Posts with tag mount-hyjal

I was reading through some links while writing a follow-up to Robert's Not-So-Original WoW Miscellany when I happened across some discussions concerning the game's most agonizing trash. This is a popular subject for players, not least because complaining is a lot of fun, but I don't think anyone's going to argue that there haven't been some legitimately unpleasant trash clears in WoW.

Fortunately, most of the really bad trash clears are a distant memory, but there was at least one recent one that almost everyone who raided Dragon Soul could agree on. I'm going to include both dungeons and raids here, mostly because Shattered Halls was among the first things to go on this list. After including that, I knew there were other, equally nightmarish 5-mans that had to be included in the interest of fairness.

WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Blizzard ruined my intro. I was going to talk about how appropriate it was that patch 5.1 included a scenario for warlocks that took them to the Black Temple. Then they pushed it to 5.2. So fine. I'll just fall back to something generic.

In terms of sheer content and changes, patch 2.1 was truly massive -- one of WoW's biggest patches of all time. It arrived in May 2007, five months into The Burning Crusade. Let's dive in!

Illidan shouts at us in person

We were ready, if not perhaps entirely prepared. After an ad campaign and a trailer that prominently featured Illidan, many players expressed disappointment that WoW's first expansion didn't launch with the Black Temple raid. In retrospect, those concerns seem silly today. If anything, the Black Temple released too early in the expansion, forcing Blizzard to add the ultradifficult Sunwell Plateau raid to fill the gap between expansions.

The Black Temple was an enormous raid, and one of the game's most beloved. No matter where you went, everything was big and scary. In some areas, even clearing the trash felt epic. Nine bosses populated a vast indoor/outdoor instance. Many of them are still remembered fondly. Supremus and Reliquary of Souls were highly memorable encounters, the latter partly due its unforgiving awareness checks. Teron Gorefiend and Illidan were major lore figures able to be vanquished in WoW for the first time.

BT wasn't the only raid that 2.1 introduced, however.

The Ask the Devs question and answer series continues with Round 8, where Blizzard devs answered user-submitted questions about patch 4.2's raid content, the Firelands. Players are anxiously awaiting the next tier of raid content, and Blizzard has had a lot to answer for due to the changing nature of patches in the months to come.

Blizzard answers some pretty good questions this time around and even addresses the melee DPS problem in many of the tier 11 raid fights. Some answers are a bit cryptic, however. When discussing the planned Abyssal Maw dungeon (we thought it would be a 5-man, but apparently, raid fights would have taken place there as well), Blizzard says that it believes that the Neptulon story is wrapped up fine with Throne of the Tides but doesn't make mention of the Abyssal Maw dungeons making a return. They only mention "for now," so hopefully the complete Neptulon story will be told in the depths of Vashj'ir.

Another interesting point that the devs make is that they don't really understand the complaint that some aspects of the raid game are too easy, when they look at the number of people who have completed the 25-man heroic encounters in relation to the normal content modes. Also, the devs wanted to stress that they were not trying to turn 25-man raiding guilds into 10-man raiding guilds and actively tried to make the 10- and 25-man versions of encounters similar in order to stress that point.

I am very excited for a new Lady Vashj bridge in the Firelands, though. WoW always has the coolest bridges. Read the full Q&A after the jump.

Once a day, resetting at midnight, alchemists at skill level 485 or above are able to transmute Volatile Life into a random other volatile. A little-known fact not documented in the tooltip is that if you perform this transmute in a specific zone, the result will not be random. For example, doing it in Uldum will always yield Volatile Air.

This transmute, even when performed in a city, is likely the best use of the shared alchemy cooldown. For a lot of realms, none of the other cooldown-linked transmutes (Truegold, Pyrium Bar, and the pre-Cataclysm stuff) are nearly as profitable as the Living Elements transmute, simply because as a general rule, Volatile Life is always among the cheapest of the volatiles. Transmuting it to just about anything is profitable, or at least not a loss. Now that we can force it, it's going to increase drastically in profitability.

Here's the list of locations and what they proc, taken from a blue post about a hotfix:

• Volatile Air: Uldum
• Volatile Fire: Mount Hyjal
• Volatile Water: Vashj'ir
• Volatile Earth: Deepholm

Transmute-specced alchemists also enjoy the chance of a double proc; however, the additional volatiles are completely random. You can force the primary proc but not the secondary bonus. Based on the fairly low drop rate from the Electrostatic Condenser, air will be the way to go for a while.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

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If you're sitting there at your keyboard right now violently coveting your upcoming Cataclysm experience and daydreaming of all the places you'll go, we here at WoW Insider would like nothing better than to aid and abet you in your wacky escapades. And since Cataclysm is launching on International Matthew Rossi's Birthday, who better to help you figure out where you intend to stream like an unstoppable torrent of locusts? Well, there may be lots of better options, but I'm doing it anyway.

Cataclysm has several new zones to experience and quite a few new dungeons to crawl through. Let's take a look, shall we?

You can get your Flight Master's License in Outland or Northrend, but the much better options are Stormwind for the Alliance and Orgrimmar for the Horde. Horde players want to talk to Maztha and Alliance players want to talk to Bralla Cloudwing. Wowhead has excellent maps for finding both of them.

Welcome to your daily dose of The Queue. With your usual hosts suffering from post-BlizzCon fatigue, The Queue was left unguarded and once again captured by Fox Van Allen. All members of the Van Allen faction shall enjoy a 5 percent buff to damage and experience for the 24-hour duration, and Spirit Shards may now be collected.

The powers than be here at WoW Insider are still licking their BlizzCon-inflicted wounds, so they requested I once again write The Queue. And since Holisky, Sacco, et al. probably won't even have the energy to edit this, I'm spilling the beans on what happened at BlizzCon 2010. Not the boring stuff. The awesome, seedy stuff that could get everyone fired.

First of all, I cannot believe what happened after [REDACTED] ended. [REDACTED] stayed a little bit after, and once we all got a few photos, all of us took turns [REDACTED]ing in the [REDACTED]. You know how [REDACTED] seemed awful friendly during the [REDACTED]? Yeah, you guessed it, he was totally [REDACTED]. Like, really [REDACTED].

On a somewhat related note, I'd really appreciate it if those of you who were taking the pictures of me when I was [REDACTED]ing [REDACTED] would stop uploading them to Facebook. Or at least stop tagging me in them. I mean, my grandmother can see that stuff. Come on.

Oh, and P.S.: [REDACTED]'s hair smelled exactly the way you'd have expected it to -- like [REDACTED].

[Nice try, Fox. – Ed.]

Dark Finch asked:

Does WoW Insider plan to redo the "(Place Spec Here) 101" articles to match the current talent trees and abilities? If so, will you do this before or after Cataclysm launches?

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we find ourselves the designated butt-monkey of several new factions.

Hello again, fellow achievement-hunters. This week we're going to finish up with a look at the new reputation factions available in Cataclysm and a quick look at new world events.

"There aren't any new world events," you point out.

That's what makes it so quick. Although this goes without saying in any article discussing new achievements, there are a few spoilers in here discussing how you meet and work with various Cataclysm factions. If you'd rather stay unspoiled about upcoming quests, don't go past the cut.

45 Exalted Reputations This is now the highest reputation-related achievement in the game. Interestingly, there is not a new title associated with it; you'll still receive The Exalted at 40 Exalted Reputations, although it's possible that it's just a placeholder. Then again, if you already have 40 exalted reputations, getting 45 should be very simple during Cataclysm, as there'll be at least six new reputation factions available. I'm not sure a new title's going to be in the cards as a result.

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly source for news, guides, tips and opinions on the death knight class.

With the Cataclysm beta well under way, the death knight class does still have some bugs and glitches to work out and maybe even a bit of balancing work needed. But for now, the beta is definitely where the action is, as we work out some of the major changes to our rune systems and trees and figure out where the future of the class is headed. With that in my mind, I'll be playing through the beta for the new few weeks using various builds and heading to various zones and dungeons, getting a feel for how a death knight plays in Cataclysm. This week, we're headed for Mount Hyjal as a freshly copied-over level 80 unholy DPS death knight.

Note that for the most part, I plan to discuss only specific items and death knight mechanics and will do my best to keep out actual zone and quest plot line spoilers, but if you're afraid of spoilers from item names or discussion of quest mechanics, some of them may appear in this column.

• Ysera, Malfurion Stormrage, and Hamuul Runetotem lead the charge against the Twilight's Hammer cult, the black dragonflight, and Ragnaros' army of fire elementals.
• "Players will be able to enter Hyjal by way of Moonglade, to take on a series of high-stakes quests in a historic location alongside some of Azeroth's most renowned heroes."
• Players must seek the help of the Ancients to save Hyjal due to fractured night elf leadership.
• New faction: Guardians of Hyjal. They seek to resurrect many of the night elf gods and goddesses slain during the War of the Ancients, including Aviana, goddess of the air.
• Malorne has been spotted!

And much more. Check out the official preview here.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

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Unless you are a Ridiculously Lucky Bastard, odds are good that you've gone the length of your time in the game without managing to get a particular drop you really wanted. It's been a running joke in my guild that, try as I might, I can never get Pillar of Ferocity to drop from Anetheron. It didn't once drop in the near-year I ran Hyjal during Burning Crusade, and it sure isn't dropping during our occasional fun runs now.

I don't even know why I want it as badly as I do. It wasn't a giant upgrade back in the day given how oddly it was itemized for Druid tanks in comparison to the Wildfury Greatstaff, and it's sure as heck not an upgrade now. But every so often I find myself staring at Atlasloot in celebrated Captain Ahabesque fashion, being driven to the brink of madness over an elusive white whale weapon that is among the last of that now-vanishing breed, the feral tanking staff.

A Restoration Shaman pal spent each Hyjal alongside me waiting for a pair of Howling Wind Bracers that never came (let's face it, Hyjal hated us), and our Holy Paladin colleague went more than a year in Karazhan without ever seeing a Shard of the VIrtuous. With gear consolidation in Wrath and generally smaller loot lists all-around, you get the slightly more exciting problem of being more likely to see a drop but losing it to someone else, possibly multiple times (see: Illustration of the Dragon Soul, enormous popularity thereof). Spill, folks; what are your horror stories?

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.

Last week I answered a question about the Kor'kron and I messed it up a wee bit, which I don't mind admitting. I said that the Kor'kron were all Orcs, but I didn't notice that in Wrath of the Lich King it actually includes a number of Trolls. The Kor'kron were originally only really seen in Thrall's throne room originally, they were his personal guard at the time and 100% Orcs. In Wrath, they've apparently spread out and include a couple of the other races as well.

So who makes up the Kor'kron? The Orcs primarily. Trolls secondary, and there are also a few Tauren and Taunka thrown in as well. I haven't seen any Undead or Blood Elves among the Kor'kron yet, they seem to keep to their own little militaries for now.

frostymage asked...

Why aren't the Knights of the Ebon Blade flying the Acherus to Northrend? It said in one of the DK starter quests that it could destroy Naxxramas.

Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we sing a swansong to TBC raiding in all its glory.

With less than a week to go before we all start frantically levelling and leaving Outland behind for good, let's not forget the ups and downs raiding during The Burning Crusade has brought us. From Attumen to Kil'jaeden, we've run the gamut of raiding, killing anything from pit lords to corrupted naaru with nary a blink.

We've shed blood and tears over rare drops, wiped countless times until the small hours, decked our alts out in epics and moved servers to find a better guild. We've rerolled, watched ourselves and our raid instances get nerfed, hung out in Shattrath showing off our gear, and gotten to grips with major class changes in the last two weeks. So let's look back...