That Sinking Feeling

 

When I picked up the quest from Wrathion to bring him the Thunder King's heart I had a bit of a bad feeling about it.  That feeling did not decrease in the slightest when he ate the heart and then had some sort of vision. 

Best case with that vision is that he is seeing a Titan influenced danger directed at Azeroth.

Far more likely in my opinion is that the players have once again unleashed Bad Shit (tm) upon the world. 

Remember back in Vanilla, there was that nice troll at the harbor in Tanaris?  We helped him, and he gave us loot and then Hakkar was alive again. So sorry, Troll Priests in Zul'Gurub, you got corrupted by Hakkar and then got executed.

Oh oh, and remember that nice human at Light's Hope Chapel? He promised to get rid of that pesky phylactery from Naxx. Yeah, Father Inigo Montoy, who helped Kel'thuzad come back to life, and then eventually ended up turning into a lich himself.

And don't forget that time that we helped that crazy gnome Millhouse Manastorm get out of prison and then he helped the Twilight's Hammer destroy stuff in Deepholm.

My favorite of course is when players helped Drakuru kill all the trolls in Drak'theron Keep so that he could become a Death Knight.  He then repaid the players by trying to coerce us into slavery for the Lich King (again for Morn) as well as slaughtering a large portion of the Drakkari Trolls, and leading to them killing off their own Loas. Oops.

But the thing that really tickles my memory is when we helped Loken trap Thorim. It was good that we got Thorim back on friendly terms with the Sons of Hodir. But all our actions doing that that just resulted in Thorim getting tentacle raped by Yogg-Saron. We ended up having to fight both Thorim and Loken. Thorim at least we could beat back into his right state of mind. Sadly we killed Loken which brought Algalon to Azeroth and almost led to the destruction of the entire planet. 

Loken/Thunder King is the parallel I'm really seeing here.  We killed someone and brought his body part back to prove death for a quest giver. But that someone, while now bad, wasn't necessarily bad to start with. Both Loken and the Mogu were servants of the Titans. They both seemed to get corrupted, but that point I suspect will be lost upon the Titans who will descend upon Azeroth with re-origination in their overly orderly hearts...

Darkmoon Eye!

This past week the Darkmoon Faire was in town. Well, their portal was in town. The island I assume doesn't actually move, but is closed to the public for 3/4 of the time. Anyway, I parked my little monk, Sucan, at the faire for the week and faithfully logged him in to battle Jeremy Feasel every day.

I had almost given up for another month yesterday, but the fight is a tidy chunk of XP for Sucan so I logged him in to send the pets forth to battle Saturday morning. The last day of the faire, and I get the eye in the Darkmoon Pet Supplies. I am not embarrassed to admit that I did a small dance when I saw the eye in the bag.

Why, yes, I did name my Darkmoon Eye Sauron. Really, what else could I have possibly named it?

DraNgNon saw and heard my Dance of Joy, and remembered to log in her own parked Faire alt. Thranba, the little troll hunter soundly trounced Mr Jeremy Feasel, so much so that he gave out a second Eye.

Mornara Profile

Full Name: Mornara
Race: Orc
Homeland: Durotar, maybe? Acherus in memory.
Age:  Physicaly she is a young adult. However, she doesn't seem to age since she was turned into a DK, and she isn't sure how long she was under the LK's control.
Height: Average female orc height. Slightly over 6ft.
Build: Stocky and muscular.
Hair: Black, slightly longer than shoulder length, but always up in two pigtails.
Eyes: Glowing blue.

Philosophy: "If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell."

Personality: Calm, cool, and patient, with a hatred of the Lich King that underlies everything she does. 

Job: Getting hit in the face professionally.  Mornara is a heavily armored adventurer and uses her Blood Death Knight abilities and skills to lead groups that plunder and defeat the enemies of the Horde and Azeroth.

Hobbies: Making beautiful jewelry. Capturing and fighting her battle pets.

Bio: Mornara has been able to piece together bits of her life. She has vague memories of controlling demons before she was captured by the Lich King's forces. After that she's tried to forget what she remembers of days of torture in the cells of the Lich King. She only barely remembers becoming a Death Knight, but after that everything is all too clear.  She vividly remembers slaughtering the Scarlet Crusade and villagers while under the command of the Lich King. Since breaking free of the Lich King Mornara has participated in campaigns in Northrend in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel, against the Twilight Hammer cultists, elementals and Deathwing himself, and in Pandaria against the Mogu, Mantid, and Zandalari Trolls.

Currently Resides:
Summer's Rest Inn in Shrine of the Two Moons in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

 

Death Knight Love Story

I was looking at WoW Insider a couple of days ago and saw an article about Death Knight Love Story. Seeing as I am a big fan of DKs I took a look. As the title suggests this machinanima is a love story with Death Knights. It was only part 1, but was 15 minutes long. Sadly there is no real ETA on part 2, other than roughly six months and no guarantee there.

I was pretty impressed with DKLS. I'm biased because I just adore the DK lore and story, as you can tell from my main and my own fan fics. DKLS had an excellent story and the filming/acting was done with a combo of motion capture and a variety of expensive animation software.

I honestly could have been more impressed with the animation. I can see where they started from the WoW models and tried to upgrade them with more polygons and motion capture. However, for a number of the spell animations and fighting moves I think the film would have been better served by actually using WoW's animations. In particular the animation for Death Grip was kinda jarring. It took me a couple of times seeing it to actually figure out that it was supposed to be Death Grip. Possibly my gripes with the animation are due to the Vimeo playback being abysmal; it was both slow and choppy. I frequently had to pause and wait for the stream to catch up, even when it appeared to have buffer available.

The story, however, was quite intriguing. I am very much looking forward to the second part. It shines an interesting spotlight on Sir Zeliek from Naxxramas. And its yet another take on the process of becoming a Death Knight, and the effect of the Lich King's mind control on those he enslaves.

I strongly recommend everyone watch DKLS. It's got a good story and some decent animation. It makes me want to play through the DK starter area again.

Timeless Isle Explorations

 

DraNgNon and I have been exploring the Timeless Isle.  It kind of reminds me of Vanilla.  There are wandering elites, and mobs can really hurt you if you're not careful.  And by not careful I mean the Ordos Yaungol are brutal, if you so much as take your eyes off their ground effects for a second you're going to be dead. Anyway, we have romped over the island with all of our level 90s, exploring cool stuff and hopping here there and everywhere. 

I also took some time while running around to tame a few pets.  I have three new moths, and hopefully can get more new pets from the rares. It's quite a pain in the ass to get in on a rare kill though.  I'm not really interested in tracking spawn timers or waiting around for a spawn.  So I generally just run over when I see a skull on the minimap.  Most of the time I can get a hit on the mob and get credit for the kill, but sometimes I ride up just as the rare dies.  Annoying, but not unexpected with such a large population on the island slaughtering things.

Timeless Isle also restricts flying. This is super annoying, but does give you a more present feeling of danger.  You can't just hop on your Cloud Serpent and fly up a bit to be safe while you afk for a bit. It also has several areas that you can't get to unless you can fly.  There are a couple of mechanics to get around this restriction. One of them is the gleaming crane statue which tosses you up and gives you a slow fall.  Another is the Legendary Cloak, which takes you (and your alts) across the broken bridge to the Ordon Sanctuary. Note that the Cloak ONLY takes you TOWARD the sanctuary.  If you want to get back, you need to do something so you don't hit the ground at terminal velocity. The third mechanic is the Highwind Albatross. These giant seagulls fly loops around the island. If you hit one it will swoop down and pick you up. Let it carry you around and when you're over where you want, hit it again.  That will stop it, and then you have to kill it to get it to drop you.  You can visit the two mountain tops near the Horde and Alliance flight points this way to get the Sturdy Chests you are missing. You can also hold on for a long ride and be taken up to the Ordon Sanctuary high high up where Garnia spawns. In fact the area where Garnia is can only be reached via Albatross, even if you have a cloak you can't get up that last sheer cliff with out the birdy ride.

Legendary Pet Battler & WarcraftPets.com

Two things happened last night related to pet battles.

The first is that I have won 5000 pet battles. That number includes battles with wild pets, pvp pet battles, and tamer battles. Regardless of what it counts it's a ridiculously large number of pet battles won.

The other thing was that someone sent me a whisper during Darkfall's Siege raid. They had the good timing to send it during a bio break or I'd likely be much less amused. This was apparently someone who had seen my profile on WarcraftPets.com and wanted to know if I'd like to buy the Spectral Tiger Cub. I would love to buy that pet, however, the quite reasonable price they were charging was more gold than I currently have.

Mr. Pinchy

Just over a week ago I was spending a bit of quality time in Outland. I've been working, off and on, on getting Morn the last bits of rep she needs from the Skyguard and Ogri'la. While I was in Skettis I figured it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of fishing. I usually fish at least one or two Highland Mixed Schools, just in the off chance that I'll fish up Mr. Pinchy.

Apparently this was my lucky day. I did catch Mr. Pinchy!

My first wish gave me the Magical Crawdad battle pet!

My second and third wishes gave me Benevolent Mr. Pinchy as a level 70 guardian. Sadly Benevolent Mr. Pinchy can't keep up when I go through portals or fly anywhere, but still impressive looking.

It took me a couple of tries to get a name that would actually stick. Blizz pops a "Mature Language" error when you try to use any variation of Mr. in a name. However, Pinchy is allowed.