The End is Nigh! Patch 4.3

Wandering around Wow Insider this morning just to catch up on all the offline info I’ve been half ignoring over the last… year? Been that long already? Huh… Anywho I found a post about patch 4.3. You can find the post here [link] and I wanted to take a moment to really have a think about the implications of it. Here’s the short of it:

• -Deathwing has a raid! Before most of us have even really cut our teeth on Firelands too…
• -New 5 man dungeons of about ZA/ZG difficulty
• -Cosmetic Armor Skins…bwa?
• -Armor Closet – store all your old armor to free up bank space.

The last patch included a few little things… like a few new hair styles, dailies, new raid all that fun stuff. What sorta bugs me a bit is there was a massive build up for Firelands, including a series of quests to kick it off, before we got started. I don’t know what the timeline is for 4.3 but it seems a little fast and we’ve not gotten a lot about it so far. There’s a little bit of a hint from the article Wow Insider sites for most of it’s info, about AQ (Ok so I just saw it briefly and it was a word I understood), which baring the two dungeons in Wrath and the raid no one got to see during current content we haven’t seen a lot of. We know its there and we might have dallied but nothing serious for the majority of players around these days.

So follow me behind the cut for further discussion on the quality of life stuff… I’ll save the PVE for another post over the weekend.

Lore Hound: Westfall

[Excerpts from a Worgen Adventurer’s Journal]

… I never thought that behind its diminutive Wall Verian Wrynn could see so little of his kingdom but the man must just be that blind. If the ills of Elwynn Forrest aren’t apparent to him then it comes as no shock to me what has befallen the once fertile lands of Westfall. Upon my arrival there I found a grizzly scene. A family and their horse murdered.  Investigators from Stormwind surrounded the area and I chose to offer my assistance in the matter.  If the changed landscape and the environmental upheaval are anything to show what has changed physically about the area it equally reflects the change in the inhabitants.

A Faded Journal

While working on a Worgen Druid in the Beta I came across this random book… A Faded Journal. Now this is most certainly a lovely chunk of Lore and I thought I ought to share it with folks. It might change, it may go away… but it’s still rather cool.

Read the Journal after a visit from Inconspicuous Bear

Roll the Dice – A Guide to RP

World of Warcraft, the biggest MMO out there, has dozens of facets for game play and attracts many to its raids, PVP, tournaments, and adventure. But for many there is another aspect, the last three letters on the end of the type of game WoW is. A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game… ie the RPG part. For many people it is the bread and butter of their WoW experience, for others it’s a terrifying mystical world full of horror stories from Goldshire and thus nothing to dabble in… and yes for some it’s prime griefing material. Be that as it may I enjoy RP in a lot of different ways, and for the last two and a half years WoW was the place for me and my creative self and I had a blast. The hardest part of the entire experience besides getting into the thick of things is just making the character to begin with. Sure there is the character creation screen – class, race, faction, name, looks, gender… but to build an RP toon you have to go beyond the pixils and think about who that person is.

I’m sure many people out there played make-believe… gone beyond that to Dungeons and Dragons or Whitewolf games… what about a school play or even simply playing House. You had a role you fulfilled, a goal for yourself as someone who was more or less not you at all yet held a part of you in their core. Keep this in mind and I’ll take some time to describe some processes, key things to keep in mind, and my personal believes behind the creation of a role-playing character.

I’ll be breaking this into a few posts, just for digestion’s sake and avoidance of ‘wall of text’ syndrome. For starters I’ll go through a few concepts and guide lines to keep in mind during this whole process. These are based solely on my own opinions and experience so you might have other views or approaches and that’s good. In the event you have no idea though, maybe these can be a bit of an inspiration.