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Why Warlords of Draenor needs a legendary chain
Mists of Pandaria was unique in a variety of different ways, but none quite so unique as its approach to legendary items. While prior expansions offered legendaries in the form of random drops from bosses or craftable items that required -- you guessed it -- random drops from bosses, Mists paved the way for a new type of legendary. It was a legendary that anyone could get, provided they put in the time and effort required to obtain it. Coming from a long line of raiding going all the way back to vanilla, I have to say that Mists' approach was the best I've ever seen. No more arguing over which class deserved the legendary more, no more officer headaches as they tried to decide who got the legendary first. No more accusations of favoritism, no more guild explosions. Just you, the character you play, and a decision to make: do you go for the legendary chain, or do you ignore it? You choose. We need this in Warlords.
A legendary for all, courtesy of Wrathion
It's confirmed -- everyone does indeed get a legendary, if they manage to finish Wrathion's expansion-long chain of requests. However, unlike any prior legendary to date, Wrathion's offering won't be a new set of weapons to wield ... and that's making some players a little irritated. Rather than the usual arming with weapons, Wrathion has instead chosen to give everyone legendary-quality cloaks, enhancing the cloaks received in patch 5.3 with some extra power -- and a little orange text -- in patch 5.4. Yes, some may have been expecting weapons -- but really, Wrathion's offering makes a lot more sense in terms of gameplay, balance, and possibly Wrathion's true motives in this little endeavor as well. In fact, the legendary offered in Mists of Pandaria manages to break every single perception we had about what a legendary is to date.
What does legendary really mean?
Legendary. The color orange was once one of the most revered, whispered-about intangible things in vanilla WoW. People had heard rumors of legendary weapons, but nobody knew how to actually get them -- they were just as much a source of speculation as any lore in Warcraft today. When those legendary items finally first began to appear, it was a moment of sheer joy for those lucky enough to receive them. And for those that were not that lucky, it was a source of constant envy. People got really, really ticked about legendaries, how it was determined that they were rewarded, and who they were rewarded to. In the end, when it boiled down to it, anyone who watched someone else get a legendary immediately questioned what made that other player worthy, when they themselves had put it so much more perceived effort. Legendaries had the power to tear guilds apart -- or, in some cases, the power to pull a united guild into an even stronger front. The history of legendaries is pretty fascinating in and of itself, but more fascinating is the evolution of the color orange. It's changed over the years, and in Mists of Pandaria anyone can start a chain to get their very own legendary -- and that's got some bloggers talking.
Weapons of Lore: Atiesh and Andonisus, Reaper of Souls
It was the first caster legendary available to players, but the amount of time and devotion it took to get almost guaranteed that only a tiny piece of the player population actually obtained it. Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian wasn't a particularly fancy weapon by today's standards. It was simple, smooth staff topped with the carving of a raven and quietly adorned with a bit of ribbon. But to those that followed Warcraft's lore, the simple design was easily recognized as the staff of one of the most powerful casters of all time. Atiesh was the epitome of everything a caster desired, largely because of its roots within the history of Warcraft. This wasn't just a simple staff; this was the weapon of choice for the last known Guardian of Azeroth, the wizard Medivh. Medivh was featured heavily in the original Warcraft RTS games but hasn't been seen since the end of Warcraft III. Atiesh, on the other hand, was seen by many -- and craved by many more. And the fate of this unusual staff ties in with another legendary weapon most never encountered: Andonisus, Reaper of Souls.
Potions, Portals, and Scrolls of Recall: How to get around Azeroth as quickly as possible
Azeroth is big. This is readily apparent to any new player who's confined to running around on foot or anyone too cheap to shell out for a mount. Even mounted, you're going to spend a lot of time getting from point A to point B unless you can somehow shorten the journey -- and you can usually shorten it in a number of interesting ways. We all know about the zeppelins and the boats, the workhorse transportation system of Azeroth, but due to the eccentricity of the many transport options in the game, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. For example, an inventive Horde player without a Hearthstone up who wants to travel from Silithus to Orgrimmar can settle in for a long flight -- or she can simply chug a Potion of Deepholm and take the Orgrimmar portal from the Temple of Earth. No potion, but you've quested through Sholazar Basin? Take the Titan Waygate from northern Un'Goro Crater to Sholazar, then fly south to the Horde's zeppelin at Warsong Hold. You'll still beat a wyvern flying from Cenarion Hold. With even a few of the following options, a max-level player with some imagination should be able to scrape together a few methods of considerably shortening a journey.
Arcane Brilliance: Patch 4.2 changes, clarifications and legendary staves
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we discuss the perils of writing about the PTR, which stands for "Public Test Realm." For a very long time, I thought it stood for "Pirate Taco Restaurant," which I thought sounded more fun, frankly. Yes, it's always a good time when I write something and the testing process immediately renders almost every word of it completely moot. Testing is testing, I guess, and absolutely everything that pops up on the PTR at pretty much any stage of the testing cycle is entirely subject to change. So remember what we talked about last week? The whole tier 12 set bonus thing? No longer true. Well, okay, I guess some of it still holds true, but not the really interesting part. Gone is the moving Arcane Missiles. To me, that was the single most significant bonus being offered by the tier 12 set for mages, but it's been removed entirely in the latest PTR build. The other bonuses remain, in slightly altered form, but mobile missiles is apparently out. Still, I'm not perturbed, other than my simmering rage at having a thousand or so of my words -- wrung from my brain only a week prior, sweat out over a hot (or at least lukewarm, perhaps slightly moist) keyboard, painstakingly arranged into mildly pleasing, competently conjugated sentences -- become instantly irrelevant. You see, I actually think this could end up being a good thing for mages, and I promise that in a minute or two I will tell you why I think that, and the answer will not be "because of all that paint I huffed."
The OverAchiever: 5 of the best lore-related achievements
Let's be honest; the best lore-related achievement is without question Loremaster, which requires you to do the vast majority of the game's quests. But that's pretty self-evident -- "To get the best lore experience in-game, do the quests, which contain virtually all of the actual lore!" -- and thus kind of a cop-out from my perspective. So what I'm going to do with this edition of OverAchiever is pointedly ignore the fact that Loremaster is the most important thing you should do as a dedicated lore junkie, and turn to some other options that tend to be overlooked. As with our article on Twenty-Five Tabards, this is not an exhaustive guide on how to do each achievement, but simply a starting point if you're either interested in Azeroth's history, or interested in your character becoming more deeply involved in the developing story. As an early warning, 1 of the following 5 achievements is no longer doable, but I've decided to include it as I think the inability to do it at this point in time could be considered part of Azerothian history.
