Yeah so it's kind of Wall 'o Text-y. So here are some links to skip to parts you care about. =P

Things from Vanilla/TBC I miss.
Things from WotLK that I like.
Things I like about MMO's in general.
Things I dislike about MMO's in general.

While I haven't been missing WoW enough to renew my subscription, there are some things I was missing about WoW while I was playing it. Things that were sadly absent from the latest expansion pack. So I'm going to list all the things I really enjoyed in WoW that went the way of the dodo. Keep in mind that this isn't a list of complaints (sort of) and that I'm very well aware that I could be the only one that misses certain things. So here we go. (In no real order.)

1. I miss epics being, well, Epic. In Vanilla WoW, until somewhere near the launch of TBC, full epics weren't all that common. They weren't really itemized all that well, but they were a status symbol. I would see people with full molten core epics, including rare things like the caster trinkets, and say "Wow. That person is awesome!" or someone with Tier 2 pieces, especially before the graphics updates, and think "Wow, that person is REALLY awesome." - Or see someone with 2-3 pieces of Naxx gear and just drool my brains out. It didn't necessarily mean they were an awesome player, but it did mean their guild was pretty cool and they were unique snowflakes... Speaking of which...

2. I miss everyone not looking the same. In Vanilla WoW, and for parts of TBC I suppose, everyone looked different. Not as much as in other games that have more customization options, but they still looked different. At least a little bit. For example as a DPS warrior (Yes, I actually used to be one of those.) I looked like a rainbow threw up on me while I was in my Molten Core epics. Flameguard Gauntlets, Titanic Legplates, Lionheart Helm, Fuzzy Boots, Tuning Fork of Death (Deathbringer), Brutality Blade, DPS shoulders of spikey ugliness from ZG. None of it matched, and none of it looked particularly good. Now everything matches and looks good with everything else, but everything also looks the same.

3. Unique tier sets that really stood out. Warrior Dungeon 1 set? With the big bottle opener shoulders? Classic! Warrior Tier 1? Somewhat poorly itemized tank gear that looked completely awesome and was covered with spikes? Amazing! Warrior tier 2 which looked like the designer was watching Barney and Jaws while on a bad acid trip? .. Well it looked nice except for the helm. Warrior Tier 3? Best. Looking. Set. EVER. Until they reused it and every other warrior was wearing it.Warrior tier 4/5/6? Less unique, but still amazing looking. 7? Looked great on taurens. 8? Bland but enjoyable. 9? Hate it! Especially don't like that all plate classes share the same graphics with other plate classes. (And cloth with cloth, leather with leather, etc)

4. I miss having a reason to run Normal Dungeons. Granted, the only reason people ran them in TBC was to get attuned for heroics. (Though I hear this is fixed with Icecrown 5-mans. The loots from Normal Mode are supposedly hawtness, but it's still not quite the same.)

5. I miss Heroic Keys. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? Yeah, I know! During TBC I hated them, because my alts were always missing some, but I did like that people didn't jump straight into heroics after hitting level 80.

6. I miss hard heroics. "Time for Fun!" on Heroic? Shattered Halls on Heroic (as a warrior), Arcatraz on Heroic? The first couple pulls and the last couple pulls in Heroic Blood Furnace? Funnnnnnnn!

7. I miss crowd control. I do! I really enjoyed assigning raid markers for sheeps/traps/etc.

8. I miss working for threat. Not counting when I've just pulled and some Pick-Up decides to nuke a mob I haven't touched yet IN THE FACE, I don't really remember the last time I lost aggro (Though that could be because I haven't played in weeks. Hmm!) I think we lost a pretty fun aspect of our role there, but I've been told repeatedly by warrior friends and guildies that I'm alone on this and that TBC tanking was "pure hell" - I quite enjoyed it though.

9. I miss my overpowered tauren racial.

10. I miss the king of stormwind being MIA. Because lets face it, that guy is a jackass. And thrall is a pansy as of late, but he's still better than Garrosh.

11. I miss PvP. Or rather I should say I miss Vanilla PvP. Not the sucktastic honor system, and not the "Haha I'm a rogue and you're a Priest/Mage/Warlock there goes 80% of your health in one ambush!" (I can talk about that, I was a rogue at the time!) thing, but PvP has a different feel to it now. Battlegrounds don't feel important, and there is a lot of pushing toward arena, which is something you can't really do if none of your friends are into it, or happen to play the classes that mesh well with your class.

12. Shamans/Paladins being faction specific. Even if it did make things pretty uneven and weird.

13. I miss Treasure Finding being useful. THANK YOU SO MUCH GOLD FARMERS for causing Blizzard to take out all of the outdoor chests and a lot of (If not all of?) the instanced chests.

14. Being able to spot a gold farmer a mile away by the fact that they were a UD/NE rogue in strange green gear running around EPL/Burning Steppes at all hours of the day. Prior to all this "LOL I STOLE YOUR ACCOUNT!" garbage.

15. I miss Malygos/Illidan/Kael'Thas/Vashj still being like ... alive.. and menacing.

Now to balance it out, lets talk about some of the things that I loved about WotLK.

1. Death Knights. Sorry, but they're fun!

2. Progression through 5 Mans. Sort of.

3. Being able to see the entire story of the game through 10-mans. Awesome for small guilds of friends.

4. Achievements for doing things "the hard way" - Though imo the most epic achievements are those random "Oh Shit" moments where you somehow survive and don't actually get achievements for.

5. Ranged Silence for Warrior Tanks (talented) - THANK YOU.

6. "Quick" raids like VoA/OS/Ony/I guess Malygos for guilds that don't have a lot of time.

7. Awesome things for/from Fishing/Cooking. (<3 Chef's hat)

8. Ease of gearing up alts that you intend to raid with/make your new main. (This kind of goes against #5 in the "Things I Miss" list. I know. )

9. All of the nifty little interface enhancements they've added, even if they were already available as add-ons.

10. The Dungeons and Ulduar looked totally awesome.

11. I liked that the leveling experience from 70-80 was a lot better than 60-70. There is no zone in Northrend that I dreaded nearly as much as I dreaded HFP. I would be on a leveling rampage and then it would take me over a week just to get out of HFP/Zangarmarsh because I would sign on and think "Ughhhhh HFP/ZM. Gaaaaaaaaaah. /logout. Though I'm really not a fan of Dragon's Blight. It's not too terrible now that you can fly through Nortrend before 77.

12. Unique bonuses from each profession. Really loved my extra sockets from Blacksmithing, and I loved that mining actually gave me a stat boost as well.

13. Epic Gems that weren't exclusively from raiding (Though they did remedy this in TBC as well.)

14. "Trickle Down" BoE epics from Raids. Thank you Blizzard for Northern Barrier so I could replace my ugly Naxx shield.

15. More than one new 5-man during the life of the expansion. (I don't count Maraudon in Vanilla because it was for lowbies, and I discriminate like that.)

And now lets do a list of things I liked about MMO's (This was my first. Probably my last because I don't have as much time as I used to, and there aren't any that appeal to me on the horizon)

1. I liked teaming up with random people from all over the world to beat down our common foe of the moment.

2. I liked that you can make real friendships that carry on to outside of the game, and sometimes to IRL. I suppose you can do that in other game genres as well, but it's more common in MMOs. I've actually met a few people IRL that I've WoWed with, and while it was a bit weird to hang out with the people behind the Taurens/Trolls/Orcs/Etc, it was also a pretty cool experience. Though I have had issues integrating my real life friends and my WoW friends. Because my IRL friends tend to look at my WoW friends as crazy people without giving them a chance.

3. As an extension of #2 I like that you can actually benefit greatly from the friendships you form in WoW. One of my friends got another one of my friends an awesome job at a pretty well known company that makes video games. And one of the companies that I currently work for? I found out about them through someone that I used to play WoW with and then continued to talk to outside of WoW. I had to relocate for it, but that's alright because it's awesome. Well, I didn't "have to", but that would be one hell of a commute.

4.I liked that it was really hard to get completely tired of WoW, and that in the end I got my money's worth. Even with the monthly fee. $14.95/month is really not bad for the amount of entertainment one can get out of WoW. Ok maybe not after you factor in the Server Transfers/Race Changes/Gender Changes/Name Changes/etc. So lets just conveniently sweep those under the rug.

5. I liked that MMO's tend to have very active official forums and fan site forums and that there is always something interesting to read on there.

6. Sort of related to #5, I like that MMO's are educational, though most of what they teach you is useless outside of the game. I actually learned how to do some advanced things with spreadsheets thanks to WoW. Much to my annoyance at the time.

7. This one is pretty random, but I like that MMOs are something that's worth blogging about, because I've met a LOT of awesome people through blogging.

And lets end on a list of things that I DON'T like about MMOs, though I'm not sure which ones are WoW specific.

1. I've seen some of the most rude and unfriendly people in WoW. This is saying something coming from me considering I used to live in New York. (Speaking of which, it's really hard to get used to how mellow people are everywhere else.)

2. People tend to get way too angry over a video game.

3. Every 5 minutes someone starts a thread on the official forums about how everyone that plays WoW is some sort of rabid crackfiend that can't put the game down.

4. I'm not a big fan of the time investment required to do anything significant in WoW. I'm glad they made some quick instances so that people with only ~30 minutes to play can log on and do something, but sometimes it takes that long just to find the 5th person. Daily quests are good for that though.

5. I don't like the constant spam to "OMG BUY OUR GOLD! WE'RE THE CHEAPEST!1!1!" - Though I'm told that other MMOs don't have this nearly as bad as WoW.

6. I didn't like that the first couple months (Or first month or whatever. Depending largely on how speedy you are) of game play was leveling, which was an entirely different game from when you hit level cap. I mean while you're leveling and when you're at level cap are two entirely different games, and I assume it's that way with all other MMOs. (I know, I shouldn't assume.)

7. I don't like the whole "IRL Money for In-game merchandise" thing, but that's finding it's way into other genre's of games now as well, and I like it there even less.

And I think that covers everything. Hope you enjoyed reading my list. And I'll update again when I figure out exactly what I'm going to be doing blog-wise now that WoW is out of the picture.

Oh .. and if you're someone I play with in WoW, I'm sorry if I didn't get to let you know in advance about my departure from the world of warcraft. My bad! Expired account and all. Sorry! Just use the contact form on the site or beg one of my other friends for my email address if you don't have it and I shall reply as time allows.

Battle.net - Do I like it? Nope.

Why? Well supposedly Blizzard's goal is to do something that they feel is awesome by creating a "Social Networking Experience" for the players of their games. Of which I am one. Even if I'm not very happy with WoW, and not really looking forward to SC3, I'm definitely looking forward to Diablo 3. I'm looking forward to that more than any other game actually. Things they've told us about include having online profiles for each game on an account. So people could look up other people and check out how they're doing in each game. Kind of like the armory at the moment. They want us to be able to chat with each other across Battle.net games and see which of our friends is playing which game. I also believe they had some sort of cross-account achievement system thing going on where if you have 2-WoW accounts and you get some awesome achievement on one it will carry over to the other. Not sure on that but I believe they mentioned that at Blizzcon.

Sounds kind of like Steam doesn't it? Which is something else I don't use, but for an entirely different reason. I have a steam account, but I avoid using it if at all possible. I actually only have it for Left 4 Dead. For every other game that I purchase I buy the non-steam version if one is available.

Anyway - Here are the reasons I personally don't like the battle.net system.

1) I played WoW for a long time. I received one disciplinary action, on the PTR, for something that was pretty silly actually. So I'm not prone to getting disciplinary actions taken against my account, but the possibility is always there. There is also the possibility that Blizzard will make a mistake. I had this friend in WoW that once got a 3-day suspension because someone else used a racial slur towards them and Blizzard's GM read the chatlog incorrectly. They eventually apologized and compensated him with free game time, but it took them over a week to do so. This makes me not feel so good about Blizzard's plan to take disciplinary actions against the entire Battle.net account, rather than just the game in which the issue occurred. So I'm to pay $49.95 (Estimated) for Diablo 3, about the same for SC2, however much I've paid for WoW + Expansions, and then lose access to all 3 because of something that may or may not have happened in one? I'm not terribly worried about it happening, but stuff happens. So, No Thanks. DO. NOT. WANT.

2) I really don't care about cross-account achievements. Not a selling point for me.

3) Not really interested in an online profile that shows off my "mad skillz" at all the Blizzard games. I've been told that I was awesome at WoW, and I've also been told that I'm a horrible StarCraft player. So my WoW profile could indicate that I'm awesome, while my StarCraft 2 Profile (If the trend continues) may indicate that I'm a horrible StarCraft player. This in and of itself would not be a problem, but when you couple it with a community like Blizzard games tend to have (And I'm not talking about the bloggers and blog readers here. Talking about the people that make the forums and trade chat something to be avoided) it becomes more trouble than it's worth. I can see it now, I'd post my thoughts on the Barbarian on the Diablo 3 forums, or about some issue I was having, or something balance related, and the first 15 replies would be something like "Nice ladder rankings in SC2 nubcaek plx 2 go kill urself failtard"

4) Cross-game communication is not something that I want. If there is an invisible mode, and if I could opt out of #3, I MIGHT be able to live with #1. The very last thing that I want is to have people in one game be able to see when I'm playing another game, or even to be able to see that I'm playing the first game. Sometimes I don't feel like playing with other people, or sometimes I feel like playing with a group of people in one game but not the group of people from another game. I have unguilded lowbie alts that I love to play when I don't feel like dealing with most people. Well I won't be able to hide on those lowbie alts because the wonderful new Battle.net system will (Unless there is an invisible system, which I'm not holding my breath for, because Blizzard was very much against having one in WoW) inform people who are my friends (But who I may not feel like dealing with at the moment) "OMG Naissa is playing WoW currently!" - and enable them to send me messages. Which is different from sending me an SMS or an instant message because ... I can't really say "Oh no I'm too busy to play WoW atm. Sorry." - Because they would know I was actually playing WoW atm! And I can't hide on my other fantastic Blizzard games because they'll be able to see that I'm playing them AND send me messages while I'm playing with them. Do. Not. Want.

5) I don't like to have to type in my 27 character email account to log-in to my games. I know there is a "Remember Username" checkbox, but I have 2 WoW accounts, and while one is inactive, it isn't ALWAYS inactive, so the check-box isn't always going to help me. And #1 certainly makes merging the 2 accounts into 1 Battle.net account not an option.

So what's my solution to this all? Well the only thing I can think of is to use a different email address and different battle.net account for each Game/Game Account. Currently looking at 4 total. 2 for WoW, 1 for D3, 1 for SC2. And it's really a hassle, but it's a necessary hassle, so I'm not actually complaining. Though to read the forum replies yesterday you would have think that I waged all out war against Battle.net for no reason. If you like it, you like it, if the things that I don't like about it are fine with everyone else that's great, more power to them. I personally don't like it, and will avoid most of the features of it as long as I possibly can. All I would really like is an option to opt-out of most of the things involved with a battle.net account, which would then pretty much defeat the purpose of having one, so I'm not holding my breath.

If you're a non-DK tank you've probably thought about tanking weapon enchants and how we don't really have anything great. In Vanilla WoW a lot of people used Crusader or +15 agi (If memory serves) and in the first part of Burning Crusade almost all raid tanks used Mongoose. When Executioner was released a lot of tanks switched to that, myself included, because back then we didn't really have easy mode threat back then and aggro was actually an issue sometimes. Executioner gave a huge threat increase, and mongoose gave dodge, armor, and a little bit of threat. WotLK came out and we were left asking "wtf?!" for a minute there.

For awhile I used a Titanium Weapon Chain on my blue tanking sword, and then on my Red Sword of Hotness as well. The other Warrior tank in my guild used Mongoose. We were both pretty happy with our weapon enchant choices. He liked the little bit of dodge, and I liked the hit rating because I really needed hit rating at the time. When the Ulduar patch was released there were two new tanking enchants out there. Blood Draining and Blade Ward.

Blood Draining gives you a stacking buff (stacks to 5) that heals you if you dip below 35% health. It has a very high proc rate, but a 10 second internal cooldown, so it takes a bit to get a full stack of five. With a full stack you will get healed for 1800-2200 if you dip below 35% health. It doesn't look all that great, but you should think of it like an extra health potion/health stone that doesn't share the cooldown, and can also save you more than once in a fight. Or you can look at it like having an extra 1800-2200 health.

Blade Ward gives you a stacking buff that grants 200 Parry Rating and inflicts 600-800 damage on your next parry. So if you get 3 stacks that's 600 Parry Rating. Sounds great right? Avoidance and threat, woot!

Unfortunately when you Parry and have Blade Ward up you lose your stack of Blade Ward. So no matter how much Parry Rating you get from it, you only get 1 Parry. Boo. It was because of this that I initially went with Blood Draining and decided that I love Blood Draining. In some cases (Heroic 5-mans, most of Naxx-10, OS-10, EoE-10, most of Naxx-25 too) it doesn't do much for me because I'm not in any real danger of dipping below 35% health. In Ulduar and such though it's saved me a couple times. It has even saved me in VoA-25. There seems to be lot of debate on the official Warrior forums and even Tankspot about which enchant is "best", and if you look at most of the top tanks you'll see that they're all using different enchants. Some use Blood Draining, some use Blade Ward, some use Mongoose, some use Accuracy.

So I decided I would pick up a second Turkey Knife from H-ToC and put Blade Ward on it and do some testing. Which I didn't get to do extensively prior to leaving for IRL, but from the testing that I did the enchant was about what I had expected and about what I had read, except the "amazing proc rate" didn't seem to happen for me. In fact the proc rate was pretty poor and most of the time that it proc'd was right when something died and the buff would wear off before the next pull would get parried. Quite a few times the buff/stack of buffs would fall off without me parrying, so the enchant did virtually nothing for me. Which was quite disappointing but I guess that's what happens when something is heavily reliant on RNG. First I have to get a Blade Ward Proc, then I have to get a Parry, or else the enchant hasn't done anything. You would think with 20%~ Parry that wouldn't be too difficult, but you'd be surprised.

In the end I prefer Blood Draining because it's always there throughout the fight and isn't as much of an RNG thing. The only downside is that if you're fighting something that hits hard enough you may end up dipping below 35% when you don't have a full stack, because it takes 40 seconds or so to get a full stack. Well I guess there is another downside in that it's possible to lose your stack prematurely and it takes another 40 seconds to build it back up.

Each enchant has it's downsides and in the end I think you should probably just pick whichever enchant looks most appealing to you until we get an amazing tank enchant. For me, it's Blood Draining all the way.

I've got a couple of blog posts scheduled for posting, and I'll see if I can write a few more before my account actually expires, and that way there will be something to read here while I'm gone. We'll see what happens.

See you later!

Ok, firstly, if someone isn't smart enough to invite you to a group, no shit you're not going to tank for them. So durrrrrrrrrrr.

Now, with that out of the way, back to our guest raiding post.

When I got home this afternoon I ventured back into Ulduar with a group of people that are cooler than a polar bear's toenails. (And that's pretty cool folks.)

We started out by ganking Razorscale who gets the "Easiest Boss Ever" award, which is pretty impressive when there are bosses like Sartharian out there. After he was dead we moved on to Freya and the trash from hell. I actually tanked Freya and it was very fun. So my previous statement about Freya being my favorite encounter ever still stands. After that it was more trash from hell as we headed towards Mimiron. We got from Freya to Mimiron on the coolest tram ever.

Right before Mimiron's room there is another Frogger thing like the Frogger Slimes in Naxx. This time it's cute little bombs though, which are slightly harder to dodge.

Mimiron is a 4 phase fight. On phase 1 and 2 I felt somewhat useless, on phase 3 I was a star, and on phase 4 I crashed and burned like a complete noob a couple of times and felt like a dunce. Wooo! Phase 2 was very pretty though.

Most of the time we made it to phase 4 but sometimes we did not. Phase 4 is where Mimiron becomes a real bastard, but it's also his coolest looking phase.

On our final attempt of the day we managed to execute things almost perfectly and beat the boss. I still crashed and burned at the end but this time I didn't die like a noob or suffer any major noob moments. So huzzah for me, I was getting pretty frustrated there because things kept going wrong on my end. If I ever fight him again I shall do things perfectly though! Because taurens are all about style and grace don't ya know?

Big thanks to DotH for inviting me along to Ulduar and having patience with me. ^.^