Recently in Wrath of the Lich King Category

It's not Sapphriron.  It's not Kel'thuzad.  Nope.  It's not even frogger!

It's lag.

My raiding group started a 25-man Naxx last night.  We went in and started on spider wing with no problem, got to the Grand Widow and we had some lag issues but nothing too too bad.  The priest had a little trouble MC'ing the adds with his lag but we did it.   Maexxna - We had some lag issues but again, not so bad we couldn't do it.  It got a little hairy at times with spells taking too long and such.

On to finish the wing and then hit Patchwerk, who we've downed before. 

WHAM.  Terrible, terrible lag.  My Quartz casting bars were virtually full red for latency.  DPS couldn't use special attacks, healers were just guessing as to when the tanks' health bars went down.  I just alternated between regrowth and nourish, and kept up a rotation of sorts.  We got him to 10% when he enraged.  I snuck back into a corner and shadowmelded.  We tried him again but it was the same thing, so we decided to call it a night.  The only times when the lag cleared up at all was when we had several people dead. 

It was terrible!  According to the forums it's a known issue, so here's hoping it gets cleared up, because we're stuck until it does.

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.

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.

Wow.  From there being not much information about Wrath of the Lich King, it's suddenly exploded into a wealth of it.  I'm not going to respost everything, just talk about some of my favourite things.

Death Knights

I'm really looking forward to making a Death Knight, and it sounds like the class will be a blast to play.  I think my poor warrior is going to get neglected as the DK may replace her as my tank.

This is an interesting snippet, saying you may be able to make a Death Knight of either faction.  This means that if you have all Alliance characters you could potentially have a level 55 Horde without having to reroll.  The question in the post is more for PVP realms, I think, as you can only have characters of one faction on a PVP server, but it opens up all sorts of possibilities.  If you have Horde friends on the same server you could make a Horde Death Knight and play them up to the new level cap with a lot less work than starting over.  Of course, with the limit being one DK per server, you then couldn't have an alliance one.

Factions

Here is the main article with all the snippets.  The most interesting thing for me is that Hemet Nesingwary will have a rival faction.  Wow.  Hemet would have to offer something pretty dang special to avoid me trying to kill him for all of those hunting quests he made me do.  The "Wolvar" sound like they might be a worgen faction, perhaps some that are a little smarter and have broken away from Arugal or whomever is controlling them?

That also brings me nicely to my next topic;

Lore

Wow oh wow is there a lot of stuff to cover.  I love the Azerothian stories.  Don't get me wrong, some of the Outland stuff is entertaining, but after having levelled several characters through Ashenvale and Duskwood I have come to love the Worgen tales and legends, such as those covered in the Scythe of Elune quest.  It sounds like the worgen lore will be developed further and I can't WAIT. 

There's also some dragon lore that I'm looking forward to as well, but I really do have an unhealthy obsession with the Worgen.