Our first Karazhan team is nothing less than amazing. I would say it is the best group of people I have ever played this game with. We might not have the best gear, but everyone makes up for it by listening, coming prepared, etc… I really wish Blizzard would do something about the trash respawns, but I don’t think its too game breaking (although, I hear the Aran trash is the most annoying in the zone).

Loot from last nights run…

Harbinger Bands - Attumen
Spectral Band of Innervation - Attumen
Boots of Valiance - Moroes
Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch - Moroes
Barbed Choker of Discipline - Maiden of Virtue
Shard of the Virtuous - Maiden of Virtue
Ribbon of Sacrifice - Romulo
Despair - Julianne

Drops…

Worgen Claw Necklace - Attumen
Bracers of the White Stag - Attumen
Handwraps of Flowing Thought - Attumen
Harbinger Bands - Attumen
Emerald Ripper - Moroes
Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable - Moroes

Other than that, its actually been a fairly calm couple weeks in WoW. I have been having my worst loot drought ever. I have seen about 2-3 drops in probably 30-40 runs. If that… The thing saving it though, is that I am running all of these instances with close friends and guildies, so it keeps it fun.

We should be going back into Karazhan on Monday, hopefully Maiden of Virtue will go down easily.

Now onto the meat of the story. I wanted to post something to this blog, voicing my general opinions on the Burning Crusade. Everything from the quests, the zones, the instances, etc. I forgot all of my screenshots at home, so I will hopefully be able to make a seperate post in the next day or two with all of my screenshots.

Levels

This was one thing I dreaded in TBC. I figured with the levels being anywhere from 400,000xp to 800,000xp, it was going to take days to get a single level. Damn I was wrong. I dinged 61 the first night I had TBC, and at some points, took out 2 levels in a long days playing session. Now granted, I had the week off work, so I had a good amount of time to play, but levels were on par with 50-60 levels. At some points, I was getting 150k-175k xp/hr. On average though, I would say I got 75k xp/hr though. In a marathon grinding session last night, I even went from 5% of level 69, to dinging 70 in a mere 6 hours. Congrats to Blizzard on getting this right.

Questing

This, to me, was the biggest change in TBC. The amount of quests you burn through from 60-70 is absolutely amazing. I dinged 70 in Netherstorm, but had only been there for maybe 6 hours, and didn’t even come close to completing half the quests in the zone. Every zone that I went through (Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar, Nagrand, Netherstorm) is like this, with the exception of Blades Edge Mountains. There just weren’t enough quests there to keep my interest. I also found the quests in Blades Edge to be quite annoying. Most of them required 3 or 4 completely different objectives, and made for a very frustrating time.

The quest rewards were also very nice. Granted I only replaced about 4 pieces of my gear along the way, but I could see how a person coming through the portal in Tier 1 would replace almost every piece of gear they have. I am hoping to run some of the higher level instances in the next few weeks to be able to replace more of my gear.

Zones

The zones themselves are stunningly beautiful, as I have said in previous beta posts. You could literally explore for hours on end, and love every minute of it. Everything from the mobs, to the sky, to the mountains, to the plains of Nagrand…. stunning. Now, it’s really hard for me to pick a top 3 for zones, but here it is (know that I haven’t really been through much of Shadowmoon Valley yet)…

1) Nagrand - Clean, crisp, tons of quests, and it just feels nice. Plus, you get to see your first Netherdrake.
2) Hellfire Peninsula - For a first zone, this one is amazing. The quests are easy, yet unique. Great intro into TBC.
3) Netherstorm - TONS of quests, fairly easy mobs, amazing scenery. Just wait till you get to see it from above.

The Alliance & Ganking

This is my biggest surprise. I got ganked literally 4 times the entire time I played. There seems to be an understanding between all Alliance & Horde, to just quest and level, without PvPing. Now, thats not to say I didn’t see my fair share of ganking, but it was usually because someone accidentally AoE’d, stole a mob, etc… Thanks to any Alliance on Burning Legion that might be reading this.

I’m flying!

For 800g in training, and 100g for the mount, I bought my first flying mount last night. I wasn’t able to buy the epic version yet (5000g training, 200g mount) but should be able to get it fairly soon. Flying around Outland literally changes everything about travel in this game. And I can’t imagine how much more it will change whenever I buy an epic mount, seeing as how it flys the same speed as a gryphon. The things you are able to see from above changes the way you will do things in this game. You will just have to wait and see for yourself. My only gripe with the flying mounts, is that the non epic version should be 100% speed, not 60% speed. When I pay almost 1000g for a mount, it should be 100% speed in my opinion. But hey, I am flying so what do I care.

In Closing

I would give this expansion an A+. This expansion met (and exceeded) my expectations. I cannot imagine it getting any better than this, but Blizzard consistently surprises me. Thank you Blizzard, the devs, the CM’s, etc… You did a wonderful job.

Now, I wouldn’t normally make this kind of information public as I don’t feel humiliation is the right way to go about it. But there isn’t contact information anywhere on this site.

If you are reading this, take my feed off of your system immediately.

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.

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?

Looting, Speaking, Strategizing, etc..

Ok, so I never really thought about this aspect before, but doing all of these things as raid leader, and still playing your class to its top potential is a really hard thing to do. Not only did I have to loot all of the coins, and bijous, I was the one responsible for telling all of the strategies, answering all of the questions, distributing loot, and everything else you can think of that a raid leader does. Don’t get me wrong, it was the most fun, yet challenging thing I have done to date, but it was just a lot more than I expected.

One way I think this can be fixed, is to distribute the responsibilities to different officers. Maybe leave one officer in charge of looting, one in charge of telling strats, one in charge of pulling/marking (thanks Syd, you did a great job btw), etc. This is probably the only way it wouldn’t eventually overwork me. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Loot

I forgot most of what loot dropped, as I was busy doing other things, but heres what little I remember…

Primal Hakkari Aegis x2
Primal Hakkari Stanchion
Runed Bloodstained Hauberk
Zulian Defender
Band of Jin
Zanzil's Seal
Bloodsoaked Pauldrons

Korgg picked up the Zulian Defender. Finally