Project Lore

Oh my favorite dailies friend of all time, other than my RL buddies whom I play with from time to time has to be K'iru. She is, or he is, the wonderful Naaru that appears after all of the Shatterd Sun Offensive objectives have been completed and the Isle of Quel'Danas has been taken back from the jerks trying to take over the island. So why is she / he my favorite friend? One word... err buff:  K'iru's Song of Victory. What does that do? Well let me tell you. It gives you a fantastic buff of 79 stamina nd 40 intellect while in Sunwell, Magister's Terrace and the entire Isle of Quel'Danas... for free... forever... for freakin' frackin' awesome. Woot! Can we just agree that this buff is quite nice when doing those 15 or so daily quests around the Isle? It's so nice. And to have that buff while in Sunwell and MgT is super awesome... well not that great since you can't stack fortitude or arcane brilliance with it, but still very nice. So has your sever unlocked K'iru yet? Was it one of the first or is it still trying? Let me know. I'm always curious how my server Frostmane is doing compaired to other servers. Just fun info for me. If you got it, run to the Isle, grind those dalies, and go buy some really over-priced bags to get ready for WotLK. See you on the Isle.

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Every time I read something new about Wrath of the Lich King, I can't help but get a little more excited for it. I recently came across a list of Shaman glyphs from the current beta build. What are glyphs? They are customizations for your character that will alter the way certain abilities work in some way. The example I like to give is that druids will be able to make their bear form look like a polar bear. Fun, right? Well, looking good is one thing, but check out what glyphs have been uncovered for the best class (shaman for those of you who don't know).

• Glyph - Water Shield - Your Water Shield has 3 additional charges.
• Glyph - Chain Heal - Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.
• Glyph - Lesser Healing Wave - Your Lesser Healing Wave heals for 20% more if the target is also affected by your Earth Shield.
• Glyph - Earthliving Weapon - Increases the chance for your Earthliving weapon to trigger by 5%.
• Glyph - Healing Wave - Your Healing Wave also heals you for 20% of the healing effect when you heal someone else.
• Glyph - Mana Tide - Your Mana Tide Totem grants an additional 1% of each target's maximum mana each time it pulses.
• Glyph - Earth Shock - Reduces the global cooldown triggered by your Earth Shock ability by 1 sec.
• Glyph - Frost Shock - Increases the duration of your Frost Shock by 2 sec.
• Glyph - Strength of Earth - Your Strength of Earth Totem also grants 1% melee and ranged critical strike chance.
• Glyph - Windfury Weapon - The attack power bonus on the additional attacks granted by Windfury Weapon is increased by 40%.
• Glyph - Stormstrike - Increases the nature damage bonus from your Stormstrike ability by an additional 8%.
• Glyph - Flame Shock - Increases the range on your Flame Shock ability by 10 yards.
• Glyph - Lightning Shield - Increases the damage from Lightning Shield by 20%.
• Glyph - Chain Lightning - Your Chain Lightning strikes 1 additional target.
• Glyph - Fire Nova Totem - Increases the radius of Fire Nova Totem's effect by 2 yards.
• Glyph - Flametongue Weapon - Increases spell critical strike chance by 2% while Flametongue Weapon is active.
• Glyph - Totem of Wrath - Your Totem of Wrath also grants 1% spell haste.
• Glyph - Lightning Bolt - Reduces the cost of your Lightning Bolt ability by -10%.
• Glyph - Earth Elemental Totem - Reduces the cooldown of your Earth Elemental Totem by 3 min.
• Glyph - Fire Elemental Totem - Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Elemental Totem by 3 min.
• Glyph - Healing Stream Totem - Your Healing Stream Totem heals for an additional 20%.

Now, all of those are pretty awesome, and it will be hard to choose which six to have inscribed (you can have two of each type: minor, lesser and major). I'll leave the theorycrafting to those smarter than myself and just look at the ones that jump out at me. Resto shaman always get love, but adding a fourth target to chain heal would be awesome. Healing wave healing myself while I heal others? Another win. My current love, enhancement, should see huge boosts from an additional 40% AP bonus on Windfury, and strength of earth totem becomes even more buffed by adding an additional 1% physical crit chance. That's on top of the agility it's already getting in WotLK! And of course my rekindled love in Wrath, elemental, is not forgotten. An additional target for chain lighting is situational, but will be fun! A 2% spell crit bonus with flametongue, the new elemental imbue of choice, is much appreciated, as is the extra 1% spell haste for Totem of Wrath. Stacked with the Wrath of Air totem haste, casters will love shaman. It will be difficult to pick glyphs for Juggynaut, but I can't wait!

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...but so is Elemental. I've logged into the beta once or twice in order, of course, to test out Wrath of the Lich King and to provide Blizzard with bug testing and feedback. In my time on the beta server (PvP, natch), I've respec'd a few times to check out all of the new talents and changes to itemization. Enhancement seems like it will play like much more of a hybrid between melee and casting than it currently does. The itemization for Shaman has changed significantly, with Intellect giving Attack Power and Strength's effects reduced. Luckily, with my current gear, I actually gained some AP, though I lost a bunch of crit chance. All in all, I'm happy that Blizzard finally decided to make gear designed for hunters a little bit more viable for us. With the newly changed Maelstrom Weapon along with Lava Burst, spell rotations should be a little more complex than "Stormstrike and shock whenever they're ready." Unfortunately, Lava Burst isn't quite what I had initially expected. Also, the spirit wolves that get summoned with Feral Spirit are not yet implemented (NYI). For now they're just a pair of spirit wolves who do some pretty disappointing DPS. According to the beta forums, these wolves will have some special abilities, like snares and stuns. With Spectral Transformation, they will be even more powerful. It will be fun to check those out once they actually get implemented. Once I had my fill of a full on Enhancement build, I switched to Elemental. Now, while I was testing out Elemental, I used my old Restoration set. I must say, I was pretty happy with the way the team at Blizzard changed healing and damage into spell power. I a little over 1800 bonus healing just from my gear, and my spell power in the WotLK beta was in the mid 900s when I spec'd elemental. As I may have said before, I leveled from mid 60s to 70 as elemental, and stayed that way for a while. So I know how much fun it is to throw Lightning Bolts over and over, watching Lightning Overload proc with devastating results. Thunderstorm is a lot of fun, since it can be used as an extra interrupt, keeps melee at range, and returns mana. Paralysis and Storm, Earth and Fire give even more options for keeping enemies away in order to throw even more Lightning Bolts. In Northrend, I think I'll use an elemental spec to level for a while, because it's just so much fun. As for Restoration, I haven't check it out yet, since its top tier talent also isn't implemented. I also haven't had a chance to group with anyone, which is sort of necessary in order to get the full feel of a healer. We'll have to see if that ends up happening. All in all, I've tried to avoid leveling too much, since I don't want to have to go through it again (and again for Xeno). I will give all of those Alliance out there one tip in case you decide to go out and buy WotLK once it is released. Take the boat to Northrend from Menethil Harbor, not Stormwind.

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WOOT! OMG... OMG... OMG... Woo-Wooo-WooooooT ! Oh yes, oh yes. I win. Okay. Maybe that was a bit too excited, but tell me if you wouldn't be doing a little happy dance if you got what I just got. So let's back it up a bit and start from the beginning. Several months ago I, like many of you, saw an interesting banner on the official WoW website. The banner promised to bring my toon to life in a real 3D existence. I clicked and the banner took me to FigurePrints.com. FigurePrints creates 3D miniature replicas of WoW toons in a plaster-like substance, sealed with resin and painted to look just like the in-game character. The technology to do this is a form of rapid prototyping that manufactures have used for years with CAD machines - great for making new car engine part prototypes and now AWESOME for making WoW figures. As you might have guessed, hundreds of thousands of people instantly wanted their very own figurines to immortalize the effort and joy received from playing the game of WoW. But FigurePrints didn't have the man / woman power to met the demands, so they initiated a lottery system to select the people who would have a chance to get their character rendered in plaster. So each person had to register, fill out a form, and wait. And wait. And pray to win that lottery and hear the words, "Let's make your toon." Well guess who won the lottery. ME! WOOT! And no there was no funny business between me and them. No favors or backroom deals to get their name here or have me yap about how cool they are. No. Fair and square I won it. Just like I won that roll oh so many months ago for my favorite trinket, the Serpent-Coil Braid. Now of course I will be paying a little RL money in exchange for FigurePrints' fine craftsmanship - a mere $125 +S&H for a truly one-of-a-kind piece of artwork that commemorates my digital WoW accomplishments. It's a small price to pay, if you ask me. Now, after a few months in WotLK, I might have to enter that drawing again. The point is this: most everyone I know who plays the game would love to have their toon immortalized in plaster and paint. With FigurePrints, this is a reality that might just come to you. Check out their gallery and let me know what you think. And when mine arrives in about a month, I'll let you know how well they did.

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While we all wait for our WotLK beta keys (except for Alex, that s.o.b.), it's fun to speculate about how long exactly we will have to wait to hit Northrend with the force of two spirit wolves. Hmm, I guess that doesn't really sound very intimidating. Just you wait, though. You won't want to mess with my spirit wolves. Anyway, I don't know many players who aren't looking forward to getting their hands on some Wrath of the Lich King content. Apparently it is news that somebody mentioned that Blizzard still plans on releasing Wrath of the Lich King before the end of the year, but not before October. Word on the street is that Blizzard is aiming for a November release, which makes sense plenty of sense. Of course, WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade was also planned for a Q4 release in 2006, but it managed to get delayed into Q1 of 2007. So, with no official release date confirmed, when do you guys think the much anticipated expansion will be released for real?  My randomly assigned guess is November 18, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it come out a bit later than that.

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Wowhead continues to prove itself a great resource for players looking for the latest information on the Beta of Wrath of the Lich King, and today Wowhead gives us a pet talent calculator and a great list of achievements. Looking through the pet talents, I find Heart of the Phoenix to be great for a certain hunter who always seems to complain about his pet dying. Other than that, there are a bunch of interesting things that hunters will be able to tweak about their pets, and though some of the talents are similar to old ones, the new stuff shows a lot of creativity on Blizzard's part. When I first heard of the Achievement system being implemented, I figured I would just let the achievements come to me as I played. But now I can see some people might really go out of their way to get some. Look at this one. I know someone who might just be crazy enough to try it. I definitely see a lot of things that I expected in the list, and I hope its going to expand even more from the nearly 650 already there. I also really hope that when someone unlocks an achievement, there is some crazy sparkley stuff that happens, visible to everyone with an announcement to all in the vicinity, like the discovery system has but even bigger. After all, World of Warcraft is a social game, and what good is a social game if you can't show off when you get something cool?

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So Tigole, aka Jeff Kaplan, confirmed on the official Blizzard forums that leveling from 60-70 is going to be faster once WotLK hits, similar to the way that 20-60 is now faster than it used to be. This is a great example of how Blizzard is really listening to its community. The acceleration from 20-60 came long after BC was released, but it was embraced by most of the community. Blizzard improved the questing process by leaps and bounds in the Burning Crusade, but players still had to get through the long grind to 58 to see most of the new content. This time, Blizzard is allowing players to have an easier time through older content to get to the shiny new stuff. I can't wait to see what kind of new quests they're going to have in Wrath of the Lich King, and this is just one more improvement to help keep my attention. This may also make more people consider rolling Death Knights right away. Genius!

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Obviously, I am a badass shaman. Some would say the most badass shaman ever. At level 80, though, I will become even more badass. How is that possible you ask? I will summon not one, but two spirit wolves. Imagine a shaman coming at you. I can already see you trembling in your boots. Now, imagine that shaman in ghost wolf form, two spirit wolves, and a fire elemental coming at you. By now you've probably just given up. Now add in whatever Lava Burst is going to do (I can only imagine it will cause the insides of nearby enemies to burst, instantly killing them). And then, if you aren’t already dead, I’ll just use Hex to turn you into a frog. And then I’ll use my friend Mojo to turn myself into a frog. Then we can be froggy friends and you will forget all about attacking me. And then… FROST SHOCK. So forget being a death knight. You should probably just reroll as a shaman.

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By now, it's probably pretty obvious that I have a new 70 which I am pretty excited about. Somebody brought up a good point on vent the other night, though. With Wrath of the Lich King creeping up on all of us pretty quickly, I have to decide how much time and gold I should put into gearing up my little warlock. I could save all of my money and be pretty well off for when the expansion comes out, or I could put tons of money into upgrades that might prove meaningless in 6 months while having fun and learning a thing or two along the way. I'm probably going to end up closer to the latter than the former. I've nearly maxed tailoring and have made two out of three pieces of my frozen shadoweave set, which has already cost me a fair amount of gold. I still need to gem those pieces and make the final piece of the set, and then I will probably start running more heroics and maybe head into Karazhan with an over geared guild group. I don't think I will be spending tons of money to completely maximize Xeno's performance, but I won't hold back if I've got the resources on hand. Learning the dynamics of playing a warlock in instances and raids will also help me as a player, even if warlocks' play styles change in Northrend. So, given the amount of time I have to enjoy playing at level 70, I think I just won't worry about being rich in WotLK until it comes out. After all, spending money is more fun that saving it, and I play to have fun.

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