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11.) The alliance might finally get an expansion that provides insight in to the space goats.

imo, TBC was too light on the space goat lore once new characters left the newbie zones.

Dis gon b gud.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

All the Cinematics.

Damn, those of Talador and Shadowmoon Valley are pretty sweet!

Prepatch on wed! (Tue for US)

Soo much hype!

*sheds a tear for Garrosh*

A friend and I were talking about him earlier today, and he's actually a pretty swell guy!

Doubt I'll be playing anywhere near launch, having too much fun on MWO at the moment.

Having a look at the patch notes, and this caught my eye:

Icecrown Citadel: Door leading past Valithria is now open by default, allowing players to skip the encounter.

Best news I've read so far; that encounter was a pain in arse for anyone trying to solo or low-man ICC.

Eumerin wrote:
11.) The alliance might finally get an expansion that provides insight in to the space goats.

imo, TBC was too light on the space goat lore once new characters left the newbie zones.

They basically retconned the WC3 lore from being: "All Draenei were converted into Eredar Warlocks by Sargeras." to, "Draenei are swell russian-ish people, that are blue, shamanistic, one with the light, and also not the Eredar."

Even though fething Archimonde is shown as a god damn Draenei.

*shakes fist at Chris Metzen for taking some of my favorite lore into the back room, getting it roofied, and then doing terrible things to it* All in the name of 'DEM SALES'.

Edit: Actually, I'm wrong, the Orks killed all the Draenei before leaving Draenor, Sargeras unlocked the Eredar from their prison after deciding to go all Horus on the TItan's universal works.

Without the ret-con I wouldn't have attractive space goat women to look up porn of on the internet play as.

>.>

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Without the ret-con I wouldn't have attractive space goat women to look up porn of on the internet play as.

>.>

:3

/thread

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Without the ret-con I wouldn't have attractive space goat women to look up porn of on the internet play as.

>.>

Multitool tails, yay.

I've actually started playing again. The new race models look fantastic. Looking forward to it coming out.

Oh, and I'll just leave this here...

My realm just went down for maintenance and for applying the patch.

I had bullcrap luck with raid drops and gear on my 90s, so I only have 1 character able to queue for the revamped UBRS. >.<

570 ilvl, 350k dps. Bring it on, 6.0.2!

I am mainly a roleplayer tbh.

 Frankenberry wrote:

Edit: Actually, I'm wrong, the Orks killed all the Draenei before leaving Draenor, Sargeras unlocked the Eredar from their prison after deciding to go all Horus on the TItan's universal works.

This. The WC1 and WC2 manuals made it clear that all of the draenei were dead.

And they ret-conned Garona from being half-human half-orc (as in WC1) to half-draenei half-orc. Of course, since she's never appeared in game, that's not that big of an issue...

But even before TBC was released, there were some surviving Draenei. Akuma's group of lightly mutated draenei worked with Illidan in WC3: The Frozen Throne. Then in Vanilla WoW, both lightly mutated (friendly) and heavily mutated (not friendly) draenei turned up in the Swamp of Sorrows zone. The unmutated blue space goats version - along with the "cousins of the eredar" lore - was revealed in the TBC expansion.

And Metzen has admitted that he accidentally contradicted (as opposed to just adding or bending) pre-existing WoW lore (as opposed to the "they're all dead!" WC1 and 2 lore, which gets ignored at will) when he created their background.

Eumerin wrote:

 Frankenberry wrote:

Edit: Actually, I'm wrong, the Orks killed all the Draenei before leaving Draenor, Sargeras unlocked the Eredar from their prison after deciding to go all Horus on the TItan's universal works.

This. The WC1 and WC2 manuals made it clear that all of the draenei were dead.

And they ret-conned Garona from being half-human half-orc (as in WC1) to half-draenei half-orc. Of course, since she's never appeared in game, that's not that big of an issue...

But even before TBC was released, there were some surviving Draenei. Akuma's group of lightly mutated draenei worked with Illidan in WC3: The Frozen Throne. Then in Vanilla WoW, both lightly mutated (friendly) and heavily mutated (not friendly) draenei turned up in the Swamp of Sorrows zone. The unmutated blue space goats version - along with the "cousins of the eredar" lore - was revealed in the TBC expansion.

And Metzen has admitted that he accidentally contradicted (as opposed to just adding or bending) pre-existing WoW lore (as opposed to the "they're all dead!" WC1 and 2 lore, which gets ignored at will) when he created their background.

From my understanding he's outright stated that the previous lore is not really considered 'lore' as far as WoW as concerned as he just writes whatever they tell him to to progress WoW's background.

 Frankenberry wrote:
From my understanding he's outright stated that the previous lore is not really considered 'lore' as far as WoW as concerned as he just writes whatever they tell him to to progress WoW's background.

The WC2 lore even contradicts the WC1 lore on a point or two, iirc. So yeah, Blizzard is quite happy to ignore the lore from both games when they feel the need.

However, once something is mentioned in-game, or appears in the lore section of the WoW website (I'm not sure if it's still there, but Blizzard used to have a large multi-page background section on the site), then it's officially WoW lore. This is what Metzen accidentally contradicted when he created the Draenei background (as opposed to the WC1 and 2 lore that he knowingly ignored).


Addendum -

I've been leveling my Mistweaver Monk recently, and yesterday's patch ticked me off. They removed my melee abilities from my healing stance, leaving me with only Jade Lightning as an effective offensive ability. And they also *massively* reduced both the amount of damage that Jade Lightning does, as well as it's duration (it now lasts less than 2 seconds in melee stance, and less than 4 seconds in healer stance). So all of those bonuses that my monk gets that convert damage to healing are essentially useless.

Additionally, I ran Utgarde Keep yesterday as a level 70 monk healer. It was horrible. My heals felt completely ineffective, and it was a horrible fight to keep the tank alive. Not only are those "damage to heals" bonuses that monks have useless as mentioned above, but I also don't dare spend *any* time doing damage - except for shooting an occasional Jade Lightning at the very end of the fight when there's only one half-dead mob left.

Now it's possible that the real problem was that this was my first WotLK instance, and there's a difficulty spike that I was unaware of. But I'd never had anywhere near this much trouble keeping someone alive in any of the other instances that I ran, and I'm pretty certain that most - if not all - of the trouble came down to changes that Blizzard made in how monk heals work.

Our tank was a feral druid (level 69, iirc), and he was also complaining about how squishy he felt.

 Ashiraya wrote:
570 ilvl, 350k dps. Bring it on, 6.0.2!

I am mainly a roleplayer tbh.

350k DPS?

>Remembers having 60K health in WotLK in full Raid gear with buffs.

That's one thing I'll miss about the normalising of values in WoD, I always enjoyed the ridiculous numbers you got during Cata and MoP.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
570 ilvl, 350k dps. Bring it on, 6.0.2!

I am mainly a roleplayer tbh.

350k DPS?

>Remembers having 60K health in WotLK in full Raid gear with buffs.

Yeah, the numbers started to get a bit high in Cata. I can't remember how much hp my non-raiding Warlock had in that expac, but it was a lot. And MoP hp levels were just insane.

The problem that you see frequently in TBC is the level 90s who hang out looking for people to gank in the PvP sections of that expansion. Not only can they one-shot any opposing PvP players who are the expected level for the content, but those players can't really even scratch the level 90s because of the massive disparity in hp and damage between the levels.

I'm not sure if that's still the case after the stat squish yesterday (I didn't realize just how much stuff had been squished until I started paying attention to the damage numbers from my Chaos Bolt spell), but it was definitely the case prior to yesterday's adjustments.


Though as noted in my previous post, I'm in panic mode on the monk healing alt that I'm attempting to level. My channeled healing spell seems to largely exist to make a couple of my other healing spells insta-cast, as the healing that it does is now completely negligible. And healing anyone other than the tank mid-fight is almost tempting fate.


Addendum - The general sentiment on the official forums seems to be:

1.) Blizzard wants people to go back to the pre-WotLK style of fighting in which you had to do things like mark mobs for CC before pulling trash, and STOP STANDING IN THE FIRE!!
2.) Even with #1, Blizzard may have gone too far, particularly with groups that are still dealing with leveling content
3.) Until everyone adjusts to item #1, the healers are going to take the blame

I'm not sure how viable Atonement healing is any more what with the changes to it and the fact that smart heals have become random, or even if Discipline gets Atonement at all now, but it seems my days of shoving a new priest into buffed up cloth heirlooms, queueing healer, and simultaneously healing and carrying the group through the DPS I generate by using Atonement, are over. =(

I'm going to miss my Disc priest being ridiculously OP in dungeons until around Cata... Levelling as Disc outside dungeons was also a cakewalk until MoP forced me to go shadow to do any sort of reasonable damage, but I didn't rely on Atonement for solo content - just stupidly powerful Power Word: Shields and Penance casts that hit like a truck.

I'm feeling the urge to resubscribe now that Patch 6.0 is out...

I'm interested in the healing changes because I remember when healing was actually difficult and I quite enjoy that.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
570 ilvl, 350k dps. Bring it on, 6.0.2!

I am mainly a roleplayer tbh.

350k DPS?

>Remembers having 60K health in WotLK in full Raid gear with buffs.

Stat squish came yesterday. Down to 82k hp from 667k, and down to 13k dps.

To compensate when soloing old raids, they increased damage done and reduced damage taken against pre-MoP NPCs. Soloed ICC25 Heroic yesterday, did 2,4 MILLION dps when the buff-gnomes were available.

What does everyone think about the new character models? I know I said they looked fantastic but that was based on the previews I saw on the website.

Having seen them in game now it looks like theres very little variation between the faces... look very samey to me, just with different expressions. They seemed to make a big thing about "capturing the essence" of the original ones but none of my characters even resemble their old look.

And the new animations... interesting...?

I'm not particularly bothered, just disappointed really.

 Velour_Fog wrote:
What does everyone think about the new character models? I know I said they looked fantastic but that was based on the previews I saw on the website.

Having seen them in game now it looks like theres very little variation between the faces... look very samey to me, just with different expressions. They seemed to make a big thing about "capturing the essence" of the original ones but none of my characters even resemble their old look.

And the new animations... interesting...?

I'm not particularly bothered, just disappointed really.

Lots of derp. Unimpressed. I could tell the models were going to be crap from the previews.

I also logged on to two things:

1) No more getting PvE heirlooms outside of DMF and Argent Tourney until WoD hits.
2) ALL my leather PvE heirlooms, and my bow, are gone. Poof.

What I time to get back into playing.

Time to log off and not touch the game until WoD.

See, I was never impressed with the 'lawl I got 600m hp and can 1 shot garrosh' types of power levels WoW was moving towards. I get that we're supposed to feel epic while fighting these big named bosses and monstrosities associated with them...but it got to be stupid.

I get a lot of flak from people when I comment on TBC being where WoW peaked, mainly because that's when I had the most fun. It still took a great deal of time to level a character and gear them out correctly, and in raids and 5 mans you still had to pay attention. Post - TBC everything changed; power levels sky rocketed, tactics for everything except the hardest of raid fights didn't matter, and the game overall took a turn for the...I don't know, cheesy? Cata and Mists were no different, with the exception of Mists displaying, yet again, that Blizzard can take even the most mundane little detail and turn it into something enormous and fulfilling - mostly.

I look at WoD as a new hope for WoW, a refresh of the style of play that made the game so addicting originally, I mean, they brought back UBRS! Now, I just want to see the trainwreck of an explanation as to why the Horde is now fighting the Horde, the Aliiance is fighting the Horde fighting the Horde, and the Horde is fighting the Alliance fighting the Horde.

Also, Garrosh knows Doctor Brown apparently.

I joined in TBC, so I might be a bit biased when I say it was my favourite.

Sure, I liked it in Cata and Mists when I crit for stupid amounts of damage, but WoD is supposed to be the exact same power creep, but with lower numbers. You might not have 600m hp, but you'll still be 1-shotting Garrosh. I guess I was just amused by the large numbers.

I preferred TBC's instances to pretty much every instance in WotLK, Cata, and most definitely MoP, and for me, its solo levelling was second only to Cata's (both the changed, pre-existing areas, and the new 80-85 areas it created). Outland felt alright once Hellfire was out of the way, and each area of it felt nicely done.

Then came the snooze-fest that was WotLK, with its almost-painful Northrend levelling and lacklustre dungeons/raids. I took my first break mid-WotLK because I was sick and tired of NR. I came back and power-levelled a warrior through it (through lots of sweat, tears, and music), then finally got my paladin through.

Cata came about and made levelling fun again, and within about a week my warrior was running heroics in preparation for raiding, and I'd gathered enough JPs to grab some clothie heirlooms and power a priest through. I'd abandoned my paladin at this point.

I took my second break when it was decided that nobody wanted a: Retribution Paladin, Fury Warrior, or Shadow Priest in their end-game teams; not even back-up or casual teams. PUG raids were also off-limits. Seeing as my three favourite classes were useless (something I'd only previously experienced with the paladin), I decided it wasn't worth £9 a month to sit around SW twiddling my thumbs.

I came back earlier this year to prepare a few characters for WoD, and my God, I thought Northrend was bad. Pandaria levelling pretty much was physically painful. It was the most unejoyable experience I've ever had the misfortune of levelling 4 characters through. The solo content was crap, the dungeons were crap, the entire concept itself was crap. I left a few weeks between playing twice this year alone, purely because Pandaria is the most mind-numbingly boring experience in WoW.

WoD I'm still really unsure about. Draenor before it was shattered sounds awesome, but the whole "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" 'explanation' for it all well... it seems ridiculous... I've not managed to get a UBRS group yet (last I tried it had a half-hour queue time and I couldn't be bothered waiting) so I've no idea what the new instances could be like, even though UBRS is just a revamp.

Personally, I hope they do away with the hand-holding, almost completely linear questing of Pandaria; especially in the first zone. Jade Forest made me want to cave my skull in.

I'm probably just going to go through the main story content and uninstall when WoD hits.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
I joined in TBC, so I might be a bit biased when I say it was my favourite.

Sure, I liked it in Cata and Mists when I crit for stupid amounts of damage, but WoD is supposed to be the exact same power creep, but with lower numbers. You might not have 600m hp, but you'll still be 1-shotting Garrosh. I guess I was just amused by the large numbers.

I preferred TBC's instances to pretty much every instance in WotLK, Cata, and most definitely MoP, and for me, its solo levelling was second only to Cata's (both the changed, pre-existing areas, and the new 80-85 areas it created). Outland felt alright once Hellfire was out of the way, and each area of it felt nicely done.

Then came the snooze-fest that was WotLK, with its almost-painful Northrend levelling and lacklustre dungeons/raids. I took my first break mid-WotLK because I was sick and tired of NR. I came back and power-levelled a warrior through it (through lots of sweat, tears, and music), then finally got my paladin through.

Cata came about and made levelling fun again, and within about a week my warrior was running heroics in preparation for raiding, and I'd gathered enough JPs to grab some clothie heirlooms and power a priest through. I'd abandoned my paladin at this point.

I took my second break when it was decided that nobody wanted a: Retribution Paladin, Fury Warrior, or Shadow Priest in their end-game teams; not even back-up or casual teams. PUG raids were also off-limits. Seeing as my three favourite classes were useless (something I'd only previously experienced with the paladin), I decided it wasn't worth £9 a month to sit around SW twiddling my thumbs.

I came back earlier this year to prepare a few characters for WoD, and my God, I thought Northrend was bad. Pandaria levelling pretty much was physically painful. It was the most unejoyable experience I've ever had the misfortune of levelling 4 characters through. The solo content was crap, the dungeons were crap, the entire concept itself was crap. I left a few weeks between playing twice this year alone, purely because Pandaria is the most mind-numbingly boring experience in WoW.

WoD I'm still really unsure about. Draenor before it was shattered sounds awesome, but the whole "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" 'explanation' for it all well... it seems ridiculous... I've not managed to get a UBRS group yet (last I tried it had a half-hour queue time and I couldn't be bothered waiting) so I've no idea what the new instances could be like, even though UBRS is just a revamp.

Personally, I hope they do away with the hand-holding, almost completely linear questing of Pandaria; especially in the first zone. Jade Forest made me want to cave my skull in.

Bolded and enlarged for exalt! I spit tea all over my keyboard, well done!

As for the post itself, exactly what I felt doing MoP and WotLK. Cata and TBC were pretty awesome, but I think Cata continued the ongoing 'hand holding' that you mentioned that was present in MoP - something that I think started in WotLK.