Well, I’m kind of new to this blogging thing, but given my strange, and sometimes potentially disturbing way of posting more than 400 words on various forums given a specific topic, I thought I would try my hand at “blogging”. I thought I’d start off with a topic rather valid right now: how exciting was the Burning Crusade, and how does the hype around Wrath of the Lich King measure up to what came before patch 2.0. Let us hope it doesn’t turn into a psychological analysis of what people think or write…I get enough of that at university.

So, let’s begin with the good stuff BC brought us:
A Storyline
Vanilla WoW was sort of missing a content thread that drew its way through the game: You got to kill a dragon and some fire elementals, more dragons, an old god and the Scourge seemed plonked into the game as an after thought. BC brought us the story of Draenor and the Burning Legion (who had a rather peripheral meaning in vanilla WoW). The Horde discovered the roots of the Orc’s history, while the Alliance got to rescue this stupid Draenai kid who had the rather suicidal tendency to get itself captured by various ogre tribes. I guess not many people can claim to have landed on every ogre’s dinner plate in Nagrand, but this is rather a stupid boast in my opinion.

The Horde quests in general were well set, particularly in Nagrand. The quest with the Grandmother and Thrall in Garadar, and the mini-cinematic with Hellscream kind of made the addon worthwhile for me.

Nesingwary's “kill 184 mobs please and I’ll give you something useless” quests however, did not. Go kill 30 of these, 30 of these and 30 of these. When you’re done I’ve got more wildlife needing exterminating

I also liked the whole "lets push those demons back where they belong" storyline, but I found the spin-offs with Gruul, Kael'Thas, Lady Vashj and Magtheridon kind of disappointing. Sure the endboss fights in those instances were interesting enough (apart from listening to a mountain gronn with terminal constipation for 6 minutes), but basically you’ve got disenchanted ogres wanting their ruler out on his arse, a naga who wants to drain the water out of Outland, a megalomaniac magic addict who wants to destroy Azeroth, and a pitlord stupid enough to let himself be kicked out of his temple and imprisoned by some upstart elf with big ideas. Archimonde went off on a tangent, sure it is one of the defining moments in Warcraft lore, but the absence of the Infinite Dragonswarm; the point of the Caverns of Time existing, kind of sucked. Also the fact that the Hyjal Past trash killed my laptop was not great, so I missed out on the Archimonde kill and everything after Teron Gorefiend (Grrrrrrr!). And that was after grinding out 16000 honor for my medallion of the horde (which was painful, give me Vashj P2 or Kael P4 wipes anyday), the cost of which was cut 1 month later to needing half as much honor as before -.-

The Burning Crusade was the first expansion for WoW, so nobody really knew how it would pan out, and didn’t really have many expectations of what it should be like. Flying mounts-very cool addition, the main attraction of The Burning Crusade was the prospect of flying around on this huge netherdrake. Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was only being added 4 months later if I spent 5000g on learning to ride the bloody thing. Which brings me on to daily quests.

Basically the idea behind these was to swamp the market with Gold, pushing gold-sellers out of a saturated market. Unfortunately Blizzard decided to only have a couple of daily quests in the game. 2 quests in Skettis (one an escort-so he was never in the cage), and some in Ogri’la (bombing run, memory puzzle (at which I failed, miserably), catching nether-rays for this skyguard who was rather pushy etc. Still, I managed to complete the 5000g grind about a week after hitting exalted with Skyguard and Ogri’la, so I got to grind out another 4 weeks of reputation to finally get my coveted Cobalt Netherdrake. Hooray! The daily quest grind got a bit more involved when Sunwell Isle was implemented. It was now possible to get about 250g in around 90 minutes.

I think people are more excited about WLK because people have expectations and hopes, and quite a few have been served: Naxxramas V2, Culling of Stratholme, new mechanics, new graphics and even some new abilities. The fact that WLK has been better publicised...beta server forums have been more used by blues than before, more defining class changes, so youtube has been flooded with "WoW Wrath of the Lich King*" videos; means that people are more hyped up about getting their Deathknight (mine’s going to be a female gnome with pink pigtails) and pooning in battle-grounds.


Brings me on to something viewed about as badly as heresy was in the 16th century: ITEM RESET.
There was this big hype about the item reset with The Burning Crusade, that Kel’Thuzad gear would be replaced within 5minutes of setting foot in Outland. What an anti-climax: T2 lasted well into the mid 60s; T3 was still being worn in until T5. I wore my T2 helmet until level 68. This does not seem to be such a huge problem this time around; there is a conspicuous absence of "my epics are worthless QQ" threads. Perhaps people have got used to it/are resigned to the fact, or perhaps people are happy that they will see a new item basically every time they log-in in three weeks time.

Something sobering about Northrend is the fact that flying mounts aren’t allowed until lv 77. but for me that is a fairly minor setback: after all, I am paying €36.99 for this new game and €13 a month, so I want to see what they're doing with my money, and not have it spawn behind me as I pass it by at 280% run speed. I am looking forward to gaining level 80, and killing the treacherous demon Varimathras (spoiler warning, but I reckon everyone knows this by now anyway…) and foiling the evil machinations of the Lich King (give Ashbringer on my pally pls:> ).


So…just over 1000 words later, I’m done with this blog. I reckon people are generally more excited about Wrath of the Lich King.

Just need to hope that people don’t get epic gear so easily this time around, fully epicced means nothing nowadays due to welfare epics…

Next time I may have a rant about whiners (what a hypocrite I can sometimes be) or perhaps the PvP system will get a look at from an outsider’s point of view. Or maybe something else will turn up in November. Hopefully by then my new PC will be up and running, so you can see some pictures!