burning crusade Archives - Page 2 of 2

Nostalgia is Strong

Once again this week I have not really consumed much media, so I don’t have enough material to really do one of my normal Saturday morning columns. Additionally I am still mired in this nostalgic bomb that is World of Warcraft Legion information. I’ve still managed to stay “clean” but I know at this point it is only a matter of time before I renew my World of Warcraft account, and at least take a “taste”. As quietly as Alt seemed to think, yesterday information about the Legion Beta client started trickling out on the data mining sites, and I have to say there is a bunch of interesting information. So this morning I thought I would talk a bit about some of the theories I have running around in my brain. Firstly there seems to be a much more heavy Vrykul theme than I originally thought. I realize that one of the islands we will be visiting is essentially run by the Vrykul, and since they have more or less lost their connection to the Lich King, I am assuming we will not longer have the Valkyr resurrecting them and creating undead versions.

Much of the armor we have seen datamined has that same feel, which only serves to damage my calm all the more. This expansion is starting to seem like an amalgam of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King which pretty much represent the pinnacle of my enjoyment of the game. I feel like this is absolutely what they had intended, and then when you combine actually letting us venture into the Nightmare… they are essentially throwing everything at the screen and hoping that we love whatever it is that they come up with. There are so many warning klaxons going off in my head telling me that the end result will never live up to the hype. The problem is there is a hyper kid in my head on a sugar rush telling me how awesome it COULD be… and is slowly winning out. Basically the adult in me is losing and I am finding myself paying closer and closer attention to Legion beta information. More than anything I am just hoping they give me a Death Knight that is fun to play again.

King Anduin

I’ve said before that in the Legion trailer, I thought we would be witnessing the death of Varian Wrynn because for a few moments… you think exactly that is going to happen. That is not in fact how the trailer ends up… but as I was preparing for it… it started me thinking that I believe over the last several expansions Blizzard has been preparing us for this. Bit by bit they have been grooming Anduin to take the throne, and in the datamined information we can see that once again he is getting a significant upgrade in model. Similarly we see Anduin not Varian as one of the avatars we the players get to play. I think it is pretty much an inevitability that something will happen to Varian and cause Anduin to take the throne, bringing with him a much more three dimensional and reasoned character than that of his father. I like Varian just fine… but he was always sold to us as “our” Thrall, but that promise has never really materialized.

The game as a whole is still to some extent dominated by the evolution of “Green Jesus”. Maybe this expansion will be different, and maybe this expansion we will see Varian as something more than a dude with two badass swords and a penchant for war. That has always been the problem with playing Alliance, it never felt like we had a really strong focus to rally around. The horde have such a strong identity, and that reverberates with the players that love that faction. The alliance on the other hand, has no shared struggle… no central driving focus that they can rally behind. We have a bunch of really interesting secondary characters, consistently rallied behind a significantly less interesting central character. I had hoped that we would exit out of Warlords with Yrel, but all signs seemed to point to her staying on Draenor. Then we have awesome characters like Genn Greymane that never actually got the promise of being a true and proper leader with their own city. You can see that Genn also got a really nice model update, but my working theory is that this has something to do with one of the artifact weapon quests… and sadly not that we might be able to actually use Gilneas as a proper city.

Lava Man

I find it hilarious that after all of these years… the model is still called “Lava Man” in the back end, instead of Bolivar or even the Lich King. This is obviously an updated version of the Lich King model, and I am wondering where exactly he will factor into the new content. My theory is that this is probably related to the Artifact weapon quest chain, but then a part of me wonders… if we are essentially creating an expansion with the best parts of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, are they going to set the Lich King up for a return as well? We are after all seeing Illidan as part of this expansion, and it is a high likelihood that after all of these years Bolivar would lose his control over the power of the Lich King. I always questioned the sanity of allowing Bolivar to hold this position… even though it seemed pretty badass at the time. Surely eventually the power of the throne and the helm would overwhelm him… and he would in fact turn into a proper “new” Lich King.

With Legion could we be setting in a chain of events that would end up triggering a reboot of the Lich King content essentially? Where the Scourge under the direction of the new Bolivar Lich King would once again ravage Azeroth? There is part of me that doubts they would do something that blatant… but then again I never expected to see Illidan again. There is of course another option.. we might end up fighting along side the scourge under the control of Bolivar as they serve as a nearly limitless army to take on the Burning Legion. I guess it all depends on just how big this conflict gets before the end of the expansion. The problem is… as I let all of these theories and ideas out of my head… the more I am wanting to log into World of Warcraft in its current state and play. I know that the same game is there that I left several months ago, and that most of the things I am really interested in wont be here until Legion. The stranglehold of nostalgia however is absolutely a thing.

Farewell to Arts

I did another really quick video yesterday since we are supposed to have an impending server reset. In the holiday weekend since the last restart folks have filled the server with all sorts of nifty stuff. So I thought I would do a really quick video showcasing some of the cooler things. The highlight for me is the alligator. I am wondering who built it, because seriously it was perfect. The server has essentially exploded with pixel art everywhere, some of it seeming to be freehand which is pretty amazing. While this is all interesting I am hoping soon we get a bit more substance.

It was rumored that we would be seeing a new patch today or tomorrow and in it I am really hoping they introduce two things. Firstly I want to see the crafting system and all the nifty things it can produce. This is likely going to be a massive thing because this also means they will likely change they way the blocks work so that we actually harvest them instead of just destroying them. Currently the game works a lot like Minecraft creative mode, where you have pretty much unlimited resources to place at your disposal. While this is cool for free range building, the game however right now is lacking a “game”. Wandering around and exploring, engaging in combat is fun but I feel like we need something to give us a sense of purpose.

The second thing I want badly is the cornerstone concept, aka your plot of lands that persists to each server you play on, and that no one else can disrupt. Part of why I have not built much of anything yet is the fact that we still have way too many mad bombers on the server all to willing to destroy your hard work. In fact I railed on Shawn Shuster of Massively a bit in the video as in his walkthrough that was posted yesterday… he was all too happy to blow up other peoples creations.

There have already been some pretty epic works of art destroyed by some idiot who would not suppress their inner poo flinging monkey long enough to appreciate what had been created. While I realize this is a side effect of having a game with no rules yet, it still depresses me to see the world as Swiss cheese. I am sure once the new patch has gone life I will do another quick video showing off what it added. So stay tuned to my channel and I will post something up there as soon as it is available.

Quintessential Quintet

Also last night I managed to push my paladin Exeter to 90 and with it came an achievement that I was not expecting. Apparently Quintessential Quintet is a thing? I cut an odd path on this one, by the time I left Jade Forest I was already 87 thanks to all the mining nodes. From there I made a beeline for Kun Lai, and critpathed my way through the zone until I reached the quest chain that lead to Townlong. Similarly in Townlong I quested my way through the Shadopan chain until I reached the jumping point for Dread Wastes. All of which was to set myself up perfectly to be able to start working on Klaxxi quests as quickly as possible.

Why you might ask? This is my blacksmith, and all the nifty things you can create seem to be on the Klaxxi vendor. Namely I wanted to be able to start creating masterwork weapons for all my other characters as I get them to 90. That seems to be the big weakness as it comes to the Timeless Isle content. You can gear your alts up with 496 extremely rapidly, but you have a few glaring holes… namely your weapons. Also I seem to have a much harder time getting Curios for trinkets, and the neck/ring slots to drop on the Timeless Isle. So as a result I have ended up spending a fair amount of time trying to remediate their gear just so I can be able to queue for something.

Timeless Isle is nifty, but I really miss the equivalent of the Icecrown 5 mans. I wish there were heroics that I could run that actually provided something viable for filling out a set of gear. I feel as though they should really have put in a new 5 man that dropped 496 weapons to go with all the gear they are handing out like candy. Even with epics… a crappy weapon is still a crappy weapon. Right now my paladin for example is using the treasures of pandaria BOA one handed sword that you find on the ground. Which is better than anything he has gotten yet, but at least being able to create the masterwork hammer will be something slightly better. I think those are 463 ilvl which is essentially what the heroic gear is.

What Next?

I have to say getting Exeter to 90 was a pretty cool thing. He technically was the very first character I created, and my intended main. For years my internet handle was “Exeter” and quite honestly “Belghast” was my main over in DAoC, and it was not until late in Vanilla that I started to play that character as a main. All the while through vanilla my main was Lodin the hunter, and it was an almost accidental occurrence. I had a death in the family that pulled me away from Warcraft a few weeks after the release of the game. As a result I got rapidly outpaced by the rest of the guild, and back then soloing a Paladin was a truly painful experience.

Hunters were the gods of soloing, so I started leveling Lodin just to be able to keep up with my friends. Within a very short amount of time I had caught up, and when we hit 60… I got drafted into the raid group of a guild member as they wanted to replace a troublesome hunter. I had no intent to actually play a hunter as my main, and in truth I am not terribly suited for the class… but I did for almost all of Vanilla because it was my “Raid main”. Once you start playing a character in a raid group you are pretty much committed to always play that character until they no longer need it. The positive effect however is that I met so many life long friends through raiding, and that the Late Night Raiders hunters were all such amazing people.

As soon as Burning Crusade was released, I saw this as my opportunity to leapfrog Lodin in gear and start playing Belghast as my main. That is the awesome thing about expansions, the gear reset lets you change your focus. From that point until the tail end of Wrath of the Lich King, I was a warrior main tank. It was not until I needed a break from the hot seat that I switched focus to the Deathknight and fell in love with it. All of this time I felt horrible for leaving Lodin abandoned in the dustbin. It was not until Cataclysm that I actually managed to level him out of the outlands. During one of my last sessions playing I pushed him up to Pandaria levels, so I feel as though it is probably his time to shine again. I pretty much permanently run around in Giantstalker transmog in honor of the fun times I had with him raiding during those early days of Vanilla WoW.