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The Queue: Facts of life
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. To celebrate my most recent level 80, a protection warrior, I was going to use a screenshot of it in the header of today's edition of The Queue. Unfortunately, I'm writing this on my laptop and when I play WoW on this thing the character models... well, let's just say they mutate a little bit. It's not pretty. So instead, I'm using a screenshot of one of Matt Rossi's warriors and we're all going to pretend it's a white-haired female draenei. Sound good? Great. Now let's move on. Kar On E asked... "If you could trade out one of the new race/class combinations coming to us in Cataclysm for one that will not be there, which would you trade out? Which would you instead trade in? Why?"
Ghostcrawler cleans up two dev chat questions
As you probably noticed if you watched along with us, yesterday's developer chat (with Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton taking questions from Twitter and answering them on the forums) was a little light to say the least. Rather than answer questions about game balance seriously, the devs chose to make fun of hunters taming druids and do a lot of hinting and winking. Fortunately, we have Ghostcrawler -- he's responded to concerns about two of the questions yesterday over on the forums. The first is in response to some feedback about what the devs yesterday called "binary" hard modes -- they said that instead of providing multiple levels of difficulty (as in Sarth and his drakes), they'd prefer to have a hard mode either on or off (you'll be able to toggle between the two in Icecrown). This relates to what we just said recently, with different types of guilds looking for different types of content to play. GC replies that the "in-betweens" in terms of difficulty will come with later bosses in normal mode -- if you want to play a challenge without stepping into the hard modes, Blizzard will do their best to make sure that the last bosses on normal give you that challenge. Which makes sense -- bosses should ramp up in difficulty as the instance goes along, and no one would suggest, for instance, that Yogg was nearly as easy as Flame Leviathan. And GC also talked about one of my favorite (and missed) game mechanics: crowd control.
Guildwatch: Just don't say "priceless"
We got quite a few good photoshopped victory pictures in the email after our suggestion that you send us some a few weeks ago, so you'll probably see a few of them here in the column over the next few weeks (assuming, that is, we don't get any hilarious chat logs that we need to show you). This one's from Tyranis, GM of The Arcane Council on Bloodhoof, who adds in some fun stuff to every screenshot his guild puts together. Go see more of them on their website.More downed news, as well as drama and recruiting notices, in this week's Guildwatch, which starts below. If you have news to send in, please do: drop us a quick note (the more you can emulate the format of the news below, the better) at guildwatch@wow.com. Meanwhile, read on for this week's column.
May Guild of the Month: Dragon Knights on Area 52
We're running late on this one (the beginning of the month was quite busy), but it's not any less exciting: congratulations go out to our latest Guild of the Month for May: the Dragon Knights on Area 52. They sent us a nomination along with many other guilds in the game, and were selected for their originality, community, and raiding performance. Among other interesting things about the guild (which you can read in the second half of this post), they run a guild podcast, an email newsletter, and even a lotto, all along with raiding competitively and leveling up as a guild.In addition to being profiled here on the site, the Dragon Knights will also win a raid pack from Swagdog.com, where they (and you) can pick up customized shirts and hats with their guild name and logo printed on them. Our Guild of the Month contest is ongoing, so stay tuned to the site for the next chance to nominate your guild to be recognized here on WoW.com. Read on to learn more about the Dragon Knights and why they're our winners for May.
The best of WoW.com: June 9-16, 2009
Joystiq's sister site WoW.com covers the most popular MMO ever, World of Warcraft, every day of every week. Want to know what's new in Azeroth? Here's our biggest stories from the last seven days. News Upcoming mount changesRequired levels for mounts are being lowered, as are the costs for each. Isle of Conquest details releasedHot new deets on the game's upcoming battleground instance. Mountain Dew Battle-bots now liveMountain Dew released their promotional in-game items -- come and get 'em while they're... bot? New zeppelin and portals coming in Patch 3.2In addition to the mount updates, Blizzard is adding a new zep to ride and a portal straight to Outland. How convenient! Yogg Saron and Flame Leviathan nerfed tonightTwo Ulduar bosses get hit with the nerf bat. Features Guildwatch: He's really, really sorryDrama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. Ten things WoW players should know from E3Activision is bigger than ever, the MMO genre is widening, and wow, Star Wars: The Old Republic looks good. Addon Spotlight: Essential addons for raid leadersOur weekly column for UI addons examines some recommended installs for those leading raids. Popular scams and how to avoid themThere are scams aplenty in Azeroth, so here's some tips on how to dodge them. WoW, Casually: Tips for leveling on a PvP realmPlay on a player vs. player realm but don't want to die that often? Here's how to stay alive.
Ready Check: Flame Leviathan
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.Ulduar. Land of legend. Realm of confused Titans. Raid of epics. Ulduar is home to some of the finest fights available in Azeroth, not to mention leagues of incredible lore. Over the next few weeks, your intrepid Ready Check columnists will be taking a look at what you should expect from Ulduar, in both 10 man and 25 man versions.We're going to go in a simple format. We'll look at the trash before a boss, the boss, then the next trash. So, let's get started with that beautiful runway before Flame Leviathan. There's a little extra to cover with Leviathan, because of the fight's unique vehicle dynamic. Today's Ready Check will be focused exclusively on this fight. It's not because the fight is so difficult, but because your method for fighting it has absolutely nothing to do with the class you play. You get to learn entirely new stuff for this fight.The three parts of our Flame Leviathan guide are: Part I: Understand your new vehicle Part II: The trash before Flame Leviathan Part III: Fighting Flame Leviathan Or you can jump behind the cut to get started.
Yogg-Saron and Flame Leviathan nerfed tonight
It looks like some pretty big nerfs to the Yogg-Saron fight tonight. Ulduar's big bad (well, one of two) will have a much easier first phase, as the Guardians of Yogg-Saron have ceased mind-controlling players, as well as becoming "more forgiving" in their spawn rate. Additionally, flash-frozen players that touch a cloud will no longer bring forth a Guardian. Flame Leviathan's hard mode was hit as well. The amount of extra health he gets per tower up was reduced and the snare effect of Hodir's tower removed. Additionally, vehicles caught in a flash freeze will be freed with a single shot from a Demolisher or Siege Engine cannon. Players will also not go quite so high when ejected from Flamey following a stun, which should make them a bit easier to pick up. Oh, and XT-002 Deconstructor won't make people into bombs quite so often (and his heart's health was reduced a touch on 25-man). Overall, it seems Yoggy will be significantly easier. My guild isn't there yet, though (next up for us is Mimiron) - people who have done the fight, how big of a deal will these changes be?
70,000 Death Knights slaughtered in Great Server Downtime of 2009
It's been some time since I last looked at the Top Lists on the official World of Warcraft site. I only thought to glance at it since I stumbled upon my own post about it from December of last year, when Loken reigned supreme as the most dangerous mob in the game. These days, Yogg-Saron's other minions have taken his crown from him. Interestingly, the most dangerous mob bounces back and forth between the first boss of Ulduar and one of the last bosses of Ulduar. Flame Leviathan is apparently far more deadly than I'd ever have expected, and either there are more players than I thought fighting General Vezax and Yogg-Saron, or the few guilds on those two bosses really like wiping. I guarantee that my raid added a thousand deaths to the Guardian of Yogg-Saron tally a few of those nights.The correlation between Flame Leviathan being tops or Vezax being tops seems to be a matter of the day of the week. Monday night leading into Tuesday morning, Vezax and Yogg-Saron reign supreme. Wednesday and Thursday when everyone has a fresh Ulduar ID? Flame Leviathan is ahead significantly. Makes sense. 'Risen Ghoul' is consistently near the top, too. Nerf Death Knights plz k thx.The most interesting stat of all of these this time around is certainly not most dangerous mob, though. No sir. The Most Completed Quests section is hilarious. You can see the effects of this past Tuesday's lengthy downtime for certain battlegroups. How can you tell? Well, the date of the data is when it was uploaded to the site. It's the data from the day prior, however. The data listed for Wednesday (which is what happened Tuesday)? There are no daily quests in the Most Completed like there usually is, no sir. It's the entire Death Knight starter quest chain. Yes, that's right, you can actually see how many people on North American realms rerolled throw-away Death Knights on different realms because their server was down. The very first quest, In Service of the Lich King, was completed 64,152 times.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution tips and tricks in Ulduar
I know, it's another Retribution post, but since we got hit with the nerf bat again (ever so slightly) I decided to devote one last column to the spec before I rotate back to Protection. Besides, my past month or so has been spent raiding Ulduar as Retribution (with the first few forays as Holy) so I think that's what I'll talk about for now. Rather than talk about specific boss strategies, we'll talk about the little things we can do to perform at our best in Ulduar. Flame Leviathan First up is Flame Leviathan. Obviously, none of the usual strategies will apply here but one key point players should remember is that the vehicles scale with gear. This means having to prepare an outfit set optimized for the encounter. One thing to note about vehicle scaling is that it doesn't look at stats, just iLevel. Optimizing a gear set for this means putting the highest iLevel item you have in every slot. For "pure" classes, this is usually their normal set-up, but for Paladins who keep several sets of gear, an iLevel-optimized outfit can be composed of healing items, a few tank items, some DPS items, and even PvP gear. Players can use AddOns such as RatingBuster to determine an item's iLevel and outfit managers such as Outfitter or Blizzard's new in-game equipment manager to quickly swap gear.
Guildwatch: Ninjas are mammals
Lots of great guild news in this week's column -- many guilds, like OpEx above, from Scilla, are making their way through Ulduar and dropping lots of bosses as they go by. And many more guilds are recruiting: way more, unfortunately, than we have space for in this column. Business is booming if you're a raiding guild, apparently, and we have a feeling that's exactly what Blizzard planned.There's also drama in this week's GW, as there is every week, and don't worry: we included the rap battle. Don't miss that one. If you've got tips for us about drama, downed news, or recruiting (though we are still overflowing on recruiting -- at this point, you're probably better off just on your realm forums), send us an email at wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Click the link below to read on.
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Ulduar, part 1
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Ulduar.With Ulduar laid wide open, many Rogues and their guilds are flocking to its gates. Brand new bosses and shiny gear upgrades are just two of the reasons that I've seen so many 'LFM Ulduar' advertisements in trade chat. However, as the dungeon is still relatively new, many of us haven't had the opportunity to confront every giant-sized boss in the instance.I've compiled a list of basic roles for each boss fight in the instance, as well as a list of cool tricks and tips you can use to make your first (or eighth!) run through Ulduar as smooth as possible. Blizzard has included several fights in the instance where it is advantageous to bring a Rogue, and being able to proactively seize these opportunities will put you at the head of the pack.
Guildwatch: Bad form
The shot above actually takes place after Rigged denied instance-ninja'ing the last two bosses of Naxx... until his guild found out that, according to his achievements, he really had taken their kills earlier that day. Strange how all of a sudden plenty of justifications (Naxx is easy, it was only two bosses, "I was bored") jump to mind after he's caught, when before all he could do was deny it ever happened.That story and more in this week's Guildwatch, which you can click the "read more" link below to read. If you've got tips about guild drama, downed (especially downed -- we could use lots more good Ulduar news), or recruiting notices, make sure to put it in the format you see below and send it along to guildwatch@wowinsider.com (yes, we're still working on getting that email address changed to wow.com, give it time). And in the future, you could see those tips right here.
Breakfast Topic: How is vehicle combat treating you?
The other week, I finally took my druid into Ulduar for the first time. The instance has been calling to me for weeks, but my guild has only just started EoE. Having spent all our time prior to 3.1 in Naxx, we've only now got to the point when we're all in enough epics to survive for more than five minutes. So we went in, grabbed vehicles and started downing towers and other random buildings. Then it was time for a meet and greet with one F. Leviathan. Needless to say we didn't just wipe, we crashed and burned, but I found the use of vehicles interesting, even if the controls infuriated me beyond belief. I've done my time in Wintergrasp and I love it, especially when you can hitch a ride and let someone else do all the shooting (/joke). However I've always found the targeting system a little awkward. The vehicle interface in general feels clunky -- particularly when you're doing certain quests. Wintergrasp is bearable, but boss combat means you have to be more on your toes, especially when it's a team effort between the people driving and those who are unleashing hell upon Flame Leviathan and its minions. So I'm quite curious to know what you guys think of the use of vehicles in WoW. Do you like the interface? Is there enough variety? How do you find using them in PvE combat in Ulduar? What about Wintergrasp? Do you wish we could have those flying vehicles mentioned way back at the WWI? Drop your comments in the box and cast your vote in our poll below.%Poll-30123%
Guildwatch: When GMs go bad
Ah yes, the sinking feeling you get when you see that someone has ninja'ed your guild bank... and it's your guildmaster. Never a good thing, for the guildies, the GM, or the guild. Actually, it's a great thing for the GM -- they get to walk away with thousands of gold (and most of them, through some twisted logic, even think they deserve it). That's why I recommend you do what I do: pack all of your ingame stuff in a virtual mattress somewhere. Sure, your guild might not appreciate a lack of bank contributions, but at least it'll be safe, right?The story of the picture above and much more drama, downed and recruiting news all in this week's GW. Click the link below to read on, and if you've got news for us (everything but recruiting, please -- we are uber full on that one lately), hit us up at guildwatch@wow.com.
The Daily Quest: Ghost ridin'
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The YOGSCast has done it again. Another flawless Ulduar strategy. You can either watch it embedded above, or over on their YouTube page. You might want to watch it in HD, it's worth it. Big Bear Butt talks about his guild and how they approach casual raiding. You could learn a thing or two from him, perhaps! We're a day late on linking this one, but Frost is the New Black was right there Sunday morning to honor the Mothers of Azeroth. Slice and Dice answers some of their most frequently asked Rogue questions! Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Player receives Developer item in the mail, one-shots Ulduar
Update April 30th, 2009: Karatechop's account has been closed. Read the full story here. We first received a tip on a mysterious guild that was blowing through Ulduar's hardest achievements one after the other, all in one day, about a day or two ago. Their gear and raid experience stated very well that they were in no position to do any of those achievements, but we sort of shrugged and let it pass by. It was odd that these players were barely in Naxxramas gear, and their first recorded Kel'thuzad kill was only two weeks prior to their explosion of Ulduar achievements, but we initially ignored these reports because surely, nobody could be hacking the game. On top of that, the forum threads submitted to us all had so many posts deleted from them that they were completely incomprehensible. There was nothing solid about any of it. Tips on it are still flooding our mailboxes today and a bit more information has surfaced, so let's look into it a little, shall we? The guild is The Marvel Family of US-Vek'nilash. The character Karatechop is the one that has attracted the most attention, and you'll see why in just a moment. If you look over his gear, it's not that bad, really. Epic tank gear, a lot of it from Naxxramas, so it's feasible that he could make some progress through Ulduar. It gets weird when you go to his Statistics and/or Achievements panels. Let's go to his statistics first.
Guildwatch: It wasn't me, man
*Sniff sniff*. Smell that? It's the smell of desperation -- the smell of a ninja who knows he's been caught. Zlickrick above found a piece of loot in his mailbox that was supposed to go to someone who won a raid roll, but instead he put it on. And now, confronted, you can almost see the desperation in his text. Unfortunately, once an item is soulbound, it's pretty much lost. But still, he knows he's been caught. And GW knows it, too.That story and more in this week's Guildwatch, bringing you drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. Send your guild's information (or any drama you've spotted) to wowguildwatch@gmail.com, and click on to read this week's column.
Patch 3.1 Secrets of Ulduar round up
We've talked a whole lot about Ulduar in the last few months, and a lot of great Ulduar-related resources have cropped up. So you don't need to dig through our entire site to find what you're looking for this fine Tuesday morning, I've tried to collect the most useful pieces of our current Ulduar content into one nice list for you. Enjoy! Ulduar Mania kicked off with this preview of Ulduar from the official EU community site. And then this video! You can listen to this song by Summergale and Cranius titled 'Ulduar' while you read this insanely long list! To be sure you'll never be lost in Ulduar, we've covered a few sites with maps of the zone. Check out an early iteration of the Ulduar achievements. Most of them have remained the same, but note that some of the numbers in the post were placeholders and have since been updated.
Shifting Perspectives: Ulduar class preview, part I
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author pretends to know more about Ulduar than she actually does, which makes a refreshing change from pretending to know more than she actually does about things that are already in the game.Hail and well met, Druids. For the next three Shifting Perspectives columns, I'm going to take a look at Druid class roles on Ulduar fights. If patch 3.1 hits earlier than expected (I'm currently betting that it hits in late April/early May), I'll try to squeeze these in a little bit faster than once per week. But with luck (and, I hope, a parade of annoying bugs for Blizzard to hunt down and squash before they let the patch go live), we should have some information to chew on before we set foot in a live Ulduar. Now watch Blizzard deploy the frickin' patch next week.I have not gotten the opportunity to test all of these fights personally because I'm only on the North American PTR, and some fights -- like Yogg-Saron -- haven't been available for testing at all. What I write here is going to be a compilation of personal experience, details concerning boss abilities available on the PTR version of Wowhead, information I've gotten from pestering various people on both PTR's, and news available around the web, principally from WoW Insider's previous PTR testing, Wowwiki, MMO Champion, and World of Raids. Bear in mind that some things here may wind up being very different when Ulduar actually goes live, so take numbers and conjecture here with a grain of salt. I'm going to assume that basic boss mechanics are likely to remain the same or similar, so let's get started with the first three encounters.
Ulduar testing schedule updated: March 13th-18th
The last couple days of Ulduar testing have been a wash, delays and cancellations cutting things short. As mentioned by the developers when they announced the cancellation of the EU's Auriaya testing, recent tweaks and retuning hadn't yet made it to the PTR, they were contained in a future build that hadn't hit those servers yet. Really, it would be rather pointless to test those bosses. Due to this, they've pushed back all testing and changed up the testing schedule. Testing is now on hold until tomorrow, which means that either this evening or tomorrow morning, we'll be seeing a new build on the PTR.North American realms: Friday, 3/13, 4PM PDT: Mimiron Saturday, 3/14, 4PM PDT: Hodir Sunday, 3/15, 11AM PDT: Flame Leviathan Monday, 3/16, 4PM PDT: Ignis the Furnace Master Tuesday, 3/17, 4PM PDT: XT-002 Deconstructor Wednesday, 3/18, 4PM PDT: Kologarn European realms: Friday, 3/13, 19:00 CET: Mimiron Saturday, 3/14, 19:00 CET: Auriaya Sunday, 3/15, 19:00 CET: Flame Leviathan Monday, 3/16, 19:00 CET: General Vezax Tuesday, 3/17, 19:00 CET: Thorim Wednesday, 3/18, 19:00 CET: Freya Again, this is the new testing schedule for the upcoming week, and the one that was passed around yesterday should be disregarded.
