Wrath of the Lich King

The expansion has been out for a few days now and ignoring all the people who rushed to 80 within a day or two and clearing raid content just so they can stroke their e-peen and have something to complain about for a few months until something new comes along. This is an amazing expansion. The lore, the quests, the zones, all of it is really well done and it is nice to get back to the traditinal story. I liked Burning Crusade and all, but wrath blew it out of the water. I, like many people, rolled a death knight almost right off the bat. Got an Alliance one to 60 and a Horde one on another server to 60 also and while I like it I have been forcused on my main which is now level 76, once the servers come back up will be making the run to 77 and take to the air again with cold weather flying.

With as much as I have been focusing on doing everything on my rogue and trying to do it all, I am a bit worried I will get burnt out when it comes time to bring my warrior, paladin, and two death knights to 80. Though at least one of those is Horde, so something slightly different.

3.0.2/Wrath leveling

With the patch coming out last Tuesday and the servers finally seeming to be stable again, at least the ones I play on, I have had a chance to finally get a chance to look at most of the neat new things available in the current build. First I am going to talk about the rogue, my current main.

I specced into combat swords for leveling through Northrend, I currently lack any swords that are worth anything compared to my two epic daggers, but I am hoping through either drops or quests I will be able to get my hands on a pair of decent ones once I set foot in Northrend. Might be kinda silly, but oh well I still out damage most of the people I run with in dungeons anyway at the moment. Though Assassination, my old spec does seem tempting and will probably be my off spec come the next patch which will have duel specs in it.

Secondly, the warrior. My original main and one that might make a slight come back for me come Northrend even if I don’t plan to drop my rogue anytime soon. I went into fury because the thought of duel wielding my two epic axes was too interesting to pass up for me, although protection spec has been kicking some ass lately from what I have seen and I am also interested in the end tree arms talent which is like whirlwind that lasts for a good amount of time and unable to be stopped unless killed. Leveling I will probably go with fury, off spec will most likely be arms even if protection does seem best.

Thirdly, paladin. I was protection for the majority of my paladin career and with the new talents and buff to retribution I joined many other paladins in speccing the Juggernaut that is ret. I’ve had more fun as the new ret spec than I ever did in all the time I spent as protection. Though being able to pull everything in the world and live was fun and will be my off spec when the feature goes live, killing things faster than I do on my rogue at times is insane.

I had a bit of mount/pet troubles on my rogue when the patch went live and took a few days to get everything back all was made up for when I got the Albino Drake and special pet for getting the 50 mount/50 pet achievement. Making me one of the first, if not the first to get them on my server from what I have seen. And other than getting stuck in the middle of nowhere above terokkar I haven’t had much problems.

Useless Boredom.

Blizzcon wrapped up today, well, yesterday at this point for me. Nothing too major was annouced, just a lot of little things. I don’t have directTV and of course didn’t get to go to the event itself, so I didn’t get to see much live stuff, though I listened to the streams on WoWRadio. I spent most the time being jealous I didn’t get a goody bag full of “junk” that stuff might be useless, but damn if I don’t want it all.

As for Warcraft related things, patch is dropping Tuesday and I look forward to that and not being bored and searching for things to do. Huzzah for achievements! Move my level 70 Paladin over to the Moon Guard server, despite not wanting to lose my little personal econmy I had going between all my characters. Oh well, can always start up again I guess.

I was a bit disappointed that the only Warcraft movie news we heard was they had a rough draft of a script. I was hoping to hear it’s going into filming soon, since it was supposed to be out in 2009.

Spoilers, Horde vs Alliance, and a traitor.

Saying right up front I am going to talk about a lot of things most people probably wont want to know before playing it in game, so you might want to skip this post.

Firstly, just saw the in game cinematic where the horde and alliance assault Arathas at Icecrown. Which leads to the death of both Saurfang the Younger and Bolvar Fordragon. Saurfang the Younger being one-shotted by Arathas (lol) and Bolvar falling to the Forsaken plague unleashed during the event. Anyway, all this leads to a quest to assault the undercity for both the horde and alliance. Alliance version lead by the newly returned King Varian Wrynn. Now after the seige and victory Thrall shows up, Varian goes to kill Thrall and end this once and for all. And what happens? The most annoying person in the world steps in yet again! Jaina Proudmoore. The same Jaina who let the horde kill her own father, the same Jaina who is pretty much in love with an orc now, the same Jaina who had past romantic dealings with both Kael’thas and Arthas. She freezes all alliance forces and ports them back to Stormwind. I am really getting sick of her, she should be exiled or if possible executed already.

Which leads me to this, I am sick of all these horde players claiming better over alliance. They always use the “oh, they put orcs in internment camps” and various other things along those lines. Guess what? They deserved it! They invaded Azeroth, they attacked the humans, they brought it on themselves. Then they use how they were enslaved to the demons because they drank Mannoroths blood and how they didn’t know any better. Uh…shouldn’t have drank it in the first place, your fault also. So the horde fan boys need to shut up on all this a bit. Both sides are bad guys, end of story.

Also, the horde still has slavery. Read the WoW comic and everything Varian does is totally justified in my opinion.

Wrath of the Lich King collectors edition.

Just woke up to see they announced the collectors edition already and I Jumped all over my chance to pre-order it. I missed out of a Burning Crusade collectors edition by seconds and never had a chance for the original, so for $100.67 (damn $24 shipping overnight) I get an awesome late birthday present to myself. Being the Warcraft geek I am, everything inside looks awesome. Can’t wait for November!

Wrath of the Lich King release date.

November 11th, 2008 is when the next expansion is supposed to come out. So two months to finish gold farming or leveling alts before it’s time to get another 10 levels. I can’t wait to level up my three 70’s and death knight, I got a chance to jump on the public test realms and check things out. Stormwind Harbor is amazing, I knew what it looked like from pictures and all that, but I had no idea just how big it was in person. Feels really epic. Had some fun with fury warrior and combat rogue talents also. I am kind of surprised they annouced it so soon before blizzcon, I figured it would be annouced there. But I guess they are trying to take some hype away from Warhammer. So now all I am waiting for is the collectors edition to show up and try to get my a copy of it.

Professions.

So recently I maxed out my first ever profession, as in actually having to make goods to level it up. I max out gathering skills left and right with no problem. Now while proud of myself in my small acomplisment, it is also a bit off setting for the fact that it is probably the most useless skill for all my current characters. Tailoring. And on a paladin no less, sure bags are nice but other than that I only took it out of boredom and to make the cloth healing set normally worn by priest and walk around Stormwind claiming to be one. Of course my mind turns now to Wrath of the Lich King yet again and some of the neat things tailors will get, like a flying carpet as a mount. But with my luck I wont ever max out any of my professions quickly to get to enjoy these things for a long amount of time before the next expansion. So much time sinks to finish.

Indifference and WoW.

I have to say I am feeling rather lethargic lately. With Wrath coming out so soon I find myself hardly even logging onto the game anymore, when I do I mainly just sit around in a city and surf the Internet, not even like I have people to talk to at this point. Seems like everyone could care less about the current game and like me are just sitting around waiting on the expansion to sink more hours of their life into. Then again I have been bored out of my mind with everything, so it might be more than just new expansion looming, but who knows?

Also I have to say a big “screw you” to Moon Guard. I hit 30 on an alt of mine I was messing around with away from my main server and for 5 days I tried to get the 9 gold needed for the mount, the whole time I had the riding lesson, just needed the mount. And guess what? No one would buy anything I put on the auction house, I didn’t over price or anything like that. But before I sold everything I put up, so obviously they were out to get me. I ended up finally going out to level again after that amount of time and hit 33 before I finally got the gold together to get my mount. So that was more work than it needed to be, damn it Moon Guard!

I have been toying with the idea of transferring one of my 70’s over to Moon Guard though, I already know my characters name is taken there, apparently by someone who hasn’t even hit 10 being they don’t show up on the armory. Which is even more frustrating being I like the name, though I have an ok one in reserve on the server itself. But it just isn’t the same and not as good either in my opinion, so that is the main bit of doubt I got going on. The plan was to transfer my paladin over and when the expansion hits roll a Alliance death knight on my main server and a Horde death knight on Moon Guard to see both side of things. But the server is always set at “full” or “locked” so I don’t know if I can even transfer over and if I can the though of waiting in ques all the time to play my paladin kinda sucks. So it is still up in the air right now as to what I should do.

More expansion talk.

A new beta build was just released yesterday I think it was and I have to say some interesting things are in it, at least for people like me. The main thing is the who slew of titles that were added, a lot of which are really cool. Only problem is they will go to select people since most of them are “First _____ to reach 80″ or “First to get 475 in *insert skill*” now while I am capable of getting at least one of those, chance are I wont. I am the type of person who loves the lore of the game and taking their time to see everything I can. While I will be leveling at least 3 character from 70 to 80 and at least 1 Death Knight from 55 to 80 I more than likely wont get a title of any kind when it comes to the be the first ones. Which sucks, because I love titles and want one of my Night Elves to have “Champion of Elune” or have “The Supreme” for being first to 80 on the server, it just wont happen because even rushing I will take too much time to read everything. Which is also sad because having my warrior have the title “Warbringer” or rogue with “Assassin” or my personal favorite being a huge Scarlet Crusade fan, some how getting my newly level 70 paladin the title “Crusader” for being the first pally to 80. Of course, my main come expansion will probably be a split between rogue and warrior, so my poor little paladin wont be 80 for a long while. Either way I can still dream of magically getting one of these awesome titles.

Death Knights also got new voices, though most just sound very echoy or under water sounds I guess it is something. Only ones really “evil” sounding seem to be the male Draenei and male Blood Elves, I play neither though and doubt I will roll either as Death Knights either. So oh well, they still look cool at least.

Also seems to be a new cinimatic intro in the works going by a transcript I saw on the Wrath of the Lich King wiki, sounds really long and frantic but also badass with Arthas, Bolvar, I assume Saurfang, and my girl Sylvanas. Going by what is said in it, it seems like the Forsaken are going to have some major things going on during the story lines in the expansion, which will be interesting to see on my Horde Death Knight. Rolling a Horde one almost totally to see their side of things in Outland and Northrend, but mostly for Sylvanas. Hope I can help her out some way.

Top 10 favorite Warcraft Characters.

With Wrath of the Lich King growing ever closer and my addiction to all things Warcraft growing also, I thought I would waste time by listing some of my favorite characters from the games/books/comics.

1. Sylvanas Windrunner

2. Anduin Lothar

3. Valeera Sanguinar

4. Varian Wrynn

5. Saurfang

6. High General Abbendis

7. Alexandros Mograine

8. Muradin Bronzebeard

9. Anub’arak

10. Daelin Proudmoore

Now I am sure that list seems extremely weird, but I am a weird guy and I could have made it totally Alliance if I really wanted to do that…or at least heavily human.