Posts with tag blacktemple

This should mark an end to this string of world-first posts, and hopefully the poor raiders of Nihilum can get some sleep now. Illidan has now been defeated: the Black Temple is cleared. But how did the fight go? Do you actually kill Illidan, or is it more like the Majordomo Executus fight from MC? At the moment, I don't know, because they haven't uploaded any pictures or information to their site -- no loot, no fight shots, no kill shot. But I'm sure these details will surface soon, and when they do, I'll update this post. For now, I offer one more "congrats" to Nihilum, the current champions of WoW raiding.

Update: loot, via World of Raids; apparently there were also 2 Tier 6 chest tokens. Also, if you look at the killshot above (click for a bigger version), Illy certainly looks dead...

Warning: this post relates what is popularly known as a "world-first" kill. If you are not interested in a certain high-end European raid guild that shall not be mentioned destroying enemies you may not have heard of, read no further. Right. Still here? OK then.

A mere 15 hours after their last kill, the current superstars of WoW PvE have vanquished the one remaining obstacle between them and the big man himself, Illidan. Yes, the Illidari Council is no more. This means they have tonight and tomorrow to try to take down Illy before the raid resets on Wednesday morning (right? Wednesday for EU raids?).

What's the secret to their success, you may ask? Well, Kungen claims "Key to success is 4 rogues in all raids." That's good to hear, as it may assuage some Rogue concerns over being edged out in PvE. According to their site they're working on Illidan as I type this, so good luck, guys, and congrats once again. Check out their site for a nice gallery of Illidan killing everybody, and here's the loot from the Council.

Jeff Green and Sean Molloy of 1up have gone where I know I have never gone before: the Blizzard offices for a tour of the Black Temple. Knowing that it's not likely that I will ever set foot in the instance, this peak into the world that is Illidan's lair is fascinating. To me it looks like a combination of all the Outland instances rolled into one. I caught glimpses of everything from the Hellfire orcs to the Blood Elves of Tempest Keep. Heck, I don't think I'll ever be prepared.

Previously on Moviewatch..

The world first kills continue. First, Nihilum brought their PTR skillz out to the live servers, and rocked four bosses in one night. Then, they dropped three more just for fun. And now, other guilds are getting in on the action.

Curse reports that Forte from EU Kazzak took out Anetheron in Mount Hyjal on Saturday evening, winning them the world first on that one. Then, on Sunday, Nilhilum (on EU Magtheridon) and Curse (on EU Vek-nilash) both headed into Hyjal, and downed Anetheron and Kaz'rogal-- and this time, Curse picked up the world first on Kaz.

MMO Champion has more, including deets on all the kills (and the fact that Curse also picked up Supremus and High Warlord Naj'entus in the Black Temple-- with only 22 players in the raid!), and screenshots for every kill. So grats to Curse, Forte and especially Nihilum on all their achievements this weekend.

What does all this mean for us casual players? While usually a world first kill means not much more than a tip of the hat, so many kills like this in one weekend might be a sign that Blizzard is getting serious about making the endgame more friendly to casual players. If these hardcore guilds can burn through this content so quickly, it's probably not long before we see more casual guilds moving up the ladder behind them, right?

Nihilum, never ones to rest on their laurels, tore through Tempest Keep and claimed the head of Kael'thas Sunstrider in a bold sweep that landed them the world first kill on live servers. From there, they finished the Mt. Hyjal attunement quest, and then proceeded to peek their heads in and see what was up in Hyjal. Just to send a warning shot to the other bosses that it was just a matter of time, they decided to tear Rage Winterchill a new one and leave his corpse behind as a warning. Due to a bug in that fight, Tigole had to get involved and reimburse them as only one of the items for Black Temple attunement dropped -- as opposed to the 25 expected.

With those items in hand, they headed towards the Black Temple, finished up the attunement chain, and then took down both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus in a one-two punch based on their hard work learning the strategies on the PTRs. In one evening, they secured four World First kills on live servers, thereby proving their dedication to the destruction of endgame content.

[via Nihilum]

On the PTR, it was really easy to get attuned to the big new tier 6 raid, the Black Temple. All you had to do was be at least Honored with the Violet Eye and talk to Johnny McWeaksauce, and you'd get the amulet that served as a key. So it actually never occurred to me to wonder what the attunement process would be like in the live patch.

In case you were wondering, however, wonder no more. MMO-Champion has all the details (plus screenshots), courtesy of Arthyn from Vanquish (A-Staghelm). In short, you have to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress (a boss in Serpentshrine Cavern) and Al'ar (a boss in the Eye). The detailed version is after the cut, for reasons of length and spoileriness.

Update: apparently, Karathress and Al'ar are just the first parts of the attunement chain. After Al'ar, you have to kill Rage Winterchill, the first Hyjal boss, and even that may not be the end -- we'll just have to see. World of Raids has screenshots of the new quests.

As announced yesterday, patch 2.1 has gone live this morning. It brings many, many changes; here are some highlights:

• Almost every level 70 epic buffed
• Big Alchemy changes
  
• Black Temple and Mount Hyjal raids
• Druid epic flight form
• New zones: Ogri'la, Skettis, Etherium Prison
• Netherdrakes
• Talent changes for Paladins, Shamans, and Rogues
• Battleground matching system
• Ruins of Lordaeron arena

That's just the big stuff -- there's tons more. For well-organized compendia of 2.1 information, check MMO-Champion or World of Raids. The full patch notes are as usual available at Blizzard's site; if you can't get there, I have them mirrored on our site (in three parts, because the notes are ridiculously long: 1, 2, 3). And if you can't get the patch downloader to work, WoWWiki has a list of patch mirrors.

Most realms were supposed to come back up at 11:00 AM PDT; there was a bit of a delay, although most realms appear to be up now. However, some realms needed extended maintenance, and are expected to come up at 2:00 PM PDT. Those realms are listed after the cut.

For those of you who didn't want to wander through the extremely long transcript for the Stratics House of Commons Dev Chat in the last post, I thought I would point out one extremely pertinent bit. According to Tigole, Kalgan, Drysc and Eyonix, patch 2.1 is going live tomorrow morning to all servers.

If you've been holding off on running the torrent, or meaning to look for that patch mirror site but never got around to it, you might want to get that download started. In either case, patches generally mean strange bugs and rolling restarts, if not an extended downtime in the first place. Best to prepare for an extended WoW jones now and some frustration as the bugs get worked out of the system.

Me? I've got my World of Warcraft home game, WoW Insider, and caffeine. I'm ready to face patch day!

What kind of things do you do on patch day? Have any particular things you do on maintenance Tuesdays like the WoW LJ community does with their Caturday - Servers Screwed thread? Share your tips and save your fellow WoW players from boredom tomorrow!

Edited to add: Yep, Drysc confirmed extended downtime:

From the guilds Drama and Curse on the PTR comes some more Black Temple loot! This stuff is amazing, folks! Both guilds have succeeded in slaying two bosses of the Black Temple instance, and I'd like to give you a preview of the loot. How about a 100.2 DPS One-Hand Axe? Or a high-stat crossbow? Or, maybe some resto-shaman gears? Check out all the linked gear so far, here.

One of the biggest things I noticed about the few healing gears linked so far were the perma-haste casting effects on-equip. This could be a huge hint at what's to come, where you may need to get those big heals down to under one-second cast times. I'm very excited to see more from the PTR.

On a different note, another quest has been reported: The head of Magtheridon is a quest item that is turned into Thrallmar or Honor Hold. Like the heads of Onyxia and Nefarion, the quest turn-in gives a zone-wide buff: "In Hellfire Peninsula and Hellfire Citadel, increases Honor Hold/Thrallmar reputation gained from killing monsters by 10%." Here is a snippet of the quest dialogue:

Many of us have been curious to see just how Illidan would look when he was actually in-game as opposed to data-mined from the PTR client and then previewed through the WoW model viewer. Well, several brave souls from the PTR have managed to locate him in the Black Temple and have sent back the above screen shot of the man Night Elf-Demon himself in game. The reports are that he's roughly as tall as Onyxia large, but not overly so, yet extremely imposing when you're standing face-to-err ... hooves.

The rumor from the peanut gallery says that when he gets to 20%, he despawns saying only "A terrible and costly mistake you have made. It is not my time, mortals."

[via Curse, with a video size confirmation from Ysona]

Sometimes you don't have to slay a dragon, topple a kingdom or save the world to be famous in Azeroth. Sometimes you can just be a total bastard. So today we're featuring Teron Gorefiend -- Death Knight, deceptive questgiver, Black Temple boss and all-around badass.

Who: Teron Gorefiend.

What: Formerly an orc warlock, now an orc warlock's spirit in the body of an undead human knight, aka a Death Knight.

History: Teron Gorefiend was a member of the Shadowmoon Clan of orcs, based in Shadowmoon Valley. Along with his clan's leader, Ner'Zhul, he turned from the shamanistic legacy of the orcs into the dark teachings of the warlocks. Eventually, Ner'Zhul broke a pact he had made with the Burning Legion demon lord Kil'Jaeden and went on to a bright future as the Lich King. His apprentice, Gul'Dan, took up where he had left off and organized the orc clans into a single entity with a council of powerful warlocks supporting it, known as the Shadow Council. Gorefiend joined up with the Council.

During the first war against the Alliance, Gorefiend and the Shadow Council manipulated events from behind the scenes, including the assassination of King Llane Wrynn. But Gul'Dan overreached when he tried to gain secrets from the mind of Medivh, ending up trapped in a coma when Medivh died. Orgrim Doomhammer, chief of the Blackrock Clan, figured that it was time for a coup. Doomhammer killed the Shadow Council's puppet warchief and slaughtered as many Shadow Council warlocks as he could -- including Gorefiend.

Never heard of Deathwing? Well, I suppose you can be forgiven -- he's not currently in the game. However, Deathwing (also known as Neltharion), the former leader of the Black Dragonflight plays a big part in Warcraft lore. Despite the fact that he's not currently to be found in Azeroth, there's a lot of speculation as to where Deathwing might be. Grim Batol, where he was last seen? Returned to his long-empty lair? Or perhaps he's truly dead? Well, new information coming from the public test realms suggest that Deathwing may be back. BlizzPlanet is reporting that in the Black Temple, the NPC Lady Sinestra has a dialog referring to "the master" -- presumably Deathwing.

Still curious? Full text of the dialog after the jump.

By now, you've probably seen the Tier 6 shots (if not, you've got to read Elizabeth's great critiques of them all), but here they are in all of their full-motion glory. Yes, even the Warlock (lol) set. Don't watch this if you're not into spoilers, especially because there's a little surprise at the end...

Was it just me, or did the Paladin set just look like weird flat spikes before? Here, you can see it's actually glowy. And it's awesome to see the eyes on the Hunter set blink, although I think that if I ever did get my Hunter to the point where he could wear and obtain those shoulders, all that blinking would annoy me after a while. The Mage's head just looks all pointy. But oh yes, that Shaman set does look awesome. You hear that, guild? We've got to get to the Black Temple... it will be mine.

Tier 6 is out and about on the forums, so it's time for everyone to do their best Joan Rivers imitations (especially the undead, who are halfway there already) and critique the sets. Boubouille has been nice enough to link us to all the Tier 6 skins in his massive 2.1.0 info collection, so I'll be using his skins as the basis for the criticism. Ready to get bitchy? Let's go!

MMO-Champion is at it again (Boubouille has just been doing a bangup job showing off content from this 2.1 patch!), and this time, he's somehow delved into the Black Temple and pulled out screengrabs of (most of) the bosses. As of this writing, there's no Illidan grabs yet, but that may still be coming.

Since we killed the site off the last time we linked to it, I've gone ahead and mirrored the Boss shots: Here's High Warlord Naj'entus (he's the Naga-looking thing we saw last time), Supremus, Teron Gorefiend (judge me by my size, do you?), Gurtogg Bloodboil (the best looking one, in my opinion), Mother Shahraz, and Essence of Souls (the last one appears to be an encounter of sorts, and it's probably where that three faced boss-- Desire, Grief, Anger-- appears).

Boubouille has also grabbed a layout of the class trinkets available at the Exalted levels of the Ashtongue Deathsworn rep, so you can know right now what you're going to be working for. I have to admit that all the content looks sweet, but just like all really high level content, I wonder how many people are actually going to see it. The Black Temple seems fun, but to tell the truth, I'm actually looking forward to the Ogri'la and Sethekk quest areas more.