#84 Tier 14 armor, Transmog, and LotR

This week I joined my guild few a few of The Burning Crusade raids and after winning a few tokens I realized that I was able to complete the Merciless Gladiator’s Regalia set.

Sadly Blizzard removed the Belt, and I have no idea what to replace it with.

This was my first epic set, I was able to buy most of the PvP armor the moment I got to level 70 (I did a LOT of PvP when leveling)

As luck would have it WoWhead datamined the tier 14 armor and names for all the classes. I remember that someone, on a podcast that I listen to said that now that Transmog is now live, the game developers now don’t have to worry about making class tiers that fits in the theme of the Expansion/Patch, they just need to make them look cool

After I looked through each of the armor sets, I can loosely quote Aragorn from Lord of the Rings,

“The day may come when the Tier Armor theme will fail, when gear designers will forsake their expansion’s look . And break all bonds with the gear and expansion themes. But it is not this day!”

My Lord-of-the-Rings-loving younger brother would KILL me if he ever found out I butchered one of the best speeches in the trilogy just to make a WoW joke.

Every bit of armor looks like they were crafted from Pandarians with names to match. Regalia of the Burning Scroll (Mage) , Battlegear of the Thousandfold Blades (Rogue), and the Sha-Skin Regalia (Warlocks). These names sound like they came out of a 1980’s Kung-Fu movie.

Lets not forget about the White Tiger Power Ranger….Plate (Paladin)

(All the sets can be found at WoWinsider.)

I would think that there would be an uproar from the players if we traveled to Pandaria, explored the exotic terrain and interacts with new creatures without some armor to match with the land.

We may see Blizzard move away from a tier gear-content theme in the next major patch, during a time when the players get use to the Pandarian look.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#83 Wait, there’s a summer thing happening this week?

This week kicked off the holiday event, The Midsummer Fire Festival, as the title of this post would hint at, I have not been participating in any of the holiday event.

A part of the reason that I am not flying to every fire site and either respect or disrespect the Horde or Alliance’s Bon fires is because I am experiencing the burn out stage of playing WoW (eh heh, I made a pun!)

But another, bigger reason, is that there is nothing offered for me to get me into the holiday spirit.

As I wrote about in previous holiday posts (Be MOP #52), Blizzard is following a trend of adding a new collectables for a for every holiday event to bring back players who already completed everything in past years.
The Luna Festival had a new pet,  the Love is in the Air and the NobleGarden both had new mounts.

I lost so much productivity to get this mount

So what does the Midsummer Fire festival have?  Helm of the Fire Festival, new Helm that acts as a cooking fire for when you do not have the wood or kindling .

That’s nice and all, but I already have Gnomish Army Knife and that has Kindling and a Skinner’s knife. So I never have to worry about not being able to make a Basic Campfire when somebody needs it.

This item also occupies the helm slot, something that I could use on my Chef’s Hat on instead, which works better with any bit of cooking.

So only thing left that I would want on my mage would be the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune  for the transmog. I would only get it for the nostalgia, when I got it on my mage when I was on the Horde.

The problem is that when my mage had the Scythe staff when he was a Horde, I was playing him as a Forsaken and having an undead with a grim reaper scythe is much cooler than a Draenei with the same weapon.

See? It looks so much more awesome on a walking corpse.  -from WoWhead

For this holiday, I’m just going to call in sick with Hayfever and wait for the next holiday.

Which would be ….

Oh yeah, Pandarians + Brewfest = an awesome event.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#82 Cataclysm’s Superlatives (part 1)

A few days ago a leaked photo of Mists of Pandaria‘s box art was posted online and with the raiding testing announced, it is clear that this expansion is ready to be launched.

The baby’s coming….

As this expansion comes to an end, lets look back on Cataclysm with Be MOP’s Superlatives

Today we are looking at my picks for the best and worst Raid Fight.  I was going to add more but it would end up being way too long for just one post, so I’m breaking it up into parts to be used for a later date.

Best/worst Raid Fight

Over this expansion I started raiding the current content, and I have seen all the raid fights in appropriate gear level.

Out of all the four raids (I dont count BH) two boss fights stood out in my mind.

The best raid fight in Cataclysm goes to Baleroc!

This in an amazing fight, every member of the raid has a job to do. The DPS has to group in pairs next to crystals, where the healers would heal them to get a buff needed to seriously heal the constantly growing hp of the offtank.

The players all helped killing the gatekeeper in a completely new way.

The entire fight works like a clockwork, with the focus exclusively on the players with no RNG to worry about.

Once everyone got their part down (which showed the raid’s teamwork), the boss was a push over.

The Worst Boss Fight

You now know my favorite fight, but whats the worst? Well coincidentally the worst boss fight is also housed in the Fire lands

I did not like this fight from day one and she was one of the reasons I experienced burnout in Firelands.

Remember how I said that Baleroc made me feel like I was killing him in a new way?

Well I didn’t get that feeling for Lady Beth, The fight starts and the first thing she does is retreat to her web. While two or three players are blessed with the chance to do battle with her for most of the fight the rest of us have to deal with her adds.

Most of the fight is just trash pulls and I was always, Always, ALWAYS had to deal with the tiny spiders because we almost never had a hunter on hand. I had to AoE tiny orange spiders who are crawling on a red and orange background for ten times.

At the end of the fight, only then does the rest of the raid burns the boss down, while it Beth just does AoE damage.

That’s it, just terrible boss fight.

I have more Superlatives in mind (Best/worst 5man, NPC, remade zone, and any others that comes to my mind after posting this) that I will be posting as the expansion reaches towards its end

But I want to know that your favorite/worst Raid boss in this expansion in the comment below.

P.S I have two great news that happened last week.

First, I got a letter from New Hampshire’s State House, It is now official, I and now a candidate for a seat for NH State of Representatives of the Hillsborough county.

From the stats and information the WordPress gives me, there are three people who goes to my blog who can legally vote for me: my Dad, my Mom, and me on my mobile phone later in the day.

But that doesn’t mean that you , non-New Hampshirite can’t join in. Currently I don’t have a logo or a catchphrase to put on the buttons I’ll be ordering.  If you can think of one, let me know in the comments as well.

Secondly, Friday’s post pushed my total view OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!

DBZ jokes never gets old!

I would like to thank everyone who ever visited this site, it really made my weekend.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#81 Finally getting able to raid.

Oh boy, I’m excited because tonight I am going to be able to raid.

Ever since I came back from college I started a new job at a local fast food restaurant, manning the burgers and food, in short a Fry Cook

that’s right, I now have something in common with SpongeBob Squarepants

 

Because of my new night owl position, I have not been able to log in for my guild’s usual Friday/Saturday nights for the past month.

Tonight is my lucky night I am not scheduled for work this night, giving me a chance to catch-up on my friends in the guild.

I can’t wait for it. I already have a huge can of Mountain Dew, chilled, ready to be consumed by me to give me the energy to progress in the Heroic Dragon Soul.

 

Mnt Dew, the drink of Champion of the Frozen Wastes

 

It wouldn’t be a lie if I said that raiding is the only reason that I still play WoW. (I got burned out when I literally did every quest in the game)

Since it seems that weekend nights are not going to be free, I may have to look in some third-party LFRaid services for something to do on the weekdays. If anyone has any experiences with this leave a comment below I’ll be looking around for the weekend.

 

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#80 The mount collector’s look at the BMAH

One of the newest aspect of Mists of Pandaria that I have not talked about on this blog yet is the Black Market Auction House.

For those who are unaware about the Black Market, it is another gold sink in this expansion where NPCs will, at random times, will place valuable items on this auction house for players to bid against each other.

There is some potential for Blizzard to be clever with the lore with what NPC puts up what items.

From what I can gather from other sites, there will be current iLevel heroic epics and weapons, teir sets that have been lost between expansions and of course mounts and pets.

As I look at the list of items from WoWhead I have to ask the question a lot of people are thinking, “Is it fair?”

As a mount collector, and not a transmog/gear collector so I am going to just talk about my thoughts as someone who has 126 mounts.

From the nine mounts that looks like will be on the BMAH and I don’t mind that these mounts are “buyable” because except for Blue Proto Drake and the Swift White Hawkstrider, these are mounts that I can not farm by myself.

 

Did I ever tell you the time where in my raid group, this mount dropped for two weeks in a row and I didn’t win either one.

 

The Ashes of Al’ar and the Reins of the Drake of the South are all mounts that I would need at least 9 other players to kill the boss, and even if the mount did drop I would end up competing with these other players.

If my math is right, my chance for winning a mount for raids is either .1% or .004% of getting the mount by entering the raid every week. With those odds I would rather have to chance to buy it.

 

I would not mind dropping 20k+ gold for that mount

 

The other non-raid mounts are not that unique unique of a design and they have been in the game long enough that most of them are easily soloable if you want to save the gold.

 
My problem with the Black Market Auction House would start if Blizzard decides to sell mounts that took time and effort to get (The Netherwing drakes or, my personal favorite, the Black War bear)  instead of farming the RNG chances.

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#79 Always want what you can’t have

As I was reading some blogs around the internet I stumbled upon   Azerothian  Life’s topic of things you always wanted but cannot get in WoW and it has inspired me to make my own list of some things that I want, but cannot get.

 

1. Purple Skeletal Warhorse/ Black War Hawkstrider

When I was saving up my gold for epic riding (back when it was only obtained at level 60) these were my first two epic land mounts. I got the  Hawkstider first because I had the PvP tokens and it saved me some gold to set aside for the skill.  But once I got some more money in Outland I went back to buy the beautiful Purple Skeletal Warhorse.

So epic….

These were the two that started my mount collection, and when I switched to the Alliance side, I could not take them with me and they were replaced with the Alliance racial mounts.

Even though I have the reskins of the mounts on my Alliance main, it’s not the same as the original two mounts.

 

2 Lil’ Deathwing Pet and the goods from the Cataclysm Collection Edition

I don’t say this often, but just look at the detail of the jaw!

I was able to get the Wrath of the Lich King Collection Edition for my birthday when the expansion came out, so I was able to get the Frosty pet, the TCG and the soundtrack to the expansion.

Fastforward to Catalysm’s announcement, and was in college (with no car) and  I forgot to preorder the Collect0r’s Edition of Catalsym and I am kicking myself for it, to the point where the moment Mists of Pandaria’s Collection Edition’s goods are announced I am going to race to a Gamestop or Best Buy to put down my deposit for the game

 

3.  To have another Max level 

This is my own problem, for the life of me I can not play the same game twice. Not just WoW, but Limbo, The Bastion, and Pokemon games I love playing the first time I can’t replay a game that I already know the ending to.

I started her at the dying days of Wrath, and she is nowhere near max level.

I want another Max Level toon to raid with and to farm gold but I can’t get her to end game, before I was too busy with prepping my main for Mists but now I just have burnout.

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#78 Will we ever see a Blizzard crossover?

One of my hobbies as a geek is collecting and reading comic books. (My favorite Superhero series is the adventure of Spider-man)

One of my favorite thing about comic book heroes is the crossovers stories, seeing your favorite heroes  fighting long side each other.

Throughout learning and reading the vast, complex history of comic books characters, I came to accept the fact that there will some heroes that will never meet.

I also learned to never say never, because this month two big crossovers comics are on sale, with characters that most people could imagine seeing together.

The first one is the mini-series Spider-Men, which brings together two Spider-mans from the two different Marvel Universes.

This is the meetup between the Amazing Spider-man and the new Ultimate Spider-man

The other one is a Star Trek the Next Generation and the Doctor Who cross over

“Set phasers to wobbly”

As I was reading these two crossovers I asked myself a question, “Will Blizzard ever join two of their three Universe?”

Warcraft seems to be the Universe that could be connected to either Diablo or Starcraft universe. Diablo has Demons and magic, based in a medieval world.

We are one Warlock mispronouncing a demon summoning spell to bring the wrath of Diablo onto Azeroth.

The first time I saw the Starcraft teams, I thought that there was a connection between the Zerg and the Aqiri insects that are found in Silithus (both threaten the inhabitants with an invasion, and their bases do look similar)

To a lesser geek this could be confused with a bug-creature

Both Starcraft and Warcraft both has space traveling blue aliens with technology that surpassed the humans’ tech in every way.

“You must construct additional Pylons!”

When I’m talking about a crossover, I am not talking about a clever cameo or a minipet reference I’m talking about a quest objective in a video game or a part of a short story.

I doubt that there will be any canon confirming lore unless Blizzard start scrapping the bottom of the barrel, but if the next World of Warcraft expansion takes place on a different planet and we have to grind rep with the Terrans.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#77 Where is my ARTS Battleground?

When Mists of Pandaria was announced, it was said to have a new Battleground called Azshara Crater that would be based on the A.R.T.S style of gameplay

For those who do know, A.R.T.S is short for “Action Real Time Strategy” and it is used to classify Dota, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, and many other games where you and your teammates form and execute a strategy to overwhelm the other team and destroy their base, this is while both bases spawn an equal amount of low level NPCs to aid in the assault or to give gold and exp to the enemy when killed.

For a game that has a very limited map it offers a lot of play time

Last time I checked on the Beta the new battlegrounds (that I talked about earlier) are not implemented on the servers yet. While news have been some news about Tower of Power and Silvershard Mine, I haven’t heard anything about Azshara Crater.

As sad as it may seem, I am going to call it and say that the ARTS battleground is the one thing that Blizzard will fail to deliver in Mists of Pandaria (I wrote a post about this topic a while ago)

I think that killing Azshara Crater is for the best, the testing and balances that would be needed would be so great that it could warrant it’s own game.

Oh wait….

And there would be so much problems with this one particular battleground.

An ARTS battleground would need to be dumb down every class/spec down to 4-5 spells just to ensure that some player with a move combo, that the developers would not think of, that would break the game.

This would cause so much problems with NPC farming in that Battleground

Also half of the ARTS is leveling up your character throughout the course of the fight, and you get to customize the Armor and Weapons your own way, something that could be different than any other player.

(Although there are cookie cutter builds that you are almost forced to used when you get to the higher levels)

Also the fun of playing League of Legends is that you can change your role and playstyle between each game. One game I can play as a range caster that specialize in AoE spells while other games I can play as a melee tank that can handle two enemies at a time.

I can play these two polar opposite game styles and without spending hours leveling up these characters  and then grind the honor to get their great to an adequate level to finally go toe to toe with other people.

I’m glad that this project is dead, it means less hassle with balancing issues in future patches and it will reduce the development time for Mists of Pandaria.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#76 The Three evil forces in Pandaria

One of the big draw of Mist of Pandria is that there is no big enemy that both faction will have to worry about in this expansion.

Before we had Deathwing, the Lich King and  the Burning Legion that forced the Horde and Alliance to join together for the last raid.

But in Mist of Pandaria we don’t have one main villain, not two but three evil forces that you, the player, have to fight against to stop their plans for conquering the world.

We have the Lawful Evil Mogu, they once ruled Pandaria and all they want is to get it back

 

The Mogu has the ‘best’ motivation to fight in Pandaria

 

Then there’s the Warcraft faction that you are not on, they are the Neutral Evil. They just want Pandaria because your team wants it too,  I call this Little Brother Logic.

 

What? An Alliance was spotted going to an island to look for the King’s lost son? LAUNCH A FULL ASSAULT!

 

Then we have the Sha, Chaotic Evil, that just want to destroy the world for the sake of destruction.

 

I really hope The Sha and the Old Gods have a connection, or better they team up!

 

Throughout the expansion, and future 5.X patches you are supposed to stop all three forces from fulfilling their separate plans.

This reminds be of vanilla WoW end game where you had to jungle the Fire Elemental invasion, the crazy Black Dragon flight and the Scourge in the Plaugelands.

My only concern is that Blizzard does not follow through with these evils in future patches. I hope that we see a quest in patch 5.1, 5.2, ect that follows up on the Mogu’s plan B the strategy they use after you arrive and mess up their base the first time. Also, I hope to that Blizzard follows through on the lore setups that they created in Cataclysm.

 

I can’t wait to see her special brand of crazy again

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#75 The post where I brag that I added another bird mount to my collection

Two days ago, while going through my regular routine of Dailies and Dungeon runs when I was treated with a very surprising treat:

 

This was at 10:30 at night. I’m pretty sure that I woke up half of my family with my screaming.

 

The reins of the Raven Lord has a 1% drop since Blizzard added him as a regular boss in the Heroic Sethekk Halls and being the mount enthusiast, I was trying to get this mount for a long, long time.

 

131 kills. Statically speaking I should have gotten that mount at the 100th kill. This is why I am not a Math major. 

 

It has been a total of 4 mouths of constantly killing the same three bosses just for one item, but it was worth it because I am riding on a boss that I have grown to loath.

 

It kind of satisfying that the time I got the mount was the run where I killed him before he went into his Immunity phase.

 

Now I am done with solo dungeon runs until Mist of Pandaria, where I will be strong enough to solo run the Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle dungeon to try to get the Reins of the Blue Protodrake.

 

I can’t wait to see this loading screen every day after I ding 90

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays