You no take key!

I remember back when 4.1 was released, sifting through the general whine thoughts regarding nerfs and buffs that had been made and what the new za/zg instances would bring, a lot of concern was vented regarding the fact that they decided to implement the Bear-run mount reward in the revamped version of ZA. It ranged between the bear-huggers who didn't want to see people run around with this fake-bear, to people who thought it was their turn to have a shot at a cool bear mount. And eventhough the raid version was more difficult to get, the current version actually requires a pretty good setup and skills to get. It's not like you can just waltz in there and grab it, like some people feared. I remember our guild really struggled to get that mount, but we usually got our asses handed to us by those pesty scouts before the official third boss, quite like nowadays actually. I wasn't lucky enough to get one, and I was quite awed at those who had it. Envious? Not sure. My guild wasn't good enough obviously, and whoever had got it must have busted their asses off and definitely deserved it. So when it was announced that they'd re-implement it, in a version that basically looked the same but with a slightly more pinkish hue (making the original look better imo) I decided to stand inbetween these two stand points.

On the one hand I thought that the bear mount was a relic, a thing of the past and whoever had it should consider themselves lucky.  I don't necessarily think everything in the game has to be available to everyone at some point. I think this game needs some exclusivity. I think the dude with the Scarab Lord title is the coolest guy around, but that doesn't mean I think I should have a chance to get that title. If everyone had a shot at it, it wouldn't be as cool. Even if it means I can't be that cool, so be it. On the other hand I do understand, and to some point agree, that you should make "old" stuff accessible to new people. And so many things still are without it being a problem. Anyone who likes can go and build their own Thunderfury with some patience (and luck). It's still cool. It might not be as cool as back in Vanilla, but not far from. It still stands for dedication and hard work. I'd argue that some items are cooler to get now than when they were current, like Val'anyr or Shadowmourne. Imagine what you have to do to get the mats and kills for Shadowmourne without a raid group backing you up? That's not even possible right now. Getting these things now doesn't tarnish the glow of the item or those who managed to get it when it was current eventhough it's the exact same item.

Why is the bear mount such forbidden grounds? One reason I can see to it is that the bear mount is a lot more visible than say, a legendary weapon. It might hold more bragging possibilities, that would vanish when everyone can sport a bear mount (although they don't look exactly the same and I personally think they're quite easy to tell apart). But to a bigger part, I think, it's because the bear mount was made unaccessible for a long period of time. All through Wrath, having the Bear Mount meant the equivalent of saying "I was there", pretty much like having an old pvp-title or tier 3. Because you've been able to get Thunderfury all through Vanilla, BC, Wrath and now Cataclysm, it has never been part of those items that mostly symbolized some sort of "veteran" status. Having these veteran items was the same as being able to say "I saw [insert random no longer living artist here] live" as many parents do or like my mom said "I saw Star Wars when it was first released, before it was remastered". Young me became awed and envious and thought she was totally cool. There is just something special about being able to say, or show, that you were there. That's why we take pictures of ourselves with celebrities or cool stuff, to prove we were there and to remember what it was like to experience it. Re-implementing a revamped version does tarnish some of that memory and worst of all, removes the possibility to brag about having been there when it was current. I myself usually run around with my Senior Sergeant title, not because it's a cool title (because it aint) but because it shows everyone that my char has been around for some time. And it matters to me, for some reason. Deep inside we're all small hipsters who want to be able to tell people that we had it when it was still underground/current/cool.

But it's not just about bragging. We care equally much about the stuff no one else can see, like special quest items and the thing that have made many people sad in 4.2 - the keys. Eventhough you might never have opened that key chain and looked at your keys, you knew they were there. They meant something to you, they were your photo album over all the time you spent collecting them and everything around it. Those keys usually stood for hard work and loads of memories are attached to them. Eventhough I never was a key collector myself, I actually felt a sting in my heart when I read that they were going to remove so many of them. I felt an equal sting in my heart when they said that they were going to revamp the za/zg instances, but figured that those revamps could just as easily be seen as a homage of the old instances, which I've already written about. But items often mean more to us since they're personal. They're keep sakes and bragging rights at once and we need them. This game has been around for 6 years now and many of us have been around just as long. That's a big chunk of our lives that I've spent more hours than I'd like to count with. I'll gladly admit that I am proud of having been around that long, and eventhough I don't think that necessarily makes me a better player than a Wrath-baby it makes me feel special to be able to say that I was around when enhancement shamans weren't a viable raid spec (along with a tons of other specs), when any class that could heal only healed and when warriors were meant to tank. That I fought that boss when it was still difficult, that I managed to get epics when that was still epic and that I got the bear mount the first time around (although in my case, that isn't true). We don't even have achievements to help us remember all the cool stuff we did back in Vanilla, to many of us keys, and things like them, are all that we have left (and I've kept my Benediction/Anathema of course).

Now that they've removed the key chain, I need some other bag to keep my useless most important stuff. I know they removed the key chain to save up space, and I have no idea what they intend to do with this precious space, but what could be more needed than some sort of scrap book where I can keep things, perhaps with a little note and attached screenshot of the place I got it. Or would that make WoW too much like real life?

Glory of the Cataclysm Hero

I was lucky enough to finish Glory of the Cataclysm Hero and get the Volcanic Stone Drake the other day. I say "lucky" because unlike the last time I did an achievement like this, I basically got this on what we in sweden call a "shrimp sandwhich". That is without putting much effort into it. When I did Glory of the Hero I really busted my ass off to get all the achievements. This time I just tagged along for the ride and got nearly all achievements while passing by. Only for the last two achievements did I actually ask people to help me with them specifically, in all the other cases did I end up with people who wanted to do them or got them by "accident". Overall this metaachievement felt alot easier than the Wrath one, and the fact that I didn't have to lift many fingers to get them proves that. In a couple of cases I ended up in random pugs where the majority wanted to do them, and eventhough I didn't feel like it I decided to go with the flow. This is how I got all the achievements in BRC. In some cases I got the achievement from being lazy, like with I'm on a Diet. In some cases I got the achievement by doing the fight the easier way, like Ready for Raiding, No Static At All or The Straw That Broke the Camels Back. In some cases people did the achievement for me like with Extra Credit Bonus Stage and Rat Pack. Then I noticed that I only had two achievements in Throne of the Tides left for the whole meta achievement and when a friend of mine told me that those were easy I decided to get it all done.

Speaking of flaunting e-peens

I did feel like I as a healer rarely had to do anything special to get the achievement done. In a way that is both good and bad. I could ride on the wave of others, but on the other hand I had to rely on my party getting things done if I wanted the achievement. I could just keep them alive and hope for the best. I remember in Glory of the Hero there were a couple of achievements that rested alot on the healers effort, like Watch Him Die, Hadronox Denied and Zombiefest. Sure everyone had to pitch in, but if the healer didn't know how to handle heavy healing there was nothing you could do.

I won't attempt to write a guide on how to go about doing this. Exul wrote a really nice guide about this which was featured over at mmo-champion.com as part of their guide writing contest. If you're interested in pointers on how to go about doing this I suggest you check that out. Instead I am going to do what I did last time and comment a little on the achievements that I feel where the most noteworthy.

This mount is extra special since you don't actually ride on top of it, but underneath it!

Faster than the speed of light
Complete the Vault of Lights within 5 minutes of entering in the Halls of Origination on Heroic difficulty. 

I like to do things on time. There are few things that can get me pumped up like knowing I've only got a limited time to do something and every effort is needed and every step has to be correctly done. It is something I enjoy much about raiding, and probably one of the reasons I like Conclave of the Wind. Timing the jumps, and using the right heals for each platform are a few things that probably will entertain me for a long time. This achievement isn't as difficult as timing boss skills in a raid, but it still requires you to think more than when usually doing this. For one you can't hope for a mana break during those 5 minutes, so spamming heals is not recommended (that is otherwise something I don't mind doing when killing trash since I can drink afterwards). This is how I prefer to do this room even if I didn't get an achievement for it.

It's Frost Damage
Allow three Freezing Vapors to cast Coalesce during the Admiral Ripsnarl encounter in Deadmines on Heroic difficulty. 

This is a funny (?) achievement since you actually are awarded for failing. I liked it because of the doom feeling you got when you knew everyone was going to die, and that that was what you were aiming for. Kind of weird. And definitely not an achievement you like to repeat. You CAN survive it, since you apparently can run out of sight of the explosion, but rest assured that someone (most of you) will die when you're doing this achievement. I'd really like to know what Blizzard is referring to with the title name too.

Headed South
Defeat Siamat, Lord of the South Wind, with 3 stacks of Lightning Charge in Lost City of the Tol'vir on Heroic difficulty. 

The way I got this achievement was quite ironic. I did a random heroic with a couple of friends and guildies and we got into Tol'Vir. A guildie of mine had been trying to get the meta achievement, and Headed South was the last one he had to get it. He had tried and failed already, so when we got to this boss he asked if we could do it. I really didn't feel like it. The way the described the tactics it would take 15 minutes, and I didn't think that sounded fun at all. I started whining, asking them to do it another time without me. I really couldn't care less. But my guildie pleaded, and everyone was set at doing it (a couple of others in the group needed it too) so I finally gave in. "Ok!" I said. "One try! But no more". And we failed. And I said that that was it. But they begged. So I gave them another try. And we failed again. And I said that I'd rather leave than do that all over again. Remember that was 15 minutes of waiting basically for each try. So they said that they'd do another tactic, one that wouldn't require all that waiting. We'd simply nuke the boss down. "Fine then" I thought, as long as I don't have to stay here much longer. And we nuked him down, everyone got ready for the achievement and BAM! I was the only one who got it. The guildie had resisted the last stack, and the other two had died just before we killed the boss. So I, the only one who really didn't want to do the achievement, was the only one who got it. Of course.

Straw That Broke the Camels Back
Defeat Earthrager Ptah while mounted on a camel in the Halls of Origination on Heroic difficulty. 

I liked this achievement since you got it from riding the camels, which is the best way to do this fight. Beside the fact that riding a camel is fricking cool, it also allows us to move while casting which is nice for a change. It's not like the fight is difficult and riding the camel or not riding the camel makes much of a difference, I just really like the mechanic of being able to run around and throw all of my heals. I'd really like it if they somehow implemented this into a raid boss, which required you to constantly stay on the move. Unfortunately you can't use pets for some reason when riding the camel, that is both hunter pets and the Shadowfiend, so they'd have to fix that first of course.

Druids never seem to be able to just do stuff the regular way.

Ulduar Hat-Trick - Mimiron's Head, Iron-Bound Protodrake and Astral Walker

I was going to post a very lengthy guide on warrior tanking in 4.0, but I was rather lucky in Ulduar this evening and just had to share it! And also some short thoughts on the healing.

Yogg+0
Trying to find new and interesting challenges before Cataclysm, my guild had set out to do Yogg+0 and get people some Mimiron mounts. Mimiron's Head happens to be the coolest mount in the game. The only mounts about as cool are Ashes of Alar and that damn Headless Horsemans mount that just won't drop for me.

We had cleared Ulduar last week and went on today to focus on just killing Yogg. We downed him on our third try. Our first try people failed miserably on the clouds in phase 1, on our second try people died in phase 3 and then we got him. I thought Sanity was going to be the big problem for this fight, seeing as you can't replenish it at all, but actually the adds in phase 3 turned out to be the biggest problem. So if you want to do this, save everything for the last phase and make sure to really nuke him down, because you won't be able to keep the tanks up for long.

Everyone rolled on the Mimiron's Head that dropped at the end and I won with a whopping 100 roll! I am now proud owner of the coolest mount ever. It makes the funniest sounds and looks so awesome, I love it. It's weird though that more people don't have it since Yogg+0 really wasn't that difficult. We had even pugged some 5 people in our 25man raid. Yogg is one of my favorite fights for Wotlk, and I'm looking forward to going back for more mounts to the rest of the guild.

Iron-Bound Protodrake
Having killed Yogg we went on to finish the achis we hadn't done the week earlier to get everyone the Iron-Bound Protodrake. That of Ignis, Razorscale and Iron Council. Compared to Yogg+0 this was some really easy achis to get. The only slightly tricky one was collecting dwarves on Razorscale because they just kept on dying. Fortunately you don't have to do them all in one go.

Astral Walker
Seeing as we were done doing everything we had planned for the evening way ahead of schedule, we set out to give Algalon a try. The good thing about Algalon is you can only wipe on him for an hour, then he disappears and you have to try it all over the next week. We had some wipes on him as well, and the aoe damage from the Collapsing Stars is actually really tough to heal through, even with our current gear. Kudos to anyone who got this with Ulduar gear.

Healing?
If you're interested, here are my recounts for healing Yogg and Algalon. 

The above is from Yogg. Shielding is nearly half of my healing, and atonement pretty high on nearly one tenth. I've even started to use Flash Heal way more than before. Even after all the healing I had to do, mana was never an issue. With archangel I get more than 7k mana every 30 seconds if I keep smiting. Crazy really.

This is from Algalon. Having PoH on top stands as a proof of the heavy aoe damage you have to heal through on that fight. I actually thought healing Algalon was tougher than Yogg, but the fight is easier. If that makes any sense. It's easy because you "just" have to aoe-heal alot. On Yogg you have to cleanse, dispel, avoid stuff and whatnot aswell.

Brewfest is over, time to count the mounts

The bloggosphere is completely swarming with posts on Cataclysm and 4.0 at the moment. Seems everyone can make a post about the new changes, when it's estimated to arrive and whether it's gonne be frickin awesome or not. I don't blame them, I've done my fair share of posts in the matter! And it's very obvious that our dear readers are interested. My post on Disc 4.0 Talent Builds has alone gotten more pageviews than the rest of my posts combined, over the last couple of days. And that says something. Looking at what google searches led to my blog, 8 out of top 10 include the words "talents", "disc", "cataclysm" and "4.0" in some combination.

 Some people seem to go into a frenzy about Cataclysm though. It'll come when it comes! Let's just sit back and relax and enjoy what is left of Wrath, for it will never come again. Take your time to take some screenshots of the old world for instance. Some people even seem to be scared about the expansion (and the preceding patch). "What will I do? I will be noob all over again! My guild won't be able to down Marrowgar anymore!" Yes that is all probably quite true, but remember that we are all in this together. We will all run around like noobs trying to figure out left from right. No one will laugh at your mistakes, you'll probably won't do the worst ones. And to be honest people will be so busy with their own they won't even notice what you might be doing wrong, they probably won't even know that you are doing something wrong!

Let's take a look at something completely else for now instead. Today was the final day of the Brewfest Festival, and I have been "grinding" Coren to see if I could get some fun stuff. Grinding isn't really the right word since he takes about 20 seconds to kill + around 30 seconds in queue. Grinding does sort of suggest a tediousness or time-sink, which isn't really applicable in this case. Many people have commented on Coren being a fiasco. He's too easy, and no fun at all, they say. I don't agree. Yes he might be too easy, but he's definitely not boring. He offers the perfect opportunity to test how much burst your character has (as a healer though, this is a /afk fight). As a tank you will have the challenge of trying to hold aggro when people go completely monkey berserk for 20 seconds, completely disregarding things like initial aggro and "run-to-the-tank"-mechanics (wait, that's just like any heroic then).

I've done Coren 10 times each day for the last two weeks, on 9 different classes (two warriors, but no rogue). Coren offered me the perfect setting for trying out different "nuke it like you mean it" tactics on all my different classes, trying to outdps myself each time. I didn't start doing him at once because I didn't really think I wanted anything from him. I'm no collector of things really, I don't care about mounts and achis much. But I soon realized that he only takes 1 minute of my time (per character), so what the heck. I thought I might take the chance to collect some statistics on the guy! So here is what I found out over the course of 130 runs all in all.

Fastest kill - 9 seconds = 17,777 group dps (4444 dps per person, not including healer)
Slowest kill - 49 seconds = 3265 group dps (816 dps per person, not including healer. I think this was the run where all the dps were afk or something and I had to kill him alone on my warrior tank)

I got;

• Kodos - 3 = 2,3% drop chance (2% according to Wowhead)
• Rams - 1 = 0,7% drop chance (2% according to Wowhead)
• Tankards - 9 = 6,9% drop chance (5% according to Wowhead)
• Shankers - 5 = 3,8% drop chance (4% according to Wowhead)
• Remotes - 2 (alas, on the same char!) 1,5% drop chance (5% according to Wowhead)

As we can see I wasn't very lucky with my drops, overall being slightly below average (yay me). So where you any lucky?

Did you get your Venomhide Mount yet?

Hello you!

When leveling my shaman I stumbled upon a really fun and interesting quest chain, or rather chain of daily quests - the quest to get the Venomhide Raptor Mount in Un'goro. I knew it existed, somewhere in the back of my head, but since I am no collector (unless you count collecting alts) I had just filed it away under information I wasn't really going to need or use. I actually tend to avoid Un'goro when questing all together, mostly because the quests require you to completely cram your bags full with quest items so that you can't go and do anything else (instances, quest in other areas) until you're absolutely done in Un'goro. But I generally like the area. It has a nice feel to it, and I don't even hate the Devilsaurs as much anymore. I don't know if Blizzard has done something to them, but I am sure that when I used to quest in Un'goro those huge bastards were following me around (just as the Fel Reavers in Hellfire Peninsula). Lately I've had no trouble with them (I still hate the Fel Reavers though).

So back to the Venomhide Mount. I might as well go and say this at once, before any of you alliance playing readers send me hate mail for having you run all the way to Un'goro for nothing - the quest (and mount) is horde specific. It was implemented in the game as a counterpart to the alliance quest for the Winterspring Saber that has been around since Vanilla days. Unfortunately for you alliance, that quest was designed when Blizzard still didn't know much about how to make interesting and fun quests and so it requires a whole lot of tedious grinding. So does the Venomhide Raptor quest in a sense, so what are the differences?

The biggest problem with the alliance quest chain is probably that you need exalted (yes you read that correctly) with the Wintersaber Trainers in Winterspring to take it. Becoming exalted with this faction requires weeks of extremely boring grinding of mobs in Winterspring. You don't need any kind of rep with any faction to start the horde-quest however, Mor'vek the quest giver stands by the entrance of Un'goro ready to give anyone of level 48 and above the first quest (and all subsequent ones too).

I asked Love if he had done this quest, since he actually is a collector of mounts. He has done about 50 runs to Sethekk Halls for the Raven Lord Mount (and got it the other day, I was just thinking he might go crazy in his efforts to get that bird...). To my suprise, he hadn't done this quest. I asked him why and he told me it was just too horrible. As I so far completely love this quest, and I'm the one who usually hate to do dailies (I never ever do them unless I really have to) except the fishing daily, I asked him what he didn't like about it.

The first part of the quest chain is to obtain blood from different venomhides in the area. As a level 50 ish shaman, getting this blood was extremely easy. Killing the mobs took some 15 seconds or so, and I usually got 2-3 splashes of blood on myself per mob. The quest took some 5 minutes to get done, tops. Love on the other hand had tried this on his main - a level 80 druid. To get any splashes of these raptors you will have to keep them from dying long enough to splash you with some blood. Not an easy task for a level 80, even when naked. Love had struggled to get some splashes, it had taken him far longer than 5 minutes and in the end he gave up since he thought that if this was the repeated daily quest he had to do for the next coming 20 days, he wouldn't bother.

Fortunately for him, I knew that he was wrong (this is very often the case actually). Getting those splashes of blood is just a one time quest to get your very own little Venomhide Hatchling. And now we're getting to why this quest is completely awesome. You're going to raise your own mount. Blizzard has actually managed to make a quest where I as a player feel a connection with the quest. After some start up quests you're handed a little Baby Venomhide, whom you have to raise over 20 days until he's big enough (and trusts you enough) to be ridden. The daily quests are ordinary enough and primarily focus on feeding the little thing, but since you engaged in taking care of that cute little thing, staring up at your with huge raptor eyes, you gladly do them.

I find myself actually looking forward to doing this daily quest each day!

The quests are done in Un'goro and Tanaris, and that is also the only areas you can summon your Baby Raptor (and Silithus for some reason). The mount can of course be used anywhere regular mounts can be used. As far as I know there are four different quests, of which I have done three so far and they all take about 2-5 minutes each. The real trouble is getting to Tanaris/Un'goro every day, but not even that is much of a hassle since you can take the teleport in the Violet Citadel that takes you directly to Tanaris. Or you can take the teleport in Scholazar Basin that takes you directly to Un'goro.

If you want something to do for a couple of weeks before Cataclysm, I can't recommend this quest chain enough. To quote Signalfirefly from wowhead.com
"If you're not in love with it by the time it's all grown up... well, I'm afraid there's just no hope for you."

Hmm, did you grow?

Discovering a gnome

Vroom! Actually I am standing still in this picture though...

Even after more than 5 years of playing, end game raiding and more alts than I want to admit, there are still things in WoW that I have never done or experienced. Many of these things include pvp or alliance. I have for instance never played a gnome or dwarf beyond level 15 (until recently), and therefor I have never actually ridden a Mechanostrider or Ram! This hasn't bothered me too much, but occasionally I wonder what it would feel like. So the other day I rolled the gnome warrior I have mentioned some times now in posts, and it dinged 20 recently. So off I went to get my Mechanostrider. Choosing one wasn't easy, I wanted to ride them all at once! But I finally settled with the Red one, for no particular reason at all since they all looked awesome and started to randomly ride around. So much fun! I noticed that I made vroom-sounds when riding around on it. It's not really as fun if you don't vroom.

The Mechanostrider isn't the only new thing my little gnome has introduced me to. I've never leveled in Loch Modan either. So I decided that now was the time to give that place a go. You don't have much reason to go there other than leveling, especially not as horde. As alliance you might want that flightpath by Thelsamar to get easier access to Badlands. when questing in Loch Modan I soon realized why no one does this area though, it must seriously be one of the baddest designed quest areas in the game, where efficiency is concerned. As for rp and lore, Loch Modan is a really nice area to start out if you want to feel all dwarfish (not so much gnomish unfortunately). In fact it reminded me somewhat of the starting area of Greenskins in Warhammer Online. The quests are few and extremely far apart, be ready to alot of running. Too many quests involve "get this for me over on the other side of the world". Alot of quests involve flying back and forth to Ironforge, not only the regular "talk to the flight master" quest line, but other quests as well. If you want to level fast and efficient, Loch Modan is the worst place to go. It is also quite far from other leveling areas, like Elwynn Forest and Dun Morogh. What's even more annoying is that there is a level gap between the starting area of gnomes and dwarves, and Loch Modan. So even if LM would be the logical next area to go to, you actually have to travel all the way to Stormwind and quest in Elwynn Forest unless you want to get your ass kicked in the high leveled quests of LM.

At level 10 I got a quest to kill some guy, that was red to me. So I thought well I'll just level a few levels and it might turn orange or yellow soon. At level 15 it was still red to me. I don't want to have to travel half across the world to be able to find decent quests my level, before I've even got my mount. Nevertheless, there are areas if LM I've never ever seen, so for me it was still fun in some way. I wonder if this is common, because it wouldn't suprise me if alot of people skip LM because of it's inaccessibility, sort of like Desolace (or am I the only one who always skips that zone?). Everyone should see it at least once though.

Suppose my next goal will have to be to level a dwarf to level 20 so I can try a Ram out as well. And then I have to think of new things that I haven't tried yet. Hmm.

Is there anything you'd like to give a go, that you've never done or seen before?

Reminiscing vanilla WoW - Part 2

The list to convince everyone that Vanilla WoW in many aspects was pure horror (especially when compared to today) continues. Today, let's think back and talk about;
Respecs:
Remember when the fee for respeccing stacked indefinitely? If you look at most other RPG's and MMORPGS the possibility to change your talents after chosing them isn't even there. Blizzard had thought one extra step and thought that you could respec if you really wanted to, but it should be something special and out of the ordinary. They didn't foresee the potential opening up for people when being able to change their skills and play-style entirely (especially for hybrids being able to go from ex. healing to tanking). As I noted last time, changing roles wasn't even something Blizzard had thought of. But it turns out role-changing is one of the major aspects of WoW that keeps people playing it, year after year.
Mounts:
Remember when you got the mount at level 40? Had to run to Badlands (if you're horde) by foot which took like half an hour, unless you waited till level 40 like I did everytime. No one can say getting the mounts at 30 is a drawback. The old areas and quests still require alot of travelling where you will enjoy the pretty scenery plenty. And speaking of travelling, that makes me think of...
Graveyards:
This is something they still change, or add, continously. But back up a couple of years and you often had the corpse-run from hell waiting for you if you died. Especially memorable to me are Southern Barrens one, Maraudon one and Stranglethorn Vale one (since you're killed there alot if you're unlucky). Remember any else?
Mana-regen:
And last for today, but definitely not least - the lowbie mana-regen buffs. Although level 80's have recently got a medium-sized mana-regen nerf the lowbies got a much longed for mana-regen buff some months ago (with Wotlk perhaps?). This means classes like Shamans, Mages and Hunters got their Water Shield, Evocation and Aspect of the Viper at level 20 instead of like 62/36/70 (don't remember the old levels exactly). This makes a huge difference for the possibility to play elemental shaman and mage at low levels without it taking ages due to downtime drinking (hunters are easy-mode in any case). Imo one of the best changes to WoW recently.

Proto-Drake

Flying a proto-drake (because we finished the Glory of the Hero thing yesterday and got our proto-drake mounts) feels like you will plummet to your death at any second. The wings move as if they're heavier than the body, and although I know it's all bound by the laws of programming I still feel uneasy when riding my proto-drake, eyeing my levitate button, just to be ready. You know, like you hold on to something in an elevator just in case the floor would fall out... Well maybe that's just me.
We did AQ20 today too, and only had some trouble on Ayamiss, because no one had bothered checking what to do when she/he/it paralyzes someone and how to get her/him/it down from being high up. Some wowheading solved those problems.
We cleared some trash to first boss in AQ40 and two mounts dropped. So getting those seems fairly easy. Really bothers me that you can't take those awesomely cool mounts outside the instance tho! You should at least be able to pay someone somewhere to be able to ride them anywhere, seriously.

We started out on a try for the "undying" achi in Naxx and everything went just swell (we were only 8 people too, trying for the "dedicated few achi at the same time) when it happened. On Gluth's decimate the retridin judges himself to death with SoB. Don't know if someone killing themselves counts (but I would think it does), but still... of all the ways to fail that achi.