Storm-Peaks
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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.
Ask a Beta Tester: More on phasing and starter zones
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester on this Maintenance Day Tuesday. Let's get started right away with webrunner's question... Have you seen any interesting/fun usable gear with cool procs or use abilities, or is it just stats, stats, stats till the Tauren come home?There are plenty of trinkets with this sort of thing, but not weapons or robes or anything like that. Trinkets are much more common as quest rewards in Wrath than they were before, and you get a pretty wide range of effects. On weapons, it's all stats of various flavors.
Ask A Beta Tester: Questions I wish we'd been asked
Here at WoW Insider sometimes we go a little nuts around big news events due to sleep deprivation or sensory overload in conjunction with large hits of caffeine. When that happens while we are writing "Ask A Beta Tester," occasionally we ask ourselves questions ("Why am I not in bed?") that we later realize might actually be useful.As Wrath of the Lich King's release date creeps up and the beta becomes more and more deserted (seriously: Dalaran is a ghost town these days, not that my computer's wheezing hardware doesn't appreciate it), I find myself turning to a few topics that readers generally never asked about, but wound up being game-defining experiences in the beta. By necessity, most of them are a little more general -- overall impressions, things you wouldn't necessarily think to ask about unless you were a fresh arrival in Northrend and noticed the differences -- but I've included a few specific things that I hope people will find interesting. Unlike --Why are you not in bed?What makes you think I'm not?
Ask a Lore Nerd: Alliance leaders and strange mythology
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. We're all busy people, so let's jump right in here. Sorano asked...Has Gelbin Mekkatorque ever done something to contribute to the world around him? Poor little guy seems to do nothing nowadays. I'm sure as leader of the Gnomes, he could do a lot to help the people of Azeroth.He does things, but they're not portrayed in WoW very well. It's mostly things you will find in the RPG books. Mekkatorque helps design the various siege weaponry the Alliance uses (steam tanks, etc), and works heavily on figuring out ways to take back Gnomeregan from the ferocious level 30 elites and, more importantly, clean up the radiation.
Ask a Beta Tester: More on daily quests and champions
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester! I've plugged in more music for you above, this time from Icecrown Glacier. If you're feeling kind, you should go give some love to the guy that posted them later on. For now, though, we're here to answer your Wrath of the Lich King questions!Sorano asked...While killing mobs in a dungeon that normally gives rep for a faction, for example: The Wyrmrest Accord, if I am wearing the tabard representing the Warsong Offensive, will I gain reputation for both Wyrmrest Accord and Warsong Offensive at the same time?Contrary to the original description of the feature, you only get rep with one faction at a time. Personally, I think that's a better design. If you're working on a particular rep, you can still help friends out in random unrelated Wrath dungeons without feeling punished. If you only received half of the rep gains, you would still want to go to Violet Hold for your Kirin Tor rep instead of Utgarde Pinnacle, just for random examples. Going to Utgarde and getting half of the payoff just feels punishing. Feeling punished for helping friends sucks.
WoW Moviewatch: Muffins WotLK Exploration Part 77-80
(Viewers be warned that this video contains spoilers for the Wrath of the Lich King beta.)At the beginning of last month, I featured a video that explored levels 70-77 of the Wrath of the Lich King beta. It was apparently so popular that Muffins was contacted by a studio for a possible job! Since then, she realized that machinima was something that she wanted to do with her life. Nothing makes me happier than when someone says that, so congratulations, Muffins!Muffins obviously only covered a portion of the levels last time, so she's back with an exploration video for the 77-80 crowd. In it, she checks out Storm Peaks, Halls of Lightning (Instance), The Oculus (Instance), Utgarde Pinnacle (Instance), The Culling of Stratholme (Instance), and Icecrown. She noted that The Violet Eye in Dalaran seemed like a less interesting version of Black Morass, and that Naxxramas was pretty much the same as the old one except for the trash.[Via Warcraftmovies.com]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Ask a Beta Tester: Scourge Strike, titles, and flying mounts
What you're seeing up above is a flaming quill in a well of frozen ink. Is it useful? No. It looks wicked awesome sitting in the Inscription trainers' shop, doesn't it? Heck yeah it does! We'll kick off today's Ask a Beta Tester with Askhill's question... Does Lake Wintergrasp seem dominated by only one class, or is it pretty even among the 80s? Unholy Death Knights are the current "overpowered spec of the day" (formerly the role of Ret Paladins) so there's tons of those rocking face right now. Beyond that it's pretty difficult to judge, since Blizzard hasn't balanced all of the numbers yet and few people are in Resilience gear. The only really memorable thing are the absolutely enormous Scourge Strike crits. By enormous I'm talking numbers anywhere from 10,000 to 16,000, and since it's Shadow damage, your armor isn't going to do a darn thing to help. Luckily, I was healbotting one of those Unholy Death Knights rather than being on the receiving end. Death Knights are bloody fantastic at keeping people off of Healers, by the way.yazah asked a couple of questions...Why does the Scarlet Crusade employ Death Knights in Northrend? Doesn't that seem unlikely since they were slaughtered by them back in Tyr's Hand?
Ask a Beta Tester: The Drakkensryd, Dispersion, and other stuff
We'll get started with Gareth's question... How is the Storm Peaks coming along? Seems like it has a lot of history and culture behind it. This zone has been closed off more than it's been open. There are a few hefty bugs that they're trying to iron out that forces them to seal it off now and then, since the bugs bring the entire world server down. That and there was an XP exploit that the beta testers found and needed to be dealt with mighty quickly, so it was sealed off for that as well. As far as the history and culture, I loved what I saw. A lot of Titan lore, a lot of Dwarven history. The introduction to the zone is pretty awful, though. Your first quest hub in the culture-rich zone is a Goblin town (K3) full of whimsy that has little to do with the zone's overall story. I guess you need to keep the mood light sometimes, though. Still, despite the silly Goblins, it was one of my favorite zones while I could get in there. Blizzard has thrown around the term "epic scale" quite a bit, and I think Storm Peaks really displays that. The place is absolutely massive, in the good way. Watch the video above if you want an example of the quests you'll be seeing. Be warned, it's kind of a spoiler in that doing this quest for the first time really leaves you in awe. Watching it beforehand might take that away a little.dotorion asked...Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands?
Breakfast Topic: The zones of Northrend
I know. I'm not in Beta, and yet I'm as giddy as a greedy little boy who just got hold of a cookie jar with every bit of Wrath of the Lich King information. We've seen the breathtaking Howling Fjord, bits of the Borean Tundra, and even glimpses into the lush forests of Sholazar Basin. I don't think I could be excited enough for Lake Wintergrasp, even though there's just so little information about it. Elizabeth Harper, who's playing around in the Beta, has said that Dragonblight is her favorite zone.From what we've seen so far, it really looks like Wrath of the Lich King is going to be one hell of a game. Each of the zones -- as has been the trend throughout World of Warcraft -- has its own personality. Blizzard has said that it won't all be ice and snow, and the diversity that's been revealed up to this point seems to attest to that. What zone are you most excited to see and most eager to explore when you get to Northrend? %Poll-17619%
WWI '08 Notes from the Dungeons & Raids Panel part 3
11:13 AM: Faction. Want to make it not feel like a grind. Championing -- Earn faction outside of your current dungeon. Choose a specific faction to earn rep with, system will use tabards, put tabard on in any heroic and every kill will give rep towards the faction whose tabard you're wearing as well as dungeon faction. Small bonus if you wear the tabard of the dungeon faction too. Details not final but this is the direction. Don't want you to feel you have to grind certain dungeons mindlessly. 11:15 AM: Remove faction requirements for heroics. Don't want people to feel like there are so many barriers. 11:16 AM: PvP rewards will show up in faction too. Similar to current lowlevel pvp faction sets. Will continue this trend. Greater variety of faction rewards full stop. Only a certain amount of items they can make in the time they have. Items that fit different specs and classes. More recipe plans, something done in TBC but not all trade skills were represented in factions. More rewards in general from faction. 11:17 AM: How does the Death Knight fit in? Will be able to tank both raids and dungeons. Not intended to be 'the new tank' but is a unique tank and want to make sure they can tank raids and 5-mans, heroics, as well as DPS. Just going to do it in a different way, keeping classes unique. Looked at what players need -- people always need a tank. More tanks = more dungeon runs. 11:19 AM: Sneak Peek: The Occulus. Level 80 dungeon located in Borean Tundra (Coldarra). Unique; first dungeon players can fly in. Get a drake partway through the dungeon and do mounted combat as if it were a vehicle, individual spells on different drakes. Tank drakes, heal drakes etc. Nonlinear; started as a high fantasy pitch and has become a high concept design. Occulus is a series of rings floating in the sky, can pick and choose bosses. Concept art shows circular and frozen themes. Dungeon design shown, they design on paper and try to feel how big the space is, is it big enough to fight the boss, the trash. Layouts turn into concept art and 'blockout' phase, turning 2D image into 3D so they can run around it in 3D. Dungeon is complete, internal playtesting at the moment. 11:24 AM: Halls of Stone. Part of Ulduar, located in Storm Peaks. Tied to Titan lore. Level 77-79. Will need a flying mount to access. Nonlinear. Want to make you feel like you're infiltrating Titan area, feel like it's something new even though scope is very different. Epic scale. Level 80 dungeon in Ulduar (Halls of Lightning) and raid dungeon too, but Halls of Stone is first dungeon players will experience Wanted the scale to be big but not annoying (to the level of wanting a mount to travel through it). Showed blockout, walked 5 players through game to see if there's basic things like enough room to pull mobs, enough room for cameras etc. Platinum Discs quests from Uldaman -- this is the next evolution, continuing the story. Location where we can read the discs and maybe find out information about how Azeroth was created, deliver lore to players. NEXT: A new CoT instance and Q&A ===>
