Incredibly Innacurately Named Quest

There's a World Quest in Tiragarde Sound where you talk to a friendly Tauren who flies you over to a ship packed with enemies where you are instructed to kill three named mobs and ten regular mobs. It should say on the quest objectives " /10 Ship crew slain, LOL" because you're going to kill ten within the first few seconds of the quest. The rest of the time you'll wander aimlessly through countless rooms and what feels like ten or eleven deck levels to find the named mobs who are safely tucked away in remote corners of the ship. Just like shooting fish in a barrel. :-/

I have no idea what Blizzard employee thought "Like Fish in a Barrel" was a good name for this WQ, but evidently they have a different understanding of what exactly that saying means. I always assumed that it meant "easy", because all of the fish were trapped in a confined space and you could shoot them without the means of escape. However, it seems the alternative interpretation is that that fish are so packed into the barrel that it's impossible to find and kill the three named fish that you're searching for without killing every single other fish in that barrel at least FOUR TIMES. Except that actual fish don't respawn upon death, so even that doesn't quite work.

I would suggest the title "Like Finding Three Needles in a Haystack If You Drew Aggro on Every Single Piece of Hay and It Respawned at an Alarming Rate" but I can see why they went with something shorter. How about "Painful and Demoralizing Quest" or just save my time and call it "Skip This One".

Using Your Imagination

I finally got my Paladin up to 120, so while she's out grabbing ore for my main she can pick up the rare pet battle quest that awards Polished Pet Charms so I can buy all the pets. Since I couldn't decide which one to buy, I decided to try the Imaginary Gun toy. Apparently imagination is not included, because I tried it out and it the animation was so fast that I didn't even catch what my character did, although I did try it on my Tauren later and it looks like she made a finger-gun move as my pet flopped onto the ground. It is very quick and very difficult to capture a screenshot of. I used my crocolisk companion the first time, hoping that he would do the death animation where he flops upside down (my favorite part of Tol Barad dailies) but unfortunately he just laid down and closed his eyes. The little ferret thing from Vol'dun did flop on the ground more dramatically, so I guess I'll just have to try it on different pets as I think of it. 20 minute cooldown, though, because they don't want you to break your imagination by having too much fun.

Dismal Druid of the Cenarion Circle

I wasn't really expecting anyone to answer me. I mean, I get where you're coming from, Cenarion Circle Druid, I am a little disappointed as well, but I think you may be overreacting just a bit.

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Seven Years. Seven long years since the first time I killed the Headless Horseman day after day during my first year of the holiday, fully expecting the mount to drop. My brother, you see, told me that he thought Blizzard must have increased the drop rate, because he had gotten the mount drop FOUR TIMES the previous Hallow's End. I felt unlucky after that first year when it didn't drop, but I still expected that my luck would turn in each subsequent year.
When I made a Warlock alt, I was disappointed that the awesome-looking Dreadsteed mount didn't fly. Then I really, REALLY wanted the Headless Horseman's mount to drop. Eventually, the class mounts came and I finally got my flying, glowy horse. It was close enough and I was somewhat mollified. This is the first year that I almost (but not completely) didn't give a crap about the Headless Hrseman. Almost. I would still /rude and /spit on his corpse after I opened my loot box each day, and ran it daily on my characters high enough to get the mount drop.
And then it finally happened.
I felt numb, cursed a little bit in all caps in chat, and got disconnected. Luckily the mount was still in my bags when I got logged back on, but it did take me a heart-stopping moment to realize that it was called "The Horseman's Reins" instead of "Headless Horseman's Reins". That was fun. Well played, RNG, well played.

Mage Mistake

I found this victim of a polymorph spell gone wrong in Drustvar and adopted it as a companion pet. And then I had to rename it, of course. At least it was a Gnome Mage this time, instead of the tired trope of an incompetent Gnome Warlock. They're really branching out there.

Just a Suggestion

Vol'kaal should just be renamed Fuk'elemental. I have NEVER done less casting in a boss fight than this one.
So, I finally remembered I had a quest on the Troll island in Durotar and wound up in Atal'Dazar for the dungeon quest part. Unfortunately, the only quest step I saw was "Yazma Slain", so once that was done I left immediately. Apparently the other quest objective "Urn of Vol'jin Placed"  didn't show on the quest panel until AFTER I looted Yazma, so I ended up having to run the damn dungeon again. And although this time I understood the importance of killing all three totems at the same time, I ended up doing about the same amount of running around casting Frost Shock that I did the first time regardless. I typically think the conspiracy theories about Blizzard developers hating certain classes are crap, but when I was constantly running out of the green crap, it didn't seem too completely crazy to imagine some developer creating this while saying, "Oh, yeah? Just try and Gust of Wind your way out of this one. OH RIGHT. You don't have that anymore!"

Aw, Shucks

I really love the way they include the player in cutscenes in this expansion, especially with the idle animations. As soon as Princess Talanji started praising my character, Rocksy started scuffing the ground with her foot shyly.

This Seems Fine

Just a group of crabs basking in the incense they're burning on a strange bloody skull. Seems perfectly normal.

Yippee!

I was so excited that I get Lilian Voss as a follower that I didn't even time my screenshot right!

Greetings, Richmon

When I was looking at which pet to buy next, I saw that I had to finish an achievement (Get Hek'd) to be able to purchase this one. I didn't realize there was an achievement for this but I always enjoy the Jani quests so I quickly finished the few I was missing so I could get this little guy. And, of course, I had to rename him. Silly saurid.

Home is Where the Horde Is

Thought of this while doing this quest, and now I kind of want to make a needlepoint of it for the mantle.

Is That the MkIII Model?

I somehow completely missed this when I saw them the first time. The BElves are using a S.E.L.F.I.E. stick. Color me jealous.

Dino Duo

I finally saved enough pet charms to get a baby Brutosaur! So many pets to save up for this expansion, but this one was the first one I just had to have. I think I'll name him Big Brutus. Or maybe Lil' Brutus? I don't think I can use apostrophes, though. Which is weird since Blizzard does all the time in pet names.

The Druid's Dilemma

On the one hand, Moonkins look hilarious on horses. On the other hand, you end up with cutscene screenshots of Moonkin rear ends instead of a nicely framed heroic shot of your character.

Oh, Am I Blocking Your Shot?

I saw these BElves trying to get a good picture of themselves in Dazar'alor so I thought I'd jump in and give them a hand. They seemed really grateful for the help. It sounded to me like an appreciative /sigh, anyway.

Excuse Me, Curiously Attractive Stranger, Do You Know Where My Quest Objective Is?

I ran into this room for a quest and wandered around trying to figure out what I was supposed to be looking at. When I saw this Goblin in the corner, I was trying to figure out how to interact with her when I realized she was wearing my character's transmog, which then led to the realization that I was supposed to be standing where she was standing to trigger the quest progression. LOL. At least I didn't do the Trial of Style before I went here, or I probably wouldn't have recognized my outfit.

I'd Rather Bee Fishing

Or actually, doing anything other than fishing, except that I got this Honey Bee pet and had to immediately use my pet mirror and take screenshots. I'll get to 120 eventually, I'm sure.

Headhunter

Nice.

Just Being Nitpicky

This quest kill in Tiragarde Sound is hanging out by a coffin, and there's no way the Kul Tiran models are going to fit in these coffins. I'll have to go back and get a screenshot of my goblin lying in it to see if that works, but I did edit my screenshot to demonstrate that the guy here definitely does not fit.

Busy Taking Screenshots..Not Listening

Dammit. I didn't notice the comment until I looked at the screenshots later, so I didn't keep clicking to try on different pirate garb. I hope they add it in as a tailoring toy item or something. I did enjoy the whole pirate quest line in Tiragarde Sound, though, especially the quest text for Marking Our Territory:

Addie Is the BEST!

For multiple reasons, I just adore her. But upon assigning her as my Gnome Hunter's combat ally, I found out that when you take out the S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera (because of course), Addie immediately starts posing!

Has Genn Lost His Damn Mind?

"Uhh..Anduin's in his place, right there on the throne. Beside you. You and Velen need to quit talking like this before my squirrel attacks, 'cuz you guys are nuts."

JUST BUSY DOING IMPORTANT STUFF

My son was doing an impression of Toad's voice from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show while AC/DC was on the radio and I was struck by the similarity. He suggested Hells Bells was perfect for Toad in the Toad Warrior episode, so I made this. I feel like I could have done a better job matching up the lip sync at the end, but I'm so incredibly lazy. BUSY. Busy, I mean. Ahem.

Too Soon? Probably Too Soon.

I got my Teldrassil Hippogryph from the War of Thorns event!

Oh, wait. This is actually the Flameward Hippogryph from the Molten Front. I have several hippogryphs, it was kind of confusing trying to find the new one.

Twinsies!

I finally have a bat like Vivianne, except mine's a plauguebat which I'm guessing's why it has extra arms? Still, though, my first bat! It's exciting! Until I begin endlessly farming multiple recolors of the mount from various rares. (I'm looking at you, Blistermaw.)

SOMETHING'S NOT QUITE RIGHT...

The thing is, I hate being manipulated emotionally. I am typically cynical and skeptical of most things, particularly when it’s meant to evoke an emotional reaction. I’ve already been evaluating what both sides are doing and why, and I feel like motivations are weak on both sides but more believable on Sylvanas’ part thus far. I don’t know why Anduin makes the uncharacteristic move to interfere and sabotage the Horde’s mining operation in Silithus or why he acts like it represents an open declaration of war on the part of the Horde. But then, I don’t really care about Anduin in particular. Maybe he’s working though his daddy issues, it’s just not my concern or interest.  Sylvanas anticipating Anduin’s rush to aggression seemed odd, but I don’t really know the timeline. Maybe my character talked to her after she discovered Anduin had sent spies and saboteurs. Blizzard likes to pit the factions in conflicting storylines (airship attack in ICC, anyone?) so it’s difficult to parse out canonically what is happening when.

The Warbringers: Sylvanas cinematic was upsetting. Mainly because I felt the intent was to make me angry at Sylvanas, and at the same time her action (reaction, even more stupidly) was such a ridiculously stupid move militarily that I felt like the entire cinematic was inexplicable. The consensus of people upset with the cinematic seems to be that it represents shitty writing on Blizzard’s part. That is such an amazingly unsatisfying answer to me, and I sincerely hope and choose to believe that a more complete picture will emerge as the story progresses to launch.

Here is what I know:

    NElf:  “You can kill us, but you cannot kill hope.”

                Sylvanas: “Can’t I?”

By burning their tree? Uh…no? No, you can’t. I know this, there is absolutely no way that Sylvanas does not know this. As a matter of fact, she acknowledges it in a subsequent quest later: “The Alliance will retaliate. They will come for us. For me. For you.”

EXACTLY. Burning Teldrassil won’t kill hope, but it will galvanize and unify your enemies against you, so there’s that. 

She then attempts to rationalize the attack: “But they ARE bleeding. Their anger will prove a weakness, not a strength, in the war to come.”

Uh, no. Just… no. The entire theme of Warcraft from the beginning has been “Unite, or die”. The Orc clans had to band together, different races formed the Alliance, both sides worked together to defeat the Lich King and the Burning Legion. It’s just ridiculous to imagine that THIS time, the Alliance will actually be weaker as a united group who now has one clear purpose. 

Here is what I think:

                This is not Sylvanas. I know that sounds like a hypothesis crafted by Ancient Azerothian Theorists, and I am usually the first person to answer those hypothetical questions “Could it be possible that…” with “No. No, it couldn’t. Just no.” I am, again, cynical and skeptical and if the actions taken by Sylvanas in that cinematic made any damn sense at all, I wouldn’t be grasping at straws. Honestly, though, I kind of have no choice, because there aren’t clues being dispersed to discover what is actually going on, or some group of insane super-sleuths like the Lucid Nightmare group would already have figured it out. Seriously, the puzzle that led to that mount involved using the damage of three pet battle attacks. I pet battle all the time and I couldn’t tell you the amount of a single hit. Or most of the names. Really, it’s kind of frustrating that these people aren’t working on solving climate change or something because holy shit.

Or:

                Sylvanas is being controlled by something or someone else. Mind control is a priest thing, yeah? It doesn’t seem like Anduin’s style, but then again, neither did the spying/sabotaging in Silithus, so maybe? Maybe someone not involved, though, that just wants the two sides to fight. Velen? I don’t really see what would be in it for him. Is Wrathion still wanting a war after Legion? Or is he satisfied with the way everything turned out? He definitely wouldn’t have a problem with meddling, though. 

 

That’s all I've got. I really hope it doesn’t turn out to be another “Hush, Tyrande” or “I’m just proud of my king *sob*” because I wasn’t prepared to like BfA but that doesn’t mean I want to hate it, either.

Unfinished Questlines

I'm planning on writing about this week's prepatch quest (as soon as I finish doing the quests and get a good screenshot), but in the meantime I thought this was funny:

On my way over to the this week's new quest I noticed this old quest along the way that my Shaman had apparently never completed. Better late than never, I guess? Assuming I ever get around to it, anyway.

#ImStillWithHer

So, I am not a real fan of the faction conflict in Warcraft and I play both factions. But Jaina's purge of Dalaran in Mists made my Alliance toons feel less relatable, and Legion's faction bickering cemented my feeling that the Horde's actions just made a lot more sense to me. And so the pattern continues, because faction conflict right after the joint defeat of the Burning Legion makes absolutely no sense, but at least I can believe that Sylvanas is mistrustful, pessimistic, and prefers to be proactive rather than reactive. On one hand, her belief that Anduin will attack the Horde unprovoked seems a little batshit-crazy, but at the same time, by playing Alliance toons I know that Anduin sends SI:7 to spy on the Horde in Silithus and his champions to sabotage the Horde mining operation (killing goblins incidentally), which does seem to be batshit-crazy. 

Then there's the War of the Thorns (Week 1) quest text, such as: 

Is there really a good reason (besides "NElves") all of the Alliance quest text reads like racist propaganda? It seriously makes me feel sick to my stomach. The Horde text doesn't sound like this. When I see Alliance quest text like "we are not savages like our enemy", it reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode where Picard is being held captive by a Cardassian, who brings his daughter in where Picard is being kept. The daughter asks if humans have children, and is told "Yes, but they don't love their children as we do." (paraphrasing, I'm not going to look it up.) It's just not a good feeling, and probably is the reason I played my Alliance toons very little in Legion. So I guess if Blizzard's goal is to force us to take sides, then mission accomplished. I'm not going to abandon my Alliance toons, but I won't be able to play them without a significant amount of eye-rolling. And if they were allowed to defect then they would all be saying:

Too Long in the Spin Cycle?

Ghost Raptor before the patch:

Ghost Raptor after the patch:

Well. At least it matches how puny my DPS feels post-patch. Yay?

I Am Not a Fan of Change

But I am trying. So, the things I like about the pre-patch: 

1.

It shows your pets when you switch them now! Or this may be an addon I have, I'm not completely sure because I had to disable around half of them the first time I logged on. But it's kind of cool either way!
2. I did three emissaries this morning and had over 1000 wakening essences so I went to see what class legendary I would get when I rolled the dice, and SURPRISE! I get to pick a legendary roll item for whichever class I want now! Nice! Also, and this doesn't really count as a change but it does have to do with the shitty talent changes that I am unhappy about so I may as well count this as
3. since it's a discovery that makes a shitty change not-so-shitty. So, in addition to a roll item for whichever class you want, you can also buy any specific legendary for your class. I already have all of them in void storage, but I noticed that Soul of the Farseer gives you the talent Echo of the Elements, which means I can have it and still choose Elemental Blast on that talent tier, which is awesome because I was really missing it in my rotation*!

I don't want to enumerate the changes I am unhappy with because I'm really, really trying to be as positive as I possibly can, and I've been bemoaning the loss of Gusto for a long time already. I'm going to play Elemental Shaman regardless so I may as well try to figure out how to do that the best that I can. But since I suck at positivity, I have to say I'm surprised that Stormkeeper didn't get a name change to go with the new icon when it was added as a talent. I'm thinking more along the lines of StormBorrowerIfItsOKICanWait. I can see how that might be a little cumbersome, though.
My brother thinks the change to Flame Shock is good because Elemental Shaman aren't supposed to be running around dotting everything anyway, but it's really disappointing to lose an instant cast that used to mean I could tag maybe three falcosaurs before an Alliance hunter barraged them all, but now means that all I can do is stand still and cast, mostly finishing off kills for said Alliance hunter. I can't get the hang of the cooldowns, either, because now. everything. feels. so. ungodly. slow.

I did find out that I'm still able to grind Honor and get the final tint for my artifact weapon, so that's another thing I'm happy about! So I guess that makes it

4. things. However, I have to get to Honor level 80 and I'm at 54 (took me forever to find that out) and doing all of the PvP WQs and one extra prior to reset this morning didn't net me a single Honor level, so apparently this is going to take forever. But it's PvP week so we'll see.

*R.I.P.

SHOO BEE DOO, SHOOP SHOOP BEE DOO

I noticed the Reins of Poseidus on the AH for less than half of the 100k it had always been listed for, back when 100k was a lot of gold, so I went ahead and picked one up. Now I don't have to be in Vash'jir to call upon my Sea Pony.

Well, Shit.

It's not so much that I love my Elemental artifact weapon or anything, I'm actually looking forward to mogging something besides fist weapons finally (although, admittedly, I would prefer to keep Doomhammer in my bank stashed away). But I'm not happy about losing Gust of Wind (I accidentally typed Gusto first and I think I actually like that better) and Stormkeeper is an important part of my rotation, until they add it into my Talents so I'll have to toss a coin every time I run a dungeon to decide if I'm going to burn the boss with Ascendance or the adds with Stormkeeper/Chain Lightning. I immediately checked Wowhead to make sure I wasn't going to lose my artifact yet when I ran this quest. Luckily, it just empowered it so that I don't have to dump AP into the black hole that I had reached at this point. Unfortunately, there were still a few quests I had left to do, and I ended up with seven or eight AP tokens that I couldn't use. Fortunately, it turns out that hoarding does pay off, and they were hotfixed to have a vendor price the next time I logged in. :)

I am almost done with Legion, though. I'm close to Prestige 10 and maybe I can convince myself that's the last one, I got TWO mounts I've been farming today (24th and 26th kills) and now I only have one Argus rare that I have to kill daily. I do think I'm going to be farming the Army of Light Paragon mounts forever, though. They drop three mounts, and I don't have a single one yet, but I got the toy twice. And the Nightfallen Paragon mount continues to elude me, and I opened my 18th Paragon box from them today.

Housekeeping

I started playing Luigi's Mansion again the other day, and now the Warden's Towers are driving me crazy. I want to vacuum the spider's webs. so. badly.

Perfect!

I just realized what I needed to name my Dutiful Gruntling!

So Stealthy

This is generally how my Druid prowls around Argus. I haven't asked anyone so I have no idea if other players can see my entire entourage of assorted squirrels, turtles, spiders, raccoons, deer, turkeys, etc. that follow me everywhere. The NPCs do seem to ignore them, though. Thank goodness, considering they span the entire walkway wherever we go.

THIS GIRL IS ON FIRE

Apologies for the title. I was just going to go with "SHE'S ON FIRE" but it seemed difficult to avoid it sounding like a reference, and pointless to try. She IS a Fire Mage, after all.
Anywho.
I really wasn't trying for Argus completion on my other characters, but I wanted some reason to log into them at all now that they're 110, and the one thing standing in my way seemed to be their crappy class halls. My main is the only one with the gold-making factory of maxed out champions, so I wanted to get my 900-level followers to the next level at least. Apparently that requires doing a shit-ton of stuff in Argus. Oh, well, it's not like I had a lot of other things to work on, I guess. I'm down to three or four Argus rares with drops that I'm farming, Army of the Light and Nightfallen paragon mounts, working my way to Prestige 10, and weekly chores. All of my (800-some-odd) pets are now level 25, so I'm just farming pet charms to make them all rare now. I'm still trying to level my Hunter when I get a chance, mostly with the app, and if I ever get her to 110 maybe I'll start on my Nightborne Rogue again.

EDIT: Adding my second alt to make it through the fire, my Druid. She is not in cat form ONLY because I did this earlier on my Mage and knew to expect it this time.

EDIT:  Aaand my Warlock, because why not? Oh my god I'm so sick of Argus.

I do really like the way my Gnome's cutscene is really zoomed in so you can actually see her in the picture. I appreciate it, although I think it would have been really funny if this was her screenshot:

So, Buddy, How's the Respawn Wait Time?

I'm actually just waiting 10 minutes for my Warframe cooldown so I can summon Mother Rosula, but I noticed this guy and I just had to get a picture with him.

Aw, Nuts!

Just a PSA, the squirrels just outside of Lorlathil are NOT invading. That is all.

I Don't Know About Prestige

I don't really think anyone is in awe of my NPC-slaying abilities or my indifference as I check off PvP WQs on my long list of tedious chores I feel compelled to do without any enthusiasm or sense of purpose (after obtaining my main goal, my adorable Gruntling buddy). I didn't even bother getting a screenshot of the mount, a white unflyable unicorn, which at this point just feels like... Oh, well. Maybe I'll get to the next level. I think it's a title reward.

Beta Fun

The day the Alpha changed to Beta, I finally got in. I haven't been really excited about the expansion, but I am interested in how it's going to feel playing my Shaman. I probably should have made a Goblin to test (so I could at least put Rocket Jump on my Gust of Wind button) but I went ahead and made a Mag'har orc since I hadn't seen them yet. I thought my name was clever (like a Mag'har Martha) but I've since realized it sounds a lot like Magatha, and I'm not sure that I care for the association.

It took me forever to get my bars into a playable configuration without bartender, using keybinds and a helpful screen loading tip about the extra action bars in the interface menu, so I was finally able to approximate my Goblin's setup, but I'm not sure I was able to glean any useful information about the play style in BfA. It feels clunky and slow, and I am not a numbers person so I don't know the difference between my Goblin's stats and my Beta Orc's stats, all I know is my Goblin feels fast and powerful whereas using the same basic rotation on my Beta Orc felt like "Laaaaaava Buuuuurst, Laaaaaava Buuuuurst, Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing Boooooooooooooolt." I definitely don't care for Ascendance being on the same talent tier as Stormkeeper. It's just a weird place to put them, they have completely different utilities, I don't know why Blizzard felt like we should choose between them? Ascendance is my hard hitting spell for a big bad, or big burst of damage during a boss fight spell, and Stormkeeper is one I generally use on cooldown, three fast hits of lightning bolt when I get the extra maelstrom proc or three instant chain lightnings to burn down a group of enemies. I feel like I'm going to be switching back and forth between questing and raids/dungeons, and I don't really like to do that. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do, but it felt like Blizzard was trying to discourage that when they made talents only changeable in cities instead of everywhere, so I don't know.

I haven't done much on the Beta otherwise, but I did run The Battle For The Undercity. It felt pretty unfinished, with a couple of Thrall vs. Deathwing cinematics and lacking voiceovers in parts. I don't know if I wasn't keeping up with Sylvanas at the end well enough (probably because I kept turning around to fire Lava Burst procs) but I ended up just outside of the room the NPCs ran to with a permanent Disoriented debuff keeping me from running any farther. I had to exit the instance to get out of it, and then had to restart the game after a /reload didn't restore my ability to move.

How Old Are You Now, Anyway?

"I've taken you to the toy vendor and ice cream place eight years in a row now, and you get bigger every year. Maybe next year we could just grab some coffee and check out the engineering shop. Sound good, kid?"