So long Arthas and thanks for all the fish!

Its’ time. I’ve been wanting to write a “Goodbye Wrath of the Lich King”– post for a while, but I always felt it was too soon to look back on the past 2 years, drawing a final line and remembering the best moments. But Cataclysm is due in less than a month now, we’re defending our hometowns against the rift invaders, eagerly awaiting the Shattering. It’s time to let go of the past.

Wrath of the Lich King felt like a drag these very last months which is probably a mixture of different things: the changes in accessibility and loot this expansion, but also the fact that Blizzard’s latest installment lasted a lot longer than The Burning Crusade and didn’t have the novelty factor of vanilla WoW (which actually lasted a bit longer). Nevertheless WotLK was a great expansion, I absolutely loved Northrend and I will take a lot of fond memories with me over into Cataclysm. A few things are worth remembering before all else –

1) My WotLK Top 3 features:

• WotLK quests

Wrath of the Lich King’s quest design was worlds apart from everything we’d seen before. Blizzard put a huge effort into creating quests that were more diverse, fun and engaging, trying to get away from the past’s standard fetch&delivery or escort quests. From flying a helicopter dropping bombs on your targets, to fighting your own doppelganger on 1vs1, collecting bat guano (while swearing like a lumberjack) to jumping on flying dragons around the Temple of Storms, WotLK delivered long and memorable questlines full of fun moments. Kudos to Blizzard for making such an effort this time around!

• The maps of Northrend

I’m sucker for northern themes in MMOs; you can make me very happy with dark, misty woods and snowy mountains. The Northrend maps were beautiful, some of them accompanied by the sweetest tunes ever in WoW! Thank you so much for Stormpeaks (norse mythology ftw!) and Grizzly Hills above all else, I’ve spent countless hours exploring them and enjoying their atmosphere!

• Dualspecs

Finally this came true! For so long players that respec on a daily base had to endure the superfluous procedure of respeccing at their class trainers, filling in the talent points every single time (without an addon at least) and there was really nothing to it but a timesink (and 50g are not that much of a penalty these days). Dualspecs have made the life of so many raiders and PVPers so much easier and added a lot more flexibility in general to the game. Cheers!

2) Personal Top 3 WotLK moments:

• Sartharion 25man 3D and the Twilight Drake

Above all else and every kill Adrenaline have added to their progress list in this expansion, our legendary Sarth 3D kill will stand out forever. Not only was defeating this boss (pre-nerf) our greatest achievement and struggle since…..well, Archimonde or something,  but on this hard-earned night of all nights I actually rolled a /98 on our very first Twilight Drake. I had never won any special mount or similar in WoW before that, my bad luck with rolls has been the butt of jokes many times.

So, when Stumps asked the exhilarated raid to roll for the first drake, I didn’t even bother to check my roll! I certainly didn’t expect to win – “Me? Y’er having a laugh!” Only when the first “omg GZ!” whispers came rolling in did I realize what had happened and it made our achievement (and killshot!) so much sweeter for this priest. 🙂

That’s me, me, me up there! ^^

• Adrenaline’s 1st and 2nd anniversary events

I’ve been very deeply involved in the planning and execution of our guild’s 1st and 2nd Anniversary events which have been some of the best, most fun times I have ever had in WoW. Already the planning phases were a blast for somebody with too much creative energy (and sadistic tendencies =p) like myself, and seeing all of that hard work come to live later and your guildmates competing against each other while you’re dying of laughter on ventrilo – truly epic!! We’ve raised the bar quite high and I’m a little scared of our guild’s expectations for year 3 – I’m sure we’ll come up with something though.

For anyone interested in details on said events, I have a few links to share:
Larísa’s first and second review, Adrenaline @WoW Insider, an interview @Gamerfill.com , my personal event album (anniversary 1), my WoW quiz (anniversary 2).

• The Lich King’s demise on 25man

Killing Arthas felt great, and not only because he annoyed the shit out of us in the Culling of Stratholme so many times. Killing the big bad endboss of the expansion marks the end of an era. All in all we didn’t struggle at this boss the way we struggled on others before, but he certainly gave us a run for the money. The title is epic and I loved the kill-cinematic (which would’ve been even more awesome had I not misclicked the damn fountain in Dalaran some time before we killed him /gah!).

To me, as to so many other players, Arthas was always that distant endboss figure at the horizon of World of Warcraft: the last hurdle, the end of the main story. Whatever follows after him in Cataclysm is an “extra” in my world (“what, I am STILL playing this game??”)

So long Wrath of the Lich King, I knew ye well!
So long Dalaran, you won’t be missed!
(I will miss Sheddle tho!)
So long Sindragosa, I still hate your guts (and icetombs)!
So long minefield in Stormpeaks, it was good fun!

So long Arthas! The Lich King is dead, all hail Deathwing!