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WoW Archivist: Paths not taken
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Recently, Blizzard addressed rumors that their ultra-secret next MMO, codenamed Titan, had been "reset." Developers were indeed reassigned to other projects as the slimmed-down team made "some large design and technology changes to the game." Since we don't know anything about Titan for sure, despite some compelling leaks, we'll never know what features the game would have had as part of its original design. The WoW team, on the other hand, has backed away from many different announced features and content additions that didn't work out. This week's WoW Archivist will look at some of the more interesting and infamous canceled or delayed features. Homeless Believe it or not, player housing was briefly tested in alpha. Model viewers showed files going back to alpha in a folder called "playerhousing" (as shown below). Only human houses were ever designed. Blizzard also added a portal in Stormwind as an entrance to an instanced player housing area. An alpha blue poster named Katricia wrote, "Our current idea (which could change) is to extend the cities to have player housing neighborhoods. For example, in the canal area of Stormwind players can see a blue instance portal behind a large portcullis; this is the entrance to the player housing neighborhood in Stormwind."
Know Your Lore: Titan facilities of Azeroth
The 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. Let's just be up front about this now -- the Titans left stuff everywhere. It would be hard to disbelieve in them, frankly. They left bases, research stations, fortresses, labs and more. We don't even know what everything they left behind originally did or why it was there in many cases. Some places have somewhat clear reasons for existing (Ulduar, for instance, was tasked with holding the Old God Yogg Saron prisoner, but the Halls of Stone and Lightning point to other goals for the complex) but others, such as the ruined complex now known as Ahn'Qiraj was simply a 'research facility', and we have no idea what it was researching or why such a complex was needed so close to Uldum. At any rate, there are a lot of Titan complexes currently known of on Azeroth.
The Wrath you never saw
As we're heading towards the final confrontation with the Lich King and the end of this chapter of the World of Warcraft saga, we end up reminded of how much of Wrath of the Lich King was designed and never used, or used sparingly, or even resurrected later, fittingly enough. But not only do we have loads of models that either weren't used at all or were used later in places completely unrelated to where they were supposed to drop, we have entire zones that either didn't happen at all, or did but which don't seem to go anywhere.
The Lore of Patch 3.3
In many ways Wrath of the Lich King can be considered the logical conclusion of one of WarCraft's major story lines. Arthas, the evil sovereign of the scourge, will meet his doom in Icecrown Citadel. Each Wrath patch up until now has lead to this defining moment -- the face off between Arthas and the players representing the next generation of heroes of Azeroth. Who will win? What happens after Arthas is defeated? Is Arthas defeated? These questions lend themselves to a spectacular conclusion to a great tale. In The Lore of Patch 3.3, Michael Sacco, Alex Ziebart, and I will take a look at all the various plots, characters, and environments that lead up to this grand confrontation with the Lich King. You'll want to know this story. You'll want to know this lore. For when you finally face off against the wielder of the Frostmourne, you'll know why you're going toe-to-toe against him, and why your fate can make or break the very face of Azeroth. This article, while containing essential lore, also contains heavy spoilers. Do not proceed if that bothers you.
Two Bosses Enter: Gortok Palehoof vs. Krik'thir the Gatewatcher
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King. We've got adds here, people: it's Gortok Palehoof (Utgarde Pinnacle) versus Krik'thir the Gatewatcher (Azjol-Nerub). Gortok steps into the Thunderdome fresh from a resounding defeat of Lavanthor, while Krik'thir arrives after besting the Commander Stoutbeard/Kolurg from The Nexus. Let's review the ground rules: Assume that the opponents share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output. New clarification: All of the competitors' abilities, including crowd control and other effects to which bosses are usually immune, work on their opponents. This deathmatch takes place in neutral territory, which shall in no way hinder either opponent from using his usual resources. Don't get caught up in gameplay mechanics and what actual players might do in each encounter. Don't neglect style, story and scale. Let the doors open, and let the contestants come forward. As Dr. Dealgood would say: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.
Guildwatch: "these guilds in which this game is revolved around"
There's a distinct lack of crazy drama on the servers lately, and I think it's not necessarily because the raids are easy (guilds are still hitting hardcore achievements as they should be), but just that there's no guildbreaker raids out there right now. If you can beat ToC, you beat it, and if you can't, you can go back and do Ulduar and heroics, gear yourself up, and move on. I will say this: it seems much easier for a guildleader to avoid drama and issues later in the expansion cycle, when gear is plentiful, rather than right away. That said, there's still lots of good drama, downed, and recruiting news in this week's Guildwatch. Click on to read more, and don't forget to send us your tips (especially drama) via email at guildwatch@wow.com.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Of Nerubians, Dwarves and Titans
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. I'm going to get this out of the way right off the bat since I know I'll get a dozen people asking again this week: Yes, Know Your Lore will be coming back, it is not gone forever. I promise. I will pinkie swear on it, even. Come on, who wants to pinkie swear? Anybody? Anybody?Aler asked..."On the topic of the Nerubians and the Qiraji, is there any relation in the lore between the two? Or are two insect civilizations coincidental?"There's absolutely a relation between the two. They hold a common ancestry. Both the Qiraji and the Nerubians are offshoots of an even more ancient race, the Aqir. Way back when Azeroth was still very primal, and Trolls were the top dogs. There were three major players in the world: The Amani Trolls, the Gurubashi Trolls, and the Aqir. They warred for thousands of years. Thousands. It was a war of attrition on the grandest scale possible, and all involved more or less broke under the weight of their losses.
Ask a Lore Nerd: It's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.I didn't intentionally choose today's Scourge theme. Really. These things just happen. That Dragon-specific one I did all that time ago? I didn't plan that, either. I'm just awesome enough that these things come together all by themselves. Yep. It's my pure, radiant awesome.What? What do you mean current game content dictates what topics are hot or not? Pssh, that's crazy talk. That can't be it. It's all me, y'all.Briz9 asked... "Who built Icecrown Citadel and the accompanying structures? Did Arthas build it after he became the Lich King, or was it already there?" The massive Saronite structures that make up Icecrown as it is today is all fairly new, from what I understand. Most Scourge architecture is based on Nerubian architecture (as you can see in Ahn'kahet) but the Saronite structures in and around Icecrown seem more styled after the Lich King himself. You certainly didn't see that stuff in Warcraft III either, but I suppose that's not always a good indicator.
The OverAchiever: Glory of the Hero, Continued
No one's kiling any folk here today, on account of we got a really tight schedule. -- Mal, "Trash." Seemed to have some good luck with a previous Firefly quote, so why not? We're all set in Ahn'kahet, so let's pop over to Azjol-Nerub and lay waste to some bosses there.AZJOL-NERUBEvery achievement here is, in one way or another, a DPS race. If you've had difficulty with previous achievements in that vein or your DPS is still gearing up, you'll probably want to steer clear of Azjol for a while.Watch Him DieThis is one of the few achievements in the game most efficiently done from a kamikaze perspective (Sarth-10 3D is the most notable of the other picks). Early attempts at this with two tanks, two DPS, and one healer failed miserably, mostly due to the combination of poisons, a Priest healer, and Watcher Narjil's Blinding Webs ability. I'll admit I tried that before anything good dropped from Naxx, so it may just have been a gear issue at the time, but:a). If you have very good DPS, and:b). If you're willing to suffer a repair bill -- you can probably get this achievement in one or two tries without worrying about keeping all three Watchers tanked, bringing an off-tank, or risking a DPS having to kite all three to the entrance.
Breakfast Topic: New 5-man dungeon plotlines
So the rumors of a new 5-man dungeon to come sometime before Icecrown, maybe in 3.2 or 3.3, continue to persist. Assuming they're true, I wonder: What would you like to see? I have a few ideas of my own. How about a Grimtotem dungeon? Let's unmask Magatha once and for all as a Scourge agent. Some quest lines point to the possibility, and it's an excuse to implement a nice Great Masquerade type quest line complete with confrontation in Thunder Bluff. It's topical to Wrath, and it shakes Tauren lore up a bit. It's a perfect idea all around, as far as I'm concerned. If that idea doesn't tickle your fancy, I have a few more after the break.
The Queue: Genn, you're such a jerk
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.Be warned that the very end of today's edition of The Queue contains minor spoilers for the upcoming Ulduar raid zone. Everything is perfectly safe until the very last question, and even then the spoilers are very minor. Minor as in it describes a couple of the bosses found within the zone. It doesn't give away any story or plot. If you want your experience to remain pure, stop at the last question. If you don't care so much about knowing who you'll see in Ulduar, it's perfectly safe.I warn because I love.mindor asked...What is the deal with the Greymane wall in Silverpine forest? Is there an old raid set in there? What is on the other side of that monstrous wall?
Rumor: Interview with a 3D modeler from Blizzard
We're going to go ahead and throw this out there, even though it's likely as fake as the 3.1 patch notes that come out a little while ago. But WotLK Wiki has an "interview" up with someone who (without any proof at all) claims to be a 3D modeler for Blizzard, and it's got some interesting info in it about a few of the future patches and the way things work behind the scenes over there.The good news is that we'll someday know if this guy's full of bull or not -- he says that the optional boss in Ulduar will be vehicle-based, and that part of the raid will deal with the boss, while the other part of the raid runs around destroying parts of the environment in vehicles. He also says there's a whole new Azjol-Nerub zone going into the game in patch 3.2, and that the next expansion will likely focus on the Maelstrom and Caverns of Time, which will send us back in time and have Sargeras and Azshara as the main baddies. This could all be complete and total boloney (most of those things have already been rumored before), but at least it's stuff we can verify in the future.The rest of his insights could just be made up, and unfortunately, he says some unkind things about a few other developers that Blizzard would probably frown upon if they were true. So take this with a metric ton of salt -- I looked around the Something Awful Ask/Tell forums to see if that's where this was originally posted, but didn't find anything, and WotLK Wiki didn't share a source at all, either. But we do have to agree with one of their sentiments: it would be nice if Blizzard was this forthcoming with some of their official outlets.
More free character transfers open for the EU
A new batch of fre realm transfers have opened up for European servers, which is always a good thing. A lot of these transfers are ones we've seen before though, so hopefully this time around these options will be more successful than they may have been previously. We also have a whole load of transfers opening up to EU-Magtheridon specifically for the Alliance, so they're continuing to try and repair the faction imbalance there. Right now, we're looking at... Horde players on EU-Magtheridon may transfer to Haomarush, Tarren Mill, Trollbane, Zenedar, and Silvermoon. Alliance players may transfer to EU-Magtheridon from Aerie Peak, Aggramar, Alonsus, Aszune, Azjol-Nerub, Bronze Dragonflight, Bronzebeard, Emerald Dream, Eonar, Khadgar, Kul Tiras, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Silvermoon, and Turalyon. Check behind the cut below for the rest of the current free character transfers.
The Queue: Sea shanty 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.Good afternoon, everyone! I'll waste no time trying desperately to be funny today, we'll just jump into this thing.Carda asked... Which heroic dungeon provides the most rep? Of course, this will probably vary depending on the amount of trash pulled (full clear vs. "just the pats, ma'am"), but accounting for bosses and essential trash pulls, where can I farm to max out my rep as quickly as I can?
"Gotta Go" getting easier
I like the heroic dungeon achievements a lot. They give you something to strive for if you're bored if the instance, or just want an extra challenge. I recently had a great time getting Zombiefest! in what would have otherwise been a pedestrian CoS clear (not enough DPS to try for the timed boss; we were running with some fresh 80s and a Holy paladin DPSing). However, some of the achievements are currently though to be near-impossible. One that is often talked about is Gotta Go!; typically, it's Anub'arak's burrowing that throws attempts off. Good news to those of you working towards your Red Proto-Drake: the time limit on Gotta Go! is being doubled to four minutes in 3.0.8. Many groups were getting quite close to two minutes before, so this change ought to make it relatively easy.
Shifting Perspectives: So. Um, do bears suck?
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we shelve the column we originally intended to run due to a rather pressing matter.OK, folks. I have a confession to make. This week's Shifting Perspectives was originally meant to be a full guide to gearing your Restoration Druid at 80, and I'm still going to post that, either this week or next. A lot of people have (correctly, I think) observed that this column has historically paid more attention to Feral than to Restoration or Balance, and it's my aim to balance (har!) that out a bit. Part of it is just that the people who play Druids on staff here at WoW Insider are usually feral, and part of it is that -- at least as of the last numbers we had on it -- most people playing Druids are also feral. I confess I would love to see the demographics on Druids post-Wrath, because I get the sense that Balance in particular has become markedly more popular.But the Resto post is going to have to wait a few days, not least because my eyes are swimming from so much Wowhead. We found out today that Swipe's threat is getting a significant buff, but over the course of reading the pertinent forum thread and some back-channel discussion here, I ran across a few things concerning bear tanking that really made me sit up after the hell of tanking last night's heroic Old Kingdom and go, "Wait. It's not just me?"Personally whenever I encounter serious problems in a dungeon I tend to chalk it up to the fact that I suck. I find this to be an efficient and typically accurate means of pinpointing the source of an issue. However, my fellow Druids, our problems may actually be more wide-ranging than that.
Breakfast Topic: Five-man thoughts
We talked about this quickly during yesterday's podcast, but I think most of us have seen most of the instances in Wrath at this point, so we'll ask it here: what do you think of the 5-mans so far?Actually, I should say that I can't quite pass judgment yet -- I haven't visited the Halls of Stone or Lightning yet, and I haven't yet seen The Oculus, which is the instance I was most excited about at launch. But so far, I have to say that Azjol-Nerub is a standout -- not only does it look great, but the fact that it's pretty much all bosses and no trash is a real plus. And having a well-known lore figure to fight at the end doesn't hurt, either.And of course I remain a fan of Utgarde Keep, though I think it'll eventually be like Hellfire Ramparts, in that I'll just have done it so much eventually that it'll lose any charm I have now. What are your first impressions on playing through all the five mans so far?
The Queue: Tradeskill bits and pieces
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.First off, I want to apologize for an error I made yesterday. I didn't research the sockets that Blacksmiths can give only to themselves enough, and due to one-part misinformation, one-part assumption, I said those sockets overwrite enchants from Enchanting. That's actually not true. Leatherworking's fur linings do overwrite enchants. Tailoring's cloak embroidery overwrites enchants. Blacksmithing's sockets do not. Again, I apologize for that. Socket One-Handed Weapon still never made it into the game, though. With that all said, let's get into the questions.pietrex asked...I've got another question about sockets. I remember that we had lots of socketed quest rewards in Outlands. But I've completed three zones in Northrend and seen only few of these. Does it change in mid-70 zones or do we have to wait until we get our hands on gear from Heroics?
WoW Insider's guide to the dungeons of Wrath
Still leveling? Looking to do some dungeon runs? Want to know where to go, or where to find your quests? ...No? Oh. Well, okay. You can leave, then. Wait, I think I heard someone say yes! In that case, you might be interested in WoW Insider's guide to the dungeons of Wrath.In the gallery below you'll find a quick guide to all of the 5-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King, in order of the level of the instance. It contains brief descriptions of each dungeon, their level range, and just where to find all of the quests for each of them. I hope it proves useful, and if not, at least some of the pictures are pretty!%Gallery-37974%
Breakfast Topic: The new 5-mans
5-mans are still my favorite part of the game. Guild runs, PuG-runs, something in between...doesn't matter. And I've had a fabulous time in Northrend 5-mans so far. Yes, Herald Volazj is pretty much the clear winner of the early 5-man bosses (gotta love that Insanity debuff), but Azjol Nerub's been very popular, and the questline leading to the cutscene at the end of Drak'tharon Keep is getting a lot of good press. Not enough people are in the late '70's or at 80 to have had a good crack at Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnacle, or Culling of Stratholme, so I'm not sure how those are going to go over, but I think players in general have really enjoyed the new dungeons.That there's markedly less emphasis on soul-crushing trash (I'm looking at you, Shattered Halls) and more emphasis on cool boss mechanics and gorgeous scenery is also pretty awesome. And then there's that giant drop in Azjol Nerub taking you past several levels of the ancient city that never fails to kill someone. I shouldn't find it funny, but I do, even when it's me.How far along are you on the new Northrend 5-mans? Have you picked a favorite yet? And how many people have you seen die on the Azjol Nerub drop?
