Project Lore

A lot of people responded to the Battle of the Newbs post by listing all of the classes they play, and what level they are.  I'm sure just as many were like me, sticking with one class for months, perhaps years.  Whatever the reason for your dedication may be, you really should take a spin on the PTR.  Assuming you don't mind running the upcoming instances (you won't be able to do much else), it is a fantastic place to playtest classes. Bug testing aside, I think the most useful aspect of the PTR is for rolling another class, and what a fantastic idea that is.  Most players believe that the game doesn't begin till the level cap.  So if you've been thinking about switching, why not try them out at the level cap on the PTR?  Then you won't have to spend ten days of playtime before you realize that you hate tanking, or can't stand playing whack-a-mole for hours a night.  Feeling incredibly powerful with little to no effort doesn't hurt either. Not interested in rolling a new class?  Fear not, the PTR offers plenty of incentives for the unadventurous.  For instance, Solidsamm is undergeared when compared to his raiding counterparts - I know I've beaten this topic to death, but hold on.  I've always felt that if I had the gear, I could be right up there with the big boys.  To test myself I used a character copy, created a rogue decked out in the latest epics, gems and enchants, and proceeded to tear stuff up.  Now I can pat myself on the back, confident that I don't totally suck. Character copying your same class, or even a character transfer with extra gems on your person, can enable a player to tweak their itemization with no penalties.  Want to really investigate what those gems can do for your current gear?  Buy up some class-friendly gems (or have a friend use a pre-made and hand you some), transfer, and begin socketing and unsocketing until you find the perfect combination.  Jot down the details and you'll know what to apply on your live character.  Of course Rawr can calculate this information for you, but there's nothing more concrete than seeing the differences in action before they cost you anything. I think I may go try out a spec I've had little experience with, tanking.  Then I'll feel more, possibly less, confident when I verbally assault the player I am trying to heal.

Interactive online magazine MMOZine recently scored an interview with one Mr. Greg Street, a.k.a. the infamous Ghostcrawler. The first part of three focuses squarely on the production and coming release of Patch 3.3, which as you all probably know by now will wrap up the whole Lich King plot-line that's been brewing since Warcraft III. Most of the questions relate directly to the design of the Icecrown Citadel raid and 5-man dungeons, but one answer caught my eye in particular, especially with this whole release date mess we've been going through lately:

MMOZine: Will all the bosses in Icecrown Citadel be made available immediately or are you going to stagger them, as you did in Sunwell Plateau? GS:Well we've not announced when it's coming out yet but we don't want to throw players against challenging raid content right over the holidays, so we're trying to avoid that a little bit.

If we've been looking for a reason as to why a Blizzard CM might tell a player that 3.3 is over a month out, then Ghostcrawler may have just given us our answer. I think a lot of us assumed that Thanksgiving would be an issue, but they might just be lumping the December holidays right in there with it. I still think that's a questionable decision to make, if it's true. However, note that Street is addressing the issue of gating ICC content specifically. He doesn't want to throw players into challenging raid content right away, which is a statement that jives with the whole idea of making only the first wing available until after the first of the year. It's clear that Blizzard wants to stretch the content, but it's comforting to know that they don't necessarily want to use that as an excuse to keep Cataclysm from coming out any sooner:

MMOZine: Are you concerned - hypothetically assuming it's going to be released around Q2/3 next year - that players are going to get a little bored waiting for Cataclysm? GS: It's definitely a challenge to make sure too much time doesn't go by. At the same time, if we stop and make a 3.4 patch, then that just pushes Cataclysm farther away. We know from the past, from Burning Crusade and Wrath, that when the beta comes out that's a really big moment and it gets people really excited again. What we've traditionally done is change the game and put in the new spells and talent trees quite a bit before the actual box goes up on the shelf. There's a couple of really big milestones along the way, even though they're not going to be playing Cataclysm as a Goblin or a Worgen right away.

So you can see there's won't be a 3.4 and that there's a good chance of 4.0 arriving at least a couple weeks earlier than Cataclysm goes retail in order to implement all of the changes that affect players across the board (inculding those that can't or don't purchase the expansion right away). In truth, that means a whole lot more than the release of 3.0 did before Wrath, because this time around, it would have to include the remade Azeroth. In other developer interview news, the WoW Community Site has put up their own interview with Greg Street (and Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton) concerning Patch 3.3. Considering it's internal nature, it's mostly fluff and softball questions. Do remember that these sorts of things are tailored to the portion of the playerbase out there that doesn't go out of their way to find out what's coming down the pike, but you still might learn a thing or two about the design philosophy behind ICC by checking it out.

Proverb is a rare yet delicious column discussing the lore of Warcraft. It is spoiler heavy for all Warcraft games, novels, and other media. Comment on this post or send a tweet to @Heartbourne and let us know what you would like to see in future columns! Warcraft III made several references to captains of Prince Arthas. Since then, three major characters have been fleshed out as captains of Arthas' former military unit.

Oh captain, my captain!

This "captain" character appears multiple times throughout the Warcraft III campaign. He has some dialogue, and he is a controllable unit along with Arthas and Jaina on many missions. It is a little bizarre that he was unnamed for so long.

Luc Valonforth

The multiple characters created by this "captain" is partially explained by some ill timing. During the development of Wrath of the Lich King, Christie Golden was hard at work writing the accompanying novel to the WoW expansion, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. In the novel, the character Falric is fleshed out as a royal guard who befriended Arthas and fits the role of the captain in the Warcraft III campaign, following Arthas to his corruption in Northrend. However, during the development of Wrath, the encounter team had already created a character to match the "captain", named Luc Valonforth. He appears in flashbacks during the questline, starting with The Truth Shall Set Us Free. He appears to have been intended as a major character to reappear later in the game, as he was named and had a good deal of dialogue, including the exact audio from the Warcraft III campaign from the "captain". It wasn't until later, when the novel was in the editors' hands, was this discrepancy realized. The game was left as is, but Luc was added to the novel as a minor character. It seemed a messy solution, as Falric was fleshed out as a major character to assist Arthas, yet one of the iconic moments of Arthas' downfall has this mystery fellow Luc as a major player. Some lines from "the captain" in that scene are given to Luc, and some to Falric.

An ethereal Falric in the Halls of Reflection

Unlike the other "Forgotten" soldiers in the flashback quests, he does not  die and become a ghost. Instead, he fades away, like other confirmed living characters, including Muradin and Arthas. It may be that he was intended to be an Icecrown Citadel boss, or perhaps an Alliance or Ebon Blade NPC, but he never appears in corporeal form. He appears to have been swept under the rug in favor of Falric. In addition to Falric, Golden wrote about a second royal guard who was a close friend of his. This character, Marwyn, also accompanied Arthas to Northrend. Both Falric and Marwyn were converted to Death Knights by Arthas, and can be seen as the royal guards accompanying Arthas to the murder of King Terenas II. As the second and third Death Knights of the Scourge (after Arthas), they were tasked with raising the massacred citizens of Lordaeron as Arthas' undead army in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Falric and Marwyn behind Arthas

It was widely thought that Falric and Marwyn would make an appearance in Icecrown, as they were Arthas' right-hand men in life. Indeed, in undeath, they continue to be personal assists of Arthas. The Halls of Reflection are Arthas' personal halls in Icecrown Citadel, and he calls on Falric and Marwyn when players invade to take Frostmourne in the new 5-man instance. They are the first encounter, and not a trivial one either. We will get a better look at Falric's unlife in the upcoming Death Knight manga.

A Tribute to Addons is a column featuring new, cool, or useful addons. Send a tweet to @Projectlore with your suggestions, or leave a comment.

Blue Rune Circles in SexyMap

I've been getting lots of questions asking me about my mini-map addon that I use in my videos. Its called SexyMap, and its fast become a staple of my interface. Sexymap may look like it would take a lot of system resources, but it uses spell effects through the in-game engine to achieve its fancy graphics. This gives it a lot of built-in options that have a very low overhead. I've been using the default preset "Blue Rune Circles". There are about a dozen beautiful presets to choose from. If you are feeling creative, you can make your own using several various in-game textures, effects, and more. Do you dig the Route 66 symbol? There's a map for that, just add your own effects. Want your map to have druid appeal? There's a map for that too. Sexymap does much more than just look sexy. Its highly configurable with a lot of rich features. It also controls the graphics for the "armor man" that shows you when your armor and the graphics used for vehicle passenger information. You can move these frames around, as well as the minimap itself. Perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to control built-in and addon buttons. So many addons throw their own button on the minimap and I don't want to dig through their config to move hide it. Sexymap takes complete control of all of these buttons. Sexymap allows you to move anything on the minimap, including the built in things like the calendar button, clock, mail icon, battleground queue, and more. In addition, you can set up three levels of visibility: show, show on hover, and hide. If you show a button, you will always see it. I like to use this for things like the clock and new mail notification, which I like to see all the time. Hover buttons are shown only when you mouse over the map, so I use this for things like the calendar and most addon configs that I regularly use. I hide most addons buttons, as I usually use something lie broker2Fubar to put them on Fubar, or pull them up using a script command. I don't need a graphical button cluttering my interface if I can type /dbm and get the same menu and I open the config only once every few weeks. There is lots in here, including built in coordinate support, detailed pings showing who pinged and reporting to chat, a HUD that other addons can plug into, and more. I suggest you download it and play with it yourself! Grab it on Curse or your favorite addon repository. I give it a 10/10 for ease of use, high customization, and wide appeal.

There is a strange blue post that our commenter Vexklythor tipped us off to that implies that patch 3.3 will not be live until late December at the earliest. The post was in response to a forum post about the recent background downloader performing very poorly. Quote:

We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we're not really worried about your speed. :)

This revelation comes as I was working on a post predicting the release of patch 3.3 in the coming weeks because of the background downloader and the annoucement of how heavily gated Icecrown Citadel content will be. I can't fathom any way that the background downloader is not downloading patch 3.3, so it looks like the earliest we will see the patch is December 29th, as the 22nd is during Winter Veil and I doubt they will patch during a major event.

[caption id="attachment_8539" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Do Some Internet Sleuthing."][/caption] Forget about other video games, I find it difficult enough to split my play time across multiple characters.  Despite my best efforts, that is exactly what I have been doing lately.  Over the past month I have put serious time in to not two, but three alternates avatars and my trusty bank alt.  Solidsamm hasn't missed a beat, as he continues to raise his average ilvl at an alarming rate (for me).  I've only been able to manage the juggling act thanks to careful planning, tunnel vision, and of course, an understanding girlfriend. Solidsamm is doing his best to gear up in an attempt to remain a reliable raider, Solidsagart is trying to get to that point, and the other Solidsagart (original, I know) is busy running through the old content.  My fourth character isn't really a character per se, but a pre-made on the PTR (again, Solidsagart).  The two alternate Solidsagarts are tied to other players, so I only play them when the rest of the group is available, but the priest and rogue are entirely different.  Honest to god, this is the first time I have ever had two max level characters at once, and that's the issue. At this point in time, I wouldn't consider either of them my main.  I play them nearly 50/50 with the rogue eeking out the percent error thanks to raiding time.  As soon as Solidsagart is fully raid ready, that will change.  The longer I go 50/50, the longer it will take for her to be ready.  In light of that, the holy priest is about to become my main.  I have nothing against my rogue, I still love the gnome to death, but my draenei offers an entirely new experience.  One with new challenges, new things to learn and a new set of numbers to crunch.  I've already had enough heroic dungeon experience to know that I enjoy healing, so the change sticking depends solely on my measure of fail.  Hopefully I can keep it low, and people will be understanding. Oh man, I almost kept a straight face.  People on the Internet understanding. Hahahahaha. I've been rocking the John Kerry approved flip-flop method.  How do you move between your alts?  Reroll out of boredom, or after one is geared to an acceptable level?

Dedicated Icecrown Citadel Raiders in the upcoming Patch 3.3 will have a new, glorious armored Frost Wyrm mount to work toward. Blizzard blue poster Ancilorn over on the European forums confirmed Wednesday that the armored Frost Wyrm mount previously data-mined at MMO-Champion will indeed be the next hot raiding reward. Here's exactly what was posted:

There will be a Frostwyrms up for grabs for Icecrown raiders, achievable in a similar way to previous rewards such as the Ulduar proto-drake.

Not a very long description, but certainly enough to get me even more excited for the upcoming patch and all of its wondrous possibilities. Depending on exactly how similar the process of getting this mount is to the Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes, it may be a pretty rare get. The latter two super-fast mounts, rewards for completing the Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievements in 10-man and 25-man modes, respectively, originally were reported as set to be removed from the game sometime after 3.2 because of the major gear upgrades that players would be able to get, making the achievements easier to earn. But it's been several months since then, and back in July blue poster Eyonix said the mounts would remain in-game for now:

After further discussion, we decided not to remove the rusted and ironbound proto-drake rewards for the normal and heroic Glory of the Ulduar Raider meta achievements when patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade, launches, and currently have no plans to remove them in the foreseeable future. However, we will continue to evaluate the situation and if a decision is made to remove these rewards at any point in the future, we'll provide a one month warning so players will have time to make some final attempts.

There's always a balancing act between making rewards like this difficult to get without it being utterly impossible for some of the less hardcore raiders. So if Blizzard continues along their current line of thinking, then it's reasonable to conclude that we'll have at least a few months to strive for the new mount once Patch 3.3 comes out. What do you guys think of the subdued Frost Wyrm as a mount? I'm really digging the skeletal look along with that blue, hazy glow. She's a bit eerie, but in a good way.

Oh Blizzard, you're so sneaky! With a notice surreptitiously tucked away at the bottom of the launcher, and a download utility that chugs away at forthcoming patches minimized on your taskbar, you wouldn't even realize you were downloading anything at all unless you were looking for it! But if you've used your World of Warcraft client today, chances are you've already got pieces of 3.3 on your hard drive. Exciting, isn't it?! The pre-patching process allows Blizzard to push information such as texture and environment data (in other words, stuff that wouldn't currently affect gameplay) well ahead of patch day, so that when that moment comes, the process runs just a little bit smoother. As much as it might lighten the load on the data servers, though, it rarely does anything for the mountain of people trying to access the latest content, leading to lag on live servers, which leads to frustration and disappointment anyway, which leads to the Dark Side. Of course, the first thing your mind probably jumps to when you hear news like this is "the patch is coming next week," right? Well, the answer to that is... possibly. Now that we know Blizzard is gating content in Icecrown Citadel, that gives them plenty of time to continue testing encounters featured later in the dungeon in the background while hungry players sink their teeth into the first bites of the instance on live servers. From all I've experienced, the first set of bosses is more or less ready to go and itemization is in place. Nonetheless, it may still be unwise to release 3.3 the week of Thanksgiving, since most players will probably be vacationing, out of town, or otherwise spending time with their families. But either way, with data being pre-loaded, I don't expect the patch to be more than two weeks out. Only time will tell, so keep your eyes on the downloader and on Project Lore for more information on 3.3's release!

We expected it might the case for some time now, but Blizzard has confirmed it: Icecrown Citadel will subject players to gated progression in an attempt to stretch the content out as far as possible. However, as you will see below, it gets a little bit more complicated than just restricting you from accessing certain wings. Just as well, it seems that several weeks (as opposed to one) will pass before the next chunk of the raid zone is available. Here are the highlights you should be looking for:

• Each wing will be gated, with several weeks between each release. It has not been stated how long this period will be.
• The Wings are Lower Spire (4 fights), Plagueworks (3 fights), Crimson Halls (2 fights), Frostwing Halls (3 fights, including The Lich King). They will be released in that order.
• Each wing, aside from the Lower Spire, will have a marquee boss fight (Putricide, Queen Lana'Thel, Sindragosa). Every time one of these encounters is opened up, 5 more attempts will be available on these specific fights for a total of 15 (Lich King is included, though he doesn't supply any additional attempts).
• Once your attempts are expended, these four bosses will despawn from the zone until the next week. Likewise, these attempts only act as a limiter. You will not get any special rewards for not dying or only using up a certain number of attempts.
• As the weeks move forward, the Ashen Verdict's forces will "grow stronger," giving players the ability to pick up an optional buff which will make their raiding experience easier if they're having trouble.
• Heroic difficulty will not be accessible for any boss until the Lich King has been defeated on Normal.
• Heroic difficulty for the Lich King will not be available until the three aforementioned marquee boss fights have been completed on Heroic on a week-by-week basis.

The text of the announcement in full follows:

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. I want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there. As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, I wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately. The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace. There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty. The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week. The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty. There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity). In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

So what do you think about this? Personally, I like it. Gating does make the content last a little longer, and from what I've experienced on the PTR so far the "marquee" fights (including Deathbringer Sarufang) are sufficiently difficult, meaning that nobody should feel slighted that they don't get to pop a cap in the Lich King on the day one. It also keeps a lock on the "world first" crowd. While they're certainly free to raid how they see fit, the trend of conquering a dungeon on its first night also has a dangerous side effect on the community, creating the perception that the content isn't as difficult or engaging as people want it to be. The only real problem I have is that it feels like the content may be stretched just a little too thin. This entirely depends on what Blizzard means by "several weeks" between each wing is released. One or two weeks is more acceptable than three or four. But even if they do let it go that long, hopefully it's just to tide us over until Cataclysm and not used as an excuse to delay the expansion any further.

[caption id="attachment_8520" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Those Names Look Suspiciously Familiar..."][/caption] My adventure into old school instancing has lead me to one definitive conclusion; everyone is a critic.  Everyone believes they know your class better than you, something I can be guilty of when it comes to dagger-equipped rogues.  The five person team that I joined to experience the old world is no different.  In fact, it may be worse.  We wanted to experience the pre-Cataclysm world in a way we hadn't before, causing us to roll classes we have never played before. The tank and the healer (me) changed rolls dramatically, going from melee DPS classes to the key parts of the holy trinity.  To make matters even more interesting, I rolled the healing class that I knew the least about, a restoration shaman.  The other three switched from DPS classes to other DPS classes, some switching from ranged or melee DPS for the first time in their WoWing career.  You can imagine how these conversations go.  Tons of "you're doing it wrong." The thing is, we all tend to be right.  We've all had small nuances in our new class pointed out to us by a helpful teammate who's had hours of playtime in the role.  I certainly appreciate the pointers I've been given by the former shaman, and I am very grateful for the pointers that the newbie tank has received.  His complete and utter lack of tanking knowledge (get threat on all of the mobs in a pull!) left him open to numerous jabs and burns throughout our various runs.  It's okay though, he seems to enjoy the good-natured ribbing, firing right back when the opportunity arises. The class virginity is still a factor thanks to our low level (low 20s).  By the time level 40 rolls around we should be comfortable in our now smelly shoes.  I'm not sure I want that to happen though.  The jibba -jabber is just too hilarious.  Thankfully, we have PTR testing to continue playing classes we have no business rolling.  Let's just hope the tank doesn't gem for crit.  Oh wait, he already did that. /facepalm