blackwing-lair
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Around Azeroth: None shall resist...
Readers, if you have not yet met Nefarian, well, above you see him, perched on his throne in the heights of Blackrock Spire, in a shot courtesy of reader Versus. The fiery crown is standard, but the tiny hippogryph flapping cheerfully around his feet is an addition since the last time. Apparently not even he could not resist the utter adorableness that is this non-combat pet.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part.
Around Azeroth: Wipe number nine...
Trystania of Eitrigg sends in this shot of her guild running back towards Blackwing Lair after their ninth wipe on the second boss, Vaelstrasz. Ah, yes, this screenshot brings back fond (???) memories of learning the Blackwing Lair encounters, including many evenings when defeating Vaelstrasz seemed like nothing but pure luck. I'm sure many of you can relate!Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part.
So many dungeons, so little time
This thread in the raid and dungeons forum is not the first - nor will it be the last - to complain about the difficulty in scheduling an increasing number of raid dungeons. As raiding guilds seek to advance through higher level instances, some raids need to be cut out of the rotation - and for most guilds, Molten Core is getting left in the dust. Of course this means that players who are still missing the one piece of tier 2 that drops in Molten Core are now stuck without a way to acquire it, but it also has implications for unguilded players and up-and-coming guilds. When I joined my first raiding guild, I had part of my blue class set, as well as assorted blues and greens from Scholomance, Stratholme, Blackrock Spire, and Dire Maul. But for guild exclusively running Naxxramas, Ahn'Qiraj, and Blackwing Lair, that may not be sufficient gear to be able to contribute. As the leader of a small guild working towards gearing up for 20-player instances, I fear that this will intensify the problem smaller guilds have with players raiding for a while and jumping into guilds that have progressed further in end-game content. Though perhaps I am too pessimistic - will players soon simply be skipping over Molten Core to attempt Blackwing Lair in better gear coming from lower dungeons (dungeon 2 set, etc)? As the scourge invasion event completes on more servers we can begin to see what sort of fallout may come from this growing library of raid dungeons.
Four New Realms Today
Four more new realms opened today - for PvP players, there's Onyxia and Blackwing Lair, while PvE players can enjoy Gnomeregan and Anvilmar. So if you were feeling like a fresh start in Azeroth, here's your chance. The realms appear to be in the PST time zone, so if that's what you're looking for, this is your fix. There are ongoing complains on the forums about low population servers, but perhaps the combination of newer realms and pay for realm transfers this will aid in evening out population imbalances across all the servers. However, only time will tell!
Testing Raid Content
When Blackwing Lair was released, way back in patch 1.6, it was ridden with bugs. In order to keep the content top secret and preserve fair competition between guilds seeking world firsts on the live realms, it was never released on the public test realms - and its lack of polish showed. For Ahn'Qiraj, Blizzard took the alternate approach, releasing it on the public test realms for all to try. Tigole has already announced plans for an "extended test period" of Naxxramas, but some question whether having the instance available for testing ruins the race for world firsts. What do you think - does testing make enough of a difference to be worth spoiling the surprises?
Blackwing Lair Live Blog
alwaysBETA's Blackwing Lair live blog is up and running right now. So if you've never been inside Blackwing Lair but are curious as to what it's like - go check it out! Lots of screenshots are provided as well as details on what's going on.
Want to go to Blackwing Lair?
It's true - many players never have the chance to see the inside of these massive raid dungeons while others choose to avoid them. For those of you curious to see what the raid game is like, intrepid player (and blogger!) Zach will be live blogging a Blackwing Lair raid this Saturday, April 15th, at 7PM. So fire up a browser to alwaysBETA at the appointed time and see what large-scale raiding is like. As for me, I've got to wonder - how can you blog and raid at the same time?
Bug Fix Tuesday
US servers are expecting several bug fixes during tomorrow's maintenance (and I would assume European servers will see them during Wednesday maintenance). Among them are fixes to the time lapse ability used by Chromaggus, the invisible vortexes in the Ossirian encounter, and raid resets (which will hopefully be back on their regular schedule). All good fixes and I'm glad to see them coming - though I honestly wonder how they managed to make it beyond QA in the first place.
Raid Timers Still Broken?
Though all realms were restarted on the 31st in order to restore raid reset timers to their normal behavior, raids still aren't resetting on their ordinary schedule. Blizzard hasn't made any comment on the matter, so it's hard to say whether they're intending to change raid reset timers or whether the timers are still bugged. Nevertheless, my Blackwing Lair ID seems to be resetting mid-day Thursday instead of its scheduled Tuesday. Hopefully we'll get some clarification on what's going on soon, but until then be aware that raids aren't on their usual schedule.
Raid Reset Issues Continue
This morning's server restarts, which were intended to fix raid resets, apparently did not solve the problem. Community manager Eyonix tells us they have managed to identify the problem, however, and are working on implementing a fix that will not require additional playtime interruption. As much as I disliked the initial change that put all raids on a fixed calendar of resets, I've come to appreciate the predictability of such a system. Hopefully we'll see a fix soon!Update: All raid IDs on European realms were manually reset today in order to solve this issue. Ouch.
Raiding After Patch 1.10
While you can hardly pass a day without seeing several threads in Blizzard's Raid & Dungeon forums proclaiming "ONYXIA STEALTH BUFFED!", I wonder if this time the posters have a point. There are numerous new and interesting challenges awaiting the raider in 1.10 and none of them made it into the patch notes. Are they bugs or features? We may not know unless we see hotfixes. Anyone out there see any other odd raid issues happening this patch?
