The Most Epic Questline in WoW

*Update: Click here for the movie playlist*

I finally got around to wrapping up a project I've been working on ever since the end of Wrath. It is about the "Scepter of the Shifting Sands" questline that was removed from the game when Cataclysm came out.

It is viewed as one of the longest and most epic questlines ever put on WoW and it was the culmination of a server wide gathering quest to open the gates of Ahn Qiraj. This was needed to get access to the AQ raids.  A one person quest, the backing of a well geared entire 40 man raid team and still you might not make it before someone else on your server did. When the gates where opened a 10 hour war would ensue, places all over Kalimdor would be invaded by Qiraji elites and raid bosses. At the end the person who rang the gong to open the gates, and anyone within these 10 hours that also did, would receive the legendary quality mount, the Black Qiraji Battle Tank, and the title of "Scarab Lord...".

I found out at the end of Wrath of the Lich King that this questline still existed in the game and as a lore nerd, and having heard the stories about it, I felt that I needed to complete it and see what all the fuzz was about. This took quite a while and at the end I almost didnt' make it in time (cursed GM's), but that is another story. While I was completing it I randomly filmed some bits here and there, things I thought where cool. And slowly I realized that noone would be able to see any of these things after they removed the questline. So I decided to try and put something together as an attempt to preserve it.

Click that "read more" for more

The strange future of WoWs timeline

Wow, no pun intended, I havent written here in a while. Time to fix that.

World of Warcrafts in-game timeline. I have been thinking about this little subject since Cataclysm was announced but a bit more ever since Mists of Pandaria came out. Blizzard has really made things very difficult for themselves and I can not understand how they did not see this coming.

Ok, to illustrate my point (Horde view). Previously you started off leveling up your character in vanilla WoW, everything was taking place before the opening of the dark portal. Then you hit level 58-60 and you could now enter the Burning Crusade expansion, with the story of how we tackled Dreanor and eventually defeated Illidan/Kil'Jaeden (not that you where very likely to actually see that particular content but still). Then you swiftly moved on to Wrath of the Lich King where Arthas kept hopping out from around the corners and the story unfolded much better than it had in the previous incarnations of the game, but then something happened...

Stand against SOPA

This is going to be off topic but it is of the utmost importance in my opinion to spread word of this.



PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Arms Warrior DPS 4.2 - Test

I just released a new DPS Test vid on my youtube channel :)

In the vid I go over my opening rotation and some thoughts in general.

I plan on doing a more proper look in to Arms DPS as 4.3 hits, provided that the raiding and gearing does not take up all my waking hours (it should not though). It might even turn in to a proper guide but that we shall have to see.

Blizzcon and Mists of Pandaria

Blizzcon this year was huge. As a follower of all Blizzards games I must say that this years event had the most information ever. Tons and tons of info on Diablo 3, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and of course WoW: Mists of Pandaria (aka MoP).

Mists of Pandaria was both expected and unexpected. Crafty people had already found out that Blizzard had trademarked the name a few months before Blizzcon so it was no surprise really. What was unexpected was how drastically Blizzard had changed from their ususal semi-dark themed expansions into something that could basically air on the disney channel.

The theme is controversial and personaly I'm not very happy about it either, however a lot of people have jumped on the "omg I'm gonna quit this game after cataclysm"-train solely based on pictures of pandas. For those of us that followed the panels there was a lot of other points that really stood out.

Kill-vid celebration!

Ok, I must admit that I have a weakness for neatly edited kill-vids. This is especially true is it manages to capture some of the lore or premise of the fight in question. There is also, in my opinion, no better way to honour your guild. Some guilds are famed as much for their fast progression as for their inspiring videos. Examples would be Paragon or Vodka or even the WotLK Ensidia kills.
Paragons video of their amazing world first Heroic Lich King 25man will forever be remembered as a milestone in both the art of making kill-vids and in guild promotion. The second bit is important as nowadays people can actually follow their favorite guild, see them progress and also distinguish individual raiders performance thereby learning and improving their own techniques. The mystique previously attached to the top end guilds have dissapated somewhat and instead revealed their true dedication and skill, plain for all to see.

Now with the release of the Firelands 4.2 patch a new flood of kill-vids are about to decend upon us. In a sort of celebration of this impending delight I've put together a little list of the top five videos from the patch 4.0 era. All after the jump.

Arms Warrior DPS in 4.1

I recently put together a new dps-test vid to see how patch 4.1 had treated Arms, and I was pleasantly surprised. 19k dps on a raid dummy is not hard at all.

(view on youtube for proper annotations and info)



The major change that came in 4.1 was that Mortal Strike now refreshes Rend. This is a bigger help to the complexity of the rotation than one might think, however with the removal of re-rend'ing Arms suddenly feels very different.
Rend is at the core of the mechanic that makes the class tick (no pun intended) and with the removal of it from the rotation it almost feel as if Arms has lost some of it's soul.

I have not yet had the pleasure of testing the new system in the execute phase of a fight. I really hope that this change improves the buff tending bore that preceded it in patch 4.0.6.

Even though Arms is far from the 'very challenging to play' class it used to be, it is still a ton of fun. And to new warriors out there it is at present a very appealing dps-class choice.