A New (for me) Warrior Transmog

Several weeks ago, after going through a cash-rebuilding spree following my splurge on Poseidus, I found myself awash in thorium and old world gems.  I was flipping through my various crafting books, looking for something that might make me more cash than the raw ore and gems themselves, when I (re)discovered the Enchanted Thorium Plate.  I was something of a completionist on my blacksmith for recipes 300 skill level or lower, so I did a lot of the blacksmithing quests and went through becoming a swordsmith on her.

So a couple weeks pass with me trying to unload the breastplate and pants on the auction house, but unfortunately my blacksmith is on Bronzebeard and not a fashion-conscious RP server.  What did this mean?  My warrior got a new look:

Boots, for a troll, are of course the hardest part, so I'm still using the Shinkicker boots I put on her as soon as transmogrification was put in.  A lot of the rest of the pieces changed, though.

• Helm:  I keep it hidden, so I haven't bothered.
• Cloak:  Similarly, I like the clean, no-cloak look on my warrior.
• Chest:  Enchanted Thorium Breastplate.  There are some "same model as" options, but none of them have the attacked choker.  I really like the black/gold/steel coloring and the arm detail.
• Legs:  Enchanted Thorium Leggings.  I like the color contrast between the leggings and the breastplate; same color scheme, but the black leggings give the set a better look than if the steel were dominate here.  These pants are decidedly low-riders if you forgo a belt.
• Shoulders: Stormforged Shoulders.  These are a great color match for the Enchanted Thorium look, although they do sharply highlight the improvement in graphics detail between Vanilla WoW and Cataclysm.
• Feet:  My beloved Shinkicker Boots.  A few other boots still available in the game (Gothic Sabatons, Heavy Lamellar Boots) have the same clean lines, but the color doesn't go quite as well.
• Hands:  Ymirjar Lord's Handguards.  I was having trouble finding gloves I liked to go with the set, but flipping through my banked items, I found my tier 10 gloves.  The color isn't a perfect match, but the overall look (dark, metallic, with yellow/gold scrollwork) works overall.
• Wrists:  Since they're hidden by the gloves, I didn't bother transmogrifying the wrists.
• Waist:  The old-school Belt of Might.  I am loving this belt and finding that it goes with damned near anything I want to dress up my troll in.
• Shield:  FOR THE HORDE!  Ahem, still the Tyrant's Shield.  (If you follow the link over to WoWhead, I have the pants... if you can call them pants... in that first screenshot in the bank, but opted against having my troll's cheeks free to the wind.  I'm curious now what they'd look like on a tauren.)
• Sword:  Blazing Rapier.  The sword, like the gloves, was something I was having trouble finding something I liked that worked through the set.  But, as I mentioned, my blacksmith is a swordsmith, and lo and behold, the Blazing Rapier.  It doesn't show up in the screen-grab from the armory, but if you look at the WoWhead link, you can see that it has its own fire aura.  This was especially awesome because I hate how (the admittedly cheap) Mending glow looked.  (If I can get a weapon of a higher ilvl than 346, I'll put something better on it.)

Evolution

My beta play has been slowed down by the mind-numbingness that is being asked to chair a search committee at work, and Diablo 3 will probably occupy my attention for a bit.  I'm a Loque'nahak kill from having finished Northern Exposure (Outland rares are being sneakier), and I've made back about 60k of what I spend on Poseidus (and then went and did Haris Pilton's bag achievement, and got a Kirin Tor ring, which was immensely handy).  I may break down and get a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth with account-wide mounts going in, because, let's face it, I can't be an engineer on every toon.  (Mostly due to the ore costs, really.)

So yeah, I've been in tying-up-loose-ends mode in WoW, and D3 isn't going to really change that.  What D3 does have me doing is thinking about the evolution in the complexity in game play in both the Diablo and the WoW worlds.

I mostly played a Rogue in Diablo.  I like playing an archer/ranged class, and you could still learn all the spells if you put enough points into magic.  I put a lot of points into magic.  Fire Wall was my go-to spell for practically everything, and I used Town Portal for extra light.  Yes, extra light.  I had the gamma turned all the way up, and I still needed more light.  The game was pretty simple: you just descend through increasingly lower levels of the dungeon.

Diablo 2, and its expansion, upped both the complexity of the story and the game play: you could enhance items with sockets via gems and runes; each class had unique skill sets and talents (rather than everyone learning the same magic spells); charms could further improve your character; and the game had a distinct storyline that wasn't just "get to the bottom of the dungeon and kill the big demon."  There was some flexibility (I had a stupidly huge amount of fun with a Barbarian dual-wielding throwing knives), and I could get away with things like stacking light radius or Charged Bolt procs on my armor.  (35%+ chance of Charged Bolt proc was a delicious, wonderful thing.)  I played several of the classes (Amazon, Mage, Assassin, Barbarian) that I immediately recognized the influence of when I moved on to WoW down the road.

So now we're looking at Diablo 3, and it's interesting to see just how much the evolution of WoW is influencing it in the same way D2 influenced the classes in WoW.  You can glyph skills to change their utility, and the quests and lore have been much more fleshed out.  The gameplay is a bit more... strategic?  Some skill sets work better for groups, some for single-target, and I've found myself basically trapping and disengaging with my demon hunter to kite bosses or groups around, much in the way I would with my WoW hunter.

Still can't rotate the camera, but I'd imagine that decreases the overall video/data load of the game by having a flat, if animated, canvas to work with.  Going back and forth between D3 and WoW (where I use click to move) is always an adjustment, as well.  (One of these days I'll give in and invert my D3 mouse buttons.)  I had to remap a lot of the default keybindings, as well, since I am a diehard qwasde user for in-combat movement.

Battletags were a nice addition, and through some experimenting with someone who had RealID disabled, but who I'd friended in D3 via battletag, we discovered that you can see someone you have battletag friended in WoW (that they're online, and what server they're on), but you can't see what character they're on, and you can't interact with them via the battletag/RealID communication or party invitation channels.  Also apparently it will tell people when I am in both WoW and D3.  Ahem.

Bottom line: I want Hungering Arrow in WoW. >.>

Beta Mists, 8

Okay, back to the beta!  D&D was canceled tonight, so I have some time to kill.

Which is good, because I'm in the Valley of the Four Winds now, in the area with the Turtles of DOOM.  I think I crashed out... ten times?  About that, to kill five turtles.  Erg.

Macros work if you put an ! in front of spell names.

Krasarang is still closed, but I've found a couple quests that point that way.  I'm gonna guess it's the next zone open.

Hm, looks like another 'you need to kill five things but they're way overfarmed' quests.

New favorite quest!  "Crouching Carrot, Hidden Turnip."

Fast forward a week:  I spent most of the week disconnecting every five minutes.  It's more stable now, and more zones are open, so yay! more to take pictures of.

Hadrian finally has a spec!  Of course, misdirection is still broken.

I rolled a Pandaren until he puked. o.O

The Jade Witch is finally fixed... and apparently there were more quests after that one that I couldn't get to before.  I guess I'm questing in the Jade Forest again.

Woo, crashed again.

New cave maps!  But, um, the map doesn't actually show up yet.

The Jade Serpent is beautiful!  I'd imagine that, like the green drakes, I'm never actually going to get that color for a mount, though.  (Still waiting on my green drake, dammit.)

Tried Temple of the Jade Serpent; group fell apart.  (Come on, people, it's beta, we're all still learning it. >.<)

But I hit 87 (current level cap), and got Stampede.  Which I can apparently cast while moving.

Valley of the Four Winds has the Tillers faction, which will, among other things, let you have your own little farm mini game, which isn't yet implemented.  Krasarang Wilds has the Anglers, which have fishing poles, a (slowly sinking?) raft, and a water bug mount that lets you walk on water.

Lots of NPCs have little notes (I'm a girl, NEEDS HOE OR RAKE, temp model) that are presumably for the developers, but I find them quite amusing in the meantime.

Database Sites

Wowhead:  A repository of items, quests, spells, NPCs and other information.  The search is spelling-dependent, but the user-submitted comments on items or quests can be extremely helpful.  Includes basic strategies for many raid and dungeon bosses.  Includes a transmogrification set gallery.

Thottbot:  Similar to Wowhead, but with a different interface.

Allakhazam:  Also similar to Wowhead, but with a different interface.

Wowpedia:  A wiki-based encyclopedia of WoW lore, including people, places, histories, and items, as well as game mechanics information.

Wowwiki:  An older wiki, which Wowpedia has, to some degree, replaced; updating is hit or miss.

Battle.net:  Blizzard's official site, including blogs, the Armory (character search), and other official game information.

Moon Guard Wiki:  A wiki created for Moon Guard, a role-playing server, including information useful both to general role-playing and to the Moon Guard community.

Gem & Sockets

Which gems activate which sockets?

• Red socket: red, orange, purple, prismatic
• Yellow socket: yellow, orange, green, prismatic
• Blue socket: blue, green, purple, prismatic
• Meta socket: meta
• Cogwheel socket: special cogwheels from engineering vendors

Diggerest

So I've got beta access, and Diablo 3 beta access, and I've gotten Duskhawk to 86 on the beta.  And what am I doing?

Archaeology on the live realms. >.<

This weekend I checked off Nerubian, Vrykul, Draenei, and Troll completions (I already had Orc done), which means I finished the Blessing of the Old God, the Nifflevar Bearded Axe, the Last Relic of the Argus (the most awesome thing I've gotten from archaeology so far), and, ahem, Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds.

I love the model for Zin'rokh.  I loved it back in Vanilla (not that I ever got it), and it's still one of my favorite sword models.  Surprisingly, the Troll completion was less frustrating than the Draenei one.  Having finished out the Orcs and everything of the Draenei once except the Last Relic, I had to go through thirteen more common item completions to get the Last Relic into my queue.  Zin'rokh?  I was actually trying to whittle down my only half-done list of Dwarf artifacts.  (Dwarf is still 25/31... I keep getting Fossil sites.)  At least the Dwarf artifacts got me to Diggerest.

Tol'vir I know is going to take forever.  I've completed all of the common ones at least once, and none of the rares, and I keep spawning Troll and Night Elf sites.  With my massive number of completed Night Elf commons, Tyrande's Favorite Doll has to be soon, right?  Right?  The Fossilized Raptor has been the same way for me.

I think the archaeology rares were a good idea in theory, but in practice?  Hardly anyone gets them while they're relevant to the current tier of equipment.  The fun items are far more... fun as rares.  Maybe the usable, Binds-to-Account equipment should have been less than epic, but more common, just to make it useful when you find it.

Beta Mists, 7

I've mostly been trying to get through quests in the Jade Forest, but I've run up against a couple buggy ones that I just can't do right now (the Jade Witch and Getting Permission).  I finally hit 86, though, and the Valley of the Four Winds is open, so I headed over there to see what it's got.

So far:

• OMG huge birds.
• The cutest little pig farm.
• New giant lizards.
• MOTHRAN. 
• Birds flying around with sacks of grain. o.O
• Stormstout brewery.
• The Cliffs of Despair over the KrasarangWilds, and New Taurajo.

Huge birds!

Cute pig farms!

Mothran!

Birds... carrying sacks of grain?

The Stormstout Brewery

The zone itself is pretty: rolling hills, nice trees, quaint little farms.  Oh, and stills.  This is Pandaria, after all, and for the longest time all we knew of them was Chen's Empty Keg.

Pretty trees!

New Taurajo in Krasarang

Whoops, got too far to one side for a screenshot.  Let's see where it ports us.  (Back to the wreck in Jade Forest.)

I haven't seen any quests yet, but that could just be the two bugged quest chains from the Jade Forest keeping me from moving on.  (If so, that's quite annoying:  previous expansions you could move on when you were high enough level for the next zone.)

Running around Jade Forest looking for any extra quests... There are cats that walk on water. o.O

Waterwalking cats

Accidentally ran into the Alliance's allies.  Whoops.  Now PVP + resurrection sickness.  Running on, a rogue sapped me, tried to kill me, but didn't dismount me.  Jump off a cliff into water, feign, camouflage, equip fishing pole that allows water breathing.  Now to just re-camouflage until PVP wears off...

Ended up in an archaeology site, and the fragments are in!  Pandaren's special fragments are oracle bones.  Hm... attacked by an Ancient Haunt after my last Survey, which dropped Mogu fragments.

Oh, hey.  If I go across the bridge into the Valley of the Four Winds, there's a quest.  From Chen Stormstout himself.

Okay, the Virmen are adorable.  Like rat murlocs.

Virmen