Posts with tag magtheridon

Warlords of Draenor, the next WoW expansion, comes complete with a storyline that has players asking plenty of questions. Featuring an all-star cast of previous RTS characters, Warlords delves into an alternate version of reality, a version in which the orc chieftains never drank the Blood of Mannoroth, instead choosing to band together in the Iron Horde. In this version of reality -- a splinter of reality that shouldn't really exist -- the orcs and draenei are still at war, and that entire splinter of reality is being connected to our own via the Dark Portal.

This has been raising all kinds of questions regarding who exactly we'll see on the other side of that portal. What about Azeroth, in that version of reality? What about Deathwing and his kin? What about the Velen leading the draenei at that point in time, what about younger Garrosh? Will there be duplicates of orcs who have since made their homes on Azeroth, after traveling through the Dark Portal? Will the Alliance Expedition be stranded on this version of Draenor? Just who are we going to see over there, and who won't be making an appearance?

While we don't have all the answers, we have more than enough to start filling in the blanks.

There are very few items in World of Warcraft that have much of a shelf life beyond the games in which they debut. No matter how powerful and prestigious they are, they get nerfed, or their level range is restricted, or -- most commonly -- they're simply outclassed by bigger and better gear. Thunderfury lasted through early Magtheridon kills in The Burning Crusade before Blizzard nerfed its threat. The Luffa was resurrected for a few shining weeks to help guilds kill Moroes before the developers squashed its use for anyone past level 60. Even the most hotly contested BC trinket and Wrath trinkets, the Dragonspine Trophy and Deathbringer's Will, were eventually scuttled by DPS, no matter how much intra-guild bloodletting they'd inspired before.

However, the Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon somehow managed to fly under the radar for years. While it was never the best trinket in any tier outside of classic, it was still a pretty solid regen piece (albeit more so before in-combat regeneration was improved during Wrath). I got mine after Aertimus at Hotstree noted in early Wrath that it was still shockingly good almost five years after it appeared in the game, and I knew legions of healers who pulled theirs out of mothballs or went to hunt the Beasts deck themselves as a result. You never know, we all said, when it'll pop up in the middle of a sea of "better" trinkets and still be one of your best options for regen.

No more. As Blizzard announced during a hotfix late on April 4 for the recent patch 5.2, the Blue Dragon "now has a reduced chance to activate its effect for characters that are level 61-69 and its effect no longer activates for characters above level 69." I guess it'll be in the bank for good now, because I just don't have the heart to get rid of a workhorse trinket that performed its job faithfully for so long.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. In good news, the most esteemed archmage Christian Belt has escaped from the alternate timeline where he was forced to perpetually watch reruns of Fox Van Allen's appearance on The Price is Right. The bad news is that this means this is Josh Myers' last mage article for a while, but he had fun while it lasted!

My mage wasn't level-capped when Magtheridon was relevant content. I was a resto shaman, content to spam my one PUG raid night a week spamming four ranks of Chain Heal on other people. I still remember those days fondly, as they were my first exposure to "real" raiding. Also, Magtheridon's Lair was considerably easier than tier 4's other 25-man raid, Gruul's Lair, and the only way to get access to your tier four chestpiece.

I first learned Magtheridon's Lair was soloable at level 85 by managing to do it on my hunter, because pet classes are overpowered (though the ones with self-healing are even more so -- I'm looking at you, Megan O'Neill!). Speaking of potent self-healing, I followed with my blood death knight, and then conquered the pit lord with my enhance shaman. The natural next choice would have been to take a warlock or maybe a feral druid, but I wanted a challenge. Also, Magelam was craving a Crystalheart Pulse-Staff, so he was my fourth choice. I ended up spending about two hours last November perfecting my strategy and have since been able to down him consistently whenever I want a quick 50 gold and some level 70 epics to sell.

With the release of the Raid Finder and the recent changes to valor points, the debate about 10- vs. 25-man raiding, which is harder to run, and which is harder to balance rages on. I have friends on both sides of the 10/25 debate. I understand both points of view, and I think both are utterly wrong. Completely, absolutely wrong. The issue to me is when we went from 40-man raids down to the current raid sizes, the decision to offer 25-man raids didn't really work. I think we should have gone to 10- and 20-man raiding at the dawn of The Burning Crusade, and I still think we should.

We had 20-man raids back in classic WoW -- two of them, in fact, Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. Neither exists as a 20-man raid any more, so this may seem odd to players who didn't raid then, but these were considered the small raids. People who had just spent hours raiding in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair or AQ40 would put together these runs on the fly to gear their alts or get a shot at off-spec loot, while other guilds that didn't have the numbers for 40-man raids would spend their time raiding these while trying to build up their numbers.

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.

So now the stage has been set. The exiles have all arrived on the blasted remnants of Draenor, once the home of the orcs and last refuge of the draenei. Following the events of Ner'zhul's attempt to lead the orcs away from their dying world, the planet was shattered and torn asunder, pulled violently into the Twisting Nether that Ner'zhul's portals linked to its surface. Now Outland, a world drifting in the nether, is the remains of that destroyed place. A world where natural laws are often suspended, it hung overripe waiting for a clawed hand to pluck it.

That hand belonged to Magtheridon. Second among the pit lords only to his master Mannoroth, Magtheridon was the one the Legion chose to conquer this world, unique among all the planets formerly taken and crushed by this army of demons. For Ner'zhul's portals still worked, making Outland a kind of nexus wherein the Legion could pull entire armies through at will and easily stage them for new conquests. Holding Outland therefore gave the Legion a strategic foothold, one they were loath to give up.

However, circumstances were unfolding that would lead to exactly that.

Part 1: Forcing Fate's Hand
Part 2: Into the Outland

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I'm going to kick this edition of The Queue off with a little request: Before you ask a Cataclysm question, ask yourself if it's something WoW.com will actually know about. We don't have the game in front of us (yet) so we probably can't tell you what gear has which stats or what quests have been removed or updated. We can certainly guess if you want us to, but right now we can't do much better than that.

Fedwick asked...

"Is there any word as far as who will be doing the Character Intro narration with the passing of Tony Jay?"

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. Ever wondered what were the hardest fights to heal in the game? Based solely on my opinion and experience, here's a list counting down from number 5 to number 1, along with everyone's favourite "Honorable Mentions" list to follow!

Before continuing with reading the list, I'd strongly suggest you check out part 1 and part 2. Healers have a unique role they play. Almost none of their time is spent with bosses in their crosshairs or target frames. Us healers are busy making sure everyone is alive so they can kill the boss while the rest of us hold down the fort.

Enough with the preamble. Let's find out what the biggest pain in the ass bosses were from number 5 to number 1 are.

There are a handful of free EU character transfers to report on today, all focused on the faction differences on the realm Magtheridon.

Now Magtheridon was always a pain in the butt in the days before his colossal nerf. It was a big challenge when BC was released to coordinate a couple groups of five people to click on cubes all at one time. I'd always say on vent very calmly: "Three, two... one... click-click-click. Good work. Break." Or "Three, two... one... click-click-click. Terrible. Wipe it."

Does that obnoxious and repetitious pattern which still haunts me in my dreams have anything to do with the character migrations? Probably not.

The full list of realms after the break.

A new batch of fre realm transfers have opened up for European servers, which is always a good thing. A lot of these transfers are ones we've seen before though, so hopefully this time around these options will be more successful than they may have been previously. We also have a whole load of transfers opening up to EU-Magtheridon specifically for the Alliance, so they're continuing to try and repair the faction imbalance there. Right now, we're looking at...

• Horde players on EU-Magtheridon may transfer to Haomarush, Tarren Mill, Trollbane, Zenedar, and Silvermoon.
• Alliance players may transfer to EU-Magtheridon from Aerie Peak, Aggramar, Alonsus, Aszune, Azjol-Nerub, Bronze Dragonflight, Bronzebeard, Emerald Dream, Eonar, Khadgar, Kul Tiras, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Silvermoon, and Turalyon.

Check behind the cut below for the rest of the current free character transfers.

Man, you'd think they're trying to achieve realm population balance or something. Blizzard has just opened up yet another round of free character transfers for the European realms, these scheduled to be active from now until Tuesday, January 27. Some of these transfers are simply extensions of the last round, and some are brand-new.

• Horde-only: Magtheridon -> Haomarush, Tarren Mill, Trollbane, Zenedar
• Alliance-only: Alonsus, Aszune, Bronze Dragonflight, Bronzebeard, Emerald Dream, Eonar, Kul Tiras, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Silvermoon -> Magtheridon

Both factions:

• Al'Akir, Ravencrest -> Kor'gall, Lightning's Blade
• Burning Legion, Crushridge -> Vek'nilash, Xavius
• Grim Batol, Twilight's Hammer -> Dentarg, Dragonmaw
• Outland, Kazzak -> Burning Steppes, Haomarush
• Shattered Hand, Stormreaver -> Genjuros, Trollbane
• Stormscale, Sylvanas -> Spinebreaker, Zenedar
• Argent Dawn -> Darkmoon Faire, Steamwheedle Cartel, The Sha'tar

Move early if you want to move, because transfers can be closed if the desired goals are met (i.e. world domination). So who's saying goodbye to their home server and leaving to a new world?

One of the blogs I frequest most beyond our own WoW Insider is DeathKnight.info. They have a fun little community on their forums, and their front page highlights most of the really cool stuff that happens to come out of it. The bulk of it is, of course, Death Knight news, but it also shows off a lot of the really random things WoW players do.

Magtheridon, once one of the hardest raid encounters in the game (depending on who you talk to), has been 4-manned by an Unholy Death Knight (who you may have read about previously), a Retribution Paladin, a Restoration Druid and a Holy Priest. If you've done the fight before, you might be thinking to yourself, "That's not possible. You need more people than that just to click the cubes!" Apparently that is not the case. They didn't bother with the cubes, they just healed through the damage.

Earlier today, Thundgot of the offiical EU forums announced a couple of free character migrations for EU PvP realms. The transfers are an attempt to move some players from a few overly populated PvP realms to some that could use a little help. These transfers are available from December 17th (yesterday) to December 23rd. The open transfers are:

From: Burning Legion, Drak'thul, Sylvanas
To: Ahn'Qiraj, Burning Blade, Xavius

From: Magtheridon (Horde only)
To: Haomarush, Zenedar

I really didn't expect to be writing this. Like others, I was left a bit nonplussed at the seeming ease of early raiding content in Wrath, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like an interesting intersection of prudence, circumstances, and quite possibly some residual discomfort on Blizzard's part over how awful early BC raiding was. I don't think that the current "ease" of first-tier raid content in Wrath is a bad thing -- and I also don't expect future content to stay that way.

My guild cleared all of the 25-man raid content in Wrath within two weeks of the expansion's release. Naxxramas was easily the biggest non-surprise. Doing Naxx-25 in the company of people who know the place inside and out is a pretty straightforward and -- dare I say it -- easy process. This is even more true with players who learned the original Naxx at 70, with a much greater margin for error than they would have had at 60. Honestly? Most of the fights haven't changed to the point where you'd have to toss out your previous strategy and start all over again. A raid that saw Naxx at any point between 60 and 70 is effectively an old dog that doesn't have to learn a new trick.

Aren't you EU players just lucky lately? Here's some more free character moves for you to make -- apparently the population situation on the EU realms must be bad, because I think this is the third (at least) round of moves Blizzard has made in that region. Here are the latest ones, to be in effect now through the ninth:

Drak'thul, Grim Batol, Sylvanas --> Bladefist
Al'Akir, Neptulon, Ravencrest --> Deathwing
Burning Legion, Crushridge, Twilight's Hammer --> Dentarg
Magtheridon (Horde only) --> Zenedar, Haomarush

A lot of these are the same transfers offered previously -- in fact, all of the realms Blizzard is transferring from have been offered transfers before, though the realms people are being transferred to are switched up a bit. Anyone out there who didn't transfer in the first go-round but is willing to transfer now?

If the issues continue, Blizzard might have to come up with a new way to control the realm populations -- there's always the option of splitting up a big realm, though neither Blizz or players will probably enjoy going through that. But they've got to get rid of the queues somehow, right?