When I first found out that this event involved a lot of cooking, I felt disheartened at first since I never bothered to level up cooking on any of my characters. But after a few moments of figuring things out, it turns out that the opposite is true. One of the NPC’s I talked said something like “if you don’t know how to cook, now’s the best time to start!” and boy was he so right. I leveled my Druid’s cooking from zilch to 300 in no time and I understand that you can go all the way to 350 with the Turkey Recipe. This event only lasts a week so if you have all characters you’re having some problems with leveling your cooking the regular way, this week is the best time to bring them out and get a boost.

For me, the ease in which you can level your cooking from 1-350 is the best part of this event but some of you might find other things interesting. Like the other World Events, this one also has a bunch of Achievements that you can get done. Some of them involve cooking, while some of them involve sharing the food while others involve hunting turkey. One of the most amusing is Turkey Lurkey where you get to blast those filthy rogues! This is an amusing or annoying week to be a rogue depending on how you look at it. But one thing is for sure, if you’re a rogue, you’re probably going to get blasted by someone this week.

Maybe it’s because it’s a new World Event in WoW and the novelty is still talking but this looks like one of the most interesting events Blizzard has put up. I have to say that if you took a break from the game to visit the family this week, you’re missing a nice event!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Last year we got an Achievement for logging in on the 4th anniversary and even got the in game companion pet the Baby Blizzard Bear. This year we get another Achievement for logging in and another pet, the Onyxian Whelpling. People who’ve done Onyxia will recognize it as the whelp adds that you have to “deal with” during the Onyxia encounter. To make things cooler, this pet doesn’t just hang around looking cute. Give it a while and it starts to take a deep breathe shown as a text emote.

Here’s to more anniversaries to come! Now go have fun with Pilgrim’s Bounty!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

icecrown citadel

Below are a few important points taken from the interview:

The designers were really excited about working on the Icecrown Citadel because it’s such an important part of Warcraft history and since Arthas himself is such an important and popular figure since the days of Warcraft 3.

The design of the Icecrown Citadel was inspired by the original look in Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne. The whole Citadel was designed around the original spire.

The Icecrown Citadel is bringing back a few aspects of past raid dungeons that we’ve seen like the winged sturcture similar to Naxxramas and the teleporters similar to Ulduar.

Blizzard is taking advantage of the number of bosses to make every boss have something for a wide number of players. This was something that was harder to do in Trial of the Crusader, which had only 5 bosses.

The designers want the loot in Icecrown Citadel to feel epic in every sense. Considering this is highest tier of loot until the Cataclysm expansion comes out, they want the loot to last until then. This also means they don’t want to be giving this loot away too fast. I guess this explains a lot of the difficult raid access progression Blizzard is implementing here.

The design of the Icecrown loot has its inspiration from the Citadel itself, with mage gear looking like Blood Princes and hunter gear having Nerubian elements. They said to look for lots of blue, ice, skulls and spikes in the gear!

Loot in Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning don’t have the titan-ish feel that you see in the Ulduar gear. Since both the 5 man dungeon and the raid were developed at the same time, expect to see similarities in the gear in terms of look and naming.

The vertical design of the Icecrown Citadel means we’ll be seeing things like elevators, teleporters and gunships to get players through the place.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Anyway, it’s while leveling up that Draenei Shaman that I encountered the famous Alliance quest chain “The Missing Diplomat” and I realized that it did feel quite odd to be doing that quest since it’s outdated, made for before Wrath of the Lich King came out. Everyone familiar with that quest chain knows that the Missing Diplomat isn’t just a diplomat but King Varian Wrynn himself, who oddly enough happens to be standing just a few feet away from the original quest giver. of course back in the day when King Varian was really missing, this quest made sense.

In a similar fashion I can think of something that would feel just as strange when the Cataclysm expansion comes out and it involves Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream. Anyone who plays as Horde probably knows that Thrall is involved with a bunch of quests involving Ragefire Chasm, the search for the Mag’har and even the welcoming of the Death Knights into the Horde. We also know that Garrosh Hellscream will indeed be the new Warchief when Cataclysm comes. Anyone see the problem now?

Garrosh simply can’t take the place of Thrall for some of these things. As new Warchief, would it be Garrosh’s job to welcome the new Death Knights? Somehow I don’t think it’s up his alley considering it’s Thrall’s respect for Tirion Fordring that helped that through, something Garrosh doesn’t seem to have. If it’s still Thrall’s job then where can we find him, since Garrosh is the new Warchief. Even stranger would be the quest involving the finding of the Mag’har because this quest involves Thrall specifically and at this point in time Garrosh is still an impotent leader in Garadar.

I don’t claim that things are going to be inconsistent because the events I’m talking about involve a different period in the game. But i feel like those things I mentioned still need some kind of resolution because it really is going to feel strange to people doing them.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

icecrown citadel

The devs plan on doing the same kind of thing for Icecrown. There are four sections of the Icecrown raid: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. Blizzard plans to release these sections one by one at designated dates that we still don’t know of because of the uncertainty of patch 3.3’s release. He just said that after they release the first section, the Lower Spire which includes the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters, content beyond that will be unavailable for weeks until they are finally unlocked one by one.

Daelo also mentions another form of gating content which shouldn’t be new to any raiders. He mentioned that the heroic versions will not be available for players until they have defeated the Lich King for that specific player cap. This means that the heroic 10 man cannot be attempted unless players have defeated the Lich King on 10 man normal mode. The same goes for the 25 man. Considering that the Lich King won’t be available for a while, it’s really going to be a while until we hear of any heroic modes being done. Speaking of the Lich King, he cannot be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, and Sindragosa have been defeated for the week and those bosses must be defeated in heroic mode to attempt the heroic difficulty of the Lich King.

If you think that’s tough you haven’t seen anything yet. Icecrown Citadel is taking a page from Trial of the Crusader and twisting it around a bit. Remember those attempts you had in ToC? They’ll be back for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King but there won’t be any kind of rewards attached to them. Basically, you start out with 5 attempts when Professor Putricide is made available and this number grows as the bosses get unlocked (10 when the Blood Queen is out then 15 when Sindragosa and the Lich King are out). There will be 15 attempts to defeat all 4 bosses and when this runs out, the Ashen Verdict withdraws their support and you’re done for the week. Harsh!

The cool thing about this is that we actually get to see a dynamic system where we actually see the forces against the Lich King growing. As time passes by we’ll see more attempts for the last four bosses added to the game. We’ll also see Garrosh Hellscream and Varian Wrynn lend their support by providing a zone wide buff to players, which will increase the health points, damage done and healing done by players and this buff will increase in effectiveness over time.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

violet hold

Of course, as I was saying earlier the Dungeon Finder will make PuG’s easier to find because a lot of people probably won’t mind going on PuG’s just to get those random heroics done. Then there’s the Perky Pug non combat pet that Blizzard is giving out as a reward for players who have done enough PuG’s. Until now the specifics of “exactly enough PuG’s” was not known.

MMO Champion reveals an Achievement from the patch 3.3 PTR called Looking for Multitudes. This Achievement is the the one that gives the Perky Pug as a reward. Below is the exact tooltip of the Achievement:

Use the Dungeon tool to finish random heroic dungeons until you have grouped with 100 random players total.

If I’m right, this means that it won’t take too many random heroics to get this done. There are 5 players in the group so every run there’s at most 4 players who could count towards this Achievement. Assuming you do nothing but PuG’s then you just need 25 runs. if you insist on taking some friends or guildies then this will take a bit longer. But with the potential of limitless number of random heroics you can do using the Dungeon Finder, don’t be surprised to see players with the Perky Pug soon after the patch goes live!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

If you’ve been playing the past few hours, you’ve likely seen yourself or others get a Night Elf Mohawk mask like face. That’s the work of the Mohawk Grenade. To get some you need to find a Night Elf Mohawk located outside the starting areas like Northshire or Deathknell for example. once spoken to, the Night Elf Mohawk will give you some Mohawk Grenades. Once you run out you can go back and get more. According to the Mohawk Grenade FAQ, the US really gets this earlier so Korea and Europe will have to wait until November 24 to get this. There isn’t a date set for when this will end, only that you’ll be able to keep getting these grenades until the Night Elf Mohawk feels his work is done.

Now go out and pity some fools!

You can watch the new Mr. T advertisement below:

Post from: WOW Obsessed

It’s become a lot harder to run lower level dungeons especially if you want to run them the real way and not just get run through by a high level player. I still see quite a bit of players announcing that they want to run Shadowfang Keep or Scarlet Monastery or any of those classic dungeons. This proves that there are people who could really use the Dungeon Finder to run these places. By getting help from other servers, this should make it even easier.

I remember Blizzard saying something about low level players getting rewards for using the Dungeon Finder to run lower level dungeons. That’s where the Satchel of Helpful Goods comes in. The Satchel is your reward for doing a random dungeon at lower levels. According to CM Wryxian, the Satchel will have two groups of items. One group contains bracers, rings, necklaces and cloaks and the other group contains belts, boots, gloves and shoulder items. The Satchel will contain one item from each group and will also depend on your level range, which is a 10 level spread. I assume that these items will be rare (blue) quality, which is something Wryxian also assumed before he came back with the info above but didn’t seem to confirm again.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Well it wasn’t really Blizzard but it’s someone high up enough to give this statement a bit more “oomph”. Blizzard’s VP for Game Design and WoW mastermind Rob Pardo recently had an interview with Warcry.com on his view about the 5 years of WoW. It was here that he talked more about how the game has been evolving from a more hardcore game to a more casual friendly game where more players can see the content they come up with. He explains that this was because a lot of designers including himself came from being hardcore gamers in other MMO’s like Everquest and it was this hardcore gamer in them that made them think that’s how things should be. But as we know they’re learned that it didn’t have to be that way to make the game fun.

Anyway, it was in that interview where Mr. Pardo said it outright that the Arena Tournament was a mistake. To clarify, he mentioned that when they thought it up before they never expected how much it problems it would cause in terms of balancing classes especially when taking both PvE and PvP into consideration. These his words:

We didn’t engineer the game and classes and balance around it, we just added it on, so it continues to be very difficult to balance. Is WoW a PvE cooperative game, or a competitive PvP game? There’s constant pressure on the class balance team, there’s pressure on the game itself, and a lot of times players who don’t PvP don’t understand why their classes are changing. I don’t think we ever foresaw how much tuning and tweaking we’d have to do to balance it in that direction. source

Mr. Pardo even said that if he could go back in time, either he would go back to before the game came out and changed the rules to make the Arena easier to implement or he would just scrap the idea. Of course they can’t scrap the Arena Tournament now so we just have to live with it, taking the good with the bad. Right now I’m just have this happy feeling that what I was thinking all this time ever since it came out was right all along.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Perhaps the only Tank that can use one of these weapons is the Death Knight tank. They use two handers for tanking anyway so this isn’t that big a deal for them. The bigger issue is that every other tank doesn’t get to share with the fun. If you’re a tank, you’ll be doing the Quel’delar quest chain for your off spec and that’s just sad. CM Bornakk has this to say about the situation:

We don’t feel there is a need for it? We aimed to make sure that every class had something to gain from the Quel’Delar series, but that doesn’t mean every spec of every class. Could a tank use the one handed dps version of Quel’Delar? Yes, it may give them more threat. Is this ideal for surviving while tanking? No, but there are other items available for that. Source

I somehow feel what Bornakk is trying to say. If the Argent Tournament rewards don’t even include a proper healing mace for holy pallies and resto shammies then we probably shouldn’t expect better for the Quel’delar. Sure the seven weapons seem to be very accommodating. It’s just that having something this epic and leaving out a whole role doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. Even the Argent Tournament rewards, lacking a bit in coverage for specs, managed to get a tanking Axe out. So while Bornakk has a point, it still feels like a whole bunch of bull excrement to me.

Post from: WOW Obsessed