Northrend Orphan Week

There is now a third Orphan Week in World of Warcraft. This time it takes place in Northrend. If you're not familiar with what Orphan Week is, you basically temporarily adopt an orphan and bring him to places he's never been but would like to see.

These quests are very easy (minimum level 75) and you could get them done with a ground mount, but are really meant for characters with flying mounts in Northrend as they dramatically decrease the time to get them done.

Step1 :
Visit the orphan matron in Dalaran near the Alliance side's bank and get your orphan. There are two orphan's to choose from. A wolvar and an oracle (really ugly murloc).

Step 2:

Get three quests from your orphan. "Playmates!" is the only quest in this step that is different for the two orphans. The wolvar orphan has you go to the wolvar village in Dragonblight and the oracle orphan has you go to the Winterfin Retreat in Borean Tundra.

Step 3:

Both orphans want to meet the Dragon Queen in Wyrmest Temple (with different things to say to her), but they want to go to two different places for the second quest. The oracle orphan wants to see a Great One in Sholazar Basin while the wolvar wants to meet Hemet Nesingwary in Sholazar.

Step 4:

This is the easiest step. Go back to Dalaran to buy a small paper zepplin at The Wonderworks in the tradeskill section and play catch with your orphan.

After you've done that, go back to the matron to finish the quest. A minute or two later and you will get some mail with your new pet.

I wasn't really paying attention to how long it was taking to get these Northrend Orphan Week quests done as I was doing other things, but I would say 30 minutes is an accurate guess. If you like to collect Orphan Week pets like me, both pets are a must. Plus, the wolvar pet is pretty cool. :)

Side Note: I have to give kudos to Blizzard for the change to the Quest Log screen. The vertical split lets you see more quests in your list and more quest text on your screen at once. Very good change.

The payoffs:
Wolvar


Oracle

Class Q & A Series: Paladin

The 5th Class Q & A Series thread is up on the official World of Warcraft forum. This time around, it's the Paladin's turn. Read the thread Here.

My Paladin just dinged level 80 last weekend and I was kind of hoping to see something useful or informative in the the thread. However, the Class Q & A Series discussion for the Paladin is not very insightful or contains anything I would consider new.

Not that Paladins really need anything in the level 1 to 79 range for leveling purposes. You pretty much just specialize in Retribution and blow through content. Leveling as a Holy Paladin is just dumb and a waste of time. You can level as a Protection Paladin and kill multiple mobs at once. But, the reality is, Retribution is the fastest, most efficient way to go for leveling.

If the level 80 instance running/raiding game is anything like what it was like for the level 70 game before Wrath of the Lich King, Paladins should do fine as healers and tanks despite any changes coming in 3.2. Based on the few instances I have run through as a DPSer, I think Retribution Paladins will do well in the PvE area as well. Although, pressing 3-4 buttons gets pretty boring pretty fast.

This quote is a little confusing based on how much people whine about Paladins being over-powered in PvP.

"Q. All classes vary in dps from one encounter to another; however, some paladins may feel their dps can be less competitive at times in comparison to other classes, more so in straight stationary single-target dps encounters. How do we feel paladins are doing in terms of dps across the board?

A. Retribution dps is too low in PvE in 3.1. We are buffing it in 3.2 through the new way Seal of Vengeance / Corruption will work. This Seal is designed to really deliver damage once the paladin gets five stacks up, which will make it the Seal of choice for boss fights. Seal of Command will be used in PvP or PvE for short fights. We expect overall for Corruption / Vengeance to be the “go-to” Seal much of the time, perhaps even in PvP, provided you can keep the buff up."

If I'm reading this right, Seal of Vengeance / Corruption is getting a buff so it does MORE damage and this will, of course, transfer over to PvP. How exactly is this going to address the cries of Paladins being over-powered? What's annoying is Death Knight damage is getting nerfed (even more) in 3.2 but Paladins are getting buffed and based on playing both of these "over-powered" classes, I find this incredibly bass ackwards.

I'm not saying Death Knights didn't need to be adjusted, but Retribution Paladins need to be adjusted too. Having fought both classes in PvP at the level 80 bracket now, I dread fighting Retribution Paladins a lot more. Big damage plus healing plus bubble of the Paladin outweighs the big damage a Death Knight can deal. Hopefully, Blizzard can make some good adjustments during testing, but I'm not holding my breath.

World of Warcraft Class Q&A Series: Warlock

Everyone's favorite demon-hugging class gets some love in the World of Warcraft Class Q&A Series. The Warlock Q&A thread can be found Here.

I have a level 52 Warlock and can understand some of the issues the higher level Warlock crowd has with the class. The possible changes discussed in Q&A thread sound interesting, but I'm not the best person to judge them. I primarily play my Warlock when all my other characters get boring.

Warlocks are very easy to level and tend to get boring pretty quick unless you get inventive or push your limits. PvP is fun when you're at the top of a level group in Battlegrounds and not facing a bunch of twinks. But, it sucks when you're in the lower half of the level range because you're not much more than a speed bump to most classes thanks to having no real escape abilities.

Perhaps the biggest change to Warlocks brought up in the Q&A series will be to Soul Stones with a complete revamp of how they're used. Nothing specific was mentioned, but they said they want to make the system interesting and worthwhile. It should be interesting to see what Blizzard comes up with.

World of Warcraft Class Q & A Series: Death Knight

The World of Warcraft Class Q & A Series continues with the Death Knight class in this thread on the official boards. It seems a little longer than the Mage thread, but that may be a perception issue because I have more interest in any changes to the Death Knight since it is my favorite class to play.

My general impression of what was said is Blizzard is going to hit Death Knights with the nerfbat. Repeatedly. The question is are they going to swing the bat one too many times and tick off all of the Death Knights or are they not going to swing it enough and tick off all of the non-Death Knights?

Either way, I don't think I'm going to be happy. Not because of the changes but because Blizzard did not specifically state in the thread what they think a Hero class is and what is expected of them in all aspects of the game. They cracked some jokes about how over-powered Death Knights are, but avoided the question. I think it's pretty safe to say Blizzard does not have a clear vision of what role or abilities a Death Knight, or any Hero class, should have.

If, in the end, Death Knights are "balanced" and turn out to be just another class, Blizzard needs to remove the "Hero" label and stop giving people the false impression Death Knights are supposed to be special.

And for the record, I think anyone who has a character level 55 or over should be able to create any new character at level 55 with a set of blue equipment and mount, if they want. Let's be honest, the road from 1-60 or 1-70 or 1-80 is only fun the first couple of times and that might be pushing it.

In the end, I think Blizzard is in a no win situation with this Q & A series for Death Knights. Too much tweaking and people will stop playing their Deaths Knights and possibly cancel their accounts. Not enough and the whining from masses of non-Death Knights will continue on.

World of Warcraft Class Q & A Series: Mage

The World of Warcraft Class Q & A Series continues with the Mage class in this thread on the official boards. Overall, it's a good read and informative.

Some highlights:

"Q: Even so, will mages get robes, or at least the option of choosing robes, over tunics going forward?

A: To be totally honest, this is not a huge priority for us at this time. We embrace some level of player visual customization in World of Warcraft, but it’s just not in the design vision to give players as many controls over how their character looks as some players would probably desire. One of the distinctive visual qualities of cloth is that it often looks like long, flowing robes, which is pretty consistent with the iconic fantasy wizard. No doubt some players would prefer to change the look of their weapon or weapon enchant if they could without having a game play effect, so this is just a slippery slope for us. We will keep the feedback in mind though."

Not specific to mages, but their attitude towards players wanting to customize their "look" annoys me a little but is consistent with their art choices for equipment over the past couple of years.

Basically, Blizzard has been getting lazy with the amount of work put into how different looking armor sets for a class are. See the new 3.1 gear as an example. They just switch some colors around and that's it. This isn't a huge deal, but I find their attitude towards it annoying.

"Q: While mages do recognize this issue, has there been any discussion about reworking Blink so it’s more intuitive and could recognize a mage failing to teleport any distance forward, wasting only a global cooldown rather than the mana and spell cooldown?

A: Blink is a movement spell, and anything related to movement can be a little dicey on a client-server game like World of Warcraft. That’s not an excuse for it bugging out, but an explanation for why you can get into situations where it doesn’t seem to work. In the 3.1 patch we made some technical improvements to the spell working on slopes. It used to fail a lot in the portal area of Dalaran for example, but that has been much improved. One of the places where it still seems to struggle the most is entering or exiting the tunnels in Warsong Gulch, which ironically is one of the places where it’s also the most useful. Anywhere there is a change in terrain, such as entering a building, could be problematic. We are working on this issue. If you run into a problem with Blink, the most helpful thing you can do in the Bug Report forum is specify where exactly you had the spell fail. That will let our engineers zero in on solutions."

I find it hilarious that Blizzard STILL hasn't found a resolution for blink's problems. Before they changed how macros work way back when, you could have a macro make you jump and blink with a key click and terrain preventing the blink wasn't an issue. Usually. For some reason, hitting the spacebar to jump and then blink isn't as effective.

I'm not sure why they haven't put a jump component into blink yet. If they're afraid of people killing themselves by jump blinking over barriers, I say let them. Mages have slow fall for a reason. :)

Midsummer Festival Event Guide

The Midsummer Festival in World of Warcraft is scheduled to begin on June 21 and end on July 4. This event is packed with things to do and can be somewhat complicated. You will need a guide if you want to get all of the rewards and achievements.

This Midsummer Festival Guide page has the locations of all of the bonfires as well as the available rewards and achievements. There aren't any walk-throughs on the page itself (it's a sales page for an in-game guide), but it should give you a good idea of where to start and whether or not there is anything you might want from the festival.

Good luck.

Isle Of Conquest Preview

In case you hadn't heard, there is a Isle of Conquest Preview on the official World of Warcraft site. It's mostly just concept stuff at this point. No screen shots or movies. Just one image of concept artwork.

However, there's enough information to get me excited about this new battleground. Isle of Conquest is a 40 on 40 battle in the tradition of Alterac Valley (my personal favorite). Basically, you fight against the other faction in order to kill the enemy general or reduce their reinforcements to 0 while trying to control strategic points on the map.

The biggest differences between Isle of Conquest and Alterac Valley are siege vehicles and an airship where players can pickup parachutes and assault the enemy from above. Ground based siege vehicles can be used to kill enemy soldiers, break down the enemy fortress walls like in the Battle for Wintergrasp and toss allies over the walls of the enemy fortress (I bet the landing part really sucks).

I really like the idea of having to actually defend and attack at the same time. It has created some really fun times in previous battlegrounds. My only real concern is getting enough people on a side to actually work together to accomplish something. Alterac Valley should be an attack while defending battleground, but is usually just a zerg race to see who can kill the enemy general first. Hopefully, Isle of Conquest will have features to prevent this from happening.

Isle of Conquest looks like it is taking some of the best features of existing battlegrounds (command areas (Arathi Basin), siege vehicles (Strands of the Ancients) and reinforcements (Alterac Valley), putting them into a large, possibly huge map, and throwing 40 people against 40 of their bestest friends to see who comes out the victor. I'm really looking forward to it.

World of Warcraft Class Q&A Series: Shaman

This is a must read if you play a shaman in World of Warcraft. Lots of good info.

Click Here to read the thread on the official World of Warcraft forums.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Deceived Cinematic Trailer HD

This isn't World of Warcraft related or a video of actual game play, but I don't care. Star Wars: The Old Republic is shaping up to be the game that breaks my World of Warcraft addiction.

This is the Star Wars: The Old Republic - Deceived Cinematic Trailer HD shown at E3 this year.

New Character Of The Month For June - Markco

Name: Markco
Race: Orc
Class: Warrior
Level: 80
Specialization: Protection

Bio: I’m a warrior who does something maybe a handful of people in the world have tried and only one is better at: Play protection pvp.

Alloraan of Daggerspine is the only player in the world to score a higher arena rating than myself last season (2450 vs my 2380).

How prot pvp works is you grab as much block value as possible from pve gear and then gem it with +crit gems and enchant for +hit/+crit. You also have to chain your abilities to get the largest crits possible from shield slam:

5xSunder, Enraged (+10% overall damage), Shield Slam Once (+10% dmg from glyph on next shield slam within 10 seconds), Disarm (+10% all dmg for duration of disarm), Shield Bash (+10% dmg for 3 seconds on next shield slam), Shield Block (+100% shield block value), Trinket (+440 Shield Block Value), Ret Judgement (+3% damage) and finally slam for insane crits.

I see as high as 13.8k in arenas on cloth and 8k on plate against full resilience targets. We basically cc chain every 40 seconds (my pally partner is ret/holy for repentance) and go for a burst kill. When I think we will down the person (knowing they are out of defensive cool downs) then
I pop recklessness to seal the deal during my rotation. As a prot warrior I can peel like crazy and keep my partner up easily while we wait for our cooldowns to come back between bursts.

To see some of the numbers I’m capable of, check out This Video.

My highest slam on record is 20k+ on a priest in wsg; he had zerker but I did not. I did have a full row of +str buffs from teammates.