Heroic Dire Maul?? 10 Ways It Could Happen!!!

Image Courtesy WoW-Wiki

Before you panic, no, Blizzard isn't putting in a Heroic Dire Maul... as far as I know!

It's ok. You can breathe now. Deep breaths. There you go, that's it.

Actually, Blog Azeroth suggested the topic "10 Things That Would Make __ More Heroic" in their Shared Topics forum, and seeing as the little time I spend online nowadays has been in Dire Maul, it is only fitting that I choose that!!! (Although I really wanted to pick Kara, but they said Old World.)

So imagine - it's major patch day. In the patch notes you see that a couple instances have now been re-attuned to level 80! AWESOME, right? Everybody loves Dire Maul, right???

Well, here are the 'patch notes,' teehee. Enjoy!

Dire Maul has been re-attuned to level 80, and now offers a heroic mode.

1. Pusillin is back, and he has brought friends. Members of your party now enter a temporary phased instance upon entering DM West, similar to the final boss of Ahn'kahet. Each player must keep up with one of Pusillin's friends while doing damage to him. The imp must be defeated before he reaches the "imp room" or the phased player dies to a whelp-esque swarm of fire-crazy imps. Once all players have killed their imps and left phasing, or have been killed within the phased zone, Pusillin becomes targetable. All 5 players must successfully finish the encounter for the Heroic key to drop.

2. The Shen'dralar faction now features epic neck pieces! Approximately of the same iLevel as the gear in Heroic ToC, the Shen'dralar rewards allow the player to transform into an Ent for 10 minutes, with a 1 hour cooldown.

3. Reputation with the Shen'dralar has become easier! Each boss of Dire Maul now drops a Libram of Eldre'Thalas. These librams grant 500 reputation and can be turned in until 11999/12000. Heroic DM bosses drop Librams of the Quel'dorei, which are required to reach Exalted status.

4. Tendris Warpwood now has a 0.1% chance of dropping the 280% Ironbark Protector land mount. Players must be level 80 and exalted with the Shen'dralar to equip this mount.

5. Ogre Tannin will now be looted off of bosses in Dire Maul North.

6. New tailoring and leatherworking patterns can be found in Knot's cache! These epic patterns require 20 ogre tannin each in addition to cloth and leather materials, as well as 450 skill to learn.

7. Slaying Immol'thar now has a 5% chance to drop a Baby Void Terror pet. Awww, ain't he cute?

8. The title "the Drunk" is now available via a quest-line completed on Heroic difficulty. Wearing a Gor'dok Ogre Suit, all players in the party must purchase grog from the temporarily friendly ogres. Upon reaching King Gordok, players must reach 'completely smashed' status before slaying the king, in costume.

9. Alzzin the Wildshaper now has a "Possess" mechanic, allowing him to temporarily turn a player into a worg, rendering that player useless for 5 seconds. This is similar to a polymorph, and can be dispelled with Dispel Magic.

10. Exalted status with the Shen'dralar, possession of the Ironbark Protector mount, as well as of the Baby Void Terror pet unlocks the Feat of Strength "It Puts the Tannin in the Basket...," granting the title of "of Eldre'Thalas."

Faction Transfers - Would You Do It?

Baby Kyo!!!!

Well, it's here, folks. Faction transfers.

I don't know about you, but I never saw it coming. I thought that there was a slight chance of Blizzard caving in on their strict policy about playing both factions on a PVP server (which they did), but I honestly never thought they'd allow full-blown faction switches.

I'm honestly pretty torn about it. As you all know, I am a bit of a lore whore, and so the idea of a Draenei/Troll with no knowledge of Orc/Gnome history suddenly running around as a level 80 drives me insane. So much faction history in leveling up!!!

When I rolled my first character, Kyokiru (troll priest), I read the little book that came with my game about the history of some of the races, and the first thing I did at level 5 was brave the walk to Orgrimmar, look for Thrall, and take a screenshot of my character kneeling in front of his chair. Yes, I know. Nerd, right? Well I thought I was pretty badass. =P

At the same time, though, when I switched to Alliance to play with my friends, I would have given anything to change level 70 Kyo into an Alliance character. I loved priest, and knew I wouldn't be able to devote enough time to both characters, so I created Fuyuko as a priest. (Hence why I have 2 high level priests).

While it was a huge pain in the butt to relevel a character and try to catch her up to the rest of my new guildies, I'm thankful looking back, because Alliance leveling is a different experience than Horde leveling, and I know a lot about the lore associated with both factions now.

At this point, if I were in the Kyo situation again, would I take advantage of the faction transfer service, despite my complaints of it ruining lore? Even if I didn't know anything about Alliance history?

Yes.

It's just too convenient for playing with friends. Releveling a character that you intend to be a raiding main at some point, for most of us, just takes too much time. This was a good financial decision on the part of Blizzard, and I bet they are making some decent scratch off it.

How about you all? If you were in a situation like I was (and I bet most of you have been), would you take advantage of the service? Why or why not?