Project Lore

The High Inquisitor is a new regular column at Project Lore that seeks answers to the greatest mysteries of Azeroth. Each week, 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.

They're the drunken, boorish, muscular, axe-wielding, long-bearded, mining, vertically-challenged characters of Azeroth. And did I mention that their accent suggests they're Scottish? Yup, I'm clearly talking about dwarves. And my question is simple - why? Just when did dwarves become such a type-casted caricature? Not just in World of Warcraft, but dwarves in a multitude of modern pop culture references seem to share a few key elements: beer, rocks and a hardy, bearded musculature. If you want to blame someone, let's go directly to the source - Norse mythology. The dvergar, as they were called, were significant nature spirits associated with rocks and the earth. Although they weren't described as short beings until much later, the dwarves even in this rendition are master crafters, especially in the sculpting of metals. Somewhat ironically, when exposed to sunlight, the Norse dwarves would turn to stone and die. The pop-culture version of the dwarf took a drastic turn thanks to JRR Tolkien and his iconic The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy. The stocky, touchy, easy to anger incarnation this time also explained dwarves as merrymen miners who loved a good drink and would willingly take on someone much larger than them in a fight. We see this version of the character commonly referenced in the modern fantasy genre, including in WoW (especially recently in Brewfest). And this certainly wouldn't be the last time that LOTR may have been used as inspiration for WoW. In the Warcraft lore, dwarves originated from the Earthen, who are guardians of living stone. After the implosion of the Well of Eternity, the shocked earthen went into a state of hibernation within the titan cities of Uldum, Uldaman and Ulduar. Nearly 8,000 years later, they awoke with softened skin and diminished powers over stone. Some migrated to Dun Morogh and built Ironforge. So, that's that. But there's still the remaining question of the Scottish accent. In the Lord of the Rings books, the dwarves were described as having a language that would more closely resemble African tongues. On the other hand, the LOTR movies adopted the Scottish convention, solidifying it into all of our minds as the proper language for dwarves. Perhaps one explanation for the accent could come from English folklore surrounding Duergar. These short, trouser- and hat-wearing tricksters would appear bearing torches at night to lead travelers astray into bogs. This story originated in Northern England, along the border with - ding ding - Scotland. Or, perhaps, someone just decided to portray a dwarf with a Scottish accent, and it stuck. So, perhaps it's the accent that's the biggest mystery of all. But WoW dwarves just wouldn't be the same if they didn't proclaim, while rolling those RRRs and charming the listener, "I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem!" So here's where you guys come in. What do you think of the accepted portrait of dwarves - does it work for you? Or would you rather see more originality instead of stereotyped characters? Oh, and don't forget to find me a good reason why dwarves are Scottish. The best answer(s) will be featured in the next edition. 3...2...1... GO!

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I know, I know. I gave Brewfest a hard time when it first started up. On top of my frustrations with blurry screens and fatigued rams, Blizzard was working through some bugs that prevented players from properly using their mugs to bonk dwarves attempting to steal beer kegs. Then, as if that wasn't enough, serious server stability issues set in after the unexpected release of Patch 3.2.2. But I suppose I ruled out this merry holiday a bit too soon, and have since grown to enjoy even those aspects that previously were driving me insane. Which is why I'm happy to report that Bornakk announced today the event has been extended for an additional two days:

"Brewfest is a time of year where the focus is placed squarely on the celebration of fun and food. In order to give everyone enough time to truly experience this event (and after some fine tuning on the part of the event organizers), we will be extending the event two additional days. The festivities will end on October 5th at 11:59PM, so don’t miss it."

Yes, it seems Blizzard has taken notice of our frustrations with bugged-out quests and lagged-out ram racing, and in compensation has decided to give us extra days to earn those all-important Brewfest tokens. Now that we've memorized the perfect routes for the Bark For.. quests, perfected the timing of whipping our mighty rams to go faster and learned (the hard way) that not all pugs are trustworthy when it comes to winning loot, we have the opportunity to get a little more out of the event. Personally, I got the Brewmaster title a couple of days ago by selling back my Brewfest garb before purchasing the Brew of the Month membership. But as a starting-out collector of vanity gear, I'm looking forward to getting a couple of pieces back. Plus, more chances at the ram or kodo mounts, and that mighty (and highly auction-able) BoE Tankard O' Terror. I'll drink to that!

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After another drunken night of slaughtering Coren Direbrew repeatedly for his phat lootz and Brewfest tokenz, I thought it was time for something a little different. Up in the higher reaches of Blackrock Mountain rests more fun to be had (and a bit of a confidence boost for us rogues) for anyone who hasn't yet acquired the title of Jenkins. Actually, scratch that. Whether you have the title or not, it's still a good time. After having your (hopefully) multiple shots at Direbrew, head out of Blackrock Depths, back up the mountain and up another chain into Blackrock Spire. Take a left to head into the upper part of the instance, clear the entire first area and boss, and make your way into the rookery. Here lies the tricky fun. For the achievement and Jenkins title, you have to round up 50 Rookery Whelps and kill them within a 15-second time span. Some toons probably could solo this, but since other of my guildies also wanted the title we went as a group of three (the same group that ran through Classic Ony before the patch - FTW.) First try, each of us ran through smashing rookery eggs before we brought them to a central location to AoE. Bad idea. They didn't automatically aggro on the egg-smasher, so we hadn't gathered enough for the kill. Also, no heals and the cumulative attacks of so many little whelps at once killed me. Second try, we were getting ready to run out and reset the instance, but it turns out there was no need. The eggs respawn pretty quickly, and after just a couple minutes we sent in the tank to round up whelps for our second shot. This time, he made sure to get aggro on the way through and then pulled them all back for massive AoE. It worked! And, let me let you in on a secret. Pre-married life, I was a RL Jenkins. Yup. For Real! So I thought this was only appropriate. Now, onto the real juice. As it turns out, Fan of Knives, even after its massive nerf in 3.2.2 does a ton of damage when being inflicted on 50+ targets at once. So, for this rogue who, in the past few weeks, has upped her dps from a lowly 1,500 to a somewhat more respectable 2,800, I did a double take when my guildy popped recount for fun. 15k DPS?! Confidence boost! Now I just have to reach that high under more usual circumstances :D For the full details on what to do, make sure to check out Juggynaut and Dorkins' complete run through of the achievement that they did a while back. Now's the perfect time to make a shot for the title! Has anyone else detoured up to the top of the mountain to also partake in the fun?

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If you have been killing Coren Direbrew as often as possible this year, you probably noticed the increased drop rate for the Direbrew's Remote as well as both of the Brewfest mounts. They now all seem to be a flat 5% drop rate. If you are lucky enough to get a remote, there are some novel uses for it besides teleporting your group to the Grim Guzzler during Brewfest. Something you should be doing already is visiting Plugger Spazzring when you have the chance. He resides upstairs in the Grim Guzzler and sells a few items which you can resell or have fun with: Recipe: Transmute: Fire to Earth (maybe a 10g profit), Dark Iron Ale Mugs (useful for getting Jubjub during the Darkmoon Faire and very pricey on the AH during that time), and the Sulfuron Slammer, which gets you drunk quickly and lights your feet on fire. You can also kill him; he drops the Schematic: Goblin Jumper Cables XL, which teach Goblin Engineers to make Goblin Jumper Cables XL. These can only be made by Goblin Engineers, but used by Gnomish Engineers as well. They are all but obsolete with the Gnomish Army Knife, which shares a cooldown and supposedly has a higher rate of success, rumored at 75% over the 50% rate of the cables. Regardless, the schematic continues to fetch a fair price, and hey, if you are going to hearth anyway, why not take a stroll to Blackrock Depths to try grabbing some? Another useful way to use the item is as a teleport to Searing Gorge. With the new "ghetto hearth" in patch 3.2, if you leave your group in an instance, you are teleported to the nearest graveyard. With this in mind, if you invite someone to your group, use your remote to teleport to BRD, then drop group, you will end up at Thorium Point. This is useful for Horde players who would otherwise have to fly from Undercity to get there conventionally. While not much of interest is around Searing Gorge, its useful if you decide to do Molten Core or Blackwing Lair, and it could be a useful ability come Cataclysm time. If you are the type of person who likes to get kicked out of raids, you can use it during the Razorscale encounter. It may confuse some people who are expecting some adds, and you can mock people who run up to it and accidentally teleport to BRD. Other uses are purely for visual effect or strange curiosity. Using it in nonsensical places always gets me a laugh. For example, how exactly would the mole machine get you from Outlands or Dalaran to BRD, as it not connected by earth? How does one burrow through a bridge? And, of course, what better way to impress n00bs or spitefully leave a group than using your mole machine? Be warned that you cannot use the remote while in an instance you are saved to, like heroics or raids, so you will look silly if you try to use it and fail.

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You may have heard of 3 Point Entertainment before. They're the creators of the official World of Warcraft beer steins. Well, they couldn't just let such a monumental (and conveniently-themed) event like Brewfest just go by without honoring it, right? Of course not. And their replica of the recently added Coren Direbrew drop, the Tankard O' Terror, does just that. This 226 iLevel BoE Mace, discovered by our very own Juggynaut, is a very rare drop in-game, but just about anybody can score the real life version of the mug for a cool $39.99. Though it's the cheapest of the company's steins by a fair margin, 3 Point didn't slouch on the craftsmanship. With all of its lo-fi angles and textures modeled after those in the game, replica isn't just a buzz word, it's a promise. You'd swear they were actually made by the finest Dwarven stoneworkers in Azeroth. While the Tankard O' Terror's authenticity is no doubt amusing, it's questionable whether or not anyone would actually want to drink out of it. Certainly, with a 2-liter capacity, it can hold a lot of brew, and the company insists that entire collection of mugs is perfectly safe to use in the act of imbibing, but this one's not very ergonomic, is it? The handle doesn't look particularly comfortable to hold and, while there are not pictures provided of the tankard from above, it looks like it might have a wide lip. Of course you could always wield it as weapon, like it's intended to be in the game. At a height of nearly 10 inches, and a weight of 4 lbs,  there's little doubt it could be used to crack a few skulls if the need should arise. Or, you could just set it out to view as a nice piece of World of Warcraft-themed ephemera. Although you can purchase them now, please note that shipping and handling is not included in the price tag, and that they will not actually be available until at least mid-November. Be sure to check out the other steins while you're at the website, most of which are a bit more ornate than the Tankard O' Terror and feature artwork by well-known names like Samwise Didier and Alex Horley.

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Which is the Dark Iron Dwarf, and which is the keg? They're both short and fat - your guess is as good as mine!

As iTZKooPA already pointed out in his detailed Brewfest guide, the onset of this merriest of holidays brings with it a host of achievements and quests to keep us amused while chugging enough beer to dizzy even the stoutest of dwarves. I didn't get too into Brewfest last year, since I was low-level and focused on changing that. So this year I was excited to dive right in from the start. So why am I already hungover from all the content we have to do for the event? I think it's because two of the repeating themes of the holiday revolve around two of my least favorite antics: performing actions when not being able to see anything (in this case, because of drunken blurriness), and controlling a mount (for Brewfest, a ram) that has built-in limitations. For some of you, these may be your most favorite in-game tricks ever! But for me, not so much. I like the concept of Brewfest, and of course, knocking back some drinks should have some side effects on the drinker. Usually, I think the in-game drunk effect of blurred vision and the inability to walk straight is pretty funny. And I still enjoyed it the first couple of times around. But then I had to get smashed over and over again to catch Wolpertingers, find pink elekks, jump off a ledge in drunken stupor and, of course, fight back Dark Iron Dwarves intent on stealing our brew. Day one of Brewfest, it took my server only a couple of tries to win the epic battle by smashing those thieves over the head repeatedly with a giant mug. There's been some debate over whether this is bug-related or just because people aren't targeting the dwarves right, but both Monday and yesterday, amidst post-patch-lag, we had absolutely no luck in winning the fight. Which means 20 less tokens so far, but that could add up to a lot more if we don't get with the program. Maybe I'm being too hard on the ram quests. They're not that horrible, once you get the right whipping rhythm down for keeping them at a steady pace without getting fatigued. Just don't make the mistake of being in a group when you complete them. I've had two separate occasions already in which only one person in a group was able to turn in the Bark For... quests, then it would automatically fail the other person. Once again, that could be a bug or it could be Blizzard's way of preventing people from having an easier time completing the quests because they could ride on the coattails of someone else. One thing I have been thoroughly enjoying is whipping up on Coren Direbrew and getting some sweet loot. If you group up right and use your alts, you can get in quite a few runs every day on this guy and keep trying for those mounts and weapons! So has anyone else been having a hard time fighting back the Dark Iron Dwarves? What other bugs have you encountered? Despite my frustrations with a couple I've come across, I'm aiming to get Brewmaster - so that's enough to keep me chugging. Cheers!

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Does His Belt Have Hearts On It? We are progressing into day four of our celebration of all things beer (hic!) and I've already come across a few scoundrels.  Not once, but twice - 66% of the time for those keeping score at home - I've been in a group where some horrible human being lied to the group.  That's right, I am complaining about people criminals lying about their ability to Insult Coren Direbrew, the Brewfest boss. The main issue isn't that a group can't figure out if someone is lying, it's that we find out too late.  Thanks to the quest starting inside BRD, we don't have any idea who's telling the truth until we are already there.  At that point we don't have an easy way to figure out who is lying, just that someone is!  You can deduce the culprit - kicking people from the group to watch the number on the quest log change, or not - but one of my groups folded to the liar because he was the tank.  Turns out that wasting additional time is of higher consequence than losing the Ram to a liar. If Direbrew was the only summonable boss, then it really wouldn't be an issue.  But he's not.  Coren is only one of three quest-based summonable bosses that I can think of off the top of my head.  Ahune of Midsummer Fire Festival fame, and the Headless Horsemen of Hallow' End being the other two bosses that we truthful people routinely get screwed on. Blizzard, if you are listening we citizens of Azeroth would love for this archaic form of treachery to be a thing of the past.  Please allow us to see who is eligible for the quest before we travel all over the lands.  Or at the very least, make deducing the liar a quick and painless process when we do arrive. In the interest of screwing these bastards out of their ninjaing opportunities please make sure to see that everyone has the quest before the first summon!  No mount drops for me yet, how about you?  Anyone lucky enough to score anything fun/useful?  Solidsamm finally managed to drop his Pocketwatch for a nice beer coaster.  Rolled a 4 on the remote, and a 22 on the barmaid trinket.  Hope you've had better luck.

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Blue Stew is a semi-regular 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. How Do You Separate Yourself? As a rogue, I absolutely never feel remorse for any of the actions that I perform. I play the game perfectly and I'm not afraid to Vanish and hide if I sense an impending raid wipe (don't judge me, you'd all do it if you could!) It would be so much easier if healers could just turn their fellow raiders into zombies when they died. so when Neonpeon mentions his "burden," I have absolutely no clue what he's talking about:

"I find I have a bad habit that I need to break. I'm hoping some of you have experience on something that worked. The bad habit is that when I heal I suddenly take on every life in the raid as if I'm the only one responsible for them. When someone dies, no matter what the cause, I feel guilty that I couldn't save them. Even with multiple healers in the raid I take every death as a personal failure. Over the course of a night it really affects me even when half the deaths were impossible for healers to prevent."

Guilt? Personal failure? I don't think I'm familiar with these concepts...

"It doesn't bother me that a virtual character ceases to live for a brief instant. The loss of a digital life is not worth concern. It's that people dying means the raid wipes and more and more time is wasted. The remorse comes from knowing that if you could have kept that person alive, somehow, that you could have downed the boss and moved on to the next. It's the time lost and the head bashing against the same encounter that is the struggle, not a virtual avatar changing states in a digital world."

Ohhhhh... OK. Now you're speaking my language! Who does like waiting around for wipe recovery. I may not understand the healer's plight, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to relieve them of it once in awhile. In all seriousness folks, while I can't say I've ever felt the same way as Neonpeon does, I do recognize who easy it is for us normally self-reliant DPS class players to forget who's keeping us alive during a boss fight, and there are always a few things that we can do to keep them from pulling their hair out. Rogues in particular can use skills like Feint to reduce predictable, incoming AoE damage or Cloak of Shadows to get rid of a harmful debuff before it causes any pain. But every one of us has the ability to be aware of what's going on around us. Be vigilant for void zones, fires, and other common raid hazards during a fight. You might just save your healer's life. It's the least you can do when they're saving yours with a well-timed heal every few seconds. As I haven't had much experience with playing healing classes or specs, is this something that's common amongst you guys and gals? What about the tanks out there? Do you suffer from a constant feeling of remorse, or do you just let it slide off your back and keep trucking along like nothing ever happened? While guilt can be a powerful motivator, it can also be a terrible burden that drags down your performance if you dwell on those feelings too much. Blue Nethaera abides:

"You do need to find ways to get yourself away from blaming yourself too much when someone dies. It happens. Shrug it off and unless you purposefully let them die or made some error in judgment, don't sweat it. If you do make an error, apologize but don't wallow in it. It's easy to get wrapped up in the concern of being excellent at what you're doing as a healer and a point of pride keeping everyone alive. The very best healers are concerned with these things, but the most important thing to remember is to have fun with it and if someone gets on you for what they feel you are doing wrong, ignore it. As long as you know what you are doing for the group and are doing your best, there isn't anything they can say to take that away from you."

Recent In-Game Fixes - September 2009 - 9/22 Even though the release of 3.2.2 caught all the attention today, Bornakk makes us aware that there were a few extra tweaks hotfixed into the game:

• The Faction Champions encounter in the normal 10-player and normal 25-player Trial of the Crusader instances have had a number of spells and abilities altered which should result in less overall damage.
• The Anub'arak encounter has been changed on all difficulties. Anub’arak now attacks faster, the Nerubian Burrowers should hit a little harder, and their Expose Weakness ability now caps at 9 stacks.
• Some season 7 arena weapons will now have a socket.
• Threat of Thassarian will now properly halve the damage of Rune Strike for the off-hand strike.
• Soulstone Resurrection now fades upon entering raid combat if the character who cast it is not present.
• The Idle/Inactive debuff is now cleared upon round switches in Strand of the Ancients.
• The Mistress of Pain will now target more accurately in the 25 man Heroic Jaraxxus encounter.
• The damage of Hunter’s Volley ability has been increased.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about the changes to Faction Champions. While it's a slice-o'-pie on 10-man at this point, my guild has still run into a major wall while trying to take them down on 25-man. I agree that they should remain untouched for heroic, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't in favor of at least a tiny nerf to their damage-dealing capabilities. We still haven't figured out how everyone suddenly starts dying after we take out the healers. The other changes to Trial of the Crusader seem less drastic, with Anub'Arak getting a small buff (and he really needed one on normal, he's way, way too easy as it is) and the Mistress of Pain being a little easier to control (as a melee DPS I can't stand how she jumps around all the time). Hunters should be happy with their Volley buff, even if it is only incremental. I'm still QQing about what they did to Fan of Knives (though I can't complain too much, as our single-target damage has gone up with changes to Envenom and Master Poisoner). Missing Brewfest Quests? Euro players like Sakhar have been wondering what's up with the absence of Brewfest quests like "Catch the Wild Wolpertinger!" and "Pink Elekks On Parade." They were completely removed from the holiday last year, Blizzard citing that tweaks needed to be made to them could not be completed in time. However, both made their triumphant return in the 2009 version of the beer-chugging event. Well, they did in the United Stats anyway. Sorry to say, friends across the pond, but for one reason or another, they chose to leave them out on European servers. Vaneras confirms it:

"The Brewfest quests ‘Pink Elekks On Parade’ and ‘Catch the Wild Wolpertinger!’ were removed to ensure that World of Warcraft contains content that complies with regional game rating requirements."

And fellow Blue Wryxian backs him up:

"This is unfortunately not correct. The Pink Elekk and Wolpertinger quests are deliberately not available in Europe. Though we would like to have them available here too, this isn't possible I'm afraid."

With the rest of Brewfest left, presumably, intact (not to mention that the real-life inspiration for the holiday, Oktoberfest, comes from the Old World), I'm left wondering why these seemingly innocuous parts of it were nixed. If I had to venture a guess, it's that, despite the theme of getting pissed, both quests run with the idea that your character can see things "under the influence" that they wouldn't be able to when stone-cold sober. As Vaneras said, this is a "game rating requirements" issue, which probably means that even if the drinking is OK, associating hallucinogenic properties with it is not. Otherwise, you know, all the little kiddies out there would be breaking into their parents' liquor cabinet and going three sheets under in order to find the horned rabbit hiding under the house.

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I've heard quite a few tales of players getting both the Kodo and Ram mounts from the Brewfest boss in BRD. What I haven't heard mentioned at all was a piece of loot that dropped on my 20th (and final) run for today: the Tankard O' Terror. The slow one-handed mace is not only higher item level than any other loot from Direbrew, but is also BoE. Since googling the term showed no results, I figure it must be an extremely rare drop. The stats on it are actually very good for a melee, especially an enhancement shaman. Not only that, but it looks amazing. A huge mug that is acutally useful in combat? Very nice. Almost as good as an overflowing chalice or a broken beer bottle. Anybody else seen unexpected items come off of our old friend Coren? I have yet to nab a Kodo from him so I'll likely be spending more time piling the floor with his corpses. For all of the times I've already killed the guy, this drop was quite the surprise. Maybe there is reason for people to go in there, even after they have all of the trinkets they can handle.

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I finally achieved the elusive What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been, the achievement for completing the main achievements for all the major holidays. It awards the Violet Proto-Drake, which is an epic 310% movement speed flying mount, currently among the fastest in the game. Players who receive the achievement get their drakes in the mail from Alexstrasza, with the following message:

With the drums of war pounding in the distance, it is easy for the denizens of Azeroth to forget all that life has to offer. You, on the other hand, have maintained the dignity of the good races of Azeroth with your ability to remember what we fight for. To not celebrate our victories is another form of defeat. Remember that well, Reveler. May others be inspired by your good cheer, Alexstrasza the Life-Binder

Note that I corrected Alexstrasza's misspelling of "remember", which was written as "remeber". Come on, Blizzard! Its very curious to me where Alexstrasza is getting all of these drakes from and how she is fitting them in the mail. She also sends the Red Proto-Drake to players who complete Glory of the Hero. There are a lot of controversies surrounding the Violet Proto-Drake. The number of 310% move speed mounts is extremely small, and most of the others can only be obtained by completing very difficult raid achievements when the content is still very new. The other 310% are the Black Proto-Drake, Plagued Proto-Drake, Ironbound Proto-Drake, and the Rusted Proto-Drake. Aside from the Violet Proto-Drake, you must be in a progression raiding guild to obtain one of these super-fast mounts. Is it fair that players who just participate in all of the holidays can get one of these mounts? They will likely be pretty common by the end of Brewfest, and even more common by Hallow's End, which was the first holiday the occur after the launch of the achievement system last year. I personally will enjoy my Violet Proto-Drake and won't complain. The other issue is that there is no reason to use other mounts once a player obtains a 310% movement speed mount. I love my Sunreaver Dragonhawk, Turbo-charged Flying Machine, and Green Proto-Drake, but they will not see the light of day when I'm flying around, as they are slower than my Violet Proto-Drake. Its really a pity, because I put a lot of effort into getting those mounts and they are really cool. Blizzard has said that they might do this in the future, but for now, I'm stuck flaunting only one of my flying mounts. Should Blizzard scale mounts up with riding skill, including those at 150% movement speed?

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