While I wasn’t (and am not) really *enthusiastic* about Dragonflight, I’m having fun. Took my time to level, went for a little bit of gear (still pondering to run a few M0 tonight before the reset), started leveling an alt, also got that one to 70 last night. Either I’ve missed it or we don’t have a plan about raiding yet (as in, when does it start, how to prepare) so everything is chill and I’m certainly not repeating the manic prep grind that I had when Shadowlands launched.
Been taking a week off EVE and just played as much (or as little) WoW as I wanted. I like it.
Apparently everyone was quicker than I was but here are my numbers, including reading all the quests, doing as many Dragonriding courses as I felt like (only did Gold after hitting 70 though, and need to work through the Advanced courses now). Dragonriding is pretty fun.
60-61: ???
61-62: 1:14h
62-63: 1:30h
63-64: 2:00h
64-65: 2:00h
65-66: 1:13h
66-67: 1:42h
67-68: 1:54h
68-69: 1:44h
69-70: 2:00h
That’s about 16h, my alt (with a spec I have no clue about) took around 17h despite not reading quest text. Guess I am slow.
So I did buy the Dragonflight expansion on the day before the launch to get the preorder pet, but I didn’t log in at midnight to play.
Today is the end of the 2nd evening after launch and I just dinged 65 on my Warrior. 1:15h to 2h per level and Dragonriding is fun!
I’m still not really in hype mode, but I’m leveling at an enjoyable pace – but I mean I spent around 8h on the first two nights, so it seems to be good, right?
We’ll see how this evolves, sub is running out in 1-2 days but I have a WoW token prepared already. Maybe I just need some time to get back into the groove.
Also while I’m not a fan of Twitch drops, just leaving it on in the background for 4h for a mount, while stupid, is nothing I’d refuse just out of principle. I got it, I redeemed it, now I just need to find out how I will get it.
WoW is completely on the backburner at the moment, I’m only logging in a handful of chars once or twice per day and spend 2 minutes for the table, trying to make some easy money with the covenant missions.
I still have these 4 chars I have started to push through Shadowlands (57, 56, 56, 54), but I had actually forgotten about them momentarily and only thought about them again yesterday. Maybe I’m in the mood to work on them again in a week or so when their rested XP has filled up.
But overall, I’m done with the expansion – there were a few achievements I wanted to do and maybe I will, but right now I’m not even sure. Basically a wasted last month of my 6 month subscription, but at the time we didn’t really have a release date or knew how S4 would pan out, bummer.
WotLK has also not managed to interest me, at all. I tried to login once and there was a queue, and that was that. Oh well, I got EVE at the moment, so I’m not bored. I’m half-heartedly following news and updates as people prepare their Dragonflight TODO lists and tips, meanwhile I’m not even sure which character and spec I want to play. I guess waiting until the last moment has worked out fine several times for me and just because right now I can’t even imagine leveling up and raiding… it’s 6 more weeks and I don’t want to write off the expansion launch yet.
Raider.io currently has an event called “Break the Meta” where you’re encouraged to run M+ with… well, specs that are currently not meta. Bit weird because in the regions where I run we just take the player and not class. Anyway, they apparently partnered with Blizzard and if you run just 2 +15 in time you’re supposed to get an ingame toy as a reward. Didn’t have to ask for long and we had 5 people – DH tank, Monk healer, DH DPS, Ele Shaman DPS, DK. Successfully finished our two +15s (was a bit close due to two people being a bit inexperienced in their role/class, me one of them) and now we’re waiting for our reward.
Just one hour and for where we stand it could’ve easily taken 2h instead of one, but a nice diversion when we said we wouldn’t really do anymore M+ just this week.
Thanks to my awesome M+ group I got my Season 4 mount on Friday
! Managed to do 2 19s and then one of the instances I was completely missing (Upper Kara Fortified) which brought me over the hump of 2000 rating. Then I noticed I’d forgotten to buy one of my BiS trinkets with the raiding Dinar and a macro was broken. Oh well, I’m really good at this game, you know. That’s 4 +15s for the Vault this week as well, nice.
Wastewarped Deathwalker mount
I also healed a few +10s in PUGs to get my Shammy to 1400 rating to upgrade some gear, I guess I’ll even try for 1700, I’m still missing enough Fortified/Tyrannical runs that this should provide a good base with +10s and then I can grab 1-2 +15s with the team.
On the downside I’ve not really felt like tanking, so both my DK and my DH didn’t do a lot, maybe I’ll try to get a +2 in on the weekend, but unlike with the Shammy it feels a little pointless this late in the season. There’s only a few weeks left, so I’d have to hardcore play tons of dungeons and I don’t want to really learn it. Maybe in Dragonflight…
So overall everything looks pretty good with regarding to goals in Season 4 and Shadowlands overall – I’m working on a few achievements as well, mostly the Stitchyard and some zone metas. I won’t make the big overall Shadowlands meta achievement because I didn’t care for the Kyrian (Path of Ascension) and Venthyr (Ember Court) thing.
The only thing I’m a little worried is the Fated mount, as we’re still missing the last 3 bosses in Sepulcher, but the guild -again- only did the first 8 when I missed my first raid, so I hope we’re extending this week because no one should have this mount unless the pugged later in that week.
Once upon a time in 2010 Tam of Righteous Orbs (no, not that one as far as I know) had the idea to collect all EU bloggers who played WoW at the time and form a guild to play together for a bit, this was <Single Abstract Noun> on Argent Dawn-EU. I don’t exactly remember who was in there at the time (I think Jaedia was there), because that was a long time ago.
I started a male Troll Hunter – I’m pretty sure there was a little inspiration because I was watching Kripparrian at the time when he was raiding and making cool videos, but not the main one. I’ve had several hunters over the years, I always liked them, and my second most important char at the time was a male Troll Warrior on my main server. I actually leveled quite a bit in 2010 and 2011 and because this was an RP server, I remember a few occasions of stopping by and looking at RPers in Orgrimmar doing there thing. It was nice, especially on this remote (to me) server with no pressure to level up or get anything done – yes, I’m usually very goal-oriented in WoW and there’s always something to do.
Anyway, at some point I reached Northrend and stopped playing and when I came back, the guild was pretty dead. A single person had a few max-level chars and we chatted for a bit, but that was it. Then I hardly logged in once a year for another few years and that was it basically.
When I bought the bundle of 8 or so transfers a few months back I only had used up all but two and I was still unsure what to do, but I never wanted to just delete this Level 30 (after the squish) Hunter with a history, so on the weekend I transferred him off to a server where some friends play and I already have 2 Level 60s. I changed the name and it’s now a female Troll Hunter who just reached the Shadowlands last night, 20 Levels in current retail are easily doable on a weekend without stressing too much.
Unfortunately I had only made a single post about this but at least it helped me pinpoint the start pretty clearly. So here’s a second post now, as the final end of chapter. Thanks to all who participated back then even if your names are lost to time, it was a fun project and came just at the right moment, in the middle/end part of WotLK.
The Trial of Style is one of the most important ingame festivals in Retail WoW because while it’s live you can transmog for free. This is really important if you have too many alts.
Here’s the 2022 Rogue/Warrior autumn collection, a bit heavy on Tier gear this time, but I didn’t farm it for nothing.
My main Night Elf Warrior in Dragon Soul Tier gearMy Troll warrior in mostly Tier 6My Goblin Warrior in Tier 10My Highmountain Tauren Warrior in some blue colored gearMy old main Orc Rogue in Tier 4My Mag’har Orc Rogue in the coolest leveling armorMy Gnome Rogue in 10-man Tier 8My Human Rogue in something that took ages to color-matchMy Void Elf Rogue in something black-colored
This is the fourth week of Shadowlands Season 4 and while M+ is kinda ok I’m not a fan of raiding right now. While I originally supported us going down to only one day instead of two days per week – you can’t really get a lot done in just 2h. Today we barely managed to get Nathria Normal cleared (in the order of first continuing the old bosses from Sludgefist alive, then doing a new ID up to Council, in total 10/10) and no one seems to be motivated to go for Heroic after our first try three weeks ago and noticing it’s not a pushover after all these months of no one doing the fight, and no one’s really up for progressing – the only draw seems to be the mount (for clearing all 3 on Fated Normal) and the gear, to a degree. Legendary bow for Sylvanas and some odd bits and bobs here and there. Today I got the missing cloak of the Normal set but didn’t get the Shoulders.
But that’s not really the problem. I’m not really enjoying it, Normal is just too easy for this group, and some people have already stopped logging in for this weird season, and I can’t hold it against them (amongst them our replacement raid leader). I mean, I’m happy to hopefully get the mount – but this 3 Dinar loot system doesn’t excite me. I know I should take the Jailer’s Gavel (would be an upgrade from 259 to 285) but I kinda dislike the mechanic, it just makes most sense. I mean, the system seems fine in geenral, I’d like that in a normal raid tier. Kill 30 bosses, be able to buy a weapon or trinket (maybe make it 20, for 2 complete Normal clears and not 30 for 3 Normal clears, or something) as a form of bad luck protection. But I’m simply noticing I’m not made for farming content. We’ve seen it on Normal+Fated now and I don’t really want to go back. Go Heroic or stop trying.
Overall I’m simply not sure I’ll keep logging in for raids until Dragonflight launches if we’re keeping up this pace of only clearing Normal, but maybe people are actually up for a challenge and reprogressing Nathria after we got the mount, but I somehow doubt it. I think I’ve not missed a raid in this guild since July 2021, but maybe that’s coming soon. That’s not to say I hate Season 4, but I guess I’d be more ok with Season 3 just petering out slowly like in other expansions. That feeling of “being done” – got 2 of 3 AOTC and now for 3-4 months.. just go away and play other games, like I did after our Heroic Sylvanas kill – but instead we got this weird Raid tier, that’s just interesting enough to not just sod off.
Also I’m noticing that I’m in a certain end-of-expansion mood as I’ve been going around and knocking off soloable achievements in Shadowlands. Quests, Exploration, finding treasures, grabbing pets. I’ve not done that for a long time…
It’s Friday and I’m mentally preparing for a vacation trip on Monday, which also means I’ll be missing the last 3 days of Blaugust and I’ve not yet reached my goal of 15 posts per month. More like a stretch goal but unless I’m going for the full 31 (like in 2018) I don’t really feel like cheating by just banging out a semi-random post. This one might sound like one, but I’ll be coming to the point shortly. I’m just not sure if something will come up for the last one.
I’ve been keeping busy this week by running tons of old instances in WoW, in order to finish out some transmog sets. See, at some point they added achievements to have a full set of one raid tier. SimpleArmory nicely shows these under Achievements -> Collections -> Appearances.
Despite me playing a ton over the years, I’ve never actually been in a guild that kills stuff very quick and then spends months farming, so my completion of Tier sets was actually abysmal until I started farming old raids.
The first ones I finished were the Tier 5 Rogue set quite recently and the Paladin Nighthold set, probably also this year, since then I also managed to get the Tier 11 Warrior set from Icecrown Citadel and the Rogue set from Siege of Orgrimmar in Pandaria. My main targets at the moment are Rogue Tier 4 from Karazhan (1 piece missing), Rogue set from Throne of Thunder (1 piece missing), Heart of Fear/Terrace of the Endless Spring, Rogue set from Naxxramas 25 (1 piece missing), and with a little less focus Black Temple and Ulduar.
It really helps to have several Rogues and Warriors and I’m sure I’ll lose interest again soonish, but right now I’ll push a bit more. So there are 28 achievements for raid tiers in previous expansions, and I currently have only 12 of them, and I really want to get to around 18…
Next week there will be the Trial of Style event again (and I’m missing the start of it), but I’m just to cheap to simply transmog 30 chars, so I’ve been waiting for this for a while. I’m not saying I don’t transmog my main chars, but that alt that I probably won’t touch in a few months.. Yeah, Trial of Style free transmog it is.
Now if only WoW had something like tokens I could save up and just buy the one thing I need after 10 runs of the old instance, that would be great.
Thinking about all the transmogs I also noticed that I was missing some of the Shadowlands Covenant transmogs, there are 16 of them – one per Covenant and armor class. Now it’s Saturday afternoon and I already managed to grab the Kyrian Plate one, the Night Fae Mail one and most of the Necrolord Leather one, it’s kinda easy to rush through with decent gear. The missing ones are Kyrian Cloth and Venthyr Mail… for the latter I don’t even have a char that chose this.
