Rainy Noblegarden?

Was your Noblegarden weekend as rainy as mine? Well, I was not home so i could not join in for the hunt for colored eggs... but from what i hear most players were quite disappointed about this event. Also it's getting more and more tiresome that every RL holiday gets a WoW equivalent - can't they come up with something more creative? Especially on a RP server i find it disturbing. Did you find anything beside choclate during your search for eggs? The picture shown is most likely fake, at least i could not find any confirmation, but a pet with that kind of aura would be funny.

Referring back to C'Thun, the controverse about this encounter ranges from it's just very hard and there is some trick to it, nobody found out yet, to the encounter is broken and needs to be fixed and Blizzard only uses it to keep the raiders busy until patch 1.11. The guild Death&Taxes had a very long and heated discussion (with not really nice choice of words) going and many players in that guild wanted to cancel their accounts during 14 days if no official statement towards C'Thun would be made. The thread in their forum can be found here (but they used up their bandwidth it seems). A lengthy post on the official forum also discussing the topic is here. Is there a hidden solution for the encounter or is it really just poorly (aka too hard) designed and Blizzard will just tone it down? Only time will tell...

There is a rumour spreading about the before mentioned Catalyst addon. Apparently some uninformed GM answered a ticket about this addon and said it would be illegal to use?! Tseric himself answered that of course its perfectly ok to use it and the GM was only being poorly informed (when will they fix their bad support?). With an improvement for zoning loading times between approx. 200%-300% i can't wait to try it out.

C'Thun - Ancient God and Monster

Since no raid killed C'Thun yet, there are a lot of myths spreading around about what exactly is happening and how to kill him. The guilds working the hardest on him are also the ones being close-lipped about their attempts on him. I recently talked to a friend being in one of those guilds and even I had to choke when i heard how much time and gold those guys spend on beating his tentacle-butt. If you enjoyed all the rumours about the search for Ashbringer, you'll like this forum thread about the C'Thun fight and a connection to the AQ Scepter. There is also an interesting post about some Titans vs. Old Gods Lore from Seraphi. The picture to the left shows a map of the Outlands, as i did not want to bore you with more C'Thun pics.

Recently a larger discussion started about how mods slow down your loading times when you enter a new instance. This is cause by a) bad programmed mods and b) the way how Blizzards API handles the updates. Rumours say in patch 1.11 Blizzard will improve the loading times by updating their scripts. If you want to improve your loading times before then, read the interesting post by Tigerheart: How-to reduce zone times! which started the discussion. Meanwhile there are several mods that are supposed to help you reducing the loading times, the most promising ones IMO is Catalyst. I had no time to test it yet tho.

Alright, before the Blood storms come, it's time to go and check my dwarven matrix...

Naxxramas the Necropolis

So the news are out that we'll get a new 40 player high-end raid instance with Patch 1.11. The necropolis Naxxramas floating above Eastern Plaguelands. The New York Times had an interview with Tigole at the end of January when he mentioned the new instance as well. Looking at the map to the left, the instance will be huge. Here is an even bigger picture. Tigole said the zone will be larger then the Undercity. Fortunately we'll not have to farm stupid amounts of items to open it, there will most likely be a Scourge Invasion world event, but after that the instance will be open for all. Although as it's supposed to be harder then AQ40, not that many players will probably see it. But watch out... an Eye of Naxxramas might already be watching you.

On a sidenote concerning patch 1.11, if you might have missed it, we'll finally get keyrings! That should free up some space in my bags... So add the non-consumable version of the Aqual Quintessence and patch 1.11 is definately something to look forward to.

Zandalar adventures

As you might have realized, updates have been sporadic. I'm quite busy atm and don't have that much time to play. Nontheless I'll try to keep you updated from time to time. The picture shows us during one of our recent Zandalar reputation adventures. We started to go to Zul'Gurub with 5-6 people and kill trash mobs for reputation when we were bored and could not gather 20 for AQ20 or a real Z'G run. These kind of trips are way more fun then just grinding something else.
Our last visit to Ragnaros with Equilibrium (EQ) was a breeze again, down in the first try with 36 people... we did put the stamp "Farm Status" on Ragnaros butt. Been there seen that, moving on. ;) I managed to get myself Legplates of Wrath. Now i got head and legs and it's time to farm Zul'Gurub enchants again... until i got two again, I'll stick to my might parts which are enchanted.

Did you follow the news how bold Blizzard is trying to keep everybody away from doing any business connected to WoW? If not, you should definately read those two articles...
'Warcraft' maker sued for blocking sales of unofficial guide and
This Means Warcraft!

As i wrote, friends of the Bloodsailors can't finish the questline for the new dungeon 2 sets. Blizzard will not add additional content to the Pirates soon, but say they'll offer a way to repair your Goblin Factions in patch 1.11.

On a sidenote I got myself the new Recipe: Elixir of Greater Firepower right on patch 1.10 day, took me about one hour to farm it for myself. When will they add some more cool recipes everybody can use?!?

Any of you working on the dungeon 2 quests? I did not really started, as the items are useless for me. Maybe when I get more time and become bored, I'll do it anyway. Although it looks like some of the bosses you have to summon can drop unique new loot. Like a great tank ring Band of the Steadfast Hero (from the boss you summon in Scholomance) or the already mentioned great looking staff Lord Valthalak's Staff of Command.

Did you saw all the forum threads about the raid ID problems right after the patch? Raid IDs were messed up, resulting in the instances like MC, BWL, etc. being scheduled to reset on the wrong days. Blizzard then manually tried to hotfix this by resetting all instances during friday night prime-time play... WTF?!? I can totally understand people got *very* upset. You should have seen the thread in the general forum, so much hate. Not that i think the bad style of some is good, but who can come up with the really stupid idea to reset instances during prime-time giving 9 minutes warning ahead? I would be upset as well if i get kicked out of the instance while standing in front of Ragnaros or Nefarian. On some servers in addition Kazzak spawned every 5 minutes and the green dragons were spawning one after the other as well - needless to say that a lot of guilds exploited this bug until they got exhausted. Are the raid IDs fixed yet? Not sure.. some servers were still reporting issues, better have a close look on the locked instances you're assigned to. Bugfixes for Onyxia's deep breath went already in and Chromaggus and Ossirian will get fixed during tomorrows downtime.