Archive for April, 2009


The awesome weapons of the Argent Tournament

Filed Under: PVP Basics, World of Warcraft by admin — Leave a comment
2009/04/14

It’s kind of sad and funny that the best-designed weapons in Patch 3.1 aren’t going to come from Ulduar but from the cool but overshadowed Argent Tournament. As great as the Tier 8 armor designs are, most of the Ulduar weapons just aren’t on par, with the awesomely-named Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion looking like something you’d stick into an hors d’oeuvre sooner than you would stick it into an opponent. Remember Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood? Or Zin’rokh, Destroyer of Worlds? The new 2-handed sword from Ulduar follows that great naming tradition but minus the visual badassery.

On the other hand, the iLevel 200 weapons from the Argent Tournament are some of the best-looking weapons in Wrath of the Lich King. The best thing about them is that aside from being cool, they’re thematically designed to fit specific races. As the Argent Tournament highlights being able to ‘champion’ a particular major or racial city, it’s highly appropriate that the rewards fit the theme. Unfortunately for many players who raid, these weapons won’t be upgrades. However, the Argent Tournament was specifically designed for the solo player, a wonderful concession to a sizeable portion of the game’s customers. Those players should find that the Argent Tournament weapons are excellent upgrades from quest rewards or even heroics.

Comment

Breakfast Topic: Awesome Animations

Filed Under: World of Warcraft by admin — Leave a comment
2009/04/13

So hot on the heels of the best mob noise in game discussion, I thought I’d ask another question: What about the animations? We probably don’t think about it too much, but the sounds and animations of PCs and NPCs alike probably end up making a lot of atmosphere we take for granted. It fills out the world and makes it feel more immersive, more real.

With that in mind, the noise topic got me thinking of what animations I really like. There’s a lot of them that at least deserve a mention, from the howling of Coyotes to the nervous skittering of the Silithid. In the new animations, we get stuff like Stinker’s escapades and the wildlife of Grizzly Hills going on with their every day activities.

Beyond that, even PC animations can have their awesome looks, such as a Draenei twirling a Polearm to attack or a male Blood Elf dying with Shakespearean dramatics. Ethereals also have some pretty graceful moves overall, even in the way their bandages move and their energy pulses.

What animations and graphics have you encountered in WoW that have made you stop and say, “Hey, that’s pretty neat?”

Comment

Blizzard did the wrong thing with Ulduar-10 emblems

Filed Under: World of Warcraft by admin — Leave a comment
2009/04/12

As we posted yesterday, it has been made very clear at this point that Emblems of Valor are the emblems that are going to drop in the 10-man version of Ulduar, while the 25-man version will drop the entirely new Emblems of Conquest. Nothing is being added to the EoV vendors aside from the relics that drop in Naxx-25.

In other words, 10-man raids are basically getting glossed over, and 25-man raiders are getting all the new shinies.

Where 25-man raiders get an entirely new quartermaster with access to gear on par with normal-mode Uld-25 drops (ilvl 226), as well as two of their tier 8.5 tokens, we get recycled EoV gear that was originally meant for Naxx-25 raiders. This is gear that is half a tier worse than the gear that drops in Uld-10 normal mode (ilvl 213 vs 219), and there is no way for us to buy our tier 8.0 gear with emblems, at all.

Add this to the fact that Val’anyr (the new legendary healer mace) is a 25-man exclusive, and I’m one annoyed raider. They have been saying all along that they want 10-man and 25-man to be separate progression paths. I’m starting to think it’s no coincidence that they left out “but equal;” it’s becoming more and more apparent that 10-man progression is meant to be significantly worse than 25-man progression.

The major argument that Blizz has been giving against putting T8.0 gear for purchase by EoVs is that they don’t want 25-man guilds stockpiling hundreds of emblems in order to rush out and buy stuff on the 3.1 release – they want to depart from the Burning Crusade model of badge farming. That seems like a good idea to me, but the thing to do would have been to introduce a new kind of emblem just for Uld-10, with trading-down to EoVs. Let’s call them Emblems of Awesome, or EoAs for short.

10-man raiders would then get their EoAs out of Uld-10, which they could use to buy T8.0 pieces, just like 25-man raiders buy their pieces with EoCs. Ideally there would also be some new pieces on the EoA vendor, with the appropriate ilvl, 219. And if Uld-10 raiders wanted to go buy some EoV stuff, they could trade their EoAs down to EoVs (and then again down to EoHs in case they needed heirlooms or something).

But no, they didn’t do this. They recycled the EoV stuff, and decided that it was fine to make us rely on boss drops for tier gear, and to get gear 6 ilvls lower than our drops in exchange for our badges. I’m very disappointed. I was really hoping that in Wrath 10- and 25-mans would be on an equal footing, but once again it seems that only the largest groups are considered first-class raiders. Shame.

Comment

WoW Moviewatch: Buddhist 3v3: Ming Must Die!

Filed Under: warhammer for sale, World of Warcraft by admin — Leave a comment
2009/04/10

Warning: This video is longer than your average, and definitely includes language not suitable for the workplace. It’s not all potty-mouth, but it’s got some cursing and strange sounds.

Do you remember Insane Gouge Crits, by Buddhist? Well, the master of PvP Parody is back with another installment in the ongoing struggle to be Rogue Hokage. Behold Buddhist 3v3: Ming Must Die!

The love of Buddhist’s life (his soulmate, if you will) has been damaged by a rival rogue, Ming. Now, Buddhist and his 3v3 team must fight through Ming’s merciless minions to regain Cel’s power, and prove who is the true Rogue Hokage.

This video is parody of the PvP genre, and sticks its tongue firmly in cheek at the majority of rogue and PvP culture. It’s steeped with references and odd quirks, so it helps to have some knowledge of who’s who. Ming, for example, is actually a very well known blogger in “rogue society.” Serennia is a prominent Arena fighter, and was once hailed as the “best warrior in the world.” And if the dialogue from Ming seems funny after her initial confrontation wow goldwith Buddhist’s crew, check this video out about Swarm.

The video made me laugh. The stream could use a little better quality, but overall, I enjoyed this new installment. Mileage is going to vary, of course, but I enjoyed the irreverent, self-aware humor.

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Comment

The Queue: Soul Shard parade

Filed Under: PVP Basics, runescape gold, World of Warcraft by admin — Leave a comment
2009/04/07

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider’s daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

In yesterday’s intro, I mentioned WoW Insider’s April Fool’s joke. Sillily (it’s a word now), I didn’t actually include a link to it, and there were people writing that they had no idea that we even did a joke and couldn’t find it. Well, here it is! Now, let’s begin, shall we?

Sorano asked…

“In the Argent Tournament, is it possible to champion other cities than the ones attached to your race and faction? Could my Tauren Warrior try and earn the favor of Gnomeregan to obtain a sweet Mechano Strider? I’ve always wanted one of those for my tauren warrior.”

Your Tauren isn’t going to be able to get a Mechanostrider, sorry. You can only champion the races on your overall faction. In your case, you can only champion Horde races. You’ll need to do Tauren first, then when you’ve ‘finished’ with the Tauren you can choose to branch out to the others. At least, that’s how it worked when I was doing it on an earlier iteration of the PTR. I don’t think it’s changed, though.

Somewhat related to this question: There were people in the comments yesterday suggesting you couldn’t champion a race until you were Exalted with them, and that’s just not true. You don’t need to be Exalted with anyone here. In fact, part of the purpose of this event is to help you get Exalted with them without slaving away in the runecloth mines.

Doulmagnus asked…

“Is the same thing as the ammo bags gonna happen to the warlock soul shard bags since they are upping the base number of shards to 32, which is the biggest bag you can get right now for them. Is so, why make a pattern for the bag available only after grinding out Ebon Hand rep?”

The ammo change and the Soul Shard change are working in two entirely different ways. Soul Shards aren’t stacking differently like ammo. Soul Shards still stack one at a time, but you can only carry a maximum of 32 Soul Shards at a time. This is because they changed how Drain Soul works. You have a chance to generate a Soul Shard every time Drain Soul ticks, so if they didn’t put an upper limit on the number of shards you generate, your bags would fill up with them unless you had a mod deleting them all as they were created.

A raiding Warlock will probably still want to carry an Abyssal Bag around for extra room for all of the shards. The non-raiding non-PvPing warlock probably doesn’t need a big bag like that, because you probably don’t need 32 shards.

Jobu asked…

“I have a new question that I don’t think I’ve seen the answer to anywhere. Does the +10% XP bonus that the Bind on Account Heirloom shoulders give apply to leveling hunter pets? I’d like to get some confirmation before dropping the emblems on them. Thanks!”

I don’t think it applies to pet, but it’s nearly impossible to outlevel your Hunter pet these days, they need dramatically less XP than you do to level up. If you’re leveling your Hunter, yes, buy the Heirloom shoulders. They’re wonderful. If you’re a level 80 Hunter thinking about buying Heirloom shoulders for the purpose of leveling up new pets, no, it’s not worth it.

Comment