And Here Comes the 6.1

And it drops on this Tuesday...

 
     Tuesday was pretty good.  We went in and tried Kargath on Heroic and got eaten.  We managed to get his life low enough to feel good but never quite took him out.  Instead we moved on after an hour or so to down a few bosses for Loot.  We only managed three, but it was better then a wasted night.

     Wednesday we went back into Blackforge and still only got down Gruul.  We had some issues fighting him that felt like things just weren't syncing up very well. We finally got him down, but not in enough time to do much else.  That means we ended the night right there.

     But enough talk about raiding.  6.1 is dropping right quick and what do you need to know about it?  Not much.  It isn't changing the landscape much other then some nice UI updates and a few tweaks here and there, and that is fine.  Not every named patch needs to be absolutly awesome.  Sometimes we just need the little quality of life tweaks that are given.  This one will include....

     Heirloom tab.  As an altoholic I fully approve of this.  This means no more trying to remember which character has was heirloom on them or where they went.  You simply click and summon the heirloom for you nooby toon, and then delete it when you done.  If you have one level 100 warlock and want an army of 49 more warlocks on your account, no problem.  You can roll them all and then summon some heirloom threads for all.  Also, if you get enough heirlooms (I believe it's 35) you get a lowbie mount called the chauffered chopper.  You get to ride in the sidecar and let someone else drive you around.

     Male blood elves.  OK, old bad joke that is still somewhat relavent.  Seriously though, your blood elves are getting a visual work up.  I don't think it's going to be an insanely big change but it will be there.  Don't worry, your laughs and voices are staying the same...

     Selfies and Tweets.  Yes, for you superficial folks that have to show off your characters and achievements to everyone you can now take a shot and tweet from in game.  I won't lie.  I am one of the folks that think the whole idea of selfies in real life is absolutly stupid, and finding them in game doesn't excite me.  I mean, aren't you excited for your non-gamer friends to lift an eyebrow at your pixalated glory?

     Legendary follower.  Yes, we can get closer to our legendary rings and we can earn a legendary follower.  Most people know who this is by now, if you don't I won't spoil it for you.  Needless to say this one I think is a nice touch and I'm excited for.

     Daily Garrison quest.  You can run a dungeon or do a quest for a chance at 640-665 gear.  This is a cool way to gear your alt slowly, or get some more chances for loot.  It might actually get folks out of their garrison a little.

     Speaking of garrisons, they are changing the UI up a little with improvements to identify what followers fit what quest better etc...  Also, your followers will now be counted when working at your buildings only if they are present during a work order.  No more assigning them for pick up, or drop off then pulling them for quests.  On the bright side they will now get experience while doing this so they can grind their way to epic while mining your ore.

    Flying.  Ok, that was mean of me.  It doesn't look like we are getting flying yet.  I don't mind not flying per se, but I do miss it.  I look forward to getting it and further exploring Draenor.  In other words,  Num Lock, fly forward while sneaking a snack, then coming back to say wow! That is a neat cliff I'm face planted in!

    And much more.  You can look up the patch notes to see what I've missed.

So what are you excited for in 6.1?

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

Questing for hats....

Yes, I won't be raiding for a month or two.  Yes my goal is still to keep posting.

      I have hit 100 in Draenor and I am loving the content.  So far I have loved the leveling content, the story lines, and the zones.  The aesthetics to the areas are wonderful and feel like they pull you into the world.  I can't say enough about how much I am loving this new expansion.

      Garrison's are fantastic.  I have a love hate relationship with my desire to go back and re-set up quests etc.. for my followers every time the button on my mini map dings and tells me that someone has finished their job.  My only problem is getting extra mats for professions does seem more like a requirement then a bonus at this point, and I will say more on that in a moment.  Most of it feels like you can set things and come back any time later, and your garrison will keep pumping out the love until it's time for you to come back.

     The stat squish, (as I said after fiddling around in the beta) doesn't feel limiting or like it has broken damage or anything else.  Mobs still die, dungeons feel accessible, and for the most part PVE feels pretty balanced to me.  (I am not a PVP fan, so you will have to get your opinion on that elsewhere)

     I do have a couple issues however.

     Professions feel limited to me so far.  With the mine, mining feels unnecessary, while Engineering feels like I can get recipes for stuff I just won't be able to make in any type of quick time frame.  In past expansions if I worked hard I could farm, earn and buy mats to get some nice toys within a week or so of hitting level cap.  This time around it took me a week to get my engineering goggles, and then after doing an evasion event via Easybake (Saberlynn) they were replaced by a superior headpiece.  I could grind up another week and a half and upgrade them, but it is annoying to have saved for them just to replace them so quickly.  You know, like with in a couple of hours....

     End game feels a little light, and that might just be after getting done with Pandaria, but there are only a couple of quests and dungeons it feels like at this point.  Yes, you can farm rep, and hunt rares as well.  I just think that while I don't want to see last expansions daily overload, a bit more might be nice to have to keep people with a focus in mind.

     Oh, and if you haven't watched the above video yet, you should.

     That is my quick snapshot of how things are feeling right now for me in the new expansion.  Next week, will have more I hope.

Lag/Lazyeye


   

Haven't seen this in forever.... (Raid update week of 11/09/2014)

    Yes, there we are... after years I now have a queue time to log in.  Kinda hurts a little.

     This week was rough.  Tuesday I spent 2 and 1/2 hours pugging trying to work up a save close to Garrosh so we could try and get some folks another shot at a leveling boa for their alts etc...  I managed to get to Nazgrim (Lame) Pug groups tend to stop for 10 minutes between bosses on average I'm learning and part of me died inside.  However, we picked up another save from someone in our raid and started a bit further at Spoils.  We had a rough night of it however, wiping on Thok a few times etc.. and just barely managed to get to Hellscream's door.  We decided to hit him Wednesday but the raid leader (me) had a judgement in error.

     I let the person who had the save swap toons after the first boss went down.  This meant if We had used my save we would have started on Immersius, and would have to fight all the way through Malkorak to get a shot at Garrosh.  On the other side the raider who swapped had swapped after spoils so we would have started on Thok, and had to fight through that again.  We opted to do Heroic ToES instead.  Sadly as we could only take ten at a time we decided to go in two groups.  Second group didn't make it far in before we ran out of time, and I'm hoping in a week or two to give them a shot at their "The Fearless" title.  Why? Because the guild is Fear Itself so it fits greatly.

     Now I would love to tell you the expansion launched yesterday, life was beautiful and everyone was happy.  I can't.  The launch was horrible, filled with latency issues, inability to log in, and wait times.  It made me want to punch something, to swear at Blizzard, to gnash my teeth in frustration, but really, Blizzard wasn't to blame.

     They were attacked by DDoS attacks on a major scale.  Everything we experienced was because a bunch of A-hole hackers decided to have some fun and ruin other peoples experience.  You can argue that some of the blame lies at Blizzards door for not anticipating something like this happening with enough preparations, but at the end of the day, it's the fault of those who illegally decided to flood the servers with false attempts to log in and ruin your day.

      If you want to real a little more (http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/11/14/warlords-of-draenors-launch-failure-and-where-responsibility-li/#continued) Adam Holisky at Wow Insider had this article on it.  But in short, we were on the receiving end of a bunch of douches who wanted to have some fun at others expenses.

     Now as I write this I'm hoping the servers come up soon enough for me to get a couple of quests in before work.  Probably won't, but I can hope.  If not I will have this evening to play.  I am sincerely hoping this unscheduled maintenance this morning weeds out most of the issues we are having.

     Then we can all have fun exploring a beautiful new Draenor.
Lag/Lazyeye