A.D. Temple's Azeroth: Dustwallow Marsh

My journey, dear friends, begins in the noble city of Theramore.



Theramore is often thought of as a military outpost and is sometime referred to as Theramore Keep. It is true that Theramore is a well fortified island, strategically placed to monitor the desserts and marshes that the Horde sometimes call home.

The militaristic nature of Theramore extends back to its creation. Lady Jaina Proudmoore established the Keep with several military companies prior to the invasion of the Burning Legion. To this day, it remains the Alliance's strongest outpost in Southern Kalimdor.

The recent unpleasantness in Northrend led to the absence of the city's leader for an extended period of time. However, the people of Theramore are both loyal and industrious and, rather than the city falling into disarray without it's Lady, it has seen great growth.



The people of Theramore have been extending their Highway through the marsh, allowing people safe travel through this otherwise dangerous location. The marsh's stinking bogs and unfriendly denizens have claimed many an unwary traveler. Those that stick to the provided highway, now can be reasonably assured of safe passage.



The arrival of the Aspect of Death has done little to daunt the spirit of Theramore. Dustwallow Marsh was largely - but not completed - unaffected by the Aspect's re-entrance into Azeroth.



The changes in Theramore and Dustwallow Marsh are political in nature. With Thrall's departure from his position as Warchief - indeed his departure from Azeroth for awhile - has led to a resurgence anti-Horde feeling in Dustwallow Marsh. The uneasy alliance maintained by Lady Proudmoore and Thrall has been dissolved. Furthermore, the Grimtotems - a clan of of the tauren - have recently been exiled from their traditional home. Distinguished by their black and white markings, they have begun to settle - and cause problems - in Dustwallow Marsh.



Visitors of Dustwallow Marsh may begin, as I did, in Theramore on the island off the eastern coast. Alternatively, Mudsprocket still welcomes visitors from both the Horde and the Alliance in the southern region of the marsh. The Horde outpost in the area remains - visitors may find Brackenwall Village in the Northwest region of Dustwallow Marsh.

Brave Adventurers may be interested in visiting the Wyrmbog - the former home of Onyxia, the black broodmother. The Stonemaul ruins may provide visitors with some insight into the violent culture of the Ogre's. Or, history buffs may find Alcaz Island - the former prison of King Varian Wrynn - to be most interesting

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Sources:
The comic image at the beginning, the maps, and the image of Alcaz Island are from WoW Wiki and may be found in the following articles:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Theramore
http://www.wowwiki.com/Dustwallow_Marsh
http://www.wowwiki.com/Alcaz_Island

Information for this post was found in the above articles, the novel The Shattering, and BradyGames' World of Warcraft: Cataclysm game guide.

The remaining images come to you from my screenshot gallery.

The Elephant

Or The Post that Hopefully Allows me to Revive From my Two-Month Funk

First, a quote from Wikipedia: "Elephant in the room is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.[1]

It is based on the idea that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not there have chosen to concern themselves with tangential or small and irrelevant issues rather than deal with the looming big one."

When I last posted, Memento was looking forward to a guild-wide meeting to determine our path for Cataclysm.

My Elephant - the topic I have, thus far, been unable to discuss is the fact that Memento is no more.

There's more to it than that, of course.

We discussed a lot of things during our meeting. Everyone was there, which impressed me. Takk, Mord, Hippy, Ann, Militia, Batra, Sen, and myself. We talked about what we had and what we wanted.

At the time we all wanted the same thing. Sitting on the bleeding edge of a new expansion gave every one the bug for progression raiding. So we compared schedules and made decisions. Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons were to be for progression raiding. For three weeks, those time slots would be used for running heroics and gearing up. For learning how to work as a team in the big new world that is Cataclysm heroics.

Sen, being a full time engineer, decided to step down from his position as GM. The group chose a replacement... me.

I didn't mind the responsibility. Memento being a small guild, we made a few more changes. We ditched the officers idea and moved forward with our "open-forum" idea. Mord agreed to continue his role as Raid Leader and Militia volunteered to be the Recruitment Guy. I made us a new website and we were all ready to move forward.

Or so I thought.

We floundered through those first three weeks. Most nights we were forced to split up into who was eligible for heroics and who was not. I healed some normal dungeons those week - Disc felt pretty weak at the time.

Then a new, insidious idea began to spread through our happy-meal-sized guild. It would be so much easier to join the progession party if we were not actually a happy-meal-sized guild. But! Instead of recruiting... let's just join a different, bigger guild.

The idea did - and does - cut me like a knife.

But these were my guildies now and I had a responsibility to them. If, in the three week span since our last meeting, they had changed their minds about recruiting for Memento and preferred to raid in a larger, more established environment then that was what we would do.

We had a second guild meeting and decided to look for a new home.

There were some possibilities right off the bat. Militia has always raided on the side with Kaizen and we thought, for awhile, that they might be interested in "absorbing" our little guild.

But... I guess... people weren't willing to wait.

Hippy and Batra, whose attendance was always a little iffy, disappeared entirely.

Militia transferred his characters out of the guild and over to Kaizen without telling anyone.

Mord announced to me - over realID, one day - how totally relieved he was to not be the raid leader anymore. That being free of the responsibility had lifted a huge weight off his shoulders. He, too, had left the guild without telling anyone.

...

Let me go on record for saying it's not okay to leave a guild without notice. You may not want to give them your reason - and most of the time, you don't have to. You do have to say something.

It's not okay to ninja-quit.

It's not okay. It fucking hurts.

...

Time and a shift in priorities has done much to restore my equilibrium on the matter.

Mord went on to join Soulfire Tribe - a guild that successfully runs 25 man raids, 4 nights a week.

Ann joined him soon after - something I expected. As an engaged couple who has been raiding together for awhile, little else would make sense.

Soulfire has extended the invitation to the rest of us still dithering about in Memento. All three of us: Takk, Sen and myself.

I encouraged Takk to take the offer, even as I knew that Sen and I probably wouldn't. Memento has been our home a lot longer than its been a raiding guild, so we're comfortable in the small environment. Even if it's now a home for lost alts - its still ours.

...

I got a new job. The local university lost a visiting professor three weeks into the semester and needed a replacement in a hurry. I met all the necessary requirements. I jumped on it. I now attempt to teach 130 students the ins and outs of Object Oriented Software Development.

Sen and I are attempting to buy a house. I know that no one has ever said that buying a house is an easy thing to accomplish, but they certainly don't tell you that it's rather like playing dodgeball with screwdrivers.

Getting approved for our loan has added a whole new level of stress to our lives. Sen has since turned off his wow account. He has a major engineering exam in April, but he does plan on returning to the game "when things settle down again".

...

I've encouraged Takk to join Soulfire again, since spending time in our dieing guild doesn't get him any closer to his goal of raiding. He's loyal and stubborn and has stuck it out with us thus far. I suspect I will be moving my warlock to Soulfire with Takk soon.

'Ware. Here there be rambling.

I could have gone with The post wherein I muse about the cyclical nature of life, the universe, and everything but I thought it might be too long.

Today is, in fact, my blogoversary. Its hard to believe that its been a full year since I first starting posting in my tiny corner of the blogosphere. OP was a little different then. A bit more... orange. I went purple in October. At that time I was raiding mostly on my priest and orange is just not a priestly color. I think purple suits both priests and warlocks, which is why I kept it for my links when I went black in December.

A year ago, OP stood as much for "over powered" (which warlocks always are, of course) as it did for opportunity. I like to play up to the stereotypical things said about warlocks. Most importantly, we hate rogues. I learned that ages ago on Arthas, a PVP server. Secondly, we do not get along with mages. We view them as weaklings - glass canons who have no way to escape a beating if something gets close enough to them. They view us as power-hungry and sloppy - snatching at any glimmer of power and prestige. We fight over gear - especially now that mages and warlocks are the only classes that need +hit cloth armor.

Finally, we are the unquestioned gods of caster dps. Even when we're not.

More recently, I have tried to lessen the focus on warlocks. I plan to raid on my priest and, while my warlock will still have plenty to do, OP is about all of my experiences and opportunities in WoW. See wat i did ther?

Even though Cataclysm has been out for nearly a month now, I think everyone is still adapting to the changes. The dungeons are harder. Crowd Control is a requirement, rather than a nice bonus or a neat trick. AOE has all but disappeared in the standard dungeon environment.

This being the New Year, we are surrounded on all sides by change. Perversely, I am flummoxed by the things that haven't changed.

A full year has passed since I was celebrating reaching level 80 on my warlock. Now level 80 is only a milestone in the sense that, after you reach it, you only have 5 more levels to go. I didn't have a lot of spare gold floating around, so I was carefully searching out each drop from the dungeons and trying to get enough emblems of triumph together for any new pieces. I was trying to make sure I leveled my Enchanting high enough to be useful for a raider and I had some help getting enough Dream Shards to collect the high-level patterns.

We took an extremely ragtag pug into Naxxramas and, while it wasn't a complete fiasco, it certainly had its moments of terrible noobness.

Now, I do have some spare gold floating around but it usually gets spent on leveling my Jewelcrafting. I am still carefully searching out each drop I can get from the normal dungeons. I am herding together all the justice points I can for other items. I am rep-grinding with Therazane and Hyjal. I am doing everything I was a year ago.

Our bouts of noobness currently occur in dungeons, but we may get up to some raids in the near future. One can only hope.

A year ago I was getting started on a new project. The "Mara will has a Healer" project. I leveled a dwarf priest, spending most of my time after level 40 in a Random Dungeon learning the fine art of Disco.

Now I'm considering a new project... perhaps several new projects. I haven't ruled out a "Mara will has a Tank" project, though I'm not sure its in the best interest of my blood pressure. I'm still warming up A. D. Temple's Azeroth. Its a struggle to determine where to start, but I think I've got a handle on that now. It will be... an interesting trip to say the least.

A year ago we were fumbling with the idea of a raiding guild. That hasn't changed at all. We gained and lost members. We made great progress at the end. Our triumphs as a guild are a great treasure. Memento is due for that guild-wide meeting to discuss our future plans tomorrow. There's plenty to improve upon, I think. I believe (hope?) we will continue to fight the good fight.

Here's to another year! May all your mobs be weak and all your drops be epic.