rhok-delar
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More old World of Warcraft design notes
Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi loves to tweet out his old notes, and this morning has seen another two instalments from his journals of Warcraft past. This time, we saw Rhok'delar's design laid out in messy scrawls over two pages, personally the "turn in to third dude" made me chuckle. The interesting thing about those notes is how the design is created before any kind of story, and how the different stages panned out in concept. Next up, as an extra treat, Alex posted the to do list we see above, which you can view in all its glory on Twitter. He also issues a challenge, asking readers to spot what didn't make it to fruition. What can you see? I can certainly see a couple of lines that I can barely make out... Repeatable something something for Silithus? Hard to tell. And if you want to follow the Blizzard team on Twitter to see these for yourselves, WoW Insider posted a guide to Blizzard's Twitter accounts.
WoW Archivist: WoW's 20 greatest non-legendary weapons, part 2
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Based on your comments from part 1, I feel the need to explain my criteria so that people can debate these choices with the right frame of mind. This list isn't just for a weapon that had good stats, or a great model, or even one that is a big part of the lore. Those are all bonuses here, but they are just that -- bonuses. This list is about weapons that straight-up delighted us because they did something new or unique, because they were memorable in some grand way that other weapons haven't been. Gorehowl and Ashkandi, as beloved as they are, as gorgeously modeled as they are, just weren't interesting enough as items to make the list. They deserve honorable mentions, though. A lot of amazing weapons have been left out, including some of my personal favorites, but hey, WoW just has too much greatness for any mere top 20 list to contain. Let's proceed to the top 10!
Weapons of Lore: Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers
For hunters in vanilla WoW, it was the pinnacle of weapons -- a bow with incredibly powerful stats. But Rhok'delar wasn't without its issues, mainly concerning the ability to change the bow into a staff but not being able to use both staff and bow at the same time. This was eventually changed so that hunters could have both Rhok'delar and its counterpart, Lok'delar, Stave of the Ancient Keepers, after completing the Rhok'delar quest chain. And if that weren't enough, hunters also could obtain the Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamia, an at the time unheard of 24-slot bag perfect for carrying around all the ammo a hunter could ask for. Though all three of these items were only of epic quality, like Benediction, Rhok'delar represented a legendary test of skills for the player who tried to obtain it. Although Benediction only had one event for priests to frantically heal through, Rhok'delar contained four of these trials, all of which had to be completed without even a pet to assist. It was a brutal test of shooting, traps and hunter cunning, but those who completed the chain were richly rewarded. And it all began with one unassuming petrified leaf, found in the fiery depths of Molten Core.
Out with the old
In response to a what I'd call a troll on the forums, Zarhym gives some thoughtful insight to a problem that's been raising its head more and more often as the game gets older and older: items and achievements that once required lots of time and/or skill to obtain are becoming easier than ever to get. Usually, when this topic comes up, we're talking about epics, but that's not always the case. Here, the item in question is the Warlock mount. It used to require a long quest chain to obtain, but after a series of decisions on Blizzard's part, you can now train it right away from the trainer as soon as you hit the required level.Zarhym says that it's just part of the game's evolution -- originally, the dreadsteed quests were part of the endgame, and just like the Hunter Rhok'delar quests, were designed to show that players had reached the pinnacle of the class. But nowadays, level 60 isn't what it used to be, and the best way to do those quests is to have a higher level character tag along with you. That's not how Blizzard designed it (and it definitely doesn't fit within the "lore" of the quest), so they ditched it.That questline is still in, just not required, but some questlines and rewards are obviously removed from the game completely -- their achievement no longer represents an equivalent challenge, so Blizzard decides to take them out. And that really seems the best way to do it -- though it's always a shame when today's players can't experience the quests the same way veteran players did back in the day, the alternative would be to have them play through content that makes no sense, and no one wants that. As Zarhym says, there will always be new challenges to take on.
