Flu

You must have noticed a lack of updates recently, regardless of my claims of being back. Well, it's Winter and I came down with a pretty nasty case of flu. Till I get better, no WoW or TBC for me - I am staying in bed and I can't stand the way Warcraft looks on my laptop's old video card.

Big thanks to The Instance!

I would like to thank The Instance podcast (link in the sidebar) for bringing some new visitors to the blog (and also, welcome to all of you). Although Andrew totally butchered my surename, which should be prenounced mee-hal-ski, it is nevertheless a great publicity.

I am just-back from the Christmas holiday, feeling a bit sick, but ready to do some more exploration for your viewing pleasure.

So, if you are returning viewer - new content coming up in virtually no time, and if you are new - big welcome, take time to catch up with previous posts and glad to have you here :)

My dad kicks ass

Hey, I am still on the holiday blogger-break, but I thought I gotta share this one with you.

My dad is a graphic design professor at the university - one of his assignments this year had students create t-shirts for graphic designers related to the different aspects of contemporary culture.

One of the students produced the shirt my dad knew I must have - so he made him do a second copy and gave it to me for Christmas.

Although the shirt is kind of ripped off from Pure Pwnage concept, I love it. And my dad definitely kicks major ass.

The Christmas T-Shirt :)

Out for Christmas

Happy holidays to everyone!

I am off for Christmas in the land without Warcraft. Will be back at around 26th, and eager to post more goodies for you!

Bloodbath

Not a typical post on my account. This time I will talk, or rather rant about one particular quest which took me over 45 minutes to complete.

The quest name is Boiling Blood or Boiled Blood and the description seems fairly simple; kill some Bleeding Hollows (yet another type of redskins), collect their blood and boil it at the cauldron. The quest is recommended as a solo type, which I gladly accepted, since my guildmates are not present in Burning Crusade Beta and in such case I much more prefer one-on-one encounters...

...only that this quest definitely was not one-on-one, but instead more of a me-versus-the-world.

Bloody Bleeding Hollow Blood to Boil

First, a bit about the wording... Bleeding Hollow Blood??? Come on, you must be Bloody kidding me! Combined with my survival skills based on Bloodthirst skill... Too much blood for me. This is not Doom! It's The Bloody Crusade!... excuse me, BURNING one. You see where I'm getting at.

Anyhooooow, the fight takes place next to the encampment of Bleeding Hollow orcs, filled with patrols. All mobs are in level range of 60-61, with a few level 59'ers thrown in for a good measure. Patrols can be divided into two types: redskins on foot and redskins on a mount. And there are tons of them.

I believe it was dwarves that keep saying "Watch your back!" - hell of a good advice for this quest. You need to constantly turn your camera around (while fighting not-so-easy mobs) in order to avoid adds. One mob can easily take the health bar down to around 25% - two is a headache... and many, many times I had to deal with 3 or 4.

This peon was pulled just in time, before the patrol arrived

How you ask me?

First of all, there are so many patrols. Second, the patrols intersect their routes frequently, so while you are pulling your mob away from one it is very easy to move into another. Third, while the redskins on foot are pretty straightforward, the mounted ones will unmount and both the redkin orc and his mount (generally, a tough level 60 wolf) will start fighting with you.

Blood does not drop very often, either (bloodless mobs?), so it is good family fun for the entire evening. Or at least something in the range of 30 minutes, including good dozen of corpse runs.

The cauldron and its hosts

Once you are done with collecting 12 pieces of blood it is time to head to the cauldron. It is being guarded by a level 61 Necrolyte and its two level 61 skeleton minions. Fortunately the minions are quite manageable, although they can be pain in the ass, considering the fact big daddy is constantly hurling fireballs at you.

The cauldron has no less (and possibly more) than 5 different patrols passing by. Main problem here is the aggro radius level 60 character has. It is huge! You may think you're in a safe zone, and wham! here comes a patrol... and another one... and another one.

Needless to say, I didn't make it that time.

Had enough? Hell, no! There is also a green blob patrolling the area, named Eye of Grillok. If it sees you, you have few seconds to kill it (which is easy, provided you are not already engaged with tons of other mobs, who keep on dazing you and slowing you down). If not killed, it's owner, another nearby necrolyte, and his two skeleton minions are sure to join the party!

Once you eliminate all the patrols and guards you need to hurry. Respawn rate is pretty high and usually you will have around a minute to boil the blood.

Not that easy!

You boil the blood one at the time (12 vials needed total). It is a channeled action, taking approximately 2 or 3 seconds. Once you produce a vial of boiled blood, tons of little scarabs will spawn around the cauldron. They will all be yellow at first, and then randomly turn red and start attacking you.

Typical scene: 21 scarabs, 3 patrols and some extras, so you don't get bored.

Scarabs, although level 61, are not very tough and don't hit for much, but once they gang up on you, it becomes quite a challenge to stay alive.

After countless corpse runs, cleaning the area again and again I managed to finish the quest. All that for mere 89 silver and a follow-up quest.

Meanwhile, other simpler quests ask you to kill 20 mobs and reward 2 gold... Imbalanced? Definitely. I hope they will fix it before TBC comes out... Or actually, hell no! I went through this, why shouldn't the others?

On a lighter note, I noticed a very nice little addon to the interface. Apart from the fact (which I think I did not post) that the map by default displays coordinates now, the quest window reports how many people would it take to complete a quest.

Quest window recommends 3 players for the task

Of course, as you can guess from this rant, the recommendations don't always reflect the reality of some quests, but once polished up, this could be a really good one.

No ball on Caverns of Time

I decided to have a look at Caverns of Time today. In order to do so I had to travel miles and miles all the way from Thrallmar to Dark Portal to Swamp of Sorrows (fly) to Undercity to Orgrimmar (fly) to Tanaris to Caverns of Time.

It took... quite a bit of time.

There should be an easier way to get to Kalimdor from Outland, if you ask me. I noticed some portals to Orgrimmar next to the Dark Portal, but they were not clickable... maybe not implemented yet.

Eye of Storm envoys

In both Undercity and Orgrimmar I noticed Eye of Storm envoys. No ball here - you must be level 70 to enter this particular battleground. Well, that's what happens when you join beta as late as I did. I think I will pass on even attempting to level up to 70, since by the time I would the expansion will actually be released and I will have to do the same thing again.

Once I finally made it to the Caverns of Time I at least got some eye candy to share :)

Caverns of Time entrance from Tanaris desert

The dragons that used to roam around the area are all-but-one gone. It creates absolutely no problem to run into the place. The long spiral tunnel guarded by Keepers of Time faction (neutral, no aggression there) takes you deep down underground, to the main chamber.

The tunnel itself is filled with strangely positioned artifacts from all around Azeroth. Broken statues, lamps, fragments of architecture - all thrown at strange angles into the walls of the corridor. The setting really manages to establish a concept of time travel, where dimensions and places blend together in unexpected fashions.

The following four screenshots were taken during my journey down the rabbit hole.

Finally, I arrived at the main chamber, where keepers of time walk around the main pedestal. The pedestal supports a large dragon and intricate hourglass mechanism, undoubtedly powering the time travel.

Main chamber in the Caverns of Time

There is a number of smaller corridors leading away from the chamber - each "decorated" suitably to the mission it represents. Enthusiastically I have thrown myself on all of them, just to receive the following message: "You must first complete the quest Caverns of Time. You also need to have The Burning Crusade installed".

Access Denied :(

Frustrated after a long run all the way from Outland, I decided not to look for the quest and call it a day. Not a very productive one.

A little bit of exploration

Impatient creature I am. I could not just sit there in surroundings of Thrallmar and quest like I am supposed to. I decided, therefore, to travel a bit and do some sightseeing and screen-capturing for your enjoyment.

Don't ask me what is on the pictures. For most of the time I was just running for my life on my non-epic mount who does not fly. I did not get very far either. Just far enough to see there is indeed a lot of content to be explored and I better level up if I am to survive in higher level areas.

So, without much further ado, here are the screenshots:

Be careful, and don't fall

And look who's talking. I fell.

Blood Elf on a chicken (NPC)

How I endanger my life to bring you the best shots


A pass to the next zone


Cenarion Expedition cleaning up what I dragged behind.
My Heroes!


This zone is so pretty I did not even remember its name!


The creatures are amazing also...


One more shot, for a good measure.


Latest Draenei technology allows compression of your
flight masters into the size of Rubik's Cube.
(really: a missing model placeholder)


Neutral city, for grabs by either faction.
Could not figure how to do it,
but I was way too low level anyway.


Remember the rhino-like creatures chasing me in 4th screenshot?
They were guarding this.


Back to the relative safety of Blood Elves' Falcon Watch.

Fight Mechanics

While slowly making my way through Outland (one step, second step, corpse run, third step... you get the idea) I had a chance to fight many times. In fact sometimes it felt like too many times. In fact it was not so much of "had a chance" case, as "had to"...

Throughout the fights I noticed that the mob AI seems to be improved over what I am used to from standard WoW play. I cannot confirm it in 100%, but the opponents seem to have their own fight tactics, making it much more challenging.

When fighting two mobs at the same time, I often found it fairly difficult to keep both of them in front of me. Especially in case of humanoids, they tend to have some limited flanking ability, positioning one in front of me and one hitting from the back.

It could be all a blind chance, but I have a feeling that it is a conscious design decision. Harder? Yes. More challenging? Yes. More fun? Hell, yes!

Hiding underground

I found one particular type of creatures most interesting - the underground ones. You might have seen something similar in Dune or That movie with Kevin Bacon (I think) where they fight the underground worm-thingies (I may be not 100% correct on the second title). They come in many flavors; Bursters, Tunnelers, and whatnots, but they have one thing in common - an interesting attack tactic.

You cannot be the first to attack the underground mobs for a very simple reason - they are hidden and although you can see a pile of rubble travel through the ground, you are unable to target the creature. This gives our mob a better hand right from the beginning of the fight. Warriors cannot charge them (hence less rage), Rogues cannot Sap or do some other dirty trick that Rogues do... The mob has the first hit guaranteed.

My passing makes the mobs come out

During the fight it will not just stay in front of you waiting to be hit. Much like the disappearing bugs in AQ20, the tunnelers will quite often hide underground, make their way underneath you and reappear at the safe distance behind your back. From there they will launch some ranged attacks (spit green stuff at you), while you need to re-target them, turn around and if you're a melee class - run a couple of meters to get in range.

In a long run it may be frustrating to fight them, but that's just because I got used to easy kills of the brainless mobs. Now it is more like Half-Life without impulse 101. (Yes, I like Half-Life. I keep referring to it on various occasions. I think Half-Life is one of the best games ever made. There, I said it, now let me be!).

They proceed to spit venom at me.

Meanwhile a redskin also wants a piece of the action.

...by the way, there was indeed a similar creature in Half-Life :P I believe in expansion. Now back to Opposing Force expansion... Now back to The Burning Cursade.

There is a bunch of creatures (Stonewhelps if I recall correctly) who use a strange Paladin-Berserker technique during the fight. When their health gets down to around 50%, they cast a buff on themselves, making them invulnerable to the attacks and get healed up a bit. Just as the buff is about to finish they go into a frenzy attack type, gaining what I believe is around 25% extra attack power. It is bandage while you can or corpse-run when fighting these guys for most of the time.

I actually wish I had some caster or hunter character at level 60 to try Outland mobs with, since I noticed all my experience is with melee fights. I really wonder how is it to fight the same opponents with a ranged attack techniques.

Burning cannon

Outland does not differ much from the Blood Elf (by the way, I hate when people call them Belf) and Draenei starting area quest mechanics. Gone are the days of boring tasks. There is a really nice variety of things to do, and literally almost everyone wants you to do something for them.

One of my favorite quests so far required me to set fire to huge Alliance cannons, surrounded by redskin orcs. It wasn't maybe the most enjoyable concept for the quest, but hell, destroying public property of humans - definitely my kind of thing.

Military ranks of computer problems.

Back in the day when Windows 95 was king, I had a good military friend on my computer. His rank and name was General Failure and he really liked reading disk. I haven't heard from the general for a while, but it seems I have found a new friend.

His name is Major Lag and he likes to hang around when I try to play WoW.

Today I wanted to login to my normal WoW account, maybe throw some snowballs at people, maybe do some PvP - to no avail. Each time I logged on, Major Lag would show up. My latency would skyrocket to the regions of 10000ms (yes, 10 seconds for a response) and the server would keep dropping me out. Major Lag was also around when I tried playing The Burning Crusade but his influence was not so dramatic - just around the usual 800ms I get on the beta servers.

It was time to rise and live again for Quba, the Orc who cannot level.

Rise and shine Mr. Freeman... *cough* Mr. Orc...

I was planning to do a longer session tonight, but it appears some Ally Paladin managed to level all the way to 70, get an epic flying mount and decided it is time to make other's lives miserable. I kept on getting ganked (so pissed off I did not even take screenshots), and soon I logged out.

Still, there are couple of points I did not cover yet from my previous session, and a bunch of screenies I took that may as well constitute to a nice new post here.

First of all - a correction. I am not sure where the name Fel Orcs came from. Maybe that is the race, maybe not. After inspecting the screenshots I found out that the characters are described as Bonechewers. This could be the clan name for the redskins, or racial name - I am not really sure. Just wanted to mention that.

Bonechewer indeed. Mmmmm, bones...

One of the quests I attempted, or shall I say, one of the quests I actually managed to complete, required me to collect scraps of wood and metal from some wreckage guarded by the Bonechewers. yet again, the reward blew my mind. Green leg plates, level 60 totally outranked my old pants. I did not have any purple in that slot, only Abyssal Plate Legplates of Striking but getting 100 extra armor, 4 more strength and agility and 15 more stamina points isn't bad for a quest that takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.

Old and new leg pieces compared

All I can hope for is that when Burning Crusade comes out, people will not get too obsessed with racing forward. I still didn't have a chance to raid Blackwing Lair (well, went there solo once, needless to say I did not last very long), I still haven't seen Naxxramas - I have a bad feeling that many players will not want to bother with these once the expansion comes out. Of course, the drops from what is now the end-game raid content will be obsolete in a month's time, but the experience will still be there!

Anyway, back to the topic.

Another neat addition in the interface I noticed is dynamic quest objectives display. As you know, SHIFT-clicking on the quest title in the log allows you to display the objectives on your screen. In Burning Crusade the mechanic of this system got well thought of improvement. Once you complete an objective of the quest (even if you are not tracking it), the list of objectives will automatically display on the screen for a while (around 1 or 2 minutes I believe).

It is really useful, especially when you pick up 25 quests and don't want to search which one that particular flower you just picked was good for and what other objectives were there.

Unyielding Knight, just like a bad driver

In an earlier post about Outland, I mentioned the ruins populated by the ghostly undead. This particular group of baddies goes by the name of Unyielding and is not too tough to kill (as long as I managed to pull one or maximum of two at the time). One of the more fun mobs are the Unyielding Knights who fight you mounted. I cannot recall anything similar in the earlier WoW content - mobs would always dismount before the fight, and either attack you solo or assisted by their beast. Of course this is just a model of an enemy, much like the centaurs, but makes an interesting difference in the gameplay.

Of course, it also makes me long for the ability to actually perform some basic attacks without the need to dismount from my good old wolf.

Outland is filled with interesting "bonuses" - either for the player to participate in, or just watch. After one of my unfortunate resurrections I stumbled upon a following scene: A poor guy, Arcanist Torseldori getting attacked by dozens of Infernal Invaders. I did not manage to take a very good shot of the scene as I was running from quite far away to witness the fight. The fight itself lasted good 3-5 seconds, after which Mr. Torseldori obviously had some cleaning up to do.

Arcanist Torseldori and dozens of Infernal Invaders attacking him

Arcanist Torseldori and a pile of dead rubble

Well, that's it from me for today. I will perhaps attempt to log on again, maybe my pally nemesis is gone and I can finally complete that capturing towers quest.

No Burning Crusade blog could be possibly complete without some snapshots of Fel Reavers - these huge monsters (machines?) roam the surroundings of Thrallmar and tend to freak me out, somehow managing to sneak up on me. Did not fight any yet - I usually stay away from things that are taller than my house and have a skull for a level number.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of my Blog. Please drop me a comment about what you like and dislike in my articles, what would you like to see and read about. I am all for answering your questions, but with virtually zero feedback on the blog it is tough for me to figure out what the audience is and what you may want.

The Burning Crusade Cinematic Intro

Well, here it is, no longer in Shaky-Cam Telesync, but officially released by Blizzard in full HD glory. I doubt many of you missed it, but just in case, I decided to post it.

You can download the video from WoW's page at: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/ (46MB, no Blizzard downloader! Direct link :)

The cinematic does a great job introducing the two new races to the exisitng conflict. It also seems to be much more horde focussed than the original one. I only saw a human mage as a representative of Alliance (brilliant little sheeping scene, by the way), while all Horde classes are present in various scenes.

Could that be a subliminal messaging by Blizzard trying to get more faction ballance in the game by getting more people to play Horde?

Here are few snaps, but really, just go and download the file. It is worth it.