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New Ritual Of Summoning To Make Life Easier For Warlocks

Angelo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:07:46 +0000

In an effort to help warlocks in their soul shard usage, one of the changes coming in the next patch has something to do with their Ritual of Summoning spell. In the pre-TBC days warlocks had to stockpile loads of soul shards to summon every member of the 40 man raids twho were not present. While the move to a smaller 25 man raid was a lot of help, what really made it easier for warlocks is shift to using meeting stones to summon people. This way any two members of the group could summon the whole party.

The new change coming to the Ritual of Summoning is in effect something from the pages of the Mage Ritual of Refreshment spell or the Warlock Ritual of Souls spell where a tangible object is summoned for the rest of the group to benefit. In the case of Ritual of Summoning, the warlock creates an object that acts like a meeting stone. For one shard, the warlock can summon the whole raid from anywhere where summoning is allowed. In fact, since it acts like a meeting stone the warlock doesn’t even need to be there. H e just creates the object and can leave the summoning to the rest of the group present.

Just like Ritual of Refreshment frees the mage from having to do the hard work of conjuring so much water and trading it to the party, this new change to Ritual of Summoning frees the warlock from having to do so much clicking to summon people.

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WoTLK Online Upgrade Now Available

Angelo — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:43:39 +0000

While we’re enjoying the recent release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, sadly there are still some of us who still don’t have it. Maybe some still haven’t found the time to get a copy. Others probably have a hard time getting a copy in the first place. I know that here in the Philippines, I had a hard time getting my copy of the Burning Crusade expansion having to rely on someone who came from the US who bought the game. I had to wait about two weeks so while everyone was enjoying in the Outlands I had to level an alt. I know of someone in my guild who lives in another part of the Philippines who still hasn’t gotten his copy of the expansion since it’s not available in his area.

For people like him who are having a hard time getting a copy of the expansion for whatever reason, there’s good news! The Wrath of the Lich King online upgrade feature is finally here, according to the World of Warcraft Website. This means that with a credit card, you’ll be able to upgrade your account to a Wrath of the Lich King account and also download the whole game. It’s great news that it’s finally here since when this feature was offered for the Burning Crusade expansion, it took quite a while (about a month if I’m not mistaken) for it to be released. Now, less than a week after the WoTLK expansion the online upgrade is already out.

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Quest Items In Northrend Make Questing More Fun!

Angelo — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:39:05 +0000

For a lot of us, it’s still early for me to start talking about working an alt to 80 since a lot of us aren’t 80 yet. In fact, since I got the game a bit later than most of you did I’m still about half way to 72 and I haven’t touched my other two 70’s yet. But something tells me that when we eventually do get our mains to a point when we feel comfortable in leveling our alts, it’s not going to be boring. First of all, there are two starting areas so you can totally choose one for your main and then choose the other for an alt. but when it comes to a point when you’ll be leveling your third character to 80 or your fourth and so on, this won’t be much of a factor in giving some novelty since you’ve probably done both zones extensively. Even in that situation, I think it’s not going to be as boring as going through Azeroth and the Outlands.

Granted that I’ve only seen the Howling Fjord so far (not counting that quest that flew me to Dragonblight against my will and since I didn’t want to go there yet, I had to fly back), a huge amount of the quests I’ve seen already tell me that if a lot more of the quests in the other zones in Northrend are like them, questing finally has an added spice to it than it ever really had before. I’m talking about the creative use of quest items that you use to accomplish your task. With the use of these items, questing is rarely just a boring kill X number of Y or things like that. Using signal flares to mark targets for your allies’ cannons, using an item to summon an npc that gives you quests and fights with you, using an item that gives you control of an abomination that blows stuff up, killing people and using an axe to cut them open to take their brains - such quests are more fun because of the quest items that are provided for you and there are heck lot of quests like that I encountered already just in the Howling Fjord.

This is why I think that even if I decide to level another character through the Howling Fjord again, it’s probably not going to be as boring. While I might get that feeling of “been there, done that” at least going through the whole process again is going to be more fun because of the added spice the quest items give to questing. The only downside to this is that the items take up a lot of space in the inventory haha.

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Early Outsider’s Observations And Thoughts About Death Knights

Angelo — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:33:07 +0000

For a lot of us, the moment we got the expansion we immediately took our characters to either to Northrend, making the decision to go to either the Borean Tundra or the Howling Fjord first. Quite a number of us decided to abandon our 70’s in the meantime to make a Death Knight to be the new main character.

I only got my copy of the expansion a few hours ago so I’ve had a lot of time to mess around in the Outlands for quite a bit on my characters. I’d usually go herbing to supply my druid’s inscription and do some dailies and not much else. Out of boredom from not having the expansion the past few days, I’d just end up logging out early. But in my travels the past few days, I noticed one thing which will end up becoming the trend for quite some time - a ton of Death Knights going around the Outlands! For now, it’s the Hellfire Peninsula but I imagine the swarm could follow all the way Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley.

Everywhere I went on my druid, I saw a Death Knight whether Alliance or Horde there was at least one. But it’s usually swarms! General chat was full of them and the stories are quite funny. A priest in my server who was leveling in Hellfire Peninsula was talking about a 5 man group he was in where there were 4 Death Knights and he was healing. My guild mate who plays a Death Knight was remarking that he didn’t notice unless much later in the fight that he was actually fighting an elite because his health never went below 90%.

Another thing I was noticing was the choices on Death Knight races. As I said, I saw tons of them running around Hellfire Peninsula and I was keeping a rough score in my head. For the Alliance in my server, it seems like I only saw Humans and Night Elves and nothing else. I thought Gnome was going to be quite popular? I know that if my DK was Alliance, I’d be Gnome. I noticed that for the Horde in my server, Blood Elves were the most popular but I also saw a lot of Taurens and Undead and slightly less but still plenty Orcs. In my journeys, I only saw one Troll and it was a female.

This brings me to my Death Knight. I decided a long time ago that my Death Knight was going to be either Troll or Orc. I have an Undead Mage, Blood Elf Paladin, Tauren Druid and a Blood Elf Warlock I’m still working on. That left Orc and Troll as the only horde races I didn’t have yet. All the guild mates I asked said I should go Troll and i seemed to agree since I liked Berserk and the new Voodoo Shuffle as racials. Seeing that Trolls didn’t seem to be a popular choice also made me feel a bit unique or at least give me a sense of cheering the underdog or going against the norm. Of course it might be a while until I seriously get to play my Death Knight if ever i even decide to play it seriously at all.

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Wrath Of The Lich King Is Here! (But Not For All Of Us)

Angelo — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:12:07 +0000

While innocently playing earlier, I knew that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion was truly here when I saw some of my friejnds who never used to play so late log on to quietly make their way to the Undercity, then to Tirisfal Glades and next thing you know they’re in the Borean Tundra or the Howling Fjord. I’m was quietly tracking their location on the friends list and as soon as they reached Tirisfal Glades, I knew what they were up to. As for poor expansion-less me, I was trying to pass the time doing other things to try to take my mind off my crappy situation. While doing this, I realized that there were a lot more people like me in the same situation. I quickly thought about the topic to do below.

Things To Do If You Don’t have The Expansion Yet

Do daily quests

A friend told that the quests he’s done in the expansion so far don’t give gold. He advised me to get as much gold as I can by doing dailies since I don’t have the expansion yet. Even if you eventually do get the gold later on from quests, more gold is not a bad thing!

Deal With Professions That Need Work

Some of you may have 70’s that still need to work on their professions. Inscription comes to mind but it could be any other profession. While waiting for your copy of the expansion, you can spend your time online productively by getting these professions up some more.

Dust Off That non-70 Alt And Play It

If you really don’t have much to do on your 70’s aside from do the dailies, then maybe you can turn your attention to that alt that’s been sitting in your virtual closet for quite a while now. In my case, it’s my warlock who’s currently level 61. I’m not sure if I’ll pay too much attention to it when the expansion comes out but at playing it gives me something to do.

Empty Your Bags/Bank Of Stuff You Won’t Need In The Expansion

Get rid of the stuff you won’t need that’s cluttering your bags and bank. Vendor them. Put them in the Auction House. Do whatever to get more space for the new stuff you’ll be getting when you get your copy of the game.

Complete Quests But Don’t Turn Them In Yet

Might as well turn your situation into something that will benefit you when you do get your copy of the expansion. You can complete as many quests as you can (If you’re a pretty fresh 70, you probably have tons of quests you still haven’t done) but don’t turn them in yet. When you get the expansion, turn them in for some pretty nice XP!

These are the stuff I thought off but I’m sure there’s more to do. Maybe you could go do TBC dungeons with other people who don’t have the expansion yet. This is a perfect time to do your own personal last minute TBC tribute. Whatever you do, try not to be too sad about the situation. When you do get the expansion, I’m sure it’s going to be worth the wait!

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Bug Causes Players To Swarm Hall Of Legends/Champion’s Hall

Angelo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:08:16 +0000

If you’re wondering why your Champion’s Hall or Hall of Legends is swarming with people, it’s because there’s currently a bug that’s affecting PvP gear. The details listed at WoW Insider here. The basics on this is that the bug allows players to purchase PvP gear at a discount or even completely free. Warlocks and priests can get their season 2 gear completely free.

I’m sure this won’t be a permanent thing so don’t start replacing your gear with these. For me, I just got them for kicks. besides, I don’t have a priest and my warlock can’t even wear the gear since he’s only 61. I did it to say I was part of it and to say I did it. For sure, Blizzard will take these away the first chance they get. People are already talking about the time there was a bug that allowed shamans to get their T6 helm for free. Same thing, shamans from all over flocked to get it. The next day, poof! their helms vanished. I expect the same treatment for this situation.

UPDATE: There’s currently a 3 hour maintenance going on to fix this. So if you got these items earlier, they will be gone. Any tokens and arena/honor points you used to buy some of the other items will be refunded.

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Last Minute TBC Tribute

Angelo — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:43:25 +0000

With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion coming out in a couple of days, this server maintenance is the last we’ll ever have for the current Burning Crusade expansion. It also means that the TBC raid dungeon timers are going to reset one last time to a community that actually cares. By next week, most of us aren’t going to care if Karazhan or Gruul’s lair or Black Temple reset since we’re going to leveling our 70’s to 80 or working our Death Knights up. So when the servers go live later, it would be nice for you and your friends to do one last run at a TBC raid dungeon or even a few just to give a last minute tribute.

My friends and I have agreed that we should do Karazhan one last time. I really hope we get to do it since we’re running out of time. We might not be able to do it again until we’re all 80 and bored. What are you planning to do for your last TBC tribute?

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Lich King’s Forces Invade Orgrimmar And Stormwind

Angelo — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:26:32 +0000

A few days before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out, we are treated to yet another progression of the big world event that we’ve been experiencing the past few weeks. the forces of the Lich King have gotten even more aggressive as frostwyrms and abominations invade the cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar. Since I play Horde, I haven’t experienced the Alliance version of this event but judging from what I’ve experienced Horde side and seen from the videos, it must be awesome too.

In the Alliance version Varian Wrynn and his companions Bolvar Fordragon, Broll Bearmantle, Valeera Sanguinar are at the Stormwind Harbor ready to fight and defend the city. My only comment is that while Varian is the king of Stormwind and the other three are his companions, it seems like all of them are quite unknown to the average WoW player. It would have been nice to see guys like Magni Bronzebeard and/or Tyrande Whisperwind helping out just like in the Horde version. The event seems to repeat every few minutes (20 minutes I think). It can be seen in the video below.

More after the break.

The Horde version is very much like the Alliance one except that it seems to have more spice to it (at least for me). First of all, there’s an exciting event that happens before the Lich King’s forces arrive. Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream are seen disagreeing outside the Ring of Valor (org arena) about sending forces to Northrend and somehow leads to a duel inside. It’s the best duel I’ve ever seen and it’s something you should see for yourself.

Just as Thrall is about to lose the duel, it’s interrupted by the invasion. Like I said in my comment above about the Alliance version, it’s awesome to see really familiar faces fighting with you - Thrall, High Overlord Saurfang, Lady Sylvanas, and Garrosh Hellscream are seen running around decimating the invasion forces! You can see it in the video below.

This is something you should really see if you haven’t yet and hurry since it might not be here long!

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Devs Looking To Make Healing Less Boring

Angelo — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:16:54 +0000

Ah healing… it feels great when everything is going well and feels like crap when it doesn’t. I remember when I first started healing on my holy paladin, I felt personally responsible for every death even when it wasn’t my fault (like dps pulling aggro and getting owned or the tank not doing his job). Over time, especially as I got better and better geared, I noticed a sort of strange trend. When everything was going well, healing was a pretty relaxing job. In fact sometimes it was so relaxing that it quickly crossed into the realm of boring. When things were not going well, that’s when things got interesting!

By the very nature of what you do as a healer, you always seem detached from the action as you stray off into your own world of watching health bars go up and down As a tank and dps, you’re always part of the action. It doesn’t help that healers usually use the same spell or the same 2-3 spells over and over. This is what I experienced as a holy pally spamming Flash of Light and using Holy Light when needed.

Ghostcrawler hints in one of his replies in a thread in the healing forum that they’re looking at some mechanics that will make healing more interesting. He says that rogues don’t just spam the same ability most of the time and that frost mages would like to get a freeze then use Ice lance in PvP. In short, Ghostcrawler seems to hint at healing becoming a lot more like DPS-ing at least in the sense of using cooldowns and making some spells trigger effects to use on other spells just like the example of freezing and ice lance.

I like this move to make healing more interesting but I sure hope they don’t make things too complicated. I just fear that things might come to a point where healers will be forced to follow spell/effect X with spell Y all the time just to get the effect they want just like following a freeze effect with ice lance all the time. Healers are different from dps because they don’t follow a rotation, they use a certain spell because it’s the best spell for that situation given the health levels of the raid, current mana, urgency of landing a heal and other factors. Having to follow spell/effect X with spell Y all the time will just disrupt this. I hope that made sense haha!

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Devs Might Slap A Cooldown On Circle Of Healing & Wild Growth

Angelo — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:01:00 +0000

Holy priests and Restoration druids just received some potentially sad news earlier about their spells Circle of Healing and Wild growth, respectively. Both spells have been known to be quite similar because of their AoE healing capability. Ghostcrawler posted in the forums that they are thinking of adding a 6 second cooldown for both spells

If implemented, this change would affect Circle of Healing more than Wild Growth since the it makes sense to spam the former because it heals it’s full amount right away while the latter does it over time. This would make healing AoE encounters harder to do in the future. Would this decrease the value of both the Holy Priest and the Resto Druid to the raid in the future? Only time will tell I guess. While it might increase the value of the Chain Heal spamming Restoration Shaman to the raid, it might not necessarily lower that of the other two based on what Ghostcrawler said. He mentioned in the same post that if this change pushes through, they will have to tweak encounters keeping in mind that Circle of Healing will no longer be spammable.

Of course, a nerf is a nerf so if this pushes through it’s still going to suck. I just hope that it’s not going to suck too much.

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