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Old world boss gold drops reduced in 3.0.8
Enjoy soloing Onyxia for a quick 180 gold every five days? With patch 3.0.8, those good old days are no more, as boss gold drops (at least back in the old world) seem to have been significantly reduced. Onyxia's 180 gold is now 50 gold and forum posters are noticing similar reductions in other old world raids from Ahn'Qiraj to Zul'Gurub. Is this the end of old world raiding for good? Well, it may not be as profitiable, but I'm willing to go on record saying that slaughtering Onyxia is still plenty of fun. Plus it's the only way to complete that awesome tier 2 set you need to be super stylish while idling in Dalaran.[Thanks, Rhaziel!]
Breakfast Topic: Soloing your way to a new ride
As Elizabeth observed a few days ago, there are certain pleasures to being 80. Even if you haven't gotten a shiny drop from a raid or a heroic yet, or finished grinding your way to exalted with a Wrath faction, you have one thing that absolutely no one can take away from you: an ever-increasing chance to leave classic and Burning Crusade-level mobs swinging fruitlessly at the air, completely unable to hit you.Just writing that gives me a disturbingly evil smile, because one of the things I've enjoyed most since hitting 80 is soloing heroic Sethekk in pursuit of the Raven Lord mount. Hi there, Syth. Remember the days when you used to mop the floor with my furry ass? I do, and this dish of revenge is being served to you at the proper temperature, courtesy of the frigid Northrend climate. How does it feel to be killed just because you're on the way to something bigger?
Breakfast Topic: To solo or not to solo?
Sure, getting together with 40 of your best friends and leading an epic raid on the alternate faction's capitol city can be fun, but I have to say that there's fun to be had doing things all by yourself, too. Some classes were soloing Onyxia at level 70 -- and it seems like just about everyone can solo her at or near level 80. (For those thinking of trying this yourself -- it's good fun and not a bad amount of gold for the effort.) Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj (the 20-man wing, at least) have both been cleared (mostly) by a lone player. Karazhan has been cleared with a group of 3 -- though in our post-Wrath world, I'd imagine that everything save Netherspite could be easily managed with less. (And at some point even Netherspite is bound to be overcome by brute force.) To solo or not to solo, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Hunters (who sometimes seem to think they have a monopoly on soloing content) or to take arms against a sea of dragons (dragons, elementals, demons -- we're not picky), and by opposing, earn epic (albeit under-level) loot. So, tell us, what have you soloed lately?
Elemental Shaman, Priest solo Onyxia
First we had a Druid do it, then a Pally, and then after Wrath Hunters and Death Knights got into the mix, and now it seems anybody with a pulse and a level 80 can solo the old 40-man boss Onyxia. Here's video of an Elemental Shaman taking the dragon down (Skitlash of the guild Unrelenting on Aman'thul), and we've even heard of a Disc Priest doing the deed (I believe that way back, when the Druid first downed Ony solo, a Priest, we thought on the podcast, was the least likely class to do it).But time has proven us wrong. Does any of this mean anything? Probably not -- while it's certainly an achievement for these guys, the old bosses will only get easier as time goes on (until, of course, Blizzard decides to break out some Heroic versions of these instances), and the once-feared Onyxia will only become more and more of a punching bag. Grats to everyone who's been able to solo the old lady of raiding, but at this point, if a Disc Priest can do it, anyone can.
The Queue: Tradeskill bits and pieces
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.First off, I want to apologize for an error I made yesterday. I didn't research the sockets that Blacksmiths can give only to themselves enough, and due to one-part misinformation, one-part assumption, I said those sockets overwrite enchants from Enchanting. That's actually not true. Leatherworking's fur linings do overwrite enchants. Tailoring's cloak embroidery overwrites enchants. Blacksmithing's sockets do not. Again, I apologize for that. Socket One-Handed Weapon still never made it into the game, though. With that all said, let's get into the questions.pietrex asked...I've got another question about sockets. I remember that we had lots of socketed quest rewards in Outlands. But I've completed three zones in Northrend and seen only few of these. Does it change in mid-70 zones or do we have to wait until we get our hands on gear from Heroics?
Original World of Warcraft team lead takes helm of Red 5 Studios
An MMO nerd logs into a bar and tells his online buddies, "Hey, did you hear Mark Kern was just appointed as the chairman and chief creative officer at Red 5 Studios?" To which they replied, "Who?" Mouth agape, the MMO nerd shoots his arms into the air and explodes with, "The dude who totally helped create World of Warcraft!" The friends look between each other, searching for a response to their fellows' immense piece of news. "Well, if he's so great, why isn't he still in charge of World of Warcraft?" they replied, satisfied with their obviously unbeatable intellectual retort.The nerd replied, "Well that's simple, he wanted a creative challenge and working on the world's most successful MMO simply wasn't enough for him." Smug with a sense of victory, the nerd logged out and prepared a post.But seriously, Mark Kern is taking lead point on development of Red 5 Studio's big secret MMO project. That means whatever game he's helping to create could be considered, in a way, as the spiritual successor to World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft: The Comic issue 13 preview
If you've been following the World of Warcraft comic, you might be pleased to hear the official WoW website posted a preview of issue #13 last night. After reading it, if you're like me, you'll be dramatically less pleased. Maybe you'll enjoy it, but I personally have no idea how much longer I'll keep reading this thing. The comic was never really good good, it was corny good, which is sometimes exactly what you're looking for. It's quickly falling out of corny good into bad. Varian Wrynn talking to Varian Wrynn #2 is just a silly, piss-poor way or trying to drag character development out of him. Come on now. He can't talk to another character about his past? He needs to talk to himself? Oh no, it can't be an inner monologue, either! You know what we need? Two Varians so they can be emo together. Come on. Varian Wrynn has the potential to be a really engaging character, but this writing make me cringe. I don't care if the clone turns out to have some totally super awesome twist in the end, this is still terrible.Oh, and if I see one more character thrust their chest to the sky in a futile attempt to look powerful and noble I am going to stab myself in the eyeballs. Gah. It's so bad it hurts. It feels like we're in the early 90s again.
World of Warcraft #12 and Ashbringer #2 comic previews available
The official World of Warcraft website has been updated with previews of the next issues of both currently running Warcraft comics, the Ashbringer series and the series featuring Varian Wrynn. The Ashbringer series is starting to feel a little more like a story and a little less like random happenings in Alexandros Mograine's life superglued together, so that's good. I wasn't too impressed with the first edition in the series, but I'm hoping that's because it had to string together in-game events to set the tone/story in motion. This is only a preview though, so we can't really judge from that. There's a neat little discovery at the end of the preview that grabbed my attention, so I'm curious to see where that goes.The Varian Wrynn comic is starting to come to a close I think, as we're finally seeing the King make his comeback. It looks like the player's role in ousting Onyxia has been nullified, which is disappointing but expected. It would've been nice if they left that nod to us, but what can you do?Anyway, if you're into the comics, go check it out!
Patch 3.0.2 graveyard
There's a lot of great stuff incoming with patch 3.0.2, but there's a lot of stuff leaving as well -- here's a rundown of what we'll be missing after today. The Zul'Aman bear mount. Yes, if you haven't picked one up yourself (or paid to get one from another guild), you're out of luck. The bear mount has been replaced with other loot, so you'll have to wait until Northrend (or go for the new TCG or BlizzCon mounts) to ride a bear. The Alliance Onyxia key quest, and any other quests that mention the missing king of Stormwind. The king is back in town (or will be soon), so any references to Varian Wrynn not being around any more... aren't around any more. Naxxramas. It's gone up north (or will soon -- we know that some people actually made sure to log out in Naxxramas, so hopefully they didn't completely disappear into the ether. Dalaran, that big purple bubble in the Arathi Highlands Hillsbrad Foothills. In its place, there's nothing but a crater, because the whole city has flown North as well. That 1% chance to miss with spells that all mobs had. In an effort to take a little bit of randomness out of the game, you can now beat spell misses with hit rating. Rogue poison making. No more making poisons, rogues -- now you just buy all your poisons straight from vendors. The old Hunter pet training system. It's been replaced with the new (and really awesome) pet talent system. Mages, contrary to rumor, are actually not getting removed from the game. But it's bye-bye to bears, potions, and pet training -- it's going to be a very different game when you log in for the first time after patch 3.0.2 hits.Update: We even missed some -- more after the break. Patch 3.0.2 "Echoes of Doom" has landed and WoW Insider has you covered. From patch notes to talent guides for every class to fixing your addons to 5 easy achievements you can snag right now. Make sure to check out the latest news.
One last chance to run Onyxia's key quest
Reader Blinger wrote in to remind us that if patch 3.0.2 does, as expected, go live on the servers tomorrow, tonight will be your last chance (for the foreseeable future) to see one of the best quests in the game, the Alliance Onyxia key quest, featuring Marshall Windsor's valiant walk through Stormwind to confront the deceiving and treacherous dragon. He's hosting a final viewing of the quest tonight on Khaz'goroth at 9:30pm Central, so if you've never seen it go down (and it is cool), you may want to stop by and check it out.In fact, why don't we try to make this a worldwide event? If you have the quest ready to do (or can get ready in the next few hours), why don't we say that at 10:30pm Eastern/9:30pm Central this evening, you can run the quest and let everyone in Stormwind on your realm see just what happens when Marshal Windsor runs out of bubblegum. There's quite a bit of prep work to do, unfortunately, so maybe not every realm will have someone ready to run the quest. But you can use the comments below to coordinate -- sure, everyone could jump onto Khaz'goroth to see Blinger do it, but it would be even more awesome to have every realm experience an unmasking of their own, because tomorrow, it might not be able to happen again.And of course, if you check out this or any other player-run events, be sure to let us know about it (with pictures if possible, we love pictures). It's always awesome to hear players finding new (or in this case, old) ways to experience the game together.
The funny, morbid, and sad coins of the Dalaran fountain
Level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. I'm serious. This completely nonsensible and illogical statement is brought to you by the 53 tiny lore moments you'll get if you'll just sit yourself down somewhere and level up fishing. Yes, it's boring having to fish up dozens of useless fish to get to the good stuff in Outland and Northrend. Yes, you could be farming up gold or materials that will help you level in Wrath. I don't care. Go fish.You see, while you'll be fishing up a lot of equally useless fish in the Dalaran fountain, you'll also get coins. No, not in the sense that you'll be fishing up ingame money, but you'll fish up coins tossed into the fountain of this very old city by 53 people, many of whom will be known to you if you've played the game for any length of time. Some of them, perhaps most of them, are funny. Some are serious. Some are heartbreaking. I admit to a touch of being a lore geek, and it was wonderful being allowed a peek into the irreverent or hopeful or sad heads of Jaina Proudmoore, Thrall, or Stalvan Mistmantle. It is idiosyncratic little touches like this that make WoW hopelessly fun to play, and it is my fondest wish that whatever person at Blizzard who thought this up is pulled off whatever they're doing right now and chained to a desk until they come up with more stuff like this.So, if you don't do anything else with your time between patch 3.02 hitting and Wrath going live...level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. But don't read any further if you're not interested in Wrath spoilers, because there are a few here...
Onyxia attunement to be lifted
Valnoth announced today that with the return of King Wrynn in Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard will be removing the attunement necessary for Onyxia. In vanilla WoW, Ony was an achievement and many peoples first introduction to raiding in Warcraft. In Burning Crusade it was often ran as a quick way to make a buck or get a nice helmet for an alt.Ony was one of the last, great old school attunements required in the game. With it gone, only Black Wing Lair and Molten Core remain as attunement required raids. This is a sad day for those of us that enjoyed the quest chain. A friend of mine and I were going to run this through on his Shaman and my up-and-coming Mage. Apparently we'll have to actually kick ourselves into gear and do it soon.There is no indication if this change will come with WotLK or with patch 3.0.2. However the King returns in 3.0.2, so I would have to assume the attunement will be lifted then. It should be noted however, that Valnoth did say they would attempt to return the chain some day in the future. But we all know how that can go...Thanks to Jarred for the tip!
Ask a Beta Tester: Spell power, phasing, and more
The image above has almost nothing to do with the content of today's Ask a Beta Tester, but I found it funny so you get to deal with it. We'll jump right into things with Turfing's question... I have a priest alt getting close to 70. Planning on doing healing come Wrath. With the conversion to spell power should I be picking up healing gear or damage gear right now? How is, for instance, Spell fire stacking up against Primal Mooncloth? Is spellfire actually able to heal better right now in the beta? How about damage?I strongly recommend hopping over to Wowhead's Wrath site and doing some research on how the numbers turn out. In most cases, DPS gear has better DPS stats (hit, crit) and Healing gear has better Healing stats. The spell power numbers are just much, much closer. In your particular example, the Primal Mooncloth Robe has more spell power than the Spellfire Robe, but it has mp5 and the Spellfire has crit. A DPS spec/class would rather have the crit.A few weeks ago I covered the effects of the spell power change in Hybrid Theory, with some raw numbers to look at. You can read that over if you'd like, but I mostly just suggest hitting up wotlk.wowhead.com for specific items.For more answers to your questions, read on!
Death Knight solos Onyxia
With how fascinated players are with using Onyxia as a benchmark, it was only a matter of time before our new legions of Death Knights tried their hand at it. Scarblade, a poster from the MMO-Champion forums, seems to hold the prize for world first solo Onyxia kill by a Death Knight. At least, as far as we know, and as of the latest beta patch. Will it count when Wrath goes retail? Who knows? We're a fickle bunch. Either way, I sincerely doubt many others attempted this as a Death Knight before Scarblade, because running around doing those attunement quests on the beta realms must be brutal even at level 80. You're just going to have to do it all over again!Still, Scarblade was a trooper and went through the whole ridiculous attunement process. He says he tried both Frost and Blood specs before ultimately settling on an Unholy build that won the day for him. Personally, I expected this kill to have been done using a deep Blood talent spec with how well they solo. I suppose Onyxia isn't the same as your random elite thug hanging out in the middle of a field somewhere, so it makes sense that what works there might not be best in Ony's Lair. Unholy does make sense though, controlling those whelps can make or break an Onyxia attempt no matter how many people you take with you. Unholy Blight is a beautiful thing.Yes, Scarblade did earn an Achievement for killing the ol' gal. Two, actually. One for just plain killing her, and one for killing her solo.[ via MMO-Champion ]
77 Hunter solos Onyxia
Chalk up another piece of evidence for just how trivial the old world stuff will be when Wrath releases -- here's a video of a Hunter at level 77 (on the beta servers, obviously) soloing the original raid boss herself, Onyxia. There's a little more info about how it was done over on the WarcraftMovies page -- the only way to deal with all the whelps was to max out AoE, so he used a special talent blend just to do this. And it looks like he just dodged or ate the Deep Breaths, as I doubt even a 77 Hunter would be able to put up enough "dots" to down her before she can do too many. Roar of Sacrifice also got a lot of usage -- it's a pet talent that lets a Hunter avoid half of his pet's health in damage. And he says the two-piece set bonus from Hunter T5 helped a lot, too -- over the fight it added up to quite a bit of healing.Not too shabby. And at 77, this means there's still three levels (not to mention all the endgame gear) to grow. Maybe the fact that Blizzard is revamping/replacing the old endgame isn't so bad after all -- when it's this easy for the highest level players, it's time to move on. Unless, of course, they make soloing Ony an achievement.[via BRK]
Blizzard confirms retroactive achievements, when possible
Ever since achievements were announced, the question I've heard the most from players has been about whether what they've already done will count. I attemped to answer this with a little bit of speculation last week, and today Tigole has basically confirmed what we'd already said: that where possible, Blizzard will award achievements retroactively.As we said last week, things like reputations and quests are easy to track -- other than dailies, you can't do the same quest twice, so it's easy for Blizzard to know, since day one, which quests you've done. And if a quest takes you to kill, say Onyxia, and you've completed it, then obviously you've got the achievement. Where it gets a little fuzzier is if you haven't done that quest, but you have killed Onyxia -- Blizzard probably doesn't even know yet if they'll do things like look for specific loot from certain bosses in a character's history, or if they'll extrapolate things even farther -- if you're Exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords, does that mean you've cleared MC?But Tigole does say that Blizzard is making a conscious decision to be as inclusive as possible on these old achievements -- whenever they can, they'll reward credit rather than making you go back to redo old content. That's a good choice -- it does mean that a few people will get angry for not getting the achievement because they killed the boss but didn't do the quest, but the alternative, awarding no retroactive achievements at all, would be even more frustrating.
Blizzard releases preview of World of Warcraft comic #9
If you're a Lore Nerd like Alex and I are, you've probably at least been following the storyline of the World of Warcraft Comic, and you know it's likely going to have a pretty big impact on WoTLK lore, as King Varian Wrynn returns and we finally get an end to the Missing Diplomat Storyline. Issue #9 continues the journey of Lo'gosh and his companions as they travel toward Ironforge and brings a familiar old villain into the light as well. Blizzard has posted the first few pages of the issue on the official WoW site. I have to admit, I have one major reservation about the story.
Maintenance for June 17th will be short
Here's a heads-up to all our North American night owls early risers and Oceanic readers: It's Tuesday morning, and that means maintenance. Luckily, it's a short one today. Bornakk has said that they expect most servers to only be down a half hour, starting at 5AM PDT and ending a 5:30AM PDT. There are some extra servers that will be down slightly longer, until 6:30AM PDT. Those servers will be listed after the break. Aussies can rejoice as well, as any Oceanic servers not on this list won't be taken down until 5AM AEST (Which is noon over here on the American west coast). For the list of servers that will have a longer downtime, read on:
Father's Day in Azeroth: A salute to the fathers of Warcraft lore
So it's Father's Day, the time when we all pay homage to the fathers or father figures in our lives, and thank them for all that they do. While we can't say for sure if they celebrate Father's Day in Azeroth, too, there's a lot of people in Azeroth and Outland who have reason to think back on their dads today. Many dads of Azeroth have affected their children's lives or been affected by them. The ramifications of the interactions of these fathers and children have then in turn affected the lore and story of Warcraft in ways great and small. Therefore, in honor of the holiday, let's look at 10 famous and not-so-famous dads of Warcraft lore (listed in no particular order).
The best of WoW Insider: May 27-June 3, 2008
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. This big girl is Onyxia, once the 40-man raiding terror of World of Warcraft, and yet this past week she was downed by just one person not once but twice. Poor Ony -- with the current max level of 70 (and Wrath of the Lich King pushing players up to level 80), it's tough times out there for level 60 raid bosses. Learn more about Ony and all the other NPCs in the World of Warcraft at Joystiq's sister site WoW Insider. Here's our most popular posts from the past week: News Druid solos OnyxiaOne Druid toppled a 40-man boss -- probably one of the first of many old raid bosses to be farmed for gold and items. SK Gaming releases Kil'jaeden videoLive the death of the last raid boss... vicariously through SK Gaming. Paladin lays the solo smackdown on OnyxiaNot to be outdone by a Druid, a plate healer also decides to crush the dragon that once took 40 people to drop. New exploits target FlashSome big Flash exploits could get your login and password in the wrong hands. Missing teen found after running away with 27-year old WoW boyfriendA 27-year-old ran off with a 14-year-old girl after they met in World of Warcraft. Features How many endgames have there been?After Kil'jaden was downed last week, we decided to figure out just how many times the game has been beaten. How to make 10,000 gold in a monthAdam Holisky lets you in on some of his best ingame monkey-making tips. Ask a Lore Nerd: You're how old?Our resident lore nerd answers your questions about NPCs and the stories of the Warcraft universe. Breakfast Topic: Do you pay attention to 25-man raiding progression?Should we care when groups like SK Gaming drop big endgame bosses for the first time? Tanking for BeginnersNeed a primer on being the meatshield? Here you go.
