Project Lore

Content patches often bring class changes of the raw number variety, but rarely do we see mechanics almost completely reinvented. Shamans' lives are about to get a whole lot easier, as Blizzard intends to give them their very own hotbar for totems! The new bar will hang just over the left side of your core action buttons, just like a Warrior's stances or a Paladin's auras, and feature four slots where you can drop totems, one of each element. As there are currently twenty-three totems available to the class, this should help cut down on clutter (assuming you're like me,  and keeping all of them readily available just in case you might find the rare use for most of them). This Shaman might still be alive if he was using the new hotbar! Several other buttons will be available on the hotbar just as soon as you achieve the level needed to learn them. Call of Earth, for example, will replace Totemic Call, while a whole new spell, Call of Fire, will drop all four totems at once. Those Shamans who currently rely on macros to do this will be pleased to know that Call of Fire operates using only one global cooldown, making it even more efficient. Likewise, there are Call of Air and Call of Water spells, which essentially function the same as Call of Fire, but allow you to drop two more (different) sets of totems, so you can queue them up as the situation calls for it. Each of these can be hotkeyed for easy access. A total of eight new buttons on your screen might seem like a lot, but it's certainly better, and more organized, than the alternative. Ultimately, this should eliminate several problems for the class, including resetting your totems after they've been destroyed in PvP combat or quickly moving them to avoid adds while questing or running an instance. I, for one, am happy with these changes. My primary alt is a Shaman, and setting down totems before any given encounter gets to be a pain, to the point of not even bothering for most trash pulls. It should also make tasks like dropping an emergency Cleansing or Tremor Totem more convenient. Overall, it looks like 3.2 may be shaping up to be a bigger release that originally anticipated. What do you guys and gals think? Does this sound like something that would appeal to you, or are you just going to continue sticking with macros? Gives us your feedback below!

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I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but it looks like one of the greatest points of contention regarding the recently announced mount changes for 3.2 will continue to upset players of WoW. In comments both on my post here at Project Lore and on the official WoW forums, posters have begrudged the major price dips for mounts because they had to pay so much more when they bought their mounts. Some have gone so far as to suggest (or demand, in some cases) that Blizzard refund their in-game gold. Not surprisingly, blue poster Zarhym has responded to these requests in a couple of different places in the forums. After the complaints started rolling in Wednesday, he said:

"We have no plans of offering in-game gold refunds on item costs to compensate for this content change, as has always been our policy."

Later on,  in an individual thread asking for refunds, he expanded on that point:

"It's truly a great thing that online gaming has expanded to the point where a game can grow and evolve over time with new content. As a gaming company, we can look back with hind sight and make changes to update older content within the context of everything that has come since. Several times over this has led to price adjustments in a number of areas, and we do not reimburse items or money due to changes in content. There are simply too many variables and too many changes each content patch to attempt to compensate anyone who's been negatively affected by a change."

Now this doesn't seem like a hugely unexpected revelation. As he said, I can't think of any other time that Blizzard has made any overarching gold refunds for in-game price adjustments. I'm also not sure that anything has ever decreased in price across-the-board this drastically before, but I can't say for sure. But still, this has been a major point that has players up in arms, and it probably will continue to be controversial. I predict that all the hoopla will die down once patch 3.2 comes out (whenever that is - it may still be awhile), and people start getting cheap-ass mounts for their level 20 alts. Plus, all those other changes that also are planned for 3.2! Personally, I can't wait. One thing I'm still undecided on - what's the verdict for all of you who are on the verge of buying your mount? Do you wait for the patch, however long that may be? Or do you shovel out the cash so you can get the benefit of faster travel now? And if you do, will you QQ about it?

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Blue poster Zarhym on Wednesday night announced some pretty huge mount changes coming up for the next major content patch, 3.2. You'll be able to learn your apprentice, journeyman and expert riding skills all considerably earlier than before and at a reduced cost. As an added bonus, regular flying mounts now will fly at 150% speed, instead of 60%. All of this, Zarhym said, is "to further improve the leveling experience in World of Warcraft." Here's the breakdown of changes to cost and level requirements, according to what Zarhym posted, with my own notes in italics:

• Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)
  • 60% land mount speed
  • Requires level 20 - a whole 10 levels earlier
  • Cost: 4 gold - way down from 35g
  • Mount cost: 1 gold - instead of 10g
  • Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

• Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)
  • 100% land mount speed
  • Requires level 40 - OMG 20 levels sooner!
  • Cost: 50 gold - currently 600g
  • Mount cost: 10 gold - down from 100g
  • Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

• Expert Riding (Skill 225)
  • 150% flying mount speed instead of 60%; 60% land mount speed
  • Requires level 60 - Previously level 70
  • Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply) - currently 800g
  • Mount Cost: 50 gold - down from 100g
  • Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

• Artisan Riding (Skill 300)
  • 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
  • Requires level 70
  • Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
  • Mount Cost: 100 gold - instead of 200g

And, after getting lots of questions from other posters about Cold Weather Flying, Zarhym replied that at least that much will "remain unchanged." It looks to me like these changes will help leveling go quite a bit faster, especially when in many of the wide, open spaces common throughout Azeroth. Not to mention the zones in Outland, too! AND the huge price slashes will mean that it's much less of a hardship for players to pay for mounts, especially for those poor alts. Most people in the forums seem to be pretty ecstatic about the announcement, but there are plenty also who are starting to say that the changes are catered toward the casual player (or that they should have been implemented xx months ago!). But these changes will affect everyone across the board - and in my opinion, it's all for the good. It's not about being lazy when leveling - it's about enjoying the game. And I think for a lot of us, mounts are fun. Zarhym also announced that the casting time for summoning all mounts will go from its current 3 seconds down to 1.5 seconds. Which, to me, equals a greater chance that I'll be able to get my mount out in time after breaking stealth and before getting attacked. And maybe you also can successfully escape any other baddies heading your way before entering combat. I guess that would "improve the leveling experience" in my book. Add this to all the other changes coming for Call of the Crusade, and a new battleground, and I'm just giddy. So what does everyone else think about these upcoming changes? FTW? Or FTL?

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I admit that little of Blizzard's new raiding philosophy has sat well with me, so when details started trickling in about the next major content patch, you can imagine that I had a few beefs. Most notably, this little nugget:

Crusaders' Coliseum: In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the Coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside.

With the wealth of raiding content added in Burning Crusade, am I the only one that feels like Blizz has been sort of phoning it in? Sure, Ulduar's a fantastic instance, but Naxxramas really did feel like recycled content. Remarkably few people experienced its first iteration, and it was nice to smash Kel'Thuzad's face in, but the feel and design screamed "hand-me-down." Likewise, before Wrath hit the market, we knew Ulduar was on the horizon and were told that the doors to Icecrown Citadel would creak open with the release of 3.3, but Blizzard also hinted at a mystery raid that would appear sometime in-between. Now they're telling us it's the Argent Coliseum, a raid instance that Blue Zarhym describes as "Ring of Blood or Amphitheater of Anguish, but more epic" is the only bone being thrown? You call that a raid dungeon?! A raider's appetite is voracious (just ask Ensidia), and the meatier the content, the happier we're going to be! I hate to take a Blue's words at face value -- after all, they're just trying to help and don't necessarily represent the company as a whole -- but "another Ring of Blood" doesn't exactly inspire. You've already got three of those in various areas of Northrend! Coliseum-style quest lines are all fine and dandy for a few extra boxcars on the leveling train (as I sometimes describe my experience bar), but as a raid instance? I'm not so sure. Those raid designers are going to have to work some juju to convince me. Really, though, it just feels symptomatic of a greater malady. Hard modes? Who wouldn't want to see whole new encounters as opposed to a few over-charged bosses? It smacks of the same sort of lazy design most developers use to "enhance replayability" in their games by juicing the enemies and nerfing the player. A true Hard Mode works great with well-coded AI that becomes more and more devious as the difficulty scales higher, but the structure of WoW's PvE gameplay doesn't lend itself to those sorts of augmentations. Bosses are clockwork machines that work either on strict timers or random number generators. It's easy to strategize for them, and from there it's mere player execution. The path is not that hard to follow: a raid group encounters a boss for a first time, wipes and wipes to the point of frustration, finally kills that boss, then has it on farm. The "freshness" of any given in encounter doesn't last very long, and Hard modes, at least in my eyes, do very little to lengthen it. Despite my problems, I feel like i'm peeing on the wrong hydrant here. Blizzard's put a crazy amount of effort into this expansion and it shows in the cohesiveness of Northrend. I think it's great that the community can have differing opinions and honest debate about this topic with those that actually have to create the game. It shows a great amount of love and investment on all sides. Perhaps that's why their new raiding philosophy feels do damning to long-time players like myself. The focus has been on expanding the casual content, providing a wealth of quests to work through on the path to 80, dailies galore once you get there, and the opportunity to traverse content you never would have had a chance to in Burning Crusade. But in doing so, it seems to rob successive content (and the lore associated with it) of its impact.  Once terrible fiends in the WarCraft universe have had their rears thoroughly kicked in 5-mans, and as I've discussed here, the raid bosses haven't had it much better. This philosophy would've worked fine if it had been implemented from the ground up, but two expansions in, broadening the base of the content makes for an increasingly flat experience. Perhaps I'm belly-aching too much, though. I do find it weird to make a post like this on a night spent entirely having my face cratered by Mimiron, but it's also strange to know that by this time next week, yet another Titan will no doubt have been toppled. So you, dear readers, does WoW's new raid direction feel like a sweet deal to you, or does it leave a faint, sour taste in your mouth? Will 3.2 serve as a sufficient stop-gap between Ulduar and Icecrown, or is it just another bump in the road for the hardcore set?

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The new patch, 3.1.2, is now live on all realms. We have been covering what would be in this patch for awhile, and it's great to see some of our long-lost favorite features implemented, like the equipment manager. Check out the full patch notes. Here are my selected highlights from the new patch: Equipment Manager- When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank). I'm not quite sold on the equipment manager. I use Outfitter for all of my gear management and it's very robust. It automagically equips my lance when I enter the Argent Tournament grounds and puts on my PvP gear when I enter a battleground, arena, or Wintergrasp. I can also throw all my PvP gear in the bank when I'm going to raid for bag space and integrates beautifully with Fishingbuddy. The Blizzard implementation of interface components are generally not as good as player-developed addons (as evidenced as Omen versus in-game threat manager as well as all the interface mods from everything from the auction house to unit frames). We'll see how much this breaks Outfitter and whether it will replace it for most players. New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion's Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply). Not only does this mean new, pretty mounts, but also that there are 5 more mounts, and cheap mounts at that! Five Champion's Seals is nothing, and 500g minus the 20% exalted discount is a mere 400g per mount. I might start seriously trying for that dragonhawk mount. Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator's gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level. Thank god! If only they implemented this on Oculus and the Eye of Eternity, then I would be perfectly happy with vehicle combat. Vehicles don't get tenacity, and this makes my average 7-8 tenacity buff in Wintergrasp pointless for actually doing objectives relevant to victory. Now that vehicles scale up with gear, there is a better incentive for getting gear for Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients. All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper's Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate. There are a few reasons why this is a good idea. First off, it should be noted that the honor rewarded from Wintergrasp on a whole has been nerfed to try to encourage people to do other battlegrounds. On the flip side, they changed the dailies to weeklies with much more honor and Stone Keeper's Shards. This means that there is less of an incentive to play Wintergrasp at every moments it's up, and instead encourages players to play it a few times per week. Hopefully this decreases the plague of Wintergrasp lag. Additionally, they won't take up one of the 25 daily quests you can do every day, meaning that overall the amount of gold and whatnot I can get each week has increased! What changes are you excited about?

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The smoke is starting to clear from all the changes in patches 3.1 and 3.1.1, and players are figuring out how all the class changes have affected preferred talent specs and accompanying glyphs. Also, with the recent addition of dual spec, there are a lot of players out there who've recently been looking into the best builds for different aspects of gameplay. So there was plenty to consider with the patches, and thankfully we have a lot of tools out there for figuring out which builds we like best. When I was trying to figure out how to spec for my foray in the arena tournament, I used the WoWWiki page for rogue builds, found the PvP spec I liked best, then figured out how to gear up based on my new talents. But there are downsides to that route - posters don't always have the best insight into which builds are best, and there's a whole array to choose from, each with slightly different tweaks. Now I'm all for personalizing your character based on your own preferences and playing style. But when thinking about completely switching your specs (or adding a dual spec), sometimes it's good to go for the tried and true specs to start off with, then figure out what changes you want to make from there. I think the best tool out there for this is TalentChic.com, and the recently added sister site, GlyphChic. Here's how it works:

"To find the most popular talent builds, the system scans both the US and EU WoW armory sites to find the talent points chosen by characters. It then sorts those according class, spec and playstyle and collates the results... We continually scan the armory and update the popularity score of the most popular builds hourly. "

Just by looking at the TalentChic home page, we can see that the overall most popular builds among "the best players" who are included in the calculation are:

1. Elemental Shaman 57/14/0
2. Restoration Shaman 0/16/55
3. Fire Mage 0/53/18
4. Combat Rogue 15/51/5 (And coincidentally, also the spec I'm working my main toward)
5. Shadow Priest 13/0/58

But the interesting part is when you use the site's filters to break down the popularity of a build according to class and find out specifics. As of my writing this, the top 10 most popular Death Knight builds are either Frost or Unholy, with Blood only making the list at number 11. You also can sort the list according to specific talent trees. The top four builds for hunters, for example, are minor variations on a survival spec.  But you also can look specifically at the beast mastery tree to see that among those specs, several different versions of a 53/11/7 build are the most prominent. And if you want to watch and see how any patch changes affect the popularity of builds, you can sign up to get updates when a specific page on the site changes. Currently, the site is updated based on how players have rebuilt their specs that were reset with patch 3.1 and again with 3.1.1. The sister web site, GlyphChic, operates very similarly. You choose your specific considerations, and the site reguritates useful stats back at you. Among players who also use my favored combat spec, for example, the most popular major glyphs are of sinister strike, rupture and slice and dice, while the favored minor glyphs are of blurred speed, vanish and safe fall. The site's been around since the talent respec that came with 3.0.2, and the WoW community continues to be a little smarter because of it. So for anyone who hasn't checked it out yet or who hasn't been back since last Tuesday, definitely take a look. You may find yourself surprised, entertained or at least more informed.

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My long-awaited vacation has finally arrived. And one of the top items on my priority list (although I'm sot sure yet whether it will happen) is playing more WoW and getting a feel for all the 3.1 patch changes. The only problem: I'm more than 800 miles from home and in a much different atmosphere than usual. Here, there's no permanent desk setup, which isn't a huge deal since I normally play on my laptop anyway. It's just a bit less comfortable playing from a hard, wood chair than in my much softer desk chair. But since I need my mouse accessible, I can't exactly sink into a couch. I wish I would have remembered to bring my lapdesk - that would have solved that issue beautifully. Thankfully, latency isn't much of an issue. The DSL here versus cable back home both have me hovering at about 200 ms. But I doubt we'd have enough bandwidth here to run two (or three) windows of WoW simultaneously. Needless to say, my escapades with dual-boxing have temporarily halted. I'm just glad I'm not staying with someone who still runs dialup! So it's not quite the same as back home, but I'm able to squeeze in a bit of WoW in between fun vacation-esque stuff. Enough to feed the addiction. For any of you all looking to leave town for spring break or whatever reason and still hope to get in some gaming on a laptop you can travel with, I recommend: find a comfortable spot - bring a lapdesk (do as I say, not as I do). Don't forget your mouse - touchpads are incredibly difficult to use in-game. And if you have anything like a Zboard that you can fit in your luggage, bring it along, too. Even if you can't fit your entire desktop, a keyboard doesn't take up a ton of space. Of course, if you CAN bring a more powerful desktop, that also would be nice. Though it may limit your options for a spot to play. And no matter what the case, remember: You're on vacation! Don't forget to run some RL quests for fun, too! So what's your WoW routine while on vacation - do you still find the time to squeeze in some playtime? And do you have any more tips to offer for those traveling?

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Dungeon maps? Yes, please!

While my game was patching this afternoon, I took a look through WoW's official Patch Notes on 3.1. We've already been talking a lot about some of the larger ticket items including Ulduar and related achievements, dual spec, armor upgrades, profession changes and the unfortunate delay of Equipment Manager. Now, there's a WHOLE lot more that we'll undoubtedly be combing over in the coming days and weeks, but until then let's take a look at some of the other random details from the Secrets of Ulduar page and the patch notes that jumped out at me. My aim for this first round up is to detail what will affect all of us, as opposed to the specific. The convenience factor:

• All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider. Flying Mounts still may NOT, and will dismount the rider upon entering water.
• Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location. Leaving a battleground will return you to the location from which you entered.
• Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).

Class changes:

• Death Knights have a TON of changes that will take some time to readjust. Some spells got buffed, some got nerfed. With time, we'll see what the overall affect is. If I had to guess, it may be an overall nerf.
• Druids, hunters, paladins, priests, shamans and warlocks also are seeing substantial class changes.
• Mages and warriors will see some changes but not as many.
• Rogues, my specialty, may possibly be getting an overall buff. A couple of skills got debuffed, but not by a ton. /hopeful! What I'm looking forward to most -- Killing Spree: Now also increases all damage done by the rogue while active by 20%.

Professions: cooking:

• A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man 'O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
• Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You're just that resourceful!
• Ingredients such as Spices, Apples, and the like have been removed from most cooking recipes.
• Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
• You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

And for the all-important First Aid:

• You no longer need to complete the “Triage” quest to attain Artisan First Aid. Instead you can learn the Artisan skill from the trainers in the capital cities.
• You no longer need to learn First Aid from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

And Fishing:

• A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools (hmmm, what could it be?).
• The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
• You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
• You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

The only bummer for me on professions, and this is of my own doing, comes from Leatherworking:

• Added a recipe for combining Borean Leather Scraps into Borean Leather. You can still use Borean Scraps from your inventory to combine them. (I JUST combined a TON of these without the recipe, and hence got no levels for it. Sadness!)

Dungeons:

• New dungeon maps have been added for all Wrath of the Lich King dungeons. (YAAAAAAAY!!)

User Interface:

• New Advanced features for quest tracking are now available. Players will need to activate this option within the Interface panel.
• Several new options for increased graphics such as Video Mode Ultra, higher Shadow Quality detail and new high-resolution player textures for Northrend armor sets.
• Players can now return items purchased with an alternate currency back to the original vendor within 2 hours of the purchase time for the original cost of the item. Stackable items (such as Frozen Orbs and gems) and charged items that can be purchased with an alternate currency are not eligible.
• Confirmation boxes have been added to purchases over 150 gold.
• The calendar now supports a guild-wide sign-up sheet, allowing the event organizer to invite his or her entire guild.
• Class roles (i.e. damage, tanking, healing) have been added to the Looking For Group feature. Class roles will be displayed when sorting through the Looking For More section.
• Quest and Achievement tracking are now combined in a new Objectives Tracking window. Advanced features can be activated from the Objectives Options panel.
• On-Use items will display in the Objectives Tracking when tracking a quest that uses them. No more searching through your bags for that on-use quest item!
• Health and Fuel/Ammo bars have been added to the vehicle interface whenever operating a vehicle.
• The mini-map has been optimized for better performance. Displays for vehicles, class colors, and off-map pings have been added as well.

Items:

• Loot from clams now stacks correctly! (Thank the Azeroth heavens)
• Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn't look quite as disgusting. Now 100% more succulent!
• A whole ton of glyph changes.
• Three new mounts are available from Horde mount vendors, equalizing the number of purchasable normal and epic mounts: the Black Wolf, the White Kodo, and the Black Skeletal Horse (in Orgrimmar, Bloodhoof Village, and Brill respectively).
• Hearthstone: Cooldown has been reduced to 30 minutes down from 60 minutes. (!!)Bug Fixes - there's a bunch for all the classes, some items and some race-related. Good stuff to make your game play a more enjoyable experience.

For the full notes, check WoW's patch notes page, and keep checking back with Project Lore as we wrap our heads around all these changes!

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Earlier we took a look at some the gear design philosophy of Blizzard and saw some armor that was introduced in 3.0 and that will be added in 3.1. We looked at the "Lost Vanquishers" (sans Druid): Rogue, Death Knight, and Mage. Today we are going to check out what the "Lost Protectors" have: Hunter, Shaman, and Warrior. Thanks to MMO-Champion for the screenshots of Ulduar gear and Season 6. More consistent and high resolution imagery will be added once patch 3.1 hits the live realms. Scroll down to see the sets and click the images for larger views. The first three Gladiator's sets of Wrath seem to be just recolorings, but they do seem to be getting more fancy with season 6's Furious Gladiator's sets. Of these three classes, I think hunters have the best looking PvP gear. The green scales on the Furious Gladiator's set look pretty cool. Shaman's shoulders in PvE have always been cool. Some people despised the dungeon set 1 shaman shoulders, but I loved them. When Blizzard had finally added skins in for the end game items so that they looked cooler than twill, it became a great symbol of progress for me. Now, the shaman shoulders are just ridiculously cool. The glowing orbs and meteorites chained to the armor are far more epic than any other shoulders. Hunter and warrior armor is honestly boring to me. It doesn't have as much flair as it should. What do you guys think? Are shaman's shoulders over the top or just epic and which class looks best? Hunter PvP PvE Shaman PvP PvE Warrior PvP PvE

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I always wondered about how Blizzard would handle armor designs as new content as released. As players are able to get more and more powerful and fight progressively nefarious enemies, how could armor sets get progressively more epic to reflect the power of the wielders? Thrall is beginning to look less and less cool comparatively. I thought tier 2's Bloodfang was far cooler than anything until tier 5 for rogues. The Burning Crusade armor sets had quite a few very bizarre armor sets as Blizzard designer's were reaching to try to make things as epic as possible. They definitely had the theme of Burning Crusade, drawing on the ideas of "lasers! pew pew" used in the nether-themed places and Draenei. The mighty morphing pally rangers will never be forgotten! The Wrath sets definitely have a distinctive look as well. The tier 7 sets are nigh direct copies of tier 3 since tier 3 was obtained in Naxxramas, which was revamped and moved to Northrend, but the non-tier pieces have had a very satisfying Nordic look that was a little shocking coming from the highly colored and crazy Burning Crusade world. Tier 8 continues this trend, with the items being highly influenced by the Titan architecture and carrying a very "new" look. Some players complained that the new PvP sets were too bland. Blue poster Zarhym told players:

The look of the sets will improve as the seasons continue. If we started the first sets of PvP gear with asteroids orbiting the shoulders, in a couple seasons you'd be wearing Thrall on your head... Under the current design philosophy, the idea is that in PvE you're killing very rare and challenging creatures of Azeroth, while in PvP you're receiving gear from the crafters (so to speak) of your faction to get you battle-ready. Chances are you're going to be given the gear that'll get the job done rather than the gear that has to be constructed entirely out of the nipples of a 7,000 year-old dragon.

I personally like this idea. It used to be that my PvP sets would be a mish-mash of pieces from various sets and didn't look very cool. Now, it blends together much more nicely. You can check out all the new armor sets for both PvP and PvE gear on MMO champion. Additionally, you can read more about the Frost Wyrm mount reward in season 5 and more discussion on PvP rewards. Check out the first part of our gallery comparing the tier 8 and tier 7 sets along with all the Wrath Gladiator sets. Today, we feature the classes of the "Lost Vanquisher": Rogue, Death Knight, and Mage. Druid's sets are not done yet, so they will be featured later. Thanks to MMO Champion for the renderings of the sets from the PTR. Note that the unreleased armor sets are still subject to change. Rogue Mage Death Knight The Death Knight's "Valorous Darkruned Battlegear" appears to be the same as Darion Mograine's armor. Very cool! Rogue's PvP sets are boring. They look like a themed grey set. I've got to say, the tier pieces look great though. Mage's tier 7 looks more like druid gear with the moose horns, but the tier 8 looks decent. What do you guys think? Is the current philosophy of PvP gear's look good, and are the PvE tier sets maintaining a good look?

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