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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.
Official: Dalaran Children's Week quests not repeatable this year
Blizzard has officially stated that the issue with not being able to complete the Dalaran Children's Week quests this year, if you did them last year, will not be resolved before the holiday is over. They are not saying this is how it is supposed to work, but that they cannot fix it in time. Bornakk -- Dalaran Children's Week Quest Line Issue We are aware of the issue that is currently affecting the Children's Week quest line in Dalaran which does not allow players who have completed the quest line last year to take part in it again this year. We do not currently have a fix planned to address this issue at this point in time. source Bashlok -- Dalaran Children's Week Quest Line Issue To clarify, this issue won't be able to be resolved for Children's Week this year. If you completed the quest previously you won't be able to complete it again for the other pet this year. source
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?
WoW Insider Show Episode 102: Stupid big-tongues
We had a terrific time (as always) on the live podcast last Saturday afternoon, as Zach Yonzon, Mike "Belfaire" Sacco, and Turpster and I sat down to talk about the most popular stories in the World of Warcraft. Of course patch 3.2 was at the forefront of our minds, and we chatted about what each of us was most interested in, from the new BG to the 5-man Trial instance. And we got a little bit of discussion in about the various classes and roles they play in instances.Of course we answered your emails as well -- we talked with Michael Sacco about the "Additional instances can't be launched" issue that's going around (that I got hit with for the first time yesterday, actually), and a reader emailed us about BRK's gun -- so awesome to see our friend get recognized, and deservedly so. It was an excellent show, in my humble opinion, and a great way to squeeze a week's worth of WoW news into just one hour.This week, the podcast will be at a special time -- we'll be going live on Thursday at 1pm Eastern. That's a little earlier than we usually do it, but it should give our friends overseas a chance to tune in when they might not have been able to before (and if you can't make it live, don't worry, the recording will be in iTunes soon after). See you then!Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
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.
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 Queue: Mutant turtles are greater than boys in spandex
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. Adam Holisky will be your host today. On this Monday morning I have come to realize one important thing: a picture is worth a thousand words.Clearly, TMNT > Power Rangers. For shame Alex, for shame!Romir asked..."I just switched my off spec for my Death Knight to a tank spec. However I've never really tanked before, what would be the best heroic to go into to learn to tank? I have an uncrittable set I got from raids/off-spec rolls. I know most of the dungeons, I just need practice. Which would be best to start in?"
The Queue: Better than Bejeweled
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Good afternoon, ladies and gents! Let's waste no time and jump right in today, shall we?Horris asked..."I have a question. What's with the sudden change from red to yellow sockets between T7 and T8 for warrior tanks?"Sockets have always been notorious for not being the optimal color for certain specs and classes. T7 seemed like the odd duck to me in that case, where the sockets were generally pretty good for most classes. Now they're back to being sort of weird like has almost always been the case.
Bornakk winks at new Children's Week content
Bornakk, you sneaky little... Over on the forums, when someone brings up the PTR achievements we've seen for the newly revamped Children's Week, he just kind of snickers and avoids the topic. And while that may mean that he's just ignoring the issue, I'll take to mean something a little more exciting: there's more in store for Children's Week than we think this year. Which isn't much of a surprise: we already know that there'll likely be a Gurloc and a Wolvar orphan added to the game (along with pets for each of those groups), and there's no mention of any quests involving those guys on the PTR yet. The original complaint in the forum was about "good" RP characters having to do evil things for achievements (haven't we made it plenty clear that achievements are optional?), so maybe we'll even see some more quests for all kinds of players.At any rate, expect new things to do during this year's Children's Week. We're sure Kisirani and her team are dreaming up all kinds of crazy things for us.
Shifting Perspectives: Faction Gear from Oracles and Frenzyheart
THE ORACLES:Who am I kidding? You're here for the Mysterious Egg, same as everybody else. But along the way -- or possibly beyond it -- you might pick up a few good pieces. Glitterscale Wrap -- Revered, Level 78: Surprisingly good melee belt. Armor penetration prejudices it toward cat DPS although it's fine as a threat stat for bear, and it's otherwise solid. At 80 you'll want to have Trollwoven Girdle crafted for tanking (and possibly kitty if you're not doing so hot on +expertise from other pieces) if you don't get Jorach's Crocolisk Skin Belt from badges or the Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt from heroic Utgarde, but Glitterscale will tide you over til then. Fishy Cinch -- Revered, Level 78: An equally useful Restoration belt, although we're back to cloth again. No +crit or +haste to muck up the item budget; just good solid stats all around and a great chunk of spirit. If you can afford to give that up, however, then you may want to spend more time working on Ebon Blade rep for Belt of Dark Mending. Oracle Talisman of Ablution -- Exalted, Level 70(?): A level 70 trinket available at exalted with a Wrath faction is kind of a head-scratcher, but eh. The amount of crit on this, as a Wowhead commenter correctly observes, is 1.55% at level 80 -- more, obviously, if you manage to get the trinket before that. The straight +crit trinkets available from the Skyguard at exalted were actually pretty good at 70, but the introduction of Savage Roar into a cat DPS rotation generally, I think, argues for the use of trinkets granting more attack power (or an attack power use/proc). The energy/rage/mana return here could be useful while leveling or while grinding, however. THE FRENZYHEART TRIBE:One of the irritating things about the Oracle/Frenzyheart faction fight is that switching between the two will make you unable to use gear from both as your reputation rises and falls. If you're dependent on a piece from either of the factions until you get a drop, crafted, or badge piece, you'll want to keep that in mind. Azure Strappy Pants -- Revered, Level 78: The Oracles do belts; the Frenzyheart do pants. As with Glitterscale, this is a surprisingly solid piece for where it is, and possibly better for cat DPS than the Mind-Expanding Leggings available from the Kirin Tor depending on your current +expertise versus +hit. Time to fire up Rawr again. Muddied Crimson Gloves -- Revered, Level 78: The glove counterpart to the Oracles' Fishy Cinch and another fine, no-nonsense, Restoration piece with straight stats and good +spellpower. Grotto Mist Gloves from heroic Azjol-Nerub are better, unless you can somehow dig up the materials for Moonshroud Gloves -- which, at less than a month into the expansion, is going to be very difficult. Frenzyheart Insignia of Fury -- Exalted, Level 70: The proc, per Wowhead commentary, appears to be +91 critical strike rating. Undeniably useful, but again, you'll find better trinkets at 80, and quite sadly the proc is of more use to cat Druids than the actual equip on the trinket (haste, as noted, is not an amazing stat for us). It's better for moonkin, but still primarily a trinket oriented toward leveling. Whew. Next week we'll cover the Argent Crusade, the Knights of the Ebon Blade, and the Sons of Hodir. Until then, good luck with the rep grinds you're on and the dungeons you're running (especially if it's Ymiron on heroic Utgarde Pinnacle).Click here to head back to the beginning of the guide.
The Oracles' Mysterious Egg is a must-get for pet and mount collectors
If you're still trying to decide whether to grind rep with the Oracles or the Frenzyheart in Sholozar Basin, here's something that might make up your mind: The Mysterious Egg, a reputation reward at revered with the Oracles. You'll have to keep the egg on you for 7 days, but at the end of those 7 days, it will hatch into a few things. Most of the time, the egg will be a "dud," and you get an Aged Yolk. Some of the other possibilities, however, are pretty dang cool.
Wrath 101: The Oracles and the Frenzyheart Tribe
Throughout the lifespan of Ask a Beta Tester (now The Queue), people have asked if there are any factions like the Aldor and Scryers. Are there two factions like that, you get to pick one or the other? The answer is yes, but they don't play as big of a role. They're less prime players of the expansion, and more lolcat comedy relief.I'm convinced that this situation in Sholazar Basin isn't to be determined by which faction you like more, but which faction you hate less. The two warring factions are The Oracles and the Frenzyheart Tribe. The Oracles are a group of fully sentient, 'intelligent' gorlocs (a step up in murloc evolution) that unknowingly worship the Titans. The Frenzyheart Tribe are a tribe of wolvar (little wolverine men) and they're fairly new to Sholazar Basin. They're huge jerks that do jerk things and steal gorloc land like jerks. The gorlocs do have big, annoyingly floppy tongues though, so I guess it's justified.
WoW Insider presents Sholazar Basin and Zul'Drak
Building up to Wrath's release, we've been showing you previews of each of the world zones of Northrend. Sholazar Basin and Zul'Drak are two of the remaining zones you probably haven't yet seen, so if you're interested, links to the galleries are below.Sholazar Basin is Northrend's Un'goro Crater, and has a pleasing mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. A testing grounds of sorts for the Titans, you run into a lot of unusual lifeforms here like the Oracles, a race of intelligent murloc-esque creatures who are at war with the Frenzyheart Tribe of Wolvar. This is also the new hunting ground of Hemet Nesingwary, and trust me when I say his quests aren't nearly as awful this time around.Zul'Drak is the center of one of the last Troll Empires, home of the Drakkari Ice Trolls. Under heavy assault from the Scourge, the Drakkari Empire has pooled their resources and pulled back to their capital, using some rather desperate measures to ensure their survival. Your first major Argent Crusade quest hubs are in this zone, and our old friends of the Zandalar Tribe will be meeting up with us here as well.Edit: As always, if you're trying to avoid any and all spoilers, these galleries are not for you. There are no heavy plot spoilers contained within, but there are some light ones. If you don't like spoilers, don't look.%Gallery-36407%%Gallery-36409%
Ask a Beta Tester: Glyphs and gorlocs
Isn't this fella cute? Sooo cute? Adorable!? No? He isn't? Yeah, i don't think so either. We'll get back to these horrible abominations a little later, because Meethan asked...Is Hunger For Blood, the 51 point Assassination talent, at all useful for solo leveling?I asked a friend of mine about this since I don't personally play a Rogue, and he says popular opinion is that Hunger for Blood is mostly going to be a PvP talent. Keeping the damage buff up constantly while questing isn't worthwhile, and the debuff clearing it provides will be highly situational while soloing through Northrend. You can take it if you're gung ho about Assassination, but you'd be better served picking up something else until you start PvPing often.Drewcast asked...Are there or will there be any Aldor vs. Scryer type factions?
Ask A Beta Tester: Death Knights, bears, and buckets
Welcome back to another edition of Ask A Beta Tester! I've stolen the reins from Elizabeth and Alex for a day, so let's get into last week's comments and get some questions answered. Death Knights: Multiple people had lots of questions about Death Knights, so I'm just going to list a bunch of them and then delve into what's going on: How Customizable are Death Knights? Do they get unique skintones, or unique racials? As to Death Knight Customization, the big difference they have right now are glowing blue eyes for every race. You can see that in action in our Death Knight racial gallery. Unfortunately, I think the Blue Eyes look sort of pasted on for most races, so I'm hoping they keep tweaking that to make them look more natural. We've also been promised different sounding emotes -- every Death Knight will have a deeper, sepulchral voice.
The new and improved Murlocs
Just in case you missed it the other week, my absolute favorite part of all the new expansion news was that we will, for the first time ever, be doing something with Murlocs besides killing them. In the Borean Tundra, there will apparently be two Aldor- and Scryer-like factions, with one being called "Wolvar" and consisting of "wolverine people" of some kind (probably not the same as Worgen), and the other being our favorite gurgling landfish.Which is not only awesome because, man, we sure missed Murlocs in Outland, and also because apparently the Oracles (that's what the faction will be called) will be a reputation faction, so we'll actually get to earn reputation with Murlocs. We have no idea how we'll possibly communicate with them, though -- rumor is that they're "more evolved" than the murlocs we've been fighting so far, but it would be super out-of-place to see a Murloc saying anything other than "Murrrglgglrrlgglll!!"Then again, we already know it's possible (at least unofficially) to capture a live Murloc and develop a translator. Never underestimate the power of goblin ingenuity, I guess.
More Wrath of the Lich King impressions and information coming out
WorldofWar.net also got an invitation to the Blizzard event this past week (our invitation must have been lost in the mail, maybe?), and they've got six full pages of text about what they saw. Six pages hard to read though, so we've got all the salient points right here: Both Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton presented, with Kaplan showing off the Death Knight class and Chilton showing off the work they've done on Northrend. The Forsaken-designed starting town Vengeance Landing was shown off -- this was the same area we got to play back at Blizzcon, as well as Utgarde Keep They also got to see Valliance Keep (the other Alliance starting area), and Warsong Hold, a huge gothic iron structure run by Garosh Hellscream that Kaplan apparently called the "new look " of the Horde Horde players will be taking a Zepplin up to Northrend The Nexus, in the Coldarra part of the Borean Tundra, is the first instance on the western side of Northrend from Utgarde Keep, and it's a three wing instance with a raid dungeon where players will meet Malygos. The Badge of Justice system will continue in Northrend, but there will be new tokens to act as Badges and be returned for loot. Lots more after the break.
