Hello Boys! Did you Miss Me?

Onyxia Returns!

This is the moment that I should go back and dig out the blue post I KNOW I read that states quite categorically Blizz would be leaving the old world content alone. I understand what they're doing here though: Ony is the iconic first encounter from Vanilla WoW. Updating it gives a whole generation a chance to experience it. However, removing her in her present form will cause a problem.

I hope whoever's doing this isn't the same person who for Paltress' memories decided to whack an old-world skin on a generic 83 boss, because there's still a great deal of content attached to this old girl that people can still pick up and take part in. Let us look at some examples:

• Blizzard will need to remove a certain Epic Sword from the game, or at least ensure that Ony's breath will forge it as intended. Yes, I know people who still farm for the book in Dire Maul.

• They'll need to make sure that the Black Dragon Sinew still drops so people wanting to do the Epic Bow quest can still complete it.

• Plus, if they remove the AQ40 aspect from her... well, I'm going to have done several months worth of work for nothing... *sigh*
  

If, as they did the with the Bolvar Onyxia Questline and just remove all this stuff, I'm not sure that's actually the answer either. I understand that 'cleaning up' the Lore is helpful when trying to streamline the gaming experience... but AQ was MASSIVE. Onyxia was a KEY part of that. I'd be pretty dissapointed if as a result Blizzard just swept it under the carpet and pretended it never happened.

I do appreciate as well just how happy this is going to make the vast majority of people, before you think I've engaged QQ Mode. I have to believe that me thinking this has already been covered in a meeting somewhere, that Ghostcrawler's gonna pop up in the next few days and post a 'for those of you who have concerns...' Blue but I am aware also that I may be an ever dwindling percentage of WoW's population. I know this is like remaking my favourite movies twenty-five years on. I understand this is like rebranding old stuff and pretending it's brand new. The fact remains however that if they are going to do it, it needs to be done properly.

As we have seen with 3.2, Blizzard don't have a problem cutting corners. I REALLY hope they've done their homework on this. If not, I will be dissapointed, because they have the opportunity to show ALL their player base they are capable of keeping the content relevant while at the same time allowing people to continue to play the game they enjoy, and that they wish to.

Blizzard, you have been warned. Do this right, or there WILL be consequences.

[EDIT 14/08: Bornakk Responds to the Issue of The Epic Sword. The sword remains, but the book will depart, which says to me no more reforging. Am looking forward to seeing a definitive response of this...]

Bleurgh

<--- has clod. Has Honey and Lemon. Has 2 kids on Easter Holidays (or Spring Break as I believe some schools are now calling it.) Those pesky Americans, they get everywhere.

First today, it's time for Ghostcrawler's Corner...

"What's the point of 10-Man Hard Mode? Almost all the serious raiders are in 25-Man"

We actually don't know if this is true or not. Or more specifically, there were 40 player guilds in vanilla because that's all we offered. Then there were 25 player guilds for BC because that's all we offered. We had a lot of data and feedback that there are a lot of players who would prefer to run with a smaller group of friends even if the content was very challenging. As I said, we will see if 10 player guilds are more casual or if there are a lot of 10 player guilds who are up to hardcore challenges.

I'm all for 10 Man Hard Mode. I think there's gonna be HUGE numbers of people who will be doing the 10 man stuff, a great many via PuG. I also think anyone who doesn't grasp how far the game is diversifying at the more casual level is missing out on an entire new focus to the game. We have people now in Guild who have pretty much stopped raiding and focus solely on Achievements. I assumed initially this was due to time constraints but having read about it does occur to me that this may not be the case. As this is clearly happening across the entire game it does demonstrate that more people are being very specific in what they choose to do with their time. Getting 25 people together isn't nearly as hard as it was for 40 but it still takes some doing. If there's an alternative that's quicker, easier and less hassle... seriously, you think people aren't going to take it?

As I see a new date has been provisioned for Noblegarden I'm gonna stick my neck out and say we'll see 3.1 being deployed on the 21/22nd. If that's the case we don't have long to wait to see if 10 man Hard Mode is gonna be the Goût de choix. Does mean I need to start sorting a few things too...

In Character News: M has 375 Blacksmithing!!! It was a peculiar situation yesterday, as I was actually turning a very healthy profit for the last 15 points. Eternium sells currently for copper on the AH and Eternium Rod sells for 4g to the vendor, so I made close to 60g by buying bars, converting them and then vending them straight back in IF. Such are the idiosynchracies of this game sometimes: M's not got to wait 12 levels before she can start again, but the hard work is done. I can at least gather a shedload of mats and store them in anticipation, and anything M gathers as she levels can be AH'd. Win/Win, ftw ^^

Oooh Aaah Sporregar!

So, P has 30 exalted reputations. Yes, this is sad. All look, point and mutter 'no lifer' if you wish, but after coming up for four years... I have noticed the number of people with 'the Exalted' title is slowly beginning to creep up on the Server. There's a lot of us Old Gits around. The next five, should I decide to go for them, will be hard. I do have a couple of instance-based reps to work on: Scale of the Sands, the Brood, the Ashtongue... however these aren't really soloable. I have 20k to do with the Timbermaw (which of course if completed will grant me a title as well) then after that... well, we're into Insane territory. However the last time I looked on the PTR there was a tab in place especially for the Darkmoon Faire, so I'd put money on that faction getting a revamp sometime soon, a la Noblegarden. Talking of which, must go get the new PTR build...



Before those four were done, there were these four as well. The books were surprisingly easy to find in the end (didn't even need to kill anything in Scholo for the last two) and the 500 Dailies was an accidental consequence of my 'grind gold for dual specs' project. All in all I'm quite pleased with P's Achievement progress thus far. She's been pretty much retired from raiding, and is being moved towards a grinding/PvP DS combo. I took the plunge and spent my elbows plus the 68k's worth of honor I had on gears: this meant shoulders, legs and gloves, plus the Epic boots from WG (almost enough tokens to buy the head, hopefully by the end of the week) I read this morning that Arena attendance has dropped sharply so I'm wondering if I stand any chance of finding people to do 2 v 2 or 3 v 3 with... for now I reckon I'll stick with the Old Skool BG's and will try and pick up some Achievements there.

OOh and as it's Downtime I am sorting out some more site gubbins, including grabbing some help from a guildie to make this page look a little more like a Warcraft blog...

Not a Lot

As previously stated, it's been a quiet week.

• M is L53. BRD is pretty much done (Emp quest left) and I have the ST Quest in my log. There's been a fair bit of faffing, BS is at 355 and I suspect will sit there until I can mine in Outland, though I am tempted to run someone around the Isle of Dailies for a bit for the Adamantite spawns. This weekend I hope to clear out some of the Quest Log.

• M (the Druid) picked up some useful odds and ends on our 25 man run. Stuff for DS is almost ready (am gonna do a seperate post on this at the weekend) There's been grinding in Zul'drak for cash as well. You know, actual questage.

• P has *finally* picked up the Classic Dungeonmaster Achievement. I broke Zul'Farrak in the process. Note to self: if you don't let the NPC's on the Jailbreak event attack any mobs in a wave the entire thing bugs. Horribly. There's not been time for anything else except some light faffage beyond that, though a trip to Scholo and I will have the Well Read achievement done as well. Next I may be forced to do the Squirrels...

Nothing else to report, at least for now...

[PTR] Priorities

So, while everyone else was testing bosses last night, I went fishing.

I was instantly encouraged when I logged in: my hair is back! I flew directly to Wintergrasp first, to see what there was on offer: Nettlefish, Glacial Salmon and Mussleback Sculpin were all plentiful (very useful fish for the food-buff conscious) plus the much-anticipated Giant Darkwater Clam (which despite all my efforts I was unable to open and submitted a bug report to that end) I then decided I'd risk returning to Dalaran. They've fixed that too! So, off to find the Fishing Dailies...

You'd think with the promotion to Questgiver they'd have given her a nicer outfit...

So, back to Wintergrasp then ^^

The quest was hardly ground-breaking, but of all the five on offer it is the least engaging, probably due to the fact on a Live Server you'll want to be fishing as quickly as possible before being ganked. The fish, however, could do with looking slightly more scary. Pink does not inspire terror.

On a scale of 1-10, Terrorfish get a 2 for shockingness and a 9 for pinkness...

The 10 fish took one lure to catch. I think I may get my engi back on making the Fish Attracters in anticipation of what will be a rush on fishing stuffs, especially as a rare mount is in the loot table of all Northrend fishing schools. I know several guildies who are skilling now especially to that end...

Here's the Reward Bag for the quest: 10g's not bad, the items have some use (and I have the recipe to cook the fish so stockpiling for sale is now an option) and it means there's a daily that I won't mind doing at least until I can nab a Lucky Fishing Hat for my troubles. Having completed this I decided to go take a look at the Argent Tournament again. The FP now exists flying into the zone, so I grabbed a bird from Dalaran. On the way I noticed another change to the Interface.


I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but the minimap scaling has changed considerably. As you can see the ? on the map is a great deal smaller: with my tracking on dots are about half the size they were before. It looks a bit strange to someone who's used to the normal scale of things (I rely on hunter tracking, especially if hunting down rare or named mobs) and I'm pretty sure that the minimaps themselves have increased significantly in detail as well. As you can see I had a quest to hand in here. Once I'd done that I had a look around.

The 'shield' effect in a previous PTR Build

Things in the Tournament are a great deal more polished than last visit: lances now actually look like lances, the quests all seem to function correctly and a 3 part 'pre-quest' sequence has been introduced which makes you talk to three NPC's who explain the basics of the Jousting interface to you. There are also visual pointers to help even the most inept to grasp the charge, the block and the melee attacks. The Targets themselves have evolved significantly: in the earliest PTR Build, targets had no shield around them at all. The Red 'halo' appeared subsequently as an indicator of how much damage you had done to a target: green meant it was at full strength, amber meant weakened and red (seen above) almost exposed. Once the shield was down: BANG! This has now been refined further with the new 'shield' looking a lot more polished and identifiable:

Three green 'shields' means this target is at full strength

These small shields (they revolve around the targets) also appear around you if you are jousting, to give an indicator of your current shield strength. Always keep a full stack up on yourself if possible: the less protection you have, the more damage you take. You'll work it out :D

Banana Shoulders will have a comprehensive Guide as to what actually happens in the Tournament (if you'd like to prepare yourself for the event) but that's not really my interest here. I've gotten a great deal of satisfaction watching this zone evolve over the last few weeks, and it's given me at least an insight into how part of the development process works. I'm really hoping that the patch will be ready for Easter.

New instance aside, there is a great deal to look forward to in 3.1.

It's the Great Big Post of Everything

[I suspect that I watch too much kids television. It's good for the obscure post titles though...]

So, gonna have a bit of a roundup here as a) I can't get onto the PTR AGAIN :( and b) I've been doing a bit of faffage around the rest of the family. Really, you cannot faff enough.

P [Ironforge, Hunter] Update:

So, I ran around and fished and farmed and finally did the cookery stuff, and then discover that they're gonna make the trip to 450 a lot easier.

*headdesk*

P is enjoying her semi-retired status by farming leathers, defending (and attacking) Wintergrasp and doing the odd 25 man PuG at the weekends. Next up on the Agenda will be fishing achievements and some prep for a foray into some light PvP-ing. There is a good chance I will DS her into traps and work on a proper PvP build as her second string.

M [Darnassus, Druid] Update:


I've not done much instancing of late (most of my time's been on the Shammy, see below) but that night in HoL was class. We also did Lightning Struck, so all the achievements in 1 hit = WIN. I've been doing quests as a gold supplement, now the Basin is done we're beating up Trolls and Scourge... there's also been a lot of preparation for DS (I am thinking about writing a seperate post on this) I've invested with my badge pool in the Druid Healing chest, and the Handbook of Obscure Remedies, and after last night's Naxx 10 I have enough badgers to go grab the Egg of Mortal Essence which means I have a decent spread of healer-specific items. I've picked up odds and ends from heroics and swept up in 10 man (picked up a nice healing neck last night) and have been focussing on replacing the items I have with hit for things more appropriate for a tree.

Lesser-Levelled Update:

W the Lock (74) got an outing yesterday to AN, and K the Mage (70) has been working hard on her tailoring (443/450) . She even got to do Nexus and UK but has yet to update any gears. N the Priest (72) is one point away from maxxing Enchanting \o/ by the time-honored tradition of DE-ing greens from everyone else and selling the enchants via scrolls on the AH. Haste on Cloak does very well, I have discovered, and does not break the bank in terms of mattage.

The big moves however come over in Azeroth.

M [Exodar, Shaman] Update:

So, we are at L49. Yesterday I did Searing Gorge. Normally that quest hub at the Thorium Brotherhood would be a couple of days work but yesterday I completed it in three and a half hours, thus proving beyond a doubt they've nerfed the content pre-60 (to the ground, baby!) Even the Elite who guards the Firey Flux recipe is no longer, and has only one nonleet mate to biff. Shammy + Totems + Chain Lightning = owned. The only thing they have not nerfed is the bloody ridiculous Incendosaur + reagent + coal hand in you need to do the TB rep. GAH! Never mind, I still need to find a bazillion iron and mithril bars for all the Armoursmith quests (yes I know I'm a weaponsmith but I'm also a competist.)

One of the things I've noticed is just how utterly useless BS is pre 300. There are NO spell power items of any note, it's all crit and AP and strength and hit. Clearly Blizzard have noticed this as well as there is apparently a re-asessment of all the BS items coming in 3.1, which I hope will be too late for me as by that time I hope to be rolling into Northrend. However, it would be nice to be able to make lower level stuff that sells that's not Spurs or shield spikes.

So today I WILL do the Triage quest. I sent M out early to round up some more Thorium to hit out a few more points in the BS-ing and then I suspect I will spend an hour or so riding around the Charred Vale in Stonetalon picking up Mithril (or possibly Badlands depending on traffic) After that, I can hear the Sunken Temple calling me...

All This and World War Three

So, it was my daughter's 4th birthday on Thursday. If I said it had taken me this long to recover, it would not be too far from the truth.

So, I've not been to PTR Land since the latest Build (which I finally managed to download this afternoon) but the changes look very interesting. I also see that there are some new Fishing Quests in Dalaran, so that needs some investigation. The last couple of days however have been about clearing up loose ends.

• M finally got Exalted with the Sons of OhDear and has her shoulder enchant. This involved a long and entertaining grind session in the Blue Laydeez Mine area where, for the first time since at least before TBC, I found a Bot. How did I know? Well, I spent an awfully long time (back in the day) farming black scales from the dragons in Burning Steppes for crafting. That used to be the Farmers Base, the BM hunters who never slept, never took a break and who would have a manner about them that made them unmistakeably not human. You get a Spider Sense, after a while... and so I reported it to a GM who agreed that the behaviour needed further investigation. Let's hope it's quicker to ban someone now than it was back then.

• M the Shaman is now very close to 48. When I've typed this she's likely to ding, as it happens, which gives her a ton of stuff to grow into. I still need to do Alliance TRAUMA which still gives me bloody sleepless nights. I HATE that quest. It's gonna be another clear of the current quest log and then it is back to Searing Gorge to start on the Thorium Brotherhood quests. I may even get the rep for the patterns, because I can. I've finished everything up to Sunken Temple... and then it's BRD... :O

• There has been what, I suspect in business circles, would be referred to as cost containment amongst the alts. A couple are likely to be *gasp!* deleted as well, as I try and sort out who has use and who I want to play with in the future.

So, let's go get the Shammy up another level then...

Green Means Go

Odd that they gave him a hairstyle first. I'd have started with a face...

So, a load more stuff has come out overnight on MMO Champion concerning the Argent Tournament. New tokens mean new items (tabard, pet, mount, items) but rather more interestingly the ability to buy reputation with your home factions at 250 a shot. I can see this being a big draw, especially for those with late blooming toons. I also like the idea of this being like the SSO/AQ Gates where you'll need a certain number of quests done to progress. The sense of competition this instills may not be healthy in some people's eyes, but it's gonna mean that our server is one of the first to complete it. It's full of serial overachievers. Lord knows what I'm doing there...

A plethora of new vendors and tradesmen at the back of the construction area.

I really like the way that Blizz are meshing casual game elements with the more hardcore ones (I'd say PvP is hardcore, especially if you want to do it properly) but also making sure what you're asked to do repetitively every day is not utterly sleep-inducing. I think it also helps greatly that there's four years of experience and history behind this as well: RP servers are going to have a field day with this stuff, especially as it allows you to fight specifically for your home city. I sense a lot of suppressed Gnome Pride will surface, after all this is the first time you can directly champion Gnomoregan anywhere in game. The tabards, I have to say, rock. Stormwind one especially is fabulous. Any Horde worth their grunt should want to own the Orgrimmar one.

Just in case you were in any doubt where you were...

As this is smack bang in the middle of the L80 zone one assumes that this isn't going to be accessible until you've levelled. That would be nice is to think that they might extend that to at least 77 (when you have access to the flying mount) so it would offer an accompaniment to those in the later stages of levelling, especially as the rewards available with the new tokens are really rather tasty. Part of my annoyance with TBC was the fact the new content from the Skyguard, Netherwing and Ogri'la was only available once you hit 70. It would have been great to have been given the chance to start working towards a flying mount with an alternative to exploratory questing, especially one that (like the factions) gave you access to upgrades as well.

Right, let's go look and see if in the latest build they fixed the bug not allowing you to assign pet talents...

PTYarrrrrrrrr!

So, I'm in ^^

First thing I find (after renaming my character) is that I appear to have lost my head:



Clearly there's a problem with some of the hairstyles: whether it's client or server side I am yet to discover...

Next thing I do is pop off and find the Dual Specs Trainer. 1000g. Not unexpectedly large but it will cause a problem for a fair few of my Guild. They've shifted Glyphs out of the spellbook and stuck them in the Talents window, and they've done summat far more significant to the actual choice of Talents themselves:


FINALLY! All those times I've tried to respec and made one wrong click and had to respend my gold. Now if I could only persuade Blizz to reimburse me for all that bad clicking.

I popped up to Ulduar, where there is a large green swirly portal and not much else, and I was heading to the Argent Camp when my machine crashed for the third time in ten minutes. Time for a reboot and some more exploring...

It's ALIVE!!!!!!!!

So, guess what I'm doing right now?



There's even a New Event type Thing to look at as well! Can I contain my excitement???

[EDIT: Ok, so that was Part 1, and I did think it was a bit small. Part 2 is almost a Gigabyte.



This is gonna take some time...]