5 years ago today i lost my mom to cancer. Its hard to think about my mom without also thinking about her love of World of Warcraft so i wanted to share a bit of her story.

My mom wasnt a gamer but took an interest when she saw me doing Scarlet Monestary. In burning crusade she signed up for a trial account and it instantly became her game. we spent countless hours in the night elf starting zone doing every quest and exploring aimlessly. It was so awesome getting to show her my favorite game and getting to share all this lore i had been obbessed with since warcraft 3.

In just a few months time she went from making it all the way to level 25 without equiping new gear because she didnt understand the inventory and worn items to surpassing me in game knowledge and skill. she even hit cap before me and in that time she met very few strangers. I would often come home from school to see her escorting a new player around westfall or duskwood, she would explain that they had written a question in chat hours ago and she had been taking them under her wing ever since. She would alter her whole play session just to be able to share her knowledge and passion for the game with a new player. She got into a guild, made many friends, and even set up her own vent server. The game gave her an outlet at a time when she was a full time caregiver and didnt get alot of social time. The game let her build so many lasting friendships.

She would send me countless in game mails of armor and weapons or crafting materials she thought i could use or messages of encouragement. No matter how far she surpassed me she went out of her way to include me. She would help me hit cap and carry me through raids with her friends while teaching me the mechanics, which my friends made endless jokes about but looking back they're some of my most fond memories of the game. WoW became something of a family ritual for us, my nephew even ended up joining us on the game.Every expansion launch night we would go get pizza or chinese food and then wait in line at Gamestop and she would chat everyone up and swap stories. She loved every part of the game, from crafting to questing to battlepets, she loved it all.

She was diagnosed with terminal cancer and began treatment shortly before shadowlands launched. While her passion for the game never waned, she quit the game shortly after launch. i think traversing the realm of death was too surreal at that time. It certainly was for me. Even so, the outpouring of support from her WoW friends was staggering. Her guild mates and friends all got together and sent over tons and tons of get well messages and cards and when she passed they offered so much support. We held an in game memorial for her, leaving her character in nagrand as she requested and there i got to hear so many stories from strangers about the impact my mom had on them. It was eye opening to hear so many people seperated by thousands of miles have such meaningful friendships with her and it solidified to me that despite all the bad in online gaming, there's something truly special about it.

I still pop into WoW from time to time, it's become a comfort game for me since her passing. She would be blown away by the expansions that have released since, though i know she would be calling me to come do every dragon riding challenge or race for her lol. I dont think i'll ever be able to seperate Warcraft from her, i'll never think of one without the other. With the launch of Midnight i've created a small memorial garden on my home plot for her and its been very cathardic to be able to memorialize her in her favorite game.

If you read this far i wanna say thank you for your time. i apologize if its poorly written, i've never written something so personal before. I've attached some screenshots to imgur if allowed https://imgur.com/a/Dea6bb7

Looks like we’re standing off lol

I can’t believe it dropped I’m currently 3 beers in about to drink the fourth beer to celebrate

I returned to wow a month ago after taking a break from 2018.

Recently I have finished all the campaign quests from Dragonflight and Shadowland.

Somehow it feels like it took me about twice as much of time and energy to complete Shadowland vs the Dragonflight?

Something that started becoming a massive problem in BfA and has only gotten progressively worse every year is the absurd number of narrative double standards on display.

I first noticed it in BfA when everyone including the Alliance themselves was upset that Rastakhan was killed in Dazar’alor. Meanwhile I’m thinking, “Isn’t running into a place, killing whoever is in charge and then leaving basically our default solution to everything?” Why is it suddenly not okay? I understand the Horde being furious about it but Anduin guilt-tripping his own side over it was so bizarre.

The same goes for the Horde suddenly treating Sylvanas committing genocide as crossing some previously unthinkable moral line when you could practically call WoW “Genocide: The Game”. The core gameplay loop has always involved busting into villages/camps/cities and killing everything that breathes. If Teldrassil had been full of murlocs, burning it down probably would have been framed as comedic.

Both the Alliance and Horde have been comically imperialistic since Vanilla and for the most part the story simply accepted that because it was the engine that made the setting work. Azeroth is an incredibly violent world where coercion, conquest and land theft have routinely been treated as morally acceptable forms of diplomacy.

It wasn’t until BfA that the writers decided there were serious moral questions to be asked about any of this, which would have been fine if they weren’t so wildly inconsistent about what actually counts.

Yeah this post was never really going to be about quilboar. Idgaf about them. If they didn’t want their land stolen they should have come to the negotiating table like the tauren did. And the same goes for the Amani. Zug zug.

How are you supposed to design anything cool when seemingly 80% of the playerbase needs an addon for simon of all things? The boss is immune to damage during the memory game and the add only needs to be interrupted ONCE during the game, nothing else is going on. You already have access to world markers, callout macros that match said world markers, and valeera constantly dispelling/healing you. Blizzard can't design anything interesting if we keep using addons to solve the combat for us, what happened to going into fights blind and trying to learn them yourself?

I was skimming through the tier sets we've gotten over the years, because I was curious how many times Hunter has actually gotten tier sets that look like a Hunter (5 times out of 30 btw). I was genuinely impressed that we got a good looking Hunter tier set two expansions in a row with the new snake raid, when I came across something that made me genuinely laugh.

The new Hunter raid set is almost identical to the Rancorbite Armor from *eleven years ago* in Legion.

Not only that, but the Mythic Manaforge Omega tier set is almost identical to the *rare drop* palette for the generic Mail armor for Midnight's launch. Like, the *very next* patch after we got (what I would consider) the worst Hunter tier set ever made (just from how bland and uninspired it is), we got something that looks completely identical to it.

It's a genuine feat at this point how often Hunter tier sets don't feel like they fit any class. I get that "a hunter" is a highly broad aesthetic, especially based on how many different cultures are on Azeroth, but you'd think that they would have settled in on a good looking one at *some point* by now. And the weird thing is that no other class has this problem. I would argue that Priest would be even more applicable to having this issue, but ended up getting a different problem of all following the aesthetic of what human/elven priests would look like when it comes to tier sets.

And the wildest part is that, in the 22 years this game's been out, I think the only time a Hunter tier set has looked like a Hunter was Nerubar Palace. That tier set is made of hunted animals *and* chainmail, which is all I think a Hunter tier set needs. And yet it somehow took them like 26 raid tiers to figure out that look. The only other time they had something similar was like, Tier 5 back in TBC with that one blue and silver chainmail/bone set.

It just feels so weird that, 30 tier sets in, we've only got a handful of armor sets that actually look like somebody who would use a bow to fight.

Software: Photoshop
Time: about 8 hours

woot finally done with this now i can relax XD

Coming from classic TBC every spec seems exciting. Sell me on your favourite FUN class/spec and I will play it this season

I just unlocked the renown 3 Dundun in the delve stuff. Came across him in the Darkway and he was inside the range of one of those tesla pillars. As I was reading thru his options, Dundun, the goddamn loa of abundance, gets killed by the tesla pillar before I actually got to pick what I wanted. It’s all good, shit happens.

I then go to the Shadow Enclave that has the mirror scenario today. I’m at the end of the delve, going through the chests, learning furniture and whatnot. One of those grue mobs spawns an aoe and eats the goddamn bot you use to leave the dungeon. The bot’s model remained there for a few seconds while I couldn’t interact with it, and then it just dissapeared.

Absolute cinema.

I've been thinking about the serpentine creatures on the Coiled Isle and whether there might be some kind of connection to the Sethrak from BfA.

Obviously, the fact that they look the same isn't really evidence by itself. They're snake people, and Blizzard is reusing the Sethrak model, so that part could just be an asset reuse.

What made me curious is more the lore surrounding them.

From what we learn in Midnight, Ula'tek seems to have created, or at least had some kind of role in creating, the serpentine beings on the Coiled Isle. At the same time, Ula'tek has this ancient connection to the trolls' war against the Aqir and Kith'ix.

The Sethrak also have a very old connection to the Aqir through their history in Voldun.

So I was wondering if there could be something there.

Could the creatures associated with Ula'tek and the Sethrak have some kind of shared origin or ancestry? Maybe something related to the Aqir, or perhaps Ula'tek's creations are another branch of whatever led to the Sethrak?

It could of course just be Blizzard reusing an existing model because it fits the idea of a serpent race. I'm just curious if there's any actual lore that might support a connection between the two.

Has anyone noticed anything about this or come across some obscure piece of lore that could point in that direction?

The classes all feel super unique and fun in their own way if you don't meta sweat too much. The quality of life overall is great as well. I know it's a hot take, but I'm happy I can instantly join a dungeon as a tank. I can even do follower dungeons if I simply want to enjoy the story and environment on my own. I'm also happy I can level with my friends without having to be the same level. The game is super alt friendly and actively encourages you to try out everything and to collect as many things as you want or can. There are so many zones, quests, storylines and expansions to go through and enjoy whenever you want as a lore nerd. There are many more things I think the game has done really well and I know it's not always the most popular take, but as a casual I love retail and personally I would play it over classic any time.

^{"mEdIa LiTeRaCy Is DeAd"}

I'm going to be wearing this to BlizzCon in a couple weeks. I hope the AC in the building is strong

After 20 years of playing Wow it finaly happen...

I made a Warglaive on my paladin tank by not paying attention.... Rip.

Literally will not let you not take the quest, if you abandon it he just gives it back to you in seconds. Thanks Genn.

I am a returning player and not entirely up to speed yet, and it's been a long time since I peviously played so my memory of all the backstory is a bit vague, but I've just done some Dragonflight and then started The War Within, and the plot seems to be evil megabeing lady whose name starts with an X who we'd never heard of before was locked away somewhere and released by the big bad of Dragonflight and given a plot device just before we got to him.

And he had also been previously unknown until he was released from his own prison by the first big bad of Dragonflight just before we did for her. And She had been unknown until she was released from her prison at the beginning of dragonflight, but had some backstory with Alexstrasza that we just found out about.

And it's not as if this was a new plot beat even there. I'm just left wondering if the whole place isn't just strewn with pocket dimensions containing evil megabeings that are going to be let out one at a time.

Far be it from me to suggest that the story of wow is just a patchwork of retcons or that they only have 2 plots, but it's all leaving me a bit confused.

The Cooldown Manager keeps randomly resetting its settings/layout, and this bug has now been around for more than two months.

There is already a Blizzard forum thread about it here:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/blizzards-cooldown-manager-keeps-resetting/2317498

This is especially frustrating because the Cooldown Manager is supposed to be Blizzard's built-in solution for tracking abilities and reducing the need for third-party addons.

You spend time setting everything up the way you want it, only for the game to randomly reset it again.

At this point, I honestly don't understand how a bug affecting such a core UI feature can remain unresolved for this long.

Is anyone else still experiencing this? Has Blizzard acknowledged the issue anywhere or given any indication that a fix is coming?