2.4!

Well, yesterday was patch day. 2.4, the final content patch before WotLK, came out and the servers were packed. It introduced a new raid dungeon, a new five man instance, a host of new daily quests and a new zone far to the north in Eastern Kingdoms.

I have been busy with schoolwork and have not been able to test out Magisters' Terrace, the new five man instance, but I have heard good things about it. From what I hear it is more difficult that your average instance, but a good time as well. And the final boss drops some nice epics items even in normal mode, so it is definitely worth your while.

Additionally, there will be a bunch of new badge loot to be acquired in the further stages of progression in the Shattered Sun offensive, and badges can be acquired at a painstakingly slow rate via one of the daily quests. So, if you want your new purples soon, you're probably going to want to stick to kara, but for those of us who don't raid, this is good news.

On the pvp side of things, which is definitely more my style, the arena queue times have been decreased, which will certainly be nice, and they have taken away diminishing returns on honor kills. This is nice because it means that when you earn honor, you get it right away. No more waiting until the next morning. That will make day-long honor grinds a lot more satisfying when at the end of the day you can pick up that shiny new purple.

Not too much news for me. I am enjoying the new daily quests on my two 70s, and I picked up the new pvp mount for my warrior:


Nothing sillier than a gnome on an elephant, but I like it.

Noblegarden

Today is Noblegarden. Or easter, if you are more into the RL side of things.

Laura and I woke up early this morning because she had to go to work. But before that I.. err.. the Easter Bunny set up an easter egg hunt and a little easter basket for Laura. Boy, that easter bunny sure is nice.

After that we dyed some eggs. We used a really cheap walgreen's dye kit, and did not have any vinegar, so we had to substitute lemon juice, but they turned out pretty nice looking in the end:


Also this morning I jumped on WoW and did a little Noblegarden egg hunting for the first time in the 3 years I have been playing. And let me tell you, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I rode around for about an hour while I watched television, and ended finding around 20 eggs, which seems like way too few. It would have been especially bad if there had been other people around, but fortunately for me I was up far too early for an average person on a Sunday morning. In the end I had 8 chocolate squares, 8 candy bars, 3 lollipops, and an elegant dress. And from what I hear that is not even a bad haul for Noblegarden. Supposedly the eggs only drop dresses and tuxedos 1% of the time.

With all the love for the other holidays, why hasn't Noblegarden seen any? It would be pretty easy to spice it up, I think. First step would be to make the foods better. Rather than the 61 health, make it 3% of health per second for 25 seconds, like the Hallow's Eve event candies. Next you can throw in some flavor items, like they tend to do with the other holidays. Maybe a vanity pet rabbit that has an idle animation of laying eggs or something. And if you really want people to go for it, throw some eggs in the outlands or after a boss in a level 70 dungeon, and have a chance for it to drop a nice ring/cloak/trinket in there.

I don't mean to hate on the devs so much. I really do appreciate what they are doing with the holidays. They are becoming a lot more fun than they used to be. Perhaps in due time they will fix Noblegarden.

Emergency Supplies!

So, over my spring break I had a little bit of free time to do some WoW crafts. I ran into the idea of an "In Case of Emergency" potion case on Craftster. It is a pretty simple project, and will take only a few hours and around $12 of input. The materials used were a 5" x 9" shadow box [$10] and a small bottle [$1]:



I printed out a close up of a map of the Eastern Kingdoms for the background. Anyways, there was some work making the labels for it. After the background was finished I put a label for the potion in the front of the window.

The potion is made of distilled water, so it won't get gross. I colored it with pink and purple food coloring to get a good purple. The finished product looks something like this:



So, I have happily hung this on my wall. It is a great little craft project for a Sunday afternoon to add a little protection to your gaming station.

Alternatively, if you haven't got the time to make one, I have a few up for sale on Etsy. I have an extremely limited quantity in stock right now, but there are more on the way. Check out wowcrafts.etsy.com if you are interested!