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WoW Insider Round Table: The Timeless Isle
In a special Geek Week edition, the WoW Insider Round Table is taking on the Timeless Isle. This new zone, located to the south-east of Pandaria, is a max-level content area, crawling with rares, chests, puzzles, gear and exciting items for all and sundry. The Round Table, this week comprising of Matt Low, Olivia Grace and Sarah Pine, had all been out on the new island, soaking up the scenery and enjoying the sights it had to show them. They discussed, variously, the new rares, the breadcrumb and exploration quests on the new island, the lore quiz content, the many, many ways to get the Timeless Isle's new currency, what you could spend it on, the drops that you could get from mobs to gear alts, and much much more of all the content the Isle has to offer. We hope you enjoyed the WoW Insider Round Table, and as ever if you have any suggestions for future topics or specific questions for the panelists, let us know!
WoW Insider Round Table: Testing out the Proving Grounds
The proof of the proving grounds is in the, um, proving? That poorly constructed phrase is what the WoW Insider Round table set out to explore this week, with Matt Low, Dawn Moore, Sarah Pine and Olivia Grace sitting down to discuss the new feature coming in patch 5.4 which just recently went live on the PTR. Between the panel we'd tried out all the different roles within the Proving Grounds system, to varying degrees, and had quite some differing opinions on the ease and difficulty of the systems, as well as whether or not gear should be scaled, and how hard they should really be. We discuss the endless mode, the achievements that come from it, and class balance within the proving grounds system. We also chat about the NPC artificial intelligence, and their rather patronising flavor text! We hope you enjoyed this Round Table, and if you have any suggestions for future discussions, do let us know!
WoW Insider Round Table: Proving Grounds
This week, in episode five of the WoW Insider Round Table, the panelists are looking at Proving Grounds, one of the new features coming in patch 5.4. Dawn Moore, Matt Low, Kristin Marshall, Joe Perez and Olivia Grace discuss various elements of the new feature, from the basis of speculation as, at the time of recording, it is not yet accessible on the PTR. We wonder exactly how it will play out on the PTR for healers, tanks and DPS and what the content will offer in the way of challenges, before moving on to discuss whether it will really be an effective training tool for healers and tanks. The panel largely agree that, for the initial learning stages, it will definitely serve as an excellent method to learn the basics of tanking and healing in a pressure-free environment. The team went on to discuss ways in which Proving Grounds could also be useful for more high-level skills for these specs, before discussing the use of them as a recruitment tool. We hope you enjoyed this Round Table, and if you have questions or ideas you would like us to discuss in future let us know!
WoW Insider Round Table: Virtual realms
The WoW Insider Round Table has assembled yet again, discussing the upcoming virtual realms and their potential impact on the game. If you want the short version: it depends. This week's panelists include Dawn Moore, Joe Perez, Kristin Marshall, Matt Low, and Olivia Grace.
WoW Insider Round Table 3: Flexible raiding and its impact on WoW
Welcome back to episode three of the WoW Insider Round Table! This week, we had Olivia Grace, Dawn Moore, Matt Low and Sarah Pine, and new panelist Joe Perez, and our topic of discussion was, inevitably, flexible raiding. We started off, selfishly, by giving our own opinions, the panel runs teh gamut from the hardcore end to the casual, so we had most perspectives covered. We discussed whether this would cause or contribute to burnout among hardcore raiders, as well as wondering what the impact on casual guilds would be. We then moved on to consider the new tier's impact on the Raid Finder, whether players would choose to run this new content instead of the Raid Finder, particularly tanks, and while the panel concluded that a good number of them would, they were fairly sure that, while queue times were likely to increase, the Raid Finder would not die an untimely death. As far as other considerations for the new raid system, the panel discussed some of the issues inherent with flexible raid sizes, particularly the numbers and how abilities would scale, before moving on to talk about the looting system chosen -- the same as the system for Raid Finder. We concluded, just as we began, that this was a system that would have a positive impact, far more so than the Raid Finder. One panelist even asserted that this was what they always should have done, instead of LFR. We hope you enjoyed this panel, and if you have any ideas for future topics, do let us know!
WoW Insider Round Table: Diminishing returns on valor?
The WoW Insider staff at the Round Table this week are Dawn Moore, Matt Low, Sarah "Sally" Pine and Olivia Grace. We all sincerely hope you notice that we got lower thirds. Welcome back to another WoW Insider Round Table! In this second round table, we're talking diminishing returns on valor. Managing Editor Adam Holisky posted a brief editorial last week on this topic, and it was interesting enough that we decided to bring it up for discussion. We began by explaining just exactly how such a system would work, as clarified in Adam's original article, and then delved into the pros and cons of such a system. The Round Table was pretty universally opposed to such a system, based purely, of course, on our own gaming experiences, and while we tried our best to isolate redeeming qualities, we failed pretty miserably. And, finally, on comparing previous expansions' dungeon valor methods, the surprise winner was Cataclysm! We're really hoping you continue to enjoy this new format, and do remember that you can actually watch the Round Table live on our YouTube channel every week. Keep an eye on Twitter for announcements of when we're going live. And if you have any ideas for future round table discussions, let us know!
WoW Insider Round Table: Heroic Scenarios
Welcome to the first WoW Insider Round Table. Every week or two we'll give you the inside scoop on the key opinions and facts about a specific area of the World of Warcraft. In today's inaugural video we're talking about what's on everyone's mind: heroic scenarios. They're beasts right now. People are quite divided on how useful they are, and what the best way to go about finding a group for them are. We've even had Ghostcrawler weigh in on the mechanics of the rewards via Twitter. Olivia, Matt, Dawn, and Sally sit down in a Google Hangout and share their thoughts and opinions. And we want to hear yours! What do you think heroic scenarios are doing for the game? Are they everything you wanted them to be ... or can you not even find a group for them? Let us know, and thanks for watching!
