The latest patch on the PTR has some dire news for miners. MMO-Champion posted that the vendor price for a cut green-quality Cataclysm gem has been reduced from 9g to 75s. It's not yet in the patch notes, and I can't log into the PTR to grab a screenshot, but it's in the data files and will likely go live with patch 4.1.
Why is this change dire news for miners? Right now, the price for all Cataclysm ores is largely based on the fact that no matter what, you can vendor cut green gems for 9g. For example, Obsidium Ore has a price floor based on green gems only of 54g. Players who can prospect Obsidium can safely spend all their money on any amount of ore below that cost, and they will get a no-risk return on this "shuffle." Add in the fact that a lot of green-quality gems can be made into items that value those gems at considerably more than 9g each, and you have a very profitable and risk-free way to make money.
One of the great things about expansions is all the "firsts" we get to experience. For example: my first 310% flight speed, my first time flying in the old world, my first archaeology artifact -- there are so many fantastic things that come with an expansion! However, there are also some rude awakenings. I was surprised when frost came back as a mage leveling spec. I was also taken aback at just how quickly I perished when I tried to take on more than one mob. Let me paint a picture for you.
Here we have this overconfident fire mage coming into Mount Hyjal for the first time. She grabs some quests and heads out to kill some fire elementals. She tags one, and puts Living Bomb up. It proceeds to make a lot of elementals angry with her. She shrugs off the multitude of fiery beings heading her way -- "I'll just AoE them down." That doesn't bode well. Slowly, her life force ebbs away, she gets weaker and weaker, there's a darkness coming over her, and then she's just ... gone.
I stare at my screen. Did that really just happen? Did I seriously just die to my first Cataclysm mob? I quickly look around the room; awww crud, yes, my husband saw that. Well, that's a bit embarrassing! I then take some time to see what the other mages in the area are running as. "Ahem, well I guess I'll go spec frost now ..."
I'm curious where and when the rest of you saw your first Cataclysm demise. Was it due to overconfidence or a wrong spec? Did you make it without dying until your first dungeon?
Yes, when we hear the graveyard music, we often indulge in various expressions of nerd rage. However, there is no denying that there are some cool, funny and emblematic ways to die, both throughout the leveling process and in the endgame. Who has not gotten stomped by the Fel Reaver in Hellfire Peninsula? Were you ever pwned by Hogger? And what about all those times when your famous last words were, "I'm a _____. Five levels above me? No big deal ..."
My characters have met their deaths in the elevator of the Undercity, been shot out of the sky near Alliance camps in Outland and steamrolled under various groups of mobs in Stranglethorn Vale. One of my favorite deaths occurred when my husband and I rolled Forsaken toons together. I rolled a warrior, he rolled a rogue, and we had fun roflpwning low-level mobs in our BoA gear. We found our way to Silverpine Forest, and I noticed that one of the nearby worgen had a different skin color than the others. Of course, being the compulsive silver-elite-killer that I am, I immediately targeted the mob, only to discover that it was a gold elite -- a level 20 Son of Arugal. I shouted and we ran, avoiding the mob the first time, only to have it pat up behind us and kill me a few minutes later. Darling hubby got away (stupid rogues -- always run when there's a fight).
One of my more shameful deaths occurred after playing chicken with the ground on my level 80 druid. The most exciting part of this game is wondering if there is enough lag at the moment that you click the flight form button that you'll end up dying anyway. I was flying over Dalaran and told my hubby, "Hey, watch this!" As he stood at the bank, I proceeded to fall through the air, expecting to be able to transform into flight form at the last second. Oh wait, fail -- I forgot that you cannot mount up on flying mounts in Dalaran. After he stopped laughing, he was nice and rezzed my splattered corpse.
Sure, we all die in raid wipes and in PvP -- but what about the neat ways to die in the game? What has been your favorite or most hilarious death in the World?
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.
I can totally understand feigning death to escape from a horrific family life, organized crime or a group of extremists with an irrational vendetta. But fake your own demise in order to get out of playing a video game? Really?
Hello Drama Mamas,
I'm not sure if anyone else who plays WoW has this same problem, but I unfortunately do. I've had two WoW friends "die" then come back after a few months with the stories of: "My cousin stole my computer and told people I died," and "My parents took away my internet and told my friends I died." Now I have another WoW friend who died this past summer. I believed this death with the details his brother was giving, until I started to get outside friend requests from my friend's name.
Is there a point where we should just stop believing the stories of friends dying in WoW without outside proof? Should I mourn and then be happy when they suddenly reappear? Thank you for any advice you give.
New around here? We've got your back! See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's for new players in theWoW Rookie Guide.
Though I've been playing since open beta, there are still things that I stumble upon that I either didn't know or had forgotten. There are also many little conveniences that took me forever to figure out. So while these tips, tricks and tidbits say they are for rookies -- well, even long time veterans have a few holes in their knowledge of the workings of Azeroth.
Built-in Talent Calculator If you, like me, have a tendency to click the wrong thing when choosing your talents, there is a way to set up a safety net. Just go to Game Menu (ESC), Interface, Features and click the Preview Talent Changes box. After that, you will be able to play with your talents a bit before accepting them.
New around here? See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's for new players in theWoW Rookie Guide.
It ain't over 'til it's over -- and in World of Warcraft, it ain't over 'til every player has used the last resurrection cooldown and trick. Death is far from permanent in Azeroth, and over time, the available methods of resurrection ("rezzing") have multiplied. Some classes can resurrect only outside of combat; one class can rez even in the heat of battle. Some classes have rezzes that work only on themselves. Now that the dungeon finder makes running instance groups so easy for a leveling player, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the alternatives for coming back to life. There's a specific etiquette that's risen up around rezzes, as well, so take note and don't get caught looking like a chump.
According to your votes, Andrenorton will become an herbalist and scribe. For Selfloathius, the numbers were slightly ahead for tailoring and enchanting in the polls, but there were extra votes for engineering and other things in the comments -- with very good reasons to go along with them. So, Selfloathius will take up engineering and mining. And the winner for our favorite suicidal warlock's next death is to go to Teldrassil and jump off the tree, all while listening to Justin Bieber.
Here is the schedule for the week:
Christian Belt, as Selfloathius, blood elf warlock: Monday, 11:30 p.m. EDT
Anne Stickney as Annephora, the troll warrior, will be on Tuesday at 1 a.m. EDT (which is Monday at 11 p.m. Zangarmarsh time)
Michael Sacco as Sahko, the orc warlock: Wednesday, 7 p.m. EDT
Elizabeth Harper as Faience, the troll shaman, and Robin Torres as Robinemia, the undead mage: Wednesday, 11 p.m. EDT
Amy Schley as Patent, the troll rogue: Thursday, 10 p.m. EDT
Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the blood elf paladin: Friday, 8 p.m. EDT
Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, the troll mage, Michael Gray as Grayfields, the tauren hunter, Adam Holisky as Adammentat, the tauren druid, and Gregg Reece as Yakkowakko, the orc warlock, will be making appearances as they can
If you want to join in on the fun of Choose My Adventure, please join us on US Zangarmarsh-H in <It came from the Blog>. Ask Robiness, Robinemia or any member online for an invite. Guild ranks of Lurker or above have the ability to invite. You are all welcome as long as you play by our simple rules, that can be summed up with "Don't be a Funsucker!" Also, please see the guild FAQ for the most common questions.
I was running through Borean Tundra recently, leveling my death knight alt, when a rather morbid thought hit me. That thought was this: death by death knight must suck. With all of the diseases, a ghoul often gnawing a limb off and the DK himself hacking into you with his weapon of choice, dying from a death knight may be the worst death that you could receive from a player class. With a max-level paladin as my main, I know that pallys are a relatively quick and painless death (so long as they're not fighting an undead mob, at which point it would have to be a terrible way to go). I've not played any other classes to high levels, so I can't say for them. The closest to me would have to be the warlock, what with sucking your soul straight out of you.
Which class do you think would bestow the most painful death, and which the most merciful? Are death knights the masters of suffering, or are they merely pretenders to the throne? Are warriors or rogues, with their bleed tactics, a worse way to go? Would it be better just to get one-shot? Is there a particular spec that rules the roost? Let the debate begin. This article has been brought to you by Seed, Aol's guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Watch for the next call for submissions and a chance to submit your own article. The next byline you see here may be yours!
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one man in his time plays many roles.
Long time readers of "All the World's a Stage" may remember that I wrote an earlier series of three articles, called "WoW is a Work of Art," which I viewed as a kind of launch pad for this column about roleplaying. The first article talked about how when my mom came down with a very serious form of brain cancer, I had to put other things in my life on hold in order to come back to the US and take care of her. I was happy to do this, of course -- it was an honor to be able to be there for my mother when she needed me, but I won't pretend it was very much fun. Cancer is a terrible disease that wreaks havoc on one's body and emotions all in one big punch. Roleplaying in WoW was one of the social activities I could do for fun at that time, a little world I could enjoy without actually having to leave my home and the loved one that I was caring for.
Last weekend, the life of my mother was very visibly coming to a close. As the deadline for this column approached, I asked for leave (incidentally the first weekend since almost two years ago with no article in this column), and spent every moment with her I could. She died on Monday afternoon, leaving me an inheritance of countless feelings and thoughts which I shall undoubtedly explore for the rest of my life.
Among many other realizations and ideas that have come to mind, I realized that my roleplaying career had come full circle. My decision to play WoW and eventually write about it had begun with my mother's cancer, and now that this cancer had finally taken her life, I wondered, how has this roleplaying contributed to my real life? Has it made me a better person? When I eventually lie on my deathbed as my mother did, will I feel thankful to have roleplayed in WoW the same way my mother felt thankful for all of her experiences in life?
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.
Yesterday Alex featured Cab Calloway blasting out Minnie the Moocher, a song that while was around for a long time was truly made epic by his performance with the Blues Brothers. And this lets me tie in perfectly to wish my brother Logan a happy graduation from high school next week. Logan and many of his friends were in their jazz band, and he often dressed up as the Blues Brothers when appropriate. And in lieu of that, today's reading music is the Blues Brothers' "Soul Man" performance from the 1978 SNL season. The good old days. 5 years before I was born.
Hokiebuddy asked...
"With the revamp of the bear and cat forms for Druids will there be any more Druid revamps in design such as the travel, swimming, or flying forms? Also will this spill over into other races and classes i.e. Warlock and Paladin mounts, Warlock minions, Shadow Priest shadow form, etc..."
There are a few accomplishments in this game that truly amaze me anymore. Leveling characters is routine now, and having an army of high level alts at your disposal isn't something super uncommon anymore. However I have been amazed by this:
There is no achievement for doing this, however I wouldn't blame Blizzard one bit if they went in and retroactively added one just for Cautious. Lord of the Rings Online has a no-death achievement, but only up through level 20. I got to level 18 without dying on LotRO on a recent attempt, however I perished when some "really really super awesome person" trained a bunch of mobs near me just as I executed an AoE attack. "Really really super awesome person" is what I called him too. Honest.
A few months ago in The Queue a reader asked if there would ever be (or is) such an achievement for WoW, and my response at the time was no, there is not one now and probably would not be one later. I reasoned that including such an achievement would just present undue psychological damage on the player if they died at 79 from an unforeseen circumstance. I still don't think there will be one, but it's pretty awesome someone managed to do it sans in-game achievement.
There are some interesting statistics Cautious had upon reaching level 80 without deaths. You can check out a lot of them on her armory profile, but those are inflated just a tad since she has played since reaching 80.
Some of her key stats upon reaching level 80 include:
This AP story is making its way around the community -- Jerald Spangleberg's daughter was faced with a growing problem when he passed a way: figuring out how to notify the guy's in-game friends. As online relationships grow more and more prevalent, relatives of those who pass away are often having trouble notifying some of the deceased closest friends. Even Blizzard can't help in this situation, apparently -- they have no policy or rules to deal with players who have died, and no way for relatives to log in to the game without the password to let guilds know what has happened.
You might suggest that these relationships aren't that big a deal, but when you think that guildies are encountered almost nightly, while real-life friends connect only when schedules allow (maybe once or twice a week), you can see why it might be important to let the ingame associates know what has happened. Unfortunately, all of the solutions so far are pretty morbid -- there are sites that will send email for you, or some players have left lists of contacts to reach when they move on.
The importance of online relationships is likely to increase in the future if the past few years are any indication. And given that the average player is getting older even as they're making more and stronger friends online, it might not be long until we've got a much better solution to deal with this problem.
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.
Today we're fielding a lot of questions on the Light and the Shadow, and Life and Death. I don't know why, really, that's just how things happened! Trends like that are always fun, like the week or two where we had nothing but dragon questions. It makes picking out themes really easy! Emorich asked... I was under the impression that C'Thun wasn't dead. I thought we simply stopped him. After all, we were attacking one of his eyeballs, hardly a vital organ. Is Kil'Jaeden dead too? I thought we basically just pushed him back through the portal and now he's really pissed.
The Harvest - Chapter 1 is the first, full-length machinima movie attempt by UltraViolet. She's the same author who created Buff My Warlock back in January, and I think you can see the growth of her skills over time. "The Harvest" is somewhere between a horror and mystery drama.
As the story goes, there's been a recent rash of deaths in Elwynn Forest. (Presumably, not Hogger's fault.) All the victims are young women, lacking any tell-tale signs of how their deaths may have occured. The story's focused on a young barmaid named Elane, whose greatest concern in life is dodging every bit of work that comes her way. Hijinks ensue, including the appearance of a mysterious figure.
The first thing I want to say about UltraViolet's work is that I'm strongly encouraged that the main character isn't a "Mary Sue." If you're not familiar with the term, a "Mary Sue" is an escapist character written by an author. The character is usually the most awesome, coolest thing ever. (This is a criticism often applied to Bella in the Twilight series.) By virtue of Elane's faults and characterization, I'm pretty sure Elane isn't serving as a prop for UltraViolet's fantasies, and that gives me a lot of hope for the continuing series.
The dialogue and action is a little awkward. The voice acting and scripting all seem in earnest, and the heart's in the right place, but there are a few too many tropes and cliches scattered through the character interaction. I chalk this up to this being UltraViolet's first piece. Her pacing, plot plan, and basic flow all seem pretty good. She just needs some more time working with her actors, and putting pen to paper, to get away from some of the easy-fallbacks for dialogue. I'm eager to see how the plot develops for Chapter 2, given the promise I see in this installment.
If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com. Previously on Moviewatch ..
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
Good afternoon, ladies and gents! Before we get started today I just want to thank everyone for participating in my Hawaiian Pizza poll. It was a silly, spur of the moment sort of thing, and it really made my day to see it creep up to around 11,000 votes! Thank you all very much for humoring me.
Again, there are a few Ulduar spoilers in this post, but only minor. Be warned. Also, vote Alex.
Adrexani asked... This has always puzzled me, Arthas is a Death Knight, Death Knights are dead, yet no where in lore do I see that Arthas died, so did he die or is he still alive?
Transmog yourself into an Avenger!
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Cross-realm zones coming soon
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news
Apr 7th 2011 at 10:00PM 
This AP story
