Thoughts on 4.3 – Transmogging, Casual PVE, Darkmoon Faire and More

It’s been a week, WoW fans. A week and we’ve already gotten our teeth deep into 4.3. I have been enjoying myself, especially now that I can enjoy a patch that offers me gear, dungeons and not have to worry about raiding much on top of that. This is my first new content patch where I haven’t been raiding since Burning Crusade started. It is a weird feeling, to be honest. Thanks to the efforts of my social-but-very-enthusiastic guild, we’ve been working on retro raids for transmogging gear, achievements and even stepping foot in Firelands to get me siphoned essences to finish my legendary*.

Overall, I’ve been having fun and have a lot of thoughts to what 4.3 has offered us thus far.

Transmogrification

I have always relished the idea of transmogrification. Even though I never played any MMORPGs prior to WoW, where such things as vanity layers or costume layers existed, I have been deep in my  heart a fashion nerd and roleplayer. I like having appropriate clothes for the occasion, especially since my real life self is a little too self-conscious and destitute for such things. My earliest memories of gear on my mage was that they “all matched” and being chided gently by guildies that I needed gear that was better than what I had on, rather than just all was the same color. (You can’t take my Mistscape Wizard Hat of the Owl AWAY FROM ME!)

However, when given the world of armor to play with, I found myself falling a little short on ideas (No gnome jokes, please.) Everyone else had must-have sets and creative uses of color, style and theme. With the exception of my priest, even my RP character concepts didn’t lend themselves to “iconic” gear for their personality. I had reams of gear in the bank saved because of how it looked and memories it held, but I’m still not sold on most things to wear. It has been fun to play with and to disguise horrible gear in the case of my shaman, who had a lot of trollroic armor. So while transmogging is quite possibly the best thing to happen to WoW in a long time, I feel so disappointed that I’m not taking advantage of it as whole-heartedly as everyone, even if I am the perfect person to do so. I will endeavor a little harder to come up with pretty sets, but I am glad that Blizzard implemented the feature anyways.

5 Man Dungeons – End Time, Well of Eternity and Hour of Twilight

In a word: exciting (and I get to be TALL!)

While I feel that some of the trio are less exciting than others, when taken all together, they are a very nice mixture of new boss mechanics, immersive storytelling and gameplay. The very obvious standout is Well of Eternity, which I have a feeling was supposed to be part of the rumoured War of the Ancients raid. It feels so complete and filled to the brim with interesting things that it feels almost a little out of place with the other two dungeons, which are still laid out around Wyrmrest on familiar ground. They also aren’t nearly as punishing as heroics have been immediately upon release, unlike in the past. Sure, I’ve seen a few PUG groups wipe on Tyrande, but nothing like the hours of frustration from trying to learn Ozruk.

Most of the dungeons feel fun and invigorating for a couple of reasons, I believe. First – less trash and it is more pragmatic and directed. In End Time, you basically make a big ring to clear out the boss area, or push forward to where the boss is, not long twisty hallways to get to a small room. It feels like a progression, not a crawl. Secondly, there’s a better mixture of mechanics designed to mess with ranged vs. melee, healers versus tanks, and some that just require smart use of mechanics that can be done by most group compositions. Not every fight requires heroism, not every fight requires 3 ranged. Most people have decent interrupts now and while some have been given longer cooldowns, most of the casts that need to be interrupted are on timers that don’t feel impossible to catch. There’s lots of stuff to not stand in, but it isn’t a 360-degree chain cleave, nor tons of puddles out at ranged while the melee gets to whack on the boss. Everyone feels responsible for their own mortality in some ways. Third, newness in both the fight mechanics and scenery. There’s things here we haven’t played with before – such as the hourglass feature on Murozond. It is commonly remarked as the most fun boss fight so far out of the three dungeons just because of it. I have even brought people back to life using it and I find that a little liberating, especially to people who are newer healers and feel pressured to keep everyone alive.

Additionally, there’s lots of nice new gear to be had in the dungeons and gotten with a minimum of fuss. You clear all three dungeons in roughly an hour and a half and due to less trash and less ridiculous bosses, it never feels like a slog. I’ve already managed to VP cap my mage and shaman for the week, which will make quick work of gearing up the other 85s I never play (due to heroics being boring as hell.) My only bone of contention is how limited the loot tables are for each item slot in your armor class. There’s not a lot of leeway for you if you only gear yourself via heroics, but I think that’s because of…

Looking For Raid

Now featuring Yor’sahj the Unpuggable!

Admittedly, my experiences so far with the Looking For Raid feature have been small. Last night, a small group of 8 or so guildies and I dropped ourselves into LFR (one of them as the main tank). We breezed through every boss (including said Yor’sahj) with nary a death or a wipe (until we lost a couple of people to the ice wall on Hagara) and finished in an hour and a half. This stands in stark contrast to some of my boyfriend’s exploits via the finder, which include every group wiping to Yor’sahj, but I digress. LFR seems like a reasonably good idea. It gives people the ability to legitimately see raid fights in a smaller, more forgiving environment, as well as collect gear and valor points. As my friend the main tank put it, “It is like pugging a heroic but with 24 other people.” I think that he had the right of it as well; while there may be more people, the atmosphere is roughly the same. Most people are quiet participants, there are occasionally boisterous and unhelpful ones and overall the experiences can vary. But it seemed to us last night that if you mix in a little bit of your own social group, that it can go quite smoothly and make it very fun to participate. One of us got two very good loot drops and I got to test my hand at raid healing without the stress of trying to learn Firelands fights or freak out that no one was directing assignments. Granted, I think our positive turn at the LFR was mostly due to a lucky bit of competency out of the raid (the other tank, most of the healers, DPS knowing how to target swap), but I think overall, this has the potential to ease people into raiding or give people end-game choices. I know some people who have long maintained that PUGging and casual raiding has ruined WoW, but I think my ability to have fun last night is more important than their opinions on the matter.

The Darkmoon Faire

Finally, after testing it extensively on the PTR, the faire is here. So far it is exactly what it promised to be – fun dailies, lots of vanity items like mounts and pets to acquire, as well as added mysteries and bonuses that you can gain while doing PVP and dungeons. Ticket generation seems a lot slower than I’d like for a week-per-month event, but as Rickiep00h from Something Awful posited:

If it were permanently open, it would be Molten Front 2. Enjoyable at first, but ultimately another annoying grind.

It’s a compelling point, and not just because of the fact that Molten Front fails in all the ways that DMF succeeds – the rewards are not meaningful to progression in quite the same way that MF put them at the time, especially to casual players. However, they are meaningful to people as much as they want to make them. People who enjoy vanity rewards or transmogging sets for gear make them purposeful and have value, those who do not enjoy them do not have to participate. It helps both alts and mains in different ways – one way is via trade skill points (imagine getting 5 points once a month to get you around a tricky spot between 285-300) and one is money and loot. This means you have different goals and reasons to bring more than one toon to the Faire, unlike doing the same dailies for the same thing in the Front. It also lays out the path of tasks very concretely and without much effort – the quests are short, fun, and require very little exertion in terms of killing mobs, even the Grisly Trophies quest. It doesn’t consistently open more and more dailies to keep you occupied, like in a hallway full of infinitely opening doors that lead to nowhere. DMF is a return to a lot of the old fun seen in earlier quest design and development before Titan was a thing – anyone remember Isle of Quel’danas? Sure, not quite the same carrot-on-a-stick there but I can feel a familiar tingle of the fun. The Faire seems to hold fast to the idea that it is a magical, mysterious and slightly sinister fair in the woods. Molten Front gave us an illusion of choice and individuality and left us with nothing but a bad taste in our mouth.

So in short, get out there and fish yourself up a Sea Pony. I got both it and my rare fish achievement in the same hour. Many more are reporting the same thing with the Steelscale Crushfish, so get yourself closer to Salty!

*Art courtesy of Aly Flock.

Discussion Post: Thoughts on Patch 4.3 So Far?

Well patch 4.3 finally showed up! I logged on and promptly got to work throwing together transmogrification outfits for all my characters…well once I got my add-ons and UI squared away. Turns out ElvUI decided to redesign most of it’s configure panel, as well as some of the integral parts of the layout. Cue an hour of fussing with how it looks and re-adjusting and resetting my keybinds.

Last night was rather frustrating for a lot of reasons, but it was to be expected. Patch days are always unstable and Blizzard has done a good job making sure they aren’t earth-shatteringly  terrible as of late. However, I didn’t even get to queue for any of the new dungeons since wait times were an hour-and-then-some and our queue kept dropping mysteriously. One group of people in my guild got to do all three of them together so we got the guild achievements for that.

How was your Patch Day? Was it as annoying as mine? Or were you partying with Illidan and the Dragon Soul?

Patch 4.3 Is Here – The Hour of Twilight

In patch 4.3, Thrall and the noble Aspects will call upon the Horde and the Alliance to help them retrieve the artifact–no longer in existence–from the distant past. Those brave enough to face the challenge will embark on a perilous journey from Azeroth’s apocalyptic End Time to the Dragon Soul’s point of origin during the catastrophic War of the Ancients. If the heroes succeed, an even more harrowing battle awaits them in the present….

Patch 4.3 is here, and the servers  are down! There’s patch notes everywhere, and the excitement is at a boiling point.

But what should us mages care about today? Only ONE THING.

Mages

• Pyroblast’s initial damage has been increased by approximately 26%, and its damage over time has been increased by approximately 100%.
• Fireball damage has been increased by approximately 17%.
• Talent Specializations
• Fire
• Living Bomb damage over time has been increased by approximately 10%, and explosion damage has been increased by approximately 120%

No longer are we slaves to the arcane! UP WITH FIRE! DOWN WITH ARCANE (on every fight, there’s still some raid and dungeon fights where arcane is good.)

MWAHAHAHA!

Darkmoon Faire on PTR – Carnies, Cannons and Cannibals

It was another boring Sunday yesterday, so when I heard that the new Darkmoon Faire had hit the public test realms, I scampered over and updated. Let me tell you – when Blizzard announced that they were revamping what was a fairly pitiful, forgotten “world event” that people only went to turn in decks and occasionally get their fortune read, perhaps engage in some world PVP, I was over the moon. I love fairs in real life, and the chance to port that feeling into World of Warcraft excites me.

This time around, the fair isn’t plopped next to Elwynn Forest, Shattrath or Thunder Bluff, but on an island shrouded in dark smoke far away. However, Darkmoon Faire NPCs make it very easy to get there. They will teleport you from capital cities to that month’s fair portal (not 100% sure about this), located in one of the spots where the actual fair had been before. The portal then takes you to the Darkmoon Isle.

When I got there, I was not prepared for all the sights and sounds! There were NPCs scurrying all over, players trying games and lots of debris and supplies piled everywhere. It definitely felt like I was at a real fairgrounds.

Games

The fair has a lot of games of chance that act as dailies. Games tickets are purchased from NPCs at the start of the fair and don’t have a limit. The dailies have a certain objective to complete. However, given how they are structured (using a special vehicle UI, have timers), they often require multiple tries to complete the quest. This means that buying multiple tickets is a must. I went through at least 8 tickets just trying to get the Whack-A-Gnoll game right. (Go for the Hogger gnolls, they count for more!) Completing the quest objective or game mechanic in a exemplary way is how you get the individual game achievements. For example, if you got dropped into the target for the Cannon Shooting, you got an achievement. It was fun trying to do the games as fast and perfectly as possible, even though a lot of them required multiple tickets to learn. None of them felt like a slog though – even with the vehicle UI. This is no Jousting v.2! And like any carnival game, there was a certain element of “being rigged.”

One of the interesting mechanics that Blizzard decided to drop into the games portion of the fair was this “GET OUT” zone around the large space each game had. It meant that if you felt like running across the game area for any of the games (save for the Shoot-Out game), you would get teleported out and stunned momentarily, much like when you entered the various Shattrath faction areas when you weren’t supposed to be there. It kept most of the game fields clear so you could see what you were tossing rings at, whacking, etc. The only place that didn’t have it’s own dedicated area and anti-grief field was the Shoot-Out game. It was three small targets in a typical vendor tent and had no way of keeping all the idiots on the PTR back from standing on the tent or inside the tent on their giant mounts. The point of the game is to shoot whatever target is being highlighted and to win, you had to basically shoot blind. I made a suggestion to the PTR forums that they give this game its own space and bubble; there’s no reason that people should not have fun playing it because people just want to make stuff hard to see.

The games themselves include: a whack-a-gnoll game, human cannonball, shooting gallery, tonk challenge, and ring toss on a turtle.

Quests and the Darkmoon Faire Guide

Along with the gaming dailies, there’s also profession quests and quests that allow you to gain items from PVE or PVP content. The quests that you get are determined by what professions you have – I had quests for cooking, first aid, archeology, herbalism and alchemy. Some of the quests require you to go fetch items from inns or general crafting vendors back in the capital cities, but with city portals on the fair’s docks, it is a quick snap to go and come back. And the quests are fun! I was running around, picking flowers, bandaging up injured carnies, and mixing up fizzy drinks. (Why can’t we include brewing with alchemy, please?!)

As you can see, it awards  you five skill points, a token (for using at the games), and a prize ticket – the prize tickets are obtained from the quests and games and can be put towards many of the vanity items that are sold at the fair.

The other quest is called Test Your Strength and charges you, Darkmoon Faire Guide in hand, to kill 250 mobs or players that give you experience, reputation or honor.

But what is the Faire Guide for? Apparently the guide is an item you keep in your bags (obtained from the Darkmoon Faire Information NPC at the fairgrounds), and helps you “discover” artifacts when you are out questing, doing raids/dungeons, or PVPing. Anyone of any level can use it as well. The actual blog post about it on WoW’s front page explained it better:

The Darkmoon Faire Field Guide

It’s your passport to riches, my friend. Y’see, we need a few things — just some junk, nothing valuable to a big hero like you. We call ‘em Darkmoon Artifacts, and there’s all different kinds to be found all over Azeroth. The Darkmoon Field Guide helps you discover artifacts while you’re explorin’ dungeons, slayin’ monsters, and fightin’ in Battlegrounds. Without a guide, you’d never notice ‘em, and it’ll help keep you focused on the stuff we want. Whether you just reached level 10, or you’ve crushed the biggest baddies in the land, we need somethin’ from nearly everybody. You won’t have to go too far out of your way to get ‘em and each month you’ll get a new opportunity to seek out an Artifact for us. What do you get out of the deal? Don’t you worry, you’ll get your cut. When you bring a Darkmoon Artifact back to us, you’ll get valuable experience (it builds character, you know!), earn a better reputation, and possibly earn precious Darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets too!

The field guide will help you unlock several artifact-based achievements by discovering all nine artifacts, so make sure to carry with you at all times.

Vanity Items – Mounts, Pets, Heirlooms and Much More

The prize tickets I mentioned before are the main currency for the rewards you get at the faire – and there are quite a lot. I found 3-4 vendors just selling cute things that would be of interest to anyone. One contained mostly pets that you can purchase at the fair (along with another balloon vendor), and one contained mounts, including the datamined Dancing Bear.

There were also two armor vendors; one sold the heirlooms that are still purchasable with both Argent Tourney tokens as well as Justice Points, and another sold the Dungeon Tier 1 set revival gear that people can use to skin their regular armor with via transmogging. I of course had to try the Magister armor on my goblin:

Don’t I look cute? It is funny but I had most of that set and trashed it once I got Tier 1 and 2. Mostly because I thought it looked very ugly and garish. Funny how nostalgia changes things! It looks right now that an upper bound of the tickets you can get in a full week of Darkmoon Faire dailies and quests is 175, meaning that you can purchase 2 pets, or one mount, or an assortment of your chosen dungeon set or heirlooms once a month.

Attractions

Peppered in-between the quests and various vendors are a few things that make the faire feel more than just a hub for dailies. It feels very alive and swims with things for you to see or do to your heart’s content.

• Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain concert that plays on a special stage at the top of the hour.
• Krolin the Dancing Bear
• Deathmatch Arena – while the island is a sanctuary by design, there is a giant Gadgetzan-style arena cage where participants can jump in and bloody eachother.
• Sayge’s Fortunes – gives you a buff!
• Food Cafes
• Pony and Ram Rides
• Petting Zoo
• Pavilions – under construction currently but should contain something later on.
• Sandbox – pick one of your favorite tiger designs and get to riding!
• Fire-eaters, Torch Tossers and Fireworks – lots of pyrotechnics on display here.

All of these things make you feel like you can wander for hours and relax while taking in the amusements and frivolities of the faire. My only wish is that one of the pavilion tents gets turned into a nickel-odeon where we can watch various cinematics! I tried out most of these attractions and even got pounded a pulp by 40 Alliance players that were sitting in a raid inside of the deathmatch cage. Ouch.

…Cannibals?

While out exploring the entirety of the island’s landmass (there’s a named cave on the map but it holds nothing as of yet), I heard a croaky voice hissing somehow in my ear.

“Come, my sweetling, come taste my delicious waresssssss….yesssss….”

I gulped and turned. Stinking of who-knows-what, I was face-to-face with a haggard gash of a smile containing moss-green teeth.

Beware Rona Greenteeth’s wares if you run into her. Sure, she may offer the most savory Troll tartare in all of Azeroth, but caution to those unaware adventurers who don’t know where the meat is coming from…

Jokes aside, I feel that Blizzard’s world event team has really been knocking it out of the park lately. Between the revamped Hallow’s End event and now what promises to be a bigger and better Darkmoon Faire, we are in for a real treat when 4.3 actually drops in a couple weeks. Prepare to put on your best dresses and plate and stomp down to the fairgrounds for an immersive, expansion and entertaining monthly event that has all sorts of achievements, prizes and acclaim for those who wish to seek it!

For full guides and videos on this event, check out WoWhead News, as well as Mat McCurley’s video guide over at WoW Insider.

For an intriguing look at Darkmoon’s creepy past, check out Mia’s Azeroth.

Public Testing Realm – 4.3

Usually I have better things to do in-game on live servers than check out PTR – I tend to be of the sort where I hate to be spoiled on things before they happen and I don’t like to wear myself out on new content before it is even 100 percent done! 4.3, however, has been most attractive in terms of things I like about the game. New raid content, new gear, and new vanity stuff – pets, mounts, and especially transmogging. So when the PTR came up last week, I just had to try it out.

Transmogrification

After downloading the patch and getting all my mods and macros/keybinds set-up, I quickly ran over to the transmogging/reforging shop in Stormwind. It is located on the west side of the outer Cathedral shops, and in Ogrimmar, it’s down in the Drag across the way from the cooking quest NPC. Transmogrification is easily the one thing I am most looking forward to in 4.3. My only real problem right now is that I have such trouble really tapping into outfits that I want to wear that aren’t just straight tier sets – especially for my mage main. I love the look of progression raiding tier for mages usually, so I don’t know why I’d want to skirt around that. So at first, transmogging seemed to be a 3 second affair – while I have tons of gear saved in my bank for my own nostalgia, I didn’t want to change into it. So I picked something simple to start with:

Gnome mages don't need transmogging, eh?

One of the upsides of doing PTR is they very often let you change races, names/features, or even faction on a whim to test out those services. Suffice to say, I took one of my mage clones and ported her over to Horde. This is tempting me pretty hard to roll Horde and never come back. Look how stylish these goggles are now:

All in all, goblin mages just look SO much better in my tier gear than I do. Eventually, when one of my guildmate’s and I did the End of Time dungeon (which I’ll talk about in a bit), I transmogged into something a little more timey-wimey, Furious Gladiator Regalia. Transmogrification isn’t too steep right now, so take some of your extra-fake gold on the PTR and try it out. I suspect this won’t be as much of a goldsink as…

Void Storage

While blues have said that the final costs of Void Storage are not set in stone yet, on the PTR they are definitely worth a pretty penny. It’s 1000G to unlock the service and then 100G per stack of stuff to place in your storage, or withdraw it (the “basket” is a 3×3 storage container.) There were some bugs when initially testing it, as I lost some of my prized possessions quite LITERALLY to the void, but they are back in there now. Some unfortunate drawbacks of the system so far:

• No unique-equipped items.  This means anything with that label, including certain rep items, quest rewards or special pieces of gear. It makes me upset as MOST of the things I had hoped to shove in my storage fall into this category. I have a very large, nearly complete collection of boss quest reward items and none of them qualify. This is something I hope they fix.
• No stackable items. That one Eternal Ember I have left over from the legendary quest step I was on will not be going in there.
• No non-soulbound items. So all those strange grey or white items you have have to stay in the bank. I think the Ethereals just have a problem with Pet Rocks.

But I am anticipating sticking all the tier gear I collected (but would never ‘mog) into my Void Storage, so that’s all well and good. Looks like all those giant bags I got for my bank will finally be used for useful things, like new transformation items.  I have issues, don’t I?

New 5-Man Dungeon: End Time (Spoilers)

Nozdormu guards the End of Time timeway.

End of Time is the only non-raid dungeon up at the time of this writing, and I must say, it knocks it out of the park. We return to the Bronze Dragonflight and their efforts to maintain the timestream, but this time, in the future, at the end of all things after Deathwing has “won” the battle against Azeroth. It has a very desolate, surreal feel to it, much like some episodes of Doctor Who. Players are given a random choice of four Dragonshrines, each with their own Echo (a faded version of a world leader), which serves as the end boss. You clear various trash mobs in the dragonshrine and then fight the Echo at the center. Most of the trash and their abilities (or various environmental) effects aren’t too hard for people who are 360+ geared and above, but some of the end bosses have neat abilities you still have to be careful of.

The choices for end bosses are Sylvanas, Tyrande, Jaina and Baine Bloodhoof and you go through two of those before getting to the final Dragonshrine – the Bronze Shrine. You fight Murozond, considered to be the Infinite Dragonflight version of Nozdormu (the letters of his name are rearranged, “that’s how you know he’s evil.”) You use one of most interesting fight mechanics so far to fight him – a giant bronze hourglass. Murozond scatters giant patches of flamey-wamey timey-wimey stuff on the ground and you use the hourglass to reset the fight. It doesn’t reset Muro’s health, but it reverses you backwards in time to your former positions and gives you a speed (haste and movement) buff as well as resetting your HP, MP and baseline class cooldowns. However, it also makes the boss cast his floor puddles faster, so it is literally a race against the clock whether you kill him or run out of the 5 hourglasses you are allowed to use for the fight. I really had a fun time doing this dungeon. The atmosphere is amazing and the structure of the dungeon is fast-paced and unique. I’ve always loved the Bronze Dragonflight and the sorts of fight mechanics Blizzard could use under the guise of “time travel” but this one really takes the cake.

New Baradin Hold Boss: Alizabal, Mistress of Hate

This seems like 4.3 is going to have the highest ratio of female to male bosses ever. I’ll let you know how the shivaan Mistress of Hate holds up, as Blizzard did not see it fit to allow both Horde and Alliance test the BH boss by holding the raid open, but rather you still have to win TB to have access to it, on the PTR. She reportedly had 10man health on 25man setting, according to my friend who did get to try it last night, but don’t expect that to last.

New Spell Effects

I play neither a boomkin nor an elemental shaman, but I do take some glee in the fact that the Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor’s lightning bolt effect uses the new spell effects on the PTR. It’s fun to be a mage and to shoot a giant arcing lightning bolt at something randomly.

What About You?

What are you guys most looking forward to in 4.3? Have you picked out transmogging outfits yet? What do you think mine should be? Does anything ACTUALLY match Branch of Nordrassil? Post your comments or pictures in the reply box and let me know.