First, go read Alex's post, because he makes some good points about recruiting for 25 man raids in Wrath of the Lich King. We now know that in the expansion, all raids will come with a 10 man and 25 man setting, effectively a 'normal' and 'heroic' mode for raiding. While I personally believe this to be awesome, I can understand the idea that this will adversely affect (not effect, I'm reminded) recruitment for 25 mans if people can see the exact same content by just running a 10 man. Sure, the gear won't be as good, but if the starter 10 man gear allows you to run the next stage 10 man, and so on until you finally reach a 10 man version of Arthas, guilds that run 25 man raid content might have a harder time recruiting people to run what is essentially the 'same' content with 24 other folks instead of 9 other folks.
The reason I don't think it will be a real issue (I do think it's worth considering, though, and I do believe it will have some effect on 25 man recruitment) is threefold. Unrelated to those reasons (which are coming up after the jump) I have to admit that this may vary by server: on Norgannon, if anything I'm seeing more new 25 man guilds recruiting and starting up the crawl through Gruul's and Magtheridon, so I may just be working from a glass half full through rose colored glasses state of ludicrous (and heavily over-metaphoric) optimism here.
It's a good week for posts at DwarfPriest.com, it seems. In this look at the manual for World of Warcraft, we get to see that the maps included in the original, 2004 release (which hasn't been updated since... four years later, and we're still using the same increasingly inaccurate manual) are at times surprisingly accurate to what we see in the game today. Interesting inclusions and omissions abound: the fact that Maraudon isn't on these maps but Dire Maul is just fascinates me from the perspective that Maraudon was a full patch ahead of the Maul.
I remember riding around Silithus way before the AQ release trying to get inside and see what was back there, and have been to both Hyjal and along the Greymane wall with my lovely wife who always wants to see the zones that are the hardest to access: I like the idea of Gilneas coming into the game so much that I've mused about releasing the whole zone as an instance before. For these reasons I found this look back at the game manual's maps and what has and hasn't made it into live yet to be grist for the mill of my naturally speculative brain. Will we finally see Uldum when Ulduar hits in WoTLK? Maybe Hyjal will finally go live? Will those islands off the coast of Gilneas make a reappearance on the world map? I've been wondering for years now what's up in Kul Tiras.
Anything on these maps you're surprised to see? Anything excluded that you'd expect? The very detailed map of Quel'Thalas, years before it went live, was one of my big 'woah' moments looking over these maps, which shows how easy it is for me to forget just how much lore the RTS series packed in.
I'm one of those odd players who likes to play multiples of the same class. I've got a tauren, human, night elf and draenei warriors at 70 and to be honest, my human currently way out-gears them all. Not only does he sport T4/T5 level gear for tanking, his DPS gear is also at that level even though I rarely DPS with him. Now, this isn't a problem, exactly. It's not that I dislike having good gear for the content.
It's that I hate playing my human.
When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I started a paladin, and then switched quickly to this warrior. I've been playing him on and off ever since, he's got close to 170 days played on him. I've come up with a personality for him (I wouldn't actually say I roleplay him so much as I emphasize my curmudegonly side when I play him... I like to roleplay, mind, but I don't really put enough effort into it) but while he's got a lot of sentimental attachment for me, his major flaw is that he's a human, and Blizzard gave humans the dumbest emotes and /silly jokes in the game.
Well, okay, a couple of towers is funny. But the rest really just doesn't work for me anymore after having played the other options. In fact, what I really want to do is play my 70 draenei warrior instead. The problem there is, while he's on the same server, he's nowhere near as well geared for the content my guild is doing, and it's hardly fair to ask them to gear up another warrior for me.
Yes, I realize this is a really minor problem. But since WotLK is promising us more cutomization in the form of dances and haircuts, my pipe dream is that they'd allow me to either pay to transfer my soulbound equipment between my level 70 toons or allow me to pay a similar fee to a server transfer to change my race. I know there are PvE and PvP balance issues to be considered here, and I got myself into this situation by playing all these characters to 70, so I don't ever expect to see it happen. But man, I'd really like it if it did.
What about you? What one ridiculous, you know it's never going to happen but you can't stop wishing it would dream do you hold dear for the game?
Tipster Medros emails in pointing out that Blizzard has finally put the Wrath of the Lich King Bestiary online. In his email, he mentions that the TBC bestiary started showing us the long leggedy beasties of the first expansion roughly nine months before it launched, arguing for a summer release for WoTLK.
What with all the recent talk of what else might be in the expansion, I am starting to think it may launch sooner than that. It depends, in my opinion, on when Sunwell Plateau launches and if we can expect them to have learned from the original launch of Naxxramas so close to Burning Crusade. In my opinion, I'd hope there would be enough time between the Sunwell launch and the expansion for more guilds to get to see the place in full, especially with the way we're told content will unlock there as people complete quests. So I wouldn't be surprised to see it in late spring/early summer, nor would i be surprised if it didn't launch before Christmas of this year.
Meanwhile, take a look at the two new monsters being unveiled for us today and get your speculation on.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors spent some time looking back at 2007 not so long ago, and finds itself looking forward to 2008 and beyond this week. Matthew Rossi wants you to imagine a big swirly tube and either the Stargate or Dr. Who music playing, whichever you prefer. I'm more of a Dr. Who man myself, but as the omnipresent third person narrative device I don't think my opinion is much consulted. It's a hard life being a narrative device. No one ever asks you out for coffee.
As the somewhat emo italic text stated, this week we're going to look forward at where the Warrior class is going, a discussion I quite frankly think will be more interesting in the comments you leave than in my own ramblings. My goal here is mainly to serve as a firestarter, hoping to initiate a few sparks of brilliance from you. As a result, I'm going to just throw my musings and opinions at the wall here and see what sticks with you guys, what you accept and what you reject. After all, in the end it's the players who will ultimately determine what warriors will become, as they're the ones who'll chose what they do with their characters.
My first thought is, looking over the past few years, the trend is that warrior successes in PvP tend to be followed by large nerfs. So PvP warriors are almost certainly going to be nerfed in a rather large way if they remain dominant in PvP. I expect mace spec to see the lion's share of this nerfing, perhaps changed into an entirely unrecognizable form removing stuns entirely, but mortal strike is also up for a few changes. It will probably be safe for the next few months, as they just gave a similar effect to hunters and to change MS now would mean having to change that, too, but it will most likely come in whatever patch lays the preparations for Wrath of the Lich King. If not these, then some change to a fundamental warrior DPS/PvP mechanic, similar to the way weapon speed and rage generation were normalized.
Warriors with better gear still, despite nerfs like rage normalization, perform at a much higher rate than before they achieved it. My tauren warrior does much, much better in PvP now, even against opponents who substantially outgear him. In my biased experience, right around the time I start winning in PvP is when the nerfs start coming.
You can find all kinds of things on the forums. For instance, you can find a forum thread about Illidan. Back and forth the debate goes: does killing Illidan free him from his demonic taint or, well, just kill him? Will he come back or not? Is Maiev kind of a jerk? Bornakk weighs in on page two and continues to post throughout, which to be honest is what I like to see in a blue poster.
The debate on whether Illidan was a hero to his people, a misguided power-hungry ambitious sort, or even out and out evil is interesting on its own, but what really interests me is to see this level of back and forth, even if Bornakk doesn't really say a lot in his replies. It may just be the lore geek in me talking, but I'd really like to take Chris Metzen out for a beer and talk turkey about Illidan, Arthas and the storyline in WCIII. How is it going to manifest in WotLK, did it work out in TBC the way they wanted? Might we see Illidan again or is he definitively dead on the floor of Karabor? Does Maiev have any purpose to her life now? This kind of stuff fascinates me, and clearly it does some other folks as well given the back and forth of this thread.
What about you? Could you care less about lore? Do you want to see Illidan again? Was he a basically good but flawed hero or an out and out villain or both?
One of my guild's officers has taken up the dubious practice of "farming for Wrath of the Lich King." He has epic mounts for all his 70s, all the recipes he could ever want, and enough spare cash to pay alt support for an army of gnomes, but he's convinced there'll be some big, 20K or so gold sink in the new expansion.
The gold sinks for WoW have always been epic mounts: the epic ground mount in vanilla WoW, and the epic flyer in BC. I'm not sure what it could be for WotLK. I can't see that many people would spend a ton of money on PvP structures, which leaves a couple of options. There could be extremely expensive forms of character customization, such as tattoos, wings, or other adornments. There could be guild housing (finally.) My guildmates suggested that it will be submarines shaped like "sharks with frickin' lazer beams" and underpants "with rockets on the front", further confirming that my guild's sense of humor is stuck in 1997.
What do you think the gold sink will be when WotLK finally emerges from its cocoon?
Once upon a time, cavemen roamed the earth, great volcanic eruptions disrupted the cavemen's gaming time, and I wrote an article called "Know Your Lore: Good Dragons." Now it's time to cover the "bad dragons" - the Blue, Black, Chromatic and Infinite Dragonflights. And yes, I know you're all going to complain about the blue dragonflight being "bad", but unless you really want to run every dungeon at level 80 without a mage, you're gonna have to fight them.
Blue Dragonflight
Leader: Malygos.
Characteristics: The blue dragons may be the most intelligent of all the dragonflights. They're the masters of magic, the weavers of the arcane, and the guardians of icy areas. Of course they're going to be villains at some point! "Arcane magic corrupts" is one of the primary lessons of WoW, along with "elves are jerks" and "never get involved in a land war in Kalimdor."
Is that him in the WoW comic book, or is he going to be in Northrend?
The answer, according to Stormgaard of Se7en Samurai, may be 'both'. And to be honest, I agree with him. Not because of the strength of his evidence, good as it is, but because his argument makes sense. One of the things we've seen with World of Warcraft tie-in media like the manga series and novels is that they all flow back into the MMO, help develop and direct the lore forward. As much as players like to chant 'lorelol' it is clearly important to the folks at Blizzard, and Stormgaard's argument that the comics and movie may well be setting up a new age of hostility between the horde and the alliance centered around a new lore figure who is connected to, if not the 'star' of the Missing Diplomat quest makes a lot of sense to me.
Plus, having the comic star a human who washed up without his memory on the coasts of Durotar... well, if you look at the map you'll see why that could well lead to the exact scenario Stormgaard posits. It makes sense to me. What do you guys think?
The folks at World of Raids linked to this fascinating and disturbing interview with the folks at Blizzard about the upcoming expansion. Disturbing in a good way, to my mind, in that they talk about making the journey from 70 to 80 one of tough moral choices and twisted encounters with the Lich King himself, and fascinating because it talks about what the design team for the expansion learned from The Burning Crusade.
Blizzard vice president of creative development Chris Metzen seems to be apologizing for it. "It had a lot of high-concept ideas, high-concept environments," he says, calling to mind the psychedelic mushrooms of Zangarmarsh, the tragic majesty of Tempest Keep, "but other than some really nice moments, there was nothing really personal about it."
There's a lot more substance in the interview, although some of it is stuff we've seen before - Lake Wintergrasp PvP, flying mounts not working right away, Death Knights - but the insight into what they've learned and how they're approaching the mood and feel of the new expansion is, I think, worth a read in of itself. The way they intend to weave Arthas' journey into each player's experience, if it works, will be one of the most interesting things any MMO has ever done.
Courtesy of the excellent Daily Blue feature of World of Raids comes this tidbit about possible changes to the user interface for Wrath of the Lich King, posted originally on the European forums, where a lot of the good blue responses seem to reside.
Blizzard poster Salthem cautions, as is often the case, that it's too soon to expect much in the way of details but that there's not likely to be a radical change in the UI. "I doubt we'll see a dramatic completely new User Interface, generally we prefer to implement more gradual changes or options to the existing interface." While this sounds like a safe and generally correct way to go, it does leave us with some wiggle room for speculation. What gradual changes should they be working on for WoTLK? I'm personally pretty content with the UI as it stands, I don't fiddle much with it or use a lot of addons, but I'm sure more advanced modders have ideas. A built-in threat meter would be kind of cool, or the long-promised shaman totem UI.
Blizzplanet, long home to detailed loregasms for those of us who can't keep it all straight (I have to use Know Your Lore constantly to keep track of who we're killing and why, try to keep it all straight as I may) as well as a good general resource for all of Blizzard's games, has dropped a nice roundup of the Sunwell lore in time for us to begin thinking about the Sunwell Plateau, the last big content release before Wrath of the Lich King drops. Packed with spoilers for the Sunwell Trilogy manga (which I have never read) it does a pretty decent job of filling in spaces I had missed... for example, I had no idea who this Dar'khan fellow was or how he'd betrayed the High Elves to the Scourge, and that's even after I'd killed him a couple of times. I need to start reading the quest text more and just clicking through to my rewards less.
Thanks to Chadwick for the tip and to Blizzplanet for a very comprehensive look at the Sunwell's appearances in the game to date. They even manage to tie in the heroes of the Sunwell Trilogy to what's happening to Malygos in Wrath of the Lich King. I had no idea I was helping to eradicate all spellcasters on Azeroth when I did that quest. Live and learn, I guess, unless Malygos kills us all, in which case... oops.
If you've been keeping up with the news here on WoW Insider, you already know the information that has been updated on the WoWUnder Development page. But it's nice to see it in black and parchment.
Under Almost Ready, Blizzard lists the highlights of Patch 2.2: Voice Chat, Mac Movie Capture and the Improved Chat Interface. They also include a link to the current PTR Patch notes. These changes will be released in the next major patch, which unfortunately looks like it will be a while.
The Coming Soon section lists things that will be in upcoming patches, presumably before the expansion. They don't link to any further official info for this section, but I've provided links to WoW Insider details:
Zul'Aman - A high-level 10-player instance located in the Ghostlands
Sunwell Plateau - A high-level 25-player instance located north of Silvermoon City
The On the Horizon section is all about Wrath of the Lich King. The highlights they list are the new level cap, Inscription, Northrend, Death Knights and Character Customization. For more info, they link to the official WotLK website.
I was hoping for more official info on the Coming Soon topics -- and something more than just 3 items. I don't expect the expansion to be here for another year, so an official sneak preview of some more of the free goodies we're going to get in the meantime would be nice.
What are you most looking forward to being added to the game before the expansion? Or will nothing satisfy you except for new hairstyles, ten new levels and another continent?
On the French-language EU forums, Blizzard poster Thyvene gives enchanters a hint of news on something they've been wanting for a long time: the abilitity to sell their enchants on the auction house. For those of you attempting to confirm on the site, but failing your language skill check, Thyvene's comments approximately translate to:
The developers plan to give to enchanters the possibility to sell their enchantments at the auction house, nevertheless this shouldn't be implemented into the game before the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.
Of course, without knowing an official release date for Wrath of the Lich King, this change could still be a year off. However, I'm certainly looking forward to a time when my enchanter won't have to stand around in a major city spamming macros in oder to market and sell my wares.
"Oh my frikkin dog, everybody and their second cousin is gonna wanna be Death Knights!" was the cry heard throughout Outland when the new Hero Class was announced. WoW players everywhere had visions of dungeons and raids filled with only Death Knights; as well as Alliance and Horde cities alike all filled wall-to-wall with thousands of players who abandoned their original class to become Death Knights, only to discover (along with rogues and hunters) that it ain't so easy being uber-cool and powerful when everyone else is uber-cool and powerful too -- because everyone else is taking your raid spot.
Well Drysc has a ray of light to shed on this despair... or, in the case of Death Knights, perhaps that should be a big tank of unholy frozen blood to spill on it (assuming that would help):
I expect just about everyone is going to want to try one, but is everyone going to want to drop their long-time proffered class for one? I seriously doubt it. Also there's some amount of self regulation that will really be required to keep group composition equalized.
Not only will the other 9 classes still be needed to succeed in any group effort, but the tactics involved in playing a Death Knight might be too hard for the average Stanley Noobsauce to master. In response to one player who felt that the rune system Death Knights will be using seemed "clunky and not fun," Drysc responded:
It's a good week for posts at 
I'm one of those odd players who likes to play multiples of the same class. I've got a tauren, human, night elf and draenei warriors at 70 and to be honest, my human currently way out-gears them all. Not only does he sport T4/T5 level gear for tanking, his DPS gear is also at that level even though I rarely DPS with him. Now, this isn't a problem, exactly. It's not that I dislike having good gear for the content.
Tipster Medros emails in pointing out that Blizzard has finally put the 
You can find all kinds of things on the forums. For instance, you can find a forum thread about 
One of my guild's officers has taken up the dubious practice of "farming for Wrath of the Lich King." He has epic mounts for all his 70s, all the recipes he could ever want, and enough spare cash to pay alt support for an army of gnomes, but he's convinced there'll be some big, 20K or so gold sink in the new expansion.
"Oh my frikkin dog, everybody and their second cousin is gonna wanna be 
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