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.

Why do you want to kill the Lich King?

I posed this question to my guild. We're getting close to the release of Patch 3.3, and I'm fairly excited at the chance to go head to head with The Lich King. We've worked hard to become a guild that can role play as well as we raid, with our focus being on 10 person progression since our desire as a guild was not to field the number of members necessary to run 25s. I have been leading our raids since the beginning of Wrath, and when Icecrown does open its gates, we'll be there waiting.

I asked in our forums what your character's personal reason for defeating the Lich King was. As a player, I feel I have some vested interest in this because I've played Warcraft III where I literally played as and watched Arthas seal his fate as he climbed the Frozen Throne. This is a culmination of those events I played through several years ago and I'm eager to see what happens. Will he die? Will he be redeemed? Will the Burning Legion show up again? He was their creation after all. I'm extremely excited to play through the dungeon quests, to see the storyline for so many characters progress, and to deal with the aftermath and how that will affect my own characters, the guild, and the world at large.

Elionene has waged war on the Legion ever since her father died at My. Hyjal. She sees the Lich King as an extension of the Legion and has vowed to remove this threat from the world. She also happens to be in the position of a leader of a small group of adventurers that share her sentiments, though they all have their own reasons. Salthier is concerned with the rifts this war is placing between the Horde and Alliance. It took their combined might to stop Archimonde. Can they succeed against Arthas divided?

I bet there are some good stories out there. Maybe you don't want to kill the Lich King. Maybe you're fine with him. Maybe you want to be him. Maybe you'll do whatever grants you the biggest profit, monetary or otherwise. Maybe you're already bent on future threats, and are willing to leave the Lich King to others.

I've read some rumors about what is supposed to happen with the defeat of Arthas. I'm still looking forward to seeing it first hand. Ulduar was hard to figure in, and sort of a let down at the end. We killed (or did we?) Yogg-Saron, but what effect did that have on the world? He wasn't even out of his prison yet when we got to him, so why was he such a big threat? We didn't have the Alliance or the Horde backing us. We just went along to help out Brann.

Then the Coliseum came with Tirion's grandiose plans to take the winners to Icecrown. Elionene still holds that this is foolishness, but she goes along with it because it is what is expected of her and her friends to reach the gates of Icecrown. And it's also the only way to curry favor with the Silver Covenant, who she aspires to be exalted with. She does what she must.

Now we're closer than ever to Icecrown, and this time, the battles should mean something. But what does it mean for you? Why do you want to kill the Lich King?

It's Here!

We downloaded patch 3.0.2 last night and installed it. I actually had to make room on my hard drive to accommodate it. This thing is big! Then we joined the millions of people around the world as we signed in to the server and....waited to retrieve our characters. And then we waited for game to load. But hey, we got cool new loading screens to look at.

Actually, it took so long we set the laptops aside and started watching the TV show Chuck from Monday night. We got about halfway through it when we noticed that our characters got logged in. Of course things were buggy, our addons didn't work (so we disabled them), and everywhere you went was really crowded and thus our frame rates were low.

The first thing I noticed were the new achievements since as soon as you log in you achieve a bunch of stuff. Then my first thought was click my pets and mounts and make them the spell items and free up some bag space. As soon as I learned my first vanity pet I got the achievement, "Can I keep him?" Very cute. Of course, everyone and their dog has that achievement.

It was about this time that we got booted. So back to watching TV and waiting to load again. We got back in and it was immediately apparent that the pets and mounts we had just learned were no longer in our spell books. Oh, and we didn't have the items either. /panic. Apparently we were not the only ones affected, and we saw later on that it was a known problem and had something to do with display issues. I'm still waiting for the hot fix to this. I want my hippogryph back!

With that out of the way, Lal and Elionene headed to Darnassus to learn new abilities and talents. We chose Darnassus because we figured it would be the least crowded. Throughout all this, we had gotten on vent with a couple guildies and were talking back and forth about things. A few people in the guild were grinding their inscription ability. One of our members made it to 350 last night. He's crazy. Lal kept her Discipline/Holy build, moving a couple talents around to grab some of the new talents. Elionene stayed Beast master and went 51/10 into Marksman. I have the extra points for my pet and the ability to tame exotic pets, but for now I'm not sure which exotic pet I want. Another hunter in the guild made his way to Azuremyst Isle to tame the newly available core hound, The Kirken. He collects all white pets and mounts, so I was excited for him to get the only white core hound in the game. He's still deciding on a name. In homage to the mob and his quest, I would call him Kirkenstocks.

Salthier logged in and specced 51/10 Feral. I had to give up omen of clarity, but I really wanted to try out the new Berserk talent. It looks pretty crazy. I'll just have to grab omen when I get to level 71.

After doing all of this, and exploring the new Stormwind Docks, and seeing the hole where Dalaran used to be (and picking up the Going Down? Achievement by falling into the crater) it was already getting way past my bed time.

I heard through the guild forums that the server was still buggy. People were getting kicked every 30 to 60 minutes. And all of our addons are still a little finicky. Some work, but others some cause problems. Outfitter is especially MIA.

The other thing I really wanted to check out was the new calendar option. I really like how it looks, and that you can create your own events, but it's lacking in its ability to allow people to sign up. You can't just post a raid or event and have the whole guild see it. You have to invite people individually. There is a Mass Invite option that was always grayed out for me, so I'll have to take a look at that again. If you're interested in knowing more, Gun Loving Dwarf Chick wrote a fantastic blog post on it. I'm hoping Blizzard adjusts it to be more useful in the near future.

Tonight I'm hoping to try out my new talent trees in some dungeons or quests or something. We have a guild meeting, after which we are going to pub crawl and try and pick up the achievement to drink 25 different beverages. Should be fun.