A Return of Things

It's been a while since I frequented these dusty halls 

*blows dust and cobwebs off the front page*

Many things have changed since I last wrote here, both in and out of game. Firstly, I now have a job, so my time is a lot less than it was when I started this thing.

However, to look forward, we must cover what happened in the past.

Warlords of Draenor

WoD as released on November 13th 2014. As I wrote at the time, the launch was not the smoothest with long log in queues and high latency for many, including bottle necking while levelling with the start of the garrison - a new feature added by Blizz that everyone had to partake in to be able to continue with the storyline.

Through WoD, I managed to meet my goal of getting at least one of every class to level 100. This did end up meaning a few multiples of certain classes (e.g. hunters and paladins), as well as a few others dotted around. By the end of WoD I had 19 level 100 characters spanning both factions, and even two different regions as I had been playing on the US as well.

One unexpected benefit from the garrisons, and one that was better the more alts you had, was the gold quests from both the garrison table and the shipyard. This made WoD the most profitable expansion for a lot of players, and made Blizzard make sure to remove the gold quests from the garrisons once Legion was almost ready to go live so that players wouldn't return to do this old content.

My guild underwent a rebrand as well during WoD, changing from The Drafia to Seren. This ended a period of uncertainty for us and we are still going strong today as our progress on the left hand side shows. For those wondering about the new name - it is Welsh for Star, hence the logo.

My New Love

Fast forward two years to 2016. We are in the longest content drought since WoW began with many people fed up of Hellfire Citadel. The previous Blizzcon a new IP for Blizzard had been announced - a FPS game called Overwatch, a completely new direction for Blizzard. I was lucky enough to get into the beta, and absolutely fell in love with all of the new heroes. The first cinematic that was released mesmerised me, and even my nephew fell in love with it and I had many requests to play him "the video with the monkey who gets his glasses broken"

This and the subsequent hundreds of hours I have played in the game have led to my love affair with being a support main. I am a proud Mercy main, and I will not be shamed because of it, Mercy is love, Mercy is life.

Falling in love with Overwatch led me to a fantastic community of like minded geeks and gamerfolk who have made the past year of my life amazing in so many ways, and the amount of creativity that Overwatch has brought out in people never ceases to amaze me, from new art pieces, cosplay to OW inspired musical pieces.

Legion

The new expansion for WoW released February 8th 2017 - many players returned excited to see the promised return of the Legion and hopeful for a return to the most exciting times of the game. Sub numbers were indeed boosted quite high with the release of legion, with many people seeking to complete the new artifact weapon quest lines and power their weapons up as they levelled to the new maximum of 110. 

There have been many things I have loved about Legion so far, along with a number of things that I have not loved so much - but i shall leave those for another post!

The Future

My gaming habits may be evolving, and I have branched out into games other than WoW and Diablo . However, Azeroth is still my home, I just like to occasionally vacation in other areas.

The blog is going to focus on my changing relationship with the games and what they mean to me as I continue to share just why these games are so special and invite you all to enjoy them with me!

The two important gaming ladies in my life

Warlords of Draenor!

So, as most of you no doubt saw there were more than a few issues with the launch of Warlords!

That being said, it is shaping up to be a fantastic expansion, with lots to do and plenty of thigns to see and find.

Playing on Draenor EU meant we had whopping queue times on launch, most of which I manage to evade, however one evening did see me taking around five and a half hours to beat the almighty Queue Boss!

Launch night on Draenor - only one part of the hundreds that were there!

My hunter was the first char I decided to level (of course!), and I went through each zone doing every quest I could find, not moving on until I got the achievement and bonus objective achievement for each zone!

Doing this found me many items and toys (which was fantastic!) including this toy that turns you into a tree!

I want to be a tree!

My hunter is max level, and has also done the lovely taming quest thing for Gara the spirit wolf! (I would take more in game screenshots but currently getting World Server Down message on the hunter, as she is in her Garrison and they seem to be having issues at peak times on Draenor still ^^)

I have also started levelling my shaman, and am loving the Glyph of Ghostly Speed which makes my ghost wolf run speed super fast! She has started her Garrison (I see this becoming quite addictive...not that I'm addicted already on the hunter!)

Here she is fitting in with the locals!

I am totally a Frost Wolf!

The shammie is currently 91, but also picking up herbs along the way for extra XP, as well as all the little toys and gear and garrison resources. Because of the added gathering prof, I foresee this char taking less time to level than my hunter, plus I won't be reading all of the quest texts this time around.

I'm going to try to update the blog more often but I give no guarantees :p What is everyone else's favourite part of the expansion so far? :)

Well, Well, Well, Lots of Squee!

Warlords of Draenor it is!

Like most of you I spent last night glued to my computer screen (unless you were lucky enough to actually *be* at Blizzcon!) and there were many many things that made me really happy!

Like the fact that heirlooms and toy items will no longer be in bags! That alone is going to save me a whole lot of bag space! No confirmation on tabards yet but there was a maybe about those!

Something that never really bothered me but that a lot of people wanted was player housing, which we seem to be getting in the form of Garrisons which you build and upgrade. You also have access to professions through these - including limited access to ones you don't even know! I'll be interested to read more on this as more information is released.

Also bags will have an option to auto sort, which is fantastic for people as OCD as me for having certain things together in certain bags, and quest items will no longer go in bags either! So much saved space! Also you will be able to craft directly from mats that are stored in your bank, no more trips back and fore!

Another thing that made me very very excited was the free character boosted to level 90 when the expansion is purchased, and a heroic version of Upper Blackrock Spire. That place is going to cause so much QQ and I really look forward to seeing how hard it is at heroic level.

We also got to see some of the new character models! Quite frankly they look amazing and I can't wait to see what some of the ones I actually play are going to look like, these are the female models we have so far:

Suffice to say, the dwarf hunter is definitely staying, and I may need to make a gnome or two now as well!

Bring on the belf and troll models!

Will stop here otherwise I'll write everything in one go and have nothing left for tomorrow! (Yeah right!)