making plans for Pandaria Remix

Now that we’ve got some dates for Pandaria Remix — start May 16 and end August 19 — I can think about refining plans for what I want to do with it.

The May 16 start date for Pandaria Remix is offset from the Patch 10.2.7 release on May 7, giving me a week and two days to do the War Within bridge questline before jumping into Timerunning. The full duration of the Timerunning event runs right up until about a week before my Fall semester will begin — and suggests that the War Within pre-launch event might drop right when I’m in the middle of the high-crunch time of preparing for and getting through the first week of classes. Oh, joy.

All of my lecture courses need some level of iteration this summer. All of my courses are losing a couple of lecture days due to a change in the academic calendar, so I have to figure out which lessons to cut and how to adjust the rest of the course content to compensate. I switched textbooks for my sophomore-level majors class two years ago and I haven’t quite gotten my unit review sheets fully caught up to the differences in content organization of the new book compared to the old book. My GE physical sciences survey class is moving from a 75 minutes 2 days per week format to a 50 minutes 3 days per week format, so it’s going to need a lot of work.

Thus, I think it will be best to go into Pandaria Remix with a very limited set of goals:
1) Level ONE character, probably a Kul Tiran, to at least 50
2) Do the Landfall Campaign (becomes available at level 20)
3) Max out the faction reputation associated with the Landfall Campaign for the Landfall meta achievement to get the Sin’dorei Magister’s Regalia.
4) IF I’ve made adequate progress on my preparation for Fall semester and there’s enough time remaining in the event, level a Vulpera to 50

I’d like to someday acquire Heritage Armor for my Kul Tiran and my Vulpera. Blizzard has confirmed that leveling an Allied Race toon to 50+ in Pandaria Remix will allow the character to pick up their Heritage Armor as soon as they get ported into the regular game at the end of the event. Back in the day, I only did Landfall from the Horde perspective, which makes running a Kul Tiran to see the Alliance perspective on that sequence of events more appealing. I’m also somewhat more interested in the Kul Tiran Heritage armor than the Vulpera, particularly because I want to see if I can make some good mashups with the Plunderlord set.

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What might *I* do with Timerunning: Pandamonium?

The idea of Timerunning as a rapid alt leveling mechanism is certainly intriguing — but if I could port my existing under-level-70 alts into Timerunning at their current levels, instead of creating new alts specifically for that game mode, it would be even better!

One idea I’ve been entertaining for making new alts is using Timerunning to create and level male Blood Elf and Void Elf characters to be the SOs of Kaelinda and Kaelyla. They’d probably both be Mages because I’ve already illustrated them that way — though I have facetiously contemplated making Kaelinda’s SO into a Warlock because he works in Silvermoon’s finance bureau and finance is Teh Evel, amirite?

Something important to consider, though, is which of the Timerunning cosmetic rewards that have been previewed so far I am most interested in acquiring.
The Halfhill Famer’s Backpack is amusing enough for me to want to pick it up even if I only use it in a Sunday Mog Show outfit once. That’ll require completing the Valley of the Four Winds Timerunning meta Achievement.
The Class Armor sets and Class Arsenal sets that unlock by completing the Landfall (Patch 5.1) and Isle of Thunder (Patch 5.2) Timerunning meta achievements, respectively, are recolors of the Trading Post sets that were available during the last third of 2023. I acquired the Mage Armor & Arsenal, the Hunter Armor, the Druid Arsenal, and the Monk Arsenal from the Trading Post. The new color scheme for the Mage Armor is called “Sin’dorei Magister’s” so of course I gotta have it. I find myself about as interested in the other Class Armor sets as I was before. Of the Arsenals, I am most interested in the new color scheme for the Druid weapons. The new color scheme for the Mage weapons is also quite nice — but I haven’t managed to use any of the Battle Magister’s weapons from the Trading Post in a Sunday Mog Show outfit yet. The new color scheme for the Monk weapons is lovely, too, but not quite to the level of “oooh must have!”

If I did Timerunning with a Vulpera Monk and a Kul Tiran Druid, in addition to the Eversong Elf fellas, I could pick up the other Class Armor & Arsenal sets I’m most interested in, and when those toons get ported back into the regular game after Timerunning ends, I ought to be able to get the Heritage Armor for those races.

Timerunning will be competing, however, with the War Within lead-in storyline and its associated cosmetics collection activities. So if I only have time & attention this summer for one Timerunning toon, it’ll most likely be Kaelinda’s SO.

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Plunderstorm P.S. — Polly Roger

I told my son that I was done playing Plunderstorm, but we were only one [Prize] Level away from getting the fancy pirate bird, and I thought he could get it all by himself if he kept playing Plunderstorm.
He kept playing, and he got it.
If he keeps playing Plunderstorm and manages to get us to Renown 40 by the end of the event, great! If he doesn’t, that’s just fine, too.

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DONE with Plunderstorm! **phew!**

On Tuesday night, I got to Renown 36. On Wednesday night, I just wanted to be DONE with Plunderstorm, so I pushed through to Renown 38.

Blizzard, please don’t put something as desirable as a high-res, modern version of the long red pirate coat worn by Baron Longshore that I’ve wanted forever behind a PvP game mode ever ever again.

Or if you do, PLEASE at least make a separate bracket for all the players who have reached the end of the cosmetic rewards track and then keep coming back because they really only care about the PvP.
Some sort of grace period with no PvP allowed at the very beginning of each match would have been nice, too, whether it was a timer or a certain level that a participant has to reach before they can initiate or be targeted by PvP. Perhaps level 7? Because for some of the quests, even with a “good” landing, I would often reach level 6 from killing creatures and picking up Plunder on the ground before I was even able to complete the quest.

~*~*~

CAVEAT: I am not particularly interested in Polly Roger for myself, but my kids think it’s fun to look at, and I’m sure they’d enjoy playing with it if my account had it. My oldest did contribute meaningfully to my Renown progression, so if he regularly earns computer time and spends at least some of that computer time playing Plunderstorm, I think he’ll manage to get from Renown 38 to Renown 39 all by himself. Still, once a close date for Plunderstorm has been announced, I’ll probably check in with Da’kash in the main Valdrakken inn to see if my son has actually succeeded in obtaining Polly Roger, and run a few more matches to make sure that we get it if he hasn’t.

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Sunday on the Promenade 212

Wasting away in the Plunderstorm
Searching for my lost silver and gold…
With some help from my kid, I’ve made it to Renown 24. Only 14 more levels to go… I just want the Tender to spend at the Trading Post and the Plunderlord Mog set, I don’t need the fancy parrot mount or the title or the tabard.
One evening this week, I went to bed early and didn’t do any Plunderstorm. The next night, I got the 800 Plunder reward for completing the Captain’s Orders from my first two Plunderstorm matches.

Storm Captain

Storm Captain’s Hat, Weatherproven Drape, Fine Crimson Doublet, Swindler’s Cutouts, Handwoven Trousers, Silent Leathers, Blacksteel Saber, Mistyreed Torch
This outfit is rewarded from Keg Leg’s Crew (Plunderstorm) Renown levels 12 – 21.

Taverner’s Tale II

Reno’s Lucky Hat, Dueler’s Sepia Shoulder Cape, The Tavern’s Tabard, Earth Mother’s Sepia Gloves, Taverner’s Belt, Trader’s Sepia Sarong, Blue Diamond Witchwand, Heartbound Tome
This outfit, which makes use of Trading Post models in a color first available from the March 2024 Trial of Style, has a little more of the “telling tales of high adventure while playing cards at a genteel gathering” vibe.

Jade Variations

Summer: Gilded Sunglasses, Jade Breastplate, Jade Legplates, Vorpil’s Ribsmasher

Blue Skies: Gilded Sunglasses, Selfless Wings of the Ascended, Jade Breastplate, Waistguard of Divine Grace, Jade Legplates, Frostbitten Hammer

Goin’ Green: Fel-Proof Goggles, Gleaming Mantle of Unrelenting Justice, Gleaming Cloak of Unrelenting Justice, Jade Breastplate, Gleaming Gloves of Unrelenting Justice, Gleaming Belt of Unrelenting Justice, Jade Legplates, Gleaming Treads of Unrelenting Justice, Vorpil’s Ribsmasher
A series of outfits I made for sequential themes in the March 2024 Trial of Style.

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This series of posts began because I set myself a goal to document new Transmogrification outfits in a more timely fashion. As soon as I create a new outfit, I write it up in a draft post. As the weekend approaches, I start working on taking fashion screenshots, processing them, and updating “Things my [Class] Wears” posts. On Sunday — though not every Sunday — I publish the collection of my recent efforts. Then I begin the next “Sunday on the Promenade” draft post.

Occasionally, I have ideas for themed Transmogrification collections that take several months to completely assemble. Thus, some of these outfits might get re-posted at a later date as part of such a themed Transmogrification collection.

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Plunderstorm needs a Renown 40 bracket

I’ve managed to reach Renown 16 in Plunderstorm. Only 22 more levels to go before I’ll have the all the Mogs and can get out of there.
Every evening, there are more and more players in the matches sporting the fancy Plunderlord gear. The more people who are there who are already Renown 40 and just there for the PvP, the more difficult it’s going to get for me to make progress. I just don’t have the time or the psychological stamina, however, to do more than about two Renown levels per night.
Last night, therefore, I put in a Suggestion that went something like this: “Plunderstorm would be a lot nicer activity for players who just want to get the Dragonflight cosmetics if the matches had Renown brackets, like the level brackets in regular game PvP. Maybe five Renown levels per bracket? Most importantly, a Renown 40 bracket for the players who just want to PvP. Keep the Renown 40s who just want to PvP away from the lower Renown players who just want the Dragonflight cosmetics!”

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I’m… done (with Dragonflight)? And Plunderstorm is plugging the gap?

While walking to campus this morning, I had a surprising thought. Until Patch 10.2.7 comes out — which, from its name on the roadmap, sounds like it will be a bridge patch to War Within* — I am pretty much done with Dragonflight.

Last week, when I finally did the Patch 10.1 Blue Dragonflight storyline, I got all caught up on all of the major story content of Dragonflight thus far.

This week, after doing the Azerothian Archives Big Dig and world quests, I was able to purchase the last of the Mog items I wanted from that activity.

Major Mog collection goals? DONE.** Major story completion? DONE.

This is a kind of a strange feeling.

For the last several years — the years encompassed by Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands in WoW — I’ve had a long lag period in which I was working on content from each expansion well after the next expansion had come out. Being at the current expansion’s level cap definitely helped with getting through that lingering endgame content from the previous expansion. However, playing last expansion endgame catch-up also held me back from getting into the current expansion’s endgame content. Now, those years were also pretty crazy years outside of Azeroth between babies, drama at work, and COVID, so I was okay with being waaay behind the curve in Azeroth. With real life settling down, though, when Dragonflight launched, I made myself a soft goal of getting all the significant Dragonflight story content done before the next expansion came out. Until Patch 10.2.7, I’ve done it!

So, um, now what am I gonna do in Azeroth? I could level alts…? Play Classic Era Classic?

Or, you know, I could go do the brand new shiny thing that was just released, which will only be available for a limited time — conveniently, almost but not quite the amount of time until Patch 10.2.7*** if Blizzard sticks to the 8 weeks between updates schedule that they’ve said they want to continue for the rest of Dragonflight — and grind up all the Mog stuff I want from it.

Looked at that way, it seems very much like the Plunderstorm was deliberately designed and timed to address the longstanding end-of-expansion doldrums problem. And with the way the patch cadence and difficulty of getting things even for a relatively casual player like myself has been in this expansion, even I am finding myself with plenty of time and attention for the Plunderstorm+. Well played, Blizzard, well played.

~*~*~
* Kinda-sorta like the last patch of an FFXIV expansion?
** Kerisa is still trying to get the Crystalline Tender’s Chestpiece from the Emerald Dream weeklies, but that takes, like, an hour to do each reset day
*** Or maybe just Season 4, with Patch 10.2.7 another eight weeks after that?
+ Well, at least until Noblegarden, when I’ve got a handful of alts who will want to collect eggs for XP, and there will be a new holiday boss to farm for a pretty pastel recolor of the Leywoven Flying Carpet…

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Hearthstone 10th Anniversary summary; Plunderstorm progress

By spending a rather unhealthy amount of time camping Whizbang spawns, I managed to obtain a Collector’s Carryall for all 17 characters on my primary realm. In the process, I acquired 35 Sarges (including the first one, which I added to my Battle Pet journal, and the one I traded away to another player), 13 of which were collected by Kaelinda alone.
~*~*~
After the rest of my weekly activities were done, I spent the time in between Whizbang spawns running Plunderstorm matches. Since the Plunder increase hotfix, I can usually get 300 – 400 Plunder per match; occasionally, I can even get almost to or just barely over 500. To help myself stay interested, I change my pirate’s appearance every few matches. I don’t spend a lot of time on that — I pick a race, hit the “randomize” button until it produces a combination that I find reasonably pleasant to look at, and then go. I’ve managed to get to Renown 6, but my goal of Renown 38 still seems a long way off.
Although my son has tried Plunderstorm a few times, so far he seems to have bounced off of it. He’d still rather play WoW or SCII.

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The Plunderstorm — first impressions upon actually playing it

In my first couple of Plunderstorm matches, I died to PvE stuff before I even saw another player. I’m still trying to get used to having my default melee ability on R, since that’s not a key I have hotkeyed to anything in the normal game. I figured out that if I could land my parrot in a relatively isolated spot, I could level up and gather plunder from PvE mobs for awhile before encountering another player — at which point, I would die. I am definitely not getting about 500 reputation per match! 50 would be more like it. For this first night, weaving Plunderstorm matches in between Whizbang spawns and my reset day routine, I did enough matches to get to Renown 2.5-ish.

I’ll have to get to Renown 38 — almost to the cap of 40 — to get all the Mog stuff; there are three increasingly fancy Mog sets and a selection of weapons. There’s also Trader’s Tender at two of the intermediate Renown levels, which will be a nice boost for being able to purchase whatever shows up at the Trading Post in April.

To articulate a little better why I like the Plunderstorm being independent of main account activity: this means that I don’t have to either park the character that I want to do it with out in Arathi Highlands or do a lot of traveling back and forth between the Dragon Isles and Arathi Highlands with a character who also wants to keep working through her usual Dragonflight weekly routine.

My son, watching me trying it out, was interested in it and asked if I would let him play it. When he’s earned his screen time tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have to show him how to get into the Plunderstorm.

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Patch 10.2.6, The Plunderstorm! first thoughts — at work, before actually playing it

I don’t like PvP.
I do. not. like. it., Sam-I-am!
Three expansions later, I still haven’t got the 1000 Honorable Kills tint for the Hidden appearances of my Legion Artifact weapons. I did do a few matches of the WoW’s Birthday version of Alterac Valley last year and that got me up to about 250 Honorable Kills, so a few more years of that should get me there… 😛
BUT!
That pirate ensemble in the official Blizzard post about the Plunderstorm sure is sweeeeet. So even if I end up spending most of my time in Plunderstorm matches dead and spectating, I’ll endure enough of them to get far enough along the Renown track to get it.

Speaking of which, I like very much that getting rewards from the Plunderstorm won’t rely on being lucky enough and good at surviving enough to get to the right treasure chests to loot them, but is instead tied to progression along a Renown track. What was it they said in the Blizzcast interview? Four or five matches should get even a player who doesn’t survive very well a full Renown level? Getting Plunderstorm rewards is predictable and plannable… unlike farming for the 36-slot bag from the Hearthstone anniversary event… or for Experiment 12-B from Ultraxion….

I also really like a lot that Plunderstorm activity is independent of main account activity, other than rewards obtained in the Plunderstorm transferring over to the main account. And since your character for the Plunderstorm is only for the Plunderstorm, I think I won’t be either a Tauren or an Eversong Elf. Maybe I’ll be a Troll! or a Vulpera! or a Pandaren!

A few months back, BTH introduced our oldest to Starcraft II co-op mode and custom maps. Since then, he’s been spending quite a lot of his screen time playing SCII instead of WoW; his favorite characters are Kerrigan, Artanis, Zeratul, and Alarak. If I show my son how to get into the Plunderstorm, will he think it is fun enough that he will want to play it instead of SCII and do all the work, as it were, of climbing up that Renown track for me?

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