The One Where I Became A Panda

Last night I finished the Pandaren starting zone and I have to say that I was disappointed to have to go to Stormwind. I really didn’t want to leave, it’s so wonderful!

I really am impressed with the artwork, I would find myself at times wanting to do nothing more than soak up the surroundings. The world is both brilliant and sedate if both can exist in the same sentence, a true ying/yang experience. Nothing I can say does justice to the world they have created. You just have to see it.

The quests are fun with the usual Blizzard sense of humor and a lot of cool mechanics. Lots of them made me laugh in delight but I did get lost in some of the story so I want to do it all over again.

The fact that I do want to experience the zone again so soon says a lot in itself. When I was in the beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic, I became so sick of doing those same quests that lots of evenings I just couldn’t bring myself to log in even to do the new content. For the sake of full disclosure, I’ve not been logging into the live WoW servers much lately since I stopped raiding. But that’s probably another post that I don’t want to go into here.

But they have done so much to enable you to buy-in to the idea of being in another land. The detail in true Blizzard form is astounding and this is just the beta! Once everything is released, I’m looking forward to taking lots of screenshots of the finished product!

Speaking of beta, there were two things I ran across that really made me laugh. See if you notice them…

    

One thing that was disappointing to me is how quickly things progress from the point where you have met the Horde and Alliance, it almost feels a bit rushed. Or maybe I just know the end is coming and I don’t want it to.

I was chatting with a friend and he brought up the fact that there is no mention of WHY we have to make a choice of Horde or Alliance within the context of the Pandaren world. Everything is framed in a sense that the elders may know about who they are but is it assumed that the new Pandarens do?

But it seems a great time to introduce who these Horde and Alliance people are from the Pandaren point of view. It seems strange for this ancient race to ship their young warriors off to these new lands without much of an explanation of who these strangers are… “they need help, we’ll go help them”.

I do play alliance on my toons so when I chose Alliance, it kinda felt out of character for the three Pandarens to show up at Stormwind’s gate, go see the King and get this lecture after having saved his people and having had their homeland threatened. It feels as if Varian Wrynn is doing them some sort of a favor by allowing them into the Alliance. I do hope they will flesh out this last part a bit more.

My Pandaren master admonished me to have patience and so I shall. In the meantime, I still have to say Great Job Blizzard!

Good To Be Back Home Again

Just as an update post, I’m back on Elune and back to being Allianceand it’s really nice to be home. Horde was interesting, I accomplished goals and enjoyed the quests that I had a chance to do but Alliance really is where my heart lies.  I’m chalking it down to a very expensive experiment. One great thing is that when I moved back, all of my old achievements & factions were restored and I didn’t have to grind anything old again. I even received It’s Over Nine Thousand!

Right now I’m in the guild Emerald Dream and raiding in a joint raid with them and Saving Grace in the tier 11 dungeons. I’d not spent much time in there when we moved to Firelands on AD so it’s good to do the fights. Hoping to get back into Firelands very soon though and stay somewhat current. It’s nice to be able to group with some long time friends in Kindred Spirits again as well!

I have been thinking that I do want to put more time into doing horde quests. There is a lot of interesting story there! I have a lot of alts but I just don’t play them much, I really love Katherinne & playing pally.

Right now I’m working on a post about my feelings concerning The Old Republic which may or may not see the light of day. It started out kinda small but my negative feelings about TOR have become a bit overwhelming. Perhaps I’ll get it sorted out enough to post.

In the real world, I just paid down the balance of the package deal booked through AAA to go to Blizzcon so it is official now. I have a flight paid for and a hotel room booked. Looking forward to meeting some of the folks I follow on Twitter. Woo hoo, my first Blizzcon finally after all these years!

Thanks for reading!

Faction changing from Alliance to Horde – what’s not mentioned

After 6.5 years of playing Alliance on Elune, I’ve moved to Horde on Argent Dawn in order to raid.

Today’s post is about the things that Blizzard doesn’t tell you when you change factions.

1. You may lose more faction that they list.

I was at 48 exalted reps when I moved and I knew I’d be losing Wintersaber Trainers and would have to grind Tranquillian from what the WoW Faction Transfer guide said.

The website shows that most Alliance faction moves to a corresponding Horde faction.  But they don’t list that the Silver Covenant will not move to The Sunreavers.

Also note that it resets the whole Tournament quest chain so you can not buy pets/mounts  until you have become a champion of each Horde city. At that point, you start earning the Champion’s Seals again.

2. Twilight Highlands and Vashj’ir quests reset.

At least so far they are all new. I actually enjoyed the Horde lead-in quests into Twilight Highlands more than Alliance. Vashj’ir quests so far are the same, just different players of course. My rep with both The Earthen Ring stayed exalted and I transferred from Wildhammer to Dragonmaw, but I have the horde quests to do.   To me this is a positive thing since I’ll get to see this area that is crucial to the Cataclysm story with new eyes.

3. You do not lose pets or mounts.

I finished up with the same number of pets and mounts. I did not lose my alliance companion pets like the cats, etc. This is logical since you can buy those on the AH. And my Alliance mounts turned into Horde equivalents. I do miss my Black Stallion and the Winterspring Frostsabre that I had just received but the raptors and wolves are cool too.

4. You lose most Northrend flightpaths.

I have one of the Rings of Kirin Tor and when I used it to go to Dalaran for the first time, I realized that I only had two flightpaths: Warsong Hold and Vengeance Landing. All of the rest were gone.   I did have to do the quests to gain the Shadow Vault flight path again but did not have to do the ones for the Nesingwary one, just click on the plane.

So there you are, a few things that you’ll want to be aware of if you decide to change factions.  I’ve really enjoyed it so far, it’s freshened up the game for me.

And many thanks to those in my new guild, the Orgrimmar Brewing Company, for showing me around the city and helping me get my bearings those first few days!