breakfast-topics
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Breakfast Topic: Virtual Pets
3.1 is looming ever closer and most of the players who aren't storming Ulduar are probably going to be hitting Icecrown for the Argent Tournament thanks to the promise of new mounts and, of course, the zone-specific pets! Now I love pets, I once gave a guildmate all my gold and asked him to go all the way to Netherstorm to get me a Blue Dragonhawk Hatching. Admittedly, I don't have that many and while I normally whip out Frosty or Mini Tyrael when we're in instances, I'm usually found exploring Azeroth with a much simpler pet, my Orange Tabby Cat.It seems like most of the WoW Insider staff - bar Alex and his roomba thingy - have pets and until two months ago, I had an ancient orange kitty called Jerry (known universally and beloved as The Ginger One). Sadly I had to put him to sleep but being followed by a virtual cat makes me wish we had more personalisation options in game. Hunters can name and feed their pets but why can't we do the same with our non combat ones? Yes we can brush them, put them on leads and play ball but it's not really the same thing is it? At the same time because I now have a pair of cats, I'd love to be able to summon several kitty minions who would follow me into battle. Anyway, here's a morning question for you: do you have virtual forms of your real world pets? If yes, do you have a particular one? If you don't, is there a particular non-combat pet you'd like to have? Would you like just one? How about many?
Breakfast Topic: Gonna check out Ulduar on the PTR?
It doesn't take Mind Vision to determine that I'm really, really excited for 3.1, and of all of its features, the Ulduar raid has me enthralled the most. I love new raids, and after all this time running Naxx, I'm ready to move on to a bigger and badder place. It doesn't hurt that everything I've heard about Ulduar sounds great! 14 bosses, hard modes, optional bosses, getting launched onto the back of a giant fire-breathing robot ... I honestly can't think of any negatives about the place. I guess it's just what I needed. Of course, I haven't played it yet. But soon, very soon, the PTR will go live and I'll be able to bask in all of its brass-and-marble glory. And you won't be able to shut me up about it if you try. If you can't beat me, though, you should consider joining me there.I'm aware, of course, that raiding's not for everyone, and that some people don't want encounters spoiled for them before they go live. So what about you guys? Are you looking forward to checking out Ulduar for yourself on the PTR? Gonna wait until it hits live WoW to try it out? Or do you just not care about Titantown too much?THESE QUESTIONS AND MORE ANSWERED (BY YOU) IN THIS, THE BREAKFAST TOPIC.
Breakfast Topic: What's the oldest piece of gear you use?
Man, WoW just throws so many items at us. They're greens, blues, and purples. They're vendor trash and they're enchanting mats. They all fill up our bags and our hours in the game. They drive our raid attendance and our questing time. And some, out of all of those thousands of items, mean something to us. We've all got our cherished items, ones that we can't bring ourselves to get rid of. This breakfast topic isn't about what we don't want to get rid of, though! This is about what we can't freaking get rid of no matter how hard we try. The General forums were graced with Blue presence in a thread asking just what the oldest item you still use is. The OP mentioned that theirs was Dabiri's Enigma, a tanking trinket they've been trying to get rid of since they day they got it back in Netherstorm. Unsuccessfully, of course. What about you guys? What have you been trying to replace, upgrade from, or downright throw away since Light-knows-when?
Breakfast Topic: Are you ready for Season 5?
It's finally here. The real reason I rushed to 80 and moderately gear up by mid-December is because I wanted to be ready for Arena Season 5. To be quite honest, now that it's here, I'm a bit nervous. Not nervous, that's not the right word... giddy, I think, excited like a six-year old going to the playground. Strangely, though, I've been having so much fun in Wintergrasp that I've hardly given a thought to Arenas.Now that I've given mulled it over a bit, I realize that the gear gap -- or lack of one -- is going to become immediately palpable simply because so much gear is readily available in Northrend. Any player who has just hit 80 will have immediate options for gear, and it won't be so hard to catch up or gear up for Arenas. Even without Resilience, so much gear has massive amounts of Stamina. I mean over 100 Stamina for a trinket? That's kind of insane. Players have so many options for gear now that some people won't even be doing Arenas to get Arena gear.It's going to be a completely different ballgame. The presence of Death Knights will completely change Arena PvP, as it already has in PvE. Knockback effects such as Thunderstorm or Typhoon will be exciting tools in the movement-heavy environment. How will players react to a sudden Death Grip into the opposing team's kill zone? Will HoT-impairing effects like Shadow Embrace or Plague Strike be enough to curb Druid dominance? We'll see. It's exciting. Are you prepared for Season 5? Not just in terms of gear, but psyched and ready for the unpredictability of the metagame, at least for the first few weeks?
Breakfast Topic: The Man with a Plan
It's a full week after the record-breaking Wrath of the Lich King. How has it been so far? Did it all go according to plan? If you're like most players I know, you had a plan going into the expansion. Personal targets, maybe, or things you were looking forward to doing and achieving. Some of you might even have been your Realm's first Level 80 <insert class here> or <insert race here>. For the rest of us, I have to ask -- did everything go according to plan?I must confess, I'm not even 80 yet. I had expected to hit Level 80 within a few days, but I had to wait for my wife, with whom I leveled since Day One, to get her Collector's Edition key (eventually made possible only with some arm-twisting and name-taking by our very own Dan O'Halloran -- thanks, Dan!) before I could set foot in Northrend. When my wife finally got her key last Monday, she found my pace too frenetic because I would simply accept quests and do them as I remembered them from Beta. She, on the other hand, wanted to read and enjoy the quests and level up her professions at the same time. We ended up stopping at every Cobalt Node, slowing down our leveling pace considerably.That kind of changed things. Instead, I eventually decided to level ahead of her on my own time and just accompany her through quests whenever she played. I also stopped rushing myself and didn't mind spending some time in Dalaran's Underbelly looking for elixirs. I guess I'll hit Level 80 eventually. It's not going the way I envisioned it, but I'm actually still enjoying myself. I guess I'm the Man with a Change of Plans. How about you? How has your first week in Northrend been?
Breakfast topic: Keeping track of WoW
Let's face it, World of Warcraft is a big game. Nine classes with a new one on the way, ten races, each with all unique spells and abilities, over fifty zones to explore and soon a new continent, each with more quests, baddies, and precious loot than we can count. With so many details a virtual world like WoW has, just how the heck do you keep track of everything? Everyone has certain goals in mind for their characters. Be a master of a certain profession Be exalted reputation with certain factions Quests you want to go back and do (I'm with you completionists!) A wish list of goodies to be gotten and exactly what you need to get'em. Do you go for the casual approach and just store it in your noggin? Or maybe you've lined your monitor with so many sticky notes you can barely see your character. Perhaps you're the obsessively anal type and keep a notebook binder or excel document handy at all times? Myself, I'm guilty of using an online application called Backpack to keep my profession notes and wish lists in order. Share with us in the comments how you keep track of all your WoW information!
Breakfast Topic: Cooling off
I like starmixx's idea from WoW LJ: whenever she's driven nuts by something in game, she just steps away and does some baking. To tell the truth, I've gotten pretty good at avoiding my ingame annoyances -- I don't really PuG all that much anymore, and I mostly avoid group quests (or just stay patient enough until someone I know can help me finish them). But sooner or later, we're all going to hit our heads up against something that happens in game, and then it's a good time to walk away and... do what?I personally find that going for a walk helps me clear my head -- nothing reminds me that "this is just a game" more than actually going out in the real world for a while. But I like that starmixx's plan is so productive -- you get de-stressed and get to have cupcakes? That's pretty win.What do you do when the game drives you nuts? Some of the folks in the LJ thread don't even leave the game -- they log an alt or just go fishing for a while. What's your plan when something in Azeroth makes you crazy?
Breakfast Topic: How are you celebrating St. Patrick's Day in game?
Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I'm sure my Irish Catholic grandmother will be proud of me when I show her this Easter holiday that I've managed to write something up on this Irish celebration. In fact, pictured above is my Irish leaning main character Osullivan overlooking the green river in Chicago. My friends in Defenders of The Pass over on the Eldre'Thalas server have teased me for years with green beer, and today, I'm going to have one and salute them all. /cheers!While there isn't any official World of Warcraft holiday for St. Patty's Day, festivities are bound to be popping up everywhere. Perhaps some merry drinking, maybe a few kisses to a stone, or maybe everyone rolls a red headed female dwarven warrior and dances around a bit.Besides my real life green beer that I'll be enjoying (most likely a Budweiser Select with green dye), I'll have to saunter over to a tavern and pick up some sort of Potent Ale. I think I'll drink it right before I go off to pull Archimonde, no doubt causing everyone to yell in bewilderment over vent. What are you doing in game for this St. Patrick's Day? And if you can, share with me and tip back the ol' glass at 9:00 EST tonight!
Breakfast Topic: What does Northrend look like in your mind's eye?
A poster to the official forums complained (they're just so good at complaining!) that Northrend is "supposed to be completely covered in snow and ice," but so far there hasn't been enough of either in the screenshots for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Bornakk responded: "While we have no plans for Northrend to appear like an island of paradise, we do want the zones to bring a wide variety of scenery and environments for all players to enjoy. Making a continent one big block of ice didn't seem to fit with this ideology too well."Several posters came right back at him though, and while no one wanted to go through a whole continent that was just like Winterspring, the general feedback going Blizzard's way was to say: less chill, more freeze. One poster put it well: "I was hoping that maybe the Devs would actually try and I bet if they wanted they could make a plethora of breathtaking Ice and Snow environments that would be much more interesting than Winterspring." When I read that, my mind leaped with images of giant ice structures protruding from the earth, refracting sunlight as you looked at them. It was a beautiful image, not at all like Winterspring, and possibly variable enough for one or two zones.... but 10? 10 whole zones of different ice and snow environments? How in the world could one avoid the overwhelming dominance of the color white? Where would all the variety be without some areas that have... less freeze and more chill?Of course a lot of Blizzard's landscaping work for the expansion is probably already planned out, but as things stand I'd imagine it's not too late for a little bit of player input to influence just how icy Northrend actually is. What's your take? Can you describe some significantly different environments that don't look like Winterspring?
Breakfast Topic: What do you want your character to look like?
You're likely already aware that one of the great new features to be unveiled in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is the ability to change your character's hairstyle. A number of players (including myself) have actually stopped playing certain characters just because our original appearance choices didn't turn out as good in play as they seemed in the character creation screen. Some (including myself) have spent a long time thinking about what a new character should look like and trying out many variations, playing for a bit, deleting them and trying again until you get something you know you can live with for the rest of your character's life.Soon, however, our characers' hairspray will no longer be stone-stiff, and a new era of creative exploration will open up to Azerothians. Existing characters with ugly hair may get a second chance at coolness -- but as many already satisfied players know, your characters' good looks often come from a desire to make them fit, as closely as possible, some image we already have in our mind.So tell us of your dream for your character, how you envision him or her when you close your eyes. Do you want your Death Knight to look like Darth Vader, or -- heaven forbid -- Chuck Norris? If you like, you could link to a picture you like, or even draw your creative vision for us!My own most vivid character visualization was for a night elf rogue I had in mind. I wanted her to have the look of an angel who used to live among the stars in the sky, but had somehow gotten lost on earth and forgotten her way home. In hindsight, I was probably very inspired by my favorite Neil Gaiman novel, Stardust, in which a star actually does fall to the earth... and breaks her leg.
Breakfast Topic: Old heroes with new stories
At the Lore panel at BlizzCon Chris Metzen mentioned that some old faces will appear in new ways in future content. We can expect Sylvanas to make an appearance, Bronzebeard will lead us to unlock the mysteries of the world's creation, Hellscream will lead the Horde into Northrend. Keeping this in mind, what heroes would you like to spend more time with? Is there anyone you would especially love to see again?
Breakfast Topic: Lore and fantasy comparisons
You've been reading Know Your Lore for a long time now, and since then, you've started checking out the WoWWiki's lore information. You've read the World of Warcraft encyclopedia and history. You've even gone out and bought all the Warcraft novels, comic books and table-top roleplaying games, and previous Warcraft games, just so that you could go through and feast your eyes on more WoW lore.Or... maybe you've just read some of the quest texts every now and then. Everyone's got at least some idea of Warcraft lore just from playing the game, with some sense of what the story is about. Chances are you've also encountered many other fantasy stories of one sort or another, and perhaps started thinking about how WoW is different, or how it is the same. What are some of the similarities and differences you see between the Warcraft lore and the lore of other great fantasy stories? Do you think it's just a cheap ripoff of Lord of the Rings? Or do you think it brings its own unique contribution to the genre of fantasy storytelling and cannot be fairly compared to any other story lore? Perhaps it even draws the most inspiration from a certain religion or philosophy! What do you think?
Breakfast Topic: W... w.... warlocks?
I'm shivering in my boots as I type this post. I quiver in fear at the very mention of warlocks. My knees are shaking, my nose is dribbling, and my eyes are getting teary at the mere thought of seeing a warlock today, walking around with one of those spooky infernals or... *gulp*... succubi.Okay not really. But you've got to admit, with sooo many people complaining about how overpowered warlocks are, that's got to amount to a lot of fear! But fortunately for warlocks, fear is what they're all about. Warlocks seem to just soak it up when people cringe at the sight of them or complain about how overpowered they are.Still, there are plenty of chances to complain in other places. If you'd like to complain about warlocks today, by all means start a warlock of your own so that you can really get the inside scoop on what exactly should be changed! But today, which is Warlock Day, in our very last breakfast topic about class encouragement, let's not complain -- let's tell all those warlocks out there: whether you are a warlock, play with one, or fight against them in PvP, what is it you love and fear about them?
Breakfast Topic: Hunters are for the win
There are so many hunters out there that really there's no excuse for this post to not get at least 5 thousand comments from all the people who love being hunters so much. Obviously I exaggerate, but seriously, almost everyone who plays WoW will at least try out a hunter at some point, perhaps because they want to choose a nifty pet, or because they want to know what all this much ado about hunters is for. Lots of us feel more at home in this class than in any other... but why? What is it about playing this class that people love so much? Do we love playing with hunters as much as we love being them? Doesn't fighting a hunter fill you with that joy of challenge that makes you want to come back and fight them again?So today let's encourage all those hunters out there with a volley of positive comments -- and if you haven't noticed the class encouragement for other classes, be sure to leave them a note too!
Breakfast topic: Legendary bad pulls
Every raider or dungeon crawler knows the heart-stopping terror of awful pulls -- the shaman who accidentally pulls Vael before the raid is buffed, the tank who disconnects as the hunter shoots the boss, and, of course, the newbie on Ragnaros who thinks it would be a wonderful idea to talk to this Majordomo guy. There's a nice thread in the Raids & Dungeons forum about the worst things to hear before pulling. Highlights include:
