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WoW guides to help you through the new year
The end of the year is a time in which we all look back and reflect, and in the case of WoW Rookie, that means looking back and reflecting on the guides of the year. While Warlords of Draenor has changed much of the game we've been playing -- like all expansions before it -- we have plenty of getting started that are good resources for players new or returning to WoW. If you're feeling a little rusty on your essentials, here are our favorite guides from 2014. Pet battles. It's no secret: we love pet battling. The collecting, the leveling... it's like a miniature version of WoW inside WoW. Whether you're looking to get started with Warlords-level battling, power-level your pets, or brush up on battle pet basics, we've got you covered. Collecting. There's a lot more to collect in the game than pets! We've got guides to help you grow a potential collection of mounts and titles. If you're looking to collect transmog gear, you'll want to work on soloing classic dungeons. Leveling. If you're leveling a new alt and not just boosting to 90, the leveling grind can be tedious, so you'll want to check out our advice on spicing up your leveling game -- though if you've been gone from the game for a while, you may want to check our guide on how to get back into WoW. And, finally, once you get to level 100, you'll definitely want to check our list of what to do at level 100. Garrisons. As soon as Warlords of Draenor arrived, everyone had questions about garrisons -- and we've got answers. Check out garrisons 101, what you need to know about garrison followers (and garrison follower abilities), how to get resources, which buildings to choose, and where to get level 3 blueprints. Have anything you'd like to see WoW Rookie cover? Drop us a line and you may see it covered in a future WoW Rookie! Just because you don't know everything there is to know about World of Warcraft doesn't mean you can't play your A-game. Visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to everything you need to get started as a new (or returning) player, with new sections on garrisons and what to do at level 100.
Know Your Lore: Wrathion and Draenor
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. We may have helped him in Pandaria, but we certainly didn't fulfill whatever it was Wrathion had on his peculiar wishlist of things to do in regards to his plans for Azeroth. The Black Prince has stated on more than one occasion that he seeks to protect the world from some kind of impending attack by the Burning Legion. He even showed us the vision he'd seen as part of the expansion-long legendary quest chain in the last expansion. Yet when the chain came to a close, Wrathion was less than pleased with the results -- he wanted a clearly defined winner in the battle between Alliance and Horde, and he didn't get it. It was his next plan of action that was perhaps the most surprising, however. In the novel War Crimes, Garrosh Hellscream is placed on trial, and the end result for the former Warchief was a trip back in time to an alternate version of Draenor, courtesy of the bronze dragon Kairoz. But Kairoz wasn't alone in his efforts to take Garrosh back. Wrathion helped him out. And that's pretty strange when you think about it, because unleashing the Iron Horde on Azeroth seems like a really funny way to protect the planet. So what gives? More importantly, where is Wrathion now?
The Queue: Doodad Orc Cannon 003
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today. I find it a little odd that there are so many clickable objects in the Horde garrison, yet none of them actually do anything. Some of them are even labeled as if they were meant to do something, as in the case of the level 3 War Mill and its Doodad_Orc_Cannons. With a name like that, I sort of hoped I could launch orcs across the fortress I'd built, circus-style. Because nothing says I'm in charge like the threat of a rousing game of Peon Cannonball. ScottLeyes asked: Is it possible to get to Draenor WITHOUT killing anyone/anything? I have a "pacifist" toon as a bank alt, she's never killed anything and gotten to level 63 on holidays, exploration and daily quests. I'd love to eventually get her a Garrison, but not if she has to kill stuff. You cannot get a garrison established without doing the lead up quests, and those quests involve killing things whether you are Alliance or Horde. While you could have your alt summoned to Draenor, said alt wouldn't really be able to do much of anything except maybe hang out in Warspear or Stormshield. The savage lands of Draenor are no place for pacifists, unfortunately.
The Queue: Shark Attack
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today. When I was a kid, my brother and sister and I all wanted the Shark Attack game for Christmas because the commercial made it look so incredibly fun. But that idyllic little slice of life shown in that commercial was far, far from the truth, friends. There was no giggling and happy shouting with this game. Oh no. The commercial has it all wrong. Picture if you will three children frantically shrieking bloody murder at each other to roll the dice whilst edging ever closer to that invisible line in which we start using the profanity we've heard our parents use off and on again for years, throw in a few tears of desperation and you've got a much better idea of the experience. Oddly enough, most of the card games my siblings and I now play as adults during holiday gatherings involve much the same thing. Our family gatherings are things to be treasured. Let's answer some Warcraft questions! Maelzrael asked: Q4tQ: What would be, in your opinion, the most likely new system or feature in the next expansion? I would say this xpac it's obviously Garrisons followed by New Model Updates. Most likely would probably be the overhaul to the transmogrification feature and/or the tabard and heirloom storage tabs. Both of those have been bandied about as being in progress or at least still being thought about, so they seem like they'd be the most likely selections. Or, you know, the Dance Studio.
The Queue: Boxing Day, Warcraft novels, Did Thrall cheat?
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Today's first question is about Boxing Day. I didn't see that coming when I wrote today's Breakfast Topic. JeffLaBowski asks: Canadians: What is boxing day like? Do people have nice meals and exchange gifts? Are stores closed? Do you go to church? Any fun traditions? Non-Canadians: Do you have any day after X-mas traditions? I usually like to head out to a store or two (in the afternoon), if I got a gift card I wanted to use. Might go see the new Hobbit movie. I already talked about this in today's Breakfast Topic, but basically, around here at least (here being Edmonton) Boxing Day isn't very dissimilar from Black Friday - there are a lot of big sales and special deals and stores open early to accommodate people coming in to make exchanges or spend Christmas money. It differs from Black Friday mainly in that there's a lot fewer stories of people trampling each other on Boxing Day. I happen to be non-Canadian, despite living in Canada, and so I could theoretically answer the second part of the question. But frankly, I don't have any fun traditions.
Chaos Theory: A guide to TSW's Christmas Conspiracies event
Silver bells, Krampus and Hel, It's Christmas time in The Secret World Ring a ling, hear them scream, Soon you will see a Christmas play! Ahh, it's the holidays. A time when other games pull out the stops on cute and cuddly, flinging festive colors and joviality about like Christmas confetti to make a joyous celebration. Then you have The Secret World. In TSW, the season is dark, twisted, and fiendish; nightmares are brought to life, and conspiracies worm their ways throughout even the most revered of traditions. And we wouldn't have it any other way! I always wonder how on earth the devs are going to top themselves each new event, and this season's Christmas Conspiracies definitely does not disappoint! From the story to the puzzles, this mission chain fits right in. It even incorporated my favorite new element introduced this year -- music -- and literally makes you play for your reward. Want to experience it? You've got until January 5th to thwart the conspiracy and collect all the treasure you can. (Of course, even if you have done the two previous Christmas' events, you'll want to do them again just to get the special goodie bags!) Here's a not-quite-a-guide to help nudge you through. As always, I won't offer a direct step-by-step walkthrough but instead will just drop hints (in italics) to help you along. That said, here's your warning: There will be spoilers ahead, so read at your own risk! If, however, you want even more spoilers, watch Massively TV tonight, December 25th, at 9:00 p.m. for a Stream Team walkthrough special.
The Queue: I am not Santa
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. I am, however, incredibly vain and egocentric. WalterAnderson asks: Did you get what you wanted for Christmas? If not were you happily surprised with what you did get? Honestly, I didn't want anything. I tend not to want things aside from books, and I usually buy those for myself, so I'm an incredible pain to shop for. Get me an Amazon gift certificate or hand me fifty bucks and drive me to a bookstore, and I'm good. I'm writing this Queue Christmas Eve, so I don't know what I got yet, but I'm sure it was good.
The Queue: Queues, Sorting, and Santa
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today. Today's queue is a bit late. I blame my packages not getting here when I was told they would, so I had to punt and go shopping in the real world today. It was terrible. Way too long of queue lines. Rustin asked: could you ever see blizz putting in an alt queue finder? Like queue toon A for a raid while I switch to toon B to do some questing at lower lvls. More often than not I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting when I could be working on my alt army.
Blizzard opens new dedicated Ashran forum
If you have an opinion about Ashran, now there's a place for you to take it. Blizzard CM Kaivax posted that there's a new forum dedicated solely to Ashran. It's right here, although it doesn't appear to have a counterpart in Europe yet. Ashran's been a hot topic as of late for problems with queue times and difficulty in balancing it - with some players having used Ashran to gear up it's not not uncommon to see people discussing one faction utterly dominating the zone now. If you're interested in Ashran and possibly in contributing your voice to the discussion (you may have a good suggestion for fixing the issues, or just a perspective that hasn't been considered yet) then head over to the new official forum for the PvP zone and make your voice heard.
The Queue: Owl worship
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Goooood morning, WoW Insider! ScottLeyes asked: Is there a "best time" to queue for LFD? Or, more appropriately, are there "better" times to queue? I usually try to queue in the early evening, thinking there are more people online, but Saturdays seem horrible, and Sundays are hit and miss. Opinions? Data?
Know Your Lore: Cinematics, character development, and story in 2014
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. Last week, we began to take a look at 2014 in review for World of Warcraft -- not from a general game standpoint, but from the standpoint of lore and story development. While we had some written material and media released midway through the year, in game the year didn't really get started until the release of patch 6.0 and the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. But despite only being out for a little over a month, Warlords has made an pretty sizeable impression so far. From a perspective of sheer story delivery, the leveling game in the new expansion is hands down the best thing Blizzard has ever delivered. There's not really more than a moment or two that you aren't being hammered with story from one direction or another, whether it's the unique struggles of two different factions on two different sides of the world as they establish their bases on Draenor, or the struggles of Draenor's natives as they deal with threats from the Iron Horde and beyond. Obviously, quests are everything -- what else contributed to lore in 2014?
The Queue: Blame the bird people
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today. Anyone remember the Simon Says Apexis crystal game in Ogri'la? Supposedly it's the arakkoa's fault, and the ogres of Ogri'la just found all these Apexis crystals and relics lying around, picked them up, and got very smart in the process. We might not be playing Simon Says in Draenor, but there's a horrifying reminder of the thing in a lone mine deep underground, oddly enough. Which makes me wonder -- was this irritating game of disastrous, zappy consequences really a relic of the arakkoa, or was this just the Titans playing their version of the buzzer-in-the-hand practical joke? bushogg asked: question for the que: does the level of my follower assigned to my barracks matter? If I am level 100 and my bodyguard is 94 should I level him to 100 or does it not matter? Nope! He'll scale right up along with you. Feel free to take him along on whatever journeys you feel appropriate!
The Queue: In which stuff got weird
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today. This week has been kind of strange. I put together an image in Photoshop last year of Elsa in the Lich King's armor, because it was kind of funny. Then I stuck the image on Twitter, and a lot of people liked it. This week, it popped up on a news site with an article about how Elsa dolls have dethroned Barbie dolls as the dolls of preference this holiday season. A lot of people told me about this, I found the whole thing very amusing, and then the image was pulled. Ah well. I still have the mental image of Barbie resigned to a Bolvar fate in my head, and that's enough for me. Lamneth commented: The dungeon system I miss from WoTLK was the Frozen Orb. They should make savage blood available via the LFD system. Even if it was just 1 or 2 at the end that everyone got to roll on. Would encourage people to stay for the whole dungeon and give me a reason to sign up for them when I already outgear them. If they put Savage Blood in as a drop reward for completing a heroic dungeon, I would start doing heroics again immediately. Without question. As is stands, the amount of time I have to spend in queue as DPS and the lack of any rewards that are at all currently useful to me make heroics largely useless as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure there are plenty of other people still getting use out of them, I'm just not one of them.
The Game Archaeologist: The complete history of classic MMOs
Since this is my final Game Archeologist post of 2014, I want to indulge in a personal project that's been pulling at my shirt-tails for a little while now. I've been writing this column for years and have yet to create a proper guide to all of the games and subjects that I've covered. So that's what you're getting today: a "complete" (thus far) history of classic, obscure, and dead MMOs, arranged by decade. Ever wonder where MMOs began? Wanted to know what online gamers played back in the '90s and '80s? Trying to remember which games never made it to launch? Curious whether I've covered that little-known gem that was your doorway to a larger virtual world? Then take my hand and come with me!
The Queue: I'm turning into Rend Blackhand
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. If you read today's Breakfast Topic, you know why I said this. It's a really surreal feeling, let's just go with that. Merkavar asks: Q4TQ anyone else miss the way dungeon rewards worked in wotlk. where you got one bonus reward per day but you could save up to 7. so you could smash out 4-7 dungeons in one go instead of doing one a day. im not on every day so it would be nice if one or two days stacked I feel much the same way. The weekend is the best time for me to get in some uninterrupted WoW time, and it would be nice if I could do a bunch of dungeons on Saturday/Sunday instead of trying to log on every day. I get why they made the change, but personally I miss the flexibility to my schedule this provided.
Know Your Lore: Breakout Characters of 2014, Part One
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. Since 2014 saw the end of one expansion and the beginning of another, it's actually got quite a list of characters that got an expanded role in the lore. Some of these are fairly predictable, and others less so. Since I like to talk about lore (it's what the column is about) I decided to round up some of the ones I found the most interesting. I've set myself a few arbitrary rules for this. One, Mists of Pandaria characters are fair game. I know the last patch was in 2013, I don't care. Secondly, they had to do something in terms of story. Sorry, Varian, but you really didn't do much at all in Siege and you haven't done much in Warlords, either. This isn't listed by priority - the last character we talk about isn't more or less important than the first. So let's get down to brass tacks - who do I think broke out in the past year? (If somehow you still haven't had any exposure to Warlords of Draenor's story, be warned, Here Are Spoilers.) Vol'jin This one is kind of borderline for me - while he certainly took a big role in the end of Mists of Pandaria, he hasn't done a whole lot yet in Warlords. But I think it's an indisputable fact that Vol'jin's mere presence as a non-orc (a troll, even) atop the Horde power structure is a very significant change in terms of what it means for the Horde going forward. Before Vol'jin's rise to power, there had only been four warchiefs, two from the old Horde and two for the new, and all were orcs - the institution of warchief itself was an orcish one, brought over from Draenor when the Horde invaded. No other change in the history of the Horde has done more to draw a strong line of demarcation between past and present. The ascension of Vol'jin says to the world of Azeroth (and beyond it) that the Horde is no longer Orcs and their Amazing Friends, but instead a collective of races banded together for mutual survival, and one where no particular race predominates (at least in theory). We have yet to see how successful Vol'jin is in the role, but he definitely changes the status quo dramatically for the Horde.
The Queue: Lockouts, level 3 mine, Nagrand, and NSFTQ
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today. Kyra asked: If I already cleared Highmaul on normal difficulty with my guild, can we still do it on Heroic and get loot? People don't really agree on this, some say yes and others no. Any idea?
Know Your Lore: 2014 Lore in review
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. I like to do year end reviews of lore we've seen in the past year, but this year's review is going to be a little odd. A little different. This is largely because we didn't actually see a lot of lore introduced until November of this year, when Warlords of Draenor was finally released. Patch 5.4, the last content patch for Mists of Pandaria, was released in 2013. So we had the majority of a year with little to speak of in terms of lore and story development, and then a massive avalanche of new lore and story delivered just last month. That makes reviewing kind of difficult. But at the same time, we do have plenty to talk about, particularly since we're dealing with a brand new expansion and a brand new world -- a world full of new mechanics, storytelling and characters that are just as vibrant and vivid as anything we've seen in Pandaria. So what did 2014 offer for the Warcraft lore fan, exactly -- and where did it falter?
The Queue: You shall not pass
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today. Today's Queue has absolutely nothing to do with Gandalf, I swear. Whiteout asked: Question for the Eminent Queue: Have you discovered anything odd in World of Warcraft, not a bug or error produced by lag, but something intentionally placed in the world, whether it be in Outland, Azeroth, or Draenor? Once upon a time back in vanilla WoW, there used to be places you could get to through ... creative use of game mechanics. I may or may not have been pretty good at getting into said places due to my overwhelming affection for punching the space bar and making my character jump every where I went. Back then, Hyjal wasn't a zone. It wasn't even an instance, it was a completely blocked off section of the map. There was very little in it save canyons, paths, a few houses, and a layout that looked kind of similar to what we got with the Hyjal zone in Cataclysm. That big crater that Goldrinn's shrine is in? It was there back then. There were also a few instance portals that looked like they could go to a raid or a dungeon at some point in the future. And if you happened to follow the trail all the way to the top, you were treated to an amazing view of Archimonde's skeleton impaled upon the World Tree. And at the very, very end of that trail were the construction signs shown above, marked "Blizzard Construction Company." It was weird. Maybe not quite as weird as the crypts beneath Karazhan, but it was pretty weird.
The Queue: Disturbing orc face
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today. I think maybe I'm just never going to ask an orc to smile for the camera ever, ever again. maalin asked: Q4tQ: I got started late and am struggling to get my ilvl up before MC goes away. Why does MC not even show up in my lfg/lfr list? Others show up as disabled and the tool tip tells me what ilvl I need to queue. Molten Core won't actually show up on your list of raids until you're at an ilvl of 615.