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WoW Moviewatch: ZA
Work Warning: There's a bit of cursing. Be warned! Who's tired of running ZA to get the darn bear mount already? I'll admit, I've given up. Winning the roll is more difficult than accomplishing the timed run. You can imagine my cathartic relief when Sharm busted out this parody addressing that exact issue. ZA is a take-off of Dolly Parton's Jolene. (Look, White Stripes fan, I dig it. Their cover was pretty good, but they were barely born when Parton was crooning this song out.) While Jolene itself has always given me odd feminist cognitive dissonance, ZA abandons that moral ambiguity in favor of simply lambasting the infuriating RNG behind the bear mount. I was very happy to see Sharm tackle this song because I think it shows off the strength of her vocals very well. Sharm's a fascinating person and a lot of fun to follow, but it'd been a little while since we've really sen the power of her guns. ZA puts that talent on display and reminds us exactly why she's so successful. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Patch 4.3 PTR: Streamlining changes for Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman
The latest patch 4.3 PTR notes have a significant change in them for those of us running heroics for valor points (that is to say, everyone running them). When patch 4.3 drops and the Zandalari heroics are dropped down into the common pool of heroics, it'll be easier to complete the dungeons. Why is that, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Patch 4.3.0 PTR Notes Zul'Gurub Players now only have to kill two of the four initial dungeon bosses (High Priest Venoxis, Broodlord Mandokir, High Priestess Kilnara, and Zanzil) to face Jin'do the Godbreaker. Zul'Aman Players now only have to kill two of the four Troll avatars before they may face Hex Lord Malacrass. source This means you'll only need to kill two of the bosses to get to the end in the case of ZG, and two plus Hex Lord to get to the end of ZA. The good news is, this will make these dungeons go a lot faster. The bad news is, good luck convincing a group to kill Dragonhawk or Kilnara. This is a fairly big sign that Blizz expects us to be saying goodbye to these instances as soon as we can get into the new Twilight 5-mans. I'm all for it, myself. I hate running ZG now; it takes forever. But I can definitely see people objecting to the way this will force them to miss out on mount changes or loot from bosses no one wants to do. Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Patch 4.1: Guide to the new Zul'Aman
Of the two "new" troll dungeons introduced in patch 4.1, Zul'Aman was the more difficult on the PTR, to the point that it actually felt a little overtuned for folks trying to do it solely in heroic blues. I'd compare it to heroic Magisters' Terrace of The Burning Crusade or heroic Halls of Reflection in Wrath of the Lich King, at least in the sense that it can be a pretty unforgiving place if you're not sitting on any raid-quality gear. I only ever pugged ZA while on the PTR, so estimates of the content's difficulty are necessarily colored by that. If you're going to do this place with a competent set of guildies, you probably won't need to worry as much. If you're familiar with ZA's pre-4.1 incarnation, you'll recognize a lot of the same mechanics, mobs, and bosses at 85. I used to organize "bear runs" for my guild back in BC and would go so far as to say that, in marked contrast to Zul'Gurub, about 90% of the dungeon's raid mechanics have survived in one form or another.
Scott Mercer talks redesigning Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman
Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's online newletter, sat down with World of Warcraft Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer to discuss the upcoming patch, Rise of the Zandalari. The interview goes into detail about revamping the old dungeon content, what classic dungeons Blizzard would potentially like to tackle next, and the challenges of turning a 10- and 20-man raid into a 5-man heroic dungeon. Hit the jump for the full question and answer session.
Extended maintenance announced for Tuesday, April 26
Barring force majeure, it looks like patch 4.1 lands tomorrow, folks. Not only is the 4.1 trailer out, Blizzard has also announced extended maintenance for all realms for Tuesday, April 26, beginning at 3 a.m. PST and ending at 11 a.m. PST. Expect it to last longer, as patch day maintenance usually does. While servers are down, check out our Guide to Patch 4.1, including class analysis, dungeon previews, UI additions, and more. Stop the machinations of the Zandalari! WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.
Patch 4.1: Rise of the Zandalari preview now online
For those of us waiting with bated breath (yes, it's bated, not baited -- look it up) for the release of patch 4.1, one of the most highly anticipated aspects of the patch would be the new heroic 5-man dungeons Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman. Now, at last, we have Blizzard's patch 4.1 content preview, Rise of the Zandalari, to tell us how ZG and ZA came back to life after we defeated the horrors within both dungeons. If you want to see how the same Zandalar tribe that once assisted us against the Hakkari in Zul'Gurub and the Drakkari in Zul'Drak is now working at cross purposes, how Vol'jin has stepped out of the shadows to stake his own claim to troll affairs, and who replaced Zul'jin as warchief of the Amani (and how the Zandalar are behind it all), this preview is for you. You can view it directly on the official Battle.net blog, or read it behind the cut below. %Gallery-119767%
Shifting Perspectives: Dispatch from the patch 4.1 PTR
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we nose around the patch 4.1 PTR. As promised, I hit the patch 4.1 PTR to get a feel for the changes we talked about last week. Naturally, the first change I ran to confirm was Prowl's new icon, which I'm pleased to report is totally kickass and addresses all our icon-related needs for the forseeable future. This patch isn't going live with new raid content, so the premade toons on offer are kitted in heroic blues (ilevel 346). This gear is all easily obtainable with a little elbow grease on the live servers, so the numbers you'll see in this column should be representative of what a pre-raid druid will look like. Just for kicks, I also copied my main over, and she's in slightly better gear feral-wise and slightly worse gear resto-wise. As an aside, when did we get that cool little swooping animation upon changing into flight form? Is this totally new, or did it happen in patch 4.0.6 and I missed it while buried under a mountain of snow and subsequent flooding in my winter-ridden hell? Or -- scary thought -- am I so used to shifting to flight form in midair that I've failed to notice it for months? God, that's terrifying.
The Queue: It's a moose, all right?
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mat McCurley will be your host today. Hey, it's Mat here, filling in for Mike Sacco. I love filling in for Mike Sacco! He's so dreamy... Also, that's a moose. Quit bugging me. Sky asked: Question for the Queue: If the 140 VP reward for 'tier 2' heroics went live, players would be able to reach the weekly valor point cap without having to raid. Do you think this is good or bad for the game?
The Queue: Zul'Again
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Lots of troll questions today, and I mean that literally. Questions about troll stuff. Getcher troll answers here! Free troll answers! Pledge your troll and get a free Zul'Jin tote bag! Oldboy asked: Since ZG/ZA will be "heroic-only", is there any word on whether it will be possible to intentionally queue for them more than once in a day? It almost sounds like they'll be on a separate heroic "tier", so it's not clear whether they'll be in the same pool when choosing random. Queueing restrictions are the same for ZA and ZG as they are for any other heroic dungeon. You can queue for them once a day, or run them multiple times via the random option for Cataclysm heroic tier 2.
Patch 4.1 PTR: Zul'Aman examined
After spending many hours and relying on the dungeon finder to pick up tanks on the 4.1 PTR, I managed to get a nice handle on the updated bosses in Zul'Aman. Unfortunately due to time constraints, the group was only able to challenge the first four animal bosses. We weren't able to progress past the Lynx or Dragonhawk bosses. While there were new mechanics introduced, after wiping over 10 times to the Dragonhawk boss, I can safely say that there need to be some slight numbers adjustments. WoW Insider rogue specialist Anne was able to join me as we continually wiped, figuring out new mechanics. Thank goodness for repair bots. As an aside, perhaps someone can answer me this question: Why are raid groups looking for players for Icecrown Citadel on the test realm? %Gallery-118415%
The Queue: Trollface.jpg
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Probably not the one you were expecting, eh? Batleth asked: Since ZG and ZA will now be lvl 85 heroic dungeons in 4.1...does that mean the current lvl 70 10 main raid ZA will go away? Or stay put? The achievement for completing the Zul'Aman raid becomes a Feat of Strength in 4.1, so it's safe to say that running the dungeon as a raid will no longer be possible.
Breakfast Topic: Terrible things
Back-channel team discussion these past few days has been reminiscing about the Warcraft series' best bits of lore, and eventually discussion turned to the things that we wish Blizzard had revisited or expanded. Zul'jin came up, with people a bit uncomfortable that the great story promised by the Zul'Aman trailer didn't transition to the actual raid very well. "Both Horde and Alliance had perfectly good reasons to raid it," Rossi observed. "Instead, we go there because someone wants to plunder Amani riches." That made us think about all the stuff we do in-game that kind of makes us...well, bad guys, for lack of a better term, and we started wondering -- what's the worst thing that player characters have done (or been asked to do)? Setting Teron Gorefiend loose has to rank pretty high up there. Then there's that torture quest out in Borean Tundra, which squicks people to this day. While we're on the subject of Borean Tundra, nobody particularly liked thinking about a daily quest offered in Coldarra, or the ugly results of Horde questing in Howling Fjord. If you wanted to look at the whole "player evil" thing from a larger perspective, you can even make a case that player-generated PvP is, within the context of WoW's lore, one of the more significant contributions to faction antagonism and war. So what's the worst thing that your character has done -- or, failing that, the thing that you still feel the worst about? I've already got my pick.
International HD news roundup
Here at Engadget HD, we'd prefer not to just focus on high-def happenings in the US of A. Thus, we round up the best of the best from the international front each week and present it here, bundled together in a single, easy to digest list. If something went down in your corner of the globe over the past seven days, let the rest of the world know it in comments. 'Til next week, Sanga'ay hanto!Read - AETN signs carriage agreement with Taiwan Broadband CommunicationsRead - AAAN enters TaiwanRead - Multichoice HD PVR update positively received (South Africa)Read - Central European Expansion for HISTORY & HISTORY HDRead - History HD confirmed for SkylinkRead - Microsoft Mediaroom Comes to RussiaRead - High Definition a key driver for UK Projector marketRead - ITV, C4 worry over Freeview HD fundingRead - El Salvador adopts ATSC digital TV standard
Loot, rationality, and the Sunwell effect
Here at WoW Insider we don't always agree with each other. Whether it's debating the merits of various tanks on different encounters, the damage difference between pure and hybrid DPS classes, the ideal function of a particular healing class in raids, or the superiority of cake over pie, our back-channel discussion tends to be pretty interesting.Eliah Hecht's article "25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear" sparked a lot of great discussion with our readers and, I think, some illuminating poll results as well. The majority of responders believed that giving 10-man and 25-man raids the same loot table would result in a significant drop in popularity for 25-man raiding. Overall, I tend to agree with this, but I also think that Eliah touched on something that speaks to Blizzard's evolving sense of game design, much of which is evident in the transition between late Burning Crusade and Wrath. I would like to call this the Sunwell effect, or "ingame rationality." To wit: don't incentivize players to behave in a manner contrary to your actual design interests. I believe this played a huge role in the differences between BC and Wrath raiding, and that it underlies why the 25-man loot table has to remain superior to its 10-man counterpart.
World of WarCrafts: Mojo tee
Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.There's just never enough Mojo to go around. Fortunately, this tee will let you show off your love for Mojo without having to get lucky with your hex stick.The method can also be applied to bags, hats, or even shoes. And if by chance you don't fancy Mojo, you could always mix it up and make a shirt with a huge Willy. Here is what you will need: T-Shirt Glue-on Jewelry Beads Fabric Glue Cardboard Click on the images below to view a gallery of step-by-step instructions. %Gallery-36236% Want to print the step-by-step instructions? Copy and paste the instructions below.
First impressions: 5-man healing in the beta
I specced resto in the beta the other week to try out the new talents and abilities Druids are getting in Wrath, and decided to brave the horrors of LFG and scribble some notes for your sake, dear readers. By the way, the aspect of beta that I will miss most? The 1 copper respec fee. Can we keep this?Please note that this is written from the perspective of a 70 Restoration Druid, so unfortunately I can't comment on whether Priests, Shamans, or Paladins might have had an easier or harder time healing the instances. I have a good but not jaw-dropping resto set, and on the live realms clock in around +1998 to +2100 healing unbuffed. If your gear's better or worse, then just adjust the potential difficulty level as needed. And even if you're not a healer, you still might find something useful here:
The marathon raid day?
A friend and I were idly wondering about the possibility of tackling all Burning Crusade raid content the way you'd watch the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy on a rainy weekend: doing it all without stopping, intent on a glorious finish. Nobody's arguing that the point of such a marathon is to have fun every second while you're doing it; I'd say this is the classic undertaking where it really is about the destination and not so much the journey. But let's say you had an enterprising bunch of raiders sitting around bored on a weekend and your choices were either raiding Tarren Mill again or trying something adventurous. Or if you had Wrath coming up the next week and you wanted to conduct a triumphal tour of the content your guild had conquered, stopping only to relish the wholesale slaughter of bosses who'd given you so much trouble (here's looking at you, Gurtogg). Would it be possible to cut a swathe of destruction across the BC raiding landscape all within the space of a day?Assuming a bunch of experienced raiders, we came up with the following figures:Karazhan: 2-3 hoursGruul's Lair: 1 hourMagtheridon: 45 minutesSerpentshrine Cavern: 3-4 hours Tempest Keep: 3 hoursZul'Aman: 1 1/2 hoursMount Hyjal: 2 1/2 hours Black Temple: 3-4 hours Sunwell Plateau: 4-5 hoursOn the low end, that's 20 hours and 45 minutes. On the high end, it's 25 hours (and I have to pause here for a moment's respect over just how much raid content Blizzard programmed for BC). If you lopped Kara and ZA off the marathon in the interest of doing only 25-man content, an experienced (albeit insane) raid that stomped each site and methodically proceeded to the next with no wipes along the way (probably not likely in Sunwell) could probably wreck BC raid content in maybe 18 hours start to finish (giving them a little extra time for travel and bathroom breaks). Has anyone been crazy enough to try this? Should anyone be crazy enough to try this?
Patch 3.0 PTR round-up
The public test realm has just gone live, and if you've got any characters on it (or if you'd like to go copy some), you can head on over to enjoy all of the patchtastic frivolity likely to descend sometime soon. In case you're catching up to the rest of us, patch 3.0 is another large content patch specifically designed to transition the player base to the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King. We won't be seeing Death Knights or Northrend (or at least, we're pretty sure we won't, unless they're planning on a big surprise). We will be seeing all of the 1-70 class changes, new features added to the default UI, barbershops, Inscription, a raid buff system overhaul, and more, in addition to four European servers closing due to Russian player migration. Read on for a quick guide to what you can expect:
World of WarCrafts: Raid art
Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.With Wrath looming over the horizon, the instances we currently spend all of our time inwill become obsolete. The dusty halls of Karazhan will be forgotten and we will never have another chance at obtaining an Amani War Bear. So, here's your chance to commemorate the good times with your fellow guildies and spruce up your WoWspace. Here is what you will need: White Cardstock Color Printer Scissors Paper Cutter Xacto Knife Double Sided Tape Photo Frames (8x10) Matboard (3 for 8x10 frames) Click on the images below to view a gallery of step-by-step instructions. %Gallery-31666%
Alt Text just short of the real bribe
Lore Sjöberg at Wired's Alt Text talked yesterday about the Zhevra mount you get as part of the Recruit-a-Friend program. It's a pretty fun read. He talks about the myriad of vanity items, and how these items can be such a motivator for WoW players, even though they don't really affect your gameplay at all. I do want to add a point to his article, though. The new Recruit-a-Friend benefit isn't just the Zhevra. For me, the ability to gain triple-XP is the huge motivator. I'm involved in a Guild that's doing it's best to truck through Zul'Aman content. I can't wait to get a good friend of mine involved in the fun, but getting from 0 to 70 is going to take a while. Even with the speed levelling records out there, going from zip to end-game isn't going to happen overnight. So, while my friend will be starting after Labor Day weekend, there's a little bit of delay before she's rocking out to left-handed Nalorakk. The triple-XP bonus -- and the ability to teleport me to her when she needs help -- overcomes the big hurdle to getting a friend started. This is the real power of the new Recruit-a-Friend benefit, in my opinion. The Zhevra's cool and all, but the XP bonus and teleportation feature makes getting my friend involved three times faster. The benefit doesn't just reward getting friends involved, it empowers us to get our friends involved.
