Project Lore

Most of us have never had a legendary item as defined by the WoW community. Nope, those elusive oranges are prizes for a very select few. Sure they are cool and have sexy stats, but for the most part they succeed in only making their owner happy. The good news is, there is a different kind of legendary item that is much more prominent among players. Have you ever had an item that you named? Did your guild ever talk about a piece of your equipment as though it was an actual person? Does the story behind how you got your gear mean more to you than its stats? If so, then you know how awesome these real legendary items are. The first time I experienced this was in the Burning Crusade. At the time, I was playing a night elf hunter and we had recently taken down Al'ar. I was awarded a Netherbane axe and while it was amazing statistically, I was disappointed by how it looked. It's hard enough protecting your masculinity as a night elf, but try doing so while walking around with a glowing pink axe! Well rather than fight the jeers from my guildmates, I embraced my new weapon and named it Scott Baio. Some people thought it was humorous and began talking about it during the next raid. It quickly started to feel like my friends were more excited to see Scott Baio at the raid than they were to see me. A few weeks later, another Netherbane dropped and as I won the DKP auction, everyone laughed and wondered what I would name this one. My offhand axe was dubbed Pink Lover and I bought myself a pink mageweave shirt to complete the ensemble. Most people got a big kick out of it and of course there were those that did a /facepalm every time Scott Baio and Pink Lover were mentioned. My dad, who is also in my guild, was not a huge fan of the twin fuchsia blades. Eventually, another one of our hunters won a Netherbane and he didn't disappoint when he named his John Stamos. It was a bitter sweet when I finally got an upgrade and had to replace those axes. I hated how they looked, but they will probably be one of the few items I'll remember long after I'm done playing this game. They were my legendaries. A similar phenomenon has occurred recently in Ulduar. Our guild's tanks have had horrible luck upgrading their shields in WotLK. They just don't drop for us, especially in the heroic raids. A group of us were running Ulduar 10, when our luck finally seemed to be taking a turn for the better. Auriaya dropped the Shieldwall of the Breaker and it was claimed by one of our paladin tanks, Beomaire. We were so excited for him, that is, until he put it on. We stared at the graphic for a few seconds in silence and then all at once started telling him how ugly it was. One person thought it looked like Grizzly Adam's head was chopped off and slapped on the shield. Another guy said, "Actually, it looks like my mother." We chuckled a bit and then moved on. The rest of that raid things went downhill. We were wiping and not making much progress. When we finally ended the raid, we blamed Beo's shield for the bad luck. The next night we were in heroic Ulduar and even though we had beaten Ignis before, we kept dying. Then someone said, "You know, we haven't been able to beat Ignis, since Beo got that heinously ugly shield." In that moment, that homely shield had become legendary. Now, every time we're struggling during a raid, Beo's shield is blamed. It's been weeks and we've still yet to have a shield upgrade drop. so the hilarity continues. I even asked a GM, while they were working on another issue for me, if they could change the graphic on Beomaire's shield to change our luck. I'm still waiting to hear back. So who else has had an item attain legendary status in your guild? Please share your stories with us.

Click to read more ...

The stats on Val'anyr, the new legenary healing mace that is obtainable in Ulduar, were revealed a little while ago, but the special proc that is on the mace has been a bit of a mystery since its tooltip was discovered. Ferraro over at Paladin Schmaladin has been posting over the past few weeks about the mace, and the discussion sparked a couple of developers - Bornakk and Ghostcrawler - to let the community know exactly how the proc works. The basics are these: There is a 10% chance on any heal for the weilder of Val'anyr to gain the blessing from the mace, as long as the heal is not completely overhealing (ie the target is not at full health when you heal them). It is a 15 second effect with a 45 second internal cooldown. For the next 15 seconds, all of your healing spells will create a shield on their target(s) for 15% of the heal. This includes overheal and spells that do no actual healing. The shield will stack with itself, and will max out at 20,000 damage absorbed. Bornakk gave a few examples of how it actually works and Ghostcrawler has answered many of the questions that have come up since then. Check out their posts on the official forums for the complete details. Unfortunately I won't be seeing one of these in my guild for a long time (and we haven't even seen a shard drop). Anyone out there close to collecting the 30 shards needed for it?

Click to read more ...

I didn't have the heart to crop out the skull.

Blizzard Entertainment seems to be on a warpath with Wrath of the Lich King's first content patch.  The developer has promised players an insane amount of content including the addition of the largest instance to date, Ulduar, the Dual Spec mechanic, a built-in Gear Manager, and the Argent Tournament, just to name a few.  Not everything coming in v3.1 has been given the bullet point treatment however. The bloggers on Project Lore have found a few under-the-radar type of additions that we have clung to like a dork to his unopened figures.  Heartbourne gave us the Hearthstone cooldown reduction and Dual Spec price.  The first change was likely made to stop "ghetto hearthing" - the art of abusing an instance for a free hearth.  Juggynaut got hooked on his Legendary mace and the modifications to the Dual Spec feature before hitting us with the removal of the Black and Plagued Proto-Drake meta-achievement rewards.  Myself, well, I covered the Argent Tournament and the patches upcoming gear additions.  Which no one cared about apparently, or just didn't want to spoil themselves. Following in the footsteps of the Hearthstone's nerf and the additional of the Gear Manager, comes another quality of life change to World of Warcraft, the modification to the RaidID system. Blizzard announced their intentions to overhaul the archaic system a few weeks ago, but I don't think anyone, including Blizzard, expected it to be done for Patch 3.1's testing on the PTR. The RaidID system is Blizzard's internal way of tracking which instance a toon should be connected to.  The main problem that arose with the system was the lockout period.  Should a player that has cleared a raid or heroic enter into the instance first, followed by the other members of the party or raid, the unsaved players can get linked to the cleared instance.  This would then blow their lockout period.  Needless to say, this small issue pissed people off. A lot.  Zarhym's promise of "a better interface to warn players" has come to light on the PTR, but not as elegant as he hoped. BigRedKitty's screenshot shows us a dialogue box with a warning on it.  Basically, we have 15 seconds to get out of dodge if the instance is not what we expected, that is it.  The box does not appear to give you any details on the instance itself, so the "better interface" has yet to come to fruition by my standards.  Hopefully further upgrades to the system will be coming in the near future. Many of you probably never experienced this issue, or don't even care about the "fix", but you should.  In my opinion, it is Blizzard's application of these little tweaks that helps make them one of the premiere developers in the industry.  The company should be applauded for their attention to detail and willingness to correct their mistakes, especially when the issue only effects a small amount of the populace under certain circumstances.  Even if Blizzard does it in an iterative fashion when a more drastic change is called for, at least the ball is rolling.  Right?

Click to read more ...