Project Lore

It's 5 O'clock Somewhere! The closing of International Talk Like a Pirate Day ushered in another of WoW's seasonal events, the much loved Brewfest.  Ahh Brewfest.  Who could dislike two-week long celebration based upon the ancient Dwarven tradition of drinking?  No one, that's who.  Not even the Elementals, Old Gods or Titans could turn away a good brew, tall mug of ale or flagon of mead.  Each and every being in the Warcraft universe has their vice, thus we all love to celebrate the joy it brings.  Oh, except Coren Direbrew.  He probably hates the event since everyone tries to kill him for his purpalz.  Unfortunately for that Dark Iron dwarf, this year will be no different. The double-fisting dwarf has been updated to a level 80+ boss for 2009's Brewfest, and is complete with a new loot table.  Included in his table are the staples of old, the Ram and Kodo and the summoning remote, alongside some sexy new ilvl 200 trinkets (Dodge/Spell Power/Attack Power/Healing Haste) and the second successor to the dagger that almost forced me to quit the game, Direbew's Shanker 2.0.  Yes, Azerothians apparently label their daggers like we Earthlings label our software. Other than the new loot and raise in level, Direbrew's encounter is essentially the same.  To the tickets! Quests:

• Brewfest! - This is the simple starting quest to the event (Alliance/Horde).
• Now This is Ram Racing...Almost - You need to do this quest if you want to unlock the other ram racing dailies and/or grab your souvenir stein for Brewfest 2009 (Alliance/Horde).
• Say, There Wouldn't Happen to be a Souvenir This Year, Would There? - You'll be able to grab your free stein once you complete Now This is Ram Racing...Almost (see above), so be sure to do that quest first.  A very simple quest (Alliance/Horde)!
• There and Back Again (10 Tokens) - This is the most challenging, but not the most time consuming, quest.  You have to run back and forth on a temporary ram delivering kegs, while keeping your fatigue in check.  And you only have four minutes to do three runs.  If you do this quest then you can help the quest giver one more time (Alliance/Horde).
• Do you still need some help moving kegs from the crash site... (2+ Tokens) - That bit about helping the quest giver one more time refers to this.  You'll be tasked with doing the same thing as above, but you'll get 2 tokens for each trip made.  However, once your four minute timer is up you are done for the next 18 hours.  It's like a daily quest, only not a quest, or on a daily timer.  I guess it's the tuned up "Do you have additional work" from last year.
• Catch the Wild Wolpertinger! - One of the quests where you need to be completely smashed on booze or wearing the Synthebrew Goggles, available from the quest giver, to complete.  If you can't see any Wolpertinger's at the Brewfest camp grounds it is because you aren't inebriated enough (Alliance/Horde).
• Pinks Elekks On Parade (40 Tokens) - Another 'be smashed (or goggles) to complete' quest.  Only this also happens to be our token traveling quest for the event as well.  Alliance have to hoof it to Azuremyst Isle, Elwynn Forest and Teldrassil, while Horde will have to head to Eversong Woods, Mulgore and Tirisfal Glades to slay the figments of drunken imagination.  Please, no drinking while driving (Alliance/Horde)!

Daily Quests:

• Bark for a brewery! (15 Tokens) - You have to chose which brewery you bark for per day.  You can swap between the two available beer makers for your faction though.  You'll mount another ram, and then run amok in your capital city screaming about how awesome the chosen brewery's bubbly is.  Pretty simple  way to score some tokens (Horde - Drohn's Distillery/T'chali's Voodoo Brewery; Alliance - Barleybrews/Thunderbrews).
• This One Time, When I Was Drunk... (10 Tokens) - The beginning to all good stories...You can only start this quest after a Dark Iron invasion.  They happen every 30 minutes, so you should be able to find a keg to strike a Dark Iron baddie pretty easily.  Once they've aborted the mission pick up the Dark Iron Mole Machine Wreckage on the ground to start the quest.

In addition to the quests and the loot we also have Brewfest's achievements.  Most of them remain the same, so I won't bother running through them all.  The important one is the new Brewmaster (Alliance/Horde), which forces you to complete all the Achievements except Brew of the Year.  For many people, the completion of Brewmaster means they will have completed the monster meta-Achievement of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, earning themselves a Violet Proto-Drake.  Congrats to those who do. I'll be wondering around "completely smashed" later today to finish off my token collecting for my very own pink elephant elekk.  Already snagged my wolpertinger.  Once that's complete, it's off to BRD for farming of the non-shattered dagger from Direbrew.

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Grunty Going Nuts Just shy of a year ago I had a gripe.  I know, hard to believe, but I did.  Blizzard had dropped the ball with vanity pets, and I wanted it fixed.  The gist of the ancient article is that the most recent non-combat pets lacked animations.  The beings, the Spirit of Competition and hard to get Archangel Tyrael, would simply be.  No movement and little, if any, interaction.  In the case of the Diablo II buddy (released to attendees alongside the Diablo III announcement) it was a missed opportunity of epic proportions.  Tyrael flat out ignored mini Diablo, his arch nemesis. Blizzard seems to have learned from the mistake.  Grunty, the space traveling Murloc decked out in Tier Terran Marine gear does battle with the Zergling.  The Zergling was part of the Collector's Edition for the original World of Warcraft, so coming across a toon with the insectoid may be difficult.  Given the chance, you should travel to the ends of Azeroth to see this far reaching space battle take place on our humble planet/dimension/time.  Here's the flip side. Even though BlizzCon 2009 attendees didn't get a beta key, or access to the Diablo III beta it seems, at least we have this consolation prize.  Even if it is far more common than any other BlizzCon pet before it. Onyxian Whelping's First Appearence Let us not forget the upcoming fifth anniversary of WoW itself.  Forget a shot at an Onyxia mount, I'm not a masochist.  Even if I was, I'd take a cute companion pet any day of the week.  And that's exactly what the incoming ("sometime in November") Onyxia Whelpling is.  It's animation you ask?  Why the little bugger tries to Deep Breath, what else?  Even cuter is a failed attempt, where rings of smoke billow from its mouth instead. What a magnificent time to be a vanity pet collector.

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In an effort to cover World of Warcraft's extended Extended Universe I drank not one, not two but four Game Fuels recently, two of each flavor.  Now I know the Horde is going to freak out about this with claims that Project Lore hates hordies, but your drink taste exactly how I would imagine Cherry citrus-flavored death to taste.  The stuff is absolutely awful.  It should be pulled off the market as fast as Zicam and its creators forced to drink it, and only it, until they beg for mercy.   Screw waterboarding, just force terrorists to drink this concoction of chemicals and "flavor!" As with most things, the Alliance is better.  Well, that is simply relative to the Horde mockery of a refreshing beverage.  This pop is only mildly less appalling than its co-branded cousin, offering gamers a Wild Berry-flavored potion of high fructose corn syrup, caffeine and almost the same collection of chemicals that are difficult (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid), and scary (Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin), to pronounce.  I've yet to meet someone who drank the disgusting tonics out of something other than curiosity, but the shocking thing is that they have both been around the block before. As unattractive as I find Horde Red, the carbonated catastrophe is a re-branding of Mountain Dew's Halo 3 GameFuel which debuted in 2007.  Not to be outdone by unoriginality, the Alliance Blue is also a re-branding, this time of Mountain Dew's election tie-in flavor, Mountain Dew Revolution. Something good did come of the cross branding though, IRL dailies.  Again, I am not a marketing mastermind, but forcing us to view the same junk, much of which has nothing to do with the sodas, day in and day out seems like an odd marketing strategy.  Even money says it has to do with the act of repetition forcing the human brain to remember things more accurately (see Navi). In all seriousness the good aspect is another vanity pet!  After this morning's failed attempts at the Scorched Stone, my GM and I took out our frustrations on each other's Battle-Bots.  Once fueled up (you have to reboot WoW after requesting your fuel) these guys duke it out for a bit and then one explodes in a great show of leakage.  Glad Blizzard gave the animators some time to play with these machines, but it makes me want a mini Diablo vs. mini Tyrael battle even more. I'd say that between the chance for IRL rewards, even if the token collection system is absolutely stupid, and the in-game combat pet, the co-branding has been a success.  But Blizzard, next time make the other company create interesting IRL dailies.  It really shouldn't be that difficult, some guerrilla marketing, puzzles we have to solve, trivia, need I go on? There are a ton of things more entertaining than "watching" videos over, and over again. Here I thought reading numerous Knaak novels was the worst thing that could come from the Extended Universe!  I kid, I kid, the story arcs are entertaining and leave absolutely no aftertaste (of death). I am sure many of you out there actually enjoy these deviants of ahh, but are you proud enough to admit it?  Me?  I will stick with my Pepsi/Mountain Dew Throwback, as I cannot stand the aftertaste left on my palate by High Fructose Corn Syrup.  The Throwback stuff is awesome, as far as soda goes anyway.  Anyone else get a kick out of the Battle-Bots? Edit: Yes the Horde Drink is the Halo 3 GameFuel, not Code Red. Thank you readers!

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The Folks over at MMO-Champion have once again dug through the latest game files and found new stuff for everyone to drool over. Grunty the Murloc Marine is just that, and if they're following their trend from the past few events (a murloc pet, murloc costume, and mount with a murloc doll), the murloc space marine might just be the in-game item from 2009's BlizzCon. Considering Starcraft 2's public beta is on the verge of coming out, it fits quite perfectly. The pet itself has an awesome gun and an animation of shooting the gun, which you can see above. Check it out or head to MMO-Champion for high res screenshots!

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Earlier I discussed some of the hidden gems in the Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition Artbook. That article focused solely on the idea that a few artistic scribbles could be Tier loot that will be added to World of Warcraft in the near future. This post will have a much larger scope, peeling back the shrink wrap on all aspects of $69.99 Collector's Edition. A price that a few of us balked at.

Behind-the-scenes DVD

The DVD featured a widely varying collection of World of Warcraft related content. Naturally, we have some developer comments on things like The Burning Crusade versus Northrend, Northrend's art direction and environments and the in your face lore that so many people love about Wrath. The DVD includes trailers from TBC's content patches, v2.1, v2.3 and v2.4 and a collection of funny machinima. It is a pretty standard fare DVD pack-in, with no shocking revelations or insights we weren't already aware of. Content discussions aside, the sheer passion that Blizzard's employees emanate, especially their Lore Historian, is what makes them, and WoW, so great. Worth a watch when your internet is down.

Official Soundtrack

There is actually a section in the Behind-the-scenes DVD that perfectly expresses my feelings for the OST of WotLK. As I have been walking around Northrend, I have never been hit in the face by the ambient music kicking in. Instead it weaves in and out of the background, adding some stimulation to my auditory senses, while not being too disrupting. The OST simply gives us a continuous stream of this music, and while it doesn't flow as well as in the game, I do not expect it to. Nonetheless, I have added it to my playlist of game music which includes The Witcher: Enhanced Edition's OST and everything from The Advantage. Way more utility than the DVD.

Feelies

Feelies are a lost art in video games. The young whippersnappers out there - who won't stay off my lawn – missed out on the golden age of feelies. Back in the day of walking to school, up-hill, both ways, purchasers of PC games would be meet with trinkets galore in their ridiculously oversized boxes. Especially if you had just purchased an adventure game.

Nowadays, the only place to find anything remotely close to that is by paying extra for the “collector's edition” (Actually the aforementioned re-release of The Witcher had feelies included for only $39.99. Also, I like The Witcher: EE). Blizzard's best feelie, is not a physical item at all, but the mini Frost Wyrm pet that becomes account bound when you upgrade to Wrath. The initial oohs and ahhs of guildmates and friends have worn off though, so back to Egbert. The mousepad is cool, but not replacing my dirty Pokemon pad ('m' doesn't bring up a list of the badass Pokemans now does it?!) and I didn't score any godly cards from the two packs of WoW TCG. Not being a TCG player, they are now worthless, although some users will enjoy the free cards.

Wrath of the Lich King Artbook

I suck at art, but wow do I appreciate this book. The book, rather tome, is chock full of Northrend goodies and broken up by sections. Often with an introduction that was lifted from the official website. The book is probably the only thing in the CE that would interest anyone outside of the game. My casual gamer friend looked at it for about 20minutes yesterday after we watched the Behind-the-scenes DVD. Not counting the actually game, the art book is what defines the Collector's Edition and made the purchase worth it, even if there were a lot of prints straight from the cinematic.

While I don't feel that buying the CE was a waste of $30, I do wish there was a bit more to it. I mentioned that I would have loved a cloth map, well, I guess I can hang-up the mousepad since I won't be using it. Still, pre-loading the title would easily make the CE's hefty mark-up worth it to many users, while not upsetting the casual base as much as in-game items.

Blizzard, are you listening? We want more bang for our buck next time.

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