I was grinding my way through the Howling Fjord quests in World of Warcraft today, just minding my own business, keeping an eye out for stray turkeys to kill (I don’t know why, @Longasc hinted that I should kill them). I’ve been staging a one-gnome assault on a nearby village of giants; I’ve fought their champions in the arena, stolen artifacts from beneath the noses of a hundred million undead, freed prisoners and in all ways made myself something of a pest.
A shaman with a nose for ancient lore suggested I go into the spirit realm and uncover the secrets of the village’s dead. I think it’s for a book she’s writing or something. Anyway, I was to be her inside rogue, as it were, so I did the whole sneaking into the village, burning the incense thing and went a-prowling.
I soon found the secrets the giants tried to hide — an impure infant had been born, and the giants, fearing that imperfect children were a sign their gods had abandoned them, killed the child. So that was bad. (I traveled into the spirit realm in another giant town and saw the next chapter, a full on genocidal purge to all “impure” giants, and a king trying to make of himself a god).
Walking about, I saw a shadowy figure flanked by two of the evil Valkyrie-like creatures, standing on a bridge, watching the town. I sneaked to them to hear what they were saying. It was Arthras, the Lich King, himself, who immediately killed me. BUT — he didn’t stop there.
That was just the beginning.
He told me he held my soul in his grasp, and could consign me to eternal damnation, but I wasn’t yet worth the effort. I needed to become more powerful so that I could be turned to serve him. And then he let me go, back to the spirit healer.
Arthras MAY be the very first NPC in any game who ever acknowledged that a player character death is only an inconvenience. He knew I’d just rez up and go about my business. My business of becoming a willing vessel to the Lich King, if he has his way.
Unfortunately for him, my seven free days ends tomorrow. I better get to being a willing vessel quickly.
My garden continues to grow nicely on the Wizard101 test realm. I’ve reached Rank 3 by harvesting several elder plants. With my three gardens, I’ve very much outstripped the amount of power in my power pool with which to perform gardening tasks each day; I’m forced to leave some plants with needs. If only the music from my music spell could be heard by the plant in the next pot over…
The Helephant Ears have reached maturity and started giving harvests; the Baby Carrots will probably never reach maturity because… they wouldn’t be baby carrots then, would they? The Laugh-o-Dill gave me a harvest. Because all my other Laugh-o-Dills vanished and needed to be replanted, that’s all I’ve gotten so far from my evil garden. The Stinkweeds are not doing well at all.
I am very close to Rank 4, and that’s a fairly respectable rate to level; I guess I can’t complain about that. There seem to be ten possible ranks. Farley the Mole sells plants up to Rank 5; I’m hoping seeds become available for later ranks. There’s indications that there are variants to Desperagus and Laugh-o-Dills which may well be given when harvesting the elder plants.
Parts of Star Trek Online’s Season 3 are up on the STO test server, Tribble, for players to test this weekend. Those who spent time on the test server will get a special prize, typically a tribble of some sort. Well, it IS the Tribble server!
The Forge isn’t out yet. That’s the STO user-generated content creator, similar to City of Hero’s Architect, and is likely the most anticipated upcoming feature. The mission replay feature, however, is in, and I chose to replay The Doomsday Machine.
This mission is a sequel of sorts to the original series’ episode of the same name. (You can watch it online, legally, from CBS.com by following that link. McCoy quote: “I’m a doctor, not a mechanic!” Also note Commodore Deckard’s ship-specific USS Constellation badge). The original Doomsday Machine was an intergalactic visitor, a remnant of another galaxy’s ruinous war. Captain Kirk destroyed the original way back when, but now there’s been another one sighted. And the Klingons are aching to use it as a weapon with which to dominate the Alpha Quadrant.
I played this mission in the first week of the game’s launch back in February. Back then, it was tough to run a mission alone, and I had a group of friends and strangers. We were pretty much through and done with the thing, Doomsday Machine #2 destroyed and rewards given, before I really knew what was going on.
It was fun to go back and take some time with it. I had to steal some special torpedoes from a Klingon base, power them with special materials from the core of a recently, not-so-mysteriously destroyed planet, and play a cat and mouse game with the Doomsday Machine where it would fire a planet-killing blast at me, which I would have to immediately follow with a torpedo down its gullet.
Replaying favorite missions is a great idea, but you can’t substitute old content that people have already played with new content. We’ll see what else they have in store (aside from this and the new sector space) next week. In fact, the very same day Cataclysm launches…
Question: Will the people at Cryptic be playing STO or WoW on December 7th?
1 thought on “WoW: Killing you is just Arthas’ way of saying “hello!””
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I have been playing more STO lately it is for sure more fun now and I am still a noob. But I had an itch to play it again since it is really the only game of its type. Which is good I guess. Cant wait to play user made missions. Should be interesting