valiance-expedition

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  • Wrath 101: Factions and reputation

    by 
    Alex Ziebart
    Alex Ziebart
    11.21.2008

    Reputation in Wrath of the Lich King works a lot like it did in The Burning Crusade, except refined. Most of your reputation will come from dungeon runs and questing, and not grinding mobs off in some random corner of the world. At the same time, they've thrown in some 'extra' hooks to some of the reputations that make it pretty different from what it used to be, for better or for worse. That's what we'll be digging into here.FactionsThe Horde and the Alliance each get a set of factions: The Horde Expedition and the Alliance Vanguard. These are a bit unusual, because those two primary factions have four other secondary factions. For the most part, those secondary factions don't have any rewards of their own. As you gain reputation with the sub-factions, your overall Horde Expedition or Alliance Vanguard reputation goes up, and that determines your rewards. Why did they do it that way? I don't know, but they did!

  • Ask a Beta Tester: Icecrown, quest rewards, and scary monsters

    by 
    Alex Ziebart
    Alex Ziebart
    11.01.2008

    Good news! No corny jokes today! Just pure, delicious Ask a Beta Tester. Let's start with Actuality's question... When I first ran around TBC, the Fel Reaver scared the hell outta me. Ground shaking, crazily running everywhichwhere to get away. And the Draenei spiders still creep me out. But by and large the monsters now have a "ho hum" quality because I'm too used to them. My question is, are there any monsters in LK that will scare me or creep me out for at least a while?There are most certainly a bunch of those. There's a lot of "whoa, cool" mobs and "holy crap what the hell is that" mobs. My favorite is the geist (pictured above), and it sounds like a lot of our other readers adore that one as well. It has a very maniacal laugh when you aggro it. The Revenants are cool as hell, except for the Earth revenants which look like floating poo. I don't mean they look bad, I mean they actually look like poo. Also: Thrym in Zul'Drak. I won't tell you what he is or what he looks like, but you'll know him when you see him. Just remember the name Thrym. There's plenty of other cool/freaky models in Wrath, too many to name, so yes. There are monsters that will scare you and/or creep you out.

  • Ask a Beta Tester: Tradeskills, training, and rep gains

    by 
    Alex Ziebart
    Alex Ziebart
    10.29.2008

    As the beta winds down, Ask a Beta Tester becomes a little more infrequent, but as long as we have questions, we will answer. Let's start with Rob's question...Are they planning to put in recipes for green items between 350-375 to make it easier to grind up professions? Or should i just suck it up and make (obsolete) blue/purple items to level up.Many professions start with new recipes at 350 skill in Northrend, and some of them at 360. Nobody starts at 375. 360-375 is usually taken up by 'end-game' items so you won't have to grind those out to skill up before Northrend. I recommend checking Wowhead to see where your particular profession starts out.Locke asked...I know there's the Wrath Gate cinematic and so on, have you come across or know any other cinematic events like this, or was this the only one? I'm sure there has to be in game scripted events. Thanks.

  • Ask a Beta Tester: Reputation, crowd control, and more

    by 
    Alex Ziebart
    Alex Ziebart
    10.03.2008

    We all know how this goes by now, so let's jump right in. If you don't know how this goes, click back through a few of the previous editions of Ask a Beta Tester. You'll catch on, I'm sure. Xaktsaroth asked...How does reputation work in general in Wrath? Are there turn-in quests? Rep for killing Mobs? Quested Rep? If you just quest, how far along does that reputation take you?It's a little different for every faction, but I can say that I have not yet seen turn-ins like we had to do for the Aldor or Scryer. Most of the rep gains seem to be via quests or dungeons depending on the faction. On beta, I'm nearly Exalted with the Valiance Expedition exclusively from quests. Strangely, I'm Neutral with the Kirin Tor as of a couple of beta patches ago when I had been Friendly. Curious! Either way, I haven't seen much in the way of rep via quests from them. You'll probably need to do dungeons or some other thing.It's going to vary from faction to faction, they're not all the same. Some are quest heavy, some are not. If you prefer dungeons, however, just get to Friendly with someone, pick up their tabard, and you can get rep with them in any dungeon you want.