level-80
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Controlling multiple minions and how it might work
We were lucky enough to get an Azerothian ton (they're like twice the weight of normal tons, don't you know) of news about Wrath of the Lich King at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational this weekend, and hidden in the Death Knight hands on, there's a ton of great information about the way the class' summons will work. Most of the summons seem to be in the Unholy tree -- Death Knights will not only be able to summon the ghouls we heard about earlier, but will also be able to bring down a gargoyle and summon an insect swarm. But the ghouls are what we're most interested in -- Army of the Dead is a level 80 spell (with a 10 minute cooldown!) that will summon a "legion of your best ghouls to fight by your side."And our question is: how is this going to work? Obviously the ghouls won't actually work as pets as in the way Hunter or Warlock pets work, but surely they'll have a little more control implemented than the Druid's treants or the Priest's shadowfiends, right? As far as I can remember, we've never actually controlled multiple pets before -- are we going to have one bar to control all three with, or will we mark a target as they're summoned? It would seem that with a tanking class like the Death Knight, more focused pets would be a necessity in some cases.Or maybe our ghouls will be as mindless as ever, and after we hit a button to summon, they'll just head for the closest thing that looks like it might have brains to eat. Hopefully the Death Knight's ghouls will be a bit more interesting than that (there was a rumor a while back that you'd be able to raise your fallen group members as ghouls, though I don't see that spell in the hands on), and if not, I guess there's always other Hero classes to improve upon the pet mechanics.
Poll: How many 70s do you have?
Drew sent us a question he wanted us to ask, and I'd like to know the answer to it as well: How many level 70 characters do you have? Blizzard has made changes to the leveling curve to make it easier to get alts up the ladder, but how many players are actually taking multiple characters all the way to 70?I'd also like to know, in the comments below, whether they're different classes or the same class -- I suspect that of the people who have multiple 70s, there are more folks who take the same class all the way up than we expect. And the other question is whether you're going to take all these 70s to level 80 or not -- will the Death Knight take up most of your time, or do you plan to get everyone at 70 up ten more levels in the future?%Poll-16003%
Level 80 legendary tabard spotted
Like Bigfoot, it's so elusive that photographs are rare, but some WoW players have caught a glimpse of what may be an upcoming PvP reward from Wrath. Or maybe it's just a bug. Or -- and I have a nickel bet on this one -- it's a nice little prank Blizzard's playing on us in return for our snooping around for information on the expansion. Whatever it is, though, it has left at least one footprint. We've gotten a few tips that upon inspecting a player's Tabard of Summer Flames, the Horde side reward from the Shards of Ahune quest, the tabard's tooltip describes a very different item called Tabard of the Victor. Even though the tabard's design matched the Midsummer quest reward, the description was quite different. First of all, the Tabard of the Victor requires Level 80, which was our first clue that it was probably not meant for pre-Wrath eyes. The tabard binds on pick-up, provides 250 Armor, +20 Stamina, +10 to All Resistances. Upon equipping it, your resilience rating improves by 15 and it increases movement speed and life regeneration rate. The funniest part -- and what makes me think this could be a prank by our dear game designers -- is the tabard's use is described as: "Use: Show how heroic you are! (55 Secs Cooldown)" and the bottom line description is, "The Mark of a True Hero." It seems that perhaps the glitch was caused by an error in the cache because when it was cleared the tabard's description correctly matched the Summer Flames tabard.[Thanks, Jagoex and James Vertovec!]
Preparing for 80
I have four level 70 characters that I've decided to level to 80, my two horde 70's (tauren warrior, orc shaman) and my draenei warrior and shaman. (I may or may not level my human warrior, and if I get my BE paladin to 70 by then, he'll be in the running to go the distance as well.) As a result, I'm playing catch up with them... making sure their professions are maxed, trying to make sure they have if not great gear than the best gear possible (I know it will be replaced, but doing those initial quests in the new zones is always easier with better gear), supplies of netherweave for when the new first aid comes out, that kind of thing. I was caught unaware the last time we had an expansion as far as what was needed to make things easier, I don't intend to be so caught again.
Forum Post of the Day: Burning Crusade constructive criticism
With Burning Crusade winding down as we get closer to WoTLK, Scarpa of the Bleeding Hollow server had the bright idea of starting a thread to do a little bit of post-mortem on the Burning Crusade: Praise the stuff you liked, and offer constructive critcism on stuff you didn't like, in hopes that it can be improved in the expansion. There's a lot of good commentary in there on raids, arenas, badge gear, and other stuff. Some of my favorite criticism included Quaesitor's observation that a lot of reputation gear becomes automatically obsolete, because by the time you have the reputation (or the special tokens) to purchase it, you're too high level for it and probably have something better from a quest or dungeon anyway. I also tend to agree with many that they could tone down the trash a bit in raid dungeons. It's hard to clear the same trash over and over again every raid when you want to get to the generally much more interesting and lucrative boss fights. As far as likes, I like that the reputation PvP sets mean you can get a good hand up to start PvP, then gradually work your way up through Honor gear and into the Arena sets. I am also glad to see many in the thread were big fans of badge gear. I've always liked the concept, it makes for a good reason to run dungeons and means I always feel like I'm working toward something instead of waiting forever for one certain thing that won't drop. It's a great idea and a good positive thread that has even gotten some blue attention, so I'd say it's a perfect change for you to head in and deliver your own critiques and praises before BC is just a speed bump on the way to level 80.
Video, interview paint detailed picture of AoC raids
There's a two-pronged assault of Age of Conan raid content information at Ten Ton Hammer -- a 20 minute raid presentation video, and an interview with raid boss scripter Eirik Munthe. Both the presentation and the interview occurred at the AoC launch event in Oslo last week, and both were rich with information. It looks like the endgame content has some incremental innovations just like the lower-level stuff; that should make the hardcore crowd happy.In the presentation, bits and pieces of one of AoC's level 80, 24-person raids were shown to an audience with live commentary by Game Director Gaute Godager. Multiple bosses were shown, such as a poison-leaking monstrosity and two demons -- one ice, one fire -- who gain power when standing near one another. Godager explained the philosophy behind raiding and epic gear, and using collision detection in battle strategies. He revealed that raid groups will be able to call it a night halfway through a raid and finish any time they want (so long as it's before the raid expiration date -- one week after its start date). There was also a brief series of clips of a massive PvP siege.In the interview with Eirik Munthe we learned that Funcom put together strike teams consisting of designers, scripters, and writers. Each strike team focused its attentions completely on a 20-level span; for example, Munthe's team worked on content for player levels 60 - 80. Munthe described the challenges he faced when scripting encounters with some of AoC's unique features such as collision detection and CoE (cone of effect) healing in mind.
And the first EQ2 player to reach level 80 is...
Stratics reports that the first player to reach level 80 on EverQuest II's live servers is the Monk Taucher of the guild Second Dawn on the Najena server. The word is that Taucher reached level 80 at 7:37 AM EST on Thursday the 15th of November; that's approximately 36 hours after Rise of Kunark -- the expansion that raised the level cap from 70 to 80 -- went live.Taucher won a $100 reward from the community for being the first to level 80. He wrote a couple of brief posts in the contest's stickied thread at the EQ2Flames forum. He said in his post announcing his accomplishment, "I'm sure I'll have a lot to say when I wake up at some point, but right now I've been playing for pretty much 39 hours straight and I just want to go to bed."This is not the first time a power gamer has blown everyone away with a marathon play session to reach a new level cap. Back when The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft came out, a 24-year-old Frenchman progressed from level 60 to level 70 in just 28 hours with the help of his guild mates.
Death Knights and legacy content
Merdrah had an intriguing question on the forums a few days ago: will Death Knights get a callout for Nefarian? During the Nefarian fight in Blackwing Lair, each class gets called out by the boss, and the raid has to deal with abilities that define that class (ie for Warlocks, each Warlock "accidentally" summons two Infernals that the raid has to AoE down). Bornakk, kind of surprisingly, says that yes, Blizzard will "probably" add in callouts for Death Knights.And that's interesting, because it means that, at least right now, Blizzard is committed to implementing Death Knights throughout the entire game. Though they're only a Hero Class, Death Knights are the first "new class" that WoW has ever seen, and so we'll definitely see some interesting changes throughout Azeroth. Every class has their moment to shine in each instance, and so if Blizzard wants to give Death Knights their chance to step up in even the "old" instances like Blackwing Lair, lots of changes are probably coming.Of course, one factor of this, however, is that Death Knights won't start at level one-- they'll be starting at a higher level when first rolled. From what we know, Blizzard hasn't actually chosen that level yet (remember as well that when Death Knights appear ingame, the highest level will be 80), but if they're planning on changing around a level 60 instance to include Death Knights, odds are that you'll have at least twenty levels to go on your Death Knight before you can reach level 80.
Breakfast Topic: Leveling to 80
A new expansion is coming our way, and with it comes an additional ten levels of zones, quests, dungeons, and other content. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well, maybe... While I'm looking forward to seeing new people and places added to my favorite game, I can't say I'm terribly excited about leveling all of my characters up to 80. In fact, it sounds like a task with the potential to be extremely tedious. But for those of us still wanting to play, there's no option other than leveling up to 80 -- and if you're an alt-a-holic like me, leveling up to 80 again, and again, and again... So today I ask you: with level 80 on the horizon, do you look forward to the leveling experience, or dread it?
