Defending Orgrimmar

Snippet of a conversation in game tonight.

I had other things I was going to write about... pre-Naxx gear for balance druids, properly using Beacon of Light as a paladin, and I'm still working on those, but for now they've been derailed by the start of the Wrath of the Lich King launch event.

I remember last time with the Burning Crusade this was a crazy ordeal. Kazzak disappeared, some raid demon went roaming, and demons streamed out of the Dark Portal for us to kill. I earned my [Tabard of the Protector] and I'm proud of it.

So when I was at work this afternoon and the event started going live (me being on the west coast), I was extremely excited. I couldn't wait to get home. Except that I had to pick up a few things from the grocery store first and even then I did get home I still had a few more things to do like prepare for a workshop tomorrow and put out the trash because pick-up's in the morning... Eh, yeah...

I ended up logging on about 10pm server time (go me), but things were still bustling. I ported from Shatt to Org almost immediately and ran for the arena in the Valley of Honor. There were abomination bodies everywhere, but I was lucky. The event wasn't active at the moment and given that it runs on a twenty minute cycle I was fortunate to arrive in time to catch the beginning of it. I even ran into a couple friends along the way.

And so I found a small table with Thrall on one side and a much, much more imposing Garrosh Hellscream on the other. Saurfang and Sylvanus Windrunner stand nearby with their own opinions on the matter at hand. At first I was very excited because I moused over Thrall and saw that he had a quest, but it turns out it was only Hidden Enemies, which I'd never done on Hana. Ah, sad face for me.

Shortly after my disappointment though, the event started up and everyone started spewing text faster than I could read their speech bubbles. Apparently Garrosh has found his prozac since his days in Nagrand and has become an orc among orcs, and for some reason really wants to lead an army of the Horde up to Northrend bad. I'm not sure exactly why he has so much of a personal stake in this, but he thinks he's orc enough to do it and he duels Thrall for the privelege.

Garrosh and Thrall duke it out in the Orgrimmar arena and it's kind of funny watching them go at it. It just makes me wonder if we ever look like that when we're dueling. And in a way it kind does, but no shaman would would waste time casting a Lightning Bolt and suffering all that pushback while a melee opponent is beating on him. And where are his totems?

Sadly, Thrall's Lightning Bolt is the only spell that's actually named in their arsenal, which is too bad since Garrosh has this nifty lightning spewing ability that doesn't look like anything else currently in game.

Their fight is interrupted though before either side can claim a decisive victory (yes, Thrall is down more health when the battle ends, but it's not by a whole lot so I wouldn't say he actually loses) and then when the bystanders run outside the arena the army of frost wyrms and abominations attack!

I was totally ready to go. I moonkined it up and started shooting Moonfire at the nearest one. Thrall, Saurfang, Garrosh, and Sylvanus Windrunner all joined the fray. At one point I found Saurfang already fighting an abomination and pulled aggro off him, which was pretty funny just because of his over-inflated reputation (now immortalized in my screenshot).

But after the initial rush of running into battle... I was a little disappointed, and when I said "I'm a little disappointed honestly" I wasn't really talking about Saurfang. I was talking about the event. The abominations died real easy, and the frost wyrms were annoying because they either flew too high or too far away for me to consistently attack them as a caster. I can only imagine how annoying that would have been for melee.

It was fun watching the named NPCs running around, and they really did a lot of fighting (Sylvanus struts like she means it and if I was her enemy I would totally stay out of her way!), but I didn't really feel like I was making any progress in fighting this invasion. I'd kill abominations and just after it seemed like I was done, another one would pop up over here, or another over there. Frost wyrms kept falling down but I couldn't tell who was killing them because they kept flying around without actually sticking to any one target.



And then... it was over. I barely caught wind of a conversation with Thrall at the end of it. There was no scream saying they'd been beaten back. Just nothing. The named NPCs stood around the table and then faded out, reset as it were, and all was as it was before.

I'm hoping that's not all there will be because I was hoping for something a little more memorable. The fighting's only in the Valley of Honor, making it so easy to miss the carnage entirely. I wasn't expecting another plague of zombies, but really, if that had been run closer to the actual release date I would have been happier with it.

Tomorrow night I'm gonna to hang out on my Alliance alt and watch the Alliance end of things. I won't be online at all on Wednesday, but that will hopefully leave me fresh for Thursday!