At the beginning of 2012, the year that was supposed to bring about armageddon, Patch 4.3.0 was current on the live servers. We weren't quite tired of Dragon Soul yet, but little did we know we'd be slaying that insane dragon for the next 9 months...
January 1, 2012 - Still a tradition. After all this time? Always.
January 9, 2012 - I enjoy when I come across characters named as subtle references to books, movies or obscure shows. Sayadina was the name of Paul Atreides (Muad'dib) in the Dune book series. The response he or she gave was perfect.
January 17, 2012 - Remember, its called the Ultrasafe Transporter for a reason. It's not just safe, but ULTRA safe.
January 19, 2012 - I was flying over the ocean surface of Vashj'ir, presumably for the Lunar Festival, when NPCscan went off. Amazingly I managed to get into the water and kill it before anyone else arrived. Shiny new mount: Reins of Poseidus. Thought about selling it for 100,000g since I didn't play this character much. Fortunately I kept it, since the next expansion made mounts account-wide.
February 9, 2012 - So late one night we were bored. We were talking on Vent about the Goldshire Inn on Moonguard. Apparently crazy things happen there. It's true. This was at like 4:00am local time.
February 9, 2012 - CRAZY. But I've never seen that many people at the Goldshire Inn, even around Hallow's End when the Headless Horseman is burning the place down.
February 17, 2012 - A teleporter trip to Blade's Edge Mountains turned me into a female gnome. A year or two back I'd been playing around with a female gnome warrior tank. It always seemed funny to me to have a tiny gnome tanking. While I was stuck as a gnome for an hour or so I really liked it, so decided to freshen things up a bit by doing a race change. I also wrote a short story to go along with it, explaining what happened....
BOREAN TUNDRA
It was well into Day 1193 of the Alliance Expedition to Northrend. At the Fizzcrank Airstrip Tundra Crafty Wobblesprocket has been at work for hours on her newest version of the Ultra-Advanced Proto-Typical Shortening Blaster after some kind adventurers delivered new parts from Valiance Keep. She's spent months and a number of hapless test subjects attempting to refine the technology to shrink the giant Magmoth down to a more manageable size. Today is seemingly no different. Crafty takes careful aim at the test object, pressing in the trigger....
"YEEEEAAAAAAHH HAWWWW HEY CRAFTY, LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!!!!" screams Iggy "Tailspin" Cogtoggle as he swoops down out of the air near craft flying a Heart of the Aspects. Iggy's sudden scream and the sight of a large golden winged serpent barreling down at her startle Crafty as she's firing the gun causing her to miss the target and instead hit the nearby teleporter...
"Darn you Iggy! Stay away from my test area!" Crafty screams at her fellow gnome as he zooms away. She walks over to the teleporter and notices it was active when the beam from her Blaster hit it. But there doesn't seem to be any damage. The teleporter must have absorbed it. No harm, right? Right. Crafty sighs and gets back to work on her Blaster prototype....
STORMWIND CITY
Meanwhile...
"Last one to Magisters' Terrace has to polish Kael'thas' orbs!" says Thandrenn with glee as he runs thru the Dwarven District with his friend Lonomia running alongside. Thandrenn skids to a stop and pulls out his personal teleporter beacon and pushes the large button on it.
"Hey, no fair!" Lonomia cries as she reaches into her bag and pulls out her own teleporter beacon and activates it....
Thandrenn only chuckles as the teleporter beam takes him and he disappears in a column of blue glowing light....
Safety manuals for Personal Teleporters explicitly state that crossing teleporter beams can be very hazardous and there are built-in safeguards to prevent such a thing. Most of the time.
The manuals also state that in the milliseconds during which the body is in a state of energy, one cannot feel anything. Thandrenn however very much felt the bolt of stray energy from the Twisting Nether though....
TOSHLEY'S STATION, BLADE'S EDGE MOUNTAINS
"Ooomf" Thandrenn said with a start, half choking as he stumbled out of the teleporter. Having been a Grandmaster Engineer for several years, Thandrenn was no stranger to the quirks that the devices could have, but this time seemed... different...
Taking a moment to check himself for any missing limbs or appendages Thandrenn hears the teleporter activate behind him.... and turns to face Lonomia's knees. He looks up and starts chuckling at the same time as Lonomia looks down and starts giggling hysterically.
"Awwww, you look adorable." Lonomia manages to get out in between the laughs as Thandrenn comes to realize that the Ultra-Safe Gnomish Teleporter has turned him into a Female Gnome. With a brief sigh, Thandrenn bursts out laughing himself and shrugs.
"It's happened before. It wears off after a few hours...." Thandrenn mounted up and flew off towards Shattrath City with Lonomia quickly following.
TINKERTOWN, IRONFORGE
Many hours and a clear of Magisters' Terrace later....
"Well that's it then..." Thandrenn sighed as he and Lonomia walked out of the Engineering shop. Having visited just about every Engineer, Priest, Mage and even a rather large Paladin in the cities of Ironforge and Stormwind, Thandrenn resigned himself to accepting the change for what it was. Permanent.
After a visit to the Library of Ironforge, Lonomia found a suitable name. A variant of the name of an ancient god meaning strength and courage in battle. And so from that day forth, Thandrenn, Killer of Stuff became known as Thyrra the Destroyer....
March 31, 2012 - After farming off and on several months for the Bindings of Thunderfury, they finally dropped. Meanwhile, a week prior to this the Mists of Pandaria Beta test began.
May 12, 2012 - By now the final patch of Cataclysm, Patch 4.3.4 has been out a month. A few months prior, Patch 4.3.2 was released, adding the ability to group with friends on different realms. Meanwhile we kept kicking Deathwing's ass. Three days from this, Diablo III would be released. Combined with both our 10-man raiding groups collapsing from lack of interest, not much went on for the next few months... Until August when both the big Patch 5.0 and Guild Wars 2 were released.
August 28, 2012 - Last look at the Cataclysm login screen before the servers went down. The next day I logged in and cleaned up my characters a bit - since both Pets and Mounts were now account-wide. I decided to focus on Guild Wars 2 the next few weeks and start playing WoW more when Mists of Pandaria was released.
August 28, 2012 - Patch 5.0.4 - "Mists of Pandaria" was released.
September 18, 2012 - A few days before release... all I want is a tall ship and a star to steer her by....
September 21, 2012 - Sadly, unlike all previous expansions, Mists of Pandaria did not feature an ingame pre-launch event. Instead all we got was this scenario that sorta explained that Theramore was destroyed. A disappointment.
September 25, 2012 - Mists of Pandaria release day! With my guild on Echo Isles pretty much dead, I decided to return to playing on Destromath and switched my main to my Death Knight.
September 25, 2012 - Fancy new sunshaft lighting effects.
September 28, 2012 - Sitting on a pile of jade in a cart being pulled by a Panda. Not too shabby.
September 30, 2012 - The Jade Forest questing experience was pretty epic.
October 5, 2012 - In a dank smelly cave helping my buddy Hemet Nessingwary Jr. out. Good times.
October 7, 2012 - The Half Hill Market was the new meeting place.
October 9, 2012 - Ride around on a giant beast, smashing bad guys? Yes please.
October 11, 2012 - As you might suspect from its name, bad things were happening in the Dread Wastes.
November 8, 2012 - This type of art was on the walls everywhere. Really cool. I kinda missed the ball on raiding with a regular group due to my work schedule, so LFR was the way to go. Didn't like it, but I got to see the content at least.
November 8, 2012 - Elegon. The fight where months, even a year into the expansion, people still didn't get off the platform in time and would fall to their deaths. And then expect a rez to be able to reach them down there.
November 27, 2012 - Patch 5.1 - "Landfall" was released.
December 15, 2012 - Apparently the Abominable Greench is really hungry. Or I'm on a PvP server.
December 26, 2012 - A Christmas tree grows in Orgrimmar.
As 2012 rounded to a close and we all released a collective sigh as the much hyped end of days hadn't happened. Patch 5.1 had been released a month prior in November, adding a number of quests, progressing the Mists of Pandaria storyline and a ton of fixes, changes and new stuff.
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