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WoW Insider talks 5.4 with 3D artist Fanny Vergne-Vicente
Patch 5.4 is here, and those that aren't gallivanting around the Timeless Isle have likely already taken their first steps into the Siege of Orgrimmar. The boss fights are exciting enough on their own, not to mention the awesome loot waiting to be found in the depths of the newest raid. But what many players don't think so much about is the raid itself. I'm not talking about the bosses or the mechanics of the encounter, but the actual bits and pieces that make up the space in which we're destroying all those new bad guys. We've had plenty of developer interviews leading up to patch 5.4, but Blizzard was kind enough to give us an interview of a different sort. 3D artist Fanny Vergne-Vicente is one of the many artists at Blizzard that helped put together the Siege of Orgrimmar raid from the ground up, designing textures for everything you'll see while you're merrily murdering Garrosh -- the walls, floors, spikes, and everything else that makes the encounter come to life. We had a brief chat with Fanny about just what a 3D artist at Blizzard does, and what it was like bringing the Siege of Orgrimmar to life.
Blood Pact: 'Lock loot in Siege of Orgrimmar
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill links all the things, all the time. Patch week with a new raid tier? It's loot list time. You know the drill. Just like last time, I'm going to visit the loot for each boss, perhaps saying a word or two, just so you know what's there when you spend a coin on a bonus roll.
World of Warcraft's patch 5.4 launches tomorrow
Tomorrow's patch for World of Warcraft will not bring about the end of the Horde. It will, however, mark a crucial turning point in the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde when both sides storm the walls of Orgrimmar to take down Warchief Garrosh Hellscream. It remains to be seen just what will happen after tomorrow's patch, but as the preview video past the break shows, things won't be the same after the walls come down. Not that the patch is just about laying siege to the Orcish home city. It also introduces flexible raiding modes to allow groups of any size to tackle raid content as well as the Proving Grounds, which are solo instances that test your tanking, healing, or DPS skills. There are also currency conversions and new items to be obtained, helpfully explained in a small FAQ on our sister site. Do what you need to do today, and get ready to storm the walls tomorrow.
Patch 5.4: Blizzard's official round-up post
Are you wondering how to gear up once patch 5.4 drops? Looking for information about the Timeless Isle? Curious about the raid? Well, Blizzard has all the information you'll need on patch 5.4 all rounded up in one location on the official site, just waiting for you to click madly away at it. Some of the information isn't in there yet (the armor previews, for instance) but just knowing where it will be is useful for when it finally arrives. I generally like having one consolidated place to point people when they ask questions like "Why did they make this class change?" or "What's going on with arenas in 5.4?" So head on over to the official site and gorge yourself on patch 5.4 information.
Blizzard presents Siege of Orgrimmar raid preview with Ion Hazzikostas
If you've managed to avoid spoilers, then don't read this post over at Blizzard's official site, because it goes into great detail on what the big patch 5.4 raid is all about, complete with commentary with Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas. If, however, you're like me and you just can't get enough detail on this kind of thing, then here are a few details from the long overview I found particularly interesting. Each and every one of them is a spoiler, so be warned. The first encounter, Immerseus, is one that us old players "may find the fight structure somewhat reminiscent of Viscidus in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj." The Galakras encounter is rooted in the lore of the Twilight Highlands quests Horde side, and also has that storming the beaches feel to it, with multiple waves of enemies to deal with before the boss himself. When talking about the Dark Shaman encounter, Ion says "The attire for these two wolfriders was inspired by the traditional Warcraft III Shaman unit, and we're excited to be able to give lucky Shaman players a chance to earn that look for themselves by defeating this encounter." He's specifically talking about these. The Spoils of Pandaria encounter isn't a fight with a traditional 'boss' as such, but rather your raid trying to shut down a 'security system' before it overwhelms you. The Garrosh Hellscream encounter is definitely going to hearken back to Pandaria itself - "As Garrosh wields the power of Y'Shaarj-origin of all the sha-players must battle through some of the most memorable locations where the sha manifested in Pandaria" There's a lot of detail to sift through, so again, if you're the curious type definitely take a look at the post. I'll be scouring it over and over again over the next few days.
I won't cry for you, Garrosh Hellscream
We stand on the edge of patch 5.4 -- Orgrimmar is about to be invaded, and Garrosh Hellscream is about to be dethroned and likely killed. The decision to make a playable faction's leader the end boss of an expansion is a pretty surprising one, and as is to be expected, has been met with mixed feelings from many among the player base, myself included. I admit, Garrosh holds a very special place in my heart. Back at the end of 2009, Blizzard called me up and asked if I would be willing to write his leader story, to hopefully give some more depth to a character who was at the time much maligned. The prospect was incredibly daunting, and I was terrified, but keen for a challenge, I agreed. As often happens when you spend enough time getting into the head of a character or two (or more), that fictional person begins to grow on you. When I started Heart of War I will admit I had little love for the younger Hellscream. I thought him brash, full of himself, and woefully ignorant of Azeroth. But I went into the story production armed with the following philosophy: everyone is the protagonist of their own story. As such, I was determined to give Garrosh, as my Australian husband sometimes quips, a fair shake of the sauce bottle.
The Light and How to Swing It: Strength DPS gear in Siege of Orgrimmar
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! A new patch means more gear, and more gear means another gear list. Let's get to it before I change my mind and write about how awful it was trying to solo Valithria Dreamwalker in 10-man heroic Icecrown Citadel as holy -- I still can't shake the nightmares. Unless otherwise noted, the following gear can be found within the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. Non-tier pieces appear in normal, warforged, heroic, and heroic warforged varieties, similar to the gearing scheme in Throne of Thunder. Oh, and although I covered Siege of Orgrimmar two-handed strength weapons in a previous article, I will briefly repeat their drop locations for the sake of completeness. Head Helm of the Night Watchman – drops from the Spoils of Pandaria encounter. Thranok's Shattering Helm – drops from Galakras. Helmet of Winged Triumph – token drops from Thok the Bloodthirsty. Magdalena's Murderous Crown – drops from Ordos on the Timeless Isle, and named after death knight theorycrafter and community member Magdalena. Neck Juggernaut's Ignition Keys – drops from Iron Juggernaut. Malkorok's Tainted Dog Tags – drops from Malkorok. Anafielle's Spiked Choker – drops from Ordos on the Timeless Isle, and named after ret paladin theorycrafter and community member Anafielle.
Blizzard reveals Siege of Orgrimmar raid schedule
Next week, we hit Orgrimmar as the Siege begins. And Blizzard has just revealed the release schedule for the raid as a whole. Next week, on September 10th, we get normal mode opening and Flex Raiding opens wing 1, the Vale of Eternal Sorrows. Heroic opens on the 17th (requiring a Garrosh kill on normal to unlock it), along with Flex wing 2, the Gates of Retribution, and LFR opening wing 1. This keeps the previous intention of unlocking Flex faster than LFR and staggers the normal and heroic releases as we saw in previous raids this expansion. For the complete release schedule, we've reproduced the Blizzard post behind the jump. I for one am very much looking forward to the Siege.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Siege of Orgrimmar raid testing Tuesday and Wednesday
There's more raid testing on the PTR for the Siege of Orgrimmar as the release date for patch 5.4 creeps steadily closer. Coming up this week is Heroic, 25-man testing for Galakras, Malkorok, Paragons of the Klaxxi, Sha of Pride, Spoils of Pandaria, and Thok the Bloodthirsty. So if checking out new raid encounters is your idea of good fun, there's plenty coming up in the next couple of days. Here's the current schedule: Tuesday Galakras: 10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST) Malkorok: 13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST) Paragons of the Klaxxi: 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST) Wednesday Sha of Pride: 10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST) Spoils of Pandaria: 13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST) Thok the Bloodthirsty: 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST) But the schedule is subject to change. According to Watcher: Watcher As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. source For more details, head to the PTR forums. Happy testing!
Ghostcrawler on availability and the Siege of Orgrimmar
Ghostcrawler has recently confirmed, via Twitter, that the Siege of Orgrimmar normal mode will be completely open the first week of the new patch. @giraffejerry The plan is normal will all open on the first week. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) August 30, 2013 Or at least that is, as he says, "the plan", and as we all know, plans can change! As twitterati chou explained in his question, there seemed to have been some confusion about the availability of the different wings of the Siege of Orgrimmar at launch. Let's hope this clears all that up. You could potentially even kill Garrosh that very first week! ...If you're prepared enough!
Patch 5.4 PTR: Raid testing for Thursday, August 29
The flurry of heroic raid testing continues tomorrow, with more bosses scheduled for patch 5.4 PTR testing. Players looking to test their mettle against the 25-man heroic versions of the Immerseus, Iron Juggernaut and Siegecrafter Blackfuse encounters will have their chance to do so throughout the day tomorrow on the PTR servers. Remember -- if you've been testing flex or normal modes of these encounters, they may look a little different on heroic mode. Players that wish to test out this content should log on at the appropriate times listed for each boss encounter. Don't worry too much about the gear you bring in, it will be scaled to match the difficulty of the encounter -- but bring your best game, because heroic bosses are hardly a joke. And as always, be sure to leave feedback in the appropriate threads on the official PTR forums once you're done testing content. Read on for more details, including the full schedule of times for individual raid bosses.
Patch 5.4 PTR: More visions of foreboding
Spoiler alert! You'll all be aware of Garrosh's visions, such as earlier images of certain major WoW cities and various others, and our friends over at Adriacraft have dug up yet another one. Now as a vision, we're not really sure if this counts as a spoiler or not, but because we're nice people, we're trying to err on the side of caution here. So if you don't want to see potential spoilers that might just be the hallucinations of a deranged lunatic, but might point to a story point, or might not, then don't hit the break, don't watch the video, don't read the comments, don't come crying to me if you do. Final warning, people, spoilers may possibly lurk after the break! Proceed if you dare.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Raid testing for Wednesday, August 28
Heroic 25-man raid testing continues tomorrow on the patch 5.4 PTR servers. For players interested in testing heroic Siege of Orgrimmar content, both the Sha of Pride and Malkorok encounters will be available over the course of tomorrow for the purposes of testing. As with all PTR raid encounters, players should leave feedback on the encounters in the appropriate threads on the official PTR forums. If you have yet to explore the patch 5.4 PTR, you can copy a character by logging into your Battle.net account on the official website, or you can simply create a pre-made level 90 character if that sounds like a better option to you. Gear will be scaled to match the difficulty of the encounters, so don't worry about being under-geared for the content, either. Read on for more details, including the full schedule of times for individual raid bosses.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Raid testing for Tuesday, August 27
If you've been wanting to test out heroic modes in the Siege of Orgrimmar before patch 5.4 hits live servers on September 10, now's your chance. Tomorrow the PTR will be featuring 25-man heroic difficulty testing of three of the fights in the new raid. Fallen Protectors, Kor'kron Dark Shaman and General Nazgrim will all be available for testing over the course of the day tomorrow. Keep in mind that this is heroic difficulty, so expect the fights to look a little different than their normal or flex mode counterparts. Remember that these PTR bosses are open for testing purposes -- don't forget to leave your feedback for the encounters in the appropriate threads on the official PTR forums. Don't worry about bringing your own raid group -- although it is helpful, it's not required. If you need one, just hang around the raid entrance in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, as it's likely there will be more than a few raid groups looking for people to fill spots. And if you're worried about gear, don't be -- all gear will be scaled to the appropriate ilvl for the encounter. Read on for more details, including the full schedule of times for individual raid bosses.
What would be enough?
I play Alliance now. I've played Alliance primarily throughout my WoW career, although admittedly I played Horde over on Malfurion with some awesome folks local to Edmonton (Hi Vees) and again on Sisters of Elune with another group of people I really liked. (Hey Taken.) When I played Horde, I almost always played tauren because, well, I have significant problems with Horde storylines. My then-fellow Horde would always tell me about how they liked the Horde's underdog status, but I never saw that - I saw forsaken plague bombing people, orcs attacking their enemies when they were occupied fighting the Scourge, etc etc. The Horde was always the aggressors, I noticed - how were they the underdogs? Still, I liked the people I was playing with (still do, in fact) and so I kept going. Just because I didn't see the underdog thing didn't mean it wasn't real, and there are plenty of other reasons for faction preference. Still I ended up back in the Alliance, as I always knew I would. I'm a draenei again, like I was in Wrath of the Lich King (and frankly, often in the same outfit) and I will admit here to favoring the Alliance in storylines. The Alliance is simply the group I sympathize with more, and Cataclysm definitely gave me plenty of fodder on that front. I know a lot of the changes were made to balance the Horde/Alliance leveling experiences, which were infamously disparate. It still ended up feeling like the Alliance was playing frozen side of beef in the Horde's upcoming "I did it, Adrian" montage. While I've since really enjoyed Mists of Pandaria, it hasn't entirely rinsed the bad taste I got leveling an alt through the Cata 1 to 60 game. So it is from that perspective that I have to say that I don't really understand what, exactly, some Alliance players want to be the outcome of Patch 5.4 - it seems like all that will satisfy some players is the complete and utter destruction of the Horde and the uprooting of half the player base.
Blizzard's guide to gearing up for patch 5.4
With an exciting new raid on the way, one question sure to be on many people's minds is that of gearing. How to make sure that you're ready to step into the Siege of Orgrimmar the moment it drops? Our own Olivia Grace covered that very topic earlier this week with this comprehensive guide, but today Blizzard released their own, as well. If you want the truncated version, it looks as though the Timeless Isle will offer the most diverse and quickest potential ways to upgrade your gear, however, it could be difficult for fresh level 90s or certain classes to solo there, so keep in mind other options--like intro ilevel 476 PvP gear, reputation gear, Valor gear, and Battlefield Barrens gear (while it still lasts!). The full Blizzard post is available behind the cut, and good luck gearing up for the Siege of Orgrimmar!
Patch notes for August 20th
The Siege of Orgrimmar is just three weeks away, and we can expect that the changes for patch 5.4 are starting to solidify. Blizzard released the notes for the latest PTR build yesterday and there are some notable changes as well as reminders -- such as the fact that these next three weeks mark the final opportunity you have to nab the achievements that correspond with Vol'jin's rebellion as well as the Golden Lotus's "Eternally in the Vale." Time to get going on those, if you want them! Frost DKs: Frost Strike now deals 115% weapons damage (up from 105% weapon damage), and Obliterate now deals 250% weapon damage (up from 230% weapon damage). Rogues: Glyph of Redirect now reduces the cooldown of Redirect by 50 seconds (down from Redirect no longer has a cooldown). Other major changes are noted in red text, and we've summarized the biggest ones for you after the break:
Six ways to gear up right now
So you know the score. You've taken advantage of the reduced leveling XP required, you've made the best use of your rested XP, and here you are at level 90 in record time. But now what? There's such a lot of gear available to you that actually getting yourself ready to raid is a bit of a daunting prospect. But fear not, friends, we're here with a list of top tips to get yourself up over 500, and into Siege of Orgrimmar LFR in no time at all. OK, a bit of time. We're writers, not wizards. And, as ever, we'll be scouring the comments for top reader tips to supplement our list. And with patch 5.4 on the way, you'll want to know how to get the best out of the new content, right? 1. Honor Point Gear We spoke about this in an earlier gearing tips article, and the information hasn't changed. Honor point gear, at item level 476, is still vastly superior to its justice point equivalent. However, with the point conversion coming in just a couple of weeks, you'd be very wise indeed to save up your honor and your justice for patch 5.4. When the patch drops, the current conquest point gear will be bought with honor points, and that's ilvl 496, so a huge boost to a flagging character. However, honor point gear should be used wisely, to fill gaps. Particularly in 5.4, when the JP-HP conversion is being nerfed from 375JP:250HP to 500JP:250HP, meaning the most reliable way to get HP gets slower. So what should you look at doing first?
Patch 5.4, flexible raids, dailies and more with Tom Chilton
Patch 5.4 is nearing completion, and soon we'll see the Siege of Orgrimmar and the fate of Garrosh Hellscream on live servers. But 5.4 has much more to offer than the raid itself -- we'll have plenty of other content to play through as well. Featuring new pets, new mounts, a new raid difficulty and much, much more, patch 5.4 is shaping up to be a substantial addition to an already massive expansion. We had the opportunity to chat with Lead Game Designer Tom Chilton regarding all of the above, as well as plenty of other topics of contention in regards to both patch 5.4 and Mists of Pandaria as an expansion. Read on to hear what he had to say about Flexible raiding, the upcoming Connected Realms feature, the future of daily quests and the challenges of creating a raid out of a capital city.
Stormwind Harbor just fine in patch 5.4
Players may recall datamined spoiler images and videos from earlier this month, indicating a particularly disturbing fate was in store for the Stormwind Harbor in patch 5.4. The datamined information suggested that the Harbor and possibly more of Stormwind would be under direct attack from Horde forces and possibly ruined -- a low blow to the Alliance that are still diligently working on repairing the damage from Deathwing's attack in Cataclysm. But it's okay. You can breath a sigh of relief courtesy of Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak, who clarified this information on Twitter earlier today. Dataminer alert! (Spoiler?) Misleading to see Stormwind Harbor trashed out of context. That's just a vision from Garrosh's head. - Dave Kosak (@DaveKosak) August 15, 2013 Don't worry, citizens of Stormwind -- your city appears to be safe and sound. You're just looking at the optimistic visions of an overly enthusiastic megalomanical warlord bent on global domination and the onset of racial supremacy. That's ... comforting, right? Either way, you can look forward to punching Garrosh in the face in patch 5.4, ruining any and all plans, or dream boards, that Warchief Hellscream was constructing.
