Day 3

I can't tell if the stat squish got better or not. On the plus side, my level 31 Shaman isn't dying whenever she attacks something (haven't checked my Mage though), on the downside, soloing on my 90 appears to have gotten harder? I don't know, I didn't really expect to get killed in Firelands against the first set of trash. Kind of thought I'd make it a little farther, you know?

Do we know if those rolling restarts a few hours ago fixed the issue the Blood Elf starting zone was having? The one where the Mana Wyrms were 1-shotting level 1s? I hope that was fix. Poor Blood Elves.

I'm still happy with the models. Even the female Tauren are growing on me, honestly.
Quite frankly, it's disturbing me immensely that people are saying that the female Night Elves look "fat." There is no fat on those ladies. It's rather disturbing that people are seeing fat on them. I think they look great.

Going back to either leveling something or soloing dungeons, since I can still apparently handle those no problem.

WoW Warlords of Draenor Prepatch First Impressions

Let me preface this with two things:
1. I did not do the pre-expansion quest chain during the beta, so it was 100% new to me, along with some other things I hadn't messed with yet, like the Toybox and the new Reagents system and storage.
2. I'm a great big beam of sunshine-y happiness compared to the WoW forums today. Expect very little negativity here. I'm completely satisfied.


Now that that's over with, what do I think about the prepatch?

• My characters look great, for the most part. Toysatomimi needed a hair/hair color change. My Draenei needed complete makeovers (especially Gensokyo. Her skin color isn't quite the same as it was, and it's not matching with any hair colors, really). The only models that I have problems with are the female Draenei and female Tauren. The rest I'm pretty good with. I love human females, in particular.
• The prepatch quests were decent. I was hoping they'd be short, and they were. I really wasn't feeling up to a whole long chain. It wasn't a bad questline by any means. Not the most exciting, but not the most boring either.
• My Shadow Priest is feeling great. Level-up glyphs have really helped me out.
• I messed with some of my lower leveled characters, and I'm having no issues fighting things whatsoever. If anything, it seems like I'm downing things in fewer shots than yesterday.
• Stat-squish has somehow made it feel like I'm doing more damage than before. I might just be confused and out-of-touch with numbers though.
• I'm a big fan of the ability pruning. All the skills I lost on my Shadow Priest weren't that important to me. The only one I was mildly sad about was Renew, but I understand why it's gone, and Desperate Prayer makes up for it. I still have Power Word: Shield, so I'm good.
• The game itself doesn't feel like it's changed much. The nicer models are a plus, although not all that noticeable unless you're specifically looking out for them.
• Toybox sounds great. I don't have many toys, so I haven't really gotten to mess with it. That, and whenever I try to put a toy in my game crashes, but I'm 100% certain that'll be fixed soon.
• I LOVE THE NEW REAGENTS SYSTEM. IT IS AMAZING. So many shiny new tabs to keep all my cloth in! And the Reagents stack to 200! DO YOU KNOW HOW AMAZING THAT IS?! Toyosatomimi's bank was previously completely full of cloth with no space for anything else. I have so much free bank space now!
• I've already finished the prepatch questchain, so I've got my shiny new title and less exciting pet. I'm kind of obsessed with attempting to collect titles at the moment, so I love having a new, easy to get one at the moment!
• Warlord's Deathwheel looks great, even if it is mildly obnoxious sounding.
• My only character that is legitimately ruined is this random level 5 Orc Warrior I have on Nazgrel named "Beautyitself." Well, her, and a level 15 Tauren Shaman on Nazgrel. But that's because I think the female Tauren model is...lacking.
• Quintella is looking great. I also feel like the only person who actually really likes the new Female Forsaken run animation...

Was logging on this afternoon a pain? Certainly. I didn't expect it to be a smooth login process. My game patched fairly quickly. It did get stuck at one point, but a quick restart of my computer fixed that. My game got stuck at Connecting (not surprising; it did that to me in the beta as well), but Run as Administrator cleared that problem right up.

All my vital addons are up and running. Lag isn't terrible, especially since the Blasted Lands don't appear to be CRZ (that, or only Tanaris-Greymane players were playing today, which seems unlikely, as we're often CRZ with Stormrage).

All in all, I am extremely pleased. I can go back to my leveling in peace, and my characters will look better doing it! That, and the leveling zones are fairly quiet today since everyone's busy on their 90s. Heehee.

Things that I'm most excited about for WoD

Just wanted to make this list. Please be aware that I am far from a hardcore player, and have no delusions of being one (okay, maybe delusions, but I know I'm not). I know that some (perhaps a lot) of people will not agree with my opinions. That's fine. I like these things. You don't have to :)

Oh, and these are in no particular order.

• New Human Female models. I know people don't like the new faces, but I love them. The faces have so much more emotion! The high-eyebrows don't bother me too much, and the old faces just never had any personality to me. I mean, a couple of them did, but things get old when you use the same face for every character, which was what I was doing. These ones are all slightly different. They have different expressions, and I love them. I feel like I can actually make the characters I want with them!
• New Night Elf Female models. I love them. I never used to like playing Night Elves because I didn't like them. Now I do. Face 1 is wonderful.
• New Troll Female models. If I play ever play Horde again, I'm making all my characters Trolls. They're gorgeous.
• Ability pruning. I log onto the beta and rearranging my buttons is still a core, just, perhaps, less of one. I honestly don't see the big deal, but I main a Shadow Priest, and we didn't get hit bad, so there's that. I've been messing with the classes I've never maxed before (so, everything but Priest and Monk), and I can pick it up just fine. Then again, I don't know what I'm missing, right?
• Claws of Shiravva level 100 talent for Feral Druids. Looks pretty cool. It would be nice if they implement a glyph that lets us keep the perk of the new form (any non-combat spells are usable while transformed) but still keep the appearance of Cat form. Not because I don't like the new form, because I do, but I'm guessing that some people really won't like it replacing Cat.
• Lone Wolf level 100 talent for Hunters. This is what I've always wanted. Hunter without the pet. I love archer classes, I really do; I hate pet classes. This will let me still be viable without having a pet. I desperately need a level 90 Hunter now. If only you could get the talent at an earlier level than max.
• Tanaan Jungle opening questline is fantastic.
• I kind of love Yrel.
• Automatically learning some essential Glyphs while leveling sounds like a great addition.
• Demonic Servitude level 100 talent for Warlocks sounds useful. Probably. I don't know anything about Warlocks.
• On the topic of Warlocks, they have a level 100 Talent called Cataclysm. Warlocks can summon an expansion?
• Shadow Reflection level 100 talent for Rogues sounds wicked interesting.
• I love the idea of Followers. I haven't messed with Followers or Garrisons too much since I want to experience it fresh when the game comes out officially, so I don't know much about it. Sounds like the system in Assassins Creed II: Brotherhood, which I really enjoyed.
• Prismatic Crystal level 100 Mage talent sounds really, really interesting, but it also sounds clumsy, so I'm not sure about it.
• Quests so far seem fun.
• The new glow for objectives (replacing the sparkles) is a lot easier to see, in my opinion.
• Hair pretty much looks better for everyone.
• Female Dwarves now wear bras under their armor (better physics, yay!).
• Being able to bring certain Followers with you questing sounds wonderful.

There's really only two things that I'm still iffy on:
Lack of flying (let me get into that, don't kill me just yet), and the new Draenei female faces.

Let me start with the easier one: the faces.
I don't know, something just doesn't look right about them. It's not the eyes, per se, since on the level 100 realm my Shaman came with a mask by default, so I can just see the eyes. The eyes look great. It might be the proportions of the face, or perhaps the shape of the face itself? Not sure. The lips look a bit weird as well. It feels like it's some minor detail throwing me off.

As for flying, I think I've explained my stance on this before. I support flight at level 100 because when I first started playing, flight was what inspired me to level. Don't ask why, it just did. Ever since then, I enjoy getting on my mount and just flying around. Half the time I forget to mount up while questing anyway. I just like seeing the view. I don't enjoy my surroundings on the ground, because I'm too worried about running into enemies.
When I'm on the ground I'm in serious-mode. When I'm in the air, I'm looking around at the pretty surroundings.
That said, I'll see how it works out.

Whooooo

My WoD beta is up and running, which means I can start playing it now! Yay!

Guess what?

Guess who got their invite to the WoW Warlords of Draenor beta?

Me!

And there's no non-disclosure agreement, which means I can post on here about it!

Now, I just have to be able to log in. I can get as far as the realm selection screen, but then it freezes up at "connecting" before finally disconnecting me.

This will be much more exciting when I can actually jump in and play, but it's still exciting nonetheless!