DONOTCHANGE There are three main suppliers of Warcraft Leveling Guides. Each of them will be updated for the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) Expansion. The guides have their strengths and weaknesses and this article will review each of them from a World of Warcraft player’s perspective that has been playing the game [...]
Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Expansions, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Wrath of the Lich King
So, what’s the score with Elemental as a spec? Why, Mister Rossi, have you been so assiduously avoiding any discussion of it?
Well, in part it’s because I don’t really like playing as an elemental shaman. It’s a personal preference issue: when I’m DPS, I like to be up in mob faces, not standing back casting spells. My default spec for when I’m not enhancement is restoration, if only because I seem to be able to keep people alive fairly well with that spec and usually healing is at a premium. But I would have no difficulty in admitting that not only am I not particularly enthused with elemental (unlike Mike Schramm, one of our big elemental boosters) I’m also not very good at playing one. So speccing elemental this week and testing out the spec was to some degree like asking Wayne Gretsky to go figure skating: sure, the guy can skate, and skate well, but he’s really not known for that particular kind of skating. Still, I did it, and I have to say that as is always the case when I do it I found the spec much less agonizing to play than I expected. It’s actually pretty fun. (Yes, I use basically the same gear as I do when I go resto now, which means my crit sucks, but I’m not going to blow all my badges on elemental gear just to test the spec.)
Continue reading Totem Talk: Elemental, my dear Watson
Totem Talk: Elemental, my dear Watson originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Blizzard, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King
Our good friend Kevin Kelly (who writes for Joystiq) has apparently turned traitor — over at the Spout blog, he’s written up four reasons why they shouldn’t bother making a Warcraft movie at all. His arguments go from shaky to solid — he first claims that movies made from videogames just don’t work anyway, In response, I’d submit to you Doom, and — oh wait. Never mind. His second reason is that they just wouldn’t make enough money, even if every Warcraft player bought a ticket, but I don’t know if I’d worry about that: Transformers made money, and that movie was a high-budget pile of junk.
His last two points are probably more solid, though — he says that unlike Lord of the Rings, which the Warcraft movie is often compared to, most people (even players of the games who skip cutscenes) would walk in having no idea what the story was about, which means the story would have to be dumbed down or just be a confusing mess. And finally, we can’t really argue with the last point: since that first piece of concept art, we haven’t heard a peep out of Legendary or Blizzard about what’s happening, so maybe the flick’s not getting made anyway.
And by the end of the piece, we’ve got to agree with Kevin: even if a big-budget worldwide movie release didn’t get made, we’d much rather have a high-quality DVD of Blizzard’s cinematics anyway (or maybe even a feature-length put together by the same department — they do awesome work). The odds are against a live-action Warcraft movie already, it seems — maybe it would be a better idea for Blizzard to just release something themselves.
Why they shouldn’t make the Warcraft movie originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Hunter, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Talents, Wrath of the Lich King, (Hunter) Scattered Shots
So between 3.0.2, the Scourge Invasion, and Hallow’s End, my Hunter’s seen a lot of play as I’ve been going after the title and the undead armor and playing with all the new changes on a live server and all, and in that time, I’ve had some chance to see how stuff works out when it’s thrown into the crucible of live server playing. Most of my observations have ended up focusing around pets, which is probably to be expected. After all, they’ve changed quite a bit. Here’s what’s I’ve learned from 3.0.2 in the last few weeks about managing your pet:
Continue reading Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2
Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King
I showed you the Alliance airship on yesterday’s Ask a Beta Tester, now you get to see the Horde version! And now that that’s out of the way, let’s start with a couple of questions from Aerei…
I’ve got possibly the most important question ever asked in this column! Are we going to see NPCs rocking the new hairstyles now available? I don’t think it’s fair only PCs should get them.
Yep! You’ll spot the new hairstyles on NPCs here and there. Not super often yet, but you definitely see them. A lot of the guards in the Argent Crusade camp are rockin’ the new styles. They’re very progressive!
Also, if Dalaran gets mage trainers because it’s the mage city, how come Shattrath doesn’t have paladin trainers? Huh?
Because Shattrath sucks.
Continue reading Ask a Beta Tester: The mystery of Crystalsong and other things
Ask a Beta Tester: The mystery of Crystalsong and other things originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King
It didn’t really hit me until I saw this post about it, but there are no sharpening stones, weightstones, or mana or wizard oils in Wrath of the Lich King. Verimonde, a blue name that’s unfamiliar to me, confirms that this is by design, saying “While they were something nice to use once in a while for most people for many raid guilds they were simply another burden to the cost of raiding.” This is essentially my reaction to the change, although some other Insiders are of the opinion that it’s another step in the oversimplification of WoW. I’m happy that typical raid consumables will be down to flasks and food.
There’s another problem with this plan, though. Unless they remove the current stones and oils, progression-oriented raiders are going to be running back to Outland and farming up the mats for old stones and oils all the time. This is nothing new really; dedicated raiders have been going to great lengths for buffs since the days of mind-controlling fire resistance off UBRS mobs to go to MC and BWL. Still, I don’t think it’s what Blizz had in mind in removing them, so my bet is that old stones/oils will either be removed, or prevented from working on players over level 70 (like the Riding Crop).
Update: Looks like they went the latter route. Stones/oils will not work on post-70 items.
Sharpening Stones, Mana Oils gone in Wrath originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Expansions, Raiding, Leveling, Wrath of the Lich King
Our good friend Relmstein (who I was able to finally meet in person at BlizzCon this year) is back to blogging about World of Warcraft, even though he was on a WAR trip for a while there. But we’re glad to have him back — yesterday, he posted about how Wrath might tackle all the launch issues we saw with the Burning Crusade.
Everyone knows by now that Blizzard has split the entry area into two different areas (with four total Northrend entry points, one for each faction), and of course there’s also Death Knights to roll, so hopefully the lag problem is helped (hard to believe it could actually be solved). But Relmstein has other ideas in mind: the dynamic spawn system (mobs will spawn faster the more people there are around killing them) causes some crazy repops last time, and hopefully that’s been evened out a bit. He’s also worried about the “leveling truce” on PvP servers — during the last expansion, everyone was more interested in exploring than fighting for the first few levels, but if you missed that ad-hoc “truce,” you had new level 70s beating you down as you were trying to explore the world. Hopefully the Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone will keep PvPers busy without griefing all of the people trying to see Northrend for the first time.
And later on, the Karazhan bump is a worry as well — lots of guilds, early on in BC, were crushed by Karazhan’s 10-man limit and the gear checks in there. Will 10-man Naxx also cause a ton of guild breakups, or will the 10/25 man split help guilds play what they want to play? We’ll have to see how it all works out — this is only the second time Blizzard has released this amount of content into the game, so while they’re sure to have evened out some problems, you have to think that there will still be a few bumps in the road.
Can Blizzard fix all their launch problems in Wrath? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King, Battlegrounds
I have to admit, I’ve been giving Arathi Basin short shrift lately — while I’m having a great time hitting all the solo achievements (just got my Delicious Chocolate Cake the other day, and Mr. Pinchy is my next goal), battlegrounds have fallen by the wayside on my play schedule. But AB is a great time, and if you’ve recently found your way back in there, Slorkuz happens to be an expert on AB winning — when a player wonders how to win AB in a tournament setting, Slork shows up a wall of text on how to walk away with at least 3 nodes.
Of course, Zach has already written extensive tips on how to win in there, but Slorkuz has a few tricks of his own — rather than the usual 5-5-5 group, he recommends a 4-3-3-3-2 setup, with a group of four holding down what he says is the most important node, the Blacksmith. It’s the closest point to all of the nodes, so if you group has to move fast, that’s the place to be. The other three person groups hold down the other nodes, with an extra three person group and a duo moving back and forth and defending as necessary. And in a tournament setting, there are lots of things you can do to make the setup even stronger — give mount buffs to the moving players, communicate back and forth to match the numbers, and make good use of CC when possible.
Definitely food for thought (and probably enough to pull me back into AB for a few fights this weekend — to get Make Love, Not Warcraft, if nothing else). When Wrath actually releases, Wintergrasp will probably be the place to be, and I’m just plain tired of WSG and all the shenanigans in AV, but AB still seems to have some fun in it.
Slorkuz tells you how to win Arathi Basin originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Expansions, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King
No Totem Talk today because I’m going on a raid tonight as an elemental shaman and so I don’t want to make my big ‘elemental shaman’s in 3.0.2′ post until after that. Instead, we return to itemization in Wrath of the Lich King.
As far as gear that you’re earning now is concerned, if you’re raiding in T6 or Sunwell content, don’t expect to slap on the first greens you see off the boat. While there are blue quest items as good as Karazhan gear in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, you won’t be throwing your Apolyon out for a long time… the first real blue replacements for that gear aren’t until level 78. Comparing the Breastplate of Agony’s Aversion to Agin’s Crushing Carapace, which requires level 77 to wear, and you can see how the Sunwell drop dominates (and will even more so with the new gems coming into the game. Just look at the various +defense options available to you to extend that Sunwell drop’s life. You could most likely walk into Naxx in that gear and, save for worrying about critical hits, do perfectly well.
So if you’re raiding at high levels right now, don’t sweat the gear reset: while you most likely will replace a piece or two on the march (especially if your leveling spec is fury and you raid as prot) you won’t start seriously re-inventing your gear selection until you’re near the end of the leveling curve. However, if you’re not raiding past Karazhan right now, you’ll start seeing upgrades early on in the instances.
Let’s start looking at the gear.
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part four
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part four originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Events, Blizzard, Expansions, Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Blizzplanet’s got the deets on a Future Shop midnight launch going on in Canada (eh?), so plans of Wrath midnight launch events are starting to sneak out into the world. Blizzard will be doing their usual schtick in Los Angeles, and this time also in New York, San Franscisco, and Austin, where developers go out to stores to sign and say hi while people buy their game. Our good friends BRK and Mania are hosting an event in Orlando, Florida, and I’ll be picking up my game at the Gamestop just south of Clark and Diversey in Chicago (and I’ll probably invite you all out for a drink or two beforehand at a bar around here, if you’re interested). We’re also planning some more events around the country here at WoW Insider — stay tuned for more information about when and where things are going down.
And if you’ve got information about a special midnight launch event going on around the country (or if, hint hint, you happen to work for a retailer and want to give us an inside scoop on what they’ve got planned, anonymity assured), please do drop a note on our tip line. The Burning Crusade launch was the biggest expansion launch of all time ever, and Wrath, with its return to Warcraft III lore and the increase in Blizzard’s playerbase, is shaping up to be even bigger.
More information about the Wrath of the Lich King midnight launch originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
