Bugging

There's quite a few members in my guild that have expressed a desire to run some of the old world content. A lot of them didn't have 60's back in the day, and some of them (like myself) just didn't get in to a raiding guild back then or for whatever reason didn't see the things. So, there's been a lot of talk about it, and even some people going off and actually doing it.

As for me, I'm kinda torn. Yeah, it would be neat to see some of that stuff, but a lot of it is also such a push over for level 70's, that's it's really not a challenge. Furthermore, there's not really anything it for me, per se. Just some fun times, right?

There's a number of old world raids that I haven't completed. Heck, I've never even set foot in BWL or Naxx. Last night, however, after our raid, a guildie asked if I wanted to do AQ40. I got summoned just after an attempt at the Twin Emperors. They said they had worked for a couple nights on it, but the fight just looked trivial. There was 20 of us that easily took down the Emperors. After that, I was kind of bored. We pulled some of the trash mobs after that. Bug mounts dropped like crazy. I even got a cool yellow one. It's a shame that you can only use them in AQ though. Oh well.

I guess some of these old world instances are basically like a few of the 5-mans. Yeah, I could go in and solo Mauradon, but why? I've never completed Wailing Caverns, Ragefire Chasm, Razorfen Downs, or Razorfen Kraul, but I don't feel that I really have to. I find it more of a challenge for the 25-man content we're in now.

I guess that's the beauty of this game though. Everyone plays it differently, so it appeals to many different people and play styles. But hey... at least I got a cool bug mount. :)

Final Dings

Last night, I finally got my priest to level 70. So, that makes 3 70's on my current account. And I found myself thinking, "What do I do now?" Oh sure, every piece of gear that he has can be upgraded, with some of them probably being simple quests. But I'm not sure how much grinding I want to do.

I've been through the whole grinding process once with Leiandra. She's exalted with all the 5-man instances and also Violet Eye and Aldor. I do need to work on some Sporegar rep for the new herbalism bag. I could always farm mats, but that seems rather boring. If I were to do dailies, I suppose I'd want to do them with one of my more recent 70's for the SSO rep, but then it will take me longer to do most of them since Leiandra is such a killing machine. I'm looking forward to instancing with my priest, but not really looking forward to pugging anything. And most of my guild is way beyond the recent 70 gear level.

So, what do I do? I logged on to EQ2 to check out the new content there. lol.

But I'm doing that for more of a distraction. My plan of action is to get these other two geared... I just hope to do it with the minmal amount of grinding. Instance crawling with a good group would be fun... just not sure where to find a good group. lol.

On the side note of EQ2: I totally don't remember how to play any of my toons. I even have to ask people where I should be leveling, so I started a new toon. And this is going to sound gay, but I started a female Fae (think fairy with wings and all). But the reason I did it was (A) I wanted to see new content, and I'd seen that starting Isle (is that still there?) too many times, and (B) I thought my daughter would really love it. I tried to show her this morning, but there servers were down or something. Oh yeah... that's one of the things I hated about EQ2.

Old Skool UBRS

After a horrible, but successful Magtheridon run, and some honor farming for AV weekend, a small bunch of us thought it would be fun to run through UBRS just for kicks. There were 4 of us, and 2 of us had played long enough to remember the days when UBRS was kind of the "introduction" to raiding. Heck, we could also remember when UBRS was 15-man, but that's even more off the topic.

Our group consisted of myself (on my mage), one of our pally tanks (who was Retribution for the weekend, like usual), Elemental Shaman, an alt priest (level 51), and oddly enough, a 70 Pug hunter, that happened to be outside the instance portal while we were waiting for everyone to get there. (No summoning stones for us.)

The thought process in getting to the decision to run UBRS was something like, "Hey... won't this be fun?" And it kind of was, but it kind of wasn't. It might be fun to go run with a full group of 70's so we could just bust through it, but there's just too much trash to make it fun for just a group of 5. I'm not complaining or calling for a "Nerf UBRS". I'm just saying that nostalgic shouldn't have to take that long. :)

The most entertaining part of the evening was that the priest, who happened to be healing when it was needed, kept getting charged and pretty much one-shotted. I can't tell you how many times I heard "WTB rez, please." All said and done, with full red gear, I think she had a 1g repair bill though.

It got late, and right after The Beast, we decided to call it. Nobody else died at all. (And I do have to thank our priest for saving my butt quite a few times.) But there also wasn't really any motivation to see the rest. We'd shown 2 people most of what we endured over and over again at level 60.

I always thought it would be cool if Blizzard went back and did all the old skool instances with a heroic setting. Now having set foot in UBRS one more time... I'm really glad they didn't do that.

Disappointment with the Skyguard

As I mentioned, I am having a lot of fun on some of these daily quests. I'm sure it will wear off when I've done them for like the 100th time. Part of the appeal, I'll admit, is the promise of future rewards. I can't wait to get the [Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry]. But that will take me a bit of time. For a more immediate award, I focused on the flight path at honored reputation with the Sha'tari Skyguard.

Now, I'll admit that I didn't do any research on this flight path. From what friends said (or at least what I remembered), once you hit honored, you got another flight path down to Blackwind Landing. So, last night, I burned a little extra midnight oil (okay, well past midnight after all the other things I did), and made sure I hit honored. I turned in my quest to hit honored, and strutted over to the guy that would be the flight master. I was puzzled when, upon talking to him, he didn't open a map like all other flight masters do. And then I was just plain disappointed when I finally figured out that this flight was only between two points. With my porting abilities, there's almost no reason to take this flight path. Oh well... I took it once. I'll eventually get the Nether Mount itself, I suppose. And there's still Airman's Ribbon to look forward.

Dun Morogh Airfield

After Adventar told me about a little expedition he had up to the airfield near Iron Forge, I had to go too. Personally, I thought it was no longer accessible, but it's really not that hard to get to at all. WoWWiki has a good article on how to get there using one of three ways. I used the third way as that was where Adventar went (and the video linked on WoWWiki was of help as well). The only challenging part was the first jump behind the tree. I did it pretty easily the first time I went up, but then when Byasaz and Mattosaur wanted to come along with me, it took us a bit more time. But we finally made it up to the airport.

We explored a bit after that and found the trolls (level 8 or so) constantly fighting the dwarves up there. The dwarf guard in the picture above was crying, but who knows what about. It's just a fun place to visit... once. Unless you're gonna be farming for linen, you're probably okay if you don't come here more than once. The other place we explored was on the top of Iron Forge. Byasaz said it was the second highest elevation point in all of Azeroth. What's the first? I have no idea.

So, after we took this shot, I opened a portal for my friends, and decided to have one more adventure for the evening. With a stack of Light Feathers that I always carry, I casted slow fall, mounted up, and then jumped off the mountain towards Menethil Harbor. I had to dismount and recast slow fall 2 times before it expired with me only about 10 feet above the water's surface, so the fall was about a minute and a half. It was a great ride. Almost like parachuting in real life, just without all that annoying wind in my hair, and I didn't lose a contact either. As you can see from the map, I landed on the other side of Menethil Harbor. I'd highly recommend this jump for any mage or priest. I'm not sure that anyone else would survive the fall or be able to glide for quite as long.

Zul'Aman

I had to create a whole different label for this post because I had so much fun doing it. Yes, we ran Karazhan last night, but it was the beginning bosses. Do you really want me to write about that?

So, after the raid, I went and goofed off with my friend, Justicar. We headed out to Eastern Plaguelands to 2-man parts of Stratholme. On our way over, we exacted some of my revenge on the Crimson Courier and his Crimson Bodyguards. (After all the times they got me, you can bet they'll die a lot more when I'm up near EPL in the future.) It's amazing how easy Stratholme has become at level 70. 45-minute Baron run, you say? I'm guessing that we could do it in about 15 without even trying much. We accidentally pulled a few groups at once and laughed at how relatively easy it was to shew away the gnats.

Then I suggested we go check out the new instance in the Ghostlands. Of course the portal to the instance is blocked, this time by a huge wooden door as you can see in the picture. But you can see the swirly green just to the edge of the door.

The area around it is quite beautiful. There's some design touches of a Zul'Gurub type area in STV, which makes sense being that the trolls will inhabit this one as well. There's various towers that you can climb on. And while it is completely deserted of mobs atm, I assume that once patch 2.3 (or whenever Zul'Aman is released) comes out, there will be a few more inhabitants here. There's also two wide waterfalls as you walk up the path to Zul'Aman. I know I'm a sucker for waterscapes, especially rivers, steams, and/or waterfalls, but I thought this looked really, really cool.

There's a summoning stone on the path up to the instance, that got me thinking about how easy it would be for Alliance players to raid Silvermoon City after getting summoned up to Zul'Aman. It also got me wondering how Alliance players will get to Zul'Aman. If flying up to EPL and riding the mount all the way up is the answer, just shoot me now. Maybe I'll have a permanent alt sit up at that meeting stone. lol.

I find it intriguing how the instance portals of unopened instances are closed off. There's obviously the one here at Zul'Aman. There's one in southern Wintersprings that I assume leads to Hyjal, but not the Caverns of Time variety. There's one in Stormwind between the Trade District and Old Town. And I believe there's one in Tanaris at Ulman? (Hmm.. help me out with the name of that one.) Anyone know of any other currently sealed off instance portals? If not... it may be time for me to do more exploring after raids. heh.