Project Lore

We all knew that there would be plenty of people out their racing to hit level 80 as soon as possible. Not you racing against your friend or guildmate. I mean someone who would take vacation, go without sleep, eat dry packets of Ramen (hey, the saliva will hydrate it) and pee in empty bottles of energy drinks, until they finally dinged level 80. As Juggynaut mentioned, this happened less than two days after Wrath went live on the European realms.

Since then, I am sure many of us have witnessed server wide messages proclaiming the first of this class or race to hit 80. Even the North American realms, which are a bit behind due to timezones, have plenty of 80s roaming Northrend. It was only a matter of time before people began taking on the 10-man and 25-man raid content.

For TwentyFifthNovember, that time was under two days after Nymh hit level 80. TFN is the General Electric of World of Warcraft. A guild conglomerate put together by SK-Gaming (Curse) and Nihilum to achieve world first kills and to create “one of the best World of Warcraft community sites.” Their fancy new site is set to launch on November 25^th, well after they started putting up new content. If you head over there now, you will be informed that they have beaten all of the raid content that Wrath of the Lich King has to offer.

Getting a group of players together that fast is an achievement of itself. The guild took it one step further by beating the re-tuned Naxxramas and swiftly moving onto Malygos, the hardest boss currently in Wrath. 68 hours and 30 minutes later, and TFN is standing on top, waiting for Patch 3.1 and Ulduar.

These guys are obviously good at WoW, but damn that was fast. TFN's announcement post wasn't entirely self-congratulatory though. The team questioned Blizzard's tuning of the raids, even suggesting that Blizzard may have made them easier to put the “large casual player base...on equal footing with end-game raiders?”

What do you guys think? Are they just too good, or is Blizzard trying to appease the larger audience? Hitting 80 inside two days is one thing, beating Wrath inside a month, let alone three days is another. Comparatively, it took almost five months for Nihilum to beat The Burning Crusade's PvE content.  Of course, if I mention TBC had more raid content, it isn't really defending Blizzard...Seems like Ulduar cannot come soon enough.

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I'm not sure if any of you had heard, but Wrath of the Lich King launched yesterday! Somehow, people are already hitting level 80, as there is proof of Nymh, a Level 80 Human Warlock (Alliance FTW) right here on the Armory. It makes sense that the first eighty was on the EU servers, as their time zones had a few hours of a head start to get the record. Personally, I've only leveled a couple of times, but I cannot get enough of Northrend. I am enjoying pretty much every single quest I've done. I'm a bit of a quest-a-holic, and I'm going for both the Loremaster and 3000 quest achievements, so I finished up in Borean Tundra and headed over to Howling Fjord. I figure if I'm going to be doing these quests anyway, I may as well get XP for them. What level are you guys a day and a half in? Vote on this poll! I'm guessing most are in the 71 area, but I've seen a bunch of mid 70s on Executus, so let us know.

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As you may have noticed, today's featured video is not from the Halls of Lightning. For some reason, the Project Lore offices seem to be pretty much empty. There must be a bug going around, because everyone called in sick. So, today we'll be expanding on Bastosa's look back at fond memories of the Burning Crusade by featuring my personal favorite episode of Project Lore, the infamous Netherspite kill. Enjoy today's look back while you wait for your Wrath of the Lich King to patch, or on your short break from leveling. Of course, we will be back tomorrow with the final episode from the Halls of Lightning, and the Weekly Wrap Up will be available on Saturday at Noon PST.

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Warning: The post contains business information that may not be suitable for some minds. In the event that you hate business, market analysis, facts, quotes, words and things of that nature, you may want to read some other posts. However, it is good to have these things when you try and argue with your friends about which MMO is the best. Blizzard Entertainment has certainly struck a gold mine with World of Warcraft. ProjectLore is living proof of its popularity and cultural impact. I could give you all numerous examples to the phenomenon that is World of Warcraft, but its 11 million subscribers worldwide, should be enough to convince gamers. Since WoW's launch in 2004, it has constantly been put up against other MMORPGs. The first of which was the sequel to the previous industry leader, EverQuest 2. It took a few months, but it became readily apparent that WoW had won that first battle. The next battle was fought with some old Blizzard employees and their first title, Guild Wars, in April 2005. The trend continues, with a string of MMOs trying to dethrone World of Warcraft, but none putting more than a dent in the armor. A pair by Turbine (Dungeon and Dragons Online & Lord of the Rings Online), the terrible MMO from the Matrix universe (The Matrix Online), a MMO from the father of MMOs Richard Garriot (Tabula Rasa), and the brutal Age of Conan, all pail in comparison to World of Warcraft's influence. With the exception of EverQuest 2, I only felt that Dungeon & Dragons Online: Stormreach had a chance to upset WoW's stride. That is until Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was released in September. Mythic Entertainment released WAR to solid reviews and has posted impressive subscription rates since. To date, it is the closest anything has come to stealing WoW's thunder, holding over 750,000 subscribers with more than 1.5 million units shipped to retailers. Unlike AoC, it doesn't appear that the subscribers are leaving in droves after the free 30-days either. Is Blizzard worried? It doesn't appear so, but maybe they should be.  Just a little. When Age of Conan was doing so hot its first months, Blizzard sat back and watched their members return, “about 40% of those players have returned to World of Warcraft," according to CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime. That was just two months after AoC launched, so one would imagine that the number has only grown since then. Yesterday, as part of Activision-Blizzard's business mumbo-jumbo, Morhaime returned to update that number, and included WAR in the statistics. A whooping 68% of people who left for AoC have returned to WoW. Mythic Entertainment's title seems to have faired a bit worse than AoC. Almost two months out from WAR's launch and Morhaime reports a return rate of 46% to AoC's 40%. In fairness to WAR versus AOC, many people are likely returning to WoW for Thursday's release of Wrath of the Lich King. In fairness to both of them, just because players have re-subscribed to World of Warcraft doesn't mean they aren't still participating in the other MMO. Yet, according to research, most MMO players only subscribe to one title. The numbers show that WAR has been the biggest threat to World of Warcraft, but even a shiny new title with an incredibly dark universe and more mature theme, hasn't been able to retain its users when put up against an expansion. Let us pray that the competitors stay in business, and new titles make it to market for years to come. This will ensure that Blizzard has to keep the design juices and creativity flowing. Competition is a good thing. Anyone think Blizzard should be scared of some upcoming MMOs?  Aion?  Star Wars: The Old Republic? LEGO Online?  To be honest, I think LEGO Online just might grab some impressive numbers.

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There was another topic I almost addressed in yesterday's post on World of Warcraft and other games (they do exist!). I chose not to discuss it because it is a wholly other topic, deserving of its own post. Also, it would have derailed the main point of the post, seeing what you guys are playing, and how you fit it into your MMO regiment.

So here it is folks. I once stopped playing World of Warcraft. No, no. It wasn't one of those times where your friend throws a hissy-fit and quits, only to return a week later. I was gone for awhile, and I went cold turkey to top it off. This was actually around the same timeframe that I quit, just before an expansion.

There are a handful of reasons behind my decision, but the main issue was that I felt Blizzard Entertainment was double dipping. I had no issue paying for a subscription fee, but that, coupled with planned yearly expansions – that cost $39.99 – kind of pissed me off. I knew that the double dipping was the norm of Western MMOs, but that didn't mean I had to like it. So there I was, just a month before The Burning Crusade was set to drop, still raiding Naxxaramas, and I let my account expire.  At the time, I would have been happy with paying $20 a month, so long as they kept releasing the awesome content patches semi-regularly.

My main reason was clearly a fiscal concern. The other reasons, not so much. My number two would be that I was constantly upset at missing all those classic games I mentioned. Then there was my concern with the upcoming content. I just wasn't excited about what The Burning Crusade had to offer. The feature set seemed too underwhelming to me, two new races, umm, okay, whatever. Swapping Paladins and Shamans? Sorry, but sounds like they just got fed up trying to balance the classes. Spaceships??? Add to that a collapsing guild, changes in the raid structure and a host of small issues and I had enough reasons to bail.

I never lost touch with the community, and frequently conversed with my Rogue buddies while I was away. A few tried to suck me back in, and luckily, they finally did. Months went by, but I was finally pulled back into Warcrack and was happy to return. Even if things weren't the same. TBC turned out to be a lot better than I anticipated (I thought it was going to suck...), with my favorite feature being short and sweet 5-man content mixed in with more epic stuff.

No worries about me ditching this time though. Blizzard has me on the edge of my seat waiting for Wrath of the Lich King. Arthas, you are not prepared!

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We've got six videos for you on this week's schedule. Of course, We are continuing our Ten Days of Knight special covering the Death Knight experience in Wrath of the Lich King. In addition to that awesome series, our five guys will be bringing to you a Level 80 instance from the beta, as well, the Halls of Lightning. Can you imagine what might be inside waiting for our group? Tune in this week and find out. Here's the schedule: Monday, October 27th at Noon PDT- Project Lore WotLK beta Episode 2.1: The Halls of Lightning Tuesday, October 28th at Noon PDT- Project Lore's Ten Days of Knight: Day 6 Wednesday, October 29th at Noon PDT- Project Lore WotLK beta Episode 2.21: The Halls of Lightning Thursday, October 30th  at Noon PDT - Project Lore's Ten Days of Knight: Day 7 Friday, October 31st at Noon PDT- Project Lore WotLK beta Episode 2.2: The Halls of Lightning Saturday, November 1st at Noon PDT - Project Lore's Weekly Wrap-up Take a look at our subscribe page to find us all over the web, and use the Episodes RSS feed or follow our Twitter to find out when new episodes are out! Project Lore is also on MySpace and Facebook, so please be our friend!

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Wow.  What a mess the Echoes of Doom patch has been.  I do not know about the rest of you, but I have had a hell of a time with the latest content patch.  Blizzard Entertainment warned us that the maintenance would be extended, but my main server experienced over 12 hours of down time. Then it was hit with shoddy performance when the realm finally came up.  In fairness, I would rather take the downtime now, than when all the new content from Wrath of the Lich King goes live.  Of course, that is the exact reason Blizzard does these patches ahead of time, to work out the kinks. My server being down was only half the battle though.  I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I actually play World of Warcraft on three separate computers.  Keeping the WoW installations on the myriad of computers I have is difficult enough for common play (no, I don't want to carry around my WoW installation on an external harddrive).  So you can imagine how annoying it is to go through the motions of patching and reinstalling addons on three computers for a major content patch.  Tools like  the BLASC Client can only do so much. My two Windows XP boxes patched up nicely, although I had to transfer the patch from one box to the other because a download was corrupt.  Thankfully, Blizzard's repair tool managed to revert the MMORPG to 2.0.0 rather than having to reinstall everything.  Things went smoothly after that. My Windows Vista 64-bit box has been, and continues to be, a bit more difficult though.  I have the User Access Controls disabled - because they suck - and still get harassed by Blizzard's installer telling me to move the files to a public directory.  I told it to do what it wants and it failed to copy data from the original installation location into the public area.  I figured it was a PEBKAC issue and tried again, this time not moving the files.  Failed again with much the same error, unable to copy data. I then did a whole bunch of dumb things like copied the patch files into the installation folder, ran it as administrator, ran it as administrator while on one foot and ran it as administrator while I played The Witcher.  At this point I was worried about the installation as a whole, thinking that the failures may just cause a chain reaction of destruction.  Double-clicked the repair tool (as admin, while I prayed to Pagan gods) and got reverted to 2.0.0 on the Vista box. It took me awhile, but I finally gave up in frustration and began to download a new copy of the patch.  Hours later, in fact, it ended up being early this morning, it completed and installed correctly.  Looks like I was blaming Vista for another corrupted download.  Sorry Microsoft! Things are up and running on all of my computers now, and I have begun taking a hard look at which specs to select for my Rogue and Priest.  I think I am going to roll with a healer Priest from now until level 80, so that should be different.  How did the conversion to the Wrath of the Lich King's launch screen - which rocks by the way - go for all of you?

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Late yesterday afternoon the Player Test Realms were finally closed, marking the end of testing for patch 3.0.2.  At the same time, players were met with the typical “Breaking News” window at the login screen.  The latest in “Breaking News” was a message telling everyone that maintenance would be longer than normal.  Gee, what could possibly make maintenance longer than normal.  Oh, I know, Blizzard Entertainment is finally putting the Echoes of Doom patch live!

Just because we can't play World of Warcraft right now doesn't mean we should put it out of our minds.  There is plenty to worry about and do while waiting for Blizzard's techies to finish their job.  Hopefully most of you managed to empty out your inventories and cash out while you could.  If not, be sure to do so right away.  I expect that once the servers go live, the market will start its steady decline on those soon-to-be-replaced items.  The patch may make many items relatively worthless, but it will also allow many players to get some epic quality gems on the cheap.

Thanks to the removal of BoP and unique-equipped tags on PvP gems, those epic stones can soon be purchased by your PvP-dominating main and socketed into your whimpy alt's gear.  The change in PvP items – initially added because Blizzard was going to wipe Honor points and Battleground marks – is just one of the cavalcade of changes coming with Echoes of Doom.  There is another thing you can do, put on your reading glasses and hit up the latest official PTR patch notes for 3.0.2.

Done reading that ridiculous amount of class changes?  Well, then it is time to go lay out your new spec for your main and handful of alts.  I am actually still working on that myself, although I am kind of stuck with dagger builds for the moment.

Last but not least, and this one is often torture, it is time to start collecting 3.0.2 ready addons.  Many addons will be broken with the launch of 3.0.2, so updates will surely be needed for a handful of your mods.  The most popular mods have already been updated for the beta of Wrath of the Lich King itself, and therefore work fine in 3.0.2.  WoWWiki has a comprehensive list, complete with funny little icons, to keep us informed.  Most of my favorite addons are ready such as the Auctioneer suite, FuBar and tons of its plugins, Bejeweled, Itemrack, Rating Buster.  Some of my other favorites are in limbo right now, including the popular BankItems, AutoBar and Omen Threat Meter.  To make matters a little less time consuming, you may want to install the BLASC Client, which will keep your mods up-to-date via WoWAce's database.

Oh, and how could we forget the Achievements.  Which ones are you shooting for on day one?

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Continuing their romp through Karazhan, Project Lore and friends downed a bunch of bosses: Big Bad Wolf, Nightbane, Curator, and Illhoof all went down. Here are quick links to each episode from this past week: Episode 10.1: Karazhan Episode 10.2: Karazhan Episode 10.3: Karazhan Episode 10.4: Karazhan Episode 10.5: Week 2 Wrap-Up In addition to the amazing week in Kara, we were interviewed by Nihilum. Everyone is still looking forward to Wrath, getting worried, or hoping their computers will even run it. Oh and also, Death Knight footage? Yes please! Remember, we're be at BlizzCon today and tomorrow, so follow our Twitter to keep up with the latest haps. If you want to keep up with whatever Alexis is up to, follow her on twitter at twitter.com/alexisknapp or you can email her at alexis@projectlore.com! Join us next week as the team of ten make their way through the next bosses in Kara, starting with the Shade of Aran. As usual, keep up with us by using the Episodes RSS feed, the Blog RSS feed, or Twitter, and join our Facebook Group, Facebook Page, and MySpace! You can head to our subscribe page to find us on some of your other favorite sites, too. Lastly, get over to the Lore Store to grab yourself a Project Lore T-Shirt and stay tuned for next week's schedule on Sunday. Hope to see some of you at BlizzCon!

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After the Utgarde Keep episode, we got a myriad of questions about the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion. Often, we were asked about the new Hero Class, the Death Knight. Apparently, you all want to see some footage of one in action. You guys have been begging us and begging us, and we are giving in (To be honest, we couldn't wait to show you guys this stuff either). Next week, in addition to the Karazhan episodes that we are still churning out, we are going to start a ten part special that will be all about the Death Knight leveling experience, as seen through the eyes of none other than Zand Broumand, AKA Dorkins. How does that sound? Stay tuned, as we will have the schedule and more details for you on Sunday.

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