Are you looking for a way to easily gain faction reputation in World of Warcraft? Well look no further. We have found a WoW guide that will let you impress your guildmates by being able to attain the latest gear enchants, purple items, and recipes very fast.
The guide covers all the factions from Wrath of [...]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Instances, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King
Haven’t loaded up the PTR and gone to check out Ulduar for yourself yet? The good news is you’ve got lots of ways to see it online — in map form. Reader Evan B sent us the version in the picture to the right (click it for the full version, and it’s big) — he cut and pasted together the in-game map screenshots to make up a to-scale version of what the instance looks like. Our friend Stompalina also has a version, cut together from what looks like the minimap ingame, so you can get a little clearer idea of what the textures look like in each section of the instance.
And StratFu sent us an interactive map of the Titan city, with hover-over tooltips on each boss and click-through information for what we’ll face inside. Strategies are still being fleshed out completely (and remember, this is the PTR, so everything is subject to change). But if you’re looking for as much info as possible on what’s waiting for you inside the brand new raid of Ulduar in patch 3.1, there’s lots of places for you to find it.
Ulduar maps aplenty originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Rogue, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Podcasts, Podcasting, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King, Battlegrounds, WoW Insider Show
We had a great time on the podcast last Saturday, and it was a full house: Turpster, our friend Patrick Beja, Michael “Belfaire” Sacco were all on board, and we welcomed a special guest, Alex Albrecht of Project Lore. And despite the fact that we had so many people on, not only did we answer your email questions (apparently I’m the only one who believes in guild loyalty, even when progression isn’t happening), but we talked some World of Warcraft as well: why Arena players have left the Arenas, what might be in that brand new battleground, and why a free iPhone Authenticator program is so great. (And thanks by the way, Blizzard, for that one.)
The recording of the show is now out on the feed and at the links below, so download away. Huge thanks yet again to Alex Albrecht for stopping by the show, and congrats go out to him on his Streamys win on Saturday. We’ll be back as usual next week, kicking off the show as always just a little bit before 3:30pm Eastern.
And don’t forget: we met our Facebook goal of 4,000 fans, and the song that came out of that turned out pretty darn epic, if we say so ourselves. But we’ve got another goal: we’re aiming for over 9,000 followers on Twitter, and if we can pull that off, we’ll do a live video version of the podcast. And who knows what kind of hilarity will ensue from that one. If you’re on Twitter (or even if you’re not) and haven’t started following us, please do! And hey, we tweet all kinds of things that never show up on the site, so it’s even more WoW Insider for your efforts. See you next week.
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WoW Insider Show Episode 83 with Alex Albrecht originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Podcasting, Breakfast topics, Instances, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors
So the rumors of a new 5-man dungeon to come sometime before Icecrown, maybe in 3.2 or 3.3, continue to persist. Assuming they’re true, I wonder: What would you like to see? I have a few ideas of my own.
How about a Grimtotem dungeon? Let’s unmask Magatha once and for all as a Scourge agent. Some quest lines point to the possibility, and it’s an excuse to implement a nice Great Masquerade type quest line complete with confrontation in Thunder Bluff. It’s topical to Wrath, and it shakes Tauren lore up a bit. It’s a perfect idea all around, as far as I’m concerned.
If that idea doesn’t tickle your fancy, I have a few more after the break.
Continue reading Breakfast Topic: New 5-man dungeon plotlines
Breakfast Topic: New 5-man dungeon plotlines originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Priest, Tips, Tricks, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matt offers some tips and insights for the healing Priests that are struggling with Sartharion and his 3 drakes up
Welcome to the toughest raid encounter that Wrath has to offer. By the end of the first night, you will wish you decided to stay home and watch the latest episode of House instead.
Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: Sartharion with all drakes
Spiritual Guidance: Sartharion with all drakes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Alliance, Human, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Lore, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, Comics
Via Blizzplanet, we have news of yet another Warcraft graphic novel coming to us from Tokyopop in December 2009. This time, the story will focus on Thassarian, a Human Death Knight NPC in World of Warcraft.
If you’ve played a Death Knight or an Alliance character in Northrend, chances are you know of Thassarian. He first shows up in game as a thrall of the Lich King, but even as he assists in the slaughter of the Scarlet Crusade, he shows a noble spirit that even the Lich King’s control can’t completely suppress.
Continue reading Death Knight Manga to be released December 2009
Death Knight Manga to be released December 2009 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Alchemy, WoW Insider Business, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, Interviews, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW Insider Show
Our podcast returns for another live broadcast tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern (over on our Ustream page), and this one’s a doozy: Turpster and I will host special guest Alex Albrecht, from TechTV’s long-ago program The Screen Savers, and more recently from the popular Diggnation podcast, as well as the WoW video podcast Project Lore. We’ll also have French friend of the show Patrick Beja on, and WoW Insider Contributing Editor Michael Sacco (who is represented by a talbuk in the machinima video of our song above, made by very talented fan Jack R.).
So it should be a great time. We’ll be chatting about the most popular stories of the past week, including where all the Arena players are, another nice bonus for Alchemists, and what’s next for addon developers (and why Blizzard doesn’t want them making money in the first place). Plus, we’ll answer your emails — you can send us anything you like anytime at theshow@wowinsider.com.
For those of you who always have trouble figuring out when the show is, we’ve cooked up something special for you. This should show you, from whatever time zone you’re coming from, exactly when the show will be. This week’s show will be at: March 28, 2009 3:30 PM EDT var date_span = document.getElementById(”date”); var date = new Date(date_span.innerHTML); var monthname=new Array(”Jan”,”Feb”,”Mar”,”Apr”,”May”,”Jun”,”Jul”,”Aug”, “Sep”,”Oct”,”Nov”,”Dec”); var weekday=new Array(”Sunday”,”Monday”,”Tuesday”,”Wednesday”,”Thursday”, “Friday”,”Saturday”); var year = date.getFullYear(); var day_of_month = date.getDate(); var month = monthname[date.getMonth()]; var day = weekday[date.getDay()]; var hour = date.getHours(); if (hour > 11) { if (hour > 12) {hour -= 12} am_pm = “PM”; } else { am_pm = “AM”; } var minute = date.getMinutes(); if (minute = 0) { offset = “+”+offset; } date_string += ” in your time zone (GMT”+offset+”)”; date_span.innerHTML = (date_string); . You can watch it, as always, over on our Ustream page, or right here after the break. See you then!
Continue reading WoW Insider Show live tomorrow afternoon with guest Alex Albrecht
WoW Insider Show live tomorrow afternoon with guest Alex Albrecht originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Human, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Instances, Lore, Classes, NPCs, Wrath of the Lich King
There’s a fun little discussion on the forums right now about the best noise out of a mob in the game, and people have all kinds of different opinions. Among the many brilliant things Blizzard has done with World of Warcraft is the way their sound design makes each and every encounter with a mob very memorable, so that even if you’re not paying close attention, you know a) when you’ve aggroed something, and b) what you’ve aggroed. We all know what a wolf growl sounds like, we know what it sounds like when the caster you’re trying to sneak past starts casting (and many of us can probably tell what spell, just from the sound), and of course, probably most memorably, we all know what that gurgly murloc sound means, especially when you hear it in numbers.
Lots of the best audio clips are actually from bosses (all of Molten Core’s bosses were memorable, for some reason, and “Too soon!” has even reappeared in the game since). My personal favorite lately is the quote from Elder Nadox, the first boss in Ahn’Katet’s Old Kingdom. He shouts an otherworldly phrase (apparently in Nerubian) and it ends with a “k-k-k-k-k” sound that must have been edited together — it definitely doesn’t sound human. Every time I hear that (and he says it a few times throughout the fight), I get the feeling that we are fighting something that is very, very old and very, very evil.
But of course lots of the audio cues help pull you into the game like that. What are some of your favorite mob noises in the game?
Breakfast Topic: Choosing the best mob noise in game originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Classes, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums
Ghostcrawler has a nice long screed over on the forums about Blizzard’s theory about change. Way back when the first few patches went into the game, Blizzard had a plan to adjust a few classes at a time — one patch would be all about Mages, while the next would be about Rogues. But right around Burning Crusade, they changed their mind — no more large patches, and instead it would be back to lots of smaller changes.
Of course, nowadays, whether they mean to or not, we’re back to the way it was — patch 3.1 will have pretty huge changes for all of the classes, and everyone is getting a free respec. GC says that while the “progressive patching” idea was a good one, Blizzard just doesn’t have the chance to take that time — patching is a big undertaking, and the way they change the game just plain leads to putting a lot of changes in a big patch. He would love to have the team make smaller patches more frequently (tweaking instead of a complete revamp), but the way things are now, the system just isn’t set up that way.
He also reiterates that Blizzard is designing the game, not the people who complain on the forums. Blizzard listens to what their customers have to say, but they make their own decisions from there. Sometimes, that means we complain about problems that don’t get fixed (Cower bug, anyone?), and sometimes it means they hear us complain about things that turn out not to be a problem (back in beta, a few forum posters claimed Death Knights would never be able to tank, and we now know that’s clearly not true). We can hope for more sequential changes in the future, but GC says that right now, the way the game works is that Blizzard fixes as they can, and those fixes will come out in large chunks like 3.1.
Ghostcrawler and the pace of change originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Bosses, Wrath of the Lich King, Battlegrounds
We’re going to be heading out into the PTR tonight again to see what there is to see, and we’re inviting you to come with us. Tonight at 9pm Eastern, we’ll be streaming live video from the PTR over on our Ustream page, as well as chatting live with you and anyone else who stops by.
We’re planning to check out the Argent Tournament first, and probably run through a few of the dailies there, though there’s a VoA boss to test and we may get some PvP testing in as well. It should be a good time no matter what we end up doing.
You can see the stream over on Ustream, or just click through to the second half of this post, where we’ve placed an embedded stream for you to watch and chat with. We’ll sign on to the server around 9pm Eastern (don’t worry, you can DVR Lost — we will be), and it’ll go until we’re done for the evening, whenever that is. See you there!
Gallery: Patch 3.1: The Argent Tournament
Continue reading WoW Insider streams from the PTR tonight
WoW Insider streams from the PTR tonight originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
