Posts with tag uldum

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?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests and makes the occasional StarCraft 2 reference. If you ask her, she'll tell you disc priests are like sentries and holy priests are medevacs.

There is a lot to cover in Spiritual Guidance this week, so I'll be diving right in to the content. I was going to outsource my creative introduction to Mr. Fox Van Allen, but he wanted to be paid entirely in red M&Ms, so we'll just have to do without.

We'll be covering two topics today. The first will be to cover the latest build released on the Cataclysm beta earlier this week. There were some large changes made to AoE healing that affect both holy and discipline priests in different ways. Second, I've written up my advice on leveling from 80 to 85 as a healing priest.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

All of us are anxiously awaiting Cataclysm's going live. Wrath is winding down and people are anxiously anticipating the new content. Some want new raids, some want new dungeons, some want new quests, some want to make goblins or worgen. Some of us are just really excited to see the changes to the old zones, and some just want to get right into the level 80 to 85 content.

I myself am in the beta. I have played it as it has evolved since the friends and family alpha, and I have watched some of the zones go from buggy and near unplayable, with quests not yet implemented, to being far more fleshed-out and nearly ready to go live. I love Hyjal. It has an epic feel; you are right in there battling to reclaim the zone from the Twilight Cultists and the elementals. Deepholm is equally amazing. In the revamped zones, I thoroughly enjoyed the CSI-inspired murder quest chain in Westfall. I have made both a goblin and a worgen and must say, the goblin starting area and Azshara should not be missed. Everyone should make a Horde character and complete the Azuregos and Kalecgos quests in Azshara. On the other hand, I feel Gilneas is a little overscripted and Darkshore is still a little odd.

There is a lot of the world I want to see when Cataclysm launches, but there are places I want to see more than others. Where are you most interested in exploring when Cataclysm comes out? What do you absolutely have to see, and what quests do you want to do? What particular zone excites you the most? Or are you just in it for new dungeons, raids and new shiny epics?

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

In the latest beta patch, Blizzard was so kind as to bump the level cap up to 85, in addition to opening Uldum and Twilight Highlands, the last two major leveling zones in the expansion. Unfortunately, neither zone is itemized, but more on that later. In my testing this past week, I've delved in the long-dead, dormant spec of two-handed frost. The spec was officially killed off (at least in the sense of having competitive DPS) in the latter part of Wrath, when Blizzard decided to make frost the official spec of dual wielding. However, with the advent of Cataclysm, that is changing. With blood becoming a dedicated tanking tree, it left unholy as the only two-handed weapon tree. Recognizing that some players might dislike the pet-tending aspect of unholy, Blizzard decided to support two-handed weaponry in the frost tree once again.

That said, deciding to support it and succeeding at it are two different things, and in addition, there seems to be a lot of people who are still confused as to whether or not Blizzard plans to support it. You can put your mind at ease now though. Very recently, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) confirmed that, yes, Blizzard is supporting the two-handed weapon playstyle for the frost tree.

• Cho'gall is not only alive, he's the last boss in Grim Batol: Bastion of Twilight, the new entry-level raid for the expansion.
• Upon defeating Cho'gall on heroic mode, the floor beneath you will collapse and you will fall into a cavern of flowing lava that hides a "horrifying secret," according to Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi.
• Uldum was locked away by a Titan mechanic that created a projection of a large, impassible mountain -- the Cataclysm destroyed the machine and opened access to Uldum.
• Thereazane the Stonemother will be present and involved in a reputation grind similar to the Sons of Hodir.
• Reports state that one of the bosses in Skywall: Vortex Pinnacle is an elemental lord. Given that Skywall is the Elemental Plane of Air, this can only mean Al'Akir the Windlord.
• Garrosh is the "acting" Warchief of the Horde. Implying "temporary." Everyone breathe a sigh of relief.
• The Valley of Wisdom in Orgrimmar is now the Tauren district.
• Garrosh's stronghold is not in the Valley of Wisdom; it's at the center of Orgrimmar.
• The Park district in Stormwind has been destroyed, largely because Deathwing wasn't exactly happy about his daughter's head hanging from the rafters.
• The Forsaken have set up a foothold in Silverpine Forest and have rebuilt many areas, to provide a base of operations for assaulting Gilneas. The current reason for the attacks is because Gilneas is strategically valuable to the Horde.
• Less of a lore note, more of an immersion note: New music will be added for all of the cities, and a large portion of the game world.

Archaeology

Plenty to look forward to, but the most interesting change is to the Archaeology profession. Since Path of the Titans is being scrapped, Archaeology is no longer involved with it. Instead, players will use Archaeology to "dig into the lore of the game" as a new vehicle for storytelling purposes. There are two types of "artifacts" players can uncover. The first will be a lore or story artifact, while the second type can reward items -- cosmetic or fun, with the occasional rare useable weapon. Archaeology will not provide any "must-have" items, so those that don't feel like grinding out another secondary profession can skip it entirely. However, it sounds like Blizzard is taking another step towards making the story and lore of the Warcraft world a more interactive experience.

WoW.com's prestige in the community has afforded us the opportunity to speak to major Horde and Alliance leadership figures on any subject, and we're letting you, the reader, Ask A Faction Leader!

We recently spoke to Genn Greymane, King of Gilneas and leader of the Worgen, and he shed some light on several key issues, such as how hot Vereesa Windrunner is, why losing the Blood Elves was no big loss, and how to treat mental illness in the undead. This week, we've got incredibly popular Orc leader and captain of the Horde's Warsong Offensive, Garrosh Hellscream. Sitting in with him is Overlord Varok Saurfang, right hand of Warchief Thrall.

Our first reader question:

Dear Garrosh,
There is a growing number of Horde members who believe "a basic campfire" would make a better Warchief than you. What's your response?
Thank you,
Brakkas

Looking ahead beyond Icecrown Citadel, one of the zones that intrigue me the most has been around for an extremely long time. In Cataclysm, we're going to finally gain the chance to explore the area.

I'm referring to Uldum of course. Somewhere behind its gates, we'll be given the task of discovering and then securing the super weapon in order to keep it away from the hands (claws?) of Deathwing and from the Horde (or Alliance).

So here's the 64,000 gold question. What on Azeroth could possibly be so powerful to attract even Deathwing's attention? Think about it. He's one of the most powerful beings on the planet that's still alive. Granted he's lost his sanity a long time ago, but he seems lucid enough to go after something that can help amplify his power even further.

My idea? Well we know the Titans were involved in the creation of Ulduar and Uldum. Not only that, but they were responsible for landscaping all of Azeroth. So what if the weapon behind Uldum isn't really a weapon but more of a giant landscaping tool capable of flattening mountains or making really deep holes?

Or maybe it's a weapon similar to the one shown in my favorite science fiction TV show (which is no longer on the air) that has the ability to either create life or destroy it by reshaping their molecular structure? (Hint: Jaffa! Kree!) We will be assaulting the Halls of Origination after all.

Or maybe it's a whole swackload of caged murlocs with giant "lazers" attached to their bodies.

Bad movie references aside, anyone else out there the least bit curious about what we'll be going after in the future? Or what we're keeping away from Deathwing? What could it be?

It was a hectic two days at this year's BlizzCon with lots of revelations, some good, others awesome. Destruction is coming to Azeroth with the return of Deathwing, changing the face of the planet forever. While we won't see the game until 2010, the world will change entirely and cities will be revamped in order to enable them to be made flyable. However, there are several very important locations currently in-game (for the most part) which are going to be very important to the coming Cataclysm.

Check out our gallery below as we take you on a guided tour of some of the important places you should probably visit right now before they are changed forever.

Chris Metzen, speaking during the World of Warcraft preview panel, revealed that Cataclysm will introduce seven new zones, on top of revamping the old world. This revamp changes both the game mechanics (adding the ability to fly anywhere) and the lore, as old zones are forever changed, both geographically and territorially. These new zones are:

• Gilneas
• Twilight Highlands
• Deepholm
• The Lost Isles
• Sunken City of Vashj'ir
• Mount Hyjal
• Uldum

For all those of you out there who don't have the time to slog through the 100+ articles we published on BlizzCon 2009, we've condensed the events of the past few days into the most important things you need to know:

• THE END OF WRATH: Developers gave some pretty revealing information on what we can expect to see in patch 3.2.2 (the revamped Onyxia raid) and in patch 3.3, where we'll finally stare down Arthas himself.
  
• THE NEXT EXPANSION: Blizzard's own loremaster Chris Metzen debuted the first trailer for the next expansion, titled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and that sound you hear is millions of players who can't believe Blizzard would ever pull a stunt this big. Cataclysm's basic storyline features the return of Deathwing and the re-sundering of the world in his wake, forever altering Azeroth's classic landscape and sending players to previously unseen parts of the world like the Lost Isles, Hyjal, Gilneas, Uldum, and Grim Batol.
  
• FEATURES OF CATACLYSM: The most important features of the next expansion include two new races (Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance), new class possibilities for existing races, a new secondary skill, character stat simplification, cross-server instances, the ability to level and "talent" your guild, new means of character advancement through the Path of the Titans, Mastery, and the revamping of the talent system, and rated battlegrounds.
• LIVEBLOGS: We blogged and liveblogged the convention from start to finish: the Opening Ceremony, the WoW Preview panel, the WoW Art panel, The Guild's panel, the first and second WoW Class, Items, and Professions Panels, the general WoW Q&A, the Breaking Into the Industry panel, the Game Systems panel, and the Raids and Dungeons panel.
• FUN AND GAMES: Even in the middle of all the craziness, we still found time for our third annual Reader Meetup (we expected maybe 300 people and got 1200+) with the cast of The Guild present, Premonition's live raid, the Costume contest, and the Dance and Soundalike contests.

If you'd like a more thorough look at how BlizzCon 2009 went, visit our round-ups on Day One and Day Two of the con for a more complete guide to our articles, galleries, and videos.

Cory Stockton and Scott Mercer gave an in-depth look into the dungeons and raids available at the launch of WoW: Cataclysm during the Raids and Dungeons panel today at BlizzCon. We'll look at the dungeons first.

OVERVIEW:

At launch, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will ship with eight 5-man dungeons and two heroic versions of old-world dungeons.

Grim Batol: One level 85 5-man.
Skywall: One level 80-82 5-man.
Abyssal Maw: Two 5-mans; level 80-83 and level 82-84.
Deepholm: One level 80-83 5-man.
Uldum: Two 5-mans; level 83-84 and level 85.
Blackrock Caverns: One level 85 5-man.
Shadowfang Keep: One level 85 heroic 5-man.
The Deadmines: One level 85 heroic 5-man.

Descriptions and info after the jump for dungeons that were covered in depth in the panel.

I decided to do something a little different with the image above for today's Ask a Beta Tester. Instead of beating you over the head with another of my awesome Dalaran screenshots, I've plugged in some music you can listen to while you read, if you'd like. Just hit play, and get in a Wrath kind of mood.

Milkgas asked quite a few question, but many of them involve story spoilers that I don't think readers would appreciate seeing in this particular column. What I don't answer, you can truck over to Ask a Lore Nerd and I'll squeeze them in on the bottom behind my usual "spoilers be here, yarrrr" line. We can definitely hit a few of them though.

Has there been any hints in the quest text of either the Uldum or the Karazhan Basement as a raid or dungeon in this expansion or the next?

Nothing that I've seen! We'll have Ulduar as a raid zone in Northrend, so to me that seems like a definite no on Uldum. I don't think they would put two Titan raids in one expansion, unless Uldum turned out to be a 5 man dungeon. We've seen nothing about the rest of Karazhan.

We've seen Hordecake, Alliance cake, Horde-oken cake, and now we have a cake from Fatalis Sciurus, the 'Deadly Squirrels' of the Uldum realm. According to Kronq, a member of the guild, Fatalis Sciurus is a pretty small, tight knit group that all gets together in person now and then for "food, drinks, and whatever." Guildie Hallana decided to go the extra mile and put together a themed chocolate cake for the gang, bearing their adorable yet deadly namesake. I don't know about you guys, but that picture makes me want to lick the Horde emblem right off of the thing. Delicious, delicious sugar!

I have to admit, I have some pretty serious envy about the regular guild get-togethers. I enjoy gaming with my long distance friends (and yes, I consider them real friends), but there's just no substitute for hanging out in person sometimes. I wish I could have more of my guildies over at my place or vice versa regularly, the few times I've been able to do it were amazingly fun.

From now on, I think we of WoW Insider should start requiring that you guys send us a piece of the cake along with the pictures. It's just not fair to taunt us with sweets like this!

It seems a complaint I've heard a lot about Blizzard lately is that 2 years between expansions is just far too long. We'll languish too much without new content, and people will leave for Age of Conan and Warhammer Online and other games, they say.

Myself, I think the length between expansions is acceptable, provided that Blizzard is working on improving and adding new content. To some extent, they are doing this. 2.4 was a tour de force that granted us a whole new area to grind and quest in, and if Blizzard can be out patches like 2.4 on a regular basis, I can forgive them for a few delays in the expansions.

That said, I do feel like they could stand to pick up the pace.