#10years10questions

The mistress of faffing herself, Alternative Chat, has asked for the community's help in her 10 Years :: 10 Questions project. Essentially, she's asking as many WoW players as possible to answer 10 simple questions about the game and their time playing it. Of course, I felt the need to throw my 2 copper in.

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?
10 years ago, World of Warcraft launched about a week or so after my birthday. One of my cousins had picked it up for himself and decided to get me a copy as a present.... not realizing that he would spawn an addiction that has so far lasted a decade. :P

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?
The first character I ever rolled was an undead rogue. I hated it. I moved on to a night elf druid and then eventually an undead warrior, which I kept playing into Burning Crusade.

3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?
At the time, I went Horde on Blackrock because that was where my cousin was. I have mainly stuck with Horde over the past ten years, although now I do have two max level Alliance characters in addition to my army of Horde.

4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?
It's very hard to narrow it down to one or even a couple of events that took my breath away. Being in Sunwell and seeing Kil'Jaeden come up for the first time is definitely one of them. Seeing Icecrown Citadel looming over Northrend for the first time, protected by armies and walls is certainly another. Karazhan is also very memorable to me as it was the first raid I ever did as current content.

5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?
Honestly, for me, it's the people. I love raiding and I love PvP, but they're nothing without great people to enjoy it with. I would rather spend my night shooting the shit and killing things with my friends than anything else.

6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?
In terms of raid zones, I've always called Karazhan and Ulduar my "happy places." I always go back, be it for transmog or just to run them for fun. In the world, I love sitting atop the mushrooms in Zangarmarsh.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?
The account that I play on now was started during Cataclysm, so it's not that high. Across my 11 level 90 characters, I have roughly 500 days played.

8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?
Now.... not so much. After leveling so many times, I have started to remember everything. I do read quests that I have never done or I've only done once or twice!

9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?
Not really, no. I do regret some friendships I have severed in-game but everything happens for a reason.

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?
WoW has truly had a huge impact on my life. Spending a lot of time communicating with people in game has given me more confidence in my interactions in real life. I used to have a fear of public speaking and I have always been fairly socially awkward, but spending so much time in Mumble with people or podcasting has given me a lot of practice! I've also made long-lasting friendships with people who I would have never met if it weren't for WoW. That's definitely the biggest and most important effect. :)

You can find the answers to #10years10questions from many other WoW community members over at Alternative Chat's blog!

Alphas & Chat & News, Oh My!

Sure, it's old news by now... because, come on, it happened five minutes ago and the internet moves fast!
Blizzard announced that they're starting Warlords of Draenor alpha testing. Invites are slated to start going out soon(™), but don't get too excited - as with any other alpha, I'm sure that the first batch will be going to fansites like Wowhead before anyone else. Apparently there is a ton of content that is ready for testing. Blizzard's official post about alpha can be found here.

In addition, another wave of Heroes of the Storm alpha invites have been spotted lurking about mailboxes. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get one... eventually.

Blizzard also sneakily rolled out chat functionality on the Battle.net desktop client. Now you can chat with your online friends from the client without logging into a game. :)

[How To Strain Your Dragon]

Well, well, well. I've been extraordinarily neglectful of my blog as of late. In the time that I've been absent, I've moved across the country (for the second time in a year!) and started university. A whole lot of news related to Blizzard franchises has come and gone. I've missed a lot of opportunities to blog!
Recently, I've been playing a lot of D3 and, as always, a whole lot of WoW. I've dabbled in the WildStar and ESO betas, played a bit of Rift here and there and messed around with a bunch of console games as well.
I'm back with a vengeance. I think. I'm sure I'll be posting something of substance eventually. ;)

Forged Steel (Warrior Week)

Hello hello, people of the internet! I know I have missed a few alt appreciation weeks but I'm back with a vengeance (heh) for warrior week.

I've always really enjoyed playing warriors, particularly protection spec. There is no other tank spec that I enjoy playing nearly as much, although I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the charging, the great damage output, the strong defensive cooldowns... either way, I have tons of fun playing prot.  I've also messed around with fury quite a bit and also love playing it. As for arms, I haven't fooled around with it a lot but I do intend to do so in the future. Gotta try everything once, right?

Although I don't currently have a level-capped warrior, I have not one but two prot warriors kicking about - one without BoAs and on a different realm as the majority of my toons. That one in question is in the 80s and currently making her way through Cataclysm content. The other is in the mid-70s and hanging out in Northrend with DEHTA. Eventually, they're both going to make it to 90 but I'm taking my sweet time with them since I usually rush through leveling as quickly as possible. It's nice to charge around shield slamming all of the things, doing quests I haven't done in a long time and re-exploring zones.

P.S. I'm going to do all of the alt appreciation weeks that I've missed over the last couple of weeks. Better late than never, right? ;)

[An Occupation of Time]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's been a while! I can't provide you with too much insight as to why I haven't been blogging, since I don't really know myself. But hello again, people of the internet! I figured I would just toss a quick update post out there before really getting back into the swing of things.

So, the big question is... what have I been up to?

Is that.... is that a goat?

Leveled a (gasp!) Alliance side paladin from 1-90. It's my first time leveling a blue side character past level 60. I leveled her to 80 healing dungeons as holy and swapped it up to retribution for the second leg of the journey from 80-90. I've put a lot of work into her since hitting 90 at the middle of last week - I've been through a whole lot of LFR and spent a whole lot of time on the Timeless Isle. When I hit 90, it was at 414 ilvl and now it's slightly over 500. It was a lot of fun seeing how long it took to gear up to the required ilvl for the current tier's LFR.

Other than that, I've also leveled not one prot warrior to 80... with a second one in the works, currently in the 70s and tanking through Northrend dungeons. Have you figured out that I'm a crazy altoholic yet?

The Lesson of the Iron Bough (Monk Week)

Leeeeeet's get appreciating some alts! This week's class is the monk. The newest class in the game, they are a hybrid class that is extremely fun to play. Unfortunately, I don't have a level capped monk myself... I'm trying to work on it, though. I have numerous monk alts scattered across different servers. The one on my home server of Illidan has been grossly neglected and outleveled by a lot of the other ones. Every time I log in to level him, something comes up and I have to stop after a level or two. He is a Pandaren, of course, because is there really any other way to do it? ;)

Although my monk experience is limited, I've been playing Mistweaver on some and Brewmaster on another. Monk tanking is really fun and monk healing even more so. I haven't really fooled around with Windwalker too much yet, but I'm sure that I will eventually. However, I do know that when I come across a MW monk in arena I groan - even when I'm playing disc. Their heals are powerful and they also have a lot of utility.

If anyone has some monk tips and tricks for me or think they can get me more interested in actually leveling the one class I don't have too much experience with, please let me know!

The Black Heart of Hellscream

There's nothing quite as exciting to me as patch day, particularly when it's an endgame patch. When the servers go down the night before, I squeal in happiness. I know that when they come back up, there will be new things to see, do, collect and explore. Despite the problems that can and do happen with a massive content patch like 5.4, Blizzard works around the clock to make it launch as smoothly as they possibly can.

5.4 is massive, there's no two ways about it. There are huge changes and tons of additions to the game. I've had a lot of people ask me questions about different patch features throughout the day and figured "hey, may as well blog about it." I figure that if I can lay out all of the information in an easy to understand way and help even one person, my job is done.

Credit to Keo (@tempusfrangit)

The biggest visual change in 5.4 is something that's immediately noticeable upon going outside of your faction's Shrine. The once beautiful Vale of Eternal Blossoms has been scarred, burnt and destroyed with hatred in Garrosh's quest for power. The water is tainted, the land is marred and it's rather jarring to look at.

Where mages once crittermorphed moths in front of Mogu'shan Palace....

Now lies a testament to Garrosh's greed.

Although we've lost the beauty of the Vale, we have a new place to explore. The Timeless Isle is located off the coast of The Jade Forest. It may look small, but appearances are deceiving - it's jam packed full of quests, rares, treasure and new world bosses. Not to mention more glorious, glorious achievements.

So many rares packed on such a small island can be really overwhelming. Thankfully, my good friend WoWMartiean has made another excellent guide for the Timeless rarespawns. These videos may seem fairly long, but they thoroughly cover the many rares that can be found on the Island. You can find part one here and part two here. In addition to the rares, there are many different types of treasure chests hidden around the Isle. MMOChampion has an awesome guide to the locations of these chests here, although I am much preferring to explore and find them on my own. ;) Some of these treasure chests contain Timeless Armor Caches and pieces, which will allow you to create a 496 item level piece of gear for your current gear specialization. These are all bind-to-account and are an incredibly simple way to get some new gear for alts you may have neglected or who just plain need the gear. There are also more than 50 new vanity items that drop from mobs around the Isle and an achievement for obtaining them all. Whew!

Also introduced with patch 5.4 is the endgame raid for Mists of Pandaria - the Seige of Orgrimmar. In this raid, we'll fight our way through the now desecrated Vale of Eternal Blossoms and end up knocking right on the front gates of Orgrimmar to take the battle right to Garrosh Hellscream himself. I was lucky enough to down the first two bosses in the also newly-introduced flex raiding mode on Tuesday evening and so far, I am really enjoying what I'm seeing. Throughout the raid, we will fight off the corrupted army of Garrosh's new Horde. Both Alliance and Horde alike will delight in the eventual fall of the man who dares to calls himself the Warchief of the Horde. 

Seige of Orgrimmar load screen.

Flex is a new raid mode introduced that will allow you to do current content with your friends from the same faction who are on other realms. This difficulty can be done with anywhere between 10 and 25 players and the raid difficulty will scale based on how many people are in the group. Flex has a different lockout from LFR and normal modes and awards item level 540 gear.


Also introduced in 5.4 (getting tired yet?!) are the Proving Grounds. You can access them through an inital quest in your faction's Shrine that takes you to the Temple of the White Tiger in Kun-Lai Summit. The Proving Grounds are a way to test your mettle as a healer, tank or DPS role in a solo environment. You are provided with four NPC companions throughout your trials and can progress through bronze, silver and gold ranked challenges. After completing gold rank, you are able to head into endless mode, which is exactly what it sounds like - endless waves of mobs to fight. They're a great way to learn a new role or hone your skills at the one you already play. But beware - your stats are scaled down a bit. ;)

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more new things in patch 5.4, such as mounts, pets, new armor sets, legendary cloaks, glyphs and even a new boss at the Darkmoon Faire! But... I felt it was best to leave you guys some stuff to see on your own.

As usual, if you have any questions or want clarification on anything, feel free to leave a comment or talk to me on Twitter!