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Mists of Pandaria Beta: New Dungeon and Raid Finder UI
The Dungeon and Raid Finder tools are getting a visual overhaul in Mists of Pandaria, combining multiple tools into one. The new menu, opened by default with I or Ctrl+I, mashes together the Dungeon and Raid Finders into one utility along with the new Scenario Finder and a tab for dungeon Challenges. I liked when the PvP interface was mashed together but it still had the drop-down menu issue. Hopefully, there will be a day when drop-down menus are gone forever. Check out this gallery of the new Dungeon and Raid Finder utilities that I just snapped in beta. What do you guys think? %Gallery-151580% It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Mists of Pandaria Beta: First look at the new raid instances
YouTube user WazopVids has dropped some of the Mists of Pandaria beta files into a model viewer and recorded the results -- our first look at the Mogu'shan Vaults and the Mantid raid zones. I must stress that these are works in progress and not running in WoW software, so take all of this with a grain of salt. However, what we have seen so far looks pretty damn promising. Check out the Mogu'shan Vaults up above and the Mantid zone after the jump.
Addon Spotlight: A UI primer for returning WoW players
Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. World of Warcraft experienced numerous cataclysms over the last year and a half as Blizzard, the community, and everything in between had a weird hiccup moment. Mists of Pandaria seems to be shaping up to pull many lapsed players back into the World of Warcraft ranks, and the Scroll of Resurrection is a none-too-subtle way of facilitating that goal. Old players who thought WoW was down and out have been pulled back because of instant access to a lot of the features once reserved for the especially dedicated. Last week, I gave you some tips on what to install on your brand new player's game in order to facilitate a smoother first-game experience. This week, we're going to address old players from all past eras of WoW's lifespan and help them get back into the game without too many bumps along the way. It's a very different game, but the core components are exactly the same. Blizzard correctly pointed out that when WoW's got you and your character's boots on the ground, the game works the best. But first, before we begin with the article proper, I wanted to proclaim victory for the WoW community with regard to AoE looting. Blizzard has announced that AoE looting will be making the release of Mists of Pandaria, and I could not be happier. I've been championing AoE looting for some time now, and I want to send the happiest thoughts possible to the dev who got this feature on the launch list. You have no idea what types of quality of life changes that this will bring to everything from old raid farming to time spent waiting around in dungeons.
Mists of Pandaria: Raid Finder loot system changes clarified
If, like me, you heard about the upcoming changes to the Raid Finder's loot system and were a little confused, then this post by Zarhym clarifying what exactly will be changing is a useful read. Basically, rather than rolling against people in the raid (as is the current system), you roll and the chance that you will or won't get loot will have nothing to do with other players at all. Zarhym -- The new LFR roll system First, other players will not affect your loot in any way. Another player winning will not cause you to lose. Another player winning a mace will not mean that she took your mace. If there are many rogues in the raid, your chance of winning a rogue item is not diminished. We may decide that each player has an X% chance to get loot, or we may decide that X number of players get loot, and then randomly determine who those lucky players are. Second, the item you win will be "useful" in the sense that it's potentially usable by your current spec. This does not mean that warriors will get leather because warriors can equip leather (at a huge stat loss). It also does not mean that the game will always give you an item you want or an upgrade for the items you have. It just looks and says "You are a Holy priest, so here is a random item chosen from the Holy priest-appropriate items that this boss can drop." source You'll still have a chance to not get the item you want and have to come back again, but at least this will curb that hideous sinking sensation of seeing Gurthalak drop and knowing yet again that someone else is going to get it instead of you, leading to hostility. Zarhym then goes on to explain the bonus roll system, which is a roll you can effectively trade in for a guarantee of some kind of reward, be it extra gold or a random drop from the boss. At present, this is all only for the Raid Finder, with a possibility of seeing the systems in dungeons if it works out. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Is PvP gear good enough for heroics?
I don't really PvP these days. In vanilla, I had plenty of fun with my priest, running around and healing people who were on the mad dash for High Warlord. Back then, there wasn't really much in the way of PvP-appropriate gear -- in fact, when the honor system began, the most effective and deadly people you ran across in Battlegrounds were those who were raiding and collecting tier gear. I remember that fact particularly infuriated a friend of mine, who over the course of vanilla did nothing but PvP, although at the time that meant basically running around Southshore and Tarren Mill. When the honor system was introduced, there was a contest held by Blizzard for those who engaged in PvP, and the top characters on the realm who got the most amount of honorable kills were rewarded with a special tabard. My friend spent weeks in Tarren Mill, happily murdering Alliance until his fingers bled, and he won his tabard handily -- after all, nobody really did as much PvP as he did. Then the Battlegrounds came out. When he stepped into Battlegrounds, he discovered that despite the fact that he did nothing but PvP, he couldn't hold a candle against those people who engaged in raiding. The gear and weapons that they got from raiding were too powerful. And that's when he threw up his hands, said he didn't want to have to raid to be good at PvP, and promptly stopped playing the game.
Should Blizzard leave heroic encounter difficulty alone?
When the Raid Finder was first introduced, I had high hopes for its impact on the game. While the main reason behind the implementation of this system was arguably to get as many players experiencing raid content as possible, at the time, I was more interested in the impact it would have on the progression races between all of the top guilds in the world. I have always had a great deal of admiration for players in these types of guilds and have watched intently during each new tier as they all vied for world firsts. I believed the Raid Finder could benefit this type of competition by preventing heroic encounters from being nerfed while the content was still current. Surely, I thought, if so many people are able to experience raiding like never before through this new tool, Blizzard would have no pressing reason to make heroic encounters any easier. Well, it seems I was wrong, for in the very next tier of content Blizzard released, we saw progressive nerfs to these difficult fights. Personally, I prefer to keep these encounters the way they are, at least until a new tier is released. Something just feels wrong to see the hardest fights available made easier through a series of hotfixes. Even with respect to my own guild's progression, having sweeping nerfs hit Firelands just as my guild was putting in some really good attempts on Ragnaros felt like Blizzard moved the finish line, taking what would have been a very gratifying kill and turning it into an accidental one-shot that contained none of the catharsis we had felt during previous boss kills. What do you think? With the Raid Finder now a reality and a new expansion looming on the horizon, do you think the difficulty of heroic raid encounters should be static, like those from tier 11, or should they be more flexible?
Does a video game have to force us to make good choices?
Take a moment and picture this: There's a politician out there, a pretty sleazy politician, who is basically in a position of power to use that power to do whatever suits him or her best -- no regard for anyone that voted him into office, no real sense of caring for those he is supposedly serving. One day, someone comes up to that politician and says, "Hey man, I'll give you $3 million if you start taking an interest in your constituents and doing what is best for them, OK?" The politician agrees, takes the money, and promptly starts doing the right thing. Is that politician in the wrong? Or is that politician simply learning that if he behaves badly, he'll get a bribe to start behaving correctly? What's to stop him from behaving badly again, if he thinks he's going to get another $3 million out of the deal? More importantly, if all the other politicians out there see this guy get a bribe to behave like a decent politician and all of those politicians decide to start behaving badly in an effort to get that bribe for themselves, are they in the wrong?
Looking for raid, or looking for trade?
My interactions with the Raid Finder have been limited, for the most part. I'm in a raiding guild, and we were told when the Raid Finder came out that we would do guild runs to start out with. This was to make sure that all drops benefited everyone in the guild, and honestly, it was a smart idea. Players got their set bonuses with relative speed, and we completed the encounters with no difficulty at all just due to the fact that they were relatively easy in comparison to the normal-mode raiding we were doing. However, after we began melting more gear than we were keeping and started working on heroics in earnest, our raid leader let us know that if we really needed anything else from the Raid Finder, we'd have to go run it on our own. So it was with a fair amount of confidence that I queued up for Dragon Soul, looking for a trinket that was so far eluding my rogue in normal mode content. No big deal, right? Easy enough, and by now plenty of people ought to be familiar with the content. Well ... not so much.
Should WoW players be responsible for player accountability?
Blizzard's policy as far as reporting players has been about the same since day one. If you have a problem with a player, you report them. While Blizzard can contact you and thank you for reporting the issue, it will not give any details regarding what it has done about the problem being reported. This has always been understandable to me; in the many years on and off that I worked customer service and call center jobs, rule #1 was that you did not speak to anyone but an account holder regarding the status of their account. To me, the Blizzard policy is just more of the same kind of treatment -- Blizzard cannot tell you about actions taken against another player's account, because hey, their account isn't yours, you know? It's private information. That said, I have reported my share of players over the years, and I never really knew if action was taken against these players or not. In simple cases of name violations, like using an inappropriate word for guild or character name, I could usually tell if something had been done, because the guild or player in question would have their name changed. But in cases of player harassment ... well, you never know if they've been told anything or not. You just sort of hope this means the person harassing you will go away and that will be the end of it, but there are absolutely no guarantees.
The Queue: Shattered glass
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I think Blizzard should scrap the dance studio concept forever and ever ... if it meant we could all get personalized theme music for PvP. WoWie Zowie asked: As I understand it, Tyrande Whisperwind is a Priest. Yet I see her wielding a bow and having a pet "Dori'thur" the owl. Is this because she is hiding something? Or did Blizz just decide that she needs some form of offense without being "shadow"?
Drama Mamas: Choosing between raiding and friendships
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. In the video above, Candace's friends are off having fun without her. Since she is unwilling to find her own fun, she takes a portal to Mars to hang out with strangers -- and breaks into song. There are parallels with this week's letter (except for the song part). Hi Robin & Lisa, I'm finally writing in with my own dilemma. Since I started playing this game in mid-Wrath, I've played with my girlfriend and our mutual friend. We have a strong bond and truly enjoy playing together, and GF and I have even met our friend IRL. In Wrath, I led our 10 man raid group, and we loved every minute of ICC. Once the Cataclysm was upon us, we expected to continue raiding. However, things rarely work out as planned, and we missed T11 completely, mostly due to the dissolution of our guild. Eventually I became frustrated with lack of progress and quit the game for a while.
4 steps for dealing with Raid Finder harassment
I'm a reformed bully. A few years back, I was the kid in the PUG raid calling everyone else bad and acting like I was the Light's gift to raiding. I've since worked to distance myself from that attitude. While I still get annoyed from time to time when I see poor play in Raid Finder and generally have a sour taste in my mouth while pugging raids, I've become a lot more aware of how painful and harmful my words can be, and I keep them to myself. With my past experience being a bully, it made sense that when our editors wanted someone to write up a survival guide to using the Raid Finder, the most dreadful hive of scum and villianry since Mos Eisley, I would take the challenge on. The three main types of WoW bullies In my real life, I work with kids. I've spent the past third of my 24-year life working with kids. As a result, I've been exposed to a lot of bullies, both online and on the playground. There are a few staple things to remember about people who are also bullies, particularly when it comes to the Raid Finder. Here's who you'll find there. 1. The Covering for His Own Inadequacies Bully This is your archetypical bully cliché, but it's grounded in reality. These bullies are horrifically self-conscious, and they're just lashing out at whoever's handy because they're afraid that if they don't, they're going to be the one picked out and picked on. We've all been here; it's called high school (also Congress, but I repeat myself). These bullies are fairly common in your average Raid Finder run. Just yesterday, I ran a RF with Shelam, my blood death knight. Now, Shelam has an average ilevel of 378 and has tanked all of RF before, but he was called out and almost vote-kicked by three players: another blood DK who was trying to tank while dual-wielding Souldrinkers (a big no-no), his friend and guildmate the last-on-meters fire mage, and an unholy death knight who was fully gemmed for stamina despite being a DPS class. They all called me out for being undergeared, most likely because I was the easiest target in the raid due to my lone remaining blue item, an ilevel 346 helm. Had they not gone after me, it would have been easy for them to have been the recipients of some harsh (if accurate) words, so they chose to go on the attack instead. That let them redirect the blame and their insecurity onto me while feeling empowered because they were making accusations instead of fielding them.
Encrypted Text: When your DPS doesn't matter
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Rogues are all about DPS. You've heard my spiel about us being the only pure melee class, which makes DPS the only thing we bring to the table. SportsCenter can claim that Tim Tebow is a great quarterback, in spite of his shortcomings, because of his "intangible" benefits. Rogues don't have that luxury. If you parse poorly, then you get labeled as a bad rogue. I was in the Raid Finder last week, and a warrior from another server tried calling me out for using Cloak of Shadows to stay in during Morchok's Black Blood phase. "Hey, that rogue didn't run out, that's not fair," he complained in raid chat. The last time I checked, all is fair in love, war, and the DPS meters. However, there is one higher calling than DPS, and that is the success of your raid or party. Even though it's against our nature, we occasionally have to sacrifice some of our personal DPS in order to benefit the raid.
Two Bosses Enter: Echo of Jaina vs. Morchok
In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title. At the beginning of season 3 of Two Bosses Enter, I changed the rules a tiny bit, finally allowing raid bosses to be a part of the competition. While some have brought up that the power differentials between a 5-man dungeon boss and a 10- or 25-man are an unfair dynamic, I counter those statements with only this: It's my fake arena show, not yours! Jaina vs. Morchok, go! On the last thrilling and chilling episode of Two Bosses Enter, the lost and angry essence of Baine Bloodhoof utterly wiped out the satyr guard Peroth'arn from the Well of Eternity. It wasn't even close. You guys and gals love your tauren heroes, and I will not deny you the championing of one of your prolific and hooved role models. The Echo of Baine was well represented in the comments, as we will soon see after checking out this week's combatants. Are you ready for a serious rumble between two powerhouses? Master of the arcane versus an elemental monstrosity -- one is going home next week. %Poll-72968%
Breakfast Topic: Has the Raid Finder changed the way you raid?
My name is Fox Van Allen, and I'm a recovering raidaholic. When I first got into raiding, it was just a casual thing. One night a week for a couple hours. Then, when Icecrown Citadel opened, it got far more serious. I was raiding several nights a week, several hours a night. I was grinding hard modes, wiping on heroic Lich King more times than I'd care to remember. But something changed. That something: patch 4.3. The advent of the Raid Finder tool made it possible to get a group whenever I wanted. I could raid on my own schedule. I could have a life again. Sure, it's harder to get loot via Raid Finder, but I don't care about that. I'm just in it for the fun. How about you? Has the Raid Finder changed the way you raid? Has it freed up more of your time? Or are you just as serious about raiding as you were before the Raid Finder came along?
Officers' Quarters: Guilds struggled after Cataclysm's raid changes
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. As predicted, Cataclysm has had a massive impact on guilds and guild leadership. The changes to guilds in this expansion will continue to have consequences throughout the lifetime of the game. Of all those changes, none have affected PvE guilds more than Cataclysm's new raiding systems and philosophy. The new endgame In April 2010, Blizzard announced a major shift in its design philosophy for raiding: The company intended to combine lockouts for 10- and 25-man raid sizes, while placing the exact same items in both. When the changes were first announced, the community -- including part of WoW Insider's own staff -- unleashed an understandable outcry. Memories of the transition from vanilla's 40-man to The Burning Crusade's 25-man cap haunted us. We worried whether our guilds could survive another monumental change.
Is choosing a server becoming obsolete?
Let's hop in the wayback machine for a minute, because I enjoy doing that. Once upon a time in the days of vanilla WoW, players who had just purchased the game were faced with a choice upon logging in for the first time: What server would they call home? There were three different server types, each with their own flavor: PvP, for those that wanted to log in and have the opportunity to whale on the opposing faction at any given opportunity; PvE for those who would rather avoid fighting with other players and simply enjoy the content; and RP, for those who wanted to create character stories and roleplay with other characters. Later, the RP-PvP realm was introduced for roleplayers who really wanted to whale on the opposing faction as well as roleplay. But the choice went beyond a simple matter of what type of game you wanted to play. Each server had its own cast of characters, and as the years went by, these players turned into friends and foes alike. Servers weren't just about how you wanted to play; they were a collection of people you interacted with on a daily basis. Guilds were composed of people with the same ideas in mind, but those guilds weren't the be all and end- all of your interaction with people in the game. Every server had that one guy who was always cracking jokes in trade chat. Every server always had a ninja or two. And of course, there was always the guy who didn't seem to get what social interaction was all about. These days, we have cross-realm grouping via Real ID, the Raid Finder for those who don't want to bother with joining a raid guild, and now we've got the up-and-coming feature that will allow us to group with players cross-realm for raiding old content as well as the new stuff. So the big question is this: Do servers even have a purpose anymore?
Lichborne: Fall of Deathwing Raid Finder tips for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. I will be frank: Every death knight should have a solid goal to defeat Deathwing this expansion. It's not for the experience, it's not the glory, it's not even for the achievements. No, it's for one thing: It's for the tentacle sword. This baby is everything that one can aspire for in a WoW weapon. It's a sword. It can be transmogrified into our signature runeblade. It has an awesome creepy pet proc. What's not to love? Of course, to get to the sword, you'll first have to take down four bosses, hope the sword drops, and then hope you win the roll against who knows how many other plate DPSers in the raid -- but hey, you have to start somewhere, right? Let's dive into the Fall of Deathwing. To be frank, the most annoying part of the fight with Ultraxion, the first boss, is his trash. Dragons will fly in slowly from the skies above and must be pulled down where you can DPS and/or tank them. If you can get past that, Ultraxion himself should be a breeze.
Drama Mamas: The etiquette of AFKing in a group or raid
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. When is it OK to AFK during a boss fight? The answers range from "Never, unless you are about to call 911!" to "Any time you need to. Real life comes first!" This week, we address this common conundrum. Not a specific instance of drama but it definitely causes it often enough. I really love instancing but have been a bit stressed recently about how to deal with interruptions. How do you handle them? Knock on the door, kids waking up, anything really. We're not all college kids where the worst that could happen would be a power-outage or dorm fire alarm. From what I read there is not much help or sympathy out there - although that may just be the minority. They mostly say to not even run instances, which I can sympathize with - they want to run it fast - but I cannot accept that as an answer. What do they do when they have to answer the door during a boss fight? Really.
Does WoW need more raid lockout alternatives?
I was talking to some friends about raiding lockouts before we went into Baradin Hold, in part because Baradin Hold isn't merely locked out by the usual weekly system but also by whether or not your faction holds Tol Barad. This led us to discussing the old Zul'Gurub raid lockout, a three-day cycle, and that led us to consider other possible options. Algalon, a raid encounter that gave you exactly one hour per lockout to complete, also came up. I then told them I was shamelessly going to steal our discussion and use it as grist for a post, because that's what I do. One of the things about raiding lockouts right now is that they're extremely predictable, and their commonality across the board means that they tend to cause content exhaustion near the end of a week. Everyone does everything they're likely to as close to the reset as possible, meaning that by the end of the week, there's nothing left. Even guilds like mine that raid on a three-day-a-week schedule can exhaust almost all current raiding well before mid-week if we get some lucky breaks. What if we had some variation?
