Cute Fuzzy Meow

November 30, 2010

Archeology and Rewards

Filed under: General — K'vn @ 8:02 am

Hello everyone! With Cataclysm right around the corner, I thought I should take a moment to write up a short article explaining how it works and what the rewards are. Most of the rewards are disguises, mounts, fluff, or vanity items but not all of them. Note that while some are even Bind on Account none are heirlooms. (An heirloom scales from a level range.) With that said, let’s talk about Archeology and how to get started. Also, before we really begin, it’s freezing in my house so my typing may be a little off. I’ll fix it later, when the heat is on!

Fimlys demanded screenshots. I hope he cannot tell this is photoshopped. Kitten sold seperately.

Archeology is a secondary skill like fishing, cooking, or first aid. This means you can have your gathering and main professions and it won’t affect your ability to be an archeologist. When you train Archeology you learn two new skills on your professions tab. One surveys, the other shows you what artifacts you are currently working on. Think of Surveying as being similar to prospecting, milling, or disenchanting. It’s how you gather your archeology items. The real archeology interface shows you what you have going and what is needed to complete it. Upon training Archeology, open your map of Kalimdor or Azeroth. You will notice four shovel icons added to random zones. Head out to those shovel icons on the map and on the zone map you will see an area around them lit up. This is the area where you can use your survey skill. Your survey skill puts a telescope on the ground. The telescope will point in a direction and have a blinking light. Red means “go that way, it’s a long ways off!” Yellow means “Go that way, it’s still a good ways away.” Green means “You’re either in the right area or almost on top of it.” For yellow I usually mount up an run until my mount is off cooldown and then dismount again to check. Practice makes perfect, and you’ll notice that the surveying telescope doesn’t always point exactly where you need to go. This can be frustrating, but as long as you know that it’s pointing at 90 degrees because it can’t point at 75 or 80 degrees you will understand what it’s doing. Once you are in the green it becomes easier to narrow down, like a game of Hot and Cold. When you are very close instead of a telescope the artifact will appear. Each surveying node has three artifacts in it. After three are removed, it will disappear and a new location will appear. Note that if you remove two another node with one will not appear. This can be frustrating. On the other hand, if you get Dire Maul in Feralas and one node is bugged a server restart will change the location of the artifacts inside it, allowing you to possibly find them. In the beta, some artifacts were frustratingly close to the edge of the survey zone. For your first 100 skill points in Archeology you should do this as it will grant skill ups. Surveying won’t later, so appreciate it now! Note that if you mouse over a node on the map it will tell you what type of artifacts are found there.

You will either pick up the appropriately typed artifact from the node or the artifact and one or more keystones. Keystones are interesting, and you will not use them at first. Still, hang onto them! There are different types for each type of Archeology except Fossil. They are Highborne Scroll (Elf), Troll Tablet, Dwarf Rune Stone, Orc Blood Text, Draenei Tome, Nerubian Obelisk, Vrykul Rune Stick, and Tol’avir Hieroglyphic. When an item has a keystone slot in it when you view the item you are working on in your Archeology book, clicking and dragging a keystone to the slot adds 12 artifacts towards completing it. Note that if you close the archeology book it resets them. I found them to be very common items and suggest using them whenever an item will allow it. Early items take no keystones, middle items take 1-2, and big items can take 4 or more keystones.

Now that we know what keystones and artifacts are, let’s talk about the relics themselves. Your book will have an item for each type of archeology you have unlocked. You don’t choose which you get, after you complete one another pops up. Blizzard claims that until you’ve created each item once you will not see repeats, so theoretically the RNG only slightly affects your ability to get all of each race’s artifacts. As the good stuff is all Tol’avir and Tol’avir nodes appear in Southern Kalimdor rarely this is more frustrating than it sounds. As you collect artifacts you will see the bar under that type of artifact increase, even going past the number required. Any extras you have are rolled over to the next one. So if you have 13 artifacts without using a keystone and the item takes a keystone, putting one in adds 12 to that item. Then clicking create uses the keystone and 1 artifact, rolling the remaining 12 over to the next item. You will notice that the good stuff requires much, much more to complete than the others do. The keystone slot is just above the progress bar if there is one — many early junk items do not take keystones! And fossils never take them at all.

You start out with Night Elf, Troll, and Dwarven archeology. When your skill reaches 300 new Draenei and Orc nodes will be added, mostly in Outlands. When your skill reaches 375 Nerubian and Vrykul nodes will be added, mostly in Northrend. When your skill reaches 450 Uldum will have Tol’avir nodes. Note that the level range of the zone does not necessarily dictate the requirement. Troll fragments can be harvested at skill 1, yet appear in Northrend. The Twilight Highlands are a lv 84-85 zone, yet contain many orc and draenei artifacts. Once fragment collection has stopped giving skill ups at around 100, it’s all creating artifacts the rest of the way up.

This profession is very time-consuming but has some very nice vanity rewards. The rewards are either Bind on Pickup or Bind on Account, and I made a short list of both types to help people decide which nodes to farm. Remember that more items were likely added past Beta, but this should give you an idea. The common artifacts not included here all sell for a decent amount when created, but have no fun effect or use. Also included is the full list of keystones for easy reference.

Archeology Keystones:

  • Highborne Scroll
  • Troll Tablet
  • Dwarf Rune Stone
  • Orc Blood Text
  • Draenei Tome
  • Nerubian Obelisk
  • Vrykul Rune Stick
  • Tol’vir Hieroglyphic

Bind on Pickup Rewards

  • Druid and Priest Statue Set. Use: Summon a fountain of knowledge. 15 min cooldown. Acquired by Night Elf Archeology.
  • Blessing of the Old God Use: Receive the blessing of the old god for 20 seconds. 10 min cooldown. Acquired by Nerubian Archeology. Note: transforms you into a Qiraji that resembles the battle tanks.
  • Bones of Transformation Use: Endure the transformation for 20 seconds. 10 min cooldown. Acquired by Night Elf Archeology. Note: transforms you into a naga for 20 seconds.
  • Fossilized Raptor Mount. Requires level 40. Requires Riding (150). Use: Teaches you to summon this mount. Acquired by Fossil Archeology.
  • Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron Use: Make a vain attempt to open the puzzle box. 1 min cooldown. Acquired by Nerubian Archeology. Note: Yogg-saron whispers you each attempt, an homage to the fact that both him and C’thun whisper to you in their respective instances.
  • Scepter of Azj’Aqir Mount. Requires level 40. Requires Riding (150). Use: Teaches you to summon the Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank. Acquired by Tol’avir Archeology. Note: like the Black; but unlike the Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow Battle Tanks; this mount is usable outside the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj.
  • Wisp Amulet Use: Take on wisp form for 20 seconds. 10 min cooldown. Acquired by Night Elf Archeology.
  • Arrival of the Naaru Use: Witness a recording of the arrival of the naaru. 3 min cooldown. Acquired by Draenei Archeology. Note: much like the battle of gnomergan or Garrosh fighting Magtheridon in game, this place a small hologram of the scene where the Eredar first met the Naaru.
  • Chalice of the Mountain Kings Use: Witness a historical sword dance. 10 min cooldown. Acquired by Dwarven Archeology.
  • Clockwork Gnome Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion. Acquired by Dwarven Archeology. Teaches you to summon a mechagnome like the ones in Northrend. Mine was always pink, but screenshots suggest it may be slightly different colours at times.
  • Fossilized Hatchling Use: Teaches you to summon this companion. Acquired by Fossil Archeology. Teaches you to summon a fossilized raptor hatchling companion pet.
  • Highborne Soul Mirror Use: Look into the mirror… 10 min cooldown. Acquired by Night Elf Archeology. Note: summons a translucent copy of your character.
  • Kaldorei Wind Chimes Use: Hold the chimes up to the wind and check the weather. 1 min cooldown. Acquired by Night Elf Archeology. Note: makes a chiming sound when used.
  • The Last Relic of Argus use: Teleports you exactly where you want to go… if you aren’t too picky. 12 hour cooldown. Acquired by Draenei Archeology. Note: I never received this item. but ViceVersa on WoWhead has a list of locations it took her. If she is correct, the locations include the Wailign Caverns, Duskwood Catacombs, Dark Portal, Wetlands Dam, Nighthaven, Dire Maul’s Maul, Narain Soothfancy’s house, Mardenholde Keep in Hearthglen, Fuselight-by-the-sea in Badlands, Golakka Hot Springs in Un’Goro, floating island east of the Dark Portal on the Outlands side, and Lost Rigger Cove in Tanaris. Sounds a lot like when you use a Scroll of Recall and you’re above the level restriction for it!
  • The Innkeeper’s Daughter Unique. Use: Returns you to your Hearthstone Location. Speak to an Innkeeper in a different place to change your home location. 30 minute cooldown. Shares a cooldown with Ruby Slippers, Trans-Dimensional Fabricator, and Hearthstone. Aquired by Dwarven Archeology. Note: This just replaces your normal hearthstone, it does not provide you with the ability to hearth twice as often. The flavor text is long but funny enough for me to include: “According to legend, Bryher Stonekeeper ran a prosperous tavern near Loch Modan. His daughter, Keelin, travelled far from home, eventually developing the kind of reputation that embarrassed her father. Bryher made a deal with a gnome warlock to keep his daughter close to home. The warlock turned Keelin into a hearthstone, so that she would always return to the inn.”

Bind on Account Rewards

  • Crawling Hand Small pet, teaches you to summon a crawling hand. Acquired by Tol’avir Archeology. Note: I don’t know if it goes away after one use like most pets or sticks around. All of the collector’s edition pets that bind to account let you teach it to your entire account, but I didn’t manage to dig this one up.
  • Headdress of the First Shaman Requires level 70. Mail Helm. +39 Agility, +21 Stamina, Red Socket, Blue Socket, Yellow Socket, +6 Stamina Socket Bonus, +22 Hit, +22 Crit, Use: See far into the distance (1min cooldown).
  • Nifflevar Bearded Axe Requires level 80, iLevel 226. One-Hand Axe. 312-850 Damage 2.60 Speed (171.5 dps). +36 Agility, +87 Stamina, +24 Hit, +37 Crit. Acquired by Vrykul Archeology. Note: This is like getting your very own Bind on Account Tankard of Terror! It also isn’t Unique-equipped so you could dual wield two.
  • Pendant of the Scarab Storm Use: Summons a storm of peaceful scarabs on a 2 hour cooldown. Just a fun item, the “storm” is more like a small army that runs along behind you.
  • Queen Azshara’s Dressing Gown Requires level 60. Cloth Chest, 258 Armor. +27 Stamina, +41 Intellect, +23 Haste. “The rumors of the Highborne’s poor fashion sense seem to be true.” Acquired by Night Elf Archeology.
  • Ring of the Boy Emperor Requires level 85. Ring, Unique-equipped. +286 Stamina, +190 Intellect, +127 Haste, +127 Mastery. Acquired by Tol’avir Archeology.
  • Scimitar of the Sirocco Requires level 85. One-hand sword, 841-1563 Damage, 2.60 Speed, 462.3 dps. +145 Strength, +219 Stamina, +111 Crit, +74 Haste. Acquired by Tol’avir Archeology. Note: Not unique-equipped, so dual wield two if you’d like.
  • Staff of Ammunae Requires level 85. Two-hand Staff, 443-666 Damage, 2.40 Speed, 231.2 damage per second. +512 Stamina, +341 Intellect, +247 Spirit, +194 Crit, +1955 Spell Power. Acquired by: Tol’avir Archeology.
  • Staff of the Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan Requires level 85. Two-hand Staff, 388-583 Damage, 2.10 Speed, 231.2 damage per second. +512 Stamina, +341 Intellect, +228 Crit, +228 Haste, +1955 Spell Power. Acquired by Dwarf Archeology.
  • Tyrande’s Favorite Doll Requires level 85. Unique-Equipped Trinket. +321 Intellect. Equip: Recaptures 20% of all the mana you spend on spells, and stores it within the doll to be released at a later time. Up to a maximum of 4200 mana can be stored. Use: Releases all mana stored within the doll, causing you to gain that much mana, and all enemies within 15 yards take 1 point of Arcane damage for each point of mana released. (1 Min Cooldown). Acquired by Night Elf Archeology.
  • Zin’rokh, Destroyer of Worlds Requires level 85. Unique Two-Hand Sword, 1894-2843 Damage, 3.80 Speed Sword. +341 Strength, +512 Stamina, +216 Hit, +238 Crit. Acquired by Troll Archeology. Note: This weapon was originally a lv 60 weapon that dropped from Hakkar in Zul’gurub. With the removal of Zul’gurub as a raid instance it is good to see an homage to this blade. Note that for any roleplaying troll fury warriors with Titan’s Grip you can find its twin in Zul’aman, Jin’rohk, The Great Apocalypse from Troll Warlord Zul’jin himself.

That’s Archeology in a nutshell! If you have questions about this or beta please let me know and I’d be happy to answer any questions before December 7th. Goblin starting zone, Worgen starting zone, what to farm, where to go — anything!

Edit Fimlys of Twisted Nether Blogcast suggested I add some images. I hadn’t because I lost my beta screenshot folder with my adorable mechagnome pictures. I have decided to recreate them using paint shop pro. Surely no one will be able to tell the difference between my drawing of an Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank and the real thing… right?

EDIT 2 Now that Cataclysm has gone live, I’m getting some screenshots. I took the first two days to get my Worgen from 1 to 85. A big note are that Surveying gives about 5,775 experience per survey at lv 80, doubled if you have rested. I’ll survey on some alts to see how it scales. Level 81 gives me 7,297 xp per survey. That’s a little over a third of 1% of the xp it takes to go from 81-82. So that’s 100 dig sites unrested, 50 dig sites rested to hit 82.

EDIT 3 It looks like once you pass about 225 Archeology skill the number of fragments per survey goes up from 3 to 4-5. Obviously dwarves get more due to their racial, but for us mere non-bearded folk.

July 29, 2010

Profession Perks

Filed under: Newblett — K'vn @ 2:53 pm

It seems that lately I get a lot of questions about professions, things along the lines of “Hey, I’m playing a ____, what are the best professions for that class?” While I would always encourage you to play whatever profession you find most enjoyable, I realized that I didn’t know of an easy place to see an overview of each profession and what perks it provides. While some of them are obvious, sometimes the real benefits don’t show up until later levels. I’ve tried to compile a list that is comprehensive enough to be useful, but without including every single detail of each profession so there are too many details. I haven’t included gathering professions because they are fairly simple, but I may add them later. For the time being, skinning = crit, herbalism = self heal-over-time, and mining = more health. I hope this helps people out!

Alchemy

Description: Use herbs to create potions, elixirs, and flasks. Also, transmute metals and elementals into different types.
Specializations: Potion, Elixir, or Transmute master. Grants a random chance to create more of that type of item, up to 5 extra. It’s a random chance to happen, not garaunteed.
Quirks: For many Northrend recipes you have to use Northrend Alchemy Research on a 3 day timer. Some recipes from the Burning Crusade aura you learn by making other potions, and some transmutes you can only learn by transmuting Saronite into Titanium.
Passive Perk: Mixology: Increase the effect and duration of flasks and elixirs. So your passive benefit is based on what flask or elixirs you use. Most raiders use flasks, so usually this will be spell power, health, or attack power.
Other Perks: Alchemist Stones (Mighty, Mercurial, Indstructible) provide +40% effect on health and mana potions, but only if you have one equipped. Endless Healing Potion and Endless Mana Potion are infinite use Bind on Pickup potions. Also, Flask of the North is usable in Arenas (unlike most flasks/elixirs) and is infinite use, so you can use it for a boost while soloing!
Making Money: At 450 Alchemy you can take Eternals plus rare gems and transmute them into epic gems. You can also transmute “Diamonds” — uncut meta gems. Elixirs, Potions, and Flasks all sell well, too.
Interactions With Other Professions: At low levels, leatherworking requires Shadow Oil and other alchemy-created potions and elixirs. Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, Glassfin Minnow, and Pygmy Suckerfish from Fishing are used to create various oils. Herbalism provides the herbs used for Alchemy. Mining provides the metals you can transmute. Jewelcrafting uses the gems you transmute like epic gems and meta diamonds.
Fun Items: Pygmy Oil, if you drink about 7-10, turns you into a Voodoo Gnome. You can learn the recipe for Gurubashi Mojo Madness from the stones at the Edge of Madness in Zul’gurub, then use the Mojo to summon a boss. The bosses cycle each summoning.
Classes/Roles: All. As long as the flask or elixirs you use are your best stats, it’s ideal. As most flasks are attack power, stamina, spell power, or mana regen you will usually have sub-optimal effects.

Inscription

Description: Scribes can mill stacks of 5 of a type of herb into pigments that they turn into inks. Then they take these inks and create glyphs, scrolls, offhands, and Darkmoon Faire cards.
Specializations: NONE.
Quirks: Except for three purchasable techniques and one drop, most of what you learn comes from Minor Inscription Research, Major Inscription Research, and the world drop Book of Glyph Mastery. Inscription Research is on a 20 hour cooldown.
Passive Perk: Master’s Inscription of the Axe, Crag, Pinnacle, and Storm. You can also trade Ink of the Sea (common lv 70 ink) for any lower level ink, or trade 10 for the uncommon Snowfall Ink.
Other Perks: Scrolls of Recall allow you to return to your hearth just by using a scroll!
Making Money: You can sell Glyphs, Offhands, Darkmoon Faire Cards (or complete decks and sell the trinkets from them), and Runescrolls. Runescrolls of Fortitude cast a slightly weaker version of Power Word: Fortitude on the entire raid and can be sold to anyone. Glyphs are dirt cheap, but the market takes some time to learn how to adapt to.
Interactions With Other Professions: Enchanters love Armor Vellum and Weapon Vellum. When you cast something like Enchant Weapon – Spellpower on a Weapon Vellum you get Scroll of Enchant Weapon – Spellpower, which you can then sell on the auction house or mail to other characters.
Fun Items: Rituals of the New Moon is a book you can learn to make by finding the Technique from the Silverbrook Villagers, Trappers, Defenders, and Hunters in the Grizzly Hills. Upon creation it random chooses a wolf colour and each time you use it it makes you that colour. Also, for a good time, try using Scrolls of Recall that you are too high-levelled for just to see where they teleport you to.
Classes/Roles: Any, as long as the Master’s Inscriptions work with your statistics. So not ideal for everyone. Also, Scrolls of Recall are less useful for a mage (teleport) and shaman (Astrall Recall).

Leatherworking

Description: Leatherworkers create leather and mail armor along with armor kiits. Most physical dps and tank cloaks are also made by Leatherworkers. Also makes a few normal bags (not as many as Tailoring), the 32-slot Inscription Bag, the 28-slot Leather Bag, the 32-slot Mining Bag, and quivers/ammo pouches.
Specializations: Tribal, Elemental, and Dragonscale. These used to dictate some special patterns you could learn. Most of the Bind on Equip gear has had its specialization requirement removed and in Cataclysm these specializations are going away.
Quirks: There are many types of leathers and scales which are required. Also, you can convert some leather up. Several scraps make a light leather, several of those make a medium, then heavy, then thick, then finally Rugged. In Outlands, Knothide Scraps become Knothide Leather, and Knothide Leather becomes Heavy Knothide Leather. In Northrend, Borean Scraps become Borean Leather which become Heavy Borean Leather.
Passive Perk: Fur Linings are super-powered wrist enchants for Attack Power, Spell Power, Stamina, or resists.
Other Perks: Nerubian Leg Reinforcements and Jormungar Leg Reinforcements are physical dps and tank leg enchants that are the same as the epic crafted Leg Armor Kits but are self-only and incredibly cheap.
Making Money: Drums of the Wild are not Bind on Pickup, have 50 charges, and cast a weaker version of Gift of the Wild on the raid. Drums of Forgotten Kings are the same but with a weaker version of Blessing of Kings. Icescale Leg Armor, Earthen Leg Armor, and Frosthide Leg Armor can be sold to other people.
Interactions With Other Professions: Skinning provides the leather used in almost all Leatherworking recipes, and Leatherworkers create Trapper’s Traveling Packs (28-slot Leatherworking Bag) for skinners to put leather in. Iron Buckles are made by Blacksmiths and are used in many low-level leatherworking recipes. Alchemy provides some agility elixirs and shadow oils used in Leatherworking. Most items created by leatherworkers can be disenchanted by an enchanter. Leatherworkers make Pack of Endless Pockets (32-slot Inscription Bag) for Inscriptionists. Leatherworkers make Mammoth Mining Bags for Miners.
Fun Items: Leatherworkers can learn to make Gordok Ogre Suites to allow players to transform into black ogres if they complete the quest in Dire Maul North.
Classes/Roles: All, though stamina, spell power, and attack power is probably less than optimal for most classes.

Blacksmithing

Description: Blacksmiths use metal bars and stone to create mail and plate armor and weapons. Also creates shield spikes and weapon chains.
Specializations: Armorsmith and Weaponsmith, with Weaponsmith also having Mace, Sword, and Axe specializations. They are all going away for Cataclysm.
Quirks: Sharpening and Weightstones do not work on items above item level 165. Specializing is essentially worthless right now.
Passive Perk: Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves allow you to add one socket to your gloves and bracers. This socket is a prismatic socket, so whatever gem you put into it will automatically match it. If the item has no sockets before you add one, and therefore no socket bonus, a socket bonus is not added by using this spell.
Other Perks: None.
Making Money: Beyond the gear and weapons, you can make a good amount of money sell shield spikes and weapon chains. Also, every time anyone gets a new belt they need a Blacksmith to make them an Eternal Belt Buckle to add a socket to their belt.
Interactions With Other Professions: Mining provides the metal and stone used by Blacksmithing. Blacksmithing makes Iron Buckles used by low-levelled Leatherworkers. Jewelcrafters can prospect ore to get gems used by Blacksmiths. Jewelcrafters also create the gems you put in those sockets you add to your gear. Enchanters use the Metal Rods created by Blacksmiths to create their enchanting rods.
Fun Items: Not many, but there’s always the Kittenblade (Lionheart Blade). It has the vague shape of a kitten, but you can upgrade it several times to create the Puppyslaer (Lionheart Executioner.)
Classes/Roles: Everyone! You can find a gem for almost any stat and most combination of two stats, so adding sockets to gear makes this one of the very best professions for everyone.

Jewelcrafting

Description: Jewelcrafters make necklaces, rings, and cut gems for use in socketed gear. Jewelcrafters also learn the prospect ability, which destroys 5 of a type of ore to generate gems. Does not work on all ores.
Specializations: None!
Quirks: To learn your Northrend patterns you are forced to do dailies to get Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Tokens, then you spend those on the recipes you want to learn. On a 20 hour cooldown a Jewelcrafter can make an Icy Prism which can contain all sorts of rare to epic gems.
Passive Perk: Dragon’s Eyes (Cataclysm: Chimaera’s Eyes) are special gems. You are only allowed to have three of them, but they are super powered versions of red gems.
Other Perks: Jewelcrafters can create special trinkets that are good starting gear.
Making Money: Gems sell well, and prospecting is a great way to get them. You can also sometimes sell cut gems for more than uncut gems. Some necklaces and rings also sell.
Interactions With Other Professions: Tailors create Bag of Jewels 24 slot Gem bags. Blacksmiths require gems for their “Add Socket” abilities. Blacksmiths and Engineers need gems, and Jewelcrafters can use the Prospect ability to get them. Alchemists can take a rare Northrend gem, combine it with a 20 hour cooldown and some eternals, and create an epic Northrend gem. They can also combine elementals and uncommon gems to create uncut meta diamonds.
Fun Items: The Jewelcrafting trinkets summon a metallic or gem small companion pet when you use them!
Classes/Roles: Everyone, this is probably the best profession for most classes as you basically pick your stat bonuses.

Enchanting

Description: Enchanters destroy uncommon, rare, and epic items to create dust, essences, and shards using the Disenchant Ability. Then they add enchants to weapons, cloaks, chest pieces, wrists, gloves, boots, and rings.
Specializations: None.
Quirks: Mana Oils only work on certain items, and do not work on heirlooms nor level 80 gear.
Passive Perk: Enchant Ring Assault, Greater Spellpower, and Stamina.
Other Perks: None.
Making Money: By putting enchants on weapon and armor vellums you can sell them on the auction house to make money.
Interactions With Other Professions: Tailors can create Mysterious Bags (32-slot Enchanting Bag) for Enchanters to put their materials in. Some professions like tailoring and leatherworking can use some enchanting materials in their recipes. Enchant Gloves – Gatherer adds +5 to Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning and works. Enchant Gloves – Angler provides +5 Fishing to gloves for Fishing.
Fun Items: For a very enjoyable experience levelling up herbalism, try combining Enchant Gloves – Advanced Herbalism on a pair of Herbalist’s Gloves for +10 Herbalism to any class that can wear leather. Toss it in a Tauren with their herbalism racial for some very easy flower-picking.
Classes/Roles: All roles, but with the only options being spell power, stamina, and attack power this is probably not ideal for any of those.

Tailoring

Description: Tailors use cloth which drops from humanoids and the undead to create cloth items, shirts, cloaks, bags, and flying carpets.
Specializations: Moonshroud, Ebonshroud, and Spellfire. Talk to the trainers in Lower City, Shattrath to specialize when you have the appropriate skill. While all tailors can create the Shadow, Holy, and Spell clothes, when you create the cloth that matches your specialization it creates two per cast instead of one.
Quirks: In Northrend you can talk to the trainer to learn Northern Cloth Scavenging, a passive ability which causes humanoids to drop more cloth for you. In a group, after someone loots a body, sometimes you will then be able to loot extra cloth off of it. Only works on humanoids and undead who drop Frostweave Cloth.
Passive Perk: Swordguard Embroidery, Lightweave Embroidery, and Darkglow Embroidery. Lackluster, but they exist!
Other Perks: You can add cheap epic leg enchants for healers and casters to your own pants at the cost of just a thread with Sanctified Spellthread and Master’s Spellthread. You can also make Flying Carpet mounts for yourself. Note that if you drop Tailoring the mount stays in your spell book and counts for achievements but you will be unable to cast it.
Making Money: While some cloth gear sells, the specialty cloth and bags usually sell. Glacial Bags are in high demand as the only crafted 22 slot bag. You can also create Sapphire Spellthread and Brilliant Spellthread to sell to casters and healers. The highest warlock soul shard bag, the Abyssal Bag, is made by Tailors, also.
Interactions With Other Professions: Tailors can make many specialty bags for professions, including the Emerald Bag, Mysterious Bag, and Bag of Jewels. Some tailoring patterns require herbs, provided by Herbalism. Starting with Outlands and then Northrend, you also create Imbued Bolts of cloth which require dust provided from Enchanting.
Fun Items: While I was tempted to point out the Black Mageweave gear and how trendy they are on Role-Playing Servers, who can resist the Blue Jumberjack Shirt?
Classes/Roles: Healer, Caster, and Physical DPS all have embroideries, but they often don’t compare to others. For many physical dps classes, this is the worst choice that provides at least some bonus.

Engineering

Description: Engineers use a combination of metals, gems, and creativity to make wacky gizmos. Guns, scopes, and ammo are created by Engineers. Engineers can make Flying Machines for themselves and motorcycles for everyone.
Specializations: Gnomish and Goblin. The difference is a few gizmos between each of them, and if they can make epic arrows (Gnomish) or bullets (Goblin) at level 80. Engineers can also Scavenge high level mechanical mobs to get parts, schematics, and other items. Also, a lot of fun, wacky gizmos.
Quirks: It can be very difficult to specialize and train if you are below neutral with the Steamwheedle Cartel. Also, the parts for motorcycles are sold in limited supplies and cost about 12,000g.
Passive Perk: Many, many passive perks. The interesting gizmos of the past have become enchants in the present. Mind Amplification Dish provides 45 stamina to a helm and allows you to mind control people. Nitro Boosts provide 24 crit rating to boots, and let you get a speed increase for a few seconds. Hand-Mounted Pyro Rockets allow you to fire rockets every 45 seconds. Hyperspeed Accelators provide 340 haste for 12 seconds on a minute cooldown. Reticulated Armor Webbing provides 885 armor to gloves. Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator allows you to confuse mechanical units or detonate decoys. Flexweave Underlay provides 23 Agility (or spell power from the Springy Arachnoweave) and a parachute cloak. Frag Belt gives you an AoE on a cooldown. Finally, working Saronite Bombs into your rotation is another dps boost.
Other Perks: As if the main perks weren’t enough, the secondary perks almost overshadow them. You can use gizmos to teleport to most places in Northrend with Wormhole Generator: Northrend. Or go to Area 52 or Everlook or even Outlands! Teleporting around isn’t enough for you? How about making Jeeves, your own Personal Butler? He is a bank, repair vendor, and guild bank on a 1 hour cooldown. He also allows anyone to repair, and other engineers to use all of his features. Almost as fun as Jeeves is MOLL-E, which places down a portable mailbox. Mana Injector Kits (also Health) can be used to turn a potion into an injector which gives you more health or mana. While we’re at it, why not just making yourself a Turbo-Charged Flying Machine Control. You can also make your own Titanium Toolbox (32 slot Engineering Bag) instead of worrying about finding a tailor or leatherworking to make you a bag like most professions.
Making Money: Arrows, Bullets, Scopes. You can try to sell motorcycles but they cost so much people usually do not want to tip. Also, this is the perfect profession to entice those pet collectors with a menagerie of little mechanical monsters: Mechanical Squirrel, Tranquil Mechanical Yeti, Lifelike Mechanical Toad, Lil’ Smoky, and then the amazing Pet Bombling!
Interactions With Other Professions: Alchemists make rocket fuel for low-level recipes. Engineers make Salt Shakers to purify salt for Leatherworkers. Jewelcrafters can prospect ore to get the gems Engineers need.
Fun Items: Do I even need to list any? The whole profession is awesome! Well, I suppose there is the Gnomish Poultryizer, which allows you to cast Polymorph: Chicken. Also, the Wormhole Generator for Northrend can sometimes have a hidden option show up to go to a secret room with a secret vendor. Oooh.
Classes/Roles: Everyone, often being the best choice for PvP or near the top for dps classes. Slightly weaker options for tanks, but still options. With the current stamina and armor trend in tanking, they may be better than I’m giving them credit for.

July 26, 2010

Blood Elves and High Elves

Filed under: Lore — K'vn @ 6:04 pm

I was looking up some other information for a different article when I came across something interesting: Koltira Deathweaver. He’s the guy from the Death Knight starting area that Thassarian rescues and comments that they are “brothers in death.” When the Death Knight starting area ends, Thassarian rejoins the Alliance and heads to Northrend while Koltira rejoins the Horde and does the same. Wait, what?

You see, what I noticed was that Koltira died during the Scourge invasion of Quel’thelas back in Warcraft 3, before The Frozen Throne. While the games don’t exactly matter, Blood Elves were a faction of High Elves that formed in honor of the destruction of Silvermoon City to get revenge. So that means Koltira is a High Elf, as he died long before the Blood Elf movement founded. But the High Elves are part of the Alliance. So why did he rejoin the Horde? Why do NPCs call him a Blood Elf sometimes? How does that even make sense? Well, I suppose it isn’t that confusing. If being a Blood Elf just means you’re sworn to avenge Silvermoon and Quel’thelas, and he died at Quel’thelas, his wants are probably identical to that of the original Blood Elves. And Silvermoon is really more of a Blood Elf city now than a High Elf city, despite a few stragglers left behind. But this got me thinking about Blood Elves and High Elves.

When the Night Elves first meet the Blood Elves, they’re part of the Alliance and working with Lordaeran to try to retake Silverpine Forest. Tyrande comments to Maeiv that they fought with the so-called High Elves in Hyjal. Kael’thas then explains that they have renamed themselves Blood Elves in honor of their fallen brethren and the loss of Quel’thelas, and seek vengeance for their people against the Scourge. At this point, being a Blood Elf didn’t mean anything separate from being a High Elf, just a sort of focus on revenge. As time went by, the term has evolved and even the elves have evolved. In game, the only way to tell a high elf from a blood elf is their eyes. Blood elves have green eyes, high elves have blue. Why is that? Supposedly it has to do with the magic addiction the blood elves suffer from. High Elves don’t suffer from it the same way Blood Elves do. Why is that? Why would being concerned with revenge make that kind of difference?

Now, however, the term means even less. Blood Elves serve the Horde. With the Sunwell restored the magic addiction is no longer a problem; with the Lich King dead, there is no real political reason to be a Blood Elf instead of a High Elf. A pair of contacts and a faction change and you could go from Blood to High elf (or vice versa) easily.

What I would like to see is something a little deeper in Cataclysm. A little more of an explanation, and a bit more of the reinforcing of the ideas they have been laying out. I would even go and make the eye colour a retcon. Make the claim that when you feed upon the magic of another living being, or upon a demon, that your eye colour turns green. Feeding upon orc blood made orcs red, so colour-changing has a precedence. Obviously Warcraft 3 doesn’t reflect this eye colour situation, but at least it makes a bit more sense overall. So make it so the Blood Elves were a political movement that ended up deciding that it was okay to feed upon others and make it something more when it was condoned and encouraged by Kael’thas. I’d like to see a novel or comic that explains why Silvermoon City, High Elf Capital, is now entirely Blood Elf. When did the High Elves leave, and why? Were they all so fed up with the magic addiction issue that they left? Were they persecuted? Why is there a huge gap in the lore here?

Also, now all blood elves have green eyes. Why not make it an initiation? Show your allegiance to Silvermoon (and the Horde?) by feeding upon another and having your eyes change colour. I’d actually like it if they switched it so it was more like the gold and silver eyes of night elves. With the Sunwell restored, make it so not all of the Blood Elves have green eyes. Have it be a mix of both, change it back to a political affiliation. Perhaps give a name to the high elves that still side with the Alliance. I’d just like to see more of this fleshed out and explained. I’d even like to see some of the blood elves that have fed upon the demon energies beginning to transform into fel elves. The same way Stormwind City has a hidden coven of warlocks at The Slaughtered Lamb, have it so to learn to summon demons you end up going through a false door or secret passage by the warlock trainers and seeing elves turned into fel elves by feeding upon too much demonic magic. The Fel Elf faction would be perfect for this, and they look amazing, too. Don’t let the Fel Elf model fade away after Burning Crusade!

So that’s my silly little rant about Blood Elves and High Elves. They’re everywhere, but there’s just not enough information. Give me more, Blizzard!

July 20, 2010

Ding, level 80! Okay, what now?

Filed under: Newblett — K'vn @ 12:36 pm

Congratulations! You now have your first level 80 character. You have beaten Casual World of Warcraft, and are ready to move up in the world. Without every monster giving you experience, where do you go? How do you continue improving your character without the comfort of the level system? Well, allow Kvn to help you out. When I hit level 80, there are always a few things I look at on a character. First, I look at ways of improving and customizing that character. Second, I look at ways of improving all of my characters. Let’s look at the individual character first.

Dungeon Finder and the Gear Grind

If you read my article complaining about Gearscore, you probably know that each item in the game as its own item level which determines the kind of stats it is allowed to have. The more diverse an item, the more stats it gets overall. You’ve seen this while you levelled, but not in the great diversity you are about to. Gear at level 80 is often divided into tiers based on the item level of the gear that drops there. Over time, as new raids are introduced, older tiers are phased out a bit to make it easier for new players to get a handle on things. When WotLK was released, Tier 7 was the highest content. You had your Tier 7 set and items ranging from about item level 200 to 213. Then Ulduar was released, and it was a huge raid with a lot of content that released the Tier 8 sets and item levels of 219-226. That’s all in the past, but if you see those sets and gear around, now you know where they came from and why they were the “new awesome thing” a year ago. Let’s look at the here and now.

Emblems of Triumph

Perhaps it is easier to talk about Emblems before we go any further. Emblems of Triumph are the “easy” Emblems to get, and you can get them almost anywhere. When you do a heroic dungeon, each boss drops an Emblem of Triumph. If you do the Frozen Halls dungeons on normal (Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection), each boss drops an Emblem of Triumph. When you do the weekly raid quest, you get 5 Emblems of Triumph. And finally, when you use Dungeon Finder to run a Wrath of the Lich King heroic, every time past the first (which gives you the next type, Frost) gives you two bonus Emblems of Triumph. Emblems of Triumph are going to be your bread and butter. While you will probably run the Frozen Halls dungeons and Trial of the Champion many times to try to get various items, you can use the Emblems of Triumph to fill out your gear. Here is an overview of what you can purchase with Triumph, along with suggestions.

  • Reputation Commendations For the price of one Emblem of Triumph you can purchase 520 reputation with the various Northrend factions. I do not recommend doing this, as the factions you can choose from are all factions with easier options. The choices are Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, Sons of Hodir, and Wyrmrest. Most of which have tabards that achieve the same purpose, except Hodir. Hodir has dailies that grant a lot of reputation along with a quest series that begins you at Revered.
  • Ranged Weapons and relics. For 25 Emblems of Triumph, you can purchase a wand, throwing axes, ninja stars, idols (balance version & cat/bear version), librams (dps & healer), sigils (dps), and totems (caster & melee). If you are a shaman, druid, death knight, or paladin I suggest you spend your first 25 Emblems of Triumph on your relic slot. Relics will not drop in any of the 5 man dungeons or the Tier 9 and 10 raids, so this is your best use of triumph badges.
  • Tier 9 Shoulders and Gloves for 30 Emblems of Triumph each. As a fairly easy and short raid that is commonly pugged called Vault of Archavon (covered later) can drop gloves and pants for tier sets, most people start out by spending 30 Emblems of Triumph on their Tier 9 shoulders. I’ll explain Tier sets later, but you may notice that these tier sets are 232 item level while the non-set items you can purchase for more are 245. The deciding factor when it comes to slots that offer both is how good the set bonus is.
  • Tier 9 Helms, Chestpieces, and Pants for 50 Emblems of Triumph each. Slightly more expensive than the shoulders and gloves, many people enjoy the feeling of getting four pieces of Tier 9 for the set bonus. As mentioned before, the deciding factor is set bonus and lower item level versus the non-set pieces costing more and having 245 item level.
  • Non-Set Shoulders cost 45 Emblems of Triumph but have better statistics than the set piece shoulders at 30. As the set is only 4 pieces, you have one slot left to buy a big piece of gear for, and shoulders could be one of those slots!
  • Non-Set Helms cost an incredible 75 Emblems of Triumph each but have better stats than the set piece helms. As with the shoulders, even if you want the four piece set bonus that leaves you with an open slot, and the helm could be it.
  • Trinkets of several flavors: Melee, Caster, Healer, and Tank for 50 Emblems of Triumph. Trinkets are one of the hardest slots to itemize, so these can be a good use of your badges if you can’t get your Frozen Halls Heroic or Trial of the Champion normal trinket to drop. The healer trinket here is often frowned upon due to the large amount of intellect, so make sure it is the right choice for you.
  • Rings of several flavors: Caster/Healer 1, Caster/Healer 2, Strength DPS, Agility DPS, and Tank at 35 Emblems of Triumph each. Most of the dungeons contain rings of some sort, but these are 245 item level and can go a long way if you are having bad luck. The crafted rings made by Jewelcrafters are only 200 item level (though not poorly itemized) and the Dalaran Signets are extremely expensive.

Phew, a lot of gear, right? Even if nothing drops for you, you can fill out every one of your slots; except your primary weapon, belt, wrists, pants, cloak, and necklace. You can find those in dungeons, though, although it can be hard to find a solid cloak for most classes. You can also “downgrade” your badges and purchase the Tier 8 and Tier 7 quality items for slots like cloaks and necklaces.

Emblems of Frost

Emblems of frost are the best emblems for Wrath of the Lich King. There is a limit for non-raiders as to how many you can get per week. The first time you use Dungeon Finder for the day to do a Wrath of the Lich King heroic, at the end of it you get two frost. That’s 14 per week. The weekly raid quest is usually puggable, and gives 5 Frost and 5 Triumph. That’s 19 per week. Vault of Archavon’s frost boss drops 2 Emblems of Frost on 10 and 25 man, so we’re up to 23 per week. With items being so expensive, it takes a long time to get gear from Frost Emblems. When you start raiding later, Icecrown Citadel and Ruby Sanctum’s bosses on 10 and 25 man both drop Emblems of Frost. Each one can also have a random special quest that offers another 5, but those run the gambit from trivial to extremely difficult. The first time you do the quest series for the Frozen Halls dungeons you will pick up a few Emblems of Frost from the quest. Now, what should you spend your Emblems of Frost on? Well, I have a few suggestions.

  • Ranged and Relics for 30 Emblems of Frost each. With the low cost these can be very tempting, but most of the relics are not major upgrades from the Emblem of Triumph versions. A good example is the Sigil of the Hanged Man. It takes awhile to stack, and fully stacked it counts as 219 strength. The Emblem of Triumph version is the Sigil of Virulence, which grants 200 strength with no ramp up time or stacking. So on any fight where you move or cannot attack a boss, the Triumph version is a big dps increase over the expensive Frost version. This was the last thing I purchased with my Emblems of Frost.
  • Cloaks for 50 Emblems of Frost of various flavors: Tank, Strength DPS, mp5 Healer/Caster, Spirit Healer/Caster, and Agility DPS. If your tier set is not worth acquiring, the difficulty of getting cloaks can make these very tempting.
  • Tier 10 Gloves and Shoulders. Vault of Archavon’s latest boss can drop Tier 10 gloves or pants, so avoid purchasing these two items. The shoulders are a popular choice since they are cheap and you usually want to get your Tier 10 set bonuses sooner rather than later. Note that the tier 10 you can purchase is 251 item level and not 264. Unlike Tier 9, however, you require the 251 Tier 10 piece in order to upgrade it to the 264 version, so if you want your set you will need to purchase these items!
  • 264 iLevel Belts and 264 Ilevel Gloes are available for 60 Emblems of Frost. While they can be pretty good, belts and gloves are usually not impossible to find from the Frozen Halls dungeons so you probably already have a solid one. Some belts may be better for some classes than others, however.
  • 264 iLevel trinkets (Melee, Tank, Healer, and Caster) are available for 60 Emblems of Frost. Even at this point trinkets are a pain to get. In a perfect world you would be using the Ruby Sanctum and Icecrown Citadel Heroic’s trinkets, but you may end up needing one of these.
  • Tier 10 Chestpiece, Tier 10 Helm, and Tier 10 Pants are available for an incredible 95 Emblems of Frost each. As with before, Vault of Archavon can drop the Tier 10 pants and gloves from the frost boss. I do suggest getting the helm or chest piece (whichever is the bigger upgrade).
  • 264 iLevel Chestpieces are available for 95 Emblems of Frost. While the set bonuses go a long ways, if the set bonus is lackluster these chest pieces can be worth picking up. Also, you only need four pieces for highest set bonus, so you can use this for the last piece if needed.

Tier Sets

A quick word on Tier sets. Tier 9′s 232 version is purchased with Emblems of Triumph that you get from most raids and heroics for 30-60 Emblems of Triumph each. Vault of Archavon (10)’s fire boss also drops the pants and gloves. The 245 version of Tier 9 is purchasable for 45-75 Emblems of Triumph and also one Trophy of the Crusade which drop from Trial of the Grand Crusader (10 and 25) and Trial of the Crusader (25). Vault of Archavon (25)’s fire boss can drop the gloves and pants. Finally, the 258 version of Tier 9 only shows up if you complete Trial of the Grand Crusader, at which point 2-4 Regalia of the Grand Conqueror / Protector / Vanquisher. You only need to turn the Regalia, no need for Emblems of Triumph. While the 232 Tier 9 can be purchased in Dalaran from the appropriate leather/mail/plate/cloth vendors, if you want the 245 or 258 versions you need to head to the Argent Tournament grounds in Icecrown.

For Tier 10, all three types can be purchased in Dalaran or just inside Icecrown Citadel from the appropriate cloth/leather/mail/plate vendors. The cost for the 251 version is 60-95, and you need the 251 version to purchase the 264 version. Vault of Archavon (10)’s frost boss can drop the gloves and pants. The 264 version has an interesting cost, requiring the 251 piece and also a Vanquisher’s Mark. The Vanquisher’s Mark drop off the final wing bosses in Icecrown Citadel on heroic 10, normal 25, and heroic 25 mode. You can also get the 264 version of the pants and gloves from Vault of Archavon (25)’s frost boss. The final 277 version requires the 264 version and a Heroic Vanquisher’s Mark that drop off the last boss of each wing of Icecrown Citadel 25 heroic.

Phew, okay, so now you know where your gear upgrades come from. Next, let’s talk about reputations and why they matter.

Reputations

Northrend has several reputations you have probably run into as you quested. Some of them are pretty forgettable, but a few of them matter. Remember that for the Horde/Alliance Northrend factions you can gain reputation by not wearing a tabard in Northrend dungeons. It will give the basic reputation gains first, then at max exalted it switches to Valiance Expedition, Explorer’s League, Frostborn, and then Silver Covenant (as an Alliance example). For the other factions, when you hit friendly from quests you can purchase a tabard that converts Northrend dungeon reputation into that faction’s reputation. The factions without tabards are Sons of Hodir, the Kalu’ak, the Ashen Verdict, the Oracles, and the Frenzyheart Tribe. While the Ashen Verdict reputation is given by running Icecrown Citadel, for the others you will need to do dailies. Oracles and Frenzyheart are mutually exclusive, as being friendly with one puts you hated at the other. You can switch at any time, resetting your reputation with both. The non-daily quests for the Kalu’ak and Sons of Hodir factions will put you at Revered, so the rep grind does not take too much time. The benefit of the Kalu’ak is a penguin small pet and an epic fishing pole. The real benefit of the other reputations, however, is for the enchants.

Helm enchants are found at each faction and are Bind on Account. Once one of your characters can purchase them, you can send them to your other characters. They do not require the reputation to use on alts, but they do require level 80. Depending on your needs, here is what each faction offers for helm heirloom enchants. The Argent Crusade offers the Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector for tanks. The Kirin Tor offer the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries for casters. The Knights of the Ebon Blade offer the Arcanum of Torment for physical dps. Finally, the Wyrmrest Accord offers the Arcanum of Blissful Mending for healers.

For shoulder enchants, you should seek out the Sons of Hodir. Back in The Burning Crusade, you could gain reputation with the Aldor or Scryers for shoulder enchants. At Revered, the Sons of Hodir offer you a level 80 version of those Burning Crusade enchants, but they are Bind on Pickup. At Exalted, the Sons of Hodir offer the best shoulder enchants (outside of Inscription-only) and they are bind on account, as seen here: Greater Inscription of the Axe / Crag / Pinnacle / Storm. The quest series to unlock them begins with “They Took our Men!” in the K3 Inn in Storm Peaks, and a full write-up on it can be found in the article I Speak Newblett Hodir Edition and part two.

Other Fun Things

While gear and enchants and getting ready for raiding can take up a lot of time, there are a lot of other things I like to do with characters at 80. The Argent Tournament offers a squire who can serve as a bank, along with dailies that grant a lot of cash. You can also pick up titles related to the crusade (“Crusader K’vn”) or to the various cities (K’vn of Orgrimmar, K’vn of the Exodar) and tabards/mounts related to each city. If you want fun stuff, this is the place to go. Speaking of mounts, there are many achievements with mounts as rewards. Collect 100 mounts for a Dragonhawk, or complete the dungeon or raid quests for a proto-drake. I usually try to get a land mount and air mount related to my character, along with a real title. In fact, if you have friends, there are many multipassenger mounts you can pick up at 80. Sons of Hodir sell a cheap 3-person mount. The Kirin Tor sell an expensive 3-person mount with vendors on it. Engineers can craft you a motorcycle that holds a passenger.

Okay, I just wanted to give a brief overview of how to get started at 80 improving your gear and customizing your character. I know we have some newly 80 Fuzzlets and I hope this helps a little bit!

July 15, 2010

The Many Flavors of Orcs

Filed under: Lore — K'vn @ 3:38 pm

Hello again! Much like everyone else, I have been trying to get as much Beta information as I can while praying that I will get my own beta invite any day now. Some of the more interesting beta videos I found were done by Total Biscuit over at The Cynical Brit. While he admits he has no interest in lore at all, the Loremaster inside of me dies a little every time he attempts to speculate on lore, and I thought maybe other people care about the lore. I’ve had a few articles in mind about characters who were seriously retconned (Garona, Akama, Rend, and Maim) or who magically disappeared (Jarod Shadowsong, Maim) but I’ve thought that they probably aren’t enough to justify an article. Then I realized that Garona, Rend, and Maim are all orcs and perhaps some people aren’t aware of what the different colour of orcs mean. Well, I can fix that! I know about orcs! And while I’m sure the obvious starting place is the green orcs that you can find all over nowadays, I thought it would be best to start with the “original “orcs, the Mag’har.

Types of Orcs

The Mag’har Orcs

If you play World of Warcraft, you first encountered the Mag’har in Outlands, the ruined remains of the planet Draenor. The Mag’har orcs, or “brown orcs,” are native to the planet and lived happily there as shamans for years upon years. Much the same way my Night Elf article talked about how Elf + Something = New Species, these are the “base orc” the way Night Elves are the “base elf.” As most orcs have gone through something horrific to become what they are now, you may be wondering why the Mag’har orcs are still brown and happy. Well, it’s simple — they were too weak or too old to be of service to the Horde during the first war. Grom Hellscream and Kilrogg Deadeye’s children are among them, along with Thrall’s grandmother. Oh, and Saurfang Jr., of course. When you first meet them as a Horde player they are sick and losing the fight on many fronts. Garrosh Hellscream is in charge of the largest camp of Mag’har, and he is slowly losing territory to the Draenei and ogres. The other Mag’har clans come to him for aid, and he does nothing. The player eventually gets a quest to bring Drek’thar and Thrall to Outlands. It seems Garrosh knew his father was the first of all orcs to drink the Blood of Manneroth and enslave the race, and he can’t live with the burden of what his father did. Thrall shows him that Grommash Hellscream killed Manneroth to free them all, and Garrosh is freed of his lethargy. So the Garrosh we see leading the Mag’har in Outlands is fairly apathetic while Deadeye and Saurfang Jr. do all the work, then the Garrosh we see in Wrath of the Lich King is a bloodthirsty maniac. A bit of a change, but I guess Thrall’s encouragement worked. Speaking of Grommash Hellscream drinking the blood of Manneroth, that brings us to our next section.

Fel Orcs

Ner’zhul was leader back in the day, and in his madness he saw visions of his ex-wife warning him of an incoming invasion by the Draenei. While ogres and orcs are native to Draenor, the draenei are actually eredar who fled there to hide from the Burning Legion. And yes, I’m thinking the same thing you are: how egotistical do you have to be to show up on a planet with a ton of other sentient races and name it after yourself? Regardless, Ner’zhul combined the clans and served as Warchief to fend off the imaginary invasion. As time went by, the same voice had him train some of his shamans to be necromancers and warlocks, and he began to realize that perhaps his deceased wife was not really speaking to him. Then Gul’dan took over and locked him away. Around this same time, the orcs were told to drink the blood of Manneroth, a great demon. Grommash Hellscream, as mentioned before, was the first to drink. Drinking the blood transformed them all into fel orcs. And, if Warcraft 3 is to believed, allowed them to do chaos damage instead of normal damage. After the orcs were defeated in Warcraft 3, they went into a strange lethargy that was a side effect of drinking the blood. Thrall rose up during this time and encouraged them to go back to shamanism, and many followed. This return to shamanism is akin to the Night Elves turning their backs on magic after the War of the Ancients and becoming druids and priestesses. During the course of the third war, Cenarius arrived and destroyed several orc encampments. The Warsong Clan was in trouble, until their troll allies located a fountain of demon blood. Manneroth had spilled his own blood into the fountain to lure the orcs back under his control. Grommash made the decision to drink the blood again and killed the demigod Cenarius. Soon after, Thrall returned and saw what had happened to Thrall. Jaina, being a master at stealing people’s souls, explained that she could help them purify Grom. Together they returned him to his sanity, and Grommash ultimately killed Manneroth. In a fairly touching scene Grommash, dying from his wounds, explains “I have finally freed myself.” Thrall, ever the carebear, gives him a hug and explains that “You have freed us all.”

Now, you may be curious why there are still fel orcs by the boatload in Outlands. Well, that comes later. When the Dark Portal was sealed at the end of Beyond the Dark Portal, the Burning Legion retakes a large portion of the planet and Magtheridon, another pit lord, takes over the Black Citadel and creates his own army. What happens here is a little fuzzy, because according to Warcraft 3 Rend and Maim of the Blacktooth Grin clan are the main fel orc clan. this is clearly not the case in World of Warcraft, as Rend is in charge of Blackrock Spire and Maim is missing in action, and the orcs we find in Outlands are not part of the Blacktooth Grin clan. Regardless, after Illidan takes Outlands for his own with the help of Kael’thas (Princess of Silvermoon), Lady Vashj (Ambassador for Queen Azshara), and Akama (leader of the Draenei clans being persecuted by the demons) he chains up Magtheridon under the Hellfire Citadel and uses his blood to create his own army of fel orcs. Almost all of the orc heroes “forgotten” on Draenor at the end of Beyond the Dark Portal return as part of the new Fel Horde. The orcs on Azeroth had no idea what happened to them, which is why you will find Azeroth cities named after evil orcs in Outlands. At the time, Thrall didn’t know that naming a city Kargath might be a bad idea as Kargath Bladefist was leading the Fel Horde. Oops.

While there are still some fel orcs in Outlands, for the most part they are a relic of the past. The Burning Legion could always create more, however, as it appears that drinking the blood of a significantly powerful pit lord will do it. It is also possible that demonic essence is all you need. Blood Elves were transformed into Fel Elves by drinking the magical essence from doom guards given to them by the Burning Legion. We will just have to wait and see what exactly is required. Of course, when the fel curse wears off, you get green orcs.

Green Orcs

Ah yes, the most common type of orc. Most of the orcs you see in game today are the green orcs. After losing the blood of Manneroth effect at the end of the Second War, the orcs left in Azeroth became green orcs. It also appears that their children are green orcs, too. At first, the effect on the orcs was to cause them to become lethargic and listless without the ability to run rampant. Thrall fixed this by creating a new, shaman-themed Horde. Also, he freed them from slavery and earned them an entire country. Still, being a shaman, Thrall would like you to believe that it wasn’t the influx of new jobs or lack of slavery, but his amazing shamanistic skills that brought about the new Horde. Of course, he didn’t bring all of the clans under his control.

In addition to the fel orcs in Outlands, the rightful heirs of the Horde and their Warcraft 2 allies — Forest Trolls and Ogres — continued to wage war against the humans from Blackrock spire. In a little bit of retcon, Rend is in charge of this Horde. In the old days, the Horde player get a quest to kill Rend so there is only “one, true Horde.” The Dragonmaw Orcs are also leading their own campaign against the dwarves in the Wetlands, but as far as I can tell they are currently unaffiliated. The Dragonmaw orcs in Outlands, however, joined the Fel Horde.

There are two clans which are not quite clans but are also worth mentiong. The Twilight’s Hammer was an “orc clan” that was ruled by the ogre Cho’gall. They were manaics and determined to end the world, but Cho’gall was fiercely loyal to Gul’dan. After they were nearly wiped out by Rend and Maim’s Blacktooth Grin clan for betraying the Horde in the second war to seek out the Tomb of Sargeras, they went into hiding. Cho’gall will return in Cataclysm as a major player, and is also in the WoW Comic Books. I warn you now, if you loved Cho’gall from Warcraft 2 you are going to cry a little when you see him in the comic books. The Twilight’s Hammer always allowed non-orcs inside its ranks, but after nearly being wiped out they allowed any and everyone to join them. The Old Gods share a similar agenda, and now you see the Twilight’s Hammer clan working almost exclusively for the Old Gods. Gul’dan, as mentioned earlier, was in charge of the Stormreaver Clan and also the Shadow Council. While the Stormreaver Clan is basically one guy sitting outside the Tomb of Sargeras talking to himself now, the Shadow Council remains as one of the major Burning Legion agents. Whenever you find the Cult of the Dark Strand or Burning Blade or any other obvious group of warlocks, be prepared for the last quest to reveal that they were simply a faction of the Shadow Council. Surprise! I cannot wait for us to find a new group of Scarlet Crusaders with warlocks who turn out to secretly be the Shadow Council led by a dreadlord. While I’m not in the Cataclysm beta, we’ll just call that “spoilers” as it’s bound to happen sooner or later.

Kvn’s List of Awesome Orcs

While I could list every clan chieftan or minor orc who shows up, these are the list of orcs who matter to me. Also included is why they matter. I know you can make an argument for many orcs, but these seem to remain relevant to me even today. If you want to list someone like Eltrigg and why he matters, just use the comments below.

Rend and Maim I know, why list two people? Well, Rend and Maim are twins and inseparable, except by retcon. Blackhand was the Warchief, but was being manipulated by Gul’dan in Warcraft 1. Ogrim Doomhammer, before Warcraft 2 began, killed Blackhand and put himself in charge as Warchief. When he did this, he kept Rend and Maim on a short leash. They were co-leaders of the Blacktooth Grin clan, and worked hard to keep from meeting their father’s fate. They were responsible for hunting down and killing the Stormreaver and Twilight’s Hammer clan. What happened to them after that is a mystery.

Version one of the story has them both returning to Draenor and becoming leaders of the Fel Horde under Magtheridon. In The Frozen Throne you face them down with the combined armies of demon hunters, blood elves, naga, and draenei inside the Black Temple before you are allowed to kill Magtheridon. In World of Warcraft, they act as though Rend was always in Blackrock Spire and there’s a throwaway line in WoW or the RPG that says Maim died and Rend mourned him. Assuming the World of Warcraft version is correct, Rend and the “Old Horde” are under control of the Black Dragonflight. In World of Warcraft Vanilla, they are locked in a constant war with Ragnaros, the Twilight’s Hammer, and the Dark Iron Dwarves. With the combination of the Twilight’s Hammer with the Black Dragonflight, it’s unclear what is happening with Rend and the Old Horde. As it appears Cataclysm is having the Dragonmaw clan join with Thrall’s Horde, it will be interesting to see what happens to Rend. The Blackrock orcs, while they appear dark grey, are technically “green” orcs.

Garona the Half-Orc was a pawn of the Shadow Council. Originally, she was the offspring of an orc raider who went across the Dark Portal and a human. This only worked when the portal had been open for 15-20 years before the orcs launched their offensive. When it was changed to only be 1 year, it no longer made sense for Garona to be part human, and she was made half-draenei instead. Garona spent some time at Karazhan speaking with Medihv, the mage who opened the Dark Portal. According to the novels, she joined the Alliance task force that assassinated Medihv, also. Having earned their trust, she went and assassinated King Llane, which more-or-less brought an end to the Kingdom of Stormwind at that time as Blackhand invaded and levelled Stormwind Keep. At this point, she disappeared. The comic books series goes on to explain that she was secretly pregnant with Medihv’s child, who would be orc, draenei, and human. And possibly titan, since Medihv was possessed by a dark titan when he supposedly had crazy sex with Garona. This whole concept is pretty awkward, and the child ends up being called all sorts of things by “fans” of the comic series, most of them unpleasant. Of course, this isn’t what Metzen intended.

Metzen, when asked, talked about how Garona was intended to be a character just as important as Thrall for Warcraft 3 but they didn’t have room to add her. He said that she is one of her favorite characters, and he always thought of her as a future love interest of Thrall. He went so far to say that if Thrall was the “father” of the current Horde, Garona was the “mother.” I really like this idea of Thrall, and can only hope that he wrests control of one of his favorite characters from the comic creators.

Saurfang There are two Saurfangs: Senior and Junior. Senior was an incredible orc warrior and later friend of Thrall who is a major player in the new Horde. He received a bit of a reputation among players because he could handle entire Alliance raids upon the city if they came close enough to aggro him. He would later go on to help the war effort in Northrend against the Scourge. His son was too young to drink the blood and became one of the Mag’har. He became disgusted with Garrosh’s apathy, and after being ambushed by ogres he went into a blind rage and killed everyone. He later seeks revenge upon the Murkblood draenei, and goes off to seek answers. His father puts him in charge of the war effort at the Wrathgate, where Arthas kills him and steals his soul with Frostmourne. He later is raised as a Death Knight and serves as a boss under the name Deathbringer Saurfang. His father leads the Horde’s invasion of the Citadel. As Alliance, when you kill his son, Saurfang the Elder shows up. Muradin at first refuses to let him in, but King Varian Wrynn arrives and tells Saurfang that he has heard of his son’s bravery at the Wrathgate and it would be his honor to allow him to take his son’s body. Saurfang says he is taking his son back to Nagrand to the graves of his ancestors in Nagrand.

Ner’zhul is the orc that began it all. As explained above, he was in charge until his apprentice, Gul’dan, took over. He realized what was going to happen to his people if they continued consorting with demons and repented. Later, when things went horribly awry in Warcraft 2 and the Dark Portal was destroyed, he takes over the Horde again. He has them retrieve artifacts to try to open portals to new worlds to save the orcs, but it ends up tearing apart Draenor and turning it into the Outlands it is today. His trademark is that, after his wife’s death, he painted his face with a skull. If you see an orc that is incredibly badass-looking, you’ve just seen Ner’zhul. For a quick glance at him, check out the Black Temple Gameplay Trailer from the official site’s movies section. “Even as the orcs’ reckless sorcery tore the planet apart” is the line that appears about 40% of the way through and shows Ner’zhul rendered in the WoW engine. After stealing the necessary artifacts to steal his people, the Burning Legion ambush him as he goes through the portal. They tear apart his soul, and eventually freeze what is left of his spirit in ice taken from the Twisting Nether. He is then thrown to Northrend where he becomes the Lich King. The rest of his story will be covered in a future article about the Scourge, but as most people remember from Warcraft 3 h3 guides Arthas into betraying the Burning Legion to liberate the Scourge from their control. In WoW, the only reference to Ner’zhul we really get is when the Alliance forces in the Howling Fjord attempt to use Shamanism to spy on the Vrykul. The Lich King appears for a second and says “You forget. I, too, used to be a shaman.” and then makes the player explode. Sadly, in Wrath of the Lich King this character is otherwise forgotten. He also makes an appearance in the novel Arthas.

Ogrim Doomhammer became warchief by killing Blackhand at the end of Warcraft 1 and start of Warcraft 2. Gul’dan was in a coma from having been inside Medihv’s mind when he was killed, and Ogrim Doomhammer was much smarter than Blackhand. He had not partaken of the Blood of Manneroth, suspecting treachery from it. While the Horde ultimately lost the Second War, Ogrim Doomhammer still did an amazing job. According to the Alliance, Doomhammer ambushed and killed Lord Lothar, champion of the Alliance. According to the Horde, they fought in honorable combat outside of Blackrock Spire until Doomhammer killed him. Ogrim received the Doomhammer from his father. Depending on what you read, Ogrim was part of the Thunderlord Clan, too, though that makes no sense. Doomhammer brought the Forest Trolls and Goblins under the Horde’s control, and together they razed Dalaran and Quel’thelas before he was finally captured. He escaped easily, wandered the land, and eventually met Thrall and fought him. Thrall won, they went and liberated the orcs from their slave camps, and a lucky shot stabbed Ogrim in the back and he handed the Horde over to Thrall with his dying breath. In return, Thrall engraved a frost wolf on the Doomhammer and named several things after him. Orgrimmar, the Ogrim’s Hammer airship, and Hammerfall are all named after him.

Teron Gorefiend was an amazing warlock during Warcraft 1. When Ogrim Doomhammer had the warlocks killed, Gul’dan took their souls and put them into some slain Knights of the Silver Hand to create the original Death Knights. Teron continued to serve the Horde after Gul’dans betrayal, and wore a trademarked banana-yellow cloak and hood throughout Warcraft 2. Think April O’neal, but instead of reporting news and talking to ninja turtles he was DEATH INCARNATE. He aided Ner’zhul in opening the portals, but met his fate in Shadowmoon Valley before going through the portals. Ultimately the player is able to free him from his bonds in a quest series in Shadowmoon Valley by gathering his items of power and allowing him to take over your body to destroy his jailors. For no plot-related reason he showed up as a boss in Black Temple. Thankfully, he was awesome enough that this did not significantly hurt his coolness factor.

July 3, 2010

Cataclysm Beta, Troll/Worgen Druid Forms, Oh My!

Filed under: General — K'vn @ 11:33 am

Cataclysm has finally gone to beta and the major news sites are flooded with the latest information. MMO Champion has the lion’s share of the new information, and I have to say the first thing I went to see was the new feral forms. Troll Bear Form looks a little awkward, but the glow-in-the-dark feel works slightly better on the troll cat models. I think I’d like for my Horde druid to go trollish just for the teal cat form. The worgen bear form looked familiar, and finally it hit me: isn’t that the same bear form the druids of the claw changed into during Warcraft 3? The Worgen cat form looks pretty good. Sort of like a male version of the night elf version. You can expect me to be playing a Worgen druid (that black model, most likely) when Cataclysm occurs. I also enjoy the Worgen druid plot, though I won’t spoil it for anyone!

Speaking of spoilers, most of what I’m enjoying about the beta information is all spoilers, and I know most of my readers won’t want to read them. There are two points of interest which are not spoilers that I wanted to share, though. First, there are lv 78 green quest reward weapons that put Shadowmourne to shame. No matter how good your gear is right now, it will be replaced by greens quickly. This makes me a little sad. In Vanilla, my Field Marshal’s Sanctuary set lasted me through most of the Burning Crusade. Then my Feral Tier 6 lasted me from 70 to 80 when Wrath of the Lich King became the new hot thing. Now my Death Knight’s heroic Cryptmaker is going to be vendored in favor of quest reward greens. Oh, the shame! And yet, since I want to go Worgen druid, it is a little bit liberating to know that all are made equal.

Oh, and mounts! We have a blue post saying the Frostwyrms and Proto-drakes from Glory of the Meow Raider won’t be going away. So I can spend time at my job and fixing up my home and not worry about missing out on the Frostbrood Vanquisher mount. Also, archeology seems to include some cute skeletal raptor companions and even skeletal raptor mounts! Nice, isn’t it?

And finally, an introduction. I’ve had a guest poster who would like to post her own versions of dungeon guides here, and I said I’d be happy to have them as a party of The Cute Fuzzy Meow. With Fire Festival winding down (I hope everyone has their Ice Chip and Frostscythe!) she’ll be posting her guides over the next week or two. Give her a warm welcome for me!

On a non-WoW note, I just rewatched The Big Empty. Rachel Leigh Cook is one of my favorite actresses, and Sean Bean rocks any role you put him in. While some of the dialogue Rachel gets is a little awkward to listen to, it’s great to see such two great actors working together. Somehow I imagine Sean Bean’s roles in this and Sharpe as being less about acting and more about just being himself. “Where did you come from?” Sean Bean is asked. “Your Momma sent me. She asked me to give you this” he replies with his Sheffield accent, shooting the man again. Oh Sean Bean. Now if only Billy Zabka and Dean Cain worked so well in Dark Descent. My goal for the summer is to finally sit down and finish that and There Will Be Blood. Well, and Jeanne d’Arc and Chocobo’s Dungeon.

June 24, 2010

Battle Net’s Real ID, a Response

Filed under: Personal — K'vn @ 5:20 pm

A friend who hasn’t been playing World of Warcraft lately sent me a link to this article on Broken Toys, asking about the new Real ID feature and how it compared to the description the article gave of it. After reading through the article, I was rather surprised to see a lot of the views expressed and how they’re not quite in line with how the product actually works. I’m not sure if Scott Jennings, the author, has used the Real ID feature or not. If he’s as concerned about the feature as the article suggests it would make sense that he wouldn’t want to give it a try. In that case, perhaps the misconceptions arise from the frequently-asked-questions section of the Blizzard Website. Either way, I wanted to take a few moments to reply to some aspects of his article and then expand upon some of my experiences with Real ID.

First, a few facts about what it is and how it works. I realize not everyone is going to want to read the article I linked first. RealID is a completely optional supplement to the “Friends List” feature of both Battle.Net and World of Warcraft. If your parental controls are set up on a child’s account, they won’t even see this option at all, so there’s no danger that your child is secretly using this. Currently, you create a moniker such as “Brighteyes” when you play a game on Battle.Net or as a character name in World of Warcraft. It’s probably easier just to work off of World of Warcraft for the moment, because you can have up to ten characters on each realm, with a maximum of 50 characters per account. Each of your characters has their own friends list, which allows you to see when those other characters are online. So your friends list on “Brighteyes” is different from “Embereyes” or “Angeleyes,” and the characters you can add to a friends list are restricted to only characters on the same realm and faction as you. Simple and limited in functionality, but it’s what we’ve had for years.

What the RealID feature does is offers another way to add someone to your friends list. By default it’s off for everyone, and it only turns on if you try to add someone after giving you a short tutorial. The basic idea is that instead of adding the character “Brighteyes” to your friends list, you can send a request to add Kvn instead, pretending for a moment that Kvn isn’t technically a moniker and act as though it is my real first and last name. To do this you need the e-mail address that I used to register to WorldofWarcraft. Instead of typing “Brighteyes” into the friends list you would type my e-mail, and it would give you the option to send a short message with it. After that, nothing happens on your end. Maybe there was someone with that e-mail address, maybe not. If no one has an e-mail with that address or your request is denied you will never find out. However, if I know you and like you, I can approve you and now we’re RealID friends. Now you will see Kvn on your friends list, and to the right of my name is what game I’m playing. If it’s WoW, it will also show you “Brighteyes – Stormrage” underneath it so you can see what server and character I’m on. You can now send me messages or invite me to a chatroom that works across any faction, server, and Blizzard game with Battle.net’s RealID enabled (Starcraft 2). Now you’re in business.

In addition to seeing “Kvn” on your friends list, I now see your real name. There’s some added functionality, such as the ability to set a status that persists even when you’re out of game. You can choose to be notified when a friend changes their status or not (I quickly turned mine off), but so far I see people using it for short informative messages. “I have some time off work this weekend and plan to play, let me know if you want to run some instances.” “Does anyone know how to open the Crusader Quartermaster at the Argent Tournament?” (Obviously my friends don’t read my blog!) If it were just this simple it would be fine, but there’s another level of social networking that concerns some people. One is the ability to invite friends to a conversation chat room, and they can invite their friends. As the conversation uses your real name, I was pretty concerned. At least, it was showing my real name. After about 10 minutes of the conversation everyone was asking who “Brighteyes” is if they were invited by my other friends, so it seems that your character name is used in these chat rooms instead of your real name for people you aren’t RealID friends with. That makes me feel a little bit better. However, these cross-games-and-server chat rooms can be left at any time but right now there’s no prompt and the Interface Options don’t include an option to add a prompt. If you’re invited, you join the channel. I’m hoping this is an oversight as all other chatting in WoW requires a prompt before throwing you into a chat channel. The other concern is a big one, seeing your friend’s friends.

If you click a RealID friend and select “View Friends,” you get a list of who they are friends with. It shows their full names, but nothing about their characters. Also, while one of you needs to know an e-mail to invite initially, no e-mail addresses are ever displayed again and they do not show up on this list. You get the option without an e-mail address to invite the people your friends are friends with. As an example, a few days into the new system I received a request from Red Bunny. Red Bunny was also friends with KHAOS KITTEN, who was my friend. They couldn’t tell anything about me except that I do play a game called World of Warcraft. No information about my e-mail, server name, or characters showed up to them. They couldn’t tell if I was online or not. As before, they could request, but for all they know I don’t play anymore. Feeling a bit snobbish I opted to decline their request. Still, it bothers people that others may know they play World of Warcraft. I can understand that, I certainly wouldn’t admit to my real life friends that I play World of Warcraft, either.

Now that we have that description out of the way, allow me to discuss my replies to the articles. The article works off of the assumption that this feature will be popular. I imagine it is quite popular among groups of real life friends who play World of Warcraft. I’m certainly enjoying it, for the most part. Her first point is that being able to chat with your real life friends cross-realm is a big problem, that it is sending a mixed message. I’ll have to double check and see if I can find it, but I feel like this was addressed when the new Battle.Net was announced months ago. To put things into perspective, originally you could use special characters to send messages between Horde and Alliance with an awful mix of leet-speak and numbers. There are still cases where people abuse the language filter to yell at their enemies in battlegrounds. Blizzard has squashed things like this in the past to try to keep up the barrier between Horde and Alliance. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that RealID is in violation of this. RealID is intended for your friends, and these are people you can call and chat with on the telephone, voice over IP, or an instant messenger program. Scott Jones asks “Why bother scrambling cross-team chat if you’re going to enable it in a different interface?” I would say that this isn’t the case. The faceless Horde you come across are people you’ve never met. A server has thousands of people on it. Preventing you from speaking to Horde on your own server using RealID would be silly, as these are people you already know. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that most people have characters on both factions, as there is no rule about that. I think we have always been heading in this direction, and this is just a continuation of the ability to make Alliance and Horde characters on the same PvP server. To be honest, I was fairly surprised when that happened, because I didn’t realize that rule was still around.

The next argument is that this “essentially disengages the player from the avatar. Now, World of Warcraft is only very, very peripherally a role-playing game…” The arguments works off of the issue that your RealID name is your account’s owner name. I’m not sure I’m qualified to respond to this simply because I never felt particularly attached to my avatar. With 50 avatars to chose from and the ability to make a character and then delete it later, my attachment is more of a fondness. I don’t feel like “Brighteyes” is a real person with a real story. World of Warcraft just isn’t that sort of game. In fact, my MMORPG experience is so limited I’m not sure this is the case with any game. Maybe I would feel differently if I felt as though I were sending a message to Lord Kittenwraith, Destroyer of Worlds. Or if I felt that when I typed something, Brighteyes was “speaking” it to the world. But most of the time the messages I send are in guild chat to people strewn across the game world or whispers to people in similar situations. I can’t say I’ve ever really attached the thought that an avatar is real or that World of Warcraft is a role playing experience to my play time. Do I stop feeling immersed in the experience when my healer tells me that his lawn is on fire and he needs to go away for awhile? I play primarily on an “RP” server, too, so it isn’t that I’m sheltered from the idea of role play. I’ve heard rumors of people playing the game who supposedly become their character from the moment they log on to the moment they log off. I’ve never met them, but I imagine this potentially small minority is probably okay not turning on their RealID.

The continued argument talks about how important it is to go by a moniker and not be associated with your real name to the crazy freaks out there in the internet world. He doesn’t want to be bothered in game about the articles she writes. But bothered by whom? If he gives his RealID to friends, they already know his real name. The only danger is if he shares his real name with strangers. Even if someone sees his name by viewing “friends of my friend,” all they’re finding out is that someone named Scott Jennings plays World of Warcraft. They don’t have his character information or his e-mail or any information about him. I suspect that someone writing about MMORPGs probably has played World of Warcraft and probably has friends. How has this changed anything? If he plays in some sort of hardcore role-playing setting with his hardcore role-playing friends, they can still send him messages at “Lum the Mad” even if they are RealID friends with him. That hasn’t changed. What I do agree with is that being able to set an alias would be quite nice. Most people have nicknames, and having your real name show up there is a big deterrent to allowing people I’m online friends with online to be RealID friends with me. I actually think this is deliberate and well thought out, however. I’m only willing to give my e-mail address to real friends I’ve met in person and trust. If it were just an alias, I would be willing to give it out to more people, who would then potentially know the e-mail address I use for World of Warcraft. It’s a sort of built-in safety feature. Of course, in a perfect world I would get my alias and I would also not require an e-mail address to be RealID friends.

His final gripe is that there is no way to not use the system. I’m not sure why he takes issue with Blizzard’s comment that you can simply not use the feature and it isn’t a problem. Parental controls allow you to opt out of it completely, for one. Also, someone has to have your e-mail address you use for World of Warcraft and know that’s the e-mail you’re using for that purpose and send a request and have you go into your pending requests and accept it and go through a tutorial to open it up. While that’s not a time-consuming process if you want to start it up, it’s not as though it’s on by default or you’re stuck with it. Mr. Jennings compares it to being flooded with marketing ads and being told you can opt out by not looking at them, but that’s not quite accurate. When you log in, nothing has changed. You have to go in and change things, and there’s no obligation to do so. The game hasn’t changed if you decide not to do this. It’s a fun little thing for people who have real life friends playing, but it isn’t affecting anyone who doesn’t want to use it.

Now, he does touch upon the friend-of-friend issue. I’ve covered it before, but I would like to say that it would be wonderful to be able to disable this feature. Add in this, an alias option, prompts for conversations, and it would go a long way towards making me feel better about this feature.

June 21, 2010

Frost the Ice Lord!

Filed under: Holiday — K'vn @ 6:27 am

Hello everyone! It’ll be later today before I get up my Fire Festival guide, but I wanted to put out a quick guide for Lord Ahune since he’s changed so radically this year. Instead of finding 4 other friends and going to Slave Pens or Heroic Slave Pens like the previous years, this year you access him through Dungeon Finder. For those who haven’t used Dungeon Finder, it’s the green eyeball icon between your action bar and your key ring and bags, between “Player Vs. Player” and “Game Menu.” When you access this you will see options for specific dungeons, heroic Northrend dungeons, and regular Northrend Dungeons if you’re 80. I don’t yet know if you can access the level 70 version of him or not — EDIT, level 75 has no option for him. During this holiday only you will see an option for “The Frost Lord Ahune,” click it and you will enter Dungeon Finder for just this boss. So far on two separate battle groups I’ve had very short (under 5 minute) queues for him, but that may change. You are transported to a phased version of Slave Pens when it finds you a group. Kill Skar’this the Summoner and you can use the ice stone to summon him once. If you want to go again, simply requeue for the boss. Ahune’s loot is divided into the things he drops and the things that come out of the Satchel of Chilled Goods. There is no limit to the number of times you can kill him, but you only get the Satchel of Chilled Goods once per day. Lord Ahune can drop item level 232 cloaks for almost all specializations (includes agility and strength cloaks as you can see in the list below). The Satchel of Chilled Goods drops two Emblems of Frost, rarely the Frigid Frostling small pet, and also rarely a new item level 232 version of the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune. In an easy-to-read format, they each drop the following.

Lord Ahune’s Ice Chest Loot Table (infinite attempts)

Satchel of Chilled Goods (Once per day) Loot Table

Lord Ahune’s strategy is pretty simple as he only has two phases. Phase One lasts about 1 minute and 45 seconds, during which he will spawn a large Ice Elemental called an Ahunite Hailstone that has an aura of Frost damage called the Chilling Aura. Burn him hard and fast to remove the aura, this is the only thing that needs to be “tanked,” and an off spec tank in a decently-geared group could just be a dps with taunt. During this first phase you will face waves of two smaller elementals caled Ahunite Frostwinds and Ahunite Coldwinds that appear every few seconds, also. If you let him go into the first phase more than once the number of elementals increases, so there’s a soft enrage on this fight due to the increasing number of adds. Ahune will knock you back if you get too close to him, but ranged can attack him if the adds are under control and their damage isn’t needed on adds. Also at this time you will notice small swirls of mist that appear underneath random players. A few seconds after the swirl an ice spike will appear from the ground, dealing damage and sending anyone standing there into the air. While moving out of the way is easy, spreading out will guarantee that only one person has to move per ice spike. During this phase his defenses are formidable so damaging him is less effective than it will be in phase two. Another time you may want to damage him in phase one is if you do not manage to quite kill him and just need to finish him off. Lord Ahune’s second phase is much simpler, after a few minutes he will hide inside his frozen core. During this period of time he stops spawning new adds and the ice spikes seem to reduce in frequency. He will take much more damage, so hit all of your cooldowns and use Bloodlust or Heroism if you have a shaman. Most groups should be able to take him down during the first time he enters phase two. Just before he returns you will get a warning. If you happen to kill him after this warning an ice elemental will still spawn after his death, so be wary as it would be silly to die to a piece of rock after besting the Frost Lord! If you do not kill him after the first phase two be aware that that the number of adds you will have to deal with increases. All-in-all, a pretty simple fight.

You may requeue and kill Ahune as many times as you’d like for the Deathfrost enchant or the cloaks, but you only need to kill him once per day if you are after the Frostscythe of Ahune or the small pet.

June 10, 2010

Gearscore, a Classic WoW Problem.

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , — K'vn @ 4:59 am

Ah yes, Gearscore — does anything else elicit such a negative response about the current state of World of Warcraft? Or maybe it’s just me, rolling my eyes at the very concept. Is it pride that makes me refuse to link my gearscore? Is it my dislike of acronyms that makes me refuse to even respond to comments of “GS plz?” Well, perhaps. But listening to some of my friends complain about it, someone commented on how it’s a recent problem that’s cropped up. This got me thinking about how while Gearscore is a recent development, the problem has gone back to original “Vanilla” World of Warcraft. Sure, maybe we didn’t call it Gearscore back then, but the basic problem still existed.

World of Warcraft Classic, Vanilla Flavor

Allow me to take you back to the old days of Vanilla WoW. You’re running something like 10-man Scholomance as an undead rogue and you have your wonderful Dire Maul Bracers of the Eclipse, a wonderful mix of agility and attack power. Suddenly, Shadowcraft Bracers drop. There’s no Tier 0.5 upgrade quest, but my goodness, don’t they sound like something a rogue would want? You upgrade and remove your awesome agility and attack power bracers for… a huge downgrade. Why? Well, because it’s your set. You feel cooler. It sounds better. Sure, the item level is way below what you’re wearing but no one knew item level back then. Is this isolated to the casual players? Nope! Watch as an army of cats “upgrade” from their lame “blues” like Chitinous Shoulderguards to the amazing Blackwing Lair purples of Taut Dragonhide Shoulderpads. What, are you “chitin” me? Why would anyone go from the best stats for a kitty to…. attack power and stamina in mediocre amounts? Well, it was called purple fever. If it was purple and you had a blue, you rolled on it because it was purple. If it was purple and from a raid later than yours, you rolled because it must be better if it shows up later in the game, right?

I’m sure you can already see the problem here. People were more worried about where something came from than whether or not the item was actually worthwhile. People should be looking at the stat distribution and how important those statistics are, but instead they’d just wear whatever was “more purple.” The only benefit it had is that you could easily spot the poor cat druids because they were in epics while the good ones were wearing blues from Zul’Gurub and Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj. Man, I’m glad this was just a Vanilla thing…

The Burning Crusade

Except, of course, that it wasn’t. The same problem existed in The Burning Crusade, except it was more a matter of the “more purple” issue instead of blues to purples. People continued to work off of the assumption that if something came from a later instance, it must be better! Instead of taking a smart approach to gearing up, people would just grab their next set piece and work onwards. I’m sure I’m giving away that I raided as a cat druid in Vanilla and Burning Crusade, but there were some big itemization quirks and a lot of extremely dumb cats out there. Some set bonuses were amazing (Two pieces of Tier 4, lovingly called 2pc T4, granted energy per attack). Some were awful or useless (Tier 5 offered a caster increase… for cats.) I’d see cats upgrading out of extremely well-itemized gear for set pieces that did nothing for them. Then I’d see cats putting away their Tier 4 with a nice AEP value of 500 attack power for two more strength from their Tier 5, losing their set bonus. While Damage Meters are another issue altogether, surely seeing your dps plummet from your “upgrade” should be a clue? Then from a class that lives off agility many cats would take attack power idols from Black Temple simply because of where it dropped. Taking set pieces that lower your dps greatly combined with grabbing whatever gear seemed newer made it feel like I was pugging Lower Blackrock Spire all over again. What’s wrong with these people?!

Wrath of the Lich King

And now we have Gearscore. People are taking gear with a higher item level over gear that’s good for them because it inflates their gearscore. In some cases, the old problems exist exactly the same way they did before. For classes like hunters, two pieces of tier 9 gives such a huge DPS boost by allowing Serpent Sting to crit that “upgrading” to Tier 10 and losing the bonus will tank your DPS. Some of the Item Level 264 relics have a ramp up time and can fall off easily, making the 245 relics a big dps increase most of the time. Darkmoon Card: Greatness is a great example of a trinket with near-perfect itemization. It’s item level 200, but it ranks higher than a good deal of the 245 trinkets. While I could continue to list many other examples, it is worth noting that overall itemization tends to improve as the item level goes up. The important thing is to be able to think for yourself and know your class. Which brings me to the interesting problem this poses: requiring gearscore to do pugs and raids and bragging about your gearscore. This rewards players for making poor choices. Your gearscore does not show your DPS, your skill, or your experience. If you can click need on the item with the highest item level, you are rewarded by having your gearscore go up. The problem is that we use a sort of mental gearscore sometimes when people ask us about gearing up. No one worth their kitty paws would say “get 5,700 GS before you should look to Trial of the Crusader,” but we might say “Try to get some good badge 245 and heroic 232 gear before you look into ICC10.” If that player goes and builds a Darkmoon Card: Greatness, great! It probably beats their trinket. But again, I suspect giving out advice like this probably encouraged things like Gearscore.

On a tangent, I think the best bet would to be to develop an add-on or system that works off of AEP. Perhaps if we had to link our Tossk Kittypoints or Rawr simulator score it would be better. Then again, to remain accurate those are constantly being updated and worked on, and they don’t always update immediately. But at least there is some thinking going on there. At least the statistics and set bonuses are weighted. Instead of complaining (too late!), I just hope this is the direction we’re heading. I would love a mod that replaces the Item Level on the item with AEP. (AEP is a generic term for Attack Equivalency Points, basically a way of comparing stats. Think of it as “For your current gear level, how does this compare to another piece, comparing how things equal out in attack power.”)

I’d love for someone to defend Gearscore, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below.

May 23, 2010

May 22nd Site Update

Filed under: Personal — K'vn @ 7:04 am

Hello everyone! Sorry about the delay in updates, I thought I’d take on a slightly longer lore article than I probably should have. I’m also in the middle of moving and I have family visiting next week to help me with the furniture, all combined with work. I have the artwork done for the article, though, so if I get some time to breath I’ll finish typing it up. It’s a little bit different than how I normally handle lore, so we’ll see what everyone thinks.

That said, I have been stealing an hour each night with my better half and we’ve been either watching a bit of a movie or playing Chocobo’s Dungeon on the Wii. It’s a fun little game that’s turned out to be a little more involved than it’s child-like initial demeanor would have suggested. I’ve haven’t touched a Dungeon Crawler since Diablo 2, so I’m a bit out of practice, but it’s really a blast. The traps and mechanics can feel a bit frustrating the first time you see them, but once you get used to things it’s pretty enjoyable. As an example, a lot of items you get are like vendor trash except if you equip them you’re stuck with them for the dungeon and they cause some horrific effect. Going into the first water dungeon and watching every attack “Rust” away my weapons and armor reducing their effectiveness permanently was pretty annoying. Still, I’m having a great time now and I’d recommend the game.

Hollywood Video and Blockbuster are all going out of business in our area, so I keep picking up DVDs for $1-10 as I find them. I’ve picked up a nice selection of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and a few movies I would never buy for full price but that I’ve enjoyed for $2. We watched through the new Sherlock Holmes movie (Not the Robert Downey Jr. one, the one with Ianto from Torchwood) and it was amazing. Not quite as amazing as the cover would suggest, but still pretty enjoyable. While on the mend from broken bones last year I read through all of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and to say this movie takes liberties with the original material would be like saying Boa Vs Python was a remake that took liberties from Hamlet. If you’re not offended by the incredible liberties taken, however, you should be able to find some enjoyment from Sherlock and Watson chasing a T-rex through London. Plus, it has the creepy spider guy of NC’s Lost in Space Review fame.

Now, if only getting my lore article up was as easy as typing about what I’ve been doing instead. Ah well! Time to get some work done before moving more boxes over. Oh yeah, check out Bandu Bites new article if you haven’t yet! Bandu needs your mails!

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