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Why leveling will always be important to WoW
Times they are a changin', and as Patch 3.2 hits the PTR with a new wealth of mechanics aimed at making the journey to 80 that much easier, why not take a moment to look back at how Azeroth has changed? Leveling used to take a long time, and one of the first things a friend told me was that "the game started at 60." While the level cap might have changed, it's something I heartily agree with.Those of you who joined the game around the time of the latest expansion or even before might hear others speaking with misty-eyes of the olden days of Classic WoW when it took an age to get from Darnassus to Stormwind. While WoW might have a much lower learning curve than, say, EVE Online, it does still have one. But WoW is known as a bit of a grind fest and the ever growing level cap, which currently stands at 80 but will no doubt go higher with the next expansion, can be pretty daunting.Especially for a new player.
The Queue: Missing out
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.Before we get started today, I just wanted to take a moment and mention that I'm working on a Special Edition (super special!) of The Queue focusing on Dual Specs. It won't interrupt our regular daily doses of The Queue, it'll come seperately. It might take me awhile to piece it together because people have asked a lot of Dual Spec questions, but it's coming! Slowly but surely.jam asked...What happened to the new instance that was supposed to be in Un'Goro crater, accessible only by through the Waygate in Sholazar Basin?
The Ghostcrawler Experiment
Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler, is the lead systems designer at Blizzard for World of Warcraft. It's his job to make sure all the numbers work right, that the talents are spiffy, and all that "other" stuff. He became a presence during the Wrath of the Lich King beta, posting daily about updates to the game and interacting with players in a way that hasn't been seen before.The daily activity by Ghostcrawler has lead to him become a staple of sites such as WoW Insider and MMO-Champion. Every day you can see at least one or two items from him. We here at WoW Insider are particularly watchful of what he says, since his posts usually contain detailed information about why something was done and what might be done in the future. That's great content that we like to talk a lot about.However despite the volumes Ghostcrawler publishes each day, some people feel that his welcome has ran out – that this experiment of him providing community interaction has failed. Some feel that his penchant for forum interaction is time wasted, that he's done nothing more than incite riots with certain classes, and that his demeanor is less than appealing. There was a forum post today about this very topic, but that in itself is nothing new as lots of people have been QQing over Ghostcrawler for a while.Don't let all the crying fool you however – he has some major supporters throughout the community.
The Queue: Pandamonium
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.Welcome! You probably noticed I skipped yesterday. Why? Because I felt like it. Yeah, how do you like them apples? I sure showed you! You got owned, y'all.Uh, anyway. Alexran asked... Why exactly did Blizzard skip out on the Pandaren as a playable race? I remember hearing something about racism or that the Chinese government would invade Blizzard's HQ. Whats the deal?
Ask A Beta Tester: AABT's greatest hits, part 2
On to part 2! This series of questions spans August and early September, and we'll keep moving forward this week.Hoops asked.... How much gold roughly would you get from questing 70-77 (until you unlock the flying mount)? I was wondering if it would it be worth farming money beforehand or would the money from questing be enough. Elizabeth answers: I'm not 77 yet, so I can't exactly address the question as asked, but I can tell you that I've made about 400g leveling from 70 to 72. That's just from questing, vendoring trash & unneeded greens -- and it includes some stupid deaths, plenty of repair bills(I blame Dalaran for many of them!), and training a couple of professions (35g to train a primary profession to the next skill level and 100g to train a secondary profession to the next skill level). Allie adds: I finally started keeping track of how I was doing gold-wise while leveling. On the beta I leveled a lot through instance runs because the demand for healers was so high; on the live realms I've leveled mostly through questing. Between 70 and 76 so far (remarkably fast for me but my guild starts raiding next week) I've made somewhere in the region of 2K gold after training, repairs, professions, etc., mostly through questing and keeping my bags as open as possible to sell vendor trash. As Elizabeth observes, that part's key; Northrend vendor trash and greens sell for a LOT.
Ask A Beta Tester: AABT's greatest hits, part 1
Yep, we've shocked the ol' column back to gasping life. The good kind of reanimation, though, not the kind you're probably killing in Northrend.Wow, this took ages. We got a lot of standout questions while doing Ask A Beta Tester, and I went through all of them trying to pick out the best, funniest, most helpful, or most unintentionally prescient among them. To be perfectly frank, we had so many that I started splitting them into separate articles. I've eliminated the questions that I expect readers will probably have answered for themselves at this point (e.g. Death Knight starting faction reputation) but kept all of the questions that I'm pretty sure are still relevant to the first week of gameplay in Wrath. I've also made a few additions and updates based on what we saw both in the beta and now on the live realms. I hope you guys enjoy reading these as much as we did answering them.I'm going to start off with the earliest series of questions that Elizabeth Harper and Alex Ziebart took in July and August. To round out the rest of AABT's best in the next few days, we'll keep moving through August, September, October, and up to the very end of AABT.
Ask A Beta Tester: So long, and thanks for all the fish
Yes, folks, the proverbial fat lady has sung, and this is the last "real" Ask A Beta Tester. Tomorrow we're going to run an AABT that showcases the best, funniest, and most prescient questions we received, and after that -- bowing to popular demand -- the column's going to change gears somewhat and become Ask A Guy (or Girl) Something, or...I dunno, whatever we decide to call it. AAGoGS is cumbersome but oddly endearing, I admit.Deri (among others) asks...At 77, approximately how much money will I have made levelling up through quests?At 77 you'll be eligible to train Cold Weather Flying for 1,000g, which I assume is what this is about. Will you have made that much questing? I'd made...I want to say somewhere in the region of 800g leveling between 70 and 77, but I also tanked and healed a LOT of instance runs, so my quest income was on the low side. So I'd say it's probably going to be very easy to finance Cold Weather Flying just from Northrend quests. If you're occupied with a lot of instance runs, just keep in mind that you'll be leveling proportionately faster than you're making money, though.
WoW Insider presents Sholazar Basin and Zul'Drak
Building up to Wrath's release, we've been showing you previews of each of the world zones of Northrend. Sholazar Basin and Zul'Drak are two of the remaining zones you probably haven't yet seen, so if you're interested, links to the galleries are below.Sholazar Basin is Northrend's Un'goro Crater, and has a pleasing mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. A testing grounds of sorts for the Titans, you run into a lot of unusual lifeforms here like the Oracles, a race of intelligent murloc-esque creatures who are at war with the Frenzyheart Tribe of Wolvar. This is also the new hunting ground of Hemet Nesingwary, and trust me when I say his quests aren't nearly as awful this time around.Zul'Drak is the center of one of the last Troll Empires, home of the Drakkari Ice Trolls. Under heavy assault from the Scourge, the Drakkari Empire has pooled their resources and pulled back to their capital, using some rather desperate measures to ensure their survival. Your first major Argent Crusade quest hubs are in this zone, and our old friends of the Zandalar Tribe will be meeting up with us here as well.Edit: As always, if you're trying to avoid any and all spoilers, these galleries are not for you. There are no heavy plot spoilers contained within, but there are some light ones. If you don't like spoilers, don't look.%Gallery-36407%%Gallery-36409%
Ask a Beta Tester: The past meets the future
We only have one or two days of Ask a Beta Tester left, ladies and gentlemen. Very soon, it will be no more. Who will care about beta questions? We'll have the expansion in our hot little hands! Forget the beta, we'll have the real deal. We've actually had a lot of fun doing this for you guys though, and we're kind of sad to see it go. I like to think you guys have had fun with it, too. You know, beyond drooling over the Wrath screenshots and information.With that in mind, I'd like to ask all of you a question: Would you like to see something similar to this continue past Wrath's launch? Obviously it wouldn't be about just Wrath's beta, it would be more about the game in general. Leveling, patches, content. Short questions that can be answered in a paragraph or two. I don't know what we'd call it. Ask a Guy Some Stuff has a ring to it, though. %Poll-22189% jared.daniels asked...I won't be getting the WOTLK expansion for a few days after the launch. What do you suggest I do until I can get the DVD?
Ask A Beta Tester: Kalecgos, Wintergrasp, and how much is this going to cost me?
We're going to get right down to business this evening, folks. I was kind of heartened to see Willferal (our first questioner) ask about something that's bugged me for a while.EDIT: several commenters have taken issue with the lack of a spoiler warning on this post when it went live at 9:00 pm EST. I genuinely apologize; it should have occurred to me to write one, and it's entirely my fault that one wasn't present. So consider this fair -- if belated -- warning that there's a significant, if general, spoiler in this AABT concerning an important quest chain in Wrath, and if you're trying to avoid spoilers completely, please do NOT read AABT. This column is nothing but a pile of spoilers compressed into a spoiled package and tied with a spoilery bow.Willferal asks...I know that in Wotlk, the players are fighting Malygos. But in TBC, Kalec/Tyri are blue dragons that help us, and Kalec is especially vital in his help to kill Kiljaeden. What's their role in Wrath?I wish I knew. I never found any mention of Kalecgos while leveling, and Tyrygosa only got a brief mention at last year's BlizzCon. Tyrygosa's role in BC wasn't that extensive, but Kalecgos was all that and a box of crackers in Sunwell, so this is a little...mystifying. They both seem on passable (Tyrygosa) to good (Kalecgos) relations with the mortal races, so the involvement of their entire flight in Malygos' war would -- I hope -- concern them somewhat. I really hope Blizzard goes somewhere with this, but as of now I don't think you can expect to find anything in Northrend.
Ask A Beta Tester: Spirit, AoE, and raid loot
I'm going to start off this AABT by stealing a question that Alex actually took last time, mostly because I started laughing when I read it yesterday. I have, oh, conservatively, billions of Wrath screenshots on my hard drive at this point, but there's one I remember all too well.Marathan asks... Some time ago, there was a talk about new player character models for Wrath - and even some bugged pictures. So the question is, are they going live? Are we finally going to get improved graphics on our characters?As Alex wrote, Blizzard used one beta build to test the ease of implementing new skins and some of them...didn't turn out too well. Imagine you're me and you get a beta key. Budget a few hours of anticipatory excitement while your main copies over. She's a 70 Tauren Druid who has been with you since day one, your sole 70, and you think she's the most beautiful thing in the game even if to everyone else she's an ungainly 8-foot heifer. Now imagine booting up the Wrath beta for the first time and being horrified to see your beloved character with a Glasgow smile, like the developers had seen the Joker in The Dark Knight and thought, "Hey! We could make that work!"Holy water did nothing. Neither did crucifixes, garlic, a wooden stake, waving the Bible in the direction of the laptop, or sobbing quietly in a corner.On the plus side, here was finally something in the game to which Tauren cat form was an actual graphical improvement.
No Wrath digital download immediately available
Claudiog has confirmed what we've speculated for a while. The digital download of Wrath of the Lich King will not be available right away next Thursday.The digital download for Burning Crusade took a few weeks to get going, and while Claudiog can't say if the Wrath version will take as long, he does mention it won't be available immediately.This is important if you're living someplace far off and are expecting to be able to download Wrath the night it releases. While there will no-doubt be places around the internet where you can do it – you will have to use those places at your own risk.You'll hear it here when the digital download does finally go live, but don't expect it anytime soon.
Shifting Perspectives: State of the class, part 1 - Balance
Every Tuesday, or possibly Thursday when the writer votes on Tuesday and spends Wednesday screaming and beating her laptop over formatting errors, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week Allison Robert steals John Patricelli's column once again, secure in the knowledge that she will never be forced to atone for her crime as long as she writes something nice about ferals and keeps a respectful distance from Dan O'Halloran's whip.I hate Tauren cat form.Good. I got that out of my system and can write something productive. Although, believe me, if I could get away with it, an entire Shifting Perspectives would be devoted to just how much I hate Tauren cat form. I mean, just look at it! Look at the angle on the horns! The cat can't bite anything! Christ, I just -- hi, Dan. Yes, I'm totally writing the column! Look at me go!This week, mindful as always of American election-year politicking, I'm going to borrow a page from presidential duties and write a little something I like to call "State of the Class." Druids have undergone a number of changes in the transition to Wrath of the Lich King, and will acquire even more as they level to 80. We are one of Blizzard's primary targets for both gear and role consolidation, which raises a few questions over how comfortably we're going to scale in relation to pure classes and what we can realistically expect on the march to a new level cap.The TL:DR version of this article -- I believe our future is generally bright, the Druid community continues to have a few concerns over certain aspects of the class, our focus in PvP seems to be changing the most, and I hate Tauren cat form. This is a three-part post, so let's get started with balance. However, if you want to jump ahead to feral, you'll find that here; and the third part, restoration, is here.
Ask a Beta Tester: A closer look at the starting zones and other things
There's only about a week left of Ask a Beta Tester, so get your questions in while you still can! You can be special like Radiophonic and get your name all bold-like up here! I guess we could actually answer the questions, too... So I'm hearing that there are tons of quests in all areas, has the allowable number of quests in your quest log expanded or should we all start getting those last 10 or so completed?The number of quests you can have in your log is still limited to 25. If you stick to one zone at a time, it's very highly unlikely you'll ever have more than 15-20 quests in your log at once. If you're anything like I am though, curiosity will probably get the best of you and you'll end up questing in 2-3 different places at once and you'll need that space in your quest log.You might want to finish up the quests you have now, or when Wrath comes around you can scribble down where you got them, abandon them and go back later.
Ask A Beta Tester: Questions I wish we'd been asked
Here at WoW Insider sometimes we go a little nuts around big news events due to sleep deprivation or sensory overload in conjunction with large hits of caffeine. When that happens while we are writing "Ask A Beta Tester," occasionally we ask ourselves questions ("Why am I not in bed?") that we later realize might actually be useful.As Wrath of the Lich King's release date creeps up and the beta becomes more and more deserted (seriously: Dalaran is a ghost town these days, not that my computer's wheezing hardware doesn't appreciate it), I find myself turning to a few topics that readers generally never asked about, but wound up being game-defining experiences in the beta. By necessity, most of them are a little more general -- overall impressions, things you wouldn't necessarily think to ask about unless you were a fresh arrival in Northrend and noticed the differences -- but I've included a few specific things that I hope people will find interesting. Unlike --Why are you not in bed?What makes you think I'm not?
Ask a Beta Tester: Lordaeron, epic quests, and other things
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where we answer your questions about the Wrath of the Lich King beta! Let's get things started with Chris's question...I really enjoy the Epic quest in Nagrand to bring Thrall to meet his grandmother. Is there anything like that in Wrath where you have to complete all the quests in one zone before you get an epic quest to complete?Well, there are a lot of quest chains. Maybe not that long, but certainly not less epic. That doesn't mean the chains are short, either. They just don't necessarily require completing every other quest in the zone. Some of the stories start the moment you step into a zone and last straight through until you're ready to leave it again, but there are plenty of other quests you do on the way. They're less of a prize for 'beating the zone' and more an everpresent story.
Ask a Beta Tester: Heirloom items, class trainers, and more
Another day, another edition of Ask a Beta Tester. Today, as a special treat, I am going to answer your questions while blindfolded. And on fire. And covered in bees....actually, I don't really like that idea so I'm going to answer your questions like I normally do, starting with Naraxus's question...Something I was thinking about was how much of an important stat "Hit" was on endgame gear in BC. A couple of patches ago a lot of the lower level gear was given a hit stat to it and I was wondering if the 70-79 gear in WotLK has "Hit" or is it just basic stats and spell power, attack power etc?There's some Hit on leveling gear, but not enough to keep you capped right to 80 in my experience. I actually didn't really try, I concerned myself more with survival and longevity. In the case of a Priest, that meant stamina, spirit, and spell damage. Leveling gear is a bit more simplified. Raw stats, and some attack power/spell power in most cases.You'll also find some crit, hit, and haste, but your leveling gear isn't going to have as many random stats slapped on it as you see on some raid gear.
The Light and How to Swing It: Something's gone terribly wrong
So, having fun yet? I know I am. The changes to the class are great and I don't think I've had a more enjoyable time playing the game. Of course, it has a lot to do with the new, cool stuff brought about by Patch 3.0.2, most notably the Achievements system. I know I complained about them, but I'm really enjoying them, particularly the PvP ones. It's a good time to be a Paladin. Actually, it's a little too good.The truth is, something's wrong with Retribution. There, I said it. I'm embarrassed to say it because I'm supposed to be celebrating it. I've waited for Retribution to be viable for so long that when the time finally arrives, I'm disgusted at myself for not being happy about it. Well, I'm really happy. But not happy about the fact that very nearly every Paladin is now specced Retribution. I'm certainly not happy about the fact that even undergeared Retribution Paladins are blowing things up in the Battlegrounds left and right. When a Retribution Paladin in blues can burst down a player with over 400 Resilience with some RNG -- and I've seen this happen -- there's something terribly wrong.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part three
If you are a fury warrior, rejoice. Some of you were wondering where I was during the initial discussion. Frankly, I I was bodily assumed into what I can only assume was heaven. Sorry about that. Turns out it's really nice. I honestly don't have a real lot to say on this score (amazingly) aside from noting that I'm very pleased, it was exactly the change I was hoping they would make. It will be much easier to gear your fury warrior as he levels and when he reaches 80 for prepare for raiding. Admittedly, I'm not thrilled with the increase to armor for bosses, but it hits all physical DPS about the same.I've wanted to discuss gearing in Wrath since we were interrupted a couple of weeks ago. Granted, we've been interrupted by awesome news like the above, but still it seems like a decent time to get back into looking at what gear we'll be picking up as we level through Northrend. And frankly, if we don't start talking about that again, this entire column will probably be me typing "Titan's Grip aarrgh 5% ahmina kill everything gaaaaa" and nobody wants that. Well, maybe you do, I don't know what you're into. But I'm pretty sure that I should try and move past "You will know I am the warrior when I lay my vengeance upon thee" ranting aside and get on with the column.Titan's Grip.Oh, come on, you know I had to!
Ask a Beta Tester: This and that
You can tell the Wrath beta is winding down, because Ask a Beta Tester has been getting a lot fewer questions lately. Because of that, we're going to be pretty short and sweet today. If you still have questions, though, keep em coming!Let's start today off with dfsnow's question... What's happening with Alchemy and Alchemist's Stones in WotLK? Alchemist's stones have been like enchanting rods where you need the previous one to create the next one. Are new players going to have to grind Sha'tar and then SSO rep to create the reagent they need to create their level 80 Alchemist's Stone? I don't have to tell you how hard it will be to grind Sha'tar rep with no one running BC instances any more. The new Alchemists stones aren't tied to the older ones at all. All the new ones will require to make is the appropriate Alchemy skill, some herbs, some eternals and maybe some oils.
