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WoW Zone by Zone Achievement Guide Part 4: Arathi, Hillsbrad, Silverpine and The Hinterlands

December 18, 2012 by

WoW Zone By Zone Achievement GuideWelcome to ZAGGARAT ( Jetsai’s Zone-by-Zone Achievement Guide for Getting Across the Realm with Alliance Toons), a comprehensive zone by zone guide to wrapping up every achievement you need. You can view all instalments by clicking here. The printer and screen friendly guides can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.

This week’s ZAGGARAT covers Arathi Highlands, Hillsbrad Foothills, Silverpine Forest & Shadowfang Keep and The Hinterlands.

Shadowfang Keep presents some of the easier Cataclysm dungeon achievements to be had at level and they’ll be cake at 90 if you take a friend or two with you. I’m sure there are some Hunters and DKs that have already soloed these, but for most of us mere mortals Cataclysm Heroics are still cause to cash in a few favours with your guildies.

Pet Battle achievements are also starting to mount up now. If you’ve been monitoring some of the meta achievements along the way, you’ve probably already collected: An Uncommon Find, A Rare Catch and High Quality for capturing uncommon and rare quality pets; That was Close for capturing a battle pet at less than 5% health; Master Pet Battler for winning 250 pet battles and Win Streak for winning 25 in a row.

I’ve taken to capturing a pet as soon as I see it and then continuing to battle as I quest throughout the zone until I get a rare. I’ve added a new note to the guide [zone exclusive!] if you won’t come across this pet in any other zone. So if you’re going for Quality & Quantity catch your rares while you’re there!

Arathi Highlands features the Tiny Twister, Silverpine is home to the Blighted Squirrel and The Hinterlands gives you Jade Oozelings. Hillsbrad Foothills, however, is one of the meccas of battle pets. Where Red-Tailed Chipmunks frolick with Infested Bear Cubs, Lofty Librams float through the crater of Dalaran and where Plants vs Zombies meets WoW in Lawn of the Dead at the Brazie Farmstead. It’s a fun quest and mini-game all rolled in one with Brazie the Singing Sunflower as your final reward. Best news is, it’s repeatable – worst news is you can’t play it on the train on your way to work.

Next week we visit The Plaguelands and the first of our Pandaria Dungeons in Scholomance, Ghostlands, Eversong Woods, Silvermoon City and the first of our Rep Guides with the Agent Dawn & Argent Crusade.

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(Editor’s note: I just wanted to say what an amazing feat Jemima has pulled off with these Zaggarat guides – if you find them as incredibly useful as I have already, please use the donate link below – proceeds will be forwarded onto Jem for her work)

 




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WoW Zone by Zone Achievement Guide Part 3: Ironforge, Dun Morogh, Wetlands

December 10, 2012 by

WoW Zone-by-Zone Achievement GuideWelcome to ZAGGARAT ( Jetsai’s Zone-by-Zone Achievement Guide for Getting Across the Realm with Alliance Toons), a comprehensive zone by zone guide to wrapping up every achievement you need. You can view all instalments by clicking here. The printer and screen friendly guides can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.

Aaah, the low countries: Ironforge, Dun Morogh, Loch Modan and the Wetlands. Land of sheep and velcro gloves, land of gnomes, dwarves and all things close to the ground.

I must admit I’ve always found it interesting that this area is just filled with Rams, but in order to find a Ewe, you have to go to an entirely different planet. Even then, there’s only one. No wonder Farmer Griffith in Shattrath keeps her locked up tight.

Jokes aside, I’m hard-pressed to find very much of interest in these areas. Outside of a few rare pets – the Little Black Ram in Loch Modan and the Tiny Bog Beast and Razormaw Hatching in Wetlands – there’s a few recipes to collect, a few fish to catch and A LOT of exploration.

So rather than regale you with “Caught on the Horns of Giants“ – one Draenei’s epic struggle with small doors and pendant-style light fittings, I will instead discuss some of the mods that have made my achievement-hunting much easier.

NPC Scan is a clear winner. No mod will assist you better in completing the suite of achievements to kill all the rares in WoW. You can also program it to scan for any NPC with an ID and that comes in handy quite often.

PetBattleMaster is another thumbs up. Aside from allowing you to create several different teams of pets, it adds a handy reference to your tooltip telling you whether you’ve caught that pet and its quality.

Overachiever is marginally useful, but I must admit I’m not as impressed as the 5,017 people who’ve voted this up on Curse. Since 5.05 this mod has largely been broken and it’s no better in 5.1. I originally downloaded this for its tooltips but even when they are working, they’re just not comprehensive enough. For example, my tool tip will indicate whether or not I’ve fished a school for one of the many fishing achievements, but not whether I need to catch a fish and cook it for a cooking achievement. I use the Watch List function more, especially when I’m working on a few different daily/faction achivements at one time. It’s handy to be able to go to my own list and just tick track, track, track on the things I’m about to work on for the next 45 mins.

Ackiss Recipe List is great for letting you know which recipes you already have and don’t. However, it is performance-intensive, so I don’t tend to keep it loaded all the time.

Skillet is my trade skill mod of choice. It was created by one partner of the original Advanced Trade Skill Window development team and I’ve found it a lot more stable. I especially like that I can create custom lists of recipes to view at a glance.

People rave about Fishing Buddy and it’s good, but I don’t find it an essential mod. Granted. I’m not WoW’s most avid fisherman by any stretch. In fact, I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a Trout than fish one up. But for those masochists who like to be accurate in their complaint letters to Blizzard over the rarity of Old Ironjaw, it’s fantastic.

And finally the all-time best mod ever for completing low-level achievements…

Crap Away! Does exactly what it says – gets rid of all your crap at the vendor without clicking a thing. And no, it wouldn’t be nearly as great a mod without the exclamation mark in its name.

Next week, it’s northward into Horde Territory with Arathi Highlands, Hillsbrad, Silverpine and The Hinterlands.

Download the screen-friendly version here

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(Editor’s note: I just wanted to say what an amazing feat Jemima has pulled off with these Zaggarat guides – if you find them as incredibly useful as I have already, please use the donate link below – proceeds will be forwarded onto Jem for her work)

 




Filed Under: General News, Maps, WoW Tagged With:

WoW Zone by Zone Achievement Guide Part 2: Stormwind and Stranglethorn

December 4, 2012 by

Welcome to ZAGGARAT ( Jetsai’s Zone-by-Zone Achievement Guide for Getting Across the Realm with Alliance Toons), a comprehensive zone by zone guide to wrapping up every achievement you need. You can view all instalments by clicking here. The printer and screen friendly guides can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.

This week’s ZAGGARAT features Stormwind, the Stranglethorns and Zul’Gurub.

For the last two expansions, Stormwind City has been the Alliance mecca and, without question, now serves as the most significant hub for Achievement hunters in the entire realm. In fact, compiling everything to be achieved in Stormwind required four pages of listings.

Mounts and cooking recipes feature prominently but Stormwind also houses much of Azeroth’s history for the Well Read achievements. It’s the fashion capital of the Alliance, if you call getting a haircut and donning a new tabard fashion and there’s also a disturbing amount of the realm’s cheese available in this one cosmopolitan hub.

Northern Stranglethorn started our four-expansion adventure with those crazy Nesingwarys and was most people’s first experience with open world PvP. Has anyone else ever thought that the goblins in Booty Bay look a little too much like BDSM Leather Men for comfort? Fitting, I suppose, since many of my first PvP encounters occurred outside the Gurubashi Arena and felt like I’d paid for such services.

The Stranglethorns now are a treasure-trove for Pet Battlers. The schism that divided Stranglethorn Vale into the North and Cape also gave rise to lots of interesting new quests, so if you haven’t completed the zones since, they’re worth a look.

The return of Zul’Gurub heralds the return of the prized Razzashi Raptor and Zulian Panther mounts at a staggering 1% drop rate. And I, for one, can assure you how much I missed farming Zul’Gurub every week during those few months of reprieve to help my husband maintain his car… er mount… status. /end sarcasm.

Despite everything there is to be accomplished here, it’s a good time to talk about what’s not included in these Zaggarat Guides.

Reputations and factions: I’ve included how to procure the windfalls of gaining reputation that help earn other achievements like Mountain-o-Mounts and Thirty Tabards but not the achievements associated with earning reputation themselves or any notes on how to.

Daily Quests: achievements associated with daily quests haven’t been included here. Daily quests tend to be associated with a faction or a secondary profession. So while the Twilight Highlands ZAGGARAT may indicate you need to fish up a Striped Lurker for The Catalcylsmic Gourmet, it won’t tell you that you need to complete three cooking dailies to earn the tokens to buy the recipe in Stormwind.

Those sorts of achievements will be covered in a separate guide.

Low-level dungeons: ones like Stormwind Stockades, that don’t have a heroic mode, any boss-by-boss achievements and can easily be soloed by a 90 are included as a breakout section in their relevant city or zone and don’t have an entire page devoted to them.

PvP: this is a world of achievements unto itself. I have included some of the open world and city PvP achievements like For the Alliance! and Gurubashi Arena Master, but PvP achievements will, on the whole, be covered in another series.

World Events will also be covered separately, although by the time I’ve finished every other guide I’ve an idea for, it may be a Level 100 guide.

Next week: Ironforge, Dun Morough, Loch Modan and the Wetlands.

Download the screen-friendly version here

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(Editor’s note: I just wanted to say what an amazing feat Jemima has pulled off with these Zaggarat guides – if you find them as incredibly useful as I have already, please use the donate link below – proceeds will be forwarded onto Jem for her work)

 




 

 

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Through The Mist: 5.1 Landfall Overview

November 30, 2012 by

Through the Mist is a regular column from Luke Le Page covering everything World of Warcraft. If you’d like something covered in a future column, drop us a line!

As I’m sure most of you are aware Patch 5.1 went live yesterday. David was kind enough to announce the full list of changes – as you can see it was a fairly significant patch with a number of bug fixes as well as some added content.

The most significant inclusion for the average casual player is perhaps the first steps of the Pandaria campaign. The content can be almost exclusively completely without flagging for PvP, which for many players is a positive thing (there were a number of threads on the official forums from concerned PvE players as to whether they could participate in the campaign). The mobs for the daily quests also award Black Prince rep so it’s worthwhile getting straight into the new content even if you’re not at honoured for the additional quests for the Wrathion chain.

I ran through the initial quests with my guild mates yesterday as well as completing the two new Alliance scenarios.  I have to say that this is the first time, with the possible exclusion of the Death Knight starter quests (that I can currently think of) in WoW’s lifespan where I can see the growth of an NPC character through quests. Without giving too much away for those who have not done it, King Varian Wrynn displays a number of characteristics I would not have ascribed to him previously. This bodes well for the future of this expansion and the Pandaria campaign itself.

Another major change for the average player is the introduction of item upgrades. Players can now upgrade the majority of items (both PvE and PvP). Upgrades vary in costs and the exact amounts can be seen in the patch notes. Having already upgraded a couple of items I can tell you it is relatively easy and the stat changes are made quite obvious before you finalise the process.

Probably the biggest change with this patch comes in the form of the Brawler’s guild. Whilst I personally like the concept of the Brawler’s guild I am not entirely happy with the way in which Blizzard have implemented it. Participation is via invite only – these invites can only be bought off the Black Market Auction House or from rare spawn Horde and Alliance NPC’s in the new PvP areas (I am unclear as to whether these NPCs flag you for PvP or not). Additionally you can be invited by someone with the appropriate rank within the Brawler’s guild. For the average player there is going to be a long, long wait before they will see this content. On my server, which has a fairly poor population and progression rate, invitations are already over 60k gold on the Black Market AH. The NPCs that drop invitations are heavily spawn camped. Hopefully Blizzard will continue to increase the amount of invitations and the way in which they can be obtained.

Pet battles have also received some attention, the user interface now has added functionality that makes it easier to sort, select and use pets. We can now also see the quality of a pet during a battle. This is handy for knowing what to catch but it takes the fun out of researching pet families so that you can work out quality yourself during combat based off their stats. We also saw the addition of new pets to older raid instances (which now incidentally no longer need raid groups to enter). A single run of Molten Core saw me snag the Corefire Imp and a Blackwing Lair run rewarded me with Chrominius and the Untamed Hatchling so the drop rates seem quite good.

I won’t go into the many class changes as I’m sure many of you are more familiar with the classes that received nerfs or buffs than I am. Rogues once again saw fairly minor changes.

UI wise we have seen the addition of a “banner” when under the effects of crowd control. This has received some fairly negative feedback – personally I think it’s an excellent addition by Blizzard and means one less add on.

As many people expected the new Warlock quest chain was omitted from 5.1 and is now slated to be released in patch 5.2.

As some of you are aware I am off on holidays for the entirety of December, so this will be my last column for a little while, I was hoping to get into more detail on the changes but last minute preparations coupled with my recent engagement have left me rather busy.  So merry Christmas and enjoy Patch 5.1!

Filed Under: General News, Opinion, WoW Tagged With:

WoW 5.1 Full Patch Notes

November 28, 2012 by

WoW Patch 5.1 has dropped, and what a beauty it is.

We’ll have a full overview in Luke LePage’s Through The Mist column soon, but in the meantime, feast your eyes on the WoW 5.1 full patch notes:

 

World of Warcraft Patch 5.1

General

  • The Pandaren Campaign begins!
    • The conflict between the Horde and the Alliance has ignited a new series of daily quests along the shore of the Krasarang Wilds.
    • Players can visit their faction strongholds in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms to begin the quest to summon their war fleets to the continent of Pandaria.
    • Players will both valiantly defend their faction’s outpost and assault the opposing faction’s headquarters.
    • Two new Reputations have been added: Alliance players can earn reputation with Operation: Shieldwall, while Horde players will curry favor with the Dominance Offensive.
    • Players can follow the story of the Pandaren Campaign through a series of special quests tied to their reputation with the landing forces. Heroes assisting with the war effort will join key characters and faction leaders as the growing conflagration spreads across Pandaria… as well as other locations around Azeroth.
    • Players can slay rival NPCs and opposing faction players along the shore to earn commissions that can be spent to upgrade their faction’s base.
    • Look for strategic objectives to capture, including graveyards and towers. Commissions can be spent to recruit guards that will help protect this captured territory!
    • Players who are truly dedicated to their faction can spend their commissions on an item that will give their fellows an extra reputation group quest for the day. Horde players can speak with Ongrom Black Tooth, while Alliance players can contact Proveditor Grantley for details.
  • Item Level Upgrades
    • Players can now use PvE and PvP currencies to directly upgrade equipment by visiting Ethereal merchants in their respective Pandaria faction capitals.
    • Weapons and armor of item level 458 or higher can be improved by up to 8 item levels each.
    • Rare quality PvE gear costs 1500 Justice Points to upgrade once for 8 item levels, while Epic quality PvE gear costs 750 Valor Points for 4 item levels and can be upgraded twice.
    • Rare quality PvP gear costs 1500 Honor Points to upgrade once for 8 item levels, while Epic quality PvP gear costs 750 Conquest Points for 4 item levels and can be upgraded twice.
    • Be aware that items that have received item level enhancements cannot be placed into Void Storage.
  • Legendary Quest
    • Wrathion has taken a keen interest in the events along the coast of the Krasarang Wilds. Those that have aided the Black Prince in the past will now have new quests to complete as they advance Wrathion’s agenda for Pandaria and their own progress toward Legendary power.
  • Brawler’s Guild
    • Underground fighting rings have sprung up in Stormwind and Orgrimmar that will give brawlers who have their mitts on an invitation a chance to earn bragging rights by testing their solo PvE mettle against some of the toughest creatures found in World of Warcraft.
    • Players will prove their skill, and increase their rank with the Brawler’s Guild, as they win matches against some of the most difficult solo encounters in World of Warcraft.
    • Entry into the brawler’s guild is by invitation only. Invitations can be found on the black market auction house, by invitation from somebody within the guild, and occasionally as drops from certain Horde and Alliance NPCs.
    • As their Brawler’s Guild rank increases, players will unlock additional rewards and activities within the Brawler’s Guild.
    • Brawlers on a realm will gather together into the blood spattered ring to watch as their peers face down their own opponents. They can watch the battles in progress to learn from hardened Brawler’s Guild veterans as they wait for their own turn to fight.
    • If this is your first night at Brawler’s Guild, you have to fight.
  • Lesser Charms of Good Fortune no longer take up bag space, and are now recorded in the currency tab of the Character Sheet.
  • Grand Commendations are now available for purchase from all Mists of Pandaria faction vendors at Revered reputation. Using a Grand Commendation will permanently increase the amount of reputation gained with that faction across all characters on a Battle.net account.

Classes

  • The durations of all disarm effects have been reduced to 8 seconds.
  • The Weakened Blows effect has a new icon.
  • Death Knight
    • Damage received from players (or player-controlled sources) no longer counts towards increasing the healing done by Death Strike.
  • Druid
    • A new passive ability has been added: Tooth and Claw. This ability causes autoattacks to have a chance to empower the Druid’s next Maul. Empowered Mauls reduce the damage dealt by the target’s next autoattack. Guardian Druids obtain this ability at level 32.
    • Omen of Clarity now has a different visual effect for Feral Druids.
    • Symbiosis:
      • Mass Dispel’s mana cost has been increased to match the Priest version, and its cooldown has been increased to 60 seconds.
      • The cast time of Symbiosis has been reduced to 2 seconds.
      • Survival Instincts is once again granted to Brewmaster Monks and now costs 2 Chi to use.
      • Might of Ursoc is once again granted to Blood Death Knights, and now costs 30 Runic Power.
      • Savage Defense is once again granted to Protection Warriors, but now only provides a 30% increase to dodge.
      • Barkskin is once again granted to Protection Paladins, and now costs 1 Holy Power.
      • The cooldown of Stampeding Shout provided by Symbiosis has been reduced to 5 minutes.
      • The duration of Solar Beam provided by Symbiosis now displays correctly as 4 seconds.
    • Glyphs
      • The Glyph of Solar Beam has been changed, and now increases the radius of Solar Beam to 10 yards (was 5 yards).
      • The duration of Solar Beam has been reduced to 8 seconds.
  • Hunter
    • Careful Aim now increases the critical strike chance of Steady Shot and Aimed Shot by 75% on targets who are above 80% health, down from 90%.
    • The duration of Steady Focus has been increased to 20 seconds, up from 10 seconds.
    • Aspect of the Fox has been removed.
    • Steady Shot, Cobra Shot, and Barrage can now always be cast on the move.
    • Lynx Rush has been changed. Lynx Rush is now a bleed effect that causes damage every 3 seconds over a period of 15 seconds, and stacks up to 9 times.
    • Bestial Wrath no longer grants Hunter pets immunity to crowd control effects, and instead now breaks existing crowd control effects when activated.
    • Glyphs
      • The Glyph of Icy Solace has been renamed to Glyph of Solace, and now causes both Scattershot and Freezing Trap to remove all damage over time effects from the target.
      • Glyph of Scattering has been removed.
      • A new Major Glyph has been added: Glyph of Aimed Shot. This glyph allows Aimed Shot to be used while moving.
  • Mage
    • The damage buff from Arcane Charge has been increased from 22% to 25%, and Arcane Blast’s mana cost increase when affected by Arcane Charge is now +75% (was +125%).
    • Rune of Power’s duration now shows in the UI, and no longer has a cooldown (was 6 seconds).
    • Ring of Frost now has a 45 second cooldown, up from 30 seconds, and can no longer affect more than 10 targets.
    • The duration of Deep Freeze has been reduced to 4 seconds.
    • Frost Bomb will now detonate after 6 seconds (up from 5 seconds). Detonation speed is still affected by haste.
    • Mage Armor now reduces the duration of harmful Magic effects by 25% (down from 35%).
    • The damage absorbed by Ice Barrier has been reduced by 25%.
    • Combustion’s periodic damage is now based only on the current Ignite, instead of both Ignite and Pyroblast. Damage has been increased to bring it up to approximately the same level as before.
    • Blazing Speed may now be triggered after recieving damage in any amount.
    • The mana cost of Spellsteal has been increased to 21% of base mana for Fire and Frost mages, up from 7%.
  • Monk
    • Spear Hand Strike now costs 10 energy (was 30).
    • All healing spells which cost mana have had their mana cost increased by 10%.
    • The energy costs of Legacy of the Emperor, and Legacy of the White Tiger have been reduced to 20, down from 50.
    • The energy cost of Healing Sphere has been reduced to 40, down from 60.
    • The Tiger Power provided by Tiger Palm now reduces target armor by 30% with a single application and no longer stacks.
    • Stance of the Fierce Tiger now increases the Monk’s movement speed by 10% in addition to its other effects. This movement speed increase stacks with other effects.
    • The healing provided by Enveloping Mists has been reduced by 32%.
    • The healing provided by the Healing Sphere base spell has been increased by 20%.
    • The healing provided by Chi Burst and Chi Wave has been reduced by 25%.
    • The healing provided when detonating Zen Sphere has been reduced by 25%.
    • The chance to generate 1 Chi while channeling Soothing Mist and Crackling Jade Lightning has increased to 35%, up from 25%.
    • The Power Strikes talent now grants the Power Strikes effect every 20 seconds, which causes the Monk’s next attack to generate 1 additional Chi.
    • The Healing Elixirs talent now grants the Healing Elixirs effect every 18 seconds, which causes the next Brew or Tea consumed to heal the Monk for 10% of maximum health.
    • Mistweaver
      • Enveloping Mist is now available at level 16, down from level 34.
      • You now have a chance equal to your crit chance to generate double the amount of Mana Tea charges.
      • Renewing Mists now travels to 2 additional targets (was 3 targets).
      • The mana cost of Soothing Mists has been reduced by 33%.
      • Haste for Mistweavers is now 50% more effective through Stance of the Wise Serpent.
  • Paladin
    • Turn Evil is now effective against Aberrations.
    • Hand of Salvation has been changed. This ability now removes all of a target’s threat for 10 seconds.
    • Holy Paladin: The 4 piece bonus now reduces Holy Shock’s cooldown by 2 seconds, up from 1 second.
    • Retribution Paladin: The 4 piece bonus now reduces Avenging Wrath’s cooldown by 65 seconds, down from 85 seconds.
  • Priest
    • Atonement’s healing range has been increased to 40 yards, up from 15.
    • Chakras now persist through death and zoning.
    • Discipline Priests can once again learn Focused Will. This ability is obtained at level 30.
    • Spells affected by Inner Focus cast while Spirit Shell is active now fully apply critical effect heals to the shield provided.
    • Chakra: Chastise now increases the damage dealt by Shadow and Holy spells by 50% (was 15%), and reduces mana costs by 90% (was 75%) while the ability is in effect.
    • Chakra: Serenity now increases single target healing by 25%, up from 15%.
    • Chakra: Sanctuary now increases area healing by 25% up from 15%.
    • Psyfiend’s Psychic Terror cast time has been increased to 2 seconds, up from 1.5 seconds.
    • The Psyfiend’s health has been reduced to 10% of the controlling Priest’s health, down from 30%.
  • Rogue
    • The energy cost of Kick has been reduced to 10 (was 15).
    • Seal Fate will now only be activated by melee combo point generating abilities.
    • Shuriken Toss now deals double damage when used against targets further than 10 yards away.
    • The cooldown of Blind has been reduced to 90 seconds, down from 3 minutes.
    • The energy cost of the Burst of Speed talent has been reduced to 50 energy, down from 60 energy.
    • Wound Poison now deals 33% more damage.
  • Shaman
    • All totems are now considered spells, and summoning totems can be prevented by silencing effects. Searing Totem, Magma Totem, and Fire Elemental totems fall into the Fire school, while all other totems fall under the Nature school.
  • Warlock
    • Aura of the Elements and Aura of Enfeeblement can now be dispelled as Magic effects.
    • Demonic Gateway must now be activated by the player wishing to teleport.
    • Kil’jaeden’s Cunning now longer imposes a cast time penalty.
    • Banish is now effective against Aberrations.
    • Kil’jaeden’s Cunning’s snare has been increased from 10% per stack to 15% per stack.
    • Rain of Fire
      • Rain of Fire no longer causes a stun after hitting a target three times.
      • Aftermath will now grant Rain of Fire’s damage over time effect a chance to generate Burning Embers.
      • Rain of Fire no longer requires Immolate to be present to generate Burning Embers.
      • Rain of Fire’s damage over time will now hit every 1 second, down from 2 seconds. The damage animation for the damage over time effect will no longer always display.
    • Removed the ranged Melee attack from Demonology Warlocks in Metamorphosis form, and increased the damage of Doom by 25% to compensate.
    • Conflagrate now generates Burning Embers.
    • Demonic Gateway’s duration has been increased to 20 15 minutes, and it will no longer despawn if the Warlock moves too far away. In addition, this ability can no longer be used in any capital city.
    • Glyphs
      • A new Minor Glyph has been added: Glyph of Gateway Attunement. This glyph will cause a Warlock’s Demonic Gateway to transport them immediately when they step on it.
  • Warrior
    • Avatar no longer grants immunity to movement impairing effects, and instead now instantly breaks movement impairing effects. This ability also no longer generates addiitonal Rage while active. Its duration has increased to 24 seconds (was 20 seconds).
    • The cooldown of Intimidating Shout has increased to 90 seconds, up from 60 seconds.
    • The silence provided by Glyph of Gag Order is no longer effective against players.

Items

  • Spirit of Harmony can now be purchased for 600 Conquest Points at the Conquest Quartermaster.
  • Item Enhancements
    • The Dancing Steel, Jade Spirit, Colossus, and River’s Song enchantments now use the Real PPM system utilized by Windsong and Elemental Force.

Pet Battles

  • A new item has been introduced that can be used to upgrade the quality of Battle Pets: Battle-stones.
    • Battle-stones are available in two basic types, general purpose Battle-stones that can be used to upgrade the quality of any pet, and family specific Battle-stones, which can only be used to upgrade pets of a specific pet family.
    • Battle-stones are available in two qualities: Flawless Battle-stones can upgrade pets directly to Rare quality, while Polished Battle-stones will upgrade a pet to Uncommon quality.
    • Players will have a very small chance to obtain a general purpose and family specific Flawless Battle-stone after winning a match against wild pets; defeating higher level opponents increases the chances of obtaining a stone. Family specific Flawless-Battlestones will be of the same family as the pets that were defeated. These valuable items are not soulbound, and can be sold on the Auction House.
    • Family specific Flawless Battle-stones can be found in the Sack of Pet Supplies obtained from performing Pet Trainer quests, and are Bind on Pickup.
    • General purpose Polished Battle-stones can be purchased for 1000 Justice Points.
  • Pet Journal
    • The quality of each pet is now visible in its slot in the Pet Journal.
    • Pets can now be filtered by name, type, rarity and level, and filters will remain in place each time the Pet Journal is viewed.
    • It is now possible to search locations in the Pet Journal. For example, searching “Westfall” will display all the Battle Pets that can be found in Westfall.
  • Pet Battle music is now more appropriate for the type of match being fought.
  • Several new Pet Battle PvP areas have been added to the world.
  • Several classic Raid bosses now have a chance to drop new Battle Pets. The new pets can be obtained from bosses in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj, and Naxxramas.
  • Abilities that have been used will now continue to cool down for pets when they are not the active pet in a battle.
  • Right clicking a pet’s portrait will now offer the option to look it up in the Pet Journal.
  • Players can now keep up to 650 pets.
  • Battle Pet tooltips will now display whether a pet is owned, and how many pets of that type are owned.
  • Pet Quality is now displayed in battles, and will be visible on portraits, names and tooltips.
  • The level of battle pets in a zone can now be seen on the map, and it’s now possible to see the strength of wild pets relative to your team at a glance.
  • Backline pets now display debuffs affecting them as well as the remaining duration of these effects.
  • The experience multiplier obtained by all seven Grand Master pet trainers in Pandaria has been increased to x5 from x3.5.
  • The experience multiplier obtained by defeating Pet Trainers Julia Stevens, Old Macdonald, Zunta, and Dagra the Fierce has been reduced to x2.5 from x3.5.
  • Macros have been added that allow for summoning random pets and random favorite pets.
  • The achievement Taming the World now awards the Safari Hat, which increases pet experience gained from Pet Battles by 10%.
  • Pets previously removed from the Safari achievements have been added back to the criteria of those achievements now that they’re back in the wild.
  • The I Choose You achievement has been added for defeating Zen Master Aki. The reward for this achievement is 3000 gold.
  • Players that defeat Aki the Chosen at the culmination of the Battle Pet quest lines can now follow a new line of Battle Pet quests and associated daily quests that allows players to battle against Pandaren spirits.
  • A new Master Pet Tamer offering daily quests has been added to the Darkmoon Faire. Completing quests for the new trainer will offer the chance to acquire a new pet: the Darkmoon Eye.
  • The Dragon Kite can now be used in Pet Battles.
  • The Imperial Silkworm and Imperial Moth pets can now be created by Tailors.
  • A number of pets that could previously only be found accompanying other pets into battle can now be found roaming the world.
  • A number of new capturable pets can be found in the world from pet families that were once more sparsely populated.
  • Two new Battle Pets now roam Darkmoon Island waiting to be caught.
  • Fixed an issue that would prevent some pets captured in Pet Battles from correctly saving their skin color once added to the Pet Journal.
  • Player versus Player Pet Battles now award more experience.
  • Large plants and bushes in the environment that interfered with visibility during Pet Battles while now fade out of view during the match.
  • Fixed an issue where the Gazelle would join pet battles.

Sunsong Ranch

  • A new Seed has been added: Portal Shards
    • A mage who fell on hard times back in Dalaran has found a new home on Pandaria. Barnaby Fletcher will occasionally visit Halfhill Market to peddle a new type of seed – and take advantage of the Tillers’ hospitality.
    • Portal Shards grow into consumable items which can be used to open a portal from Sunsong Ranch to a major faction city.
  • Seeds now stack to 50.
  • Runty crops now have a spell visual to help call attention to themselves.
  • Growing crops now display the duration until the crop is ready to harvest.
  • Characters who have earned the “Friends on the Farm” achievement will no longer find gifts while harvesting Cooking Ingredient crops – instead, they have a chance to find special seeds such as Magebulb, Enigma Seed, Songbell, and more.

Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios

  • Non-boss enemies in Mogu’shan Vaults, Heart of Fear, and Terrace of Endless Spring now respawn much more slowly.
  • Raid groups are no longer necessary to enter pre-Mists of Pandara raid dungeons. Some bosses that previously required more than one player to defeat are now more easily dealt with by players battling alone:
    • High Warlord Naj’entus in the Black Temple
    • Viscidus in the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj
    • Razorgore the Untamed in Blackwing Lair
  • The Statistics page now tracks and displays 10-player and 25-player raid boss kills separately.
  • Cooldown timers greater than 5 minutes will now reset between attempts on Challenge Mode dungeons.
  • Scenarios
    • New level 90 Scenarios have been added, including additional faction specific Scenarios:
      • Assault on Zan’Vess
      • Alliance
        • Lion’s Landing
        • A Little Patience
      • Horde
        • Domination Point
        • Dagger in the Dark
    • Scenarios now include Dungeon Finder queue features, including leaders, backfill, vote to kick, and deserter debuffs. Roles are still not required.

PvP

  • The growing conflict between the Horde and the Alliance has spilled across the face of Azeroth: level 90 players can now queue for Wintergrasp and Tol Barad via the PvP tab to battle one another in these epic conflicts.
  • Arena matches now have a 25 minute time limit (was 45 minutes).
  • Rated Battlegrounds now share the same spell restrictions as Arenas.

Professions

  • Fishing
    • The Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Tournament has returned every Sunday, but now allows three winners per tournament. It also offers competitors a chance to earn the rewards once offered by the the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby.
    • Speckled Tastyfish fishing pools no longer spawn during the tournament. Instead, Tastyfish can be caught from any fishing node in all parts of Stranglethorn Vale while the tournament is active. This includes inland nodes, and wreckage.
  • Cooking
    • A cooking profession bag has been added, and can be purchased with Ironpaw Tokens from Nam Ironpaw.
  • Mining
    • All mineral nodes will now despawn one minute after they are mined, even if items remain in them.

UI

  • Justice, Valor, Honor and Conquest Point quartermasters are now signified by new minimap icons.
  • A new banner will appear when a player is subjected to an effect that causes them to lose control of their character. The effect that caused the loss of control and remaining duration will be displayed. Configuration options are available in the “Combat” section of the “Interface Options” menu.
  • A search bar has been added to the mount section of the Mount and Pet Journal.
  • The Mount and Pet Journal remembers which tab you were last using.

Bug Fixes

  • Swooping Plainshawks no longer use abilities from the Bird of Prey Hunter pet family.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause crops to fail to appear when players entered Sunsong Ranch while several hundred yards up in the air.
  • Players who have learned the Terrible Turnip pet can now continue to find Ominous Seeds when harvesting Cooking Ingredient crops.
  • Classes
    • The responsiveness of many abilities and effects has been improved, including: Renewing Mist, Halo, Rogue Poisons, Revealing Strike, Rime, Killing Machine, Maelstrom Weapon, Sudden Doom, Ultimatum, Scent of Blood, Crimson Scourge, and Sudden Death.
    • The following spells now display less intense visual effects for other players: Hellfire, Death and Decay, Hurricane, Astral Storm, and Explosive Trap.
    • Earthquake’s sound effect is now quieter.
    • All spells that cause Forebearance can no longer be applied simultaneously.
    • Hunters
      • The snare provided by Ice Trap is now more responsive when enemies enter or leave the area of effect, and its effective area more closely matches the visual effect.
      • Lock and Load will now activate correctly when Ice Trap is triggered by an immune target, as long as a susceptible target is within the area of effect.
      • Fixed several issues involving Trap Mastery, Entrapment, Glyph of Black ice, and Glyph of Ice Trap.
      • The Growl pet ability will no longer cause diminishing returns against bosses that are immune to its effect.
      • Glyph of Black Ice now correctly benefits from the increased duration provided by Trap Mastery.
      • Glyph of Ice Trap now causes the visual effect of Ice Trap to match the increased area of effect provided by the glyph.
    • Mages
      • Fixed an issue with Glyph of Icy Veins that could prevent all three bolts from firing.
      • Fixed an issue with Glyph of Icy Veins that could prevent the affected abilities from doing the correct damage.
    • Warlocks
      • The Felguard and Wrathguard pet ability, Threatening Presence, will no longer be auto-cast by default.
      • Pandemic no longer smooths the damage when extending dots with different amounts of spellpower.
    • Warriors
      • Execute damage with high amounts of Vengeance is now capped at the Warrior’s maximum health to prevent it from reaching excessive numbers.
    • Professions
      • Banquet of the Steamer and Great Banquet of the Steamer now correctly provide Intellect to damage based casting classes. Healers will continue to gain Spirit from these foods.

Over to you: is there anything that’s particularly got you excited about 5.1?

Filed Under: General News, Patch Notes, WoW Tagged With:

WoW Zone by Zone Achievement Guide Part 1: Elwynn, Westfall, Redridge and Duskwood

November 26, 2012 by

WoW Zone-by-Zone Achievement GuideWelcome to ZAGGARAT ( Jetsai’s Zone-by-Zone Achievement Guide for Getting Across the Realm with Alliance Toons), a comprehensive zone by zone guide to wrapping up every achievement you need. You can view all instalments by clicking here.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m an achievement whore.

I was pretty proud of the some 10,000 achievement points I’d managed to accumulate when I quit playing WoW a month or so into Cata. So when I returned to the game for MoP with a new main, I secretly knew it would only be a few weeks before the stigma of venturing around with a paltry few thousand points got to me and I’d have to farm up my “I’m no noob” points again.

I looked for a guide that could help satisify my addiction efficiently. What I wanted was a guide that could take me zone by zone and get every conceivable achievement while I was there.

The Loremaster and World Explorer are easy to get, but there are a lot of additional achievements in later zones that slip through the cracks: hunting rare spawns, finding lore objects and returning lost treasures to some old codger.

I also want to do my fishing achievements: The Oceanographer, The Limnologist, The Scavenger. Cooking achievements have historically been extremely tedious requiring many trips to the AH, back to the zone and to vendors to purchase recipes I forgot to get. I want to buy and eat everything I’m supposed to for the Delicious series and farm up all the mats so I can cook up the Gourmet achieves in one go at the end.

Then there’s mounts and pets. Pokemon brings a whole new form of torture to pet collecting. It’s no longer a question of doing a continent hop to half a dozen different vendors, spending a suspicious amount of time with the neutral Auction House master in Booty Bay, and camping some rare spawn spots. There are literally hundreds of pets to catch and collect now, so I need to know which pets to battle and catch while I’m in that zone.

Plus I need to buy all my tabards, get my old-school dungeon and raid achievements and those pesky miscellaneous ones Like Archmage Xylem’s trials, reading the entire history of Azeroth, a series of unnatural associations with Squirrels, getting down with the Nesingwarys, getting beaten up in Gladiator rings on every single continent and spending lots and lots and lots of gold on useless things.

There had to be a guide out there that could deliver me all that – Googling “wow Achievement Guides” returned pages of online lists sorted by exactly the same categories Blizzard provides. Googling “wow Achievement Guides by zone” returned me exactly the same list with the Explorer ones at the top. Curse gave me nothing broad or overarching. Zygor looked promising but a trial demonstrated I had to keep switching out new guides and starting the zone over again – I wound up doing the Cape of Stranglethorn six times over and still lots of little things got missed.

With every option exhausted, I decided to compile my own and I present Chapter One to you here – Jetsai’s Zone-by-Zone Achievement Guide for Getting Across the Realm with Alliance Toons. Ok, so the name needs a little work… but ZAGGARAT will do for now. In this guide, I start in Elwynn Forest, move on to Westfall and Deadmines, then Redridge and Duskwood listing everything you need to do to complete ALL the achievements sorted by sub-zone. I’ve included waypoints and some notes as well as a map for each zone with icons to indicate what you’re supposed to do there. The paths roughly follow the questing order throughout the zone, so if you’re not working on your Loremaster achievement you may find it quicker to work from one end of the zone to the other.

I’ll continue to release new chapters each week working through all the zones on all the continents up to and inlcuding Pandaria. Next week, we tackle Stormwind and the Stranglethorns.

I do need to note, this is a pretty old-school guide. There’s nothing fancy about it. I list subzones by their names, not a set of co-ordinates, although those are included where possible and it’s designed to be printed out and placed in a ring binder –landscape fashion. The map goes at the top and the sub-zone list below.

Why? Well I don’t have the programming skill to develop and in-game assistant like Quest Helper or Zygor, but honestly I think old school is good sometimes. For one I hate alt-tabbing – having all the information on my desk next to me to view at a glance is great. Moreover, this game isn’t even close to an exact, step-by-step progression and things don’t happen in the same order for all people.

I find a battle-pet on one side of the zone, you find it in another. Someone just farmed out my entire quest area so I’ll move on and come back later. Plus, as a 90, you have the choice to start pretty much anywhere. I chose to start at the beginning but you could easily do the zones in whatever order you wanted to: start in Outlands, do the zones backwards or alphabetically, do the dungeons as you go or assemble them into a collection of their own and do them with a group – just mix up the pages in your binder.

And finally, I think there’s something really satisifying about actually ticking a box with your own hand. Yellow highlighter pens are pretty good too.

Download the screen-friendly version here

Download the printer-friendly version here

Go here for all the other Zaggarat Guides

(Editor’s note: I just wanted to say what an amazing feat Jemima has pulled off with these Zaggarat guides – if you find them as incredibly useful as I have already, please use the donate link below – proceeds will be forwarded onto Jem for her work)





Filed Under: General News, How-To, Maps, WoW Tagged With: ,

WoW’s 8th Anniversary: Share Your Stories!

November 21, 2012 by

On the 23rd November it’s eight years to the day since World of Warcraft launched. To coincide, Blizzard have released a short video to commemorate the occasion. There’s nothing new in it and a lot you will immediately recognise from older videos, but all the same it’s a good way for current players and older players alike to see the breadth of content we now have access to.

Have a look for yourself:

Hopefully that’s got you into the mood to share some stories about your time in WoW. I love hearing about people’s history with games and WoW has one of the longer histories.

Have you been there the whole eight years? If not which expansion got you in? What are the most fun things you’ve done in-game? What parts of the game do you miss? It’s as good an excuse as any to share WoW reminiscences. The sky’s the limit so hop to it!

Filed Under: General News, Opinion, WoW Tagged With:

Through The Mist: Is The Shine Wearing Off?

November 19, 2012 by

Through the Mist is a regular column from Luke Le Page covering everything World of Warcraft. If you’d like something covered in a future column, drop us a line!

As I’m sure many of you do, I regularly check the larger WoW sites such as MMO-Champion and Arena Junkies  as well as the official WoW forums and I have to say I have been extremely surprised by what I have found there and more importantly by the responses of Blizzard reps on the official forums.

Players of all types have been expressing increasing concerns over the daily quest system. The most common area of contention is that players feel they are being forced into doing every possible daily every day in order to keep up with progression and this extends to repetition on alts. In response, Blizzard seem to be taking the stance that players are not forced into doing dailies – rather, we can do dailies, challenge modes, scenarios, heroics and LFR etc.

I can see both sides of the argument and for the most part I enjoy doing dailies but to say that we are not forced into them is ridiculous. Yes we can run these other modes to gear up and to obtain both Justice and Valor points but what do we spend these points on? Well the answer is reputation restricted items from factions. It’s a Catch 22 situation – players can gear up from these other methods but is the randomness of a random loot system reliable enough to keep players, particularly more casual players, at a level where they can participate in and enjoy content?  So far, my experience says no. In the past I have been involved in progression raiding and server firsts and the like but I am little more than a casual player in this expansion and I am still not at an ilvl where I can participate in current (albeit LFR) content.

Players have in turn suggested a return to the tabard system that was employed in Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm and on this point I agree with Blizzard’s stance of not reintroducing them. Tabards, whilst extremely convenient, made reputation a trivial part of the game. It should mean something and work should be involved in unlocking these Justice and Valor point items as well as many of the mounts that are available. My alternative suggestion is to implement a tabard system that works much the same way as the original guild reputation system: allow players to use tabards but cap the amount of reputation that can be obtained per faction on a daily basis. The cap would include both dailies and tabards – this not only gives players a choice (something the vast majority of complainants are screaming for) whilst maintaining the integrity of the daily system. It also has the added advantage of getting people into dungeons again.

Blizzard seem to be listening to an extent, insofar that they are planning changes to how alternate characters will accrue reputation and this is a positive sign going forward.

Do you agree?

Filed Under: General News, Opinion, WoW Tagged With:

WoW Pet Fundraiser for Superstorm Sandy

November 8, 2012 by

WoW Pet FundraiserI love a good charity fundraiser using virtual goods, and no-one does it better than Blizzard with their WoW Pet Fundraisers. They’ve announced that in coming weeks there will be the option to purchase an in-game pet called a Cinder Kitten.

It’ll cost you US $10 and 100% of proceeds will go to supporting – once the full details are posted we’ll let you know. The initiative should raise a few million dollars – I know I’ll be buying one. I just wish more companies did this more often, particularly for disasters that are less well reported than this one has been.

Over to you: will you be buying a Cinder Kitten?

Filed Under: General News, WoW Tagged With: ,

Through The Mist: The Mogu’Shan Vaults – Looking for Raid style

October 22, 2012 by

The Mogu’Shan Vaults

Through the Mist is a regular column from Luke Le Page covering everything World of Warcraft. If you’d like something covered in a future column, drop us a line!

This piece has taken a lot longer to write than I had originally hoped. This is mainly due to the fact that I could not f find a fresh run using the Looking For Raid (LFR) system for most of the first week. It finally happened on Tuesday morning and I decided to push the piece back to preview all six bosses as three more would come out that night. Unfortunately I could only find a group with two bosses down, so the second part of the raid will have to wait until after the weekend.

My initial impression upon zoning in was positive. The environment felt epic and I immediately felt like this was a zone where something big was about to go down. Whether it did or not doesn’t really factor into this column – I just wanted to get across that Blizzard have recaptured some of the epic grandeur of raid zones that we have seen in the past.

I will refrain from describing the boss mechanics; there are dozens of sites out there that can do that for you. This is an opinion column so I will stick to giving you my impressions of the fights.

The first boss, The Stone Guard consists of four stone Quillen, three of which are active each week. The fight on normal 10 and 25 man modes looks to feature some interesting mechanics. Unfortunately as with the LFR bosses we saw in Cataclysm, many of these impressive mechanics can be ignored. The LFR strategy consisted of stacking all 3 mobs together and ignoring everything but dps. I can see this being an excellent test of raid coordination in 10 and 25 man.

The second boss, Feng the Accursed is a fairly intimidating looking Mogu. Unlike the first boss, this required some concentration from players; particularly in the final phase where players had the Arcane Resonance debuff. This caused a wipe in my group due to a player not paying attention and I have to say it is nice to see some consequences for ignoring mechanics in LFR. The rest of the fight was relatively straightforward from a melee perspective – dodge bad things on the ground and stay behind the boss.

The final boss of this portion of the zone was quite a surprise. As some of you know I skipped a lot of the Townlong Steppes zone as I chased a quest chain while levelling and apparently I missed some interesting happenings with the Zandalari Trolls. I was quite surprised and excited to see Gara’jal the Spiritbinder in the zone. The fight lived up to many of my memories of previous troll bosses from the ZG and ZA raid days. Gara’jal reminded me of the original Jindo the Hexxer encounter in the Zul Gurub raid zone. DPS primarily focused on the boss – whilst this was occurring invisible spirits would attack and neutralise players. Players are required to enter the spirit world (through the use of a totem dropped by the boss) and kill these spirits before they take out the raid. This was a relatively simple encounter on this difficulty level but I can see the spirits becoming quite a handful in 10 and 25 man versions as well as in less skilled LFR teams.

Overall I quite enjoyed the zone. The fights, whilst straightforward required players for the most part to pay attention to what was going on around them. It’s a nice start to an expansion and I hope that as LFR progresses through the tiers the encounters continue to build on this foundation and increase in difficulty.

Finally, I just wanted to vent about the Elder Charm of Good Fortune. I have now used seven of these charms, one on each boss in the LFR raids as well as on Sha of Anger and received no items. I understand that they offer players a ‘chance’ at extra loot, however given the time put into getting them (a minimum of 45 dailies, if you do the ones that give two of the lower ones) per three Elder Charms, it is not beyond the realms of expectation that players would receive something out of 7 uses.

What’s your take?

Filed Under: General News, How-To, WoW Tagged With:

Through The Mist: Pandaria Daily Quests

October 13, 2012 by

Through the Mist is a regular column from Luke Le Page covering everything World of Warcraft. If you’d like something covered in a future column, drop us a line!

I was hoping to do a review of the Looking For Raid difficulty level of Mogu’shan Vaults in this piece. Unfortunately, with uni work due and the reluctance of a fresh raid to pop up (so far I have had the option to join raids with at least 2 bosses down) I have been unable to get a decent feel for the raid. So more on that in a later column.

I have elected to go with a look at the various dailies we have access to in Mists of Pandaria. Ever since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players have been accustomed to fast, efficient reputation grinds. We hit max level, or even smiley equipped a tabard as we levelled and our reputation levels increased as mob kills in dungeons accumulated. Those days are well and truly over – whether you liked the speed with which you maxed out reputation and acquired items or hated it, Blizzard have returned to the grind method of reputation gain.

Daily quests have superseded Tabards and dungeons as the way in which reputation is gained. While not all of the dailies unlock at level 90, a huge portion of them do. Daily quests have been a part of the game for several years now and in this expansion they have truly stepped into the WoW spotlight.

Prior to the launch of Mists of Pandaria the vast majority of dailies included killing x amount of mobs or collecting x amount of an item. Whilst this style of daily quest is still present, the sheer amount of variety in daily quests has greatly increased. We now have access to quests such as the Tillers dailies which range from planting, watering and harvesting crops to stomping on marmots and Virmen.

Pandaria Daily Quests

The quests for the Order of the Cloud Serpent include quests to play catch with a future companion and we also have access to archaeology and pet battle dailies (provided certain achievements have been met).

Love them or hate them, daily quests are here to stay in Pandaria and I am of the opinion that it is a good thing. By tying reputation to daily quests Blizzard have put a hard cap on just how much reputation we can gain per day. This enables them to control the rate at which people can gear up and progress through content.

What’s your take?

Filed Under: General News, How-To, WoW Tagged With:

The Naked Gamer: Panda Tears

October 9, 2012 by

The Naked Gamer

The Naked Gamer is a regular opinion column that strips back the superficialities and looks at the flesh underneath. If you’ve got a topic you’d like discussed, drop columnist Kristy Green a line!

I’m a very emotional person. I recently read The Book Thief and there were tears towards the end. I’m unashamed to say that it’s not the first time I’ve cried over a book or movie. So while I normally don’t have any problem connecting with something fictional, I’ve never been able to feel this same way towards digital worlds and characters.

Therefore when I almost cried during the recent World of Warcraft expansion, it wasn’t something I was expecting. To avoid spoilers I won’t go into what happened, but anyone who has finished The Jade Forest probably knows what I am talking about. When watching that cut scene, I found myself involuntary yelling No! in a long drawn out fading screech that left my lungs empty. I waved my hands in front of the screen as if I could somehow stop the inevitable from happening. Unfortunately I couldn’t. When the cut scene finished, my heart sank in a way it never has before. I was left just sitting there for a long time staring at my little hunter with my mouth open, unsure how to continue.

I feel that Blizzard has done some things right in the newest World of Warcraft expansion and storytelling is pretty close to the top of the list. They’ve taken the style of Cataclysm, where the story is told as you progress through the zone, but kicked it up quite a few notches. Mist of Pandaria sees a really heartfelt fable delivered in a way where you are a part of it simply by playing. You can’t miss it even if you skip reading the quest text. You can’t even ignore it while you rush to the finish the rest of the content. It’s just there, gently leading you through the beautiful world towards the big teary finale.

In other games I’ve played, these sorts of story moments tend to just suddenly appear and before I can realise what’s going on it’s over. Because of this, I have been unable to appreciate their full meaning or even their true dire consequences. Or the story is so separate from the general game flow that it can be easily ignored or missed, leaving me to have to go backwards or forwards to continue. That is if I really want to.

There has been a lot of debate over the last few years about linear progression and its role in theme park MMOs. It tends to be considered a feature from the bygone days and something future games should be moving away from. However, in order to tell a story, there must be a start, middle and an end. It may seem better to give players the chance to go wherever they want but it doesn’t help the story to force them back into an old area or even into the next zone just to be able to find out what happens next.

If an MMO needs to continue with questing from hub to hub in order to tell a brilliant story that can bring me to tears, then please future MMOs, never change.

Filed Under: General News, Op-Ed, Opinion, WoW
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