The Dark Iron and her Demon Dogs

The Harpy Household is getting rather hyped for Classic but in the meantime we’re still playing Battle for Azeroth.

My favourite of the new races has to the Dark Iron Dwarves, which given I’ve never managed to get a Dwarf beyond level 40 came as a surprise. Hunter was the obvious choice because I have always loved these dogs, in fact way back when in vanilla when they were actual demons, my Warlock used to use enslave demon on them so she could have one as a pet.

The first thing Emberflower did on joining the Alliance was make the long treck north to Tirisfal Glades to tame a sister for her blazehound. It’s a journey I’ve made many times as most of my baby hunters have tamed a cursed darkhound since Cataclysm made them accessible but this time seemed sadder than usual. Despite running from Ironforge, through Loch Modan, the Wetlands, Arathi, Hillsbrad, Western Plaguelands and into Tirisfal at a reasonable time of day, I saw three players in total. The world seemed deserted.

She will be leveling slowly as Mr Harpy wants to focus on Classic in our limited game time once it’s released but I want her to reach BRD level at least so she can get a puppy in another shade of red.

You can’t go home again… can you?

After much soul searching, I couldn’t justify going Night Elf…the human racials are just so much better for both PvP and PvE. I made the original Erinys without even knowing that Priests had racials of their own beyond their race (I was watching Scooby Doo instead of reading the game manual whilst Mr Harpy installed) and went purely on looks. This time I’m trying to be a bit more grown up about the whole thing (maybe) and this is my compromise because I couldn’t quite make myself go Dwarf for fear ward.

I ended up making and reserving names for my Priest, Druid and Warlock, the first three characters I played in vanilla.

Mr Harpy’s work colleagues have a guild which we are going to join and we’ll see how it goes. Will definitely have to be more casual than it was the first time around, no more raiding at 4 am now.

I think I’m excited but also a little bit scared because what if it is rose tinted glasses and I hate it. I know I’ll miss transmogrification, I hated odd combinations of clothes and there are definite utility aspects as well, such as pets/toys etc all going into a collection rather than a bag that would be handy to have.

On the plus side though, I can’t wait to visit Southshore, to quest through Duskwood when Stitches roamed the highways and to get my sprite darter hatchling in Feralas. To sit fishing by Loch Modan when it was still deserving of the title of “Loch” and to hang out in Auberdine.

 

Bittersweet

2018 has been a very mixed bag so far.

In March, my Father died. It was hardly out of the blue as he had lung cancer but still it managed to catch me off guard, coming faster than everyone bar his Consultant Oncologist had expected.

In June, this happened.

She is gorgeous (might be slightly biased), a dreadful sleeper and possibly already showing signs of being as feral as her brother.

I had no intention of coming back to WoW, but then Mr Harpy who watches the Arena Tournaments on Twitch caught a few trailers/bits & bobs about the forth coming expansion and started making interested noises so it’s starting to look like we will be back sometime this autumn. Thinking about it, how could we miss the expansion which is all about putting the war back into warcraft.

 

Sparkle Barbie and the Argus Adventures

I’d avoided paying too much attention to information about the patch, not necessarily on purpose but the school holidays and Mr Harpy’s work schedule had me out of routine. I knew Argus was coming and that was that so logging on today and discovering that casting anything turns my serious Priest into Sparkle Princess Barbie came as somewhat of a shock.

It’s a shame she’s missed the Midsummer Fire Festival fire work display because this is a pretty good impression of a Roman Candle.

Turning the graphic settings down to the absolute minimum makes zero difference and I absolutely hate it. Now fair enough, I’m not good with change but I also struggle with flashing lights and motion sickness in a lot of games. Warcraft has been one of the few I can play for long periods of time without feeling an overwhelming desire to vomit everywhere but alas no longer. Dpsing is okay and so is single target healing but Aoe healing (the second screen shot is Prayer of Healing) and using Holy Nova has become a nightmare. Plus so much for being able to sneak around battlegrounds and rely on the fact that roughly half of the randoms in there can’t tell the difference between a fence post and a Holy Priest.

In terms of Argus play so far, Draenei spaceships make me nervous, Turalyon and Alleria make me feel like Mother of the Year (I haven’t “lost” my son for a thousand years yet) and I totally share Illidan’s feelings about destiny. Plus Turalyon comments on the Holy Priest weapon, telling you he’s glad to see it out of the hands of the Legion which given most Npcs completely ignore it gives him bonus points.

I also have a small girl crush on Divinius.

A ghost Moose makes mount number 191

I want to like archaeology more than I do. In the real world, I love wandering around museums and ancient sites. Recently I saw the Westray Wife otherwise known as the Orkney Venus in the flesh or so to speak. Although I admit I expected her to be bigger than the fridge magnet version someone gave me but instead it turns out the magnet was to scale. In game though especially in Legion, it seems such a chore. I did enough digs to get the 600 bones I needed and then hightailed it out of Highmountain. Luckily enough it also gave me all of the Highmountain display items so now I have no reason to go back, no reason to dig there. I know I have discovered everything and that takes away the magic, takes away what I imagine archaeology is really about. That sense of discovery, of learning something that was once known but is now forgotten.

 

Challenge 24: Class Fantasy

This fortnight’s challenge from Z and Cinder is right up my street as my idea of the Priest class fantasy and Blizzard’s are essentially poles apart, possibly on different planets too. When it comes to my favourite class, I think that original idea of Priests in WoW has muddied the water. Remember back when each Priest race had special spells (and everyone wanted a Dwarf Priest for Fear ward) and to me, starting playing back then, there was the class fantasy but also an individual flavour depending on your race. Snow might be a Priest but she’s a Priestess of Elune first and foremost. Her class hall should be open and wild and full of moonwells not a rather dull space ship.

There aren’t many “famous” Priests wandering around and nor is there much detail especially when compared to the amazing Mage Hall or the wonderful Druidic area. In fact when it was first released I wrote this in a fit of pique and my feelings haven’t changed. The spell changes have also annoyed me, partly because I loved using Mind Vision in PvP and I fail to understand why when I can still use Shadow spells to Mind Control someone of a cliff, I shouldn’t have access to Fear or Mind Vision just because I’m Holy. I’m also not a fan of the moulting Owlcat which is the Priest class mount although I’m not sure what kind of flying creature I would associate with Priests unless they made race specific Spirit of Redemption type models which could carry you like this:

Of the other class halls I’ve accessed so far, I admit to a liking for the Monk temple however I want to be able to get to the Wood of Staves without mountaineering. I think they were helped there though by the idea that Monks came originally from Pandaria/from the Pandarians and that the original Temple/home of the Monks got destroyed through the weapon quests so using the Pandarian start zone does make sense. It’s also lovely and expansive.

I also love the Druid Class Hall and admit to being totally jealous of all the moonwells and the Night Elf buildings which my Priest would absolutely feel at home with.

I think part of the issue with Class fantasy is that we have had years of envisioning our own idea of what our characters are, the world in which they choose to surround them and what their class means to them. Then Blizzard come along and go, “oh class fantasy” and totally change everything we’ve imagined, the spells we love and try and squish things into little boxes. I think it works best with classes like the Druids (limited races, clear theme from the outset) and Death Knights but completely falls down with others including the Priests.

Easily Distracted: Things which aren’t Warcraft

A couple of other games have been distracting me from WoW recently.

First up is the amazing, awesome and hilarious Scribblenauts Unlimited. It has haunted houses, dinosaurs and castles to explore plus the Headless Horseman as an art lover which is absolutely how I envisioned him. You have to help save your sister by creating (by typing) items to solve problems and make people happy. There is no right answer to the problem although there are definitely wrong ones (vampire teddy being one example) and it’s interesting to see how Mr Harpy would solve problems differently to me.

On my phone, I love Aqueducts.

Taking this:

To this is a bit addictive.

Although I’m far from a natural aqueduct builder. Mr Harpy takes a very sensible and logical approach, starting from the far end and figuring out what options work and what does. I take a much more relaxed approach and essentially “wing” it. I suspect Caesar would have fed to me the lions for my attitude and tendency to flood vast areas of the city although I’d probably have already accidentally drowned the lions.

 

Finally, I have found a replacement for the Chibi maker which had distracted me for far too long. This is Avatar Maker: Witches and apparently at heart I’m still the little girl who loved reading about Dorrie the Little Witch and the Worst Witch books.

 

I’m also trying to increase both the amount of fiction and non fiction I read as it feels like I read 100 children’s books to every 1 adult book at the moment. For Fiction at the moment I’m reading “Life and Fate” plus “American Gods“. They do make for slightly unlikely bed fellows I admit. My Mother buys me books for Christmas every year (I know it’s early) but if anyone has any suggestions especially in terms of non-fiction I’d love to hear them. I’m interested in most things, especially the quirky and unusual.

Training wings and learning to fly

In one fell swoop I gained mount number 190 and the ability to fly in the Broken Isles.

Flying almost seemed like an anti-climax. I couldn’t think of areas that I immediately wanted to explore, whose unreachable heights had me hankering to suddenly search them out. I even found myself still riding along the ground, having forgotten I could take to the skies almost as quickly as I’d earned the right.

Then I remembered, that area of Suramar which had long tempted me. I assume it’s part of the Nighthold raid but I still wanted to have a proper look at it because it’s on the map.

It’s definitely pretty and I love the fountain with it’s two modes of display but I’m still searching for that special spot. What has inspired me though is the rest of the Suramar quest chain, the idea of Elves putting aside petty quarrels even for a short while to work together against a common foe appeals to me as does sneaking around like a sparkling guerrilla. There is no denying that there is something very rotten at the heart of Suramar.

I might even make myself run the Nighthold when I reach the end of the chain, just to complete the zone of course.

Arathi Blizzard: Brawling in the Snow

I’ve really enjoyed this week’s PvP Brawl. As a healer, the lowered visibility is great until of course six enemy melee pile out of the fog. It’s also created much faster paced games with less defending and a lot more aggressive play which suits me. Our last two games we ended up winning 5 nil as the ice over the water and the blizzard seems to encourage people to put aside the “now defend” attitude and get out there, trying to take bases before the enemy can respond. We also had some great 2 and 3 versus 4 to 5 fights using the visibility to hide from the enemy especially casters and of course playing the bait to drag any defenders away from the flag so it can be tagged behind their backs works really well with the weather conditions.

Plus and perhaps most importantly it has snowmen!

In the winter, it would be fun if this was a permanent option from the list as I think it could quickly become my go to map. Playing this week also got my second Priest exalted with the Arathi Basin faction which was her 55th exalted faction. It’s always nice when you get a reputation achievement whilst standing over the corpse of an annoying Paladin who seems to have made it his afternoon’s work to follow you around smacking you in the face with a large sword. Holy Priests definitely feel like they are in a great place in PvP at the moment, lots of options and decent damage, for example I’m almost 100 percent sure I would have beaten a warrior in a 1 versus 1 had not Mr Harpy’s mage and a passing Demon Hunter turned up to rescue me

Topic 22: WoW soundtrack

This fortnight Z and Cinder’s blog challenge asks “What is your WoW soundtrack?” (suggested by Kamelia et alia).

I tend to play with sound off, mostly because usually Mr Harpy and I play together and if we both have sound enabled it’s really annoying, especially if we are doing different things. I know headphones is an option but then I couldn’t be able to hear the littlest Harpy if he has an nightmare and it feels a bit antisocial. The benefit however is that I have my own mental sound track for several of the zones and dungeons.

Then the door was open and the wind appeared

From the moment I watched the Death Knight start zone video for the first time, Blue Oyster Cult started singing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in my head.

Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew and then disappeared
The curtains flew and then he appeared… saying don’t be afraid
Come on baby… and she had no fear
And she ran to him… then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye… she had become like they are
She had taken his hand… she had become like they are
Come on baby… don’t fear the reaper

I have a sneaking fondness for musicals despite not being able to sing myself. Whenever we did AQ 40 and we were waiting for such fun things as shield wall cooldowns when learning fights, my mind would wander off and quite often it got stuck on “Playing with the Big Boys” from Prince of Egypt.

But first, boy, it’s time to bow (Bow down!)

 

And just to show we feel no spite

You can be our acolyte

But first, boy, it’s time to bow

(Bow down!)

Or it’s your own grave you’ll dig, boy

You’re playing with the big boys now

Playing with the big boys

Now!

Due I think to all the world pvp I took part in, the Barrens always makes me think of “Fernando” by Abba.

Can you hear the drums Fernando?
I remember long ago another starry night like this
In the firelight Fernando
You were humming to yourself and softly strumming your guitar
I could hear the distant drums
And sounds of bugle calls were coming from afar

 I’d definitely “do the same again”.