The Last Days of the Burning Crusade?
The Burning Crusade, the first WoW expansion, took a day to be released, but several months to hit, at least on the Kul Tiras realm. The breakdown spread from two directions; Blizzard kept making changes to get servers ready, like populating Deadwind Pass with level-70 ghosts who dropped incredible greens we couldn’t equip, and players started changing their ambitions and their behavior in response to all the new goodies that were being promised. The beginning of the end was when guilds stopped raiding. My guild held out longer than most, but we gave up the week after patch 2.0 came out, even though we’d made good progress in BWL with the new talent builds. The top-end raiding guild on the server either self-destructed or began radical restructuring, and the battlegrounds were flooded with new PvPers farming honor-based gear.
We did re-invent raiding in a way. Machievelli, one of our rogues, got a group of ten of us together and we hunted those evil level-70 ghosts through the tunnels near Karazhan, collecting netherweave and other mysterious stuff. We’d wipe on every third or fourth one; they were that tough, even against level-60’s in full raid-gear!
The upcoming impact of the Wrath of the Lich King has already created tremors. The fansites bristle with “How to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King” posts even though we haven’t seen any changes on the server yet except for the Theramore portal for mages. But several of us are stockpiling old-world herbs to power-level Inscription, our guildies with Beta keys are annotating maps for us, and Berise and her ZA team are frantically scrabbling for bear mounts before the content patch.
Looking at the current lackluster state of several classes, including warlocks, and the limited testing past the Boreal Tundra/Howling Fjord, I’d say we have a couple of months before the content patch and probably another before the expansion can be released. Even so, I cannot resist the temptation to plan for the (mostly) unknown.
Raiding
Tuesday we have a guild meeting to discuss where we will go with our last few months of raiding. I'm hoping to kill Kael and Illidan still, partly for storyline reasons as described above, partly for closure, and partly because those are fun fights. The guild isn't at the recommended gear levels for Sunwell bosses, so I don't think we'll be taking Brutallus down whether we try or not. Guess we'll see what people think!
We changed from a casual to a raiding guild last February, so we've pushed very hard to get from VR/Lurker to Archimonde/Illdari Council. It will be a real change of pace to go back to TKTE, but that might be something else we're ready for, a little variety. We spent months grinding through Black Temple; took a break last week to go back to Mount Hyjal, and cleared it in two days. If we can raid different instances each week, hopefully people won't get burned out and we won't quit raiding until Wrath of the Lich King is actually released.
Quests
Here's the part I'm taking pretty seriously. I always got a feeling of accomplishment from completing quests, and they're integral to the storyline. Quest Achievements are the ones I'll probably focus on. I've done most of the ones in The Burning Crusade except a couple that were bugged in the beginning and the ones that are just plain hard ("Vials of Eternity"). I still have to kill Terokk, better organize a group for that.
One of the last quest chains I completed before The Burning Crusade was the Tirion Fordring chain in EPL. Turns out that Fordring will have a major role in WotLK. Won't make a difference that my character did the earlier quest chain, but for me, it will make the Wrath of the Lich King quests more fun.
Gear
Warpy managed to accumulate enough DKP, badges, arena points, and gold to make multiple upgrades this week. I've been scrambling like crazy to get everything gemmed/enchanted/paid for.
If he doesn't get another piece of gear before Wrath of the Lich King, it's fine with me.
His lowest-level item is his helm: Spellstrike Hood/Voidheart Helm. That's going to be a little tough to replace, depending on how raiding the end-instance bosses go. It's the opposite of his gear at the start of The Burning Crusade, all Tier-1 equivalent except for his T2 helm! Didn't replace that T2 helm until he got to level 70. High-level gear will come in handy for my early-Wrath of the Lich King plans.
Alts
When I got serious about raiding, I realized that I needed consumables, but I had a hard time affording them. So I made my rogue alt an herbalist. When I respecced from affliction to destro, farming became more frustrating, so I had my rogue farm primals in between herbing. Looks like WotLK cloth-armor recipes need gems, at least in the Beta so it's just as well that I've leveled a miner!
The miner in question, my dorf hunter, was leveled because he's lots of fun and very restful. He's an engineer, so he's not very profitable, but very amusing! It's not a high priority, but I do want to get his engineering to 375 and see if I can get him Artisan Riding before the expansion. For him, I'm going for the Nesingwary-quests Achievement, because that's the kind of dorf he is!
First Days of Wrath of the Lich King
I'm not too worried about add-ons, even though I can't play without them, because people are already developing and testing them in the Beta. I'll download a lightweight compilation a few days before the WoW 3.0 patch and another a few days before the expansion is released.
The other thing I'll do is clear all of my tabards and little pets out of my bank as soon as I can!
Two things I do know, the intro zones: the Howling Fjord, the Boreal Tundra, and the Death Knight starter zone, will be mobbed, and my main has better gear than he started The Burning Crusade in. So I'll do what I did in The Burning Crusade, go to the new place, do the "Go talk to this guy" quests, find my profession trainers, look around, then head in to a slightly higher-level area. I spend the first few days of The Burning Crusade in Zangarmarsh, where nothing was camped except Boglash. I should be able to handle level-73-74 quests, at least for the first week, then move back out and do intro quests.
I would also like access to Dalaran before level 77. So I'm planning to sort out some of my guildies early on, get a mage to get us in, then start summoning the rest of them.
We did re-invent raiding in a way. Machievelli, one of our rogues, got a group of ten of us together and we hunted those evil level-70 ghosts through the tunnels near Karazhan, collecting netherweave and other mysterious stuff. We’d wipe on every third or fourth one; they were that tough, even against level-60’s in full raid-gear!
The upcoming impact of the Wrath of the Lich King has already created tremors. The fansites bristle with “How to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King” posts even though we haven’t seen any changes on the server yet except for the Theramore portal for mages. But several of us are stockpiling old-world herbs to power-level Inscription, our guildies with Beta keys are annotating maps for us, and Berise and her ZA team are frantically scrabbling for bear mounts before the content patch.
Looking at the current lackluster state of several classes, including warlocks, and the limited testing past the Boreal Tundra/Howling Fjord, I’d say we have a couple of months before the content patch and probably another before the expansion can be released. Even so, I cannot resist the temptation to plan for the (mostly) unknown.
Raiding
Tuesday we have a guild meeting to discuss where we will go with our last few months of raiding. I'm hoping to kill Kael and Illidan still, partly for storyline reasons as described above, partly for closure, and partly because those are fun fights. The guild isn't at the recommended gear levels for Sunwell bosses, so I don't think we'll be taking Brutallus down whether we try or not. Guess we'll see what people think!
We changed from a casual to a raiding guild last February, so we've pushed very hard to get from VR/Lurker to Archimonde/Illdari Council. It will be a real change of pace to go back to TKTE, but that might be something else we're ready for, a little variety. We spent months grinding through Black Temple; took a break last week to go back to Mount Hyjal, and cleared it in two days. If we can raid different instances each week, hopefully people won't get burned out and we won't quit raiding until Wrath of the Lich King is actually released.
Quests
Here's the part I'm taking pretty seriously. I always got a feeling of accomplishment from completing quests, and they're integral to the storyline. Quest Achievements are the ones I'll probably focus on. I've done most of the ones in The Burning Crusade except a couple that were bugged in the beginning and the ones that are just plain hard ("Vials of Eternity"). I still have to kill Terokk, better organize a group for that.
One of the last quest chains I completed before The Burning Crusade was the Tirion Fordring chain in EPL. Turns out that Fordring will have a major role in WotLK. Won't make a difference that my character did the earlier quest chain, but for me, it will make the Wrath of the Lich King quests more fun.
Gear
Warpy managed to accumulate enough DKP, badges, arena points, and gold to make multiple upgrades this week. I've been scrambling like crazy to get everything gemmed/enchanted/paid for.
If he doesn't get another piece of gear before Wrath of the Lich King, it's fine with me.His lowest-level item is his helm: Spellstrike Hood/Voidheart Helm. That's going to be a little tough to replace, depending on how raiding the end-instance bosses go. It's the opposite of his gear at the start of The Burning Crusade, all Tier-1 equivalent except for his T2 helm! Didn't replace that T2 helm until he got to level 70. High-level gear will come in handy for my early-Wrath of the Lich King plans.
Alts
When I got serious about raiding, I realized that I needed consumables, but I had a hard time affording them. So I made my rogue alt an herbalist. When I respecced from affliction to destro, farming became more frustrating, so I had my rogue farm primals in between herbing. Looks like WotLK cloth-armor recipes need gems, at least in the Beta so it's just as well that I've leveled a miner!
The miner in question, my dorf hunter, was leveled because he's lots of fun and very restful. He's an engineer, so he's not very profitable, but very amusing! It's not a high priority, but I do want to get his engineering to 375 and see if I can get him Artisan Riding before the expansion. For him, I'm going for the Nesingwary-quests Achievement, because that's the kind of dorf he is!
First Days of Wrath of the Lich King
I'm not too worried about add-ons, even though I can't play without them, because people are already developing and testing them in the Beta. I'll download a lightweight compilation a few days before the WoW 3.0 patch and another a few days before the expansion is released.
The other thing I'll do is clear all of my tabards and little pets out of my bank as soon as I can!
Two things I do know, the intro zones: the Howling Fjord, the Boreal Tundra, and the Death Knight starter zone, will be mobbed, and my main has better gear than he started The Burning Crusade in. So I'll do what I did in The Burning Crusade, go to the new place, do the "Go talk to this guy" quests, find my profession trainers, look around, then head in to a slightly higher-level area. I spend the first few days of The Burning Crusade in Zangarmarsh, where nothing was camped except Boglash. I should be able to handle level-73-74 quests, at least for the first week, then move back out and do intro quests.
I would also like access to Dalaran before level 77. So I'm planning to sort out some of my guildies early on, get a mage to get us in, then start summoning the rest of them.
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