Throwback Thursday

by Gimmlette

Jumping on the meme where you go through the documentation of your past and post a photo or a song to your blog or to Facebook, I thought I'd post photos from my 8 years of WOW playing. I've got a "few".

Raise your hand if you remember the world dragons; Ysondre, Tarer, Emeriss and the one above, Lethion. I remember when Spectacular Death decided we'd take these on. Ysondre was considered the "easiest", while it was a toss-up as to whether Emeriss or Lethion was hardest.

Each dragon had a special attack. I don't remember Ysondre's. Tarer would split into several shades. You had to endure that phase while dpsing the correct shade. Hunter and warlock pets knew so you needed to have at least one of those classes in the raid so you could target the pet's target. I don't remember Lethion's attack but Emeriss, shudder. I considered him (her? Do we know the sex of these dragons?) the hardest. He did a boat load of nature damage and, when you died, a mushroom spawned on your body. Anyone close to the mushroom when it exploded took concentrated nature damage. It was awhile before we were able to get Emeriss down.

August 8, 2009 Tarer group

They spawned in 4 locations: Dreamer's Rest in Feralas, Serdane in Hinterlands, east of Forest Song in Ashenvale and Twilight Grove in Duskwood. You never knew which dragon would be in which location. Generally speaking, Twilight Grove and Forest Song were the most frequented. People forgot, usually, about Dreamer's Rest so you could often find one there when all the other places were empty. They were not tied to one location so one time Ysondre might be in Twilight Grove. The next time you went there, it could be Emeriss. They also had their own loot table with items you couldn't get anywhere else.

They were removed with Cataclysm and there is a quest chain in Feralas that discusses what happened to the world dragons after the Cataclysm. If you remember them it's interesting to do the chain, if a little sad. At the end of Wrath, the dragons were little more than loot pinatas. Their areas are given over to other things now.

I miss them. I don't know if their loot was moved to another mob or to a world drop or removed altogether. The fight mechanics were unique and needed some problem solving to surmount. At level 70 and in the early stages of level 80, you couldn't expect to solo them. I wish they had just been updated for Cataclysm.

Oh well, things come and go in the fluid nature of this game. I'd like to see them come back as rideable mounts. Now THAT would be an homage to some great dragons.

Bug Report

by Epicurian

This is the first in what will be an ongoing series revolving around the things we find which are broken or can be broken. With 7 years of "organized" game play, we have some experience with this.

Our first bug comes from the Burning Crusades raid The Battle for Mount Hyjal. If you aren't familiar with the raid, you access it in the Caverns of Time. If you take the dragons to the bottom, when you land, it's to your right. There's a "park", sort of. You run through the sand to a portal. That portal takes you to the first room of the raid. This is where the tier 6 vendor and original Burning Crusades jewelcrafting pattern vendor are located. Tier 6 tokens are obtained from Hyjal, Black Temple and Sunwell. It used to be, you had to get a couple people to form a raid with you so you could get into this room; so annoying. Thankfully, that's not the case anymore.

We've been running Hyjal in an attempt to get my warlock her T6 gloves to complete the Malefic set. I really like the looks of it. There are a lot of people who feel gear set design was at its zenith with Burning Crusades. We'll explore gear sets in an future post. Anyway, I've been trying to get the gloves to complete the set. Some guild members came along to make the process of clearing the raid faster. At level 82, I would have a bit of difficulty but it wouldn't be insurmountable. Still, having people willing to come along on a legacy raid makes things go quicker...until they don't.

The raid is divided into 3 parts. You start with the Alliance portion. Two mini-bosses spawn after waves of demons. Once crushed, you move on to the horde area. This is where the bug shows up. We killed the first waves and the first mini-boss, a big cow-looking thing with a really cool sword, is supposed to show up. He never did. There is a set time between waves of demons and that time passed with nothing coming. We ran around and discovered demons had spawned in the Alliance side, which they aren't supposed to do. Then, wave 6 of the first 8 in the horde side spawned again. That's where rock elementals arrive.

We endured this for a good half hour before deciding we'd broken the encounter. Turns out, this is a known bug. Here's what you do. Generally speaking, if you run out, hit "reset" and wait 30 minutes, the encounter does a hard reset and you'll pick up where you left off. We discovered that didn't work in this case. We actually logged for the night and came back the next day, only to have the encounter freeze at the same place. Don't kill the waves too fast. The mobs don't have much health and are easily one-shotted. You might have to remove gear so it takes you longer to kill them. There are frost dragons who show up. Let them land on the ground and then kill them. And, you can let Thrall die or take off all your gear and have the mobs kill you. Either case considers the event a wipe and can reset the counter.

Unfortunately, for us, none of these methods reset the raid. We weren't able to get the mini-bosses to spawn. At that point, you have no choice but to leave and come back after the Tuesday reset. It's hugely frustrating to the casual player because you just want to finish what you start. Still, if you've ever done the raid and not had time to wander around, having the encounter bug out on you gives you plenty of time to see things. Go to the demon area over by the Alliance zone. Creepy.

A Casual Approach to Holidays

by Gimmlette

Huzzah! It's time for a WOW holiday! This time it's Love Is In The Air, the Valentine holiday. It started yesterday and runs through Monday, February 16th. It's a cute holiday. The decorations in the cities and towns are nice. The big things are the stuff you can get from the vendor and the necklace drops off the holiday bosses in Shadowfang Keep. For a casual player, running a holiday 5-man can be exasperating. You have a finite amount of time to play and there are so many things to do. This is just one more thing on the list. I have some observations on casual running of holidays and an overview of Love Is In The Air.

First, a discussion of this holiday. If you level 100 and are not a raider or a crafter or have friends who can craft, you owe it to yourself to try to run this 5-man event often. This year, the neck pieces are ilevel 635 and one drops every time you run the encounter. This year, the neck pieces have a "use" function which grants you the achievement "It Might Just Save Your Life", a clear homage to the Huey Lewis and the News theme song from Back to the Future, which featured the year 2015. Leave it to Blizzard to work in topical references somehow.

The 5-man runs for holidays don't tend to be that hard. Indeed, my bear, Ursamajor, could tank this one easily, as long as I paid attention to what he was standing in and moved him, as well as applied heals. The problem is that you have to have a tank and healer queued in your party. You can't just run over to the stone with a group of 5 and expect to zone into the holiday encounter by running through the portal. Getting into a 5-man can be immensely annoying. If you aren't in a guild, or, even if you are, and you're a dps, the wait for a tank and/or a healer can be an hour, particularly at the end of the holiday when people have what they want and don't care to run this anymore.

My advice for the casual player is thus: if you are dps, do your queuing now, while the event is still hot. Get your necklace. Get the achievement. Then, if you have a tanking or healing spec, once your dps has their necklace, queue as either tank or heals. You'll be assured of getting a run.

There are 2 pets this year, one a drop and the other, Lovebird Hatchling, obtained by turning in 40 love tokens. (If you are Allance and get the Toxic Wasteling, head to the Ironforge tram, where the rats spawn. Seriously. Just do it.) There is also the tallstrider mount which is purchased with 270 tokens and the very rare Big Love Rocket mount, which is a drop. Remember, pets and mounts are account wide so if you get the rocket on the toon you're using to run the encounter, you'll have it on every toon. You get the candy box in which the pet and mount are contained with your first run of the night on a toon. After that, it's just the necklace which drops.

Now, some thoughts on holiday achievements/events in general. Finishing out the quests for this holiday is necessary if you want the meta achievement "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been". While you can do the Love quests within one 2 week period, others, such as getting the pets from Children's Week, simply can't be done, by design, within one holiday season. So, don't bang your head on your desk if your attempts to get someone to sit with you under your festive umbrella go for naught. A casual player is used to not getting things done because, well, it's probably not the most important thing in your life.

WOWHead has a great guide to the quests and achievements and, most importantly, how to get the achievements. I think, for a casual player, one should pick which achievements are the most important to you to get. Those are the ones you work on. The next time the holiday comes around, do the same thing. Eventually, you'll complete all the achievements. If you don't have a guild to run things with, using the "Looking for Group" button could introduce you to people who are fun to run with.

My primary advice is to have fun, but that's what I advise anyone playing this game to do. You should get out in the world, visit the other capital cities, even the small waypoints on the map and look at the decorations. They aren't as extensive as in Winter Veil, but they are there. And, if you need to toss rose petals on a dwarf hunter, just whisper me. I'll stand still long enough for that.

Out And About

By Gimmlette

I'm a screenshot junkie. I freely admit it. But this game provides all sorts of places and situations where a screenshot to preserve the moment is vitally necessary. The above is a case in point. This is on the elemental plateau in Draenor. That's a purple outlined fishing pole and there's a murloc. I won't tell you what happened when I clicked the pole. Suffice it to say it was quite amusing. I love to fish in game so they didn't need to entice me to try it. Is the murloc used for bait? You'll have to go find out.

Submissions for "Out And About" are welcome. They should be in .jpg format with name plates removed. You can write your own caption or I'll do it, but I'll need to know who and where and what's going on. Please include your toon name, guild and server if you're not in Spectacular Death. Send photos to floortanking@gmail.com.

And that's my bodyguard, Delvar Ironfist, alive. I hadn't killed him at this point. Poor Delvar. He's getting really good at floor tanking.