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yukieSo last night I finished up the 'Tirion's Gambit' questline as well as the LOL ADMIRAL WESTWIND one. XD; I like Wrath stuff, I dunno. It feels a lot more rounded out than a lot of Cata things to me, quest-wise. I know it did dumb stuff to raiding, but the questing was nice.
Spolars for Wrath within, particularly the two questlines I mentioned above. I know I'm way out of the spoiler buffer zone and into territory roughly around 'Aerith dies at the end of Disk One', but hey. Also, CHRONIC CASUAL SWEARING. XD
I continue to freaking love the Ebon Blade knights and the Argent Crusade. I pretty much want to hug Tirion all the time. Seeing him in the ARR RAR EVIL CULTIST outfit, I was all like, 'omfg you are so dang cute, old guy'. (And my DK Ishandarr kept going, "Are you sure I'm going to pass as a cultist in JUST the hood, because my armour's on the spiky side...") So anyway, we all headed on in to the Cathedral of...okay, Arthas, stop making me giggle about these things with your obvious nyahhhh at the churchy types.
ANYHOW! Yeah. There. The church o' spooky doom. And there's a nice little 'in-game cut scene' wherein some cultists bring the Freaky Goddamn Purple Crystal of WTF in to the high priest, and Tirion's like, "Okay, get ready, here we go--" and then "Wait--oh crap." because HI ARTHAS.
I don't know if anyone else has read Cavalorn's "Looking for the Quintessential Scary Moment", but the point he makes about 'the worst thing a creepy something can do is turn and look at you' is very valid. This is exactly what Arthas does (breaking the fourth wall in the process--he's not just looking at Tirion and your PC, but you-the-player, and it's unsettling...he does this in the Wrath opening cinematic too), and even though his sprite was like two inches tall on my screen, tops? I jumped. And backed up a bit XD;
(LK is a genuinely scary villain. For all I tease Arthas--the Plague of Undeath is terrifying, and the situation the Ebon Blade DKs started out in is just as much so. I'm going to ramble about this at length later, but I'll stick to just those short statements for this parenthesis. That and 'Ner'zhul is one bent asshole'.)
Playing this with an imagination as hyperactive as mine, I was quite aware of Ishan's internal freakout. XD; While he wouldn't outwardly panic in a situation like that (out of sheer refusal to give Arthas that troll gratification), he'd have a constant mental litany of 'oh shit oh shit oh SHIT'. Hilariously, when I pushed my chair back out of GODDAMMIT ARTHAS LEAVE THE FOURTH WALL ALONE, I smushed my keyboard a bit, and Ishan ended up jumping forward to stand in front of Tirion, sword drawn--a very IC keysmush result! :B
I got a HUGE giggle out of the back-and-forth between Tirion and Arthas. "Oh hey, I hope you're good with this as a final resting place, old man." "Er, you seem to be forgetting how our last confrontation went." Oh Tirion. That was awesome. Arthas disagreed, of course, and crabbily attempted to reassert his position as the Arch-troll...and got his ego on. 'Humanity's most wayward son', oh my god, Menethil, stop being so goddamn adorably swaggery. You're in armour with way too many skulls on it, you have an elfpire harem, you stalk middle-aged paladins, and your sword eats people. STOP BEING FUCKING CUTE.
But I digress! Arthas and Tirion snarkfight, Tirion whacks the heart/crystal with Ashbringer, and IT EXPLOD. Tirion faceplants, the head cultist dies on the floor, and Arthas IS NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS SHIT. (And then ALL THE CULTISTS SPAM THEIR AGGRO NOISE AT ONCE. Human guys have the dumbest aggro noise on the planet: "HURR!!!!!!11!1") It looks as if we're going to get owned in a cultist moshpit beatdown, and then SUDDENLY DARION MOGRAINE! (Ishan heartmarked.) And Koltira! Who is in full on deredere badass mode: "You do not fight alone!" (He and Thassarian have much different lines when they show up. Thassarian's are BLOO TEEME only and are...dorky. He is clearly kind of nervous about all this, but trying to keep people's spirits up and enjoying his moment of badass XD) Anyhow, there is a complete cultist roflstompage-fest, and then Arthas recovers from his psychic nutpunch enough to try to WTFPWN EVERYBODY. So we all bail out through a portal.
Tirion is quite sad in re: lack of redemption possibility. I can't fault him. (I /hugged him once I got back up the hill, which hilariously sparked off a 'everybody hugs Tirion' session--it turned out there was a party of about five people already up there when I arrived, but I didn't see them at first because woooohoooo phasing hilarity. Heee. Either way, many hugs were given!)
From there, I decided that I wanted to go troll Mal'Ganis because he is annoying. (He and Varimathras are tied in the position of 'Dreadlords I really want to Punch.' Balnazzar I feel just slightly sorry for, just because his minions are completely cray and probably still address him as Grand Crusader and ignore the fact that he's ten feet tall with hooves etc. and that has to just be migraine inducing.) So I did. And...OH MY GOD, COULD THERE BE A LESS SUBTLE DREADLORD. I swear. Mal'Ganis sucks at being sneaky. He is the worst at it. he is worse at subtlety than Ryu hayabusa is at actually being a ninja! Case in point: you fly into Onslaught territory and OH HEY THE CLOUDS ARE REDDISH AND MOVING UP INTO A FREAKY GAPING VOID OVERHEAD AND THERE'S OCCASIONALLY PINKISH LIGHTNING SHOOTING DOWN IN A VAGUE DOME CONFIGURATION oh my god Mal'Ganis you noob. (Also, Balnazzar had dibs on the Scarlets. He's probably going to knee you in the astral groin when next you meet.)
I really like the NPC who gives the quests leading up to 'now we roflstomp Mal'Ganis'. Lord Commander Arete is increasingly gregarious as you prove your competence--he starts off crabby (because he and Baron Sliver don't like each other, and the Baron sent you) but comes to like you over time. You get some quests that open up a daily (GRYPHON BOMBING WHEE), and...okay, I was somewhat disturbed when I started going to get blood form the sharks, because I saw like five trying REALLY HARD to swim up onto the beach in different places. It's probably just lolpathing, but given the history in WoW of stuff beaching itself to avoid the badwrong...yeah. Mal'Ganis, stop waving your arcane junk. (Also, LAAAAAND SHAAAAAARK.)
Getting the five documents was a pain in the spine--a lot of the Scarlets like to keep 50 copper in their lockboxes. dafuq
AAAANYHOW, bluh bluh finish harassing the Scarlets (Ishan had wwwwwaaaaaaayyyyyyy too much fun with this, he really doesn't like the Scarlets in the least and will happily do his 'deadly arch-weedwhacker of the Ebon Blade' impression all over the place) sneak into cave wish I could save my compatriots who got caught smack the warlocks kick the imps OH HI "ADMIRAL" HAVE SOME ARCANE FORCEFIELD NULLIFIER COURTESY MY CANTANKEROUS FRIEND ARETE. And then he goes "BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM AND DESPAIR!" at which point I almost spat Gatorade all over my screen.
It was all I could do from retorting DIE MONSTER YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD. I /golfclapped instead. And then he mooned me. NO, SERIOUSLY. Mal'Ganis decided he absolutely had to chaerg into Ishandarr and then park his big green-clad Nathrezim butt right in front of my camera. So I exclaimed "SHAKE IT, DREADLORD!" then spun the camera around so I could actually see where Ishan was in relation to his opponent...and what did Mal'Ganis do? He moved again aaaaannnnd - big green Nathrezim loincloth, front and centre. FOR FUCK'S SAKES MAL'GANIS XD
At the end of the brawl he does his usual thing and bails out (his portal looks somewhat goatse...for fuck's sakes Mal'Ganis XD), whilst sniping that you're never going to be able to beat Arthas without him and he's totally gonna be back to faceroll you. And the portal closes, and then I sit around wondering what the fuck 'kirel naraak' is supposed to mean (he says this at the start of the fight). wtb eredun/english dictionary?
So yeah, last night was lore tastic. I will forever dislike Wrath for really getting full into the NARF POIT USE CHARACTER AS PLOT LEVER EGAD ZORT NARF trend, and for giving Jaina a spine-ectomy...but I do love most of the quests. And I love the details. I love the little red drakes whispering to you when you help defend the Wyrmrest Temple, I love that caster units in Azjol'Nerub have LITTLE SPIDER HOODS, I love the living Nerubians' talking animations, I love the Bronze Dragonshrine quests (it was JUST AS FUNNY TO ME doing it at level 85, even though it would have had more impact if I'd done it at the right levels, hee) and the "OH FUCKING HELL WE LOADED CHEKHOV'S GUN" even though thick fanboys don't understand what was actually going on there (that's a rant for another time). I really love the story, and I love Arthas as a villain, and I love the Ashen verdict, which--that is some AMAAAAZING heraldic nerding! Argent==white/silver, ebon (sable in heraldry)==black, put them together and you get grey...which in heraldry is cendrée. That term? Derived from the French word for "ash."
Reader, I squee'd.
To sum up:
-Arthas is still creeptastic and a hugeass troll and even though he appeared a lot I like pro-active antagonists so hey!
-Arthas laughs in the face of your fourth wall!
-I love Tirion. And Koltira and Darion and Thassarian and etc.
-Other people also love Tirion and want to hug him as much as I do
-Koltira in deredere badass mode = RUN AWAY, VILLAINS, RUN AWAY. He and Thass get ludicrous levels of overkill in the cultist beatdown fest.
-Apparently I look enough like a cultist if I just wear a hood to fool the Icecrown Fanboy Contingent.
-Mal'Ganis is unsubtle and also an exhibitionist
-Ishandarr is overprotective of certain paladins and has a crush on his boss
-Scarlets are really gullible
-LAAAAAAND SHAAAAAARK
-Red dragons are cute
-So are Nerubians in little hoods
-I have been mooned by a Dreadlord
-And now, I'm exalted with Undercity so Ishandarr has the purple bony pony.
Spolars for Wrath within, particularly the two questlines I mentioned above. I know I'm way out of the spoiler buffer zone and into territory roughly around 'Aerith dies at the end of Disk One', but hey. Also, CHRONIC CASUAL SWEARING. XD
I continue to freaking love the Ebon Blade knights and the Argent Crusade. I pretty much want to hug Tirion all the time. Seeing him in the ARR RAR EVIL CULTIST outfit, I was all like, 'omfg you are so dang cute, old guy'. (And my DK Ishandarr kept going, "Are you sure I'm going to pass as a cultist in JUST the hood, because my armour's on the spiky side...") So anyway, we all headed on in to the Cathedral of...okay, Arthas, stop making me giggle about these things with your obvious nyahhhh at the churchy types.
ANYHOW! Yeah. There. The church o' spooky doom. And there's a nice little 'in-game cut scene' wherein some cultists bring the Freaky Goddamn Purple Crystal of WTF in to the high priest, and Tirion's like, "Okay, get ready, here we go--" and then "Wait--oh crap." because HI ARTHAS.
I don't know if anyone else has read Cavalorn's "Looking for the Quintessential Scary Moment", but the point he makes about 'the worst thing a creepy something can do is turn and look at you' is very valid. This is exactly what Arthas does (breaking the fourth wall in the process--he's not just looking at Tirion and your PC, but you-the-player, and it's unsettling...he does this in the Wrath opening cinematic too), and even though his sprite was like two inches tall on my screen, tops? I jumped. And backed up a bit XD;
(LK is a genuinely scary villain. For all I tease Arthas--the Plague of Undeath is terrifying, and the situation the Ebon Blade DKs started out in is just as much so. I'm going to ramble about this at length later, but I'll stick to just those short statements for this parenthesis. That and 'Ner'zhul is one bent asshole'.)
Playing this with an imagination as hyperactive as mine, I was quite aware of Ishan's internal freakout. XD; While he wouldn't outwardly panic in a situation like that (out of sheer refusal to give Arthas that troll gratification), he'd have a constant mental litany of 'oh shit oh shit oh SHIT'. Hilariously, when I pushed my chair back out of GODDAMMIT ARTHAS LEAVE THE FOURTH WALL ALONE, I smushed my keyboard a bit, and Ishan ended up jumping forward to stand in front of Tirion, sword drawn--a very IC keysmush result! :B
I got a HUGE giggle out of the back-and-forth between Tirion and Arthas. "Oh hey, I hope you're good with this as a final resting place, old man." "Er, you seem to be forgetting how our last confrontation went." Oh Tirion. That was awesome. Arthas disagreed, of course, and crabbily attempted to reassert his position as the Arch-troll...and got his ego on. 'Humanity's most wayward son', oh my god, Menethil, stop being so goddamn adorably swaggery. You're in armour with way too many skulls on it, you have an elfpire harem, you stalk middle-aged paladins, and your sword eats people. STOP BEING FUCKING CUTE.
But I digress! Arthas and Tirion snarkfight, Tirion whacks the heart/crystal with Ashbringer, and IT EXPLOD. Tirion faceplants, the head cultist dies on the floor, and Arthas IS NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS SHIT. (And then ALL THE CULTISTS SPAM THEIR AGGRO NOISE AT ONCE. Human guys have the dumbest aggro noise on the planet: "HURR!!!!!!11!1") It looks as if we're going to get owned in a cultist moshpit beatdown, and then SUDDENLY DARION MOGRAINE! (Ishan heartmarked.) And Koltira! Who is in full on deredere badass mode: "You do not fight alone!" (He and Thassarian have much different lines when they show up. Thassarian's are BLOO TEEME only and are...dorky. He is clearly kind of nervous about all this, but trying to keep people's spirits up and enjoying his moment of badass XD) Anyhow, there is a complete cultist roflstompage-fest, and then Arthas recovers from his psychic nutpunch enough to try to WTFPWN EVERYBODY. So we all bail out through a portal.
Tirion is quite sad in re: lack of redemption possibility. I can't fault him. (I /hugged him once I got back up the hill, which hilariously sparked off a 'everybody hugs Tirion' session--it turned out there was a party of about five people already up there when I arrived, but I didn't see them at first because woooohoooo phasing hilarity. Heee. Either way, many hugs were given!)
From there, I decided that I wanted to go troll Mal'Ganis because he is annoying. (He and Varimathras are tied in the position of 'Dreadlords I really want to Punch.' Balnazzar I feel just slightly sorry for, just because his minions are completely cray and probably still address him as Grand Crusader and ignore the fact that he's ten feet tall with hooves etc. and that has to just be migraine inducing.) So I did. And...OH MY GOD, COULD THERE BE A LESS SUBTLE DREADLORD. I swear. Mal'Ganis sucks at being sneaky. He is the worst at it. he is worse at subtlety than Ryu hayabusa is at actually being a ninja! Case in point: you fly into Onslaught territory and OH HEY THE CLOUDS ARE REDDISH AND MOVING UP INTO A FREAKY GAPING VOID OVERHEAD AND THERE'S OCCASIONALLY PINKISH LIGHTNING SHOOTING DOWN IN A VAGUE DOME CONFIGURATION oh my god Mal'Ganis you noob. (Also, Balnazzar had dibs on the Scarlets. He's probably going to knee you in the astral groin when next you meet.)
I really like the NPC who gives the quests leading up to 'now we roflstomp Mal'Ganis'. Lord Commander Arete is increasingly gregarious as you prove your competence--he starts off crabby (because he and Baron Sliver don't like each other, and the Baron sent you) but comes to like you over time. You get some quests that open up a daily (GRYPHON BOMBING WHEE), and...okay, I was somewhat disturbed when I started going to get blood form the sharks, because I saw like five trying REALLY HARD to swim up onto the beach in different places. It's probably just lolpathing, but given the history in WoW of stuff beaching itself to avoid the badwrong...yeah. Mal'Ganis, stop waving your arcane junk. (Also, LAAAAAND SHAAAAAARK.)
Getting the five documents was a pain in the spine--a lot of the Scarlets like to keep 50 copper in their lockboxes. dafuq
AAAANYHOW, bluh bluh finish harassing the Scarlets (Ishan had wwwwwaaaaaaayyyyyyy too much fun with this, he really doesn't like the Scarlets in the least and will happily do his 'deadly arch-weedwhacker of the Ebon Blade' impression all over the place) sneak into cave wish I could save my compatriots who got caught smack the warlocks kick the imps OH HI "ADMIRAL" HAVE SOME ARCANE FORCEFIELD NULLIFIER COURTESY MY CANTANKEROUS FRIEND ARETE. And then he goes "BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM AND DESPAIR!" at which point I almost spat Gatorade all over my screen.
It was all I could do from retorting DIE MONSTER YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD. I /golfclapped instead. And then he mooned me. NO, SERIOUSLY. Mal'Ganis decided he absolutely had to chaerg into Ishandarr and then park his big green-clad Nathrezim butt right in front of my camera. So I exclaimed "SHAKE IT, DREADLORD!" then spun the camera around so I could actually see where Ishan was in relation to his opponent...and what did Mal'Ganis do? He moved again aaaaannnnd - big green Nathrezim loincloth, front and centre. FOR FUCK'S SAKES MAL'GANIS XD
At the end of the brawl he does his usual thing and bails out (his portal looks somewhat goatse...for fuck's sakes Mal'Ganis XD), whilst sniping that you're never going to be able to beat Arthas without him and he's totally gonna be back to faceroll you. And the portal closes, and then I sit around wondering what the fuck 'kirel naraak' is supposed to mean (he says this at the start of the fight). wtb eredun/english dictionary?
So yeah, last night was lore tastic. I will forever dislike Wrath for really getting full into the NARF POIT USE CHARACTER AS PLOT LEVER EGAD ZORT NARF trend, and for giving Jaina a spine-ectomy...but I do love most of the quests. And I love the details. I love the little red drakes whispering to you when you help defend the Wyrmrest Temple, I love that caster units in Azjol'Nerub have LITTLE SPIDER HOODS, I love the living Nerubians' talking animations, I love the Bronze Dragonshrine quests (it was JUST AS FUNNY TO ME doing it at level 85, even though it would have had more impact if I'd done it at the right levels, hee) and the "OH FUCKING HELL WE LOADED CHEKHOV'S GUN" even though thick fanboys don't understand what was actually going on there (that's a rant for another time). I really love the story, and I love Arthas as a villain, and I love the Ashen verdict, which--that is some AMAAAAZING heraldic nerding! Argent==white/silver, ebon (sable in heraldry)==black, put them together and you get grey...which in heraldry is cendrée. That term? Derived from the French word for "ash."
Reader, I squee'd.
To sum up:
-Arthas is still creeptastic and a hugeass troll and even though he appeared a lot I like pro-active antagonists so hey!
-Arthas laughs in the face of your fourth wall!
-I love Tirion. And Koltira and Darion and Thassarian and etc.
-Other people also love Tirion and want to hug him as much as I do
-Koltira in deredere badass mode = RUN AWAY, VILLAINS, RUN AWAY. He and Thass get ludicrous levels of overkill in the cultist beatdown fest.
-Apparently I look enough like a cultist if I just wear a hood to fool the Icecrown Fanboy Contingent.
-Mal'Ganis is unsubtle and also an exhibitionist
-Ishandarr is overprotective of certain paladins and has a crush on his boss
-Scarlets are really gullible
-LAAAAAAND SHAAAAAARK
-Red dragons are cute
-So are Nerubians in little hoods
-I have been mooned by a Dreadlord
-And now, I'm exalted with Undercity so Ishandarr has the purple bony pony.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-07 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-07 05:57 pm (UTC)His relationship with the fourth wall is consistently too close for comfort. See also: everything that happens after you hit 10% in the ICC boss fight, the way he kills you in Howling Fjord and is totally aware that you're just going to res at the graveyard.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 01:05 am (UTC)And yes in re: the Howling Fjord thing (his reaction if you come back is priceless: "Are you THAT determined or just really, really stupid? Oh well *splat*")
And though I didn't manage to trigger the "Now, Arthas does more astral trolling!" event in Agmar's Hammer when Koltira's getting me to improvise a runeforge? That's creepy too. From the caps I've seen he looks at you again. Gyah.
The boss battle SPIRIT REZ DENIED LOL messagebox is gloriously evil too. I really want to do that fight for that reason! (I'm not really a raider at all, though I solo lower level dungeons for rep to get nifty things, ahaha XD) Wrath was just spectacular when it came to immersion and little details. I wish we'd gotten more explanations for some (like the elfpire harem - er - Crimson Halls, dang Arthas you have a Blood Elf fixation), but still...I love the story, I love Arthas as a villain (Blizz really, really should have given Deathwing more personality and had him express a little more interest in players--you cannot go from "villain is gunning for YOU PERSONALLY" to "villain doesn't care unless you get stuck between his fangs" without serious whiplash), and - yeah. XD I'm really looking forward to doing those quests on my other characters, including my little human pally!
Speaking of humans and the Alliance...I have got to hand it to Arthas for pwning that one camp with INFECTED GRAIN. I mean...if the game had expanded on or touched on the Varian-and-Arthas friendship/bro-mance from the novel, that would have been a nice opportunity to round out Varian's character (since they very clearly did not know what they were doing with him, and I'd argue that they still kind of don't know who he is as a character beyond 'well he's badass?'). Arthas is straight up going "HAY WRYNN WHAT DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF LOL LOL" with that grain business. XD If only that'd been touched on more.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 12:00 pm (UTC)Deathwing was straight-up OOC in my opinion. Even though Day/Night of the Dragon were terrible books, DW was a magnificent bastard that turned everyone against each other and had a complex about how disfigured the metal plates made him and hypnotized dudes with his eyes.
I have a RealID group that pulls people through ICC25 every Thursday, if you'd like. o.o/ It's very smooth, everything is explained, people are positive, corez are not teh hard.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 03:38 pm (UTC)And - yeah, I tried to make my way through a couple the Knaak books and ended up actually screen-grabbing a page out of a digital file, pasting it into photoshop, and going nuts on it with my tablet pen. I DIGITALLY RED-PENNED IT, THAT WAS HOW ANNOYED I WAS. But DW was indeed cool. Knaak did some dumb stuff, but the dragons are cool when he's not being a useless Stu machine with them (stop damselfying Alextrasza you twank).
One thing I wish we'd seen: Nefarian and his dad having an arch-snarkwar. Though it's gone form the game now, Nef's sarcastic letter from the end of the 'get the red scepter crystal' quest if the raid group screws up...is still readable on WoWhead and it's fantastic. "I did what my father could not" and some of the hints that Nef tried to take over in dad's absence...I wish those had come up again. XD (I have far too much fun postulating/writing little bits about Nef throwing in his lot with the other flights against dad, if only for purely pragmatic reasons: "I would like to actually have a world to rule and my father's genius plan to destroy it all is really an impediment to my aspirations. Besides, I look hideous, and I know he did that on purpose.")
And - oh that is cool! man XD I am tempted. *dork* Like--I will probably nom the linoleum often, I haven't raided at all beyond GF taking me on tours of Kara and other stuff like that. But still XD;
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 07:03 am (UTC)ICC is very relaxed at 85, actually. Our healers and tanks are good, you can pretty much stand in fire and stare at the ceiling and still be alright. o.o/
There's a picture somewhere around here of me holding a heavily-red-penned of one of the worse WoW tie-in books and flipping the bird, but IDK where it went.