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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?
Breakfast Topic: Looking ahead to patch 3.3
There's another new build on the PTR, which means we're one step closer to seeing the new patch 3.3 drop. And while of course Icecrown probably holds its place as the biggest feature of the new patch, there's a whole slew of other changes to look ahead to, from updated achievements and a new faction to run, a brand new LFG interface with cross-realm instances, the Kalu'ak fishing derby, speeded-up Northrend reputation grinds, and lots of other things. Man oh man this patch is building up to be quite the event. So the question today is: what are you most looking forward to? Personally, I remain a fan of the 5-man instances -- I've already run two of them on the PTR, but fighting enemies co-op in a small group like that is really why I play the game. And of course cross-realm LFG will probably be a big part of the excitement for me as well. While I do expect there to be a few issues, hopefully it'll make jumping into a group as quick and easy as possible. And I'm looking forward to that fishing tournament, too -- the last one was a good idea, but hopefully a new implementation will help freshen things up. What are you looking forward to in patch 3.3? 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: Crafting pride
For some reason, crafting has always been a big part of massively multiplayer games. Maybe it's their quality as loot-collecting simulators, but from the very early graphical MMOs, players have almost always been able to create and modify and trade and sell items of their own. Though we don't talk about it as a mechanic much (you press a button and get what you crafted, what's the big deal), it's certainly one of the main reasons people play World of Warcraft, and the crafting system has come to not only fuel the economy, but has ended up becoming one of the best ways to show off and present your customized character. So our question today is: what's your favorite or most important crafting item? I'm in the middle of leveling my paladin, and he's just now reaching the highest reaches of Engineering, which is a skill I've never leveled up before, but have always wanted to. I haven't gotten together the gold for epic flying yet (well on my way at level 73), but I did make normal flying machine as soon as I could. And my big goal with this character, other than getting him raiding ASAP, is to make the Mekgineer's Chopper -- ever since we first saw it in the early days of Wrath, I've planned to get a character up high enough to make it. I know, I know, I can buy it, but for me it's a crafting thing -- I want to go out, find what I need to find, and craft it with my own virtual hands. Any other crafted items that have you wanting to make something for yourself?
Breakfast Topic: Freestyle specs
Lately, I've found myself messing around with alternative strategies, ways of doing things I wouldn't have tried before. One of them is Titan's Grip-less fury. Since I have so many warriors, I can devote a respec to a pet theory or a strange idea (like, say, building a leveling spec around self healing) and so, kitting out my tauren with a fist weapon and a tanking offhand (I don't have two DPS weapons for him) and seeing how it works in instances is one way to play around with the class. Gotta do something to keep the mold off the ol' cow. I have characters I need to keep min-maxed (my alliance raiding toons, who generally have specs/builds that hew fairly closely to what might be called cookie-cutter) so having toons where I can play around and see for myself are fun. So far, the TG-less fury build isn't exactly rocking the world, but I'm going to stick with it until I can get an offhand that suits the spec for a more fair comparison. I'm not expecting it to end up replacing TG, I just want to do some tests to see for myself. One of the reasons I bring this up is, a lot of the time we find ourselves looking for the way everyone else is using. And I'm not discouraging that: there are cookie cutter builds for a reason. Especially if you're in a position where people are counting on you to perform your job at the absolute peak you often don't have the luxury to spec in a way that's fun for you personally. But some players seek the personalized build over the theorycrafted ones, and some others are lunatics who play way too many warriors (or paladins, DK's, I know a player with four max level druids so he can have one of each spec ready to go at a moment's notice, no respec fees or dual spec) and have the room to take one of our alts any way we want. So now I turn to you: do you ever just throw caution to the winds and pick up that weird spec?
Breakfast Topic: Once more through the breach
You hear a lot of complaining about leveling up new alts. Having to see the same content again. And I've even said so myself from time to time and meant it. But recently, I dusted off my JC alt and decided to make a push to 80 with him, in part to have a toon to cut all these epic stam gems I need for my tank set now that I'm prot/arms... and also because, griping be damned, I missed fury. (Yeah, yeah, no one's surprised I caved and went back to Titan's Grip, not even me.) Yes, that's right. My JC alt was a level 70 warrior. And now, he's a level 76 warrior. And I'm having a blast seeing all the stuff I've already seen four or five times now (depending on if you count my Horde alts and taking into account that they have different quests to some degree) on a class I've already leveled to 80 twice. (I also leveled my draenei warrior to 76 before abandoning him.) To be honest, part of it is the fun of trying out a fury spec designed entirely around as much self healing as possible with the Glyph of Bloodthirst and Blood Craze, and part of it is just that I missed these particular questlines.
Breakfast Topic: What we don't know
I found myself without much to do last weekend, so I spent most of my time in Azeroth. My paladin, who's been extremely slow to level lately, went on a burst of XP gathering, and I got him from around 67 up to about 73, finishing up Outland and making some solid gains in Northrend. At 68, I logged out to my level 80 hunter, picked up the Tome of Cold Weather Flight, and passed it back to my pally, so as soon as he stepped on the northern shore, he could take to the skies in his flying machine (yes, he's an engineer, and he's headed for a chopper as soon as I can make it).But then something strange happened (I mentioned this on last week's podcast as well): not one, not two, but three different people sent me tells in the same evening, all of them asking just how I was flying around Northrend at level 68. I feel like we covered the topic pretty well here on WoW.com, and of course Blizzard had the information listed in the official patch notes. But somehow, news of the Tome had flown (sorry) under these players' radar.
Breakfast Topic: They just don't get it...
Geekdom is much like any other group of people. There are movies, music, and literature which are considered classics and are generally accepted as having been seen, heard, or read by everyone at one point or another. Some of these are so accepted as classics that the idea someone is unfamiliar with them is simply "inconceivable" and we are left shocked when this occurs. Unfortunately, one of our own staff seems uninitiated in such classics.While discussing some of the quests coming up in patch 3.3, we'd made a joke referencing the Knights who say "Ni!" from Monty Python's Holy Grail. Our own Matt Low mentioned that he didn't get whatever inside joke we were making. Much to our dismay, he had never seen the movie or any Monty Python for that matter. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords for daily quests wouldn't get a chuckle from him. Terry Palin in Elwynn Forest quoting the lumberjack song is also lost on him. He wouldn't even be that concerned about eating the Crunchy Frog available from Darkmoon Faire because he wouldn't know that it contained crunchy, raw, unboned, real, dead frog instead of an almond whirl.With the vast number of pop culture references scattered in World of Warcraft, it's sad when any are lost on its players. What obscure references have you found in the game that you've enjoyed or other people have completely missed?
[1.Local]: The battle over Battle.net
Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.Did Halloween arrive a few weeks early? You might think so, given the surge of moaning and groaning emanating from [1.Local] – but wait, that appears to be the sound of players facing up to the impending Battle.net account conversion deadline. Blizzard announced this week that players need to convert their WoW accounts to Battle.net accounts by Nov. 11 in order to continue to be able to log into WoW. The lamentation from some quarters wafted up above the usual QQ chokepoints, even creeping into what one might imagine would have been upbeat posts about the free companion pet awarded to every player who converts an account. In the face of this all this angst, at least a few readers were able to maintain a sense of humor and perspective. Quite a few players were pretty worked up over whether or not they would be able to successfully receive their Mr. Chilly pet if their accounts were currently inactive. FifthDream: Grr, I hope it's there when I reactivate my account in a few days.Raynier: Oh, don't worry ... The chick is in the mail!
Breakfast Topic: The best city for shopping
This discussion site we linked the other day, Epic Advice, is humming with activity, and full of interesting queries and answers about the World of Warcraft. Like this one: which city is the best for running to and from the bank and the AH (the question-asker also wants to get the mage portal in that circuit, but for the purposes of our discussion, we'll assume you're on a bank alt, so no portal necessary)? In terms of speed and ease, which is the best capital city to set up shop in?
Breakfast Topic: The Madness of Multiclassing
So a reader recently asked us a question: Why doesn't WoW allow multiclassing? It's a staple of many a Pen and Paper roleplaying game, and certain MMOs, such as DDO Unlimited, do offer it as an option. Why not WoW, our read wished to know.Honestly, it's all about balance. Games like Dungeons and Dragons are generally built from the ground up to support multiclassing. Each class has its synergies, and multiclassing its own rules, and there's a limited frame in which they work which works with the whole concept of multiclassing. With WoW, you have 10 separate classes so minutely balanced that even the slightest outside influence can shift the balance of power in class representation and role. With millions of players, each of them expecting to be able to fulfill a certain role and be competitive with everyone else, and each class balanced around a very specific set of skills and equipment, adding multiclassing to WoW would require such an extensive redesign that it would make Patch 4.0 look like a hot fix.
Breakfast Topic: Back to where you once belonged
I always knew this day would come.I was a tank all through Burning Crusade. A proper tank, no less, none of that arms specced but tanking anyway nonsense you could get away with in the original raid game. I was prot spec and I liked it! Sure, our AoE threat was ludicrously bad. Sure, I had to spam Devastate and HS so much that I grew a nasty cyst on my wrist. Sure, I kept having to deal with DPS players who had never tanked a day in their lives giving me tanking advice in the middle of a fight. To say I got stressed out would be an understatement. To say I ran screaming to a guild I'd been in back in the old days of WoW to take up a DPS spec and get as far away from tanking as I could would be accurate.
Breakfast Topic: The great Battle.net merge
It was announced yesterday that Battle.net accounts would be mandatory for us World of Warcraft players. I'm not sure if November 11th is supposed to coincide with a patch drop or anything (unlikely). It's been a pain in the derriere (that's French for ass) for GMs to unmerge compromised accounts. A common tactic hackers like to use is to commandeer a WoW account and merge it with their own Battle.net account. It's not something that can be easily undone. Of course, an announcement like this comes with all sorts of complaints. I've perused the forums on the topic and checked out some of the comments when we announced it here. Here's a few common reasons players are against it. Just for kicks, I've offered some solutions!
Breakfast Topic: With great power...
Everyone once in a while it occurs to me that our various level 80 characters actually are, in terms of relative power, astonishing. We've killed Old Gods, fought a herald of the titans, even balked the Lich King himself. But to be honest, it's not any of those things that brings it home to me.No. It's events like this weekend, when I was trying to get my level 41 paladin through Stranglethorn Vale as fast as possible (because, you know, it's bloody awful) and came upon a level 80 DK and his level 63 rogue buddy slaughtering all the quest givers. I couldn't see what levels they were (to the pally, they were skull level) so I decided to switch over to my warrior (after I got cocky and flagged hoping to draw them to attack me, which they did... level 41 pally went boom) and come clean them out. It wasn't until I arrived in Booty Bay I realized that the DK was wearing heirlooms and greens... well, to be honest, I only realized that when I hit him twice with my Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade and he fell down. The rogue died from the ancillary whirlwind.The first thing I did after cackling and thinking about how to work this into a Wow.com post (which, as you can see, I managed - I realized about an hour later that I should have remember their names) was to think about how it rarely even occurs to me just how fast gear escalates. I can remember doing the daily quests for Knights of the Ebon Blade reputation out on the Scarlet Onslaught island, carefully pulling groups of one or two and stopping to eat or bandage between pulls. Now I pull groups of 8 to 10 at a time and don't even have to stop to eat, period. With patch 3.3 coming and with it a new raid of even more powerful gear, by the end of the expansion's cycle will we just pull the entire island in one go?So once again I turn to you, readers - how much is too much? Are we even going to need to upgrade at all before we hit 85 in Cataclysm? Or are things progressing just as they should and the fact that my shaman can go resto and run through the Argent Tournament dailies letting his fire totems do they killing while he AFK's and trust Earth Shield and Healing Stream to keep him alive is just a consequence of gear evolution, nothing to be concerned about?
[1.Local]: We feel good
Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.It was a long week here for WoW.com staffers, who spent seemingly endless crunch time sifting through and digging out of PTR 3.3 updates. Gregg Reece sent on to [1.Local] this comment from his post about our team's first impressions of the Forge of Souls instance. The post discussed a boss named Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls – "or as we like to call him, James Brown, the Godfather of Soul."Aedilhild: When he hits 20%, an undead MC swathes a cape over his shoulders and begins to walk him off before the boss turns, throws off the cape and enrages to the tune of "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine)."We're not so sure about the sex machine part ... But comments like these (and the rest of this week's [1.Local] batch) sure make us feel good. (We knew that we would, now.)
Breakfast Topic: Which tier 10 bonuses appeal the most to you?
Blizzard has released information on the upcoming tier 10 sets in the 3.3 patch! Some of the bonuses have changed since their original inception. Set bonuses have been around since vanilla WoW. They were used as incentives to try to unite pieces together and provide extra abilities when you had enough of them. They're not supposed to be the main focus of a set. A bonus is just that: A bonus. It's supposed to be a bit of a boost to whatever role you're playing. Still, these are some great bonuses to help us finish Arthas off. My favourites from tier 10?Priest (Healing) 2 piece bonus - Your Flash Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over 9 sec. 4 piece bonus - Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells. I swear I'm not biased or anything! All of the bonuses are fairly intriguing in their own right. Which bonuses are you thrilled about? Which ones have you shaking your head? Leave a comment, then head here if you want to offer your two cents and supply feedback for the devs.
Breakfast Topic: The Holy Grail
Today's question is possibly a strange one: what's this game's Holy Grail? You know, the Holy Grail is that Arthurian object that you continually quest for -- if ever you actually reach the Holy Grail, you know that your quest, whatever it is, is finally at an end. So what's the Holy Grail for World of Warcraft, the thing that, if we ever actually reached it in the game, would change things forever?When we posted the rumor that Gnomeregan would finally be retaken, I thought of this -- Gnomeregan has been, since the beginning of the game, a place that's generally off-limits to lore and change. The Gnomes are pretty much defined by not having a city, and if they were actually to take back and reclaim their home city, Ironforge wouldn't be the same, and once you've messed with Ironforge, then WoW, to me, is fundamentally changed. Same thing if they ever include cross-faction communication -- this game is so defined from the core as a game with two factions separate from each other that if they ever did allow us to speak across factions, it'd be a different game. Not necessarily a bad game, not that I'd quit, but the game's so defined by that, in my mind, that if it ever actually happened, we'd end up on a whole other quest. So what do you think: what's WoW's Holy Grail?
Breakfast Topic: Which class am I again?
Tonight, after Trials of the Grand Crusader (four down, bug to go) we decided to hop onto some alts, which led to back to back TotC 10 on my DK and Shaman. Then back to back Ony 10, also on the DK and Shaman. And because I'd spent hours in TotGC 25 on my warrior before that, by the end of the night, I had no idea what class abilities I had anymore. Between popping Army of the Dead when they called for Heroism (it's bound to the same key) to trying desperately to use Chains of Ice when asked to Frost Shock the Ret Pally, I was in rare form. And it wasn't just me, either: the druid healer is usually a mage, the warlock raids as a priest, and the holy paladin healing the second Ony attempt has something like 10 alts at 80. I'm surprised he even knows where he is. We got it all done, mind you, but you can really tell the difference in smoothness between our mains and our alts, even as well geared as the alts often are.So now I put it to you, gentle readers. Do you ever suffer from class bleedover? Are you ever on your druid finding yourself mashing the Consecration button, or on your Mage trying to use Hymn of Hope? Or do you find it easy to keep it all straight?
Breakfast Topic: How to be realm-famous
I like this post on the General forums about being "realm-famous" and how to get there. World of Warcraft has a gigantic community around it, but sometimes my favorite part of the game is that there are all sorts of little micro-communities in that big one. There's the player base at large, and then groups of people who read WoW.com or other sites. Then you've got the realm forums denizens, and that's a different group than the factions on either side of each realm in-game. And then you've got your guild, and then within that, your raiders and maybe even your friends list. We're all part of one big group -- we all play the game together -- but there are all sorts of little identities in all of these little micro-groups as well.And people can become "famous" in these groups. It's tough for us at a macro level to cover all of that stuff, though I like trying to keep up with some of it in our Guildwatch column (and the picture above shows what happens when someone can become "realm-famous," or realm-infamous as the case may be. What's your experience with realm-fame -- can you name people on your own server, or have you ever gotten "famous" for nabbing a realm first or earning a reputation?
Breakfast Topic: What Tropes does your character embody?
Ok, I'm going to make sort of a pretty geeky confession here: I have been known to read TV Tropes. In fact, I have been known to waste hours that could have been better spent writing (or raiding) reading TV Tropes. For those of you who do not know what TV Tropes is, I'll explain in short: it's a wiki in which the contributors look for common themes and cliches present in modern pop culture and fiction, document them, and categorize them. Of course, rather than give the Tropes simple names, part of the fun seems to be giving your tropes fanciful and offbeat names. Big Lipped Alligator Moment, anyone? How about Contemplate our Navels?
