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All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Scribe
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the thirty-sixth in a series of roleplaying guides about how to roleplay various aspects of the lore and gaming elements of WoW. What is inscription anyways? I mean, we all know that it's the newest profession, added in Wrath of the Lich King, and it lets you make these "glyphs" which allow you to modify or improve your various class abilities in interesting ways. In gaming terms all that makes perfect sense, but when it comes to telling a story with your character, there are a lot of details missing. Technically, a glyph is a character or symbol, like a heiroglyph or a pictograph, which we can see to a certain extent when we click on the glyph and put it into our in-game glyph interface -- it looks pretty cool with all those circles and lines and stuff. But what does it really mean? Are you pasting these symbols into a book of some sort? Are they getting magically tattooed onto your skin somewhere? And where did inscription come from to begin with? Has it been around in Azeroth all along somehow, or was it some sort of ancient knowledge only discovered recently, around the time in the Warcraft lore when the Wrath of the Lich King begins? If it was discovered, then who discovered it and how? How exactly does a scribe learn these glyphs? Does he or she pore over ancient tomes that haven't been read in thousands of years, trying to decipher ancient texts? Or is the art and magic of it more in the artistic calligraphy of it rather than any difficulty in discovering or interpreting the symbols themselves? There are far more questions than answers when it comes to roleplaying a scribe, and to a large extent each roleplayer is free to choose his or her own approach. What follows is the just one suggestion as to how you might work out a plausible solution -- please feel free to read it and improve upon it in whatever way you like.
Choose my adventure with WoW.com profiles
We're all still slaving away on WoW.com, finding bugs and filing feedback. To help that process along, we're going to try a little experiment. I'm going to level a character from level 1 to level 80, and all of it will be documented on my WoW.com profile. The hook is that you guys are going to decide most aspects of this character, such as race, class, and talent spec.Such things will be determined largely via polls right here on the front page of WoW.com, where I'll be giving weekly updates on my progress along with what I've learned about the class and the world and any other observations I might have. If you want a little more detail on the process such as where I'm going, what I've done, and any other little notes I make via the Adventurer's Note feature, you can follow that on my profile. If you don't dig our profiles portion of the site, hey, no problem. You'll still get weekly updates right here on the blog until I'm level 80.There are two polls: Race and Class. I will play whichever choices are the most popular. If the chosen race can't actually be the chosen class, I'm going to go with whatever is the most popular class that I can actually play as that race. The polls are below, and there's a little more information behind the cut underneath them.Update: Polls will remain open so those who voted can still see the results, but as of May 22nd, Gnome Warlock won the polls and the adventures have begun.%Poll-30341% %Poll-30352%
Spiritual Guidance: Handling Incoming AoE as Discipline
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt's got awesome raid healing tips to share as Discipline along with some thoughts for dual spec! The first week of Ulduar is almost done! For those in there, how far have you managed to go? I've found it to be a test and a challenge for not only myself, but for the crew I raid with. Thank goodness for dual spec as it's saved me both time and money for switching between different roles. I wanted to share a few tip I picked up in my experience so far as a raiding Discipline Priest.
Several new crafting instance screenshots for Lord of the Rings Online
The new crafting instances are certainly a big part of the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online Volume 2, Book 7 update, which is why Turbine has released several new screens showing off the content. We're fairly certain that we're not missing the point when we get excited about shiny, pretty swords and images of a Dwarf mining with a mighty pick axe.That's normal, right? We're not entirely certain, but it seems like the kind of thing a balanced person would get all hot and bothered over. In any case, you can find plenty of sweetly sized images to salivate over (or is that still just us?) in our gallery just below. Enjoy!%Gallery-46767%
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Miner
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-eighth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class (or profession!) well, without embarrassing yourself. Mining is one of the strangest professions in the World of Warcraft. This may seem counterintuitive in the face of such odd professions as alchemy, and more particularly, engineering. But when you think of it, mining is equally strange in its own way.Mining in the World of Earthiness is by and large a capitalist venture, where the people getting rich off of the various precious metals in the world are never ever the same people who actually go out and dig the stuff out of the ground. No, the rich people find other people do to the actual digging for them, and then compel those diggers to hand over the fruits of their hard work for a mere fraction of the work's actual value. Furthermore, precious metals here on Earth are not simply lying about at the surface for anyone with a pickaxe to come along and collect -- otherwise those metals wouldn't be precious anymore. Mining on Azeroth is more like collecting interesting seashells than it is anything similar to what humans do on Earth. Below, we will find a few ideas about why in the world only the very greatest adventurers with the best training can go around picking up shiny ore nodes sticking up out of the ground, as well as what it might mean to your character to do so.
Massively re-arms for WAR: Slayer (part 2)
These three mastery paths are, much like the Enrage mechanic, also pretty easy to grasp, at least when you look at the two primary styles of play Warhammer Online: PvE and PvP. Trollslayer is all about getting Enraged quickly and then sustaining it over the course of a drawn-out fight. It's especially useful in PvE, where Public Quests offer up a nice variety of bosses to slash at to your heart's content.
Massively re-arms for WAR: Slayer
Dwarf Slayers are just about ready to start hitting the live Warhammer Online servers for all their worth. With the orange tide imminent, I've been running around the test server for the past several days, looking to learn all I could about these wonders of Dwarven kind. Including -- but not limited to -- the underlying cogs of their special mechanic, how they handle PvP and PvE, and most importantly where they hide their booze -- here's a hint: it's underneath something.Now, with many honorable deaths under my massive beard, I've come here to present you, our dear readers, with a neatly packed bundle of information.
Know Your LotRO Lore: Gimli
Welcome to Know Your LotRO Lore, a new weekly column here at Massively showcasing the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien's world as it intersects with Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online.In this week's Know Your LotRO Lore, we're exploring the life of our favorite quirky dwarf, Gimli. You know and love him from the movies as played by John Rhys-Davies, or perhaps his animated adaptation as voiced by David Buck in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 Lord of the Rings cartoon.Yet Gimli is a much deeper character than portrayed in Peter Jackson's movies or any cartoons. He is born of distant noble lineage and is the son of a main character in The Hobbit. His story is much more than that of a Dwarf accompanying some Men, Hobbits and an Elf through Middle-earth, for each member of the Fellowship has their own unique importance to the tale. Follow along below for more on the Dwarf known as Gimli.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be an Alliance Rogue
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-fourth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. Many of the most famous rogues outside of the Warcraft setting have been nuanced and exciting characters. Bilbo Baggins, the Prince of Persia, and James Bond, could all be reimagined as rogues if they had existed in Azeroth instead of their own settings. As an Alliance rogue, you have a certain amount of freedom to borrow from other settings, or from the real world, since the Alliance races tend to be more similar to heroes of other stories we've heard before. To a certain extent, Blizzard has already based its Alliance rogue guilds on stories from other settings, and left some aspects of these institutions rather vague. There is certainly enough room for roleplayers to fill in a bit of the blanks with their own creative inspiration. The only danger is that it could be easy to overdo it and descending into Mary-Sueism: one ought to feel free to reach for a bit of the flavor of James Bond, for instance, without ever believing your character is the single best secret agent Stormwind could ever have.
Choppa. Slayer. So what's the big deal?
With today's announcement that the Slayer and Choppa careers will be added to Warhammer Online, you may be asking yourself, "So what's the big deal?" Most of the people asking this probably aren't WAR followers, which is understandable. There are, however, people who play WAR that don't really think these two careers should be a priority for Mythic right now given all the other issues. I'm writing this article to prove the non-believers wrong and shed a little light on why the Choppa and Slayer are so cool for the Warhammer novice.First, let's look at the main similarities between these two careers. The Choppa and Slayer were both tested back in WAR beta. Actually, the Slayer was called the Hammerer back then, which was basically a cheap knock-off because Mythic and Games Workshop couldn't work out lore issues. The basic concept of the Hammerer was quite Slayer-esque in that it was a surly dual-wielding melee DPS dwarf. Mythic decided that the Hammerer and Choppa weren't quite on par with the other careers so they were cut (along with the Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun) from release. Note: the BG and KotBS were added shortly afterward. Continue reading below the cut where we'll continue to look into their similarities and specific characteristics.
Things that don't annoy me
About half a year ago I wrote the article "Things that annoy me." However, I'm in a good mood tonight:1. The music in Storm Peaks and Howling Fjord, particularly the choral portion of the former. Spooky and haunting and ethereally on edge, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had just glimpsed a large angry dinosaur through the window.2. The leather boots available at exalted with the Argent Crusade. Yes, the stats are great, but it's how they look on Tauren that really vaults them into the realm of unbridled win. For all I know, the graphic on female Tauren is a serious bug that programmers are working frantically to correct, but I think that boots on a cow look awesome.3. Dalaran when it's not crawling with people.4. Which is to say never.5. Pretty much everything that High Overlord Saurfang says, does, thinks, or writes for the entirety of the Horde's Wrath storyline.
Creative gag hints at new Warhammer Online class reveal on Jan. 29th
We've known that it was likely Mythic wouldn't be bringing back one of the original melee DPS classes to Greenskins and Dwarves. Of course that doesn't mean the two races won't even have a new class -- as evidenced by the mind games Mythic is now playing with the Warhammer Online community.The box contains orange hair dye, a hair trimming kit and the ominous note that says, "More to come 1-29-09" How is this significant? Take a look at some official Warhammer Dwarven lore:"A notable aspect to Dwarf culture is the Slayer Oath. A Dwarf who has suffered a great shame, loss, or humiliation will dye his hair and beard orange, and cut it into a Mohawk using pig grease to stick it in place."Was this a little bit blunt? Maybe, but we don't mind, since it's got us excited for a possibly very awesome new class for Warhammer Online. We only hope that when the Greenskins get their melee DPS class it's as interesting as this announcement. WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Know Your LotRO Lore: The Dwarves
Welcome to Know Your LotRO Lore, a new weekly column here at Massively showcasing the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien's world as it intersects with Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online.In last week's Know Your LotRO Lore, we discussed the Elves and their origins in Tolkien's Middle-earth. This week we're going to continue along in that tradition by covering the Dwarven race, their origins and impact in Tolkien's works and Lord of the Rings Online.As with the Elves, Tolkien did not invent the Dwarf, but he did popularize and redefine the term, beginning with The Hobbit. The plural "dwarves" was also popularized by Tolkien, as it was more commonly known before that as "dwarfs", which now refers mainly to real people affected by dwarfism. This can get tricky when political correctness comes into play, but as it pertains to this article, we will focus purely on the mythical race. Follow along through the link below for more on Tolkien's Dwarves. Dwarven Origins >> %Gallery-39552%
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Priest
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the seventeenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. Priests in the World of Warcraft are a single class that incorporates a wide variety of characters. They are best known for casting spells that call forth the power of the Holy Light, but the priest using these spells in the game mechanics doesn't necessarily have much connection to the Light as such -- rather they have a connection with their own religion which grants them similar effects to those of the Light.When WoW was being developed, Blizzard realized that night elves and trolls, for instance, would not follow the Light in the same way humans and dwarves do, so they tried to represent a bit of this diversity through race-specific spells. It didn't work out, though -- some were too powerful, while others weren't worth reading about, much less putting on one's action bar. The end result was that they made some of these spells universally available to all priests, and completely removed the rest. Here the lore had to surrender to the game mechanics in order to provide the best game balance.In roleplaying, however, there is a lot of room for players of different races to behave differently, and draw their powers from totally different sources. Greater Heal, for instance, could come either from the Light or the power of Elune. A Shadowfiend could either be a spawn of the Forgotten Shadow, or a dark trollish voodoo spirit. If you are roleplaying a priest, the only thing that really matters is that your character have some sort of faith or profound belief, which could serve as the source of their divine magical power. A priest's magic revolves around his or her strong beliefs and ideas -- but what those beliefs are is entirely up to you.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be an Alliance Warrior
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twelfth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. From the way that warriors are available to nearly every race in the game as a sort of default fighter person, you'd think that they would be the fallback choice for any number of different sort of characters you might imagine. Any sort of regular shmuck could be a warrior right? You just gotta pick up some sort of weapon and start swinging it around at an enemy, yes?No. Even though the Warrior class is available to almost every race in the game, every race has its own tradition of what it means to be a warrior -- it's not just a farmer with a pitchfork running around and trying to kill things. Warriors go through extensive training, learn to wield a wide variety of weapons, and train themselves in staying upright and charging about even while wearing all kinds of heavy metal on their bodies.So today we'll look into some of the ways that the races of the Alliance understand what it means to be a warrior, and see which heroes your character might look up to, as well as the archetypes these heroes represent.
Men are from the Horde, women are from the Alliance
Sanya Thomas continues a look into the demographics behind all of you World of Warcraft players -- last time around, we examined gender and how players measured up in the Bartle test (and crashed their servers -- sorry about that), and this time, it's all about the Horde and the Alliance, and why and when players choose a faction. No surprises until the very end -- the majority of players in game (though I swear it's become less of a majority since the game's launch a few years ago) choose Alliance, whether it's because of a "human bias," or just because they've usually been the heroes, and gamers tend to play with their friends.But things get more interesting when you start putting classes and gender into the mix. Women are pushing the average on Alliance side (men even out around 58/42, but women prefer to "grab their sword and fight the Horde" at 65/35). And when you compare the classes to faction choice, as above, then the stats really start showing signs of life:clearly, women prefer Alliance Druids (and when you look at the Druid forms, there's no question why). You can see the Alliance/Horde separation in the Hunters (that's all those Night Elves), and you can see the gender separation again in the Priests. And the Warriors probably have the weirdest stats: Men play more Warriors overall, but the gender gap is even wider on the Horde side. While there are some women playing Horde Warriors out there (I know an Orc played by a female that will tank anything you can throw at her), Horde Warriors are much more likely to be men.Very interesting. Keep in mind, as last time, that these gender numbers aren't character genders -- they're self-identified on the gamerDNA site, so we can be reasonably certain that we're looking at an (at least slightly) realistic stack of data here. There's probably lots more data to be explored, too -- it would be interesting to see what Blizzard knows about their players that we don't. What class, for example, logs in the most on any given week?[via Massively]
One Shots: That's a big wrench you've got there
We don't know about you, but there's something imposing about a naked dwarf armed only with an enormous wrench and what appears to be a pretty nasty firearm. Sure, many of the naked dwarf issues in Warhammer Online were addressed, but you still have to admit it makes you pause. Today's One Shots, sent in to us by regular Warhammer Online contributor Snacky, shows off the Iron Fist version of Snacky, in scantily-clad and heavily-armed action. Snacky writes: All a dwarf really needs is their trusty wrench and shotgun. Here I am blasting away at relentless Orcs invading a dwarf camp. Calling all MMO players! We need your screenshots for One Shots. If you've seen anything fun (holiday events are awesome) imposing, interesting, or silly, we want to hear from you. If you haven't, gather up your group of friends and go have some fun, then send some screens of that in. All MMOs from large-budget to tiny indie games; from East to West are welcome. Send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name/server/game and a quick description of what we're seeing. Reader submissions keep One Shots running, so send some in today! %Gallery-9798%
One Shots: Blowing (lava) bath bubbles
There's nothing quite as wonderful as taking a peaceful moment out for yourself after a long, hard day. Of course, when we think of something nice to do, lava baths don't immediately spring to mind. But apparently for Snacky from the Iron Fist server, who has become a regular Warhammer Online contributor to One Shots, this is just the thing to soothe an aching back. Snacky writes in: Being as we Dwarves spend so much time in the snowy mountains of our homeland, it's always lovely to get away and warm the chill bones. Here I am at the College of Wizards having myself a little "me" time. It's great to relax, but we have to ask how that lava spurt got there? It looks a little wrong. Have you done something off-the-wall that people might find funny? Perhaps you've got a special place you go to relax after a long day of playing. Whatever the reason, and whatever the game, we want to see your screenshots! Just send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name/server/guild and a brief description of the shot. We'll post it out here for everyone to check out and give you all the credit! %Gallery-9798%
Massively's WAR Camp: Tier 2 Scenario Guides pt. 2
Mourkain Temple is the Tier 2 scenario for the Dwarf and Greenskin racial pairing. Its objective could be described as "murder-ball" -- there's an artifact to grab in the center of the map, and when you have it, everyone on the other team will be after your blood. The artifact provides bonus points to the holding realm when they get kills, and there is a bonus to the other realm if they can kill the carrier. This also gives them a chance to pick up the artifact themselves, if they're quick enough. Check out our gallery guide to see more of Mourkain Temple, and when you're done there, continue on for a look at the last Tier 2 scenario. To Mourkain Temple << Previous page Next page: Stonetroll Crossing >> %Gallery-34148%
Massively goes to WAR: Character creation video for Order classes
Those who bought the Collector's Edition of Warhammer Online get their preview weekend in a few days. And open beta will start soon after that. But for those who can't wait, we've recorded video of some of the character creation options in the game.After the jump you'll find three videos, each covering one of the races of Order: Dwarves, Empire (Human) and High Elf. We recorded both male and female choices and a number of different random variations to give you an idea of what you can do.Looking forward to playing Destruction instead? Those racial videos are right here.
