Time for a pirate fashion show! It’s hard to decide which costume makes me look my best.
World of Warcraft
I loved Dolly and Dot the alpacas so much that I had to share this later quest starring them. (If you haven’t heard the song, please see this post.) This is from the quest Knowledge of the Past in Vol’dun. There might be minor spoilers if you’re avoiding those!
No alpacas were harmed in the recording of this video. (They’re okay.)
The Trial of Style was last week, and I participated for the first time. It was a lot of fun! You can see my first place “Fun & Flirty” outfit above along with gem’s third place entry.
Here’s a better look at my “Fun & Flirty,” haha. I just went with lots of pink and some booty shorts!
This is my second place “Winter” outfit.
Here’s one of gem’s second place outfits.
This is gem’s first place “Tabard” outfit.
My first place “Zen” outfit was pretty unoriginal.
My first place “Tabard” outfit was based on the tabard we got a few years ago during the Olympics.
I had a lot of fun with the Trial of Style, and it wasn’t hard to earn all the rewards. I’ll definitely be participating next time!
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is definitely the best expansion, and it’s easy to see why – alpacas! Check out the cute song in this quest. Adorable! It’s from the quest On the Move in Vol’dun.
Here’s another quest about alpacas – Alpacas Gone Wild. It’s not nearly as cute, but I thought I’d include it too.
Val’sharah has a pretty evil quest that honestly feels like a mistake to me. Rylissa Bearsong gave me Frenzied Furbolgs, tasking me with killing eight Smolderhide furbolgs. They’re in a “frenzied rage.” Okay, fine. That seems reasonable enough. As I approach their location, I saw Elder Sookh standing to the side offering Littlefur. He tried to flee the village with his nephew when the rest of the furbolgs were afflicted with some kind of wrathful curse. He made it out, but his nephew is still there. After killing some furbolgs in the village, I found Littlefur. He told me that he knows the cause of what’s happening; a totem is giving the Chieftain power and causing the madness. With Totemic Call tasking me to destroy it, I was off. I did destroy it, and lo and behold, the curse was lifted and the furbolgs were back to normal!
Of course, I still had to kill more of them. Rylissa Bearsong, Elder Sookh, and Littlefur are all within speaking distance. Elder Sookh could have explained things to Rylissa Bearsong. But that’s not how it works. I had to go slaughter some innocent furbolgs. If I ever play through on an alt, I’ll be sure to finish the kill quest before destroying the totem so I don’t have to kill any innocent furbolgs.
My next post was going to focus on my first few weeks of Legion, but some recent events are pushing the WoW Legion Companion phone app front and center in my mind. I was part of a sleep study from Monday through Thursday. It was a bit over 320 miles from my home in Irvine, and it was at approximately 12,500 feet. I was a subject in a study of sleep variations and cognitive abilities at high altitude. My trip isn’t really within the focus of this blog, but I’ll talk about it more on my personal blog in the future. However, it did mean that I was away from my PC for four days right at the same time the Legion phone application was released.
While I love WoW and have been enjoying Legion immensely, I wasn’t going to let a game stop me from participating in a fascinating study and fun trip. On the other hand, I was thrilled to find the Legion Companion app released. It meant I could still progress in Legion a bit even while away. Missions don’t require much attention either, so it was really perfect. The app works wonderfully, and if you haven’t tried it, I recommend it. You can see current world quests (which doesn’t matter to me yet because I haven’t hit 110), check your missions, recruit troops, and more. I only have two champions, but I kept them busy.
I returned home to find my HDD failing. My computer booted once but took forever and then was terribly slow. I found that no single application was accessing the HDD much, but my primary disk had 100% usage. In my experience, that usually indicates that read/writes are failing. I restarted to scan the disk, but the scans can’t complete. I keep everything backed up, but in the mean time, I can still send my followers on missions for me!
Legion launched at midnight last night, but the launch party started around 4:00 at the Esports Arena in Santa Ana. The room was filled with fel energy… or green lights. Blizzard suggested taking photos at the event to show you were in attendance “before all fel broke loose in Azeroth.” There was a store line so you could pick up as merchandise and a second line for the autographs. I went to the store first. I didn’t pre-order digitally because I wanted the physical collector’s edition. I have CEs of all the expansion as well as Diablo 3 and its expansion. I’m just missing classic’s. As a side note, I wish Blizzard would allow customers to pre-order digitally, then buy the physical CE and get the price difference added as game time. This expansion they let you buy both and gave you a key back you could give to your friend. All my friends have it already or were buying the physical CE. They don’t want a key.
Here I am on the right with gem (Mooglegem), who planned on meeting me there, in the middle. We ran into our friend Tram, on the left, who also happened to be there. Awesome!
The Azeroth Choppers were there as well. Of course the Horde motorcycle needs some spikes and tusks.
Even though I main Horde, I prefer the Alliance motorcycle. How sweet is that shield on the front?
Gorehowl made an appearance. Now is this primary universe Gorehowl or alternate universe Gorehowl? Hmm.
A Warglaive of Azzinoth was also there. This seems more appropriate for Legion.
Lots of the developers took polls on various subjects. Usually it was what class or spec we’d be playing first. Asking with what zone we’d start was also popular, as was the ever popular “Alliance or Horde?” One dev asked what role we played – hunter, caster, melee, healer, or tank. Here are the results when I reached him with melee in the lead.
While talking with the prop designers, I mentioned the pink stuffed dinosaur in Dalaran. The woman I was talking to said something like “oh yeah, she made that” excitedly and pointed to the prop designer next to her. How cool!
gem and I also made friends with the woman next to us in line, Kerry. Her husband is one of the developers, and we got to greet him too. It was fun having a new friend in line, and we exchanged e-mail addresses so we could be friends on Battle.net.
This woman was making awesome balloon props. She’s a murloc! I later saw that @worldofwarcraft on Twitter retweeted some photos someone took of her. Sweet!
A couple of the developers had autograph books on the table and were asking for fans to sign his book as well. That’s a neat idea. At the autograph line, there was also a wall for all the fans to sign. You can see mine in the middle of the above photo.
I think gem’s is cooler!
There was also some cool cosplay. We had to take a photo with this woman.
Here’s some more World of Warcraft cosplay!
Here’s the front of my box. There are more autographs on the sides and back, but most of them are here. This was a really fun event, and I think it was better and more fun than ones I’ve attended in the past. I’m also really thankful it started early. There’s no reason to wait for midnight when the game can’t be played before that time anyways. Thank you, Esports Arena and Blizzard!
Today’s the last day of Warlords of Draenor, although with the content Blizzard’s provided in the pre-patch, it feels like we’re already in Legion. I enjoyed Warlords, and now the pre-expansion content has me excited for Legion.
The Broken Shore scenario and accompanying cinematics were awesome content. If this is what’s in store for us now, what will the expansion bring? Quests given to us weekly to slowly give us more content leading into Legion was a great idea as well. It reminds me of the Garrison Campaign in some ways. I wish more content was released like this.
I took care of everything I wanted. I got all the pamphlets from the Doomsayers, and I terrorized Orgrimmar as a Dreadlord. I managed to unlock every reward from the invasions – all the weapons, all the armor, and the pet. Illuminnae, my paladin, doesn’t even seem to care about the invasion itself. Here she herbalizes while demons attack in the background. And I managed to hit 100 with her, which is only my second character to ever reach a level cap. I did some LFR on her as well to experience more max level content.
With the awesome XP from the invasions, I couldn’t stop at Illuminnae. Logrus, my Death Knight, also hit 100 with the invasions, ran some LFR, and even got the Pocket Fel Spreader on his first Dread Infiltrator kill.
I’ll leave you with a stuffed dinosaur I found in Dalaran!
With the 7.0 system patch hitting WoW, the fact that I can’t use Curse has become a huge problem. First, it wasn’t launching. I tried reinstalling it, but the installer was giving me an error. I deleted a particular folder as Curse’s support suggested, got to install, and found Curse would just freeze before actually launching. I even tried reinstalling .NET and still couldn’t get things to work.
I gave up and found a better way.
I installed Curse on a second computer, mapped WoW as a network drive, and updated my addons over the network. Maybe that’s not the most elegant solution, but I don’t want to mess with Curse; I just want to play WoW.
This happened a bit ago now, but I still want to share some screenshots. When The Force Awakens opened, guards in Orgrimmar Grunt and Stormwind Guards held some new, nifty weapons.
It seemed like a cool homage to the movie!
World of Warcraft: Legion, the next WoW expansion, was announced last week at Gamescom. After having a few days to think about the information, I wanted to talk about my initial thoughts. I’ll admit, I might not have anything completely novel to say, but I think it’s important for the community to be vocal. Plus, I enjoy the writing too!
Here’s a brief recap of what Legion’s offering:
- The Broken Isles
- Level 110
- Honor system 3.0
- Artifact weapons
- Class Order Halls
- The Emerald Dream and Emerald Nightmare
- Demon Hunters
- Queen Azshara
- The invasion of Azeroth by the Burning Legion
And we can’t forget this teaser:
Story
The tomb of Sargeras is opened, and Azeroth is faced with the largest invasion of the Burning Legion ever. Okay, that’s cool. I don’t really have a strong reaction either way to the Broken Isles themselves, and while I would have preferred to fight the Burning Legion on a different world, this works too. Throwing Queen Azshara and the Emerald Nightmare into the mix seems like overkill a bit, but I assume it’ll be integrated nicely. I’m honestly a little surprised, but Blizzard has been getting better at running concurrent stories. In Warlords, I felt like we had separate stories that pieced together for a single narrative, and I predict (and hope) Blizzard’ll be even better at it in Legion.
Honor system 3.0
The new honor system is kind of strange. You gain honor to move from rank 1 to 50, unlocking PVP abilities. This allows PVP to be tuned separately from PVE. That’s cool I suppose, but does that mean that I’ll have abilities on my bars that only work in PVP? That kind of sucks. The ones I’ve seen have all replaced current abilities or are passives. If that’s the case, I’m good with it! It also introduced prestiging. Once you reach rank 50, you can prestige, earning cosmetic rewards while resetting your rank to 1. I like that system in general, but I wonder how that’ll change competitive PVP players. If you do arenas, you can’t really prestige back to being weak, right? That doesn’t matter to me, but I’m sure it matters to a lot of people.
Artifact weapons
Artifact weapons are special, lore-heavy weapons that every player will get. There’s one for each spec, and there will be no other weapon drops. You can increase their power through the expansion through something that looks reminiscent to the Path of the Titans (and to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid). This actually sounds fairly exciting to me, but it has some interesting ramifications. In Warlords, I was the commander and eventually called a general by Vol’jin. In Legion, I’ll wield some powerful lore weapon. What happens next? Does this keep getting upped? Some examples they gave were frost DKs using the shards of Frostmourne to build two swords, ret paladins getting the Ashbringer, and enhancement shaman using the Doomhammer. Um, why isn’t Thrall carrying the Doomhammer? Why doesn’t Tirion have the Ashbringer? Are these characters going to die? Also, I have to add that Matticus on World of Matticus brought up the idea of priests getting Fearbreaker. Yes, please, please, please! That’d be pretty awesome.
Demon Hunters
I’m not all that excited to be a Demon Hunter, but I’m pretty excited to see their story. Of course, that means playing through their intro, so yes, I’m excited to play them in that sense at least! I think the Demon Hunter lore is pretty interesting, and Illidan has always been a fan favorite. This should be really awesome, I think.
Class Order Halls
Class Orders are the most exciting part of the expansion so far. Each class will get a class order hall, sort of like Acherus: The Ebon Hold was for Death Knights. It’ll be shared, but in the story, the player character will be the leader of the Class Order. This sounds incredibly neat and will really give flavor to each class. I love being a priest, and I never really felt like I had Horde priest lore figured that my character would respect and strive to emulate. I guess now that figure is me. While garrisons had way too many followers and only a few that seemed cool, Class Orders will have far fewer and much more important followers. Each class will have a different name for their “followers,” with champions being the paladins’ followers for example.
This seems like the progression of garrisons, although maybe more accurately the progression of Vol’mar and Lion’s Watch. Vol’mar is a shared location, but inside, the NPCs treat me as their leader. Regardless of how you see the evolution or whether you see them as related, Class Order Halls are what they are, and they sound fascinating.
Class identity is supposed to play a much bigger role in Legion, and I’m all for it. Even spec individuality is going to be explored. I think this is a fantastic idea, but one small thing seems odd to me. During the discussion of the new PVP system, Blizzard said that when you think disc priests, you think dispels – or something along those lines. If that’s the the most iconic part of being a disc priest, I wonder in what direction they will take discipline. To be fair, if many specs are getting overhauls, I’m not against the idea of switching to holy. We’ll see!
It really sounds like they’re giving us a lot. They’ve already dumped a lot of other interesting information that I didn’t even mention – Dalaran run by Khadgar and now floating over the Broken Isles? I’m really hopeful and expectant that the story is going to come together better than ever, and I can’t wait to see it unfold.
Now, where’s the dance studio?
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.
Legendary Chapter IV: Darkness Incarnate – Complete Khadgar’s legendary quests.
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 was too amused by my hopping to actually contribute to combat.
Lantresor of the Blade is so badass that he doesn’t even use a pick. He just punches the rock until it gives up its ore.
I don’t remember any extra exciting quests in this zone, but at the same time, I seemed to have enjoyed it before I recently finished. Maybe it’s simply because my druid is growing on me. I liked seeing Naralex and Mankrik again, although neither did anything too interesting.
I’ll have to trust that when I went through my screenshots a few days ago, pulling some out for posts, this truly was the only one worth posting. It doesn’t seem so worth posting when I look at it now.
Now it’s time for Dustwallow Marsh.
When do we get a permanent centaur mount?
I recently finished Desolace on my paladin. I have mixed feelings about it. A lot of it was uneventful, but I like seeing what happened to the centaur clans from classic.
I never played this character in vanilla and wonder if our centaur faction choice from classic would alter the experience any now. Somehow I doubt it, but it would have been cool.
In the end, I got to help some centaurs, kill some demons, and take a selfie.
I got some sweet new followers recently. First, here’s Garona. I know pretty much everybody got her through the legendary, but she’s still cool. It’s nice to have someone who’s good in every situation.
Next up is Harrison Jones. I don’t hate him quite as much now that’s he’s a follower. When someone is sent with him, they’re scaled to his level and ilvl, making him fantastic for training.
Lastly, here’s Cyril Fogus, accountant extraordinaire. If you didn’t realize, he’s an Archer reference. For some reason, it was really difficult to get a picture of him.
Now I want some Stir-Fryday. But more importantly, I want Lana as a follower.
I’ve been wanting one for a while, and I finally purchased a Spectral Tiger on the Auction House. I’m pretty broke now with a total of 8873 gold across all my characters, but the only thing for which I really needed gold was this, and it’s mine now!
My druid was actually the first to mount it. Looking good there, little feral druid.
The Spectral Tiger is still significantly cheaper than the Swift Spectral Tiger. I wonder if there’s some ingrained sense that epic versions are better even though they’re the same speed now. I actually prefer the Spectral Tiger because it has less armor, so yay for me.
Hm… what gold sink is next?
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!
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.
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?
I recently finished collecting my Primal Gladiator’s gear, the conquest gear for Warlords Season 1. Because I usually do arenas or rated battlegrounds, I think this is the first time I’ve finished by conquest set. Thanks, Ashran!
Ashran is actually very fun. Hopefully I can finish killing gnomes and pandaren so I can get that title!
I recently finished Stonetalon Mountains on my paladin, Illuminnae. This post contains spoilers for a really good zone, so keep it in mind if you want to keep reading.
In the above selfie (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), Overlord Krom’gar is yelling at his troops. He’s a pretty brutal commander and will stop at nothing to drive the Alliance from Stonetalon Mountains. Throughout the quest chain in the zone, he’s planning on dropping a bomb on the Alliance forces.
General Grebo is his second in command, stationed at Cliffwalker Post. He believes that Thal’darah Grove is home to a powerful Night Elf weapon and wants to use the bomb on it. High Chieftain Cliffwalker knows that there’s no such weapon there. He knows it’s been a meeting place for druids, both Alliance and Horde. After asking to be allowed to present proof, he sends his son there to obtain said proof. I’m not sure what this proof was actually.
His son never returns, but the player discovers his body clutching a Krom’gar General’s Insignia in his hand that belonged to General Grebo. When High Chieftain Cliffwalker accuses General Grebo of murdering his son, the General and his soldiers attack High Chieftain Cliffwalker. With the help of the player, General Grebo and his men are killed.
High Chieftain Cliffwalker’s wife, Masha, is quite distraught. I like seeing this level of emotion in the game. People die, and it’s tragic when they do.
They urge you to return to Krom’gar to let him know that they only acted in self defense. Krom’gar basically ignores all that information, considering the High Chieftain to be traitorous. He and his soldiers set fire to Cliffwalker post and murder Masha. Finally he forces High Chieftain Cliffwalker to watch as he drops the bomb on Thal’darah Grove.
Moments after the bomb is detonated, a portal from Orgrimmar opens. Garrosh steps through to confront Overlord Krom’gar while Garrosh’s guards slay Krom’gar’s men.
Warchief Hellscream demands to know what Overlord Krom’gar has done. Krom’gar claims to have been following orders. Hellscream, furious, asks if his command was to murder innocents. Garrosh says he sent Krom’gar into Stonetalon Mountains to secure the land for the Horde with his army, but instead, Krom’gar “laid waste to the land. Murdered innocents. Children even…” He goes on to quote Saurfang, saying, “Honor… no matter how dire the battle… never forsake it.” He relieves Overlord Krom’gar of duty, lifting him by the throat and dropping over the cliff of Cliffwalker Post.
When he turns angrily toward the player’s character, High Chieftain Cliffwalker stops him, explaining that he or she was the person who found out about the corruption and tried to stop Krom’gar. He asks for mercy. Garrosh notes that after his wife and child were murdered, kin were killed, and home burned to the ground, he still requests mercy, saying “Mercy… Chieftain, on this day I learn from you.”
What a fantastic finale to the zone even though I roughly knew what was coming. This builds on the original Garrosh we saw earlier, one who was growing and learning. Clearly, Blizzard decided to take Garrosh’s character in another direction. It seems ironic that the very thing Garrosh was so mad about is exactly what he does later when he drops a manabomb on Theramore.
The first time I tried to record the finale I made a bit of a mistake. It’s short, so check it out to see my blooper.
Here’s the actual finale, which is about six minutes long.
After all that death and drama, it seemed like the most inappropriate time for one more selfie, this time with High Chieftain Cliffwalker and Warchief Garrosh Hellscream.
The Iron Assembly, the third wing of Blackrock Foundry’s Raid Finder, opened Tuesday. Wednesday night are raid was cancelled, but I ventured into the new wing. I’d already done Beastlord Darmac on normal, but I’d never seen Operator Thogar or The Iron Maidens.
I have mixed feelings about The Iron Maidens. I think I’ll learn to dislike that fight only because LFR will struggle with it (and it’s a long ass fight). It was honestly kind of fun once I got into the swing of dodging bombs. That’s great the first week of LFR, but I know I don’t pay close attention in LFR usually. This will grow to annoy me.
Operator Thogar is an awesome fight! According the the Dungeon Journal, he “oversees the operation of the Grimrail.” The fight takes place on train tracks. Periodically trains come into the station with additional troops or weapons. It’s a cool looking fight and fun too. Again, who knows how I’ll feel in a month, but I was pretty happy with it last night!
Of course, there had to be a douche taking selfies in the middle of the fight.
Last night we attempted Hans’gar and Franzok for the first time, taking the fight onto their huge treadmills. After a few attempts, we were able to handily defeat the cardio bros.
We pushed deeper into Blackrock Foundry, stopping to struggle against Flamebender Ka’graz. This took a decent number of attempts, but we bent the Flamebender so out of shape that she dropped and gave us her loot.
Our new raid progression was celebrated with selfies! Hopefully next week we can down Kromog!
I finished Ashenvale on my feral druid, Tyrse, recently just about as he hit level 30. I enjoyed the zone, and it never really felt like a grind. However, it was definitely nothing compared to the early Forsaken zones. I think I enjoyed seeing the Horde on the offensive. I suppose the zone made us look like the bad guys if I didn’t have other information, but I like the topics of gray areas and foggy morality. I can understand, regardless of my agreement, the feeling that the Horde needed to do what it had to do to survive and thrive.
I’m really looking forward to pushing into Stonetalon Mountains. Because that zone is 25-30 and Tyrse is already 30, I plan on switching to my paladin, Illuminnae. She’s 23 now, so I’ll run dungeons until she’s 25 and then hit Stonetalon Mountains.
We made some more progress in Blackrock Foundry last night! Gruul went down without too much of a fight, but then we spent the majority of the night on Oregorger. The problem was just execution, but I think we got it now.
Our night ended with us slaying Beastlord Darmac. Last week we hit a bit of a wall, so I’m glad we managed to progress with two new kills this week. I got some new loot, too!
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.”
Seriously, Divine Star is dumb sometimes. It’s not a big deal out in the world, but I hate it when it shoots in the wrong direction during a raid.
Mages have this problem with Frozen Orb as well.
Go home, Divine Star, you’re drunk.
The Garrison Campaign was a pretty fun way of prolonging the game after reaching the level-cap. I enjoy the staggered release of solo content like this. It allows me to stay current without putting in more time that I’d like. It’s not for everyone, but it was perfect for me.
I finished a week or two ago (I forget exactly), but I’ve been working through uploading old videos. The events here were obviously building on the idea that we were in charge of raising an army. Here we are with that army, bring the fight to the Iron Horde.
I’m very interested to see what happens next with the continuation of the Garrison Campaign!
This post contains spoilers. If you don’t know anything about this, then don’t watch unless you’re cool with spoilers!
I enjoyed this quest although you can tell just by the length of the video that I struggled. Once I realized where to go hide to avoid that ability, things got a lot better.
Before doing the quest, I already knew generally what happened, but I particularly liked bits of the dialogue.
“Sorry for all the times you’re about to get killed,” says Chromie before beginning the fight. “If it’s any consolation, you won’t remember any of them.” Not true little Bronze friend, not true. While I did die a number of times, I totally remember them.
During the fight, Khadgar addresses Kairoz. “Kairoz! What did you want? Why did you need an army?”
He responds, “Not just one… An infinite number of armies, across an infinite number of worlds… I WOULD BE INFINITE!” I love it! The Bronze and Infinite dragonflights are the most interesting hooks in the game currently, and I’m glad to see a bit more about it.
Blackrock Foundry opened this week, and we had a chance to enter Wednesday night. We were short a few people, but we managed to pug and have a nice time. One boss went down – Gruul. Yay, progression! We put a decent amount of time into Beastlord Darmac, but we weren’t able to defeat him. Hopefully next week!
I really like the look of the raid so far. It’s reminiscent of many past set pieces. Mostly I just like that it feels like such a big, bustling city. It’s pretty cool!
Oh, and I killed Rukhmar too. Take that!
Today’s the day WoW Insider ceases. I don’t have much to say that I didn’t already say on Friday, but I thought this warranted a second post. I’ll be watching the former staff members’ Twitter accounts to see what announcement is coming, because it sounds like they have something planned.
Alex Ziebart on WoW Insider confirmed today that WoW Insider will cease operations this Tuesday, February 3. This is definitely a sad day. This follows Alexander Sliwinski reporting on a rumor that Joystiq was shutting down on Joystiq itself three days ago. With them goes Massively as well.
WoW Insider was my favorite source of World of Warcraft news. There’s a void now, and I’m not sure how I’ll fill it. There are many other WoW blogs I follow but none like WoW Insider. I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any!
Many talented persons have written for the site, including some of my favorites like Dawn Moore, Anne Stickney, Fox Van Allen, and Olivia Grace (even if the last two weren’t writing for it recently). I wish I was better at using Twitter. I feel like things I might want to read get lost in the never-ending stream, but I’ll follow all the writers regardless.
I’ve written three pieces for WoW Insider too. In my Breakfast Topics, I posed the questions, how do you relationships in game affect relationships in real life, are you a closet reoleplayer, and has your perspective of Azeroth changed over time? I’ve also responded to Breakfast Topics here on Kor’kron 501st. In fact, you can tell how much influence WoW Insider has on me by checking the WoW Insider tag on my blog.
How will I know my lore without Know Your Lore articles? Most importantly, what about the Queue? The Queue is the daily column in which various WoW Insider writers answer questions from the community. It was by far my favorite column. Every morning I check for the Queue, and when it’s not yet posted, I keep checking until it is. It’ll be weird for it be gone.
Farewell, WoW Insider, and thanks for everything.
This post contains spoilers for Nagrand in Warlords of Draenor. I know most people have likely finished it, but I know not everybody has. My guildmates should specifically take note that Mooglegem has not finished Nagrand. Please don’t spoil it for her.
I really enjoyed that the leveling experience felt like it’s own complete story arc. Obviously, Blizzard has been getting better and better at storytelling, but I was particularly impressed with how it went in Warlords of Draenor. Even if you don’t raid at all, you still get a exhilarating conclusion to the story by questing through the zones (and later the Garrison Campaign, but that’s a post for later).
The video embedded above is the end of the final quest chain. I didn’t include the cutscene that plays after that part because it’s easy to find (and you can replay it in your own garrison). Now I know that if you’re avoiding spoilers, you shouldn’t be reading this far, but I’ll still avoid saying exactly what happens. What I will say is that I’m happy that it happened in the quests and not in a raid. Leave the rest of the threats for raiding; close this chapter through quests, allowing us to move on as well as giving non-raiders the closure they deserve with this plot. Plus, that frickin’ cutscene. Wow.
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.
I found this video that I never uploaded. Apparently, Carpe Flux Capacitor drafts players when we need to split the raid group. It was a good time.
This week was our second week of raiding in Warlords of Draenor. Last week we only managed a single raid night, but we got our full two done this week. We’re 6/7 normal Highmaul; couldn’t quite kill Imperator Mar’gok.
Next week we plan to try a boss or two on heroic and hopefully fully clear normal!
While visiting Greenburg’s garrison, the death knight Kanora challenged me to a duel. As we scrapped and brawled across his paths and through his town hall for thirteen minutes, two things became clear. One, we should really battle in Ashran together. Two, Kanora should really fight Nahcho, who claims to be the number one DK (never mind the fact that Darkdk#1).
It was an epic duel.
Warlords of Draenor has been out for a few weeks. I’ve been waiting to make a proper post about it in general until I got some time with it. I think there’s been enough time. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive on every aspect of the expansion, but it does cover my general thoughts.
Questing and Story
Loved it. I know a lot of people were confused by the alternate timeline, but it didn’t seem confusing to me. Then again, I’ve also read WoW books that contained multiple timelines. This isn’t anything new to WoW. The quests feel really immersive and important. Not everything is incredible, but I didn’t feel like the quests were a grind like they were in the past. It seems like Blizzard just keeps getting better and better at this.
The introduction through Tanaan Jungle is exciting and sets the stage for the expansion. Frostfire Ridge was simply amazing; maybe my eyes watered at the end. Maybe. Although to be fair, that tends to happen something seems really awesome to me, so all three zone cinematics did that to me. Looking back on Gorgrond, it doesn’t stand out in my mind, but I enjoyed it while I was questing through it. Talador dragged a little, but it was still fun, and I enjoyed the cinematic a bunch. Yrel makes me want not only to play Alliance but also to play as a dranei specifically. Spires of Arak definitely takes a detour from the Iron Horde story, but I found it extremely fascinating to learn about the gods of the arakkoa. The culmination in Nagrand was terrific. The mood of the last cutscene… wow.
Garrison
Garrisons were engaging right from the start, but they also took the most researching I think. It was a brand new mechanic with a lot of choices. Luckily wowhead had some great guides. The missions are a fun bit of minigame, but more importantly, the garrison system as a whole makes me feel powerful and important. I still have a couple buildings that aren’t level 3 yet, but they should be done very soon.
Professions and General Ease of Use
Choosing the right profession is less important than it was previously, and I like that. There’s still something to gain by choosing a specific profession, but none feels like a requirement. I’m an enchanter and miner, and I chose the Enchanter’s Study and Engineering Works as my profession buildings. I like being able to dabble in the other professions. Being able to level everything in Draenor seems like a cool change, although I wasn’t behind in professions, so I don’t know how well it worked. I’ve also enjoying fishing with the baits, three different sizes, and garrison daily.
Dungeons and Heroics
Dungeons were fairly interesting, and I haven’t learned to hate any of them yet. Healing them was a little challenging at first but no where near the difficulty of Cataclysm.
Auchindoun – Not particularly memorable, which is a little sad considering it was a cool place in BC.
Bloodmaul Slag Mines – Interesting place. I like the aesthetic.
The Everbloom – I don’t know. Sometimes I found it a tad annoying because it felt like it was spread out, but it’s not bothering me much now. Come to think of it, maybe now that groups always skip trash makes it better!
Skyreach – I’ve probably done this least of all the dungeons. I feel like groups struggle with it more often.
Upper Blackrock Spire – This one was one of the more challenging dungeons at first – especially Zaela. Now that it’s fine, remembering how challenging it was makes me like it more.
Shadowmoon Burial Grounds – This is a gorgeous dungeon, and it makes me want to see the Alliance story in Shadowmoon Valley.
Iron Docks – This dungeon sounded super cool, and I was excited to see it. I like that kind of rough technology in the setting, so I was expecting to find it amazing. It’s a fine dungeon, but it’s disappointing in that you’re not really interacting with the ships much.
Grimrail Depot – This is another one that I thought was going to be amazing because of the technology. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The second boss was really difficult for a while, but groups seem to have it now.
I think the most important thing about heroics is that they don’t seem as vital. All of my gear is now the ilvl of heroic dungeons or better, and you don’t need to do a daily heroic for valor when there isn’t valor. They’re not getting over-used, so I haven’t grown to hate them.
Raiding
I’ve done the first wing of LFR and the first two bosses of normal Highmaul. Somehow they’ve made LFR even easier. I suppose I like that. I know LFR was easy before, but that just made it all the more frustrating when groups couldn’t do it. If you did know what you were doing, it didn’t help others. I’m all for LFR being a cakewalk.
Normal, on the other hand, was surprising. I expected to get through a lot more than two bosses the first week, but maybe my expectations were just off. Thinking back to flex, there’s no way I would get only two bosses done in Siege of Orgrimmar, but we were also coming from the previous raid tier rather than gearing as new max-level characters. I didn’t think normal gear would be important, but it is. I’ll be curious to see how the next tier is done. I’m hoping that if you’re heroic geared, you can just step into Blackrock Foundry heroic without needing normal.
Max-level Quests
Max-level questing content came as a pleasant surprise. I’m actually enjoying the apexis dailies. In addition, the Garrison Campaign quests are very interesting. Staggering them out weekly is a superb idea too, because it ensures there’s more content spaced longer. I love it. On that subject, garrison invasions are pretty cool too and give additional content!
PVP
I’ll probably talk about PVP more in a different post, but I haven’t enjoyed PVP this much in a long time. I don’t understand every little bit of Ashran, but I have great time in there. The Gladiator’s Sanctum is a superb source of honor, conquest, and PVP gear, and the Nemesis quests that reward you with a title for each race of which you kill 500 is awesome. The Highmaul Coliseum is really awesome too. Now that battlegrounds drop lockboxes, it actually pushes groups to try to do well even when they’re going to lose. Having a set of PVP gear lower than honor gear that can be obtained randomly makes entry even easier. In addition, it’s more fun; who doesn’t like upgrades?
All said, I’m incredibly happy with Warlords of Draenor. It’s my favorite expansion yet.
This garrison worker never skips leg day.
+16 Timber
Okay, actually I found this huge pile near my home. I guess the city must have chopped down a tree recently. I stopped to say “bye” to the tree.
Last night I finally finished collecting Fragments of Val’anyr and completed Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings. It looks pretty cool, and I like the effect it puts on people. It’s obviously not as cool now, but back in Wrath, it was really cool to see a healer with one. Even in a battleground, when I saw enemies with that electric-looking shield, I instantly knew one of them was wielding Val’anyr. Mooglegem was nice enough to do runs with me. I don’t know how easy it is now, but at level 90, I could solo the raid with exception of Yogg-saron +0. With her, the whole raid is much more enjoyable.
Luckily for Mooglegem, she got something out of it as well. A couple weeks ago, Yogg-saron dropped Mimiron’s Head. I think it’s one of the coolest mounts in the game, and she looks great with it!
Episode 237 – “Five Oh First!” of the Twisted Nether Blogcast released yesterday for the special price of free! What a Black Friday deal!
Hydra and Fimlys had me on the show, and I had a great time. I can’t thank them enough for letting me join them. The Twisted Nether Blogcast is a podcast about the WoW blogging community. We discussed how I got started blogging, tips for new bloggers, what I like best in WoW, my gaming history, and a lot of other topics. I was the first guest since the release of Warlords of Draenor, so of course we discussed that a bit as well.
Grab the episode, and if you enjoy it, subscribe to the podcast!
Episode 237 – Five Oh First!, Hydra and Fimlys, Twisted Nether Blogcast, 11/28/14.
While I was working on bonus objectives in Nagrand, I came across Big Pete. I knew I had to get a screenshot.
I don’t normally talk about my life outside of WoW, Blizzard, and MMOs on this blog, but I need to give some background information. My name’s Peter, and my mom remarried a man named Pete. Within the family, he was known as Big Pete, mostly for the benefit of my younger brother. (Funny side note – my brother once got mad at me for simply calling him “Pete” because he didn’t know which one I meant. You know, because maybe I was talking about myself in the third-person.)
As this was the morning of Thanksgiving and I was going to see him later in the game, I thought it especially important to stop and take the screenshot.
Big Pete summons three adds – Lil’ Peter, Pete Jr., and Petey. Wow, there are a lot of Peters in this family.
Okay, back to background on my family. Pete’s son, my step-brother, is named Peter. His ex-wife remarried a Peter. My dad’s middle name is Peter. His dad’s name is Peter.
It’s a popular name.
Happy 10th anniversary, World of Warcraft! Happy 20th anniversary Warcraft!
Today seems like a good day to reflect a little. That’s Petros in the screenshot, my Night Elf warrior of S A D on Uther. He was my very first character. You can see that the guild is pretty dead; that’s fine, because I don’t know who anyone is. I think I joined because my high level friend was in it. I started playing WoW as soon as it was released and made this character to play with my roommate at the time, Antonio. Everyone out leveled me very quickly because I took things slow. I always ended up switching characters quite a bit. Before hitting 20 or so I switched to a tauren hunter to try it. I ended up liking Horde more. I then switched to a PVP server and made an orc hunter. Along the way, there were a few mages and priests that never hit 10. Eventually I tried my original character again, getting him to 23, before switching to my current server, Kil’jaeden. I started with a tauren shaman who got to his 30s and then made my current priest. My plan was to heal with Mooglegem until she caught up to my level and then switch back to my shaman. That switch back never happened.
Warcraft itself always reminds me of my friend Lloyd from elementary school because we used to talk about it a lot. Honestly, I’m not sure I ever actually finished one of the games. I mostly screwed around in multiplayer, but I was terrible anyways. Regardless, I knew the general plot. I don’t think the first two are really playable anymore, but the third one holds up. I should go back and play it.
World of Warcraft gave me a lot of great memories. It seems like such a different game now – not just because of the mechanical changes but because of the mindset. Once you see the game through to max level, it changes your perspective.
I remember being so amazed at the size of the game. When I finally got my Night Elf all the way to Ironforge, I had a dilemma. Do I set my hearth there, giving up the quest lines I was doing, or do I hearth back home and give up the long trek to reach the city that was so full of people I had to use my roommate’s computer so I wouldn’t crash? I wrote an article for WoW Insider on this subject.
I ran dungeons with a group of friends I knew in real life. I remember Antonio yelling at me not to attack things that weren’t aggressive. I wanted their skin.
When one of my characters first reached the Barrens, one of the quests said something about the Horde soldiers needing me to help them. It felt so cool. “I’m one of them now!”
I finally hit the level cap for the first time in Wrath of the Lich King. I made sure to plan it so I could ding by turning in a quest to Thrall.
I joined a terrible guild to raid because they did a lot of old raids just for fun. They didn’t raid the current tier at all, but there was no stress of an application process. I got over that quickly.
Joining Carpe Flux Capacitor was a big deal. Who knew I was making such a great friends? I’ve met a pretty good chunk of the guild despite not living near most of them. It helps that I live in Irvine so some of them come to me for BlizzCon. It did feel a little odd at my guildmate’s wedding to say, “How do I know him? Oh, we play WoW together.”
Once there was a bug and the flag despawned completely from Warsong Gulch. I played in this one match, with breaks for dinner, for over eight hours.
Moogle made delicious cookies for everyone participating in our guild’s Secret Santa.
Bulleto, Mooglegem’s tauren hunter, made me a mechanohog. I tried it and killed the both of us almost immediately.
I was so excited when we finally killed Arthas after weeks of failing.
The quest line to get Quel’delar was one of my absolute favorite memories. I did it with Mooglegem, and we had a blast. I can’t use swords, so I received the Hammer of Purified Flame. I still have it, and it’s a popular transmog choice.
I’ve had a ton of wonderful memories in World of Warcraft, and I’m sure there are many more to come.
This Sunday at 8:00 PM PT, I’ll be a guest on the Twisted Nether Blogcast, a podcast about WoW blogs, their bloggers, and blogging. It’s the official podcast of Blog Azeroth, a forum about the WoW bloggers community. Blog Azeroth is also the organizer of the Blog Azeroth Shared Topics, weekly suggested blogging topics that encourage the community to discuss the same prompt. I haven’t responded to any in a while, but I used to do it regularly.
Listeners can tune in live if they want as well. More information can be found here. Of course, you can also check out the episode after it’s recorded!
This is the really satisfying part of the upgrade that no one ever mentions.
In all honesty, I do enjoy the Blizzard mousepads. When I get a new Blizzard game, I always enjoy switching mousepads. Sometimes I might find myself thinking, “wait, what was the latest release?” and then I can just look under my mouse. Okay, that never happens.
As for Warlords of Draenor, I don’t want to dwell too much on it here. I’ll probably talk about it more over the weekend. However, I’ll briefly discuss my initial thoughts. Despite server troubles, I’ve really enjoyed it. The introduction experience in Tanaan Jungle is sweet, and I love the cinematic way of introducing the warlords (or buildings in the garrison). I love feeling powerful and being recognized as a hero. The garrison is super fun. I’m very happy.
It’s hard to concentrate. I’m too excited about Warlords of Draenor. With the game releasing very soon, there are a lot of feelings swirling inside of me.
For the past week or so, there’s two conflicting feelings. First, there’s excitement, which is mainly what I’m feeling. I can’t wait to push the story forward and see the new content. Once I get to playing, I know I’ll experience a lot of boring filler, but the overall story progression is always so exhilarating. I also love the feeling or triumph over progression raid content. The other feeling that conflicts slightly is the constriction of my life by raiding. We’re starting in January (and I’m very thankful for that delay to enjoy the other content), and that means that two nights per week my time is already allotted.
(I’m sorry, but I had to include this. It’s stolen taken from Hyperbole and a Half, and even though it’s not really applicable here since I wasn’t using the false word, “alot,” I like the alot a lot.)
Anyways, in addition to raid time, there are other commitments as well. I feel responsible for a lot of other things in WoW that need to get done, so it’s not just a leisurely game. Raiding is worth the stress for me – the challenge and the friendships are amazing – but there’s stress all the same. Maybe, just maybe, I can keep it more under control. If I don’t enjoy something, I shouldn’t do it… but when I’m part of a raid team, it’s hard to justify that thinking. I don’t know how it’ll be this expansion though without a plethora of dailies or Valor Points.
Now that that Warlords of Draenor is this close, the responsibilities are actually draining from my mind as the hype fills it. I’m just excited.
I pre-ordered Warlords of Draenor Collector’s Edition from Amazon this time. Two years ago I pre-ordered the Mists of Pandaria Collector’s Edition from GameStop and was not happy when they didn’t have my game for me. I don’t want to try them again. I did use GameStop for the Reaper of Souls Collector’s Edition, but I used a different location. This time I decided to try something different. While I’m not in the mood for midnight launches like I was when I was younger, it does mean that I’ll have to wait for the package to come on Thursday. This also seemed appropriate though because I’m working and didn’t want to take time off for the game. I’ll have all night Thursday and plenty of time after that to enjoy the game. Still, I can’t help but be sad now. Most of my guildmates will be playing tonight at midnight.
I’m also annoyed that there wasn’t a proper way to pre-purchase digitally and then upgrade to the Collector’s Edition. I liked what they did with the WoW annual pass and Diablo 3. You got Diablo 3 for free with a WoW annual pass, and if you purchased the Collector’s Edition of Diablo 3, they credited your account with the difference. This time they said that if you bought Warlords digitally and later added the Collector’s Edition, they’d issue you a standard edition Warlords key to give to someone else. I’m sorry, but that’s terrible. Everyone I know is already purchasing the game. That means I can’t play right at midnight, and more importantly, I couldn’t use my free boost-to-90 when I actually had the time to do so. Oh well.
I didn’t mean to get side-tracked with negativity. I’m super pumped! Soon I’ll get to see a smorgasbord of new content as well as many of my friends back in action. I can’t wait!
Patch 6.0.2, The Iron Tide, brought a number of changes and a bit of new content.
Iron Horde Invasion
The Dark Portal turns red, and the Iron Horde begins to attack. The Horde and Alliance settlements in the Blasted Lands fall, and we’re tasked with cleaning up. It was interesting, but it seemed to lack zest. It was just a bit anti-climatic. I never really got the feeling that we were in much danger. The questline did more to introduce mechanic changes than anything else. For example, quest objectives are clearly marked on the map and are outlined differently in the world. This includes locations that are targets for items; instead of going to where you think you need to plant a flag and clicking it, you right-click the outline of a flag. I like it. Still, I would have liked the event to feel more important. I think what I liked most was Thrall’s new model. He’s finally integrating the aspects of being a shaman and a warrior. Awesome.
Updated character models
I didn’t care previously, and I still don’t think this is a big deal. I’m looking at numbers. I’m watching health and mana, looking at buffs and debuffs, and tracking adds. I’m not looking at my cloak. At first, I certainly did. My troll runs stupidly. Honestly it seems normal now though.
Upper Blackrock Spire
It’s much more straight-forward, but it didn’t seem like it was anything special either. I suppose that could make sense because it’s only the first half, but why show us the first half if the first half isn’t awesome?
Mechanics
Flexible raids are great. Losing Renew and Void Shift sucks. Having to choose between Spirit Shell and Power Infusion sucks. Losing Heal wasn’t a big deal.
Stat Squish
Now we’re even more OP in earlier content. That’s cool.
Void Storage and Toy Box
Oh, goodness. This was awesome. With a whole new Void Storage tab and the nifty Toy Box, I actually have free bag space again, allowing me to go do past raids for transmog. It’s wonderful. I don’t understand why they didn’t try to patch this in a couple months ago so we could actually do something in WoW. I can’t say enough good about this, although I know I’m going to fill it up soon. Mmmm old tier sets.
My progress
What have I done in the patch? I did the questline and UBRS of course. Besides that, I’ve mainly been going after old tier sets. That’s what I was doing months and months ago before I filled up all my bags, so it’s nice to be able to continue it again. I also got my heroic Siege of Orgrimmar heirloom – the staff. Unfortunately, I was hoping for the mace or offhand. The mace is shaped like a Horde symbol, and the offhand is a book with the Horde symbol on the cover. Maybe I’ll get one of them in normal mode!
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 