Posts with tag breakfast

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The smell of sizzling bacon. The sound of the toaster as it launches your toast into the air at high speeds, and the short, minor feeling of awesome that you get as you catch the toast in mid-air. The gentle sound of milk pouring over your favorite cereal, with perhaps a sprinkling of sugar on top. The excellent taste of (no pulp) orange juice. And, of course, the WoW Insider Breakfast Topic.

A good breakfast is key to the beginning of any adventure, be it into the real world filled with stress and tension, or the World of Warcraft filled with dangerous creatures and beings who seek to do you harm. It's intimidating enough on a full stomach, and on an empty one, it's just asking for trouble. Grabbing a bit of toast -- or heaven forbid, a Pop Tart -- on the way out of the house is a poor way to start the day indeed. A true breakfast requires attention to detail and a seat at a table -- and perhaps a bit of discussion on your favorite blog.

What is your ideal breakfast? A bit of toast, perhaps an egg or two? Perhaps cold cereal, milk, and maybe a sprinkling of sugar? Whatever your meal, prepare it well, and start your day right with your fellow adventurers here at the Breakfast Topic table.

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Meet Sylvanas. She's about ten weeks old, and she awfully likes to gnaw on bones and my slippers. I'm aware that makes me a giant dork. I probably should have thought twice about naming my puppy after Sylvanas, but it's an awful lot of fun to point out things like "Sylvanas snores." My favorite is "Sylvanas has been sleeping with me and my wife all week." I know, I have the sophomoric sense of humor of a twelve year old.

But, really, Sylvie's adorable. However, I couldn't make this post if all I were doing was saying I named my dog after World of Warcraft. No, no, I'm going much further. Instead of telling her to "sit," I'm training her to plant her butt when she's told "Lok'tar." (That's not a very Orc-like use of the phrase, I know, but it's still very endearing.) "Ogar" is her command to "heel."

I'd like to pretend I'll eventually have Sylvia trained to a precision level like any good hunter pet. But for now, I'm just going to be satisfied if I can get her to stop chewing my slippers.

Tonight, after Trials of the Grand Crusader (four down, bug to go) we decided to hop onto some alts, which led to back to back TotC 10 on my DK and Shaman. Then back to back Ony 10, also on the DK and Shaman. And because I'd spent hours in TotGC 25 on my warrior before that, by the end of the night, I had no idea what class abilities I had anymore. Between popping Army of the Dead when they called for Heroism (it's bound to the same key) to trying desperately to use Chains of Ice when asked to Frost Shock the Ret Pally, I was in rare form. And it wasn't just me, either: the druid healer is usually a mage, the warlock raids as a priest, and the holy paladin healing the second Ony attempt has something like 10 alts at 80. I'm surprised he even knows where he is. We got it all done, mind you, but you can really tell the difference in smoothness between our mains and our alts, even as well geared as the alts often are.

So now I put it to you, gentle readers. Do you ever suffer from class bleedover? Are you ever on your druid finding yourself mashing the Consecration button, or on your Mage trying to use Hymn of Hope? Or do you find it easy to keep it all straight?

BlizzCon is just a day away now! WoW.com staffers are gonna be haunting the grounds in full force and are likely to leave some ectoplasmic residue (read: drool) on a number of demo tables and panel floors, depending on what's announced and shown at the event. And the announcements are, at least for most everyone but Blizzard, still a mystery. Popular opinion (and the ability to put two and two together) seems to indicate the unveiling of a new WoW expansion, but why stop there? After all, there are three other games that Blizzard is working on -- or so they say -- so it's quite possible that we'll see some big ol' infodrops about those titles too.

Or maybe Blizzard will through us for a loop and treat us to two days of Premonition raids and panels about J. Allen Brack's ponytail. It is a mystery!

So what are you holding out for? StarCraft II release date? Diablo 3 bombshell? Next-gen MMO reveal? Glossy eight-by-tens of Zarhym in shades and a leather jacket (so dreamy)?

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.

I wasn't terribly thrilled with Death Knights when I first saw them. I didn't like the idea of yet another plate class (since I play a lot of warriors), and their whole "recently freed from the thrall of the Lich King" deal didn't do all that much for me. They didn't seem that different from Paladins, to be frank (which is because they're not: thematically, they're the old D&D Anti-Paladin/Blackguard idea) and although I dabbled with them from time to time, I didn't think I'd go the distance.

The first crack in that sense of disdain for the class was the starting zone experience. Anyone who's done it knows it's one heck of a well designed start to finish piece of gameplay. It was so well done, in fact, that I actually rerolled several DK's in an attempt to find the one race I really liked, secure in the knowledge that not only would I start at level 55 and be Outland ready by the end, but I'd enjoy the trip. After that, I blew through Outland on a Tauren, Gnome, Draenei and Dwarf before finally settling on my Night Elf here. Heirloom shoulders made the already painless starting zone even more rapid and Outland fell away like a solid fuel booster rocket lifting me to Northrend before I'd even finished Nagrand.

Now here I am at level 80, and for once I actually have a third alt at max level (not counting the old days when I had four level 60/level 70 warriors - I'm sad to report I only have three 80 warriors now) of a different class. Gearing the DK's been interesting, and as I've run myself through various content my DPS has been steadily increasing, my understanding of my specs steadily expanding (frankly, I love Blood as a DPS spec, it has so many cooldowns for AoE damage and a nice bag of tricks without being as fiddly as Unholy, and I can't say enough good things about Frost as a tank spec) - I have to admit, I've totally turned around on DKs. They're awfully broken in my eyes (even after the most recent nerfs to their cooldowns and tanking health) but I cannot pretend to be having a bad time playing the class.

So now I turn to you. What class turned out to be a surprise hit with you once you tried it out?

If there's one thing I've learned in the time I've spent playing WoW, it's that people are serious about the cute (and useless) tagalong polygonal pals we call non-combat pets. Blizzard apparently likes them too, since we got ten new ones with the launch of 3.1, as well as achievements to give you even more of them for hitting pet-number milestones. There are enough pets for you to fill every bag slot with them, and enough people who collect 'em to warrant pet toy vendors and whole websites dedicated to 'em.

But I'm not satisfied! In fact, I'll never be satisfied -- not until I get a non-combat Talbaby pet. I even did Blizzard the favor of designing it. See? Who wouldn't want that adorable ungulate following them around? NO ONE. THAT'S WHO.

How about you guys? Is there a specific type of non-combat pet, brand-new model or tiny version of an in-game model alike, you'd love to see? Is there a baby version of some fearsome beast you've scarcely lived without this whole time?

In a stunning twist, we actually didn't experience any catastrophic failures in regard to the BlizzCon ticket purchases yesterday morning. Any of you who were around for last year's fiasco know why it's so surprising! In fact, the only real issue we can think of is that there just weren't enough tickets for all of us to buy this go-'round. Not even Matt "Matthew" ""Matticus"" "Low", the Smartest Blogger, was bright enough to purchase extra tickets. Thankfully, half of eBay was, so we can still (defeated though we are) purchase them for a million dollars. Or we can wait two weeks.

So, what about you guys? Do you like the new ticket queue system? Did you get your BlizzCon tickets? If not, are you determinedly planning on trying again on the 30th, sulking about and eating pints of cookie dough ice cream until then, or swearing off WoW completely and running away to live in a convent? We should know! You should tell us!

It doesn't take Mind Vision to determine that I'm really, really excited for 3.1, and of all of its features, the Ulduar raid has me enthralled the most. I love new raids, and after all this time running Naxx, I'm ready to move on to a bigger and badder place. It doesn't hurt that everything I've heard about Ulduar sounds great! 14 bosses, hard modes, optional bosses, getting launched onto the back of a giant fire-breathing robot ... I honestly can't think of any negatives about the place. I guess it's just what I needed.

Of course, I haven't played it yet. But soon, very soon, the PTR will go live and I'll be able to bask in all of its brass-and-marble glory. And you won't be able to shut me up about it if you try. If you can't beat me, though, you should consider joining me there.

I'm aware, of course, that raiding's not for everyone, and that some people don't want encounters spoiled for them before they go live. So what about you guys? Are you looking forward to checking out Ulduar for yourself on the PTR? Gonna wait until it hits live WoW to try it out? Or do you just not care about Titantown too much?

THESE QUESTIONS AND MORE ANSWERED (BY YOU) IN THIS, THE BREAKFAST TOPIC.

Man, WoW just throws so many items at us. They're greens, blues, and purples. They're vendor trash and they're enchanting mats. They all fill up our bags and our hours in the game. They drive our raid attendance and our questing time. And some, out of all of those thousands of items, mean something to us. We've all got our cherished items, ones that we can't bring ourselves to get rid of.

This breakfast topic isn't about what we don't want to get rid of, though! This is about what we can't freaking get rid of no matter how hard we try.

The General forums were graced with Blue presence in a thread asking just what the oldest item you still use is. The OP mentioned that theirs was Dabiri's Enigma, a tanking trinket they've been trying to get rid of since they day they got it back in Netherstorm. Unsuccessfully, of course.

What about you guys? What have you been trying to replace, upgrade from, or downright throw away since Light-knows-when?

Let's face it, World of Warcraft is a big game. Nine classes with a new one on the way, ten races, each with all unique spells and abilities, over fifty zones to explore and soon a new continent, each with more quests, baddies, and precious loot than we can count. With so many details a virtual world like WoW has, just how the heck do you keep track of everything? Everyone has certain goals in mind for their characters.

• Be a master of a certain profession
• Be exalted reputation with certain factions
• Quests you want to go back and do (I'm with you completionists!)
• A wish list of goodies to be gotten and exactly what you need to get'em.

Do you go for the casual approach and just store it in your noggin? Or maybe you've lined your monitor with so many sticky notes you can barely see your character. Perhaps you're the obsessively anal type and keep a notebook binder or excel document handy at all times? Myself, I'm guilty of using an online application called Backpack to keep my profession notes and wish lists in order. Share with us in the comments how you keep track of all your WoW information!

WoWWiki defines a hybrid class as a class that "combines the abilities of other base classes." That encompasses Paladins (Warrior + Priest), Druids (Warrior + Rogue + Priest + Mage), and Shaman (Priest + Mage + some sort of melee). Priests could also be considered hybrids in their own right, as they can heal well or put out good dps in Shadowform. My question to you this morning is: how well do hybrid classes work in WoW? For instance, the Druid is commonly described as a "jack of all trades;" the second half of the phrase is of course "master of none." Are Druids and other hybrid classes really not as good at any given role as single-role classes? Should they be?