With M'uru now apparently substantially nerfed, and several guilds having been past him for a few weeks anyway, the top guilds are now biding their time until they can face off against Kil'jaeden himself. Before they can do that, one last Sunwell Plateau gate needs to be opened; my guess on when that will happen is May 27, two weeks from yesterday, but no-one knows for sure.
So I thought I'd jump the gun a little and give you all a preview of the loot we should be able to expect from what will almost certainly be the final raid boss of TheBurning Crusade, thanks to MMO-Champion. None of this is confirmed, of course, because nobody has actually fought him yet, but given the item levels, and the fact that we haven't seen them anywhere else yet, we can be pretty sure these are KJ drops. And an odd number of them are helms.
I love hotfixes. They're like patches you don't have to wait for. Just posted by Daelo, WoW's lead encounter designer (who I've been seeing a lot of lately, but don't remember seeing much before) is a brief account of hotfixes to Archimonde and the Eredar Twins. For Archie:
We just implemented a hotfix for all realms that makes Archimonde's doomfires no longer be able to move right through him after they spawn. Their movement should now be much more consistent with the previous patch's behavior, and melee should have a bit easier time dodging the doomfires as a result of the change.
He goes on to note that any other problems people might have noticed have been un-reproduceable at Blizz HQ, but they're still keeping an eye on them. As for the Eredar Twins, they "hotfixed a bug in the Eredar Twins encounter that prevent a Hunter's Feign Death ability from working if Lady Sacrolash was alive." Nuff said there. These fixes should, as far as I can tell, be live now on the US and the EU realms.
The small handful of guilds worldwide that have killed M'uru thus far are going to have an achievement therein that nobody else can touch. As of yesterday's patch 2.4.2 (today on the European realms), Blizzard has made the following change to the encounter:
We've changed the Negative Energy spells cast by M'uru and Entropius to no longer cause spell interruption on the target. This should ease the frustration of the encounter for those casting classes who can not obtain 100% resistance to spell interruption through talents and effects such as Concentration Aura.
Having not done the fight myself, I can't really comment on how big of a nerf this is, but it's something, anyway. (Background: M'uru is the next-to-last boss of Sunwell Plateau, followed only by Kil'Jaeden, and Entropius is another aspect of M'uru that appears during the fight.) Guilds who have been wiping on M'uru, or who intend to try him in the future, do you welcome this change?
As the first guild to have killed M'uru, SK-Gaming has now released their video of the fight. You can see it above (if it's working; there seem to be some server issues on their end), or go to their site to download it in full-res glory. There are two different points of view: a BM hunter, and an enhancement shaman. I haven't been able to watch it yet because it's been down, but I'm sure it's an exciting fight.
The SK guild leaders also gave an interview a couple of days ago on their site. Here are some things they said that I find interesting:
SK is very impressed with the tuning on the fight, and think Kil'jaeden, the next fight, "might turn out to be the best encounter ever made."
Everyone gets to take an active role in the fight; for instance, there are adds that can only be killed by an offensive dispell, and melee gets to use stuns, mages get to polymorph, etc.
The viability of feral druids has been increased; they think Resto shaman is the "strongest overall class."
Most of the loot is pretty good, although they would have preferred a token system.
And of course they're looking forward to Kil'jaeden; who wouldn't be in that situation?
In the wake of SK-Gaming's world-first kill of the Sunwell Plateau boss M'uru, World of Raids has checked out the data files and found some other items that they're pretty sure are on M'uru's loot table. You can also see information on these items, and other new items as they are discovered, on Wowhead's new additions page, a handy resource. Pictured is the one-handed sword Muramasa, which looks pretty bad-ass if you ask me.
For this and the rest of the items, I've made a gallery containing the tooltips with all the stats, and the item models when appropriate. However, M'uru's loot table seems to consist mostly of rings and trinkets, so there's not much to show for those besides the tooltips themselves. I don't mind -- I'll drool just as much over stats as over an item's appearance. Click on, fellow stat geeks!
On the fourth day of the second Sunwell Plateaugates being opened there, the European guild SK-Gaming has achieved the world-first kill of M'uru, the fifth SWP boss. Good job, guys! This is all the more surprising because I don't think of SK-Gaming as one of the big-name guilds, but maybe I've just been missing out. Edit: D'oh! That's the guild formerly known as Curse. I knew the name looked familiar. Also, I would sort of have expected the US realms to get there first because their gates opened a day earlier. But on the other hand, Europe has been on top of the world firsts for a while.
You can see the loot above -- click to embiggen. That Shifting Naaru Sliver sounds fun.
Some of you may be excited about Nihilum's live stream of a Sunwell Plateau raid, which was scheduled for today at 1 PM EDT. I know I was looking forward to it about it. However, sad news -- it's been delayed, so we'll have to wait a little bit longer to see how the cutting edge of WoW raiding does things. The reason for this delay is the opening of the new gate; I imagine they want a chance to try M'uru first before fighting him (her? it?) live in front of the world. Tentatively, the new date for the event will be in one week, May 7, but that could well change. Stay tuned for more updates.
The event itself remains the same. You'll be able to pick from four streams to follow -- Kungen (prot warrior), Darmor (fire mage), Johnnyr (holy paladin), and Buzzkil (destruction 'lock). The stream is supported by Xfire, so their software may be necessary to view it; Nihilum haven't been quite clear on that yet. I hope not, because it doesn't look like there's a Mac version. By the way, it looks like Nihilum is recruiting. So if you're a holy priest, resto shaman, holy paladin, BM hunter, or destruction Warlock on the European realms with some T6 gear, preferably Sunwell experience, and a desire to raid more than is probably healthy, click on over to apply.
When the North American realms came back online after maintenance today, the second Sunwell Plateau gate was open. This means that all you high-end raiding guilds now have a chance to tackle M'uru, SWP boss number five, while I cry softly to myself and work on melting Malchezaar's face off. The first SWP gate was opened after patch 2.4 had been live for two weeks, and the second, today, was three weeks after that. This makes the likelihood seem pretty decent that the fourth third gate, allowing access to Kil'jaeden himself, will open four weeks from today, but we'll have to wait and see.
Nobody killed M'uru when 2.4 was on the PTR, so we don't really know what he might drop, although four trinkets named "...Naaru Sliver" seem fairly likely, as they are SWP drops and M'uru is a Naaru. See World of Raids for stats on the trinkets and some information on the M'uru fight. The European realms will presumably get the second gate open tomorrow, after their maintenance.
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and spend thousands of gold on repairs and consumables. This week, we face an undead lady dragon with serious breath issues.
Felmyst is the third boss in the Sunwell Plateau. As you approach the Brutallus encounter, you see him doing battle with Madrigosa, a blue dragon. Upon defeating Brutallus, Felmyst rises from her corpse in undead form and begins circling around the plain where you fought Brutallus. (She's quite feisty, and will aggro if some AoE abilities are used while she flies over, so be careful!)
The encounter is an execution fight, and requires a lot of attention throughout from everyone in the raid. In terms of preparation, you don't need any resistance gear for the fight, but having a Cauldron of Arcane Protection will help mitigate some of the raid damage. The most common strategy also relies quite heavily on priests' Mass Dispel ability, but before we jump ahead to raid composition, let's look at what you'll face during the encounter.
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.
This week, I decided to go visit Bloodscalp -- we've been hearing about problems with stability on Bloodscalp since patch 2.4, so I decided to get the word on what was happening straight from the people affected by it. Additionally, I wanted to talk about the upcoming Arena changes in patch 2.4.2, so I had that on the list to chat with players about as well.
I created a Troll Rogue named "Wowinsider," ran up to Orgrimmar, and started chatting with the Bloodscalpians. The conversations I had with three players on the server are after the break.
Remember a few weeks ago when it was discovered that the Armory was listing the new Badge of Justice-reward epic gems at 10 badges each? Yeah, turns out that was just an Armory bug (which we knew was a possibility). They're 15 Badges after all, as they were on the PTR. The way we know this now is that Proudmoore-US, first in all things Shattered Sun, has done Discovering Your Roots enough times to unlock Shaani, the vendor who sells you the gems. Thanks, Proudmoore! Grinding for knowledge. And everyone else, get on that quest. It's a fun one -- everyone gets a pet so they can pretend they're a hunter for a little while -- and you'll help your server along.
Assuming the epic gems sell for around 500 gold, which seems reasonable given the order-of-magnitude increase in price between uncommon and rare gems, this yields a 33 gold per Badge conversion rate (if you buy gems with your Badges and sell the gems; they're not bind-on-pickup). That's right on target in terms of gold per hour. I figure it takes about 20 minutes on average to earn a Badge, which means 100 gold per hour -- pretty much the same rate I make through dailies or grinding. And given that any activity that earns you Badges (i.e. raiding or heroics) gives you a chance at gear as well, it looks like the PvE endgame is fairly rewarding right now.
Once you hit Outland and begin to surf through the materials required to not only reach 375 in your given profession, but then to proceed through making your epic sets, you might start feeling a tad dizzy. One of the main reasons for this across all crafting professions is primals.
As an example, let's consider the Ebon Netherscale pieces from Dragonscale leatherworking. In order to make the breastplate, bracers and belt, you will need, among other things: 36 [Primal Fire], 36 [Primal Shadow] and 3 [Primal Nether]. In other words, 360 [Mote of Fire] and 360 [Mote of Shadow], and this only once you've reached 375.
This week, Insider Trader explores the best places to farm for the motes you'll be needing, along with the benefits provided by engineering, alchemy, mining and herbalism. We also take a look at how to benefit from trades, with a list of further reading.
Each week, Insider Trader takes you behind the scenes of the bustling sub-culture of professional craftsmen, examining the profitable, the tragically lacking, and the methods behind the madness. For more farming guides, check out our cloth farming guide. For a complete list of profession guides, feel free to peruse our directory.
Nihilum, in conjunction with Xfire, will be streaming their Sunwell Plateau raid on April 30th live to internet. This is an amazing opportunity for raiders around the world to see how one of WoW's top guilds raids high end content – unedited and uncut.
Xfire has a limit of 1000 people on the stream, so you'll have to get there early if you want to watch it. My guess is that 1000 streams is quite inadequate. Based on numbers that I've gotten on the YouTube video's I've posted here, they could easily have ten times that and still be short. Hopefully there'll be more of this, and the number of available streams will increase.
Nihilum's raid will take place at 19:00 CEST April 30th, which is 12:00 p.m. CDT, 1:00 p.m. EDT, and 10:00 a.m. PDT (all on April 30th, no crossing of the international date line).
Mark your calendars for this one. I know I will be!
Lauren of the Mystic Worlds Blog has a new post up called "Why we Solo in MMOs," offering her perspective on why, over many years and many MMOs, she has always tended to ignore the grouping game and instead go it alone. While I'm not against grouping at all -- I was very active in the 40 man raid game, and tend to run Heroics around once a week and Karazhans around 1.5 times a week across my 3 70s -- I've always felt that the solo game has a valid spot in MMORPGs, and I've often indulged in it myself. In fact, I'd bet that most WoW players do so on a regular basis these days, whether leveling up or doing their dailies.
She rattles off the usual list of reasons for going solo -- having a weird schedule, needing to take frequent "real life" breaks, not having enough time to go LFG for a dungeon, unwillingness to deal with the infamous horrible PuG group -- then takes it a step further. She believes that many people use these types of statements as excuses or defense against people who can't understand why they wish to solo in a multiplayer game, or actively flame them for it, and that the real reasons are a lot less complicated.
Among the many fine things that can be bought with Badges of Justice in this post-2.4 world of ours are epic gems, the same kind that drop in the Black Temple and the Sunwell Plateau. They are sold by Shaani, who appears once your realm reaches phase four, and the uncut, un-BoP gems sell for 15 Badges of Justice each. Or at least, that's what we thought. Sharp-eyed tipster Herid noticed that according to the Armory (screenshot above), the price of the gems is 10 Badges of Justice -- a 33% reduction in price before they even go on sale yet!
Of course, this could just be an Armory bug, so I did my level best to check it out for myself, by logging on to Proudmoore, the only server yet to have reached phase four. However, I learned that although Shaani spawns when phase four is activated, she doesn't sell gems until the Alchemy Lab is completed, much like Smith Hauthaa and the Anvil. So I can't confirm this with anything more than the Armory data at the moment. Proudmooreans, get going on Discovering your Roots, so we can uncover the truth of this gem-price-drop rumor.
If it's true, Badges of Justice might be worth more gold than we thought, depending on what the price of these epic gems stabilizes at.
With M'uru now apparently substantially nerfed, and several guilds having been past him for a few weeks anyway, the top guilds are now biding their time until they can face off against Kil'jaeden himself. Before they can do that, one last Sunwell Plateau gate needs to be opened; my guess on when that will happen is May 27, two weeks from yesterday, but no-one knows for sure.
Some of you may be excited about Nihilum's live stream of a Sunwell Plateau raid, which was scheduled for today at 1 PM EDT. I know I was looking forward to it about it. However, sad news -- it's 
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