Icecrown Revisited

The Force Awakens

While I was getting up and around this morning apparently this was released.  For months and months there have been all manner of fake trailers floating around the internet, but finally today they release a real teaser trailer.  I am guessing this is perfectly timed for the thanksgiving/black friday movie theater rush… as all these people realize they are tired of seeing each other and being in the same house.  I have had mixed emotions with the prospect of more movies.  For starters I really did not like the “prequels” that much.  They were cool in the aspect that we got to see a lot of nifty things that were previously only written about, and even more things were flat out invented for the screen.  But the movie stories themselves were just not that good, and the whole “jesus christ jedistar” sub plot seemed silly.  Disney however is well known for protecting the hell out of their licenses and their future marketability… so when they bought out lucasfilm I started to worry a little less.

Then they announced the director was going to be J.J. Abrams, and I started to get a little more hopeful.  For those unaware he is the man behind Lost, Fringe and the Star Trek reboots.  The later of which is what is causing issues for the Star Wars purists.  Granted I have never been a massive fan of Star Trek, it was always one of those things I watched because there simply was not enough science fiction programming on television during my formative years to be picky.  Essentially I’ve never felt the Star Trek setting was believable, in that we could never actually join under one banner as a planet, and more importantly could not actually go out into the stars and be a mediator.  We are entirely too divisive as a species for that ever to really work.  Star Wars on the other hand was this beautifully chaotic universe where everything is pretty much in a constant state of “effed up”.  This was believable to me as a kid, and it featured the Jedi… which is pretty much the pinnacle of my knight in shining armor complex.

The thing is I feel like the Star Wars universe could use a bit of a reboot after the horribleness that was the prequels.  That said I don’t think that Disney is going to allow JJ to completely blow away a couple of decades worth of source material…  that is highly profitable for the notalgia peddlers.  What I think we will see is more of a reimagining of some of the constructs.  You can see this in the form of the trailer.  The X-Wing series fighters feel leaner and more aerodynamic, the Storm Trooper armor feels smoother, and the Dark Jedi lightsaber feels more brutal in the form of some crazy claymore looking thing.  I am looking forward to seeing more details leak out about this film, but I am frustrated that we will have wade through over a year of hype before actually getting to see it.

Icecrown Revisited

Wow-64 2014-11-27 23-51-03-82 Last night after a series of heroics I decided to continue my path of clearing old raids for fun.  At first I picked up where I left off last night and did the Mount Hyjal raid in the Caverns of Time.  This was easy before, but has gotten progressively easier considering I now have a spammable throw attack as a warrior that stacks deep wounds on the target.  Generally speaking the first hit takes them down in health with the deep wounds dot eventually finishing them off.  Since I also know where the mobs spawn, the first 16 waves went extremely quickly because I could simply stand on the spawn and thunderclap each new wave as it came into the world.  The horde base however is still frustrating with constantly having to run back into the base to take down flyers.  That said the entire raid maybe took 30 minutes to actually complete.

From there I used my engineer hacks and teleported straight to Icecrown with my original intent being to run Icecrown Citadel.  That said I had forgotten that the engineer port takes you directly above the Crusaders Coliseum, so for shits and giggles I decided to run that place on heroic difficulty.  Overall it was still rather easy with the only annoyances being the PVP battle, and having to take mobs in reverse the normal order… aka burn everything but the tree druid… and then the tree druid.  Anubarak was still a bit of a challenge because he deals a lot of damage still while siphoning your health.  Thankfully I was able to shield wall up, and reduce the incoming damage enough to take him down.

Storming the Castle

From there I moved onto Icecrown proper, but since the Belghast character had not actually cleared normal 25 man Icecrown… I had to set down the raid difficulty.  Hopefully next week I will make an attempt on heroic and see if it goes as smoothly.  The two points I was most concerned with were the Airship battle, and Dreamwalker.  Airship turned out not to be a big deal at all, as the scaling in damage meant I could take down the airship before I actually needed to jump across.  In fact the mage spawned like normal… and I jetpacked across… only to be standing on the wrong boat as it went down.  Fortunately I guess at some point they implemented a teleport that takes you back to your boat, so I was able to get back there without taking a death.

Dreamwalker on the other hand was a completely different problem.  For those not familiar with the raid, this is a goofy fight that works backwards from almost every other encounter.  This is the moment the healers shine, because they essentially are your “DPS”.  Dreamwalker is a dragon that starts at 50% health and during the course of the battle you have to heal her up to full.  The problem being… I am not a healer, nor do I really have any heals at all.  I feel like this is the sort of thing a paladin tank could handle without much issue.  I made a valiant attempt at using bandages to heal up the dragon… and in truth there is a point during the add rotation where you can get an entire bandage applied.  Had I brought enough bandages I could have probably solo’d this one without much issue.

However there is a way to glitch out the fight, that I am not sure if it is intentional or not.  The fight involves the spawning of these portals to the emerald dream.  From there your healing is greatly increased but the fight will reset if there is no one in the “real world” with the encounter.  So I learned that if I take a portal, it will glitch the fight, reset it and open both the door at the front of the room, and the door to Sindragosa.  So essentially I was able to simply skip the other problem fight for soloing, which allowed me to unlock access to the Lich King.  I have a feeling that none of these encounters will be quite so easy on heroic mode, but for the Lich King proper I was pretty much able to ignore all of the fight mechanics and burn him directly while standing in the crap that used to oneshot players.  My passive healing abilities as prot warrior seemed to counteract any damage I was actually taking.  The concerns about not being able to solo old raids for fun after the stat squish…  seems to have been unfounded.

The Internet

I am in the age group that folks refer to as the “internet pioneers” the generation for which the internet became an ever increasing reality.    I was in High School when things started changing, and during our college years we latched onto each new piece of technology with both hands.  The problem is that everything has become so common place that we stop to appreciate just how magical this grand interconnectedness really is.  It is because of the internet that I am here talking to you every day, and because of it that I get to hang out with people from around the world in a nightly basis.  It is because of the internet that I met my wife, and we ultimately married, and because of it that I have my job as a web developer.  On a day like today, when the stores are absolutely insane… it is because of the internet that I can stay within the warm comfort of my own home and shop the exact same deals online, and likely have them on my doorstep tomorrow if I really wanted to.

The real reason I am thankful for the internet is it allows someone like me who has issues dealing with people on a regular basis…  to live a very rich and relatively normal life.  Dealing with folks in person wears me out in ways that I will never be able to full explain.  Up close and personal interaction just drains me… and while I loved every minute of Thanksgiving yesterday… I was more than ready to go home and not see anyone for awhile.  The internet however acts as a bridge allowing me to be still social but in a way that is far more comfortable to me personally.  For all of this and more… I am thankful we have an internet, and it is populated with just as many awesome people as it is horrible ones.  I’ve made it my mission to try and gather up as many of the awesome ones as I can.

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