Hour of Twilight patch 4.3 - initial impressions - Thumbs Up!

It's been roughly 24 hours since the servers came back online with all their new 4.3 goodness. I've been going pretty much non-stop since last night and and after this marathon session I have to say it's (mostly) all good.

Transmogrification - 5 out of 5 Yeehaw's!
Works pretty much as they said it would and as the PTR reflected, restrictions aside. Blizzard needs to loosen the armor type restrictions so classes can xmog lower armor quality items they once used on to their current gear. There are many pallys and warriors who saved that Scarlet Crusader chain mail who sadly can't do anything with it. Me included. I'm not one of these players who spent the last several weeks grinding old raids for old tier and weapons, but I was still looking forward to this feature. First stop was the warlock and xmog'n the t8 Deathbringer set from the days of Ulduar. When I aquired this gear I was Forsaken and looked just like Apothecary Putress from the Battle for Angrathar the Wrathgate and even though I'm now a worgen it's still a great looking set. From the full makeover to the minor 1 item change such as my enhance shaman belt looking like the resto one and thus matching the Firelands tier. I hate looking like a hunter! There's no shaman tier matching belt in game for enhancement.... so 1 slot xmog'd on him and I'm a happy sham.

Something I didn't expect, but the urge to start collecting xmog gear for my alts quickly kicked in. I xmog'd a leather eye patch helm on my rogue but wanted to keep going for a full set on her, specifically trying to get the Savory Deviate Delight ninja look, it's going to be an under taking. I took my rarely played pally out to the Shatt badge vendor to start working on a blood knight set. I can already see transmogrification being a very time intensive and invigorating aspect of play for most of us. Getting people back in the old raids, doing random obscure quests from all expansions just to get that 1 cool looking piece of gear they want. Grinding more reps to exalted to buy up those old pvp sets from BC, etc... It's all a good thing and super fun.

The new 5-man Heroics - 4.5 Woohoo's out of 5!
They're fun! They're quick! They have many of our favorite characters in them! They drop gorgeous loots! That one with the Echos is great since every time you go in you'll get 2 out of 4 possible boss fights which keep it fresh and interesting. You don't have to grind through needless waves and rows of mobs/patrols. That last boss in End Time with the 5 hourglasses that reset all your CDs OMG that fight is sooooo fun for dps! I blew though these new dungeons on my prot warrior with guildies for time and it was pretty easy mode. Yet, even with the great resource of the Dungeon Journal available my dungeon finder groups struggled and had some wipes. Freaking noobs. I've run all the new instances a few times with guild and randoms on my prot warr, prot pally, hunter, rogue, but I am apprehensive about queuing up on my resto sham or disc priest... Many fights from trash to bosses are healing intensive for 'steamroll with no CC tanks' and players who don't know what's going on. But for any group of experienced raiders/players they're pretty much cake.

Dragon Soul + Raid Finder - 2.5 blahs out of 5
Only the first 4 bosses are available for now under Raid Finder. These nerfed versions of the Dragons Soul raid encounters are practically retard proof from what I'm hearing. Even my guilds worst raiders completed all the available bosses. I haven't been in myself, I'm holding off to run the regular version tonight with my 10 guild group. Our super team 10 man group who went into the real raid last night got 5 bosses down in 3-4 hours. If this is in fact that last raid content Cata it's going to be worse than ICC which didn't even have all the bosses available until a month or so after patch release. 3 gem socketed gear makes me a happy JC especially when you consider all these dudes who gem up and chant their Raid Finder tier who are only going to be replacing those slots with the real thing in the next week or 2. I've sold 50+ gems 10+ leg armors at crazy expensive prices since last night meanwhile all my toons are running around with empty sockets. Love patch day!

Void Storage - 1.5 ehhhs out of 5
Expensive, 100g to unlock feature, 25g per item you put in. Any gear you place in storage will have it's enchants and gems stripped. Yes I'm overly sentimental over my past epics, but I want all my previous armor sets and tier to be kept in their original "time capsule" condition. I earned that gear, used that gear, grinded reps for chants and farmed for hours for mats or gold to gem and chant them. I want them to stay as they were when I last raided in them. Thus my main, who has sadly had to delete items i'd rather not have in the name of bag space was only able to put old trinkets, wands other random untreated gear in void storage. This wasn't the feature I thought it would be or that I was hoping for. I managed to free up a couple dozen slots altogether, which is fantasic, but ultimately was turned off by the restrictions of Void Storage.

Tyrael's Charger - (negative) -1 ewwws out of 5
There were more of these ugly ass mounts in Stormwind and even Org today than there were the Winged Guardian when it was released. F'n noobs, either get a badass mount that you actually had to earn through rep grinds or raids or just stick with your plane ass old "I don't care" gryphons and windriders. I getting really sick and disgusted by all these rehash, reskinned zero effort mounts they just keep dumping on people. I've been in a couple dozen Bearly Made It runs and never once rolled on that pink easter egg ripoff bear. Finally i was the only one in group who didn't have one so I ended up with it... I see that thing I it just looks like a cheap imitation of the once unique, glorious badass looking War Bear. These new mounts from Darkmoon Faire with their Darkmoon Faire colors are gag inducing. We need more unique flying mounts, not ground mounts too.

There's more, but I'm le tired.

*Dictated but not read or spell-checked by Angry Raider

G.D. Zandalari's! randoms!

I've been so sick of running these 2 instances for months now. For awhile there they were great. I love the throw back instances, don't mind them being 'lazy rehashed' at all. I got a Zulian Tiger on my main last year and ZG was actually the very first raid I ever did on my main, so I'm all about nostalgia. I love the hex sticks for buffs or minor rewards, I love the mini-bosses that drop decent worthwhile stuff, but god help you if you try to get a random group to go 2 minutes out of their way to kill one! I think the reskinning of the Armani War Bear is ugly as sin tho and passed on rolling on them all until I was the only one who didn't have it. Still like heroic SFK and to a lesser degree Deadmines. They're all great and fun, just too damn long, but that's not why I have issue with the Zandalari's.

More so above and beyond my general dislike of running a random I just hate the fact that I have to run either of these 2 to get my valor points on my alts quicker. Its really maddening how they did that. Give them and the original heroics the same amount of valor points, but keep the random queues separate! I realize they're harder than the regular heroics and that's why they grant more points I guess, but when you add in the random noob variable they aren't any more or less difficult than the original heroics! This week I've wiped in regular 5-mans like Grim Batol and Blackrock Caverns to nubbishness more than I have in either ZA/ZG. They're just as difficult when you're a noob, ilevel doesn't help that. Yet lately I've opted to run the older 5-mans for points instead of ZA/ZG only because I'm so flippin bored of queuing up for 1 of 2 different dungeons. That is the definition of 'grind'! Being forced to repeat the same activity over and over again just to get your basic rewards like valor points. Until recently I haven't even bothered running randoms over the last couple months. I've had several alts who haven't earned a single valor point outside of a BH pug just because I want to run dungeons for fun, not because I have to. So for instance my rogue who has only gotten into maybe 1 Firelands alt run has pretty much all the same gear as when this patch started. I made a choice to pass on keeping it's gear current in favor of keeping my sanity intact. I like what I'm reading about alternate non-dungeon valor point rewards coming up in MoP, but I'm not one of these players that swoons over what is to come or drool over some future feature in some future expansion. That's not the game I'm playing today.

The only reason I started up random dungeons again is to get valor to sell BoE bracers while they're still worth something before our points get converted in the soon approaching patch.

Another sub bites the dust... hey!

300,000 more subscriptions lost this quarter? 1.6 million since Cata launch? WoW dying?

Yes, yes and yes...

My BC era realm is a deadzone late night/early morning. There used to be enough Australians and New Zealanders around to pug a 10 man at 4 in the morning. We also used to have a lot more accomplished raiding guilds in Wrath. Lower subs + serious/hardcore players constantly xfering and converging on the same half dozen realms leaves their previous home servers neglected and vacant in regard to the voids they filled.

The biggest indicator for me tho is good ol channel 2, Trade chat. I've been playing consistently for years and at all hours of the day and night and I've never seen so much time go by without a peep out of trade like it is now. It really illustrates low population and inactivity imo. I can't recall trade being 'silent' for more than a couple mins at a time at any hour before Cata.