Found In the Woods

Well, I have to say, I am excited. I have had very mixed expectations for the latest x-pack, many of them revolving around the fact that I really didn’t meet all the goals I had for Burning Crusade. I never got to see the inside of Black Temple, only downed one boss in TK, and got Rage Winterchill to 1% one night in Hyjal. Our alliances did manage to get 5/6 in SSC (with our first look at Vashj last Monday night! – got her to about 40% but the raid was more interested in seeing the Scourge Invasion event in Stormwind than avoiding the Elementals & Elites). I never really got to raid the way I wanted to, mainly due to my own fear of stepping out and getting into a more active raiding guild, but moreso wanting to stay close to all of the great friends I’ve got in Regulators. I have more fun with those guys than I’ve ever had in the game.

So the goals can wait, hopefully our raid alliances will still do old stuff from time to time and we can go mess around in BT/MHJ and I’ll get to witness that stuff. (Same thing with old-world, pre-BC instances, but that’s another story) So… WRATH!

This game is truly a revolution in Warcraft. The game was basically reinvented from patch 2.4.x to 3.0.2. We got revamps of nearly everything. Even bread and butter stats, techniques and methods (habits?) were totally reworked and changed. Streamlined, some may say. It all shows a tremendous effort by Blizzard and the community (which it seems to react to very well) to get it right. And right they got it. Departing SW and arriving in Borean Tundra, the epic feel of struggle against losing odds, against a tide of darkness, being on the front lines of battle, is very real. The atmosphere is so well crafted, textures, characters, quests, music and storylines are all just wonderful. It’s challenging to head out to do quests that no one has done (except us lucky beta testers… even though I didn’t play beta as much as I wish I had), not knowing which way to go, looking up loc’s on Wowhead.com and finding that the pages are blank… can be frustrating. BUT, nowhere near as frustrating as trying to kill a miniboss mob while about 10 other people are trying to do the same thing! (spamming AoE, instant casts, hostile pet… lag wins in the end)

I chose to bring Hossenfeffer, my hunter, over to BorTun first. (Dob went to Howling Fjord and Healtacular to BorTun too) Mainly because he’s a Miner and I wanna get a bit of a start to the Blacksmith process for Dob. Quests go extremely fast at first, they are well grouped up at Valiance Keep and at a nearby mine. The D.E.H.T.A. quests are also grouped up nicely and are a blast. I didn’t expect that one, and it’s a pretty amusing storyline; Nessingwary will get his! My hunter has a gorilladin, Panzerwagen, who I am most impressed with. The AoE pet tanking thing is just a wonder to watch. I’ve been following BigRedKitty’s Wrath posts pretty closely and I knew months ago the Gorilla was for me. So far, he’s an amazing tank and fits extremely well with a leveling toon. I’m able to group up tons of mobs and AoE them down so gathering quest items goes a lot faster.

So, yeah. I’m loving it. The place is HUGE. Northrend is ENORMOUS. Spent a day and a half playing and still only see a little bit of two starter zones. Barely! Got my hunter to 71 on Thursday about 5pm. First in my guild, so that was fun. We hit up Utgarde Keep last night but got pinned on the second boss. Tank needs a bit more gear and we should be good to go. UK is just the most georgeous instance I have seen in ages. It’s got a Nordic theme, and it’s done extremely well. You can just smell the place in there, heavy wood and metal, smoke and hay. Incredible. I’m like a kid in a candy store with this x-pack. There are new things to see and try around every corner. It’s still so new, people are spamming general chat constantly, looking for trainers and quest mobs. it’s very weird, being that I’ve never experienced an expansion launch like this before. I’m looking forward to progressing with my friends, to seeing new content, challenges and achievements. it’s going to be great.