More 6.0 Observations

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.

Stat Guy Likes Stats

Yesterday Mrs. Amateur sent me this link providing a number of interesting stats on World of Warcraft, and I see now the link has become a bit more commonplace now.  Essentially, it takes statistics from the game and provides some quirky insight into them.  After reading everything over here are my thoughts on a number of them:

100 million WoW players in 10 years
If I’m in charge of maintaining the player base, I would want to take a look at that number.  I realize it counts trial accounts and even Recruit-A-Friend accounts, but let’s look at it close.  During Wrath, the game peaked at over 11 million players.  As of last May, that number was down to 8 million.  Let’s say for a second there was a 3-4 year window where the game had over ten million players.  That leaves six years where it didn’t, and thus you start to see a turnover of accounts.  The millions and millions who stopped, did so because…?  I’m not heckling Blizz, it’s just something that I (as a number cruncher) would be intrigued to look into further.

The playerbase is currently 5% in favour of the Alliance
I don’t know if I’m surprised by this or not.  As a new player I remember hearing the kids roll Alliance and the players roll Horde.  Now obviously that’s not accurate entirely.  Of the players I know, there’s probably a pretty close split though if you include alts I think the Alliance gets the edge.  Still, whenever I see current tier accomplishments they always seem to be Horde.  Or rather, they were before I stepped away.  I can’t say in this very moment whether or not that’s true.  But, I also attribute it to the fact the Alliance have four staple races of RPG’s: Human, Dwarf, (Night) Elf, and Gnome.  For some, it might be easier to gravitate to what they know.

Most popular title: The Patient
Jenkins is number two.  It’s surprising, and yet it’s not.  The only reason I have that title in my inventory is because I did the run to help others get the title.  Lucky me.  As for the Patient, that’s one I definitely use and I think anyone that uses the “Looking For” system almost has to.  The other popular one for me is “Elder.”

Rarest Mount: Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent
I know nothing about this mount, shy of doing the old Google shuffle.  A less than 1% drop rate from the Sha of Anger.  Huh.  Well, odds of me getting that are right up there with the Baron’s reigns. Still, that it isn’t the Swift Spectral Tiger at the top of this list really surprises me.

There are 504 unique mounts
Wait, what?  I haven’t even qualified for the Albino Drake and there’s a strong probability someone out there has over 500 mounts?  Wow.

Tiny Red Carp is the rare pet
Once again, I’m a bit surprised.  It definitely sounds like this is one of those fluke casts in fishing (much like how Lioux caught the one at the Darkmoon Faire), but still.  If the bloody Minfernal isn’t up there, the Ethereal Soul Trader should be.

71 Auctioneers in Azeroth
As someone who frequents said gold houses, I have to sit and come up with all of them.  I don’t think I realized there was nearly that many.

3.6 million Pet Battles per day
I wish to track down every person who said this was a stupid feature to include in World of Warcraft.  I also tend to believe that 2/3 of these are done while folks are waiting to do something else (such as an instance or PvP).  Either way, the mechanic became an incredibly successful time sink and achievement magnet.  It also creates a great alternative to leveling (such as I posted when Saintvache hit 90).

All in all it’s an interesting collection of information if you’re a numbers person such as myself.  I’d love to see it go even deeper, particularly into classes and races and male percentages and female percentages.  But then, I also realize I’m in the minority and a good many folk would walk the other way with disinterest.

Champion Of The Frozen Wastes

I could’ve posted this earlier and perhaps should have, but I was away yesterday and this morning I wanted to get the rest of the first chapter of Posthumous up. Still shaking my head at the old Publish fiasco but we made it work.

Now then, ignoring the fact Tum is conveniently doing nothing at the time of the picture, here we have Malygos.  For those who were not in attendance, The Eye of Eternity was one of the two raids we ran this week on Laid Back Raids.  This is the first raid I scheduled specifically for me, as ‘ol Bluepuss was all Tumunzahar needed for the Champion of the Frozen Wastes achievement.  Mrs. Amateur, too, and we learned the day of the raid that Matty also needed to just slay the blue aspect as well.  It took a couple friends and one or two of their friends, but we did it.  So Azeroth has three more champions in the fold.

Ah the joy that is Laid Back Raids.  This coming weekend it’s Horde fun, and hopefully the Mrs. can get the other glaive from Illidan.  At least there’s no chance of mount confusion in Black Temple or Serpentshrine Cavern, right Matty?  😉

Through Your UI: 15 Days of WoW (Day 5)

What is your title of choice?

I remember when the Elder title was introduced.  As Guild Leader, I just felt this necessity to have the title and to also be the first one to have it in Claws of Nature.  I worked my butt off and I got it, mainly because I got into Heroic Gun’Drak and paid my respects to Elder Ohanzee.  The Lunar Festival is probably still my favourite holiday as I am very big on remembering those who came before us.  I think that was part of the reason why I wanted the title so bad as well.  To this day, though, it’s the only title Siori wears (not that she has a great many of them).