Posts with tag elements

We've seen the leaks and the datamined information, but it's all official now -- Cryptozoic has released the WoW TCG card and loot information for the next expansion to the Worldbreaker set, War of the Elements.

Cryptozoic invites all WoW and TCG players out to Darkmoon Faire Chicago this weekend, April 1-3, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. This is Cryptozoic's first Epic Con, their new traveling gaming convention for all games, not just the trading card games. There is going to be plenty of fun awaiting attendees, so hit the jump for all of the activities planned this weekend.

Cryptozoic has just announced that War of the Elements, the first WoW TCG Worldbreaker expansion, will be released worldwide on April 26, 2011. The expansion is being released in four languages at the same time around the world, a first for the trading card game. War of the Elements also features loot cards, as usual, for WoW players to redeem cool pets, mounts, and other in-game items from WoW TCG cards. War of the Elements will include Landros' Lichling, Fool's Gold, and the Savage Raptor mount.

War of the Elements will also feature two new dragonflights: the bronze and blue flights, with respective leaders Nozdormu and Kalecgos. What is interesting is that the TCG has solidified Metzen's statement that Kalecgos would become the new leader of the Blue Dragonflight and plays up the importance of these two flights in the coming patches and content in Cataclysm.

Set collecting is one of those things that you either love or hate -- either the thought of running around in old gear is curiously nostalgic, or you simply don't care to fill your bank with a lot of useless junk. With the introduction of Cataclysm, a lot of these old dungeon sets appear to be changing or disappearing entirely, making them a hot commodity for set collectors. Since a lot of players these days picked up the game in the BC or Wrath eras, not everyone knows where these pieces come from and how to get them.

The first of these sets is the Dungeon Set One. Obtained through various level 60 instances, these blue armor sets were the top of the top before the days of Molten Core and purples everywhere. Originally, these sets had very boring graphics, until a patch was implemented in which all sets got a shiny new graphics update. In the early days of vanilla, these sets were pretty much all players needed to farm for, and the +8 to all resistances that served as a set bonus for each was handy in places like Molten Core, which was nothing but a fun fire factory in which you wanted to stack as much fire resistance as possible. There are nine sets to collect, and each set is class-specific. All set pieces can be found in Stratholme, Scholomance and Blackrock Spire (both lower and upper).

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

If you haven't read the short story "Unbroken" by Micky Neilsen on the official site, please do so. Not only does it give you a real sense of the development of the draenei during the Rise of the Horde period and after, it helps one understand the tone of this series of posts exploring the elemental spirits of the Warcraft universe.

We experience elementals on both Azeroth and Outland as we play World of Warcraft. While some pretty significant differences between those two worlds and their elementals exist (for instance, there are four named elemental lords involved in the events of Azerothian history who do not seem to have nearly the same influence on the development of Draenor before it became Outland), the spirits themselves seem to share similarities worth exploring.

Unbroken - Mickey Neilsen

The relationship between the elements and the shaman is one of synchronicity. The shaman's influence helps to calm and unite us, just as our influence enriches and fulfills the shaman. When you have completed your training, you will be able to call upon the elements in times of need. If the elements deem your cause just, we will assist you in any way possible.

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Practiced on both Azeroth (by the tauren) and Draenor (by the orcs) the art of shamanism is more akin to symbiosis than that practiced by arcanists (who control or command mystical forces) or priests and paladins (who seem to either supplicate or demand the power of the Light). And while druids and shamans share certain similarities, a druid's power comes more from a relationship with the Emerald Dream that suffuses the living world and less with the component elements. Shamans concern themselves with the complex interplay between the elemental building blocks of existence. It is almost his role to act as a mediator, allowing them to work in harmony together.

We've heard these were coming, and now they're here: heirloom chest pieces. We just grabbed these screenshots hot off the patch 3.2 PTR. These are the level 80 versions, of course, but you can get a feel for what each chest has, statwise. You'll notice that the promised 10% experience gain is there on all the pieces, and that they are slightly bugged right now in that each of them has no armor.

You'll also notice that the names and graphics, which hearken back to old original WoW gear, mostly match up with existing heirloom shoulders, so you'll even be able to get your newbie all color coordinated and whatnot. Of course, a set bonus would have been nice too, but I'm sure we'll all be able to comfort ourselves with that nice big experience gain boost. The chests currently cost 40 Heroism badges and a bit of gold to buy, although that may change before the patch goes live.

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-first in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.

There's something about shamans that gets us thinking and talking. Whether it's something as simple as the proper pronunciation of "shamanism," or something as profound as a shaman's humility in relation to the source of his or her power, the lore and ideology of the shaman class often resonates with players more than many others in the World of Warcraft.

One reason for this is that shamans have been such a pivotal force in the lore, possibly more than any other class in the game (depending on your point of view). Other classes, such as warriors, or paladins, come as a sort of pre-defined archetype in fantasy games that don't seem all that different from their original forms in other fantasy settings. The actual beliefs of a priest, for instance, don't seem to matter so much to many players, so long as the class can heal like we expect them to. Even the druids, with their central place in night elf society, sometimes seem more like nature-based magic users rather than true philosophers in their own right.

Shamans, however, have a major burden to bear in one of the central plot shifts of the Warcraft storyline -- namely that the orcs, who entered the Warcraft stage in the Warcraft 1: Orcs and Humans computer game as rampaging demonic evildoers bent on destruction, and actually turned out to be a peaceful race that just got tricked into being evil. Shamanism had to be much much more than just an archetype with some special powers -- it had to be a way of thinking, a system of belief that could be taken over by demonic corruption and yet at the same time act as a beacon of truth and goodness once that the demonic taint had been defeated. Shamanism has got to be complex and profound, or else the story wouldn't make sense.

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twentieth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.

Long long ago, human beings all around the world (of Earth, not Warcraft) investigated different ways of describing how the world around them worked. Many different cultures found that the materials they encountered seemed divided into four or five separate elements, each with its own properties: earth, fire, water, and air. Space, "void," or "aether" was often noted as the fifth element, or, as in the case of China, the understanding of these elements looked a lot different but in the end produced a similar sort of system.

In Azeroth, however, these ideas about the elements never got swallowed up by modern science and the periodic table of elements. They turned out to be real forces in the world, each with its own set of elemental spirits, which people could communicate and cooperate with.

Shamans are the masters of this magical task, charged with helping to maintain the balance of nature in a very different way from druids. While druids are focused more on nature as a system of energy, life, and growth, shamans focus more on the spirits of the land, flames, waters and skies as they all interact with one another. They gain great wisdom by learning of the different characteristics of these elements, and in turn bring this wisdom to the people they serve.

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!

Two weeks ago, when I was going through my queue of questions, one stuck out as especially complex. Sean Riley inquired about the beliefs and practices of the various Azerothian religions. This topic really excited me as I kind of have a thing for analyzing religion and faith. I would never claim to be an authority on theology, but it's stlil something that is very interesting to me. Warcraft lore combined with theology? Yes please! Obviously this isn't really the place to analyze and debate religion, but taking time out to research the gaps in my knowledge on this particular topic was incredibly fun for me.

Unforunately, I didn't have the space in that week's column to fit the answer to that question in, nor did I really have the time. It was a broad question and needed to invest a hefty amount of time into it. This one question has filled today's column, and while that may be disappointing to some that are waiting their turn, I hope it's an interesting read regardless.

A couple of interesting Mote related changes have popped up in the patch. I was well aware of the Mote of Shadow change-- those babies are now dropping not off of demons, but only off of void creatures (you can find tons of them in the southern part of Hellfire Peninsula, and in small pockets in many instances). Which makes sense, but makes you wonder why they dropped off of demons in the first place-- or why it matters which one they drop off of at all.

The other change was a little more hidden in the patch notes, and most players didn't realize it would be happening until they saw the drops: Essences are now dropping in Outland in the same place that Motes are dropping. You remember Essences-- they're the elemental components of many recipes found on the Azeroth side of the Dark Portal. A few players were unhappy that Essences were dropping instead of Motes, until Drysc confirmed that Essences are actually dropping in addition to Motes-- it's not a matter of either/or at all. Essences are completely extra.

And of course that'll have an effect on the economy. Right now, Essences are selling for up to 1g a pop on most AHs (Update: and even higher on other servers, sometimes up to 15g apiece), but they still only vendor for 4s, which is pennies compared to even most gray drops in Outland. And that price will probably drop anyway, considering the market is about to be flooded with them. One solution is to raise the vendor price. And another solution, say a few enterprising players, would be to give Alchemists a Transmute Essence to Mote spell, either at a 2-to-1 exchange rate, or a long-ish cooldown, that would set the economy on these little things right. Clearly there's a need for having Essences around (how else could you enchant firey weapon, right?), but it looks like Blizzard could have put a little more thought into their effect on the economy.