Project Lore

Well it has come down to this, the final level. I am fairly certain that I am going to be the last player at ProjectLore to hit level 80, but in all fairness, they play the game for a job. I write about the game for my job. My original goal was to hit the level before the holidays, enabling me to get some raiding in before the new year. Then it was to have it done before my birthday, which was yesterday (Thanks for the awesome weekend Lesley). I guess all those trolls are right, I do fail in an epic manner. New goal equals this week!

I may not have hit 80, but over the weekend I busted into my final stretch to immortalizing SolidSamm as one of the millions of toons to hit the level cap. After watching my second to last ding go off, I quietly logged out of the game and pondered his immediate future. On recommendations from friends and guildies, the little rogue will skip out on all of the quests for the lower zones, heading straight to Storm Peaks and Icecrown to finish out the experience bar.

Many of you may be wondering why a level 79 character hasn't already been in these zones, and that is a legitimate question. Being a hardcore PvEer, I have been tackling every quest I have come across, interesting or not. No ? has gone unanswered as of level 79. Due to this incessant questing, I spent most of my time in the lowbie zones – Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak – going wherever those NPCs lead me. With 80 coming in just a few hours and my guild waiting for me to join the raiding ranks, I am abandoning Dragonblight and delaying my personal quest to complete all of Northrend's quests, in favor of starting my Sons of Hodir questline for the shoulder enchant.

Don't worry though, my escapades won't stop me from reporting on any fun quests that I came across. Icecrown's many phasing quests are supposed to be awesome and I will be running through them in short order. On top of that, I do plan on returning to questing between my reputation farming, heroic runs and raiding.  Those of you in my boat, how do you plan on heading to 80?  Do you have any special celebrations for when you join the ranks of the raiding elite?

Before I go, I have to mention Blizzard's newest WoW product, the The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. When I originally heard about the book, I figured it was another cash grab by Activision-Blizzard, but after previewing the first chapter, they had me sold. Hopefully some of our thoughts on the cinematic are confirmed.

P.S. Amazon is offering a nice discount on the book right now.

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Most players who care already know what the Tier 7 loot is going to look like.  The loot from the retuned Naxxramas - which, by the way, has already been beaten - will be styled after the look from the old Tier 3 of vanilla WoW's Naxxramas 40.  Styled doesn't mean copied however, with Blizzard confirming that their will be some model upgrades and modifications, as evidenced by the difference in 10-man and 25-man varieties, which can be as little as a color palette swap. But what about beyond Tier 7 you ask?  Well, if you purchased the Collector's Edition of Wrath of the Lich King, you might get a sneak peek at upcoming tier sets.  Included in the Phat Lewtz section of the art book is four images of gear sets, presented in the common modeling fashion, but sans any kind of label. Two of the pictures are pretty easy to figure out, with this one almost certainly being a Warlock set.  Notice the demonic energies flowing around the armor.  This set obviously looks holy in nature, leading one to label it as a Priest set, but possibly a Paladin set as well.  However, the robe's look has me to leaning in the direction of the priestly arts. It appears the Blizzard may have also included a Death Knight set in the bonus section.  The DK set is complete with their iconic skulls at the belt buckle and knees.  We also have their trademark blue aura disseminating from the gear.  Last but not least, is the piece that took a friend and I some time to make a guess at.  While the other three pieces were relatively easy, I had to mull this one over before agreeing with him.  The gear obviously wasn't of the Rogue or Hunter variety, with a robe kind of ruling out Warriors.  It doesn't appear as earthy as most Druid stuff, so we finally settled on a Shaman set. The book also has presentation of Rogue and Hunter sets, but they are not in full frame and do not appear to be part of the other series.  The scans we have aren't high-resolution (don't want to infringe on any copyrights here), so if you are interested in the details then take the book out of the shrink-wrap or head over to a friend's house. Any differing opinions on which sets the images belong to?  Think we will see these bad boys with patch 3.1 and Ulduar?  Perhaps later, or maybe they are truly just concepts and will never be implemented.  That would suck because, as usual, I think the Warlock set looks awesome.

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Yesterday, we were one of the first to announce the official release date for Wrath of the Lich King.  The faithful day is just over two months from now, since this month is actually September.  A few hours after the announcement, Blizzard updated their page with the addition of the expected Collector's Edition of Wrath of the Lich King. Here are the goodies included in the Collector's Edition for those who may have missed the announcement:

• A 208 page book entitled The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King chock full of never-before-seen images.
• An exclusive non-combat baby frosty wyrm.  (This also unlocks an achievement)
• Behind-the-scenes DVD featuring developer interviews, the Wrath of the Lich King cinematic with commentary, and more.
• The official 21 track soundtrack CD.
• A Northrend mousepad.
• Two WoW TCG March of the Legion starters decks and two exclusive cards only available via the Collector's Edition.

The normal edition of Wrath is coming in at a $39.99 price point while the Collector's Edition is receiving a steep 75% market up to $69.99. The Collector's Edition of the second expansion is now equal in price to many full titles.  At first I was pretty upset at this.  For me the last two items are basically worthless perks.  The soundtrack and DVD are more of a one shot deal, as the information in the DVD probably isn't worth seeing a second time.  I addressed my appreciation for Blizzard's game music previously, and my opinion stands. In the end this means that I would simply be paying $30 for the art book and the non-combat pet.  I am not sure of the sell rate of collector's editions but if Blizzard manages to sell WotLK CE to even 5% of its subscription base then the “rare” pet is actually owned by over 500,000 other players.  Not that exclusive. But honestly, who am I kidding?  Of course I am going to get the Collector's Edition.  It isn't like any sort of whining would get Blizzard to change their mind anyways, it's to close to release for them to change production. That being said here is some items I would appreciate far more:

• Allowing purchasers to download and install the title ahead of time – think Steam's pre-loading service.
• Small action figures of the universe's main characters.
• An exclusive item other than a non-combat pet.  A spiffy cloth map that I could frame in my "nerd room" would be awesome.
• An invitation to a future Blizzard title's beta phase.
• A collectible t-shirt in sizes other than XXXL.

With the exception of the t-shirt item, all of these are fairly straight forward additions.  Allowing pre-loading would be the most exciting feature for me.  Heck, that way you can order the item online, sans tax and possibly shipping, and still start at launch.  That ability and the art book alone would have me paying the mark up and viewing the rest as just gravy. So are you as big a sucker as I am?

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