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Around Azeroth: A death knight is never alone
The good thing about being a pet class is that you always have a friend. Hunters have bears, wolves and cats. Warlocks have stolid voidwalkers, capricious imps or sexy succubi. And death knights have ... this ... this thing. Um. Is it too late to take it back to the SPCA and exchange it for a kitten? Reader Exanimo of Aszune-EU, who also writes Full Time WoW Addict, sent us this image straight from the Wrath of the Lich King beta -- and we'd love to have your beta screenshots, too! If you have anything our readers might like, sharing it is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. And, please, no more sunsets! Unless it's a sunset over Arthas's grave.%Gallery-1816%
Breakfast Topic: What glyphs would you like to see for your class?
We don't know a ton about the specifics of Inscription and the Glyphs it supplies since the Wrath beta doesn't have very many of them yet, but we at least know what they are. If you don't know what they are, glyphs are almost like enchantments, but for your spells instead of your armor and weapons. Their effects are usually a little more substantial, even if they don't change combat very much. You're allowed up to six glyphs, split amongst the varying strengths of glyphs in a configuration that may or may not be the same come retail.We got a litlte preview of glyphs via some Druid glyphs that were posted on MMO Champion a few days ago, and they do some pretty neat things. Things like "your Swipe ability now hits 1 additional target" and "changes the appearance of your bear and dire bear forms to that of a polar bear" are both pretty big effects! That's only really the beginning of them, too.Pulling a little inspiration from our friend Matticus, why don't we take a minute and make a few guesses at what types of glyphs our classes will get? Heck, even if it's unlikely we'll get it, what type of glyph would you like to get? Personally, I'm holding out for "Glyph of It's About Time - Increases the range on Mind Flay to 30 yards" for my Shadow Priest. A guy can hope, eh?
Crushing blows (mostly) removed in Wrath as raiding changes
We've known for a while that the developers have wanted to remove crushing blows, but now it looks like they're starting the process for good: Ghostcrawler has confirmed that crushing blows will now occur only when a mob is 4 levels above you, rather than 3. Since "Boss" mobs are automatically 3 levels above the max level, that means that if you're running level appropriate content, you should no longer have to worry about crushing blows at all. As Ghostcrawler explains it, crushing blows were originally meant to discourage you from attacking high level mobs and to make bosses more challenging. Now, they serve only the former purpose, and Blizzard is working on other ways to make bosses challenging without making them so random.
Ask a Beta Tester: More Titan's Grip
We're back again with today's round of Ask a Beta Tester questions. I tried to answer as many as I could, but time is a fickle mistress and I was going to write some sort of metaphor here but I can't think of one, so if you would all be so kind, come up with one for me. If I didn't get to your question today, don't worry, we'll be doing these for as long as there are questions left to answer. Just post it in the comments section below, and we'll try to get to it as soon as we can. Jamesisgreat asked: How much gold are you getting rewarded per quest on average? I mean is it worth us saving up our gold for Wrath or are quests going to reward 100g a pop or something? Most quests throughout the starter zones give around 5g each, though group quests offer more. On top of that there are the green rewards you don't use that you can vendor, so you don't need to save a lot of money. I advise saving up a little bit though, because questing to 80 is not going to get you the (roughly) 8,000g you'll want to buy the ring that ports you to Dalaran. You won't be totally broke at 80 if you don't save money now, but you won't be able to run around and buy whatever you want either. Northrend is a big place, so that ring will be nice even if you only use it for the portal. You can be free to set your hearth elsewhere.
Mana and energy regeneration mechanics revamped on Beta
A change went in with the last Wrath Beta patch that's deceptively simple, but may have far reaching ramifications for many of the classes in game: Both energy and mana regenerate on a per second basis, rather than the previous ticks. Instead of a chunk of mana or energy every few seconds, you'll now see a steady trickle reappearing constantly at your bar (outside of the 5 second rule for casters, of course). As a friend put it, "Woah. It feels like I am playing Diablo II now." You can see an example of the change in action in the video above from Youtube user koblec. The energy change should be especially helpful for Rogues and Feral Druids in that they won't have to obsessively time their attacks to the rhythm of the energy tick system, and should be able to use extra energy from talents in an easier and more fluid manner. Likewise, mana and energy users alike won't be waiting for that one last tick to cast a crucial spell or ability, but can cast as soon as they have the mana. Plus, it's honestly sort of empowering to see the mana bar running up like it does. Technically, I'm not regenerating mana any faster, but watching that blue bar go up so quickly makes it feel like I am, and makes it much easier to tell when I'm stuck in the 5 second rule, besides. Of course, as with all changes, this is Beta, so things can change, and Koraa is asking for focused feedback and bug reports on the concept, but it's something I'm certainly hoping makes it live.
Wrath of the Lich King's magical city of Dalaran
Dalaran, which is more or less the Shattrath of Wrath, has been getting a lot of love in the last couple of beta patches. It seems development on that particular bit of Northrend is going at full steam. It's still far from complete, with a whole legion of NPCs missing, the inside of some buildings still lack textures, and entire parts of the city still walled off. It really is coming together little by little though, and the city is more or less presentable now, not to mention beautiful -- it's like cotton candy for your eyeballs.We've put together a little gallery of Dalaran for you to sift through if you're interested, and as the beta patches go by we'll probably update it with more of the finished product. Not yet pictured is the Dalaran Sewers, but I hope to fix that soon. What are the Dalaran sewers, you might be wondering? It's a small hidden town beneath Dalaran, within the pipelines that were torn up when the relocation took place. It's full of all sorts of unsavory stuff. Awesome? Yes. Yes it is.%Gallery-28715%
Ask a Beta Tester: Wyrmrest Temple and the dragon shrines
Elizabeth is off having grand adventures at the airport today, so I'll be filling in for her on Ask a Beta Tester today. You may know me from such WoW Insider features as Know Your Lore, Ask a Lore Nerd, Hybrid Theory, and Bad Pop Culture References. Hm, wait, I think I imagined that last one... Anyway! I'll be fielding your questions today, and I apologize if I didn't get to yours. I had to pick and choose questions I actually knew a thing or two about, so I couldn't really answer class questions about classes I don't play or don't know very well.If I didn't get to your question today, go ahead and ask it again today, and hopefully one of the other WoW Insider staff in the Wrath Beta will be able to answer it for you. Thanks, everyone!juicyjuice asked: As I understand it, the Argent Dawn is making a reappearance in WotLK. Will players who spent a lot of time with the Argent Dawn pre-BC have a significant advantage over people who may not have much or any Argent Dawn rep when WotLK hits? The Argent Dawn and parts of the Silver Hand are now operating as the Argent Crusade. I won't elaborate on that so we can avoid any spoilers on the front page here. So no, high Argent Dawn rep from WoW Classic will not give you any advantage in Wrath of the Lich King. However, it will probably play a role in an achievement or two, though it is a bit too early to say for sure whether that will be the case when Wrath hits retail.
Around Azeroth: Might as well jump
Don't jump, little gnome! You have so much to live for! You're in the beta! You can lord it over the rest of us! You can -- oh, wait, you're a mage. Call us when you hit the ground, you slowfalling so-and-so. Astrael of <Saga> on Boulderfist is a better man (or gnome) than most of us -- instead of playing the beta 24/7, he let his roommate have a go at Northrend. His roommate repaid him by repeatedly jumping off of Dalaran into Crystalsong Forest. It cost a couple Light Feathers, but it paid off in this beautiful screenshot. Yep, that's the underside of the magical city in the background.This image came to us straight from the Wrath of the Lich King beta -- and we'd love to have your beta screenshots, too! If you have anything our readers might like, beta or not, sharing it is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. And, please, no more sunsets! Unless it's a sunset over Arthas's grave.%Gallery-1816%
Howling Fjord image gallery is live
The beta has been going for awhile now, and I've been absolutely infatuated with it. It's about time I share the wealth, as I've teased about doing on our Twitter feed. The first zone I've put up an image gallery for is the Howling Fjord, my personal favorite zone so far with the Dragonblight coming in at a close second. I really tried to capture some hotspots of the Fjord for this gallery, but I honestly gotta say you can't quite capture the magic in a picture.Don't worry too much about plot spoilers, I don't think I've included anything earth shattering. All in all, it's really, really good eye candy and a preview of what's to come. We have plenty of galleries coming your way soon, throughout today and the days to come. Enjoy!%Gallery-28278%
Breakfast Topic: Where will you level your Death Knight?
While Death Knights start at 55, by the time they get out of the Ebon Hold, which is the instanced newbie zone that delivers the epic story of how a Death Knight becomes a Death Knight, they should be level 57 with a few bubbles in. Level 57 is pretty cool, but it's far from the level 68 or so you'll need to get to Northrend, and it's not even the level 58 that most people consider the minimum for heading to Outland. So, what's a fresh Death Knight to do? I'm taking my Beta Deathknight to Winterspring to start with. I figure that between Everlook, Starfall Village to the north, and Donova Snowden to the west, I should be able to get a good, solid mix of quests that'll allow me to hit 58 and decide if I'm ready for Outland -- Not to mention a Mechanical Yeti. Of course, there's other options as well. Eastern Plaguelands offers the chance to use Rune of Lichbane and mess up a bunch of undead in the name of the Argent Dawn, plus you can have your 70 collect Savage Fronds, Bone Fragments, Cores of Elements, Dark Iron Scraps, and Crypt Fiend Parts for some quick experience as well. With a good group, you could also hit up Scholomance and Stratholme for some revenge against the Scourge, maybe grabbing some Deathcharger's Reins or a Barov Peasant Caller along the way. Or you could trust in the power of the imba and try hitting Hellfire Peninsula straight up at 57. Then again, this is Beta, so they could always just switch things up, add a few more levels gained in Ebon Hold, maybe. Still, it's likely we'll still have a while to go before we can hit all the new stuff, regardless. So if you're rolling a Death Knight, how are you planning to start the level grind?
Ask a beta tester: Death Knights and Dalaran
With over 200 questions yesterday on our initial Ask a Beta Tester column, I'm afraid we couldn't answer everyone's questions. (There just aren't enough hours in the day!) However, I did pick about a dozen questions to answer -- like a Death Knight picking Peacebloom! -- after the break. Did your question not get answered? You're welcome to ask it again today, and maybe the WoW Insider crew will be able to hunt down the answers. So what are you waiting for? Ask us your questions in the comments!
Barbershops live in Wrath Beta
The latest beta build has implemented the Barbershops many of us have been waiting so eagerly to see. They're fun for sure, but not complete at all. Regardless, we've put together a gallery for you to see a little bit about how the process works. You can check that out down below.It's a quirky design and it makes me wonder why only Goblins know how to cut hair throughout all of Azeroth. It was fun to tinker around with, but I became bored pretty fast. The new hairstyles aren't in, so right now it's almost like staring at the character creation screen but a little bigger and there's gold involved. It will be much more fun on the live realms I'm sure, because I am a roleplayer and doing this kind of thing once in awhile should be pretty fun. There's just very little reason to play with it for a long time on the beta realms, I don't much care what my character's hair is like there. For all I care, it could be made of snakes. Hmm, that would be pretty awesome, actually...Well, I did experiment a little. I decided my Human Priest grew her hair longer since I rolled her in the first days of WoW's launch, so I picked a longer hairstyle, purchased it, then decided I was bored and wandered off. Until I came back to take screenshots for you all, of course. All in all... yeah, boring until the new hairstyles are in or I'm in a spot to care. Bummer.%Gallery-28670%
Around Azeroth: Dealing with dragons
As much as I loved the Burning Crusade, there was one thing I really missed -- dragons. After spending so many hours working on UBRS, Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, the world dragons, and all the neat individual dragon-related questlines, moving to the non-reptilian world of Draenor left a hollow spot in my gaming experience. So I'm very pleased that dragon-related questlines will be back in Wrath of the Lich King. In this picture, taken by beta tester Menelven, blue dragonflight leader and creepy kidnapper Malygos hovers over the land of Coldarra, along with a few red dragons. Does Malygos look familiar? Well, he's got the exact same model as pre-BC bossman Azuregos. WoWWiki speculates that Malygos will probably get his own, unique model in time for the Wrath release, much like Sunwell boss Kalecgos.This image came to us straight from the Wrath of the Lich King beta -- and we'd love to have your beta screenshots, too! If you have anything our readers might like, beta or not, sharing it is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. And, please, no more sunsets! Unless it's a sunset over Arthas's grave.%Gallery-1816%
Azeroth's new plague, Potion Sickness
Bad (good?) news for Alchemists and the people that love (hate?) them. The latest Beta build has introduced something called Potion Sickness. The tooltip reads as follows: "Unable to consume potions until you rest out of combat for a short duration."In other words, you can drink one potion per encounter. The debuff itself has absolutely no duration. It sticks on you until you drop combat. This is largely meaningless to the casual player, but what it will do to raiding will be rejoiced as well as reviled. Alchemists are going to take a huge hit to their income if this goes live. Yeah yeah, I know most Alchemists will say their profit is from Herbalism, but after seeing the insane prices on Haste Potions, Super Mana Potions and Flasks, I beg to differ.
The Daily Grind: Is Wrath beta news drawing you back in?
With the Wrath expansion on the horizon, many players have fell to pre-expansion malaise. Drifting off to shinier entertainment until Wrath launches, AoC, LotRO and the upcoming WAR are seeing the benefits of World of Warcraft players' inevitable burn out before the new content bows.But since the Wrath beta launched a few weeks ago and the NDA dropped, the WoW information has been coming fast and furious. The first hero class of the game, the Achievement system, major class adjustments, the list goes on.Do all these tidbits entice you to return to the game when Wrath finally goes live or are you done with Azeroth and no amount of shiny newness will draw you back?
Wrath Money Sink Found: Dalaran teleport rings for 8000 gold
Here's a brand new find fresh from the Kirin Tor capital of Dalaran on the Wrath Beta servers. We've been wondering for a while what type of money sinks Blizzard might implement in wrath, and we've found one, to the tune of 8000 gold coins: A set of melee and caster rings that not only deliver some pretty sweet stats, but also have a free teleport to Dalaran on use to the tune of an hour cooldown. The rings are sold by Tiffany Cartier, the Jewelcrafting supply vendor in Dalaran, who hangs out next to the jewelcrafting trainer. They come in both melee and caster versions, and seem to have pretty solid stats. Still, the main draw is the teleport, and it seems very likely that it will be on a separate cooldown from the Hearthstone. That means that for a paltry sum, you too can feel somewhat like a Mage once an hour. It's also worth noting that Tiffany herself is on the Kirin Tor faction. That means that if you care to do a bit of grinding before you spend your dough, you'll be able to haggle the price down to 6400 gold -- still far above the price of Burning Crusade's major money sink. This is certainly a useful and clever way for Blizzard to siphon money out of the economy once we all hit 80 and start doing all our Argent Crusade dailies, and it makes me sort of glad I didn't blow all my money on the Gigantique bag craze. Of course, now I need to figure out where I'm going to find the gold to buy one for all my alts. Thanks to Kurai for the tip, and Alex for heading to Dalaran for screenshots.
The Tuesday Morning Post: Beta goodness continues
Good Tuesday morning, everyone. As we announced earlier, it's an extended maintenance day today, which means the servers will be down from 3 AM to 11 AM PDT. However, do not despair. There's plenty of Wrath of the Lich King news to keep you busy, especially with the Beta servers live and a new build having been pushed only yesterday. Here's a list of some of the major Wrath Highlights from the Beta servers and elsewhere this past week: Hot news and features
