Valnoth announced today that with the return of King Wrynn in Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard will be removing the attunement necessary for Onyxia. In vanilla WoW, Ony was an achievement and many peoples first introduction to raiding in Warcraft. In Burning Crusade it was often ran as a quick way to make a buck or get a nice helmet for an alt.
Ony was one of the last, great old school attunements required in the game. With it gone, only Black Wing Lair and Molten Core remain as attunement required raids. This is a sad day for those of us that enjoyed the quest chain. A friend of mine and I were going to run this through on his Shaman and my up-and-coming Mage. Apparently we'll have to actually kick ourselves into gear and do it soon.
There is no indication if this change will come with WotLK or with patch 3.0.2. However the King returns in 3.0.2, so I would have to assume the attunement will be lifted then. It should be noted however, that Valnoth did say they would attempt to return the chain some day in the future. But we all know how that can go...
While the removal of the attunement is obviously a way to get more people to see their new raid zone, the Sunwell Plateau, all is not golden. Many, many, many raiding guilds and players who have already made the brutal trek through Vashj and Kael will be quite upset. On the other hand players who are not yet able to, but perhaps ready for, the first few bosses of MH and BT, will undoubtedly rejoice.
What are your opinions of this change? How do you think it will affect the raiding landscape?
Kavis wonders if he's the only person who wants 40 man raids back. I'm sure he's not the only person, but I'd bet he's in the minority. Forty man raids may sound super fun in theory, but in practice they are pretty miserable-- it's hell to coordinate the schedules of 40 people on a regular basis, and then it's even worse to actually get them to line up on time and do what needs to be done. I don't know if Kavis ever actually ran Molten Core or BWL or Naxx, but while 40 man raids were fun while they lasted, 10 and 25 man raids are much, much easier on raidleaders and guildies alike.
As Bornakk says, the devs love 25 man raids too-- since 40 man raids could be carried by about 25 good players anyway, it makes things much easier for everyone, in terms of individual contributions.
Now, if Kavis is asking to return to the 40 man content, I'm completely down with that. BWL, AQ, and Naxx were fun to go through when you had a good group rolling (as rare as that was), and the content there shouldn't be abandoned (Naxx, we already know, is likely being repurposed in WotLK). But as for a return to the days of trying to get 40 people together for five hours on a Sunday evening? No thanks.
Have you ever wondered what the names and faces behind WoW do in their off time? In the recent interview 1up had with Shane Dabiri, Rob Pardo, Jeff Kaplan, and Tom Chilton, we get to find out a bit about that -- at least in regards to some of the games that they're playing right now. Two of them were really no surprise to me: Guitar Hero II and God of War. Those two have been all over the gaming media and are a lot of fun to play, so it makes total sense. The two titles that caught me off guard were several mentions of Viva Pinata and Rob saying that he plays the PopCap game, Peggle. They also covered some great background information from their gaming roots, to some ways they think WoW has changed the genre. Check it out!
This shot is very old Azeroth, but while I've died a great many times to Ragnaros in the past, I can't say I've seen him from quite this angle before. From reader Shmoobedoobe of Kilrogg comes this screenshot of Ragnaros' oddly hollow interior, which you get a glimpse of if you die in just the wrong spot. Look at that -- you can even see his name floating above his head (obviously equipped with sunroof!).
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.
Serial entrepreneur and unofficial World of Warcraft spokesman Joi Ito recently sat down in the studio of Mobuzz.tv for an interview, which you can check out on their site. He touches on many of the most interesting aspects of the game (IMHO) including leadership and guild management, trust and bonding, achievement and value, and the implications of interface design when the current cadre of young players enters the business world and expects great tools to help coordinate personnel in that ever-elusive "real world." As one who sees a lot of parallels between my experiences in game and my "day job" experiences in the virtual office at Weblogs, Inc., I appreciate the way Joi communicates how World of Warcraft can provide inspiration for future leaders in the future office, as well as discussing the value that different and historically undervalued leadership qualities can bring to group coordination and management -- whilst simultaneously conveying the satisfaction and fun of pwning face.
When I came upon this post in the Raids and Dungeons forum, I had to laugh. The guild Dissension on Bleeding Hollow apparently got three Rejuvenating Gems -- each about a 5 percent drop off the three drakes in Blackwing Lair -- on one run. The funny thing is, the exact same thing happened to my guild this summer before we could even clear BWL. One of our healers thought it was funny and told a real-life friend of his, who happened to be in another raiding guild on our server. That guild would not talk to us for several days, aside from random "I HATE YOU SO MUCH" tells from their druids, priests and shamans. The same thing happened later in the summer, when we killed Nef and got three Ashkandis out of our first four kills.
I did the math on the Rejuv Gem drops and it came out to be about a one in six thousand, five hundred chance occurrence. (Please correct me if I'm wrong -- it's been a long time since I've been in a statistics class.) End of Days on Black Dragonflight reported an even more improbable loot table: four Talismans of Ephemeral Power off the four Molten Core bosses who drop them. This has a chance of happening in one out of every seven hundred and fifty thousand and change Molten Core clears.
Have you ever had a wildly improbable run of loot luck? And not an improbable run of not getting loot -- sorry, there's going to be a lot of guilds out there still waiting for that last Wraith Blade or Bloodfang Chest. People who complain about "it must be our loot seed, we've never seen a Eye of Sulfuras" need to look up the phrase "random" in a dictionary, along with "two percent drop rate."
I remember my first trips to Molten Core, those very first attempts at downing Ragnaros, the thrill of a first kill, and the cheers on Ventrillo when we managed to down him pre-Sons (a feat for which we were promised extra DKP at the time). But before any of us reach raiding success, there's an endless stream of frustrating wipes (practice does make perfect, after all), such as this one, sent in by Brixie of Prelude to Chaos on Guldan. Not that I miss the wipes, but I do feel sort of sorry for people leveling to 60 after the release of the Burning Crusade. Will they ever run Molten Core and challenge Ragnaros?
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Without getting too much into the lore, you may recall Mount Hyjal as being a pretty pivotal place in the history of Azeroth. It was there that the Battle of Mount Hyjal was fought at the end of Warcraft III, and the destiny of the night elves was forever changed.
We've known for awhile now that the Burning Crusade will let us access some moments in Azeroth's past, including Hillsbrad, the Dark Portal, and Hyjal. What we weren't really aware of until now, is the apparent gargantuan effort it's going to take individuals to get ready for and attuned to the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
Blizzplanet has a rundown on what you'll need to do in order to be admitted to the Caverns of Time for this epic event. Keep in mind that there will be some spoilers in there, but I believe it's worth the read just to get a grip on what Blizzard has in mind for us to get ready.
This is not like getting attuned for Onyxia or BWL. In fact, this seems like it's a bigger deal than the AQ40 event was, on top of which every single person in your 25-man raid group has to have completed all the steps.
Personally, I think this is pretty cool. Instead of slugging through raid after raid, you get a big build-up to that raid. No more walking into a giant event without some idea of what lead up to it. I think this shows that the Blizzard developers are thinking about the world they're creating, and the lore behind it. This can only be good for the continued success of the game, and I'm sure it works as a nice timesink for the beancounters, too.
What do you think of lengthy prerequisites and jaunts around the world before being let in to a big raid event? Does this encourage you or discourage you from pursuing quest chains and following the lore?
I have seen reports of druids winning the Hand of Ragnaros before. I seem to recall one raidleader handing off the Eye of Sulfuras to his druid girlfriend, but I could be wrong. Hey, it isn't like I committed the brilliant forum thread to memory.
Well, now we have another report of a druid snagging the HoR, this time it's Napier, a druid from the Greymane server. As you can imagine, this thread is dominated by folks either calling Napier the most selfish player in the history of MMORPGs or defending his right to spend his DKP as he sees fit. And yes, Napier has a long-winded response to the haters, which contains his rationale for spending his DKP on the mace. All in all, a typical forum thread, but there are aspects to it which raise some interesting questions...
Shouldn't any DKP system have some kind of priority list or mechanism which prevents warriors from bidding on a caster staff or a druid from, I don't know, snagging a legendary mace which serves him no purpose whatsoever? I have never been in a guild that employed a straight DKP system which didn't make allowances for class needs. There is no way, for example, a hunter could bid on leather, simply because he could wear it.
Is a druid with the HoR the absolute worst example of misguided DKP use? Or have you seen worse? Does your guild restrict rolling on certain items to particular classes? Or is it a free-for-all? And at this point, so close to the expansion release, does it matter who gets what? I mean, we will be upgrading everything very, very soon.
We've all heard the "50 DKP minus" guy (it's become nothing less than a WoW classic), but imagine if all of that took place inside a chat channel, and you've got this (a lot of the text is not safe for work, if you aren't supposed to read cursewords at work) A more stunning display of angry raidleading I have never seen. This guy has more ways to say "you suck" then there are to actually wipe a raid.
And that's why it's so great. I think my favorites are "this is MC level sh*t," and "I don't care how you did it in your guild-- your guild sucked, that's why you're in my guild." Seriously, almost everything on this page is comedy gold: "Just pull and let god sort it out." Dives was funny, but I think Sebudai is my new favorite raidleader.
I am obviously a sucker for a goofy World of Warcraft related song, or possibly just easily amused -- because this video had me laughing for the longest time. Though that could have, at least in part, been because I couldn't figure out what song they were parodying (despite the fact that it sounded awfully familiar) until the end....
After our rather lengthydiscussions the past couple of days about the viability of the current raid dungeons come the BC expansion, I thought you guys would be interested in this post from Tigole, that I discovered via Tobold (which he in turn snagged from Blue Tracker).
To sum it up...there will be no major changes to the current endgame raid dungeons whatsoever come the Burning Crusade release. No new loot tables, no adjusting of current loot, no new caps and no new timers. Nada. Tigole hopes some players will be able to experience them for the first time with the new level caps,and others will be happy that they will be spared their umpteenth MC run. However, he does mention the possibility exists in the future for the raid instances to be overhauled, but that is not on the agenda anytime soon.
In a sense, I am disappointed, but at the same time I would much rather have them working on the new BC content (and getting it into our hands ASAP) than spend time re-balancing C'Thun and redoing his loot table for a group of 70s or 65s or whatever. But he does leave the door open just a crack, so maybe those dungeons will be redone at a point when the new BC content starts to become old hat. Heck, maybe a patch eight months down the road will turn those raid dungeons into really awesome 25 mans, or maybe even 10 or 5 mans. That would certainly be interesting.
What do you guys think? Are you a little disappointed? Or could you care less about the old stuff?
"Because you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore"
I've always considered myself a casual player; although at times I may live and breathe WoW, it's not all there is to life, and if something better comes up in RL I'm happy to pause PvP or say no to raiding. While epics are nice, I tend not to measure my worth in purples, nor do I min/max my spec to flatter damage meters.
However, all this talk of Naxx recently led me to feel I was missing out. I'd been in the endgame a while, and although I knew some instances all too well, there were other parts of the level 60 experience that I had never seen. I'd never set foot into Blackwing Lair, never seen Onyxia up close, and certainly never had a point of DKP to my name.
So, when I was invited by a friend to apply for a spot in her raiding group, I did.
This Bluwolfe person is quickly becoming my favorite priest with these amusing mind control videos. Here's another video of him tormenting a poor bot that doesn't know well enough to fight back - watch and learn!
Blizzard announced the following important four lines in their 
Kavis wonders if he's the only person who 
When I came upon 
Without getting too much into the lore, you may recall Mount Hyjal as being a pretty pivotal place in the history of Azeroth. It was there that the Battle of Mount Hyjal was fought at the end of Warcraft III, and the destiny of the night elves was forever changed..jpg)
I have seen reports of druids winning the Hand of Ragnaros before. I seem to recall one raidleader handing off the Eye of Sulfuras to his druid girlfriend, but I could be wrong. Hey, it isn't like I committed the brilliant forum thread to memory. 
We've all heard the "50 DKP minus" guy (it's become nothing less than a WoW classic), but imagine if all of that took place inside a chat channel, and .jpg)
After our rather 
"Because you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore"
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