Warlords of Draenor

Blizzcon has come and gone with a whole lot of new things announced. I'm actually pretty excited about the next WoW Expansion. There are a lot of things to look forward to.

I have to admit that the thing I'm most looking forward to is the updated character models. The Vanilla and BC races are currently looking a bit tired. It wasn't so bad before, but when comparing an orc or troll to the pandaren is it painfully obvious that there needs to be more polygons for the original races.

The next most exciting thing I saw announced is the changes to raiding. Blizzard has finally entirely caved in and the flex model is going to be here to stay. Current flex will become the new normal. Current normal will become the new heroic, and current heroic will go up to a fixed size of 20 people and be called Mythic. I am overjoyed at both the extension of flex to two gradations of raiding and at the fact that the single raid size Blizz settled on is 20 people. I think that fits perfectly with the 10-25 flexible sizes of the other raids. It basically means that if you're going after Mythic raiding you'll take your entire roster into the flexible Normal level raids.

Something that entirely surprised me about the new WoW announcements was the Garrison. I think the comment I saw that best describes it is that Blizzard decided that Player Housing was boring, so instead they went with a Player TOWN. A full on walled town that you build and populate. This has some seriously awesome potential, especially since you can actually invite your friends to visit. The party or raid leader can allow a full 40 man raid into their Garrison. If I were into RP I'd be dancing for joy about that. I am looking forward to gathering followers and sending them on missions.

The one thing I'm a bit dubious about is the storyline itself. Yes, yes, Garrosh escapes before his trial, and travels into the past to stop his Daddy from drinking Mannoroth's blood. He also gives the orcs a big technology boost, and thus the Iron Horde is formed. I just am dubious about why we try to fight the Iron Horde after Garrosh has mucked about with the past. My rampant speculation is that this is the expansion that we see Nozdormu turn into Murozond.

See, if Nozdormu were still fully and truly on our side he'd help by sending a strike team back in time before Garrosh corrupted the timeline. Maybe he can't stop Garrosh from breaking free, but an assassin team waiting for him to appear in Draenor past would put a stop to his machinations.

We know that in the future Nozdormu turns into Murozond. And we know that Murozond still has the ability to control time. (See events in the End Time dungeon.) So clearly either Noz is holding out on us currently, or he's about to go bat-shit crazy and try to disrupt the time stream in some twisted effort to get his time controlling powers back. Either way I suspect that we'll see an end boss of some raid that is Nozdormu/Murozond.

the world of our imagination

Blizzard has put out preliminary notes on the upcoming 5.3 patch "Escalation."  A glance at it shows they are taking some care with the story line and are actually following up on some early 4.0 story laid down and neglected since.  Good for them, the world and its story hasn't been this "interesting" since the original game.

However... that's not why I am writing this post.  Or maybe it has something to do with why.  Remember the original game?  The MMORPG that is.  The opening cinematic?  The very first scene, with the dwarf warrior and his bear walking towards Ironforge?  Shown with a detail - hair, snow, muscle movement, one only expects on console games or movies?

That's, unfortuantely, the world of our imagination.  We try to pretend we are in that world, when not actually in PVP or a Raid.  Shut off the names, the name plates, the glowy sparkles, the heads up displays, and just watch the events in Azeroth like it's a movie unfolding a story.  And our imagination often fails, of course.  Becuase everything looks sorta goofy.

I bring this up becuase of a small graphic in the webpage with the patch notes.  Along with screenshots that look like they are taken from a turned-up Windows box with bad gamma, and therefore look more like cartoons than 3-d reality, there's a matte drawing of a Horde lookout in the Barrens.

Look at that.  It looks like one could walk right up to it... taking care not to turn an ankle or stumble in the loose dirt of the chaparral.  I wish so much the game looked like this at all.

I wonder where this is.  Kuanchichi will need, before this patch drops, to clear all Barrens quests reset from Cataclysm, if I find it I will take a screenshot to compare.

We know what you really look like

We are running out of room to store unopened lockboxes, so Eeyan and Teltanara are gaining their Pandaria experiences in Townlong Steppes now.

Townlong is on the other side of the Great Wall, and thus doesn't have a lot of rest, mailboxes, or flight points.  But it does have gear that really is solidly upgrades from Dragon Soul.  Practically speaking, that means we sometimes have to let the gear show off what it really looks like.

I'm not sure if she looks like a refugee from the Darkmoon Faire or an escapee from Hellfire.

I will point out that this picture shows the difference in polygons between Wow's pants and shoulders.  It's really tragic.  Blizzard should fix that.

Random Post-Patch Screenshots

Here are a few random screenshots that I took after the 5.0.4 patch.

Druids got some cool new forms.

And some cool new glyphs.

Death Knights have some neat glyphs now too.

Still bitter about my Dragon Kite. :-(

Mists of Pandaria Trailer

I saw the Mists of Pandaria Cinematic this morning. As usual it was the excellent animation that we all expect from Blizzard. I continue to wish that the game actually looked like the expansion cinematic. Or at least that the in-game animations for orcs and humans looked closer to that cinematic.

I liked the cinematic up until the very end. It really emphasized the conflict with the Horde and Alliance. The fighting scenes between Human and Orc and then Human, Orc, and Pandaren were quite well done. However I have to say that the Pandaren just looks utterly ridiculous. It was all ok until we got a full lighted view of his face while he was chewing his cud?!? It looked like some cross between a country bumpkin and, well, a panda. Not the greatest combo.

This cinematic does a good job emphasizing the plan to bring the game back to the Horde vs. Alliance fighting. And a reminder of what both sides are really fighting for. I think my favorite moment was when the Human passes a weapon to the Orc, so that they can both fight the Pandaren. It had a very excellent feel of sibling rivalry. Which makes perfect sense to me. The Horde and Alliance have been fighting for years now, but they mostly put their differences aside and smash the current Big Bad.

Granpa Deathwing

hi everyone, sorry for the long hiatus.

Today, the New York Times has an article discussing the upcoming release on Star Wars: The Old Republic and its impact on Wow. The writer has been playing both games quite a bit lately and has some rather insightful commentary. He doesn't think the games will really fight for players, although I disagree, since not everyone who plays MMORPG has unlimited time and funds.

Anyhow it mentions the time and effort BioWare has put in making the voice acting and visuals slick for SW:TOR, which makes the text-base questgiver interactions in Wow seem clunky. The article also points out that Wow has lost 2 million players - 2 million!!! - since Cataclysm came out.

Partway through the article, it has this fabulous picture of Deathwing.



whoa! hey whoa! that's not what Deathwing looks like when I see him, every damn time I log into the game. what I see is Granpa with ill fitting dentures, not mighty scary dragon as above.



wait, wait. those two images are the same exact scene. I bet that Wow wouldn't lose nearly so many players, if the first picture really was what we saw in the game.

and before anyone thinks, well that's just not possible with the graphics maybe they haven't looked at SW:TOR after all. or even Rift.

Venn Diagrams

I am usually amused by a clever Venn Diagram. I try to find where I fit in the picture.


WoW Venn Diagrams I try to actually stand in the best spot. The location of most overlapping healing goodnesses and least boss bad-on-the-ground.


Sometimes this is easier than other times, but no matter what it's important to try. But as a tank I sure do love all the overlapping healing that I can just stand in and soak up.

Blizz calls it "earthquake"

I still call it "pancake". In the Naxx "let's see if we know how to play still" PUG we were in last night, they called it "Cookie of Death".

Seriously, what were the artists thinking?





p.s. Kuan was cracking 10,000 dps last night on the boss fights in Naxx. He's on the lookout for the Nerf Bat of Damocles, hanging up over his head.

returning farmland to its natural state

Whenever I go travelling, I look around at the farms flanking the road, and wonder, how much prettier and better would the world be if it wasn't all cut up in square plots of furrowed land. Surely there is something unnatural happening to the water and temperature balance of the soil when we do that.

Like this; Ikoli travelled to Tanaris, just to see it all ploughed up.



O wait. That's not The World, that's Azeroth. I shouldn't be seeing little square plots of furrowed land there; that's a graphics issue in my WoW client.

I've been considering this state of affairs for days and finally tonight took the time to look up this problem on the WoW Mac Technical Support forum. Here's the thread about it, but I repeat the Blue instructions here:

1) Close the WoW application
2) Navigate to your main World of Warcraft folder
3) Open the config.wtf file in your WTF folder
4) Add the following line to the bottom of the file: SET gxapi "OpenGL"
5) Save and Close
6) Restart WoW

I tried it, and Kuanchichi then went to Tanaris. Kuan is nature-boy and really prefers to leave things wild, since then the Spirits are stronger. Upon seeing all was well, he relaxed.



Now if only I could just add a line item to some law and have that happen to The World.

Bound to happen

So Kuan has been carrying around the [Mazthoril Honor Shield], one of the original Badge of Justice awards, since, well, 29 Oct 2007.

Tonight he just got [Ritualistic Shield] as a quest reward that is an upgrade for everything on the badged one but stamina. And I bet a lot of that can be subbed in with an enchant.

Here's a pic of it. I am utterly fascinated at the detail they spent on the wood grain on the inside of the shield. I mean really, shouldn't they spend that sort of effort on perhaps making the ropes on the ships and blimps three dimensional...? More people look at those, than on the inside of a green quest reward shield.

Riding a Giant

***This is a spoiler for any reader not yet quested in Zul'Drak***

Last night, determined to get Kuan and Viljo to 77, we took them into Zul'Drak. We had a choice of quests in front of us: Ebon Hold rep or Argent Crusade. Since our trolls are more partial to AC we spent most of the time on those.




While poking around we came across a Storm Giant imprisoned by the Scourge. He set off this whole quest chain to get him out, much to the dubiousness of the Argent Crusade dudes whose help we enlist. Once out, he's mad, and will gladly let the character ride on his head as he wreaks his vengeance. They did this with the new "vehicle" implementation that is throughout the WotLK.

So there are two reasons I'm posting about this event. Well, three. First of all, riding the giant was fun, but ooo boy the camera angles vs what the game thinks is a movement obstacle was annoying.

Second of all, it was bugged. As far as I can tell, opening the quest log stunned my giant, disabling all control keys as he stands there like a drunk dwarf until he's killed. And, it takes a lot to kill him. Exiting the game and logging back in did not rectify the situation. I spent like half an hour or more trying every button on my screen to move, attack, dismount, anything. I haven't ever been so frustrated. This happened twice, and I even disabled addons the second time. All in all I spent almost an hour sitting on a stunned giant.

Third of all is a bit more game-philosphical. Quite naturally it would be disruptive if there were lots of players on top of giants stomping around Zul'Drak and killing all those mobs everyone else is painstakingly farming for whatever other quests. So Blizzard phases the giant into some elsewhen the rest of the players are not. However, they also take out all the other NPCs. So the giant can be ridden about causing mayhem and destruction with no care other than for his own healthbar.

I think this would have been better done if they had somehow incorporated the other NPCs to this scenario. The Argent Crusade dude was dubious of the giant; maybe somehow make the quest fail if your giant stomps him. I'm not really sure. But seems to me it would have been a bit more of a challenge (mysterious stun notwithstanding) if care for the peeps on your side was incorporated into the event.

LK Instances

Last week, we ran a bunch of instances, both on Viljo and Kuan and Eeyan and Teltanara.

Viljo and Kuan ran Violet Hold. Perhaps they are still used to Heroics? Perhaps they are still over-geared, since they are still in all their raiding gear? Perhaps Violet Hold on Normal is really easy? Either way Violet Hold seems like a very easy version of Black Morass with little running around. Viljo did get a nice neck upgrade, replacing Loop of Cursed Bones from Zul'jin with Pendant of Shadow Beams from the first boss in Violet Hold. Doing this had the happy coincidence of getting both Kuan and Viljo the Keymaster Achievement.

Teltanara and Eeyan got a chance to run Utgarde Keep. We went with a guildie's alt warrior. It went pretty well, despite the tank wearing greens and not having played as a tank all that often. The only time anyone died was when there was a damamge shield up on a few of the mobs and they resisted the tank, and went to kill a couple of the dps. Other than that no deaths, even with the crazy AOE damage on the last boss. For that last boss fight I was very glad that I had changed Telt's spec to be CoH. I think all I did for that 2nd phase was spam COH and toss out PoM. But we managed to all live.

Both of these instances were really pretty. Especially Utgarde Keep, the new fire animation in there was really nice looking. And the boss fights were quite amusing.

Progress on 3 fronts

Yesterday, after Kuan got his 250 Fish and Call to Arms achievements, Kuan and Viljo hit 76! ...and, they are still in Grizzly Hills. I'm grimly convinced they will not have gotten out of the southern coastal zones until they can fly.

Once they are 77 questing will pause, for Kuan anyhow, as he goes after Explorer title. The World Must Be Mapped!!!

After that we did a little swapping. Tylara and Kairon hadn't finished the Kalaran chain in Searing Gorge so we decided to get that done. (My intention was then to get the Burning Steppes flightpoint, and turn in the Molt, but I got distracted.) Now, I've done this quest chain with every toon big enough to do it. That is, Kuan, Eeyan, Tris, Vhaas, Ikoli. Clara has too. They've clearly nerfed it, the Twilight Cultists dropping symbol of Ragnaros are now low-level-40's non-elites; the guard towers no longer have elite Dark Iron Sentries; lame. But we were struck also that some of the mechanics have changed. It's a quest to grab the staff. It's a quest to open the chest.

Moreover, the quest is sarcastic.



I don't remember it saying that.

...Anyhow. After that we decided to play Ikoli and Mornara and finish getting the Scholo key. But that got interrupted by guildies wanting to run Utgarde Keep with alts, so out came Eeyan and Telt as that was next on their agenda. The first room is very cool, with the fire animation at the forges. It appears however that my screenshots failed and I forgot to get one when we paused to swap out a party member.

Also, as an observation, lots of people in guild at 80 now, including at least 3 Death Knights. And Wrath hasn't even been out for 3 weeks. I'm noticing folks starting to complain of being bored. Maybe they should have taken the time to read the quest text and enjoy the game. Then again, we are, and swapping alts, and clearing lowbie stuff, and we are still already 76.