Out And About

by Gimmlette

I don't remember this being here.

This is from the Tanaan Jungle starter quests, specifically the quest that frees Gul'dan from his prison. I was running around deactivating the crystals and saw this. I don't remember this crystal having a sword through it when I was through here on Gimmlette. Is this something I can obtain on my warrior? Was it added later? The sword design is one a number of one and two-handers use. It's huge, so I'm guessing it was an ogre's. It's not big enough to be Mannoroth's.

Does anyone remember? Did I miss this the first time through, which wouldn't be unusual?

Suggestion Box

by Gimmlette

Remember flying around the zone Zul'Drak in Wrath? It was not my favorite zone. I didn't like the color palette chosen; blue, white, gray, brick red, brown. The story line through ZD was interesting, but some of the questing was difficult and was a lot of "go here and kill 15 of these". The best part was freeing the troll animal spirits.

One of the interesting things about Zul'Drak was the broken irrigation system around the east side of the zone.

I think this was modeled on the ancient Roman aqueducts which still work in some areas of the world. Sections of ZD's aqueducts are broken so the water doesn't travel the full length of the system. This section is over by The Argent Stand.

I have always thought it would be way cool to have a quest and achievement to ride the system from start to finish. It would be like Donkey Kong's mine. You remember playing that, right? You'd get a small raft or boat and have to leap it over the broken sections, picking up power ups to make you go faster or leap broken sections with ease. Leaping, hopping or jumping is something I do not do well. I would, however, spend a lot of time trying to ride this if there was an achievement for doing it.

Out And About

by Gimmlette

So, do you have your jukebox yet? It was a big deal when a lot of guild members got their juke box all at around the same time. Several people set out into the world to find all the music scrolls. If you get 20 scrolls, you get the achievement, Azeroth's Top Twenty. This gets you the toy, Portable Audiophone, so you can take your music anywhere.

The above is the mystical mushroom circle in western Tirisfal Glades. Sprite darters converge on this circle to sing. It's a very interesting song so make sure you're playing with your volume on. I don't often have the volume on, particularly when I'm doing battle. I find a large amount of battle sounds annoying.

This used to be a random event, unpredictable as to when it would happen. Now, because a music scroll drops from the center, it occurs roughly every 30 minutes. The whole event lasts for 5 minutes. The sprite darters start assembling at the edge of the circle and start singing. Their song heads to the center. You click on that junction to get the scroll. If you look around, you'll see the deer of the forest, which are ravaged by the scourge, come to the edge of the circle and are untargetable. Once the event is over, you can kill them and, if you're standing on top of one, it will attack you. They are level 80 so it's easy to dispatch them.

You can find the circle by getting to the sewer entrance to Undercity. Once there, you'll need a flying mount. Fly west and a bit southwest. You'll come to an area of the map where there is a lake surrounded by forest. You might need to run around a bit south of the lake to find the circle. You'll need to devote a maximum of 30 minutes to wait for the event to start. When it's over, if you've never been here, jump into the lake just north of the center island and swim to the bottom. Any guesses on what that's doing there?

Suggestion Box

by Gimmlette

Blizzard has done a great job of adding to the very large roster of tameable pets. Several times during expansions, we will see yet another family becoming available for use. If you're a Beast Mastery hunter, you have 10 more families from which to choose a pet. In the Beast Mastery "exotic" roster are the two headed Core Hounds. I have a couple, the red named core hound from Upper Blackrock Spire, and the named purple core hound from Blackwing Lair.

Shown above is a void terror. This particular one prowls the Sunwell Plateau raid. These are considered part of the core hound family, but aren't tameable. Every time we come into Sunwell, we hunters think just how cool it would be to have one as our hunter pet. One of the problems with this particular family is that these aren't technically hounds. They are demons. It would not be out of character for a hunter to tame one of these. We do have, within the dog family, demon dogs and runed demon dogs, both of which can be tamed. I remember when the runed demon dogs were allowed to be tamed. I rushed out and got a blue one. They have a neat look. They are usually found with warlock mobs although they are not part of the demons warlocks can summon as pets. So there is precedent for allowing hunters to tame demons.

But if it would be out of character for hunters to use the void terrors as pets, why not add them to the warlock's stable? To the right in the photo above, you'll see a small void terror battle pet which was added to Sunwell in Patch 6.1. Everyone has the opportunity to get that. I can see not allowing hunters to tap into the shadow realm to summon a void terror but it would be awesome to have my gnome warlock summoning something 6 times her size. I'd even do a quest chain to be allowed to summon it.