Frozen Throne
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'Warcraft III: Reforged' arrives on January 28th
Blizzard announced Warcraft III: Reforged just over a year ago, promising a top-to-bottom refresh of the landmark real-time strategy title and its Frozen Throne add-on. Now, we know when it's going to land. The game, which features seven single-player campaigns spanning more than 60 missions, plus a total graphics and audio overhaul, releases on January 28th in the US, and on the 29th in the UK.
Know Your Lore: Interbellum part 1 - Forcing Fate's Hand
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. If you began playing World of Warcraft when the game came out, then you played through a period of interbellum. The Third War ended four years before World of Warcraft started, and the mortal races that banded together on the slopes of Mount Hyjal to defeat the Burning Legion were now beginning to approach a war footing once more. We talked before about the Third War (in two parts, in fact), and in the next few weeks, we'll talk about the period between the Third War and the original story of WoW, the events of the 1-60 game that was remodeled in Cataclysm. Why did the people of Azeroth turn away from the unity established in the fight against the Burning Legion? Why did the former high elves turn away from their once-allies? Why did Illidan raise the naga? How did Arthas Menethil transition from a death knight into possibly the most powerful mortal-born entity ever to exist on the face of Azeroth? These were the times that blasted souls.
Lichborne: Frostwing and Lich King loot for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly death knight discussion center. This week, your host is playing it cool in more ways than one, what with the test server shakeups to frost DPS. Before we start into this week's column, I do want to assure any prospective frost DPSers that I fully plan to write a frost DPS 101 guide. In fact, up until a few days ago, I had every intention of writing that as today's column. Then I sat down at the computer on Friday, and we had a nice shiny new PTR with a whole mess of frost DPS buffs. It's probably going to take a bit for us to sort through those buffs, see how they affect speccing and gearing, and whether or not they'll make it live, so for now, we're going to focus on some other topics. This week, the subject is the loot in the final section of Icecrown Citadel, the Frostwing Halls. There's only a few bosses here, but you'll find some great off-spec pieces, a few best in slots items, and some interesting weapon choices. I'll offer my usual disclaimer here and recommend that you go back and review the opening paragraphs of our Lower Spire loot guide, since it lists some basic stat rundowns and philosophies that you should keep in mind as you read these guides. You may also want to review the stat weights discussed in blood DPS 101 and unholy DPS 101 as you pick out your DPS gear from these pages.
Paragon scores world-first legitimate 25-man Lich King kill
GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed. Paragon, on the other hand, appears to have completed the encounter in an exploit-free manner and, according to MMO-Champion's Boubouille, did it on their first try. Congratulations go out to Paragon on their clean kill. Now let's see some of those heroic achievements!
Ensidia scores world first 25-man Lich King kill [Updated]
Last night was the world first 10-man kill, tonight it's the world first 25-man kill. The infamous Ensidia of Tarren Mill-EU has scored the kill, and there's a news post on their website confirming it. (Ensidia's site seems to have fallen offline, but you can still read their story via Google cache.) They walked away with Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand and Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas. Well done, crew! WoW raiding is a bit strange these days, because this kill is actually just the beginning of the road. Now we get to watch the hard modes, which is likely to take quite a bit longer. That's our hope, at least. Will Ensidia walk away with hard mode Lich King as well, or will a group of underdogs come from behind? Will Stars show up in the spotlight again? Only time will tell. Update: Ensidia's raiders have received a 72-hour ban from the game for "abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." A hotfix was applied last night to prevent the use of Saronite Bombs (which Ensidia used) in the encounter and Ensidia's loot and achievements have been removed. So that world first? Still up for grabs.
The Frozen Throne is now in Icecrown (sort of)
We took notice of this in an earlier edition of the Queue, but I thought this little bit of news merited its own article for the benefit of lore junkies, raid leaders, or anyone who just might have missed it. After being asked a question over where Angrathar was really located in the larger Icecrown raid complex, I flew out to no-man's-land of southern Icecrown/northwestern Dragonblight and tried to get a good handle on the architecture. While doing so, I noticed a new and extremely tall spire nestled in the mountain range past the Wrath Gate and flew over to investigate. At the top of a saronite spire is huge chunk of misty ice capped by a flat surface with a black design vaguely reminiscent of the one on the Lordaeron throne room (although for all I know this is entirely unintended). From above, it bears a startling resemblance to an image datamined by Boubouille some time ago that was guessed to be the location of the eventual fight with the Lich King -- and I think this exterior "set" could be quite useful for any raid attempting to work on positioning once details of the fight become known. Curiously enough, the Throne itself doesn't appear to be present in-game at the moment, but that might change soon.
The Queue: Allie gets lost in Icecrown edition
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. Allison Robert will be your host today. Alex is popping out for a RL issue, so I'm afraid, dear readers, that you're going to get stuck with the writer who will spend the entirety of a question today wandering off the Icecrown map. HC SVNT DRACONES. Frostwyrms, anyway. As a warning, the answer to said question contains what some players will consider a spoiler, so don't read past the cut if you don't want to know anything about an upcoming Icecrown encounter. TAD asks... Will experience acceleration go away once Cataclysm drops? We don't think so, because the 1-85 grind for a new character will still be pretty lengthy even with experience acceleration, but truthfully we don't know. I'd argue that Blizzard doesn't have much of a reason to change current leveling speed, because it's only efficient if the character in question is outfitted in heirloom items (particularly the chest and shoulders with the +experience boost). This obviously won't happen for a genuinely new player seeing the content for the first time. As you've probably also observed with alts on a different realm from your main, leveling's not that fast without being bankrolled by another toon or sitting on a pile of heirlooms. Then again, I'm one of those crazy people who enjoys questing for its own sake and I'll be doing all the new quests anyway, so what do I know?
Gametrailers.com's Warcraft Retrospective continues
The second part of Gametrailers.com's Warcraft Retrospective has gone up, and it's no less fun and informative than the first. Picking up right where it left off, the second part starts with Warcraft III, following the ascension of some of the most well known Blizzard employees such as Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen, and Samwise Didier, not to mention the company and Warcraft series as a whole.This edition of the series focuses a lot more on one specific game than the first edition, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Warcraft III changed a lot about the RTS genre and whether that's a good thing or not is up to the individual. It changed how you managed your units, your base, and your resources, making units more important than just canon fodder. That was especially true when it came to the hero units that now highlight World of Warcraft. This retrospective also goes into the infamous DOTA before it steps up to The Frozen Throne, so if you've no idea what that crazy Europop video is all about, you'll find out!
Blizzard opens its digital download doors
If you just can't take the wait of driving to a brick and mortar store (or even worse, waiting for something to show up in the mail!) then Blizzard's got you covered with their new digital download service. As of right now they're only offering the Starcraft Anthology, Warcraft III and its Frozen Throne expansion pack. However, we could see Blizzard eventually offering both World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade -- not to mention Wrath of the Lich King when it launches.Currently it's possible to get a digital download version of World of Warcraft and its first expansion through third-party. We're sure Blizzard will eventually take over those titles, as the company probably wants to make sure that buying their product digitally is as good an experience as it can possibly be. The thought of having every Blizzard PC title at our fingertips is a little scary though, we're worried that our bank accounts may suddenly drop soon for some mysterious reason.[via WarCry]
Why is Kael a bad guy?
Lore-wise, I can't say I understand the direction they've taken with a number of characters from classic Warcraft games in BC, but I suppose that's the reason that the term "lorelol" was coined in the first place. Mike Schramm's pointed out that the canon can probably take the abuse, but there's one character in particular whose upcoming story arc kind of appalls me.If you're trying to stay unspoiled for patch 2.4 -- why are you reading WoW Insider anyway? -- I'll slap the rest behind a cut.
