Azshara is full of hate

Yes, hate. And birds. Hateful birds.
Well, not really birds, those thunderhead hippogryphs (or as I thought of them: Blue Lightning Death(tm))
So hate, and Death(tm), and rock giants, and angry furbolgs, and ridiculously strong deer, and angry Naga, and and and...

Dreamfoil!

Let's see, that's...1 for 7. That means Azshara is scoring a 14% on my scorecard. Last I checked that isn't passing.

Honestly, Rasaiel and I were out there for a hunter quest she picked up at level 50 (we're leveling way too fast it seems...more on that later) and both remembered quite quickly why we hated the zone so much. Blizzard did a great job in creating a "boonies, middle of nowhere, ends of civilization" type area with Azshara, because you fly into the area about 10 seconds from the border to Ashenvale, and that's your ONLY CONTACT WITH CIVILIZATION, for miii~les and miles.

...of painful dragons, and hippogryphs, and elementals, and giants, and naga, and insurance salesmen, and the kids in the shopping mall that whine at parents who have long since tuned it out, and cell-phone hawkers, and tupperware parties. Yes, they're all evil.

If I were to make some kind of "top ten things I learned from Azshara," I think the first 2 would be nice comments on the herbs and scenery ("oo, perpetual autumn!"), and 3-10 would all be "run! get away! fly in to take a picture and then flee!!!"

On Leveling (and dungeons)

The one thing that's stood out to Rasa and I this time around is just how fast we're flying through the levels. Granted, we have an awesome 2-person makeup working, it's let us handle plenty of dungeon runs at or close-to our level, and up to 5 par-level nonelites at a time. But we both distinctly remember our last play-through taking much longer (even without the 2.3 experience change) and focusing on a lot more dungeon play. I think I've only picked up one dungeon loot item so far, and that was a ring off of Thermaplugg back in Gnomer. With simple AH greens we've been flying along just fine, and with 60 coming up I think we're really starting to see the changes that BC has brought.

Last time around, 60 was it. When you landed at 60 you started gearing for the big and bad, so the 40's was when you started gathering your blues early. ZF and Mara, Sunken Temple, BRD, and so on. At least... that's how we rolled.

This time, knowing that at 58 you can hop through the door to a magical world of epic-level quest rewards that take 10 minutes to accomplish...it kind of makes you ask "what's the point?". Why gather up a team of 5 and bust our humps on Sunken Temple and Black Rock when we can get more than enough xp from quests to push through to 58 and hit The New Content?

Which, again, makes us both pine for the earlier days, when we learned just how easy BRD became on it's 17th run, when we'd charge in with our 3 closest WoW buddies and grind the arena event, when DM was a near nightly run for a while...the full effect of the new 60+ quest rewards is definitely striking us. I just hope the BC endgame areas are as full of level-cap non-raid fun as the old world was. Things we'll miss:

-Rasa's old hunter would team with a mage friend and clear Scholomance for the challenge.
-Druid teams stealthing to the spider boss in LBRS for our purple boots of awesome.
-Knowing how to weave through the first chamber of dwarves in BRD to reach the arena with no combat.
-Teaching novices how to lava-hop to the Molten Core attunement stone, as well as how to weave and wall-walk to the DM library.
-"I have no idea what to do until the raid starts, wanna run Inner Mara?" *Waterfall dive!*
-Kiting Drakk
-Getting mind controlled in Strat by the Banshee boss, or killing the squishies accidentally with DoT's when they got MC'ed.
-Never being able to complete the timed Strat challenge for the Tier0.5 set.

I think the thought that there wasn't more world to go find, that this was where all the biggest challenges were, put a lot more focus on the instances at the top. With the shift that BC has made, I wonder if Outland will be a pretty sparse place come WotLK, save those grinding up to 68.

10 Things I learned in Tanaris

From the journal of Pathos, which is currently being written on the back of a pirate hat:

1. Never try to steal some water from the spring fields. There's some kind of membership due to be able to drink that stuff, and when you approach without a member's ID, the locals get really hostile. Note to self: look into membership, they were all pretty lean and tan.

2. Squid is a food. I was trying to catch a pile of floating debris when I reeled in a big purple tentacled mess, which I quickly beat into submission with my staff. The cook in Steamwheedle Port said it would actually taste good fried up with some seasoning. I wasn't a huge fan, but it put some extra spring into Rasaiel's step, so I gave the leftovers to her to have later.

3. Ogres + 90 degree weather + 0% humidity + obesity = don't take any cloth they might have had on them. You don't want to know what it's been used for. I don't care if I could "boil it and make it into bandages, silly", I'll stick to open-air wound healing if that's my only alternative.

4. They're called "dew" collectors, regardless of how the goblin pronounced it. Also, even though they collect shiny morning cactus droplets, that doesn't make them any less of a bad-ass elemental pile of pain.

5. Just because the hyenas are laughing doesn't make them friendly. Note to self: keep taking those purification potions until the bites heal, someone mentioned rabies.

6. And you thought the bugs were big in the Wetlands!

7. Pirates are decent interior decorators, and love collecting portraits. If I ever visit that nice camp town again, I'll be sure to bring the painting of my dad to add to their collection. And they have plenty of hats. TOO many hats. I think one of the doors in their moored ship just said "hats" on it.

8. There's thorium here. It's bright blue, sticks out of the ground, and is not in fact a "giant Otter Pop." Note to self: bring more water next time I venture that far south. Hallucinations are embarrassing.

9. Wear. Sunscreen.

10. Plan the next vacation somewhere nicer. Winterspring perhaps.

I'm Spamming my Blog

Took this picture a while back. A nice glitch in the system occasionally renders the ground texture invisible. It's a known bug that's been around for a while, only pops up every other month or so, and a reboot fixes it. Anyway:

"What do you need?"
"Clutter. Lots of clutter."

2 = 5?

Rasaiel and I decided to have some fun after a series of errand quests, and poked our heads into Razorfen Downs the other night. The goal was to "see how far we could get" and possibly get a piece of loot. However, what we didn't expect was a complete clear of the undead portion. Complete to the end lich boss.

With just the two of us. Well, and her kitty.

This was rather surprising to me, seeing as how she and I were 42/41, and the quest to kill said lich was rated as a level 42 group task. In dungeons, I assume "group" means 5 people. I know everything in the instance was around level 35-38 elites, so we had some leverage with our levels (levelage? That just sounds like bad ESL), but I was truly surprised that we cleared the whole way there. I wonder if the levels used to go higher before 2.3.

Regardless, I love my Shackle. I think next on the list of suicide dungeon runs is Uldaman, which could prove hairier since I won't be able to convince a trogg to stand still. Guess I could always play with mind control again...

No! BAD Pathos! That never ends well. Something about becoming some blue alien's battle puppet reeeeeeally ticks off the local humanoid populations.