November 2008 Archives

That's how stunned I am at the Wrath Gate event and the cinematic.

Wow.

I wasn't even expecting it, as I had no idea when in the questline it was, or even if I was on that particular one.

That was amazing.

I need to go pick my jaw up now.

Well, creaky old Argent Dawn is down again, so I may as well do a post that I've been meaning to do.

This is sort of a "for me" post, as I don't think many other people would be interested in it.  I want to catch up my characters' stories to Wrath.

Alyviel has continued her work with the Argent Dawn, continuing on to Northrend to join the ranks of the Argent Crusade as a scout.  She fights against the Scourge as she always has, travelling with the other members of the Agents of Stromgarde, sent to the frozen north to aid the Alliance in this troublesome time.

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so here we go!

Name: Kaliaa Shadowstep
Age: Mid-20s when alive, plus a few years in the service of Arthas.

(Yes, I know the Death Knight starting experience makes it less time than that, but I'm taking artistic license for RP!)

Kaliaa was a Knight of the Silver Hand, a paladin fighting for the forces of good.  Like so many, she was killed in service and raised to be an undead servant of the Lich King. 

Yes, I finally have Wrath.  I'm still waiting for my CE code, but I got too impatient and made poor Admosmori/Maelwyn get up and go buy me a copy of the regular edition so I could play it at the weekend.

Stop reading here if you don't want any possible spoilers.

The first thing I did was make a Death Knight.  WOW!  The starting experience is even better than I thought it would be.  I have a ton of screenshots.  The way that the world changes depending on what part of the quests you've done is incredible, I can't wait to see more of it.  It's a really fun class to play and I love how mine looks.  Now of course, I'm torn between levelling her and levelling my 70s.  Argh.  I think I'm going to have to get at least one to 80 to be my money maker and raider.

Here's Kaliaa.  She's going to be another relative of Emelyn's, probably a fallen paladin.

I think she looks creepy.  Maelwyn says she looks like she has a bad make-up job.

This is mostly for Maelwyn/Admosmori as he didn't see it.

The background: We were running a last 70 hoorah in Kara last night for fun and to get some people levelling gear.  We were doing a quick loot system, where people had 5 seconds to roll on an item.

The NPC decided that Admosmori wasn't being authorative enough.





And on an expansion update: I have Wrath downloaded and installed, and now I'm just frantically refreshing my e-mail every 10 seconds in the hopes that my Dad has magically got the delivery and e-mailed me the code while he's probably at work.  You never know.

I hopped on briefly to see who was about and most of my best playing buddies are on and exploring Northrend for the first time.  I logged back off, it was too painful!

Now it begins!

My father will be sending me the Wrath code as soon as he gets his hands on my copy, and then will mail it to me.  I won't be making the same mistake as I did with BC, though ... putting the code in without having the game installed means you can't play at all.  I'm keeping an eye on the Wrath downloader.  It's not working yet but maybe it will be soon.  It's now just a matter of waiting to see which happens first - the Wrath downloader becomes available, or my parcel gets here from across the pond.

In the meantime, I'll sit on the docks and sigh, emotionally.

Here's the quick video I threw together.

As I said on Youtube, I'll post comments (Ones on my blog will be screened if they're too abusive) but I ask people to be positive.

So, it seems that not only did we crash the server, but the game as well.

Oops.

There're a lot of nagative comments cropping up already over at Big Red Kitty.  Am I surprised?  Nope.  Does it make me sad?  Absolutely.  BRK and the others just wanted to run an event in memory of a very special little boy, and I think he would have enjoyed it.  The servers coming down was an unforseen circumstance.  When the last Running of a Bulls went down, this didn't happen, so who was to know it would happen now?

Argent Dawn is my home server, as I've said before.  It doesn't bother me in the slightest that it crashed for a while.  If people are so caught up in the game that they have to whine and complain about not being able to play for an hour or so because of a bunch of people gathering to honour a memory and encourage donations, they need to take a step back and look at things.  What about all of the parents and families who lose people forever, not just for a few hours?  What about all the terminally ill kids who lose their own lives, not their virtual ones?

Grow up.  Go and hug your parents, your kids or whomever is there, and be thankful for them.  Watch TV or go outside while the servers come back up.  Leave your negativity out there, because we all know that things could be a heck of a lot worse than you not being able to farm herbs for an hour.

Video should be up soon.

It was amazing while it lasted properly.  I think some people are still continuing, as they've ended up spread out by the lag and the crashing.  In respect for BRK's wishes and for my poor home server, I'm leaving my little cow just outside of Booty Bay.  I'll delete her in a moment to free up room.

Just for proof:

Currently waiting for the boat at Ratchet.  I keep getting kicked off, but the show WILL go on!

Five minutes to go, and we still have more people coming on.

Apparently there are about a hundred level 70s waiting for us at Stormwind.  I might even know some of them or have grouped with some of them... This is going to be fun. 

As I write this, I'm lined up with hundreds of other baby cows preparing for the Running of Da Bulls.  I even got to talk to BRK himself!  Well ... I got a reply to my whisper.  :D 

A couple of pictures to be going on with, I'll sort out the best ones tomorrow, and I'm running Fraps to get some movie footage.

Well, this time next week people will be playing Wrath of the Lich King!

Except for me.

I'll be crying.  Well, probably not.  I do have Fallout 3, Fable 2 and I will have Guitar Hero World Tour to keep me entertained.

But being a UK player on the US servers means I have to get my hands on a US copy of Wrath.  Thankfully, my Dad lives over in NJ so he's ordered me a copy, but it'll be a few extra days before I get it.

It took me two weeks to get BC, but that was a combination of many factors, including the Post Office and the tax people not liking me getting shinies from overseas and holding onto it until I cough up the duties.

On the upside, I did manage to steer my father towards Amazon during the short amount of time that you could order Collectors Editions, so I think I've been lucky enough to have one of those on its way.  It just has to go to him first, and then to me.

In other news, I went out yesterday to Tanaris and joined up with a fun couple of people, and the evening's work resulted in a full set of the Blessed mail armour for Alyviel, an Argent Dawn tabard and the horn that calls the Argent Knight!

BRK is having another Running of the Bulls event on Saturday that I'm going to try and be part of.

Click here for more info.