The quest chain to completely open up the Sons of Hodir rep grind is long. Really, really long. It’s long in the good way, though. It’s epic, and part of the chain is quite possibly one of the most fun quests in Wrath, and is as close to God of War as you’re going to get in WoW. ‘God of War in WoW!?’ is what you’re probably thinking. My answer to that? Yes. It’s freaking awesome.

I hope you’re sitting down, because I’m about to list the entire questline for you. The very first quest can be picked up at level 77 in K3, the Goblin town that’s sitting right inside the entrance to Storm Peaks from the south. From there, just go where the wind (quest) takes you.The Sons of Hodir is arguably one of the most important reputations in Wrath of the Lich King due to the items they offer. They’re the only faction in Northrend that offers shoulder enchantments for PvE, in rare and epic flavors. Casters? Melee? Healers? Tanks? The Sons of Hodir have all of your shoulder enchants. Read the rest of this entry »

There were a lot of lore quests in TBC, of course, but often the coolest ones required at least five people to get through if not a full 25 man raid group. So far in WotLK I have run all of the big new lore quests either solo or with a small group of two or three other players. The Admiral Revealed in particular was a great big lore bomb for the size of the group that accomplished it. There are huge revelations available in game that change the very foundation of the Warcraft setting and they’re very easily accessible.

On the whole, I enjoy this immensely. I wondered what that guy’s deal was, and I have to admit that Blizzard managed to create a real sense of epic scope and scale to what is an entirely soloable quest line in the Wrathgate quests. It’s one thing to say you’re going to involve players in things from the very beginning, but it’s another thing to do it: by now I’ve had run-ins with the Lich King, the Old Gods, disaffected servants of the Titans themselves and I’m just starting to get ready for raiding. I’ve seen Loken betray his brother to the old gods (in what I can only believe will be a preview of what I can expect to fight in Ulduar) and fallen down a hole in the glacier to where Arthas… well, I won’t directly spoil it for you, but any quest where I have to cut open Faceless Ones to smear their blood all over myself is amping up the creepy factor considerably. Read the rest of this entry »

Druid
Bear Scaling
I realize some players have made some passionate and intelligent arguments for other ways in which bears can scale from gear. That isn’t something we are going to do at the moment, but something we may investigate in the future. I understand that it’s fun to improve tanking gear, and while we don’t want it to be such a burden to get the +armor pieces, we also don’t want the choices to be so meaningless that you aren’t gearing for tanking at all. Let’s see how things stand after these changes go live.
Block Mechanics
Block is a very good stat now, and we have read a lot about the notion that “unblocked hits are the new crushing blows.” We don’t want the block mechanic to mean that death knights and druids (and possibly even paladins) are left behind. Again the goal is to have four viable tank classes. That doesn’t mean identical, but it also doesn’t mean that druids get swapped out for some fights or relegated to permanent off-tank status. Read the rest of this entry »

While the dual wielding goodness/badness that is Titan’s Grip continues today, Heroic Leap was removed mid-beta with Warriors everywhere screaming and crying. Yours truly shed a tear. I loved leveling through the Howling Fjord and Dragonblight with Heroic Leap at my side. One press of a button and bam – I’d be raining down upon my enemies with my plate shining and dual two-handers blaring.

Its demise has always been speculated upon. Many thought that the skill just provided one too many ways for a warrior to quickly move about the world. Others thought that it was due to it being too over powered in PvP. Still others thought it had to do with exploitation of the terrain.There was a time in the beta of Wrath of the Lich King that Warriors everywhere were excited little special snowflakes. They had not one but two, cheap wow gold, special talents: Heroic Leap and Titan’s Grip.

It turns out that those folks who thought that exploiting the terrain was the reason for its demise were correct. Ghostcrawler weighed in on Heroic Leap’s removal and gave this very reason. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re still not sure how to grind reputation in Northrend, or forgot where the quartermasters are, be sure to check out our Wrath 101 post on reputations, as well as our post on the Wolvar and Oracles of Sholozar Basin. Once you’ve done that, or if you remember the basics!So by now, I figure most of you are well on your way to level 80, and are probably starting to ask yourself: Which reputation should I grind first? There’s tons of ways to choose, be it roleplaying who your character would align themselves with or choosing the one that’s easiest to grind. One of the most popular and most effective though, is pretty simple: Asking yourself which one has the best loot. Today’s Scattered Shots will center around that last one to buy cheap wow gold.

Alliance Vanguard and Horde Expedition

Much like in Burning Crusade, the first faction you encounter in Wrath will be based on your side, and the quartermaster for either side will carry items that are mostly the same stat-wise. Read the rest of this entry »

First up is a fun daily in which you get to mate a Reef Bull and a Reef Cow in the Howling Fjord.

I’ll just wait to let the goal of this quest sink in for a minute.

Sunk? Great. Moving on.WoW Insider is happy to announce a new series of posts focusing on the daily quests Wrath of the Lich King has to offer. We’ll get a few of these out each week until we have a comprehensive library of every daily quest you can buy cheap wow gold.

This daily will raise your reputation with the Kalu’ak by 500 and give you around 7g. You can get the daily from Anuniaq located at 24, 58 in the Howling Fjord. It is one of the few that will raise your rep with the Kalu’ak, so you’ll want to be sure that you complete it every day. You need to be level 70 to complete the daily. If you complete it while leveling it will give you around 20,000 experience. Read the rest of this entry »

The interview is an interesting and entertaining read. Hit it up when you have a minute and enjoy.

And stay tuned to WoW Insider for more news on Felicia Day and The Guild. She’ll be sitting down with Mike Schramm and a few folks on our podcast soon talking about Season 2 and Wrath of the Lich King.

Felicia Day tells boys how to meet girls in WoW. If that just didn’t get the attention of every hormone-infused-female-liking nerd on the planet I don’t know what will.

Felicia say down with the Asylum and talked about this topic for a bit. Their interview with her touches on a few interesting points.

“Would it matter if the guy’s a noob?” Asylum asks. “Yeah…” Felicia answers. She goes on to mention that the difference is like seeing a guy in a Ferrari. Not being a total noob and having some good gear at least catches the eye. This makes me and all my purples happy.

Emblems of Heroism
Emblems of Heroism are one of the Badge of Justice equivalents in Wrath of the Lich King. They’re acquired through beating Heroic bosses and 10-man raids. 25-man raids award Emblems of Valor, which are not used for any Heirloom items currently.

Unless you’re a chronic altaholic, you may want to hold off on buying these Heirloom items, because there’s also a wide variety of epic gear you can buy with it that’s Bind on Pickup, not only the Heirloom items. Again, these are the Badge of Justice equivalents. Think of the Heirloom items like the epic gems or Nether Vortices from The Burning Crusade. If you want to gear up your main, these items are going to be things you buy after you have nothing else left to buy. If you spend most of your time leveling up alts, these items may be very good for you to buy right away.These items are called Heirloom items, or Bind to Account (BoA) items.

They aren’t tied to any one character and can be freely passed from alt to alt, but they’re all tied to one account, the account that bought the item. No handing them over to your friends, no mailing them to other players, no mailing them to your second account. So far none of these items are drops, but rewards for more veteran players of the Wrath content. There are two different ways of earning these items, but they dovetail nicely.

Quite simply, you need to participate in Wrath’s content. Items suited to PvE are acquired via Emblems of Heroism, and items suited for PvP are acquired via Stone Keeper’s Shards.
Read the rest of this entry »

Nymh, a Warlock on EU-Drek’thar reached level 80 yesterday, as what anyone can tell is the first in the world.  This was done by using an AoE grinding strategy, but from the sounds of it I will not be shocked at all if this strategy is nerfed very soon.  It involves locations with fast respawning, neutral NPCs,cheap wow gold, as you can see in the quote below.

“The biggest problem was to find a spot with enough monsters to grind without too much downtime … I spent some time on beta servers and eventually found the crypt in Drakil’ji Ruins (Grizzly Hills), I think that’s one of the only place in Wrath of the Lich King where monsters repop in about 30 seconds, mobs here are also neutral and it makes grinding a little safer,” Nymh said.

We are proud to declare that all WOTLK PVE raid content has now been cleared. This is both a moment of triumph and a cause for concern. The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer? Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?

Yes, it’s only been two days since release, and yes all raid content has been defeated on EU-Magtheridon. The scary thing is, if you look at Kungen’s profile on the official Armory, none of the Wrath of the Lich King items are even activated. Is this cause for concern? I’m not entirely sure… I mean yes, clearing all the raid content there is to offer in the expansion two days into it is definitely worrying. You have to consider the facts though. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a quest where you want to try to convince a friend or the random stranger who wants to do the daily at the same time as you to group up. Once you do, you can post people at different sides of the boat, ready to toss their bombs. Everyone will get credit, you can cover more ground and bomb more pirates, and you should be able to make the quest with one pass, something that feels nigh impossible if you’re soloing it.

The quest itself gives Valiance Expedition reputation as a reward, which feeds into Alliance Expedition reputation. It’s probably a quest you can technically skip, but if you’re a rep junkie, this is probably one of the best ways to get the rep, as long as you look for another rep junkie to help you get through the ordeal.

One of the semi-new concepts in Wrath of the Lich King is the idea of PVE leveling dailies that are available long before max level. One of the first ones that Alliance humans will see is Break the Blockade in Howling Fjord. Read the rest of this entry »