Prepare yourselves! The bells have tolled!
Shelter your weak, your young and your old.
Each of you shall pay the final sum!
Cryyyy for mercy! The reckoning has coooooome!

It’s Hallow’s End time once again! Really, Brewfest was the first annual holiday that I experienced but it’s Hallow’s End that I remember most fondly. Putting out Goldshire, eating too many sweets and turning party members into things. Last time I was around level 35 and so didn’t get to kill the horseman’s head. This year? He has a horse that can fly. I want it. Also he needs killing, I suppose. I need the Hallowed Helm from him, and a full set of wand transformations to get the meta-achievement.

A level 35 Durkon being big and orange

It seems to me that the Shade of the Headless Horseman has been killing far more people this year than last. Those firebombs he drops on people tend to instantly incinerate anyone of a low level – I have no particular memories of being instantly incinerated last time.

All my screenshots from this year are on another computer. Therefore, please use your imagination to fill in. You may also like to imagine some kind of brilliant writing or – let’s say – fill in for the entire last week of missing posts. Sorry…

PART TWO: The Horde

…from the perspective of Durkon Kell.

Continuing from where we left off before, I continue to document Durkon’s thoughts on the races and factions of Azeroth (and sometimes beyond!).

Orcs of Orgrimmar
I have mixed feelings about the Orcs. It would be easy to simply hate them, but my encounters with Warchief Thrall have left me somewhat confused. It seems to me that some Orcs are honourable folk and others are bloodthirsty barbarians who torture and maim for their own amusement. It seems wrong somehow to condemn an entire race because of the actions of some, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive them for what they did to my lady Alexstrasza the Dragonqueen and her flight during the second war. I do not know how she finds it within herself to permit Orcs to enter Wyrmrest Temple. Elune only knows what would happen if that maniac Garrosh Hellscream was in charge instead of Thrall, heh.

Tauren of Thunder Bluff
It’s probably not really appropriate to say this, but I actually quite like the Tauren. Spiritual but strong, gentle in peace and crushingly determined in war (I should know). Where orcs tend to fly off the handle and erupt into screaming rage quite easily, a Tauren warrior on the battlefield maintains a grim intelligence. He or she will smash you to pieces – most Tauren are pretty strong – but will probably regret the necessity of it later on. Their hunters are pretty capable sorts. Seems a shame that the Orcs were there to help them instead of, say, the Dwarves.

Undead Abominations Forsaken of the Shattered Remains of Lordaeron Undercity
I should get something straight: I don’t hate them because they are undead (it doesn’t help though), or because they once served the scourge (against their will). I did once, but a brief encounter with a priest at Light’s Hope chapel solved that for me. Now, I hate them – Forsaken of the Undercity – because of who they are. By the Light, they sat there in that ruined city developing a plague designed to kill everything in Azeroth apart from them! They freed themselves from the Lich King’s grasp and turned their hatred on everything and everyone for daring to avoid being scourged. Maybe there are some exceptions but right now, I don’t care too much. At least they hate the scourge a little bit more than the rest of us, that’s useful.

Trolls of…. uh, the ones in the Horde
Honestly, I don’t know much about these Trolls as opposed to all the others. There are so many of them, all in different tribes with different rules. I’ve fought alongside and against Trolls ever since I left Dun Morogh and I don’t really know in which way the horde’s tribe varies from the rest of them. They all seem to share an obsession with “The Voodoo” and “Mojo”, which I suspect are probably their interpretations of the arcane and natural magics experienced by the rest of us. I really haven’t had enough exposure to them to say anything definitive.

Blood Elves of Silvermoon
Well, Blood Elves… The Sin’dorei strike me as arrogant, selfish and prideful. They are addicted to arcane magic, but unlike the Draenei they abuse it, falling into corruption, insanity and destruction. It is rumoured that Sin’dorei blood knights syphoned their power from a captured, magically bound naaru, hardly the mark of a people I’d want to get to know. Confusingly, the Blood Elves who destroyed the Draenei’s city-ship Exodar are the same Blood Elves that are resident in Silvermoon, but they weren’t members of the Horde. At the time, they were all led by Prince Kael’thas except that the Silvermoon Blood Elves didn’t serve the betrayer Illidan Stormrage. It makes very little sense to me.

Again, there are personal exceptions to my general condemnation. Klinderas, formerly prominent in the Hunter’s Guild was a good man. A little prideful but his heart seemed to be in the right place.

While I’ve spoken before about Humans and their ability to get themselves (and everyone else) into trouble, it seems far more likely that the final ultimate apocalypse will be the responsibility of the Sin’dorei, no doubt due to their incessant meddling with the Arcane in a bid to increase their own personal power. When Malygos decided to kill everyone before our abuse of arcane power destroyed the world, he must’ve mistaken the Sin’dorei for the rest of us.

(Note: Once or twice while levelling, Durkon had a Tauren help – or at least stay clear of things he needed to kill. Every time a hordie inconvenienced him or stood there and /laughed while he got killed? Blood Elf. Circumstantial, but it’s quite enough to shape a Dwarf’s opinions).

A new version of the 3.3 PTR patch notes went up very recently, and there’s one or two hunter changes on the way. Also a LOAD of hunter-pet changes! Many!

Hunter

• Call Stabled Pet: cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. (Yay!)
• Deterrence: Now increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect. (Also Yay)

Hunter Pets

• Many tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer affect players’ pets.
• All player pets now receive 100% of their master’s resilience.
• Avoidance: Removed from pet talent tree. All pets now receive 90% AoE avoidance in PvE innately, requiring no talent point expenditure (Yay!). This will not apply to PvP damage (boo!). This talent is replaced with…
• Culling the Herd: increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack. (Sounds good! The question is, if you’re a beastmaster with Lick Your Wounds / Heart of the Phoenix, will it work out better to put the newly freed up points here or into Shark Attack?)
• Cower: Redesigned. No longer affects threat (what?!). Now reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45 second cooldown. While cowering, pet speed is reduced by 40%. (Uh, okay. I could see this causing aggro problems in PUGs with new tanks. My Main Battle Tank will be unaffected, however. I guess we won’t have cower on autocast any more in groups, it’ll be something we trigger manually when necessary.)
• Improved Cower: Redesigned, two ranks. Now reduces movement penalty on cower by 50% / 100%. (Hmm. I’ll keep my points in Bloodthirsty)
• Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equalling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes. (Oh, cool! Utility!)
• Venom Web Spray and Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards. (Okay!)
• Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite. (This would appear to be a decent upgrade for Cunning pets. With that said, I’m not sure what the 5-man / raid boss dodge rate is compared to pet crit rate. Further investigation needed.)

Interesting. Pet survivability versus bosses should be improved – although there is now a third pet-survivability button that must be triggered by the player, to go along side Lick Your Wounds and Mend Pet. Pet survivability in PvP however is less certain (except for 6 out of every 45 seconds), with zero AoE avoidance but now 100% of the hunter’s resilience.

WTB longer, improved pet command bar!

EDIT: A quick quote from Mania’s always-insightful commentary: Egad.

This is not Durkon after finally completing Brewmaster. Certainly not.

…Tha’s tha’ worrst thing I’ve ever tasted!

(I am in fact working on posts with actual content, including part two of faction relations, a beastmastery-themed story and the first post of the Hunter-Adventurer’s Field Manual. Yeah, this work thing they make me do for money, too… bear with me!)

(UPDATE! The Character Page now has pictures!)

The much-touted cross-server Looking for Group tool is due to arrive with Icecrown citadel in 3.3. The idea is that the new battlegroup-wide instance servers will not only solve the ‘Additional Instances’ issue but enable players from multiple different servers to all appear in the same instanced dungeon and fight together.

This is good because:

1. It will be easier to find groups as the pool to draw on will be considerably larger.
2. If you are only on late at night or at times which are not ideal on your server you may be able to find players on other servers whose schedules match with yours.
3. Basically, it will be easier to find groups.
4. Have I mentioned that groups will be easier to find?
5. There is no five.

I’ve been considering the changes that this is likely to cause for us as players. Now we don’t yet know exactly how it’ll all work, and some of the problems I foresee with the system are speculative; I don’t yet know if Blizzard have solutions or if the system even works in the way I expect it to. Take these potential issues then with a grain of salt:

1. Will the cross-server component of the new battle.net friends list be implemented in 3.3 or is that intended for Cataclysm? If we meet someone good, will we be able to invite them to a group in the future without involving the LFG tool? If we encounter an idiot, will we be able to keep track of and avoid working with him again?
2. Recruiting new guild members from PUGs will be harder now, as at least some party members are likely to be on a completely different server!
3. Ninjas and those susceptible to loot-drama tend to get a reputation on a server. If you’re pulling people from other servers, there’ll be no way of knowing what their reputation is like. Blizzard’s attitude towards loot ‘theft’, either from guild banks or in groups has always been that it’s an issue to be managed by players. The community is essentially self policing, refusing to use players who have a bad reputation. How will we punish those responsible for screwing us over if they can simply hang around in LFG and wait for someone on another server to grab them?

The community is moving closer together and the new battle.net communications system will go a long way towards dropping both server and faction barriers (in that we’ll be able to chat with friends on either side on any server). I’m looking forward to these improvements, but I do have a few concerns about how it’ll all work in practice.

Also, I should probably stop writing speculative stuff months and months before it’s even relevant and while there’s limited information on how stuff works! I promise some kind of hunter-guide or actually current post soon!

Forgive me as I veer off from YBS’s normal subject matter for a moment.

I’ve not really been around much in the last few days, hence the lack of posts here. I’ve been catching myself up with the last week or so’s news and my attention is drawn to this unfortunate announcement (courtesy of most excellent gaming blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun).

While the original Beyond Good and Evil had its share of frustrating moments and missed opportunities – I think that there are not many games that do not – it was still a beautifully different game. That quirky sci-fi world, the photography aspect (“shoot-em-up” as in “through a lens”), the characters. It was very simple, very easy to grasp with no complicated controls or crazy stats to manage (although the last boss fight was unreasonably difficult. It must’ve taken me a couple of dozen consecutive attempts followed by crashing during the final cutscene. Grr), but it made a far greater impression on me than a dispassionate analysis of its parts would suggest.

When it was announced leaked a  trailer was released that was clearly teasing at a BG&E 2 appeared on the internet there was much cautious rejoicing. It seemed from “sources” within Ubisoft that development was going ahead, the project was all but officially announced. For Ubisoft to commission a sequel to a game that wasn’t really a commercial success was daring for a mainstream publisher, but all indications were that it’d happened. The original game has achieved quite a cult following on the interwebs, and some careful marketing could probably launch a second game into quite a respectable position.

Regrettably, Ubisoft may not concur with my analysis here. They didn’t even ask me! How inconsiderate… Regardless, there are some indications that the game has been put “on hold” indefinitely, which is often just shy of – or even a euphemism for – cancellation. The French team have said as recently as August that development continues but Colin Solal Cardo of Gamesyde claims to have confirmation of the game’s halted status.

All this for a game which so far as I am aware still is not officially confirmed. I am not terribly optimistic about ever seeing BG&E2 at this stage, sadly. It just seems too likely to me that someone high up in the publisher has squashed the project because he’s only interested in MMOs and AAA shooters.

On the bright side, at least there’s no indication that they’re converting it into an MMO (as if the market’s not saturated already)…

PART ONE: The Alliance

… From the perspective of Durkon Kell.

I have a pretty clear idea about what I think of each race and faction, but my opinions are drawn from a privileged position as the player. One thing I really don’t get is why there’s such animosity between Alliance and Horde players – Oh, I suppose there are lots of reasons for Alliance and Horde characters to hate each other, but at the end of the day, players on the opposite side are still playing almost exactly the same game.

Naturally, Durkon doesn’t see it that way. If he were to describe his thoughts on those he shares Azeroth with, his perspective would be limited by what he can reasonably perceive and his experiences of individual members of those factions.

I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up the following. Dwarvish is somewhat different to Common, and Durkon tends to transliterate his accent if he’s not concentrating. (The next bit is, of course, in character)

Dwarves and Ironforge
Stout, honourable and with a keen sense of what’s good and important in life. Duty. Good food and good brew. Our tradition of delving deep into the ground has provided us with great mineral wealth and our exceptional arms and armour craftmanship has brought military strength. While the magnificence of cities like Stormwind and Dalaran cannot be understated, Ironforge is something that these other places are not: Home. Nowhere in Azeroth or beyond do I feel safer.

The Dwarvern people are not without their problems, however. King Magni Bonzebeard has accomplished much that is worthy of song, but of late he has allowed the grief of his daughter’s desertion to consume him. He does little but follow in the path of Stormwind, now, particularly since Varian Wrynn’s return. I am also concerned that certain priests of the Holy Light seem to wish to dissuade worship of the Titans which has the potential to create schism. We cannot afford this when we are threatened on all sides.

Humans and Stormwind
The problem with Humans is that they are short lived. And ambitious. I will not question the heroism and dedication possessed by many of them, but their drive to accomplish something or make their mark on the world can sometimes have disastrous consequences. They tend to think in the short term. King Varian’s current offensive against the Horde is such an example; it is a war we cannot afford to divert our attentions to while Arthas and the Scourge still threaten to reduce all to ruin. Arthas, of course, is another example of human ambition and arrogance. If they do not rein in their rash tenancies, I am certain it will be a Human that will be responsible for the final doom of this world.

With that said, their boundless energy and drive has led them to accomplish much, and they are counted among many of the Alliance’s greatest heroes. Such men as Uther Lightbringer have been powerful forces for good and have changed the course of history. I will never forget, though, that Uther was slain by Arthas and he too has changed the course of history.

Stormwind is a magnificent city, seen by many as the Capitol of the Alliance. It stands representing all that Humans have accomplished, and what a monument. I like Stormwind, although I tend to find it a little crowded. Despite my misgivings, I find I like the people too (on a personal level) although with the exception of some of their paladins I don’t really trust them not to… go off and destroy the world or something.

Lord Fordragon was one of the most inspirational men I have had the fortune of encountering and I lament his passing. It seems that King Varian blames the entire horde for his demise; someone should tell him that Orcs and Tauren perished fighting alongside Men and Dwarves in that battle.

The Kaldorei (Night Elves) and Darnassus
It wasn’t long after setting out from Dun Morogh that I found myself on Tel’drassil in the company of the Night Elves. I stayed out there for many months, such was my love for the people and their new world tree. How do I describe the kaldorei? Peaceful, but accomplished warriors. Writers, poets, tenders of nature, blessed of Elune. Thoughtful, cautious, but not indecisive. I don’t think I can adequately describe them. I adventured here for a time, helping out where I could. I met My Lady Tyrande Whisperwind more than once and during our last meeting she granted me a rare honour in exchange for my service: The right to train with and eventually take into my keeping a Darnassian Sabre. So it was that I gained my first steed, Sithala the Snowsabre.

Darnassus is a wondrous place. The kaldorei know little of industry compared to the Dwarves or even Humankind. Their entire city – every settlement, in fact – appears crafted primarily through their command of natural magic; that granted to the druids by my lady Ysera, Aspect of the Green Flight and the power that the elves seem to naturally possess. Where something must be crafted by hand, it is done so with exquisite care and detail.

I consider my home to be Ironforge, but I also consider it to be Darnassus. I would not like to be asked to choose between the two.

The Gnomes, exiles of Gnomeregan
I have great respect for the Gnomes. I am an engineer by trade and preferring not to blow myself to tiny pieces every time a minor malfunction occurs I follow the path of Gnomish engineering. I have trained under some of the greatest master engineers of our time.

If we consider merely their engineers, the Gnomes have had a profound effect on the Alliance. Dwarvern engineering is by no means terrible, but it is simple and practical. We would never have thought of building flying machines, a tram to link two cities and certainly not some of the Gnomes’ more inventive devices. There are many mages, warriors, even warlocks who have contributed greatly to our offensive. Accursed warlocks. I have to say, I find the notion of Gnome warriors mildly absurd too. I try not to hold it against them, they seem to do a good job all things considered.

It’s a pity that their city has fallen into its current state. Although with that said… I can imagine even before the disaster that the place was pretty dangerous, particularly for non-engineers. Still, I’m happy that we were able to help them out even though it’s pretty crowded in that mountain now.

Draenei of the Exodar
I have’te say… I have a bit of a thing for those Draenei lasses. [Nervous laughter. Probably blushing under the beard]

But seriously… We think we’ve had a hard time of it, the Draenei have had their entire world shattered and cast into the twisting nether, a pretty fair portion of their people broken and changed and their new home sabotaged and smashed to pieces on some isolated islands on an unfamiliar world. A world filled with enemies and in a near-constant state of war! Yet the Draenei are fiercely loyal to their friends and utterly dedicated to the downfall of their enemies. What surprises me most, I think, is that despite all they have been through they are able to retain their quirky sense of humour and warmness towards those who have made themselves their allies.

They are most spiritual, possessing to an individual a reverence for the Holy Light and the Naaru to challenge even that of the Argent Crusade. They are also the most responsible users of arcane magic that I have encountered – they use it in their day-to-day lives like dwarves might use physical mechanisms. I cannot imagine a Draenei mage falling to the corruption that Dwarven, Human and Gnomish mages must guard themselves against and that the Kaldorei fear so much.

The Exodar is, I suppose, as a giant inhabited shipwreck. But it is the strangest, strangest city or ship that I have ever seen or am likely to see. I find the entire structure deeply confusing. It has a unique crystalline beauty all of its own however and I feel certain that the Draenei will rebuild their ruined ship into a grand city in their own time.

Soonish: The Horde races!

So, apologies for the temporary discontinuation of posts here. There are a couple of reasons; I’ve been madly busy these last two weeks, and I’ve not been playing WoW much. This is partly because of the aforementioned busy-ness and partly because I’ve been doing other stuff when I have had some free time. There’s not much new material being generated for a wow-centric blog under those circumstances

I plan to post a BM hunter-guide or two up within the next week, and maybe even a post or two about guilds soon (depending on what I actually experience!). I also have some Beastmasterly fictional-type writings in the works, so look out for that if you’re into such things…

In totally tangential, unrelated, almost totally irrelevant news, I picked up the ultra-extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy from Amazon last week. Twelve disc set and two of the movies now run to over four hours! It’s like the director’s cut, but they didn’t want to call it that because it implies that the theatrical release was not the best cut it could be. It adds a LOT of really quite relevant stuff back in that shouldn’t ideally have been cut in the first place – I can see why it was, people don’t want to sit in cinemas for over four hours and the films still broadly make sense without these extra scenes. It is, however, really nice to have them in as it really adds to the background of certain characters. Faramir’s actions – attempting to bring the Ring back to Gondor (“A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to prove his worth”) are a lot more believable, make a lot more sense with the restoration of an important scene explaining his relationship with his brother and father.

An absurd twelve-disc ultra-extended trilogy of films (which must run to over ten hours without any of the special features factored in) sounds expensive. I paid a whopping £18 for it. EIGHTEEN. I’ve paid more for single DVDs, let alone special edition box sets. If you enjoyed the films originally or if you’re a fan of the books and would enjoy seeing several critical scenes restored, I’d highly recommend it. Hie thee to the Internet Store!

/tangent

Bound to the service of the red dragon aspect Alexstrasza the Lifebinder, we are her agents in the world of mortals. Where she cannot interfere, we go. Where the Horde and Alliance fear to tread, she empowers and protects us. For the Dragonqueen!

Yeah, we did it. We formed our own guild, foolhardy lot that we are. Led by a triumvirate – a council of three – our primary aim is building a community, with secondary ambitions of fielding a ten-man raiding team.

Getting ten signatures to form up was easy, requiring merely a small application of gold, a free bag and many, many polite enquiries. The real trick now is bringing good, long-term members aboard and our exact recruiting strategy is uncertain. Assuming we manage to find a good group of high level players reasonably soon, it may still be possible to knock out the Lich King before the cataclysm.

This is unlikely to be an easy achievement by any stretch of the imagination as it relies on us finding 80s who are willing to join a guild with no current progression! Hopefully we can sell the idea of a stable community to people who are disinterested in the purely achievement-driven raiders. Gear after all is merely a means to an end, a way to access higher levels of content. What matters is that you have a level of activity that suits you, things are organised reasonably efficiently and you’re with people you like and group well with. I’m certain there are people out there who can’t pull off the hardcore 5 – 7 days a week of raiding (we all work random hours), but who don’t want just a completely casual guild. Can we find them? Are they even ON Blade’s Edge-EU?

Tune in next <arbitrary time period> to find out (maybe)!

Cheeeeeeeese!

Taking a short break from my Guild Dilemma, I decided to fire up my druid and see if I could get into deadmines. For the first time, I ticked every single box on the LFG tool: Tank, Damage, Healer, Leader. It felt pretty good, actually! A short while later, a healer appeared, three DPS were already in the list, the group was assembled. Disregarding some tentative forays into pet-tanking, this was my first time. First time through any instance with this character, and certainly my first go as a bear tank (or ANY type of tank!). I remembered the fights pretty well, and I am very familiar with the layout of the place. Everything seemed to be in place.

Tanking is fun! It’s a lot different to hunting, though. For one, you have to have better situational awareness even than a Beastmaster – some add runs off and squashes the healer, that’s pretty much the end. This is tricky, considering that you’re not standing a long way away shooting into the enemy’s maw, but standing right next to them – it has to be said that the bear druid’s larger than expected posterior also interferes with seeing what the hell you’re doing. Still, I had an excellent group and we blasted our way through to Van Cleef smartly. We were a little rough around the edges – the hunter was only level 20 and not yet fully in control of her rifle or pet, and various party members would occasionally stray too close to a group of enemies and pull them. Once, we managed to pull not only a boss but no less than 6 or so random adds at the same time. Hilarity ensued…

Nevertheless, I found the Bear Druid’s limited selection of tools to be more than adequate for acquiring (re-acquiring sometimes) and then hanging onto aggro. I had great fun in that place and I’d run with any of my party members again. I suppose that just goes to show that pick up groups sometimes just work!

This evening, I went into Stockades. Semseye hauled his paladin in as healer, and we scrounged up a couple of DPSers, a mage and a hunter. We were under compliment – only four party members – but Sems’ pally was well over level, so it worked out alright.

Stockades… didn’t work so well. It was, however, an excellent learning experience for a new tank.

We dropped into the instance, and the mage immediately legged it down the stairs and blasted the enemies at the bottom, pulling three of them. He was level 28, I was 24, so pulling them off him was a real pain in the backside. The hunter ran up to one of the enemies, pet on passive, and started hacking at him in melee range. I sigh, pull my face out of my hands and wade in, desperately fighting to get the prisoners to hit me instead.

We fought on, me asking the mage if he wouldn’t mind standing behind the bear designated to try and protect him, please. And perhaps he’d consider not pulling huge groups of enemies, forcing me to pry their attention off of him. And really, please do not just attack bosses surrounded by adds when the healer’s drinking and the hunter’s AFK, I can only growl once every 8 seconds, Kay? The mage spent most of his time ignoring my advice, whilst simultaneously advising the hunter rather forcefully that he should use his rifle as opposed to hitting things with axes. The pally was too busy to talk, and spent most of his time desperately healing the mage who had pulled yet another group of ten thousand angry prisoners while I desperately growled, swiped and Fairie Fired them off of him. Stand behind me, damn you!

The hunter ran back through the instance portal on our way to the last boss and left the group without a word, the mage continued to ignore what I had to say and pulled random things, and I somehow managed to get through it all without anyone under my protection dying. It wasn’t nearly as fun as the deadmines group but on balance I still enjoyed it, and I think I learned more than I did in deadmines.

I still want to try out healing with my druid. Since I’m not specced into Restoration, I may have to take another trip through deadmines to test that out. One thing’s for certain, though, my Druid’s not likely to be a primary DPSer!