In a recent blog post, Blizzard announced that they will be repeating the events of the Warcraft campaign for players who have already completed it on their alts. This is part of a larger effort to ensure that all players can experience the story in its entirety.
The WoW Campaign Repetition on Alts and FFXIV Heavensward Main Story Done is a blog post discussing the repetition of quests in World of Warcraft. Read more in detail here: heavensward.
It’s WoW reset day, and I’ll be checking the gear vault and going into another (hopefully shorter) raid run in an hour.
As I said in my last article, I completed my raid/renown responsibilities this time by the weekend. This left me with FFXIV to play, as well as the tedious – at this point of repetition – 9.1. campaign on alts, which had to be completed for emotive and completionist reasons.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Blizzard already goes to great efforts to make alt experiences less monotonous and more varied when it comes to lore repeating. Threads of Fate was a game-changing feature to Shadowlands, since it allowed you to bypass the whole leveling zone content. We could skip the Korthia intro in 9.1. — three chapters! – and we got a long-requested Maw beginning skip in 9.1.5. You just need to complete one Taza’vesh attunement questline in order for all alts to get access to the flying route, and so on. Even though it was not necessary in terms of raiding, character strength, or access to 9.1. and forthcoming 9.2. content, I had to repeat 9.1. chapter 4-9 on all alts.
Even in earlier expansions, I set a limit of 2-3 lore material re-runs for myself. When you first become acquainted, read everything carefully to get all of the emotional highs and narrative twists weaved throughout the tales. You go through everything quicker the second time, but you notice smaller things because you already have a larger image. The experience of the third alt carves legend into the stone of your mind and memory — and that is enough.
Replays of Alt four and on lore are just a waste of time. Even if you know the paths perfectly – for example, I now know exactly which tomes to pick during Huln’s exploration of Sepulcher tower without picking the wrong ones and losing HP, or the perfect path with Cudgelface and Moonberry picking the stone sigils and skipping all the cutscenes – it’s still a pain.
So going all the way to the finish is something I’d expect from Blizzard. After your lore pioneer, every alt should be able to choose “I’ve heard this story previously” and skip everything, including all lore and attunement pieces. Your alt must be able to level and equip in world content, dungeons, Torghast-expeditions-warfronts, and start earning money and endgame benefits straight away with just a quick chat with an NPC.
As I previously said, Blizzard has already taken a surprising number of moves in this regard, even before the 9.1.5. patch to “stop crawling out of the windows.” But I want people to stick with it all the way to the finish, both in terms of narrative and gameplay mechanics. Furthermore, if there are unique mogs or large amounts of anima/other money involved, they should be won instantly and dropped into your bags, eliminating the need to replay. Of course, if you can earn these mogs or a similar amount of money in another way, that’s fine, but it’s something I’d consider.
Anyway, my campaign grind is over on all alts, with approximately 3k anima gained and utilized per character, and this phase of 9.1. is now complete — once again, freeing up my gaming time for other things. After this week’s raid/renown responsibilities, I believe I’ll start farming anima and Grateful Offerings, something I had planned to do later. I already have four conductor spots running on all alts, so this should enough. To summarize, I may now begin earning the now-fixed 9.0. content rewards system 🙂
FFXIV
I’m enjoying my tortoise pace in Final Fantasy XIV. Nothing energizes me; I play for the precise length of time and at the exact tempo that I want at the time. Still, I made progress: Heavensward’s primary narrative is now complete!
I realize there aren’t many updates after that, but the list of missions doesn’t seem to be as lengthy as the appendix to A Realm Reborn. Mind you, I’m not in a rush to move on to the next expansion, and I’m always excited to receive a fresh narrative.
Let’s start with the highlights:
We’ve found Y’shtola! One of my favorite Scions is back, and it’s a really emotional and lovely moment.
One of the decent people was really murdered, and it was irreversible. That was a pity; he was a kind man who had spent enough time with us. It wasn’t even needed by the storyline.
Unconventional thinking is one of the greatest aspects about Asian MMOs and other Asian gaming genres (compared to Western mind). As a consequence, the bosses are simply funny, flamboyant, huge, and over-the-top. When I hear about Asian MMOs, this is what I want to battle, and Final Fantasy never fails to surprise me in a positive manner, always surpassing my expectations. Consider the creepy book boss in a library dungeon:
Music is crucial in games for setting the tone, and it’s what makes me weep in cutscenes – not only from sorrow, but also from epicness and a tornado of emotions. And if the graphics are lacking – like they are in FFXIV – music becomes even more essential. Fortunately, the composers are flawless and always deliver – I can’t help but admire them in this game. Even if this expansion’s soundtrack is heavy on bagpipes and pipe organs (two instruments I can’t bear hearing, along with operatic singing voices), the soundtrack is still varied and provides too many genres and tunes for you not to find anything you like.
As a pianist/keyboardist, I recognize and appreciate the strong usage of piano (which is prevalent in Japanese culture in general), and their electronic compositions remind me of my NES days. Order Yet Undeciphered (aka Azys Lla theme) and The Mushroomery (aka Matoya’s Cave) are two classics that I could listen to outside of the game for hours. The city of Ishgard motif is also fantastic.
I suppose the narrative as a whole is great. I mean, the Y’shtola and Nanamo sections, the Archbishop and Ascian arcs were all reasonable and wonderful, but the dragon/knight clash still doesn’t make sense to me.
The premise is simple: dragons and humans (well, local elves) lived in harmony until an ancient human monarch chose to commit treason, ripping out several dragons’ eyes, which are a source of great strength, and so the thousand-year vengeance war started. Dragons are said to live indefinitely (unless they are slain), thus these events occurred yesterday to them. Humans, led by your party, are now approaching dragons with a wish to make peace, which is understandable given the deadly nature of dragon assaults. We killed additional dragons and their enraged leader in the process, and they did virtually little to calm the anger or compensate for their ancestor’s sins. Dragons aren’t known for their forgiving nature, so what our activities were all about and what the strategy was remains a mystery. Humans may have said that they want peace, but dragons do not. Eh?
I’m still working my way through the Heavensward patch tales, but what we’ve been doing with dragons so far hasn’t made any sense to me.
Overall, it was entertaining, and I’m excited to hear about more tales. So far, everything has gone well.
P.S. In terms of gameplay, I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed by my dragoon’s skills and rotations – there are just too many to keep track of 🙂 I was satisfied with my rotation; I didn’t need any more skills, please! 🙂
Related Tags
- a realm reborn
- ffxiv expansion
- gunbreaker ffxiv
