I'm getting back to WoW Insider after a month's real-life-related absence and have been spending some time playing catch-up on the site. One of the articles that caught my attention was Matt Rossi's popular "One reason tanks won't PuG," in no small part because I play a tank and my own PuG runs have been few and far between of late. My main, a Tauren Druid, respecced from balance to feral at level 69 because there were so few tanks on my server, and I literally spent months and months tanking PuG's to get experience and gear.
During that period I saw everything from rogues rolling on +healing maces to warlocks needing on tanking cloaks, and I learned that you never can tell what you're going to get from a PuG. Yes, you'll get hunters who can't trap, mages who never resheep, rogues who mistakenly believe they leveled a warrior, and priests who Power Word: Shield you straight off the pull -- but you'll also find people who know their class well, or are in the process of learning just like you are, and who are fun to be around. I have now killed Illidan with a contingent of people who showed up to my PuG's back when I was a wee lolbaretank in quest greens and Heavy Clefthoof, so as a matter of personal experience I think PuG's are a somewhat underrated way to meet people who will later turn out to play crucial roles in how you experience the game.
I don't PuG as frequently anymore due to time constraints and increased time spent leveling alts, but I still hang out in LFG from time to time for the pure enjoyment of meeting new people. Yes, it is often difficult to PuG tanks and healers (I would submit, as someone who typically tanks or heals in dungeons, that it is also difficult to PuG skilled DPS), but a lot of people could make it easier on themselves than they do. If you're having problems finding a tank or healer for your PuG's, try these.
The guild Shards of Existence on the Illidan server hasn't managed to down Illidan himself yet, but apparently that hasn't stopped them from having a little bit of fun with the other Black Temple bosses. According to their site, they've been having a bit trouble with tanks losing their computers, which has in turn frustrated their attempts to put Illidan on farm status. But just because they're still getting their replacement tanks geared up doesn't mean they have to sit back and wait.
Introducing Gaeowyn, The first Rogue to tank Mother Shahraz, the harem mistress of Black Temple. Notes Nihilum's news site, she pulled it off by stacking massive amounts of agility, while keeping enough expertise to cause adequate threat to keep the boss' attention. Raid buffed, she had 76.31% dodge, 12.16% parry, and 14.16% chance to be missed, meaning that she had 102.63% avoidance - just enough to take physical damage out of the equation.
If nothing else, that alone makes me wonder if I could pull that off on my Druid tank - It certainly would make tanking Prince Malchezaar's phase 2 easier. Of course, Bears cannot parry, alas, so I'd have to make up some major ground somewhere.
The video is a fun watch, especially at the end where it looks like Gaeowyn tries her hand at tanking Illidan. Is this a sign that we can expect Rogues to be fighting with Paladins, Druids, Warriors, and Death Knights for tanking spots come WoTLK?
There are few things more frustrating in the game than a person going AFK in the middle of a fight. Sometimes there are good reasons, and sometimes the reasons are...less than adequate. But no matter what, we all have an epic AFK story that makes us laugh and cry all at the same time.
The ultimate AFK (so far) in my WoW career happened while we were on Illidan last week. Uly, a good Mage in our guild, was standing with the ranged group dpsing Illidan during phase 1. He was a little high on threat, so he switched to his wand. Nothing wrong there.
So he's standing there, wanding away as I'm moving Illidan across the terrace to avoid the fire. It looks like he's doing his job. He get the parasites.
Blizzard has released tonight the patch notes for patch 2.4.2, which means the PTR will probably be up and running sometime soon. Patch 2.4 will likely be the last major patch before Wrath of the Lich King, and we expect to see a couple more of these minor patches before WotLK comes out.
Void Shatter no longer has a cooldown, and other cooldowns have been reduced.
Illidan will no longer despawn if a raid wipes during his death speech.
If you are sheeped / polymorphed by a mob, you will no longer gain back health (ie: the mass sheep in Aran, which regens your health before he fire blasts the raid). This is a potentially large change.
Many main hand weapons are now one hand weapons.
A good list of bug fixes, including several problems associated with sounds.
Full patch notes for your convenience after the break!
Let the lore geeks at WoW Insider help you out a bit. We've put together a scene by scene analysis of the lore behind the Fury of the Sunwell trailer, and we're presenting it to you here. Hopefully, it sheds some more light on this whole "Did Kael'thas go crazy or didn't he, and what is up with Kil'jaedan anyway?" thing.
Submissions are starting to trickle in to our inbox, and some of them are quite surprising. Brysan wrote in about his machinima experience, outlining the journey from wee newblet to intermediate hobbyist. However, he'd like some constructive feedback on his latest piece, a PvE video of his guild's Illidan Stormrage kill.
Having graduated from Windows Movie Maker up to Sony Vegas and WoW model viewer, he wanted to make a video that was more artistic than boastful. Brysan managed to come up with an entertaining storyline with what I felt was a decent voiceover and nice visuals. Since he's looking for ways to improve, I'll note that sometimes the lipsynching is off, the aspect ratio changes randomly, and the metal soundtrack made me want to cry, but that last one is more personal than anything. Make sure to include credits for any music you're using in the future!
[Thanks, Brysan!]
If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.
I have a confession: I've been mostly using the basic, vanilla UI for as long as I have been playing WoW. I do use mods, I'm not crazy, but the basic unit frames and action bars have served me pretty well.
It's not that I dislike custom UIs, or even that I do like the basic UI. The base interface has done its job, from level 1 in Northshire Abbey to level 70 standing on top of Illidan's corpse. It took that Illidan kill to make me realize that I did it the entire way using a supposedly inferior UI. I could do so much more! I could streamline everything, I could open up space on my screen, remove unnecessary information, enhance the necessary stuff...
Wow, this has turned out to be quite a task. My experience with these things is minimal, and I'm not always the most organized person in the world so I couldn't make myself a proper layout if I tried. Even worse is I need to redesign my UI on all of my characters because they all use different things. What's important to my Shadow Priest isn't important to my Protection Paladin, and what's important to her isn't important to my Rogue.
According to Ian Beckman, Blizzard has a trailer for the new 2.4 patch that they don't want you to see. In the Blizzard-issued version, Kael'thas believes that the Sunwell is the root of all evil and destroys it. When the destruction makes things worse, he turns to Illidan Stormrage for help.
Ian's version, however, tells the story of monsters that overtake the "pool of awesome." Kael'thas has an identity crisis and it just gets really random from there. If you like all things fun and happy, then this is the Sunwell for you! I wonder why Blizzard would cover up something so cool?
The upcoming patch, patch 2.4, now known as The Fury of the Sunwell, revolves around... well, the Sunwell! I guess there's something in there about a huge demon by the name of Kil'jaeden, but I'm sure he's not important. Like my previous installments of Know Your Lore, I'll give a little bit of background information on our subject, so you understand the foundation of it. This bit isn't quite as exciting as my last installment or two, but this took a lot more research, and a lot more piecing together half-told bits of story from multiple authors. It's a bit like playing Connect the Dots, but instead of getting a flower or a sailboat, I get Richard Knaak flipping me off. Sorry it's so dry, but on with the show!
A little over 10,000 years ago, the Night Elves lived under the rule of Queen Azshara and the upper class of society, the Highborne. Their culture was rich in magic and the arcane, very different from the down to earth, nature-centric society of the Night Elves today. Queen Azshara and her Highborne were extremely hedonistic, using the nearby Well of Eternity for personal power and gain. At some point during all of this, Azshara heard a dark whisper, promising power beyond her imagination.
Does this sound familiar? Yes, Sargeras was up to his old tricks again. Like he lured Kil'jaeden and Archimonde to the Legion's cause, he did the same with Queen Azshara. Whereas Kil'jaeden and Archimonde seemed to have needed a little trickery from the Destroyer, Azshara was far more welcoming. She was pretty okay with hanging out with demons, and rather enjoyed the whole fire and brimstone thing.
Tipster Kronack sent us a link to this video, which shows the Sunwell Plateau's final boss, Kil'jaedan. The animations look to be his initial summoning and his final defeat. I'm pretty impressed by how awesome he looks, but what really intrigues me is what these animations could reveal about the lore behind the encounter - and what follows it. We still don't know much about the Kil'jaedan encounter, since Blizzard is mostly focusing testing on the Eredar Twins these days -- when the dungeon is even activated -- so most of what we have for now is speculation. That said, there's still some pretty good things I can see in these animations.
Anyway, I'll be using Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau lore spoilers to explain what I think, so If you don't mind that and want to speculate along with me, please, do join me after the jump.
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening, (though it was delayed somewhat this time by technical difficulties).
Mary Sue is extremely unpopular with roleplayers. She comes along pretending to be the only daughter of Illidan and Tyrande's one-night stand, secretly spirited away and raised by furlbogs until she underwent a mysterious transformation that turned her into a human, seduced Arthas away from Jaina, and learned from him more than you will ever know about how to be a Death (i.e. Retribution) Paladin.
In fact, Mary Sue isn't just one person -- she is a demon-spirit possessing all those characters in roleplaying and fan-fiction, both male and female, who rely on clichés, melodrama, and/or supposed intimate relationships with one or more characters in the original story to such a degree that they actually try to upstage those characters, their fellow roleplayers, and indeed, the entirety of the original lore. Other roleplayers often see this sort of thing and get frustrated out of their minds.
And yet there's something about Mary Sue: she keeps reappearing all over the place, from seductive blood elf hunters who claim to be Thrall's secret lover, to angst-ridden human warlocks who insist that they are the half-demon offspring of Kil'Jaeden. What is it that continually attracts people to these ideas, couched in phrases like "tragic past" and "missing one eye" and "emits a deep sorrow that makes you want to cry?"
The answer is darker, more disturbing, than you can possibly imagine.
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers.
What do you do for WoW Insider? I write the weekly Raid Rx column every Tuesday and filled in on Ready Check for a bit. Occasionally you'll see me put up a post about something I've come across or make a guest appearance on another column, but between work and WoW, Raid Rx is plenty for me.
What's your main right now? I play Valyre, Blood Elf Holy Paladin, queen of lewts and all things pink and purple. Currently I'm my guild's healing lead, webmaster, recruitment officer, and general avoider of MH. Someday our Priests and Locks will have spent enough of their DKP for me to get the T6 shoulders. Until then, I drool on those that have them.
About two months ago, the Lead Designer for Blizzard gave an interview stating that Patch 2.4 -- specifically, the Sunwell instances -- will wrap up the story of the Burning Crusade. This got some of us here thinking. What exactly is the story of the Burning Crusade? Is it the tale of the blood elves and the draenei joining the Horde/Alliance factions? The mass exodus to Outland? The battles against the Illidari? Or the (once again temporary) defeat of the Burning Legion?
Actually, it's all of the above. And since it's now been over a year since TBC came out, it's about time for a review. So join KYL for ... the story of the Burning Crusade!
Once upon a time ... at the end of Warcraft III, Illidan Stormrage, Lady Vashj, and Kael'thas Sunstrider escaped certain death on Azeroth for the continent of Draenor. Once there, Illidan set himself up as Lord of Outland and appointed Vashj and Kael'thas as his top lieutenants. Illidan invited a group of the blood elves to come to Outland and serve him, and gave them new and improved techniques to siphon magic from the local demons.
This did not sit well with another group in Outland, the draenei. The draenei had been largely mutated or driven into hiding by their earlier war with the orcs, but the remaining draenei were still faithful to the Light and its champions, the too-cool-for-school Naaru. When the Illidari came and started enslaving the mutated draenei (or Broken), the remaining draenei decided it was time to take action. They stole the Exodar, part of a Naaru ship that had been taken over by the blood elves, and set out in search of salvation. One month ago, they crash-landed into some islands west of Kalimdor.
The name of the game in raiding is learning what makes a boss tick and using it against them. Since the beginning of PvE there have been people kind enough to figure out the fights and let the rest of us know what to do. You can find strat guides all over the interwebs, including sites like Bosskillers and WoWWiki, plus more.
And while those are great resources that we've used time and time again to defeat our foes, the wall after wall of text has been hard to digest for some of our TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read) members. What if there was an easier and more entertaining way?
Enter Akaineko (Bazlek) and Scorpio_Angel (Zhain) on WoW Ladies and their illustrated boss strats for Leotheras, Lady Vash (Phases 1, 2, and 3), and just out yesterday... dun dun DUN: Illidan 1, 2, and 3. I made Zhain pinky swear that someday they'll do Kael as well.
Now, before you go ripping into their strat guides, be aware there are some language and adult concepts contained therein. These may not be ideal bedtime stories for your 3 yr old, kk?
But they're seriously killer guides and the commentary/art takes learning boss strats to a whole new level.
[Thanks to Jaxson_Bateman for pointing out the additional Illidan parts!]
Blizzard's cinematic team deserves as many awards as they can get, in this writer's humble opinion. Even back in the Starcraft days, when graphics were 2D and it was all sprites and jumpy animation, the cinematics were exquisite. And now they've been nominated for yet another award-- Blizzard says their team has been nominated to receive honors from the Visual Effects Society's 6th Annual Awards for the Burning Crusade's cinematic seen above. And I don't disagree-- even more than a year (and a few runs through ten levels of Outland) after it's come out, Illidan's growl still rocks.
And man oh man I can't wait for the Wrath cinematic. As fun as it was to see Blood Elves, Draenei, and Illidan and the Skull of Gul'dan, seeing Arthas in cinematic form again is going to be even more awesome.
There are few things more frustrating in the game than a person going 
I have a confession: I've been mostly using the basic, vanilla UI for as long as I have been playing 
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more 
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