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Breakfast Topic: A trip to the stylist, part one
Full disclosure here: The main thing that makes me want to play a particular race is their choice in hairstyles. Especially the females. Sometimes when I go to Stormwind and enter the barber shop I say, out loud, "All right, designers, let's send our models to the L'Oreal Paris hair salon! Make it work!" Okay, that last part isn't entirely accurate. Or is it? Anyway, yeah. Hairstyles are important to me, which is why I'm simultaneously happy and a bit miffed about the new styles in Wrath, a lot of which were just copy-paste jobs from other races. Night elf females still have a grand total of two good haircuts and human males can, joy of joys, be Goku now. So my question to you, dear readers, the first in a series, is this: What are your favorite and least favorite hairstyles in the game? When you see a human male with the Goku haircut or the foxtail, do you want to kill a man? For female troll players, you don't even need to answer. I mean, you have what, two hairstyles anyway? Neither of them any good? Maybe next expansion. Addendum: And just why do goblin females get all the good hipster haircuts, Blizzard? They can be Tegan or Sara. I can't even be the girl from La Roux.
Breakfast Topic: Are you in a parent-friendly raiding guild?
Recently, I wrote about the raiding as a parent and many of the commenters mentioned that they belong to raiding guilds that are extremely family friendly. These guilds are made up of parents who have similar schedules and little ones who may interrupt at inconvenient times. I knew these guilds existed, but I didn't think they were very common. In fact, I thought they were rare and wonderful things, like playgrounds without graffiti. It is very important for parents, particularly of small children, to get some child-free leisure time in every day. But you are a parent 24/7, so no time is completely child-free. Most guilds understand when you have to AFK for emergencies and you don't make a habit of it, but few guilds want you to raid with them if your AFKing is more regular. Also, start times for parent-friendly guilds are post-bedtime which is often a couple hours later than guilds with child-free players who eat dinner at their desks while preparing for their raids.
Breakfast Topic: What class is your goblin going to be?
Yesterday's Breakfast Topic asked about the new Alliance race, but today we're here to ask about the prodigal Hordies, Cataclysm's newest Horde race, the goblins. The announcement of the race was a bit of a surprise, but one that made a lot of sense upon further examination. I wasn't at all excited for goblins at first, but the more I look at 'em, the more I kinda like 'em -- especially all of the cute hairstyles that the women get. So, I know that I'll be rolling at least one goblin. I'm thinking a warlock and ... I have no idea. I'm running out of classes I don't already have an 80 of. But it might be fun to faction change one of my existing 80s to a goblin too. They'd be my first high-level Horde character! I never fell prey to infectious rerollbelfatosis. So what about you guys? Excited to blaze new trails and be Kalimdor pioneers with your little green man (or woman)? What are you going to roll? Does your goblin have a backstory you're building? Let us know in the comments and in the poll below! %Poll-36723% World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Breakfast Topic: What class is your worgen going to be?
Cataclysm's coming, but thankfully you appear to have a bit of time left in Wrath's lifespan to decide how you're gonna tackle the expansion first. Me, I haven't decided yet. I want to level my shaman to 85 first -- maybe even go for realm first shaman/draenei if I've got the time and inclination -- or go for broke and level the hell out of a worgen in New Azeroth. I know for a fact that I'll be rolling at least one worgen. My class selection's probably going to be a male worgen fury warrior, for the "hell yes" factor, and a female worgen frost mage because it appears they'll be tall, svelte things. And yes, I plan to roll a goblin too. So what about you guys? Excited to blaze new trails and be Eastern Kingdom pioneers with your wolfman (or -woman)? What are you going to roll? Does your worgen have a backstory you're building? Let us know in the comments and in the poll below! %Poll-36721% World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Breakfast Topic: Too powerful
I like Nibuca's little writeup recently from her blog asking what happens when we become just too powerful to care? Just like her, I've played a full, months-and-months, session of D&D before, and by the time your characters start to flirt with level 20 (the maximum level in that system), you're so powerful that the story barely makes sense any more -- you're crossing planes of existence, unweaving and re-weaving the fabric of reality, and taking down gods, more or less. Once you've vanquished evil from the earth four or five times, yet another threat doesn't bother you so much. And to a certain extent, that's exactly what's happening with World of Warcraft -- when the game first started, the devs casually threw out there that it would take 40 level 80s to take Arthas down, which was of course a guess based on what raiding was at the time. But nowadays, we're all level 80, you only need five people to go after Arthas, and very soon, even someone like Deathwing will seem conquerable. In the next expansion, we already know that we're going to transverse some planes of existence, and when you're a being that can do that, why bother fighting frost wyrms? Just escape their reality and/or will them out of yours.
Forum Post of the Day: WoW is ruined (again!)
Yeah, here at the WoW.com high-rise, we were all a little surprised by the announcement of the Pet Store and its microtransactionalized non-combat pets -- but seriously, it's not that big a deal, people. Hitch your bandwagons to that slippery slope fallacy all you want, but pets offer no plausible in-game advantage. The whole experience is roughly equivalent to buying a TCG pet off of eBay, just slightly more convenient and reasonably easier to live with. Anyway, of course the forums are mad about it, or at least the incredibly vocal minority on the forums is. And they've made post after post about how the Pet Store has completely ruined WoW. Well, official forums MVP Palehoof has a rebuttal, and it's the largest green wall this side of Fenway Park. If you want a rundown of just how many times WoW has been "ruined" by an addition, deletion, or alteration to the game, you can read Palehoof's post on the official forums.
Breakfast Topic: How far would you let WoW microtransactions go?
One of the hottest topics in the past week was Blizzard's foray into the microtransactions game. By announcing the Blizzard pet store, World of Warcraft had officially come on par with other MMOs and online games that sold in-game items for real world money. Our informal survey showed that views on the move were officially split... a good third of our readers would buy the pet, another third didn't plan to, while another full third thought that our world was coming to an end. Well, the World of Warcraft, at least. At any rate, it looks like the Pet Store is here to stay. Besides, Blizzard has already been hawking in-game services for real money, so it's not as if these vanity pets are any different. I personally don't find anything wrong with these pets, and seeing the number of diminutive liches and kung fu pandas showing up all over Azeroth, it really seems like a lot of other people don't, either. Blizzard states that these items, similar to the TCG loot cards, are "purely cosmetic and just for fun." They say that they'd be loathe to introduce things that are "detrimental to the game and (detracts) from the gameplay experience for players who choose not to use the service." So that probably means no epic weapons or anything of the sort. How far does that go, though? Are heirloom items considered detrimental to the game? How about buying levels? Premades? I personally wouldn't mind paying a fair price to skip the painful leveling process (an attitude that might admittedly change during the Cataclysm). What's do you think is next for Blizzard? Armor dyes, perhaps? Vanity outfits such as the complete Brewfest set or gag items such as those found on the TCG? Titles? Now that the microtransactions gate has been opened, how far do you think Blizzard will go?
Breakfast Topic: How random your dungeon is
The new random dungeon feature in patch 3.3 promises to change how we PuG. Not only will you be able to run the same heroic more than once in a day if that's how the luck of the draw works out (a feature that would have been very handy for me back in the days of farming CoS for a fist weapon, which of course never dropped for my shaman) but we'll be able to get fabulous prizes (well, if you're into mini pets anyway) for doing so. Like many curious folk, I went onto the PTR myself to try it out I logged onto my death knight (not a premade, so warts and all) and signed up for a DPS slot, figuring that would be the longest wait. Amazingly it popped almost immediately and we were soon pugging our way through the Pit of Saron, with no major glitches aside from a tumble I myself took off of a cliff during a fight. The whole experience was pretty much universally positive for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing the implementation in patch 3.3. My question for you is, are you likewise excited? Will you run it until you get the pet and then say sayonara to random dungeoning? How are you going to make use of this new feature, or will you at all? Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Breakfast Topic: Getting guildies to the website
This is certainly an issue (if not a full-blown problem) in my guild, so I wouldn't be surprised if most guilds have a rough time getting guild members to use some of the outside resources they've put together. Nowadays, there are so many ways to make a guild website and so many different things you can do with one that most every guild has at least one place online to call its own. And those places are usually frequented by one or two people in the guild (usually the person running the site and/or maybe the GM and an officer or two), but in my experience, it's kind of tough to get people to use those resources, just because of lack of interest or know-how or habit. What's the point of having a database of members, a message board, and a blog and picture gallery when no one uses it? Enter Ankie of WoW Ladies, with an intriguing idea to support the guild's website.
Breakfast Topic: Would you ninja the Onyxia mount?
We mention a ninja of the Onyxia mount in this week's Guildwatch, and while researching that, some other forum threads came up, including these two, both from General, where people say with conviction that given the chance, they'd take the Onyxia mount and never look back. They have a point -- it's one of the rarest random mounts in the game, on a raid that's definitely PuG-able. Chances are low that you'll ever see it, much less win it on a random roll, and so for a lot of people, it'd be worth the namechange and the server transfer you'd have to pay to escape your new ninja reputation. Personally, I wouldn't do it, but that's really only because I know there are lots of rare mounts in the game that I'll never get (sigh, Red Proto-drake, I covet you), and one more isn't that big a deal. Not to mention that I like the guilds I'm in and the people I play with, and who knows what they'd think of me if I stole the mount from them or someone else. But not everyone feels the way I do, I'm sure, so let's ask: if you had the chance, in a PuG or a guild run, to steal the Onyxia mount as your own, would you take it? And if you would, is it just because it's so rare and special?
Breakfast Topic: Will you buy the new in-game pets?
In-case you missed it, which really is only possible if you were living under a rock or had something else going on, yesterday's news was some of the largest out of WoW this year. Blizzard is now allowing you to purchase in-game pets for real life money through the Blizzard store. There are two pets, pictured about, available for sale now. The Pandaren Monk and Lil K'T'. Both pets cost $10, and the Pandaren Monk will see 50% of its sale price go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation (for the remainder of the year). This firmly brings WoW into the arena of microtransactions -- purchasing in-game items for real life money. Some games, not WoW, allow you purchase items which make you stronger in the game. Other games, like WoW, allow the purchase of vanity items, such as these pets, which do nothing other than look cool or count towards vanity achievements. Some people really don't like this model of gaming, others are indifferent, and others are in love with it. I'm personally in love with it. I think the items are cheap enough to be affordable to a large portion of the player base, and are cool enough to warrant the purchase. Further, since the items don't provide in-game power ups for people, they are essentially meaningless toys. This makes it an ideal luxury item for the virtual-nerd to spend $10 on. So will I buy the new in-game pets? Absolutely, I already have. But what will you do? Are you going to go out and buy them? Vote in the poll and leave a comment, we want to know. %Poll-36542%
Breakfast Topic: Feats of Strength
Allison's great post about all of the Feats of Strength still available in the game got me thinking: just what kind of value do players place on these "kinda" achievements? Personally, I never gave them much weight -- I have a few of them (I picked up the Vampiric Batling a while ago, and I've got the Competitor's Tabard, among a few other old-school and commemorative achievements), but the ones I've got I didn't really do anything to earn, and the Feats still available don't really mean that much to me. Unlike "real" achievements, Feats don't even give you meaningless points, and they can't be used to get you into any raids or runs that you couldn't do otherwise. They're boring to me. I'm not that way about all achievements -- there have been a few that I've worked to get done, and there are even non-achievement items that I've pushed for in the past (I worked like crazy to finally get my Netherwing drake, and the only achievement I got for that was the Netherwing reputation). But Feats of Strength in particular seem passive to me, by Blizzard's design: if they happen, great, but there's not enough reward there for me to go out of my way to get them. What do you think?
Breakfast Topic: Day of the Dead ends today
Whoosh. Well, that went by rather quickly, didn't it? Day of the Dead ends today. Two days is most certainly a short time for a World of Warcraft holiday, but fortunately, there was little to do. Just a visit to Catrina, buying a bread recipe, sharing it with some dead folks, and that's it. It didn't exactly go off without a hitch, either, as there were some known issues with the event. But everything was fixed, eventually, and the short event is now about to finish. How did everyone find the short holiday? It mirrored the short holiday it was based on in the real world, and even similar holidays all over the world. In the Philippines, we got a non-working holiday for November 2, where most folks are off to the provinces visiting their dead. How did everyone's Day of the Dead go? Were you able to take a gander at the lovely dancing Catrina? Were you able to bake some (presumably stale) bread? What's your take on these short holidays? Personally, I think it's a nice touch. These blink-and-you'll-miss-it events similar to Pirate's Day are nice nods to our real world happenings. Hopefully, all of you got a chance to enjoy this new but brief world event.
Breakfast Topic: Hallow's End ends
This is it, the end of Hallow's End. Let's make today's Breakfast Topic a quick one... how did your Hallow's End go? Were you able to obtain everything you needed? It took me logging on every hour on the hour (alright, on the hour when I remembered it, anyway) to get the Hallowed Helm which I didn't manage to pick up last year. Along the way, I lined my bags with an assortment of wands, loads of ridiculous masks that still didn't complete A Mask for All Occasions, and enough Tooth Picks to make a family of sharks sparkly clean. I finally got it with forty-something hours to spare, after five straight tricks from Innkeeper Gryshka. How did you fare? Did you manage to get The Hallowed title on all your characters? Were you able to beat the Headless Horseman into coughing up more candy? Did you go around making those emotes just to get treats for those kids? Time's run out on this World of Warcraft holiday, so share your in-game stories about this past week or so.
Breakfast Topic: The ninja problem
The new LFG system is certainly great, but there's one problem with random PuGs that I'm sure it won't fix, and that is of course the problem of ninjas. As long as random people are getting into groups (and with the new rewards system in place, there'll be plenty of that), some of them will always find the loot more tempting than keeping their reputation clean. So what's the solution? Obviously, over on Guildwatch, we've been covering people shouting out names and guilds on the forums for a while, but as we've also reported a few times over there, that barely helps -- even if people do remember a ninja on their server, one name change later and they're gone. A few guildleaders over on Jubei'thos have tried putting a site together to track known ninjas on the server, but even that has issues; it's tough to avoid false positives, even if you do require screenshots. But surely there must be a solution, so let's put our heads together: a debuff? Something like the group vote-kicking system that's coming in patch 3.3? If Blizzard wanted to really go for fair, they could just take the Need-before-Greed system and turn it into straight Need: if an item matches your class and spec, you get a roll (with items everyone can use giving everyone a roll), and the best roll always wins. You can turn it off (for a Master Looter-style raid), but for PuGs, why even bother with a Need/Greed difference? What do you think?
Breakfast Topic: How do you feel about the new LFG system?
The LFG system has been completely revamped. Details were released the other day. It's supposed to be coming some time in patch 3.3. You won't have to worry about not finding a tank or a healer as the LFG interface is supposed to draw from a pool of various servers. The idea of pulling players from other servers seems like a double edged sword. Sure you might be able to run into more people and more opportunities, but what happens if you run across a ninja or an unsavory player? I suppose it's reassuring to know that they're on a different server than you are. But here's some other changes: Players can join as individuals, as a full group, or a partial group to look for additional party members. Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance. Personally I like the idea of not having to fly all the way down to the Utgarde or Nexus instances. That's going to cut down on travel time for sure. Hopefully the players we'll be partying with will already be fully repaired and have enough reagents to last the run. It's nice to know that extra convenience has been added for the days where we forget. Are you looking forward to these new changes? Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Breakfast Topic: Race Change, your personal retcon
Just about every wall has been broken down now. The only thing left is the ability to change one's class, which probably won't happen anytime... soon®. Yesterday, the highly anticipated Race Change service went live, and I'm sure a lot of players rushed to get their makeover. Take Gregg, for example, who went on and changed his Level 70 Tauren Hunter into a weed-loving Troll. I mean, he's wanted to do that for a while. I know I've been hankering for race change myself, but now that the service is here, I haven't exactly jumped the gun. Why? I said I wanted to turn my Blood Elf Death Knight -- I'm quite happy with just one Sin'dorei -- into an Orc, but now I'm kind of wondering. I still want to change my character's race, I'm just not quite settled on which one to switch to. Race change is kind of like a retcon in the World of Warcraft, more so than name changes or customization of appearance. It's right up there with gender changes. Faction changes are different because it kind of take away your character's entire continuity, and I'm sure a lot of RP'ers made completely different back-stories for faction-changed characters. Race change allows you to have essentially the same character but with a major difference. We asked what race you'd switch to about a month back, but now that the service is here, we're going to ask who's up and done the change? What race did you switch from and what race did you switch to? Tell us why! Personally, I'm just kind of bored with another Blood Elf, and I want one of each race (I know, I should've thought of that to begin with). Lame, right? On the other hand, I'm holding out for that Undead Hunter I've always wanted. Now that World of Warcraft's personal retcon is a paid service, have you taken advantage of it? Have you changed anything else besides your race such as gender or name?
Breakfast Topic: What tutorial would you add?
With the addition of sixty new tutorials for helping out new players starting out in World of Warcraft on the 3.3 PTR, I started thinking about what tutorials some of the level 80 players I've seen still need... like the above. There could be the "Hit rating is your friend" tutorial explaining that if you can't hit the boss, you can't DPS. There is also the "Stay out of the boss's cleave" for those people that want to stand next to the tank during Onyxia. Speaking of Onyxia, we could also just do a general "Dragons: Where not to stand" tutorial telling people to avoid the front and back. There is also one that most new healers run into "A dead healer can't heal the tank" explaining that you also need to keep track of your own health as AoE damage can kill the healer. While some of those were meant to be sarcastic, other ones we tend to take for granted. Some new level 80 characters have never experienced the game mechanics we often feel should be general knowledge. So, I take the question to you: What new tutorials do you think should be added into the game?
Breakfast Topic: When I left you, I was but the learner
Interesting weekend for me: My schedule is such that I can't really do weekend raids with my Alliance guild, but with fall coming the crummy weather seems to have led to a renaissance for my Horde side play, and suddenly I found myself running Onyxia and TotC 10 on Malfurion in my finest Tauren warrior self. (Tauren warriors: great race/class combo or the greatest race/class combo? The world may never know.) Since I'm fairly familiar with the fights in both cases, it seemed natural enough to explain them for people who hadn't done them. And then I realized that, without really even paying attention, I'd sort of taken the job over entirely. It just seemed like what I should do: even when I forgot to mention an element of a fight like Gormok's spell lock, I just found myself calmly explaining things in a voice that, frankly, I didn't really even recognize. It was as if I was comfortable telling people what to do. Almost without realizing it I'd started telling people what to do in a raid, and they were doing it. The whole thing was somewhat surreal all told. So how about you? Ever found yourself leading a raid, an instance, or just a charge across AV without really expecting it? Or are you always in charge in WoW? Are you a leader, a follower, or a bit of both?
Breakfast topic: Faction fanboyism
It's not unusual to see player speculation on what we'll see when Cataclysm arrives, and most of us have our own private wish lists. I'm sure I could come up with my own if I thought about it, but while riding between Kamagua and Moa'ki Harbor last night on the Kalu'ak ferry lazily chatting with people, it occurred to me that one of the things I'd kill to have again is another faction like the Tuskarr. These guys are, for lack of a better word, awesome. Their emotes are fantastic. They sell an evil penguin pet and a cool fishing item (the Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole) that probably won't be replaced for the duration of the expansion. Their ships are giant turtles traveling along beautiful coastline with a vendor on board (seriously, riding these at night = an endless series of Kodak moments). They get my vote as the faction that immerses you most thoroughly in what they need and what they're doing to survive in an increasingly hostile Azeroth, and I'm wondering if, given Northrend's various difficulties, they might be convinced to seek warmer climes just so we don't have to give them up. Agonizing rep grinds have plagued the game since classic, but the Tuskarr are such a well-realized bunch that even at exalted I love hanging around their villages. What's your favorite faction, and is there anything about them you'd like to see repeated with future reputation grinds?
