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WoW 5th Anniversary Giveaway: Spectral Kitten loot code
In honor of World of Warcraft's 5th Anniversary today, we are kicking off three days of giveaways with one of the sweetest, shiniest, most drool-worthy prizes we could get our hands on: the ultra rare Spectral Kitten from Upper Deck's upcoming Scourgewar TCG expansion. The code from this card can be redeemed for an in-game non-combat pet called the Spectral Tiger Cub (complete with miniature armor) that follows you around playfully and meows when you click on him. How do you get your chance to win this? Put down the E-Bay bid and step away slowly, pet collectors, we have a better way for you here at WoW.com. Simply leave a comment in this post by 12pm (noon) tomorrow ET. That's it. Limit one entry per person and make sure you're registered with a valid email address. We'll be choosing one winner randomly from the entrants and contact them via email after the close of the contest. Note that we won't be emailing the code to the winner until mid-December when it is made available to us by the fine people at Upper Deck. And the best part? This contest is open to all readers regardless of where in the world you live. So leave your comment below, cross your fingers and hope for the best. And even if you don't win this one, there are plenty of contests to come here at WoW.com over the next three days. Screenshot of the Spectral Tiger Cub in-game after the jump. EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks so much for participating!
WoW's 5th anniversary celebrations have begun
The celebrations have started in Europe and Oceania, anyway! Players in these regions have started to receive their Onyxian Whelps in the mail, along with a letter welcoming them to a new year in Azeroth and a feat of strength upon logging in. This probably means that those of us in the United States (and Canada and whatever other magical lands are in the region) will be getting ours tomorrow. Considering Pilgrim's Bounty also starts tomorrow, it's kind of exciting! It really is a holiday in Azeroth. The screenshot above comes from Enduser of Ghostlands EU. Since most of us here at WoW.com are US players, we're in dire need of screenshots! If you have any, please send them our way along with your character name (if you want credit for it) so we can add them to a gallery! %Gallery-78670%
Night Elf Mohawk grenade now active in WoW
In what appears to be the start of the World of Warcraft 5th anniversary celebrations, Night Elf Mohawks have entered WoW! You can go visit Mr. Night Elf Mohawk outside any of the races starting zones. In particular we were able to see the Night Elf outside of the human starting area of Northshire, and near the Undead starting area of Tirisfal Glades -- on any live server, not on the PTR. This is also only on North American servers right now. Reports indicate that the Night Elf Mohawk will appears on EU and Korean servers starting November 24th. When you get there you'll want to talk to him, make him pity the fool. And in return you'll get a five Mohawk Grenades that let you make others wear a Night Elf Mohawk mask. You can get more grenades once your five are all used up. There is a 50 minute buff called "Mohawked" with the flavor text of "You pity the fool" that gets placed on you when you wear the mask. You can right click the debuff to remove it. Check out the gallery below for images from this little Monday afternoon surprise. And just for kicks, the original Mr. T WoW commercial after the break. When you watch the commercial again, note how Mr. T's in-game self looks exactly like his character does in the commercial, quite neat! Update: There is now an FAQ on the Night Elf Mohawk, which is reproduced after the break. %Gallery-78301%
WoW Fifth Anniversary Sweepstakes
If you're a resident of the United States, Canada, or New Zealand, kindly whack yourself on the head as a show of solidarity for other players who don't qualify for the World of Warcraft Five Year Anniversary Sweepstakes. If you are a resident of the aforementioned countries or are some Asian or European or Other-Unqualified-Country-an willing to subject themselves to a little geek envy, then read on. Our favorite game turns five this November 23, 2009, and to celebrate, Blizzard is giving away a whole bunch of swag every week for the next four weeks. Essentially, as long as you're a player whose account is active when they pull your name out of a kodo-skin hat and hasn't gotten into trouble for breaking the EULA, you're automatically entered in the sweepstakes. Players qualify for certain prizes depending on how long they've been playing the game. Check out the list of prizes and player eligibility after the jump.
G4 talks to Blizzard about five years of WoW
We are quickly approaching the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft's release (my calendar has it on the 23rd of November), and G4 has gotten a head start on celebrating -- they sent Morgan Webb over to Blizzard headquarters to talk to the team, including Tom Chilton, Alex Afrasiabi, and Jeff Kaplan, about what things have been like in the last five years since WoW's launch. There's nothing super groundbreaking in here, but there is lots of reminiscing about the game's early thinking -- Chilton talks about how dual specs were never even considered as an idea (until they, you know, were) and what things were like in the early post-launch days. Pretty stressful, sounds like. Afrasiabi talks about how the quest team puts together and tracks all of the game's quests (he mentions both Metzen and the game's historian as the "lorekeepers" of the game), and the fact that they've put together "millions of words" of story and background lore for the game at large. He specifically talks about Cataclysm and replacing questlines, and says that if something does get removed from the game, they're hoping to replace it with something better, but most "fan favorites" will stay. And finally, Jeff Kaplan looks back on the early game itself, from unfinished zones to broken balance to launch day exhaustion. G4 teases something about the next MMO project, but all he says is that he can't talk about it. Oh well -- if we can't look forward, at least we get a nice look back from the folks at Blizzard who've been there since the beginning. You can see all four of the videos after the break.
"Zero lore. Maximum fun." with Onxyia back in town
When the news first broke yesterday about Onyxia returning to her status as a raid boss, I, probably like many of you, went into lore-generation overdrive. She's dead in the comic (Varian Wrynn decided her head didn't so much belong with her body any more), so how was she going to be a raid boss? I stabbed at ideas: she's in the Caverns of Time! Arthas could resurrect her as a Frostwyrm of some kind!Fortunately, cooler lore-heads (Ziebart and Sacco) prevailed: they pointed out to me this comment by Maxim in the original post: "Zero lore. Maximum fun. HOORAY!" That perfectly sums up why Blizzard is doing this: there's no lore reason or explanation behind it, it's just a straight up fun thing for us to do to celebrate the five-year anniversary. Bornakk makes it official: Ony is still dead, and she's not coming back. This is a one-time thing on the 5th anniversary.While, unfortunately, that may destroy some dreams about seeing similar old-world content come back to life (at least until the 10th anniversary, when we'll probably see Molten Core updated for the level 100 15-man raiding scheme -- drool), it means that there's no thinking involved about why Onyxia's back. She's back, we get to raid the original raid and pick up some great loot while doing it. Zero lore. Maximum fun.
Zarhym drops hints about Onyxia encounter, mount drop rate
Over here at WoW.com, we're pretty stoked about the new Onyxia fight, which was why, despite the fact that it came in a somewhat trollish thread, I was pretty happy to see Zarhym drop a few hints about the Onyxia encounter and the drop rate of the new 310% speed Brood of Onyxia mount.He reveals that they aren't going back to the 4-instance heroic and normal setup of the Coliseum, instead just having plain old 10 man and 25 man normal modes. In addition, the mount will have an equal chance to drop from both encounters, so you have a chance at it no matter what your preferred raid size.That said, you probably shouldn't expect to just waltz in and get your whole raid outfitted in matching black drakes. The mount drops one at a time, and the drop rate is pretty low. Think pre-nerf Baron Rivendare's Deathcharger mount low. As Zarhym puts it: "One day I will have it, though as soon as I loot it I'll probably be struck by lightning on a sunny day and attacked by a shark, all while in the presumed comfort of my living quarters."That said, don't get too put out either way. It sounds like Zarhym hasn't ruled out the possibility of an old-fashioned "hard mode" achievement depending on how you face the fight (I'm fully expecting a "Many Whelps Left Side" style achievement myself), and we already know the new Onyxia is permanent, meaning you'll probably have until next expansion to try to farm your mounts.
Onyxia returns in Patch 3.2.2
You read that right. In honor of WoW's 5-year anniversary, in the upcoming Patch 3.2.2, Onyxia will make her triumphant return to the world of Azeroth! The patch will convert Onyxia's Lair to a 10- and 25-player dungeon, along with new items whose models match the old-school gear available in the vanilla instance, like Tier 2 helms. Additional rewards include a 310% speed flying mount modeled after Onyxia herself!As a bonus, anyone who logs in during the 5-year anniversary event in November will get an Onyxia Whelpling pet. The full announcement after the break!
