What about WoD did I like the best? Farm, of course /sarcasm/

How Aleeia reacted to Apexis dailies.

A quickly written piece inspired by when @drew-winchester ​mentioned anyone trying to kill Khadgar. Well, it’s more of a comedic “hold me back” situation as in my AU Khadgar and Aleeia are friendly, no harm done! And Perry has a cameo. It doesn’t seem right to write about Khadgar without her now so I hope you don’t mind! Talk about an intense meeting with your partner’s co-workers!

Year 31

“Yes,” the mage replied, “Apexis Crystals”.

What occurred next would send the entire garrison into a frenzy. It had actually become a regular role call for them. Their normally composed commander, the stoic and serious Draenei, would snap. Being unable to sleep for days at a time and her frustration with the Legion created quite the temper. Her heavy eyes flickered for a moment as she squinted in disbelief before raising her sword and yelled something of a war cry in her native tongue. A startled Khadgar took several paces backward, retreating into the town hall. The other gathers held back the crazed Aleeia, sword flailing in the air. 

“Commander, no!”

“He’s corrupted, I tell you! Demonic energies have plagued his mind and will force me to collect more and more clusters. It’s endless. It never stops. It’s their plan to distract us from destroying the enemy!”

A pale, petite elven figure slipped in front of the shaken mage, reaching for a weapon round the back of her belt. Khadgar reached for the female’s hand and squeezed it into his own, brushing it away from taking action. 

“It’s okay, my love. Our Commander here has a fiery temper. She hasn’t slept in days either. She’s a silent solider, but has bursts of erratic rage. It’s normally just yelling a Draenic phrase and drawing her weapon. She lunges and she expects her guardsmen to hold her back. It happened once when I told her we were out of mana buns.” 

The elf blinked and turned back to the raving Draenei, true to Khadgars word, being pulled back by a cast of her comrades. Her sword hand had lost its tight grip within seconds of unsheathing it and her fight forward was barely a wiggle - the hysterical rage clearly over in seconds. She raised a brow: this Draenei had the strangest way of expressing her frustrations. It seemed as though her anger was released before even reaching the man. Content that Khadgar was unharmed, and would remain that way, she  leaned back onto him, she reached back to tighten her ponytail and crossed her arms. “Mana buns?” 

“Hasn’t quite grasped the concept of conjuration. I thought it would be rather humorous to see her reaction to a low stockage of them. I wasn’t disappointed.”

Two hours later

Aleeia sulked in the small hut. Khadgar had thought it hilarious to place her in the stock room for “time out”. This space was filled to the brim of Apexis crystals: glimmering, shining Apexis crystals. The irony was not lost on her and she scowled at the piles with a bitterness until the door unlocked, and she turned  to that. Mywin, another elf, came through the door with a basket stuffed with mana buns. The mage’s wit knew no end, the Draenei thought to herself.

“Ally, you have to control your temper. You would never hurt the Archmage, but you’ll end up giving one of us a heart attack. You need to sleep. You’ve been out all day and night.”

Aleeia frowned but turned her gaze to the mana buns. Still hot from the oven, they smelled fresh and sugary. Her pride prevented her from taking one and instead looked at the elf. She stood tall, hair tucked behind her ears and framed her face which had a familiar “what-are-you-going-to-to-with-you?” expression painted upon it with love and a sense of typicality faded in. 

“A warrior must keep her emotions to the surface. It comes handy in battle.”

Mywin chuckled and knelt downed. “Could you do it without distressing your friends and scaring their mates’ half to death? You know you love him really.” Aleeia rolled her eyes. “Yes you do!” Mywin insisted, giggling at the stubbornness of her friend, “He conjures you buns and I know how his transformation into a raven just fascinates you. We all do. He’s a great mage. You can buck up and get some more crystals, can’t you?”

Through Monday, the Sign of Apexis Bonus Event is back. You’re now receiving bonus Apexis Crystals from eligible creatures, and don’t forget to pick up the event-only quest The Time to Strike, which rewards you with big piles of Apexis Crystals, Garrison Resources, and Oil when you complete five Apexis objectives.

From Archaeology.

Okay but... imagine how friggin’ awesome it would be if that Temple in the Sky was discovered in a future WoD content patch. Closure about what happened to the Apexis, why they left the Spires in the first place. Of course they wouldn’t leave behind evidence of it being built, if they didn’t want to be followed there.

Feel free to add on if anything comes to mind, I’d love to hear it (even if this never happens).

Currently you can buy gear for certain slots at special vendors in your factions’ capital city in Ashran. They cost Apexis crystals and are upgradable for another huge crystal cost. You didn’t know about them? No problem, they are way overpriced and you will probably never farm the crystals to buy one.

Let’s look at an example, the head slot:

Base item: Item Level 630 - 5000 Apexis crystals

First upgrade: Item Level 645 - 11500 Apexis crystals

Second upgrade: Item Level 655 - 20000 Apexis crystals

Third upgrade: Item Level 670 - 20000 Apexis crystals

So we are looking at 56500 Apexis crystals for one (1!) item at item level 670. That is insane. 

Now if we assume that you do the Apexis daily every day, which gets you either 800 or 1000 crystals and one follower mission that grants 600 Apexis per day, it takes you around 35 days for ONE (1!) item.

My suggestion is to just drop one of the upgrade steps and cut down the Apexis cost substantially. Also add a new item to the vendors that let’s you reroll the secondary stats of those items because currently they all have suboptimal stats for almost every spec. I know a lot of people in World of Warcraft and none of them even considered ever buying one of those items, be it for their main characters or just lousy alts. 

#OOC Game Design Exercise: Farahlon Horde Storyline #Warcraft

And we return again to designing Farahlon, for the last time. But fear not, this is not the end of me trying to pretend I’m designing World of Warcraft. Because I still have too much time on my hands, I will return in about a week with a new project – Emerald Dream expansion! Yes, it’s a potentially much bigger project, which is also why we will probably go into less detail with specific design…