ashkandi
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Patch 5.2 PTR: Transmogrification restrictions relaxed
The changes that were being discussed back in December seem to have been fully implemented. I've transmogrified a 1h axe into a 1h mace and sword, a 1h sword into a 1h mace and axe, and a 2h sword and axe into maces, plus a 2h axe into a sword and a 2h sword into an axe. There were two things I was unable to transmog: a polearm onto a 2h sword, axe or mace, and a fist weapon over a sword/axe/mace. It seems that the main hand/off hand restrictions are entirely gone as well, but I had a difficult time testing it for certain since I had no off-hand weapons in my collection at present. I tested a fist weapon and could not transmog it over an axe or sword or mace, which was a mild disappointment, but I'm still very excited over the changes. At last, everything will be Ashkandi forever. 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.
Breakfast Topic: I love Ashkandi
Pretty much no weapon model in the history of World of Warcraft has affected me like Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood has. To me, it's emblematic of all that I love about Warcraft's model design -- excessive, bold, imaginative and evocative. From the moment my guild first started running Blackwing Lair, I wanted one. I ended up getting a Sulfuras instead, which is certainly a fine weapon in its own right, but as much as I liked Sulfuras, I always knew I was making the logical decision (take the one that drops first) over the one my heart wanted (wait for Ashkandi). Years passed. We moved out of BWL and into AQ, then Naxx, and then The Burning Crusade launched. No model could replace Ashkandi in my heart. The Gladiator sword, Despair, Cataclysm's Edge, Apolyon, The Lionheart Executioner -- all fine models, all solid weapons. None could take its place.
Breakfast Topic: Have transmogrification limits stymied your character's look?
I love transmogrification. I just want to get that out of the way. I think it's the best basic feature to come to WoW in a long time, and it vindicates all those fashion pieces I saved in my bank over the years. I won't lie. I love playing pretty dress up. That said, Blizzard's transmogrification system is definitely more than a little limited. Most things must be transmogrified with items of the same type, and you can't transmogrify certain items at all. For me, this has certainly caused some problems. For example, I'd love to wear a leather eyepatch on my death knight, but since he's a plate wearer? No go. I would pretty much wear an Ashkandi forever and ever if I could, but if I pick up a two-handed axe in a raid or instance? Can't transmog it. My hunter has it even worse. I roleplay her as more of a backwoods, live-off-the-land type turned sniper, so she'd be more likely to dress in brown or black leathers instead of big, flashy suits of mail armor. Alas, under the current rules of transmogrification, I'm stuck with tier 11 while her Defias Leathers stay languishing in the bank. Finally, I had every intention of dressing up both my blood elf paladin and my gnomish warrior in level 60 PvP gear, but you probably heard that only those characters with the old high-level titles get to transmogrify that stuff for now. So what about you? Are some of the transmogrification rules keeping you from putting together the look of your dreams?
Breakfast Topic: Your favorite in-game model
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. WoW has a very unique art style. Recently, models of NPCs, armor, and such have been incredibly detailed -- and, for the most part, amazing looking. Firelands in particular has some amazing looking fire models, and I can't wait to see the "Fiery Anzu" that Blizzard mentioned might drop off of Ragnaros. (In case you don't know, Anzu is the Raven Lord boss in Sethekk Halls, and is one of the coolest looking ground mounts in the game.) Honestly though, I cannot decide what my favorite NPC model is ... though I have always been fond of the Faceless Ones. So I leave it up to you, Dear Reader, what in-game model is your favorite? And please, do share why you like it so much and what makes it unique. You don't have to pick just one! Maybe let us know your favorite weapon, piece of armor, and favorite NPC. When it comes to weapon models, one thing I am dissapointed in with Cataclysm is the so called "Reclaimed Ashkandi" from Nefarian in Blackwing Descent. When you compare it side-by-side with the old Ashkandi from Blackwing Lair, it seems to have ... shrunk. Quite a bit. One thing I liked about Ashkandi so much back in the day was that it was one of the biggest weapons in the game, and this new one is just ... puny. But I digress, Blizzard has amazing modellers and animators, so please, give them a shout out in the comments and let everyone know your love for your favorite model! Have you ever wanted to write for WoW Insider? Your chance may be right around the corner. Watch for our next call for submissions, and be sure to sign up for Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider. The next byline you see here may be yours!
Breakfast Topic: Your Cataclysm Bucket List
The Times, they are a-changin'. Cataclysm promises to bring massive amounts of change to Azeroth, reorganizing zones, streamlining quests, and the like. There's a good chance that a lot of the old quests and reputation grinds we know and love will be gone forever, or twisted so much that we hardly recognize them. With that in mind, even while their exact fate is up in the air, a lot of old achievements and titles seem much more urgent.A lot of WoW bloggers, as a result, have been posting their bucket lists, a list of things they want to do in the Old World before the Cataclsym changes it for good, be it grabbing the Loremaster title or even leveling a character of the other faction just to see how their quests differ. For my own part, I've been inspired to start a bucket list myself. It's pretty simple, so far. The major thing is to finally finish getting my Druid Guardian of Cenarius. I'm also thinking my Death Knight could use Loremaster or Seeker. I'll probably also try to make sure my Death Knight gets all the old world raid bosses down, and I wouldn't mind getting an old school Ashkandi for him for fashion purposes. Sure, we still have Patch 3.3 before Cataclysm, so it's not like we have to be in a big rush, but if you're after a title like Loremaster before Cataclysm, it may be a good idea to start now. What do you want to do or see in the old world before the curtain falls? What's your Cataclysm bucket list? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Breakfast Topic: What classic loot would you want to see upgraded?
So this question was actually inspired by the photo Rossi put on his latest warrior column: That of a Worgen warrior wielding Ashkandi. It brought me back to the old days where that sword was pretty the dream in every possible way. It had good DPS, a decent speed, nice stats, it looked absolutely amazing, and it once belonged to the OG of Humanity, the greatest hero the Alliance has ever known, Anduin Lothar. Back in the day, pretty much every Arms Warrior and Retribution Paladin I knew lusted for it.
Ask A Beta Tester: AABT's greatest hits, part 1
Yep, we've shocked the ol' column back to gasping life. The good kind of reanimation, though, not the kind you're probably killing in Northrend.Wow, this took ages. We got a lot of standout questions while doing Ask A Beta Tester, and I went through all of them trying to pick out the best, funniest, most helpful, or most unintentionally prescient among them. To be perfectly frank, we had so many that I started splitting them into separate articles. I've eliminated the questions that I expect readers will probably have answered for themselves at this point (e.g. Death Knight starting faction reputation) but kept all of the questions that I'm pretty sure are still relevant to the first week of gameplay in Wrath. I've also made a few additions and updates based on what we saw both in the beta and now on the live realms. I hope you guys enjoy reading these as much as we did answering them.I'm going to start off with the earliest series of questions that Elizabeth Harper and Alex Ziebart took in July and August. To round out the rest of AABT's best in the next few days, we'll keep moving through August, September, October, and up to the very end of AABT.
Ye olde loot drama
Andrek posted an interesting thought on the forums: remember loot drama? Sure, there's still loot drama floating around-- as long as there is more players than loot at each boss drop, there will always be loot drama. And maybe this is just nostalgia rearing its ugly head, but it seems like Andrek is right-- Molten Core was home to far more loot drama (Rogue weapon! No, Warrior weapon! No, Hunter weap!) than Outland's raids have been.There's a few reasons for this. As players note later in the thread, Blizzard is much, much better at itemization now than they were back when we were raiding Ragnaros. And we're all in 10 and 25 man groups rather than 40 man-- fewer people means fewer arguments about who gets what. Not to mention that there's so much more loot now (and so many more ways to get it), that even if you lose that roll to a Hunter, you still get Heroic badges to turn in, or you've still got your Arena rating to count on.It seems like loot actually means a little less now than it used to, and that's a great change. It's too bad that the old "hunter weapon" joke might actually be becoming obsolete, but less loot drama means more fun, and no guildleader will argue with that one.
Lucky you
When I came upon this post in the Raids and Dungeons forum, I had to laugh. The guild Dissension on Bleeding Hollow apparently got three Rejuvenating Gems -- each about a 5 percent drop off the three drakes in Blackwing Lair -- on one run. The funny thing is, the exact same thing happened to my guild this summer before we could even clear BWL. One of our healers thought it was funny and told a real-life friend of his, who happened to be in another raiding guild on our server. That guild would not talk to us for several days, aside from random "I HATE YOU SO MUCH" tells from their druids, priests and shamans. The same thing happened later in the summer, when we killed Nef and got three Ashkandis out of our first four kills. I did the math on the Rejuv Gem drops and it came out to be about a one in six thousand, five hundred chance occurrence. (Please correct me if I'm wrong -- it's been a long time since I've been in a statistics class.) End of Days on Black Dragonflight reported an even more improbable loot table: four Talismans of Ephemeral Power off the four Molten Core bosses who drop them. This has a chance of happening in one out of every seven hundred and fifty thousand and change Molten Core clears. Have you ever had a wildly improbable run of loot luck? And not an improbable run of not getting loot -- sorry, there's going to be a lot of guilds out there still waiting for that last Wraith Blade or Bloodfang Chest. People who complain about "it must be our loot seed, we've never seen a Eye of Sulfuras" need to look up the phrase "random" in a dictionary, along with "two percent drop rate."
Finding Your Way Through Azeroth Lore
Garst from Stonemaul has a really interesting question on the forums: where can a lore newbie go first for information?Recently, I've been trying to get more and more into the lore of Azeroth-- instances especially are much more fun to play when you know exactly who you're fighting and why they're doing what they're doing. In the thread, Neth recommends a few books-- Day of the Dragon, Lord of the Clans, and The Last Guardian, and I agree with her in recommending scanning through (it's long and sometimes boring) the timeline of the WoW universe over on the website. For all of my interest in it, the only thing I've really done outside of the game is go back and replay Warcraft III (or just watch a few cinematics from it). Both Wikipedia and WoW Wiki have lots of good lore info. And one thing Neth doesn't mention is that there's lots of lore inside the game itself. Don't laugh, but especially in Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance, reading through a lot of the books laying around will give a really good background on what's happening in Azeroth.You're laughing, aren't you? Ok, well, a lot of players may just say "lore lol," but believe me when I say that giving the history a read definitely fills out the game a little bit, and shows you even more deeply the care Blizzard has taken in putting this universe together. Wielding Ashkandi is fun, but it's even moreso when you know who that sword used to belong to.
