WoW Moviewatch: Hard Like Heroic

Work Warning: There's some allusions and innuendo in this video. Welcome to another exciting round of Staff Picks in Moviewatch. This week, we'll be reviewing Hard Like Heroic by Nyhm, a particular favorite of Daniel Whitcomb. Why Hard Like Heroic?

Nhym's still one of my favorite WoW machinimists of all time, repping the BC era warlock gear and spinning really funny parodies. As someone who played a Warlock pretty heavily in the BC era and still keeps her in skulls and spikes, I appreciate that. I also like his honest singing voice, better than it was on the I PuG KZ (another great video), but still... authentic for lack of a better word. The video's also full of fun imagery, a bridge by Summergale (Troll Shaman supremacy), and after the video, you get a bonus dig at Illegal Danish.

I can't believe this video is 6 years old. It feels like yesterday I was humming it while cruising around Outland. It's hilarious how much of the humor is still good. 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: bloodhound-gang, featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, nyhm, 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 Moviewatch

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How to PuG a heroic scenario with oQueue

One major aspect of heroic scenarios that was causing irritation, the cache issue, was resolved yesterday with a hotfix explained by Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum. One thing that WoW Insider has been seeing a lot in regard to heroic scenarios is the difficulty players are having in getting groups to run them. As you probably already know, they require a premade group of three players to run, and particularly for those with limited play time, this can be a real palaver. You do get valor for runs after the first one, but the bonus valor is so substantial that it seems most people just want to do one per day.

So if you're struggling for people to join you for a heroic scenario, what can you do? Of course, you can spam Trade or General, but there are other steps to take. My preferred method, which I also use to pug rated battlegrounds, is oQueue. There are other options, like OpenRaid US and EU, which is a fantastic resource for pre-planned scenario runs, along with rated battlegrounds and raids. But, for me, scenarios are a spur-of-the-moment thing to do when I have 15 minutes to spare. So oQueue is my preferred method. How does it work?

Well, first you will need to download it, and install it. If you aren't sure how to do that, the Curse Client will do it for you! Once you've done that, head into the game and just type in /oq, or hit the little oQ button you'll notice hovering around your minimap. Like any addon that scans your character, you'll need to "show" it information like your rating (open your PvP window) and your gear (character window) if it's having trouble picking those up. Once you've got all that set, which should be a matter of moments, hit the "Find Premade" tab, and you should be greeted with a window that resembles the one in the header image. Within that, since the launch of patch 5.3, there have almost always been several LFG requests like you see above. Yes, I play in the EU, and over here HC is an abbreviation for heroic. I believe it stands for hard-core.

This was in the daytime, at about 11am, so hardly high-traffic timing, and I have used oQueue to PuG rated battlegrounds and heroic scenarios at every hour of the day. It works using your battletag, so don't be alarmed by suddenly receiving lots of friend requests, it will delete them again for you too, unless you choose to add them yourself. There is a checkbox at the bottom to only show premades you are qualified for: there are often premades with item level requirements, as you can see above.

As long as you meet the requirements, all you need to do is hit the "wait list" button. If it was successful, it will then change to a "pending" button, as you can see above. Then, just wait! And you can, of course, also create your own premade, using the "Create Premade" tab and inputting the details. It's all very straightforward, and it's not yet taken me longer than five minutes to find a premade for a heroic scenario. Happy pugging!

Tags: featured, hc-scenario, heroic-scenario, heroic-scenarios, pug-heroic-scenario, queue-heroic-scenarios, random-heroic-scenario

Filed under: Add-Ons

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Heroic Scenario reward system updated

A couple of weeks back, WoW Insider posted an important public service announcement, warning players of a rather counter-intuitive system whereby only the first scenario of the day would award a loot cache, regardless of whether that scenario was normal or heroic. We warned players to avoid them being locked out of a chance at 516 loot, and the palpable frustration that came with it.

Now, though, Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum has posted about a very recent change. It should be noted that this is not in the most recent batch of hotfixes, and that Taepsilum is an EU Community Manager, posting the day after EU servers restart. Therefore, it is possible that this change is currently only live in the EU. Proceed with caution.
TaepsilumQuote:
Remember that you only get the Heroic Cache of Treasures from the first scenario you do in a day (and only if it's a HC scenario. so if you do a normal scenario first you won't get one at all). The rest of the time you just get Greater Cache of Treasures.
This has actually been changed today and the hotfix should already be live.

You should be able to get both of these rewards now, as long as you complete one heroic and at least one normal scenario once per day.
You shouldn't have to worry about doing a heroic scenario before you do a normal one, the order doesn't matter anymore.

This is a great change to what was a rather counter-intuitive system, but please do be very careful about trying it, especially on US servers.

I have tested it on EU servers and can confirm that it does work, I did a normal scenario first, followed by a heroic one, and received the Greater Cache, then the Heroic Cache.

Tags: breaking, cache, heroic-scenarios, random-scenarios, scenario-rewards, scenarios

Filed under: News items

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Does Mists of Pandaria need new heroic five-man content?

While recording the WoW Insider Show this week, my two co-hosts Anne Stickney and Olivia Grace were discussing heroic five man dungeons and made the interesting point that, while Cataclysm used new heroics to help people catch up in gearing as new raid tiers were released, the advent of the Raid Finder might mean that it isn't necessary anymore. If you're running LFR as your primary way to see/experience raid content, then you'd simply run previous LFR's in order to gear up and collect valor points for the various reputation vendors. This would allow you to get geared enough for further LFR as new raid tiers are released, and keeps the previous LFR's relevant. If you're running the current 10 or 25 man raids, you can use the LFR's for those raids to bootstrap yourself appropriately if you're not already geared well enough from the previous tier of raiding.

Either way, you don't need new heroic dungeons for the task - between daily quests, scenarios and LFR, the Cataclysm model which placed new five mans in patch 4.1 and 4.3 might no longer be necessary. Challenge modes keep the heroics that launched with Mists of Pandaria evergreen, since you can't outgear them, but is that enough for fans of five mans? While both Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm introduced post-launch dungeons, Burning Crusade really only introduced Magister's Terrace in its last content patch. This makes me wonder if we really need any new five mans, and if we do, what would/should they be?

Dungeons for their own sake?

Let me be frank - I don't think we need new five mans for gearing purposes. We have enough ways to gear up a character with LFR and reputation, and I especially hope that the game slows down the gear cycle that got way out of hand in Wrath and Cata. I'm fine with people needing to run older content in order to gear up for newer content instead of introducing new heroic five mans to leapfrog over it - I'm okay with people needing to run the Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR in order to run the new Throne of Thunder when 5.2 drops.

But that doesn't mean I don't want new five mans. It just means I don't want them introduced just to give us a place to go gear up. I would be fine with a new five man, or even a few, that didn't increase the item level of their drops at all compared to current five mans. Why would players run them? Well, for starters, they'd run them because they're new. They'd be a new challenge for Challenge Mode players because they'd need to adapt new strategies for them. And if a new incentive was needed, an increased chance to drop a 476 epic at the end could be introduced. The problem with giving new five mans increased ilevel gear is, as we saw in Cataclysm, people stop running the older heroics when you do that. With the de-emphasis on valor points as a main gearing strategy, introducing new five mans seems to me to be worthwhile on the merits of the dungeons themselves. The emphasis should be on giving players a cool new place to go, not on giving them a gearing shortcut when we have enough gearing options as it is.

The fun of the crawl

But I'm neither dogmatic nor arrogant enough to believe there aren't good arguments for either simply not introducing new five mans at all, or for using the Cata and Wrath models for new heroics and introducing them with new higher ilevel gear. My own belief is that with new LFR's every tier of raiding we'll have plenty of gearing options going forward, and that players who run five mans primarily will collect valor points that will eventually allow them to buy up to ilevel 496 (perhaps better as new patches bring new reputations with new rewards, such as the Sunreaver Onslaught/Kirin Tor Offensive in 5.2) but it could be that new dungeons just won't be compelling if they don't add higher ilevel items. Perhaps that means that they must have them, or perhaps that means that in the age of scenarios and LFR they're just not as necessary as they were and we can afford to only introduce them when we have a compelling story reason.

What I personally love about five mans is that old school dungeon crawl feeling of them. They remind me strongly of my days playing D&D, and even my early WoW experience where raids were rare and I spent the majority of my time in dungeons like UBRS and Scholo and Dire Maul. I certainly don't want that style of play lost.

Certainly patch 5.2 looks to be sprawling enough without one. But with faster patch cycles, a theoretical patch 5.3 could very well be built entirely around a new dungeon or two. It now falls to you to debate the issue - should we see more heroic five man dungeons this expansion, or less? Do we need them, or are we covered by newer options?

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: challenge-modes, content, dungeons, LFR, mists-of-pandaria, patch-5.2, raid-finder, scenarios

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

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