Project Lore

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne for notifications of new videos!

Protip starts off with Winter Veil! I hope you are excited as I am. In this first episode, we get acquainted with the quests, achievements, and lore involved with Winter Veil.

WoWFlix is a column featuring videos from around the web related to World of Warcraft. If you find something you’d like to be featured, leave a comment or send a tweet to @Heartbourne. Nyhm is back! And he's got a great and timely video called "Nerf You". The song criticizes the constant complaining players do after a new patch, and the accompanying video is an entertaining montage of imagery and lyrics that make the song fun and easy to follow. Its probably not going to be Nyhm's highest production work or his best video, but its another quality video that makes me chuckle. Any Nyhm fans in the audience?

[caption id="attachment_9235" align="alignright" width="195" caption="Guess we won't see this anymore."][/caption] We knew that WildStorm and Blizzard were changing up the structure of the monthly World of Warcraft comic, splitting the Horde and Alliance stories, but no one expected it to be completely canceled.  According to IGN's comic gurus, WildStorm and Blizzard have decided to axe the monthly installments in favor of full-fledged graphic novels.  It's unknown if the faction split that was previously announced will roll over to the graphic novels.  We also don't know if we are going to see those stories played out, or if the novels are going to move in a different direction.  We've requested a comment from WildStorm and will get back to you with any information. What do we know?  Well, the the monthly serial will wrap with World of Warcraft Special, reportedly available now, and StarCraft's tale will end with late January's issue #7. I, and many other readers, expect to be quiet happy with the change.  I've never picked the issues up on a monthly basis previously, preferring the hardcover, single installments to dozens of flimsy, easily destroyed pages, so the one-shot deal is right up my alley.  I also expect that the artists and writers will be given additional time to craft their tales and plan their art.  Hopefully that will end the mixed reviews between readers.  WildStorm tends to agree: "While WildStorm and Blizzard loved the stories being told in the regular monthly comic-book series, we decided that the graphic novel would be a more suitable medium for the tales we wanted to tell next," said Hank Kanalz, VP & General Manager of WildStorm. "The larger format will give our artists and storytellers more room to explore Blizzard's rich, varied worlds and flesh out the characters that inhabit these places" (emphasis mine, on both accounts). In other WoW-related comic news, the popular web series The Guild is reportedly moving to the colorful format thanks to Dark Horse Comics.  Issues are due out in March 2010 and are penned by Felicia Day. Maybe Alex can get a cameo in there too?

[caption id="attachment_9215" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Guild hopping must be stopped!"][/caption] One of the much ballyhooed announcements at this past BlizzCon was Cataclysm's inclusion of Guild Achievements and Guild Talents.  The features are being implemented for one reason, to return guilds to the long-standing and well-respected structure that they were in vanilla WoW.  Since then, and more specifically since Wrath of the Lich King, the strength and draw of a guild has waned. The social structure was once required to get anything done.  Now, guilds are more of a tool of convenience, helping to do the job instead of being required.  Because of that fact players jump from guild to guild at a moment's notice, ninjaing and being complete assholes as they go. Cataclysm's upcoming guild features can change that, but the requirements need to be strengthened. The last anyone heard, the benefits from a guild's talent tree will apply as soon as you are made a member.  Why not levy these perks against members, specifically against those who just hop around on the guild pogo stick.  Instead of giving a brand-spanking-new member access to those sought after game modifications, cheap repairs, guild summons, etc, let's give guilds the ability to withhold them for awhile.  Give GMs and officers the power to only enable the benefits if a player has remained in the guild for x months, achieved a given guild score (awarded for contribution to a guild's success), or been assigned a specific rank.  Everyone knows that you pay for work after it's done. Guild Talents are a fantastic idea.  No longer will guilds be just a social setting, or an ends to a means, but something that players are able to grow alongside and help contribute to.  However, if members aren't required to do something to gain access to the perks, then there's nothing to stop them from continuing to bounce from guild to guild.  Conversely, if the perks have a pre-requisite, members will be more apt to settle any differences and disputes in guild, rather than running to a new home. What other measures would you like to see Blizzard put in place to lower guild member turnover?

I'm well aware that the Horde legions on my PvE server are way outnumbered by Alliance players. Up until I hit 80, though, it didn't really bother me. My rare venture into battlegrounds usually would get evened out into comparable groups of forces battling it out, and I was too busy grinding to 80 to pay much attention to what would happen once I actually hit that level cap. Simply put, ignorance was bliss. That is, until I had the most fail-tastic Wintergrasp battle of all time over the weekend. I queued up for the battle, and was astounded upon entering the raid and finding that I was only one of 17 players representing the Horde. Only 17! And this was in the middle of a cold, Saturday afternoon. Our opponents apparently had many, many more players, as indicated by a whopping Tenacity -- that buff designed to offset an unbalanced WG battle -- of 10.We had 17 players, they had 120. Mission impossible. Needless to say, it was a massacre. We had too few players to even man and gun our few vehicles, much less defend those vehicles plus our workshops and towers, or try to mount any kind of strategy. It ended with the Allies closing in on our one and only graveyard,  killing us over and over again as we resurrected. Not fun. Perhaps the recent release of Patch 3.3 contributed to our ridiculously low numbers -- everyone was too busy grinding heroics or checking out the new ICC content to be bothered by a silly Wintergrasp battle. But whatever the case, it's my belief now, more than ever, that Tenacity isn't worth crap once it stacks higher than 3 or 4. It wouldn't really be a huge deal if not for the raiding advantages that the other side clearly gets -- more shots at Vault of Archavon, more emblems, more honor -- you see what I'm getting at. I know Khaz Modan certainly isn't the only realm with balancing issues. There are plenty of others out there that probably are worse off than we are. The problem is, with no incentives to transfer to, or even remain at, a server where your faction is outnumbered, the problem just gets worse and worse. I know of at least a couple of large raiding guilds that have migrated from our server to a more Horde-friendly server. And those free transfer services that Blizzard offers every now and then don't seem to be too effective without some kind of greater incentive (other than being free) to switch to a server that needs help. I suggest that Blizzard borrow an idea from Warhammer Online -- along with their free server transfers, they also offer something to help players make the decision to move: a "limited time" 20% experience and reputation buff. Perhaps this isn't the right formula for what to offer WoW players, but something along those lines definitely could help balance out realms. UPDATE When I wrote this earlier this week, it was pretty much a rant. But an announcement this morning makes it actually relevant to some news! Blue poster Bornakk this morning announced that factions that hold WG more often now will have some added difficulty if they want to keep it. Here's what what said:

We wanted to address some of the confusion we often see regarding the Battle for Wintergrasp. We will not provide exact details on how the system works to try and avoid abuse of the mechanics, but there is a system in place that can change how the battle plays out. When one faction defends more than the other, the system will give advantages like the ability to use catapults or siege tanks faster to the faction that is on the offensive. On realms where one faction is often able to defend the fortress and the other faction rarely defends, the system tries to help this balance by providing bonuses to the faction that rarely succeeds at defending.

So what do you think of this possible fix? And for anyone else has had issues with being on either side of an unbalanced server, what other ideas do you think WoW could use to help solve the balance issue?

It's been more than a week now since the release of Patch 3.3, and I'll admit something: I've been so busy grinding heroics for badges on my main (finished off my PvP set, woot) that I didn't even think of the wonderful potential that the new LFG system has for lowbies and toons that are still leveling. Then, I got this oh-so-interesting comment on my blog about rolling new characters from reader Uthers:

I recently started a new character and found out something rather interesting. The low level random dungeon rewards are surprisingly useful, for one, and for a two I got the Ragefire Chasms dungeon. On Alliance side. I'm not sure how many level 15 Alliance can honestly say they've gotten through Ragefire Chasm before the random dungeon, but it's almost pathetically easy now. I should imagine the same applies for Horde and the Stockades.

Interesting thought. So I logged into my level 22 blood elf Pixielocks to check out the LFG system on her. And indeed, the first dungeon on the list of the dungeon finder is traditionally Alliance because of the crap Hordies have to go through to get there -- Deadmines. I love the idea of every player getting the chance to see all of the game's content, especially early-on in the game when it can be tough to find a group when players are spread out all over lowbie areas. Instead of spamming the Trade channel, begging to get a run through a dungeon, lowbies instead can queue up and continue about their questing business while LFG does it's cross-realm thing. Once finished, you can go right back to whatever you left of doing. And I'm also a fan of the rewards for doing random classic dungeons -- instead of emblems and gold, characters get experience, a smaller amount of silver and a Satchel of Helpful Goods that scales with level. I am a bit curious about how likely LFG is to put a wide level range into the same dungeon. Razorfen Kraul says it's for level 22-32. Does that mean that my level 22 character could be put in a group with a bunch of level 30s? I suppose it does - and that could be interesting. But another part of me still feels very conflicted, too. Part of the fun of those low level dungeons lies just in getting to them. The proof of that lies within the Project Lore team's Horde alts venturing through raptor hell and meddling with tigers that, despite their hopes, can indeed cross bridges. None of that will matter anymore if you can just port to and back from dungeons in a snap. In fact, you probably could even park your lowbie in Dalaran and just run dungeons constantly to level, if you really wanted. I suppose that 's pretty much the same for heroics, too, but for some reason it strikes a bit harder for the classic dungeons. Perhaps when I actually use the tool on my alts and see how much time I save, I'll appreciate it more. I'm curious how everyone else feels about the system for their non-level-capped toons? Are you appreciative enough of the content that you'll still trudge through dangerous zones to get to that dungeon you want to run, or will you take advantage of bypassing that with LFG?

Hey, guess what?! Bornakk brings us another day of in-game fixes! What is this, the third in a row now? But I know it's better to make sure everything is working right than worry about how many they're pumping out in such an incredibly short amount of time. Changes in this round primarily focus on further shaping up the Icecrown Citadel raid experience, but it's interesting to see how the popularity of the Dungeon Finder system has turned Blizzard's eye towards the old Heroics, giving them fixes and tweaks that perhaps should have come a long time ago. Those come in the form of making the fights with both Ionar and Prophet Tharon'ja just a little less annoying than they were before. While these changes seem like nerfs (and they effectively are), I doubt anyone was having trouble with these bosses before. Just be glad Blizz is allowing you to funnel through them so you can get to that next Random Dungeon run even faster. You can review the changes below:

Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted. To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677858456&sid=1 12/16/09

• Ionar, in the Halls of Lightning, will now only disperse once during the course of the fight.
• Prophet Tharon’Ja of Drak'Tharon will now only steal your flesh one time during the encounter.
• Players with the quest “Wrath of the Lich King” will now properly receive quest credit.
• Muradin and Saurfang will no longer gain stacks of Battlefury from totems. Additionally, the duration of Battlefury has also been reduced.
• Lord Marrowgar is now tauntable.
• The Looking For Group item level requirement for Halls of Reflection has been raised to match the difficulty of the encounters.

As it turns out, there is one more change not listed with the rest, and it concerns the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter. The healing effect of his Blood Rune ability is being doubled in order to reinforce the idea that you need two tanks on the boss to properly defeat him:

Deathbringer Saurfang's Rune of Blood has been modified to heal 10 times the amount of damage dealt instead of 5 times the damage. This will make the encounter more difficult if you try to tank Saurfang with just one character. The tooltip does not reflect this change, but it will in a future patch.

Anyone who's completed Wrathgate knows exactly why Varimathras, Sylvanas' second-in-command, and Grand Apothecary Putress have disappeared from Undercity.  After such a betrayal it's expected that the rest of the Horde would become a little weary of The Forsaken, thus replacing the abomination guards with orc defenders.  We knew the change was coming too.  But we didn't know that the changes, adding orc guards and Bragor Bloodfist, would break the continuity of one of the Horde's earliest questlines. It turns out that the change wasn't entirely phased, causing the abom guardians to disappear from the game for Wrathgate veterans and level 10 players alike.  Yet the early plague-creating quest from Varimathras (getting the books from RFC) is still available from a new orc NPC (to preserve the quest for the lore achievements).  Thus, the change has caused a paradox for lowbies.  Why are we tasked with retrieving the books from Ragefire Chasm if Varimathras already has them, as evidenced by his disappearance? Blizzard took the easy road on this one.  Rather than spending the time to phase all of the NPCs, abominations, Varim and Putress pre-Wrathgate, orcs and Bloodfist post-Wrathgate, the developer dropped in an unexplained replacement for Varimathras, and had orcs unstich the aboms.  Okay fine, maybe phasing all of that would have been too time consuming, or difficult.  At the very least the book quest should have been modified to skirt the paradox by asking for different, less volatile items. Who knows if the early parts of this memorable quest line will remain in Cataclysm.  Maybe that could explain the laziness.  I think that with all the players re-running old content Blizzard would be careful not to break continuity.  Especially when it could have been so easily avoided.

If you've been watching The Guild, you know Bladezz is by far the best character. With season three just concluded, what better time to pick up an obviously real Bladezz blade? Alex agrees, its the perfect doll/knife. You can check out other obviously real things from The Guild with cool cameos, including the Clara Momma and Me Cookie Jar: Tinkerballa Doll: Vork Unbreakable Bank: And Zaboo's Fantastic Pheromone Spray: If you want actual real things for Christmas, check out Project Lore gear at Jinx and The Guild's stuff, also at Jinx. How many Project Lore shirts do you own? Submit a comment or tweet me a picture and we'll have a picture roundup if we get enough!

Its been an unsolved mystery for years. Who are the Pandaren, where is Pandaria, and when is Chen Stormstout going to arrive and bring Pandamonium? We've seen references to the Pandaren through the life of Warcraft and WoW, most recently in the form of the in-game pet. Samwise, one of the most illustrious Warcraft artists throughout the years, shed some light on the current state of the Pandaren in an interview on the official World of Warcraft site. Here are some highlights:

A lot of people may not know the illustrious history of the pandaren race and their introduction in the Warcraft III expansion. Can you give a brief recap of how you got the idea for an anthropomorphic panda race and how they eventually came to be included in the expansion?

I might never have had the idea if it weren't for my brother's fantastic skill at mangling up words and phrases. "A flash in the pants" or "at the end of my wit" are some of the classics in my brother's repertoire of manglings and mash-ups.

We were all off on a weekend desert trip and come evening everyone was grouped up around the fire. I was off doing something and my bro, who already had a few Stormstouts in him, said something like "Dude, you're like one of those panda bears -- you're never cold." I said "Do you mean a polar bear?" He muttered something like "I said polar bear" or whatever, but from that moment on, I was judged and labeled as: The Panda.

Some years later I did a Christmas picture for my family of a panda bear with a cub sitting on his shoulder in tribute to the new daughter who had joined our clan. That was the first panda picture I did.  For some reason, one of our webmasters asked if it could be made into a Blizzard wallpaper. People seemed to like it well enough so that when April Fools came around we announced that the pandaren were going to be the fifth race for Warcraft III. People got excited by the announcement, and seemed to be let down when they found out it was just a joke.

...

The sculpting of Chen is special to me as the Pandaren was originally just created for my family and friends. It was done just for fun, as a joke. To have this personal piece of art become a page or two in the massive volumes of Blizzard Entertainment lore is an honor. And to have it embraced by so much of our community is a really great feeling. Some still think of the Pandaren as the Aprils Fools gag, while others think they should be the next race for World of Warcraft (Horde, naturally :)). But whatever your views, just remember this... if my brother was a better speaker then the pandaren race might never have been born. Cheers to you brother!

The Pandaren are sprinkled throughout Warcraft history, but with a non-combat pet, several TCG cards, and of course the new exclusive pandaren figure all releasing within a short time, are we getting close to something bigger?

You mean like car seat covers?

Thank you Sammy!

For Pandaria!

(read the full interview at worldofwarcraft.com) Samwise and a lot of the Blizzard "visionaries" have been going more and more public with their ideas and though processes, especially with WoW's fifth year anniversary just passed, and its nice for Blizzard to be dropping these bits of information now and then.

Pandaren model, left is beta, right is release

For those of you not in the know, Pandaren were first introduced around the time of Warcraft III. A lot of the concept art had hidden pandas in them, and various missions in the Reign of Chaos Campaign allowed you to unlock easter eggs with things like a hidden Pandaren image. Most notably, Illidan's blades had a panda face on them, which turned from happy to angry when he shifted into demon form (his blades were later changed to be the Blades of Azzinoth in WoW). When Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was in beta testing, the Pandaren Brewmaster was revealed as a neutral hero. Its model changed significantly before release, from a Japanese samurai look to a more Chinese appearance. Chen Stormstout played a crucial role in the Frozen Throne campaign "The Founding of Durotar." Chen is referenced by a quest in the Barrens in WoW, and a child in Stormwind telling stories insists they are real. There is a persistent rumor that there is a law in China that prevents depictions of violence against pandas, preventing Blizzard from adding the Pandaren into WoW. This is just a rumor; there is no such law, and I have heard that there is another MMO popular in China that features playable panda people in a PvP environment. The takeaway lesson is that the Pandaren are just a running joke. As much as we love them, they are not consistently in the lore and only make cameos once in a great while.