Project Lore

I was elated when Blizzard announced that they'd be giving you access to flying mounts the moment you hit Outland. Anything that got me out of there just as fast was sure to be a good thing. Sure, there was a point in time when I actually liked running around on ol' Draenor, but now-a-days, it's just a speedbump on the way to Level 80. Buy a fresh flyer at Thrallmar or Honor Hold and you could just cruise through the 58-68 grind! Out of bad habit, I still went all the way to Shadowmoon Valley to get mine, but the overall experience was much more tolerable. But, wait a minute. Without some really clever playing of the auction house and an amount of resource grinding equal to or greater than that which is required to level, how could you possibly have the 600+ gold required to purchase the Expert Riding skill right away? Sure, once you've quested all the way around Outland, you should have the cash on hand, but not if you're a green-eyed recruit who just popped their Dark Portal cherry. Luckily for my last alt to make the journey, I had a wealthy main who could send the required dough through the mail system, but not everyone finds their experience so serendipitous. Blizzard apparently felt your pain, and introduced a stealth update in the last patch (that they have now confirmed) which lowered the cost of Expert Riding from 600g to 225g:

"You guys are correct, we reduced the expert riding skill price in 3.2.2 to 225g. We also changed the faction discounts for the riding skill vendors in Honor Hold and Thrallmar to use Stormwind and Orgrimmar faction. There are a couple reasons we made this change. First off, we wanted expert riding to be available to more people at level 60. 600g just did not seem like a reasonable expectation for most level 60 players to have when they roll into Hellfire Peninsula. Especially after purchasing your level 60 skills. The second change, regarding the factions just made a lot more sense this way since you will not have any Thrallmar or Honor Hold faction when you enter Hellfire. Finally, I want to apologize for this change not making the patch notes. We strive to get every change we make into the notes but this one somehow slipped by. Once again, my apologies on that, but hopefully the lower price will help make up for it. ;)"

Don't fret too much, those of you who continue to see such changes as "dumbing down" the game. Artisan Riding still costs a steep 5000 gold. And, honestly, if you've got that much of a beef, you've probably been playing the game for a very long time. We should be welcoming the charity for all future alts who will eventually have to pass through Outland anyway. My piece is said, folks. What do you readers think of this discount?

Click to read more ...

With rumors swirling about the incoming Patch 3.2.2's release date, last night I took some time away from Brewfest festivities to squeeze in a final encounter with Onyxia, in her classic form. I was hoping this would serve as inspiration of sorts for others to go battle her as well before the patch, but as we heard this morning it looks like the update is now underway. As early as tonight, a freshly angry Onyxia awaits those brave enough to enter her lair. Although I've seen plenty of videos and heard players brag about soloing the once epic brood mother, I wasn't confident that I'd be able to take her on alone in my squishy leather gear. So I rounded up a couple of guildies who also were keen to battle Ony, and together we headed for her lair in southern Dustwallow Marsh. The three of us - rogue, warrior and paladin - sneaked in through the gate and easily tore through a few trash dragonkin. I felt almost guilty as we rounded a corner into her nest and found her sleeping peacefully. But not guilty enough. She awoke with a fiery vengeance, ready to lay a team of 40 adventurers to waste with a single Deep Breath. Instead, she found just us three, 20 levels higher than she, and geared with equipment and spells far beyond those she once knew. Regardless, she put up a good fight. Most of her fire attacks practically bounced off the plate armor of the paladin while I threw DPS from the side. When her whelps came, spamming Fan of Knives worked handily. More ranged DPS would have come in handy when she took to the air, and the three of us ran around puzzled about how to get her down before her fireballs took us out. I was a fraction away from dying several times before we finally pulled her back within melee reach. The warrior was not so lucky; he took the brunt of fireball damage and reached his end. As Onyxia died, we each picked off a ton of loot. The little achievement whore inside me also was thrilled to get Onyxia's Lair, even though I've heard it will no longer be required for the Classic Raider achievement. But there will be new achievements! Plus a new pet whelpling and updated loot! Not nearly as troublesome as she was in her hayday, but still a beast to be reckoned with, Onyxia soon will be back at the forefront of glorious encounters. I don't know about you guys, but I am revved up to have this battle be returned to its nostalgic difficulty. With any luck, Onyxia will be back up and ready to really shine tonight. Who else plans to pay her a visit?

Click to read more ...

As you may have read, one of the new pets slated to be included with patch 3.2.2 is the Pandaren Monk. This miniature kung-fu fighter remains the only in-game implementation of the ursine race. Though they once held an ancient empire in the center of Kalimdor, the Pandaren race have since hidden themselves away in the uncharted regions of Azeroth. Will they one day return en masse? My guess is only when their home is threatened by some massive, outside force. But despite their isolationist tendencies, some Pandaren evidently find their way to the main continents, not entirely unlike Twoflower on vacation. The only thing I know for sure is that I wish Blizzard would stop teasing us about it! More data-mining goodness from over at MMO-Champion has revealed the Monk's intricate martial artistry, and it is only making the wait even harder:

I have to admit that I'm really loving the animations here, and I hope its a preview of things to come way down the road. Not including Pandaren at this point is like not including the Cow Level in Diablo II, it would just be cruel not to! Besides, next to stealthy-roguey-assassination types, my favorite kind of class to play is a hand-to-hand fighter, and that's something that World of Warcraft is sorely lacking at this point.

If you're wondering how you can get your mitts on this pint-sized pugilist, well, we still don't know just yet. There's no specific indication as to where the Monk might drop, and it doesn't appear to be one of the trading card game's new loot cards, either. We here at Project Lore will let you know when we hear something about it. Here's to hoping that it's not a region-specific gift!

Obviously, we're pretty excited about the Pandaren Monk, but what about the rest of you? Knowing how cool the animations are and how rare it will likely be, no doubt this will be one of the most sought-after pets in the game! Is it worth going out of your way to get one for yourself?

Click to read more ...

Blue Stew is a new semi-daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. PvPvPvE Would you look at this pair of winners... In one thread, Paladin extraordinaire, Feanorion, wonders:

"why are PvE concerns being trumped by the concerns of such a miniscule portion of the subscriber population? "

And in another, posted the same day, Fireweed puts on her frowny-face:

"Since the Illidan kill in TBC I swore I would not touch PvE ever, ever again. It's mind numbing, forces you to deal with people you never want to deal with on your free time, it requires way too much dedication in the scene/too many people and to stay in a guild that is capable to handle it and so forth... What I really enjoy about this game is arena, even some random battlegrounds here and there with a small group."

This, friends, is a microcosm of all that is wrong with the average complainer's mentality towards the game : "I don't like it, so it shouldn't be there!" I've said time and time again that I'm not particularly in favor of PvP, at least not to its extremes, but that's the way I prefer to play. I'm not going to outright deny the ways in which other people might have fun. But the fact of the matter is that if any decisions to change the underlying structure of Warcraft, it would be based on an entirely different group altogether, as Ghostcrawler so handily points out:

"If you expect us to balance around the most popular way to play the game, then you'd see most of our changes aimed at low level alts and very few end-game raiding tanking changes. "

I think we all get so caught up in the endgame, that we forget most people who subscribe to WoW simply enjoy tooling around, by themselves, or with a couple of close friends, in the lower levels of the game. These are the people that like to level up over a week, not a couple of hours. And these are the people that enjoy picking herbs just because they enjoy picking herbs, not because they need to make flasks for the next raid. And that's why I think Cataclysm is going to be such a big hit with the community. It refocuses the game on these types of players without entirely forgetting those at the level cap. You see, WoW is a lot like this scrum-diddly-umptious cake... (image courtesy of http://www.mmmmbrains.com/blogg/) But even ignoring this group of players, can't we just all accept that PvP and PvE are integral parts of the game? I used to be a nay-sayer, too, but I've long since learned that both styles are like two delicious flavors coming together to make World of Warcraft just as enjoyable as a tasty little peanut butter cup! Ghostcrawler explains in a seperate thread why you will never see them split:

"Internal consistency for belief in the game world is part of it. Just keeping complexity down is another part of it. We don't want to see every spell or talent have two tooltips and players having to keep all of that straight. It just feels like two games with one art set at that point, which isn't what we're going for."

Please Explain Argent Tournament Reset Seems like the Faction Change service includes everything but the kitchen sink. Or, in this case, Argent Tournament progress. Kisirani gives a simple enough answer:

"I'm responding to this thread because it's written in a calm and concise manner, so thank you for that. Simply put, while it was not a decision we enjoyed making, due to the way the Argent Tournament functions it was not feasible on a technical level to properly switch progress between factions. I am sorry we were unable to offer a better solution."

I wish he would've expanded a bit more on that, but then again, that's due to my own curiosity. I'm always intrigued to know how the game is built, how its underlying systems are structured to allow certain things and not others. While I have no way of being specific myself, I imagine it's the case of simply coding, or constructing, the Argent Tournament in a certain way at a time before the requirements for the Faction Change service were fully laid out, leaving the two aspects of the game incompatible with each other. So for those of you still considering a Faction Change, please keep this in mind. You'll have to do the Argent Tournament all over again (though, presumably, the earned reputation with each home city will remain intact, even if the quest progress doesn't). And for those of you who already did, without realizing this caveat, I'm sorry! That's potentially months worth of daily work down the drain! Earthen Power Nerf: Overkill Oh, it's the weekend. I'll throw you guys one more bone to look over! This one's for the Enhancement Shamans out there, in response to the most recent PTR patch update, which makes changes to the way in which Earthen Power works, potentially affecting their performance in Arena teams:

"The 3.2.2 PTR change to earthen power will be crippling to Enhancement Shaman, I am not saying that this talent isn't a bit too powerful, but granting the shaman short term immunity to movement impairing effects is not the issue, the issue is it granting the shamans team mates the immunity. Removing the immunity from the shaman themselves will do nothing but cripple a spec that has just recently regained viability, without showing any form of dominance, except as a part of a counter RMP team in one tournament, a tournament which doesn't well reflect the state of play on live (nothing over item level 213)... I would propose that if you feel earthen power is overly powerful, you remove the snare immunity from allied targets, but leave it on the shaman, else we will see a return enhancement shaman being unable to stick to a target. We already suffer greatly from a lack of controllable damage, reliance on long cooldowns (bloodlust/heroism, spirit wolves), and inability to kill healers. Returning Enhancement Shaman an easy to kite class will severely undermine everything you have done to give us arena viability."

Ghostcrawler explains that they favored Ghost Wolf as a reducer of movement-impairing effects instead:

"We think Earthen Power and the Ghost Wolf change were trying to solve the same problem. Together they felt like overkill to us, and we thought the Ghost Wolf change was more interesting so we kept that one. Your mileage may vary and I would be surprised if many shaman agreed since they were the target of the nerf."

Alright, folks! Have a fantastic weekend, but don't forget to respond and let us know what you think about all of these different subjects before you do!

Click to read more ...

Ahh, yes. With a new (old) encounter comes new achievements to earn, or fail spectacularly trying to do so. The 5th anniversary version of Onyxia is no exception, and the latest build of 3.2.2 on the test realms brings with it news on just what we can expect in this regard. Deep Breath in all its fearsome glory! The achievements are as follows:

• Onyxia's Lair (10-man) - Defeat Onyxia in 10-player mode.
• More Dots! (10-man) - Defeat Onyxia in less than 5 minutes in 10-player mode.
• Many Whelps! Handle It! (10-man) - Cause 50 Onyxia Whelplings to hatch within 10 seconds of Onyxia's liftoff, and then defeat her in 10-player mode.
• She Deep Breaths More (10-man) - Defeat Onyxia without anyone taking damage from a Deep Breath in 10-player mode.
• Onyxia's Lair (25-man) - Defeat Onyxia in 25-player mode.
• More Dots! (25-man) - Defeat Onyxia in less than 5 minutes in 25-player mode.
• Many Whelps! Handle It! (25-man) - Cause 50 Onyxia Whelplings to hatch within 10 seconds of Onyxia's liftoff, and then defeat her in 25-player mode.
• She Deep Breaths More - (25-man) - Defeat Onyxia without anyone taking damage from a Deep Breath in 25-player mode.

You might recognize a few of those phrases from the famous Onyxia Wipe Animation (WARNING: Not to be viewed at work!):

And really, how could Blizzard not reference the video? Not only is it still funny after all these years, it represents all of the memories players have from when Onyxia's Lair was the pinnacle of Vanilla raid content. The flames, the whelps, the wipes! There truly is a little angry raid leader in all of us. Likewise, "She Deep Breaths More" is a nod at the oft-maligned attack she uses when in flight during Phase 2. Players swore that she did it more often (and more randomly) in later patches. The dev team even poked fun at this reaction at the Dungeons and Raids Panel last weekend. When they showed off the tools used to tune boss encounters, the randomization for Onyxia's Deep Breath skill was set a little higher than usual. Some of you might be wondering what's going to happen to the old Level 60 Onyxia's Lair achievement. Well, it's going to be turned into a Feat of Strength once the patch hits, so if you want that particular notch in your belt, I'd get on that as soon as possible. So, what do you readers think of these achievements? Will they be hard to obtain? I think it'll be hard to say until the patch hits and the rest of us have an opportunity to experience the re-tun first hand!

Click to read more ...

Looks like Mr. T's gone and hacked the game again (he's pretty handy with computers, I hear). It seems that the sudden release of 3.2.2 on the test realms reveals more than just the revamped Onyxia raid. As usual, Boubouille over at MMO-Champion has already done some digging through the  new files, and he's come up with a few unlisted spells related to "Night Elf Mohawks," and their human alter-ego, one Laurence Tureaud (that's Mr. T to you, buddy):

• Silence Fool (Instant, Melee Range) - Pummels an enemy for 15 damage and interrupts the spell being cast for 5 sec.
• Pity the Fool (Instant) - Reduces the melee attack power of nearby enemies for 30 sec.
• Maximum Mohawk (Instant) -  Only one Night Elf Mohawk may assist a group at a time.
• Create Mohawk Grenade (Instant, Unlimited Range) - Right Click to throw and pity some fools!

Can you handle the 'hawk? With Ozzy playing at Blizzcon, I knew it wouldn't be long before other WoW commercial luminaries got their due. It remains to be seen how these spells will be incorporated into the game, though. Due to their obviously whimsical nature, I suspect that they may be related to some sort of mini-game (with the 15 damage figure up there, this certainly isn't attached to some hidden raid boss or anything). Will this be a stand-alone event or might it be attached to a holiday (I can't imagine which one)? Are these spells used by players or an enemy mob that they have to fight? Maybe some more digging will reveal the answers to these questions in time. At this point, it's all speculation, but we here at Project Lore will be sure to keep you up-to-date on all the latest WoW-related Mr. T happenings! Chime in with all your thoughts and Mr. T love below (and if you don't love Mr. T, then you're a fool and you won't be receiving any pity from me).

Click to read more ...