No New Year’s party for you guys…
After a lot of heated discussions the Polish EvE Online community have decided that we should all together help our Russian brothers by sending them some very much needed and critically important supplies. After all, they’ve just finished fighting off Northern Coalition’s forces and were starting to make the push into Geminate. So we scrapped together some funds, bought a Charon freighter and filled it with life-saving medical supplies and some extremely qualified medical staff. We would be their much needed Santa Claus, even if a bit late!
Unfortunately, our freighter pilot must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere and for some reason unknown to us, he ended in the Vuorrassi solar system. Without enough time to change plans and relocate all the supplies and staff elsewhere, we decided to gather a support fleet of mostly battleships and battlecruisers, and make the push with our precious cargo through Northern Coalition’s territory. Our goal was to deliver our package to where it was needed the most – straight to the brave Russian soldiers on the front.
Our fleet was however intercepted by Northern Coalition forces about halfway through – there were a few small skirmishes on the way, but as we were moving through the NCGR-Q system to U54-1L, we were assaulted by a large battleship fleet supported by two Titan class ships. Unfortunately they appeared in the best moment for them – our fleet was split up into two groups. We managed to kill NC’s interdictors though, initiate the warp with our freighter and escape to U54-1L. However it was a costly escape, as most of our fleet didn’t make it out in time. My own Tempest battleship was lost shortly after helping to dispose of a heavy interdictor – the Northern fleet landed practically on me, and I just couldn’t burn out of range quick enough.
In U54-1L we decided to make one last stand with our precious cargo and the remains of our fleet. Alas, the forces of the North were too numerous, and our freighter exploded in a ball of flame after it’s pilot tried to ram down some of the enemy battleships.
Being in high spirits, we had hoped that our sacrifice was not in vain and the medical staff and supplies wouldn’t go to waste – or maybe the Northern Coalition would find them useful – but it was not in the cards tonight. One of their bloodthirsty pilots shot the wreck and destroyed it all, showing no respect for either the life-saving medical supplies or the extremely qualified medical personel, even though most of the latter died anyway in the freighter’s explosion. Barbarians, all of them.
And so, we all learned a very important lesson tonight – being a Santa Claus is not easy at all.
OOC afterwords
This was the Polish community’s 8th Gank Night – usually the event being your typical gank fest, a fleet of pilots flying in whatever they can find and killing whatever they can find and engage. This time, we’ve decided to do something really crazy – and escorting a freighter full of booze and ladies through hostile space is definitely a good way to show that indeed we’re not exactly sane. The freighter’s lossmail is a testament to this craziness.
NC’s attack came at a good moment for them – about 2/3rd of our fleet was already in warp to the destination gate, and initially there were only some battleships and a bit of logistics staying with the freighter. Without a full fleet we couldn’t do much against the about 200 of NC pilots. We managed to keep warp disruption bubbles out of the freighter and it warped out – at the cost of our battleships and logistics. When the rest of the fleet came back to help us, they’ve been lagging out quite badly and couldn’t do much – and all that with only about 250-300 people in the system. It doesn’t help when all your FC can see is a 1 frame per minute slideshow.
But of course we all knew that we were going to die anyway somewhere, so it’s all good. I’m just disappointed with all that wasted booze that got destroyed with the freighter’s wreckage, but overall it was definitely fun.
Become a level 85 in less than a week!
Vrethir is finally 85 as of yesterday. I’ve done it by fully finishing quests in just three of the five new zones (Hyjal, Deepholm and Uldum) and doing a few of the dungeons plus some quests in Twilight Highlands. I thought it would take more time to get there, but somehow even the last level went quite fast.
Now to find some decent guild – I already have one in my sights, they even have some of my old guildies which is definitely a plus.
The road so far
After finishing the Mount Hyjal zone I was thinking that the quests and all the cutscenes there were epic. Now I have to admit that I was kind of wrong – Uldum is even better. From the starting cutscene with the caravan right to the ending with Brann Bronzebeard, it was just like being in a Warcraft version of Indiana Jones movie, with all kinds of stuff included – explosions, rope slinging, even a fricking cool plane chase.
A plane chase, in my World of Warcraft?!
I love it. It’s my new favourite zone to quest in. And I don’t really care that all the cutscenes and phasing is making it more of a singleplayer game than a MMO, not when the result is something that awesome. And questing was always mostly a singleplayer thing anyway – now it’s even more like that as they’ve done away with all the group quests.
One thing that annoys me though is that all the phasing sometimes likes to mess with spawning of ore nodes – quite too often I’d see some elementium vein and fly over just to change into another subzone and phase the vein out. Annoying.
Another thing I’m a bit disappointed about is fishing. I still remember blue posters on forums going “ooh we’re making fishing fun” and what do we get? Skillups from the fishing daily and a new cursor… and I’m not sure if the cursor wasn’t added in Wrath at some point. Not really what I was expecting… At least the Archeology is somewhat fun.
What next?
I will have to level Vaeria, my tauren kitty, or else my friends are going to seriously harm me if I don’t. Fortunately that’s going to be another week or so once I’ll finally get her out of Northrend. Then there are all kinds of random alts here and there…
Also I’ve logged onto Misaka a few days ago just to see a frozen guild with a motd saying something like “we be doing undergeared stuff in The Pug, come join there”. Too bad, as I don’t really like the idea of The Pug and having to do AH to get gold to pay for gear. I have no problems playing the AH game and getting money out of it, but it’s not what I’m after. I have no doubt that it’s good for the goblin-minded individuals and it definitely works, but still it’s just a bit annoying.
I was thinking about making a worgen priest there only for doing the Undergeared stuff and PvP. Getting some blue gear shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Or maybe I’ll make that priest there and just level it when I’m bored and we’ll see what happens when I’m 85. Definitely not going to transfer Misaka there, though. For now I think I’ll leave her with her Wrath blues and achievements as I’m having enough fun on my warrior.
Leveling up.
Done all the quests in Mount Hyjal yesterday, something like 1/4th of Deepholme and Vrethir is at 70% of level 83. So far it’s going much faster than I’ve expected – and it’s even more amusing when you think about the fact that I’m leveling him in protection spec. I do have Arms for my secondary one, but I haven’t really used it yet.
Haven’t tried tanking anything either, at least not yet. Maybe I should check out the Blackrock instance soon, from the videos it sounds like it could be fun. And I’m kind of missing groups and tanking in general. I’m still running without a guild, though, as I haven’t found anything interesting yet – there were two of them recruiting in trade chat, but I couldn’t find anything on the internet about them, and didn’t find any familiar names in the guild’s rosters on armory, so I’ve skipped them for now.
Oh, and Mount Hyjal was an awesome zone to level in. Quite epic and all the transition and ingame cutscenes were really adding to the experience. Not to mention the final battle, which felt like good old times with Sartharion.
Night One in New Azeroth
I’m totally hooked, again. Hook, line, sinker, fishing pole and even the poor bloody fisherman. I have to admit I was getting really bored at the end of Wrath, but with the new expansion I have tons of stuff to do again. Now, I’ve been a really good boy for a whole year, how about somebody make me a Christmas present and change the days to have 48 hours instead of 24?
So I’ve downloaded some parts of the game and figured out I’ll play a bit before going to sleep. Pretty nice thing, that new downloader – streaming the game was quite fluid and I didn’t have to wait more than a few seconds for the new stuff in Easter Kingdoms to load. I’ll probably have it downloaded fully before I wake up, though.
So far, I’ve logged onto Vrethir and ran around a bit on him. Bought the new flying skill, figured out some kind of a weird protection spec that might work for leveling (he’s not poor, so it’s not a problem if it doesn’t), found Harrison Jones and learned the new profession. Now I’m bloody hooked and I’m not really sure who’s to blame.
It’s strange, really. Two hours after putting in the Cataclysm cd-key into the website and what am I doing? Fishing stuff up in Elwynn Forest for the daily fishing quest I’ve found in Stormwind. After that I’ve spent about two hours leveling Archeology, which is surprisingly fun – at least until I’ll start doing it on other characters as well.
And now, time to get some sleep. Hopefully. And then find some new quests in Hyjal, and finnally log on other characters.
Still Alive, kind of.
Argh. I’ve always suspected that my friends hate me, but buying me Cataclysm and a time card and calling it a “present” might be too obvious. ;)
So, grumbling aside, I’m back. There will be blogging and site makeover and other stuff when I finally get to it… For now I’m running on my warrior around totally empty Dalaran. Still feeling a bit overwhelmed, and I haven’t even killed anything yet.
So, first things first – I’m off to find some cool protection warrior spec for levelling, and then to do the same for every other character. Aaaaargh.