It's About Time...

If I had a readership this is the point at which I would apologise for my absence and lack of posts. 
Given the lack of said readership I will just head straight into what I've been up to since I last posted but promise to post more often just in case some lost soul lands on these shores and needs something to read.

So, where were we...?
I left you having just transferred my shaman over to horde for some heroic progression in Siege of Orgrimmar.

It didn't take long to overtake the progress I had made on my rogue and I was quickly up to speed with the rest of the guild.

We then quickly made it to 8/13HC and were progressing on Spoils when the sign-ups started to drop a little, the malaise was spreading here too.

It turns out it was only a blip and the sign-ups came back strongly with the pre-expansion patch but I was already considering what I wanted to do in WoD and making preparations.

It was a great deal of fun running 25-man heroics and the number of players at a very similar standard to myself mean there was some fantastic competition in the team.

This wasn't enough though, I wanted to be raiding with friends again. 

The horde guild was full of good people and I'm sure I would have made friends there anyway but I missed my old friends and decided to move back to my old guild.

Of course, when I got there, most people were taking a break or just chilling out waiting for the expansion to arrive.  So we just ran a few raids to finish off achievements for people and have some fun while we waited.

Warlords of Draenor
Much excitement with the launch of the new expansion, new content at long last!
Unfortunately, the launch was pretty much a disaster.

Getting into Draenor was difficult enough with Khadgar absolutely swamped with people trying to talk him into leading them, one by one, through the portal. 

Thankfully, he quickly remembered he was a mage, cast Mirror Image and sent those images off to the major cities of Azeroth.  The crowds dispersed and we could make our way through the portal.

The opening scenes are fantastic, setting the scene perfectly for what we will be facing (at least initially) in this alternate Draenor.

There was some dubious decision-making along the way though, setting Gul'dan free is bound to come back to bite us at some point.

Welcome to Draenor achievements flashed up almost constantly in guild chat but this is the point it really fell to pieces.

The flagship feature of the expansion, Garrisons, just didn't work.  Well, not the garrisons themselves but the Instancing technology that they were built on.  It was overloaded by the massive demand and couldn't cope.

To make it worse, virtually all of the opening quests required the garrison in one way or another.  And the final nail in the coffin was the fact that all of the flightpaths passed through the garrison too.

Chaos and frustration ensued as the whole server spent the best part of a week trying to go into/out of/over/under/round their garrisons and failing miserably.

The issues were finally sorted out and we were all free to enjoy questing through one of the best levelling experiences I have ever witnessed. 

Beautifully crafted zones, varied and interesting questlines, NPCs with character and depth, all contributed to me almost regretting hitting 100.  I didn't want it to end so quickly, I didn't really want it to end at all. 
I frequently (and gleefully) allowed myself to be distracted by the numerous rares and treasures around the zones, so much glorious content to do.

But hit 100 I did and began the gearing ready for our first raid.  This led me into the heroic dungeons which I also enjoyed immensely, much higher in difficulty that their MoP equivalents and challenging once more in our questing greens.

Posts on gearing up, dungeons and raiding to come "soon"

Note to self:  Soon < 6 months.