The End (?)

Last week I got two achievement fronts I missed.

The first, Veteran of the Alliance, 75 won RBGs. Ended up with a rating near 1800 and full prideful set.

The second, 200 Mount Parade. got it without pre-ordering the WoD expansion and getting the free mount. Instead, I purchased a Grand Ice Mammoth for 7k.

Why so ?

Well, a little birdie is telling me this is the end, I won't be pre-ordering and my WoW days are coming to an end, about 10 years later.

I've been reading a little on WoD, and... THERE'S NOTHING I LIKE.

1) Graphics, location and story. WoD is TBC revisited. The same kind of graphics. Absolutely hated the graphism of buildings, pinnacles, and the orange/purple colors used in TBC. Location ? Outland/Draenor. Back to Draenei. The race I disliked the most, ugly, poor, extra-terrestrial lore, with no connection with the medieval tolkien races of humans, elves, orcs, goblins, trolls. UFOs in Azeroth ? A joke.

2) Level cap 100. Really ? Is this something to cheer about ? 

3) Garrisons. It's a joke, a mix of old ideas from SWTOR, LOTRO, and whatnot. I've had a house in LOTRO for years.

4) Flexible 10-25 raiding. Couldn't care less. Is this supposedly a new feature ? Flex was already like this in MoP. What they'll do is.. remove LFR code, replace the "Flex name" with "Normal", replace "Normal" with "Heroic" and "Heroic" with "Mythic", with a 20-fixed size. 

5) New character models. Really ? 99.9% of all times, you're looking at the back of your char, and looking at others armor. You don't see their faces or body. And even if you see them, during raids or PVP... do you really care for a high-res model ? Trash.

6) Level squish and attribute erasing: "hit, parry, dodge, expertise, and reforging". Easy mode for all the dumbasses that can't cap hit because they have no idea how to check it.

7) "armor will automatically change stats based on your spec". This is targetted to hybrids, because people want to have only one gear set and play different styles. Nice. Should have been done eons ago. But not a feature. More like an "easy mode".

8) Bag space without quest items. YAY ! New feature ? RIFT was launched years ago and had it from the start. It's a new idea. But call it a feature ? Argh, should be part of the core game.

9) The rest of the "new stuff", like buying a mount for "make-a-wish" foundation, or the Adventurer's Guide for noobs, is trash.

So, this will be WoD. The only good part is that it will have new achievements, and it will have PVP, which I could get into, e.g. for getting the Battlemaster title I miss. But still.

This is the future. As for MoP...

Fact of the matter is, I disliked PVE like hell this expansion. PVP was much better, specially after I found OQ. Unfortunately, to play properly PVP, I can' be casual, so I would have to be in a PVP guild for more successful gaming. Unfortunately, I cba answering to a teenage leader with rocking hormones that starts yelling because someone lost a base. So I would have to find a mature PVP guild. Is there such a thing ? Rarely, I find people like that, specially above 1700 rating, but overall... well, it's not just that, it's the game itself. 

It's OLD news.

So...

My subscription will end in 2 days. I have an 11th lvl 60 ready  (thank you Pet Leveling!) for pre-boosting to 90, if I buy WoD. But. What if I don't and buy it later ? Ok, I'll loose 600-lvl professions boosting. What if I don't buy it, ever ?

Nice thought.

Sell in May and go Away

My WoW luck returned in May, after a dry April where I got no mount drops. 

But this week, I got both the ZG tiger and the Onyx serpent from Huolon, both 1% or so drops.

Elune be praised, 195 mounts.

If i buy 3 more, 21000 gold, buy the expansion with a free mount, and finish the Argent farm on Friday, I'll have ... 200 mounts, and a mega achievement :)

EDIT: Another mount: The drake of the North Wind, from Altairus, dropped, after 142 tries (0.8% or so rate). One less Cata mount to farm :). May is gooooood !

Ah...forgot to say... I'VE GOT PROVEN ASSAILANT !!!

That was a 2-week's effort inside Proving Grounds, to reach Wave 30 of the Endless Damage.

The first week was spent farming some raids/dungeons, because  I was stupid enough to trash some weapons/off-hand I actually needed, because of the gems. Luckily, most items dropped the first time I went in.

The gear for Proving Grounds is normalized to 463, but enchants and gear are not, as well as the legendary socket for specific ToES or Thunder King weapons. So...I had fixe my gear to maximize the number of gems, focus on "haste" as Destruction and then...

I went for the kill. One week later, it was done, I got past 30 waves. Actually, I got to 34 but then my food/flask/buffs expired and it was late so I gave up.

It felt fantastic, as good as the Kanrethad fight, which was a bit easier because gear was not normalized. The same for Brawler's guild, it was also quite fun and hard but gear was not normalized as it should be. So every noob and his mother gets it, eventually. But not this.

All in all, 

"PROVEN ASSAILANT" IS THE ONLY REAL SOLO CHALLENGE FOR DPS
in Mists of Pandaria.

My 2 cents, of course. 

Now...I really think I'll call it quits if I can get 200 mounts. 

6 months off WoW would be great. May be, just may be, I'll stop for good. 

Lady Luck strikes again

It was a funny month, this one. I tried luck again on a few more archaeology hunts.

And it paid OFF ! The Tol'vir gods helped me and gave me my Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank, summoned by the Scepter of Azj'Aqir.

This brings my total mount collection to 187...oh boy, it's getting close to the 200 achievement mark !

Besides that, I've been focusing on finishing dungeoning. Both fronts are done.

I did my Gold Challenge Dungeon runs with an imba-team, 1-shotted all 9. Defiler set, mount title, KTHXBYE.

As to Glory of the Pandaria Hero, I went to OQ, joined a team to finish most, and was left with Nizao Temple. For that, I created my own OQ premade and ended in style. After that, I helped the members doing some achievements I knew already, and it was pretty fun.

Lord of Insomnia is married to Lady Luck

Yes they are. Why ? Because it was thanks to an early waking up that I went to Karazhan to, for the 204th time (at least), kill Attumen and try to get my Fiery Warhorse's Reins.

And guess what, on the first kill of the morning, it dropped, on the first ever char I made, my brave Warrior, and it made my day.

Double doing

Two more steps in WoW, one of them, a cross-expansion achievement, the Vial of the Sands.

It took 4 years or so, but it finally showed up on a canopic jar, a rare occurrence of archaeology which had a further 2% drop rate for the vial.

How many did I open ? Less than a 100, more than 10. So, not too good, not too bad.

The second one, the Celestial Family, is not luck based. Well, a bit may be, in what concerns the hit or crit chance of legendary pets. It took a bit of time, to get all 4 legendary pets, meaning 12 coins overall, so around 9 weeks of fierce legendary pet battle against all the Celestial Tournament opponents.

A Knight's Tale

Season 15, started, and I decided to give it a go, to get my RBG saddle, my RBG mount and RBG titles.

Going good. Reached 1600 rating, and... I'm now a Knight ! Yes, I know, I've been a Knight and Lt.Commander since 2008, yada yada, but this is an RBG knighthood.

Besides, I've been collecting gold in order to buy myself the Gold 9/9 Challenge Mode, together with its transmog crap, titles, and achievements. People are asking 110-140k gold, so it's within range. Actually, I respawned my account just for that, but since I still have some time until CMs are disabled...

Besides that, and doing PVP pet battles, and weekly Celestials, there's nothing more to do. Arenas are gone, as Strings went AFK, and besides doing some flex modes (oh yes, killed Garrosh in flex a few days ago), there's not much else to do.

Meanwhile, I'm getting better in the RBG business, now as destro (shadowburns on healers are so good, dear lord) , or demo, when flag carrying or guarding needs doing.

About celestial headaches

I FINISHED THE CELESTIAL TOURNAMENT

It took about two weeks, leveling pets and searching strategies. In the first week, I had not enough pets to battle through, but in the second week, it was a matter of finding the highest rares to level or set common pets as rares, and actually getting it done. Six days into the week, and down went Lorewalker Cho, Dr. Ion Goldbloom, Sully, their respective 3-pet crews, and in the end, four legendary pets.

As a reward, the 20th cub pet, my "Crazy Cat Man" title, as a proper achievement.

Needless, to say, this thing is HARD. I'll need to win it another 9 times, with different challenges, like Blingtron 4K or Wise Mari, and get the rest of the tournament pets and achievements. So more hardness incoming :p

With all this petting, I nearly stopped my PVP, has I had done enough to reach 1500 RBG rating. 1600 means Knighthood (I'm Lt.Commander on Lock and Knigh Champion on Pala, but those are vanilla titles), so I've been pushing, but I'm stuck around 1590, always loosing the critical battle.