Time to say goodbye or even farewell to WoW. My physical condition doesn't allow me to stay in front of the comuputer screen long enough while WoW requires a lot of time (free time).
I'm a bit sad but just a bit... 15+ years of playing was worth every minute of gameplay and every penny (well, it is almost 3k US$) spent.
Health trouble might be just a coincidence or a sign to quit.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who visited this site and was my gamepal.
This site will stay online as long as my major one (realpapa.ru) is up and running. Long Live OSG!

Well, it took me less than a month to get the rest of the mounts to collect 400. This is also quite the achievement, though I feel like it is less valuable to me than 100 exalted reputations. Anyway, I thought something will drop for me as 400th one but, instead, Blizzard put another mount into the shop and so I couldn't resist to buy it (mount itself is absolutely funny one). The video below demonstrates this new mount, Hogrus the Swine :), and reward for A Horde of Hoofbeats achievement - Frenzied Feltalon. I put some comments on youtube why 2 chars are in this video. Let me repeat it here as well:
This achievement requires 400 mounts collection "usable by a single character". Hogrus has been bought on my main but DK could use only 399 mounts out of my collection. My paly could use 1 more mount. Logging on him gave me this achievement...

Mount collection will continue but certainly without that rush :)

When we moved from US to EU server mid-summer 2008 we had to start everything from scratch. My 1st EU char was mage Elderius. I definitely didn't want to go through vanilla content in details, just leveled up as fast as I could. I have returned to vanilla later doing some quests and alike, however bring reputation to exalted level with all factions was not on my priority list. But definitely it wasn't even "remotely imaginable" I'll get 100 exalted reputations in just 10 years of wow playing...

Reputation was always a part of wow game mechanincs, that is why my key chars are humans. For some expansions it was the key (e.g. as a part of flying requirements), for some - just nice gear and stuff.

Anyway, this is quite THE achievement and a kind of reward for me being so dedicated to the game ;) The mount (Pureheart Courser) should be a bit more unique though :))

My next stop - 400 mounts' collection. But it may take some time (I'm at 396 at the moment). Stay tuned!

It's been long time since I wrote something here. Been busy with game and old friends. May be how it should be - instead of writing it's better be playing ;)

Anyway, we've manage to clear 1st Raid tier and down G'huun on heroic:

As for myself - I'm close to the epic achievement - 100 exalted reputaions. Stay tuned! (Mount collection continues too, 394/400)

A few good old friends rejoined OSG. Looking forward to play with friends again!

Each and every expansion comes to the end. Same goes to any "hobby", WoW included. I'm a big fan of this game, it is really hard to imagine I am playing since 2003 (year is not a mistake) with a few breaks, but I will continue :)

The announcement of BfA wasn't a surprise to me, not sure if I want to play on classic (aka vanilla) servers though. This is the memory I want to keep intact after 12+ years since I played my paly on US Dunemall. But I definitely will be on BfA.

Speaking of a hobby - this blog was a kind of "let it out" thing - sometimes I badly needed to express myself on game, players and directions it moves. As of now I lost interest to such blogging. Have other interests/activities/hobby (e.g. I've started to build custom water cooling PCs). So basically this blog for Legion has ended. Dunno if I will start writing again at BfA time.

A few words about Legion in general. First of - I see good trend to return to vanilla basics, e.g. profession requires certain player's level...

A short story goes there to prove it, a story from vanilla days :) My elder son got blacksmith head plate plan - Lionheart Helm (he told me it was on high demand for PvP). It was extremely low drop from BWL final boss and so he was the only blacksmith on PvP server who could make it. Imagine he wanted to earn lots of gold... but mats cost was very high - that plan required 12 arcanite bars. Besides the need for Arcane Crystal (very rare drop from mining arcanite nodes) for that alcemist should buy a recipe from specific vendor, located in Gadgetzan... Well, besides you need to be Artizan Alchemist and you can't get it until you hit lvl 35 AND trainer was located on the island where Feathermoon Stronghold is/was (not sure trainer is still there), plus (if I remember that correctly) you should be at 275 skill level...
Anyway, I had mage alt, he was alchemist but no flying point opened nearby... So I ported to Darnasus and started to swim down to that island... It tiook me like an hour with a few deaths (sharks...) but I did it and since that was able to transmute arcanite bar... Very unusual for vanilla days but it was epic trip and I still have picture of that in my memory.

As I wrote in the beginning of Legion - it is very unfriendly to alts, sometime boring as you need to repeat the same quest chain again and again, but overall it is very good expansion.

Lots of puzzles, rare mounts and pets, relatively easy gearing up (thanks for tokens' vendors) and world bosses which spawn often and do not require faction tag to kill for loot. Enjoyed all of it and see no need for raiding, honestly...

Oh, a few more words on raiding. I did a few raids with random Russian guild, just to refresh my memories, as a tank. (I should admit I'm not competitive as DPS anymore /cry, so tanking is my only option). Well, I had no fun there, perhaps I'm too old for raiding. It became very linear - taunt/move to required location/"don't stand in the fire"/move to another location/watch debuff and retaunt or aggro adds... rinse and repeat... I sure understand that innovation is something that doesn't appear on someone's will and it is very difficult to invent new game mechanics for each and every new boss... but still.

All in all, great game, great fun, and a lot of good memories. See you in BfA! ;)

I sure like nice pets... and a kind of a challenge. This one forced me to grind a few potions' recipies, visit Dire Mall and even BRD :)) In the end I like such kind of adventures though it is hard to beleive someone could find all keys and sequences without insider's info.

A short message to my visitors - I'm alive and playing Legion, just have much less time for blogging. Have some interesting pictures and some thoughts. Hopefully will find some spare time to post those. Cheers!

I've been busy with different in-game activities since Legion release. I should admit I like this expansion more than any other. As I already did many things in Legion I wanted to do I now have more time to post things and thoughts :)

I must start with Ashbringer, the dream of many vanilla paladins. It's been a legend, rumors, speculations and alike. If you never play vanilla it might be hard to explain (though I will try). Please read a very nice article Ashbringer on Wowpedia beforehand.

Paladins were weak in vanilla, none of its class role was good for group/raid gameplay though we shine in solo PvE content. A speculation between paladins was that there is the unique legendary sword that will make us the best DPS in game. That sword is extremely hard to get but it is so amazing that all palies were dreaming about it.

I was in a hard-core raiding guild, Shinigami, on US server Dunemaul, and my main was retribution paladin Mikerelder. Our guild started raiding late but we were progressing rapidly and soon enough MC and BWL were conquered. There was only one more guild which cleared AQ40 (and broke soon after). I should admit Shinigami killed C'Thun only 3 times - AQ40 required much more than average raider could deliver. As you might know, Blizzard didn't expect such a great success of World of Warcraft so they didn't have any plans for something which we know today as expansion. Instead they released the extreme raid, known as Naxxramas.

Only a few guilds in the world were able to clear it in vanilla. Shingami wasn't one of those. We killed only 4 or 5 first bosses and were not even close to 4 horsemen. But I knew that those few guilds that were extreme hard-core raiders got an item, Corrupted Ashbringer, which dropped from 4 horsemen and started a questline. Unfortunately, on completion that one there were no Ashbringer as a reward and no continuation quest or alike. At that time nobody knew how real Ashbringer could be received.

As we know today Ashbringer as a real weapon didn't exist in vanilla. I could speculate and say that the developer of this questline/chain left the company and Ashbringer was forgotten (that happened to many things we saw in vanilla which had no logical end).

My main here, on EU Ghostlands, is DK, but as soon as I discovered that Ashbringer will be a hidden artifact for retardins I put it in my urgent "to-do list" in Legion. So my paly has been leveled up soon after DK and my Ashbringer hunt began.

Well, Blizzard created the great "storyline" for Ashbringer hidden artifact appearence, practically implementing all rumors that did exist at vanilla time (read this wonderful article for the full story and pls notice its date - 2010 year). It includes getting a head of Nefarian (BWL final boss), 2 parts of Nat's fishing book, visitng Dire Maul (though there is no more shortcut to the Library), travelling all over old Azeroth world, long wait for rare spawn (I was lucky and got help from other paly from another server where it spawned) and then endless fishing (I was lucky again and got my item after "only" 946 catches while people report 8000+ catches before they got theirs). Special note to those who complain that getting this artifact look is extremely hard - you guys never played vanilla :))

All in all, that was the best remembrance of my belowed original World of Warcraft, aka vanilla, where life was hard, efforts were endless but epics were epic :) And my paly got it! I'm really happy and appreciate what Blizzard did to satisfy MC veterans like myself...

I had a chance to play open beta Legion for some time - somehow Dun's account got the access. Didn't get a break from the game (I guess I really needed it) but got some interesting impressions:

All in all, I'm looking forward to play it anyway and see you in game!

WoD Postmortem thoughts finally published here.

Site has been modified to represent upcoming Legion expansion theme. WoD blog has been moved to corresponding archive.

It is very symbolic that my original main vanilla char, paladin Mikerelder, created initially on US server Dunemaul in 2004 and then re-created as my alt on EU server Ghostlands in 2011, got 299th mount. It was the last step to the "Lord of the Reins" achievement. I've been farming a few of those, solo-ing different bossess here and there, but he got it from the 2nd Throne of Thunder boss, Horridon. It is a nice blue-colored ground mount, Spawn of Horridon:

To get the 300th mount was just a matter of gold (I described it in my previous post) - I bought the alliance byke, Champion's Treadblade, for 100k and:

Well, the rewarded mount doesn't have unique model but blue color and I hate how it shakes during the flight (perhaps Blizzard will change it in Legion, at least there are some flying models change). Nevertheless, it is quite The Achievement! It took me 9 years of endless mount farming and permanent fight with RNG but I won, finally! :)

A few funny things:
- the day before 299th mount dropped for me there was one I was missing on Black Market AH, Wooly White Rhino. You definitely know that BMAH doesn't have a buy out option, so to get a guaranteed win you need to bid the max allowed sum of gold, which is 999999,99. I have enough gold but as this mount is ugly I didn't bid... and saved a lot of gold :)
- the day after 299th mount dropped for me there was another missing mount on Black Market AH, the one I was farming on all of my chars - Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent, but the hunt was already over...

What mounts did I miss but wanted to have? Seems like I got all of them... I was farming Time-Lost Proto-Drake for some time, during WotLK and after. Saw it only once but wasn't the first who tagged it, so I didn't get it. It is ugly but really rare. Phosphorescent Stone Drake - was farming Aeonaxx on different alts but never seen it. It is nice and rare but not unique. Never interested in real (arena-like) PvP mounts. Could get some from challenge modes but do not want to rush anywhere anymore :)

What's next? I need a break, a kind of... I want to be fresh for Legion :)) Will log from time to time to get some free gold in garrison and will see what the Overwatch game would be.

P.S. Getting 300 mounts woudn't be possible without help of my old in-game friend, who invited my alt to his high level guild with all guild achievement, so I was able to buy the missing guild mounts from guild vendor. That is what we call "careful use of game mechanics" :)