A minor nitpick about SW:ToR story

So, Star Wars: The Old Republic is offering a free trial weekend and I apparently got a whole week of free trial because I don't know why and I fully intend to not be lazy and actually play the game a bit and do a blog like I did with my Rift one the other day, but firstly, I want to make a comment on the story. And why I don't like it so far.

DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Yeah, I know, a lot of people are gushing about how amazing the storytelling is in SW:TOR but there's one huge thing that was bugging me. Firstly though, I just want to make one minor note so that you know the context and so you can abuse me for having not played the game enough: I rolled a Twi'lek Jedi, because it's freaking Star Wars and I can't play a Star Wars game without being a Jedi, and so far, I'm level 4 or so. So no, I've barely made it through anything, not even the start zone yet, so chances are, I'm entirely wrong about what I'm gonna moan about, and it's just the way I'm seeing things from my low levelled vantage point. So why am I posting this as a separate blog post and not just writing a big blog post about my adventures in TOR? I'm not sure, but I kinda want to discuss this and spend a decent amount of time on this and not detract from a blog going on about the game more. Plus, it's a problem that basically every MMORPG suffers from and probably isn't even solvable but it's still one that Bioware should've worked around.

But anyway! That's enough prefacing. Onto my problem!

Hold the Line: A guide to WoW warrior avoidance

So, some of you may remember, I did a thread a while back about Hold the Line. As was pointed out to me, I used some slightly flawed maths so I've gone through and redone a lot of it. For example, I had crit block chance increasing overall avoidance, which it doesn't, and I also ignored [Shield Block]. And thus, I've fixed all this and decided to have another shot at this.

So anyway. The main point was to look at Hold the Line and see how it affects stats compared to other ones. We get warriors in here stacking the hell out of parry, thinking it'll give them this ultimate uptime on Hold the Line which is obviously, the best thing evar.

Some WoW nitpicks

Yes, I play way too much World of Warcraft. And I because I can, just a few minor things I wish they'd done or followed up on or something.

1. Azjol'Nerub: Okay, I think everyone probably agrees with this, including the developers. For those who don't know, Azjol'Nerub is the city of the Nerubians that spans the entire continent of Northrend. So Wrath of the Lich King comes out and what do we get? Two 5 man levelling dungeons, one with 3 bosses including Anub'Arak, one of the Lich King's top generals (Who, thankfully, did get a raid appearance later) and the other with 5 bosses. Rather disappointing for an area with a whole lot of potential.
2. Zul'Drak raid: For those who haven't seen it, there's a huge building to the north east of Gun'drak. What is it? Why is it  there? Is that where the king of the Frost Trolls lives? As much as people seem to hate troll raids, this one just has a lot of potential. Ah well, maybe it'll show up again later.
3. Vrykul raid: There's a lot of really huge Vrykul castles in Icecrown that could potentially hold a raid there. Hell, I can think of three bosses that could've worked in there. Queen Angerboda, who, to be fair, did die but since when has that stopped the Lich King? King Ymiron, another character who I think had too much potential to just be a 5 man dungeon boss especially since when we first see him in Howling Fjord, he's a level ?? Boss monster. And...
4. Annhylde the Caller: Even those who play WoW may not recognise this name, but in Utgarde Keep, she's the Val'kyr who appears, resurrects Ingvar the Plunderer and... that's it. Who is she? Why does she get her own name? What happened to her after that? I want to kill her, damnit!
5. The Nexus War: While levelling in WotLK, we got this all over the place: The war between the mages of Dalaran and Malygos, the dragon aspect of magic. And it ended before 3.1 when we kill Malygos in one of the introductory raids. A bit of a let down and again, a lot more potential here. You know how I would've done raiding in WotLK? Make Trial of the Crusader or something like that the second tier 3.0 raid, make Malygos, with a few more random bosses the 3.2 raid. Would've been far more interesting. Also, make Anub'arak a boss in Icecrown Citadel and put something else in his place in the Azjol'Nerub 5 man and the Trial of the Crusader raid.
6. More Deathwing in Cataclysm: Really, for an expansion based around him, Deathwing doesn't really do that much while you level from 80 to 85. We do a lot of stuff with naga and cat people and the Twilight's Hammer but Deathwing himself really only pops up twice, in Mount Hyjal and in Twilight Highlands. Yeah, I know the Twilight's Hammer are his minions but honestly, half the time, they feel like Cho'gall's minions and we've already killed him off too.
7. The Shattering happened?: I'd also have had some more pre-release events right after the Shattering and before the actual expansion hit, since after the Shattering, it didn't feel like a world changing event had just happened, it felt like it had happened months ago. Ah well, can't do anything about that now.
8. Cataclysm reputations: One of the cool things about WotLK was how they managed reputations with classes. Mages were automatically Friendly with Kirin Tor, Death Knights were Friendly with Knights of the Ebon Blade and Paladins were (I think) automatically Friendly with Argent Crusade. In Cataclysm, everyone's neutral with everyone and it feels less loreful. I don't care that loreful isn't a word. It makes sense to me that Druids should start out at Friendly with Guardians of Hyjal, Shamans should start out Friendly with Earthen Ring, Orcs should start out at Friendly with Dragonmaw Clan and Dwarves should start out at Friendly with Wildhammer clan. I don't think that really causes enough imbalance for anyone to really care, but I think it'd make a nice change.
9. Tauren Village: It was a wee village just to the south of Anh'Qiraj that you had to water walk to. Apparently the Shattering removed it :( Ah well.
10. Archimonde's skeleton: Back at the end of WarCraft 3, the Night Elves, Orcs and Humans allied to kick some ass on the Burning Legion, led by Archimonde, ending with them blowing him up as he tries to kill the World Tree. It's pretty bad-ass of them all. Then, when WoW came out, if you managed to get into the Mount Hyjal zone, you could see this. Basically, it's Archimonde's skeleton tied to the World Tree as a huge "Hey, you wanna screw with Night Elves? This is what we did to one of the three leaders of the Burning Legion, Archimonde the Defiler. Still wanna screw with us? Yeah, I thought so." So once Mount Hyjal is finally fully opened and we can go there, I'm like "Yay! I wanna see the big skeleton!" And it's gone. Really? It was such an awesome symbol of Night Elf badassness. Now sure, leaving a giant Eredar skeleton is probably not the safest thing to do but who cares? It was badass!

Aaaaand I think that's about it. Yes, none of these are huge complaints but I don't care! I wanna nitpick.