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The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladin secrets for defeating Nefarian
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. The true final boss of Cataclysm's first tier is a hotly debated topic. With three different raid instances available at launch, the end boss in each raid zone could be eligible for the top spot. While most people will agree that Al'Akir is only a secondary opponent, Nefarian and Cho'gall are both old and powerful enemies. Cho'gall has been covered in the WoW comic books with great detail, while Nefarian is so common in WoW that we've already killed him once. Sinestra could even make her claim for the throne, as she is a difficult, heroic-only boss. In my opinion, Nefarian is the final boss of tier 11. He's Deathwing's son, which makes him public enemy #2. During the encounter, we're faced with not one but two dragons, plus all the doomfire and adds that we can handle. The Nefarian encounter is the type of fight that I would've hated before Cataclysm. Now, we have AoE abilities to handle the incredible raid damage and the mana management tools to keep ourselves from running dry.
Know Your Lore: The VanCleefs, the rise of the Defias, and Westfall
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Hope? Is that what I was supposed to feel when I saw my father decapitated by your henchmen? Hope is a cruel joke, played upon us by a harsh and uncaring world. There is no Hope, there is only Vanessa. Vanessa VanCleef. A little girl watches her father's demise, manages to escape, survives, and then dedicates her life to rebuilding everything her father stood for. It sounds like the sort of story heroes are made of, doesn't it? Ordinarily it would be, but the villains in this particular story are the nobility of Stormwind, including its king, Varian Wrynn -- and heroes just like you. The story of the Defias Brotherhood begins during the First War, when the orcish Horde first burst forth from the Dark Portal into Azeroth with the help of Medivh. From there, they launched an assault on the kingdom of Stormwind. With the help of a cleverly mind-controlled assassin, the Horde took out King Llane Wrynn, and with his death, the city crumbled. Lord Anduin Lothar, forced to make a decision, led the people of Stormwind and young prince Varian Wrynn north, retreating to the kingdom of Lordaeron to recoup and grieve. The once mighty city of Stormwind lay in pieces.
Know Your Lore: Blackwing Descent and the Prestor legacy
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Dragons in World of Warcraft have long been reclusive creatures of mystery; they didn't generally interact with other creatures of the world, with few exceptions. Until the launch of WoW, few chose to speak to the mortal races. The red dragon Korialstrasz was a notable exception who interacted with humans and others quite frequently, even holding a place on several councils in organizations like the Kirin Tor and Silvermoon. However, Korialstrasz took mortal form and the name Krasus when doing so and was careful not to reveal his identity. The same applies for other dragons prior to World of Warcraft, and even in WoW itself. Chronormu, or Chromie as she's more typically called, often interacts with mortals on behalf of the Bronze Dragonflight. As time has passed in game, however, more and more dragon are interacting with mortals in dragon form, no longer feeling the need to disguise themselves or keep their identities a secret. But once upon a time, this ability to disguise and take another form wreaked havoc among the human kingdoms. It all started with a man named Daval Prestor.
15 Minutes of Fame: Film follows fantasy of fighting Onyxia
Work Warning: Brief profanity in the video. From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. Just as Azeroth prepares to explode in all its cataclysmic glory, films on gaming seem to be exploding onto the scene. There's the documentary from LFG Productions (many of you may have seen them filming at BlizzCon and our reader meetup last month) that will be following leading raiding guild <Blood Legion> in a full-court press into Cataclysm. There's The Raid, another take on raiding life that we also saw at BlizzCon, and the "zanier" take on gaming culture of Gamers. In contrast to all those documentaries comes the short narrative film /afk. This live-action film, featuring extensive in-game footage produced by a whole host of well known machinimators -- Gigi, Teagen the Rogue, Baron Soosdon, the list goes on -- tells the tale of a WoW gamer whose psychiatrist informs him that he is gaming-addicted and should delete his character. Game over? Not quite. "The problem is that he always had this dream to solo Onyxia," explains creator Benjamin Dressler, "and he doesn't intend to leave without reaching that goal." /afk debuts on YouTube later this week with a unique, in-game event that literally "unlocks" the premiere. On Nov. 19, Aventhor, the night elf character from the movie, will appear on Alleria (EU-A) at 7 p.m. GMT and Drenden (US-A) at 5 p.m. CST. Find him and unlock "/afk"! Players must find Aventhor on each server and perform his quests to unlock the movie on YouTube. For more details on the premiere event, see the video at the end of the article -- and join us after the break for a peek behind the scenes with creator Benjamin Dressler.
The OverAchiever: Pimp thy ride
As you've probably already read, players will be able to purchase 310 percent flying speed from trainers in Cataclysm. While this is good news for people who hate raiding, think arena was shat into existence by the most sociopathic among the development team, or spent School of Hard Knocks trying to drown themselves in the nearest body of water, the bad news is that buying your way to super-fast flying will run you a cool 5,000 gold. Outrageous, says this dyed-in-the-wool cheapskate. For anyone else who'd rather die than part with a centavo of hard-earned gold, the good news is that having even a single 310 percent flyer in your stable is enough to get you the skill free. Fortunately, there's plenty of time to snag yourself one of these coveted mounts before Cataclysm hits, and just as fortunately, each mount is the reward (or subject) of an achievement. Strategy guides for obtaining each of the remaining 310 percent mounts is definitely beyond the scope of this article (although I'll probably devote an edition of OverAchiever to nabbing the Rusted Proto-Drake, above) but we can take a visual tour of the fast flyers that any hard-working player can still get in Wrath of the Lich King.
Know Your Lore: The Black Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. The history of Azeroth, as well as its origins, is often confusing and lacking in solid information. However, there are a few facts that are well known – once upon a time somewhere in the universe, there were great creatures known as the Titans. The Titans were an odd race of beings that were obsessed with creating order out of chaos. They traveled from world to world, setting things up so that life would progress in an orderly, structured fashion. Sort of like those people you can hire to organize your kitchens and closets. Enter Azeroth. The Titans came to Azeroth and muddled with it, creating order out of the races that existed on it and tidying everything up, but there was a larger problem that took some intensive cleaning. Ancient creatures known as the Old Gods decided they'd really like to take over the nice chunk of rock -- and where the Titans were concerned with creating order and structure, the Old Gods wanted just the opposite. The Old Gods wanted chaos and destruction where the Titans wanted order and structure, and there was a great war between the two. In the end the Titans prevailed, but they discovered something that was more than a little disturbing – they couldn't simply kill the Old Gods. The Old Gods had integrated themselves too deeply into Azeroth, and destroying the Old Gods meant destroying Azeroth itself. This presented a problem, but the Titans had a solution that they decided would work – they imprisoned the Old Gods deep beneath the earth, leaving them there to rot. After all of this, the Titans decided to put in some safeguards to make sure the planet would remain running smoothly, orderly, and without any grabby tentacled interference from below.
The Queue: An unrelated Q
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I'm in charge of the Queue train today, which means for the first time this week, this is a Star Trek free zone. Admittedly, I can't shake the obsession with the letter Q, so we're just taking things a different route today. Behold: Q. Darasen asked... "Perhaps this is better answered by the Priest community but thought I''d ask here. I have been leveling a healing priest through the dungeon finder and was curious about the proper use of "Power Word Shield". I use the spell constantly as it is very mana efficient. I have had some players tell me I should not use it though. A warrior told me he thought the shield kept him from gaining rage (he was unsure) and a Paladin told me that he couldn't get mana back when shielded. So should it be used regularly or not?"
The Queue: Oh no, not again
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. This is The Queue that doesn't end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn't end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn't end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn't end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn't end.* dpoyesac asked... "Every time I kill his son I forget to ask High Overlord Saurfang when the doors to the next wing will be down. Soon?"
WoW Moviewatch: Interactive Horde Onyxia Attunement Chain
Maybe it speaks to the nostalgic Horde members more than the rest of us, but I think the Interactive Horde Onyxia Attunement Chain is probably Wowcrendor's best work yet. It has the same subtle sense of humor shown in his previous work, but then takes it up a notch by speaking to one of the single most prominent, painful moments in any Horde member's life. Like so much of Wowcrendor's work, it's not only the in-game references that make his work relay so much truth. It's also the subtle nod to universal experiences. (For example, my favorite part is when you choose to not do the quest. If you go down that path, your guild leader yells at you to get your act together. C'mon, haven't we all been there at one point or another?) As a note, make sure you do not simply play this video. The experience is best if you visit Wowcrendor's start page for this adventure. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
The World of Warcraft in numbers
Business Management has a really interesting graphic up (that they say came partly from Eurogamer.net, but I didn't see it over there) that breaks down WoW "by the numbers." It features an interesting series of stats about the game, in what I call an Oatmeal-style format, everything from number of players and items (30,000) to number of locations (1400) and the most commonly looted item every day (Frostweave). I think these stats all came from a few different places -- from a talk given at Austin GDC last year, to the toplist over on the official WoW site (of course, that chart is constantly updated, so Onyxia wasn't always the deadliest mob, and Frostweave wasn't always the most looted. But it is cool to see all of the numbers stacked up in a row in such a stylish way. And 3.6 million pieces of Saronite Ore turned into 3 million Saronite bars? If that's true, why am I paying so much for it at the AH? 192 quests completed per second is pretty wild, too. That's like three entire Oracles reputation grinds (give or take a few dailies), all completed in this second. And this one. And this one.
Blizzard and how they deal with ninjas
Wojtek sent us this thread in which he posted a long series of emails between him and Blizzard about the ninja of an Onyxia Drake. There's a lot of back and forth, but eventually, the bottom line is that Blizzard was not able to help him, whether that's because he didn't have the information right, they couldn't find what they needed in the chat logs, or they just didn't want to. Later on, the thread is locked, and Wojtek is given the usual feedback address for the GM actions. So what does all this mean? We've heard in the past that Blizzard will occasionally help with ninjas, and we've even heard unofficially that if you get the main looter in a PuG raid to state the looting conditions ahead of time, Blizzard can go back, look that up, and then reward loot based on who really deserves it. But of course, all of that is unofficial, and there are so many variations and issues in situations like these that there can't really be a hard and fast rule -- sometimes Blizzard can help, sometimes they can't.
Phat Loot Phriday: Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade
Taveena recommended this one in last week's comments, so here you go. A big, bad sword. Name: Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory) Type: Epic Two-hand sword Damage/Speed: 715 - 1074 / 3.50 (255.6 DPS) Attributes: +146 Strength, +179 Stamina Improves critical strike rating by 69 and expertise by 103 %Gallery-33600%
Author of World of Warcraft and Philosophy interviewed
World of Warcraft and Philosophy got released a little while back -- it's a book by Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger that examines WoW-related topics like roleplaying and the Corrupted Blood plague, and ties them into philsophical ideas and thinking. TechFlash has now posted an interview with Nordlinger, and it's a good read as well. Nordlinger says that one reason they chose to talk about World of Warcraft in this way is that it's so incredibly big -- when you have 12 million (give or take a few at this point) people playing a game with a GDP larger than some smaller nations, you're going to touch on all sorts of interesting ethical, moral, and other philosophical ideas. He says the book has been pretty popular, and a few universities are currently considering teaching courses based on the material, not only because it's interesting, but thinking about the game in this way helps improve abstract thinking in general. And perhaps most interesting, he says that reading the book could help players better make ethical and moral decisions in the game. Just ninja-ing the mount from an Onyxia raid might not mean much to you, but when you look at the bigger picture, and what those actions mean for ethics in general, Nordlinger says the book might help players "make more aware decisions, if not different decisions." Of course, in practice, trying to explain higher philosophy to ninjas might not have the desired effect, but it does seem true that exploring the higher meanings of this game and the intents of the people playing it might put a little more meaning into the pixels as well.
Breakfast Topic: Would you ninja the Onyxia mount?
We mention a ninja of the Onyxia mount in this week's Guildwatch, and while researching that, some other forum threads came up, including these two, both from General, where people say with conviction that given the chance, they'd take the Onyxia mount and never look back. They have a point -- it's one of the rarest random mounts in the game, on a raid that's definitely PuG-able. Chances are low that you'll ever see it, much less win it on a random roll, and so for a lot of people, it'd be worth the namechange and the server transfer you'd have to pay to escape your new ninja reputation. Personally, I wouldn't do it, but that's really only because I know there are lots of rare mounts in the game that I'll never get (sigh, Red Proto-drake, I covet you), and one more isn't that big a deal. Not to mention that I like the guilds I'm in and the people I play with, and who knows what they'd think of me if I stole the mount from them or someone else. But not everyone feels the way I do, I'm sure, so let's ask: if you had the chance, in a PuG or a guild run, to steal the Onyxia mount as your own, would you take it? And if you would, is it just because it's so rare and special?
The OverAchiever: What Feats of Strength can you get now?
One of the easier ways to distinguish an older character from a reroll or alt is the presence (or absence) of a Feat of Strength. Feats of Strength, remnants of "the past glories of Azeroth," are among the most difficult achievements to get, and that's when they're even possible at all. Most, like the presence of an old-school PvP title, one of the original 100% mounts, or the Vengeful Nether Drake, are impossible to get these days, and are a sign that the person who has them is an experienced player. But with a little luck and a lot of elbow grease, even a new player can accrue some of these supposedly "past" glories. I started playing WoW shortly after Burning Crusade launched and didn't expect to have a shot at most Feats, but a surprising number of them are still available. After getting The Fifth Element recently and being surprised to discover that: a). It's a Feat, and b). The original quest isn't even in the game anymore (man, I'm glad I'm such a quest packrat), I started nosing around the list of Feats to see what else a player could do even if they're new to the game. Moreover, there are two achievements you can get right now that will become Feats in 3.3, so let's get cracking.
Breakfast Topic: When I left you, I was but the learner
Interesting weekend for me: My schedule is such that I can't really do weekend raids with my Alliance guild, but with fall coming the crummy weather seems to have led to a renaissance for my Horde side play, and suddenly I found myself running Onyxia and TotC 10 on Malfurion in my finest Tauren warrior self. (Tauren warriors: great race/class combo or the greatest race/class combo? The world may never know.) Since I'm fairly familiar with the fights in both cases, it seemed natural enough to explain them for people who hadn't done them. And then I realized that, without really even paying attention, I'd sort of taken the job over entirely. It just seemed like what I should do: even when I forgot to mention an element of a fight like Gormok's spell lock, I just found myself calmly explaining things in a voice that, frankly, I didn't really even recognize. It was as if I was comfortable telling people what to do. Almost without realizing it I'd started telling people what to do in a raid, and they were doing it. The whole thing was somewhat surreal all told. So how about you? Ever found yourself leading a raid, an instance, or just a charge across AV without really expecting it? Or are you always in charge in WoW? Are you a leader, a follower, or a bit of both?
Phat Loot Phriday: Frostforged Ringhelm
We haven't done a piece of armor in a little while (it's been mostly weapons lately), so here's a cool helm from the updated Onyxia with an interesting historical twist.Name: Frostforged Ringhelm (Wowhead, Thottbot)Type: Epic Plate HeadArmor: 1925Attributes: +83 Strength, +154 Stamina +10 Frost resistance, +10 Shadow resistance. These are on here because this is the updated version of the Tier 2 helm for death knights. %Gallery-33600%
Guildwatch: Redemption
Many whelps! Handle it! Oh wait, you did. In the Wake on Zul'jin (as you can see in the video above) was just one of the many guilds to take down Onyxia since she returned to the game in a more powerful form, and while obviously there wasn't much new to this fight, most guilds give it a thumbs up: it was a little old-school raiding taste in a new-school difficulty level. Not that it's too hard (c'mon, it's Onyxia), but it's nice to see the fight pretty faithfully recreated. Makes you wish for more, doesn't it?Lots more raid downings, and of course the usual drama and recruitment notices in this week's Guildwatch. If you've got a tip for us about your guild or just one you saw on the forums, please send it along to guildwatch@wow.com, and please do your best to make it look like the ones below -- if you send us five pages on the entire history of your guild, it probably won't show up here. Read on for more.
The Daily Quest: Addons, haste, and tea
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. World of Raids highlights the Caith UI, a widescreen UI compilation. Runeforge Gossip gives a quick walkthrough of Rawr. WoW players that weren't around for Onyxia 1.0 might not know about this pretty sweet trick from OutDPS. Blessing of Kings asks... is Spell Haste bad for the game? We're coming up on Winter here in the States, so we might want to buddy up with this recipe soon. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
WRUP: Ziebart craves brains edition
Well, here we are at the weekend, and yet again we're all in danger. Alex Ziebart has been bitten by the dread PTR and is stalking the halls of Wow.com central, craving our succulent brains and/or posts about patch 3.3, while we struggle to survive. Or to provide him with PTR posts and patch details like, say, Quel'Delar, This weekend, it's not just a game, it's a battle to survive against a fiend more dead than alive! Well, until he gets his morning nosh, then he's usually okay. Woe betide thee that denies said nosh! A peckish zombie is a fearful adversary. Luckily, I have a character skilled in dealing with the undead and he just got himself a new toy.But what about the gaming, you ask? I'm glad you did, because I'm awful at segues. Seriously, just awful. I mean, look at this one, it's just atrocious.
