Legion Lunch

For lunch today I'll be having some Legion. At 3AM. It's a new fad, like brunch. So, anyway.

Where have I been? Not playing WoW very much, that's for sure. I completely threw away any chance I had to get the Groove Warden and I didn't prepare. At all. Much contrast to how I was behaving at WoD launch.

credit where credit's due

Unfortunately, most of that energy probably would have been better conserved for this release. At least, I can hope that assessment is correct. We'll see!

I mentioned many times how I intentionally kept myself in the dark about the expac. I did get more hints and spoilers than I hoped I would, but that's okay, I still don't know what's going on in the zones and am pretty lost on the lore.

I wasn't going to play at launch, but due to being in a pretty rad socially active guild, I decided it might be the most fun launch to date. My hardcore guilds of the past were very competitive, everyone for themselves on release, and my other casual guilds were so particularly casual that they didn't do anything for launch. So it's looking like it could be a good one. If the servers cooperate.

Maybe I'll start writing WoW posts again! Gasp!

Warlords Closing Thoughts

The Legion prepatch is upon us and Warlords of Draenor came out 11/13/14. Perhaps a more relevant piece of information to note would be that the most recent major patch came out 6/23/15, or over a year ago. Just wanted to start out with that.

Legion is set to release August 30th, 2016. Last year, er, a year and a half ago, I was prepped, ready, and roaring to go. I had enough of Mists and while I was still playing nearly every day, I was ready for some new monsters to kill and pixels to loot.

While I am still very ready for some new monsters to kill and pixels to loot, the "preparation" for this expansion has been dramatically different. I have not been playing every day, I am very much not prepared, and I haven't exhausted every possible piece of playable content in Warlords. The reason being that Warlords was rather disappointing.

especially this thing

The Great Readjustment

I'm playing WoW again.

I hope you didn't forget me

I struggled with deciding to reup my subscription or not for a few days. I planned on getting Legion from the beginning, that plan didn't change, but I had been piecing together a long term plan.

First, I would prepurchase Legion, which I still have to do and am planning on asking for it for my birthday. Secondly, I would, as money allowed, transfer a few of my characters over to Chromaggus.

Why the transfer? First, some backstory to catch you up:

Realistic Expectations

I had an interesting ritual of acting like I was going to start writing again, and then not doing it. At this point, I haven't written since November of last year.

so many missed caturdays

I acted like I was going to hype up some Dungeons and Dragons posts, and then I never wrote them. Not sure where my motivation went, but I've been playing a new campaign lately and we're already, like, eight play sessions in, and I obviously haven't written about it at all.

I've been building in Cleft of Dimensions, which if you're wondering about that you can just look at the next post down since that was the last thing I wrote about in November, of last year. I've built two areas and will be starting a new one tomorrow or Monday, based on Sunsnug Isle in MH4U. My first area was based on Animal Crossing (no single one in particular) and my second one was actually based on Spirited Away, the 2001 Miyazaki film. My second one was three times as large as my first one, which was quite tough but I pulled through.

it's about 75% source accurate with some personal additions and deviations

Text Based Blog Post

I will write about that DnD session like I promised. Today is not the day I do that, however.

Today I'm playing Cleft of Dimensions, again.

yeah this one

I never really get tired of CoD (which obviously doesn't stand for Call of Duty in this context), but I just end up playing something else and forgetting about it for awhile. Then I go back to it and play it until something else comes up.

A Day in the Past: The WotLK Story

If you read The TBC Story, this story starts off right where that one ended. It's less self indulgence about me and my own personal history (but don't worry, I still managed to squeeze it in there) and more about the history of my long passed, best guild I'd ever been in.

To catch you up, after TBC release I screwed around as a non-raider until my guild exploded and asked me to go resto during T4. Fast forward through that guild dissolving shortly after, during T5, and over a year of me healing TBC progression in a new and better guild, and slow down around the end of TBC when I went back to balance.

flashback fade out, queue dream sequence music

TBC was the pinnacle of my raiding career. As I said at the end of my TBC story, at the homestretch of Sunwell, I was ranking as 4th best balance druid in the US and 12th best in the world.

It's Another Flying Post - Pre-Legion Edition

I made a disclaimer earlier that I'm purposefully keeping myself ignorant to announced Legion features. If I say a thing or things that have already been discussed, announced, explained, or debunked, that is because I intentionally did not research this topic. My reasoning can be summarized by saying that I don't want to spoil the game before it even comes out. My reasoning can be lengthily explained by this particular blog post. Please excuse me and any accidental uneducated nonsense.

Blizzard decided to enter into Warlords without allowing flying. They nudged at maaaybe adding it later, only to kind of backhandedly "announce" in a random article somewhere that they maybe might not be adding it back to the game ever probably most likely. Of course, throughout the entire debacle, people were very fervently internet-campaigning about it, and this just took the cake. I mean, if you somehow missed the whole thing, you must have left mid-Mists or earlier and just come back to the Warcraft community scene like, yesterday.

actual depiction of pro-flying protest rally

Everyone was writing about flying, so I tried to keep my posts about it to a minimum. My first two posts were before they had announced that flying would be back, where I ended the second stating I was sorry and wouldn't write anymore flying posts. Then I made a third one when they made the decision to add flying, insincerely apologizing for lying about not writing another flying post. Knowing better this time around, I did not, in fact, promise to not write about flying again, so here we are!

The Grand Garrison Mistake

As of this moment, I simply cannot stand my garrison. Just a few moments of walking around in my garrison reminds me that I'm sick of it and I'm sick of Warlords.

That's just how I feel. I'm sure not everyone does, but I'm definitely not the only person. But why? What did they get wrong?

Garrisons were a decent idea that got implemented poorly. There is one particular aspect of garrisons that is not only a problem on its own, but caused a huge problem in Warlords entirely.

I'm Not Buying a Ticket for the Legion Hype Train

As everyone knows, the next Warcraft expansion was announced.

wait wait

there, this one

I really don't want to know too much about it before it comes out because I don't want to experience the same kind of uncontrollable hype followed by months of disappointment. Of course, no matter how hard I try, there is only so much I can avoid learning beforehand, since the majority of people I talk to and follow are all talking about it like crazy. I can only expect that they will continue to talk about it until the day of release.

If you knew me back when Warlords was about to be released, you may remember just how hyped I was. It won't be like that for Legion. It's not that I'm not excited about it - my only impressions so far are bits and pieces I've put together from the unavoidable internet and I'm already super excited. It's just that I realized long ago the benefits of not spoiling yourself - learning everything about the game before it comes out is like reading a full script of a movie before you see it.

For these reasons, my blog posts before release will not be about Legion hype. I understand, too, that this will mean far fewer people will have interest in my blog for the time being. My most viewed posts are Warcraft posts about current content, controversies, or upcoming or recently released features. People aren't going to care about Terraria and what my guild was doing six years ago while there's Legion hype being thrown in everyone's faces.

But I'm okay with that.

This means, too, that I may make posts with thoughts, opinions, or discussions about things that are embarassingly irrelevant. For example, I may mention that I'm happy to be leaving my garrison, but in fact Blizzard has announced that your garrison as is will be air lifted into a new zone in Legion. Now, this is just an example, but I may make a faux pas like that. I don't know. That's what happens when you purposefully don't know things.

Speaking of garrisons, I am thrilled they won't be in Legion. They won't, right?

...

Wait, don't tell me!

A Day in the Past: The TBC Story

While I started as feral and fought tooth and claw to succeed and have my ability be recognized, at the end of Vanilla, a friend convinced me to go balance.

just add moonfire

He wanted to play my character late at night in WSG (don't tell Blizzard), so I let him. He raved about how amazing balance was in PvP and sent me many screencaps of impressive scoreboards. I think he was just a very good PvPer, but he did get me exalted with the Warsong Outriders, so there's that.

Because I was "stuck" as balance, I got adjusted to it, to the point where I realized, hey, I kinda like this. I stayed balance into TBC where I kept it while leveling and for the first three or four months.

In terms of socially being a subhuman low life hybrid spec, I definitely took a step backward. Feral got a lot better in TBC, while already ahead of balance in the first place. If I had stayed feral, I'd have achieved being a "real spec" a lot sooner, but as I've said before, I never back down from being an underdog.

A Day in the Past: Hinterlands

The Hinterlands is a sort of random, out of the way little zone that actually contains a good chunk of pleasant memories.

it was hard to find an old map without words or farming paths on it

The Hinterlands has a lot of trolls, but it's also pretty dwarvish. Aerie Peak is right at the entrance, and the two guardian named gryphons at the entrance to the zone are only hostile to horde players.

they wouldn't stand a chance, now

Simply going into Hinterlands required that you could sneak past or kill these two tough level 40 guardians, and the path led you directly into the alliance town, where a patrolling dwarf guard may have very well found you if you didn't immediately step off the paved path, directly into the mobs and monsters of the zone.

what did I ever do to you dwarves anyways

As a horde player, it was an accomplishment to be able to get in to The Hinterlands, and when you did, you were rewarded with a very quest-dense area.

For Clarity

I'm a little weird about WoW right now. I haven't really played since the Wednesday after 6.2's release, but I've been thinking about it a lot. The thing is, I can't really play the game that I want to play.

I've written before about my early addictions to the game. I've been writing about some more particular, fond memories I have with a day in the past. I've only published two but I have others in the works. It's cathartic for me to write about my nostalgia with the game, but there's something weird about thinking about the game all the time but never actually logging in to play it.

I still follow a lot of Warcraft players and I see them talking about their shipyards, raids, and Tanaan and I feel like I'm missing so much. I don't dislike the 6.2 content - I wrote about how I was really into it when I played it. I've just been doing a lot of other stuff lately and I haven't had time to really sit down and play video games. It's not that I don't want to experience the new content, it's that when I sit down to play, I tend to, well, not get anything else done. Other things have been taking a higher priority than video games. I'm not exactly happy about that, but it's what it is.

it could be worse

I'm not sure why I haven't accepted my current status as a break, yet. I've been on the fence since last year about taking a break. I've sort of been drifting around, acting like I'm pseudo-active in the game, but I'm not really. I tried to pug one boss in the new raid and that's all I've seen of it. I haven't logged in about two and half weeks. I feel like part of what's kept me from officially "taking a break" has been my blog.

I'm officially accepting that I'm on hiatus. With the main source of inspiration for my blog writings on the backburner, I'm cutting back on scheduled post days, removing Friday from my schedule. My weekends have been significantly busy lately, so cutting back on post days should help keep me posting more instead of feeling overwhelmed and skipping a week. I'll still probably write about Warcraft related topics, but the vast majority of interesting topics usually stem from current, relevant content, which I won't be experiencing for the most part.

oh well

Maybe I'll be more active next expansion.

A Day in the Past: Winterspring

Welcome to a day of the past, the days of Winterspring before the Cataclysm.

It was one of my favorite zones in hang out in during Vanilla. Apparently, this was kinda weird, because people always asked me "what's going on in Winterspring?" I'd get whispered unusually regularly by guildies and friends who noticed I was in Winterspring who didn't understand why anyone would even be there.

is this even a zone?

I went there on both my hunter and my druid. It was a really great place, especially Darkwhisper Gorge.

yay dark and dreary deadly demons!

A Day in the Past: Vanilla Feral

Back in the day, when Androgyn might have looked sorta like this...

rough estimate. this was awhile ago man.

 Or more accurately, usually like this...

(mouth breathing sounds)

Most of our enemies were dragons and undead, we didn't have flying mounts, and only 1% of the playerbase even saw our most difficult raids. It was a simpler time, when the world was new and
"of the Boar" was for some reason a stat combination that appeared on gear on purpose.

yeah we're doing this

I reminisce a lot. I can't help it. Nostalgia is one of my most frequent post tags. Well, I'm doing it again, and this time I'm going to do it with purpose. I've written about parts of the following personal history before - it was actually my ninth post on this blog. This time it has a little more of a narrowed focus and specific purpose. I'm going to do two things that I really like - I'm going to reminisce, and I'm going to tell stories about my reminiscences.

Welcome to A Day in the Past, my new series about Warcraft back in the day. Specifically, my Warcraft life. If you're a stick in the mud about that dreaded nostalgia, feel free to read my post about what it is and why it's totally normal and okay!

Now, on with the show!

Jungles, Shipyards, and Orcs Oh My

So 6.2 came out yesterday. This was me, today, on Wednesday.

zeroed in on the druid changes

Yesterday, I went on a day trip and played MH4U, forgetting there was a huge patch. So, I dove in today.

I updated my addons, - except for Master Plan since it wasn't updated and doesn't work and my life is in shambles - half assed some of my garrison chores, and built a shipyard. I'm killing orcs in Tanaan Jungle, and vaguely remembering that there was something about being able to fly.

pigeons?

I didn't read up a lot on the new patch. Honestly, I haven't been keeping up to date with what's coming in and going out in patches for awhile. This is the biggest patch of Warlords so far, and here is an exhaustive list of what I knew about it before today:

• A meta-achievement to grant flying but apparently not yet or something
• Timewalking and relevant weekends (which I wrote about)
• Tanaan Jungle, supposedly kinda like Timeless Isle
• New raid instance
• Shipyards are a thing

Funnily enough, I've really been looking forward to 6.2. Not for anything in particular really, since I haven't been paying that much attention, but for a dive into some (hopefully) exciting new content.

Those Damn Dirty Scoundrels

Recently, Blizzard went back on a thing they said. It was super significant. Discussion about it had been going on for kind of a long time if I remember correctly.

As any time where Blizzard does something differently than they said they would earlier, people jumped out of the woodwork and wrote angry forum posts about how Blizzard are LIARS!

NO! THRALL SAVE US!

Liars, all of them! They said they would never do this thing, and then they did. They said this thing would be a thing forever and now it's NOT! This other thing, they said it would be made this thing, but now it's a totally different thing! How can we ever even trust any single thing they ever say?!

these things

The very idea!

Nostalgia Explained

In my post about timewalking, I touched on how revamping old dungeons and 'updating' them for current content was one of the ways Blizzard has tried to accommodate people who want to revisit some of their favorite old dungeons. I also mentioned that I'm really not a fan of this method.

pictured: not me

Now, I understand the arguments in favor of revamping dungeons. One big one is the stories in them are outdated and they seem irrelevant. Why wouldn't the Gilnean traitors see Shadowfang Keep and say "that would make a good base of operations"? It makes sense that Scholomance would have changed over the last so many years since we first visited it, the school must be getting funding from somewhere. It makes sense that Warlord Zaela would commandeer UBRS and use it as a stakeout point for her planned invasion of alliance cities. Wouldn't it make sense that the old threats within them have been successfully neutralized? Why wouldn't big baddies see these strategically placed structures as a cool place to go start a new cult of evildoers?

But my gut says "Now why would you go and do something like that? Didn't you see the sign that said 'DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!'?"

How will we finish testing with the self-destruct mechanism active?

World of Identity Crisis

It's been a little under three months since my guild dissolved. We had been struggling since WoD's release, a veritable rollercoaster of events with an initial huge influx of new members, the splitting off of one of our best healers, followed by a full split of the entire guild where both our most casual and most hardcore people left the guild for different perceived reasons. Our GM quit and we tried to merge with another guild, which failed tremendously. We had just enough good people to hold on while we tried to rebuild, but recruiting was impossible. Of the about six good people that were holding us together, three of them left to greener pastures due to our stagnation. We were done.

We never made it to a level of progression and success that I was used to, and I've been struggling with Warlords as an expansion on its own since December of last year. Without a guild, a raiding schedule, or any interesting content, I haven't had much reason to play the game. I keep logging in, though, and I want to play. I don't know if I should look for a new guild or not. I feel completely conflicted about what I think I should do right now.

Flying's Back, Alright

Well, I honestly didn't think they'd do it. I also realize I lied about not doing another flying post, but I feel like this is a monumental decision and there are some words I'd like to put all in a row about it. 

If you're late on the uptake like me, who was very confused to hear people talking about flying in Draenor yesterday, Blizzard has made a concession to bring flying to Draenor. That's right, everybody!

Backstreet's back! wait

The way they have decided to implement flying into Draenor is to award it to you, account wide, after you've accomplished a meta-achievement that requires you do a ton of stuff in Draenor on foot, first.

The way this change has been implemented is getting a wide variety of praise, complaints, death threats, and the rest of the usual - but let me tell you why it's absolutely perfect.

Going, Going, Guano!

It's been a minute. I've been so busy lately, and yet I haven't had anything interesting enough to post about. I have a few ideas, but in the end I opted for the quieter, lazier option, and just didn't write anything.

it's not that I don't want to write, I've just been really preoccupied

I've started getting back to playing DnD, and we're setting up to restart our original campaign that we abandoned oh so many months ago due to various reasons. That's something to be excited about. We have had some new players come into the picture and new campaigns, so things have been a little up in the air lately about who we're playing with and which characters.

In general, I've just had higher priorities than video games and blog posts, which is kind of uncomfortable really. Whenever I've been free, I've been socializing, which has also been getting too frequent for my comfort.