dire-maul
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Interview with Ludo Lullabi, artist of the WoW comic
The good folks over at MTV's Multiplayer blog continue their coverage of the WoW comic with an interview with Ludo Lullabi. Lullabi is the regular artist on the book, and it's great to hear that he's not only a big fan of Warcraft, but that he understands how important it is to use the game as a source-- he even draws straight from screencaps sometimes.Of course, the game can't always work as inspiration-- he says he really had to spruce up the Dire Maul arena to get it to look right in the comic. And he's taken it easy on the game lately while working on the comic. Not being able to play that much of the game because you're spending too much time trying to work on describing it? I can definitely identify with that one.But all in all, Ludo sounds like a smart and talented guy. Good to know the art side of the comic is in such good hands.[Via Incgamers]
Leveling Mom and Dad through Zul'farrak
I think there's something so awesome about this story from Rufus on Livejournal-- his mom and stepdad have never gamed before, but they've leveled two characters up to 40, and during a run in Zul'farrak, they actually took on a whole gang of mobs, and lived.We've talked about playing with older folks before, but that's not even the best part of this story-- the best part, in my view, is the thought of two people discovering that they can do something they never thought possible. There is definitely an accomplishment and a thrill that comes with gaming (and this game especially-- taking out trolls is always fun), and it's awesome to think that these two were able to discover that.I did a run of Dire Maul last night on my up-and-coming Hunter, and just like that Blackrock Depths run a little while back, there were a few newbies in the group-- we had to explain tanking and aggro a couple of times, and I had to use Feign Death. But even through just the chat channel, you could tell they were having a ball running through all the demons in the old elven city. That kind of stuff definitely makes me happy this game is around.
The Daily Grind: Guild-driven events
Recently, one of my World of Warcraft guild-mates issued a challenge to the rest of us. You see, he'd been messing around in Dire Maul North, just having fun, and thinking about how we used to speed-run Tribute as a guild time-killer. So, the other day he issued the challenge for the fastest solo run in DM North, killing all the bosses along the way. Several of us have taken up the challenge, and we've yet to see who the winner is, but we've all been having a blast with it in the meantime.For today's Daily Grind, we'd like to ask you what kinds of fun things your guild/fellowship/group does that you really enjoy? Is your guild a heavy RP guild, where you write epic story-lines for your guild to get involved in? Do you like to throw game-wide events like our sister-site WoW Insider did for the Stampede to Stormwind event? Or does your guild prefer to do smaller things behind closed doors like our group is doing in setting up silly challenges for in-game prizes?
Blizzplanet corners Walter Simonson on the comic
Blizzplanet has posted an interview with Walter Simonson, and is it me, or is it time to stop poking around for information on the new comic? Just let the nice people write and draw the thing already!Simonson doesn't actually confirm the non-secret secret that Varian Wrynn is the amnesiac starring in the comic, but that doesn't keep Blizzplanet from prodding and poking everything they possibly can out of him. He says the comic will be set in the present, but when they nerd it up with some more lore, he admits it'll actually take place before the Burning Crusade. Simonson tries to drop a hint that the hero will end up in Orgrimmar, but then he's eventually exasperated enough to reveal that Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff and the Pools of Vision, Ashenvale, Darnassus, and the Eastern Kingdom will all make appearances inside the comic. And while Blizzplant has heard rumors that Dire Maul will be featured in the comic, they eventually get Simonson to tell them that "we're going to witness an event involving ogres (and others) that occurs regularly in a hitherto underutilized part of Dire Maul." And that sounds, of course, like a Tribute Run.I can see how, if you're a big fan of the comic already, learning stuff like this might be fun and interesting. But at some point, you've just got to leave Simonson alone and read the comic for yourself. Enough interviews, enough hinting, enough speculation. Just let him write it so we can read it already!
A Druid with 122k health? She must eat her Wheaties.
As I was browsing the WoW forums earlier, I came across this little gem of a thread. A Druid named Scarmbrena from Boulderfist managed to obtain over 122,000 health (yes, you read that right) by stacking a buff called Mol'dar's Moxie. Mol'dar's Moxie, for those that don't remember the good old days of Dire Maul North "Tribute runs," was a buff given to you by Guard Mol'dar that grants an additional 15% stamina for 2 hours.Scarmbrena describes in the thread how she was able to stack this buff a total of 15 times, bringing her total stamina to 11,896 and her health to a whopping 122,394! Just to put that in perspective, Pathaleon the Calculator (the last boss in the Mechanar), has 130,000 health.Obviously, this qualifies as an abuse of game mechanics (albeit a creative one), but even more surprising is that the patch notes for 2.1 state that the Dire Maul Tribute buffs shouldn't work on a player over level 63, yet in the screenshot linked in the thread, Scarmbrena is level 70.I can't say I recommend that anyone try this since Scarmbrena almost got banned herself for it, but it is interesting to see a player amass that much health!
Around Azeroth: It's a... bird?
What sort of monstrous skeleton is this, you ask? Well, your guess is as good as mine. However, I do know that this stunning specimen can be found hanging above the library of Dire Maul, and that this particular example was sent in by reader Millarun of Ysondre.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.See more of your pics from Around Azeroth.
Hacking Dire Maul
On my server, aces for the Darkmoon Faire decks tend to sell on the auction house for between 150 and 200 gold. That is, except for the ace of warlords, which seems to have bottomed out at 4 gold or so - and there tend to be ten of them on the auction house at any given time. The drop rate of the ace isn't high enough to make getting these quantities easily, which does make one wonder where they're coming from. The usual answer - farmers with teleport hacks, which allow them to jump directly to King Gordok in Dire Maul, kill him, and collect their loot. This video, which recently showed up on Google Video, shows us what might actually be happening here.
