WoW Weekly: Finally, a distraction

WoW Weekly is a biweekly-ish, self-absorbed look into the things I've been doing -- or not doing -- in the game. From auctioneering and pet battling to mount farming and raiding.

I have one Pandaria PvE achievement left. A single mob to kill---or rather, have someone kill for me---and the completionist in me will be sated until Warlords' releases. But it's apparently not that simple. According to a number of comments on Wowhead, this particular achievement can be buggy. In fact, I've satisfied the requirement to kill Cheng-Bo three times now to no avail, and I've tried every trick in the book...or at least, every trick suggested by the commenters at Wowhead. Surely, it'll work for me one of these days. Right?

But truth is, I am seriously exhausted with MoP. The majority of my time in-game since 2014 broke has been spent simply talking to my friends and guildmates---not actually engaging in much play. I'm ready for a new distraction. Thankfully, it seems I may have found one at just the right time.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Pre-Patch

I'm really excited about the new systems changes. I got to play a teeny bit of RoS at Blizzcon, but since I chose the Crusader and played on the new PS4, I had no clue what I was doing and it was hard to get a feel for any of the major changes. Then, after updating my client to the pre-patch last night, I spent several hours, stretching way past my bedtime, tooling around on my max-level barbarian and later, a lower-level witch doctor. It's the most fun I've had playing Diablo 3, period.

Full disclosure: I enjoyed Diablo 3 for a while after release, but became increasingly frustrated with loot and monster scaling. As a more casual player when it comes to that game, I rarely walked away from that game feeling like it was time well-spent. Grinding mobs and levels for hours would rarely reward an item upgrade---I can think of one occasion, honest. After hitting a wall, whether it be a brutal elite mob or even a chapter boss, I'd reluctantly head to the auction house to purchase those upgrades I so direly yearned to see drop from monsters. There was no feeling of reward, there was no feeling of accomplishment---I was just glad I had friends who played enough to lend me crazy amounts of gold to make upgrading my character possible. That's not the type of game I wanted to play. So I didn't. 

But now...now with the 2.0.1 changes, I've found the perfect distraction that has completely nullified my desire for more Warlords information. That will come when it comes. Between the new Paragon system, updated abilities, and Loot 2.0, which is arguably how the game should've launched in the first place, D3 is in a really good place. I'm looking forward to many, many hours obliterating the shit out of monsters.

Boost to 90

Though I've been somewhat absent from the game and social media due to life's demands, I couldn't help myself from engaging in several lengthy, spirited conversations about the service, mainly the price. On the day the news broke I was sure the number was either a placeholder or some excellent trolling on Blizzard's part. 

.@EntropiaWoW And even if that number is confirmed...which I HIGHLY, HIGHLY doubt...I'll probably just go "meh."
— Ross (@elepheagle) February 18, 2014

Turns out that might not be the case, as Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas defended the pricing and offered rationale in a recent interview, saying most of the reasoning behind the price point was to ensure the leveling process doesn't become devalued.

While I can totally respect Blizzard's desire for people to actually play their game and not simply drop $10 to get a near max-level toon, I feel $60 is way too much to ask. I think $35 would be a sweet spot, though I can also understand why they'd want the boost price to be near what it would cost to roll a second account.

Admittedly, what do I know, sitting here as nothing more than an armchair analyst with no data. Perhaps this is where their marketing strategy and their gameplay strategy teams met. Still, at some point down the road, it will be cheaper than $60 to buy Warlords, MoP, the Battle Chest and pay for the $25 account transfer. It'll be interested to see how Blizzard counters that down the road. That, and there's still a little part of me that's not accepting the $60 price tag. I'm going to have to see it live in order to believe it.

In-game (for reals)

Besides the Know Role Your achievement I'm trying to close out, there are a few other things I'm slowly working on. In no particular order:

• Legendary Cloak for my death knight. I'm at the closing stages, collecting Titan Runestones. I earned two the first week, didn't have the time to run any raids with her last week, and am thinking about making a more concerted effort this week. However, with how I've reacted to the D3 updates, I'm feeling it less and less likely.
• Shadowmourne questline on said death knight. I've completed all the non-RNG annoying bits. Now it's just a matter of getting in there with regularity to collect the items for the next stage of the quest.
• I've spent the gold cap. Expect to see an update on how that all went down in a near-future post. And I may be considering a Chasing the Gold Cap redux. I've started over on a new server, and after some serious expenses, I'm still already 5% of the way there. 
• The guild is still recruiting fun, friendly adults to join our guild. We've seen a significant influx of new members these past two weeks. Learn about us here and here.