an inexplicable ailment in Dalaran

When Argus first appeared in the skies on the 8th, Dalaran became an anxious place. Concerned Citizens clustered around the guards, asking for answers about what was happening. I ran through many of the shops, trying to find as many different quotes from the inhabitants of Dalaran as I could. A few days later, it occurred to me that I hadn’t gone into the First Aid shop yet. This is what I saw:

A few Dalaran Citizens were sitting near the back of the shop; when I clicked on them, they each had a debuff called “Inexplicable Feeling: Not feeling quite right”.

The next week, the 15th, the Concerned Citizens pestering the guards had been joined by Scared Citizens. Some of the Scared Citizens were fearfully running around the streets.

I made rounds of the city to see if the shopkeepers were saying any new and different things; they were. When I visited the First Aid shop, this is what I saw:

The previous week, I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary as I approached the shop, but this week, there were ill-looking people gathering around the entrance:

This week, on the 22nd, some of the residents of Dalaran had become Terrified Citizens — some running around and others too frightened to do anything but cower in corners. I observed more new and different quotes from the shopkeepers; several of them talk about having a rush of customers or getting low on supplies.

The First Aid shop and the street around it had become even more crowded:

I stood around by the First Aid shop for quite a long time while I was writing up this post, and I saw the afflicted citizens say a variety of things:
“I… I don’t feel well.”
“Is it normal to see stars?”
“Please. You have to help us.”
“I feel it coming on again…”
“This has to end. I can’t take much more of this.”
“They say it’s all in your head, but this… this is different. I swear!”

What is going on here?

Even more curious, why haven’t I seen much of anything about this subplot of the pre-Patch 7.3 event on Wowhead yet? There’s a screenshot of the first few afflicted citizens sitting in the First Aid shop in the “Patch 7.3 Foreshadowing” post that Wowhead made on the 8th, but don’t think I’ve seen anything about the continuing developments and buildup of the Patch 7.3 foreshadowing in Dalaran since then. Maybe they just weren’t able to datamine anything about what this developing medical crisis is leading up to?

Or is this perhaps related to the Whispers of a Frightened World? I haven’t done that scenario yet because I haven’t been able to find the breadcrumb for it with either Kamalia or Kaelinda. Perhaps I’m not getting it because I haven’t been to the Broken Shore and done any of the Legionfall stuff yet?

I wonder what will happen in Dalaran next week when Patch 7.3 launches…?

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the Underpowered Death Knight and the Doomsayers’ return

The burned-out husk of a world appeared suddenly in the sky. Though she didn’t know exactly how it had come to be there, the Underpowered Death Knight suspected that it had something to do with the activities of the Big Damn Heroes in the Broken Isles.

So she went to Dalaran.

Anxiety filled the floating city.

So did Draenei, conversing in excited tones.

So the ruined world was the Draenei homeworld, Argus, then? But how had it gotten to be looming over Azeroth?

And the Doomsayers were back, apparently feeling very Validated by this turn of events.

The first Doomsayer she talked to handed her a pamphlet. It was not the same as the pamphlets the Doomsayers had been handing out before the Legion Invasions began, a year ago. The Underpowered Death Knight decided to wait around and see how many different pamphlets she could collect, and compare the new pamphlets to to the ones she had collected last year.

A few were obvious sequels to the previous pamphlets.

The others did not correspond so well, but she matched them up as best she could.

She hoped that Archmage Khadgar and the Order Hall leaders knew what they were doing…

~*~*~

It was fun to discover this stuff for myself on Tuesday afternoon/evening, before Wowhead and Blizzard Watch made their posts about it. This is just a pre-patch event, but it feels more like a pre-expansion event!

~*~*~

I’ve now updated the image links in all of the Underpowered Death Knight posts and given them their own section on the Stories page.

Previously: Scenes from the Auction House dance party

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scenes from the Auction House dance party

As my current primary banker, it fell to the Underpowered Death Knight to attend the Auction House dance party. She took all of her favorite party clothes and changed outfits at intervals throughout the day.

Things started out a little slow.

Sometimes the dance floor was definitely the safest place to be.

It was fun to be the only Tauren in the house while I was wearing this outfit!

That white leaf version of the Cenarion Spaulders on the Blood Elf in the background comes from the Ravenbear Disguise — a toy I have, but have never actually tried. Now that I know what it does, my Druid will want to use it to augment a Transmogrification kit someday. She has coveted those shoulders ever since she first met with Morthis Whisperwing for the Swift Flight Form quest chain.

I saw fewer bunny ears than I might have expected.

The Underpowered Death Knight looks pretty drunk in this selfie — rather appropriate for her costume of the moment!

Although Mystery Kegs and other forms of brew abounded, however, she hadn’t actually partaken.

Then this happened.

So I popped my Jewel of Hellfire, too…

…which scared away all the other Tauren at the party.

Why does the female fel Eredar face have the same kinds of seams in it as the Titan Computer Console faces in the Tribunal of the Ages?


reference image from Wowhead

Someone put down a Moonfeather Statue…
It was a MOONKIN MASH!
It was an OWLBEAR SMASH!

I saw several people wearing the new Winter Veil suits, but I think I might have been the only Gaudy Sweater in the crowd.

I loved seeing these two low-level characters catching the spirit of the fun and hanging around at the party for awhile.

I considered wearing this hat with a Tuxedo, but this is so much more stylish and eye-catching, dontcha think?

Despite this event triggering whenever you entered the Auction House from far enough outside —



— people were continually complaining about the absence of the auctioneers and wondering where they were supposed to go. More than once, I spoke up reminding the poor confused people that Orgrimmar also has auctioneers in Goblintown, Trolltown, Taurentown, and the Valley of Honor.

An Alliance raid paid us a call, but they couldn’t stop the funk.

Rainbow Generators were very popular all day long, but this is the most I think I ever saw going at once — and certainly the prettiest formation!

Somehow it wasn’t surprising that the most populous race for the race calls always seemed to be the Sin’dorei. Fortunately, they are so tiny (compared to the Shu’halo) that a lot more of them can comfortably fit on the stage.

Tauren have the most fun, though!

A sweet end to the day!

A very serendipitous selfie snap that I couldn’t replicate if I tried! Though I had been dancing next to that handsome fellow in the guard costume deliberately 😛

Previously: the Underpowered Death Knight and the Doomsayers

Next: the Underpowered Death Knight and the Doomsayers’ return

~*~*~

I’ve updated the image links in my posts about the earlier Volunteer Guard Day and Spring Balloon Festival micro-holidays.

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Trial of Style? meh…

I was looking forward to finding out what the Trial of Style cosmetic rewards would be, so that I’d know if this event would really be something I’d want to put a lot of time & effort into.

Well, the rewards have been previewed… and they’re not particularly exciting to me.

Trial of Style reward preview images from Wowhead

I don’t really like that cloth set at all; I like the bottom half of the leather set but not the top half; there are other low-level mail sets I like better anyway; I do like this plate set, though.

Furthermore, they are all appearances that are obtainable in other ways… and I’ve already collected as much of those sets as I’m interested in acquiring.

I guess I can see where the devs are going with that; I suspect that they want the Trial of Style to be a thing folks do more for the fun of doing it and the Twitter/blog bragging rights of winning it than for the tangible rewards, and they also don’t want folks to complain about feeling obligated to do it because the cosmetic rewards are too desirable.

Still, I think it would be more interesting if the rewards were at least new & unique colorations of these armor models. For the cloth set, perhaps pale pink where it is teal, pale gold instead of silver for the metallic areas, and emerald green for the jewels? There already exists a blue version of the pants for the leather set, but no other items in that coloration, so a full set of a blue version of this leather gear would be nice. I’d go for that mail gear in blue, too, whether it was blue & silver or blue & gold. For the plate set, a black & red Blood Knight version might be appropriate.

The shirt reward for actually winning the competition appears to be a darker version of the Gilnean Adventurer’s Shirt. It’s something that would be nice to have… but not “must have” to the level of strenuously trying to get it.

Still, I’ll probably try out the Trial of Style at least once or twice just to see how it goes. (Then again, I still haven’t gotten around to going Timewalking, even though in principle I think it’s a great feature…)

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Volunteer Guard Day

Not being all that keen on being a Stormwind Guard or an Orgrimmar Grunt for a day, I was going to give this micro-holiday a pass until I read that the transformation worked for guards in all of the major cities.

It’s part of my Warrior’s RP story that she spent several years serving first as a Bluffwatcher,

then as one of Cairne’s Honor Guards.

So on this day of acknowledging the service of the city guards, it was natural that she’d want to return to Thunder Bluff and assist the Bluffwatchers.

I was surprised that the first City Attacker that appeared after I got the guard transformation was a male Troll in Dragonstalker gear.

Why would a Horde person be attacking a Horde city? I had expected the City Attackers to be enemy NPC races such as centaurs, harpies, troggs, naga, or mogu.

Soon, I saw that there was a group of transformed players standing around near the inn, and that City Attackers were rapidly spawning near them.

I joined the group and fought until I reached the commendation for 50 kills… but by then I was already getting kind of bored of the activity.

I observed that all of the City Attackers were player races wearing T2 armor. As well as the male Troll Hunter, I saw a female Undead Priest, a female Human Mage, a female Draenei Shaman, a female Tauren Druid, a male Blood Elf Paladin, a male Orc Warrior, a male Goblin Rogue, a male Tauren Death Knight, and a Gnome Warlock that I didn’t get a close enough look at to determine if it was male or female. After I’d thought on it for awhile, I concluded that this choice of appearances for the City Attackers was meant to emulate fighting off a PvP raid on the city — though it still seemed very strange to me that my Horde city should have Horde attackers. I think it would have made more sense for there to have been two groups of City Attackers — a Horde group that would only spawn in Alliance cities, and an Alliance group that would only spawn in Horde cities.

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going mog crazy

A few of my characters — the Priest, the Druid, the Paladin — are already at the point where they need to run dungeons before they can progress any further in their Order Hall campaigns — and I know the others will get there eventually. This has had two stalling-out effects. One, I feel the need to complete the storylines of the appropriate zones so that I can maximize each dungeon run by also being able to grab the Pillar of Creation found therein. Two, I’m intimidated by reports I’ve seen in Blizzard Watch’s “The Queue” column of people being kicked from leveling Normal-mode dungeons for low DPS — and I have quite a bit of trepidation about healing with the Priest and the Paladin because they struggled through their Holy Artifact acquisition scenarios.

Between that and the baby, I have more or less entirely set aside any notion of making progress in Legion content (for the time being) in favor of filling out the holes in my Appearances collection.

This doesn’t mean I’m trying to collect everything I don’t have yet — I don’t like a lot of the appearances I don’t have (or even all of the ones I do). What it does mean is that I’ve gone through all the subcategories of the Appearances tab and made a list of items I don’t have yet that I do like and have been working on acquiring them; thus far, I’ve been focusing down the Plate armor list. I’ve been running old raids and dungeons rather obsessively for the past month or two, to the extent that I’m starting to feel like I might be in danger of burning myself out on it. I might go back to leveling as a break from the Mog farming!

I’m pleased that the holiday party clothes will become Moggable during the appropriate weeks. I guess I need to go through my party clothes collections and get that stuff out of my Banks and into my Appearances tab. I’ll have to check if the party clothes appearances are account-wide or armor-type limited or individual — if Kamalia has a pink Lunar Festival dress, will everyone be able to use it, or just Kam and Ketura (the mail wearers), or just Kam? Account-wide would be best, of course, but armor-type limited would be better than individual because it would mean less characters who’ll have to start doing holiday stuff again.

I am intrigued by the “Trial of Style” Mog competition scenario coming in the next patch. I applaud the developers for trying to come up with something interactive and fun involving Transmogrification. Two minutes isn’t all that long to create a new outfit, though! Unless I already have a new outfit in mind, I can spend 30 – 45 minutes sitting in front of the Warpweaver trying to assemble a new kit. Given that Wowhead has already datamined the “Trial of Style” themes, though, I can definitely see myself planning a set of outfits (one of each armor type) for each theme ahead of time.

The other thing in Patch 7.2.5 that sounds nifty to me is the Moonkin Festival! I’ve ignored the micro-holidays so far, but I’ll definitely have to make time to take my Druid to this one!

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great wings of fire!

When Ziggie Sparks first showed up at the Darkmoon Faire offering the Firebird’s Challenge, I tried it a few times and then gave up, frustrated, because I couldn’t even manage to get the 15 rings to complete the quest in one try.

How long has it been since that was a new addition to the Faire, anyway? For however long that is, I have been enviously watching folks using the Blazing Wings — and trying, in a sour-grapesian way, to convince myself that I didn’t really want them anyway.

Some weeks ago, I decided that I needed the Blazing Wings as the finishing touch for a Transmogrification kit.

So when the Faire came around again this week, I determined that I would buy a stack of Darkmoon game tokens and keep trying the Firebird’s Challenge until I got the Brood of Alysrazor achievement. On a whim, I chose to do it with my Demon Hunter. This proved to be a fortuitous choice, because when she failed to find a new ring in time and lost the flight buff, she could just unfurl her demon wings and Glide safely back down to the ground — rather than plummeting to her death, as Kamalia had done.
(A Mage or a Priest would also be good alts to use to work on this achievement, for similar reasons — Slow Fall and Levitate, respectively.)

On Kiralaira’s first time off the ground, she didn’t do any better than Kamalia had. The next time, I spent a few moments just looking around to see where the rings were before I started trying to fly through them — so I didn’t get it that time, either. That was a token well spent, though, because now I could plan my route a little bit farther in advance. On about her third try, I not only got through the 15 rings needed for the quest, I got through 25 and got the Ringmaster achievement before I couldn’t find the next one in time. This was very encouraging!

After doing other things elsewhere in Azeroth for most of the week, I returned to the Faire this afternoon, determined to get those wings. I used the map linked in the top comment on the Brood of Alysrazor achievement page on Wowhead to help plan my route. On about the fourth try, I got it!

Using Glide while the Blazing Wings are active gives double wings!

I guess I just needed the right motivation — i.e., a very specific Mog idea for which I wanted to use the Blazing Wings — though it’s not one that’s likely to appear on the Sunday Mog Show anytime soon because at least one of the other pieces for it requires level 110, and I’m not sure when I’ll get the specific character for whom I want to make this outfit leveled.

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