Month: November 2010

The Shattering

As I write Deathwing and his army of minions (subcontracted out to Blizzard) are busy breaking the world and generally trashing the place.  I also understand there is a crack squad of gnomes with capped engineering following through rebuilding some of the damage and putting in new flight points.

So, what did I do on the last night of the original world?

Firstly Wubbles got Kingslayer, the group (a mix of Nosferatu & ItP people) clicked last night, defile landed in the right place and as everyone who has got the kill knows once that happens he’s as good as dead.

After that blitzed through the final parts of Pilgrim on Korenwolf.  I just couldn’t summon the enthusiasm last year after power levelling cooking on the alts.  However with this title I have the complete set of World Event meta achievements.  There’s a few non-meta achievements left (such as the mask for all occasions on from Hallows End) which I’ll womble through as they come round, however I think I just mark that part of the OCD grind as “Mission Acomplished”.

The death of alts

It’s official, the Beta is done, complete, finished, and shutdown.

This means that Korvenwolf and Wubbilina have expired, their brief lives cut cruelly short after having explored part of the new content, reported many bugs (some of them more than once).

Despite having seen everything up to halfway through Uldum I’m looking forward to running it again, partly because we’ll be doing our tag-team levelling again (this is a good thing), we have level 1 slots lined up ready for the new combos and races, with the changes to the world this will be like getting a whole new game again.

Then there’s the dungeons and raiding.  Korenwolf is all lined up to tank his way through to 85 and into the raid content, however there shall be a part of him which is forever held in limbo, sat in Uldum waiting for the developers to polish out those progress blocking quests.  Hopefully he was able to slip back to Ironforge while I wasn’t looking and will be spending eternity in the Inn of his choice.

I suspect he’s got enough gold to keep him going for more than a few years.

Goon Squad – Tirion Kill

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onWY4Q0hIjU]

We were discussing this kill last night on vent while waiting on a healer for the LK attempts and working out the mechanic for getting past Precious to Rotface.  I only have to say that this guild is made of some seriously twisted people, and it’s a pity they’re based in the US.

Enter the DestroGnome

I’ve been debating for a while what should be my second toon to pushed through in Cata, the one which gets the solo treatment and probably nearly as much gearing attention as my tanking main.  Based on recent experience with Wubbles has sealed the deal, the warlock (one of the classes I had originally pegged as “not a hope of ever reaching the level cap”) will be fighting the good fight and looking for some serious face time with the nasties following the Shattering.

Last night was a ITP / Nosferatu mixed run starting at our mate Arthas, I reckon that this little gnome held up the honour of gnomes everywhere by nuking his heart out.  No major mistakes and plenty of raw damage landing where it should.

The experience in the beta has also been pretty solid, Wubbles made 85 in Uldum without any serious problems and has been having a great time in the normal mode dungeons.  CC is essential and easy enough to handle, though I possibly need so more macros to make things even easier.

So roll on two weeks time and the entry of DestroGnome!

Here it comes

If we’re to believe MMO Champion The Shattering will be here this week, tomorrow in fact for the US.

So it’s time for the mass evacuation of Dalaran, making sure that everyone in Azeroth is in the bunkers with plenty of food and ale.

Oh, and marshmellows, plenty of them.

On the big plus side, lots of new flight points, including my personal favourite.  Goldshire.  No more having to run down from the Stormwind gates for whatever world event / holiday is running.

Extended downtime confirmed for the US

4.0.3a, what we can expect

Via MMO Champ and many many other places

What is not in:

 

  • Creating worgen/goblin characters
  • Worgen/Goblin start zones
  • Archeology
  • Professions past 450 (Illustrious Grand Master)
  • Guild leveling
  • Guild achievements
  • Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor flight
  • New Zones (80+)

 

What is in:

 

  • Portals in Dalaran/Shattrath Removed
  • Class trainers in Dalaran where portals once were
  • New race-class combinations (excluding worgen/goblin)
  • New Gnome/Troll starting areas
  • Changes to existing zones
  • New cata load screens
  • New cata intro cinematic
  • New cata login screen
  • New music
  • City Quartermasters, with rep tabards
  • Bug fixes
  • Class balancing
  • Druids, paladins, priests, and shaman will have their talent trees reset
  • Experience required to gain levels 71 through 80 is being reduced by 20%
  • New tamable hunter pets (Monkey, fox, dog, and beetle, as well as new skins for existing pet classes.)

Invasion event QQ

Well it had to start at some point, the bitching about “I’m bored with them already”

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1063356361

I’m of the opinion that Blizz have learnt from the Scourge event, in that there was enforced PvP, cities were made completely unsable for pretty much everyone below the level cap at the time, lots of whining from players about being cleansed (hell I’m on an RP server, I’m a Paladin, you’re SICK with the Undeath Plague!!!, hell yes I’m going to save your sorry arse soul from Arthas).  It screwed anyone who was trying to level in any zone near a city (we were on a timer with RAF during the event which effectively meant dead speed levelling time).

So let’s look at the current event.

  • It’s pretty near as dammit optional, the quest lines are there but there’s no need to do them (good XP on lower level alts though, decent gold for the capped players)
  • The in-city event is every 2-3 hours or so, there are portals for low level players to get out of the city to safety, and it’s time limited on each cycle.
  • Only two cities per-faction are affected

I’m still holding to my expectation that we can expect the shattering and some interim quests hitting next week bringing the chaos of the invasion to an end (or be brought under control at least).

So, stop complaining this event is an order of magnitude less cripping to normal play than the scourge event, it’s been designed remembering that there needs to be a balance between “world changing events, big excitement” and “not everyone is heavily into this sh*t”.