In Memorium

One of Straw Hat Pirates' longest-tenured members died this weekend.  In-game, he was best known as Mudcrutch, a warrior and a damned good tank, but he also went by Fwibid and, perhaps one of the most clever of funny names, Bwahaha.  (Imagine it in quest-giver text.)  A lot of us knew him as Steve.  He was Maklak's drummer until he moved back to Southern California, and you can hear him on their self-titled album.  (I recommend "Roseblood" - I listened to that a lot when my cat died a couple years ago.)

Mud was one of our officers during our last peak of raiding drama (ICC, wow), and he was the one who talked me down off ledges when I just wanted to say to hell with it and quit or disband.  He had just recently started playing Diablo 3 and was enjoying that quite a bit, and he had transferred a character over to his brother's server in WoW so they could play together more.  He was the guy who could freestyle riff Hozen lingo in guild chat, who joined one of those huge, invites-anyone guilds with a misspelled name just to see what their guild chat was like.  (Apparently anthropologically interesting.)

I'd known him almost eight years; when I first joined the guild, he was part of the group I hung out with on New Year's Eve to watch the fireworks in Thunder Bluff.  He'll be missed. :(

On classes

Why do I like the classes I play?  Why don't I like the ones I'm not?  A few bullet points:

Classes I'm playing:

Hunter

• Independence: I'm a solo player by nature, and being able to do so when I want to is great.  Hunters are great for soloing.
• Ranged: I have a ranged mentality; I like being far enough away to have a chance to run away if things go pear-shaped.
• Manageable rotation: Okay, so marksman doesn't really have that reputation, but for me, it works.  I can macro the core of it (Chimera/Steady/Arcane) and work in all the specials (Stampede, Crows, Rapid Shot, etc.) as they're available.  I can't make that work on every class.

Priest

• Multiple healing styles: A priest can go Disc or Holy, and within each, switch it up even more - single target, AOE, direct heals, indirect heals.  I love options.
• Reasonable healer soloing: I can quest as a disc priest and just not die.  Is this what it feels like to be a pally?  I'm not sure.

Rogue

• Stealth: I discovered the thrill of just walking by stuff to pick flowers way back in Azshara at level 50, and it's just wonderful.  I don't have to fight stuff unless I want to.  It's like flying before there was flying.
• Survivability: Evasion tanking the 2nd boss in the Black Morass for the last ~20% was a rush, and not doable on every class.

Shaman

• Chain Lightning:  I love elemental, and spamming chain lightning is a bit disturbingly satisfying, especially when it procs and you get double chains.
• Ghost Wolf: Happy puppy dances!

Warrior

• Shield Slam!  Shield slam is so fun it warrants an exclamation point rather than a colon.
• Charge:  I leveled in Battle Stance way too long just to keep using charge.
• Victory Rush:  Because hitting things makes you feel better!

Warlock

• FIRE.  Uh, yeah, that's most of it.  BURN ALL THE THINGS goes a surprisingly long way with me.  And I love my little goblin destro lock.

Druid

• Flight Form:  I'll admit it, I made the druid initially for faster herbing.  And then I discovered just how amazing flight form is: hop out of water, keybind, A BIRD!  As I said earlier today, such freedom.
• Healing:  My second favorite healing playstyle; variety of buttons, instant heals, some AOE "oh crap" options.
• Downside: I like the Balance playstyle, but moonkin form just does not do it for me.  If I could glyph to play Balance and still look like a Tauren, I would.   (Am I the only Resto druid not glyphed to look like a tree?)

Classes I'm not (really) playing:

Mage

• Main server is full.  That's pretty much my main reason my mage got stranded at 40.  I was enjoying fire, then moved her to move some heirlooms when server transfers were cheap.  Then I rolled my druid on my main server...

Death Knight

• Confusing rotations:  I don't know which buttons I'm supposed to push when.  I'm not sure which abilities really go with which spec.
• Starting zone:  I've played through the DK starting zone... five times now?  It's like the Worgen, Goblin, and Pandaren zones - once was enough.  Having the option would be nice, but having the option to skip it would also be nice.

Paladin

• Confusing rotations:  Same problem as the DK, really - I was okay until Mists, and then enough changed fundamentally that I don't know what I'm doing again.  There's even only one DPS spec and I'm not sure what buttons to push for AOE vs. single-target.
• Healing not compelling:  I tried healing briefly, but stopped because I couldn't figure out how to not run out of mana.  That was really unfamiliar.
• Upside: Since the paladin is my last character under 87 on my main server, I'm probably going to try her again when I finish my druid.  Maybe *gasp* tanking.

Monk

• Late to the game:  The monk suffers from being a new class when I'm full on my main server.
• Melee animations:  The monk animations override a lot of the best melee animations - undead female special melee attack, the flippy one.  I just... wasn't as interested when I saw that.

11 to go

9999 bones down, 11 mounts to go.  Bear & I are taking a break for today, I think.

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.