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Posts with tag dark-portal

Breakfast Topic: Where have you taken your orphan?

Ok, admit it. Dornaa and Salandria are pretty cute. They say the darndest things and they are so tiny and they are like little bundles of irrepressible energy and now I want kids of my own, damn it. But seriously, If you're like me, you've probably kept your orphan whistle a little longer than you had to and took your orphan around a few extra places.

Auchindoun? The Dark Portal? Pff, c'mon kid. I'll show you some real fun. How about Karazhan? That was actually a lot of fun, although fighting Prince Malchezaar was sort of creepy, since Dornaa was staring at me through the whole fight as I stood with my back against the wall, tanking him. She looked sort of accusing. You don't suppose Mal was her dear uncle before the whole Eredar corruption thing, maybe? Unfortunately, I don't think you're allowed to take your orphan into the arenas, but I may have to take her for a tour of scenic Alterac Valley before the whistle disappears.

Seriously, I don't care how awesome Willy is, I just want to adopt Dornaa and keep her forever. She can keep Archmage Vargoth company on all my boss kills.

I know I'm not the only one who's done this. Orphan tours are probably some of the most random fun you can have in World of Warcraft with an annual event, I think. Where have you taken your orphan?

MacBook Pro gets laser-etched with a Dark Portal


A few times now, I've had the opportunity to laser etch some of my tech stuff, and yeah, I've always thought it would be cool to get a neat pic on my iPhone or my old Powerbook. But I've never had a good enough idea to etch into metal. Of course, if I'd seen this Dark Portal laser etching, though, I might have thought of some Warcraft-y ideas.

It's done by a company called Austin Laser Art. Justin, who owns the definitely Epic (or maybe even Artifact?) MBP, says that it took about 20 minutes to etch the laptop itself, though they did a few test etchings on paper to make sure it worked out all right first. The result looks pretty cool -- tons of detail and some really good looking shading. Plus, now we know what's behind that far portal in Nagrand: an Apple store.

[Via Wonderland]

Downgrading your account (or not)

If you're one of those folks who pines for the days of level 60 and Molten Core, but you've already installed Burning Crusade and made your way to 70, Slorkuz (who?) officially tells us you're out of luck. Once an account has been upgraded to Burning Crusade, there is no going back -- even if you uninstall everything and just put vanilla WoW on your PC, trying to sign in with your BC upgraded account will open up Outland and the latest content yet again.

If you really want to see the world the way it was before the Dark Portal reopened, you'll have to create a new account, and not upgrade it to Burning Crusade. But even then, you won't really go back in time -- you'll still see gems on the AH, and Blood Elves and Draenei wandering around. It's one more reason to keep asking Blizzard for classic servers, apparently -- as of right now, there's no way to really go back to the way things were.

But why would you want to anyway, right? Gold abounds, epics are easy to get, and most of the PvP problems are fixed. Nostalgia may be telling you that you want to stumble around with 39 other people in Motlen Core hoping for a Tier 1 drop every two weeks, but for most people, things are much better nowadays.

BG daily quests are one more reason to buy BC

Bornakk confirms that, as Robin posted here the other day, players will need Burning Crusade to complete the Battleground daily quests.

Which brings up the question, yet again, of why there would be people out there who still haven't picked up the expansion that released almost one year ago. It's $30 at Amazon right now (which means you could probably find it in a few places online for less than that), and given all of the content now available, not only in Outland, but back in Azeroth, it's really a no brainer.

Now, maybe you just didn't want to make the investment of the Battlechest, and maybe you haven't yet reached 70 and figure you don't need to play BE or Draenei or do these daily quests. Maybe 60 is good enough for you, and jewelcrafting isn't your thing. But especially with the holidays coming up, it's not surprising at all that Blizzard is placing more and more content behind the Dark Portal. If you haven't installed the expansion yet, why not?

Around Azeroth: At the Dark Portal


The first thing most of us noticed when running into Outland for the first time was the immense size difference between the Dark Portal on the Azeroth side and the Outland side. But it's been so long since most of us, I'd imagine, have visited the portal on either side that this odd quirk of Outland may have been forgotten -- right up until the point that you ran into this shot sent in by reader Casters, at least.

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 a copy to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world!

Gallery: Around Azeroth


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