Filed under: Insider Trader (Professions), Wrath of the Lich King

At the end of an expansion, it’s time to look back on the previous year and a half and think about what worked and what didn’t. Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King especially needs this kind of review. Among the crafting professions, jewelcrafting had some of the most rigorous gating requirements. These requirements were only lifted near the end of the expansion. Ultimately, though, jewelcrafting was a surprisingly complex, deep profession. This was at once its strength in Wrath, but also its weakness.

What made jewecrafting such a richly designed profession? First, the profession had an indirect gathering method. This kept the levelling field somewhat random, forcing you to choose your best path for progress over and over. Second doing a daily quest was a key portion of levelling jewelcrafting and learning your recipes. Third, the high level of customization of jewelcrafting profession-rewards gave jewelcrafters a lot of interesting choices.

Continue reading Insider Trader: Review of Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King

Insider Trader: Review of Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: WoW Insider Business, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

The video embedded above, WoW.com’s Lich King Tutorial, marks the arrival of Jerome Phillips (also known as Vodka’s Kinaesthesia) to our team. He has a lot of talent and a lot of ideas, so we’re happy to have him. You’ve probably seen some of his work before, most notably his trailer for Patch 3.3’s Frozen Halls. This Lich King tutorial is just the first of many projects we’ll be doing together, so we hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Due to the length of the encounter (and thus the tutorial), it has been split into two parts. The first part is above, and the second part is behind the cut below. As is true with all things in life, these videos are best when viewed in HD.

This video is just the beginning of a larger project here at WoW.com. We’re working to bring more video content to the site in all areas, raids and otherwise. We have big plans for Cataclysm in particular. With this in mind, we’ve made it a point to make our video content easier to find and navigate. Any videos made by the WoW.com staff will be posted to our new YouTube channel rather than scattered across the staff’s personal channels willy-nilly as they have been in the past. Check it out, and if you’re feeling especially kind, go ahead and subscribe, too.

Continue reading Lich King strategy and tutorial video

Lich King strategy and tutorial video originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Gear is fairly easy to get at this point in the expansion life cycle of Wrath. That’s not a flaw. That’s actually how things should be: there shouldn’t be too many artificial limitations keeping you from jumping into the newest content and getting a chance to at least see, if not down it. With the rise of 10 and 25 man versions of every raid and heroic modes, however, we are looking at something fairly unique to this expansion, a somewhat drastic power curve to gear scaling.

This isn’t a new idea, and it’s not one Blizzard themselves haven’t commented on. It’s one thing to be aware of it in a general way, however, and another to sit back and look at it. That’s a comparison of itemization on select 2H weapons from the first crafted epic (equivalent to a Naxx 10 drop) up to hard mode Ulduar 25, which puts it squarely in the middle of the current expansion cycle. What you’re looking at is a steady gain that leads to a nearly 60 DPS increase between the starting weapon (Titansteel Destroyer) and the last one compared (Voldrethar).

Continue reading The great gear explosion

The great gear explosion originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

WARNING: This post is chock full of spoilers. Spoilers like you would not believe. If you’d like to be surprised about the Ruby Sanctum and what is contained within, I wouldn’t recommend continuing onward. If, however, you are clamoring for more information, read on!

The latest push of the PTR revealed some new items and models that are exciting in and of themselves. What you haven’t seen however, are the voice files that were released, including the sound files for General Zarithrian, Baltharus the Warborn, Saviana Ragefire and Halion the Twilight Destroyer, the bosses for the upcoming 3.3.5 raid instance, the Ruby Sanctum. Full transcripts of the bosses, as well as some other voice files involving the assault follow below.

Continue reading Assault on the Ruby Sanctum: Transcripts and details

Assault on the Ruby Sanctum: Transcripts and details originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Wrath of the Lich King

With Cataclysm looming on the horizon, as Wrath of the Lich King winds down, it’s a good time to reflect on the expansion and see how things could’ve gone better. In the recently concluded developer chat over Twitter, one person asked what features in Wrath Blizzard would redo or remove if they could turn back the clock. Their answer is something close to my heart, personally, and I agree wholeheartedly. “I would have really liked to see more Battlegrounds in Northrend,” one of the tweets noted, “that is an area that I feel we fell short on.”

Another area that the developers felt lacked a little more polish was the emblem system, which they described as “clunky”. Of course, they admit that in hindsight there happens to be quite a number of things that they’d like to redo, pointing out that they are their own worst critics. I’m sure we’ve got our own ideas about what could have gone better, so let’s have at it. Personally, I’m quite happy about their plans to improve Battlegrounds play in Cataclysm, so I guess I’ll kick it off with that. What about you guys? If you could ask a favor of Chromie and her Bronze Dragonflight cohorts, what things would you have done differently about Wrath?

Breakfast Topic: If you could redo features in Wrath, what would they be? originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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