110% Kara clear, and the dead rest in pieces.

Like a numpty I completely forgot that I had signed up to Karazhan last night for a guild run. Ama informed me about the time invites were scheduled to start that I was invited along on my rogue. With a slot spare, Ama brought her boomkin, and we kicked off.

Almost every single mob dropped either warrior plate, or healer cloth… I grumbled as I was locked on my priest and missed out on all these lovely drops, although I did get a nice set of shoulders off of Chess, I believe. Not quite as powerful as my S2 PVP shoulders, but with gemming I have a little bit more attack power and a lot more +Hit, which is a bit more important for my PVEing than the dodge, resilience and stamina bonus granted by the PVP shoulders.

We took down the Hallows end boss; Prince Tenris Mirkblood. That was one fun fight! It took two tries to take him down, the first failed mainly due to lack of knowledge... When we went in I knew he had two abilities:

Blood Mirror – Shares damage to the linked party member.
Sanguine Spirits – Summons some elementals, that cannot be attacked and time out.

We quickly learned we need to kite him, as those spirits explode on contact and do 8.5k damage, which is pretty nasty. Additionally, the damage they deal seems to be fed back to him. Also, it would appear that the Blood Mirror splits the healing done on the player back to him as well, because we spent a hell of a long time with his health sitting between the 10 and 25% mark as he kept healing himself, even though we were able to avoid the most of the spirits.

Anyway, eventually he died on top of Attumen (Quite a kite!), our warrior off-tank got the Arcanite Ripper axe, which has the funky special guitar ability and some nice stats for a DPS, and we all got our vampire battling, which is so cute. My first pet on my rogue to boot!

We proceeded to clear the rest of Karazhan (excluding basement boss) with only one more wipe – on Netherspite, whom we decided to come back and take out after prince as people still had time.

Overall, it was a fantastic and smooth run, and was a great relief after the mess of Gruul/Maggy last night. It was nice to explore some bits of Kara I have never seen before, and experience a new boss.

A further note, the Zombie invasion seems to have died down. I noticed it was rather quiet on the server last night (Those that were not enjoying must have just opted to stay offline.), and everyone in Shattrath was floating about, on their flying mounts which had me in stitches. The city is starting to resemble EVE online more than world of warcraft...

I even enjoyed watching a platoon of NPC zombies give a fun show as they went around and one-hit guards into zombies, and chasing poor players that happened to stray too close. (From high up on my broom of course!) The old world cities were calm enough to be able to use the Auction house, etc. Either people have gotten bored of being Zombies, or have gotten bored with seeing all the zombies about and kill them on sight, halting the plague. Either way, it seems a lot more controlled now, and the small outbreaks that do happen are more entertaining than stress-inducing.

The zombie invasion should has ended, so I will take a little time tonight to have a bit more of an investigation into the Hallows end happenings, and join in any activities that are still on-going.

On the subject of the Zombie invasion, I think Rohan at Blessing of Kings pretty much sums up the event, and makes some interesting comments.

I’m going to miss the shambling menace and the rush they brought as you tried your damndest to get about without being infected, but it will be nice to return to normal and not get repair bills when you’re Zombled on a loading screen though!

-velk

Zompocalypse?

After a weekend of weird-gaming, I have come to a conclusion: The zombie apocalypse (Zompocalypse to some) is both Awesome, and an insanely bad idea.

Seeing hordes of zombies treck about wreaking havoc on Shattrath, with piles of bones littering the streets is Impressive, and screen-shot worthy (from the air). The forced participation CAN be fun, but becomes very trying if you have other plans.

I don’t mean for this to sound like a whiney QQ post. I like the whole zombie apocalypse idea, but its implementation is flawed. My incentive for writing this post has been a number of experiences over the weekend, and the post of one Big Bear Butt blogger. whom I agree with whole-heartedly.

I have not personally taken too much interest in the zombie apocalypse, it is entertaining for a short period to have to avoid the roaming dead, but the havoc caused is getting frustrating, and old. I generally try to avoid getting infected, and if I am, quickly try to get "cured".

I have struggled to play any sort of normal game over the weekend. Trying to do anything quickly was an impossibility. I got some headless horseman runs done, and that’s about it. We had a raid last night, that truly showed how irritating the hordes of zombies can be:

The guild got a group together to take on Gruuls lair then Maggy’s lair. This involved people doing some or all of the following:

Getting stuff from bank. (Dead bankers? Gotta wait. Bam. you’re a zombie.)
Flying somewhere (Dead flight masters. Wanna wait? Bam. You’re a zombie.)
Hearthing somewhere (Often toxic clouds await your arrival, or your converted whilst loading. Bam. You’re a zombie.)
Getting a portal or teleporting (Always toxic clouds await your arrival, and your converted whilst loading. Bam. You’re a zombie.)

The worst part is you get repair bills every time you die, just like normal. (Not like PVP as it seems to be based on.) So... Want to get repaired? Hope your flying, and good luck finding the repair guy alive. Did I mention that if you happened to become a zombie, you have a repair bill now? Yeah. I refuse to login or out anywhere I am likely to get zombied because 3g repair bill everytime I touch the ground is irritating to say the least. It was forgivable when you had 10 minutes to finish up, pop to an Argent healer or have someone run by and remove the initial disease, but now I don’t even have time to remove it from MYSELF on my priest before it takes hold.

Anyway, I digress. We eventually got the run going (45 minutes late. 1hr 15 minutes after everyone was invited and expected to be ready…)
The instance – over in 45 minutes.

Portal out to Shattrath so we can move over to do Magtheridon. Bam. Everyone’s a zombie. We all move to a safe place for their zombification to wear off, res, mount and fly. Repair at honor hold which thankfully has not been overrun to the extent you cant get repairs, and fly down to summon the stragglers.

It took another hour to get prepared to enter the instance, by this point everyone is fed up, and in a foul mood. I would not be surprised to see some of our top players up and leave at how irritating the delays were, even though it was mostly our of players hands. We go in, wipe 3 times before getting the boss down, and then logoff. Fed up, and seeking something else to do until it blows over.

I wonder what the opinions of others are? I have read a number of blogs, and most seem to be negative in reaction – and my guilds attitude, and the attitudes of those on Team-speak are certainly negative.

I intend to participate in some of the Argent Dawn quests tonight, and basically, take part in the event to see what’s what, but this is mostly because I cant do anything else! Ama, my wife, thinks this is a way for blizzard to try to sort out the economy before the expansion. Fortunes are spent on repair bills, its nigh impossible to get to an auctioneer – and in some cases – a mailbox. Levelling alts is tough to say the least, raiding is a waste of time because you need to start prep over an hour in advance instead of just popping to the bank.

I hope it ends soon, or at the very least, proves to be fun to participate in. Being a zombie was not something I found fun even the few times I did do stuff when in that form. BBB says it best: The Asshats have the power.

Cheers Blizz!
-Velk