What do WoW players do when the content ends and there are still a few months until the new expansion? They start leveling alts, doing achievements, and farming for transmogs, old legendaries, and, of course, mounts. Since transmog didn’t exist during WotLK, they mostly farmed achievements and mounts. I decided it was time to finally get Exalted with the Netherwing dragons in Outland.
Previous: WoW Player Diary. Part 15. The end of WotLK era
I had completed the initial quest chain to reach Neutral with the Netherwing back in the summer of 2009. I wanted the mount back then, but after I started doing the dailies and actually flew on one, I lost the desire. Having a giant pair of wings flapping across half the screen was really annoying, and I only learned to zoom the camera out much later. After that, I would occasionally fly over to Netherwing Ledge to kill time before a raid. It wasn’t often, but I had somehow accumulated enough reputation to be about halfway through Honored. So, after my raiding goals were met, I decided, why not finish it? Completing all the dailies, except for the one in Nagrand, takes less than half an hour, and I didn’t have much left to grind. Plus, the end of the chain featured a meeting with Illidan, a flight on a massive dragon to Shattrath, and a very nice mount that was much more beautiful than the ones from WotLK.
I only did the daily quests, not bothering to search for eggs. However, I did find one or two that dropped from ore veins and slimes in the caves while questing. I enjoyed the aerial races the most. By this point, they weren’t difficult at all. A year earlier, they were much harder because it wasn’t until Patch 3.3 that players stopped getting dismounted when hit by bombs. All you had to do was follow the leader and not let him out of your sight. But at level 70, I imagine those flights were a real challenge. I can’t recall any quests like that in WotLK. The jousting dailies at the Argent Tournament don’t count; that stuff was a piece of cake.
I finished the quests and met with Lord Illidan. Then I flew to Shattrath and chose the Onyx Netherwing Drake. In my opinion, it was the most stylish of them all. I also bought a couple of the others from the vendor on the Ledge, just to have them. For a while, it was the only mount I used, because my engineer’s flying machine had gotten boring after six months, and the drake’s flight animation had been fixed.
Elemental Invasion
The pre-Cataclysm event, which everyone was expecting after Patch 4.0.1, began on November 1st. A group of NPCs appeared in Ironforge, and one of them, an Earthen Ring Ambassador, gave the quest “The Call of the Elements,” which started the chain. He spoke of a disturbance among the elements throughout Azeroth, though the cause was unclear. After that, we were sent to Erunak Stonespeaker in Stormwind.
Upon arriving in Stormwind, I went to the famous fountain square where Erunak Stonespeaker was waiting. He first expressed his concern about the situation and then sent me to the Stormwind Keep to find Gavan Grayfeather, a shaman from the Wildhammer dwarf clan.
Inside the keep, we were met by the elderly dwarven shaman, who told us that unrest had begun and that citizens were turning to all sorts of dangerous cults. At the end of the conversation, he sent us to another NPC, Captain Anton.
Captain Anton told us that a doomsday cult had appeared in the city.
Of course, you can see worse things on the streets of Stormwind, but this time, it was causing much more concern than usual. The captain instructed us to listen to what the cultists were saying and to collect the leaflets they were distributing. In total, we had to attend four of their rallies.
After attending the rallies and collecting the leaflets, we returned to the captain, who decided that propaganda must be answered with counter-propaganda. He then instructed us to post five of our own leaflets in the Old Town district.
After educating the civilian population, we returned to the captain, and he gave us our next task: to infiltrate the ranks of the cultists…
Patch 4.0.3a
Patch 4.0.3a brought the following changes to the game:
- Portals were removed from Dalaran and Shattrath, so these cities lost their status as major transport hubs. It was time to move our mains—before, it made sense to keep them in Dalaran, which was the center of activity and so busy it was nicknamed “Lagaran.” Leaving Northrend now required taking a steamship or zeppelin.
- Class trainers were installed in place of the portals, though it was unclear who needed them anymore since a mass exodus from Northrend was about to begin.
- New class/race combinations became available (with the exception of goblins and worgen).
- New starting areas for gnomes and trolls—the Echo Isles and Gnomeregan—became active.
- The world was shattered. The earth and sky flooded, the seas overflowed their banks… in general, all the changes to the Old World that had previously only been seen in beta screenshots finally appeared on the live servers.
- Instead of the boring Sindragosa, Deathwing now appeared on the login screen (and remained there for the next two years).
- There was a new intro cinematic, new music, and new loading screens.
- Druids, paladins, priests, and shamans had their talent points reset.
- A new class balance pass went into effect.
- Vendors selling reputation tabards appeared in capital cities.
- The experience required to level from 71 to 80 was once again reduced by 20%.
- New pets became available for hunters.
- Deathwing’s arrival and the two weeks of terror that followed were also expected—the retired Aspect was flying over the Old World, setting fire to everything he saw.
I always considered my server, Gordunni, to be full of well-informed nerds. Or at least, there should have been more knowledgeable people there than anywhere else, since it was one of the top progression servers in Europe. After logging in on patch night, I looked at the trade chat and realized that people not only don’t read patch notes but apparently hadn’t even skimmed the news. How else could you explain comments like, “where did the Dalaran portals go?”, “what happened to the park in Stormwind?”, “where do they sell the new gear?”, “how do you get to the new zones?”, and “where do you learn to fly in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms?” It seemed like these people had only seen Dalaran and the first wing of ICC for the last couple of months. I was in a state of minor culture shock. If people can’t be bothered to read a few paragraphs on the news site for their favorite game before a patch, how did they manage to get through school?
But overall, it was a funny time. The Shattering had happened, but the Cataclysm expansion hadn’t officially launched. The bulletin boards where you could get quests for the new zones were already up but weren’t active. The archaeology trainer stood in the Hall of Explorers doing nothing, as training for the new profession wasn’t yet available. New gear was at the vendors, but it required level 85, and the experience bar was still capped. Deathwing had already destroyed zones in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, but you couldn’t fly over them yet. In short, you could look, but you couldn’t touch.
In any case, the WotLK era had officially ended.
Next: WoW Player Diary. Part 17. Cataclysm: the beginning
