Posted on December 21st, 2009 by admin
Every week (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. Too bad he was too busy running heroics to come to the aid of the King!
With the new dungeon finder tool released, I felt it was a good idea to write up how a priest should handle themselves in instances with a group of players they don’t know. Once I started using the system, I became exposed to a large variety of different personalities, skill levels and gear levels. Quite the experience grouping with players packing gear ranging from Trial of the Grand Crusader to the random hunter wielding the grey bow of death.
My approach to pugging has not been that different since the pre-dungeon tool era when players would randomly form up in groups for whatever the heroic daily was. After a while, I stopped doing heroics because I didn’t need the emblems anymore. In the end, I had to re-learn and remember some of the core philosophies I held onto when I dived back into the world of running heroic dungeons again.
You set the pace
Traditionally, the
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Posted on December 17th, 2009 by admin
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Michael Sacco will be your host today.
It’s my little brother’s birthday today — fourteen years old, what the heck — so today’s Queue is quick and dirty so I can get the caking and presenting done.
Lochlorien asked…
Will we be able to wield Frostmourne after we defeat Arthas?
Nope, the developers opted not to make Frostmourne an equippable weapon, replacing it as the Icecrown legendary weapon with Shadowmourne.
Shabala asked…
With Deathwing’s cataclysm and the reconstruction of the old world, will we be getting new music and a soundtrack for the altered zones?
No indication yet, but we should have more info when Blizzard actually releases some new Cataclysm information. Three months without an update to the Cataclysm site, guys! I know what a slow PR drip is, but that’s a little much!
F3rrat asked…
Burning lore question (pun incoming) about Titans, Old Gods, and the Burning Crusade: Where are the first two in the third? Azeroth has Titan strongholds, Draenor has none. Azeroth has
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Posted on December 14th, 2009 by admin
It’s been a year since the Wrath of the Lich King hit the shelves. Since that time, our myriad characters have stormed the beaches of Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. We’ve fought and rescued dragons, worked with Murlocs, slaughtered each other in Wintergrasp, and clashed in the sea, land, and air. But with the final content patch of the expansion now chilling out on our hard drives, it’s time for the final countdown.
We’re going to get to kill Arthas. And as excited about that as we are as players, you have to imagine the mounting incursion against the Lich King gets a much deeper and visceral emotion for our characters. This represents a relatively unique opportunity to roleplay your characters in an otherwise static world. After all, the entire game is about to change in some pretty radical ways. This is the purest possible fodder for roleplay, and it would be remiss of us to lose this opportunity.
Join me behind the jump so that we can talk about the roleplay opportunities. The good, the bad, the ugly.
The Good
The good opportunities here are massive. It’s easy to simply roleplay your way through quests and enjoy the character immersion, but
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Posted on December 10th, 2009 by admin
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
Patch 3.3, the Fall of the Lich King, is finally here, and you know what that means! Well, I mean, hopefully it means questions for the Queue that haven’t been asked a million times before, or questions about new content.
Haha, just kidding. Today’s Queue, like most other Queues, has nearly nothing to do with current events.
Khrono asked…
Why is it that my Paladin can wield a two handed and one handed sword, but for some reason he can’t hold a dagger? Is there some lore out there that tells the tale of a Knight of the Silver Hand that insulted the dagger gods, so now we can’t use daggers?
Cause there are some nicely itemized casting daggers out there I wouldn’t mind getting my hand on.
It’s all about flavor.
A dagger doesn’t fit the “kit” of a paladin in Blizzard’s eyes — much like you don’t see rogues using staves or priests using swords. There’s no discernable “lore” reason for it, or even a gameplay reason.
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Posted on November 30th, 2009 by admin
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com’s arena column.
Listening music: Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek. Imogen Heap is quickly making a name for herself as one of the most profoundly talented artists today. I’ve been surprised how often I’ve heard her music recently, as I had always presumed she would remain as an unrealized genius; an underground phenomenon. Her independent work is both euphoric and mentally stimulating. I am elated she has gained some notoriety, even if only within the past few years. Hide and Seek is one of those rare, almost one-of-a-kind tracks that has an incredibly strong gravity in its simplicity. The power of the minimalistic approach creates a forceful (but delicate) melody. Although I love some remixes (Tiesto’s is particularly intelligent, as the paradox of stripping away the essence of the song by adding unnecessary elements isn’t present,
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Posted on November 26th, 2009 by admin
Welcome back to Know Your Lore, WoW.com’s column about the story behind the game we all play.
A featured questline in Patch 3.3, the story of Quel’delar is available to any player who attains the Battered Hilt, which can drop from any mob in the Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons. But what’s the story behind this ancient and powerful weapon?
Long ago, the night elves and the five Dragonflights worked together with great ceremony to forge a set of incredibly powerful prismatic swords, intended to be the first line of defense against any evil that would challenge the races of Azeroth: Quel’serrar, the High Blade, and Quel’delar, the Sister Blade.
Quel’serrar was gifted to the night elves, but ultimately nearly destroyed. For thousands of years it remained partially intact with the Shen’dralar of Eldre’thalas, who anticipated that one day it’d be possible to reforge the blade. Only recently did this occur, with heroes reforging the blade in the flames and black heart of Onyxia, broodmother of the Black Dragonflight. The blade’s triumphant return to its full glory brought great joy to the night elves, who thought the blade
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Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by admin
We’re not sure what this is. Hell, we’re not even sure this is about Warcraft. But it came across the @warcraft twitter this afternoon with the tag “It’s Coming – 11/25.”
That’s Wednesday, so I gather we’ll see either the next image or the answer to it then.
This isn’t the first time Blizzard has played the image game with us — back in 2008 there was a huge deal over the Diablo 3 runes that were appearing on Blizzard’s site before the Worldwide Invitational. Could this be something like that again? We’re not sure. It’s legitimate speculation, but this is Twitter and not a big PR/Marketing rollout, so who knows. Then again, it’s possible Blizzard is learning how to correctly use social media and we’re feeding into their marketing campaign, doing all the work for them. In which case, well played.
Tune in Wednesday for more on this oddity.
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Posted on November 19th, 2009 by admin
Huntsman’s Lodge has a terrific set of tips for running Power Auras as a hunter. I’m not running this addon (yet) on my hunter, but apparently it’s pretty old news — our old friend BRK had some ideas on how to use it a while back. But HL goes even farther, and I like a lot of his ideas, like a star that lights up when Dragonhawk isn’t turned on — I’ll admit I make that mistake from time to time — and warnings for “special circumstance” spells like Lock and Load and Kill Shot.
You can mix and match them all to fit your own gameplay as well, so maybe use some from HL’s list and throw in one or two from BRK’s old setup. And even if you’re not a hunter, the addon is helpful for any class that needs a heads up on buffs and debuffs coming their way. We hunters can get all the help we need though — HL’s list is a great resource for using the addon with our class.
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Posted on November 16th, 2009 by admin
In what appears to be the start of the World of Warcraft 5th anniversary celebrations, Night Elf Mohawks have entered WoW! You can go visit Mr. Night Elf Mohawk outside any of the races starting zones. In particular we were able to see the Night Elf outside of the human starting area of Northshire, and near the Undead starting area of Tirisfal Glades — on any live server, not on the PTR. This is also only on North American servers right now. Reports indicate that the Night Elf Mohawk will appears on EU and Korean servers starting November 24th.
When you get there you’ll want to talk to him, make him pity the fool. And in return you’ll get a five Mohawk Grenades that let you make others wear a Night Elf Mohawk mask. You can get more grenades once your five are all used up.
There is a 50 minute buff called “Mohawked” with the flavor text of “You pity the fool” that gets placed on you when you wear the mask. You can right click the debuff to remove it.
Check out the gallery below for images from this little Monday afternoon surprise. And just for kicks, the original Mr. T WoW commercial after the break. When you watch the commercial again,
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Posted on November 12th, 2009 by admin
Blizzard updated the launcher again today without warning and hopefully without incident — unlike Monday, when everything went awry, errors abounded and people were unable to connect.
There is no indication that patch 3.3 is anywhere near downloading or anything other than a small tools patch. There has also been no word from Blizzard yet on exactly what this patch does, but it is required if you want to log into the game. The patch is very small and only takes a handful of seconds to download and apply.
We’ll keep an eye on this issue for any problems, but as of this writing, all is well.
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