Zzmorriss wrote in to say that he was offering in the Trade Channel to run people through his guild's cleared ZA instance in order to complete that quest. He charged 10 gold to join the raid and be guided to the place to get the item for Budd. He then charged another 10 gold a person to run them through again to do Budd's follow up quest. He made a total of 180 gold for 15 minutes of work and then ran through 6 or 7 more groups before the reset.
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Kara or BT, everyone can get in on the action and down them some bosses. This week, a bear talks about... bears.
Since the introduction of Zul'Aman many raiding guilds have been fascinated by the time trial; defeat all four animal bosses within 45 minutes and the last prisoner will gift you with a scary-looking bear mount, plus the adoration of your entire server. This article will take you through preparing for, and succeeding at, the Zul'Aman timed run.
Okay, so you want to get a bear.
Perhaps there are ten people in your guild who, bored with farming or wiping, want a slightly different challenge to take up an evening or two a week. The end goal of getting a bear mount (or ten) is an incredibly fun one to aim for, but it's also a lot of hard work (provided you don't just want to pay 20,000 gold).
The first stage in collecting your very own bear cavalry is to assemble a good team. While you can put together a run with whichever guildies feel like going from week to week, we recommend at least starting with a fixed group that's optimised for success. As you become experienced at running the gauntlet, it won't matter quite as much if the team isn't static.
Only in the best situations do you have great documentation of great drama, and only in the best of the best do you have actual screenshots of it as it happens. But then again, that might just be more evidence that they're just messing around -- it's hard to believe that this really happened and was captured so perfectly.
But as always with Guildwatch, you be the judge. For all the drama, downed, and recruiting news you can handle (most of it probably true... probably), click the link below. And don't forget to send us your own tips (anonymous or otherwise) at wowguildwatch@gmail.com.
Ever since the Burning Crusade came out, the battle cry of many a disgruntled fan has been "lollore," a cry which signifies a disgust with the direction the story has taken and a belief that many of the twists have betrayed the previous feel of the world or fallen short of some expected level of quality. Now honestly, There have been some lore twists I haven't really liked. Certainly, there were ways to give us the Draenei besides besides massively retconning the back story of the Burning Legion and making Sargeras corrupt them instead of the other way around. That said, I don't really mind that the Draenei came to us on a space ship. After all, the Orcs came to us through a Stargate!
I also appreciate that Blizzard has, in the lore arena, learned where they tripped up and tried to correct it. This is very apparent to me in the differences between the Lore behind Zul'Aman and the Lore behind the Sunwell Plateau. Where Zul'Aman's lore felt lackluster and weak, the lore behind patch 2.4 keeps getting better and better.
Our guild alliance's resident science and technology geek (and I mean that in a good way) linked us a somewhat confusing article yesterday. Apparently, scientists have figured out a way to store and retrieve empty space. Of course, a question naturally comes to mind upon hearing about this: How soon until I can buy my own bag of holding?
But seriously, while I tend to be a bit of a pack rat in real life, I'm an even bigger pack rat in WoW. I still keep gear and quest rewards from 50 levels ago because they look cool. In addition, I play a Hunter (with a quiver), a Warlock (with a shard bag) and a Druid (with Cat Form, Bear Form, and healing gear on me at all times). As a result, I'm always on the lookout for ways to increase my bag space so I can fit in a little bit of loot once I'm stocked up on gear, consumables, reagents, and all the rest.
Luckily, I've found that upgrading your bag space doesn't have to break the bank or send you after waves of elite mobs that require 25-40 people to take down, and I'll share a few upgrading tips after the break.
Who could that be? A former officer of Death Squad-- they had some jerk get promoted to officer in their guild, and then grab their stuff and ditch them, leaving them nothing but this log full of stolen items. Not cool. Be careful out there.
Meanwhile, there's lots of other guild news going around the realms, and this column is where we condense it into a smooth, witty form for you every week, and lay it out flat just for you. Click the link below to read this week's GW. And don't forget to send us your tips-- hit up wowguildwatch@gmail.com with drama, downed and recruiting news.
Reader Shilarva submits this interesting screenshot featuring Mojo, the frog pet from Zul'Aman. If you /kiss Mojo, you'll find yourself briefly transformed into a frog. And if you /kiss Mojo while riding by on your flying mount... well, apparently you become a frog on a flying mount. (Who would have thought that a frog could stay mounted on a broom, anyway?)
Do you have any shots of odd events in World of Warcraft that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? Because we'd love to see your idea of the best looking instance on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
Once upon a time, November 13th to be exact, someone very close to me traveled to the Arena vendor in Area 52 to buy his first Season 3 gear. He had been saving up his Arena points and was excited about getting gauntlets for his resto speced Shammy.
Now, he didn't have to go to Area 52. There are new Arena vendors in Blade's Edge, Nagrand and Gadgetzan, but he traveled to Area 52 to be AoE'd with everyone else. (Also, he's got one of those nifty pirate hats, so he's KOS in Gadgetzan.)
After being feared a couple times, he bought his new gauntlets, only to find out that instead of being the coveted resto gloves, he had accidentally purchased enhancement ones.
We're a couple of weeks out from patch 2.3 which introduced World of Warcraft's newest dungeon, the Troll-filled Zul'Aman. Have you had a chance to venture in yet? If not, there's no need to fear, because we're got a gallery of screenshots from the dungeon that will allow you to enjoy the environment vicariously. It's nearly as much fun as being there and you save a lot of gold in repair bills! Do you have a great shot taken inside Zul'Aman that you'd like to share with the rest of the world? An especially good boss kill story? Send it to us and we'll put it in our gallery with your name and story attached!
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
It's been nearly two weeks since patch 2.3 went live, so I thought it might be helpful to talk about the impact it has had on my guild and get some feedback from other officers about their experiences. What has been the best thing in 2.3 for you? What's just plain awful? Here's my take on it.
Thumbs Up: Zul'Aman
Zul'Aman has been a blast for my guild. Most of us enjoy the 10-player raids better than any other group size, so we were really looking forward to this one. Even though it's a bit of a Zul'Gurub rehash lorewise, Zul'Aman has a different feel to it than any other raid. The bosses aren't just standing there blithely unaware of your incursion. The dynamic trash and countdown timer make clearing the whole raid interesting instead of mindlessly slogging through static pulls to get to the bosses. The difficulty seems spot-on, if a little on the challenging side for Tier 4 guilds (but that's the intention, right?). Done right it should be a relatively quick run with some nice loot and badges for everyone. This raid will be a pleasure to run week after week. I hope future raids are more like this one!
Having said that, it's been a challenge scheduling all our raids.
Paladin Sanctified Judgement has its seal mana cost return changed from 50% to 80%
You may be thinking, yay, more dps/mana/etc., but I can't help but think what kind of brutal beatings are we going to face that justify all these buffs. Think about it. Blizzard doesn't hand out the buff candy just because a class dot shocks their own forums. They do so only when they think it's warranted. So what warrants all this goodness?
My best guess is that while many players are breezing through Zul'Aman, something far more challenging is awaiting us when Sunwell Plateau arrives in Patch 2.4.
There are a few more buffs and hard numbers available in the MMO-Champion post. Including the breakdown by Rank of the Shaman spell changes. Check it out for more information.
Player Faldomar of the Cenarius server has very unhappy to see that much of the tanking gear dropping in Zul'Aman is lacking in Defense. How is a tank supposed to do their job if they can't get the uncrittable benefit of 490 Defense as well as the boost to Block, Parry, Dodge and chance to be Missed?
While it would be nice to have a full set of armor catering to our exact needs, the reality is that there are different styles of tanking (as well as healing, dps, etc.) Blizzard has chosen to service all those styles with their current system of modular mixing and matching. And if equipped armor doesn't put your stats where you want them to be, there is also the gem socket system to customize your toon even further.
Moral of the story? Don't expect a custom suit off the rack. An outfit that is going to fit you like a second skin is going to come from attention to detail on your part.
The arrival of a new patch used to be noted with a simple entry on the update page of the WoW's site. Now, it's heralded with its own movie trailer. Blizzard has released a short trailer exploring the story behind Patch 2.3's Zul'Aman and challenging the players with: "This is our land. You wanna stay? You stay here forever. We gonna bury you here."
It's a well done trailer, especially the camera moves, sound design and music composition. But am I the only one who thought the montage of the Zul'Aman gods at the end was a little...Power Rangerseque?
EDIT: Oops, this was already featured yesterday on our site. Ah well, for those of you who missed it, here it is. For those of you who saw it yesterday, see it again for the first time. And I still stand by my Power Rangers comment.
In our efforts to bring you the latest content from therecent 2.3 patch, tonight I'm reporting live from Zul'Aman. For those of you who aren't in the know, Zul'Aman is a new 10-player raid dungeon added in patch 2.3 and intended as a continuation, in difficulty, from Karazhan. In order to give you an early glance at the zone on the live realms (for those of you who haven't had time to make it out there yourselves), I'm going through with a guild group tonight and reporting to you live with screenshots and first-hand information on the zone. My guild hasn't tried Zul'Aman on the PTRs and we don't know all of the details on the bosses we're about to encounter... and though we may not have much success, we're eager to dive head first into new content and we're bringing you along for the ride.
Raid time starts at 8:45 EST, so check back with us throughout the evening for new screenshots and notes on what we're running into! Keep reading after the jump for full run details.
Now I don't know about you, but I was personally a little confused as to why Zul'jin, a guy that's pretty much a god amongst trolls, would all of a sudden turn against the Horde. As it turns out, having to saw your own arm off will do that to a troll.