Standard disclaimer: Leave your loathing of meta, World of Warcraft, or community diaries outside. If you think we should be playing your MMO instead, start a guild and write a recruitment diary. Don't leave a comment here and then get all hurtful when it isn't received with flowers and candy. This goes double for people coming in to attack guildies over other diaries or comments - STAY OUT! Link to your recruitment diary is OK though.
Standard advertisement: Wreck List is the Daily Kos World of Warcraft guild. We are Horde-side on the Garrosh server. To join, read this diary ,visit the Guild web site, roll up a character on Garrosh and when you log in type
/who wreck list
and contact (via in-game mail or /whisper) any of our members - who can direct you to someone with /ginvite privileges and get you a guild invite. Yes, you have to be Horde. No, you don't have to be hardcore - casuals, PvPers, and people that just want to hang out on guild chat are all welcome.
More below the fold:
Our dear MoodyLoner is somewhere on the road between Arkansas and Massachusetts, physically and probably mentally, so I'll do my poor best to put together our community report on the ongoing experiment. Can an unabashedly liberal Democratic guild survive in the wilds of Azeroth? We're surviving with style these days.
We’ve been dealing with the results of the Cataclysm for a year now, and we finally have the chance to take the fight to Deathwing himself. Patch 4.3 went live this past Tuesday, and we’ve been right along in enjoying the new content. And what new content there is!
One of the big new features is the Looking For Raid tool, which has been disparaged endlessly in the forums but which I’ve enjoyed quite heartily. We took a group of 17 Wreckies into the LFR on Tuesday night and flattened the place quite easily. We could have had 22/25 people, but Ash got kicked out during a random disconnect, and four other people wanted to come but were as close as half an item level too low to queue for the raid. The difficulty of LFR is tuned for uncoordinated groups of random strangers, and was no match for our socialist collective soul with vent available. We killed the first two bosses with barely a hiccup, and the second two bosses took a couple of tries but were ultimately no match for our awesomeness. We will be running a Wreck List LFR group again next Tuesday night; I’ve put the event on the calendar for 9:30 server time. Do sign up if you’ve got the gear and you’re willing to come along.
If you’re not quite geared enough for Dragon Soul LFR, but you’ve run a troll dungeon once or twice you are probably geared enough for the new 5-man dungeons which were added with this patch. There are 3 of them, all fairly short, all lots of fun (in my never humble opinion). I suspect that the first one, End Time, will eventually be run in under 15 minutes. Its final fight is incredibly fun, especially if you have a mage or shaman in your group. Time Warp! 5 times in a row! Whee! There are 2 gear-giving quests associated with each dungeon, and the bosses drop item level 378 epics.
Description of the new instances from Taymatt:
I love the three new dungeons, although I imagine I will be sick of them very shortly. For one thing, they are fairly short. (God how I hate those troll dungeons). The other thing that is great about those dungeons is the lore. The first of the three new dungeons, End Time, explores the future of Azeroth should Deathwing succeed. It's fun because you get to fight, around Wyrmrest Temple, two of four possible bosses: Baine, Jaina, Sylvannas, or Tyrande, each of which is broken in Deathwing's gloomy future. After beating them, you have to defeat Murozond. (I'll let all of you solve the anagram yourselves).
The second dungeon is the Well of Eternity. I loved this one. This one takes place in pre-Sundering Kalimdor, 10,000 years in the past, during the Burning Legion's first invasion. The purpose for which you are sent back in time is to obtain the now-destroyed Dragon/Demon Soul, which the then-Aspect of the Earth, Neltharion, used to stop Sargeras and the Burning Legion. After you retrieve the Dragon Soul, it will be given to Thall and the remaining Dragon Aspects to help defeat Deathwing. This instance is fun because you get to sneak around with Illidan Stormrage, as he helps you defeat a bunch of Burning Legion demons. One of the bosses is the delusional highborne queen Azshara, who is attempting to allow Sargeras entry through the Well of Eternity. You also meet up with Malfurion and Tyrande, who, along with Illidan, help you defeat the final boss in the instance, Mannoroth.
The third dungeon is the Hour of Twilight. It takes place in present time, and is supposed to be a mini-prequel to the Dragon Soul raid in which you get to kill Deathwing. So now that you have obtained the Dragon Soul, you accompany Thrall in a journey through Dragonblight to get to Wyrmrest Temple, to rendevous with the four remaining Dragon Aspects. You have to defeat a bunch of Twilight's Hammer cultists who are determined to intercept the Dragon Soul before you get there.
Team Kaels started working on the normal mode Dragon Soul raid last night and we killed three out of the eight bosses. We were almost disappointed in the ease of the first few bosses, but we ran into enough challenge eventually to wake us up. Hagara in normal mode has a number of abilities that aren’t active in LFR mode, so we stopped after a few pulls. We’ve seen all the phases and we know what we need to do, so we’re reasonably confident of progressing past that point on our next raid night.
The new Darkmoon Faire island zone will become available this coming Sunday, December 4th. It’s going to offer profession daily quests, which give you boosts in any of your active professions, a PVP arena, minigames galore, new pets, and a sea pony. I never went there on the test realm, but from what I read it looks amazing.
But really, dahlings, the best part of patch 4.3 isn’t some silly raid or dungeon or zone. Fashion, dahlings, fashion! The Transmogocalypse is upon us! I admit it, part of my enjoyment of World of Warcraft comes from dressing up my electronic paper dolls. I had farmed up a complete slutwear outfit for my paladin, but in the end I decided to go for the golden warrior of the light look and I’m quite happy about how it turned out. My mage is sporting full tier 1 except for the belt; sometime I’ve got to go back to Molten Core to see if I can get that. Kaels has a wonderful sailor boy outfit. I heard that Aislan’s ensemble is a wonder to behold. (er, what there is of it) I saw an incredibly hideous hunter outfit yesterday evening in Org that has to have been designed as the worst possible combination; giant blinking eyes on pink shoulders paired with green pants and bright purple gloves. If you’ve seen a particularly great outfit, please describe it or tell us the toon name in the comments.