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Patch 6.1: Rogues have a new use for Dingy Iron Coins
Rogues who are stealthy fans of pickpocketing in Warlords of Draenor have more to cheer about in the upcoming patch 6.1. Griftah, the fence of dubious motives who has been taking Dingy Iron Coins and turning them around, in a roundabout way, for gold, has now expanded his inventory. Along with the usual fencing duties and quests to turn in coins for gold, Griftah also sells a variety of leather masks in a variety of colors, all for the low low price of a thousands or so Dingy Iron Coins -- more, if the masks are fancier. And if you're a toy collector to boot, Griftah's got a deal for you -- for 10,000 Dingy Iron Coins, you can be the proud owner of a Barrel of Bandanas. This toy summons a barrel of random bandanas for you and all your friends, so everyone can get in on the bandana-wearing fun. It's nice to see that Griftah hasn't forgotten his rogue pals -- and even nicer to see a steady supply of fashionable masks. Pickpocketing has never been this much fun. Check out the slideshow for screenshots of all available bandanas and their costs.
Garrison Followers, traits, abilities, and training
If you've been playing Warlords of Draenor fairly regularly since release, you should by now be familiar with the traits and abilities of your followers. These abilities and traits are randomly generated when you obtain your new follower, but there are some items in game, obtainable via missions, that will teach a chosen follower a new trait. Apparently there had been some confusion regarding these items, so CM Crithto took to the forums to further clarify how these items work. Crithto There's been some confusion regarding the various items you can use that allow you to change a trait on one of your Garrisons followers, so we wanted to clarify how these items work. If you use an item such as the Supreme Manual of Dance or the Hearthstone Strategy Guide, the targeted follower will gain the trait associated with the on-use item, and lose a random trait which cannot be selected or changed after the fact. Currently, the tooltips for these items are not specific enough about the randomness associated with their outcome, and we're working on getting them adjusted. So if you're now missing a follower with a specific trait you want or need, remember that you can level your Inn or Tavern to tier 2 to gain access to an NPC who will hunt down new followers. When one becomes available, you can then limit your search based on the traits you desire. source
The Beta ends with snails and Firelords
It was as chaotic and unstable as you could ask for, really. The end of the Beta test for Warlords of Draenor is upon us. And as you might expect it ended with a host of powerful foes descending upon Ashran, Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Iron stars, snails, Firelords, Huolons, Varian Wrynns, all manner of dread monstrosities are raining down upon the hapless inhabitants of the beta realms. Born to test, they shall now be tested to destruction. How many Jaraxxus' were there? All of them. And the beta realms were not prepared to face that many Jaraxxi. (I assume that's the plural of Juraxxus.) Enjoy what screenshots I could get of the chaos before it became impossible for me to stay connected. Truly, the heroes of Azeroth cannot prevail against such might.
Warlords of Draenor beta ending on November 3
After 5 months of alpha and beta testing, the Warlords of Draenor beta realms are scheduled to be shut down permanently on Monday, November 3 at 4:00 p.m. PST. As per tradition, there will be an in-game event to say goodbye to the beta. This is scheduled to happen at 2:00 p.m. PST on the same day, though no specifics have been offered up yet. I have many fond memories of the Warlords beta, such as the hunter community effort to solve the Gara mystery and participating in "play with the blues" events just to name a couple. Beta was fun, but I'm ready to move forward. Let's bring on the real deal. You can find the full announcement from community manager Nethaera after the break.
The Queue: Is this new? What about this? Or this?
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. Two weeks from today, I'll be joining Anne Stickney to begin our road trip down to BlizzCon. We had a blast last year, and we're planning for bigger and better this year. I'm excited. You should be excited, too. RebeccaChallenger asked: Are people still getting ejected from Ordos when they try to get to him without the Cloak?
Choosing the right Garrison buildings for you
Once you head through the Dark Portal in Warlords of Draenor, you're going to be faced with a variety of choices, particularly when it comes to building your garrison for the first time. While the process may seem like a complicated jumble of various bonuses and purposes, it's actually relatively easy to get your garrison up and running -- and your first few buildings will be handed to you right off the bat. As you continue to level, however, you're going to face more and more choices in regards to what to place in your Draenor stronghold. Garrison buildings are also tied into professions in Warlords, although not quite as rigidly as you might think. Instead, what the buildings do is offer you a way to craft items that involve professions you might not already have trained. It's about flexibility and choice. It's also not something that's going to take up the majority of your time while you're in Draenor. Your garrison is fully capable of functioning on its own, once you've handed out the orders. So how do you pick what's right for you? It's a personal decision, but here are some things you want to keep in mind when you're getting started.
Warlords of Draenor: Garrison Followers and you
One of the largest and most highly-discussed features of Warlords of Draenor is the garrison -- a stronghold on Draenor that you get to construct and customize to your heart's content. Hand in hand with the garrison are a multitude of other things to look forward to -- missions, quests, blueprints, profession buildings, building bonuses, followers, and more. You aren't going to necessarily be spending a lot of time sitting around in your garrison, but you'll be ducking back to it periodically in between everything else there is to do on Draenor. You can kind of think of your garrison as your own, personalized capital city in a way -- you can customize it with whatever buildings you want, and you can switch those buildings out if you decide you're better off with a different kind of building. As for your followers, they are the citizens of your garrison, the NPCs that wander around doing various tasks and spitting out conversations with passers-by. But followers are far more than just eye-candy for your garrison -- they are useful tools to help you get the most out of what the expansion has to offer.
Warlords of Draenor: Garrison mission rewards at a glance
Players who aren't in the beta often have a simple question about garrison followers and their associated missions: what is the point? There are few resources that explain their purpose and what benefit they provide. The list of rewards below is by no means comprehensive and should only be taken as examples of variety. They're some of the items I've personally earned while dispatching follower missions on the beta. Archmage Vargoth's Spare Staff for your toybox from a rare level 90 mission Relic of Rukhmar to increase reputation with Arakkoa Outcasts Shimmering Gauntlets and other Shimmering equipment at level 90 Gleaming Ring and other rare-quality Gleaming equipment at level 90 Munificent Robes and other Munificent equipment at level 100 Apexis Crystals in lots of varying sizes, up to 1,000 from a rare level 100 mission Follower missions also reward XP for your followers, items and equipment to increase the strength of your followers, and gold. Basic level 90 quests often award 50 gold, but it can often be much higher -- a level 100 rare quest, Blingtron's Secret Vault, gave me 500 gold. These missions are far from mandatory, but there's no reason not to do them. Assigning your followers to their respective tasks will only take a few minutes out of your day.
WoW Moviewatch: Beta is beta
It's awfully hard to explain the process of being in beta to someone that has never been in a beta before, but Mooclucking managed to put together something that approximates the experience. Beta is Beta does include some footage from the Warlords of Draenor beta, but there are no spoilers to be had here. Instead, there's a small and maybe slightly exaggerated smattering of the typical kinds of things you'll see when you're on a beta server, where the game isn't quite finished and the levels don't really matter. Warlords of Draenor is the sixth beta I've been in, and Mooclucking's video isn't exactly that far off the mark in terms of what you see while you're in there. Needless to say, this video had me cracking up, especially the bit with the mages and their unfortunate spell gone wrong. Take a look at the video above, and if you enjoyed it, pay a visit to Mooclucking's Youtube channel while you're at it. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Scenarios, daily quests, and events in Warlords
It's true that scenarios still exist in Warlords of Draenor, but it's also true that their existence is radically altered - no more the easy three person content you can queue for at max level for easy rewards. Now, you may be trumpeting this as a grand thing, and in some ways you may even be right, but scenarios and heroic scenarios served a purpose in Mists and I'm starting to be concerned about their removal and the change in dungeons. One of the things to keep in mind is, with the removal of valor points and the conversion of many items to costing gold, we're essentially taking out the mechanism that once served as a consolation prize when it was first introduced back in The Burning Crusade. Furthermore, by removing scenarios as content players can essentially run whenever and wherever they wish, we're winnowing down options at endgame. The Timeless Isle model for endgame content has its flaws, and converting all of Warlords to it has some potential pitfalls. For starters, the heavy de-emphasis on daily quests combined with the lack of scenarios and the placing of heroic dungeons behind the proving ground barrier removes a solid amount of low pressure, easily accessed content. Considered separately these ideas aren't an issue, but when you put them all together you can start to see one problem - they remove choices for players, and in doing so offer no replacement. This may be by design. Some players lament that there's too much to do in Mists of Pandaria's endgame. Starved for choice is a real phenomenon, and it may be a good move to thin out those options. But it may not.
How will Warlords affect low-level characters?
It's something that's fairly easy to forget in all the talk of item squishes and character boosts, but Warlords of Draenor is going to make a lot of significant changes to how it feels to play a low level character and level up. That's why forum threads like this one interest me so much, because it's important to get that low level balance right. Yes, we have the boost, we have things like heirlooms, but in the end the game has to function at low levels for people without them. If it doesn't or can't, then people who try the game on trial or who decide to start an alt after using the boost are going to end up feeling lost, and that's a feeling that leads to people not playing at all. So I decided to roll a low level character and level him without heirlooms on the beta, just to try it out for myself. And so far, I feel like they've made pretty decent strides in balancing things out - I'm at level 7 now after a half hour and I could probably get to ten after another 20 minutes. I am, however, concerned with what Kalyeatrish says about the level 8-9 relative weak spot in leveling. If players can't get stuff done at those levels, it'll be a hard slog to get to 10. And most people who try out WoW don't get past 10 - that's a barrier to entry you don't want to imbalance when you make game changes. Hopefully it's something Blizzard keeps watching, and I hope everyone in the beta manages to find time to roll a character and test it out at low levels - it may seem like a waste of time, but it's actually incredibly important for the game long term.
Breakfast Topic: Did you watch the Warlords cinematics?
One of the bigger pieces of news to come out of last week was the release of several of Warlords of Draenor's key in-game cinematic pieces. Now, normally we kind of expect to see these things at some point during the beta's lifetime -- but usually it's one datamining website or another that manages to dig the cinematics up prior to the expansion's release. This time, in a completely different move, Blizzard released all of the cinematics on the official website, clearly labeled as spoiler content and requiring players to click through a very blatant spoiler warning before actually showing any content at all. It's a new approach. I'm kind of a fan of this approach, because we all knew that material was going to surface at one point or another anyway -- this way, Blizzard has control of how it is released, and guarantees that it's labeled so as not to take anyone by surprise. You can't get much clearer about spoilers than Blizzard did in their official post, and although some might say they went overboard with the warnings, I think that was perfectly fine, given the nature of the material. And of course I watched them. I watched them all, because I like to write about these kinds of things on a weekly basis and I wanted to see what would happen, to give some context to what I'd already seen in the beta. But I'm wondering how many of you watched the cinematics, as blatantly placed out and clearly labeled as they were. Did you appreciate all the spoiler warnings? If you're avoiding all spoilers, did the clear labels and official post make it easier to stick with your resolve, or did it just tempt you into really wanting to see? Obviously, since we're talking about the nature of spoilers, rather than the actual spoilers themselves, please keep the comments spoiler-free. Trust me, we'll have more than enough articles where you can talk about the spoiler content to your heart's content.
Mythic raid testing this Friday, September 19th
If you happen to have a group of, say, 20 folks to hand and you want to test out what Mythic Raiding is going to be all about, then rejoice, for you'll have that opportunity. Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas had once again revealed to us the schedule for the next batch of raid testing, this time for Mythic difficulty. We're looking at two encounters in Mythic difficulty Blackrock Foundry, Beastlord Darmac at 10:30 Pacific and Iron Maidens at 15:00 Pacific (that's 3 PM for those of us not on military time). Note that you don't have to be on a level 100 character to take part in the testing. Your level will be scaled up and your gear as well, so you can take part with a full group of 90's if that's what you have. Also remember, this is the beta - there could be any number of issues that delay or postpone beta testing of Mythic raiding. Don't get overexcited if that happens.
Warlords of Draenor Beta: Monk and Warrior Changes
Last nigh Celestalon posted two interesting bits of information on the beta, one for mistweaver monks and the other for fury warriors. First we'll cover the mistweaver change - Renewing Mist is headed back to being somewhat of a smart heal. Celestalon - Mistweaver Consolidated Feedback Hey again. Wanted to pop back in and let you know about an upcoming change that we're making to help out with how unreliable Mistweaver AoE healing feels. Renewing Mist will now jump to the lowest health target within 20 yards. Still prioritizes targets that don't already have Renewing Mist on them over those that do. Glyph of Renewing Mist now simply increases the max jump range to 40 yards. It's important to note that this is a not an indication of us returning to having a lot of smart heals. But in this specific circumstance, we believe that it's the right course of action. This should ensure that Renewing Mist and Uplift healing is consistently effective, while still being uncontrolled. source I'm not a monk player, so I can only say I hope this is good news for y'all - it looks to me like it would be helpful. Also last night, Celestalon posted about a huge change to fury warriors - Colossus Smash is now an arms only ability.
Voice acting in Warlords of Draenor
There was a moment in the Warlords of Draenor beta when I realized that I was getting a quest from Frank Welker. Aka Megatron. Aka Nibbler from Futurama. Aka a million other voices. The man has 728 credits as an actor on IMDB, and here he is, doing a voice in the Warlords beta. Specifically, Reshad the storekeeper. See, they recently added a ton of voice acting to the beta - pretty much every character you interact with has significant voice work put into it, and for the most part it's frankly stunning. I'm not trying to exaggerate here, but the difference between this expansion and, as an example, Lady Sindragosa's Betraaaaaaaaays you dialogue is night and day. Heck, just pop over to Frostfire Ridge at level 90, or run through the Tanaan Jungle opening, and you'll hear a variety of voice actors, more so than World of Warcraft has ever boasted.
Patch 6.0.2 preview highlights upcoming UI changes
Those bags in that header image may look like a disorganized wreck now, but they're about to get cleared out a little sooner than expected. Blizzard released a preview of upcoming UI changes for patch 6.0.2 yesterday -- that's patch 6.0.2, the pre-patch for Warlords of Draenor, not the expansion itself. Along with all the pre-expansion content quests, the new character models, and the preview of Upper Blackrock Spire, we also get all those lovely space-saving improvements ahead of time. That's on top of a host of other really cool UI improvements, including a new and improved Group Finder that includes the Premade Groups function. In addition, the new map and quest log will make an appearance, the new Void Storage tab will be unlocked, you'll be able to check out your handy new reagent tab in your bank, and you'll be able to sort your bags more easily than ever before. I have to admit, while I'm excited about being able to sort my mounts and pick a few favorites, I'm far more excited to see rows and rows and rows of empty bag slots. For more of what to expect in patch 6.0.2 and how this will change the way you play, check out Blizzard's full preview on the official site.
Warlords of Draenor: Rogues and the return of Griftah
I love playing a rogue. I like the sneaky fun of being able to stealth past mobs that would otherwise happily eat my face, I love being able to stun, kick, and poison my way to certain victory. And I love the little quirks of the class. But rogues, for all their entertainment value, don't exactly have a lot to offer in the way of flashy fun factor -- which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face pop up in Warlords of Draenor in a rogue-only series of quests. Griftah, the wily troll who sells items of questionable value to players, has been a fixture in the game since Burning Crusade, where he underwent his own strange little storyline of being caught, punished, and allowed back into Shattrath City. Since then, he's been seen here and there in game -- but never in the kind of entertaining scope and capacity he had back in Burning Crusade. So what do rogues, fun factor, and everyone's favorite con artist troll have in common? Plenty, in the upcoming expansion.
Warlords of Draenor: Tanaan stress test today at 3:00 p.m. Pacific
If you've got the free time and access to the Warlords beta, consider lending a hand to the development team and joining the Tanaan Jungle stress test, today, September 10th, at 3:00 pm Pacific time. The level 100 realms will be turned off for the duration of the test, and the Blues are encouraging us all to create new level 90s in order to test the server load on the Tanaan Jungle introductory quests. This is an important aspect of Warlords of Draenor, particularly because everyone will have to do these quests at the beginning of the expansion. The more accurate data Blizzard has on what their servers can handle, the better they can make the early expansion experience for all of us.
Breakfast Topic: What do you want to know?
Playing the beta and witnessing an expansion in progress has been a pretty interesting experience -- each expansion is always a little different in terms of how much is complete when the beta is opened, and how many changes we see over the course of the beta. I have to say, however, that I think Warlords currently holds the record for the most flat-out changes I've seen in beta content. That's not a bad thing at all -- it just means that close attention is being paid to feedback from beta testers, and the devs are quietly working away at tweaking and polishing content in response to that feedback. The latest Developer Q&A addressed several questions players had regarding the upcoming expansion -- I was pleased that my question regarding professions made it to the list of those asked. And they certainly did their best to answer that question and clarify the purpose of professions in Warlords, which I appreciated as well. But I can't help feeling, even as someone who is currently playing on the beta, that I am still missing the big picture when it comes to professions. We haven't really seen any developer blogs on the topic, and I'm still wondering how being able to access multiple professions outside your own is going to impact server economies and general trading of goods on the auction house. Maybe that's just something I'm going to have to wait and witness once the expansion goes live. What about you guys? What kinds of Warlords questions do you have? What have you been wanting to hear more about? What features are you really interested in seeing once the game has been released? Is there anything about the new expansion that you're still unclear about? What kind of Warlords information would you like to know?
Warlords of Draenor: Getting resources for your Garrison
The player's Garrison is one of the central features of Warlords of Draenor, coming with its own special Hearthstone, and in many ways taking the place of a faction hub. Depending on what kind of structures you choose to build in your Garrison, you can have your own crafting centers, bank access, auction house, PvP center, and more. However, to build any of them, you need resources. In fact, to do just about anything with your Garrison you need resources. You need them for buildings, for crafting, and in order to send your followers on missions. So, just how do you get Garrison Resources? Well, I'm glad you asked. There are a variety of ways to earn your Garrison Resources in Warlords of Draenor, some easier than others.
