FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU Turkey

I am a horrible blogger. I will not stand the test of time with this, I can almost guarantee that as a fact.

I mentioned it in a prior post, but never actually posted anything about it. So I'm going to pretend that this is on time and type it up as quick as possible, despite having just written a novel over patch 4.0.3a. Here goes!

Pilgrim's Bounty is based off of the American holiday of Thanksgiving. The main idea behind this holiday is to get your Pilgrim gear and do certain things. It's also one of the best holidays in the game if you need to level up your cooking. You can level your cooking profession from level 1 all the way to level 355 with just the five recipes made available to you from the holiday and the ingredients are only available during the holiday, so it's kinda retarded to NOT do it if you're participating.

As per my norm..

Warrior: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 7/9on Day 1, 8/9 on Day 2, and 9/9 on Day 4.

Paladin: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 6/9 on Day 2 and 9/9 on Day 4.

Druid: Not a Pilgrim. Completed 5/9 on Day 3, 7/9 on Day 6, and 8/9 after th holiday ended. Did not complete the final achievement last year or this year, because I'm an incompetent retard and forget to check and make sure she had finished all of them. ><

Death Knight: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 2/9 on Day 1, 6/9 on Day 2, 8/9 on Day 4, and 9/9 on Day 7.

Mage: Pilgrim of '10, Completed 5/9 on Day 7 of '09, 6/9 on Day 0 of '10, and 9/9 on Day 6 of '10.

Rogue: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 5/9 on Day 3, 6/9 on Day 7, and 9/9 before resets removed the holiday.

Stupid Druid..

The Official Shattering: Cause A Retard Labeled The Wrong Patch As Such

So the Shattering finally hit the servers on the 23rd of November. A little too early for my tastes, but that's just due to my lack of poor time managing skills when it came to making sure I had everything finished before Cataclysm came out.

With this patch, of mighty 4.0.3a, the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were torn asunder. Where once was wasteland, now there is life. Where once was desert, now there is water. Where once was Booty Bay, now there.. Is still Booty Bay. How did it survive a freakin' tidal wave? Moving on..

Patch 4.0.3a took all of the Cataclysm information that had been released with 4.0.1 and 4.0.3 and activated the landscape changes that will be the standard for all newcomers to WoW when it comes to Azeroth. Still some things are going to be packaged into Cataclysm's release, we only received a small portion of the goodies to come with this expansion.

All of the effects for Cataclysm itself have been added in.. Login screen change, the Cataclysm intro cinematic, the new loading screens for Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend, and the new music.

Aside from the new races of Worgen and Goblins, all new class combinations are currently available to all players. Human Hunters, Tauren Paladins, Dwarf Shaman, the works. All ready and waiting to be used. Race changes are also available for all of these new classes as well, and will continue to be so even with the release of Cataclysm. So, yes, you're (possibly) favorite class will be able to be race/faction changed into a Worgen/Goblin on the 7th of December.

One of the biggest uproars with the patch hitting two weeks before the release of the game was the removal of the capital city portals from Shattrath and Dalaran, the quest hubs for Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions respectively. Those portals were the lifeline for players to return to Azeroth as needed and now they are gone. Two weeks before they actually needed to be. Magi are going to be making a killing for awhile with their portal spells, probably for quite some time. The portals were replaced with class trainers, so people leveling through Outlands and Northrend will be able to train at their quest-hub central for the expansion content they are working on.

Gnomes and Trolls, with their pre-Cataclysm events, have been removed from their prior starting locations into their own little phased zones for beginning their long journey down the road of becoming a hero. With the pre-Cataclysm event of Operation: Gnomeregan; the gnomes now start in New Tinkertown, which is located right outside of the tunnel leading down into Gnomeregan proper. From what I've seen, the quests here are phased to be gnome only, because my fresh dwarf warrior and my level 80 human warrior were not able to communicate with any of the NPCs in a questing manner. For the Horde, the event of Zalazane's Fall moves trolls out of the Valley of Trials and over to the Echo Isles. I'm going to just go ahead and make the assumption that non-trolls will not be able to quest here just as non-gnomes can't quest in New Tinkertown. I haven't explored this opportunity on my Horde just yet.

Hunters get more pets to tame, bumping their pet-types from 32 to 37 with Cataclysm's release. I really don't have anything to say on this subject because my hunter is too low level to give a damn about new pets just yet. Though, I will say this.. With the release of these awesome new pets, I ventured over to www.wow-petopia.com and went through the pet possibilities that will be available to my huntard when she finally gets the ability to have 5 pets at once, and gets the Beast Mastery talent to tame Exotic pets.

Two more things to go with the patch changes before I stop talking..

With the coming of the Cataclysm, Blizzard took the "championing" tool that they used in Wrath of the Lich King for gaining rep with certain factions and gave this unique utility to the player-race factions. Stormwind, Darnassus, Ironforge, Gnomeregan, Exodar, Gilneas, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Darkspear, Undercity, Silvermoon City, and Bilgewater Cartel all have corresponding tabards with the ability to "champion." All dungeons now reward rep toward the currently worn tabard, sans the Outlands dungeons because of the unique way they were structured toward giving rep toward the faction involved in their questlines. I honestly find this new feature to be one of the best things that Blizzard has come up with in the way of reputation gains and wish that they would continue to use this method for further reputations. It would be neat to see them restructure the old factions from vanilla in the same way as well. I'd love a Hydraxian Waterlords tabard, even though I'm already exalted with them.

And my final note for this hellacious long blog post.. Experience necessary to level from 71 to 80 has been reduced. Casuals, get busy and hit 80 before Cataclysm is released. You're running out of time, but you have the means. Maybe this means I should level one of my alts too..

Again, Cataclysm comes out next week. I, hopefully, should be able to release another blog post over it within the first week of its release. And then I'll have another coming out soon after that since it's going to be Winter's Veil. I'll probably wait until Winter's Veil is over to post over it, since my usual holiday procedure is to post how much of it I actually got done. I honestly don't see many people trying to participate in this holiday as much as the others, since it's going to be opening up during the very beginning of Cataclysm's launch.

I'll Get Back To You

This just in, I'm behind on my random WoW bloggings..

I'll get around to blogging about The Shattering. Hopefully before Cataclysm comes out this Tuesday. We'll see how good I am with timeframes and stuff of that nature.

Oh, and I'll make a quick update for Cataclysm, before delving in and disappearing. And be back a week or so later to hit you with a Winter's Veil blog. See, I'm planning ahead now.

Phase 4 and the Elemental Invasion

The majority of the current subscribers to WoW probably remember, at least, the event precluding the arrival of Wrath of the Lich King (the third expansion to World of Warcraft), and how the zombie invasion was one of the most epic, yet annoyingly redundant events after created by a gaming company within its own gaming world.

While exciting, the event itself became nothing more than a giant gankfest for the majority of players on almost all of the realms that Blizzard currently had at the time of its manifestation. The idea of destroying the scourge while avoiding the plague itself was simple enough. The only problem with this design were players who purposely got corrupted and didn't get cleansed by the Argent Dawn. And then proceeded to go to lower level areas and infest the players who didn't know any better. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Well, it couldn't have been that bad, there are a lot of areas in the game." I wish it were so..

I was playing my rogue down in Duskwood. Running from Raven Hill back to Darkshire with some quests.. When out of nowhere, a mob of ghouls ransack the town. And chase me around the landscape. There was no chance, I eventually died and joined their ranks. At first, this event was intense and fun. Really fun. Defending the cities, fighting back the scourge, getting infected and finding an Argent Dawn member to cleanse you, rinse repeat. But once the event kept going for more than a week, it was a giant gankfest griefing match. Ugh..

With the event starting pre-Cataclysm, it's more of a giant waste of time then it is anything else. But, let's do a little background before we get into the final phase..

PHASE 1: Stop the Twilight Cultists from defecting innocent citizens of Stormwind/Orgrimmar. While also heading to random areas and taking down rifts in "space" where elementals are spawning from.
-- Cultist quests take about 5-10 minutes. It's really just a lot of running and talking to people, nothing fancy.
-- Rifts spawn once an hour. For.. 15-20 minutes. You have to down rifts of all four types to get a Feat of Strength called 'Tripping the Rifts'.

PHASE 2: Get the tablet from the dwarf/orc at the harbor/zeppelin and help Ironforge/Orgrimmar was some angry minor-elementals.
-- I will admit, the tablet fights are pretty cool. You use a crystal to gain elemental powers and then blast away elementals with their polar opposites.
-- Running around dropping a totem on mini-elementals is kinda dull. Especially since the CD is longer than it takes to come upon more of them.

PHASE 3: Go mess with the cultists again, who think you were captured, and then go to Outlands.
-- Screwing with the altars was pretty amusing, especially the things the cultists say.
-- Talk to Thrall on the Elemental Plateau. Only good part about this part is PvPing on the Plateau. Cause you have to avoid getting one-shotted by the elemental giants while you're at it. >.>

PHASE 4: Stop the Elemental Invasions of Stormwind and Ironforge/Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff.
-- This is where the event gets retarded and boring. The invasion itself happens every 2-3 hours, woo wait time. After that, you have a 5 minute window prior to the event to start reinforcing the towns. I don't know about Horde-side, but in Stormwind you throw down sandbags and in Ironforge, you set up wall barricades. When the window is over, whether you've finished reinforcing or not, BOOM Rifts with Elementals. This is where it gets dumb. In Stormwind, the rifts are your primary problem, and they are definitely a problem. They're elites and they hurt. In Ironforge? Elementals are pansies. You also have to save citizens from crumbling rocks using a totem. I'm guessing since they added in that little extra feature, the mobs got to be weaker.

Here's the kicker. When that 5-minute window ends and the rifts finally do spawn. You have an hour. Whether you complete the event or not. You have an hour. You also have only what's left of that hour to fight the four elemental bosses you were protecting the cities to actually get to.

Not sure if Blizzard's intention was to piss people off with crappy timer events, but it needs to either be extended or be over with. Cause this stuff is retarded.

Oh, and before I forget.. Pilgrim's Bounty starts Sunday. Get your turkey.

Happy Halloween/Samhain/Hallow's End/INSERT HOLIDAY HERE

And with today comes the end of Hallow's End. Even though it was supposed to end today at 2AM on the servers, it's currently still active, so I did in fact get more attempts in on all of my 80s at acquiring more mounts/helms/swords/whatever. Much like I did a list-off with Brewfest, I'm now going to proceed with one for Hallow's End.. (Totally going to do this with every holiday event, just so you know.)

Hallow's End 2010!

Warrior: Hallowed of '08, finally received the mount, had the 70 and 80 helm, had the 80 sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 17/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Male Blood Elf, Male Goat, Male Human]

Paladin: Hallowed of '09, no mount, no helmet, had the sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 18/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Male Blood Elf, Female Gnome]

Druid: Hallowed of '09, no mount, got the helm, got the sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 19/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Female Draenei]

Death Knight: Hallowed of '10, received the mount, got the helm, had the sword, finally received the Squashling (all I was missing from last year), had the pumpkin hat, 19/20 on Masks for All Occasions. [Female Blood Elf]

And introducing the newest of my 80s..
Mage: Hallowed of '10, no mount, no helmet, got the sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 19/20 on Masks for All Occasions. [Female Blood Elf]

Honorable Mention..
Level 65 Rogue: Didn't complete the Outland Candy Bucket run, I was slacking pretty hardcore on that one. Since he's not 80; no mount, no helm, no sword, had the pet, got the pumpkin hat. 11/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Male and Female Blood Elf, Male and Female Gnome, Male and Female Undead, Female Draenei, Female Dwarf, Female Troll]. He should be a Hallowed of '11.

And while I'm still trick or treating every hour, until work, and then hopefully after work, to possibly complete MFAO on multiple characters, I don't think it's going to happen this year again. My druid was the only one close last year, I've obviously boosted those numbers quite a bit this year in hopes of clearing off one of the most annoying achievements ever.

Day of the Dead begins tomorrow, it's a short two-day holiday with little to no long-time value. If only the pet would stick around.. I want a haliscan hat wearing skeleton wielding maracas. And three weeks from today is Pilgrim's Bounty. Two weeks after that, roughly, is the release of Cata and then Winter's Veil starts the next week after that.

I really never get anything productive done when Holidays are around in WoW.. I spend too much time doing them. But it's alright, I usually get quite a bit of experience on my alts that I wouldn't get otherwise. Not this year though, I slacked a bit. I actually spent more time leveling my rogue through quests and dungeons, instead of farming for the buckets. >.<

Retraction

I'd like to retract my earlier statement about rogues being stupid..

They are actually quite enjoyable. After twink 19 dueling with a friend of mine, I decided to give my level 60 some much needed attention. And have proceeded to level him repeated throughout the last few days. He's currently level 65, out of rest, and using dungeons and the Hallow's End candy buckets as a boost for his experience gain.
Oh, and he's Combat. So I don't give a damn what my weapons are, mwahaha.

On a note that wasn't addressed.. I used to hate hunters too. The change to Focus over Mana has, for some reason, made me want to put some time into my hunter as well. I ran a random on her earlier today and while the group I was stuck with was rather idiotically decent, I was proud of how well I handled my hunter's rotation and abilities.

Maybe I'll finally level that Warlock and Priest that I hate so much with a passion?

Blogovision

I'm going to be customizing my blogger/blogspot/whatever it's called to be more WoW related in nature.

My tumblr, on the other hand/foot, will stay my normal blog and I'll post it with relevant real-life information. Relatively relevant.

On that note.. WoW stuff..

Fury Warrior threat is insane.
-----200% threat increase for tanks DOES NOT HELP.
Ret Paladin rotation is awkward.
Arcane Mages have shitty damage.
Fire Mages are KABOOM
Frost Mages are viable in PvE.
Rogues are still stupid.
Balance Druids are amusingly fun.
Unholy DKs are pretty much the same.