Project Lore

Recently our Mount Runs have been able to include my viewpoint thanks to the wonders of screen capture software. A few of you who are following the Project Lore twitter have also caught a couple of my live streams of Ulduar raids on Ustream (Another raid is scheduled for tonight at 7pm PST!). Some of you have wondered what addons I use. I use a lot of them so I thought I'd just list off all of them. Also here is a screenshot with a few of them labeled (click it for a bigger size). Any questions are welcomed in the comments below!

• Align - overlays a grid to neatly arrange things on the screen
• Aloft - changes the nameplates over character's heads
• Altoholic - tracks all sort of useful stuff between alts and guildies
• ArkInventory - Organizes my inventory, bank, etc.
• AtlasLoot - Shows bosses loot tables
• Auctioneer - Scans the auction for tons of statistics and data. Way more than I can use
• Cartographer - adds functionality to the ingame map
• Clique - click casting made simple!
• CT_MailMod - lots of useful mail functions
• Deadly Boss Mods - tracks bosses' abilities and more
• Dominos - customizes action bars
• ElkBuffBars - shows buffs and makes them easier to see at a glance
• FishingAce - right click casting
• Fubar - along with tons of plugins, houses a lot of info
• Gladius - enemy unit frames for use in arenas
• Grid - Compact raid unit frames
• LootDB - shows where loot came from (a little redundant with Altoholic I know)
• MikScrollingBattleText - changes combat text
• NPCScan - finds rare mobs
• Omen - Threat Meter
• OmniCC - Shows cooldowns on buttons
• oRA - tons of cool raid functionality
• Outfitter - gear swapping and item sets
• Overachiever - some cool Achievement stuff
• pError - hides errors like "Not Enough Mana" or whatever you want!
• PitBull - Unit frames (health/mana/etc)
• PowerAuras - Very customizable to show when buffs and abilities are up/down.
• Prat - Edits the chat window
• Quartz - Casting bars
• RatingBuster - Compares stats with currently equipped items, shows differences, tells how stats affect you.
• Recount - Damage Meter
• simpleMinimap - Moves the minimap, makes it square, etc
• SunnArt - creates a viewport with nice art!
• TipTac - changes in-game tooltips
• TotemTimers - does what it says
• UrbanAchiever - More cool achievement functionality
• XLoot - Changes loot window, group loot, masterloot, etc
• ZOMGBuffs - shows who needs what buffs in a raid

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Patch 3.2 is finally available on the PTR, which means that players will be able to find out all sorts of fun information about what changes lay ahead for us. Most of the changes are covered in the patch notes, but MMO-Champion found a bunch of new achievements to go along with the new patch. I, as an achievement whore, am very excited about these new (pointless) goals. Browsing through the list of achievements, they come out in a few different categories, covering the 10- and 25-player versions of the Crusader's Colloseum along with their heroic modes, Isle of Conquest (the brand new battleground), Koralon (the new Vault boss), and Pilgrim's Bounty and Pirate Day/Day of the dead. Wait, Pilgrim's Bounty? Pirate Day? Day of the Dead? New world events! Since Pirate Day and Day of the Dead only have one achievement listed for each of them, I'd assume they'll occur for only one day and have minimal impact on the world for their duration. But Pilgrim's Bounty raises my excitement level! There are a number of fun looking achievements to go along with the new holiday that I'll assume will take place over Thanksgiving week. For those of you unaware, Thanksgiving takes place on the fourth Thursday of every November in the United States. Of course, Blizzard could always adopt the Canadian version, which takes place on the second Monday of October each year. The only question I have is whether or not we'll have to participate in this new world event to get our Violet Proto Drakes from the Long Strange Trip achievement. If it's anything like the new and improved Noblegarden, then we will. I'm OK with that, but I'm sure some of the other players hoping to get that 310% mount might get upset. In addition to those new holiday achievements, there are a few new Feats of Strength, which hint at some more free pets for logging in. A Jade Tiger sounds like fun! What are your thoughts on these new achievements? Anything in particular draw your interest? What about the new world event? Can't wait or sick of holidays?

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This news makes me a sad panda. Currently, Jewelcrafters are able to cut Dragon's Eyes for themselves which give higher stats than any other currently available gems. For example a Bright Dragon's Eye gives +54 attack power, 22 more than the Bright Scarlet Ruby. With a maximum of three socketed in equipped gear, this gives Jewelcrafters 66 extra attack power (or the equivalent in other stats). That's on par with most other professions. For example, Enchanting adds 32 attack power to each ring, or 64 total. Alchemists get added effect from elixirs and flasks, so a Flask of Endless Rage gives 244 attack power to an alchemist instead of the 180 it normally gives (a bonus of 64). The difference is in the prismatics. This quality of the Dragon's Eye gems allow jewelcrafters to activate metagems without sacrificing a single stat. It also allows them to gain socket bonuses that they normally wouldn't get. Bornakk just announced an upcoming change that will remove that feature once the next major content patch lands (presumably patch 3.2):

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

Using me as an example, Dragon's Eyes being prismatic mean I was able to gem for an extra 66 attack power, gained three socket bonuses of 12, 8, and 8 attack power, and replaced a blue gem that had 12 stamina (something I don't want to gem for in PvE) with a gem that gives a pure stat. The total bonus from switching to jewelcrafting for me? 110 attack power. That's a lot more than any other profession could hope to give me from a Min-Max PvE standpoint. So I switched from Herbalism to Jewelcrafting. Epic gems are coming sometime in the future. Since they should be on-par with the currently obtainable stormjewels, which are unique equipped, Each one will give 40 attack power. Developer's plans to make epic gems much more obtainable than they were in BC mean my bonus from being a jewelcrafter will from 110 attack power to 32 attack power once those become available. Blacksmiths, who get two extra sockets on their gear, will go from a profession bonus of 64 attack power (on par with other professions) to 80 attack power. Looks like there's going to be a new best profession in town.

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While looking for more information about the new Mountain Dew/WoW cross over promotion, I came across their forums and found this post by the Gamefuel Admin. Turns out the pet is simply a prize to anyone who registers on the GameFuel site who has a Blizzard Account. While there's still no official word that the battle bots are the prize, it's pretty much been assumed by everyone to be the case. So if all you want is a new pet and you don't want to have to participate in the drawings, don't want to have to click on different ads, don't want to have to do your IRL dailies, you don't have to. Just head over to the Mountain Dew GameFuel site, register, and (somehow) you'll eventually get your pet. Might as well enter for some of the cool stuff they have to offer with the points you get for signing up, though. A new Alienware laptop sounds pretty good to me!

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Kotaku just came to the realization via Official Blue Post (tm) that one of Blizzard's projects, their unnamed next-gen MMO, is an entirely new franchise, which means it's not Starcraft, it's not Warcraft, it's not Diablo, it's not Lost Vikings, it's not Rock n' Roll Racing, and most disappointingly it's not Battle Chess. Zarhym says, in response to a poster wondering why Blizzard hasn't started advertising for their new MMO:

We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it's a shell of a game thus far. We've already stated it'll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It's an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this.

So, they're working on all new stuff. They have two fantasy titles releasing along with a Sci-Fi future title, so what's next? Where will their new MMO end up being set? The wild west? An apocalyptic future? A realistic contemporary world? Ancient Egypt? A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? Canada? I'm thinking none of the above, because Blizzard has a way of surprising us all. Nevertheless, it may end up being a battle between two Blizzard MMOs at the top, with some players unable to tear themselves away from WoW, but many making the transition to their new property. What do you think? Are you getting tired of the Fantasy MMO? Are you looking forward to Blizzard's new title? Where do you want to see it set, and what do you want it to include? How many question marks fit in one post?

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In an effort to reduce lag by reducing the number of players who are in Wintergrasp at one time, the daily quests in the zone, such as No Mercy for the Merciless, Slay them all!, and Defend the Siege will only be converted into a new weekly quest format in an upcoming patch. Honor and Stone Keeper Shard rewards are said to be increased, though the gold reward doesn't seem to be affected. MMO-Champion is reporting that certain quests are giving 20 Stone Keeper Shards each, but the current reward is showing 10, so we will have to wait and see how things unfold. There are a couple of known issues with the new weekly format, specifically the quest showing up as a yellow exclamation point instead of a blue one and the quests not showing up after the reset until the player moves out of line of sight of the NPC who gives it. I am not sure how much this change is going to affect the numbe of players who go into Wintergrasp during each fight, as most of the people I know go in for Marks of Wintergrasp or so they can go into the Vault of Archavon afterwards, and not necessarily for the quests. , the quests are a nice bonus, and the new format may actually increase the amount of honor and shards that many players get who don't usually finish the dailies every day, like me. What do you guys think? Is it going to affect you at all, or will you still go into WG every time you get the chance?

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The Folks over at MMO-Champion have once again dug through the latest game files and found new stuff for everyone to drool over. Grunty the Murloc Marine is just that, and if they're following their trend from the past few events (a murloc pet, murloc costume, and mount with a murloc doll), the murloc space marine might just be the in-game item from 2009's BlizzCon. Considering Starcraft 2's public beta is on the verge of coming out, it fits quite perfectly. The pet itself has an awesome gun and an animation of shooting the gun, which you can see above. Check it out or head to MMO-Champion for high res screenshots!

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It looks like we'll have to stop calling the Swift White Hawkstrider the Chicken Mount, because Blizzard is adding an actual chicken mount into the game. MMO-Champion once again revealed some of the newest items in the game before anyone even knew they existed. One of the loot cards included in Upper Deck's newest Trading Card Game expansion - "Field of Heroes" - will be the Magical Rooster Egg. This teaches El Pollo Grande, which as you can see, is a very large chicken that players can ride around on. How amazing does that sound? It may be a little too out there for me, but I'll decide what I think when I actually see one in game. There are also two other new loot cards incoming, one being the Ogre Piñata, which will presumably output candy when you break it. This is cute, but I think it may have been a better item if Blizzard used a different model such as, say Void Reaver, Archavon, or some other boss called a "Loot Piñata" by the players. Oh well, breaking open an ogre to find candy should be fun. Lastly, we'll be seeing the Path of Cenarius, which will leave flowers in your wake as you run around the world. Lifeblood already does this for me, but I may be dropping herbalism soon for something a little more min-max (aka Jewelcrafting), but I don't really need this for the time being. I've still yet to see a lot of the loot card items that are still available, such as the Foam Sword Rack, which looks like so much fun. Although, thanks to a nice warlock, I was able to get a Sandbox Tiger, which is fun to pull out next to a real Spectral Tiger. Anybody looking forward to picking up a gigantic chicken?

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Blizzard just put out a press release detailing the ticket sales for this year's BlizzCon. Tickets will be more expensive than 2008, at $125 instead of the $100 they were last year, and they will go on sale in two seperate blocks on the Blizzard Store. The first sale will start on Saturday, May 16. The second will start two weeks later, on May 30. Those who can't afford or who are unable to get their tickets due to say, technical difficulties, will be able to catch the event both on DIRECTV and via an internet stream. Both will be priced at $39.95 and will include the exclusive in-game item that comes in the swag bag. Last year it was the Blizzard Bear with a murloc on top. What murloc themed item might it be this year? Nobody knows. The press release also cites improvements to the Blizzard Store with a queuing system, but only time will tell how much those improvements will help with the high demand on the check-out servers. BlizzCon 2009 will be held, once again, in the Anaheim Convention Center and will take place on August 21 and 22. One other thing of note is that the press release states that signing up for a Battle.net account will help streamline the ordering process, so you may want to do that before tickets go on sale to make it as easy as possible to get those tickets. We hope to see you guys there once again this year!

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The stats on Val'anyr, the new legenary healing mace that is obtainable in Ulduar, were revealed a little while ago, but the special proc that is on the mace has been a bit of a mystery since its tooltip was discovered. Ferraro over at Paladin Schmaladin has been posting over the past few weeks about the mace, and the discussion sparked a couple of developers - Bornakk and Ghostcrawler - to let the community know exactly how the proc works. The basics are these: There is a 10% chance on any heal for the weilder of Val'anyr to gain the blessing from the mace, as long as the heal is not completely overhealing (ie the target is not at full health when you heal them). It is a 15 second effect with a 45 second internal cooldown. For the next 15 seconds, all of your healing spells will create a shield on their target(s) for 15% of the heal. This includes overheal and spells that do no actual healing. The shield will stack with itself, and will max out at 20,000 damage absorbed. Bornakk gave a few examples of how it actually works and Ghostcrawler has answered many of the questions that have come up since then. Check out their posts on the official forums for the complete details. Unfortunately I won't be seeing one of these in my guild for a long time (and we haven't even seen a shard drop). Anyone out there close to collecting the 30 shards needed for it?

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