Project Lore

Only a few weeks ago, WoW's faction change service went live, and now it looks like race changes within the same faction are up next. Earlier this month, Blizzard added a button for Race Change ("Coming Soon") to its list of paid services under Account Management. As you  may recall back in July, when Blizzard blue poster Nethaera put up an FAQ on the faction change service, one of the questions was whether characters would be able to change their race within faction. The answer?

"No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction."

But then earlier this month, after the button was added to the web site, Nethaera amended that, saying:

"Based on further community feedback, we have also decided to offer a race change service in the future. Players who choose to switch races will be able to change their race within their same faction and class. Additional details will be released at a future date."

Not surprisingly for Blizzard, it's a pretty non-committal response, in terms of how soon the service may be offered. But it looks like it may be coming up quickly. Thursday, Bornakk again addressed the upcoming service, saying that:

"More information will be provided on this upcoming service when we are closer to launching it. Hang tight, it's not far off."

Just on pure speculation, it would indeed seem that the service probably isn't far off since the more complex issues involved with faction changes already have been addressed. Faction change service came quite a bit sooner than a lot of people had anticipated, so perhaps we really will see this new service roll out in the near future. Perhaps even the next patch? Then there's the question of cost. Well, character re-customization costs $15. And a faction change will run you $30. So I'd guess an in-faction race change will be somewhere in the middle, probably $20-$25. Once again, this has not been confirmed, but it seems logical that it may be within that range. Personally, I'm happy with my character's race, faction and general appearance. But I know a couple of my guildies are super-excited for the chance to change their race. Whether just for looks and aesthetic preferences or to gain a different set of racial skills and passives, I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to get a new look. Who else is looking forward to using the service once it's released?

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The following post contains information on World of Warcraft's third expansion, Cataclysm.  If you don't want to hear about upcoming lore, features or races, then move on to the next informative post at ProjectLore.com.

We may have known a bit about WoW: Cataclysm before BlizzCon 2009 thanks to Internet sleuths, but Blizzard still shook the very foundations of Azeroth with a few of the reveals.  The company confirmed most of the rumors, didn't confirm or deny others, and added a range of things that weren't expected.  But the community's hunger for more information hasn't slowed since the doors closed in Anaheim.  The latest edition of PC Gamer UK should quench some of that thirst, as the company has the first major announcements on Cataclysm outside of BlizzCon in the latest edition of PC Gamer UK. We noted in the Goblin and Worgen previews that our characters started off at level 5 instead of the usual level 1.  Blizzard did this on purpose to shield our virgin brains from experiencing "some very cool stuff."  We weren't able to experience it, but the crew at PC Gamer UK did, and they filled us in on the details. The worgen story is told via a flashback to the good ole days of no curse, the Scourge first encroaching on the lands, and the initial whispers of some sort of plague.  It's at this time that we come across, and join up with, Crowley, a man who believes Gilneas' isolationism will be the fall of the kingdom.  Upon realizing that the worgen you are defending the city's cathedral against are your feral friends, you succumb to the curse yourself.  It's a this point that the story merges with our hands-on experience. The goblin experience continues to intrigue me.  Starting at level 1, we are placed in the role of a well-off entrepreneur that spends his life savings trying to escape the morally corrupt Kezan, the goblin home city.  Following that bit of moral depravity is the fact that our life savings only manages to buy us a one way ticket into slavery.  Thank god the Alliance blew up the ship before we were delivered!  It's here that we pickup in the Lost Isles. It's mentioned in the podcast that the goblins will redesign Azshara severely.  To the point that the goblin city is designed to look like the symbol of the Horde when viewed from the sky.  Those crazy goblins. Some smaller story elements that come to light in the article is include confirmation that Garrosh will become the new Warchief.  His first act, to remove all but the orc and tauren defenders from the center of Orgrimmar.  According to Hellscream, only those races are capable of defending the center of the city.  We're also tipped off to an expanding Undercity, and a change to the fate of Southshore.  According to the piece, the Horde will no longer be responsible for the loss of Southshore, apparently a tidal wave will be the culprit. I've covered the big reveals for you, but PC Gamer UK has some additional details that are of interest.  You can pickup a copy of the magazine for the full scoop, or check out the most recent PC Gamer UK (accents!) podcast for a select discussion.  The WoW stuff is in the early section of the podcast, but is broken up by tangent discussions and comparisons - you got Champions Online in my World of Warcraft!

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If you have been killing Coren Direbrew as often as possible this year, you probably noticed the increased drop rate for the Direbrew's Remote as well as both of the Brewfest mounts. They now all seem to be a flat 5% drop rate. If you are lucky enough to get a remote, there are some novel uses for it besides teleporting your group to the Grim Guzzler during Brewfest. Something you should be doing already is visiting Plugger Spazzring when you have the chance. He resides upstairs in the Grim Guzzler and sells a few items which you can resell or have fun with: Recipe: Transmute: Fire to Earth (maybe a 10g profit), Dark Iron Ale Mugs (useful for getting Jubjub during the Darkmoon Faire and very pricey on the AH during that time), and the Sulfuron Slammer, which gets you drunk quickly and lights your feet on fire. You can also kill him; he drops the Schematic: Goblin Jumper Cables XL, which teach Goblin Engineers to make Goblin Jumper Cables XL. These can only be made by Goblin Engineers, but used by Gnomish Engineers as well. They are all but obsolete with the Gnomish Army Knife, which shares a cooldown and supposedly has a higher rate of success, rumored at 75% over the 50% rate of the cables. Regardless, the schematic continues to fetch a fair price, and hey, if you are going to hearth anyway, why not take a stroll to Blackrock Depths to try grabbing some? Another useful way to use the item is as a teleport to Searing Gorge. With the new "ghetto hearth" in patch 3.2, if you leave your group in an instance, you are teleported to the nearest graveyard. With this in mind, if you invite someone to your group, use your remote to teleport to BRD, then drop group, you will end up at Thorium Point. This is useful for Horde players who would otherwise have to fly from Undercity to get there conventionally. While not much of interest is around Searing Gorge, its useful if you decide to do Molten Core or Blackwing Lair, and it could be a useful ability come Cataclysm time. If you are the type of person who likes to get kicked out of raids, you can use it during the Razorscale encounter. It may confuse some people who are expecting some adds, and you can mock people who run up to it and accidentally teleport to BRD. Other uses are purely for visual effect or strange curiosity. Using it in nonsensical places always gets me a laugh. For example, how exactly would the mole machine get you from Outlands or Dalaran to BRD, as it not connected by earth? How does one burrow through a bridge? And, of course, what better way to impress n00bs or spitefully leave a group than using your mole machine? Be warned that you cannot use the remote while in an instance you are saved to, like heroics or raids, so you will look silly if you try to use it and fail.

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Gamasutra's Chris Remo recently sat down with Alex Afrasiabi to chat about some of the design philosophy behind the upcoming expansion. Though Afrasiabi might not be the household name that a Samwise Didier, Tom Chilton, or Mike Morhaime is, you might start to hear it more often. Why? Because he occupies a very important position on the development team: Lead World Designer for Cataclysm. And with the world about to undergo some significant changes, he's got his work cut out for him. Afrasiabi remains tight-lipped in the interview, typical for a Blizzard employee, but he does paint an exciting (if destructive) future for Azeroth and hints about what we might expect are dropped like bread crumbs for those who can read between the lines. For instance, he cites that "the cataclysm starts out with rumbles, and what those rumbles are are the stirrings of Deathwing beneath the world." Perhaps, then, we'll start to feel earthquakes as part of the events leading up to the release of the expansion. Zones like the Barrens are in need of a major overhaul, while those like Loch Modan still meet Blizzard's standards. He also spends some time talking about how they prioritized zone restructuring in Cataclysm. Though certainly some attention needs to be paid to those that are important to the progression of the story (meaning areas like Azshara were going to be turned upside-down regardless), others will be changed merely based on an internal ranking system. Essentially, those zones that Blizzard decided they were most unhappy with will undergo drastic modifications, while those that were deemed acceptable will be remodeled less. According to Afrasiabi, Loch Modan is one part of the world that will be transformed "lightly" (though he hesitates to say any given zone will be affected as little as that term might imply). Much of the article focuses on the use of phasing and its role in quest design from here on out. Apparently, Blizzard wants to focus more on "showing, instead of telling," which seems to mean less reliance on quest text to relay the story. Providing players with visual information, or scenes that are acted out in the course of completing a mission, seems to be the way of the future. One of the exercises that Blizzard's quest designers reportedly utilize is to see if someone can figure out what they're supposed to be doing with being given any textual information. They better they can manage without it, the better the quest's design is. One big surprise to come out of the interview is that the invention of phasing was sort of an "a-ha!" moment, a serendipitous accident like Newton watching the apple fall from the tree. Afrasiabi says that it the mechanics, now used to create a more progressive game world, was born out of a bug in the Blade's Edge Mountains. Phasing was implemented by a programmer as a quick fix for the problem, but ended up becoming key to the future of World of Warcraft. Of course, this is only a taste. I encourage everybody to head on over to Gamasutra and check out the rest of the interview. There's plenty more to read, and some really intriguing stuff in there worth speculating about!

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You may have heard of 3 Point Entertainment before. They're the creators of the official World of Warcraft beer steins. Well, they couldn't just let such a monumental (and conveniently-themed) event like Brewfest just go by without honoring it, right? Of course not. And their replica of the recently added Coren Direbrew drop, the Tankard O' Terror, does just that. This 226 iLevel BoE Mace, discovered by our very own Juggynaut, is a very rare drop in-game, but just about anybody can score the real life version of the mug for a cool $39.99. Though it's the cheapest of the company's steins by a fair margin, 3 Point didn't slouch on the craftsmanship. With all of its lo-fi angles and textures modeled after those in the game, replica isn't just a buzz word, it's a promise. You'd swear they were actually made by the finest Dwarven stoneworkers in Azeroth. While the Tankard O' Terror's authenticity is no doubt amusing, it's questionable whether or not anyone would actually want to drink out of it. Certainly, with a 2-liter capacity, it can hold a lot of brew, and the company insists that entire collection of mugs is perfectly safe to use in the act of imbibing, but this one's not very ergonomic, is it? The handle doesn't look particularly comfortable to hold and, while there are not pictures provided of the tankard from above, it looks like it might have a wide lip. Of course you could always wield it as weapon, like it's intended to be in the game. At a height of nearly 10 inches, and a weight of 4 lbs,  there's little doubt it could be used to crack a few skulls if the need should arise. Or, you could just set it out to view as a nice piece of World of Warcraft-themed ephemera. Although you can purchase them now, please note that shipping and handling is not included in the price tag, and that they will not actually be available until at least mid-November. Be sure to check out the other steins while you're at the website, most of which are a bit more ornate than the Tankard O' Terror and feature artwork by well-known names like Samwise Didier and Alex Horley.

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The first thing we did upon entering Onyxia's Lair for the first time in several years was wipe. Foolishly, after pulling the first trash mob, the tank managed to grab the attention of a second. Having walked down the slope, and farther into the cave, this left him out of our healers' line of sight. Our token meat shield soon found himself added to Onyxia's collection of floor rugs, which meant that the rest of us were quickly picked off one by one. Ahh yes, having my face cratered by Lair trash! Just like old times! It stung even harder when the quick jaunt back to the entrance was met with another death. I guess those Warders weren't quite done with us yet after our Hunter attempted to Feign Death and, for one reason or another, failed at doing so. The affair made me doubly sour, though I couldn't blame him for his actions. After all, as a Rogue, I would've Vanished if I hadn't been next in line for a beating after the tank. It turned out, though, that we'd just run into some bad luck. To use a common phrase, raiding Onyxia's Lair at 80 was like trying to ride a bike again: you never truly forget. Regardless, that first time you get back on the seat and grab the handle bars, your ride is going to be a little shaky. Promptly enough, we cleared out the remainder of the trash and found ourselves at the gaping maw of the dastardly dragon's inner sanctum. After briefly recapping the encounter for those who hadn't done the fight in a very long time (or ever), we breached the brood mother's den. The first thing that struck me off right off the bat was how claustrophobic the room felt. I always remembered it being gigantic and, with 10 people instead of 40, it should have seemed even roomier than it did. Memories are weird that way, I guess. They tend to become exaggerated or warped over time and raiding experiences are, apparently, no exception. And so the fight unfolded in ways that it never did when it was a part of vanilla end-game content. Sure, we wiped once, after failing to assign a tank to one pack of whelps during Phase 2 (you know, the one where she flies around in the air), and then losing a couple of people to her first Deep Breath (which, contrary to popular opinion, she did not seem to do more often!), but we caught on quickly and downed Onyxia on the second attempt without a single death. A well-placed Tremor Totem completely nullified her Bellowing Roar ability in Phase 3, making it only slightly harder than Phase 1.  The only new twist seemed to be the inclusion of a new add, the Onyxian Lair Guard, which spawns every so often. To tell the truth, I'm not sure what this says about the encounter. It surely couldn't have always been this easy, as I distinctly recall spending hours in here on certain nights way back when. Angry Raid Leader will forever remind us of how frustrating the encounter can be. Sure the old girl hits a little harder, has a few more hit points, and adds can quickly get out of control if you don't burn them down, but it's nothing unmanageable. This isn't Hard Mode Mimiron, after all. Maybe we've all just gotten better as players? That's always a possibility, but if the Onyxia was over-tuned at Level 60, I'd argue that she's under-tuned at Level 80. Let's not forget that the reintroduction of Onyxia is more of a love letter to the old raid than a legitimate addition to current-tier raiding, and that Blizzard probably wants as many players to be able to access it as possible. What once was a barrier is now a gateway. On the whole, though, I think it's easier to make sense of the encounter because it's fundamentally less chaotic. Running a raid in the old days meant wrangling thirty-nine other people, making sure that they were always where they were supposed to be and that they could ably side-step the Deep Breaths or stay off the cracks in the floor when an Eruption was pending. The more bodies there are in the room, the greater the chance of someone being knocked into the whelps, as well. Part of me really wanted Onyxia to come back and show modern raiders what a really, truly tough encounter could bring to the table. That may not have happened, but I'm still grateful for the chance to revisit one of the premiere raids in the game. It was great seeing some of that old loot drop again, too. Our first foray into the Level 80 version of Onyxia's Lair didn't leave us with a mount, but we did nab a Gleaming Quel'Serrar and I'm looking forward to nabbing the Enlarged Onyxia Hide Bag one of these days. It may not be as difficult or imposing as my memories would have be believe, but in the end, I think it'll find a spot in our weekly rotation of raids, at least until the gear is completely outclassed by the next tier of content. Have any of you had the chance to go toe-to-claw with the revamped version of Onyxia? We'd love to know what you think and whether or not it lives up to the legend!

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They called us crazy, you and I! Those of us who paid a cool $40 just for the privilege to watch BlizzCon 2009 unfold live in front of our eyes, even as the leeches caught re-streamed feeds (of questionable quality) on other sites that shall not be named! Well, unable to attend the event myself, having such unbridled access to the proceedings from the comfort of my desk chair helped me bring the rest of you fine, up-to-the-minute coverage of all the news, but the promise of an exclusive in-game pet certainly didn't hurt. I initially lamented the regrettably long wait time (if I recall correctly, 6-8 weeks) between the event and the arrival of Grunty the Murloc Marine in my Inbox, but it ended up going by like a Summer breeze. It even arrived a little early, as it's actually only been a month since BlizzCon wrapped up. So if you purchased the live stream, either over the television through DIRECTV Pay-Per-View, or online through RayV, check your e-mail, as your activation code should be there by now. All you have to do is take that code and head on over to http://www.blizzcon.com/pet, click on the button, and type or copy and paste it into the dialog box. Keep in mind that a Battle.net ID is required to complete the transaction, so if you haven't linked your World of Warcraft account yet, you're going to have to do that first before you claim your prize. After that, log into the game and you should have an in-game mail from Master Handler Sylvester (an NPC who sends out all of the limited edition pets) which includes a Heavy Murloc Egg. Using the egg will add Grunty the Murloc Marine to your list of pets and will provide you with the Feat of Strength [The Marine Marine], as well! Grunty will leap from side to side with his gun at the ready, ever vigilant of impending Zerg invasions, and occasionally fire his rifle. Find a friend with a Zergling pet for even more fun!

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Mo' Money, Mo' Problems features tips and tricks to striking it rich in World of Warcraft.  If you need some extra gold to cover those costly repair bills, are working on an epic flyer for your umpteenth alt, or are attempting to hit the gold cap, Mo' Money, Mo' Problems is for you.  Have ideas or tips you'd like to submit?  Then @iTZKooPA or leave a detailed comment. Ahh, gold, I collect it even though I have little use for it these days.  Due to that fact I am willing to share my gold making ways with you, free of charge!  No longer will you have to drop real money on some random gold making guide seen on Google Ads panes.  You can just come to your friendly ProjectLore were we, and the community, will collect, refine and categorize ways to turn a buck in our favorite MMORPG.  We've already given out a few basic tips in the past, but now I will pull out all the stops, and go so far as to tell you my biggest money makers. On this second edition of Mo' Money, Mo' Problems we will cover ways to turn Brewfest into a beer drinking and money making seasonal event.  Okay, ways may be stretching it, as I have only found one surefire scheme to turn a tidy profit from the seasonal event.  The quests generally reward nothing but steins and tokens, and the loot from Coren Direbrew is unvendorable and not disenchantable.  All of it except the Tankard O' Terror.  The gnome-sized tankard is truly a money maker. For starters, the tankard is the only BoE weapon above ilvl 200.  That makes it worth at least 1000 gold right there.  The mug isn't exactly rare, I've already seen a few, but it's highly limited availability, only drops during Brewfest of course, will also impact the price.  The non-unique status means that a moneymaker like yourself can have on in the AH, and continue to farm for another.  Oh, and people may want to dual wield them, driving up the demand, thus the price, further.  A perfect storm of potential profit in my mind. That's all pretty basic stuff, but here's the real tip, hold out on putting your tankard on the AH.  As mentioned, the supply is limited by the presence of Brewfest.  If you don't need the money right now, then you'll be able to raise your profit to stupid levels if you can hold out until a few weeks after Brewfest is complete.  Just be sure to play the AH before Blizzard decides to release another high ilvl weapon for the next seasonal event! Tankard O' Terror is running around 1500 gold on my server at the moment.  What it's priced at on yours?  Have you already cashed in?

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One of the features of World of Warcraft that really pulled me into the game was the seamless transition between zones. I had just stopped playing Final Fantasy XI, which had a dismal loading time between zones and really made the world feel disconnected. There was no way all of those zones would fit together on a world map. WoW's seamless transition between zones offered a great level of immersion. The few loading screens were either from crossing continents, which felt justified with a picture of a world map, or for instanced dungeons. Going through a portal and getting instanced really felt like I was being removed from the world and placed elsewhere; if I looked out onto Silverpine from Shadowfang Keep, I couldn't see other players or even monsters wandering the world like I would if I was outside. It made instances where you observe the outside world, like Scholomance (or recently Oculus or Utgarde Keep), a little confusing at times until I reminded myself I was still in Azeroth. Fast forward to the release of Burning Crusade. I was ecstatic to play a Blood Elf, but one thing that took me out of the game was zoning between Quel'thalas and the rest of the world. The transporter to Undercity and portals into Silvermoon weren't a big deal since they took some time to load anyway, but simply walking into Eastern Plaguelands requiring a loading screen to go from the new "Burning Crusade instance" to the Eastern Kingdoms seemed unacceptable. Additionally, for players in the Draenei and Blood Elf cities and starting zones, player arrows on the minimap showed up when players were in other Burning Crusade lands, like Outland, but not nearby in Eastern Plaguelands! I was convinced it was one of the reasons by beloved Silvermoon city wasn't more popular and why I spent so little time there, even compared to the Undercity. This got me thinking forward to Cataclysm. With flying mounts now allowed in Azeroth, unless Wintergrasp-like flying restrictions are put in place, most of the world is going to have to be one big chunk of an instance. Blizzard will have to make sure that the Ghostlands border with Eastern Kingdoms is ironed out and remove the instancing restriction. Acherus will probably now be accessible to non-Death Knight players. The Draenei areas will likely be brought into the fold as well. Some areas like the Echo Isles and other distant zones may not have to be accessible by flying mount to the main continents. The implications of this are interesting. The Burning Crusade starting zones were instanced because they wanted the new starting quests to be exclusive to people who bought the expansion to sell more games. In addition, Jewelcrafting, the new profession at the time, only had starting trainers in Silvermoon and the Exodar, so players had to have Burning Crusade to train for it. The question that now arises is: what will happen to this Burning Crusade exclusive content? Will owners of only original WoW now be able to train in Jewelcrafting and do the Blood Elf and Draenei quests, and even maybe make Blood Elf and Draenei characters? Perhaps Burning Crusade, and maybe even Wrath or Cataclysm, will be rolled into the original WoW. The start-up cost to get into WoW is getting price prohibitive for getting new players, and players starting anew will already be experiencing the new post-cataclysm world. These new players would be "free riders" on the Cataclysm content, so why not include all the expansions, at least through Wrath, to new players? If they are getting the content anyway and it entices them to stay longer, they will make more money on subscriptions from enticing players to stay anyway. What do you think? Is it time to roll all of the old games together?

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Which is the Dark Iron Dwarf, and which is the keg? They're both short and fat - your guess is as good as mine!

As iTZKooPA already pointed out in his detailed Brewfest guide, the onset of this merriest of holidays brings with it a host of achievements and quests to keep us amused while chugging enough beer to dizzy even the stoutest of dwarves. I didn't get too into Brewfest last year, since I was low-level and focused on changing that. So this year I was excited to dive right in from the start. So why am I already hungover from all the content we have to do for the event? I think it's because two of the repeating themes of the holiday revolve around two of my least favorite antics: performing actions when not being able to see anything (in this case, because of drunken blurriness), and controlling a mount (for Brewfest, a ram) that has built-in limitations. For some of you, these may be your most favorite in-game tricks ever! But for me, not so much. I like the concept of Brewfest, and of course, knocking back some drinks should have some side effects on the drinker. Usually, I think the in-game drunk effect of blurred vision and the inability to walk straight is pretty funny. And I still enjoyed it the first couple of times around. But then I had to get smashed over and over again to catch Wolpertingers, find pink elekks, jump off a ledge in drunken stupor and, of course, fight back Dark Iron Dwarves intent on stealing our brew. Day one of Brewfest, it took my server only a couple of tries to win the epic battle by smashing those thieves over the head repeatedly with a giant mug. There's been some debate over whether this is bug-related or just because people aren't targeting the dwarves right, but both Monday and yesterday, amidst post-patch-lag, we had absolutely no luck in winning the fight. Which means 20 less tokens so far, but that could add up to a lot more if we don't get with the program. Maybe I'm being too hard on the ram quests. They're not that horrible, once you get the right whipping rhythm down for keeping them at a steady pace without getting fatigued. Just don't make the mistake of being in a group when you complete them. I've had two separate occasions already in which only one person in a group was able to turn in the Bark For... quests, then it would automatically fail the other person. Once again, that could be a bug or it could be Blizzard's way of preventing people from having an easier time completing the quests because they could ride on the coattails of someone else. One thing I have been thoroughly enjoying is whipping up on Coren Direbrew and getting some sweet loot. If you group up right and use your alts, you can get in quite a few runs every day on this guy and keep trying for those mounts and weapons! So has anyone else been having a hard time fighting back the Dark Iron Dwarves? What other bugs have you encountered? Despite my frustrations with a couple I've come across, I'm aiming to get Brewmaster - so that's enough to keep me chugging. Cheers!

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