August 5, 2009

Patch 3.2 Has Hit!

Patch 3.2 hit last night and the post-patch experience began. Lag, log in problems, etc. But I won't focus on that, like others do. It's expected and not noteworthy in the least.

What was noteworthy was the Argent Tournament. Yet another area on the map that I had never been to. Sheesh! Where have I been all these months? I was on my mage, content in my faster flight speed and looking forward to our Naxx run when someone in guild said, "who wants to check out the new instance?" Um...huh? OK, I'll admit I've been remiss in reading WoWInsider (or WoW.com, as it is now called). So I haven't been keeping up to date . But I'm really surprised I hadn't noticed that a new instance was coming!

We gathered 10 guildies and were off to the Tournie. The area is cool looking...reminds me of the fairgrounds near where I grew up. After discussing the new Dungeon and Raid settings options, we decided we should do the 10-man raid version, not Heroic. OK...so we wiped. Yeah, a few times. But we had fun doing so. I love the new gimic of the adds jumping on people's backs. That was cute.

After a few wipes, we decided to try the 5-man regular. I know elite players will turn their noses up at me for saying this, but it was hard! First, I'm just not good at encounters that require me to work with a pet. I'm just not. No two ways about it. No question. Nope, nuh uh. I suck at it. So the first part, where you have to joust the enemy, it felt like chaos to me. And, even though we all died, we actually got past that phase. (I'll have to read up on it to understand the logic of that.) But, moving on...the rest of the instance was pretty much standard stuff. Our druid healer was constantly running low on mana...and we were only on the 5-man regular! Holy mana, Batman! We finished it and were disappointed to see only ilvl 200 items. This was way harder than any of the regular 5-man dungeons. How could the purples be the same quality?

Despite finding the regular version challenging, we tried doing the heroic version. Ugh! Even worse, as one would expect. We wiped on the jousting, causing it to reset. Then we wiped again, but made it past the phase. WTF? I just don't understand that. Then the first encounter with the three representatives of the Horde cities? Wipe fest again. We called it a night after 3 wipes.

Oy vey! Either we were just not getting the stategies, or these dungeons are tuned much tougher than the other lvl 80 dungeons. I'll have to do some reading...

Other stuff?
I didn't spend any time on my other toons. Because of the patch problems, I got a late start. So the little time I had was spent on my mage with the new content.

Not sure if I'll play again tonight. The first part of the So You Think You Can Dance finale is tonight. I can't wait to see all the performances.