So… I got stuck in The Secret World. To begin the main story mission for Transylvania, you need to first complete a mission to infiltrate an Orochi compound, and said mission involves a difficult jumping puzzle.

I can’t do it. I can’t even get close.

To be fair, it may have something to do with the fact my computer lags so badly I can barely maneuver my character, let alone achieve any kind of precision.

I’m hoping to get a memory upgrade at some point, which might help, but in the meantime, I need something to do other than level my Templar alt.

So, yeah, I’ve slunk back to my dark master already. Here are my quick and dirty thoughts on coming back to World of Warcraft.

I have to read quests?

I’m not going to lie: there are many aspects of WoW that feel positively archaic after playing Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World.

“WTF, I take damage from falling?”

“This inventory system is awful!”

“WTF, I can’t loot a mob because someone else hit it first?”

“Why does this game have so many buttons?”

In terms of difficulty, it’s complete night and day to go from TSW to WoW. At one point while leveling my paladin, I pulled about eight mobs at once by mistake, and I had a good ten seconds to casually peruse my bloated action bar because I forgot which button was divine shield.

And I haven’t had to translate ancient Roman ciphers or learn Morse code or anything.

To be clear, I’m not knocking Blizzard, per se. Something would be seriously wrong if a game from the middle of last decade didn’t feel archaic compared to ones from last summer.

But still, it takes some adjustment.

Terrace of the Endless Spring:

This raid was released shortly after my sub ran out, so I never did it before now.

I’m pretty happy with Terrace, actually. Maybe could have used a cinematic or an RP event to cap it off, and the council fight at the beginning felt very generic, but all in all, a very fun and satisfying raid. The last three bosses were all quite interesting and enjoyable.

Also, my Sha-touched staff dropped on my first kill. So that’s nice.

New scenarios:

Dominance Point was a little long for my taste. One of the main appeals of scenarios is how quick they are, but this one just seemed to drag on.

Dagger in the Dark was a bit more interesting. Actually, by all rights, I should have loved it. It was lore-heavy, featured a character I’m very fond of, and began a plot arc I’ve been begging for since Cataclysm.

Unfortunately, Blizzard is really terrible at making plot twists that are actually surprises. Despite not reading any spoilers beforehand, I knew everything that was going to happen in Dagger in the Dark before I ever queued up for it. So that kind of sucked the fun out of it.

But I will say say this: any of you out there who didn’t swear the blood oath with Vol’jin? You are now my sworn enemies. I will end you.

I haven’t done Assault on Zan’vess or the Alliance ones yet.

New daily quests:

Day one: “Collect five crab meat.”

Day two: Okay, this isn’t so bad. Crabs aside, most of the quests are decent. They’re clearly designed to emulate the old strategy games, and I do appreciate the blatant attempt to pander to my nostalgia, although the timing of it feels a little odd.

It’s also nice that the quests are pretty quick to get through. This is nothing like the abominable grind that was Golden Lotus.

I think the most interesting thing is the cooperative mechanics they’ve introduced with the capture points, the wild beasts, and the bonuses you can buy with commendations. Reminds me a little bit of the spirit of cooperation that exists in Guild Wars 2.

I think the current implementation of the concept is a little underdeveloped, but hopefully we can see more ideas like this down the line.

Honestly, though, I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to get really excited about WoW-style quests again after having played TSW.

Day three: LOR’THEMAR’S NEW VOICE ACTOR PRONOUNCES “QUEL’THALAS” CORRECTLY.

A return to stabbing (now with 35% more stabby):

I started leveling my paladin, but I decided I wasn’t quite ready to give up on my rogue, so I decided to actually use my subtlety spec for once.

As it turns out, sub isn’t so excruciatingly dull as combat has become. Energetic recovery and cheap builders mean I’m actually hitting buttons, and my mastery means those buttons actually do damage.

I thought maybe I had over-estimated the dullness of combat, or it was the new gear I got from the AH, so I switched back to combat for one mob just for comparison. It took me about three times longer to kill it, and most of that time was just picking my nose (metaphorically speaking) because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything.

Going sub is not a perfect solution. I don’t like using daggers, I miss killing spree, and sub has a lot of hoops you need to jump through just to do decent damage. Although I played a demo warlock in Cataclysm, so sub’s hoops are minor in comparison to that.

But it’s better than giving up on the character altogether. My characters are more than just avatars; I get attached to them. After four (ish) years of adventuring with Maigraith, I wasn’t ready to move on to someone new.

So let the warning go out to all enemies of the Alliance: Maigraith is back, and she misses her swords, so she’s pissed.

The rest of the gang:

Not too much else is new in regards to my characters. My warlock remains my main du jour. With the removal of grouping requirements to solo old raids, I’ve been giving dark apotheosis a workout.

So far, I’ve found most bosses from Wrath or earlier are complete pushovers. I didn’t even need to use defensive cooldowns on Marrowgar, and Attumen was like fighting a quest mob. Gunship appears to still be unsoloable due to mechanics, and while doable, Kael’thas is very, very annoying.

My mage remains an alchemy bitch, my monk remains the latest neglected alt, and my paladin looks like she might actually be the alt I intended her to be.

Finally, one feature of Guild Wars 2 I found really cool — if poorly implemented — was town clothes, so I’ve decided to bring the concept to WoW.

Not bad for something I threw together in half an hour.

New article:

My latest article at WhatMMO is Eight Underused Class Archetypes. Main thing I learned from writing this one: I would like to play an alchemist.

Also, who do I have to stab to get an arcane archer?

The Third Age comes to an end:

You do have to respect game developers who, in designing their holiday event, say, “Screw Christmas. We’re doing the zombie apocalypse!”

So while players of other games are having snowball fights and collecting silly little gifts, agents in The Secret World are battling for their lives against mighty world bosses, fending off waves of undead Mayans, and enduring the horror of the Nameless Days.

Now, to be fair, it’s still not that great of an event. I lag so badly in the crowds I can hardly play, and mostly it’s just a lot of people spawn-camping zombies in a mindless AoE-fest.

You can get some decent rewards, but the drop rate for the currency is pretty crappy. Maybe it’s higher in the upper level zones; I was in Kingsmouth.

Still, I’d rather this than building snowmen in Lion’s Arch or rescuing Metzen the reindeer.

Also, the last two End of Days video blogs from Joel Bylos were as funny as the first. Check them out, but be warned: this is some mature content. What happens in the bunker, stays in the bunker.

Unrelated to the Mayan Apocalypse, I got my first auxiliary weapon. Science nerd that I am, I had to go for the new quantum B.R.A.C.E. introduced in issue #5. So now I’ve got an arm-mounted supercollider that appears to have been made from a beer can and a power bar.

Hells to the yes.

The mission to get it was fairly fun. Not too long, and not terribly hard, either, considering how crappy my gear is. It was fun going back to the original NPCs from Kingsmouth.

I hope Andy and Moose get together some day. They’d make an adorable couple.

In other news…

World of Warcraft Patch 5.2 coming soon:

As a little tease before the holidays, Blizzard has provided us with our first glimpse of patch 5.2 for World of Warcraft, in the form of patch notes and a single screenshot.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the patch will focus on the Thunder King and continue the story of the Mogu.

I’ll be honest: I’m not overly thrilled with this. I’ve gone on record several times as saying that I do not like the Mogu. They’re simple brutes. They’re all brawn and no brains. That just doesn’t make for interesting villains in my view.

Also, what happened to the idea that the 5.0 content would be a complete arc, and the rest of the expansion would be about the Fourth War?

Now, I’m not a huge fan of the whole Fourth War thing — as you well know — but if you’re going to do an expansion about the Horde/Alliance war, do an expansion about the Horde/Alliance war. Seems kind of weird that we’re (probably) only going to get one raid tier devoted to the expansion’s main storyline.

On the plus side, I would like to see more about the Zandalari/Mogu alliance, and data-mining confirms a strong Zandalari presence in the new raid. I know a lot of people are sick of Troll content, and I can understand why, but I just never seem to get sick of killing Trolls. Must be the Blood Elf in me.

And I am looking forward to the non-raid content of 5.2. I’m hoping the rumored transmogrification changes make it live, and I think I heard something about some new Blood Elf lore.

There are also going to be several new scenarios, a new daily hub, new Lorewalker stories (Yay!), a new Guild Wars 2-esque loot system for world bosses, and the usual class changes.

Rogues actually got some changes, including new abilities. Most buffs are PvP-related, and blade flurry is being nerfed by an astounding seventy-five percent, but at least they remembered we exist. That’s more than can be said for everything from Cataclysm until now.

And the new version of shuriken toss does sound pretty nice. Ranged auto-attacks? Yes, please.

Finally, windwalker monks are apparently a pet class now. Not sure how I feel about that. Storm, earth, and fire was one of my favourite abilities in Warcraft III, but on the other hand… WTF?

New article:

My latest WhatMMO article is 9 Great MMO Quotes. I’m very impressed that I was able to resist the urge to make it 100% Wrath of the Lich King and Secret World quotes.