There are certain things in WoW that I just don't do, not because I don't think they're fun, but because they intimidate me. Those activities would be tanking and PvP. Here's the thing, I don't dislike those thing, and actually, I'd love to do more of them! Sometimes I'll sit down and think, "Yeah, I would love to try tanking that boss!" or "Man, running battlegrounds seems like fun!" And then I kind of swallow anxiously and think, "Well, maybe another day..."

What's ridiculous about this, for me, is that I have successfully done both those activities in the past. I tanked tier 9 on my druid when my 10-man team needed a change of pace, and I spent significant periods of time in Arathi Basin circa level 45 back in Burning Crusade, also on my druid. Feral PvP was fun! And challenging! Those were the days when you couldn't transfer directly between druid forms; you had to shift to caster form in between (i.e. bear > caster > cat), so there were some different challenges to manage compared to PvE, and I like that! Oh, I also tanked on my paladin when he was a lowbie - Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps, stuff like that. Considering I once had so much fun doing these things, I have no idea why I find it so intimidating now!

Do you have any similar hang-ups in WoW? What aspects of the game intimidate you? What would it take for you to give it a shot?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

If you're interested in WoW design and discussion, but don't yet follow twitter, you might want to reconsider. A lot of the developers are regularly active there. For example, yesterday our own Adam Holisky had a nice little chat with Ghostcrawler, Bashiok, and some other folks about WoW's talent design, and wondering if there was another big overhaul being considered for the next major expansion. The answer, bluntly, is no. Blizzard seems content with the current system.

@bashiok @djtyrant @adamholisky The *current* talent design feels pretty solid to us. We'll iterate but no overhaul plans. #famouslastwords

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) May 9, 2013

Player Mihaly Ducz replied that three choices every fifteen levels feels kind of thin, but I have to admit that I kind of agree with Bashiok's response on that one: there are already plenty of spells and abilities in the game; I am perfectly content to have fewer of them, or at least more passive options so I don't have to agonize over how to redo my bars again. How about you? Are you content with the current talent system? What might you like to see changed or modified in the future?

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Filed under: Blizzard, Mists of Pandaria

Last week I wrote about what I considered to be the best fight from classic WoW, so this week we're moving into The Burning Crusade. Though I stated that I try to stay away from obvious choices, this boss is so infamous that I really couldn't choose anything else, despite considering several others. The picture at the top of the article has already given my answer away: Kael'thas Sunstrider, the final boss of Tempest Keep: The Eye.

This could be the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia speaking, but looking back, I really do believe that The Burning Crusade had some of the most interesting, fun, and infuriating boss mechanics of any expansion so far. Mage and/or warlock tanks? Check. Necessary item usage? Check. Guaranteed aggro resets? Check!

And Kael'thas had all of those.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade

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Filed under: The Queue

World of Warcraft sometimes gets panned for its graphics, which have never been on the bleeding edge of virtual reality. This, however, was a deliberate choice on Blizzard's part, and I think it's a good one. It allows for people who are behind the hardware curve (such as myself) to enjoy the game, and the graphics' intentional cartoonishness holds up better over time than hyper-realistic renderings, which often seem horribly dated within months. More importantly, WoW's beauty hasn't suffered for it. Azeroth is stunning.

I've compiled a list of the ten spots I personally find to be most beautiful, and by spots, I truly mean spots, not entire zones. I expect many of you will have wildly differing opinions, and I look forward to reading about them. The ten locations are listed in alphabetical order by zone; there's no way I could actually order them - I would never be able to decide!

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

I'm going to have to humbly beg everyone for their forgiveness for my terrible title pun. Get it?! Okay, but seriously. We know we've got Phat Loot Friday and all that, but Kang's Bindstone is such a neat item that it deserves its own post. The Bindstone is an item that buffs you with a chance to turn an enemy to stone upon delivering a killing blow instead of triggering the normal death effect. Loot and such is unaffected - this is a purely cosmetic item. The buff lasts ten minutes and works against critters, mobs, enemy players, and even bosses.

Kang's Bindstone drops from Kang the Soul Thief, a rare mogu elite in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. He can be found in the far west of the zone, on Autumnshade Ridge north of the Five Sisters site on the map. He's a mogu sorcerer and does some nasty shadow-based attacks, but he should be soloable for a level 90 character. Happy hunting!

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Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

This is a timely forum post, considering our topic the other day we had on our favorite ways to die. Mearl the gnome warrior asks, "What is the silliest thing that's happened to you in Azeroth?" A good number of the responses include people's own goofy deaths, but there are some more unconventional responses, too. I'm quite partial to Hippeaux's reply early on in the thread of the GM who clearly accidentally copied multiple people on a ticket, resulting in a baffling stream-of-consciousness-like list of instructions on how to accomplish a variety of things in game. Suddenly, I long for the day when something similar happens to me!

As for the silliest thing that's ever happened to me in game, well, this isn't strictly silly, but it's a story I laugh about heartily in hindsight. When I was a wee druid, at level 14, I got the quest for swim form. You needed to collect two halves to an amulet, both of which were underwater. The amulet's first half was at the bottom of the lake in Moonglade. Easy peasy, that's where you got the quest!

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor

Mists of Pandaria is chock full of WoW lore, much of it building directly upon events that were set in motion a while ago. Patches 5.1 and 5.2 in particular have been heavy on the story , so if you're either new to the game or haven't paid attention to the lore before, you may be wondering just what in the heck is going on and why! Here at WoW Insider we talk about lore quite a bit, but there are lots of resources out there for the interested player, and it can get overwhelming trying to figure out where to start. Hopefully this compilation will serve as a handy springboard for fellow WoW enthusiasts who are looking to dive headlong into the lore.

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Filed under: Lore

This is a topic I know will get me into trouble. Classic WoW is known as "classic" for a reason, after all. Being the opening foray into the MMO that has since become the standard for the entire industry, WoW's first incarnation is filled with memorable encounters. The raid bosses we battled back then are the yardsticks by which we have judged pretty much everything that has followed.

I know it's tempting to say something like Ragnaros or Onyxia or C'Thun, because those are the big bad end boss fights that remain etched in WoW players' collective consciousness. I've always tried to stay away from the obvious answers, though, because, well, they're obvious. I don't think there's anything particularly interesting I could write about Ragnaros or Onyxia that hasn't already be said better by someone else. When I sat down to brainstorm about this topic, I ran through many of the classic bosses, testing my memories of them, and after a while I hit upon what I knew would be my personal answer to this question: Vaelastrasz the Corrupt.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding

There were a few hotfixes posted earlier this week, on both Monday and Tuesday. On the 29th, both Glorious Conquest Quartermasters took leave from the game for a while. Daxxarri explains in a forum thread that, because Glorious Conquest gear is changing from ilevel 512 to 496, they wanted to remove the vendors before players purchased gear that would end up being a lower ilevel than they bought it for. The change is too big to be implemented via hotfix, so the vendors will be returning with the next major content patch.

The hotfix for yesterday was a nerf to the Lei Shen encounter in the Throne of Thunder for Raid Finder groups. Lei Shen's overall hit points have been reduced by 10%, and the Static Shock effect from the North Conduit now deals only 300,000 damage at zero energy, down from 650,000. That's a big change, and hopefully will make that encounter a little simpler for struggling Raid Finder groups.

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Filed under: News items, Hotfixes, Mists of Pandaria