World of Warcraft

[The Dreaming]

Burning crusade is such a MASSIVE improvement over Classic in terms of end-game gameplay I am all for the level cap increase. It gives the game a clean slate for blizzard to improve upon. The Itemization alone is LEAGUES beyond classic, and the new skills and talents are pretty awesome. What I would like to see are heroic versions of some of the classic dungeons (like Strat [still maybe my favorite dungeon], UBRS, and maybe even MC) rebalanced and re-itemized. It does seem silly to render a massive part of the game essentially pointless. Then again, we don't want to spread the players out too much. If you add too much content, it's going to be hard to find groups for specific things. (Although daily dungeons have done a LOT to improve this) It is cool that they are tweaking Naxx for WOTLK. Not many people ever saw the place. (I think only like 3 guilds had killed Kel'Thuzad when BC came out)

[Damelon]

Damn, Syl and I got killed in front of the mailbox in Stormwind City. Guild called Silent Assassins left some kind of bomb there. Took out about 10.

[I'm Murrin]

My game has arrived, and I'm activated. I'm gonig to try to set it up to pay through PayPal, so I probably won't need to get those prepaid game cards. Just need to reinstall the game from the US disc and add Burning Crusade, then I'll be back online.

[magickmaker17]

sounds good, glad to have you back with us! I would be on playing right now, but this is when they do their weekly maintenance, so I'm SOL...

[Nav]

Damn, Syl and I got killed in front of the mailbox in Stormwind City. Guild called Silent Assassins left some kind of bomb there. Took out about 10.

I thought they'd fixed all of those exploits. The funniest one I ever saw was when a warlock who had dismissed his imp when it had been turned into 'the bomb' during the Baron Geddon fight in Molten Core. The countdown froze until he summoned it again in the Ironforge Auction house, killing absolutely everyone in there!

The Corrupted Blood plague was fun too, check out this video to see it in action.

(it's just a shame they've made rogues suck in PvP now Mad )

I'm going to have to retract this statement in its entirety. It seems that rogue talent builds moved on somewhat while I was taking my break. Shadowstep ftw!

[I'm Murrin]

The Corrupted Blood plague was fun too, check out this video to see it in action.

Heh. I read about that the other day--the plague was carried out of the instance by hunters' pets, right? This sort of stuff happening must give the devs some great ideas for deliberate game-wide events.

[I'm Murrin]

Does it always take them so long to fix the servers after the weekly patching is supposedly complete, then?

[magickmaker17]

not usually, no...It's usually only about half that time, I think...

I think it might be because of the new big patch, they had more things to fix, bugs to work out, that kind of thing.

[Nav]

I think they're working on rolling restarts for the regular maintenance periods, so they don't last until 11am like they can currently. The problem with not bringing them all up together is that people will flood onto whatever realms that are up, which can create serious traffic problems for those realms.

I remember Runetotem being taken down for 24 hours to move the server onto new hardware, my guild migrated to the Aerie Peak server and over a hundred of us started new undead characters and made a guild. We totally flooded the Forsaken starter area and the effect on server performance couldn't have been good.

[I'm Murrin]

Did some exploring today--ran from Loch Modan, through Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, and Hillsbrad Foothills to Aerie Peak, and picked up the griffon posts on the way. After that hopped over for a first ever visit to a Burning Crusade location, The Exodar--and found it to be one of the most irritating places I've seen in this game. The minimap for the area is unreadable, the colours and lights are nauseating, and I could barely find my way around.
While there, spent all my money at the Paladin Trainer, and now I'm trying to get some more silver so I can afford the last spell that I need to learn. Hopefully some of my auctions will bring in cash; I've had a few bids on individual items, but nothing's looking like it'll go over the starting price.

[lucimay]

excuse me...that's my HOME you're calling nauseating there, SHORTY.

[I'm Murrin]

I'm a little puzzled by some of what I see on the auction house. A lot of the more common items are up at high prices that look like they have no bids on them. I waslooking at Silver Bars, something that sells for 1s to vendors--in the auction house, individual bars have prices of over 50s, and buyouts of over 1g. I myself am of the opinion that as long as I can get more for it then I'd get at the vendor, I'm happy, so I'm trying a little experiment: I've placed one silver bar on the auction house with a starting price of 1s50c, and no buyout. I want to see if what I saw is a high demand item that really sells for that much, or just a bunch of overpriced stock with no demand.

[The Dreaming]

Did some exploring today--ran from Loch Modan, through Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, and Hillsbrad Foothills to Aerie Peak, and picked up the griffon posts on the way. After that hopped over for a first ever visit to a Burning Crusade location, The Exodar--and found it to be one of the most irritating places I've seen in this game. The minimap for the area is unreadable, the colours and lights are nauseating, and I could barely find my way around.
While there, spent all my money at the Paladin Trainer, and now I'm trying to get some more silver so I can afford the last spell that I need to learn. Hopefully some of my auctions will bring in cash; I've had a few bids on individual items, but nothing's looking like it'll go over the starting price.

Agreed, Exodar is probably the worst designed city in the game. (Especially when compared with the awesomeness that is Silvermoon). The AH is isolated from the bank (and a mailbox) the Inn, and every trainer. It takes forever to get to the Flight master and back, everything is sprawled out with a whole ton of empty space, spiraling ramps etc. It makes Thunder Bluff look like a masterful example of City Planning.

I just wish every city was laid out as efficiently as Undercity and Ironforge. (IF wins for it's highly central location) In SW you have to navigate the damn canals, Org is just a chaotic mess, Darnassus is annoyingly isolated... (and not even the Kali FP hub.)

Most trade skill items sell at pretty inflated prices. A lot of High level chars change their tradeskill at the endgame, or want to power level an alts skill. You will also notice that items especially good for a certain BG bracket (around levels 19 and 29) sell very high too. Then, a lot of things are *very* cheap on the AH, like low level bags.

[I'm Murrin]

Yeah, Ironforge is definately the most conveniently laid out city I've seen so far. Nowhere else seems to have the forge, trainers, griffin, bank, and auction house so close together. (Definately sick of crossing half of Stormwind to reach the forge... It's gotten to the point where I'll fly to Ironforge instead for the convenience.)

[Damelon]

Yesterday, I made my first run to Lakeshire. I wound up doing the messenger runs back and forth between there, Sentinel Hill and Stormwind.

Ironforge is better laid out. Stormwind is more of a pain, though, the alchemist is fairly close to the inn in there.

[I'm Murrin]

Anyone who wears Mail armour want a Rough Bronze Cuirass (168 armour, requires level 18 )? It's not selling by auction, thought I'd ask if anyone here wants it.

[Nav]

I've got to be honest, I've actually hearthstoned from the forge in Stormwind back to the inn on several occasions! I've always found Undercity to be a difficult place to get around though, it can be hard to figure out how to move from one ring to another, and the wards have multiple levels so the minimap isn't much use. Shattrath City is the easiest to navigate I think, but then it's all easy when you're riding a griffon.

Patch 2.4.1 broke my internets yesterday. It seems to be some bug on Blizzard's end and not mine as far as I can tell. I hope it works today as I'm making about 150g from daily quests alone, I'm now approaching 4000g in my quest for a nether drake!

[Damelon]

Here's how I think I bit the dust the other day in front of the mailbox in Stormwind.

[[Syl]]

'The Watch' guild is now official.

[The Dreaming]

UC is actually has the most efficient layout once you figure it out. You just need to get a bit of a feel for it.