Hello Warcraft My Old Friend. I've Come To Login Again.

How did this place get so dusty? This feels emptier than the mage class hall. I'm joking; there's more people there than here. It's sad that it's creeping up on a year since I've posted here. Real life gets in the way, but mostly that's because I haven't really been keeping up with Warcraft lately. Battle for Azeroth started out so strong for me, but the story quickly fizzled out and left me overall bored. I put the game down for a bit and shifted focus on other things I wanted to get out of the way. Until a week ago...

There it was, beckoning me to return - 3 free days to experience some of the new patch! I had said before that I wasn't going to come back until 8.2.5 when the promised new worgen models and heritage armor would be (should be) coming out. I'm not going to say no to free stuff though. So I saved my play time until the weekend where I knew I could sit down and devote a few hours to checking things out.

Upon logging in, it feels like home. No other game has ever given me that feeling. It's almost like second nature at this point. I could probably stop playing for a year or two, login, and still get that exact same feeling. Ahem, anyway, I picked up all my new stuff after checking Arathi and Darkshore for rare spawns of course, then I was on my way to Nazjatar first.

It's beautiful, but you don't need me to tell you that. The environment and artists really did capture the feeling of being underwater without actually having to worry about swimming around. However, as someone who didn't have flying unlocked, it was definitely obvious that the zone was designed with the purpose of flying in mind. I did have a much better time navigating around once I had explored all the zone, unlocked the flight paths, and unlocked my whistle. My favorite area there was Zin-Azshari. Maybe it's because it reminded me of being back in Suramar or something?

The world quests are world quests. I did an entire days worth of them, but none were hard or annoying. I've heard there are a few that aren't that fun, but the ones up on the day I played were good. I joined in and killed a few rare spawns and the world boss there. I took Neri as my companion, but I quickly regretted it because her mount kept making sounds like a cat hacking up a hairball.

The next day I focused on unlocking Mechagon. When it was previewed, I was a lot more excited for that place than Nazjatar. I actually enjoyed the intro quest to this zone more and absolutely love the mechagnomes. Sadly my happiness died quickly. I wasn't exactly sure what to do? I did a few quests where I collected some items to turn in, and killed some rare spawns that dropped patterns. It felt a lot like the Timeless Isle with lots of rare enemies popping up all over. I found it much easier to navigate on a ground mount, so that was very nice. I'm still unsure of what to do there, and when I do return, I will be looking up a guide.

/cry

I know 3 days isn't enough time to even scratch the surface of what the patch introduced, but nothing I experienced made me want to actually STAY currently. I felt myself falling back into old habits with checking pet battle WQs and see which ones are up in the Legion zones because I still need paragon mounts. Ugh. Well, there is one thing that made me feel bad. That little direhorn hatchling that slept since the beginning of BfA is now able to be raised into a mount. I felt bad about leaving my child of Tocali, but I logged off right by him so when I return I will be able to feed him right away.

And so life continues on. As I said earlier in the post, I do plan on coming back when the new worgen models are added. I'd like to have more to blog about because I do miss writing here. Hopefully that changes in the future. So I leave you with some questions. Are you still playing WoW and if so, what do you think of the current patch? Which zone is your favorite? And are you looking forward to Classic? That's going to be a whole post to dig into another time!

Warlord Thoughts

I cannot believe it's coming up on almost a month since I've blogged. I've really been way too busy playing and enjoying the expansion. I've added so many new goodies to my collections lately that I can't remember them all. I know I've gotten a variety of mini pets, including Syd the Squid! That has been on my want list for a long time now. It was just a matter of getting it to drop from a bag. I've also added Drake of the South Wind to my mount collection this week. It's nice to cross one more old raid off my weekly list.

I also got some gear upgrades recently: Belt of Singing Hooves and Rotmonger Bracers. I like the pace at which I'm getting gear. I'm slowly getting upgrades, and I now have to look over each and focus more on the stats rather than item level. I'm currently 628, and with the buff to mages I'm definitely not struggling as bad as I was at the beginning of the expansion. I've also been running dungeons with my niece, nephew, a mutual friend, and Pigletoos. My goal is to have us all doing heroics which is a tremendous for all of us since some of them are extremely casual players.

Even though I'm having an overall positive experience with the expansion, there are still a few things that I'm not liking. I'm not liking fishing at all. I finally completed the Draenor Angler achievement, and I didn't think that one was too bad, but after looking at my bags, I was confused. Blizzard said that they added all these extra featured, reagent bank, toy box, ect. to get rid of clutter, but I feel like fishing has just caused more. I need to fish up bait to catch a certain amount of different versions of each fish to be able to "skin" the fish to use in other recipes... really? I wish it was back to fish up the fish you need, cook it, profit. I had to vendor so many stacks of fish meat just to clean up my bags. Now it takes up two rows in my reagent bank, but whatever.

Another thing that was just a minor annoyance was archaeology. I was working on an Arakkoa solve that needed 250 fragments. Well, I didn't know that it caps your fragments out to 200, and you have to use the Arakkoa Ciphers to complete it. This is fine for people who never use them, but for someone like me who constantly uses them to speed up discoveries, it was annoying.

The reputation grinds also seem to be pretty tedious. I understand Blizzard not wanting to add a ton of dailies, but I would love at least one or two to give 250 reputation with a faction. I will be grinding out mobs for the remainder of the expansion at this rate. I have set a goal. I'm starting with the Frostwolf Orc clan and at least trying to grind out 1000 reputation per day. This way I'm not killing myself, but I'm still making progress. I can't complain too much though, because I'm also getting drops of Iron Horde Scraps for transmog. It's all working out perfectly!

The Holidays are here and in full effect. I've been doing my Winter Veil things, and getting RL present shopping done. I've also been nominated for the Icecrown Challenge. Me and my niece will be participating in it next week, and talk more about that in a later post. For now, have a wonderful and safe holiday season, and don't forget to stop and enjoy the small things around this time of year.