Lessons in Lore - Stormstout Brewery

One thing we learn about the Pandaren as we adventure through their homeland is that they value quite highly the art of making beer. Not only can you make a Brewmaster Monk, but you can learn the Way of the Brew cooking recipes in Halfhill, and there are numerous quests and scenarios centered around saving beer, or making beer, or drinking beer. With the focus the Pandaren have on beer you might expect there to be more breweries around, but it seems that most of the brewers are more of the home brew types. There is one prominent brewery however, and it sits in the middle of the Valley of the Four Winds.

When you first enter the valley from the Jade Forest, you come across what may be a familiar face in Chen Stormstout. Chen was a prominent figure in Warcraft III where he played a part in the founding of Durotar. He was born on the Wandering Isle, so when you team up with him in the Valley of the Four Winds the entire land is new to him as well. He's traveling with his niece, Li Li, who was also born on the wandering isle. When the mists parted they made their way to Pandaria to explore their ancestral home.

As you quest through the valley, you see Chen and Li Li discovering new places and people as you go, and at some points you even join up with them to perform tasks. Early on, you'll learn of the Stormstout Brewery within the valley, and this gets Chen's attention because it's the first he's heard his family name used since coming to Pandaria. He will rush off to check on the brewery while you and Li Li continue to explore the valley. Eventually you'll catch up with Chen at the brewery, and not all is well.

The brewery itself seems to be in operation, but it has been overrun with a number of different pests and unwelcome guests. Hozen have infiltrated the stores of beer to throw their own party. Virmen have infested the grain and barley reserves. On top of that, flying beer monsters known as alementals seem to be causing havoc in the main brewing areas. Together with Chen and Li Li you fight your way in to the brewery to deal with the intruders and find out why the alementals are in such a frenzy. When you enter you meat Auntie Stormstout who explains that Uncle Gao was put in charge of the brewery while the others went beyond the wall to fight. In the mean time, the hozen entered and stole the secret recipes that Gao would need to make the brew correctly. Looks like it's time to do some house cleaning!

Ook-Ook
The first boss you deal with is the Hozen, Ook-Ook, who along with his hozen buddies has broken in to the brewery to throw a party. You interrupt the party and use the beer barrels to your advantage. By taking out Ook-Ook, you earn the respect from the lesser Hozen, who throw a dance party in your name after the fight.

Hozen Dance Party

Hoptallus
Hoptallus and his offspring have infested the grain stores of the brewery. He's quite possibly the largest virmen in existence, known to eat entire crop fields in a single night. It's up to you to clear him out of the brewery and save the ingredients from spoiling.

Yan-Zhu the Uncasked
At the end of the brewery in the tasting room, you finally come across the main cause of trouble for the Stormstouts. Uncle Gao, in his effort to come up with a new brew that will make the Stormstout name a mainstay in brewing again, has unleashed the alemental, Yan-Zhu. Unable to contain the volatile brew, it's up to you and Chen to fight off the large flying beer monster.

Once Yan-Zhu is casked, you can give Uncle Gao the recipes, and he can start making some good brew with the help of Chen. Before you bid him and Uncle Gao farewell though, head back to Auntie Stormstout and try some of Ling Ling's Favorite Tea. You might find it helps you see some other creatures around the Brewery. Find them all and you'll get a virmen pet of your very own.

What is Worth Fighting For?
When all is said in done, you're going into the Stormstout Brewery to help Chen Stormstout reunite with his family and clear out the intruders and pests from the place. You have to stop Uncle Gao's failed brewing experiments and set the Stormstouts on the path to creating great brews again. It serves as a an end to the Chen Stormstout story line in the Valley, but I don't think that's the last we'll hear from Chen Stormstout, or his niece Li Li.

Lessons in Lore - Temple of the Jade Serpent

This morning I'll take a look at the first dungeon in Mists of Pandaria. You can jump into this dungeon via the dungeon finder as soon as you're 85, but to have a better understanding of what's going on you should quest through the Jade Forest until you've completed a group of quests that take place in a non dungeon instance of the temple. You should also finish the quests leading up to and including the climactic event that takes places at the Serpent's Head. Please be aware that there will be spoilers for these events and others in the dungeon in the post below.

Temple Courtyard

The Temple of the Jade Serpent rests on the eastern side of the Jade Forest, overlooking the coast. The temple is a monument to the last emperor of Pandaria's triumph over the Sha of Doubt thousands of years ago. At some point while questing in the zone, you'll be tasked to deliver a shipment of jade to the center of the forest where a group of Pandaren are hard at work building a statue of Yu'Lon, the Jade Serpent. Then you'll get the opportunity to go inside the temple before anything has gone wrong. Inside is a huge library, the Waters of Everseeing, and a large courtyard where the guardians of the temple train. You'll also meet Yu'Lon herself, and she explains that the statue being built is meant for her to pass into when she dies, and a new celestial guardian will be born.

Upon leaving the temple, however, events take place that alter the course of Yu'Lon and all of the Pandaren in the Temple of the Jade Serpent. The Horde and the Alliance go to war near the jade statue, and their anger and hate draws the Sha of Doubt up out of the ground, destroying the statue in the process. Together with Lorewalker Cho, you push the Sha back, but this is just the beginning of problems as the Sha and its minions proceed to invade the temple and corrupt its inhabitants. This is where we start when we enter the dungeon for the first time.

Sha of Doubt makes its first appearance.

Wise Mari
When you first met Wise Mari he was a simple waterspeaker plagued by mischievous water sprites. He spent most of his time gaining insight and knowledge from the Waters of Everseeing. Now he is hostile, driven to distrust and suspicion under the influence of the Sha. By attacking him you're able to force the Sha out, and he eventually calms down.

Lorewalker Stonestep
As you enter the library, you'll notice that the Sha have infested the many books and scrolls scattered about the place. You'll have to face down corrupted versions of characters from Pandaren stories and lore as you make your way down to the bottom where Lorewalker Stonestep is waiting. Once there you will have to battle Sha who have personified one of two stories. In the Trial of the Yaungol, you will have to fight against the manifestations of Strife and Peril. If you get the Champion of the Five Suns you will have to shoot the suns out of the sky before they possess Zao Sunseeker. Once defeated, the library returns to some sense of order, and Lorewalker Stonestep sends you on to the courtyard. On the way there, you see many of the temple guardians have been slain.

Liu Flameheart
Once the most devoted of the temple priestesses, Liu is now consumed with uncertainty as to the future of the jade serpent. With the statue destroyed, what will happen to the spirit of Yu'Lon? She fiercely protects the heart of the temple from anyone who might intrude. Including you. As you attack her, she continually calls upon her training to fight paw and foot. Eventually she will even call upon the spirit of Yu'Lon to defend her, and you must defeat the image of the jade serpent to finally break her out of her trance and open the doors to the cause the suffering and pain within the temple.

Sha of Doubt
Being trapped underneath the temple for thousands of years has caused the Sha of Doubt to obsess over Yu'Lon and corrupting her influence on the Pandaren people. With the battle of the Horde and Alliance giving it enough strength to break free it used this opportunity to strike at its obsession. Now its up to you to defeat the Sha and drive it back from the temple. Upon defeating it, you save the temple from its corrupting influence for now, but can the Sha ever truly be defeated? 

Yu'Lon

What is worth fighting for?
To echo a phrase used in the Mists of Pandaria trailer, I've decided to use the last part of each of these posts to summarize why we as characters fight the monsters in each dungeon. For the Temple of the Jade Serpent, it's fairly straight forward. The war between the Alliance and Horde has freed the long trapped Sha of Doubt from the ground where it was imprisoned long ago. The Sha then seized this opportunity to attack the home of the Jade Serpent Yu'Lon, corrupting its inhabitants. It's up to us to free the temple from the influence and doubt of the Sha; to clean up the mess that the Horde and the Alliance have made by bringing their war to this land. 

All in a Day's Work

Lal and Elionene hit level 90 last weekend. Since then it's been a little overwhelming as to what to spend our time doing. There are numerous daily quests, scenarios, heroics, and of course there are the rest of Townlong Steppes and the Dread Wastes to finish. I like having options, and when you have limited time to play, you're forced to prioritize what you do in game. Here's what I've done.

Since my primary goal is to enjoy the story of Pandaria, I'm much more inclined to focus on finishing the quest chains in each zone. We're very close to finishing Townlong and then it will be on to Dread Wastes, where there is a new daily hub with the Klaxxi. While I say that is my primary goal, I will admit to being distracting by the many other quest hubs. We needed to do Golden Lotus every day because Lal is a tailor and Elio is a Leatherworker, and we needed Honored status with the Golden Lotus to have access to our patterns. It took us about a week to get there, and now Lal has her fancy epics made because she's been able to stockpile cloth since we started leveling. With Elio, on the other hand, I can't make one piece of epic gear because I need a lot of Spirit of Harmony just to make one piece.

We'll continue to do Golden Lotus to open up the other factions. We're also pretty hooked on farming, as it seems to be the best way to get guaranteed Motes of Harmony once you have opened up your farm. It really isn't that difficult either. Then there's the Cloud Serpent dailies, which we have been doing, but I don't feel  are that necessary because it's just for the mount, whereas some of the other factions were about gear for when we start raiding. Most of our raiders have just hit 90, so the next few weeks should see us finally getting into regular heroic runs.

Speaking of heroics, I've only done a couple and they've seemed fairly standard. I've also done a few Scenarios that have been a lot of fun because it's something different. I haven't gotten to do as many as I would have liked due to the amount of other things there are to do, but I am looking forward to writing out some lore posts for the dungeons soon.

I see a few people on the forums complaining about the amount of dailies they "have" to do and the fact that there is no cap makes it a horrible burden. If you're one of those people, I can understand what you're saying, but I would also advise you just to look at what's there, and prioritize. If you're after gear, you only have to worry about Golden Lotus and Klaxxi for the most part. You can get any honor gear without reputation from the vendor in Townlong. Valor gear is available with rep, but the valor gear is not something you need to start raiding, so you have time to work your way up with the reputations and then get the valor gear you need to fill in the gaps you haven't gotten from the raid instances.Other reps, such as Tillers, Cloud Serpents, and Anglers, offer mainly cosmetic rewards such as mounts and pets. I'd save those for if you have time, or after you've got your gear situation settled. You could argue that Tillers is more necessary than the others because you can grow Motes of Harmony and ingredients for buff food.

I've taken some fun screen shots. This one is of a Pandaren that will play music for you if you pay her two gold. She's located in Halfhill at the market, as well as in the Alliance city on the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. You'll also see Lal and Elio at the top of Mount Neverest up above, and a nice shot I took from Zouchin Village in Northern Kun-Lai. I'm continually impressed at the art design in Mists. Everything from Jade forest to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms has been a delight to look at and quest around.

Since turning 90, I've had the chance to tame two of the new rare hunter pets, and our guild got together for the Wanderer's festival in Krasarang last Sunday. I'll be sure to put up shots of that in the next post. Until then, have a good morning!

The Best Expansion No One is Playing

Or at least that's what the analysts would like you to believe based on the early estimated sales figures. You can read the brief summary at Massively by clicking the link below.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/27/analysts-mists-of-pandaria-sales-disappointing/

The short of it is Mists of Pandaria reportedly only sold an estimated 700,000 physical copies of the game in its initial release. I admit I was a little surprised at this development. And then a little skeptical when I read that it didn't include digital sales. This was the first expansion that allowed a direct digital download, and much like people took advantage of that with Diablo III, I had to assume they would do the same thing with Mists. My own unique situation involved buying one digital download (for my wife) and then picking up a physical copy for myself at the local game store on Monday night.

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived at the game store was there were a lot fewer people waiting around than in years previous. I've been to midnight releases now for Wrath, Cata, and Mists. The Wrath release was at a mall in Burlington, MA. There were well over a hundred people, some in costume, and one of the fast food places brought everyone free chicken sandwiches while we waited. When Cata came out, we had moved to North Carolina. The town was less populated, but there were still probably 60-70 people at the game store with the line going out the door. Now with mists, at the same store where I got Cataclysm, there were maybe 30 people total, and we all comfortably fit inside the store.

I didn't think much of it until they started handing out the games at midnight. I would say around 80% of them were the big box collector's editions. I was only there for the regular edition, and the only reason I didn't download it is because I had a gift card to the store. It dawned on me that the low turn out was due to the availability of the digital download, but the only way to get the collector's edition with all the bells and whistles was to through a retailer. If I based sales expectations on my experience, I'd say that digital sales were three or four times as much as the physical sales. That would put Mists total sales up above the two million mark, and close to the sales from previous year.

Then Massively did a follow up to their first article.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/01/analysts-mists-of-pandaria-sales-not-so-disappointing/

That's more encouraging. I hope Blizzard releases some actual numbers for us before November.

I have to ask myself why I care. Sales of the game don't really help or hinder my enjoyment of the game, so what does it matter? Mists of Pandaria is a wonderful expansion. I've only played it for a week, but I look forward to logging in every night. The zones are beautiful. The quests are fun and entertaining, and the new lore of Pandaira is fascinating. The few dungeons I've done have been well laid out and a lot of fun. There are an overwhelming amount of things to do at max level, which may be good or bad depending on your personality, but I like that there are options.

A lot of people in the various forums where Warcraft is discussed dismissed this expansion as Kung-Fu Panda in WoW or argued that the inclusion of pet battles meant Blizzard was catering to the Pokemon kids (news flash, a lot of those kids are grown up now and still enjoy it). The company got a lot of flack for what some considered a very bad Diablo III release. But the expansion is so much more than that. I can't get over the art, or the variety of quests. The NPCs are some of the best I've seen to date in the game. I've never seen Kung-Fu Panda, but I know the Pandaren have a rich and detailed history that stretches long before the movies existed.

My hope is that the game begins to attract attention for these things, and that the pretenses that people may have dismissed it for initially get washed away. It would be like a movie that doesn't do so great on opening day, but word of mouth gets out this movie was the best movie in the franchise, and eventually you have droves of people going to see it. I would not be surprised to see WoW subscriber numbers start climbing back up and with it a lot of expectations for the future of Warcraft. Which leads me to my next thought. How are they going to top this one?

(EDIT: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2949-2-7-Million-copies-of-MoP-sold-WoW-passes-10M-Subscribers

2.7 million copies sold and back over 10 millions subscribers. I guess that answers that question. I'd still like to know digital versus physical copies of the game sold, and I wouldn't be surprised to see those numbers grow rapidly over the next few weeks.)

My First Day in Pandaria

Months after seeing the majesty of the Jade Forest on the beta for Mists of Pandaria, I finally made my first foray back onto the island yesterday. I picked up the basic game at the local game store at midnight, but because we live on the east coast I wasn't going to be able to stay up until 3 AM when the expansion went live. Instead I went to bed because unlike some others I did not have the luxury of taking any time off work to play. I did manage to leave a bit early though, and all the way home I couldn't stop chanting, "Pandas Pandas Pandas Pandas!"

Eating a hasty dinner, my wife and I logged in together. She had actually already gotten to play, but spent the time leveling professions, waiting for me before actually heading to Pandaria. Elionene is and will always be my main, so along with Lal, we got sent on a special mission for the King of Stormwind to the mysterious new found land in the south. I enjoyed the quest set up quite a bit. I'm excited to experience new stories and lore again. 

I won't spoil any specific quests or things here for those that may have not have seen it all yet, but we played well into the evening and made it probably 65% of the way to level 86. In that time, I feel like we'd barely made a dent into the Jade Forest having just arrived at Dawn's Blossom before we stopped. In that time we had defeated horde forces, befriended two new races of people, and fought off an invading force of a third new race. And that was just the beginning of the zone.

As I said before when I was in the beta, the setting of Pandaria is beautiful. It's seemingly endless and so full of color. The Pandaren villages are bustling with activity, and there's always something to new and interesting around every corner. I found myself content just to look around and click on various NPCs to see what they had to say. One of the meditating Pandaren in the first village told me, "You are only good for ordering food at restaurants and spending your guild's money!' That made me smile. Later on, at Dawn's Blossom, a little Pandaren girl showed me she could burp. It was most impressive. 

One particular area had me in awe at the design. The Den of Sorrow is a small cave with water shrines inside, and a waterfall as well. A main story line quest takes you inside, so you shouldn't have to worry about missing it. The calm atmosphere of a haunted cave with the sound of falling water was so peaceful. Speaking of the sound, I was sure to turn up my music volume while playing, so I could enjoy the wonderful music in the new areas. One of my guild members was thrilled to hear a string duet in Pearlfin Village that was wonderful indeed. If you happen to be in Dawn's Blossom stop by the local inn, The Drunken Hozen, for what must be some of the best music ever composed for World of Warcraft. I heard several different songs upon leaving and entering the inn over the course of the night. They were all great.

The quests flowed smoothly from one to the other, and I have to say I'm enjoying the new quest reward system where everything you get is good for your class and current spec. As a hunter, spec doesn't really dictate gear choices that much, so that was one less thing to worry about. None of the items were upgrades to my normal Dragon Soul gear yet, but as we continued on the stat difference started to close. One quest even gave us a new vanity pet!

While there were plenty of the regular kill and fetch quests, there were a few other quests that stood out. A set of three or so quests have you reliving a story as three different story tellers. Along with being fun and different, there was a small story reveal that propelled you onward. I thought it was really cool. If you want to make sure you don't miss it it's part of the quests in Pearlfin Village, which you should arrive at shortly after leaving the first Pandaren village of Paw'don, and involves the Alliance NPCs from SI:7.

I'm looking forward to continuing the story tonight, and maybe try our the first dungeon of the zone, Temple of the Jade Serpent.  I ran it during the beta, but it wasn't quite the same as running it with a guild group at level with quests. As I've done in the past, I plan to write a lore post about each dungeon, and how it fits into the overarching lore of Pandaria and the World of Warcraft. Happy hunting, and see you in Pandaria!

There Will Be Posts

The Mists beta inspired me to write again, yet I've done very little of it since then. I've also not been in the beta since then. Part of me wants to save it for the actual experience, and so my hope is that when that time comes, you'll start to see this blog come to life again.

Our guild finished up the legendary quest line in Dragon Soul for one of our rogues. We decided then to take a break from raiding to play other games and hopefully avoid burnout before the next expansion is released. A few of us have joined up to fight the spawn of the burning hells in Diablo III, while others are just taking time away from gaming altogether. The hard part now is going to get everyone back together, so we don't forget about playing WoW. We're such a small guild that unless it's a raid night, you're unlikely to see more than a few people online other than yourself at any given time.

As our last hurrah before the break, we did make a run through Karazhan on some level 70 characters. The fights and mechanics were still fairly easy with just class and balance changes, but it was fun to see that place again. I'll never get tired of the opera event or the scenery of Kara. It's still the best raid in the game, in my opinion.

What is everyone else doing as the Cataclysm ends and the Mists are set to appear?

Novelty Mounts

I wanted to take a moment to brag on my guild a bit. We're a small group. There are only 12 or 13 of us that are active, some more than others, but once or twice a week 10 of us come together to run normal raids. We've been clearing Dragon Soul for a few weeks now, and we're one week away from completing the legendary for one of our rogues (we have two).

The first night we completed madness of Deathwing (which was in the first week of the 5% nerf), he dropped a mount. Needless to say we were quite excited. There are a few mount and pet collectors in the guild, though I'm not one of them. (I worked hard for my Cenarion War Hippogryph back in the Burning Crusade, and I have no desire to ride anything else.) We had a roll off, and it went to our holy priest, Lal. Here she is riding her fancy new dragon.

Lalstraza!

Wowhead lists the Blazing Drake as a 2% drop. But that was awhile ago. Last night we were short a person, but since we really needed to get the final few fragments for the legendary, we went anyway. With the nerf now up to 20%, it wasn't all that bad. We had two healed most of the raid before with the exception of the final fight.

As we finished off Ultraxion, I went to distribute the loot as normal (and prayed that we wouldn't have to DE junk, or sell yet another tier piece for 5 lousy gold pieces), and to my surprise I saw a funny looking dragon. Experiment 12-B. Most of us didn't even realize there was a mount drop on this fight, but here it was. A .5% chance. Point. 5. Iamma, our resto shaman won the roll. What's with all of the healers getting the mounts? 12-B is a chromatic dragon, the same that you see in Blackwing Lair. It's a pretty color, and you can see it in the middle of the rest of us below.

Such cool colors.

We continued on with the nine of us and got to the last fight. We got Deathwing to 4% before losing our tanks to the heavy hitting adds and then we fell apart. We still had plenty of time left before quitting time, so even though it was disheartening to wipe, we went at it again and beat it with less issues. Our first 9 person, 2 heal kill of Madness. Woot! And for our efforts, he decided to drop the reins of the blazing drake again! This time, the bear tank, Gilgalen, won the roll.

So on a night where we almost decided to cancel the raid, we completed it with only 9 people and won two rare mounts for our efforts. Go team! We're now only a week away from finishing the legendary quest chain for the Fangs of the Father. Not bad!

Even though we're not at the cutting edge of raiding, and we're somewhat lackadaisical about heroics, I think I've had the most fun raiding with this group of people in Dragon Soul of any other group or raid. The difficulty level hasn't overshadowed the enjoyment of getting together with friends to kill Internet dragons, and while there are always elusive pieces of loot we're still waiting to see drop, the rewards have overall been adequate with fun surprises like dragon mounts. I'm really excited to complete the legendary for one of our rogues, even if we're near the end of the expansion. It's the first legendary we've worked long and hard for as a guild, and the first legendary we will have obtained in the tier it was meant for.

I think it will only get better in Pandaria, and I can't think of a better group of people to explore it with.

Dragon Soul Nerfs and Mass QQ

It was just announced that Dragon Soul would be nerfed a further 5% after the scheduled maintenance on April 30th. This brings the Power of the Aspects debuff to 20% total. In that same Facebook post I linked to, the comments are rife with the crying and gnashing of teeth from players who are upset about further nerfing an already easy raid. The words facerolling and noob are thrown around. Jabs are taken at the incompetence of people that can now complete the raid and bringing regular mode down to the level of the Raid Finder version. There are a few comments here and there about the ability to toggle the nerf on or off, but so far the overwhelming consensus is that Blizzard is ruining the game, past its prime, and everyone is leaving the game for Tera or Guild Wars 2.

At least that's what one might gather from the comments on Facebook, and probably from comments on the official site under the identical post.

It grates on me to see so many people upset. On one hand, I can understand the frustration of seeing rewards you worked hard for suddenly becoming available to people through content being nerfed. Suddenly what you accomplished doesn't seem so special because the epics and titles are available to more people. We tend to see rare things as trophies, and it makes us feel good to be one of the few with those trophies. If everyone has it, it's not unique, and it's not easy to see if someone got a title or epic long before someone else did. Sure, you can look up achievement dates on the armory, but that's a bit cumbersome. So it's hard to take pride in doing something first if that's not really apparent.

On the other hand, I don't see what the big deal is. It benefits Blizzard (and thus the longevity of this game we play) to make content available to as many people as possible. And for the last several years the expectation is that raids and dungeons will get nerfed. Especially at the end of the expansion. It opens up the world to millions of people who didn't have the time or ability to see the content before. What's the point of keeping people from getting epic rewards? So we can feel unique and special and superior? What's the point of gear anyway? The point of gear is to make top content easier to finish. And then later we replace that gear with other epics, and then at the start of a new expansion we replace the purples with greens. Gear is only a means to an end. The same can be said for nerfs.

I also see a lot of misconceptions. I don't have the stats. Neither do many other players. Claims to the effect that everyone has already beaten the content, and thus nerfs aren't necessary, should just be thrown out. Blizzard wouldn't be nerfing it further if that was the case. Blizzard has access to more information about who is raiding, and who is beating the raids, than anyone else. Maybe a lot of raiders have beaten the content, and the nerf is to encourage people who haven't stepped foot in Dragon Soul to try it out. I don't know. But neither do most of these people complaining and making wild claims about raiding stats.

I'm not sure where I intended to go with this post, so I'll just leave you with a what if. What if, instead of being elitist and lording it over people that we've beaten content first, we extended help and encouragement to those working on content we've completed so that they could accomplish the same things? What if we spent less time telling people they're noobs because they haven't done what we have or because they chose not to pursue the same challenges we did? What if we just took pride in our own accomplishments without comparing ourselves to everyone else? What if doing all of that made mechanical nerfs unnecessary?

Cataclysm Postmortem

With a lot to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria, I'm going to take a moment to hit the highlights of World of Warcraft's fourth expansion. These observations all come from a fairly casual perspective. I've participated in Raid Finder, but the majority of my time was spent leading 10 person raids with my guild. We formed at the end of Wrath, so Cataclysm is our first expansion together as a guild, and my first expansion as a guild leader. I think we've done well, and again, I'm really looking forward to hitting the shores of Pandaria in the near future. In the mean time, here is how I felt the Cataclysm shook out.

Raiding
The expansion started out tough. Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight were not the nice, happy, introductory raids to Cataclysm like Naxxramas 2.0 was for Wrath of the Lich King. There were some nerfs eventually, but overall, it was hard for a new raiding guild to get started. Firelands proved just as tough, if not more so. That is until they nerfed it. Even with the lower health and damage, Ragnaros was a ridiculously hard fight due to the amount of things happening, and you know, the fire everywhere. Dragon Soul was the first raid of the expansion that felt properly tuned to me. What I mean by properly tuned is that the average raid group makes steady progress throughout the raid, without hitting any enormous roadblocks that couldn't be over come with gear or practice. While that could be said about any encounter, I never felt hopeless against a boss in Dragon Soul, only that we just needed some more time and effort. It's a little more complicated by the introduction of Raid Finder, which allowed us to see and try versions of the fights before we attempted them in 10 person raids.

Speaking of Raid Finder, I think it's a great idea. At one point, playing WoW was not something I could do with my wife, and I only had scant moments where I got to play for any length of time. Raid Finder is perfect for the people without enough time to commit to a guild and weekly raid schedules. It's a good learning tool for those that do run with guild groups, but I learned early on not to get to worked up about gear from Raid Finder. There were too many people wheeling and dealing with the drops to make it worth it.  This is something being addressed in Mists of Pandaria and the way that loot will work in Raid and Dungeon Finder, so that people can't game the system.

80 to 85
I've posted before what I thought about the 5 levels we were given in Cataclysm. It seemed like it wasn't quite enough, but part of that might have been from the leveling zones we were given. Most people zipped around on flying mounts and went from quest hub to quest hub in a linear fashion which made leveling a breeze. Not that it's all that hard to begin with. Because so much of the expansion focused on the revamped 1 to 60 experience, I think the end game levelers rightfully felt that they were given the short end of the stick. With Mists of Pandaria, we again have only 5 levels to work on, but these will now be focused on one continent that we'll have to travel by foot for those 5 levels. While this may slow people down a bit, I believe it will also make the leveling experience more rewarding.

Lore
I used to be a pretty big lore junky. I still am, to an extent, but I haven't kept up with it like I used to. Wrath of the Lich King had one of the best story lines to date as it dealt with some of the major players from the Warcraft RTS games and pitted us against one of the main characters from those games. A lot of us have been playing WoW for the sole purpose of taking down Arthas, the Lich King, and in Wrath, we were given that chance. Cataclysm also brought back a character from the history books. But unlike Arthas, I don't think Deathwing instilled as much intrigue in players because he was not heavily featured in previous games. Still, it was a lot of fun to see the world affected and changed due to his reawakening, even if it did create a sort of skewed timeline with Outland and Northrend.

Each of the new zones and raids fit well with the story. Unlike places like Ulduar (which was still awesome) and Trial of the Crusader, the Cataclysm raids didn't seem to be shoehorned in to fill time until we fought the real bad guy. And even though I'm not a horde player, I enjoyed the Thrall story line. Thrall is a favorite character of mine from the RTS games and the WoW Novels. His journey and the fate of the dragon aspects concludes a long standing storyline for the WoW universe. I'm looking forward to what's in store for Thrall, even as the focus switches to Garrosh, The Horde, and Varian Wrynn.

Final Thoughts
Cataclysm was a blast. We concluded some more long standing story lines withing the universe. Blizzard perfected the tuning of raids, and introduced a whole new way to raid in the process. Leveling wasn't as dynamic as it could have been, but things are looking hopeful for the future. More than anything, I'm ready to put the destruction of the world behind us, and move on to newly discovered lands.

The Mists are Inspiring

Cherry Blossoms

Back when it was announced, I signed up for the WoW Annual Pass. My key purposes for doing so were to get an in-game mount and Diablo III (when it was released), and it was all for the low low price of telling Blizzard I would play their game for another year. Something that was a pretty safe bet. Along with that annual pass came a free invitation to play in the Mists of Pandaria beta when it started, which it did recently. I was not planning on participating much in the beta because I didn't want to spoil myself, or bother with bug reports. That didn't stop me from installing it as soon as I got the invite though.

After installing, I tried to make a pandaran monk, but I logged into about 150,000 other pandaran monks in their starting zone who also got invites this weekend, and the game crashed shortly after that. This being a beta, I was prepared for this. Since the game hadn't fully downloaded, I let it sit for awhile and went to watch TV. Then I get a message from a guildie who happens to write about WoW for a living, asking me if I'd run a dungeon with him because he needs some input for his piece that's due soon. Let's see... midnight? Check. Work night? Yeah, check again... Sure. Why not?

I copy over my main, my hunter Elionene, and log into Pandaria where the other 150,000 people who got their invites at the same time as I did are just starting their adventure in the Jade Forest. I try to adjust my video settings, and the game crashes. I make a note and log back in. I meet up with my guild mate and we form a group and queue up for the first dungeon, Temple of the Jade Serpent. The first thing I notice is that I have no macros or key bindings. I was expecting no addons, but I'd forgotten about the macros and things, so I take a few moments to set up the vital ones. (Later I read a neat trick at WoW Insider for copying over your saved stuff from your real account, along with some other nifty beta advice.)

Apparently the first boss is dead or defeated when we log in. It takes a second to get my bearings and then I realize I'm in a huge library. It's impressive. We find our way to the rest of the group and we fight off a stationary water boss (who I'm told is similar to the Lurker Below mechanics, and I confirm this is true). I think we wiped, but the group seemed understanding, and we ran back in and killed him. From there we go through a series of hallways into a courtyard and fight off some monsters and fight another boss that turns into a dragon. The last boss is one of the Sha. The Sha of Doubt to be exact. I told the party I wasn't sure we could beat him. I didn't know why, but I was very doubtful it would happen. I'm still wondering if they ever got that.

Cloud Sepents

We did end up wiping to him twice. The healer (a pandaran monk healer who kept placing these huge statues everywhere) couldn't heal through some of the damage. Something clicked in the third go round, maybe we overcame the doubt, and we won. So that was fun. I was distracted by my macros and key bindings being off, and I wasn't getting very good frame rates, probably because I was still downloading game information in the background.

After that, I ran from the starting area to the center of the zone where my guildie showed me a pretty awesome bridge. And it was on the way there that I realized how beautiful this place was. It was lush and green with flowers and trees everywhere. Epic stone statues, and the Temple of the Jade Serpent towering above it all. My guild mate showed me the Dawn Bridge. A very long bridge with scenic viewing areas built in. It ended at the top of a hill with a breathtaking view of the temple. I couldn't help gawking at it. I was inspired.

To write again that is. It's been over a year since I've posted anything here about Warcraft. I've thought about it many times, but nothing seemed interesting enough, and I took the time to play other games and do other things. My guild progressed through Cataclysm at a fairly good rate. We've beaten all the normal content, which for a bunch of friends raiding together is really all we wanted to do (with a few exceptions).

Dawn Bridge

But seeing the beta, and what we have to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria, got me excited about WoW again. I never gave it up, but I was logging in mainly to interact with the people in my guild, and lead a few raids to clear content, or level an alt with my wife. I wasn't compelled to write about any of that like I was when I saw cloud serpents being ridden through the azure sky from the top of a skinny mountain that I'd walked to across a serpentine bridge. I kept thinking how the last couple of expansions were pretty bleak. Northrend was cold and foreboding. The Cataclysm destroyed much of the existing world. This is the first time in awhile we've seen some places that are flourishing and vibrant.

It feels good to write again. I plan to continue to do so, whether it's about the beta or lore or anything else. I've also included a few pictures of some of the sites I saw. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, and have a good morning.

WoW Blogger Map Idea

I haven't posted in over a month, but I'm still here, lurking.  Real life takes over sometimes and priorities and blah blah blah, so here's a quick something.

http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2011/03/call-to-action-bloggers-please-read/

The MMO Melting Pot is possibly putting together a map with bloggers pinned all over it to give us an idea of where we're all at.  I think it's a fun idea, so I'm posting it here, to get the word out to all of you who read this blog.  Hopefully you're still checking it even after a month of inactivity.

It's also posted at Blog Azeroth.

http://www.blogazeroth.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2793

It already says in my sidebar that I'm in Western North Carolina. Asheville area to be more exact. So it will be fun to see if any of the many blogs I read happen to have writers within shouting distance of me.

That's all for now. I'll try to have some WoW related posts up in March as opposed to February where there was nothing.  Thanks for checking in, and have a good morning.

Lessons in Lore: The Vortex Pinnacle

The Vortex Pinnacle resides in the Skywall, the elemental plane of air. Fortunately for you, the only trick to getting there is being able to fly above the zone of Uldum. The instance itself is in the skies in the Southeastern portion of the zone. 

In Uldum you will come across the city of Orsis while helping the Ramkahen. Orsis was attacked by wind elementals, servants of Al'akir, who has aligned himself and his armies with Deathwing. Orsis is now left in ruins, but you are able to help out some of the buried citizens in the sand and report back to the Ramkahen on what happened. You also learn that the air elementals took at least one prisoner, and it's up to you to go to the Vortex Pinnacle and save him. 

Essentially, the Vortex Pinnacle is just a staging ground for the armies of Al'akir to attack the citizens of Uldum. Thankfully you and your flying mount can take the fight to the army's doorstep and take out some high ranking officials before you eventually make it to the Throne of Four Winds to take on Al'akir himself. 

The lore is very sparse on the bosses of the dungeon. The first boss, Grand Vizier Ertan is a standard sentry, telling you that you're not welcome in the Skywall.  The last boss, Asaad, Caliph of the Zephyrs seems to be a high ranking member of the elementals calling on Al'akir's aid during the fight.  The title, Caliph, is an old title of Islamic leaders, and translates as successor. This fits with the Arabic theme that Blizzard has gone with for the denizens of the Skywall.  Asaad is classified as a Djinni or Djinn, which are akin to genies. The middle boss of the dungeon is a dragon named Altairus. Altair means the flying one, or bird of prey in Arabic. Altairus drops Reins of the Dragon of the North Wind and starts the fight facing North.  It makes sense that Al'akir would have flying creatures in his armies, as well as the many elementals. 

Vortex Pinnacle introduces us to the Skwall, the armies of Al'akir, and the danger the pose to the land of Uldum and the rest of the world.  When you go in to the instance, take some time to look around. It's actually quite beautiful. 

Lessons in Lore: The Stonecore

Blizzard actually gives us a fair bit of lore information on The Stonecore, which you can read at the official site here.  The information was released as a build up to the Cataclysm expansion to introduce people to the kinds of things they should be getting excited about as the release date got closer. Here's a quick summary before we expand on it a little.

The Stonecore is the heart of Deepholm, the elemental plane of earth.  Before Deathwing was corrupted by the Old Gods, he was the Earthwarder, the Dragon aspect of earth, alongside the likes of Malygos and Alexstrasza. So Deepholm and Deathwing are well connected. Sometime before the start of World of Warcraft, Deathwing suffered a defeat at the hands of the other aspects. They presumed him dead, but in reality he had just retreated to the Stonecore, where he rested, regained his strength, and spread his influence throughout Azeroth via the Twilight's Hammer Cultists.

When he got better, Deathwing took off like a dragon out of Deepholm and broke into the mortal plane of Azeroth where he proceeded to burn everything he could set his eyes on. In the process he destroyed what we know as the World Pillar, a significant piece of planet supporting architecture that you'll spend the majority of your time questing in Deepholm to repair.

With Deathwing now gone, the Twilight's Hammer Cultists regard the place of his recovery as sacred. They will protect it with their lives, and use it to perform dark rituals in service to their lord and the Old Gods.

When you first enter the Stonecore, you'll be tasked with chasing down a Twilight cultist who is transporting some important documents. If you've quested in Deepholm at all, you'll recognize the carrier as Millhouse Manastorm. Millhouse was first seen back in The Burning Crusade as part of the final boss battle in the Arcatraz.  He was a prisoner there that when released, assists you in defeating the final boss. We don't really learn how Millhouse got involved with the Twilight's Hammer cultists, but he's here now, and it's up to you to stop him. After chasing him for awhile, Millhouse decides to put a stop to your shenanigans and begins to cast the spell Impending Doooooooooom! Fortunately, you never find out what exactly the spell does because Millhouse gets eaten by Corborus before he can finish casting the spell.

Corborus is a gyreworm, similar to the many other stone worms you see throughout Deepholm.  After eating Millhouse, it's up to you to stop the worm from eating you and your party as another snack.

Your next encounter is with Slabhide, a stone drake who, under the control of the cult, tries to keep you from getting closer to the inner sanctum of the Stonecore.  Not much else is known about the drake, but you have to vanquish him to move further into the dungeon.

Ozruk is a stone giant, and is a child of Therazane, the Stonemother. She tells you that he did not return from the Stonecore when she called to him. She believes him to be under the power of the dark magics of the cult and requests that you return him to the earth. You do what you have to do and open the way to the World's Heart at the center of the Stonecore.

And in that heart is High Priestess Azil, who along with her hundreds of followers,  is preparing a ritual of some dark origin.  After putting a stop to that, you may want to take a look around the room behind her altar.  This is the very place that Deathwing lay before he burst into the world above.  If you recall the opening cinematic of Cataclysm, it shows the cultists reinforcing Deathwing's armor plating before he takes off.  This is the place where that happened.  And thanks to you, it's now out of the hands of the cultists. For now.

Lessons in Lore: Throne of the Tides

The Throne of the Tides is located in Vashj'ir. More specifically in the Abyssal Maw within a large, hard to miss, whirlpool. It's important to note that while the instance is available immediately at level 80 you don't have a lore reason to go there until you've completed the entirety of Vashj'ir. So much of this post will be a spoiler for what you experience while questing in that zone. If you have quested in that zone, hopefully this will sum up what you experienced and fill in anything you may have missed. Again, spoilers for Vashj'ir if you have not completed the zone.

If you get the quest from your major city to Vashj'ir, you'll be put on a boat and shipped off over seas to get there.  But it doesn't take long before you're attacked by a giant squid. That's Ozumat. Remember him, you'll be seeing him again.  Lost at sea, you're rescued by the Earthen Ring, specifically by a shaman named Erunak Stonespeaker.  He'll set you and your buddies straight, teach you to breath and walk under water, and put you on the path to go through the rest of the zone. After a few more quests, you'll be attacked by a force of Naga and get the general idea that the Naga are after something here and are building an army and taking prisoners to accomplish that something.

A little later on, Erunak will have you go on a sort of vision quest in which you act out events that happened sometime in the past as a Naga Battlemaiden under the command of Lady Naz'Jar. Lady Naz'Jar and her battlemaidens are fighting against the Vry'kul who have taken up residence in the ruined city of Vashj'ir. It is here that you begin to learn of the Naga's intentions. After taking back the city of Vashj'ir, the Naga intend to mount an attack upon Neptulon, Elemental Lord of the Water. This is where things get interesting.

Neptulon is one of the four elemental lords, along with Ragnaros, Therazane, and Al'akir, all of which make appearances in Cataclysm. We know that Ragnaros and Al'Akir have sided with Deathwing, whereas Therazane becomes friendly with players during the events in Deepholm. It is well known that the Naga were once Night Elves who were drowned after the events of the Sundering 10,000 years ago, including Queen Azshara herself, and it was speculated that Neptulon, under the Old Gods influence had initiated that transformation.  But with the events of Cataclysm and Vashj'ir, it seems more apparent that the Naga were transformed directly by the Old Gods, and now they seek to overthrow Neptulon and take his place as rulers of the water.

So all of this culminates in an epic battle where you, Erunak, and Alliance and Horde forces face off against the Naga as they attempt to destroy Neptulon.  The Naga, with the aid of faceless ones and Ozumat (the squid who shipwrecked you) are able to push Neptulon down to the Throne of Tides through the Abyssal Maw.  Erunak is captured and taken down there as well.  Lady Naz'jar, who spearheaded the Naga attack on Neptulon now has him imprisoned in his own throne room, and it's up to you to free him and make sure the realm of water stays under control of the elements and not the Naga.

So now we finally have an understanding of what all of these people are doing within the Throne of the Tides.

Lady Naz'Jar is the first boss, and was the one who organized the Naga attack upon Vashj'ir and Neptulon.  While she wasn't able to destroy him, she was able to push him back to the Throne of the Tides. Thankfully you'll be able to get rid of her before she's able to cause further damage.

Commander Ulthok, The Festering Prince is a faceless one, which further seems to implicate the Old Gods and the Naga are in cahoots. He appears after you get rid of Lady Naz'Jar, attempting to stop you from getting any further than you already have.

You find Erunak Stonespeaker within, but he's being mind controlled by Mindbender Ghur'sha, who also happens to be attached to Erunak's head. Your goal here is to rescue Erunak and hopefully not have to kill him in order to get rid of Ghur'sha.

With Lady Naz'Jar defeated, Erunak rescued, and all other obstacles removed, your last task is to rescue Neptulon who has been weakened and trapped in the throne room.  It's important that you free him because the Naga's pet squid, Ozumat, is out to finish the job he started at the Abyssal Maw.  With a little help from Neptulon, you should be able to get rid of Ozumat and ensure that Neptulon remembers what you did for him when the time comes to fight Ragnaros in Patch 4.1.

I wish that I had been able to finish Vashj'ir before I did Throne of the Tides for the first time. The design seems a bit wonky in that you can easily finish Vashj'ir and out level the instance before you even know about it, or have the quests for it.  And it's a shame too, since the way the story of Vashj'ir culminates in a huge battle and a dungeon where you assist the Tidehunter in a fight against a giant squid is pretty epic. When I went in for the first time, I had no idea who Naz'JarVasj'ir.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Were 5 Levels Enough?

Since I couldn't recently find the time or subject matter to write about anything I thought up myself, this post is brought to you courtesy of Ringo Flinthammer via the Blog Azeroth shared topics forum.

Ringo asks, "For the first time, WoW's latest expansion, Cataclysm, only raised the level cap by 5 levels, in addition to the other content it added. Was Blizzard right to make this call? All other things being equal -- the same number of high level zones and dungeons, for instance -- should they have raised the cap by 10 levels? Should the fourth expansion be a 5-level or 10-level jump?"


When Blizzard announced the next expansion would only be 5 levels instead of 10, I was probably about as shocked as everyone else. Did that mean it was only half an expansion? Would the overall content introduced with Cataclysm be less than what we've gotten used to with previous expansions? A lot of people probably thought Blizzard was taking the easy road by having to develop only five levels of content.  I think after experiencing the Cataclysm first hand, I can see a lot of reasons why they went with only five levels, and it certainly wasn't to screw us out of content.

There are different types of people who play WoW, and Blizzard tries to provide ways for all of those types of people to enjoy the game. I want to look at just two of those types of people. Those who like leveling, and those who don't.  Typically those who like the aspect of leveling aren't as committed to end game content (raiding, heroics, gearing, etc.), though that is certainly not a given. Levelers may like to quest, try out different races and class combinations, play a lot of alts, and other things that are all part of the 1 to 85 leveling process. Those who don't like leveling usually want to level as fast as they can so they can enjoy the end game content more. Again, not always the case. These end-gamers like to spend more time at the top level and therefore may have fewer low level alts, and enjoy running end game heroics and raids to get the best gear.  These are some pretty specific stereotypes, but I'll be using these viewpoints to look at two very different ways of seeing the 5 levels in Cataclysm.

Levelers
At first you might think people who love to level should be disappointed in only 5 new levels in Cataclysm. You move through zones a bit faster than you may have in Wrath or Burning Crusade, and there aren't as many new zones to begin with. While it probably takes a good deal more time to get to 85 from 80 than it did to get to 75 from 70, the process of going from starting level to top level is faster, so those people who really enjoy the leveling process have a shorter time in that process than they had before.

But there is something else to look at.  If you do enjoy leveling, there's a good chance you enjoy alts and leveling early levels as well, and Cataclysm practically revamped the 1-60 leveling experience for every class and race. That means that in addition to 80-85, we got 1-60 as well. So if you really like leveling, then you got quite a bit more than just 10 levels. New content, new quests, new levels, and new places to see.  If you're not that invested in end game content, there's a whole new world for you to explore.  I think we have to take this into account when looking at what was added in Cataclysm.  There might only be five more new levels, but they also upgraded a whole 60 levels of quests and zones.

End-gamers
I think Blizzard really likes its end game crowd.  For people who only level because they have to in order to run end game content, and thus want to get it over with as quickly as possible, well, now they only have 5 levels to contend with instead of 10.  And to top that off, there is about as much end game content in Cataclysm as there was in Wrath and TBC.  There are three raids, all accessible at 85 with a relatively similar gear level, and numerous heroic dungeons to run. There were three raids when Wrath started as well, and that was after you had to slog through 10 levels of content.

End-gamers probably got the better end of the deal in this regard compared to those who like to level. While the latter do have a whole new 1-60 experience to enjoy, they don't get as much content in the higher levels.

Personally, I'm a mix of both of these views as I very much enjoy leveling and seeing new content, but I also have spent the majority of time on Elionene, my main character, to get her ready for raiding. I'm looking forward to raiding and downing bosses, but I'm also looking forward to when I can spend less time getting ready for raids, and more time working on alts and seeing early level zones.  Lal and I both would love to spend some time on the new Dwarves or Night Elves we created between 4.0.1 and the release of the expansion.

Again, these are two very specific points of view. But I think it illustrates well that 5 levels, for the most part, was enough for this expansion. The reasoning being that Blizzard also spent an inordinate amount of time and resources on both the earlier leveling experience and the end game content, to keep the ultimate amount of content in this expansion on par with their other expansions. So for the next expansion, if they are only introducing new content and not changing any of the old content, then I would hope for at least 10 new levels. But I don't think that's what will happen. It think they'll stick with the 5 level expansion from now on, just so they don't get numbers that seem ridiculously big to work with. So it will take 3 more expansions to get to level 100, rather than 2. Here's hoping for a revamped Outland and maybe even Northrend in a couple expansions.

Lessons in Lore: Blackrock Caverns

Cataclysm is officially underway, and with new zones, new quests, new dungeons, and a plethora of other new things, it's not hard to get lost in the shuffle of what is actually happening with the lore.  Case in point, while questing in Hyjal, you'll meet a familiar gnome who has a problem. It's related to Hyjal, but he sends you all the way over to the other side of the world. In a mole machine no less. Blackrock Caverns is one of the new 5-person dungeons for levels 80-81.  Let's take a look inside.

The gnome who you meet in Hyjal is none other than Finkle Einhorn. If you've ever been to Upper Blackrock Spire and fought The Beast, killed him, and skinned him, you'll remember finding Finkle inside. Thanks to his trusty lava suit, he survived the belly of the Beast and now he's assisting the Guardians of Hyjal in investigating Ragnaros' return to Azeroth. Apparently Finkle's an expert on the matter due to his previous exploits.  Of course, we could have told him we saw Ragnaros and Deathwing having a little heart to heart as we flew into the zone for the first time.  Regardless, Finkle informs you that the Twilight's Hammer Cultists are moving elementals between Hyjal and Blackrock Caverns.  Along with Finkle's bodyguard, Raz Skullcrusher, you hop in the mole machine and show up on the doorstep of the instance.

Blackrock Caverns is physically located near the entrance to Blackrock Spire. Upon entering, you'll start the quest chain with Finkle and Raz that involves you chasing a crazed Orc throughout the instance.  Rather than regurgitate the quest line to you, let's take a look at the bosses of the dungeon and see what exactly they're up to, and how it relates to what is going on in Hyjal.

Rom'ogg Bonecrusher

Bonecrusher is the first boss of the instance. He's an Ogre Lord working for the Twilight's Hammer Cult under the leadership of Cho'gall. When you reach him, he's torturing and interrogating Raz, presumably to find out what he's doing in the Blackrock Caverns. Once defeated, Raz is released, but he's not quite the same Raz.

Corla, Herald of Twilight

Next you'll come upon Corla draining the energy from a Nether Drake into other cultists.  She is a high ranking member of the Twilight's Hammer Cult, using her abilities to take that drained energy and turn regular cult members into drakonids. She's not afraid to die, for death is what all of the cultists are devoted to. But to save Raz and to prevent the cultists from becoming drakonids, die she must. 

Karsh Steelbender

Like all good armies, the cult is in need of armor and weapons.  Karsh Steelbender is the resident evil blacksmith making the necessary equipment. He also happens to be in your way as you chase after Raz. 

Beauty

Beauty is most likely the mate of The Beast from Blackrock Spire.  She also happens to have a litter of puppies named Lucky, Spot, and Buster after the dogs of 101 Dalmations. No matter how cute you think they are, Finkle doesn't think leaving her or her litter alive is good for anyone, so you'll have to take care of Beauty just like you took care of The Beast.

Ascendant Lord Obsidius

Lord Obsidius is the last boss of Blackrock Caverns, and introduces us to a new class of enemy, the Elemental Ascendant.  These elementals appear to have originally been Twilight Cultists who through a ritual or draining of power from other elementals, have ascended to a new form.  Obsidius appears to be the one in charge of all of the operations within Blackrock caverns, orchestrating the transport of elementals, armor, equipment, and the transformation of cultists into drakonids.  Obsidius claims he cannot die, so it's possible we will see him later on, perhaps in the Twilight Highlands. or at least he will not be the last Elemental Ascendant we see. 

Taking it all in at once, Blackrock caverns appears to be a staging ground for the Twilight's Hammer Cultists to supply troops, equipment, and magically created monsters to the battle for Hyjal to fight against the druids there.  Thankfully, with Finkle and Raz's help, you're able to cause quite a lot of damage to their operations, and hopefully swing the battle in the Guardians of Hyjal's favor.

First Impressions of the Shattering

After reading that maintenance had been extended until 8 PM EST, Lal and I settled in around dinner time to watch the season six finale of Deep Space 9 which we've been renting from Netflix.  However around 6 PM we got notification from several sources that the servers were up! So we logged on to have a look around at the newly destroyed world.

I logged in on Elionene in Ashenvale at the graveyard right next to Astranaar.  The town was on fire, and a horde outpost was just a stone's throw away. Ack! I checked on the NPCs and they seemed to have things under control, so I rode over to the Raynewood Retreat and helped pick off so orc invaders and talked to the druids defending the tree.  From there it was on up to Felwood.  Oddly enough Felwood seemed like it was about the same as it had been.

I checked my hearthstone, and realized that it had been set to Teldrassil.  From what I could see, every one of my character's hearths had been reset to the racial capital city.  So off to Darnassus I went.  The new Worgen area of the city was kind of cool, and there are fancy new flight points all over the place.  I paid my respects to Malfurion Stormrage, back from the Emerald Dream. He's up holding court with Tyrande in the Temple of the Moon in case you were looking for him.

From there I took the boat to Stormwind. I have to give props to the designers for the Stormwind overhaul.  It's huge, and as one of my guild mates put it, it feels more like a real place.  There's more going on, and there's more NPC movement and activity.  In particular, check out the huge graveyard North of the cathedral, and look for the memorial to Varian Wrynn's deceased wife, Tiffin.  Speaking of Varian, the keep is newly redone as well with a giant statue of the King in front.  Anduin Wrynn is all grown up, which is probably a good indicator of how much time has passed.  In game time, it's probably been at least two to three years since we went North to fight the Lich King.  Since then, parts of the city have been renovated, and others destroyed.

During this time, other guild members were looking at other zones.  One of them mentioned he had seen foxes, which are new with the patch, and tamable. At first I went to Redridge to get a fox, but all of them were black. Instead I had to make my way to Loch Modan to find the red foxes.  It's  not much of a loch anymore actually. The dam is busted and the water is all gone, but I found the foxes and got one or my very own.

Foxes are unique pets in that they have a "play" ability which just causes it to jump up and dance on its hind feet. It wasn't long before I realized that you can tell the fox to play and then send it in to attack something and it will continue the play animation while it's attacking things.  After checking out the new Deadmines, we decided to have some fun with the fox, and Marilee was able to capture it for You tube. I'm still laughing. Beware dancing foxes!

Waiting for Deathwing

It's here! The Shattering is happening this very moment.  Deathwing will be destroying Azeroth from 3 AM PST to 11 AM PST and when we log in we'll get to see everything that's changed.  Did you do anything to prepare? Throw any late night "End of the World" parties? Where did you park your characters to await the end of the world? Somewhere practical like Stormwind or Orgrimmar? Or maybe somewhere sentimental like the Barrens, Darkshore, or Hillsbrad?

I moved Salthier to Stormwind and set his hearth there as well. I sent a couple of my other characters to Ironforge to see what the Dwarves are up to.  But for Elionene, I took her to Ashenvale, so the first thing I'll be able to take a look at when I log in tonight are the changes to what I think of as her home and one of my favorite zones.  For the rest of the night, it will probably be running around and saying, "ooh look at that!"

I was going to write about some of the things that are changing with this patch and what things still won't be available until you install Cataclysm on the 7th of December, but WoW Insider already has a pretty good summary up.  Check it out here. Of the things that are mentioned in that article, here are the ones that stand out to me.

- Those NPCs that took cloth in exchange for city reputation are gone.  In their place you can buy city tabards that will provide reputation from dungeon running, just like the Northrend faction tabards.  

- Experience from level 71 - 80 is reduced by 20% making it that much faster to reach the level cap before Cataclysm actually hits.  My lone horde Death Knight is currently 78, so this will help give me incentive to push on to 80.

- New hunter pets and new pet skins for old pets.  Monkeys! Foxes! Beetles! Oh my!

- Dalaran and Shattrath portals are being removed, and replaced with class trainers.  If you're someone like me, this might not affect you much because I don't do much in game besides leveling and running dungeons and raids. However, if you're doing dailies, and using the auction hall a lot, then the next two weeks are going to be very inconvenient because the quests and AH are separated by a lot of land and sea with no easy way to get back and forth.** If I had a level 80 mage, I'd park myself in Dalaran and advertise portals for all of the people that forget to set their hearthstones in other cities or are stuck in Dalaran after the patch.  Might stand to make a few gold. 

- What we won't be able to do until Dec. 7th is anything Goblin or Worgen related.  The newest archaeology profession is not available.  Old world flying is not going to be purchasable until the expansion is installed. Guild leveling and achievements won't be implemented, and of course, the new 80+ zones will not be accessible.

It seems like even with all of the changes there aren't a lot of new things to do with patch 4.0.3a unless you want to roll one of the new race/class combos like Dwarf shaman or a Tauren paladin. I'm not really interested in rolling any new toons until after I get my mains to 85 and start raiding. So tonight I'll just be observing the changes, and maybe knocking out the last few levels on my Death Knight. Incidentally, if you were farming the Cataclysm bosses for loot, Blizzard has made them available around the clock  So there's that, oh, and a holiday world event. You can roast your turkeys over the burning coals of what used to be Stormwind!

**Edit: I was just reading this article on PC GAMER.  Apparently there will be an auction hall in Shattrath and Dalaran. So even if you have to bribe a mage or take a plane, train, and boat ride to get to and out of those cities, at least you should have all the resources you need at hand while you're there. The article has a lot of other cool information straight from J. Allen Brack, Blizzard's Productino Director.

Coming Up Next, The Shattering

The latest patch is hitting the servers today. That would be 4.0.3, and as many sources will tell you, this is not the patch that will bring the shattering of Azeroth and thus the new zones and quests.  That will happen with 4.0.3a which is expected in a couple weeks, shortly before we all install the expansion proper. Still, the fact that 4.0.3 is going live is exciting! The Elemental Invasion is going strong on live servers currently.  Lal and I participated in the defense of Stormwind and Ironforge last night. It basically consisted of attacking large elementals and then waiting a few seconds to see if those attacks actually worked.  The sheer amount of people in the capital cities, combined with all of the fighting made for some heavy latency.  Somehow we prevailed, and we got to fight some pretty neat bosses in various places around the world with our guild.

Speaking of our guild, we've recently started our own. Theoretical Novelty on the Moon Guard server. Our goal is to be a solid ten person raiding guild in Cataclysm, but not hardcore.  I like the description I've heard tossed around of "Skilled Casual" in that we have limited time to raid (two or three nights a week), but we're no slouches when it comes to knowing our classes and learning to work together as a team. I look forward to facing these new challenges with the new guild, and seeing how it all pans out. Along with the raiding, many of us are role players in some fashion, whether that's in character stories, in game events, or elsewhere.

When we started it was hard to keep interest in running raids since we were just shy of a full team, so many of us turned to more relaxing game time distractions of rep grinds and alts while we wait for the coming Cataclysm. Lal and I finally got Bogdan and Nadya to level 80. And a few other members have been diligently working on disappearing reputations and other achievements that may or may not be available once Deathwing comes.  With the release date of December 7th looming ever closer, the excitement for seeing new zones, running new dungeons and raids, and playing Worgen and Goblins is building.  Activity levels of our members are starting to increase bit by bit. Hopefully recruitment will pick up with the expansion so we can field a full ten person team for Cataclysm raiding, and hopefully we're up to the challenge of doing those raids.

All in all, I think I've accomplished most of what I was hoping to do before the expansion.  The last thing I can think to do is get my Death Knight to 80. He's almost 78 at the moment, and he would be my first Horde 80. I don't get a lot of time to play him, but my hope was that I'd be able to do some of the more lore centric quests from the Horde point of view, and so far it's been a lot of fun. Aside from that, I'm making sure to do all of the pre-Cataclysm events, and really understand the lore behind what's happening with the world.  It's a lot of fun, and it's great fodder for future blog posts.  I'm fairly sure not everyone is familiar with who Cho'gall is, and what he has to do with the Doomsday Cult. And what ties all of this to Deathwing? Will there be another Old God to deal with, and what will his, her, or its part be in all of this? Some of my more popular posts have been the Lessons in Lore stuff I used to do, so look for more or those, and more frequent posts in the near future!

Home Sweet Ashenvale

This week's Blog Azeroth shared topic asks us about our in game home.

What does 'home' mean in your book? Do you have a particular home in Azeroth - a place you feel you belong, that you know like the back of your hand, or that you feel more comfortable in than anywhere else? Would this be different for different characters or different factions, or is there just a place that really resonates with you? Do you think Cataclysm will prompt you to find new and different turf, or will you be heading back there first thing to see what might have changed? If it is destroyed, how do you think that will affect your experience of the game, or your characters' lives? Or do you think the whole idea of having a home doesn't even really apply to a game?

As the question goes, it's fairly broad. There are many things that can be considered home about Azeroth. The first aspect that comes to my mind is about my characters and their backgrounds. Surprisingly, out of all of my high level characters, only one of them has a significant link to her home, and that is Elionene, my main. Of the others, most are displaced such as the Draenei, Bogdan, and Khristin. And Salthier has given up his idea of home and become an ambassador of sorts to the humans of the Eastern Kingdom. He could call the Night Elf lands his home, but he travels so much, it's not really a concern to him. (Caution: Minor Cataclysm spoilers ahead, if you're trying to remain ignorant of everything that is about to happen.)

But Elionene is different. She was born and raised in the forest of Ashenvale, and it will forever be a place of peace and restoration to her. It's where her fondest memories of her family are. It's where she learned the skills to be a hunter, and it is the heart of the Night Elven lands where many of her faithful pets come from. When she needs to get away from the battles in Northrend, the tumultuous nature of Outland, or the constant presence of people in Azeroth, she can find a secluded area of Ashenvale and find a refuge unlike any other.

Little does she know the Cataclysm is going to take this home away from her. When Deathwing makes his debut, Ashenvale will erupt. Literally. A volcano will appear in the middle of the land. The orcs of the Horde will take advantage of this turmoil and take more land from the Night Elves in Ashenvale, cutting down the trees for their barracks and fortresses. The Night Elves will be pushed back to Astranaar and be constantly berated by scouting parties from the East and the West. Ashenvale will no longer be the refuge it once was for Elionene and others like her.

How will this affect her? I can see it hardening her a little bit. It will further antagonize her towards the Horde. She's already distrustful. This act may very well make her hostile. It certainly gives her motivation to lead a charge against Deathwing, and the Elemental Lords who will be ravaging the land. Luckily for her, she has a band of adventurers and friends willing to fight along side of her to protect the world they hold so dear, and the people in it.

Personally speaking, when I think of home in Warcraft, I also think of the Night Elven lands. More specifically the atmosphere and music of Teldrassil and Darkshore. Whenever I find myself in those areas with any character and the music starts to play, it immediately takes me back to when I first rolled Elionene and played through the Starter zones. And then when my wife and I rolled Salthier and Lal to play through those same areas, it just intensified the feeling that this is where it all began. This is where my roots in the game are. It's kind of like remembering when you first played the original Super Mario Brothers, or why geeks like me get all nostalgic for games like Centipede, Dig Dug, and Pac-Man. It brings back a time when things were simpler, and you were just learning how to do everything. It was all new and wonderful.

After thinking about the topic for awhile, I'm encouraged to work on the concept of home for some of my other existing characters, and especially for some characters I expect to roll in the near future. What will my Worgen consider home? What about the Gnomes as they attempt to take back what many of them consider their home? Home is an important concept, and I think the Cataclysm expansion is an ideal place to focus on what it means for us and our characters.