Monthly Archives: October 2008

Ashbringer contradictions…   Not sure if this has been posted before, as I only recently entered the beta, but discussion with a friend made a few points pretty clear.   This is what’s in vanilla WoW-   You go to Naxxramas and defeat the Four Horsemen, one of which is Highlord Alexandros Mograine, the original wielder of the Ashbringer. You loot the Corrupted Ashbringer.   The Corrupted Ashbringer whispers to whoever is holding it, revealing that the Renault Mograine boss from SM Cathedral betrayed his father [Alexandros]. You bring the Corrupted Ashbringer to SM Cath and it begins a scripted event. Friendly Alexandros Mograine shows up and messes up Renault.   High Inquisitor Fairbanks, the hidden boss in Cath, says that the Corrupted Ashbringer is beyond repair. He tells you to go to Outland and find the other son of Mograine to forge a new one.   At that point, we get Burning Crusade and nothing comes of it. There is no son of Mograine in Outland, and we get diddly squat.   ——–   Now, all the sudden come WotLK, we have another son of Mograine named Darion in Ebon Hold with…the Corrupted Ashbringer? The final quest in the DK starting area sees him rapidly purified by the appearance of Alexandros’

Thurs August 21 7:30PM   I will be running a PUG Hyjal, people permitting, on thursday August 22th at 7:30PM EST on NORTHREND (pve).   I prefer level 72+ folk (primarily because I believe it takes at least 2 levels to determine a decent spec and obtain greens/blues from questing/instances that compare to t4/t5), with exception of those who already have experience with hyjal (extensive and gear to prove it), in which case 70+ is fine.   I am also looking for 1-2 people who would be willing to help coordinate and run the thing. I have (sadly) tons of experience running Hyjal, but with 1-2 other experienced leaders it will make handling PUGs easier.   Loot will be rolled on — I am going on my DK and would love special consideration for a cat’s edge, but will leave that up to the group to decide if and when we kill the retard-check Archimonde (no offense to my mentally disabled friends).   If you are interested in attending please respond here or contact me in game. If you are willing to participate in leading please send me a tell or in game mail between now and tomorrow so we can talk about setup.   I believe it will be interesting to see the affect of DKs and new talents on Hyjal, and hopefully 24 others have the same curiosity. If I

CPU Intensive – Beta Client not optimized? Hey guys.   I run an Intel Xeon eight core machine, (2008 Mac Pro). I have 4 gigs of ram and a 512mb Graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT).   World of Warcraft is hardly a challenge for this machine. I can run 3 clients of Warcraft at the same time and barely break a sweat.   However in this new Beta Client, my normally silent machine seems to be running it’s fans very loudly, which seems impossible. Granted the game is more CPU intensive, but this is ridiculous.   Trust me. The machine’s a beast.   Anyone else experiencing this?

Breakfast Topic: Unexpected Changes in Patch 3.0.2   There’s a mailbox missing in Silvermoon! I know, I know. There are a lot of mailboxes in Silvermoon City, but I really liked this one near the bank in The Bazaar area. I must have missed this in the patch notes. And why would they get rid of it anyway? If anything, I think they should add more mailboxes to the old world cities. But I’m lazy. Running on mountless/travelformless alts is a chore. On a good note, I seemed to have totally missed that Marks of Honor were going to be on the Currency tab in the character screen instead of taking up precious bag space until i actually logged in yesterday. Yay more bag space! My favorite surprise in Echoes of Doom, however, was discovering that my Herbalist now has a new self-heal over time spell: Lifeblood. It’s instant cast and has a 3 minute cooldown. There it was just sitting in my General Skills. A guildie had to point it out to me. I should probably take a closer look at the patch notes.  

Around Azeroth: Goodbye to you   I’ll let Fendrieon of Thunderhorn do the talking on his picture. “Just a parting shot taken on the last day of 2.4.3, including 3 things never to be seen again: Naxx 40, Amani Warbear, and a warrior with ONLY one weapon.” I’m sure Matthew Rossi says amen to the latter. Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing  with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards.  

New item tabs for Ammo/Shards   I’ve got an idea. How about working it into inscription? “50% Chance on shot to consume no ammunition.” That would be a welcome addition. The problem with that is it’d probably be a major glyph, and it’d also naturally be “required” since ammo is such a stringent problem for the class. I don’t see Glyphs becoming as semi-permanent as, say, talents, and consequently having a glyph that works as a “fix” for a basic class problem isn’t really productive, nor interesting. The whole idea with Inscription is further customization, beyond what talents are even capable of doing; it provides the player with interesting choices. Making a glyph that “solves” the ammo issue isn’t an interesting choice, it’s a requirement and every single Hunter would then have to choose between bag slots or a major glyph slot and there’s nothing “fun” or “interesting” about that at all; both options are generally unappealing.   If Blizzard is dead-set on ensuring that Hunters must sacrifice a bag slot for a quiver/ammo pouch that is never, ever large enough (and it’s not, especially for raiding situations with large amounts

Alliance To Northrend & Problem   For Alliance to get to Northrend you need to go to Stormwind, look on your map, see the new harbor area and go to it. I believe it is to the north.   Once to the new harbor area and as you enter into it, go to the right-most dock and to the end of it to board the ship to Northrend.   There is a bug. There is no ramp or platform. So, the best way I have found is to get down onto the lower pillar to the left. From there you can jump onto the boat when it comes.   If you do not get it right, and it takes a little practice, you will have to swim back to land, which is a distance, and start over, and by then the ship will be gone.   Getting off the ship is fine once in Northrend.  

 Tuesday Morning Post: The BlizzCon cometh Yeah, believe it or don’t, BlizzCon time is nearly upon us. This coming Friday and Saturday, we’ll be on the floor of BlizzCon itself, up close and personal with everyone and everything from the new non-computer WoW games to the cast of The Guild. I myself will be leaving on a jet plane early Thursday morning so I have plenty of time to get my ticket and hang out with some of you at the Lost Bar that night. While we wait for BlizzCon , there’s still plenty more news to report on Wrath of the Lich King and the World of Warcraft in general, and considering that WoW‘s down for maintenance from 5 AM to 11 AM PDT today, you’ll have time to read it, right? You can start browsing using the links at right, or check out our roundup of the biggest and most interesting news from the past few days below: Hot News and Cool Features ·         Before you ask, the Echoes of Doom Patch (aka Patch 3.0.2) isn’t this week. But it’s been more or less confirmed that we’ll get it next Tuesday. ·         Here it is, the definitive proof: We won’t be helping Thrall and Jaina take down Arthas. We’ll be helping Wonder Boy and Young Nasty Man. ·        

 BlizzCon 2008: Fun in the badge pickup line   We’ve all got our badges for BlizzCon now — badge pickup was a little less chaotic than last year, if memory serves us correctly (though they really need to split up the “S” names — our line was longer by three times as much as any of the others). There were lots of people waiting outside right before they opened the convention center at 4pm, but once they opened up the doors, things moved quickly. We didn’t notice any recognizable Blizzard staff around, but we’ve heard rumblings from vendors that they’re setting up inside, and there’s certainly plenty of activity going on back there. None of the rest of the center is open until tomorrow, obviously, but we also grabbed some pictures of the art we could see posted inside. No, there aren’t any big exclusive reveals, but there is a particularly nice piece of the Diablo III Witchdoctor that we hadn’t seen before. Enjoy.  

It was a heavy-handed way to disallow those without TBC to train Jewelcrafting, though I think it’d be fine now to spread them around. This. There is no “flag” currently to disallow training a profession because an account lacks an expansion. You can (could? Haven’t tried it since BC’s launch) get First Aid to 375 without an expansion. I was waiting by the Dark Portal for my copy to arrive, my friend went through, got the First Aid book, and ran out to give it to me. Most likely why they swapped First Aid back to a trainer for Wrath. The only thing keeping you from getting your profession higher or gaining a profession at all when you lack an expansion is the location of the trainers. The probable only reason they allowed Inscription Trainers in all major cities is because of the need of everyone using those books to activate glyphs now.

Two useful ideas, I just though up. One is for melee and the other for range/healers. They don’t provide any damaging effects, but have useage in both PVE and PVP. [Goblin Rocket Powered Belt Lasso] 1 min cooldown 5 to 20 yd frontal cone usage Shoots a rope lasso out to a target and yanks then to the user and [Gnomish Force Repulse-ation Belt Buckle] 1 min cooldown 10 yd frontal cone AoE Sends a pulse out in front of the user, sending any enemies flying (15 yd knockback)

At the end game, players do tend to respec frequently for raids, PvP, soloing… I know I shift between Resto and Balance on my druid quite frequently, depending on what is needed for my raid or if I want to solo without tearing my hair out (I’m primarily Resto). Having said that.. what percentage of the WoW population is affected like this? I’m not certain. I can definitely see this being a valid issue to bring up. It’s part of why many of us testing the profession would like to see another dimension added. Glyphs are an amazing addition to the game and being able to craft them is new and fun, but in the long term, the materials are easily attained and the turnover quite low. As it is, the profession is still in development so we may not know what the devs have in store for us in the future. For the moment though, it just feels like there is something missing that would round out this profession and boost it to its fullest potential. I personally feel like they’ve given us enough “crafter only” perks at this point. Especially if we see the fourth major glyph slot come to fruition. What I’d like to see is something added that will benefit all players. BoE or consumable crafted items to enrich all player’s