Long time no see! No, I haven’t died or been forced to run from the authorities, there’s just been a perfect storm of events that’s kept me from blogging (and playing Warcraft too!). First it was an uptick of school and other work but the bigger interruption came about a week and a half ago when my computer’s copy of WoW kept encountering a fatal error upon launch. I spent almost every bit of free-time I had for the past week trying to troubleshoot the issue- I rolled back Windows updates, deleted my cache and WTF folders more time than I care to count, scanned for memory issues, even reinstalled the entire game! In the end though, it was futzing around with the drivers that ultimately solved the issue and as of Thursday I have been able to play again!
Since getting access to WoW again, I’ve been trying to cover a lot of lost ground. I recently hit 110 (making me the very last person to do so) and have been plugging away at the very first 110 quests. Friday night I entered my very first dungeons of the expansion with some of my awesome guildies, which is what I want to talk about today!
My wonderful guildie Vin offered to bring me through some dungeons once I hit max level and true to his word, he invited my sorely undergeared butt for some runs. I may have only been ilvl 784 but Vin, Lore, Who, and Romanova were determined to bring (read: carry) me through.
Despite me never having seen the dungeon before, we jumped right into Heroic Eye of Azshara. One of the very first things I noticed was that, even despite how undergeared I was, my healing spells were healed for an overall smaller percentage of health. It seems we are back to a more triage form of healing yet again, which could be interesting, provided the damage isn’t too spiky. The second thing I noticed after that was just how overgeared my guildies were for the dungeon. Even though it was far higher than I should have been in, my guildies had me covered.
Eye of Azshara is a very interesting dungeon. It’s probably one of the most open floorplanned dungeons I have ever been in, allowing the players to pick which bosses they want to defeat when. And even though I spent most of the boss fights dead on the floor, the fights themselves seemed to be the typical run of the mill dungeon encounters, with one or two interesting mechanics thrown in there for good measure. I particularly enjoyed the ramp up of the weather in the zone after each boss kill; it really added to the overall atmosphere.
Also, this is the part where I mention seagulls being the spawn of Sargeras.
After Eye of Azshara was finished, we then moved to the Halls of Valor. First things first, this zone was gorgeous. I got a strong Diablo vibe from the floating structures and the gold and red but dang, was this place just beautiful! I also really dug the Norse myth tie-in, the Hearth of Revelry and the Fields of the Eternal Hunt in particular.
It did seem a little odd to me that Eyir was mad at us as alliance players, seeing as how we did rescue her from Sylvannas. Maybe she just lumps all mortals in together? Regardless, I’m glad we did not kill her champion, or really anyone in the Halls, we just beat them unconscious (out of context this sounds really bad). We’re getting better at not destroying everything!
Oh and the rainbow bridge! The first time I went up it, my guildie Lore told me to look backwards at the beautiful stain glass windows behind us. So, of course, I swiveled my camera around to take a look. And then, promptly fell off the edge of the bridge and plummeted to my death. Yeah, I won’t be hearing the end of that soon. My second try was much more successful and we finished the rest of the dungeon without a hitch!
While I’ve only done two of the (how many? eight?) new Legion dungeons so far, I am already impressed! The zones were thematic and atmospheric, the dungeons themselves very different from each other, and the boss fights entertaining! I am excited to try out the rest and maybe venture into a mythic or two! While I might be super far behind, Legion has been a blast so far!
Growing up in Azeroth 