Project Lore

Photo by Robin. June 2007

Hey, guess what. Wrath of the Lich King comes out tomorrow morning at 12:01 AM! Score! To celebrate I will be heading to a local midnight release party in the mean streets of South Philadelphia. I took a few minutes out this morning to pack a “survival bag.”

In my “Gigantique” Bag you will find:

• My Nintendo DS, currently equipped with Yoshi's Island DS (possibly the best platforming game ever).
• The new issue of Game Developer magazine.
• My girlfriend's Point & Shoot camera (more on that in a few) and a spare battery pack.
• Some Nature Valley granola bars.
• Miscellaneous junk like keys, wallet, cell phone and the ever useful stun gun (rabid fans are more dangerous than angry critics).

It surprised me how long it took to find a store with a midnight release party. I live in South Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia area is actually the home to EBGames (not that you care or anything). If you punch in 19104 into their store locator, you will be hit with over 50 stores inside a 30 minute drive. Yet, the first seven EBGames/Gamestop stores I called were not having parties. Granted, they don't all need to have a party, but they should know which store is.

In the end I got bumped to their District Manager, who informed me that the closest store with a launch party is at the popular tourist location of South Street. I should have known.

I will be heading there, camera in hand, to chat with the crowd, hang out, and kill those last few Wrath-less hours with like minded individuals. For those who may not be familiar with it, South Street is a bit of a hot spot in Philadelphia, and has become, what I would call, an outdoor mall. The Gamestop is located at 505 South Street (between Fifth and Sixth streets), with the queue starting up by 10 PM.  If also else fails, there is plenty to do in the area.

I spoke with a sales rep earlier and they are expecting a pretty large crowd, so it should be a blast. Anyone else going to launch parties? Where and which store is having it? Dare someone come meet me in person?! If you are timid about meeting people from “teh internets,” do not fret, I am not a troll.

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So this is it, there is less than a week left until the new WoW expansion changes our whole world. Some of us may be fully prepared to head into Wrath of the Lich King, but I’m sure there are many, like myself, that still have lots of preparation to do. Personally, I have been utterly neglecting the preparations I need to make to be ready for WotLK. With our guild up and raiding again, my thoughts have been directed toward BT progression and not into cleaning out my bank… but we are reaching the point where I need to get things in line to make the boat ride to Northrend as comfortable as possible. First thing is first. I just started going through my overstuffed bank and started getting rid of all the mats and consumables that will be rendered completely obsolete next week. Being and enchanter and engineer I’ve got more dust and gizmos than I know what to do with. I’ll kill two birds with one stone by clearing up some space and getting some much needed funds to help smooth over the leveling process. That takes me to the next point. I’ll need gold. I know I will make some along the way, but leveling professions, learning to fly in the cold, and buy BoE epics is going to be expensive. The more funds I have the better, and right now my funds are dangerously low. Then I’m going to have to take a hard look at my quest log. It’s high time to finish up those last quests that have been rotting in my log for months… either that or drop them. All I know is that when I hit the Fjord, I will want as few quests sitting in there as possible. At last I will soon have to tweak my spec for leveling, make sure I know what gear will be best for the process and park my toon in front of the boat the night drops. It should be a fun process, and I need to make sure by toons are ready to start the next chapter in there digital lives!

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I know feelings were very mixed, but I personally thought that the scourge invasion has been awesome. I loved the whole zombie thing, it was unique enough to really get attention, and it completely changed the world (…of Warcraft) for a few days. Furthermore, it was short enough that it didn’t get a chance to get really annoying. The necropolis attacks have been great fun as well. I loved flying from zone to zone looking to the skies for piles of undead to blow through. For me, the opportunity to pick up some one time only rewards has been very satisfying. It may be my Paladin bias, but I think it was all well executed and most importantly fun. All that being said, I’m worried. This event that started so fast and furious had all the potential in the world. But now it’s all but stopped. Sure, zones are still being attacked, but nothing new has happened in quite a while. Most people got their runes and have moved on. The world event felt so alive when every new day brought a new stage in the invasion, and a new phase of the plague, but now most people don’t even noticed it is still here. This has all been a bit disappointing to me. I am assuming that something else will happen, but when it does it had better be epic. I feel that so much momentum has been lost during this lull that it risks turning the event from a huge success to an utter failure. Right now things are just plain quiet. In my mind great world changing events shouldn’t start suddenly build up insane momentum, stop overnight, then pick back up a week and a half later. In the end I guess we will all have to wait and see. Perhaps this is all part of Blizzard’s master plan, or perhaps there was a bit too much QQ so they decided to take a break. Either way I would appreciate an explanation, or at the very least a new development. Come on Blizz, get us excited again! Northrend calls!

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Homogenization:  the act of making something homogeneous, or the same throughout; or the tendency of something to be come homogeneous (Wiktionary) A vocal group of players have been pretty miffed about the homogenization of World of Warcraft's classes.  While a collection have been barking about the issue for some time, the group grew substantially after changes to the way raid buffs work were announced as part of the Echoes of Doom patch. The late-August decision was made to allow Raid Leaders to bring the people they want to play with, rather than having to fill cookie-cutter configurations for bosses, trash mobs or the raid as a whole.  In doing so, Blizzard Entertainment drastically changed the current buffing system, including some of the buffs themselves.  I already did a summation of the changes, or if you prefer, here is the lengthy full post. Adding more fuel to the fire this past weekend, was the revelation that the class forums would be abolished in favor of role forums, Damage Dealing, Tank and Healing.  Personally, I would like the Damage Dealing section split into Ranged and Melee, but I digress.  After the aforementioned group became even more vocal, Blizzard backtracked and decided to keep both the class forums and role forums. The idea of WoW's classes becoming homogeneous has me a bit torn.  As a prospective raid leader for Wrath of the Lich King, being able to bring people I can trust, rather than the “right” classes, is certainly a boon.  Another personal point, is that my main is a Rogue, a class that should benefit from the situation.  My Priest...still no problem getting into groups there. On the flip side, doesn't everyone like feeling special?  Feeling needed?  Feeling that if, you specifically, weren't available everything would crumble?  Over dramatic you say?  Heavens no. In the end I am going to have to go with Blizzard on this one, and say the path they seem to be going down is probably for the best.  Many of my friends were burned out from raiding due to thinking there were always needed.  I hold the belief that the modifications will cause less guild QQ and more pewpew.  Which is best for everyone. Well, not Arthas, but he deserves to die after that whole plague fiasco.

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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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I’m sure everyone has noticed, the new world event is going on right now. Blizzard is now providing us with the reason we all need to charge into Northrend, and the reason is simple: A ZOMBIE ATTACK. Awesome. I am super excited as I missed the world event for BC. I'll just say: I think this is going to be really cool. It is obvious that this is an evolving event, and I can only imagine where this is going to go. It all started with a crate showing up in booty bay turning somewhat willing victims into zombies. Players get infected by the crate and in 10 minutes time if no action is taken, the turn into full fledged zombies with a whole host of new abilities. During the “infection phase” players can be cured by Argent Dawn healers in the major cities or by friendly (or unfriendly depending on how you look at it) priests and paladins. Now it is clear the plague is getting stronger. On the second day of the event crates and plagued critters are showing up in all the capitol cities. Additionally the infection is becoming harder to dispel, priests and pallies now usually have to try multiple times to remove the infection. While it will likely start affecting our play style some, I am very interested to see where this thing goes. The idea of my Paladin fighting off waves of undead zombies controlled by other players is just too cool to be ignored. I can only hope this whole ordeal will involve some sort of cool reward for participating such as a tabard like players received last year. Of course I want a souvenir from the great zombie attack of '08! While I did run around as a zombie for a little while earlier today I haven’t really had a chance to fully explore the zombie side of things. It appears that after a few days it may be unavoidable. While that may be bothersome to many players I am just along for the ride at this point. This event is only going to happen one time ever, so I intend to make the most of it. How about you? How are you enjoying your “zombie time?” Are you avoiding the whole scene, or are you running around feasting on delicious brains?

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A little while back, you saw the interview that Nihilum did with Project Lore on their website. Recently, we had the chance to chat with one of Nihilum’s earliest members, Marilyn, who has been in Nihilum since the guild was formed on Burning Legion. He’s been around since it all began and has held both officer and class leader positions in the guild. Currently, he’s a “regular” hardcore progression raiding member, so he knows all about Nihilum and how they have risen to become one of the top gaming organizations in the world. We chatted about a few different topics, like what it takes to be a top progression raider, the upcoming expansion, and PvP. Now, here is the full interview: Nihilum is one of the most well known and fastest progressing guilds in the world. What drives you to become part of one of the top guilds in the world? I am extremely competitive in everything I do. It all started really early, playing soccer, hockey or just playing chess back in my childhood, I just had to be the best and I'm definitely a sore loser. If someone beats me I will play him/her until I win. And the fact that so many people are playing this game and watching our progress, when we kill a boss world first the attention we get is pretty insane, and fun :D Your guild has a number of world first kills, not to mention server firsts. Which one was the most satisfying? Hm, Kel'thuzad, by far, for me. The amount of hours and energy we all put into that fight is something we haven't done again after that. What happened was we had two 1% wipes on Tuesday night. The server would reset for Europeans later that night, so in order to win against the Americans who had their reset 1 day earlier we knew that we had to beat him on that day to claim the world first. But since we failed to kill him that day, we thought the race was lost. But we woke up early the day after and I skipped school, we started raiding at 01:00 pm and we kept going til 05:00 am. By then the whole instance was cleared except Kel'thuzad. On Thursday we started at 02:00 pm, we buffed up and killed him. After so many hours on a boss and so much effort it felt unbelievable to claim him world first and become "the champions". Best World of Warcraft moment for sure :) Your raid team has seen every boss currently in the game. So far, what is your favorite boss encounter in the game? Hm... hard to pick, I've got many favorite bosses. But I have to say Heigan from Naxx 40. You could beat him with 10 people, and usually everyone just died and you had 10 good players standing :) What does your raid schedule look like during progression? It's a lot of hours. Lately it's been a lot more than it usually was. The reason for that is the competition. More guilds want to be the best and therefore more hours are required to succeed. I'd say from 12:00 to 02:00 is expected of us if they release new content. Of course, this is only something that lasts during one week or a few days. We all have real lives that need our attention :) How many times do you wipe before you kill a boss for the first time? Do you have any interesting ways to alleviate some of the frustration that must come with learning a boss with no input from anyone other than your guild? It all depends on the structure of the fight. Generally speaking, I would say at least 2-3 hours before you have the strategy nailed down, then another few hours to make it perfect. That makes it a total of 8-10 hours to know how a boss fight works. Twin Emperors in Sunwell took several days to figure out, so it varies a lot. To answer your second question I must say that keeping people calm is the only way. Take breaks of 10-15 minutes to let people breathe some air and get their mind on something else. Doing something for XX hours straight without a break is never good, no matter what you do. Many guilds have broken up due to drama between members over a variety of issues. How does Nihilum handle these things when they come up? Drama has always been around, it is almost impossible to get up to 40 people to get along. There are different ways to handle it. The reason we are still here is that we've been among the top (if not THE top) guilds out there, always. People in the guild are more serious in their gaming than most others, and with that thought in mind you can expect that people will act professionally. If people get upset or mad about something we just tell everyone to take a breather and we come back rejuvenated and calm, then discuss the matter. But, of course, I can't deny that drama has almost caused collapses within the guild, even for Nihilum. With Wrath of the Lich King right around the corner, how are you as a guild planning to level up? Questing, instancing, grinding mobs? Well, we haven't played much beta, any of us. Some have played it a lot and some haven't. What we did for TBC was just pure instance grinding. It was the fastest and best way to get to lvl 70. With blizzard stating that they don't want people to level that way, I think we will focus more on doing quests and doing random instances for fun! As long as it goes fast :) How will you become the first to clear the new Naxx? Do you play on the beta to get a feel for the encounters or simply hone your skills on the current content and get ready for anything? Nihilum have played Naxx on Beta, and by the looks of it, it will be easy. Also doing Sunwell every Wednesday keeps us in top shape :) Naxx will be cleared by the US guilds before any of the Europeans. Everything is cleared on beta and I predict that we will see a fully cleared Naxxramas 25 man instance within 8-9 days of the release of WotLK, including leveling. The reason for this is, even though they have changed some of the fights, it will still be the same. People know what to do and what to bring. Switching gears to PvP, congratulations to the Nihilum Plasma team that won Blizzard's 3v3 tournament at BlizzCon 2008. SK Gaming recently split their PvE and PvP teams. How much interaction does your raid team have with the arena teams? Is there any cross over between members? Is it difficult for players to be the best in the world at both PvE and PvP content or do both take similar skills? I reckon that most of the people of Nihilum PvE could be the best in the world at PvP if they chose that path. And same goes for PvP players if they decided to go PvE. This game is all about dedication, if you have the right conditions and the will, you will become the best. I'm not in any way trying to undermine our dear PvP players' achievement, they are awesome. But what I'm saying is that everything about Nihilum is professional. We are striving to be the best in the world, both at PvE and PvP. But being the best at PvP and PvE at the same time, I think is not possible. Both areas take a whole lot of time. And time is something that is limited for us all :) To answer the question if the PvP team and PvE team are connected in any way, I have to say that daily chats over mIRC client is all we do atm. They are doing their thing on another server and we on ours. But yes, we all know each other. Do you have any advice for players hoping start an elite guild like Nihilum? To start a guild like Nihilum at this point is hard. What you need is a group of people, 5-10 on the same server with incredible dedication and desire to be the best. You need to be willing to put a lot of time and effort into the matter. When I think about how much time I've spent on this game and the guild Nihilum, it's insane. Never give up on what you want, even when times are rough you have to think back to what you had as the original goal. And strive for it. And try to have a good base of hardcore people, those who do not stop for anything! Finally, what are your impressions of Project Lore? Great looking website, absolutely smashing :) We need more of these types of websites and communities. They all help to grow the game to another level :)

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So as many of you know, the patching process didn't exactly go smoothly for Blizzard. There were delays, installation issues, server issues, add-on issues, and for the fortunate few (like myself) you lost all your vanity pets and mounts. Yes... I know to look in the character screen, those babies are gone. Apparently it's a "display issue" That's not what I want to talk about, however. Once I plowed through all the speed bumps, things were actually pretty fun! I logged on with tons of new stuff to do and things to get excited about. While learning new mechanics has been a bit of a process, man, is it fun to see what my characters can do! My Paladin is pumping out more damage than I ever thought possible, and I have to say Hammer of Righteousness is about the coolest thing I have cast in a long time. Not only is it a great AoE, but I just love that sound it makes! (I know,  but you have to appreciate the small things). There were a few unexpected surprises as well. Once I got all trained up and got my hair cut, I started on a project I hadn't even considered before the patch dropped. I hit the AH and started buying up some glyphs to buff up my spellbook. Once I figured out where the Lexicon of Power was, I had a bunch of little enhancements to play with! Finally, I have to say, I just love the new achievements and titles. Allow myself to introduce you to Bastosa Jenkins (or is it Steve Marcus Bastosa Jenkins now?). On a serious note,  it has been a great excuse to check out some old content, and explore some of the secluded places in Azeroth I have never made it to. While I didn't get credit for everything I have done thus far, I think I am really going to enjoy going back and crossing all those old bosses off the achievement list. If this is a taste of what Wrath is going to be like, I am even more excited. Blizzard has done away with boredom of the downtime, and has given us all something fun to experience. Now if I could only get my epic flyer back...

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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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Blizzard has made it no secret that there are some big tanking changes on the horizon in Wrath. On the surface this has all seemed really exciting. There are tons of new spells, abilities, and mechanics all around. They have stated they want all of the tanking classes to be viable raid tanks, meaning that the ability for Paladins and Bears to tank single targets will be greatly improved. On the flip side Warriors and bears are getting some great AOE tanking abilities that were the Paladin’s bread and butter. As I first heard about these developments, I got really excited. As a Tankadin, I was getting the equivalent to last stand, shield wall, and shield slam. Mana problems will be a thing of the past, and during raids I won’t have to justify having a warrior main tank a boss instead of me (apologies to TRG’s warrior MT,  Jato). All these new abilities were incredibly exciting. Here’s a quick summary of the exclusive abilities I have noticed that have now crossed over between classes: Consecration – Both Thunder Clap and Swipe now hit unlimited targets, making them better for AOE Righteous Defense – Taunt and growl now work at range as well Holy Shield – Warriors will now also deal damage on blocks with Damage Shield Last Stand – Lay on Hands cool down has been greatly reduced, making it much more useful. Shield Wall – Divine Protection has been reworked to fill this role. Shield Slam – Hammer of the Righteous is a new skill with a similar effect. There are many more, I'm sure. After the initial excitement died down, it occurred to me: are we all going to be the same? Are we losing class distinctions and individuality? It started to not sit right. I love being able to do things that warriors can’t do. I love being the "go to guy" when you want to beat the Shattered Halls timer by 20 minutes. It’s a great feeling to round up a 12 pull without breaking a sweat. And, I’ll admit, I loved being the underdog when it came to being able to tank the big raid bosses (and loved even more proving my guild wrong when I did). It seems like all this will be gone… I will no longer be a Tankadin, I will just be a tank. Perhaps these changes aren’t so good after all? Now take this all with a grain of salt. I have not played the beta, so this may be all in my head, but I fear I may be dead on. Does anyone have any experience to prove me wrong? Are you as concerned as I am? Or is my concern unwarranted? I can’t say I’m completely sure myself.

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