Beta Notes 10-12 (with bonus notes, Part 8)

Here's parts 10-12 of my beta notes, including some priest notes, initial Forsaken changes, and more.  Spoilers, of course.

Beta Notes: Part 9

Another night, another round of beta notes!  Spoilers, of course.  Notes in bold, comments after.

Beta Notes 5-7 (Now With Screenshots!)

Here's parts 5-7 of my beta notes.  Spoilers abound!

Beta Notes, 2-4

Here's my notes parts 2 to 4.  Some of the lag-related bugs have been fixed since I made the notes.

Remember: There are spoilers!!

Beta Notes!

So Friday is the only one this summer I wasn't taking off work this summer, and while glancing through my email at the workshop I was attending, I saw a beta invite email.  I assumed it was spam.  Nope!  Got home and the beta (still labeled alpha) was in my launcher.  Apparently it's a stress test? Regardless, I'm in.

Friday it was quite disconnect-y, and it still was much of today, but today was more playable.  Here's my notes I made as I played (notes in bold, with commentary).

THIS IS PRETTY SPOILERY FOR TANAAN JUNGLE STUFF IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THEM.

Here be Spoilers

So I bought the virtual ticket for Blizzcon this year, partly because it went up for sale while I still had birthday money, and I figured, hey, I'll get a pet out of it.  The opening ceremony was free to stream, but subtitles only work on the main stage stream, which you only have access to with the ticket, and... I left my authenticator at home. >.<  So I watched the stream soundless at the reference desk at work between helping the occasional Friday afternoon patron, coupled with WoW Insider's live blog so I could actually get some context.

So we learned:

• We're going back in time to Draenor because Garrosh.  Apparently Star Trek isn't the only franchise to fork time in the past to get new content; Garrosh plays the role of the Romulan who went back to destroy Vulcan, and we get to play elder Spock, or some such.  (Woo double franchise spoiler post.)
• New level cap is 100.  All well and good, lets them add another talent tier easily.  The expansion after this, they'll probably have to redistribute them again.
• When expansion purchase, you can boost a character to 90.  This is good for folks who have been out of the game a long time, or if you've got friends on the other faction or another server you want to play with more right away.
• They're adding player garrisons.  We liked the farms so much, they're giving us a whole little town to play with, and we get to pick where to put it.  Collect NPCs; they'll do some crafting stuff for you.  Sounds like this is a partial answer to all those requests to make the gathering skills baseline.
• Draenor was gorgeous before the Legion showed up.

Overall, I'm... okay, not really excited.  I geek out over different things, really, but I'm looking at this and thinking, when am I even going to have time to raid?  I'm a bit of a pet collector, sitting at 188 mounts, and given a whole garrison to flesh out?  Dude.

I've always wanted to see a lot of the places that we know were changed because of pre-WoW storyline events, and places like Netherstorm, that's getting ripped apart, and Zangarmarsh, that the naga have been draining - those were pretty high on my list.  (Please let sea horses work in the Zangar Sea.)  But really - it hadn't occurred to me that the changes in Shadowmoon Valley were so recent, really.  Auchindoun, Karabor, and such - I didn't think I'd ever get to see them pre-destruction/corruption.

So far as I've been able to tell, they've been avoiding telling us who gets Garrosh back in time, but really, who has power over time nowadays?  Bronze dragons to some extent, and certain Timewalkers.  Given the last vision that the hourglass gives us on the Timeless Isle, I have a short list of bets to make about that.

I keep wanting to say Wrathion is involved in all this somehow, but every time I look at his background, I keep saying, dude, this kid's origin is just as screwed up as Anakin Skywalker's.  I'm not going to bother.  But if Wrathion's visions of the Legion are because he's somehow from the forked time, rather than our own...  But I don't think the Black Dragonflight was there long ago enough for that to be true.

Anywho, I have a placeholder Draenei now.