Project Lore

Tyr's Hand.  I am sure many of you old school players are very fond of this area of the Eastern Plaguelands.  The area is likely named for the Nordic god of justice, Týr, who had his hand bitten off by Fenrir.  Thus Tyr's Hand.  But a lesson in background lore is not why we are here today.  In my first installment of what I hope will become a semi-regular column, I look back on Tyr's Hand and the many hours I spent in the untouched area of the Plaguelands. As soon as I hit 60 I knew that I was going to have some serious farming ahead of me so I followed my rogue officer into Tyr's Hand, an area that I had never been.  We would farm the land before the night's Onyxia or Molten Core runs until our actions became second nature.  As a pair of rogues we would drop entire squads of Scarlet Crusaders without stopping.  Our names became a staple in the area between 4PM and 7:30PM EST.  Basically, we became a more active pair of NPCs.  Only, we focused our attention on destroying the last bastion of humanity in EPL for personal gain.  We were there so often, that numerous people thought we were china farmers. In fact, the china farmers thought we were china farmers!  From our time spent in Tyr's, we managed to pick up basic strings of Chinese to be able to talk with them.  We would trade stacks of Conjured Sweet Rolls for their Runecloth, help them when they seemed to be in trouble or chase off the horde together.  It was a grand old time.  Unfortunately, “ni hao” is all that I remember since my macro has long since been deleted. Although I was simply a very advanced bot when I was in Tyr's Hand, I rather miss it.  Pushing my limits of DPS and seeing how far I could go without eating food became a game to me.  Could I take four guys myself?  Will this guy drop my 6th green in a row?  Will I be able to fill up my bags before the raid begins?  Do the mobs in the eastern castle (up the hill) really have better droprates?  Will I ever have enough money to get my epic mount? Forget dailies, I would rather stand in one area and farm it dry than run all over creation farming.  Too bad running all over creation pays better.

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I have spent the last two days poring over the various confirmed changes and future additions to World of Warcraft.  Eyes glassy and tainted with blue, I have finally been able to come up for a breath.  Blizzard Poster Gamnin kept most of us busy during Tuesday's short maintenance by posting an update to the Rogue changes and some new information on the Warrior class.  As with all changes, people are sure to be up in arms about something or other so I will avoid being 'that guy'.

Courtesy of Mick Stephenson

First we will discuss my favorite class, the rogues.  As mentioned in the comments of my previous Rogue post, Tricks of the Trade is the new level 75 ability and has been confirmed by Gamnin.

• NEW - Tricks of the Trade: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. 30 sec cooldown.
• Relentless Strikes moved to Tier 1 Subtlety tree and made 5 ranks, 4/8/12/16/20% chance.
• NEW – Overkill (Assassination Tier 7): Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.
• Hunger for Blood duration raised to 30 seconds.
• Mace spec ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• NEW - Blood Poisoning (Combat Tier 9): All physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 1/2%.
• NEW - Filthy Tricks (Subtlety Tier 9): Reduces the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 sec.
• Shadowstep will no longer be usable while rooted.

The new abilities and talents sound interesting but choosing a good build seems more difficult than before.  I will reserve my anger and judgments for when we get closer to launch however.  I have never seen a point in A) getting angry over stuff that will likely be changed and B) spending so much time making a build when the trees aren't finalized.  Of course, I just had to end the list with something to piss off the PvPers.

Also of note, is that Blizzard plans to do something about five rogue Tricks of the Trade rotations.  Currently, there is no stacking protection but they are working on some way to avoid the need for it.

The Warrior changes and additions are interesting, just not as lengthy:

• Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
• Improved Charge generates 5/10 rage.
• Mace spec ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• NEW - Warbringer (Protection Tier 9): Allows Charge to be used in combat.
• Furious Attacks modified to use procs per minute to nullify weapon speed differences.

I like what I heard about Blizzard's take on Shields in WotLK.  The developers hope to make the shield more of a weapon instead of just a defensive tool.  Adding that utility would make them more accurate to how they were used back in the day (see 300).

Oh and Warriors regenerating 30% of their health over 10 seconds...that is gonna be annoying in PvP.

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Today we would like to introduce a brand spankin' new WoW themed comic, created by Björn Þórsson and Ívar Daníel Karlsson. Random Heroes will be a new feature on our blog, and below you will find the first two strips. We think it's off to a great start and we'd love to hear what you guys think, too!

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We at Project Lore are excited to announce that on Monday, September 8th, we will be kicking off three weeks of daily Wrath of the Lich King beta episodes. That's right, we've got Blizzard's blessing to show you a full instance run in Northrend straight from the beta to your desktop (or laptop). The guys went into Utgarde Keep with nothing but the epics on their backs and returned with tons of juicy info on a bunch of new talents, features, and areas that will be coming in the new expansion from Blizzard. Each week of our special will cover a full, real time trash mobs section, boss strat, and boss kill, as well as bonus footage and other features from the beta of Wrath of the Lich King. If you want to see what Blizzard has in store for the future of WoW, tune in! Remember, you can always find out when new episodes are out by subscribing to the episodes RSS feed or following us on twitter. You can also find links to Project Lore all over the web on our Subscribe Page.

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I have played my fair share of MMOGs. Many of them I only played for a few months, such as Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. I can only truly say that I've been a hardcore player in World of Warcraft, sticking with it for years after its release – and still counting. But all of those games have at least one thing in common. And I don't mean that they have each sucked days of my life from me. As either a hardcore user or just a casual player looking for a new MMO world to immerse myself in, I always get tired of MMO music. After the first few hours, my hands will systematically reach for Control + M to see if that near-universal hotkey was added to the UI. More often than not, the combination will drop the soundtrack instantly. Finally, I am able to continue on my wolf/alien/bear/horde killing ways without hearing the same piece of music for the xth time. It isn't that I don't enjoy the music. In fact, I have shown my love for game music on numerous occasions. This is normally where I note some way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, I do not really have any suggestions on how a company could render the issue, other than constantly producing more tracks. Obviously, that is not really feasible in a business sense. At least, not unless the company is releasing the tracks as part of a large content patch or expansion. Perhaps the greatest screensaver ever created got it right. I am of course speaking of EVE Online. EVE works around the problem by incorporating an MP3 player into their client. This allows players to listen to their own soundtrack without having to alt-tab all the time. For EVE, the addition actually fits their game, but I doubt the citizens of Azeroth would listen to Journey or Tool during their hunting expeditions. What to do...

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As we all know from his answer in the Episode 6 Wrap-Up, Juggy is a bit of a rolling stone. Since his answer to Rory's question was released, we've received numerous reports of sightings similar to those in the video.  Of course, Juggs don't remain in a single place for too long, and we at Project Lore don't even know where he is at any given time. If you think you've spotted him crafting in Kobe, respeccing in Rio de Janeiro, or owning in Omaha, mock it up using this photo of the Juggybox (png, gif) and your favorite image editing software, then send it in with the name of the location to editor@projectlore.com. We're sure everyone would love to see where Juggy might be found. Maybe eventually we can convince him to make a video like this one. (View in high quality for full effect). We can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

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Oh BlizzCon, how I wish to be a part of you. Yes, that is right folks, another episode in my on-going saga to join the masses at BlizzCon 2008. I am not simply going just for World of Warcraft either. Yes, I was a hardcore raider during vanilla WoW before turning casual with The Burning Crusade but that is only part of my addiction to Blizzard Entertainment's products. My first Blizzard game was actually their epic Rock N' Roll Racing. But it is hard to be addicted to a racing title from that generation for too long. It was really Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness that drew me into Blizzard and StarCraft that had me addicted. But I was by no means a great StarCraft player. Great in my high school, yeah, but nothing special outside that. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos/The Frozen Throne was a different story though. I was an avid AT (arranged team) player, even winning a few tournaments with my brother. You won't find my name on any replays or in the Worldwide Invitational so stop looking. Just small local tournaments and one regional appearance. And like many of my generation, I learned to mouse click thanks to Diablo II. My point is, I really want to goto BlizzCon, not only WoW but all of Blizzard's properties...and the goodie bag. Despite asking for all your luck I missed out on the lottery drawing. The drawing was my last chance at receiving a ticket through the more official channels. When the BlizzCon e-mail failed to appear in my mailbox I turned into a new man. More grouchy than Oscar in Azeroth. My girlfriend was not amused. This morning at breakfast I started looking at the grey market once again. I refuse to pay the ridiculous eBay prices for my entry into Valhalla so I have found some other alternatives:

• Pixelated Executioner is offering a BlizzCon ticket for the best, original 700+ word story related to Wrath of the Lich King. However, the goodie bag is NOT included.
• Blizzard and its partners are offering an all expenses paid trip for two to BlizzCon. All you have to do is enter some information to be eligible. 25 runner-ups will receive a mix of SteelSeries (they make the Zboard line), UpperDeck Entertainment, Brady Games and J!NX swag.

So far I have only found those two contests, if anyone knows of any others please add them via the comments. Personally, I will likely enter both as they have to have better odds than the lottery system! Can't wait to read some of those stories. The WoW community is so creative that I expect some gems to come from it.

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Mmm, finally Rogues have received a nice blue post from Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Poster Gamnin updated the stabbing community on changes they can expect to see in the near future. Gamnin admits that these are changes that are currently being worked on, as well as future goals. Therefore, some of these changes may not come for some time. Nevertheless, many of them have me in a twitter. Got me in a twitter:

• Removal of numerous reagents (Thieves’ Tools, Flash Powder).
• Poison skill removed – poisons available via vendors.
• Level 75 unannounced ability designed and teased as adding group utility.
• Fist weapon spec merged with dagger spec.
• Mace Specialization will now grant armor penetration when using a mace.

Much hotness:

• Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes on Evasion, Sprint, Vanish.
• Subtlety Tier 1 redesigned to be more attractive
• Fewer dagger specifics talents in subtlety to allow more diverse build options
• Hunger for Blood will remove any harmful physical effects. No longer just Bleed or Magic.

I have always fancied the dagger specialization more, just because I felt that it required more “skill”. In actuality, it just requires that you move around a lot more (and have more patience) but I will keep telling myself that that equals skill. Unfortunately, raiders have claimed that dagger builds were doing less DPS than the other specs for some time, a statement which Blizzard owned up to.  With that in mind, the merger of maces into the dagger spec and armor penetration instead of a stun proc make maces much more attractive to me.  Maybe it is time to give up my trusty blades? The removal of the poison skill makes sense, as it was simply as waste of time to create them so often. On top of that, its not like it was difficult to do or troublesome to locate the materials. For those reasons, the switch to a vendor item makes a lot of sense. But seeing as I never carried around poison mats, just a few stacks of crafted poisons, I don't see how it will help bag space. As for the hotness changes?  I did not note that Cloak of Shadows' cooldown is being raised to two minutes since I was focusing on the good.  But that makes the changes to Hunger for Blood look more enticing for the PvP players out there.  And should I make that jump to maces, it is nice to know that Blizzard will try to make the subtlety tree a viable option. Be sure to check out the blue post though. Gamnin mentions a lot of other changes and future additions that I did not touch upon.  Sadly, there wasn't enough to convince me that daggers will be taking over as highest DPS again – and I feel they should be the highest.

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Alexis Knapp joins us again and wraps-up Project Lore's adventures in The Blood Furnace and this week's community wrap-up. Jerry makes an appearance to answer your questions and Alexis finished up with an important reminder for you about next week's show. Watch to find out what's in store for you. Armory links for characters featured in this episode: Dorkins, Goggins, Lylelovett, Shnoobins, and Xenophontos. Our Subscribe page has links for you to follow us on your favorite sites. Use the Episodes RSS feed or Twitter to find out when new episodes are out, and join our Facebook Group, Facebook Page, and MySpace. Remember, Monday will bring our very first Wrath of the Lich King episode, which we cannot wait to show you!

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Project Lore discovers the terrifying final boss in Heroic Blood Furnace, Keli'dan the Breaker. Will Project Lore be able to stop his plans or be destroyed by The Breaker? Find out the strat to defeat this last boss of Heroic Blodd Furnace, Keli'dan the Breaker. Check our Blood Furnace Guide for some more tactics for this guy, and let us know if you know a good way to take out this crazy orc. Armory links for characters featured in this episode: Dorkins, Goggins, Lylelovett, Shnoobins, and Xenophontos. Our Subscribe page has links for you to follow us on your favorite sites. Use the Episodes RSS feed or Twitter to find out when new episodes are out, and join our Facebook Group, Facebook Page, and MySpace. Alexis will wrap things up tomorrow, so watch for her!

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