The Burrow

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hqF8uvPW84]

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.)

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”.

Or more accurately a thought on what we can do on a second batch of alts.

I present…

Team Gnome!

With the advent of 4.0.3a we have the capability to have a functional 5 / 10 setup entirely made of gnomes (no druids, paladins or shamans).  So, for fits, giggles and the honour of gnomekind (and to annoy the horde) we need to have a purely gnome setup to sit alongside Team Pirate, Team Tincan and the (only partly finished) Team Leather (aka all druids).

So, Pirates, what say ye?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/859138694

I’m going to watch this with interest, what they don’t say is what will happen once the battle is rolling and people drop, will players be dropped from the opposing faction (unlikely).  So what is to stop the opposing faction from bringing a pile of alts into the battle and then dropping shortly after the start?

I suspect that those dedicated to winning an imbalanced battle will find new ways to shift the balance again.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsQzn6ihWc]

As many of us are already aware the shattering itself is live on the PTR, no major details available yet but I’m expecting some staged questlines to keep us busy between the patch and the 7th when everything kicks off properly.

So in my wisdom I’ve subscribed to the MMO champ RSS feed, stupid me.

One of the first posts is a whine from someone in the US that the EU will be going live first, how this isn’t fair, how this means all the world firsts will go to the EU and so on.  I’m sure I don’t need to link to the post for you to get a firm idea of the content or the followups.

So specially for any readers in the US, I feel for you, if I could magically change the universe so we had a hoop shaped sun which turned on and off (single global timezone) I would.  However in this spinning world we have the flow of light across the land and sea is a fact of live.  Something which I’m very well aware of having to work with people in India, Indonesia, Germany, Austria, Canada, the US (Dallas, Seattle) and so on.  Timezones are a pain.

However please don’t forget that for every single damm patch except the initial launch of a new expansion the US gets the content 24 hours ahead of the EU, so please sit back, enjoy the new content (it’s pretty, the mobs hit hard, and by the gods do the 5-man normal bosses punch) and relax a little.

For gods sake people, it’s a damm game.

So, phase 4 is rolling, tonight I’ll see if I can get that damm rift achievement sorted, but we ripped through all four of the event bosses after cleaning Stormwind.

The quakes continue to get more intense.

MMO Champ reckons that 4.0.3 is dropping in the US today (I had my money on next week), so I’m wondering whether we’re looking at the shattering next week or the week after.  I’m not sure to be honest, if there is more of the event (and it’s pretty frantic now) then it’ll be two weeks from now giving a week between the shattering and Cata dropping.  If however phase 4 is the final phase then I’m reckoning that the shattering will hit this time next week with a ramp down in the cities but possibly stuff happening out in the re-made world (two weeks of running around the new world before things settle into the post-cataclysm levelling frenzy).

(quick check of wowhead)

Ok this is the final phase of the event itself.  So I’m reckoning that we’ll have a week of this before the world shatters, get those final screen shots now!

Ok, so how are things shaping up now that the hotfix cycle on top of 4.0.1 is almost complete (cog of doom patch arrived yesterday).

Well it’s different, my run up style has changed, post wipe my routine was

• Zone in, start running
• RF up
• Seal up
• Divine plea up
• Reach boss, eat, drink, make merry
• Start run at boss
• Sacred Shield
• Fairy wings
• Holy shield
• Capt America Shield
• Now we’re cooking

To (mis-)quote our friends in ICC, “I think they broke it”.

I miss my run in routine, in addition to the tank disappearing into the distance everyone else could tell I was serious by seeing wings go up and know that just after that landed they could open up with the glass cannons.

So, where are we now.

Still in a reasonable place, ok it’s harder.  This is a mix of not having two years of muscle memory at our disposal and the current balance issues between threat generation on the tanks and the sheer amount of hate the ranged (yes, we’re looking at you again warlocks and mages).  However it still works, I need to move my buttons around to break my muscle memory I know I’m using abilities which worked nicely a few weeks ago but are now gimping my threat (SoR).  For boss fights I need to get the 939 approach nailed down and cleaner.

Holy shield, this is a plus and a minus, I need holy power to get this up, I need to spend holy power to keep it up (HoR or WoG), so the opening move needs to be something like shield, CS, HotR.  However while giving a burst of early threat it’s not as much threat as a three-stack HotR would give.

DPS… learn to hold back

{time passes, I notice this in the drafts pile …}

I forgot to schedule this one, however it’s been a couple of weeks since I drafted the above and I’ve had more time to get used to the changes.  In short they’re good news.  Even with the changes to threat, the general nerfing of AoE, threat decay and the like the fight mechanics (raid mostly) still work.  There are periods in most of the fights where HolyRoguePower (HRP) is being blown on threat generation, however there are others (Halion in twlight, LK in the second and third platform phases and so on) where the DPS are having to do something else (move, nuke adds etc etc) so their overall threat output is lower allowing me to weave in a mix of Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory to take some of the strain off the healers (being taken for a date by an over affectionate Valkyr, dodging slime and so on).

So, HRP and WoG, go go go Paladin tanks to our new dawn!