Monday, January 5, 2009

The Pink Pigtail Inn list of 2008

A new year has arrived, but I’m not quite finished with 2008 yet. Before letting it go I thought I should make one of those lists to help us remember a few of the WoW and WoW blogging higlights of 2008. Here we go:

Best raid instance: Zul Aman
OK, technically ZA was realeased in the patch 2.3, but not many players were geared enough to run it until 2008. I really loved that instance. Being outdoors was nice for a change, the trash wasn’t overwhelming or boring, they had their own little gimmicks, like that hill you ran with all the birds or the annoying scouts that you had to grab really quickly or you would wipe soon. The bosses were varied and challenging in different ways, and as we geared up we could still get a thrill in there, running against the timer. It was easy to forgive that some gear that dropped there looked stupid.

Least successful raid instance: Sunwell
With the risk of being accused of not knowing what I talk about (I never did one single boss there myself) I’ve got the feeling that this instance never became a favourite with anyone. Very few players did it before the nerf and from the ones who did it I never heard any enthusiasm. Blood elf style was never a hit.

Silliest gold sink: Gold Eterium Band sold by Haris Pilton.
Have you ever heard of anyone buying it? If I had that gold I’d rather hand it out to begging newbies in Goldshire. Seriously.

Most longed for instance: Magisters Terrace
At the point that this one was launched we were all pretty starved for new 5-man instances. We could do Mechanar, Slave Pens and Botanica asleep. It was nice and Priestess Delrissa was a challenge to begin with . But it only lasted a few weeks. Then we started to crave for more.

Most juicy guild drama: The merging of SK and Nihilum into Ensidia and the fuss that followed.
This blog post from a former member is full of accusations and I don’t know if there is even an inch of truth in it. But no doubt it qualifies for this title.

Biggest addition to the game: Achievements
There have been a lot of new ideas and content brought to the game. The expansion brought a new class, the phasing technology, vehicles and a lot of other nifty stuff. But the most game-changing invention in 2008 was the achievements. It brought life back to a lot of the game that has been dead and deserted.

Best quest: The Wratgate questchain incluiding the video we’ll never forget and The Battle for Undercity.
This brought our expectations about what questing can be like to a new level.

Ugliest tabard: Competitor's Tabard, offered during the Olympic Games.
The Olympic circles have nothing to do in Azeroth, they just don’t belong. I trashed it immediately after getting the pet, which on the other hand was very handsome.

Favourite non combat pet: The Phoenix Hatchling from MgT
A real beauty which brightened up some rather gloomy runs in the darkness of the lair of Gruul.

Most charming Blizzard employee: Ghostcrawler
Not always telling the news players wanted to hear, he still managed to gain the respect and love from the WoW community. Honesty, humour and a talent for communication was the recipe for his success.

Best podcast: Twisted Nether
Bre and Fimley brought the community to a new level of intimacy. Together with The Twisted Nether Wiki and BlogAzeroth it has become the power center of the WoW blogging community.

Biggest blog facelift: World of Matticus
It’s amazing how much development one blogger can manage to do in one year, while still keeping up his own raiding and real life duties. Good job!

Most memorable blog post: Noob world reorder and the follow-ups.
In a series of posts James Wallis explained Azeroth from a scientific point of view combining wittiness, intelligence, game knowledge and a slight amount of insanity to a very entertaining stew.

Most noticed breakthrough: Chick GM
She took the Blogosphere by storm, entering almost every single blogroll within a few weeks of her debut.

Most solid content provider: Tobold’s
He proved once for all that content >looks when it comes to blogging. With a simple, not to say non-existing layout, he’s got subscriber numbers that few other bloggers can dream of.

Most hugged blogger: Big Bear Butt was more or less lynched when he dared to question some aspects of PvP. The Blogging community reacted strongly, giving him the biggest collective hug ever seen. Don’t touch our bear!

I could go on like this forever. One year in WoW provides quite a lot of content when you think about it. What have I forgotten? Who deserves a mentioning on the PPI list of 2008? Please feel free to nominate candidates for new categories you come to think of or make up your own lists!

8 comments:

James Wallis said...

Much appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Nice blog, i actually listen to a couple of podcasts and never new about this one i shall download it tonight and give it a listen.

Anonymous said...

Zul Aman was great because you could still attempt it and succeed without needing to be elitist.

Not sure I agree with you regarding Sunwell. I suppose you could argue that it was a failure because so few people got to do it.

People that I know who did do it from start to finish (not me, I never got past Kalecgos) said it was the best raid since the original Naxx.
Maybe they liked it because it was hard core.

Anonymous said...

Out of interest -

Best raid instance: Zul Aman.

Least successful raid instance: Mount Hyjal.
Having to spam aoe solidly for hours was particularly boring, and then after 8 waves of trash you could mess up on the boss after 10 seconds, and then you had to do all 8 waves again.
Tedious.

Silliest gold sink: Anything by Haris Pilton.

Most longed for instance: Black Temple (getting into it!).

Most juicy guild drama:
Raid guilds seem to have constant loot drama. The worst aspect of raiding.

Biggest addition to the game: Dailies.

Best quest: I agree that the Wrathgate video was superb and very 'omg', not too sure about the questline though. After some 2500 quests just on my main, I get bored of them quite quickly these days.

Ugliest tabard: I don't like tabards on caster classes. Keep them for plate classes. Which leads to -

Most abused phrase: "we have taberd"

Favourite non combat pet: Mojo from ZA.

Most charming Blizzard employee: Any GM with a sense of humour.

I will pass on the blog stuff.Kudos to all you bloggers for making my lunch hour interesting.

Anonymous said...

@James Wallis: ooohhh we got a famous visitor! Greetings and kudos. I'm glad you dropped bye, feel free to come and have a drink whenever you want. It's all on the house.

@Esdras: there are several podcasts about wow, but as far as I know Twisted Nether is the only one with a clear focus on the Blogpshere. That's what makes me feel so much at home there.

@Vlad: Thanks for the list!!! It was great, exactly what I had hoped for.

Why I never brought up MH or BT was because they, as far as I know of, were launched far before 2008. And this is a 2008 list. I know ZA was launched shortly before the year started, but I still consider it a novelty for 2008.

Oh I agree about the Mojo, it was a nice one too. Just a shame I never got one...

Was the dailies an invention of 2008? Yes, maybe it was. Gosh, I've only been playing WoW for 2 years, but my memory seems to fail me on this one.

Unknown said...

Achievements

Yeah this one really woke up completionist inside of us =). With Achievements systems going well for other Games/Platforms it was only a matter of time till WoW did the same thing.

It was a pretty good year overall

What would be your ...

Best Boss Encounter?

Anonymous said...

All my 'Best of' comments are regarding to me, so of course Nihilum might have spanked Vashj and Kael in 2007, but for me I only got to BT and Hyjal in 2008.

Anonymous said...

@Herc: Best boss encounter? Hm... To me personally it was probably Archimond. The more you wipe before the sweeter it gets when you actually gets it right and nail him. But that's the Larísa year of 2008 and probably not the WoW year 2008 since MH was launched so much earlier.

I must say that I liked several of the bosses in ZA a lot, as pointed out earlier.

@Vlad: Ah, yeah, you're right. I never saw those places until 2008 either. I just assumed they were pretty generally done before this year, but maybe there were only a few who did it. My memory is hazy.