Dalaran Crater -- What are they doing?

Okay, it's funny, but what are they doing there now other than standing in as foils for this quest? You can jump right through the Dalaran force field now and, of course, Dalaran's gone. What's their angle? A few workers are banging on farm equipment, but there are no Alliance quests that I saw.

More xserver PUGging

Another good night of PUGging. Back in June I was looking at gearing up with pre-raid content, mostly using the guide at Laser Chicken to figure out what to get after WoW.com's Shifting Perspectives had let me down so badly with the shoulders. I also decided it was about time I got serious and enchanted some gear. I'd been using the [Totemic Purification Rod] so long I figured it was safe. About 50-60g later in tips and mats, I had +50 Spellpower.

Not two hours later, I rolled on and won a [Blood Boil Lancet]. Bittersweet.

The cross-server LFG has really changed the game. I've been running quests and rep runs, and barely got in 5 minutes at a time before being zapped into a dungeon. The way this changes geography and social interactions is bizarre. It's the same game as before, sure, but it plays to much differently, it's difficult to describe. Obviously much quicker gear accumulation. No real reason to run rep for gear anymore, it'd seem, other than to pass a little time between instances. I'll probably start camping Sons of Hodir.

The grouping has gone well. I've gotten invited to two 50-80% done runs, which stinks a bit. I'd like to enjoy the whole instance rather than finish off a last boss or two, but on random you don't know ahead of time (and I guess you don't on the named dungeon LFG either). One group seemed to have recently kicked a hunter. I'm not sure how much better I did -- though I heard he didn't have ammo. FTW!!!!#1 Still, I'm not seeing people more than once. It's weird. Was nice to see someone who had gotten kicked out of Wintergrasp into the queue area in the snow from The Demonic Reich. At least they're local.

In other news, I leveled my Leatherworking to 440 so that I could make -- and did make -- [Windripper Leggings]. The leg armor that got me from 435 to 440 is worth about 100g a pop, which has been nice. Farming Eternal Air was a breeze in Wintergrasp. At first Wintergrasp was being contested and I had to wait. Couldn't even be a rear and sneak in; too long a queue for the battle. Later, however, I found that you could sneak into a couple of areas on the edges of Wintergrasp, not quite be in the zone, and farm some Tempest Revenants and Whispering Winds while technically in Dragonblight. The farming was very quick. Nobody around. Felt eerie. Quiet.

So that's two purples in the rotation with a low bid on some Windripper Boots that I hope comes through that would make three. The spellpower is growing well. No big deal to many, I know, but I'm at about 9k starfire crits now, which happens enough during Eclipse that I feel useful.

Last item -- I probably won't play as much for the balance of this month. Felt like taking a WoW break, and I've nearly gotten my $15 out already. I've enjoyed the instance runs and the gear, but I'm so freakin' far away from raids it's disheartening.

(Last last item -- none of my screenshots or movies from the last run were saved. Odd. Have to settle for making my leggings.)

The Old World is New Again: Rumors, Rumors

I'm not sure why two blogs in my roll won't comment on the rumors about the next expansion. It's fun, yo.

So here we go: My favorite news from the World of Warcraft - Cataclysm rumors at MMO-Champion:

Classic Azeroth Revamp
A cataclysmic event caused by Deathwing and Azshara will change the face of Azeroth as we know it. Most of the new content for Cataclysm will take the form of a revamped Azeroth, taking advantage of newer additions to WoW such as phasing and daily quests.

If you've been reading a while, you might remember I mentioned criticizing the virtual ghettoizing in another blog, where you couldn't see nuttin' without the expansion, and asked (here on Panzerkin) for this style of Old World revamp to happen in LK (where we know it didn't happen). Here's a bit from those posts:

[From Curmudgeon Gamer]:

Blizzard needs to ensure that expansions are backwards compatible, not so much that expansionless folk like myself can go to the new lands, nor even that we should be provided access to the new trainers, etc, but players with expansions should continue to flow through old hotspots (possibly with new buildings in cities accessible only if you have the expansions, etc) so that the communities at least do not give the impression of being quite so perfectly cleaved.

[From Panzerkin]:

Instead, it created another system of virtual ghettos back in WoW's Old World. Endgames shifted. Years of development time for instances, etc, rendered worthless. Those new to WoW or who hadn't seen the OW end game had no real incentive to go back.

There were options. Create mobs that have a new attack type or one for which there was little resistance gear in the OW, kinda like fire resist was used in the original. Keep the progression of items natural, and ensure items (other than just epics) continue to have some important value in the future. Here, I'm thinking about something like the Illdari-Bane items -- perhaps there's a mob in the WotLK that can only be damaged by items that specifically harm demons by 150 or more points.

Glad to see that wasn't such a crazy idea after all. Looks like we might even get to fly in the Old World too.

This leads me to one question: What happens if you don't have the expansions? Can I still walk around the Old World? In fact, if, "Durotar is wrecked and apparently Orgrimmar could be destroyed. A new Orc city is rebuilt over the course of the expansion," and, assumedly, much of the 'make-up' content is hidden from newbies by flight, do I now actually have less available content in Azeroth than before the upcoming expansion? UO just recently got smart enough to give everyone access to every expansion for free. Let me tell you, when I played one month of UO two years after one month of UO, years after years of UO, one of the big reasons I didn't care to stick around even with the Kingdom Reborn interface is that I couldn't go anywhere new. I was still stuck on my Third Dawn era dungeons and content. Nice. Thanks for keeping me in the virtual ghetto.

But yeah, this sounds like fun. Assuming these rumors are true, IANAL, LMNOP, etc. ;^)

TL;DR?

Okay, I'm all down and shiite with the acros now. For other causal gamers, that's apparently Too Long; Didn't Read. Excellent semi-colon use. I've caught this on Grey Matter and now Druid Main, so I figured it was worth sharing.

When next we consider panzerkin-ing, we consider whether Hurricane or Typhoon makes for a better group pull. Tune in.