We’re now into the second week of 4.3, and I’m extremely happy with it so far. It packed a bunch of features – void storage, transmogrification, three new 5-mans, Dragon Soul, the LFR, the Darkmoon Faire, epic gems, and more!

The first thing I did was look at the simple additions of void storage and transmogrification. I immediately filled my entire void storage. It has 80 slots, and in my opinion is pretty cheap. It’s 100 gold to unlock and 25 gold per item deposit. That’s 2100 gold for 80 slots. What a deal! Next, it was time to transmogrify my gear. I have to be honest; I’ve never been as good as I was in Icecrown Citadel. And I know why! It’s because of my gear of course. To solve this, I transmogrified my gear to look T10. (And actually I’ve been doing well this patch, so it must be working!)

The three 5-mans are very fun although very easy. Nozdormu informs us that we need the Dragon Soul to defeat Deathwing, but we’d need to go back in time to get it. Unfortunately, access to that time period is blocked to him, and the disturbance is in the future. In the first heroic, Nozdormu travels with us into the future in End Time. There we defeat shadows of past heroes in a dark future in which Deathwing succeeded in killing everyone. In the end, we fight Murozond, leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and formerly Nozdormu. This fight is most likely what drives Nozdormu insane and pushes him to become Murozond. Of course, this is also the first time Nozdormu decides to change the timeline, which most likely contributes as well. The fight itself is amazingly cool. Nozdormu gives us the ability to set back time. Our mana and CDs are reset, but Murozond’s health does not reset. It’s pretty cool.

Next up we’re sent back in time to the War of the Ancients where a young kaldorei named Illidan helps to fight the Burning Legion. We even get to fight Azshara (by the way, she’s hot). In the end we’re able to snatch the Dragon Soul. In the final 5-man, Thrall now has the Dragon Soul, and we escort him through Dragonblight to Wyrmrest Temple where the raid begins.

In the raid, we first fight an elemental giant who’s turning the earth against us. Next we fight two faceless ones in the spawn of the Old Gods. I won’t go into the rest of the details because I don’t want to spoil anything. However, we do revisit the Eye of Eternity, board an airship, fight on Deathwing’s back, and then fight Deathwing a second time. The Spine of Deathwing is an especially awesome fight. You cause adds to explode, knocking pieces of armor partially off Deathwing’s back. Then you break tendons holding them in place, sending them flying. Wow, how awesome.

Some people in my guild are annoyed at the difficulty already of 10-man normal, but I’m quite content. It’s the second week, and we’re 2/8. A boss per week is good progress in my opinion. One boss per two weeks would be fine with me even. However, when we add this to the fact that LFR is incredibly easy, I’m not annoyed at all. LFR is broken into two raids of four bosses each. The first is a complete faceroll. The second is a bit harder, and tanks especially will want to read about the fights before entering. Still, I’ve already completed the entire raid in LFR. While it’s easier, it’s very cool to be able to see the entire story. I imagine there are a ton of players out there who never raided previously but can now at least see all the assets. This is fantastic. And if they want to learn to truly raid, they can enter normal (which is easier than it was previously in my opinion). Then, if they want to be challenged as a raider, they start heroic progression. This is a cool way to segment things.

Enough about raiding. Isn’t there an even more casual form of PVE than LFR? There is – the Darkmoon Faire! Again, this is a big success. The coolest thing about it is the ambiance. I love being there. It really feels like a faire. It offers five dailies that are all carnival games. These gives tickets that can be spent on mounts (dancing bear!), pets, heirlooms, and transmogrification gear. There are also quests that can be done once per month for each profession (primary and secondary). There’s also a quest that tasks you with collecting 250 grisly trophies. These appear in your inventory randomly when killing players or PVE enemies that are in your level range. However, they don’t appear every time, and I wish they appeared more. The only annoying aspect is that there are also items that start quests that can drop in battlegrounds and heroics once you get the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. There are nine of these, and they can be turned in once per month each. You can trade them, which is nice, and more importantly, you can find them even when the faire isn’t around. That’ll be great next month, but I really want to maximize my tickets, and I haven’t found them all for this month yet!

tl;dr, right? Well, I’m loving the patch!