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Well, the pre-WoD patch is dropping on the 14th, and Hallow's End is coming up on the 18th, so it's almost time to resub to WoW. I'm  hoping that the class changes will lean more toward the good than the bad. I hope they change their mind about the Druid travel form change. That one sounds pretty annoying. Then again, I haven't played my Druid much last couple of expansions anyway, so probably not my biggest concern.

 

So, kind of excited about the new models. Kind of wait and see on all the rest. I'm not sure WoD will be all that great of an expansion, so maybe they'll change my mind with the first tasted of it.

 

I think I may dual sub to CO and WoW for a bit, since I have some characters finished who may be able to complete the Blood Moon stuff this time around in CO, and I mostly plan to farm the Horseman's mount in WoW and not do much else.

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Servers are up!

 

Quick glance at my character select screen shows that my characters seem to have come through the plastic surgery (model updates) relatively unscathed. May not have to change too many faces.

 

Edit: Just checked my Gnome Rogue. She came through relatively unscathed! She had the face that everyone was making an uproar about, but the live model doesn't have the derpy smile on by default. Soooooo many face pixels!

 

Also, my NE girls no longer have Michael Jackson nose, which is nice. (One did acquire a weird smile, but she had kind of a weird smile to begin with, so that's fair.)

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Ok, final verdict on my existing characters: Only two face changes. Almost a third, because I wanted green eyes on my female dwarf, but I didn't like the eyebrows so changed it back.

 

A few things I noticed, playing with the character creator:

 

  • Humans have been whitewashed. The dark skin colors are gone.
  • Draenei females got hit the hardest. They all have weird lips. Someone described 'em as duck faced, and that's pretty apt.
  • Undead are lacking a non-glowing eye option.
  • Many, many of the eyebrows on female characters are canted up in the center, giving a surprised or worried expression.
  • While my grumpy-faced female gnome rogue survived with grump intact . . . ALL the female gnomes now look grumpy.
  • None of the troll female faces look very good IMO.
  • Some of the races (Troll and Tauren come to mind) have very few face options, as in five or so.
  • Human males are no longer hair-lipped!

 

I think the new models are a net positive, but there are going to be a lot of complaints on them, and they'll be justified. They could have done better. Blizz should have had the resources to do this right.

 

Now, I just have to relarn how to play every class in the game. At least I only have eight classes at higher levels. (Six 90s, an 84, and a 60 Rogue to be boosted when the expansion drops.) At a quick glance, it looks like some have changed a bit more than others.

 

Wowhead has a nice 6.0.2 survival guide that may be worth checking out:

 

http://www.wowhead.com/news=243674/patch-6-0-2-survival-guides-how-to-play-your-class-prelaunch-event-new-content-a

 

Edit: I should add that you can disable new character models in the System menu, under Advanced. It's a check box on the bottom of the right side column.

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After having played the new patch a little, I'll have to say that this is one of the least polished efforts Blizzard has ever put out for Wow. Aside from the new character models and animations looking rushed, there are a good number of bugs. For example, the new quest line for the pre-expac "event" was not giving quest rewards when it was initially released. (That's fixed for anyone starting them now, but those of us who logged on soon after the servers came up are still waiting for a fix.)

 

The stat squish has resulted in dungeons and lower level questing being nigh-unplayable. Level 1 Mana Wurms in the Blood Elf starter zone are one-shotting players. My level 10 goblin warrior in full heirlooms was two-shotted by a Naga caster. We're talking a 900 HP PC vs a 880+ HP frostbolt and 80+ HP frost nova combo. And that was after a re-balancing pass . . .

 

It's not all bad, and I'm sure that they'll get stuff sorted out, but they've really let their standard of releasing stuff only when it's ready slide.

 

Edit: The damage scaling for lowbies was hotfixed. I checked it yesterday and it was back to normal.

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First of all . . . third run of the season, and I got my Headless Horseman mount! :Does happy dance:

 

Second, a warning and tip for anyone who boosts a character to level 90 after the 6.0.2 patch:

 

I boosted my rogue to 90 so that I could have an extra character to do horseman runs. Much to my surprise, my abilities were almost entirely gone (left with only Ambush, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate, Deadly Poison and Stealth), I had the flying skills but couldn't fly, and my Talents and Glyphs tabs were missing. This was  intentional, but undocumented. Since they haven't put in a tutorial, they expected you to do the new Blasted Lands invasion quests and gain your abilities as you do the quest chain.

 

This is kind of annoying. But there is a work around if you don't want to do quests with less abilities than you had at level 60 when you boosted. (Which if you do at 60 or higher, you also boost two trade skills.) Go to your class trainer and reset your specialization. You'll immediately get all of your abilities.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Three things about the 6.0.3 patch that went out this week:

 

1. The huge Honor gains for doing non-random battlegrounds has been "fixed." Prior to yesterday's patch, AV was giving a really good honor gain for my characters, even when queuing for it specifically. It turns out that the system was awarding bonus honor for wins, even though it is only supposed to be for random battlgrounds. Blue post here.

 

2. The quest rewards for the new Blasted Lands quests are now available for purchase from a vendor in the Blasted Lands. Vendor is standing on a cart. They cost 10 silver. So, if you missed any items you could use, you can pick them up there.

 

3. Apparently, people were leveling from 86 to 90 very quickly in old Cata zones, because of the buff against lower level mobs meant they could complete quests fast, and said quests were giving good XP. The quest XP has been nerfed into the ground. I don't know if that's just for characters over a certain level or if it's across the board.

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One more thing I noticed, though related to WoD in general not just this week's patch. (I'm just slow): The old multisampling anti aliasing is gone. I'd heard from someone that WoW was being moved to a new engine, and this is a sign of that. We're now stuck with FXAA or CMAA. When I went to check my graphics settings last night, I noticed I had AA disabled. When I went to re-enable it, the options were now low (useless) FXAA, high FXAA or CMAA.

 

Here's a post from the WoW forums where someone explains the difference: What Happened to Multisample Anti-Aliasing?

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Gah! I'm trying to level my Orc DK up for the Double Agent achievement. Got to Borean Tundra and the quests with the watery-zombie-giant-viking guys, and found out that they removed the option for disabling full screen glow effects. Found a solution:

 

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/noglow

 

There's a console command to do it too, but it only seems to work when it feels like it, so had to go with the addon.

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Here's a pretty decent garrison guide I found (not like that's special, it's the first hit when you search for "garrison guide"):

 

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1599068-Comprehensive-guide-to-building-up-your-Garrison

 

Here's a great point I'd like to highlight for my fellow altaholics:

 

 

 

Q: How does an altoholic get most out of their garrison?
A: Level a bunch of alts to 92, then you will unlock mine and lvl 2 garrison. Build barracks, LM, 2 profession buildings. Make sure to fill all the LM work orders on all alts. Afterwords rush you main to 100. In main's garrison make trading post + barn, barracks + stables, salvage yard + 2 prof buildings. Next step is getting alts to 96 to unlock herb garden and salvage yard. Keep filling all possible work orders and spam missions. Final part is getting alts to 100. When you do an alts garrison needs to help you with the following getting all lvl 3 blueprints.

 

I think the idea here is that in order to unlock level 3 Garrisons, you have to have an achievement for a certain number of Work Orders completed, and by getting all the alts up to 92 fast, it speeds up the achievement, which is account wide.

 

Here's an infographic; http://blog.askmrrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Garrisons4.png

 

Garrisons seem pretty complex and interesting. At least on paper. Some hard choices in the Medium plots, too.

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Warlord of Draenor went live yesterday . . . and it is DEAD today! Well, there's emergency maintenance. Apparently, aside from the normal "we aren't buying new hardware to accommodate a short spike in players" thing we get every expansion, and aside from the stupidity of funneling everyone into a single zone for each faction (AQ event says "Hi" from 2006), there was also a massive DDoS attack that impacted everything. So, they're hard at work fixing it:

 

 

OK, I just like that video. But since the realms are down, I'll do brief recap of my yesterday.

 

I was going to stay up for the midnight start on Wednesday night, but got sleepy and went to bed around 10. Old age, I guess. Fortunately, I'd had a nap earlier in the day. (Old age again.) I woke up yesterday at about 20 to four. I went to the local gas station and grabbed some Diet Pepsi and a snack so I could take some ibuprofen, and logged in just after 4:00 am.

 

It turns out that not many players are on at 4 am. There were two who were still on from the night before who were at 97 already. No doubt dedicated players, but it seems like leveling is pretty fast even if you're just going pretty casually and following the quest lines.

 

The intro quest line was pure cheese. Here's how it goes (no spoilers) you talk to Khadgar and he sends you through the Black Portal, back into the alternate timeline. You are part of Khadgar's merry band of saviors as you progress through the Tanaan Jungle, where you meet all of the Warlords of Draenor, one after the next. This was a much more ham-fisted way of introducing the main lore adversaries than, say, Wrath of the Lich King, but I guess they had a whole bunch of them to get out of the way, so fair enough.

 

We also meet Yrel, who's sort of a newbish level 90 Draenei Paladin NPC. I'm guessing a big chunk of at least the Alliance storyline is going to follow her development into a full fledged badass. Not as badass as my own Paladin, but I've been playing longer than her. This is obvious, because she does things like lead charges on monsters, then just stand there staring while I kill it. The intro thingie is fairly short, and ends with your ragtag little band's arrival in Shadowmoon Valley (if Alliance, Frostfire Ridge for Horde).

 

Once in SMV, you immediately establish your Garrison by beating up ginormous ravens while directing lumberjacks to cut down trees. Because you're a big damned hero, and you can totally whup giant ravens while acting as a lumberjack foreman!

 

And that brings me to one cool thing about the expansion, and the Garrisons: You actually are sort of a big deal, finally.  Blizzard has cheesed off players time and again by making it very clear that we, the PCs, are not the heroes of this story. That's reserved for the lore characters. Well, at least we've been promoted to garrison commanders, and we now have some peons to order around!

 

So, on that peon ordering around thing: It's pretty fun, actually. As you do quests and other activities, you gain followers for your Garrison. You send them on missions of varying types with varying rewards, which take place while you go do other stuff. The mission completion times range from a half hour to ten hours (so far). Your followers level up with you, and can get better equipment, too. They have various abilities that trump various threats in each mission. On the surface, the actual act of sending your followers on missions looks like one of those social media games that's just a text-based randomizing thing with a timer and some graphics. And, huh, that's what it is. But it works.

 

Your followers also hang out at your garrison. The ghost of one of my follower's dead husband hangs out at my garrison. I caught him in the outhouse the last time I logged in before maintenance. Yeah, I have a pooping ghost at my garrison. SAVAGE!

 

Everything on Draenor is SAVAGE! The animals all have extra bone protrusions. They look like prehistoric versions of Outland animals. Except . . . this is only 35 years ago. That's some pretty speedy evolution.

 

Back to followers: They can also go out with you while you're questing, if they have the bodyguard trait and you have your barracks at level 2. I haven't done that yet, because I haven't unlocked whatever I need to unlock to upgrade my barracks yet. I don't think I'll get to that until a few more levels in. So, they can hang out, they go on missions (sort of like STO Boffs), and they can adventure with you. You can also assign any who have trade skills to help you with your profession plots. Pretty cool, all in all.

 

The buildings also offer various benefits, and the mine is awesome for my Blacksmithing/Engineering Pally. You can mine nodes in your garrison's mine without having the mining profession. (Likewise herb in the herb garden.) If you DO have a gathering profession, you get a higher yield. I think the nodes respawn daily. Not sure on that. Anyway, the links in the prior post are going to be more useful than me on garrison info; this is just my impressions, which are positive.

 

I was afraid that garrisons would be annoying, like the Tillers farm in MoP. The quests to unlock the farm were so irritating to me that I just didn't bother with them. (YMMV, I know folks that love their farms.) The Garrisons, while having lots of stuff to figure out, aren't onerous at all. They're pretty well integrated into the leveling experience, and the interactions with the crafting system are cool and useful.

 

The leveling seems pretty fast. I usually expect to make a level every day or every other day with the amount of time I put in, and while trying to follow the quest lines to get Loremaster for each zone. I only played a moderate amount yesterday, some in the morning and a tiny bit in the afternoon, and I got my Paladin to 92 with about 20% in. AND I got my Druid nearly to 91. Or maybe she's 91. Not sure. The Paladin hasn't even done a third of the zone content for the starter zone, as far as I can tell. So, leveling is pretty fast.

 

I'd planned to only level up like four alts at the beginning of the expansion, then just focus on my Paladin. Considering the leveling speed, and the free epic hats for everyone who completes the LFR Molten Core event for the anniversary, I'll probably level up all 9 of my 90s. Heck, I may finish off my abandoned 82 pally on another server, too. I've got the Big Love Rocket to farm come February, after all.

 

Next post, I'll lay out my plans for my Garrisons. Not that anybody cares, but at least I can look back at it if I forget what I was planning later.

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Yep! Let's hope it's for load balancing purposes, and adding some capacity to handling the rush. They really should have planned this better, IMO. Still, it's something that's fixable, or should be.

 

Meanwhile, my pally fell through the map in her garrison and is currently a corpse sinking in a bottomless sea of solid pink. Something poetic in that, I suppose, but I hope they dredge her out of there tomorrow/today. =)

 

The garrison servers getting hammered last night was the first real problem I had, aside from a shortish login queue the day before in the afternoon. I'm on Earthen Ring, which is medium population, even with the rush, and I tend play at weird hours. I feel bad for the guys on the really high pop realms.

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