Hour of Twilight: Breaking Dawn

...Yeah, I think Blizzard missed the boat on Patch 4.3 naming. Think of how many worgen Team Jacob could have had on their side! :P

Anyway, Patch 4.3 is being applied tonight, which means I'll finally be able to free up more than 20 bag slots' worth of gear for Transmogrification. (Woo!)

I haven't quite finished my Dark Ranger outfit, but my Elven Ranger outfit is pretty well done - the only consolation prize is rather unfortunately the most important piece; Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix as a placeholder for the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas, which I haven't managed to get yet.

Either way, I'm looking forward to my new look and also looking forward to seeing everyone else's new look - I'll definitely be spending a little more time checking everyone's gear in town now!

Chuck Norris is one of us!

Apparently, the ubiquitous Chuck Norris not only approves of WoW, he's a hunter to boot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arKpdxjHamI

Always knew hunters were epic :)

Phyl back from Pandaria

With all the hype about the next WoW expansion, I found it quite amusing that I'd coincidentally booked a RL trip to the very place where it's based: China.

There are way too many beautiful pics to post here, but here are a few:

Pandaren Housing

Pandarian River

Alliance vs Horde

Deterrence Tanking FTW

I've slowly been going through the more interesting parts of Blizzcon (in my opinion, anyway!).

No panels or previews for me - anything I can read about in a patch note isn't worth watching in real time. Competitions are where I'm at!

Arena is always my first stop - you can't beat the dynamics of fast-paced PvP, really, because anything can and will happen.

My second was the live raid.

This year was probably the best setup out of all the previous years: pitting 2 top WoW guilds, Vodka and Blood Legion, against each other in a race to clear Firelands bosses.

It actually was fairly close, with one guild's half-wipe on Baelroc and full wipe on Ragnaros determining the other guild's win.

My favourite part: if you listen to the commentary (around 8:20 in part 2/4 of the linked vid), hunters get a shoutout on the half-wipe because they used Deterrence to help tank Baelroc after half the raid died.

The commentators mention that that is a familiar sight, and I'd have to agree - I've definitely done my fair share of Deterrence tanking whilst raiding! :D

Blizzkorean!

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of the Asian gamers, so it probably comes as no surprise to hear that I was all set to cheer for the Koreans (hey, I'd cheer for an Aussie if there was one! Damn our latency...) while watching the replay of the 2011 Blizzcon WoW Arena finals.

To my delight, the team that won - OMG - also had a hunter in it, so it was doubly fun to watch all the matches they won along the way.

It never fails to inspire me to become better, try the tactics, pick up hints and tricks about how to deal with PvP against other classes.

Unfortunately I haven't been Arena-ing much this year and it doesn't look likely that I'll get a regular team, so I probably won't get to try out the things I've learnt... but one can only hope :)

Free ride

I'm surprised that my recruit-a-friend made it to 2 months; he's the type that doesn't approve of a "subscription"-type game and had only been playing on "free" game time until recently.

However, I now have a handy flying transport for helping lowbies in the future. Woot :D

Ranger Phyllixia

Not bad, huh? This is now my official elven ranger outfit for Patch 4.3's Transmogrification system - I have every single piece in my bags except the bow.

I'd really like to thank Veralynn of Arygos, whoever you are - the previews of full green mail sets was a lifesaver!

My dark ranger outfit isn't quite as matching:

...and I also don't have all the pieces (the shoulders are going to be a killer), but I'm still quite happy with it just the same.

I'll also be scoping out possible transmog gear for staves and polearms, because it's the default item you see - unfortunately I've already asked for Terokk's Quill to be restored for my dark ranger set and Blizz said no... so I'll have to think of something else :(

Too soon, Executus!

Does anyone else think that Ragnaros' summoning animation is nowhere near as epic as the original animation in Molten Core?

It seems.... too sped up, somehow. Too smooth.

I guess you really can't beat the classics...

Camouflage

No, not the spell - my outfit!

I've been trying to find something to wear when transmogrification kicks in, and I figure it's my chance to look like how I've always wanted - a dark ranger, or failing that, a regular elven ranger.

The above is the closest I can get to an elven ranger - a much better attempt than my closest try at a dark ranger, below:

I just can't seem to find a decent matching darkish set... especially the shoulders.

And this isn't even counting the fact that I may not be able to actually obtain these pieces of mail - it's just what I come up with when playing around with WoW Model Viewer.

So if anyone out there has any ideas on pieces of gear to transmogrify - I'd love to hear from you!

Flame on!

Apart from Beth'tilac - I haven't seen what being on the web is like, so can't completely rule that out - the Firelands raid hasn't impressed me visually all that much.

This week, however, the orange finally got interesting: Alysrazor is a fun and fiery fight, not only in execution but also in looks:

Not to mention, Alysrazor drops one of the cooler-looking weapons I've seen for awhile; I really wish Blizzard had kept dual-wielding 1Hs viable for hunters, not just because of the loot potential but for looks as well.

...Can you tell I've been investigating transmogrification a bit lately? :P