oracles
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Is height a requirement for a serious character?
I'm 5 feet 3 inches tall. When I wear heels, I call them my tall shoes because they make me tall. Not taller, because that would indicate that there were some degree of tallness to begin with. Trying on platform shoes is an exercise in seeing the world through the eyes of someone tall enough to see all the things without standing on their tiptoes. My kitchen is organized by "things I need", "things I don't use often," and "things I put on the top shelf because I'll never use them anyway." There is an upper third of my closet that is nothing but stuff I should save but will never pull out and look at in at least five years. That said, it's not bad being short, either. I never hit my head on door frames or overhead lights. Low ceilings don't particularly bother me, aside from design aesthetic. I can fit into literally any car on the market; there's never a problem having to squish my legs under a steering wheel. Plane seats have plenty of room for my legs, which is great on long flights. I have smaller hands, so my dad constantly asks me to pull things out of tight spaces, thread needles, or mess around with teeny-tiny wires and screws. That said, it's continually kind of weird to look at all the short races in video games and see characters that aren't taken particularly seriously.
The OverAchiever: Mountain o' Mounts in Northrend
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we continue the Mountain o' Mounts grind in Northrend. Bad news, folks: Once you've made your way through your own faction's basic ground mounts and the array of options available in Outland, you've largely exhausted the supply of factions that will offer you tons of mounts just because they like you. The closest you'll get is the Argent Tournament, which offers lots of mounts but a relatively long grind for most of them, even if you're already exalted with your home factions. Past this point, count on doing reputation grinds for only a few mounts at most. However, the bite doesn't feel as bad in Northrend, in no small part because Dalaran and Argent Tournament quartermasters will sell you Commendation badges for the Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, Sons of Hodir, and Wyrmrest Accord in return for 16 justice points. Each badge gives you 520 reputation, and it's a great way to bleed off extra JPs you're sitting on, if spending lots of time in Northrend isn't on your to-do list. Also read: Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts and Mountain O' Mounts in Outland
Breakfast Topic: An earnest letter
Dear Oracles; For the better part of a year and a half, I've diligently run your errands. I've collected thousands of shiny objects for your weird little god, killed legions of "puppy men" in your name, and yet you insist on denying me the green protodrake. I've spent enough gold on eggs to single-handedly fund the feeding and care of your young for the next several years, and yet you choose to withhold the one item I covet. I'm sorry, but you've brought this upon yourselves. I have decided that since your benevolence doesn't extend far enough to grant me a dragon of verdant green, I will no longer be performing your menial tasks. That's right, I've taken up with the puppy men. You may have noticed this when I began my campaign of wholesale slaughter against the Sparktouched Village. I will continue the murdering of your people until I'm satisfied that my message has been received, at which point I may, in my benevolence, return to collecting baubles for you. It would be in your best interests when I do so to give me the drake I've been after. Rather than blame me for my actions, I suggest you take a long, hard look at Geen over in Rainspeaker Canopy. This is his fault. Sincerely, Soon-to-be Mercenary P.S. I suggest you think quickly. I'm in ICC-25 gear. I'm tired of random number generators, especially when I've been trying to get something for more than a few months. How about you guys? Do you enjoy grinding for that inexplicably rare drop, or does the very thought of spending more than a few days trying to obtain something make you feel a little green? What's the one thing that's eluded you, no matter how hard you've farmed for it?
Mrghlllghh! Real-life murlocs?
It seems that Azeroth and Earth have more in common than pop culture references and noise pollution. Meet the handfish, an Earth-dwelling fish found in the waters of southeastern Australia that is oddly reminiscent our favorite aquatic Azerothians, the murlocs. As their name implies, handfish have hand-shaped fins which they use to walk on the ocean floor instead of swimming. (Check out this video if you want to see one ambling about.) According to National Geographic, the handfish are no new discovery on Earth, but a recent scientific review evaluating the known populations of the fish have identified nine new species. The new species were determined on a number of traits, such as the number of vertebrae and fin rays, coloration and more. Like murlocs, handfish are a scientific mystery in terms of behavior and biology, but unlike murlocs, this is due to their low population and small geographic occurrence. They are considered critically endangered, something Azeroth's adventurers only wish they could say about murlocs. As many of our tipsters have pointed out, the handfish certainly do resemble WoW murlocs in a way, especially when you look at all the color varieties. I wonder what kind of sounds they make or if they can hold anything with those little hands? You know, like little sharpened spears? Perhaps Ghostcrawler, marine expert that he is, has some thoughts on how capable these little guys are or at least some insight on any connections that might exist between them and the murlocs of Azeroth. Check out our murloc gallery and let us know what you think! %Gallery-93799%
The World of Warcraft in numbers
Business Management has a really interesting graphic up (that they say came partly from Eurogamer.net, but I didn't see it over there) that breaks down WoW "by the numbers." It features an interesting series of stats about the game, in what I call an Oatmeal-style format, everything from number of players and items (30,000) to number of locations (1400) and the most commonly looted item every day (Frostweave). I think these stats all came from a few different places -- from a talk given at Austin GDC last year, to the toplist over on the official WoW site (of course, that chart is constantly updated, so Onyxia wasn't always the deadliest mob, and Frostweave wasn't always the most looted. But it is cool to see all of the numbers stacked up in a row in such a stylish way. And 3.6 million pieces of Saronite Ore turned into 3 million Saronite bars? If that's true, why am I paying so much for it at the AH? 192 quests completed per second is pretty wild, too. That's like three entire Oracles reputation grinds (give or take a few dailies), all completed in this second. And this one. And this one.
Ask a Faction Leader: High-Shaman Rakjak
WoW.com's prestige in the community has afforded us the opportunity to speak with major Azerothian leadership figures on any subject, and we're letting you, the reader, Ask a Faction Leader! We recently spoke to Regent-Lord Lor'themar Theron, interim leader of the blood elves, and he shed light on several key issues, including requisition paperwork, small business ownership, visitor permits, and class confusion. In this installment of Ask a Faction Leader, we'll be sitting with High Shaman Rakjak, leader of the Frenzyheart wolvar tribe. Our first reader question: Hi, High-Shaman, Like many, I ended up slaughtering many of your people on behalf of the Oracles to get a drake. By my estimates, that's at least 1000 people killing 50 of your tribesmen every day. And yet you had no shortage of troops when we came to do it all again the next day! What's the secret to your fertility, and have you considered selling it? Corusis Dwarf Paladin Cenarion Circle Rakjak responds: Rakjak like how dwarf think. How can dwarf be as vi ... viri ... be as good at pup-making as wolvar? DWARF WISHES HE KNEW. Rakjak tell. OR WILL RAKJAK?
The Queue: Spider Pig
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. Today's listening music for the Queue is Spider Pig. Don't ask why. It just is. We answer a few good question today, so read on for the discussion. Also, don't forget to leave your questions in the comments or tweet them to @wowinsider. If we don't answer your question keep asking, we'll eventually get to it. Good times! On with the show... Psiwave asks... "Do you think Cataclysm is really just a sneaky way to release WoW2 without us noticing? A full talent rework for classes, a rebuild of the world for all levels of play and a reworking of stat allocation to name but a few changes. I get the feeling that Cataclysm will play more like a sequel than an expansion."
Breakfast Topic: So what do you think of patch 3.2?
It's been an interesting week in Azeroth with Call of the Crusade finally landing on live servers. Patch 3.2 did bring with it another painful bout of maintenance for everyone involved that seemed to go one forever. However its offerings were certainly plentiful! After an age of waiting for the European realms to pop up, I appeared in Dalaran to find most of the server surrounding Matron Aria in an attempt to get the Wolvar/Oracle orphans (I went with Kekek, if you must know), the rest were swarming the Argent Tournament grounds and pushing and shoving to get into the new instance. Top of my list was to try out the new Druid forms and then get my hair colored. The rest of my guild made a beeline for "the new place" (aka the Coliseum) or moaning about the buffing/nerfing of such and such a class. So, constant readers, what did you do first? More importantly, what do you think of the patch? I admit I'm still sitting on the fence, there were some nice additions but I'm still a heck of a lot more interested in patch 3.3. Tell us in the usual fashion by dropping your thoughts in the box below.
TurpsterVision: Northrend Children's Week
We can't believe it either – Turpster has been let loose on WoW.com to bring you videos from in and around the World of Warcraft! You've heard him on the WoW Insider Show, and now see him on TurpsterVision right here on WoW.com.First up a bit of housekeeping; thanks to all of you who took part in last week's contest -- over 500 of you! A winner has been chosen via the highly technical method of a /random in-game roll. Sorry to the others of you who didn't win this time, but who knows, maybe in the future we'll have another giveaway on TurpsterVision!This week we take a trip on the PTR and experience the new Northrend Children's Week, doing the impossible and completing both sides of the event to show you what is on offer. Lesley Smith posted about the event before and we even put up a handy gallery if you would like to take a closer look at some of the quest text.
Patch 3.2 PTR: New Children's Week quests revealed
Bornakk hinted about this awhile back and we knew what the reward pets were going to be but when this years Children's Week came and went with no new content, a lot of players were a tad disappointed. Well now that the PTR is up in order to test patch 3.2, testers can find the Northrend incarnation of Children's Week in full swing and that means lots of shiny new quests.The new quests see you taking around a Wolvar orphan named Kekek or little Roo of the Oracles to meet certain famous people or visit various landmarks in Northend like Wrymrest Temple, Vordrassil, Dalaran and the Bronze Dragonshrine. You then have to take them to a toy shop in Dalaran and buy them each a gift. If you've ever done the classic or Outland Children's Week quests then you'll know the drill and it still looks like a lot of fun. Check out our gallery below to find out more about what the quests involve. %Gallery-66639% Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
The long wait for a Green Proto-drake
The WoW CMs continue their polling of rare and hard-to-find items: first, we got queried on Mr. Pinchy, and now the forums have a poll about that more recent bounty, the Reins of the Green Proto-drake. As you probably already know, you have to first get revered with the Murloc faction of the Oracles, and then you have to buy a "Mysterious Egg" once every seven days from their quartermaster... that probably hasn't yet given you the mount you want. Personally, I've gotten plenty of Aged Yolks and quite a few noncombat pets, but not my Proto-drake.And my experience is hardly singular -- according to the poll, a full 55% of respondents have not yet opened up their Cracked Eggs to find the mount. 4% found it on their first try (bastards -- that number seems incredibly high), and almost 14% went for the joke "Oracles?" answer, or maybe just have no idea what the question is about. Obviously this is hardly a scientific poll, so we can't calculate drop rates or anything like that (most database sites put the drop at around 2%, which means on average 50 eggs to a drake, or almost a year of farming), but it's pretty clear that the Proto-drake is a supremely rare commodity.
The Queue: rm -fR "World of Warcraft" && echo "Oops!"
Welcome back to The Queue, Wow.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Many thanks to Sacco for covering The Queue last Friday. For some odd reason he decided to start drawing this weekend, and you can see one of his drawings above. For the other image you'll have to check out our Twitter page (it wasn't done when today's edition of The Queue was written).If you're wondering about the title, we're not going to talk about the mistake Adam made over the weekend when he was setting up WoW on his fresh dual-boot linux install. It's just really not worth going over how he managed to delete his WoW directory that has lasted him since pre-BC. Not at all.Remember that The Queue is here to answer your questions, and you can either leave them in a comment in this article or contact us with them. So without further ado...Swampsquach asked... "When you do the repeatable Frenzyheart/Oracle quest in Sholazar Basin, does it have any effect on the current rep you have with either one? For example, if I get revered with the Oracle's and then do that quest but pick Oracle's again, is that just free gold? Or does it set your rep back to honored?"
The OverAchiever: Lil' Game Hunter
Every week The OverAchiever gives advice, walkthroughs and guides on completing your latest Achievement obsession. This week we look at how to track down 75 critters with a minimum of pain.At some point in your pet collecting career, it's best just to give up and admit you're obsessed. When Lil' Game Hunter went live with 3.0.8, I started looking at my options to get to 75 pets. Most people shouldn't have too much difficulty reaching 50 (Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart), but 75 is a little unnerving. I don't have any of the Collector's Edition, Trading Card Game, or fan event pets, and I also play Horde. That leaves me without access to the Sprite Darter Hatchling, and on a lot of realms also makes it harder and more expensive to get the White Kitten, on top of being more expensive to get the lion's share of the faction-specific pets (which, naturellement, are Alliance). What's up with the Horde and pet hate? Sheesh. So that was somewhat worrying, and I approach this achievement with one question in mind: is it possible to do this without having dropped money on CE, TCG, or event pets?
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.
BigRedKitty: Crocolisks?
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. The Oracles have some nice stuff for hunters, the least of which is a pretty trinket, the Oracle Talisman of Ablution. But there's more to the Oralces than loot and a cool hipster named Lafoo. (Don't mention Moodle to us; he's a cad and very ungentlemanly.) You are invited to download the full-sized version (82MB) of this movie here.As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time! Nobody covers raid Hunters like BRK. Looking for more Hunter goodness? Check out our non-raid Hunter column, Scattered Shots or the WoW Insider Directory of Hunter Guides.
Oracles or the Frenzyheart, which did you choose?
Dear readers, I come to you with a humble request: Sate my curiosity. Those of you who have leveled high enough to reach Sholazar Basin, which of the two factions did you choose? The Oracles or the Frenzyheart?I know for sure that there will be more Oracles than Frenzyheart out there, the gorlocs are just much more tolerable than the softknuckle jabbing bastards, and their Mysterious Egg is far cooler than anything the wolvar offer. What I'm interested in seeing is just how big that rift is right now. Of course, our readership here isn't indicative of the entire playerbase, but I think the numbers will be interesting regardless.So which is it for you? The big-tongues or the puppymen? What made you decide to pick who you did?%Poll-24814%
The Queue: New Year's Eve edition
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.New Year's Eve! Hooray! Are you doing anything special tonight? I totally am. I'm going to play an alt. Gasp! Shock! No seriously, I have no idea what I'll be doing. Right now though, I'm answering questions!JLocke asked...I know the next big patch to hit will have Uldar raid in it, but are there any other cool things attached to it that we know of?
The Queue: The loot blues
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.Merry No Maintenance Day, everyone! Let's not waste it and jump right into things. Chilblain asked...When my guild does 25-mans, it's not uncommon to have 2-3 Priests, 2 Warlocks and 2-3 Mages. Nearly one third of the entire raid is all rolling on Cloth armor, yet we go entire evenings where not a single piece drops.If Blizzard insists on the ridiculous notion that cloth should be all things to all people, have they addressed the poor drop rate in comparison to other items? Our Resto Druids and Shaman are all decked out in 213 and while our Priests are still healing in Heroic blues.
The Queue: The spirit of betrayal
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.Today, I'll cut the crap and not pretend to be funny, for your sake. Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow, the gloves come off. I will pretend to be absolutely hilarious until the cows come home.matthew asked... So I did a quest in Sholazar to kill Artruis and accidentally changed from Oracle to Frenzyheart. How exactly do I change back to oracle because I want to get the egg?
Shifting Perspectives: Faction gear for Druids, part II - Argent Crusade
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we continue our examination of the faction gear available for Druids in Wrath and have a serious conversation with our aesthetic conscience regarding the hideous Kirin Tor tabard: "Is the tanking staff we get at Revered worth the humiliation of wearing that purple monstrosity?" The answer, dear readers, is no.In the first part, we covered Druid gear available with the Tuskarr, the Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition, Wyrmrest Accord, Kirin Tor, and Oracles/Frenzyheart. This week, we're going to finish with a look at the Knights of the Ebon Blade, the Argent Crusade, and the Sons of Hodir. You're unlikely to encounter any of these three factions while leveling between 70 and 74, but all three figure prominently in mid to late '70's leveling. Read on for the last three factions, but if you want a quick set of links to each individual faction, here you go: Kalu'ak and Horde Expedition/Alliance Vanguard Guide Wyrmrest Accord and the Kirin Tor Guide The Frenzyhearts and the Oracles Guide The Argent Crusade Guide The Knights of the Ebon Blade and Sons of Hodir Guide
