Gimme Something Good

33 Days to go and I am really hoping that Blizzard going to give us something good. Alternative Chat is delighted about new Garrisons feature but for those of us who have not ventured through the portal (not that one, the new one) we have no idea what to expect. I am sure Garrison will become self evident when we are there with our new plot of land, but until that time it only makes  a modicum sense.

A number of decent guides and articles have hit the street in the last week, so I have started to compile my WoD Resource Kit, I am of course open to any suggestions, but at the moment it looks very Garrisons top heavy, with only one other topic about Ground Mounts. I only really started populating the MoP version when it went live, but I am guessing the topics are highly likely to appear in live as they are now.

There are no new races and no new classes and no new professions and from that sentence alone the expansion sounds lightweight. The heavyweight content is Garrisons and the race graphical makeover. The feel is apparently so different that people are referring to it as WoW v2 and with no Titan or any other Blizzard MMO in the near future we are stuck with this rolling behemoth for the next decade.

The screen is going to be prettier and a new graphics card is on standby, and we are be promised some end game content that is not Raid orientated. Raiding seems to have hit a point were new ideas have long since all been used up, and some of the mechanics were not used for obvious reasons, like a deep purple maze on a dark floor, which was undetectable to the naked eye. Stay out of shit on the floor, stand in shit on the floor, group separate. Alternatively you could "hold a chicken in the air, stick a deckchair up your nose, buy a jumbo jet,  and then bury all your clothes, paint your left knee green, then extract your wisdom teeth, form a string quartet, and pretend your name is Keith."

Why do we still put ourselves through these tasks? can anybody say that the MoP expansion brought any decent boss fights that would sit in the Pantheon of boss fights. Blizzard made big boasts for both Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar comparing them to Ulduar in scope and grandeur, I personally feel that none of the fights are of that standard.

The Grumpy Elf made a good case for not doing the returning 5 Man Heroics, and with Scenarios consigned to the history books is it case of all Blizzards eggs are nestled in Garrisons being the runaway success. It could be argued that Garrisons could have been a stand alone game, micro managing your base with followers (minions) doing their own missions and crafting etc... Could this have been a tablet game?

The pre-expansion is due on Tuesday 14th October as predicted by every man, woman and child who have ever played this game. I am assuming that the Europeans will wait an extra day for the patch, but the launch date for WoD will be a Thursday which means that Europeans and Americans will both launch on the same day. It means for once the European realms will be the test bed for the expansion, but the developers who are US based will need to put a shift on when the European realms operating on Central European Time (GMT+1) will open 6 hours before New York hits midnight. Expect bug fixes to be written by bog eyed bleary developers, in those first 24 hours.

I am really excited about the new expansion but already I seem to know the entire expansion story arc. I am hoping Blizzard can gimme something good but already I am sensing a few cracks in the dam. Only time will tell.

I Predict A Riot

The Excitement of a new expansion is very tangible, I can almost smell the excitement in the blogging community. At last we can say goodbye to the least popular WoW expansion and move out of the confines of Stormwind or Ogrimmar (assuming that is where Horde hang out). Shattrath was lag central and Dalaran was a big improvement but forcing us to share only 1 major city was a bad plan. A larger percentage of people used to do their trading in Ironforge if memory serves me right and it was located in a far more central position than Stormwind, Darnassus or the Exodar.

I can safely say that I have no idea where the new city hub is going to located in Pandaria, but it is safe to conclude that the Alliance and Horde are not going to be sharing a Neutral City. Now if it sounds like I have no idea about Pandaria, then this would be quite correct. I might have owned a beta key but this was only to sample the delights of the Panda race and the Monk class. The new cinematic only hints at the rivalry of Human Vs Orcs (read in Alliance Vs Horde) and  Klepsacovic hit the nail on the head by suggesting that the enemy is really the Panda who is more than capable of mincing our derrieres. This is the point where the Americans will cheat and napalm the whole of the Jade Forest.

Having taken a 2 week Olympics Holiday I have finally caught up with all my reading, and to be quite honest, I have no idea what is going on. I understand that there is expansion coming out 25th September and that the customary pre-expansion launches 28th August (29th for Europe so they can iron out all the bugs on the 28th for the real release in Europe -  poor North America being Europe's guinea pigs). The big news yesterday was that we can play all races with the exception of Pandas with patch 5.0.4. Now I thought that was the case right now so maybe it wasn't such big news. Perhaps in tomorrows breaking news Hunters can use Pets in patch 5.0.4.

Every expansion has dropped without me having the faintest idea what to expect. I remember walking through the Dark Portal several weeks after everybody else and then saying, what next? At least I was warned not to run head first into the Burning Legion battling on the steps of the Dark Portal. I had heard enough to run down and to the left to get the first Gryphon out of town.

WotLK dropped and I was ready with everybody else to hop onto a boat to Northrend. I was also aware that there was 2 starter zones for both factions. I simply followed the masses and caught the boat in Stormwind Harbour with 300 other people crammed onto the decks.

Cataclysm was just there, with new expansion we all knew to start out in Stormwind and Ogrimmar. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that a new expansion should be based on a new continent with all the fun of being able to freely explore the new interlocking zones without cut scenes, lengthy flight times and portals.

The new expansion brings a host of new features, lands to explore, new races to discover, a new class to play, and new class mechanics. I understand the game philosophy and the contents, but none of the specifics. At level 70 I didn't need to know what happened in Grizzly Hills, this to me is the joy of the new expansion and I am looking forward to it with great anticipation.

I know we have Pet Battles, and Farmville to waste a great deal of time. Likewise with hundreds of new dailies to fill in the time when not raiding or waiting for LFR. Alts will become a genuine play style with shared pets, mounts and achievements. The rest I gloss over at the moment and await the chance to discover in my own time.

12 more days to the pre-expansion I can't wait. I predict a riot.