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PC Zone has Wrath PvP teaser info
PC Zone magazine has an interview with WoW Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan. In it Kaplan reveals details about Wrath of the Lich King PvP warfare as well as the epic feel players will experience when first entering Northrend. Sounds great, huh?Unfortunately, you have to buy the magazine today to get the entire interview. They have only released a snippet of it online to send us into a frenzy of anticipation. What we learn from this sneak peek is that the Northrend PvP zone, Lake Wintergrasp, will be about the size of Westfall and will be all PvP. No PvE objectives in it at all. It will also be a static zone, not instanced. He also mentions that it will have destructible buildings and siege weapons, which we knew from his Leipzig interviews. Not much new there other than the size comparison to Westfall.Kaplan also talked about learning from the Hellfire Peninsula experience. This entry point into the first expansion wasn't epic enough. The design team wants to raise the bar for Northrend. We know from earlier interviews that entry into the expansion will be split. The Alliance will grab their sword and the Horde will get their own damn battlecry and both head into either Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra. How Blizzard is going to raise the bar is still a mystery.Argh! More infoz, please! If anyone gets their hands on the magazine, send us a tip with details. We'll happily give you credit.EDIT: Clarified entry points for both factions.[via World of Raids]%Gallery-5525%
WoW logo gets completely frozen
If you haven't visited the forums or the official site in a while, you'll probably not have noticed that the ice we'd seen before on the logo has now overtaken it. Not too surprising-- the background on the forums and the homepage has changed as well, and considering that Winter's Veil is here, odds are that Blizzard is just getting a little seasonal with their graphics.Or are they? The original ice showed up more than a month ago-- way back, according to our readers, when Wrath of the Lich King was announced in August. And so, despite the candy canes, it's hard not to wonder if this signals a turning point in the WoW universe. We've still got the Sunwell coming before the expansion, but is there a chance that this icy winter could be here to stay? Northrend ahoy?Thanks, Joene!
World events and how to run them
There's a discussion going down on the forums about what many consider to be the most exciting part of MMO games, including World of Warcraft-- world events. As many drawbacks as there were to the AQ events, no one can argue that they didn't affect everyone in the World-- everyone was able to step up and help the war effort, and even though everyone didn't fit in Silithus, everyone came across some of the invaders that spread across the world. While the Naxx event was that way as well, we haven't really seen anything else on that scale even in this, the largest MMO ever. And let's not forget that since Burning Crusade was released, we're dealing with a lot more people-- there are huge amounts of the population who have never seen a world event yet.Which makes it all the more likely that we will see a big one for Wrath of the Lich King. Bornakk says that while Blizzard realizes that a lot needs to go into creating a big world event, they've also learned a lot from Brewfest and the Hallow's End events about how to both tune the scale and get players involved. But Blizzard still wants to do a big one, and from what we heard at BlizzCon, they're going to come up with a reason for Alliance and Horde to head up to Northrend after Arthas.My guess? Arthas is going to become a threat again-- he'll invade Undercity, or bomb Darnassus, or somehow attack our world. And for the first time that I can think of since the game has started, we're going to actually lose something-- an NPC, a city (at the very least, Dalaran) or something else. For all of the fighting going on in the world of Warcraft, it hasn't yet changed that much. And I think that with the next expansion, Blizzard is looking to have Arthas shake things up a bit.
WoW 3v3 tournament ended, videos from the finals
The Dreamhack Winter festival in Sweden ended last week, and video footage of the Electronic Sports League World of Warcraft 3v3 arena tournament that took place right there in freezing Northrend Northern Europe is now online. The series went right down to the wire in a best-of-five between MoB-TurtleForce and team Pandemic. The videos are a little blurry (see below), but the grand final is definitely worth watching if you're at all interested in seeing competitive gaming in an MMO, with five extremely close games and amazing teamwork. Check them out! As we covered previously, the tournament itself arose from the ashes of the deceased WSVG, and whilst the high quality feed of the event was broken, it's nice to see it went off without *too* many hitches. And it gets better -- the commentary was almost passable.
Potential traffic jams in WotLK
Adding up all the traffic jams in World of Warcraft would probably make an insightful list-- I can remember some crazy days in Ironforge, a huge mess near the battlegrounds when they first opened, a lot of clustering during the AQ World Event, and anyone who logged on in the early days of Burning Crusade knows that Hellfire Peninsula was a laggy mess as well.But Blizzard claims, once again, that they've finally learned their lesson, and in Wrath of the Lich King, things will be different. Shattrath will be designed to stay up in the air (even if landed on by thousands of players), and when we played the expansion at BlizzCon earlier this year, we already saw one way Blizzard plans to split the load: Horde and Alliance players are starting at different zones on different sides of the continent.I doubt things will be perfect-- it seems like players always think of some way to ruin even the best laid plans of Blues and men. But we can say this about Blizzard-- they are visibly learning from every iteration they release. It'll be really interesting to see what they've come up with to improve upon the expansion experience in Northrend.
More Wrath screenshots
Two new screenshots have appeared in the Wrath of the Lich King gallery over at WoW Europe. The above looks like another shot from Westguard Keep. This is another shot from New Agamand, a Forsaken town in the Howling Fjord. While neither shot is offering anything we haven't seen before, they are definitely serving to tease us pretty badly. %Gallery-5525%
Tigole interviewed by Warcry
Warcry posted an interview with Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan (WoW's lead designer) last Friday, and while he doesn't reveal anything super new, he does confirm a few directions Blizzard is headed in with the game-- away from grinds, opening up more endgame content for players, and incorporating daily quests into more facets of player advancement.Kaplan does say that Blizzard thought the progression rate for Burning Crusade was done well, and that they are looking at getting even more players involved in endgame, which, with the coming of Zul'Aman and the lowering of the Heroic reputations, is something we've observed before. He says also that Blizzard is planning to involve reputation more with daily quests, while at the same time making sure it's not a grind (hopefully this will mean gaining reputation from daily quests like the new ones-- attaching instance runs or battleground fights to daily quests, with reputation as a reward). And finally, Kaplan hints at lore in Wrath of the Lich King, specifically saying that "Humans, Dwarves, Tauren, and Trolls will all have their storylines developed further" in Northrend.Sounds fun. He doesn't give any indication of where they are in the development process for the expansion (he does work for Blizzard, after all), but it definitely does sound like Blizzard is hard at work hammering WotLK together.
Hidden Wrath site discovered in Blizzard newsletter
World of Raids found a hidden link in Blizzard's latest newsletter. That link has led them to a special page on the official Wrath of the Lich King site that you can't find on the expansion's main page.On this special page is an extensive exploration of how the Warcraft team designed the Northrend 5-man instance, Utgarde Keep in the Howling Fjord zone. First they delve into the story elements that ramp up to your introduction to the "impenetrable fortress in the side of a mountain." Upon arriving by boat to Daggercap Bay, you will see the damage wrought by the enormous, native Viking race and their proto-dragon mounts.Overland quests from there will tell the story of how these Vrykul have used Utgarde Keep as a staging area to wage a battle against what they see as an invading force of Alliance and Horde.The page goes on to explain other design decisions that will play out in Utgarde: as a "starter" dungeon, it's designed to be finished quickly; it will be more mission based due to the popularity of Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass in Burning Crusade; and you will get glimpses of the end boss before finally encountering him.
No new battleground until WotLK
Nethaera has confirmed that there will be no new battlegrounds revealed prior to the release of Wrath of the Lich King, much to the chagrin of PvP'ers everywhere. Although players have previously expressed interest in having more choice, Blizzard has voiced concern about the effects that a fifth choice might have on queues. Hopefully they have some tricks up their sleeves for combating this when the highly anticipated new battleground arrives via the expansion. Although this is a bit disappointing, it is hardly unexpected, and there are so many upcoming positive changes that it's hard to be a sad panda for long. Currently, the devs are focused on improving Alterac Valley for patch 2.3 and creating new content for WotLK, which will include an outdoor PvP zone, Lake Wintergrasp. Following in the wake of Halaa's undeniable success, this zone will boast siege warfare, and many other innovations in world PvP. As for what the new battleground will be like? I'd still love to see an Aldor vs. Scryers battleground; and as much as we all love to see new content drop, we can at least try to satiate ourselves knowing that what we will be getting will continue to advance PvP as we know it. Now; a little less sad panda face please!
The skies of Northrend
One of the latest screenshots of Wrath of the Lich King shows a pink-colored sky over Northrend, with some possible cloud-moving effect I haven't seen in WoW before. When I look at this screenshot I imagine all those clouds roiling in the sky and I wonder if Northrend couldn't possibly beat Outland in most interesting skies after all. It's a tough comparison -- Outland planets floating above the horizon are hard to beat, whereas Northrend will be limited to a more terrestrial skyscape. When The Burning Crusade first came out, I remember being impressed that the skies had any animation at all, whereas now, of course, the bar has been raised much much higher. Still, there's a lot that the skies of Northrend could offer us, especially if Blizzard were to go crazy with clouds and colors inspired by the Aurora Borealis. What do you expect of future WoW skies? Do you hope for ever-increasing complexity, or do you think simple and realistic is always best?
New zones in old Azeroth
Dreadly of Nerz'hul asks a question that I'd like to know the answer to, also-- will we ever see new zones in Old Azeroth? I can't say I'm as concerned about this as I was a week or so ago-- the revelation that we'll finally see some new content in Dustwallow Marsh has me content (so to speak) about midlevel content for a while. But it would be interesting to know if Blizzard has any other plans to add on to old Azeroth (either by creating new zones like the Draenei and Blood Elf starting zones, or by developing existing zones like Mount Hyjal and Gilneas).Bornakk, always the spoilsport, says what you would expect: while it would be cool, there are no plans right now. He also says, however, that Blizzard is "more excited" about working on new continents, like Outland or Northrend, at the moment. As usual, it comes down to the player base-- because Blizzard sees so many characters at 70, they're "more excited" about expanding the endgame than the midgame.Bad? Good? We do know this: Blizzard has a history of paying attention to what their players do, not necessarily what they ask for. When Molten Core was packed with guilds every weekend, they made more 40 man raids. When Karazhan got super popular, they made Zul'Aman. And hopefully, when Dustwallow Marsh is overrun by players running alts through the middle of the game, Blizzard will finally see how badly players are scrambling for new content in the "old" game.
What's going in Dalaran's old space?
Malikoi generously offers to buy Dalaran's old location over on the forums, and says he plans to create a new city, complete with flight path, graveyard, and even an arena. It's not like the Kirin Tor are going to need it any more, right? They're moving the magical city of Dalaran up to Northrend, so Malikoi should be able to pick up the old land.Bornakk, however, says the Kirin Tor are not selling the land, which of course begs the question: what are they going to do with it? They could only take part of Dalaran up north, and leave part of it there in the Alterac Mountains (to serve as a new quest hub for lowbies, perhaps?). Or maybe Dalaran will have to fly up north under duress and what's left behind in Alterac will be the remains of some battle the mages had to fight?It will be kind of a shame to not have that purple dome there any more (and it would be cheating if Blizzard just left it there when they've already told us the mages have made the decision to move the whole city). There's a lot of wonder to be found in Azeroth, but I can't think of any other experience that has matched up in exactly the same way to turning a corner from Hillsbrad and seeing a gigantic pink dome in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully whatever replaces it will inspire that same sense of magical amazement.
Forum Post of the Day: Dalaran and faction animosity
When Wrath launches next year huge changes are in store for the people and places of Azeroth. The greatest reason I love this game is because of the compelling storyline underneath it all. We not only have great characters and plot lines to interact with, those plot lines progress, which is not always the case in an MMO. Dalaran, for instance, which has been sealed away for generations, will be opened up as the new capital city for those traveling to Northrend.But some are not happy with the prospect of another neutral city akin to Shattrath. As Sorun of The Venture Co sees it, shifting Dalaran from an Alliance city to a neutral city would only harm the lore. He says that the factions want to hate each other, want to be pitted head-to-head at every turn, and certain elements in TBC and elsewhere have shown a trend toward cooperation he doesn't like at all. Drysc mentions that no one has yet confirmed that the city will be neutral, and Neth makes a valid point on the subject later on in the thread: I think it's a bit too early to be worried or upset about what is and isn't going to be in Dalaran. When we are further along and have information on it, we'll share it with you all. In the meantime, remember, Dalaran is filled with the world's most powerful magic users. While they work together, they are also filled with many different personalities and more importantly, have a bit of a crisis on their hands by the name of Malygos. I am going to hazard a guess that the Kirin Tor are going to be using all the available resources they can to survive the onslaught.Irregardless of whether or not Dalaran ends up a neutral city, the forum thread raises an interesting topic: do players really want to hate members of the opposite faction? I know there is plenty of rivalry between the Horde and the Alliance, some created by the game itself and some created by the players. But I personally play characters of both factions and can't really say I prefer one over the other. Maybe I'm in the minority, I'm not sure. Perhaps you can help out here. Do you prefer hatred and animosity between the factions, or is cooperation more your thing? %Poll-3998%
The Missing Diplomat might be found in Northrend
We've talked quite a bit about Sylvanas and her history with Arthas in the past, but let's not forget that there is another woman Arthas has a nice long history with on the opposite faction: Jaina Proudmoore. Jaina's biggest moment in WoW is probably the Missing Diplomat quest-- after a long goose chase to find out where the lost King of Stormwind is, all you do is end up finding the man who betrayed him, and then Jaina thanks you and wishes you farewell. Wha? Players have always though the quest ended a little too quick, and Blizzard has admitted that they plan to continue the storyline at a later day.As in, during the next expansion. When a player asks what happened to Jaina and the Missing Diplomat, Drysc mysteriously says "Northrend holds many secrets, and many answers." So it's a good guess that we'll find out at least another piece of the puzzle to where the Lost King of Stormwind has gone.And it's also a pretty good guess that Jaina will be there, somehow. Despite the fact that she's pretty much the strongest leader the Alliance has, she's also pretty buddy-buddy with Thrall, and she's got that history with Arthas-- they were friends (and possibly romantically linked) before he went all power-crazy and possessed. There's no question that some of the answers we uncover in Northrend, whatever they may be, will involve Jaina Proudmoore.
New Wrath Alliance town screenshots
Blizzard posted two new Wrath of the Lich King screenshots today. One looks like a lighthouse next to an Alliance port town. The other appears to be the port town in question with a ship building yard. It's hard to tell where these were taken. The only Alliance town we know of so far in Northrend is Valgarde, settled by Humans and Dwarves left behind.But the screenshots we've seen of Valgarde look different than this one. Maybe a new Alliance town is to be revealed soon.We've added the 2 new screenshots to the gallery below and have added 11 more new screenshots as well. We'll continue to grow our Northrend gallery as the expansion draws closer. %Gallery-5525%
A face in Searing Gorge
Folks are saying this has been around since release, but I've never seen this before, either-- Serevarno found a face in the landscape of Searing Gorge. You can really only see it on the minimap, and while it is pretty messy, it's too clean to have happened by chance. The image almost looks like that "Andre the Giant has a posse" picture, doesn't it?Bornakk jokes that the Titans left their face there before heading off to another world, but while that's probably not the case (Titans aren't that grubby), it is interesting that he should say the Titans leave their images sitting around-- we've already seen Titan statues appear in the videos for Northrend, and it's been confirmed there's a Titan instance up there. Leaving their images sitting around is definitely something they are wont to do.But of course it's doubtful this has anything to do with the lore-- at most, it's just a developer hiding an Easter Egg, and at least, it's just a coincidence. Still neat, though.
Let Malygos go to it, we didn't want magic anyway
We've already heard, as you may know by now, that Malygos, the blue dragon aspect, will return in Wrath of the Lich King, and, as the Guardian of Magic, is supposed to be a little unhappy at all the Mages running around. Malygos' big thing is that he wants to keep magic from the mortal races-- he doesn't trust them to use it without destroying the world. The only thing that's kept him from doing something crazy is the fact that he hasn't had a dragonflight for a while-- Deathwing wiped them out, more or less.But in Wrath, Malygos is back, and so is his mind, and so is his dragonflight. The Blue Dragonflight is returning (thanks to Alexstrazsa's help), and as Metzen told us at BlizzCon, Malygos is waking up, looking around, and seeing all these little mortal players wielding magic like it was a game (a massively multiplayer game, more appropriately). And so he's not likely going to be happy with Mages when we arrive in Northrend.To which Takeru says: maybe Malygos is right. Maybe we shouldn't be using magic for our own purposes-- look what it did to the elves. Non-mage players are even saying we should give up the Mages to Malygos anyway-- what did they ever do for us, right? (err, besides make water and food and port us around and polymorph our enemies...)At any rate, it probably won't matter-- Malygos will probably bring the war to us, and if he doesn't, then the Kirin Tor (also in Northrend) will probably bring the fight to him by recruiting us to do it. Either way, we'll likely find the Aspect of the Blue Dragonflight on the wrong end of our pointy sticks.
Official Wrath of the Lich King forums are live
Late this afternoon, Blizzard created an official forum for their next expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King. Both the U.S. Wrath forum and the European Wrath forum are just now filling up with the usual questions, and some are already getting blue responses.From the U.S. forums: CM Nethaera confirms one new hero class is planned for each expansion CM Bornakk confirms the level restriction on using flying mounts in Northrend has not be set yet (maybe L78, maybe not) CM Bornakk implies that initial travel to Northrend will by boat and zeppelin The European forums have plenty to offer as well: CM Vaneras has moved the all things announced about Northrend post to this forum and confirmed today that Ulduar is a dwarven instance that will be accessible by both Horde and Alliance CM Vaneras also moved the all things announced about Death Knights post to this forum Forum VIP Schwick has stickied his round up of all confirmed dev quotes about the Wrath expansion and put it at the top of the forum Keep your eyes on those forums and on WoW Insider for future news about the expansion.
Map of Utgarde Keep, and what we know about it
Well this is exciting. MMO Champion points us to WoW Wiki, where some enterprising person has assembled a map of Utgarde Keep, the first instance in Wrath of the Lich King. The map is apparently based on one published in Games for Windows, but as it appears on WoW Wiki, it's a little empty. Let's see if we can't clear some things up-- I've added letters to the map above, and below, I've described what is probably there, based on my own impressions and what we've heard elsewhere.A. This is the main entrance, and as I said before, it consists of Vrykul metalworkers and forgemasters. The big firey graphic is the Forge, which has three "walls" that only open up after the mobs are defeated there. After you clear all three walls, you head around to the left, and find...B. Dragonhandlers and "Trained Proto-drakes," which appeared to be Blue Dragons. Draw your own conclusions there. This area is a stable type of place, which explains the stalls.
Forum Post of the Day: Frost magi in Northrend
Nayami over on Area 52 makes a good point in a recent thread on the official Mage forums about how magi must usually respec depending on which raid they're running:"So I was talking with a few random raiders on my server, and I was informed that SSC and TK has a large amount of frost immunities? I mean, I can accept the fact that fire does more damage than frost overall. That is the way it is and ever shall be. But I liked Frost because of the pvp viability and utility it brough [sic] outside of raid bosses and still managed to hold its own in terms of DPS. You weren't going to top any meters but you didnt suck. But Immunities? I dread to see how many things will be frost immune in Northrend."Magi switching their spec depending on what they're raiding is nothing new -- back in the old days of Molten Core, you had to spec into Frost or Arcane. Other raid instances such as BWL, ZG and Naxx did allow Fire spec magi to raid, but it seems like raid mobs having immunity to certain schools of magic is a step in the wrong direction.Nayami (and others in that thread) also point out something I hadn't thought about before -- what will Frost spec magi do when they get to Northrend? There are bound to be many mobs immune to Frost spells in the icy roof of the world. Is it fair to make a certain class respec this often in order to DPS efficiently? And when was the last time anyone saw a mob that was immune to Shadow spells? Warlocks and shadow priests certainly haven't found any, as far as I can tell.Previously on Forum Post of the Day...
