Posts with tag sunwell-plateau

Heading back to pick up some awesome armor sets from vanilla WoW or that dazzling weapon that'll have your enemies cowering in fear? Transmogrification makes it possible -- and we'll show you how!

While you're blazing your way through the Sunwell Plateau, don't forget about the other items you can nab along the way. In addition to the gear and items that drop in the raid, bosses drop Sunmotes, which can be traded along with various loot drops in Sunwell Plateau for other loot items. To trade these items, look for the NPC Yrma aboard the boat in Sunwell Harbor.

In addition, there is also plenty of unique-looking gear on Smith Hauthaa over in the armory section of the Isle. Unlike the other gear to be found on the Isle, everything that Hauthaa has can be purchased for justice points rather than fished out of an instance. If you've got a glut of justice points, it may be worth it to check out Hauthaa's wares and see if there's anything that catches your eye for transmogrification.

Heading back to pick up some awesome armor sets from vanilla WoW or that dazzling weapon that'll have your enemies cowering in fear? Transmogrification makes it possible -- and we'll show you how!

Sunwell Plateau was one of those raids that nobody ever expected to see -- nor did they expect additional items for their tier sets. However, the raid was well received. Raiders turned their focus to Sunwell Plateau and the loot within, including three new additions to their tier 6 sets in the form of belts, boots and bracers. However, despite carrying the same name as these tier sets, the models on these items didn't really match the sets at all. But fear not -- if you're looking for a snazzy matching outfit, the Sunwell has some unofficial sets that are absolutely gorgeous. These are the sets that the belts, boots and bracers were made for, and they're perfect for transmogrification. Check the gallery below for the sets, and follow us after the break for strats and guides to Sunwell Plateau.

It all started on a lark. Some friends wanted to run BWL, but for whatever reason I said, "Hey, why not do Black Temple instead?" In my opinion, BT is one of the best instances in the game, with some fantastic architecture and art and really excellent boss design, both visually and in terms of what the designers did mechanically at the time. The Reliquary of Souls encounter is still fascinating to watch, and I'm kind of a fanboy for Teron Gorefiend. To be honest, I still find myself wondering if Illidan was being controlled by Gul'dan, considering that Gorefiend, Gul'dan's first death knight, ended up gravitating to the Temple.

On our way to the Black Temple, as a lark, I asked if I could bring my level 70 warrior I'd started the week before Cataclysm dropped in order to test the new talent spec and leveling changes. Oh, and because I have a problem. I figured what the heck, I could maybe snag a couple of pieces of gear that would last into the mid-70s if I ever played her again.

Six drops later, I'd locked her XP gain and run Hyjal, Karazhan, ZA and Sunwell on her, and I am probably going to do so again.

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.

Once upon a time, Hawaiian pizza was all the rage here at The Queue. Well ... okay, I won't lie, Hawaiian pizza is still all the rage here at The Queue, but now we have dessert, too. I've been inspired by Streetza Pizza, a local food truck here in Milwaukee, and will be making s'mores pizza this evening. I'll report back on how it goes.

FluffedMojo asked:

"Are AoE pulls gone in favor of legitimate strategy in 5-mans?"

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.

Well, after last weeks extensive look into dwarven politics we're closing in on finishing off the Alliance. So far we've seen the night elves, the gnomes, and the dwarves – today we'll take a brief look at the Alliance race that hasn't had much to say since Burning Crusade: the Draenei.

Luckily Matthew Rossi has already written up an excellent post on the history of the draenei and their otherworldly origins. This post explains the corruption of the eredar at the hands of Sargeras, and the lone faction of eredar that escaped to become what we know as the draenei today. It's only been a couple of years at best from a timeline standpoint since the blue-skinned aliens made a smashing debut on Azeroth, yet they've been largely absent from the war efforts in Northrend -- what's left for the draenei, and what does their future with the Alliance hold?

The draenei race is quite possibly the most peaceful race the Alliance has on their side. While the other races of the Alliance are prone to conflicts and struggles over petty disagreements, the draenei only seem to strike out in defense. Their arrival on Azeroth wasn't pretty -- they ended up tearing up the landscape over on Azuremyst and Bloodmyst isles. While they were of course concerned about their fellow survivors, they were just as concerned with what they'd done to the land and the creatures on it -- as a society concerned with not only the Light of the naaru, but the elements of shamanism, the last thing they wanted to do was wreak havoc on a new world, especially since they'd just left a dying world behind.

Let's be honest; the best lore-related achievement is without question Loremaster, which requires you to do the vast majority of the game's quests. But that's pretty self-evident -- "To get the best lore experience in-game, do the quests, which contain virtually all of the actual lore!" -- and thus kind of a cop-out from my perspective. So what I'm going to do with this edition of OverAchiever is pointedly ignore the fact that Loremaster is the most important thing you should do as a dedicated lore junkie, and turn to some other options that tend to be overlooked.

As with our article on Twenty-Five Tabards, this is not an exhaustive guide on how to do each achievement, but simply a starting point if you're either interested in Azeroth's history, or interested in your character becoming more deeply involved in the developing story. As an early warning, 1 of the following 5 achievements is no longer doable, but I've decided to include it as I think the inability to do it at this point in time could be considered part of Azerothian history.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) 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 was going to kick off today's edition of The Queue by embedding Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta Feeling (slightly NSFW) since I mentioned it was a guilty pleasure of mine on yesterday's Moviewatch. Unfortunately, the official Black Eyed Peas Youtube channel disabled embedding and I'm not going to be a jerk and hijack it from somebody else's channel. So you get a Dragon Age screenshot instead. Hooray! Blood!

No, we're not getting paid to plug this game constantly. We're just nerds. Nerd gamers. This is what we do.

Ilmyrn asked...

"Any word on whether we'll ever see a non-Arena frost wyrm mount?"

Well, there's a frost wyrm model in patch 3.3, but I assume that's to go with the latest arena season. So I'm going to say... no. The Gladiators get Frost Wyrms, the PvE players get Invincible.

After compiling a list of what I felt were the most difficult raid bosses to heal, it got me wondering. Many of the encounters we've faced, be it in 5 mans or raids, have players feeling varying levels of emotion after they bring them down. One of my guild officers refers to it as "chasing a high". It's a feeling you experience after taking down a particularly tough boss.

I'll give you an example.

In vanilla WoW, Vael was a challenge in his own right. It took a long time for my guild to bring him down before the expansion came out. But to me, the greatest rush and "high" I experienced was after taking down Illidan for the first time. Kil'Jaeden was a close second. Sartharion with 3 drakes alive was the closest encounter in Wrath of the Lich King to even compare to the euphoric feelings I felt before during Burning Crusade.

Then there's the other kind of emotional where you've felt invested in a particular character and experience a sense of dread after realizing you're the executioner. After my guild took down Kael'thas, I felt a pang of regret. I was heavily into Warcraft III in the years before World of Warcraft. Kael was one of my favourite expansion heroes to play with. No one truly enjoys killing their favourite heroes. Of course, little did I know that Kael wasn't quite finished yet. So in a sense, even though I was overjoyed that we killed Kael after 6 or so weeks, I was disappointed that we had to kill Kael. I know I'm not the only one on the staff who feels a connection to raid bosses. For Alex, killing Vaelstrasz bought a slight tear to his eye. Just one. He's still a dragon with loot after all.

Maybe the next boss that will give me the exhilarating thrill will be when we drop Arthas himself.

Which boss made the most impact to you as a player and what about it made it so special?

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

That's a trailer we haven't seen in awhile, huh? It's relevant today, I promise! Besides, a little nostalgia is always fun. If I have one grievance with Wrath of the Lich King's cinematic, it's that they didn't give us an incredibly corny catchphrase to spout for nearly two years.

Discolando asked...

"Is there any substance to the rumor I've recently read that patch 3.3 will contain another yet unknown raid instance, and patch 3.4 will contain Icecrown Citadel? It does seem more logical to 'finish' the expansion with the advertised antagonist instead of a deux ex machina like patch 2.4 gave us."

The last few days I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out why I'm not particularly enjoying Patch 3.1 when I'm doing something besides raiding Ulduar. I should be enjoying it! When I first checked it out on the PTR, I was extremely excited about it. The Argent Tournament especially. The whole jousting deal, the Arthurian themes, the potential for story progression, the whole thing. It looked great! Unfortunately... I'm finding it pretty boring.

The Argent Tournament feels lifeless. Completely and utterly lifeless. I say it all of the time, but patch 2.4 was my favorite patch of World of Warcraft thus far, no contest. Patch 2.4 brought me more joy than even the Wrath launch. Not only did it have content for absolutely every aspect of the game, but it also actually changed the world. Storylines progressed in an in-your-face way. Sure, patch 3.1 moved the Ulduar and Yogg-Saron story forward, but would you know it if you didn't read fansites or watch the patch 3.1 cinematic? What's different? What indicator is there that something new is happening in the Storm Peaks?

Here at WoW Insider we don't always agree with each other. Whether it's debating the merits of various tanks on different encounters, the damage difference between pure and hybrid DPS classes, the ideal function of a particular healing class in raids, or the superiority of cake over pie, our back-channel discussion tends to be pretty interesting.

Eliah Hecht's article "25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear" sparked a lot of great discussion with our readers and, I think, some illuminating poll results as well. The majority of responders believed that giving 10-man and 25-man raids the same loot table would result in a significant drop in popularity for 25-man raiding. Overall, I tend to agree with this, but I also think that Eliah touched on something that speaks to Blizzard's evolving sense of game design, much of which is evident in the transition between late Burning Crusade and Wrath.

I would like to call this the Sunwell effect, or "ingame rationality." To wit: don't incentivize players to behave in a manner contrary to your actual design interests. I believe this played a huge role in the differences between BC and Wrath raiding, and that it underlies why the 25-man loot table has to remain superior to its 10-man counterpart.

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.

Today's edition of Ask a Lore Nerd is a bit heavy on the speculation side, so be warned before you start reading. We've had a lot of questions recently that we don't yet have answers to, but are asked frequently enough that I suppose I should see what I can say!

vyx asked...

"Okay, so speaking of life and death, this has bugged me for a while -- how do we explain the fact that some characters (Horde and Alliance legends for example) have died, but yet every Priest, Pally, Shammy and Druid can rez people anytime they want?

I realize it's a game and it wouldn't be so much fun if you died and then had to reroll a level 1, but there needs to be some type of lore explanation as to why people can be rezzed, but also can 'really die.' Are we supposed to just not worry about this or is there an explanation?"

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Ah, maintenance day. The day where I finally get to go out into the world and suck some sunshine into my pallid flesh. I may even pick up some groceries! One can only order crates of Ramen off of the internet so many times before life starts to get a little bland. ...Wait, but if I leave the house... who will write The Queue!? Oh man, forget it, I'll get some sunlight next year. Maybe I can order some Pringles to add a little flavor to my noodles.

Fargostar5000 asked...

Don't know if anyone has asked this yet, but are groups going able to run Ulduar-1o successfully using only the gear from tbe other 10-mans thus far, or will heroic level raid gear be necessary/recommended?