Hybrid Theory returns after a month long hiatus. We could tell you a long and boring story about how Alex's computer suffered a horrible death during his relocation from Wisconsin to Michigan, but we won't. Just picture the battle scene from Braveheart, except replace the English with a PC. It was basically the same thing.
Last week, we were graced with a boatload of Wrath news. With the Wrath news came Death Knight news. With the Death Knight news came laments of, "my class is dead, noo!" from the WoW community. Yes, it is probably quite intimidating to add another class to the tanking niche for the tank classes, especially considering we've seen the incredible Death Knight abilities and not those of anybody else, but I think all of our classes will be quite safe come Wrath.
There are a few things that should be taken into consideration before we run in circles screaming of the apocalypse and mourn our forgotten not-Death-Knight-tanks. Head on past the jump to find out just what the heck I mean!
I only slightly mentioned this back on the podcast, I think, but there was a fairly interesting change that snuck in the patch notes on 2.4.2: lots of formerly main hand weapons have become one-hand weapons. There are a couple of theories poking around about why this could be -- dual wield is first and foremost, of course, as this change allows classes who dual wield, including Rogues and Enhancement Shammies, to have a little more choice as to what weapons they can use. Death Knights will also be able to dual wield in the expansion, and this will open things up for them a bit as well. And Blacksmithing weapons were apparently changed as well (in addition to losing their "unique" status), so Blacksmithers have a little more leeway, too.
But there is one thing that, according to Blizzard, will always keep weapons in one-hand status. Caster stats, according to both Dryscand Hortus, will mean that weapons will always stay one-hand. So feel free to do as much switching around as you want in terms of speed and melee damage, but there'll be no stacking of healing or spell damage bonuses (with Shamans or Death Knights).
Which isn't really a big loss -- it means that Blizzard has much more leeway in creating healing and spell damage weapons than they do while making melee weapons. But it does mean that if you want to play around with weapon combos, you have to go melee -- healers and casters get to choose one and stick with it.
The Australian branch of CNET (CNET, by the way, just sold to CBS for $1.8 billion) is little late to release their notes from the Wrath of the Lich King preview party, but I forgive them, because they contain a few new nuggets of information that I don't remember seeing elsewhere.
As I speculated last time, it seems a Death Knight will have to "go to a specific locale" in order to pick a new configuration of their six runes. I would still guess that it would be an inn, or stable master, or some other building/NPC found in every town.
They saw an escort quest wherein the escorted NPC mounts the same horse as the player; the player was then able to use some attacks on enemies. Sounds like a sort of ground-based bombing run -- not quite mounted combat, but a step in that direction, anyway.
The Oracle/Wolvar faction choice is meant to be less permanent than the current Aldor/Scryer divide; CNET reports "it appears that you'll be able to juggle favour between the two groups." This sounds good to me, since I'm currently regretting my choice on one of my characters (missing access to some recipes). On the other hand, it will contribute to further homogenization, and what's the point of splitting faction allegiance if it's easy enough to go back?
"Second half of 2008" could theoretically mean July, right? Yeah, who am I kidding -- it'll probably be November or December.
It's been almost a full year since I last saw this brought up, and we still haven't seen anything from Blizzard on it. Eric over on WoW LJ brings up the issue of tracking alts within a guild. As we found out last time, most people just use guild notes (or helpful addons) to keep track of whose alt is whose inside a guild, and it works OK -- assuming people are up front about when they're logging in on another toon.
But still, it seems like an official interface would work much better. And especially considering that Blizzard is actually going to start encouraging alts as a part of the gameplay (you have to have a character at least 55 on the account to start up a Death Knight, and there are rumors that alts will benefit from reputation grinds as well), it seems like they might be interested in making the connection between characters on the account a little more obvious.
And as we said last time, there are benefits to the guild as well -- you never know when that lowbie leveling through Westfall might actually have a Death Knight ready to tank for you. I'm still not sure about marking alts in the Armory, but if you join up to a guild, I'd think guilds should have the right to know, officially, who's an alt of whom.
Death Knights. Seems like they're all the rage these days, and they haven't even been released yet. It was revealed that Death Knights start at Level 55, the only requirement being that the player has an existing Level 55 character. Daniel has even declared his intention to make a Death Knight his main when the time comes. I wouldn't be surprised to see a proliferation of Death Knights when Wrath of the Lich King is finally released. When that time comes, prepare to get inoculated because the class is the first to finally use diseases as a core class mechanic.
Aside from Undead Priests and their Devouring Plague, there are no player abilities that inflict the disease Dispel Type. So far, two disease-based abilities have been revealed: Blade Strike and Blood Strike. Designed to work off each other, Blade Strike is an attack that applies a disease on the target in addition to base damage while Blood Strike deals damage based on the number of diseases on the target. Death Knights are also able to raise Ghouls to fight for them and are projected to have an ability that applies a disease on their targets. Load up on Airborne, because it's going to get pretty toxic in Northrend.
Each week or so, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.
You may have noticed that there has been quite a bit of news about Wrath of the Lich King lately. In that news, there are some very wonderful things in store for those of us with limited playtime. There is also a lot of resentment because of that from some of the players. In this column, I'll be discussing what we casuals have to look forward to in the next expansion and I'll be defending what is essentially our right to participate in the WoWlore and endgame.
What I won't be discussing, like I used to, are the casual friendly events in the schedule. If you look in the right hand column of this page, you'll see a great calendar of Upcoming Events. So check there for the latest Call to Arms weekends, Holiday events and It came from the Blog activities.
Join us after the jump for the news and perhaps a little ranting.
Via Gamespy and Worldofwar.net, we finally have a good idea of what rolling a Death Knight will be like. A lot of the rumors seem to have panned out, but others have not. All I know is that at this point, I am full speed ahead to make a Death Knight my new main come WoTLK. There's a lot of meaty info to dig into, so let's get to it after the break.
In addition to all the other info dropping today (apparently Blizzard held an event this last week at their HQ to show off some new Wrath information), GameSpy got to chat with Jeff Kaplan, WoW's Lead Designer, about Death Knights and what they're going to be for in the next expansion.
Apparently Kaplan says Blizzard has designed "zero" raid bosses for the next expansion yet, so he isn't sure where they'll fit among Pallies, Druids, and Warriors as tanks.
As we heard before, Death Knights will serve as a "Fury Warrior" type of tank -- damage based rather than protection based.
Blizzard hasn't determined exactly whether there will be faction differences in the epic class quests, but they won't be too different for races or factions, just because the stories, he says, should be the same
Finally, Kaplan clarifies again that Death Knights will be available to all races, and that Arthas himself became not Undead, but Scourge
In case, maybe, Arthas wants to come back? We'll let you read the rest into what Kaplan said -- he unfortunately didn't tell us too much new information, but he did clarify a few points we already knew about Death Knights. And the news about Blizzard's nonaction on raid bosses so far is interesting -- has Blizzard really not made any raid bosses yet, or are they just not ready to tell us about them?
Many thanks to Tisen for tipping off the late night WoW Insider crew that Gamespy will be releasing new Wrath of the Lich King info in about an hour from now – at 12:01 a.m. PST. We'll get it reported to you as soon as we see it. Stay tuned for updates. Their entire announcement reads: You're going to want to stay tuned until the midnight here on GameSpy.com. At 12:01AM PST we'll be flooding the site with all-new World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King materials. New movies, media, a preview, a roundtable, two interviews and a look at the Death Knight. Enough for ya?
I have to admit, this is a little strange for it to be posted this late... but I've seen stranger things. More info as it comes in. Update 12:05 a.m. PDT: No info yet. Though their website still says it's "Thursday." We're expecting something soon.
Update 12:07 a.m. PDT: Bornakk is up late and posted " They aren't the only ones..." in response to WotLK info being released tonight. More to come apparently. Update 12:09 a.m. PDT: News is incoming, possibly from multiple sources, look for more posts soon.
There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King lately. With the World Wide Invitational 2008 just around the corner where WotLK will be playable again for us all, and the news that Wrath is in alpha, we can expect to see more and more come out about the game.
With this expectation of the beta and eventual release building, a lot of people are getting excited about different things. So I want to know, what are you most excited about?
For me, I'm most excited about seeing the new end game raid content. I'm with a very dedicated group of raiders right now who do about 20 hours a week of raiding, and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll all still be around in WotLK and get to push into the new content quickly and with a lot of zeal.
Then there is the Death Knight. Who isn't thrilled at the chance to play a new class? We haven't ever seen a new class in WoW, and it's bound to throw a wrench in the way a lot of folks play the game. Seeing the Death Knight get integrated into raiding will be a very interesting thing to watch.
Reader Ian C. wrote in with an interesting thought. He says that if he was offered a spot in the Wrath of the Lich King beta tomorrow, he'd probably decline. With the news that the expansion is in alpha and that an open beta is probably not too far off, it seems like everyone and their brother wants in early to Northrend. But not Ian -- he says that he'd rather experience the content on the live realms.
And I mostly agree. I never played in the BC beta, and generally I like to stay away from the PTR if possible -- any progress that you make on test or beta realms is completely lost when the beta closes, and while yes, there are some fun reasons to jump onto the PTR or a beta realm, I'd rather experience the content as its meant to be played when it comes out.
Everyone else might be excited to see the beta, and of course we'll have lots of information as it comes out about Wrath (which means if I'm invited to the beta, I'll probably load it up just to see what's there and try out the Death Knight mechanics), but playing on a beta realm isn't the real thing. Any progress you make there is more or less a waste of time -- I'd rather see Northrend in a finished form, through my character on the live realms.
Death Knights will start at a level less than 70, but Blizzard wants them to be able to get into Northrend "a little faster".
Converting a preexisting character to a Death Knight has been ruled out.
This is interesting in that it has been previously thought that the starting level for Death Knights might be as low as 50 or 55. However with Bornakk saying that they want Death Knights to get into Northrend quickly, I would take this to mean that the Death Knight's starting level will be somewhere in the 60s instead. There's still something for Blizzard to clarify here, but this news is interesting nonetheless.
Bornakk also waxes philosophical about the decision to not have a character convert into a Death Knight. He says that "Leveling a character just to throw it away doesn't really fit [fun game play] very well." He also expects that Death Knights will "find their way" into raid groups just as the Paladins and Shamans did on the Horde and Alliance with the release of Burning Crusade.
While this news on the Death Knight is really just clarification of some previously released information, it does provide a good insight into what Blizzard is thinking about the class. WoW Insider will have all the latest on the Death Knight and Wrath of the Lich King, so stay tuned!
Winter is coming: reports have it that WoW's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is in alpha. Wrath will feature a raise in the level cap from 70 to 80, access to the continent of Northrend with ten zones, the new profession of Inscription and, perhaps most exciting of all, WoW's first new class: the Death Knight.
This early on, details are still scarce, and Blizzard has been reluctant to release any information about Wrath since Blizzcon 2007. More information will probably leak as the alpha progresses. However, I've put everything we have been able to find out about Death Knights in the gallery below, so come on in to learn what we know.
Howling Fjord will be one of the two starting points for those entering into Northrend. The other starting zone will be the Borean Tundra. Wrath of the Lich King will raise the level cap to 80, introduce the Death Knight class, new PvP warfare, and new group and solo play.
WoWWiki has the image listed as a "player made" image. However, the image itself has been found around several other galleries on the internet, and there is no credit to the original author on the image. Additionally, the map itself closely resembles the terrain and layout of the zone that was playable at Blizzcon in 2007. We'll keep an eye on this, and other Wrath of the Lich King media that might be legit, and get you all the latest information when we know it. Stay tuned!
Update: The map is a fake, produced and propagated by user Kanaru on WoWWiki. Welcome to the World of Fakecraft.
I have to say, I am super excited about tomorrow's podcast (live on WoW Radio at 3:30pm EST), not only because Turpster is back from being away last week, and not only because our raid writer extraordinare Marcie Knox is going to be on, but also because we're going to have our first guests ever-- Johnny and Rob from Unforgotten Realms (and the Legendary Heroes podcast, that spawned this Legendary Sisters guild). And they're talented machinimakers, too-- Johnny made the great Unidentified, and Rob made one of my favorite machinima ever-- Jimmy, seen above. Can't wait to talk to both guys.
And they'll be on for the whole show, which means they'll be chatting with us about the most popular posts on WoW Insider last week-- Tigole told us about the Death Knight quests, Marcie will talk to us about how to get a guild past 5/6 and 3/4, and we'll talk about Curse's new database and how much it looks like another similar site.
So hit up WoW Radio tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm EST, and join us on IRC at irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel. See you then-- should be fun.
I only slightly mentioned this 
The Australian branch of CNET (CNET, by the way, 
It's been almost a full year since 
In addition to all the other info dropping today (apparently Blizzard held an event this last week at their HQ to show off some new 
Many thanks to Tisen for tipping off the late night WoW Insider crew that 
There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about 
Reader Ian C. wrote in with an interesting thought. He says that if he was offered a spot in the 
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