While I think this was definitely Blizzard’s best BlizzCon yet, it wasn’t my best BlizzCon. Why? Not enough WoW! 😥 One of the highlights for me was actually the World of Warcraft: Looking for Group documentary they premiered yesterday. It was great! I highly recommend watching that if you haven’t yet.
The WoW panels themselves were simply disappointing. The “classes and items” panel was a rehash of the same information they gave us at the last BlizzCon. It was almost surreal watching them talk about stuff that has been on the live game servers for nearly a month. Yes, Blizzard, we know that hit and expertise have been removed. I’m pretty sure everyone watching did too since they are big enough of a fan to actually pay to watch it. 😉 The cinematics panel was interesting.
The Q&A panels are another topic entirely, but I won’t complain too much. All I’ll say it PLEASE, for the love of Elune, vet the questions next time! That way we won’t have 3 questions about eyebrows, some guy complaining that his account gets locked, and other wastes of time. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the odd fun question like “can we get bacon in the game?” for a laugh here or there, but there was so much wasted potential. Why didn’t anyone ask about 6.1, 6.2, etc.? Gah! At least we had Red Shirt Guy. Maybe they can do half of them as Twitter questions next year? Those can at least be vetted.
I was really expecting one of the panels to be about Warlords content patches since they obviously can’t talk about the new expansion yet. I fully understand these guys have been ridiculously busy finishing the game and probably didn’t have time to make a presentation, but I still wish they would have talked about it at some point. Maybe some of the press interviews will yield some new WoW information, because the convention itself certainly didn’t. I think the only breaking piece of WoW news was the charity pet (which I’ll buy immediately — space goats FTW). More wasted potential was not having some kind of “garrison workshop” panel where they go through the buildings and explain how it all works. So many people are still confused about garrisons.
Checking in on my predictions
Looking back at my last post, let’s see how I did on the predictions.
- I was right about Eye of Azshara not being a thing, but was wrong about them giving us some kind of teaser on the new expansion.
- I was most definitely wrong about them talking about 6.1 and 6.2.
- I was wrong about the Warcraft 3 HD remake. I guess Blizzard doesn’t want my money!
- Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void awesome trailer. Check.
- New Hearthstone expansion. Check.
- Heroes of the Storm release date. Nope. They did say beta begins in January though.
- Entirely new game announced. I was half right. There’s a new game, but it’s not a low budget as something like Hearthstone. Overwatch looks like a pretty big project for Blizzard. I am looking forward to it.
- I was right about no Warcraft movie trailer, but that there will maybe be a teaser. There was a teaser, unfortunately it was only available for people at the con. I wish movie studios would move into the 21st century. So much hype denied by not putting this online. Just stupid. I was right about props being on display.
Not too bad I guess. 🙂 I wish we had some kind of WoW news though. Oh well. Who cares, right? Warlords is in a few days!
Plans for Warlords
I’m pretty much waiting out the clock now. I’ve completed most of what I wanted to complete, including getting 100 toys. The Darkmoon Faire helped me take care of that with 3 brand new toys to take me over the 100 threshold. I loooooove collecting toys. The Panflute of Pandaria (pictured above) is something I’ve been trying to get for literally 2 years. I can’t begin to even guess how many times I’ve killed that Moldo One-Eye bastard, but it’s been a lot. At least 50 times. I finally got it during the Wowhead BlizzCon party on thursday. I was watching the stream and camping stuff in the background. It’s a fun toy combined with the BlizzCon pet, Grommloc, because he periodically fears any critters you’ve gathered.
Since 6.0.2 I’ve also begun my hunt for Mimiron’s Head and Invincible now that ICC 25H and Yogg-0 is so easy to solo. Ashes of Al’ar took me 88 kills, so I hope these ones are a little more forgiving. With 3 hunters hitting them every week I’m hoping it’ll go a little quicker this time. One tip I’d give you for ICC is that you can set the raid to 10-player Normal and clear up to Lich King, then zone out of the raid and switch it to 25-player. Once back inside, switch to Heroic and you can kill 25H Lich King without having to do the rest like that. The rest of the bosses are perfectly doable on 25H, but this makes the farming considerably faster. To avoid the val’kyrs picking you up and dropping you off the edge, simply allow the Lich King to hit you every minute or so by dismissing and resummoning your pet. Doing so gives you a hidden buff that makes the val’kyrs unable to target you.
Warlords is launching at 12 a.m. PST (3 a.m. my time) on Thursday morning, so my plan is simple: On Wednesday, I will go to sleep much earlier than usual, probably around 7 or 8 p.m. and then set my alarm for 2:45 a.m. I’m used to occasionally having to wake up at 6 a.m. so pushing that to 3 a.m. shouldn’t throw off my sleep schedule too badly, and then I can go full-bore all night and into the next day. Snacks shall be acquired, ringers shall be turned off, and Draenor will be my home for a while.
If there’s any interest, I’m thinking about doing a garrisons post before launch, talking about the buildings I plan on choosing and why.
Last but not least, I want to point out how awesome it is that I got them to print “Bendak” in the back of the strategy guide (I wrote the hunter section):
I loved the little kid in the documentary who likes summoning demons, haha. I wish they would have told us some plans for 6.1 and maybe shown a hint of the new blood elf model. But there was lots of interesting stuff, I’m not really a FPS person but Overwatch has such interesting characters that I might try it out. (And I can be a healer!)
I was initially considering either Lumber Mill or Trading Post as my first Medium plot but I’m now realizing that I want to hit 100 in a day or two and the resource income will be nothing in that time so instead I will be going with the Inn. I also want to switch to the salvage yard as soon as I can get it in Arak and that way I’ll get follower items that much sooner. Without a resource income from a building I’ll be needing to do a metric ton of rare and treasure seeking to afford upgrades but it’s all gravy.
That’s a really cool cover image!
Apologies if I missed this but is the Healing boss in ICC skippable now? Or do you use an alternate skip (like engineering glider) do avoid it?
Yep, totally skippable.
I … I love you. (rushes off to ICC)
Well, then… Looks as though I know what I’ll be doing over the next day or so.
Would love to read about a Garrisons post from a Hunters perspective who has actually dabbled in Garrisons already on the Beta. I have been trying to plan out what I want to set up for my Garrison but the more I learn about the perks and the things you get from each building my plan keeps changing. I know I can get everything eventually through alts, and Garrison buildings aren’t permanent but still, would be nice to have my main actually know what he is doing than be the guinea pig for Garrisons for my legion of alts who will follow.
And another thing, am I the only one who feels it’s a tad backwards that our mains are the test babies for these our first time through? I don’t know, something about going into Draenor with no real knowledge or experience with Garrisons and fumbling around trying to pic the best buildings suited for my character, class, and play style just seems odd to me. My main is usually the one I am most anally fixated on being perfect with. Maybe it’s just my OCD kicking in and I just need to realize I might not get the best “setup” for my preferences the first time around. Just would stink to have wasted time and resources on a building right off the bat that really ended up serving little purpose for my awesome hunter.
Yogg-0, what difficulty are you ding it on?
Never got to trying to solo that.
25, only way to get the mount.
Bah, expressed myself wrong.
I ment if you can do it like ICC on 10 then swap to 25 for last boss.
No, I don’t think so.
Yeah you can, i did the whole thing on 10 up till gen vezaxx yesterday and then switched to 25 and did him and yogg
Thanks I’ll have to try that. Last time I did it was also Vezax killed on 10, so maybe that messed it up.
Edit: can confirm. Clear up to Vezax on 10. Zone out, switch to 25, zone back in, kill yogg.
Definitely interested in the garrison post. I hope you do it!
Yogg-0 on 25 is soloable? Killed LK on 25H a bunch of times but haven’t tried soloing yogg-0 on 25 yet
Scratch this, went and tried right after reading this post and found out it was easily soloable. Thanks!
Absolutely interested in a Garrison post. And… I just had Mimiron’s Head drop for me yesterday! I wish you luck with it as it is the coolest mount ever (until I can get a Sunhide Gronnling).
when they show stuff for movies at con’s only, it turns me off. i now have almost no interest in the warcraft movie. it pisses me off so much.
blizzcon was pretty much a giant meh for me. not interested in anything other than wow.
they seriously need to sort the questions at these q & a. i just want to crawl under a rock everytime i hear how stupid they are.
look forward to digging into those garrison guides. ive been avoiding it till now cause i didnt want to overload myself b4 we even started
First, garrisons – YES! Please post that! I have a road map of sorts, but I’m STILL stressing about how to plan it out! Any last minute help/advice is perfect!
Second – Blizzcon – I wanted more WoW news too, or really any Warcraft news, I mean, 10/20 years of it!! It would be the perfect time to release all the old WC games on our launcher! Give us a little under a week to bathe in the old lore and games of Warcraft we’ve had so many years, amping us up for the trek back to BEFORE the first game and see how it all went! Would have been great! I also agree about wasted questions… lots of panels had that, people trying to be “snarky” and “cute” with their comments and the way they say them, which ended up just being annoying and wasted time… twitter is great, but it’s hit or miss, at the con, they HAVE to answer your question somehow! Darn!
Ugg, the wow forums.
So Lore started a sticky taking pre-questions for the live Q&A with the devs this Wednesday. I saw it right as it was put up, and managed to post the second comment/question. I asked “What is planned for 6.1?” Something I thought everybody would be interested in.
But no, my question is getting downvoted. Questions getting upvotes have to do with weapon clipping, the way Forsaken shoulders look, Blood Elf model updates, QQ about arms warriors, why do monks punch weird, etc.
I mean, are they serious? Those are all worthless questions or softballs that will only get vague answers. Gah! Carebear casuals that only care about their transmog.