Ask a Beta Tester: Spectral gryphons, prospecting, and portals

Only six-ish days of Ask a Beta Tester left! Whatever will we do!? Well, we'll go on with our lives probably. I mean, we'll have Wrath of the Lich King. Who cares?
Have you heard anything about ghosts being able to go through mountains in WotLK, so they can reach their destinations faster? My friend told me that is what is going to happen, and I hope that it will go live!
Nope, that's not the case, sorry. However, in some zones (Icecrown, Storm Peaks) you get to ride a ghostly gryphon when you're dead, so you can fly to your corpse. Both of those zones have a huge emphasis on mountainside base camps and tall cliffs and places you can only get by flying, so the gryphon is very nice. No running through mountains though.
Erika asked...
When LK comes out are we going to have to build up the starting areas like we did with the SSO or Can I chill a few days on an alt while I let everybody start their DK and stuff?
No, we don't have to do anything like that in the Northrend starter zones. The quest hubs and all of that are already there. The only thing slightly similar is in Icecrown. Through world phasing, you help the Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade take bits and pieces of territory from the Scourge. That's purely single-player (or group) content though, it doesn't require work from the server as a whole.
Sielanas asked...
How easy is it to obtain the new gems? What should we prospect early and are there any mining nodes that have better frequency of getting a freebie?
It's about the same as The Burning Crusade as far as rarity. Blue quality gems will be a little harder to get than green ones, both from mining and prospecting. And like The Burning Crusade, high quality nodes will likely have a better droprate on gems than the lower quality ones. When you're leveling Jewelcrafting you'll probably be prospecting Cobalt a lot early on, but once you've moved past it you won't bother with it much ever again, much like Fel Iron in TBC. Saronite is probably the way to go.
LordV asked......
I'm not sure if this has been asked or answered yet but here goes! Mages can head to Dalaran at level 71. I was wondering if there are any level restrictions on the Teleport and or Portal spells or can mages learn said spells as soon as they arrive?
You get to learn the Teleport spell as soon as you hit Dalaran. The Portal spell, however, you learn at level 74. So the level most of us are finally able to go to Dalaran ourselves for the first time, you're able to start bringing your friends up no matter their level.
Marathan asked...
Some time ago, there was a talk about new player character models for Wrath - and even some bugged pictures. So the question is, are they going live? Are we finally going to get improved graphics on our characters?
There weren't any new models in the beta, but there were 'new' skins. And you don't want them to go live. Trust me. They were horrible. Imagine you have a plastic bag. And you put the end of a vacuum inside of it, and sucked out all of the air. The bag would get all shriveled and pulled in on itself. That's what the 'new' Human Female skins looked like. Deflated and shriveled.
Gnomes and Tauren also suffered from these weird skins. It was as if a gorilla grabbed two handfuls of face, yanked them off, squished the face about between their fingers, and slapped it back on haphazardly.
You did not want these skins. They were abominations unto the Light. People who liked them need to be burned at the stake, because surely they are agents of evil here to sew discord, sorrow, and teh ugliez.
Filed under: Human, Gnomes, Tauren, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Jewelcrafting, Wrath of the Lich King
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Jodi Nov 7th 2008 2:23PM
Did you notice in the bottom part of your column you still have it written that "wrath of the lich king beta is in full swing" and yet you reported before that its over?
Alex Ziebart Nov 7th 2008 2:27PM
Copy-paste for the lose. Thanks! I'll fix that.
Alex Ziebart Nov 7th 2008 2:30PM
Better?
Jodi Nov 7th 2008 3:03PM
Yes :D
Brianboru Nov 7th 2008 2:48PM
Hey Alex, just wanted to say thanks for the great advice and tips over the past few months, I can't freakin wait for next week!
chris Nov 7th 2008 3:05PM
So is tailoring still a "must" for shadow priests? With the change to "+spellpower", is there anything THAT worthwhile that is tailor-specific?
Turtlehead Nov 7th 2008 8:45PM
Nope.
FSW was broken, especially for shadow priests. They swore it would never happen again, and it hasn't, but they've swung even further in the other direction. As things currently stand, tailoring will very much be optional--and probably not optimal.
chris varner Nov 8th 2008 1:13PM
Thanks for the reply! Engineering, here I come! :)
actodd Nov 7th 2008 3:15PM
Does cold weather flying require Artesian riding? One of my 70's is a tailor/chanter and mostly does BG's so I never picked up 300. Will I need it in Northrend?
RogueJedi86 Nov 7th 2008 7:02PM
Epic Flight not required for Cold Weather Flying, but the extra speed would help, with Northrend being a lot bigger than Outland.
exordius Nov 7th 2008 3:07PM
I know that the beta is actually closed, but before it shut down was there any hope at all for us shammies so desperately in need of a ranged AOE? I mean even non-shadow specced priests get mindsear now, and all druids get hurricane...I ask because every time I log on my level 42 feral druid alt and can deal better aoe dps than my T5 shammy I just want to cry. I know this will provoke some folks saying shammies need nerfing or whatever, but I mean seriously, if the point is for all dps classes to bring viable single and multi target dps, shammies need an AoE. Perhaps at long last the ability to cast that oh-so-cool Earthquake spell Thrall was rocking in WC3? I mean we have all the other far seer abilities now that spirit wolves got added to enhance.......... /sigh
aman Nov 7th 2008 3:14PM
Question:
Have the world designers come up with news ways to boarder each zone other than mountains or water? Thats all I see when I look at my world map a rim of mountains. My favorite transition in the game is the little piece of land between Zangarmarsh and Terokkar Forest, since they blend together. Its neat and most importantly, different.
Andelorn Nov 8th 2008 6:47AM
In case you haven't noticed, many borders in the real world are based on things like mountains or rivers since it's an obvious break in landmasses. But the Eastern Kingdoms are naturally mountainous, and Northern Kalimdor is all surrounding Mount Hyjal. There are many places where there aren't mountains/water between zones.
At least it's not like EQ. My first experience in EQ was in the forest outside the high elven town, which was a big square with little terrain changes in the center but straight up cliffs around the entirety of the zone except for the entrance to the city and the pass leading to the next zone.
Kildon Nov 7th 2008 3:17PM
This is probably not a "beta" question but its along the lines of new and exciting stuff potentially coming out... Are you aware of any talk of a graphic overhaul of the classic game? I know you answered a question concerning new skins for the players and NPCs but I'm sorta asking about something similar to what EQ did back with Kunark came out... updates to the character models AND environment (and druid forms)... etc.
AZShizzle Nov 7th 2008 3:33PM
Will we have different hotbar(s) when we switch to an another spec with the dual-spec system?
Robert M Nov 7th 2008 3:50PM
I had thought I saw a previous post on here where a blue said that a rogues sap was going to extend to something along the lines of anything a brain and a skull. Was this a misread of mine?
Mayhew Nov 7th 2008 4:04PM
You remembered correctly. The reason you haven't seen it yet is that the better version of Sap is rank 4, which is trainable at level 71. ( http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=51724 )
Dave Nov 7th 2008 6:43PM
I'm curious about some of the changes to plate boots and belts. Some models look different,
http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Duchess_Mynx.jpg
Check out the belt and the boots, looks much better, way more like you would think plate would.
Arlendor Nov 7th 2008 4:35PM
So what speed do these 'ghostly gryphons' fly at? Is it dependant on your level of flying skill?
Alty Nov 7th 2008 5:10PM
I think it would be appropriate to answer in the beta tester questions at some point how we should uninstall the beta client.
Wait until after the expansion?
Do it now?
Of course my fear is whenever I uninstall the client, I will end up losing some important chunk of code that will cause problems.
So if someone can get an answer on when/how to uninstall beta, it would really help us out.
Thanks