Project Lore

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. Each installment, the inquisitor will attack a previously unanswered question and attempt to explain the unknown. But she won’t rest until all plausible explanations are explored. The best, most probable comment(s) will be highlighted with the next edition’s inquisition. Looks like it's time for another High Inquisition, and just in time for the Pilgrim's Bounty festivities. In commemoration of the food that we'll all be cooking and eating this week in-game, let's ask a question that may leave you wondering whether you should have actually just eaten that 37th slice of Pumpkin Pie. But first, a quick look back at the last inquisition, where we questioned whether spirit healers are inhibiting the progression of the world by bringing everyone back to life time and time again. Many of our readers seemed puzzled by my question, and for that I can only blame myself. Yes, even the High Inquisitor gets writer's block from time to time, and I don't believe I gave a solid enough example from which you all could draw your own conclusions. Here's one: The spirit healer actually is looking toward the end-game, where players have to have earned a certain amount of fighting experience (what we like to call level 80) to take down the ultimate big bad. If the spirit healer didn't bring back all those creatures that we kill along the way to that quest, then everyone else wouldn't be able kill them and also get experience. It can be a troublesome loop at times, but it works. And here's another way to phrase it, as said by Innosinned :

...So, the question remaining is, do the enemies have a Spirit Healer? We don’t really know much about Spirit Healers, I think. Maybe they only choose to resurrect those who do good in this world. Maybe we players are allowed to linger as spirits and find our bodies back, because we are needed for a future goal, like beating the Lich King or whatever comes after he is dead.

Well put, my friend! And now onward to this special, food-inspired edition. Straight to the question this time: What in the crazy world of Azeroth makes our food stay good for so long? During this week's special Pilgrim's Bounty festivities, we make a lot of food. And, as expected, leftovers can only stay good for so long. Once all your event-inspired foods are made, they only have a duration of seven days. The same was true of our Trick-or-treat goodies, too. But they are the exception to the rule in Azeroth. For some reason, be it magic, really good preservation, or otherwise, most of our food and feasts have no expiration date. Think about that Fish Feast that we all partake in before a raid. Do you really know how old it is? Who knows how long the chef may have held on to those Musselback Sculpin, Glacial Salmon and Nettlefish before combining them with Northern Spices to create that tasty (and power-boosting) feast. Once the concoction was made, how long did it sit in his bank or bags before he used it? And wouldn't you think chefs (and their bottomless bags) must really stink while carrying all that food around?! One plausible explanation: those spices - be they mild spices, northern spices, hot spices, soothing spices, holiday spices -- you get the point -- must have some kind of mystical preserving power that keeps our food delicious and safe-to-eat forever. But then what about the recipes that no longer call for said spices? Or perhaps its not the ingredients we use, but the skill with which they are prepared. Maybe those cooking trainers are a strict bunch who won't pass on their recipes unless the trainee learns the secret of how to make the food last during wartime. Whatever the case, this is one week during which we'll all have plenty of freshly-prepared food. Eat up, while you can! And while you're at it, share your own thoughts on Azerothian foods in the comments section below. Happy Turkey-time!

Pilgrim's Bounty started, and I may as well ought to have had a target plastered onto my face. No rogues in Azeroth are safe! All are being hunted! Take shelter -- run for your lives!! Okay, so I'm being a little overly dramatic. But that's what it felt like -- that this whole Turkey Lurkey achievement has turned the World of Warcraft against rogues, encouraging players to "Blast those dirty, sneaking Rogues with your Turkey Shooter." Sure, we're sneaky. That's kind of the point. But dirty? Seriously!? On Sunday, I decided to revolt. I went into stealth as often as possible to avoid getting turkey-fied. Which was difficult while achievement hunting, considering that I cannot cook or eat from a feast table while in stealth. But I couldn't do anything in peace. I don't think I went 5 minutes without getting shot in the back while amongst the masses. Even my own guildies turned on me during 25-man Ulduar raid night. It appears that some players have a lot of pent up rage against rogues - perhaps for being stun-locked one too many times (not that I'm any good at achieving said stun-lock, but I've had it done against me, too). Then, upon completing my cooking achievements for the day, I had a moment of horror as I came to a certain realization: If I want the Pilgrim title, I, too, must take aim with my turkey shooter and morph my fellow rogues into gobbling critters. Monday, I decided to take a new approach when I saw a freshly-created level one troll rogue dancing just outside of the Horde area in Dalaran, happily getting turned into a turkey again and again, and dispelling the effects quickly so the next person could also take a shot. Horde and Alliance toons alike were invited to fire their rounds, and they bowed in thanks in return. This, I can deal with. I joined in, and soon we had a pretty good group going. My own blood elf, the troll and even a dwarf, gnome and night elf joined in to the fun at one point. We danced, we each got in our own shots on a willing party, and we did our good deed for the day by taking hits from the passers-by. I don't mind so much when I'm so obviously on display as a shooting target. When done the right way, it feels less like rogue hate. And more like rogue love. So to all you rogue-hunters out there, a simple request: a simple /bow or /thanks goes a long way. I'll take a hit for the gracious and polite any day. How far along is everyone else in your efforts for the Turkey Lurkey achievement, and overall Pilgrim achievement?

The release of Icecrown Citadel dungeons and raids via Patch 3.3 may still be weeks away, but the development team is already starting to ramp up promotion of the upcoming challenges.  This past weekend, perhaps as part of the WoW Fifth Anniversary celebration, WoW Europe posted an interview with Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg Street (also known as Ghostcrawler) about the climax to Wrath of the Lich King. I took the liberty of pulling out some of what I found to be some of the most interesting questions and answers, and also highlighting in bold some of the key statements which may (or may not) answer some of our questions about WotLK. As Amatera pointed out in his recent post about MMOzine's interview with Ghostcrawler, some of the information is a lot of what we already know. But some of the hints sprinkled throughout could also point to a little bit beyond that. If you want to read the full interview, make sure to check out the official site where its posted. Also check out the still-in-development ICC Bosstiary, which also just made its debut. Let's jump right into the interview, which touches on topics such as loot, inspiration for aspects of the dungeons, item abilities, a new faction and tier-10 gear: What were you looking forward to most about developing Icecrown Citadel?

Cory: I think the most exciting thing about developing Icecrown Citadel was just knowing that we were working on the final chapter of the Northrend expansion, and that we'd really be able to give players that ultimate sense of completion of the storyline. Arthas is a huge character in Warcraft lore, so we took a lot of pride in making this the best experience we possibly could. Icecrown and the Frozen Throne are important parts of the world of Azeroth and have quite a bit of history, especially for longtime Warcraft players. How do you convey the significance of these places and the events that took place there in design? Cory: History was a large factor in the design of Icecrown Citadel from the very beginning. When we first sat down to discuss the layout of the raid itself, we immediately went back to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne to think about how the spire from the ending cinematic could be translated into World of Warcraft. We decided to actually build Icecrown Citadel around the original spire to pull players even more into the storyline. This kind of thinking carried on throughout the entire design process. Greg: We want Icecrown to be an epic experience from top to bottom, and that includes the loot you get. We're not going to shower players in items -- well, more than we already do -- but we do want to make sure the items are sufficiently powerful so that they're upgrades for all of our players.

Is there an existing model in World of Warcraft for Icecrown Citadel's itemization or style of play? What lessons that you'd learned from earlier projects wound up being applied to Icecrown Citadel?

Greg: The nice thing about Icecrown Citadel from an itemization perspective is that we have lots of bosses. That's something of a relief coming from the Crusaders' Coliseum, where we had only five bosses. For Icecrown, we can afford to have multiple options for a particular slot -- say a healing leather bracer or a melee trinket -- and even itemize some of the more unusual pieces. We have a pretty effective system for figuring out who is going to drop what to make sure that an individual boss will be interesting to a variety of players in terms of loot. Most of our lessons learned are in the realm of what differences there should be between 10- and 25-player itemization, the role of tradeskill recipes, and what kinds of items to place with badge vendors. Cory: I think we learn lessons from every raid that we do. We didn't model Icecrown specifically after any of our previous raids, but you can definitely see influences. For example, we have a winged structure in Icecrown that players will remember from Naxxramas. Another example of an influence would be the teleporters from Ulduar. We know that players really loved that concept, so we brought it back in Icecrown.

What sorts of new loot and item abilities will we see in Icecrown?

Greg: There are three main sources of loot for Icecrown: the bosses themselves, the Emblem of Frost badge vendors, and a new faction, the Ashen Verdict, that will provide suitable rewards as well, particularly at the Exalted level. As far as the items themselves go, we want them to feel epic. In addition to having favorable optimization, we also want to try a lot of experiments to make the items feel cool and unique. We are going to try to do a lot of weapon procs, for instance, which is something we haven't done much since the original World of Warcraft.

Do you itemize Icecrown's "trash" -- the enemies between bosses -- differently from elites elsewhere in the world elsewhere?

Greg: We make sure there is epic trash loot -- specific items that only drop from trash. It helps keep players interested between bosses. However, we aren't doing Heroic trash, just Heroic bosses, so there won't be unique trash loot for Heroic versions of the 10- and 25-player versions of the raid. We try to construct the trash in such a way that it isn't trivial to go farm the first pull or whatever in hopes that an epic drops. We make our raids more accessible now in general, so I'm not sure the motivation is there to try stunts like that the way it once was. We want players who have raided so far in Wrath of the Lich King to be able to actually fight the Lich King, so chances are a lot of raiders will have plenty of opportunities to gear up. Now, the Heroics are another story -- those will be as challenging as they were in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, and the items will likewise be even better.

What have you done to make the tier-10 sets feel like a meaningful advancement from tier 8 and tier 9? How do they visually represent Icecrown's lore and history?

Greg: Not only do we want them to be a meaningful advancement, but we want them to feel really awesome. This is Arthas loot you're talking about. We started by spending a lot of time on the concept art to make sure it tied into the type of creatures you'll encounter and the whole Icecrown art "kit" in general. For example, the rogue tier-10 set has a strong geist look to it, while the hunter set has strong Nerubian elements, and the mage set looks a lot like the Blood Princes. You can see the Icecrown look and feel in a lot of pieces, which itself drew strongly from the Lich King's original helmet. Look for lots of blue, ice, skulls, and spikes. We have also spent a lot longer on the set bonuses than we usually do. It's important that they feel awesome for every class and spec. Going back to the Crusaders' Coliseum, part of the challenge we made for ourselves was to create an instance that didn't require as much time or resources as Ulduar to develop, yet was still cool. We had set bonuses for the tier-9 gear, but they were often simple -- more crit on a common ability was a typical one. For tier 10, we're really going for set bonuses that change your game up a little. At the very least, you should want to change your rotation a little, though this is easier with some classes than others.

Icecrown is the last major raid and dungeon before the release of Cataclysm -- how has that affected the design?

Greg: The major challenge from an itemization perspective is that the items have to last basically until Cataclysm. That means we can't afford to give them away too quickly, but they also need to feel powerful enough that players are motivated to keep trying for them. On the other hand, the really fun thing about doing a final raid tier is how it unties your hands. We can afford to make these items great because nothing needs to follow on their heels. It's cool to be able to optimize the items very well, because it's okay if players don't want to replace these items for a long time. Cory: We are really pushing as hard as we can to deliver the most epic experience possible. We know that our players have been waiting for this for a long time, and we plan to deliver. Everyone should expect to see this sort of storytelling and attention to detail in Cataclysm as well. I think we are always striving to pull the people who play our game into the storyline and really give them an explanation for why they're there. It won't be too long before they'll get a chance to bring the pain to Deathwing!

Well there's the core of the interview, folks, and a quite interesting one in my opinion. The gear, especially, is starting to sound more and more drool-worthy. Who else can't wait to jump in?

The WoW cooking grind has always been something I've avoided like the plague. Sure, the initial basic cooking of Spice Bread is enough to buy your way to level 50 or so cooking, but beyond that I have not ventured far. All that gathering of bear and raptor meat, clams and crab claws, eggs of all types and countless other ingredients wasn't exactly appealing to me. So I've been putting it off. Needless to say, I wasn't too pleased -- at all -- when I set off to start my Pilgrim's Bounty achievements and discovered that cooking is a staple aspect of the new holiday ( who would have thought!) I cringed at the realization that my cooking only hovered at about level 70. But I decided to not be discouraged, and soon found the shiny silver lining for myself and all of my fellow cooking procrastinators. Upon opening up your Bountiful Cookbook, you'll find five recipes that can be used in succession to bypass the other alternative grind to at least level 300+ cooking. First up: the Spice Bread Stuffing, which requires the absolute minimum cooking experience to be learned at level 1. Buy enough Simple Flour and Mild Spices to cook up a ton of Spice Bread, and level up that cooking to 100, when you can learn to make Pumpkin Pie. Rinse and repeat to cooking 160 for Cranberry Chutney, 220 for Candied Sweet Potato and 280 for Slow-Roasted Turkey. All of the ingredients, except for the turkey in that final recipe, can be purchased from the Pilgrim's Bounty Vendors found outside each capital city, greatly reducing the amount of time you'll need to hunt for the right kind of meat. Just keep a stack of each of the ingredients on hand, since some of them are unique to certain cities. And if you have my luck, it'll probably take you a few times to complete that Turkinator achievement, during which you can pick up a few dozen turkeys to cook up the final recipe until it no longer yields levels. It's as easy as pie. Now if I can just garner up the motivation to grind those final 100 cooking levels... Who else has been able to use this fun and festive event as a means to level up your cooking skills? I've also seen quite a few guildies obtain other cooking achievements after learning these new recipes, from Lunch Lady all the way up to Chef de Cuisine.

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.

The first few times I ran Vault of Archavon, I was lost. It was my first real foray into 10-man content, and I was trying to keep Archavon, Emalon and Koralon straight. Which one overcharged adds? Which cast a nasty fire that you had to get out of immediately? Is it Lightning Nova or Chain Lightning that you have to run away from? These are three relatively straight-forward boss fights, yet I was having one hell of a time getting them down.

But the learning curve eventually turned in my favor. Somewhere along the way, that little metaphorical light bulb clicked on inside my brain - and I just got it. Since then, I've learned that it usually takes me a good three to four successful boss kill attempts before I really know the fight.

The same was true of the new Onyxia. While I had watched videos of the battle and new the basics behind the battle, it took some actual experience with the fight to learn my role. My favorite part - wailing massive FoK damage on the whelps - isn't the most critical. While I would rather watch my DPS meter run sky-high during Onyxia's second phase - the one where she's airborne and sends adds in after you - I've learned (the hard way) that the priority goes to DPSing down Lair Guards whenever they're up.

I'm still in that hazy, starting-to-understand-but-not-quite-there phase for a good number of encounters. I've run Naxxramas only once on each 10- and 25-man, and a few of the battles I'm still a little iffy on. I've barely touched Ulduar. Trial of the Crusader also is starting to come together, but I still get the two giant Jormungar debuffs - and what to do for each of them - confused in the heat of that first battle. And don't even get me started on those cursed Twin Val'kyr. I think that particular battle is going to take about 10 times before I really understand all the mechanics.

But there's an upside to this ginormous learning curve. Once you get down a fair number, bosses seem to each be variations of one another. Some put some nasty crap, be it fire, smoke, poison or other, on the ground that you need to stay out of. Some cast massive AoE damage that you need to watch for - and move the hell out of the way when it comes. Some bring out adds that need to be dealt with immediately. Some teleport away, fly up, burrow down, or otherwise get out of range periodically and find another way to keep you busy for that phase. Some are straight-up tank and spanks. Several put whirling bubbles of spores or light into the raid party that can either give you a buff or debuff. And then there's every melee's favorite boss attack to dodge: the infamous whirlwind attack.

My best suggestion for anyone else in a similar stage of learning as I - get Deadly Boss Mods as soon as you can. It helps a ton with reminding you when you need to run away and what you need to watch out for. And it may sound simple, but this also helps: Do your homework before you get to a fight and make sure to listen-up for any boss-strat on what your specific role will be.

How has everyone else gone about keeping boss fights straight? Does it also take you a few tries to get it down? What about those of you with multiple level 80 characters - how do you keep all your different roles straight?

50 DKP minus if you don't get the reference.

It's hard not to get attached to guild mates when you spend hours on end online with them working though complex strategies and making friendly jokes at their expense. On top of that, add on real-life friendships with said guildies and you've got one heck of a bond. That's been my WoW world ever since I first started out in Vanilla. During a hiatus from playing, those same friends were groomsmen in my wedding. And when I picked up the game again after WotLK came out, we picked up where we left off in-game. There were a plethora of benefits of having a guild of just friends from RL. No awkward getting-to-know you phases, no hesitance of saying something which may offend them, basically no drama, and a hell of a good time. But there also were drawbacks: the main one being that rarely were there more than five of us on at a time, so any 10-man or more content had to be PUGed. We struggled with how to remedy that problem for months. For a while, we were hopeful that we could find another small guild to partner up with for 10-man content. That didn't pan out. We also spoke about starting to recruit, making our core group the officers and bringing in more members. But that also seemed to take away the point of us having a friends-only guild. I also worried whether newcomers might feel left out from all our inside jokes and already-forged bonds. Finally, it came down to it, and a couple of us decided to look into finding another adult, somewhat casual raiding guild, and see how many of us they would absorb. I did a little research and found the friendliest bunch of players I could, and ran a couple of trials with them. My husband went first. A couple of our original guild mates didn't like the idea of playing with people they didn't know IRL. I stood torn for a couple of days. Not wanting to betray my friends by leaving, but also wanting to see more content. I really shouldn't have worried so much. After I decided to switch guilds, a lot has stayed basically the same. We still do a lot of 5-man content together. Now, 4 of us original buddies are in the new (to us) guild, and a few decided to stay behind. We're building up new friendships with a group of really fun people, and have been running 10- and 25-man raids regularly. But more on that later. So, what's the point, you may ask. This whole experience has reminded me how emotional this game and all of its different aspects can be. I was so incredibly torn about switching guilds and changing that little name plate that hovers above my toon. It's amazing, in a way, the sense of camaraderie  that develops between groups in-game. Already, from playing with this new group for about the past month, I can see that it's not just between people with real life bonds. The in-game ones also can be quite strong. Has anyone else felt this sense of uncertainty when it comes time for a /gquit? How did you decide whether it was time to move on?

The High Inquisitor is a regular column at Project Lore that seeks answers to the greatest mysteries of Azeroth. Each installment, the inquisitor will attack a previously unanswered question and attempt to explain the unknown. But she won’t rest until all plausible explanations are explored. The best, most probable comment(s) will be highlighted with the next edition’s inquisition. Welcome, dear readers, to another installment of the High Inquisitor. This time, I want to take a look at the spirit healer's role in our adventures. But first, let's take a look back at some of your submitted answers to the last question, when I asked where all the kids are in Azeroth. We got a nice range of answers, from pointing out that there are kids running around, they're just sometimes hard to find, to the thought that Azerothians have stopped having kids during wartime. The idea that I like best, however, is that our toons, before we start playing them, are the kids of the world. I thought Phanttas described it best:

I think that over time the children of Azeroth evolved to become safe from all those gigantic spiders, raging elementals and opposing faction members by turning invisible. The children stay like this while they train to become adventurers themselves, but do it in a safe way, because the creatures they are trying to take [enlarged spleen]s from can’t see them. Some of the children realise that they aren’t going to every be good enough to be an adventurer and stop being invisible to live their life running round Stormwind free of the perils of adventuring. The other children however, once they have been training for several years, suddenly get a calling to run to a certain place to start their true lives, where they become visible at last: the starting zones. If you hang around them for long enough you can see this miraculous act happening.

Now moving on, let's explore this week's question a bit. I'm sure you're all familiar with Spirit Healers, those celestial beings who await adventurers who enter the astral realm between life and death, ready to guide them back to the land of the living. While I appreciate the life that my toons can continue living, I also am aware that these spirit healers also must be the reason for respawning foes in areas that we so painstakingly clear out while questing. So here's the question: How can any side ever truly win? Be they members of the Scarlet Crusade, tribal leaders atop Darkcloud Pinnacle, hostile centaurs or quirky murlocs, our enemies will simply run back to their corpses and respawn a few minutes after their defeat. How can any group ever claim victory when neither side's numbers wane? In the case of PvP, we at least have an objective that will determine the winner; Capture the flag, defend the keep, gain the most resources. In the rest of the world, our objectives are outlined in quest form: Kill 10 of these and 20 of those; gather 8 shiny items scattered throughout the enemy village. But the world is static, and so the outcome of our endeavors is less defined. After we leave, the world goes back to the way it was before we ever came. Generations later, our alts can perform the same quests. Once again, game mechanics come into play. This is an essential aspect of MMO gameplay, and the only way around it that I've seen is through phased events. But phasing the whole world would be quite a task, and wouldn't necessarily give us anything better. Regardless, I'm interested in how we can use the lore to explain the situation. I say we need to appeal to the enemy spirit healers themselves, and convince them they're on the wrong side. Then, we'd get somewhere. How do you think we can get past this dead heat?

This past week, for me at least, has been all about crazy, oh-no-they-didn't moments in WoW, and hopefully educating our dear readers a bit about how not to get duped by would-be bad apples. I have one more tidbit to share before shifting my concentration back to where it belongs, which certainly isn't on these griefers. This one's all about keeping track of those enemy spies, Raid ID thieves, trolls, ninja looters, serial gankers, and just general douchebags. Beyond adding them to your ignore list or just blacklisting said players from your raid invite list, you also can go beyond by listing them at wowjackass.com (Thanks to Eric, who alerted me to this site in a previous comment.) Here's how it works: When you are the subject of any of the above offenses, you go to the site, enter the name of the criminal and their server, describe the act in detail, and submit it to the site. They process submissions within 24 hours, and the roughly 50 percent who make it through the screening process then are listed on the site's front page, and Twitter and Facebook pages. After bumped from the front page, they'll remain listed on their respective server page. The site also ranks servers according to the number of listed jackasses. Currently my main server, Khaz Modan, is listed at the number 1 spot with more than double the number of  listings as the next-closest server, Skullcrusher. Is this because Khaz Modan has an unusually large number of jackasses? Possibly. But, it also could mean that more people on the server are aware of the site through trade chatter, or it could also mean that people are retaliating against getting listed by reporting others. The site doesn't collect or display names of those reporting the information, but someone accused (especially if they're a RL jackass) may take a guess at who reported it regardless. Which brings up another potential problem: False accusations. I'm a firm believer that there are always two sides (or more) to a story. Unfortunately, WoWjackasses, at least initially, only reports one side. And, just because a person can tell a tale of ass-hattery in great detail (which is part of what the team looks for to figure out which entries are authentic), the story still could be pure fiction. WoWjackasses attempts to thwart this possibility by allowing site-goers to add a comment of their own, or give each listing a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" based on their own experiences. Finally, someone who feels they have been wrongly accused may contact site developers and give their piece. At least that's a step in the right direction. Criticism aside, the site makes for some fun reading, especially if you recognize some of the names listed on your server. And I don't mean to belittle the mission of the site; it's certainly a worthy one, and would be hard to pull off without these side-effects. You'll just have to decide whether you trust the information enough to let it guide you in your quest against getting jerked around.

Speaking of douchebaggery on the Khaz Modan server, apparently Alliance aren't the only ones acting up. While on the same Ventrilo server where an enemy player listened in to my raid group's precious Wintergrasp tactics, another interesting topic came up: the stealing of raid IDs. It's been a while since I've heard anyone mention stealing raid IDs. I assumed the practice had at least waned a bit ever since a blue post announced last year that the practice is now considered a reportable offense. For anyone unfamiliar, the stealing of a raid ID is basically when another player (and whoever else he invites along) is able to gain access to the hard work that someone else already has put into a raid. Let's use Naxxramas as an example. Say Guild A already has run through the Arachnid, Plague and Military quarters of the instance, leaving only the Construct quarter to finish later in the week before they can unlock the Frostwyrm Lair. (The new Patch 3.3 PTR patch notes state that players will no longer have to unlock the other quarters to get to the lair, but as an example let's keep this rolling.) Then, there's Guild B, who also wants to run Naxx -- as quickly as possible. Somehow, through trade chat, whispers or possibly even a planted mole, they find out that Guild A is already 3/4 of the way through the raid. They form a group for a 5-man instance and invite along a member of Guild A. But actually, the other four members are waiting outside of Naxx. The actual "steal" happens very quickly. Guild A member accepts the group invite, then immediately Guild B changes the group to a Raid and promotes the Guild A member to leader. The other four Guild B members run into Naxx and are asked whether they want to be saved to the group leader's instance. They all click "yes." The group is disbanded, and Guild B invites their friends to partake in the last quarter of Naxx. Guild A, on the other hand, loses its progression in the instance and has to start from scratch after the raid lockout period ends. I explain the practice not so that you can go and use it (please don't be a douchebag - I'd put this behavior several notches worse than spying on the other side for your own advantage.) Instead, use the information to be smart about who you group with or, in this case, don't group with, especially when you're saved to a partially-completed instance. And also don't go announcing that you're half-way through an instance when someone may try to take advantage of that. And if, for some reason, you find yourself leader of a raid group that you thought was a 5-man PUG, GTFO. Fast. Unfortunately, it looks like the practice is alive and kicking, at least on my server. The good news is that everyone who was in on that vent discussion now knows which guild is guilty of the practice. You can't be a douchebag for long before people spread the word and exclude you from groups. But all this got me a little worried about the new cross-realm LFG system getting ready to roll out in Patch 3.3. So far, it looks like the cross-realm LFG will only be for 5-man dungeons, and not 10- or 25-man raids. Things could get really sticky if the cross-realm system also is available for raids, introducing a whole host of potential challenges, not in the least being the systematic stealing of raid IDs. Beware! Has anyone else come across this trickery as of late? Who else things the Raid ID system needs some kind of overhaul to prevent the systematic stealing of others' progression? With the changes already coming to LFG, perhaps now is the perfect time for Blizz to tackle the issue.