Disaster!!

So, a few days ago I finally logged back into WoW for the first time in months. Now, I knew my account had been hacked, but Blizzard had told me they investigated and were able to restore my accounts to what they had been when I last played. Sadly, this was untrue. I logged in to find MOST of my 10 80s in the gear that I had left them in... however, their bags and banks were empty other than a few quest items and hearthstones (all of my toons are dual specced and had at least two gear sets, my pally who is the best geared of my toons was in her off spec gear when I logged her out, so her good gear is gone), almost all of my gold is gone (between my ten alts I had about 10-15k gold), and a few of them are even still missing some of the stuff they were equipped with when I last logged out. I opened a GM ticket of course, and they are investigating again, so we'll see what happens... but if I don't at LEAST get all my good gear back I might commit WoW suicide (I can live without the gold if I have to). Anyways, I'm going to go log in and see if I can help Blizz with the investigation by figuring out exactly what gear I'm missing... then I'll go back to playing with my now level 71 draenei warrior who I've been playing cuz they didnt fuck with her and I'm too broken up over my hordies to try to play with them.

Best. Quests. Ever.

Its been awhile since I've posted. I've been working overtime and have had limited internet access. The good news is, starting next week I'll be living in a hotel for 7 weeks and as long as the hotel has WiFi, it will be the perfect time to end the long dark tea time of my WoW soul. Hopefully, I'll be back into WoW within three weeks, if not sooner.

So, we left off heading into the frozen wastes of Dragonblight, one of my favorite zones in Northrend. The look of the zone is exactly what I pictured for Northrend, big and epic with mountains, valleys, gorges, weird bones sticking out of the snow covered wastes, etc. And there are some great questlines. Hunting the several name elite mobs around the zone is a good way to make new friends in Northrend. The magnataur quests are fun. The Scarlet Onslaught quests are innovative and loads of fun, even if a bit frustrating at times. We get introduced to the Wyrmcrest Accord and the different flights, do their dirty work, and start fighting the blues. And of course, the most epic questline in WoW, the Wrathgate event that then leads to the amazing Battle for Undercity phased event. Blizzard really WOWed me with that (no pun intended). Seriously amazing stuff, and I get to go kick demon and apothecary ass with Thrall and Sylvannas. Golbez was a happy camper. And then we get a choice of zones again.... if you do most of the quests in Dragonblight, you'll end up with a quest that leads you towards Grizzly Hills, and another towards Zul'Drak. Now, in later play throughs, for effective leveling, I only dipped into Grizzly Hills to unlock the DTK quests there, but, with Golbez, I didn't know any better, and as Grizzly Hills seemed a bit lower leveled than Zul'Drak, I went there first.

Welcome to the Big Show Kids

No more tropical paradises like STV. No more verdant rolling hills of Mulgore. No more exotic veldt of Nagrand. No kids, welcome to the frozen wastes. This is Northrend, and it is NOT a nice place to visit.

With a tear in my eye, I waved goodbye to my friends in Tirisfal Glades, took one last look at the Undercity, and braced myself for the cold.... luckily, as a Forsaken death knight, I probably won't feel it. As the zepplin pulls into Vengeance Landing, I see something new and interesting right away... Forsaken architecture. All we've seen of Forsaken towns before have been old human ruins, but this was a town built by the undead... and it suits us perfectly. I started questing and was pleased that with a few exceptions, the quests were mainly objective based rather than "Kill 30 of X or collect 20 of Y." There are some really enjoyable quest lines in Howling Fjord which is kinda sad because these days my leveling route mostly avoids Howling Fjord other than a few of the early quests out of Vengeance Landing.. its simply more efficient and rewarding to level in Borean Tundra. After taking 10 characters through Northrend, I got my leveling route down to a science. I met the Tanuka for the first time shortly after my arrival, and was a bit let down that they were really just Tauren with new faces (for the males, the females are lamely just Tauren clones). I knew they were related to Tauren but I was hoping they'd be a bit more unique. The Tuskaar filled that role though. And there are some really fun Tanuka quests, especially the one where the Tanuka brave accompanies you into the vyrkul place. There's also alot of twisted mischief going on with my fellow Forsaken, which is always a good time. But, before long, I got back on the zepplin and headed to Borean Tundra via Org.

Borean is where you start seeing the difficulty level bump up a bit (not that anything in WoW is really hard). It can be easy to get overwhelmed in the early quests here fighting the nerubians outside of Warsong Hold (especially if you come here at 68), they repop fast, have long pat routes and big aggro range. But, it was still early enough in the expansion cycle that there were alot of people leveling here and alot of us helped each other out. It is also here that us Hordies got our first real taste of Garrosh Hellscream and his douchiness. Sure, he was in Nagrand, but he was a fairly minor character at the time, no one paid him much attention other than maybe some Warcraft III Grom fanboys. But now, hes in charge of the Horde Expedition, and has turned into a giant D-bag, starkly in contrast to Saurfang the Elder who is ridiculously awesome. I'm trying to think of someone equally repellent on the Alliance side (besides all the players... kidding) to try to explain to you Allies how you'd feel if someone said he'd be the next King of Stormwind... then again, Varian IS pretty bad... but, yea, not as bad as Garrosh. Damn you Blizzard! I was glad to be rid of him when they sent me off to the Tanuka village, especially since I got an awesome blue 2H axe just for walking in the door. Borean is really a great place to level, theres tons of quests (I think maybe only Dragonblight and Icecrown have more) and alot of the quest rewards are really good. And it was cool when for the last quest in the zone, they have you escort a refuge Tanuka into the next zone, the first place that really looks like you'd expect Northrend to look, Dragonblight.

DK Tank, DK Healer, DK DPS

Leveling a death knight through Outland right after WotLK launched was pretty weird. Hellfire was once again a giant gankfest, with everyone Death Gripping everyone all over the place. There were also a few level 80s (who must have power leveled to the cap, then got bored waiting for enough other people to be 80 to share endgame content with) just griefing all the poor nooby DKs.

And then there were the 5 man all DK instance runs... cuz pretty much everyone doing the leveling game 60-70 at that time was a DK. The one frost, one unholy, three blood group was very common. The strength of the DK starting blues helped us getting through the first few instances, but it did get a little harder as time went on. After Hellfire Citadel, I didn't really bother with instances anymore, I really just did it for the novelty of doing an all one class instance run that wasn't with pallies or druids. As I progressed through Outland, I found it wasn't just Hellfire that was a gankfest, and the longer it took me, the more bored 80s there were griefing. I actually decided to go to Shadowmoon as soon as I hit 67, as I had never quested there before, and figured it was usually a less traveled zone and would have less ganking. The amount of "group" quests I was able to EASILY solo as a DK, both in Shadowmoon and other zones, was ridonkulous. I hit 68 and decided to say fuck Outland, and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, home to Arthas Menethil, AKA, the Lich King.

The Altaholic's Dilema

With Burning Crusade, it wasn't a dilema for me, though I'm sure it was for many altaholics, but when Lich King came out, it was hard to decide if I wanted to play with a shiny new DK but have to go through the familiar Outland again, or take my 70 huntard and jump straight into Northrend. I decided on the former as you know, but its a tough call. I'm sure alot of my fellows had the same decision to make then, or for BC, whether to jump on your 60 and head through the portal, or make a new belf pally or draenei shammy. And with Cataclysm on the horizon, I'll face the dilema again... to jump on Faeyth and take to the skies of ravaged Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, or to head to Kezan with my goblin. Yes kids, you can be sure my altaholism isn't cured, I will be making a goblin.

So, my journey with Golbez.. right off the bat, you can tell Blizzard has really changed the game again. The Lich King, who would become the expansion's final raid boss, is there to give you your first quest. You're level 55 yet have no talent points, and you've got some pretty impressive green gear as starting equipment. You know all your weapon skills at max level, and already have a high level in first aid. My only complaint is still you can't pick trade skills to have leveled up to an appropriate skill, and have to go muck about in low level areas or spend a ton of gold on the AH to level some up.

Then I start doing the quests. The first thing that amazes me is the area I'm in keeps changing as I complete quests. Yet, other people must still be doing the quests I've done already, yet I don't see other players fighting invisible mobs. I didn't know about the new phasing technology and how it worked at this point, but I was dazzled by whatever Blizz had used to pull this off.

I also really enjoyed the lore... I've always enjoyed my clashes with the Scarlet Crusade. Scarlet Monastary was probably my favorite instances in the old world, for a variety of reasons. It's design of four separate and short wings was great (why couldn't WC have been like that?), some of the gear you got there was some of the most longlived gear in pre-BC days that would not be replaced for a good 10-15 levels (only rivaled by some of the leather gear from WC and the cloth from SFK), and it was also a good training ground. I feel like SM was where I really learned to play alot of my classes well in group scenarios. It was one of the first instances that presented a challenge, where more than luck and brute strength were required, you couldn't just blunder throug it, you needed stategy. It's probably the instance I've run the most, between hunting for gear for my clothies in Cath and Library, and for my melee classes in Armory, and running it solo on my 60s for the copius amounts of silk and mageweave. So seeing my old Scarlet friends and murdering them in vast quantities was fun.

And then, finally the grand concusion in the EPL (one of my favorite zones) was epic. Seeing my favorite in game human (Tirion Fordring) be all bad ass was awesome Sadly, after this was done, I found myself level 58 or 59, and had to trudge off, yet again, to the Outland....

P.S.: Finished Day of the Dragon today, I got into it finally. Even though it portrayed the Horde in a very negative light (all the orcs, trolls, and goblins in it are dicks) and sngs the praise of the humans to no end, it was good with Cataclysm on the way to get some more insight into Deathwing and the rest of the Aspects. Also read Chris Metzen's short story Of Blood and Honor. My only complaint was that it was too short. It had my previously stated favorite human being awesome, the rest of the humans being racist dicks, showed more of the honor and intelligence and bravery of orcs, and even had a Thrall cameo. All in all, a good read. Next on my reading list, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. I'm excited because the same author who did Lord of the Clans, my favorite WoW story thus far, did this one too.

Captain of the Red Wings

So 2008 found me sidetracked from the project by console games. First, it was Grand Theft Auto IV. I spent a month or more playing this pretty heavily, with WoW thrown in here and there. Then I got back to it, and had gotten Claude, Faeyth, Renoh, Barrett, and Tifah up to 60, with the other three in the works. However, I started realizing how close Lich King was, and decided I wanted to have whichever of my toons I wanted to level t0 80 first sitting ready at 70 when it hit. I decided that I enjoyed the ease of warlock leveling, so Renoh would be my choice. With only weeks until the release, I began working on leveling him to 70. However, something happened that'd derail me once again. My roommate brought home a copy of Fallout 3. I was hooked in. Damnit. It got so bad I didn't even buy WotLK until a couple weeks after it was released, and the dream of having 9 70s at launch went unfulfilled. But, I did get it, and decided that since I didn't have my warlock ready, I'd just jump into my death knight, and so, the tenth of my alts, Golbez the forsaken Death Knight, was born. And then my jaw dropped as I started doing the amazing quests in the DK starting area. Blizzard had REALLY outdone themselves. I like it so much that whenever my server goes down these days, I roll a new DK on a new server and just dick around for a bit with it. This was a very differen class to play, with very dfferent mechanics... it took some getting used to..

Multiple Personality Disorder

I finished Lord of the Clans a few days ago, it was amazing. I love how well they "humanized" the orcs, made them really strong, honorable, respectable characters. I'm now working on Day of the Dragon, but, I'm having trouble getting into it... Kirin Tor and elves... blah.

So weeks go by, and I get all of the gang up to 30. My plan at this point was to cycle through all of them again to 50, and when that was done, cycle through to 70. However, as I went back to Faeyth the paladin, I realized the problem... I had totally forgotten to play her. I started thinking about how to fix this problem going forward. I decided I'd pair everyone up, and do two toons at a time all the way to 70, then move on to the next pair. So, Claude and Faeyth became the first pair.

Quick aside about the gang... not all of them were original. Originally I had a slightly different line up, most got changed before I got started, with the exception of Cid and Tifah who I did a paid recustomization on. When I heard about death knights coming in WotLK I knew I wanted to make him a forsaken named Golbez. That meant breaking from my original all Final Fantasy VII naming scheme. So I deleted my troll priest named Aeris and made a blood elf priest named Terra, and my undead warlock named Valentine became the blood elf warlock Renoh. I always had a female orc named Tifah, but originally she was a shaman, and my warrior was a male orc named Highwind. However (much later, after WotLK came out) I decided I REALLY wanted a male orc shaman who looked like Thrall. So, I recustomized my warrior into a female named Tifah, and my shaman into a male named Cid.

Anywho, I estimated it would take me about 7 months to get all my toons up to 70 at this point (from 30), if I were playing an average of 6 hours a day. A lot of days I didn't get to play that much but I'd make up for it with usually at least one marathon session a week. At the time, it was looking like WotLK was about 8 or 9 months away, so I had a little wiggle room.

Unfortunately for the project, 2008 ended up being a really good year for console games I wanted to play....