Project Lore

Blizzard Poster Wryxian added a wall of blue text to the official forums yesterday, dealing entirely with the upcoming patch. Being the first major patch since Wrath of the Lich King went live means we expect many changes, but the list is slowly leaning towards ridiculousness. As of yesterday, the up-to-date Player Test Realm notes for Patch v3.0.8 stands at a full six posts from our boney friend. Needless to say, it is a lot to digest and cover.

Not everything is new to the list, so if you have been keeping yourself abreast of the situation, then you will only have to add small morsels to your extensive knowledge. Every aspect of World of Warcraft will see some small changes with v3.0.8. Some of the most drastic changes target the newly added Wrath content, namely the Death Knight class. Most of that information is old hat, but tweaks to Wrath's PvP contributions aren't. Despite the laundry list of changes to Lake Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients, nothing comes off as earth shattering, except the change in marks. For some actual game changes we have to move to the professions.

Here are some of the highlights to the profession changes:

• All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create. (Alchemy)
• Reduced the cooldown on Northrend Alchemy Research from 7 days to 3 days. (Alchemy)
• Succulent Orca Stew and Shoveltusk Soup have been removed from the requirements for any cooking achievements as they will not be added to the game. (Cooking)
• Many high level enchantment recipes have had the amount of Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essence requirements significantly reduced, but with Dream Shards being added to them. (Enchanting)
• Added a new recipe to convert a frozen orb and some green quality gems into several superior quality gems. (Jewelcrafting)
• Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits. (Mining)

Personally, my two main toons are not too effected by any of the changes. My priest is in it for the money, thus she is a strict gatherer – Skinning and Herbalism. The rogue will love the change to mining, even though it is four years late, for its speediness.  The flip side is that he will miss the ability to Sap, ninja and go for a HK that he enjoyed so. Heck, even their class changes aren't worth mentioning.  Can't complain about cheaper enchants though!

Blizzard managed to squeak in some UI changes that no one specifically asked for, but are happy to see. The company has pledged to implement much needed anti-scamming measures into WoW and the first of such will come with this patch. MMO-Champion.com gave us the first details and screenshots the other day, and it is a valiant effort by Blizzard, but I am not sure how much scamming it will curb. In practice a GM chat request window will pop-up when a GM wishes to chat with you. Upon clicking it a self-contained GM chat window will show up on the screen.

This is all fine and dandy, but the biggest problem is the dissemination of the information. I doubt most players will realize the request feature has been added, so they won't expect it, leaving some of them open to the same type of scamming we see today. At least Blizzard is finally trying something though, even if it is just to cover their ass.  Naturally, the one thing Wryxian didn't update us on is when the patch is coming out...

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Unless you are living under a rock, you are undoubtedly familiar with the new achievement system Blizzard added with the latest expansion. I’ve touched on how much I enjoy the new system before, but I wanted to take a moment and dive a little deeper into it. I think it is no secret how much I like achievements, a lot. I am currently sitting at #2 in our guild for overall achievement points behind a certain draenei shaman who will remain nameless. During the lull between 3.0.2 and Wrath I really dove deep into these achievements, exploring the lands, running lowbie dungeons, and doing everything I could to knock them off my list while there was nothing better to do. Now that I have progressed past the initial stages of Wrath I am finding that they are filling a new void and giving me something else to go after. Now that I have finished all of the level 80 dungeons on regular and heroic, other than farming badges, there would typically be little reason to go back. Now I am finding myself wanting to run them over and over again, hoping that I can knock off some of those special achievements off the list during the boss achievements. I am finding myself responding to people asking me to tank with “only if we go after all the achievements.” Typically the response is “of course!” Some of the achievements I have recently knocked of are Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi, Intense Cold, and Chaos Theory. I am trying to figure out where to go next, to me the achievements in AzN seem tough, but I like a challenge and think I will be trying for those next! It seems lots of people are really digging these new goals inside of our heroics. I know I can list a few personal faves. What about you, are you enjoying the new carrots? Or do you see them as just another time sink? Which ones have you got, and which ones seem impossible?

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So we have all had Wrath in our hands for a little over a week now. That was enough time for a few dedicated people to “beat the game” but I suspect many of us are a little behind the curve in that regard. I, myself, am on the verge of hitting level 80… and will likely have done so by the end of the day today. So I feel like I have seen a fair bit of the new content. Originally I had intended to grind instances all the way to 80, but quickly learned that was not the way to go. The XP per hour is simply much larger if you are questing. So ultimately I ended up questing for the majority of the leveling process. And, man, I am glad I did! I have found questing in wrath to be absolutely awesome! The new phasing mechanics really add a while new element to the game. While I have always enjoyed questing, there was never much tangible result other than a quest reward and unlocking the next link in the chain. Now you get to see the world change as the result of your actions. You get to witness time move on and realize things will never be the same as they were. It is great. I am not going to give out any spoilers here, but the epic quests that take advantage of it in Dragonblight, Icecrown, and even the DK starting area had me cheering at my computer monitor. Beyond the phasing mechanic, it seems to me the quests are all together better. You don’t see nearly the amount of kill X mobs for Y drops. They are more creative, more exciting, and all together larger feeling. The new vehicle mechanics play a big part in this, making lots of things possible that you were not able to do before. From time to time you get to step out of your character and control something of absolutely epic proportions. For me, so far, Wrath has been all I wanted and more. Now with hopes of seeing some end game next week I am anxious to see what the rest of the game has in store! What do you guys think so far?

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Most players who care already know what the Tier 7 loot is going to look like.  The loot from the retuned Naxxramas - which, by the way, has already been beaten - will be styled after the look from the old Tier 3 of vanilla WoW's Naxxramas 40.  Styled doesn't mean copied however, with Blizzard confirming that their will be some model upgrades and modifications, as evidenced by the difference in 10-man and 25-man varieties, which can be as little as a color palette swap. But what about beyond Tier 7 you ask?  Well, if you purchased the Collector's Edition of Wrath of the Lich King, you might get a sneak peek at upcoming tier sets.  Included in the Phat Lewtz section of the art book is four images of gear sets, presented in the common modeling fashion, but sans any kind of label. Two of the pictures are pretty easy to figure out, with this one almost certainly being a Warlock set.  Notice the demonic energies flowing around the armor.  This set obviously looks holy in nature, leading one to label it as a Priest set, but possibly a Paladin set as well.  However, the robe's look has me to leaning in the direction of the priestly arts. It appears the Blizzard may have also included a Death Knight set in the bonus section.  The DK set is complete with their iconic skulls at the belt buckle and knees.  We also have their trademark blue aura disseminating from the gear.  Last but not least, is the piece that took a friend and I some time to make a guess at.  While the other three pieces were relatively easy, I had to mull this one over before agreeing with him.  The gear obviously wasn't of the Rogue or Hunter variety, with a robe kind of ruling out Warriors.  It doesn't appear as earthy as most Druid stuff, so we finally settled on a Shaman set. The book also has presentation of Rogue and Hunter sets, but they are not in full frame and do not appear to be part of the other series.  The scans we have aren't high-resolution (don't want to infringe on any copyrights here), so if you are interested in the details then take the book out of the shrink-wrap or head over to a friend's house. Any differing opinions on which sets the images belong to?  Think we will see these bad boys with patch 3.1 and Ulduar?  Perhaps later, or maybe they are truly just concepts and will never be implemented.  That would suck because, as usual, I think the Warlock set looks awesome.

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I’ve been trying to keep a healthy perspective on this thing. Sure, I called in sick on Friday, and sure I logged more hours this weekend than I probably did the past 3 weeks combined, but I’m having fun and fully expected to invest a lot of time during these initial few days. With everyone racing to level cap, it is very interesting to see how far various members of my guild are approaching it. There are some that are playing about the same as they did before, there are actually some that are playing less (waiting for things to settle down) but what I am noticing most is those that are playing more, much more. There is the guy I know who went 40 hours without sleeping, there is the one that did 3 levels in one sitting (and hasn’t logged since), and even the guy that took 2 weeks vacation to dedicate all day everyday to getting up to the cap. Now I’m not here to judge, like I said I have logged more than my fair share of hours over the last few days, but sometimes I just have to wonder. Where is the line for all of this? I hear people calling each other noobs for not leveling fast enough, or on the other side calling them nerds for playing too much. I cannot say what the proper balance is, but it is certain that there are strong opinions all around. What does it take to be the world first 80, or be the first to clear all the PVE content? Are we so competitive that we push our selves to the brink to beat that other guild, the others of your class, or even your friends? I know that this will all be very short term, and soon all will be back to normal, but in the mean time it’s a great time to learn a little about your friends and guildies. What about you? Are you feeling the pressure to level like a madman, or are you appalled by what you see going on around you? I wish I had a way to wrap this all up into a moral or a strong opinion either way… let’s just say I have found the last few days very interesting. Now back to leveling.

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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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Thanks WSU.edu and Mark J. Berry

Trade Chat and General Chat are certainly odd beasts. I consider Trade Chat to be one of the most mistreated features in World of Warcraft, as it is hardly ever used for its purpose, facilitating the buying and selling of goods. More often than not I simply ignore the channel all together in an attempt to save my intelligence and sanity.

General Chat, well, that can be forgiven for its missteps into the immature comments or pointless rants. As I roam around Azeroth grinding away at one thing, or the other, I tend to watch General Chat very closely. My eyes will tune into that block of text in the lower left of my screen out of sheer boredom, hoping that a fun or exciting discussion is going on. General Chat's conversation, nine times out of ten, will be a LFG message, a looking for this or that question, or someone begging to be saved from a camper. Yet, like Pavlov's dog, I always come back for more.

While conversing in general, I try to be as helpful as possible. That can get me in trouble though. Help one newbie and you run the risk of them chatting you up for small facts or discoveries till the end of time. Worse still, other newbies bugging you. But, when you are bored, you are bored and I don't mind the distraction.

While on my Priest the other night I found that needle in the haystack gem. I was joking around in GC in Terokkar Forest when I noticed a name I recognized – although slightly modified with an accent - from my former hardcore raiding guild. After feeling each other out to see if they were who we thought they were, we each found a new addition to our 5-man instancing group for Wrath. Score! The only drawback, it seems that they decided which character I will be leveling first for me, the Priest.

What role do you play in General Chat? The helper? Wiseass? Know it all? Annoying person with tons of questions?  Player with numerous ASCII macros? Ever get anything positive out of it?

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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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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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The Line As We Approach Launch

I pulled up to Gamestop last night just after 10:15 PM to see about fifteen people milling around outside the store.  After fumbling with my bikelock in the 46 degree weather for a few minutes, I finally joined the crowd and jumped in on my first discussion, QQing about Retribution Paladins and how badly they need to be nerfed.  Not that anyone would care two hours from now, when they are home and installing Wrath of the Lich King. The kind employees at Gamestop invited all the fans in while they began processing last minute transactions.  Thankfully, the Philadelphia midnight launch did not have any credit card problems.  After the first batch of purchasers completed their transactions and the murmurs grew louder, I loudly introduced myself to grab their attention for a highly unscientific poll.  “Who thinks the servers will be playable in the next 24 hours?!” I asked. A few hands went up, but the general consensus was that lag, stability and over population (queues) would cause issues for many players.  A few players told me that this thinking was exactly the reason they decided to attend the midnight release.  They figured they would have the servers to themselves for a handful of uninterrupted, non-laggy hours to get ahead of the curve.  As of press, my server (an original server) is still fine, although there are reports of trouble out there. After we had warmed up and purchased our copies, the kindly employees threw us out into the cold again (“Line up outside if you want to get Wrath”).  As the line grew, passersby asked us what the hell we were in line for.  Being the angst-filled, impatient, basement-dwelling gamers that we are, we made stuff up.  Halo 4, Gears of War 3, Grand Theft Auto 5, free STD tests, and a few others that I can't print.  I also heard a few other items of pure gold while in the chilly air:

• Question: “What do you call a gnome escaping from Alcatraz?  A small medium at large.” (Player)
• “Aren't you too old to be waiting in line for a video game?” (An old lady after I told her what we were in line for while taking the picture).
• “All right you little warlords, up against the wall if you want the game.” (The cop helping out with crowd control).

These fellows demanded that they be put on the interwebs since they were in the front. Thanks to Patrick Mulhern for the pics!

The line ended up extended well around the corner by 11:30 PM, with every copy the store received reserved and paid in full.  By 12:30 the line had been cut in half, with the second purchaser sprinting out of the store, game in hand, as he shouted something like 'I'll be the first to 80, bitches!'  He was running so fast that I couldn't hear him clearly.  Needless to say, he was excited.  By 1:00 AM the line was gone, but the employees were still cleaning up in the store.  Sorry guys. How did your midnight releases go?  We didn't have a single cosplayer!

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