Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Well the world was shattered today, and what a shattering it was!  I spent some time running around a good part of the eastern kingdom and saw so many changes.  First off everything just looks more amazing.  You can definitely see the texture work done here.  It seems to have been done game wide because even Dalaran was looking more spiffy.  There were the obvious changes like the Loch Modan damn has broken and all the water leaked down into the wetlands.

While walking around you notice there are tons more flight paths which should make things nice for the newbies as we start all creating alts I noticed tons of quest hubs everywhere and quests all over.  I heard many people talking about the very detailed stories being told in each zone.  The leveling experience is definitely nice it seems.

After running around some of my old haunts I decided yes I wanted to go with a Dwarf Warrior not a Worgen.  Not to mention I’ll have Cataclysm a little late so this gives me something to do still   So I created him as you see here.  He is the great Cosain, the mighty Dwarf Warrior and Protector!  He of course benefits greatly from his much older and friendly rich Uncle Dwarf Laneer.  So he was outfitted with the finest weapons and armor, bags and of course some gold to help him on his way   There is something very satisfying about laying this big ass axe into a trogg

So he is on his way now, already has two achievements, for getting over 15 pets already of course   Tomorrow is another day!

I did some more runs of the bosses to help out Inien tonight.  Before we did it though I decided I had to help out with Stormwind because I hadn’t saved it yet.  Since IF is bugged it is over pretty fast, but Stormwind actually takes work to save

One thing I noticed while I was defending was Atonement which specifically says group or raid member was jumping to anyone regardless.  Only Inien and I were grouped but it was healing the stormwind guards and anyone else.

I had a pretty good time defending stormwind.  I just kept alternating between smiting and holy nova depending on my mood   All in all not a bad night!  Got Inien the gear he was after anyways!

So today I got on with a mission, get my new neck!  Of course I had to wait for the invasion to come so I went around and did some dailies and such.  I made a stop over at the to grab an egg for that green protodrake I never got.  I got dismounted flying over dalaran a little too low and snapped a nice picture of the crystal forest and I floated to safety

About the time I finished all my tasks, including running a quick ToC the invasion happened!  Inien was on and tried to find his rifts, and after it was over I went ahead and invited him and we went to run Grand Ambassador Flamelash.  I kept doing him the whole time it was open and the Pendant of Burning Spirits dropped 3 times.  The first time I thought, wow finally I got it.  Then the boomkin DPS rolled need on it and ninja’d it from me!  I wasn’t expecting him to roll on it so I was quite annoyed.  After all it is a healer item and if the guy doing that role rolls need on it, you are suppose to yield to him/her.

So the next time the pendant dropped was when I was with another Mage and Warlock besides Inien.  Both of them stood in the fire and died at the beginning.  I cannot save someone who stands in the fire… So basically it was the tank, Inien and I doing the whole run.  Then after the pendant popped up I was like “yes!” then the stupid Mage and Warlock both rolled need on it!  Inien rolled need on it too this time to try and win it for me.  But the stupid Mage won it instead.

The last time it dropped, again we had a boomkin in our group and Inien and I were joking about him rolling on it.   Sure enough it dropped and he rolled need on it, after I clearly tried to claim it! No one has any respect anymore I guess   Inien rolled need as well again this time and he managed to get it and gave it to me yay!  So tomorrow we are going to farm the wind guy and try for the DPS neck for Inien.  Guess we’ll use the double role method there too, turn about is fair play!

I heard speculation the world is going to be shattered on WoW’s anniversary, I do hope they do that!  It seems like a very fitting day to bring about a change of this magnitude.  It is all very exciting.  I heard they shattered the PTR but I didn’t have the client installed anymore.  Plus I think at this point since I was never in beta even, waiting till live is prudent

So this is what happens when you have a lot of people in WoW waiting on something   I got on close to the time of the next IF invasion.  I wanted to try and farm the fire boss Grand Ambassador Flamelash because I found out he had a neck upgrade Pendant of Burning Spirits for me

I took part in the invasion which doesn’t last very long with that many people in IF   The elementals are out maned and out gunned.

Did the fire boss a bunch with Inien.  Did the earth boss a few times with a group to be fair as well.  Continued to do it till we ran out of time.  My neck dropped once and it got swiped from me by a DPS! I was so annoyed!  Oh well hopefully I can get it tomorrow or something   The fire boss happens to be the more annoying boss to do of course.  That had to be the boss more likely to drop my neck lol

Had a almost as fun time waiting with people in IF and I did doing anything else tonight.  We even did a mammoth parade around the bank area

I heard the invasion started from wowhead on twitter so I got on as soon as I got my son to bed.  There was an insane number of people in the cities, I must have just missed the invasion.  The bosses were down, I didn’t even know about the bosses until just tonight.

Since I missed the invasion I went ahead and did my Argent Tournament dailies and even a ToC for my complete seal run.  I even ran into a few of the elemental invasions while I was out doing the quests.  I dispatched the elementals to do my part!

Today was the big day for my mount.  I finally got another 150 seals and purchased the Silver Covenant Hippogyph!  It is a nice pretty white one

Just after I finished all that the invasion started in IF.  I managed to get over there and help some people and kick a little elemental butt before it was all over with.  It sure didn’t take long for everyone to end this puppy!  It is quite an event and man are there a lot of elemental boddies after it is all over with

I then ran around and did the quests for the 4 bosses.  The bosses were pretty intense to heal actually.  I guess because they actually put out pretty decent loot.  Not that I think I can use anything from them.  I still haven’t looked at the loot tables.  The only thing I could use at this point still is a new neck   The fire boss was the worse because people kept standing in the fire   Will they ever learn?   Where is my life grip when you need it!

Anyways it was a pretty intense night all sorts of cool stuff going on.  The suspense is really building up to Cataclysm.  I heard patch tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes!

Man I’ve been a busy guy.  Most of the time I’m too tired to play WoW lately.  Been easier for me to keep up with everything from twitter than update the site.  Terrible I know, I hope to squeeze out time for 4.x though.  I had been up since 3 but got on to get a good bye 3.x screenshot in.  There were a few trees having some festivities on the steps celebrating their last hours in that form before it becomes a Cooldown.

It started growing into quite a celebration.  I got out my little tree to be festive with them.  It is funny how many people have no idea what is about to happen tomorrow.  They were just talking about it and people kept being surprise about what was changing.  I wonder how many people are going to get caught off guard by the enormous changes to the game that will be in tomorrow.

• 31 point talent trees and specialization system
• changes in resources for warriors, deathknights, paladins, hunters, and warlocks
• Stats are going away or changing what they do
• tons of spell and ability changes
• no more spell ranks

Just to name a few   We should have all the necessary things now for whatever pre-cataclysm events Blizzard has planned for us   Plus updated graphics!  The game is as pretty as usual especially rendered on my new computer

I’m pretty excited about 4.01, and cataclysm in particular.  I have plans to make a new alt for the first time in 3 years I think, a warrior   I’m looking forward to leveling in the new redesigned world.  I’m also looking forward to archaeology for my pet collecting needs   Lots to look forward too!  I got my CE ordered to join my other 3

Hope everyone enjoys 4.x!

Still waiting on my cataclysm invite, none yet though at least we have had lots of great info coming out lately. The new 31pt talents have been interesting but still need a lot of work. Very interested in seeing how the smite mechanics they added in disc work out. I even got one of my questions answered about it in yesterdays dev chat!

Q. I’m excited about the Smite mechanic in Disc. Are you going to do anything about hit so that mechanic can be effective?
A. We had a talent to give you a bunch of spell hit in a beta build, but spell hit on your offensive spells is a hard sell in the new talent model. But yes, we want to do something about spell hit for the Discipline Archangel specialization, possibly move up Twisting Faith to a tier that Discipline can obtain it in Shadow (so your spirit would convert to hit as Discipline/Shadow sub-specialization).

I’ve still mostly been working only goblin factions lately and farming gold. Also picking up stuff here and there for my future worgen warrior. Decided on a new name for him, Cosain which in Irish means to protect. Also trying to pickup frost badges when I can each day to grab my 4piece bonus and get to the stupid 5500gs so I can try the new ruby sanctum.

I’ve been super busy but still finding time for WoW, but have been neglecting my site recently   If you follow my twitter feed though I have been posting there!  I’ll try to do better!  I’m trying to do too many things right now I think

Anyways some pretty exciting news yesterday about the redesign of the talent system.  They have this whole new system worked out and ready to appear in the next beta push! (Which I’m still not in btw )  I think they hit the nail on the head with this new specialization concept.  Especially the part about making the class FEEL like the spec they choose very early on by presenting them a tree defining ability at level 10.

I was telling Inien again last night that I am glad I have continued to wait to start learning anything about Warriors (my new worgen) with this much stuff in flux.  There is so much changing, from the gear, to the stats, to the talents that its going to be a new game.  Not to mention the world!  Speaking of which I’ve watched a lot of videos of the new world and Blizzard has done an amazing job on the new and old zones.  This expansion has got to be the most epic expansion ever created.

I’m very excited to see what they do with Disc after cleaning it up.  I hope Power Word: Barrier is still there because I still believed that would be a fun spell!  I was also saw mention of Penance being the Disc defining ability given to level 10s, which means we may get something new at the top of our tree which should be interesting.  I just hope they stick with the overall theme of Disc, speed and absorption.

Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to lately.  I’ve mostly been working on my gold supplies and farming rep for my non-exalted factions.  I’ve also tried to keep a slow and steady income of frost badges coming.  I’ve managed to get my two piece bonus on T10 and pickup a few other odds and ends.  I am working towards getting the 4 piece bonus then I’ll likely go for one of the trinkets or the tailoring patterns depending on how things are at that point.

I managed to get the new pet they put on Ahune before he went away, and also bought the two plush pets baby Gryphon and Wyvern.  I know it is a sickness   Every once in a while Inien goes with me to beat up the folks in ZG to try and get the last Raptor I don’t have.  I also do a lot of fishing in the sewers still for my rat.  I still have a few pets I need to get other places, like the phoenix in MGT.  I’m currently running with 124 pets now, woot!

I have been reading the WoW forums more lately despite the usual headache it can give you some times.  I ran across a post in the Cataclysm forum that Zarhym replied too. The title was Cataclysm: WoW Killer.  Now when I first read that I thought it could be both a positive or a negative post, of course this is the WoW forums so I knew it must be negative.  But I’d like to take a second to argue the other way.

World of Warcraft has been the number one MMO for quite some time now.  From the very beginning they managed to bring an audience that no one dreamed possible.  Since those early days many MMO’s have come out to try and recreate the success of WoW, or to some how take some from it.  Every time a new MMO is about to release there is all sorts of forum posts about how it is the next WoW Killer.  Warhammer Online was one such game which everyone was sure would bring WoW down, as was Age of Conan.   These games would always show some limited success but WoW lived on.  All the things that makes WoW great, they just couldn’t match.  It was hard for them to compete against years of fine tuning that WoW has done.

My reason for bring this up is I believe Cataclysm is THE WoW Killer.  Cataclysm will finally be the one game to one up WoW.  You might say to yourself, well “Laneer Catalcysm is WoW.”  However if you have been following the info coming you can see just how much they are changing.  Yes there will be some aspects of our old game there, but everything about WoW is pretty much changing.  They are modifying nearly every item, changing quests, the landscape everywhere, spells, talents, trade skills.  Nothing in this expansion seems to be escaping the great cataclysm.

Now this is just my opinion, but I think this is all for the better.  Admittedly I am a Blizzard fanboy, but I think the success of this game speaks for itself.  I am very impressed with all the refinement coming in Cataclysm.  I admire Blizzard very much for taking on such a monumental task such as this.  I am not sure that any other company would have been gutsy enough to try and do so much at once.    I have enjoyed WoW going on 6 years now.  It has come a long way from those early days with each expansion building on the next.  Cataclysm seems to be a compilation of all the lessons learned from each stage of WoW.  So without a doubt I believe we finally have a WoW Killer.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

The WoW Killer!

Had just enough energy for a quick 5 man tonight.  Though 5 mans these days are so boring if it isn’t any of the 3 new ones.  On occasion I’ll get in a group with a poorly geared tank that makes it more interesting but usually I stand around lol  So today I thought I’m going to see if I can beat any of the DPS.  So in between healing I used every trick in the book to do some DPS as Disc of course.  I managed to beat the hunter, and came close during the instance at beating the Warlock, but in the end I couldn’t do it.  I was proud of myself at managing to do 15% of the damage WHILE I was also healing

Also wanted to make a quick longer comment on the new badge changes that Blizzard has posted for Cataclysm.  My first thought was about time!  It seemed the current system was getting ridiculous and if they kept this up we were going to have all sorts of crazy named badges hehe  Its also a pain if you want to get a different item and have to down convert your badges like 3 times for heroic stuff.  It seems like a well thought out plan.  Especially how each time they release a new tier of gear they convert your uper tier badges to lower tier.  This will keep people from hording and get you spending!

It is quite amazing at how many systems they are changing.  I’m really excited and just a tad worried.  My worry lies only in the fact that so much is being changed that testing of it all has got to be a nightmare.  I imagine that there will be a lot of tweaking, more so than normal even when Cataclysm goes live with this many changes.  It’s all good though!