What a Patch

So..let's talk 3.2.

First off, all these people back at the Argent Tournament? What the hell? I know there's some new dailies, and I understand people being there for the new instance, but why was there a 4 group deep line at Chillmaw? Why were there tons of people battling over Commanders at the Citadel? It's not like these quests all of a sudden grant special powers for the instance. They've been around for ages and they've been ignored the past couple months leading up to the patch. And now they're hot again? It makes no sense to me. Sure, there's some new heirloom items you can buy with Champions Seals, but other than that, why are people running these again?

I know I ran them every day (except 2 or 3) since the patch and I have almost every Argent Tournament pet (still waiting to trade one more) and I've saved the rest of my Seals. So I had plenty saved up when the patch hit which allowed me to immediately buy my Argent Pony Bridle. I'm not quite sure why, but even though my Squire has a pony, he refuses to mount up with me. But he does give me access to a vendor, the bank, or my mailbox every few hours. Plus...

Speaking of achievements, I was pleasantly surprised to see I still had over 7,000 achievement points when logging in yesterday. The nice folks at Blizzard decided to count up all the badges I had earned and apply them towards the 2,500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems achievement. So I'm currently sitting at 925/1000. But because of the emblem and badge changes, people wanted to run heroics last night. So we first went into the Oculus because it was the daily and would reward two Emblems of Triumph. While we were there, on the final boss, we figured, why not go for an achievement? So that we did. We had one person die, but we got Amber Void. I also rode an Emerald Drake, so I'm one drake away from Experienced Drake Rider. After the Oculus, we headed down into the Nexus. On the first split of Telestra, we got all the images down in the right amount of time, but on the second one, one got away from us and we just barely must have missed the timer for Split Personality. But, on the bright side, we did get Chaos Theory later on.

So while looking through my achievements, scanning for new, easy achievements (there aren't any), I did see I got three new feats of strength. They're a little overdue, but I'll take them.

I continued on after the two instances to do more of the Argent quests (the new ones are pretty fun - and...easy) and then went to search out some pets. I picked up the new Shimmering Wyrmling up at the Argent Tournament for 40 seals. I also picked up a Obsidian Hatchling from Breanni in Dalaran and then I did the new orphan quests and ended up with my own little Gorloc. I would have preferred the Frenzyheart, but I chose wrong, so I'll be happy with a Gorloc until the next Children's week. With the new pet additions, I now sit at 112/126 pets collected.

Woohoo!

Some achievement updates and notes from Ulduar...

Thursday, the 10 man Gold Team ventured back into Ulduar after some clearing on Wednesday (including an XT hard mode kill) and we ended up with 6 tries on Yogg. Unfortunately, we had to 9 man a couple of those due to an unfortunate power outage somewhere in Texas I think. But we had some good shots at him, got him to Phase 3 a few times and I also had the chance to blow a kiss to Sara.

On Friday, our 25 man went in, and I was ready to get through Hodir once again, but we did one better, getting our fist Thorim kill! And boy did we deserve it. After our first flawless arena+gauntlet attempt, we were stoked to get a chance at Thorim himself when what happens? He evades and disappears! Oh no, how'd that happen? Ok, regroup, take 2. An almost flawless gauntlet and a perfect arena team and he does it again!? Ok, that's upsetting. Time to research. We found two possibilities:

1. We were losing someone to a disconnect upon starting the event. Just a random disconnect of a random person. There are posts suggesting that you have to wait for the disconnected person to come back before starting the gauntlet. So we did that.

2. A few other posts suggest that he can evade if you DPS him while falling down from the gauntlet run. So we made absolute certain that no one hit him other than the tank (I always pull him in the 10 man and we've never had an evade bug - so I'm thinking the strange disconnects were giving us the issue).

Either way, we kept him in check and didn't let him evade and quickly took him down. A great job done by all!

So with Thorim going down, my calculations on the 30th needed to be updated, as I could now get 100 Emblems of Conquest. So into Wintergrasp I went. We took Wintergrasp back from the Horde yesterday, but there weren't enough people to get a team going. So luckily I was able to be in a winning Wintergrasp again this morning and we found a team of 25 and took down Emalon. And what's this!? He drops 2 emblems of conquest?? Well crap, I could have gotten my 100 all along. So here I sit with 101 Emblems. Yeah, the achievement will become a feat of strength. But I wanted the 100 Emblem Feat instead of the 50 Emblem Feat!

I also forced some fellow friends to go into a couple of heroics just before the patch comes out so I could get another worthless achievement, but it's all about the feats!! So there it is:

Yesterday, before Wintergrasp, I saw that Halls of Stone was the daily and since I am still working on Proof of Demise, I dragged Aravic in with me, and we quickly cleared, and to top it all off, I got Brann Spankin' New which clears the Halls of Stone of all achievements for me. Yay!

And back to my Vault of Archavon attempts this morning, I had a lot of fun in there putting out some awesome DPS. A hunter did some awesome DPS on Emalon, but I was able to pass him somehow on Archavon.

Emalon


Archavon

So Close...

I know it won't matter, so let's get that out of the way beforehand, but still, I wanted my 100 Emblems of Conquest achievement. If the patch comes Tuesday (which most think it will), all "Collect X Emblems" will be converted to feats of strength. So either way, I don't gain the achievement points, but still, I'm so close that it would be great to have.

Going into last night's run, I had 87/100. We quickly downed Flame Leviathan with a tower up (we tried 2 towers, but left the wrong two up) and then we one shot XT-002 hard mode. That gave me 3 emblems so I'm currently at 90/100. I don't think we'll do any hard modes tonight as we are hoping to finally get Yogg'Saron down.

So that leaves me 10 short. I think I can get one from Emalon, and on our Friday run, we'll down Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002, Kologarn, the Iron Council, Auriaya, and probably Hodir. That's 8 more. So, I will most likely be at 99/100 going into Tuesday's maintenance. Which most likely will have the patch, which will upset me if I don't get that feat of strength. Oh well, after Tuesday, it'll be a combined "Collect X Badges" across all types of badges, so we won't have to worry about it any more. But still.....so close.....

Achievements Galore!

Ok, notwithstanding the exploration achievements, I was able to get quite a few done tonight. I was able to cross off Razorfen Kraul, Razorfen Downs, Wailing Caverns, Ragefire Chasm, and I completed Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!

While working on Ragefire Chasm, I was also able to quickly fish in Orgrimmar, port to Stormwind, and complete the Fishing Diplomat. I had just one quest left for the Terror of Terokkar and with that one quest, I earned my Loremaster of Outland achievement.

I now stand at 1930 achievement points, 300+ since logging in on patch day.

I am at 609/700 of Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms and a measly 476/730 of Loremaster of Kalimdor. I finished Exploring Kalimdor and had Outland done when I started. Tomorrow I will finish the Eastern Kingdoms.

Finally, I have to work on my Lower City, Honor Hold, and Keepers of Time rep for the Burning Crusader and that will also get me to 25 exalted factions. Lastly, I picked up my Blizzcon mount today and now have 11 feats of strength.