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Barad Glaran entry added to LotRO Lorebook
Turbine has gone to great lengths to stay true to J.R.R. Tolkien's gigantic library of Middle-earth lore in The Lord of the Rings Online. Regularly updating the official Lorebook is one of the ways they've tried to appeal to gamers who are fans of the literature.Every now and then they write up a new entry to fill us in on the story behind a place or person in the game world. This week, it's the high-level instance of Barad Gúlaran in Angmar. Barad Gúlaran used to be the fortress of the dreaded Witch-king, chief of Sauron's Nazgúl. When a few heroes chased the Witch-king away in the name of the free peoples of Middle-earth, the fortress was left open for plundering ... but it's still not exactly safe.Turbine included a couple of really nice screenshots of the dungeon, as well. And if lore isn't enough for you, you can learn a bit about the gameplay experience of Barad Gúlaran at the unofficial LOTRO-Wiki. That is, if you can tear yourself away from grinding Deeds!
Age of Conan interview on Uberguild podcast
In the latest episode of Uberguild's "Grenade" podcast, the boys sit down for a chat with Age of Conan designer Jason Stone. While we were prepared for a bit of a puff piece, you'll be happy to know that they actually take Mr. Stone to task, taking listener questions and generally raking Stone over the coals for specifics about the hotly-anticipated title. Of particular interest was Stone's discussion about Funcom's choice to de-emphasize the role of healing classes in the traditional sense, moving away from the chain-healing prevalent in games like World of Warcraft. Their plan to achieve this involves proliferating cheap, readily-available healing potions, and giving the game's hybrid healing classes more heal over time abilities instead of spam heals. They also go into depth about the guilds, large-scale PvP, the siege system, and more. If you're anticipating AoC as much as we are, it's probably worth throwing on the iPod.
Guild Wars: PvE player tries PvP and likes it; Hell freezes over
I'm going to be up front with you: the original intent of this post was that PvE play in Guild Wars is where it's at and how I don't like PvP. My PvP experience in just about every MMO have been one steaming pile of suck to another. From the the lagaliscious enforced PvP of Risk Your Life, to the grind until 30 and then pvp of RF Online. through the almost, but not quite what I was looking for of Dark Age of Camelot, my PvP experiences were just not fun.I'm willing to write a lot of this off to my personality. I just don't have the competitive streak I feel is required for PvP. Even when I play boardgames with my friends every Friday night, as long as the game was fun I'm ambivalent about whether I won or lost. Now, I'm not saying every PvPer is the type to dance on other player's corpses, but I think an above-average level of competition is required. The other big deterrent has been ganking. In a momentary lapse of sanity, knowing my general feelings toward PvP, I rolled on a PvP WoW server. The fun lasted until level 17 when I was minding my own business running quests and some higher level decided to teach me the harsh realities of PvP by ganking my sorry ass. It's then I remembered why 'm not a big fan of PvP. My Guild Wars PvP experience has been minimal. I'd usually roll a PvP character since I wasn't level 20 yet and give it a go. While I can't say I had a horrid experience, because I just rolled a pre-built I felt like I was playing in someone else's skin.However, recently I did manage to get a character to level 20. Since before I praised the PvE game over the PvP game, I figured I should at least refresh my memory on it. So, I logged in, hopped over the Random Areas -- the PvP area I figured to the best for n00bie me -- and promptly watched the time fly by as I had fun. I'm sure it helped we won our first match, but after we lost the second one I promptly hit "enter battle" to go at it again. Playing with a character I knew the quirks of made all the difference in the world.It's turning out that Guild Wars' PvP may be exactly the type I'm looking for: Totally consensual and quick. No long, drawn out battles waiting for the enemy to show up, or simply zerging the other side. Most importantly, no ganking! The small team-based combat reminds me of quick games of Capture the Flag or general team-based deathmatch games when I played Quake. People were largely quiet and didn't tell me how much my play style sucked. I can see where it may not appeal to a DAoC or WoW player, but for an infrequent pvper like myself, it turned out to be quite fantastic. I'm not sure how much it'll draw me away from PvE, but it'll certainly fill the "I only have an hour to play" void. What have your experiences been with Guild Wars' PvP? Do you prefer it over "standard" MMO PvP?
More balances coming to AV
After not playing in there for what probably has been months, I found myself back in Alterac Valley this morning-- with the recent AFK changes, things have just gotten so much more active in there, and considering this weekend is an AV honor weekend, there will probably be a lot of blood shed beween the Frostwolves and the Stormpikes. Of course, just because players are active doesn't mean they know what they're doing-- we had twenty people standing around the SP GY flag this morning, and I was the only one actually clicking on it to capture. Oh well.And now that players are playing in there, it's time to look at the other problems in AV-- map balance and fun factor. That bridge is still an issue when Alliance actually sit down and guard it, but the past few matches I've seen have a completely other problem-- it's just a zerg race. Sure, some folks stay on D at times, but really it's just a matter of which side gets to the other boss first.And Neth says changes are coming, specifically that Blizz wants to make AV "more fun" and "more balanced." She can't say what that means yet, but I'd be very surprised if the "more balanced" part didn't involve a little map adjusting. As for the "more fun," who knows? Personally I'd like (and I know some of you share this sentiment) to see additions in terms of the PvE stuff, but Blizzard has learned a lot since they first created AV. Instead of the summoning quests and the NPCs entering the action, I'm guessing there'll be things like zone-wide buffs and other Halaa-like happenings.But as always, we'll see. In the meantime, who wants to go get Balinda with me?
Breakfast Topic: Chose your realm
On first entering the World of Warcraft, we're given a choice of four distinct realm types (PvE, PvP, RP, and RP-PvP), and this morning I'm asking which one you chose for yourself and why. Are you a carebear at heart or can you not miss the excitement of leveling on a PvP realm? Or perhaps a roleplaying variety is more your style... We want to hear about it! Tell us how you roll, and why in our comments!
Cross-faction trash talking on carebear alts
blueskydei on WoW LJ learned the best reason for doing PvP on a PvE server: cross-faction trash talking. Yep, there's nothing more classy than getting ganked (or ganking), and then logging on to a different toon just to start something up. I'm embarrassed to say that I've been a part of it before-- I can't remember if it was me that logged to chat with a gnome Rogue that I started fighting with, or if he logged in to chat with me, but either way it, as usual, didn't end well: threats of level 70 alts ensued, and I even had one of his guildies sending trash talk tells to me. Ah, carebear PvP.Is there a way to avoid this? And even if there is, do we want to? As frustrating as random ganking can be, cross-faction trash talking is a weird but strangely effective way of getting back-- you may not be able to actually take on that high level Mage that took out your accidentally flagged lowbie alt, but at least you can give him a good talking to, right?As you can probably tell, I'm not proud that I did it, and 90% of the time, I just give up and move on. Logging out to temporarily break Blizzard's language barrier is more trouble than it is anything else, so these days even if I am unfairly ganked, I just shrug and move on. But every once in a while, you can't help but log an alt and give that guy a piece of your mind.
I love playing World of Warcraft.
I really, really do. And so do these people, it seems.It's easy to forget in all the complaining about, say, flying mounts in Northrend or enduring the XP grind yet again or what have you... the endless discussions about rep grinds, or disputes about this feature of that class... that this is a game, and if you're paying for it, you're doing so to have fun. Now, I'm as likely to complain as any player about things that I don't like or find unfair, but in the end, nobody is forcing me to play and no one has to force me to: I play WoW because I enjoy throwing a Chain Heal off in time to save the run or properly timing a Shield Slam to keep from losing aggro. I enjoy running with the folks in my guild and our allied guild and reading or hearing the outrageously cocky things they say. I really dig getting two big crits in a row just as that Warlock figured he had me down and could turn his attention elsewhere. I like winning an AV match, and I don't even mind losing one as long as we gave it our all. I like flying on my mount over Shadowmoon Valley, looking for mats for potions.I've leveled four 70's. I've played along side my wife, one of the best hunters I've ever seen. I proposed when we were raiding Molten Core. World of Warcraft is a game, and like all games, it only has so long before I'll stop playing it, but that time isn't here yet. I love playing World of Warcraft.What do you love about it? Why are you still playing, if you are, and if you're not, why do you keep reading about it? What was the most fun you've had in WoW?
Fear and how to fix it
Draele just started a blog about being a Warlock called Rantings of the Afflicted, and today he's got a post up about that most heinous of Warlock abilites: yes, none other than fear. A touchy subject (to say the least), but he offers three different suggestions on how to make fear fun for everyone.At its base, fear is actually Blizzard's way of trying to come up with another game mechanic. If you're a veteran MMORPG player, you know there are three archetype classes-- healer, DPS, and tank. All three of them are centered around damage-- either getting rid of it, doing it, or tanking it. Fear, however, plays with none of those rules-- it's a complete damage negator. The reason Warlocks have fear is so they can wear cloth and yet stay alive for a long time against one target-- long enough for their DoTs to come in.The problem with fear, however, as even the developers have admitted, is that it's not fun for the person being feared-- getting feared leaves you with almost no option but to sit there and do nothing. It removes control from your character, and that's never fun.So how can we fix it?
Should some spells be PvE or PvP only?
Over on the Blessing of Kings blog, Coriel makes an excellent point: does World of Warcraft need PvP-only or PvE-only spells? Why, you ask? For balance purposes. If some spells were lebelled as only usable in one type of combat or the other, it would prevent situations in which a sometimes helpful spell in PvE gets nerfed hard because it's too good in PvP. As an example, Coriel talks about the 2.2 change to Blessing of Sacrifice, which will give the skill a 1-minute cooldown:It's [the change] pretty much aimed at PvP, where Sacrifice is constantly used to break Crowd Control for paladins. However, this change makes Sacrifice useless for both PvP and PvE purposes. Admittedly, Sacrifice doesn't get used an awful lot in PvE. But there are times when it is useful.Perhaps it's time for Blizzard to take a new tact in its PvP balancing act and implement some PvP-only and some PvE-only spells -- preventing a PvP nerf from nerfing your PvE game and vice versa.
Curse joins up with MYM, in both PvP and PvE
Curse has announced that they're throwing their hat in the professional gaming arena with Meet Your Makers, a group that both sponsors and supports PvE and PvP teams. The PvP part of the team, called MYM.PvP, is the "Log" arena team (and they're part of the tourney at BlizzCon later this week), while the "MYM.PvE" group will consist of the Curse guild and their ingame progression.Now, the PvP side of it is hardly new-- we've already seen quite a few teams get picked up by sponsors, and since Blizzard implemented the arena system, we've seen a few teams, most notably Team Pandemic, rise to the top. But the PvE side is very interesting. Curse says that they're going to get a "significant boost to our PR and Administrative capabilities" from the partnership. On first thought, it doesn't seem very profitable to support guilds making progress in-game-- unlike tournaments, there's no monetary prize awarded for being the first guild to down Illidan.But in point of fact, there is a lot of mindshare out there to be grabbed by being the first guild to drop a boss-- players are interested in the kills, and therefore sites like ours are definitely interested in reporting them. Seeing a PvE boss kill "sponsored" by an eSports company like Meet Your Makers might not be that far off.[ via MMO Champion ]
Blood Pact: Fear kiting 101
Everyone talks about fear being overpowered in PvP, but that's not a discussion we're going to have today No, here we're going to talk about using Fear in PvE situations, where it can easily be just as useful. The main reason for this is that Fear in PvE isn't on diminishing returns. You can cast it until you run out of mana (though it costs 12% of your base mana per cast), and your target will never become immune. Compare this to Fear in PvP, where your target will become immune on your forth attempt to fear it. And while it has a chance of breaking on damage in both PvE and PvP, its maximum duration in PvE is twice as long as its PvP duration (at least it will be as of patch 2.2).With a 20-second duration and no diminishing returns, you can kill nearly anything that you can Fear, and if you want to know how, just keep reading!
Phat Loot Phriday: The Decapitator
A name so nice Blizzard used it twice, this axe is so B.A. Baracus you can even throw it.Name: The DecapitatorType: Epic Main Hand AxeDamage / Speed: 167-312 / 2.60 (92.1 DPS)Abilities: +27 critical strike rating Here's the fun part: on use, you can throw it at a target up to 40 feet away for 513-567 damage. Oh, and the throw can crit as well (at about 5%, most players say), so while you can't really use it to spike your DPS in PvE (most bosses are immune to it, apparently), it's very helpful in PvP. Got a runner with just a little health left? Toss this guy and watch the numbers fly and the dude die. Then go eat some pie. 3 minute cooldown on the use, which is kind of lame. Also happens to share a cooldown with trinkets that increase your attack power, which is kind of a bummer, but not a gamebreaker. How to Get It: Drops from the Prince in Karazhan at around 11.5%, so chances are your guild may have Voided one already. But if you're a Fury Warrior or a Shaman with an axe fetish who really likes the sound of throwing this thing around in PvP, you can probably convince them to give it to you.Getting Rid of It: Bored of tossing axes around already? Disenchants into a Void Crystal, and sells to a vendor for 12g44s56c.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: We are the champions... of the world!
Every week Matthew Rossi brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, a column dedicated to that guy who keeps Mortal Striking you in the arenas, Whirlwinding in Alterac Valley, popping Intimidating Shout in Arathi Basin, and standing there rooted, sheeped or sometimes Death Coiled in Warsong Gulch. Yeah, we all know you hate that we get to wear plate. We hate that you get to set us on fire, if it helps any.This week, instead of talking more about tanking (although you can expect a tanking article covering Protection spec in more detail soon, covering the abilities unique to that talent tree like Shield Slam and Defiance) I've decided we should talk about two related, but not identical, aspects of the warrior - PvE DPS and PvPing. There are some myths to dispel, and some good and bad news for those of us who enjoy the idea of gearing up in the heaviest armor and smashing things with a great two handed whacking stick. There's so much to cover that I expect I'll have to come back to each subject again in the future, but you have to start somewhere.First off, as most experienced warriors will tell you, PvE DPS is actually better if you dual wield. I say this as a devotee of the two hander, mind you. When I raided, I stayed Mortal Strike and used a Sulfuras as my weapon of choice, and I still put out very respectable numbers even in Naxxramas. But I could never match the damage of a dual-wielding fury/arms warrior. I sacrificed that damage for big crits and whirldwind damage which saw me top the charts in places like the suppression room where I could compete with the mages and at the same time I had much less threat than friends who used a Crul in one hand and a Thunderfury in the other. Granted, the proc on TF meant that we had some spirited debates about whether or not you should offhand it in a DPS role at all, or just tank with it, but I won't bore you with that specific and outdated a debate.
Stratics interviews Awake from Nihilum, too
Stratics has posted their own Nihilum interview (here's ours, from last week), and while the piece doesn't actually appear to be in interview format (?), it does have some good info from Awake about how to manage a huge guild, whether PvE players will be able to go professional in the future, and how Nihilum stays on track and GTD.Not too much is new since last week, but Awake does offer up some new info about Nihilum's PvP plans-- they're trying to bring at least two teams into WSVG. Also, Awake mentions that they'll be at Blizzcon in some form (so will WoW Insider, of course, and if you don't have your tickets yet, be sure to watch for our contests all week), and hints that it might have something to do with... Leeroy Jenkins?So there's not too much to learn if you read last week's interview (or if you're just tired of hearing about Nihilum-- yes, I know there are some of you out there), but if you just can't get enough Nihilum, go check it out.
It came from the Blog: Hide & seek, and this week's adventure
This last Saturday, the Undercity on the Zangarmarsh server saw an odd assortment of people running wildly amok. And no, it wasn't because of the Fire Festival or Apothecary Faranell's red light special on body parts. The onslaught of rampaging Hordies was purely made up of members of the Wow Insider guild, <It came from the Blog>, all out to hide and seek as best they could! For the first round, Roark and Charcuterie agreed kindly to help me hunt down members of the guild. I'll tell you this much: there are some serious nooks and crannies in the Undercity. However... there are a few places you don't ever want to try to hide. Those hanging out under the elevators, in coffins, and most of the folks in the slime in the sewers were largely the first caught in the initial sweep. However, after a good half-hour of searching, there were five folks who were still nowhere to be found...
Battleground rewards meant to be "a tier behind" arena, PvE gear
Hellaciouss asks why there is no epic set for level 70 Battleground honor rewards, and Drysc, in answering, reveals quite a bit about how Blizzard views the arena PvP, raid, and battleground experiences.Drysc says the high-end arena gear is "intended to always be about on-par with the current tier players are progressing on." That means that if you play well in Arenas, you can earn gear that's just as good as what the hardcore raiders are earning in PvE. But Battleground gear, says Drysc is actually intended to be not as good. Because Arena and raiding take "quite a bit of effort, interaction, etc" (and BGs apparently do not), the gear for regular honor just isn't as good.I'll let you decide whether that suggestion is true or not, but I've been playing in the BGs, and there are large numbers of players sitting there AFK just to earn honor-- I reported a few of them. That definitely doesn't match up even close to the effort the best teams put into the arenas. But then again, it takes a lot of coordination and effort to lead a winning Horde team through AV, and if I'm able to do that, shouldn't I get rewarded for it? Just because it's easy for some people to exploit the BGs and earn lots of honor doesn't mean Blizzard has to treat all of the people playing in the Battlegrounds like second class citizens. Instead of gimping the gear, how about upping the effort required, and ditching the AFKers?
Archimonde down, Nihilum beats TBC
And here I thought Nihilum was going to take a break. But no! They have just defeated Archimonde, the final boss of Mount Hyjal, which means that they have cleared every PvE encounter currently available in WoW. Um...good job, guys! (This was, of course, another world first.) What's next?MMO-Champion has Archimonde's loot table. Here's what Nihilum got.
Shifting Perspectives: How fun is a druid?
Welcome to Shifting Perspectives! This is a new feature here on WoW Insider, which will bring you various perspectives on shifting forms as a druid, from David Bowers one week, and Dan O'Halloran the next.I'm here kick off our little druid feature for this week with a simple pair of questions to answer: "Is playing a druid fun?" and "should I play a druid?" I reply to both with a resounding yes, of course. "But why?" you ask. "What has the Druid class got to offer me that other, so-called 'superior classes' haven't got?" The answer is, naturally, everything! Well mostly everything. You see, more than any other class, druids have such a variety of abilities and can specialize in these abilities to such a degree that there are many very different play styles available to each druid player. The Druid is the ultimate class for the player who wants to tank sometimes, stealth and kill sometimes, heal sometimes, and then sit back and nuke things from a distance for a few months in order to get a change of pace. A druid can alternately be very good at healing, tanking, dealing up-close melee damage, or dealing far-away nuking damage, filling the roles of a priest, warrior, rogue or mage -- all in one class!
How to get attuned to the Black Temple [updated]
On the PTR, it was really easy to get attuned to the big new tier 6 raid, the Black Temple. All you had to do was be at least Honored with the Violet Eye and talk to Johnny McWeaksauce, and you'd get the amulet that served as a key. So it actually never occurred to me to wonder what the attunement process would be like in the live patch. In case you were wondering, however, wonder no more. MMO-Champion has all the details (plus screenshots), courtesy of Arthyn from Vanquish (A-Staghelm). In short, you have to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress (a boss in Serpentshrine Cavern) and Al'ar (a boss in the Eye). The detailed version is after the cut, for reasons of length and spoileriness.Update: apparently, Karathress and Al'ar are just the first parts of the attunement chain. After Al'ar, you have to kill Rage Winterchill, the first Hyjal boss, and even that may not be the end -- we'll just have to see. World of Raids has screenshots of the new quests.
Forum post of the day: Thrilling heroics
For all that the forums are wretched hives, every so often some really good posts come out of them. This looks like one of those posts: Tinker, of Bloodhoof-EU, has written a little guide for every heroic instance. (Well, almost all of them; Black Morass is coming soon.) The guides are copied after the cut if you want to check them out from work. He gives every heroic a difficulty rating, too; here's what he came up with: 1/5: Blood Furnace 1.5/5: Slave Pens, Mechanar 2/5: Ramparts, Underbog 3/5: Steamvault, Auchenai Crypts, Sethekk Halls 3.5/5: Botanica 3.5–4.5/5: Old Hillsbrad 4/5: Arcatraz 4.5/5: Mana Tombs, Shadow Labyrinth 5/5: Shattered Halls Looks like a pretty reasonable scale to me. I haven't run anything above a 3 on his list, so I can't comment about the relative order of those. Is this rating system accurate in your experience? And what would you give the CoT heroics?
