Legendary
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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.
One-thousand-Gnome race invades WoW's Horde capital
What do you do when you've finished a World of Warcraft-centered show and you have time on your hands? If you're the guys from Legendary over on GameBreaker.TV, you gather up an obscene number of friends and viewers and have the mother of all roving dance parties on the way to the ultimate goal. Not content to rest on their laurels of dragging 300 young Orcs into battle with Gamon, this time they managed to gather up a thousand starting Gnomes to rampage across the landscape of Azeroth, ultimately ending in a confrontation by any means necessary with Garrosh Hellscream. Of course, huge races across World of Warcraft aren't a new idea. Anyone who has played the game for years has undoubtedly heard of one at some point -- if not taken part. With that said, herding 1,000 footbal...err...Gnomes is definitely a hectic, crazy thing to do, especially when mobs are intent on taking bites out of your racers. Add in some excellent video editing, music, and the odd snippet of commentary, and what's old is new again. You can check out the video of the Legendary crew's epic after-party behind the break as they attempt to prove that there's no race like Gnome.
World of Warcraft's mad cow against the naked orcs
If you've played World of Warcraft for long enough, you know about Gamon. An NPC in Orgrimmar for a relatively standard rogue quest, Gamon's life became a perpetual cycle of death shortly after players found that he could be attacked even by his fellow Horde members. So for Cataclysm, Blizzard Entertainment proved its sense of humor borders on sociopathy by making Gamon a max-level elite who hits like a 747 in a nose dive if anyone is dumb enough to attack him. As it turns out, 300 naked orcs are precisely dumb enough to attack him. Again, if you've played World of Warcraft for long enough, watching huge player spectacles is not a new experience. But it's rare that you can get this many people to band together in an effort to kill an enemy whose death does not and has never offered any rewards beyond a death animation. Gary Gannon and the Gamebreaker TV crew did just that as part of their Legendary podcast Cataclysm launch party last week. Click on past the cut for something everyone can enjoy -- half-naked muscular green men stabbing at an enraged bipedal cow.
Borderlands on Amazon for $37 with free Double Add-on Pack
We've seen this game for super cheap already, but just in case you haven't taken the trip to the Borderlands of Pandora (the other Pandora), now's your chance. Gearbox's excellent loot-and-shoot title is only $36.99 on Amazon right now, and Jeff Bezos and company are throwing in the Double Add-on Pack (with the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Moxxi's Underdome Riot packs) for absolutely free. That's an amazing deal -- like coming across a legendary SG30/V3 Blast Hammer while clearing out the Crimson Fastness again (if you'd bought the game already, you'd know what that felt like). Go get you one, and once you're in the game, make sure you stop by and say hi to Scooter. He's right where the cars live. [Thanks, Goldenchild]
World first Shadowmourne
Modk of Juggernaut has obtained the world's first Shadowmourne! It's the final legendary weapon in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion (at least, that we know of) before Cataclysm is due out. The quest line to earn the weapon is both costly and long. So a big congrats to Modk! I suspect we'll gradually be seeing more and more of these. Who knows how many we'll have by the time the new expansion is released? If you're curious to see the proc of the weapon in action, check out the video on MMO Champion.
Spider-Man 4 delayed, possibly impacting Warcraft movie
The latest buzz out of Hollywood is that the fourth installment of the Spider-Man movie franchise has hit a snag. Director Sam Raimi is apparently in the midst of some major creative differences with Sony Pictures executives over the script and the villain lineup. A little bit of drama in Hollywood is nothing new, of course, but in this case its become bad enough to delay the movie, with the May 6th, 2011 release date now in serious doubt.
Shadowfrost Shard drop rates are actually pretty good
People who were worried that creating Shadowmourne, the legendary two-handed axe, would be double the grind that Val'anyr was might want to relax a little, as the official WoW Armory just clued us in as to where and how often the Shadowfrost Shards necessary to craft it drop. As per the quest The Splintered Throne, you're required to collect 60 of the little buggers, and from the site, it appears that they're around a 25-50% drop rate off of all bosses except Arthas in the 25-man version of Icecrown Citadel on normal mode and a 50-100% chance off of the Heroic versions of the same bosses. All in all, not bad. It'll still be a, well, legendary process to get your axe crafted, but at least you won't need to suffer through awful drop rates to make it happen. 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: 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?
Patch 3.3: Official Shadowmourne preview
Following its announcement at BlizzCon '09, players have been looking forward to seeing just how the new legendary two-handed axe, Shadowmourne, will be created and how it'll function. Today, Blizzard fills us in on the details ... well, sort of. In their official preview of the weapon, Blizzard fleshes out its backstory as the Ebon Blade's premier anti-Arthas weapon. Forged from the hardened blood of Yogg-Saron, empowered with the souls of the deceased, encased in ice from Arthas' own Frozen Throne, the axe is intended to be a true match for Frostmourne. But at what cost? Blizzard has yet to reveal the weapon's stats, but the soul-stealing proc on it is pretty neat. Here's hoping it's not too much of a pain to craft. 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.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Shadowmourne spell details
Everyone's favorite* dataminer, Boubouille of MMO-Champion, brings us more details on the upcoming legendary axe Shadowmourne this evening. I'm going to keep this intro brief, because I know many of you don't want to be spoiled at all regarding the stats of this item or the means of acquisition (that link is a spoiler, FYI). If you do want to know what the effects of this new legendary might be, read on behind the cut. If you don't? Skip the rest of this post.
WoW Rookie: Save everything, sell everything
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.It's clean-up time around here. Now that the WoW Rookie Guide is up and running to shuttle you to precisely the information you've been wondering about, we're poking through our older pieces to bring them up to date. (If there are any WoW Rookies whose datedness you find especially galling, shoot me a link at lisa [at] wow [dot] com and I'll prioritize it for updating.) Sometimes during the updating process, I uncover little gems, like this excerpt from Elizabeth Harper's 2007 piece Money-making 101. Be sure to visit the entire article, by the way; it's an outstanding resource to make sure you arrive at your character's more costly milestones with gold in your pockets.In the meantime, let's talk about what's worth selling and what's not. First of all: keep everything. Make buying or making big bags a priority; after all, you can't make money if you can't bring home loot to sell. If your bags get full, sure, go ahead and destroy grey items (items with their names listed in grey letters). (To destroy an item, left-click it, drag it to an open spot on your screen, and left-click again to drop it; reply "Yes" to the dialog box that pops up.)
World-first Val'anyr formed by Avant Garde
If you're a raiding healer, you almost certainly know this already: Ulduar-25 contains a legendary healer mace, called Val'anyr. To craft it, you have to gather 30 Fragments of Val'anyr, which drop from both normal and hard-mode 25-man Ulduar fights (though they always drop on hard-mode, and only have a chance to drop on normal). You then have to throw the combined collection of fragments at Yogg'Saron while fighting him when he uses the "Deafening Roar" ability, which he only uses on hard mode. After that, defeat Yogg, and Val'anyr is yours. Well, someone has now completed all of the above steps: Snuggleme, a resto druid of Avant Garde on Kil'jaeden. Congratulations on what appears to be the world-first Val'anyr! We know exactly what it does already, but I'm still curious what it feels like to use it in a real raid - hopefully Snuggleme can give us some insight in weeks to come. Also congratulations to Impervious of Stormreaver, who collected their 30th Fragment last week on a hard-mode Yogg-Saron kill, and will be forming the hammer this week.
SouthPeak sees revenue surge on 'post-holiday demand'
Hey, SouthPeak, we're in a recession, didn't you hear? The publisher again pocketed an impressive wad of cash, reporting $13.5 million in revenue during its fiscal third quarter, up more than $2 million over the same time the previous year. According to Gamasutra, the company cited "post-holiday consumer demand" and recent releases like Big Bang Mini and X-Blades as key factors in the outfit's financial buoyancy.With 711,000 units of software flying out the door during the quarter, it's no wonder the company is making plans for the future. The report notes that SouthPeak has more than 60 games in the works, with over $14 million currently invested in development of new titles and IP. Perhaps we can finally quit pointing and laughing as the publisher of Gamecock cast-offs Legendary and Velvet Assassin rolls up to the bank. Clearly some gamers' spirits are more resilient than others.
The Queue: Going to the movies
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.The Queue is generally a weekday affair, but since this Saturday is going to be a busy day for us WoW players, we're going to be doing a special edition this weekend. You didn't forget about BlizzCon tickets going on sale this Saturday, did you? I hope not! If you have any BlizzCon related questions, get them in over the next couple of days, and we'll see what we can do for you this weekend.Erogroth asked..."What is the status on the Warcaft movie? I have not heard anything in a long time. Is it even in production? Will we ever see it? Is there even a website?"
WoW Insider Show Episode 89: Best Healer ever
Quite a week on the podcast last Saturday -- Alex Ziebart, Adam Holisky, Turpster and I spent a considerable amount of time answering your emails (talking about everything from whether VoA has been ruined with the new raid boss to the never-say-die issue about which tank is best to take with you), and when we finally did sit down to the Meat of the Show, there was a lot, there, too: an interview with Tom Chilton, who Val'anyr is for (and that crazy proc), and we even snuck in a little Bloodlust/Heroism talk. Listen in to the show on any of the links below.And don't forget: this Wednesday at 6pm Eastern, we'll be doing the show at a special time, since I'm out of town next weekend. And our live video show will be going down on the 23rd at 3:30pm Eastern, so mark your calendars for that if you like.Thanks for tuning in, and enjoy the show.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
The Queue: Left 4 Cheesehead
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.I was horrified to find endless amounts of Wisconsin hate in the comments of yesterday's edition of The Queue. Come on, Wisconsin rules! Well, no, the few bubbles of real civilization in Wisconsin rule. Milwaukee, Madison, and maybe (maybe) the Green Bay area. Everything in between those points are like something out of a horror movie. In transit from Milwaukee to Madison, all of the passengers in the car keep their eyes squeezed shut while the driver breaks out in a cold sweat. Packers fans fling themselves at your vehicle like the undead, crying out for your blood and pounding their fists on your windows. The only thing that you can do, the only thing you want to do, is keep driving.Milwaukee, though? Totally rules.aw232 asked..."I'm starting to think that there won't be a raid included in 3.2. I've heard about a new battleground, an expansion of the argent tournament but nothing about a new raid. Is there any confirmation or denial on if there will be a new raid before Icecrown?"
The best of WoW Insider: April 28 - May 5, 2009
Finding yourself lost in the World of Warcraft? Joystiq's sister site WoW Insider has everything you need to know about the biggest game around, whether you're a grizzled level 80 veteran, a newbie in the Ghostlands, or a former Molten Core raider finding yourself curious about rejoining the game. Here's our most popular posts about what's been going on in Azeroth lately. News Player receives developer item in the mail, one-shots UlduarThe Game Masters accidentally send a killer shirt to a player, who then uses it to drop progression content. The Martin Fury scandal: Karatechop reveals allWe talk with the player who got banned for using a GM item in Ulduar. WoW reference found in Wolverine gameThe creators of the new Wolverine videogame sneak in a WoW reference just for us. Ulduar nerfs and Blizzard's new raid philosophyBlizzard tweaks the newest raid instance, and shows their design cards a little bit. World of Warcraft patch 3.1.2 PTR notesThere's a new patch on the Public Test Realm -- here's what's new. Features The Queue: MercenariesYou ask, we answer. It's that easy. Guildwatch: It wasn't me, manDrama, downed, and recruiting news from guilds around the realms. Val'anyr explainedWhat exactly does the game's newest legendary do for you? We'll tell you right here. Noblegarden: Sexy or sexist?The new Easter ingame holiday has you throwing bunny ears on females level 18 and up. Hot or not? Scattered Shots: Pets for raidingHunters, if you need a pet to take along with you to Ulduar, look no further.
Val'anyr explained
In an unusual move, Blizzard has spelled out exactly how the proc on Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings works. There are probably one or two of you who consider it a spoiler, so I'll put it after the cut.
