Posts with tag collectibles

I'm not usually a collector in World of Warcraft, mostly because when I start collecting I want to collect everything in true "gotta catch em all" style. It's a dangerously time-consuming hobby, and so I often avoid it by not collecting in the first place. But every now and then Blizzard throws something into the game -- whether it's a mount, a pet, a piece of gear, or a toy that I just need to have.

Case in point: Hogs, the Hogger-alike pet that we'll be able to collect for WoW's 10th anniversary. The description alone is enough to get me: "Tenacious and terrible, the mighty Hogs slaughters weaker enemies without hesitation." Doesn't he sound adorable? Or if not adorable, at least tiny and fierce which is something my gnome monk can certainly relate to. And since he's presumably going to be handed out to anyone who logs on during the anniversary, this will be a lot easier to collect than some of my other must-haves, like Deathcharger's Reins.

But tell me, readers -- what are your must-have WoW collectables? Is there anything on your list you've been trying to get but just can't?

---

This announcement kills two Tallstriders with one stone -- we get more information on both what's in the BlizzCon 2013 goody bag, and what the Cute But Deadly stuff is all about! As many folks have already guessed, Cute But Deadly is a new line of Blizzard universe-themed figurines and, as the name implies, they are adorable representations of their horrifically menacing counterparts. For now, at least.

The BlizzCon limited edition figurines include Arthas, Kerrigan, and Diablo, and are the Cute But Deadly kickoffs. I imagine they're only available through the BlizzCon goody bags, and they kick off what's sure to be a popular new set of Blizzard collectibles. Just look at Diablo's little face!

Editor's Note: Kerrigan is cute, too.

---

Those cute little in-game pets -- they're not so innocent. Once you allow one of the little buggers to slip past your legs and dash into the house, there's no getting all those muddy little paw prints off the floor (or the couch). Is there anybody out there who can harden their heart after just one? I'm afraid to even dip a toe into those waters, fearful that Lil' Ragnaros will begin bellowing "By PayPal be purged!" as my pet tab ticks inexorably upward. Indeed, I whisked him from my Amazon wish list the morning I realized in horror that should someone ever bestow me with his code, the door would stand wide open to the rest of his irresistible little friends.

So how are you fine, upstanding consumers coping with the pressure? Have you snatched up a brand new Swift Windsteed? Do purchasable pets and mounts hold no interest for you? Do you pick and choose? Collect them all?

---

Originally previewed at BlizzCon 2009, the new collectible n00bz figures are now in the Blizzard online store. These are small, customizable action figures that are available in either a blank version or in a variety of pre-painted models from murlocs to ghouls and even Ragnaros himself. Blizzard has said they'll slowly be releasing more of these little guys as time goes on and has already offered a limited-edition n00b this past BlizzCon of Raynor from StarCraft.

So, check out the n00bz and send us your pictures of them in strange places, or grab some blank n00bz and paint up your own. If you're looking for some ideas, here is a gallery of some custom n00bz that were on display at BlizzCon this past year.

A tipster named James sent us a pointer to store.wowhead.com a little while ago, and as a few people have noticed since, the Wowhead store is now open for business! Here's what they're selling:

• Official Wowhead merchandise (a t-shirt, a hoodie, and a mousepad, so far - does anyone still use mousepads?)
• WoW paraphernalia, like those steins, and some LapWorks and Steelseries hardware products.
• Some random gaming hardware that seems to have nothing to do with WoW, like Guitar Hero for PS2, and Xbox 360 accessories. It is at a discount, though, so that's cool.
• The Burning Crusade collector's edition. I guess they had some extra copies [now seems to be sold out].

One interesting feature of the store is "reward points." Every item you can buy gets you a certain number of reward points; the amount loosely correlates with price, but I couldn't determine a direct correspondence from one to the other. Basically they idea is: buy stuff, earn points, spend points on rewards. So far the rewards consist of the original WoW and the various Wowhead merchandise, and the points add up fast - as the site points out, a $30 Xbox controller nets you enough points for a copy of WoW, and almost enough for a t-shirt.

For the technically inclined, I inquired about the underlying technology of the shop. The front-end work is all in-house, and so should hold true to the beautiful Wowhead aesthetic, but the e-commerce engine is the popular open-source platform Magento.

Blizzard has announced that they've partnered with a company called Windlass Studios to release real-life versions of a couple popular in-game banners and tabards. $40 will get you a banner of the Alliance or Horde, while $80 will get you a real-life faction tabard to wear. Each of the pieces is apparently 100% cotton, and silkscreened with the familiar faction insignia. Very interesting -- we've seen some nice fanmade pieces before, but these are commercial releases bearing official logos.

The company has also released a latex rubber version of Frostmourne -- it's not quite as nice as the Epic Weapons metal version, but then again, it's $149, and the metal version is over $400. I still wouldn't spend over $100 on a rubber sword, but hey, if that's your thing, there you go. And speaking of spending money on rubber costumes, the Blizzard store is also chock full of Halloween costumes this year, and there are a few other masks, including Illidan and a new Draenei mask, floating around the Internet for purchase as well.

I don't have a lot of detail on this, but the news from Comic-Con is that Blizzard is finally starting to sell gold! Collectible WoW-inspired gold, silver, and copper coins, that is. What did you think I was talking about?

They'll come in both Horde and Alliance versions, and are being made by DC Unlimited. DC also handles the WoW comic, so that's unsurprising. If we hear anything more on pricing and/or availability, we'll be sure to let you know.

DC has officially announced their latest series of World of Warcraft action figures, and while there are only four figures shown off so far, they look awesome. These are the same figures we saw in the coverage of the New York Comic Con -- there's Lo'gosh (better known as Varian Wrynn, the new King of Stormwind), Hunter Alathea Moonbreeze and her pet Sorna, a demon form Illidan (hot!), and Rottingham, a Ghoul. We've got pictures of all the new figures in our gallery below.

Unfortunately, we aren't going to see this for sale for a long, long time -- DC has the date of release set as October 28, 2009. That doesn't really seem right to us (they only want to release four figures this year?), but that's what they say, so we'll go with it. Still, that Illidan figure looks awesome. The Hunter would be cute, and Lo'gosh would be nice to have if you're a fan of the comic book series, but Illidan is definitely the standout so far. Also check out all of our other DC figure galleries after the break.

By now you have surely heard of the new Achievements system set up for Wrath of the Lich King. While this will finally give collectors an extra incentive and reward, players are a bit worried about their bag space.

It was announced recently that non-combat pets and mounts would take up no bag space in Wrath, and instead, the item that currently houses the pet will serve to teach you a spell for summoning the pet, and then disappear.
While this is a huge weight off of the shoulders of many players, when reading through the current list of Achievements, one begins to wonder where all of their tabards, battleground tokens, badges, holiday items, epics, trinkets, and the like are going to go.

Although we don't have information regarding the storage of every item we'll soon be collecting, Tigole made the following statement:

Your bags will be ok. I promise. Pets, Mounts, Heroic Badges, BG Tokens are all getting storage space.

I wonder how badges and tokens are getting storage space. Surely, they cannot be turned into spells, and I don't have room for bags specifically dedicated to only one or the other, so I'm definitely interested to know what they have up their sleeves, and if any other collectible items will get similar treatment.

Upper Deck has sent news of the newest loot items in the WoW TCG, and yowza they're neat. These will all come in the new expansion, called The Hunt for Illidan and launching July 1st.

• The Path of Illidan, which is a super common loot card (like the Pet Biscuits), and will enable players to leave glowing green footprints around Azeroth and Outland as they walk around.
• D.I.S.C.O., which creates a disco party anywhere, along with a disco ball, lights, and music.
• And finally, most interesting, the Ethereal Soul-trader, who is a full-size Ethereal as a pet. Additionally, this card is actually a whole slew of items in one -- the Soul-trader will give you currency for creatures killed while summoned, which can then be traded off for other prizes, including special foodstuffs, a special alcoholic drink, a ball of energy (to throw in people's bags and play catch with), and even the Ethereal's outfits as wearable items.

Pretty incredible. Upper Deck is hosting a preview of the next expansion on Saturday at various locations around the country, and the cards will be out, as we said, on July 1st. The Spectral Tiger Mount was great, but I think we have a new loot card winner with the Soul-trader. A mobile NPC with their own currency gained from killing mobs? Yes please.

Beckett Media is a company normally known for their collectible magazines -- they cover things like baseball cards, Yu-Gi-Oh, toys, and all of that other junk most people don't bother with (ok, ok, I kid, collectors, but I don't get the point of buying toys you don't take out of the box). Apparently, a little while back, Beckett started to get into another field where most of what you do is collecting: massively multiplayer online games, and they started a magazine called Beckett Massive Online Gamer. And now, they've started publishing a series of biannual guides for various online games, starting with our very own World of Warcraft.

We haven't seen the guide, but their sales page promises "tips for conquering dungeons, guides for leveling to 70," and "perfecting WoW endgame classes," all for only $9.99. To tell the truth, it sounds pretty lame (not to mention that you can get exactly the same stuff right here for the low, low price of free), but at least there's another print competitor to the official Brady Guides -- if you absolutely need your WoW news in print form, you've got at least two choices now.

Anyone seen one of these yet? Next time you're at the collectibles store, see if they've got one sitting on the magazine shelf and let us know what it looks like.

As I was perusing the very first review of Grand Theft Auto 4 yesterday, I noted that the "collectibles" in that game are going to be pretty intriguing. While a lot of collectible items in games (say, all the packages in the previous GTA games, or the flags in Assassin's Creed) are fairly superfluous, I find that some (like the orbs in Crackdown and the billboards and jumps in Burnout Paradise) actually make the game more fun -- while traveling through the game world, you can keep an eye out for extra stuff to do and see.

World of Warcraft has never really jumped in on that idea, however. Obviously, there are plenty of collecting quests, but usually they're for killing mobs. And there are plenty of things to collect in the game -- noncombat pets, tabards, and mounts, and so on -- but none of them really give you a reward when you find a certain number of them, or give you bonuses based on how many you've picked up.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? For me, hiding some fun, optional collectibles (and giving small rewards based on just finding them) in a world as lush as Azeroth would make exploring an already great environment better. But I'm sure some would see it as a cheap tactic to make people hunt for widgets. What do you think?

When the word "collectibles" comes in to play, the first thing that comes to my mind is those Precious Memories figurines that my Grandmother collected. However, I think that you'll find these World of Warcraft collect ables (they're not action figures -- they're designed to look awesome, not move around) produced by DC Direct to be much more appealing. They're incredibly detailed figures for which IGN's preview has nothing but praise:

What impressed us the most were some of the finer details like the ritual scarring on the orc's chest or the blood on his fangs. DC was very careful to incorporate a strong level of "grit", ensuring that the figure has a strong degree of realism and avoiding the "fake toy" look that can plague a collectible. Other details like the eyes, mouth interior and clothing texture really help seal the deal.

IGN has a great photo gallery if you want to check out these things for yourself and DC's page has a nice collection of pictures to flip through, as well. Series 1 of these figures should find their way to a store near you starting on October 24th, while Series 2 (including the figure to the right) won't be out until Feburary 2008.

Most of our news of late has been about BlizzCon, but as anyone interested in comics knows the mother of all comic conventions began today in San Diego, Comi Con. Blizzplanet today posted about one little bit of WoW-related news released at the convention today: the first in a series of WoW sculptures. This particular sculpture is based on that spectacular mural we saw at the first BlizzCon (okay, so maybe this story is related to BlizzCon after all) featuring the battle between a Blood Elf and a Draenei.

This series of sculptures, created by Sideshow Collectibles, will be available next year, so we have a while to wait, but the images sure are amazing. I'm not one for statue collections, but I will definitely have to pick this one up, especially considering the collector's edition will feature a Nether Whelp.

[via Blizzplanet]

I was never able to collect any of the Darkmoon cards (although I'm pretty sure I have six or seven of the Warlords cards sitting in my Warrior's bank), but I always thought they were a great idea. Since the expansion, however, the old cards haven't been quite up to par for level 70s. Enter the new Darkmoon decks-- Blue announced a little while ago that there would be new cards to collect, and now Tiare has compiled what the new Darkmoon trinkets will do for you when completed.

[Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] (Ace - Eight of Storms)
You have a 10% chance when hit by an attack or harmful spell to deal 95 to 115 holy damage to your attacker.

[Darkmoon Card: Wrath] (Ace - Eight of Furies)
Each time one of your direct damage attacks does not critically strike, you gain 17 critical strike rating and 17 spell critical strike rating for the next 10 sec. This effect is consumed when you deal a critical strike. (Stacks up to 20 times)

[Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (Ace - Eight of Blessings)
Each time you deal melee damage to an opponent, you gain 6 attack power for the next 10 sec., stacking up to 20 times. Each time you land a harmful spell on an opponent, you gain 8 spell damage for the next 10 sec., stacking up to 10 times.

[Darkmoon Card: Madness] (Ace - Eight of Lunacy)
Each time you land a killing blow on an enemy, you gain the Power of Madness.

Unfortunately, we're not quite sure what "Power of Madness" means-- it could be anything from a simple beserk buff (+Damage and Spell Damage, -Healing recieved), to a shapechange to a Worgen, or even "Opens a portal into the Twisting Nether that periodically summons demonic minions to aid the caster in battle for 14 sec." (at least that's what the rumors say).

But sweet cards nevertheless. The Wrath and Crusade cards look especially cool, but I'm confused about the 10 second limit-- someone with Wrath can supposedly build up to a whopping +340 crit rating, but does that mean they somehow have to hit 20 times (without critting) within 10 seconds? Is that even possible? I don't see it procing more than two or three times before the ten seconds are up or a crit appears.

[ via MMO-Champion ]