Legion Has a Date, Death of Vanilla.

First big news, Legion has it's release date.

   We will all be grabbing our swords and girding up our loins for battle on August 30th 2016.  A little over half a month before their released by date of Sept. 23rd.  This I believe is a good thing.  I'm a little surprised they are announcing it at this point, the game is still in Alpha but hey, I trust they know what they are doing.  And I'll be honest, I think a lot of the Alpha has served the purpose the Beta has in past expansions.  I think the only reason they are calling it an Alpha and not a Beta is to keep folks from making assumptions about how far along the game cycle is.

     This means folks I haven't seen in a while in game will be coming back together.  We will be gathering up our forces and hitting the raids and hopefully downing a few baddies along the way.  I really want to hop in on a Demon Hunter... The class has been fun to play around with, but Lag may still be my main just for consistency sake.

    I am hoping, as they said this would be a longer pre-patch then other expansions this means we will get our 7.0 drop in June.  That is a month and a half away for those who are counting.  While I think the overall game won't be ready by then, I could see the class specs and other such things being ready to ship at that point.  I imagine if you prebought the game, Demon Hunters might be released at that point too.

    The other news is the fact Blizzard shut down a big private Vanilla server.  Nostalrius was a server based on the original implementation of the game that was being run outside of Blizzard's purview, and Blizzard finally stepped in and shut it down.  Now fans are up in arms over this, and there is now a petition going around for Blizzard to open up a Vanilla realm of their own for players to play on.  Which is fine.  What is not fine is the uproar.

     I'm sorry, a private server using someone else's technology and code is illegal.  Yes, I'm sure it was nice to have a Vanilla server to play on, but you are playing on code that was stolen from Blizzard so if they step up and say "No!" you have no ground to stand on.

    If I befriended Brandon Sanderson, got ahold of one of his first drafts of Mistborn, and started selling it I would be stealing his intellectual property.  (Now, to be fair I'm not sure anyone was making a profit off Nostralrius) He would have the right to sue me for distributing what wasn't a finished, or optimum work even if I left his name on it.  The fact Blizzard just shut these guys down, but doesn't seem to be making a bigger smack down, which I'm sure they could, is points to them.

    That being said, if you want to petition Blizzard for a Vanilla server I'm behind that.  Go play a Vanilla server for a while.  Other than the fact you will be forced to build a stronger community to find groups etc... you will also be reminded of the grinding and pain.  But I would love for Blizzard to host a couple of servers of pre-iterations of World of Warcraft.  That would be cool.

Anyway, that is my rantings for this Week.

Lag.

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.