I might be emotionally scarred from the amount of Horrific Visions and accompanying assaults I did in 8.3. They were neat content, and I really enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself to play better on multiple classes, but I also felt completely burned out by the end of the patch.
By completing both the Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar and Horrific Vision of Stormwind solo while all five masks are activated (the hardest version), you earn the Mad World feat of strength, which rewards the title, The Faceless One. I found that it was significantly harder to do this on cloth characters than any others. I really pushed myself to master my mage and warlock, while it felt like the other classes came easier. In the end, I earned Mad World as a discipline priest, demonology warlock, retribution paladin, elemental shaman, and balance druid. Five classes down!
I also managed to save up the 100,000 corrupted mementos from Horrific Visions to purchase the Wicked Swarmer, shown at the top. It’s a really great mount I think. The color looks good, it’s a cool model, and it’s small enough that it isn’t annoying when using it. I decided to save up for it on my warlock so that my priest, my main, could spend the corrupted mementos on sockets.
Hertz Locker is a Feat of Strength achievement that can be earned by completing Mechagon with all hard modes and without anyone dying.
We only tried three different nights and ended up earning it last night – the last night before it became unobtainable when the Shadowlands pre-patch hit. We had a few hiccups because for some reason, despite being able to do 15s no problem, we still learned of new mechanics that would cause a death – on trash! I’m looking at you shrink ability that can cause someone to get trampled by their friends.
Two Sides to Every Tale (the achievement for doing all the 8.1 quests on both sides basically) gives a horse to the Horde and a wolf to the Alliance, which seemed strange at first until I paid attention. The reward for the achievement is, in lore, a stolen mount.
Alliance get the Ironclad Frostclaw: “Captured in the snows of Alterac Valley, this bloodthirsty hunter now roars for the Alliance.”
Horde get the Bloodflank Charger: “Stolen from the Arathi Basin stables, this fire-hearted charger now steeds for the Horde.”
This is an achievement for completing Zandalar Forever!, A Nation United, and both Tides of Vengeance achievements. So basically, do the Horde zones and their culminating storyline, do the Alliance zones and their culminating storyline, and finish both sides of the 8.1 war campaign. I did one Alliance zone before completing the A Nation United part, so I’m not sure if they changed in a later patch or just made it easier to for alts. (I’m still working on Drustvar and will do Stormsong Valley last.)
While I liked the wolf, I thought the horse was a bit of letdown until I realized it was stolen. Now I like it!
Before talking about the raid, check out that skybox in Ny’alotha! It’s really gorgeous!
The five of us who have been actively pushing m+ were geared and had our Ahead of the Curve already but wanted to be sure the rest of the guild could get it too. Carpe Flux Capacitor has a lot of people who have been in and out this expansion (some fairly geared from pushing through +10s) as well as one friend of mine who just recently came back to WoW and was a hard carry. Plus even the five of us had some bosses we still needed. I had never done Vexiona (besides LFR) even.
We did it over the course of three nights. The first night, we cleared the first few bosses without much issue. Unsurprisingly, Dark Inquisitor Xanesh and Vexiona gave us the most trouble. We eventually pushed through Xanesh, which I thought would be the hardest boss, but then we hit a brick wall with Vexiona.
Night two we descended into that pit to defeat Shad’har the Insatiable, Drest’agath, and Il’gynoth. Again, not too much trouble. And we managed to get Vexiona down as well!
On the third night we tackled Carapace of N’zoth and N’zoth himself. It was a lot of fun to be coordinated again in a group. While I’m enjoying m+ and prefer it to raiding now, raiding is a different beast and scratches an itch I’ve had for a while. Everyone did really well, and even my friend who was a carry in regards to his gear had execution down.
Here I am on my Uncorrupted Voidgwing, which now most of the active guild members have too! As fun as it was, getting the group together also reminds me of the most stressful part of raiding – organizing 10+ people.
Hopefully we can follow a similar path next expansion: pushing m+ primarily but then looping back to try the raid before the end of the patch. This patch has been a blast!
Last week my mythic+ group finished our last +15. This was for the Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Four achievement, which awards the Awakened Mindborer mount.
Here’s our mythic group! It makes me feel gross! Matt had already finished the achievement before the rest of us but was still helping the group push. It seemed like last week was our best shot because the affixes got harder this week, and we were running out of time.
The hardest part was getting the key we needed. Our final key was Siege of Boralus. We actually had a 16 of it. Besides little issues here and there with our run, our tank disconnected for a bit. We were fairly confident though, because even if we fail on +16, we’d be able to try again on +15. We were just about done with the boss, and the timer was close. We pushed hard and accidentally went just a couple seconds over – and that’s when we realized that by finishing it overtime, our key would change. We meant to walk out and reset. There goes our SoB key.
From that point, our group split up into PUGs. Sometimes a few of us went together, but usually we were pugging alone. Matt continued to try to run his own keys in an attempt to generate the SoB key, which was unlikely. It took forever trying to get into good PUGs, but eventually we all did it! While the end was stressful, m+ was a blast and felt very rewarding!
After performing a solo 5-mask run in the Horrific Vision of Stormwind last week on both my shadow priest and demonology warlock, I did a solo 5-mask run in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar this week. This was a big goal for me, and while I’ve been working toward it for a while, I’m also kind of surprised that I managed to do it. Now I have my Mad World achievement and “the Faceless One” title! Later in the week I’ll give it a go on my lock!
This weekend I hit 20,000 achievements points on my account! Thanks to mythic Hellfire Citadel for pushing me over that threshold. And thanks to Mooglegem for tagging along to the run. There’s still many more to earn!
I’ve been leveling Voidgazer, my Forsaken warlock, recently in an effort to earn the Gift of N’zoth. The Gift of N’zoth is a buff that gives you an eyeball on your forehead at the end of a quest series about finding Xal’atath (the shadow priest artifact that was discarded in lore). Having the buff allows you to see other people who also have it; those who don’t have the buff won’t see it on you either. There’s a quest to remove it, but it seems appropriate that Voidgazer keeps it.
Voidgazer thought he’d get to spend more time with this babe he just me, but she took off right away.
I love his expression as he receives the gift.
Now Voidgazer can truly gaze into the void! Leveling him to 120 also earned me Dynamic Duo, the achievement for reaching maximum level with two different classes. I’m not sure how much I’ll play him, but it’s fun to have a second max level character!
It’s been a few weeks since patch 6.2 released, and I’ve been pretty happy with a casual consumption of the content. Overlooking the idea that the Horde and Alliance somehow forgot how to build shipyards and ships, the introduction quests were exciting and well done.
Once in Tanaan Jungle, the new daily system works well in my opinion. The focus is still on assaults on various locations with a progress bar that fills by performing various tasks. I liked these in Warlords first launched, and I still like them now. You go to the location and can space out and take care of things, whether in a group or alone. It’s nice that I can very easily drop from the group in the middle, stop playing, come back, and pick up another group. There’s no start or finish for the group as a whole. While there are a couple other objective-based daily quests, they can be done alongside the assaults and don’t seem overwhelming.
As for Hellfire Citadel, I’ve done the first six bosses in the first two wings of LFR. For some reason, the aesthetic doesn’t really stand out to me. Hellfire Assault, the first boss, tasks players with using the Blackfuse company’s Hellfire Cannons against Hellfire Citadel itself. Sounds cool, but it wasn’t so cool when I did it. The Iron Reaver fight is interesting mostly because I think the boss looks cool – a bit like Samus Aran. I liked taking out Kilrogg Deadeye eventually! My favorite fight so far is the disgusting, glutinous Gorefiend. Going into his stomach and dealing with the souls of draenei that he devoured? Awesome.
Everyone has different goals, and I had a few for this patch.
Draenor’s Last Stand – Complete the Tanaan Jungle daily objectives.
In Pursuit of Gul’dan – Complete the Garrison Campaign.
Hellfire Citadel – See the fights through on LFR at least.
Things have gone pretty fast so far, and I admit that I like the pace. Draenor’s Last Stand and In Pursuit of Gul’dan went quickly and were fun. Obviously I don’t really even need to think about Hellfire Citadel LFR; it’ll happen as soon as it’s all released. As for the legendary, I’m working at it. On that subject, if anyone chooses to comment on talk about it, I avoid spoilers, so I don’t know what happens in the legendary quests and don’t want to know until it’s revealed.
We’ll see how everyone else feels about patch 6.2 and if it lasts long enough for them. As for me, I don’t like it when I get overwhelmed with too much. I know I don’t have to do it all, but I prefer when it feels manageable. I’m also fine completing all my goals and then not playing WoW for a while, but that’s just my opinion. Right now, WoW feels very leisurely for me, and I like that!
I’ve earned a couple monuments recently that I didn’t mention. First, I earned the Master Draenor Crafter monument for crafting 50 epic items with an ilvl of 600+. There was one thing I could craft – the gun through the engineering building.
I also earned the Master of Apexis monument for collecting 100,000 Apexis Crystals. Now I have three distinct monuments, so each pedestal can display a unique monument. I think the Mythic Draenor Raider monument is far away from my goals, and I don’t have any max level pets, so Draenor Pet Brawler is out of my immediate reach as well. My eye’s on the legendary ring monument for next patch though!
This post contains significant spoilers for the legendary quests in 6.1! Keep in mind that this builds off the current story of Warlords of Draenor, so if you missed other major lore moments or cutscenes, those could be spoiled a little too.
I recently finished the 6.1 parts of the legendary quests, which are fantastic. Obviously, there was a lot of grinding and killing raid bosses repeatedly, and that’s not included in my videos. I’ve recorded turning in the quests, picking them up, talking to Khadgar, and all the non-repeatable content.
I broke it into two videos because the final quest, the culmination (that is seriously awesome), is a lot longer. Sure, that probably has to do with me failing repeatedly, but I think it’s interesting to see failures as well sometimes.
What an awesome cutscene. It got a little choppy near the end because I stupidly ran low on disk space on the drive to which I was recording. Whoops. You can always search for the cutscene on YouTube if you want.
There’s an achievement called Time is a Flat Circle that awards a monument of Khadgar fighting Gul’dan. It’s description reads, “Everything we have ever done or will do, we are going to do over and over and over again.” It seems like we’re going to see that even with all the meddling of beings from our timeline, this timeline wants to naturally progress to the same state.
The cutscene at the end of the chain also leads up to the next raid that was recently announced – Hellfire Citadel, complete with the Legion’s Archimonde and the Iron Horde presumably now under control of Gul’dan. I can’t wait to find out what happens to Grommash Hellscream. Can I build by shipyard and launch a naval assault on Tanaan Jungle yet?
Five thousand Alliance have fallen before me in battle on Draenor, earning me the Defender of Draenor achievement. A monument now commemorates this, standing next to my Gladiator’s Sanctum!
Speaking of the Gladiator’s Sanctum, I finished Nemesis: Worgen Hunter this weekend and have continued to Nemesis: Draenei Destroyer. I have four more races to slaughter, counting the draenei. I also became exalted with Vol’jin’s Spear. It was a productive weekend.
Ashran was incredibly fun at the start of the expansion, but eventually people stopped PVPing, opting to do events. Luckily the group finder makes it easy to find a Nemesis group – perfect for direct PVP. I’ve been having a wonderful time in Ashran, although part of that has to do with my own circumstances. I hurt my wrist a few months ago and didn’t like prolonged computer gaming. I wish I could say it got better, but actually, I just bought a wrist brace. Regardless, I can now spend hours in Ashran again. I’m not looking forward to the rarer races, but I’m definitely looking forward to “Warlord of Draenor.”
A few weeks ago, Zaghar, my guildmate, suggested we run Challenge Mode dungeons to get silvers for the mount before the first season of CMs ended with the completion of Mists of Pandaria. I’d been wanting to do CMs mostly for the, well, challenge of it. We’ve been running them when we had the chance. I wish we had started earlier because they’re a lot of fun.
Is that a second Devee in the picture? No, it’s just Mooglegem.
I really enjoy how Challenge Mode dungeons greatly reduce the role of gear and tests group skill. In Warlords of Draenor, I think I’d like to try Challenge Mode dungeons earlier so I could aim for golds. However, I have to be honest that I’m not sure how much time I can truly devote to the game. I doubt I can seriously focus on CMs and raiding.
gem and I both chose Violet Pandaren Phoenixes as our rewards! Of course, soon we’ll have all of them when the patch lands.
Recently I was playing my paladin, Illuminnae. She’s Illussia’s (gem’s warlock) sister of course! After finishing Eversong Woods, she headed south into the Ghostlands.
Finishing that zone unlocked Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms! However, I still had a little playing to do. The achievement always comes before the end of the zone for some reason. I understand they like to give wiggle room, but there’s no way I’m going to stop before the conclusion of a zone once I’m reaching the good stuff!
Traveling to the Undercity, I got to trigger Sylvanas’ Lament of the Highborne. It was pretty darn cool to see even if I have seen it previously. I can listen to it any time with Sylvanas’ Music Box, but it’s not every day that I get to see the event too!
For now, I’m done with Illuminnae as I move to my druid. I’m sure I’ll return to her in a bit though!
We finalled stripped the mantle of Warchief from Hellscream and liberated Orgrimmar! According to my count, it was on the guild’s 45th attempt.
I’m happy to finally complete normal mode. This might be it for the guild for a while; I know a number of people are looking forward to a break. I think the guild will take a break for a week or two and then see who wants to continue.
I won loot from my bonus roll – a tier token! I turned it in for the fifth and final normal-mode healing tier piece. I don’t think I’m going to use because my off-tier is better in that slot, but I’m glad to have the option
Normally I include a montage of our deaths before the kill video, but with 43 failures, it would take me a while to edit them and render the video, plus it would make the video pretty long. You’ll have to live with the kill video alone. Of course, I doubt anyone really cares to watch our kill videos, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, I had WoW’s audio routed through my speakers and Mumble through my headset, and somehow FRAPS only picked up Mumble. No WoW audio in this one. Oh well.
You can read more details about the kill on the Carpe Flux Capacitor kill announcement.
After a terrible LFR run last night, I wanted to do something new. Having never tried Proving Grounds, that sounded like an interesting thing to try. The bronze and silver healing challenges were very easy, but I couldn’t quite get gold. I felt a little better later when I read that it scaled gear. At first I thought I was failing even though I was so over-geared. I’ll have to take a look at how the scaling works later. If everything scales equally, then I definitely want more spirit. In my normal gear I cap my spirit pretty low compared to what I could have. We’ll see.
I also tried the DPS Proving Grounds as disc. Bronze was ridiculously easy, but I was about a second or two short on silver. I’m pretty confident I can do it though! Of course, I could switch to shadow too, but I want the achievement for doing it in the wrong spec.
I’ve been running a lot of old raids recently in an effort to collect old tier gear. While i Was in Molten Core, I got this Core of Hardened Ash, which teaches the Ashstone Core. Pretty cool. Not done with this tier yet though.
I also obtained the Jewel of Maddening Whispers from AQ. It teaches a Mini Mindslayer. I particularly dislike gathering gear from the AQ raids. I don’t like having to deal with idols and scarabs. Ugh.
While I was in there, I did manage to hit exalted with the Brood of Nozdormu though. Yay! I’m almost done collecting gear from the AQ raids.
By this point, my bags were super full. I had to figure out a way to free up some bag space. One thing I did was spend my Spirits of Harmony on archaeology. I earned the What was Briefly Yours is Now Mine achievement for finding enough rares, but more importantly, I got this cute little Pterrordax Hatchling!
I decided to run Blackwing Lair tonight for an attempt at transmog gear. When I defeated Razorgore the Untamed, I got an Unscathed Egg containing this Untamed Hatchling. I’m guessing the drop rate is pretty decent, but I’m happy.
I’ve earned a few other random achievements lately. I did some achievements in Obsidian Sanctum, Onyxia’s Lair, and Naxxramas recently. This weekend I earned To All The Squirrels I’ve Loved Before, To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life, To All the Squirrels Who Cared for Me, and To All the Squirrels I Once Caressed? That was a lot a critter /love’ing. Yesterday I also earned Thirty Tabards and, while flying over the Jade Forest, accidently earned Explore Jade Forest and Explore Pandaria. Pretty nice!
I forgot how much I enjoyed this dungeon until I ran it the other day. It’s fairly straight forward but has amazing atmosphere. Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls, is an awesome boss, but even more awesome is his music.
Okay, his sounds are pretty entertaining too.
I ran it last week just for the achievements – Soul Power and Three Faced. I feel like I spend most of my time in WoW running things for progression, but I think I want to go do this again, and I just ran it a few days ago. It’s just too good.
I’ve been branching out in WoW a bit lately, finishing some things besides just doing my LFR or flex. First, I finished the dungeon achievements for the ICC heroic dungeons. Next, I got the mount from a OS 3D 25-man run, the Twilight Drake! I know it’s old content, but I do like the mount.
I also finished the last two achievements I needed for Glory of the Hero. First, there was Dehydration. This is for killing Ichoron in Violet Hold without allowing any of the globules to merge. It was fairly simple. My final one was Respect Your Elders. It’s funny, because I remember that requiring strategy. You have to defeat Elder Nadox in the Old Kingdom without killing his adds. The adds make him immune to damage when they’re near him, so you’d have to tank the adds away from him. Back in Wrath, I suppose that would mean two people need to be able to survive a lot of damage. Now it means you just start DPSing the boss, and a second later he dies. And then you get a Red Proto-Drake if it’s your last Glory of the Hero achievement!
On the same night I earned that, I did some achievements in the Lost City of the Tol’vir with the same friend who was helping me do these other things. She earned Headed South on Siamat, which gave her Glory of the Cataclysm Hero and the Volcanic Stone Drake! We’re on our new mounts in the above screenshot.
It’s funny how little I know about a lot of these instances. I have a couple alts (no alts are max), but I don’t really play them. I only saw most dungeons as I did them for gear while leveling and then never touched them again. I feel so lost in some instances and barely remember them. I must have coasted through Cataclysm on auto-pilot. I remember Wrath fairly well, but that was the expansion during which I first hit a level cap. In addition, I was out of school and didn’t have a job, so I spent a lot of time in game. Doing Wrath of the Lich King dungeons felt very nostalgic. Thanks for being a good expansion, Wrath.
It took me a long time, but I finally got my 100,000th kill! You can now call me Devee of the Horde. It seems crazy how much I slowed down. I PVP’d a lot while leveling, spending much more time in battlegrounds that actually trying to level. After I hit 80, my first level cap, I began running heroics and old raids. When I applied to Carpe Flux Capacitor in December 2009, I had 37,787 honorable kills.
In February 2010, two months after joining Carpe Flux Capacitor, I had 50,000 HKs. After that, it took me close to four years to reach 100,000. Whoops. It always felt like there was something I needed to do to improve my gear for raids. I let myself down!
My 100,000th Honorable Kill was Elvion of Thorium Brotherhood. I’ve been playing a lot of Temple of Kotmogu recently. The small arena really lends itself to killing. I guess it’s as close to a 10v10 arena match as we’ll see. Now, do I set my sights on the 250,000 HK achievement? I’ll keep PVPing, but I’m definitely happy to have the “of the Horde” title!
Recently I’ve been finishing some reputation and profession grinds in Mists of Pandaria. You can see him chilling with Nat Pagle in his boat in my nice, new Nat’s Fishing Chair.
Of course, that’s because I’m best friends with him. No more fishing for his three rare fish every day.
Once I convinced Fish Fellreed to be best friends with me, I was best friends with all the inhabitants of Halfhill. Now that we’re best friends, I can say that I hate them all.
Speaking of Halfhill, I’ve mastered all of the Ways! I do still need to teach my own apprentice, but I’m putting that on hiatus. I’ve had enough with these grinds for now!
I recently hit exalted with the Order of the Cloud Serpent. My baby cloud serpent grew into the glorious Azure Cloud Serpent you see here! I was very excited to ride him, but honestly, it’s kind of an annoying mount. It’s huge, and while its movement looks fluid and pretty, it’s also distracting. This was the last true reputation grind for Mists of Pandaria (outside of two remaining friends) except for Huojin Pandaren.
I couldn’t have that! I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Because I wanted to run all the BC heroics that I never did, I threw on my Huojin tabard and got into those dungeons. It didn’t take long to hit exalted and earn Pandaren Ambassador.
For my trouble, I got this beautiful Pandaren Kite mount. It’s pretty nice! However, I still prefer my Disc of the Red Flying Cloud. It’s very small and can be used as both a land and flying mount. But the Pandaren Kite is very nice as well!
Now I just need to become best friends with Fish Fellreed and Nat Pagle.
This past weekend I decided to finish old content that I never ran. I started with Dire Maul. For whatever reason, I never completed Dire Maul. At some point I ran one wing but never the rest. It was actually an interesting instance. After completing it, I earned Classic Dungeonmaster, which was nice. I don’t know why I never got it earlier.
Next I moved into Burning Crusade raids. I completed Gruul’s Lair first, which was nice and short, then I did Serpentshrine Cavern. I really enjoyed Serpentshrine Cavern. Those two raids gave me Outland Raider. Why stop there? I ran Shattered Halls, The Mechanar, The Botanica, and The Arcatraz after that. I particularly liked Shattered Halls. The three Tempest Keep dungeons kind of blended together in my mind already, but they were fun too. I know running the same dungeons over and over can get old, but I think it says something about the quality that I can go back to do a dungeon from two expansions ago and have fun. No, I don’t want to run them over and over, but even being over-powered for them, they’re still entertaining. The layout, art assets, and bits of story all make for good entertainment. These dungeons allowed me to earn Outland Dungeonmaster.
With this, I’ve now seen all dungeons, scenarios, and raids in the game. Yes, I have some heroics to do, but it’s nice to have seen everything.
We did it! Two weeks after first having killed the Twin Consorts, we attempted Lei Shen for the first time. After seventeen wipes, we managed to kill him! I’m very excited and extremely relieved. I still want to repeat it for the people who weren’t there, get more gear, and maybe push some heroic bosses for gear, but this was the big moment. Especially considering that there’s no way we’re going to finish heroic mode by the next patch, this was the big “end game” goal for us for this tier.
It’s also special for me. I’ve been raiding this tier with the guild, Carpe Flux Capacitor, since the beginning, and now it’s completed. During tier 14, we finished Mogu’shan Vaults, but we didn’t complete the other two raids. In tier 13, we raided Dragon Soul, but we stopped raiding long before the end. I did manage to complete the raid before Mists of Pandaria was released, but it wasn’t with the guild.
I was taking a break from WoW for much of tier 12. In my first time in the Firelands, I joined a PUG at the request of a guildie. They needed a healer for Ragnaros. I pointed out that not only had I never killed him, I had never entered the raid. They discussed it and let me join. I pulled him by accident before we were all ready. They didn’t kick me. We killed him, and I won loot. The next week, we finished Firelands as a guild. At the time, the guild hadn’t yet killed Ragnaros. When we killed the previous boss, my achievement suddenly popped for finishing the raid. While I completed the raid, I didn’t work for it all tier.
In tier 11 I was with a different guild, Playground Brigade, made of friends I knew from out of WoW just for that tier. We fell apart in the middle of the tier. We were 5/6 Blackwing Descent, 2/4 Bastion of Twilight, and 1/2 Throne of the Four Winds.
Tier 10 was my first current-tier raid. I had just hit level 80 and joined Carpe Flux Capacitor. I was an alternate, and my first boss was Deathbringer Saurfang. Maybe I wasn’t there from the absolute very beginning, but we pushed the entire tier, and yes, we finished the raid (as well as Ruby Sanctum).
I mention all this because it means this is only the second raid tier for which I worked the entire tier with my guild and still completed. Carpe, thanks for being a great guild (and taking me back after my one-tier stint with another guild). Here’s hoping next tier goes smoothly well. Let’s take back Orgrimmar!
My friend Shaun is moving to another country soon. I’ve talked about him before, and there’s a reddit thread about him here. He acquired every achievement shortly before Mists of Pandaria’s launch. I’ve known him since middle school, and like I said, he’s moving to another country next month. To prepare for this, he’s been giving away practically everything he owns. I took some of his weights and a pull-up bar, but that’s not really applicable to this blog. He had Collector’s Editions of all the World of Warcraft expansions, and I accepted The Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition because it was the only one I didn’t have!
Of course, the key’s been used, but that’s not really why I took it. It’s also missing the WoW CCG cards. However, it has the mousepad, art book, and behind-the-scenes DVD. I’m looking forward to preusing them more. In fact, I don’t think I finished looking at the Mists of Pandaria art book! (I like to be surprised in game.)
Thank you for the gift, Shaun / Scyber / Scybear / Yuber. Enjoy your new country!
The Darkspear Rebellion was very exciting. Yes, it was pretty short, but I like that. You can see all the content in the day, but you can grind some more if you’d like. You can watch me experience it in the video below. Of course, the video and this post contain huge spoilers. I’ve also cut a lot of the repetition from the video. Below I first explain the lore and story involved before giving my opinion and feedback. Click here to jump straight to my feedback.
After witnessing events elsewhere on Azeroth with Lorewalker Cho and his dream brew, I was sent to Sen’jin Village. Vol’jin is there planning a rebellion against the Warchief, Garrosh Hellscream. With him are Thrall and Chen Stormstout. You’re tasked with collecting some supplies from the new Kor’kron camps in the Northern Barrens.
After completing this task, I returned to talk with Vol’jin, Thrall, and Chen. The Warchief, or at least his Kor’kron, figured out what was happening and led an attack on Sen’jin Village. Unfortunately for them, we were able to defeat them. As they fled, Vol’jin suggested we let them run because they’d be executed by Hellscream for doing so.
Vol’jin’s next move was to plan on attack on Razor Hill, using it as a staging ground before laying siege to Orgrimmar. Thrall parted ways with the rest of the rebellion at this point, believing that some of his previous advisers, such as Eitrigg and Saurfang, must not support Hellscream. Vol’jin told him that he’d be killed upon setting foot in Orgrimmar, but Thrall felt he had to try anyways. He told Vol’jin to watch over Aggra and his boy if he’s killed. gem watches from her direhorn, propped up cutely on the stairs.
After taking Razor Hill, the rebellion sets up camp at a watchtower just north of the city. Baine Bloodhoof arrives, happy to see Vol’jin alive. He offers to join the rebellion. I was tasked with two new objectives – to steal many more supplies from the Kor’kron and to speak with the Old Seer currently climbing Mount Neverest in the footsteps of the last emperor.
First, I went to the Northern Barrens to collect materials from the Kor’kron and to kill the Kor’kron commanders. Once that was done, I headed to Kun’Lai Summit.
I helped the Old Seer, Seer Hao Pham Roo, climb the mountain, during which he explained how when he was young he would have had trouble performing the climb. For example, he says, “My, you are strong! When I was young, I might have doubted that we could do this. But now, I have no doubts at all.” In fact, he mentions overcoming anger, violence, doubt, despair, hate, and fear.
Upon reaching the summit, he explains. “You see, when I was young… when I was young… when I was young… I was EMPEROR.” He transforms in the spirit of the last emperor, describing his remaining vice – his pride. He explains that his pride cloaked Pandaria in the mists. He thought they could solve their problems without outside help. Now he believes that old enemies must work together, and that proud races must admit that they need help. He then disappears.
Upon completing all the tasks of the Darkspear Rebellion, I became Darkspear Revolutionary Devee. (If I was a member of the Alliance, I would gained “Hordebreaker!”)
My opinion and reaction
I’m incredibly happy with the Battlefield Barrens event. The lore was fantastic, and experiencing it was a ton of fun. The only grind is collecting supplies for the weekly, but that really only took an hour or so. Of course, if I choose not to do it again, it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal. The conflict rose at a great pacing as well. First, we attacked the Kor’kron haphazardly. Next, they attacked Sen’jin Village, and we defended. Finally, we led a full assault with a marching army upon Razor Hill. Very cool!
All three leaders of the primary Western Horde were there – Vol’jin, Thrall, and Baine. They even mentioned that Lor’themar agreed with the rebellion but was still busy and that Sylvanas agreed but was too far away. It was nice to see Baine show up despite there still being tauren within Orgrimmar. The dialogue between Thrall and Vol’jin was also touching. I know I’m a sap for lore and story, but I really enjoyed it. I hope Blizzard wasn’t foreshadowing Thrall’s death, but in all honesty, I was expecting his death at the end of Cataclysm already. Many people love Thrall, and many people are sick of seeing him. Killing him could be a fitting solution. The people who are sick of him won’t need to see him anymore. The people who love him will have him go out at a high point in his life and can remember him as a great hero.
The quest with the Old Seer was simply amazing. I didn’t even realize he was talking about defeating the sha as we climbed until I went back to watch my own video. And when he transformed into the Emperor, I was at a loss of words. I know that sounds silly, but I have a low tolerance for “awesome,” and this was super awesome. A lot of people were expecting a final Sha of Pride, but it’s nice to see it confirmed. And it’s definitely true that Garrosh has been acting more prideful and much less honorable than previously. When did the mists part, anyways? Could the Sha of Pride have left Pandaria, parting the mists, near the end of Cataclysm – right around the time Garrosh Hellscream began planning the destruction of Theramore? It could explain his change of behavior!
I’ve been hoping to fight Oondasta but have always missed it for some reason. This weekend I noticed he was up. [Thank you, Balkoth, for pointing out that Oondasta is a male!] I played Xbox for an hour or two with the game open, continually checking to see if there was a group forming, but there wasn’t. The next day I finally saw people getting together to fight Oondasta. Seeing her approach the edge of the hill to come to the beach to fight us was a joyous occasion!
While we were waiting to pull, someone decided to organize the raid by class. Once people noticed it was happening, others tried to rearrange it just to stop the organizer. There was a little raid frame war, which was surprisingly fun actually.
We had a few wipes, but eventually we killed her! Thank you for the Girdle of Dimorphodontics, Oondasta!
I knew that we were getting Feats of Strength for completing 5.0 raids before 5.2 hit, but I was under the impression it was run Feat of Strength for completing the entire tier on normal and a second for completing the entire tier on heroic. I was quite surprised to find this Feat of Strength when I played last night.
When you earned an achievement is, in many cases, as important as whether or not you earned it at all. In my personal tracking here on Kor’kron 501st, I always note what patch I downed a boss. I’ve been hoping for a while that Blizzard would add the patch at the time of earning the achievement next to the date, but they don’t seem to think it’s important. Giving a Feat of Strength for completing a raid when it’s current fulfills the same role (at least for raids).
I hope Blizzard will continue to award this type of Feat of Strength. I wouldn’t mind seeing similar Feats of Strength for the Glory of the Raider achievements and Loremaster achievements at the end of each expansion.
On Saturday we decided to raid Mogu’shan Vaults because our normal raid nights are now only Heart of Fear. When we got to Elegon, we decided to try to earn “And… It’s Good!” for flying through the rings. We got it, and now you can share in our joy by watching the above video!
Afterward we went to complete “A Change of Command,” a quest for the second chapter of Wrathion’s quests. If you’re worried, the video doesn’t have any spoilers. It’s just a fight, but it does take a group of people. We did it with 10. It was a pretty fun fight especially considering it’s a mob out in the world!
Well, I had a little more progression this week – kind of. We decided to three-man ICC 10. After the first five bosses or so, we decided to switch it to heroic mode. It was totally doable. On Sindragosa, a fourth person joined us. Previously I was 11/12 ICC10H, but now I’m 12/12! It was nice to finally earn Bane of the Fallen King too!
I also got a nice drop – Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer. I was already transmogged into T10, so this went very well. It was a good night!
Last night we didn’t have enough DPS to raid, so we decided to do LFR as a group. After clearing Guardians of Mogu’shan and the Vault of Mysteries like I have the past few weeks, I would have had to stop because my ilvl wasn’t quite 470. However, my guild leader purchased the Inscribed Red Fan off-hand for me. It’s a huge jump, so I was able to continue doing LFR. We completed the Dread Approach, which was fun, and then moved on to Nightmare of Shek’zeer. While working on Amber-Shaper Un’sok, we all disconnected. After not being able to get back into the game for a few minutes, I decided it was time to sleep.
It was fun getting to see the new raid and downing four new bosses. Tonight I’ll finish it up and move on to the Terrace of Endless Spring!
After obtaining Loremaster, doing all the dungeons, and gearing, Mooglegem and I were finally able to enter Mogu’shan Vaults. It was an enjoyable raid, although I’d probably need to run it a few more times to fully form an opinion.
When Mooglegem died, I took it upon myself to cremate my body. Don’t worry; no trolls were hurt in the recording of this picture.
We wiped a couple times on The Spirit Kings due to some bugs. We couldn’t get everyone in the room at the start of the fight. That’s fine except that when you get the boss down to 0% and people are locked out of the room, it counts as a wipe. I took the time to transform the entire raid using Hallow’s End wands. I almost got through all my wands!
When all was said and done, I managed to score two items from LFR. I’d call that a success!
Mooglegem and I quested in the Twilight Highlands this week. Here we’re pretending to be Twilight Cultists. They totally bought it.
We explored a dark cave together too. We were a bit scared, but luckily for us, we had Squishy the water elemental to fight off any dreaded spooks.
Okay, okay, it was actually Mooglegem who managed to cleanse the place and save me from the bad spirits. I just didn’t want to admit to being saved by a blood elf.
While fighting the Black Dragonflight, I invented a new sport – dragon surfing. While watching a dragon surf would be pretty neat, that’s not what this is.
When I saw Mooglegem earn the achievements Explore Twilight Highlands and Explore Cataclysm, I had to go fly in circles until I explored Victor’s Point too and earned the achievements. Nice to finally get this.
Then we pretty much performed genocide against the Black Dragonflight. I’ll admit to feeling a little bad about that.
Next I tried to go for a quiet flight, but these darn Kor’kron kept flying behind me everywhere I went.
After earning Fading into Twilight (and Loremaster of Cataclysm), I sort of expected the zone to be just about done, but there were still a significant amount of quests left.
We posed with Blindeye the Guardian because we thought he (and his surrounding area) looked pretty cool.
Squishy was thrilled to meet Super Squishy, so we swam in circles around him excitedly! (I wish Blizzard hadn’t removed the ability to rename water elementals even if they never intended it to be in the game anyways.)
I enjoyed the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references in the names of these two-headed ogres.
Beeble’phod and Za’brox are obviously references to Zaphod Beeblebrox.
All in all, Twilight Highlands was an enjoyable zone, but I’m glad to have finished all the Cataclysm zones. Now I wonder if I’ll finish Blackwing Descent or Throne of the Four Winds in time for Mists of Pandaria. Probably not.
I was previously only 5/8 in Dragon Soul because my guild stopped raiding. When a guildie asked me if I wanted to run a normal mode Dragon Soul last night, I was excited. It’d be a chance to do it on normal mode even if it is super nerfed now, and it would also be a chance to practice after the patch. Nate took a little convincing, but when he realized that not being set up after the patch wasn’t a good enough excuse, he swapped over and joined us.
I don’t care if it’s late. I’m still taking a killshot. Here’s Blackhorn dead. I had never actually got to do any attempts on him previously. While I had studied the fight, the mechanics still confused me. (Consider that it’s also been many months since I studied the fight too.)
Then gem had to ride Nate around. I think she really liked being able to do that. Shhh, don’t tell his wife that he let gem ride him.
Spine of Deathwing was an absolute blast. While I do feel like it’s anti-climatic in that it’s the same process repeated, I still find it really cool. Rather than being in a room fighting a raid boss, the location is the actual boss. This isn’t the first game to do it, but it’s definitely fun.
While Mooglegem didn’t make it to the end of the fight, we did successfully put down the Madness of Deathwing. I also won the Maw of the Dragonlord! Someone offered me 500g for it, but I wanted to keep the mace. How exciting! Now I can be Devee, Destroyer’s End.
One of my alts managed to get Brew of the Year last week! It amuses me because I earned “Brew of the Month” in October 2010, which means I missed one or more brews that year.
Of course, this doesn’t really matter with achievements being account-wide now. Still, I was surprised when I saw it pop!
Patch 5.0.4 hit last night, and as usual, there were some complications. No matter what I did, I couldn’t connect to the tracker to download the patch (which I thought we had already downloaded). Eventually I gave up trying to fix it when I realized that Mooglegem’s computer was updating just fine. She didn’t have room to optimize, so we moved her copy of TOR to an external drive, giving her 6 GB free on that drive. After optimizing, she had 30 GB free. This morning I copied her WoW copy to an external drive, and by before I left I began copying it to my computer.
I also logged in on each of my characters to unify the achievements. The screenshot above is of my very first character, a Night Elf warrior, looking at his achievements. In particular, I’m happy about the honorable kills achievements! I can now PVP on any character and still make progress on that achievement! I’m really looking forward to PVPing on alternate characters.
I finished Grizzly Hills recently. Overall, I enjoyed the story. The mechanics were nothing special, but I guess that’s like pretty much every zone. I had this new golem buddy, but he didn’t want to continue to hang out with me!
While I always have trouble remembering exactly what went on in each zone, I did enjoy the story as it played out. I enjoyed the various stories – worgen, furbolgs, Loken’s forces, and especially the trolls. In the picture above I was partying with the spirits I put at ease!
The quests in Grizzly Hills seem to lead directly into Zul’Drak. I guess most zones lead to other zones, but I liked the flow. It’s also cool how Drak’Tharon Keep sits between the two zones.
I wanted to include a picture of my friend Shaun with me at the top of this post before talking about him, but we looked really stupid in high school so I couldn’t do it. Instead, I found this old video clip that jokingly explained why an acquaintance of ours, kuno5, stopped joining our IRC channel. Shaun uses the name Scyber online along with a few others such as Yuber and variations of Scyber.
I met Shaun in middle school, and we became best friends. After graduating and heading to college, I stopped seeing him as much, but we’re still friends. As teenagers we got into a lot of various kinds of trouble together. Luckily, neither of us were successfully expelled! A couple years ago he was nice enough to buy me a BlizzCon ticket so we could hang out, which was very cool of him.
He recently claimed to have beaten World of Warcraft, but some of his friends didn’t believe him. We could debate what beating the game means to help decide whether or not he did. On the other hand, we could check his character (at least before Mists of Pandaria releases) to see that he has 100% of the achievements. Yeah, I think he beat it.
He answered some questions on reddit, so feel free to check that out. I like that someone realized who he was in iRO (Ragnarok Online) as well.
If I recall correctly you were Yuber there, right? Me and my friends would tell tales of legend of the guy with full +10 gears, +10 Steel Chonchon carded Full plates, whatever. With this WoW milestone you’re essentially one of the final bosses of MMO gaming, though. Rock on.
He’s pretty much beaten two MMOs. Back in iRO, he kicked me from the guild for not playing enough. That summer I was eating, sleeping, and playing Ragnarok. I was sleeping too much apparently.
Also, remember how I didn’t want to share a picture of us? Well here’s one of him from the last day of our junior year in high school tying up a couple girls.
And reddit user Roboticide called him well-adjusted! Okay, actually he is a pretty well-adjusted guy! Congratulations, Shaun!
I finished my 25th Tol Barad victory, earning Tol Barad Veteran and Master of Tol Barad. I wanted to make sure to get this out of the way before Mists of Pandaria launches because I’m sure there will be a lot less people doing TB. Tol Barad’s fun; I think I liked Wintergrasp more, but I’m glad they felt very different.
I also saw someone earn 100000 Honorable Kills while I was in Tol Barad! Congratulations, Phuska of Kil’jaeden!
While working on the Darkmoon Faire last week, I purchased that ugly mount along with three pets – Darkmoon Turtle, Darkmoon Zeppelin, and Darkmoon Tonk. In doing so, I earned Menagerie! Of course, if you look closely at the chat window in the screenshot, you’ll see that Moogle had to show me up!
While working on the Midsummer Fire Festival dailies, I earned 2500 Daily Quests Complete. It came as a bit of shock to me simply because I had no idea I was approaching it.
Then I recently did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done previously; I completed 25 dailies in one day. I know most people might scoff at that, but just think about what it really means: I’ve never bothered to do 25 tedious, boring dailies in a single day before.
There have been other bloggers talking about their Cataclysm bucket lists lately, and I didn’t think I had anything I really needed to get done before Pandaria hits. However, I recently realized I was wrong.
I’ve always thought of Wintergrasp and Tol Barad basically as battlegrounds. I do them for PVP. However, the fact that Wintergrasp is so dead shows that most people are likely doing them for the gear you can get. That means Tol Barad will likely die when Pandaria releases. Embarrassingly, I don’t have Tol Barad Veteran yet. I’m actually only 13/25. I need to step it up!
To a lesser extent, I need to work on Loremaster. I don’t expect to finish it, but it’ll be easier now than later. When Blizzard’s new-fangled realm merging in under-populated zones, I suspect I’ll have people around me now in the low level zones. On the one hand, I like the idea the world feeling more alive. On the other hand, I don’t want to have compete for quest objectives.
Most likely, I’ll finish TB off and forget to work on Loremaster at all.
Achievements offer the chance to look at content in different ways and track progress. Sometimes they’re boring, but often they’re quite fun. Boring achievements might track progress or simply track something that you were going to do anyways. However, fun achievements task you with going about something in a different way than you might have previously or acknowledge that you did something difficult.
World of Warcraft has some boring achievements – Level 10, Explore Durotar, Northern Barrens Quests, An Honorable Kill, etc. These are achievements that really don’t warrant a “grats” in guild chat. There are also some good achievements. Explore Kalimdor, Disgracin’ The Basin, and More Skills to Pay the Bills are a couple examples. There are also achievements that mean you did something very difficult like The Loremaster, 100000 Honorable Kills, Battlemaster, and The Light of Dawn. These are achievements that pretty much require a quick “grats.” Unexpected ones like Going Down? can be fun as can the Glory of the Hero and Glory of the Raider achievements that task you with doing special things during boss fights. Then, of course, there are Feats of Strength, which are not available to all players.
There needs to be a balance between these types of achievements. There should be far less of the boring achievements because they just clutter up the system. It’s nice to be able to check how progressed in the game someone is, and for people who aren’t at endgame, checking their level via achievements could work. However, many of these boring achievements are hardly achievements. They shouldn’t be taken out of the game, but they should be the minority. Achievements should track the cool things you did. They’re things to show off. Feats of Strength are a great aspect to the achievement system in Blizzard’s games. They’re something special even if they’re not particularly hard.
Right now, I see a lot of the boring achievements in Diablo III. This is likely because I’m just beginning. However, it just seems strange to see achievements pop up when I’ve yet to even complete Act I. Let’s be honest here; I haven’t really achieved much. Also, I don’t care when a friend gets an achievement that’s hardly an achievement. Maybe a single progression achievement for each difficulty would be better? That might be going too far. However, boss-by-boss seems a bit much.
I think a better system is to push the profile we see in Diablo III and on the Web for World of Warcraft. There only needs to be an achievement for everything if the achievements are the only way you show off your accomplishments. If they were just one part, along a raid progression graphic like the one above, some of the boring achievements don’t need to exist.
Another thing I’d love to see are custom achievements. The logistics are difficult, but what if they weren’t worth any points and were in their own section? Basically, a little notepad area that’s part of your profile. These could be used to track personal memories you’ve made in the game.
No Longer Languishing in Ulduar
Convinced Lang to go back to Ulduar since I never saw it!
Where’s the Flag?
Played in a Warsong Gulch match over 12 hours after the flag disappeared and never respawned!
Look who Mooglegem and I finally ran into in Mount Hyjal – Mankrik! He was the last person at whom we needed to /wave!
We finished the rest of the Molten Front a long time ago, but Mankrik always eluded us. A few days ago gem had the idea to just keep the quest in our quest logs and to visit every day. She pointed out that it would be faster than actually doing the quest every day. I know that should seem obvious, but I didn’t realize our guardians would still change. Yeserday we logged out while in the quest area, and today when we logged into the game, she had Mankrik with her!
(I have to be honest. I’m anxious to talk about TOR actually, but I want to put it off a little longer just so I can finish the first planet before I talk about it. So, WoW:)
Lately I’ve been questing in Netherstorm. I’m trying to use my time more wisely. Yes, there are a few things I still need from the Raid Finder, but those items won’t help me. However, there’s content out there I’ve still never seen. I should see it!
But first, look at this cute picture from Blade’s Edge Mountains:
Okay, anyways, back to Netherstorm.Even though I read all the quest text always, sometimes I feel like it’s hard to remember what a zone’s about. What’s Netherstorm about? The Burning Legion is present there. The Consortium and Protectorate are there learning, profiting, and fighting. (I had to double-check what factions of Ethereals were there despite just playing this weekend.)
There’s the village of Kirin’Var (I had to look that up) consisting of the spirits of former Kirin Tor, killed by Kael’thas and his followers. I finally got that nifty staff that summons an image of Archmage Vargoth.
There’s some really beautiful Blood Elf architecture here, too. Who wouldn’t want a huge tent set in a broken world half exposed to the nether?
These guys do, apparently!
Not only did I finish the zone, earning “Into the Nether”…
…but I, Devee the Seeker, also earned the “3000 Quests Completed” achievement! Now it’s off to Shadowmoon Valley. (I see you farmin’ primals in Shadowmoon Valley…)
While doing Elders of Cataclysm (which I did finish), Moogle suggested we stop to buy camels. They were cheap, so I picked up both of them. Let’s be honest though; I don’t think I’m ever going to really want to use them. till, One Hump or Two? is nice.
As an added bonus, I got Leading the Cavalry for obtaining 50 mounts! That’s pretty cool. I just have one small issue with this.
I get 50 mounts. Blizzard must be able to guess that if I have 50 mounts, some of them must be pretty sweet, right? And then Blizzard goes “since you have so many sweet mounts, check this one out!” What is it? A boring Albino Drake. Thanks so much Blizzard.
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
