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Ready Check: First look at Cataclysm raids
There's been a huge splash of Cataclysm information released unto the wild in the last few days. Every since the beta hit the streets, we've seen information about warrior changes, hunters and even racial emotes. I guess I called it a splash. What I really meant is that there's been a flood of information everywhere. It seems like we can virtually see anything we'd possibly want to know about the expansion, right now. But what we haven't seen yet is much information on raids. Our good friends over at MMO-Champion have some great information about 5-man instances, but their raid information is running a little behind so far. Of course, that's never kept us from drooling over new raid content before now, so let's not start bad habits. Let's take a look at what raid information we do have and spend a little time getting excited about the new expansion.
Cataclysm Press Event: New raids and lockout mechanics announced
As part of the large Cataclysm information released tonight, we've gotten quite a bit more information on how raids will be changing. One exciting idea is "downshifting," namely, the ability to split a 25-man raid up into separate 10-mans. There won't be any sort of "upshifting" allowed, however. Simply put, if your 25-man fails to proceed due to numbers, it can break up into separate 10-mans with the same bosses defeated as the 25 was at the time of division, and if you later get those other players back, another 10-man can be created with the same conditions. In addition, raid lockouts will be more forgiving; as long as you have killed the same bosses as the raid in question, you'll be able to join a raid in progress even if you've been in a different raid to the same instance during the lockout. Basically, you will not be able to kill the same boss twice during a lockout, but you won't be totally cut off from raiding with others simply because you were in a different raid lockout earlier that fell apart, as one example.
Cataclysm Press Event: New lore details revealed
He's not quite dead-dead, only mostly dead, and new information from a Cataclysm press release event confirms it -- Cho'gall is back. The folks over at World of Raids have released a ton of new Cataclysm information including a good chunk of lore info. Here are some of the highlights: Cho'gall is not only alive, he's the last boss in Grim Batol: Bastion of Twilight, the new entry-level raid for the expansion. Upon defeating Cho'gall on heroic mode, the floor beneath you will collapse and you will fall into a cavern of flowing lava that hides a "horrifying secret," according to Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi. Uldum was locked away by a Titan mechanic that created a projection of a large, impassible mountain -- the Cataclysm destroyed the machine and opened access to Uldum. Thereazane the Stonemother will be present and involved in a reputation grind similar to the Sons of Hodir. Reports state that one of the bosses in Skywall: Vortex Pinnacle is an elemental lord. Given that Skywall is the Elemental Plane of Air, this can only mean Al'Akir the Windlord. Garrosh is the "acting" Warchief of the Horde. Implying "temporary." Everyone breathe a sigh of relief. The Valley of Wisdom in Orgrimmar is now the Tauren district. Garrosh's stronghold is not in the Valley of Wisdom; it's at the center of Orgrimmar. The Park district in Stormwind has been destroyed, largely because Deathwing wasn't exactly happy about his daughter's head hanging from the rafters. The Forsaken have set up a foothold in Silverpine Forest and have rebuilt many areas, to provide a base of operations for assaulting Gilneas. The current reason for the attacks is because Gilneas is strategically valuable to the Horde. Less of a lore note, more of an immersion note: New music will be added for all of the cities, and a large portion of the game world. Archaeology Plenty to look forward to, but the most interesting change is to the Archaeology profession. Since Path of the Titans is being scrapped, Archaeology is no longer involved with it. Instead, players will use Archaeology to "dig into the lore of the game" as a new vehicle for storytelling purposes. There are two types of "artifacts" players can uncover. The first will be a lore or story artifact, while the second type can reward items -- cosmetic or fun, with the occasional rare useable weapon. Archaeology will not provide any "must-have" items, so those that don't feel like grinding out another secondary profession can skip it entirely. However, it sounds like Blizzard is taking another step towards making the story and lore of the Warcraft world a more interactive experience.
Patch 3.3.5 PTR: Unfinished Doomsday quest line removed
Sure, Patch 3.3.5 is shaping up to be interesting with the implementation of the Battle.net Real ID system, and new Ruby Sanctum raid dungeon -- but early players on the PTR got a sneak peek at a quest line that has since disappeared from the PTR servers. This quest chain was originally datamined back in the Patch 3.3.3 PTR along with various Cataclysm doodads and items, but the quests hadn't surfaced until now. Its removal suggests that it wasn't meant to be implemented in the first place -- luckily, we've got screenshots of the entire chain. These are spoilers for pre-Cataclysm content, so if you don't want to be spoiled, don't check out the gallery. More info on the chain after the break.
Know Your Lore: Med'an, Cho'gall and the Prophecy
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. WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for World of Warcraft: The Comic. Players who are currently reading through the comics or simply wish to avoid spoilers from the series should avoid this post. We're taking a step back from Alliance politics this week in light of some new information from the 3.3.5 PTR. The servers have been laggy and somewhat unstable, but I've still been able to log on and play through a few things. One of those things is an interesting new quest chain available in Orgrimmar involving Doomsday Cultists who are suddenly making appearances in the Drag and talking about the end of the world as we know it. The biggest thing that sparked my interest was mention of Cho'gall. Matthew Rossi did an excellent write-up of the Twilight's Hammer and their leader Cho'gall, but what struck my interest was that Cho'gall's presence in game may lead to more interplay between story lines from the Warcraft comic series and World of Warcraft itself. However, while I made the connection readily enough, there are plenty out there who haven't read the comics and have no idea who Cho'gall, Med'an or any of the other characters I've referenced in previous posts actually are. In light of this, today we're going to be talking about the last half of the Warcraft comics series -- what happened in them, who was introduced, who died, what happened with Cho'gall, why Silithus was suddenly relevant again, and most of all, who the heck that Med'an kid is that I've been going on about. As I will be talking about these things in detail, this post is absolutely brim full of spoilers for the comics series; readers who are interested in picking up the comics and reading through them may want to veer away from this post.
Know Your Lore: The Twilight's Hammer
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. Of all groups and sects and collectives and factions in the World of Warcraft, the Twilight's Hammer stand out as being possibly the most deranged and nihilistic of the bunch. If you have an apocalypse, they'll happily start it. They'll worship elementals, Old Gods and anything else that might bring about the end of all that is. Whether infesting Blackfathom Deeps, evoking elemental spirits in Silithus, fighting the Scourge in Anh'Kahet or making trouble in Ulduar, if there's a chance for the world to come to an end, the Twilight's Hammer are definitely pulling for Armageddon. They started out as the personal fiefdom of Cho'gall the ogre mage, handed to him after their previous chief was disobedient to the wishes of the Shadow Council, the warlock servants and mouthpieces of Gul'dan. They continued on through the wars, eventually finding themselves in control of Tol Barad itself, and were therefore of use to Gul'Dan following the Doomhammer's ascension, when he desperately needed allies. Even then, Cho'gall sought annihilation. The ogre, and through him his clan, saw the Horde as the best means to bring absolute destruction about (in their way as devoted to nihilism and apocalyptic destruction as even the Burning Legion). So when Gul'dan found the location of the Tomb of Sargeras, Cho'gall and his clan the Twilight's Hammer followed. And when Gul'dan found death in the tomb, many of the Twilight's Hammer died alongside him. Many, but certainly not Cho'gall. (As a note, we'll be discussing spoilers for Cataclysm in this post. So if you don't want to see those, don't read past this point.)
The Queue: Cho'gall is back in black
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. On the last edition of The Queue written by yours truly, I included a mind-blowing video on how to properly eat chicken wings. Today, I bring you something equally as mind blowing. How to properly peel a banana. And now, on with the show. Boombaclot asks... "Do you believe that WoW has truly gotten easier or just maybe that the WoW community as a whole have become better players? Yes you have your scrubs but I know my WoW game has improved vastly since I started playing in Vanilla WoW."
The Queue: No
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. For the curious, the original title of today's edition of The Queue was "The Queue: Adam if you skip me and write a Queue today I'm going to shiv you IRL because I'm seriously not still asleep and will have it written in a couple of hours." Luckily, he didn't skip me, so he gets to live another day. Terethall asked... "Will the newer 5-mans (ToC and the Icecrown Citadel 5-mans) be included in the random dungeon tool in 3.3? Because it seems like a huge difficulty difference when you could go from extremely easy instances like Heroic CoS to extremely difficult (comparatively) Heroic instances like ToC and the IC instances."
WoW comic #22 preview
Blizzard and DC/Wildstorm released the preview for the 22nd issue of the official World of Warcraft comic last night. The official soliciation says: The new Council of Tirisfal is formed. Med'an keeps Meryl's possession a secret. Maraad acts on his vision, but what does it have to do with Valeera? The latest issue of the World of Warcraft comic is on sale August 19. Check out the preview pages now! The excerpt is about normal fare for the comic, but includes some tasty plot bits that lend plenty of credence to certain leaked information about WoW: Cataclysm ... if you're looking for it. Half-blood prince shamagaladin Med'an seems to be training heavily to learn all the different schools of magic, which calls Jaina to suggest that they... well, I guess you'll have to read it.Check it out on newsstands (do those still exist?) today!
Sneak peek at World of Warcraft comic issue 16
The official WoW website has put up a preview for issue 16 of the World of Warcraft comic. I have to say, this one doesn't look nearly as facepalm inducing as the last few. In fact, aside from a few art oddities (did Valeera just trip up there?), it looks like a pretty good start for this arc.It looks like this arc is not only focused on Garona's half human, quarter orc, quarter draenei son, but a few other things, too. It looks like this arc will focus somewhat on Fandral Staghelm and the state of Teldrassil, what's happened to Ahn'qiraj since we were there last and potentially the relationship between King Varian and Valeera. To avoid spoilers, I'll stick a few more things behind the cut below.
