classic-raiding
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WoW Summer Challenges offer some raid night suggestions
Now here's something pretty cool from the World of Warcraft community team: Blizzard is promoting the WoW Summer Challenge, a weekly series with suggestions for an old raid to run with friends for lore and history, notable drops, transmog gear, and more. There is even an associated forum thread to plan activities or share thoughts on any given week's challenge. This week's challenge tasks you and your friends with hitting up AQ-40. WoW's focus from here on out needs to be subscriber retention and engaging its players. The two go hand in hand, and the more Blizzard can do to involve the community, the better. These Summer Challenges are a great way to give a little structure to an otherwise unstructured experience. Blizzard has even included links to Wowhead's excellent transmog set viewer so you know what drops you're looking for. It's good to see Blizzard recognizing Perculia's hard work. Blizzard's full announcement is below.
Cataclysm Beta: Select guild raid achievement requirements reduced
I admit it. I'm an achievement-holic. I'll repeat the most idiotic, mind-numbing task for hours on end just to earn a handful of achievement points. It doesn't matter that I can't do anything with those points. I want them. I need them. And I know I'm not alone in my obsession -- some people play World of Warcraft just for the achievements. (You know who you are.) Once Cataclysm launches, there will be a whole new set of achievements just for guilds, only compounding my poor, crippling obsession. A metric ton of them are for completing old instances and raids as a guild, and grabbing those points requires 80 percent guild participation. Under the guidelines laid out earlier in September, that meant you'd need to take along at least 20 guildies to conquer Serpentshrine Cavern (a BC 25-man), even if you could easily complete it with fewer. Well, for those of us who are obsessed with collecting achievement points, there's good news -- Blizzard just cut the required participation rate for all the old school Burning Crusade raids. On the official forums, blue poster Mumper confirmed that they're treating all old 25-man raids as 10-mans -- instead of needing 20 guildies to take on Lady Vashj and Kil'jaeden, you will now only need 8. The full blue post is after the break.
The Classifieds: Old school a go-go
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on news from around the WoW community. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? Email TheClassifieds@wow.com. Is it just us, or are players revving up the retro vibe to record RPMs? From retro and classic raiding to world PvP events, players are chasing away the pre-expansion blues by rocking and rolling some classic Southshore-Tarren Mill action. Case in point: a massive mix-up on Anachronos (EU-A) being organized for next weekend by <The Stormwind Crusaders>. "The aim of this event is to enjoy this epicness one more time before Cataclysm flushes Southshore away like Atlantis," write event organizers, "and of course for the generation of players who kinda missed the epic fights in the old days. (Yeah, I had to force some guildies to Google 'Southshore vs. Tarren' because they didn't understand that it's 100% wow cult!)" Organizers are hoping players from both factions will transfer or whip up a new death knight to come relive the epic tug-of-war battles of old on June 11 from 21:00-23:00 server time. Check the official realm forums for more details. As often as we discuss zones and aspects of the game that will be changed in Cataclysm, it hadn't yet occurred to me for some reason that the epic Southshore/Tarren Mill battles of yesteryear will be forever wiped from our slates. If you never had the chance to submerge yourself in the madness back in the day ... Yeah, this is worth a pool of tears to drown your sorrows in. Talk about pure, addictive, adrenaline-fueled fun ... My first character became a Knight-Lieutenant, in fact, off kills made in the fields outside Tarren Mills. My brother-in-law and I would roust each faction from their respective homes every weekday afternoon to kick off the action, tempting them out with the prospect of an easy kill on the two little clothies scuttling along the roads. ("Easy"? Not for a second; we knew every dirty trick in the book.) I heartily endorse more recreations of these tug-of-war epics before Cataclysm alters the killing fields playing field forever. Let's crack open The Classifieds ...
15 Minutes of Fame: Classic raiders keep a different pace
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft personalities of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, from the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. The old days are long gone, Gramps; take off the rose-colored glasses and play Wrath, where raiding is better than ever. So goes conventional wisdom in the comments whenever anyone espouses a little nostalgia for the old days of vanilla WoW. Raiding was a far different animal back then. Players who raided were still considered hardcore -- "casual raiding" wasn't on the radar yet -- and devoted week after week of angling for a 40-man raid slot in hopes of earning the chance at a purple drop. Even though strategy sites for WoW raids blossomed sooner rather than later, videos and the trustworthy guides remained relatively sparse, and many early guilds developed their own tactics and jealously guarded alternative strategies. Standing at the mailbox in Ironforge with a massive, raid-sized weapon on your back meant wielding a badge of achievement that attracted a small crowd; bearers would be flooded with awed whispers asking where it was from. A thoughtful look back at WoW's 40-man past yields both positives and negatives. It wasn't simply the size of the raids that made them feel so different than today's raids ; it was the interplay of raid size, the inexperience of the raiding player base, the scarcity and difficulty of rewards, the lack of universally accepted tactics and strategies ... A whole host of influences that simply can't be replicated today. But while the era may long cold and dead, the content is still very much alive. Beyond the bored, pre-expansion players who are fending off burnout by sightseeing in vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade instances lies another layer of players who are attacking old content with level-appropriate characters. These classic raiders aren't fruitlessly attempting to recreate the past; rather, they're enjoying an entirely different pacing for the game.
The Classifieds: More raiders than ever pushing through end-game content
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on news from around the WoW community. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? Email TheClassifieds@wow.com. Has the stacking buff in Icecrown Citadel done its job opening up end-game raiding to more players than ever? Signs point to yes. An analysis posted at LoreHound shows that the progressive ICC buff (Hellscream's Warsong and Strength of Wrynn), which is currently pumping 20% more power into raiders' total health, healing done, damage absorption and damage dealt, is also puffing up the number of guilds chugging through what's currently the toughest raid instance in the game. The report is chock full of progression statistics, shining a light on content accessibility. Its conclusion: Raiding in Wrath, including features such as progressively stacking buffs and encounters with interchangeable difficulties, has ripened to a mature model that is friendly to both hardcore and casual raiders. Read the details at LoreHound (thanks for the tip, Rhabella!). Let's crack open The Classifieds ...
The Classifieds: One million gold in his pocket
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on news from around the WoW community. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? Email TheClassifieds@wow.com. The road to level 85 will be paved with gold for one lucky guild being financed by a member who's earned 1 million gold in the past six months. Reader Villainus managed to crank his bank account up to 1 million gold last week. His ultimate goal? Sharing the wealth. "I'm not selling anything, not advertising on my site ... just did it for the challenge," he wrote to WoW.com. "My plans so far are to help my guild power level to 85 for Cataclysm with basically unlimited funds. :)" Villainus' entire savings project took six months and began with 1,000 gold, a rudimentary understanding of the Auction House, no addons and no stock of items. On the blog where he documented his work in progress, he noted these facts along the way: Averaged 46,080g per week in profit 1500+ active auctions at any one time Largest single day gain: 51,781g Largest single day loss: 18,254g Single Iceblade Arrow sales: 16,374g Rare and epic spellthread profit: 81,313g Gold earned from GDKPs: 28,312g Gold spent at GDKPs: 71,210g Vendor pets profit: 19,448g Largest profit from a single item: Ring of Rotting Sinew 9,512g Largest % profit from item: Plans : Titanium Razorplate 3,308%, 80g to 2,646g Most expensive item purchased: Deathbringer's Will 17,000g Most expensive item sold: Mechano-hog 15,210g Gold lost to AH 5% fee: 64,712g
WoW Rookie: 10 ways to meet other new players
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's at WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Come out, come out, wherever you are ... We know you're out there leveling! The dungeon finder feature isn't the only way to meet new and leveling players – in fact, it's one of the worst, since you'll only occasionally be paired off with another player from your home realm. Today's WoW makes it possible to scuttle from the auction house to the dungeon finder without forming any lasting relationships to speak of at all. Here at WoW Rookie, we're all about enjoying the journey, rather than racing for the finish line. Let's go over the best ways, then, to join up with folks you can adventure with along the way. In ascending order: 10. Hit the dungeon finder. We know, we just said the dungeon finder is not a great way to make friends. It's not. That said, we've heard more than one tale of players who transferred realms to play with friends they met through the dungeon finder. You're more likely to find a compatible group for the length of a single evening than a permanent partnership that persists over the levels -- but hey, it could happen.
Turn off XP gain for classic raiding
The ability to turn off experience gains is coming in patch 3.2, and is rightly being touted as a feature to enable twinking (to go along with the new battleground experience system). However, that's not all that turning off XP lets you do. Remember how people have been asking for classic realms with the level cap set at 60 (or 70)? Yeah, here you go. Level a guild of characters to 60, pay 10g to turn off XP gain, and raid the old world to your heart's content. Nethaera mentioned as much in a blue post yesterday, constituting the first supportive mention of classic only raiding that Blizzard has ever made, as Adam noticed. She does mention that this may change during testing, like everything, but for now: classic content lovers, rejoice! Don't forget to loot your core hound. Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
