Yep. Like what the hell is in the woods?!
Well, as a hardcore raider, I think the whole DMF thing looks way cool! I haven’t visited the Faire in ages because the current one is boring after you’ve seen it once, but this new version looks like it’ll be fun. And I do indeed want the fez-wearing monkey. 
Either they’re fourteen years old and want to prove how mature they are, or they’re middle-aged players with no life who are trying to prove how elite they are. It’s pretty sad.
Speaking of PvP, since I started doing some arenas in the last two weeks I changed up my spec again. Primarily I took points out of Mind Meld and put them in Improved SW: Pain, plus one or two other tweaks. In Battlegrounds and Tol Barad, Mind Meld was nice because I would Mind Spike three times and then get an instant Mind Blast. But in arenas, I just wasn’t getting time to cast all those Mind Spikes without getting interrupted. So I took all the talents that boost my DoTs and reduce the CDs on my escapes. My damage and our win rate went up after that.
I’m gonna quibble a bit and say that the fact that the big reveals so far for the next patch are Transmogfrification, Void Storage, and Darkmoon Faire make me much less unhappy that I’m not playing for awhile due to a newborn in the house.
It’s a fair point to raise that it appears that Blizzard is emphasizing aesthetic, mini-game, and 5-man content over raid content, and for raiders (especially casual raiders like me who really only log on for raiding) it makes it much more tempting to start spending gaming time elsewhere.
Now maybe the Deathwing raid will be epic, have a ton of bosses, and be more than enough to keep raiders busy until the next expansion. But just based on where the effort seems to have been applied, I’m not holding my breath. I’ll go ahead and bet right now that the new 5-mans (combined) will have more bosses than the raid.
I wonder if Blizzard has numbers that indicate that the raiding community is likely to jump ship to a new game soon (or, perhaps, already is doing so) and they are trying to re-position WoW as a more casual 5-man and mini-game centered game (as well as primarily a social game).
I don’t remember what they used to be like–it’s possible they’ve redesigned them. Now every class has a quest to get a helm that’s the same model as their T1, but Rare (blue) instead of Epic.
If they were, they were replaced with new ones. However, they don’t show up as class quests, but instead under BRD. They are class-specific, though.
Hate to say it, Quasi, but your poor video card may just be dying, if it’s suddenly acting up without having updated anything else. Especially if it keeps acting up after you’ve updated the driver.
Because *people in general *are assholes. There are just as many asshole casuals and baddies. Being good at WoW doesn’t magically turn you into a nice person.
Very interesting thought. Certainly they could be gearing up for their own Titan, as well as SW:TOR.
Yeah, but you don’t generally see the asshole casuals berating the raiders for preferring raiding. You see raiders all the time acting like casuals are the lowest of the low who shouldn’t really be playing this game at all unless they spend 5 hours a night in a raid dungeon.
ETA: And I’m not saying ALL raiders are this way, or even MOST raiders. Just that there is a vocal contingent of raiders and hardcore pvpers who can’t seem to grasp that there is a perfectly legitimate casual game here, too.
I find it curious that Patch 4.3 is already announced as the final Cataclysm patch. Surely they don’t intend players to be satisfied with the same content for nearly a year until the next expansion (assuming that an announcement in August translates to a release sometime in Nov-Jan, and a typical expansion would be released in Fall 2012). So they’re either changing up their expansion cycle, or they’re ready to announce something new that will shift the majority of their focus off WoW. Or both, hell.
Whatever it is will probably be announced at Blizzcon.
Yup.
There was a nostalgia thread over on Wowit and someone said the thing they missed the most was discovery in battle. Like, in Vanilla, there was no Youtube for people to shove all their strategies onto and most people went into raids blind, figuring it out as they went (or with text tutorials).
I mark the line at being required to watch a video tutorial spoiling the entire encounter before I even have a chance to experience it myself. Most people would be mad if you spoiled a movie for them, but spoiling a battle? They’re all over that shit.
I imagine being required to watch Zelda boss videos before being able to fight them and I cringe.
Bosstone, Blizzard has been wanting to speed up patch cycles for a while. They say smaller, faster patches.
Faction, that is…
Horde:
And Alliance:
I wasn’t allowed to put them both on the back glass, since it would have obstructed her view, and, since I wrecked her car 4 months ago, it didn’t give me a lot of “wiggle room”, know what I mean?
Anyway, the decals got some appreciative looks at Game Stop along with some “Dad, can we get some, please?”
Q
Hmm. I got the impression that had been for patches alone, not expansions. I was sort of expecting to see 4.6 or 4.9 as the final Cataclysm patch, though offering the same total amount of content as in BC or LK.
You just don’t raid enough. There are all kinds of people who whine about having to show up on time, bring their consumables, bring their reagents, get out of the fire, do more DPS than the healers, switch specs, do anything but stand there and mash two buttons, etc. etc. etc. People who whine about how hard stuff is when they can’t immediately faceroll through it. People who whine because hardcore raiders or PvPers have access to better gear or cool mounts. And so forth.
Trust me, they exist, and they’re everywhere. Ask **Daed **about the guy who flipped out at him in a random because **Daed **politely asked the group not to talk to anyone in the BRD bar.
It’s perfectly typical, actually. IIRC 2.3 was Black Temple and 3.3 was ICC. Don’t forget that we spent a year in ICC–although there will be no artificial gating this time, so *that *does suggest that something else will be coming out in the meantime, so the hardcore crowd doesn’t get bored.
Just be aware that you’re strongly limiting your options for groups to raid with. There are groups dedicated to going in “spoiler free,” but if you want to raid with most guilds, or PUG with the vast majority of the population, it’s your job to learn the encounters ahead of time–and that means watching strategy videos.
I’ll bet! Those are awesome. I’ve always liked the Horde logo much better than the Alliance one. It’s all “bold abstract symbol” versus “silly cartoon lion.”
More expansions = more money.
Oh, I totally know that. I just wanted to throw that in as part of the whole hardcore raiders hate casuals thing. I mean, I didn’t get my Kingslayer until this month and last night Yogg-Saron took my sanity and eated it 
Yeah, used to be a whole chain - pick it up from your trainer, who sends you to some quest-giver in a level 50-ish zone who makes you go kill 10 things or something and then sends you off to kill something-or-other in Sunken Temple, for which you are rewarded with a choice of 3 pieces of level 50 blue gear. For instance, the warrior version involved going to talk to a ghost near the entrance to the Blasted Lands, who first sends you off to prove yourself by killing hellboars, then sends you into the sunken temple to get feathers from the trolls in the upper ring (the guys you needed to kill to turn off the force field). Anyway they were kinda fun but I suspect most people leveling alts just ignored them since awesome level 50 gear isn’t so awesome any more since you’ll have replaced it ten times by the time you hit max level.
Ah, thanks for the reminder, Tom. I’d forgotten about those. Yes, they’ve now been replaced with a single dungeon quest. Generally nice reward for the level, though.
I had to beg a guildy to come with me and my friend to do these for our Paladin rewards. Only problem was he rushed off ahead of us and we weren’t able to loot all the feathers we needed though we didn’t appreciate this at the time. So after an hour or so of finishing it we had to go back in just the two of us taking it slowly to get what we missed. In the end I got my shiny Ret two hander which made me happy. For a level or so anyway as I soon after changed spec to prot and went mace and board…
Interesting healing experience in Utgarde Keep where I couldn’t keep the level 68 Paladin tank alive when facing the two bosses Skarvald and Dalronn, he was two shot three times running. Thankfully the last time we got them down and had a ret pally with a res, first time I have failed in an instance on my druid very odd.
Big night last night, Went 6/7 in FL +Occ in 2 hours last night. I think there was one wipe somewhere in there (not Alys. first time one shotting her!)
I picked up a bunch of gear too. I got enough Living Embers for the crafted boots (and traded truegold for the dreamcloth…bad trade? both cost 30 volatiles.) With 1 daily I maxed my VPs and picked up the Tier12 legs (3 pieces now…need to get lucky - double lucky actually - on a token drop now for 4pcT12 bonus)
And best of all, unless certain no shows on Thursday, we’ll have 2 full nights on Ragnaros! We’ve been making slow but steady progression each time over the past 2 weeks. So we should get him down soon!
I think the fault was the pally’s for trying to tank that place at 68. DPS can run that dungeon at 68, and maybe even a healer can handle it–but the tank needs to be at least 70 with decent gear to tank it with a reasonable chance of success, I think.
A 68 tank can handle it as long as he’s done some questing and has a decent amount of the initial NR quest gear. A fresh 68 who hasn’t quested yet is likely wearing mid-65ish gear and maybe even some HFP quest gear still in a couple slots. And will get absolutely wrecked. Itemization in Outlands was always wretched, and that problem is magnified even more with the levels being sped up so much through XP requirement reductions and XP bonus items.
If the tank wears plate, I’d suggest going to the AH or a friendly blacksmith and picking up whatever Cobalt armor you can. It’s a pretty decent tanking set for starting out in Northrend (far better than any BC gear for sure) and it tends to be affordable because blacksmiths usually make a lot of it to level their skill. At least that was my pre-Cata experience.
Yeah just based on level alone, he’s going to be getting crit all over the place. Hence the two-shot deaths. And nobody ever uses cc at those levels, which would compound the problem.
I’ve been having a lot of fun gearing up my alt mage in heroics. I had tried arcane after dinging and was really unhappy with the spec’s mana-inefficiency. Went frost, which was more fun but with disappointing numbers, and tried fire but was unhappy with the fragility. See, I didn’t realize that arcane mages are supposed to use mage armor instead of molten armor. :eek: Once I learned that and gemmed/enchanted my shit, I’m pulling very decent numbers as arcane (14k-17k single-target dps) and not spending every single fight drinking up to full from oom. yaaay arcane! It also helps that I only have to cap hit up to level 87 mobs, since I never plan on raiding with this character. That frees up more item budget for delicious mastery.