Logging in the first time and falling to my death. It’s especially fun to watch all the NPCs fall with me. No wonder the new Kargath is deserted.
Watching enemy spawns that haven’t been moved to match the new landscape yet wander through lava, at the bottom of the ocean, and up vertical cliffs.
Blizzard has been adding Spirit Beasts to World of Warcraft since the Spirit Beast family was added at the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
But because they’ve only added one for each major patch — and there have only been four major patches in the Lich King era — we only have four Spirit Beasts.
Patch 3.3.5 is finally going live today, packed with RealID plus a Ruby Sanctum that will be activated once Europe has a chance to get the patch as well. (The Fire Festival started yesterday too, but that’s not actually related to this patch.)
Patch 3.3.5 also has, hidden in its innards, the two pre-Cataclysm events: Operation Gnomeregan for the Alliance and Zalazane’s Fall for the Horde. These events won’t be activated until some time much closer to the launch of the Cataclysm expansion, of course, but we had a chance to check them out on the Public Test Realm over the past couple of weeks.
And that left me with a bit of a problem …
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Samuel Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
We’re in the calm before the cataclysmic storm, and like most calms this one is a bit boring.
I had an entirely different post planned for today (crocs FTW!) but then Nethaera went and posted this request for feedback on hunter pets on the WoW hunter forum:
We’re looking to get some feedback on the types of pets that hunters would like to be able to tame and the types of abilities that might be interesting for those pets to have. Is there a type of creature in the game now that you would like to be able to tame or an ability that you’ve always thought should be added? Here’s your chance to share a bit more about what you think could be great additions for the hunter class.
Edit: EU hunters, your version was posted a bit later on the EU Hunter forum.
Needless to say, this is a question near and dear to my heart. I posted a response immediately and I expect you to do the same! In fact, head on over there right now … I’ll wait.
Oh hey — I have a blog! *cough*
If you’ve been around here awhile, you may remember Kaet — my second character to 70 and my ‘Alliance main’. She’s a dwarf lass with a penchant for those tiny jewels of the hunter world: crabs. For reasons unknown, she has three of the little suckers: a red crab named Tibri, a blue crab named Frore, and a white crab named Niffis.
Noblegarden has started! And it wasn’t five minutes before I saw the first bunny-on-bunny violence .. or at least excessive yelling and use of obscene language.
The problem, so far as I can tell, is that about have the population of any given realm believes that the “right” way to gather eggs is to find an egg spawn spot and sit in front of it until an egg spawns. That eggs is then “theirs” because they were specifically waiting for it.
The other half of the population believes that the “right” way to gather eggs is to hop frantically from spawn spot to spawn spot, grabbing any egg that happens to spawn and isn’t grabbed by someone else first. That egg is then “theirs” because at that point, it’s in their inventory.
Unfortunately, these two methods don’t necessarily work well together. When an egg spawns by a sitter and a passing hopper grabs it … well, there may be words. And regardless of your personal predilections, I find that too much yelling can get on my little bunny nerves.
Personally, I love hopping frantically … in general, I mean, not just when gathering eggs. There’s something about being a bunny that makes me want to hop about frantically, and it’s not just that I can’t mount up without dropping the shapeshift, either.
At any rate … try to have fun gathering your eggs. If you aren’t having fun, skip it. There’s no title for Noblegarden and it’s not part of “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” either.
Edit: Sheesh — I completely misread my Achievement panel. Noblegarden does have a title — “the Noble” and is part of “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been”. I apologize for the misinformation.
Thanks for catching me, Kestrel.
Lately I’ve been lackadaisically working towards the Loremaster achievement on Mania. (I want the tabard.)
I finished up Outland and Northrend first because I find per-zone count of quests both convenient and satisfying, but now I am working on Kalimdor.
(As an aside, I’ve been posting some of my more pithy-but-certainly-not-interesting-enough-to-make-a-post-out-of thoughts about my travels on Twitter.)
Anyway, since I outlevel the content in Kalimdor by at least twenty levels, and usually more like fifty, I figured I’d do my questing in style.
Above and to the left is my favorite questing shirt right now: a Watcher’s Tunic from a level 68 group quest in Nagrand. On a female character, the color of the sleeve fabric changes to match your skin color, leaving you with a spiderweb or fishnet effect.
The sleeves flare out at the bottom, though … which looks a bit odd if the fabric is supposed to be skin. But a pair of gloves fixes that! I am still looking for a pair of pants and a pair of gloves that look really good with this tunic, but for the moment I’m just wearing it with my normal combat gear.
But that’s not my only questing outfit! I also have the purple pleasure that you see above and to the right: Mordant’s Travel Tunic and The Wanderer’s Cover (both courtesy of quests in Dustwallow Marsh).
I know that you can put together some really nice purple outfits if you try, but I just happened to pick these two pieces up while I was doing quests in Dustwallow. Coincidence, or does Blizzard employ a fashion consultant for quest rewards?
And finally, for those times when I want to look like Wonder Woman, we have a Gleaming Scale Breastplate to the left, also from Dustwallow Marsh.
My thanks to Letters From Birdfall, by the way, for a recent ‘Outfit of the Month’ post that got me thinking about my own outfits again.
One of the things that has always bugged me about World of Warcraft is how the trumped-up hostilities between the Horde and the Alliance interferes with cooperative gameplay.
Okay, yeah, there’s PvP and that’s supposed to be a decent chunk of the game. And yes, sure, there’s lore and lore is important — I get that.
But Mania the character has no beef with most of the Alliance (except humans — she hates humans) and Mania the player could often use their help. And not being able to talk to them makes that a bit of a pain.
Sometimes we find ways around that, though, and I admit that it is very satisfying when we do.
I admit it — I bought the plush Wind Rider Cub and the plush Gryphon Hatchling the moment that they became available on the Blizzard Store. I was getting a bit worried about them, though, because I never got any e-mail confirming the purchase or letting me know if they’d shipped. But they arrived today!
Both came in little black drawstring bags, about 11″x13″, with “World of Warcraft” and the name of the critter on one side, and a faction symbol on the other. The Gryphon Hatchling bag has a big Alliance lion in yellow and the Wind Rider Cub bag has a big Horde symbol in red. I rather wish the bags didn’t have the names on them: a reusable drawstring bag with the Alliance or Horde symbol would be cool, but a bag that says “Wind Rider Cub” is just a little too geeky for me.
I am somewhat surprised by the size of these kids. I was picturing something about 5″-6″ tall (akin to the stuffed snail I have, or the little rhino) but these are a full 9″ tall and about that wide across the bottom. Both seem to be fairly high quality — and both are absolutely adorable, of course.
The Wind Rider Cub narrowly wins the cute content with his fuzzy mane and darling little fabric wings. The gryphon’s head is a bit big and his wings, oddly, are attached to his head — but he does have a charming little fuzzy tuft at the end of his tail. (Can you tell I’m running out of synonyms for ‘cute’?)
Each also comes with a code for an in-game mini-pet, of course — which is how I justified spending $24.99 on each of them. (I would have bought the in-game pets for $10 each, so the plush animals themselves are effectively only $14.99 … right?) The Blizzard store has Flash video of both in-game models in flight. (Click the pictures or the links above to see ‘em.)
Something I found very interesting: Rather than just including the code on the receipt or something, each plush mount comes with a card in a protective plastic sleeve. The card has an illustration of the mini-pet over a ‘tooltip’ — i.e. “Wind Rider Cub” (in blue), “Binds when picked up.” and “Use: Right click to summon a wind rider cub.” Under this is a scratch-off strip with the code itself.
So I expect it will be approximately 3 nanoseconds before we see unscratched cards on eBay, minus the toys. Or vice versa, I suppose. If you really want only the real-life or only the in-game version of these critters, that might be one avenue for you.
I haven’t redeemed the codes yet — not because I’m going to sell them but because every time I start I find myself cuddling the Wind Rider Cub and thinking about puppies. But I suppose I’ll get to it some time today …
[edit] Warcraft Pets has added these kids, so be sure to update your collection when you get them! [/edit]
