Legion: They haven't fixed professions.

So, I have enjoyed professions in World of Warcraft in the past…

     Let me take a step back first and say despite the tone of this post, I am still loving the crap out of Legion.  While it's early to be very judgey it has some of the best starting content we have experienced in game in my humble opinion.  If the rest of the expansion lives up to it's launch it is going to be a great time in Azeroth.

    Warlords put a bullet in the head of professions.  Last expansion with all the garrison options almost no one needed to work on creating potions, armor, and the rest because other than in a very few choices you could have a shop in your garrison for what you needed.  This meant that my paladin didn’t need to have my DK fashion plate armor for him, he could just make it himself.  And ore? Shoot, if he didn’t feel like going out there was a steady supply coming through his garrison.

    The only point I will give Warlords in regards to professions, is that they were still useful when you leveled.

     Legion has killed that for me.  In almost every past expansion my engineers have worked hard to grind up mats so I can have engineering googles to start raiding with.  I love the techno look mixed with the usefulness of being able to make myself a decent bit of gear to hop in with.  In this expansion, not so much.

     By the time I got my first recipe for goggles, I had already out geared them.   I made a pair and threw it on for transmog, but otherwise I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to use them well for leveling.  Now, at 110 I have a quest to be able to make my ilevel 815 goggles, but I can’t access the dungeon they are in until I’m further in Suramar.  To top that, I already have an 840 helm from world quests, so I am in no hurry to make them.  Now I know I can with the fel forge (I can’t remember the exact name) make items to level the goggles up.  But stating at 815, (825 if I get lucky and it wins an upgrade roll) that means I have to make, and destroy a few dozen items after doing a quest that cost me about 30k gold after completing to level them to the point of this drop.  That means my profession goggles, the thing that marks me as an engineer is useless for anything but transmog.

     And I have heard other professions having similar issues.  I heard a complaint about it with Blacksmithing on a podcast I listen to.  Now I haven’t played deep enough to know if this is all professions, but if it is then yes then what use are they?  Why do I want to make gear I will never be able to use, unless I put a lot of effort into making it equal to what I can get with a five-minute world quest?

     Of course, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, and Inscription may not be effected by this.  I’m thinking mainly crafting professions like Leatherworking, Tailoring, Blacksmithing, and Engineering.  Unless we get some pizazz and sizzle in each patch to make these worthwhile, it is going to be another expansion where people don’t care.

     Or am I wrong?  If I am let me know.

      All I know is that I have every profession at least once with all my alts.  If there is no bonus or point in doing my professions why should I bother leveling them this time around.  IF there isn’t reason, it may be the final nail in the coffin for me.  And I have always enjoyed professions before this point.

     Heck, I had three engineers at the end of Cataclysm….

     How are you feeling about your professions?

Lag

I'm Legion it

So we are a couple weeks in, and it’s still a bit overwhelming.

     I make 110 about a week ago, and sadly have not been able to dedicate as much time as I would like to doing everything.  Of course, as soon as I take my Network+ exam next week, should I pass I will have a bit more time.  Until then it is mostly crunch and study time.  This is supposed to be a very hard exam, and so far from what I am seeing I believe it.

     In the game though, is what we are worried about.  Let me tell you, the experience is great at the moment.

      Once you open up world quests, which you will do if you have finished the main storylines in the zones and get friendly with Suramar there is plenty to do.  I still have to finish the Nightfallen quests, I haven’t had time to do more than a handful of world quests, but those are fun, and the dungeons have been great so far.

     The note on that, is I have only run a few dungeons on normal, so I can’t speak to heroic or mythic modes.  I still have only scratched the surface of the Suramar quests and I still feel like I have at ton to do.  It honestly borders on discouraging that I am so overwhelmed with stuff in game, with not much time to play at the moment.  I look forward to finding the time.

     The Legion app they released helps a little.  If you don’t have it yet, what are you doing?   The problem I am finding with it, is by constantly doing Class Hall missions and sending my followers out, I am bleeding through resources much quicker than I am collecting them.  Unlike the Garrisons in Warlords, you don’t have a cache that grows said resources, and you don’t have follower quests to gain them either.  So if you don’t have much time to go out into the world, you are facing the choice of just stopping the missions for now, or burning your resources to the ground and not being able to do your research for Class hall abilities etc.  In short, you have to play to keep up and while that is not necessarily bad, it feels punishing when you can’t get on a for a couple of days.

      Suramar itself is not clicking with me.  I liked the other quest zones, but something about the crack (magic) addicted night elves (Nightfallen) just isn’t doing it for me.  I find it strange because I normally like anything elven, and the story seems great.  I might just need to push further in before it matters to me.  I do find it frustrating that if I don’t quest there for a day or two, I have to feed mana to the NPCs before I can pick up and continue quests.  I know the mana is easy to grind up, it is everywhere, but it seems an unnecessary hurdle to have to jump.

      Despite everything above, I am loving this expansion.  Visually it is amazing.  The storylines are great, and important things happen.  Long known characters are killed and others are saved and you aren’t sure which ones will survive with Blizzard’s willingness to end their characters right now.  And hey, with Metzen retiring (I’m saddened by this) Maybe Thrall in next.  Mwha ha ha.  Just kidding, I like Thrall.  Still, like everyone else, he may die.

      How is everyone else’s experience with legion going?  Are you loving it? Are there things you don’t like or that you feel people are overlooking?  What is your favorite experience so far?

Lag.

A Few Days to Legion

We are almost to Legion.  All we have to do is survive the weekend.

     There is always that time before the next expansion drops where we sit in frenzied excitement planning on this being the best expansion ever.  Normally, a couple months in a few flaws will appear and we will start to talk about how Wrath was the best expansion etc... but that beginning where everything is shiny and new is amazing to us.  And who knows, this could be the best expansion ever.  Until we sink our dirty little claws in who knows.

     I have been blows away a bit by the excitement of the pre-patch event.  For the most part it has been tons of fun.  People are still swarming over the Legion attacks, and you can level a alt quickly.  I can tell you going from 90-100 isn't hard.  Wearing full heirlooms and a 20% potion from your garrison you can get almost a level per invasion.  Even without you can get half a level or more. Now is the time to speed level alts.  The time is perfect for it.

    The story we have gotten each week with a new quest has been two hits and one miss for me.  The first week of course was the most amazing when we saw some major lore characters fall, and both the Horde and Alliance get shaken up a bit.  Some people went out like a bad A, (King Varian) and some died before we could see their potential fulfilled (Vol'jin) either way that week was amazing.  You had to play both sides of the scenerios, or watch them on youtube, to get the full story.  If you only had one half, specifically the Alliance half, you were ready to go murder the other faction.

    The second week and the return of Magni Bronzebeard was fantastic.  We got to trudge around Ulduar and Karazhan again.  There was a great bit of lore introduced, some that may have surprised some people.  Though, it came close to what Matt Rossi and Anne Stickney from Blizzardwatch have predicted. Titan Azeroth.....

     The third week I found disappointing.  It felt shoehorned in because Blizzard needed to add something.  Of course seeing Alodi is no small thing, but it felt more like five minutes in Dalaran than anything substantial. There was no real story to it, just a cool guest appearance to make you feel like it mattered.

    I am spending my last few days, getting a few alts to 100, and just getting a feel for a few classes.  I am still not locked onto one class for my main in Legion, but I have this weekend to decide what I want to do.  I love the feel of Demon Hunter, and have been asking for that class since Wrath, but I don't want to jump on the hot new thing because it's the hot new thing.  My paladin has been my main for so long I almost feel indebted to the idea of leveling him first.  But we will see.

    What are you doing in these last few days?  Leveling alts, trying out new classes, or just taking it easy?  Are you enjoying the pre-patch content?  How do you feel about the pre-patch quests?

Lag

Did Warlord's Break Professions.

I’ve been thinking about professions a lot.

                Warlords was not kind to professions.  Everything was made so readily available by garrisons, that for the most point it felt pointless to have any gathering professions, let alone any making professions.  You could upgrade a few select items for yourself or others with a lot of work, but for the most part, it felt pretty useless to be a blacksmith etc… after a point.

                With Legion it sounds like we are taking a step back to the old way of doing things, with a few improvements.  You will have your blacksmiths, doing all the blacksmith work.  Jewel crafters doing all the gems and so on.  The improved part is that if you are not at level with Legion professions, you will still be able to make the items.  This means you won’t have to slog through all making all the Vanilla Wow recipes on up before you can make current gear.

                I look forward to this.  I miss professions feeling meaningful, rather that something you might do so that you can make one or more extra items that through hard work will be comparable to that next drop you get in a dungeon.  I know I’m kind of looking back at things through rose colored glasses on this.  I remember grinding to make a couple of items to get my ilevel up and ready to raid, just to replace them a week or two later.

                However I also wonder how many people are looking forward to going back to the old way?  I remember flying around Uldum for hours grinding ore so I could work on Engineering and Blacksmithing items.  Now because of my garrison, I don’t remember that last time I went grinding for ore.  Well, it’s been a couple of months, but it was in Pandaria to make Sky Golem mount to sell.  I still do that on occasion, but that is a gold earning thing, not a current need gear that works right now thing.  As far as current engineering work, I do the same thing I have done since the beginning of Warlords, I pop out a Blingtron 5000

                Now, since we have not had to do much gathering, are people going to be willing to hope back into that again?  How about professions when it comes to making stuff.  Are people going to have the drive to bang out a bunch of items after it just felt useless?  Or is everyone else’s experience different than mine, where people making a lot of items with professions and making it feel worthwhile?  I am honestly curious.  How is this going to affect people’s feelings going into Legion?  Am I just crazy to be having these thought?

What do you think, are you ready to hop back into professions come Legion?

Lag

               

                

Any Given Tuesday.

It's getting close to that time.

    The patch could drop any week now.  I know we say that every time about now, but every week we are one step closer.  I fully expect we will have at least a month to play with the pre-patch event, as that seems to have been a trend with the expansions that had a pre-patch event (I'm glaring at you Pandaria)

    That means, if you want your Moose from Hellfire Citadel, you have a very limited amount of time to do so.  Once the patch drops, that mount is gone.  If you wanted to level X character up to 100 before the shenanigans begin, you need to get it done quickly.

    The Legion is coming.

     If your like me you are frothing at the mouth to see what Blizzard does with this.  I'm expecting a lot of changes and updates to lore.  I as always, am hoping this new expansion will resonate with players as much as Wrath of the Lich King did.  I think Blizzard needs another expansion that just nails it like wrath did.  There is a reason it was most every bodies (whom I talk to anyway) favorite expansion.  It does have the promise.

     Icon character driving the story forward (Illidan, check) A real threat to our Azeroth (Check again) and a feeling that our actions will have an effect on our world going forward (Sorry Warlords, Check).  An enemy that is both familiar, but has some new aspects to it. (Check it baby).

     Now all we need to do is hope the story and game play lives up to the hype.  I have no illusions that we are ever going to see twelve million players in this game again like we did in Wrath.  It would be nice, but the possibilities are just not there at the moment.  I won't say it's impossible either.  No one expected the player base to jump back up to ten million at the beginning of Warlords, but we all know that didn't last very long.  What does that mean though?

    It means that the fans are there.  It means there are enough players hoping for an experience that can pull them back into the game again like it used to.  I myself would love something that made me feel like I had to log in every day, for at least a few minutes, to see what was going on.  On the other hand I don't really have that time at the moment either.  That pull though, I would love to feel it again.

     So, ten million, twelve million players, not probable, yes.  Impossible?  I don't believe anything is impossible if done right.  I don't see it happening, but I would love to be proved wrong.  I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't expect those numbers again, but they would be happily surprised if they happened.

    Grab your swords and staffs, Legion is coming.  It is less than two months away and will be upon us before we know it.  Lets kill some Legion.

Lag.

Flying into Legion.

It wasn't long ago we had "Flightgate" in Warlords of Draenor.

     Now let's be fair here.  There was little or no doubt after the community explosion over flying in Warlords that we would be getting flying Legion.  I myself am a fan of flying, but as I stated earlier, if it was removed from future expansions it wouldn't be a game breaker for me.  I think there are valid arguments on both sides, but that isn't the issue at hand.

     It was revealed that when patch 7.0 drops you will have your requirements for flying in Legion.  Like in Warlords it will be an achievement based.  What the achievement will be, I think it's pretty easy to guess.

     Plan on finishing all the main quest lines in all the areas relevant to your faction.  One of the main reasons Blizzard wanted to remove flying was to make sure everyone experienced the content in a good grounded fashion.  This meant not flying over mobs to kill the main baddy in a quest or skipping important content.  They are going to want you to experience the world in a way you have to interact with it.

     Plan on having reputation with factions.  This is where I pray faction reputation isn't the grindfest that it was in Warlords.  I never bothered focusing on any this last expansion because there were no rewards worth wasting my time pounding mobs.  The only factions that mattered to me were in Tanaan Jungle simply because that was how I had to earn flying.  Other than that I simply didn't care. This time around I hope that doing all the quests gets you most of the faction rep you need, otherwise I see this as a point of whining contention from some members of the community.

      Plan on doing class quests.  Part of getting flying on Draenor was the garrison quest lines and the dailies from there.  I would expect there will be some sort of quest line, maybe given on a weekly basis, that you have to finish to get flying, along with daily achievements.

    Don't plan on getting flying in the first patch.  From what has been seen the achievement thus far is part 1.  I do believe they mentioned on Convert to Raid that finishing part one will give you a speed increase on your ground mounts, but you won't get flying just yet.  This is going to be one of those things that we are probably going to get a few months into the game at the earliest.  I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they didn't release flying until the last patch of the expansion again.  I hope not, but it's possible.  This also means I won't be leveling as many alts initially as I normally do.  I like the ease of flying/questing when I've already seen the story.

    I do have some questions though.  Say they release flying earlier in the expansion.  Is it going to include all of our alts again? Or just the character who earned it?  I hope it will effect all of our alts but since in Draenor it was introduced at the end of the expansion, I could see Blizzard implementing it another way, and then opening it up to include all your alts later.

    What will happen with those who didn't earn flying in Draenor.  Obviously after the expansion ends people aren't going to want to hang around and earn the achievement for the most part.  There are exceptions here, but if you have a friend who gets the game and starts playing now, that means if you want to go run retroactive dungeons in Draenor with him, he is going to have to walk.  I am honestly hoping they open up flying in Draenor to everyone when Legion drops.  Or at least make it included if you get the Legion achievement.  I don't think this is a big deal, but it's a question I feel is at least worth asking.

   So, anything I miss or anything that needs to be added to this discussion?  Post below.

Lag.

Illidan- A book review.

So, I read the book Illidan by William King.  And of course I have opinions.

There may be spoilers... so quit now if you don't like 'em

Serious, spoilers ahead.  IF you read, your own fault

Spoilers.

Alright then.

     So, for those who haven't read my blog much, or haven't heard me rant, Illidan to me is one of my favorite villains in Wow.  however, I have never seen him as a villain.  To me, with the lore I've read and playing World of Warcraft III I've always felt he got forced into the position he inhabits by his own people continually turning their back on him.  Yes, he make questionable decisions, but he also made some pretty big personal sacrifices as well.  

     He infiltrated the burning legion for his people, loses eyes, gains power, but is punished by his people for taking the wrong side.  I can't defend his choice to make another Well of Eternity in Hyjal, that was a complete power play.  I also don't think his being locked up for 10,000 years by his own people was a good decision either.  I think in that case the Betrayer was betrayed.

    Then in Warcraft three he is freed and fights the burning Legion for his people despite their incarceration of him.  Of course he is a bitter character at this point.  When he takes the power and transformation for the skull of Guldan to fight the burning legion more effectively he is again punished by his own people.  Once again you can argue whether this was a "good" decision. Whether it was or not he continues to fight against the Legion and in the end is rewarded with exile.

    After that his decisions are not very good, but I feel everything after that point would have been different if his people had treated him as a hero who had helped them defeat the Legion rather than acting as if he had betrayed them again.  Which, I would argue he didn't.

    This book takes place after this, right after he has first arrived in Outland after he was rescued from Maev.  It details what happens between that point and when we killed him in black temple.  It gives some insight into his motivations, why he made some of the choices he did and what Illidan's goals were.  It also somewhat explains why he wasn't very present as we moved through that expansion unlike Arthas who popped up every other moment in Lich King.  Simply put, he was focused elsewhere.

     His motivation in this book is simple.  He wants to find a way to take the fight to the burning legion rather than waiting for them to come for him.  While he makes several decisions in this book that would be defined as evil (creating fel Orcs, sacrificing souls for power) over all his interests align with ours.  Making me think, once again if he hadn't been exiled, things would have been different. Then again he is so obsessed with his goal he might have done similar things on Azeroth.

    You basically get four point of view characters in this book.  Vandal, a demon hunter that allows you to see the Demon Hunter process, Maev who is, well Maev, and Akama.  Out of the four unfortunately for me I felt Vandal had the most interesting story arc.  In a book named Illidan it should have been Illidan but instead If felt the "sidekick" was a little more interesting.

    That brings me to my first complaint.  This books is really serious to the point of making it dry.  You have Illidan who is very serious, Maev who is essentially a female version of Illidan in seriousness and obsessiveness, Vandal whose also driven by revenge and seriousness, and then Akama, once again very serious.  We needed someone or something to put some bright points in the book or some levity.  Instead it is all a dark crawl to the end page.

    My second complaint is there is underutilized side characters in here.  Prince Kael'thas and Lady Vashj are in there on the side, but have no real interesting dialog or even part in the book. They kind of show up in the beginning, then are mentioned a few times on the side.  Maev has her small contingent of night elves, but even the two main ones (I forget their names, they were that important) never get a moment to shine.  Those two should have been built up so when they are killed later you actually care rather then going, um... ok, I'm over it.

     My third complaint is this book should have been longer.  Instead of digging into details it feels it gives you a quick path of what happened with Illidan in outland.  They could have dug in and gone into greater detail in several places.  They could have build more character into several folks but instead we get just enough to tell the story.  I feel there is a lost opportunity here.

     That aside I did enjoy this book.  I found seeing Illidan's point of view on things interesting as he amassed power in Outland.  He does have several choices that do put him in the villain box including betraying Akama and planning on torturing Maev when she's captured at the end.  He had a definite "the means justify the ends" problem.   At the same time you see his motivation is that he has seen the Legion for what it is.  He has seen the fate of the worlds they have destroyed and he is driven in a desire to stop them before they lay waste to Azeroth.  His belief of course is that the only way to do that is to go defeat them on their home turf, rather than waiting for them to show up and invade.

    I enjoyed that right before the end there is a promise of redemption shown to him, not that he believed it was possible.  We of course know he's coming back (if you've played the Alpha you know a little more about why)  I for one, want to replay the Demon hunter campaign and look for a couple of names now.  I am pretty sure after reading this book he will be on our side completely, if not trusted by the rest of our leaders.

My rating on this book is 3 of 5 stars.  It's good and worth reading, just don't get your expectations up for something new or a thrill ride.  If you don't play World of Warcraft, I would look up know your lore articles from Matt Rossi or Anne Stickney on Illidan before reading so you know the background that will help this book make sense.

Please note, this is the first World of Warcraft novel I have read.  I have a couple in may stack but I moved this one to the front because of Legion's approach.

Lag

Can You Avoid the Cookie Cutter Build?

It's always been there, in one form or another.

      There was an article released recently that was very interesting on Blizzardwatch.com. It's How cookie cutter builds discourage player customization.  It's a good read going into how player perceptions effect the choices that players overall make.  Give it a read, I'll wait.

      For those who have played World of Warcraft for a long while, you remember Talent trees.  Instead of one defined spec, you could take points in all three moving up as you leveled.  In order to take full advantage of a spec, you had to put a large amount of your talent points into it, but by picking and choosing different abilities in different trees you could make some very interesting choices.

     In theory this meant that folks could have some very customized options in their characters.  You could stick to the bottom half/third of all three specs at one point and never advance to end talents.  Or you could take your fire mage and then give him a bunch of power in frost once you topped off the fire tree.  This should have lead to a bunch of differently balanced characters doing really cool things.  Instead once some number runner figured out what talent point configuration put out the top DPS in the trees the community would all start to adopt that talent point spread.  If you wanted to be taken seriously pugging raids or finding a team you had to be running the popular choices.

     What should have been customization was in fact an illusion.

      As time went on Blizzard started putting constraints on the trees.  The first was that you had to put X amount of points into a specific spec before adding points to a different spec.  Then the trees got pruned and simplified taking out pointless choices, like add X damage to ability B.  Things that they knew everyone in the talent tree would take.  Then eventually the talent tree got the boot out the window and we were given essentially what we have now.  The talents tab.

     By simplifying the system and giving choices that where meaningful when it came to the feeling of game play Blizzard wanted to get rid of the cookie cutter build.  I would say they have been mildly successful, but overall people still depend on which choices are rated the best, or are the most popular.  There are some good options with choice, but most people stick with the popular track.

      I will admit I'm in that pack.  When I level a character I haven't picked up for a year or so, and decide to make that jump to level 100 I normally go to Icy-Veins.com and see what talent choices are rated the best, and which ones I can choose without a DPS loss etc...  I even do this for characters I know will probably not even make LFR.  While the idea of switching and testing different talent choices sounds fun,  a part of me just wants to make sure I'm doing things "right."  This is the part that often wins.

    I guess the question then becomes, is it possible to escape the cookie cutter build?  In legion we will be able to run all three specs and if I read correctly won't need to spend points to switch talents.  I think part of the goal has been for people to swap abilities for different fights, but I find myself only doing this in the rarest of circumstances.  Apparently you won't need a resource to do this swap next expansion which is probably another step in the right direction, but I still think folks are going to mostly follow the crowd.

    This makes the question what can you do to make your game play feel customized?  If talents are just another illusion of choice does it really matter if Blizzard includes this mechanic rather then just giving you the abilities to use as needed?  Is there anyway to beat this Illusion of choice and make it meaningful to game play?  Obviously if the talents had to do with things non-combat related (mount speed, character's dance etc...) then it feels like choice, but it doesn't matter in the over all scheme of things.  How do you all feel about it?

Lag.

My issues are Legion

Because you know, we are getting more information

EDIT: A Quick Clarification, It's two raid instances to start.  The information I had led me to believe otherwise.  I ran a small search and couldn't find anything definitive on how many raid tiers are planned for this next expansion.

With that in mind take my words for what they are worth.  A little misinformed at this point, however should there only be two raid tiers, they are a valid concern for me.  (I can't speak for everyone.) So I will leave them up, but wanted to make sure anyone reading knew they where misinformed at the time of writing.

    First of all, it's been a little while.  I won't lie. Without regular raiding my desire to keep writing here has been a little light.  I plan on keeping this blog going however, and will hopefully pick back up after the new expansion drops and we are back into baddies.  With that being said...

    My first issue is the announcement that there will only be two raid tiers again.  I almost missed this one until they mentioned it on "The Instance."  Really Blizz? If you want to do more content more quickly then you have to live up the that more content part.  I have mentioned it before, but it's annoying that the expansions are being shortened content-wise when the price tag went up by $10.  Now, I'm not going to opt out of wow, and I'm not hurting at shelling out ten more bucks for the next expansion.  I am worried about the precedent that expansion may be two big raid tiers long.  It feels wrong to me somehow.  I know last expansion they said that there was one less raid tier because of Garrisons, I am wondering if Class Halls are going to be the excuse this time around.  Honestly, I would take another raid over a Class Hall, but that's my preference.

     Spoilers (Not going to give them away) seem to indicate that there will be shake ups in both the Hordes and the Alliances leaderships.  While I like to see the story advance, I am wondering at this.  Yes, it's probably time to swap things up in the Alliance.  It's been stagnant there since Varian came back to his throne.  However, the Horde has had enough shake up the last couple of expansions I think they could use a rest over on that side.

     No new battlegrounds.  Now, this one doesn't really effect me as I rarely if ever do PVP.  However, this is the first expansion I can think of that isn't offering any new Battlegrounds coming to the table.  I am worried that the rush in content is going to alienate those people who actually play the game for that aspect of it.  I hear they do exist....

     On the positive side, I love the fact they are really digging into the flavors of each class spec.  Making hunters feel that survival, Marksman, and Beastmaster specs are completely different is a good thing to me.  From what I see most classes are getting more of that and as long as things are generally balance this is a good thing.  It could become a bad thing if spec X is doing way more damage the spec Y and now everyone feels required to play spec X to be competitive.  I know this already happens a bit, but if  people feel forced to play in a way they don't like it's going to push more away from the game.

     I'm still Juryied out on the Artifact weapons, I like the concept, and as long as I can Transmog over them I'm OK.  If I can't, then they may really cramp my style.

How are you guys feeling about the expansion news so far? What's exciting to you? What worries you?  Let me know.

Lag

The Wait is a Mistake.

I know, lot's of awesomeness from Blizzcon today.

     Blizzard and Activision starting their own film and Television company.  They are starting with a Skylanders T.V. show, and mention was made of a Call of Duty treatment.  This is perfect as anyone who has seen Blizzard's cinematics has seen the awesome talent that Blizzard has hired on.  I'm excited to see where they take this.

      The Warcraft movie cinematic was released as well.  I enjoyed it and I look forward to that movie more than I do Star Wars.   I don't feel the trailer gave a ton away other than the idea of the main conflict.  The few shots of Garona made me wish she looked a little more orc like, but really I had no complaints.

      The opening Cinematic for Legion was released as well.  I felt it was VERY Alliance heavy, and that is coming from someone who mainly plays Alliance.  I thought the tone was interesting and I am wondering if they are foreshadowing Varian's doom, or if they are trying to fool us on the direction the expansion will go.  The moment between Sylvanas and Varian before the fight breaks out was something I never thought I would see in a Warcraft game... and anything else I say will be way too spoiler filled for those who haven't watched it.

      And here is where I get a little negative.  They announced, last night actually, that Legion will be released on or before September 21, 2016.

      Really Blizzard? You are focusing on getting content out quicker and it's likely to be well over a year of Hellfire Citadel?  This is going to be a mistake on their part, and I would be surprised if there aren't folks at Blizzard working to make sure they beat that September deadline by a bit.  If they wait that long, I am betting the subscribers who plan on returning will be less than if they dropped it in June, or so.

      The honest part is that the date says BY.  That means there is a chance that the expansion could drop well before September if things work out right.   But with Blizzards standards of perfection and track record, if they do get the game out before September, I wouldn't bet on it being a lot sooner.  They could prove me wrong here however.

      Once again however, this wait could have been alleviated by one or two things.

      Blizzard could have slowed down how quickly they released content by a little.  I'm not saying a lot, but if each of the major patches had been delayed by an extra month or month and a half that could have bought Blizzard 3-5 less months of waiting for the next expansion.  Yes, in reality we would have been waiting just as long, but it would feel as long since the last bit of content was much closer.

      A third raid tier.  I won't lie that I felt it was a mistake for Blizzard to up the price on expansions at the same time they released a two tier expansion.  We had taken it for granted that the previous expansions from Wrath to Pandaria all had three raid tiers.  Yes I know they were saying that the third raid tier was sacrificed for Garrisons, but had they done something, anything, to at least give us a midway raid that would have bought them more time as well.  Instead if feels like we paid more for less content.  That feeling is never good for a player.  It probably won't cost Blizzard my subscription, but I'll be severely dissapointed if Legion only had two raid tiers.  It's just not a direction I think Blizzard should go.

      I'm sure there are other things I could think of.  They could release a patch of just extended quests, make some timewalking raids available, etc... There are things they can, and may do to alleviate this time.  However, remember. Anything Blizzard does at this time is essentially development time they are taking away from Legion, so it becomes a double edged sword if they throw a lot of resources our way to help get past this down time.

    I'm honestly surprised they didn't offer another annual pass deal, because while I don't think this is by any means the death of wow, I thinks it's a major loss of revenue they could have had if things had been planned better.  I honestly hope next time around they do figure this out.  The less people playing World of Warcraft does effect the gaming experience, and I have a right to worry about the future of the game I love.  But enough about that.

What has been your favorite bit of information dropped from Blizzcon so far?

The Magic we Miss

Yes, it's going to be dry news until Blizzcon.

     Last weekend no raiding again.  Saturday, only 4 folks showed and we all went and did our own thing.  Sunday, we blew up Firelands for transmog.  Gratz to Scorpy by the way on his Flame Talon of Alysrazor.  So, once again, not enough peeps and we ran older content or dispersed.  I will keep trying to do things on weekends, but if we don't raid until next expansion it won't break my heart.  Don't get me wrong, I would love to get back into Hellfire Citadel and finish it.  However, if I have to find an alternative to do it, I will.

     I just hope we have a group to start raiding with in Legion at this point....

     Anyway, let's go back and discuss a topic we light to cover.  Why do people miss original, (or vanilla) wow so much? People are always talking about wanting to do forty man raids, and how epic it was back in the day.... There is a level of prestige to saying that you've played the game since vanilla (in your own head generally). Part of the reason we were so excited for Warlord of Draenor was the fact it hearkened back to good old Orcs. Vs. Humans and old Warcraft.  Which, while not being Wow itself, stirred up a lot of nostalgia and emotion.  Now we are getting the same feels for Legion.   But what exactly do we miss?

     I think it has more to do with scope and excitement.  I know the first time I rolled a character, (a Night Elf Rogue because I was excited about playing a Drizzt type character.  You R.A. Salvatore fans know what I'm talking about.) The sheer size of the game baffled me.  My brother was nice enough to port me to Stormwind so I could learn the sword skill, because once again, I wanted to wield swords no matter how impractical, and I was amazed at the difference just between Darnassass and SW.

    After that as I deleted and re-rolled characters, trying to find the perfect fit for me, I would run my rogues, hunters, warriors, etc... from Darnassas to Stormwind for that sword specialization.  This would be an hours trip give or take depending on how many time I died on the run etc....  The first couple times however, it amazed me how far I would run/ride a ship between the two areas.

    As I continued to play, it was still hard for me to image just how big the game was.  All the way to level 60 I found myself constantly being surprised at how many areas I could level in, how big the quests where, and all the different story lines.  I very quickly lost my desire to picture Night Elves in the same light as the Dark Elves they had resembled to me.  I fell in love with the lore itself.

     And I remember how cool it felt, when my first character, who was a gnome mage incidentally, hit level 60.  What a big accomplishment that seemed to be.

    That I think is what people are looking for in each expansion.  A level of scope and immersion that we probably won't see again.  We want that experience that was stepping into Azeroth for the first time, not knowing what we where doing in the slightest.  That feeling that there is no way we will touch every corner of this game because of how big it is.  The knowledge that there is something we have never seen before around every corner.

     And that will never happen.  We know this game.  We love this game and have grown with it.  Over the years, Azeroth has been explored by our characters so many times it's no longer the giant unknown.  Each expansion brings us new lands, but they are filled with as much familiar as they are new.  There is no going back, just forward.

    I personally wouldn't have it any other way.

Lag.

   

Things I'd like to see in Legion.

So, I was at a wedding in Vegas last weekend, so I didn't raid.

      Now here is one of those things that bear asking before the launch of a new expansion.  What have they promised, and what do you want to see that hasn't been mentioned.  And I'll admit it is kind of a hard question for me this time, because it feels like everything has been thrown into this expansion that we have asked for.  It has been called the fanservice expansion in a few descriptions I've read, and I'm not sure how far from the truth that is.  But here are some things anyway....

      I want to see more dynamic professions.  Warlords gave us a neutered down, generic path for our character's professions.  It largely felt like it didn't matter what profession your character had, because you could just get a vendor in your garrison to make whatever you needed for the most part.  The only exceptions seemed to be the items used to level up the ilevel on gear.  Gathering professions where just laughable.  Your garrison pretty much gave you everything you needed on this front.

    Class specific quests.  It feels like we may be getting some of these with the class halls, but I'm not holding my breath.  I have walked in to to many things only to find that we have been supplied with the same quests as everyone else, just with a different starting point, or different faction.  I am hoping that each class with have a series of quests unique to each.  So my Paladin and Death knight can have very different experiences.

     More involved story lines.  A lot of Warlords felt like we were watching events unfold, but not necessary to the story.  This was a departure from the feeling of places like, say Jade Forest where we did something, and felt like we were personally responsible for the consequences at the end.  In warlords despite being called general etc... it felt like we were watching others achieve thing for us, and we just happened to be helping a little.  In order to feel involved our characters need to feel like the driving force in the game.

     Involvement from characters in Warlords  or Mists, or.... Rather then having great character like Yrell disappear from this point on, I would love to see them pop in here and there as we move forward.  Even if it's just running into her while visiting the king on a quest that takes me back to Stormwind. I hate that we get invested in characters and storylines just to see them abandoned for the next big flavor.

     That is the list on my mind, what would you like to see in Legion when it drops?

Lag

Regaining The Fire

So, raiding happened.  I'm very happy that raiding happened.

     The first night we ventured in may have had a couple of issues.  I brought in a new raider who was geared but inexperienced, and it showed a little.  Also, the first boss just kept outright destroying us and we couldn't figure out why.  The healers couldn't keep the tanks up through the first few mobs, and I think we only got to the second siege weapon once.  finally called it.

     The second night our mystery was solved.  On the way in my wife noted that there was a skull in front of the portal.  Somehow I had my raids turned to heroic, and we were all expecting normal. To put it lightly, I screwed up.  But that second night we downed the first two bosses and had our best attempt on the third we have seen so far.  More importantly, we managed to raid two days in a row.  I am hoping this means more happy things to come.

     Now, I've been thinking of the next expansion in reference to the subscription drop.  For those living in a cave Wow is now down to just over 5 million subscribers.  Now, I do not think this is unexpected.  The game is ten years old and we see a lot of drop off as expansions go on.  Warlords itself feels like an expansion that just has aged prematurely to me too.  While it's been out for less then a year, for some reason the content just hasn't felt lasting.  Normally we get some excitement, you feel content to log in every day and do stuff, but this time it feels like it's all been done pretty quick.

     Part of it is the shock of how the end game feels after the great leveling experience.  You hit level 100, and half the stuff you want to do is tied into your garrison.  There are rep grinds, but you really don't need them.  There are daily apexis, but while they are fun the first couple of times they just don't feel great after a while.  The dungeons felt ok, but I wasn't enthralled.  And raiding, as always is fun, but that is only a couple nights a week.  Overall the experience people got after a while was, log in, check garrison, log out.  There was no benefit to hanging around in game for the most part, other then visiting with you guild mates.

     I also think this is where the faster content expectation they built hurt them.  When it feels like very little is coming, and it's coming quickly it just isn't a wonderful experience.  In Pandaria it worked because we had things like the Isle of Thunder, or the invasion of Krasarang Wild as our factions showed up.  All that had direction and felt like it had purpose behind it.  Then we got the wild treasure hunt that was Timeless Isle.  

     Now the best we have is Tanaan Jungle, which is fun, but feels as directionless as the rest of the expansion.

     Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed Warlords, but I wanted to take a look before I went forward at the issues I have had, and that I have heard discussed before I moved forward.  Because there are a lot of things that Legion is going to have to be in order to keep the current subscriptions they have.  Let's be honest too, we know when the expansion drops those subscriptions are going to go up again.  I don't know if they will go all the way to ten million, but no one expected to see that with Warlords and it happened.

     Legion is going to have to have direction and purpose.  We need to feel like we are interacting and controlling the story, not just witnessing it.  Being called general, master, etc... doesn't make up for the fact you don't feel like your character is important to the story.  I want to feel like the driving force behind taking down the baddies, not like I'm holed up in my castle giving orders and surfing chat.

     It is going to have to play on our nostalgia, and keep a hold of it.  The themes we are seeing so far are familiar and exciting.  Demon hunters, Illidan, Tomb of Sargaras, are all fan favorites and great memories from Warcraft III and early World of Warcraft.   Blizzard needs to make sure that these places and people feel enough like the original that we don't feel cheated.  It also has to feel shiny and new enough that we don't get the, "It's all been done" feelings.  Right now the excitement is high, and i'm hyped up, but I need a good pay off for that excitement.  If I hop on my new demon hunter and I feel like, "Well, I've played this class before" it's not going to be so great.  If I go into the Tomb of Sargaras and say, "Oh, I seen this cave skin since vanilla." It will be disappointing.

    The last thing Legion needs to do is find a way to find new players.  Most of us who have been playing for years don't have the time we did long ago.  I know I can't spend hours upon hours questing like I used too.  I have also debated lately dropping my subscription for a while with work and school just so I don't have one more thing pulling at me.  (I'm not dropping, don't panic raid team)  We need to find a way to get new blood into Wow.  I don't know if it's possible but getting those late teen and early twenties crowd to hop in would build a player base with more time, and durability then those of us die hards who have been logging in for years.  At some point we generally move on to other things, there needs to be players coming in, to slow the number drop of those going out.

     Not that Wow is dead or dying.  They still have more subscribers by far then any other MMO out there.  That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be looking to the future a bit more.  I imagine this game will still be going on in some form ten years from now.  I also think with the MMO market what it is, we will never see another MMO with 12 million subscribers that dominates the market like Blizzard has in days past.  I would love for them to prove me wrong.

    That is my thoughts on it anyway, what are you all thinking at this point?

Lag

World of Warcraft:Legion. The Newly Announced Expansion.

      So, needless to say, as this was all announced as information leading into the next expansion, I 'm not going to worry about anything that might be considered a spoiler.  So, if you don't want to know what is coming stop reading here.  I am not filtering, I am not avoiding, I am talking about what was shown and what I'm still looking through.

      So, I am giddy with excitement.  I just watched and looked through some information for this expansion and I'm very happy with what I'm seeing.  I don't think I've been this excited for any other expansion, and I've been excited for most of the expansions... let me explain.

     When you watch the expansion trailer it is voiced by Illidan.  Just to hear him doing the voice over made me insanely happy.  If you watch the teaser cinematic you see Gul'dan going into revive someone who looks strangely just like Illidan.  Pair that with the voice, and we can be sure that the other Stormrage is returning to our World of Warcraft.  I am not sure what role he is playing however, but we will discuss this in a moment.

      We are witnessing the return of the Burning Legion on Azeroth.  While we have tangled with them before, in Wow it was limited to Outland in BC, and the end of Draenor.  Sure there has been the odd demon or two popping out of the nether and earning a sword to the gut, but for the most part that has been the extent of our interactions in this game.  Of course, before BC, they were the ending focus of Warcraft III.

      We are going to the Lost Isles.  If you played Warcraft III you have been here, it's where the Tomb of Sargaras lies among other things.  If I remember correctly, this continent was between Kalimdor and Northrend, but it's been a few years so if I'm wrong I apologize.

      While this is being marketed as, "The burning legion has returned we must defend ourselves" it's very apparent we are going after Gul'dan right off.  He is in one of the first two raids, and I am hoping we put him down.  But I'm not counting on it.

      This expansion seems to be pulling on the heartstrings of those like me who remember playing in Burning Crusade.  From the Illidin voice over to the familiar legion mobs it smacks of new mixed with familiar.  Once again I think Blizzard is playing with Nostalgia to try and bring people back into the game.  But they are also giving us new shiny stuff like my favorite thing... The Demon Hunter Quest.

      The new class looks pretty cool.  With only two specs, the Demon hunter is either Melee or tank.  I am disappointed that they went with leather for armor, since mail is the types that has the least users right now.  Other then that, from the characteristic green glow from where the character's eyes had been to glaves the class looks awesome.  They metamorphose into demon forms while fighting, can double jump, and they even mentioned using your wings to glide down from areas.  This class is supposed to be all about mobility and in the minor game play video they showed, the Demon Hunter can bounce around and fight with the best of them.  However, they mentioned that the Demon Hunters we play (limited to the two elf races) are the Illdari that followed Illidan back in Outland.  This brings us to the big question.

     If we are fighting for the Horde and Alliance, and Illidan is back, does that mean that Illidan is flipping sides to help us against the Burning Legion?  While I've always found his story somewhat not convincing in making him an outright villain, (yes he betrayed people for power in the war of the Ancients, not forgetting here) I felt more that he took opportunity in Warcraft III to grab power and then used it to help, I don't see him as a "good" guy.  He may fit in the Anti-hero role fairly well though and I imagine that it might be safer for him, and for us, to ally for at least a little while.

    But what do you all think?  There are many things that I haven't mentioned like Class halls (garrison where you hang out with the other members of your class in game), and artifact weapons (because you know you want to wield Doomhammer or Ashbringer), and many other things.  Level cap 110, etc...

    Are you guys excited too here? or is it just me?

Lag

   

     

     

Next expansion 2015.... War of The Dead?

     It's that time of year again.  Time to speculate on what the next World of Warcraft expansion will be.  Last time I made a guess at what I wanted the expansion to be I said an adventure where the Forsaken are shaken up because Sylvanas is resurrected and giving her some sort of redemption story.  My guess was that Lilian Voss was going to be the next Forsaken leader as they seem to be building her up to something, and that the expansion would also take us to a series of tropical Islands including Kul Tiras and Zandalar.

    This year my expansion idea is actually a little similar.  So bear with me here.

     I am somewhat basing this on the fact that we get a reference to Wrathion having been in Draenor with us, though he never appeared and what happened to Admiral Taylor's garrison.  Admiral Taylor's garrison bothers me simply because it was obviously destroyed by a necromancer/warlock (Ephial) but we are in a Draenor where as far as we can see, Warlocks if they exist are somewhat new.  The orcs have not lost their shamanistic powers, as happened (to my understanding) when the race gave up on the elements and started practicing magic through demons.  Of course this change seemed to have happened along with the orcs drinking Mannaroth's blood.  (I haven't read to books so my understanding may be skewed here)

    What if the "Dark one" that the Necromancer was referring to wasn't even on Draenor.  Ephial came through the portal to Draenor with us, and may have had some plan all along.  While Taylor's journal does mention Ephial going missing for a while after a Horde attack, I'm not sure this means that whatever twisted him happened on Draenor.  He could have been evil before he stepped through the portal.

     I think things may be stirring in the North.  What if Bolvar has awakened, and he's been corrupted.

     He has spent the last few years up there with Ner'zhul in his head.  Frozen alone with the ghost of the Lich King whispering in his ear.  Because with Arthas having been in the helmet all those years, there is a chance that his voice in in Bolvar's ears as well.  What if we are about to fight another scourge invasion.  What if Wrathion knew this and had arranged Garrosh's escape in order to find  a way to get a bigger army for Azeroth.  I don't think it's coincidence he showed up in the same garrison as Ephial.  He told Admiral Taylor that he was fleeing the ogres, but was that the truth? Or did he lie so he could keep an eye on the evil he found had followed us through.  Strangely, we didn't see any signs of ogres chasing him.  From the account in Admiral Taylor's book he was hardly a prisoner. 

     Now picture this, Bolvar goes south to take out the only true threat he can see to his power, Sylvanas.  What if Sylvanas where to strike back with a Frostmourne rebuilt from the shards.

    When the sword takes her like it did Arthas, will we be stuck between to factions fighting for the dead of Azeroth?  What might have happened in Northrend in the years of our absence?  What might have been awakened from beneath the ice? What lands might the Cataclysm have unearthed between us and the North?

    Anyway, that is my thoughts.  I would love to see "The War of The Dead," as an expansion.

    I'll be honest, everyone is thinking Burning Legion expansion, and dealing with Gul'dan.  But let's be honest, following Garrosh to Draenor was the first time the previous expansions event led to the next expansion.  I'm more inclined to believe they will let that thread dangle for a while.

    What do you all think the next expansion will be?

Lag

Hopes for How Draenor Ends

I have been pondering this lately.

      So, I was listening to the Blizzard watch podcast and they hit several nails on the head with this expansion that has been a problem.  The two most relevant where that out characters felt like side characters this time around watching events unfold, and that when we where done here in "the alternate Draenor," Nothing we do will have any relevance to Azeroth afterwards, other then stopping the invasion.

      I'm not sure how to fix the first one.  Being the side character is not a good feeling.  In the past expansions we have felt that we were the ones driving the story forward.  Feeling we are more witness or bystanders isn't fixed by everyone in your garrison calling you general or captain.  This may actually be part of the problem.  It is great to have characters recognize you after all you have accomplished, but a general is normally someone who sits back planning the war, not fighting it.

      The other problem is that things don't feel like they will effect the long picture of the game.  All the people we are meeting here, will never step foot in our world.  Everything we do just changes a different universe that we have no long term investment in at all.  For those who love Wow' lore and stories this is also a negative feeling.  Woot! We saved Yrel and watched her grow into a mighty hero.  So what? What is the relevance in another expansion.   This one I have two suggestions Blizzard could (or might) go with on this one.

      My first suggestion is the least likely.  What if, once we finished our mission we went back and found that our actions had changed Azeroth.  What if by changing this alternate timeline it caused a ripple effect that changed our past.  Or what if we found out that it wasn't an alternate timeline at all, but that we had changed the very history of our world, and now we have to figure out what that means for each race going forward.  

      That first suggestion I find very unlikely.  It would take a lot of extra work to explain why things had changed, what that meant for each race, and to essentially re-create a bit of the world to reflect this.  With how many people where confused by traipsing off to an alternate Draenor in the past, this would not work well, but it would give us something that felt like it would last going forward.

       The second suggestion or hope I have is that we see a reflection of what happened in past Draenor happen again.  What if after the last raid Gul'dan, mad with power simply ripped the world apart.  What if in the chaos we were forced to evacuate the Draenei and Orcs and whoever else we could to our Azeroth to save them from destruction.  If that were to happen then we would suddenly have all these new faces and characters in our world and the ripple from these events would be felt for expansions to come.

        Imagine a suddenly full Exodar, that now hosts massive numbers of Draenei instead of a few scattered remnants with Yrel joining Velen to rule.  An Ogrimmar suddenly bolstered by a bunch of new Orcs and Ogres and no watched over by Durotan.  We also could have a group of Arrokoa trying to carve their way out into our world, Oggron suddenly sharing the land.  This would bring about many new story lines and the growth of the world could be immense.  I love this idea so much I hope Blizzard considers it, or is planning something like it.

       So what would be your idea to make the events we are witnessing and the stories now matter in an expansion or two.  I really don't want to walk away from this one with no lasting changes to our own world of Azeroth.

Lag/Lazyeye.

6.2 is coming

Normally I would do a lot of what we did here, not this time.

      Because last week we didn't really raid.  Not enough peeps showed the first night, and we LFR'd the second night.

      This week was a little better.  We were a person short Tuesday night and managed to pull someone from the nether to come heal for us.  Because it was a mixed team of newness etc.. we just did Highmaul.  We didn't get started until late, and because of it, we only downed Khargath and The Butcher.  Better then nothing.

      Wednesday we managed to get into blackrock a little, but just managed to down Gruul.  We brought in the healer, this time on a hunter, again and had a relaxing fun night.  Yes, things can be fun and relaxing when not downing bosses.

      Right now honestly, I just want to build the team back up.  I think we may lose another toon or two before things are through but I'm hoping that with one person who came back from the nether, and this healer if he wants to keep putting up with us might give us the flexability we need to start working on progressing again.  I would love to feel the team was whole by the time Hellfire Citadel opens.

     Now, time to look at what's coming up in a month or two.

     First up is the end of the Legendary Ring quest.  We are supposed to get a proc that we can blow every X amount of minutes for added damage.  Here is the catch, if you blow it everyone else in the raid with a ring blows their proc at the same time.  I will be honest, I don't like this.  I see nothing but chances for abuse on this if your pugging or running LFR.  I would much rather just have another cool down that all players could use at their own discretion.  Either way, it's a thing and it will be interesting to see the end of the Gul'dan/Legendary story line.

      We are getting a naval yard in our garrison.  You will need about 6k resourced to build your ship yard up.  Your garrison will need to be level three as well.  The quests here will be used to open up Tanaan Jungle to you as you quest in to fight the new Fel Iron Horde?  Really not sure what we are calling them now.  But this will essentially be what you have to do to progress in the story of the expansion.  Once again I'm not fond of a gate that involves a lot of resources that may keep my alts from venturing into this.  Obviously, as stated before Tanaan Jungle will be open to players.

     Felblood will be replacing Savage blood as a building mat for professions.  So, don't sit on your Savage blood at this point.  Sell it or use it before the patch drops, because after that it may start being fairly useless.  My understanding is that the item upgrades from the Felblood skip the savage blood upgrades completely.  If that's the case Savage Blood will just be a bag space holder.

     We will be getting Mythic level dungeons.  Because nothing makes you hate the dungeons you were so glad to be done running (and for some reason they have been painful for me this Xpack) like having to run them again.  Only with them being harder.  Oh, and epic gear, epic level gear drops so you may have to run them if you want to gear up quickly.

     I am excited about Timewalking dungeons in retrospect.  We will be able to run select dungeons on level with current content, and the drops will be ilevel equivalent.    This means older gear with current stats.  Kind of pointless with transmog, but it will be fun to run some older content and have it feel like something other then a cakewalk.

    And of course there will be some minor class changes etc.. that I'm not going to list here.  If you want to know what is happening with your class just go hunt down the patchnotes on blizzard forums.  Or Blizzardwatch.com normally lists them in articles as they are updated every few days.

See you next week.

Lag/Lazyeye.

   

   

   

Take a breath, It's not that bad.

Seriously, the freak outs are getting to me.

      So we are by my count about 3 weeks into this new expansion.  In that time we have had a rough launch, (Due to large amounts of people coming back and DDoS attacks) and several time when service had been disrupted as well.  Today, I imagine we will find out there was a whole new round of DDoS attacks because it was the opening day of the Highmaul raid.  Hackers aren't stupid, they target the times they know that the populations of different games are going to be on in force and excitement.  They get their kicks ruining the fun for other people.  Same reason Mac's don't tend to get viruses.  It's not that they aren't susceptible, it's the fact that hackers are going to focus a large group, and Mac users tend to be a minority.

       I will admit.  I am as frustrated as the next guy when I can't get on and play.  Sometimes, after a long day at work, I feed the kids and then look forward to that little bit of me time.  When I can't do that because authentication servers are having issues, well it can make me kinda grumpy.

     Or like tonight, I shrug and finish that book I've been meaning to finish while trying to log in.  Why? Because there are other things then World of Warcraft.

      Other then nights like this I am enjoying the new expansion still.  I am having connection issues when doing dungeons and group events that may make me swap ISP providers here soon.  But even there I am doing OK when I run, and I'm enjoying the new content.  Lazyeye, and Shimmer have both started their quests in Draenor, along with Leesill over on the horde side of Hellscream.  I'm not in a hurry to have a second level 100 toon, but I won't complain when it happens.

      My plan here is still to hold off raiding for another week or two.  I am about ready, and I know several people are, but I don't want to rush back into things quite yet.  I am enjoying my little break from such things and know it will be over soon enough.  When it's time to lock and load and blow stuff up I'll be happy to do so.  Until then, I enjoy the peace and quiet of just running around and exploring the new lands.

See you all in game soon.

Lag/Lazyeye

Heroic and Blizzcon.

Alright, here we go...

     It's been a busy couple of weeks....  And I admit to not having written this last week, partially in frustraition.

     Last week between Tuesday and Wednesday we managed to get to both Thok on regular and Heroic on Thok.  Sunday we snuck back in only to find that our Heroic save had been corrupted so that we had to start at the beginning, so we worked Garry on Regular.  And we died.  Sadly.

    Tuesday this week we went in knowing we would be working on regular as the same issue was still presenting with heroic.  We downed Garrosh for the second time on regular and then thanks to a guildy who had a heroic save on an alt we were able to fight Garry on Heroic.  We got him close but didn't quite kill him off.

    Wednesday we went in to try him again.  This time (after a rant from yours truly) we managed to down him in about an hour and called raid early.  Gratzy to all who were there.  We can say we downed Heroic Garrosh and now have shiny titles and better BOA's to level with.

   Of course the other big news is Blizzcon launching tomorrow.  I think the next expansion to Starcraft, and Hearthstone will be shown.  I would also not be surprised to see them show off something up and coming for Diablo III.  I am guessing we may get introduced to a new Blizzard project or two, and maybe Beta release plans for Heroes of the Storm.  What of World of Warcraft you ask?

     I have heard people wonder if they are going to announce the next expansion.  This would fit into their goal to release more content faster and keep pushing us along.  I honestly feel the opposite.  I hope they don't tell us the next expansion because it would feel strange to walk into Warlords knowing what was going to happen after from the get go.  I believe that would be a mistake that might make Warlords feel like something in between and not it's own expansion.  I am one of the few though that thinks that having an expansion about every other year is better then every year.  Truly part of it is budgeting with me.

     So, next week the question is what next? Do I just push an alt run through regular Siege to get more toons some heirlooms? Or do we try and work Heroic again?  Maybe we should go back and try to finish Throne of Thunder?  I haven't fully decided.  Honestly, part of me wants to start my short break from raiding early so I'm fresh and ready to start leveling on the 13th.

     Still not sure if I'm leveling Lag or Lazyeye though.... I'm not convinced we have a steady 2nd tank at this point.  We have had people step in, but no one who has been consistant on being there every time yet.  I don't want to level my hunter just to find that I have to power level Lag to raid....

That's it for this week.  See you on the 13th.

Lag/Lazyeye.