Gaming Blog

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King

I know that I wasn’t the only one that did a double take today when I opened up WoW and saw the “Breaking News” maintenance announcement that included a tidbit about the realm Dreadmaul undergoing hardware upgrades for Wrath of the Lich King.

I find this interesting for several reasons. First, the expansion hasn’t even had a release date announced yet and they’re already making hardware changes. Now this is obviously a good practice - getting ready for things before hand - but then again, if it’s not going to be released in October / November of this year all these hardware changes could be done later and for much cheaper. No matter if you agree with my pricing analysis or not, it is definitely a bit odd to hear about hardware upgrades when the release date hasn’t even been made public yet.

Continue reading Server prepares for WotLK…in July

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Filed under: Druid, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors

A healer in WoW basically has one job: keep people from being dead. Ideally, you would keep people from ever becoming dead in the first place by healing them, but sometimes people do die and you have to resurrect them. WoW has four classes that can heal, Druid, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman, and three out of those four have more or less the same spell to bring people back to life, whether it’s called Resurrection, Redemption, or Ancestral Spirit. There are slight variations in mana cost and the amount of HP and mana the target resurrects with, but they’re all 10-second casts and all only work outside of combat.

Then there is the Druid’s resurrection spell, Rebirth. This spell is often known as “combat res” or “battle res,” since it is the only targettable resurrection spell that can be cast during combat (Shamans can also self-res in or out of combat with Reincarnation). It’s a great spell, but it has a 20-minute cooldown, meaning that if you’re in a 5-man with a Druid healer and no other resurrecting player, and people die more often than one every 20 minutes (which happens frequently in heroics), they’re not all going to be able to be ressed. This is not enough to keep me from wanting to run instances with only a Druid healing - I still love trees. But it is an obvious hole in a the Resto Druid’s spell lineup.

Fortunately, it looks like this hole may be closed in Wrath of the Lich King. According to the newly-relocated Wrath alpha wiki, Druids will be receiving a regular, no-cooldown, out-of-combat resurrection spell, entitled Revive. It has a 10-second cast time, and seems to bring targets up with about the same amount of HP and MP as Priest Resurrection. No word on mana cost yet. All I can say is “it’s about time.” Sure, it does homogenize the healing classes a little bit more, but Druids really ought to be able to fully serve as sole healers, and that means both keeping people from dying and bringing them back up if they do fall.

Spell not found

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Though we had a great time on Sunday, we neglected an entire continent of Alliance flames which desperately need desecrating! So, those of us from It came from the Blog will be rectifying this on Wednesday and you are welcome to join us. Here are the details:

• When: Wednesday, July 2nd at 6PM Pacific (7PM server time, 9PM Eastern)
• Where: Undercity (Ruins of Lordaeron), Zangarmarsh Realm (U.S.)
• Who: Any Horde character, any level
• How: Just send a tell to Robiness or anyone in the guild for an invite to the guild and the raid

The Midsummer Fire Festival ends this Friday, so you only have a few days left to reap the benefits. If you don’t have a character on Zangarmarsh, Horde-side yet, you can just create a new character and join us, since the quests we’ll be doing can be done by any level.

Play hookie on your raid and come join us on Zangarmarsh! See you there!

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Talents, Death Knight

We were lucky enough to get an Azerothian ton (they’re like twice the weight of normal tons, don’t you know) of news about Wrath of the Lich King at Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational this weekend, and hidden in the Death Knight hands on, there’s a ton of great information about the way the class’ summons will work. Most of the summons seem to be in the Unholy tree — Death Knights will not only be able to summon the ghouls we heard about earlier, but will also be able to bring down a gargoyle and summon an insect swarm. But the ghouls are what we’re most interested in — Army of the Dead is a level 80 spell (with a 10 minute cooldown!) that will summon a “legion of your best ghouls to fight by your side.”

And our question is: how is this going to work? Obviously the ghouls won’t actually work as pets as in the way Hunter or Warlock pets work, but surely they’ll have a little more control implemented than the Druid’s treants or the Priest’s shadowfiends, right? As far as I can remember, we’ve never actually controlled multiple pets before — are we going to have one bar to control all three with, or will we mark a target as they’re summoned? It would seem that with a tanking class like the Death Knight, more focused pets would be a necessity in some cases.

Or maybe our ghouls will be as mindless as ever, and after we hit a button to summon, they’ll just head for the closest thing that looks like it might have brains to eat. Hopefully the Death Knight’s ghouls will be a bit more interesting than that (there was a rumor a while back that you’d be able to raise your fallen group members as ghouls, though I don’t see that spell in the hands on), and if not, I guess there’s always other Hero classes to improve upon the pet mechanics.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, WoW Rookie, BlizzCon, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors, Worldwide Invitational

WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

This has been an exciting week for World of Warcraft news and rumors. Blizzard has been hosting two major events Blizzcon and the World Wide Invitational. These events are a hotbed of information about WoW and other Blizzard Entertainment games. Here at WoW Insider we work hard to keep you on top of all of the latest developments in our beloved game. I’m sure you were aware, but this past weekend saw Blizzard’s World Wide Invitational in Paris, France. Let’s take a look at the kinds of information that we receive.

We did not get the piece of information that I was most hoping for: A release date for Wrath of the Lich King. Not even a beta date. Now there are a number of websites that have pre-order dates for Wrath, but none of them can be trusted as an actual estimation. We will get our new expansion “when it’s ready.” Blizzard is the only trustworthy source of this information. We will get that bit of information out as soon as it’s available from the source.

Continue reading WoW Rookie: What’s the buzz?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gamers on the Street, Wrath of the Lich King, Worldwide Invitational

Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what’s going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

Are you spending Monday digging through the pile of Wrath of the Lich King news from this weekend’s Worldwide Invitational in Paris — or is today (and the remaining months leading up to the expansion’s release) just another day in the World of Warcraft for you? We popped on to Warsong server this morning, where Stormwind was positively bristling with activity: guild and Arena team recruiting, a PuG for Zul’Aman forming, plenty of spam for various heroics, and a healthy number of twinks going about their Old World business.

I had expected to encounter a fair number of players who weren’t aware of this weekend’s deluge of Wrath news - or who plain didn’t care - but instead, I was met with nothing but enthusiasm. So I pulled up my trusty 3-bubbles-of-xp, level 1 warrior to the steps of the bank to visit with Zidona, a Night Elf Rogue I’d noticed vigorously recruiting (in Spanish Portuguese, from his home in Brazil) for fresh blood for his guild, Viral.

Continue reading Gamers on the Street: Watching for Wrath

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Filed under: Tips, Factions, Guides

Some of the best rewards in WoW can only be achieved if you have the appropriate level of reputation with a specific faction. Whether you’re a brand new WoW player or a freshly-minted level 70 dipping your first toe into the endgame, you need to educate yourself about reputation (or “rep” as it’s usually called). Fortunately, here at WoW Insider, we have a lot of tools that can help you find your way through the rep maze to the piece of loot you desire.

For new players

WoW Rookie: Introduction to Reputation
New players should start with this article to learn what all the terminology means and how rep affects your gameplay.

WoW Rookie: Azeroth Reputations
This article is the next step in understanding rep and how it works for the world of Azeroth. Since you should start worrying about rep long before you hit level 40, this article shows you how to start preparing for getting your first mount — especially if the one you hunger for is not your toon’s racial mount.

Breakfast Topic: Reputation grinding
Here you can see what your fellow players have to say about what it’s like to grind rep after level 60.

For new level 70s

Ask WoW Insider: Do you optimize your rep grinds?
Advice from us and other readers on how to streamline your rep grinds in Outland.

Faction frustrations eased in Wrath
A preview of how rep may change in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Rep calculators

Here are a couple of rep calculators we’ve reviewed.

• Liquidor’s rep calculator
• WoW Reputation Calculator

For extra credit

WoW Rookie: Pre-Burning Crusade engame reputations
This is a good primer on how rep worked prior to the release of The Burning Crusade expansion. Rep grinding in Azeroth after level 60 is not overly relevant now, but you may still be curious as to how it worked.

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Filed under: Engineering, Enchanting, Analysis / Opinion, Factions, Wrath of the Lich King, Worldwide Invitational

To coincide with the earlier good news about factions (which is, apparently, bad news to some) we have a little more good news regarding reputation. As I am sure some people (Engineers) are painfully aware, representation was… uh, lacking for certain tradeskills in TBC factions.

I actually enjoy grinding reputation simply because it gives me something simple and straightforward to do when I want to do something…. well, simple and straightforward. As much as I don’t mind doing it, there still needs to be a sense of reward from it besides moving that little bar on the bottom of my screen upwards. I didn’t grind out Kurenai simply because it wasn’t rewarding. I got a Talbuk easier via Halaani PvP. I was lucky (or unlucky, depending on your view) as an enchanter, though. Our representation on faction vendors was quite high, and that only improved as The Burning Crusade progressed and the old AQ40 enchants made a comeback. I felt bad for my Engineering buddies that didn’t really have much motivation to earn rep with anybody at all due to a complete lack of rewards.

The good news is that at the WWI’s Raids and Dungeons panel, it was mentioned that a goal of theirs to be sure more tradeskills will be rewarded via factions, spread the love further, and just plain have more recipes. Again, as an Enchanter I had more than enough recipes to grind out all over Outland, but other tradeskills didn’t quite receive that much love. It’ll be nice to see my friends feel rewarded for their work in Wrath like I did throughout the leveling and gearing process in The Burning Crusade.

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