level-80
Latest
Flameseeker Chronicles: The long haul in Guild Wars 2
I hear a lot of Guild Wars 2 players talk about level 80. I hear, specifically, a lot of Guild Wars 2 doubters talking about level 80. Surely, surely, if the level cap could be hit in mere days (or for those of us well behind the vanguard, mere weeks), then the game must be content-light? Surely, surely, that would mean that the real game was "endgame"? Nope. Don't get me wrong; hitting the level cap is significant. It's cool. Your character strikes a pose (you know, the same one he has struck literally scores of times before at each and every level-up). Your character says a catch-phrase. You feel good. But in terms of actual gameplay, I can think of very little that is less significant.
Recruit-a-friend now grants bonus experience, levels to 80
Big news coming for those of you getting friends into the game -- Recruit-a-friend bonus experience and "granted" levels now goes all the way up to 80. Players have been asking for this feature and have been wondering when Blizzard would raise the Recruit-a-friend cap from level 60. Now, Outlands and Northrend content should be quicker than ever for players to complete with their friends and leveling partners. The Recruit-a-friend change was noted in the newest version of the patch 4.2 Rage of the Firelands patch notes found on Blizzard's community site. Patch 4.2 Patch Notes Recruit-A-Friend now awards bonus experience and free level grants to level 80, up from level 60. source Check out the Recruit-a-friend FAQ for more information on the program and how to level characters together and the benefits received. The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!
Massively Exclusive: Age of Conan's Refuge of the Apostate solo dungeon
Lots of new content is on the near horizon for Age of Conan, and Massively has teamed up with Funcom to bring you an exclusive look at one of the game's newly minted solo dungeons. The Refuge of the Apostate is a level 80 instance located in the lands of Khitai (Kara Korum, to be exact), and it features a storyline involving the Scarlet Circle and Last Legion factions. Funcom's designers are keen on making an unusual dungeon experience (and one you want to repeat) as opposed to the usual mob- and boss-whacking fight-fests. To that end, the Refuge dungeon is rife with what Funcom calls "environmental challenges." Aside from the new content and story experiences, the Refuge will likely be popular with players due to its rewards (which include factional marks of acclaim, rare trophies, and esteem tokens). Check out Funcom's full description of the new content after the cut.
GamersFirst rezzes Acclaim 9Dragons characters
Where's a good cleric when you need one? Apparently they're at the GamersFirst offices, performing the herculean task of reanimating thousands of 9Dragons characters left for dead when Acclaim (the title's original publisher) pulled the plug on the martial arts MMORPG this past summer. If you're a former 9Dragons player and you submitted a character request earlier this year, you can now claim your rebuilt level 80 avatar at the official GamersFirst website. "We are excited to finally be able to offer character restoration options for the 9Dragons community. We want players to know that we appreciate their support during our transition. We have spent a large amount of time and effort processing and improving the template characters to get players back into the game without having to redo all their hard work from before," said David Demers, 9Dragons Associate Producer.
Raid Rx: Healing a level 80 dungeon vs. a level 85 dungeon
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community. Everyone enjoying the post-patch so far? If I didn't know any better, I'd say some of you decided to try out a few new healing classes. I know the first thing Joe (our resident resto shaman columnist) did was switch to a dwarf shaman. Alas, I know he is still deeply saddened over the lack of keg totems. I'm assuming there is a shipload of players who decided to create a tauren paladin, eh? I decided to start a night elf mage. Stuck with taking out Nightsabers. Nice to see some things never change, right? Anyway, in today's post, I want to shed a bit of insight about 5-man healing. The other week, I wrote about differences between 10-man and 25-man raid healing. I completely left out 5-man healing because I felt that was better left for a followup post. Unfortunately, I don't have any polished videos that demonstrate the 5-man healing environment. They're all on an older hard drive. I just purchased a beast of a computer which will allow me to record more cool stuff in the future (and I really want to try to produce additional healing videos).
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 ret paladin
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. As I said last week, I'm looking for action screenshots of retribution and protection paladins. I've gotten a lot of good shots thus far and am always looking for more (especially you retribution paladins out there, as I got a ton of protection ones). They can be any level between 1 and 80. I'll be using these for header graphics like the one above. Please send those as well as any other comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. If you've been following the column recently, you've seen the three-part series we did on gearing up a brand new level 80 protection paladin. We're going to take the same approach now to the retribution tree and work our way through the different types of items. First up, we've got craftables and reputation items. We'll be taking a look at stuff you'll be able to grab in dungeons next week and finish up the week after with a run-through of what all you can buy with the badges you got from all of that time in the random dungeon finder.
Arcane Brilliance: Level 80 mage gearing road map, part 2
The dawning of another Saturday brings with it another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column delivered direct to your driveway by a paperboy who blinks from house to house, fending off overprotective guard dogs with the occasional conjured ball of flame and constantly demanding his two dollars (I really, really wish I could have found an actual clip of that, but yet again, YouTube has failed me). It's all pretty impressive, especially when you consider that this paperboy is also wearing a dress. Okay, after last week's part one of this topic, many of you disagreed with my assertion that a fresh level 80 mage should attempt to upgrade his gear prior to jumping into random heroics. I understand this point of view. Farming random heroics is by far the fastest way to gear up initially, and it is true that if you find the right groups, you and your pathetic new-80 DPS may be viewed less as a liability and more of a charity project. Thinking about it, I too secretly enjoy having someone in the group who's needing on blue drops because they're honest upgrades for him. As long as we have a decently geared tank (or a healer who's capable of keeping him up even if he isn't), even a dungeon run with terrible damage dealers can go relatively smoothly. If you wish to gear up as rapidly as possible and you don't mind the idea that you won't quite be pulling your own weight at first, then by all means, skip my first few suggestions for gearing up and head directly for the random heroics. Better yet, get together with some better-geared guildies and queue together. That way you'll always be in a good group and one that doesn't absolutely require you to be up-to-par right away. This week, regardless of the path you've taken to get there, I'm going to assume that you've been industrious and spent a significant amount of time gearing through drops and collecting emblems in those random heroics. Here's the general road you should be following ...
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon an entire flight of black dragons. The quiet before the storm. This is period of time where people are losing interest in their current characters and either start playing less or trying out one of their alts. As such, we've been getting a lot of requests for guides during the end of expansion lull. One of the requests we got last week was a gear guide to your up-and-coming level 80 protection paladin. Whether you're catching up an old character or rolling a new 'toon to try your hand at tanking, we'll show you where to get started.
Spiritual Guidance: Gear guide for fresh 80 healing priests
Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance and Dawn Moore lead priests into the light by studying the fine art of healing. Priests who walk into the light have a longer life expectancy* than those who follow the teachings of Fox Van Allen. Recent studies show that the 51-point talent Dispersion is actually an unexpected side effect of drinking spiked Honeymint Tea, partying with warlocks and cannibalizing gnomes. Well, the day has come: I finally decided to put together a gear guide for fresh level 80 healing priests. Many readers have been requesting this, and I figured I ought to stop teasing everyone with promises of it. I hope that this list, combined with the 101 guides we published in the past few months, will be enough to help my fellow fledgling priests find themselves somewhere in Azeroth. I can't have you all getting lost before you have a chance to dive into that new, shiny Cataclysm water. Before I get started, let it be known that this is not a list of any and all healing upgrades you can get after you hit 80. Instead it is a list of gear I would recommend to a healing priest who is trying to get the best gear he or she can without raiding or is trying to get enough gear to start healing in the current raiding content (Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel.) Since this is not a complete list, feel free to deviate from it when you find upgrades that work for you. A lot of items you find in heroics will be be better than the gear you are wearing from questing. Now, let's get started.
WoW Rookie: Leveling in instances, top tips for fresh 80s
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Construction continues inside the WoW Rookie Guide, where we've put together a corner especially for those of you who are just hitting level 80 for the first time. We've already got a few of our favorite resources listed there. This week, we're adding something new and convenient for you right here. Every week (look for us on Thursdays), WoW Rookie will round up the week's best posts from other WoW.com columnists and features that touch on the basics of endgame play. From polishing your character to playing in PUGs to breaking into the raiding game, we'll help you spot the week's best advice for newer players (even if it snuck in under the radar within the class column of a class you don't play). This week's selection is fairly bursting at the seams, so we've tucked the entire kit and caboodle after the break. (Oh, one more thing before we get to the fresh 80s stuff. Did you catch WoW, Casually's guide to leveling by grouping in instances?) Next week, we'll be back to tackling rookie topics one piece at a time -- followed up, of course, with the week's best links to other pieces fit for fresh 80s.
A little pre-80 min/maxing can be helpful
Gnomeaggedon has written up a great guide to something a lot of players (including me) haven't worried about at all in the past: min/maxing your gear before you ever hit level 80. Aside from twinking, there seems to be almost no reason to worry much about gear before you hit the endgame -- you can level in almost anything these days, and by the time you hit 80, you'll replace it all anyway. Why bother? But Gnome makes a good point: he says you should put the minimum of effort in to max out your gear's power. Better gear will help you level faster, will help you play better, and I'll even add that it will help you learn your class better; figuring out early on which stats you want to choose over others will be a big help when you are dealing with all of the epics at level 80. You don't have to spend all your time choosing gear pre-80, as most of it will get replaced with regular quest rewards anyway. But it's good to put some thought into it. So how's it done? Gnome's posts have some excellent tips on browsing Wowhead for new gear, using Rawr to analyze where your character's at now, and eventually looking ahead to what's next (I'll throw Gear Wishlist in again, simply because that's helped me out a lot). There's so many great tools out there for choosing gear, and it's interesting to note that they're still helpful even pre-80. Taking a second to check your gear while leveling up might actually make that grind that much easier.
The best of WoW.com: October 13-20, 2009
It's that magical time of year in Azeroth -- pumpkins adorn the inns, players are chowing down on candy like crazy, and a deep rhyming voice echoes throughout the world, originating from somewhere in the Scarlet Monastery. Yes, it's the in-game Hallow's End holiday again, and the Headless Horseman is terrorizing newbies and veterans alike. Head past the break for all the information you need about trick-or-treating your way through Azeroth.
Arcane Brilliance: Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 2
Welcome to the latest Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that believes there's no such thing as a wrong time to turn something into a sheep. Unless it was already a sheep to begin with. Then it would probably have been better to turn it into a pig or a rabbit or something. Or maybe just hit it with a Pyroblast. Mmmm. Lamb chops. What were we talking about again? If you missed last week, here's a link to click on so you can catch up. If you can't be bothered to read the first part of this column, let me summarize the idea here: we're discussing ways to get your Mage all decked out in epic, raid-worthy gear without ever actually entering a raid instance. Now, more than ever before, we have so many options for obtaining raid-quality gear that actually raiding for it seems almost...old-fashioned. Last week we talked about 5-mans in both their normal and heroic varieties, focusing on Trial of the Champion, because duh. But maybe you don't want to do 5-mans. Maybe your guildies aren't on, and maybe you hate pugs. Maybe you are a Mage, and because there are eighty-four DPSers looking for group for every one tank or healer, you threw your hands up after an hour of trying to get a group and went off to do dailies. Well good news, everyone! Doing those dailies can get you epics too! Yes, it is entirely possible--even if you happen to be the guy on your server who ninjas gear in pugs and sucks at everything to the point that nobody invites you to groups anymore--to fill just every slot of your gear with sparkly purples without doing any instances of any kind. Isn't that wonderful? It tends to take a bit longer, overall, but these alternative methods for obtaining gear can be perfect for those of us who simply don't have a lot of time to commit to a group. Simply log in, craft an epic cloak, do a daily quest or two, blast out a couple Arena matches, and then repeat for a few weeks, and eventually you'll have epics too. Anyway, nice talking to you, see you next week! Wait...what's that? You want details? Oh fine. Clicky clicky.
Arcane Brilliance: Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 1
Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that asks all the tough questions, and then Ice Blocks before the tough answers one-shot it. A little while after Wrath hit, Arcane Brilliance posted a column on how to gear your Mage up for Naxx. Several things have changed since then: Pretty much everything I wrote then is now wrong. You don't really gear for Naxx anymore. Naxx is now a place you go in order to gear up for other places. Trial of the Champion. Knowing these things, I thought an updated gearing column might be in order. So if you're raising a fledgling Mage, and level 80 is about to hit you like a truckload of Death Knights, and you're looking for the quickest way to turn green and blue into purple, look no farther. Well maybe a little farther. The column's not over yet.
The opposite of Heroics
Reader Malos on Nagrand sent me an interesting idea that I thought was worth some discussion. For a long time now, I've been a big fan of the idea of turning the old instances into Heroic versions -- I think it would be really fun to play Deadmines as a level 80, or roll through Scarlet Monastery for badges. But obviously the problem there is that Blizzard already has enough to do -- they're focused on creating new content, not revamping old instances that people have already played.So Malos has a solution: instead of tweaking the instances to us, how about tweaking us to the instances? He suggests a set of gear, much like the Heirloom gear, that matches your character to whatever instance you happen to step into -- if you enter Deadmines, it powers down your level 80 character to an appropriate power and level for the instance. That way, all Blizzard has to do is make one set of gear per class (that could even scale upwards, so they never have to make it again), and boom, every instance could be played at the standard difficulty by any character any time.Will it happen? Probably not. But I really like the idea of tweaking the players, not the instances, and I think there's a lot of possibility there for Blizzard. They've had such a tough time trying to balance out content for all kinds of players (including all of the hard modes and extra gameplay in Ulduar), that it might be interesting to try and measure the difficulty by going the other way -- balancing players out for all kinds of content.
From our readers: Is my Ulduar-clearing guild holding me back?
I'd like to take a minute to address the concerns of one of our readers. Since my return to WoW Insider, I've been focusing on sanity, progression, and congruence. Dear WoW Insider:I need help, and I figure between me and that guy in the last Breakfast Topic, I'd have more than a good chance of you guys having suggestions to my current dilemma.I'm fairly new to WoW, having started in December 2008, after a long stint on FFXI. I was glad I made the move, and I haven't looked back. I toyed with a few classes before settling on a blood elf rogue. I zoomed through classic, Burning Crusade and have now made Northrend my home.I hit 80 a couple of months ago, and although many guilds have offered for me to join along the way, I always replied that my brother's guild was going to take me in as soon as I turned 80. I've been with them on a few heroics and even saw the inside of Sunwell as my first raid ever, although I must confess all that left me feeling a little bit bewildered as I didn't really know what was happening most of the time. I was constantly asking for help, asking where I should stand and what not. While most of the guild was really nice and understanding (and still are), I'm feeling a little bit out of my depth. Most of the guild members are very experienced, as you can imagine. Some of them are on their second or third alts clearing Naxxramas, and most of the guild are working on Ulduar progression.
Project 62*80: 62 level 80s by Christmas
I first heard about this from El Jeppy when I visited him and company on the Rawrcast Show a few weeks ago, but now he's posted a little more about goals and method on his site. He's just beginning something called "Project 62*80," which sounds pretty crazy on the front of it: he's planning to level 62 different characters (which is apparently one of each race and class combination for both Horde and Alliance) to level 80, and he's planning to do it by Christmas of this year. With 224 days until Christmas, that's 22 levels a day -- pretty easy when you're starting from level one, but not so much when you're trying to do 60-80.He's not just grinding away on it, though -- he's chosen to do some multiboxing, and plans to level three characters at a time up until 60, and then three to five characters per group up to level 80, so if he can move four characters up five levels each a day, he'll be pretty close to his goal rate. And he's using recruit-a-friend, so the triple XP will make things even easier on him. It definitely seems like he can do it if he stays committed, but man, it's not something that would ever appeal to me.He started off with Paladins (for the free mounts and the survivabiilty), and from there it sounds like he's going with Death Knights next, to raise some quick gold for the rest of the enterprise. You can follow his progress over on the Ten Gnomes blog if you want to see where he's at. It's hard to wish him luck (does anyone really need 62 freakin' 80s?), but we'll do it anyway: good luck, Jeppy.
ESL Arena tournament Finals kicks off in Germany
The Intel Extreme Masters World of Warcraft Arena tournament will be culminating at the CeBit in Hanover, Germany from March 3rd to 8th, featuring the European Continental Finals as well as the Global Finals, which will determine the overall winner of the 3v3 Arena tournament. The event closes the third season of a globe-hopping event that spanned Dubai to Chengdu to Los Angeles, and a total of $280,000 in prizes is ready for the taking.The event in Hannover is significant in that it will be the first Level 80 tournament on the pro level, with special rules changes to reduce the effects of RNG. One example is banning speccing into talents like Hunters' T.N.T., Mages' Impact, or Priests' Blackout. ESL has also elected to exclude the new Arena maps -- the gimmicky Dalaran Sewer and Orgrimmar Arena -- from the tournament. This should make the competition notably different from live realms.The Electronic Sports League will feature live streaming videos of the matches throughout the event, with live commentary from the ESL hosts. Archives of matches throughout the tournament can also be viewed on the site or on youtube, even including popular clips outside of matches such as Swarm's infamous nerdrage breakdown. The program can be viewed through the ESL TV, as well as the live stream of all the matches. All games will be broadcast in English.
Age of Conan launches new patch, introduces Xibaluku
By Crom indeed! A literal tidal wave of patch notes has hit the Age of Conan boards this morning, giving all of the gritty details of Conan's next major patch.Of special note in this patch are all of the new dungeons being added to the game for high level players and mid level players alike. Xibaluku, which you may remember us mentioning before, is launching with this patch. This dungeon is targeted towards level 80 endgame raiders, but can only be accessed by performing a prerequisite quest chain that sends the player through another brand new area, The Slaughterhouse Cellar. The Cellar is a single player instance, so be warned that you can't take your friends on casual decapitation fests through the opening quest chain.If you don't feel like going to run Xibaluku, then you can make your way over to Black Ring Citadel and challenge those evil dark sorcerers to the new third wing of their dungeon. Players in the area of level 43 will be happy to know that the Cradle of Decay is a brand new dungeon added just for them. If you're looking for the entrance, just stop by the Fields of the Dead and you should be able to find it.All of the above is just a small sample of what's been included in this patch. For the full, 4 post long set of patch notes, check them out on the Conan forums. Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!
Dual specs at low levels
We heard a ton of news about the incoming dual spec feature last week, and for the most part, players were pretty thrilled -- besides the fact that we're finally getting the option to have two specs at once, we're also getting the much-awaited ability to preview our specs before they're saved, and the official Itemrack functionality that we've heard about for so long. But there was one thing Ghostcrawler said last week that hasn't sat well with many players: that we'd need to be max level before training for the dual spec feature.For many players, the main reason they wanted dual spec was to be able to switch between "leveling" and "grouping" specs, and obviously if you're already max level, you won't have much need for a leveling spec any more (more likely you'd be switching between "solo" and "raid" or "PvP" specs). Ghostcrawler's stated reason for requiring a max level was that they didn't want lower level players to be confused by having access to more than one talent spec too early, but as Zarhym says, Cvarto makes a good point: if a player uses only one spec for 80 levels and then gets the dual spec feature, he/she may not have enough experience with different specs to have any clue about how to choose another one.
