Project Lore

I haven't been playing a whole lot of WoW lately. I'll hop on vent every once in a while to hear the latest haps, or maybe log an alt and spy on the Totally Rad Guild (or their lower level equivalent, The Knights of Radshire), but I haven't spend much time doing anything meaningful in game. The one thing that really made me want to play last week, Brewfest, is no more. Of course, there are some other fun holidays coming up, but the Darkmoon Faire just doesn't do much for me. I turned in the Blessings deck a while back for the Crusader card, but now I don't even use it in enhancement spce (I've got a couple of trinkets that are better). So in light of this lull that many players seem to be noticing, I decided to look forward. The 3.0 patch is coming soon, which means there are going to be a lot of changes for, well, everyone. For some, more than others. Some classes, like Shaman and Paladin, are having set pieces reworked to play nice with new class mechanics. This will probably cause me a few headaches. To avoid those headaches, I have been playing around with Wowhead's recently unveiled Item Compare feature. In short, it allows you to compare a bunch of items or groups of items with built in stat weighting so you can decide which item would be best for you. For example, say I have two helmets and I need to decide which one is better for me. I take a look at this page and it shows me. What does this have to do with the changes to certain set pieces? Well, change the www. in that link to wotlk. and you get this page. Now, currently the feature doesn't seem to allow socketing or enchanting, but since, for an enhancement shaman, strength will be worth one attack power after the patch hits, even a lowly Bright Blood Garnet will be better than an epic Bold Crimson Spinel. So, let's say red socket will be worth 16 AP, a Bright Living Ruby. That offsets the AP bonus. Enh shaman will also be gaining 1AP per agi and 1AP per Int (talented). This means that, while crit chance will go down by a little under 1%, with the Cyclone Helm, AP will be much higher. Take into account a Meta gem and we have a winner. So, all I'll need to do is change to a Bright Living Ruby and I will be set for 3.0, at least in the helmet department. This tool will give me a chance to really figure out what I will need to change before the market gets crazy. Well, crazier, I guess.

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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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