breakfast-topic
Latest
Breakfast Topic: Five years
Today is November 23rd, and that means it's the fifth anniversary of the release of World of Warcraft. That's a long time! Especially in the high-risk world of MMOs, where a bad launch can mean your whole game is doomed, or a sudden change in gameplay can make your whole audience rear up on its hind legs at you. Thankfully, Blizzard has made WoW a living, breathing document, a world that constantly changes and evolves to match its players, which is what makes it so accessible. Throughout dozens of patches, tiers upon tiers of raid bosses, waves of dailies, faction grinds and honor grinds, legendaries and greens, WoW has managed to keep growing and growing along with its subscriber count. And of course, you've been there, too. Maybe not for the whole five years like some of us, but everyone's experienced the game in their own way. So what about you? How long have you been with the game? What's your favorite memory of "growing up" in WoW? Will you keep playing for another five years? Happy anniversary, everybody. Here's to five more!
Breakfast Topic: Pilgrim's Bounty and you
Pilgrim's Bounty, WoW's brand-new holiday, has gone live on all servers by now, and players worldwide are busy inhaling huge quantities of cranberries and stuffing in pursuit of the Pilgrim title and the uber-adorable turkey pet. I have to admit -- I was kind of worried that the first day of the holiday would be a nightmare along the lines of Noblegarden's egg-camping hell, but was pleasantly surprised by the fast respawn rate of the Wild Turkey mobs and the sheer number of them. I'm also optimistic that the holiday will encourage more people to level cooking, because once you're got the requisite cooking skill for the achievements, the Pilgrim title and turkey pet are fast, easy, and fun (or they would be, if I could just find the ever-elusive Dwarf rogue). But Pilgrim's Bounty isn't part of the meta-achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, so I'm wondering if anyone's just going to ignore it as a result. Are you planning on going for the Pilgrim title, enjoying the holiday in a more casual way, or not planning to participate at all? If you are participating in the holiday, how is it going on your server so far?
Breakfast Topic: Too powerful
I like Nibuca's little writeup recently from her blog asking what happens when we become just too powerful to care? Just like her, I've played a full, months-and-months, session of D&D before, and by the time your characters start to flirt with level 20 (the maximum level in that system), you're so powerful that the story barely makes sense any more -- you're crossing planes of existence, unweaving and re-weaving the fabric of reality, and taking down gods, more or less. Once you've vanquished evil from the earth four or five times, yet another threat doesn't bother you so much. And to a certain extent, that's exactly what's happening with World of Warcraft -- when the game first started, the devs casually threw out there that it would take 40 level 80s to take Arthas down, which was of course a guess based on what raiding was at the time. But nowadays, we're all level 80, you only need five people to go after Arthas, and very soon, even someone like Deathwing will seem conquerable. In the next expansion, we already know that we're going to transverse some planes of existence, and when you're a being that can do that, why bother fighting frost wyrms? Just escape their reality and/or will them out of yours.
The best of WoW.com: October 27 - November 3, 2009
That right there's a big ugly frost dragon named Sindragosa, and with the newest patch headed to the World of Warcraft (we expect it sometime this December), we'll be bringing her down. It won't be easy, but then again, WoW players have Joystiq's own WoW.com to guide them. You can read all about that fight, the new patch, and other popular stories in the World of Warcraft on our weekly roundup after the break.
Breakfast Topic: The future of the Horde
One of the things that's continually surprised me since news broke on the likely changes to the Horde's leadership is how many otherwise die-hard Horde players have considered going Alliance. Yeah, yeah, most of it's probably idle threats anyway, but the real issue is one that's simmered for the length of Wrath's storyline. Lots of traditional Horde players are happy to fight under Thrall. Lots of traditional Horde players are...not so happy to fight under someone else. The issue seems to be the growing rift between players and Horde leadership in Northrend, and the degree to which many of us can't identify with the sub-faction that eventually hijacks the Horde storyline. I burned Saurfang's letter as he asked. I nodded alongside Golluk Rockfist as he told Horde players, "You are leaving to the Ruby Dragonshrine. This is not a request." I sat with Thrall in his darkest moments in the Undercity throne room, when he realized that everything was lost. By contrast, I /facepalmed my way through Icecrown. Spoiler material past the break.
Breakfast topic: Faction fanboyism
It's not unusual to see player speculation on what we'll see when Cataclysm arrives, and most of us have our own private wish lists. I'm sure I could come up with my own if I thought about it, but while riding between Kamagua and Moa'ki Harbor last night on the Kalu'ak ferry lazily chatting with people, it occurred to me that one of the things I'd kill to have again is another faction like the Tuskarr. These guys are, for lack of a better word, awesome. Their emotes are fantastic. They sell an evil penguin pet and a cool fishing item (the Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole) that probably won't be replaced for the duration of the expansion. Their ships are giant turtles traveling along beautiful coastline with a vendor on board (seriously, riding these at night = an endless series of Kodak moments). They get my vote as the faction that immerses you most thoroughly in what they need and what they're doing to survive in an increasingly hostile Azeroth, and I'm wondering if, given Northrend's various difficulties, they might be convinced to seek warmer climes just so we don't have to give them up. Agonizing rep grinds have plagued the game since classic, but the Tuskarr are such a well-realized bunch that even at exalted I love hanging around their villages. What's your favorite faction, and is there anything about them you'd like to see repeated with future reputation grinds?
Breakfast Topic: Crafting pride
For some reason, crafting has always been a big part of massively multiplayer games. Maybe it's their quality as loot-collecting simulators, but from the very early graphical MMOs, players have almost always been able to create and modify and trade and sell items of their own. Though we don't talk about it as a mechanic much (you press a button and get what you crafted, what's the big deal), it's certainly one of the main reasons people play World of Warcraft, and the crafting system has come to not only fuel the economy, but has ended up becoming one of the best ways to show off and present your customized character. So our question today is: what's your favorite or most important crafting item? I'm in the middle of leveling my paladin, and he's just now reaching the highest reaches of Engineering, which is a skill I've never leveled up before, but have always wanted to. I haven't gotten together the gold for epic flying yet (well on my way at level 73), but I did make normal flying machine as soon as I could. And my big goal with this character, other than getting him raiding ASAP, is to make the Mekgineer's Chopper -- ever since we first saw it in the early days of Wrath, I've planned to get a character up high enough to make it. I know, I know, I can buy it, but for me it's a crafting thing -- I want to go out, find what I need to find, and craft it with my own virtual hands. Any other crafted items that have you wanting to make something for yourself?
Breakfast Topic: What we don't know
I found myself without much to do last weekend, so I spent most of my time in Azeroth. My paladin, who's been extremely slow to level lately, went on a burst of XP gathering, and I got him from around 67 up to about 73, finishing up Outland and making some solid gains in Northrend. At 68, I logged out to my level 80 hunter, picked up the Tome of Cold Weather Flight, and passed it back to my pally, so as soon as he stepped on the northern shore, he could take to the skies in his flying machine (yes, he's an engineer, and he's headed for a chopper as soon as I can make it).But then something strange happened (I mentioned this on last week's podcast as well): not one, not two, but three different people sent me tells in the same evening, all of them asking just how I was flying around Northrend at level 68. I feel like we covered the topic pretty well here on WoW.com, and of course Blizzard had the information listed in the official patch notes. But somehow, news of the Tome had flown (sorry) under these players' radar.
Breakfast Topic: Which class am I again?
Tonight, after Trials of the Grand Crusader (four down, bug to go) we decided to hop onto some alts, which led to back to back TotC 10 on my DK and Shaman. Then back to back Ony 10, also on the DK and Shaman. And because I'd spent hours in TotGC 25 on my warrior before that, by the end of the night, I had no idea what class abilities I had anymore. Between popping Army of the Dead when they called for Heroism (it's bound to the same key) to trying desperately to use Chains of Ice when asked to Frost Shock the Ret Pally, I was in rare form. And it wasn't just me, either: the druid healer is usually a mage, the warlock raids as a priest, and the holy paladin healing the second Ony attempt has something like 10 alts at 80. I'm surprised he even knows where he is. We got it all done, mind you, but you can really tell the difference in smoothness between our mains and our alts, even as well geared as the alts often are.So now I put it to you, gentle readers. Do you ever suffer from class bleedover? Are you ever on your druid finding yourself mashing the Consecration button, or on your Mage trying to use Hymn of Hope? Or do you find it easy to keep it all straight?
Breakfast Topic: How to be realm-famous
I like this post on the General forums about being "realm-famous" and how to get there. World of Warcraft has a gigantic community around it, but sometimes my favorite part of the game is that there are all sorts of little micro-communities in that big one. There's the player base at large, and then groups of people who read WoW.com or other sites. Then you've got the realm forums denizens, and that's a different group than the factions on either side of each realm in-game. And then you've got your guild, and then within that, your raiders and maybe even your friends list. We're all part of one big group -- we all play the game together -- but there are all sorts of little identities in all of these little micro-groups as well.And people can become "famous" in these groups. It's tough for us at a macro level to cover all of that stuff, though I like trying to keep up with some of it in our Guildwatch column (and the picture above shows what happens when someone can become "realm-famous," or realm-infamous as the case may be. What's your experience with realm-fame -- can you name people on your own server, or have you ever gotten "famous" for nabbing a realm first or earning a reputation?
Breakfast Topic: Have you tried the Pit of Saron?
The PTR has been out for several days now. It's loaded with the latest build of the upcoming patch 3.3 which will feature the Icecrown raid and several smaller 5 man instances. The first instance that's up for testing is the Pit of Saron. I know some players do not like to be spoiled and would rather take in the moment when they first encounter it on their own. Others like myself crave information and wish to know every possible detail on a particular boss or instance. There's no right or wrong answer. PTRs are designed to be a testing ground and it offers a cool preview of what is to come. Some of the other bloggers on the staff along with myself jumped on during the weekend to give the place a shot. I had a fun time in there and learned a few interesting things. I don't think the instance is entirely finished yet, but there's enough in there to keep me busy healing. Have you taken a look around the place yet? If not, do you intend to at some point?
Breakfast topic: Who inspired you to play what?
When they first come to the game, many players instinctively know what they want to play. For me, my first love was, and ever shall be, my female tauren druid, the lollopy-gaited, bemused-emote, hoarse-voiced heifer. I can't even explain why she appeals to me so much, because her casting animations are relatively boring, and the female tauren voice actress sounds like she's nursing a 40-pack-a-day habit. It matters not. She is loved.When it comes to other characters, though, I can usually point to someone or something else that inspired me to roll that alt. Big Red Kitty made me want to play a dwarf hunter (now level 67) with a Frostsaber Pride Watcher. This video made a tauren shaman look awesome, so now I've got one at 71. And it was World of Roguecraft, oddly enough, that made a male undead warlock (as opposed to rogue) look like it could be fun; the scene with the warlock and rogue taking a stroll around the Lordaeron ruins with the warlock's imp toddling beside him, for whatever reason, sold it for me. When I look around my list of alts, for each I can name something or someone who just made that particular race/class combination look cool. Who or what inspired you to play the races and classes you're playing right now?
Breakfast Topic: Worgen and Goblin dances
Reader Andy sent us a good topic to talk about this morning: dances for the new Cataclysm races. Every time we've sat down to play the new expansion, we've punched in the /dance and /silly emotes, and we haven't seen a single thing implemented for Worgen or Goblin males or females, so as far as we know, it's completely up in the air on what dances they'll choose for each one. You have to think that Blizzard has some idea already (or maybe they'll just be included in those long awaited dance studios), but we haven't seen it, so what do you think?Andy says Goblin males should go for a West Side Story-style classic number, while Worgen should definitely do Thriller. For some reason, I see Goblins breakdancing, but I have no idea what the Worgen might be doing. If it's something befitting their starting area, I have to think something boring like ballroom. But they may actually have different dances for their human and wolf forms (at least you'd hope so -- surely they'd be able to do more in Worgen form than in normal human form, right?). What do you think? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Breakfast Topic: Happy Pirates' Day, ye landlubbers!
Yaaaaaar maties, it be me again, Cap'n Phineas Blackbeard (ye may remember my old guide to the most piratical o' quests), and I be back again, today, September the 19th, because today, ye scurvy dogs, be Pirates' Day! My old flame Dread Captain DeMeza will be hanging out in Booty Bay and causin' all kinds of trouble under the nose of old Baron Revilgaz, so ye can head down to the southern shores, listen to some shantys with those old swashbucklers, and maybe even win some loot. If ye like, ye can even go and visit DeMeza with the scallywags from this here WoW.com site (though between you and me, some of them smell like the inside of a whale's belly, especially that landlubber Schramm). And of course, all of ye yellow-bellied scallywags should spend the whole day talking like a pirate as best ye can, and maybe even wear an eyepatch. Y'know, for the nightvision.And just in case ye don't get enough grog today -- HA! Get it? "Enough grog"? A good pirate knows ye can never have enough grog! -- don't forget that Brewfest starts tomorrow. Stay tuned to this here vessel for more information about how ye can get all of the achievements and titles and dragons and treasure chests ye desire. Have a great Pirates' Day, and then get back to swabbing the poop deck, ye peg-legged, pox-faced mutinous cur! Dead men tell no tales! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!%Gallery-32280%
Breakfast Topic: The Moment
They don't happen often, but when they happen, you remember them forever. My wife successfully taming Loque'nahk. The forging of my Quel'Serrar. Our first complete clear of Ahn'Qiraj. Even just sitting on my mount as the sun rose on Menethil Island and realizing I'd spent nearly an entire night with my then-girlfriend chatting in-between bouts of killing various and sundry things. Those little moments that make up the memories that keep people playing. One of the ones I've enjoyed the most in game, oddly enough, is a small set of linked quests available in the Dragonblight where you end up doing the same quest effectively twice, once as a mid 70's character getting help from your future self, and again as your level 80 incarnation going back in time to provide that help. I don't know exactly why but it's one of my favorite aspects of the game and one I've made sure to do over and over again.Of course, they're not all good. One of my good in game friends delights in telling the story of the night my wife was patiently waiting for Lupos, a rare spawn worg from Duskwood, as she wished to tame said beastie for a pet. Lo and behold, as soon as she took a break for her biological means I linked a green drop in guild. As you can imagine, going on four years later I still hear about this from her when tempers are short. I've often wished Chromie would let me go back and stop that one, but so far no dice.So now dear readers I ask you for your moments, be they great, terrible, or greatly terrible (or terribly great, even).
Breakfast Topic: The one-of-every-class club
A friend of mine just dinged 80 again the other day, and it put him into a community that we joked about: the "one-of-every-class" club. Like a few of our readers (including William B, who emailed us a while back), he now has ten 80s, one of every single class in the game. It's not something I'd ever do, or ever want to do, but certainly there are probably quite a few people out there who've gone all the way to the highest level with every single class.As Turpster would say, it definitely gives you a nice overview of how all the classes work and what their strengths and issues are. And of course it'd be handy to run instances with -- you can roll into endgame instances playing whatever role you want or your guild needs to have.
Breakfast Topic: I hate
The interesting thing about World of Warcraft for me is that it can create such feelings of loyalty, solidarity, faction pride, and sometimes, raw, visceral, demonic hatred welling up from within. As an example, as an old school warrior player, I despise the Cyclonian with every fiber of my being. Mind you, I loved the quest chain, it felt epic and I kept the sword forever and a day (might even still have it somewhere in that mess of a bank) but the mob? Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate. I still stop whatever I'm doing and ride down to see if any warriors are trying to solo him whenever I'm anywhere near Southshore or Chillwind Point. And if they are, they suddenly find themselves assisted by a level 80 warrior who wishes nothing more on earth than to kill that windbag!Seriously, kudos to Blizzard, you managed to make me hate a mass of pixels more than some people I've had reason to dislike over the years. If sentient whirlwinds ever manifest and begin speaking to us, they'd best do so very far away from me.So this fine morning I ask you: what do you hate?
Breakfast Topic: Which NPCs cause a double take?
You have to hand it to Blizzard. They have a way with pop culture references and inside jokes. One of the methods that developers use to express their sense of humour is in their naming of the various NPCs in the game. For instance, the two Triumphant Armor vendors located outside Crusader's Coliseum. Champion Isimode (which I'm going to pronounce as "easy mode") is the vendor for the Alliance players, while Champion Faesrol (or "face roll") is the vendor for Horde players. Harrison Jones guided us through the introductory parts of Zul'Aman (or at least, tried to). Unlike the real Indiana Jones, Harrison didn't didn't last very long after your raid hit the gong. He'd end up resurfacing again in an escort quest in Grizzly Hills (aptly named Dun-da-Dun-tah!). Firefly loves might have missed this NPC over in Zangarmarsh. The engineering Grandmaster K. Lee Smallfry is a nod to Kaylee Frye who is the engineer on the television series. Last but not least, a few Goblin NPCs are named after a few prominent Star Trek characters. In Booty Bay, there's a goblin named Scooty (Scotty)! The first time I ran Gnomeregan as a Horde player, I came through here and did a double take on the name. You could imagine my pleasant surprise when I activated the transporter only to emerge on the other side to be greeted by Sprock (Spock). Which NPCs have you run across that have caused you to look twice?
Breakfast topic: Has Trial of the Grand Crusader been a reasonable challenge?
My raiding guild suffered from the Anub'Arak soft reset issue where we were unable to reach the floor where the oversized bug was. We wanted to clear him out on normal mode before we switched over to the harder difficulty. But since the floor was intact, we couldn't! (Note: This has since been fixed). Because of this, we decided to toggle on Heroic mode for Trial of the Crusader on 25 just to get a feel for it. Some guilds believe that the Coliseum, even on heroic, is too easy. So I went in wondering what the fuss was all about. I wanted to know how easy the heroic setting would be. But that's when I faced the reality check. Remember, not everyone is in a top 100 guild. We burned through about 10 attempts that night just working on the first encounter alone. That experience helped to ground us and we realized what we needed to do to get through that mountain. In the end, we weren't able to even get past Gormok. We came to the conclusion that we were definitely going to need to coordinate healing and tanking cooldowns to break past the final minute of the first boss. Nonetheless, it was fairly humbling. We'll have to go in next time much more carefully and with a more detailed game plan in mind. It's been several days since Trial of the Grand Crusader has been accessible. Do you feel it has just the right amount of challenge for your raid group? Have you found it too easy or too difficult?
Breakfast Topic: To-do
I love the to-do list that Siha posted on Banana Shoulders the other day -- I don't know if it's just the kind of people we are or if it says something about our play styles, but I too usually have an ongoing list of things I plan to do in the game, and pretty much everything I end up doing in game (from running reputation grinds to leveling up alts) follows the list.For instance, ever since Burning Crusade came out, the number one item on my to-do list was picking up a Netherwing Drake, and pretty much everything I did after that goal was set (switching over to my Hunter so I could solo the dailies more easily, doing only those quests in game every day, and leveling my professions up just to make the most out of doing them) was targeted at getting that Drake, which made it much sweeter when I finally did. In Northrend, my two main goals going in were to pick up the Kalu'ak fishing pole and to get the Green Proto-drake, and while the Oracles haven't been very giving with the Cracked Eggs so far, I have at least ground out the reps needed for those. My latest goals are to get the mounted Squire (I'm well on my way to the needed Seals) and to finally get a high-level Engineer (so I'm leveling up my Paladin, with the added bonus of having an endgame tank and/or healer whenever I want).And though this gets a little hokey, I'll actually say that aiming at and meeting my goals in game has actually helped me think about goals in real life the same way. We don't have anything so obviously as questgivers in real life, but setting a goal in game and following it through to completion can help you envision a real life goal as well, and follow that out until you finally reach it. There's so much to do in this game that I think it's very helpful to determine exactly what you want to do as you play. So what's on your to-do list?
