Goblins might be a race of ugly little green people with giant hands and horrifying taste in decor, but you've got to admire their self-confidence. These beach-partying gobbos aren't ashamed to strut their stuff and dance around in their bathing suits. Admittedly, whatever sort of liquor is in those bottles on the right might be helping them lose their inhibitions. Sober people don't usually stay at the beach during a rainstorm. (Thanks to submitter Arugadh of The Brotherhood of Iron on Wyrmrest Accord [US-A] for the screenshot!) Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ssFiled under: Around Azeroth
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.
Yesterday was the huge Patch 5.4 infodump. Today, I'm going to see Man of Steel. So I'm all sorts of freaking out right now. Let's talk about WoW before I spin out of control and just start talking about Kryptonian Thought Beasts and the Jeweled Mountains of Krypton and Kandor and oh my Rao tonight is Man of Steel I am freaking out here.
And yes, a Thought-Beast was a big dinosaur looking monster with a screen on its forehead that showed you what it was thinking. In this case, it was thinking I want to eat that guy.. I don't know what possible evolutionary benefit that is, but there you go. Since a lot of these questions are about patch 5.4, expect many spoilers.
Thieren asks: Any info on the Stromgarde Keep scenario that people are now talking about? Please say it's true!
Anne covered the little we know about the Scenario in this post yesterday. All we know is that it exists, basically. Is it going to be the Alliance reclaiming it, the Horde taking it over, something else? We have no idea yet.
So many people that I'm gonna paraphrase the question: Oh no, Nazgrim is a boss in the raid, does that mean we have to kill him? I like Nazgrim! (Replace Nazgrim with the Klaxxi Paragons for a whole lot of people.)
First off, yes, it does appear that both Nazgrim and the Klaxxi Paragons are bosses in the new raid. Until we actually get to see these fights, we don't know if that means we'll be killing them or not, but it appears at least likely. And frankly, to a certain degree the fact that we've come to care about these characters means that the raid has more emotional depth - instead of it being Nameless Big Orc #7, it's Nazgrim, that guy we met in the Grizzly Hills, ended up working alongside in Vashj'ir, and who even called us friend in the Jade Forest and Kun'Lai Summit. This makes the reality of this war all the more evident - good people, doing the best they can to live up to their ideals, end up on the opposite sides of the coin and in the end those hard choices cost us both in casualties and in the scars left by knowing that in doing what you have to do, you'll hurt someone you've come to respect.
As for the Klaxxi, well, we did work with them in the Dread Wastes, but they were up front about it: the younger races are just fodder for the evolution of the mantid, our gods are not their gods, and in the end they serve Y'Shaarj. Now, we don't know why they're in the Siege yet - they could be there to serve Garrosh as the current holder of Y'Shaarj's heart, or they could be there trying to steal it back and bring Y'Shaarj totally back. We'll only find out once we see the fight. Either way, though, I think that us feeling a connection to these characters makes the fights more interesting and fun.
Nocjin asks: Are polearms being titan grippable likely to have any bearing in mogging other 2h melee weapons into polearms? I really love the look but there just aren't enough str ones to actually use.
So far, no. Polearms and staves mog together, just like swords/axes/maces mog together. I have tested this on the PTR, and as of June 13th (as I type this) you can only use polearms and staves to mog your polearm. I mogged Bo-Ris to the Exodar Life-Staff.
ArtoVallivirta asks: Malkorok, very mysterious figure. He was brought out in Tides of War, but what is this guy anyway? Is he the driving force behind Garrosh's ideas of the Horde or did Garrosh walk to some secret corner in Blackrock mountain and asked "Wanna come and make the Horde strong with me?" I hope we get some light to this character either in the upcoming novel or in game. I don't want to just walk up to him and fight him before knowing why is he really there
If you remember during Cataclysm, Eitrigg and his son Ariok worked to undermine the Blackrock Clan's current Dark Horde leadership and bring the Blackrocks into the Horde proper. Garrosh offered them an amnesty if they'd join, and many of them took him up on it, as Garrosh's attitude suited them a lot more than Thrall's did. This brought Blackrocks like Malkorok into the fold, so to speak. Since Garrosh personally recruited them (and the Dragonmaw) into the Horde, they bring their older, more Old Horde way of doing things and combine it with personal loyalty to Garrosh, not Thrall or the other Horde races. In essence, Garrosh has recruited and made the Old Horde into his most loyal supporters.
We see Malkorok in the Dark Heart of Pandaria scenario. He's not a fan of goblins, or really, any non-orcs. He's kind of a racist. Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: featured, guide, Klaxxi, Malkorok, Nazgrim, patch-5.4, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions
When I was struggling not too long ago over what race to make my new caster, the collected wisdom of Twitter seemed to distill into one simple principle: Choose whatever race you think has the best casting animations. Ultimately, I made my choice based on a corollary, choosing a race whose casting animations carried whiffs of a nostalgically sweet time in my WoW life. Objective achieved: What I see over and over while I play makes me happy.
Here's your chance to represent with your favorites. Casting animations, melee animations, resting animations -– cast your vote in multiple polls after the break.
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.
Sometimes I just can't come up with a good intro to the Queue. I don't have any music I really want to play, I can't really do a huge post full of spoilers about Man of Steel, so it's basically just me, sitting here, trying and failing to come up with anything clever.
In lieu of clever, let's just answer some questions.
Pmarsico9 said I bet Malkorak is actually a dreadlord.......that's my guess. You heard it here first. Remember how Balnazzar manipulated the entire Scarlet Crusade?
Well I hope this the beginning of the re-emergence of the Legion.
I have no evidence that he's not a dreadlord, aside from him seeming fairly orcish in his appearances in Tides of War and the expansion to date. I kind of hope he's not, because frankly we've done that bit twice now with Balnazzar and Mal'Ganis. Sometimes people do evil things for their own reasons, they don't have to be manipulated into it by demons. lucho_pinto asks Well, obligatory question of the day: New Garrosh model - Template for new Orc model? Thoughts?
Mine? OH YES.
Well, we have some fairly detailed orc models to look at, between Thrall's Cataclysm revamp and Garrosh's current model (which is itself a refinement of Garrosh's Cata look) and I expect that if/when we get new orc models, they'll look something like these. But since both Thrall and Garrosh are fairly distinctive looking orcs, I expect the player orc model (when it is updated) will look simpler.
HerrKlokbok asks Any rough estimate on when patch 5.4 will drop on the live realms? I'm planning to buy a new computer until 5.4 but it would be really great if I had some sort of deadline.
So what are we looking at - july? August? September?
Or even october?
Okay, keeping in mind I'm completely guessing because Blizzard hasn't said boo about it, September seems like a safe bet. That will mean the 5.4 PTR would have been up for four months, which is about what we got for the 5.2 and 5.3 PTRs.5.2 hit the PTR in January and went live in March, so three to four months seems a really safe bet.
SallyBowls asks Q4Q: if we are going to have virtual realms, why do we still have 3 AHs? Wouldn't a combined AH just be simpler? Why make people sell to friend/alt to move it? It used to be the special snowflakes didn't want competition in the AH. Several new realms blows that out of the water.
SWTOR converted to the single AH and I liked the change.
I think it's extremely unlikely that we'll have cross-faction AH's for the same reason we're not allowed to have cross-faction grouping. Yes, the neutral AH exists, but it's deliberately in an out of the way place that's annoying to get to. Now, you can never say never with Blizzard, but I just don't see them making it even easier for Horde and Alliance players to sell things to each other.
SergioSirsay asks Did I miss it somewhere, or have they let on whether there will be a list of which realms get connected to which under the virtual realms, or is it still too early for that? (I'm thinking of the situation where someone may not have to pay for a realm transfer if they get lucky with that list and can share heirlooms, etc.)
It's still way too early for that. We have no information on how they're planning on fusing realms into virtual realms - we don't even know if they'll keep PvE, PvP and RP realms separate although my assumption is that they will. Keeping in mind that it may be only a couple of months before the change, I'd hold off on a realm transfer unless you have a pressing reason to go now.
Jackesteve asks How do the changes to the Vale and its waters affect the waters that spill forth via the Thousand Years falls in the Valley? No more huge veggies?
No idea yet, but it doesn't look good for the Valley of the Four Winds. Not good at all. Perhaps the waters of the Terrace of Eternal Spring, now that it's been cleansed, can help restore the Vale of Eternal Blossoms since it would make sense for the Terrace to be the original source of the Vale's water. Remember, it was in the Terrace that Shaohao first called the mists down, so it's possible that the Sha of Pride was seeking to keep the Terrace isolated.
Then again, perhaps we went to Pandaria, brought our war to its shores, and ultimately destroyed the continent by digging up its most sacred and profound place and freeing an ultimate evil, then left the place a wasteland and completely failed to live up to the faith the August Celestials showed in us. We'll find out. Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: featured, guide, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions
A message from the War Chief (sic) is the newest video from Ryan Cant. In it, Garrosh desperately tries to convinced the harried, oppressed members of the Horde that everything's fine. Nobody's beating a rebellious path to Orgrimmar, bent on the complete dispossession of the standing despot. Nope, it's just a little thing off in a distant land, nothing to worry about here.
I enjoyed the video, and I think it's a good idea. The only thing that distracted me was Garrosh's voice. When you use a comedic voice, you generally do it to make the character somewhat a buffoon. I had the sense that the video might have been a little better played straight, with the idea that Garrosh was actually trying to convince us that everything's fine. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com. Tags: featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, ow-machinima, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos
For those of us who have not yet begun our Legendary item-building, not hung out with Wrathion at all, and not collected the relevant sigils and points and such, the idea of starting out now is daunting to say the least. But fear not! Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has tweeted with some excellent news:
@weedeveryday420 ToT will drop all 3 legendary raid drops (in order) when 5.4 ships.
- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 14, 2013
I think we'll all agree that this is a pretty fantastic bit of news for players who want to catch up with the Legendary, perhaps having let it slide, and players with alts who might like some orange things in their life. But it's inevitable that this will also result in a slew of comments that legendaries should be hard to get, should require months of work, and should not have catch-up systems. That doing all those things makes them less legendary, not to mention the legendaries-for-all approach that has been ushered in with Mists of Pandaria. Which side of the fence do you sit on? Or are you awkwardly perched upon said fence like me? I am still not sure if one of my characters will ever have one. Tags: breaking, legendary, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-legendary, wrathionFiled under: Mists of Pandaria
Blizzard's Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has taken to Twitter to make an announcement about just exactly how PvE gear is going to work in PvP come patch 5.4.
.@anthonydeluca8 It won't. The ceiling will slowly go up next season (e.g. 1 point per week) but PvP gear will be exempt from the ceiling.
- Holinka (@holinka) June 13, 2013
There's likely to be a new season with patch 5.4, given how the previous ones have played out, and the fact that we have new tiers of gear. So when that new season begins, the PvP gear, which is the Grievous Gladiator gear, will be item level 522. This will put it a fairly substantial 26 item levels above the downscaled PvE gear, which will sit at item level 496.
As Holinka has mentioned in the past, they want PvE gear to catch up to PvP gear slowly. And it makes sense, nobody is able to step into a season and be fully conquest geared in the first week. So, a player in PvP gear's average item level will probably increase in line with that of a PvE geared player, with the notable difference that, of course, PvP players will have PvP Power on their gear. It's also worth noting that this scaling occurs only in PvP instances, so arenas, battlegrounds and rated battlegrounds. Whether it will take PvPers 26 weeks to become fully geared remains to be seen, but it will feel good for PvP gear to be decently ahead of PvE gear for a while at least. Tags: arena, arena-guide, arena-strats, arena-tips, arenas, breaking, featured, guide, how-to-play-battlegrounds, how-to-pvp, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-pvp, pvp-guide, wow-arena, wow-arena-guide, wow-guide
If you've been playing World of Warcraft since it launched in 2004, that's eight years of subscription fees, expansion pack purchases, and character transfers -- not to mention the cost of tshirts, vanity pets, BlizzCon tickets, and any other swag you might have picked up along the way. And while we don't pay much a month, it definitely adds up -- ka-king! -- to the tune of $179.88 a year if you pay month to month. And, while I definitely think I've gotten my money's worth, the amount I've spent on WoW over the years adds up to a frankly embarrassing sum.
And instead of sharing that figure with you, I'm going to segue into today's Breakfast Topic: just how much have you spent on WoW since you started playing? And, in the end, has it been worth it? Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics
As with any new feature, confusion abounds around Flexible Raiding and just how it will work. Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum took to the forums to clarify various aspects, including lockouts. TaepsilumRight now, the idea is to have FR lockouts work very similarly to lockouts in LFR. You will be able to repeat bosses, and that will actually still be somewhat rewarding, you'll be able to use additional bonus rolls, earn Valor Points, and potentially loot some shinnies from trash...
There's something unique about FRs though, I'll explain it with an example: Let's say you join a 12man and kill the first boss, leave the raid, and join a 20man, you might have to repeat the first boss.
"Might", so how does that work? If everyone in the new 20man raid has already killed the first boss just like you did, then that boss will not spawn. But even if only 1 of the players in that 20man has not killed the first boss, he will spawn again and everyone else will have to repeat the encounter.
This is all pretty confusing stuff! WoW Insider reached out to Blizzard for some additional clarity on just how the raid lockouts will work, and they came back with some more information. Flexible Raids will be queued for like heroic scenarios -- players will form a pre-made group, then join the queue. The raid will be cut up into sections, just like in the Raid Finder, so you will be queueing for, say, a set of three bosses. If everyone in your pre-made group has already killed boss one and boss two, the bosses and their trash will simply not be there. You will wander through straight to boss three and start from their trash. However, if even one player in your group has not killed boss one and boss two, they and their trash will be there. In order to progress to boss three, you will have to kill boss one and boss two.
But, fear not. Because on repeat kills of bosses, while, just like in the Raid Finder, you will not be eligible for loot, there are other incentives. Firstly, trash drops loot, just as Taepsilum mentions, but secondly, repeated bosses still award valor. Valor is dropped from Flexible raids on a boss-by-boss basis, and repeating bosses will still give you points. What's more, players can use their bonus rolls on repeat bosses to get greater chances of loot.
What's your take on this? It seems like a great system, gives player an incentive to do the raids more than once a week if need be to help friends and make finding groups an easier task. However, attempting to look at this from the angle of progression-focused hardcore guilds, it seems possible that this could be used creatively to spam a single boss or wing over and over for specific drops. Nonetheless, in the grand scheme of things, that's a small price to pay! Tags: featured, flex, flex-lockouts, flex-raiding, flexible-raiding, flexible-raiding-lockouts, guide, guide-to-raid-leading, leadership, lockouts, patch-5.4, raid-guide, raid-leader, raid-leader-guide, raiding-guide, raids, wow-guide, wow-guide-to-raid-leading, wow-raid-leader, wow-raiding, wow-raids
Blizzard's Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has taken to Twitter to make an announcement about just exactly how PvE gear is going to work in PvP come patch 5.4.
.@anthonydeluca8 It won't. The ceiling will slowly go up next season (e.g. 1 point per week) but PvP gear will be exempt from the ceiling.
- Holinka (@holinka) June 13, 2013
There's likely to be a new season with patch 5.4, given how the previous ones have played out, and the fact that we have new tiers of gear. So when that new season begins, the PvP gear, which is the Grievous Gladiator gear, will be item level 522. This will put it a fairly substantial 26 item levels above the downscaled PvE gear, which will sit at item level 496.
As Holinka has mentioned in the past, they want PvE gear to catch up to PvP gear slowly. And it makes sense, nobody is able to step into a season and be fully conquest geared in the first week. So, a player in PvP gear's average item level will probably increase in line with that of a PvE geared player, with the notable difference that, of course, PvP players will have PvP Power on their gear. It's also worth noting that this scaling occurs only in PvP instances, so arenas, battlegrounds and rated battlegrounds. Whether it will take PvPers 26 weeks to become fully geared remains to be seen, but it will feel good for PvP gear to be decently ahead of PvE gear for a while at least. Tags: arena, arena-guide, arena-strats, arena-tips, arenas, breaking, featured, guide, how-to-play-battlegrounds, how-to-pvp, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-pvp, pvp-guide, wow-arena, wow-arena-guide, wow-guide
Brand new Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted to clarify the datamined information on the Stromgarde scenario. Unfortunately it seems like our enthusiasm may have been a little misplaced, as Lore explains: LoreJust to avoid any further confusion, there is no Stromgarde scenario in patch 5.4, and what you've seen datamined is little more than a developer experiment with a stand-in name.
This happens quite often; developers will put something quick together to test out some new tech or functionality, and the remnants occasionally slip through to the PTR files where dataminers can get ahold of them.
So, just to be clear, there is currently nothing related to Stromgarde in production. That's not to say it's a location we'll never revisit, but should that happen, it will not be in 5.4, and the recently datamined files will not be part of it.
Yet again, it's a good reason to take datamined information with a pinch of salt. Don't assume that, just because something is in the files, that it's in the patch. Even something being on the PTR doesn't mean it's going to make it into the patch. So, while it's fine to be excited about new content, it's best not to take datamining as gospel.
Nonetheless, this leads to some interesting speculation. Just exactly what was this experiment? What else might the scenario technology be used for? And are there other scenarios you'd like to see? We'd love to see some more of the old world turned into scenarios.
Last week's Community Blog Topic was whether or not servers should be merged to alleviate the problem with low population servers. With the announcement that Virtual Realms will be tested on the patch 5.4 PTR, this subject became very timely, if not a little belated. Blizzard's answer to whether or not servers should be merged seems to be yes ... kinda. Rather than merging servers into several bigger servers, Virtual Realms will cluster several separate realms together into one big meta server with a shared AH and the ability to join guilds and groups cross realm. I assume that like servers will be put together, just like CRZ, so that PVE and PVP players won't be mixed.
If Virtual Realms make it to the live realms and work, it seems like an excellent solution to the problem of dead and imbalanced servers. But how will it be implemented? And what if Virtual Realms don't work? Should servers be merged?
They predicted it
Dead Gnomes Society's alykii actually predicted virtual consolidation. Looking very prescient, alykii described what it looks like we'll be testing.
Cross-realm Guilds – the ability to join a guild physically located on another realm without having to transfer characters.One AH for each faction (yes, it would change the economy as we know it, but the AH interface needs a makeover anyway).Cross realm grouping for ALL content without necessarily having to go through the battletag system.The ability to mail items across realms to other toons.The ability to send tells to players not on your battletag or in your group by typing the name-realm.
The only thing not mentioned in the patch notes about Virtual Realms so far is mail, but it only makes sense that with cross-realm guilds and auction houses that we'll have cross-realm mail.
Jeff LaBowski at Sportsbard also suggested cross-realm everything as a solution, but is reticent to try it.
This option makes me shudder a little. I think I would feel more like a number than a name. They would need to update the UI in the auction house. They would also need to start moderating public chats. If you don't know what I am talking about- roll a toon on Cenarion Circle or Argent Dawn and wander over to Goldshire. Read /1 general chat for a minute. You will only need a minute. This is what we can come to expect more of if we get more CRZ or "super servers". Not really looking forward to that.
I admit that the Elwynn Forest general chat is pretty awful on just about any decently populated server. It's not just the infamous erotic roleplayers on certain RP servers. The general tendency toward Barrens Chat or worse exists in Goldshire for some reason.
It will be interesting to see how the chat channels will be handled on Virtual Realms. Perhaps the zones will be instanced as many other MMOs do. In both City of Heroes and Star Wars: The Old Republic, zones would be instanced but you could go to any zone you wished if you wanted to meet up with friends. Carmelo at Clever Musings did not like the way Guild Wars 2 handled overpopulated zones and is not looking forward to any possible implementation of overflow zones in WoW.
Blizzard could clearly design a better system, but I'm wary of the logistics. What happens when someone switches zones? Could you voluntarily switch to a different zone instance like TERA allows players to? Would that open the potential for abuse? People already complain about CRZ making it impossible to find rare NPCs. Would players constantly begin swapping between zone instances looking for the Time Lost Proto-Drake? Would spawn timers need to be adjusted to compensate for the dramatic increase to players in a zone?
At The Golden Crusade, xsinthis2 also discussed Cross Realm Zones and the possibility of expanding it to the AH and guilds as being the only way to make CRZ work to alleviate the issues in low population realms. Anastrace said something similar in the comments.
Single player appeal
While most people agreed that either merging servers or expanding CRZ was the right thing to do, some are happy on their low pop servers. Although World of Warcraft is a multiplayer game, Jimmy and others like to play it like a single player game. Jordan is also a proponent.
WoW may technically be an MMO-rpg, but it is still a phenomenal single-player RPG. The amount of hours and quality solo play I've gotten out of WoW outstrip any rpg I've ever played in my life. Whatever console rpg I pick up, no matter how much I like it, I can only clock in about 100 hours before I get bored with it and need to put it down for 1-3 years. But I haven't put WoW down since 2007!
Names
Quite a few people mentioned the inherent problem with names when merging servers together. Whether as one big meta realm or merging two or more realms into one, keeping one's identity is very important to most players. Many people, including shawneesue, thought that using the original server name as a sort of surname would allow people to keep their preferred names. I assume that is how it will be done on the Virtual Realms.
Login to the character, not the realm
A few people, such as Yoshihito, would like to see the realm choice come after logging into a character, rather than merging the realms. This system is used in Toontown Online, where you could choose non-full servers and teleport to friends as necessary.
What about the economy?
There was much discussion about what would happen to the economy, should the Auction House go cross realm. For example, gamer4279 thinks that prices would bottom out. But jemjem.nightfall believes that people will be selling more at the lower price, therefor making up for the difference with volume instead of high prices. On the other hand, shawneesue is afraid that auctions would come and go too fast to be clicked on. It's hard to say what a cross-realmed AH will be like for WoW before we actually see it.
Merge away
Regardless of the method used, most people believed that some kind of merging of the realms, whether virtually or physically, was needed to fix the problems of low population realms. I, for one, am very excited about Virtual Realms and hope they make it to the live servers. And I think that this solution is better than merging servers. We'll have to see what patch 5.4 ends up delivering to us. Tags: community-blog-topic, community-blog-topic-results, crz, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, merge-servers, virtual-realms, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics
"It's not that I'm not happy to see you," Lolegolas carefully said. "But what on Azeroth are you wearing?"
"You look like a stag beetle," Throgg said. "Like an angry, fuzzy stag beetle."
The druid looked down at his outfit and then plucked the helmet off his head. "Oh. It's the Grievous Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm. I picked it up while fighting in the arena."
"Were you fighting stag beetles?" Throgg asked. "Did you skin them and wear their buggy hats as a prize?"
The Gilnean known as Not Spot growled slightly, then laughed. "No. Just other fighters. It's how I paid my way to catch up with you two. My kitty fu has grown strong."
"Also," the blood elf interjected, "it'd be good camouflage for infiltrating Silithus. It's a harsh helmet. A bug helmet."
Item Note: While the Grievous Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm obviously looked pretty good, I can't help but dwell on its beetle-like nature. I think this might be my favorite druid hat since the days of the moose horns. Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com. Tags: fat-lewt, fat-loot, featured, grievous-gladiators-dragonhide-helm, what-are-you-playing, world-of-warcraft-items, world-of-warcraft-loot, wow-item, wow-items, wow-loot, wrup
One of the defining aspects of the death knight class is their inimitable voice. That hollow, Darth-esque echo lends a creepy underpinning to the characters. Episode 3 of Nobody's Quest opens up with that subject and then plunges back into the story.
I'm digging how NinthBatter is stepping into character development. Exposition and exploration can be important parts of a character's life. But rather than get trapped in the sticky mess of exposition, Ninth immediately launches into a plot twist and story progression. All in all, I like where this series is going and I keep looking forward to each installment. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com. Tags: featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, ninthbatter, nobodys-quest, ow-machinima, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos
Filed under: WoW MoviewatchAutosTechnologyLifestyleGamingFinanceEntertainment on AOLLifestyle on AOLSports on AOLTravel on AOLMore on AOLBlizzard EventsClass NewsDaily FeaturesExpansionsNewsWeekly Class ColumnsWeekly Features //// .dir',this).addClass("open");$('ul:first',this).css('visibility','visible');},function(){$(this).removeClass("hover");$('.open',this).removeClass("open");$('ul:first',this).css('visibility','hidden');});});//]]>//(function($){$("[name='aol-share']").aolShare({services:["facebook","twitter"],templates:{'twitter':{'twitterStatus':"url={{url}}&text={WoW Moviewatch: Nobody's Quest, Episode 3}&via=wowinsider"}}});$.facebookSocial({options:{appId:109780035159}});$("[name='aol-facebook-like']").facebookSocial();$('.aol-share-print').attr('href','print').attr('target','').unbind('click');})(jQuery);(function(d,t){var g=d.createElement(t),s=d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];g.async=true;g.src='https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s);})(document,'script');
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.
The three rogue specs share many common mechanics. They all follow the same formula: generate combo points, use finishers, activate your cooldowns when they come up. The real differences between the specs only show up once you start playing them. Assassination is well-known for being more relaxed and favors pooling energy over spamming attacks. Subtlety rogues have a knack for massive burst damage via their complex cooldown, Shadow Dance.
Combat is arguably the simplest of the three specs, and is often characterized by its fast-paced gameplay and high actions-per-minute rate. Adrenaline Rush, which has been combat's signature cooldown for years, is designed to let you push buttons even faster. Assassination's Vendetta lets you hit harder, subtlety's Shadow Dance lets you use openers, and Adrenaline Rush doubles the numbers of buttons you can push. Unfortunately for combat, the concept of "push more buttons" can't scale forever.
The 1-second GCD
The GCD, or global cooldown, has multiple purposes. By invoking a minimum amount of time between abilities, Blizzard can reduce the amount of burst damage that classes can do. It ensures that the server has time to process each ability and action, so that spells don't occur out of order. Imagine if a mage could unload his entire mana pool into a barrage of hundreds of Ice Lances at once. It wouldn't be very fair for anyone else. A rogue dropping multiple Ambushes at the same time would be similarly overpowered.
Rogues have always had a short GCD. Even in vanilla WoW, we had a 1-second GCD that let us make split-second decisions and unload multiple attacks in short time windows. The default GCD is 1.5 seconds for most other classes, which made playing a rogue feel slightly faster and slightly more fluid. I was personally drawn to the rogue due to the quicker gameplay and the ability to react quickly to my enemies.
When 1-second isn't enough
A rogue's base energy regeneration rate is 10 energy per second. With a 1-second GCD, we could use a move that costs 10 energy every GCD. We don't have any DPS abilities that cost 10 energy, so we're obviously not using every GCD available to us all the time. Haste rating on our gear, buffs in our groups, and Bloodlust during burn phases can all increase our energy regeneration. There are also several spec abilities that grant bonus energy or increase our energy regeneration rate. All of those pale in comparison to Adrenaline Rush.
Adrenaline Rush doubles our energy regeneration while active. If we were pushing buttons every 4 seconds before, we're pushing them every 2 seconds during Adrenaline Rush. As we obtain more and more haste, we're able to use more and more abilities. Luckily for us, we've never quite reached the threshold of being able to use an ability every 2 seconds, so we've never been truly GCD-blocked during Adrenaline Rush outside of Bloodlust situations.
Shadow Blades and the 4-piece tier 15 bonus
The new 4-piece bonus on our tier 15 set cuts the energy cost of our abilities by 40% while Shadow Blades is active. If we have the set bonus, we can use 40% more abilities per second, or cuts the time between our abilities by 40%. Suddenly, we've moved from using an ability every 3 seconds to using an ability every 1.8 seconds. Shadow Blades also penetrates our target's armor and grants us double combo points, which means we want to pair it with Adrenaline Rush to achieve the maximum effect. The problem is that AR's energy-doubling effect would have us gaining enough energy to use an ability every 0.9 seconds, which is shorter than the GCD. What now?
Blizzard decided to allow the set bonus to drop our GCD by a few fractions of a second. There is already a Glyph of Adrenaline Rush that does the same thing, and yes, they stack. The goal was to lower the GCD enough to allow rogues to use their abilities as fast as the energy came in. Now, during SB+AR windows, our abilities have less than a second delay before the next one is ready to use. We're finding ourselves pushing Sinister Strike and Eviscerate as fast as we possibly can.
Latency doesn't like short GCDs
One of the biggest problem with enforcing a short GCD is latency. If you're playing with an average ping time of 100ms, it could be 0.25s before your Sinister Strike press leaves your computer, is processed by Blizzard's server, and then confirmed back to you. You won't know how many combo points your SS generated until you have less than half a second before your next move needs to be determined and then pressed. Who has reaction times that good?
If you're playing in a situation with high latency, like on wireless, your ping times could easily exceed 200ms. Now you're left blindly spamming Sinister Strike and hoping that you push Eviscerate at the right times. Blizzard's servers also had issues handling the low GCD times, as they're forced to process our incoming abilities faster and faster. Ghostcrawler confirmed that while lowering the GCD time might have fixed the energy capping problem in this tier, it also isn't a perfect solution.
What's next for combat?
When combat's whole niche is "push more buttons" it can be hard to figure out where to go from here. You can only push so many buttons so fast, and combat with the 4-piece bonus definitely pushed that envelope. In order for combat to continue to scale in the future, I think the 1-second GCD needs to be respected and other ways to boost combat's damage should be evaluated. The issue is that assassination and subtlety rogues are both nowhere near being GCD-limited, due to the high energy cost of their abilities and their lack of Adrenaline Rush.
How do you solve energy capping, then? I'm not sure. There's a lot at play with Adrenaline Rush, and most of the solutions feel very messy. Extending our max energy pool during Adrenaline Rush doesn't solve the problem, making our abilities cost twice as much but deal double damage is redundant, and inventing a new high-energy cost ability to use during AR is just making it Shadow Dance. The goal of Adrenaline Rush is to provide the rogue with a lot of fun, active damage. Teasing around the 1-second GCD is what we want to see happen. So how do you ensure that your energy regeneration never teeters into the sub-second-per-ability range? We'll have to wait and see. Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue. Tags: adrenaline-rush, ar-sb, combat-energy, combat-rogue, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, energy-cap, featured, gcd, global-cooldown, guide-to-rogues, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-gcd, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-talents, sb, set-bonus, shadow-blades, tier-15, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.
Med'an is a controversial character.
Well, maybe not. If Med'an were controversial, that would mean that some people like him and some people hate him, but so far, if Med'an has fans they're being awfully quiet about it. Now, that doesn't mean they don't exist, but until I see evidence for them existing I'm going to assume that they don't. So Med'an isn't controversial because there's no controversy. People either hate him, or they don't care about him at all. But there's the rub. By nature, I tend to dislike just going along with the common opinion without examining it for myself. So now, I find myself forced to ask: is Med'an that bad?
Med'an is as far as I know the only character to get dismissed from existence by the Ask CDev responses. There's a vague response at the end of Ask CDev 3 that implies that he left Azeroth entirely, and that's the last word we've gotten on the character. And I kind of understand why - taking a look at Med'an's backstory, it kind of sounds like something you'd see in someone's FlagRP profile that got out of hand. To make a long story shorter, Med'an is the son of Medivh and Garona, making him half human, a quarter orc and a quarter draenei. Since he was conceived when Medivh was possessed by Sargeras, I suppose you could make an argument for quarter demon if you wanted to. Surrendered by Garona after his birth he was raised by Meryl Winterstorm, a thousand year old undead (not a Forsaken or Scourge undead, his own unique form of undead) and former member of the Council of Tirisfal. Through a comically convoluted series of events, Med'an discovered his true parentage, eventually leading up to his meeting Maraad (a draenei vindicator and Garona's uncle, thus his great-uncle) and becoming the new Guardian of Tirisfal as well as stopping C'thun from being reborn or reincarnated or whatever it is that Old Gods do when they're dead but still giving orders to Cho'gall.
So is Med'an so bad? The story's a standard 'young man finds who he really is and discovers his destiny' plot, after all. It's nothing new or original, but it's a standard because it works. So does it work here?
Well, let me put it this way: Med'an's biggest crime isn't anything he actually does in his story arc. The kid's actually fairly boring, your standard 'determined to be heroic young kid finding out who he is' story that doesn't do much other than show him trying to be good a lot. You could certainly make a case that he's boring, but in and of himself that's his primary sin. He's a fairly boring character, the closest he gets to character development is moping about his heritage and how the orcs did horrible things to the draenei and worse, how Medivh was so evil and he'll be evil too, stuff that's dealt with pretty fast in the comics anyway.
I think, if we were going to try and dissect why people dislike Med'an, there are a few reasons that I can think of to cover. He fills roles other characters already fill. We don't need a green skinned messianic figure, Thrall has that covered. Garona handles the whole "I'm descended from the monsters and their victims at once" aspect, Medivh pretty much nailed the whole 'Last Guardian' shtick, if we need an impossibly powerful mage we already have Jaina and Khadgar. In short, Med'an doesn't add anything crucial to the storyline.He shows up, usurps the comic book story and reduces every major lore character to his periphery. The header image is from the end of the storyline, when Med'an basically 'borrows' the powers of every single member of the New Council of Tirisfal, goes super-Saiyan (complete with yellow glow) and defeats Cho'gall who is empowered by C'thun. We're talking people like Hamuul Runetotem and Jaina Proudmoore here, and they're reduced to cheerleaders while Med'an defeats the story's big bad. Even his mother, Garona, a ridiculously lethal assassin ends up twiddling her thumbs while Med'an saves the day.His very existence changes established lore characters. I admit, I actually don't mind the idea of Medivh and Garona having an affair - I kind of like the idea of these two lonely people, each with a past full of tragedy and predestined doom, finding a kindred spirit in another person who grew up feeling alone and alien - but Med'an's existence means that Garona goes from haunted, reluctant assassin of a personal friend to someone who spends years playing absentee mother/guardian angel, and Med'an as the Guardian of Tirisfal completely destroys the whole point of Warcraft III, that the time for Guardians was past and the world's fate was in the hands of its people now.The story he appears in didn't really have any lasting impact. That one's mostly because Blizzard has very deliberately steered away from letting it have said impact, but look at the story. Med'an grows into a person capable of wielding arcane magic, nature magics, the power of the elements and the Holy Light, is eventually empowered by the New Council of Tirisfal (which this time consists of members of both the Horde and Alliance, representing a variety of magical disciplines) and defeats Cho'gall. And none of it matters. The New Council either immediately disbands or just plain forgets that it exists, Cho'gall is a major villain in Cataclysm, Garona hasn't been seen since her brief appearance in the Twilight Highlands (she doesn't even show up to kill Cho'gall when the ogre dies), and Med'an himself is apparently in another dimension having an extended training montage. Whether or not you like Med'an is almost besides the point - the fact that his story is so ephemeral that even the people who take part in it don't seem to remember any of it stands as a huge blow to the character.Three and four are the big problems with Med'an to my eyes. Three isn't really the fault of the character - bland as he is, Med'an doesn't affect Garona at all really. He neither adds or detracts from her personal story, he doesn't make her life or actions revolve around him. You'd barely even know while reading the comic that she's his mother. Now, ordinarily I'd be willing to argue that it's a good thing that Garona isn't changed into a matronly or maternal figure, because it doesn't fit her arc from Warcraft II - but the problem is, we're still given this huge secret about Garona that she's been hiding for the kid's entire life and we're given no indication that it has had any affect on her. I almost would have preferred a nice Lone Wolf and Cub-style montage of a pregnant Garona murdering people trying to capture her, then wearing a back harness with a baby Med'an in it while again murdering more people, something that showed us that she was still Garona. Having mystery undead dude just adopt the kid and raise him in Duskwood just cheats us of any possible story development.
In a way, Med'an changes everything too much and yet not nearly enough, a paradox that's astonishingly frustrating. We see that Garona and her uncle Maraad know about each other, but we get very little time seeing how coming face to face with her draenei heritage affects her. We get a flashback of Garona and Medivh but it's so short that we never get any sense of how their relationship happened. We see a council of some of the world's most powerful beings come together and immediately fall apart. Where were these guys when the Lich King showed up? When the Cataclysm happened? Heck, it was the same villains as the Med'an story, were they all just too busy, or maybe too embarrassed?
In the end, it's probably just as well that Med'an is trapped in the bottle city of Draenor, or heading off to free Argus, or fight Freiza or whatever it is he's doing now. I'd love to see Garona return and do stuff, but frankly, dealing with the mess this storyline makes of her backstory is probably a bad idea. It's here, like an enormous elekk in the room, but it's been so thoroughly sidelined that I can only see a couple of ways to make good use of it in the future.
Next week's KYL will be a Tinfoil Hat dealing with how we could get good use out of Med'an. While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore. Tags: featured, Garona, guide, guide-to-lore, lore, lore-guide, Maraad, Medan, Medivh, New-Council-of-Tirisfal, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.
So yeah, I was hoping to go to bed when patch 5.4 news dropped and I ended up being awake for hours working on posts about it. I may be ludicrously groggy right now. Anyway, best news of patch 5.4 is Titan's Grip for polearms wooo! There's other stuff ... proving grounds, flex raiding, virtual realms, something in Orgrimmar ... but all of that pales compared to the majesty of TG with polearms. Many warriors will now twirl our way to greatness.
Since none of you knew that 5.4 would drop on the PTR when you were commenting in yesterday's Queue, most of your questions won't be about it. That's okay, it happens. As a result, we're lucky that folks on Twitter never sleep.
@AlternativeChat asks on Twitter: Chances of mail across Virtual Servers? So you can finally send Heirlooms?
It looks pretty good, considering you can join a guild across them, use a shared AH across them, and do dungeons and raids (and no word of limits on that) across them. I would be very surprised if you couldn't mail across them. We'll see, though. The patch notes don't say yet.
@EmberDione asks on Twitter: What's going on with names on this virtual server thing? Do we have any idea?
From the patch notes: Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name. I assume this means that if my warlock Pyrrhus and someone else's mage named Pyrrhus are on different servers in the same virtual realm, he'll be Pyrrhus# to me, and I'll be Pyrrhus# to him. Perhaps our realm names will be in there as well, like in a dungeon or raid finder group.
Puntable1 asks: With raid fights becoming more and more complex, what do you think of allowing the raid leader to direct like a coach from the sidelines. Add an extra spot to the raid, and he could be there in "ghost form" and move around, use raid markers, chat, etc, but not use abilities or take damage.
Honestly I think it is unlikely, it breaks immersion and kind of reduces the 'field general' feeling of raid leadership. It seems to me that raids have responded to the increased complexity of raid fights by spreading the raid leadership about -- in my experience, there has been a raid leader and up to three or more helpers who mark, call out specific boss abilities, tell the raid when to use cooldowns, etc etc. I don't see them divorcing raid leadership from raiders.
@Bulidar asks on Twitter: What are the Horde doing in that mining pit in the Vale of the Eternal Blossoms?
They are digging it up looking for anything that Garrosh and his Horde can use as a weapon, and if you run the Dark Heart of Pandaria you find out exactly what he found. It's not good for anybody who isn't him, let me assure you. It's probably not even good for him.
@RetroDragon asks on Twitter: Clog Den, a refugee from Kun-Lai at Two Moons, has a bear companion. With no bears in Pandaria, where did the bear come from?
A wizard did it.
@nuggsftw asks on Twitter: Where do you think the raid portal will be for t16 raid?
Based on the boss list for the raid, I suspect it may actually be in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, perhaps in the pit the Horde have dug, because there's clearly some consequences to that action.
@Mementh asks on Twitter: Do you think virtual servers will fix the low pop realms and can people handle it?
Fix it? No, but it may ameliorate the situation. It'll be hard to really test it on the PTR, so it'll be tested most thoroughly by going live and it'll be during that first month or so of the patch that we'll see how well lower and higher pop realms are joined in the virtual realms. If done well, it could definitely ease the pain for players on extremely empty realms.
fbxxkl asks: Whats the point of Isle of Giants? Are there dailies? Special mobs (besides oondasta)? Can anyone give me a link where Isle of Giants gets a roundup/review?
You can farm up dinosaur bones -- if you get 9999 of them you can turn them in for this sweet mount. Our own Anne Stickney answered your question in this post.
And that's the lot. Thanks for reading! I go sleep now, I hope. Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: featured, guide, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions
What, you may ask, are virtual realms? Well, they're a very interesting new feature (and if you choose, you can pretend they're the new feature Ghostcrawler mentioned for 5.4) that will have quite an impact on how we play the game. To quote the patch notes: Rygarius - Patch 5.4 Coming Soon!Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests. This is basically the first step in the creation of a unified, single realm across whole regions of World of Warcraft. Similar in concept to a PvP Battlegroup, this basically allows you to treat players from other realms in the shared virtual realm as if they were on your selfsame realm, including all the benefits of guilding, grouping and raiding.; This is an enormous game changer, and I admit, I don't think I ever expected to see it happen. For guilds on low pop servers, this drastically increases the potential player base that you can recruit, for just one potential benefit.
Do remember, however, that this is the PTR. As Ghostcrawler says:
Take data-mining and even PTR itself with a grain of salt. PTR is our Petri dish and not every experiment works.
- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 12, 2013
Stay tuned for more news -- this is definitely an exciting change. Tags: breaking, ghostcrawler, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-ptr, rygarius, unannounced-feature, virtual-realmsFiled under: Guilds, Blizzard, News items, Raiding, Mists of Pandaria
We've talked about WoW's gathering professions, but now that you know gathering, it's time to talk about what to do with the materials you've gathered: craft. World of Warcraft has eight different crafting professions -- alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring, jewelcrafting, and inscription -- which means that a wannabe crafter has plenty of options. So follow along as we walk you through your WoW crafting choices.
Alchemy What does it do? Allows you to create a variety of potions, elixirs, and flasks, as well as transmuting certain items into other items. Most of an alchemist's skills involve providing buffs for anyone using their brews: potions provide an immediate benefit (like restoring your health), elixirs provide buffs for an extended period of time, and flasks provide buffs that last through death.Do I need any gear? Crafting potions will require herbs and different types of vials.Do I get any extras? Alchemists have access to the passive ability Mixology, which doubles the duration and increases the effect of flasks and elixirs they use. High level alchemists have access to a number of useful trinkets and, if they also study Archaeology, can learn to transform into a Sandstone Drake.Why take alchemy? It's definitely useful to be able to make your own potions: you'll find you're never lacking for them. And paired with herbalism to gather herbs, you'll be entirely self-sufficient. However, you might also take alchemy purely out of interest in high-level trinkets or the Sandstone Drake.
Blacksmithing What does it do? Blacksmiths turn metals into weapons as well as mail and plate armor. Blacksmiths can add sockets to their own bracers and gloves as well as craft an Eternal Belt Buckle which adds a socket slot to any belt. Blacksmithing is best paired with mining.Do I need any gear? You need to be near a forge to craft things and your crafting recipes can require a variety of materials beyond stone and ore.Do I get any extras? Beyond what they can craft, blacksmiths can add sockets to their own -- and only their own -- bracers and gloves.Why take blacksmithing? If you're a plate-wearing class, blacksmithing can help you create your own armor as you advance through the game -- including some decent gear that will give you a good start towards raiding. But if you don't wear plate armor, the benefits are few.Enchanting What does it do? Allows you to imbue armor and weapons with magical properties that increase their stats or provide other bonuses. Enchanters can also disenchant items, which turns them into magical components which can be used to create other items. Enchanting doesn't need any particular gathering profession, but many pair it with tailoring and disenchant the goods they craft.Do I need any gear? You'll need a Runed Copper Rod -- which you can craft yourself -- to enchant items and then you'll need various supplies for various enchants.Do I get any extras? In addition to the benefit of always having your own gear enchanted -- trust us, it will happen as you're training -- enchanters can enchant their own rings.Why take enchanting? Enchanting can be a frustrating profession to level, as you have to destroy magical items to gather materials to train. However, at high levels both enchanting and disenchanting can be very much in demand, as players look for enchanters to enchant their own gear or disenchant their unneeded items. Additionally, disenchanted items can be very valuable on the auction house for making cash. Engineering What does it do? Engineering is hands-down the most entertaining profession in the game. It's not always useful, but it's always fun. Engineers can craft a variety of oddball devices that range from the Loot-A-Rang to the Mechano-Hog. Since nearly all of an engineer's gadgets require engineering to use, if any of these things sound like fun, you'll have to level up the profession. Engineering pairs best with mining.Do I need any gear? The Arclight Spanner, which engineers can craft, is an oft-needed tool. Higher level engineers may wish to upgrade to the Gnomish Army Knife. In addition, different crafts will require different materials.Do I get any extras? Only the very nifty items they can craft, which includes some nice epic-quality gear like engineering goggles.Why take engineering? If you prefer fun over practical, engineering is the profession for you. If you prefer practical over fun... it probably isn't. However, any player may find some engineering gadgets that they just can't live without. Leatherworking What does it do? Allows you to craft leather and mail armor out of animal skins. It pairs nicely with skinning.Do I need any gear? You'll need thread and leather to make most of your wares, but different crafting recipes will have different material requirements.Do I get any extras? In addition to the gear you craft, which can be very handy for a leather or mail wearer leveling up, leatherworkers can improve their bracers with fur lining and improve their leg armor with armor kits, both of which provide very nice buffs.Why take leatherworking? If you wear leather or mail armor, then leatherworking will be a useful way to create your own gear as you level up. Some of the gear will give you a good start on doing dungeons and raids at higher levels.Tailoring What does it do? Creates cloth armor as well as bags, magic carpets, and other cloth items.Do I need any gear? Only cloth, thread, and any other materials needed for individual crafting recipes.Do I get any extras? In addition to crafted gear -- some of which is very nice -- tailors can embroider their own cloaks with handy buffs as well as create spellthreads for their own use.Why take tailoring? If you're a cloth-wearer, this is a very decent profession to help gear yourself up as you advance. And since it requires no particular companion profession, you could take it with a gathering profession to make some extra cash. Jewelcrafting (Burning Crusade required) What does it do? Jewelcrafters cut gems into jewels that can be socketed into gear. Additionally, they can create rings, necklaces, trinkets, and even a few weapons. Jewelcrafting pairs best with mining.Do I need any gear? You'll need a Jeweler's Kit, sold by trade supply and general goods vendors, as well as gems and other materials to craft with.Do I get any extras? Jewlcrafters can create trinkets only they can use as well as cut special gems for themselves. High level jewelcrafters with the patience to gather a long list of materials can also craft the Jeweled Onyx Panther and other mounts.Why take jewelcrafting? Cut gems are useful to socket your own gear but can also be worth selling to others or giving to friends or guildmates. Additionally, the trinkets and gems can be a nice buff. Inscription (Wrath of the Lich King required) What does it do? Scribes turn herbs into inks which are used to craft scrolls, glyphs, Darkmoon cards, and epic items like Inscribed Red Fan. Inscription is best paired with herbalism.Do I need any gear? You'll need a Virtuoso Inking Set as well as different types of parchment to make different items.Do I get any extras? In addition to the items they craft, scribes can create inscriptions which are used to enchant their own shoulder armor.Why take inscription? Making glyphs for yourself, your friends, and your guildmates can be a very handy skill to have -- and profitable, too, if you take the time to hunt down popular recipes. Hopefully we've given you a good starting point: happy crafting! Just because you're a newbie doesn't mean you can't bring your A-game to World of Warcraft! Visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to everything you need to get started as a new player, from the seven things every newbie ought to know to how to get started as a healer or as a tank. Tags: alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, featured, guide, how-to-play-wow, inscription, jewelcrafting, leatherworking, new-to-world-of-warcraft, noob-guide, rookie-guide, tailoring, world-of-warcraft-guide, world-of-warcraft-help, world-of-warcraft-noobs, world-of-warcraft-rookies, wow-guide, wow-help, wow-noob-guide, wow-noobs, wow-to-play-world-of-warcraft
The title of this new video by Off the Air is actually Squirrel Challenge, but I've already come to think of it as Squirrel in My Pants. The song is from Phineas and Ferb, and apparently involved woodland creatures running rampant through trousers. I guess that's a thing that happens.
As the story goes, a commenter challenged the guild to create a music video to the song. Off the Air knocked this out of the park. The video is huge fun, complete with a dancing troupe of orcs carrying the chorus. Whether or not the challenge was actually intended to be difficult, Off the Air used it to create one of their best videos yet. So kick back, have some fun, and lament the pants-borne squirrels that are plaguing Azeroth. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com. Tags: featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, off-the-air, ow-machinima, squirrel-challenge, squirrel-in-my-pants, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos
Karazhan is a pretty dull place nowadays. They used to welcome thousands of guests a week, and now they're lucky to see a few dozen warriors. So the bosses have decided to mix up their battle tactics when a group does come around. "To this day I still have no idea what made Shade of Aran want to wield an axe instead of his trusty cane," writes submitter Colter. "Perhaps Karazhan just required more lumber." Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ssFiled under: Around Azeroth
We mentioned them last night while covering the surprises of patch 5.4, so now I roll around to you this morning. Did you see virtual realms coming? Do you like or hate them? Are they a cool way to avoid forcing players to worry about name changes and server moves or are they just a half step that needs to go further?
Personally I'm really interested because with this, the day comes ever closer that I could pug any raid with any friend I have of the same faction. It's a change I never expected to see, and one I'm very interested in watching. If this eventually leads to, say, one North American virtual realm for all players, I might be okay with that.
But enough about me. This is about you. What do you think? Let us know, we're keen to hear it. Patch 5.4 definitely isn't afraid to shake up the status quo so far. Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-PTR, virtual-realms, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics
The WoW Insider Show Episode 298: A great day for a red wedding object,embed{display:none}(function(){var a=window,h,g=[],c=function(){if(h){return}h=1;for(var e=-1,d=g.length;++e Skip to Contentfunction runOmni(){s_265.pfxID="wwo";s_265.pageName="The WoW Insider Show Episode 298: A great day for a red wedding";s_265.server="";s_265.channel="us.wowinsd";s_265.pageType="";s_265.prop54="blogsmith";s_265.prop1="article";s_265.prop2="podcasts";s_265.prop18="podcasts|wow_insider_show";s_265.prop22="adam-holisky";s_265.prop19="@livefyre|facebookfeed|featured|podcast|podcasts|wow-com-podcast|wow-dot-com-podcast|wow-insider-podcast|wow-podcast|wow-podcasting|wow-podcasts|wow-show|wowcom-podcast|wowinsider-show";s_265.prop8="bss:99";s_265.prop9="bsd:20616498";s_265.mmxgo=true;s_265.prop12=document.location;s_265.t();}var s_account="aolwbjystiq,aolsvc";(function(d){var s=d.createElement("script");s.src=(location.protocol=='https:'?'https://s':'http://o')+'.aolcdn.com/omniunih.js';d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);})(document); WoW Insider has the latest on the Mists of Pandaria!SubscribeTwitter AOL MAILWoW Class Death Knight Druid Hunter Mage Monk Paladin Priest Rogue Shaman Warlock Warrior Guides Blizzard Who's Who Cataclysm Guide Leveling Guides Lore Guide New Player Guide World of Warcraft Resources Raiding Ready Check Raid Rx Addons Addon Spotlight Reader UI of the Week Addons 101 Lore All the World's a Stage Around Azeroth Know Your Lore Sunday Morning Funnies WoW Insider's Weekly Comic PvP Blood Sport The Art of War(craft) Daily Features Breakfast Topics The Daily Quest The Queue WoW Moviewatch Weekly Features 15 Minutes of Fame Drama Mamas Guest Posts Gold Capped Officers' Quarters Phat Loot Phriday The Classifieds The Lawbringer The Overachiever Weekly Podcast Roundup World of Warcrafts WoW Insider Show WoW Rookie WRUP Guild It Came from the Blog Choose My Adventure About Us | Contact UsPatch 5.4 patch notesVirtual Realms feature revealedThe Proving Grounds are comingThe latest patch 5.4 newsThe WoW Insider Show Episode 298: A great day for a red weddingby Adam Holisky Jun 11th 2013 at 4:00PM Every week, join us as we present you with The WoW Insider Show podcast -- an hour's worth of WoW community discussion covering everything from the week's top stories here on WoW Insider to emails from our readers and what's been going on with our particular characters in Azeroth.
This week we continued with our return to the live show format! We were thrilled to be joined by everyone late last night for some good ol' fashioned WoW Insider Show fun. Sacco was out, so I was fortunate enough to sit in with the crew on the live end, instead of just hanging out behind the scenes making 'totally appropriate' comments.
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Goblins might be a race of ugly little green people with giant hands and horrifying taste in decor, but you've got to admire their self-confidence. These beach-partying gobbos aren't ashamed to strut their stuff and dance around in their bathing suits. Admittedly, whatever sort of liquor is in those bottles on the right might be helping them lose their inhibitions. Sober people don't usually stay at the beach during a rainstorm. (Thanks to submitter Arugadh of The Brotherhood of Iron on Wyrmrest Accord [US-A] for the screenshot!)
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ssFiled under: Around Azeroth
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. 
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: featured, guide, Klaxxi, Malkorok, Nazgrim, patch-5.4, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions
When I was struggling not too long ago over what race to make my new caster, the collected wisdom of Twitter seemed to distill into one simple principle: Choose whatever race you think has the best casting animations. Ultimately, I made my choice based on a corollary, choosing a race whose casting animations carried whiffs of a nostalgically sweet time in my WoW life. Objective achieved: What I see over and over while I play makes me happy. 
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. 
For those of us who have not yet begun our Legendary item-building, not hung out with Wrathion at all, and not collected the relevant sigils and points and such, the idea of starting out now is daunting to say the least. But fear not! Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has tweeted with some excellent news:
Blizzard's Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has taken to Twitter to make an announcement about just exactly how PvE gear is going to work in PvP come patch 5.4.
If you've been playing World of Warcraft since it launched in 2004, that's eight years of subscription fees, expansion pack purchases, and character transfers -- not to mention the cost of tshirts, vanity pets, BlizzCon tickets, and any other swag you might have picked up along the way. And while we don't pay much a month, it definitely adds up -- ka-king! -- to the tune of $179.88 a year if you pay month to month. And, while I definitely think I've gotten my money's worth, the amount I've spent on WoW over the years adds up to a frankly embarrassing sum. 
As with any new feature, confusion abounds around Flexible Raiding and just how it will work. Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum took to the forums to clarify various aspects, including lockouts. 
Brand new Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted to clarify the datamined information on the Stromgarde scenario. Unfortunately it seems like our enthusiasm may have been a little misplaced, as Lore explains:
Last week's Community Blog Topic was whether or not servers should be merged to alleviate the problem with low population servers. With the announcement that Virtual Realms will be tested on the patch 5.4 PTR, this subject became very timely, if not a little belated. Blizzard's answer to whether or not servers should be merged seems to be yes ... kinda. Rather than merging servers into several bigger servers, Virtual Realms will cluster several separate realms together into one big meta server with a shared AH and the ability to join guilds and groups cross realm. I assume that like servers will be put together, just like CRZ, so that PVE and PVP players won't be mixed. 
"It's not that I'm not happy to see you," Lolegolas carefully said. "But what on Azeroth are you wearing?" 
Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com. Tags: fat-lewt, fat-loot, featured, grievous-gladiators-dragonhide-helm, what-are-you-playing, world-of-warcraft-items, world-of-warcraft-loot, wow-item, wow-items, wow-loot, wrup
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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. 
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. 
While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore. Tags: featured, Garona, guide, guide-to-lore, lore, lore-guide, Maraad, Medan, Medivh, New-Council-of-Tirisfal, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping
Listen, little dudes. You saved me when I was freezing to death in Kun-Lai, burying me in a pile of fuzzy bodies and adopting me into your pack, and I'll always be grateful for that. But it's time for us to part ways. Sure, we've had a good run of it, and you've certainly helped by out by paralyzing trolls with your adorableness. But I just don't earn enough gold to buy six pugs food and water and designer leashes and adorable little rhinestone collars for your itty-bitty pudgy necksies ... oh, damn it. You can stay. But I'm not making any more elite dragon pâté. (Thanks to submitter Casalilly of Dark Steel Knights on Fizzcrank [US-H] for the screenshot!)
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ssFiled under: Around Azeroth
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. 
What, you may ask, are virtual realms? Well, they're a very interesting new feature (and if you choose, you can pretend they're the new feature Ghostcrawler mentioned for 5.4) that will have quite an impact on how we play the game. To quote the patch notes: 
We've talked about WoW's gathering professions, but now that you know gathering, it's time to talk about what to do with the materials you've gathered: craft. World of Warcraft has eight different crafting professions -- alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring, jewelcrafting, and inscription -- which means that a wannabe crafter has plenty of options. So follow along as we walk you through your WoW crafting choices. 
Enchanting What does it do? Allows you to imbue armor and weapons with magical properties that increase their stats or provide other bonuses. Enchanters can also disenchant items, which turns them into magical components which can be used to create other items. Enchanting doesn't need any particular gathering profession, but many pair it with tailoring and disenchant the goods they craft.Do I need any gear? You'll need a Runed Copper Rod -- which you can craft yourself -- to enchant items and then you'll need various supplies for various enchants.Do I get any extras? In addition to the benefit of always having your own gear enchanted -- trust us, it will happen as you're training -- enchanters can enchant their own rings.Why take enchanting? Enchanting can be a frustrating profession to level, as you have to destroy magical items to gather materials to train. However, at high levels both enchanting and disenchanting can be very much in demand, as players look for enchanters to enchant their own gear or disenchant their unneeded items. Additionally, disenchanted items can be very valuable on the auction house for making cash.
Tailoring What does it do? Creates cloth armor as well as bags, magic carpets, and other cloth items.Do I need any gear? Only cloth, thread, and any other materials needed for individual crafting recipes.Do I get any extras? In addition to crafted gear -- some of which is very nice -- tailors can embroider their own cloaks with handy buffs as well as create spellthreads for their own use.Why take tailoring? If you're a cloth-wearer, this is a very decent profession to help gear yourself up as you advance. And since it requires no particular companion profession, you could take it with a gathering profession to make some extra cash.
Karazhan is a pretty dull place nowadays. They used to welcome thousands of guests a week, and now they're lucky to see a few dozen warriors. So the bosses have decided to mix up their battle tactics when a group does come around. "To this day I still have no idea what made Shade of Aran want to wield an axe instead of his trusty cane," writes submitter Colter. "Perhaps Karazhan just required more lumber."
We mentioned them last night while covering the surprises of patch 5.4, so now I roll around to you this morning. Did you see virtual realms coming? Do you like or hate them? Are they a cool way to avoid forcing players to worry about name changes and server moves or are they just a half step that needs to go further? 
Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsThe WoW Insider Show Episode 298: A great day for a red weddingby Adam Holisky 
Every week, join us as we present you with The WoW Insider Show podcast -- an hour's worth of WoW community discussion covering everything from the week's top stories here on WoW Insider to emails from our readers and what's been going on with our particular characters in Azeroth.
