Well Mists went live on servers last night. As a follow up to the post I made yesterday, some of which was a very detailed plan of action, I thought I’d post what actually happened. This was my experience, so it’s highly personal, everyone’s experience was different I’m sure.
My Mists launch started with the digital launch event, so we’ll start there.
The digital live stream
I started watching the live stream for the digital launch event at 9.30pm UK time, being that I’m an hour behind Europe. Without daylight savings time, I’m not sure whether that will change to two hours behind, or make us the same. Anyway, Ghostcrawler was in Europe, actually a lot of top people were in Europe. I wonder if they got straight on planes back to the US, probably not. Flight time alone would eat up the time difference, so I guess the EU got them and the US got other people.
The launch event was about what I expected. The interviews didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already read somewhere else, the entertainment was strange, it was fairly business as usual. What I didn’t expect was that it would end at 10.30pm, or half an hour before launch. I mean seriously what was I going to distract myself with for the last half hour? The answer to that, just in case you were wondering, was AMV’s of The Avengers on YouTube.
The server went live
This actually happened a couple of minutes before the timer on the website ticked to 0. I’d seen that I’d got a couple of minutes left so went to get a drink. I came back to the pandaren and monk selection buttons in colour. The first thing I did was to follow the plan and roll my gnome monk. That’s when the plan started to fall apart. I did the first quest and had about 3/4 of level 1 done, as I wanted to stop at 99% of level 1 to maximise the level granting I then made by way out of Gnomergan. The moment I stepped outside though the exploration xp knocked me over to level 2. I had friends waiting on me to run a new Mists dungeon so I gave up the list and logged over to my main.
The first thing that went wrong with this part is starting the Jade Forest quest. Really blizz is nuts to make the first quest, the one that everyone has to do, a vehicle quest. There were some really funny visuals, I should have taken a screenshot, but others did and it really did look like someone had gone nuts with the clone tool. There must have been a hundred or more vehicles in one spot, you couldn’t see anything, it was crazy.
Then the lag started, oh that lag was horrendous. Click the mount button, run around for a minute and then the cast bar will show up. I’ve had bad lag before but nothing on that scale. You’d think queueing for a dungeon, with a full premade group, would have helped – it didn’t. The loading screen took ages and then got stuck at 90%, then disconnected, then it zoomed back up to 90% and got stuck, rinse and repeat.
I was on TeamSpeak with these guys and if I’m honest I was having a blast. I’d heard about launch night problems, Cata hadn’t turned out that way for me, but I was expecting issues. It was a great experience, being there with friends, having the issues that I usually just read about. I honestly had a great time though it took an hour before we all got zoned into the first dungeon – Stormstout Brewery.
The first dungeon
I’d run this one once on beta as a paladin healer. So I did have a vague memory of what was happening, though I was running as pally tank this time. Now I’ve read about these dungeons supposed to be pug friendly, how you can tank them in dps gear, and I have to ask is blizz joking? We had no issues as Dui had read the tactics and warned us about certain things, like don’t stand in that, click on the bubble, click on the casks etc. We also overgeared it by about 50 ilevels (it’s tuned for 358) and we’re guildies, we were communicating and we’re not idiots. For a pug it would have been a nightmare.
The massive gauntlet event will wipe many pugs I can guarentee it. The last boss where you have to kill the adds otherwise they heal the boss, and you can’t stand in yellow or you’re pacified, that’s going to just not die on pugs, and then it’ll be a wipe. The first boss uses the frontal attack mechanic of that boss in Stonecore that tanks can’t cope with. Maybe Stormstout will be the new Stonecore, the one that people drop group in on zoning in. I certainly wouldn’t blame them, I will avoid pugging as much as possible. I hate it anyway.
That being said it was an interesting dungeon and one I won’t mind running in guild groups. I think the challenge mode version of it will definitely be interesting. I liked it as a dungeon but to pug? No way.
What happened afterwards?
Well there was some confusion over the leave instance/leave party change, and 4 of us wound up in a dungeon without out 5th friend. We left that dungeon to try and regroup but then got the deserter debuff. Thwarted by this we went our separate ways for a time. I jumped back to the plan, I deleted the monk and this time just ran straight out of Gnomergan. I then killed mobs till I had 3/4 of a level and then I grouped with my level 80. This meant I got 1xp for every kill making it easy to take it to 399/400. I then granted levels till I was at level 80. Keeping with the plan I went back to Stormwind and started to train but I was tired at this point, so I got to about level 75 in Enchanting and called it a night.
The best of times and the worst of times
What is fantastic about the new expansion is also the worst thing. There’s too much to do! There’s too much choice! What do you work on first? This morning when I logged on I got my monk’s enchanting up to 427 as planned. What happens next?
I’m an achievement junkie so starting Pet Battles appeals for the new achievements.
I want to level my main to 90 and get Loremaster of Pandaria.
I want to level my professions, for the achievements, for what they produce and maybe to make some gold.
I’ve faction changed my second paladin to horde as planned. So there’s the pvp achievements for killing horde, the Halaa battle tokens etc. to get. I need to do that soon before my second account runs out.
I want to get into pvp and not get too behind so I need to level my druid.
Honestly where do you start? Need to knock some things off the list as it’s so long right now. Maybe do the quicker stuff like the pvp achievements. I do love it when a plan comes together. Then when things are done I can go get some shawarma, or not as I don’t actually like shawarma. It’s going to be a fun few months, oh yeah!