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The Daily Grind: What's the best loot you've ever scored in an MMO?
Everyone's got a a story or two about the time she scored that one really great piece of game-changing loot in an MMORPG. There was the time I won the piece I needed for my World of Warcraft Priest's Benediction/Anathema staff (still have it, too!). There was the time I landed a 120-skill powerscroll for my Disco-Archer in Ultima Online. And there was the time I lucked out on my first Guild Wars birthday and received a bone dragon, a minipet whose sale for a virtual fortune helped me bankroll my characters' gear and my obsessive trading habit for years to come. Even if we wouldn't call ourselves lootmongers, we still love getting a new shiny -- the rarer, the better. What's the best loot you've ever scored in an MMO? Let's hear some juicy tales! Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Alex Afrasiabi's design framework for Benediction
Today on twitter Alex Afrasiabi is at it again with the pictures, this time with the above: a photo of his 10-year-old notes for the design framework of two classic priest weapons: Benediction and Anathema. Priests from World of Warcraft's days of yore probably have vivid memories of these coveted items, Benediction and its counterpart, Anathema. In order to obtain them, an eager priest would first have to get The Eye of Divinity from Majordomo Executus in Molten Core, then The Eye of Shadow from an elite demon in The Blasted Lands or Winterspring. With both trinkets equipped, the ghostly questgiver Eris Havenfire became visible in the Eastern Plaguelands. Eris would then task the player with healing and curing 50 peasants escaping the undead. If 15 of them died, you failed the quest. Once you had successfully completed the objective, Eris would give you the Splinter of Nordrassil, which together with the two trinkets created Benediction. Priests could then switch the two staves into each other as they wished. Afrasiabi's photo is a nice little glimpse into a world WoW has largely left behind, and a sure shot of nostalgia for those who were there. It's also nice to see how much of the work was done the old fashioned way, with pen and paper! What a nice, pre-Valentine's Day gift for the playerbase.
WoW Archivist: WoW's 20 greatest non-legendary weapons, part 2
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? Based on your comments from part 1, I feel the need to explain my criteria so that people can debate these choices with the right frame of mind. This list isn't just for a weapon that had good stats, or a great model, or even one that is a big part of the lore. Those are all bonuses here, but they are just that -- bonuses. This list is about weapons that straight-up delighted us because they did something new or unique, because they were memorable in some grand way that other weapons haven't been. Gorehowl and Ashkandi, as beloved as they are, as gorgeously modeled as they are, just weren't interesting enough as items to make the list. They deserve honorable mentions, though. A lot of amazing weapons have been left out, including some of my personal favorites, but hey, WoW just has too much greatness for any mere top 20 list to contain. Let's proceed to the top 10!
Breakfast Topic: What long-deleted item do you most yearn to get back?
Transmogrification and void storage was too little, way too late for those of us who ran out of space back in classic WoW. While it's easier than ever to retrace your steps via mogging, solo dungeon diving, and account-wide pets and mounts, quite a few items remain that simply cannot be regained. My original priest's Benediction is the centerpiece of a battle raging among my characters vying for main character status, for no other reason that I could mog that staff and enjoy it every single day. I do still have it, thank goodness, but if I didn't, it's no longer obtainable in game. I thank my stars (my stars, see?) every day that my Bene is still mine. But what about all the lovelies that I sold to make room in my bank? Remember, pets and mounts used to take up a bag or bank slot. My Black Nightsaber? Gone. All my original ZG items -- gone. And sometimes it's not even that the items are completely unobtainable anymore; it's that the effort would be herculean. Also, I admit to pining for an actual, original item I once owned rather than its replacement. Crafted goods especially fall into this category, because I miss the "made by" tag of the friend who slaved over making it for me or the pride that came from crafting it myself. The group effort behind all those early enchanting rods ... The memories entangled in some of those crazy trinkets and odd items ... They're irreplaceable -- but bank space is bank space, right? Are there any currently unobtainable items you deleted or lost along the way that you wish you could have back again? Is there something you've tried to replace, but luck's been against you?
Weapons of Lore: Benediction
For a priest, it represented the ultimate in weapons, a staff designed to assist with the greatest of healers or the darkest of shadowy specters. For others, the staff was a signal that the healer they'd just run into was one of the few and highly skilled, capable of keeping them alive in the darkest of situations. Though epic in quality, the staff Benediction was akin to a legendary in stats and appearance. Clicking on Benediction wouldn't give you wings or turn you into a mount; instead, the staff transformed into Anathema, a completely different staff with a completely different set of stats. There has never been another weapon released with Benediction's glimmering golden model or with Anathema's dangerous silver spines. Benediction is no longer obtainable in game; it was removed when Cataclysm was introduced. But for players in vanilla WoW lucky enough to get the appropriate quest drops, Benediction represented the best of the best in healing staves for the majority of the original iteration of the game. Others looked at the weapon with awe, but the lucky priest who wielded it knew there was more to the staff than a set of killer stats. Benediction may have been a brilliant weapon, but its origins were stained with the blood of thousands of innocents.
Legendary Weapons: Story chains or class quests?
So last week, the first rogue in my guild got the Fangs of the Father set, and I started working on my set. Right now, I'm about a third of the way to stage two, and then I'll have stage three to contend with. Though there are fewer pieces to collect for the daggers, unlike the items for Dragonwrath, only one rogue can proceed on the chain at a time. That's OK with me -- I don't mind the wait, and I know I have fun stuff to look forward to in between stages. I wasn't expecting a cutscene after starting the chain, but I was absolutely delighted with the fact that I got a bit of story to play through instead of "You killed Illidan and you're very lucky -- have a Warglaive!" However, there was another, slightly more bothersome difference between Dragonwrath and the Fangs of the Father, one I'm not quite sure how I feel about. When our first raider got his Dragonwrath, everyone rushed to Orgrimmar and watched Kalecgos appear and deliver the staff in front of everyone that happened to be idling in town at the time. It was a moment of sheer excitement, joy, and fun, both for the player who got the staff and the guild who had helped him along the long road to getting it. We didn't get that with Fangs of the Father.
Spiritual Guidance: When I was your age ...
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Every so often, I'm hit with this brilliant idea that I should level another priest. It always sounds like a lot of fun at first, especially when I'm just toying around in the character creation screen making my new baby all pretty. Do I want brown hair or blond hair? The sexy eyes or the vapid ones? Hmm ... now what do I name her? The fun ends a few minutes later when after skipping the opening cinematic (which I've already seen), I pick up my first quest and realize I've done this before. Sure, maybe this time I'm picking up Salvaged Supplies instead of Cactus Apples -- but really, it's always the same. That's why after about 5 minutes of killing eight boars or eight bandits or eight worgen, I bask in the glory of level 2 and log out. Except for today. Today, I was determined to get my new darling Elyria up to level 12 so I could see all of the new Worgen content and the new Forsaken quests in Silverpine Forest after that. I was really determined this time, and as a result, I made it through something like 42 Smite casts without logging out and got to learn Flash Heal as a result That's when I realized that damn, priests these days have it easy. Flash Heal at level 3? Really? Let me tell you how it used to be.
Spiritual Guidance: Benediction
Though temporarily bested by Sindragosa's Ice Tombs, a well-timed Renew and some gnome mages have freed Dawn Moore just in time for her to wrench back Spiritual Guidance from the shady clutches of Fox Van Allen; just as she does every Sunday. After she finishes advising her fellow healing priests on the ways of the light this week, she will be waiting for a duel in Zangarmarsh atop the highest mushroom with a Flag of Ownership and Medallion of the Horde. Bring it! I've had a lot of requests recently from readers who want a leg up on gearing out their soon to be level 80, or fresh level 80 priest for raiding. This is certainly a worthwhile topic, one I intend to get to, but not this week. We get a lot of mail at WoW.com and this past week we got an e-mail from a player named Nemikahn who wrote a WoW version of the song Sunscreen. The various staffers read through the e-mail, groaned in realization at how old they were (the original song came out in 1998) before the e-mail got lost in the jumble of BlizzCon 2010 news. I really enjoyed the rewrite though, and thought it rather timely given we are nearing the end of this expansion. Cataclysm is coming, and it's supposed to change everything we've become familiar with. So, this week my fellow priests, my guidance is this: stop and smell the flowers. WoW operates at such a hurried pace these days. Don't feel like you always have to rush off to the next raid or complete another alt. Take more screen shots, visit your favorite zones, make sure you can contact your closest friends in the game outside of it, and most of all: create Benediction. I will, of course, help you with that last part.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Life and Death
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. Today we're fielding a lot of questions on the Light and the Shadow, and Life and Death. I don't know why, really, that's just how things happened! Trends like that are always fun, like the week or two where we had nothing but dragon questions. It makes picking out themes really easy!Emorich asked... I was under the impression that C'Thun wasn't dead. I thought we simply stopped him. After all, we were attacking one of his eyeballs, hardly a vital organ. Is Kil'Jaeden dead too? I thought we basically just pushed him back through the portal and now he's really pissed.
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Paladin changes
After a wait that I was beginning to suspect wouldn't end, the 3.1 PTR is finally online and we have some new 3.1 patch notes. Though there are some noticable changes announced earlier this month missing from the latest patch notes, all of them seem to be in the current PTR build, only undocumented (most undocumented notes here are via MMO-Champion). As with all undocumented changes -- they may change at any time. For a complete rundown of the changes listed in the patch notes (and the changes not listed in the patch notes!), read on.
Patch 3.0.2 primer for Retribution Paladins
Let's face it. Retribution blows.Blows things up, that is. Out of all the trees -- and I mean all including the other classes -- no tree got more love than Retribution in the Echoes of Doom patch. For many of us, it's been a long time coming. No other class spec has been the butt of more jokes and the target of such derision as Retribution. Not anymore. Not in Patch 3.0.2 and the days leading up to Wrath of the Lich King. Retribution deals so much pain that we've sent the rest of player base running to Ghostcrawler crying for a nerf. And we're getting nerfed. To the ground.Don't panic. The changes are really, mostly aimed at PvP Paladins -- okay, that's me -- but will largely leave Paladin PvE damage output the same. That's excellent news. Because I've grown accustomed to the idea that quite a lot of you guys prefer PvE to PvP, we'll take a look at a PvE Retribution build that will make you the darling of your Heroic runs and more than welcome in raids. Let's bring on the pain after the jump.
[UPDATED] Paladin changes in Beta build 8926 part I
This is one of the biggest patches to hit Paladins in a while, and it's a mixed bag. Let's get the bad news out of the way first -- all of Seals have been nerfed. All of them. Seal of the Martyr / Blood, Corruption / Vengeance, Wisdom, Light, Justice, Righteousness and even Command have all had their damage reduced. The formulas are tweaks of the values of attack power, spell power, and weapon speed -- a bit complicated to explain in detail -- that result in an overall damage reduction. Now, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, let me say one thing: don't panic.We can probably consider this patch the nerf patch, which is an essential part of the tuning process. The developers traditionally start from a high power scale and fine tune it downwards -- I mean, look at the poor Death Knight. This is still the Wrath Beta, and while there is a chance these numbers might stick through to live, testing these lowered numbers are vital to getting everything right for release. If you're in Beta, log in, play with it for a while, and give feedback. If you're not in Beta, hold back a bit from making a ruckus and exercise a little patience until the testing is done. Let's take a deep breath. Now where'd I put my inhaler...
Ask a Lore Nerd: Things that aren't Deathwing
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below (or e-mail us!), ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer your question in a future installmentCowbane asked...Is there a Heaven or Hell in any Warcraft lore? Or is the swirly clouds when you die about it.That's a good question, and my answer isn't going to be very clear, because Warcraft itself isn't clear on it. Warcraft used to be based much more heavily on Christian concepts. There was a Heaven and there was a Hell, there was God and Angels and all that jazz. It's much more vague and nebulous now. It seems that the Twisting Nether is the current concept of Hell, but that might just mean it's a really bad place and not somewhere that sinful dead people automatically go. I have no idea if there is still a Heaven, but the Priest quest for Benediction/Anathema has you escorting souls of Stratholme's dead to the afterlife. So do they exist? Probably, yes. It is suggested that they definitely do exist. What are they like, exactly? We don't know.
The Light and How to Swing It: The shocking truth in Beta
Ok. So Paladins rock in Beta. There are a whole slew of abilities and talents that make life a whole lot easier and a lot more fun. One popular request on the comments has been to test drive the new Wrath Shockadin, with improvements like a 6 second Holy Shock and ranged judgements from Enlightened Judgements, it really does seem like the spec has finally come into its own. Of course, what looks good on paper doesn't necessarily translate into actual gameplay. With the reshuffle of talents and the consolidation of spell and melee crit, what used to be a fringe off-spec with a loyal following might actually turn into the spec of choice... for healing Paladins. Before anything, though, let's make one thing clear -- this is Beta, so everything we'll be taking a look at today might (and is likely to) change by the time Wrath of the Lich King is live.
The Light and How to Swing It: Three easy steps to Retribution PvP
Regular Paladin columnist Elizabeth was crit by an insane amount of work at, well, work and her co-columnist Chris is away completing his own epic quest, so like those duplicitous Blood Elves, I'll be stealing the Light for this week and swinging it around. Since most of the stuff I write on the site concern the one thing I really like to do -- PvP -- I think I'll get into character and write about something that some people find taboo... Retribution PvP. After writing about a few rules on healing in PvP, let's indulge ourselves with a little retributive mayhem. Despite being the most ridiculed spec in the entire game, Retribution can be a lot of fun -- and painful for your opponents -- once you get some fundamentals down pat.Step one: gear upIf you are at all interested in PvP as a Retribution Paladin, you must get geared up. There are no two ways about this. Unless you have the proper gear, you will simply not perform as well as similarly-geared classes and your PvP experience will be diminished greatly. Retribution is one of the most equipment-dependent specs in the game, and you will feel it in PvP. Chris has written an excellent starter guide for all aspiring Ret Pallies, which is an excellent read for learning about the perfect Retribution gear. In order to do some PvP, we'll then need to take the next step and go beyond what Chris suggested and aim much higher as far as at least one piece of equipment is concerned -- your weapon.
Time, time, time is on the designer's side
Taking a break from his recent infatuation with updating the back-end of his website and rattling his plastic saber at Moorgard, Ryan Shwayder has posted a new rant that gives his perspective on the pervasive, though oft-bemoaned, time-sink quest. You know the one -- that fed ex quest where you're sent to an NPC fifteen or twenty minutes away, click through a few windows of text, then run back for your piddling little reward. Ryan argues that while those quests certainly have their place, especially when it comes to introducing and endearing players to new zones, in excess they make for very dry and mundane gameplay.I take Ryan's point, but I still think there's more to the issue. He says that while filling up a game with fun content is difficult, it can be done without artificially extending the durability of the content. Perhaps my perception is limited by experience, but it's hard for me to imagine an MMO that doesn't rely substantially on wasting time to spread out the rewards and keep gamers coming back time and again. Part of what makes accomplishments in MMOs so much more profound is the sheer volume of time it often takes to complete them. Without that commitment, would these accomplishments mean as much? Would getting Anathema/Benediction on my Priest way back when have meant as much if I could have farmed for it for a couple days? I doubt it.
Answers for Those Nagging Priest Questions
This charmingly titled FAQ provides a nice compilation of answers to questions that are posted in the forums ten times a day by priests. From what enchant to put on your Benediction to whether spirit gear is better than mana per 5 gear, this guide isn't covering the basics - for basic information for a starting priest you might try this FAQ instead - but it does hit on all the hot topics. If you're a priest looking for answers, this is a very good starting place. Hopefully it will also slow the constant inquires over the best enchant for the Benediction, but I'm probably just being optimistic...
