Project Lore

One of the major pieces of content from the latest major content patch was Ulduar, the new raid instance. Many people are exploring the instance and killing the bosses inside. Many people are also dying inside Ulduar... a lot. Blizzard has decided that people are dying too much. This has caused the developers to make many of the bosses much easier so that those people who are having trouble can experience the content much quicker. This is quite in line with their determination to allow all players to see the encounters, but not necessarily defeat them in their most difficult incarnations. The guys are starting out with a few of the earlier bosses in order to hopefully have more players full clear the instance, or at least get a little bit further. I have yet to beat all of the bosses inside Ulduar, having only cleared up to Yogg Saron, and I know many others have also not cleared the instance. However, it is only the third week that the content has been available, so I'm ok with some of the encounters taking many tries to defeat. How do you guys feel about the nerfs? Here are some of them in detail, in case you're curious:

• The Ignis the Furnace Master encounter has received the following changes: The interrupt effect and duration of the damage from Flame Jets has been reduced, the damage from the Slag pot has been reduced, the number of Heat stacks needed to transform an Iron Construct into a Molten state has been reduced, the base melee damage done by Ignis has been reduced, and the damage bonus Ignis receives from Strength of the Creator has been slightly increased.
• The Assault Bots on the Mimiron encounter will now attack faster, in turn they will do less damage per hit.
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: The duration of Tympanic Trantrum has been reduced, the timer for XT-002 to hit berserk has been increased, the damage of Light Bomb has been reduced, the effect radius of Light Bomb has been reduced, and the health of XM-024 Pummeler has been reduced.
• The aggro radius for several trash mobs before General Vezax has been reduced and the health has been reduced on Void Beasts and Faceless Horrors.
• The Kologarn encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Stone Grip has been reduced, the amount of time to break someone out from the right hand has been increased, the radius and damage of Rumble has been reduced, and the damage of Focused Eyebeam has been reduced.
• The Assembly of Iron encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Rune of Death has been reduced, the damage of Chain Lightning has been reduced, and the damage of Lightning Whirl has been reduced.

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Despite the fact that Ulduar is much more difficult that the previous tier of content, there are many guilds that are tearing through it! I mentioned in my last post that Ensidia had downed Yogg-Saron and since then many more have followed. While Yogg is technically the last boss in Ulduar, there is one more challenge lying in there for the truly dedicated raider.

Algalon is the special hard mode only boss that you can only face after defeating the he Assembly of Iron, Hodir, Thorim, Freya, and Mimiron hard modes.

With the news that guilds have started to actually see this fight, and then the following blue post that you can only attempt this boss for one hour PER WEEK, it begs the question. How long until we see this guy go down?

While I was fairly sure we would see him downed by one of the “professional” raiding guilds this week, now I am not so sure. Remember after all, this guy “feeds on your tears” and is not supposed to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. Additionally one hour seems like a ridiculously short window, I imagine it will take some top guilds weeks to learn the fight alone.

Part of me always figured that part of the reason the top guilds could down bosses so fast is because the sheer number of hours they are able to put into an encounter. Now there is a limitation.

Furthermore, what does this mean for the rest of us?? I know my guild spent over 10 hours on Mimiron alone this week (phase 4 is absolutely insane). I am really having a hard time imagining us downing this guy who, presumably is harder, in that short of a window.

I really cannot wait to see how this all shakes out, and will be incredibly impressed with whoever manages world first. This is an interesting move for Blizzard, can’t say I’m sure how I feel about it yet.

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What does pronunciation have to do with a fond memory, let alone World of Warcraft?  Allow me to paint you a (paint by numbers) picture.  I was cleaning out my bookmarks a few weeks ago and I came across a thread I saved from 2005 entitled "How do you pronounce Scholomance?"  Filled with glee and excitement, I clicked on the link to relive the joy that 2005 had brought me, but it was all for naught thanks to Blizzard and the forum pruning.  Dejected but not broken, I tried a quick Google search and came across an archived version of the thread.  It is difficult to read and it repeats itself for some reason, but now-retired CM Caydiem, and the other forum goers, deliver a bunch of win in the thread. I must hand it to the original poster though, that was a brave question to ask more than six months after the title was released.  It was also a good one.  Seeing as the game and its locations are largely made up via the MMORPG's various racial dialects, it can be quite difficult to discern the correct pronunciation.  As the thread points out, sometimes Blizzard doesn't even know the "correct" phonetics to the words.  There are a ton of phrases from World of Warcraft that I have heard mispronounced in various way.  I'll admit that I just recently learned the correct pronunciation of Ulduar (Ull-doo-ar).  Reaching further back there are common mistakes with the Draenei (DRAN-eye), their buddies the Naaru (na-ru), TBC's main city Shattrath, C'Thun (Kah-Thoon) and everyone's favorite goblin town of Gadgetzan (Gadget-zan).  I was off on only two of those, drain-y and ul-der. I honestly don't know the official pronunciation of Shattrath City.  Personally, I have always said Shatt-wrath, but find a silent th, Shatt-ra, to be acceptable as well due to the draenei roots.  You'd think that I would have learned from my guild's ventrilo, but how often do people say the whole location, rather than Shat?  Perhaps my guildmates don't know the intended sound of the city either... What commonly used locations and words do you hear murdered during your travels?  At the same time, please state the perceived correct way to say the words in question.  The thing that makes me chuckle the most is that English words like melee and buffet are botched to this day! As for spelling misteakes, that is an entirely different discussion.  All this talk of steaks and smorgasbords is making me hungry.

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With Yogg Saron having already been downed many times all over the world, there remain a few challenges from Patch 3.1 that have yet to be overcome. Wraith, an EU guild has managed to unlock the 10-man version of Algalon the Observer, the "True" final boss encounter of Ulduar by defeating the Assembly of Iron, Hodir, Thorim, Freya, and Mimiron, all on their hard modes. MMO-Champion has a multitude of screen shots courtesy of Wraith, along very few details about the fight, but it is being speculated that each raid has only one hour per day to attempt to defeat the boss. I've heard rumors that failing to defeat Algalon results in the destruction of Azeroth, though I can't help but feel that might be a bad move on Blizzard's part. I guess we could all escape to the Outland, though. Check out MMO-Champion's post for all of the crazy screen-shots, and leave your predictions on how long it might be until we see a world first Algalon kill.

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Yes, I know it’s popular for everyone to want to get easy loot off of easy bosses, but not everyone feels that way. I personally love a challenge, and I know I am far from alone.

It is for this reason that Naxx was somewhat disappointing to me, I know it was their plan to make the first tier of raiding accessible, but after farming for months on end, I feel it got somewhat mind-numbing.

It is for that reason I was fairly nervous going into Ulduar the first time yesterday. While I knew it would be harder, I was concerned that it too would quickly become another boring farm grind. I was really hoping they would give a challenge.

Man, did I get my wish! Ladies and gentleman, I am happy to report the bosses in Ulduar are SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult that those in tier 7, and even harder than I had ever expected. Now I’m sure there are those among you that will disagree, no doubt some of you crazies out there went in and demolished the place, I even saw that Ensidia has downed Yogg-Saron. But for me, I’m pretty confident this content will keep me busy for a while.

My guild was able to make quick work of Flame Leviathan (one shot, dare I say he was easy? :p), but man did things take a turn after that. Ingis was incredibly challenging, and after a few hours of diligently wiping we moved on the both of the other bosses that are available after Leviathan goes down. While both Razorscale and XT-002 seemed much more manageable, we were unable to down either of them. I’m feeling pretty good that at least one of these guys will be going down tonight, but I am just thrilled at the new mindset this has put me in.

No longer do I expect to clear half the instance in a day, I don’t even know if we can clear half the instance in a month! Ulduar is a challenge, and we haven’t even hit the hard modes yet. I couldn’t be more excited for the level of difficulty lying ahead of us.

How are you guys doing in there? More importantly, how do you find the difficulty? Are you guys knocking down bosses because it is too easy, or are you hitting your head against a wall because it is too hard? I’d love to hear your experiences.

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Almost 48 hours since the release of Patch 3.1 and there are still many, many issues to be ironed out.  Players across the greater Internet are reporting numerous snags that are consistent with all of Blizzard's content patches.  Dead or laggy servers, extended extended maintenance, busted spells, broken talents, castrated add-ons, un-updated add-ons interfering with general WoW play, disconnected instance servers, the works.  As Ivnication stated in the Secrets of Ulduar post, even if Blizzard had a perfect patch, it'd be unlikely that we would have been able to raid efficiently on Wednesday, let alone Tuesday, due to the massive amount of changes.

As it stands now, I have let the issue go by the wayside.  Better to shrug it off than pull my hair out while screaming about my paying customer status.  During the intermittent server problems I spent most of my time leveling my priest's professions and, preparing her for her incoming second spec.  Since I wasn't doing anything of consequence, I allowed my eyes and mind to roam and came across a collection of unexpected things.  First and foremost, Magtheridon was playable by late Tuesday evening.  Being an original server, I expected it to be utterly destroyed by its high population, so I was taken aback by its playability.

I did my best to keep up on the patch notes and all the upcoming stuff in Wrath's first content patch, but a lot of small tweaks managed to slip by me.  It takes enough time to digest the class changes, let alone all of the other stuff listed in the patch notes.  It wasn't until I was a few hours into the patch that I began noticing just how many things I missed.

• There are a ton of new icons for various spells and talents including Devouring Plague, Cleanse Spirit, Riptide and many others.  Even the Essence of Wintergrasp icon has been overhauled with new art.

• Along with the addition of maps for the dungeons, Blizzard overhauled the minimap.  Our personal guide is far more detailed and allow us to zoom out further than before.  A fantastic surprise addition for me.

• You no longer need to be near a Lexicon of Power to apply a Glyph.  Does that change make the Lexicons completely useless, or do Inscriptors need them for something specific?  I haven't rolled one yet so I am not certain.  Speaking of Glyphs, how did the old Supply and Demand scale work on your servers?  Prices on Magtheridon are up over 200%.

• New music courtesy of Ulduar and the Argent Tournament!

• "Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You're just that resourceful!" (emphasis added).  That bit from the patch notes just made me laugh, even though I see the bold as a possible slight against the hardcore RPers.  Apparently we are all Survivorman.  Now I can make my first campfire.

Since most of these dents have been pounded out, it's about time to get working on my new spec, gem and enchants for my pair of toons.  Ahh, decisions.  What changes have caught you unawares, if any?  How bad our your servers acting up?  Anyone have a chance to head into Ulduar yet?  Bosses have already been downed, some before the first round of hotfixes.  As Tom Chilton expected, each and every one of Yogg-Saron's maws have been thoroughly beaten.  Nearly all the hardmodes remain undefeated by the best of the best raiding guilds, which means Algalon is still alive and well.  Grats on being the first to clear 10-man Ulduar Ensidia.

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So in case you have been living under a rock, Ulduar is here! It is finally time to do and experience everything we have been reading about and looking forward to for the last several months! It is an exciting time to say the least.

I know I had developed quite a shopping list of things to do. So many, in fact, I am having a hard time deciding what my first stop will be when I can finally log on!

The Ulduar instance is obviously my number one priority, but I have a few stops I am going to make before I hit the zone it. I logged out at the trainer so I could pick up my dual-spec right away, after that I’m sure I will head to the AH and see how bad I am going to get gouged for new the glyphs.

Of course I will have to take some time to set up toolbars, gear, and glyphs for my new spec. Then I’m sure I will have to fight with some newly out-of-date add-ons.

Once I get all that house keeping squared away, I am heading straight into Ulduar-10! The idea is to see if I can get some boss tries in before our schedule Ulduar-25 run later tonight. I’m not going to lie, my guild is planning on hitting Ulduar 25 hard, so I imagine I won’t find much time for anything else once we get in there.

That being said, I definitely see the appeal of looking at some other stuff before charging right in. After all The Argent Tournament sounds like great fun, and of course doing some heroics with dual specs in place could present an interesting challenge.

There are lots of new directions to go! So what are you guys going to be up to the moment you log on?

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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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As you're reading this, the maintenance period for patch 3.1 has been extended, but very shortly, the gates of Ulduar will be opened, Emalon the Storm Watcher will start giving out free purples to whoever controls Wintergrasp, and duel specs will be live! Keep in mind that your talent points will be reset and you should probably take care of that before entering Ulduar. If you haven't already, go watch the official cinematic trailer. Note that it does contain spoilers if you have not completed the Wrathgate questline. Here are my observations from the trailer:

• Jaina Proudmoore has a new (old?) face! Instead of using the standard human female face model, she now has her own face that looks much more like her old model in Warcraft III. I've never played an Alliance character so I'm not too familiar with her "old" "WoW face" and like this new one much better.

• Garrosh Hellscream is one hotheaded little Mag'har orc. For being such a pansy when he was chilling in Nagrand, he is certainly taking after Grom.

• The Horde/Alliance conflict is being featured quite prominently. It makes me want to transfer back to a PvP server. It reinforces my suspicions that 3.2 may not contain a major raid and be PvP oriented.

• It is heavily implied that Yogg-Saron has influence over both Garrosh Hellscream and Varian Wrynn. I wonder if we will see a parallel of Grom Hellscream breaking free of the Burning Legion's influence by killing Mannoroth with Garrosh and King Varian. Not likely; maybe down the line leading us into the next expansion.

• Rhonin finally speaks! Rhonin is quite an epic character in the lore and seeing him play an active and audible role is awesome.

What is the first thing everyone is going to do in patch 3.1? Join up with your guild and hit Ulduar? Argent Tournament? Learn dual spec?

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Anyone who attempted to login this morning realized why the servers were being hit with extended maintenance, it's officially patch

day.  I am sure most of your are feeling like the Nintendo 64 kid, as I am, but let's be realistic, I doubt the game will be very playable tonight.  My pessimism is based entirely on previous experiences, specifically that whenever a content patch is released, the day of its release is often a wash for a collection of reasons.  First and foremost, downloading the patch generally takes longer than the maintenance itself, then we must often update all of our add-ons.  And forget about raiding, most of my guildmates - past and present - don't bother to start the download until they get home from work, school or simply wake up.  While we can now pre-download most of the content, the majority of us still don't, which guarantees that we won't be ready for the day's raid.  But hey, I am not here to QQ, I have accepted these issues as necessary evils to new content.

Rather than complain, I figured we could dive into some of the lore for Secrets of Ulduar.  Specifically, the lore presented by the all new trailer.  Before reading on, check out the trailer here.

Welcome back.  How did you enjoy the machinima?  Personally, I thought it was pretty awesome, a far more captivating trailer than the one created for Sunwell Plateau.  In fairness, that may just be because I didn't care too much about the Kil'jaeden storyline.  That may be part of it, but the bulk is simply how inclusive the lore presented by the Secrets of Ulduar trailer is.  In the short clip, we see a collection of some of the most recognizable faces in the Alliance and a pair of big names from the Horde, together.  We watch as Brann Bronzebeard narrowly escapes some sick eye lasers.  With knowledge of Yogg-Saron's escape in hand, Brann rushes off to Dalaran to warn Jaina, Rhonin and Varian before they are interrupted by Thrall and a very agitated Garrosh Hellscream.  Varian and Garrosh quickly go at it, only to be separated by Rhonin.  After a promising speech, Varian and Garrosh leave the summit in rage, destroying any hope of the Alliance and Horde working together to take down a far greater evil, Yogg-Saron.

Aside from "who will face Yogg-Saron," the trailer does raise some other interesting notions.  Is the Alliance or the Horde even going to support our efforts as they did in the Isle of Quel'Danas - through the Scryer and Aldor - or are we on our own?  With Garrosh constantly disobeying Thrall, could he be planning a devious coup?  Will Varian ever get over his struggles as Thrall did, or is he to obsessed with his past - which doesn't differ much from the Warchief's - to let it go?  Perhaps he just needs to see Garrosh perish? Brann seems scared out of his wits, so I hope the Yogg-Saron fight is pretty epic.  At the very least, the trailer should get your pumped up for this new raid!

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