childrens-week
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Reminder: Join ICFTB for Children's Week today
Come join It came from the Blog today on Zangarmarsh (U.S.) to run the Orgrimmar Children's Week quests. You need to be level 10 or higher to get the quest, but you are welcome to join us for the runaround, no matter your level. When: 3pm Pacific (4pm Server) Today! (Sunday, May 4th) Where: Orphanage in Orgrimmar (the Valley of Honor) on Zangarmarsh (U.S.) How to join: Send Robiness a tell to get a guild invite I got my warlock to 20 this morning and stocked up on shards so I can summon if you are too far away, say in Mulgore bringing up a Tauren. If you are in Blood Elf lands, take the teleport in Silvermoon to Undercity and then the Zeppelin to Orgrimmar.Let's take our orphans on a field trip together! I hope to see you there!
Children's Week in Wrath
With The Burning Crusade, Children's Week was given a new tier of quests, based in Outland. Either this year or the last, I'm sure most of you have done these quests. Rather than replacing the old ones, it was simply an addition to the holiday.If Children's Week receives the same treatment in Wrath, I'm itching to see what the rewards will be, or who(what?) we'll be escorting. The rewards in TBC were based off of the new content, so I have my doubts we'll have any accurate guesses for Wrath's installment at this point, but wrong guesses are still fun to make. Penguins? Walruses? Baby Bornakks?And what will we be escorting? A baby Tuskarr? A baby Nerubian? Who knows! Like I said, I doubt we can make any accurate guesses at this point in Wrath's development, but it's still fun to think about.
Help a kid this weekend: Children's week in World of Warcraft
It's always fun to talk about in-game MMO holidays. Christmas events give you a chance to get into the holiday spirit even if real life isn't that jolly. Trick-or-treating in-game is more rewarding that walking around in the cold and dark on October 31st, and won't make you feel as foolish. And most games have implemented at least one holiday that's all about drinking - hard to argue with that!This weekend World of Warcraft's top-drawer holiday events roll on with the original event Children's Week. This event, which began on May 1st and will run through May 7th, gives Horde and Alliance warriors alike the chance to step back from questing and PvP. There's a kid in an orphanage that really just wants to get out and see the world, and you're their ticket to fresh air and good time. Our sister site WoW Insider has a pair of gallery guides up that will lead you through the quests in Shattrath City. They're lucrative and fun, each netting about 50 gold and almost 2000 Lower City faction. The quests for Orgrimmar and Stormwind are still up, of course, and you can earn some factional rep that way as well. Both questlines result in one of three unique pets - a tough choice but one well worth making.Gallery: Children's Week: Shattrath City -- Horde Gallery: Children's Week: Dornaa's quests
Dornaa's Day: A journey for the Shattrath City Children's Day Alliance quests in pictures
Robin Torres has already described her day with Salandria, the Horde ophan from Shattrath Cty for the Children's Week festivities, but don't think that the Alliance gets left out. We get to escort an orphan of our own, Dornaa the Draenei. Check out the gallery below for my experiences travelling the worlds with this delightful little girl. %Gallery-22042% I'm already missing poor Dornaa, and I can't wait to travel with her again next Children's Week (even if the nearly free Lower City reputation from these quests won't mean much then with WoTLK out), and hear what she gets up to in the future. Keep writing to your big brother, Dornaa!
Gallery Walkthrough of Children's Week, Shattrath City, Horde-side
Children's Week is one of my favorite events of the year. You can get a couple of pets, some reputation and cash and, in the Shattrath City version, there be dragons. Dragons are cool.I have chronicled my questing in this year's Shattrath City Children's Week event for the Horde in a gallery walkthrough. It's an interesting story and a nice tour of some fun spots in Outland and Azeroth, but if you also want to know the hard numbers for completing the entire quest chain, here they are: Cash: At level 70, the cash total was 45 gold and 54 silver. Reputation: Your Lower City Reputation increases by a total of 1760. One very cute or disturbing pet. So check out our Horde-side Children's Week in Shattrath City Gallery Walkthrough and stay tuned for more on the rest of the event.%Gallery-21949%
Around Azeroth: The bloodening (plus a contest!)
Don't kids grow up so fast these days? Especially when you feed them one of Papa Hummel's Old Fashioned Pet Biscuits. Shikozu of <Fallen Ghosts> on Altar of Storms snapped this photo of her blood elf orphan right before Child Protective Services took her in for questioning. Now onto the contest. As you may have heard, the latest entry in a popular series of video games came out this week, and there was much rejoicing. Except from me. Because while I love these games, I am terrible at them, and end up giving up after about five missions and seeing how many times I can drive cars over pedestrians or attack shopkeepers with katanas before the cops catch me. If only there was a way to have the mayhem of GTA with the simplicity of WoW ... ... which leads into a new screenshot idea: Grand Theft Azeroth! Glitchstravaganza was such a success, I decided to try another user-submission gambit. But this time, I'd like to see you doing evil things in the fashion of the GTA series. Jacking mounts. "Mugging" guildmates. Slaughtering innocent critters. Crashing zeppelins. Running your orphan through hot lava. Whatever your evil heart desires. Send your Grand Theft Azeroth screenshots, with a one-paragraph-or-less explanation, to aroundazeroth@gmail.com by noon ET on Wednesday, May 7. The five best entries will go up for a vote on Thursday, with the winner to be announced the following Monday. The winner will be held up for universal acclaim and will receive a spot of honor in the AA gallery. Remember to include your name, guild and server if you want them included. We prefer full screenshots without the UI. And please, no more sunsets ... unless they're over a bloody corpse! Muahahaha!%Gallery-1816%
Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain, now featuring an orphan on Air Guitar
So, with Children's Week upon us, the lore buff in me was wondering something: What's going to happen with Salandria? If you had a high level character Horde last year and did the Shattrath Orphan's Week quest, you know what I'm talking about. Salandria, your Blood Elf Orphan, is a somewhat snooty and stuck up girl who loves to stick her nose where it might not be safe (such as the fire elemental up at the Throne of Elements), but she seems mostly like a normal, if slightly precocious girl. Until she asks to go to Silvermoon and the Caverns of Time.
Children's Week begins today
Today's the first day of May, and that means that Children's Week has begun. All kinds of little snot-nosed orphans are out there begging for you to run them around Azeroth and show them the sights, and in return they'll give you one of the richest treasures in all of WoW -- a cute little noncombat pet. There's a nice Children's Week guide up over at WarcraftPets, and we've done our share of orphan touristing around here at WoW Insider. This year will be no exception -- stay tuned all week for posts about what may have changed in Azeroth for the holiday, and don't forget that this Sunday, our in-game guild on Zangarmarsh will be running around the orphans all together.Of course, it may not be the best thing for Azerothian orphans to be running around with all you wacky player characters, but they've got to get out of the orphanage at some point, right? Go do it for the kids this week!
[Updated] It came from the Blog: Children's Week event on Sunday
Children's Week will be here May 1st through 7th. But you already knew that because you saw it on the nifty Upcoming Events list in the right column. Children's Week is one of my favorite Azerothian holidays because it's fun, it's for everyone and you can clutter up your bank with more non-combat pets.So who wants to join me for celebrating Children's Week with It came from the Blog? When: Sunday, May 4, 3pm PDT (4pm Server Time) [Edited to change from Saturday to Sunday] Where: The Orphanage in the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar (to the left of the ramp that leads up to the Battlemasters) Server: Zangarmarsh U.S., Horde side There will be Summoning for those who need it and don't worry about what level you are, because everyone is welcome. [Edited to add:] You may have to be level 10 to get the quest, so if you want to do more than just hang out with us, level up to 10 before Sunday.If you aren't in the guild yet, just send a whisper to Robiness or someone else in IcftB and we'll be happy to invite you.Come join us in making a virtual orphan's day a little brighter!
WoW, Casually: Gearing up before level 60 (Reader Mail)
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.This week, I answer some Reader Mail that is only a month old. Woot!Hi Robin,I am what I consider to be a casual player on WoW. A good session for me will last about an hour or two... Usually just long enough to gain a level before I run out of time. The current character I am working on is my "main", a level 50 Orc Hunter. One thing I was hoping to find in your articles was a way for a casual to obtain equipment when they haven't yet reached the 60s and 70s. The last time I updated my gear was in the low 30s, so it is really starting to show its date. I was having trouble finding a way to equip my character for the rest of the game until I can start on some epics. It seems the only way is to dump a ton of money in mediocre items (which is basically what I did in the low 30s), or spend hours doing instances... Hours being something most of us casuals don't have.Is there something I'm missing here?Thanks,PaulMy answer and more are after the jump.
Around Azeroth: Big Willy
You all remember Sleepy Willy? He was one of the three pet rewards for doing the Children's Week quests. Show the Outland orphans all the war and carnage that infests the lands and in exchange for that touching moment, they give up their prize pet. I guess you never thought to ask where they got that pet, now did you? Dopervius of Impulse Raiders on the Stormrage realm has provided us the answer.Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? Because we'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing. And please, no more sunsets. This means you. I'm not kidding, yours is not the exception. No, really. Sigh.%Gallery-1816%
RP Spotlight: Pets can be more than decoration
In WoW social situations, combat and non-combat pets alike usually just take up space looking pretty. Hunter and warlock pets have many actions they can perform to help fight an enemy, of course, and for a normal gamer there's no reason they would need to do anything more. But sometimes, as a roleplayer, if you pat your pet wolf on the head, you might expect it to look up at you with those adorable puppy eyes; or if someone else pats its head, you might expect it to bite their hand off. However, with the emote system as it is, we can only type out custom emotes with our own character's name at the beginning of the sentence, never the pet's.There's a way around this problem, which is actually quite obvious once you think of it, yet roleplayers rarely use it, so far as I have seen. If you write the possessive apostrophe-S as the first part of your character's custom emote, you can make your pet seem to do something on its own: "Isabeau 's pet wolf growls and bares his teeth." It takes a little bit more typing, and it leaves a space between your characters name and the apostrophe-S (since that's built into the emote system), but effectively it lets you roleplay two entities at the same time. Hunters and warlocks can use the PetEmote addon to help make this a little more streamlined. Our reader Ellyndia, for instance, roleplayed a very introverted character that normally would not introduce herself to others, but using such custom emotes, she could have her Jubling walk up and interact with people first to get conversations going. Pets can reflect what your character is thinking but not saying out loud (by hissing or purring perhaps), or they can do anything that such pets in real life might do. Special non-combat pets such as the Children's Week kids, the interactive Animatronics, or even the magical Mojo, could all be especially fun to animate a little now and then. Certainly this technique would become very annoying if overused, but in moderation it can add a extra spice of humor, entertainment and even a touch of realism into the game.
New WoW site for non-combat pets
With the release of the latest WoW TCG expansion, a new in-game pet has arrived, Bananas the Monkey. Looking into this has led me to a wonderful site dedicated to collecting all the non-combat pets in Warcraft. And when I say "dedicated", I mean "look no further than this site."World of Warcraft Small Pet has checklists, FAQs, guides to getting pets exclusive to the opposing faction, screenshots, extensive information for each pet, you name it. Now, I have a fair collection of non-combat pets, mostly from seasonal events like the mechanical yeti from Winterveil and Willy from Children's Week. I also quested for the Sprite Darter Hatchling out of Feralas back when the zone was in my level range. But this site is for the serious collector.Check it out and then tell me: frightening obssession or one more kind of pleasant activity to pass the time in-game?
When it's not nice to share
We're all taught from an early age that it's nice to share. But not when it comes to your WoW account info. And I don't just mean e-mail scammers posing as Blizzard employees asking for your password. What I'm referring to is something that is something much more rampant and just as damaging to your WoW account's continued existence: willingly sharing your account information with a brother/roommate/guild mate/girlfriend, etc.For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, allow me to spell it out:If you're caught sharing your account, Blizzard will ban that account.You'd think this fact of WoW life would be well known, and I believe it is, but many players are choosing to ignore this rule at their own peril. Why? A few rationalizations seem to be popping up over and over.
It came from the Blog: Serving Azeroth's orphans
Big thanks to everyone who came out and played with us, the WoW Insider staff, in our new guild on the Horde side of Zangarmarsh last night. I'm playing an undead priest named Mikril, and I had a good time questing around with a shaman named Gambu (he made a good tank). All told, we picked up almost 60 guildmembers in our first night, and even rolled a few people to 10 so they could run orphans around Azeroth for the last day of Children's Week. We'll continue to keep the guild running for some fun and casual gameplay, so If you want to join up, just roll a toon on the Horde side of Zangarmarsh and send a whisper to anyone in "It came from the Blog."We are keeping it totally and completely casual -- I don't want to give up on my own usual characters, and you likely don't want to give up yours -- so there's absolutely no pressure to level up at all. We're just planning on making it a fun place to hang out once a week or so. While we will probably be around at various times throughout the week (I'll be working my way up to 19 so I can get a good WSG group going), our next organized game night will be Wednesday, June 6th at 7 pm EST. The Darkmoon Faire will be in Elywnn Forest then, I'm told, so we'll lead a Horde lowbie party into the Human starting area to run some tonk wars, shoot the cannon, drink some ale (and start some drunken fights with Alliance), and have a grand ol' time.So mark your calendar, and in the meantime feel free to roll your own alt and come join us on Zangarmarsh. When you need a break from hardcore endgame raiding, or just want to come meet and greet all of us here at WoW Insider, we'll see you there.
Where to start with 2.1 content
The 2.1 patch this week introduced enough new quest lines, top-end raid content, flying mounts, and L70 solo & small group content to qualify as its own game. With a three day weekend looming I didn't even know where to begin. So I scoured the web and found the where to go and what to do to get me started. THE BLACK TEMPLE: Already planning to strut around Shattrath in your T6 Raid gear? Don't bank that T5 set too quick. The Black Temple attunement quest is ... epic. And it hasn't even been fully discovered so far. What is known is that you will have to slog through a great deal of the Burning Crusade raid content that comes before it: Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair, Serpentshire Cavern, The Eye and The Battle of Mount Hyjal. And many of those raids require extensive attunement quests of their own. If you are still itching to begin, you can dig in with the Tablets of Baa'ri chain out of Shadowmoon Valley to start grinding that Ashtongue Deathsworn rep. NETHERDRAKE EPIC FLYING MOUNT: First, don't confuse this with the Swift Nether Drake top Arena teams are awarded with at the end of every season. That one has a speed increase of 310% and has an armored appearance. This is the normal epic nether drake with a speed increase on par with other epic flying mounts: 280%. What's special about this epic flying mount is that it can be obtained through solo and small group quests. No raid required. What is required is a great deal of dedication.The first steps on your journey is to dig yourself out of Hated reputation with the Netherwing clan and get all the way to Exalted. This is accomplished through solo, 5 man and 3 man daily quests. Head to the south east corner of Shadowmoon Valley and speak to Mordenai in the Netherwing Fields. A complete write up can be found here.
