tabards
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Ask a Beta Tester: More mounts, raid gear, and emotes
We have a few more questions about the passenger mounts today, but a lot of Mammoth-related questions are repeats of ones we've answered previously. So if you still have a question about them after today, I recommend checking the last few editions of Ask a Beta Tester to see if it's been answered already. Now, let's get started with Iceman's question...Are the flying passenger mounts? Ground mounts are lovely and all, but once everyone takes to the skies will they become useless to everyone with cold weather flying?I haven't seen any flying passenger mounts yet. Whether the passenger ground mounts are 'useless' or not with Cold Weather Flying is really up to the individual. You can still use it in the old world, you can still use the Mammoth's vendors. There are also places like Lake Wintergrasp where flying is turned off permanently so you don't 'cheat' and skip over all of the fighting to get from Point A to Point B. You and a bunch of your friends charging people down in a huge Mammoth is sweet.If you don't care about any of that stuff though, yeah it could be seen as useless. It's an optional purchase, though. You don't need to spend the money if you don't want to do so.
Ask a Beta Tester: Championing clarification, raiding, and more
Quite a few people wanted some clarification on the Championing system mentioned in previous editions of Ask a Beta Tester, so I'll try to do just that: The Championing system is not retroactive, and by that I mean old factions are not included in it. You can't use this to grind Orgrimmar or Honor Hold or whatever in level 80 dungeons. It only applies to Wrath reputations, and so far, not even all of those. It only counts towards the 'big four' of Northrend as far as I can see. Those reputations are: The Kirin Tor, The Argent Crusade, The Knights of the Ebon Blade, and the Wyrmrest Accord. You should be able to get really, really high reputation with the Valiance Expedition/Warsong Offensive just through questing, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Tabard for them soon, too. The little people like the Kalu'ak are, so far, not included in this system.Read on for more answers to your questions!
Ask a Beta Tester: Baron Rivendare, heirloom items, and more
Remember a little while ago on Ask a Beta Tester, someone asked if Jaina Proudmoore has any role in Wrath? And I said no, she has no new story involvement? Well, a recent beta patch made a fool out of me. She has a role, it's epic, and no she doesn't make out with Arthas you horrible, horrible people.And with that out of the way, let's get on with the questions. Shadgalaul asked...What about the whole dual-spec situation? Was this implemented, or did it just fade out and get scrapped? This hasn't been implemented yet, and nobody is sure whether it's on hold or been scrapped. It seems like instead of giving dual specs, they're trying to make one spec be able to hold its own. For example, tanks are getting higher DPS so they can go off and do their quests without wanting to hang themselves. It's not a perfect solution and there are still a few balance issues, but I bet that if they shelved the dual spec thing, this is what they tried instead.We may still see dual specs in the future, but we haven't so far.
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Breakfast Topic: What tabard do you wear?
So I have to admit, one of the most annoying parts of Beta testing my Death Knight is that I don't have access to any decent tabards. It's annoying, and I feel almost naked without one, but I don't have the time to grind exalted with any factions. Thinking about that got me thinking about my tabard choices for my other characters. Of course, in Wrath, tabards are going to get all mixed up a bit, what with that new championing system, but I'll probably keep my favorite tabards on hand for swapping in when I'm not grinding faction. Actually, I may just tend toward my guild's tabard in Northrend, since our guild's backstory is intertwined with Northrend itself. Besides, I like to show a little guild pride when I can, and it's been a while since I wore a guild tabard on any of my alliance 70s. Currently, my Druid wears the Cenarion Expedition tabard. Not only does the green and brown go well with his leather, but it's the closest there is to a Cenarion Circle tabard. For my Dwarf Hunter, it's an Argent Dawn tabard, since she's an especially zealous enemy of the Scourge. For my Warlock, the Scryer's Tabard, because he admires the Blood Elf race and (what he sees as) their dedication to knowledge at any price. So why do your characters wear the tabard they wear? Do you plan to do any tabard swapping for Wrath of the Lich King?
WoW TCG Loot gives away a few special Tabards
We've mentioned WoW TCG Loot before -- they track prices of those TCG Loot cards, and while I don't think I'd ever pay money for an ingame item, if you want to, their price guides are pretty invaluable (not to mention that they provide a helpful directory of all the cards released so far).And now they're hooking up some lucky folks with some TCG loot of their own, specifically some of those tabards that got released a while back. Usually, items like the Tabard of the Void and the Tabard of the Arcane are only available through Upper Deck's points system, but WoW TCG Loot is giving three Tabards to folks who enter on their contest page. And even if you don't get a tabard, they're also randomly giving away a paper airplane kit to one lucky winner.Entering is as easy as telling them why you want it and putting your email address in (they say they don't send unsolicited email, but as always, enter your info at your own discretion), and you've got to enter before August 17th to be a part of the contest. Good luck to everyone who enters!
Officers' Quarters: My pre-Wrath wish list
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.When World of Warcraft launched, a guild was a chat channel, a tabard, and some very basic UI features like ranks and the message of the day. It's nearly four years later, and very little thus far has been added to the game to help guilds. So far we've gotten one major feature: guild banks. It was almost absurd that banks weren't part of the feature set for guilds when the game went live, and the hoops guilds jumped through to stash and distribute their important items were equally absurd. So while banks were a welcome addition, I wouldn't call their implementation a step forward so much as a step to catch up with what's adequate. Now we're getting calendars -- yet another essential feature that should have been part of the UI since Day 1. I don't want to sound unappreciative. I'm hopeful that this feature will be sound enough to use and I'll be thrilled if we can dump Guild Event Manager or Group Calendar for something that's built into the software (with a grateful farewell /salute to the makers of those mods!). But in terms of running a guild using in-game features, we're still in bare-bones territory here. Is it possible that Blizzard has more surprises up their sleeve for officers in Wrath? Here's what I'd love to see them implement:
Saving Space: Should tabards be next?
Blizzard really does seem to have finally realized that can give us a few more decent ways to save space without breaking anything or trivializing the game. The new vanity pet and mount skill system has done wonders to clear up bag space on my characters on Beta, and I just can't wait to be able to do it on live. Of course, there's tons more stuff that a good, solid pack rat can keep in their bank to take up space, from cool looking quest rewards to old gear sets to tabards. Tabards are an especially massive space investment. Even with just the basic battleground and unique event tabards, we're talking at least half a good bag taken up in the bank, and that's with deleting all the easily re-obtainable tabards to save space.
Certain old keys, pets, and tabards to be retrievable in Wrath
One of the nice things about Wrath is the consolidation of bag space. With mounts and pets becoming skills instead of items, it'll free up a lot of bag space for us pack rats. Unfortunately, for now, we still need that bag space, and to get enough of it, some of us have been forced to delete pets, tabards, and keys that we've otherwise outgrown. But if you're lamenting the loss of your Miniwing, or if you're having second thoughts about deleting that Battle Tabard of the Defilers, take heart. Tigole's announced that Wrath of the Lich King will include a way to recover deleted unique tabards, keys, and vanity pets. For keys, you'll talk to a locksmith, for pets, a stable master, and for tabards, a tabard vendor (likely the ones in the capital town halls). This only works on unique, one-per-character items, of course, so if you deleted a rare drop, you'll still have to go farm it again. It also doesn't appear to be currently implemented on Beta, but hopefully it is soon so we can test it and make sure all the right unique stuff can be recovered again -- I'm hoping they include non-key keys like the Scepter of Celebras. In the meantime, it's nice to see that Blizzard's continuing to allow us just a little bit more leeway in character customization and giving us pack rats more options to keep the stuff we love. Next stop: Player housing with item display cases! Hey, I can dream.
Personal Tabards may be a possibility in Wrath
A lot of us have probably had this problem before: We join a guild, and we like it. It has the right combination of people we like (or can tolerate), interests we share, and or what have you, and we're doing fine. Unfortunately, there is the problem. The tabard sucks. That whole green crying bear on pink background thing is just so tacky, and does not go well with any of our stuff. Sure, you can replace it with one of the factional tabards, in theory, but not until 70, and not until you grind exalted, and most of those tabards don't look much better anyway. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go design your own personal tabard at your local town hall instead? That may be coming. In a thread by Beta tester Talid, Tigole said that the idea of personal tabards was actually pretty cool, and that he'd look into it. Yeah, admittedly, that means personal tabards could be in before Wrath goes live, or it means they could be a year off, or they could still discard the whole thing. Still, it often seems to this WoW Insider staff member that getting Blizzard to agree to any major type of personal character customization is like pulling teeth, so seeing Tigole act favorably toward this is pretty exciting. It'd be a great gold sink or achievement reward for Wrath.
Wrath storage solutions
By now you have surely heard of the new Achievements system set up for Wrath of the Lich King. While this will finally give collectors an extra incentive and reward, players are a bit worried about their bag space. It was announced recently that non-combat pets and mounts would take up no bag space in Wrath, and instead, the item that currently houses the pet will serve to teach you a spell for summoning the pet, and then disappear. While this is a huge weight off of the shoulders of many players, when reading through the current list of Achievements, one begins to wonder where all of their tabards, battleground tokens, badges, holiday items, epics, trinkets, and the like are going to go. Although we don't have information regarding the storage of every item we'll soon be collecting, Tigole made the following statement:Your bags will be ok. I promise. Pets, Mounts, Heroic Badges, BG Tokens are all getting storage space.I wonder how badges and tokens are getting storage space. Surely, they cannot be turned into spells, and I don't have room for bags specifically dedicated to only one or the other, so I'm definitely interested to know what they have up their sleeves, and if any other collectible items will get similar treatment.
UDE Tabards delayed until August
If you remember way back to the end of June, we told you about the new tabards available for purchase using your UDE points from the WoW Trading Card Game. At the time, Upper Deck said the new tabards would be included with patch 2.4.3. Well, 2.4.3 is here, but the tabards are sadly not. According to UDE_Patrick, the plan for releasing the tabards is now a little different. The first tabard will be available on August 1st, and each additional tabard will be added one at a time over "several months." He doesn't really specify why this change has been made, or even which tabard will be first. Some of us will obviously be disapponted (like tipster Donna, who already has ample points to pick up one for her, and one for her boyfriend). Some of us will have a little more time to pick up more points in before the release, and maybe score some of the cool loot cards from the new set.
New tabards from WoW TCG
Tabards have been a fairly frequent subject lately. There are the summer-themed tabards you get from the Shards of Ahune, which are a part of the Midsummer festivities. And, of course, there was the "glitch" that may have revealed a Legendary tabard. The World of Warcraft trading card game is getting in on the action by letting you purchase tabards with your UDE points. The ability to purchase these tabards will be included with patch 2.4.3, according to the Upper Deck. Each of the six tabards are all variations on the same skin or pattern, with the only real difference being a change to the color pallette. This is the Tabard of the Void on the right. They don't say exactly how many UDE points each will cost yet, and ask us to stay tuned for details. If you don't know, you get UDE (Upper Deck Entertainment) points by purchasing UDE products. I know, that's a stretch. Eeach WoW TCG pack you buy has a card with points on it. So far, you get a 100 point card with each booster pack. We'll let you know if and when we hear more about how many packs you have to buy to get a tabard. %Gallery-26114%
Study shows Horde have advantage for wearing red
All the red tabards on the Horde side really annoy me. How come everyone picks a red tabard? Isn't it enough that the Horde flag is red? Can't we have as much variation in our color schemes as we do in our tusk/horn/pigtail configurations? Red is so 2007.Or maybe it's not. A study published in the Cyberpsychology & Behavior journal determined that teams who wore red while playing Unreal Tournament 2004 won 55% of the time over teams that wore blue. Another study from 2005 showed that wearing red gave an advantage to athletes in the 2004 Olympics, too. However, I'm not sure I buy the reasons given for this advantage, though. The neuroscientist who studied the Unreal Tournament matches thinks that because men turn red when they're angry this color acts as a psychological distractor. Sounds like some reaching, if you ask me.Now, of course, in WoW we don't always wear the colors of our faction, but the predominance of red tabards on the Horde side and blue ones on the Alliance side may just put a Brutal Gladiator's Painsaw in the hands of those who claim the Horde has an advantage in the battlegrounds. But only if everyone wears red or blue. Hm. I wonder if I can change my guild's tabard color from green to red...[Thanks, Avadann Kedeth.]
Breakfast Topic: Collectibles
As I was perusing the very first review of Grand Theft Auto 4 yesterday, I noted that the "collectibles" in that game are going to be pretty intriguing. While a lot of collectible items in games (say, all the packages in the previous GTA games, or the flags in Assassin's Creed) are fairly superfluous, I find that some (like the orbs in Crackdown and the billboards and jumps in Burnout Paradise) actually make the game more fun -- while traveling through the game world, you can keep an eye out for extra stuff to do and see.World of Warcraft has never really jumped in on that idea, however. Obviously, there are plenty of collecting quests, but usually they're for killing mobs. And there are plenty of things to collect in the game -- noncombat pets, tabards, and mounts, and so on -- but none of them really give you a reward when you find a certain number of them, or give you bonuses based on how many you've picked up.Is that a good thing or a bad thing? For me, hiding some fun, optional collectibles (and giving small rewards based on just finding them) in a world as lush as Azeroth would make exploring an already great environment better. But I'm sure some would see it as a cheap tactic to make people hunt for widgets. What do you think?
Blizzard needs to steal character customization Ideas from other MMORPGs
The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough. The idea came to the front of my mind a few weeks back when I was visiting my brother. We played EverQuest together, but when it came time to move on from that game, he (and most of our EQ guild) chose Everquest 2, and I chose WoW. So, of course, he ribs me about it quite often, and since I was visiting, he decided to load up EQ2 and show me what I was "missing." Now to be honest, I'm still a bigger fan of WoW, but that's a subject for a different article. One thing I will say for EQ2 is that I was very impressed with the wider range of options to customize your character and show off your character's accomplishments. There's a few ideas related to character customization from EQ2 and other games that I'd really like Blizzard to continue emulating in future patches and in the WoTLK expansion that I believe would deepen the game experience for me and my friends, and for many other players as well.
Where are all the titles?
Franco on Aman'thul has a request that I wholeheartedly agree with: Bring back a way to earn the old PvP ranks and titles.In fact, I think Blizzard has dropped the ball on titles completely. While they promised us lots of new mounts and tabards and have more or less delivered on those, where are the titles? That seems like the easiest thing to implement, and yet the only new titles I can think of are from PvP (doesn't the Skyguard confer a title as well, or am I imaging that?).So why doesn't Blizzard get creative with titles? Every faction should have a title that goes with it, and conquering raid instances should grant titles as well ("Gruul the Dragonkiller Killer"). I'd even like to see titles for less than heroic events-- falling to your death a certain number of times should grant you a title ("Heir of Icarus"?), or even deserting a battleground a certain number of times. There are tons and tons of fun titles that Blizzard could give out, and it would add a whole new and easily implemented element to the game. There's no reason to force titles on anyone, but the way things are implemented now, people can choose to carry around any title they want (or none at all). Why didn't Blizzard go crazy with putting a ton of creative titles into the game?As far as I'm concerned, Blizzard just plain dropped the ball here. Sure, maybe they're a little leery about bringing the old PvP ranks back so soon, but they put that title system into the game for a reason, Drysc-- use it!
News of titles and tabards
Player Narci of Nordrassil thinks the game needs a little more flavor. More cool looking tabards with clickable particle effects and titles earned through means other than PvP. CM Vaneras agrees.Vaneras confirmed that more titles will be introduced into the game, though he didn't say what titles, when or how they will be earned. He also said that older PvP titles will be reintroduced into the game, but couldn't give us a timeline on when that will happen.As for tabards, he couldn't confirm any plans to add more to game. But he did express the personal opinion that he would like to see more. More designs, more ways to quest, craft and loot them. And, let's face it, more tabards is good thing to cover up our mismatched visible armor.What do you think of more titles and tabards? What titles would you like to see? What tabard designs would be cool? Should you get a tabard for killing Illidan or some other large accomplishment in game?
It came from the Blog: Vote for your favorite tabard!
First off, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in our tabard design contest! We have some excellent entries, which the WoW Insider staff has combed through for the best of the best -- and now it's your turn! I know we had a tough time narrowing things down to ten finalists -- every entry would have made a lovely tabard. (If you don't believe me, check out our gallery of entries, including commentary from some of the designers.)Take a look at our finalists and pick the one you'd like to see as the official It came from the Blog tabard! Polls will be open for 48 hours, so you have until Monday at 9:00 AM EST to get your vote in. And remember, the top three winners get to take home a "I'm Only Here Because My Server Is Down" t-shirt! Voting, after the jump!
Tabards: A guide to cool things to hang over your pants
Tabards can say a lot about your character. They can be a way to show pride in your guild's ferocity or skill, or a way to show that you have a twisted, sadistic guild leader who makes everyone wear a pink fuzzy bunny tabard. They can proclaim your skill at PvP, your exalted status with certain factions, or your luck in the WoW card game. They can even show that you were a hero at the Battle of the Dark Portal or that you've earned a somewhat misleading "victory against Illidan Stormrage." What kind of tabards can you get in WoW? Read (and look) on ...
New tabards are all the rage
I play on a number of servers, and a fashion is spreading through them -- players are donning new tabards everywhere from Ahn'Qiraj to Zul'Gurub. The two items, Tabard of the Argent Dawn (left) and Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade, surfaced in the last patch.The Argent Dawn tabard is obtainable as a result of the invasion event. Initially, you have to take ten Necrotic Runes to the Argent Quartermaster at Light's Hope Chapel. Finishing this quest will activate an Argent Quartermaster, and you can then trade more Necrotic Runes for items like mana potions and Consecrated Sharpening Stones (+AP against undead). For ten runes, the tabard is yours. I found this tedious to solo, but when grouped with a mage and a couple of others the runes flow heavily.
