Posts with tag booty-bay

Today marks the start (and end!) of one of World of Warcraft's most fleeting in-game holidays, Pirates' Day. It's Blizzard's way of honoring International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a "holiday" celebrated almost exclusively by people who like pictures of cats with misspelled words on them.

Are you going to Booty Bay today, even though participating in the holiday isn't required for the What A Long Strange Trip It's Been meta-achievement? (Achievement point junkies can still score 10 points by traveling to Booty Bay and talking to Dread Captain DeMeza.) And do you actually like the holiday, or do you wish it would make like a tree and get outta here?

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Working on achievements? The Overachiever is here to help! Count on us for advice on Azeroth's holidays and special events, including new achievements, how to get 310% flight speed with achievement mounts, and Cataclysm reputation factions and achievements.

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Halloween is over and we're headed towards Thanksgiving, which means it's the time of year that charities everywhere ask you to open up your hearts and wallets and support some good causes. Azeroth United, the recently-formed community for WoW players, just revealed the prizes in their "Hearts, Hands, and Voices" charity giveaway. They're officially supporting Child's Play (they got mentioned on the main website), and your donation there (of $10 or $20) will get you into two tiers of giveaways, featuring prizes of all kinds from all over the WoW community. Sounds like a great chance to both support a good cause and maybe even win some free stuff.

And from our old friend John "BigBearButt" Patricelli comes news of a "Raid for the Cure" -- on Saturday, November 14th, a group of players from both factions will walk in-game on the Kael'thas server from Darnassus to Ratchet (and on to Booty Bay) to raise awareness and funds for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity. Pink shirts will be handed out at the event, and making a donation of any kind over on the WoW page for the charity will enter you in a raffle to win a guest appearance on the Sidhe Devils Gone Wild podcast (a member of that guild has been dealing with breast cancer, and the in-game run is in support of her and her cause).

This is a fun thread over on the forums, and though we've talked about favorite cities a few times before, I like the use of the word "settlement" -- it seems different enough from "city" to consider separately. Your favorite city brings to mind images of metropolises like Stormwind or Orgrimmar, but "settlement" could mean anything -- the Mirage Raceway, way out in the middle of Shimmering Flats (those Goblins probably live there, right?), or the Arrakoa camps around Terrokar Forest. "Settlement" opens up the question a lot, from the biggest cities to the smallest huts on the outsets of Azeroth.

So what's your favorite in-game settlement? Booty Bay and Loch Modan get a lot of votes in the thread. Personally, I kind of like the Westfall Brigade Encampment up in Grizzly Hills -- it was fun wandering around there and seeing the old faces from Westfall. Back in the old world, Lakeshire holds a little fascination for me -- it was the first time in the game that I was out of Elwynn and starting to realize just how big the world really was.

What about you?

Reader Kongzai sent us a tip this morning that the recently revealed loot cards for the next TCG expansion Fields of Honor are available for testing on the PTR. He hotfotted it down to Booty Bay and reports that it is indeed possible to sample the latest loot using the same codes as in previous PTR tests. All you need to do is enter the following when prompted by Landro:

1111 for the Path of Cenarius
2222 for the Ogre Pinata
3333 for the Magic Rooster Egg (aka El Pollo Grande)

Kongzai was also able to shed a little more information on the loot itself. He reports that Path of Cenarius is the common item, coming in stacks of 100 and lasts for five minutes. The Ogre Pinata is, as I predicted, BoP and thirty minute cooldown. He comes with 5000 HP and, when destroyed, leaves a stack of gumballs in his wake which grant a buff that makes you blow bubbles. Awesome. He also told us that El Pollo Grande costs 100g which is not a bad amount for such a cool mount.

This news comes mere hours after Upper Deck posted a loot card preview on their official site featuring screens and the first video of the must-have chicken mount El Pollo Grande.

A Gnome Death Knight appropriately named Nutshell from Mug'thol reported on the forums that he had completed the requirements for the upcoming Achievement Insane in the Membrane. The Achievement, to be implemented in Patch 3.1, requires a character to gain Exalted reputation with the Steamwheedle Cartel (Everlook, Booty Bay, Ratchet, and Gadgetzan), Darkmoon Faire, Ravenholdt, the Shen'dralar, and Honored with the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Unlocking this Achievement also rewards the fitting title 'the Insane', arguably one of the cooler titles in the new patch.

Most of the faction reputations listed aren't easy to grind, particularly the little known Ravenholdt faction in Hillsbrad Foothills. Most players who have been playing for years are unlikely to have considerable reputation with them nor the come-and-go Darkmoon Faire and the Dire Maul-based Shen'dralar. It's an impressive feat for any character, and even more impressive for a Death Knight -- Nutshell might possibly be the first one to complete it. Considering Loremaster Nutshell has 5870 Achievement points to date, it's probably not that surprising the player made the grind. To all of this, Bornakk simply responded, "you're insane."

A little under a week ago we posted the details of the new TCG exclusive loot items, and more recently we've shown off some video. If you haven't heard about it yet, you can actually do yourself one better if you have access to the PTR: You can head down to Booty Bay and test out these items for free!

If you've never traded in a TCG code before, to do it you need to go down to the docks of Booty Bay and look for Landro Longshot. He's flanked by guards, so you can't really miss him. Ask him what he has to offer, select the Blood Of Gladiators set, and put in the following codes for the item you want:

• For the Sandbox Tiger, input the code 1111.
• For the Epic Purple Shirt, input the code 2222.
• For the Foam Sword Rack, input the code 3333.

Easy, isn't it? As of this posting the PTR is down for maintenance, so you'll need to wait until later today to try these out. Worth the wait, though? Certainly.

As much as we enjoyed watching what is arguably the most phenomenally fun bug ever, it should come as no surprise to anyone that exploiting it is a very bad thing. In particular, GMs have been alerted to the bug and are on a keen watch for players who attempt to do it. After Elizabeth Harper's experimentation -- all done in the name of journalistic investigation, we promise -- resident killer Rogue Chase Christian attempted it, too. He was very swiftly messaged by a Game Master informing him that he would be banned if he ever did it again.

The boys over at DeathKnight.info confirm the same thing, not only because it is under close watch by GMs, but because it has serious repercussions for players who are 'pulled' into the wormhole. Players with the temerity to try it out have reported getting stuck in limbo and had to submit tickets to get their characters unstuck. No doubt a deluge of tickets describing suspiciously similar circumstances was more than enough to raise alarms over at Blizzard. So while we enjoyed showing that video of the Death Grip bug, we hope you didn't follow such bad examples. I mean, you didn't, right? Of course not. Good boys and girls.

We received the above video from tipster Jimmynorden (better quality video on Vimeo here) about an absolutely amazing bug with the Death Knight ability Death Grip. If you initiate a duel with a Death Knight who's aboard the ship in Booty Bay while you're standing on the dock, Death Grip will pull you -- not to the ship itself, but all the way across and through the world. Elizabeth Harper has just tried this on live servers ("You get PvP flagged from flying through the arena in Stranglethorn!") and her character finally landed on a random ship in what the map insists is the Alterac Mountains, southeast of where Dalaran used to be.

Death Grip is described as harnessing the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter. They certainly got that part right. I don't have a Death Knight online in my guild right now and I'm really curious to see if this just works in Booty Bay, or if it works wherever there's a ship or zeppelin docked. I'm assuming it's the latter; from my admittedly limited understanding of the game's plumbing, once you're on a ship you're not actually where the map "thinks" you are but rather in some nebulous area without real coordinates before the ship transfers you between servers.

UPDATE: A few guildies and I tried this; you'll find additional results and notes behind the cut.

Elizabeth had time to take a few screenshots, which you'll see below:

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

Oh, snap – literally. Yes, that's Booty Bay, constructed completely from tens of thousands of Legos. It took Astrylian and Raeina, husband and wife WoW players from Eonar and long-time Lego aficionados, about a month to assemble this five-foot masterpiece. While WoW Insider couldn't lend the industrious couple an equivalent 43,000 minutes of fame, as soon as we saw their creative piece de resistance, we decided a solid 15 minutes were definitely in order.

(Warning: This video contains some harsh language.)

Just in time for the weekend, like a quick junket to Vegas,we offer a movie called What Happens in Booty Bay Stays in Booty Bay. The filmmaker, Brigitte Swiftblade, calls this an "RP documentary." I love this format; it's very original. Since she's playing on an RP server, she decides to follow around her pal, Zaitzegrait, and film the consequences while he tries to meet chicks in Booty Bay. Apparently Zait is quite a famous character in Trade chat (US Twisting Nether-A), so it's like she picked a celebrity for a reality show. And, in a way, a "reality show" is really what this movie is since Zait is the only one who knows why the little Dwarf Rogue is following him around so closely. (Her POV is the camera's eye.) Everyone else plays their part to perfection, albeit unbeknownst to them. The subtitles offer insight into the documentary setup and a running non-RP commentary on the action -- or Zait's lack thereof. The result is a very humorous, original movie that contains themes of love, betrayal, honor, and cross-faction hanky-panky. I would love to see more of this kind of documentary movie-making from role-players!

[Via WarcraftMovies]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Tcher on WoW LJ comes through with an interesting change in the Wrath beta: mounts are now usable throughout Booty Bay. Personally, I've never had a problem navigating around there without a mount, but apparently it's a welcome change -- you'll be able to go all around one of the coolest cities in Azeroth without dismounting.

Even more interesting than the change itself, though, is the thinking behind it -- apparently Blizzard is still tweaking where mounts can and can't go. And though it's a small complaint, this has always been an area that's been a little confusing -- why were mounts fine to use in Ironforge but not in Booty Bay? Why weren't ships ever considered "outdoors," but the crates on them are?

At any rate, if Booty Bay stays changed through the updates on the live realms for 3.0, it'll be clear Blizzard is still tangling with their strange definition of "outdoors," and the rules on where mounts can and can't go, even in old Azeroth.

Lone of Bleeding Hollow asks when we'll see architecture, and immediately, a few other players pop up to shout out my answer: we already saw some Egyptian creatures and styles appear around Ahn'Qiraj. But his request for a specific type of architectural style is an interesting one: is there a kind of architecture you haven't seen in game yet that you'd like to?

A few people say they want to see Asian architecture, and as we pointed out a little while back, Darnassus actually borrows a lot from Eastern architecture. I'd like to see a city or village in World of Warcraft with a Northeastern United States, Cape Cod kind of fishing town feel -- Booty Bay is a nice fishing town, but it's a little too far south for my personal tastes. We are heading north for Wrath, however, and since there are not one but two coastal areas open up there, I might just get my wish. Fans of Viking and Norse architecture will also get their fill in Wrath, I'll bet, and consdering the Forsaken, as Neth says in the thread, are getting their own architecture, Gothic style will also be a highlight.

Are there any styles or cultures that you'd like to see represented in Azeroth that haven't been?

We've never seen this one before, but then again, we've never seen a loot item as complicated as that Ethereal Soul-trader before. Blizzard wants to test those new Upper Deck loot items on the PTR, so if you go Landro Longshot in Booty Bay on the test realm only, you can input special test codes for each of the new items: 1111 for the Path of Illidan item, 2222 for the D.I.S.C.O. ball, and 3333 for the one everyone wants: the Ethereal Soul-trader.

The only news coming off of the PTR is that the disco ball object still has the placeholder tag on it ("[PH] Disco ball"), which means the name might be a little more formalized when it actually appears on the live realms. But this testing might answer one of the more pressing questions we've got about the Soul-trader -- we already know that any player (not just the one who summoned it) can exchange the "Etherium" currency that you use to buy items off of the vendor, but does that mean that any players who kill mobs that give experience or honor near the trader can gain currency, or only the person who summoned?

We'd assume that everyone can do it -- in that sense, getting this card is really like opening up a special vendor rather than just getting all the trader's items for yourself. And there's one more bit of news we can take from this: since these cards are going into stores on July 1st, we'll very likely see patch 2.4.3 on the live realms before then. To the PTR!