spirit-healer
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World of Warcraft's Spirit Healer recreated in Minecraft pixel art
Nearly lost in the shuffle of patch 5.1's release, this Minecraft pixel art from Paradox (YouTube channel SpoofGaming) appeared on our radar back at the end of November. The recreation of World of Warcraft's iconic Spirit of Redemption took over 15 days of work and over 250,000 blocks (representing pixels) to construct. While the art surely could have been done easier and more quickly in something as simple as MSPaint, it's fascinating to see the build done in Minecraft's game world, which has a far more limited palette and requires manual placement of every single block. If you're impressed by this build, don't miss some of the other Minecraft builds we've highlighted previously such as scale recreations of Ragnaros and the entirety of Kalimdor.
Ditching the Death Penalty
About ten days ago, Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum posted in the EU forums on a thread about removing the death penalty. While this may sound like a political hot potato that WoW Insider would do best to avoid, Taepsilum was actually responding to a post calling for the removal of resurrection sickness from the game. The original poster asserted that it was outdated, no longer necessary, and flatly inconvenient. That it detracted from the game's experience. Taepsilum's post was as follows. Taepsilum The death of a character should be something important, the death penalty is there to make sure players don't disregard it, in my opinion it's actually already too easy and too fast to resurrect. It's because of the penalty and the lost time when doing a corpse run, that players will be more cautious about their character. If you decide to resurrect at the spirit healer, it's because either your character died in a very weird place (and you should be more careful), or you just don't want to corpse run. I think we should all be glad that there's no experience loss as death penalty, that would probably be a bit too harsh, but I do think we need something to keep death from being meaningless. We're always open to good and new ideas of what that might be; as long as it's not "removal of the death penalty", feel free to chip in ;) source
Know Your Lore: The mysterious connection between spirit healers and the Val'kyr
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. They are about the only thing you're happy to see when you're dead. Beings of ghostly blue, these winged saviors of Azeroth's adventuring masses have been there since the very beginning of WoW, and are the closest thing Azeroth has to angels. They possess the power to bring the dead back to life, when said adventuring masses have had their adventuring cut abruptly short by accidentally pulling one or two more murlocs than they could handle. Gracious and kind, it seems that these beings only exist to help Azeroth's lost find their way back to the world of the living. You only see the true scope of their power when you're dead, and it's safe to say if you're coherent at the time, you're probably not prepared or happy for what comes next. From quietly resting beneath the earth to a shambling mass of undead material, these ghostly creatures exist to pull the dead back to life -- at a cost. Where once was a whole and complete adventurer, now there is only forsaken; a living corpse with free will, although it's questionable as to how much of that will is actually free. One brings players back to life; the other curses them with a life of undeath. Is there a connection between the benevolent spirit healers of Azeroth, and their dark doppelgangers, the Val'kyr? It's a question that's been posed to me on more than one occasion, and since we've slogged our way through the order of the Warcraft cosmos, it's one we can take a look at now.
"Return to Graveyard" button appears in latest Cataclysm beta build
Picture this: You're an innocent, wide-eyed goblin, exploring the Ruins of Gilneas in Cataclysm. You're minding your own business when all of a sudden, a hideous, jaggedly polygonned female worgen leaps out of the bushes and assaults you! You fight valiantly, but -- QQ! -- your chosen class has been nerfed to the ground in beta patch after cruel beta patch! You clutch your chest, cursing Ghostcrawler with your final breath. You fall to the ground as a sassy little green corpse. "No problem," you think. "I'll simply run back to my corpse!" And so you try. But ... you can't find it. I mean, it's there somewhere, but you're on the wrong side of a moat, and ... well, you've never been here before. Wait, this doesn't look familiar at all ... I mean, it sorta looks familiar but ... it's different. You think you've seen that tree before but ... no, wait, it looks exactly like all the other trees around here. And ... dammit, your ghost just fell into this deep trench. Crap. You're nowhere near your corpse or the Spirit Healer. How the hell are you going to get out of this? The answer: The brand new Return to Graveyard button. It's a new feature in the latest beta build, and it does exactly what you think it does.
WoW Rookie: The method in the madness of resurrection
New around here? See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. It ain't over 'til it's over -- and in World of Warcraft, it ain't over 'til every player has used the last resurrection cooldown and trick. Death is far from permanent in Azeroth, and over time, the available methods of resurrection ("rezzing") have multiplied. Some classes can resurrect only outside of combat; one class can rez even in the heat of battle. Some classes have rezzes that work only on themselves. Now that the dungeon finder makes running instance groups so easy for a leveling player, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the alternatives for coming back to life. There's a specific etiquette that's risen up around rezzes, as well, so take note and don't get caught looking like a chump.
Spiritual Guidance: A new look
Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance reverts to "lovey-dovey" heal mode by the hands of priestess Dawn Moore. This week she has set aside her differences with Fox Van Allen, her dark counterpart, so that she can peacefully enjoy dumplings and fair weather. She hopes that he enjoys the fruit basket she sent him. The cyanide in the apples shouldn't be a problem for a master of darkness such as himself to digest. Right? As I alluded to in my analysis of the Cataclysm priest preview last week, I will be taking a departure from my typical column this week on Spiritual Guidance. Instead of a guide or current event, I'd like to take some time to examine the priest class with a wider perspective. My analysis from Thursday was a response to the pinpoints of Blizzard's preview; this article, on the other hand, will examine the class from a broad design perspective. My hope in doing this is to get readers thinking about our class and the game differently and, in turn, start an ongoing discussion of where it could go. Why do this? Because Cataclysm is approaching, and now is the time, if there ever was one, to suggest things we would like to see change. Blizzard is most likely to listen to strong and constructive ideas we put forth now, and I think it's valuable to get you guys in on the discussion. Now is the time to speak up!
The high cost of rez sickness
Lotonero got his thread locked because he posted it in the wrong forum, but he makes an interesting point: rez sickness costs are higher than ever. Death costs are already pretty high -- when you're dressed in greens and blues it's not much of a problem, but get yourself down to red on some high-level epics, and see if you don't wince when you hit up the repair vendor to pay the piper. But rez sickness costs are even worse -- they affect durability on all of your items, even those you're not wearing, and so when a dual-specced healer or tank with two or even three sets of gear goes rez-sick, the amount they have to pay goes through the roof.Now, you might think what I thought: if you're carrying around that much epic gear, then a) why are you dying, and b) why are you rezzing from a spirit healer? But Wryxian, right before sending Lotonero packing to the suggestions thread, throws in his own two cents: "Maybe not." Maybe Blizzard might consider it -- dual specs wasn't around when they originally thought up the cost of rez sickness, and maybe since many players are carrying around two sets of gear now, it's due for another look. I didn't think the Hearthstone cooldown needed a nerf either, but we got that anyway.So maybe it's something for Blizzard to think about. My guess is that most players will not think it's worth the change -- gold is flowing so freely nowadays and the death penalty is so cheap (back in the EQ days, we used to lose XP or even levels) that it's not a big deal, especially when you choose to go rez sick. But it's true that this is one of the game's oldest mechanics, so maybe it's time to take a critical look.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Life and Death
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. Today we're fielding a lot of questions on the Light and the Shadow, and Life and Death. I don't know why, really, that's just how things happened! Trends like that are always fun, like the week or two where we had nothing but dragon questions. It makes picking out themes really easy!Emorich asked... I was under the impression that C'Thun wasn't dead. I thought we simply stopped him. After all, we were attacking one of his eyeballs, hardly a vital organ. Is Kil'Jaeden dead too? I thought we basically just pushed him back through the portal and now he's really pissed.
Subliminal messaging from the Spirit Healer
This is pretty ludicrous, but it's too funny to ignore: this YouTube posters swears he hears "World of Warcraft" and "give us your money" hidden in the whispers swirling around the Spirit Healer while dead (there is one NSFW word in the video, if that rubs you the wrong way). Personally, while I do hear it, it's a little too off to be taken seriously. And of course we all know that subliminal messages don't work anyway. But still, if you're the type to go for a good conspiracy theory, it is in there -- maybe the reason Blizzard has the top MMO ever made isn't because it's a great game, but because they're transmitting messages to your brain!The question does remain: what's really being said in those death whispers? Whatever it is, odds are that it's not in English. My guess is maybe Titan, the language of the Titans -- but that assumes that whatever's speaking to you is from the world, and there are probably more deceased spirits floating around Azeroth by now than actual living creatures on it. For all we know, it could be the Others.[Thanks, Dave!]
Of corpse running and you
I'm sure we've all done it from time to time -- trying to get somewhere new, you've encountered heavy resistance from the locals and died a terrible death. Refusing to give up, you've run back to your corpse and continued on, until you're caught and killed again. Perhaps you thought you'd be smart and run to the spirit healer in your destination zone, far off from where you died, only to tragically see that you've been sent back to the location of the spirit healer closest to your corpse. This does make traveling through areas high above your level quite the challenge -- as I'm sure they were intended to be. Die, run back, rez a bit further down the road -- then simply wash, rinse, and repeat until you've reached your final destination. However, over at Mania's Arcana, Mania provides us with two tricks that will allow you to do the majority of your traveling as a ghost. The trick? If you die on one continent and then spirit rez in the other (yes, you can ride boats and zepplins as a ghost!), you'll be allowed to rez right where you want to. And, perhaps more conveniently, if you run as a ghost to wherever you wish, disconnect, reconnect, and then try to spirit rez, you'll be allowed to.Now, both of these little tricks smack of overlooked bugs, as the intended behavior of the game client is clear. But at present it is a working strategy in-game that can be used to more quickly move you from point A to point B.
Should you lose experience when you die?
In the World of Warcraft, the cost of dying is really pretty minimal. Yes, there's the trouble of running from the graveyard to your corpse and yes you take 10% durability damage to all of your equipped gear (the cost goes up to 25% if you need to spirit rez). So you lose a minute or two of time running back to your corpse eating/drinking/bandaging, and rebuffing yourself before getting right back to where you left off. In terms of gameplay, you're not really set back at all -- you don't lose experience or levels from death. And sometimes death can even be beneficial to your character: say, by killing one of a pack of three monsters (dying in the process), and then coming back to take out the second and the third. You've just managed to kill a group of monsters larger than you could have killed alone -- all by benefit of the death system!But the penalty for death is so light that there's not really much reason to avoid it. Oh, I know the time spent in corpse runs adds up and the cost of repairing gear only gets higher and higher. But it's not the end of the world if you die -- and it's hardly even the end of your online character. And so there are some players who think the death penalty needs to be harsher. If death mattered, we'd all be playing more cautiously -- in fact, the difference in playstyle would make it a whole new game. But it would make the most difference in the raiding game -- I can't say I've ever learned an encounter without a few deaths. Losing experience or levels for wiping in a raid situation?"Sorry everyone, I just leveled down to 69 from that wipe, have to go grind."Ouch!
The Death Stories Project
The Death Stories Project is a research progress focusing on how players experience death in MMO's. The project is currently seeking contributions from players of various MMO's who are interested in describing their in-game experiences with death and share screenshots. There are no results or findings posted yet, but the project looks to be an interesting one. So take a look, and if you have time, fill out the survey. [Via WarCry]
