Ye Gad: It's Been Forever and a Half!

So...wow, WoW has been a complicated thing for me.

I had spent the latter half of 2013 on the opposite end of the country (BC to MB) and when things didn't work out over there, I had to leave anything that wasn't clothes back there, my computer included. It's all still there, courtesy of one of my best friends allowing me to come back at a later date and pick it all up.

I'll just say this: I've tried to follow WoW but it's been difficult without being able to log in. My guild was one, maybe two nights away from a Lei Shen kill before I had life overwhelm me and I missed it, never to go back. I was able to get a slightly staggered presence in SoO at a later date, mostly LFR, but was able to get to experience a little bit of the raid. I forget if I got to down anything in normal mode but I did have fun attempting Nazgrim. Maybe Malkarok (I was not able to keep any consisentency in attendance so I probably had that another night).

However, long story short: I'm hurting real bad for my WoW fix.

Given the influx of information about the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor, I felt it was time to put my two cents in. I needed to find a quiet place to collect my thoughts so I needed to be creative. Hell, I'm typing this from a public college library computer!

As a mage (Fire For Life!), I found myself rather horrified at the school specialization being surprisingly forced. I actively used several frost spells for multiple purposes, mostly gimmicky add control in dungeons/raids, and obviously for solo treks in the world. R.I.P. Cone of Cold, you will be missed. Deep Freeze, too, but was harder to set up when other people wouldn't stop hitting stuff. Had to really be on the ball for timing inbetween your allies' attacks.

While I appreciate the drive of the development team to define various specs across all the classes, I feel they should have made the mage class an exception. We're *supposed* to have all sorts of magic available. I mean, really, why not just have demonology, necromancy, etc. be different mage specs if they are going to limit us in this way? There's very little point.

I am VERY excited about the hunter class, though. At first, it started with the promises of cutting ability bloat. I found that to be the bane of my alt existence in that I never knew what I should bother pulling to the action bar. Too many options with far too similar purposes. At least mage spells all had a very clear reason for existing alongside the others.

Then came when a hydra was Tweet'ed and confirmed as a possible tame. See, for me, the hydra is my favourite mythological creature of all time. It was about time, given they've been not only in WoW since launch, but also memorable units from Warcraft III. I never played a hunter during WotLK and its accompanying Oracle quest bug where you could have a ghostly hydra. I was so jealous and I am one of the few people ever to LIKE the fact that it never shuts up with its squabbling amongst its own heads. I was probably annoyed at some point, sure, but I have grown to like it. I know, weird, but it is what it is.

Upon looking at the specific changes to the hunter class as a whole, including cut abilities, I was sold so fast on the idea that I will learn to play this new generation of hunter no matter what. Best of all, I'll finally have an alt that can solo older content without resorting to rolling yet another mage (I lost count how many I've made which are strewn across multiple servers) OR a class which I have once loved but have grown to despise with all the extra nonsense (death knight and warrior are the two biggest ones for me).

My love of this game has only strengthened over the past going on 9 years, despite all my concerns, complaints and even full-out rage over various design choices, decisions of change, and implementations of entirely new concepts but I will take a stance of cautious optimism with this expansion.

Now...I really want my computer back.  =(