Nothing quite like exploratory ding sneaking up on you. After getting in good with Highmountain, I had Saintvache visit Suramar, since I wouldn’t mind a Nightborne. Once again failing to look up what is required bit me in the rump. I figured it would work the same as the Highmountain in that I needed to complete the initial group of quests. As you likely know, that’s not the case. But at this point, I’d now done two of the factions for “Uniting the Isles.” So it was off to Val’Ashar for some more samaritan work. It was while wandering about there the 50 happened. At this point, I’ll probably keep him up in that area to continue to unite the isles. That’s now the Paladin and Druid that are level capped for me. I think up next is someone on the Alliance side. The who is still up for debate.
After dipping my toes in over the weekend, I decided to get my hooves wet. Saintvache was off to Legion Dalaran as I decided if I couldn’t have a Zandalari, I could at least get a Highmountain Tauren into the fold. Plus, it gave me a chance to do some leveling, which…wow. Such an improved experience. I’ll elaborate on a later date but I definitely approve. Saintvache is now 47, and that’s just from doing the main Highmountain story and a couple of bonus objectives that happened to be where I was questing anyway.
It didn’t take too long to complete that main story and set up the meeting between Baine and Mayla. I was in for a bit of a surprise as I never looked up how any of the alliances worked. I figured I would fly back to Orgrimmar and it would be a simple case of “hey, thanks for all your help. You proved the Horde is good. We’re in, ok?” Needless to say that is not what happened at all. I really enjoyed the story that lead to them officially joining the Horde. Though I can only imagine what it was like to have to do that chain without a flying mount. Dear Illidan it was like a classic WoW questline – all over the damn place.
In the end, though, it all worked out. The most difficult thing was getting back to Orgrimmar because everyone is logged in for Shadowlands.
See? Just a few people. I actually had to go to Pandaria and use the shrine portal to get back. Then I was able to scoot off and get my new mount and more importantly unlock some new friends. It didn’t take long for one to fall into the fold.
Not a fan of her default armor, but we’ll get that fixed eventually.
A few days in and we’ve definitely got a feel for the new flavor of WoW. Yesterday I talked about the many immediate changes that bombarded us in the first minutes we logged in, but now the details can be absorbed a bit better.
Class changes are interesting. The only thing I had to do on Saintvache was choose two new talents. His action bars went nearly untouched. I could not say the same for Tumunzahar, Siori, and Liouxpold. Perhaps it’s an Alliance thing. Speaking of classes, many people found Burnt Glyphs in their possession now. Rest assured that’s just for Glyphs that are no longer in the game.
I completed the Iron Horde invasion on the Horde side, and while I don’t know the details of what is to follow, I really hope it isn’t done now. I came out of it with a title and a new pet, but incredibly underwhelmed. That and agitated because Thrally-Sue (which I think I’ll call him far more often now) had to be the one running around on the front line. Really? There couldn’t be anyone else? The guy had a whole expansion dedicated to him (Deathwing was merely supporting cast) and still we get him shoved down our throat. Not to rant too much, because up until the later parts of Cataclysm I actually liked Thrall. It’s just that Blizzard has overplayed him. Getting back to the Iron Horde, it seemed pretty linear and to the point. I’ll have to flip over and give the Alliance side a try before I really assess it but I can’t imagine it is all that different.
One no longer has to spend so much time in Pandaria. I logged into a toon and found it sitting at 100% XP, but hadn’t dinged yet. There’s no way in Dire Maul I would ever let that happen. The OCD in me would have to ding before I logged. Particularly because that’s less than exploratory XP. That’s more along the lines of “you dinged because the wind changed direction.” Now, to confirm this is the case, I played for a little while and had six bubbles in half an hour. At 88. Hrm, this place really might not be that bad anymore.
The final nugget of “huzzah” is stacking. Imagine my surprise when I had the bank open and decided to top up my stack of Dreamfoil and sell the rest. Suddenly I had a stack of 28! I began playing around with this immediately, finding eventually that stacks cap at 200 now. Between that and the Toy Box my bags are bordering on empty (and the bag sort feature is fantastic). But what it really excites me for is my guild banks. For Claws, it just means having a cleaner bank. For the auctioneer in me, it means more room to store goodies. I mean, just look at the difference in one tab.
It wasn’t 100% good news, though. On top of shelling out gold for some face lifts (I think I spent about 200g or so in total. Obviously someone with more 90’s than I spent even more), I found that some gear held onto its transmogrification, while others reset. Needless to say, many of my toons look incredibly goofy so I will have to correct that when given the chance to.
I’m sure many people knew about these changes already, from playing the PTR or reading about it. For me, I have been incredibly removed from these details of the game as I’ve been merely puttering in it for the past few months. I vaguely kept tabs on what’s going on and really didn’t read the changes ahead of time (of course I knew about character models). Thus, it’s all a surprise. It feels like a good surprise, and I have a feeling I’m not the only returning player to think so.
Patch 6.0 is now live and with it came many changes, but none more than the vast amount of visual ones. Almost everyone I spoke to yesterday was headed straight for the Barber Shop to see what they had to work with. Many weren’t keen on what they saw when they logged in, while others didn’t mind the initial look when things went live around 1:30 EST. Personally, Tum was far more angry than I wanted. To be honest, almost all of the dwarves are surly/angry looking. Not that it doesn’t fit the race, because it most certainly does. It’s just that it wouldn’t hurt to have one lighthearted option. As you can see by this image, I did the best I could with what I had.
Initial one on the left, new on the right.
I had to change Saintvache as well, as logging on to him I was blinded by an albino. I just wish we had more hair options for the Tauren. As for the rest of the team, I’ll check them in due time.
It wasn’t just character models that changed. From what I saw last night and this morning, nothing sparkles anymore. No quest items, no nodes. Nothing! Instead, you’ll get a faint outline that gets stronger once you mouse over it. Even characters gain an outline now (green for friendly, red for not) when targeted, though I’m sure there’s an option to turn it off. Still, at a glance it took me a second to complete a couple of quests because I was looking for the shiny.
Action bars have obviously changed, with some spells removed and others simply changed. But speaking of spells, they even look better visually. The animations are fantastic, though I’ve only seen Paladin, Mage, and Warlock. Once again, I’ll get to them in due time…or simply see them amidst my travels.
This isn’t even documenting some of the bigger changes that came with the patch either. Things like the new level UBRS, the Iron Horde invasion (which I’ve started Horde side…so far so good), Garrisons, Premade Groups in the Dungeon Finder, all the class changes, etc.
With the game seeing an increase of over half a million players, this patch is well timed. Many of the changes brought the game up to relatively modern standards and introduced a lot of things the players have been yearning for, for quite some time. Will it translate to more than 7.4 million players and sustain them for a while this time? Hard to say, but you can’t say the new expansion isn’t setting up to take a big swing at it.
It’s a surreal view isn’t it? The Darkmoon Faire just doesn’t look right empty. It isn’t as though I just snapped a shot at a quiet hour or that moment where no one was going by. Look closely, there isn’t even any NPC’s. Now you’re no doubt asking yourself the same questions I was, and others who saw me online (such as Kamalia), and that is how am I even there? Well it was legit. I had hopped onto Carrera last night to grab her for the pet battle circuit for some experience and knowing she was logged out at the Faire I expected Elwynn Forest to be perfect since I could start the circuit there. Except that isn’t what happened.
When I logged in, there I was on an abandoned island. It wasn’t a character fluke as Saintvache was there as well and the same thing happened when I logged on with him. The simplest explanation I can come up with is that it’s so close to the Faire opening up once more that the servers have the location as being live, there’s just no one in it. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue because the entry portals in Elwynn and Thunder Bluff aren’t up yet. But if you’re on the other side of the portal it’s a whole different story. Needless to say with both the Tauren and the Draenei I took the opportunity to shutterbug a little bit. I’m keeping what I post to a relative minimum. Enjoy!
Oh no! Here come the Tonks! Whatever will I do?!?!
The sword? Eh. Some of the ingredients don’t go in the pot so willingly these days…
Empty Merry-Go-Rounds that turn are CREEPY.
Really?!!? There’s no one on the island and I still can’t get in? ARGH!!!!
Would you like to buy a Gnome?
“I think we’re alone now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around….”
Hard to believe it’s already the end of March. It really flew by. At the start, of course, I put together a small list of things I wanted to try to accomplish. For what it’s worth, after two weeks I looked like I was going to blow through things with the greatest of ease. I had no problem getting Paramita to 45, or a Pandarian level for Liouxpold (he’s now 86). Even Semblance. I wanted to get her to 35 and ended up with a level 40 Warrior. My successful attempt at cleaning up the Claws of Nature Guild Bank is also well documented. Unfortunately, that’s where my accomplishments end. Sure, I did get other things done unexpectedly, but not the other items on the list.
Junkshot only made it to level 15
Elcombe barely completed 1-2 Fishing Dailies, nevermind getting two levels.
Saintvache made it to 451 Herbalism. Wow, I never realized how tedious that can be. Never touched his Enchanting either.
I also didn’t make it to 2,500 daily quests. I know I’m less than 100 quests from that goal though, so that one will come in April.
A couple of those I might’ve come closer to completing if not for coming down with something this past weekend. All three of us in the Amateur household are suffering from it, though I think Mrs. Amateur has it the worst. But the key is focusing on the things that did get done and moving forward and building upon. So a quick to do list for April and then a little blogging exercise.
Junkshot (15) to 20
Liouxpold (86) to 87
Semblance (40) to 50
Boost my Engineers: Carrera (392), Semblance (185), Oddfodder (116), Vortmar (112)
Still get a friggin’ Alchemist started somewhere…
2,500 daily quests should be easy to obtain at this point.
Saintvache to 600 Herbalism (again)
Maybe get my Albino Drake.
Get to level 20 in Hearthstone in April for the sexy Pandaren card backs.
We’ll see how things go this time around. I already know a good chunk of the coming weekend is a write off, so I expect to be a touch behind the 8-ball. Either way the important thing will be to once again focus on what I do manage to accomplish.
So now the blogging exercise. I really don’t know where Mrs. Amateur found this, but it’s one I can definitely handle doing. It’s another 30 days type of exercise, but the questions (to me) are pretty straight forward with good odds of being easy to answer. How much elaboration comes with the answer is entirely up to the writer. I know AmerPriest plans on doing it as well, and I would love to know if anyone else decides they’re up for it.
My efforts thus far to get where I want to be for Warlords has been met with limited results. It’s entirely my own fault as I’ve been spending my time Hearthstoning when free, usually in an effort to complete a daily each day. Yes, reader, that one has its teeth sunk in but good. Fortunately with some free time last night I finally got in some actually WoW time and took to my Gnome Warrior. The Mrs. and I did some puttering around but actually got into a dungeon pretty quickly(!) and I picked up a couple of levels in Blackfathom Deeps. After that she was kind enough to run me through Stocks before calling it a night. Another Gnomeregan run this morning and she’s now 27, on her way to 28. Go figure, as soon as I lament queue times, I have two occasions where it was less than 20 minutes. But, now that I’ve actually been productive to some degree, I figure I can increase said productivity and give myself a proverbial kick in the rear to do so…by jotting down some goals for the month.
Get Semblance the Warrior (27) to 35. My original plan was 25, but I accomplished that quite easily yesterday.
Get Paramita the Priest (41) to 45.
Get Elcombe the Mage (68) to 70.
Finally have Elcombe learn Alchemy, and then actually power level it to some degree.
Max out Saintvache’s Herbalism, currently 310.
Get his Enchanting (487) up over 500 as well. Who knows, might even Max it as well.
Get Junkshot the Monk (7) to 20.
Clean up Claws of Nature Guild Bank.
Get Liouxpold (85) at least one level in Pandaria.
Reach 2,500 Daily Quests
Not a vast list by any stretch, and many of the goals are pretty simple to obtain. I average about an hour and a half of free time a day, so I can’t be shooting for the moon. If I get all of these accomplished then it will feel like I’ve done something and will push me on towards the next ones in April. Let’s face it, many little things can add up to one big thing and in this case that one thing can be momentum. It wouldn’t hurt for me to have some of that the closer we get to Draenor.
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