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Meet Tenris Mirkblood, a new Kara boss, possibly for the Scourge event
Our friend Boubouille over at MMO Champion has done some more digging in the datafiles of the beta realms, and pulled out a brand new boss in Karazhan of all places. Meet Prince Tenris Mirkblood of the San'layn, a group of elven princes aligned with none other than The Lich King himself. He's not live on active servers at all -- again, Boubouille dug this up from beta realm files, so we may never actually see Tenris in game.But there are a few quests surrounding the boss as well -- for more on how he might be included in the game during the world event (including possible spoilers), hit the link below.
Northrend-flying quest removed in favor of cash payout
Drkshadow posted in the official forums with what he considers a slap in the face for folks looking to use their flying mounts in Northrend. (It's always a slap in the face, isn't it?) The quest to "attune" your mount to Northrend has been removed, and replaced with a simple 1000 gold payout. If you don't pay, you don't fly. Bornakk confirms the change only a few posts later. He says turning the attunement into a cash payment makes it easier for more players to get. It might suck to pay the 1000G for each hungry alt. But, really, if you consider it -- how hard is it to farm up 1000G on your main? I think Bornakk makes a fair point -- it's probably easier to just grab cash on your main than take a relatively undergeared alt through a quest over and over. Of course, we already knew that flying wasn't going to be very expensive. I guess someone might argue that 1000 gold can be a lot of cash, but that's really only a few days of dailies, or maybe a quick trip to sell loot at the auction house. At level 80, I'm just not going to get intimidated by a single grand.
Celebrating Bilbo's birthday in LotRO
Today is both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins' birthday, and to celebrate, Turbine has reinstated the Belated Birthday quest in Lord of the Rings Online. This quest is basically a way for Bilbo and Frodo to get you to deliver their presents to each other, but you get a nifty little musical cracker as a reward.As you may remember from the books (or heaven-forbid, the movies), this day is the beginning of Bilbo's disappearance from The Shire , so this is a big deal to many of the game's lore buffs and role-players. Even if you're not a fan of the lore though, this quest only happens once a year. It's available to those level 43 and above, and begins in The Last Homely House of Rivendell. Simply run over to Bilbo's Room inside the House and follow Frodo's instructions.
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!
Phat Loot Phriday: The Booterang
I've been grinding as much Netherwing rep as I can lately, and this is definitely the most fun of the quests down there, if not the most fun daily quest ever.Name: Booterang (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)Type: Quest itemDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: Gets Disobedient Peons back up and working again, and fast. As you might expect, the Booterang is a boot you can throw that will come back to you, whereever you are. It's part of the Netherwing rep questline, and involves a daily quest where you must search out Disobedient Dragonmaw Peons on Netherwing Ledge, toss the Booterang at them to give them an attitude adjustment, and then the boot flies back to you (and as you catch it, you do a great fist pump motion). It's great, great fun -- while the bombing daily quests are always a good time, and the Murloc de-mind-controlling on Sunwell Isle always brings a smile to my face, the Booterang is the best. Unfortunately, the Booterang only works on Disobedient Peons on Netherwing Ledge, so using it to knock some sense into raiders who aren't paying attention or battleground members who aren't fighting at the flag is, unfortunately, out of the question. But maybe we'll see an upgraded Booterang in the expansion? There is also a technique called "Booterang chasing" -- you can use the item from your mount, and since an epic mount is required to do the Netherwing quests, you actually move faster than the Booterang can come back to you. Since you can use it 20 times in a row, you can throw out 20 Booterangs at various peons, and as long as you keep moving, you can trail all 20 Booterangs behind you, spinning around you as they try to find their way back. The 'rangs can be trailed anywhere, too, so people can be seen flying around Shadowmoon Valley with a trail of spinning boots behind them. How to Get It: There are lots of Netherwing quest line guides around (including an official one) -- to start the quests, you've got to first have a 300 riding skill, and then you'll have to grind a few dailiy quests until you get to Friendly reputation with the Netherwing Faction (by masquerading as a Dragonmaw Orc grunt). Once you hit Friendly, you'll get upgraded to an Overseer, and with the promotion comes your very own Booterang (which you've got to assemble with a quick quest that requires you to get some Knothide Leather, easily attained on the AH if you're not a skinner, and the hide of Tyrannus, a dinosaur hiding in the northernmost ecodome in Netherstorm).Make your Booterang (the "There are many like it, but this one is yours" inscription, along with the text of the quests, comes straight from the great Full Metal Jacket), and then the next quest requires you to bust some Peon heads. And let me tell you -- after a day of slogging through the Netherwing mines dealing with all those Flayer respawns and fighting with other players over drops and mobs, there is nothing better than slinging a booterang around and telling some lazy orcs to get back to work.Getting Rid of It: Unfortunately, you don't actually get it -- even though you "make" it by getting the mats together, the Overseer who gives you the quest keeps it when you turn the quest in. It sure is fun while you have it (and note to Blizzard: this would be a great leatherworking pattern, especially if you threw a stun or even a debuff on it), but when the quest is gone, so is your Booterang. Until the next day, anyway, when you can do the quest again.
The strange task of entering Dalaran
Here's a somewhat annoying little problem with the Beta. As of the latest build, you can't just walk into Dalaran, or rather, you can't just use the teleportation crystal go up. Instead, you have to complete a quest to align yourself to Dalaran. But this quest is only available at level 74. In the Outlands, it's not uncommon for a fresh 58 to head through the Dark Portal and right to Shattrath City. Binding in one of the Inns there essentially puts all of the Outlands before you, with flights connecting you easily to where you wish to go. It seems strange that Blizzard has put up this strange quest attunement roadblock to those who wish to alight from the boat to Northrend and head straight to the capital. Perhaps it's a similar decision that caused them to restrict flying mounts to level 77 and above -- they don't want people skimping on exploration and seeing content, so they make you hang around the newbie zones for a while before you can just stick with Dalaran. Luckily, not all is completely lost. Much like with Shattrath before level 58, You can still get teleported or summoned up by a Mage or Warlock before level 74. Still, it's a strange little extra hoop Blizzard's having us leap through to get the to top.
The Death Knight starting experience
A couple of days ago, it was with a little good fortune and a lot of soul-selling by WoW Insider lead Elizabeth Harper that I finally got my grubby little hands on a precious Beta key. Over 2 Gigabytes worth of installer and patches later, I found myself creating a Death Knight. It is a fair certainty that every player who upgrades to the Wrath of the Lich King will create one. In fact, after playing the class for just a short time, I have to say that every single player should. The Death Knight starting experience is the single most immersive role-playing experience in the game.Don't get me wrong. I'm not too big on role-playing. I mostly skip quest flavor text and go directly to the objectives. But the Death Knight starting experience -- it's really called that -- is just game design at its finest. Blizzard mentioned that one design flaw in The Burning Crusade was not making Illidan's presence felt early on in the Outlands. In fact, aside from the raiders who managed to set foot in the 25-man raids, a large number of the player base never got to see the bad guys driving the story of The Burning Crusade. Well... when you play a Death Knight, you won't just feel the lore, it punches you in the face and knocks you off your feet the moment you log into the game for the first time.
Breakfast Topic: Doncha hate it when...
...you're doing a collection quest and you don't understand why the widgets aren't dropping -- until you realize you're grinding in the wrong area?And doncha hate it when you're just a few pulls away from finishing an instance when your main tank says, "Sorry guys, I've got to go, I didn't realize it was so late"?And doncha hate it when you finally grab that last pig's spleen, turn around to head back to the quest hub -- and walk right into an elite who sends you back for a corpse run?And doncha hate it when you go to turn in a quest after leaving an instance run... and then realize you left the quest item back on the last boss' corpse?I mean doncha? What else do you hate in game?
Phat Loot Phriday: Orb of the Blackwhelp
This is the perfect hefty loot item -- it's easy enough for almost anyone to get, but relatively secret enough that most people don't know exactly where it is. When I came across it leveling up my Hunter this week, I knew it belonged right here.Name: Orb of the Blackwhelp (Wowwiki, Thottbot, Wowhead)Type: Common ConsumableDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: Transforms you into a helpless Blackwhelp dragon for up to 15 minutes. You can't attack or cast spells while transformed. In fact, it's pretty limiting -- you can't even take damage while in this form. You can use self-buff abilities and drink potions and such (rumor is that Winterfall Firewater looks funny while the Orb is on), but the disguise is pretty fragile. And Wyrmcultists will see right through you in this disguise, as will any other mobs. We'll get to why that's important in a second. Oh, and coincidentally, Blizzard's item ID number for this item is 31337. Cute. How to Get It: Up in Blade's Edge, in the Wyrmcultist chain of quests leading out of Evergrove, you'll eventually find your way to Blackwing Coven, a cave west of the Grishna Arrakoa settlement (through the Wyrmskull Tunnel). There's a quest called "Meeting at Blackwing Coven," that requires you to kill Wyrmcultists, get "Costume Scraps" from them, and then use five of those to make a costume that will make you look like one of them.The actual quest has you meeting with an NPC and then leaving, but if you hurry (the costume only lasts three minutes), you can run over and also chat with another NPC on the opposite side of the cavern from the quest target. The NPC is called the "Wyrmcult Provisioner," and if you're in costume, he'll be friendly, and act as an actual vendor. Among a few other general goods (I stocked up on bullets while there), he also sells this item for a mere 2g 50s.And the good news is that even if you've done the quest already, you can go back, murder more Wyrmcultists for more Costume Scraps, and go visit the provisioner again. So even if you didn't catch this the first time around, it's still waiting for you in Blade's Edge.The Provisioner also sells the Wyrmcultist's Cloak, which is a nice Fire Resistance cloak, especially since it's so easy to get.Getting Rid of It: It's only got 3 charges, so use those and it's out of your life forever. You could also sell it back for 62s 50c, but unfortunately it's BoP so no auction house profits off of this one.
The Eye of Sauron makes an appearance in Wrath of the Lich King
The ultimate evil in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is represented by a large eye sitting atop a gigantic tower in a desolate and war torn land. It is one of the most iconic images in not only fantasy literature, but also in recent cinematography. Just about anyone who has paid attention to movies in the past eight years would be able to pick the Eye of Sauron out immediately, and I would have to imagine just about everyone playing WoW would be able to as well.The Eye of Sauron makes an appearance in Wrath of the Lich King in the Death Knight starting zone. It goes under the name of the Eye of Acherus. In the image at the top of the article you can see the two side-by-side – the Eye of Sauron on the left, and the Eye of Acherus on the right. Arthas himself directs you to control it and use it to gather data from New Avalon, a nearby Scarlet Crusade fortification. Take a look at the gallery below for images of the quest, what you do during it, and how everything appears.%Gallery-28758%
Around Azeroth: Extreme robot fighting
I admit, I totally made the post title up. But I think you have to admit that extreme robot fighting sounds like tons of fun. Reader Forlune sends in this shot straight from the beta realms, explaining that this is a new daily PvP quest in the Grizzly Hills. Though I haven't tried this one out myself, judging from intel from our good friends at WoWhead, this is one of several new PvP-oriented dailies in th Blue Sky Logging Grounds -- this one just asks you to return several broken-down shredders for repair, while the others seem to encourage more direct punishment of the opposing faction. Robot fighting or no robot fighting, who's not into showing the Horde... or Alliance... who's boss?This image came to us straight from the Wrath of the Lich King beta -- and we'd love to have your beta screenshots, too! If you have anything our readers might like, sharing it is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. And, please, no more sunsets! (Well, okay, maybe if they are some really cool Northrend sunsets, we can consider.)%Gallery-1816%
Forum post of the day: Random acts of kindness
Of course there's a lot of bad blood between Horde and Alliance, but every once in a while we work together. About half of the times I've done the Ring of Blood quest line in Nagrand I've seen Horde and Alliance fighting side-by-side. There are some other quests that seem to promote this behavior like "Even Gronn have Standards" and "The Skettis Offensive." Some things just bring out our cooperative souls. Sometimes we just find ourselves compelled to do nice things. Sukalin of EU-Anarchronos told a tale of a complete stranger coming to his rescue:Just a few minutes ago, I was running down through Stranglethorn Vale on my 20 Warlock, so I could get to Booty Bay and eventually The Barrens to do my Succubus quest. I kept getting attacked by beasts and dying, though. About a quarter of the way down I was attacked by a tiger and was reduced to about 5% health when a Troll Shaman called Ayisah shocked the tiger and saved me! I was grateful, of course, and expressed my gratitude in the form of emotes - but in addition to that she helped me travel down the rest of the zone by following close behind me on my way to Booty Bay.
Illusionary Tactics: Tree's Company
Illusionary Tactics documents my perfectly reasonable preoccupation with items and quests that change your appearance. After all, how long can you really look at one character's back before you start getting tired of it? So much better to turn into a tree periodically. (No, I'm not talking about you, Druids; your column is that way.) Blizzard must have really had a good time designing the Draenei and Blood Elf starting areas for Burning Crusade; there are a lot of great and frequently hilarious quests there, and this is one of them. The reason I'm talking about it here is because it's one of them that happens to turn you into a tree. Although I find it unlikely that anyone would want to avoid spoilers for a level 8 quest chain, I'll put the rest of the discussion behind a cut just in case.
Breakfast Topic: Most evil quest in the game
Here's an interesting question: what's the most morally evil quest in the game? There was a quick discussion about the Stanley the Dog quest in Hillsbrad (where you poison and then kill a neutral dog), and it got me thinking: are there any quests in game where you really had a problem with what your character was doing? What's the most evil thing your character has done?Of course, the definition of evil in this case isn't quite written in stone -- what your character thinks is OK to do may not be what you think is OK to do. My undead Rogue took a lot of pleasure in killing Stanley, even if I would be horrified to hear about someone doing the same thing in real life. But in the same vein, while I was fully convinced in character that setting off that Mana Bomb in Outland was the right thing for my character to do, personally, I thought the kill count was a little shocking. At what point does my hero become a mass murderer?A few other WoW Insider writers mentioned the Cenarius' Legacy and the other Undead Plague quests to be a little too evil for their tastes. Are there any other quests in the game where your character is asked to do something morally questionable?
AO designer says adieu, moves on to The Secret World
Anarchy Online content designer Nina "Aythem" Sund has been writing developer journal entries over at Ten Ton Hammer for several months, sharing game design wisdom and insider anecdotes with players. Her latest entry had a different tone, though. She used the medium to bid farewell to AO players as she moves on to work on Funcom's next MMO, The Secret World.As a parting gift, she spent the rest of her entry telling fans how they too can become game designers. Hers is good advice if that's an aspiration for you. Unfortunately, she didn't slip out any news or information on The Secret World, which as so far been very, well ... secret. Ten Ton Hammer attached two bits of concept art, though, so savor that!We hope Funcom will continue to support AO even though it now has Age of Conan and The Secret World to worry about, too. Sund was a popular quest designer at AO; we're glad she'll be adding her touch to TSW, but poor AO!
LotRO's Korean launch may alter western business model
Turbine is busy gearing up for its Korean launch of Lord of the Rings Online. The title is currently in closed beta in Korea and moving toward limited open beta. Fantasy titles are hugely popular in the country, but the enthusiasm with which beta testers are greeting LotRO has likely been spurred on by the popularity of the films directed by Peter Jackson. MMORPG's Jon Wood recently caught up with LotRO Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel to discuss Turbine's plans in the east. They discussed some of the details about LotRO's forthcoming Korean launch, which revealed how this might impact North American and European subscribers.
EVE Online dev blog: new missions galore
EVE Online developer CCP Molock writes in his dev blog that CCP Games has big plans for PvE content in the game, especially for mission-runners. Eight devs are currently working full-time on mission and deadspace creation. In addition, there are a number of freelancers working on new mission text. The freelance opportunities were announced in EVE's EON magazine, so it seems they found the people they needed -- particularly in light of just how much PvE content is on the way. Molock describes the process of getting everything in order for The Empyrean Age and Factional Warfare as 'dizzying', particularly in light of the 160 new Factional Warfare missions that were part of the expansion's launch. Molock states that more content is to come in subsequent Empyrean Age releases, and explains what we can expect from EVE's PvE experience in the future.
Sword of the New World expands with Nocturnal Sonata
IGN has a scoop on the new 'Nocturnal Sonata' expansion to Sword of the New World, an MMO also known as Granado Espada in Asia. Sword of the New World is a free-to-play title brought to North America and Europe by the K2 Network. Massively has looked at this game in the past and found it to be a quirky title; IGN describes its setting as 'the European Baroque period if it was designed by a modern anime artist'. Sword of the New World becomes even more surreal given that its old world setting is juxtaposed with a techno soundtrack. Surreal qualities aside, the game has some interesting features, particularly the use of collectible UPCs, or Unique Player Characters. The concept is somewhat comparable to the Heroes in Guild Wars. You control up to three characters at once who are members of your 'family'; certain NPCs for whom you've successfully completed quests offer themselves up to be added to your family as UPCs and called upon to aid you in your adventures. They provide access to special hybrid classes with unique powers to match. There are over 40 such UPCs, and two more are initially being added in the Nocturnal Sonata expansion: Vincent Rio (who inflicts damage with music) and Baek Ho (martial artist extraordinaire). Yet more UPCs are to follow in the coming months, adding new gameplay possibilities to Sword of the New World. The Nocturnal Sonata expansion will be released on June 25, and closely follows the 'The Land of the Dead' expansion released only three months ago.
Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan's 250 hours
It's going to take you 250 hours to get to level 80 in Age of Conan. That's the big news today, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that. On the one hand, that tells us very little about the actual game. Saying you have 250 hours of content means nothing unless that content is fun content. On the other, it does let you know exactly what you're getting into as far as a time commitment goes (on average). It's also important to note that that's pretty close to World of Warcraft's benchmark, too -- most players can get from 1-70 in 6 to 14 days played. I think my first 70 took me about 7 and 1/2 days. What's a good length of time for the leveling game to be, anyway? If you make it too long and drawn out, won't many players quit in frustration before they ever get to the top (EverQuest was notorious for having players that never capped)? Maybe. Let them level too quickly, though, and they'll quit if there's nothing to do at the top. Even if there is something to do when you're capped, for many people, leveling is the game. I'm probably one of those people. I hate structured PvP (like arenas) and while I dabble in raiding, I really have more fun leveling. So is 250 hours long enough to keep you interested? And why even tell us that in the first place? What does Age of Conan's 250 hours mean to you?
Player vs. Everything: Learning by doing
In most MMORPGs, it's practically considered a right of passage to learn advanced concepts by the sweat of your brow and with a big helping of independent research. We're MMO players, after all! We don't need tutorials guiding us through the advanced aspects of the game. Right? They're for the weak and lowly fans of single player and casual games. We rely almost solely on forum information, lessons from more advanced players, and learning by doing (and we're darn proud of it). And as Tobold discussed a few weeks ago, you really have to do that stuff if you want to be a successful player.While raiding Karazhan last weekend, my guild brought a relatively newbish hunter along for the ride. Her spec wasn't terrible, and she brought a number of epics (albeit PvP epics) to the table, so we figured, "What the heck?" We didn't even get too worried when her DPS wasn't up to par. Things were going just fine until we got to the second boss fight and needed her to do a little chain trapping. A few wipes later, we realized that she had absolutely no idea how to use her frost traps effectively-- a core mechanic of her class. What was the problem there?Well, there's no game tutorial that comes in, holds your hand, and says, "Hey, pal. You're going to need to use frost trap effectively in the end game. Let's practice it a little until you get the hang of it." Most MMOGs just teach you the bare-bones basics of the game (like running, moving, and auto-attack) before they abandon you to the wild. You're expected to figure out the rest on your own, and eventually to hit up sites like Elitist Jerks or the World of Warcraft class forums to make sure that you're being all that you can be. Is this necessarily the best way to do things, though?
