legendary-weapons
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7 wishes for guilds in Mists of Pandaria
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. For officers, the improvements and new systems that Cataclysm brought to guilds were a game-changer in many ways. The sweeping changes to raiding that came with it brought on some difficult challenges. Fortunately, WoW does not stagnate. The Mists of Pandaria expansion gives Blizzard a chance to add new features, make important changes, and improve on what the developers gave us in Cataclysm. Here's my personal wish list: 1. Treat legendary items as guild rewards, not player rewards. As guilds in WoW have matured over the years, I've heard from officers less and less frequently about loot drama -- with one huge exception: legendaries. Every legendary in the history of WoW has caused problems for officers. For some, the legendary drama itself has become legendary. It's time to change both the reality and the perception of these powerful items.
Drama Mamas: Legendary drama
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. We have two letters this week -- both about legendaries. The first letter is below, and the second letter and our responses are after the break. Dear Drama Mamas, I've been thinking a lot about taking a long break from WoW recently since I have almost no interest in playing. The problem is I'm an officer in an active raiding guild and also the only person in the guild close to getting the legendary staff. The only reason I've been playing lately has been to finish the staff for many guild. It'll take me only 2 weeks of doing a full clear to complete it so the guild will get the achievement and pet; however the other officers are too interested in the new 4.3 content to do anything in Firelands, inculding work on the legendary staff. I'd really like to quit wow without burning any bridges or upsetting my long time guild mates, but I feel that if I quit with a 95% complete legenday I will be a considered a big jerk. Thanks for any advice you can give me. Burned Out
Officers' Quarters: Patch 4.3 -- An officer's perspective
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Patch 4.3 is shaping up to be the most exciting and feature-filled of Cataclysm. Let's take a look at which features might impact your guild and how you can take advantage of them. I have located a raid The Raid Finder is not just for the guildless. Guilds can also take advantage of this new feature in several ways. The first and most obvious is that it will allow your raiders to get practice time on bosses for your own normal-mode raids. Since you don't get locked to the instance using the finder, you can see the mechanics ahead of time and still raid with your guild in the same week. If you have players who need to get up to speed, you can also use Raid Finder runs as a training ground. New players can learn the fights without wasting time and causing wipes in your normal runs. (Of course, we have yet to see how different finder mode and normal mode will be, but odds are the mechanics will be fairly similar.) Plus you can use the opportunity to address any issues that the player might be having with DPS rotations, awareness, etc.
Players of the world vs. Malephar: Fiesta Online creates the ultimate showdown
The colorful Fiesta Online -- the party MMO that is always prepared to breakdance if someone turns on a beat -- has conga'd forward with its latest update: Malephar's Lair. Named for a nasty centaur who doesn't play well with others, the update has plenty of new challenges for high-level players. Geared-up level 105 players can attempt to take Malephar down in his fortress, but before they do so they'll have to beat a pair of mini-bosses that serve as gatekeepers to the encounter. Take him down, and new legendary weapons will be yours for the taking! The update also includes 10 additional sets of armor, class balances, repeatable quests for those levels 89 and higher, and a special unicorn mount that lasts for just a week and can only be obtained by excelling in the guild tournaments. [Source: gamigo press release] %Gallery-108290%
New LotRO screens show off Isengard items, legendary weapons
Something draws near, we can feel it. That something is Lord of the Rings Online's Rise of Isengard expansion (hey, at least it wasn't another "they're taking the hobbits to Isengard" joke). Anyhow, the new content debuts in two short weeks, and Turbine has sent out some new screenshots to keep the hype machine rolling merrily along. Today's batch shows off some of the new gear and items to be had as the Fellowship inches closer to Mordor (and thousands of players follow in their wake). Of particular note are the spiffy new legendary weapons that you can see in our gallery below. Rise of Isengard will be available on September 27th, and the patch offers three new explorable regions, a level cap increase (to 75), and a new 24-man raid. More info is available at the official LotRO website. %Gallery-9579%
Arcane Brilliance: Patch 4.2 changes, clarifications and legendary staves
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we discuss the perils of writing about the PTR, which stands for "Public Test Realm." For a very long time, I thought it stood for "Pirate Taco Restaurant," which I thought sounded more fun, frankly. Yes, it's always a good time when I write something and the testing process immediately renders almost every word of it completely moot. Testing is testing, I guess, and absolutely everything that pops up on the PTR at pretty much any stage of the testing cycle is entirely subject to change. So remember what we talked about last week? The whole tier 12 set bonus thing? No longer true. Well, okay, I guess some of it still holds true, but not the really interesting part. Gone is the moving Arcane Missiles. To me, that was the single most significant bonus being offered by the tier 12 set for mages, but it's been removed entirely in the latest PTR build. The other bonuses remain, in slightly altered form, but mobile missiles is apparently out. Still, I'm not perturbed, other than my simmering rage at having a thousand or so of my words -- wrung from my brain only a week prior, sweat out over a hot (or at least lukewarm, perhaps slightly moist) keyboard, painstakingly arranged into mildly pleasing, competently conjugated sentences -- become instantly irrelevant. You see, I actually think this could end up being a good thing for mages, and I promise that in a minute or two I will tell you why I think that, and the answer will not be "because of all that paint I huffed."
Officers' Quarters: Wrath of the orange stick
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. WoW has had a fairly limited number of legendary items over the years. Some took a monumental effort (and a bit of luck) to put together; others just fell into our hands. Either way, obtaining one has always been a big deal. Patch 4.2 is rectifying a longstanding omission by offering caster DPSers their own, exclusive legendary weapon: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. Sure, you could count Atiesh, but only a handful of guilds around the world ever assembled one, and it could be used by healers as well. Needless to say, casters are hyped, and every caster wants one. Cue the drama: Hi Scott, I just wanted to suggest a topic for the next Officers' Quarters: How to choose who gets Dragonwrath. The casters in our group all want and think they deserve the staff, but we're having trouble agreeing on how to decide. Raw DPS, seniority, voting amongst the group, and even chance have been suggested. Thanks for any help! Unfortunately, only one caster in your guild will have the thrill of being the first to complete the quest line. Your guild might be able to assemble more than one down the road, but that's irrelevant right now. Everyone wants to be first. How can we single out one player for this amazing reward?
New quests on the PTR point to legendary weapon's origin
More news, in the form of a few quests datamined from the PTR, has cropped up about the legendary staff that will be available this expansion. While we've talked about the possible links between the staff and the upcoming War of the Ancients raid, nothing had been confirmed. However, the quests seem to be pointing to something a little different. In the quest A Legendary Engagement, players are sent to the Caverns of Time to speak to Anachronos. Anachronos is the acting "leader" of the Bronze Dragonflight in Nozdormu's absence; we first encountered him way back during the quest line to open the gates to Ahn'Qiraj. Oddly enough, it seems as though Anachronos requires your presence immediately -- something that's more than a little strange for a reclusive bronze dragon.
Datamining Cataclysm's legendary staff
The stalwart dataminers over on the MMO-Champion forums have uncovered a great number of textures, icons, and models, all potentially leading up to Cataclysm's first legendary -- a staff. We have already known that the first legendary of the expansion would be a staff, as told to us by Blizzard at BlizzCon this past year, but we had no other information or pictures. Above is a picture of what the staff will probably look like. Check out the MMO-Champion thread here. The forum users working on this have really done a spectacular job figuring out this puzzle. Big grats to them! So, what do we do once we get something as awesome as this? Speculation! Many of the staff icons and files were named "Firelands," so it is safe to assume that most of the epic staff is put together in Ragnaros' domain. However, there's also a Timeless Eye item mentioned, and the staff's body is made from wood. Wooden weapons don't seem to be Ragnaros' deal. The Timeless Eye definitely points towards Caverns of Time something or other, and with the body of the staff being wooden and definitely not of the Firelands, we're looking at night elven stuff going on. We'll find out, sooner or later. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
Arcane Brilliance: Patch 4.1 PTR for mages, (very) early edition
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we discuss the upcoming patch 4.1, which hit the PTR in the wee hours of Thursday here in the North Americas, sending WoW bloggers everywhere into an early morning, sleep-deprived fit of feverish typing, followed by a deep and possibly fatal sugar and caffeine coma. For those who were lost, we mourn you -- but not for long because we gots deadlines, yo. So yeah. In case you've been stranded in some Mesopotamian nation or another without internet access for the past few days, we've got a new patch on the PTR. It's not the most earth-shattering patch we've seen, but for some reason I'm just inordinately excited about it. I woke up this morning with dreams of raptors, tiger/panthers, and armored bears fresh in my mind. I was quite sad when Zul'Gurub vanished from the game, but every time I flew over that part of Stranglethorn Vale and saw that the ancient troll city was still there, empty and tigerless, I felt a surge of hope that until the structures themselves vanished, the instance wasn't truly gone. Just the idea that Blizzard is willing to take old raids and turn them into heroic 5-mans for me to churn through in my daily valor point farming efforts is a cause for celebration. Though old 5-mans get new life whenever you level a new alt through the old content, no single part of the game falls into misuse more completely than obsolete endgame content. To see some of it repurposed in such a relevant way, well ... I'm just giddy. Like a schoolgirl, only male and 30ish. Similar outfits, though. Cough. So there's a lot there to look forward to, you may be saying, but what about mages? I come here to read about magecraft and also to hear about how warlocks drink their own urine. Where's the info on the parts of the patch that are specific to me? I hear you, reader who I just made up. Read on, and we'll talk all about the few but significant mage changes we can expect in patch 4.1.
Lord of the Rings Online dev diary details legendary item and relic changes
While the radiance mea culpa and radiance's subsequent removal from the game is the big Lord of the Rings Online news nugget of the month, it's worth noting that Turbine's version of Middle-earth will be rolling out some changes to legendary weapons as well. In a new dev diary at the official LotRO website, Ken "Graalx2" Burd and Brian "Zombie Columbus" Aloiso spell out some of the upcoming tweaks. The good news is that the randomness associated with legendary items is soon to be a distant memory. In spite of the Pool A/Pool B legacies introduced with the Mirkwood expansion, players would still occasionally be stuck with item legacies that didn't fit with particular playstyles. New Legacy Replacement Scrolls will remedy this situation; they will be acquired through the deconstruction of an item with the desired legacy (or through the game's item shop). The devs also have a bit of info to pass along regarding changes to the game's relic system. In a nutshell, the goal for relics was the same as the goal for legendary item tweaks: reduce the random element and give the player more control. To this end, the number of relic tiers has been reduced to six, as has the amount of time required to attain the top tier. Secondly, Turbine has added a new legendary item currency called shards, which serves to "bind various parts of the system together," according to Aloiso. It's a lot more complicated than that, of course, and you can read the lengthy details at the official LotRO website.
The Road to Mordor: My wish list for 2011
January is always a month of denial for me because it usually takes a full 30 days for the reality of a new year to settle into my skull. It can't be a new year! I just, just got used to the old one! I'm going to forget the real year when I sign my checks and then I'll be denounced as a fraud! What horrible teenage fad will be inflicted on us this year? Seriously, Ke$ha was the final straw for me. She's like all four horsemen of the apocalypse melted down and recast as a talentless banshee with an ironic dollar sign smack in the middle of her name. But that's my problem. A new year also means a virgin slate for all of our MMOs. What happened last year was so last year -- now we turn our eyes to the future. We know a little of what's upcoming for Lord of the Rings Online, but that doesn't mean we can't have wishes. You know what they say: If wishes were horses, I'd have the Steed of Night. So in honor of '11, I've come up with an 11-point wish list of what I'd love to see in LotRO this year. I fully expect Turbine to drop everything -- everything -- to get on it!
Perfect World launches Legend of Martial Arts
The MMO machine that is Perfect World Entertainment has churned another title off the publishing assembly line. The new game is called Legend of Martial Arts (formerly known as Kung Foo! during beta) and it's now live and available for direct download or via bit torrent. The game features various martial arts disciplines, a demonic race called Reavers that offer players a choice between Berserker and Oracle classes, and a unique transformation mechanic that ranges from the aesthetic to the practical (via character attribute buffs and skills). Legend of Martial Arts also boasts a PvE dungeon matchmaking system, PvP-specific dungeons, and a legendary weapon system that features leader boards and the chance to earn unique items. Check out the official website for more details on the free-to-play title.
The Urban Legends of Warcraft: Ashbringer
One of the more interesting facets of playing a game as extensive as World of Warcraft are the legends and mysteries surrounding the game, both inside and out. A lot of these legends, mysteries and unsolved puzzles have developed over time into urban legends -- stories that sound just true enough to be plausible, but usually end up being untrue, dead ends or simply unsolved mysteries that were never meant to be puzzled out. Today we'll be talking about a weapon whose origins were so mysterious and carried so many loose ends that it left players in a tizzy for years: Ashbringer. The legend of Ashbringer started when World of Warcraft was originally released. The orange legendary weapon was discovered in the game files by data miners, and the stats and proc on the weapon were truly amazing. At the time, even epic weapons were extremely rare, so seeing something with an orange tag on it was more than a little unique and awe-inspiring. However, other than the datamined weapon, there was no indication of it appearing in game -- that is, until players slowly leveled from launch to their first steps into the Plaguelands.
Breakfast Topic: Are legendaries good for the game?
Sunsmoon on WoW_ladies makes an uncomfortably accurate observation concerning legendaries -- people tend to get a little nuts around them. Anyone doing Tier 6 back in the day doubtless remembers the fistfights over who was going to get a Warglaive, WoW players worldwide were in shock at a rogue getting Thor'idal over two hunters, and the annals of classic WoW are rife with nightmare stories of /gquits over Bindings of the Windseeker and arguments over Sulfuras going to a druid. Nowadays (as someone on my realm remarked in a moment's pique), of the six Val'anyrs that have been assembled on our server, only one remains in its original guild. A reasonable person might be forgiven for thinking that the little orange text accompanying what's usually a decent weapon with a great proc is a lot more trouble than it's worth. A good point is brought up by Amiyuy in the thread -- the process of creating a legendary, or having to keep farming for an extremely uncommon drop, tends to wear people out. A healer on track to build a Val'anyr can't reasonably expect to take any time off for fear of missing one of the inconsistent shards, and my guildmates and I continued to farm Black Temple well past the point that anyone was getting even offspec gear upgrades because we just couldn't get a main-hand Glaive. With another legendary coming out in Icecrown Citadel, guild leaders are facing the headache of figuring out who'll get it, and we've already fielded questions on our tip line on which class gets the most from Shadowmourne and whether Blizzard could have nixed the stamina on it to discourage death knight tanks from picking it up (!). So readers, I ask you -- are legendaries good for the game? If your guild was on a position to get one, did they ultimately help or hurt you more? And is the painful process of getting a Legendary the real source of the trouble, and not the item itself?
Latest LotRO dev diary details legendary weapon changes
From the last "Ask the Dev Team" session with the Lord of the Rings Online developers, we knew that some changes were coming to the game's Legendary Weapon system. The latest Developer Diary entry is devoted entirely to filling in some of the details on these changes, which should come into effect when the Siege of Mirkwood expansion launches in December. First and foremost (and definitely one of the best tweaks) is that you'll be able to tell if a legendary weapon will ever turn into something good before you pour time and money into improving it.There will also be a brand new item type, a series of "legendary item advancement scrolls". They will provide an alternative method of improving or altering legendary weapons, and will be found both as loot from enemies and from the deconstruction process. In addition, crafters are getting a significant nod with the introduction of a fourth relic slot that can only be filled by player-crafted relics. It gets better: every crafting profession can make a different kind of relic, providing a range of improvement options, and ensuring that no crafter is left out of the fun. To read up on all the details of the upcoming legendary item changes (including specifics on how experience will be altered) see the full dev diary at the official site.
How to decide who's getting Val'anyr
With Ulduar due to hit in the near future, Tales of a Priest addressed a pretty timely subject for 25-man raiders yesterday with a blog post on Val'anyr and how you're going to assign it. As it's a constructed Legendary like Atiesh rather than being a dropped item like the Warglaives and Thori'dal (sudden thought: why do the caster Legendaries have to be assembled, whereas the melee/ranged Legendaries just drop?), you're going to have to put some time and thought into which one of your healers is going to get this baby first. It's not exactly the world's most comfortable question for a guild leader, but I like how Derevka lays the issue out so matter-of-factly, and then goes on to address an interesting point concerning Val'anyr's proc. Your ideal candidate is a good healer with great attendance who plans on hanging around for a while, but then there's the question -- which class gets the most use out of the proc?
Death Knight gets Thunderfury
Here's a world first I never thought I'd see via Deathknight.info: The first Death Knight with a Thunderfury! Night Elf Death Knight Dragoth of Frostmane-EU grabbed the legendary sword a couple weeks back, and has the achievement to prove it (It's under the Feats of Strength category). Certainly, this was no small task in and of itself. Sure, you can probably do most of the questline with four or five people now, but you'll still find yourself in Molten Core begging for the bindings to drop for at least a few weeks, and that doesn't even count the elementium.
TurpsterVision - Weapon of Choice
TurpsterVision is back with vengeance now with four episodes every month focusing on one MMO at a time. This month, along with the rest of the Massively team, we are venturing deep into Middle Earth and exploring the depths of the Mines of Moria.Hey folks, it's good to be back; MMOs just wouldn't be the same without TurpsterVision! Today we are taking a look at Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria's new Legendary Weapons. I've often wanted to have a sword glow blue and warn me when danger is near. To be honest I'd settle for an iPhone app that would do the same thing. But fortunately for me I don't have to settle for anything less than the real deal, albeit a virtual-real deal.Moria not only granted us two new classes, which I'll be exploring one at a time over the next two weeks, but it also granted players the ability to gain Legendary weapons of old which they can level up alongside their character. But enough reading about it, this is TurpsterVision! Watch on after the break...
Ask a Lore Nerd: Shared tongues and other oddities
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.I fulfilled my dork quota in last week's Ask a Lore Nerd, so this week I'll ramble a bit less, and answer some more of the simpler questions we've seen recently. With that said, let's get started with Chris's question...Why is Gorehowl just an epic weapon? It was claimed to be wielded by Grommosh Hellscream and if so shouldn't the weapon be legendary?