I was sitting here today, reading the forums, and started thinking back about how long it has been since I started playing this game. How much fun it has been… From the start of Molten Core, to the beginnings of Naxxramas, there are literally, a ton of memories.

Dungeons

I guess most of my memories come from the 20 & 40 man dungeons I have played, as this is where more than 75% of my time in this game has been spent. I remember the first time I zoned into Molten Core, and was so overwhelmed with the magnitude of 40 people grouping together to kill 2 mobs. I remember when I only used Auto Shot & Arcane Shot on every mob in there my first time, for fear that I would pull aggro. I remember only starting to use Multi-Shot when I was EXTREMELY comfortable that it wouldn’t jump to the guy 80 yards away and pull him on the raid group.

BWL was an odd adventure though. To me, it seemed like we progressed through there with almost no trouble, like it was 10x easier than Molten Core. I guess this is because I was more used to the raid scene, and knew pretty much everything going on around us. I remember the first day I was in Method, they were putting together their first BWL run. It didn’t happen because not enough showed up, but the next time we got together for BWL, we took down Razorgore on our 2nd or 3rd attempt.

AQ40 & Naxx are all a blur to me though. Not too many good memories through these, as I was starting to get burnt out with guild drama, and people being loot whores. You could probably tell this through me not posting as much on here, etc… Now that I am with a group of real life friends in Core, I am sure this will be completely different, and bring back all of the fun I remember from Molten Core & BWL.

Guilds

From The Vague, to Nightelf Skinning Co., to Method, to Teen Girl Squad, to Core. These are the guilds that made the memories. These are the groups of people that have consistently amazed me with their dedication to the game. These are the people that frustrated me to no end. These are the closest to real life friends I will ever get in an online game.

Back when I played Battlefield 1942, I thought it was one of the most addicting, well put together games I had ever seen. I figured it would never be toppled in terms of memories. Then, in September of 2005, I bought WoW. My initial blog post about World of Warcraft never hit the pages of Aeigelus.com, but rather my personal web development blog, joshdura.com. I posted that more than 1 year ago, and to this day, I am addicted as I was that very day. Thats something for Blizzard to be proud of. They have created a game, that nothing in history can rival. Yet, they are releasing an expansion next week, that will hopefully take the game to even higher levels.

Guild drama is one thing I am really intrigued with in this game. I guess since I have been working at an 8-5 job for the last 10 years, I expect group activities to be run as a business, and if anything ever goes wrong, things will be worked out in a civil manner. So, when Nightelf Skinning Co. broke up due to only 1 or 2 of the officers leaving, I was absolutely amazed. I was begging people to understand, and to just realize those 1 or 2 people do not make the guild. Yet, no one would listen. The sky was falling. The same thing kind of happened in Method, except I could tell it was happening for months. There were people not paying attention, people being lootwhores and not caring about the next person in line for loot, etc… Once again though, it amazed me that people were willing to just easily quit something that they had worked a year to create. I guess this is something I will just never understand about the game.

The Future - Burning Crusade

I guess the reason for this post, is because with the Burning Crusade being released on Tuesday, I will probably rarely attend a 40 man raid ever again. All of those memories will be made again in new instances with new people. There will be more guild drama, more lootwhores, more first time kills, more yelling on vent (be it good or bad), more yelling at bosses for not dropping your loot, etc… And yet, I can’t wait to go through every single bit of it again. I can’t wait to zone into that 25 man instance, and be wow’ed by the first set of mobs in there.

Sorry for the lack of updates, been pretty busy at work, and figured I would make one huge update. Been playing a lot of beta lately, and also doing some PvP on Burning Legion. Nothing too exciting going on with Core yet, as we are all just waiting on the expansion to do some raiding. We might be getting a ZG together this Thursday, but I am not sure how many will be willing to give up their PvP grind for less than popular loot.

Blood Elf Paladin

So, sometime about 2 weeks ago, I was putting together a group for Hellfire Ramparts in the beta to complete a quest. So, I use the LFG tool, and also spam the General channel, as beta has come to a standstill with players. I get a whisper from Puah, a 62 Blood Elf Paladin wanting to go. I jumped on the chance. Luckily, he was Holy specced too! The pally was able to easily main heal the entire group, while staying at pretty much 50-75% mana unless we pulled a double or triple pack. Also, the Blessing of Might is quite possibly my favorite buff now. I can’t wait until I can have 2 pallies in a raid, and get Wisdom, Might, and Aspect of the Viper (thats ummm, about 100 mp5, and 150 attack power, drooooooool). So, after we get done with Ramparts, the group shows interest in running Blood Furnace, which is only a 1 min walk from Ramparts. We plow through there as well, and get about halfway through 62 in the process.

Later in the week, I am back online, and had already dinged 63 while doing some quests in Zangarmarsh. I had put a LFG into the system for Underbog, but with the population on the beta server low, I didn’t expect much. Luckily, we got a group of 3 or 4, then Puah whispered me again, wanting to go. Again, I jumped on the chance Underbog is a LOT tougher of an instance than Ramparts or Blood Furnace, but was still doable with our group. I believe the group was myself (a 63 Hunter), a 64 Pally, a 65 Rogue, a 63 Tank, and a 64 Shaman (Dual Wield). We wiped a few times, but it was mostly due to bad pulls, etc. Unfortunately, there are a lot of terrain issues in Underbog. One caused us to have to have the shaman hearth because he was stuck, and wait for him to come back for the last boss. Not fun.

Beautiful Scenery

To this day, I am still absolutely amazed by the scenery in the expansion. Terokkar is amazing. Not only do you get a huge neutral city (Shattrah), but you get a great looking zone. I haven’t really quested here too much, but have poked around and found Auchindoun. Looks to be a really great instance. Whats great about it as well, is most of the mobs are fairly easy to take down. I didn’t really find too many annoying mobs, other than the ones that consistently mana burn. Although, this is really only a problem for me when in melee range. I took a journey into Shadowmoon Valley, and was able to pretty easily take down a level 69 mob.

Plans for Expansion

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I am going to level Aeigelus in the expansion. Truthfully, I think we all realize that the quest mobs are going to be completely overrun for the first 2 or 3 weeks. I think I am going to do instances for the first couple of days, to let a lot of that die down, then hopefully I can have a good head start on most of the quests, and fly to 70. Leveling the hunter is going to be a lot easier than leveling Korgg though. Hell, levelling anything is harder than a hunter Hopefully, the servers will be able to actually hold up during the first week. Would hate to actually have the expansion, and not be able to play. What are ya’lls plans for expansion?

About 2 weeks ago, I received my invite to Burning Crusade. For the first week or so, I didn’t play too much, and for the first 2 days, I was waiting for Aeigelus and Korgg to be transferred to the PvE server Hellfire (I am starting to think PvE is the way to go, actually). When I finally sat down to play, I can say I was thoroughly impressed. The atmosphere in Outland is amazing. Blizzard has successfully created a true expansion to the game.

Scenery, Creatures, etc

The scenery is amazing. From new creatures, to new class pets, to new skylines, it truely feels massive. I really enjoyed just walking around the first couple days, and exploring new areas like I did when I was first leveling. Although, EVERYTHING in Outland dazes about 5x more than anything in Azeroth, so getting Dazed, Dismounted, then having Feign Death resisted is not a fun thing. Running back to your body, the scenery seems less fun :). The enemies seem just as difficult as Azeroth mobs. My cat has seemed to gain about 3k armor due to pets now scaling with my gear. He is around 7.5k armor, and 4.5k health. I found myself accidentally aggroing way too many mobs yesterday, and my cat tanked 7 non elite 61’s, and had half health at the end of the battle.

None of the scenery I saw could prepare me for this though. I would have to say this town has to be my new favorite. While on my way to Netherstorm, I was riding through Blades Edge Mountains, and came across this odd disco looking town. It literally stopped me in my tracks. I then walked up to it, and noticed it was hostile to me. Being 60 in a 65+ zone, I had to be careful. Upon closer inspection, the town was filled with half naked gnomes. Who knows what the purpose of this place is, or if there even IS a purpose, but it had the bells and whistles of Gadgetzan times 10. I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.

Questing, Questing, Questing

One of the great things about the expansion, is the amount of quests you will find. I literally filled my entire 25 limit Quest Log with quests from Hellfire Peninsula alone. Along with that, each quest is pretty fun. I can’t tell if this is just because I haven’t done them or not, but the Bombing Run quests alone make the expansion worth every penny. Also, each quest provides some really good rewards as far as gear goes. There seems to be a selection for each type of class (caster, melee, ranged) with each quest, with some getting left out each time. I do think that Tier 2 will be lasting me well into the late 60’s though. None of the gear is even half as good as Dragonstalker’s.

Oh, another thing. Gold shouldn’t be a problem anymore in BC. I made over 100g just questing for 2 hours on Saturday. And I didn’t even do it in a fashioned manner. I was running across the map half the time, being lost. I was worried about the 5k gold cost of the flying mounts, but I don’t think it will be much of an issue now.

I ended up dinging 61 with Aeig on Saturday afternoon. You would think the fact that the xp is nearly doubled to gain a level would hinder your process, but it seemed to only take as long as it did to level 59-60. I still have about 10 of the original 25 quest chains in my quest log, so I think I will probably hit 62 in Hellfire Peninsula, then head over to Zangarmarsh to work on 63. I still need to hit up a lot of the Hellfire Citadel insances. I went on a run with another friend’s character the other day, and the XP gain is HUGE in instances. The instance we ran, was Blood Furnace. There were 3 bosses, and about as much trash as the first 20 minutes of UD Strat. It took us an hour to run, and I ended up with about 1/3 a level of XP. This means, that instancing is probably just as viable as grinding/questing is. Truthfully, I could easily see grinding becoming the slower way to level in BC. There are just way too many quests, and way too much XP to be had.

Misc. Screenshots