The View Through The Branches

My Death Knight dinged 80 on Saturday night!

That’s the lovely Ellenaie now at Level 80, standing there looking sheepish with nothing to do.

I’ve moved on to my priest now, although I am tempted to delve back into the world of PvP with the boy, or to gear up my paladin in heroics with a lovely friend who offered to help, cos I’m a coward and don’t like it when people laugh at me, but he “don’t take no shit” in heroics.

Regardless, things are progressing and I am steadily moving towards my pre-Cataclysm goals.

All I have to do now is reign in my desperate competitiveness and stop trying to beat Zal in achievements. I am resigned to the fact he has far more time than I do, which is why he’s racing ahead with 300 more points than me *grumble grumble grumble*.

Laters,

Sophx

Hello all,

I’m doing some sorting of the ol’ blog today, including the publication of my resource lists for each class. (link lists stolen from my feed reader, essentially).

I’m decided to publish as posts rather than pages, so you might get ten annoying “Resources for: xxxx” posts in your feedreaders today. Feel free to ignore them all, and the links will be posted along my header under “Guides”, where you’ll be able to click on each class and get the full resource list from there.

Thanks,

Soph

A note: all images credited to MMO-Champion.

Please note: all this will be speculation about what might have become of areas and places, using only the maps – although I may take a look at the screenshots at a later date. But now, maps only. I think this will give me quite a unique perspective on things. And yes. It’s all my speculation. None of it’s true, and I’m usually wrong.

Here is Ashenvale.

This is Ashenvale during Wrath of the Lich King and all the time before it.

And here is Ashenvale afterwards:

Let’s take a look at some key differences should we.

Look to the North-West. The Strand has seemingly been totally taken over by the Twilight’s Hammer, and the Blackfathom Depths have grown in size.

The Zoram’gar Outpost has grown in size considerably. Roads have been firmed up – no longer paths – and a roadway from the North down to the new area known as Orendil’s Retreat has been laid down – could this be a new Alliance quest hub in a Horde-favoured zone?

Maestra’s Post seems to still be in existance, but there is nothing telling us who controls the area, and it looks like the previously enclosed water area of Lake Falathim has become more swamplike (west of Maestra’s post).

The passageway to the Shrine of Aessina is more defined, and there are many more roadways and paths to Astranaar.

Fire Scar Shrine (south of the Shrine of Aessina) seems to be even more tainted and dark, but more visited if the roadway is any indication.

Astranaar itself is looked upon by a new settlement: Hellscream’s Watch. I think we all know what this means. The Horde has taken over the town and now either controls it completely, or leaves the elves to live there under the total tyranny of the Horde. Either way, it ain’t lookin good.

The Ruins of Stardust have been rebuilt into the Stardust Shrine, perhaps as a haven for the night elves? But there is no indication as to whether the Talondeep path continues to exist.

Silverwind Refuge has been made stronger, but taken over by the Horde, they’re USING OUR LOVELY BUILDINGS, but is overshadowed by what seems to be a volcanic eruption of some kind. Raynewood Retreat seems to be bigger, more defined, but unaffected by the nearby eruption. Is this where the elves will live?

As we move further East, the Horde presence becomes more defined. Splintertree Post is bigger, covering more land, as is the Warsong Lumber Camp. Pockets of resistance may be appearing – near Fallen Sky Lake, possibly, and Satyrnaar seems to have been cleared out and built upon by the Horde forces. Felfire Hill, in the south, also seems to have suffered the same fate.

Have I missed anything? Anybody got any opinions on the future of Astranaar, the elves and Ashenvale?

Well then.

When it comes to Cataclysm, I have been flipping from side to side. One minute, I wanted to know everything. Next minute, I wanted to discover it at the time.

But now I’ve realised what it is – I want to read it somewhere objective, go, have a wander, have a think, formulate my own opinions on it and then read everyone elses opinions on it.

Weird, hmm? Or normal? I don’t know.

Anyway.

One of the things that really does interest me in Cataclysm is the new areas and maps, as I’m sure it does many people. So what I am going to do is try and do a little series of posts using the maps of the old and new areas, draw some comparisons and do some speculation!

I have written briefly about the talent changes for druids, but I’m going to try and do a nice little series about the area maps we have seen for the new places.

I hope you enjoy them and I’d love some discussion and debate to arise.

I will try my best to mark everything with a spoilers tag!

In other news, my goals for 2010 are progressing nicely.

Elsen is now a 450 alchemist, Baeletha is level 41, Ellenaie is level 70 and my spacegoat Petranne dinged 80 yesterday – my second 80.

Very very pleased and looking forward to the future.

Enjoy All Time Low if you can…

That I’ve come across in the past few weeks…

6 of us took out one of the great world dragons, Emeriss:

I did feel pretty bad about it but he is freakin massive and twisted and a “bad guy” so to speak.

He also still hits pretty hard, unexpectedly.

Stood on the top of Black Temple looking up, you can see Azeroth before you.

It’s pretty god damn beautiful!

I came across this whilst doing some levelling in Dragonblight. I’m guessing it’s Horde-lore for the area as the guy is one of them buffalo chappies, but I found it really touching.

This is, of course, post-Wrathgate.

The Wrathgate appeared as a bit of a shock to me on Petranne, I think maybe I hadn’t remember the quesline very well but when the cut scene appeared my heart went all a-flutter.

It’s one of the most amazing cut scenes in WoW in my opinion, although as many people have said, Alexstraza is a bit…late.

Lovely screenshot though.

This obviously links back to the above, collecting the shield of Bolvar, alliance hero.

The first time we killed BQL, we were surprised to discover the floor had fallen away in front of us. Not knowing whether or not it was fully safe I switched in to cat form and let someone ELSE throw themselves down there first. They survived, so I followed.

My pet is spectacularly good at standing RIGHT in the way. Thrall and Jaina “chat” (flirt) while Sylvanas looks on and I watch the proceedings in Ogrimmar.

And then we confront Putress and successfully battle against Undercity.

This questline just further reiterates what a total tool Varian is and how made of awesome Thrall and Sylvanas are.

This made me do a LOL at zal’s tiny gnome warrior. THAT was tanking for me and Mike on our alts.

LOL at gnomes. Punt the gnomes!

Tree POWA takes on the pit commander.

In actual fact, in front of me is Mike on Rydia, getting pwned. SOMEONE kept standing in the fire.

This is nearly as big as a fucker I found in my bath last week.

The first time Flames takes on Sindragosa it’s fronted by three healers and a mage. Awesome squishyness. This was mainly a case of Riccah going, “oh let’s pull this bit of trash….go on, this next bit of trash…..oh go on,,,oooo look there she is!”

run awayyyyyyy!

AQ40 bugs out, and Riccah the circus performs rides elephant-back, standing up!

And once that AQ40 was finished I had enough bits and pieces for my full Gensis Raiment. Very very pleased to have this set! I look awesome!

Me with Zal showing off my pimpin new armor – she does look way better with her hair down.

Grizzly Hills – defeating Ursoc. BIG BEAR!

Me with my new pet – previously known as Pitch, briefly known as Cat, but then named, “Dusk”.

OMG BABY CHIMPS!

My Dusk fights himself!

Sholozar Basin is freakin awesome, I’m surfing a crocodile.

Elsen rests in Hemet’s camp in Sholozar after a long day of animal slaughtering!

Tree power at Sindragosa. I was awesomely impressed by theme of great trees think alike when I saw this post yesterday!

Petranne, bareback mammoth rider!!!

I love my sparkly pony, oh I do I do I do!

And the posse is back together again, Jae (Faesiala), Zal and me

And we leave fatty-paladin in the dust as we roar away in my brand new motorbike, a gift from the most uber of uber hunters, Jae

wooooooo!

Poor Ellenaie curls up to sleep after being dragged from Netherstorm by the evil Mihr.

Back on Petranne again, my hunter on her sparkle pony floats towards the Temple of Storms to aid Thorim.

and aid him I shall, atop my sparkly pony

I reckon Loken’s jealous that Thorim gets to live in Ulduar, while he gets relegated to the Halls of Lightning.

And here endeth my hiatus and my blogging break.

Service back to normal after Mike remembers to post Tuesday’s location…

Sophx

And I am seriously in gratitude to my gorgeous Mike for keeping everything ticking over for me whilst I’ve been dossing about, levelling alts and oh shock horror! Doing work in work time.

One thing I have noticed recently as I feel my life is in the middle of a particularly tumultuous time, that I miss my personal blog. It still exists, with a password on it, and I’m tempted to write again, just because I need somewhere to write about the people in my life and the things that go on without it being open for all the world to see on a warcraft blog where no one gives two hoots about the evil-Pete (which long readers may remember from Summer 2009) making me cry last week.

So I may start that back up again.

Something else my break has allowed me to do is level without abandon, and something I feel I have truly noticed this time round, inspired by Jae’s Explorer Task which made me think – oooo isn’t that pretty – is how gorgeous Northrend is.

At the moment I’m planning on using the dungeon finder to completely level up my priest, so I doubt the same thing will occur throughout Azeroth, but it may on my horde side blood elf as she sees things that haven’t been seen before.

One thing you do get as you level you DON’T get on a re-visit of an area is the cut scenes. You don’t see Thorim and Loken battle, you don’t get to gallop through Grizzly Hills on a mustang, you don’t get to battle vrykul on the back of a proto drake.

Some of the things I’ve seen recently are going to be documented over the next few days in pictorial form.

Thanks,

and just a couple more days until normal service resumes and your tourism posts go back to being a lot less funny!

Sophxx

Oh I do I do I do.

A couple of points to address:

1. Yes I know it’s a waste of money. I don’t care, I’m reclaiming my youth because my mum threw out all my My Little Ponies when I was 7.

2. Yes I know I’m being exploited by Blizzard. One year’s Warcraft subscription costs less than one month’s Horse Riding. I’m fine with £17 of absolute pleasure I get from riding around on a sparkly pony.

Anyhow.

I know I’m a bit delayed on this guys but I have been building up a nice pile of screenshots so I hope you enjoy the April funnies!

This isn’t so much a funny as a…time for embarrassment.

Mike and Nyo came 2nd in our Scavenger Hunt which means they got a raptor hatchling each. I wanted to screenie each of the people getting their hatchling but SOMEone decided that would be the ideal time to crank out the bunny costume. Shameful.

Anyway that spends anytime with Zal online will know that for someone several years younger than myself he has the voice of a man in his late thirties.

It is often a topic of conversation and comedy…

Ah, the old age bickering of “my job’s harder than your job”.

I still think my job’s harder than his job…

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I don’t know what he’s complaining about, Blood

Queen Lanathel is an AWESOME fight. It’s all about the movement, the quick reaction times, the movement…

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It must be love when your boyfriend describes your main character as an “elven tart”.

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For someone so young, he’s got a terrible, terrible mind.

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I’ve got a little series of these. On our Black Temple fun run a few weeks back, I discovered that the riding sea turtles jump up and down into their shells sporadically. I then turned my sound on.

Nothing in the WORLD (of warcraft) is as good as the “sploosh!” “spleesh!” noise that they make.

NOTHING.

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This is my best friend flaunting his Tier 6 whilst we waited for our lazy comrades in ICC.

I think the look on Elsen’s face says it all really.

*Is ashamed to be there*

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We were in ToC25, and I was bored.

I was debating the term battlechicken, decided that made me a battlehen and our raid leader a BATTLEROOSTER. It was funny, honestly.

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If you hadn’t noticed this, next time you’re killing trash in the Crimson Halls, that knockback you get? Yea, that’s right, you just got LICH SLAPPED.

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Zal had a bit of a nerd rage at the Sons of Hodir and their refusal to provide him with on tap shoulder enchants.

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Noblegarden brings out the worst in the guild pervs…

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I agreed to PvP with my suicidal mage friend. I think it might have been a bad idea really.

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Ste’s death wish got us thinking about his past adventures, like the time I was on follow and he asked the question, in HoR, “what happens if you run off the edge?”

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And again…Noblegarden’s

just a bad idea really.

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Debating the minds of the trade channel trolls.

I particularly like Opheliah’s (the alt of one of our main tanks) comment.

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Wednesday night ICC25 man with our raiding alliance, I’d made some threat against Mike got making comments about druids again, and one of Caledonia’s RL couples responded

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Officer Chat is really quite, quite dreadful sometimes!

I get confused by techie jokes.

Really, none of us is very funny

But we think we are, and that’s what counts!

SRSairbag is serious business…

Let that be a lesson.

Never listen to the resident suicidal mage. How is “in the fire!!!

!!” an answer to my question, hmm?

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Every guild in the world has a name for the orange raid marker.

For us it always used to be the nipple, but now there’s an eternal battle about it being either nipple or condom. Maybe I should start a poll?

I don’t really know how to explain this away…

other than cocunut biscuits?

err…..NO.

Hope you enjoyed the April funnies anyway…

Thanks to Zal, Nyo, Mike and Yanader in particular for giving me this month’s material, and of course Alissia and Ceinwyn from Caledonia for agreeing to let me post that screenie!!

Dear subscribers,

For the next 7 days Mike will be posting the wow-tourism for me.

I won’t be around.

thanks

Sophie