It's been 2 weeks since The Burning Crusade was released, and it's been a pretty good time. I've gotten Unbarc up to level 67, and replaced some (not much, but some) gear with quest rewards and a drop or 2. I think my favorite upgrade thus far is from a quest, [Battle Mage's Baton]. It's better then [Staff of the Shadow Flame], which drops off of Nefarian, and it's a quest reward. After seeing all this stuff drop in the 5-man instances (blues/greens), I'm really anxious to see what comes from the 25-man raids. With all the quests and quick instances I've been doing, I shot my banked gold from 950g to 2100g as of last night. Looks like I won't have any problems getting a flying mount when I hit 70.

Now on to some bad news (for me, anyway). With the latest patch, the mage talent Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt have been given a damage reduction of 2% for each point you put into it, which comes out to a spell that reduces cast time by 0.5 seconds and reduces spell damage by 10%. To try and avoid this, I tried to respec and get around that talent, but needless to say I hated it. I went all the way down to Slow in Arcane, and put the rest in fire (minus Improved Fireball). It may not seem like it, but a 3.5 second cast fireball seems like an eternety after a year of casting a 3 second fireball. By the end of the night I switched back to my old build and just dealt with the damage reduction. It's not too bad, since I just got my new staff, along with the new enchant +40 spelldamage to weapon. I even replaced my gloves with some nice socketed ones ([Tempest's Touch]) and put some crit gems into it, so my crit is building up enough to where I don't care about the damage nerf. After I get these new gloves enchanted with the +20 all damage (instead of my old +20 fire damage), I should be up to around 580ish spell damage and 25% crit with fire.

Only 6 days and counting until The Burning Crusade is unleashed upon the world, and the Dark Portal is finally open. All this week, certain events will be taking place throughout the world. If you venture to the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands, demons are starting to spawn through the Portal. There is a quest to help kill them, and in return you get some gold and a [Tabard of the Protector]. Make sure you get a group first... not because it's hard to kill the demons, but just so you have a better chance of tagging them before anybody else. There will be a lot of people standing around the Portal casting AoE all the time, and they only spawn a few at a time.

Also, one final patch has been released before the Expansion comes out. Here's an blurb from it:

Patch 2.0.3 Wrote:

Several years have passed since the Burning Legion's defeat at the Battle of Mount Hyjal - and the races of Azeroth have continued to rebuild their once shattered kingdoms. With renewed strength, the heros of the Horde and Alliance have begun to explore the broken lands beyond the Dark Portal. What dangers or rewards await mortal champions in Draenor? And what will the Alliance and Horde do when they discover that the demons they thought vanquished have returned to renew their terrible Burning Crusade?

After you install The Burning Crusade, you will have to re-patch 2.0.3, so don't delete the files just yet. The game CDs went into production right before the patch was ready.

First off, The Burning Crusade has been set for release on 1/16/2007, which happens to be a normal maintenance day. Hopefully they leave the servers up for launch day. I think I might be taking a day or two of vacation around that time.

Second, it saddens me to say that I have quit my guild, Dark Portal Syndicate. I've been with DPS for roughly a year and a month, and I've enjoyed most of my time there. Yaral and I have transferred to the Runetotem server, so look us up if you're in the area. I quit mainly because our GM quit playing WoW, along with some other key people in the guild. The first night without them, we spent a couple hours wiping to the first boss in BWL. We were a guild who have cleared BWL with ease, killed 5 bosses in Nax, and got C'Thun to 56% phase 1 on our first attempt ever, were wiping to Razorgore. From the sounds of it, there hasn't been any improvement the past couple of days. So now, on Runetotem, Yaral and I joined a guild with some old friends that we first leveled up to 60 with. Everything is kinda casual right now, as they're going to be an expansion guild (running the 25-man stuff). It's been nice not having to worry about raiding, since I've been doing it for a long time. The first night on the new server, Yaral and I ran through Stratholme (live-side) twice, and I walked away with almost 40g and a [Righteous Orb]. That's more than I'd normally make in a week with raiding. Well, enough about that for now. Come see me on Runetotem.

Last, the pre-patch (1.13 or 2.0, however you want to look at it), has been set for release this upcoming Tuesday (12/5/2006). What this means for me, is that I'll be in AddOn updating hell. It'll also mean I get a free respec! Hopefully a day or two after the patch, I'll have my Profile updated with the new talents and honor page (not that the honor will mater, since I can't stand PvP).

Finally, after about a month of nothing, I was recently able to update my gear a little bit:
[Enigma Shoulderpads]
[Gem of Nerubis]

On the Burning Crusade frontier, it seems that Blizzard has pushed the release date to January of 2007.

Eyonix Wrote:

IRVINE, Calif -- Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade(tm), the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

"We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we're excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content," said Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve."

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback. Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

Kael'thas will be down for the next day or so, in order to upgrade the hardware for The Burning Crusade. This is a tad annoying, since it takes away one of my 3 nights of raiding this week, but that just shows how much closer to releasing the expansion they are.

Last week's loots: [Ring of the Eternal Flame]