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

Trial of the Crusader was, for all intents and purposes, an experiment. The world part of raiding, from suppressor rooms to the Twin Emperors and beyond, has always been the stifling mechanic of trash. “The real meat of the dungeon’s content should be the boss fights,” the masses cried! And for the most part, they are right. Trash serves many purposes, from creating artificial time sinks and flavor, to teaching players mechanics that they would then need to hone, skill wise, against a boss. Trial of the Crusader paved a very different path, succeeding in many areas, but ultimately failing in many others. ToC was uneven at best, soul-destroying at worst.

Let’s look back!

Continue reading Wrath Retrospective: Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, part two

Wrath Retrospective: Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, part two originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Events, News items, Wrath of the Lich King

Looks like mini-pet collectors are going to be unable to get the Scorchling this year. Aredek posted in the official forums that the Scorched Stone is no longer on the Ice Chest’s drop table from Ahune.

Aredek

It’s unclear why they elected to leave it out this year, however it almost looks like it might have been a simple error rather than a design decision. Either way, the historical drop rates for this were so low that most players won’t be able to tell the difference. Also, despite this, the Lil’ Game Hunter achievement is much more easily obtainable now than it was this time last year, with the introduction of many new sources for non-combat pets.

Still, that’s a very cute fireball.

Scorchling not available in this year’s Midsummer Fire Festival originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader (collectively “ToC”) were the middle children of the Wrath raiding family. And like many middle children, they both turned out wildly different from the children before and after them. Ulduar and ToC could not have been farther apart in design, structure, implementation, and style. I would love to share with you my experiences in both raids as a business-casual raider and my own thoughts looking back on these two distinct experiences.

Continue reading Wrath Retrospective: Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, part one

Wrath Retrospective: Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, part one originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

With the final content patch of this expansion on our doorstep and Cataclysm following close behind, we’ll be taking the next several weeks to look back on Wrath of the Lich King and everything that made it what it is, for better or for worse, in Wrath Retrospective.

Ulduar was released with patch 3.1 in April of 2009. Until the release of patch 3.2 in August 2009, Ulduar was the highest level 10- and 25-man raid content in World of Warcraft. It’s fair to say that Ulduar was at best tangential to the overarching story of Wrath of the Lich King that concluded in Icecrown Citadel, but I also think it’s fair to say that Ulduar took everything that had gone before it in Naxxramas, the Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum and distilled down to a refined, satisfying raid experience.

Ulduar took the vehicle fight mechanic of EoE and managed to make it fun, interesting and variable, incorporating the hard mode mechanic first developed in Obsidian Sanctum and then expanding on it in several different ways. It allowed for optional bosses that could be killed if a raid was gearing up or skipped once you were ready to move on to the end of the instance. It took the various teleport mechanics first seen in Karazhan and Black Temple in BC and made them part of the instance. It even had a “hard mode only” fight with a limited duration that could only be attempted for one hour every raid week from the first time it was started.

It’s no secret that Ulduar is one of many people’s favorite raids for this expansion (it’s personally #2 for me, as I’m a much bigger fan of ICC than most), and there are quite a few reasons for that popularity.

Continue reading Wrath Retrospective: Ulduar

Wrath Retrospective: Ulduar originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

With the final content patch of this expansion on our doorstep and Cataclysm following close behind, we’ll be taking the next several weeks to look back on Wrath of the Lich King and everything that made it what it is, for better or for worse, in Wrath Retrospective.

Raiding has been the generic end game for massively multiplayer online games for the past 10 years. Originally comprised of hard-to-kill, non-instanced world and dungeon bosses, end-game raiding tested players’ coordination, skill, communication and tenacity. World of Warcraft pioneered the accessible raid — instanced dungeons that guaranteed loot drops. Many people forget that guaranteed loot drops was a huge deal, right along with no failures during crafting.

Vanilla WoW raiding was an evolution on the EverQuest system, naturally, due to the prevalence of EverQuest players’ not only designing and producing World of Warcraft but also their prevalence in the installed player base. Raiding had a language all its own. The first expansion to World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, attempted to stretch the bounds of raiding by scaling down player numbers and, at the same time, creating new and unique challenges in an attempt to make content more accessible. EverQuest routinely failed to make content accessible, and WoW was determined to turn the tides with the introduction of the 10-man raiding tier comprised of Karazhan and Zul’Aman. The popularity of 10-man raiding soared more than Blizzard could have ever imagined.

Continue reading Wrath Retrospective: Raiding Naxxramas, Malygos and Sartharion

Wrath Retrospective: Raiding Naxxramas, Malygos and Sartharion originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue, Cataclysm

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. This week, Matthew Rossi’s rabbit Grimalkin is using her priestly powers of mind control to answer your questions about World of Warcraft.

Hello.

Do you have any greens, or perhaps a carrot or two? No? Some pellets, perhaps? Or a banana chip? I enjoy banana chips and would gladly eat one now if you happened to have one.

You don’t have any of that? I disapprove. But as I told Matt this morning while he was giving me some carrots, I’ll fulfill this duty of answering your World of Warcraft questions. You’re sure you don’t have any banana chips? Not even one?

Hmmph.

Salty asks:

When Cataclysm starts up, will us 80’s have a rested xp bonus?

Continue reading The Queue: A bunny!

The Queue: A bunny! originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 27 May 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King

The Icecrown Citadel raid buffs, Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn, just went from 15% to 20% with today’s maintenance. As always, this means a bunch of raid groups will be able to progress a lot farther in Icecrown Citadel, and we’re two thirds of the way to the final 30%. Assuming the schedule remains constant, the last Tuesday in June, the 29th, is when we can expect to see the next 5%.

Adam Holisky: I’m doing 10k single target dps right now on my huntard in ICC. today I’ll magically do 10.5k. that just doesn’t seem right.

Basil Berntsen: It’s better than suddenly reducing the health of the bosses by 30% like they did in BC

While this might cheapen raiding rewards for many hard core players, I’ll take a slowly increasing, optional buff against a flat out 30% HP reduction any day. Also, I suspect we might see some new achievements or rewards for players choosing to not use the buff once it finishes hitting 30%.

Icecrown Citadel raid buff to 20% originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 25 May 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Economy, Wrath of the Lich King, Gold Capped

Gold doesn’t matter, right? It’s just gold, and you get more than enough for your needs through dailies and the occasional mining spree. Why even bother getting Gold Capped? It’s not like you’ll ever be able to spend it all! Wait a sec, how does that bank alt have a single Ulduar clear and have Mimiron’s head? Every week, check in with Basil “Euripides” Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast, as he attempts to mold all the random information jostling for cerebral space into a coherent, readable post about how to make gold in the World of Warcraft.

In real life, engineers are brilliant and dedicated individuals who work together with tradespeople to accomplish some of the technological marvels of the modern world. Historically, these are the people who built the pyramids, the boats that brought Europeans to the new world, and the spaceships that took mankind to the moon and back. In World of Warcraft, engineers are a bunch of goofy characters who speak in childishly high voices and have a tendency to blow themselves up by accident in humorous ways. Anyone else sense that whoever did the concept art at Blizzard for gnomish and goblin engineers flunked out of engineering?

Anyways, while engineering is an amazing profession for certain parts of the game, it’s dead last when it comes to making money. There are only really a few things engineers can do to make cash.

Wryxian

This quote was from the Cataclysm profession preview we posted about earlier. Engineering is currently barely ahead of farming in terms of income potential, and it’s nice to see that Blizzard acknowledges this and might fix it.

Not all hope is lost, though. A savvy player can eak out a living if they focus on the right markets. First off, the elephant in the room: selling epic ammo.

Continue reading Gold Capped: Engineering isn’t so useless after all

Gold Capped: Engineering isn’t so useless after all originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 12 May 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hunter, News items, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

More evidence of the superiority of the hunter class has recently emerged: Caspi, hunter extraordinaire from the <Refuge> guild on the EU Taerar realm has officially beaten Wrath of the Lich King, having achieved 11,635 achievement points. This is no mean feat — even though we reported just over a month ago that Caspi was getting close, the next most recent time we posted about something like this was last summer, when Zoltan had achieved 908 of 931 possible (at the time) achievements.

Zoltan appears to be both in the same guild as Caspi, as well as very close to him in achievements points. I, for one, would like to take a moment and say on behalf of hunters everywhere to paladins everywhere: neener neener!

Achievement points and achievements in general are an interesting mini-game, in that while you can earn points, there’s nothing you can do to spend them. Still, it’s a very difficult accomplishment that requires mastery of many other parts of the game. Some of the achievements that go into this take ridiculous amounts of skill, resources, luck and patience.

Tip of the hat to Caspi!

Hunter beats Wrath of the Lich King originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 04 May 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

Burning Crusade launched in January 2007, and from that point until November 2008, level 70 was the endgame of World of Warcraft. For roughly 23 months (with staggered content releases, with the Black Temple launching later, then Zul’Aman and then Sunwell/Magister’s) we all leveled to 70, ran heroic instances and Karazhan to gear up, and then some of us began making our way through Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon’s Lair, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep before moving on to Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple.

Zul’Aman came out to offer scaled challenges (the prototype of the hard mode) with a timed run to get the Amani War Bear, and of course no one can forget the final big content patch, Fury of the Sunwell, which gave some content for just about any level of gameplay from casual daily quest grinding to hardcore raiding. Gameplay was still very stratified in Burning Crusade — there were a handful of guilds progressing through the endgame content (which was still tiered into a couple of 10-man raids, with the majority being 25-man) but most people did dailies, ran some BGs or played Arenas (which debuted with Burning Crusade as well).

With Cataclysm previews coming out and Wrath in its last major content phase (Icecrown Citadel and the upcoming Chamber of Aspects raid being pretty much the end of Wrath’s end game) we can start to look back at how the last expansion unfolded and the life cycle of an expansion in World of Warcraft.

Continue reading The expansion life cycle

The expansion life cycle originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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