World of Warcraft dropped the Visions of N’Zoth 8.3
patch this week, so naturally, my husband and I dove into the new content as
soon as work and life allowed.
Vulpera!
I unlocked the new Vulpera Allied Race for the Horde (cute
little fox people) and rolled another mage, of course, Fire spec this time. I
already have an Arcane Mage and a Frost Mage, so let’s just round that out, why
don’t we. I named her Zemiko and she is my sweet pyromantic child who I will
love and protect forever.
The Allied races currently start at level 20, but I
am not planning on leveling her (or any of my other new, allied murder-children) until 9.0
drops. They’ll be changing the leveling system for Shadowlands, due out
later this year, and I’m looking forward to leveling through the old expansions.
Not sure which expansion I’m going to level through with each character, but I
missed Cataclysm and Pandaria when they released, so those will be at the top
of the list. I’ve gone back and done the content with max level characters, but
it just isn’t the same. Anywho…
Horrific Visions
As for Visions of N’Zoth, I’m dying for a Black
Empire expansion (Old Gods abound!), and I’m afraid that they’ll lob all of
that eldritch horror goodness into this single patch and then never touch it
again. That said, Battle for Azeroth has largely been a huge disappointment,
but Visions of N’Zoth redeems this expansion a little bit. N’Zoth (supposedly
the weakest of the four Old Gods originally on Azeroth) is bending reality to
show us possible futures of a fallen Azeroth, with N’Zoth reigning over the
titan planet in his many-eyed, many-tentacled, obelisk-aesthetic, Black Empire-returning
glory.
I cannot adequately convey just how badly I want this to be
an entire expansion-spanning story.
But it’s here now, with 8.3, so I will have to enjoy this
tiny sliver of what may never be the expansion of my dreams. *sob*
So far, I’m enjoying the new content they released with the
patch. The main questline introduced did not take much time for us to complete,
but it was enjoyable and actually felt like a natural progression of the story,
compared to 8.2 and the introduction of Nazjatar.
A Brief Recap of the Story So Far...
-- Spoilers for Battle for Azeroth Abound --
Battle for Azeroth has mostly been all over the place
with the story, from the Burning of Teldrassil and the Battle of Lordaeron, the
so called Fourth War, or the “War of Thorns” between Horde and Alliance that
never really feels like a war, with the Warfronts at Darkshore and Stromgarde
that sadly never expanded beyond the two, to Oh yeah, remember how Sargeras
stabbed the planet at the end of the last expansion? So Azeroth is bleeding out
and we need to collect this so-called Azerite into a necklace that ONLY YOU POSSESS,
IGNORE THE OTHERS HERE, for… reasons?
And also, because our fleets were destroyed (?) at some point,
we need new fleets for… reasons… so let’s go find the Zandalari (Horde) and the
Kul Tirans (Alliance) to ask for more ships for… more reasons… And of course,
we need to help these INDEPENDENT NATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN PRESUMABLY FINE FOR
THE LAST DECADE (and didn’t we fight the Zandalari during Mists of Pandaria?
Oh, that was a different faction, led by the royal vizier of Zandalar? Who
still has power? Cool cool cool) put their countries back in order so that they’ll
join our faction, while fighting a war between the Alliance and the Horde on
their land, and collecting this Azerite so our spells and weapons hit harder…
And oh, yeah, half of the Horde has lost faith in Sylvanas as Warchief and
support Saurfang as Warchief to bring the Horde back to honor, so the faction
is splitting in two… and also Sylvanas is working with Lady Ashvane, the
totally not suspicious at all privateer who pulls the string in the Kul Tiran
Admiralty, to build weapons I guess. No one knows why. No one knows anything
about whateverthefuck Sylvanas is supposedly doing, and she might as well be a completely
different character, but who’s counting?
And then 8.2 rolls around, and SURPRISE! The only reason we
needed a fleet of ships was to sail to… Nazjatar? And draw the Alliance there…
for reasons. Okay okay okay. Oh, and we rediscovered Mechagon, the ancient home
of the Gnomes, in spitting distance from Kul Tiras all these years. Okay. There’s
some kind of civil war going on there. In Nazjatar, Azshara is waiting for us,
I guess, and is just letting us dick around in her once-underwater nation, killing
shit and absorbing Azerite, and we go attack her in her palace for some reason,
and OH GUESS WHAT GUYS? THAT AZERITE YOU’VE BEEN ABSORBING? IT’S THE KEY TO
RELEASING AN OLD GOD!! SO COOL RIGHT?!?!?! NO ONE SAW THAT COMING! *eyeroll* And that was Azshara’s
plan all along, I guess, to draw us into Nazjatar to release N’Zoth, and there
is no groundwork for that anywhere in the previous patch of the expansion, but
whatever, right?
Also, remember Saurfang? He’s challenging Sylvanas to a Mak’gora
in 8.2.5, and they fight! And then Saurfang is dead and Sylvanas yeets off to
the Eastern Kingdoms for… reasons. The Horde is left without a leader. Fun
times.
Ugh.
Anyway, that brings us to 8.3.
At least 8.3 continues the story of N’Zoth being released in
8.2, and now he’s mind-fucking Azeroth to drive us all to madness. Pandaria and
Uldum are now under his influence, and we need to prevent him from gaining
access to the Titan facilities or else he could corrupt the whole planet and
open the way to the Void, or other Old Gods, or something, and now there’s tentacles
and obelisks and eyes everywhere! Cool! Wrathion is back, and thinks we can use
the corrupted essences from these mind-fuck visions to somehow defeat N’Zoth
because I guess we can learn something from them about his weakness. I don’t
know. It isn’t really clear. The goals of this expansion have all been very
hand-wavey. Whatever.
8.3 Gameplay
Mechanically, the Horrific Visions are pretty neat so far,
showing a twisted version of the future where Orgrimmar and Stormwind have
fallen, and we have to throw ourselves into these visions over and over for…
reasons. To grind up our cool new Legendary Cloak, I guess.
Much as I love the aesthetic, the reasoning for anything
that we are doing doesn’t make any sense, but that’s where we’re at right now
in the quality of the storytelling. It’s obvious that they’re operating from a
game-mechanics first mentality, instead of story first and then shaping the
game around that, but whatever. I’m trying (and failing) to not be too salty
about it.
Barring all of that, 8.3 is fun. It’s a grind, because
end-game content is always a grind, but it’s a more fun grind than usual, so I
won’t complain too much. I do hope that we get a little more content with a mid-patch
or something. I’d love to see them doing the same thing with Uldum and Pandaria
again in the zones containing other Titan facilities. I know we are supposed to
get three invasions a week, and as of writing this, we still only have two this
week, so that means another one is going to pop up somewhere.
Despite feeling like Blizzard no longer gives a shit about good
story or the players who fell in love with the lore of Warcraft, I’m holding
out hope for Shadowlands.
And I guess, if that ends up sucking as much as this
expansion, I’ll just start playing Elder Scrolls Online instead.
Photos and video (c) Blizzard Entertainment
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