Project Lore

Despite the fact that the official patch notes clearly state that the Forge of Souls would be the first wing of the new 5-man Icecrown Citadel instance available for exploring, players on the test server can only currently access the the second wing, Pit of Saron. Even if it does seem a bit odd to kick off testing with the middle of this epic story instead of the beginning, I was still hungry for any bone Blizzard was going to throw us, so I gathered up a war party and ventured deep into the unfortunately-acronymed dungeon. If you're not afraid of spoilers (and there will be some), continue reading below! A word of warning to those who might seek entrance to the Pit of Saron before I begin: while the servers themselves seem to have been largely stabilized, many characters are having trouble seeing the instance portals. This appears to be a bug associated with phased content, meaning that anyone who has completed certain Icecrown quests (the exact culprits haven't been nailed down just yet) will not be able to see, let alone use, them. In that case, you'll have to either transfer another, less developed character, use a premade, or hope there's a Warlock in the group that can summon you in. I, for instance, have been stuck using my under-geared Elemental Shaman, Nuggnuts, instead my pimped out Rogue, Amatera. This will no doubt be fixed in upcoming builds, but those are the only options for now. If you're not cool with that, feel free to join the rest of the players out there using the dungeon's abbreviation as a fun pejorative for describing their current experience! That aside, let's get on with it! The first thing I noticed when I entered the Pit is that the bulk of it consists of a wide-open outdoor area. This means two things: mounts and the ability to skip trash. There also may be some choice regarding which order you tackle the first two bosses in. The dungeon map for Pit of Saron. The second thing I noticed was the big, bad frostwyrm called Rimefang hovering overhead, with Scourgelord Tyrannus, the mine's overseer in the saddle. After taking a few steps in, Lady Sylvanas appeared from the portal behind us (well, if you're Horde, she will), with two of her Dark Rangers, and a small battalion of troops in tow. The redshirts of the group charged right for Tyrannus, who clearly doesn't like people interfering with his operations. A little bit of the old Darth Vader stranglehold and they all dropped to the ground, dead. Tyrannus flew off, leaving the remainder of his undead minions for us to deal with.

Sylvanas' forces attempt to crush Tyrannus...

...and are subsquently destroyed. From here, the path split off to the left or the right around the eponymous Pit, where tired slaves are busy digging out Saronite while a giant, floating skull watches from above. Each one leads to a different boss encounter, and as I mentioned before, it doesn't seem particularly important which you decide to fight first. We chose to go to the right, which included offing some giant skeletons, necrolytes, and vrykul -- in other words, the usual Icecrown rogue's gallery. *The* Pit of Saron Along the way, just passing by slaves working the ore freed them, and they had all sorts of reactions to their saviors, from just plain old running away to thinking that they're hallucinating when they first saw you. It adds a nice little touch to the proceedings. Eventually, we reached the platform where Forgemaster Garfrost resided, who was essentially a giant vrykul crossed with an abomination. He looks a lot like the Pustulent Horrors you might see wandering around Mord'rether, but with a sack of giant Saronite boulders on his back, which he evidently thought was a good idea to toss at us during the fight. His other primary ability seems to be an AoE pulse that stacks a debuff on you, increasing Frost damage taken. This means you'll need to take him down quickly before it builds up and his regular attacks start doing too much to handle. Garfrost's ugly mug. Though we downed him on the first attempt, I won't say it went cleanly. I was killed due to one of the boss' ranged attacks and so were the Hunter and Resto Druid (aka the healer), leaving the two Paladins in our group to finish the job (I should mention here that loot hasn't been implemented yet, on trash or bosses). A previously enslaved Orc named Gorkun Ironskull appeared to retake the forge, along with all the other laborers we had previously relieved of their bonds. He promised that they would take the opportunity to gear up and help us in our final assault. After rezzing everyone and buffing back up, we traversed the Northern edge of the Pit towards the second boss, a corrupted leper gnome named Krick and his hideous companion/mount, Ick. This wasn't a particularly hard fight either, but it was fun and definitely tested our movement skills. For a majority of the encounter, Ick tossed globs of slime, which created poisonous, green pools on the ground where they landed. These came slowly and were easy to dodge. But at some point during the fight, Krick decided that it simply wasn't doing the job on its own and started conjuring time bombs on the ground. Represented by expanding, purple domes, they started popping up all over the place and quickly became difficult to completely avoid. All the while, Ick continued to throw bolts of his fetid bile at the party, dealing direct damage this time. Unfortunately, I bit the dust again, but we still managed to pull off a victory on our first attempt. Krick gets throttled by Sylvanas. Sylvanas appeared to take the vile gnome's life, but before he perished, he let slip that the Lich King's blade, Frostmourne, could be found in the 3rd wing of the instance, the Halls of Reflection. Sylvanas questioned Krick's admission, citing that she thought Arthas always had it by his side, but he continued to insist that he was telling the truth. With the second boss down, Tyrannus showed his ugly mug once again. He taunted us from the skies, provoking us to burst through the ranks of his most powerful undead lackeys and challenge him on the platform above. Several more powerful packs of trash stood before us on the slope, five or six to a number. Trash on the way to Tyrannus. Hey, look! A cave! Embarassingly, we wiped on the first set, but picked back up and made it through the rest more or less unscathed. The cliffside eventually lead to a cave, which I can now admit is probably my favorite part of the dungeon. The trash inside isn't terribly difficult, but you'll have to fight them through falling blocks of ice. If you've ever fought Hodir in Ulduar, you should already be familiar with this mechanic, as glowing blue circles on the ground will show you where icicles are about to drop. This looks awfully familiar... On the other side of the cave we met Tyrannus for the final time. He had nowhere left to run or hide. Gorkun and his men appeared to back us up, distracting the Scourgelord's undead army so that we could face him and his frostwyrm alone... In the interest of at least keeping some things a secret, I'll end my recount of the events here. As for what I thought of it when it all was said and done? Well, if you were expecting a challenge, I don't think you'll find it here. The Pit of Saron, at least, isn't much more difficult than any of the other Heroic 5-man dungeons out there. But it does flow better, and the integrated story elements allow the instance to have a sort of "rhythm" you just don't get in other parts of the game. With each boss down, you feel like you're actively working towards an end goal instead of just more loot, and the inclusion of important NPCs like Sylvanas adds some extra fun, even if you never fight directly by her side. I'm reminded somewhat of the dungeons in Lord of the Rings Online, and I hope that, at least in terms of pushing the narrative, this is a path Blizzard continues to tread in the future. Facing down Tyrannus, once and for all!

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One of the features of World of Warcraft that really pulled me into the game was the seamless transition between zones. I had just stopped playing Final Fantasy XI, which had a dismal loading time between zones and really made the world feel disconnected. There was no way all of those zones would fit together on a world map. WoW's seamless transition between zones offered a great level of immersion. The few loading screens were either from crossing continents, which felt justified with a picture of a world map, or for instanced dungeons. Going through a portal and getting instanced really felt like I was being removed from the world and placed elsewhere; if I looked out onto Silverpine from Shadowfang Keep, I couldn't see other players or even monsters wandering the world like I would if I was outside. It made instances where you observe the outside world, like Scholomance (or recently Oculus or Utgarde Keep), a little confusing at times until I reminded myself I was still in Azeroth. Fast forward to the release of Burning Crusade. I was ecstatic to play a Blood Elf, but one thing that took me out of the game was zoning between Quel'thalas and the rest of the world. The transporter to Undercity and portals into Silvermoon weren't a big deal since they took some time to load anyway, but simply walking into Eastern Plaguelands requiring a loading screen to go from the new "Burning Crusade instance" to the Eastern Kingdoms seemed unacceptable. Additionally, for players in the Draenei and Blood Elf cities and starting zones, player arrows on the minimap showed up when players were in other Burning Crusade lands, like Outland, but not nearby in Eastern Plaguelands! I was convinced it was one of the reasons by beloved Silvermoon city wasn't more popular and why I spent so little time there, even compared to the Undercity. This got me thinking forward to Cataclysm. With flying mounts now allowed in Azeroth, unless Wintergrasp-like flying restrictions are put in place, most of the world is going to have to be one big chunk of an instance. Blizzard will have to make sure that the Ghostlands border with Eastern Kingdoms is ironed out and remove the instancing restriction. Acherus will probably now be accessible to non-Death Knight players. The Draenei areas will likely be brought into the fold as well. Some areas like the Echo Isles and other distant zones may not have to be accessible by flying mount to the main continents. The implications of this are interesting. The Burning Crusade starting zones were instanced because they wanted the new starting quests to be exclusive to people who bought the expansion to sell more games. In addition, Jewelcrafting, the new profession at the time, only had starting trainers in Silvermoon and the Exodar, so players had to have Burning Crusade to train for it. The question that now arises is: what will happen to this Burning Crusade exclusive content? Will owners of only original WoW now be able to train in Jewelcrafting and do the Blood Elf and Draenei quests, and even maybe make Blood Elf and Draenei characters? Perhaps Burning Crusade, and maybe even Wrath or Cataclysm, will be rolled into the original WoW. The start-up cost to get into WoW is getting price prohibitive for getting new players, and players starting anew will already be experiencing the new post-cataclysm world. These new players would be "free riders" on the Cataclysm content, so why not include all the expansions, at least through Wrath, to new players? If they are getting the content anyway and it entices them to stay longer, they will make more money on subscriptions from enticing players to stay anyway. What do you think? Is it time to roll all of the old games together?

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I hate this thing so much...

One thing I love about video games is their ability to allow me to blow off steam.  When I ran up against an unbeatable bug in one of my computer science projects in college I would turn to video games for relief.  After "Killing Nazis", which meant playing Day of Defeat (pre-Valve), I would return to my task at hand, relieved of stress and with a fresh mind.  More often than not, I would have an epiphany shortly after those breaks, getting me past the frustrations and into new ground.

Yesterday was one of those days.  With my attempt at being more green and lowering my heating cost failing at every turn, I walked away from the half-installed pellet stove defeated and highly annoyed.  Not wanting my foul mood to affect my lovely girlfriend, I sealed myself off in my office/ferret room/gaming haven and booted up WoW for some stress relief.  In Solidsamm's world of Azeroth, everything was smooth as silk. I was greeted with a few hundred gold in the mailbox upon logging into my Auction House alt.  Pretty good start.  After beginning my scan of the AH with Auctioneer I was asked if I would like to provide some DPS for the Vault of Archavon.  I humbly accepted, logged onto Solidsamm and rushed towards Wintergrasp for my first Wrath raid encounter.  Along the way I picked up a stack and change of Saronite, some Titanium and an assortment of crystallized elements. The vault doesn't have much to offer, just another instance in a collection of Wrath's one-boss raids.  After clearing a few trash mobs we walked up to Archavon with noses plugged and began the generic tank-n-spank encounter.  The raid's overall DPS was pretty low - mine being a pitiful 1,900, need more heroics! - but we managed to down the Stone Watcher before his enrage triggered, and with only one death.  I quickly grabbed my Emblems of Heroism and glanced at the item drops to see a piece of leather had dropped and I was the only Rogue in the raid!  Darn, serves me right for checking the armor class instead of the name.  I guess everything wasn't silk. Despite the lack of loot (can't expect epics everyday) my hour of WoW served its purpose.  I got to relax, joke with friends, meet some new people, get asked to join a guild and take out some bad guys.  With just shy of an hour played, my mood had gone from sour to chipper as I headed off to bed.  I <3 video games.

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So here is a little rant for you guys. I have no delusions about changing the world here, but there is a bit of a double standard out there in the World of Warcraft that I can’t help but point out.

I don’t think (dis)enchanters should have to roll against the group for the shards they collect off of the unused gear. I think they should get to keep them all to themselves. Given, I am an enchanter, so I am a bit biased on this one, but it seems right.

Think about it. When there is a mining node in an instance, do we all roll for the ore/gems? When a skinner pulls an arctic fur off of a slain foe, do we all roll for it? What about the leather? In the groups I run with anyway, the answer is always no.

I’ve heard the argument plenty of times. “But we all worked for that loot!” Well… we all cleared the trash to the mining node, and we all killed the mob that you skinned. How is this different? Because a need/greed box pops up? I have not problems giving out gear, even to off spec, but if the group decides to shard the gear. It should be my shard.

After all, I need those shards to buy my enchants. Why should I have a 1 in 5 chance at the shard I provide, when you all have a 1 in 1 chance at anything you get off of your professions in the instance. It just doesn’t seem right, but then again I have a sinking feeling it is never going to change.

What do you guys think? Am I being greedy? Or is everyone else? Do me favor, next time that blue gets sharded, at least think about passing to your friendly guild disenchanter.

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I'm currently specced enhancement, which is my spec of choice for the time being. It's also the one I tend to recommend to shaman who are leveling up. Of course, both Elemental and Restoration have come a long way in their viability as leveling specs, but an enhancment shaman is able to solo with very, very little downtime, PvP decently, bring utility along with great DPS in groups, take on elites without breaking a sweat, heck I even tanked the ranged horsemen in 10 Man Naxx. Knowing the abilities that are at your disposal will help you make fights go much smoother. One of the key abilities available to enhancement shaman is Feral Spirit, the 51-point enhancement talent introduced in the Echoes of Doom patch. I said I would address my love for this tandem of wolves and you might have wondered what they do besides look cool and make lots of noise. I'll tell you right now - they are a versatile little cooldown that I've used in a myriad of situations. While leveling through Northrend, I used my wolves to solo most of the group quests that I encountered. My basic strategy when approaching an Elite was to start out with totems that would increase my damage output. That means Strength of Earth, Windfury, Flametongue, and Mana Spring. If I knew the enemy was a caster, I'd drop a Grounding Totem and wait for the cooldown to be up before heading in. Once set, I'd run in, let the dogs out, take some damage, heal with a 5 stack of Maelstrom Weapon when I got low on health, use my wolves' Twin Howl when I got too low on health to let them soak up a little damage, grab aggro again, and repeat. Usually by the time my wolves despawned, I was able to kill the enemy. If things got too dire, I'd use Shamanistic Rage or even Heroism, but most of the time I wouldn't need to go to those lengths. Now, while the additional DPS from the twins doesn't hurt, the real key to these guys is one of their abilities: Spirit Hunt. Spirit Hunt heals the wolves along with the Shaman, for 150% of the damage they cause, which ends up being a very nice HoT on both me and the wolves. This means that when I'm ping-ponging aggro on an elite by using their taunt, I generally don't need to heal myself during the time that they are being targeted and they don't need healing unless they're taking a severe beating. It also gives your healers a break during heavy raid damage and can give you a nice buffer in PvP so long as your wolves can stay on an enemy. Another useful ability that the Spirit Wolves have available is Bash, which is a stun. This is the only true stun that shaman have access to. It's amazing for PvE since it can give you an extra breath between damage, and in PvP, well, you can't do that while stunned. If you're a Shaman who's done any real PvPing, you know how much it sucks to be stunned, so start using it against all of those rogues and pallies. Unfortunately, the wolves will cast this as soon as they start attacking something, and although autocast can be turned off manually once the pets are out, it will turn back on the next time they are summoned. I've looked and tried hunter macros that turn off autocast, but they are not effective on the spirit wolves. Blizzard is aware of the issue and hopefully it will be fixed soon. Spirit Walk is the last of the wolves' abilities that I'll cover. It is a Sprint-like ability that increases your run speed and your wolves' run speed by 60%. It also clears any root effects on all three of you. Incoming AoE spell? Stuck in a Frost Nova? Getting kited? Running a flag? Trying to catch a flag carrier? For an enhancement shaman, if you aren't in melee range, you're missing out on a lot of your potential damage. Sure you can Lava Burst for a decent crit on top of a Flame Shock, but that's not how you get your damage done. Movement is critical especially in PvP. Spirit Walk will get you there faster than Ghost Wolf, frees you from roots, and even works indoors! (Insert Plea for Ghost Wolf Indoors, maybe a glyph? Please!). If used early enough in the wolves' 45 second duration, it can be used twice per summon. I often use it while running back in an instance if I know it is going to be a long one. Now, if only they were permanent and not just 45 seconds every 3 minutes...

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Photograph by L. Simon.

Like many of you, I am taking my time in getting to level 80. I did not create an elaborate flowchart of areas to tackle, research the best grinding spots or enlist a friendly Priest, Paladin, Shaman and Warrior for their buffs. Last night I got a few of my guildmates to slow down and enjoy some of the content they have skipped over, bringing two level 75 players into Utgarde Keep with my newly-found old friend.

This weekend, well that was an entirely different story. With my girlfriend busy with visiting friends, I had Friday night, Saturday and most of Sunday to do with what I pleased. Naturally, I took the extra free time to tear into Northrend, although not as focused as some people. As of launch, I was still uncertain who I was going to level, my Rogue or my Priest. In the end I surprised myself and rolled a Death Knight. An enjoyable experience thus far, but it wasn't long before I jumped back to my Rogue to see Northrend.

By mid-Saturday, General Chat was full of people looking for healers for various things. Being the good samaritan that I am, I logged in and began SolidSagart's journey into Northrend. After performing the first few quests outside Valiance Keep, I realized that my professions were woefully under skilled. Not wanting to pass up dozens of skinning opportunities or trot by numerous herb nodes, I had to head back to Stormwind and went about the tedious task of skinning low level mobs and picking pointless flowers. Say what you will about my choice in professions, she is simply my gathering girl.

After logging a reasonable 20+ hours across the three characters, I feel I got a bit done. The DK is now up to level 68, SolidSamm is a bubble shy of 71 (he was the most neglected character) and SolidSagart has her professions up to snuff and is a hair shy of finally hitting 70. She started the weekend out as 67, with little rested. If only her professions were leveled beforehand, I would have been able to get her past 70, possibly even jumping ahead of the rogue.

While my WoW avatars progressed a decent amount, other parts of my life were pushed aside. As you can see in the image above, my kitchen is an absolute mess of dishes, plates and glasses. I even saved numerous articles of kitchenware from washing by abandoning them, opting to eat right out of pots and pans like any good college student would – just over my computer instead of the sink. On the brighter side of things, my ferrets, fish, snails, crayfish, and plants all made it through the weekend. They would like to thank boat rides, flights and queues for their continued existence.

What'd you accomplish?  Perhaps more importantly, what didn't you accomplish?

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Okay, this is something that everyone is allowed to be angry at, casual, hardcore, Auction House nuts, everyone.  Maintenance day.  Thankfully, I actually have something to do on this day of reduced playtime.  In my effort to head over to Karazhan and Tenris Mirkblood yesterday, I realized that I have not logged into my Rogue with a purpose, for some time.  Poor Solidsamm has been relegated to the role of bandage machine in recent weeks. The main issue with this is that Solidsamm had never had his talents redone for Patch 3.0.2.  Gasp!  How the hell can one raid without spending those precious talent points.  Instead of being “that guy” in the raid that largely does nothing, I informed the leader of my plight and kindly allowed a replacement.    What a nice guy I am.  I then spent the next hour or so pining over my talent spec and have finally come up with a base spec that I will fine tune after some raiding. The current specialization is built around daggers and will change to a more level friendly build when Wrath launches in a few weeks.  For now, raiding, instancing and damage is all that I really care about.  At the same time, I decided that I wanted to try something new.  Out with the old Combat Daggers build I was using, and in with the new Mutilate build that uses 3.0.2's Turn the Tables talent. The build is pretty cookie cutter, but I will try a moving a few points around to see what can maximize my damage, if anything.  The current setup focuses on energy conservation and creation and is heavily reliant on poisons, namely Deadly Poison.  I threw in that point of Vigor mainly for farming purposes.  Which I do plenty of.  I will have to get used to using Seal Fate again, as well as another new talent, Hunger for Blood.  My combo point rotation will change, from Gouge/Backstab, to a Mutilate heavy rotation capped off with Slice and Dice or Envenom.  In the end, a whole bunch of new buttons, that are bound to a collection of new abilities, will be pressed.  It'll be almost as different as leveling a Priest! What do you PvE-focused Rogues out there think?  Have you guys tried Mutilate yet?  Am I the only person attached to his daggers?  As for the rest of you, did you take the opportunity to try something fresh like I am about to?  Hopefully my toon won't revolt on me for ignoring him for weeks...

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