Breaking News...

What is it about big patchest that inevitably and invariably breaks the servers? Tuesday the 13th, the long-awaited "Echoes of Doom" patch has finally been released. Despite having played a bit in beta, despite plans to capture a keep in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, definitely despite my better judgment, I finished the patch yesterday and waited for extended downtime to finish so I could log on.


And then I waited.


And waited.


And went and played warhammer.

And then waited.

And finally around 10pm the servers came up and I actually got to log in......

..... to find that nothing, and I mean NOTHING worked. If you had to click it (or hit a key) to use it... it was broken. There were no NPC's. There were no portals. You were trapped in whatever zone you logged out in Monday night (unless you hoofed it). There was absolutely no travel between Azeroth and Outlands.

Soooo... I logged off again and went squig-hunting.

About 2am, just before bed, I finally decided I'd give it one more shot and logged back into World of Warcraft. Everything worked again. Hurrah!

So I quickly emptied out my bags of pets and mounts, and made a visit to the barber shop. Finally rid of that disastrous hair I chose 3 years ago! And then ranted and railed about the dropped-ball on promises Blizzard had made to the balance-druid community and failed to provide on. But what else is new? With luck that'll go through eventually.

However, I am guardedly hopeful again for Wrath of the Lich King. I miss raiding, and I miss the friends I made in World of Warcraft. Granted, many of 'em joined me in Warhammer, but it's not quite the same.

I just wish Blizzard spent more time making sure all these fun new patched goodies didn't break the server every time they added 'em...! Heh!

Travel, good...

In addition to the new boats which have been added, there are many very fun modes of travel that have been embedded in quests.

Travel, bad...

My first few days in the Beta were scarred by travel woes. Over a two day period, I spent seven hours waiting for the boat to Northrend, riding the boat, getting dumped in the ocean, suspended in the ether, screaming, crying...finally stepping on the shore, only to have the server go down, and find myself back in Stormwind or Menethil.

Shamefaced

OK, I admit it, instead of blogging, I have been running around Northrend. Now, nothing counts in the Beta, but it would be nice if I saw some content beyond the two 'entry' zones. Not yet. Why? Because, I have a slew of alts running around there. I am running three hunters and a druid.

You see, I love farming, gathering, thus all three of my hunters must be played, the skinner, the miner and the herbalist. I also love...just gawking at great scenery. Have I mentioned the fabulous scenery? Hellfire Peninsula is just hideous, so when I started BC, all I wanted to do was get the heck out of there as fast as possible!!

Anyway...I will try to figure out how to add more than one screenshot per post and get a few of my thoughts written up by tomorrow...

Case of the Humdrums

I find myself feeling.. listless.. when it comes to the gaming world, lately.

I have access to WotLK Beta and actually have my own toons there to play with now. As I said last time... the Death Knight area was so creative and fun that I found myself saying "wow!" a lot of the time. Blue mentioned that everything seems to come so easy...

I almost agree, and yet... at the same time it doesn't bother me. We are given the 5-minute cooldown blue Medallion of the Alliance/Horde within our first few quests. We also did, in fact, hit 56 within less than an hour's worth of questing. However, one thing to keep in mind is that Blizzard originally lowered the requirements for leveling from 20-60 by nearly 30%!

And they seem to have done it again slightly, with the advent of Wrath. From 60-70 the experience needed per level will be lessened again, and the experience gained per quest and mob-kill will be increased. This is to make it easier for people who are picking up the game from scratch with Wrath to get to 80 in a world where finding questing partners is next to impossible (re: Azeroth).

But anyway... as I said. Listless. I'm having a hard time drumming up the interest and ability to log into either Live WoW, WotLK Beta, or even Warhammer Beta. I'm not quite sure why. No, I know why.

It's the general antipathy that comes over players when an expansion draws near. We saw it with release of The Burning Crusade a year and a half ago - guilds fell apart, friends server-transferred, and people stopped logging into the game because they felt everything they worked toward on their character would swiftly become useless.

And.. it will.

I think that's my biggest beef with the MMO expansion industry today. The fact that most 'expansions' aren't really expansions at all! It's an entire reset of the game. Every hour we spent pressing keys to down Illidan, and every drop of sweat poured out downing Kil'Jaeden will be absolutely useless in about 2 months.

Well... maybe not entirely useless. Those players who did progress past Black Temple and into Sunwell are likely to see their epics last until the first forays into Naxxramas, much as their tier 3 Naxx gear lasted them to Karazhan in TBC. (Nice kind of symmetry there, don't you think?)

But those players who got through SSC or TK... were making their first tentative steps into Black Temple and Mount Hyjal will likely replace every piece of their hard-won tier 5 set in the first level or two. Or at least they assume they will. And so... people don't want to try anymore.

I can't really blame them. Can you?

Bums me out a bit, though. On the bright side, however...

That comic still makes me giggle every time I see it!

Entering the Beta

Thursday afternoon, Syri and I made a couple of death knights and played them for the first several quests. As many others have said, the quests are fun, teach you about the class, and have great rewards. In fact, my one complaint is that you get SO much for so little work, including XP. We leveled 56 in less than an hour. I know, this is a starting zone, but still!!

Anyway, then I went on to Northrend with Blue. The first thing she did was tame a rhino. Of all the pets I have seen BRK running around with, rhinos looked the most awesome. I was not disappointed! Not only is the stomping very cool, and the knockback fun as hell, but they just look cuddly to me.

It took me an hour to figure out where the pet talents are. Of course, they are on the same window as my talents. /sigh Sometimes I can be a noob. Another thing I did noobishly was to use the knockback in congested areas, thus bringing more mobs aggroing on to us. We survived quite nicely, even before I had found the pet talents!!

Blue and Rhino ran around both the entry-to-Northrend zones, opening them up, finding all the flightpoints and quests, and killing skinnable stuff. And that brings me to another complaint. When I went to the skinning and leatherworking trainers, I found NO mail patterns, just leather. That made me a sad hunter. I hope there are mail patterns soon!

Next post...second day in Northrend!

Beta!

I got in!!!

I is the excited. Client is 40% downloaded, I should be playing tomorrow afternoon, there will be screenies!

I considered calling in sick tomorrow, but I maintain a tiny shred of sanity which says "No!"