Illidan’s a beast! Wait, no, that’s a warlock tank

Oh, yeah, I said it – Warlock tanking. I was let into the Mists of Pandaria Beta this last Saturday and picked my warlock as the first class I wanted to explore. Picking the Demonology tree first as I wanted to see the new demons in action, I discovered the tanking glyph. It’s not even a talent that lets you tank, but a glyph.

Alright, I thought, let’s try this out and see how it works. Filling out my talents, gems, enchants and glyphs with everything else that would assist me the best when tanking, I ran around the Jade Forest and killed stuff, hoping I’d run into an elite mob and could test how well I really was doing as a tank. I found shit. Apparently there are few elite mobs in the first part of the starting zone.

Really needing an accurate test, I hopped into an instance and talked the tank and healer into letting me be be the tank. For whatever reason they agreed and we took on Jade Serpent Temple together. Even though I wasn’t entirely sure what the hell I was doing, I was a successful tank. Not the best tank, since I couldn’t get my hands on how best to fill my fury bar and work AoE tanking down until the end, but I did my job and the only people who died stood in shit they shouldn’t have. Fire’s bad, mmkay? (and so is water now)

Coming out of the instance I was psyched! I ran around kicking random mob ass and telling everyone I could how great warlock tanking was. There was only one thing left to do: tell all of you about it too.

Zone Wrap Up – Valley of the Four Winds

The second zone in my Zone Wrap Up is the Valley of the Four Winds. It is located on the southern edge of the new Pandaren continent and seems to be just a questing zone. The Tillers farm will be located here along with at least one Brewmaster scenario and the new Stormstout Brewery dungeon. Unfortunately, the only screen captures so far are from the video above, so I’ll leave you with just the video.

Blizzard has described it as:

A tranquil plain of lush farmland, bordered by dense mysterious jungles along the south and impassible mountains to the north. The valley is considered the “breadbasket” of Pandaria, but the year’s harvest is in jeopardy and a terrible malaise has overcome the Pandaren that live along the coast. The valley is also the home of the legendary Stormstout Brewery, where Chen Stormstout and his niece Li Li hope to journey to discover the whereabouts of their long-lost ancestors.

Unlike the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, this Valley looks exactly like I wanted the entire zone to look. Green, flowers, animals, growing things; I am more than pleased. This zone appears to be a cross between the Wetlands with water, cliffs and trees and Nagrand with its bright colors, multitude of animals, and plenty of growing things. I am loving it.

Zone Wrap Up – Vale of Eternal Blossoms

Screen shot from the Vale of Eternal Blossoms

To help keep things simple, I’m going to try to dilute the information coming out of the Beta and Press Release for the new content by tackling each zone on its own, including the instances and raids that are (as of the time of writing) going to be there.

Vale of Eternal Blossoms World Map

To start off, we’re going to learn about the Vale of Eternal Blossoms because the Alliance and Horde hubs will be located here. It is located in the central part of Pandaria along with the Mogu’Shan Vaults raid, two dungeons, Mogu’Shan Palace and the Gate of the Setting Sun, and the Temple of Power battleground. It is a level 90 zone that Blizzard describes as:

The ancient seat of the pandaren empire has been hidden for generations, shrouded in mists and walled-off by impassible mountains.  The waters of the Vale are believed to have mystical powers… which has attracted the attention of ancient enemies as well as power-hungry factions within the Alliance and Horde. What secrets lie buried below this mystical font of power?

I’m really hoping this legendary Valley isn’t going to be as brown as the Barrens like the map makes it look. Not to mention the screen shots. I demand color, Blizzard! Pink, purple, blue! Where are the FLOWERS?! Ahem, moving on…

Minor Glyphs from Mists of Pandaria

Once again I have scoured the blogs and information sites so you don’t have to. Why, you ask? Because I was dying to know about the silly new minor glyphs and no one has put together a list of them by themselves. So, I did it and provided images and video where I could.

I’m so interested in the minor glyphs because I feel this is a return to being able to customize our characters in new and interesting ways. When in combat, you’re not looking at the armor, but the spell effects and finally there’s a way to show off your own character. I am so making a macro to let everyone know how pleased I am at being able to bubble hearth again.

As of the blog posts this morning, this is everything I’ve found. The only one I couldn’t find was mentioned by Blizz at the press event where Mages would be teleported to the Old Dalaran crater and dropped out of the sky far, far above the ground. Sorry mages, apparently that’s not in the bata yet. Blizzard owes apologizes to Rogues, Priests and Deathknights as I couldn’t find a single interesting minor glyph for those classes. Those bastards.

Chris Metzen, Varien makes up for shit

Chris Metzen, senior VP of Story and Franchise Development

I’m frustrated. That’s about the only way to describe my feelings with World of Warcraft lore. I’m specifying WoW and not Warcraft, because the lore there and in Vanilla WoW (and BC), I didn’t have these concerns and this feeling like the faction I play the most, is weak and pathetic with useless leaders. At one time, we had Onyxia! Now we have Jaina Proudmore jokes.

Yes, I’m bringing this up again. It’s been nagging at me ever since I read the Chris Metzen interview by WoW Insider. A lot of Horde players (and even some Alliance players) don’t understand why I’m so upset with the lore and the direction it took during Cataclysm. I’m going to attempt to explain my opinions and why this guy needs to get his fuzzy head out of his fuzzy ass. It all boils down to one thing: morale.

Throughout all of Cataclsym, the Alliance has gotten its collective ass handed to it. Go ahead and argue about Camp Tarajo all you want, but when you place all the weights on the scales, it tips heavily in the Horde’s favor: Ashenvale, Southshore, Andorhol. I can pull out a few more here, but suffice to say that would be beating a dead horse, or the Alliance as it stands.

This is not a “woe is the Alliance, we got beaten post,” this is a post telling you, if we get beaten forever, we’re not going to care much about our faction or this damn game. Warhammer Online died with the biggest complaint being one faction was over powers and kicking the other factions ass. While this isn’t lore, I believe it could get that way. Why? Shortly after the information about Theramore burning (another feather in the Horde’s cap), my server saw a huge wave of faction transfers from Alliance to Horde. I can’t blame them because let’s face it, Horde are just cooler.

The Forsaken got so much love in WotLK, the trolls got their own patch in Cata, the Cata expansion revolved around an Orc, and with all this, the Alliance got Worgen. I’m not complaining about that. The Gilneans have a rich, vibrant lore full of grand characters, both good and evil, with so much story potential (the Goblins, not so much). What are they doing now? They squat in a tree, unable to retake their home because of the Forsaken. Their entire starting zone is empty. Hell, my RP server did more with their story than Blizzard did

Nika Davies on the Tillers Farms

Nika Davies farming in Lord of the Rings Online

One thing I really am excited about is the concept of the farms and associated dailies. Personally, I can’t help but wonder if this this Blizzard’s way of testing the waters for possible player housing in the future. The reason I think that might be a possibility is because the farms will most likely be instanced. They have a very similar thing in Lotro (Lord of the Rings Online) with both farms and player housing, and I have a feeling Blizzard got the idea from there.

The way housing worked in Lotro was a series of neighborhoods, each containing maybe a dozen houses of different sizes and costs. You entered the neighborhood through a portal similar to entering a dungeon, so they didn’t take up all that extra space in the world. If they make the farms instanced, and it’s successful, I could see player housing happening someday in the (far) future.

MoP Press Release: Fuck yous, right ons, and other info

The Mists of Pandaria Press event happened today with plenty of stupid reveals and great things to come. I scoured the interviews, blogs and press releases to put together the things I thought were the best, the worst, or just rather noteworthy about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion.

The obvious things we know about MoP are, of course, discussed in the press release. The Jade Temple, the Stormstout Brewery, new Scholomance, new Scarlet Monestary, Pet Battle system, Pandarians, monk class, etc. I’m not going to touch on those at all if they don’t discuss something new – and for the most part, they don’t. Luckily there is plenty of new information being given out that I’ve combed through to find the most interesting, infuriating, and just noteworthy news that’s been given out today.

We’ll start with the shit that just plain pissed me off:

MoP Image Leak

Some lovely person took a bunch of screen shots and leaked them for your viewing pleasure. You can find the full Gallery here, but here are the one’s I liked best:

Here’s a picture of the Jade Temple, which I believe is one of the new instances. The talbuk wandering around are a bit disappointing (not to mention lore breaking), but I love the dragon statues, all the cliffs and trees everywhere. It does remind me a lot of Nagrand, but I loved Nagrand, so there’s no complaining here.

Holy crap, the new Pandarans look boss! This makes me actually consider rolling a Monk class.