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Argent Tournament Dailies: Jack Me Some Lumber
Jack Me Some Lumber is one of the first daily quests you'll encounter upon arriving at the Argent Tournament. Neither of them have any impact on the tournament itself, so they can be skipped if you so choose. They only award gold, no reputation or items, so avoiding them won't hinder your progress through the Tournament content whatsoever. However, the gold is pretty good and the quests are quick, so if it's gold you want then it's gold you'll get.What's going on in these quests, you ask? Well, the Argent Crusade has outsourced the construction of their coliseum to the Goblins. I don't think I need to elaborate on how catastrophically dumb that is, do I? If you want to help these Goblins strip Northrend of its many natural treasures, just talk to Bezzle Blastbolt and his brother Bozzle Blastbolt. The latter of the two offers A Chip Off the Ulduar Block which we will discuss another time.So what do you need to do here? Accept the quest, fly out to the western portion of Crystalsong Forest, just north of the Violet Stand. You'll find yourself in amongst a load of trees, as you'll see in the picture at the top of this article. Ask yourself, "One of these things is not like the other things. One of these just doesn't belong! Can you guess which thing is not like the other things before we finish this song?"
Alex Ziebart04.10.2009Argent Tournament Dailies: A Valiant's Field Training
This is one of the quickest and easiest dailies to complete for your Argent Tournament prestige. The questgiver asks simply that you kill 10 Scourge units in Icecrown.Remember, in 3.1 any mob that will grant you quest credit will show as much on their tooltip when you mouseover them. Use this to your advantage and don't waste your time with an AOE pack that won't give you credit!Given its close proximity to the Tournament grounds, many players are likely to flock to Sindragosa's Fall to kill the Scourge mobs there, including Frostbrood Whelps and Cultist Corrupters. You have some other choices, though -- the Valley of Lost Hope is chock-full of mobs that grant quest credit, as is Aldur'thar, and both are close enough to the Grounds that you don't need to fly all around the zone just to get your quest done. Crack some Scourge skulls and grab your reward!Reward: 1 Valiant's Seal and 13g 23s Editor's note from Alex Ziebart: I happen to like doing the Shadow Vault dailies side-by-side with this one. The vrykul for Leave Our Mark count as Scourge for this quest!
Michael Sacco04.09.2009Argent Tournament Dailies: Learning the Reins
This is a series of daily guides intended to guide you through the Argent Tournament as quickly and painlessly as possible. We'll have guides for each daily going live in the weeks to come. Keep your eyes peeled and your lances ready! So, Argent Tournament aspirant. You want to start beating up dudes on their mounts, right? Of course. Any aspiring champion does. But before you can, you'd better familiarize yourself with mounted combat controls. Don't worry! Your Sunreaver or Silver Convenant reps have you covered, and they'll even pay you to learn how!First, visit the Tournament grounds and find your faction's base of operations-- the red Sunreavers tent or the blue Silver Covenant tent.
Michael Sacco04.08.2009The Queue: But there are cats in Azeroth
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. Adam Holisky will be your host today. I feel sorry for Alex and his significant other. They can't have pets in their apartment so they got a Roomba. Now I can have pets in my place, and the girlfriend and I have a nice little kitty named Max. In fact, Max was talking to me last night as I wrote today's Queue and told me he'd like to eat Alex's Roomba.He only started talking after I fed him some Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuits.Actuality asked..."I was wondering how the Argent Tournament will work with phasing in Icecrown. Will the Tournament be open to all, or only those who have made it to the final Icecrown?"
Adam Holisky04.08.2009Argent Tournament dailies: The Edge of Winter
This is the first in a series of daily guides intended to guide you through the Argent Tournament as quickly and painlessly as possible. We'll have guides for each daily going live in the weeks to come. Keep your eyes peeled and your lances ready!All of the Argent Tournament competitors want to best their rivals, and the best way to do that is (clearly) to grab some mythical weapons and bash their heads in. In this case, you're after the Edge of Winter, a mythical blade held safe by the Maiden of Winter's Breath Lake ... but not for yourself, of course. You don't need any kind of special advantage to compete. The first thing you'll want to do is head to Crystalsong Forest, near the entrance of the Crystal Vice.
Michael Sacco04.07.2009The Queue: There are no Roombas in Azeroth
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.Good afternoon, everyone. I have a very important question for all of you. Recently, I purchased a Roomba. I'm not allowed to have pets where I live, so a little robot that makes chirping noises and cleans the house for me will have to do. There's only one problem: We need to name it. My girlfriend and I each picked our preferred names. Help us decide, o readers! Name that Roomba! Oh right, and we have some of our usual Q&A after that, too.%Poll-28871%yossarian asked..."Can Death Knights use Runeforging on BoA Heirloom weapons? I'd love to level my DK with an Arcanite Reaper lookalike, but it may not be worth giving up Runeforging. If not, are there plans to "fix" this so that Runeforge enchants don't transfer along with the item?"
Alex Ziebart04.07.2009The Queue: Strategery
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.Good afternoon, everybody! I apologize for missing yesterday's edition of The Queue, I sort of forgot about it in my rush to get our April Fool's joke pieced together. The entire team got together to bring that little joke to life. Getting it all put together was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Fun, but it took awhile! Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. If not, oh well! We had a good time bringing it to life.I don't think you want to listen to me ramble about that, though. Onto the Q&A!Ghola asked..."Why would the Argent Tournament set up camp in Icecrown, at the back end of the glacier? This makes absolutely no sense to me. Crystal Song seems way better: no quests there, plenty of space, and much better weather!"
Alex Ziebart04.02.2009Encrypted Text: Upcoming Rogue gear in patch 3.1
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 the new gear coming for Rogues in the upcoming patch.With patch 3.1's steam winding down, I predict its release in the next three weeks. Our most recent change was a simple increase to Deadly Throw's velocity: hardly groundbreaking. We should begin finalizing new builds, and planning our gear upgrade paths.Between the Argent Tournament, Ulduar, and new PvP gear, Rogues everywhere will be very busy collecting all of the new leather gear that we'll have access to. Read on to find out where to pick up the best upgrades, and how to prepare by stockpiling now. And to any Warriors looking for a wishlist: Sorry guys, leather is for Rogues (& our pictured feline friends)!
Chase Christian04.01.2009Shifting Perspectives: A 3.1 miscellany
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author ferrets around her inbox for several unanswered questions concerning patch 3.1. Greetings, Druids. For a while now I've been adding to a list of questions I've had for the upcoming 3.1 patch. Some of these are questions I got from other players, some are questions that occurred to me while reading various versions of the 3.1 PTR patch notes, and others are mostly-illegible bits scribbled in the middle of testing Ulduar fights -- dasiewlerjewDIFEEIRKdfklsd? 3349FHDFHDIOJKfkdsfadioer. REIOWEL? Must've written that one on Kologarn. I believe it is a super-secret, devilishly clever guide to the fight that brilliantly exploits group positioning to produce a clean, one-shot kill on the first attempt, but alas, we will never know. Such are the dangers posed by bad handwriting, people. Study your Palmer Method! This evening, I will attempt to answer all of the following questions, or to point you in the direction of other bloggers who have. These deal with all three Druid specs, so let's get started!
Allison Robert03.31.2009How to level up through the Argent Tournament
Banana Shoulders has a really excellent guide to just what the Argent Tournament is all about. I played it for the first time the other night (while we were streaming live from the PTR), and it's a strange little mix of minigame, questing, and rep grind. The Argent Tournament has set up north of Sindragosa's Fall, and there are three basic stages: first, we've got to help them build the place (which will send you to quest in other parts of the world), second, you'll be moving up the ranks from Aspirant in the tournament to Champion, and third, you'll be acting as an Argent Tournament Champion, and picking up Champion's Seals to spend on various rewards and items.The tournament itself involves a minigame of mounted combat -- you can ride around on a mount, lance equipped, that has a few different abilities. There's a ranged attack that will let you break down an opponent's shield, there's a Defend ability that will let you build up your own shield, and then there's a Thrust melee attack that just does damage, and a Charge attack that will do damage as well as break down your opponent's shield. And out of combat, you can fully heal your mount or challenge someone else to a duel. The Aspirant quests teach you all of this, and then the Valiant quests really put your knowledge to the test as you move up through the ranks, fighting NPC mobs as challengers to the title.The Argent Tournament definitely seems like a lot of fun -- as I said way back when, the whole event seems like a one-stop shop for picking up rep and items in Northrend, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if Blizzard plans to add more events and more daily quests on to what we're building up there. Banana Shoulders will be posting part three of their guide soon, and of course you can stay tuned to WoW Insider -- as we get closer to the patch 3.1 release on the live realms, we'll have everything you need to know about the Tournament and then some.
Mike Schramm03.27.2009The Queue: The Scantily Clad 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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Hello, everybody! I'm going to jump right into things today because I'm sure at least a dozen people will want to shiv me for my answer to our first question, and I'd like to give everyone time to do that.Andrew R. asked..."Why do the females in WoW always wear such scantily clad gear? I don't see how plate armor that exposes half your upper body will do you any good when someone wants to stab you. Isn't it kind of degrading to real women who play the game?"
Alex Ziebart03.26.2009WoW Insider streams from the PTR tonight
We're going to be heading out into the PTR tonight again to see what there is to see, and we're inviting you to come with us. Tonight at 9pm Eastern, we'll be streaming live video from the PTR over on our Ustream page, as well as chatting live with you and anyone else who stops by. We're planning to check out the Argent Tournament first, and probably run through a few of the dailies there, though there's a VoA boss to test and we may get some PvP testing in as well. It should be a good time no matter what we end up doing.You can see the stream over on Ustream, or just click through to the second half of this post, where we've placed an embedded stream for you to watch and chat with. We'll sign on to the server around 9pm Eastern (don't worry, you can DVR Lost -- we will be), and it'll go until we're done for the evening, whenever that is. See you there!%Gallery-45851%
Mike Schramm03.25.2009The Queue: Close the floodgates again, please
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.Hi again, everyone! I may be covering The Queue for the rest of the week while Adam Holisky flees from a righteous flood. We usually trade off days, but he's kind of a wuss and can't take a little water, so I'll spare him the tragedy of needing to toddle through a puddle or whatever.pants asked... "I know that they are taking away the proto-drakes for the raid achievements in 3.1, but will the title "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" be gone as well for it's respective achievement?"
Alex Ziebart03.25.2009Kisirani calls for focused testing on the Argent Tournament
The Argent Tournament has been overshadowed quite a bit by Ulduar in patch 3.1, it hasn't been talked about a whole lot since the first thrill of finding out it was actually there in Icecrown. Since that rush a whole lot of things have changed with the Tournament, but beyond the dedicated few, I have my doubts it was receiving as much testing as it needed. That's probably why Kisirani has put out a call for focused testing on the Argent Tournament, asking for as much feedback as you can supply.Kisirani's thread on the official forums lays out a few things: First, a lot has changed since the early PTR. This means that if you only did the quests in the first week or two of the Tournament, you should try them again before submitting feedback. If you've never been to the Tournament before, Jean Pierre Poulain awaits you on Krasus' Landing in Dalaran. He'll send you out there for free. If you want to do it yourself, the Tournament is just north of Sindragosa's Fall.%Gallery-45851%
Alex Ziebart03.19.2009The Daily Quest: Of gemming, Bloodlust and MoonkinTV
Moonkin Raiding Basics 101 from Amanda d on Vimeo. The Daily Quest brings you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. There are quite a few good explanations of the gear stats raiding Moonkin should pay attention to, but Foofy of Foofy's CupCake Factory made her guide an instructional video (see above). And she promises more to come! The Rawrbitchrawr blog continues to pump out great Ulduar info. This time with a video of mounted combat from the Argent Tournament event. The Righteous Defense Paladin blog has a great article on gemming for Protection Paladins. The Hunter's Mark (written by our very own WoW Insider Hunter columnist Larissa) also has a new gemming guide for Hunters. Honor's Code posts a set of gear Protection Paladins can get for the DPS off-spec if they choose to go that route when dual specs arrive in Patch 3.1. Forever A Noob continues his Naxx-10 guides for Rogues. His newest one focuses on Thaddius. Blessing of Kings demystifies the math behind when to fire off Shaman Bloodlust in a raid presented in this Elitist Jerks' thread (warning: algebra!)
Dan O'Halloran03.03.2009WoW Insider Show live this afternoon on Ustream
Our podcast returns yet again this afternoon -- we'll be live for your listening enjoyment over on the Ustream page at 3:30pm Eastern as always. This time around, we'll be joined by our illustrious Managing Editor Dan O'Halloran, and (assuming that he's not too busy launching shuttles into space) our good friend BRK will also be making an appearance. And of course Turpster and I will be on as well -- we'll be chatting about all of the news out of patch 3.1, including the undocumented changes and the new dual spec and gear management systems in the game. And I'm sure the Argent Tournament will make an appearance as well.Whew. If you guessed it would be a busy show, you're probably right. Plus, if all goes according to plan (I know Turpster is having some issues with some of the musicians he's hired), we will hopefully have the new song all ready to play for you, as the reward for hitting 4,000 fans on our Facebook page. And don't forget that our Twitter challenge is still ongoing -- if we can get "over 9000" followers on our Twitter account, we'll do a video version of the podcast. So join Twitter (if you haven't yet) and get all of your friends to follow us as well!Should be a good time. We'll see you tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern, or 20:30 GMT, or whatever time that is in your neck of the woods, either over on the Ustream page or right here on the feed after the break. Talk to you then.
Mike Schramm02.28.2009The Queue: Vanilla Coke 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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Hey, everybody! How's your Friday afternoon so far? Mine is full of rain and Vanilla Coke. Mmm. Delicious Vanilla Coke. You know, I'm definitely a Mountain Dew man, and Voltage is my lifeblood, but some days you just want something else. I couldn't drink Vanilla Coke every day, but cracking one open now and then? Caffeinated heaven.* Now, if I can just find my dentures, I'll start answering your questions...Hellscreamy asked... A few days ago I read in one of the posts that Noblegarden would be getting new achievements, items and events. Is there any indication at the moment (PTR or otherwise) that this will count towards the 'What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been' achievement?
Alex Ziebart02.27.2009Argent Tournament rewards found
MMO Champion has posted some of what are believed to be rewards from the Argent Dawn Tournament coming to the servers, and they are pretty awesome. All of the rewards will apparently be purchased with a new currency called Champion's Seals, and those will be earned from doing dailies, some instanced activity (likely a type of mounted combat -- think PvP-esque, but against mobs), and all of the other various tasks the Argent Dawn is lining up for us. The Tournament itself will appear in 3.1 (and Alex has already posted a great gallery of what it looks like on the PTR), but other activities won't appear until a later content patch.There are epic weapons for everyone (right now priced at 25 seals, though that may change -- the weapons seem to be a little higher 5-man Heroic level), as well as blue boots, belts, gloves, and neckpieces for most classes and specs (all just 10 seals -- about equivalent to the Revered options the endgame reputations). Additionally, you can get tabards for each faction city (at 50 seals, that seems expensive, but they could have a special proc or ability granted with them), you can buy specially colored faction mounts for 100 seals, and at the top of the heap is an Argent Hippogryph for a whopping 250 seals. Seals, it seems, will also be able to be exchanged for reputation commendations, so if you just want to rep up with a certain old faction rep, you can do that, too.Pretty enticing. We have yet to see how exactly seals will be earned or how easy they'll be to come by, but it seems like Blizzard is planning to make this a catch-all option for endgame in terms of picking up rep, mounts, or gear. Just like the champion tabards let us choose just how we could earn rep for the endgame factions, the Argent Tournament appears to be a chance for folks at level 80 to pick up whatever rep or options they like by doing whatever the Tourney offers.
Mike Schramm02.26.2009The 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?
Alex Ziebart02.26.2009WoW Insider's Argent Tournament gallery
The Argent Tournament is part of the new content coming in patch 3.1, and it was sort of a surprise when it was announced the other day, just before the PTR came up. We hadn't heard anything about it previously, not even any hints at its addition, so it grabbed our interest right away.We had to check it out, of course. There are a few quests you can do right off the bat, but they're not particularly exciting. The first two quests you pick up are just some gathering quests. It gets a little more exciting from there, but I was honestly much more interested in the visuals of the event. While there's obviously a lot of development still happening there (lots of placeholder tags), what is done looks really awesome. When this event goes live, I have no doubt we'll see a lot of people going back to using their racial mounts once these new skins have been added in.Just south of the tournament, there also seems to be a failed Frost Wyrm resurrection site, a Death Knight's blade jutting out of the ice with a wyrm just below the surface. I wish we knew the story behind that!Screenshots of the new mounts, tabards, banners, and the whole shebang are in the gallery below. Check it out, and if there's anything you want to see in greater detail, leave a comment to this post and I'll see what I can do for you.%Gallery-45851%
Alex Ziebart02.25.2009