death-knights
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The Queue: Finding treasure where there's no treasure to be found
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.Another day, another Queue. Forgive the awful quality of the screenshot above, I tried to show off Malygos' righteous beard but the guy doesn't sit still, even if you ask him nicely. He's a crabby son of a lich sometimes. Well, let's forget about him and dig into today's questions. As always, if you have a question for The Queue, leave it in the comments section below and we'll get to it in a future edition. Magebleck asked... As a mage, my main weapon is almost always a Staff with some good stats to it. Since Wrath of the Lich King has come out I have read several places that there are now some really well speced staffs that are "Bind to Account", such as the Dignified Headmaster's Charge and the Grand Staff of Jordan. I understand that their stats scale with level, but how does one go about aquiering these new "BtA" items?
WoW Insider Show going live on Ustream this afternoon
Our podcast hits the virtual airwaves again this afternoon, and it's going to be a good one -- Matthew Rossi, our tanking titan, will be on the show, as will Daniel Whitcomb, one of our bloggers and author of the new Lichbourne Death Knight column. We'll talk about Wrath, of course -- where we're leveling and how things are going so far, and how Death Knights are integrating into the game, both as tanks and DPS. And we'll talk about Wrath's difficulty and whether it's too easy or not, the new commercials, and the fact that Blizzard made lots and lots of money last week.And as usual we'll answer your emails (you can email us at theshow AT wowinsider dot com), and we'll have an aftershow after the show where you can chat directly with Rossi and Whitcomb. Should be a great time -- it starts up in just about two hours from now on our Ustream page, or you can jump onto the stream embedded right after the break. See you there!
Ask A Beta Tester: AABT's greatest hits, part 2
On to part 2! This series of questions spans August and early September, and we'll keep moving forward this week.Hoops asked.... How much gold roughly would you get from questing 70-77 (until you unlock the flying mount)? I was wondering if it would it be worth farming money beforehand or would the money from questing be enough. Elizabeth answers: I'm not 77 yet, so I can't exactly address the question as asked, but I can tell you that I've made about 400g leveling from 70 to 72. That's just from questing, vendoring trash & unneeded greens -- and it includes some stupid deaths, plenty of repair bills(I blame Dalaran for many of them!), and training a couple of professions (35g to train a primary profession to the next skill level and 100g to train a secondary profession to the next skill level). Allie adds: I finally started keeping track of how I was doing gold-wise while leveling. On the beta I leveled a lot through instance runs because the demand for healers was so high; on the live realms I've leveled mostly through questing. Between 70 and 76 so far (remarkably fast for me but my guild starts raiding next week) I've made somewhere in the region of 2K gold after training, repairs, professions, etc., mostly through questing and keeping my bags as open as possible to sell vendor trash. As Elizabeth observes, that part's key; Northrend vendor trash and greens sell for a LOT.
The Lich King is Twittering
Fake Twitterers are all the rage these days -- you can sign up on the microblogging service Twitter.com as just about anyone and shoot out some parodic little "tweets," as they're called, for the instant amusement of anyone who wishes to follow you (I'm personally a big fan of the Mad Men characters tweeting). But now, the WoW community has its own fake twitter personality -- apparently the Lich King has found some time in between knighting Death Knights and plaguing the world to start up his own Twitter account.No idea who's behind it, but I know a few WoW bloggers who twitter pretty often, including a few WoW Insider contributors. Whoever's tweeting for Arthas, they're doing a nice job, promising "cold deaths" to everyone, and steadily counting down the days until his Wrath is upon us.I'm kind of surprised this is the first fake NPC twitterer we've seen -- sure, you'd think Thrall or Jaina would have tons of time to Twitter, and Kael'thas, assuming he's not quite dead yet, seems made for such an enterprise. If you are on Twitter, don't forget to follow our own WoW Insider account as well -- we won't offer you a cold death, but we will occasionally tweet about important posts and our own experiences with the game.
A WoW burnout's guide to Wrath of the Lich King
Does Wrath of the Lich King, the second World of Warcraft expansion, have enough new, interesting and worthwhile content to give longtime burnout players a reason to come back again? What about players who've recently hung up their Azerothian hat? In this feature, we're taking a burnout player's perspective and looking into all of the interesting things about the soon-to-see-release title expansion.
Ask a Beta Tester: This and that
You can tell the Wrath beta is winding down, because Ask a Beta Tester has been getting a lot fewer questions lately. Because of that, we're going to be pretty short and sweet today. If you still have questions, though, keep em coming!Let's start today off with dfsnow's question... What's happening with Alchemy and Alchemist's Stones in WotLK? Alchemist's stones have been like enchanting rods where you need the previous one to create the next one. Are new players going to have to grind Sha'tar and then SSO rep to create the reagent they need to create their level 80 Alchemist's Stone? I don't have to tell you how hard it will be to grind Sha'tar rep with no one running BC instances any more. The new Alchemists stones aren't tied to the older ones at all. All the new ones will require to make is the appropriate Alchemy skill, some herbs, some eternals and maybe some oils.
Ask a Beta Tester: The Alchemist
Apologies to Paulo Coelho fans for borrowing his title, but we have two Alchemy-related questions to start us off today, in addition to questions on Blacksmithing, cinematics, and dailies: Horizons asks... Do the alchemy specializations in wrath still work the same way as they do now in BC? For example, will I still have a chance of getting 5 wrath potions even when I'm leveling starting at 375 such as Wrath Elixirs or Icy mana potions? And will transmute spec ever be fixed? Yup, alchemy specializations work the exact same way in Wrath. As a potions master, I've already procced a few, but don't expect to see the Runic Mana or Runic Healing potion recipes until...I want to say it's 410 Alchemy. You'll skill up on the array of new elixirs like Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Elixir of Mighty Agility until then, but do save mats for the new Alchemy trinkets that become available at (I think) 400, like Mighty Alchemist's Stone. We'll have more information soon on materials you'll start getting in Northrend that you'll want to set aside for crafting.
The best of WoW Insider: September 30-October 7, 2008
BlizzCon is almost upon us -- this weekend, thousands will descend on Anaheim to celebrate Blizzard and its games, and Blizzard developers will share their wisdom with us about Wrath of the Lich King, Diablo 3, and Starcraft II. And WoW Insider will be there: if you're going, make sure to come by our big reader meetup on Thursday night at The Lost Bar, and if you're not going, stay tuned to the site all weekend long for live-on-the-scene coverage. News Raids rebalanced for patch 3.0.2Even Burning Crusade raids are getting a facelift, considering how much is changing in the upcoming expansion. Patch 3.0.2 release date revealed (probably)Set your calendars for October 14th -- that's when you'll get to try out all the new talents and skills. BlizzCon schedule and interactive mapBlizzard announces what's going down at their third BlizzCon event in Anaheim, CA. Blizzard wins $6 million in court case against GliderThe botting company loses big time in the ongoing lawsuit. Tigole confirms dual specs are still in the worksPlayers are still begging for a way to switch specs more easily, and we might just get it. Features Tips for new Death Knights from a fellow melee, part 1Trying out the new Death Knight class? Here's a quick review on how to stab things. Don't Panic: Paladin changes in beta build 9014Pally developments in the latest Wrath of the Lich King beta build. Ask a Beta Tester: Soundtracks, trinkets and travelOne of our beta testers answers all your questions about what's going down in the beta version of Northrend. Tenacious D discovered Northrend firstThink the frozen wastes came from the mind of Chris Metzen? There's a secret to be told. Spiritual Guidance: Everything you ever wanted to know about raid healing at level 80And then some -- our priest blogger Matticus lays down the facts on what's up in the Wrath raids.
WoW Moviewatch: Lingering Memory
Hey there, I'm the new WoW Moviewatch blogger since Moo unfortunately had to leave our hallowed halls. My first pick is a new film by Count Vrenna called Lingering Memory. The story follows a young Paladin's conflict with The Scourge at Caer Darrow. It's told without dialog or voiceover, with just a few titles by way of setup and some emotional music to carry the mood. Count Vrenna asserts that this is his first time filming large battle scenes, but I wouldn't have guessed if he hadn't told me. The last scene showing rows of Death Knights -- including one of the Naaru, just like we find in Ebon Hold -- is chilling in its inevitability. Another scene I liked is where the hero confronts her fate and memories of her life flash before her eyes. It reminds me somewhat of Here Without You but without the love story. I've never quite gotten the hang of role playing but all these RP guilds making such cool recruitment videos sure make the idea tempting to try.[Via WarcraftMovies.]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Ask a Lore Nerd: Portals, pandaren, and Jaina Proudmoore
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.Let's get this party started with Lionheart's question...What is that barred off instance looking portal thing in Stormwind, by Old Town? Were the gates once open?There are actually two of these in Stormwind. Neither of them were ever open, they're relics of unfinished projects. One is a closed off little guarded island in the Canals. That one was going to be the Stormwind Vault, probably a dungeon like Arcatraz or the upcoming Violet Hold in Dalaran. Probably.There's also the barred off one at the end of the Canals, right down the way from that one. This is probably the one you're referring to, I'm going to guess? I don't think we've gotten a real answer on this was supposed to be, but it was probably going to be the portal to player housing. They actually did start work on player housing at one point, but never got far. There are relics of it in the game files. Half completed houses/structures, things like that. They all use the Stormwind motif for their appearance, and they would have to put it somewhere. Through this portal is a safe bet.thinice asked...Jaina Proudmoore and Arthas. Any chance they'll hook up against in the future? What are the details of their history together?
Oh, the cleverness of me!
I'm not in the beta. I'm kind of uncomfortable with the notion of spoiling myself completely, and I'm a terrible leveler. I have the lurking feeling that leveling my main to 80 before Wrath actually went live would wreck a leveling pace that might otherwise have been driven by exploration and discovery. I want Wrath to be a fantastic new experience that will recapture the sense of wonder I felt leveling my first toon in a strange new world. Also I never got a key, but the other reasons are more important and influential.Yeah, even I don't believe me.While I'm certain I'll never make a Death Knight my main, I'm sure I'll enjoy leveling one. I'm sure I'm not going to enjoy trying to level one alongside 50,000 other people and their cousins and their friends and their friends' dogs and their friends' dogs' fleas leveling a Death Knight. So it's occurred to me that, OK as I am with the notion of waiting a few months to get started on my bouncing baby bundle of risen-corpsified merriment, I can capitalize on the coming rush of Death Knights in a completely different fashion simply by exercising a little foresight. All Death Knights are melee, right? None of them can really heal, right? People are already noticing un peu problem in the beta in this vein, right? And I can't level an alt worth beans, right right? Right. What's the one buff that makes all melee salivate, provided by an excellent healing class, during a time in which healers will never have to worry about finding a group or a tank?Bingo. I'm getting a resto Shaman to 58 and parking him in Eastern Plaguelands to twiddle his thumbs in anticipation of the descent of the Death Knight legion come Wrath's release. See you there!
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?
Ask a Beta Tester: The Drakkensryd, Dispersion, and other stuff
We'll get started with Gareth's question... How is the Storm Peaks coming along? Seems like it has a lot of history and culture behind it. This zone has been closed off more than it's been open. There are a few hefty bugs that they're trying to iron out that forces them to seal it off now and then, since the bugs bring the entire world server down. That and there was an XP exploit that the beta testers found and needed to be dealt with mighty quickly, so it was sealed off for that as well. As far as the history and culture, I loved what I saw. A lot of Titan lore, a lot of Dwarven history. The introduction to the zone is pretty awful, though. Your first quest hub in the culture-rich zone is a Goblin town (K3) full of whimsy that has little to do with the zone's overall story. I guess you need to keep the mood light sometimes, though. Still, despite the silly Goblins, it was one of my favorite zones while I could get in there. Blizzard has thrown around the term "epic scale" quite a bit, and I think Storm Peaks really displays that. The place is absolutely massive, in the good way. Watch the video above if you want an example of the quests you'll be seeing. Be warned, it's kind of a spoiler in that doing this quest for the first time really leaves you in awe. Watching it beforehand might take that away a little.dotorion asked...Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands?
Breakfast Topic: Your Four Horsemen
On this fine Sunday morning, we're going to play a game of 'what if.' As you may or may not know, The Four Horsemen is an encounter in the Naxxramas raid dungeon, loosely based on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the Scourge, the Four Horsemen are basically the top dog Death Knights, the best they have to offer. We don't know a ton about each of the Horsemen, but we know enough to know that they're pretty hardcore.What if the Lich King and the Scourge were to win the war in Northrend? What if they totally whooped our butts, and wash over Azeroth unopposed, then moved on to bigger and better things like taking out their adversaries the Burning Legion? With all of the heroes of Azeroth at their disposal to raise as the Undead, who do you think would be the new Four Horsemen? Pick from anybody in Warcraft history, alive or dead. Death is meaningless to the Scourge, after all.My picks? Highlord Bolvar Fordragon, High Overlord Saurfang, Anduin Lothar, and Tirion Fordring. Obvious choices? Yeah, probably. You gotta admit though, those four riding on the side of the Scourge would be pretty bad news for whoever is on the other side of the battlefield. I considered Uther as well, but personal preference puts the other four on top. So what are your draft picks? Don't worry about lorelol or anything like that. Comedy answers are fine. Picking people just because they're cool is fine, too.
Death Knights receive unique voices
The fine folk over at DeathKnight.info have posted a video of the unique Death Knight voices we've all been promised. They don't have an entirely new set of voice emotes (at least not yet), they took a slightly different route. There's actually a sound filter over the voices, making them sound echoey and spooky. The females have been described as sounding like banshees, which is pretty accurate I think. If you're not a fan of the voice effects, you're allowed to turn them off in your Sound control panel so you won't have to hear it. Other people still will, unless they do the same.I'm definitely a fan of this for most of the race/gender combos. Some of them are lackluster (in my opinion) such as the Female Dwarves. The best? Male Blood Elf by far. That laugh? Awesome. Just awesome. I'm sure we'll see a couple of tweaks to this before the end of the beta period, but they're definitely on the right track, I think.%Poll-18836%
Lichborne: PvP, grinding, the Unholy tree, and you
Every weekend in Lichborne, Daniel Whitcomb will take you through the ever-changing (Beta) world of World of Warcraft's first hero class, the Death Knight. With a new Beta Build on the test servers, Death Knights have received a massive amount of talent changes. Many of them have been hinted at on the test servers for eons, and I've covered much of them in last week's Lichborne. The new disease changes are in, as is the changing of Chains of Ice's Snare component to an undispellable physical effect. You can check out the full list of changes here. Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. In fact, I'd have to say that the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP. As a disclaimer, there's still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don't seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases instead of 60% weapon damage per disease), Raise Dead, and Night of the Dead. Because of that, it's often hard to say how or if an ability would be better or worse if it actually worked. Therefore, I'll be discussing the abilities based on if they actually did work, backed with some feel for them from Death Knight play on the Beta Servers.
A Death Knight with pink pigtails
Ever since we heard way back at BlizzCon last year that Death Knights would be available for all races, the lament has been heard: Gnome Death Knights will ruin it for everyone else. Death Knights are, by their very nature, supposed to be pale and scary and imposing, and given the fact that there are bound to be a ton of Gnome Death Knights out there just for hilarity's sake, the Death Knight starting area is going to look more like a nursery than a gothic bed of evil.But will it really ruin the lore? Daniel already pointed out very insightfully that Gnomes definitely have a dark side -- we all seem to overlook the fact that Gnomes can be Warlocks, and that doesn't make the Felguard they send after you any less scary. And while yes, on launch day, there'll be a lot of Gnome DKs running around (the starting areas will be chaos no matter what gets rolled), after that it should settle down for sure. After all, if Gnomes were all people wanted to play, we'd never see Humans or Dwarves on the realms, and there are plenty of those.So I'm all for Gnome Death Knights, pigtails or otherwise. If nothing else, it'll give us Horde something to laugh at -- right before we go in for the kill.
The Arena is about to get diseased
As we're already starting to see, our good friends the Death Knights juggle some abilities centered around an as-of-yet unrepresented PC damage type: Disease. There is a variety of plagues and diseases which will obviously have direct application in the arena. I wonder if, as PvP-guru Zach put it, Death Knights might be the rock to the Druid's scissors. This isn't the first time we've seen Blizzard willing to put a strong counter to Resto Druids in the hands of a single class. (Arguments about Hunters/Druids being the strong counter to Warrior/Druids are kind of aside here - both comps still have Druids.) You don't see how this new damage type is the Druid counter? It's pretty simple -- Druids don't have a cleanse that works against Disease.If Death Knights become a favored arena class, then the presence of Disease in the Arena could help provide solid reason to go Paladin or Priest over Druid. Of course, that assumes the disease effects are significant enough to matter. And cleansing all that Disease is still going to be a pain even for our Paladins: they can only cleanse one at a time, and they'd blow through quite a few global cooldowns trying to clear their partners.I don't know if this dynamic was intentional, but I would find it hard to believe that Blizzard's ignorant of it. They tend to have an idea about what's going on. We don't know what new gear will be available to combat diseases (Resistance? Resilience?), and it's still way early to be hedging bets -- but introducing the Death Knight and their diseases should certainly mix things up.Edit: I've not forgotten about Shamans, but I was mostly focused on Druids in this article. My apologies to any Shaman who issued a rightful reminder for the call out.
The Daily Grind: Best news from WWI?
Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational just wrapped up, and aside from the highly anticipated announcement about Diablo III, there were also a huge amount of changes announced for World of Warcraft. From Shamans getting the ability to have their totems cover the entire raid as opposed to just their party, to the confirmation that you will be able to make a Death Knight of every playable race. Many players are buzzing about the upcoming changes. This morning we thought we'd ask you what you thought the most interesting World of Warcraft news was from the Paris Worldwide Invitational? This blogger thinks that her favorite thing (aside from Diablo III, which really isn't WoW news) is the unveiling of the Blizzard authenticator encryption keychain. It will be interesting to see if other MMOG companies follow this step or not.
WoW Rookie: What's the buzz?
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. This has been an exciting week for World of Warcraft news and rumors. Blizzard has been hosting two major events Blizzcon and the World Wide Invitational. These events are a hotbed of information about WoW and other Blizzard Entertainment games. Here at WoW Insider we work hard to keep you on top of all of the latest developments in our beloved game. I'm sure you were aware, but this past weekend saw Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in Paris, France. Let's take a look at the kinds of information that we receive. We did not get the piece of information that I was most hoping for: A release date for Wrath of the Lich King. Not even a beta date. Now there are a number of websites that have pre-order dates for Wrath, but none of them can be trusted as an actual estimation. We will get our new expansion "when it's ready." Blizzard is the only trustworthy source of this information. We will get that bit of information out as soon as it's available from the source.
