A Confession and a Diary

[Sheriff Fatman]

So, I started playing the content for Pandaland yesterday. I don't think anyone else is likely to play through it (I'm filling the MMO gap until GW either gets a dungeon finder or Wildstar - my money is on Wildstar being first) so I won't bother with spoiler tags.

GW2 has a dungeon finder now. It's only in beta at the moment but early reports are very positive.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Hi, I'm Berk and I have a confession to make.

[Dog Pants]

Did you ever leave?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I had about 6-7 months completely off wow.

[Anery]

I've had quite a bit of time away from the game, mostly because I found new stuff to do in GW2 but also because I was running out of levels. I'm at 88 and still only in the second zone of pandaland (and not even halfway through at that) and I'm not sure what to do when I get to 90 - I know I want to farm Hyjal for the transmute but thats all right now.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

There's an island of wandering around killing rares and getting 496/535 loots.

Quite hurty, the whole thing requires you to be awake, but it's fun in that respect.

[Wiggy]

I started a Paladin on Blade's Edge, then everyone seemed to bugger off - so I went back to my Panda on Stormreaver. Now I'm learning it it seems quite fun.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I'm happy to announce that I love Horses has just managed to ding guild level 2.

I'm shocked at how quickly we've progressed, coming one full level since the release of cataclysm in december, 2010.

[Dog Pants]

Omgrats!

[Anery]

I'm still on Blades Edge, just face rolling my Pally up to CatJism now. Moved on from Hyjal to Black Temple but can't seem to get past the blades phase on Illidan so no tier chestpiece for me yet. Pandaland has run out of toys for me now, just finishing up my cooking levels and then I've nothing to do, I'd try LFR but not sure I can deal with people.

[Jimmington]

Any of you chaps raiding current content at the mo?
Got back into raiding a couple of times a week and it is quite good fun within the guild environment, not quite the same vibe with the LFR mob, but still doable...

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I just cannot be arsed with this expansion, I've raided on and off, but it just seems like a load of rehashed old bosses and mechanisms so simple that they could be explained to a literal potato in 3 sentences.

[Anery]

Pandaland is meh.
Havn't raided since early Catjism and don't really fancy it right now, maybe in WoD - maybe not.
I'm just levelling alts right now.

[Jimmington]

Got two first heroic kills last night, probably the first time since TBC where I have been ahead of the curve - but yes interest from the guild is waning it would appear. I have been pvp styling as well but it is so unbalanced that it drives you to instant rage. You chaps horde or ally side?

[Anery]

I have both.

Horde on Emerald Dream
Allies on Blades Edge

[Anery]

I've been trying to play my shadow priest again, with limited success. I've relegated myself to farming for cloth as I never managed to max out my clothing or enchanting before Cat Jism (still level 80)

[Anery]

Well, my paladin hit 90 and now I'm working on a shamen which is way more fun than the pally was. Resto/Ele works well, burn your face of lava thing is amazingly fun.

[Anery]

I figured I'd start this up again for a few weeks at start of expansion.

Previously in World of Warcrack:
I levelled my druid to 90, farmed some transmogs and mounts
Levelled my Pally to 90, farmed some transmogs and mounts - paladin tier 2 pants from Ragnaros? no problem, cupcake just won't drop em.
Boosted a warrior to 90 from my pre-order - farmed some mounts.
Abandoned healing on my Shamen because 90% tanks still run at things like this was pre 6.0.2 (stat squish, healing nerf, use your heads tanks..no, not like that, no...that's disgusting, stop it!)
Went through the darker portal to draenor, helped Khadgar with some refugees n shit, beat up some orcs and then tried to build my garrison...

Well, that did not go according to plan at all, build a garrisson they said, instanced to you only they said, quest hub for you they said... well that may well be true but it didn't work. For a stupid amount of time I was stuck in the are where my garrisson should be, but no NPCs and another 50 or so folks standing around.

Hmm, this must be broken - let try logging out.
Can't log out, nothing happens, lets try /logout...oh hey! got the log out timer.

Timer counts down to 0 - nothing happens.

/reload ui
hearthstone
taskmanager>stop application, back into game (it allows you to log back on again without queuing if you return within a few minutes)
close application and go away.

I figured I'd return later to see if it was fixed - still broken .
This time I tried my teleport to moonglade (druid only ability, sorry) after 5 minutes of casting animation - not an embellishment, it was 5 minutes almost exactly - tadaa! back in Azeroth! good times.
I floated around Pandaland for a bit, did some quests, earned a mount. Eventually I decided to head back and see if the drama was fixed. To the blacker portal go!
Can't fly through the portal, wtf?
Back to Stormwind, I spotted Khadgar there earlier.

Khadgar says go to the portals for Cat Jism?!

Oh, there it is! Liddle diddy widdy blacker portal!

Success! I'm in my garrisson! Huzzah!

By this point it was very late/eary so I did a few introductory garrisson quests (go kill these things, go talk to this person) killed a rare - woop, nothing dropped though - and decided to call it a night/morning.

So, I logged in just now - after waiting 45 minutes, thankfully I was able to play hearthsone for the duration, control Pally is amazing to play, really shits on priests and minion buffers - aaaaaand can't do shit. Can't load into garrisson where my quests are, servers so laggy I can't even do archaeology...teleport moonglade - 2 minute cast this time - lets try this again...

[Dog Pants]

Sounds great.

[Roman Totale]

Sounds great.

Reading this and Berk's experiences makes me think that Blizzard phoned this one in. Maybe even just a text. Using only emoticons.