Trial of the Champion
Okay, so I finally got around to doing the new five-man instance in normal and heroic mode. My first thought is that they really do want a pretty serious gear reset pre-Icecrown. Because TotC drops a lot of epics.
My second thought it, Tirion Fordring and the entire (*&#$ing Argent Crusade needs to hand off leadership of the war against Arthas to somebody who will take it more seriously, and handle it more competently. I’m thinking the Winterfin murlocs, perhaps. Let’s see, the Alliance and Horde have been slaughtering each other in Icecrown, largely in reaction to the events of the Wrathgate (well, that and the fact that Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream are jackasses who need to be lined up against a wall and shot for undermining the war effort). So Tirion’s response is to build….an arena. Where the two sides will kill each other. Under the Argent Crusade’s banner. Yeah, that won’t have a problematic effect. When five players massacre twelve of the other faction’s soldiers in the first fight, including three city Grand Champions (each individually vastly more powerful than a player character)? Yeah, that will facilitate unity, and totally not breed resentment of the sort that will fatally undermine the war. Cripes, just what the Alliance-Horde relationship needed – the angst of a Red Sox-Yankees rivalry added on top of it.
Or how about this – the Argent Confessor fight? She brings nine Argent Crusade underlings into the arena with her (each one individually more powerful than a level 80 player character). And then offers them up to be slaughtered (while she, of course, puts a stop to the fight before she dies – to borrow a line from Pink Floyd, “‘Forward!’ she cried from the rear/And the front rank died.”). All quite explicitly to test the PCs. What about those poor underlings? Seems to me those three Argent Priestesses could have been freaking useful in, I don’t know, maybe killing the undead of Icecrown? You know, those wandering bony-looking guys right the *(&$# outside?
This isn’t even incompetence. This is treason. At least the Scourge don’t slaughter each other for fun (or phat lewtz). Are we entirely sure that one of the twelve thousand dreadlords-we-thought-were-dead isn’t running the Argent Crusade, just like the Scarlet Whateverthefrak?
Fel Deeds Awake! 
Raes said,
August 8, 2009 at 11:51 am
I haven’t had to pleasure to pursue the new instance yet, but I get the same feeling from doing The Obsidian Sanctum. Beyond getting “epic loots” there is no story that I can find to give me a reason to go there and beat that dragon senseless. I guess I shouldn’t really need a reason as a player because of said “epic loots” and possible “epic titles,” but I still thing it would be nice. I mean we go to Naxxaramas because its Kel, we go to the Eye of Eternity because Malygos wants to kill everyone. So why am I going to kill Sartharion? Right for purples.
Kahleena said,
August 8, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Sartharion has a story, apparently, Blizzard just didn’t see fit to share it with anybody who didn’t pick up one of those literary atrocities they call a tie-in novel. Apprently Sartharion is a lieutenant of Deathwing, the black dragon aspect, and responsible for guarding Deathwing’s latest experiment in breeding some new breed of dragon, the Twilight dragons. Might have been nice, though, to have a breadcrumb quest to tell us that. Or some plot element somewhere in Wrath suggesting this was going on. Maybe a little “Hey, go check in the basement, wouldja?” quest from Alexstrasza, maybe? Which, incidentally, is something Naxx is also missing. I get why they ditched attunements, but at least in TBC, for the most part, there were stories leading to the various raids (other than ZA, which ticked me off for exactly the same reason – the sole breadcrumb quest was “Go get loot!”). Now, apparently, we’re supposed to just go to wowwiki and look up what the next tier of raiding is. I’m not an RPer, but I want the story of the game to make some small degree of sense.
Sometimes I really wish LOTRO were a better game than it is. Because it’s sure as hell a better story.
Temitope said,
August 9, 2009 at 9:57 am
I always felt LotRO had its own story problems. I’ve never played it but the whole notion of playing somebody who *isn’t* a member of the Fellowship but who somehow achieves incredible power and changes the course of the War of the Ring is *really wrong*.
Although in some ways it would be oddly faithful to the source text:
[Party] Gimli: Dude, Karadras sucks, let’s go do Moria
[Party] Aragorn: No way we need to level first
[General] Gimli: LF BOOST MORIA
Gandalf has Joined the Party
(Later)
[Party] Gandalf: lol this boss is beyond any of u
[Party] Gandalf: fly you noobs
Temitope said,
August 9, 2009 at 8:52 am
But you dont understand! For every soldier that dies fighting Arthas, another undead is raised to join his army!
If we send these guys out to fight the scourge, and they get killed, Arthas will have a whole *five extra ghouls* to throw back in our faces.
It’s much better to kill them *ourselves* because that way Arthas can’t raise them as undead. Because you can only raise people as undead if they died fighting against you. And the tournament allows us to make sure that whoever survives is *definitely* going to be able to defeat Arthas, and his entire army, without getting killed, or corrupted.
It’s called *strategy*
Kahleena said,
August 9, 2009 at 9:32 am
You, good sir, have a future in public relations. Or possibly working for the Pentagon (why let citizenship get in the way of raw talent?)
That or you’re the dreadlord I was talking about. I forget, is it like witches, where you throw them in a lake and see if they float, or mind control you into jumping off a cliff, or whatever?
Tamarind said,
August 10, 2009 at 6:42 am
Well said and agreed, a thousand times agreed.
I’m totally throwing my lot in with those murlocs. Forward, to victory *gurgle gurgle gurgle*.
The whole tournament questline / set up is *stupid beyond stupidity itself* and I hate it. I’m sorry but there’s a fucking war here. Stop playing Knights and Maidens and bloody well do something.
M’Pocket Tank and I tried the bloody thing this week again and NEVER AGAIN, I tell you, NEVER AGAIN. First of all, the jousting. I would rather stab myself into soft and tender regions with a flaming biro than ever ever ever put myself through that again. My favourite part of the whole experience is how, if you get knocked off your horse, as you inevitably do because it is badly designed, badly implemented and made of pure condensed fail, they horsemen then descend on you and trample you to death in about 2 seconds flat. Because you’re wearing a sissy robe and they’re armoured and on goddamn horse back.
Also the battles were hard in an annoying way (we are fresh 80s and our group was basically stupid) so we wiped far more than we should have, yet the sheer quantity of insanely good epics being thrown around like Tirion got them in a job lot from a passing goblin 2nd hand epic trader means that the rewards for putting yourself through such hell and tedium are disproportionately good. Well, arguably, they are proportionately good (given getting them in such a pain) but I would rather be rewarded for doing something I enjoy. Cf: definition, game.
The highlight of the whole experience was when the Black Knight slaughtered the pointless bloodelf commentator. Finally. Somebody who realised the whole business was stupid. I wanted to join his team then and there, but sadly the game wouldn’t let me.
Sorry, I’m ranting unforgiveably on your blog. But I am full of hate and pain.
Kahleena said,
August 10, 2009 at 7:55 am
Oh please, you’re ranting eminently forgivably. It’s especially forgivable when you agree with me. I pretty much decided that, against my better judgment, I couldn’t ignore the Tournament because I would have raiders in my guild using the five-man to gear up, and I couldn’t just say “Sorry, I can’t help you, I’m boycotting this instance that is useful to our eventual progression” and be a responsible guild leader. So, I grabbed a guildie, and had him take me through Jousting For The Utterly Incompetent. And eventually, I learned to joust successfully. But I deeply resent having to learn.
I didn’t even get into the fact that my own main, like yours, wears a sissy robe herself (well, she’s a warlock, so her robe is black, tentacled, oozing a sickly fel-green glow, and generally all nasty and threatening-like, so it’s probably a bit less sissy than a priest’s). So jousting? In a world where some semblance of reason prevailed, not such a good idea.
The only way Blizzard can redeem this bit of patent nonsense is if my initial rant turns out to be spot on, and the Argent Crusade is run by an infiltrator. It would be derivative and unoriginal (see: Scarlet Crusade and Scarlet Crusade 2.0), but it would be less stupid than the idea that this is actually how Tirion Fordring, Paladin, Knight of the Silver Hand, thinks a war should be run.
Come to think of it, this is precisely how a paladin would run the war. Which explains the current state of Lordaeron.
Kahleena said,
August 10, 2009 at 7:56 am
Also, I’m a title whore, so all those “of Insert-City-Name” titles, plus the eventual “Crusader” title, are too good to pass up.
Naïve said,
August 10, 2009 at 9:34 am
I feel like I should produce a decent wall of text to comment here, as the comment field is pretty filled with good words and thoughts. But please, forgive me, but my mind got stuck on something during the firts 30 seconds of reading this post. Oh. My. Holy Unicorns. I WANT TO BE RULED BY MURLOCS.
I’m just imagining the battlefields with Murloc generals, where everything will be solved by yelling “mrrgrrll mrgglrll!” and charging in. If the stratergy won’t work, we’d just head to the Morloc-mobile, and live happily ever after. It is a dream, I know. But I thank you for filling my mind with such blissful thoughts.
Kahleena said,
August 10, 2009 at 9:59 am
Seems to me, murloc strategy would actually be pretty effective. Charge the undead. Gurgle noisily and threateningly. The Murloc Battle-Gurgle (as it is prone to do) summons 4,152 additional murlocs. Each of whom unleashes their own Murloc Battle-Gurgle, complete with adds. Undead die under a tsunami of fins and scales. Everybody celebrates the coming of our new murloc overlords by dressing up in murloc costumes and dancing (I really wish I still had that costume, and that it worked outside the Winterfin area).
Plus, the murlocs sign a pact with the Alliance, and doing those Elwynn Forest quests involving the poor guards’ remains becomes a whole lot easier.