Love is in the air! Well, perhaps not for Pilkington of Ravenguard on Suramar (US-A). His all-consuming loneliness (gnomeliness?) leads him to make dramatic gestures such as lying all alone in a field of flowers, weeping over the state of his romantic life. Someday your vertically challenged princess will come, Pilkington. Hopefully before that rat starts chewing off your toes.
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.
Around Azeroth: To dream the impossible fly fishing dream
Submitter Kezan of Wyrmrest Accord writes, "Flying is fun. Fishing is ... fun? It is a shame both cannot be done simultaneously. It would certainly remove the need to waste precious time with proper landing procedures or the significant collateral incurred through fishing the Goblin Way(TM). (Hardcore goblin fishermen can watch Jacques Cousteau demonstrating the technique here, while those with weaker stomachs or a shred of human decency might want to check out this cruelty-free variant.)"
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.
At this point, it shouldn't be hard to remember when the Darkmoon Faire is active. This is our third month with the new Darkmoon Island. However, with both Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air in progress, we figure this friendly reminder can't hurt. It's incredibly easy to get caught up in the festivities with so many events happening at one time.
Remember, your Darkmoon Faire achievement progress has been reset since last month. Don't wait until the last minute to take care of those! And if you need a little help with those achievements, we have a guide for that.
Blue Posts: MoP account-wide achievements, phasing, authenticator troubles, Battle.net Balance
Join us every weekday evening as Today in WoW runs down all the WoW news that you could possibly want. From comments from Blizzard's blues to the latest datamining info -- we've got you covered.
Zarhym's judge-ness been taken up to the Dredd degree.
I received an email three weeks back from a discipline priest who told me she thought her performance on the healing meters was too low. Though there wasn't any pressure on her from her guild to change what she was doing, she was bothered that her peers often outhealed her by a significant amount -- even another discipline priest with worse gear and a laggy computer. She told me she'd first noticed it at the start of Cataclysm, despite the fact that her performance on meters should have gone up with the change to combat logs (which allowed absorption from Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis to register on meters). She kept up with her assignments regardless, and none of her targets ever died, but something just didn't seem right to her.
The priest linked me her armory but said that she didn't think it was anything to do with her gear choices, which I agreed with upon my own inspection. She also described what she was casting, none of which seemed horribly egregious to me. What could be wrong?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.
There was some talk on the official forums recently about the logistical issues presented by plate gear with intellect on it. The best part of the preceding sentence is that it was true last year, it's true this week, and will probably continue to be true next year.
While the gear itself was originally called spell plate due to its spellpower stat, it's now usually referred to as intellect plate. The issue isn't with intellect plate or holy paladins, because they've both been serving their purposes perfectly. The problem is how intellect plate interacts with boss loot tables, affecting everyone else in the raid.
I did a Breakfast Topic recently asking you all what your game was. This included a woefully inadequate poll, but it still gave me some interesting results to look at. There was the expected dominance of PvE endgame content, but that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous about most aspects of WoW; I could explain PvP and PvE to a non-player pretty easily. I could also make a relatively decent stab at achievement farming, professions and playing the Auction House.
But roleplaying ... now, that is a total mystery to me. I get that we're all playing roles to an extent -- bar a recent Halloween fancy dress outfit, I'm not an orc shaman any more than I really could survive being beaten up by a huge dragon. But that, as far as I know, isn't what roleplaying is really about. I could be totally wrong, of course!
I think it has to do with creating a story for a character and then enacting it, but I have so many questions! Do you raid? Can your character's storyline encompass all aspects of gameplay? I can see how there may be a good amount of PvP involved, but are instances more troublesome? Do you quest? If you don't include normal gameplay, what do you actually do? What are the constituent parts of a few normal days of roleplaying in WoW? I'm intrigued to hear your stories!
Two Bosses Enter: Echo of Tyrande vs. Warlord Zon'ozz
In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title.
As the poll closes for last week's matchup. the Echo of Sylvanas from the End Time dungeon successfully trumped the second raid boss to be a part of Two Bosses Enter, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. Looks like this unsleeper is being put down for the night, if you catch my drift. You don't? Oh, Yor'sahj lost. By 800 votes. Another surprisingly close match, considering who Sylvanas is.
This week's matchup proves to be another fun one, especially for the commenters, who are doing their best to reconcile raid mechanics and 5-man mechanics while remembering that this is about spirit and fun. The Echo of Tyrande, leader of the night elves and caretaker of Nordrassil and the druid barrows, will have to pull out every trick in the book as she goes up against Warlord Zon'ozz, one of the two generals at the helm of the assault on Wyrmrest Temple.
Now the fate of these two champions is in your hands. Who wins it, loyal readers and fans? Does the Echo of Tyrande have the strength of will to stand up against the madness of the Old Gods' servant Warlord Zon'ozz?
I love this video for a few reasons. I'll Fight For You is a guild tribute video by Antimatter (who did Colder), featuring music by Jason Derulo. The first reason I love this video is that I love heartfelt, honest, friendly videos that commemorate the friends and family we all enjoy in WoW.
More importantly, I liked this video because it exemplifies a favorite aspect of machinima. While I like to think of myself as a fairly pop-culture-savvy dude, I don't know every artist, every song, and every cover created. While I obviously recognized the Toto sample, I've never been exposed to Jason Derulo. I really grooved to this song, and I loved the way it worked with the video. So now I get to enjoy a new artist, which is an added bonus to a video like this.
All in all, nice job, Antimatter. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host for today.
I don't think I need to say anything other than the fact that it was a really good game. Sorry, Brady.
exogenesis. asked:
"I did the Love is in the Air bosses this morning - and the necks that dropped were not upgraded. Is this intentional, or a bug?"
This is intentional. Remember, the Cataclysm expansion released at the beginning of December, with Love is in the Air launching with an updated form in February 2011. At the time, these ilevel 346 necks were a huge boon to players who were still slogging through Cataclysm heroics at the opening of the expansion, some of the hardest casual content Blizzard has ever released.
Breakfast Topic: Will you be finding Love in the Air?
Guys. Seriously. I can't believe more people haven't mentioned the fact that Love is in the Air this year has a holiday mount involved -- the Swift Lovebird, which can be purchased for 270 Love Tokens. Have you not heard? Bird is the word, in the form of this absolutely gorgeous pink tallstrider. Needless to say, I do not care how much running around I have to do to get all those Love Tokens, by the end of this holiday, I will be riding around on a ridiculous pink mount ... because I can.
There's a ton of other reasons to do the holiday as well, for achievements and for tons of fun items from the holiday bosses. I'll be faithfully killing the trio of Apothecaries in the hopes of getting fun prizes, provided the Apothecary Trio is still there, of course. I'm not much of a fan of Valentine's Day, but I do love fun world events. And giant pink tallstriders to ride around on. Did I mention the pink tallstrider?
Are you planning on participating in Love is in the Air? Do you still have achievements to finish for the meta? And perhaps the most important question of them all: Will you be hunting down enough tokens for the Swift Lovebird as quickly as possible, too? Let us know -- and while you're at it, check out our Guide to Love is in the Air 2012 for tips on nabbing all those pesky achievements.
Every week, Raid Rxwill help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.
The recent nerf to Dragon Soul with the release of patch 4.3.2 means more players are now within striking distance of Morchok on heroic modes. He's a boss that serves as an execution check for your raiding group more than anything else. If your raid group mastered the art of healing through him on normal, then it should have no problem doing it again on heroic.
Just be prepared to do it twice.
The biggest hard mode change is that Morchok clones himself. His clone has the exact same abilities as Morchok prime, except the timing will be off. Your raid will be splitting in two and pulling the two bosses away from each other. You can envision the fight as two pseudo 10-man groups fighting (or two 5-mans, if you're in a 10-man raiding group).
Come into the raid with six to seven healers, if you're a 25-man raiding group. Actually, I'd consider bringing seven if it's the very first time. For 10-man, it is not uncommon for groups to bring in up to four healers for the first time. You'll need them, due to the amount of damage being dished out to the raid. Ideally, try to insist that when your raid leader splits the raid into two groups, the players will show up in your raid frames in different groups. Having all of the players in group 1 and 2 on one side with groups 3 and 4 on the other can be beneficial. The side that is tanking Morchok is the one that could benefit from the extra healer, as it seems more damage is done on that side.
I strongly recommend bringing in tanks with their four-piece bonuses, because they will be an incredible asset.
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
"Finally," you're saying right now, "Sacco is back with more YouTube videos of songs he likes." Yer darn right!
Puntable asked:
I'm not sure I really want to ask this question, but here goes. Blizzard has been changing a lot of the armor models on females, such as black mageweave leggings, to cover more skin. Why the sudden increase in prudishness after 6 years?
Well, Black Mageweave Leggings haven't changed since launch. What other instances of an "increase in prudishness" can you provide? If you need evidence that Blizzard hasn't stopped putting in revealing armor for women, check out rogue season 11 gear.
Every Monday evening, WoW Insider brings you a long list of WoW podcasts that were published the week and weekend before. If you don't see your favorite World of Warcraft podcast listed, just let us know in the comments. Be sure to leave a link to it, and we'll pick it up next week.
All podcasts and content belong to their owners. WoW Insider is not responsible for what you hear, and some of the content may not be safe for work.
How players are using cross-realm raiding to foster communities
With the introduction of cross-realm raiding in patch 4.3.2 and the Raid Finder, players have gone above and beyond in creating new and exciting server-less communities that bring in raiders from all over the world via Real ID grouping. While the Dragon Soul raid is not available currently for players using cross-realm raiding, all other raids and difficulties are, and there is no better time to go back to old content and finish off stuff during the wait until the next expansion.
Sites like LFRaid.com and Twitterland Raiding are two communities that have sprung up quickly in this new cross-realm raiding world. Twitterland Raiding is a website created for the Twitter WoW community to form up groups for raiding across server lines. With a centralized place to express interest in raiding as well as no server structure or logistics to worry about besides Real ID names (which gets immensely easier with the introduction of BattleTags), raiding can happen in greater volume and more quickly.
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
I got a little 10.5.8 MacBook that can just barely run Cataclysm. Just wondering if I should start saving money for a new computer now.
Blizzard has been incrementally increasing WoW's system requirements with each expansion, so it's safe to assume that MoP will require even more muscle than Cataclysm did. I don't think it's been announced just how much more muscle, but if you had trouble running Cataclysm, you're going to have trouble with MoP.
I hear there's this dubstep music all the kids are into nowadays. Being an old man of questionable taste, I phoned some of the local teenagers for a primer. Their advice was to "listen for the drop." I kept listening for the drop, but I couldn't really hear it.
Nonetheless, WoPairs created WoW Meets Dubstep as a way of bringing this newfangled music into good old Azeroth. I don't really know if it was successful, since I kept waiting for the bass line to stop gently weeping.
If you have trouble making sense of this video, don't worry. It's meant to be random, I'm told. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Remember how amazing cogwheels were? The concept was an inherently cool one -- engineers, much like jewelcrafters, could get their hands on something that would enhance their gear purely through their craft. For jewelcrafters, it's the ability to cut amazing gems, limited to the number they can use in their gear. For engineers, cogwheels were purchasable with crafted engineering items and could be used in a helm with cogwheel slots.
You may be wondering why I'm using the past tense here. It's for good reason -- cogwheels are, essentially, a dead item. Introduced at the beginning of Cataclysm, they could be used in engineering crafted goggles, but that was it. Once players started raiding, those goggles were quickly replaced ... and we never saw anything with a cogwheel in it again. For something that had me really excited about being an engineer, the cogwheel was a letdown of sorts. But that's not the only thing that's been a little off, professionally speaking, with Cataclysm.
"Life is tough as a single worgen father," writes Ghostmoon of Blood of the Titans on Eonar (US-A). "Especially when you're raising an orphaned panther cub. Finding a woman who likes cats is one thing ... finding one who likes cats, dogs, bears, treants, birds, and moonkins is another! But that doesn't keep us from going on fun family outings to Stormwind. Here is a picture of one such trip with me and the cub after a lesson in pouncing with some help from the unsuspecting locals."
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.
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.
Are you super familiar with Warcraft lore? Can you name all the dragon aspects, what they were created for, where they got their powers? Do you have a working definition of the Dragon Soul, what it is, what its other name is, and why it's important? Do you know who Sinestra was before she was a torn-up, reanimated corpse in the bottom of the Bastion of Twilight? Are you related to the Red Shirt Guy? Are you the Red Shirt Guy? Then this post is likely not for you.
But if you've been running the Raid Finder like a fiend, killing dragons and elementals and minions left and right, and suddenly found yourself wondering why, exactly, you were fighting in Wyrmrest Temple, this is for you. If you're wondering why Thrall is suddenly pals with the Dragon Aspects, this is for you. If you're wondering why exactly Deathwing is such a huge major threat and what's with all this running around you have to do, this one is for you.
Let's take a quick sweep through the entirety of Cataclysm and recap what's happened. Better yet, let's sum up.
Here at OQ, I receive emails all the time about people acting like jerks. Jerks are everywhere, and MMOs certainly have their fair share. Of all the jerks I've heard about, the player from this week's email has to be among the all-time worst. Fortunately, his terrible behavior has a bright side: By sharing this guild's story, other officers can avoid the same fate.
From the start one of our members started to complain about the guild at the start of raiding early cata. However the officers and GM has brush it off as him being annoyed at the game because he hated the expansion. Things went from bad to worst when we started Firelands.
He started to make plans to overthrow the GM of the guild and made fun behind him. He complains the GM is never there supporting the guild because he took a month off due to work reasons. He made fun of our progression even though we manage to get at least 1 heroic mode down. When we got to dragon soul he stop raiding with us all together. Which is fine because our guild is a casual raiding guild and members are free to choose to raid or not. However he complains even more that people in the guild are stupid and we won't ever progress. It got to the point where we kicked him from the guild but the problem didn't stop there.
Mists of Pandaria can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned, and that anticipation is palpable. Hopefully we'll learn more about Pet Battles soon, especially with all of that hinted Pandaria information coming in the near future. Enterprising players have begun to create their own visions of the future of Pet Battles, including the above video that features an all-too-familiar scenario occurring in an all-too-unnatural place.
Have you seen any other fan mockups of the upcoming Pet Battle system, whether humorous or realistic? Show off your favorites in the comments below.
Drama Mamas: Choosing between raiding and friendships
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.
In the video above, Candace's friends are off having fun without her. Since she is unwilling to find her own fun, she takes a portal to Mars to hang out with strangers -- and breaks into song. There are parallels with this week's letter (except for the song part).
Hi Robin & Lisa,
I'm finally writing in with my own dilemma. Since I started playing this game in mid-Wrath, I've played with my girlfriend and our mutual friend. We have a strong bond and truly enjoy playing together, and GF and I have even met our friend IRL. In Wrath, I led our 10 man raid group, and we loved every minute of ICC. Once the Cataclysm was upon us, we expected to continue raiding. However, things rarely work out as planned, and we missed T11 completely, mostly due to the dissolution of our guild. Eventually I became frustrated with lack of progress and quit the game for a while.
