noblegarden-2009
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Cataclysm easter egg reveals Deathwing's musical side
Blizzard is a cunning bunch and they seem to love easter eggs. No we're not talking lovely chocolatey orbs like the ones you find during Noblegarden, rather that they like hiding artwork in plain sight and waiting for us to click on it. Tucked away in the Cataclysm official site is the kind of artwork which practically demands to end up on a T shirt. Yes, Deathwing is actually the sixth member of The Artists Formally Known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain (aka TAFKAL80ETC or that funny Prince-like symbol with the Horde sigil at its center). Oh and he plays the piano. Who knew, eh?You can find it by clicking here and looking for the small keyboard at the bottom of the page (it's in the middle underneath the artwork, just below the page indicator). Alternatively, if you want all the gratification and none of the work, click here to download the awesome high res version. We fully expect to see everyone wearing them come next year's BlizzCon rather than those three wolves howling at the moon.
Breakfast Topic: Are achievements putting too much pressure on players?
I'm not in a WoW place right now. I tend to move through phases of being a casual or a hardcore player. It depends on the content available (such as a new patch) and my workload. I did most of the Noblegarden achievements but now Children's Week is here I suddenly feel burnt out. Except for a quick romp through Gun'drak with my guildies last night and a pit stop to pick up my orphans, I've been strangely distant from Azeroth.The thing is, I know precisely why. It's the pressure of achievements and festivals. Let me be clear, no one is making me do these things but me. Last year I enjoyed Children's Week because it was my first time doing the Outland version, I got rep, money and the smug feeling you get from taking a cute Draenei orphan around to see her heritage. Now all my guildies and most of the other people on my sever are frantically going for the achievements and, in some ways, it feels like the holiday has been cheapened a little. Being so close to Noblegarden probably hasn't helped either.But it makes me wonder if I'm the only one? Right now I'm a casual player, but do you think the point of these holidays has been lost by the desire to get a Violet Proto-Drake?
Breakfast Topic: Did you get what you wanted out of Noblegarden?
Noblegarden has passed for another year and everyone is now running with little orphans in tow. There were lots of changes this year - the biggest being a whole seven days of egg hunting madness rather than just twenty-four hours.My Noblegarden was spent camping Azure Watch, being chased by purple bunnies and looking for eggs until I went more blind than usual. When I eventually managed to find enough eggs to get me my bunny wabbit (the tuxedo pants, shirt and dress dropped along with the bunch of flowers), I started looking for females in order to do the Shake Your Bunny-Maker achievement. Now my server isn't one of the largest and I found all the females quite easily -- even a Tauren and a Troll -- but I'll be damned if I could find a single Orc female. There are some on Daggerspine, as many of my guildies had already completed the achievement, but I eventually switched to my Horde account only to experience the mind-numbing chatter from prepubescent players. In the end, I couldn't get the title and now have to wait another year. Hopefully then it won't be as chaotic.I'm curious to hear your thoughts and experiences post-Noblegarden. Did you achieve everything you wanted?
Breakfast Topic: If you could add game mechanic to WoW what would it be
Last night I was flying down to Un'Goro to do the Hard Boiled Noblegarden achievement. Long flights get me thinking, at least they did until I installed the Bejeweled addon. World of Warcraft has changed so much since I started playing and 3.1 has brought some of the most interesting changes: dual specs, the hearthstone timer nerf.Now as I was flying, my guild whispered me asking for my aid in Naxx 10. Fortunately they could summon me but it reminded me of one of the biggest problems with flying in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, you can't get off a bird. Yes I know you can log out and then log back in to be deposited at the next flight point but it's hardly ideal if you need to get off right now. Since I first started playing, I've wondered why Blizzard don't implement a handy eject button that you could use when on long flights. You could be thrown from the back of your gryphon or wind rider and gently parachute to the ground. Alternatively they could just allow you to hearthstone while flying. But I digress. Readers, I want to know if you could add one mechanic to the game what would it be?
The Daily Quest: There is nothing Nobel about Noblegarden
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.Everyone has something to say about this lovely little world event going on, and we've selected some of the best blog entries from around the net for you to enjoy today: Mend Pet has some good egg spots for Horde. BlizzPlanet has a nice Noblegarden guide. Be sure to check out ours too. Wobin writes over at WoW LJ about a great add-on to get your attention when finding an egg. Biker Bunny. And for the non-noblegarden related post today, Matticus knows why you're Frustrated by Ulduar. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Eggcellent Guidance: 30 Noblegarden eggs in 15 minutes
Noblegarden - Love it or hate it, either way it's here to stay for the rest of the week. And if you want that 310% mount then you're going to have to put up with it. But hopefully I've got a tip for you all that'll make things a little easier. There is a spot, the perfect spot if you will, where you can get upwards of 30 eggs in 15 minutes. More if you're not bothered by others attempting to rain on your egg parade.The spot exists in Azure Watch outside of Exodar, and I've gotten a few pictures you can see after the break to make it easy for you to sit there and farm away for a bit. While this trick won't necessarily work in the early evening when everyone and their mother's uncle is on farming eggs, it works great during off hours.
Breakfast Topic: How's Noblegarden going so far?
The title seems self-explanatory; are you enjoying Noblegarden? How many people are participating on your server? Do you already have the achievements done, or are they a work-in-progress?I have to admit I'm writing this expecting a lot of comments to come back noting that it's pretty hard to get this holiday done when spawn points on the eggs are camped 24/7. For my part, I vastly underestimated how much of a nuisance that was going to be on the live realms. That aside, Noblegarden does seem to be one of the more efficient holidays, particularly if you get lucky with item drops, and I think this is also the first time Blizzard's made it possible to get all the achievement items you need as purchases in the event that Lady Luck spends the week being an indifferent mistress. The ability to buy achievement items certainly settles what was by far the biggest complaint concerning Love Is In the Air. For that holiday, your ability to complete the meta-achievement was ultimately determined by the RNG, to the point where Blizzard hotfixed the drop rate on a key achievement item after the forums went kaboom. This time around, you don't need to worry about that as long as you can get enough Noblegarden Chocolate. Time to knuckle down, plunk a frosty beverage at your side, and tell that jerk who's camping your spawn to go find his own friggin' eggs. Ahhhh, the holiday spirit!
Throw your own egg hunt with Noblegarden Eggs
I've been looking at the Noblegarden items for awhile now, since they first showed up on the PTR. For some reason, it never hit me until I saw it on live realms how cool one item in particular actually is. For five chocolates you can buy your own Noblegarden Egg, which allows you to lay a Brightly Colored Egg. Yes, that's five eggs for one egg of your own, which is a pretty horrible exchange rate.What's so cool about it? They're the exact same eggs you've been picking up that whole time, except that you can set them out. You can loot them right away for an added chance of whatever loot may be in them, but I'm not sure why you'd do that, except for possibly completing Dressed for the Occasion/Sunday's Finest. What makes it better is that other people can loot them.What makes that so great? If you can get an organized crew (and their alts) together, you can set up your own Noblegarden Hunt for your guild or your friends and family. Laying an egg has a 1 hour cooldown, so each of you will only be able to set out one egg each, but with a sizable group that might not be too terrible. A brief hunt, but you can make it exciting! Feralas, perhaps? Icecrown? The interior of a cleared Ulduar? Just take it far, far away from busy cities or hubs. You don't want to lay an egg out in the Stormwind Trade District. Joe McMullet will loot that thing in a flash, and that's no good.
Breakfast Topic: Which part of Noblegarden are you most excited about?
Noblegarden is finally here and, boy, is it addictive! Knowing how everyone would be swarming all over Kharanos and Goldshire, I headed for the most isolated, least visited starter town I could think of: Azure Watch. On my low-population server, there were only about another five people after eggs and once you start spotting them hunting becomes insanely addictive. There are already people with their Spring Rabbit's Foot and the rest have just been turned into purple bunnies. I'm not sure if the latter is cute or just weird. Personally, I'm just ambling along and doing what achievements I can, there's no hope of me getting the Violet Proto-Drake this year. But, I want to know which part of Noblegarden are you folks are most looking forward to?%Poll-29523%
Noblegarden has begun!
It's 12:01 AM Pacific, which means that Noblegarden should now be live on all North American realms. Despite the fact that it's the middle of the night, people are absolutely packed into the starting zones on my home realm, so don't expect things will be easy just because it's late!Keep an eye on WoW Insider throughout the day, because we're going to be covering the holiday as much as we can. Our own Allison Robert started that already yesterday evening with a special edition of The Overachiever, covering the achievements of Noblegarden. She also has a basic FAQ of the holiday up, should you need it.A note to all of you bloggers out there, I plan to do a Noblegarden-themed special edition of The Daily Quest today as well. If you've written about the holiday and think our readers may be interested in what you have to say, send your link our way and we'll take a look!%Gallery-19015%
Noblegarden FAQ
UPDATE: This guide has been revised for Noblegarden 2010. Noblegarden 2009 should be going live on the European realms in a few hours and then start popping up on realms elsewhere over the next day. Because so much of the holiday has changed and we've fielded a lot of questions from players about what's going on, we decided to write up a quick FAQ to the new (and vastly improved!) holiday. Help! Where do I go to get started? If you're Alliance, head to Azure Watch, Dolanaar, Goldshire, or Kharanos. If you're Horde, head to Bloodhoof Village, Brill, Falconwing Square, or Razor Hill. What am I supposed to do when I get there? There will be questgivers in all of these towns who will give you a new daily, The Great Egg Hunt, and A Tisket, a Tasket, a Noblegarden Basket. The former will reward you with an item that will come in handy for an achievement (more on this in a little bit), but for both you're going to want to get started hunting down eggs in and around these level-5 towns. Once you've finished these quests, in order to get Noblegarden achievements done, you're going to need to be a dedicated egg hunter for a little while. What do the Brightly Colored Eggs look like? See the egg in the article's picture above? They're all variations on these colors and patterns and not generally tough to spot (although they are considerably smaller than the perspective in the picture makes them appear).
The OverAchiever: Guide to Noblegarden achievements
UPDATE: This guide has been revised for Noblegarden 2010. In honor of Noblegarden, we're running a special-edition OverAchiever today, dedicated to what you'll need for the meta-achievement Noble Gardener. Should you finish, not only do you get a spiffy new title, but you also get to check off another set of achievements toward What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, the yearlong achievement-palooza rewarding a 310% speed Violet Proto-Drake. Because Noblegarden has been extensively reworked, most of what you'll be doing this year is completely new, and some of this guide is going to be comprised of educated (or not-so-educated) guesses as to the difficulty of the achievements on the live realms, and tips on how to get them done. I'll let you know if I just plain don't know something or have to hazard a guess based on PTR information, but fortunately most of the holiday is pretty straightforward. We're only going to cover the achievements you need to worry about for the meta, as everything else you can achieve is really based on luck and doesn't count toward Noble Gardener. Let's get started!
Revamped Noblegarden revealed
The seasonal revamped extravaganza that is Noblegarden is due to start tomorrow and the Blues have revealed a little more about the new week-long festival. Yesterday night Zarhym posted on the official forums, revealing some new details as well as linking to a revamped festival page on the official site.The new Noblegarden (which starts tomorrow) has its origins in a druidic festival, but the modern peoples of Azeroth seem more interested in egg-hunting and scoffing chocolates. Focusing on the starter towns like Brill and Goldshire, it's one of those great festivals which is aimed at newer players as well as die-hard level 80s.Zarhym promises egg hunts and new daily quests as well the chance to find cool items within brightly coloured chocolate eggs. There's also a stack of new achievements (you know you want that Violet Proto-Drake) and if you get sick of eating chocolate you can also use them as currency to buy awesome Noblegarden swag.WoW Insider will have guides and galleries up tomorrow. Noblegarden runs through next Saturday.
Breakfast Topic: Your most anticipated Patch 3.1 feature
It's been a long time coming, but Patch 3.1 Secrets of Ulduar has arrived and with it comes a long list of shiny, shiny features. Ready for new content? It's got Ulduar, the prison for Yogg-Saron and his floating brain of death, plus more epic loot than all of The Burning Crusade raids. It comes in both 10-man and 25-man versions, and each boss has a Hard Mode for you crazy kids trying to get your hands on the new Legendary healing mace. Oh, and did I mention the new related Ulduar Achievements? Revamped Noblegarden with its own meta-Achievement? Dual specs? The Argent Tournament? Swimming mounts?! The list goes on and on.So tell us, which of the new features are you most looking forward to today.%Poll-29100% Patch 3.1 is live and it takes us into Ulduar, delivers us dual specs, and brings significant changes to all the classes! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1 and the official patch notes!
Noblegarden delayed
As we suspected might happen when we learned that Noblegarden was removed from the in-game calendar, the Easter-themed holiday has been delayed. CMs are quick to note that it will be implemented "at a future date," but it won't be going live on April 12 as usual. We were warned that this might happen, so it isn't a huge surprise. The likely reason for the delay is that patch 3.1 won't be ready in time, or at least that Blizzard isn't sure it will be - it would have to ship next Tuesday, April 7, to make it. 3.1 is a massive patch and I'm sure they don't want to rush it. Nethaera did mention in a reply that they are "still doing a little bug dance and squishing a few more before we decide [the patch is] ready to have its coming out party," which may imply that all that's left before the patch is ready is debugging. On the other hand, debugging can take a very long time, so we can't conclude too much from that. Whenever it does come out (probably sometime this month), we will be enjoying a new, expanded Noblegarden. It's going for one week (previously, it was just a single day), and there will be additional content for us to experience, as well as presumably a title (since it'll be part of What a Long, Strange Trip, everyone's favorite holiday meta-achievement).
Noblegarden removed from in-game calendar
Thanks to the astute eyes of reader Jadissa, we can report that Noblegarden is no longer present on the in-game calendar. This is likely a clear indicator that the in-game world event is getting pushed back. Based on what we know already (that it will be part of other achievements), it should not be assumed that the event was removed.We've spoke about the upcoming changes to Noblegarden before: it might get delayed, and it will be part of the overall world event achievement What a Long, Strange Trip.There has been no indication from Blizzard when exactly it will start up, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it go live towards the end of the month. We'll have to wait and see when this start date is, and we'll be sure to announce it here on WoW Insider as soon as we know.This is not an April Fools joke.
