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Breakfast Topic: Shirt of choice
Out of all of the things we've broken down and discussed on this site, I don't think we've ever really dug into this one: what's your character's shirt of choice? The shirt slot on your character screen is really the last customization-only slot we've got left, ever since the tabards were allotted to earning reputation. So today's discussion topic is: what shirt do you have in there?Unfortunately, the Shirt of Uber is only a PTR item, so no one is wearing it on the live realms, or else obviously that's what we'd all be wearing. The Epic Purple Shirt is probably a favorite since earlier this year, if you've been lucky enough to get the TCG code. I'd bet the Swashbuckler's Shirts are popular, and the Red Linen Shirt has always been one of my favorites. I'm sure the Tuxedo Shirt has its share of fans as well.So what are you wearing underneath that armor? It'd be cool if Blizzard actually beefed up our choices there a bit -- maybe they could put stripes on the sleeve to show rank, or have some special color or model for people who have met certain achievements (and come on, a Three Worgen Moon shirt? I'd wear that). Then again, maybe it's better that the shirts stay pretty low key -- every other item on our character screen has gotten a purpose lately, so maybe we're better off wearing whatever shirt we want.
Breakfast Topic: Your favorite lines of spoken dialogue
While video game voice acting never really seems to draw the amazing big names, it's definitely steadily improving from the old day when it was spare members of the coding team and a couple people pulled off from the street or something. WoW seems to combine the best of both worlds here, in that Warcraft's Voice acting seems to run the gamut from awesome to pretty decent to painfully over-hammy. Still, to its credit, it's produced a whole lot of iconic lines, from the first "zug zug" to "You are not prepared" and beyond. With so many iconic phrases, both breath taking and amusing, I'm interested to know what lines of dialogue stick with you and why. Is it the turn of phrase? The delivery? The context in which the line is spoken that adds to the drama or humor?For me, it's all about Eadric the Pure. Pretty much every line of dialogue he gets in the Trial of the Crusader 5-man is amazing. Well acted, well scripted, with just the right balance between pomposity, noble righteousness and a sort of bemused sense of humor and enjoyment about the whole concept of the Argent Tournament. If I had to pick one line, it would be his final one: "I yield! I submit! Excellent work! May I run away now?"Yes, you may Eadric. But please, come back again soon. You're awesome.
Breakfast Topic: Which NPCs cause a double take?
You have to hand it to Blizzard. They have a way with pop culture references and inside jokes. One of the methods that developers use to express their sense of humour is in their naming of the various NPCs in the game. For instance, the two Triumphant Armor vendors located outside Crusader's Coliseum. Champion Isimode (which I'm going to pronounce as "easy mode") is the vendor for the Alliance players, while Champion Faesrol (or "face roll") is the vendor for Horde players. Harrison Jones guided us through the introductory parts of Zul'Aman (or at least, tried to). Unlike the real Indiana Jones, Harrison didn't didn't last very long after your raid hit the gong. He'd end up resurfacing again in an escort quest in Grizzly Hills (aptly named Dun-da-Dun-tah!). Firefly loves might have missed this NPC over in Zangarmarsh. The engineering Grandmaster K. Lee Smallfry is a nod to Kaylee Frye who is the engineer on the television series. Last but not least, a few Goblin NPCs are named after a few prominent Star Trek characters. In Booty Bay, there's a goblin named Scooty (Scotty)! The first time I ran Gnomeregan as a Horde player, I came through here and did a double take on the name. You could imagine my pleasant surprise when I activated the transporter only to emerge on the other side to be greeted by Sprock (Spock). Which NPCs have you run across that have caused you to look twice?
Breakfast topic: Has Trial of the Grand Crusader been a reasonable challenge?
My raiding guild suffered from the Anub'Arak soft reset issue where we were unable to reach the floor where the oversized bug was. We wanted to clear him out on normal mode before we switched over to the harder difficulty. But since the floor was intact, we couldn't! (Note: This has since been fixed). Because of this, we decided to toggle on Heroic mode for Trial of the Crusader on 25 just to get a feel for it. Some guilds believe that the Coliseum, even on heroic, is too easy. So I went in wondering what the fuss was all about. I wanted to know how easy the heroic setting would be. But that's when I faced the reality check. Remember, not everyone is in a top 100 guild. We burned through about 10 attempts that night just working on the first encounter alone. That experience helped to ground us and we realized what we needed to do to get through that mountain. In the end, we weren't able to even get past Gormok. We came to the conclusion that we were definitely going to need to coordinate healing and tanking cooldowns to break past the final minute of the first boss. Nonetheless, it was fairly humbling. We'll have to go in next time much more carefully and with a more detailed game plan in mind. It's been several days since Trial of the Grand Crusader has been accessible. Do you feel it has just the right amount of challenge for your raid group? Have you found it too easy or too difficult?
Breakfast Topic: Your Cataclysm Bucket List
The Times, they are a-changin'. Cataclysm promises to bring massive amounts of change to Azeroth, reorganizing zones, streamlining quests, and the like. There's a good chance that a lot of the old quests and reputation grinds we know and love will be gone forever, or twisted so much that we hardly recognize them. With that in mind, even while their exact fate is up in the air, a lot of old achievements and titles seem much more urgent.A lot of WoW bloggers, as a result, have been posting their bucket lists, a list of things they want to do in the Old World before the Cataclsym changes it for good, be it grabbing the Loremaster title or even leveling a character of the other faction just to see how their quests differ. For my own part, I've been inspired to start a bucket list myself. It's pretty simple, so far. The major thing is to finally finish getting my Druid Guardian of Cenarius. I'm also thinking my Death Knight could use Loremaster or Seeker. I'll probably also try to make sure my Death Knight gets all the old world raid bosses down, and I wouldn't mind getting an old school Ashkandi for him for fashion purposes. Sure, we still have Patch 3.3 before Cataclysm, so it's not like we have to be in a big rush, but if you're after a title like Loremaster before Cataclysm, it may be a good idea to start now. What do you want to do or see in the old world before the curtain falls? What's your Cataclysm bucket list? 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: To-do
I love the to-do list that Siha posted on Banana Shoulders the other day -- I don't know if it's just the kind of people we are or if it says something about our play styles, but I too usually have an ongoing list of things I plan to do in the game, and pretty much everything I end up doing in game (from running reputation grinds to leveling up alts) follows the list.For instance, ever since Burning Crusade came out, the number one item on my to-do list was picking up a Netherwing Drake, and pretty much everything I did after that goal was set (switching over to my Hunter so I could solo the dailies more easily, doing only those quests in game every day, and leveling my professions up just to make the most out of doing them) was targeted at getting that Drake, which made it much sweeter when I finally did. In Northrend, my two main goals going in were to pick up the Kalu'ak fishing pole and to get the Green Proto-drake, and while the Oracles haven't been very giving with the Cracked Eggs so far, I have at least ground out the reps needed for those. My latest goals are to get the mounted Squire (I'm well on my way to the needed Seals) and to finally get a high-level Engineer (so I'm leveling up my Paladin, with the added bonus of having an endgame tank and/or healer whenever I want).And though this gets a little hokey, I'll actually say that aiming at and meeting my goals in game has actually helped me think about goals in real life the same way. We don't have anything so obviously as questgivers in real life, but setting a goal in game and following it through to completion can help you envision a real life goal as well, and follow that out until you finally reach it. There's so much to do in this game that I think it's very helpful to determine exactly what you want to do as you play. So what's on your to-do list?
Breakfast Topic: The trouble with instance servers
My server rarely encounters the Door Boss, but many of you have to deal with the above error on a constant basis. The error originated as a fix for high population realms that had issues with instance lag and crashes. Rather than have you frustrated with problems while in the dungeon, Blizzard decided to put a virtual bouncer at the "door" to keep the load down on the instance servers. While I do think that this was a good idea on Blizzard's part, I think that they erred greatly by not putting a queue at the "entrance" so that you can do other things while you wait -- much like the way Battlegrounds are handled.My friend Joe has to deal with the problem with on his realm and therefore made sure to ask his designated Blizzard representative when he attended the Laguna Art Museum benefit dinner. Producer Carlos Guerrero replied that they needed to upgrade the hardware on the affected realms in order to allow more instances to be launched at the same time. Presumably, that is what the extremely extended downtime was for on Tuesday. So my question to you is, did it work? Are you meeting the Door Boss with the same regularity, or are you able to enter instances more frequently now that your realm has been upgraded?
Breakfast Topic: How has Battleground experience been working out for you?
Since we didn't have a WRUP this weekend, I'll go ahead and tell you what I did: leveled alts using Alterac Valley. Just a few hours of play, and the levels were flying past without a care, even with only about a 50% win rate. And those times we won fast? Hoo Boy. 100-150k experience for about 10 minutes of work is nothing to sneeze at.It might be possible that I could have leveled up quicker by loading up a few questing addons and buckling down, but I found PvPing a lot more fun and relaxing for some reason, and I don't think questing would have been all that much quicker.
Breakfast Topic: What classic loot would you want to see upgraded?
So this question was actually inspired by the photo Rossi put on his latest warrior column: That of a Worgen warrior wielding Ashkandi. It brought me back to the old days where that sword was pretty the dream in every possible way. It had good DPS, a decent speed, nice stats, it looked absolutely amazing, and it once belonged to the OG of Humanity, the greatest hero the Alliance has ever known, Anduin Lothar. Back in the day, pretty much every Arms Warrior and Retribution Paladin I knew lusted for it.
Breakfast Topic: What secret weapon lies within Uldum?
Looking ahead beyond Icecrown Citadel, one of the zones that intrigue me the most has been around for an extremely long time. In Cataclysm, we're going to finally gain the chance to explore the area. I'm referring to Uldum of course. Somewhere behind its gates, we'll be given the task of discovering and then securing the super weapon in order to keep it away from the hands (claws?) of Deathwing and from the Horde (or Alliance). So here's the 64,000 gold question. What on Azeroth could possibly be so powerful to attract even Deathwing's attention? Think about it. He's one of the most powerful beings on the planet that's still alive. Granted he's lost his sanity a long time ago, but he seems lucid enough to go after something that can help amplify his power even further. My idea? Well we know the Titans were involved in the creation of Ulduar and Uldum. Not only that, but they were responsible for landscaping all of Azeroth. So what if the weapon behind Uldum isn't really a weapon but more of a giant landscaping tool capable of flattening mountains or making really deep holes? Or maybe it's a weapon similar to the one shown in my favorite science fiction TV show (which is no longer on the air) that has the ability to either create life or destroy it by reshaping their molecular structure? (Hint: Jaffa! Kree!) We will be assaulting the Halls of Origination after all. Or maybe it's a whole swackload of caged murlocs with giant "lazers" attached to their bodies. Bad movie references aside, anyone else out there the least bit curious about what we'll be going after in the future? Or what we're keeping away from Deathwing? What could it be?
Breakfast Topic: Have you played those other games?
One of the things I got to do at BlizzCon 2009 that ended up being a whole lot of fun was sit down and play a few rounds of the World of Warcraft TCG at the Upper Deck Booth. I actually plan to write a bit more on that later, but for now, my main thought on it was that it was pretty fun. As a former Magic: The Gathering Player way back in the early 3rd edition days, I've always held a soft spot in my heart for a good solid card game, and I've been meaning for the longest time to check out the TCG as something more than a silly thing that refuses to give me a mount. I have to say, if anything, that I probably enjoyed it too much. Not only did I catch onto the rules pretty quickly, but I was transported back to the old magic days, and I'm halfway tempted now to perfect a good solid deck and go out to my local gaming store in a couple weekends to see if anyone else plays. On the other hand, I'm trying to avoid that temptation, because I just know it'll eat up my life like Magic did back in the day.
Breakfast Topic: Would you play a neutral character?
The Spawn and I had The Spousal Unit run Itchee the Gnome Warlock through Deadmines and now Itchee looks like a pirate. Yar! Though we are still doing the same warlocky things, The Spawn is now claiming that her character actually is a pirate -- which, as a pirate family, we encourage. But this reminded me of a conversation I had with TSU a while back. What if WoW had a playable neutral faction?One of the great things about Star Wars Galaxies, when it was actually fun to play, was that you didn't have to fight much if you didn't want to. There were master artisans and merchant malls that were available for getting the best armor or outfitting your home or whatever. I would love to see WoW incorporate some of these aspects as well as some from other MMOs to make a more persistent world. And I think they could do this by introducing a neutral faction.
Breakfast Topic: Skill mastery, or lack thereof
Yeah, I know most of you reading are pretty elite dudes. You have your hotkeys mapped, your DPS rotations memorized, your addons loaded, and you never miss a cooldown and never let a buff drop for more than a second. But for most people, I can't help but think that we all have that one ability that just sort of gets forgotten all the time. There's just so many buttons to press and configure and it's not exactly core to basic gameplay, so you shuffle it off to a corner in your brain or the UI and forget about it.
Breakfast Topic: Loving the class you hate
I wasn't terribly thrilled with Death Knights when I first saw them. I didn't like the idea of yet another plate class (since I play a lot of warriors), and their whole "recently freed from the thrall of the Lich King" deal didn't do all that much for me. They didn't seem that different from Paladins, to be frank (which is because they're not: thematically, they're the old D&D Anti-Paladin/Blackguard idea) and although I dabbled with them from time to time, I didn't think I'd go the distance.The first crack in that sense of disdain for the class was the starting zone experience. Anyone who's done it knows it's one heck of a well designed start to finish piece of gameplay. It was so well done, in fact, that I actually rerolled several DK's in an attempt to find the one race I really liked, secure in the knowledge that not only would I start at level 55 and be Outland ready by the end, but I'd enjoy the trip. After that, I blew through Outland on a Tauren, Gnome, Draenei and Dwarf before finally settling on my Night Elf here. Heirloom shoulders made the already painless starting zone even more rapid and Outland fell away like a solid fuel booster rocket lifting me to Northrend before I'd even finished Nagrand.Now here I am at level 80, and for once I actually have a third alt at max level (not counting the old days when I had four level 60/level 70 warriors - I'm sad to report I only have three 80 warriors now) of a different class. Gearing the DK's been interesting, and as I've run myself through various content my DPS has been steadily increasing, my understanding of my specs steadily expanding (frankly, I love Blood as a DPS spec, it has so many cooldowns for AoE damage and a nice bag of tricks without being as fiddly as Unholy, and I can't say enough good things about Frost as a tank spec) - I have to admit, I've totally turned around on DKs. They're awfully broken in my eyes (even after the most recent nerfs to their cooldowns and tanking health) but I cannot pretend to be having a bad time playing the class.So now I turn to you. What class turned out to be a surprise hit with you once you tried it out?
Breakfast Topic: I rolled a Belf, and I think I liked it
I've never been a fan of Blood Elves. My dislike of them goes back to the days of the Burning Crusade beta, when the word was they were beefed up to appeal to notions of masculinity. (Uh huh, you heard me: the boys playing Blood Elves wanted their men beefy and all twinkie to satisfy them. I'll just leave that repression thought alone.) Nonetheless, that impromptu steroid injection just set me off on the wrong foot with the Sindorei.And then my initial dislike for Belfdom found a quick reaffirmation when I saw Silvermoon for the first time. Everything's so . . . posh and pretty. Luxurious color, rich fabric, and cushions. I've been an Ironforge man all my life. We don't do cushions! Cushions are for namby pamby elfs! And they have brooms! And those brooms magically clean things! Yes, gentle reader, I'm aware that one part of my brain was rebelling against the beefy-ization of Belfs because of gender assumptions, while at the same time the other part of my brain railed against Belfs for being "namby pamby." So, yeah. Blood Elves. Never been a fan.
Breakfast Topic: Do you know where your children are?
Lately, I've been writing a series of articles on playing with your children. First, I talked about playing with preschoolers, like my own daughter, and then about reading age children. Though both articles are about playing with young children and I recommend not letting them play WoW by themselves, many readers complained in the comments that I was encouraging children to run amok in Azeroth. I certainly understand their concerns, because encountering rude and/or needy young ones while playing can really reduce your enjoyment.The other night, I started a gnome mage and came across a couple of other gnomes while entering the noobie troll cave. We grouped up to get to Grik'nir the Cold and the leader of the group, we'll call him Goodkid asked our ages. I said my ancient age, Goodkid said he was 11 and the other kid, we'll call him Juvie, said "U R GAY UR 44". Now, I'm not completely hip on the cool talk of today, but I think that translates into English as: "Excuse me, but I think you are lying about your age." Juvie then stated he was 10.
Breakfast Topic: Putting on Your Game Face
No matter what your playstyle or what you're doing in World of Warcraft, I'd say chances are you reach a point where you want to get down to business. It can be any number of things. Maybe you finally want to grind out Exalted with Warsong Gulch. Maybe your raid group is in dire need of a good clean boss kill. Maybe you just want to head to Silithus and grind out that Guardian of Cenarius title. Whatever the reason, you have a goal, you have a plan, and you are not going to stop until you get enough. But one thing remains: You have to keep yourself focused on your goal. That's when you put on your game face, and that's when you have those little rituals that keep you pumped up and motivated.
Breakfast Topic: Your best instance run ever
I love instances. They're far and above my favorite part of the game -- I'm definitely a co-op PvE kind of player, and PvE instances are, to me, what's really great about MMOs: a group of players can sit down, and in an hour or a few hours, take down dragons, kill some monsters, and nab some epic loot.And of course I've had lots of bad instance runs. But today we're not talking about good or bad -- we're talking about the best. What's the best instance run you've ever done? If "best" can be described by how much loot you get, then a recent Naxx run probably meets the criteria for me, as by the time we'd toppled Kel'thuzad as a raid, my Hunter had picked up at least four epic upgrades (and gained probably a good thousand DPS along with those). If "best" means most fun, I can think of some old UBRS runs back in the day in which every single one of us knew the instance and each other so well that we weren't so much fighting bad guys as just hanging out and telling jokes while picking up loot.If "best" means most exciting, then I have to think back to BlizzCon a few years ago, where we got our first hands-on of Wrath of the Lich King. I went into Utgarde Keep for the first time ever with a few guys from the press room, and though we only made it to the first boss (and I don't think we even beat him), I was just so fascinated by all of the new stuff we were seeing, my first look at the Vykrul and the huge Forge in the entryway there. So "best" can mean anything -- what's your best instance run?
Breakfast Topic: Who do you want to see in the Expansion?
So a while back, I asked you what races and organizations you'd want to see show up in the next expansion. But while races and organizations bring a lot of flavor and purpose to an expansion, there's nothing like a good charismatic figure to really stir things up. Be it Garrosh or Varian, Bolvar or Brann Bronzebeard, the figures of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion have certainly done a lot to inform the story and drive discussion and debate in lore.With that in mind, I've been thinking of who I'd like to see take a starring role in a future expansion. Turalyon and Alleria are definitely the biggest stars I can think of who have yet to make an appearance. I'd love to see them come back through a portal from whatever world they're on, with all the drama that would bring. Does Turalyon still hold a grudge against the orcs for the death of Lothar? What will Alleria think of the Blood Elves and of what her sisters have been up to?
Breakfast Topic: Back from school
We're in the dog days of summer at this point -- the sun is high and hot, the beaches and swimming pools are full, and if you're a kid, the days are long and lazy. Which is probably why we've got all the kids in game lately -- as donnyman notes, when school lets out and summer is underway, the population of Azeroth seems to get much bigger during the day. Some might say that's a good thing: more people playing means more PuGs and more AH buying and selling, while others might say they don't really want more of the younger audience in the game.I haven't had too much experience with this lately, as most of my gametime is in the evenings and on weekends, so I already see most of the school folks as I play. But I do remember the yearly migration of kids to video games -- I worked at Gamestop for about a year and a half after college, and sure enough, whenever school let out, we had more kids in the store talking about how they'd spent all day yesterday playing online.So is it a problem for you, or have you even noticed the influx of summer visitors at all? We have to be careful not to generalize here, as while some younger folks can cause issues (either by acting like kids, or just by filling up the instance queues), there are certainly others who act very mature for their age. Some of them, especially with parental supervision, can actually make model players. So the question here is: how have you experienced the sudden rash of schoolkids?
