As you (all one of you reading the feed still..) may have noticed, this site has gone dormant. Mainly, I don’t play WoW any more. Every time I have gotten “serious” about playing and making this blog be something, a close family member has passed away. While it’s not a “sign” telling me to stop playing WoW, it has spoiled the enjoyment of the game for me.

Therefore, this blog is done, and the site will gradually shut down and collapse to forgotten bits.

Thanks for reading.

This is Hollydae.

Say hello Holly.
“Hello Holly.”
Holly is a project girl. She doesn’t have any huge baggage, or weird habits like eating herring while sitting in the freezer. Nope, she’s the Holiday Project.
I was doing the Hallow’s Eve quests on Jaramon and had a stroke of inspiration. “Let’s level a character on ONLY holiday quests!” Logistically, it is impossible to do this without gaining some exploration XP, so we are going to have to accept that.
Holly started out around the Blood Elf Starting zone, (her first death was the Headless Horseman’s pumpkin bomb.) Holly reached level 2 after completing the quests in Falconwing Square, and started the long trek to Light’s Hope Chapel. She was half way to the chapel when I realized that this could only be made more interesting by being permanently PvP flagged.

Holly finally made it to Light’s Hope Chapel just in time to ding 3 as she walked into the area. She snagged the candy and then was promptly killed by a wandering mob after getting the flight point. Holly’s next stop was a tour of Undercity, Brill, The Sepulcher, and finally Tarren Mill. At this point it was time for a rest, as being level 3 in a level 80 world is tough work.

So the established rules for Holly are:

• XP only from Holiday quests and exploration-
• PVP Flag on
• No funding or Twinking from my toons, however if someone wants to give her something, she will take it, dedicating the next leg of her journey to that individual.
• She does this for at minimum of one year (until at least next Hallow’s Eve)

Hopefully you will follow us on or weird and fearsome journey in search of the Azerothian Dream..

Say goodnight Holly.
“Goodnight Holly.”

I spent a little time last night experimenting with the rune system in Unholy Spec using a two handed weapon. I’m not sure how this is going to work, but my instincts are leaning to having a steady pace on the runes now, firing them off as they come up, in turn.

This is different from the current play style, since it is more important to not waste any Global cool downs and can make a hectic experience. This seems much slower and methodical, which also may make tanking much less stressful.

I think that the waste of a rune or a rune power dump is going to be the new Cardinal Sin for DPS Death Knights, since this seems to fall into a steady pace and almost a rhythm.

I started playing with a 5/31/0 Dual Wield spec yesterday and thought I would document it. I am not sure that the simplification of the talent trees is going to be as game breaking/making as people make it out to be. (To be honest the mastery bonuses are not in yet so I have no idea if it will get better or worse.) Frost is definitely going to be a spec to be watching, as it has a lot of nice toys for both DW and 2 hand style play.

I had to remember to switch into Frost Presence, since Blood is now the “Hi, Have I made you mad yet? How about Now?” presence. It is interesting, because the self healing aspect of the DK is gone in this build. The bonus healing we got from blood presence is completely absent now, with only Death Strike having healing abilities. I am not sure how this will change leveling, but it does make DKs much more squishy on normal content. I will try to get into an instance and see what happens. (Well that and I want to see how tasty this spec can be in DPS land.)
edited to add: They appear to be still processing it, please have patience!

I bring you a quick tour of the troll starting area, now with more horn section!
They did a good job here and it is a very fast five levels and they managed to expand on the Polynesian/Afro-Carribbean/Meso-American feel of the troll and make the story very interesting for new players.
Without Further Ado:

Video by Jaramon of http://deathcoil.org
Music: GB Rastaman by AJT (http://www.musicalley.com/music/producers/producerLibrary/artistdetails.php?BandHash=c3d42bda0c13c7d38256564352db3ba0)

I was busy yesterday doing the *squee* and the *tap tap tap* waiting of downloading the Cataclysm Beta. While I waited, I found myself reading through the Beta Forums for what I needed to be looking at. The list was fairly extensive, but one caught my eye after Big Red Kitty ( http://bigredkitty.net ) had given a little preview of it earlier this week (or last.) “Feedback on Durotar” was requested. Now this I could dig! Getting to play with the new Troll Druid and an Orc Warlock. I rolled my new Troll Druid “Jaratroll” and entered the game.

We got a nice fly by of what was some hazardous bits in Vanilla when the zone was level appropriate; but Vol’jin (bless his Trolly heart,) managed to clean out the place and set up a Troll town to be proud of!

The Echo Isles is now a 1-5 zone that has a lot of good bits to make trolls interesting, expanding on the back story and involving the new Troll in the story. Blizzard did an excellent job making the zone feel more like the Death Knight starting area which engages the player who wants some immersion and lore right off the bat.

The zone gets you familiar with your basic abilities, and you get introduced to some basic concepts and what’s going on in the world. This is nice because it gets you involved in the greater story of the World level plots as well as the quests you are working on currently.

The Orc starting area has shown some nice enhancement and a bit more organization that it used to, with less pointless runs and a better handle on combining quests trips. It does lack the polish of the Troll area, but that could be because the rest of Durotar may be steeped in Orcishness where the troll area and Sen-Jin Village may be all we see of the trolls for a while.

So far so good!

I have been peering at the screenshots of the various zones in Cataclysm
over at www.mmo-champion.com and in addition to the strains on the vanilla
world we know and mostly love, I see some strains in the relationships of
the various groups, who up until recently, were pretty darn tight.

SPOILERS BELOW- NO FOLD

I see this mostly in the Horde, as we see that the Tauren have now gated
off the little path that leads to Mulgore. In some ways this could be
because of the increased presence of Alliance troops in the Barrens, but
also because Garrosh Hellscream is now running the show over in Orgrimmar.
I think that the Tauren expansion throughout Kalimdor is a good thing,
but it seems like there may be some tension with the more war-minded
Garrosh at the helm. The bit I read about Sylvanas using the Vrykul to
raise new Forsaken has got to be sitting poorly with the other groups
within the Horde, as creating new undead is not really a comfortable
thought for the living. The Blood Elves appear to have redeemed
themselves at the end of the Burning Crusade and are more in line with the
Tauren and Trolls (which could explain the Troll Druids and the Tauren
Paladins.)

I find it hard to believe that the current political structures are going
to remain static for many more expansions, but I am not sure how to
implement a change. I would prefer to see the Tauren, Trolls and Blood
Elves move into their own arrangements, possibly picking up the Draenai as
an unlikely ally, as it seems these groups are all headed in some similar
direction.

Having the Orcs, goblins, forsaken, and perhaps a new race group (Ogres?
Living Vrykul? BOTH??) form an warhorde would make sense as well, though
the reasons for such might have to be looked at closely.

The Alliance would be fine with the current structure (Gnomes, Night
Elves, Dwarves, Humans and Worgen.)

I don’t know that the balance would work out for things like Wintergrasp,
but I think that it would be an interesting change for the game in the
long run. Blizzard has shown that they are willing to kill a few sacred
cows to make things interesting, so I wouldn’t put anything off the table.