Project Lore

Tuesday night is 10-man night for TRG, and we're about to do some 10-man instances including Onyxia, Trial of the Crusader, and Trial of the Grand Crusader. If you haven't caught the new Onyxia, be sure to tune in and see her as she dies... again. Tomorrow at the same times (7pm PDT/10pm EDT), we'll be running through the 25-man version of the same instances. We run these on Wednesday, Thursday, and Mondays. If you miss tomorrow's, check those other nights at the same times. As usual, I'll be in the USTREAM chat and I'll try to answer any questions that come up whenever I can. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Also, if you happen to miss the stream, there should be some archived videos embedded below!

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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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Yesterday in 10-mans, we managed to clear all of Trial of the Crusader and then managed to get the tribute chest in Trial of the Grand Crusader on the last possible try. Now that we have some real experience clearing the 10-man version of ToC, tonight The Totally Rad Guild will be trying the 25-man version of the instance tonight... right now! Once we get through Anub'arak (as we did last week), we will be starting on hard modes of the encounters. With just 50 wipes per week to use on the Trial of the Grand Crusader, we'll have some extra stress put on each of our raiders. It will be a lot of fun to see the differences between 10-man and 25-man. Tomorrow at the same times (7pm PDT/10pm EDT), we'll be continuing our raids, so come back then to see what we have in store next. As usual, I'll be in the USTREAM chat and I'll try to answer any questions that come up whenever I can. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Also, if you happen to miss the stream, there should be some archived videos embedded below!

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With the entirety of Trial of the Crusader finally unlocked, The Totally Rad Guild will be trying the 10-man version of the instance tonight starting in about an hour at  7pm PDT/10pm EDT. Once we get through Anub'arak, we will be starting on hard modes of the encounters. With just 50 wipes per week to use on the Trial of the Grand Crusader, some Blizzard employees doubt the abilities of raiders to complete the instance in its first week of being available. We'll have to see how far we are able to get. I, for one, can't wait to run into some actually difficult content outside of Ulduar! Tomorrow at the same times (7pm PDT/10pm EDT), we'll be running through the 25-man version of the same instances. So if you want to see the differences, come back tomorrow and see! As usual, I'll be in the USTREAM chat and I'll try to answer any questions that come up whenever I can. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Also, if you happen to miss the stream, there should be some archived videos embedded below!

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This week we get access to boss encounter number four of five in Trial of the Crusader, and tonight at around 7pm PDT/10pm EDT (that means soon!), The Totally Rad Guild will be trying the 10-man version of the instance. Once we get through the four released bosses, we will be heading to Ulduar most likely, so check those encounters out! Tomorrow at the same times (7pm PDT/10pm EDT), we'll be running through the 25-man version of the same instances. So if you want to see the differences, come back tomorrow and see! As usual, I'll be in the USTREAM chat and I'll try to answer any questions that come up whenever I can. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Also, if you happen to miss the stream, there should be some archived videos embedded below!

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We had a good night last night, taking down all three available bosses in the 10-man version of Trial of the Crusader on USTREAM. Tonight, at around 7pm PDT/10pm EDT, The Totally Rad Guild will be trying the 25-man version of the instance. Once we get through the Horde Champions, we should be headed into 25-man Ulduar. After that perhaps we'll work on some more 10-man instances. As usual, I'll be in the USTREAM chat and I'll try to answer any questions that come up whenever I can. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Also, if you happen to miss the stream, there should be some archived videos embedded below!

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Last night we took down the first two bosses that have been unlocked in the 10-man version of Trial of the Crusader on USTREAM. Tonight, at around 7pm PDT/10pm EDT, The Totally Rad Guild will be trying the 25-man version of the instance. Once we get those bosses down we should be headed into 25-man Ulduar and then maybe we'll finish off last night's 10-man Ulduar hard modes run. If you caught Monday's stream and experienced some audio issues, you'll be glad to hear that those have been taken care of (I hope). As usual, I'll be in the USTREAM chat and I'll try to answer any questions that come up whenever I can. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Also, if you happen to miss the stream, there should be some archived videos embedded below!

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Edit: The initial stream is over, but we're doing some more tonight. Check it out at the same time! Tonight starting around 7pm PDT/10pm EDT, The Totally Rad Guild will be continuing our raid of Ulduar and hopefully not failing. Some of you may have watched the live streams before, but today I'll be streaming with full in game audio and limited audio from me to respond to the chat room that's attached and give a little side commentary outside of vent. The streamed video and chat are embedded below, so come in, join the chat, and check it out. You can also follow Project Lore on twitter or check out our USTREAM channel to find out more! Free TV : Ustream

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A lot of players don't seem to know about a very cool feature of Recount, the realtime graph displays. I can say this with confidence because I get a lot of questions about the red graph in the bottom right-hand corner of my UI that displays the current DPS output of the raid. So, to answer that common question I decided to write up a quick post about setting it up. First, you'll need to install Recount. Once that's done, either type in /recount config or click on the cog on the top of the Recount window to bring up the settings window. Next, navigate to the Window tab and choose which window you want to turn on. You can turn on a few different windows for the raid: damage per second, healing per second, damage taken per second, and healing taken per second. Now, these are all pretty simple and show overall raid performance. But what if you want to monitor just your own performance? You can actually turn on player specific graphs for each of those four stats (DPS, DTPS, HPS, and HTPS).  To do this, go to the main recount window and navigate to the stat you'd like to track. In my case, I want to watch my personal DPS during a raid, so I'll go to the Damage Done meter. Right click on the player you want to track and choose "Show Realtime Graph." Alternatively, just Ctrl-click on the player's name on the meter. Up pops an individualized version of the meter that will just watch one player's performance as a fight goes on. Handy! A lot of players have had recount installed and don't use it beyond the basic damage meter capabilities, so click around and check out what it has to offer. Also, if you're curious about my UI, check out the list of addons that I use.

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Recently our Mount Runs have been able to include my viewpoint thanks to the wonders of screen capture software. A few of you who are following the Project Lore twitter have also caught a couple of my live streams of Ulduar raids on Ustream (Another raid is scheduled for tonight at 7pm PST!). Some of you have wondered what addons I use. I use a lot of them so I thought I'd just list off all of them. Also here is a screenshot with a few of them labeled (click it for a bigger size). Any questions are welcomed in the comments below!

• Align - overlays a grid to neatly arrange things on the screen
• Aloft - changes the nameplates over character's heads
• Altoholic - tracks all sort of useful stuff between alts and guildies
• ArkInventory - Organizes my inventory, bank, etc.
• AtlasLoot - Shows bosses loot tables
• Auctioneer - Scans the auction for tons of statistics and data. Way more than I can use
• Cartographer - adds functionality to the ingame map
• Clique - click casting made simple!
• CT_MailMod - lots of useful mail functions
• Deadly Boss Mods - tracks bosses' abilities and more
• Dominos - customizes action bars
• ElkBuffBars - shows buffs and makes them easier to see at a glance
• FishingAce - right click casting
• Fubar - along with tons of plugins, houses a lot of info
• Gladius - enemy unit frames for use in arenas
• Grid - Compact raid unit frames
• LootDB - shows where loot came from (a little redundant with Altoholic I know)
• MikScrollingBattleText - changes combat text
• NPCScan - finds rare mobs
• Omen - Threat Meter
• OmniCC - Shows cooldowns on buttons
• oRA - tons of cool raid functionality
• Outfitter - gear swapping and item sets
• Overachiever - some cool Achievement stuff
• pError - hides errors like "Not Enough Mana" or whatever you want!
• PitBull - Unit frames (health/mana/etc)
• PowerAuras - Very customizable to show when buffs and abilities are up/down.
• Prat - Edits the chat window
• Quartz - Casting bars
• RatingBuster - Compares stats with currently equipped items, shows differences, tells how stats affect you.
• Recount - Damage Meter
• simpleMinimap - Moves the minimap, makes it square, etc
• SunnArt - creates a viewport with nice art!
• TipTac - changes in-game tooltips
• TotemTimers - does what it says
• UrbanAchiever - More cool achievement functionality
• XLoot - Changes loot window, group loot, masterloot, etc
• ZOMGBuffs - shows who needs what buffs in a raid

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