Ask a Beta Tester: Spectral gryphons, prospecting, and portals
Only six-ish days of Ask a Beta Tester left! Whatever will we do!? Well, we'll go on with our lives probably. I mean, we'll have Wrath of the Lich King. Who cares?
ahmed ahmed asked...
Have you heard anything about ghosts being able to go through mountains in WotLK, so they can reach their destinations faster? My friend told me that is what is going to happen, and I hope that it will go live!
Nope, that's not the case, sorry. However, in some zones (Icecrown, Storm Peaks) you get to ride a ghostly gryphon when you're dead, so you can fly to your corpse. Both of those zones have a huge emphasis on mountainside base camps and tall cliffs and places you can only get by flying, so the gryphon is very nice. No running through mountains though.
Erika asked...
When LK comes out are we going to have to build up the starting areas like we did with the SSO or Can I chill a few days on an alt while I let everybody start their DK and stuff?
No, we don't have to do anything like that in the Northrend starter zones. The quest hubs and all of that are already there. The only thing slightly similar is in Icecrown. Through world phasing, you help the Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade take bits and pieces of territory from the Scourge. That's purely single-player (or group) content though, it doesn't require work from the server as a whole.
Sielanas asked...
How easy is it to obtain the new gems? What should we prospect early and are there any mining nodes that have better frequency of getting a freebie?
It's about the same as The Burning Crusade as far as rarity. Blue quality gems will be a little harder to get than green ones, both from mining and prospecting. And like The Burning Crusade, high quality nodes will likely have a better droprate on gems than the lower quality ones. When you're leveling Jewelcrafting you'll probably be prospecting Cobalt a lot early on, but once you've moved past it you won't bother with it much ever again, much like Fel Iron in TBC. Saronite is probably the way to go.
LordV asked......
I'm not sure if this has been asked or answered yet but here goes! Mages can head to Dalaran at level 71. I was wondering if there are any level restrictions on the Teleport and or Portal spells or can mages learn said spells as soon as they arrive?
You get to learn the Teleport spell as soon as you hit Dalaran. The Portal spell, however, you learn at level 74. So the level most of us are finally able to go to Dalaran ourselves for the first time, you're able to start bringing your friends up no matter their level.
Marathan asked...
Some time ago, there was a talk about new player character models for Wrath - and even some bugged pictures. So the question is, are they going live? Are we finally going to get improved graphics on our characters?
There weren't any new models in the beta, but there were 'new' skins. And you don't want them to go live. Trust me. They were horrible. Imagine you have a plastic bag. And you put the end of a vacuum inside of it, and sucked out all of the air. The bag would get all shriveled and pulled in on itself. That's what the 'new' Human Female skins looked like. Deflated and shriveled.
Gnomes and Tauren also suffered from these weird skins. It was as if a gorilla grabbed two handfuls of face, yanked them off, squished the face about between their fingers, and slapped it back on haphazardly.
You did not want these skins. They were abominations unto the Light. People who liked them need to be burned at the stake, because surely they are agents of evil here to sew discord, sorrow, and teh ugliez.
The Wrath of the Lich King beta has come to a close, but the WoW Insider crew is still here to sate your Wrath curiosity with Ask a Beta Tester! Leave your beta questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
