Posts with tag mmo-champion

While the level 90 heroic versions aren't available on the beta servers yet, MMO-Champion and Wowhead both took a look into the lower level version of Scarlet Monastery to see all the revamps. The current four wings of Scarlet Monastery have been slimmed down into two wings, the Scarlet Cathedral and the Scarlet Halls, removing most of the unnecessary trash while keeping what made the monastery a great set of dungeons to begin with.

Scarlet Cathedral now starts with the graveyard. Interrogator Vishas is no longer there; it's just Bloodmage Thalnos, now outside the mausoleum. Before Thalnos among the mobs are Scarlet Flamethrowers, who drop explosive cannisters that players can use to damage other mobs.

MMO-Champion recently released an incredibly interesting set of data about the most popular items used in weapon transmogrification, finding out that 62% of the top five transmog weapons across all classes are from The Burning Crusade. Only 20% of the top five items are from the classic WoW world, with 18% of the weapons coming from Wrath of the Lich King. 0% of the top five items are from the most recent Cataclysm expansion.

The Burning Crusade is heralded as the golden age of World of Warcraft, a time when the genre that WoW perfected hit a beautiful peak, a wonderful balance between difficulty and accessibility, that appealed to the hardcore MMO veterans who dominated the genre until the Wrath of the Lich King days. Others hated it entirely. No matter which way you lean, it's clear that The Burning Crusade had strong art direction, with otherworldly weapons and armor juxtaposed against traditional fantasy tropes. The fact that Burning Crusade items are the most popular right now does not surprise me in the least.

Check out all of the statistics, as well as each class' top five transmogged weapons, over at MMO-Champion.

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MMO-Champion is reporting on a new Blizzard trademark that was just filed for "Mists of Pandaria," potentially the name of the next World of Warcraft expansion to be announced at BlizzCon this year. This is not the first time Blizzard has filed for a trademark in such a way, as Blizzard filed for the "Cataclysm" trademark back in 2009. While this trademark does not explicitly say that it is the name of the new expansion, the class of trademark does point to its being filed for computer game software and lines up, according to MMO Champion, with other Blizzard trademarks for expansions.

While it is not confirmed that Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, it very well could be. We don't exactly know what the next expansion has in store for WoW players, but we are certain to find out at BlizzCon. Mists of Pandaria could be an expansion that opens up many islands still as of yet explored and populated by players on Azeroth and could potentially provide some new land grabs for the Horde and the Alliance to quarrel over after Deathwing's demise. Whether or not the Pandaren race will be playable is definitely up in the air, but Blizzard has apparently had issues with bringing panda people into the game in the past. Personally, I would much rather prefer another space exploration expansion like The Burning Crusade, as we've been on Azeroth for two expansions already, and I think it's time to head to the stars again.

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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.

Yes, that's right. I moved to California, land of actual broadband internet, leaving my dial-up and horrible mobile broadband far behind. Are you excited? I'm excited. I'm downloading games from Steam at 2MB/s. Do you know how long it took me to download stuff like that before? And how much I had to pay for it? Don't get me started, people.

Josh asked:

Did curse.com and MMO-Champion.com get hacked like the other gaming sites?

They've reported that they're working through a hardware failure, not a security issue, so it doesn't appear that they've been hacked. We like Curse and we hope everything is back up and running soon!

Blizzard puts an immense amount of time and thought into every piece of tier gear (at least, you'd hope it does). For those of us who raid (even casually), it's the armor set we'll see our characters in the most. You get a blue drop out of a heroic, and you might replace it in a few weeks. You get a piece of tier gear, and ... well, the only thing that's prying that out of your hands is an even better piece of tier gear.

That said, our datamining friends over at MMO-Champion have released some terrific finds today -- the tier 11 sets for druids, rogues and warlocks that so many of you will be wearing just a few months after the Cataclysm release. The druid set, which seems to turn you into some manner of electrified bird-man, is absolutely gorgeous. Warlocks get a nice, evil-looking set that comes complete with skewed horns. As for rogues ... well, somewhere out there, there's a rogue who roleplays as an Arabian ghost -- and man, is he happy today!

Though the full warrior set is not yet in the Cataclysm beta files, MMO Champion did dig up the warrior tier 11 helm, so the Matt Rossi posse gets a sneak peek at its gear as an added bonus. The video for the druid tier 11 is above; rogues, warlocks and warriors will have to follow me after the break.

It was announced in July that MMO-Champion had been acquired by Curse, which also owns World of Raids. It was unclear at the time what would eventually happen to World of Raids, given the obvious close proximity of content between WoR and Curse. While there were no details to be had, it seemed clear that something had to happen between MMO-C and WoR.

Now, Kody, a World of Raids administrator, has announced that World of Raids will be going offline and that most of the page views will automatically forward over to MMO-Champion. At the same time, MMO-Champion will receive a facelift by the same designer who created the Wowstead design. According to Kody, the new design will not repeat any of the "mistakes" in the WoR design, although Kody didn't specify what those mistakes may have been. World of Raids will still be providing basic coverage until the final forwards are completed and the lights are turned out.

Yesterday, Curse.com announced the acquisition of MMO-Champion from its owners, Major League Gaming. Boubouille, the big dog over at MMO-Champion, is heading to the Curse team as well. This is some pretty exciting news for the Curse network!

Curse, which already has one of the largest repositories of WoW addons and mods for download, as well as the venerable World of Raids outlet, adds on significant prowess in the WoW information community. With content from all three channeled into each other, you can expect big things from all involved. Read the official press release over at Curse or MMO-Champion.

Some of the questions that I personally had about the acquisition were, happily and thankfully, answered by both World of Raids and Boubouille himself. Curse currently has a premium subscription-based service, and I wanted to know if we could expect something similar from MMO-Champion in the future. Boubouille answered on his website:

I'm not going to bullshit you, premium might happen but it's really not a top priority for the moment. I would hardly call it premium, more like "Donator/Sponsor" for people who would like to help, I would also like to explore new features through that like user generated blogs or user groups on forums, etc ... But really, I don't see it happening in 2010.

If I ever add a Premium feature to the site, it will be because it can bring something more without penalizing people who don't want to pay, it won't be just because I'm jealous of Ghostcrawler and want to buy a bigger yacht than his. If something is free today, it will stay free. It's that simple.

Doesn't sound attractive or well-thought? Good, that's because we have no immediate plan to do that. Exactly my point.

Secondly, what happens to World of Raids, now that two similarly positioned outlets are housed under the same roof? From World of Raids:

What this means for World of Raids, and when it will happen, is still being worked out. I'll make sure to announce any plans well in advance though.

We talked with Boubouille back in 2009, and the interview is definitely worth a read. Good luck to Boubouille at his new home and big grats to Curse for picking up a hot property.

With Cataclysm news ramping up lately, one of the things I've been thinking about is the possibility of certain achievements going bye-bye. While achievements have only been in the game since patch 3.0.2, we've already seen a few of them (and/or their rewards) go to that big MMORPG in the sky. Blizzard's tended to do this when an achievement would simply have been too easy past a certain point, or -- as with Timear Foresees -- when game changes rendered them obsolete.

Below are four achievements that I think might be facing the firing squad as we ramp up to Cataclysm. (I'm sure there are more, but these were just the ones that occurred to me first.) I'll be revisiting this article later to see if I was correct about any of them.

Posters on MMO-Champion's boards have gotten into the Cataclysm alpha and started datamining female worgen models and animations. While the models don't have textures yet (i.e. you're only going to see a bunch of black and not their faces or anything) and some of the animations are placeholders borrowed from existing models (mostly female draenei), this is the first look we're getting at one of Cataclysm's most hotly anticipated features.

WARNING: This post is stuffed full of spoilers. It is a spoiled piece of concentrated awesome wrapped in spoiled paper boxed and shipped to Spoilertopia courtesy of Spoiler Express. Don't click below if you don't want anything to do with unofficial information.

• World of Warcraft EPEEN: New from Blizzard, the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number system!
• WoW Armory Tuskarr Invasion: Folks checking out the armory may have noticed their characters transformed to tuskarr, their achievements reported as 'cheesed,' and a whole lot of gear ninjaed and summarily vendored
• Battle.net Matchmaking Service: Battle.net decides to play eHarmony and place lonely gamers with suitable partners
• Battle.net Neural Interface: New from the Blizzard Store, the Neural Interface promises a lifelike gaming experience
• Blizzard Mobile Games: Up for 2010 from Blizzard Mobile Games are Blackthorne 2: Thorne Harder, and Queen's Quest!
• Diablo Gamer Blanket and Body Pillow: Wave goodbye to the cold as best as you can while swaddled in this Diablo 'gamer blanket!'
• Diablo Deckard Cain GPS System: Now you can listen to Deckard drone while you drive!

• El's Extreme Anglin': El reports on the latest Cataclysm feature: Aquariums!
• MMO-Champion/Paragon/Premonition: MMO-Champion breaks the news that Paragon will be moving to US servers come Cataclysm and merging with the US Guild Premonition. Sponsored by AXE!
• Nihilum: Nihilum breaks some rules and brings us screens and video from the Cataclysm alpha
• Wowhead: Wowhead, er, TACOhead brings news of a new in-game item, the Hellfire Kickin' Taco Supreme!
• Tankspot: Tankspot announces their change to Farmspot
• Warcraft Pets: Breanni fills us in on some new non-combat pet... er... features coming out in Cataclysm
• World of Raids: World of Raids reports on the new Observation Deck and Spectate features coming in Cataclysm
• The Guild: The Guild proudly announces its new foray into the world of animation!
• Curse.com: Curse.com fills us in on Cataclysm -- exclusively available for the IPad
• WoW.com: And of course, there's us. Our day was filled with takeover after takeover, from Twilight to Muscle March to Saturn Six -- we've decided to return to WoW news. For now...

We took notice of this in an earlier edition of the Queue, but I thought this little bit of news merited its own article for the benefit of lore junkies, raid leaders, or anyone who just might have missed it. After being asked a question over where Angrathar was really located in the larger Icecrown raid complex, I flew out to no-man's-land of southern Icecrown/northwestern Dragonblight and tried to get a good handle on the architecture. While doing so, I noticed a new and extremely tall spire nestled in the mountain range past the Wrath Gate and flew over to investigate. At the top of a saronite spire is huge chunk of misty ice capped by a flat surface with a black design vaguely reminiscent of the one on the Lordaeron throne room (although for all I know this is entirely unintended). From above, it bears a startling resemblance to an image datamined by Boubouille some time ago that was guessed to be the location of the eventual fight with the Lich King -- and I think this exterior "set" could be quite useful for any raid attempting to work on positioning once details of the fight become known. Curiously enough, the Throne itself doesn't appear to be present in-game at the moment, but that might change soon.

I guess answering your various questions will fulfill that need for now.

Jason asked...

"Since the Battle.net change has occurred, is it now possible for me to log on to WoW in Europe (like at an Internet café) with my American account? Or are they still separate like they were before?"

MMO Champion has dug up a few more animations for the already popular Perky Pug pet, which you will be able to obtain in patch 3.3 by running pickup groups with random players (the current guess on the pet is running with 100 random players, but of course we won't know for sure until it appears on the live realms). The first few animations in this video just look like the Pug has been tweaked a bit (looks to me like that weird leg thing got fixed), but the last animation is definitely new. MMOC suggests you might not want the pet any more after you see it doing this, but I guess Blizzard wanted to go for realism.

Personally, I'm still going for it. Dogs are dogs, and I'm going to be running with the new LFG system (actually, according to the last patch notes, it's called the "Dungeon Finder system" now) anyway, so I might as well go all out and get a vanity pet and the "Patient" title along with all of the other good stuff you usually get from running a ton of heroics. Perky Pug, here I come!

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Because those guys at Blizzard have a wonderful sense of humor as well as an unerring knack of dangling the right carrots in front of players' proverbial horses, they've come up with the most adorable little pet to entice everyone to try out the new dungeon system to be implemented in patch 3.3. Called the Perky Pug, this elusive and adorable little fellow is rewarded to players who group with other random players using the new dungeon system. According to the patch notes, "the more random players with whom one groups, the faster the pet can be obtained."

That means the process can actually be pretty painful. It's kind of like playing Russian Roulette, except that instead of one bullet, you can possibly have four. And instead of bullets you have inept, or badly geared, or socially abrasive (or combinations of all three) players. And instead of your head, it's your... well, okay, it's still your head that can get pretty messed up.