As Soforah and I are in the process of swapping main characters, we are working toward a few goals from past expansions, like getting Legion’s fishing artifact.
I didn’t expect to find so many people still fishing for the Fisherfriends reputations. Not only is it very easy to find people to fish with but, Sunday, we were part of a 40-man raid for Margoss.
Legion was amazing for fishing and so many people are still enjoying it, many years later. So, why not creating more content for fishing?
Lately, First Aid has been removed and nothing has been done for Archaeology or Fishing. It’s time that Blizzard gives a bit more love to the secondary professions.
After more than 10 years farming for The Horseman’s Reins, it finally dropped for me today, on Halloween!
Soforah had hers on her first run, many years ago. This year, I killed the Headless Horseman with 5 different characters each day, and it’s on the last day that it dropped. It’s my RNG Halloween gift and I fucking love it!
I could not not write a post about this week’s best news: Shadowlands will be released on November, 24th and it couldn’t be a better date. Sof’ and I will begin a month of holidays at home (unrelated to the confinement, related to not giving a shit about the outside world) on December 4th. By then, the new expansion will have had 10 days to bug, lag and crash.
Remember when I said that it would be between Nov. 23th and Dec. 8th… Ok, I said it would be the later, but I wasn’t too far, huh?!
We were already prepared to not see WoW’s new expansion this year, with this nowadays’ general delaying trend, California’s wildfires and god knows what 2020 still has in stores (aliens, volcanoes, Trump?)… But it’s definitely coming, Blizzard has even moved WoW’s 16th anniversary to November 2nd so the two events wouldn’t overlaps.
Writing a prequel to a new expansion is not an easy task, the real plot will unfold in the game while the introduction story is mostly about the tensions that grow before the war. While there is a plot in Shadows Rising, the book focuses on the relations between the characters that will play a role in the expansion to come.
I won’t lie, I didn’t have much pleasure reading this book, it was often overly descriptive and slow. Also, I’m not a fan of Madeleine Roux’s writing style. Unfortunately, Christie Golden was apparently already busy with another project (which looks amazing)… I just hope that Roux doesn’t become a new resident writer for Blizzard.
What I did enjoy though was to read the book as I was completing the Horde campaign with my Paladin. It gave more depth to many characters that I was discovering in the game (like Talanji and Bwonsamdi).
I am now ready for Shadowlands. Only twice sleeping before the pre-patch, yeah!
Blizzard just announced that Shadowlands, the next WoW expansion which was set to be released on October 27th, will be delayed until late 2020.
Well, I didn’t see that one coming…
But, since we’re veterans of launches (and the mess they usually are), we didn’t plan a single day off for the release. Actually, we were planning to take some time off in December.
I know that November 24th and December 8th are the two most possible new dates for the release but I’m not sure that Nov.24th is gonna happen, since it’s right before Thanksgiving and the launch of an expansion requires most people to be at work. So, I put my money on Dec.8th.
I just hope that they won’t delay it until 2021 because I really would love to run in Shadowlands during the holiday season.
We made our choice for Shadowlands, our allegiance will go to the Venthyr covenant. The first reason is simply aesthetic, Revendreth is awesome and we definitely can see ourselves in the middle of the intrigues that are taking place in this gorgeous gothic zone.
As we’ve already stated in our previous post, we both plan to main retribution paladins for the new expansion and the plate armor set of the Venthyr looks awesome:
The abilities also seem to fit perfectly our specilization:
Ashen Hallow will boost our AOE, provide some healing and increase the damage output of Hammer of Wrath.
Door of Shadows will grant us a movement ability which will be more than welcome because we lack in mobility.
Many people will argue that Kyrian would suit better the fantasy of a Paladin but we’re not really into Angelic Paladins. Retribution is about dispensing punishment to those who deserve it, our place should definitely be with the Venthyr covenant.
I believe that the last push was the Afterlives video. The more I watch those animated shorts, the more I believe that Blizzard should publish its own comic books. It would be a better way to introduce a new expansion than the book I’m reading at the moment, but I’ll talk about it in another post.
Battle for Azeroth as been the expansion that we’ve probably played the less. For two years, we’ve been asking ourselves how we could love something that much for more than a decade and, now, not being able to play it for more than a few days. Many times, we’ve tried to get back into it… We’ve joined another guild, we’ve even tried to better plan our achievement hunt… All without success.
As we were starting to think that it was time to move one from WoW, we decided to spend a week-end discovering the Horde campaign…
Zandalar, the colors, the characters, the story, the music, everything feels right. Within a few days, our enthusiasm was back and our greatest regret is that we haven’t been on this side of the story since the begining of BFA.
Throughout our years in Azeroth, we’ve been both Alliance and Horde and I know that it is down to everybody’s personal taste, but our greatest times have always been on the Horde.
We don’t know why we didn’t think about it sooner but we won’t change factions anymore. For the Horde! Zandalar forever!
But moving to the Horde wasn’t enough, something else was missing… Around Cataclysm, Sof and I both changed our mains from Druid to Hunter. Since then, we’ve been accumulating achievements points on those characters, which made it increasingly harder to change our mains again. As a consequence, we’ve been playing a class we both didn’t enjoy because we were afraid to start all over again. We’ve tried several times but we always came back to our hunters because “they have everything”. It was a mistake. If you don’t enjoy the class you play, you should change, no matter what!
When we recently moved to the Horde, we started questing with our Retribution Paladins in Zuldazar and we’ve been having more fun than we’ve ever had with our Hunters. I won’t lie, we’ve had a rough couple of weeks… Changing your main characters when our old ones are so close to complete achievements like Undersea Usurper is not an easy thing to do. But, as the week passed, it became clear that our Hunters were responsible for last years’ drop of enthusiasm.
Our plan is to complete Nazjatar and reach exalted status with Rajani and Uldum Accord, then we’ll switch entirely to our Paladins for Shadowlands. We have until December because we don’t plan starting the next expansion before the end of the year holidays. Meanwhile, we’re completing the Paladin class order hall campaign and we’re trying to unlock the hidden artifact appearance, which is an insanely fun thing to do.
Blizzard is gifting us with a new free mount in Shadowlands and they let us vote for the one we’d like to receive. The mount isn’t created yet, we vote for the concept that will serve as base for the final design. Of course, community artists have already created fan art for the contest.
Both Soforah and I voted for the Nerubian Swarmer. We thought that the Ancient was more for druids, the flying book for mages and the other mounts didn’t really look appealing.
Unfortunately, as we voted, we discovered the results and, so far, the Nerubian Swarmer is last while the Ancient is first… The poll will run unil September 19th, so everything can still change.
No matter which mount wins, I’ll be very happy to receive a free mount and I found the contest to be an excellent way to include the community in the design of the game.
Finally a release date that’s perfect for Soforah and me. First, it’s far from the heat of the summer. Second, it’s only a month away from our end-of-the-year holidays. For once in a long time, Blizzard’s timing and ours seems to match perfectly.
But this isn’t only the best release date possible, now is also the best moment in a WoW player’s life… We’re only a few weeks from the pre-patch, the new expansion is around the corner, the hype is going up, there are news every day, Blizzard releases shorts to introduce us to the new lore, we even have a book to read.
Since I started playing WoW, I hear people say that Blizzard is going down or that World of Warcraft is dead. To me, it seems that what’s changing the most are the players, because Blizzard still provides amazing entertainment and I’m proud to be part of it.
