cold-weather-flying
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Cataclysm Beta: Cold Weather Flying at 68
That pretty much says the whole story right there -- but since when have I let that stop me? Our old friend Cold Weather Flying is seeing a significant price drop in Cataclysm, it seems. In addition, the level at which you can get it is changing. On the live servers, you currently can buy Cold Weather Flying at level 77 (or level 80 to buy a Tome of Cold Weather Flying). The tome is Bind to Account and allows an alt to learn CWF at level 68. In Cataclysm, all of this is unnecessary. You hit level 68, you spend around 500g (475g for the human character I used to test this, talking to a flight trainer in Stormwind) -- and bam, you can fly in Northrend. (Said human was level 1; as you can see, he didn't even have 1 solitary copper on him.) So there you go. Do all of your alts have CWF? If you somehow have an alt who is above level 77 but doesn't have it yet, will you be picking it up?
Breakfast Topic: How would you be honored ingame?
Being honored ingame with an NPC or an item is, I think we can all agree, the height of player cool. Not that this will ever happen to me, mind you. Realistically, the only thing I expect to get from Blizzard is a letter bomb, or possibly a bloodstained horse head for going live with that article on the Death Grip bug, and perhaps I deserve it. To this day I feel kind of bad, or at least I do until I remember my guild leader's Death Knight sending a goblin NPC flying off the dock, and then I laugh and laugh, and realize that I am a terrible person who should probably be locked up somewhere. It's fun to wonder, though, and I've settled on two wishes. The first would be making my beloved main into a Thunder Bluff NPC among the Druid trainers, kitted in full Tier 6 with an Origin of Nightmares. She would be friend and counselor to all young Druids and full of unsolicited advice for them, most of it incorrect. The second, less dignified, and perhaps more realistic legacy I would leave to the game is a series of cow-shaped impact craters at the bottom of various Northrend cliffs and in Crystalsong under the Dalaran sewers' exit pipe, in tribute to the several falling deaths incurred while mindlessly jumping from heights without the benefit of Cold Weather Flying. Little signs could be posted below informing players of the sites' historical significance, although I'm not sure how Blizzard could squeeze the phrase "Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.........." onto the flavor text.On the chance that Blizzard ever decides to honor your august self ingame, what would you want honored and how?
WoW Insider Show with Medros of All Things Azeroth live tonight
We're doing the podcast at a special time this week, so if you can't usually tune in to us on Saturdays at 3:30 Eastern, now's your chance to catch a live show. Tonight at 6pm Eastern, we'll be live over on the Ustream page, and our special guest will be none other than Medros, of the All Things Azeroth podcast. He's the second in our ongoing series of guests from around the community -- Michelle Madison of Warcraft Outsiders, you'll remember, was on a few weeks ago, and we're planning on having more podcasters and bloggers on with us in the coming weeks as well. Medros will join Lesley Smith, Turpster, and I in discussing the biggest news of the past week, including those Worgen pets you may have seen around the game, what Tom Chilton said about the future of World of Warcraft, the upcoming changes to Northrend flying. And if things work out as planned, we might even be able to get a live report straight from the PTR about how testing of the Crusaders' Coliseum is going.Should be a great time for sure. Tune in tonight on our Ustream page. It all starts off at July 9, 2009 6:00 PM EDTvar date_span = document.getElementById("date"); var date = new Date(date_span.innerHTML); var monthname=new Array("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug", "Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec"); var weekday=new Array("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday", "Friday","Saturday"); var year = date.getFullYear(); var day_of_month = date.getDate(); var month = monthname[date.getMonth()]; var day = weekday[date.getDay()]; var hour = date.getHours(); if (hour > 11) { if (hour > 12) {hour -= 12} am_pm = "PM"; } else { am_pm = "AM"; } var minute = date.getMinutes(); if (minute < 10) { minute = "0"+minute; } date_string = day + ", " + month + " " + day_of_month; date_string += " at " + hour + ":" + minute + " " + am_pm; offset = -date.getTimezoneOffset()/60; if (offset >= 0) { offset = "+"+offset; } date_string += " in your time zone (GMT"+offset+")"; date_span.innerHTML = (date_string); , so you can head there or just hit the link below to find an embedded version of the stream after the break. And while we'll be chatting live as usual during the show, you can always send us a note about something you hear or something you'd like us to talk about at theshow@wow.com. We'll see you tonight!
Significant changes to Northrend flying mounts discovered on the Patch 3.2 PTR [Updated]
A little surprise on the Patch 3.2 PTR was discovered this evening. The Cold Weather Flying training, which previously had to be purchased for each character that wanted to fly in Northrend is now available as a Bind on Account book purchasable at the exotic mounts vendor in Dalaran.The Use text is a little odd in that it notes the "tome is consumed when read." To me that means that the book is only a one use thing, which is a departure from current BoA items. And why have a level 68 requirement on this and not the normal Cold Weather Flying training? If you're 68 you're likely to be able to get to Dalaran anyways these days.But wait Did you see it? You might have missed it.It shows level 68 being the required level, not level 77.
The Queue: I believe I can fly
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.So I made an oopsie yesterday. A rookie mistake! I referenced a picture that I used in The Queue a couple of days ago, and also showed off a picture of the character it may have been referencing. Only I used the same file name for both, so the original picture turned into the second picture. I'm pretty pro, I know. It's been fixed though, so if you want to see what the heck I'm talking about, check out Sunday's edition and then yesterday's edition and you will understand! Now, on with the show.Tim asked...I heard that there are new DK only facial features coming in the next patch. Will existing DK's get a chance to redo their toons or does Blizzard actually expect us to cough up $15?
WoW Rookie: Saddle up your mount at level 30
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.UPDATE: Progress gallops forward and mount requirements have changed ... Visit our updated WoW Rookie mounts post for the latest mount information.Hitting level 30 is a major milestone in today's World of Warcraft: the level at which you get your mount. Up to this point, you've spent plenty of time hoofing it, getting to know the lay of the land. On the back of your trusty steed, you'll be able to zip across increasingly larger zones and quest areas in style. You'll start off on a standard ground mount, such as a Horse, Wolf or Kodo. Later, you can upgrade to faster versions of those creatures and eventually to mounts that can fly (in Burning Crusade and Wrath content).Mounts used to become available at level 40. Now that the game extends to level 80 and early character progression has been sped up, you get to speed up at an earlier level, too.
The Queue: Death Knights in the arena and other things
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.Hey, welcome back! How was your Thanksgiving, my American pals? Did you sit around and laugh at Europeans like I did? You did? Great! High five! No, I'm just kidding, I love all of you equally. My Thanksgiving was pretty good! Well, as good as Thanksgiving can be when nobody feels like cooking so you buy a pound of sliced turkey and drop it in a pot of warm canned gravy, toss some of it on bread, and have a can of jellied cranberry sauce on the side. It's not good unless you can still see the can ripples in it. Mmm. Can ripples. Delicious.Right, right, the Q&A! Let's start with Rasman's question...I was just thinking about Death Knights and PvP and realized, Casters are really going to be hurting in the areas now if they match up agianst a DK. Death Knights don't care about your casting bar because they can just yank you in or go Vader on you because you forgot his cookies, and choke you for the Silence. Matter of fact, if they get you close, they really have 3 or 4 ways to interupt those casts, if you include the stun from an Unholy DK's Ghoul, that is. Am I just stammering on and not knowing what I'm talking about, or are Death Knights going to make this upcoming Arena season VERY Melee heavy?
The Queue: Ebonweave and heirloom longevity
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.Welcome to today's edition of The Queue, in which we don't have any witty or necessary preamble, so we're going to skip straight to the questions.Aigarius asked...Is it possible to craft Ebonweave without cold weather flying?
Ask A Beta Tester: So long, and thanks for all the fish
Yes, folks, the proverbial fat lady has sung, and this is the last "real" Ask A Beta Tester. Tomorrow we're going to run an AABT that showcases the best, funniest, and most prescient questions we received, and after that -- bowing to popular demand -- the column's going to change gears somewhat and become Ask A Guy (or Girl) Something, or...I dunno, whatever we decide to call it. AAGoGS is cumbersome but oddly endearing, I admit.Deri (among others) asks...At 77, approximately how much money will I have made levelling up through quests?At 77 you'll be eligible to train Cold Weather Flying for 1,000g, which I assume is what this is about. Will you have made that much questing? I'd made...I want to say somewhere in the region of 800g leveling between 70 and 77, but I also tanked and healed a LOT of instance runs, so my quest income was on the low side. So I'd say it's probably going to be very easy to finance Cold Weather Flying just from Northrend quests. If you're occupied with a lot of instance runs, just keep in mind that you'll be leveling proportionately faster than you're making money, though.
Wrath 101: How to get to Northrend and where to go once you get there
How do I get to Northrend?For Alliance, head to the northernmost dock at Stormwind Harbor to get to Borean Tundra or take the boat out of Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands to be dropped off in Howling Fjord.For Horde, the zeppelin in Ogrimmar leads to Borean Tundra and the zeppelin out of Undercity will take you to Howling Fjord.Consider camping out your character at one of these spots the night before launch so you can head right over as soon as you have the expansion loaded on your system.
Ask A Beta Tester: Questions I wish we'd been asked
Here at WoW Insider sometimes we go a little nuts around big news events due to sleep deprivation or sensory overload in conjunction with large hits of caffeine. When that happens while we are writing "Ask A Beta Tester," occasionally we ask ourselves questions ("Why am I not in bed?") that we later realize might actually be useful.As Wrath of the Lich King's release date creeps up and the beta becomes more and more deserted (seriously: Dalaran is a ghost town these days, not that my computer's wheezing hardware doesn't appreciate it), I find myself turning to a few topics that readers generally never asked about, but wound up being game-defining experiences in the beta. By necessity, most of them are a little more general -- overall impressions, things you wouldn't necessarily think to ask about unless you were a fresh arrival in Northrend and noticed the differences -- but I've included a few specific things that I hope people will find interesting. Unlike --Why are you not in bed?What makes you think I'm not?
Tenacious D discovered Northrend first
For what ever reason I found myself looking at some Tenacious D stuff the other day, and came across the Wonderboy video (you'll have to visit YouTube as we can't embed the video due to copyright restrictions). Wonderboy is a great little song, completely safe for work and young bucks (however pretty much everything else that comes out of Jack Black's mouth is not).In the video they are going on "The Quest" for truth. And where does this quest take them? None other then high above the mucky muck. This mountain region has a surprising look and feel to it. That's right. The D discovered Northrend, before any of us.But wait, there's more.There's even powers that The D posses which are featured in Northrend. What powers are those, you ask?
Ask a Beta Tester: More mounts, raid gear, and emotes
We have a few more questions about the passenger mounts today, but a lot of Mammoth-related questions are repeats of ones we've answered previously. So if you still have a question about them after today, I recommend checking the last few editions of Ask a Beta Tester to see if it's been answered already. Now, let's get started with Iceman's question...Are the flying passenger mounts? Ground mounts are lovely and all, but once everyone takes to the skies will they become useless to everyone with cold weather flying?I haven't seen any flying passenger mounts yet. Whether the passenger ground mounts are 'useless' or not with Cold Weather Flying is really up to the individual. You can still use it in the old world, you can still use the Mammoth's vendors. There are also places like Lake Wintergrasp where flying is turned off permanently so you don't 'cheat' and skip over all of the fighting to get from Point A to Point B. You and a bunch of your friends charging people down in a huge Mammoth is sweet.If you don't care about any of that stuff though, yeah it could be seen as useless. It's an optional purchase, though. You don't need to spend the money if you don't want to do so.
Ask a Beta Tester: Multi-passenger mounts and Enchanting
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where we answer your questions about the Wrath of the Lich King beta! We had quite a few questions regarding the multi-passenger mounts coming in Wrath, so we'll mostly focus on those. That's not all we have today, but most of it. Our first question is from JPN...What does the tooltip mean for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth where it says it carries vendors?It means just that! It comes with two vendors. One sells reagents (including poisons) and the other sell trade supplies, like thread and parchment. The trade supplies vendor also sells some statless fashion clothing.If you're not using the vendors and want to let your buddies hop on, there will be an Eject button to throw the vendors off and make room for your friends. And yes, only people in your party or raid can get on your vehicles. No random strangers will be jumping on your mammoth or motorcycle.
Ask a Beta Tester: Flying in the snow, etc
FoSho asked.... Maybe I'm in the dark here, but how does one get to Dalaran since its floating in mid air. Is there a portal in a town, or do you have to be 67 to get there? I keep on hearing its "dangerous" to get to Dalaran, how so? I wouldn't call it dangerous, but you aren't going to be able to get there at level 70 without the help of a Mage or Warlock. Because Dalaran is floating high above Northrend, you need a flying mounto reach it, and when you first arrive in Northrend, your flying mount simply doesn't know how to handle the cold weather. You'll need to complete a level 77 quest chain to obtain Cold Weather Flying and reach Dalaran on your own. Alternatively, there's a quest at level 74 you can seek out in certain inns that will take you there.For more of your beta questions -- and our beta answers -- read on! But if you're the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We're aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can't talk about the beta without giving a few things away.
Ask a Beta Tester: Scourge Strike, titles, and flying mounts
What you're seeing up above is a flaming quill in a well of frozen ink. Is it useful? No. It looks wicked awesome sitting in the Inscription trainers' shop, doesn't it? Heck yeah it does! We'll kick off today's Ask a Beta Tester with Askhill's question... Does Lake Wintergrasp seem dominated by only one class, or is it pretty even among the 80s? Unholy Death Knights are the current "overpowered spec of the day" (formerly the role of Ret Paladins) so there's tons of those rocking face right now. Beyond that it's pretty difficult to judge, since Blizzard hasn't balanced all of the numbers yet and few people are in Resilience gear. The only really memorable thing are the absolutely enormous Scourge Strike crits. By enormous I'm talking numbers anywhere from 10,000 to 16,000, and since it's Shadow damage, your armor isn't going to do a darn thing to help. Luckily, I was healbotting one of those Unholy Death Knights rather than being on the receiving end. Death Knights are bloody fantastic at keeping people off of Healers, by the way.yazah asked a couple of questions...Why does the Scarlet Crusade employ Death Knights in Northrend? Doesn't that seem unlikely since they were slaughtered by them back in Tyr's Hand?
