Project Lore

In this interview with Nethaera, Ghostcrawler has revealed a lot of the specifics about the upcoming dual spec system. Up to this point we've been given hints about how the system will work and what will be included, but this time GC has unveiled much more specific information. Some of the key points from the interview:

• Only level 80 characters will be able to purchase a second spec. This may be changed based on feedback.
• The Lexicons of Power located in major towns are required to switch specs. Additionally, scribes can create an item that allows a group of players to summon a temporary lexicon of power. The only other restriction (so far) is that specs cannot be swapped in combat or in arenas.
• Paying for a respec will only clear talents from a character's active spec.
• A Gear Manager is going to be added into World of Warcraft. This will not automatically change the character's equipment after a spec change, but will be configurable to quickly change weapons, trinkets, or entire outfits. Sounds like an integrated Outfitter or Itemrack.
• Hunters will no longer have to pay a trainer to respec their pets. Blizzard didn't want an extraneous step for hunters to have to go through to change their pets' talents. Hunters will also be given a new spell (on a long cooldown) that will allow remote access to the stables.
• As we've heard before, glyphs and action bars will both be tied to the talent spec, changing along with the talent switch.
• Talent points will be configurable before the get saved. This allows players who are respeccing to allocate talents with the ability to double check and avoid having to respec again just to move a couple of points.
• It is indeed Dual Spec, not Tri or Quad spec, for now. In the future, they may allow for more than two specs to be used in the system.

All of this is pretty exciting news. With a lot more of the details hammered out, it seems like this may be coming even sooner than I had thought. We'll still have to see how the whole dual spec system has shaped up when it comes up on the PTR, but I am very enthused about the idea of having more than one talent build available.

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^ Not Useless.  Welcome Aboard Guys - Via CNN.com

Of course this would happen.  I take the day off for some "house work" and am greeted by not just maintenance, but extended maintenance.  At least by x o'clock - who knows when the servers will be up AND playable - I can wade through all the changes for v3.0.8 that Bastosa mentioned the other day.  Until that time, we always have the patch notes to drool over/shake our fist at. Yesterday's escapades into level 80 didn't go as well as one may have hoped.  Apparently few people have off on Martin Luther King day, making it incredibly difficult to find a group to run with.  I managed to swing only a third of the dungeons I wanted to do before I got fed up with spamming the channels.  Despite the few runs, I did catch myself doing something unexpected. Since the early days I have always used gear to compare myself to other players.  Although gear != skill, it can show how dedicated you are to your toon.  The assumptions made through the technique aren't always accurate, but in general, a toon with good gear while lacking enchants or sockets means that the player just got decked out, doesn't have the money, or does the bare minimum to look good.  While checking how bad I looked in front of the PUG groups, I found another not-exactly-accurate way to measure players, Achievements. I am one of the few people around these parts that isn't too found of Achievements.  Aside from being an Xbox Live rip-off, I just didn't see much cause for them.  Personally, I would rather something like WAR's Tome of Knowledge, a personal diary of sorts, rather than these arbitrary points.  That being said, it can serve a purpose beyond bragging rights.  Paired with a simple gear check, an Achievement check can lend you extra knowledge about your new teammate, partner or prospective guildmate. There are actually a ton of ways this can be used, but here are a few examples.

• A player has good gear, but their achievement score is pretty low for a level 80 and lacking numerous dungeons.  One could reasonably assume that the character is an alt or new player in general.
• A Druid has average gear, but a very high score, including most of the quest based objectives.  Player probably enjoys the game for the universe and may intend on finishing everything the game has to offer.  Likely to continue to subscribe for the foreseeable future.
• Character is decked out in an odd mix of PvP, PvE and crafted gear; has most of the PvP achievements completed.  Get this player on your 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 and PvP guild ASAP, likely a min-maxer based on his eclectic gear choices.

I am pretty shocked that I never really thought of this useful aspect before.  Perhaps I was blinded by my hatred of the Achievement system as a whole.  At least we don't have to pay $50 a year to use it though.  Anyone have some real-world examples?  I know there has to be some GM's out there that have used this as part of their recruiting measures.

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Via an overzealous nerd with shoes from the 80s

Generally speaking, watching another person play an MMORPG can be incredibly boring. PvP matches and raiding aside, the audience always knows what will happen, the avatar will kill the mob with plenty of HP to spare. World of Warcraft is no different in that respect; thank god for WoW's customization. Rather than watching the shining graphics on the screen, I watch a player's hands to see how they have mapped their keys for their personal settings.  It has proven to be far more interesting.

For every type of player that exists in Azeroth, there is a type of play style. One of the best warriors – one of those people you'd hate on Ventrilo though - I have had the privilege to play with moved around with the arrow keys, mapping his abilities to keys in the area.  A hunter from our guild didn't hit any hotkeys, relying entirely on mouseclicks.  A pair of my druid friends are a clear case of convergent evolution, mapping all of their healing keys as close to WASD as possible, including Q, E, R, F, G, C, V.

My brother, a Holy Priest from the beginning and a RTS master, only used 1-5 for his spells. Five spells isn't enough for any class, let alone a Priest.  He simply would hit Shift 1-5 to change his bars as needed, effectively giving him 25 keys to play with. His “uber-micro” from his Red Alert and Warcraft III days are what enabled him to keep up with the required speed necessary to be a main healer.  Those frantic keystrokes and movements to flip his bars to the correct spells at precise moments was stunningly beautiful.

And here I am, a fourth alternative to the default layout. I have applied a few tricks from my RTS playing days as well. The ability to hit CTRL, Shift and Alt with ease – years of training - frees up the rest of the keyboard for use with macros. In an attempt to give 1-6 as many uses as possible, I chose to map CTRL 1-6 and Shift 1-6 to additional bars instead of their default actions. The new keybindings allow me to keep spells, abilities and macros on my top and side bar, but avoid the need to mouseover to them. Mousing is for newbs. My personal attachment to palming CTRL has lead me to only purchase keyboards with raised keys and after I have played with them in meatspace.  On the flip side, my mouse requirements are incredibly basic.

Do you guys go about your business with the default layout, or have you changed the title's key layout as much as your User Interface?  Are you a mouseclicker or do you have a gear out mouse with as many inputs as a keyboard?  What is the craziest play style you have witnessed or heard about? Heck, I even use ` (the key next to numero uno) for Stealthing.

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Recently I was shown an interesting article in Wired that featured World of Warcraft. The piece mentions how much customization is available in WoW and highlights a handful of common addons that are used by WoW players to enhance their playing experience. Among the ones they list are a couple that I use, like Catrographer and Ventrilo. The screen they show with the covers the entire screen with interface elements, which happens sometimes, but isn't the main experience of WoW. First of all, there aren't many times when you're going to have to worry about casting spells and looking at the map while you are browsing the auction house. It did get me thinking, though, about how much time I spend in WoW while not even paying attention to the graphics going on in the background. I'll be crunching numbers trying to figure out which piece of gear to use for a 16% hit set versus a 13% hit set, looking at AH to find out how much it might cost to gem an item to get my meta gem activated in both sets, and I sometimes have trouble finding space to open some of the larger interface elements while still being able to see everything that I need to. Another example is when I have my achievement pane open for a list of recipes I need to make while browsing my cooking window to figure out if I know the recipe and looking at my bank to find the mats I know are in there. There are some addons that help greatly with this, but there are others that just add to the clutter. I'm going to cover a bunch of the ones that I use in the future, but for now I'd like to ask what you think. What is your take on addons? Is WoW too cluttered or do you want more windows? Do addons just make it worse or do you use them to make your UI more streamlined? What addons are essential to you? Drop a line in the comments to chime in.

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Many players have been griping that the gear they have seen on their first five levels towards 80 have not been good enough. Generally speaking, these players are decked out with Tier 5/Season 3 gear, or better. Heck, one of my characters has a combination of heroic/Karazhan/Season 2 and their set is still going strong. Blizzard Poster Bornakk even addressed the lack of upgrades by stating that those with concerns should "keep leveling and keep instancing, you'll find upgrades soon enough. :)" The flip side to this discussion is that this is exactly the opposite situation from The Burning Crusade's release. After TBC went live, people who had been raiding for the previous two years realized that their gear was being replaced by early quest rewards and instances. Mind you, these players had the best gear available in the game, making them feel that all their hard work was pointless. The reversal of fortunes is not perfect, but I feel it is a much better way to go than the itemization from The Burning Crusade. However, it remains to be seen if Blizzard made the end-game stuff difficult enough to force players to upgrade. While TwentyFifthNovember has now beaten all of Wrath, the hardest way possible, they are the best of the best. Many other guilds are now tackling endgame heroics with their Sunwell gear, and blowing them away. Hopefully they have upgrades available to them, and need them to complete the end-game raids. It remains to be seen. While I have been complaining the majority of this post, that isn't my only point. Many of you out there are in the same boat as me, seeing quest reward after quest reward being wasted because you can't use it. In the interest of helping with your personal economy, I have another gold creating tip for you. If the quest reward isn't a solid upgrade then buy the plate or weapon reward and just vendor it. As tanks know, plate gear costs way more to repair, but on the flip side, sells much higher than Cloth or Leather. The Auctioneer Suite used to be able to tell you exactly how much things would vendor for on mouseover, but the last version I grabbed does not have the updated information. It will likely be updated soon, if it hasn't been already in an alpha release. So for the players out there complaining about not getting upgrades, perhaps this is Blizzard's way of handing you 1000 gold for the Cold Weather Flying fee. Seriously, if you do 300 quests with item rewards on your way to 80, average 4 gold per vendor, you'll bank 1200 gold. Remember, the harder it is, the better it sells.

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So I'm sure many of you are running around in WotLK, leveling up your toon, gaining profession points, maybe a few new achievements. And with all of that 'living' in the World of Warcraft, there's a price: food, water, reagents, ammo and repairs.

But here is what some of you may be missing: Always shop where people know you. In other words, only buy and repair from people you are exalted with or you will lose tons of gold in the long run. Since patch 2.3, your toon's status with a faction can get you great discounts at exalted. These discounts of 20% are huge for guilds that try for world-first boss kills or grind on trash mobs in places they don't have the gear to go into and kill the boss. "But I'm leveling. I don't have time to go to SW or Thunder Bluff. And what's a few more copper anyway?" Okay, okay. you might be right. You might be willing to pay a little more for a service that's right in front of you rather than going to Shatt and porting to IF or Undercity. And really what's the difference on a 10% discount? What does it really matter? Well there may come a day when you might want the epic flying mount riding skill or maybe cold weather flying? That's the day you'll wish you'd repaired at SW or Undercity. Get a little addon called FuBar_DurabilityFu (requires FuBar) or something like it. It will show you exactly how much you save by repairing with a faction that really, really likes you. Now riddle me this: Do you do that in RL? Well? Do you shop at a convenience store for basics like milk, cookies and bread? Do you take your car to be repaired at a big dealership who know you only by your license plate number? Do you spend thousands of extra dollars on on an education or a house because you took the first loan you got approved for by some huge conglomerate who might know who you are if you give them your social security number? Well? So take a look at the game, and the players who have loads of money, already rollin' around on those mammoths you want so much. Take a look at the system of commerce, and really watch it. And then you'll start to see that it really is who knows you, who you're exalted with, that gets you the best deals, the best stuff and those special little things that they won't even consider giving to just anyone. Always shop where people know you. You will save in the longrun and you will get better deals that you ever thought possible.

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During the (incredibly short) leveling process my Priest was mostly specced Shadow, with a little bit of Discipline thrown in for good measure. Upon hitting level 60, and no longer gaining the benefits of the Refer-a-Friend program, I promptly respecced Holy. It has been three weeks since the change, and I feel that I can finally weigh in on my decision with a semblance of intelligence. In weeks past, Solidsagart has gone from level 60 to level 66, sheerly through instances (along with some dungeon-based quests). I stuck to dungeons so I could prepare myself for group healing. Not to mention the fact that the grind as Holy would totally suck. Initially, my healing ability was appaling; ADHD would kick in and I stopped paying attention, stopped looking at people's health, or decided that I was DPS again, and wasted all my mana trying to contribute to the chart. What can I say, old habits die hard. I decided that the best way to overcome my need for DPS was to stop playing my Rogue for awhile. For more than a solid week, Solidsagart was the only character I played, allowing me to hone my healing skills, and grab some respectable gear from the early Burning Crusade dungeons. Another obstacle I had was to get used to multi-target healing, rather than a single-target mindset. Thankfully, my spec has some built in utility for AoE healing. While on the topic of my spec, I have heeded some of the insights from the previous post's comments. I decided that Guardian Spirit is indeed, nearly useless (thanks Ryan) . Along those lines is Spirit of Redemption. The talent is very situational, and doesn't increase my healing unless used.  It has only made a difference once to date. So, I will be moving that SoR point and Guardian Spirit's into Holy Reach (thanks Claxo). I thought about moving two points from Searling Light to have full Inspiration (as PopeSeanPaul suggested), but decided that I wanted some DPS buff, for when I grind between instances. As a personal experiment I will be dropping Silent Resolve, moving the trio of points into Serendipity to help with mana conservation (numerous people pointed out the overheals issue). I would like to think that I do not burn too much mana off overheals, but I know I burn some. On the flip side, I have yet to pull aggro from the tank. Hopefully, I can maintain that statistic. The slightly modified spec now looks like this. I doubt I will get any raiding time in before Wrath of the Lich King, so that report will have to wait a few months. I would also like to thank the players (not Goggins) who pointed out Grid and Clique, they have been wonderful additions to my suite of addons. Groupmates have loved my "Oh, SHIT!" button. :p

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We've got six videos for you on this week's schedule. Of course, We are continuing our Ten Days of Knight special covering the Death Knight experience in Wrath of the Lich King. In addition to that awesome series, our five guys will be bringing to you a Level 80 instance from the beta, as well, the Halls of Lightning. Can you imagine what might be inside waiting for our group? Tune in this week and find out. Here's the schedule: Monday, October 27th at Noon PDT- Project Lore WotLK beta Episode 2.1: The Halls of Lightning Tuesday, October 28th at Noon PDT- Project Lore's Ten Days of Knight: Day 6 Wednesday, October 29th at Noon PDT- Project Lore WotLK beta Episode 2.21: The Halls of Lightning Thursday, October 30th  at Noon PDT - Project Lore's Ten Days of Knight: Day 7 Friday, October 31st at Noon PDT- Project Lore WotLK beta Episode 2.2: The Halls of Lightning Saturday, November 1st at Noon PDT - Project Lore's Weekly Wrap-up Take a look at our subscribe page to find us all over the web, and use the Episodes RSS feed or follow our Twitter to find out when new episodes are out! Project Lore is also on MySpace and Facebook, so please be our friend!

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There certainly is a lot of activity on WoW after the latest patch. Everyone has new talents, abilities, and mechanics. After a bit of a rough start, especially for the Executus server with intermittent problems over a day after the patch, I managed to log on long enough to pick up my newest mount, the Big Blizzard Bear. Other than doing that, I was completely lost. No addons, no talents, missing spells, what was I to do? As enhancement, before 3.0, I pretty much knew what to do. I had all of my addons perfectly setup to make me the most efficient ass kicking machine ever. All of that is now in the past. One of the first things I needed to do after patching to do was set up Dominos, a replacement for my previous favorite action bar addon, Bongos. Then I went through to figure out where to put talents. My spec could probably use a little work after playing for a little bit. Next, I had to figure out what to actually do in order to kick ass post 3.0.2. I have a few new spells and talents that I needed to prioritize. Stormstrike for me is still the best instant available, since it does a bunch of damage and can proc a bunch of other things, including Windfury, Maelstrom Weapon, Flurry, among the other crazy trinkets and procs that I have. Lava Lash seems to make Flametongue a viable offhand imbue, but according to my uncontrolled test environment (I really should spend some more time at the training dummies in Ironforge, near the Military Ward), I still prefer dual WF. Now that hit and spell hit are a single stat, I am extremely close to the spell hit cap, and I can pretty much use Earth Shock without fear of a resist and it gets crit chance from some of my gear. In order of priority, Stormstrike, Earth Shock, and Lava Lash are my bread and butter instant casts. If Maelstrom Weapon is stacked to 5, I'll use it for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or a Healing Wave (I can't wait to setup Clique to optimize off-healing). So, I pretty much set up a macro to optimize my DPS. Improved Stormstrike has an 8 second cooldown. Earth Shock untalented has a 6 second cooldown, Lava Lash also has a 6 second cooldown, and the max global cooldown is 1.5 seconds. So, the macro goes like this: /castsequence reset=8 Stormstrike, Earth Shock, Lava Lash Hammering this macro between other spells will make me miss an Earth Shock cooldown every once in a while, but makes things super simple while I am still trying to figure out Maelstrom Weapon along with my new favorite friends, Feral Spirit. I'll talk about them later, because they are so much fun.

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I believe that one of the biggest issues with raiding and partying in World of Warcraft is ego. So many people out there think that they know the game better than the creators themselves.  That confidence can often be a player's downfall. The fact of the matter is this, probably less than 1% of World of Warcraft players know it well enough to be considered experts at the game. Sure, many players known their class very well, but do they know its utility for raids, parties, Battlegrounds, Arenas and every boss fight? Not likely. What about the other classes?  Do they know how to get the most out of the Auction House? The ins and outs of WoW's scripting language? The often neglected lore? Doubtful. You may think I am here to gripe about how we could all open our eyes and learn a little from our guildmates, PUG-mates or Buddhism, but I promise you that isn't the case. Sure, I showed an officer last night that he could link his professional abilities rather than telling everyone what he can do, but he was gracious about learning from the “new blood.” I am actually here to ask for help. If you have been following my blog here at Project Lore, then you know that I made a Priest alt for the Refer-a-Friend promotion. I have never, ever, in all the MMOs I have played, gone healing. With Wrath coming in less than a month's time, I figured now is as good a time as any. With the refunded talent points I created this healing spec. Let me restate this, while I know the basics of healing, I certainly do not know the nitty-gritty details. My spec was designed to reduce casting time and mana consumption, while bolstering heals and crit heals and the chance to crit. Survivability was an afterthought. I do realize that being new to the “keeping people alive” rather than “killing everything that moves” mentality will likely cause me to waste tons of mana on overheals. So, the Serendipity talent is something I will likely move too. So Priests, and healers in general, now is your time to shine. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated – that means the first poster better have some good input – and it just doesn't have to be talent spec pointers. Good addon, macro or rotation suggestions are welcome too! I did create one macro already, my personal “Oh, shit!” button which I stole from my brother's old Priest. It yells, says, sends to party and raid the following message: “Fox! Get this guy off me!”

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