Dragonblight

Shorter playtime last night to compensate for the weekend’s excesses, but was still able to hit level 72.  I think I’ve nearly finished everything there is to do in Dragonblight, save the group quests which offer no reward worth standing around trying to get a group together to win. 

One thing that is actually impressing me with this expansion is the amount of lore that has gone into the game beyond the typical blurb thrown into a quest’s descriptive text, which I often skim as I try to quickly discern the number of rats the quest giver wants me to slay.  The developers bit back this time and hard, as there are a number of quests that, as part of the completion sequence, allow/force you to watch cut scenes that show the story behind the events.  I rather enjoy these and it adds a much-needed element of depth to the game as a whole.

In the past couple of days, for example, I have summoned visions of the ghost of Arthas, the son of the King, and watched as he orders his men’s ships burned to prevent their retreat.  Deep in the depths of Dragonsblight, where the cursed blade Frostmourne once rested, ghosts of the past showed Arthas claiming the blade for himself, sacrificing his own soul and his friend for its power—becoming the first Death Knight.  Essentially, the nifty bits from Warcraft III dropped into action sequences.

Otherwise, recovered a lich’s phylactery and helped a squadron of knights beat him down, did a series of quests for an emo black dragon deep within a lava-filled cave full of smoldering animated skeletons and horrors from beyond, and killed a bunch of things because people were willing to give me gold.  By far, the most fun I had was guarding the Hourglass of Eternity.

In RTS games, I’m a complete sucker for “Alamo” scenarios where an objective must be defended for a certain time period.  This time, I was tasked with placing the hourglass in the center of a very scary area and defending it from interlopers for a set time.  To my surprise, the first thing that warps in is a doppelganger of me, who hastily explains he is my future self and he’ll help me defend the artifact.  After the first critters warped in to attack, I learned a few things about my future.

Apparently in the future I’m a total dick, have gotten rid of Steve, and prefer hitting things with my staff instead of casting spells.  He chided me with comments like “I can’t believe I used to wear that” and the like.  For a couple of minutes, dragonkin warped in two to four at a time and tried to dismantle my artifact with force, so I felt obligated to defend in kind.  To his credit, future me could really wield a stick and after the last wave of trash was hauled away, an elite dragon landed and I had no problems letting him take the aggro before nuking the hell out of it.  With the beast slain, “future me” couldn’t resist getting in one last jibe at me to “replace my equipment!” before returning to the ether.  As a side note, I later looked it up and found there’s a follow-up quest you can do much, much later that allows you to go into the past where someone is guarding an Hourglass…

I suppose I should start practicing with my staff now.