Kind of puts me in a panic, actually. Patch 3.1 doesn’t seem like it’s quite ready yet, and even though I know there’ll be quite a bit of change from now until it goes live, there are some things in the patch now that don’t quite work for me. A number of talents don’t quite have the right polish, for one. That said, Blizzard has been working very fast lately so I wouldn’t be surprised if all this gets straightened out before the patch goes live. For today, though, let’s pretend Patch 3.1 is about to go live. What would you change? What stuff would you still like to see? It looks like an exciting patch, so what are you looking forward to (or dreading) the most?
Patch 3.1 isn’t out yet and probably won’t be for a little bit longer. But with the background downloader already active and the official PTR patch notes updated once again, it seems much closer than ever. Testing of the bosses are going pretty smoothly, and it’s likely that the public won’t get to test the final bosses of Ulduar. That means Blizzard has gotten quite a bit of data about the boss fights, so we’re certain to see some differences between the PTRs and when they go live.
Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.
Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! To misquote Terry Pratchett, if you put a big red button somewhere in Azeroth with a huge painted sign over it saying “END OF THE WORLD SWITCH - DO NOT PRESS!”, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry before you’d have three gnomes arguing about who gets to hit it first. In this shot, the gnomish curiousity of Crazyazell of <The Silver Wind Knights> on Bronzebeard might be producing fatal results, as she prepares to pilot her flying machine into the top of the Nexus. There’s a good reason why Death Knights need to stay away from the light, Azell!
The dialogue and action is a little awkward. The voice acting and scripting all seem in earnest, and the heart’s in the right place, but there are a few too many tropes and cliches scattered through the character interaction. I chalk this up to this being UltraViolet’s first piece. Her pacing, plot plan, and basic flow all seem pretty good. She just needs some more time working with her actors, and putting pen to paper, to get away from some of the easy-fallbacks for dialogue. I’m eager to see how the plot develops for Chapter 2, given the promise I see in this installment.
As the story goes, there’s been a recent rash of deaths in Elwynn Forest. (Presumably, not Hogger’s fault.) All the victims are young women, lacking any tell-tale signs of how their deaths may have occured. The story’s focused on a young barmaid named Elane, whose greatest concern in life is dodging every bit of work that comes her way. Hijinks ensue, including the appearance of a mysterious figure.
The first thing I want to say about UltraViolet’s work is that I’m strongly encouraged that the main character isn’t a “Mary Sue.” If you’re not familiar with the term, a “Mary Sue” is an escapist character written by an author. The character is usually the most awesome, coolest thing ever. (This is a criticism often applied to Bella in the Twilight series.) By virtue of Elane’s faults and characterization, I’m pretty sure Elane isn’t serving as a prop for UltraViolet’s fantasies, and that gives me a lot of hope for the continuing series.
Blizzard missed out in the actual game nominations — for best PC game, the expansion was overshadowed by Fallout 3, Crysis Warhead, Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, and Left 4 Dead. You can argue amongst yourselves whether that’s justified or not. But we’re sure Blizzard is happy with the animation nomination anyway — their competition there is Turbo Dogs, so they’ll probably do fine when the awards are announced on April 25th.
Throw another nomination on the list for Wrath of the Lich King — Blizzard’s cinematic team has been nominated for an Elan award for the WotLK cinematic in the category of Best Animated Short Subject. And the nom is well deserved: while the trailer broke with the tradition of showing the various races and classes of Warcraft doing battle with each other, Blizzard’s choice to instead recap the story of Arthas and the Lich King while he summoned Sindragosa worked well and looked amazing.
To be frank, Nordrassil Harness is a PvP and soloing bonus and nothing more. Sure, you could whip out that raid-saving spot heal, but odds are you’re going to be too focused on doing your job (DPS) to notice someone moments away from death in time to heal them before the actual healers do. And even if you do get heal off first, you’re going to heal what, maybe 1800 if you specced Nurturing Instinct? Odds are, if you really need to pop out to help the healers out, you’re going to need to throw more than one spell, and ultimately, all this bonus does is cuts half of second off of the effective casting time for Re-growth, since the global cool-down delays you for 1.5 of the 2 seconds you thought you just saved.
In short, T4’s bonuses are made of epic win. T5’s bonuses are the dregs from the bottom of Blizzard’s Tea (though the swipe damage boost is a rather tasty looking dreg). Crit immunity was something only the ignorant Ferals strove for before Survival of the Fittest. Raid viability was when your healing set was good enough to overcome the fact that your spec sucked. And while it didn’t set in for a while, those who are fortunate enough to at least be killing Prince Malchezaar on a regular basis got one more system shock: Feral Set Bonuses.
It is a fact that Tier 4 has some extremely good set bonuses on it, bonuses which quite frankly dwarf T5 and T6. This, unfortunately, means it is very hard for us to upgrade beyond our first feral set into the higher tiers (mind you, for some of us, there are other conditions keeping us from Tier 6 gear as well). And we want to take a look at our raid set bonuses, from the ungodly two-piece T4 bonus for cats, to the utterly craptacular two-piece T5 bonus.
Malore Harness is such a strong cat bonus that many people keep two pieces of tier four all the way up to four pieces tier six. It should because it’s essentially a second Omen of Clarity for Feral Druids. At a procrate of 4% per hit, combined with an average of about 5 attacks every 4 seconds in catform, the set bonus alone will give the average cat Druid 1-2 more shreds per minute, which could easily yield an extra 20-30 DPS! Bears don’t necessarily get as much benefit from this, getting only about 2 procs per minute, but that should still be enough for one more maul.
Four-piece Bonus is a fairly decent buff for catform which give us about 80 attack power with raid buffs. But let’s face it, strength as a set bonus is kind of boring. Though, for bears that 1400 armor is nice. It makes sure that set bonus is not affected by the bear modifier. Much like the two piece bonus for cats, bears hold on to their four piece malorne bonus until they start picking up T6 pieces. However, while this is a significant chunk of armor, the overall stat upgrades on T5 can easily overtake the benefit of this bonus, especially when you factor in T5 bonuses.
Bear is the first form you will obtain when you hit level 10. After you switch into and out of the form about a dozen times immediately after you get it, and discover the “Bear Dance,” you’ll want to get back to leveling. This is a tanking form which means that you have the ability to take a beating really well but you are not really all that great at dealing damage. Your job as a tank is to get in the face of an enemy and keep them focused on hitting you rather than other members of your group. While you’re getting beaten on someone else is doing the serious damage to the enemy and, if you’re really lucky, someone might be healing you as well. For the first ten levels of Bear, you’ll want to focus on strength and stamina for stats. Strength lets you hit hard, gives a higher attack power which bumps your threat level. The higher your threat level, the more enemies want to beat the crap out of you rather than someone else in your group and that is a good thing.
Feral Druid is your choice at the beginning. However, a common approach is to put your first talent points into Ferocity, Savage Fury and Feral Instinct. By the time, this way you hit level 20 and gain your cat form you will already have an increase in damage and a better prowl waiting for you. Who wouldn’t want to play as Bears, Cheetahs, Puma and Lion looking things, a Tree, Moonkins, a wacky sea lion swimming form and even birds? So you run off and roll yourself one and right away you notice two things. One is that you can not turn into anything cool at all and another is that you have got is a couple crappy little offensive spells. Many players quit the class before they even get to Cat and miss out all the fun. You should be patient and get to Cat form before you made a decision to dump the class.
For some players, it is frustrating to start out a Feral Druid. So here want to tell of a simple guide to get you from a wimpy new Druid running around a field with a bent stick to a stealthy Cat shredding everything in its path. The trick is to get to your Cat Form as fast as possible. Once you get there, at level twenty, the real damage begins. So let’s get down to it right now.
It has nothing to do with the Feral Druid build at all from level 1 to 9. You’ve got some spells to attack with, Root and some healing. Blast through these levels quickly by Moonfiring and Wrathing the heck out of everything and keeping yourself healed. It is important for you to get the timing of your spells down as you will use these extensively even as a Feral Druid. Practice using and watching your Moonfire Damage over Time ticker. As you gain more of these types of spells like Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, you’ll want to be aware of the timers and know when you need to refresh these spells, even as a Feral Druid. Practice using Root to Crowd Control enemies as this will be part of your role on occasion, especially when you earn the spell Cyclone later on.
You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed to follow our ongoing coverage of your favorite game. Do you have a springtime MMO?
Our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe - it’s not all just World of Warcraft over there. Which is not to say we don’t love WoW! Our weekly roundup will try to give you a look at the best WoW-related content on Massively from the last week. The Escapist takes a look at multiboxing
Multiboxing. It sounds like cheating when you have one man controlling two or more characters, but it’s more of a pain to work with than it is a straight out cheat. Whatever your feelings are on the situation though, you have to admit, people who do multiboxing have some tremendously interesting setups and rigs to accomplish this difficult feat.
Your favorite MMO pop culture reference?
It seems like no matter which way you turn in many MMOs, you’ll eventually find a pop-culture reference nestled in there somewhere. While World of Warcraft may be perhaps the most blunt about using them with quests named after things as varied as a Peter Murphy song and a Kevin Smith movie, we know they’re by no means the only designers who have added references.
Spring is nearly here, and that means new videogame releases are bound to decline over the coming months until summer arrives with nary a release in sight. For us MMO gamers, though, what it generally means is we look for a particular game to pack away — like geeky summertime squirrels!
GM Dave goes for a ride in World of Warcraft, finds out it’s not Final Fantasy XI
Everyone’s favorite drunken Final Fantasy XI game master, GM Dave, has decided to finally cross over to the dark side and take a spin in World of Warcraft. Instead of relating his experiences with feeding people who call GMs for unnecessary reasons to the FFXI dragon Jormungand, he’s been asked to relate his experiences with World of Warcraft for one entire week by one of his site’s donators.
The Tribunal of Ages in Halls of Stone revealed that the reason the Titans didn’t destroy the Old Gods. If they did, that would destroy all of Azeroth, so they just locked them away. However, in the game we’ve already killed C’thun and Yogg-Saron is likely to be the final boss of Ulduar. If the trend of mortal races killing Old Gods keeps up, isn’t it likely that Azeroth would be destroyed?
There’s one advantage we have over the Titans: We are tiny and can fit in small spaces. Do you think a Titan could’ve snuck inside C’Thun’s stomach and taken him down from the inside out? Probably not. Killing C’Thun would’ve been some long, drawn out, catastrophic uprooting with all kinds of lasers and explosions. We’re small enough that our kills can be a bit more surgical… and accidental. Poor C’Thun, undone by his afternoon snack.
It’s that, or the world is going to collapse when their corpses start to rot away and we’re friggin’ screwed. It was nice knowing you, Azeroth.
That’s all of the questions we’re going to cover today, but I have a special secret for those of you that read this all the way through. Very, very soon, Michael Sacco and I are bringing sexy back. Are you excited? I’m excited.
Why do the Orcs call Draenor, Draenor? Didn’t the Draenei show up out of nowhere and call it that, so why would the native Orcs adopt the name given to it by outsiders (and still refer to it after their attempted annihilation of said outsiders)?
The Orcs never gave Draenor a name. It was just where they lived. It was home. Giving their planet a name never even crossed their minds. The Draenei gave it a name, and it became the accepted norm when that information became important. When they started interacting with beings from other worlds, that’s when they needed a name for where they come from. The Draenei called it Draenor, and it just stuck.
Even outside of the game, sentient species don’t have a very interesting track record for naming their home planet. We named our planet Earth (or Terra if you prefer). We are basically calling it ‘big floaty rock.’ If by some miracle we met another sentient species and we shared the same language, they’d be all, “What the hell, that’s what you named your planet? Really?”
On the east edge of the Sons of Hodir town, there is a big frozen giant in a throne. Who is/was he?
That’s Arngrim, a former King of the Sons. He gives the quest Feeding Arngrim at Revered with the Sons of Hodir. He is very hungry.
It seems like generally all, if not most, of the Argent Dawn/Crusade members are paladins, or at least worship the Light in some way. And given that a lot of non-Paladin-class races — Orcs, Gnomes, Trolls — etc are also part of them, could it then be conceived that we’ll someday see an Orc Paladin or something like that in that group’s future? Is it even feasibly possible for non Human/Dwarf/Draenei/Blood Elf races to be able to use the Light? I know Forsaken are out of the picture, due to their Scourge-i-ness, but how about the other races?
More and more Blizzard has been pushing the point that anybody can wield the Light if they’re faithful. The Light doesn’t know racial barriers. There can certainly be Orcish Paladins, but most Orcs simply don’t put faith in the Light. There could be Troll Paladins, but again, it would be rare because that’s simply not their culture. Blizzard always makes it a point to show that there are exceptions, though.
The Arakkoa, overall, are a pretty grim race. Most of them worship dark gods and all of that, but what do you see in and around Shattrath? Light-worshiping Arakkoa like Rilak the Redeemed.. The Trolls are Shamanistic and are also steeped in voodoo. Despite that, we see Zabra Hexx in the Ashbringer comic series, a Troll Priest that has converted to the Light. Those are just two examples of this. The Light does not judge you by the color of your skin or the size of your tusks. You just need to accept it and stay (mostly) faithful to its tenets.
The Argent Crusade probably has Light-worshiping Priests and Paladins of various abnormal races in its ranks already. Players probably won’t be able to play Orc Paladins and such since racial classes are determined by what’s most indicative of the race’s culture, and Light worship is most definitely not widespread among Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Night Elves, et cetera. It would be a very rare thing, but certainly possible from a lore point of view.
The contents of the fountain has inspired a question that’s been making the rounds through the WoW community: If you had a coin in that fountain, what would it say? What wish or musing would be left on it? I posed the question to the WoW Insider team to see what they would come up with, ranging from the silly to the serious, from speaking in-character to speaking as a player. Here’s what they (we) had to say…
Combining the two is a recipe for success, I think! I really enjoyed the ability to get a little glimpse into the mind of various lore characters, and it was offered up in a pretty interactive way. It’s not only the fun quotes, but a sense of discovery accompanies each new coin.
Adam Holisky:
My Alliance Warrior: “What part of ‘follow my target’ came out in Orcish?” My Alliance Shaman: “That Hunter gear looks so nice…” Alex Ziebart:
My Priest’s coin would say something like, “I wish I could have done more.” My coin? “Why won’t Mike take me to prom?” Chase Christian: My Rogue would wish to never been seen unless he wanted to be seen.
Daniel Whitcomb: My in-character wishes…
My Tauren Warrior would wish for a sandwich. You can have a sandwich too. My Human Warrior would wish to understand why he should do less damage with two huge maces each the size of his entire body than a Rogue does with a couple of daggers. My Draenei Shaman would wish for a hat he could wear visibly. My Orc Shaman would wish for me to hurry up and get him to 80. And a hat he could wear visibly. Michael Sacco: “How long has my Flametongue Weapon been off?”
Just like the coins in-game, our responses varied pretty wildly. A few serious wishes (Sylvanas, Tirion), a few silly wishes (Archimonde, Danath), and the occassional shattered 4th wall (Arthas, Anduin). Now I pass the question on to all of you. What would your coin say?My Human Death Knight: “Remember.” My Night Elf Druid: “I wish to go home.” My Dwarven Hunter: “I’m doing pretty good. Ain’t got much to wish for. Maybe a new hunting rifle?” My Human Warlock: “I wish for knowledge and power. Not necessarily in that order.” Lisa Poisso: “In memory of Philpot the Shadowfiend.”
Manda Miller:
My Hunter would wish to be loved. My Holy Paladin would wish for the ability to break curses, to finally learn the multi-layered mysteries of The Knife, and for everyone else with her hairstyle to suddenly go bald. My Death Knight would wish for the Holy Paladin’s raid slot.
When asked the question of whether BTPNTC applies to PvP, as well, Ghostcrawler had a succinct answer: “we’re not sure.” He explains that the immediate concern is to make all specs equally viable in PvP (read: Arenas), with particular focus on the class specs that have historically been underrepresented. I can tell you right off that that they probably overcompensated with Survival Hunters. With such limited numbers — twos, threes, and fives — it’s quite unreasonable to think that just any combination of classes and specs will work the same way they do in PvE.
That said, some effects are somewhat ‘mandatory’ in PvP the way Replenishment is for PvE. For most of the first four seasons, this was the Mortal Strike effect. It was so critical to PvP that the effect was tagged on to Aimed Shot as one of the ways to improve Hunter desirability in Arenas. A current variant of this is the HoT-removal of Death Knights or the HoT-reducing effect of a Warlock’s Shadow Embrace. With healers being key to the success of many Arena teams, particularly on the pro level where quick burst simply no longer happens, there needs to be a way to balance things out. In Arenas, particularly, some compositions are simply more viable and synergistic than others. Take the incredible cohesion of Rogue-Mage-Priest, which continues to be a powerful comp even in Level 80 Arena play (as seen in the current ESL tournament).
Blizzard seems to be on the right track about prioritizing spec viability, with the ‘make tanking more fun’ philosophy that resulted in higher tank DPS also having the happy side effect of tanks becoming more viable than ever in PvP. It will be a slow and understandably unending process, but the developers obviously know what abilities or effects will make specs viable in PvP and Arena teams.
Ghostcrawler says that one of the coolest parts of Arena play is “building comps with certain synergies”. Ironically, that’s probably also one of the most uncool things about it. Certain compositions are naturally synergistic and strong that playing outside of the box or cookie-cutter Arena specs (as far as cookie cutter in PvP goes, anyway) actually gimps some classes and players. Some classes are just so strong that some pro players reroll and never look back (i.e., Serennia rerolling a Death Knight) while other pro players just give up (e.g. Korean team withdrawing because of Death Knights).
Class and spec parity is most assuredly a top priority, but the Arena format will never, ever be as class or spec-friendly as traditional PvE content. Arena play demands greater synergy within teams than a dungeon ever will. Ghostcrawler says, “I’m not sure it would be a good design goal to say almost any 2, 3 or 5 classes can form a good team together.” Although he mentions in passing that some teams have no healers, it should be noted that in 3v3 — the money bracket which pro tournaments focus on — there are no successful pure DPS teams. This means that some classes will continue to be more in demand than others simply as a consequence of the format.