Zombies! How's everyone enjoying the invasion? There's no NPCs in any of my server's major cities. If you're in shatt the only way to be safe is to be 20ft off the ground. It's retardedly easy to make a city go from clean to an outbreak. My friend and I got zombified, went through Ironforge portal in shatt(we're horde) and infected the entire priest/mage room then started an outbreak throughout Ironforge.

I find it annoying....

It was fun, now I agree with Cynth...it's getting annoying.

I spent most of my time yesterday running AV and it was hit or miss as to whether the BG NPC's would be there or not. I did have a humorous moment when I queued up while they were infected and killed them a few minutes as zombies. Several times, I had to wait for them to pop again and once I went AFK for 5 minutes or so and came back to me as a zombie and being killed by guards.

I hope this ends or scales back some as far as the major cities..

We were preparing for a Sunwell raid where someone thinks it's fun to infect the entire waiting party outside the instance... RL was forced to start the raid early to "Get away from this fucking zombie shit". So yea, fun at first - then when you're actually trying to get something done, you need to take huge detours to get around a zombiefied group.
-----Added 27/10/2008 at 03 : 25 : 06-----
It ends when WotLK hits.

Actually, the zombie aspect should have already ended on live servers. The infection spreading aspect of it was supposed to go away at noon today.

I just can't wait for the Headless Horseman to STFU.

He's a fucking hack of a poet.

I've done so many Headless Horseman kills... My party has like 15 summons every day. We still haven't seen the horse mount drop yet.

Someone in chat (yeah I know) was saying the broom was only a Temp mount and will be unusable when Hallow's End is over. Is that the case?

The broom mounts all read "14 days" on them. They'll poof, unfortunately.

Yes. The duration is 14 days.

Gosh, im going to miss that broom. Its an epic ground and air mound and insta casts. Plus it looks like im riding a speederbike.

I'm going to be so sad when this event is over and I don't have the pet on my hunter still. Lost the roll on it again last night. ACCURSED SINISTER PUMPKINHEAD! WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME?!?

Of course, I've gotten 6 or so hats on my bank alts, a pet on a bank alt and a hat and a pet on my mage that I never play. Yay RNG!

So Hallows End and the Invasion in the same week killed are server, Instances where up and down for 3 days. I just want it all the be over and the x-pack to come out.

Oh ya I have got the pumpkin pet from the trick or treat you get every hour.

I heard today that the Horseman's mount can be used like a flying mount? Can someone confirm/deny that? If so I think I really want it.

Horseman's mount is both flying AND ground and is permanent. When you have it, you can literally gallop across the skies. It's pretty sweet.

The Horseman's mount, same as the broom mount, is a scaling mount. it changes itself to the highest level mount available to you in the area you are in. So if flying is available it flies, if you can only use a land mount in the area, its only a land mount.

I need to get this mount then. A horse running through the sky is pretty awesome.

And another candle is gone..

Ezra Phoenix Chatterton, Ephoenix the Hunter, Squirlanator the Mage, is gone. I didn't play on his server or new much about him except for the quest in mulgor and his cool xbow he got from make a wish and blizzard. But as a father of 5, it still hurts to see a child die.

and many children die every day, yet this child was part of the game I have a passion for.

his father wrote....

Ezra died at 9:45 on Monday night. The cancer attacked those portions of the brain that control breathing, and his lungs eventually shut down. He was conscious until the very end, and though he couldn’t speak, he could still communicate with me through hand gestures and nods. Ezra was in pain, gasping for breath, and very scared, but up to a few hours before he died, he was asking for ice cream and choosing the things I read to him. As much as I feared the cancer would take his mind and memory away from him, he held onto those as long as he could.

The ironies are sickening. Ezra’s mind was always his greatest strength, and stayed strong even as his brain was malfunctioning. His spirit and his will to live life well grew so amazing powerful all the way to the point that his life was taken from him. No one I have ever met was as talented at finding the bright side of a horrible situation, adapting his worldview to whatever new hardship befell him, and generally milking every last drop of happiness he could out of life as Ezra, and he’s the one who is taken. The one person in my life who most loved living and was most exceptionally gifted at it, and he’s the one who is taken.

I say these things because I am in pain, because I miss my son so much, and because Ezra’s death is an undeniable tragedy. It is the world’s loss that he doesn’t get to do more, and fulfill his great potential. But I also hope that I can learn from his example. When Ezra couldn’t walk anymore, he turned to World of Warcraft. When he couldn’t see, he turned to music, or our pets, or food, or directing me to play World of Warcraft for him. The trick was that, as his world got smaller, he just looked at it more closely. If I am to take any shred of good from this suffering, I’ll have to learn from him.

I hope to honor my son by learning to love my life as much as he did. It will take a long time to get to that point, especially now that my greatest joy is gone, but Ezra would demand it of me. I ask the WoW community, who have been so generous and kind to us, to please help me honor Ezra by doing the same in your hearts. Ezra’s sickness and painful death was a tragedy, an experience that showed me a glimpse of how easily suffering can invade your life, but his response to it showed me how a strong will can overcome that suffering. As well, the outpouring of love from all WoW players all over the globe showed me how wonderful people can be to someone they’ve never met. Our bodies are fragile, but our hearts are incredibly strong. A tumor the size of a raisin is enough to destroy the brain, but our minds are so much more powerful and immense than the brain.

My son, Ezra Phoenix Chatterton, Ephoenix the Hunter, Squirlanator the Mage, is gone. All we have left in this world are memories of him. Please remember that he was a good person, smart and clever but also very kind, that he loved to play World of Warcraft, that he loved rice pudding and fettucine alfredo, and that he went through so much pain and still found ways to smile all the way to the end. Please remember too the kindness of Blizzard, and the overwhelming love of the WoW community. Without these gifts, Ezra would still have found a way to be happy and optimistic, just not as easily.

Thank you all for helping him through the suffering.

Sincerely,

Micah Chatterton


I found his quest one day by accident. I rushed through it like the rest in mulgor but something stopped me. The dog. The voice of the npc.. It was different somehow. Then I checked Thottbot and found the story. I had recently lost my last uncle to cancer. My father has had his voice removed from cancer. It's hard. I, till the day I close my eyes on this world for the last time, will remember my fathers last words to me. His last spoken words through his given voice.

I made it a rite that I do this quest with every toon i play. If its alliance, I still ride down. In the end, its the same macro.. /me kneels, heart heavy as the tears for the fallen renew the parched earth. A salute to the Stars where he now hunts.

Then the yell... "Beware immortals, a new hunter stalks your heavens. Make way for the Phoenix. For like its name sake. In the fires of death, a new beginning arises. A whole perfect being beyond deaths touch!!!"

Gotta hand it to Blizzard. Some things they just do perfectly right.

I saw that story yesterday as well, so sad to lose someone so young. He helped design his own weapon, own mount, and the aforementioned Mulgore quest. I read that he was the insipation for the Hallow's End brooms as well..

Ezra Chatterton passes away - WoW Insider

Yes, Make-A-Wish and Blizzard do things right, glad he got that experience and will be forever remembered in WoW..

Has anyone previously bought a collector's edition of any version of WoW and retrieved the pet? If so, would you mind posting how it happens? Is it just a code you get and have to enter somewhere in game or does the verification code that you use to install with the DVD somehow add a quest to your account to pick it up? I find myself in an odd spot where I might receive a CE later than the version that I'm going to initially install and I want to make sure I can still get the pet. Any help?

You have to create a WoW account with the CE key. In other words, there is only 1 account that can use the pets, usually the account the person who bought it is using. Once you create a character using that account the pet is automatically in your inventory. So basically no, you can't get the pet unless you're using the account created by the CE key.

Bah, guess it prevents selling the pets separately, but damn.

I tried to order a collector edition but EB Games was sold out months ago....kinda stupid why not make collectors edition for everyone that wants one?

I resubbed....damnit.

well... my DK is broken free from the clutches of the Lich King. What a story that unfolded.... and very original quests to do.

Haven't played in a few years, probably won't play, but I wonder how the DK plays. Is it like a cross between a rogue and warrior? Hows the downtime when soloing? Can they solo well?

welp from the wow forums.. all the quests to get ya DK going

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Welcome To Being Dead! DK Starting FAQ


Damn me, I gave up this game 4 months ago... its like meth.. I'm slowing breaking down stareing at it over and over. By next week I'll be playing it all over I guess.

retailers everywhere always have plenty after launch. I ordered mine from Best Buy yesterday. the only scarcity is prior to launch.

best buy had them at the store the night of... I could have changed my order.. but didn't want to pay the premium. I do want to see the DVDs that they had of the previous ones... other than that, didn't want to pay extra.

inscription is pretty neat... I spent most of the past hour buying mats and levelling up my inscription.

I'm trying out inscription on my Death Knight, so yesterday I spent most of the day just leveling up my DK's professions and secondaries. There were a lot of other DKs running around Elwynn Forest, doing the same exact thing, and a number of them fishing in Stormwind. :D

DK's are so overpowered at lower levels its hilarious. at lvl 58 two people jumped me at the same time and I killed them both. One was a level 64 Mage and the other was a level 63 Druid. I was pretty astonished at how quickly they died. Hopefully they even out a bit more as you progress in levels but it was damn fun.

Taking a short break to check in to TFP. I hit 77 today and got my hippogryph back so I've been flying around mining and exploring the areas I haven't been to yet. I can't believe how many mining nodes there are in northrend. I literally find 5-6 nodes for every section of the map I get explored. Just flying through Icecrown I racked up 8 stacks of ore.

I'm really enjoying the expansion. I started out hardcore going for a first race/class to lvl 80 achievement but found out that I just wasn't enjoying that grind and if I stood a chance I'd have to put off sleep, food and friends so I just gave up and going at a pace where I can enjoy to really good lore and quest designs. I'm sure I'll be the 4th or 5th hunter to 80... if I don't get side tracked selling this ore 150g a stack.

The expansion is really beautiful and really cool to look at, but the levels, for the first time ever, feel too large to me. I mean, obviously crazy people in my guild were 80 in like 2 days, so it's probably a function of how I'm playing that I'm not higher up, but I don't remember quite feeling like TBC leveling was as much of a grind as WotLK. I did quite a bit of instancing right at first, but I've only really leveled in Howling Fjord and I'm 20% to 73. That's a shit ton of content up front in one zone. 150-ish quests and 2 levels and change to show for it? Seems kind of crazy.

When I'm not on my hunter, I've been having quite the time getting my deathknight started. They really did a wonderful job with that class. I think he'll be quite the interesting alt.!

Edit: So I was bored, and I'm in my countdown week for bar results, so I can't sleep. I decided to do some research to see if I was just crazy about it feeling like there was a shitton more to do for less progress (numerically speaking) than there was in TBC and here's what I've discovered:

Note, I assume what I've been told is true that the Loremaster achievements for each zone in TBC and WotLK give you a very slight margin for error. About 5 quests at most is what I'm hearing. If that's wrong, this post is pretty much moot.

In TBC for alliance, the total number of quests required for Loremaster of Outland is 568. For horde, the total number is 595. Dunno about horde people, but speaking personally doing instances at level 1-2 times for quests/with friends, I dinged in BEM or Netherstorm every time without touching Shadowmoon Valley (90 quests for both factions). So, when I hit 70, I'd done at MOST 430 or so quests. In all likelihood, many fewer, since I did a lot more quests in Netherstorm for gold after hitting 70. For simplicity, let's say I did 400, plus about 10 instance runs.

In WotLK for alliance, the Loremaster of Northrend achievement is 875. For horde, it's also 875.

I kind of think those numbers speak for themselves, but I'll put it in perspective. Currently, I have done somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 instance runs (AK/AN/UK/Nexus) and about 150 total quests in Northrend. As I mentioned, this has put me at 73.2, with one zone cleared. After I'd done 150 quests in TBC, I would've been done with HFP, Zangarmarsh and gotten a good start into Terrokar. I leveled three toons to 70 pre xp nerf, and by that time they were all pushing 65. Additionally, I didn't really run any of them through SP/UB/BF and ramps more than once or twice total.

So compared to BC, I've seen 2 fewer zones, spent way more time in instances and am over a level behind where I was. I think that does a pretty solid job of accounting for why I'm feeling like Northrend is taking so much longer than Outlands did.

I certainly applaud blizzard for the scope of Northrend. It's beautifully designed and far more cohesive as a continent than anything else they've done by a long shot, but I don't know why they decided to make the levels as big as they did. That's a shit ton of quests and content to get through, just to level, saying nothing for all of the instances and instance-based achievements to work on at 80! For me personally, it's building up wealth, gear and achievements at 80 that I find to be more compelling, so having to do so much more leveling to get there seems a little harsh and unnecessary.

Anyone else felt the leveling grind a bit harder this time around, too?

There are TONS of quests. They're much better than previous quests though. There are some really awesome quests and later on you'll get into phase changing where entire towns will look different depending on if you've done a quest or not. There's still a ton of Kill/collection quests but they've added some very unique quests. The Wrathgate is one of my favorites. There's others too but I don't wanna spoil them.

Some of the dungeon bosses are really fun the first time you attempt them without a strategy. I think they'll get dull once the surprises are gone but man a few of those bosses caused us to ROFL. Herald Volazj in Ahn'kahet for example was very interesting. :)

Does or has anyone played on a private server? Pros and cons? Recommend any?

Half my guildies are 80 and im almost to 78 now I guess im doing good for the amount of time I play.

I found a private server (WoWFusion) and played on it for a week. The increased rates were quite nice (that's always been my main problem with retail, it feels like a job with how slow it is). The only down side is population, as I like BGs, and WSG was about the only one up reliably.

Just as I was getting into the community, lawyers struck. Last night blizzard got their lawyers together and sent notices to almost every private server out there. They've pretty much all shut down overnight. We're waiting to see if they'll come back up or not (they don't have any real legal standing, but private server owner's can't afford to go to court). I'm oddly saddened by this.

I finally hit the Outland for the first time ever last night.

OOooooOOOOh..... :oogle:

Outland is definitely a crazy place. I personally think it fits in much better as a leveling zone of crazy new environments than it sat as "home" for a year and a half.

But no matter what you think of Outlands, just wait until you step off the boats in Northrend for the first time.

I'm finally 80 and have started messing around in instances and raids. Looking forward to some Naxx fun here soon, I hope.

I got my DK out of Outland last night and into Northrend at .5 bubble to go to 68 so I dinged in NR after a few kills of the vykr invaders.

Very different than the other beachhead that I did with my hunter.

w00t! Outland is a fast ride. I think you'll be shocked at how fast you progress, even when you don't necessarily mean to make progress.

Before you know it, you'll be 68 and wanting to go to Northrend!

We downed 10man Malygos tonight. It's definitely got a bigger learning curve than any other boss in the game thus far. It sucks because it's pretty easy until about 8 minutes into the fight you hit phase 3 and then if you don't know what you're doing, you wipe in about 10 seconds. I got Black Ice polearm, possibly the first person on the server to get it. :)

Do not go to Northrend until you hit 70.

I wrote a post on this, but then I decided to just link you the source, since I wlll thereby do you two favors:

1) you will get a very clear explanation as to why it is a bad idea;

2) you will get a link to the very best leveling guides ever written for WoW, including pay guides.

Enjoy.

Jame's MMORPG Blog: Going to Northrend at level 68 - Is it a good idea?

I see all kinda of people in Northrend at 68 can't be that hard, I plan on taking my shaman there at lvl 68 :P, Then again most 68's are DK's and there well OP,..

The point isn't that you can't or that it's impossible, rather that people haven't thought through all the consequences of doing so. Even in t6 gear, the way I ended up leveling I was doing mostly green quests from 77 to 80 and between the mobs and quests being green, it went a whole lot faster than 71-73.

I don't see a problem going to Northrend at 68. I hit 80 with no quests done in Storm Peaks or Icecrown. I also had zero rested experience since I leveled to 80 in less than a week. If you do go at 68, You should definitely do both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra.

I totally disagree with that guy. Then again, I know how to organize my quests and kill mobs as efficiently as possible.

Considering he has the best fastest leveling guide out there, I tend to agree with him...unless you are a DK, then you could kill things instantly.

I always find these "level as fast as possible" guides a bit funny. I don't use them. I tend to savour the game.

But that's just me.

Understandable for the first time (and maybe even second time) through the content, but when you are working on your 3rd or 4th character you want to power through as fast as possible.

Oh, that. This is something else I think is funny. (BTW, by "funny," I mean peculiar. I don't mean any ridicule.) I don't think I could ever do that...a third or fourth character. I view other character types as the same creatures of different names. It all comes down to button-mashing, really. I'm more about exploring the world and trying not to die. I don't think I need to have more than one character. By the time I'm bored enough with my first one to want to push a second (or fourth) one to level 80, it will be time to cancel my account. Life's too short. Mind you, I do have other characters, but I only use them when something goes wrong with my main character or his server and I haven't had my fill of the game.

I got my mage to 80 and slowly gearing her up, now I just randomly play my DK, rogue or hunter...or just run around and fish all day while chatting to friends on vent :P

That's if the goal of playing is to play end game content.

My goal in bringing my DK now is to play with a friend. I can then stop playing my hunter with my friend who can only play a couple hours a week. I can then get my hunter moving to 80 to play end game content.

I thought that too. Until I played a DK and found out just how different it is. The view of the game is very different up close to the mobs, the button mashing rotation is different because I have to worry about runes and runic power.

Yeah, but everyone's a DK these days. :rolleyes:

I'll just stick to being a holy priest. I'm always popular. :)

yes we are, good thing you came in after TBC though. I remember people wanted me to spec shadow because holy paladins were better single target healers, shaman were better AoE healers and Druids had better HoT's. :grumpy:

My healing crits have just broken the 4,200 barrier. I must say I'm starting to have fun. The Outland has been a positive experience thusfar.

I keep people alive; it's what I do.

As I suppose my recent posts have indicated, leveling is one of my least favorite parts of WoW. Anything that minimizes the time I have to spend running around, flipping back between my map and my quest log, trying to figure out where, exactly, I'm supposed to be going is a win in my book. I read the quest text for every quest I did between 70 and 80 and very much appreciated the depth of the storylines in WotLK both in a grand sense and within each specific zone, but I have no regrets in using a guide to help me through the nuts and bolts.

WoW isn't a puzzle game, and the enjoyment I get out of questing is the experience and the reward, not figuring out exactly which hoops blizzard wants me to jump through. Jame's guides do the best job, in my experience, of covering all the content and explaining everything clearly and simply, so if you're like me and leveling isn't the point for you, it's an enormous help.

If you like to lounge through leveling, though, certainly don't take this as any criticism of it as a playstyle. You only get to do that once an expansion (alts notwithstanding), so take as long as you want. Just trying to provide people with some of the tools I like and use if they have similar interests.

I'm right there beside of you Baraka, right now my druid is a boomkin spec but the minute I hit 80 then I'm back to being a tree (literally the second I hit 80, my guild mates are waiting on me :( ). Apparently druid HoTs are the HOTness right now. Hehe, couldn't help myself. From what I've been reading with druid's new spells, they are topping the healing charts. I know I can out heal almost any other class even with inferior gear. I was hitting 2nd on the healing chart during a Mount Hyjal raid with every healer in T5-t6 gear and me only in my t4/ZA gear. The only guy who was beating me was the Shaman in full t6/Sunwell gear and not by much. I like healing, as long as you are good at it, it's fun to keep everyone alive.

EPIC TREE PUNCH! I do 134 per punch. Epic. Had to say it.

Ah druids, the class that was supposed to be jack of all trades, master of none but turned into jack of all trades, master of all.

You are just jealous of my epic tree punch. :)

haha....maybe

I'm not the fastest leveler, but I am faster than most with the limited time I have to play and I intend to have fun while doing it. Right now, I'm probably the best lvl 72 retribution Paladin on earth (rough estimation, excludes BC-geared Pallies). I played my DK up to 73 and was very impressed by the DPS potential.. well, my Paladin is MUCH better. I love gearing up to walk up to a mob and kill them after hitting 3 buttons.

The trek to lvl 80 is too long to grind the whole way. Learning my class well enough to do incredible things at low levels is my version of leveling. Being the best player in the pickup group. Gearing up specifically to make questing easier. Challenging your resourcefulness by pulling 8 mobs at a time. That's how my leveling guide would go. Who wants to hit 80 as a button mashing drone?

The thing is, the leveling guides give you the the fastest possible quest routes to get to the cap faster. Some people already know how to play a class and don't need to spend all their time slowly learning how do the best dps at a certain level and would rather speed through the content they have seen already that will only give gear that will be replaced rather quickly and get into the end game content to start gearing up for raids or Arenas.

The guides aren't about grinding, they are about being efficient in your questing. Some people just want to enjoy the ride to 80 and some people have already enjoyed the ride and want to power through it with another character in order to get to the area of the game that they really want to play. Leveling is boring once you've done all the lore stuff.

Well cybermike, looks like you and I get to take a seat in the corner next to the ret pallies. The nerf bat swings hard and fast at BM hunters. I remember when they did this in TBC, too. I don't know why the people at blizzard have such a hard time figuring out why BM hunters come out of the gate with such great dps. Hunters scale VERY well with levels and relatively poorly with gear. Going to end up the same place we were last time with sub-par output in Icecrown because our Naxx dps was too high. Alas.

Sigh.. I can't say it's unexpected. I don't think we were doing as well as people say though. I'm one of the best geared people in my guild. I got that way by working my ass off in heroics and rep grinding and showing up early to every 10 and 25man and I'm not THAT far ahead of other DPS classes considering their gear is far below mine.

The Steady shot nerf is the worst of it. That's such a huge blow to every spec.

Yeah, that's how I feel, too. Everything else is reasonable and I can see why they're doing it, but the SS change is way overboard. I hope they'll remove that change or scale it back into the 15-18% range and see how things play out. Removing BW/readiness combo combined with the call of the wild change is going to do a lot to how hunters show up in groups. Wish they would approach this process a bit more slowly instead of dumping it all on us at once.

Maybe I can get some advice for my hunter. I missed several months of updates, so I have no clue what they did to this class. A couple questions:

1) How do I train abilities for my pet? The pet training feature seems to have disappeared.

2) My pet can't hold aggro anymore. WTF! I even specced BM and my pet loses aggro after 2 hits. What am I doing wrong? I used to be almost full Marksmanship and my pet always held aggro.

3) Are they useful for anything at all anymore?

Pets have a talent tree now, and the hunter's in my guild are topping the dmg meter all the damn time now.

1) Pet training as it was no longer exists. Pets now have a talent tree which operates exactly like player talent trees, though they only have one tab. The tab that a pet gets is determined by the pet type. There are three pet types with accompanying trees: ferocity, tenacity and cunning, which roughly match up to DPS, tanking and utility, respectively. You can access your pet's talent tree by opening your own talent tree and looking for a pet tab on the side or bottom, then spec away.

2) After you spec your pet, I imagine you will find that this improves, since its dps will improve and it will gain additional abilities to help it keep aggro. ADDITIONALLY, there is a major bug with pet abilities and autocasting at the moment. Pet abilities have their own spell tab, as before, and, after spec'ing, you will have MANY more pet abilities than you have space on your little pet bar.

For some reason, any pet ability that is NOT on your pet bar but IS in your spellbook will ALWAYS revert to having autocast on whenever you dismiss your pet-including death, mounting or taking a flightpath. So, since all pets have cower as a built in ability and since you probably don't have cower on your bar, it is possible that you pet is casting cower and reducing its aggro. It may or may not be autocasting all sorts of other silly things that you don't want it to. To make sure it stops doing that, you have to find space on your tiny, tiny pet bar to fit those abilities that you want to not have autocasting all the time.

Additionally, you can't just drag a pet ability to a normal action bar and have it function. Instead, you need to put the pet ability into a macro and then drag it to a normal action bar. This, of course, requires you to manually activate the ability, which might be rendered moot because the pet is trying to autocast it, unless you've found space for it on your pet bar or you bother to turn off autocast literally every time you summon your pet.

Groovy?

3) They are ridiculously powerful right now, especially for BM hunters. BM pets are currently doing 1500-2000 dps by themselves fully buffed in raid situations, which is why blizzard is nerfing them so hard. If you're BM, make liberal use of misdirect and intimidate to help it along if you're still having trouble with aggro after spec'ing your pet. They're both on much shorter cooldowns than they used to be.

And finally, check out this page Petopia: Patch 3.0 - Overview for the major recent changes. It should give you a good overview about everything that's going on, as well as providing links to show you the different types of trees and the different pet families found within those trees and the type of family skill each family has. The system became MUCH more complex with 3.0, but there's a ton of variety for personalization, which is cool. Hopefully we can keep blizzard's grubby hands off our steadyshot, so that hunters can remain happy fun dps instead of tossing limp noodles around.

I think Frostbyte really covered it. I'd like to make a correction though.
This has been fixed. Abilities with cooldowns are now priority over focus dump abilities. Cooldowns under 10 seconds have been lowered to 20 pet focus so they trigger before the 25 focus claw/bite skills. Longer cooldowns like Call of the Wild have no focus cost and if left on autocast will fire every time they're available. Also, Growl and Cower are on the same cooldown and Growl takes priority. If both are on autocast, Cower should never cast. The only thing I keep on my bars are skills that I don't want autocasting all the time because they do tend to turn themselves back on if left in the spellbook. Call of the wild is a more situational buff that I like to manually trigger in raids. I like to have growl and Prowl on the bar because I don't like either of those casting during raids.

For leveling, I highly suggest using a Gorilla as a pet. Charge/Thunderstomp/improved Growl combo generates a ton of threat and it's AOE so it'll hold 2-4 mobs no problem. I leveled with full Tier 6 from 70 to 80 and it was rare that I pulled agro off the gorilla.

GAH... We were well on our way to a 2 night clear on 25man Naxx but lag monster ate us. Grobulus was insanely laggy but we managed it.. Gluth was better but when we got to thadius we just couldn't do the dps to down him because of 2-3 second lag. It was amazing the lag wasn't causing polarity explosions.. We got him to the enrage every time... Just the stupid lag was making us slowing dps so much..

Why are you guys doing Naxx? Did they put harder bosses in it or something? I always hated how nobody got to see Naxx before TBC came out.

They moved Naxx to Northrend.

Naxxramas is sorta like a floating aircraft carrier type deal. It gets sent to invade places by the lich king.

i thought 40 man naxx was still an option in the old world.

It's still in the old world, just moved from EPL to Northrend. Both EPL and Northrend are in the 'old world' of Azeroth. It is no longer in EPL and you cannot run it like in vanilla WoW as far as I can recall.

I'm not sure, i haven't been out there. My understanding was that they took out out of EPL. Could be wrong tho, I'd log in to check it but my play time is expired till tomorrow.

darn...

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Naxxramas 40-man, gone forever?

I would have made more of an effort to run it pre-WotLK had I known it was not going to be available at all.

My guild ran it once after a Guurl's run once day. Our main tank was obsessed with classic runs and old world titles/rep venders. It's fun and was a great run back in the day, but except for the achievement, I don't think it's worth your time. Plus, before they took the requirement off for it, it was a BITCH to be able to get into Naxx. Our tank spent 2 months farming his rep for Naxx from Hated to Exalted to get into it.

I heard a rumor that the next patch will feature dual-speccing. Is there any truth to this? Resources?

The more I read this thread, the more I realize how little I know about this game. :expressionless:

Yes, Hal, the next major content patch (the one containing the next tier of raid zones, 3.1) will include a dual-spec feature, unless they fuck something up or decide to make it much more complicated than they think it's going to be right now. They have released almost no details on it at the moment, though, for obvious reasons, everyone is salivating over it.

The current plan, as described, is that it will be free and trivial to change specs while you're in a town and it will be possible but less convenient (maybe requiring 3 group members to channel something like a soul portal) to do so in a group or raid away from a town. When you change spec, your glyphs would all change over, as well, so you're not stuck with a bunch of tank glyphs when you're trying to dps, for example. They also want it to shift to a new set of action bars, so you don't need to recreate your keybinds and such every time you respec.

Let's hope it gets out soon and works as well as they say it should, because it's probably one of the most exciting possible things they've come up with.

And to put any lingering questions to rest: Naxx is now a level 80 instance above Dragonblight in 10 man and 25 man flavors tuned to be the entry-level raid in WotLK. It no longer exists above EPL in any format and the level 60, 40 player version cannot be accessed anymore. I think it's overall a good thing, since precious few people got to experience it the first time, but it's a little sad that you can't do the original in all its epic splendor.

I really ought to start carrying all my t3 with me so I can do the new one in the old gear and do terrible dps, but look really cool.

Wow that multi-spec thing is crazy. Also that's cool how players get to see Naxx now. My guild went into it once before TBC but the furthest we ever got was downing the Twin Emps in AQ. What a crazy fight that was (especially as one of the MTs).

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GhostCrawler: Dual spec importance.

so it says next major patch which i figure means next content patch not 3.04 or whatever is going on the PTR soon.

Both Naxx and Dalaran are gone from the old world and added into Northrend, Where Dalaran was before is now just a big ass hole in the ground.

I never got to see AQ40 and only cleared AQ20 once and I don't even remember that place, maybe I should go back there for some good ol' times

Well, if you're a decently geared level 80 deathknight, word on the street is that you can solo-clear AQ20 in about an hour for some easy gold!

Here are some tips.. or rather, questions to ask yourself:

1. How can I do the most damage possible for my class/level/equipment?
2. Are my keys bound to the ideal abilities to allow me to do things swiftly and efficiently?
3. Does it feel like I am missing a vital part of the game that an online guide could fill me in on?

Don't sweat it if you're having fun, but some of us are "students of the game" and we try to be as effective as possible when we play. That means we look for news on changes that are being made to mechanics, use add-ons that customize our play experience, and refer to various knowledge bases when we need a hint.

To build on what Hal said, one of the things that has made WoW so immensely popular is that it's very easy to enjoy it both as a hardcore theorycrafter who picks out the tiniest details and min-maxes on everything he does or as a casual guy just making his way through the world without much of a thought for the mechanics. Just have fun, and if you run into something you don't understand, right here's probably a pretty damn good resource for you. And if we can't help you, we can probably point you to those who can.

Baraka, I'm much the same way when it comes to playing World of Warcraft. I enjoy the game, but I don't worry so much about the finer intricacies of WoW. When my SO was really into it and raiding all the time, he also really got into theorycrafting (to the point that he was working mathematical equations and using Excel files to keep track of stuff). It was great for me, because any time I had a question, he had an answer. He's not really helpful anymore in that respect (he quit playing a couple months ago) since his information is a bit behind the times since the xpac came out, but before he quit, we joined a guild with some friends, and two of the guys in the guild are really helpful when it comes to figuring stuff out. Mostly, though, I just kind of bumble along, and I do pretty well.

I use addons because they make my life easier--QuestHelper because when I was leveling from 60 to 70 on my second warlock I felt lazy, AuctioneerAdvanced because I need gold, FuBar and various FuBar plugins to track stuff, FishermansFriend because I love fishing, OneBag because once I switched to having one bag frame instead of several I found it impossible to switch back, Cartographer for map addons, Gatherer because I can't get the tracking database in Cartographer to do what it's supposed to do since WoTLK came out. I'm still waiting for the update on OneBank (an addon that turns all your bank bags into a single frame, ala OneBag). Most of my addons are profession-related. I was really resistant to the use of addons for a long time, mostly because I saw my SO and roomie use them to completely overhaul their UIs and every time a patch came out they'd have to do it all over again. That is way too much of a pain in the ass for me. So I stick to pretty simple addons and use the Curse client to keep them up-to-date. Easy peasy.

I wish my SO would start playing again so we could go pwn some n00bs together, but I'm not holding my breath.

You do know about Wowhead at the very least, right, Baraka?

snowy, there is an "off brand" version of OneBank that someone other than the original author touched up enough to make it work with WotLK until the original author finds the time to make it work. You can find it on curse. I use ArkInventory myself, but my wife doesn't really need that level of customization, so I have her set up with OneBag and the fake OneBank and she likes them just fine.

Turns out I'm kind of a liar and kind of a bringer of good news.

I couldn't find the fake OneBank I found for my wife, but I did find a beta rewrite by the original author here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a.../onebank3.aspx. Enjoy.

Thanks a bunch! I've become so disorganized since WoTLK came out because OneBank wasn't working. I'll have to give this a try.

I use QuestHelper and Auctioneer. What is all that other stuff? What in hell is Wowhead?! :confused:

Wowhead is an online database of all things World of Warcraft related--quests, NPCs, objects in game, etc. It's endlessly useful when you can't figure out where the NPC or mob you want is, or how a quest is supposed to work (sometimes I find the quest text too vague for my tastes).

Most of my addons are professions-related--FishermansFriend allows for one-click (on the screen) casting, and automatically attaches lures to my fishing pole with a click. I love fishing. Gatherer tracks all of the nodes for my herbing (it also tracks mining nodes). Cartographer allows you to fiddle with the maps in game a bit, plus it reveals the whole map, not just the bits you've uncovered so far. I used to be able to use it to track herb nodes, but I've been having issues with that since WoTLK came out. Takes a bit of the mystery out of it, but I'm okay with that. OneBag consolidates your bags into, well, one bag frame--I find it's easier to keep organized than separate bag frames. Same with OneBank.

snowy listed a bunch of other UI mods which do a variety of things you may or may not need. If you look them up on curse (Curse.com - WoW Addons WAR Addons Gamer Blogs Forums), you can figure out if you want them.

Wowhead (Wowhead: NOM NOM NOM), on the other hand, is an essential all-purpose WoW resource. It has every item in the game (and a few that aren't anymore), every NPC, every quest, every...well everything. Talent calculators, pet talent calculators, spells, achievements, professions.

If you're trying to find something and you don't know where it is or where it's from, go there and type it in (or better yet get the firefox search plugin) and chances are much better than not that it'll pop up. Use it, love it, and never feel confused agian.

:) i just discovered lightheaded :) what a great mod to bring wowhead to in game... i have dual monitors, but now I can do some of it in game :) great compliment to carbonite... i don't like questhelper for some reason.

i used thottbot througout azeroth and the Burning Crusade but just installed Carbonite and WOW! how awesome is that!

I see that, with the latest patch/upgrade, they are seriously nerfing the hunter class, which will have a major effect in PvP...

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively...fbowheader.jpg

(I love that graphic – it's so appropriate, for what's being done to hunters.)

The rest of this article can be read here...

The great 2008 World of Warcraft Hunter nerf - Massively

A couple of months ago, I quit WoW, for good (I deleted all my characters, just before cancelling my subscription, to make sure I wouldn't be tempted to go back), because I was sick and tired of Blizzard's hamfisted and continuous tinkering around with character class spells and abilities. (Well, I was also getting burnt out on the game, having played it extensively for over a year.) This, after the hamfisted way Blizzard, with a patch, increased the power and effectiveness of paladins (my favorite character class, in WoW), finally making them a viable class in PvP, only to nerf them a month later with the subsequent patch.

This latest nerfing makes me laugh, because it was hunters who were pissing me off the most, on the PvP battlegrounds. I found that hunters were by far the most effective character class, in PvP (in the level 10-49 battlegrounds, at least). Even for the short period of time when my paladin was enabled with the power increase (before the subsequent nerfing), hunters were more often than not in higher positions among the top 10 player characters of a given PvP match, than paladins were. (Warlocks were among those top 10, too, but not as much as hunters and paladins were.)

I must resist the urge to reactivate.

I won't though because once I've gotten over the inital "ooh ahh" about Death Knights I'll quickly realize that I hate raiding so I'd be forced to participate in Blizzard's shitty Arena to get gear to compete. Unless WotLK has made it where Arena isn't the end all be all for good gear in PvP.

dual specs is too complicated for me. it's taken me long enough to learn how to play my holy priest and sublety rogue correctly, at the moment i'm just sticking with those specs, even if others might be 'better'. it's a playstyle for me. My holy priest doesn't want to be shadow, and i like shadowstep and Shadowdance on the rogue.

You probably wouldnt enjoy the coming arena season at all. They did a tier system for the armor that is based on having honor and arena points and arena rating for the two higher tiers.

The people who are going to dominate arena early on will be raiders(as usual)and people using badge gear from heroics/tradeskill epics.

They should reduce PVE gear effectiveness in PVP settings(and vice versa for PVE).