Project Lore

Seen this kind of image?  Then you aren't casual -via ElitistJerks

Recruiting issues promoted me to write the latest in the line of DPS guides.  By the end of the day, the guild's officers and GM had tossed in their towels and canceled raiding for the foreseeable future.  For most of us the news wasn't exactly shocking.  Over the past few weeks the mighty force in Naxxramas known as the Warriors of Faith had degraded into Warriors of Whenitseemsnecessary.  Sign-ups remained incomplete, those that did lend their John Hancock were no where to be found for invites, and players began disappearing earlier in the night than normal. It isn't that the guild is dead, far from it.  The former trio of raid leaders simply got fed up with all the extra work they were putting into the guild, with little to show for it besides stress.  After all their recruiting, hand holding and calming efforts, raids failed to materialize.  Rather than continue their struggles, they have put the pressure on the rest of the guild to step up and form raids ourselves.  The irony is that this is exactly what many of the newer members were doing rather than joining the guild runs. I think that the current raids have harmed casual guilds.  Being a group of older players, our time is often limited by other obligations (family, friends, work, this blog).  This in turn means that many of us have unexpected things come up fairly often, causing us to miss invites, sign-ups or raids altogether.  Who cares when you can PUG all of the available instances?  My point is this, since you don't need a guild to get through the content, most players feel less inclined to actually support their guilds.  This is especially the case if they have no other reason, like long standing friendships, to guilt trip them. At first, I simply thought that it was just our little guild that was having issues.  But if my other WoW playing comrades are anything to go by, that isn't the case.  According to them, their guilds are also struggling to get guild runs together.  Their plight is for the same reason, many members are running PUGs on their own time.  Hopefully, most of you will read this post through before commenting, because here's the kicker.  It isn't a big deal.  Yea, there are some hiccups to scare out, but casual guilds won't be going anywhere, ever.  The early raid content has shaken things up a bit, but as Wrath of the Lich King matures and Blizzard ramps up the difficulty - we are looking at you, Ulduar - the guilds, all guilds, will collapse back into themselves. It's just interesting to see how fleeting these online relationships can be.  One minute you are joking about this druid's mom or laughing about how the RL proposed that all Gnomes are drunkards IRL.  Then a freeze on raid leader lead raids is handed down, and boom, a fistful of long standing members gquit.  It's fine that they are leaving to pursue what they want from the game, but I have never been one to guild hop.  How are the more casual, small scale guilds doing for the greater ProjectLore Society?  Possibly more importantly, how goes those Heroic Naxx/Malygos PUGs?  I have been somewhat successful in my PUG attempts, still haven't managed to take on the Eye though.

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MMORPG designers are a crafty bunch.  The genre may be relatively new, but by using design philosophies from single player titles, mainly standard RPGs, the minds behind MMOGs learned to keep a players entranced quickly.  Blizzard has nearly perfected the art of retaining its player base by implementing the relatively ancient knowledge of past video games into World of Warcraft.  They don't even hide their lifting of another company's ideas, as evidenced by the blatant use of Achievements, which is their most recent addition.  In all fairness, damn near everyone from Sony to Valve is ripping that off due to Microsoft's highly praised implementation. The massive flattery of the Achievement system is simply because it works.  The added goals, no matter how fleeting they may be, add to the longevity of any and all titles.  It was only a matter of time before MMOGs began implementing them in full force.  And what a powerful force they have become.  However, the age old catch - just gotta get this next mob/drop/quest/level - continues to drive my elongated playing sessions. I spend most of my time during my journey to Exalted for my third Northrend faction completing the group's half dozen daily quests.  But I always queue up for various Heroic dungeons, especially those that may have some piece of gear for Solidsamm.  Being of the overpopulated DPS archetype, I often grind through the dailies, get annoyed at never finding a group in under an hour and log off for the night or afk to make dinner before the raid.  Well, that is what used to happen.  Lately, right as I go to log I get ninja invited or join this or that party/raid. My original intention when I sign on these days is to complete an instance quickly.  Doing dailies is supposed to be the distraction during group formation.  After waiting so long, then getting ready to log, the late invites and formations can be hard to stick with.  In the end, it isn't any fault of Blizzard's that I hang around past my personal time limit.  Even after admitting that to myself, I can't shake that nagging feeling in the back of my brain that some designer in Anaheim is celebrating his small victory over my lack of willpower.  Bastard. Anyone else have this problem?  Do you always get pulled back in when you are on your way out?  When was the last time a 20 minute session became two hours for you?  And to those of you with willpower, can I have some?  Please?  Sugar on top?

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Via Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA)

Championing, all the kids are doing it now, so why aren't you?  Championing is the fun way to gain reputation with a few select factions in Wrath of the Lich King.  With Championing, you can go from Friendly to Exalted in a matter of minutes, instead of weeks.  No longer will you have to wait for mobs to respawn or fight with other aggressive characters when you wish to mind your own business.  Yes folks, Championing is the way of the future, the easiest, most convenient way to become best friends with a faction that previously despised the ground you walked on.  Championing - the new hotness. Championing offers players an easier way to farm reputation, but you can only Champion certain classes.  However, every player who wishes to have the best head enchant available needs to Champion at least one faction.  Before we get into those factions, allow me to explain the process before I drop the C-word for the tenth time.  The new reputation mechanic enables players to run any level 80 dungeon while still gaining reputation for a chosen faction.  This is accomplished by wearing a faction-specific tabard that can be acquired when your toon reaches Friendly with the select Northrend posse.  Mages get it a tad easier, the wielders of physics breaking magic can obtain the Kirin Tor Tabard at the incredibly low rank of Level 1. Four Champion-able factions and their associated head enchantment: The Argent Crusade - Stamina & Defense Rating Kirin Tor - Spell Power & Critical Strike Rating Knights of the Ebon Blade - Attack Power & Critical Strike Rating The Wyrmrest Accord - Spell Power & Mana Per 5 Seconds Blizzard's mechanic allows players to break the monotonous cycle of grinding dailies for every faction, but we can't escape it completely.  Aside from a new way to gain status among our peers, the hidden benefit is that Championing will - at least theoretically - open up more people to a selection of instances.  The ability to gain Ebon Blade rep in any Heroic means that SolidSamm won't have to grind the same instance like he did in The Burning Crusade's day.  This opens up the possibility of my rogue joining any instance group that is looking for DPS (read: none).  Choice is good. The above aside, there really is no "guide" to Championing.  Simply hit Friendly with whatever faction you need, grab the tabard from their vendor and you are on your way.  As a side note, if you fail to don one of the faction tabards, your toon's Northrend rep (Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition) will be raised instead. SolidSamm is working on his AP/Crit Arcanum as you read this, but don't forget to look at the other items the factions of to offer.  The little ankle biter will replace his Ebon Blade tabard with the Kirin Tor's in an effort to lower the high price of their sexy ring.  Who's colors are you sporting? On a more hardcore note, how many of you have taken the time to score the Championing achievement?  Serious props if you have.

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So we’ve probably all heard by now of the infamous death grip bug. The one that drags unsuspecting duelists, PvP’ers and joyriders alike all the way across Azeroth and into a ghost ship in the nether realm. The music video-inspired footage and numerous threads on the WoW forums are hilarious enough to make basically any DK (and there are a lot) say, “I have GOT to try that.” But here’s the bad news: all the hype caught on, the bug caused GMs a lot of headaches and help tickets, and perpetrators now face warnings of getting banned. But all hope is not lost for those of us who want to have fun with what I would argue to be one of the most powerful abilities in the game. There are still plenty of options for death grip pwnage that don’t involve getting banned. And I’ve been running through a few of them to find the most thrilling. Option 1: Massive slaughter Nothing makes the somewhat overpowered DK revel in their glory better than death gripping a weakling and one-hitting their asses. This is a good option for those of us who play mostly PvE. So when you need a quick fix, run into whichever low-level area you’re closest to, and start pulling any gray beasts who have the misfortune of being close to a bloodthirsty DK. Unfortunately, the 35-second cool down can be a buzz kill. Not ideal. Option 2: PvP The best part of death grip is making your target come to you - whether they want to, or not. So when you see that little gnome trying to escape with the Horde flag: death grip!! There used to be a lot of complaints about death grip being broken for PvP play. But it seems players have simply adapted by rolling their own DKs. Now from what I've noticed, about half of all battleground players are Death Knights. Which leads to the next fun choice. Option 3: Double death grip!! With all the DKs running around battlegrounds, it’s not hard to see that sometimes two DKs of opposing factions will death grip each other at the same time. Imagine the scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Harry and Voldemort duel, their wands connect, and everything goes haywire. It’s JUST like that. Or close, anyways. The dual death grip sends you both flying through the air. And if you time it just right, you’ll unexpectedly land behind each other. Try it – you’ll be delighted. And there’s still endless possibilities to try out. Want to run around Northrend pulling all PvP members of the opposing faction off their flying mounts, just for kicks? By all means, have at it. Let me know how it goes. Just don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do. Especially not anything involving the boat on Booty Bay. *wink*

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A few weeks ago I dished out some controversial viewpoints on the upcoming Dual Spec.  In no way shape or form was I saying that the ability to easily swap specs wasn't a useful feature.  Hell, I know I could get some use out of it, especially when I decide to PvP again.  The reason for the post was to express my concerns for what the feature could mean for the future of certain classes in raiding, namely Mages, Warlocks, Rogues and Hunters - the non-hybrid classes.   Some agreed, a handful took offense, but everyone formed their own opinion, which we are entitled to. Many other bloggers out there brought up an entirely different point.  Would the additional of Dual Spec change the way that Blizzard designs Talent trees or encounters?  In short, these players were worried that Blizzard may do some funky things in the WoW's future.  Such as having one spec be the PvE spec and another dedicated as the PvP spec.  On the PvE side of things, the designers could envision a fight requiring the use of 10 tanks while every other encounter remains at the two or three mark.  The thinking behind such madness is simple, you can always just respec right after. Thankfully, Ghostcrawler put this one to bed.  In a post on the forums he flat out stated that "we are going to design instances and talent trees while pretending this feature does not exist."  Greg Street for President! Blizzard will be ignoring the feature because they do not want to assume that everyone will purchase it.  In fact, they expect that only the more "high level" players will bother dropping the 1000 gold.  Instead of treating the mechanic as something the design team can play with, they are viewing it as yet another quality of life feature.  After all, it only stops players from hearthing back, dropping 50 gold and distributing their talent points after they are summoned back. Blizzard could have used the feature as a way to extend their options for encounter design, but have decided - at least for now - to stick with their current toolbox.  What do you think, should the company keep the extra hammer in there, or did the correct call get made?  Normally I would be all for new encounter mechanics, but I think such a radical shift would upset the majority of the populace.  Before you scream that they are placating the casuals, the decision is also sound from a design standpoint.  You shouldn't design something based on a feature that isn't available by default.

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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?

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World of Warcraft has been out for over four years now, and Blizzard has done a lot of great things, along with a few not so great things. Blizzard's approach of never being satisfied with their games makes for some very exciting evolutions. Every new expansion pack makes WoW become a whole new experience. Before the Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft was a pretty hardcore elitist game with very few people progressing through all of the most difficult endgame content. Now with the Wrath of the Lich King, the game has evolved once again to allow more and more people to experience the great content that Blizzard has created. With all the good WoW does, there is one issue that needs to be addressed, random drops. Blizzard has been on record saying they enjoy the PvE content that is out right now, they like the level of difficulty that having multiple tiers of encounters each person and guild can attempt. I believe that the duality of drops, and emblem gear is a perfect mesh but I would love to see it taken a tad further. Each 25 man raid has its own specific achievement. Sartharion has its 3 drake achievement, Malygos has You Don't Have an Eternity, and Naxxramas has tons of achievements with the hardest being The Immortal. Why not allow these achievements to open up gear available from the new vendor. If you complete the Malygos achievement kill you open level one allowing the trash epic drops, and the first boss epics to be bought with the vendor. Each different achievement would progressively be harder, and thus be rewarding the guild that is able to complete these tough achievements. On top of that, this could also give long time raiders a reason to work for the achievements, and help them stay motivated and raiding. The vendor would use the Emblems of Valor marks to help keep balance and to also help emblems to stay relevant for hardcore players. I know in my guild there are a ton of people that have no more use for the marks, this would help partially resolve that issue. This could also give people a lot more freedom to spec the way they want. A lot of the time people who are specced a certain way for a raid must only roll on gear for that spec, if you enjoy PvPing or if that spec is bad for soloing, you can use the Valor marks to help with these offspecs without having to compete against your guild members. What kind of gear can you except from this new vendor? I would suggest all Naxxramas gear before Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad, excluding all Valorous Tier 7. Why this gear? Well I have looked at all the loot that drops, and I personally feel all gear except for Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad loot should be accessible. I wouldn't like to see some of the best items in the game like Betrayer of Humanity or Journey's End become nothing more than an emblem grind. In terms of how many emblems the gear costs, that is really in Blizzard's court to balance. If this idea was to ever be implemented this would be well after patch 3.1 and Ulduar. This vendor would only help to create new ways for guilds to get loot, and with more loot, the faster they can progress to see the new and harder content. Most people are going to stop and say wait a second, this seems unfair, why should hardcore raiders be rewarded in this way? With hardcore raiders blazing through the new content with little to no challenge except the the few achievements I've posted, I think it's time Blizzard rewards them for keeping at it. I would like to see an element introduced aimed exclusively to the super hardcore, I think they've earned it. So, what's the verdict people? Would you feel angry that only a small percentage of people would get this vendor or would you feel they've earned the reward?

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I'll admit that Dual Spec is going to be a game changing mechanic.  There is no denying that.  The ability to trivially change from one layout to another, glyphs, button layout and talents all together, is an exciting idea for most classes.  While appealing to the PvP/PvE crowd - that is, the players that switch back and forth around their raid schedule - Blizzard also believes that the changes will create more tanks and healers per realm.  How many people will go DPS with a Tank/Healer off-spec, rather than a PvP survivability or solo PvE off-spec remains to be seen.   Then there is the issue of one's ability to play their vastly different spec... I'm not saying that the idea isn't a valiant effort on Blizzard's part to fix the various issues it's tackling.  If anyone can pull off such a drastic change, it's Blizzard and their slew of talented designers (oh, right).  My pessimism creeps in because Blizzard and the general WoW populace seems to think that the mechanic will fix all of these issues.  Poof, everything is perfect.  Hasn't Patch v3.0.8 taught us anything? All things considered, I think these problems will be eased, not solved.  The PvP/PvE crowd will be the only sect entirely satisfied.  Although they may start wanting a Tri Spec setup, ya know, for solo PvE.  The quantity of tanks and healers will be split with the PvP crowd, while quality comes with practice.  The first few months could be rough as new or rusty tanks and healers get back into their groove.  I still expect to see plenty of LF2m Tank/Healer either way. Then there is my concern for SolidSamm.  What about the non-hybrid classes?  Warlocks, Hunters, Mages and Rogues are all designed to do one thing, DPS.  Without the ability to offer drastically different specs (don't forget, pet tanking is going bye-bye) we could be left fighting for far fewer spots in raids than before.  If you had the option to take a geared face-melter who could also heal if someone leaves, or an arrow-flinging Hunter, why would you confine yourself to just the Hunter?  Dare I say that the feature will create more homogenization? Scary thought indeed. Initially, I was ecstatic about the Dual Spec feature.  After mulling it over with a certain Horde buddy, I wouldn't mind it not coming with Patch v3.1, or at all in its present condition.  Are you as paranoid about the change as I am, or are you entirely for it?  There are also the issue of Dual Speccing loot drops.  I won't even get into that.  This is one of those things were I hope I am wrong, but I can't see all my points being incorrect.

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Well it has come down to this, the final level. I am fairly certain that I am going to be the last player at ProjectLore to hit level 80, but in all fairness, they play the game for a job. I write about the game for my job. My original goal was to hit the level before the holidays, enabling me to get some raiding in before the new year. Then it was to have it done before my birthday, which was yesterday (Thanks for the awesome weekend Lesley). I guess all those trolls are right, I do fail in an epic manner. New goal equals this week!

I may not have hit 80, but over the weekend I busted into my final stretch to immortalizing SolidSamm as one of the millions of toons to hit the level cap. After watching my second to last ding go off, I quietly logged out of the game and pondered his immediate future. On recommendations from friends and guildies, the little rogue will skip out on all of the quests for the lower zones, heading straight to Storm Peaks and Icecrown to finish out the experience bar.

Many of you may be wondering why a level 79 character hasn't already been in these zones, and that is a legitimate question. Being a hardcore PvEer, I have been tackling every quest I have come across, interesting or not. No ? has gone unanswered as of level 79. Due to this incessant questing, I spent most of my time in the lowbie zones – Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak – going wherever those NPCs lead me. With 80 coming in just a few hours and my guild waiting for me to join the raiding ranks, I am abandoning Dragonblight and delaying my personal quest to complete all of Northrend's quests, in favor of starting my Sons of Hodir questline for the shoulder enchant.

Don't worry though, my escapades won't stop me from reporting on any fun quests that I came across. Icecrown's many phasing quests are supposed to be awesome and I will be running through them in short order. On top of that, I do plan on returning to questing between my reputation farming, heroic runs and raiding.  Those of you in my boat, how do you plan on heading to 80?  Do you have any special celebrations for when you join the ranks of the raiding elite?

Before I go, I have to mention Blizzard's newest WoW product, the The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. When I originally heard about the book, I figured it was another cash grab by Activision-Blizzard, but after previewing the first chapter, they had me sold. Hopefully some of our thoughts on the cinematic are confirmed.

P.S. Amazon is offering a nice discount on the book right now.

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Okay, this is something that everyone is allowed to be angry at, casual, hardcore, Auction House nuts, everyone.  Maintenance day.  Thankfully, I actually have something to do on this day of reduced playtime.  In my effort to head over to Karazhan and Tenris Mirkblood yesterday, I realized that I have not logged into my Rogue with a purpose, for some time.  Poor Solidsamm has been relegated to the role of bandage machine in recent weeks. The main issue with this is that Solidsamm had never had his talents redone for Patch 3.0.2.  Gasp!  How the hell can one raid without spending those precious talent points.  Instead of being “that guy” in the raid that largely does nothing, I informed the leader of my plight and kindly allowed a replacement.    What a nice guy I am.  I then spent the next hour or so pining over my talent spec and have finally come up with a base spec that I will fine tune after some raiding. The current specialization is built around daggers and will change to a more level friendly build when Wrath launches in a few weeks.  For now, raiding, instancing and damage is all that I really care about.  At the same time, I decided that I wanted to try something new.  Out with the old Combat Daggers build I was using, and in with the new Mutilate build that uses 3.0.2's Turn the Tables talent. The build is pretty cookie cutter, but I will try a moving a few points around to see what can maximize my damage, if anything.  The current setup focuses on energy conservation and creation and is heavily reliant on poisons, namely Deadly Poison.  I threw in that point of Vigor mainly for farming purposes.  Which I do plenty of.  I will have to get used to using Seal Fate again, as well as another new talent, Hunger for Blood.  My combo point rotation will change, from Gouge/Backstab, to a Mutilate heavy rotation capped off with Slice and Dice or Envenom.  In the end, a whole bunch of new buttons, that are bound to a collection of new abilities, will be pressed.  It'll be almost as different as leveling a Priest! What do you PvE-focused Rogues out there think?  Have you guys tried Mutilate yet?  Am I the only person attached to his daggers?  As for the rest of you, did you take the opportunity to try something fresh like I am about to?  Hopefully my toon won't revolt on me for ignoring him for weeks...

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