Project Lore

We reported, pre-Blizzcon, that Blizzard had created several new Twitter accounts, each focused on one of the company's key franchises. Some of you started following them instantly, while others maintained their distance from the social networking site wonder what, precisely, it could offer beyond the usual community or news features. Well, so far, the latter would be right. Posts have generally concerned themselves with daily questions, opinion polls, and highlighting the more creative aspects of the Blizzard fandom (things like fan art, stories, and, most recently, papercraft). Though there is an on-going Battlecry contest -- in which fans of the Horde or Alliance update their own accounts with "For the ____!" whenever their side's banner is lifted -- there have yet to be any prizes that you can actually use within the game. But, a recent post on the Warcraft Twitter page hints that might not be the case for long:

We are talking to our licensing department about giving out some#WoW in-game pets/mounts through Twitter. Looks promising. Stay tuned.

That's right, soon enough, you could be earning in-game content just for participating in the usual Twitter shenanigans. I can tell you from personal experience that it's not a sham, either. I recently won a Starcraft 2 Beta Key through Blizzard's Starcraft Twitter page. Generally, these contests involve little more than "re-tweeting" a phrase or offering up your own thoughts on a given subject. At 140 characters, that's not very hard at all. So what sorts of things might Blizzard actually give out? According to another tweet from yesterday, quite possible pets and mounts normally available only through loot cards:

What types of in-game prizes would you like to see us give on Twitter? Interested in #WoW TCG loot items? Spectral Tiger Mounts maybe?

This is wonderful news for those who have no interest in playing (or spending money) on the Trading Card Game. I wouldn't expect to see anything game-changing to be offered through these contests, but vanity items like Spectral Tiger Mounts, alone, are desirable and rare prizes. Do you think this sort of giveaway might get you to sign up for Twitter if you haven't already? Well, if you do, please make sure to follow Project Lore and myself, as well! We're always keen on having new friends to talk to!

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Zarhym just dropped the bombshell that, in honor of the 5-year anniversary of World of Warcraft that's coming up in November, Onyxia's Lair will be getting an update. That's right, Patch 3.2.2 will bring a new, level 80, 10- and 25-man version of Onyxia for players to take on. Not only that, but there is a new 310% mount in her loot table, along with "updated" loot modeled after tier 2 but with updated stats. Further details will be coming soon, and the full announcement is here on the official forums. I hope this news means that, if the upgrade goes smoothly, other old school raids and instances will get an update. Like, say, Deadmines? Is this news exciting for you guys, or are you thinking it might be another Naxx that was dumbed down and made a little too easy?

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Image via MMO-Champion.

PepsiCo, creators of Mountain Dew, are working with Blizzard for a new promotion! They are producing two new limited time flavors of Mountain Dew called "Game Fuel". It comes in two varieties: Citrus Cherry which has a Horde theme on the label and Wild Fruit which has an Alliance theme. The Alliance version has 1 more mg of caffeine. There are some cool prizes in the promotion. Most notably are what assumed to be in-game pets: battle bots. The bots have at least two abilities: fill with "Blue Battle Fuel" and "Red Battle Fuel". Its unknown what this does besides change their appearance. In order to get these prizes, you need to earn tokens. You can exchange your tokens for an entry to a prize drawing. Its unclear how the battle bots will be acquired; I don't think its likely that it will be through the drawing. There is a greyed-out button that says "Redeem Tokens" that will give you the option of exchanging tokens for a battle bot or entries to the prize drawings once its implemented. Here are all the different ways you can start earning tokens today. Note that you can only "carry" 2,000 tokens before you must exchange them for something, and you can't do that yet. Its very realistic that you might hit this cap before its implemented.

• Sign in: 100 tokens when you register for the first time and sign in and 25 tokens for each day you log in after registering.
• Refer-a-friend: 50 tokens per referral (shameless plug of my referral link). You can send out 5 emails per day through the site. Though your friends will probably hate you for doing this, since if they care enough to register, they probably already know about the contest. You can also make a "faction flag", which makes an embeddable link you can put on your website or forum from which you can get 50 tokens with a maximum of 250 tokens a day. You also get 25 tokens for making the flag the first time.
• Clicking on product facts: 25 tokens per day you look at the product facts. What is the point of wanting people to do this every day?
• Videos: 125 tokens per day. There are 5 videos, each worth 25 tokens per day. You don't have to watch them, just click them. These are all the intros to WoW and its expansions and some trailers for WoW. Most player have seen these, why does Pepsi want us to watch these again... every day?
• Read lore: 25 tokens per document. You can only read each timeline document once.
• Clicking on ads that take you to the Mountain Dew page from other sites: 25 tokens per ad per day, max of 175 per day. Why does Pepsi want to burn their Adsense money?
• Clicking on the WoW promotion ad on the Mountain Dew Home Page: 25 tokens per day. Again, stupid.
• Clicking on "hidden urls": 25 tokens per URL per day. I have no idea what this means.
• Social Media: 25 tokens per site per day. On Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, you just click on the link that takes you to the Mountain Dew site.
• DEWSletter: 25 tokens per newsletter, which comes out once per month.

Here is the list of prizes and how many are being given out:

• All-inclusive Blizzcon Trip: Four total, one per week for the first four weeks of the content.
• Alienware Notebook, one per day (worth $2,000)
• Razer Mako Desktop Speaker System: one per day (worth $400)
• Razer Carcharias Audio Headset: seven per day (worth $89.00)
• Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard: seven per day (worth $70)
• Razer DeathAdder Gaming Mouse: seven per day (worth $59)
• Mountain Dew Game Fuel Hoodie: twenty four per day (worth $40)
• Mountain Dew Game Fuel Messenger Bags: twenty four per day (worth $40)
• Mountain Dew Game Fuel WoW T-shirt: twenty five per day (worth $18)

The drawings go through August, and its only available in the US. You have to pick which prizes you want to put your tokens towards, so start thinking about it now. Everyone will probably pool into the most expensive ones, so you might want to enter into the cheaper ones as well. What are you going to try to get, and what do you think of the promotion?

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The Argent Tournament has become my first destination when I log on every day. The reputation with both the Sunreavers and the Argent Crusade is easy, the gold is insane for the amount of time invested, and there are all the cool mounts and pets to pick up. We've already discussed the dailies and goals of an Argent Tournament participant, but there are a few things you might want to be aware of when you make the trip to the far reaches of Icecrown every day. First up, its important to note that there are some daily quests available that are much quicker than the others, and there are some that just don't have as high a reward. If you are going for any of the pets, mounts, or most rewards, you probably want to get as many Champion's Seals per day as possible. This means doing Battle Before the Citadel, Taking Battle to the Enemy, Among the Champions, and Threat from Above for a total of 5 seals a day. However, while you are doing Battle Before the Citadel and Taking Battle to the Enemy, the same mobs you are killing are also the objectives of the valiant's dailies, A Valiant's Field Training and At the Enemy's Gates. These are, in fact, the only Argent Tournament dailies I do! It shouldn't be difficult to see why the goblin's quests, A Chip Off the Ulduar Block and Jack Me Some Lumber, are pointless. They require you to travel far and reward nothing but the standard 13 gold and 23 silver. At that rate, you might as well do dailies that reward reputation as well, such as the Sons of Hodir, Oracles, Frenzyheart, or Kalu'ak dailies. Contributin' to the Cause is not worth doing because it costs you gold and only rewards Argent Crusade reputation. If you do the other dailies for a couple weeks, you will quickly hit exalted with the Argent Crusade and will have wasted all that donated gold! As for the other valiant's quests, consider this: if you want all of the mounts and/or all of the pets, you will be doing a lot of these dailies. In fact, just the pets and the hippogryph will run you 450 seals, which is 90 days! Since getting the Champion's Seals also gets you a couple Valiant's Seals if you do the overlapping quests, why go out of your way to do the other valiant's dailies? Unless you are in a rush to get all the titles, you might as well do dailies of another faction, as you will eventually get enough Valiant's Seals doing the champion's quests to champion all the factions anyway! The quests you are already doing will get you all the reputation you need for the Argent Crusade and the Sunreavers/Silver Covenant anyway. Additionally, after you champion all the factions, you lose the ability to pick up the valiant's quests. Since you are completing their objectives for the champions quests, losing the ability to do the valiant's quests is a severe loss of gold. Therefore, I've decided not to champion one of the factions until I'm done grinding away at my goals for the Argent Tournament. It would be a loss of hundreds, even thousands of gold. I hope Blizzard remedies this somehow, that Crusader title is sweet! Are you going to rush to get the Crusader title and do all the Argent Tournament dailies you can, or are you going to use similar moderation?

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At first, I didn't give it much thought when a WoW acquaintance asked me to join his 3v3 arena team for the tournament. "Sure," I said. "Sounds like fun." Actually, I didn't think it was a serious request. I mean, really - he was asking me, of all people? I'm still working to ding level 80 for the first time, and haven't ventured much into the realm of PvP. Back in the pre-BC days when my main was a warrior, I played a bit of Battlegrounds in Warsong Gulch. Even then, I never dared walk into an arena. And since I switched to my rogue, I've been focused more on leveling and only try out a battleground here and there when bored. So it seemed like an odd request. But the idea grew on me. I kept thinking about how fun it would be to play a super-beefed-up version of my rogue. A nice change of pace, I thought. And it turned out the guy was both serious and persistent in asking me to join. I explained my lack of experience, and he didn't seem to mind. So I caved. I paid my $20 fee. Rolled Pixiestixy. Signed the team charter. Decided on a 41/5/25 mutilate spec. Set up my action bars. And spent a couple hours figuring out the best gear, enchants and gems to use. All I needed was confirmation that the team had been formed so we could start playing toward 200 matches (and a glorious, golden-armored pet murloc) before the April 6 deadline to qualify for the next round. So I waited. And waited. Played around with some macros. Admired my glowing-red berserking Deadly Gladiator's Shankers. Waited some more. A couple days later, I got an e-mail. My friend decided to play with a couple of his other (and, as it were, more experienced) friends, instead. I sighed in exasperation. I saw it coming, but had been hoping that wasn't the case. So I started with the obligatory search for a PuG. It seemed no one wanted a PvP noobie in their group. I don't blame them - most people who sign up probably have at least some clue what they are doing. I got no responses, not even to "BElf rogue LF a good time." I started asking RL friends (I had my husband convinced at one point, but we still needed a third). I saw several PuG requests from people saying they would just play 200 matches and lose each one to get the murloc. Pet collectors, I guess. But, somehow, that feels like cheating to me. If I'm going to do this, I oughta at least try, even if those attempts are futile. So I made a final effort to PuG it before the extended deadline to register last Friday. And finally, found a couple of takers. Myself, an affliction warlock (who also said he was no good at PvP) and a hybrid holy/ret paladin (who wanted to make top 1,000 teams to earn the Vanquisher title, but said he'd stick with us even if we lost). We became The Misfits. The first few matches were mayhem. I had absolutely no experience to back up everything I've read about PvP. And let me tell you, the experience is much different. It's way harder to keep track of everything going on than I had expected. We only played 6 matches the first night, with an even 3-3 record, and set a time to play again Saturday. Another 12 games in Saturday, and we had been getting worked. Despite me starting to get a better feel for the hectic arenas, our record was 6-12. Our paladin kept going AFK between matches. And then, the dreaded message. Pally "has left The Misfits." Teamless, again. I'm taking a break to work off the annoyance, then perhaps back to PuG-ing. What have I gotten myself into? So who all's in the tournament? What have your experiences been so far? How should us who are new to PvP find a group willing to stick it out through the 200 matches? And is there still enough time to squeeze in 200 matches before the 6th?

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MMO-Champion has been bringing the thunder this morning with tons of news that has been cascading out of the public test realm. With a build of patch 3.1 live on the PTR, players have been given the first full look at an almost overwhelming number of changes and additions to the World of Warcraft. Big, drool-worthy news for Paladins, Priests, Druids, and Shaman is that a legendary One Handed Mace looks like it will be making its way to those classes' hands eventually. The classes mentioned will have the ability to collect 40 Fragments of Val'anyr and combine them, creating Shattered Fragments of Val'anyr, which begins a quest, eventually rewarding Val'anyr, Gavel of the Ancient Kings. Here's to hoping there's a version which certain enhancement shaman might be able to use. Players have also discovered that inscribed versions of the Kirin Tor rings (the ones that cost 8000g and teleport you to Dalaran) are available for an additional 1000g. These rings will be item level 213 and require the original ring to purchase. Finally, MMO-Champion revealed that new mounts and pets are being added into WoW, including Mimiron's Head, which summons and dismisses a rideable mechanical gnome head! This thing reminds me of Bowser's clown faced aircraft from Super Mario World. A full list of the pets and mounts can be found below. New Pets

• Spring Rabbit - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Spring Rabbit.
• Plump Turkey - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Plump Turkey.
• Teldrassil Sproutling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Teldrassil Sproutling.
• Tirisfal Batling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Tirisfal batling.
• Dun Morogh Cub - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Dun Morogh Cub.
• Durotar Scorpion - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Durotar scorpion.
• Alarming Clockbot - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Alarming Clockbot.
• Elwynn Lamb - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Elwynn lamb.
• Mulgore Hatchling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Mulgore hatchling.
• Ammen Vale Lashling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Ammen Vale lashling.
• Strand Crawler - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Darkspear Strand crawler.
• Enchanted Broom - Right Click to summon and dismiss your enchanted broom.
• Argent Squire - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Argent Crusade squire.
• Mechanopeep - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Mechanopeep.
• Argent Gruntling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Argent Crusade gruntling.
• Curious Gorloc Hatchling - Right Click to call or shoo away a Curious Gorloc Hatchling.
• Curious Wolvar Pup - Right Click to call or shoo away a Curious Wolvar Pup.
• Gorloc Orphan - Right Click to summon and dismiss the orphan you've agreed to look after for Children's Week.
• Wolvar Orphan - Right Click to summon and dismiss the orphan you've agreed to look after for Children's Week.
• Murkimus the Gladiator - Right Click to summon and dismiss Murkimus the Gladiator.
• Sen'jin Fetish - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Sen'jin fetish.

New Mounts

• Aquatic Riding Ray - Summons and dismisses an Aquatic Riding Ray. This is an aquatic mount.
• Swift Stormwind Steed - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Stormwind Steed. This is a very fast mount.
• Great Azuremyst Elekk - Summons and dismisses a rideable Great Azuremyst Elekk. This is a very fast mount.
• Swift Darnassian Mistsaber - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Darnassian Mistaber. This is a very fast mount.
• Swift Silvermoon Hawkstrider - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Silvermoon Hawkstrider. This is a very fast mount.
• Great Mulgore Kodo - Summons and dismisses a rideable Great Mulgore Kodo. This is a very fast mount.
• Turbostrider - Summons and dismisses a rideable Turbostrider. This is a very fast mount.
• Swift Ironforge Ram - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Ironforge Ram. This is a very fast mount.
• Swift Sen'jin Raptor - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Sen'jin Raptor. This is a very fast mount.
• Forsaken Warhorse - Summons and dismisses a rideable Forsaken Warhorse. This is a very fast mount.
• Swift Orgrimmar Wolf - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Orgrimmar Wolf. This is a very fast mount.

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