Happy (Belated) Birthday World of Warcraft!

In case you missed it, Sunday (November 23rd) was the 4th Anniversary of World of Warcraft's release. To celebrate, Blizzard gave away a special feat of strength and Bind to Account non-combat pet to every character that logged in that day.

Being the achievement chaser and pet lover that I am, I couldn't pass up such an opportunity. So, I spent a good hour yesterday logging onto all of my characters on Feathermoon (9 in total: 5 Alliance and 4 Horde) to get them all the feat of strength as well as to finish off some of the things I'd been neglecting to do in-game.

A while ago there was some sort of error with the in-game mail system, which effectively removed player access to all mail that had been sent previously. Several days later, Blizzard returned the missing mail items via mass mailing. Unfortunately, this method removed the original content of the letters, as well as information as to who had sent them. Now, I personally use the mail system primarily to transfer items between my alts, but also as a temporary storage system for items or characters I can't be bothered to deal with at the moment. This meant that I had only about a month to log into each character and retrieve each item from the mailbox before it would be lost forever. Well, I took care of that on Sunday, so that's one less worry off of my mind. :)

One of the other things I had been intending to do was to make sure that all of my characters had access to all of the Collector's Edition and BlizzCon related in-game items that I have acquired over the past 4 years. This meant a long string of logging into a character, learning all available non-combat pets and mounts, then sending the account-bound items along to the next character and repeating the process. It also meant that I had to create a new character to make sure that all of my existing characters had access to all three of the non-combat pets that were available in the original World of Warcraft Collector's Edition (I tend to favor the Panda Cub, and thus don't often get the Mini Diablo or Zergling on many of my characters). Well, now I can check that off of my to-do list, too. :)

I guess that means I should get back to leveling. Gryphonheart is still only level 73 or so, although I'm progressing significantly faster than I did when I was first leveling to 60, back before the Burning Crusade launched.

Happy Wrath Day!

I hope everyone's enjoying the Wrath of the Lich King release. :)

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to enjoy it, myself. Due to some issues I've been having with how World of Warcraft and my operating system get along, I decided that I'd celebrate the arrival of my shiny (oh, so shiny! :D) new Collector's Edition by completely uninstalling and then reinstalling World of Warcraft. So, after spending some time backing up my addons and converting 22.7 gigabytes worth of .tga format screenshots into 4.55 gigabytes worth of .jpg format ones (which really must find the time to go through, as most of them are completely pointless), I finally got everything back up and running.

Now, if you don't mind, I've got to go swing some Light around. ;D

On Collector's Editions

In my opinion, one of the best things about every new Blizzard game or expansion release is the Collector's Edition. Blizzard does an amazing job packing these boxes with cool extras, especially the soundtracks, art books, and behind-the-scenes DVDs.

Soundtracks:
If you haven't bothered to listen to the in-game music recently, I really think you're missing out. WarCraft music is some of my absolute favorite music of any video game franchise, and is amazingly effective at breathing life into an otherwise fairly static world. Not only is the music itself epic enough for any music player, but there are just some moments in World of Warcraft that are not only enhanced by, but become extremely memorable because of music highlights. Two examples of this from the top of my head occur in Molten Core and Zul'Aman.

For those of you who used to raid Molten Core with the in-game music turned on, you probably know the exact area I'm thinking of. About halfway through the instance, right after you defeat the fourth boss, Garr, you pass through a narrow tunnel to encounter your first "lava pack" trash group and see the cavernous room in which Baron Geddon and Shazzrah reside. Right as you cross the threshold from the tunnel to the cavern, the music suddenly drops away and is replaced by something much, much more epic. This transition is absolutely perfectly placed. Garr was arguably the last of the easy bosses at the start of the raid zone, and the "lava packs" were definitely some of the hardest trash pulls in the entire instance. Yet despite this sudden increase in difficulty, the members of the raid group I was part of always seemed to become re-energized when we reached that point, regardless of how long the raid day had been, and I credit this musical transition for at least part of that.

The other example of when music really makes for a memorable moment is the completion of Zul'Aman. After successfully defeating Zul'jin, your raid group is treated to a bit of a celebration in the form of victory music. For me, the feeling of exhilaration after completing Zul'Aman was greater than anything I'd experienced since defeating Ragnaros in Molten Core. Of Hakkar the Soulflayer, Ossirian the Unscarred, Prince Malchezaar, Gruul the Dragonkiller, Magtheridon, Lady Vashj, and Kael'thas Sunstrider—all of whom I defeated between my first victory over Ragnaros and my first victory over Zul'jin—none provided the same sense of achievement that completing Molten Core and Zul'Aman did.

Art Books:
If you've never had the chance to take a look at any of the WarCraft art books, I highly recommend you check out Sons of the Storm, the website of the top Blizzard artists. It'll give you a small taste of the pure awesome that is packed into every art book page. Not only do you get some insight into WarCraft development, but you also get to see cool concept art and sketches of things that may not have necessarily made it into the final game (most likely due to being comprised of too much win). One example of this would be the original concept for Crystalforge Armor (the Paladin tier 5 set), which is much more awe-inspiring than its in-game counterpart.

Behind-the-Scenes DVDs:
The behind-the-scenes DVDs are, by far, my favorite part about Blizzard Collector's Edition boxes. Not only do you generally get high resolution versions of the jaw-dropping cinematics, but you also get to watch cool environment, character, and gameplay videos narrated by the designers and developers.

In fact, my greatest regret about any of the Blizzard Collector's Edition boxes I've bought is the loss of my WarCraft 3 Cinematics DVD (before I could peruse its full contents, too :( ).



Now, am I saying that you should buy yourself a Collector's Edition? No, not necessarily. If you're not interested in owning all the extras, then leave them to people who are. However, if you do know a friend who has gotten the Collector's Edition of any of the WarCraft games which have offered it (WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King), I definitely recommend taking the time to stop by and ask to ogle their goodies.*

...On second thought, you might wish to find a different phrase to use.



*: By reading or in any other way consuming the content of this post, you hereby agree that Gryphonheart of The Lion Guard will not be held responsible for any repercussions resulting from the usage of the phrase "May I please ogle your goodies?" or any derivative thereof.