Benie's Games Blog

Blizzard is revealing more about the content of the three heroic-difficulty 5-man dungeons that players must do in order. The Bronze Dragonflight plays a critical role in this.
Players speak to Nozdormu the Timeless to go back in time to before Malfurion hid the Dragon Soul, and acquire it to stop Deathwing. But something is keeping him from doing this. So he sends players into the future to stop who or what is causing the disturbance.

The first dungeon, called “End Time”, is five years in the future (though this isn’t confirmed, it’s my guess). A “worst-case scenario” version if Azeroth’s defenders fail to stop Deathwing, and he torches the planet. He’s killed all the aspects, all the dragons, and every living thing.. including you. It truly is… the end OF THE WORLD… of Warcraft! For real this time.
Though Wyrmrest Temple itself survived the onslaught, Deathwing is seen impaled on the top of it. So at least we know he’s dead in the future. Why he’s dead, Blizzard isn’t going into details. And it’s driving me nuts.

Upon entering Azeroth’s grim future, Nozdormu is seen and tells players what he thinks might be causing the disturbance, and mentions four former heroes of Azeroth, echos of their former selves. Players must battle two of them. No one knows how they got there, not even Nozdormu. They are the Echo of Baine, the Echo of Jaina, the Echo of Sylvanas, and the Echo of Tyrande.

UPDATE: 9/30/11: New video showing a walkthrough of the End Time dungeon. Showing detailed info of the bosses, and trash mobs. There will be a portal near the instance portal that will take you to two of the four dragonshrines. What they don’t explain is if you can walk freely around the desolate, torched landscape just to get a feeling of how devastating losing the battle to Deathwing really was (and attempt to find landmarks from the current Dragonblight). This could change with time. All bosses are 87 Elites, and all trash mobs are 85 Elites.

Once done, a strange dragon from the annoying Infinite Dragonflight, Murozond, shows up at the Bronze Dragonshrine. They must defeat this thing to finally gain access to the second dungeon. Turns out this dragon is Nozdormu’s evil side, and is the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight.

Finally, Nozdormu regains control and sends players back 10,000 years ago to the second dungeon, labeled the “Well of Eternity”, when Azeroth was young. The Highborne are planning to bring the Burning Legion to Azeroth through the Well of Eternity during the War of The Ancients, which causes The Sundering and Kalimdor to be created. Players must fight bosses from the past, and then get their hands on the Dragon Soul. Thrall, Alexstrasza, and her Emerald Dragonflight sister Ysera are all seen in this. What parts the dragon aspects play is still unknown. Thrall is seen who is trying to acquire the Dragon Soul. Young Illidan and Malfurion will also be seen there.

And the third, labeled “Hour of Twilight” sends players back to the present Dragonblight when Patch 4.3 was released. Players have possession of the Dragon Soul now. Thrall has to be escorted back to the temple, but the Twilight’s Hammer are marching there too, to welcome Deathwing to kill everyone. The Twilight’s Hammer have also brought minions of the Old Gods. It’s unknown how battles will be done at this time.
It still doesn’t explain what is the purpose of the Dragon Soul, and how it will be used to stop Deathwing. I assume in the next few weeks, we’ll find out something. I’m curious to know.

Wowhead has more info about this patch that Blizzard hasn’t mentioned on battle.net, mentioning the three new heroic dungeons and the raid will be in the Caverns of Time, which does make sense since the Bronze Dragonflight helps. I’m sure they will be leading us as the days go by with new info.

Blizzard has now explained the ultimate battle of all time, and the raid that will feature battling the Grim Reaper of Azeroth; Deathwing.

What’s known is there will be three dungeons, unknown the difficulty or size. It will feature Wyrmrest Temple being under attack. Fortunately for Level 70’s (and my own sanity), it will be instanced so non-raiders won’t see anything (the instance portals will be in the Caverns of Time). Non-raiders will still see the blues attacking and the reds fighting back, with Malygos still alive. The same daily for defending the temple of burning blue ass on a red dragon will remain.

The raid version, labeled “Dragon Soul”, features Thrall and all the aspects, trying to charge what is known as the Dragon Soul, a device that was forged by Neltharion (who became Deathwing) during the War of The Ancients. Once the device is powered, Thrall will use it to weaken the monster, then the battle is taken to the sky.
Blizzard mentions the fights will be upon gunships, trying to blast away at Deathwing’s elementium plating to expose his molten core and weaken the aspect, with players actually ontop of Deathwing’s back. It’s said that this fight will be taken place all over Azeroth. It’s unknown if non-raiders will actually see Deathwing fly by while doing normal questing. Currently, it shows the raid starting in Dragonblight, and ending infront of the Maelstrom, where Cataclysm began.
It’s now known that players will be literally.. ripping him apart, while jumping between islands. It’s also known that Deathwing’s true form will be seen, that he’s just another minion of the Old Gods. And he will refuse to go down without a fight. And one of his spells threatens to rip the planet apart and blow it up by calling a second cataclysm.

Here’s the blog post, explaining everything: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3516572/Patch_43_Preview-9_16_2011#blog

Doing randoms / a raid, has been less than pleasant today. Started off like any normal day. I logged in, Jack logged in, we did TBP. We both hate the same dailies. And we did Hyjal and MF (yeah, Jack is now into the Hyjal/MF dailies like I am).

This time, the daily named “Punting Season” is going on. I’m waiting for him to grab the dailies while in my dragon form, then he leaves without jumping on my back so we can do them together. So he’s in one area and I’m in another. I get finished first, and do the one of killing a clone of Nemesis. I ask Jack if he was done, go to help him with the last one. He grabs a turtle and suddenly forgets what he’s supposed to do with it. I nearly blow a fuse since we could of done this together, and he’s wasting my time.

After punting, he almost pulls an Angry and nearly goes AFK on me, saying he’s gotta eat. I take him to Nemesis in hopes he’ll help me, then turn in the quests. And he goes AFK during the encounter, and dies from the attacks. He’s now a ghost, still AFK in the graveyard. So I’m like “fuck it. I got dailies to do” and go to do mine. Later on he comes back and tells me the ones I killed, he got credit. So I won’t have to do them for him. So that’s good.

In the afternoon, Blacksoul PM’s me and asks if I want to do ICC (which is killing the Lich King, I think). I agree. He tries to get a raid going, but is failing. He invites Terlarer who starts talking about he wants to do Uldar to get a sword, and starts spamming items for us to see. Seeing how I’ve never done it, I agree to this and Ter becomes the leader. And finally we go there with three people. Me, him, and a healer. Uldar is fun at the start. You get to control one of two steam tanks; a Demolisher, or a Siege Tank. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I got control of a Demolisher and went to town with that thing, throwing boulders at everything I saw.

About ten minutes later, we’re going on foot. Wiped at the second boss. Ter has to go, and we leave. Time to do my random. So I fire it up, and get a fresh run for Grim Batol.
We start like any other run. No one talks. They grab the quests. I wait by the doorway to start killing. But after doing the part where your group is on a bunch of red drakes and bombing the mobs to weaken them to make them easier to kill, the tank starts pulling everything he can for some unknown reason. I yell at him, yet no one else seems to care about it.

But here is where hell erupted in my face (literally). After killing the second boss, I tell the healer that she’s a damn good one. Suddenly, the tank speaks up about my gear not being so good. Then… then I just snap and say “Watch it…”. I have had it up to HERE with the insults about my gear!! So I’m doing my best for the group to just shut up and let me do my job, and work as a team. .. Ohh. They worked as a team alright. They worked to piss me off, with the tank deliberately sending mobs my way so I’ll die, then blaming me for it. One time they called me a “meat shield”.

One time I could of sworn I had the group acting normally again. We get to the third boss and the tank just blindly runs after him. I say “How about you wait for the others..”. He answers a little later with “How about you suck my dick?”, followed by “LOL” from the healer.

Then they start it up again, with the tank bringing the boss over to me so I can’t attack him ranged. The healer refuses to heal me and they just let me die again, and they congratulate themselves for “working as a team”. By then I leave. I’m sure they had their shits and giggles and were saying “what a fail hunter!” after I left, and found a better one and talked about what a failure I am.

*sigh* I did make it up after doing a successful Lost City of Tol’Vir run. And they didn’t bitch about my gear. I just did my job as a Hunter.
But it’s like almost every fucking time I get into GB, I get insulted about my gear. Sometimes, I’m in a fun group where they’re so busy laughing at eachother that they don’t notice my DPS.

The point of doing randoms is to get gear, right? You get Justice Points for doing them. Yet some assholes like them expect you to just.. become elite like the snap of a finger. I even told them that no one can be elite right out of the box, and one says that I’m living proof.

I’m actually thinking about joining a dungeon guild, where they will accept me and we can do runs (instead of ones with assholes). But I don’t want to be tied down. Hard to tie down a true soloer. Plus, I have to bend for them. And no drama. That’s why I’m in my own guild. But I don’t know if I can do this on my own anymore. I’ll just have to tolerate the ‘bad apples’ and continue getting marks to buy gear with them.

Spore’s official forum, the Sporum, is “down” today. But it’s not really down, only broken. This has happened 3-4 times this week.

Posting new topics, even reading them, and PMing people are all broken. It lists a bunch of shit about java and exceptions. At the bottom, it mentions notifying the administrator. Simple enough. Only problem is there’s no fucking link to do said thing!

I attempt to PM one of the moderators, and it too shows the same shit about java exceptions. So there’s no way to notify the admin. I can’t ask EA Customer Help, because it’s not Spore-related. Plus it’ll take ’till Monday when they might respond. By then it’ll be too late when I want the forum up now.

What’s strange is I’m still seeing people post. So it’s only broken to me? Internet Explorer shows the same thing.
Why am I concerned about this instead of just playing Spore, since this doesn’t affect the game? The topic I made kinda does. It’s to ask opinions of people, what is their thought of expanding an empire.
I got a response a day ago, but with this issue I can’t read it.

But I did finally find a way. I clicked on the RSS Feed and it showed the entire topic and the person’s reply. The person in disbelief why I would throw RP into Spore, about how there’s no parts (I explained why in my reply, which I feel I made a fool of myself). But the rest of it is what I thought people would say. That yes.. your people work in sweat shops to produce spice for you to sell.

Anyway, the forum is back up finally. And guess what? There IS a thread about it. One of the Maxis boys are asking people about this. But sometimes I wish I never opened up my.. keyboard. After explaining what I’ve been experiencing, they treat me like a total noob in telling me to clean my cookies and shit. I did that a long time ago.

Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, explains in a lengthy, educated blog post (longer than all of mine in here) labeled ‘Rate of Change’, about the frustrations players like myself face, and why they nerf and buff and patch. They want to make you think that fate, not Blizzard, is the enemy when you die due to a bug or whatever.

He claims that they listen to complaints of players, why people leave WoW and for what reason and use that to improve, and the concerns of players being overpowered in PvP and Arenas. Blizzard seems to actually care about their players instead of the money they give them.

This to me sheds some insight in maybe, Blizzard aren’t the enemies everytime a hostile pops up when I’m trying to mine a node or whatever. Or the annoying “Target not in line of sight”, when you can clearly see the target (but your char cannot).

Here’s the post for your reading convenience: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3435893#blog

For three days, I’ve been strongly thinking about playing Spore for some unknown reason. I tried telling myself all the bad things about the game (your creations are slaves that make spice for you to trade), but it didn’t seem to deter me from wanting to play it again. Shockingly, Spore is still being played by many, and still uploading new creatures, vehicles, buildings, and adventures to the Sporepedia.

There was three things that did, though. But I got through them all and started to play. There is a few issues I’m noticing with GA(Galactic Adventures), that I believe are trainer-related, but I’ll get to that later on in this blog post.

So, I hoped to find my old Dragon race from back in 2008, but no luck. Had to re-create him. In Creature Stage, he wasn’t really turning out as I’d hoped. I spent most of the time searching for parts instead of moving up the food chain to Sentient status.
In the Creepy and Cute pack, there’s a dragon head. It can also be used as a Crocodile head. But since when do crocks have a horn on the end of the snout, or horns on the sides?
So I used it and fell inlove with it. He was really looking like a dragon. Went through Tribal Stage. Panicked alittle when I noticed the trainer wasn’t keeping my people not hungry, but I found the key for it and completed it. Went through Civilization Stage with no problems.

In the Space Stage, once my ship (I still have my old Pyro-RX I made back then. And did you know noone’s made the SSV-Normandy from Mass Effect?) was launched and I spoke with Mission Control, I started getting all the badges, and some of the perks that came with it. But I wasn’t getting the stuff I loved about Space Stage. For example — the Hologram Scout — which is the only way you can walk on a planet (even your Homeworld, and extreme heat/cold planets). And the infinite Planet Terraforming tools.
Turns out, I had to go to the My Collections window, and go to Badges, then I exited out and I got them.

So now that I bought and had everything I want, I started buying out everyone’s systems one by one. Now my empire owns over 50 star systems. Total dragon population on 11 colonies is 1,215 (includes our homeworld). Life is good. And we’re only getting started.
And with no one starting shit with me, except the occasional Space Pirate attack/Eco-Disaster, I started playing GA. With the trainer, GA has been easy (god mode is fun). Increasing my Captain level has not. That’s not something the trainer can help me with. Only going to other alien empires will give me new adventures (they claim your own empire can, but I’ve only gotten a few. Most are standard missions like terraforming and delivery) to increase it.

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Now, remember when I said I would talk about what problems I’ve seen in GA earlier? There’s three problems. There was a forth serious one that was prohibiting killing infected things to stop an Eco-disaster, but that’s gone away.

Problem 1: I move way too fast on an adventure planet. It’s like Sprint is stuck to On. Even when trying to disable the trainer or disable the sprint cooldown remover, I still move too fast. I run into alot of things and it’s hard to control. I blame the trainer on this.
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Problem 2: It seems like everytime I dress my Captain guy up, my empire does the same thing. When I’m able to use guns, they will have the same props the captain is using. Why I may think it’s a trainer issue is, it won’t let me undo their stuff in the Colony Manager. It keeps saying it’s unable to save. At first I thought it was just corrupted by the trainer. Now I’m not so sure.
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Problem 3: I ran into two missions where they say you can beam your crew down with you. When zooming into an Adventure planet and clicking the Accept button, the Crew area of the window is blank. You can’t select any crew members. The strange thing is, you can on any other planet.

Despite the issues, I am having fun with this thing. Sometimes you just can’t help but wonder when you go out of your homeworld and see the galaxy.. if there’s other life out there. With the billions of star systems, there has to be some intelligent life out there.
I also love the freedom. Sure, trying to get to the Galactic Core, then suddenly your homeworld’s under attack, is an issue. But there’s more freedom in this game than.. say.. Mass Effect. At least you can go to Earth and walk on it. Every dot in the galaxy (except for Wormholes) has at least one or more planets you can explore with the Hologram Scout.

There is one thing I’m doing differently which is making Spore more fun for me. I’m throwing Mass Effect into it, to make it look like the Dragon Empire are colonizing planets for a reason. For example, planet Carelerren is being used as a research base, to make better atmospheric tools which would warm a frozen planet that’s far away from its sun into a T3, and keep it there.

Here’s another thing. I wrote this up (really wish there was space stations..);
Star System: Vallis (Home Star)
Planet: Drakkin (Homeworld)
Planet T-Score: 3
Capital: Dragon City
Population (workers): 1,200
Total Planet Population (includes space stations): 125,535,646,574
Colonies (cities): 10
About: See the “Spice and the Dragon Empire, must be nice” pamphlet for more info and planet data. Pamphlets given to all new recruits on Space Station 23.

I wish I found this site sooner. Cooleow approves it. What it does, is optimize your gear.
You have two choices.
1. Keep your current gear, but get it gemmed/enchanted/reforged.
2. Get new gear that it picks, and get it gemmed/enchanted/reforged.

This thing tells you what enchants benefit you, what gems to get, and what values to use when reforging. And it bases those figures from your current gear, and your spec and talents.

I actually never heard of this site, but most of my friends do. And Cooleow was going to suggest it, just with my negative attitude of gear, he didn’t. How I found out about this website is, I decided to ask the Curse forums if there’s an addon better than Pawn, that would do the thinking for me in getting geared. I knew it was going to be flamed. Being told I’m lazy and crap.

Fortunately, it wasn’t. Instead, this guy posted a link that does what I need, and said no addon could do that. So I checked out the site. It took me awhile to figure out what it was trying to tell me.

This isn’t just for Benie; all of my chars can be optimized to get better gear. As you get the gear it suggests is recommended for your class, level, and spec, it puts a checkmark behind the gear piece to indicate you got it. It’s still up to you to get the items gemmed, enchanted, and reforged as it shows to do them.

Currently, I got Benie’s ilevel up to 315, two numbers below my previous “record” of 317 (before the 4.2 patch hit). After the 4.2 patch, I had 309. So I’m not doing that bad. Still, I should be having 350+ by now and doing a shitload of DPS.
I just hope this site doesn’t steer me in the wrong direction.

Was a boring day, until one of the raiders from yesterday’s BT run, Grumbles, wanted to do the run again. I told him that I don’t think we can due to killing up to the third boss, but I agreed and wanted to continue where we left off. And I wish I didn’t, because it was a waste of time.
We try to assemble a raid, but without Darksoul being on, we have no leader. I try to ask for one. One of the invited players says she’ll lead, so I give her control and she starts inviting. At this time, Grumbles is getting bored and asks if I could take him to Badlands. I told him I couldn’t because I was still trying to recruit people. So he hops off and goes anyway. That’s when I see the new leader has everything under control, and decide to take him anyway.

So, we’re at Badlands, and I discovered Grumbles is using me as transport to work on his Alch. Now I know how Drago felt. Anyway, time ticks on and I’m noticing how disorganized the raid is going, and whisper to Grumbles that this raid is going to be a failure. But he says it’ll work, so I stay. Finally we’re ready to go there, but there’s no one there to summon us. Grumbles tries to take over and hearths out, leaving me alone. But he forgot that the raid’s in TBC. I take off and head there myself. About five seconds after I go through The Dark Portal, I get ported and accept.

So, we’re all infront of the instance portal. We run in, and me and him get stopped due to the instance lock. I start yelling at him for not knowing about the fucking lock, but I shouldn’t of. It is partially his fault, but it’s more of Blizzard’s. So, I had to tell the raid that me and him can’t go in and left. All of that planning.. wasted.

I’m still pissed at both of them for wasting my time. This is so fucking unfair!! We didn’t COMPLETE the fucking thing! It shouldn’t be locked! But this is the thing; we had people that didn’t have a lock. We would have to re-create the old raid to continue where we left off. That’s the only way it would of worked.

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A bit later, I was in GS. Blacksoul’s alt was on, and he said he wanted to do something, and mentioned The Battle of Mount Hyjal. I jumped when he said that and wanted in. I only did it once, but never completed. Again, had to go to SW. This time he started to recruit.
So, we’re getting people. Not many at the time. Then suddenly Darksoul gives me the lead and says he has to go, and said that I can still do this. So now I’m the leader of this forming raid, and I have NO idea what the fuck we need for it! But a Shaman named “Daegon” seemed like he knew what he was doing, but I never passed over the lead to him. I should of, but he didn’t ask for it.

After what seemed like 20 minutes just trying to assemble a raid, we head out, and we got it done, thanks to that guy who knew what to do and how to do it. Occasionally I tried to be a good leader and instructed the raid to go here and there. So I can say I lead my first raid.. sorta. Daegon did all the work. But now I know what to do next time I decide to do this.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try to see if I can solo a dungeon I haven’t seen since my days as a Level 70; Grull’s Lair in Blade’s Edge Mountains. I’ve only been in it once through that private server that Troy was a GM in. I find it weird no one wants to raid up for it. Is it soloable? I don’t know, but I don’t think I can due to it being a 25-man (same as TK and SP, and they’re both unsoloable). That’s why I want to find out. I’ll have to bring one of my alts to make it a raid.

When Patch 4.3 nears (if it’s not soloable), maybe people would want to raid it for the new Transmogrification feature.

Yesterday was my birthday. I’m 35 years old now. I didn’t get much, neither did I expect much. I’m just glad that god has allowed me to live another year of my life.

As for the WoW side of my birthday, it wasn’t that much either. I made some new friends, and we’ve been RPing together since the 19th (even know sometimes it makes no sense). One of those friends now knows how good I RP, by myself. Since I’ve been doing it for years.
In the evening, I tried to do another BT run. On the 19th, this Gnome DK named Blacksoul wanted people to do Kara. I told them that I’m able to solo almost the entire raid. They asked for my help and I joined their group. Some are telling others that we don’t need that many because Kara’s soloable.
As I was flying to the meeting stone, someone invites everyone to SW. I declined it, but most of the group said yes, and were trolled. Was quite funny.

So we did the run, with people leaving left and right. But we got it done with three remaining (there was 9 in the raid when we started). Afterwards, Blacksoul wanted to so BT. I asked in GS and SW. Got 9 people again and we went there, but we ran into a snag. 1/4 of the 70’s didn’t have flying mounts, but I told them to just follow us. Now, I don’t know what happened, but there was alot of arguing over stupid things and people dying. One saying that he solo’d BT (which is impossible), …. and we weren’t even in the dungeon. Then the raid just fell apart.

Today, we tried to do it again, and we actually killed up to the third boss. But the whole thing went to shit before the third boss. There was still so much rage and hate over drops. Who gets who, and shit like that.
Basically, we were all getting ready. But one of them decided to pull some out. Now, at the time it seemed like a small, manageable group of mobs. But then it’s like they all came out. One starts yelling that everyone should of been in when the door closed. I didn’t even know it did. I was too busy trying to kill these bastards. Unfortunately they killed me and almost the entire raid. Then the raid started to fall apart, and I said; “Well, at least now we can say we wiped IN the dungeon.”

Blacksoul didn’t really seem all that pissed. He wanted to do another raid. So I said we could do SP; the hardest raid in TBC (that I know of), but I said to get a good, strong group. And he did. This raid didn’t mind the fact I have low DPS, and tried to get more people to compensate for that. During the battle of Kalygos, we had some trouble, but figured it out. And we finally completed it.

And that’s basically what happened on my birthday.

I’ve been doing what I mentioned in my previous blog post; doing all Burning Crusade dungeons in Heroic. So far, I got 7 to go. Doing all of them will give me the “Outland Dungeon Hero” achievement.

I also did MT in Heroic, something I thought was impossible but Heol said it’s doable. The final boss nearly killed me, because I didn’t kill the mobs infront of him (it was also during the phase when gravity is reversed). Got to remember to, but the thing is, killing them causes the final boss to start mono-logging forever. He isn’t a tough boss, but he is fun to kill.

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So after I got done, I tried to do this daily you get from the Draenei before stepping through the portal in Shatt. When I checked Wowhead to figure out where to go for it, I saw something interesting on their front page.
Blizzard’s working on another patch. And this one will have a raid to finally kill the one responsible for the destruction of Azeroth; Deathwing. I’m sure that’s going to be an interesting battle. The hardest boss known in WoW.
There’s also talk of a new continent, that will feature three new 5-man dungeons.

There’s also four new features. Two major and two minor. The ethernals of TBC are coming to the major cities and looking for work. One of the features is called ‘Void Storage’. It’s similar to a bank, except they charge you to deposit and withdraw items, but they give you 80 slots. IMO, I might give that a chance to move my “treasure” out of the bank. You can put the same items in that you can put in your bank; Soulbound and BoA’s.

The second feature is a mouthful; called ‘Transmogrification‘. You can customize the look of your gear. No more will you be forced to wear a purple cape just for the stats. The kicker is, you have to own the item. And not all items can be changed. They have to have stats.

The last two minor features, are a Raid Finder, and changes to the Darkmoon Faire. The Faire change is what I’m really looking forward to.