Posts with tag old-kingdom

Zarhym popped into one of the many official forum topics complaining about the seemingly inordinate amount of times Old Kingdom pops on the Dungeon Finder to offer some welcome news for exhausted dungeon runners: Old Kingdom and Nexus alike will be receiving some adjustments meant to bring the dungeons in line with other Wrath heroics.

So we've been doing these Creative contests to give away their shiny new World of Warcraft-branded wireless gaming headsets for a few months now. But if you haven't won one yet, worry not: today, we're giving away five headsets to one lucky instance-running group out there, so you can all talk to each other while you're wiping in Heroic Old Kingdom.

To enter, you've got to send us a .JPG-formatted picture (no bigger than 800px please) of your favorite five-man group -- you and four friends -- to contests@wow.com by 5pm October 29, 2009 (that's one week from today!). Make sure you put "Creative 5-man contest" in the email subject so we can recognize what it's for, and while you can take it wherever and however you want to in-game (or even in real-life!), just make sure there are five people in there. Because one lucky random entry will win five Creative World of Warcraft wireless gaming headsets, one for each member of the group, at a value of $150 each, or $750 total. That's a lot of headsets! You must also be 18 or older, and live in the United States or Canada excluding Quebec -- full official rules can be found right here.

Please note: in addition to emailing us the .jpg picture, you will also need to copy and paste the form below (filled out) into your email -- it was put together by our legal department and simply says that you understand and will adhere to the rules of the contest. You need to include the names and e-mail addresses of all five players in your group so that we can contact you all about prizes if you win.

Good luck to everyone who enters -- we can't wait to see what your five-man groups look like! And stay tuned, because we've got an even more epic contest planned out soon.

This is great -- it's probably more WoW playing than I could do in one day, but maybe I'll try it this weekend anyway. loztaylor has designed a heck of an instance run that rolls through thirteen Heroics and will nab you 53 Emblems of Conquest (along with all of the other spoils of war) in one day. Basically, you'll be sweeping across the land of Northrend, hitting every Heroic you come across, and if by some chance you're able to keep the group together the whole time, and keep from passing out from all the WoW playing you're doing, at the end you'll end up with 53 Emblems, more than enough to purchase most of the Emblem gear, and almost enough to pick up a Tier piece.

Of course, if you're wearing a rep tabard, you'll also rein in a ton of dungeon rep. And if you hit the new Trial of the Champion, you'll pick up your Champion's Seals as well. And you'll have 13 Frozen Orbs to divvy among the group, a few extra Emblems and gold from doing the daily quests, and if you're good and/or lucky, you might even be able to clear up a few of the achievements or snag that blue proto-drake. Of course, doing this much of anything in the game will probably nab you plenty of rewards. But here's a tuned route to follow all the way around the world of Heroics. If I can find a willing group of suckers guildies, I think I'll give it a shot.

I've been working in coordination with a group called Vocalo.org here in Chicago for the past few weeks -- they're a community-oriented division of the public radio station WBEZ (the same station that produces NPR shows like "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" and "This American Life"), and I've been doing some interviews with their in-studio host. A few weeks ago, we talked to a psychologist friend of mine about video game violence and addiction, last week we chatted with da_bears, a professional gamer here in Chicago (who recently got into World of Warcraft), and this week, we're doing something extra special: I'll be running an instance together with a five-man group live on the air. It'll start up at 4pm central both live on Vocalo.org (and live on the air in Chicago at 89.5FM). As I run through the instance live on the air (I haven't decided which one yet, though I'm thinking Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle or maybe Heroic Old Kingdom), we'll be talking about WoW and other MMOs, why these games are so fascinating, and what it's like to run with a group of five different people, all playing different roles with different abilities.

It should be interesting to say the least -- while the segment will likely be directed at people not as familiar with World of Warcraft as you guys, I'll be sure to keep it interesting even for veteran WoW players (and if we wipe, you can at least laugh at me for being a noob Hunter). I believe we'll also be taking phone calls in the middle of all of this, so if you want, you can probably call up and talk some WoW with me as well.

This all begins tomorrow, Wednesday afternoon at 4pm central time, both online at Vocalo.org and live on the air in Chicago, so if you're available to tune in and give us a listen, please do. I have no idea what will happen (has anyone ever tried to run an instance live on the radio before?), but it should be a lot of fun.

There's a fun little discussion on the forums right now about the best noise out of a mob in the game, and people have all kinds of different opinions. Among the many brilliant things Blizzard has done with World of Warcraft is the way their sound design makes each and every encounter with a mob very memorable, so that even if you're not paying close attention, you know a) when you've aggroed something, and b) what you've aggroed. We all know what a wolf growl sounds like, we know what it sounds like when the caster you're trying to sneak past starts casting (and many of us can probably tell what spell, just from the sound), and of course, probably most memorably, we all know what that gurgly murloc sound means, especially when you hear it in numbers.

Lots of the best audio clips are actually from bosses (all of Molten Core's bosses were memorable, for some reason, and "Too soon!" has even reappeared in the game since). My personal favorite lately is the quote from Elder Nadox, the first boss in Ahn'Katet's Old Kingdom. He shouts an otherworldly phrase (apparently in Nerubian) and it ends with a "k-k-k-k-k" sound that must have been edited together -- it definitely doesn't sound human. Every time I hear that (and he says it a few times throughout the fight), I get the feeling that we are fighting something that is very, very old and very, very evil.

But of course lots of the audio cues help pull you into the game like that. What are some of your favorite mob noises in the game?

One of the things that caught my eye in the Ulduar preview that was posted awhile ago is the description of Yogg-Saron. The flavor text describes him as 'the Old God of death.' Considering our big target in this expansion, the Lich King, that's extremely interesting.

Wrath of the Lich King has heavily hinted at some sort of connection between Yogg-Saron and the Scourge, though we never quite find out what it is. The Scourge make heavy use of Saronite, an ore with Yogg-Saron himself as its origin. When the Alliance investigates this ore in the Dragonblight, they discover the Scourge says Yogg-Saron's name with some degree of hate and contempt.

A lot of people fear there's a "puppet of the master" thing surrounding the Lich King, that he's not actually his own power, he belongs to Yogg-Saron. I find this unlikely for one really big reason: The Scourge hates Yogg-Saron, and everybody else that we've run into that have fallen under Yogg-Saron's will either love him utterly or serve him faithfully. If you go to the Saronite Mines in Icecrown and do the quest Slaves to Saronite, you see just how faithful some of his servants become once they've been controlled. If Yogg-Saron were controlling the Lich King, we'd see a very different Scourge.

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.

Good afternoon, everyone! I'll waste no time trying desperately to be funny today, we'll just jump into this thing.

Carda asked...

Which heroic dungeon provides the most rep? Of course, this will probably vary depending on the amount of trash pulled (full clear vs. "just the pats, ma'am"), but accounting for bosses and essential trash pulls, where can I farm to max out my rep as quickly as I can?

5-mans are still my favorite part of the game. Guild runs, PuG-runs, something in between...doesn't matter. And I've had a fabulous time in Northrend 5-mans so far. Yes, Herald Volazj is pretty much the clear winner of the early 5-man bosses (gotta love that Insanity debuff), but Azjol Nerub's been very popular, and the questline leading to the cutscene at the end of Drak'tharon Keep is getting a lot of good press. Not enough people are in the late '70's or at 80 to have had a good crack at Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnacle, or Culling of Stratholme, so I'm not sure how those are going to go over, but I think players in general have really enjoyed the new dungeons.

That there's markedly less emphasis on soul-crushing trash (I'm looking at you, Shattered Halls) and more emphasis on cool boss mechanics and gorgeous scenery is also pretty awesome. And then there's that giant drop in Azjol Nerub taking you past several levels of the ancient city that never fails to kill someone. I shouldn't find it funny, but I do, even when it's me.

How far along are you on the new Northrend 5-mans? Have you picked a favorite yet? And how many people have you seen die on the Azjol Nerub drop?