Let’s look at some of the open world activities from patch 10.1 that I completed.
Snail Racing
Look at this beautiful snail, Big Slick in the City! I love this mount.
This is Bulleto and me on our snails! I short collection of dailies, and the little snail was mine.
Researchers Under Fire
Researchers Under Fire seemed interesting at first but quickly lost its appeal. I think this happens with a lot of the world content that starts at set times. It just became a chore. However, it offered three mounts and two pets. I earned everything. This is my favorite mount from the activity, the Subterranean Magmammoth.
Sniffenseeking
Sniffenseeking is the activity in Zaralek Cavern in which you dig with Myrrit. They were pretty fun little scenarios that offered a change of pace to the standard game. I did all of them and found all the quest items, earning the Sniffenseeker title and the Salverun pet, who whispers things to you.
Fyrakk Assaults
Fyrakk Assaults basically boiled down to showing up and defeating a bunch of enemies, but it had a little bit of complexity by forcing to you to target more powerful enemies. What I liked about the assaults were that there were four transmog sets to collect, one for each armor type. Here’s my druid with the leather set. There were also some drake manuscripts, a toy, and some pets. I collected everything.
Aberrus was a really good raid with some fun, varied fights. I earned Ahead of the Curve on my shaman, warrior, and evoker. On my hunter, I finished normal. Other classes did some bosses or LFR only. With 9 bosses in the raid, I only had issues with a couple of them.
The Amalgamation Chamber, The Forgotten Experiments, and Magmorax seemed rather boring. Magmorax was especially trivial, but somehow I disliked The Amalgamation Chamber and The Forgotten Experiments even more, possibly because they were two boring fights in a row.
Opening with Kazzara, the Hellforged was fantastic. I’m glad we started with a dragon.
I also really loved the flow between Assault of the Zaqali and Rashok, the Elder. We stop the Zaqali from infiltrating deeper into Aberrus, yet when we find Rashok, we initially think he got past us before the Echo of Neltharion reveals that the Zaqali were there to free Rashok. I know the idea of us having to defeat innocent or good characters who have gone mad has been done a ton in WoW, but I still have to feel bad for Rashok!
The Echo of Neltharion was a fun penultimate fight, and the reveal that the Echo was actually a Faceless One seems to have been missed by a lot of people.
Sarkareth is a complex fight that was a lot of fun – even though I once dispelled immediately when I wasn’t thinking and immediately caused a wipe. I wish Sarkareth has been built up more. I know his story existed in the Forbidden Reach and tied to the dracthyr, but I didn’t find myself caring all that much about the lore.
This was the first time Bulleto and I defeated Sarkareth I think, which would make this an LFR or normal screenshot.
My Ahead of the Curve kill on my shaman is at the top of this post. It was kind of an odd tier because my raid group did splits, and I wasn’t in the group that was pushing as hard. I still ran with the raid group, but I was ahead through pugging and got my AOTC in a pug group.
Here’s where we earned Glory of the Aberrus Raider. These achievements are interesting; I used to think of them as a challenge to obtain slowly but now it’s just a single run.
Here’s some of the raid group with our Shadowflame Shalewing, the Glory reward, right after we earned it.
And here’s Bulleto and I on them outside of Aberrus.
I think this is from the time Bulleto earned her AOTC.
This is the Highland Drake: Embodiment of the Hellforged customization that drops from Sarkareth. I’m glad I got it, because it’s awesome! It looks like the first boss, Kazzara.
Here’s a closer look at it with Bulleto and I carrying eggs!
Hopefully Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope will be just as fun!
Last night we earned Dragonflight Keystone Master: Season One! It’s just in time for the catalyst tomorrow. It feels weird that we can get KSM while still waiting for the Inspiration Catalyst. Right now, only one of us has four piece. That’ll change soon!
I wanted to share some fun Winterveil screenshot from last months! I’m always excited to put on my holiday transmog and celebrate, even if Bulleto here has that silly grin on his face!
Going for a sled ride through Orgrimmar.
Slow down, Bulleto!
Winterveil in the Ohn’ahran Plains.
Look at all our friends!
Who needs reindeer when you have a friendly bakar?
Taivan is a good, good boy. I loved his storyline. Skip to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers. Taivan doesn’t appear good at anything, but eventually we discover he’s a rescue bakar!
Sled ride!
Weee!
Making a furbolg friend.
I don’t remember what this world quest was exactly, but I liked all the mage tables!
Taking a break for a Winterveil picnic.
Winterveil in the Court of Stars.
I have a lot of holiday spirit!
Raszageth might want to fight the aspects, but she still celebrates Winterveil.
She’s wearing her Winterveil hat and holding a candy cane and wreath.
Dragonflight’s pre-patch event provided a nice way to level alts. I had 6 max level characters when the pre-patch released, and on the day of Dragonflight’s release, I had 18 level 60 character! And yet I still don’t have a level 50+ highmountain tauren to unlock their heritage armor.
Please note that I’ll be discussing quests in this post without regards to spoilers.
The expansion release was a mess for me at first. Apparently things were okay the first half hour or so, but by the time I tried to play, Orgrimmar and Durotar were empty, and I kept getting “instance transfer aborted” error messages. On the plus side, I got to ride my rocket indoors!
Eventually I was able to see everyone. Like most people, the zeppelin did not want to show up for me. Eventually I saw a reddit post suggesting you could summon people to a dungeon in the Dragon Isles, and it worked! Thank you to my guildmates for summoning me to the Isles!
The Waking Shores
Once we reach the Dragon Isles, we have to backtrack across the zone from the dungeon to where we should have arrived. Cool zeppelin!
Alexstrasza’s new model is detailed and looks great. I’m looking forward to helping the aspects more!
Bulleto and I are little whelps!
The lava mammoths are amazing enemies. I need to level a hunter because I want one, and I can’t wait to get a mount.
This was from a later zone, but I thought I’d include it here. These were just a temporary buff, but it was fun to ride them!
I don’t know what to think about Sabellian vs Wrathion, and I could write a lot more about them. Wrathion acts like he’s always acting in our best interest, but he’s made a lot of stupid decisions and then didn’t even show up in Legion. Are we supposed to remember that, or was that bad writing? On the other hand, Sabellian hasn’t even been around in years. Who should I hope becomes the new aspect?
Hanging out with Bulleto!
Did… did Bulleto transform into a whelp and take a little lava bath in that cauldron of lava? I think so!
I didn’t think I’d like dragonriding much because my friend and I use two person mounts a lot while questing.
I was quite surprised to see you can enable the ability to let someone ride your dragon with you. They even get to turn into a little whelp! Of course, we now know dragonriding is super awesome and amazingly fast!
Ohn’ahran Plains
I never really cared about the centaur previously, and I still wouldn’t say they’re one of my favorite races. However, their inclusion in Dragonflight just makes the world seem so much more grounded. I like seeing races that were present in classic. And I love the architecture and world around these Maruuk centaur!
Especially cool is Sansok Khan, the tall centaur on the right in this screenshot. She’s the leader of her clan, and she’s deaf. Okir, the centaur next to Sansok Khan, speaks on her behalf, translating Sansok Khan’s sign language. Sansok Khan’s quest text starts with As Sansok Khan signs, Okir vocalizes. The dog next to Sansok Khan is Basran. It appears you can pet him as you can other dogs in World of Warcraft, but when you click him, you get this: You extend a hand to offer Basran pets, but he stays stoically next to his khan. Basran is currently working and you should not pat service dogs on duty. How amazing is that? I really like the representation, and she’s a cool character in general.
This was one of the longest quests I’ve ever experienced – or at least it felt that way. You escort the caravan and listen to the centaurs tell their history. It was a little hard for me to focus, but I still like to soak up all the lore.
I love how green and beautiful the zone is.
Yay, we get to ride him!
I thought the green dragons’ area was pretty too.
The Azure Span
Who knew a powerful mage could control their mirror images independently? Kalecgos knows, apparently.
Seeing Sindragosa, or at least a simulacrum of her, is an amazing moment. We don’t really know how sentient this is, but she sure feels like a character in her own. I hope we interact with her more!
Finally, we get to the tuskarr! This is the best and cutest race in the game, and you better believe I would be a tuskarr if they ever made them an allied race. I can’t believe Blizzard said there are no plans for allied races in Dragonflight, but I’m still hoping.
I really thought the tuskarr for which we were searching was dead, but his feign death tricked me. Bulleto is so upset that he feigns death.
Relaxing with Kalecgos and our new tuskarr friends.
During a quest with some tuskarr and Kalecgos in which we’re battling the decay, the tuskarr Kaqiata dies. Her dying words are “Please, tell my son Rowie in Iskaara that I love him. And I’m sorry.”
We meet her son Rowie later and help him “defeat” this yeti. This was a such a cute quest!
We also helped the tuskarr say good bye to Chieftain Ponoliak and learn about their funeral ceremonies. It’s another sad yet touching quest.
The tuskarr children are just super adorable!
And so is this frog!
Some tuskarr children want to help this abandoned baby gnoll they named Scraps. I thought it was cute, and I’m looking forward to this being referenced again later I’m sure.
This quests tasks us with helping Elder Poa with her stories. Elder Nappa suggests we get Elder Poa a new story – even if we have to make it up! Elder Poa takes the quest answers and spins a story from it.
You can also read it here.
This one is Bulleto’s!
The zone ended with the blue dragonflight coming together to help Kalecgos. It was to be expected from the major story beats of the zone but was exciting nonetheless!
Thaldraszus
Eventually we reached Thaldraszus, the final zone and home of the dragon city Valdrakken. You’d think a city made for dragons would have chairs spaced a little further apart.
Due to some time shenanigans with the bronze and infinite flights, I met my future self here. Why does his armor look worse?
When I get sent back in time, I’m not expecting this. Camp Narache?! (Of course, when my character lived this, it was vanilla and not Cataclysm.)
A timeline where the Horde and Alliance are murlocs has to be one of the coolest things in the game.
Even the map is modified!
Here I am with Bulleto, Varian Wryngrrlgulgll, and Thrallgrulgulgul. Deathwingurlugull is in the background!
Who are those murloc heroes with us? Why, they’re Bulleto and Sotiros the murlocs of course!
We even found Baine Blrrgfin!
Here’s a clip of this awesome quest.
We’re sent even further back in time to before the titans ever came to Azeroth and the Black Empire ruled. Don’t worry, we make it home.
Bulleto and I fit better at this table even if Sumo hogs the camera while Chompsky stands nicely in the back!
Need a break from adventuring? Maybe you could get some cheese from Gorgonzormu.
It would go perfect with some wine from Zinfandormu!
Well, maybe I’m off to have some cheese and wine in Valdrakken. See you on the Dragon Isles!
Look at that glorious Mimiron’s Head! My mage, Mooglepete, was the character that finally got the mount to drop. Coincidentally, he was also the one that got Mollie, the alpaca, to drop! I guess he has good luck at mount farming. Bulleto, gem’s hunter, has been holding an Ulduar lockout cleared up to Yogg-Saron for months now. I think he’s happy to end his post in the icy wastes of Northrend.
I wasn’t sure what I was seeing was real for a second. I started nervously laughing when I noticed what dropped. I know I ran this a few times over the years, but likely only 10 or so maybe before I started farming it regularly. Since I started farming, I’ve run it 282 times. At first, I was running it with all 12 of my characters that were over level 50, but it became annoying to move characters I’m actively playing to Ulduar. For the past couple months, I’ve been running it 8 times per week; those 8 characters have just stayed parked in front of Ulduar. It’s nice to be finished!
Today’s Mooglegem’s last day with an active account. In fact, by this time the subscription has already lapsed. She just doesn’t have the time to play. She raided during Highmaul, but never even had a chance to finish questing let alone enter Blackrock Foundry. Last night she wanted to make the final push toward the Nagrand finale.
There were a few quest lines she hadn’t completed in Nagrand, but most importantly, Thrall was offering her “And Justice for Thrall.” She was so close this whole time. I was happy I got to witness her witnessing such an amazing moment.
I made her do this emote, heh.
She also went through her bags a little. There were a lot of old memories. One included a letter from my bank alt.
Dear Mooglegem,
Thank you for the stuff. How are you? I heard you were far away, south of here. How is it there? I’ve never left Mulgore. I live at Thunder Bluff.
I guess I liked RPing in letters.
Or how about this one I sent to her hunter?
The fight against the Lich King is slow but progresses well! I look forward to the day when we put him down for good!
Congratulations on reaching Outland! I hope you’re enjoying Nagrand; it really is quite beautiful. I’m surprised [Nesingwary] remembered me! Someday you’ll surpass him as a hunter, I’m sure.
Chompsky and Sumo are both very cute. Give them my love! Mooglegem says hello too.
Hope to see you in Northrend soon!
It’s been a while since we’ve really played together, but it’s weird to have her account inactive. On the plus side, she got to see the Nagrand finale. Afterward, I summarized the events of Highmaul, Blackrock Foundry, and the legendary quest, and then I showed her the finale of the Garrison Campaign and the 6.1 legendary cutscene. At least she’s caught up on the lore!
Hurry and come back, Mooglegem, so I can take you on a tour through Ashran and we can slay Alliance like old times.
Sometimes, Bulleto gets stuck above Orgrimmar and ponders his existence.
Actually, this happened a while ago, but I never uploaded it. I think it was during Hallow’s End. I had missed the zeppelin, so I flew toward, got above the deck, and right-clicked off my mount buff. I dropped to the level of the deck and stopped falling, but the zeppelin continued without me. I messed with the camera for a while for fun, but luckily the next zeppelin to come saved me.
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 