WoW - Massive 4.3 News Overload - Huge boost for casual/new/returning players.

You can still get the Twilight Texts. They drop from the cultists in Silithus. A stack of 10 texts will get you 550 CC rep (with a guild bonus; 500 otherwise). It's a pretty tedious grind because you have to stop and loot everything.

The Twilight Cultist gear (the three piece hat, chest and shoulders set) still drops, but you can't use it to lure the mini-boss that used to give CC rep. The gear is vendor trash now. (No, you still can't disenchant it.)

TK is right: The AQ 40 bosses do give CC rep. But the trash doesn't. I found AQ 20 to be a better source of CC rep because most of the trash and all of the bosses gave good CC rep. The final boss was worth 1.1K rep. A full clear was several thousand easy CC rep.

If anyone wants to hit AQ 40 for the mounts or the achievement, let me know. Two decently-geared 85s should rip right through it.

I'm three short of the Exalted achievement, with Frostborn (Northrend dungeons without a tabard and AT dailies), Darkmoon Faire (the March event should do it) and either Thorium Brotherhood or Sons of Hodir to go.

Project 9K update: I'm over 7,200. The latest milestone came today, when I ground out five more Darkmoon Faire tickets for the Littlest Pet Shop achievement.

The new holiday pets and the DMF were the things that got me over the hump, as I didn't spend actual cash on any of the pets (I'm not counting the Corehound, which came with the Authenticator) and the RNG was really not my friend (except for the Deepholm spider, which required a daily to pop and a spider to spawn; that's probably chewed up all my luck).

I shudder to think how much in-game gold I spent on pets. 50K? 100K? Somewhere in between, probably. I bought every pet I could except for the Wetlands whelp, which I haven't seen on the AH in ages (and which sells for 20K+ when it does).

Next up: mounts. I'm at 89/100, and it's now a matter of grinding out JPs, honor points and Argent Tournament and Tol Barad dailies.

I have to admit that I thought 9K would come faster. But I didn't count on being distracted by kicking the Horde in the teeth every two hours (winning Wintergrasp never gets old) and noodling around with a couple of new baby toons.

Bumping to invite any and all folks to run some Wrath heroics and/or Vanilla-BC 10-mans. Bring a couple of friends and we can blast through some Wrath 10-mans.

If you don't see me killin' Horde somewhere, I'll probably be up for a few old-school runs.

Jorrn I'll be looking you up in the next few days so we can roll some fools. I'm also interested in getting back into the arena and doing the PvP if you're up for it. I know we said we were going to make it happen back in December but it never came to fruition. We'll make it happen this time.

Excellent, TK. We can smoke some folks in 2s. I might be gone this weekend but I'll be around Sunday and beyond.

Get some damn gear. Convert those JPs if you have to.

Enix wrote:

Bumping to invite any and all folks to run some Wrath heroics and/or Vanilla-BC 10-mans. Bring a couple of friends and we can blast through some Wrath 10-mans.

If you don't see me killin' Horde somewhere, I'll probably be up for a few old-school runs.

TrollSlayer will look for you in the odd hours of night/morning (I'm Server time plus 7 hours).

/performs Redemption on this thread

/thread returns to life with 35 percent of max health and mana

I'm now the proud owner of this bad boy. Happy birthday to me! (No, really, Sunday was my birthday. That's when I kicked the crap out my last four achieves.)

Project 9K is rolling right along. I'm up to 8,270 achievement points, good enough for fifth in the guild behind Eppy, Sel (grats on 9K!), Carg and Bifur (who probably will hit 9K sometime in early or mid July).

As for me, I'm still gunning for Loremaster (fewer than 10 zones to go, mostly in Northrend) and should hit 8,500 or so achieve pts by the Panda launch without too much trouble. 9K is looking a little iffy.

A few of us (4, in fact -- Bifur, Drauglir, Heatus and I) easily 4-manned the Military Wing of Naxx. If the Armory is to be believed, the other three took out the Plague Wing after I dropped. We've been achievement whoring on Saturday mornings and at random other times. That's an open invite to come tour the old content before the new stuff drops.

I got the Red Protodrake in Wrath, when it was still a challenge! /angry fanboy

/casts bubble
/casts hearth

But ... but ... but ... this was a challenge! You know how hard it was to find FIVE PEOPLE who wanted to get impaled in Gundrak?

Also, too, I've run Occulus in Cata way more than I ever ran it in Wrath. It's still pretty awful.

NSMike wrote:

I got the Red Protodrake in Wrath, when it was still a challenge! /angry fanboy

When I was your level I walked to the dungeons on my slow-ass race-only mount both ways and I liked it, damnit! Damn you kids, get out of my castle moat. It's not a swimming pool.

kilanash wrote:
NSMike wrote:

I got the Red Protodrake in Wrath, when it was still a challenge! /angry fanboy

When I was your level I walked to the dungeons on my slow-ass race-only mount both ways and I liked it, damnit! Damn you kids, get out of my castle moat. It's not a swimming pool.

:old:

And I remember the days when Paladins and Warlocks had to quest their armored behinds off, just to get their epic mounts! Harumph!

Heretk wrote:
kilanash wrote:
NSMike wrote:

I got the Red Protodrake in Wrath, when it was still a challenge! /angry fanboy

When I was your level I walked to the dungeons on my slow-ass race-only mount both ways and I liked it, damnit! Damn you kids, get out of my castle moat. It's not a swimming pool.

:old:

And I remember the days when Paladins and Warlocks had to quest their armored behinds off, just to get their epic mounts! Harumph!

The thing is though, although that involved a(n awesome) quest chain, it ended up cheaper than a normal mount, and if you got to 60 before they put the quests in I think it was free or cheap.

Scratched wrote:
Heretk wrote:
kilanash wrote:
NSMike wrote:

I got the Red Protodrake in Wrath, when it was still a challenge! /angry fanboy

When I was your level I walked to the dungeons on my slow-ass race-only mount both ways and I liked it, damnit! Damn you kids, get out of my castle moat. It's not a swimming pool.

:old:

And I remember the days when Paladins and Warlocks had to quest their armored behinds off, just to get their epic mounts! Harumph!

The thing is though, although that involved a(n awesome) quest chain, it ended up cheaper than a normal mount, and if you got to 60 before they put the quests in I think it was free or cheap.

Timing is everything. I remember the pally quest chain being fun. I was not a fan of some portions requiring a group though.

I found myself in the camp that liked class quests and doing things with a dungeon group or needed a group in the world (such as the blasted lands chain). I think the tolerance to it varies on how much people expect to progress the chain when they want to, and they were something I would do just for interest between advancing my character.

My buddy and I did the quest chain for Warlock mounts a week or so before they gave them to everyone. We were livid.

I'm glad I was able to do the warlock and belf paladin mount quests before they were removed. The best was the Druid epic flight form one.

Pex-Corrh wrote:

I'm glad I was able to do the warlock and belf paladin mount quests before they were removed. The best was the Druid epic flight form one.

I have a co-worker that just started playing WoW last year. I was just telling about how brutal some of the stuff in vanilla was and his response was "why would you play a game like that"?

I told him "I'm not sure.......but I loved it"!

Bear wrote:
Pex-Corrh wrote:

I'm glad I was able to do the warlock and belf paladin mount quests before they were removed. The best was the Druid epic flight form one.

I have a co-worker that just started playing WoW last year. I was just telling about how brutal some of the stuff in vanilla was and his response was "why would you play a game like that"?

I told him "I'm not sure.......but I loved it"!

When I think along those lines, I think about something like TF2. Why do I play the same old maps with the same old weapons? Because I like the gameplay. I think that's a side of the equation that's often missing when games and MMOs concentrate on just letting the players get what they want quickly, essentially unbalancing the equation.

And in 'No one is surprised' news, Blizzard continues to try and tempt folks into paying for WoW again. This time, if your buddy signs up and stays active for 2 months, you get a 2-person flying mount a-la Vial of the (Sean?) Sands.

Yep, its the pre-expansion doldrums and the marketeers are trying to get your money again.

Is there anyone left who hasn't played wow at some point?

Hello, just wanted to invite people to do old WOTLK raids on Saturday mornings (around 9 server). We lack only Onyxia, Ulduar, and ICC now. We also farm Sartharion for the black drake. So join in for a chance at the mount!

9AM Saturday? I'll be there!

Someone please ping me on Steam if I forget >_>

Scratch Ony off the list. We nuked her last night! (Though we probably should go back and pick up those two stray achievements.)

@ Bifur: I'm out this weekend (July 28) and two weeks after that (Aug. 11). In the meantime, I'd love an escort through HoR. That's the one Wrath 5 I'm still missing.

Sort of related: If anyone is looking for a Lich King kill, there's a non-guild group on the BH-A server doing ICC 25 on Sunday afternoons, usually about 3 or 4 server. If you log on during the weekends, you'll see it being pimped in /2. I haven't done it, but I know others who have (Bifur, for one), and the group seems to be skilled and well-organized.

How quick could an 85 gear up to see the last few raids of the current expack and is that something GWJ is even doing at this point or would I need to possibly look outside of the guild?

Been "clean and sober" for about 14 months I think, so I may be a little rusty.

How quick could an 85 gear up to see the last few raids of the current expack

Super quick, Bean.

LFD the current tier of heroic 5 mans for a couple days and you will be geared for Firelands and the LFR version of Dragon Soul. Hell, maybe even the non LFR version of Dragon Soul at this point, given that they are up to a 30% buff in there right now. I bet you could see all the fights currently in the game (excluding heroic versions) in maybe three weeks if you found a group to run with.

is that something GWJ is even doing at this point or would I need to possibly look outside of the guild?

That's the stickier issue, though. Officially scheduled GWJ raiding is on hiatus right now, as are many GWJ raiders.

I personally plan to dig back in whenever 5.0 goes live so I can get things tuned back up and relearn to play before the expansion launches. At that time I'd be more than happy to run Firelands or Dragon Soul once or twice, but until the new mechanics are in place I'm not sure I'm interested in running them again. I can't speak for anyone else directly, but I imagine the same is true for at least a few other folks.

Thanks for the quick response Zero. I completely forgot about LFR (dont think it was available when I played tbh). I would feel bad going in not knowing the fights though. I guess that is what the internet is for. Tankspot still the place to go for that kind of stuff?

I'll be glad to hit up Firelands a few more times with you fellas. I need to get myself a legendary staff

Tankspot still the place to go for that kind of stuff?

It's still where I went when Dragon Soul launched. But seriously, LFR is easy. EEEEEEEEEEasy.

Easy.

@ Bean: This site seems to have a pretty good and detailed writeup on the Dragon Soul fights. Wowhead also has details.

I'm probably the only regular player anywhere who hasn't run the LFR version of Dragon Soul. By all accounts, though, it's pretty easy, especially now that everyone's got LFR, actual raid and VP gear.

If you want to run the real thing, there seem to be pretty regular groups forming in /2.

zeroKFE wrote:

LFD the current tier of heroic 5 mans for a couple days and you will be geared for Firelands and the LFR version of Dragon Soul. ...

Indeed. The drops from the Hour of Twilight instances and the JP gear are all i378 these days. That's plenty to get you into a raid.

bean wrote:

and is that something GWJ is even doing at this point or would I need to possibly look outside of the guild?

Like Zero said, pretty much all the raiders from BHA are on hiatus right now and the guild is fairly empty of late. I still log in fairly regularly, as does maybe 5-6 other diehards, but there's not a lot to do other than achievement hunting.

The Dragon Soul raids are the latest piece of endgame content, and at this point they are fairly easy - Blizz added a weekly nerf to it to help the people lagging behind to see the content. I think the current nerf-status is 35%?
And LFR is basically sleepwalking through the raid by now assuming someone knows what they're doing and the majority of people in the raid are semi-competent.

I'd certainly be happy to help you out with anything if you catch me on, as I suspect the rest of the regulars would. I still have stuff to get out of LFR for some of my toons but I dread the thought of joining LFR on my own so I just don't bother most of the time.