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Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Frozo the Renowned takes your Frozen Orbs
Frozen Orbs have been sort of a weird little problem since Patch 3.3 came out. Since they automatically drop off every heroic end boss, the dungeon finder has pretty much guaranteed that there's thousands of them created every single day. However, the Emblems of Triumph that come out of those same dungeons pretty much make most of the profession gear made with Frozen Orbs obsolete. As a result, many of us have at least a couple stacks rotting in our banks or backpacks, and I know I personally have started outright passing on them, having nothing better to do with them. Now I sort of wish I hadn't, if only because they're finally useful as currency in Patch 3.3.3.
New seasonal vanity pet, the Toxic Wasteling
Vanity pet collectors, rejoice! The Crown Chemical Co. apothecaries not only drop some pretty nice necklaces, they're also the source of a new vanity pet, the Toxic Wasteling. You may think this looks a lot like the Disgusting Oozeling, but there's a major difference -- rather than a debuff applied to your character, the Wasteling is a hungry little guy. So hungry in fact, that he'll eat random critters, and as he does, he grows in size. Check out the video to see the Toxic Wasteling in action -- and for those pet collectors wondering about the Truesilver Shafted Arrow for the Perma-Peddle achievement, he's now available on holiday vendors for the low price of 40 Love Tokens.
Fool for Love just got easier
Love is in the Air on most servers by now, and players should notice a substantial change in the way the event is being run this year. No longer do you have to furtively log on each hour on the hour during the course of the event in the hopes that you'll get that candy bag with that ONE piece of candy you need for the Be Mine! achievement. The candy bag, as well as all other random rewards from previous years are available on vendors in each capital city, and purchased with Love Tokens. How do you get the tokens? Well, you certainly don't have to run around begging people to give you cards and building gifts. This year, the tokens are available through daily quests. Since it's the first day of the event, we may not have seen all of the possible dailies, but here's the rundown on two of them: Remember the Gifts of Adoration? This year, faction leaders are looking for jewelry. You can turn in a Lovely Charm Bracelet to the faction leader of your choice for a Lovely Card that will give you an hour long buff, and 5 Love Tokens. The method used to obtain these bracelets? Kwee will give you a Lovely Charm Collector's Kit with the following flavor text: "Pliers, bone saw, scalpel and sundry other tools allow for the collection of Lovely Charms from worthwhile enemies. Collect 10 charms to make a bracelet!" Yes, you read that correctly. You murder beasts and creatures in your level range, and hack Lovely Charms off of their corpses. I'm thinking I love this event already. Other ways to obtain Love Tokens include the daily quest "A Perfect Puff of Perfume," which requires you to hose down ten players or NPC's with perfume. Vendors and city guards will work just as well as other players, so don't worry about running out of people to spray. This quest will also earn you 5 tokens. The changes so far to the event make it much, much simpler to get that coveted Fool For Love meta achievement, and should provide a welcome change to players used to the same old grind from previous years. Check out the gallery below for the complete list of items available on the vendors, and stay tuned for more Love is in the Air info as it comes in! %Gallery-84863%
Loot is in the air
Love is already in the air on the European realms and MMO Champion has the details on the loot which drops from the three new Love is in the Air bosses. Three apothecaries have taken up shop in Shadowfang Keep: Baxter, Hummel and Frye. They'll be there for the duration of the holiday as daily quest bosses and following is a list of what they drop (mouseover for their stats): Winking Eye of Love Heartbreak Charm Shard of Pirouetting Happiness Sweet Perfume Broach Choker of the Pure Heart Forever-Lovely Rose Vile Fumigator's Mask Toxic Wasteling The Heartbreaker But the drop from Apothecary Hummel that I am most excited about is the Big Love Rocket Mount. It's pink, it has zhevra seats and a naughty, naughty name. Naughty. Stay tuned for more Love is in the Air info as it comes in.
Lich King's loot table revealed
This is surprising: the entire loot table for the Arthas fight, on both 10 and 25-man (normal and hard, judging by the item levels) has just been posted to the Armory. Edit: the loot is also on Wowhead now, complete with 3D models. As tipster Micah noted, if this is really the whole loot table, it consists entirely of armor tokens, weapons, and Invincible's Reins (which is listed as a guaranteed drop on 25-man heroic). The focus on weapons isn't exactly new for raid end bosses, but it's interesting nonetheless. I haven't had a chance to go through the whole list yet, but as far as I can tell, there aren't any of the nifty proc-based items we've been seeing elsewhere in Icecrown. It's pure stats on Arthas drops (though Alex points out that they all the 25-man heroic items have flavor text). Still, I wouldn't say no to a nice Tainted Twig of Nordrassil for my druid. Which one's your favorite?
Have emblems ruined heroics? (Hint: no)
Ardol has made a compelling post at World of Warcraft Philosophized, a blog which I can't remember adding to my feed reader, but which I'm now glad I (evidently) did, arguing that the current emblem system has ruined heroic instances. You should go read the whole post if you can, because it's well written, but here's his argument in a nutshell, as I understand it: A player who mainly runs heroics will quickly amass many Emblems of Triumph, thereby becoming easily overgeared for all but the most challenging heroics (i.e. Halls of Reflection). This makes them much less fun. Raid-oriented players who are running heroics just for the two Emblems of Frost at the end are not very fun to run with. He also proposes a solution: five-man instances should be ordered into tiers, like raids, and should award emblems on the same schedule as raids do. The first part of this suggestion is already partially implemented: Trial of the Crusader already came with Trial of the Champion, and Icecrown Citadel with the Frozen Halls trio of instances. But Ulduar did not have any attendant five-mans, and the same quality of emblems drop in every heroic (although the loot quality is differentiated).
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting Icecrown's lower spire
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. Sometimes, you just have that maddening compulsion to make your wish list of various things you want to acquire. I've got one on Amazon for a woodworking shop and another of things I want on WoW (which does happen to include a pony, Ghostcrawler). However, with the last of the loot being divvied up in these final days of Wrath, let's go through Icecrown Citadel and make a shopping list of gear we'd kill for.
WoW.com's gift guide for 2009
It's that time of year again -- if you (like me) haven't gotten gifts for everyone on your list, it's time to start scrambling to find something nice to get under the tree this year. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about finding something good for the World of Warcraft fan in your life: we've got you covered there. In the gallery below, we've got a nice bunch of gift ideas for everything Warcraft, from the cheap to the expensive, from the silly to the practical, from in-game presents you can wrap with shiny paper, to out-of-game classics that you can... also wrap with shiny paper. If you need to give a gift to a WoW player this year, you'll find it below for sure. And if you happen to be a Warcraft player, faced with the annual awkward question of "What do you want me to give you this year?", just feel free to drop this link surreptitiously as a reply, maybe even with a hint or two towards a specific item. We've included links to everything and kept it easy to understand even for someone who hasn't visited Azeroth before. That's our gift to you. Happy holidays, and good gift hunting! %Gallery-79856%
Patch 3.3: 1400 new PvE items on their way
It seems like every Wrath patch brings with it more items than the last by an order of magnitude. It was eight hundred of 'em for 3.1, between the Argent Tournament and Ulduar, and now Ghostcrawler says that 1400 more PvE items will be packed in every box of Patch 3.3, including our big orange buddy up there. Given the recent interview with Cory Stockton and our man GC, it seems like there's a lot of attention going into itemization for all of the Icecrown gear, and thus it's actually a little surprising that there's so darn much of it. And there's a ton of new kinds of procs, set bonuses, et cetera, building on the "Epic. Cool things. Proc'y stuff." mentality that GC says Icecrown items are all based on. Then again, with what's going down with items in Cataclysm, fourteen hundred new items seem downright mundane in comparison. It must seem that way to Ghostcrawler, too, given that this whole comment off-handedly came out in a post where someone was loudly complaining about an itemization bug on a piece of Icecrown gear. That's casual conversation for ol' Greg. "Yeah, put the finishing touches on 1400 new items today. Figure later I'll get the number of that waitress at Applebee's. Tomorrow I personally reitemize all of the old-world quests for Cataclysm. I'll get up around noon, probably leave work at 3:30 or so." Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Wowhead's new item page now even newer
Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what's going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there's even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements: Categorization by item level, with breakdowns for the five levels of items that are coming at us (219, 232, 251, 264, and 277). You can now filter the new items and search within them. Items are also sortable. And this isn't a new feature, but it bears mentioning, at least if you're a major news geek like me: you can get an RSS feed of the new items added to the Wowhead database. If you wanted to you could probably hook this up to Twitter, or put it on your blog, or whatever. Anyway, if you want to know what items are coming at us along with Icecrown Citadel, I think there's no better place to be. What items are you most excited about?
Patch 3.3: More community members honored with item names
In the vein of Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed and the BRK-1000, Blizzard honored several community members with items named after them in Patch 3.3. Ones we've seen so far: Maghia's Misguided Quill - Named after the well-known cosplayer who came to BlizzCon as Alexzstrasza and the Eredar Twins. Toskk's Maximized Wristguards - Named after the player who maintains a popular druid DPS calculator. Aldriana's Gloves of Secrecy - Named after the player who maintains a popular rogue DPS spreadsheet. There are other items in the patch files that look to be named after certain individuals, but I'm admittedly not familiar with everyone ever involved with the WoW community, so I'll leave it to you guys to let me know if I missed someone. I'm always happy when I see items like this in the game. They show that somebody out there is paying attention to the players that are making an impact in the community, and that's good enough for me. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Breakfast Topic: Getting guildies to the website
This is certainly an issue (if not a full-blown problem) in my guild, so I wouldn't be surprised if most guilds have a rough time getting guild members to use some of the outside resources they've put together. Nowadays, there are so many ways to make a guild website and so many different things you can do with one that most every guild has at least one place online to call its own. And those places are usually frequented by one or two people in the guild (usually the person running the site and/or maybe the GM and an officer or two), but in my experience, it's kind of tough to get people to use those resources, just because of lack of interest or know-how or habit. What's the point of having a database of members, a message board, and a blog and picture gallery when no one uses it? Enter Ankie of WoW Ladies, with an intriguing idea to support the guild's website.
Phat Loot Phriday: Jeweled Fishing Pole
If you're planning on heading out to join the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby in patch 3.3, you might as well look good doing it, right? Name: Jeweled Fishing Pole (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory) Type: Rare Two-hand Fishing Pole Damage: 410-610 / 3.00 (169.3 DPS) Attributes: 1603 Feral Attack Power. Yes, it's true. Just in case you druids leave this on while in a different form. Requires Fishing 300, which as we've said before, isn't too hard to do. Go over to El's Anglin' take a few hours and follow their great Fishing/Cooking guide, and you'll be done before you know it. %Gallery-33600%
The ins and outs of chatlinks
I know -- most of you will hear the word "chatlinks" and think of horrible times in Trade channel where people are spamming the names of abilities and items in different ways, from nonsense to offensive. But chatlinking is a skill that isn't talked about much, and there definitely are place where it's useful (telling guild members about an item that might help them, or linking an enchant to show what mats it needs). So, encouraged by this thread over on Epic Advice, let's run through a few of the ways you can put links to items in the chat channel.
Phat Loot Phriday: Blade of Tarasque
Been a while, I think, since we've done a dagger. Plus, this one will show off a little of my D&D lore knowledge, and I don't get to do that as much as I like. Name: Blade of Tarasque (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory) Type: Epic Main hand Dagger Damage/Speed: 108 - 343 / 1.80 (125.1 DPS) Attributes: +48 Stamina, +65 Intellect. Used to be that Stamina on a caster item meant warlock, but I think this is just an endgame item -- any caster who needs it could use it just fine. Plus, there's a blue gem socket on it, so you can put whatever you want in there, with a socket bonus of +5 spellpower. Just because it came up on the site earlier this week, I'll use this opportunity to remind you that any gem can go in any socket -- you just won't get the socket bonus. Yes, really. %Gallery-33600%
Dragon Age: Journeys bonus items transfer to Origins
You may have scoffed at the prospect of a flash-based, 2D version of BioWare's upcoming RPG epic, Dragon Age: Origins. "A browser game meant to simulate the deep, immersive emotions that arise when one plays roles," you may have said, mid-scoff. "Who would play something like that?" As it turns out, if you're looking forward to the full, three-dimensional version of Dragon Age, the answer to your query is simply: You. A short Q&A on the Dragon Age: Journeys developers' blog cultivated an enticing bit of info about the browser adventure: if you play through it while logged into your EA account, you can gain access to three items that will transfer over to your Dragon Age: Origins save file on Xbox 360, PS3 or PC. No details were given about the items in question, but we're imagining they'll either be used to help you slay dragons, or to help you become a more profound lover.
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite toy?
We've all got our best abilities, the ones that do the most damage or heal the most or save us the largest number of headaches. We all have the armor or items or random hats or whatever that give us huge stat increases and make us almost invulnerable in most circumstances.And then... we have the toys. The stuff that's not bad, but just... doesn't really do much of anything. The one that lets you hover when that's not actually relevant to anything except looking cool. Or the item you've been holding on to that lets you shoot non-damaging fireworks all over a room. Totally useless, of course, but always fun when you get to break it out.What's your favorite in-game toy? Is it a piece of equipment without any useful stats but a really amazing look to it? An item that does something silly and unique? A spell that's been designed without many practical components, or one that has practical usage but generally just gets played with? When you have the downtime, what's your choice of fun little toys in your favorite game?
Researching virtual economies to learn about real ones
Researchers are apparently using economies in virtual worlds like Everquest, EVE Online, and of course our own World of Warcraft to determine how real-world economies work, according to this article by Reuters. Scientists have, of course, used WoW to model real-world behavior before, but that was specifically for something biological, and thus there were quite a few differences between the virtual model and the real application. In economies, however, it's all just money and numbers, so researchers can easily see real patterns and movements in the data.Unfortunately, the article doesn't go too deeply into their results (and it only talks about their findings from Everquest), but there is one nugget of conclusion: the economists saw inflation spike in one server over 50% in just five months. They say that the population rose on the server, which apparently made some items hard to find, thus raising prices. Economists say they've seen that same thing in the real world before: in developing nations, and in war zones. We can probably see similar effects right around a patch, or even just on weekends. As more people run to the AH to buy certain items, inscriptions or enchants, the price on those is going to rise. Interesting stuff -- it would be cool to hear what other similarities these guys have found between the virtual world and the real.
Phat Loot Phriday: Ancient Hakkari Manslayer
We've had some requests for husky loot lately, and so here's an item that isn't quite phat these days (just a little husky), but used to be quite interesting.Name: Ancient Hakkari Manslayer (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic One-hand AxeDamage/Speed: 69 - 130 / 2.00 (49.8 DPS)Attributes: This is how you can tell this weapon is old-school: it has just one bit of green text, and that text is "Steals 48-54 life from target enemy." Which doesn't, on its face, sound quite that nice. But at the time this weapon was current (ye olde patch 1.7), that was a hot proc. Because the proc actually scaled along with spell damage -- if you had 150 spell damage, and this proc hit, you wounded the enemy for 150 shadow damage, while healing yourself with same. %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Edge of Agony
I finally got my Green Proto-drake today, so I was tempted to do that, but instead today we'll go with the old PLP standby of big scary swords. Alliance, before you go running after this one, make sure to see the note below.Name: Edge of Agony (Wowhead, Thottbot, MMO Champion)Type: Epic Two-Hand SwordDamage/Speed: 651 - 977 / 3.50 (232.6 DPS)Attributes: +112 Agility, +92 Stamina Improves haste by 62, attack power by 183, and armor penetration by 86. Note that these are the stats for the 10-man normal item (Trial of the Crusader drops are pretty confusing actually). The 10-man Heroic version has a better version of this, but with the same name and graphic. %Gallery-33600%
