Project Lore

Like you guys and gals, I have been poring over all the exciting info coming out of the PTR right now. New gear, dungeons, and battlegrounds are so much fun and what keep this game exciting. But I can't help feel that the most significant change in this patch is something we found out about a while ago, and will change the way we play this game more than you might realize. The change I am referring to is the changes that Blizzard is making to the emblem system. In case you missed the blue post, here is the section I am referring to.

• Emblem System Changes
• Both the 10 and 25-player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
• The Heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
• The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
• New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

So what does this mean for our daily play style? Simply that we now have lots of reason to run heroics. Currently there is virtually no reason for me to step into a heroic. I don't need heroism emblems, gear, or rep. I, like many others, have progressed past this. But now things are different. With every boss dropping Conquest Badges the first few weeks of 3.2 are going to be full of heroic runs. This will let us get all the T8 tier gear, runed orbs, and deadly gear that we could possibly want in a very short period of time. Eventually we will all get all the conquest gear we can handle, but for a short time heroics will be very important. What is even more exciting is the details regarding daily quest rewards. Both the daily and heroic dailies will no give us Emblems of Triumph, which will purchase the next highest level of gear and, presumably, T9 tokens. To me this means I will be doing both of those dungeons every day that I can. It will certainly be an adjustment, but I must say I am sort of looking forward to it. I have always been a big fan of 5-mans, something about that groups size lends itself to a fun relaxed atmosphere. It is something I have missed. With this news I know I have lots of heroic dungeons ahead of me, and more importantly heroic dungeons worth doing! How do you feel about this change? Looking forward to getting back in those 5-mans? Or would you just as well leave them behind?

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In late March it was revealed that Blizzard is hard at work on a new Battleground for an upcoming patch.  Just shy of a month later and not one, not two, but three separate blues announced plans for a new 5-man dungeon.  Being Blizzard employees, there wasn't much to the announcements.  All that we know for sure is that the dungeon will be part of an upcoming patch - you'd be insane to think the BG and instance will come in the same patch - and that it "can be compared to what we saw with Magister's Terrace."  Naturally, we have no idea if the comparison that can be made refers to the scope, size, difficulty or a combination of the three. New content is fantastic, and I can't wait to see what direction they take the instance.  Will it be released alongside a raid?  Will it have anything to do with the growing Arthas storyline?  Is it going to contain machinima like MgT?  An endless amount of questions, with a catch.  Sadly, the announcement of the new 5-man content has shined a light on the current crop of 5-man instances and their heroic alter egos.  Frankly, they are beginning to feel incredibly stale. It is this very reason that I bring up a topic as old as heroics themselves, heroic Old World instances.  Blizzard, if you can't get new content out fast enough, I am sure that many of your subscribers wouldn't mind revisiting some retuned old content.  Just think of the advantages of doing so.

• A large percentage of the players joined World of Warcraft after the launch of The Burning Crusade.  Therefore, a good amount of the old world instances - especially the mid-range instances - were ignored by the playerbase.
• Retuning is far less time consuming/costly than creating a new instance.
• Trickling out retuned old world instances would keep players busy between major content updates.
• Many old world 5-mans are far longer - and larger - than the current crop of dungeons.  The varied length would likely cater to the hardcore audience who tend to be fond of more diverse and deeper offerings.  There's no reason to expect that the casual players wouldn't enjoy it either.
• You've already recycled content in the past (Naxxramas , Caverns of Time) and that was accepted.  No need to worry about that stigma.
• The old world would see a (small) population increase, rather than its current state of being largely abandoned.  Essentially, more than just Northrend would be relevant.
• Come the next expansion, you could sprinkle retuned TBC instances amoung the content patches.
• Being "old school" is still hip...or so I tell myself.
• You'd shut me up.

Just think of the possibilities.  LFM Heroic UBRS - Rend Run.  The return of Dire Maul ledge walking.  More Barman Shanker grinding.  Discovering the secret boss in Blackfathom Deeps.   Getting lost outside of Maraudon, only to be farted on when you finally get inside.  Van Cleef.  I'm giddy over the prospects already. Many of us have run Wrath's heroics dozens, perhaps even a hundreds times.  The question is, would you have the any interest in the four year old content or are you content waiting long periods of time for all-new encounters?

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I ran across this artistic presentation on Friday. I didn't stick around to see its completion

If you happen to be my mother, then you noticed that I didn't post on Friday.   I wasn't being lazy, or basking in the glorious amount of sunlight that Philadelphia had that day.  No, I was having bones forcibly extracted from my skull because they failed to know their place (in my mouth).  These so called "wisdom teeth" forced me to miss a day's worth of work, writing, and cleaning and put me through a substantial amount of discomfort and annoyance.  The chemicals that I was pumped full for the early morning procedure lasted until around noon, at which time the gang of four started to beat on my nerve endings until the experience became too unbearable to sleep through.  I rolled over and grabbed Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.  I made it through two pages before I returned to kicking my legs in frustration. I've always been intrigued by the studies showing that video games help hospital patients (and everyone else) deal with pain and the stress of their illnesses, such as transfusions or chemotherapy.  With that in mind, and a little coaxing from my girlfriend, I fired up the computer and dove into Azeroth with reckless abandon.  One, two, three, a half dozen hours passed me by as I continued to crush heroic after heroic.  I wouldn't claim that the pain had vanished, I still felt it, but with my brain utterly distracted by DPS maximization, group creation, fishing, or dailies, it was pushed by the wayside.  Thanks to my brain's limited capacity, the synapses continued to fire, but no one was home to receive delivery. No, it wasn't just my Wolverine-like healing abilities taking over.  I didn't even realize the positive effects of my "self medication" until the next morning where I awoke in agony, despite that fact that I went to bed feeling relatively well.  I broke down and took the prescribed pain medication before I went back to my previous method of recovery.  Once again, the hours passed and I was able to ignore the hardcore drugs in favor of GTA: Chinatown Wars, Demigod and a ton more of World of Warcraft. In an odd twist, the pain actually helped Solidsamm substantially.  During the course of the hazy weekend he bagged close to twenty achievements, hundreds of gold, leveled his fishing and cooking, participated in some new (to him) heroics, gained thousands of Kirin Tor rep, downed Kel'Thuzad for the first time and lost a collected 5 rolls on needed rogue loot.  The little gnome managed all of this will keeping me, his driver, off the hard medication.  Quite a weekend. The pain still remains as of today, but it is tolerable so long as I don't try to chew, speak on the phone long, laugh loudly or yawn.  Perhaps I am milking it a bit.  Hey, when else in your life do you get a perfectly reasonable excuse to drink milkshakes 3-4 times a day?  Now I know what I will be doing if I ever break a bone.  I feel a twang of pain...back to Azeroth.

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After a Tuesday full of wiping, I was looking forward to grinding out some reputation and tackling a new Heroic on Wednesday.  The last thing I really wanted for the Heroic Wednesday session was a repeat performance.  I may enjoy the hardships due to the end results, but success is plenty fun too.  It so happened that Gundrak - a rather easy Heroic - was the Daily, so I wasn't worried that the group comprised two newer members.  I am sure you have guessed by now that things didn't go as planned. Slad'ran brought us down without much of a hassle. Looking at the Recount data it was painfully obvious what the problem was.  The DPS-specced Death Knight couldn't perform, with less damage dealt than the tank, who was also new.  The freed DK's collection of green and blue quest gear was the obvious culprit. We could have pulled through the issue - Slad'ran wiped us at ~10% HP the second time -  but at a lousy 800-900 DPS, it hardly seemed like a good idea to struggle.  After all, the later bosses pose a much greater threat, and who wants to spend a few hours in one heroic?  We didn't abandon our new Death Knight friend for some other Heroic ready member, we kept it real.  As a group we decided to move our endeavor to another instance so he could gear up for next week's heroic night.  After all, this is what a guild is supposed to do, help its members.  And yet, the new guy seemed a bit shocked that we would run him through a non-Heroic when they offered the rest of us "nothing." Apoxz noted in a comment the other day that it is incredibly difficult to find a group for a none-Heroic instance.  I completely agree with the statement, but have you guys found it difficult to even get your guildies to help you out with such things?  I won't, without fail, help someone, but if I have the time I am more than happy to lend a helping hand for the betterment of the guild.  Has this bit of comradely disappeared with all the PUGing that is going on?  Or am I jumping to conclusions based on a bit of anecdotal evidence? By the time I had to leave, the former green DK had two new blue items of far superior quality.  Therefore, the time I spent in your basic dungeon was well spent.  Oh, and I guess you could say my acceptance of the move to a non-Heroic wasn't all altruistic.  SolidSamm scored himself a bit of Kirin Tor reputation from his Champion's tabard, and caught his first glimpse inside Ulduar and the Halls of Lightning. When was the last time you lent a helping hand to a guildie that you didn't already have a rapport with?  Wondering how last night's 25-man Naxxramas went?  Two words for ya, much smoother.  One-shotted Grand Widow and Maexxna, some bad pulls on Instructor, but that happens.

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The moment that achievements were announced I knew it would quickly become one of my favorite aspects of the game. The reason is because I spent most of my days in Burning Crusade doing them before they were even implemented. You may wonder how this works, but it is really quite simple. You don't need a shiny rectangle to appear on the screen to know you have accomplished something out of the ordinary (although it doesn't hurt). Myself and a few friends have a long standing tradition of trying to push ourselves. Back in the day we would often try and complete heroics with only 3 people, or 10 man raids with only 8. There is a great sense of adventure in trying to do things in a way that makes them more difficult. Other variations included doing a heroic without a tank, or without a healer. These exercises make you get creative, and that is one of the aspects of the game I really enjoy, solving problems with a group of friends. Looking at the in game achievement list can be a spring board for new ideas. So there is an achievement to 8 man Naxx? Great idea, but how far can we push it? How about a 7 man, or a 6? It really makes you stretch and ups the challenge immensely. So in a time when many people are making great progress on their achievement list, and dare I say, running out of things to do, I urge you all to give it a try! It's an amazing way to milk even more enjoyment out of this game. For my next project we plan on trying to do Naxx10 with only one healing spec'd player. Think we can do it? What about you guys? Have you done any achievements that are not listed on your character? If not, what do you think would be a fun challenge? I personally would like to see someone 20-man Sarth 3D!

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Way back when I started here at ProjectLore.com I was all giddy over a new engineering pattern that showed up on the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. The Mechano-hog (Horde) or Mekineer's Chopper (Alliance) infatuated me with its ridiculous clunkiness , gnomish features and lifelong dream to be part of a biker gang.  We should also factor in the hilarious Predator reference that comes via the accompanying achievement, Get to the Choppa!

I had been waiting to get on this bike since Wrath launched, but its insanely steep price and my incredibly slow grind to level 80 have delayed me severely. I am underselling the price when I say steep though. The bike is on the Auction House for downright ludicrous prices, well over 10,000 gold the last few times I have checked.  I am not poor but in this economy I find it difficult to even spend virtual money.

Being an engie, Solidsamm has an alternate route, making it himself. This would require a crapload of money spent to level the profession (see link above), then a boatload of time spent getting the required materials. Lastly, a small purse full of money and time spent rep-grinding to pick up the pattern itself. All of this to ride around in a spiffy hog, that can't fly.  At the moment my time is better spent on other things, causing me to go with option three, the passenger's seat. Shotgun!

While participating in yesterday's Heroic Daily, I noticed my tank had pulled out his shiny new Hog, complete with PWN license plate. As I ran up to him to get a free ride click the green arrow, a party member dove in before me. Being the little knee biter that I am, I harassed the paladin until he got out of the sidecar and allowed me to navigate. After all, I did call shotgun.

To my surprise, Blizzard actually intended the person in the sidecar to navigate. Once belted in, I noticed a scroll of parchment placed in front of my character. On it was a map of Kalimdor. The map wouldn't help in Stratholme (Lordaeron is part of the Eastern Kingdoms) but I loved the small detail nonetheless. It is the little things Blizzard adds that make their titles more enjoyable.

Although we didn't succeed in completing the timed event (I blame Arthas and his snail pace), I did score some loot. Sadly, it was two new pairs of gloves, but they may both be used. Until I can get my hit rating up to something respectable, the Handwraps of Preserved History are my new gloves. Bile-Cured Gloves should make an appearance when I begin to approach the the hit cap. This is all assuming both pairs aren't replaced by then.

I would say that Solidsamm had quite a productive weekend. Scored a few pieces of new loot, got more than a dozen Emblems of Heroism, over twenty Stone Keeper's Shards, a good amount of reputation and his first ride in Wrath's version of the ROFLCopter.  He also got a sad reminder of his sister's lack of playtime. According to the returned mail he received from Solidsagart, I haven't paid much attention to her in 30 days!

The irony of the whole situation was that as I oogled that glorious chopper, my buddy went on to explain that he wanted my Mechanostrider...Anyone else manage to have a productive weekend in Azeroth?

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Yes, I dinged while working on Sons of Hodir

Wrath of the Lich King's PvE content may be easy compared to The Burning Crusade, but there remains a line of progression.  For instance, hitting level 80 does not mean you should immediately jump into one of the many heroic dungeons.  With my long weekend, I figured I could get a bunch of heroics under my belt seeing as I have finally hit level 80 (DING!).  My old warrior buddy set me straight in only the way he can, through ridicule and yelling. I still have a lot of gear from Season 2, Karazhan and high level crafted items equipped and haven't seen many alternatives.  This is why I was thinking about banging out a dozen or so heroics with my free day.  After the text-lashing, I checked in with WoWHead to see just how much my gear could be upgraded through non-heroics.  Turns out to be a crapload.  Nearly every dungeon from Gundrak on has some sort of an upgrade, incremental and not so incremental.  The only thing that they lack is a pair of quick daggers for my Mutilate build.  Guess I will be sticking with old trusty for awhile longer. Rather than diving into the ranks of heroic runners, I have taken the advice of my friend (although I will never admit it to him) and segued to the non-heroic instances for the moment.  By the end of the day I will have run over a dozen non-heroic dungeons, and hopefully, bumped by gear into the next level.  But damn if I don't want a new off-hand dagger. Doing non-heroics before jumping to heroics may seem like an obvious notion to many of you, but I have run across countless people in the non-heroics who are barely geared for them, let alone the more difficult flavor of the dungeon.  Even many of my guild mates tried to make the leap from level 79 to heroics.  The better geared members were able to roll with the punches, but just as many had to be replaced during the instance.  From our anecdotal evidence, anyone decked out in SSC gear or better, with some Wrath gear mixed in there, was more than ready for heroics. Nice, just found a group for Halls of Lightning, off to shiv some baddies from Nordic lore.  This will be my first run at Loken, hopefully he is kind enough to drop his hood.  For those still leveling, do all the heroic runners a favor, check out which dungeons have gear you need and hit them up first.  My tank is sick of out DPSing other party members in heroics... How many of you had the patience to gear up before attempting your first heroics?  For those that just dove right in, what was your gear like and how did you do?

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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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Unless you are living under a rock, you are undoubtedly familiar with the new achievement system Blizzard added with the latest expansion. I’ve touched on how much I enjoy the new system before, but I wanted to take a moment and dive a little deeper into it. I think it is no secret how much I like achievements, a lot. I am currently sitting at #2 in our guild for overall achievement points behind a certain draenei shaman who will remain nameless. During the lull between 3.0.2 and Wrath I really dove deep into these achievements, exploring the lands, running lowbie dungeons, and doing everything I could to knock them off my list while there was nothing better to do. Now that I have progressed past the initial stages of Wrath I am finding that they are filling a new void and giving me something else to go after. Now that I have finished all of the level 80 dungeons on regular and heroic, other than farming badges, there would typically be little reason to go back. Now I am finding myself wanting to run them over and over again, hoping that I can knock off some of those special achievements off the list during the boss achievements. I am finding myself responding to people asking me to tank with “only if we go after all the achievements.” Typically the response is “of course!” Some of the achievements I have recently knocked of are Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi, Intense Cold, and Chaos Theory. I am trying to figure out where to go next, to me the achievements in AzN seem tough, but I like a challenge and think I will be trying for those next! It seems lots of people are really digging these new goals inside of our heroics. I know I can list a few personal faves. What about you, are you enjoying the new carrots? Or do you see them as just another time sink? Which ones have you got, and which ones seem impossible?

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So I felt like I was in a pretty good groove; I hit level 80 in stride, more than one achievement for finishing off zone quests, and my trade skills were leveling up nicely. I really felt I was closing in on the end-game and getting back to where I was before this whole expansion thing. Then it hit me. I’m not even close. I was just flying around Storm Peaks, questing away, when I came into a collision course with the Sons of Hordir quest line. On this surface it didn’t seem so bad, it was long (33 quests), but not altogether unenjoyable. I’ll try not to get into too many details, but at a certain point you realize that this is a reputation grind, and a big one. After a quick visit with their quartermaster, I realized these guys were the source of all my new shoulder enchants. These are definitely a must for raiding. So I pick up a few dailies, and look at my rep bar… I need exalted, and I am just barely friendly. There is no championing, just dailies, dailies, dailies. Yikes. This is going to be a BIG project. After coming to that harsh realization, I dove into raiding in hope of picking up some of these free loots I have been hearing so much about. No dice. In my experience raiding isn’t the walk in the park everyone made it out to be. Sure there are some easier encounters. The Vault of Archavon wasn’t very demanding, and The Obsidian Sanctum (with all the adds down) wasn’t too bad, but I found plenty of challenge in Naxx. It is clear that progression will be a bit slow and there will be lots of gearing that needs to be done. I haven’t forgotten all these dungeons have a heroic mode either. Just like at level 70, I am getting the feeling this game begins at 80… and there is a lot of game ahead of us.

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