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Okay, we all knew Blizzard was going to do this sooner or later; and here it is, the fall of the lich king. As far as I can now tell, Blizzard has completely sucked dry all the lore created from WarCraft III. What's next? What else could they possibly do? WarCraft III built the Lich King up as the badest villain around, but now he's apparently scheduled to be defeated. Obviously I know they will come up with something else, but I'm just saying it seems this is the end of the line for people like me who followed the storyline of the RTS games. In other words, you could say that I probably am not looking forward to the lore in WarCraft IV.

So what do you current WoW players think of the lore with this patch? There's not much to say about it gameplay-wise, as it's just the standard balances changes and new raids.

I like the new dungeon instances because they have fun and innovative play, and the new random LFG system is fun for people who don't know alot of folks on their server. The 'Reforging Quel'Delar' was fun, I got lucky and got a hilt on the first day. The new raid, however, is a cast-iron bitch and is shaping up to be Kara 2.0: Now with more wipes. Two solid nights of raiding and my guild didn't get past the second boss.

As for what's coming next, I refer you to World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Short version? Deathwing wakes up and lays waste to about 2/3rds of the world, and now SHIT JUST GOT REAL. Also, Malfurion Stormrage has woken up. That's how serious it is.

I haven't found time to step into the raid yet, but the new instances blew my fucking mind. Bronjahm has the best boss music I've ever heard. The fights in the Pit of Saron are a ton of fun, and Halls of Reflection...

...I mean, just, Halls of Reflection. What can you say? It's fucking epic. The lore nerd in me went nuts at seeing Falric and Marywn again, and that ending is just goddamned insane. It also delivered a humongous laugh when a rogue friend of mine took a swipe at the Lich King during the fight scene and got popped off in one shot. Arthas didn't even turn to look at him, just -wham- and he was dead.

I've been running instances and heroics like crazy - I really like the new queue feature - and my warrior's gotten seriously kitted out.

Obviously I know they will come up with something else, but I'm just saying it seems this is the end of the line for people like me who followed the storyline of the RTS games.

Fuck that fucking noise. Warcraft III was all about whiny bastards like Arthas and Illidan playing "my cock's bigger than your cock" the entire time. We're getting the motherfucking Deathwing back from Warcraft 2, a goddamn dragon who woke up and decided to nail adamantium plates to his fucking scales cause....cause god damn it, there's nothing better for him to do on a Thursday afternoon!

And now we've axed his daughter, his son, and his wife, blown up one pet project after another, waltzed into his house, broken into his office, killed his buddy...

...I mean, shit. Revenge movies have been made with less to work with, and Deathwing was less than stable to begin with. Now he's been pumped full of Things That Should Not Be roids and told 'go nuts'.

And fuckin' Ragnaros. This guy had it made. Nice, cozy cavern, bunch of friends over for a party, entire nation worshipping his name, and what happens? The nation gets stomped out, his cave gets overrun, his friends get whacked, and he gets kicked out of the fucking world.

Let me say that again.

He got booted off the fucking planet.

Small wonder this guy's coming back in full Apocalypse mode. Seriously, if you're looking for good villains, including one who was around way before any of that Warcraft III jazz, Cataclysm has a ton of potential.

Kuja, you need your own gaming magazine column. I also think 'Things That Should Not Be Roids' should be trademarked. Of course I agree. BC and WotLK were about fighting mopey lost souls bent on destroying the world. Now we've got the primal forces of creation awake and cranky and bashing the world with their morning-wood-of-evil.

And after that's done, what'll be next? An invasion by the Zerg? Oh, wait, Sillithids...

From what I've heard, Arthas is not supposed to die, just be defeated or something. Anyone got information on that? Right now I'm off the game, and probably will stay off until after the Cataclysm craze.

The new dungeons are good, Halls of Reflection seems a little oddly tuned for a 5man, I was in there with a fully ToGC geared tank and he was getting smacked around a little during the first portion, but other than that its really nice little gear reset to boost up those few pieces that might be low.

New raid....sigh where to begin. The gated system quite simply can fuck right off. Blizzard is so worried about raiders finishing that they've literally just given up and said 'fuck it, we're delaying you for 28 days, have fun'. Then you've got limited attempts on some bosses and it becomes an exercise in tedium. At this rate we won't even get NORMAL Arthas until April, let alone HM Arthas. Limited attempts should have fucking died with ToC, it doesn't reward any kind of careful gameplay or make people play less, all it means is waiting around after each wipe for CDs to reset.

The new raid (so far) has been fun, but easy. We did 10man with the first 10 people to come online at around 11am EU server time, simply went in and started killing bosses with very little idea of what we were doing (ended up being 6th in the EU, 286th worldwide). Ended up wiping on the trash more than the bosses.
25man wasn't hard either, but what was hard was the absolutely crippling server lag. Blizzard was supposed to have sorted this shit out back when Naxx was around and a guild pulling Thaddius would damn near crash Naxx for everyone else. We were getting 20-30 second lag spikes on some fights, but we just brute forced through it eventually and finished Saurfang within the night, went and got our way up to Twins in ToGC ready to try for Insanity tonight, which means we're likely back to farming ToC on alts or going and doing Yogg 0 for the mount. Yay for 4 weeks of farming the same normal mode bosses and farming the snooze fest of an instance that is ToC.

From what I've heard, Arthas is not supposed to die, just be defeated or something. Anyone got information on that? Right now I'm off the game, and probably will stay off until after the Cataclysm craze.

It's in the Halls of Reflection that you get the lore part of this. As you enter Jaina/Sylvanas go and attempt to commune with the souls inside Frostmourne, and Uther the Lightbringer pops out. Turns out that no matter what, there has to be a Lich King. Without a Lich King the scourge would simply swarm over Azeroth and strip it of life - apparently the tiny part of Arthas left is holding them back (which goes against what was written in Christie Golden's book Arthas where he kills off Ner'zhul and the tiny part of him left as a boy). So theoretically he might just be defeated and shoved back into the Frozen Throne, or someone else takes up the mantle of the Lich King to contain the scourge.

New dungeons provide bits of new lore for what may happen in the final battle...and a trinket for those who never want to run another fucking Naxx25 or Uld10 Heroic. Not as good, but hell...easier to farm and less drama.

New raid is

1st battle : Look motherfuckers, no taunt. Stop spamming shit and stop standing in fire, standing with tank, standing in way of whirlwind.
2nd battle : Does she shut up? Oh and silence/stop the frostbolt...it kills.
3rd battle : JET PACKS FUCK YEAH. Sucks for you on cannons.
4th battle : Day 213 and we got him to 50%. Mana users are getting testy. Tanks are sleeping again. Healers/Paladins are wondering if end in sight.

We destroyed 10 man in one night, and wondered why the rest of our server hasn't done the same. 25 man is a bit more annoying because it's 15 carrying another 10 retards.

I don't know about your servers, but Mannoroth is an absolute WHORE for 'Link achieve. You don't have it? Fuck you.' I adore the gating system; it gives ample time for everyone to get subsidiary achievements before the next level opens up, which should hopefully alleviate the achievement bitching.

The downside is that Manno is also a whore for raiding in general, so ICC went down hard when we tried it last night, then eventually came back up to a full respawn, so we didn't get more than a few attempts on Marrowgar before we got dicked. We were also shy one of our regular healers on account of finals, which didn't help.

I despite gating systems, it was annoying as hell in Sunwell and its annoying now. Its nothing more than deliberate time wasting on Blizzards part, same as ToC was. After Ulduar they all fucking panicked and realised what a huge job Cataclysm was going to be and since then they've been desperately trying to keep the raiders interested until then. ToC was gated and had limited attempts, and now ICC is going the same route purely to delay, to buy time for them. And its purely there fault for making raiding easier (not that I mind), they can't make a genuinely hard boss that people struggle on for weeks/months (Vashj, Kael, Mu'ru etc) because half the people would never be able to complete them, so they're stuck with this utterly retarded method of drawing out a raid instance.

As for the achievement thing, we've got a pretty dedicated alt raid going since ToC came out, we usually have like 14-15 alts and we just pug 10 people. 14-15 alts who know what they're doing and are decently geared can carry 10 fuckwits through most fights.

From the perspective of a non-raider:

The new Dungeon Finder is amazing. Before the situation on my server was that it might take half an hour to find a PUG for the daily heroic, and you could go for hours without finding a group for the others (even ToC once you got later into the patch). And if you wanted to do a Vanilla or Outland dungeon on a lower level alt? Find a level 80 guildie to clear the place out for you, because Hell would freeze over before you'd find a PUG for it.

Now? Just queue up on the Dungeon Finder. It'll take all of 5-10 minutes to get a group together, even for lower level dungeons. And if you are on during the prime play time of some servers in your battlegroup, it is not unheard of to find a group within seconds.

I'll also agree that the new 5-mans are awesome. Bronjahm is like Deconstructor in terms of hilarious dialogue. The corridor fight before Tyrannus was really fun (my group got Don't Look Up). Halls of Reflection is just brutal. The whole place is one giant DPS race with a side of endurance fight. Barely avoided a wipe during the Lich King encounter there. Tank, healer, and one of the dps died during the last wave, so only the rogue and I got credit for completing it.

Minischoles wrote: New raid....sigh where to begin. The gated system quite simply can fuck right off. Blizzard is so worried about raiders finishing that they've literally just given up and said 'fuck it, we're delaying you for 28 days, have fun'.Then you've got limited attempts on some bosses and it becomes an exercise in tedium. At this rate we won't even get NORMAL Arthas until April, let alone HM Arthas. Limited attempts should have fucking died with ToC, it doesn't reward any kind of careful gameplay or make people play less, all it means is waiting around after each wipe for CDs to reset.

Blizz has stated that none of the other gates are going to last as long as this one will, it just has to do with Icecrown being released so close to the holidays.

25man wasn't hard either, but what was hard was the absolutely crippling server lag. Blizzard was supposed to have sorted this shit out

Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha. Ha ha. That's funny.

And got the quest for the legendary.

Okay...all those bosses I'll have to tank to get the needed whatever? No sweat.

25 FUCKING PRIMORDIAL SARONITE AT 23 BADGES EACH?! 575 BADGES?!

Yeah...not so much. And before someone goes "Guild to help out!". We're aka I AM selling the first 10 or so to actually build our coffers. So unless they drop like rain, that part will be a larger cockblock then waiting for the raid boss and figuring the fucker out in a 10/10 tries. Though we are offering incentives to donate a few for the guild but we are trying to make at least 2 of these suckers. Which will likely take longer then beating the stupid place...and then some.

And really, that's not even counting the badge gear we'll need. Yeah...the major raiders will be doing random dungeons for a loooooooooooong time. Yeah, I'll have that Pug pet eventually.

Ghost Rider wrote:And got the quest for the legendary.

Okay...all those bosses I'll have to tank to get the needed whatever? No sweat.

25 FUCKING PRIMORDIAL SARONITE AT 23 BADGES EACH?! 575 BADGES?!

Yeah...not so much. And before someone goes "Guild to help out!". We're aka I AM selling the first 10 or so to actually build our coffers. So unless they drop like rain, that part will be a larger cockblock then waiting for the raid boss and figuring the fucker out in a 10/10 tries. Though we are offering incentives to donate a few for the guild but we are trying to make at least 2 of these suckers. Which will likely take longer then beating the stupid place...and then some.

And really, that's not even counting the badge gear we'll need. Yeah...the major raiders will be doing random dungeons for a loooooooooooong time. Yeah, I'll have that Pug pet eventually.

I'm planning on buying the Saronite for the most part. Cursader Orbs went for around 1k each (400 towards teh end of 3.2), and I presume that Prim. Saronite will follow a similar pattern. I can;t change the number of emblems I can get in a week, but I CAN change how much gold I can make.

Also, emblems DO seem to come more easily, and will increase in teh rate they accumulate as more of the raid is opened up. The daily randoms are nice, but the weekly raid that gives 5 of each emblem is extremely nice - we killed Ignis for it last night.

I and one other DK in my guild are very much hoping for Shadowmourne. It's certainly a lot more accessible than previous Legendaries, even if that initial investment is extremely costly.

Overall, buggy patch week aside (and really, that was expected) I'm impressed with 3.3. This may be partially because I'm an Unholy Death Knight, and we got a massive buff. But the dungeon tool is something I wish had been around since launch, as is the new quest tracker system. The new 5-mans carry the feel of a scaled-down raid instead of the monotony of many of the others. The new raid so far is extremely fun. I feel like you still need to put forth some effort and have some skill to accomplish anything of significance, but I'm not punished for having a job and a life outside of WoW.

Time to start my daily mining routine again. I'm going to need a LOT of gold. And I need to keep trying for that other new sword in teh meantime - I've been using my Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade for too long.

I gotta say, I'm shocked at you guys clearing as much as you are. My guild is pretty solid, and we only got to phase 2 on the second ICC boss ONCE.

I agree, Kuj should have his own gaming column.

I'm briefly back in the game - 7 free days from the 5th anniversary, added a 10 day WotLK trial to it - and I have to say I can see where Blizz really made improvements. The quest-tracking system is better, the quests in Northrend are fun (harpoon surfing!), the Death Knight starting zone is awesome, and I do love what they did to Arms warriors. Killing machines now, well, to the standards of a guy with a Prot-Paladin as his primary.

Steve wrote:I agree, Kuj should have his own gaming column.

I'm briefly back in the game - 7 free days from the 5th anniversary, added a 10 day WotLK trial to it - and I have to say I can see where Blizz really made improvements. The quest-tracking system is better, the quests in Northrend are fun (harpoon surfing!), the Death Knight starting zone is awesome, and I do love what they did to Arms warriors. Killing machines now, well, to the standards of a guy with a Prot-Paladin as his primary.

If you haven't played since pre-Wrath, even a Protadin will seem vastly different.

The state of the game seems to be moving in a good direction. My major complaint is also a paradoxically one of the things I like the most: the gradual homogenization of classes and specs.

On the one hand, I enjoy the unique feeling of being the only class or spec to bring a given buff to a raid. That's part of why I play Unholy on my DK - the Ebon Plaguebringer talent lets me spread the 13% magic damage debuff to all targets as part of my standard DPS rotation, as opposed to a Boomkin or a Warlock throwing away some (or all, in multiple target situations) of their personal DPS putting it up.

On the other hand, I utterly hate missing a buff because we can't find a specific class to fill a slot when we have others waiting to get in. Spreading the various buffs and abilities around means that class composition in raids is far more lenient than it previously was. Blizzard has also made a significant effort to make the "hybrid" classes up to par for all of their roles - Retadins can now do serious damage, for example. There are still some exceptions, of course, but lookign at my Warlock, DK, and Paladin, I can see a viable raiding spec for each talent tree and/or class role that is competitive with other classes in the same role.

What I hate about WOTLK is the faceroll AE tanking.
It's way too easy.
I still don't understand why so many classes got CC like Druids (indoor entangling) or shamans (frog), but have nearly no incentitive to use them , except in PVP, or in gimmik situation.

ent0r wrote:What I hate about WOTLK is the faceroll AE tanking.
It's way too easy.
I still don't understand why so many classes got CC like Druids (indoor entangling) or shamans (frog), but have nearly no incentitive to use them , except in PVP, or in gimmik situation.

Blizzard painted themselves into a corner - by giving Paladins such easy AoE tanking abilities, they forced themselves to give the same to all of teh tanking classes. Hence, unlimited swipe, the changes to Thunderclap, etc.

I too am miffed by the lack of any incentive to CC, though. I don't think I've really seen it used at all since BC. I suppose the reason is that they didn't want to force individual classes into raids. I can see how an elemental or demon that needs a Warlock to Banish would be bad, particularly for 10-man content where you simply may not have a Warlock available. Again, I think Blizzard has cornered themselves - right now, 1-2 classes can typically chain-CC a given class of NPC. This means you NEED to have one of those classes, which is difficult for a 10-man (and sometimes even 25-man) raid. The alternative is to allow all forms of CC to work, but that runs the risk of the raid CCing too many enemies in a given pull (unless Blizz makes most of them immune). The CC mechanism we have now was designed back in the days of 40-man raids where you'd have several of every class virtually guaranteedand such problems weren't an issue.

I'm shocked at people Raiding. I can't get into a raid to save my life, save for one run against the new Onyxia where I got nada.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I gotta say, I'm shocked at you guys clearing as much as you are. My guild is pretty solid, and we only got to phase 2 on the second ICC boss ONCE.

Guys like Ghost Rider are from experienced raids which have been clearing raid content since Vanilla. They can probably walk into an instance and hear "This boss is like Boss X but with Boss Y's Ability Z" and already know what to do, cutting their learning time drown drastically.

There used to be bottlenecks like Kael'thas that exaggerated the difference between a good and a great raid. In a few weeks you'll have the place on farm too and it won't matter.

I'm no longer a raider myself. I was very dedicated and used to theorycraft/optimise constantly, but the Vanilla rogue we had was always picking up the fights quicker than me.

The only time I ever really surpassed him was on not kicking the wrong cast on Reliquary of Souls.

My only real experience with the changes in 3.3 so far has been on Eagletalon... solo'd (but didn't clear) the Botanica. Chose to skip the second and fourth bosses, so it's not a true clear, but I now have the Top Shard of the Arcatraz Key. Just can't figure out why I died against High Botanist Freywinn... then again, I did choose to wear PVP gear in there, since that means +3k hp for my turtle tank.

One thing I am somewhat concerned about... I don't know if it's game mechanics, improper execution, or an actual bug, but it seemed a few times that a bit after my Misdirection was complete, all the threat given to my turtle tank would suddenly shunt back to me.

Still planning to explore Tanaris and Un'Goro Crater before I venture off to explore Northrend, followed by Icecrown, and concluding at Icecrown Citadel itself. Only downside so far has been that a Timear Foresees quest I had (Centrifuge Constructs) was not completed but has disappeared from my Quest Log anyway, so no Feat of Strength: Timear Foresees for me unless I get it back.

GuppyShark wrote:

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I gotta say, I'm shocked at you guys clearing as much as you are. My guild is pretty solid, and we only got to phase 2 on the second ICC boss ONCE.

Guys like Ghost Rider are from experienced raids which have been clearing raid content since Vanilla. They can probably walk into an instance and hear "This boss is like Boss X but with Boss Y's Ability Z" and already know what to do, cutting their learning time drown drastically.

There used to be bottlenecks like Kael'thas that exaggerated the difference between a good and a great raid. In a few weeks you'll have the place on farm too and it won't matter.

I'm no longer a raider myself. I was very dedicated and used to theorycraft/optimise constantly, but the Vanilla rogue we had was always picking up the fights quicker than me.

The only time I ever really surpassed him was on not kicking the wrong cast on Reliquary of Souls.

This. We went into Deathwhisper and I only had to say 'its a bit like Muru' and instantly most of our raiders knew exactly what I was talking about and set up to do it.

Outside of the new raids what i've mostly been doing is just chaining heroics on my warlock alt (dinged 80 about a week before the patch) and i'm absolutely loving the LFG tool. Constant dungeons, longest wait i've had is maybe 4 minutes, grinded out 2 parts T9 and i'm close to the triumph badge wand. Not bad considering I was in a mix of crafted epics and boes a few days ago.

And gotta agree with Ghost Rider, the legendary is gonna take some getting. Our resident ret pally is prepared to drop massive amounts of gold to get them. He's got every raider tapping up friends from old guilds, basically saying 'if you want easy money, I will pay any price for Primordial Saronite'. Considering off the first 4 bosses, we've only had one drop of them so far, its not looking good on the drop rates, and I don't see many people in our main raid being prepared to drop badges for it, considering the gear off the badge vendor every hardcore raider is gonna be saving for those straight away, not even considering the huge cost of tier gear this patch.

I'm still enjoying chasing achievements, I've now gotten Loremaster and Seeker under my belt, and I'm closing in on 100 mounts. I am truly staggered at how much money you can make with a bit of knowhow. I'm an alchemist, transmute spec, and in 3.3 they did a very interesting thing: They took off the cooldown from transmuting saronite to titanium. I can now take any amount of saronite, and sell it for titanium at a 50% markup.

As of today I had 18,000 gold.

Almost 16k here. Albeit that's by not shelling out on enchants yet. I believe I have over 2100 quests completed, but for getting Loremaster, it's easier thanks to the 3.3 change where quest history addons may now query the server for the character's completed/turned-in quests, instead of the addon having to be used from the beginning of the character's virtual life.

Any thoughts on Engineer? I'm thinking of respeccing from Herbalism.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I'm still enjoying chasing achievements, I've now gotten Loremaster and Seeker under my belt, and I'm closing in on 100 mounts. I am truly staggered at how much money you can make with a bit of knowhow. I'm an alchemist, transmute spec, and in 3.3 they did a very interesting thing: They took off the cooldown from transmuting saronite to titanium. I can now take any amount of saronite, and sell it for titanium at a 50% markup.

As of today I had 18,000 gold.

Unfortunately people on my server caught onto this pretty fast. Titanium this morning was 300g a stack, and now? lucky if you get 20-30g a stack.