Gimme Back My Lightsaber

One of the characters I was happiest to create was Semblance, my Gnome Warrior. I did the Gnome area so that as a Warrior I got my 2H Very Light Saber. Yep, it’s exactly what you think it is. And it fit her with her Leia buns and Engineering goggles. Imagine my surprise when I logged in and saw this:

I first saw this when I was at the character select screen. I thought perhaps it was just a glitch until I logged in. As I just mentioned that was not the case. Instead of a lightsaber, all I have is a hilt. And it’s not just a glitch with her, I tried my Tauren Paladin and Worgen Death Knight and neither of them showed the sword either. Just the hilt.

I’m disappointed this happened, and hopefully can find a resolution that fixes it but I’m not holding my breath. Nor do I want to find Teebu’s Blazing Longsword because the price on that bad boy is off the charts. I know there’s an Outland one, but unfortunately it’s only a 1H weapon. Not sure what I will do with her in the meantime, but there will definitely be disappointment if the Very Light Saber no longer…well, lightsabers.

Back To Wrath….Back To Reality?

After spending a lengthy amount of time on the private server “Monster,” I found myself in a relatively short honeymoon phase. Their Legion server was ok, but I made the switch to BfA and was excited at the opportunity for the content. Unfortunately reality set in and it was clear neither server was in good enough shape to call home for myself. I was just too excited early on to notice. As a result, I ended up in a mass hiatus once again. Recently, though, I found the strings to come back being pulled at my heart once more. It was heavily influenced, no doubt, by my acquiring the WoW Board Game in all it’s glory. Seriously, it’s vanilla to a tee. Or a vee, I suppose. But it gave me thought on what I wanted to do if I returned to Azeroth. I gave a lot of thought to vanilla because there’s so much stuff I missed out on, for better or worse. In the end, as the title would suggest, I went down a different path.

Indeed, back to the days of Northrend. Patch 3.3.5 to be specific. One of my happiest times in playing the game and the content was as rich as it would ever be. The server I ended up choosing seems to be a perfect fit. Everything works the way it’s supposed to (though I haven’t rolled a Death Knight yet, so that’s one of the few things I can’t speak to). No glitches, missing quests, npc’s, or anything to that end. In fact, there’s some bonus treats. They have a mall. As in, a developer created location that doesn’t look like anywhere else in the game. You have access to all the expected goodies such as Tier gear and legendaries if you’re lazy. But also you can transmog. By paying their vote/real money currency, you can get transmog tokens. One token lets you transmog one slot. Certain mounts can also be bought in this location. Ones that weren’t in the game yet. So again, it’s a purely cosmetic service. You’re also able to buy said currency with in-game gold, so even if you don’t give the server any money you are not missing out.

There are two things in particular the server does for starting out. For one, you’ve got Goblins and Worgen who spawn in existing start zones. The goblins join the orcs and trolls starting out, while the Worgen are in the Night Elf start zone. The other thing, which even modern WoW should do at this point, is the moment you hit level 10 you get the Riding skill and a version of your racial mount.  With most of the flight points players are accustomed to being nowhere in sight, having the riding mount at level 10 is a nice boon. It doesn’t make a huge difference, just that nice little assist as it were.

So, yes, there are some minor modifications to what we knew as Wrath of the Lich King. But that’s all they are. The game itself functions as one would expect it to. It’s 2009 all over again as far as I’m concerned. And that’s not a bad thing. Granted, it isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. There are some things that definitely changed for the better, but there are others I miss. And I will go into those at another time. For now, I’m playing the game on my time, my terms, and where I want to be in the WoW timeline.

Revealing My Privates: Part One

Once upon a time I mentioned that I would share the members of the Private (server) Army. The problem for me and my stickler for things, is that I refused to do so until they were at a point where I was happy with them…Transmogrificantly speaking anyway. Yes, I’m choosing to make up the word Transmogrificantly. It’s gotta catch on better than “dab.” So while this is the first character I’m posting, none of the others are quite ready to make an appearance for one reason or another. But they’ll get there and I will post as they do.

When I rolled on the server I decided I wanted one of each class and no repeat races. Being as there are only 12 classes that meant one race was left out. Sorry Night Elf lovers. It came down to Trolls, Night Elf, and Humans and only Warlocks and Shaman left to assign. For today, though, we’ll focus on the Worgen, who takes up the Hunter slot.

Soundwaive and his loyal companion, Tone’loque.

Soundwaive started out Marksman. However, I was doing some questing in Sholazar Basin when I hit level 80. I decided to leave the zone, but because I was close enough I decided to check the spot I had always seen Loque’nahar before (east of the Savage Thicket, up on a hill). Sure enough, there she was and that meant a change in spec. Absolutely worth it. Despite what Mrs. Amateur says, Tone’loque is clever.

Then I got the idea to put together an outfit that complimented the pet and I think it came together really well. The only thing missing is the Mechanized Snow Goggles, because I can’t find Borean Leather for the life of me…and my Skinner isn’t high enough to go get me some.

I made this outfit pre-100, so I found it convenient that the Titanstrike artifact for Beast Mastery is pretty much a perfect fit with the look. Here’s the rest of the components you see:

Head: None, but again will be Mechanized Snow Goggles
Shoulder: Mountainscaler Chain Spaulders
Cloak: Wyrmcultist’s Cloak
Chest: Kurken Padded Chainmail
Hands: Brazen Gauntlets
Waist: Padded Chain Belt
Legs: Bramblescar Legguards
Feet: Mountainscaler Chain Sabatons

Soundwaive is the third private to arrive in New Dalaran. With 100 levels under his belt he’ll be deployed to Aszuna soon enough. But first he’s going to spend some more time in his lab, further developing his Engineering and Alchemy.

Patch 7.0 Thoughts

So close. Alas, the new patch means I missed out on the Quintet achievement.

With a couple of days now to peruse and test some of the features brought about by the pre-Legion patch, I sat down with the army to get their immediate thoughts. I’ll share mine afterwards.

Liouxpold: WHERE ARE MY ANIMAL FRIENDS?!?!?…oh, they have moved the stable.

Logard: I no longer have to use this bow like a coward? Excellent.

Hartley: Now that the Skullflame Shield is across the account, you’re not going to kill me, are you?

Carrera: I received two axes in the mail. To that I say…”OUTTA MY WAY!”

Vastego: Give me the Fabulous title already.

Zarahi: The soldiers in my Garrison no longer bring in money. I shall feed them to the creatures of Tanaan.

Elcombe: Does this mean I can finally leave Northrend?

Siori: A pistol? What in Elune’s name am I supposed to- *headshots an Orc* …nevermind. We’re good.

 

Um, so…yeah. The new patch content is certainly interesting, to say the very least. The new transmog system is pretty solid, with Blizzard clearly adapting MogIt for in-game. I definitely applaud the move, particularly the ability to finally hide shoulders! Sharing gear across accounts is also fantastic. Nothing like taking your Rogue into a dungeon for two months and never getting the drop you want, but your Druid on another server gets it on your first run.

The class changes are just too many to discuss, and some I am just too low to properly gauge. But I will say the Outlaw spec for the Rogue is interesting. I don’t know if it’s the talents I have chosen or I just haven’t looked up rotation but I find it to be very heavy on stun and attack together. Slice & Dice as a Level 100 talent I’m not to sure of. Particularly when I find Roll the Bones to be ineffective for the most part. Could just be my relationship with RNG.

The Hunter now has the most diverse specs and all three feel really good and unique. I still have to get used to getting into the fight with Survival. Unfortunately, Liouxpold loves his range weapons so for the first time ever he is no longer that spec (just Logard is at this point). He still thoroughly enjoys Beast Mastery though.

The change to adjusting talents is fantastic. Just having to move to a rest location and being able to change spec or talents is phenomenal and long overdue. It’s something I honestly never even considered and now wonder why it wasn’t a thing ages ago.

Glyphs are gone and I’m personally not upset about it. There were only a handful that were used for major slots, so many were redundant. After all the years of Blizzard saying they trimmed the talent trees because powers weren’t getting used, glyphs were a natural evolution of that thought. Though I will miss some of the minor ones like Confession. Even Siori tried to Sprint on water, much to no avail.

Obviously without being a raider, it’s hard for me to truly gauge what the classes are like now. I’ve heard from beta testers that most are really solid at 110, and that’s good to hear.  What I can say, from a casual player’s perspective, is all the experiences I’ve had related to the new features and changes are fantastic. I’m sure there will be bumps along the way the deeper I delve, but thus far the developers really seem to have nailed this one.

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.

A Random Transmog Adventure

Having decided Liouxpold needed a new look, I began puttering around with MogIt to see what I could come up with.  Unfortunately I wasn’t having much luck, so I went off in search of some new Hunter pets for him which I found in the form of Vexxus, Gabriel, and Yrra.  I then focused back on a transmog outfit and decided to start with a bow.  Yes he has Black Bow of the Betrayer, but I was looking for something different.  I settled on the Skyfire Hawk-Bow, figuring I could work on the rest as I go.  I headed off to Shattered Halls and it actually dropped on the first run.  A nice white cloak, Mantle of Vivification, also dropped so I decided these two pieces would be my starting point.

Thanks muchly. You shall only perish once this day.

When I previewed the two pieces in MogIt I accidentally had “current gear” in the view and realized the Barrel Stacker’s Mitts that he was wearing fit as well.  Now it was a matter of off-setting all the vibrancy with a core that was darker.  Initially I wanted blue, but that was before deciding on the gloves.  So I just started previewing shirts to see what would come up within my current means.  Shirts that required honor were most certainly out for now, as was anything 85 or 90 level raids.  What can I say, I’m impatient and don’t like chance.  I’d prefer to be able to build the outfit in the moment.  I settled in on Savage Gladiator’s Chain Armor.  I looked through the leg slot, but admittedly ended up cheating and going with the matching Chain Leggings.

Most of the time I don’t use existing set combinations, but once in a while it’s ok.  Plus, in this build I stopped at two pieces.  The shoulders and feet are both crafted, Vicious Dragonscale Shoulders and Tsunami Boots (yes, I could’ve cheated a second time and used the boots from the shoulder set but I specifically avoided doing that). All that was left was the belt.  The one I ended up choosing had four versions and all of them were quest rewards in Twilight Highlands.  I chose the Waistguard of Salvaged Happiness because it was a quest you could just fly into the zone and do.  You need not have completed anything else first…and as an added bonus, it’s dirt simple to do.

At the start, I wanted the bow to be the focal point of the outfit.  Having the gold in the gloves helps pull it in, and the cloak completes the accent pretty well.  The core green managed to achieve the contrast I was looking for.  Though I just realized the colour scheme is not that far off from Siori, I’m still happy with the end result.

Hey Look, Transmog Contest!

It seems like just yesterday I was talking about how to run your own contest for Transmogrification.  Right around that same time, oddly enough, I came upon someone’s contest.  That someone would be Dragonray over at Azerothian Life.  The contest?  Around the World In 80 Mogs!  Wait, no…that’s not quite it.  Ah, found it.  Mog The World In 80 Days!

Head over there to get the full details, but if you’re looking for the short version from me first…it’s a 12 week competition with a different entry due each week.  The emphasis is on countries, and more specifically mogging to match their flag colours with an outfit.  I haven’t seen the list of 12, but man I hope Jamaica is in there.  That would be a great colour scheme to build from.  I also expect many entries to include the Scarlet Crusade Tabard if Canada is one of the weeks.

So there’s the short version.  I know there’s a panel of judges just as there’s been around here, though I don’t know what the criteria is to increase your chances of winning.  Personally I’m not concerned as I just look forward to using this as a chance to get some old fashioned mogging done and submit my own entries.