Apparently there’s a world event happening right now with rifts opening up all over Azeroth and elementals generally making a nuisance of themselves.

I found this out by accident. I was retraining some of my paladin’s talents when suddenly the trainer said he had to go evacuate and ran away from me. I was confused.

Then the ground started shaking and dust started to fall from the ceiling. Earth and fire elementals were invading Orgrimmar! I ran around lost and didn’t quite know what to do. I ended up helping the guards by putting up barricades and then fighting the elementals that spawned around us.

After the event was over, I decided to do a bit of research to figure out exactly what was going on. This wowpedia page on the Elemental Unrest seems to have the most comprehensive info.

Basically:

• To get the Feat of Strength achievement Tripping the Rifts, you need to help close down four rifts, one of each type.
• These rifts spawn all over the world, but also in the major cities. Fire&Earth-Orgimmar/Ironforge, Air&Water-Thunder Bluff/Stormwind.
• The toughness of the elementals vary depending on what zone you’re in, and for purposes of the achievement, it doesn’t matter what level rift you help close. The city ones are pretty tough, and guards will open up gates for lowbies to evacuate the area.
• To place sandbags or barricades, click on the boxes near the guards (green arrows) and this will put one in your inventory.  Then look for red markers and click on the item in your bag to place them.  These need to be done before the big elementals come.
• There is a followup quest after closing a rift however, and that is level dependent.
• You just need to be in the area of a closing rift for it to count.
• After a city attack, special rifts will open up that will allow level 80 characters to fight special bosses for 30 minutes (you can access these through portals in the cities or through the random dungeon finder). You can fight these guys as often as you want, up to the time limit. They drop some pretty nice level 80 epic gear (item level 251), so are well worth doing.
• The bosses are fairly easy. There are four different ones: Grand Ambassador Flamelash, Crown Princess Theradras, Kai’ju Gahz’rilla (never knew this guy had a first name), and Prince Sarsarun.
• The invasion happens every few hours, with a herald announcing the event.

Deathwing in Stormwind? Hope he didn’t burn the cat lady’s cottage just outside the entrance…

Here’s my 13th level worgen warlock with his Felguard!  Apparently, you can get it as early as 10th level now.

Here’s my Worgen again riding into Gilneas.

Look!  You can fly in the old world areas now!  This one is from Wailing Caverns in the Barrens.

Part of the Barrens is now full of greenery and new wildlife.  Notice the tauren caught in the tentacle?  Why use cow dung for fertilizer when you can use the whole cow?

I also dropped by Mount Hyjal, but forgot to take pictures of the big tree.  Saw the well of eternity though.  I decided to see what was at the bottom of it.

If you attempt to do this, keep in mind that you can drown.  It took more than half my breath bar to get to the bottom, so you can’t make it down and back up. You’ll need some waterbreathing magic (or use a hearthstone once you’re at the bottom which is what I did).

Oh, and this glowing blue stone was at the bottom.  Don’t know the lore behind it though.

I’ll try to take more screenshots later.

I haven’t played it much, but is there anything anyone’s curious about? Want me to take screenshots or test out something?

I probably won’t be able to get to it til the weekend, but if there’s anything I should check out, I’d appreciate it if people could chime in.

I already got a WoW comic idea from playing 10 minutes in the goblin starting zone…

I’ve got a funny idea for a WoW tie-in for this strip, but I need for certain events to happen first. If I update twice a week, I’ll be able to show it…around October