So, who doesn’t love zombies?

Something in me gets the feeling that after this week, it might be more people than it otherwise would be. Welcome to the Invasion.

I love it; I loved catching the Plague for the first time and wandering around the SSO area with my tiny army (incidentally, you can complete quest objectives while zombified, but it’s sporadic in a way that suggests it’s a bug). I love the fact that as a zombie — so long as you keep attacking — you’re practically unkillable. I love the fact that zombification breaks the formerley impenetrable faction barrier. I love the sense of creeping doom as the infection spread, getting gradually worse and worse. And I love the fact that the whole thing progresses until the Plague Is All; forget your quests, forget your dailies, forget your levelling. The Lich King is here and you will pay attention to him, whether you like it or not.

Because that’s the thing. I was out trying to do my SSO dailies last night and, damn, the whole island was overrun with pockets of zombies. The Greengill Coast (my favourite early-Invasion place to spawn a large army) was unrecognisable, the Argent Dawn was nowhere to be found, the boats in the harbour were overrun and I lost about 7 gold on repairs from all the times I got zombified and subsequently died. And yeah, I got frustrated. I was ganking mobs with a viciousness I normally wouldn’t even consider thanks to the shortage of anything living, and I wasn’t the only one.

“Fucking zombies!” I thought. “I’m just trying to do my fucking quests! Why the hell would Blizzard make such a pain in the ass world event?”

And then I thought, shit. That’s the whole fucking point.

The Lich King does not give a shit about your dailies. He does not care that you’re only level 10. Your repair bill brings nary a tear to his eye, and don’t even try and talk about your raid. The only thing, in fact, that the Lich King cares about is killing you and everyone like you. And yeah, that sucks. It’s going to get in your way. It’s going to stop you doing what you’d normally be doing.

So why don’t you do something about it?

Stop bitching and start killing. Group up and practice your kiting. A lot of zombies in an area? Then take those bastards down; the fate of the world depends on it. What’s your pathetic 10 gold in comparison to that?

And that’s why I love the Invasion; because it works on a meta level, too. Players are getting angry and frustrated that there’s something in the world they can’t directly control. And it’s amazing how complacent we all are, really. How set in our routines and our rituals, and the second they get disrupted we all go whinging to mommy.

Or a GM.

I was talking to another player today who wondered whether GMs would start to descend magically from the sky to cure everyone of zombification, a la the Corrupted Blood incident. In some ways it’s a cogent parallel to draw because Blizz has obviously used that as a model for the spread of the Plague. CB taught Blizzard that it could be done, but that was an accident and this isn’t; it’s engineered to decimate cities and disrupt gameplay. It’s designed to make you work together, either to stop the Plague… or to spread it. There will be no GMs descending from the sky tonight, boys and girls; this time, you’re on your own (well, on your own with the help of the plot).

So the next time you see someone complaining they’ve been zombified? Tell them to relax and enjoy the show. You can grind SSO every day, but the Invasion?

That’s once in a lifetime, baby.

(Though, I do rather wish Blizz had gotten rid of durability damage for zombie death… but I guess you can’t have everything.)

I always forget about mods.

And, really, patch day is always about 89% less fun when I spend most of it standing around trying to sort out what’s working and what isn’t. Three of my favourite-mods-of-all-time-forever-OMG still haven’t been updated; Advanced Bags Plus, Confab and UberQuest Reborn Again. I’ve replaced the first with Baggins and the last with QuestGuru, and I’m still debating whether to keep them or not. Because, like, on the one hand I like Baggins’ sorting and Bank integration, while on the other I prefer the way ABP allows you to have icons representing each of your faux bags. I like my new quest mod’s history function, but prefer UberQuest’s tracker. Bartender looks prettier than Trinity (thanks to ButtonFacade), but I like how Trinity allowed you to have button rows longer than 12.

Change is always stressful.

Anyway, 3.0.2 so far has been pretty fun. My “resting” AP went up by about two- or three-hundred, which was nice, and adding Lava Lash into my usual rotation has made for some super-happy fun times in PvE. Malestrom Weapon is great and, okay, I still can’t solo Zuluhead (first thing I tried), but the ability to self-cast Healing Wave instantaneously in battle has shot my survivability through the roof. Now I just have to get used to pressing 1-2-2-1 in combat instead of 1-2-1-2. Tough stuff.

The one thing I am significantly pissed off about is the fact that the new pet/mount system (while cool) broke my awesome macro. See, I used to have this macro that would cast my Hippogryph, Warstrider or Ghost Wolf depending on the circumstance. Three-mounts-one-button and all that. Alas, it is no more; even replacing /use with the appropriate /run CallCompanion() doesn’t seem to replicate the behaviour (maybe because you can’t use modifiers on /run, I dunno). So I’m looking for either a new macro or a mod that replicates the functionality. No luck so far. And this whole two extra buttons being used thing is getting real old, real fast.

Only four more Hallow’s End Achievements to get. Alas, they’re all the random drop ones. Fail.

Me, I’ll probably be doing what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days; squeezing SSO dailies (only about three more days to go until Exalted 999) in between revisiting old Azeroth zones trying to finish off questlines I’d missed the first time around. I want my Loremaster title, damnit, and I was quite crushed on PTR when I realised just how far I had to go; I thought I’d be much closer, but I guess my abject terror of grouping has left me a bit behind. Luckily, my lowbie-epics-geared 70 can power through your level 40 elite mobs, mwahahaha! Dire Maul was a bit of a challenge (lots of groups), but I managed to get in far enough to pick up Lethtendris’s Web, though I drew the line at trying to solo LBRS. Maybe when I hit 80.

As always, I’m starting to get that regretful feeling. I’ve been “out” of the game for a long time, frustrated with a lot of things, but in retrospect a lot of that frustration was probably self-created. So I’m trying to squeeze in as much as I can before the patch lands, then the thirty sleeps after that until Wrath. Once I’ve done questing the lowbie zones, it’s back to Mining and levelling Fishing; I’d really like to get at least 4k gold before Wrath (I’m serially poor, and that will literally be the most gold I’ve ever had at any one time), plus 375 Fishing. Maybe I can drag Mat around to finish off a bunch of BC group quests, though there are still a bunch of instances I’ve never done and– argh.

I never did manage to find a group for Zuluhed. I should be able to solo him by 80… right?

See you in 3.0.2.

Here’s a post about that.

(Oh, and it’s safe to say that for those of you avoiding all news of WotLK; this post contains spoilers.)

Onwards.

The Login Screen

I remember way back in the day being impressed by the login screen to Warcraft 3. Instead of just a splash with some buttons, Blizzard had actually served up a moving 3D diorama, a trend which they’ve continued. Once upon a time I spent a good ten minutes just watching the original login page for World of Warcraft, but damn if the art department hasn’t outdone itself with Wrath of the Lich King.

Okay, the Dark Portal we all know and love is gone, but in its place Blizzard has served up a dragon.

That’s right, a motherfucking dragon.

A motherfucking dragon that flies around and lands and roars at the login box.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I’m sold.

Achievements

Okay. A new class, a new continent and ten more levels are all well and good. But the thing I know you’re all really interested in — the new feature I know you all really want from Wrath — is the Achievement system. And who wouldn’t be (well, other than mechanics nuts like my darling other half)? Other games have had similar systems in place for ages now — I loved the idea during my brief and bright foray into City of Villains — and I’m all over keen to finally see Blizzard’s take on it.

So.

I love it.

Here’s the deal: Achievements are broken down into various categories, depending on what type they are. You’ve got PvP Achievements, Exploration Achievements, Quest Achievements and so forth. Most of those categories have subcategories, under which the achievements themselves lie. Achievements are either singular, or “stack”; the Achievement for reaching Level 10 stacks onto the one for Level 20 and so forth, all the way up to 80. The Achievements themselves range through pretty much the entire scope of things you could ever possibly do in WoW; from Srs Biznes like earning high-end ratings in Arenas, to things like using /love on all the Critters in the game (well, most; Adders are notably lacking, shame Blizzard shame). Achievements that require part completion — such as the “read these books” or “do x things” sort — expand when clicked to give either a progress bar or check-list, as appropriate, and each Achievement can be tracked much the same way Quests can be currently.

There are two measurements of Achievement (ahem) achievement. The first is a progress bar of how many out of how many you’ve attained (at the time of writing, Ulfrun had 113 of 750), and the second is an Honor-like system of Achievement Points. Earning each achievement — barring Feats of Strength — adds either 10, 25 or 50 points to this tally. What the points actually mean is a bit vague right now; Blizzard has stated you won’t be able to spend them a la Honor, but they’re obviously being accrued for some reason, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh, and earning a new Achievement gives a very satisfying level-up-like ding. Because positive feedback is a Very Good Thing.

There’s one more cool thing about the system, and that’s the ability to compare your Achievements with those obtained by other players you come across; similar to inspecting their gear. This is all laid out logically and aesthetically, with yours first and their second, and in fact the whole system feels highly polished and thoroughly though-out; maybe a little too much so, if only because the new UI pane makes all the others in-game look so, well, dated.

The rewards for completing Achievements are pretty much what you’d expect, in that they’re “pretty” rather than useful; tabards, mounts and titles so far. Not having actually managed to attain any, I couldn’t tell you how the game process them; let me get back to you on that one in a bit. Oh, and since I know you’re wondering; some of the stuff you’ve done previously is carried forward (mostly stuff you’ve done previously that was already recorded by the servers, such as how many quests you’ve completed and in what zones), but not all of it. C’est la vie.

So, overally, yeah. I’m pumped about Achievements, and can’t wait for the patch to roll around so I can start ticking some of them off. Green Hills of Stranglethorn, anyone?

Pets & Mounts

The new pet/mount window probably wins props by being, a) the most mechanically useless new feature, and b) the most awesome. Collecting pets and mounts has always been a super-fun side project for many players, hampered only by their own lack of gold and massive shortage of bank/bag space. Because while it would be awesome to be able to randomly summon any one of your fifty mounts and/or vanity pets — depending on whim and situation — people rarely have the space for it, especially if you’re one of those people who happens to have to carry around multiple sets of gear.

Almost oddly, Blizzard apparently cared enough about this issue to give us an entire new UI to solve it. Go figure.

The pet/mount UI is very similar to — and found in the same place as — the Hunter/Warlock pet UI. Items that used to summon these creatures now teach a “spell”, which appears in one of the appropriate Mount/Companion slots. The teaching item then disappears. Usually.

Because that’s the other thing. Being a proud owner of both the original and BC Collector’s Editions, I’m pleased that Blizzard has changed the CE pets to “Account Bound”. That means you can trade them between characters on your own account, with the net result there being that you can end up with all three of the original CE pets on the one character. In the case, the Diablo Stone, Panda Collar and Zergling Leash items hang around after you’ve taught yourself their spell, but you can happily destroy them afterwards if you so choose.

Either way, the whole system is very cool and makes me want to spend a lot more gold on a bunch of stuff that is, really, pretty useless…

The Barber

So the very first thing I did was roll myself a Level 1 and go check out the Barber.

I’ve been excited about this feature for ages, mostly because this sort of mechanically useless customization stuff is right up my alley. Plus after (what?) three years I’m totally sick of Ulfrun’s hairstyle. As far as I can tell, the Barber is also one of the lesser intrusive implementations of WoW’s new “Phasing” mechanic. This is the same thing that makes the Death Knight starting zone work; essentially, the game client loads up slightly different visuals for you and you alone based on things you’ve previous done (this, of course, is in contrast to the current system that loads up the same physical world for everyone, all the time). The large-scale implimentation of this involves changing the locations of NPCs and appearance of zones based on quest completion.

The Barber is much less intrusive, but works on the same principle (I think; it’s a little hard to test with only one character). Sure, it looks like you’re sitting down in the barber’s chair… but only to you. Like I said, it’s small-scale, but an interesting use of the mechanic, since it overcomes the otherwise horrific prospect of (gasp!) more people wanting to use the barber than there are barber’s chairs to sit in.

All that being said, I was ultimately kinda disappointed by my whole shave-and-a-haircut experience. The new hairstyles I had a look at — for female Trolls, Orcs and Undead — were mostly kinda… meh. They all still seemed to keep the older, lower-res format than the hairstyles for the new races, which was also a bit of a bummer. And, sure, I realise that hair fashion is probably fairly low on Blizzard’s current list of things to create new in-game models for, but still…

Oh well.

The Rest…

Oddly enough, the thing that impressed me most here was the new reputation screen. I’ve always felt this screen was way too “cluttered” for the amount of stuff that goes on here; I guess back when it was initially designed, faction reputation didn’t play nearly the role it does now. Anyway, the “new” window isn’t that different, but the way Blizzard has re-tiered it just makes the whole thing feel a bit easier to use. A good change.

The next new UI improvement is the “Currency” tab; this goes where the Honor tab used to (Honor is now it’s own UI window, which I’ve neglectfully forgotten to screenshot), and acts as a holding place for a bunch of your reputation items. I was actually kinda surprised at how few things ended up here. I honestly would’ve liked to have seen all Soulbound rep items here, but after some investigation most of my stuff was still hanging around in my bank, with no obvious way of “storing” it in this window. Not having then gone out to farm Scourgestones, I’m not sure if this is just a legacy thing — with newly earned tokens appearing here — but I kinda hope so. I want those bank slots back, damnit!

Last but not least, the calendar. Of all the new UI elements, I felt that the calendar was probably the least polished. I couldn’t really tell you why, only that — especially compared to the Achievements screens — it looks a bit haphazard. Which is kinda a bummer, but not so much of one because, damn, do I love the calendar! Back when I was GLing, I searched everywhere for an add-on that would perform this function, with only moderate success. I’m going to make a tentative prediction that this feature in particular is going to become every raid’s new best friend… and put a bunch of secondary, web-based services out of business while it’s at it! Raid sign-ups have never been easier.

The other thing about the calendar, of course, is that it lists the in-game events and, wow, I never realised just how many there were. There’s something on practically every other week, if you’re willing to look for it.

My husband, of course, only had one question upon seeing the Calendar: Does it integrate with Outlook?

I told him next patch. Maybe.