BurningCrusade
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The pacing of the new endgame
So Illidan met his match yesterday in the form of Nihilum, which means that since the Black Temple is the last and latest bit of content to show up on the live servers, the game is effectively beaten. That's it. We're done. Time to go home.Didn't that seem a little fast? The original WoW content took a few years to "beat," it seems, and now Burning Crusade (and the 2.1 patch) has been beaten by players in a matter of months. Is the endgame going too fast? From Boubouille's wrapup of the Illidan defeat yesterday, we get this post on the Elitist Jerks forums by Tigole. He says Blizzard is very happy with the way Black Temple is tuned. He also takes a look back at Naxx, and says the Four Horsemen were an example of an encounter that was well-tuned, but players at the time didn't have the gear they needed, so it took much longer for guilds to finish them off. The biggest hole in WoW content right now, Tigole says, is the lack of options after Karazhan for 10 man raids-- but, he says, "we're fixing that." So /cheer for more 10 mans to come.But is the endgame dropping too fast? In my estimation, not at all. In my estimation, Nihilum is not a normal guild. If you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on gold buying (and frankly, I am not-- I believe they're cheating), they clearly play the game more than anyone else, driven by both their own determination and the fact that they are basically raiding celebrities in Azeroth. They are the hardcore. And if you're asking me whether hardcore players should finish the endgame content quickly, I'd say they should.Why? Because that means it will be that much easier for casuals to get there, too.
Burning Crusade reference guide
For the reference-minded among you, we've compiled a Burning Crusade reference guide for you, your alts, or anyone new to BC content to use as a handy, one-stop-shop reference. The guide aggregates the most informative links we've found on BC-specific content so far, including dungeon walkthroughs, profession and class changes, new PvP objectives, maps, quests, loots, changes in patch 2.1, etc. We hope you find it useful, and we hope you'll help us continue to improve the guide by making suggestions in the comments here of any other Burning Crusade-related guides, FAQs, walkthroughs, or roundups we haven't yet included. We'll do our best to check this thread and add updates to the guide with your contributions. Burning Crusade reference guide
Goggle costs and a bit of RP
I think of all the trade skills I have, Engineering has to be the one I feel has been overlooked the most by the devs. The patterns have traditionally been scarce, and it seemed to me like the material costs were pretty crazy for many things when I was leveling up. In contrast, I still haven't gotten all the patterns for tailoring and recipes for alchemy. Enchanting is definitely a pain in the arse, but I can justify that one with tips and the occasional sale when I have the mats. Engineering, for me, was something I picked up and only leveled for the love of toys. (Like my long-ago-nerfed Gnomish Shrink Ray in combination with Nogginfogger Elixir, which was great for laughs.)I've listened to my Hunter officer, who has maxed his skill out, decry the material costs of many of the new patterns. (I haven't pursued it on my alt as yet) So when I saw this tidbit today, I thought that many engineers would be glad to hear that they are actually looking at improving a pattern as opposed to nerfing it. Per Drysc when fielding complaints about the inclusion of Primal Nether in the epic goggle schematics: We're in the process of reevaluating the power consumption needs of the goggles. While it was felt that the Primal Nether would be able to sufficiently power the devices, and through further testing, we're currently investigating other power sources and their availability.Good news, and a bit of RP. We'll have to wait and see what the final decision is in regards to "power sources."
Blizzard offers Burning Crusade free trial-- to whom?
Ok, I'll admit there probably isn't much of a point to telling you about this, but I'll do it anyway. Just in case you haven't been by Blizzard's WoW homepage in a while (and why would you, with such an informative site here, right?), it appears that they have announced a free trial for the Burning Crusade expansion. That's right, if you really weren't prepared and haven't purchased the expansion yet, you can now download and try it for free for 10 days.That said, who among you out there really hasn't purchased the Burning Crusade yet? I don't mean to make a hard sell (personally, I don't care if you buy it or not), but you have an inhuman amount of willpower if you've been reading this site, checking out all this amazing stuff, and have been able to somehow avoid the temptation to go out, to plunk down the cash and head into Outland.I guess if you're not yet 60, there's not a lot of call for it, but even if you're a lowbie, you'll like the new Draenei and Blood Elf lands. Has anyone out there not taken the plunge yet? And what on Azeroth has kept you from buying it? At any rate, if you want a free trial of what you're missing, Blizzard is ready to offer it to you.
Breakfast topic: Worst new instance
Ok, I think it's been long enough-- we've all sat here talking about how great all the new content is and how thrilled we all are to have new 5mans to run and new items to collect for a few months now, so it's time to move away from the good and start getting into the bad.Awakener on Demon Soul says Shattered Halls is definitely the worst instance of the expansion. I have to completely disagree-- I think Shattered Halls is fun and simple once you've got it down, and the Gauntlet of Flame is one of the best 5man experiences in the game. Then again, not all long experiences are fun-- my pick for worst instance is The Black Morass in the Caverns of Time. Escape from Durnholde was brilliant fun, but BM is just (literally) a swamp-- there's no variety in the spawns, and no story to the event. Either you kill the nondescript bad guys or you don't, and I think it's a waste to be "fighting alongside" Medivh when really he's just standing there yelling at you.But that's just me. What's the worst instance you've seen in the expansion?
"Classic" servers for a simpler time
Bob (nice name), like many players, finds himself pining for the days of yore. Sure, we're almost all flying around in Outland now. The loot is nice and the instances are plentiful. But there's something missing-- it's the weekly runs through BWL and AQ and ZG. It's Stratholme and Scholomance and leveling rep with Argent Dawn. It's raiding with 40 people at one time, and it's a world where you can be proud to be a hunter in full Tier 2, not embarrassed that you haven't picked up anything better.And Bob's solution is an interesting one: he says it "would be awesome" for Blizzard to implement "classic" servers-- that is, servers that don't have the 60+ content. They could still have the Draenei and the Blood Elves (and Shaman and Paladin on both sides, I guess), but 60 would be as high as players could go, and the Dark Portal to Outland wouldn't be open-- Naxxramas would be the current pinnacle of raiding. Just like the old days.It's not an unprecendented idea-- Dark Age of Camelot has a few "Classic" servers, in which one of the expansions simply isn't included (and the rules are tweaked a little bit to what I think is a previous patch). That was implemented based on player demand, and so if there's a lot of player demand for a non-Burning Crusade server, Blizzard could probably put it together. Drysc answers in the thread that while it's been considered, it's not likely-- Blizz doesn't want to split up players based on what expansions they own.But I don't think that's all that's going on here-- Bob is 70, so he owns BC. He just wants a simpler time, before Fel Reavers, before Karazhan (whoops-- would Kara be on the classic servers?), and before Shattrath City. I don't know if I'd play there all the time; I might feel kind of silly fighting to finish MC when I knew I could just log out and back in to a character 10 levels higher. But I know where Bob's coming from.
Does Hellfire Peninsula parallel the Iraq war?
Over at Curmudgeon Gamer there's some speculation that the zone Hellfire Peninsula is meant to be Blizzard's commentary on the Iraq war. And Blizzard is certainly known for making in-game references to pop culture; why in Outland alone you can find Star Wars, Masters of the Universe, Monty Python, Snakes on a Plane (literally!), Star Trek, and Dune, just to name a handful. But usually they restrict themselves to to humor -- their goal, after all, is to entertain, and making you stop and laugh (come on, did anyone not lol at the "Voidwalkers Gone Wild" quest?) is just part of the job. So is Blizzard really making Iraq war references here? Curmudgeon Gamer makes note of the invading army (us: the denizens of Azeroth), the plumes of fire coming out of the ground (oil refinery fires, anyone?), and the Zeth'Gor Must Burn quest which requires you to mark towers in Zeth'Gor for later bombing runs. And then there's this bit of NPC chatter:Marshal Isildor says: Do you think that demons will play fair? These beasts are more savage than orcs and more cunning than the undead.Marshal Isildor says: How many more soldiers need to die before we start paying attention out there?While I see his points, I'm not so certain the zone is meant to be a specific reference to the Iraq war as opposed to trying to catch the feel of a front-line war zone in general. With the Iraq war being the current event of the day, a connection stands out -- but I wonder if the political climate were different would we just connect Hellfire Peninsula to the most recent conflict?
WoW Moviewatch: Jimmy: A World of Warcraft story
This is what you call a tour-de-force of a WoW movie. It's a heartbreaking tale of two friends, two factions, and the funniest portrayal of what it's like to play WoW I've ever seen. Watch it and love it. (There are a few curse words, so it might be NSFW if you work in a monastery). I laughed, I cried, I charged my fireball. And then I shoved it right in that guy's face! Great stuff. By the light of the moon-- *POOF*[ Thanks, Salad! ]
Blizzard posts Burning Crusade attunement tree
While we've certainly seen some excellent player-created guides to instance attunement in The Burning Crusade, sometimes it's just good to know there's also an official source. So it was with great glee that I opened up my email this morning to find that *other* World of Warcraft Insider (you know, the email Bliz sends you that you never read) with mention of this fabulous interactive attunement guide. While I don't know about you (and I hope you'll tell me), I know that a guide like this helps me figure out what I'm headed to do next on my path of content conquering. I honestly had no clue it would be this involved as I was leveling up, but thankfully the faction grind hasn't really felt like a grind at all. In fact, after leveling to 70 on a new shaman, and seeing most of the new instances, I'm now only missing revered with a couple of factions. So, does a guide like this from Blizzard help, or are you more inclined to use the player-generated guides?
You can't go home again
When the expansion came around, we did a lot of speculating about what would happen to the "old" raid instances, now that the items were so much better in Outland. So now that people are working through the level 70 instances (that guy to the right isn't just Murmur on fire), what has happened back in Azeroth?I've only been back through old instances a few times, and every single one was just depressing. My guild, a few weeks ago, decided to run MC with about 30 people, just so some alts could get geared and we could spit in the face of mobs who'd given us trouble in the past. But I was glad I had to leave for some real life stuff halfway through-- we were taking down bosses without even blinking, and trash mobs dropped too fast for me to even get a cast off. We fought for weeks over this?I've also done one run of UBRS (to get some people attuned to BWL, which I passed on after that bad MC experience), and one of Stratholme just the other night-- my 61 rogue, a 65 priest and a 70 hunter farming Runecloth and Righteous Orbs tore both sides of that place apart so quickly that I was bored the whole time (the Eye showed up, and we just killed the adds it brought). The one place I'd actually gain something from, Zul'Gurub (I've got quest pieces that I need rep to turn in yet), I haven't had the guts to go back to yet-- I liked running the instance so much when it was challenging that I feel like going back there now with ten or even five people and tearing it apart would be like visiting the house you grew up in: everything just seems so much smaller and more depressing.Have you been back to the old content? Is there any challenging fun to be gotten from it at all? Originally, I was thinking it would be nice if Blizzard could reinvigorate these old instances, and I guess some kind of heroic mode would still be fun. But at this point, I'm almost of the opinion that they should just be put out of their misery.
Burning Crusade tops the 3.5 million mark
Gamasutra reports that the Burning Crusade expansion has surpassed the 3.5 million sales mark -- 2.4 million of which were sold within 24 hours of release. Regions that play on North American realms (which includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia) accounted for 1.9 million copies, while the remainder were sold in Europe. BC was recently released in South Korea, and work is underway for Simplified and Traditional Chinese localizations for mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, with an official release date "as soon as possible." The worldwide subscriber base has now reached the 8.5 million mark, with an increase of 500,000 new players in less than two months. For the mathematically-minded among you, that's a 6.25% noob increase since BC's release. [Via Joystiq]
WoW Moviewatch: Tempest Keep Exploration
After taking out Magtheridon, the guild Nihilum has been able to complete the attunement quest to access the Eye of Tempest Keep. And since they can get there and we can't, they've decided to share some video of the place with the rest of us, giving us a first look at the place. And if the video's not enough for you, there's also a preview of the instance with some pretty sweet screenshots.[Via World of Raids]
Instance Spreadsheet offers overview of swirly portals in Outland
Ryianne of Stormrage has assembled this freakin' terrific spreadsheet of all the Outlands instances, a must-have close at hand for anyone like me who considers running instances the most fun part of the game. Want to know where the Shadow Labyrinth is, or what level Blood Furnace is, or what rep is given in the Underbog (both regular and Heroic runs)? It's all here.Ryianne hasn't added one thing a lot of players might want-- exactly how to get attuned to the instances that need attuning. That info has been floating around, though, and it's definitely out there if you need it (my guild is holding a Karazhan attunement drive lately, trying to push our latent 70s to get the key so we can start downing stuff in there). Ryianne also says she's still working on it, so if you have more to add (like the fact that it's Thrallmar rep for Horde in the first three instances), let her know.But it is cool to see, in a "big picture" sense, all the different options available when someone says "Let's run something." With the expansion, Blizzard has really paid a lot of great service to the 5man instances (not just in size and quantity, but in variety and skill), and nowhere is that more apparent than in a large overview like this.
Breakfast Topic: How many times have you changed your talents?
With the new talent trees and the challenges of leveling, I've had to adjust my talents several times. On my warlock, I did a post-2.0 build before the expansion pack that was very heavy demonology, a leveling build that was heavy affliction, then I tried multiple builds for post-70, settling on a hybrid 40/0/21 build similar to my old raiding build.Fortunately I'd had my old raiding spec for a very very long time, and my cost to switch everything now is up to just 30G. How many times have you unlearned your talents lately? What's your re-spec cost up to?
Burning Crusade $37 shipped at Newegg
If you haven't picked up the Burning Crusade yet, congratulations: you've saved yourself 3 bucks. Techbargains points out that Newegg is now selling the expansion for $36.90 with free 3-day shipping, which is the cheapest we've seen it yet.And if you don't have the new expansion yet, it's pretty clear by now that it's worth it at under $40. Originally, I was thinking that if you haven't got a 60 yet, it might not be necessary, but considering all the great new content that showed up in the starting areas, anyone interested in rolling a new character would definitely get their money's worth.Of course, if you're willing to hunt a little bit, there are even better deals to find. The Collector's Edition, sold out in most places, is still floating around on eBay, some for even cheaper than this Newegg deal. Of course, that brings all the risks associated with normal eBay deals, but no matter how you find it, there's almost no reason not to pick up the expansion and take on the Burning Crusade.
Ask WoW Insider: Aldor or Scryer?
We've explored the topic of the Aldors and the Scryers before, but reader Tetelestia gives us a great excuse to revisit this question of faction allegiance again now that we've had some time to spend in Burning Crusade. For this week's Ask WoW Insider, Tetelestia writes "I primarily play a horde character, and I want to make the best choice of allegiance for the quest in Shattrath city. As a noob coming up on my first character, I made the grave mistake of 'fighting' my way through to Winterspring. Mistake. I'd like to avoid that in BC, so I'm looking for readers input on which allegiance they took and why, instead of me just guessing." So, which faction did you choose to (or plan to) ally yourself with, and why? As ever, please don't forget to send us your questions for Ask WoW Insider to ask AT wowinsider DOT com. See you next week!
Confessions of an Outland clown, part 2
I'm still feeling awfully silly running around in my set of Outland greens and blues. And I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks my character's appearance has taken a turn for the worst since leveling past 60. Even Drysc has chimed in on the topic, telling us......leveling items are almost always go to look more or less "plain". We want the end-game items to really stand out, both in ability/power and the way they look. The items you had at 60 were the end-game items, they were the best of the best and their look really showed that visually just running around the city. As you're leveling again you may be finding better gear than what you had, but it's not the uber end-game gear, and so it sort of has a plain look to match.Of course, I don't think that my complaint is over the fact that the gear looks "plain" -- in fact, I think "plain" would be a major improvement over what I'm wearing now. And while all of us want the incredible end-game gear to look, well, incredible, that doesn't seem like a great reason to make the rest of the gear in the game look awful, or just as bad -- boring and recycled. With most of the sights in Outland making me want to gape in wonder, the fact that my character would look about the same (perhaps better -- I don't recall low level greens being this jarringly colored) if I went and geared myself with the best that Elwynn Forest had to offer is a little disappointing. How could the current system be improved? Read on for some thoughts.
Ding! 70!
My warlock hit level 70 during one of the horrendous trash pulls in the Auchindoun's Shadow Labyrinth. It took about 2 weeks, a little over but for the first four days my server was unplayable. I have a few suggestions for those of you who are trying to get 70 in the minimum amount of time spent. First, get out of Hellfire Peninsula as quickly as possible. There are so many people in that zone that I spent way too much time waiting for spawns. Second, unless you are a mage getting powerleveled with the help of a entire guild, quests are the way to go, not grinding and not instances. Finally, my pattern was Hellfire Peninsula to Zangarmarsh to Nagrand to Terokkar Forest to Blade's Edge to Shadowmoon Valley. I did Nagrand first Terokkar Forest was very heavily in use, and I wanted to stay out of that mess. They're about the same level, so it works out. I haven't even been into the Netherstorm area. Why did I skip Netherstorm? I'm a warlock. Shadowmoon Valley is full of demons. I was completely playing to my strengths. I started The Burning Crusade with about 150 gold on my warlock. I ended with a tad over 1500, not counting green items (sold via my bank alt) but counting all consumables, repairs, flights, and other expenses. Whenever there were quest rewards with no usable options, I picked the 2 handed weapon or the plate armor, those items tended to sell better. Unless you blow all of your cash on tradeskills, you should have basic flying mount cash very quickly.I managed to find groups to finish nearly all of my group quests on an ad hoc basis. On a couple of quests I got help from in-guild. Now that I've finished leveling, my goals are to finish up all my keys, do some instances, and help the rest of the people in my guild level.
A man, a plan, a faction
There are a lot of new factions in the Burning Crusade. Just by looking at WoWWiki's factions page, I can count thirteen, and that's combining all the opposed faction ones like Honor Hold/Thrallmar, Mag'Har/Kurenai, and Aldors/Scryers. With so many factions, it's nearly impossible to grind rep with all of them. So I've come up with a game plan. I have to get revered with Thrallmar, Lower City, the Sha'Tar, Cenarion Expedition and Keepers of Time to get my Mount Hyjal attunement, so those are a given. That alone should net me a couple of transmutes and alchemy recipes. Aside from that, I have two factions I am considering grinding to exalted: the Scryers and the Consortium. They both have excellent daggers available at exalted, and I'd like to be able to start the endgame off with some good daggers. The Keepers of Time also have a nice dagger, but they seem significantly harder to grind solo than the other two. Plus, the Consortium is a group of ethereal smugglers! How cool is that? After I've been 70 for a while, I may go back and do some exalted grinds to pick up alchemy recipes, but I doubt I'll be in any hurry. What factions do you want to grind out, and what reputation rewards are you lusting after?
Countdown to Burning Crusade: Burning Crusade winner
We'd like to thank everyone for helping us level up our contest skill with one final contest in our Countdown to Burning Crusade. We're happy to announce two lucky winners -- Baxmaniac is going to be the recipient of a copy of Burning Crusade for lucky comment number 260, and Kieron is going to receive a copy of Christie Golden's Rise of the Horde novel for lucky need roll number 119. Grats to Baxmaniac and Kieron, and thanks to everyone for taking part in the Countdown this month!
