World of Warcraft: Battle For Azeroth (Pre-Sale)

I recently purchased my pre-purchase for Battle For Azeroth (BFA).  I am saying this because like every expansion that comes out I smile to myself as I try and convince myself that I have an exit strategy, that the time has come to explore different games, and that the age of WoW has ended.  Well like every expansion I come over to the dark side, dust off my keys and try and get back into the game.  This expansion was no different, Legion kept me entertained and I had fun but quickly shoved it aside as I finished leveling one character and then played some simulation games (my first true love).  I had moved on, ready to tackle the game a bit at a time depending on whether I had somebody to play with or not as I would not be playing by myself.

I made the mistake, not really a mistake as it was on my bucket list, of going to BlizzCon 2017.  After a whirlwind of emotion and fun I came back and jumped back into WoW.  The trailer gave me such joy that I had to try and level up some characters that I wanted to play in the new game.  I leveled up two more characters and played at least an hour a week between BlizzCon and when I pre-purchased the game.  I got sucked into the vortex of WoW once again, and I love it.

As I write this review I want to tell you all that I have only played through the second patch of Legion, which means I never went to Argus and haven't played through any of that content.  I used my token for a 110 boost on a Fire Mage, not my YouTube Mage, on the alliance side.  One of the points of this purchase is that you can start to build your alliance and get the new races, but you have to complete the Argus quest line as well as gain exalted with the races you are trying to recruit.  So I guess what I am getting at is a quick look at boosting a 110 character without playing through the current expansion, the quest line, and ultimately how to go through the work and gain your reputation as quickly as possible.

Review:

The difficulty of Argus:

I know that World of Warcraft has gone more casual in the recent years but this end of expansion zone is one of the most difficult that I have played.  The mobs (monsters and other npcs that try and attack you) boost their skills to match your current gear score (ilvl).  This makes them hit hard no matter how much raiding you do or how much gear you are lucky enough to secure.  I bring this up because this is one of the hardest parts of boosting a new character, unless you are a tank you will die a couple times as you get used to a class that you don't play very often. 

Getting that out of the way, this patch is fun.  You finally get to take the fight to the Legion, which means invading their home planet and trying to fight them on their own turf.  I would say that the story this expansion is one of the best and I look forward to it every day I log in to find a new angle to write about. 

My advice would be to log in and start the campaign on Argus.  It is a little difficult but the story makes up for it and the trial by fire mentality is very helpful in learning your new class. 

Raiding:

Your brand new level 110 character will have a base ilvl of 870 and weapon ilvl of 900.  This means that you cannot do the last raid of the expansion in LFR (Looking for Raid) but you can go through all wings of the previous raids.  I found jumping into LFR to be another avenue to learn your new class as well as experience some of the content that I had missed.  The encounters aren't that difficult and the biggest thing is that you don't stand in stupid during the fight.  My advice to the newish raider is to just pull up the map and click on the boss portrait when you get there.  This will pull up a brief synopsis of what to look out for and what to do so that people don't rage during the encounters.

PvP:

Your gear is awful but with the base stats this expansion for PvP you should do alright.  If you are new to the game I would recommend getting used to playing your new character before you jump into player vs player combat.  I'm not saying this because you will be bad, which you will, but because I love PvP so much and I want you all to enjoy it too.  The learning curve for PvP is huge, and because the encounter changes every time you queue up it can get disheartening to always feel like you are losing or dying all the time.  Do yourself a favor, go quest a bit, get used to your keybinds, practice on training dummies, find a sequence of keys to push that make the training dummy scream for mercy, and then enter the fray.  When you enter be prepared to have fun and make new friends in a sometimes old and dry game.

Allied Races:

I have not had the opportunity to unlock any of these races so I can't comment on the difficulty or the ease of the scenarios to unlock them, I will say that once I get them unlocked I'll do a quick blurb about the scenario and how it was to unlock them.  Who knows maybe I'll go and record the scenarios so you all can see second hand how not to do them, or what they entail.  I will put spoiler warnings on them if you do not want to see them for yourself.

Overall:

I have enjoyed the presale of Battle for Azeroth a lot.  It has breathed new life into a game that can sometimes stagnate, and gotten me to want to complete the current expansion because I mostly want to get it done while it is fresh content.  For those of you coming into the game hopefully the pointers I added in my review will help you at least know what to do, and for those of you that have played through the entire expansion let me know what you think of the pre-expansion so far either in the comments here or on my google plus page. 

Good luck, Good hunting, and Good times

Wylesco