Teyla's Tails, World of Warcraft

Blackrock Foundry Unlock Schedule

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So Blizzard posted the unlock schedule for Blackrock Foundry today. Here it is below:

February 3, 2015:

  • Blackrock Foundry opens with Normal and Heroic difficulties available.
  •  World boss  Rukhmar becomes available in Spires of Arak.

February 10, 2015:

  •  Mythic difficulty becomes available.

February 17, 2015:

  •  Raid Finder Wing 1: Slagworks (Gruul, Oregorger, and The Blast Furnace) unlocks.

February 24, 2015:

  •  Raid Finder Wing 2: The Black Forge (Hans’gar and Franzok, Flamebender Ka’graz, and Kromog ) unlocks.

March 10, 2015:

  •  Raid Finder Wing 3: Iron Assembly (Beastlord Darmac, Operator Thogar, and The Iron Maidens) unlocks.

March 24, 2015:

  •  Raid Finder Wing 4: Blackhand’s Crucible (Blackhand) unlocks.

Raid Finder will require a minimum of 635 to Queue.

Pandette's Labyrinth

The Hidden Costs of Garrisons

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Hi. My name is Pan. I’m an altoholic.

And it’s costing me a fortune.

Without a doubt my favorite part about the new expansion are garrisons. The raids are fun, the dungeons too, and the lore, oh man the lore is so good. Garrisons though, they’re the real deal. They keep my coming back.

Unfortunately, they cost a little bit of gold to get going, especially if you’re indecisive about which buildings you want. Pan’s whole layout has changed twice since it hit level 3, and that means quite an investment in gold and resources.

But let’s talk about getting that level 3 garrison, shall we? Sure, you make about 7k gold leveling from 90 to 100, but is the first thing you want to do is blow 5k maxing out yet another garrison for an alt? 5k will get you the Darkmoon healer trinket for crying out loud. There’s a lot of sweet stuff you can get for 5k, and that’s before you factor in the cost of the level 3 buildings you want in your level 3 garrison!

Now for the big picture, I’ve got 11 toons on Khadgar, and if I went level 3 with all of them, that would be a 55k investment just in getting them level 3 garrisons. Yeah. With the building costs, it’s probably closer to 75k in the end!

So, should the completionist in me max out 11 garrisons? Or, will I be smart and save my money? What are you going to do?

Also, the costs aren’t hidden at all. It just made for a good headline. They literally tell you how much you’re going to spend with every plot and upgrade.

Pandette's Labyrinth

Holy Crap Does WoD Gear Look Bad

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All I can say is thank god for Transmog. Just look at her. Look at her face. You can see in Pandette’s face how much she hates that gear. I stripped the transmog off for this article, btw, it’s going to go right back on. The Time Lord set is just too awesome. Still, where’s the cool gear in WoD?

So far, the only cool looking gear I’ve seen is the Blackrock transmog set that you can only get by having the Dwarven Bunker, and you better as hell pray you wear plate. The mail questing gear doesn’t look too bad, but holy crap is the cloth just shit.

Am I off base here?

The quest gear looks bad. The crafting gear looks bad. The LFR gear looks bad. And as far as I can tell, the Normal/Heroic gear looks bad. The only exception is some of the weapons. I’m pretty happy with my shattered-rock looking staff, though it would be nice if it didn’t share a model with half the staves in the game. What is with the artwork recycling?

I would like to go on record, that I’m super happy that the only negative I can attribute to this expansion so far is nit-picky crap about how awfully terrible the gear looks. But seriously…

What the hell?

Pandette's Labyrinth

The Forums Are Going to Die (Update: The New Forums Are Live!)

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I’ve put it off as long as I possibly can. Our beloved forums have been a great source of happiness and collaboration over the years, but alas the damn system is just getting to hard to keep running.

So the forums are going to die.

Permanently.

Well, more accurately, the Mingle Forum we’ve been using is going to die. We will be losing all of the content that is in there right now, so if it’s just something you desperately want to keep ahold of, you have until Sunday, January 11 to copy it out and paste it into a word doc or something.

There is some good news.

The forums shall be reborn! We will be abandoning the Mingle Forums for BBPress, the forums plugin designed by WordPress for WordPress. So, you’ll have all of the forumey goodness you’re used to, but better integrated into the site.

The good news is that the new forums will come online today.  None of the old content will be carried over, sorry, I don’t have the time or energy to do it (it can be done, it’s just very time consuming). Once the new forum is online, the old one ain’t coming back.

So the Forums are going to die, long live the Forums!

Pandette's Labyrinth

Heroes of the Storm Final Alpha Impressions

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Well, as the Technical Alpha of Heroes of the Storm wraps up, and we all delve deep into the awesomeness that is Warlords of Draenor, let’s take a moment to reflect on what is shaping up to be a really great game.

Beta Release Date

As odd as it sounds, Heroes of the Storm isn’t even in closed Beta yet, me and well, lots of you, have been kicking around in the Alpha up to this point, and I can tell you, there’s been a whole heap of changes over the past six months. The interface has changes a dozen times, the heroes have been unbalanced and rebalanced and remixed over and over again, and heck, even some of the keybindings have changed (which is a slight annoyance since I program my BlackWidow’s macro keys.) Now, the time is running out for the January 13, 2015 closed beta release. Are there still any of you not in the Alpha/Beta?

A MOBA By Any Other Name

I gotta say, Blizz is sticking to its guns on this whole “team brawler” concept, but giving credit where credit is due, League of Legends has definitely legitimized and main-streamed this genre of games. And good for them! Strong competition and realistic contenders are important for keeping a genre from stagnating. I think World of Warcraft is a good example of what happens when you can rest on your laurels due to no realistic competition, then face some pretty realistic threats, spurring you to release content on the level of Warlords of Draenor. I’ll be curious to see if Heroes takes any real bite out of League, I really am not sure they will. Either way, Riot will be smart to learn what works in Heroes and see if it makes sense to integrate into their game.

Will I Still Be Playing?

Yes, though of course, I’ll be playing less thanks to WoW. However, I’m going to be watching the game closely as it opens up to the general public. Will Heroes be able to keep their relatively friendly and civil community going? Or is toxicity just the price of doing business. Time will tell.

Header Image by Mr. Jack

 

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