One of a few things I wanted to do in MoP was to complete warlock's "green fire" class chain quest. The reason is quite obvious - I still remember old good days of vanilla WoW and the time I've been playing with Dun there. His char on US server was warlock and together we went through very hard warlock class quest to get him his epic mount. Still remember the last (insane) part which took place in West DM and required very good 5-man team (I should admit it was easier than the last part of paladin epic mount chain in Scholo).

Anyway, when I prepaid for WoD for his account I created warlock with its "original" name Dunmer and gave it Level 90 character boost. You could call it sentimental but that is what I've done ;)

Indeed his char got some love and soon enough warlock was full epic with average ilvl of 500. It took me like 2 weeks farming quest object and then I had no problem to enter into the final one-man Black Temple instance to complete the chain. I've spent good hour in there with some reading as I wasn't aware of some recent lock's abilities. (I've got a big surprise at the time of warlock creation - no shards are in need anymore... Side note again - all vanilla classes had unique identity, shards for lock was the one, nowadays classes are not that much different which makes playing alts very much boring...)

In the end I met Kanrethad Ebonlocke (where Illidan Stormrage used to stay) and in about 15 minutes understood I can't beat it due to extremely complicated mechanics and lack of DPS due to low ilvl.

Then it was a gear grind, practice and reading. After that, at 558 ilvl it took me like a week of daily attempts, each for duration of a flask, until I've learned how to do that, but... But I should admit I'm probably too old for this :) I always was late with LoS or changing the target etc etc etc...

But in the end I did it and quite happy to complete this task. Congratulation to me and to Blizzard - they made excellent final encounter for this chain where you need to know this class extremely well and utilize all warlock abilities at right time and in a right sequence to beat it:

P.S. The last thing I am looking for until WoD comes out is heirloom weapon for my DK. I don't put too much efforts in there as it will be 100% drop at the time of 6.0 patch before WoD launch.

P.P.S. I will change the look of this site to match WoD theme in forthcoming weeks...

Finally I got a good group via oQueue and killed Garrosh on normal difficulty. Got my achievemet mount (have now 211 mounts in total) and feel like I'm done with MoP. Blizzard killed my Firelands Raid lock so I'm not in a mood to clear it up again to Ragrnaros and kill him (that was my last goal about pre-MoP raids - to solo my old MC frid). Will definitely try to get warlock solo quest done.

All in all, it wasn't the best expansion but definitely not the worst.

I highly recommend to read Blizz blog about raiding Dev Watercooler: Raiding Azeroth Part 1 - A Look Back

My only concern about vanilla writing is that none of the original designers is working for Blizz now and therefore the original development thoughts might be lost.

Anyway, as I am a veteran, I think I have rights to comment vanilla part:

P.S. Want to comment the rest of "Episode 1"...

First time since TBC went live I see the acknowledgement from game development that this expansion was a big failure. It really was. Original Naxx at the end of vanilla has insane difficulty. Our guild has 40+ players fully geared in AQ40 but we were able to down only 3 out of 4 first bosses in there, and it took enormous amount of time so guld started to break apart as we all were exosted by raiding. It became a pure business, no fun, and I stopped hardcore raiding and didn't do it since then. Somehow Blizzard didn't see this trend (or didn't want to) and so TBC has been designed to be a continuation of end-of-vanilla difficulty (read Naxx) which already was much above what an average player could take. Attunement process was insanely complicated, you still could find a chart of it over internet (e.g. here).

At the end of vanilla we quit from our raiding guild and established exactly what is wriiten in the blog - small guild of friends to keep playing in TBC. Most of the players were focused on PvP, but we've managed to clear Karazhan. And yes, it was difficult at the beginning. After Karazhan there was nothing to do for a small guild, and that is another evidence that Blizzard was focused on hard core raidiers only in TBC. They've started to see things right only at the end of this expansion but it was too late - many good players left as expansion didn't bring anything new and exciting...

I should admit that Blizzard learned lesson of TBC and all futher expansions were not that bad. Well, enough said...

I read about game chages in WoD and decided to put my MoP impressions into one place. It is a new section of my blog, named MoP thru the Elder's eyes. It is not completed yet but will be soon.

As I wrote about a month ago I was surprised that I was able to solo Blackwing Descent. Since then I've tried to solo a few more Cata raids.

Here is the results:

Now I'm really eager to see what I can do in Firelands... :)

To be honest I wasn't sure I can do this. It started when I decided to get that funny hat from Bloodsail Buccaneers that summons Blood Parrot. Then it was just a matter of time. I should admit that original requirements for this achi were much more tough due to the need to be exalted with Shen'dralar faction.

Just a short info for those who never played vanilla - Shen'dralar faction resided in the instance Dire Maul. There was a back door inside of North part of the instance to the library where all of them were located. You could go in there skipping trash (you had to know the path and proper timing, but there was no need to clear anything to get there). The front door was in the West part. To enter through that one you need to clear the entire instance (rogues/druids were able to sneak in though). As Dire Maul was 60 level instance getting in the library was a kind of a challenge.

You were neutral with them in the beginning. To rise a reputation with Shen'dralar you could turn a quest there with so called class-specific book. Books dropped from the different NPC in Dire Maul. While playing paladin in vanilla I did turn paly book "The Light and How To Swing It". That quest gave me trinket with Fire Resistance (which was the key for raiding Molten Core) and +500 rep. However it was one time only quest. Another one time quest for rep with them was "Pusillin and the Elder Azj'Tordin" which gave +500 rep as well (it is not in the game anymore).

So the way to rise the reputation with this faction was to turn librams there. Librams were special "books" which were dropping from diffferent bosses inside of Dire Maul. As I said above Dire Maul was level 60 instance so you can't farm bosses for libram alone. Meaning you had to have friends who helped you to farm those librams. Besides Libram itself you had to collect a few very expensive and rare mats and turn them together to Lorekeeper Lydros. In return you were getting +500 rep and so called Arcanum. That was an item you could enchant your head or leg item with. (Indeed it was destroyed during enchanting). There were 3 different librams to turn in there and 3 different enchants (+spell power, +dodge and +haste)

Now you see how hard it was to become exalted with Shen'dralar faction. There were many other "terms and conditions" to grind this reputation, e.g. you needed a key to enter West Dire Maul etc. etc. etc. I found a guide (outdated indeed) how to rise this rep - Shen'dralar Exalted Guide - read it if you are interested of vanilla game experience (UNFORGETTABLE by the way).

Shen'dralar faction has been removed from the game. I've visited Dire Maul recently, playing with my druid alt - back door gone, Shen'dralar faction NPCs gone as well... Oh my, I still do not understand WHY THE HELL classic Azeroth has been redesigned... I am missing all that jazz...

Like I said, there is no outstanding efforts to get this achievement now, just a lot of time and dedication. I had to make a rogue for Ravenholdt reputation rise. Interesting enough that it went to level 90 easily (though pick pocketing trash is possible at level 60). Pick pocket is the most boring part - with heavy junkboxes 10% drop rate it takes a lot of time and efforts. Got several world drop formulas, plans and alike as well as lot of tailoring materials.

In the end, it took me like 3 years of slow progressing. I know, I'm spending too much time playing this game but... But I'm happy I did it. "One goal less..." © Elder :) The next one will be Loremaster...

Aparently someone at Blizzard was (is?) a fan of hip-hop group "Cypress Hill". The name of this achievement ("Insane in the membrane") is taken from the chorus of 1993 hit - "Insane in the brain"... This song was #1 in US rap 1993 chart.

I did it... Lich King on 25-man heroic difficulty solo'ed.

I will not do it again and will not start farming his rare drop mount. The reason - for my char it is too much RNG-dependant and too tiny balanced, making its success almost unpredictable. I actually died (as I should in the end of this fight) but it was like 3 sec before Berserk...

Soloing Lich King as DK in 25-man heroic mode is not about survival (I actually can't survive in Frost build but in Blood build and DPS gear there is no problem to stay alive). The key is to deliver enough DPS, and since LK has 103 Mio HP you need to do about 90Mio damage within 15 mins. Remember that you can't DPS the boss while he is in "Remorseless Winter" phase (happens 2 times), plus no DPS could be done while you are inside of Frostmourne (2 times as well).

So I've used all (available for me) buffs and alike to boost DPS, that is:
- Blessing of Might (that is why you could see Dun's paly on screencap, though it rested outside of the instance),
- Drums of Forgotten Kings,
- Flask of Winter Bite,
- Pandaren Treasure Noodle Soup, eaten in Frost build to get +300 Strength,
- Potion of the Mogu Power (2 times, just before the fight starts and later on after CD),
- Drums of Rage (2 times, at the beginning and after CD, together with Army of the Dead 2 times as well).

As I already said it was just enough but may be I was lucky :)

One less achievement to earn :)

As a solo play lover I was quite happy to fight inside of Brawler's Guild arena. I like personal challenges so getting Rank 8 was the goal as soon as Brawler's Guild has been introduced in patch 5.1.

It took quite some time to get it and then, after new 8 bosses were added in patch 5.3 and I've started to collect 200 mounts, getting rank 10 got another motivation - you could buy a mount when you reach it.

I should admit some bosses made me mad - I was hitting a wall hardly and haven't seen the way out. To name a few - Hexos, Nibbleh and, indeed, the last boss, Ahoo'ru... I agree with the most players who went thru all of the bosses - some are much easier for casters, some - for melee. The bad news is that killing some of them depends on RNG rather than on players skills.

Anyway, it cost me tons of flasks, potions and about 3k gold for repair and enormous amount of time for endless attmepts... Nibbleh kill took me 3 full days and Ahoo'ru - full 5 days. Besides very complicated mechanics during 1st phase, you need to down 10Mio HP last boss during phase 2 within 1 min or less. TBH I do not know how it was possible before patch 5.4 and new ilvl gear...

In the end I down last boss today and am extremely happy with that ugly mount :)

I took it as a gift from Blizzard for my tomorrow's birthday. :)

I was in there once at Cata times, a friendly guild invited me as a tank to help them kill Magmaw. We did it but got stuck at the next "defene system" boss.

I've tried to solo it at ilvl 489-ish, but it was an epic fail. Since then my gear became much better and in DPS gear (average ilvl 555) but blood build I've visited Blackwing Descent to meet my old vanilla friend Nefarian.

The only trouble I had with was Maloriak, mostly due to his selfhealing. A few wipes, some thoughts, and he died out of AoD under Drums of Rage. :)

To my surprise Nefarian himself died easily (phase 2 requires some intensive selfhealing though).

We'll see if I'm capable to solo Throne of the Four Wings...

Some funny things happening when I'm visiting old raids. As you know I've been working on 200 mounts. There were several options to get last few ones, and one of those was to get Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher as a reward for meta achievement "Glory of the Icecrown Raider". I did all but one of those achievements but got 200 mounts before its completion. Yesterday with help of my old wow friend I did the last one and got this mount as well.

Today I decided to complete 10-man heroic ICC solo and went to kill Lich King. With todays gear it is rather easy fight though you need to know encounter mechanics. It went smothly until phase 4...

Raiders of ICC should remember that at the beginning of phase 4 Lich King casts "Fury of Frostmourne" - an instant cast, that deals 1,000,000 Shadow damage to all players plus a debuff that unable them to release spirit or resurrect.

But I didn't die... I thought - wtf... But then I found simple explanation for that.

Aparently, at the time of creating Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard never thought that tanks could have more than 1Mio hp AND Blood DK tank could have an additional shield to adsorb a lot of damage too. Meaning 1Mio damage from Fury is not enought today to kill DK tank...

So I broke this encounter mechanics and was able to bring LK hp to 1 while his speach, heal myself to full still having that debuff and just waited until Terenas is freed from the ice to kill this boss.

If I succeed killing him solo on 25-man heroic next week I'll FRAPS it :)

Finally I've got this - "Mount Parade" achievement!

Onyxian Drake became 199 mount for me... Tomorrow I should get the 200th :)

To get 2 original ZG mounts took me a lot of time and efforts. To get 2 "new" ZG mounts was rather easy. Perhaps Blizzard has changed drop rate, perhaps I was just lucky...

Anyway, I'm at 198 mounts and omw to 200 mounts achi...

I put rather very old news into a separate section, called "Archive". Seems like I've started preparation to WoD :))

During Cataclysm OSG revival we did 2 Zul'Aman timed runs. The very first was successful and we got 1st guild Amani Battle Bear. The second failed and somehow we never tried to do it again...

As I've started my 200 mount achievement run I've been looking into every option to get more mounts and, to my surprise, Blizzard didn't remove this run and its reward from the game.

My very first attempt was successful w/o any troubles - DK tanking (blood) build is OP even in DPS gear. That allows to do average DPS and survive even Nalorakk debuff of extra 500% physical damage.

So I've got it - here is a screencap of it (click on the image to see a full picture):

P.S. I've visited Zul'Gurub as well - since patch 5.3 Bloodlord Mandokir doesn't use Decapitate against his current target any longer so it is easy soloable... And that could be my next grind for the last missing mount from there (I have both from original ZG and one from Cata version)...

The last thing I wanted to do on Timeless Island was to win Celestial Tornament... Well, it took me 2 full weeks to level up appropriate set of pets and down 3 pet bosses... and to discover that this is just Stage 1. Stage 2 (4 individual legendary pets battles) was frustration and complete failure - I've spent 7 hours on Sunday trying to win it with my exisiting pets (601 in total to be precise, and 45 of lvl 25). No luck...

In the end I leveled up 2 missing pets to beat Xu-Fu (it is the most PITA in there)... and won Tournamet today. Funny enough that Blizzard knows how hard it is, so as soon as you won it and got 1st coin, you'll get 2 more right away as one time quest reward which requires just to accept quest and turn in (The Rainy Day is Here) :)

Why do you need 3? Because this is the price for one unique pet, and you could see me below, happy, with one of those :))

Now, when Blizzard officially announced next expansion and after reading, watching and looking into all possible sources I'm very concerned about WoD. It very much looks like and might be TBC v.2 - the worst expansion ever made from "the look" point of view.

IMHO: whoever is playing (age, race, nationality etc) - a fantasy game should not be scary. It is a shelter for me, an escape from reality and I want to forget about RL difficulties and troubles. So far Pandaria is the best one in that sense. Seems like I should fullfil my promises and write up about Mop... If I only have time for that...

There was a game C&C Generals. Aparently it required better weapon to win. One of the "factions" best weapon was AK-47. It required a lot of time and efforts to get it there. When you finally was able to arm your troops with it all were very happy...

Why I'm posting it here???

Because Blizzard made it again, now in patch 5.4. Just go to the new island and walk around looting chests (there isn't even a competiton for those since it is your only loot) - you easily get ilvl 496 gear... They did it in the past - let all players to get epics to all gear sockets - and did it again now. With Molten Core veterans slang that approach sounds as "AK-47 for everyone".

I do understand why Blizzard did it though I'm not happy about it. It also sounds to me like next expansion release is much closer than we think...

Seems like I was lucky enough as Ashes of Al'ar dropped for me in like 6 month (roughly 25 runs).

I rarely quote Blizzard blue posts but this one is exactly how I feel about the game. This December it will be 9 years anniversary of my WoW playing and I'm glad Blizzard remembers good old vanilla days. Yes, I was "all epic" pimp, and, honestly, I was and still am happy about it :)

As for the post - I strongly disagree on "players are way more skilled" now but the rest is great.

Here is the link to the post - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7860746695?page=2#36

Epic Item Prestige

I don't think this will change any time soon but I must say that I sympathize with what you're saying, This isn't a "special snowflake syndrome". Sure, there might be a little bit of that involved, but it's mostly a matter of perception, and perception is a very important factor in driving motivation.

If a colour is associated with rarity, that colour becomes important by itself, and that's something that only the most old school players probably understand, still feel, or miss.

What I'm saying is, there was a time when having 1 single purple item was something absolutely amazing, they were not only the very best items but they were also incredibly rare.

That rarity was a consequence of a combination of many things:
- Raids were hard to get into.
- Only a very small minority was actually able to raid.
- Players were much less skilled than they are nowadays, so killing raid bosses was done at a much slower pace. Content was also updated much less frequently.
- Apart from the very first 40man raids (Molten Core, Ony), the chance of getting any epic items at all was incredibly small (world drop BoEs)

So the colour purple meant two things, extreme power and rarity. But the game soon evolved, more raids were introduced, and all these new items that came with it were epic.

Nowadays purple means power, rarity hmm... not so much, maybe at the very beginning of an expansion.

But you see, that's exactly the same that happened in vanilla, the only difference was that raids were a lot less accessible and less diverse (so, less overall chance of getting raid drops), and the patch turnaround with new raid content was much slower, which means, less availability of epic items. There were also no catch up mechanics set in place, so players had to go through all the clearly defined gearing paths of green-blue-purple (quests, 5man, 10man, 40man), and also follow a progression path with raids ZG/MC, Ony, BwL, Naxx.

We don't want to restrict raiding again to <1% of the player base, and that's the only way to go back to purple being rare again. Reducing LFR gear to blue wouldn't make a big difference, there's plenty of other sources of high ilvl gear that would need to be changed to blue, and even if we did that and only normal + heroic would drop epics, we would never have the same level of rarity as in the old days, content is just so much more diverse, more regularly updated and players are way more skilled.

Legendary item(s) are very much devaluated in Pandaria. It is a part of overall Blizzard's campaign "AK-47 for everyone". It was very easy to get all of them, which only requires time and persistence... until that epic cloak (btw - if it is a legendary quest chain why this cloak is "just" epic?!).

So after LFR'ing for like 6 week I finally got the required 12 tokens, turn the quest and faced a solo quest to fight against Black Prince or protect him (as DPS or Tank class correspondingly).

I thought it would be a piece of cake, as all previous "fighting" quests in this chain, but I was wrong... It took me about 2 hours of tries, 200+ gold on repair, reading strategy and watching video on how DPS solo should be done... but I was never even close to 50% of his HP... Oh my....

So I went to Tanking solo challenge. It took me much less on repair since I didn't die (that Prince did it a lot :) ) but I wasn't able to kill an Image of Deathwing and keep Prince alive.

I should admit I was so frustrated - I took it as the evidence that I've reached my limit in the game as a player... Well, after sleepless night I started Tanking solo again, this time in DPS gear with all possible DPS flasks/food/potions and on my 3rd attempt I did it... Dun calls it "careful use of game mechanics" /lol

This solo reminded me old good vanilla days and legendary hunter and priest quests (I often was helping with those quests buffing players with paly buffs). I never saw those live (e.g. priest "healing" fight took place in EPL but only a priest saw those endless NPCs which he or she had to heal) but watch those on youtube. Today's solo ones for this cloak are at least on par with those...

Cloak has ilvl 600 which is, from my perspective, the gear level of final patch for this expansion. Meaning it is purely overpowered compared with today's ilvl 522 average gear.

I also spent a lot of time in ICC since I've started a chain that lead to legendary WotLK weapon. So far I was able to solo all of the bosses (with the exception of Festergut due to his 10th debuff that blows me off). Soloing Prof. Putricide took me like 3 days - very narrow timing required... and some luck. I can't go further solo as "Blood Infusion" quest requires a group of, say, 5 players. I'll see what I can do about it :)

My the most negative raid memory is about original Naxxramas, introduced at the very end of vanilla. Seems like Blizzard developers were doing it for themselves, ignoring real WoW players' base dedication, skills and time available for playing.

I wrote already that my US guild, well geared in AQ40, was able to down only 3 first bosses in there. However time spent on that and efforts were too extreme...

Definitely, instance itself is very good so I'm glad it has been re-introduced in WotLK. At golden age of "Old Scholars" we cleared it in like 2 month after hitting level 80, even having some unexperienced players and alike.

Like a week ago I decided to visit it alone. I had some concerns about some encounters (like 4 horsemen) but it went smoothly without a single trouble with lots of achievements on my way to final boss.

Good memories!

Today I turned over the last page of my long Molten Core story - I got the second Bindings of the Windseeker on my DK (it took me another 9 month of farming it) and there is nothing left in there for me...

A bit of sentimental feelings, a bit of self-pride, but MC visiting is over...

Farewell, Molten Core...

I'm sending my best regards to Shinigami on US server Dunemaul and a "postcard" below:

Some reorganization of the site - made MoP Battle Report section and put all blog notes about WotLK solo'ed instances there. Looks more logical to me and less scrolling on the front page :)

Had some free time today and completed Black Temple rep runs, but no legendaries drops from there :) Got "Outland Raider" personal achievement and guild one "Raid Representation". Funny enough I did it all alone :).

I was so excited that decided to see what is Sunwell Plato instance. Never been there at TBC time as it was of insane difficulty (that is what top guilds were saying). At Cata time couldn't pass Kalecgos due to the game mechanics, but Blizzard made us, players who like solo adventures, a gift with patch 5.2 - it is easy soloable now. So I down him and all other bosses there after... Got that Apolyon 2H.

Instance itself is kind of placeholder - not good in terms of graphics or structure. It has been made to keep raiders in game while Blizzard worked on WotLK. The same trick was used with Naxx at the end of vanilla...

So I'm done with TBC raids, let's see how far I could go in WotLK raids :)

If you know how long I'm playing you won't be surprised...

It was a hard decision to leave the US guild Shinigami where I've spent almost 2 years raiding in vanilla, waking up at 4:00 am (due to the time zone difference with US West coast) but there were valid reasons to do so. I simply was very tired with those endless and sleepless raiding nights and guild transformation from friendly and joyful one into aggressive and totally UNfriendly hardcore raiding guild. I should admit I was a part of it as pimp retripaly, arrogant and best geared.

At the end of vanilla a group of friends left Shini and established a small guild. It wasn't raiding a lot but TBC expansion did require that kind of guild activity (from my pov expansion itself was a disaster - too complicated attunements, too dumb graphics and environment and there was almost nothing to do for small guilds). We did clear Karazhan though but at the end of TBC it became obvious that if I want to keep playing WoW I have to have more convenient playing time.

So I moved to EU servers... But I missed my paly, Mikerelder, so much that soon enough I made him again. You could call it "clone". Indeed, the game has changed drastically and paladin has practically nothing in common with almost useless class in vanilla, but that is another story :)

While waiting for patch 5.2 I found myself playing him and, at certain point, I decided I want to gear him the same way as my original, US, paladin was geared (you could scroll down to see the screencap). Since Blizzard fixed C'Thun (it became soloable) it took me just 2 weeks to get reputation and all necessary tokens and alike to get the same Avenger Battlegear set and even more - I got all 5 pieces (We never were able to kill Ouro in vanilla, but it is easy soloable now). Famous 2-hander dropped for me after my 1st kill of Twins :)

Somehow I feel very good now about my beloved paladin, though his future is unclear to me...

A few days ago I finished my reputation with MoP 5.1 factions and got this Pandaren Kite as a reward:

Got rather strange feeling that game is over...

There are several hidden treasures in Pandaria, some are a part of "Lost and Found" achievement. I've been looking for one, Swarmkeeper's Medallion, when was gearing up my mage alt. Wowhead gives coordinate and has a small screencapture of this object but it was unclear to me how it will look like in the real game environment...

I wasn't able to find it when it was in need, my mage is "Mystically Epic" already and, as usual, I spotted it yesterday "by accident", crossing this area on my way back to Klaxxi to turn dailies...

Here is a screencap of it (click on the image to see a full picture):

As you might see the lootable object is really very small and looks like a small crest, but it is sparkling brightly so you won't miss it, there is no need to zoom or decrease ground particles to see it better...

The Warmest Seasons Greeting from OSG founders!

That used to say by some people whom you keep telling about something they hard to beleive...

I'm often telling about my US WoW career on Dunemaul server that started in December 2004 and eneded in 2008 (when me and Dun moved to EU servers). Thanks to Blizzard - I've got 10 free days there and was able to log to the server and see my beloved paly :)

This char is in the guild Shinigami where I've spent most of the time playing though I left it due to the guild drama at the end of vanilla. I was invited back at the end of TBC and so this char is rested in there up to now.

Shinigami became #1 guild on the server at the end of vanilla. Previous #1 guild, Kindergargen (?), broke soon after AQ40 opening. End of vanilla raiding was trully hardcore, I was a part of it and do not regret about it :) I also was the pimp retri paly on server as I was the only one who got most pieces of paly avenger set (4/5, no pants as we never were able to down Ouro) AND favorite 2H sword Kalimdor's Revenge, the dream of all warriors :)

Below are 2 screepcaps taken a few days ago to prove it, featuring Mikerelder in 4/5 Avenger set and that 2H. They are taken in Dalaran's bank and my paly is lvl 70...

Great memories...

From my PoV this is the best MoP trinket :)

It drops from Jonn-Dar, the rare spawn of MoP (one of the so called MoP champions), drop rate, according to Wowhead, is 15%. It is "tanking" warrior with 787k HP and permanent taunt...

Patch 5.1 made C'Thun soloable, so I did it and got achievement "Classic Raider":

However it is not 100% correct term as classic raids enlisted here do not include classic Naxx. It was added at the end of vanilla and was a part of classic raiding...

Too bad even Blizzard does not keep its faithful history... :(

That is exactly what I think about LFR in MoP after playing it a few times on my mage.

That is what clearly supports my impression of MoP - it became very much kids' game, simplicity of which landed very close to stupidity. More in my upcoming "essay" about MoP in general...

After second thought I decided to delay my post about MoP impressions - I have mixed feelings and want them to settle down. I will publish it but later on.

In the mean time I'm testing my luck and battle with RNG... And I won again :) This time I decided to solo Zul'Gurub - the place where I spent a lot of time farming 2 mounts when it was lvl 60 20-man raid instance (and got both in about 6 month) and where I was only once at lvl 85 when this place became 5-man dungeon.

Place hasn't changed much though new trash and look of several bosses gave me some fresh feelings. I went through the entire dungeon, down all but one bosses (I should admit I read strategy for some bosses) and on my 1st run I got this nice addition to my mounts' collection - Swift Zulian Panther (though the original Swift Zulian Tiger looks much better to me). According to wowhead.com drop rate is 1% (which is probably true for all mounts) so I am really lucky.

Some bosses were relatively easy, some required all possible cooldowns and selfheals, but none killed me except Mandokir, where killing a player is a part of game mechanics. Since I was alone my death was the end of the fight... :) That also means no new Raptor for me... :))

Interesting enough that my kill of Jin'do was counted toward the completion of the quest "Break the Godbreaker", but I wasn't able to loot him thus didn't get Zul'Gurub stone and didn't complete the quest "Booty Bay Interests"...

Ticket opened, awaiting for GM reply...

P.S. - It took me 7 days talking to different GMs and finally one agreed that quest item should be restored and sent to me in game-mail. It has been done so I did complete this quest and got a treasure from a hidden cave in Booty Bay... But I was so pissed off of stupidity of first 3 GMs that I wrote a nasty note to GM's senior management. Interesting enough that I got reply in 24 hours with apology and 2 free weeks of gameplay as a compensation... :)

2 weeks of playing new WoW expansion is quite enough to get first impressions out of MoP. I'm still "drafting" those but have rather strange feelings.

Will post those long thoughts soon, stay tunes...

Seems like I'm lucky again... Or am I just persistant? :)

I saw this horsy drop only once, loooong time ago, when I was playing on US server, around spring 2007. We were in a small guild, raiding Kara once a week.

As soon as Karazhan became soloable (I think since spring 2009), I started to farm it on weekly basis. So seems like it took me 3.5 years non-stop (I had a few weeks off for vacation though :) ) and, finally, I've got it yesterday (click on the image to see a larger picture):

Fiery Warhorse's Reins has like 0.1% drop rate but my long run was worth it...

I've spent some time "learning" new Blizzard's approach to specs and talents for different classes I have. I should admit I have very strange feeling. I'm not happy with talents indeed. It is for imbeciles... On top of that I feel like they made classes too simple and too close to each other. Yes, different classes' abilities have different names but they became very common in their actions and lost their uniqueness...

E.g. DKs have "stun" now - the ability that was specific for paladins only. At the same time DK's class ability - to have 2 different interrupts on different CD - is now not a part of Blood build... The list of such "simplification" is endless but I must mention 2 major changes that were signatures for 2 classes - paladin's auras gone completely and shaman's totems are gone in their original meaning.

This is much too much for MC veteran. Indeed, it is not me who develops each and every expansion but there are some core basics for classes that represents them and make them different from the others. Blizzard - you gone too far in simplifying this game as if your customers (read "players") have IQ lower than 10.

Adding WoW own mini-farm game tells me that game designers are out of creativity and simply follow mass trend of stupidity. Let's see what MoP would be when it goes live...

Seems like I am lucky bastard as I got second Bindings of the Windseeker which opens my way to Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, legendary 1H DPS sword from vanilla WoW.

I wish I could trade legendary mace I got on my DK for this 1H sword on my paly but I decided to complete this quest as I never saw the boss (that required full raid in vanilla) which should be killed to complete this chain and get Thunderfury.

Here is FRAPS of that final stage:

I'm proud to use a name Blizzard gave to us - those who played WoW from day 1 - Molten Core veterans. Yes, that's me. It took me about 3 years to get what was (and still is) the best reward for any melee class that could use 2H weapon and who knows what was MC in vanilla - legendary Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros.

I've played on US server Dunemaul in Shinigami guild and we've been farming MC for about a year and a half (and then stopped as we moved to BWL) but Eye of Sulfuras (a legendary item that is needed to craft Hand of Ragnaros) never dropped for us.

After we started OSG on EU server Ghostlands and I've reached lvl 85 MC became soloable and so I kept farming it for this item for about 1.5 years (1 year before the break and half year after)... Means every week and about 150 weeks in total... and, finally, it dropped for me yesterday:

Click on the image to see full screencapture.

Check this FRAPS as an evidence :)

With getting Legendary weapon OSG got guild achievement "We Are Legendary"... and I'm VERY happy!

Site has been changed a bit to represent a new theme of MoP. I have some time to write about the game a bit more before Pandaria comes out. Stay tuned...