Project Lore

All this turtle wants to do, all day every day, is catch that stupid carrot on a stick.

One thing that constantly fascinates me about WoW is how everyone gets something different out of the game. Some of us really love raiding or running dungeons, others have fun hunting for achievements, some have a grand time playing the auction house, and for some players, questing and learning the lore is the optimal gameplay.

And depending on what we like to do, we tend to prioritize our limited gameplay time to fit in as many of our favorite aspects as possible. And because of the way that Blizzard has smartly created a focus on doing certain things once a day, whether that be for daily quests, your first random heroic, or trying for an achievement in a particular heroic. And because there are so many things that we can do once per day (per toon), that leads many of us to developing daily routines.

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I know a lot of other ladies, besides myself, who play WoW. I'm pretty good friends with many IRL, and I've also met a ton of talented ladies through my guild. But I don't often hear many stories about the women of WoW and how they're making an impact on the world we live in. That's why I perked up recently at hearing two fine examples of women who play WoW, and why they're shattering stereotypes on gamer girls and, more importantly, on the gaming industry as a whole.

The first story I came across on game designer Jane McGonigal doesn't deal directly with Warcraft (although she mentions WoW as one of her favorite games), but more on innovation in gaming and promoting the positive aspects that games can have on culture. Last week, McGonigal spoke on this topic at the TED 2010 conference (TED, a nonprofit organization, stands for "technology, entertainment and design"). The conference featured big-name speakers including Bill Gates, Jamie Oliver and Sarah Silverman. But it was McGonigal who drew my eye. Here's a brief interview CNN did with her:

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The titles that we choose to have emblazoned over our toons (or lack thereof) can say a lot about what kind of players we are. And it also can say a lot about who we are in terms of what captures our attention in-game.

Personally, I choose a title based simply on what I think sounds cool. I'm partial to Champion of the Frozen Wastes, Merrymaker, the Hallowed and, now that I've got it, the Love Fool. None of these were particularly difficult or time consuming, I just like the way they sound.

But that would be different if I had any of the five badass titles that we've previously written about (the previous list included The previous list included Salty, Loremaster, of the Nightfall, the Immortal and any arena title), or any of the other extremely rare and difficult titles out there (I'm looking at you, Kingslayer). Add to that list a plethora of other titles such as the Exalted and the Insane along with some now-unobtainable titles. Now any of those, I would wear proudly.

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I'm usually a gung-ho fan of world events. Since hitting 80 on my main in September, I've plunged myself head-first into every event in the quest to complete What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been and earning that coveted Violet Proto-Drake. And since it's my first time doing most of the event-related achievements, they've been intriguing enough to hold my interest.

But over the course of February, something changed and withered away at my enthusiasm for world events. I blame the latest combination of Love is in the Air butted up and overlapped with the Lunar Festival.

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Sure, holiday bosses (and the potential for their phat lootz) are one of the biggest draws for many of us to world events. But up until now, a lot of drama has come with them - the potential for players not being "fresh" for their daily kill, the difficulty in forming groups late in the day, and of course QQ over rolls on loot.

Patch 3.3.3 aims to bring closure to some of those issues by bringing in the LFG system that we so love here at Project Lore. And now we also have a bit of clarification from blue poster Zarhym on exactly how it will be implemented (at least as of now).

Buried within the Patch Notes for 3.3.3 on the PTR, we have this little morsel:

• World Event bosses (such as Ahune for the Fire Festival) will now be accessible through the Dungeon Finder. Players must use the Dungeon Finder to access these bosses.

And here's what Zarhym said to bring a bit more clarity to the matter:

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It was one of those fights that took everything my raid group had to get through it. And that made it all the sweeter when we finally beat it.

I'm talking about that ugly, bumbling, high-pitched experiment of an abomb, Rotface. For whatever reason, my 10-man raid crew had opted to take the right fork in the hallway outside of Professor Putricide's laboratory. Although probably the harder of the two abominations, we set our sights on downing Rotface first, and focused on getting down the tactics we needed to down him.

Our first night trying him out seemed encouraging. Our best attempt had gotten Rotface to 20 percent, and we were certain it was only a matter of time. Then things went south.

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Welcome to The High Inquisitor, where Project Lore pokes fun at all those crazy, unexplained WoW impossibilities. While the answers to these great mysteries of Azeroth often are a matter of game mechanics, here we’re less interested in that aspect, and more interested in exploring our own unique brand of lore that could happily provide explanations. The inquisitor will make her own suggestions, and the best comment(s) with more possibilities will be highlighted with the next edition’s inquisition.

Despite appearances, no zhevras were harmed in the making of this screenshot.

All of us probably have experienced the odd physics of Azeroth at one point or another. Probably on a pretty regular basis, we'll see a monster's corpse die while in mid-air, or our flying mount's wing seemingly travel through a solid wall we pass by. Perhaps we're used to it enough that we don't even think about it all that much. But that is just what the High Inquisitor is all about. So question, I will - Let's find a lore-tastic reason (beyond the actual programming quirk called clipping) to explain this phenomenon!

To the right, we have a classic example that occurred on a Zeppelin while I was running around on my main and finishing up the last of my Love Fool achievements. My zhevra apparently had other motivations.

While on board, his body repositioned in the oddest of ways. Not only did the front half of his body appear to be on the other side of the wooden structure leading to the cabin down below, but his front hooves also appeared to be standing on air as if it was as solid as the wood clearly behind his back legs!

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Heartbourne brought up some excellent and not-often-talked-about points in his recent post on the logic and thought process behind the use of frost emblems to buy gear versus their use for gold. Depending on how you play and what you value in-game, there's a lot of aspects to consider before spending those emblems. Read it - it will get you questioning whether you're spending your emblems right.

I'd like to bring a bit of a counterpoint as to why I choose gear over gold. As Heartbourne contends, using your Frost Emblems for gear is pretty much standard despite the fact that they could instead be used to buy and then auction off Primordial Saronite and earn yourself a nice profit. Despite the gold that you and I could be earning from that, I'm here to champion the case of using your emblems to buy gear.

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Each time a new Vault of Archavon boss is added, it seems that a PUG's chances of actually completing a full run decrease more and more.

VoA, when you're in a situation like mine in that your faction rarely holds Wintergrasp, can be a tough raid to pre-plan. Once you hold Wintergrasp, your regular 10- or 25-man groups likely aren't entirely on, and other guildies may already be saved to the raid. But those two Emblems of Frost for each kill of Toravon are precious loot that you don't want to pass up; usually, the situation calls for a PUG.

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You guys may have noticed yesterday that ProjectLore.com now has a fresh, updated look. We're still the same Project Lore crew you know and love, just with a little more functionality and an overhaul from Squarespace.

Up top, you'll see a few new navigational features that will help you get around the site. We still have the same fun forums for all our readers, and we've added links for quick access to the Project Lore fan guild page, to our WoW glossary,  to the Project Lore store, and to our social page.

We've also highlighted a few of our more popular blog columns, including Proverb and WoWFlix, and given you easy access to news on Cataclysm and, of course, to our ever-popular episodes. Along the right-hand column you can sort blogs and episodes by their author and take a look at our handy guides on classes and talents, professions and instances.

Along with the new look, we also have a new podcast that we're hoping to continue with and grow in the coming weeks. Episode 3 has been recorded and will be posted soon for all of you to enjoy.

But we know not everything is perfect yet. Most of our archived blog posts from 2009 and earlier have formatting issues,  and we lost a large number of reader comments from the past few months. Please be patient with us, also, as we fix some links that don't appear to be working yet.

That's where you all come in. Although we know of some issues on the site resulting from our transition, we also know that more may arise as we work through getting our site as functional as possible. If you see anything that could be improved, please post a comment and let us know. Our comments feature, although a little different from our previous homepage, should still be working for all of you. And we'd love to hear more feedback from readers on what you think.

We hope you enjoy our new look!