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Breakfast Topic: What would the ultimate raid be?
I should probably asked "What would your ultimate raid be" instead but let's just run with it. For some people, Icecrown Citadel is the raid and the Lich King is the encounter they've been waiting for since WoW shipped. Arthas/The Lich King is on a lot of players' lists of favorite bad guy. For me, personally, there are a few contenders for 'Ultimate' raid status, as defined as both super-epic in lore and scope and the older definition of ultimate as the end. For me, if I ever get my ultimate raid, I may stop playing WoW. Deathwing. Frankly, if they do this fight the justice the character deserves, the fight will be so awesome that it may destroy my WoW installation upon finishing it. Deathwing is a character I've wanted to see more done with since our old days raiding BWL. I want cinematics, unique models, unique music, new mechanics, the works. I'm actually somewhat nervous about this character and hope his entrance in Cataclysm feels as portentous as it should. Sargeras. We've yet to actually see Sargeras himself in the game. His spirit is supposedly drifting in the Twisting Nether, unable to access his original form, so will we eventually end up fighting him twice? Will we have to try and stop him from reclaiming his original titanic form and power, and then fight him later once he does? And will we even be on Azeroth when the confrontation takes place, since for him to enter our world bodily seems to take a massive amount of power (see the original Well of Eternity)? Azshara. I really dig the Naga and I want to see more done with them. I know we'll have underwater cities and such in Cataclysm, but I'm eager to get to see the main event, so to speak. And Azshara ties well into the whole Sundering/Well of Eternity legacy which would make for all sorts of story hooks. I'm eager to see this character make an onscreen appearance in WoW. Someone new entirely. Old gods and established lore characters are great, but one of the things that Vanilla WoW did was provide us with new or expanded enemies to fight and I'd like to see more of that. Nefarian and Onyxia, Ragnaros, even C'Thun were all new to World of Warcraft itself (although the Black Dragonflight and Old Gods weren't.) There's no reason something else from the Twisted Nether or Great Dark Beyond couldn't menace Azeroth, or some mortal wizard or warrior couldn't acquire vast power and become a threat. The Lich King had ties to the previous two Warcraft games but was new at the same time. Let's see something like that happen again and an entirely new menace confront us. The Gronn. I kind of feel like the Gronn got short shrift in Burning Crusade. Here are these gigantic, semi-immortal beings of immense size and power, strong enough to go toe to toe with potent dragons and led by Gruul, who mysteriously has seven 'sons' (I can't tell Gronn genders, man, for all I know they use parthenogenesis to reproduce) each nearly as massive and vicious as he is. In Beyond the Dark Portal, Gruul is supposedly smart enough to know how to use the Alliance to help him defeat Deathwing, but in the game he's just kind of a drooling idiot. I'd enjoy a raid that dealt with the true origins of the ogres, their relation to the Gronn, and where the Gronn lords and Gruul actually came from. So now we turn to you. What do you really want to raid? What raid would be your ultimate WoW experience?
Breakfast Topic: Thank you for the music
The very first time I made a character in World of Warcraft was way back during the original beta -- I made a night elf. And then I logged in for the first time, and was immediately assaulted with visual eye-candy that has kept me entertained for over five years. But on top of the graphics, there was the music -- something about the soundtrack just gelled the whole thing into a game I really, really wanted to continue playing. The first time I entered Stormwind, the solemn choral accompaniment made the whole place seem... huge. Dramatic. This was a place where grand and interesting things happened. After the game's launch, I made another night elf. But once I'd hit 60 and realized the only thing to do was run Scholo or Strat or UBRS if you could find someone with the key over and over until you had your blue set of amazing awesome that had just had the graphics updated... right. I got bored. I rolled Horde to see what that side of the game looked like, and once again, it wasn't just the visuals when I first walked into Orgrimmar, it was the music that really hit me. Some time after that I started raiding, and some time after that, I'm not sure exactly when, the repetitive tracks that I'd heard play over and over again just stopped drawing me in. And so I turned them off, and enjoyed a mostly silent game in which I could play whatever happened to be on iTunes at the time. It wasn't until years later when stepping into Kara for the first time that I realized something was missing, and I went into the options and turned up the music slider. I'm glad I did, the tracks from Kara remain some of my favorite WoW music to date; they mesh with the zone so well that I can't go into the zone without listening to it. Blizzard has really stepped up the music with Northrend. With the Invincible track that was released, and the datamined tracks from the Gnomeregan and Echo Isles events that have been posted here and there, I've fallen in love with it all over again -- although I still tend to turn it down in raids. So Breakfast Topic people -- do you leave the music on, or turn it off? What's your favorite WoW track?
Breafast Topic: Do you use all available buffs when pugging?
I rarely notice buffs when I'm running heroic dungeons. Granted, every buff helps in maximizing DPS or survivability, but I personally don't find it really necessary. Do you absolutely have to have Blessings of Kings or a Prayer of Fortitude? I've had players who have absolutely refused to pull until they get all the buffs they want. I'm sitting there looking at their health and their gear and it isn't like they're fresh 80s or anything. We're talking tier 9 level stuff or higher. I don't think having Dalaran Brilliance is going to shave off a significant amount of time in a run personally. Now when it comes to raiding, I make sure I have everything. On progression raids, I always check to make sure every buff that is available is active. At the same time, I'm a little more relaxed about it when taking on trash. I don't drop a Fish Feast for the trash leading to Lord Marrowgar, for example. I wait until we get to the boss itself before laying out one of these. What? The feasts are expensive! Anyway, what about you guys? Do you require every buff before tackling anything in a heroic? Are there certain buffs you can live without during raids?
Breakfast Topic: I don't have one of those
Rogues. I don't have a single rogue on my account on any of the servers I even semi-regularly play on. Oh, sure, I've rolled rogues. The most recent rogues I created were so my wife could do something to them for a holiday. I don't even remember what. But I do know that I deleted them shortly after. It's like the class is made of teflon or something. I simply cannot grab hold of it. So many people really seem to like them, but every time I try and play one it's as if someone was slapping my soul with fish recently caught off the shore of a sewage treatment plant. To say I hate playing them is like saying the Hulk has a small impulse control issue. Hunters, paladins, druids... these are classes I'm not particularly fond of, true, but I've at least managed to get them all past level 40. I've yet to be able to keep playing a rogue for more than three hours before logging off in disgust and deleting the character. One time I deleted my rogue so fast I accidentally left the heirloom shoulders and chest on him, and my loathing for the class is so strong that I didn't even petition the GM for a restore. I accepted that it was my fault for playing a rogue in the first place. So yeah, I don't have a rogue. I have a mage, I have a warlock, I have a priest, I even have a death knight. But I don't have a rogue. I wish I even understood why they just fill me with this total sense of pure revulsion. It's weird. Then again I'm hardly known for how calm, rational and comprehensible I am. I mean, I keep trying! I think gnome rogues look badass, their combat animations are awesome, and so I roll one over and over and over again. Pure insanity. Look how cool they look using fist weapons! If only I didn't have to actually play a class to have one. So what don't you have? A class you won't play, a drop you refuse to get, an achievement you won't do?
Breakfast Topic: Fear is the mind-killer
Let me be frank: I've run heroic Halls of Reflection a lot. By a lot, I mean hundreds of times now. As a tank, I find it tedious because there's only so much I can do about people refusing to understand certain simple key facts If you are ranged DPS, do not be hitting the ranged mobs before they run around the corner. If you are a healer, please stand out of line of sight of the ranged mobs so that they don't start nuking you instead of running around the corner. Everyone just stay out of line of site until the mobs get here. Seriously. Do not run out to begin nuking until the mobs get here what the heck are you doing arrrrrrgh and then of course I need a new keyboard. As a result, I cringe when I get HHoR now. On my DK, on my shaman, on my warrior, doesn't matter. Tank, DPS or heal, I loathe the sight of the place. Now, I generally stay in the run anyway, because I'm a pampered baby used to his instaqueue and I hate having to wait around until my debuff falls off. But dozens of runs where people refuse to understand these simple rules (stay out of LoS until all the mobs are in one spot and for the love of all good things let me get them into one spot) and a general inability of every single PuG I've yet done to CC the marksman when he doesn't come in means that I'm generally just about ready to blow the place up. That's why I found this thread (especially the comments by Bornakk) so interesting. Are people just afraid of HHoR?
Breakfast Topic: Rebuilding
Some friends of mine in game have recently had the experience of having the rug pulled out from under them: their 25 man raiding guild, for whatever reason (I'm only privy to one side) has decided to go 10 man strict, leaving 15 or so people out in the cold. So now, this late in the expansion, they're forced to either seek new homes or try and start something up for themselves. It's really hard to watch good people suddenly find themselves lacking that role they'd grown accustomed to and not really be able to do much of anything. I've been there myself back at the end of Vanilla, as a move and real life commitments took me away from the game for four months, and by the time I returned everyone had moved on. It's hard to feel like you don't have a place in game anymore, as WoW is such a social experience. At least now there's the Dungeon Finder and raid PuG's that didn't exist before, and most of them are geared enough that they'll find a home eventually, but it still seems so discouraging to be in the position of trying to get back to where you were while everyone else moves forward. So now it falls to you to tell inspiring tales of overcoming a similar difficulty or share your tales of guild breakups and recoveries.
Breakfast Topic: I will destroy you
(With apologies to anyone who played Mass Effect or who brings Jack along in ME2.) More and more lately I use the dungeon finder as a pure stress release. I don't sign up to tank: we seem to have hit a decent steady state on Stormstrike where a queue rarely lasts more than 10 minutes for DPS, so it's safe for me to let someone else tank and play around with DPS ideas. It's actually to the point where I'm looking forward to seeing exactly what kind of group I'll get on any particular run. One run was myself as DPS, a warrior tank, two more warrior DPS and a very confused ret paladin who'd accidentally queued as a healer. A brief discussion and we decided to see if he could heal the group with Art of War procs. Turned out he could. Quite frankly, that was the fastest CoT run I've ever had, with two furies, a prot and an arms warrior plus a ret paladin doing our level best to play combine harvester with the undead hordes. With the new Battleground Finder on its way, I'm wondering if this will be an experience I get to have in PvP as well. Except now I'll be able to get my stress relief on by defending a flag while everyone else fights on the road, I guess. Will you be lured back to the BG's to crush faces, or have you already been there all along?
Breakfast topic: Stat and system changes for Basic Campfire
Recently, Blizzard has been supplying us with a lot of information for their plans in Cataclysm. So far we've learned about changes to the stat systems, as well as talent trees. Everything announced so far will be incredibly far reaching, and affect many aspects of the game, including some that have been hanging around since vanilla. In an effort to keep our loyal readers informed, WoW.com has been doing its best to cover every inch of blue text we find. It came to our attention that we had overlooked one important change when we discussed the effects of stat and system changes in Cataclysm the other week. So, without further ado, this morning I will be explaining how the ability Basic Campfire is affected by the upcoming expansion.
Breakfast Topic: Meet Sylvanas, she snores
Meet Sylvanas. She's about ten weeks old, and she awfully likes to gnaw on bones and my slippers. I'm aware that makes me a giant dork. I probably should have thought twice about naming my puppy after Sylvanas, but it's an awful lot of fun to point out things like "Sylvanas snores." My favorite is "Sylvanas has been sleeping with me and my wife all week." I know, I have the sophomoric sense of humor of a twelve year old. But, really, Sylvie's adorable. However, I couldn't make this post if all I were doing was saying I named my dog after World of Warcraft. No, no, I'm going much further. Instead of telling her to "sit," I'm training her to plant her butt when she's told "Lok'tar." (That's not a very Orc-like use of the phrase, I know, but it's still very endearing.) "Ogar" is her command to "heel." I'd like to pretend I'll eventually have Sylvia trained to a precision level like any good hunter pet. But for now, I'm just going to be satisfied if I can get her to stop chewing my slippers.
Breakfast Topic: When the love comes back
Lately I am supremely enthused about my shaman. Fist weapons! Zapping things! Windfury! Turning that guy into a frog! That guy is totally a frog! Now he's on fire! The best thing about the enhancement shaman playstyle I'm working with (designed for five mans and the occasional 10 raid) is working out for myself how to glyph and spec for it. It's admittedly not the most efficient spec, relying on a lot of 3 second Fire Nova blasts in big trash pulls, but it's undeniably fun. Basically, with Maelstrom Weapon and FN, I love the trash mobs in VH or Utgarde Pinnacle. (Edited to correct the mistake I always make.) You go ahead and pull another four mobs, mister tank, I'll just hit Feral Spirit when I pull aggro. Glee! And I love hitting my "This oughta help!" macro and popping Heroism, it makes already fast boss kills go crazy fast. There's something satisfying in turning Cyanigosa into a smear on the floor before she can do that annoying Arcane Vacuum. It's actually gotten to the point where I have to remind myself to switch over to tank for raids. Oh, if only warriors had Bloodlust. Or could tame shamans or something. So have you rediscovered the love for an aspect of the game?
Breakfast Topic: The Icecrown raid buff and you
The Icecrown Citadel raid buff has been out for a week now. For the time being, it's only a 5% buff to healing, health, and damage (and let's not forget that it will affect damage absorption spells soon). It'll continue to slowly ramp up as time goes by. I know the question I've asked myself is whether or not we should have the buff active for progression bosses. There doesn't seem to be an achievement or any incentive to take down bosses without it so it becomes more of a question of "Why not?". When we were working on Blood Queen the week before the buff was up, we've had some extremely close shaves where she hit her enrage timer at 6%, then at 2% before we killed her post enrage with 6 players still standing. That 5% damage would've easily given us some extra breathing room. Cutting through trash and taking down the early wings with the buffs up means we can cut through that stuff faster and get to the hard bosses earlier. So I know for me, I'm okay with working on bosses with it up. It's only 5%. Now I just need to figure out where to draw the line. How about you? Have you been disabling Strength of Wrynn or Hellscream's Warsong for your raids just to say that you can do the bosses without it?
Breakfast Topic: Favorite names
Our very own Gregg Reece is a new father, which got me thinking about names for babies. Some names are just plain awful, like my poor father-in-law named Hubert. Some names are passed down in families, with varying degrees of suitability -- naming my sister after our great-grandfather probably wouldn't have worked if he hadn't been named Hillary. There are names that leave you with pity for the poor kid saddled such bizarre parents that would inflict such names upon their kids: Kal-el Cage, Apple Paltrow. And then there are names which are just plain awesome: Magnus Magnussen, Harold Bluetooth, Rip Torn. The Warcraft universe is full of names, some strange, some familiar. We have the parody names: Vana Grey, Xiggs Fuselighter (above), Linken. There are the homages to literature: Morgan Stern, the putative author of The Princess Bride, and Commander Falstaav, a joke on Shakespeare's Falstaff. There appear to be family names like Anduin. There are the cultural patterns that allow for easy guessing of an NPC's race -- who's the gnome? Bloodhoof or Mechatorque? So what names from the World of Warcraft would you a) be proud to name your own children, or b) refuse to inflict upon an innocent child? Calia or Jaina wouldn't sound too far out of place in the real world, but I can't imagine meeting a Garrosh or Brann. (Especially, God forbid, a Brann Muffin.) Leave your thoughts! Warning: This is not a raffle to name Gregg's baby, as Lyssa Rhiannon has a name.
Breakfast Topic: The Eternal Stairway
One of the good and bad aspects of an MMO is that it is a form of storytelling that does not really end in the same way that a consistent narrative does. A novel, a movie, even a single player RPG can have a climax in a way that a MMO like World of Warcraft simply cannot. Killing the Lich King isn't the end of the story, it's merely a chapter coming to a close in a saga that just keeps rolling along. Given enough time and the momentum of such a thing becomes its own literary device, effectively, as you know you'll be facing something new before the body of your current antagonist has a chance to cool down. (Of course, since you'll be rifling through his or her pants for some loot, how cool was it really going to get?) We talk a lot about expansion gear resets, greens replacing epics to be replaced by blues we then replace with epics and so on. Frankly, I've come to see this as the great strength of an MMO and not something that holds you back. No matter how awesome your gear is now, no matter how epic the fights, no matter the towering evil you're defeating, tomorrow will bring new gear, new enemies, and new stories. Yes, it can be seen as a treadmill and us as hamsters running it, but it can also be seen as a ladder always going somewhere new. So what about you? Do you like the limitless nature of the cycle, or do you want an endpoint? And what would you want it to be?
Breakfast Topic: Loremaster for a day
It's been a pretty alright time to be a lore nerd the past few days. Not only have we had some intriguing spoilers about the new goings on with the gnomes and the trolls, but we've had a look at the Ruby Sanctum, and with it had some hints of whats to come with the Cataclysm. Of course, at the same time, there's frustrations as well. Having had a chance to peek at Stormrage, I can tell you I'm not completely thrilled with the way they chose to advance certain portions of the lore there. I generally give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on lore and retcons, but there's some stuff in there I just did not like. That brings me to a thought. Let's say Chris "God" Metzen comes up to you on the street. He doesn't need a reason, he's Chris Metzen. He's awesome. And he says to you, he says, "Hey, I heard you like WoW lore. So I'm going to let you make a choice. You take any existing lore thread, and you tell me how to change. I can retcon whatever you want, or I can just make it go forward any way you want. You name it, I'll do it."
Breakfast Topic: Does this topic not value its life
Meet Cro. Cro's just an orc trying to make a living down in Lower City, but apparently it's not as easy to just sell some items and be a vendor as everyone thinks. In Burning Crusade, players were entertained by the ongoing saga of orc vs. fruit vendor -- a tiny little old lady who seems a bit absent-minded at best, and doesn't realize the orc is screaming about her. This began with simple screaming from the orc, who was outraged at the apple cart parked smack in front of his stall, and quickly progressed into a self-perceived war which ended, ultimately, with Cro selling the apples out of the cart and encouraging people to crush them. Lower City was full of this random NPC interaction and storylines, between the Cro saga, Griftah's ongoing struggle to stay in the city's limits, and the continuing adventures of Investigator Asric and Peacekeeper Jadaar. But let's get back to Cro. I find sometimes when wandering around Dalaran that I miss the orc's frenetic shrieking and paranoia. And then I find myself wondering what would happen if the simple leatherworker, sick of the fruit wagon nonsense, up and moved to Dalaran to try and do business there. What would Cro do? Who would he ally with? Would he berate Marcia Chase until she remembered the stupid secret of the Ghostfish and finally stopped calling it a mystery? Would Minigob Manabonk take some small amount of pleasure in repeatedly turning the bellowing orc into a sheep? I have no idea but the speculation has been entertaining me for the last half hour or so, so have at it, Breakfast Topic readers: If suddenly relocated to Dalaran, What Would Cro Do?
Breakfast Topic: What won't you do?
I just plain won't kill critters. It's a bit of a superstition that I developed after a beloved pet (a rabbit) died in real life shortly after I'd killed a rabbit in game. I should point out that I'm fully cognizant of the fact that my killing a digital rabbit in no way, shape or form actually harmed my real life bunny. It's simply not something I want to do ever since it happened. I don't want or need to believe in any sort of causal link to simply find it unpleasant to hear their little death screams in game. I've gone so far as to kill a flagged player I had no interest in PvPing beforehand just because he killed a squirrel outside the Darkmoon Faire grounds. I also generally won't gank lowbie players. If a toon isn't within at least 3 levels of me, it's just not sporting (as far as I'm concerned) and I don't see the point. I actually even rolled a horde toon on my old alliance server back in the days of Crossroads raids and geared him as best I could in BG gear just so I could attack my own guildmates (and let them know I was doing it) for raiding XR. So now, how about you? What won't you do? Run lowbies through instances, twink, roll a warrior, what is that thing in game you're just never going to give a try?
Breakfast Topic: Reading rainbow
While World of Warcraft has one heck of an audience, the story involving it doesn't limit itself to just playing the game. There's a ton of books, comics, manga and RPG source guides out there with yet another ton of information. Some of this we see reflected in game, some of it is merely implied, and some of it we just don't see at all. I'm currently working my way through Stormrage, but I've read pretty much everything out there in the Warcraft universe -- and trust me, it's a lot of material. It got me thinking, though, particularly with what's contained in Stormrage and in other books as well: Just how many people actually read the books and other assorted reading material? Do you go out and buy a novel when it's released? Or do you prefer to just wait for the story to show up in game? So it's time for a Breakfast Topic poll! %Poll-42473%
Breakfast Topic: If you could redo features in Wrath, what would they be?
With Cataclysm looming on the horizon, as Wrath of the Lich King winds down, it's a good time to reflect on the expansion and see how things could've gone better. In the recently concluded developer chat over Twitter, one person asked what features in Wrath Blizzard would redo or remove if they could turn back the clock. Their answer is something close to my heart, personally, and I agree wholeheartedly. "I would have really liked to see more Battlegrounds in Northrend," one of the tweets noted, "that is an area that I feel we fell short on." Another area that the developers felt lacked a little more polish was the emblem system, which they described as "clunky". Of course, they admit that in hindsight there happens to be quite a number of things that they'd like to redo, pointing out that they are their own worst critics. I'm sure we've got our own ideas about what could have gone better, so let's have at it. Personally, I'm quite happy about their plans to improve Battlegrounds play in Cataclysm, so I guess I'll kick it off with that. What about you guys? If you could ask a favor of Chromie and her Bronze Dragonflight cohorts, what things would you have done differently about Wrath?
Breakfast Topic: What's love got to do with it?
Jaina Proudmoore. Tyrande Whisperwind. Garona Halforcen. These girls have got game. (Sylvannas has totally got game too, but she's not related to this article.) An interesting note, more on Jaina than anything, is this -- whose heart they held had, or could have had, a profound change on how Azeroth's history turned out. Let's take Miss-Too-Much-Lilac-Eyeshadow. Jaina, being not only beautiful, intelligent, and an immensely powerful human mage, has attracted the eye of more than one suitor. First, and the tender age of fifteen, a young[er] Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider desired Jaina for his own. Now, all uncomfortable social situations aside, how would that have changed Kael'thas? Remember that the wayward Prince of the Elves went into the Outlands and ended up teaming up with Kil'Jaeden instead of saving his people. You know how it goes. But what if Jaina had been there for him? Would he still have gone nuts? What about our dear Prince Arthas? Instead of publicly breaking up with him prior to the Culling of Stratholme, what if she had stayed? Do you think she could have calmed his tumultuous heart? Made him, well, not so Lich King-y? Lastly, let's not forget the Stormrage x Whisperwind thing. What if Tyrande has chosen Illidan? Would he still have risked so much to try and impress her? To show her what a great hero he was? Maybe he wouldn't be brooding in a derelict temple in the Outlands? Please keep in mind that I am in no way trying to vilify these women. They're all amazingly strong characters who have stood and faced great peril and responsibility. I applaud them all for thinking for themselves, but I always had to wonder: what's love got to do with it?
Breakfast Topic: Who could be a new world boss in Cataclysm?
One thing that was missing from the Wrath expansion, conspicuously or not, was a world boss on par with those such as Kazzak and the Emerald Dragons. For better or for worse, Blizzard completely removed them from the game, reserving the massive figures towering over the landscape for instanced quests or dungeons. Blizzard touched a bit on why they've not used world bosses in Wrath in the recent Twitter developer chat. They observed that there are issues with the bosses that have prevented them from feeling comfortable making more world bosses, such as issues with groups racing to bosses, or the ability of people outside raid groups to deliberately mess up boss attempts. On the other side of the coin, though, they did imply that they like world bosses, and will probably implement more in Cataclysm if and when they can find a satisfactory work-around for the problems.
