Obviously it’s November and I’m only halfway to my 100k target for the month. That has to be my priority but I wasn’t even going to try kidding myself. There was no way I was going to wait till December to login to Draenor, I wanted to dive into all the new content, I just wanted to play the game again.

I did manage to exercise enough self control to get my on pace target for the day. Just over 3,000 words and I hung up my writing pen and logged into Warcraft. I know I should have tried writing more but I’m only human, I can write more when it isn’t launch day and all the new content is there laying unseen and untried.

I played for probably about four hours Thursday afternoon. I got from Level 90 to halfway through level 91 before my playtime came to an abrupt end with a game breaking bug. I’m finishing off this blogpost with the game open on my other screen, waiting for my character to be rescued by support. As a lot of other people are stuck the same way, I thought I was in for a long wait. Relogging over and over eventually fixed it but damn that was annoying.

Random Observations
I want Khadgar’s outfit as transmog from my mage. That is one dress I can get behind, its blue, with proper black trim and it looks awesome. I doubt they will put it in the game as it’s a special look for a named NPC but I hope they do.

The quest to save Exarch Maladaar sucks. Why just save the special prisoner? Why not save all the prisoners? We left them behind and didn’t even try.

Khadgar doesn’t know the difference between a cave and mine. It had carved stairs and everything, not a cave.

The quest to kill the three masters in the mine. It triggering as completed when you stand on a corpse, might be convenient but it sure breaks immersion.

The Keli’dan the Breaker quest shut the door on me as I stopped to kill some void wolves. It didn’t re-open for several minutes which sucked. I thought I’d bugged the quest out.

After completing Tanaan as Alliance we’re taken to Shadowmoon. There’s a quest ‘For the Alliance’ which founds the Garrison. It’s kinda hard to accept that I’m the commander, when there’s a ton of other players all around me. They really should have instanced this bit.

The three player group quest ‘Wanted: Kilaa’s Stinger’ must have been for three boosted characters. I know I’m questing in tank spec but it didn’t even take a long time to die, it was just like a regular mob. I was hoping for more.

I hate coming upon a quest that another player is half finished, I want to see it all but it completes it with or without my consent.

When completing a bonus objective quest be very careful not to stray outside the boundaries. I did one near the Draenei village and accidentally reset it a couple of times, as it resets everytime you leave. That was kinda annoying though I guess it’s because it’s not really on your quest log, it’s just a temporary bonus thing so it can’t keep permanent track of your progress. Understandable but still annoying.

The quests
The quests themselves aren’t bad. I have never been a fan of Warcraft questing and I’m looking at these and trying to find reasons for that. There’s a lot more voice acting than in the past, there’s a lot more RP exchanges if you look out for them. However, I think it’s the lack of personal quests. Swtor really spoiled me for questing, the class quests, feeling like my choices mattered, feeling like I was the hero. I just don’t get that feeling in Warcraft and I never have.

Maybe I’m just prejudiced against Warcraft quests now, I don’t know but these honestly aren’t bad. I’m sure I’ll be sick of them in time if I level any alts. Maybe that’s the real kick – repeatability. Swtor has it, as it makes the experience different everytime even with the same quests. With Warcraft whatever class, whatever character, you are just a nameless hero and it’s the same no matter what.

Professions and the Garrison
Professions in Draenor require a drop to open up the skillpoints to 700. After I left the starter area of Tanaan and went into Shadowmoon I got drops for my two major professions, Cooking and First Aid. I got the Archaeology one by digging up some fragments and I got the fishing one first time I tried to fish, which means I have all of the professions on my main ready to level.

I also directed my Garrison to start building a Forge as one of my small buildings. It took an hour to build, I used my Garrison hearthstone to try and go back and check it out. I got the same error message as while flying “transfer aborted: instance not found” so I’m guessing Garrisons are down right now until they fix that. What is annoying though is it put the hearthstone on cooldown so I couldn’t even try again.

In all honesty Garrisons still confuse the heck out of me. I decided what buildings I thought might be good mostly from Ask Mr Robot’s infographic, as I do better with pictures and information in small doses. I did also read The Grumpy Elf’s guides but they were extremely detailed which will be good for later, but didn’t help my confusion now. I’m hoping that the more I get to use it, the more it will become clear. However, I would say I don’t think it’s that user-friendly. I look outside the game for information and I ask questions, I’m not sure that the average player does.

The game-breaking bug
I got a quest in my garrison to report to Ashran, where my faction capitol is. The flying aborted partway through, saying “transfer aborted: instance not found” so I was bugged out mid-air. Judging by how many other gryphons there were hovering in mid-air, that happened to a lot of people. I slowly seemed to fall a few feet occasionally and the error message repeated itself. I clicked character stuck and I couldn’t use my hearthstone or teleport to graveyard. I tried to logout of the game and it wouldn’t work. Clicking exit game didn’t do anything either.

I submitted a support ticket and figured I’d wait, maybe even get some more writing done while watching for my ticket. Then the internet went down for the second time, it came back up pretty much immediately but obviously I got disconnected. I hoped maybe this would fix the stuck issue but when I tried to login it said “a character of that name already exists” so it obviously still thinks I’m logged in somehow. I managed to login on my second attempt and for a moment I was flying, then I stopped and was stuck mid-air again. Talk about a game breaking bug.

That actually marked the second time the internet went down today. The first time there wasn’t a dial tone on the phone either. I’m guessing the company must be doing some maintenance on the line or something but it’s quite disconcerting.

I logged in and out a couple more times and I flew forward a little each time. Then I guess I moved beyond the boundaries of whatever the bug was and I was on my way again. I cancelled the ticket though I’m thinking perhaps I shouldn’t have, they need to know about it to fix it. However, that was a support ticket, I’ll submit a bug report instead. Hopefully it’ll be fixed post-haste because I don’t want to get stuck if I ever fly over my

Overall impression
I think it sounds mostly like I’m complaining but I’m not really. I just wrote this post so I wouldn’t spam twitter too much. The first thing I did when I logged in was look for a Minfernal, I hoped that if everyone was in Draenor then it would be there, no such luck. I then got rested XP for all my characters before I logged on my main and dove into Draenor.

Draenei architecture is beautiful and while Shadowmoon is a dark zone, it’s not a dark zone. I realise that sounds backwards but I’ve never liked dark zones where I can’t see what I’m doing. I’m much more a fan of big open sunny zones. However, Shadowmoon while dark doesn’t feel all that dark and as I said the Draenei flavour is really well done.

I do get a kick out of being called Commander at my Garrison. Considering we are likely to be spending a lot of time in our Garrisons, it’s a good job that I like it there to be honest. Plus my architect has a crush on one of the young female lieutenants, I love little details like that.

I went to Stormshield, the new faction hub, and it’s nice enough. However, I won’t set my hearthstone there, at least not initially, as it doesn’t have a portal city. There are portals to Stormwind, Ironforge and Darnassus but that’s not enough. Shrine is more convenient as it has portals to everywhere. However, so did Dalaran and they removed those. If Shrine gets gutted then I will have less of a reason to keep my home in Pandaria. Plus there might be some reason why I have to make regular visits to Stormshield, it’s a question of convenience and what works out.

Really I haven’t seen enough of the meat of the expansion to form a proper opinion. What I have seen so far is ok but really what matters is what happens at level 100, I’m only level 91 so I’m nowhere near there yet. That in itself is something vaguely positive, after all there’s no need to rush so long as I’m 100 in term to run the anniversary stuff for the rewards. Questing and getting to level cap can take time as I’m not rushing to raid or join any group activities. It’s part of the expansion, as perhaps it always should be.

End Note
I called my play session to an end by logging out in the Shrine. My garrison inaccessible due to instancing issues, I didn’t feel like battling bugs any longer. The start to the Mists expansion was arguably worse with the Gyrocoptor quest that meant levelling at launch was impossible for Alliance. However, that was just when the expansion went live, when the clock ticked over to Mists, it was fine the next day. The same obviously can’t be said for Warlords.

Oh well after I checked for the Minfernal just once more time.

…….

I left this post open just in case and you will never guess what was in Felwood? Yup that blasted Minfernal and it was even a rare. That is incredible and totally made my day. I’m happier about that than I am about Warlords, that has been a long time coming. The word – finally – has never meant so much. It was the worst kind of RNG, as I couldn’t even grind for it as it’s open world and not instanced. Finally! Finally! That Minfernal is mine, the World Safari is complete. Ooo-rah!