Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Newegg sale offers Wrath of the Lich King expansion for $9.99

by Dawn Moore Jun 28th 2012 at 7:00PM

If you've been wanting to get a friend into World of Warcraft before Mists of Pandaria comes out or you just want to upgrade a second account for Recruit-A-Friend perks, you might want to check out Newegg right now. The retailer is currently selling box copies of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for $9.99, half off the normal retail price, with a limit of five copies per customer.

Players who currently own a standard Battle Chest account (which includes both vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade) need Wrath of the Lich King to gain access to level 70+ content and to upgrade to the current expansion, Cataclysm. A fully upgraded account will also be necessary to install Mists of Pandaria when it is released in the near future.

Since Newegg is a U.S. vendor, it's most likely this sale will only be good for those of you who want to play on North American and Oceanic servers. Sorry, Europe!

Update: It looks like Newegg has sold out of copies of Wrath of the Lich King now.

[Thanks, Reddit!]

Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Know Your Lore: Top 10 magnificent bastards of Warcraft, part 1

by Matthew Rossi Jun 27th 2012 at 2:00PM

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2007 to 2012 in warrior years

by Matthew Rossi Jun 23rd 2012 at 3:00PM

The Care and Feeding of Warriors 2007 2012 in Warrior Years

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

This was the first column I ever wrote for WoW Insider. A lot of things have changed in that five-year period; for one thing, I got five years older. In that time, I've written about tanking shortages, about dungeon etiquette, about killing Cyclonian and rage normalization. Together, we've tanked and DPSed our way through The Burning Crusade, Wrath and now Cataclysm. (I did vanilla before I joined the staff here, so I was woefully alone. Well, OK, my wife helped me out.)

There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years. Warriors had some dizzying highs and some painful lows. Our tanking was weak in The Burning Crusade, with lots of AoE needed that we didn't have, yet later, certain raid bosses were designed to be tanked best by a warrior, putting all those paladins and druids who put us out of work earlier in the expansion suddenly out of work watching us tank. Wrath balanced things for all tanks, but DPS warriors got to ride the roller coaster of rage starvation until getting geared, the big Ulduar nerf, and the ascendency of armor penetration. Cataclysm has had peaks and valleys for us, but on the whole, we've weathered this expansion as a strong tanking class (once you're familiar with all we can do), and both fury and arms have been contenders for best DPS spec at one point or another.

Strange as it may sound, Cata was probably the best overall expansion warriors have had. We've had issues (PvP), but overall, we've been in the hunt if not top of the pack. I wanted to take the opportunity of having a milestone like this to sit back, reflect and consider the pros and cons not only of the class but of my demented love affair with it -- and your participation in it. After all, without you, this would just be me writing these things to myself.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King

Know Your Lore: Why World of Warcraft needs evil

by Matthew Rossi Jun 20th 2012 at 1:00PM

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

One of the real problems with the New Horde is fairly simple. A lot of the people attracted to playing it were not players of Warcraft or WCII. They discovered the game with or after WCIII -- and in Warcraft III, the Horde isn't portrayed as the group that came marching through the Dark Portal anymore. Trying to put the war back in Warcraft is hard for players who see the Horde as the group Thrall led, who first discovered the Horde in Warcraft III or in one of World of Warcraft's expansions.

The Horde we have today, even after Garrosh Hellscream took over the reins, simply can't sustain the narrative weight of the Horde as the existed for two Warcraft games. The Horde that burned Stormwind, led by Gul'dan's puppet Blackhand and usurped by Orgrim Doomhammer, is not the Horde that Thrall led across the sea. It's a Horde composed primarily or exclusively of orcs with a few allies, a Horde that burns and rampages and murdered without remorse. It was to the Warcraft setting what the Empire was to Star Wars, a force of pure malevolence. The biggest difficulty reconciling that Horde with the current one is the idea of honor, which the Horde of WC and WCII could not have cared less about if they had tried. They were thieves and monsters, and their goal was to murder and steal.

They were the villains.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

What classes should WoW have been designed with?

by Matthew Rossi Jun 13th 2012 at 1:00PM

One of the interesting things about converting a real-time strategy game series into a MMO is how the units of the game are converted to playable classes -- or aren't converted, in some cases. While some heroes or units are folded into the classes like Far Seers into shaman and others make it straight into the game like paladins or death knights, others will make it in more as components or abilities sometimes not even given to the thematically suitable class. Such was the case when mages gained the signature Mirror Image from the blademaster hero class instead of warriors, who would seem to be the most appropriate match.

Reading over this post on Scrolls of Lore about the Demon Hunter got me wondering again about these elements' making it into the game. Several posters mentioned that quite a few demon hunter-themed abilities have made their way into the warlock toolkit, making a separate demon hunter class redundant and unlikely. It's a fair point, and it's mirrored in other places.

Mages in WoW make a specific archmage class unlikely. Paladins have pretty much absorbed the knight unit into themselves. Warriors are getting abilities reminiscent of the Mountain King and Tauren Chieftain heroes. At this point in the game's existence, with 11 classes come Mists of Pandaria, are we likely to see any more introduced? Is it better that the trappings of the RTS make it into the MMO at all, or do they have to come packaged with the heroes and units that made us love them?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A Cataclysm postmortem, part 2 -- Arms

by Matthew Rossi Jun 10th 2012 at 6:00PM

The Care and Feeding of Warriors Cataclysm postmortem Part 2 Arms

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I have yet to be guilded with more than two other warriors at any point in time since Cataclysm launched. I've had more rogues and warlocks than warrior guildmates, and those are the two least-represented classes in World of Warcraft. While I can't prove it, I suspect a lot of the warriors out there are alts, not often played these days. What I do know is, especially in a 25-man raiding situation, I have not been seeing a ton of warriors.

However, one thing is indisputable: Arms is the most-played spec of the class. There are more arms warriors than protection and fury combined in heroic Dragon Soul. Arms is, by far, the most popular spec the class has to offer right now in both PvE and PvP.

It was not always so. For most of Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm, arms lagged well behind fury both in terms of the damage it could do and the popularity of the spec, although its prominence in PvP kept it afloat. The reduction in the Mortal Strike debuff as Cataclysm launched hurt arms in PvP, but the nerfs to Vengeance and fury's mastery meant that all warrior specs suffered. Arms is just one of the pack there, while repeated nerfs to fury and small adjustments to arms gave it the eventual dominance it now enjoys.

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

The Queue: Good girls go bad!

by Elizabeth Wachowski Jun 7th 2012 at 11:00AM

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

Since we'll be discussing female villains, I figured that Betty Draper, the most hated woman on basic cable other than Lori from The Walking Dead, would be an appropriate illustration. I used to think that Betty was the absolute worst, but a few conversations with coworkers made me realize that she's really no worse of a human being than Don. So she's cold and manipulative? Well, she's an isolated housewife married to a philandering, lying workaholic. Do we tend to forgive Don more than Betty because he's the hero of Mad Men? Or does Don Draper's handsomeness erase all sins for many fans? Yes, Mom, I'm talking to you.

sergel92 asked:

What major female baddies are there in WoW? There's Azshara, obviously, and Onyxia too, I guess. But who else could be major enough to get her own expansion, or at least her own patch?

Filed under: WoW Insider Business, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

The Queue: Spoiler-laden voice acting from the future

by Matthew Rossi Jun 6th 2012 at 11:00AM

Since Adam took a long look back yesterday, I thought it would be nice to look forward today. The above audio clip is the Sha of Hatred, one of the big threats of Mists of Pandaria. It's interesting to realize how much voice work there is in Mists. The game is definitely moving forward.

OnyxElders5124 asked:

After previous expansions launched, how long was it before prior xpacs contents exp requirements were nerfed?

This was already answered, but to confirm it, patch 4.3 was the patch that lowered the XP needed to level through Northrend and improved dungeon quest flow for both Outland and Northrend dungeons. I'm not sure which patch lowered the XP needed to level in Outland, although this forum thread on Wowhead seems to indicate it was in place by November of 2008. That would mean Patch 3.0.3, the major content patch for Wrath of the Lich King, or slightly before that.

What we can take from this is that Blizzard doesn't have a set pattern for nerfing old content's XP requirements. The devs do it when they think it's warranted, no sooner, no later.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Know Your Lore: The role of characters in WoW lore

by Matthew Rossi May 30th 2012 at 1:00PM

Filed under: The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Mists of Pandaria Beta: The evolution of itemization

by Matthew Rossi May 25th 2012 at 3:00PM

Let me introduce you to the Massacre Sword. It was, and still is, a solid leveling green with a rather good model. I point it out to you to show you the odds of getting one with stats you'd actually want on a warrior, paladin or hunter (the three classes that would be using the sword at the time the game launched) and how likely it was you'd get, say, a Massacre Sword of the Boar or Whale. Granted, you could get a few fairly useful combinations (one of Strength or Agility, say, or a good two stat combo like Bear, Tiger, Eagle, Monkey or Gorilla depending on your class.

This was a green drop, of course. It wasn't meant to be the best of the best, just something to pick up and use on your way to dungeon loot. It's hard to compare it to what it would be replaced by nowadays, because a lot of that gear was re-itemized when Cataclysm came out and the dungeon levels were adjusted up or down. I remember replacing it with Lord Alexander's Battle Axe, followed by a Demonshear and an Arcanite Champion, before forays into Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. It's fascinating to consider how itemization works as a tool in driving players forward. Bad itemization, while baffling at times when encountered in game, actually serves a purpose in the hands of the developers. An item with too good of a stat spread can actually serve as a hanging burr, sticking to your character long after it should have been replaced.

I mention this because, to my mind, Mists of Pandaria is the first expansion to really know this, forwards and backwards. This is the expansion that will use gear design to motivate you better, more skillfully, and more expansively than ever before.

Filed under: The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Know Your Lore: Otherworldly mysteries

by Matthew Rossi May 9th 2012 at 12:00PM

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Draenor has always interested me. Note that I didn't say Outland, which is a part of the former world Draenor. While Outland itself is very interesting in its own right, one of the things I find fascinating about Draenor is that we do not know what it looked like. While we have a good understanding of one large continent (of which most survived as Outland), we don't know the entirety of that continent, nor do we know whether or not any other pieces of the lost red world survived.

What we do know is that Draenor died when Ner'zhul, the former elder shaman and de facto ruler of the Horde remnants that survived Gul'dan's treachery and Doomhammer's defeat, tried to use stolen magical artifacts to open portals to new worlds, hoping to find one to lead his people to settle on. He did this because the warlock magics taught to Gul'dan by Kil'jaeden had effectively rendered Draenor unlivable.

While Draenor was the homeworld of the orcish people, who evolved there, it was not named by them. Rather, it was the draenei fleeing the Burning Legion who gave the world its name. Draenor means "exile's refuge" in the eredun language. In addition, it was the arrival of the draenei and the naaru that led to the entrenched ancestor worship of the orcish people, as K'ure's tomb in Oshu'gun (the remains of the draenei vessel) attracted the spirits of the deceased to it. In turn, these spirits deliberately created a religion among their own descendents that would venerate K'ure's resting place, weaving orc and draenei together spiritually.

Draenor was a world of its own, and we barely knew it. And it's not the only world we know about in the Warcraft cosmos with strange, unexplained mysteries.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Totem Talk: Solving the problem of Maelstrom Weapon

by Josh Myers May 5th 2012 at 4:00PM

The default Blizzard power aura for Maelstrom Weapon

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids using all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though.

When I try to think of what enhancement's most iconic ability is, a few come to mind. Windfury Weapon is a definite contender, and three or four years ago it would have been my default response. Seriously, though, what is Windfury other than a glorified auto-attack with an attack power bonus and a lower chance to miss? Likewise, Stormstrike could be iconic, but it's essentially a melee attack with both weapons with an electric graphic and a debuff. It's enhancement's Mutilate or Obliterate.

To me, Maelstrom Weapon is the answer. If there's one ability that encapsulates what enhancement is -- a brutal melee class that weaves instant spellcasts between their weapon strikes to harm their opponent or heal themselves -- I believe it's Maelstrom Weapon. It's enhancement's Death Strike, Arcane Blast, Chakra, or Raging Blow -- abilities that, at a glance, offer an insight into what makes the spec different from other specs in their role.

There's a problem here, though. If Maelstrom Weapon is enhancement's iconic ability, why is it currently so awful?

Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Know Your Lore: Fire stolen from heaven, fire stolen from hell

by Matthew Rossi May 2nd 2012 at 1:00PM

Ragnaros the Firelord, ruler of the Firelands and mastermind behind the invasion of Mount Hyjal and power behind the Molten Core, has been ultimately defeated in his own demesne, and the fire elementals are now scattered and leaderless. They pose little threat to the world for some time to come.
Likewise, Al'Akir's servants can call for his aid, but he's not likely to answer, having himself been deposed and slain alongside his son Thunderaan and even powerful servants like the Conclave of Wind and Prince Sarsarun. The air elementals are even more disrupted than those of fire.
Neptulon the Tidehunter may not be dead, but he's currently missing, having been seized by Ozumat and taken elsewhere, his ultimate fate as yet unknown. The naga invaded the elemental plane of water itself and may well still be there alongside the faceless ones.
While Therazane the Stonemother herself endures (the only elemental lord to still rule a plane), Deepholm itself has suffered much throughout the Cataclysm. Not only did Deathwing shatter the World Pillar (it was repaired, but for a time the Maelstrom threatened to collapse into Deepholm and Azeroth along with it), but wars broke out between the Twilight's Hammer and the servants of Therazane as well as the stone troggs and the earthen. Meanwhile, a titan designed waygate leading directly to Uldum was found.
With all of this, one might almost forget that the Destroyer himself, Deathwing, has met his own end at last. In addition, the four remaining dragon aspects (Nozdormu, Alexstrasza, Ysera and Kalecgos) have lost some measure of their former titan-bestowed power -- at least their immortality, and possibly more. With Deathwing's death, the Twilight's Hammer cult (the main instrument of the Old God's will on Azeroth) has also suffered greatly, their forces destroyed, their leaders such as Cho'gall, the Twilight Prophet and lesser lights like Warmaster Blackhorn.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Breakfast Topic: The insomniac's dilemma

by Matthew Rossi Apr 24th 2012 at 8:00AM

OK, so I have a weird sort of problem. When I can't sleep, I tend to run pickup groups, doing anything from starter Cataclysm dungeons to the Hour of Twilight heroics. I freely admit I go in there to cut loose, maybe get some shards out of the deal, and play around with specs that are suboptimal for raiding to see if I can shake them around and get some idea of how well they can perform. As an example, I'm learning that Single-Minded Fury can burst pretty high with the right cooldowns and gearing.

That's not my problem, however.

My problem is that I'm an irascible old grump who kind of enjoys it when a group is full of jerks so I can just be as big a jerk back. And lately, that's not happening. I've had nothing but good behavior from you guys. Even the runs where the tank can't hold aggro or the healer doesn't seem able to keep us up or the other DPSers seem to have forgotten where their buttons are, everyone's so apologetic and civil about it that I have to wonder: What happened to all the buttheads? I mean, I'm the guy who used to get heroics with tanks who had a racist macro on their Avenger's Shield! I'm the guy who couldn't zone into a dungeon without the tank asking me if I had a tank set on me, or the healer telling us all that he or she was simply too drunk to type and was gonna try and remember his or her keybinds.

Did those people all leave? Because lately, everyone's being so nice that I'm kind of confused. When I cut loose on Archibishop Benedictus, people go out of their way to compliment me. When I slapped on a shield and taunted the adds when the tank died on Queen Azshara, the group praised me. Praised. Who are you people, and what have you done with my usual pickup groups? If this keeps up, I'm going to have to be nice to people by default.

How are your pickup groups progressing?

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast Topics, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King

Did flying mounts ruin Azeroth?

by Matthew Rossi Apr 23rd 2012 at 5:00PM

The question of whether flying mounts may have ruined Azeroth is a hard question for me to even posit, because I love flying mounts. I love being able to fly right over things that annoy me, drop right in on quest objectives and soar right out again. I loved that we could finally fly in Azeroth when Cataclysm shipped, and I was absolutely in favor of being able to use my flying mount to skip over stuff I disliked when questing and leveling up.

But it's worth considering: Did that convenience that I so love come at too high a cost? Did being able to fly over obstacles keep me from appreciating how much detail went into the zones? Did it ruin world exploration, something that a lot of players got a lot of enjoyment out of for a great deal of vanilla WoW's run? Did incorporating flying mounts into Azeroth, in addition to forcing a complete redesign of the world, also end up stripping out interesting and cool places you had to really work at to find and visit? Let's discuss the pros and cons.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

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