Elemental Invasion - Part 2 on live servers!

[cradle666]

Phase 3:
Twilight's Cult (Part II):
After having prevented their assault on Orgrimmar and Stormwind, Garrosh and Varian have decided to take the fight to the enemy. It will be up to you to capture some cultists, learn their rituals, and ultimately disrupt them. Finally you will make an important trip to meet someone in Nagrand and learn further about the elemental invasion.


Phase 4:
Elemental Invasion (Part II):
The denizens of the Elemental Plane have finally mustered enough strength and courage to attack your capital cities. The Horde will have to defend Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff, while the Alliance will need to take care of Ironforge and Stormwind. Every 2-3 hours NPCs in those cities will yell out, informing all players that an invasion is about to begin. This warning will start a 5-minute window, during which players will have to haul sandbags or barricades to locations indicated by red markers. Low-level players will be instructed to take one of the portals in the cities and escape to safety. After all the barricades have been placed, or after 5 minutes have expired (whichever one happens first), the elementals will being their attack.

Before you even being battling the invaders, talk to one of the Earthen Ring Defenders located throughout the cities, and get your Earthen Ring Unbinding Totem - you will need it. The objectives of the event are straight-forward:

*Free all citizens. At the beginning of the invasion, the elementals will trap a number of citizens in every district of the cities. You need to find them and use your Totem to free them. Your UI will indicate how many citizens remain trapped in each district.

*Defeat all elementals. Every rift will spawn exactly 32 elementals. YouR UI will show you how many rifts remain standing in each district. Make a good use of your Totem if a fellow player gets imprisoned.

*Beat the clock. You have one hour to complete all this.

If you succeed at closing at least one of the rifts, all players who participated in the defense will gain a buff appropriate to the type of elementals you just repelled. Also, every city will be attacked only by two types of elementals.

Earth: Attacks Ironforge & Orgrimmar.
Fire: Attacks Ironforge & Orgrimmar.
Water: Attacks Stormwind & Thunder Bluff.
Wind: Attacks Stormwind & Thunder Bluff.

And finally, successfully defending a city will allow you to take the fight to the enemy! A rift will open from the city you just defended to the hideout of a minor elemental lord. You will be able to queue for them through the Dungeon Finder just like you queue for seasonal bosses. All of the elemental bosses drop items of level 251, equivalent to ICC10 loot.

[Siar]

Tablets of the earth seems bugged on my server atm. Been waiting at the courier for atleast 20 minutes with absolutely nothing happening.

[heptadragon]

I can't help but feel like the majority of people who are complaining that this phase is too short will be complaining that the next phases are too long, too difficult, or something else. I would be curious what you think would be an 'acceptable' pre-launch event. (What Maleagant posted would be pretty cool, for example.)

And of course there is the inevitable point that if you don't enjoy it, nobody is forcing you to participate in it =)

[Noah37]

Dang I was excited for some stuff to do today, oh well I guess I'll just do these 2 and get prepared for the longer parts later. I'm looking forward to the bosses, and other fun stuff soon. Also to anyone who is wondering about the Shattering, Blizzard has said that the next content update will occur (I think it is 4.0.3) and "some time" after, probably about a week, the Shattering will occur. I'm thinking the Shattering will take place on about December 1, so that it is close enough to Cata that it will still be "New" when Cata comes out, but so that they can also make sure the servers are working with new everything.

Looks like it could go as follows:
-> November 2: Phase 1
-> November 9: Phase 2
-> November 16: Phase 3
-> November 23: Phase 4
-> December 1: Shattering

I just don't know if they would really follow such a predictable schedule like that, and I think they may want Phase 4 and the bosses to be available for more than just 2 weeks.

[wintervictor]

Allies got one more for storytelling one of their important figure.

[Buu]

Alliance have one more quest because of a BUG. In Thunder Bluff the NPC supposed to have the Horde version, isn't working. The name of the Horde quest was supposed to be "The Elements Cry Out", turned in with Earthmender Norsala in Orgrimmar.

[Gwendion]

Alliance have one more quest because of a BUG. In Thunder Bluff the NPC supposed to have the Horde version, isn't working. The name of the Horde quest was supposed to be "The Elements Cry Out", turned in with Earthmender Norsala in Orgrimmar.

Yes, I figured that was the real reason behind it, thanks for confirming.

I also can confirm that the spawning rifts throughout Azeroth now have a shorter respawn timer, making it more likely that you find another rift while the first buff is still ticking.
The respawn reduction appears to be 10 minutes, so now it's 40 mins and 10 mins uptime instead of 50 mins and 10 mins uptime. Happy hunting!

[LordKain]

8 pages of whining....what's new.

[Tobiko]

Hm while pushing herbalism in the barrens, i found several spots with fire. Not the fire from the riffs.
Is that new or also old?

[Szemere]

Phase 3:
And finally, successfully defending a city will allow you to take the fight to the enemy! A rift will open from the city you just defended to the hideout of a minor elemental lord. You will be able to queue for them through the Dungeon Finder just like you queue for seasonal bosses. All of the elemental bosses drop items of level 251, equivalent to ICC10 loot.

Yay, we get to battle a MINOR elemental lord through DUNGEON QUE. Where are our epic world boss fights they wanted to bring back? give us a friggin huge fire elemental in the middle of Ironforge, a water elemental wreaking havok upon Stormwind from the harbor, give us a huge earth elemental tearing up Orgrimmar, and blazing typhoons and wind elementals knocking you off Thunder Bluff if you don't watch your ass. They gave you a portal out. There are two citys being totally safe. IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR SOME HUGE THREATENING SOMETHING? In PTR, i couldn't see why i should take the portal out. I could just walk through Ironforge without anything threatening me in any ways, except for the big scary portals to safety i might accidentally click. Disappointed me is disappointed.

[Synbaby]

Does anyone else find this event boring as hell? I know theres more to come, I've been on ptr. I just think the scourge invasion was more fun.