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Midsummer Fun: Where to begin
The Midsummer Fire Festival is represented relatively equally in all capital cities, so you don't need to worry about the entire Azerothian population being packed into Ironforge and Orgrimmar. Below is a list of where, exactly, the festivities are in each of the capital cities.Alliance Stormwind - Just north of the Mage District, west of the Trade District. Next to The Stockade. Ironforge - At the far back of the city, in the Hall of Explorers. Darnassus - Outside of the city proper, in Rut'theran Village, right by the dock to Auberdine. Exodar - In the center of the Crystal Hall, the northmost wing of the city. Horde Undercity - Above ground in the courtyard, right by the city gates. Silvermoon City - In the Court of the Sun, just outside of Murder Row. Orgrimmar - In the Valley of Wisdom, just outside of Thrall's chambers. Thunder Bluff - On the Spirit Rise, near the northwestern edge of the bluff. Shattrath also has some of the activities these places have, but not everything. If all you're looking for is the Maypole or the daily quest Striking Back, Shattrath will do you fine. Otherwise, head to one of the locations listed above.
Midsummer Fun: A Thief's Reward
While not the fastest way to earn Burning Blossoms, stealing the opposing faction's flames is the most fun way to do it, I think. How do you steal the enemy's flame, you ask? Easy! Run into the heart of their capital city and click on their bonfire. Okay, maybe that isn't very easy, but knowing where you should be going makes it less difficult, at least.To acquire to flames, simply run up to the bonfire and click on it like you would a chest or similar item. Once the casting bar has completed, the fire will be placed in your inventory automatically. Right click on that item to begin a quest, one quest for each fire. Unfortunately, these quests require level 50 to begin.Alliance Flames Exodar - The Exodar Flame is one of the more hidden simply due to the town's layout, but you'll run into the least amount of player resistance here. You'll find the Flame of Exodar in the back of The Crystal Hall, the northmost wing of the city's three wings. Darnassus - You will run into a little more Alliance opposition here than in Exodar, since Alliance players generally pass through here to begin the Unusual Activity chain. Luckily, you don't even need to enter Darnassus itself to reach the flame. It is in Rut'Theran Village, a few steps away from the dock to/from Auberdine. Ironforge - This is where you'll see the most Alliance interference, most likely. The flame is in the Hall of Explorers, far in the back of the city. If you want to avoid going through the front door and getting slammed by all of the players auctioning and banking at the front of the city, I recommend doing the Stormwind flame first and using the Deeprun Tram since it will take you pretty close to the Hall of Explorers. If Stormwind is highly populated on your server, you may want to do it the other way around. Stormwind - This city has become fairly popular since The Burning Crusade, so this might challenge you more than Ironforge depending on your server. The Stormwind flame is just next to the Stockade. If you don't know where the Stockade is, go west from the Trade District and across the first bridge you see. If you look north along the Canals, you'll see the Stockade Meeting Stone. Run towards that, and the flame will be on your left. If you need to make a quick getaway or drop some heat from guard aggro, pop in there for a minute or two and people will forget all about you. Horde Flames Silvermoon City - If you play on an RP server, you'll probably run into a fair amount of opposition in this city. If you play on a PvP server, you'll probably skirt by without much issue. The Silvermoon flame is right on the edge of the Court of the Sun, just after you exit Murder Row. Murder Row has a distinct lack of guards, so if you need to drop some aggro, flailing wildly in this section is a good way to make the guards give up and go away. Oh, and if you play a gnome, you can hide from players under the lilypads in the fountain. I'm serious. It works. Undercity - This is one of the more populated cities, but that's balanced out by the fact that it has the most exposed flame of them all. Ride straight in the front door, enter the courtyard, and it's on your left. Easy enough. Orgrimmar - The flame is pretty close to Thrall's chambers in the Vallery of Wisdom, just a few steps away from the corpse of Mannoroth. There will be a lot of player interference in this area, but you can dodge and/or leash most of the guards if you enter the city from the side entrance and sneak along the back of the city. If you need to make a quick escape, dip down into the Cleft of Shadow and spend a few minutes inside Ragefire Chasm, just as Horde players can do with the Stockade. Thunder Bluff - Your mileage may vary as far as the opposition you run into. I got in and out pretty clean, but this city's population varies wildly per server. The flame can be found on The Spirit Rise. The easiest route is to simply take the elevator up, ride straight to the bridge across, and then go straight for the flame. The guards from the main area of the city will leash on the bridge, and you likely won't pull more than one or two guards on your way to the flame. What does stealing these flames get you? Well, each of them gives a guaranteed 25 Burning Blossoms, for a total of 100 if you gather all four flames. In addition, each of them allows you to pick one of the following: 5 Elderberry Pies, 5 Midsummer Sausages, 5 Fire-toasted Buns, 5 Toasted Smorcs, 10 Fiery Festival Brew, or 10 Handfuls of Summer Petals. Level 70s also receive 9 gold, 10 silver per quest. If all you want from the festival are those minor goodies, completing these can actually save you a fair amount of Blossoms. If you're after things like the dress or the vanity pet, it's not as good of a deal on the currency front.So, what happens if you turn in all four of the flames? Well, I'm glad you asked! That is where the quest A Thief's Reward comes in. You turn the flames in at any of your own capital cities, and those same people will over this to you when they've gotten all four. 5 gold, 10 silver, and the Crown of the Fire Festival is your prize for all of your hard work. Blizzard really enjoys making hats hard to get, don't they?
Know Your Lore: Thrall (part 2)
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm.Many moons ago, Matthew Rossi began a look at Thrall, one of the most beloved heroes in Warcraft. It was only the first half of Thrall and Grom's Radical Adventure and in a shocking turn of events, most of you actually want us to finish what we started! Man, slavedrivers, the whole lot of ya. If you haven't read part one of the Thrall saga, you should probably do so. If you have read it, here's a quick recap of what went down so far: Thrall is the son of Durotan, former chieftain of the Frostwolves, who refused to drink the Blood of Mannoroth and was killed because he called Gul'dan a jerk. Aedalas Blackmoore, a drunkard with a lot of power, kept Thrall alive and raised him to be a tool to be used to gather more power for himself. Thrall made friends with Teretha Foxton in his days at Blackmoore's Durnholde Keep, and when Thrall escaped Durnholde many years later, Blackmoore cut off Taretha's head and threw it at the freshly-named Warchief of the New Horde. Thrall rejected this oh-so-kind gift and killed Blackmoore. If you need the details that go in between those notes, well, part one is just over there. Let's move on to the Third War and beyond, shall we?
Breakfast Topic: Those little annoyances
So like Alex, I figure I probably have a few more alts than your average player. I have 3 level 70s, 3 more characters above level 60, and a few more at various levels of play. I even started a new shaman just this past week, just because I decided I had a really cool character concept for a female Orc shaman. Anyhow, I've been playing the shaman quite a bit, and I've actually not been twinking her at all, enjoying the challenge of starting a character from scratch and making sure I still have my mojo despite getting all fat and sassy from all that easy daily money from Sunwell Isle. WoW's done a pretty decent job of keeping the lower level game easy enough for characters, but there's a couple things I've noticed while playing that still feel like they need some work. If I could highlight one, it would be the complete lack of Shaman trainers in Lordaeron.
Breakfast Topic: Major city vibes
This morning, Damian Olson writes in with a concern that not all of the major WoW cities are created equal. In fact, he goes as far as to suggest that perhaps the Horde "got the short end of the stick" in comparison to their Alliance counterparts. For example, he points out that Ironforge has an impressive entrance and heroic theme-music, while Undercity is a broken, sad place. What do you guys think? Does the lore behind each major city justify the design, or should some of the cities have been given a little more development love?Personally, Undercity is my favorite city in the entire game, and I find parts of the Alliance capitols to be a bit overly patriotic and proud. How do you feel about the major cities, and what would you change if you could? Where do you feel most at home, and why (the racial capitol of your main or first character, etc)?
Goon Squad reunites Jaina and Thrall
Dipex from Goon Squad contacts us to report on the guild's having brought Jaina and Thrall together for a -- uh -- tempestuous reunion in Orgrimmar. The video above can be seen in a higher quality version here, and it's quite a sight. On occasion I've entertained thoughts of the stunts I'd pull as a GM in WoW, and high on that list would be pitting raid or faction bosses against each other for an ingame version of Two Bosses Enter. Well, Goon Squad actually pulled it off. I won't spoil the video for you, but apparently Thrall and Cairne aren't immune to Jaina's teleportation ability...I can't begin to imagine the kite job this must've been, but if you take a look at their video of Jaina going postal on Org, you get a sense of just how many people it took. Dipex writes toward the end of the first video that this is the quest-spawned version of Jaina, which I can only assume means they were kiting her from her spawn point in Dustwallow Marsh where the Alliance quest "The Missing Diplomat" ends. This certainly would have simplified matters; getting her out of Theramore would have been significantly more difficult, and I daresay this was an elegant solution. Elegant? Do I mean elegant? Maybe I mean something else.
Omen meet Orgrimmar, Orgrimmar meet Omen
The Lunar Festival is in full swing, and every once in a while Omen is no where to be found. I talked about killing him earlier in the week, but there is another strategy that's been popping up. Have you ever wondered what it's like to kite something across half a continent? Well, now's your chance!I've tried this with a few friends, and the trick is to keep Omen moving along with as many movement-impairing effects up on him as possible. We had a mage there slinging Frostbolts at him, a shaman shocking him with Frost Shock, and of course a hunter laying down his Concussive Shots and Frost Traps. I was there on my warrior issuing the occasional Taunt just in case one of the DPS made a mistake and got too close (this was never a problem).
One Shots: Orgrimmar in the evening
Reader Nathan offers this shot of World of Warcraft's Orgrimmar (though some may argue, we'd say it's the main city of the Horde faction). Nathan tells us that he'd always though of Orgrimmar as one of the ugliest cities in the game, Horde or Alliance. "But when you need a lockbox opened at 2 in the morning," he tells us, "the bank roof is the only place to go. It was on the way to do that when I suddenly stopped, looked up, and thought, 'Wow, I guess I was wrong.'" We don't know why people congregate on the roof of Orgrimmar's bank to do business (except, perhaps, that it's easy to get there), but those of us that play Horde are glad that the grandeur of our fine city is finally being recognized! (For those of you who agree with our point of view, this shot is also available in wallpaper size. For those of you who don't, expect a contingent of Orcs and Trolls at your door soon.) One Shots lives on a steady diet of your screenshots! Snapped a good screenshot lately? Tired of seeing the same old games featured? Send us shots from your favorite game! It's easy to participate -- just send your screenshots and stories to oneshots@massively.com. %Gallery-9798%
Breakfast Topic: Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2008 from WoW Insider! Most of you were probably at home or out with friends watching the new year come in, but some of you surely celebrated the new year with fireworks in Stormwind, Orgrimmar or Booty Bay, enjoying the festivities online friends as well as offline. Did you have any special new year festivities in Azeroth?
Last week in Warcraft: November 4th - November 10th
Welcome to another weekend on Joystiq! Your local WoW Insiders are here to bring you up to date on everything happening in their world of Warcraft. For those of you not in the know, patch 2.3 is coming to WoW next week and bringing a lot of changes with it, including new raid dungeon Zul'Aman. For the rest of the details of the week, keep reading!News Diminishing returns on silence effects revertedAfter a loud revolt on the forums, Blizzard reverts the change to slience effects. Patch 2.3 coming this Tuesday!Are you prepared? <Dude Wheres My Shaman>A new guild on Auchindoun Horde protests Shaman issues. Aimed Shot changes (again)A half second cast time reduction causes controversy Mage buffs on the horizonThey aren't all making 2.3, but expect more for mages in 2.3.X or 2.4. Discussion All the World's a StageWhere should we draw the line on ERP? Unconventional group makeupWhat unconventional groups have worked for you? If I knew then what I know now...What would you do differently if you started WoW over again? Nobody's perfectWhat's your biggest WoW mistake? The Light and How to Swing ItA field guide to bad paladins. Your server's [item]Does your server have its own obsession item? Growing confidenceTaking steps towards mastering your class.
Around Azeroth: A question of scale
Reader Fragile sends us this interesting shot of a graphical glitch in Orgrimmar. My question, however -- is the quest just that big or is the Orc just that small? Interestingly, though I have seen several shots of this nature from the wandering quest NPCs in Ogrimmar, I've never seen the giant quest markers anywhere else. Have any of you run into this graphical bug elsewhere in the world?Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
Blizzplanet corners Walter Simonson on the comic
Blizzplanet has posted an interview with Walter Simonson, and is it me, or is it time to stop poking around for information on the new comic? Just let the nice people write and draw the thing already!Simonson doesn't actually confirm the non-secret secret that Varian Wrynn is the amnesiac starring in the comic, but that doesn't keep Blizzplanet from prodding and poking everything they possibly can out of him. He says the comic will be set in the present, but when they nerd it up with some more lore, he admits it'll actually take place before the Burning Crusade. Simonson tries to drop a hint that the hero will end up in Orgrimmar, but then he's eventually exasperated enough to reveal that Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff and the Pools of Vision, Ashenvale, Darnassus, and the Eastern Kingdom will all make appearances inside the comic. And while Blizzplant has heard rumors that Dire Maul will be featured in the comic, they eventually get Simonson to tell them that "we're going to witness an event involving ogres (and others) that occurs regularly in a hitherto underutilized part of Dire Maul." And that sounds, of course, like a Tribute Run.I can see how, if you're a big fan of the comic already, learning stuff like this might be fun and interesting. But at some point, you've just got to leave Simonson alone and read the comic for yourself. Enough interviews, enough hinting, enough speculation. Just let him write it so we can read it already!
Around Azeroth: Will you...?
Reader Zimmi of Dragonmaw sends in this shot taken of corpse graffiti that you'll commonly find littering Orgrimmar. But what makes this shot interesting is the message -- you'll have to click the image to see it full size in order to understand exactly what I'm talking about. But what I want to know is... did she say yes?Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
Around Azeroth: Don't go into the light...
Reader Gotpriest of Crushridge sends in this fascinating screenshot. Want to take any guesses as to where it was taken? Go on -- think about it. I'll wait.Still not sure? That's okay, I wouldn't know either if Gotpriest hadn't mentioned it. In fact, we're looking at none other than Orgrimmar. There's little waterfall in the back of Orgrimmar's local fishing pool and you can get unusual graphical effects when your camera is shooting through water. (Also, I'm guessing Gotpriest is Levitating while in Shadowform to give the typical this-is-my-character screenshot that extra-special touch.)Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
Breakfast Topic: Your favorite city
Easy one today: what's your favorite city in the World of Warcraft? Even though I'm Horde through and through, I have to say I really love Darnassus. It was the first "big city" I encountered in the game, and at the time I didn't even know places like Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and Ironforge existed. It's fairly simple to navigate, and the huge buildings and floaty forest atmosphere-- especially the Temple of Elune-- make the whole place uniquely magical. It's a shame that it's off the beaten path, because it really is a great city.And while I know it's probably the first city a lot of people think of, Shattrath is a cool city, too. I don't think it's actually my favorite city, but on the first night I ever played Burning Crusade, I remember cresting the hill from Zangarmarsh, seeing that big pillar of light coming out of the center of Shattrath, and realizing I was finally playing something new in WoW. I can only hope that seeing Dalaran in Northrend lives up to the experience.And by city, I don't just mean huge metropolis, either-- I really like Sun Rock Retreat, and visiting Freewind Post at the top of Thousand Needles is always fun, too (in fact, Thunder Bluff is great for that sense of height as well). So where's your favorite settlement in the whole world (of Warcraft)?
/Silly: Shadow of the Colossal Mistake
Greetings all! Welcome once again to another /silly, my weekly attempt to bring a little spark of humor into your topsy-turvy lives. Today I would like to introduce you to the lovely lady pictured above. But not until after "the jump", as the cool kids are calling it nowadays. No, really, they do call it that. You just can't make something like that up.
Around Azeroth: Return to sender
Reader Nihil sends in this charming Orgrimmar shot, showing us the results with someone clearly dissatisfied with their postal service. Postal carriers of Azeroth, be warned -- this is the sort of thing that can happen to the bearers of bad news!Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
We've become carebears in Shattrath
Arrianae has a great point over on the forums: since when did Outland take the war out of Warcraft? Remember all that blood spilled on the Crossroads? Remember the massacres that took place at Southshore, or the daily incursions at Orgrimmar and Stormwind. STV ganking is legendary, and BRD used to have skeletons all over it. So why is it that, in Shattrath, Horde and Alliance are suddenly buddy-buddy?The answer, says Nethaera, is that there are bigger foes to worry about in Outland, the Burning Legion definitely not the least of them. There is some good PvP to be found in Outland, although the Auchindouin nodes are usually just grabbed rather than conquered. But while Halaa in Nagrand is covered with the entrails of both sides, you still get the feeling that there, we're just fighting for a turn-in vendor. It's fun, but it doesn't have the epic, original Warcraft flavor that was so sweet in Azeroth.I think what players want is some good old Orcs and Humans combat. Before Burning Crusade, we were asking for more World PvP, and we definitely got it-- from HFP to Zangarmarsh to Auchindouin, there are tons of ways to fight the other faction, and tons of reasons to do it. But no amount of standing around in a PvP objective feels better than sticking pointy end of sword into enemy, and that kind of ruthless attack is what players miss.
Arena season 2 vendors are way too popular
The pic above is courtesy of reader Scott, and it shows the aftermath of the chaos around the vendor for the Arena season 2 gear. Everyone is jumping on the servers to check the gear out (if you haven't seen it yet, we linked to what it looked like on the PTR a while back, and WoWWiki looks like it should be updated with live stats fairly soon), and so things are crazy around the vendor in Area 52, especially when PvP fights break out.A couple of players have been complaining about the insanity, so Drysc says on the forums that there are now temporary versions of Krixel, the rewards vendor, appearing in Orgrimmar's Hall of Legends, Stormwind's Champion's Hall, and outside of the Blade's Edge arena. There's no time set as to when the extra vendors will disappear (why wouldn't they have them in all places all the time?), but if you want a firsthand look at what there is to offer, you've got three more places to do it.
This space for rent
There are many places that lie empty within Azeroth, those interesting nooks and crannies that get our imaginations going. While exploring Stormwind I came across Cut-throat Alley, a little cul-de-sac hidden away in the Canal District. This is exactly the sort of place that makes me curious. I can see in my mind's eye a thoroughfare bustling with shady dealers and rogues, tucked away and out of site from the rest of the city, their dealings too dark to go on under the public eye. One of my favorite empty spaces is now filled: I used to camp all my characters out in what is now the Stormwind Auction House, since I enjoyed pretending it was my own private home within the city. Or the courthouse in the Dwarven District. Here the great magistrates of Stormwind might have sat, dealing out justice to those who break the realm's laws. There are all sorts of stories that we can build out of these empty spaces. I once found an empty cave in Azshara without mob or mining node, the sort of place you might expect a hermit to hang out in, or a mountain troll, hungering for the flesh of wayward travelers. Perhaps these are the places that originally had content but somehow it changed over the course of the development cycle. In the case of Cut-throat Alley, it looks to me like it was the original home for the rogues of Stormwind, but somehow seemed too difficult to find. Now, being that I play mostly Alliance characters, I don't know the empty spaces that might be found in Orgrimmar or Undercity. But these places get me wondering. Are there any empty spaces in the game that you wonder about?
