Tuesday (23 Mar) - Patch 3.3.3

Tuesday (23 Mar) - Patch 3.3.3

Wild was left at the altar again, Tuesday night, standing by but not needed as the guild 25 man started at VoA in Wintergrasp for the evening raid. They finished off Koralon so fast they were back out of VoA and streaming past Wild before they even announced that raid invites had been completed. I'd had a small hope that they would bring Wild just for the VoA run because a couple of invited guildies were running a little late, but they made it to the party just in time. As usual the Tuesday farming run was well attended with 32 raiders signed up. Wild will have to wait and see what Wednesday brings. The proposed restart of the MM group for a ten man has not materialized. Wild's raiding situation sucks.

Before Wild checked out for the evening I did note that the Dungeon Finder now has an option for random level 80 pvp battlegrounds. That part of the new patch looks to be in place.

I didn't have any trouble loading the patch, although some of Wild's guildies did. Wild's troubles only started after he logged in, although I would have to say they were pretty minor compared to other patches. The first time Wild logged in nothing worked - he couldn't open mail, get on his mount, etc. Couldn't even leave Dalaran as the flight master wouldn't talk to him and even the portal to the surface failed to respond. Later in the day I tried again, and although it was laggy things appeared back to normal. Philly had a couple of disconnects as well, but the servers stayed up.

One the first day of the patch I intentionally stayed away from the quartermasters for the turn in of the pvp marks (which are no longer being used) as I figured there would be a crowd and it would be overly laggy, if it worked at all. I'll try it on Wednesday.

I rolled Philly out of bed, though. She was able to get dailies done and even got into a Wintergrasp match after Wild logged out. Philly has had good luck with WG since she made level 78. She's won both matches she's been part of, including the one Tuesday night, one on offense and one on defense. The new WG rules mean that the advantage will stay with defenders for two consecutive victories instead of one as was the previous rule. In order to assure parity between the two factions, Blizzard rigs the WG battle so that the offense eventually gets a decided advantage, in order that one faction doesn't hog the fortress for long periods (they call that rigging their "internal balance system"). The advantage turned to the offense after just one win before the patch; now it doesn't change until there are two consecutive victorious defenses.

Philly can't use the pvp battleground finder yet as it is only for level 80s for this first release. With the dailies and the WG match, though, she's now 18% of the way to level 79. Another enhancement to the dungeon finder tool is that now world bosses and seasonal bosses can be assaulted year round instead of what used to be just a limited time. Rare drops from these bosses are about to become ho hum routine as players farm those bosses.

For those who don't use addons, there are quite a few changes to the default user interface in the patch for the Auction House, quest tracking, and other areas. The rest of the patch is the usual tweaks and adjustments, but I didn't see anything major in any of those.

On the home improvement front, we were renters for many years when we first got married. We moved a lot and that, plus financial issues, kept us from buying. Once we settled for a bit - six years renting once we moved to California - we made the plunge, bought a home, and never regretted it. We even had to move away for two years, rented the house while we were gone, and then moved back. The one thing we did regret was paying rent those first six years, when we could have had our own home. With today's low fixed rates and home availability, it's a good time to consider buying.

I fixed the electrical issue with the bedroom wall unit yesterday, and even did some shoring up of the troublesome mirror centerpiece, and the Mrs seems a bit happier. I'll try to post a picture or two when I get a chance. Then she told me she wanted to drywall and paint the garage. I wonder if that is before or after we dive into the bedroom closet upgrade.