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.

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.

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.

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?

The Flying Purple People Eater

Yesterday, I wrote about flying. Well, no, I wrote about Warlords of Draenor's lack of interesting and engaging content. I am a person with various opinions that require many words to reveal their true nature, and in my previous post I precariously left unspoken the matter of my actual opinion on the flying debate. It sparked some feedback, where it seemed to me that I may have implied I think the flying debate is unimportant.

not working as intended

While there may have been parts that alluded to my beliefs, the reality was shrouded. Here is the thing, though: my opinion doesn't matter.

What am I trying to say? That, as one singular individual within the vast Warcraft playerbase, my opinion isn't important? Am I implying, in this statement, that all of your opinions don't matter?

No, no. Here's the situation at hand: the voices of those so opposed to the flying restriction that they have continued to voice their concerns for more than a year are more important than my opinion.

These Boots Are Made For Timewalking

Timewalking is a new feature coming in 6.2. This official Blizzard preview summarizes it pretty quickly, but if you haven't read about it and need an even quicker summary: you can queue up for some randomly selected old dungeons, where you will be scaled down to reasonable power, but you can still get rewards relevant to current content.

baby I'm coming home!

Oh, but only if the current weekend event is a timewalking event.

Game Evolution - Why The Game Changes

World of Warcraft has changed dramatically over the course of its life. We all know that the game does change - duh, it's not going to not change. We joke about playing "the same game" for ten years, but really, no one is going to play the same game for so long. The game has to change for people to keep playing it. You'll go back to a game you liked and play it again, but not for, say, six hundred total days worth of time. For a game to accumulate that kind of loyalty, it has to keep its playerbase entertained and happy.

A more curious question is why does the game change the way that it does? What factors influence the designers' decisions on how to change the game?

well...

This subject is misleadingly complex. There's no shortage of people claiming they know exactly what would fix the game, but that actually attributes to part of the problem.

We all know the game has to change, that the driving factor in changing it is to keep people playing, and that the changes made are intended to keep people playing and hopefully increase the amount of people playing it. Anything else would be nonsensical.

What's complicated about that? Well...

playerbase vs. blizzard

Warlords Subscription Prescription Description

If you already read forums or read trade chat (why would you do that, though?), you don't need to read anything else about the state of World of Warcraft's active subscription numbers, I'm sure - but I don't usually talk about the active subscription counts, so hear me out for a moment.

This is the (cropped - view full, interactive chart here) chart of WoW's active subscriptions. At Warlords release, subscriptions skyrocketed to be as high as they were at Mist's release, clearing the leap upwards from the dismal sub count that Mists had earned after overstaying its welcome with over a year of SoO. With this latest report, we're seeing that in record time of only six months, subs dropped back down dramatically to almost as low as they were at Mists' lowest point,

However, in case you forgot, Mists' release came with that Annual Pass deal - free beta access, a mount, and Diablo III for free - if you had already paid for Diablo III, you had game time credited for the worth of the game - if you agreed to subscribe to the game for a full year. Cancelling before your year was up revoked your mount and Diablo III access. Of course, after the Annual Pass ran its full year course, the subscription count was 7.6M.

My Complex Relationship With PvP

I don't dislike PvP. I used to do it in classic and TBC a lot, but after my run around with arena and the vast amount of changes, including resilience, it brought into the game under the pretense of "balance", I fell out of interest with it.

I played with my friends and my guild, but I hovered around rank 4 for the majority of my PvP career until I finally decided I was determined enough to work my way up.

I climbed the ranks of the old honor system in pursuit of glory, purples, and cool mounts, until I learned about the changes to honor coming in 2.0. I stopped stressing about it and just waited until honor would be an accumulated point system, but as with many things I didn't do back in vanilla, it would have been neat if I had kept going with it and had earned a higher rank than 9 to show off in my feats of strength.

Nostalgia and Addiction - a Warcraft Story

I bought a filing cabinet today because I am an adult. After setting up the hanging folders and putting all my important papers into a heap, I went through and ended up finding things from many years ago.

I'll figure this out

One thing in particular I found was a creative writing assignment I had in high school. I threw it away hastily in embarrassment, but not before looking through it.

In it, I had to write 6 separate pieces in an assortment of types of poetry and/or prose. Two of the six had been directly influenced by World of Warcraft and one of them was loosely influenced, with an additional drawing I had included for the final several page story.

I had this creative writing class in 2006-07 and graduated in 07. TBC came out about six months before I graduated from school (and on said release date, I lied and said school was cancelled so I could play, which was accepted without question for some reason), though I was in high school throughout all of Vanilla, and it almost caused me to be in high school longer than necessary.

The Art of Falling Behind

I think I'm looking at about the fifth time that I'll be behind the curve in game. It's been happening with more and more frequency as the expansions come and go, but the first time I ever fell behind was actually in TBC.

the one with the red hellfire peninsula

The difference back then was that I was still actively playing. Something about the game when I hit 70 prompted me to just chill, fly around, and farm rather than joining my guild in raiding. As I began to see more and more people in Shattrath with raid gear and, most notably, tier sets, I got frustrated and wanted to raid again. Unfortunately, I can never be happy playing the game without raid gear - yeah, just the gear. I really like raiding, but ultimately, it's the high end gear that I can't stand not having. I'm not saying I'm in favor of systems that grant raid gear to you without requiring some amount of raiding from you, just that basically I get frustrated when I'm not ahead of the curve. I know it sounds elitist, but I'm not really afraid to admit it.

Since my first raiding break back then, I have taken breaks from the game with increasing frequency and managed to always find myself needing to play catch up. Right now, in light of all of the work I've been doing to move and the fact that I still have rooms full of boxes and bags of clothes, I won't have much time, or frankly interest, to play to try and maintain my character between guilds since my latest dissolution.

The Dark Times - a Guild Story

I figured there's no time like the present, and I've decided to regale you all with the tale of my third guild, that fabled year I spent with the worst guild I've ever been in. The first time I dedicated more than a sentence or two to it was the opening to my Experience post, but it was always a story for another day. I've waited long enough, so that day is today, or whichever day it happens to be when you read this.

Now, I mean no offense to anyone when I say this guild was 'the worst'. Mathematically, statistically, and operationally, it was undeniably less functional than any other guild I've been in. It's just fact. I had issues with only one member, and I put a lot of time, effort, and emotion into that guild.

Though the main catalyst that caused me to leave was directly related to a person within the guild, I imagine that after enough time, I still would have made the decision to part ways. It's doesn't feel good to accept putting my heart and soul into something while the people around me consistently fail without holding anyone accountable, without any signs of improvement. Even so, I was in the guild for an entire year - and it wasn't because they weren't always bad. Oh, they were always bad.

"Well, how did you even end up there if you think you're so great?" you ask me, accusingly. Yeah, I heard you - rude much. Well, what had happened was...

it was just a couple years ago...

When the Going Gets Tough, the Guild Gets Going

My guild has been through a lot in the past few months. It's easy to say that the people who are still there are some of the most loyal and determined people I've ever raided with. Some of them had been given offers to join better guilds, and a good chunk of them easily could have left to better guilds if they had wanted to - but they didn't.

Of the ones who left, I've heard here and there that a number of them have quit raiding or quit the game altogether, and the guild that formed from the departure of several long time members is currently lost in a trail of dust in progression.

I even recently found that a good chunk of the members in the guild from our failed merger stopped trying and chose to be absorbed by a much more progressed guild - something we've refused to do. All of this bedlam going on within and around us, and we're still here and raiding.

Mislead By Remakes

I get excited about remakes, then subsequently disappointed. To me, an upcoming remake is a chance to play a game that I liked on a newer system with updated graphics. I don't know why it took me so long to realize how big of a lie that is.

none of this applies to pokemon games
they are all the same game remade forever
and that is totally okay

Remakes change the original game. Whether it's for better or for worse is up to the player, but when a company remakes a game, they change things about it. That's part of the whole idea of a remake. Clearly, I'm a little slow on the uptake, because I've only just realized it after playing several remakes over the years.

why isn't this wooooooorkiiiiing

I would be more than happy to pay 40 bucks to play the exact same game on a newer system. I guess game companies don't think that's a great idea, and I mean I guess I can see why, so I guess that's just me.

Graphics and You

Giving a game a bad review or saying that a game is bad because of its graphics is an easy way to get laughed at by a lot of gamers.

the enlightened opinions of random internet users

Graphics matter - but not the way some people tend to think. It's not important how stellar the graphics are, it's not important if the graphics look "real", but rather the way the graphics fit into the atmosphere and the environment matters.

Minecraft has made hundreds of million of dollars with very low quality graphics, and no one has stopped playing the classics due to the higher quality graphics available in more recent games. Don't get me wrong, you can judge graphics all you'd like, and stellar graphics really do enhance a game's experience, but here's the thing:

Gameplay and graphics are mutually exclusive.

Goodbye Pandaria, Hello Draenor!

farewell, pandaland

Warlords of Draenor comes out in just a few days! With its release comes the end of Mists of Pandaria (finally), our fourth expansion to World of Warcraft.

Mists came out on a Tuesday, September 25, 2012. Mists will have lasted two years, one month, and 18 days once Warlords is released this Thursday.

While two years in itself isn't super crazy long for an expansion in WoW, the fact that its final content patch, 5.4.0, lasted for a year, two months, and two days is a little dizzying. However, they did a pretty decent job keeping that last patch relevant for a long time - by adding heirloom weapons off of the last boss, and subsequently removing their drop chance with the release of Warlords, they created an incentive to continue to do the content up until the very last few days.

Loremaster

While I do have [The Loremaster], I'm not exactly an expert on the Warcraft universe. It surprises me, however, that there are so many people who have an express disinterest in the story behind the game. It seems unfathomable to me to be able to experience the game, in fact any game, with such a deep, detailed background without paying attention to lore. I never skipped cutscenes and I read all the dialogue in the old RPG console games I played - part of the entertainment factor was that the game was telling a story. Part of the appeal of video games as an activity is that it's a story where I am a direct participant.