MMO-Champion user Mojo Risin posted a pretty neat idea that I had to mention here. He proposes a Mount 2.0 system with three things:
mount names
mount traits
new riding skills
I’m sure you can guess what mount names are. Mount traits are special abilities that each mount has such as providing a temporary crit bonus when the player dismounts or healing the player while riding. Each mount has one specific major trait and two empty minor trait slots. Once you have a mount, you’ve unlocked that trait. You can use unlocked traits in a lesser form in minor trait slots. In other words, you can’t change a mount’s major trait, but you can equip a mount with two minor traits, which are lesser forms of other traits you’ve unlocked. It’s an interesting idea, but there’d be balance issues. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but it would be a decent chunk of work.
How about new riding skills? His proposed Mount 2.0 system would allow you to train a new riding skill that increases land mount bonus speed to 125% as well as giving your mounts an additional 25% movement speed bonus when riding on roads and 10% on paths. I think these are fantastic ideas!
The system offers a number of interesting improvements. The traits sound fun, but there could be ramifications. The road and path system, however, should be implemented immediately!
Carpe Flux Capacitor, the guild of which I’m a member, defeated Garrosh on March 10. Since then, we’ve been inactive awaiting Warlords of Draenor. I realized that I might think to myself, “boy, remember all those good times I had raiding? It was always a positive experience.”
Now I have this video to remind me what it was really like. This is the last few seconds of every progression wipe we had in Siege of Orgrimmar.
We’re going to be recruiting for the next expansion, so maybe we could use this to remind new recruits what they can expect!
All kidding aside, wipes are to be expected. I just thought it was fun.
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.
I’m pretty excited to finally share this. I painted this Horde plate and Horde mug at Color Me Mine! In case you’re not familiar with the chain, allow me to briefly explain. Color Me Mine lets you choose and purchase ceramic pieces. Once you’ve chosen, you paint the piece there in the studio. They fire it while you go about your week, and a week later you can pick up your finished piece.
Because I’m more excited about the mug, I’ll talk about the plate first. I painted this on February 22 of this year. We were celebrating Mooglegem’s birthday!
If I spend too much time on details, I won’t be able to finish in a single evening and will have to return multiple times. To avoid that with this plate, I tried to keep it simple. I based the Horde symbol on the way it appears on the banners at the Shrine of Two Moons in Mists of Pandaria. It’s clearly Asian-inspired. The plate’s simple, but I’m pretty happy with it!
This mug is a much bigger deal. I’m so happy to finally have it completed. I don’t remember when I started it, but I do know that I signed and dated the bottom, and when I checked today, the year on the bottom was 2012.
I put a lot of work into this. In fact, it took me much longer than a single session. I probably went at least five times, spending hours each time. There was some other stress involved as well. Normally, you pay for the piece and you pay a studio fee to paint. If you purchase one piece or three pieces, the studio fee remains the same. If you don’t finish and bring a piece back, you don’t need to purchase the piece again, but you’d need to pay the studio fee again.
This side’s pretty boring. My intent with the colors here was to get that metal look with which Garrosh infused the Horde. Those circles were supposed to be metal rivets. I don’t know how well that came across.
I spent so much time on the mug that the Color Me Mine at which I purchased the piece closed. However, they had assured me when I began that I could take it to any store to continue working on it. The manager at the other store, however, seemed pretty upset by it. He made a big deal about how he can’t profit if I’m not purchasing from him. I guess he didn’t think the studio fee was high enough. Regardless, he was very huffy about the whole thing but let me work there, and I eventually finished. I’m not very artsy usually, so it was a big deal to me.
As a troll, I had to include some Darkspear love of course. Too bad a crack runs through the right mask.
A week after I finished painting, I went to pick up my piece, and it wasn’t really a piece. It was a bag of pieces. It had exploded in the kiln, which happens sometimes. I asked to look at the pieces because I was curious how it turned out, so the woman working there handed me the bag. A few moments later, she told me something about how she’d throw the pieces away for me, but I told her that I still wanted to keep it. She told me that they can’t let me do that because the sharp pieces are dangerous. This seems rather dumb to me, because I could always break a piece and then cut myself on it, right? Well, I told her that I really still wanted it. I think it helped that I was still holding the bag, and I honestly wasn’t going to give it back to her. I had already paid, I didn’t consider theft, and I doubt she would have physically stopped me. Luckily, she said okay, although she did make me sign the back of the receipt after she wrote something about how they wouldn’t be held responsible if I hurt myself.
The handle has a vine wrapping around it. It took a while to do that due to the shading.
I kept the bag in my room for a long time. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. There was lots of conflicting advice on what type of glue to use and how to fix it. Rather than choosing something, I kept putting it off.
When I painted the Horde plate, Mooglegem and I chatted with the staff, and one woman mentioned being able to glue pieces together there in the store. When I picked up my plate, I brought my mug with me, and they glued it back together for me!
For those wondering, the Color Me Mine in Tustin, CA on El Camino Real is a great business, and the people who work there are terrific!
The vine reaches the top and wraps around the inside of the mug.
It’s not safe to drink from it, but I created it for artistic reasons, not utility. I’m really pleased to have them completed. Now I just need to figure out where to display them!
Oh, and I suppose that the cracks just add to the representation. The Horde are the outcasts and underdogs. Individually we might be broken, but we come together! It’s apt that I didn’t get this glued together until after the Siege of Orgrimmar as well. Even though the Horde has been shattered, we piece ourselves back together!
I finished Silverpine Forest with my warlock this weekend. The story was quite good. I particularly enjoyed listening to Sylvanas early in the zone as she recounts the history of the Forsaken. There was nothing I didn’t already know, but it was an incredibly powerful speech that really gives a great idea of who the Forsaken are. Here’s a great video of the quest I found.
Simply amazing storytelling.
I know that a lot of people seem to think the end of the zone contains the great story moment, and yes, that was cool too. (I won’t say what happens.) But it didn’t compare to this speech.
We awakened the Paragons of the Klaxxi, so it’s only fitting that we put them down too. Tuesday we fought the Paragons for the first time. On our eighth attempt we managed to kill them.
No loot for me, but as usual, I prefer progression over loot. We’ll be seeing Garrosh on Thursday hopefully. I might go shadow for the fight, which could be fun.
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.
Alright! We downed Siegecrafter Blackfuse on Tuesday. Yes, maybe it took 21 attempts, but we killed him regardless. No loot for me, but I’m happy to be continuing forward. The Paragons of the Klaxxi seem complex yet, if LFR and flex’s trend applies in normal, easy. Will we get to see Garrosh Thursday? I’ll find out soon I suppose.
We ran the fourth wing of flex on Saturday night, and I ended up having a blast. I grabbed a few PUGs at the beginning, but most of them left. We ended up with fourteen of us – all friends except for a single PUG. It was a lot more fun than joining a flex group of people I don’t know. Of course, it has its drawback; if you want to play with friends, you have to coordinate a time. I suppose that’s a big trade-off in WoW all the time. One of our hunters got the heirloom from Garrosh, and our undergeared players all got some loot from the wing. I wouldn’t mind doing this more in the future.
Last night we defeated the Spoils of Pandaria on our fourth attempt. Not bad! It felt like more honestly. The fight went pretty smoothly. I’m glad we’re making rapid progress.
No loot for me, but that’s okay.
We also managed to kill Thok the Bloodthirsty on our eighth attempt. This was a much rougher fight than the Spoils of Pandaria. I think we were healing too long and keeping Thok in that interrupt phase too long. At first we were getting him to around 66% health before transitioning, but maybe that was allowing him to hit the tanks too hard. Honestly, we didn’t have a problem keeping the tanks up in that phase, but a tank would almost always get one-shot in the second interrupt phase. We were probably using too many CDs on the first one. Anyways, once we went with much shorter phases, things went better.
I won gloves that I’m not going to use right now I don’t think but could be useful later depending on how tier works. I also won the tier helm! That’s great, because it would give me four-piece if I choose to use it with the LFR tier legs that I didn’t use yet. Unfortunately, AskMrRobot shows that I’ll take a significant loss if I used the four-piece because I’d be changing from Warforged normal legs to LFR legs. It’s better to use the higher ilvl gear without four-piece for now. I’m hopeful that I’ll get another piece though. If not from normal, even a flex one would probably be great. I have normal chest, hands, and head tier, and LFR legs. My non-tier shoulders and legs are Warforged normal, so we’ll see.
You can check the guild kill announcement here or our log at World of Logs.
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’ve been playing a lock recently, which is only a big deal because I don’t usually play alts. My primary motivation is to see the quests from the 1-60 Cataclysm content. After finishing Tirisfal Glades, I made it to Silverpine Forest. I felt excited just walking into the zone. Wasn’t Silverpine Forest really boring before the Shattering? It was exciting now, but the fact that I like Forsaken architecture and design probably helped. And the scene in which Garrosh arrives to talk to Sylvanas at the beginning? Excellent.
We killed the Kor’kon Dark Shaman as a guild for the first time yesterday! We extended last week’s lockout so we could start right on progression. I even managed to get a warforged mace off my bonus roll – Kardris’ Scepter.
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.
I’ve been complaining a bit because I couldn’t manage to down Garrosh in flex. In fact, most groups couldn’t get past the first boss of Downfall. On Friday I listed myself for Downfall and got invited to a group just for Garrosh. It was super simple, and everything went extremely smoothly. It was a lot easier than most LFR groups even! Anyways, I’m happy to have completed flex.
It might not be guild progression, but I had some personal progression. Pepper asked me to join a PUG for Siege of Orgrimmar, so I decided to give it a go. It seemed like it was at least half of a guild run. We started at Galakras and made it through the Dark Shaman. It was my first time downing them!
It was actually a rather unpleasant experience. They were very rude to non-guildies. I stayed simply because I thought I had a chance at progression. Is that bad of me? Whatever.
I spent another three to four hours doing flex the other night. I’m attempting to get a Garrosh kill. On this particular night, I was never able to kill the first boss of flex 4. People wouldn’t know what to do, and that would cause other people to quit. We’d wipe and wipe and then fall apart. After four groups, I gave up for the evening.
It was very frustrating. I dislike LFR because it’s boring, but I dislike flex because if other people are bad, you’re just wasting your time completely. If I could just kill him once in flex, I’d leave him be!
Wednesday we had our one and only attempt on Iron Juggernaut, defeating him! It seemed like a strangely uneventful boss. I’d heard it was easy, but after a boss that had a group leaving to do their own thing in the towers on Galakras with comparatively complex mechanics, I don’t understand why Iron Juggernaut was even there! That said, he’s pretty cool looking, so I guess I get it.
You can watch our kill too. I forgot to start the video right at the beginning, but I remembered pretty early. Now that I’ve become the official kill poster on the Carpe Flux Capacitor guild website, I might as well link to our official kill announcement too.
Last week we finally killed Galakras! We were missing our main tanks and actually had to PUG a DPS as well. It was the first time we had raided in about a month due to attendance issues.
This was our 20th attempt when we finally defeated Galakras. I’m surprised it took so long, but I’m glad to see him die. Off to Iron Juggernaut this week I hope!
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!
Rossi has some very interesting theories about the Titans and time. He speculates that they’re from the future, and that they want to preserve the “true” timeline to ensure their own creation.
Warlords of Draenor sounds very cool and seems to be bringing a lot of great things. I don’t intend for this post to rehash all the news released at BlizzCon, but I still want to talk about my reaction.
The story
I love the direction of the story; Garrosh escapes and, with the help of the Timewalker Kairoz, travels back in time to Draenor. He stops the orcs from becoming corrupted by the Burning Legion and forms the Iron Horde. He then builds his own Dark Portal connecting that Draenor to our Azeroth. I know that anything relating to time travel can be confusing to people, but I kind of like that Blizzard basically told us not to worry about it and that there wouldn’t be any time paradoxes or consequences. I like it. It’s just an excuse for us to visit Draenor and interact with all the old orcs. Of course, this gives us a lot of potential. Seeing ruthless, old-fashioned orcs should be fun, and of course, experiencing Draenor will be great.
It could also be a vehicle for some interesting character development. What if Garrosh finds his father’s not what he expected? What if Grom thinks Garrosh is a failure? It’ll be fascinating. I also think Blizzard has a chance to do something great with Thrall. Thrall never had the chance to know his parents. We know Durotan is going to side with our Horde, but what if he’s different than Thrall imagined? Even if he’s a good guy, what if he’s still ruthless? What if he thinks the Horde is too soft? In addition, some characters could stick around after the end of the expansion. For example, Durotan could come through the Dark Portal to live on Azeroth.
I’m also fascinated by the idea of circumstance shaping a person, and I hope Warlords of Draenor examines this. I’d like to see some characters act very differently than they did in the original timeline due to the changed events in their lives.
Stats and itemization
Hit was always a boring stat to me. There was no strategy or choice. You just had to get hit-capped. I’m glad to see it and its fellow not-fun stats removed. Movement speed could be a fun stat on gear as well. Plus, being able to move quickly and get back to DPSing or healing means a DPS/HPS boost.
Having gear change to match the wearer’s current spec is very interesting. It means you can use more gear but that there’s more competition. Ultimately, I think it’ll make the game much more offspec-friendly.
Reforging seemed more needless than useful. On the other hand, it is nice to be able to change from a haste build to a crit build without changing gear. I almost feel like it would work better like changing specs. When you’re out of combat, you can could change builds. Oh well. We’ll have to see what it’s like for gems and enchants to be less common as well.
Garrisons
Garrisons are effectively the Sunsong Ranch farm crossed with the companion mission system of TOR (or other games) with a dash of Warcraft RTS. Sounds intriguing. I liked the farm even though it felt like a grind at times, so I’m optimistic about this. Honestly, it’s more of an evolution of the idea of keeps and followers from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It could be pretty fun.
Updated character models
Honestly, I don’t really care about this. I don’t understand it. My character is a pretty portion of my screen. When I play D&D, my representation is, at most, a small metal figure that isn’t even using an accurate weapon half the time. However, a lot of people do care, so I’m glad Blizzard’s doing it.
Boost to 90
I completely understand how some people are bothered by this, but I’m not at all. I’ve never had two characters at the level cap. With the character boost, I’m more likely to get a second to level 100. It’d be nice to check out some other styles of play, because I’ve only ever had my priest at endgame. In addition, being able to boost to 90 combined with updated character models mean that people who haven’t played WoW before can immediately begin playing what is effectively a new, modern game. That’s great.
Collections and quest items
These might be my favorite changes. Currently, mounts and pets are in collections rather than items. In Warlords of Draenor, toys, heirlooms, and possibly tabards will be in collections as well. That’s so much bag space I’ll be regaining. In addition, quest items won’t take up bag space. Finally. I’m pretty excited. The only downside is that I lost all those toys I earned previously. Maybe Blizzard could check that I did those quests and award me the toys. Please, Blizzard?
Raid changes
LFR is still LFR. Flex will be called Normal. Normal will be called Heroic. Heroic will be called Mythic. LFR, Normal, and Heroic will all be flexible (1o to 25 people) and cross-realm. Mythic will not be cross-realm and will be 20 people. As a normal-mode raider currently (so a heroic-mode raider next expansion) in a guild that struggles with attendance, this is great news. We recruit so we have 15-20 people, and then we take everyone every week. Awesome! I do feel bad for current 10-man heroic guilds, but it won’t be my problem at least.
Dailies and dynamic events
Dailies will not be widely used. Great. Dynamic events like those from the Timeless Isle will exist in the world. Also great if not overdone. In addition, they talked about wanting to combine the ideas behind the Isle of Thunder and the Timeless Isle. I think Blizzard is on to something, and I like to see them iterating on the way content is delivered. A combination of these two is exactly what I want.
Story quests
The map will tell you where the next story quest is, and it also indicates how many story chapters you’ve completed. This is awesome news. In Mists of Pandaria, I finished all the zones before I started raiding, and I only did a dungeon once I got to it in the story. It made for a nice, cohesive experience, but it also meant I took longer to get raid-ready. In Warlords of Draenor, I’ll skip all the non-story quests and come back to them. This should speed up the process significantly.
PVP interface updates
I don’t know how anyone could have a problem with being able to see capping progress on the map and on the flags themselves. This is a welcome change.
Warlords of Draenor
I’m pretty excited about all the aspects of the expansion. I’ll admit, things could go wrong. The quests could be boring, or the new content delivery mechanisms could be boring. I won’t know until I see the content. But I’m feeling hyped to experience it. Of course, I’d like to defeat Garrosh in normal-mode first!
BlizzCon was this weekend, and I found the announcements pretty exciting. Despite living just twenty to thirty minutes from the convention center, I didn’t go. I think it feels less special as a convention because it’s so close, but I do watch the stream. I’ll be posting about some of the announcements and my feelings about them later. I have something more important to mention first!
What would World of Warcraft be without people with whom to play? Some of my guildies came down, and got to hang out this weekend. I’m second from the right, in the red shirt. I stole the pic from my guild leader, so hopefully she doesn’t mind. I went to dinner with three out-of-towners and Mooglegem on Friday night, and Saturday night the group of us above went to dinner. That includes four people I met (in person) this weekend, which was great.
In the photo, you might notice a cookie jar between a glass of water and a beer. Moogle baked cookies and brought them with her in that jar. While we in line at a restaurant, she handed them out to us. A girl behind us got excited, asking where we got the cookies. Moogle explained that she baked them and brought them with her. She seemed sad, and Moogle offered her a cookie. She got really excited, accepted, tried it, and then told Moogle how good it was! Later, when we were seated, Moogle offered cookies to our waiter and waitress. The waiter took one fairly early and thought it was great. It was later in the meal when the waitress accepted, and she also told Moogle how good she thought it was. A few minutes later, a different waitress came over to us, telling us that she didn’t know who baked the cookies but that her coworker shared a piece with her and she thought they were amazing. Moogle gave one to her too. Everyone loves cookies!
As for the content from BlizzCon itself, I was pretty impressed. I think Warlords of Draenor sounds very exciting and the changes are, generally, good ones. I’m also pleased with what I saw of Reaper of Souls. I’ve never played a MOBA, but I’m optimistic about Heroes of the Storm (and the trailer was fantastic). I’d actually not played Hearthstone in a while, but the convention made me excited to play once more. Adventures sound particularly cool! And I guess StarCraft was there. I don’t play it. I’ll post more in-depth about the announcements in the future!
We’re almost two months into the patch, so I thought I’d talk about some of the content. When the Timeless Isle was released, I was pretty excited. It was largely free-form content. In many ways, it mirrored the feeling of World of Warcraft when it was first released. I didn’t have particular expectations. There were no grinds of dailies. I was just able to explore and find things to do. I talked to Wrathion and his friends, got sent around the island, and met the Emperor. I killed some random monsters and did some platforming to find some treasure chests. I even bested the Celestials in battle, earned by legendary cloak, and fought Ordos. I was excited and incredibly happy with the Timeless Isle. I loved platforming to reach chests, and I particularly enjoyed getting carried by a bird to the top of a mountain.
Soon I began working on it a bit more. I wanted to complete the weekly so I could see the vision. I wanted to kill Yaungol so I could earn reputation with Emperor Shaohao. I wanted to get more armor from the island so I could use Burdens of Eternity on them, even if they’d only provide a small upgrade.
Soon I realized that there wasn’t an abundance of fun to reach chests. Platforming was very limited. The second week on the Timeless Isle, I didn’t quite finish gathering enough Epoch Stones to complete my quest and earn a vision. The next week I still hadn’t finished it. Fast-forward until today, and I’ve still only turned in the quest once and currently have 27/50 Epoch Stones.
Looking at my quest log, I see that I’m supposed to kill Yaungol for Emperor Shaohao, kill Elite creatures for Emperor Shaohao, kill Rare or Rare Elite creatures for Kairoz, and kill everything for Epoch Stones for Kairoz. These don’t scream fun to me. In fact, they seem pretty terrible. At least the Isle of Giant was even looser. This just feels fake. I have a few different quests, but really I’m just so run around killing things haphazardly. I primarily play to experience the content, see the story, and challenge myself. Challenge doesn’t really apply to this type of content, so let’s disregard that. I’ve already experienced the content. The Timeless Isle is now asking me to experience the same content again and again. I’m missing some story, but I feel like I’d be better off watching the visions on YouTube than continuing.
I do like PVPing, and I purchased the Censer of Eternal Agony, but I’ve never even used it honestly. I don’t really want to screw with people who are trying to get things done. I’d rather go do some battlegrounds. The Burdens of Eternity could provide me with some minor upgrades, but they’re not enough to really motivate me.
It’s really too bad. I’m not trying to say that the Timeless Isle is bad. A lot of people enjoy it, and that’s great. Unfortunately, it’s just not for me I suppose. When I first explored the island, it reminded me of the way exploring World of Warcraft felt for the first time. In many ways, it mirrored the experience of the game. That exploration is much more limited than implied. I understand what it wants and requires, and it offers a lot less than I originally thought. Perspective changes.
For now, I’ll fly out to the Isle once per week to spam smite at Ordos and to tag a Celestial right before the kill.
Rohan notes that there’s room for bad healers or DPS in LFR but not tanks. He speculates that increasing the number of tanks (while keeping encounters tuned for two) would make tanking more forgiving and possibly yield more people queuing as tanks. It’s a great idea.
Here’s another fantastic piece by Rohan. He provides an alternate explanation on gender bias in which he speculates that women prefer to stay at range while men prefer melee. It’s interesting.
I like that LFR is included, and I think it’s a great feature. That said, the experience is usually infuriating. People are usually under-geared, which is to be expected, but they also don’t know what to do and don’t listen to instructions. Honestly, LFR is open to everyone, and many people have never raided outside of LFR. I understand that it can be daunting. What gets to me, however, is when we wipe so many times and fall apart so much that it takes 2 or 3 hours to complete a wing. This happens pretty frequently, and it’s especially bad now that we’re in a new tier. Everyone’s yelling at each other, we have four stacks of determination, half the group drops, and I just want to finish.
Tuesday night after our raid, I decided to do the Vale of Eternal Sorrows in LFR. I was great on Immerseus, and we completed it in one attempt with no problems. The Fallen Protectors also went very smoothly, but I was beginning to get tired. We had no problems on Norushen either, but I was incredibly sloppy. I didn’t switch to adds, and I didn’t do anything but spam Smite and occasionally cast Penance or Holy Fire on the boss. By the time we got to the Sha of Pride, I was falling asleep. Sometimes I cast Smite on the Sha. Most of the time I did nothing. Yes, I was stacked at the correct spot, but I didn’t move. I didn’t fight the add. I didn’t use my healing CDs. Pretty much, I just slept.
Whoops. I was the bad that got carried last night.
Tuesday we cancelled our raid due to low attendance. We tried recruiting and taking trial members, but the couple that was planning on running with us restarted their computers and never returned. However, on Wednesday we breezed through Immerseus and the Fallen Protectors and finally completed the Norushen encounter! I got a belt, too. I think it was only on our second attempt of the night, although we wiped a total of 24 times.
Then we moved on to the Sha of Pride. If flex was any indicator, I expected this to be easier than the Norushen encounter, and I was right. We did wipe four times, but we defeated the Sha of Pride on the fifth attempt. Take that Sha of Pride! Who’s the best now? Us! Wait…
Hopefully next week we’ll be able to push into Orgrimmar itself!
Whoops, I missed this one. Laura Shigihara, the voice of the Singing Sunflower pet (and the song from Plants vs. Zombies), sings Lament of the Highborne.
Brewfast has always been one of my two favorite holidays – the other being Hallow’s End. (It’s too bad they’re so close together.) The year before last, I obtained my Brewfest Ram. I still needed by kodo, so I continued to run Direbrew daily.
This year, I got my Brewfest Kodo! It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I do like it a lot actually. The next day, I realized it was a bittersweet victory. Now what do I do with Brewfest? I have every token reward except for on the drinking hat, and I actually had that previously and destroyed it. I have my Wolpertinger, which I do love. Now I had both mounts. Was this is for the holiday? There wasn’t even a stein this year! I think I’ll do the ram riding, calling through Orgrimmar, Dark Iron fight, and Pink Elekks on Parade quest once each just for the experience. I really wish Blizzard had continued to update the stein yearly though!
About a week ago, Mooglegem earned her legendary cloak, Xing-Ho, Breath of Yu’lon! I was looking forward to seeing her increased DPS, but we called raids off this past week. Hopefully next time we raid she’ll get to put her new legendary cloak to good use!
When Greg Street and Brian Holinka traded tweets about exciting changes to PVP, Olivia Grace replied to them, saying that she’d bake them each 1,000,000 cookies if the changes were cross-realm arenas. Well, they’re in patch 5.4 now, and in the Alliance PVP room in the Valley of the Four Winds, there’s an IOU note for “1,000,000 Chocolate Chip Cookies” signed “- O.D.G.” She better get on that.
Good to know if you’re still playing Hearthstone. You’ll be reimbursed with gold for your purchases, and they don’t believe there will be any additional wipes.
And this is the follow-up Rossi wrote after realizing that people didn’t realize the first was satirical. It lists the reasons why Orgrimmar shouldn’t be destroyed.
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!
Personally, I think it’s fine to have restricted content. However, I think the general plot and assets should be available to everybody. That’s one reason that, while I don’t particularly enjoy running LFR regularly, I’m very thankful for it’s inclusion in the game.
Last week, I earned my legendary cloak, Jina-Kang, Kindness of Chi-Ji. If you follow my blog and know that I play a discipline priest, you won’t be surprised that Jina-Kang is the healer legendary. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to earn this before my raid nights, but this week I should be set!
I’m sure you can find hundreds of videos showing the cutscene, but I recorded mine as well. It starts with some quest text and dialog before Wrathion sends me to the Seat of Knowledge above Mogu’shan Palace in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Around 2:00 into the video is when the good part starts. Do you remember how Lorewalker Cho has shown you scenes from stories? Now he, with Wrathion’s help, tells my story. This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in World of Warcraft. We’ve all done great things, and the cutscene that plays will show each player his legendary accomplishments. To someone who loves the lore and story as well as building a character, it was incredible.
After earning it, the player is displayed with his or her appropriate legendary proc outside the Seat of Knowledge. I’m sad that I didn’t wait for Mooglegem so we could be displayed together. Oh well. Now to complete this chapter of the legendary, I just need to stop Garrosh Hellscream!
The Fallen Protectors went down again! It took us seven attempts, which isn’t too bad at all. The fight itself wasn’t too interesting, but I definitely like the idea of fighting sha-corrupted, fallen heroes.
I’m sure you really wanted to see us do it, and now you can! We did some attempts on Norushen – 10 it looks like if each of these Fraps videos is a full attempt – but we weren’t able to finish it.
I also completed the first flex wing, Vale of Eternal Sorrows. It was interesting. Yes, it was easier than normal, but we still had to pay attention to mechanics. I think I liked the difficulty. What really sets it apart though is requiring it to be pre-formed. I bet people would do their jobs better in LFR if you had to form your own group as well! I was a little stressed out joining a PUG because you never know what you’ll get. I guess it was kind of silly. Regardless, it went well, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the Sha of Pride. That’s a really cool boss to include. Afterwards you get some dialog between Jaina Proudmoore and Lor’themar Theron that I enjoyed.
And So It Begins, Averry, The Warchief’s Command Board, 9/10/13.
Averry, the man behind Garrosh Hellscream at the Warchief’s Command Board, posts a little bit out of character. He brings up leading a raid of Warchief’s Command Board readers in Siege of Orgrimmar. Could be fun!
Tuesday night, Carpe Flux Capacitor descended under the Vale and fought to cleanse the corrupt Immerseus. On the eleventh attempt, we succeeded! I’m very excited to be in the Siege of Orgrimmar. From what I know of it, it seems like a well made raid. I know many people dislike raids set in old environments; new is interesting, but old environments make it seem more real. I think Blizzard nailed a good mix with Siege of Orgrimmar, but I suppose I need to see a lot of more of it for myself to make that call.
We also moved on to the Fallen Protectors. We made some attempts but haven’t downed them yet. Maybe tonight!
I recently decided to try some other characters. First, I wanted to see the Worgen starting zone. I created a Worgen hunter named Eadgar, and I thoroughly enjoyed his starting experience. I especially loved the building pictured above. After finishing the starting zone, I created a Forsaken warlock. He’s currently level 7 or so; the Forsaken starting experience is definitely not as cool as the Worgen’s!
My Death Knight was in the very low 70s, so I decided to try him again. I did a couple dungeons, and then decided to try my hand at tanking. I was extremely nervous, but it went well. I told the group I was new to tanking, and that I really only heal. They told me I was going a little slower than normal but that I was doing fine. Great!
I also wanted to check how I could mage, so I swapped characters and computers with Moogle for two boss fights in Throne of Thunder. Amazingly, it went really well. I’m confident I can DPS in a raid setting.
Following that, I decided to get a shadow spec for my priest. I created the spec and a set of offspec gear based on what I already had. Sadly, I went into LFR to test it and I was already in the top three or four on DPS. I would expect to be worse than that, but I forgot that you can never underestimate LFR.
The war against Hellscream is coming. The die has been cast. This is a fantastic piece of the importance of this event. It could be a big turning point for the Alliance as well as the Horde.
As you’ve probably heard, Blizzard is cancelling the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game. Most likely this stems from their focus on Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. While I hadn’t played it in years, saying goodbye to a good game makes me a bit sad.
I’m not sure that I ever played a 1v1 match against another player; it was the raid decks that fascinated me. WoW: TCG features raid decks modelled after their World of Warcraft counterparts. In the photo above (taken years ago), one player is controlling the Onyxia raid deck. We had five players banded together to defeat Onyxia. It was a new concept (at least to me) in TCGs, and I enjoyed it immensely. Besides defeating Onyxia, I also defeated Molten Core in normal (it had different difficulties) with five other players.
There were seven raid decks released – Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core, Magtheridon’s Lair, Black Temple, Naxxramas, Assault on Icecrown Citadel, and Battle of the Aspects. Maybe it’s a waste of money, but I suddenly have the strong urge to purchase every raid deck. They’re fun, and I can’t stand the idea of them going away! I’ll pick up Assault on Icecrown Citadel at the very least.
This weekend, I played a lot of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. My friend gave me a beta key, which was really nice of him. Hearthstone is a lot of fun. It’s very similar to other collectible card games, but at the same time, it’s a bit different. I feel like Blizzard must have put significant thought into what makes CCGs fun and makes them annoying. Having too much mana is annoying. Having too little mana in annoying. In Hearthstone, you use mana crystals, but they don’t come from cards. Like other games, your available mana is reset every turn. Your maximum is one on the first turn. On every subsequent turn, your maximum increases until it caps at ten.
In this video, I’m playing a practice round against Malfurion. Hearthstone has three modes that I see – Play, Practice, and Arena. The play mode pits you against a similarly skilled player online with one of your constructed decks. I only tried one match of this, and I beat my opponent.
Practice mode allows you to pick one of the classes for your hero and then pick your opponent. When you beat a class / character, you unlock it for your own use. I’ve unlocked all nine. As you play, you also gain experience and can level your heroes. When they level, you unlock additional basic cards. After unlocking all the heroes, you also unlock expert mode practice, but I haven’t tried it yet.
The arena mode is particularly interesting. It’s a sort of draf. First, you pick one of three heroes. After that, you get to choose one of three cards thirty times to build your deck. You then play online with the deck, but after three losses the deck is retired. It’s pretty cool!
I’m having a great time with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. I expect I’ll have more to say on it in the coming weeks as I keep playing.
I love this. The Alliance story was the story of their paladins. What if paladins had stayed Alliance-only and shaman had stayed Horde-only? What if Death Knights had been given to the Horde, and monks to the Alliance? It’s an interesting article.
Why do the orcs want to kill Garrosh? Why do players hate Garrosh but like Sylvanas? Rohan thinks that in lore, the orcs in general aren’t turning on Garrosh. As players, we like Sylvanas because she’s “all cool and calculating” while Garrosh “is a thug.” Players are more likely to identify with Sylvanas.
Window Shopper, Prinnie Powah, That Was an Accident!, 8/14/13.
Rohan’s wish list includes paladins, necromancers (or maybe druids), a no-trade, no-AH mode, and the ability for hardcore characters to become normal characters upon death. I think the no-trade, no-AH mode would be nice, although Blizzard would never do it, and the hardcore change would be great.
Even if you haven’t been reading this story, this is an interesting article about “assumed RP.” I didn’t really know anything about this, but it was a fascinating read.
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!
I finally completed the fourth chapter of Wrathion’s legendary quest line. I’m glad this one was short while still having a bit of challenge. The quest tasks you with receiving the blessings of the four Celestials. They give wisdom to Wrathion as well; Wrathion, in comparison to the Celestials, is actually pretty stupid, but he is just a child.
I completed Chi-Ji’s healer challenge. Unfortunately it took me a few tries, but I still got it, and now I have my nice, new cloak. I’m looking forward to putting it to use!
After collecting all those darn Titan Runestones, I’ve finally completed Wrathion’s Chapter III: Two Princes. Later this week, hopefully Monday night, I’ll complete Celestial Blessings and earn my delicious new cloak. I’m looking forward to it. The Wrathion questline has been one of the best in the game, and I love how it’s unlocking over the course of the patches. And boy, I love what happened when I turned in this quest. I won’t spoil it in case you haven’t done it!
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 