Grutar's Weblog

Ungoro Crater Temple

grutar — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:29:45 +0000

Just above Marshall’s Refuge is a temple with no ready access. You can see it clearly marked on the map of the crater.

Attached to the the temple is a transporter like building.

0 to 60

grutar — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:31:04 +0000

The Shattering of Azeroth: Tobold’s new expansion idea with the starting level at 55 with the old zones getting new content. One of the comments was that old Azeroth could be accessed via Caverns of Time.

Blizzard needs to do something worth while for the 0-60 levels rather than just completely devaluing them but still making you doing them.

Grutar has the idea is keep the current zones 1-60 but jump forward 5 years with the story lines. Some examples based on the theme that the burning crusade types are declining in the face of the natives:

Westfall: Defias increasing

van Cleef has his boat off the coast of Stanglethorn with Deadmines building something new. Rebalance the populations in the starting areas. More Defias less Kobolds. The buildings around Sentinel hill are finished.

The Barrens: Quilboar

The druid have been defeated in the wailing caverns but the quilboar have taken over. The centaurs are moving into the North and Mlulgore

Ashenvale: Horde and Naga

The Horde are expanding their influence i the south. The Naga are now more in control of Blackfathoms.

… and so on.

The new quests can be up to Lich King and Burning Crusade standards.

Blizzard could easily have a team working on this because the starting zones should be interesting and a great introduction to the game. After all it was the 0-60 game which initially attracted all those millions.

Also 0-60 is not just for alts since Grutar has met many people recently with their first character.

New Guild – and to remember

grutar — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:21:19 +0000

Following the often the same group of people into a new guild on Dreadmaul

Noobs Incorporated - merged into:

Argent Legion (Lesarius GM) – which folded after defections into:

soldiers of fortune – disbanded, account hacking, into

Bandits of Justice(sic) (Corral GM)

Other memorable guilds

Azeroth Army (Surumar) – (Silgar GM) Rhonda’s first guild and the first guild tag she saw. She thought it was something official.The Unknown (Surumar) – Rhonda and Cand’s guild – we had no idea on how to run an end game guild and it fell apart though it was friendly and a lot fun It still lives though even if dormant. Other members:

Tess,
Yxd,
Fuddgarion,
Sapper and Sappen
Aznusno and Aztoo
Samorline
Krayle
Akimbo
Tarazune
and many more

Quick notes about v 3.x

grutar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:14:03 +0000

Installation:

It was a straight 1.2 gig download which took about 5 hours. Some podcasts talked about background downloaders but this was definitely not the case. Other members of Grutar’s guild (soldiers of fortune) had similar expeririences. 24 hours in one case for a bloke that exceeded his download allowance.

Inscription:

Kind of interesting with Grutar’s friend Ashia get to skill level 125 with some stock piled herbs. The added glyphs are handy as are the returns on selling herbs on the auction house.

Resto Shaman:

Grutar has only had a light experience with normal Black Morass and Magisters Terrance and found that healing is much the same with the addition of heal over time spells being welcome. A priest in Grutar’s guild thought her big heals were less. The added damage is nice but not overwhelming.

Hunter:

Darul really likes his molten core hound (see blow), likes some damage increases but misses aimed shot which is now too far down another tree.

Haircuts:

Grutar thought about getting a new style but the hair and the facial hair are a big part of Grutar’s identity and to change that would be to change out of being Grutar. But then how often do you really look at other character’s faces?

Achievements:

Ahn’Qiraj, Blackwing Lair and Onyixa.are now being visited to rack up the achievements. This is a good time for some of that ol’ time instancing. But this does bring into question why are people playing the game? Is it the journey or is it the reward? Grutar finds it fun to visit old instances even if the rewards aren’t there but to go just for getting a new entry in the achievements interface seems a bit empty.

Adds Ons

Don’t really work any more. Grutar has turned them all off.

What Makes the Healer Class Unpopular? Still

grutar — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:35:59 +0000

Grutar is a resto shaman, even after v 3.0, and finds this old series of articles by Relmstein still relevant:

The Many Relms of Relmstein: What Makes the Healer Class Unpopular? Part 1

In some of the earlier instances and when Grutar was first doing resto the instance scenery and even the opposition mobs were mostly irrelevant. Just concentrate on the party member’s heath, heal through the encounter and follow the group onwards. You could do it all from a control panel without all the added graphics.

While as an enhancement shaman you were right in there in the fight.

But then again I get to go to more instances…