WotLK

[Ratman_tf]

Did a Utgarde keep run with some guild folk. We rejoined wow a couple of months ago (vanguard, what an error that was) so our gear is decidedly sub-kara and it was actually nicely challenging, especially without spoilers. Died a lot, wiped multiple times and had to try and work out boss effects on the fly but got through it in the end. I can imagine the uber-geared are finding it boring but blizzard built heroic mode for those guys.

Yeah. My group was all guildies with tier 5 gear. One had previously been through UK and knew the bosses. So we didn't have much trouble at all.

[Koyasha]

The D.E.H.T.A. quests were fun, and the achievement "D.E.H.T.A.'s little P.I.T.A." is full of win.

Do those quests prevent you from doing the Hemet Nesingwary quest line?  Because I'm totally siding with good ol' Hemet on this one!  Fucking hippies.   

[Driakos]

No, they don't prevent you.  They just seem to be an extra source of Cenarion Expedition rep.

[Nonentity]

After my four-day Wrath weekend, I'm halfway through 78. I would have been higher, but as soon as I was able to use my Netherdrake again, I went and harvested piles and piles of Saronite ore. I have to ride the 24 hour cooldown transmute train to get 8 Titansteel bars, so I can get my Titansteel Destroyer.

My guild managed to clear 10 man Naxx, 10 man Sarth, and I think 10 man Malygos as well. Also, they finished 24 man Sarth and possibly 25 man Naxx as of last night when I logged. I wasn't hardcore enough to roll with the super poopsockers, and I kind of wanted to do dungeons with my real life pals.

I did most of the dungeons - just did The Oculus last night. The last boss encounter is super, super neat. The entire instance is vertical and outdoor, so after you kill the first boss, you get your choice of a tanking drake, a DPS drake, or a healer drake. You then fly vertically between areas, hopping off of your mount to clear trash and fight bosess. Just before the last boss, however, your drakes get buffed, and then you take on the last boss while ON the drakes. Pretty neato, as it allows for some role swapping. Our mage tanked it on his tank drake, and I got to heal on my healing drake.

All in all, the quest content is super, super epic. They really outdid themselves.

[K9]

I get the feeling that someone at Blizz felt that there werent enough dragons in TBC, so they're mildly overcompensating in Wrath, there's motherfucking dragons everywhere.

Not that I'm complaining, having cleared Borean Tundra and Dragonblight I'm really liking this.

My only current petty complaint is a number of quests that require you to target tiny fast-flying birds as they whip in and out of range. Trying to target stuff before it flies out of range for another 2 mins is kinda meh. Still, it's only two or three quests out of several hundred, and most of the rest range from average to awesome.

[Merusk]

No, they don't prevent you.  They just seem to be an extra source of Cenarion Expedition rep.

The ability to do both, particularly since Hemet is AFTER D.E.H.T.A., is like an extra nice little fuck you to the druids.  "Oh, sure, Hemet's a bad guy. I see that after my slaughter through STV and Nagrand.  I'll take your stuff and then.. uh.. tell Hemet what I REALLY think when I see him again."

[Merusk]

I get the feeling that someone at Blizz felt that there werent enough dragons in TBC, so they're mildly overcompensating in Wrath, there's motherfucking dragons everywhere.

One of the loudest complaints when BC was new and shiny was, "Wtf is all this crystal and psychedelic shit?"  The Blizzard "High" fantasy didn't go over well, and they promised a big time return to "Low" or "common" fantasy with this expansion.  I think they've delivered in spades.  You'll note there's also a lack of floaty open-webbed impossible weapons like the Outlands axes and swords.  They've all looked solid and possible to build without some sort of funky crystal magic to hold them together.

Post++

[Khaldun]

I hit the LFG queue and then I joined a pug yesterday for Azol-Nerub.  Turned out none of us had ever been there.  We died twice at the first boss, easily took down the 2nd boss and then almost wiped at the last boss.  Even with a sub-par tank and the server's highest DK (75, may God have mercy on his cat-ass soul).

My point is that the LFG tool works.  I just entered the queue for that dungeon and solo'ed until I was invited.  Also it was so cool to go in a dungeon without any one knowing any strats.  Sure we died but we did it ourselves.  Never happened to me before in WoW.

Same here--got in a nice PUG for Azjol-Nerub. None of us had been there, none of us read the strats, we had a level 75 warrior, rest of us were 73-74. So we just figured it out. Wiped once, had a close call on the final boss but took him down. It was quick, fun, visually interesting. So we said, "Hey, let's try the other one that's right here, why not?", Ahn-Kahnet, The Old Kingdom. And we had a couple of wipes and had to get a bit more careful on pulls, but we figured out the bosses quickly enough. That's one thing I liked: the strats were intuitive, not the sort of thing where you had to go study six YouTube videos just to find out the exact timing of various sequences. The third boss in The Old Kingdom, for example, you have to very quickly kill an add that the boss calls forward--if it gets to the boss, the boss powers-up. We were surprised the first time, but totally understood what it was that we needed to do. The choreography on the boss encounters in the early instances is very good--challenging but not obscure or ridiculously precise in the sequencing it requires.

[Azaroth]

...tanking for PUGs is a shitty job.

I hadn't tanked in about a year and a half. I respecced tonight to Protection.

...

I think I got into the instance about four pulls before I dropped the group and respecced?

[Paelos]

Tanking now is only as hard as the people in your group make it. If you run a five man with 3 competant DPSers and a decent healer, you can pretty much just AE everything. If you have 2 competant DPS and one idiot, you can put vigilance on him as a warrior. If you have 3 idiots and a shitty healer, no good tank can save that situation. Luckily I've yet to encounter such a group.

My favorite thing so far is to take in a healer, mage, ret pally, and some other form of DPS. You can Vigilance the ret pally, get 10% of his threat, have him toss out consecrates to hold things in place and keep your taunt refreshing, and then just burn the shit out of the groups with mage AE. It works through trash with little to no pain in the tanking department what with shockwaves, thunderclaps, and the Sunder Glyph.

[WindupAtheist]

Maybe I'll try grouping again now that ret pallies are actually useful. I keep forgetting that we've gone from a bitch-spec to something decent.

[Calantus]

"Kickin' Nass and Takin' Manes" is the most awesome quest name ever.

[Nonentity]

The quest at the end of a Sholazar Basin questline where you get to drive a Titan around and blow shit up is pretty good too.

I'm 75% into level 79 now, I'll be 80 shortly after I get home.

Pro tip for any Melee DPS - Fly into Icecrown as soon as you can, and land on the airship. After that, do the series of quests from the death knight that involves retaking Shadow Vault. Once that is done, you can do some quests for them to hit friendly with the Ebon Blade (if you haven't hit friendly already from their quests in Zul'Drak).

Once you're friendly, you can snag the Ebon Blade tabard, to champion their faction up. Revered with the Ebon Blade nets you a 50 attack power 20 crit rating head enchant.

[WindupAtheist]

I hit 72 and got tired of doing my quests, so I decided to go to En'kilah in the Borean Tundra and burn off my rested XP tearing shit up randomly. With the super fast respawn rate, I ended up in a pattern where I was running no more than a few seconds between abominations, burning them down in an average of 8 seconds each, and making 1700+ XP per kill thanks to being rested. I kept at it for about 45 minutes and, when I decided I'd had enough, was up 250k XP. I did the math, and I was averaging 20 seconds per kill. Probably less, since it took me a few minutes to find the pattern and I sat down to chug looted drinks a time or two.

That was some quality grinding. The next couple times some "doesn't start a chain and I don't feel like bothering" quest comes up, I can ignore it and not feel like I'm behind.

[Tannhauser]

Another great place to grind is in Dragonblight.  There are undead camps around the center titan camp "Garakrond" or something.  The respawn of the ghouls is crazy fast.

[Tale]

How will I go, if I return as a 70 Druid who quit soon after TBC launch?

[Oban]

Heroic Violet Hold, second boss.

KILL THE ORBS!!!!!!

OH MY GOD.

RUN!!!!!!!!!!

DON'T TOUCH THE ORBS!!!!!

WTF, TELEPORTED ONTO ORB!!!!

JJHDFJDHEFKLHEFWIKFNCMAXAJNAMNRFM!!!!!!!!!!!11111111

Fuck.

After three wipes with a melee-centric group and reading up on multiple strategies, I finally found something that is not fun in WotLK.

[WindupAtheist]

How will I go, if I return as a 70 Druid who quit soon after TBC launch?

You could be high 60's in quest greens and come to Northrend and be fine.

[K9]

Within about 10-12 quests of hitting Northrend you'll be in the equivalent of all T4 gear more or less. Slightly sub-par stat distributions and too much haste, but once you get those done you'll sail as fast as everyone else through the rest of the content.

[ClydeJr]

I got in a guild group to try out Azjol-Nerub. None of us had been in there before, no one knew any strats, and to quote one of the other guys quoting someone else "fuck it, we're doin' it live!" We had one semi-wipe on the first boss because our healer got webbed and we didn't know what to do about that. We came back and pounded the boss. He drops one hell of a nice dagger (Cobweb Machete).

The 2nd boss' room is a serious vertigo experience. The "floors" are see-through webbing so at times its hard to get a reference point for depth perception. Add to the fact that you're going to fight Shelob and its some good nightmare material. After that boss is one incredible drop. Make sure you look around as you fall. It looks like Blizzard made a ton of scenery for that dungeon that you only see while falling by it.

We found out the hard way that when the final boss is aggroed, webbing pops up around the platform he is on and prevents people from coming in and stops LOS for spells. Not good when the person trapped outside is your healer. I was tanking and our ret pally had to heal me. I died at 8% and our DPS warrior tanked the rest.

Its a real nice short dungeon. You can easily beat it in less than 45 minutes. There's almost no trash. Most of the "trash" are part of the boss event (kill 3 waves of trash, then the boss aggros). I'd recommend Azjol-Nerub for anyone in the 72-75 range.

[Nonentity]

The last boss on heroic Halls of Lightning is ridiculous. Our group had already hit apathy when I learned from my guild you could Line of Sight his 14k aoe lightning, so we didn't try him again after that.

He drops my axe I want that is made out of axes.

[Vash]

Heroic Violet Hold, second boss.

KILL THE ORBS!!!!!!

OH MY GOD.

RUN!!!!!!!!!!

DON'T TOUCH THE ORBS!!!!!

WTF, TELEPORTED ONTO ORB!!!!

JJHDFJDHEFKLHEFWIKFNCMAXAJNAMNRFM!!!!!!!!!!!11111111

Fuck.

After three wipes with a melee-centric group and reading up on multiple strategies, I finally found something that is not fun in WotLK.

You sure it was the 2nd boss?  On normal the first boss is an Etheral guy with an "Orb of Doom" (my personal description of it) that he summons and it moves around the room doing MASSIVE dmg if it touches you.  The second boss is somewhat random, a drakonid will open one of the barriers in the room holding baddies, I've done the ice/water elemental boss and the nerubian/scarab one with his guards so far.  The final boss is basically Azuregos (pre-BC 40 man world boss) made into a 5 man boss which is pure win.

My favorite 5 man in TBC was The Dark Portal in Caverns of Time.  The Violet Hold is basically Dark Portal only made better and it's right in Dalaran, the Shat of WoTLK.  It has to be my favorite 5 man so far in Wrath with the Nexus being a close 2nd.

The "orb of doom" from that first boss probably needs to be tuned better or be given a slight delay when it spawns before it does its massive damage, only wipe I've had in there was when it spawned right next to our tank on our first attempt and he went from full to dead in less than 2 seconds, as a prot pally in T5/ZA/Northrend gear with over 19k hp.  I can't even imagine how deadly that thing must be on heroic mode. 

[Azaroth]

Queues on my server are down from 1600+ in prime time to about 100, 150.

Are THAT many people transferring to low pop realms, or are people just dropping out like flies?

[Mazakiel]

If I recall correctly, the queue is based on how many people are logging into same areas so that a crush of people in one zone doesn't crash the servers, so it could be more that people are spreading out levelwise and not all in the two starter zones. 

[WindupAtheist]

The super poopsocks have hit 80 and are no longer playing 12 hours a day. Probably people in general aren't playing as long per session now that "ZOMG NEW EXPANSION" is wearing off a bit.

[Calantus]

Another nitpick brought to you by Calantus: They need to fix the no flying area in Dalaran so I can use my flyable/noflyable switch macro without using a modifier key. >_<

(for those that aren't aware you can make a macro that will use your flying mount in a flyable zone and your ground mount in a no flying zone but it somehow doesn't work in Dalaran)

[ironic]

We found out the hard way that when the final boss is aggroed, webbing pops up around the platform he is on and prevents people from coming in and stops LOS for spells. Not good when the person trapped outside is your healer. I was tanking and our ret pally had to heal me. I died at 8% and our DPS warrior tanked the rest.

This happened to our group, none of us had been in there before and we just winged it. Our mage and shadow priest got stuck outside when the event started. Me, holy priest, a prot warrior and feral druid eventually killed the boss albeit slow with the mage watching and the shadow priest group healing with not much else to do.

Really enjoying the expansion after being burnt out on the game a few months ago, almost has the feeling of playing the game when I first started back in Nov '04

[Mazakiel]

The quests, overall, seem to be tons much more fun than any they've done before.  I mean, steam tank?  Hell yeah.  And some of them crack me up, a lot.  Like one where you have to chop up corpses with a machete.  Once I was done and was handing the machete back to the guy, he was all, "Wow, you...you were really good at that.  Have you done this before?" and acted all creeped out. 

[Ingmar]

Ran Azjol-Nerub and Old Kingdom last night. Those were all cool boss fights! I have a feeling the trash in Old Kingdom will suck on heroic though.

[K9]

I liked the last boss in Azol'Nerub, the first two died before I could actually figure out what they were doing. The second boss in particular didn't seem to do much other than eat some spiders, hiit our tank twice and die. It was a fun instance though, overall, I look forward to trying it on heroic.

Also, the Bronze Dragonflight quest from chromie is 

[Fordel]

Ran Azjol-Nerub and Old Kingdom last night. Those were all cool boss fights! I have a feeling the trash in Old Kingdom will suck on heroic though.

Is that before or after I Typhoon half the room?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Also, the Bronze Dragonflight quest from chromie is 

"You're going to be at a party and there will be pie, don't eat the pie"

[Paelos]

So far, Old Kingdom is the coolest looking dungeon in terms of pure aesthetic. The insanity fight at the end and the circle of doom fight on the third boss are two of my favorite designs so far.

[Merusk]

Also, the Bronze Dragonflight quest from chromie is 

"You're going to be at a party and there will be pie, don't eat the pie"

"Man, I forgot what a noob I was."
"Keep us safe and get some better gear!"

[Khaldun]

The final Old Kingdom boss is pure win, and I like the one before it too. There's also just some really fun touches--the passageway that looks like it's collapsed is something I haven't seen in the game before. The webs plus long drops in Azjol'Nerub are also a hoot.