It was the best of times – A Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

The Shared Blog topic over at Blog Azeroth this week is as follows:

I know we heard the word “Throwback” many times around the net, but as part of World of warcraft expansions. I want to know what is the best expansion in game that really highlights a lot of your accomplishments in game especially that the new upcoming expansion is coming its nice to look back it could be the one when you started playing with your main character, getting a cool mount, being in a great guild, or your very first screenshot in game if you still have it or being in PvP battlegrounds or Arenas, even your raiding experiences back in BC or PRE-BC, Cataclysm, etc. You can be creative how you want to do this it could be storyline, poem, screenshots up to you it is pretty much a throwback experiences you can share to everyone.

Suggested by Amerence.

For me this has to be a toss up between the original game and Wrath.

When I first started playing, it wasn’t long before I found myself in a hardcore guild fighting for and indeed winning server firsts on everything from Vael onwards all the way to Naxxramas mark 1. Despite there being over 40 of us, despite there being a fair number of giant egos and quite a few times when I would have liked to kill at least one person in the guild, there was also a sense of pride in our guildtag. We played on a PvP server and it was more often than not a case of attack one and get swarmed by the rest of the guild.

Also of course there was the newness factor, I’d never ever played anything multi player besides first person shooters across a LAN with friends so suddenly raiding with 39 other people from across Europe including Russians from Vladivostok who would get up early to raid before work felt amazing.

Getting my Benediction as the second Priest on our then server and of course getting the only C’thun kill  (no one else killed him until the Burning Crusade) naturally rank high on my list of things achieved in the days before “achievements” but it was the silly things which stand out more. The long drawn out fights between Southshore and Tarren Mill, getting rank on my little Warlock before she was level 60 when the pvp system first came out and of course later on, same server Alterac valleys. The conversations in Priest chat, like the one which put me off eating seaweed for a very long time and doing things like drunken LBRS runs with 3 dpsers all desperately trying to beat each other by pulling as much as possible and no tank these are the things which stand out.

Selling the clothes off my back to buy my first mini pet because I hadn’t found the auction house and 40 silver was a lot of money back then, to me at least. Not to mention many of my favourite outfits are based around gear which has been available since the start, the Devout set, the Wildheart set and the Robes of the Guardian Saint are three examples which quickly spring to mind.

Wrath didn’t have the newness factor but it had several elements I enjoyed. First up a proper end boss, demons really aren’t my thing and the Sunwell didn’t exactly have the happiest of memories for me. Then there was Ulduar, quite possibly my favourite raiding instance of the entire game. As with the original game I was raiding at a fairly high end level and enjoyed completing for things like server firsts and also ticking off what were then hard achievements. When we got A Tribute to Insanity, it felt like killing C’thun all over again especially given that we usually wiped to stupid on something. It also brought me my favorite 5 man of all time, the Halls of Reflection. Call me weird if you want, but I rather like being chased through frozen halls by a man with a very large sword (and based on what I found when I went and read WoW fan fiction with the  mature filter turned off) I’m apparently not alone.

There was the nakedness bug

and Gnomes in the fish feasts. I got my one and only legendary, although I have to admit the lack of RP was slightly disappointing even though some of my guild kindly tried to improvise for me. There were flying carpets and real story telling. The Wrathgate chain for example still makes me teary eyed.

Ultimately though, there has been one constant to my journey across Azeroth.

Mr Harpy and given that he’s currently in the process of leveling warrior number 3, this shot of us snuggling on a beach in Silverpine way back when our adventure was just starting seemed appropriate. I’ve enjoyed the vast majority of my time spent exploring this strange new world and am looking forward to everything that this new expansion brings.

Minion of Har’koa: Transmogrification Gnomish Style

So I noticed whilst flicking through my feed reader that J D Kenada was hosting yet another transmogrification contest and I thought “ooh!” to myself. My first thought on reading the brief was Snow Gnomes!!!!! and given that first thoughts are usually if not the best, at least the most quirky and strange, Snow Gnomes it is!

First of all, every Spirit needs a few Priests to speak for them.

This outfit was one of those serendipitous moments begun whilst running around AQ40 pursued by an army of angry bugs when you happen to pause long enough to loot Fankriss and find those beautiful blue robes staring back up at you. Being a modest Gnome it is of course matched with the Cerulean Filigreed Doublet, a shirt whose design I adore and use whenever shyness gets the better of my characters.

• Heroes’ Crown of Faith
• Pauldrons of Transcendence
• Robes of the Guardian Saint
• Bindings of Transcendence
• Cerulean Filigreed Doublet

As it happens, this is what Sprout is wearing at the moment but when I went to grab a few screenshots of Har’koa, I noticed that the blues matched up almost perfectly.

The other outfit I made, the one I originally intended entering was designed around the weapon as after all, Spirits need Blades just as much as they need Priests to praise them.

• Very Light Sabre (the reason why my Warrior is a Gnome)
• Mechanized Snow Goggles (which always make me think of Charles Causley’s poetry
• Glimmershell Shoulder Protector
• Iceguard Breastplate
• Imbued Plate Greaves
• Iceguard Leggings
• Lurker’s Girdle
• Gauntlets of Resolute Fury

I was still toying with the idea of designing something around the “wonderful” Boneshredder’s set but work and duty calls, that will have to be a plan for another day.