The omega in the beta

SPOILER ALERT! This post includes screenshots and talk of Mists of Pandaria. Only from my nubish point of view, though.

Due to having purchased the annual pass, I've had access to the Mists of Pandaria beta for ages now, but it was only recently that I actually paid it a visit. This is what my second trip to MoP beta was like. You can read about my first trip here!

I began my journey by creating a level 1 human monk, Merppuli.

Click the screenshots to see bigger versions of them.

At the gates of Stormwind I encountered some dueling ascendant shamans; elemental and restoration ones.

A monk's jade serpent statue.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!111 Not like this!

Pandas, turtles and all that kind of stuff.

Some graphical details I really liked.

I don't actually want to level on the beta server, because I tend to get fond of the characters I work on. Even if their name was Merppuli, I'd catch an arrow in my heart the day the beta is closed. I've even felt bad about deleting my banker called Fghfghfghj. I understand that me hanging about in Stormwind wouldn't make a very interesting blog post - therefore a night elf druid named Simsaario and I went for a little exploration trip in Pandaria. Simsaario became a restoration druid, which could be a future alt of mine, considering how much fun the resto boomshrooms seem to be.

On the map of Pandaria, I saw something that, based on the name, I wanted to see. Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Of course I have to suck at reading maps, even on WoW, so first of all I came across tons and tons of places where one can fall to their death. Second, after all that I went through I hadn't even got close to where I thought I might get to the Valley of Eternal Blossoms. Instead I found myself in Waxwood.

Yeah, it was possible to fall on it.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was taking the back door. I ventured into the camp of monkey men, who group ganked me with their tigers.

I don't really want to talk about it.

/sigh

After a lot of swimming - and rediscovering the druid aquatic form halfway through the journey - I finally found a place with no god damn mountains that allowed me to get on ground again. There I found a Zandalari troll encampment.

Pandaren: Trolls = bads?

Thank goodness I finally died (to falling), so I could resurrect at the graveyard. I ended up at Shado-Pan Monastery. Somehow the place reminded me of Skyrim, but the graphics were really amazing. It appeared to be a dungeon, which I couldn't enter, because I wasn't level 87.

You could actually hear these flags in the wind. Very cool. The following view reminded me of a series which I really, really liked, but I can't remember its name. Battle for something county something something. I liked this area a lot. The cold atmosphere and sound of wind pleased me.

The Sha of Anger scared me with his yells earlier. Voice acting could have been cooler. As a silvery level ??, I'm not sure if he's a world boss, a quest objective or what.

This bunch I found down there.

A cool cowboy twig ball thing that moved in the wind.

Again the Great Wall of Pandaria blocked me out, but I found a way to climb on it. It wasn't too difficult, really. And there it was, the Vale of Eternal Blossoms! I had finally reached it!

Yeah, cool. Falling and then that guy. Now who is responsible for that model? Those things were bloody everywhere! This place was extremely scary - and high level.

So disgustingly romantic.

Pandaren and mogu.

I found the login screen place.

And so I felt content for the night. Although, there was still something I wanted to check out. As I finally got an awesome axe from Blackwing Lair, my plan was to change my paladin's holy spec to retribution in Mists. However, in the beta it appears that abilities such as Crusader Strike and Divine Storm no longer have the same animations, which really disappoints me. Death knights, however, seemed to fight the same way as before. But if I don't start liking those new ways of hitting things, Raleigh might remain holy after all.

I can also tell for sure that at least for now I do not like the fact that perma-seals have replaced auras.

As before, here are some extra screenshots. Enjoy.

Great internet and great weather are just... great together.

What, why?!

Hmmm?

So...

Something happened. I got disgusted by my own writing. It frustrates me beyond understanding that something, in this case language skill, is preventing me from being as good as I could be. Writing is the only thing in the world I am really good at, and this situation pains me a lot.

I can't and don't want to just stop updating my blog, but I'm going to take a break from those (excuses of) stories and just write something else for a while. I'll probably try again one day, but not now. I don't want to hate the one thing I am talented at because of other people. So please, enjoy my break and keep reading my blog, but if you would be so kind, please don't read the earlier posts.

This one is about PvP.

I would never call myself a PvP pro of any sort, so I'll just settle for explaining something of my own that, like always, makes little sense.

My main character Nicasia is elemental/elemental specced, meaning that her main spec is elemental for PvE, and off spec elemental for PvP. Her talent trees, as of patch 4.3.4, the last one of Cataclysm, look like this:

And she is glyphed like this:

I feel the need to say something about these. Stoneclaw glyph is there only because we thought of the possibility of me soaking an Hour of Twilight at Ultraxion. Then I never came to change it, because I didn't think I needed to. Ghost wolf is there for a better chance of avoiding a Shockwave when further away, faster movement at Zon'ozz and all that stuff. I like Glyph of Elemental Mastery for PvP, because I seem to suck at avoiding the situation where I get hit. I also suck at having EM available at those times. I should probably swap it for Stoneclaw, as the absorption effect still persists if you change your earth totem after popping it, however I probably won't PvP much before Pandaria.

My problem with PvP is that I lose my nerves. I get annoyed, I rage at myself, I ruin what's left of my peace of mind and wreck my day. It has a lot to do with my fear of failing. In fact player verses players, doing it and talking about it, is one of my weak spots on World of Warcraft. I haven't PvP'd with Nica, or any other character except my lowbie Forsaken rogue Ancelot, since a very traumatising arena match some months ago. There doesn't seem to be a limit to how much I can terrify myself with my own behavior. Despite all that I have some amazing player verses player memories. Not to mention that I am a great!! amateur psychologist, and therefore try to cure myself with music therapy.

Warriors by Freedom Call works great in Warsong Gulch, which is slightly too much a claustrophobic battleground for my taste. I have some awesome memories of that, and I imagine it would also work in various other situations.

If I'm generally not in any particular kind of mood, I like to play Supreme by Robbie Williams. There's absolutely nothing about Robbie that would make one associate him with PvP action, but if you take a closer look at the song's lyrics, it's actually understandable why it fits a moment of aggression and uncontrollable rage.

... And all the best women are married
All the handsome men are gay
You feel deprived

Yeah, are you questioning your size?
Is there a tumour in your humour,
are there bags under your eyes?
Do you leave dents where you sit,
are you getting on a bit?
Will you survive?
You must survive

... Do you need a bit of rough?
Get on your knees

For a couple of battlegrounds I tried Eros Ramazzotti, but found that the memories related to his album Stilelibero are too far from anything gaming-related.

Now something for the imaginary readers: what's your PvP soundtrack like?

Beta getaway: A nabcake's first visit to MoP

SPOILER ALERT! This post includes screenshots and talk of Mists of Pandaria. Only from my nubish point of view, though.

In my first ever blog post on GGNica, I said I'd write about MoP beta stuff. I've had my beta key for ages now, but have only visited the character creation window. My first turn-off was when I tried to copy my main character Nicasia to the beta server via the link on the beta account page, it said the MoP beta account wasn't an option for that.

Anyway, recently I've had pretty crappy times on WoW, including various disappointments in people, so I thought I'd go check out the panda beta to take my mind off of that stuff for a moment. I ended up creating a level 85 beta shaman called Nicasia. Here's what I came across in the Mists.

Since my last visit, the login screen had been updated from Cataclysm to Pandaria style. The main theme was also the new one. Theme songs mean the world to me, and I must say that the panda one was a positive surprise. What can I say, I like dramatic-sounding things. Also, thumbs up for remaining so true to the original piece. Wrath of the Lich King one is still my favorite though, because of what it brings to my mind, the memories and personal preference.

Click the screenshots to see bigger versions of them.

Having just two item slots in the bottom looked strange. We appear to have a faction tag in our tooltips.

I checked out my talent tree and chose my talents. It took a couple of minutes to go through it, a few more to actually decide what I'd go with. I couldn't yet be bothered to find or bind any of my abilities. I'm looking forward to one particular cooldown.

Firepowaaaaa!!!!1111

A place called Pearlfin Village in the Jade Forest reminded me an awful lot of the elf thing starting zone in a Perfect World Entertainment game called Forsaken World. My framerate, which I so very much obsess about, scaled from a ground-facing 60 (which is what I generally have) to a laggy below 20 with the same graphics settings as I have in Cataclysm. I've had my PC for about six months and I bought it for WoW in particular. I think I'll have to buy a tabletop one pretty soon. For the sake of exploring, I ended up reducing my graphics, and the good thing was that with all the greenness, things still looked pretty!

Full graphics.

 vs.

Everything low except liquid and view distance.

Fish men with night elf body movements. /shiver

'Ere dere be talbuks.

I suddenly felt very barbarian as I encountered the Great Wall of Pandaria, protecting secrets from my curious eyes.

Bug people killed me. Because I am lazy, I reincarnated and they killed me again.

Spirit healer sounds always remind me of the times spent in Ratchett with my first character ever, a level 3-5 night elf warrior. And as you could guess, yeah, I spent a lot of time at the spirit healer because I foolishly tried to kill level 14 lions and giraffes.

A bunch of friendly Shaghorns in the background.

I killed a Longfang Patriarch, because I am a feminist. Ha ha.

After passing through three areas, I decided to call it a night. So, what do I think? I think Pandaria is bloody beautiful. I'm never going to forget what I saw during this short beta exploration. And the zones are HUGE! You actually feel like you're exploring a prairie. I can't wait to actually level and do stuff there!
Feline models and colours seem pretty and things have very scary aggro sounds.

Here are some other screenshots I took.

Salad and a warlock, who just wouldn't move out of my shot.

Do not show this to Rivendare

I wish to share just how bad my sense of humour actually is. It wasn't even in the heat of the moment that I made this video, but I planned it from the start. The mounts featured in the video are Deathcharger's Reins' that drop from the final boss of Stratholme, Lord Aurius Rivendare (previously Baron Rivendare, who can post-Cata be found in Naxxramas only).

A request for Blizzard, feat. blog news

I'm pretty sure game masters have always got a lot of tickets from people who have accidentally (or purposely, who knows, could be a form of masochism) vendored or deleted an item they actually wanted to keep.

Now we have the battle.net item restoration service, which is pretty handy, although I always prefer dealing with real humans rather than robots and computers. They tend to mess things up. However, I was too ashamed of my recent issue to contact a game master and talk about it. Therefore I am kindly requesting that Blizzard makes a Sent my heirlooms from banker Fghfghfghj to new banker and never took them out of her mail, leading to a situation where the items were returned to a non-existant bank character restoration service.

Until then poor Luciferias needs to work hard on his light-swinging skills. It's strange how we adapt though - on Argent Dawn Horde I'm totally fine with levelling without heirlooms, simply because it's my first character on that realm. On Moonglade Alliance, my main base, I think: "I don't have to do this anymore, with all the ninjas who need on armour which they can't even wear."

I was also supposed to say something about GGNica (I like how that also sounds like 'good game Nica', hihihihih), the blog, generally. The story of Vlad will continue, but part IV most likely won't be posted within the next couple of days. I need a moment to gather more ideas regarding details. At the moment I find W.A.S.P. a great source of inspiration for the story. I recommend listening to them to both of my two readers.

Also, has anyone else noticed that the ending of the my blog's URL has changed from .com to .fi? /gasp My national identity isn't secret anymore! Maybe it's just me...? But anyway, the favicon appears to have updated itself, so enjoy the shamanism on your browser.

I am here, in the shadows

Okay, he's not a protoss stalker, but quite as cool otherwise.

Being a rogue, he's not just a stereotypical Forsaken, but also a stereotypical rogue as a thug dressed in a ragged, dark outfit. And that's not all! He's also a stereotypical thug *cough* with a hint of Italian in his name.

Meet Ancelot.

Well, he's not very sociable. And that reminds me, his personality is stereotypical, too. Ancelot de Luca is a silent and grumpy rogue, a lone wolf. There is something in particular that he despises - water. Whether it is in a sea, a river or a bathtub, it's a major no-no for Ancie. His weak spot is leaving people in trouble. In other words, he feels obligated about helping people, even if he didn't know them personally. Enough is always enough though; Ancelot has his limits, too. And if the timing is particularly unfortunate, he may even act completely heartlessly.

He is indeed my fourth rogue. In addition to him I have my second character ever, a 60 human rogue, an 85 human rogue whom I quite like as a character, and a lowbie mechanic rogue with a crazy name (who has since got deleted, sadly. It just wasn't the time for him yet, despite me really loving the idea of that character). I admit that's a lot of characters for a class that I'm not even particularly good at. Not the worst, but not that great. But I love how rogues have so many RP possibilities, or maybe I am just particularly inspired about them.

Some time ago in the 20-24 bracket of Warsong Gulch the Horde line up consisted of eight rogues. Eight out of ten. I was one of them. The Alliance had five rogues. That was a very stealthy WSG, 80% of the damage was probably done with Ambush. I wonder how much time the other classes spent sapped.

P.S. Grendella is much missed.
P.P.S. No cool gear available for photoshoot, since he's only level 37 at the moment.