Seven years, seven months, seventeen days
This isn't about World of Warcraft directly. This is about a time when I found myself looking for a job, and found something better. This is about how I ended up at WoW Insider.
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This isn't about World of Warcraft directly. This is about a time when I found myself looking for a job, and found something better. This is about how I ended up at WoW Insider.
Read MoreI want the Tomb of Sargeras as a raid. I really, really want the Tomb of Sargeras as a raid. With demons everywhere and Gul'dan's half-eaten headless corpse and a bunch of undead night elf sentinels who got buried alive by Illidan and at the very center, the demonic corpse of the Avatar of Sargeras, waiting to be reanimated and used as a weapon against Azeroth. What about you? What location from Warcraft's more than twenty years do you want to see in game? Do you wish for the return of Kul Tiras? Are you wondering whatever happened to Zandalar Isle, if it finished sinking or if Rastakhan managed to find a way to save his people? And have the Nerubians managed to reclaim their underground kingdom from the disorganized undead rabble? So, since this will likely be my last Breakfast Topic, go wild. What haven't we seen yet that you're dying to?
Read MoreThe World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. For my last KYL, a hat made of tinfoil. You know the drill - for the farewell of this column, Anne and I are going to go out speculating. This one's mine. You might want to read this old KYL to get a handle on the concepts I'm going to be throwing around. The idea is simple enough to start with, however. We know that at some point in the distant past, over twenty five thousand years ago, the fallen Titan Sargeras sought out a world whose inhabitants were powerful, with great potential for magic. Their culture was ancient - so very ancient that it had already risen and fallen and risen again, creating not one, but two golden ages. They were the eredar. Sargeras's offer was accepted, and the majority of the race along with two of the three triumvirs that ruled Argus entire became man'ari, corrupted. Barely a tenth of the race resisted and escaped, led by Velen and aided by the naaru, who sent the mighty Genedar, a dimension ship, to rescue them from this corruption. Velen first contacted the naaru using the Ata'mal Crystal, an ancient artifact of their people which was said to be a relic of their distant past. This has always interested me - the Ata'mal Crystal is said to be an eredar relic, yet it summons the naaru and their dimension ship, and when it is used in this fashion it shatters into seven fragments, each of which manifest strange new powers when used properly. Where am I going with this? Well, Sargeras was a Titan. Like all Titans, he has strange and almost unfathomable powers, and he seeks to undo the works of his fellow Titans, his former friends and allies in the Pantheon. He sought out the eredar - he went looking for them. This has always struck me as interesting, because the eredar resemble a race created by the Titans here on Azeroth, namely the mogu.
Read MoreEvery week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Eleven months ago I wrote this farewell. It says everything I wanted to say about this column - I'm not going to repeat it.But with WoW Insider as a whole in its last days, it felt right to bring back the longest running continuous class column to say something else - to take a look back at the class over the years, to say goodbye to the past and take a look forward into the future. First off, let me say that for the most part, the redesign of warriors in Warlords of Draenor seems to be working out. Arms and fury DPS? Too low.l Arms in general doesn't feel good to play, and any arms warriors saying so are correct - the spec didn't get the overhaul it needed. Or more accurately, it got an overhaul, but it didn't need one, and now it feels like a once grand 1969 Shelby Mustang with half the options yanked off. Fury plays fine, if somewhat boring depending on your talent choices, but it's clear that it still lacks the bite it needs to be a competitive DPS spec. The buffs it received recently have helped, but in my opinion they haven't helped enough. What I'd like to see for DPS in the future is an arms spec that recaptures some of the fun and feeling of the Mists arms warrior, and simply put, more damage in a less spammy format for fury. A big, big hit instead of having to get off three Wild Strikes when they're free. As for Gladiator Stance, it's the hit of the expansion. Everyone loves it. People are raiding as DPS using it, because for quite a while it was head and shoulders above any other DPS spec warriors had. Even after the fury buffs and the change to the talent, Gladiator specced prot warriors are a force to be reckoned with, and it's a huge proof of concept success for designing a tanking spec that can also perform as a DPS spec. So kudos to Blizzard there. Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about warriors one last time.
Read MoreWelcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. I don't really have a favorite dinosaur. Or it's more like I have so many favorite dinosaurs I can't pick one. And to be honest when I do sit down and think about my favorite dinosaurs, my opinion changes with the research to a degree. At the moment, I'm fond of Deinocheirus with those massive arms. But a lot of people ask me what's the deal with all the dinosaurs, like there's a proper age to like them, and I'm way, way over the limit. So I'll try, just this once, to explain what the deal is with the dinosaurs. They were our superiors. They were better suited to life on Earth than the mammals. This is indisputable. They first arose 231 million years ago during the Triassic, at a time where our own therapsid ancestors were recovering from a mass extinction that nearly wiped out all life on Earth, just as the mammals were starting to evolve. Our ancestors. Us, in potential. And our ancestors, with their highly evolved teeth, with the start of the mammalian body plan that we see today in everything from tigers to dogs to sheep to cattle, lost the competition with the archosaurian dinosaur clans. It's just that simple. For over one hundred and thirty five million years, mammals went head to head against dinosaurs in the evolutionary arms race. And in all that time no mammal larger than a modern housecat thrived. The dinosaurs won. Their dominion was so total that even after the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, it was birds that first evolved into truly massive predators feeding on our mammal ancestors. So that's it. Dinosaurs are proven winners. They lasted for one hundred and thirty five million years, and they still exist today in the form of birds. And you'll notice that no mammal has managed to push birds out of their aerial niches. So yeah, I like dinosaurs, and I see no reason not to keep liking them for the rest of my life. I realize this was a huge digression, but to be honest, it simply wouldn't have been right for me not to talk about dinosaurs in this edition of The Queue. This edition of the Queue will likely be very, very long. I got quite a few questions on Twitter, and there's 981 comments, so we're going to try and get through as many of those as we can. Sean Boyle asks: Here's one for you Rossi. Why haven't we seen any Naga or Ethereals on Draenor? Naga are native to Azeroth. The ones we saw on Outland were part of Lady Vashj's contingent, pledged to Illidan's service. Etherals are also not native to Draenor, but were cosmic exiles whose native world of K'aresh was destroyed by Dimensius the All-Devouring, and in the process of trying to save their people from his arcane devastation the Ethereals lost their corporeal forms. Neither group was on Draenor thirty five years ago in our timeline, and as a result, they aren't on the alternate Draenor we now explore.
Read MoreThat's my first character ever, Marketh the warrior from Azjol-Nerub. That's him in his hideous mismatched DPS gear (I was tanking back then, in the Naxx 10/25 days) He's been through several race changes, faction switches, and realm transfers, but he's still around, and I still log on and go on rampages through older content for transmog gear, or a dungeon run or two. And that seems very important today. Are you still playing your first character? Is she or he a main or an alt? And how long have you been playing her or him?
Read MoreWelcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Guys, I love you all as if you were my children. My children who leave a lot of comments in the comment section. So many comments. 737 comments as of this moment. That is a lot of questions, statements, pictures, videos, non sequitur, all sorts of things. I have to admit, on nights when I can't sleep (that's all of them) going through the Queue is like a portal into another dimension. Luckily, they still play WoW over there. Chrth asks: Q4TQ: If you were one of the humans on Fenris Isle, would you have chosen to become a Worgen or to be raised as one of the Forsaken? Consider this from a real life perspective, not game-wise (e.g. "Worgen because I love the Alliance" is not what I'm looking for). Would I rather be trapped in a rotting corpse that's slowly deteriorating, forced to consume the flesh of the living and unable to feel, or would I rather have awesome werewolf superpowers? Yeah, that's a toughie. I guess I'd have to go with awesome werewolf superpowers.
Read MoreWe have epic followers, we have a legendary follower, so why not heirloom followers? Well, as is often the case when I have one of these ideas at three am, there are potentially a lot of reasons why to not have heirloom followers. For one thing, we level our followers and get them better gear and so on - a follower you could somehow send to your alts would mess up this whole process. Would they scale to your level? What level would they top out at? Could you gear them up? Could you make them epic? All good questions. But man, it's daunting to have to try and get all the same followers over and over again, especially ones that are on rare vendors. Sometimes I wish I could mail my little minions to my alts, just so I wouldn't have to deal with flying out to the Spires of Arak yet again.
Read MoreSo once again the folks at Wowhead are hard at work datamining away at Patch 6.1 on the PTR, and they've found something very interesting - new heirlooms. Specifically, neckpieces. A whole host of them, in fact. Eternal Talisman of Evasion Eternal Amulet of the Redeemed Eternal Will of the Martyr Eternal Emberfury Talisman Eternal Woven Ivy Necklace Eternal Horizon Choker At present they don't seem to scale down on Wowhead, and they say 1 to 60 which seems odd to me, I'd expect 1 to 90. But that On Use is pretty amazing, all told. Since we're also talking about the heirloom tab coming in this patch as well, it's a good time for a set of necklace heirlooms.
Read MoreWe've been waiting for new blood elf models since Warlords of Draenor was announced, and now we finally know when we're getting them. Patch 6.1's PTR will have the first look at the blood elf of the future, soon to be the blood elf of the present. These are very definitely works in progress, so there are things to keep in mind - currently all male blood elves have the same facial geometry, for instance. But you can hop on the PTR yourself and take a look right now. To my eye they don't look very different, just improved. But what do you think?
Read MoreI tend to like to do stuff at night, when there's practically no one else on. Partially this is because of my rather aggressive insomnia, a problem I've had for years now. But there's also something peaceful about it - stripped of the vast majority of players, suddenly I can wander about in the world, queue for dungeons or LFR, do the daily quest without worrying about other people doing the same, farm for rares if I'm of a mind to. The world feels broader, more expansive. Perhaps this is simply a legacy of my being a rather curmudgeonly sort, but as I type this it's the waning hours of the morning. So I now ask you, what would you do in the quiet moments of the night?
Read MoreSeriously, I have like twenty of these people, why can't I loose them as an unstoppable force of destruction? I know we have raid missions, but I'd love to be able to go to, say, Ashran and do a 20 vs 20 PvP Follower match, or perhaps a special raid, just me and my followers. Some actual in the world gameplay for them beyond just sending them on missions or sticking some poor unfortunate in the mine (Sorry, Lantressor) or what have you. I mean, imagine a weekly mission where you have to coordinate your followers on an assault on an Iron Horde base? Yes, I'm basically arguing that we should be able to play Warcraft III while we play WoW. I just feel like we should get to do something more with our followers, something that helps increase the feeling that we're the commander of this elite fighting force. Do you have any ideas for ways we could more directly utilize our follower base?
Read MoreWe're talking a lot about Patch 6.1, of course, because it's the new hotness on the horizon. But because we assume there'll be at least two more patches after it (and who knows, maybe that's a false assumption) I have to ask what you guys think the next patch is going to be. I'm kind of hoping it'll be either Farahlon or Tanaan, although I suspect Tanaan will be in the last patch of the expansion, whatever that is, along with the final raid. For 6.2, I don't even know if we'll get a raid, but I have to believe we're at least going to see some new five mans. Now it's your turn. What's 6.2 going to have in store for us?
Read MoreWelcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. That's right. Ten hours of the Mortal Kombat theme. Why? Because Mortal Kombat. Let's do this. valencemagi asks: Q4tQ: is there any way to rename Lt. Thorn to something else? Like, I dunno, Lt Harshwhinny? Asking for a friend. No, and I think your friend is mean. Lt. Thorn's a lovely person once you get to know her.
Read MoreThere's a lot of stuff coming in patch 6.1 - like, for example, the continuation of the Legendary Quest Chain, complete with legendary follower. But so far, one of the things I'm not seeing is content, exactly. A ton of model fixes, new stuff for the Darkmoon Faire, Harrison Jones as a follower, but no new dungeons, no new raids, and as far as I know zones like Tanaan and Farahlon aren't coming. Since I have no idea how many patches we'll actually see for Warlords, I have no idea how significant this is. I want there to be more dungeons and raids, that's my favorite content, so I'm sort of hoping we'll hear more soon. What about you? Would you like to hear about some dungeons, a raid or maybe the zones that weren't released on launch? Or do you think 6.1 is full enough?
Read MoreWe've seen a lot of improvements to the inventory system over the years. We've seen bags get bigger, sorting and searching included, items like mounts, pets, toys and soon heirloom items all removed from our bags (along with quest items) to help make space. We've seen void storage, so that we can take items we want to keep but not necessarily need access to and put them somewhere, and many consumable items and various reagents have been improved to stack to higher amounts, freeing up more bag space. This has me wondering, though, are we forever in a bag arms race between all the things we may want, and the amount of space we have? Will we eventually see consumables get their own tab, or reagents go from the various kinds of profession and reagent bags in the bank to a tab of their own? What changes do you foresee for our always filling bags?
Read MoreThe World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. When last I was writing about this, we covered some characters that got their chance at the spotlight in 2014. Real life then conspired to interrupt me, but I'm finally back, almost a month into 2015, to talk some more about 2014. Timely! Anyway, I don't think my choices are going to be groundbreaking or shocking for anyone. We all know my biases, but you may be surprised by some choices anyway, because sometimes, I actually try and ignore my biases and be fair. Sometimes. Ga'nar Straight up - I expected to hate Ga'nar. When you first meet him, he's your typical blustering orc, going on about murdering Iron Horde with his shovel (granted, they had him digging out latrines, I'd be pretty upset too) and posturing at Hellscream as you retreat from Tanaan. But something happened on the way through Frostfire Ridge. He started to grow on me. He was arrogant and hotheaded, yes, but also brave and well, such an orc about everything. And when he challenged Durotan, he showed a quality I hadn't expected in him - as Durotan refused to even fight him, declaring that he would stand and let Ga'nar kill him if necessary, Ga'nar backed down. The final confrontation with Fenris Wolfbrother (and the revelation that Fenris was the eldest son of Garad and Geyah) ultimately revealed Ga'nar's true self to the player. I'm a sucker for heroic sacrifices. Always have been. And this was a heck of a heroic sacrifice, all told - after dispatching their wicked elder brother, Ga'nar refuses to allow Durotan to die, instead hurling himself, a lone orc (say it in Muradin Bronzebeard's voice) against the forces of the Iron Horde, and his death buys victory for his people. I'm sorry, but as much as I often bag on orcs, this was an excellent heroes' death for Ga'nar, and it won my affection.
Read MoreWhen I first started playing World of Warcraft some ten years ago, if you'd told me one day I could simply queue for dungeons, raids, even open world content, I'd have looked confused because I barely understood how to run dungeons with a group of friends at that point, much less all this talk of 'queueing' for anything. Thinking about this the other day I started wondering if we were at maximum inclusion, if there was any kind of content that could exist that would use the queue system. You can queue for PvP and PvE, you can queue for random BG's, dungeons and raids, world bosses and I'm wondering what could possibly be left. I'd say scenarios, but we had those in Mists. Have we achieved peak Group Finder? Or am I missing something? For that matter, could an entirely new form of content be introduced? Flex dungeons? One of the reasons I love this job is that I know you'll come up with something that completely eludes me.
Read MoreYes, more hotfixes. What do they entail, you ask? Well, I'm glad you did. Here's just a few highlights from this latest round of hotfixes. There are quite a few class changes, some of which I highly approve of (the ones that buff warriors) and other changes as well. Death Knights see Blood Boil's damage reduced by 33.3% Sacred Duty, formerly granting 5% additional haste from all sources, is heavily buffed and now grants 30% haste from all sources. For you enhancement shaman, Stormstrike sees an 11.1% damage buff. Gladiator Stance now only increases damage by 5%, down from 20%, but just about all damaging abilities for protection warriors see buffs - Thunder Clap, Deep Wounds and Revenge were buffed by 40%, while Devastate and Shield Slam both got 20% buffs. There's a lot more, so head on over to the official site and take a look for yourself. Just about every class but monks saw some adjustment.
Read MoreThe 6.1 PTR isn't even live yet, but datamining continues apace, and the folks at Wowhead have certainly dug up a doozy for us. Apparently as part of the legendary questline, we'll be getting the first ever legendary follower, namely Garona Halforcen, the infamous Shadow Council assassin. If you're curious about what a legendary follower gets, it's impressive. It's very interesting to see the quest open up in this way, really . It broadens the idea of the kinds of rewards you can get from a legendary chain, and it also makes me hope that we might see other such followers. Perhaps my hope that Maraad can make a comeback isn't entirely unwarranted.
Read MoreOnce upon a time, the only legendary items were weapons, or means to create weapons. (I'm ignoring the Talisman of Binding Shard, okay?) But with the introduction of the Legendary Cloak in Mists of Pandaria, and now the Ring and Follower in Warlords of Draenor, we're experiencing an entirely new phenomenon, whole new kinds of legendary items, even an outright legendary person. This has gotten me wondering - what new kinds of legendaries would you like to see in World of Warcraft? A legendary shield? Legendary offhand items? A legendary mount or pet? A legendary toybox item? Or could we get even weirder? The legendary cloak made it possible to fight a world boss, perhaps we could actually summon a legendary version of a boss with entirely different loot? The sky's the limit. What should be legendary?
Read MoreWelcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Let's talk about the Maniraptora. For one thing, the Maniraptora is a very large clade, including various subgroups, one of which is the birds - this means that the Maniraptora is the only surviving clade of dinosaurs, since all bird species are included within it. In addition to birds, the segnosaurs, the various raptor species (Dromaeosauridae) and the Oviraptorosauria were all members of the Maniraptora. It's almost certain that all members of the Maniraptora (indeed, possibly all Coelurosauria) were feathered, with body plans and bone structures we would find convincingly bird-like. In case you are wondering this is why I'm so bloody annoyed that in 2015 we're going to have another Jurassic Park sequel with featherless raptors. Similarly, WoW raptors just irk me now. Put some damn feathers on them! They had feathers. I get that people refuse to accept that T-Rex had feathers (although it did) but the Maniraptora were even more ludicrously birdlike than that, because they literally are birds and all dinosaurs closely related to birds. If your movie has any member of the Dromaeosauridae in it, and they're not feathered, your movie is wrong. Same for games, same for any media. They had feathers. HemttTanker asks: Two questions: Does the 2 week timer for Highmaul follower missions start when the mission first becomes available or when the mission is attempted? If I have a Highmaul follower mission sitting in my queue and I go kill enough raid bosses to quality for the next tier of reward, does the mission I have upgrade or does that only apply to the next one two weeks later? As far as I'm aware it acts like any timer, it resets based on server time. If you keep that follower mission sitting in your queue and then unlock another tier of reward, it'll apply when the mission resets in two weeks. I admit that I may be misunderstanding how this timer works, but this is my current understanding.
Read MoreIf I had to list the one character in Warlords of Draenor who already existed, but who improved the most in this expansion, my choice would absolutely be Vindicator Maraad. Before this expansion, all we ever got to see from him was his appearances in the comic book, a brief cameo in Northrend, and his appearance in the Prophet's Lesson short story (which was pretty cool). The first hint we got that he was going to be a big part of Warlords was his appearance in a Pandaria short story, and that hint was confirmed by his appearance in the Lords of War shorts, then his role in the Warlords of Draenor cinematics and as you level through the game. So I ask you - who was your favorite established NPC in Warlords? Was it Cho'gall? Teron'gor? Thrall? Velen? Garrosh? Let me know.
Read MoreWelcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. There's been a slight calamity, and so the glass has been broken and the emergency Rossi has been brought forth to write this edition of The Queue for you. Think of me as a helpful, somewhat hairy, denizen of the frozen north. A helper sasquatch, if you will. Since I have a cat named Sasquatch, here's a picture of him being helpful. At least he thought so, anyway. Morte asks: Q4TQ: Can you do the Tanaan Jungle intro quests with a friend or is it a solo experience? I know that a guildmate of mine did it grouped with his wife and they both completed it together.
Read MoreI've lost my taste for alts this expansion. With the Garrison being so important it feels like I'd be wasting effort to level another character, even though I could theoretically end up with a lot more materials that way. It just seems like a lot of time and effort spent leveling which I could be using on follower missions and so on. But on the other hand, I could very well set my stuff on my main then switch over to an alt, so maybe I'm wrong. This is complicated by the fact that I've never really been a big altoholic - I mean, I play a lot of warriors, but that was mostly because of a neurological disorder I have. Most people wouldn't do that. So I'm stuck on the fence. What do you think? Do you like alts? Is Warlords the wrong time to experiment with the idea of starting up a host of them? Let us know. Let me know. I need help to make this decision.
Read MoreHotfixes, piping hot. And what's in those hotfixes, you may ask? Well, I'm glad you did. Because if you hadn't, rhetorical reader, I wouldn't be able to inform you that, in addition to the trap stealing hotfix we mentioned earlier: Spawn rates for Direfang Alpha, Ironhide Bull, and Wetland Trampler has increased slightly. This change requires a realm restart. Alliance and Horde PvP vendors in Ashran now have collision boxes, so it should be easier for players to buy stuff. Hand of Protection should now interrupt players that are in the process of capturing a point in the Battlegrounds. A whole host of class fixes and changes. Come with us under the shadow of this small jump to see what's going on.
Read MoreI remember, back before mounts and pets just existed in a special book, that we actually had to carry them around in our bags. Many, many jokes about this were told. Jokes about how an entire horse took up as much bag space as a roll of bandages, a cherry pie, a dagger, or a greatsword. And even today the game is absolutely chock full of moments that, if you really think about them, confuse and bewilder. To this day, there are items like food and bandages that you simply can't use unless you're of a certain power level - there are people out there making pies that simply cannot be eaten until you've killed enough things. Clothes you cannot wear, weapons you cannot use, even earrings and rings and necklaces that will laugh if you attempt to don them before you master a certain degree of power. We accept this because we have been trained to do so - the game makes these assumptions and we go along with them. Why wouldn't we? We always have. We have always been at war with the other faction, we have always constantly discovered new foodstuffs, new pants and new earrings that can't be used until we grow sufficiently strong. Any doubts we have are suspended, because we trust the fictive element, or because we simply do not care about the inconsistencies. But every so often I balk. Where do I even keep all these mounts? How can I possibly be carrying over thirty weapons and piece of plate armor in my bags and not topple over? I have like ten greatswords and greataxes on me! So I ask you - what do you sometimes find yourself unable to believe?
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