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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview Look
The Hot Hits Now, I may be in the minority but I like the smooth edges and bright colours formally associated with World of Warcraft. Reckoning uses a ton of the fluid motion and brighter colours which I like. Its like they took a Mario brush to the usual harsh … |
I love transmogrification. I just want to get that out of the way. I think it’s the best basic feature to come to WoW in a long time, and it vindicates all those fashion pieces I saved in my bank over the years. I won’t lie. I love playing pretty dress up. That said, Blizzard’s transmogrification system is definitely more than a little limited. Most things must be transmogrified with items of the same type, and you can’t transmogrify certain items at all. For me, this has certainly caused some problems.
For example, I’d love to wear a leather eyepatch on my death knight, but since he’s a plate wearer? No go. I would pretty much wear an Ashkandi forever and ever if I could, but if I pick up a two-handed axe in a raid or instance? Can’t transmog it. My hunter has it even worse. I roleplay her as more of a backwoods, live-off-the-land type turned sniper, so she’d be more likely to dress in brown or black leathers instead of big, flashy suits of mail armor. Alas, under the current rules of transmogrification, I’m stuck with tier 11 while her Defias Leathers stay languishing in the bank. Finally, I had every intention of dressing up both my blood elf paladin and my gnomish warrior in level 60 PvP gear, but you probably heard that only those characters with the old high-level titles get to transmogrify that stuff for now.
So what about you? Are some of the transmogrification rules keeping you from putting together the look of your dreams?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Breakfast Topic: Have transmogrification limits stymied your character’s look? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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MMO Update: A Closer Look at Mists of Pandaria's Talent Calculator
Piki Geek While it was, indeed, another major change to the game, it was with purpose: World of Warcraft, in its long history, had always been a game of cookie-cutter play – the new system, however, seeks to change that. In the past, if you intended on being … |
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A look back at a cataclysmic year for World of Warcraft
Joystiq It's been a big year for World of Warcraft, especially considering that the MMO behemoth is currently hitting its seventh year of operation. Considering its nigh-ubiquitous nature in the MMO sphere, … |
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration and grant you one birthday wish …
Let’s start off today’s column with a question to you, the reader: How did you get your start raiding?
Me, I got my start in the PUG raiding circuit of yore. Someone would spam trade chat with their need for one ranged DPS for whatever raid instance happened to be in fashion at the time. I’d whisper them, hoping to snag that elusive slot (and believe me, as a DPSer, that slot was very elusive). Generally, I had no idea what I was doing while in the raids. I knew not to stand in stuff and to target whatever had the skull over its head.
I was a pretty lousy PUG raider. Let’s face it — we all were. PUG raids aren’t known for their rates of success. Which is why I was intrigued when Blizzard announced its new Raid Finder system, coming in patch 4.3. Could Blizzard have found a way to make PUG raiding … bearable?
Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest’s first look into the Raid Finder
Filed under: Priest, Raiding, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance, Cataclysm
Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest’s first look into the Raid Finder originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.
If you’re a Breaking Bad fan, I hope you enjoy the header image today.
AdamAldaine asked:
Now that Guardian Cubs have been released, any word on how many people have quit, how many economies have been totally ruined, how many accounts have been hacked and how much money Blizzard made through all of this? (/sarcasm)
In all seriousness: I know this will be anecdotal, but how much does the going rate seem to be? My server is about 13k-ish.
Continue reading The Queue: Look at me, Drek’thar
Filed under: The Queue
The Queue: Look at me, Drek’thar originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.
Just over a week ago, Blizzard unveiled its plans for the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and with it will comes a new talent system to simplify things dramatically. In the case of healing priests, it looks like we might be changing the way we view ourselves from now on, since only our spells will distinguish us from one another, not our talents. Before you know it, discipline priests will be tank healing with Serendipity and holy priests will be casting Power Infusion on themselves to call down torrents of healing. It’s … [Pandemonium joke goes here].
We better take a look at the talents before things get too furry.
Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: A first look at healing priest talents in Mists of Pandaria
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Spiritual Guidance: A first look at healing priest talents in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
At BlizzCon 2011, druids received the groundbreaking news that we were changing to a four-specialization model. With this news, plus the new talents that were revealed, obviously large changes to the spec are planned. With today’s column, I’d like to look at the talents that were revealed during Blizzcon, and make some first guesses as to what players will be looking for. Of course, the standard disclaimer applies: this is pre-alpha stuff, so I won’t be commenting on numbers specifically, just the design choices. Feel free to follow along on the Wowhead MoP talent calculator. Onward!
Tier 1: Movement
I’m happy that movement choices come first. At level 15, you spend a LOT of time walking from place to place, so any movement talents are welcome.
Feline Swiftness is likely your default choice, replacing Feral Swiftness. The vast majority of your playtime is spent moving your character from place to place, after all, so let’s get there faster! Let’s face it: the stationary tank-and-spank model is mostly dead, so being able to move faster is a key part of good DPS. Not to mention, it’s always annoyed me when playing my resto off-spec that I didn’t go faster in cat form, so I’m glad I’ll be able to pick this up there as well.
Now, I think this choice is a pretty good example of the “optimal, but…” design. The other choices are clearly more intended for PvP, but they could very well be useful for survival on encountersthat feature large periodic damage effects or roots/snares. Displacer Beast is interesting if the Charge->Ravage mechanic stays in (my guess is it does) but the random component will make it confusing to use, so it will likely be only useful as an escape in PvP. Finally, my guess would be that Tireless Pursuit heralds the removal of Stampeding Roar, or possibly Dash.
Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: A first look at Mists of Pandaria talents for feral druids
Filed under: (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Shifting Perspectives: A first look at Mists of Pandaria talents for feral druids originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we engage in wild, baseless speculation and make hasty, groundless assumptions based on that wild, baseless speculation. So … just like every week.
A quick recap for those of you who have limited internet access and choose (understandably) to use each of your precious online moments reading this column each week, but otherwise ignore the internet completely:
Blizzard announced a new expansion for World of Warcraft. It has pandas. The WoW online community appears to be simultaneously overjoyed, mildly excited, meh, and borderline suicidal. Monks are the new class, and they will be able to tank while drunk, which makes them pretty much identical to every other tank I know. Most importantly, though, the design team plans to throw our current talent system into a virtual wood-chipper, pick up the pieces that come out of the other side, and mash them together into a completely new singular talent tree for each class.
The three distinct mage trees will survive, but the majority of the school-specific talents and spells we have now are slated to become baseline abilities that we’ll gain as we level (automatically, no more going to a mage trainer). Ability customization once Mists of Pandaria hits will exist as six talent choices available regardless of spec, one choice between three talents every 15 experience levels. Talent specs as we have known them since the game began in 2004 will cease to exist once patch 5.0 hits, and I expect that to occur in less than a year.
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: A preliminary look at the Pandaria talent tree for mages
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Mists of Pandaria
Arcane Brilliance: A preliminary look at the Pandaria talent tree for mages originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Arcane Brilliance: A preliminary look at the Pandaria talent tree for mages
Joystiq Blizzard announced a new expansion for World of Warcraft. It has pandas. The WoW online community appears to be simultaneously overjoyed, mildly excited, meh, and borderline suicidal. Monks are the new class, and they will be able to tank while drunk, … |