Posts with tag world-of-warcraft-beta

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

As I write this, it's 3:15 a.m. here in Wisconsin. About 30 minutes ago, I was comfortably in bed, drifting off to sleep. Then I heard a familiar sound coming from my iPhone -- someone was sending me instant messages over AIM! You see, I keep AIM logged in on my phone just in case the staff needs me in a hurry, especially on weekends. So I rolled over and groped blindly for my phone. What happened? Did WoW Insider burn down while I wasn't looking? Did we get news of another domain change? Did someone put a hilarious .GIF in our virtual war room?

It was Michael Sacco. "Hey Alex, can you write The Queue for me tomorrow?"

"I'm in bed, Mike. I am literally in bed. Right now. Sleeping."

"Yeah. OK. Can you write it?"

So here I am. Writing The Queue. Because that's what friends do.

bubbap51 asked:

What will be the best way to grind worgen/goblin rep?

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community.

I've been having a blast lately on the Cataclysm beta. I managed to sneak into a few raids on both 10- and 25-player raids. Even better? I got to do it as holy! While I was interested in seeing how I could cope with the new healing mechanics, my primary purpose was to evaluate what the overall healing game would be like in a raiding environment. It isn't enough for me to see the posts and see the numbers or the discussion. I myself need to be in there and do it. I figured while I was at it, I could record a video of a few encounters and do direct comparisons between 10s and 25s, along with detailing the challenges with both.

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.

Honestly, I have no idea if it's hot or not. I'm writing this Queue from the Atlanta airport at 6:30 in the morning after a red-eye from California, and I still have another flight to go.

Pancakes asked:

What's to become of draenei paladin chargers (or at least, what happened on beta)? I know we're getting elekks when 4.0.3 rolls around, but do we get to keep our horsies?
No, your horses turn into elekks. If you're concerned, don't be -- the Great Exarch's Elekk looks really cool.

One of the many nice things that Cataclysm is doing for the low-level quester is finally getting rid of the level 1 to 60 "clown suit." Every 10-level range has its own specific set of matching quest rewards, giving you a unique look every handful of zones. And they don't look half bad! In fact, some of the sets look pretty darn cool. Speaking from experience, leveling from 1 to 60 in the beta was a lot more exciting, not just due to the new quests and mechanics, but also because I couldn't wait to see what my new gear would look like when I hit a new leveling milestone.

Check out the full picture with all of Cataclysm's low-level armor sets, courtesy of reader Frez, after the break.

Short and sweet here, folks: Blizzard has announced that race changes to goblins and worgen will be available immediately upon Cataclysm launch. That's 12:01 a.m. PST Dec. 7. Additionally, there will no longer be any achievements for being the first of your race to hit level 85; the achievements are now class-only.

Great news for people who want to switch from their terrible male night elf druid into a dashing (literally) male worgen druid, or basically anyone who's tired of playing a troll of either gender.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Last week, I received an email asking me for my thoughts on raid size in Cataclysm. As it turns out, I have quite a few thoughts -- three columns' worth, in fact, covering four different categories: gameplay, logistics, rewards and intangibles. My goal is to help officers and their guild members to choose which raid size is best suited for their guild. A week ago, I wrote about the gameplay category.

This week's column will cover two topics that have been linked together throughout the history of the game. From the very beginning of WoW, Blizzard has made a connection between more difficult logistics and greater rewards. Molten Core, Onyxia, and later 40-man raids rewarded the best available gear in their respective heydays. Throughout The Burning Crusade and Wrath, 25-man content yielded the best items. For Cataclysm, this paradigm is shifting.

Let's take a look at the logistics involved with the two raid sizes and the rewards that each size offers.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), 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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Welcome back to The Queue, our 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.

Ayasumonk provided today's header image, a reflection on the cruelty of Russian circuses. Not really.

A_V asked:

Are the guild-earned new heirlooms in Cata going to be the only accessible heirlooms available to level from 80 to 85? Because my partner and I have a private guild on one server for the two of us that consists of just our few 80s and little alts. If the heirlooms are deep into the guild levels, will we still be able to access them with just the two of us running around?
Yes, only the helm and cape heirlooms are currently known to work past level 80, and it might take a bit of time for a two-person guild to unlock them. Bear in mind that you'll likely also have guild perks to boost your experience gain at that point.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we take a hard look at the new fire tree in Cataclysm and beyond. Well, not really beyond; I'm not sure how we'd even do that.

The next three weeks will find Arcane Brilliance looking in depth at each of the mage talent trees, with all of the associated bits and bobs. Because it's very likely the most popular of the three specs right now, we'll begin with the fire tree. Or will we? Yes ... yes, we will. I'm sorry, I just got done watching Inception for the first time (I know, I'm slow), and I'm pretty sure none of this is real and all of it is a dream. A dream where I get to write a weekly column about mages and set fire to warlocks over and over without repercussion. And you guys are all in my dream with me! Frankly, I never want to wake up.

The fire tree, in my opinion, is a model of good design. From top to bottom, the talents play off of each other, working together in creative ways that just make the tree fun both in theory and in practice. It's not without its problems, but the issues are comparatively minor. We'll mention some of them, but only in the interest of full disclosure. For the most part, the fire tree seems to be an example of Blizzard's getting it right.

Welcome back to The Queue, our 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.

Rainyia sent us this picture on Twitter. "It's what I imagine worgen riding mounts to look like," she says. I suppose she's not far off, though admittedly this worgen looks a little, uh, young.

jq71586 asked:

Do the immediate goblin and worgen starter zones have mailboxes? Or to retrieve heirlooms, for example, is it still needed to run toward a larger nearby city to access a mailbox?

New goblins and worgen do indeed have mailboxes available right away. You'll be able to get your heirlooms and proceed to outlevel the starting zone right away, even though you can't leave until you complete it anyway.

Earlier today, Blizzard's Zarhym posted some clarifications on the changes to Create Soulstone and Rebirth that we can expect to see in Cataclysm. I know a lot of warlocks and druids who are going to be very unhappy about this change. These mechanics are not fully implemented on beta yet.

• These limitations affect raid content only.
• One combat resurrection is allowed per boss attempt in 10-man raids (Rebirth or Soulstone).
• Three combat resurrections are allowed per boss attempt in 25-man raids (any combination of Rebirth and Soulstone).
• Accepting a combat resurrection is what counts towards the total accrued, not the cast.
• Create Soulstone has a 15-minute cooldown.
• Rebirth has a 10-minute cooldown.

Zarhym also hinted at the possibility of adding to the existing functionality of Soulstone by allowing one to be cast in combat on a deceased character, a change that would soften the blow ever so slightly for many raid leaders. Zarhym remained cagey when questioned about the ultimate fate of Reincarnation, but it seems that reincarnating currently counts towards the attempt combat resurrection total. Whether this is a bug or a feature is yet to be determined.

The full blue posts are after the jump.

Welcome back to The Queue, our 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.

Surfboards? Passé. The latest extreme sport is surfing on alien ungulates.

Grovin asked:

Not being in the beta, I was wondering what the current status is on the storage space issues related to tabards, backpacks and banks (as brought up here)?

Right now there's no new news relating to inventory space. Blizzard has said that it's exploring options for tabard storage, but we haven't heard anything else since.

Planning on kicking off Cataclysm by killing all the quest givers in newbie zones? Think again: Blizzard has increased the level of starting zone guards in areas like Coldridge Pass and Deathknell to 90. These guards are currently level 65 on the live servers.

The change, which guarantees you'll be at least five levels lower than the guards, takes advantage of existing game mechanics to protect lower-level players from mischief. NPCs that are five levels higher than you are exceedingly difficult to hit (spell casters will suffer a 39 percent chance to miss) and frequently wallop you for higher-damage-causing crushing blows far more often. The guards will also have higher health pools as well. This contrasts vividly with guards on the live server, who are prone to dying if a level 80 character accidentally sneezes on them.

Level 90 guards are better suited to protecting newbie players from max-level griefers. Note that only starting areas will see these high-level guards. The guards in major cities are now level 85 -- dangerous, but soloable.

Players who are upset by this change are encouraged to stop being jerks who grief newbies.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), 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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This has been an authenticatorless week. I do not recommend weeks like this. Now that I have access to Azeroth again, however, I am reminded that the lack of substantial updates to the elemental spec implies that the developers are mostly finished with us and have been for some time. For the majority of elemental shaman, we are watching and waiting for the final Cataclysm itemization and profession details, although we certainly aren't the only class in this situation. Luckily, this latest beta build has given us a few minor details to mull over. My enforced break from the game has also coincided with my first reader emails and questions, so after I've covered the consequences of the tweaks, I'll be answering some questions.

Now, as for the small changes, I am happy to see Searing Totem finally get some love. I suspect many elemental shaman will be grinding their teeth in annoyance as I mention the shaman sweet spot on the Blood Queen Lana'thel encounter, or the frustrating positioning for Blood Prince Council, or even the erratic totem behavior on Sindragosa! The totem's low range has caused many shaman to question the value of the current Elemental Reach talent. Why pick up a talent that increases your max range to 40 yards, if you have to continually refresh a Searing Totem at a mere 20 yards? The full change and a Ghostcrawler post on the topic is after the jump.