Project Lore

Snow is no fun alone.

Last night I did something that I have never done in my MMO career, I gquit.  Even when I quit the game for a few brief months around The Burning Crusade's launch, my fingers never actually typed that sequence into World of Warcraft's command prompt.  In fact, at that time of my relapse into real life, I was the second oldest member in the guild.  And no, the GM wasn't the longest-standing member, my IRL boss was.  It stayed that way until my subscription ran its course, then I was promptly gkicked.

Upon returning to World of Warcraft more than a year ago I found it fairly difficult to readjust.  Going from arguably the best guild on the server to bouncing from guild to guild as they repeatedly disintegrated was a drain on the soul, and my intentions to continue playing.  My former guild finally "collapsed" - GM quit and guild was reformed under a new name - shortly after TBC's launch.  The pieces were quickly picked up by a few of the dedicated members and reformed as a hardcore, min-maxing powerhouse of a guild.  Not something I wanted.  I fought through the ups and downs, and eventually stumbled into a guild of close knit friends.  Not only were many of them real-life friends, but they happened to be French-Canadian. They were a good group of people, some of them excellent players, others, not so much.  They made a good run towards the end of TBC to get through all of the raid content.  They brought me along on those raids when they could, but I never felt that I was part of the guild.  I was just that rogue they'd bring along if they needed some melee DPS.  I was the guy who could get anything cooked, or would waste time fishing.  I was the gnome that was always at the AH.  I was the dagger lover they'd ask lore questions to.  I was the uneducated person who couldn't speak French.  I was THAT guy, not one of them. Nevertheless, I did have some good times and late nights with them, and thank them for the support they showed me and instances we ran together.  I even scored some going away gems along with the well wishes and good lucks. With my trusty rogue finally at level cap and geared enough to enter Naxxramas, it was time to look ahead.  Wrath of the Lich King brought more than a few friends from my old guild back to the game, so I created a private channel for us to chat in due to our guild separation.  Slowly the channel filled up as old friendship were re-kindled or re-discovered.  Loot drama forgotten - a priest taking tanking loot to use the stamina as a PvP item - we have fallen back under the same banner one by one.  A banner that I will join as soon as the GM gets online.  Till that time, Solidsamm remains guildless, but this time on his own terms.  Soon, I shall return to dominating Naxxramas! It feels good to be excited to raid again.

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I hate this thing so much...

One thing I love about video games is their ability to allow me to blow off steam.  When I ran up against an unbeatable bug in one of my computer science projects in college I would turn to video games for relief.  After "Killing Nazis", which meant playing Day of Defeat (pre-Valve), I would return to my task at hand, relieved of stress and with a fresh mind.  More often than not, I would have an epiphany shortly after those breaks, getting me past the frustrations and into new ground.

Yesterday was one of those days.  With my attempt at being more green and lowering my heating cost failing at every turn, I walked away from the half-installed pellet stove defeated and highly annoyed.  Not wanting my foul mood to affect my lovely girlfriend, I sealed myself off in my office/ferret room/gaming haven and booted up WoW for some stress relief.  In Solidsamm's world of Azeroth, everything was smooth as silk. I was greeted with a few hundred gold in the mailbox upon logging into my Auction House alt.  Pretty good start.  After beginning my scan of the AH with Auctioneer I was asked if I would like to provide some DPS for the Vault of Archavon.  I humbly accepted, logged onto Solidsamm and rushed towards Wintergrasp for my first Wrath raid encounter.  Along the way I picked up a stack and change of Saronite, some Titanium and an assortment of crystallized elements. The vault doesn't have much to offer, just another instance in a collection of Wrath's one-boss raids.  After clearing a few trash mobs we walked up to Archavon with noses plugged and began the generic tank-n-spank encounter.  The raid's overall DPS was pretty low - mine being a pitiful 1,900, need more heroics! - but we managed to down the Stone Watcher before his enrage triggered, and with only one death.  I quickly grabbed my Emblems of Heroism and glanced at the item drops to see a piece of leather had dropped and I was the only Rogue in the raid!  Darn, serves me right for checking the armor class instead of the name.  I guess everything wasn't silk. Despite the lack of loot (can't expect epics everyday) my hour of WoW served its purpose.  I got to relax, joke with friends, meet some new people, get asked to join a guild and take out some bad guys.  With just shy of an hour played, my mood had gone from sour to chipper as I headed off to bed.  I <3 video games.

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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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So I felt like I was in a pretty good groove; I hit level 80 in stride, more than one achievement for finishing off zone quests, and my trade skills were leveling up nicely. I really felt I was closing in on the end-game and getting back to where I was before this whole expansion thing. Then it hit me. I’m not even close. I was just flying around Storm Peaks, questing away, when I came into a collision course with the Sons of Hordir quest line. On this surface it didn’t seem so bad, it was long (33 quests), but not altogether unenjoyable. I’ll try not to get into too many details, but at a certain point you realize that this is a reputation grind, and a big one. After a quick visit with their quartermaster, I realized these guys were the source of all my new shoulder enchants. These are definitely a must for raiding. So I pick up a few dailies, and look at my rep bar… I need exalted, and I am just barely friendly. There is no championing, just dailies, dailies, dailies. Yikes. This is going to be a BIG project. After coming to that harsh realization, I dove into raiding in hope of picking up some of these free loots I have been hearing so much about. No dice. In my experience raiding isn’t the walk in the park everyone made it out to be. Sure there are some easier encounters. The Vault of Archavon wasn’t very demanding, and The Obsidian Sanctum (with all the adds down) wasn’t too bad, but I found plenty of challenge in Naxx. It is clear that progression will be a bit slow and there will be lots of gearing that needs to be done. I haven’t forgotten all these dungeons have a heroic mode either. Just like at level 70, I am getting the feeling this game begins at 80… and there is a lot of game ahead of us.

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I did it. Juggynaut is a Level 80 Shaman. What did I do when I hit 80? I definitely didn't say ding. I spent my last talent point, turned in my quest, then Astral Recalled and trained one of my new favorite toys. Well, I actually trained about three levels worth of skills which cost me hundreds of gold, but the most important one for me was Hex. For those of you who haven't been paying much attention to shaman lately (including the devs), or those of you who haven't been watching our features from the beta, Hex means I can crowd control a mob temporarily. While it only lasts 30 seconds and has a 45 second cooldown. I've found it terribly useful while soloing, grouping, and even raiding. While questing, Hex can either eliminate an add for a short period, or it can decrease the damage output of the enemy for a few vital seconds in a fight. I utilized it in both fashions while attempting (and eventually defeating) a 5-man quest with my favorite Night Elf Priest (I love telling people we duoed Mal'Ganis). In instances, I'll Hex any animals or humanoids I see. It's been great in both heroics and our first steps into Naxx 10, where we managed to down a handful of bosses. In the end, Hex is a crowd control spell that mixes elements of a lot of the other CC spells that are out there. On the surface, it is polymorph effect, but it also counts as a curse. It can only be used once during a typical battle, like Sap, and has a cooldown longer than its duration, reminding me of blind. Similar to Fear, it doesn't break immediately on damage. Instead it takes a certain amount of damage to break it, which according to my anecdotal evidence can vary. I think I've seen frogs drop dead from AoE before anyone in the group targeted them. While not an ideal CC spell, I'm definitely liking it over my past options (none).

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With Wrath upon us I thought I would take a moment to look back at all the great times I had with the burning crusade. Sure it may seem silly to wax philosophical about a video game… but I must admit I had some absolutely great times playing it. With WoW, I was a little late for the party; I never played “classic” WoW… so my burning crusade memories are my WoW memories. It seems long ago I first rolled my Draenei Paladin, found my self crashed on some rock, and didn’t have the foggiest idea what a talent point was. As a long time gamer I quickly picked up the mechanics, vanquished the evil on Bloodmyst Isle, and most importantly found a guild that I could truly enjoy the game with. It was about this point that I realized there is a whole WORLD outside those little islands I had grown accustomed to. I’ll still never forget the first time I set foot in Stormwind and realized truly how many people there were playing right along side me. I continued to enjoy the game leveling, grouping with whoever was nearby from time to time, and generally enjoying the whole questing scene. Then around level 45 or so I really discovered what this game was about. I hooked up with a few guildies around the same level and started leveling and instancing together. I installed ventrilo and got to know the people on the other end of those characters. Suddenly my guild was more that a chat room, it was a group of people that I could experience this wide world with. I continued to level, learned about tanking, healing, and DPS and next thing I knew I was level 70! I know its cliché, but this is where the game starts. I started running heroics, collecting badges and generally gearing up as well as I could. It was about this time I first heard about this “Karazhan” place, and began to understand what raiding is all about. I waited outside of Kara for hours and my guild slowly but surely progressed through the content. Finally after a few nights a spot opened up and I made sure I never lost out on a raid slot again. Seeing Kara for the first time was truly amazing. Before long we mastered that place, our raids progressed, and soon it was time to take on the High King. It was the impossible feat, being in a “casual” guild or a “fan” guild we weren't meant to raid, and many people made a point of letting us know we couldn’t do it. But we did, and I must say seeing that ogre king die, and putting on the T4 shoulders he dropped is my fondest WoW memory to date. Now I sit back reflecting on all the raids I've led from Moroes to the Illidari Council and can’t help but realize how thoroughly I enjoyed all this content. The bar is set high for Wrath, but if I enjoy half as much as I did TBC I’ve have many hours of great times in front of me.

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Homogenization:  the act of making something homogeneous, or the same throughout; or the tendency of something to be come homogeneous (Wiktionary) A vocal group of players have been pretty miffed about the homogenization of World of Warcraft's classes.  While a collection have been barking about the issue for some time, the group grew substantially after changes to the way raid buffs work were announced as part of the Echoes of Doom patch. The late-August decision was made to allow Raid Leaders to bring the people they want to play with, rather than having to fill cookie-cutter configurations for bosses, trash mobs or the raid as a whole.  In doing so, Blizzard Entertainment drastically changed the current buffing system, including some of the buffs themselves.  I already did a summation of the changes, or if you prefer, here is the lengthy full post. Adding more fuel to the fire this past weekend, was the revelation that the class forums would be abolished in favor of role forums, Damage Dealing, Tank and Healing.  Personally, I would like the Damage Dealing section split into Ranged and Melee, but I digress.  After the aforementioned group became even more vocal, Blizzard backtracked and decided to keep both the class forums and role forums. The idea of WoW's classes becoming homogeneous has me a bit torn.  As a prospective raid leader for Wrath of the Lich King, being able to bring people I can trust, rather than the “right” classes, is certainly a boon.  Another personal point, is that my main is a Rogue, a class that should benefit from the situation.  My Priest...still no problem getting into groups there. On the flip side, doesn't everyone like feeling special?  Feeling needed?  Feeling that if, you specifically, weren't available everything would crumble?  Over dramatic you say?  Heavens no. In the end I am going to have to go with Blizzard on this one, and say the path they seem to be going down is probably for the best.  Many of my friends were burned out from raiding due to thinking there were always needed.  I hold the belief that the modifications will cause less guild QQ and more pewpew.  Which is best for everyone. Well, not Arthas, but he deserves to die after that whole plague fiasco.

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I accomplished two different tasks at the same time this weekend. First and foremost, I put my new Mutilate build to the test in an actual raid setting. That is assuming one believes Karazhan, post Patch 3.0.2 nerf, can be called a raid.   I enjoyed the new build, and it performed nicely, managed to take second in overall DPS.  Thus, I will be sticking with it for the foreseeable future. Along with that accomplishment came the second achievement, tackling the Invasion boss, Tenris Mirkblood.

New content is always a good thing, such as the recently closed Hallow's End, but new bosses are even better. Headless Horseman is cool and all, but a tad last year. I managed to get a PUG together for Karazhan just a few days before Mirkblood and his sect of Lich King worshiping elves disappear. Seeing as it was a PUG, it wasn't all fun and games. I brought along my Refer-a-Friend partner, a Resto Druid that hit 70 just a few hours before, and even a Mage who hit 70 not even 20 minutes before zoning in. With all these undergeared players you'd think we would have wiped a lot. Thankfully, we didn't.  On the flip side we did get hit with crappy overall DPS, causing the raid to take nearly four hours.

Our first attempt at Tenris was a messy one. The tank didn't realize that opening the door would pull him, causing the fight to start with most of the players still getting mana, and myself still going over the strategy. Although we were completely unprepared we managed to bring him close to 50% before the off tank backed into some of the hall mobs we hadn't cleared. The second attempt was much worse, thanks to a Warrior who was leaving the raid, pulling

the half-blood prince to cause us to wipe a second time. The joy of PUGing.

Finally, attempt three we decided to do things right. We went with the common strategy of kiting Tenris around the ring, as myself and the green-geared Mage screamed at people to stop DPS on Blood Mirror. A few trips around the hallway and he was dead, with no deaths to Blood Mirror or the Sanguine Spirit's explosion. The use of Blood Mirror especially touched me because I loved Spirit Walkers in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, which have essentially the same ability. The Demonology Warlocks out there should be appreciative, and jealous of it, because Tenris' visual effect is much cooler. All in all, I enjoyed the encounter as a whole, its design, the lore and the link into the Scourge Invasion. Just wish I could wield the Arcanite Ripper...

Now if only Blizzard would confirm that Tenris is indeed a nod to Harry Potter.

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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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A little while back, you saw the interview that Nihilum did with Project Lore on their website. Recently, we had the chance to chat with one of Nihilum’s earliest members, Marilyn, who has been in Nihilum since the guild was formed on Burning Legion. He’s been around since it all began and has held both officer and class leader positions in the guild. Currently, he’s a “regular” hardcore progression raiding member, so he knows all about Nihilum and how they have risen to become one of the top gaming organizations in the world. We chatted about a few different topics, like what it takes to be a top progression raider, the upcoming expansion, and PvP. Now, here is the full interview: Nihilum is one of the most well known and fastest progressing guilds in the world. What drives you to become part of one of the top guilds in the world? I am extremely competitive in everything I do. It all started really early, playing soccer, hockey or just playing chess back in my childhood, I just had to be the best and I'm definitely a sore loser. If someone beats me I will play him/her until I win. And the fact that so many people are playing this game and watching our progress, when we kill a boss world first the attention we get is pretty insane, and fun :D Your guild has a number of world first kills, not to mention server firsts. Which one was the most satisfying? Hm, Kel'thuzad, by far, for me. The amount of hours and energy we all put into that fight is something we haven't done again after that. What happened was we had two 1% wipes on Tuesday night. The server would reset for Europeans later that night, so in order to win against the Americans who had their reset 1 day earlier we knew that we had to beat him on that day to claim the world first. But since we failed to kill him that day, we thought the race was lost. But we woke up early the day after and I skipped school, we started raiding at 01:00 pm and we kept going til 05:00 am. By then the whole instance was cleared except Kel'thuzad. On Thursday we started at 02:00 pm, we buffed up and killed him. After so many hours on a boss and so much effort it felt unbelievable to claim him world first and become "the champions". Best World of Warcraft moment for sure :) Your raid team has seen every boss currently in the game. So far, what is your favorite boss encounter in the game? Hm... hard to pick, I've got many favorite bosses. But I have to say Heigan from Naxx 40. You could beat him with 10 people, and usually everyone just died and you had 10 good players standing :) What does your raid schedule look like during progression? It's a lot of hours. Lately it's been a lot more than it usually was. The reason for that is the competition. More guilds want to be the best and therefore more hours are required to succeed. I'd say from 12:00 to 02:00 is expected of us if they release new content. Of course, this is only something that lasts during one week or a few days. We all have real lives that need our attention :) How many times do you wipe before you kill a boss for the first time? Do you have any interesting ways to alleviate some of the frustration that must come with learning a boss with no input from anyone other than your guild? It all depends on the structure of the fight. Generally speaking, I would say at least 2-3 hours before you have the strategy nailed down, then another few hours to make it perfect. That makes it a total of 8-10 hours to know how a boss fight works. Twin Emperors in Sunwell took several days to figure out, so it varies a lot. To answer your second question I must say that keeping people calm is the only way. Take breaks of 10-15 minutes to let people breathe some air and get their mind on something else. Doing something for XX hours straight without a break is never good, no matter what you do. Many guilds have broken up due to drama between members over a variety of issues. How does Nihilum handle these things when they come up? Drama has always been around, it is almost impossible to get up to 40 people to get along. There are different ways to handle it. The reason we are still here is that we've been among the top (if not THE top) guilds out there, always. People in the guild are more serious in their gaming than most others, and with that thought in mind you can expect that people will act professionally. If people get upset or mad about something we just tell everyone to take a breather and we come back rejuvenated and calm, then discuss the matter. But, of course, I can't deny that drama has almost caused collapses within the guild, even for Nihilum. With Wrath of the Lich King right around the corner, how are you as a guild planning to level up? Questing, instancing, grinding mobs? Well, we haven't played much beta, any of us. Some have played it a lot and some haven't. What we did for TBC was just pure instance grinding. It was the fastest and best way to get to lvl 70. With blizzard stating that they don't want people to level that way, I think we will focus more on doing quests and doing random instances for fun! As long as it goes fast :) How will you become the first to clear the new Naxx? Do you play on the beta to get a feel for the encounters or simply hone your skills on the current content and get ready for anything? Nihilum have played Naxx on Beta, and by the looks of it, it will be easy. Also doing Sunwell every Wednesday keeps us in top shape :) Naxx will be cleared by the US guilds before any of the Europeans. Everything is cleared on beta and I predict that we will see a fully cleared Naxxramas 25 man instance within 8-9 days of the release of WotLK, including leveling. The reason for this is, even though they have changed some of the fights, it will still be the same. People know what to do and what to bring. Switching gears to PvP, congratulations to the Nihilum Plasma team that won Blizzard's 3v3 tournament at BlizzCon 2008. SK Gaming recently split their PvE and PvP teams. How much interaction does your raid team have with the arena teams? Is there any cross over between members? Is it difficult for players to be the best in the world at both PvE and PvP content or do both take similar skills? I reckon that most of the people of Nihilum PvE could be the best in the world at PvP if they chose that path. And same goes for PvP players if they decided to go PvE. This game is all about dedication, if you have the right conditions and the will, you will become the best. I'm not in any way trying to undermine our dear PvP players' achievement, they are awesome. But what I'm saying is that everything about Nihilum is professional. We are striving to be the best in the world, both at PvE and PvP. But being the best at PvP and PvE at the same time, I think is not possible. Both areas take a whole lot of time. And time is something that is limited for us all :) To answer the question if the PvP team and PvE team are connected in any way, I have to say that daily chats over mIRC client is all we do atm. They are doing their thing on another server and we on ours. But yes, we all know each other. Do you have any advice for players hoping start an elite guild like Nihilum? To start a guild like Nihilum at this point is hard. What you need is a group of people, 5-10 on the same server with incredible dedication and desire to be the best. You need to be willing to put a lot of time and effort into the matter. When I think about how much time I've spent on this game and the guild Nihilum, it's insane. Never give up on what you want, even when times are rough you have to think back to what you had as the original goal. And strive for it. And try to have a good base of hardcore people, those who do not stop for anything! Finally, what are your impressions of Project Lore? Great looking website, absolutely smashing :) We need more of these types of websites and communities. They all help to grow the game to another level :)

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