Kronos Scourge invasion

The Kronos Scourge invasion is on us and I couldn't resist giving it a look. Which means logging on, getting the 2x quest items from my mailbox (one of which is bugged and shouldn't have been sent) and running to the Eastern Plaguelands... Where I could clearly see a skull by browsing the world map yet couldn't find any flying ziggurat or scourge crystals. Also one of the Scourge invasion questgivers had a ? question mark even though I didn't have his quest (I couldn't complete it anyway). On Oct 6th I was told we had already killed 25 "waves" of scourge.

Good news is that I did end up finding the crystals in the Burning Steppes. And quite some bit of Alliance farming them (are you stacking oils for Naxxramas?).

Luckily most of them focused on the scourge and not on me. As described in a bugreport, I did not see any necropolis flying in the sky. All scourge creatures are missing their money loot. Killing scourge creatures does lead to flying spells hitting the crystal (which cannot be selected... but probably should) but it also keeps me in combat because reasons.

90% of what happens during this invasion

Scourge minions melee hit me for roughly 70/hit (reduced), which would mean 88/hit or so unreduced, which looks too low. Doesn't seem to be much for me with this event unfortunately... maybe I will farm some for reputation until revered (that'd mean less arcane crystals to buy).

Unfair world, mages can kill 50 or so of those in 20 seconds. Say hello to vanilla.

I have yet to see some scourge in Undercity and couldn't find a group to fight a Shadow of Doom. It's interesting to see how this event seems very small and unimportant to me now yet felt much different back in 2006.

... On a 100% unrelated note my roughly 2 years old report about Gahz'ranka's slam hitting for roughly 10x too much damage is now #confirmed, yey!

13 August 2016 - Kronos WoW opens the Silithus doors

A random poppup message on Facebook informed me today that the Ahn'Qiraj doors were finally OPEN! Which means I rushed on my char to see things by myself, I've missed this occasion once, not gonna miss it again. I am so happy this is finally over considering how long it took. From what I understand a slight delay happened due to Fireblooms not being possible to give to the War Effort right near the end. Anyway, we're there!

Unfortunately I had to come all the way from Orgrimmar and the gong had already been hit by the time I arrived in Silithus. A nice crystal welcomed me near the flightmaster and also my friend lag, which was all over the place, but still very much playable. Interestingly two of the people I interviewed in the past were there, A* and Pussochkram, I like to see people that have stayed for so long.

I ran to the gates and noticed Alliance players running all over the place, with a couple Horde, crafty anubisath and silithids playing around, which basically killed everyone in rampage mode, I did not see a single one get tanked correctly by a group and I couldn't access the gong as the Alliance was camping it. Apparently some guys got to hit and kill the colossus from the hives as I could get all those quests from Cenarion Hold. Free loot :D (or bug, perhaps)

Interestingly there were Qiraj destroyers and anubisath spawning past the Ahn'Qiraj gates that stayed in evade mode (you could go through them and not get aggro) until they had made a full group and rushed to attack Silithus. I wanted to go into the Ruins but it told me that it was currently closed (isn't it supposed to be open now?). I didn't see Roman'khan, Setis & General Pax-lish anywhere.

Black Qiraj Battle Tank owners from what I could see :

• Worstworrier (Eclipse, Alliance)
• Swagkhalifa (Friends, Horde)
• Khano (Onslaught, Horde)
• Bagdemagus (Friends, Horde)
• Jellyschool (Onslaught, Horde)

And likely a lot more.

I decided to log on my alt and look for low level crystals, found a single one in the Crossroads, but it wasn't spawning anything. No silithids, no minor annubisaths. I didn't see the crystals that should spawn silithids in Silithus (see this, I had noticed those on my Vanilla WoW video depository) either. Maybe a realm restart is needed, hopefuly it doesn't reduce the duration of this world-event as one of the goals of those silithids is to bring great loot to everyone! That crystal only mind-controled some level 18 guy and got him killed. Now that was unexpected to me ^^.

I couldn't see the expected crystals south of Gadgetzan either so maybe spawns are missing, spawning randomly or should only spawn after some time, I don't know. My understanding from videos was that all crystals spawned at once in the world.

Now, I did notice a qiraj spawn crystal (level 30-40) in the Thousand Needles, so I went there. Captains and anubisath had great rare and uncommon loot rate (about one uncommon and rare per kill), as expected but were missing their money. Scarabs (trash) respawned roughly every minute and hit for 100, Captains every 10 minutes or so and hit for 200, Anubisath respawned after 15-20 minutes, hit for 350, all were crowd-controllable. I don't recommend trying to solo them at their level and alone, they do hit for a bit. Mainly melee damage, with a couple abilities (charge, slow, stun, resistances). Farming them at level 60 could be interesting for some little money but prices will likely fall with all those crystal spawns. This got me roughly 25 uncommon level 30+ items and 7 rares in 30 minutes of solo as a level 60 warlock. Rare items are pretty much always the same unfortunately (small pool, roughly 10 rare items per qiraj).

Okay, apparently it is much easier to find those farming spots by using the Twinhead database and looking for their spawns, like this. Do I always have to break the fun with logic? At least not all the spawns are up yet.

*Quick edit 14.08.2016 : C'thun killed by 3 alliance guilds already (Synced, Risen, Vanguard) on the day the raid was opened, congratulations to them all!

Unrelated : Black lotus now 88-100 gold? Interesting price increase...
Unrelated 2 : Goldsellers are now advertising with rebus? Wut?

Kronos comic 11

Mooncloth prices go up with the ZG release.

[Kronos comic 10] [Kronos comic 12]
[Other articles and comics on Kronos]

Emotional attachment to vanilla characters

I have leveled up my undead warlock to level 60. I have run all the level 50+ dungeons, collected most dungeon upgrades, done dozens of battlegrounds, seen over 1000 honorable kills, finished my class quest for my epic mount, killed Onyxia, Ragnaros and Nefarian and found a few epic set items. My total played time is over 18 days. And yet I think I am not attached to my character. How come?

Does that epic gear make this character worth more to my eyes?

I know that I am not fond of my character for a couple reasons. First, I find its gameplay bland in PvE as the main thing I am doing is casting shadowbolts and a curse. This is even more noticeable because encounters do not require much movement, thinking or adaptation*. This lack of challenge also means that I did not encounter many hardships playing my warlock (as an example elite quests while leveling consisted of fear-shadowbolt-fear, simple and easy) and hardships build a relationship between the player and the character. 
  
Then, I feel like I have no particular importance to my raid partners, as a lone dps among 40 players I am mostly expendable. This belief expands into how I look at my character (a random warlock of low importance) and this is likely a reason why I much prefered playing healer in 10 man raids on retail. I dislike being one among too many as I feel as if each individual's personality gets lost.

Standing out from the crowd : tanking Onyxia

Also, historically I have played on many private servers where character wipes sometimes happened and of which almost all got discontinued, which has lead me to not care too much about what happens to my characters and take things as they come. Saying I distrust most servers would be inaccurate, I am incredibly skeptical of the survival of most private servers. And as such I voluntarily prevent myself from doing superfluous things like collecting random items, or trying to have a server's best damage on a boss fight, which could further increase my investment in my character and my fear of losing those (loss aversion).

Likely the very first server I stayed a long time on. Its community can still be found here and there but the server is no longer running.

But maybe the main reason is much easier to grasp... I never thought I would play long-term on this server. I thought of it as a thing to try, a short experience, but not more.

Thus unfortunately for all I have heard about vanilla making you care more about your character, it did not work for me.

*Actually you could do exactly that and try to find every possible smallest way to increase your damage on a fight or decrease the damage you take, but I take no pleasure in doing 5% more damage making lots of efforts when simply getting a flask, a dragonslayer buff or being a rogue could bring 10-30% more and in most cases regardless of my damage the boss still dies.

[See other articles about Vanilla]

8th november 2015 - The end of a tier – Will Nefarian fall? (part 1)

That night I wanted to raid. I knew the guild was already 6/8 in BWL from thursday's raid. That meant Chrommagus was next and we had already killed him once, so it was fairly probable that he would die again. … That would mean the first night on Nefarian, the current tier's last boss. I can't miss that, I'm a raider, some would say it's in my blood, my flesh. I have to fight him, and I know the first kill is not anything like other kills. It matters.

Obviously I dreaded having to come at 20:00 ST when the raiding starts at 19:30 ST (most of the time I can't come earlier because of social reasons, they've been kind enough to accept me nevertheless). That's 30 minutes of every raid that I miss. 30 more reasons to be benched and replaced by some other random warlock, or worst (mages, I am looking at you, you dps monsters). That's also no dragonslayer buff for me and 30 minutes during which any boss can die. Including perhaps Nefarian. What do I know? Maybe he's not as strong as they say. I can't tell until I've got some tries on him.

Chrommy hit the ground last week, what tells me he won't this one?

Well guess what? Family members ended up coming later, things got delayed and at 20:20 I would still have been busy had I not decided to abruptly leave (I dislike doing that, but I dislike more making 39 players wait on someone). Luckily I was prepared with Teamspeak (TS) on and the game already launched, my required consumables in the bags, standing in Orgrimmar with a ready hearthstone set to Kargath (thank god, I kept forgetting to set it there during the first 2 raids and felt ashamed of it). Alas, the raid slots were filled. 

No Nefarian for me, let's go sleep and end of the story? Nope, not my style, I decided to go ahead and wait, hoping for the best and listening to their progress on TS. Honestly, it could have been a really crappy idea if they had come to Nefarian and killed it without me. 

But that night would not be the night where I would feel left out. [Part 2]

A World of Warcraft vanilla journey

The idea of joining a vanilla private server had been in my mind for a very long time. Indeed, I had played on the official World of Warcraft servers in 2006 as gnome warlock level 21 (named "New", yes I really named him like that) and an undead rogue, yet I had never gone beyond level 43. That was my third MMO after T4C and Dungeons Siege but I didn't know anything about the game, I had never played in a serious way. 

Leveling to 60 seemed elusive. Time was missing, money to pay for the subscription wasn't remotely possible (I played on the account of my brother's friend, he had priority and kept disconnecting me) and killing the Stranglethorn pirates took ages and required decent anticipation to not end up with a full pack of 5 swashbucklers hitting on me. I can remember getting a shaman and rogue friend during that time that then made it to 60, I was amazed at their speed and prowess but I couldn't think of ever making it. The only times I could feel the power of the highest level was with the PTR (Player Test Realm), and I liked it a lot. Without a doubt I must have been one of the least able rogues of those PTRs and getting myself killed was what I did best. ... In the end I never leveled up to 44, studies happened, time passed, the subscription ended and I stopped playing.

Thok heroic back in Mist of Pandaria, 02.2014

Fast forward to 2015, I have played on a couple private servers and know about some of the risks associated with them, I've moved to the official servers on an on/off basis, I've raided in every expansion and on some occasions ended up very close to the last boss on the highest difficulty, I have done some challenge modes, collected mounts/pets & achievements, got some endless achievements as healer, dps and tank and I feel tired of the content. Something seems missing for me, but I can hardly say what. Garrisons feel repetitive, I login only to raid, I don't find meaningful goals. 

And I remember my level 43 rogue, I remember how everything was fresh, harsh, required time and effort. I feel like I've left something unfinished, I feel like I have never experienced the whole vanilla experience, the initial Warcraft experience, raw and unpolished. I want to feel part of a massive 40-man raid, I want to see how Ragnaros used to be fought, I want to finish leveling to 60, I want to farm in Hearthglen and get an epic mount ! 

The journey begins again.

Now, I probably would have never begun my vanilla journey if I hadn't seen a blogpost from Priestwithacause. It brought back the memories I had of the Deadmines, Smite shouting and charging ahead, the pain we had to get into the dungeon with the defias respawning, the corpse-running after some wipes, my awe when I first saw the ship and huge cavern it was hiding inside, the doors that could only be opened with a hidden canonball, etc. I couldn't resist, I HAD to go back to Vanilla and give it a try! After some quick research the Kronos server (www.kronos-wow.com) seemed like a good fit for me, decent population, good reputation on the forums, a focus on quality scripting of dungeons and raids, all nice points that would allow me to meet my goals.