Well, 8.2 has been out for almost a month now, and although it was shaky at first, there have been some improvements. Additionally, season 3 has started, the Mechagon dungeon is open, we’ve had our first week in Azshara’s Eternal palace, and Mythic & LFR difficulties open this week. With the patch in full swing, I thought it’d be a good idea to look at how everything is going at this point and some areas where things still fall a bit short. I’m saving talking about the lore aspects specific to the raid and the Mechagon dungeon for later, though the story in the zones themselves is fair game at this point.
One of my big annoyances two weeks ago had to do with the Bounty: Dangerous creatures and how not only finding them was frustrating, but it seemed like some rares didn’t count for no apparent reason. This fix for this had a few parts; the first was they reduced the number of rares needed from three to one which certainly made all of this easier but wasn’t a change I anticipated. Additionally, they increased the health scaling and base health of all the rares who had the lowest health in Nazjatar and Mechagon. This is my second favorite rare fix as it reduced the occurrence of arriving right as a rare is dying. Obviously, there is no way to prevent this from ever happening, but it does help.
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My favorite fix is they went through and fixed the rares which weren’t counting for the bounty. This was by far the most frustrating aspect of trying to do the daily, so I’m quite happy they were quick on fixing it. Since this fix I’ve only run into one issue of a rare not counting and I’m unsure if it’s supposed to count or not because of this patch note from July 2nd “World Quest targets in Nazjatar no longer display a silver dragon portrait, but instead show up as quest bosses or elite quest bosses.” There’s one World Quest Boss down by the Eternal Palace; I’ve completely forgotten her name, unfortunately, but she’s a bit of a pain to fight alone. She puts down nullification zones and seaweed which sticks you in place. As of this past week she’s still marked as a rare but didn’t count as one for the quest.
Another big issue was the phasing of the various gathering targets (starfish, poison leaf, seaweed, etc.) and thankfully, this is something they fixed as well. I did have some phasing issues right after the fix, but since then I haven’t had anything disappear on me. Another issue which came up recently and was related, was with people now flying getting to these materials is sometimes frustrating for people still running around on the ground. To some extent, this can’t be helped because people with flying unlocked move faster. In the case of the sticky seaweed, it was particularly frustrating because there were very few spawn points for it. Thankfully they have recently increased the amount of sticky seaweed spawning which should help alleviate the impact flying vs. not flying has on collecting items.
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My feelings about the return of dailies haven’t changed over the last two weeks. As someone who is quite busy in real life, but also plays multiple games, I don’t like feeling forced to log every day to do quests which are already dull. My annoyance has only increased because there are now hidden dailies on Mechagon. I’ve mentioned before I enjoy exploring and finding things in MMOs, it’s honestly one of my favorite things to do in any game. I, however, do not like having exploration forced on me. Especially to do something I’m already annoyed I have to do in the first place. Things which are hidden should be fun or interesting, not quests if I don’t find my rep gains will be reduced and the only reason, I care about rep in the first place is I want flying. Exploration should be fun, not a requirement.
I also recognize Mechagon is just not my cup of tea and it never was going to be. I’ve never been in love with gnomes in the first place, and the concept of robognomes is frankly terrifying. I tend to like the zones which are more natural and less mechanized (I am a Druid after all), so I probably find things in Mechagon more frustrating than they are of their own merit. It’s been interesting talking to people over the past few weeks because it seems like most people love one zone and hate the other. Considering they are such polar opposites in style and setting this makes complete sense. Initially, I felt Blizzard should have just focused on making Nazjatar amazing and left Mechagon for another time. But, I get why people enjoy Mechagon though, and this patch probably needed the seconded area.
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One thing my guild was talking about a lot this week was the pseudo attunement for Azshara’s Palace. It isn’t a real attunement because players who haven’t finished the Nazjatar storyline can be summoned into the raid, just if you want to go through the water vortex to get to the summoning stone and entrance you need to finish the storyline. This is mostly an issue because It’s easy to think you have reached the end of the main story available in Nazjatar while you are working on the Friends in Need quest. Since there are limited ways to gain follower XP, it’s not something which can quickly be knocked out, so it’s easy to think the rest of the zone story just hadn’t been implemented yet. Especially for players who can’t play every day finding out, there’s more to do on that aspect was a bit of a surprise.
This, however, isn’t something which should be changed. Having the unlock to get to the entrance of the raid makes sense in the story because the storyline is taking control of the Tidestone and opening the way to the Palace in the first place. Additionally, if you haven’t done the story then suddenly having the other faction around in the raid will seem REALLY out of place and random. All of this aside, the fact this isn’t a hard attunement is what makes it acceptable in the long run. Attunements are always a pain for those running a raid group, and I have no desire to go back to that reality.
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So far, I’ve enjoyed the Eternal Palace and like the fights as well, though I’m not sure how much of this is powered by the fact I’m just happy to not be in Battle for Dazar’alor anymore. Most of the fights are mostly easy from a tanking perspective and don’t require the hyper-focus required of say, Grong, which is a nice change of pace. Radiance however sort of feels like Blizzard was just like “let’s put all the things in this fight, explosions, knockbacks, and tornadoes!” Even so, Radiance is a fun fight. I’m curious how the mythic race will go though. There’s been so little testing on the end of the raid, feels like anything can happen.
As much as I do detest the reintroduction of daily quests, overall 8.2 is in a pretty good spot with all the fixes over the last few weeks. Although it would be nice if things could have been more polished before release, it is good the fixes have come quickly. Next stop is the Mythic Eternal Palace Race and thinking about what 8.3 might bring.
