For roughly two and a half years, Naxxramas has been a special instance (or dungeon, as they call it nowadays) to me. Both in terms of fun, and also as a leftover relic from the pre-Burning Crusade days.

At the end of it all was Kel’thuzad, who more or less ended up as the embodiment of all the bad memories I have from raiding back then with my priest. All the wipes, and all the guild drama irrationally chained to one servant of the Lich King. Haunting me, even if it’s just a little, every few waking moments. Pulsing, the memories flash in my head. The good ones, the bad ones. And each time, filled with some sort of regret that I could go back to those days… and then the sudden regret if that actually did happen.

But that ended tonight. With his demise, ends a long journey that started… somewhere. Maybe it was in that classroom, or that night in Azeroth. Maybe it started that night in Molten Core, or the day I had enough and quit my first raiding guild. Who knows. It really doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve moved on since then, and with a full-clear of Naxxramas tonight, am definitely ready to put all that away now.

After all of that, I’m left speechless. Not much to say.

I’ve taken screenshots and all, but since I just recently installed WoW on my new computer about a week ago, I forgot to change the settings from a jpg to a tga. The picture quality when WoW captures to a jpg is really bad, even when you’re playing WoW with an actual graphics card.

I believed I have dinged 60 for the sixth time in WoW. Doesn’t really mean as much nowadays. This is the second character that I got to 60 after TBC. The first one after patch 2.3, in which Blizzard made it tremendously easier to level to 60.

Pre-2.3 it would take most of the level 50 areas to hit 60. Perhaps some parts of one of the upper-level areas would be left mostly untouched. However, my druid only did very few quests in a lot of the level 50+ areas. Barely touched Un’goro, Felwood, very little of Winterspring. Haven’t even been to Silithus. There’s still tons of quests in Azeroth to do, whereas all my previous 60’s, there aren’t very many quests to do in Azeroth anymore. It took about 157k worth of experience points to hit 60. To hit 61, it takes 494k points. That’s about a 314% increase in experience points.

Personally, I don’t really like Outland. Not to say Outland was poorly done by any means. Outland was partially a result of the concerns and complaints about 1-60 leveling pre-BC. A lot of those complaints came from lots of running around, quests were not enough, or too hard to find, among other things. Many of these were taken out, so the quests in general were numerous, and generally all centrally located. If they weren’t, then there would be a quest directing you towards that area. In addition, most of the quests that involve running from place to place, or ones that span 10 or 20 levels were kept at a minimum.

This was great, as it made leveling simpler. There were really no surprises in how quests were given out and such. I think this format made it easier for casual people to get into, which I think is a good thing. But a lot of the content in The Burning Crusade didn’t have that same sort of feel as a lot of the quests in Azeroth. There aren’t very many notable mini-plotlines in the TBC quests. Most of them have one of two over-arching themes. It was either something realted to the Burning Legion, or Illidan. I can’t think of many other quests that involved something else. Maybe something in Blade’s Edge Mountains, but that zone seems to be generally viewed unfavorably among players.

I’m sure my whole jaded outlook towards WoW had a factor to play into this as I explored TBC content, but I never really felt all that immersed in the environment in Outland as I did in Azeroth. It was either the Burning Legion this, or Illidan that. If it wasn’t either of that, it was some generic “collect food cause all the nasties are making it tough for me”, or “kill these random beasts and I give you moneyz and candyz.” Vanilla WoW had that too, but vanilla WoW also had other elements in those quests.

The “big” storylines I saw in pre-BC WoW generally were related to the end-game raids. The first one ties into Molten Core, with Ragnaros, the Dark Iron Dwarves. And Rangaros’s minions were also fighting a battle against the next one–the Black Dragonflight, which includes both the schemes of Nefarian and Onyxia. Those Onyxia attunement quests were pretty epic (on the Alliance side, at least). There were other little plots as well. This includes the story around Hakkar, of which has some ties in two 5-man instances, and a 20-man raid instance, and other places all over the world.

There were also great content outside of raids. The whole matter with the Defias, which got partially revived with Dustwallow Marsh’s revamp. And Duskwood is just full of juicy lore, the dark riders, the Embalmer. Granted, most of this is Alliance biased, as I primarily play them. I should go back one day and re-explore pre-BC content as a Horde character.

In addition, while the questing in the Burning Crusade was more centralized and routine, which helped make the leveling process easier, it didn’t allow for as much autonomy. Sure, Outland is a smaller zone, but basically it felt like, at times, that I had a hand to point in the direction where I should go next to level. Of course I had a choice to either quest in Blade’s Edge Mountains or Nagrand at level 66 or whatever, but the choices just seem so limiting and it’s not just the fact that Outland is smaller. There just didn’t seem to be a lot of encouragement for exploration in Outland. You won’t find an abandoned raft in the swamps of Zangramarsh for example. Perhaps this is a result of people trying to snoop around restricted areas, and Blizzard wanted to put an end to that. I find that disappointing, and contrary to one of the things that makes RPG’s fun. If I didn’t want to explore, I’d go play Tetris.

But the point I’m trying to get at is that all these little things, the quests, the exploration, made Azeroth seem alive; especially in comparison to Outland, which is… a floating chunk of land in outer space, a piece of land sitting in the middle of nowhere. It’s like a side-story almost. It’s interesting how Outland is just a floating piece of land sums up how I feel about the place. Don’t take me wrong, there were many parts of Outland that were well done, some of the environments are great. What was lacking was the content, it just didn’t feel as alive as Azeroth did for me.

Hey, it’s me! Whoever I might be. For the first time in about a year, Blizzard has finally made a new server. I’m not the kind of person who prays fervently everyday for a new server, but when you’ve quietly slipped into a WoW hiatus and you’re waiting for Brawl to be released… you may as well check out the new server. After all, it’s been such a long time since a completely new server has been available (x-fer only servers do not count).

I’ll probably officially try rerolling this weekend, if it isn’t too crowded. I will miss my priest whom I’ve played over 200 days on (of which over 100 days of that were played at level 60). Six months down the road, the cost to move her to this new server probably won’t be worth it at all unless if the prices were to be lowered.

So I’ve rolled alliance and horde characters on both sides (yay for PvE!). A quick (and inaccurate, according to Blizzard) census count totaled about 670 for Alliance, and about 575 for Horde. Not too bad odds. Humans and night elves make up the majority of the Alliance. Druids are the most popular class for the Night Elves (go figure…). Blood elves by far are the most popular according to that count for the Horde. Was thinking about rolling a druid, guess that won’t be happening for now. Warrior would be a second choice, but they are expensive to have… we’ll see what happens I suppose.

But I would like to say though, that this server is great. The Alliance here already have started to form raids for Karazhan, Black Temple, Sunwell and even the Emerald Dream. Yes, Cairne (the new server), is just that good. Certainly, be sure to keep your eyes on these elite raiders. But if hardcore raiding isn’t your game, then the horde (in the Blood Elf area at least) were a little more casual, discussing the finer things in life including political mudslinging, and urination. Regardless of whatever type of WoW player you are, I’m sure Carine has room for all kinds of players. Especially when they all decide to leave…  Or maybe they won’t; I remember rolling on Spirestone with some friends in the early days of the game. It was pretty full, but then some new servers came out (Gurubashi and Smolderthorn, I believe), and everyone left. On the other hand and, it’s unlikely Blizzard will make another server so maybe Cairne will be alright.

Only about 11 more days until Brawl is released. This new server hopefully can keep me occupied until then. I’ve heard about some Sears stores selling them ahead of schedule, but at this point… I’ll just wait. Besides, already pre-ordered at one of the local GameStops.

edit: And of course, after every hiatus, comes the minimum half-hour of figuring out what do with your UI that is horribly outdated.

I know the WoW forums are a filthy cesspool filled with some of the most insensitive people and words, but reading this thread was depressing. The amount of people who would abandon groups for their guild disgusted me. There are good reasons to do it, but most of what I see is “g2g guild needs me” or some crap like that. I’m at the point wherever I see that, it automatically translates to “I don’t want to do this anymore, bye,” or “You guys suck i’m out.” Is it so hard to be courteous? I’m a very shy and introverted person, but if I ever have to leave for something, I at least let my group know, and offer to keep going until a replacement was found. Or if I knew beforehand, I wouldn’t even commit to a group.

When I was still a hardcore raider, I always made sure to stay for groups as long as I can, but usually I don’t do anything if there was a raid. And as an officer, I let (or make) them finish/get replacements their instance or whatever before they get invites. Generally, you don’t need everyone to start clearing trash, and the key members of the raid are usually responsible enough that we don’t have to wait on them with 9/24/39 other people waiting.

I guess courteousness doesn’t matter in WoW anymore.

Some other quick thoughts:

Super Mario Galaxy – The first “real” game on my Wii. The other two, Wii Sports and WarioWare felt like Wiimote demonstrations, like, “hey look at what this neat thing can do!” But SMG felt like, a game. And it was everything I expected and more. SMG alone is good enough reason to get a Wii.

Finals – Kicking my ass. But there’s no sense in crying over every mistake. Stupid business law.  At least it’s over with now and if I’m lucky I will pass that horrible course.

The Red Sox are about to win another series (groan). I’ll admit, I was completely behind them in the ALCS back in 2004 against the Yankees. Cause you know… it’s the Yankees. Once they beat the Yankees, I didn’t really pay attention to the World Series that followed. And three years later, the Red Sox could be starting their own dynasty. I hope the Rockies prove me wrong in the next few hours, but probably not.

In that case, I’m about to renew my subscription to WoW. See Red Sox! Look what you made me do. Actually, it’s a decision I made myself. It should be much better than last time, where the short break was forced quite a bit. And then I made myself avoid playing my priest (which I enjoyed playing overall, a lot more than my rogue). So here’s looking forward to a nice diversion whenever I don’t have work, classes, or studying to do. The past two months made me think that I need something fun. Otherwise, it just gets filled up with boredom. I will tell you this, most of the time I saved by quitting WoW wasn’t spent productively.

If quitting WoW creates a void and it can’t seem fillable, and trust me, I tried to fill it many times, then there may be only one feasible way to fix that. Maybe it isn’t, but with my job, I make enough for a month in two hours of work.

Oh, and I also bought a Wii. Lucky for me? So far, my roommate has spent more time on it playing the GameCube re-release of Zelda 64 than all the combined usage time on WiiSports, and the Mii Creator. I’m not expecting too much improvement on it’s usage until February. Yes, I bought it for Brawl. I know it’s not coming out for another four months or so. But why not get one thing out of the way? I may get Super Mario Galaxy, but I was planning on waiting for a used copy when it gets down to a good price. I’m not made of money. I already spent about a thousand dollars since moving up here to Bellingham. iPod and Wii combine to about $500. Tuition out of my pocket (but out of financial aid refunds) were about $500, including books. And then about another $100 on other expenses.  Good thing I saved up all that money I guess. As of now, my account is still looking good, even after I pay the off for the Wii (it’s on my credit card). And then after the WoW expenses, it will still be okay. I’m just worried about next quarter.

Okay, okay. I guess it was going to happen eventually regardless. Announcing the expansion would cement my eventual return. But Patch 2.3 Notes was icing on the cake.

No, I’m not back in WoW yet. Not until the patch is out at the very latest. Really… haven’t touched that thing for ages.

So much for quitting. Blizzard has announced another expansion. Personally, I would of preferred an expansion that features the Maelstrom, Undermine, and the mystery of the disappearing Kul Tiras.

Of all the ideas for expansions, Northrend and the South Seas were the ideas that interested me the most, so I’m actually interested. This creates a little dilemma, since I’ve decided to cancel my account. I’ll probably let it rot for a month or two, and I’ll work out a plan of return when a release date becomes more clear. Or the expansion could be a bust, and I won’t bother with my time at all. It could be; this obviously means we get a shot at Lich King Arthas. Making Illidan a killable raid boss in Burning Crusade was controversial enough. Although there’s an obvious reason why we should be killing Arthas, it takes away from the lore.

I like the lore of Warcraft. There wasn’t much to it in the first two games, but WarCraft III expanded the lore in so many directions. It was great. World of Warcraft also expanded on the lore a lot too. At a first glance, this was also a great thing. However, with the new lore additions, there becomes two main problems I see.

The first is all the retcon. WarCraft III managed to expand the universe without conflicting too much with the previous titles. However, even in its early stages, there were some noticeable discrepancies. I think there was a better page on WoWWiki, but I can’t find it right now. But the one of the early ones I can think of is the location of Stratholme. In Wc3, the city was located north of Lordaeron, maybe a little to the west. In WoW, it’s located in the very northeast. I’m pretty the other cities, most notably Hearthglen and Andorhal were in different places as well.

But Burning Crusade introduces even more stuff to the lore, and creates a mess. The big one is the whole deal with the draenei. They have been mentioned, but never seen in the WarCraft II expansion. We got to see them for the first time in The Frozen Throne. And wow, they were ugly, and old creatures. Then Blizzard announced that the draenei were the new playable race for the Alliance in the Burning Crusade. “It’s about time the Alliance got an ugly race to play as!” That was not so though, as Blizzard once again changed their entire backstory. As it turns out, the draenei we see in the Burning Crusade share a striking resembleance to the Lost Ones, but Akama and company in The Frozen Throne weren’t Lost Ones. They’re called the Broken. Was that confusing? It doesn’t stop there.

In the WarCraft III instruction manual, there is a backstory explaining how Azeroth was formed. Something about the Titans. They traveled all over the Twisting Nether and created order out of chaos or something. Don’t remember the exact details, but two of really bad races they encountered were called the Eredar, and the Nathrezim. The Titans fought them, and won. They were trapped in prisons of some sort. One of the Titans, Sargeras eventually got so tangled up with how evil these guys were and decided to free them and start the Burning Legion.

However, the Burning Crusade essentially made all of that null and void. This time, it was just the Nathrezim the Titans fought and imprisioned. The Eredar didn’t come into the picture until after the Legion was formed. Okay, now the Eredar were from a planet called Argus. And basically Sargeras offered immense power to the Eredar, and I’m guessing 2/3’s of them accepted (since there were three leaders ). The ones that joined the Burning Legion in general retained the name, Eredar. We can get more specific than that, but it’s not important. The others who didn’t became known as the draenei. And they’re different from the original race.

Confusing wasn’t it? In any case, that’s one of the bigger examples of how the lore became complicated.

The second also relates to the lore. It pertains to the pacing of the whole story. If you think about it, hardly anything in the game progresses. We’ve killed VanCleef a million times, but he and the Defias Gang are stiil hiding in the Deadmines. Ragnaros and Nefarian are still stuck in an arms race vying for control of Blackrock Mountain. The Frostwolf Clan, and the Stormpike… weirdos are still in Alterac Valley fighting over… something in there.

What in Azeroth and Outland has changed? Well… a couple of notable NPC’s have moved from Azeroth into Outland. The gates of Ahn’Qiraj have opened (on most servers at least). And of course, the Dark Portal has opened (and also relocating yet another NPC to Outland). There’s some other things that make the world seem more lively, like the Darkmoon Faire, and all the various festivals that happen throughout the year. Other than that though, the Alliance and Horde not only are constantly fighting amongst themselves, but they also have to worry about the threats of Ragnaros, Nefarian, Onyxia, the Scourge, the Qiraji, Hakkar, the Burning Legion, and of course smaller, but still dangerous threats of Hogger, VanCleef, insane druids, random groups of centaurs, nagas, wolves, bears, troggs, quillboars, and well… everything else really. I don’t think even the United States has this many things to worry about. And after about two and a half years, hardly any of this has changed.

The obvious reason for this is so people will have things to do. From a gameplay perspective, this makes sense. From a lore perspective, you might be able to make sense of this, but that may require too much thought. And this brings us to gameplay versus lore. This alone creates many problems.

But I’m going to try to narrow the focus before things get even more out of hand. The lore of Warcraft is one of the biggest reasons why I play. I know there’s plenty of other things out there that have a much more coherent and developed backstory, but what things like Warhammer, and Lord of the Rings don’t have on me is that I didn’t grow up with them. LotR is close; I read the Hobbit when I was in 7th grade, but I started playing WarCraft II when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. And it’s disappointing to see the story crawl at a snail’s pace, as well as parts of the lore where only a small minority of the people get to see the story progress.

I was a part of that small minority when people still raided Naxxramas. I decided I didn’t really want a part of that anymore when TBC came out. I’ve been a part of both crowds, and I can say that the high end content is a lot of fun. Unfortunate that a lot of people miss out on it.

And when I make my inevitable return to Azeroth some months later, I’m going to make the right choice this time. I’m transferring my priest.

Only about an hour before I start heading for my driver’s ed class. It’s kind of funny and ironic, as I took the the morning class over the afternoon and evening classes because I didn’t want to miss a raid. Since I registered for the class, I’ve taken steps to quit WoW for good. The first step was to stop raiding.

But I’m still stuck with the 8AM class. I don’t really see it as a loss at all. I only managed maybe 3-4 hours of sleep tonight, the rest of the time was spent trying to fall back asleep with very limited success. In any case, the morning class should hopefully give me a good time to sign up for driving time, and the time between 3AM and 8AM are about the only times I’ll let myself log on my priest on Spirestone, who has been rotting since January. I maybe quitting, but I may as well make the most of my money before the account expires.

The first time I “quit” wasn’t really quitting at all. In my farewell post to my guild on Spirestone, I cited the reasons for leaving was to get my life back on track. I gave Insomnia the impression that my grades were failing. This was true to an extent; I know lots of guys at Central who would love to have my B average. And although my average GPA after I left them went from about 3.5 to 3.7, I wasn’t telling them the entire truth.

I did quit to focus better on college, but that wasn’t the main reason. Granted, it probably did have a positive effect on grades. However, there were plenty of days where I gamed up a storm, even if it was a weeknight. I didn’t tell them though, that the biggest reason I left was because I couldn’t stand playing with a certain person anymore. This guy used to be a friend I knew for about 4-5 years in real life, but sadly some events through the game strained that friendship. There wasn’t much left of that relationship then. Only recently, I’ve been able to finally get over it.

I secretly transferred my rogue to Archimonde to play with my roommates. I’ve been with a little guild on that server called Icon. Not the best guild in the world, but I really didn’t care enough to gquit or anything. Still, I felt I owed some of the people there an explanation, and also because I needed to say somethings that I’ve been holding in for half a year. So I made another farewell post on their newly almost unread forums. This time though, I was a lot more honest. I cited the lack of passion as my main reason for quitting. Which is true. WoW isn’t that much fun anymore (look at the post below for a little more info). Although their replacement rogue has bad gear, and isn’t even specced properly for even the first few bosses in Karazhan, I don’t think it was fair for me to keep raiding with them. Definitely not fair for them. The fact that I put a point in Relentless Strikes doesn’t mean much when I can’t have the same amount of fun anymore, and can’t put 120% effort into it. Although I think most non-raid leaders end up putting only about 90% on average.

I consider myself one of those kind people who, to put it figuratively, “stay on the sinking ship.” But… when your home team gets a seven run lead early in the game, and then the starter slowly gives those runs back… and then Reits(can’tthinkofawaytomakefunofhisname)ma turns a two-run lead into a two-run deficit… wait, I’m not done. Against the worst hitting team in the majors, not long after a seven-game losing streak, on the day before the Anaheim, err… LA Angels of Anaheim come to Seattle for an all important series… that’s just too much.So I pointed my universal remote at the TV and said “f!@# you,” and turned it off. Then I watched Lucky Star. After watching a couple of episodes, I checked the scores. It was only the eighth inning, but the M’s were up ahead someone. That game probably had more offense than the M’s had combined during their seven-game skid.Since cancelling my WoW account, life has been good. I’ve been playing casually since the expansion, but there’s a huge difference in playing casually, and not at all. Although still with two weeks left, I haven’t seen the last of Azeroth just yet. I cut back on reading the WoW forums for the most part, and instead reading M’s blogs instead. And I have to say… they’re both equally bad. On the WoW forums I see a lot of complaining about:

• Lack of active partipication in Alterac Valley.
• Lack of tanking and healing classes.
• How just about any class is overpowered unless if they’re shamen.
• The lack of active players on some servers.
• Something relating to how hard it is to progress in PvE .

While valid complaints, I’ve seen so much that they’re all just starting to sound the same, just clevery rewarded. Not everyone is happy on the M’s blog either though, although about completely different things. But like the WoW forums, I see a lot of it, and it’s starting to sound all the same. Instead, a majority of the complains are generally stem from one or more of the following:

• About a certain centerfielder, who should be in Seattle instead of Tacoma.
• Why does our run differential in games suddenly go the wrong way when a certain reliever takes the mound
• Why is (Raul/Sexson/Vidro) is in x position in the lineup, even though they kill our offense
• WTF is (McLaren/Bavasi/FO) doing, and they should be fired for doing it (or not doing it).
• Why we should/shouldn’t trade for (player) to improve our (rotation/lineup/bullpen).
• The other team has more runs than we do!

As with the WoW forums, some of these things are starting to sound the same, if they aren’t already.To be fair, on the WoW front, I do agree that there are a lot of problems with the game (and those problems are one of the many reasons why I cancelled my account in the first place).  And some of them especially, Blizzard has had a lot of time to fix, but they haven’t. Took them about six months to get an actual content patch for BC. It was a big one, but it still took forever. And as for the Mariners, it’s the mostly the same thing. Some lineup adjustments did needed to be made (and looked what happened when they were finally made!), they could use a left-handed power hitter, and even a number five guy in the rotation would be better. But none are worth trading away the top prospects unless they are not only good investments for the playoff race, but also for future seasons.

Hm… I had a mouthful to say. But basically it all comes down to this… I see a lot of complaining, but then again, I guess I asked for it. I’m at the point where I don’t really mind all the complaining. It’s good to know sometimes I’m not the only one who feels that way. But at the same time, a guy can only take so much.

RIP My WoW Account. Dec. 17, 2004 to Aug. 14 2007. May all the love and epics lie in peace with the account.

It’s 5am, and the sun is almost up. So I’ll reflect later. I couldn’t sleep because all I could think about was cancelling.