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Guest Post: Three fresh ideas for world PvP events
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Of all the PvP events I've participated in over the years, the battle for Halaa in Nagrand always sticks out in my mind as one of the best-executed examples of world PvP that the World of Warcraft has ever produced. The battle for Halaa brought together several areas of warfare in perfect harmony. The element of surprise The battle for Halaa took place at any time. Whenever the opposite faction felt like taking control of the city, they could form a raid and start bombing. It left the controlling faction scrambling to assemble a defense when the words "Halaa is under attack!" popped up on their screens. Aerial assault Players had to activate one of four wyvern stations and fly over the city of Halaa to drop bombs, causing massive amounts of damage. Until the defenses were weakened, players could not successfully enter the city. Sabotage While enemy players were taking to the skies, one of the keys to success was to destroy the activated wyvern stations to prevent those enemy players from immediately taking off for another bombing run. Siege warfare Once the city's defenses were eliminated, the conquering force moved into the city center and held the city captive. Either the defending faction would break the siege and regain control of the city or it would be lost to the conquering heroes. Spoils of war Defeating your enemy within the boundaries of Halaa yielded you a Halaa Battle Token. Once you controlled Halaa, those tokens could be spent on various rewards, including the coveted Dark War Talbuk. With new expansions come new territories to explore and conquer. Sadly, Nagrand and the war-torn city of Halaa fell to the wayside in favor of Wintergrasp once Wrath of the Lich King was released. So what does a player who is hungry for world PvP do now? If you have some friends and are will to do a little organizing and promoting, here are three new ideas to spring on your server.
The Wrath you never saw
As we're heading towards the final confrontation with the Lich King and the end of this chapter of the World of Warcraft saga, we end up reminded of how much of Wrath of the Lich King was designed and never used, or used sparingly, or even resurrected later, fittingly enough. But not only do we have loads of models that either weren't used at all or were used later in places completely unrelated to where they were supposed to drop, we have entire zones that either didn't happen at all, or did but which don't seem to go anywhere.
The Queue: Snape, snape
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.In celebration of the recent release of the new Harry Potter movie, I've decided to expose the two of you out there that have never seen the above video to... well, the above video. I'll say no more, folks. Watch it, then read on! Probably in beat with a metronome!Mannas asked..."With the new feature to switch factions, will we finally have a way to "mail" items across factions by making a toon, sending the item there, switching factions and then mailing on? Or will they somehow limit this?"
WoW zones in real life
Aurdon over at I Sheep Things spotted this great collection of comparisons between real-life environs and the in-game places that they inspired. Not all of the comparisons are pitch-perfect, obviously (there are no Nagrand-esque floating islands in the real world, and the Crystalsong Forest picture shows trees covered in ice rather than the mystical wood that grows in-game), but lots of the pictures are really dead-on, and they show you really well how Blizzard uses a kind of hyper-realized version of Earth to create what seems like a very real Azeroth.We've posted before how the architecture of WoW mirrors real-world places and culture, but even the natural world of Azeroth uses lots of Earth's real-life elements. And it would be cool to know where these pictures actually come from -- some of them are recognizable (obviously, Stranglethorn Vale is based on parts of the Amazon, and The Barrens represents Africa's savannahs), but even Icecrown and Zangarmarsh are represented (in slightly less mythical form) on Earth. It would be interesting to know exactly where.
Argent Tournament Dailies: Jack Me Some Lumber
Jack Me Some Lumber is one of the first daily quests you'll encounter upon arriving at the Argent Tournament. Neither of them have any impact on the tournament itself, so they can be skipped if you so choose. They only award gold, no reputation or items, so avoiding them won't hinder your progress through the Tournament content whatsoever. However, the gold is pretty good and the quests are quick, so if it's gold you want then it's gold you'll get.What's going on in these quests, you ask? Well, the Argent Crusade has outsourced the construction of their coliseum to the Goblins. I don't think I need to elaborate on how catastrophically dumb that is, do I? If you want to help these Goblins strip Northrend of its many natural treasures, just talk to Bezzle Blastbolt and his brother Bozzle Blastbolt. The latter of the two offers A Chip Off the Ulduar Block which we will discuss another time.So what do you need to do here? Accept the quest, fly out to the western portion of Crystalsong Forest, just north of the Violet Stand. You'll find yourself in amongst a load of trees, as you'll see in the picture at the top of this article. Ask yourself, "One of these things is not like the other things. One of these just doesn't belong! Can you guess which thing is not like the other things before we finish this song?"
The Queue: Strategery
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Good afternoon, everybody! I apologize for missing yesterday's edition of The Queue, I sort of forgot about it in my rush to get our April Fool's joke pieced together. The entire team got together to bring that little joke to life. Getting it all put together was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Fun, but it took awhile! Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. If not, oh well! We had a good time bringing it to life.I don't think you want to listen to me ramble about that, though. Onto the Q&A!Ghola asked..."Why would the Argent Tournament set up camp in Icecrown, at the back end of the glacier? This makes absolutely no sense to me. Crystal Song seems way better: no quests there, plenty of space, and much better weather!"
One Shots: Hunting carrots in Crystalsong
It seems like a lot of players sign on each morning to knock out a nice and easy World of Warcraft Daily Quest - the Dalaran cooking dailies! If you're used to them, then you'll know that one of them is called Sewer Stew, which sends you after pieces of Chilled Meat and Crystalsong carrots so you can make a special batch of stew for a pub owner who lives in the sewer. (No, we're not entirely certain why anyone would put a pub in a sewer either, even if it is a renovated sewer.) But getting back to today's One Shots, this image of Crystalsong was sent in by Johanis, who writes: Took this picture today when Johanis visited Crystalsong (the land beneath Dalaran) to gather carrots for a cooking quest. The beauty of this particular area is hard to capture in a screenshot.Just out and about doing your normal daily things? We'd love a screenshot. Just send it to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and the game it came from. Feel free to add a note, but it's not required. We'll post it here and give you the credit. Couldn't be easier unless we did the gaming for you, which wouldn't be nearly as much fun for you.%Gallery-9798%
Ask a Lore Nerd: Demons rule, naga drool
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.Just as a warning, today's Ask a Lore Nerd has a couple of spoilers for Wrath content. At this point, I assume that light Northrend spoilers isn't going to scare people off, but I figure I should mention it anyway. It's nothing major, so you won't ruin your experience by reading it anyway. Let's dig in!Tarean asked...Blizzard's said that there's enough material for plenty of more expansions after Wrath of the Lich King, and there's plenty of possibilities, but what expansion should come next lore-wise?
The Queue: New Year's Eve edition
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.New Year's Eve! Hooray! Are you doing anything special tonight? I totally am. I'm going to play an alt. Gasp! Shock! No seriously, I have no idea what I'll be doing. Right now though, I'm answering questions!JLocke asked...I know the next big patch to hit will have Uldar raid in it, but are there any other cool things attached to it that we know of?
Ask a Beta Tester: The mystery of Crystalsong and other things
I showed you the Alliance airship on yesterday's Ask a Beta Tester, now you get to see the Horde version! And now that that's out of the way, let's start with a couple of questions from Aerei... I've got possibly the most important question ever asked in this column! Are we going to see NPCs rocking the new hairstyles now available? I don't think it's fair only PCs should get them. Yep! You'll spot the new hairstyles on NPCs here and there. Not super often yet, but you definitely see them. A lot of the guards in the Argent Crusade camp are rockin' the new styles. They're very progressive! Also, if Dalaran gets mage trainers because it's the mage city, how come Shattrath doesn't have paladin trainers? Huh? Because Shattrath sucks.
Ask a Beta Tester: Dalaran coins, environment effects, and AoE tanking
I ran into two common questions last night on the Dalaran coin post, so I thought I'd start off by answering those here. I apologize if we haven't yet gotten to everyone's questions; most of them, like Gurluas' question concerning The Missing Diplomat and the high elves in Northrend, we're just not 100% sure of the answer to yet, but I'll keep trying. Keyra asks...Just curious...the gold coins all have "Use: Throw this coin back into the Dalaran fountain", yet I've seen people commenting (as well as the author) that they'll carry the coin in their packs. What happens when/if you throw the coin back in?When you toss a gold coin back into the fountain, you gain the "Lucky" buff for 2 minutes, increasing your chance to fish up any and all coins from the fountain (rather than fishing hooks or goldfish). You don't have to toss them back in if you don't want to, in which case they'll just occupy a bag slot like anything else, or you can sell them to a vendor (not for much). But most people throw the coin/s back in because fishing the coin up is enough to give you the Achievement for getting it. Particular coins would be carried solely for personal or sentimental reasons, i.e. I can definitely appreciate the irony and RP value of grimly hunting Arthas down like a dog while carrying a symbol of Sylvanas' wasted hopes.Rexigar asks...Question though, do we have to keep the coins for the achievement or does it count when we throw it back in?It counts as of the moment you've fished it up. No matter what you do with it afterwards, the Achievement's yours. The same mechanic is true of everything else; once the game "knows" you've done something and an Achievement's gained, nothing can take it away.
WoW Moviewatch: Muffins WotLK Exploration Part 70-77
(Viewers be warned that this video contains spoilers for the Wrath of the Lich King beta.)Muffins did a great job with her most recent exploration video. If you're looking for another artistic take on the new locations available in WotLK, this is the movie for you. The areas that she visits include Howling Fjord, Borelean Tundra, The Nexus (Instance), Utgarde Keep (Instance), Crystalsong Forest, Dragonblight, Stone Halls (Instance), Drak'tharon Keep (Instance), Zul'Drak, Dalaran, Sholazar Basin, and Grizzly Hills.The other day, I mentioned that Razzik may have had his exploration video removed from Vimeo. While I have yet to confirm it with him, there is a comment on Muffins' WCM page saying that they removed hers. I'll be weighing in on this shortly with some additional news from other sites, as well as recommendations for where to keep your machinima safe.[Via Warcraftmovies.com]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
