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The Queue: Pandapocalypse
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. On Friday I responded to a question regarding Pandaren, and it turns out I'm about half wrong. Partially right, but also partially wrong, which is certainly a problem. My answer was based off of something I talked about with a random Blizzard employee, but in hindsight that's a pretty poor move on my part, they wouldn't necessarily know the little inner workings of one or two departments within the company. What I said was refuted with quotes from J. Allen Brack and Chris Metzen, which I'm willing to put more weight in as far as game lore goes. The Chinese did, indeed, have a problem with the Pandaren being in-game.I was right in that there are no laws against virtual pandas getting shivved or whatever, but there definitely was an issue with the Pandaren race, culturally. It's much more likely it just ran into a lot of friction when it came down to dealing with censors and the cultural shift, and it became not worth it to risk losing players over. I'm sure the fact that the Pandarens' original design was much more Japanese (see above) than Chinese didn't help, but that was shifted in the right direction eventually and may not have had an actual impact at all. And with that said...
Ask A Beta Tester: Spirit, AoE, and raid loot
I'm going to start off this AABT by stealing a question that Alex actually took last time, mostly because I started laughing when I read it yesterday. I have, oh, conservatively, billions of Wrath screenshots on my hard drive at this point, but there's one I remember all too well.Marathan asks... Some time ago, there was a talk about new player character models for Wrath - and even some bugged pictures. So the question is, are they going live? Are we finally going to get improved graphics on our characters?As Alex wrote, Blizzard used one beta build to test the ease of implementing new skins and some of them...didn't turn out too well. Imagine you're me and you get a beta key. Budget a few hours of anticipatory excitement while your main copies over. She's a 70 Tauren Druid who has been with you since day one, your sole 70, and you think she's the most beautiful thing in the game even if to everyone else she's an ungainly 8-foot heifer. Now imagine booting up the Wrath beta for the first time and being horrified to see your beloved character with a Glasgow smile, like the developers had seen the Joker in The Dark Knight and thought, "Hey! We could make that work!"Holy water did nothing. Neither did crucifixes, garlic, a wooden stake, waving the Bible in the direction of the laptop, or sobbing quietly in a corner.On the plus side, here was finally something in the game to which Tauren cat form was an actual graphical improvement.
Tank Talk: Do you feel lucky, punk?
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. At least, that's what the others said they were doing. I intend to use it mostly as a soapbox to complain. Absolute power tends to......something something.Welcome to Tank Talk. I am your bear Druid hostess for this week, with a topic that occurred to me while reading a recent article here on the site. Eliah Hecht wrote that his guild is facing a not-uncommon tank shortage and that he has considered the possibility of leveling a tanking class to 70 before Wrath, or tanking on a Death Knight afterwards. A number of people on my server and in my guild have talked about doing the same thing, or switching mains once Wrath hits. With so many people playing Death Knights, I think it's very possible that more people will discover they enjoy -- or at least, don't mind -- tanking, and may seek to do so in a raid environment without necessarily knowing what they've really signed up for. From those of us who have tanked raid content in vanilla WoW or BC, here are the 10 questions you'll want to ask yourself if you're considering the possibility of tanking serious raid content:
Ready Check: Felmyst
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and spend thousands of gold on repairs and consumables. This week, we face an undead lady dragon with serious breath issues.Felmyst is the third boss in the Sunwell Plateau. As you approach the Brutallus encounter, you see him doing battle with Madrigosa, a blue dragon. Upon defeating Brutallus, Felmyst rises from her corpse in undead form and begins circling around the plain where you fought Brutallus. (She's quite feisty, and will aggro if some AoE abilities are used while she flies over, so be careful!)The encounter is an execution fight, and requires a lot of attention throughout from everyone in the raid. In terms of preparation, you don't need any resistance gear for the fight, but having a Cauldron of Arcane Protection will help mitigate some of the raid damage. The most common strategy also relies quite heavily on priests' Mass Dispel ability, but before we jump ahead to raid composition, let's look at what you'll face during the encounter.
First Sunwell Plateau gate is now open on US Servers
If your uber guild has freed Kalecgos, beaten Brutallus, and felled Felmyst, and you've been a little bored, here's some good news for you: Agamath, The first Sunwell Plateau gate is now opened. This means that the Eredar Twins, Grand Warlock Alythess and Lady Sacrolash, are now fair game. Good luck to all the guilds aiming for a world first! This puts the first gate opening time at just about 2 weeks (the patch went live on March 25th, as you recall). If the next two gates come down just as fast, we may see a world first Kil'jaedan kill somewhere around early May. Then again, I imagine Blizzard wants to drag stuff out just a tiny bit so that they don't need to put out a patch 2.5 with new content between now and the release of Wrath of the Lich King. [Via MMO-Champion]
Phat Loot Phriday: Shivering Felspine
Our second polearm ever is a brand new shiny piece from Sunwell Plateau, perfect for Hunters who want to talk softly and carry a big stick.Name: Shivering Felspine (Wowhead, WOWDB, Thottbot)Type: Epic PolearmDamage/Speed: 393-590 / 3.50 (140.4 DPS)Abilities: +52 Agility One Yellow socket (socket bonus of +4 attack power) Improves Haste rating by 53, and attack power of 120 With the Agility on there, this thing is probably best meant for Hunters -- only they can really benefit by changing Agi directly into Ranged Attack Power. Warriors and Paladins may benefit occasionally, but since Agi translates into Armor and Dodge for them, and the goal when wielding a big two hander is to do damage, not dodge it, it's really at cross purposes with most DPS melee-ers. Armor is always good for tanks, of course, but a shield will give you much more armor than this thing's Agility will. The only problem with this thing is that it doesn't really have any Stamina or hit/crit on it, so players looking to max those will probably pass on this for something else. But Hunters looking to crank ranged DPS (especially with a slow bow or gun) will like this one a lot. How to Get It: It's brand new in the game as of patch 2.4, and while on the PTR it supposedly dropped from Felmyst, we're told that it now drops from the trash near Kalecgos. Since players are just starting to head in that way, expect this to start showing up in player hands soon.We don't have too much info on the drop rate yet, but there's good news and bad news. Since it's from trash you'll have a lot more chance for it to drop, because it'll be in the loot tables of more than one mob. The bad news, of course, is that it is probably a super low rate, so cross your fingers and hope for it to show up if you're running Sunwell Plateau regularly.Getting Rid of It: Disenchants into a Void Crystal, as usual, and sells to vendors for 18g 80s 53c.
Exclusive Interview: Nihilum, the Sunwell, and the future of high-end raiding
After writing one of my first articles on an essay penned by Neg, one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, I was surprised and heartened to see him get in touch. We talked about a few matters related to our pieces and I asked him if he would mind answering some questions about what the guild's been up to since we spoke to them last. We hadn't heard much about Nihilum on the PTR (Vis Maior was the guild steamrolling the content this time out), but they've been upgrading and expanding their website, and one of the 2.4 raiding screenshots on Wowwiki belongs to them, so they've obviously been busy. It had also become clear that Awake, arguably their most high profile member, had left the guild, and I was curious about what was going on.Neg very graciously answered my questions, which you'll find below the cut. Read on for his take on Sunwell Plateau and his favorite boss, Awake's departure, resto Shamans versus holy Paladins, picking up an enhancement Shaman and the class in PvP, various boss encounters, and WoW as an e-sport.
World firsts on the PTR
So here's the question: Do PTR world first kills count? MMO Champion has done a great job of following along with world firsts in the Sunwell on the PTR, and Vis Maior, an Alliance guild on Bonechewer has done most, if not all, of them-- they were the documented first to topple Kalecgos, Brutallus, and Felmyst (Forgotten Heroes and our old friends in Death and Taxes are also among the first boss downers on the PTR). But do kills on the PTR count as world firsts, or do the kills need to happen on live realms before they're considered world firsts?Now, I know lots of you readers don't care about world first kills anyway (and you've got a point-- the only down that matter is the one you do with your guild), but lots of players believe there is value in being the first guild in the game to down a boss, and certainly the best guilds in the world work really hard for that honor. But technically, a boss isn't really "done" until it reaches the live realms. Then again, it usually isn't "done" yet anyway even after that.Personally, I don't think they do count, which is one reason why we haven't yet reported them on this site. I have to applaud Vis Maior and the other guilds for their hard work, and I'm definitely impressed by what they've done, but this content isn't done yet, and in terms of documenting who got there first, my opinion is that we need to wait until after the bosses hit the live realms. You readers disagree?
Unlocking the Sunwell: Essence of the Immortals
We've known for a while now that the Sunwell Plateau would start small, with more bosses being unlocked along the way until you could finally face down Kil'jaedan himself to prevent him from coming into this world. But with 2.4 out on the PTRs, the question becomes, how do you start unlocking the plateau? The answer comes in a form of a drop off each of the bosses inside the instance: The Essence of Immortals. With this essence, the mages of the Shattered Sun Offensive are able to bring down the magical gates inside the Plateau, three in all, that block access to Kil'jaedan himself.
