Posts with tag cat-beta

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

The Queue is as good a place as any to solicit feedback, right? Sure, why not! Readers, in addition to whatever questions you might have for us to tackle, we would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations for Cataclysm content you'd like to see either before or during the expansion's launch. Is there anything you're dying to know? Something you just don't feel prepared for the expansion without? We'd love to hear it!

Now, to the Q&A!

JoJa asked:

I have a trio of level 80 characters decked out in a mix of ICC, TOC, and badge gear. I've recently returned to playing a favorite alt, however, and I'm thinking about making it my main in Cataclysm. I keep reading about how hard the mobs hit in the leveling zones of Cataclysm. Will I be able to take my alt in a mix of quest greens and dungeon blues directly to the first Cataclysm starting zone? Or will I have to grind for iLevel 232 badge gear just to stay alive in the new zones?

Hyjal and Vashj'ir aren't too bad as far as damage is concerned. You don't start getting your face rocked off until Deepholm. Taking Wrath greens into the two starting zones won't be an issue at all. You'll replace all of your Wrath greens with Cataclysm greens before you're done with them, and then you'll be prepared for Deepholm.

Want to ask Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack questions about Cataclysm? Well, you can, this Thursday on the Best Buy gaming forums. Straight from Best Buy:

This Thursday, Nov 18 at 4pm Pacific (12am GMT) Best Buy is hosting a live chatroom Q&A with Blizzard's Tom Chilton (Game Director) and J. Allen Brack (Production Director) about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The event is open to the public but is limited to 500 participants.

The chatroom will be hosted on the Best Buy Forums here: http://bbyurl.us/CataclysmCHAT. A forum account is required to participate. If you don't make it in under the 500-user limit, check out the overflow broadcast on Ustream: http://ustream.tv/channel/wowdevchat

Might be a good time to ask about your pet issue, like worgen females, ret paladin DPS, or cosmetic slots.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

---

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Welcome to the third and final column exploring the various pros and cons of raid size in WoW's upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Before we talk about the final category, let's recap.

In part 1, I examined the various gameplay considerations that come along with the different sizes.

Gameplay

• We can only speculate about relative difficulty.
• 10-man raids offer fewer options for dealing with specific boss abilities and/or adds.
• Position-based abilities are easier to deal with in 10s.
• Player deaths are not as crippling in 25-mans.
• It's easier to cover for someone else's mistake with 25 players.

In part 2, I talked about the logistics involved in running each size and the rewards you can obtain from them.

Logistics

• A 25-man raid requires an intense recruiting effort.
• "Cat herding" is flat-out easier in 10-man raids.
• More raiders mean more attendance issues and technical issues.
• Subbing is easier in a larger raid.
• Scheduling difficulties are easier to manage with more players.
• Loot is easier to distribute in 10-man.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today is another one of those days where I just can't think of something interesting to say as an introduction. So ... how about that Q&A, huh?

Croe asked:

Are the sea turtles you fish up in Northrend going to be useful for getting around in Cataclysm in the initial stages?

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

What, he gets to use my full name but I can't use his? Thanks for covering for me yesterday, Alex. Red-eye flights suck.

Raful asked:

I don't know if this have been answered before, but will the honor and justice points that we get at level 80 be reset when we're at 85?

They won't reset, though the cap of 4,000 may be lifted when Cataclysm launches, since that's only like ... an item and a half, with badge gear prices at 85 in mind.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're discussing the ins and outs of the frost tree, the mage tree wherein you learn to conjure delightful snow cones from the air around you, and then how to hurl those icy treats into your opponent's face at 1,000 feet per second. It's like a winter miracle that kills you.

Whenever I do these kinds of things, where we explore each of the three mage trees on consecutive weeks, it seems like the frost tree always goes last kind of by default. In the English-speaking world, we read left to right, we tend to organize things on a page in left-to-right fashion, and until Simon's Quest came along and screwed everything up as awesomely as possible, we played our video games from left to right. Frost's the tree on the right, so it always ends up last, while arcane somehow always gets to go first.

It isn't fair, so what we're doing here is giving the usual way of things a big middle finger. Last week, we hit the fire tree, and this week we're going frost. Arcane will have to wait until next week. Take that, conformity! I feel like we've really done something here. Society will be better because of this column. I really believe that.

After the jump, we'll look at each and every talent in the frost tree in turn, picking them apart for nutrients, then squeezing the rest into a fine paste to use as a crude adhesive. Yes, once we're done with the frost tree, we should have the raw materials to feed our family and also to build a small hut.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

As I write this, it's 3:15 a.m. here in Wisconsin. About 30 minutes ago, I was comfortably in bed, drifting off to sleep. Then I heard a familiar sound coming from my iPhone -- someone was sending me instant messages over AIM! You see, I keep AIM logged in on my phone just in case the staff needs me in a hurry, especially on weekends. So I rolled over and groped blindly for my phone. What happened? Did WoW Insider burn down while I wasn't looking? Did we get news of another domain change? Did someone put a hilarious .GIF in our virtual war room?

It was Michael Sacco. "Hey Alex, can you write The Queue for me tomorrow?"

"I'm in bed, Mike. I am literally in bed. Right now. Sleeping."

"Yeah. OK. Can you write it?"

So here I am. Writing The Queue. Because that's what friends do.

bubbap51 asked:

What will be the best way to grind worgen/goblin rep?

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community.

I've been having a blast lately on the Cataclysm beta. I managed to sneak into a few raids on both 10- and 25-player raids. Even better? I got to do it as holy! While I was interested in seeing how I could cope with the new healing mechanics, my primary purpose was to evaluate what the overall healing game would be like in a raiding environment. It isn't enough for me to see the posts and see the numbers or the discussion. I myself need to be in there and do it. I figured while I was at it, I could record a video of a few encounters and do direct comparisons between 10s and 25s, along with detailing the challenges with both.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

Honestly, I have no idea if it's hot or not. I'm writing this Queue from the Atlanta airport at 6:30 in the morning after a red-eye from California, and I still have another flight to go.

Pancakes asked:

What's to become of draenei paladin chargers (or at least, what happened on beta)? I know we're getting elekks when 4.0.3 rolls around, but do we get to keep our horsies?
No, your horses turn into elekks. If you're concerned, don't be -- the Great Exarch's Elekk looks really cool.

One of the many nice things that Cataclysm is doing for the low-level quester is finally getting rid of the level 1 to 60 "clown suit." Every 10-level range has its own specific set of matching quest rewards, giving you a unique look every handful of zones. And they don't look half bad! In fact, some of the sets look pretty darn cool. Speaking from experience, leveling from 1 to 60 in the beta was a lot more exciting, not just due to the new quests and mechanics, but also because I couldn't wait to see what my new gear would look like when I hit a new leveling milestone.

Check out the full picture with all of Cataclysm's low-level armor sets, courtesy of reader Frez, after the break.

Short and sweet here, folks: Blizzard has announced that race changes to goblins and worgen will be available immediately upon Cataclysm launch. That's 12:01 a.m. PST Dec. 7. Additionally, there will no longer be any achievements for being the first of your race to hit level 85; the achievements are now class-only.

Great news for people who want to switch from their terrible male night elf druid into a dashing (literally) male worgen druid, or basically anyone who's tired of playing a troll of either gender.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Last week, I received an email asking me for my thoughts on raid size in Cataclysm. As it turns out, I have quite a few thoughts -- three columns' worth, in fact, covering four different categories: gameplay, logistics, rewards and intangibles. My goal is to help officers and their guild members to choose which raid size is best suited for their guild. A week ago, I wrote about the gameplay category.

This week's column will cover two topics that have been linked together throughout the history of the game. From the very beginning of WoW, Blizzard has made a connection between more difficult logistics and greater rewards. Molten Core, Onyxia, and later 40-man raids rewarded the best available gear in their respective heydays. Throughout The Burning Crusade and Wrath, 25-man content yielded the best items. For Cataclysm, this paradigm is shifting.

Let's take a look at the logistics involved with the two raid sizes and the rewards that each size offers.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

---

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

Ayasumonk provided today's header image, a reflection on the cruelty of Russian circuses. Not really.

A_V asked:

Are the guild-earned new heirlooms in Cata going to be the only accessible heirlooms available to level from 80 to 85? Because my partner and I have a private guild on one server for the two of us that consists of just our few 80s and little alts. If the heirlooms are deep into the guild levels, will we still be able to access them with just the two of us running around?
Yes, only the helm and cape heirlooms are currently known to work past level 80, and it might take a bit of time for a two-person guild to unlock them. Bear in mind that you'll likely also have guild perks to boost your experience gain at that point.