breakfast-topic
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Breakfast Topic: What do you expect on the 16th?
Looking forward to release day? A quick poll of the forums suggests that you wouldn't be the only one -- with plenty of players making big plans for the 16th. We've got people taking vacation days and skipping classes, but I have to wonder whether all this is worth it. After all, with so many players new and old planning on hitting up the Outland come release day, how many of you expect the realms to be stable at all, much less playable? So that's today's question -- what do you expect to see on release day? Has Blizzard done enough to lead to a smooth roll-out or are you more pessimistic of playability on the 16th?
Breakfast Topic: How are you getting the expansion?
Yep, I'm among those who wish the expansion were simply downloadable -- yes, it would be hideously slow, but at least we wouldn't have to deal with crowds, lines, shipping, and the endless list of pre-order issues. But since it's clear that isn't an option, what's everyone doing to jump in and start playing the Burning Crusade as soon as possible? Ordered online with next day shipping? Have a pre-order with your local retailer of choice? Planning on jumping in in a midnight line? Or maybe just planning on sitting back and picking up a copy when you feel like it -- perhaps a week or two after the release date, once everything's calmed down?
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Breakfast Topic: Hand of Ragnaros is a druid weapon
I have seen reports of druids winning the Hand of Ragnaros before. I seem to recall one raidleader handing off the Eye of Sulfuras to his druid girlfriend, but I could be wrong. Hey, it isn't like I committed the brilliant forum thread to memory. Well, now we have another report of a druid snagging the HoR, this time it's Napier, a druid from the Greymane server. As you can imagine, this thread is dominated by folks either calling Napier the most selfish player in the history of MMORPGs or defending his right to spend his DKP as he sees fit. And yes, Napier has a long-winded response to the haters, which contains his rationale for spending his DKP on the mace. All in all, a typical forum thread, but there are aspects to it which raise some interesting questions...Shouldn't any DKP system have some kind of priority list or mechanism which prevents warriors from bidding on a caster staff or a druid from, I don't know, snagging a legendary mace which serves him no purpose whatsoever? I have never been in a guild that employed a straight DKP system which didn't make allowances for class needs. There is no way, for example, a hunter could bid on leather, simply because he could wear it. Is a druid with the HoR the absolute worst example of misguided DKP use? Or have you seen worse? Does your guild restrict rolling on certain items to particular classes? Or is it a free-for-all? And at this point, so close to the expansion release, does it matter who gets what? I mean, we will be upgrading everything very, very soon.
Breakfast Topic: How to fix the official forums
The WoW.com forums occasionally provide some insight or humor, but for the most part are a cesspool of stupid comments, flaming and ridiculous antics. This is really unfortunate, as while there are a ton of good World of Warcraft community sites out on the net, the WoW.com forums are the most visible and almost certainly the most visited. The forums could really be a place for good discussion...if only they weren't nearly useless in their current form.My question for you folks is this: Is there any way possible to make the WoW.com forums a useful community building tool? Or is it simply a lost cause? There are some other gaming sites that manage to keep some semblance of order and usefulness...Cheap Ass Gamer and NeoGAF come to mind (albeit on a smaller scale), so it can be done. But how can Blizzard to do it on the scale of the WoW.com forums? Is it an impossible task? Or something that simply requires more community policing and stricter moderation? Any examples of well run WoW forums out there?
Breakfast Topic: What next?
You've reached level 60. You've run the gamut of instanced content. You've spent some time PvPing. You've collected gear in all shades of blue, purple, and maybe even orange. The upcoming expansion will bring us ten new levels of grinding and questing, new zones and instances to explore, and new PvP arenas. But how long will that content really last -- and what's left to do when you hit the end of it?
Breakfast Topic: All I want for Winter's Veil...
Well, perhaps you aren't really celebrating the Blizzard-invented holiday of Winter's Veil. But I imagine a lot of you are celebrating today. And if so, what are you hoping to find hidden under the tree? A Burning Crusade pre-order? An IOU for some exciting in-game gear? Or most likely, something outside of Azeroth entirely?
Breakfast Topic: Is crafting useless?
In my experience, crafted items have usually been items you use while waiting to get a better item to drop. With a few exceptions, of course -- crafted resistance gear tends to be some of the best you'll find and there are occasional gems (the priest in me is still giddy with the memory of getting a Hide of the Wild crafted). But the majority of crafted gear seems to be inferior to what you'll find even in the 5-man dungeons, and the disparity only gets worse as you participate in higher-end content. And in the Burning Crusade, where green quest rewards will immediately begin replacing any blues you might still be lugging around, will the outlook for crafting improve? In short, is crafting worthless?
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Breakfast Topic: WoW as a holiday gift
I have one of THOSE friends. You know the type. He loves videogames. Has a 360 and Wii, plays a ton of games on his PC and is the very definition of a hardcore gamer. He really enjoyed Warcraft III and Starcraft. He played Diablo II until his mouse broke. However, there is one issue with this guy...he absolutely refuses to buy World of Warcraft. He won't even download the demo. He tried Everquest once, hated it, and swore he would never play one of those MMORPGs again. He had the same attitude about Diablo II, thinking it to be too "nerdy" for him. But once he finally broke down and bought it he played for months on end. I am 100% confident that if I bought him World of Warcraft and a two-month gamecard, he would eventually, at the very least, give the game a try. And I just know he'll like it. Then I'd have my friend to adventure with in Azeroth. Or maybe I should just let him be and not expose him to the WoW addiction. Hah. So, my question for you guys...should I pick this up for him or not? Is WoW a good holiday gift? Have you ever given WoW as a gift?
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Breakfast Club: Gold buying is naughty
We have had a lot of Breakfast Topics over the course of the past year. Some subjects are more popular than others. Some topics only appeal to certain classes. Some only to PVP junkies or the Naxx raiding crew. And then some topics completely explode and become the most commented on Breakfast Topic thread of the year. Gold buying and you is the topic that inspired more comments, and more arguments, than any post this year. It started innocently enough. One of my guildies mentioned he had bought gold, was promptly tossed from my guild, and I wrote a post about it. You guys took it from there. There seemed to be three camps of folks in the comment thread... People who don't condone gold buying under any circumstance. Shadowbrand hopes that those that buy gold get "ganked until the end of time." Pretty harsh! They blame the overpriced economy on gold farmers, and ultimately on the gold buyers. Gold buying is bad! Another, more neutral group, that while they don't buy gold, can see why someone might. Lykaon makes the point that gold farming equals time and time equals money. He thinks gold is easy to get, so he doesn't buy any, but he could see the rationale behind those that do. If you don't have the time to farm it, why not buy it? A rather vocal minority who believe that buying gold is just fine, and that everyone else is on the wrong page on this issue. Forsaken points out that he has bought plenty of gold, and having a wife and kids makes it too time consuming to spend hours and hours mindlessly farming. So there you have it. If you haven't read the comments in the gold buying Breakfast Topic, you really should. A lot of our readers went out of their way with some really excellent comments. Of course, some of the conversations get a little heated, but hey, it's still fun to read! And if you have any new opinions on gold buying, by all means, leave your comments right here!
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Breakfast Club: Class in session
We enjoyed talking about guilds, no doubt. But what kind of Breakfast Topic did we enjoy chatting about more than any other in 2006? Classes. Have you heard about the Burning Crusade expansion? Hah. Anyway, Elizabeth wonders what class you folks will be playing come the expansion. I am working on a rogue and a pally, but I might just start a warrior come January 16th. Heck...who am I kidding? I can't give up my super-overpowered warlock! We have been playing the same nine classes for darn near two years. Wouldn't it be nice to have some new classes to play? I liked the idea of a battlemage, while necromancer and bard were some of the favorite choices of the comment crew. Which class is the the easiest? Hunter? Warlock? Well, Elizabeth says hunter. I had an easy time with my warlock. Comment crew agreed with Elizabeth. Beyond how easy a class is to level, or how powerful it is, the question is simply...which class is the most fun to play? I really, really enjoyed my priest way back when, and I am really liking my rogue right now. I'd say warlock, but you are probably sick of hearing me talk about my damn warlock. Everyone remembers their first. First class that is. Mine was a rogue, which I retired, but have recently revisited. Good times! Finally, every class got a review. Some liked theirs more than others. As a priest when they were reviewed, I was initially happy. Then not so much. And hey, if you have changed your opinion, or you weren't a regular when these topics were discussed, feel free to chime in! Any ideas for fun new classes? How about some new insight on your class review?
Breakfast Topic: I quit!
I've noticed an astonishing number of players on the forums claiming, at least, to be ending their relationship with the World of Warcraft that we all know and love. Complaints are all over the map -- warlocks are overpowered, warriors are underpowered, fear needs to be nerfed, too much lag, too much downtime, too few world events... Indeed, everyone has their beef with the game, but with the recent patch throwing a lot of things up in th are, a number of players seem to think it's just not worth coming back. But what about you? You're reading a game-related blog, which hints that you're still in the game. Do you see the game's last straw somewhere in the immediate future, or are all of these quitting announcements dramatic nonsense?
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Breakfast Topic: You didn't know that?
This past April, I had been playing World of Warcraft for one and a half years. I had all the latest add-ons, knew the math behind all the stats for my characters, participated in plenty of online discussions, was an officer in a BWL guild and was basically a WoW dork to the extreme. Then on one April afternoon I was playing WoW at my friends house and went to loot a corpse. I right clicked on the corpse, the window popped up, and I clicked on the silver and cloth, then moved onto the next mob.My friend looked at me like I was a moron, and asked..."Um, don't you shift-click?". I said no. He laughed. Then he told me that when you loot a mob, if you hold down the shift key, you will auto-loot and save yourself a little time. And I have been shift-clicking ever since. And to this day I don't know how I played for 18 months with that little bit of information alluding me.What about you guys? Anything in World of Warcraft that you discovered way, way after you should have?
Breakfast Topic: Looking for group!
Do you remember the mass chaos that occurred with the global looking for group channel went in? As I recall, it was a little crazy. The line was quickly overrun by random spam which drove many players from the line and lead a number of people back to old habits -- like typing /who priest 58-60 and whispering down the list. Many protested the flawed system and asked for it to be removed. And now that it's gone, replaced by a sleeker interface? There's a number of players that can't stand the thing and demand the global LFG channel be reinstated. So if the old system wasn't right, and the new system isn't right, what's the best way to go about looking for a group? What do you think Blizzard should have implemented?
Breakfast Topic: Bad Guys?
When I first started playing Warcraft games, way back in high school, I always chose the humans in multiplayer. Why? Well, I was a pretty straight laced fellow, and the humans were the good guys! The orcs were terrible, evil folks who allied themselves with the equally as nasty trolls. And ogres. Why would I want to associate myself with that? Then after Warcraft III hit, the line was completely blurred between the good and bad. The orcs didn't seem so terrible, and boy, those humans sure did screw things up. The storyline in World of Warcraft has really done nothing to change that blurred line. Which leads me to my question for you folks...is there any true villain race or faction in WoW? Sure, the Undead seem kind of creepy, and they send you off on some truly questionable quests, but they are counterbalanced by the Tauren, who I think may be the most virtuous race in the game. And for some reason, don't the humans seem a little shady? Onyxia fools them and hangs out in their capital city and, in all honesty, I think they stuck it to Van Cleef. Come the expansion...what about the Blood Elves? They surely don't seem as nice and docile as their Night Elf cousins. So what do you guys think? Which WoW race is the most evil? Which one the most noble?
Breakfast Topic: The best thing about Warcraft today
Last weekend we talked about the biggest problem with Warcraft today. This weekend, let's switch gears and try to decide what the best thing about Warcraft today is -- after all, despite the game's flaws, we're all still here and playing. So what is it that keeps you logging on and interested in the game, rather than jumping into any other MMO on the market?
Breakfast Topic: Bugs, bugs, glorious bugs!
Ah, yes, the exciting aftermath of a patch. Battlegrounds have been functioning intermittently at best, faction-specific loot is dropping for both factions, talent trees differ from the PTRs (and the patch notes), re-building my UI seems like an impossible challenge, and newly bugged raid encounters one-shot tanks in the game's best gear. (Though admittedly they've already hotfixed Patchwerk.) So how are you coping? Not having any problems? Taking a break from playing while all the kinks get worked out? Switching to a less problematic class? For my part, I'm hoping some of the worst of it is worked out by the weekend, when I'll have more time to play...!
Breakfast Topic: Best Looking Tier Set
We saw the tier 5 video yesterday, and it got me thinking...which of the tier sets look the best? I will admit to being partial to the tier 2 paladin set, simply because it looks positively awesome...less so when some pally is bubble hearthing in front of me, but awesome nonetheless.Another set that I find rather interesting is the warlock tier 3 set. Sure, it makes warlocks look a little like Sand People, but there is something about it that makes me want to look at it. Whether I want to look at it because I like it, or because I am fascinated by it's lameness, I am not entirely sure.What do you guys think? What is the best looking tier set out there?
Breakfast Topic: The season of giving
I was in the process of doing a little Christmas shopping this weekend, and as I hurried home to catch an Onyxia attempt, the thought occurred to me: am I going to get my favorite guildies anything?I only play with a few real life friends-- most of the people I know well in my guild I've only known online through Warcraft. But we've had a lot of fun, and I've gotten to know some of them pretty well. Considering Blizzard has included giftwrap in the game, it's no stretch that I might want to grab them something during the holiday season as a gesture of goodwill.The only question, then, is what? RazorbladeKiss asks the same question over on Livejournal, and people suggest quite a few good things, from Snowshoe Rabbits to other faction specific cosmetic items. Almost anyone would love a good potion, or a few farmed mats you know they've been waiting for. But some things that would be really cool to give, like mounts or crafted items, are soulbound, or so common that every 60 has them. So are you getting your guildies anything in-game for the holidays? And if so, what?
Breakfast Topic: What will you be playing in the expansion?
We're getting closer and closer to the expansion's release date, and if you're anything like me, you're making plans! As a long-time Horde aligned healbot, I'm excited about the addition of paladins to the Horde, and will be making one of the hundreds of newbie Horde paladins -- and possibly making it my new main character. And with the countless changes to classes across the board, I can't be the only one planning on having a different main in the Burning Crusade than I do now. So, what do you think you'll be playing in the expansion?
Breakfast Topic: Biggest problem with Warcraft today
If you read the official forums, you've seen page upon page of nerf this!, nerf that!, and lolcoil is overpowered! threads, some even complete with suggestions on how to bring balance back to the game. However, how can 7 million players agree on a solution when we can't even agree on a problem? So I ask you now: what is the biggest issue facing World of Warcraft today?
