World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

So, the new WoW expansion has caught everyone by surprise - not to say that people are not expecting it, but the content has definitely blindsided everyone. And that includes me.

In my opinion, Blizzard once again has done a marvelous job. New races, new classes combination, new professions, and most of all the cataclysmic disaster that changed the face of Azeroth as we know it forever. No more empty Old World, no more deserted Azshara/Barrens/Desolace jokes, no more peaceful and tranquil old starter zones. It does bring out the nostalgic part in me. But the opportunity to explore contents that was once familiar does bring forth an excitement - what will we find? How has the land changed?

On one part though, I'm deeply saddened from a lore point of view. Previously, when Neltharion went missing after his defeat at the hand of the combined Dragon Aspects, speculations were abound about what he was up to, where is he and such. A part of me was secretly hoping that, like the Saronite Mine Slaves, he was merely tormented by the ancient whispers of the Old Gods and now that he has failed, they will discard him and move on to the next victim (like Loken). Freed from the grips of the Old Gods, he would be ashamed of what he has done and would seek redemption by returning to offer assistance to the war against the Lich King.

Sad to see that Neltharion has indeed return - but not as a redeemer, but as a destroyer inflamed by thoughts of vengeance.

More thoughts on the expansion later - I wasn't at Blizzcon, and so had to formulate my opinions based on information obtained from Wow.com, the Ten Ton Hammer forums and other bloggers.

Oh, and just for the record - Yes, my toons are active this past weekend, and yes, Aenur did get some good drops. No, I'm not posting anything about them, because I need to go through mountainful of stuff about the new expansion. Maybe in a couple of days I'll post something new. =)

My First Heirloom...

...is the Tattered Dreadmist Mantle I bought off the Argent Crusade's quartermaster for 60 Champion Seals.

Aerdanil the Side-Project now looks cool wearing dead goat skulls on his shoulders - I may wait until I can get him the 'Skull on a Stick' before taking him on a spin to level 30!

Of Exalted, Transfers, and Blackouts

Last weekend went pretty much as planned, except for the unexpected power loss to the housing area where I am when I was doing a PuGged normal Trial of the Champions - that 45-minutes of no power pretty much doomed Aerhandor's chance of getting in a group with those 4 people ever again.

This incident would've only annoy me... if it wasn't for the fact that on the previous Sunday the same housing area was left without power for 3 hours, right when I was in a guild run in a Heroic. What is it with the useless energy company? The blackouts are coming more regularly this year - I think there's been half a dozen incident on this area alone. Maybe I should start marking the incident and then write a public complaint =P

Anyway, rants aside - here's the updates. As I mentioned, it's pretty much what I've planned previously, with only a little adjustment.

Aenur's almost done maxing out the Oracles rep, which I estimate will take another two days at most, and her first Oracles egg yielded a Cobra Hatchling, which promptly went to Aerdanil the Side-Project (netted him an achievement in the process). Her Champion Seals' cache is growing, and she should be able to buy something in the following week. I made her run some Heroics with the guildies (we got Heroic version of Trial of the Champions, Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle, and Violet Hold down in one go) and that made her some Emblems of Conquests. She also got the Majestic Silversmith Shoulderplates and Gauntlets of Capture for her efforts.

Aelyra is now Exalted with SoH - got her Ice Mammoth too - and has begun training as an Argent Aspirant at the Tournament. She'll make it to Valiant this evening if all goes well. At the same time, she's following the daily circuit previously done by Aenur: Doing this dailies will net her rep with The Sunreavers, Warsong Offensive and Argent Crusade. Hopefully, by the time she's a Crusader she'll max out rep with all these factions.

Aerhandor has obtained the penguin pet after getting Exalted with the Kalu'ak, and is now officially in Icecrown, and has started on the Knights of the Ebon Blade's rep. I thought about upgrading his gear, which is uninspiring, which led me to join the afore-mentioned PuG... and which as you know, ended in disaster for me. Bleargh... I hate you, local energy company. Please record that for future reference.

The little adjustment in the setup came with Aerdread. With so much dailies among the four of them to cramp into an average schedule of less than 3 hours, I decided to make Aerdread do the filler circuit... and results immediately shows - he's now Honored with Wyrmrest and got the Fang of Truth for an option to dual-wield it with the Reaper of Dark Souls.

As for the rest of the gang - Aergor dinged 42 after some high-octane caffeine-filled quest running in Dustwallow Marsh. Aeyrin the Rogue and Aerdanil the Side-Project has no level advancement, but made up for that with steady increases in their professions. Oh, and Aerander the bank alt reports the accumulated level of money in the bank has now reached 12k. Booyah!

Musings...

I've been thinking about re-positioning my major toons, who are currently dispersed throughout Northrend trying to bring the forces of the Lich King to their knees. At the moment, this is the setup:

Aenur - Now parked at Sholazar Basin, doing the Oracles dailies for the achievement and immediately afterwards heading to Icecrown to do Argent Tourney dailies for the Champion Seals. Her purpose? To get enough seals to buy Aerdanil the Side-Project and Aeyrin the Rogue their Heirloom items. I'm thinking of making her dive into Heroics whenever possible, to accumulate enough Emblems and buy a Tier-class armor... which she still has none, poor girl. Aside from that, no changes.

Aelyra - She's hanging around K3 in The Storm Peaks, just a flight point away from her SoH dailies. She's about halfway through Revered right now - probably will make it to Exalted in about a week. I'm keen to finish it as soon as possible, since after that I will be sending her to join Aenur in my quest to accumulate enough Champion Seals for my nefarious purposes. And like Aenur, I'm thinking of making her do Heroics and get her Tier-class armor before the end of August.

Aerhandor - He's now doing what I call 'filler dailies circuit' - Kalu'ak and Wyrmrest - named so because of the relative ease of the circuit and the short amount of time in order to do it (4 dailies in 2 separate zones in under 25 minutes). He's about to get Exalted with the Kalu'ak, and once he does (and gets the baby penguin hehe...) I'm sending him to Icecrown to open up the Ebon Blade dailies and make him grind the rep all the way to Exalted. At the same time, I need to assemble the gear requirement for him because he's still in mostly Eviscerator PvP, which is not good enough for me. I'll need to get mats to make him his own Titansteel Destroyer, but at least with Aelyra's help he's now sporting a cool Trollwoven Spaulders and Trollwoven Girdle.

Aerdread - Now in Argent Tournament ground. Recently he hit 440 in Engineering. And that's it. Well... in truth he has been grinding Thunder Bluff and The Sunreavers rep, but being a DK he has a bit of a handicap with major city reps (not having done enough lowbie quests, hence most faction standing at Honored or below). So instead of making him slough through that, I'm deploying him to The Storm Peaks to replace Aelyra once she's transferred to Icecrown. Hopefully by the time he hits Exalted with SoH (and get that Mammoth) I will have new assignments for him.

In other news, levelling for all alts (including Aergor) will have to be suspended until the mains have their Tier-class armor (noticed how much I want them, yet? =D ).

3.2: The Weekend after da Patch

Honestly, I was expecting the weekend to be a standard 'try-the-patch-experience' and then it would be back to levelling my alts.

I was wrong.

Saturday noon (would be around midnight in the US), Aergor was in Orgrimmar getting his 100% mount and riding skill after dinging 40 a few minutes before. We were inspecting the fierce Swift Brown Wolf Aergor had taken a liking to when something in Trade channel caught my eyes - "LF Tank & 2 DPS for ToC"

Interesting - I had wondered about seeing the new instance, but slightly apprehensive about the quality of the PuG (after reading so much about 'em anyway). But fate always favored the bold, no? So I whispered back, saying that I can bring my other Hunter in, and was promptly met with agreement. So I switched to Aelyra (by this time Aergor's whine had reached record level) and flew from Storm Peaks to the Tournament ground. The original advertiser is a Blood Elf Hunter, epicly geared, and they had a Undead DK tanking. Soon after, we're joined by a Tauren Shaman and Druid, which is our DPS and healer respectively. All were geared in epic, with the exception of the DK, who incidently has 80% epics and the rest in blues.

Only then did a few facts emerged - this is everyone's first time doing the Trial of Champion, and this is the DK's first time tanking. Apprehension turned into something colder in my stomach... even though the group leader announced that they'll be trying this in normal mode. Well, Aelyra and I are going to see first-hand whether fate really favors the bold.

Long story cut short - we wiped. On the encounter where we were automatically dismounted after the last Alliance Champion was felled. Aelyra got 3-shotted by the nasty Gnome mage and our healer by the nasty Human Paladin/Warrior. But since they reset afterwards, the following happened - we lined up for payback and wiped the floor with them. The following encounter - Argent Confessor Blondie and her posse - was a lot easier, even when she summoned the Memory. But on the Black Knight, again we wipe to his Ghoul Explosion (arrr, I r asploded). We managed to down him finally with the DK's DnD and some Volleys.

It was an exhilirating experience - a PuG that just wouldn't give up. We agreed to give the Trial another run (since most of the drops were healer materiel, our healer wants none of it and so it was rolled for vendoring) and this one goes smooth as... well, not as smooth as a perfect run, there were a few deaths, but we didn't wipe. And after that, finally getting the feel of the encounters, we did it a third time. Aelyra managed to grab the Belt of Merciless Cruelty, so her thirst for epic for the day was sated =D

On other fronts, Aerdanil the Side-Project Priest and Aeyrin the Rogue got their Riding skill and mount, Aenur the Paladin ran Heroic AN with fellow guildies Jalkatra, Rage, Oat and Kragg (although sadly that was cut short by a local power failure), some Seals and Emblems were collected and overall, it was a hectic yet productive weekend. I'm looking forward to the following weekend - I wanna try and trample the next Champion in the upcoming Trial muahahaha!

Patch 3.2's Arrival

Honestly, I wasn't expecting Patch 3.2 to hit this early - I was speculating that the earliest the patch would hit was on next Tuesday. Heh... that shows how much I'm unfit to be a weatherman or stock broker, hehehe...

Anyways, back to Patch thingie.

The changes to the mount system has got to be the one improvement that I'm looking forward to. Now that the level requirement has been lowered to level 20, I can now manage to get both Aeyrin the Rogue and Aerdanil the Priest their mount and the skill to ride it. It was a great improvement, seeing the land zip by as you move from one area to the other. This will definitely make levelling a lot faster, and get those delivery quests done sooner. I'm appreciative of what Blizzard has done with this - GOOD JOB! ^_^

After that, I took Aenur out to see the completed Coliseum - which is quite astounding, IMHO - and tried out the new dailies that were implemented. The theory was simple, the execution was not. There's about half a dozen people already there at the quest location, swarming over the quest mob as soon as the bugger spawned. So I took a few minutes to scout the entire area, getting the overall picture into my head, and once most of the peeps are gone, I managed to snag the quest mob without opposition. Got Aenur the new Argent Crusade tabard (now with hearth options!) which definitely looks good on her - the gold borders add a royalty feel to the otherwise standard Argent colors.

Next - Aerhandor the Druid. The new Bear form looks awesome - I can almost touch the new shiny fur... but his Cat form borders on disaster. True, the form is cooler than the old model, but the coloration? Uugh... Guess I may have to get used to it, or if I can't, I'm gonna drag him to the Barber's Shop and dye him in something else.

Aerdread's talent points have been reset - luckily, I did wrote down his spec before the Patch hits, so I just assign points as per. Otherwise, I don't think I should change his spec without further testing.

The Coliseum new instances calls out to me - I know it. But being busy with work and preparation for the baby (shopping, etc.), I may have to postpone any run to the weekends. I hear there's jousting (/shudder), which I'm bad at. Oh, sure, the Valiants are pushovers when you get the rotation down, but the darn Champions cheat, and cheat a lot. So... if everything is alright tonight, I may just move Aenur and Aerdread to the Tournament ground and let them run the instances first (with guildies' help, of course).

Oh, by the way - I need to get as much Champion Seals as possible, those new Heirloom chests will do wonders for my levelling alts...

Of Moar Leveling

After much deliberation, I finally decided that it's time to get Aergor out of the 'small league' and move him into the big boys' field. So last Saturday, I kept dailies on a bare minimum and focused on leveling the Orc.

I started off at Hammerfall, in Arathi Highlands - Aergor massacred boatloads of Syndicate mens, Witherbark Trolls (I think that's the tribe anyways) and Ogres. Then he massacred some Stromgarde defenders and some wild raptors and spiders before saying good-bye and headed off back towards Stranglegank.

In Stranglegank, the bloodthirsty Hunter finished off the Nesingwary circus quests, dinging 37 in the process. A visit to Booty Bay to pick up some quests (I got a maxed-out quest log, which surprised me since I have never gotten THAT message before) and then it's back to killing more stuff that moves, breathes or actually stand on it's own feet. I'm starting to wonder if Aergor has a personality of a psychopath in him...

After his ???? kills later - Ding 38! Off to Grom'gol to get some small, almost insignificant skills from the Hunter trainer and then it's back to more killing and questing...

...but honestly, all those bloodshed has made me a bit green in the face, so I parked him at the nearest inn and switched to Aerdanil the Priest. I goofed around Ghostlands a bit with him and before I know it, Ding 20!

Dear Blizzard, I know some people hated your guts for all those nerfs you made to their favorite class. I know some wicked souls have cursed you due to failure on your part to make Druid forms more lovable. God knows I sometimes threw flak at you for some perceived error I think originated from you. But know this - I'm grateful that you see fit to have double XP for all my rested toons.

Next time, I'm buying you a drink 8-)