to do dungeons with my guild who are horde is not fun. thye should have a toggle that would be able to choose if you want cross faction or not
There is probobly less than 100 people worldwide that would mind que with alliance/horde. And what about the rest of the playerbase that would rather play with their friends then not ? Tells me some people at Blizzard got their priorities all wrong. Esp since the solution is so easy, let people choose. And this did work in remix and they ''flipped'' a switch to turn it off so i realy dont think its a tech issue. And if it is it should be a priority to bring people together.
If someone is so deadset on keeping horde and alliance players separated in dungeons then let them play on pvp servers. Let the rest of us have faster que times.
