Project Lore

Boy, these things have been a bit of a crapshoot, haven't they? The first was plagued by terrible questions and neither has provided a wellspring of significant new information for us to chew on. This one appears to be no different, reported to focus on Icecrown Citadel and "other Fall of the Lich King content" (which is code for no Cataclysm, but maybe the upcoming minor content patches).

Instead, they tend to play out like an extended-form Q & A session with the absolute dregs of the official forum providing the inqueries (and considering all answers are posted there, as opposed to Twitter, it makes you wonder why they even bother in the first place).

And yet, they've proven sufficiently popular and it does provide an easy and convenient way for those members of the development team that don't spend their every waking moment dealing with trolls to get in touch with the community. Well, at least Cory Stockton. I'm pretty sure Ghostcrawler, who's slated to make an appearance, lives and breaths off the class forums like it was a symbiotic leech.

As usual, these things tend to be announced only a day or two before they actually happen, which makes tomorrow (Friday, the 26th, at 5:00 PM PST) the date to mark on your calendar.

For further details on how you can get in on the action, as well as a link to the previous Twitter developer chat, hit the jump. 

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It was one of those fights that took everything my raid group had to get through it. And that made it all the sweeter when we finally beat it.

I'm talking about that ugly, bumbling, high-pitched experiment of an abomb, Rotface. For whatever reason, my 10-man raid crew had opted to take the right fork in the hallway outside of Professor Putricide's laboratory. Although probably the harder of the two abominations, we set our sights on downing Rotface first, and focused on getting down the tactics we needed to down him.

Our first night trying him out seemed encouraging. Our best attempt had gotten Rotface to 20 percent, and we were certain it was only a matter of time. Then things went south.

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Heartbourne brought up some excellent and not-often-talked-about points in his recent post on the logic and thought process behind the use of frost emblems to buy gear versus their use for gold. Depending on how you play and what you value in-game, there's a lot of aspects to consider before spending those emblems. Read it - it will get you questioning whether you're spending your emblems right.

I'd like to bring a bit of a counterpoint as to why I choose gear over gold. As Heartbourne contends, using your Frost Emblems for gear is pretty much standard despite the fact that they could instead be used to buy and then auction off Primordial Saronite and earn yourself a nice profit. Despite the gold that you and I could be earning from that, I'm here to champion the case of using your emblems to buy gear.

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Groups tackling normal modes in Icecrown Citadel no longer will be limited by a fixed number of available attempts, Blizzard blue poster Daelo announced on the official WoW forums late Monday. Here's what was posted:

After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode. We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids.

A few hours later, Slorkuz expanded on the topic in the European forums:

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There's been one specific horse trampling his mark all over WoW news this week, and his name is Invincible. On the official World of Warcraft website Wednesday, Blizzard unveiled a page devoted to Arthas' horse along with the news that the Invincible Charger mount will drop upon defeat of the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel, on heroic difficulty. The site also goes into considerable depth on the history of Invincible -- in both life and undeath -- and just why he is so epic and frightening:

The mare Brightmane gave birth to Invincible as a young Prince Arthas watched with rapt attention. In the years following Invincible's birth, the horse and Arthas formed a bond that carried them across the warring nations of Azeroth, through the icy grip of death, and into the throes of battle. The stallion's coiled muscles were made for speed, and Arthas often felt that his mount flew rather than galloped across the countryside.

With the slightest touch of his heel, Arthas was able to convey his directions, and Invincible obeyed without question or hesitation. It was Invincible's unfaltering faith in his master that inevitably led to the stallion's death and unholy rebirth. On a cold winter afternoon as snow was blanketing the ground, Arthas was desperate to get away from the city even if it meant riding through harsh and unforgiving weather. Once outside, Arthas guided Invincible over a familiar jump, but the stallion slipped on slick ice, and the fall shattered his forelegs.With no way to save his companion, Arthas was forced to give Invincible a merciful death, and the prince carried that guilt with him for a very long time.

Years later, after the Lich King granted Arthas necromantic powers, Arthas returned to the grave where he had buried Invincible and raised his loyal servant into undeath. It was in this dark act that Arthas felt a sense of purpose. He believed that Invincible's death was not an accident; rather, it was essential to Arthas's destiny. Invincible was not bred to be a warhorse, but after he was brought back from the dead and made immune to hunger, pain, and exhaustion, he became the perfect steed for Arthas.

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ProjectLorians were busy providing an assortment of original content the last few days and missed a few tidbits of news.  I figure that the mantra of "better late than never" applies, since we want to keep everyone well informed.  Or we could cope out and just say we were really checking our facts, thrice over.

According to a screenshot from the Enigma raiding guild on NA-Deathwing, the Lick King's last defenses will be accessible on February 2 (or February 3 for EU).  The Frostwing Halls houses two unknown bosses, Sister Svalna and Valithria Dreamwalker, and Sindragosa, the original frost wyrm.  Valithria, a captured green dragon, is going to be an interesting encounter.  Especially to those with fond memories of Dungeons and Dragons' combat variations.  Sindragosa is part of the lockout counter, along with Putricide, Lana'thel and the Lich King himself.

My guild is still stuck on Professor Putricide, and has not even attempted any of the Crimson Hall bosses (something I have disagreed with).  It's fairly obvious that we are falling behind, so I doubt Solidsamm will be seeing Sindragosa any time soon.

In other news, Solidsamm will be seeing a new non-combat pet shortly.  According to various sources, a Competitor's Souvenir has been added to the North American servers.  Unfortunately, no visual imagery or animations have been datamined as of press.  If you were around for the Summer Olympic games two years ago, you'll likely remember the Spirit of Competition vanity pet that was randomly awarded for participating in Battlegrounds.  It's worth noting that the tabard from the last olympics was called the Competitor's Tabard.  Either way, the closely named Competitor's Souvenir will likely be obtainable once the 2010 Winter Olympic games kick off on February 12.

They're two of the signature moves of rogues and hunters: Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection. Both allow the two classes to dps straight out at the start of a boss fight without pulling aggro, and in fact can also help a tank build up their threat levels quickly from the start. But I had never seen a fight won solely because of the tactics of these two moves until last week.

My raid group had gotten through Lord Marrowgar in Icecrown Citadel, but hadn't quite reached the Gunship Battle shenanigans that I already happily told you about. Which left us taking on Lady Deathwhisper, and things were going great -- the Adherents and Fanatics were going down fine with the help of our two tanks, the deformed ones were getting kited around to avoid their hard hits, and the boss' mana shield was getting hacked down steadily.

Then right as we were finishing off the last of the mana shield, somehow one of our tanks died. With no battle rez in sight, we assumed that the attempt would be a wipe because usually two tanks are absolutely necessary for the second phase of this boss. She has a nasty, stacking debuff that essentially makes a tank lose the ability to generate threat, so the two tanks taunt off each other, ensuring that at least one tank is holding aggro.

Time to improvise.

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Wow, WoW, you're going too fast for me! It seems like only yesterday that the Plagueworks opened, and now today we'll get the blood-thirsty minions within The Crimson Hall for our stabbing pleasure. But are we ready?

It seems like most groups venturing within Icecrown Citadel have started to get a feel down for defeating the first four bosses in the instance. But with only a couple of weeks under our belt for the three bosses in Plagueworks, I know there are still many groups struggling with these new encounters. My personal raid group has nearly gotten Rotface down, had an epic wipe the one and only time we faced Festergut, and has yet to see the face behind that ever-amusing voice of Professor Putricide that echoes within the hall.

We're progressing, which is a start, but I would hardly say that the encounters have become routine yet for anyone. So this is why I'm somewhat torn.

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The Icecrown Citadel gunship battle may not be the most challenging of fights in the raid, but I would definitely argue that it's one of the most fun. The jetpacks you get to strap on to your back coupled with a coordinated effort to bring down the other ship before they can shoot yours out of the sky brings an exhilarating thrill unlike any other fights I've previously seen in WoW. (Added bonus - get a druid to use the jetpack while in bear form. Hilarious.)

Both times my raid group has gotten to the battle, we defeated it pretty easily once we got in the groove. As a melee dps class, my primary job has been to man one of the guns on the ship. I shoot the heck out of the other ship and strategically use the stronger cannon once enough pressure has built. Once our cannons are frozen by a meddlesome sorcerer on the other ship, we rocket on over. The tank and healer go first, then I and the other gunner charge in, too. We get her down, and come right back to the canons that are now free to be used again. Those of you who already have seen the fight know there's a lot more going on, too. While the gunners have their own mess to work on, other members of the raid group have a whole 'nother set of problems.

But it's easy to get sucked into a bubble while concentrating on your designated task, as I found out the hard way last night. Our cannons were about to get frozen again, and the rocket group was preparing for another trip over to the enemy ship. We've gotten the timing down SO quickly -- the tank and healer rocketed over as I got booted from the gun, and fractions of a second later I also clicked my rocket to board the ship. But we were so engrossed with our duties that we didn't realize we had already won the battle.

The realization sunk in pretty quick, though, as the three of us (the second gunner stopped short) flew through the air, and our destination ship pulled further and further away.

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WoWFlix is a column featuring videos from around the web related to World of Warcraft. If you find something you’d like to be featured, leave a comment or send a tweet to @Heartbourne.

 The following fan-made video contains major spoilers for The Frozen Halls, the series of 5-man regular and heroic dungeons available upon the release of patch 3.3. This video was made by vodka, a famous progression Alliance guild on Alterac Mountains. I remember back when they were on Mannoroth and my old Horde guild Reformation was competing with them for the server first Kazzak kill. This trailer is quite high quality. They definitely took some time working on capturing the multiple dramatic angles. For anyone who needs to get hyped up about patch 3.3 and its probable release on Tuesday, this will do it for you.