War of the Shifting Sands, 15 months later

If Steptoe the Warlock is to be believed (and he should, he has access to wow forums while I’m bared from it thanks to work), my current main realm will have its Opening of the Gates Festival tonight.

A nice trip down memory lane ahead for me, although I will of course miss the ringing of the gong proper due to logging on hours after the action has started.

What I expect won’t have changed from last time I witnessed the event:

• Lots of duelling and impromptu world PvP action
• A big pile of tauren bones, undoubtedly from a handful of nostalgic players who created new tauren just for the event and got trampled by the Anubisath

What I expect will have changed:

• Little to no gate tourists from other realms
• A sizeable chunk of the endgame population won’t be there but continue doing whatever they do in Outlands
• There will be a sizeable list of level 70 characters who are temporary PCTs because they wanted the Black Qiraji Battle Tank but could only complete the quest line way after their primary realm opened their own gates. They’ll be gone within the week if they planned ahead properly, or in 3 months if they didn’t (snort)
• The server won’t crash this time around and you will definitely be able to get off the boats
• Aside from the above-mentionned Transferees and whatever local guild actually completed the quest line (I confess I don’t really care about our server’s catass endgame raid guild politics, I just gather there’s enough drama to make AFK Gamer cackle with glee), the whole thing will be absolutely meaningless to everyone else.

It will have two consequences for me, though. First, I hope I will be able to get a ride on a tourist raid to AQ20 tonight for the memories or better, visit AQ40 for the first (and probably only) time.
Second, I might actually have company from time to time when parking myself in one of these in the LFG interface when I’m not actively looking for a group but still want to listen into the LFG channel.

Anyway, if you’re reading this and suddenly feel nostalgic, apparently the gong will be rung tonight on Ghostlands EU at 8pm server time (or was it 9? Don’t remember, sorry). I don’t think there’s going to be any kind of GM intervention teleporting level 2 cows away this time around, so if you’re around Silithus on your low level cow with some funky guild name past 11pm server time and a random pallie hugs you, it will have been me.

Should have rolled a hunter, come to think of it. Would have been handy to track the live tauren during the three seconds between rezzing and getting trampled.

On Similar Matters

• Zen of Design’s How Game Economies Can Fail to Incentivize Fun (0)
• Will 3.1 Dual Specs Become the Rug Under Which Design Issues Will Be Swept? (13)
• Why Nerf Calling is Wrong (9)
• When Arena Gear only takes you so far (7)
• Tobold on Story-Telling in MMORPGs (0)

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Comments