f13.net

So I had some friends who resubbed and got me to join in. We are all 63 - 70 and got WoTLK. It's really well done. I doubt we'll ever see the raiding game, never raid as we're too small, but as a 4-5 man group they've done a damn fine job. I easily see us getting to 80 with these characters and PvPing a bit before we cancel again.

Blizz consistently blows me away with their attention to detail and corrective design decisions. They deserve to own this space right now.

Oh and as a Pre-TBC rogue until recently - rogues rock! What fun!

You can easily see the raiding game if you hit 80 (and its hard not to). There's a lot of PUGs on the easier ones.

Make sure you do all of the quests throughout.  The use of phasing is really quite good.  You'll also want to make sure to do a lot of the dailies for each area.  Some are well done and very fun.  The rewards you get with the factions are nifty too.  You really could go quite a long way without raiding between the quests, daily quests, instances, and heroics.  Throw PvP on top of that and you won't miss raiding at all.

If you help with Wintergrasp and end up winning it, you can try to get into a PUG for the vault instance there.  You can go in for 10 man or 25 man.  It involves about 4-5 trash pulls then one boss.  The whole thing is easy and takes maybe 20 minutes.  It is good for some more little trinkets and a shot at some big upgrades.

Leveling - If you're looking for "Cool Content", I would suggest you do both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra for the quest lines. Icecrown is by far the best zone and makes heavy use of phasing. You can either go there when you're 78 for the 'cooler quests than where I'm at' factor, or you can save it all for when you're 80 and get 10 gold per quest completion.

Zul'Drak is the good/bad depending on what you want - it has a lot of 'mounted' quests, where you take control of a creature, and has an entire quest line where you're part of the scourge. Cool from a gameplay perspective, but if you're just looking to level an alt, all these quests have abysmal experience/time ratio.

Grizzly hills and Sholozar Basin are the most "classic" zones, being they have almost no phasing and are almost completely your standard kill quests - go here, kill 10 guys, OK now go back, kill 3 higher guys and their leader, plus an extra quest stack to collect 10 of their asses while you're at it. There's some cool lore about titans in both the zones, but they don't really get very good until the instances.

The competency bar is MUCH lower than it used to be - you should be able to run heroics and there are tons and tons of people looking to do the daily heroic. You should be able to, as was suggested, pug Arch when you own wintergrasp and get some really nice gear. You should be able to at least go into Naxx 10 man in heroic blues with a decent group so don't feel shy about getting your mates together and filling the last few slots with pugs.

I love Sholozar Basin.  To me it feels like a combination of Nagrand and STV.  Both zones I loved.  I liked Icecrown at lot too, but there's a lot of 5-man quest cockblocks all over the place.  Reminded me of SMV, where you couldn't finish off your cool story line because no one wants to do 5 man quests a month after an xpac is out.

I do fine in Naxx and I still have greens and some low level blues equipped (3 crafted/rep epics).  Of course, the DK seems to do reliable DPS in less than optimal gear. Helps if you're not an idiot.   

I don't know if the competency bar is lower, but there's definitely less of a gear check where ever you go. Of course, my guild manages to beat encounters while still being VERY BAD AT THEM. 

I like this xpac a lot, but I feel at most it's got another month or two for me.  My buddies need to hurry up and level (they just got the xpac) so we can do stuff while my guild smashes it head against raiding content their unequipped to handle.

Storm Peaks is like Icecrown without the cockblocks. In some ways I like the storylines better there.

Icecrown has entirely too many 5 man quests.  That is all.

Not sure what level you are, but there are TWO entrance zones (the borean whatever, and the fjords), and what goes on in each zone is different from the other, and different subplots of what goes on later are set up (through the quests) in each of these two zones.  Green sea giants attacking happens in Borean, why they're attacking is explained in the Fjords, for example.

But you get enough XP to only have to do ONE of the starter zones to go from 68 to 72, so I guess a lot of people miss out on half the story line quests, until they make an alt.  I went and tried to do the quests in both zones, and am glad I did so before proceeding past the Dragonblight/Dalaran phase.

Some of the quests are quite fun, and some are quite funny.  I think they went overboard with the "Omg you're a hero, I heard about what you did in Outlands" praise that every NPC spews at you, but otherwise I'm having fun.

The "omg ur a hero" thing actually made me feel slightly uncomfortable on my death knight. But in a cool way. Because I am a dork.  :awesome_for_real:

I'm not sure how much they used it for the quest text but I noticed in borean tundra my main was noted as having helped defeat nefarian. However when I went with an alt who had never done that, there was no mention of dragon slaying. I think that achievements may augment quest text in some small cases...which is awesome.

Yeah, there's something similar for Death Knights when you start the Icecrown area.  There's a whole separate response from Morgan when you speak to him as a DK vs as another character.  Makes me wish they'd carried it through a little farther at times... like the running joke I have that Razivus still owes me $20. The bastard.

Bolvar has special text if you did the Onyxia attunement chain.

I'm about bored and ready to unsub again. The newbie death knight quests were cool with the phasing and stuff, but on the whole the class just leaves me really cold. I usually like this sort of dark knight archetype, but combat-wise they feel like an exercise in button-mashing, and lore-wise Blizzard's whole "vengeful emo hero" treatment just lays there like a dead fish. After about the tenth time some DK NPC told me to "suffer well" I just wanted to tell the little pussy to shut the fuck up.

I barely ever bought the Scarlet Crusade and their "evil paladins who still keep their powers" routine in the first place, but around the time one of those good-guy death knights was telling me how I needed to go kill the evil paladins and then heroically reanimate their corpses into horrible ghouls for some reason, meanwhile a player's gnome death knight with a green mohawk was doing donuts on his motorcycle and a blue-skinned goat alien paladin flew by in a helicopter, my suspension of disbelief finally suffered a critical failure.

Jesus, does everyone have to be a good guy? Does your orcish death knight really need to be a hero? Next they're gonna add the "BLOOD SOAKED RAVING HELLBEAST RAPIST" class, then throw in some cutscenes about how they're really angsty do-gooders underneath.

They started out well, with Alliance not being quite the good guys you wanted to think they were, and then... yeah.

I pretty much ignore a lot of things to be able to play the game.  It's definately more into the "game" and not "world" or "play experience" that I prefer.  I can only play it as long as I haven't grown bored and there are people to chat with.  Because of that (and achievements to give me something new to do) I'm having fun for the moment.

I dunno, WotLK does a lot to make you not such a goodie goodie as any class. Well, WotLK tends to make you look like a fucking moron since every zone has like 2-3 questlines where you end up helping the badguys by accident. The only real "bad guy" stuff you see from either faction is the shit they do to eachother later on. Icecrown is a lot of the Alliance and Horde not getting shit done because they can't stop killing eachother for 5 minutes.

Also did you miss the whole starting DK area where you do basically every awful thing a non-M rated game can let you do?

Why would anyone want to rape a hellbeast?

Maybe you should try raiding.

While I do get tired of being told to suffer well, I don't think the DK telling me to go kill the Scarlet Crusade and reanimate them even tried to pretend it's anything other than being a dick to people who are dicks to "us." "They hate undead blindly? Well let's see how they fucking like BEING undead!" The Forsaken guy in charge of that little operation in particular is a huge dick who doesn't try to pretend you're doing heroics either.

The King of Stormwind is also a giant racist douchebag, so it has that going for it too.

If I could have stayed with the Scourge forever, I'd have made my DK my new main. :(

I'll have to roll up a DK and see what the quest and story are like. So far I'm enjoying the starter areas of Northrend.

Well, I'm not sure how many quest in northrend had me be this sort of hero, most of them seemed to be "for the horde!" type stuff where sure i may be killing centaurs who are evil but it's not from any righteous standpoint, they were just in the way. I'm sure having a straight 'good' and 'evil' faction like the naaru or scourge would appeal to most but i much prefer morally grey wow and I don't see them as having really deviated from that much.

I mean of course in the expansion you're going to come out looking pretty good, since you are fighting the lich king and all, it's hard to be evilER than that. I can't attest to how different the alliance quests have been but aside from helping the taunka with some errands which could be considered neautral nothing I did seemed very altruistic and selfless.

to sumarize...

Wow was never good vs. evil.
Wow is us vs. them.

both sides believe they are "right" and the other side is "wrong" and doing bad shit to us.

For the Alliance and the Horde now, that's true.  The core storyline behind WoW is that of the effort by the Burning Legion to eradicate all life and the efforts of the Naaru to stop them.  It just so happens the war on Burning Legions advanced on Azeroth were stopped twice, so the planet has become the battleground for the war.  The Lich King was spawned as a result of this, and he's an enemy of everyone.    So, you've got these 2 factions of people who more or less just wanted to be left alone who thrown into combat with each by much greater forces, and thanks to the outcome of the war, find themselves having to try to love and work together in order to survive when neither side trusts each other. 

The Warcraft has a decent setting, Blizzard keeps cheapening so people can get their purplez.

Even Arthas or the Legion would argue from their PoV, as being "right".


The Legion wants to destroy creation to remake it as perfection. The Scourge wants to make everyone dead, because everyone is equal in death.



Very few bad guys actually believe they are bad guys. The Old Gods, they probably are just crazy though  :why_so_serious:

When your main guy is constantly cast for the leading role in hentai movies with school girls while you're left in the cold, you just feel the need to destroy the world.

I'm pretty sure part of the "everyone is equal in death" canbe extra justified in that if everyone is equal in death, they'll stop slap fighting each other long enough to fight off the Burning Legion for good. There's definitely a "the Horde and Alliance can't get their shit together enough to defeat the Scourge, how could they REALLY defeat Sargeras?" vibe I'm getting from various Icecrown quests I've done.

Great game, great xpac, but I hit all the dungeons, mostly also heroic and now I'm done.  I'm just not a Raider; addons, gearing up, reading strats and all that shit.

Back in good old Middle Earth!

At the risk of sounding like one of Those People who are always all "yay raiding" to people who really just don't want to raid, raiding is a lot more friendly in WotLK than it has ever been before. It's really easy to gear up for (crafted epics, some heroic runs, done), the fights are relatively easy to explain (mostly), and I still haven't gotten around to installing any mods (I am a lazy gamer that doesn't care) and haven't really missed the boss mod at all ... although I am one of those people that usually notices the in-game warning that shit is about to go down. Other people need it in ten foot high letters (I probably would too if I was still a healer).

Anyway, if you just don't have enough people you care to raid with, that's one thing, but if you have the people, it's not nearly as big a headache as it was.

What about the whole "after everything is undead, Arthas will rule it all" vibe?

Well, Arthas clearly feels he's the best dude for the job, sure. It's that messed up "if everyone has to do what I say, there will be WAY LESS PROBLEMS" thinking that is wrong but at least vaguely understandable.

Sort of unrelated, it cracks me up how much the Lich King shows up at random. I know they felt no one actually gave a fuck about Illidan because we never saw him in TBC and wanted to avoid that issue in WotLK, but they went a little overboard. It's more like, "Christ, you AGAIN? Get a hobby." But maybe that's just me!

It's not so much that he shows up, but he shows up, has the opportunity to kill you for meddling in his plans, but spares you because you provided him temporary amusement.

"NEXT Time, you won't be so fortunate!"

Well, also no one cared about Illdian because he was a sideshow in WC3.  You played him in one mission, then he disappeared until the expansion when suddenly he's the like evil..or good.. or just some fucked whiner you wanted Kiljaeden to kill.  Arthas, on the other hand, you played for a good time, and while you knew he was an evil bastard, you didn't care, because he was cool. 


He's also suppoedly a demigod at this point, so when he laughs at lets you live, it's realy because, compared to him, you are jackshit.  Plus if he killed you there'd be no raid instance.

Look, if the evil warlord just went and killed the hero before he got stronger, he wouldn't be EVIL, duh.

The whole "We're just two sides who each feel we're justified, it's all morally grey, can't we work together against a common threat? Here, let this windchime made of Holy Light explain!" routine has always made me want to go sign up with the Burning Legion.

I wish there was one Naga NPC somewhere in Northrend that said something like, "This guy ain't nothing compared to Queen Azshara down Maelstrom way, yo!"

...just to remind everyone that someday the Lich King will be getting 3-manned by level 120s. 

Play a warlock.

So while we're discussing this, something vaguely relevant. Being the slow leveller that I am, I only got around to finishing Dragonblight and associated story quests last night (just after dinging 77).  The cinematic was excellent and the following quest was alright in a "I just need to stand here and watch, don't I?" way but what I want to know is this:

I think Jaina is a traitorous Horde-loving cunt who should be executed.

Jaina is the only Alliance scum with any sense.

Jaina's always seen the bigger picture. It's the reason she stood against her father with Thrall in WC3.

Given I think King Douchebag is a douchebag's douchebag, I was totally all "right on, Jaina." It's partly because right now is really just not the time to slap fight with the Horde, what with the Scourge gearing up to kick all our asses and such. There will be time to kill people different than us after we kill the undead that are different than us AND want to eat our brains.

How does the alliance side of that event play out? I've only done it on horde.

Wrinn sees it as an opportunity to reclaim Lorderon, so you attack the Undercity from that HUGE FUCKING HOLE in the defenses that is the sewers. (seriously, why is this entrance there?)  After killing the alchemist, Wrinn hears Thrall and you run after him, start to fight and Jaina freezes everyone and ports you back to Stormwind.  You'd expect him to have a hissy and order her killed or something, but nope. He just kind of shrugs and says "We'll get you next time, Gadget. Next time!"

I think it's because in the WoW universe it becomes pretty much impossible for strong people to kill each other. They are like pre-BC paladins in terms of attack/defense - 30 billion HP and attacks that do 5k. As such, they just have to learn to live with each other.

Jania is shagging Thrall, I'm waiting for the mysterious green baby to pop out.

I sense a disturbance in the Force, as if the cry of millions of fanfic writers was suddenly silenced.

Ahh, thanks.

Yeah that's the impression I'm getting too.

Jaina: Oh Thrall, I love you so much!
Thrall:  Yeah, that's great.  Hey how about you summon me a sammich?

If we really want to be RP about it, the Lich King is a big pussy. He finally managed to get his undead plague everywhere, absolutely everywhere, in Stormwind, in Orgrimmar, and everywhere in between, and launched a massive invasion of everyone to capitalize on this. Net result: The plague purged, his invasion beaten back, he himself personally humbled by Tirion, his death knights gone rogue, a successful counterinvasion of Northrend by pretty much everyone, and hostile forces camped on the outskirts of Icecrown itself.

What's more, fuck the Horde. Thrall should be pulling a fucking plow somewhere, and if that smarmy cunt Jaina doesn't like it then off with her head.  :drill:

Speaking of big pussies, what's the odds on either King Beef McHardSlab or Garosh "I learnt all the wrong lessons from daddy" Hellscream eventually ending up as a bad guy in Icecrown, I wonder? (Also Thrall could totally smack King Punch Rockgroin down  :grin:).

Plus most of the time* when he shows up, he smirks and mutters something about "Give in to your anger, my young...apprentice" then wanders off again.

*Getting blindsided at the Wrathgate by the Apothecaries being a notable exception.

King GenericRage isn't going anywhere for a long time sadly. He was specifically created to make the alliance seem more 'bad ass' to the 12 year old boys or whatever.


Garosh exists to appease the War1-2 Horde fans. For the horde etc!

I see Blizzard conscientious decision to preserve the integrity of established lore shines through in WoTLK.  I mean, I am not sure how people who get their power from the Lich King can revolt and keep their power, or how someone is literally a demigod along the lines of C'thun can be defeated by any players or factions.  Damn thos paladins and wind chimes from space!

I've seen a Space Chime one shot a Fel Reaver, they are not to be trifled with!

twinkle, twinkle   *splat*

More like they realized that all that Alliance/Horde cooperation stuff was boring stupid bullshit, and especially pointless when we're still mass murdering each other in battlegrounds every night anyway. Frankly I'm tired of the filthy Horde and their competing superiority and persecution complexes. I'll give them persecution. I'm right there next to King Anime Hair, shoving you green-skinned sons of bitches into the ovens at Orcschwitz.

I love that none of us actually know what the hell King FuriousChin's actual name is.

Our leader is hitting jaina proudmoore and has queen gothy belf on the side...or maybe at the same time. Your king looks like a dbz reject and has been in prison for the past few years dropping the soap regularly.

Particularly when I mentioned it at the top of this very same page!  (Tho I misspelled it... it's King Wrynn)  :awesome_for_real:

Bolvar was much more badass.


Yeah, the Death Knights still being able to access their powers bothers me because it's not explained well.  It supposedly comes from their runeblades.. you know, those weapons you regularly replace.  :oh_i_see:

The killer part about it looking like Arthas is just going to turn into the final raid encounter is this: When Lk was first announced they specifically said he was NOT going to be the final encounter.  The line at the time was that he's much too powerful for any raid group of any raid size to take him down.  Yeah.

His set-back at Light's Hope is purely based on 3 things.  1) Tirion is one of the true champions of the Light and founder of the Silver Hand - the original order of Paladins.  He's "a badass."   2) Light's Hope is some huge sacred place/ holy ground.  There's speculation as to some ancient artifact of the Light being buried under it, but no confirmation anywhere in the lore.   3) He had The Ashbringer, which had somehow been redeemed during the fight with Morgraine and the Death Knights. 

Where did you read this?

Was nearly 18 months ago now, when LK was first announced.   It was a blue post IIRC.   Of course at that time they also said DKs would intentionally be more powerful than standard classes. It was also said that to have a DK players would have to hit 80, do a series of quests and then give-up that character by having them 'fall' to the Scourge.  So yeah, things change.

This is the same highly-effective Warchief who got punked in single combat by one of his underlings, then followed that up by being so inept as to allow one of the capital cities of his coalition to be seized in a coup, while rogue Horde military units took to the field to launch biological warfare attacks against Scourge, Alliance, and Horde forces alike, throwing the entire political situation straight into the shitter, right? That's who you're talking about, isn't it?

Then the dumb bastard comes out and basically says "So yeah, guess what? We kinda let a demon from hell (or whatever) be second in command of one of our capital cities. The one where we've been turning a blind eye for years to the Forsaken using human guinea pigs to develop biological weapons, yeah that's the one. Well anyway, shockingly, this all turned out to be something less than a great idea and a bunch of your best guys all died horrible melty deaths. Woops. Our bad. Hey, some of our guys died too. So we expect you to just sit back and take it, because we're totally going to handle this ourselves. Really, you can trust us. We know what we're doing." Yeah, how could a stance like THAT not go over well?

But hey, it's all cool because he found a human female degenerate enough to touch his peen. And when he can't get that, he fucks a dead woman. Way to go Thrall.

 :awesome_for_real:

Well, except that part.

That's sort of why I thought the Wrath Gate questline series and the subsequent horde/alliance scuffling was actually pretty well done compared to a lot of the ham-fisted/super generic writing done earlier. Blizzard did a pretty good job in Wrath of giving the impression that Lich King is playing everyone for idiots and largely expecting you (the player) and both factions to eventually end up becoming corruptible. Shit, he spares or ignores you like a dozen times over the various questlines just because he "knows" in the end you're going to be working for him. He knew his invasion was going to fail since I think the main boss NPC of it beckons you to Northrend after he dies.

Again, the only thing I would change is adding a lot more morally "grey" questlines, rather than having you be a gullible douche who helps the badguy of every zone because you don't ever bother to ask WHY they want the chalice of power from the dungeon of foozits. Drak'Tharon sort of gives the impression that you're killing the wrong people until you get reasonably far into Zul'Drak and find that that the Drakkari are pretty much dicks and slaughtering them isn't too much of a grey area.

It's really sad how the Forsaken, in general, are mishandled.  It's arguably the only truly evil player faction in the game, and the whole "we're making a new plague to use on the undead, but we're testing on humans and taurens" concept was interesting, because it reinforced the whole alliance of convenience setting that's laid out in the introduction.   It seems as through Sylvanas has developed some sense of loyalty towards the Horde.  Really, the entire game would be much more realistic if the Alliance actively sought to destroy the Forsaken while the Horde struggles to keep them in line.

I was always surprised that a lot of the New Plague quests could be done by other races when they should have been Forsaken only. There was never any attempt to disguise what they were doing either.  Apparently the background (in WC3 perhaps - never played it) said that they always claimed that they were trying to find a cure and, at worst case, were developing a plague that would affect Scourge and humans only. But it was never really made clear.

Then again, the Wrathgate was the first time that the Blight was used against the Horde iirc. Although you did mention that they tested the new plauge on Taurens - when/where was this? I only recall humans and dwarves.

If you go through the Undercity, there is a tauren NPC in the Apothecary. There's also a quest related to finding a cure for her.

Right. Thersa Windsong (http://www.wowwiki.com/Thersa_Windsong) Not a victim of the Apothecaries plague it turns out.

The Forsaken aren't supposed to be evil.  They're supposed to inhabit the moral grey area wherein Shakespeare's Shylock resides.


Also, why is our king a pirate?

Because they thought about making him a ninja, but that would have been silly.

Shylock's as morally white as they come.

Look, it's not our fault you're working for Team Evil and King Wolverine McTestosterone-Poisoning. Thrall has repeatedly made the Horde work to help the Alliance, offered treaties even after his de-facto sister was beheaded in front of him by a ranking Alliance leader, and generally done everything possible to make peace with the Alliance because he's smart enough to remember back half a dozen years or so to when everyone had to work together to save the entire planet from demonic invasion.

It's not the Horde's fault that King Manmuscle O'Fuckhead is so much of a wimp that a couple of weeks in the arena broke his tenuous grasp on sanity and none of the other Alliance leaders seem to be willing to stand up to the sweaty imbecile. Seriously though, at the very least Velen should be telling him to sit down and shut the fuck up when the grown-ups are talking.

(Forsaken bioweapons? Well, maybe if Stormwind wasn't invading the sovereign territory of the Forsaken/Lordaeron, then the Apothecaries wouldn't need to get involved...  :grin: )

This thread is going places....dark...geeky places...


I like it. :drill:

You do realize that his plan from like Act I Scene II onwards was to cut the guy's fucking heart out, right?

Right, but he had no conniving plots or schemes going on.  He didn't like Antonio, so he made the pound of flesh deal.  A simple act because he fuckign hated the guy for being a douche to him.  How morally straight can you go?

I am not sure who is more incompetent here.  The Alliance for allowing petty hatred to tule it's relationships with the Horde, the Horde for being ruled by a pussy, or the Burning Legion and Lich King for not being able to kill them all whilst they squabble.

Um, no. Dead, actually.

 Nope. Still dead.

Already dead. Thanks for playing

Ah! Now that's the right attitude.

It's fun being Forsaken.

Except the rogues can kill my warlock.  Apparently, daggers and poisons do affect the dead...

Well, yeah. There's that little matter of being a game that gets in the way. Apparently I can drown too.

Fortunately, it's a world of infinite rebirths. Death is transient - a mere inconvenience. Morality is neither black, white or grey as it's surplus to requirements. Murder can hardly be considered a crime if there's never any victim.

He didn't coerce Antonio into accepting the deal, Antonio accepted out of his own volition. Not only that, the chap had cursed and spat on the filthy jew. Additionaly, the loan was made without interest.

Shylock's a fucking saint.

You mean the same peace-loving Horde that has spent this entire time attacking the night elves and contesting Ashenvale because they built their grand capital in the middle of a wasteland and, oops, lumber doesn't grow there? The same Horde that has long included and paid no mind to the Forsaken as they tested biological weapons on innocent humans? The whole "peaceful Horde" thing has never been anything but a joke, meaningless noise coming from the mouth of a disconnected and ineffective ruler while everyone else ignores it.

But that's the Horde in a nutshell: Attacking foreign nations to steal their natural resources, kidnapping and performing grusome experiments on foreign citizens, and then loudly congratulating themselves on being the only ones enlightened enough to seek peace. It's an improvement from their intermittent bouts of demon-fueled genocide, but only just.

Hell, the orcs never even had a "Horde" until the Burning Legion came along and unified them to be used as a weapon. What we're looking at is a Legion-created organization which has become moderately less belligerent since bucking Legion control, united with a rebel faction of Scourge calling themselves the Forsaken, who have done little to nothing to show themselves as being any better than their former masters.

This argument is fucking awesome and must continue. I've learned more about War Lore (I find the quest text horribly boring) in the last 30 posts than I ever have in game. Horde | Alliance | Forsaken Fight!

That made me chuckle, because every time I make a Orc or Troll, I get the same "Why the hell would anyone CHOOSE to live here?"

They considered the Barrens, however the chat drove everyone out.

Gyspy space goats are the best faction though.  No matter how stupid their plots or actions, they sound awesome doing it.  They need more dialog.

I'm still sad a bunch of the female draenei voice emotes were deemed too dirty to actually go live.

To be fair, they really were REALLY DIRTY.  Except the Sexodar one, that one ruled and was only SLIGHTLY dirty.

List of quotes please!

List of quotes please!  :awesome_for_real:

They also took out the troll's "Smoke two gnomes" quote.

Innocent?

There are no innocent humans. Internment camps and hunting down Orcs like animals is not innocent. The Scarlet Crusade's persecution of the Forsaken is not innocent. How can you possibly think that we would just sit back and let that happen to us? We didn't choose to be undead - we have to make the most of the situation we've got. Our "Allies" barely trust us and it's only by the good will and influence of the Earthen Ring that they accept us into the coalition. Yes we do biological research into the Lich King's plague - both as a vaccine and a cure.  The only way to create a vaccine is from plague samples itself.

Genocidal fuckers like yourself who are all too keen to exterminate us put us in the unfortunate position of having to maintain defences which, regrettably, include derivatives of the very same plague that made us what we are. Our new plague, our Blight, was only ever meant to be a deterrent against those who wish us harm but we absolutely will not hesitate to use it against our enemies when our withered, decaying hand is forced to so.

But don't start comng here and talking about the innocence of humans when it was a human mage who opened the Dark Portal to let the Old Horde through and when it was a human prince who burned Scholomance and turned Lordaeron into the Plaguelands they are today.

Since you're clearly not interested in rational discourse and would rather fling shit everywhere in an attempt to cover up your own misdeeds, I'll leave aside the fact that there really wasn't much else to do with the orcs besides pack them up somewhere and watch them carefully. It's not as if they could be sent home. No, instead I'll merely point out that neither the Kingdom of Lordaeron nor the High Elves like your precious Sylvanas (all members of the Alliance at the time) objected to this system at the time. Pot, kettle, black and all that. If you want to pretend you were all born on the day you died and that nothing which came before has any bearing on you, well fine, but then you have to quit pretending to be the rightful continuation of the Kingdom of Lordaeron and accept that you have no more right to squat in the ruins of an Alliance city than the ghouls wandering the wreckage of Andorhal or Stratholme.

The Scarlet Crusade are nutters and pretty much everyone, Alliance included, takes every opportunity to attack them. The idea that this somehow justifies torturing and plaguing anyone you want is laughable on its face, as is the idea that you're developing your own version of the Scourge plague for "defensive" purposes. Throwing forth "Here is an example of a human who did something bad!" as an excuse isn't even worth the chuckle.

No, you've done nothing to show us that you're any better than the Scourge. Weaker, weak enough to have to suck up to orcs, sure. But that's a match made in heaven. The Horde's hypocrisy in attacking anyone they want and then patting themselves on the back for their newfound peaceful nature? It's right in line with the Forsaken's tendency to bestow the plague on anyone they feel like and then get indignant when we don't immediately recognize that they're plainly much different and better than the Scourge.

8/10.
Could be a bit less obvious  :awesome_for_real:

The Alliance would have been more than happy to watch the orc population stagnate in those camps.  Rather than take the work to try an integrate orcs into society, they dumped them into camps and said "have fun".


The new plague was meant to combat the Scourge, since the Forsaken are a prime target of Arthas.  It was only due to the corruption of Varithamas that the plague was unleashed on the alliance.  Sylvanas was foolish in trusting him, but she was desperate for powerful allies to help her and her people survive. 


The difference between the Forsaken and the Scourge is that the Forsaken have free will.  If the Alliance was smart, they would have recognized the Forskaen for what they are: unwilling victims of the plague that the Alliance turned a blind eye to.  These people could have be reintegrated back into the alliance with the hopes that one day, a cure could be found.  But like the orcs, the Alliance turned an eye to the plight of people and only brought their current trboules on themselves. 

f13 is an RP server now.

Please.


Neither of them have enough eye patches for a RP server.

The one that for some reason really made me go :ye_gods: was their /silly asking if gnomes had a vibrate setting.

 :awesome_for_real:

The orcs come screaming out of the portal filled with demonic fury, attempt to basically destroy the world, make a pretty good run of it, and when they're finally defeated the Alliance is supposed to not only hold back from exterminating them, but give them forty acres and a mule and integrate them into human society? Typical Horde nonsense, where the Alliance is expected to behave like some sort of sainted charity, but the most outrageous Horde misdeeds are ignored. I notice no one wants to go near the whole Ashenvale thing. For all intents and purposes the Horde basically declared war years ago (while applauding themselves for their peaceful ways) and the Wrathgate debacle just finally exhausted the EPIC amount of patience the Alliance had been showing.


Right, I suppose when the new plague has been tested on human beings it's to make sure that it DOESN'T kill them, right? The ideal purpose of the new plague (http://www.wowwiki.com/New_Plague) is to kill Scourge and living alike, while reanimating the latter as new Forsaken. They just haven't gotten it right yet, and Putress happened to spill the beans early.


Yes, we could integrate the undead right along with the orcs. Then we can all dance and sing together, and we can bring you flowers while you butcher the elves for their resources, and oh thank you for this dose of the plague, what a lovely gift. Get real.

The old Horde was at least honest about saying "Fuck you!" These constant pathetic attempts to play the victim on the part of the new Horde are just sad.

There is actually a growing number of Orcs that agree with this, from what I understand of Horde WotLK Lore.

Hellscream Jr. is a tit, though.

Let's see.  After the war, you clearly had some reconstruction to do, and you had a large number of lethargic creatures who were trying to figure out what to do next?  If you're aim is to prevent more war, sounds like a win-win situation, you put the orcs to work cleaining up, and then teach them Alliance = good, and then those fierce warriors are on your side.



Putress was a defector, corrupted by a demon who was put in charge by a confused woman trying to figure out "what now?".  As for the test subjects of the plague, the men who it was tested on were going to die fighting the Forsaken.  Might as well put those deaths to good use.


Get real? Miss an oppurtunity to turn 2 powerful rivals forces into alies?  Who needs to get real?


First, the old Horde was a bunch of demon blood drunk craziies driven into a battle frenzy by a much more powerful force.  They said "fuck you" because the Alliance never tried to offer an olive branch.

Pfft. More likely we'd get Thrall weeping big fat emo tears about how his people were used as slave labor by the evil Alliance, and how no one respects his sincere efforts toward peace, all while his subjects loot and pillage and laugh at him behind his back. In other words, exactly what we have now.


Yeah, who would have thought putting a fucking member of the Burning Legion in charge wouldn't work out well? Putting him in charge and then apparently not even watching him that closely! You'd need to be some sort of prophet to forsee THAT coming to a poor conclusion.


This is the part where I point out that one of the first things Sylvanas did as a free-willed undead was to enter into a false agreement with an Alliance commander, then betray and murder him so that she could have the Undercity as the capital of her own little empire. But hey, that's okay because Garithos was fat and a jerk, right?

The Forsaken like to spin this myth of persecution at the hands of the Alliance, but the very first contact between the undead Sylvanas and someone in a position of authority within the Alliance was basically cooperative, until Sylvanas decided to kill him. Garithos was an asshole, the cooperation was limited and temporary, and really he didn't have much choice anyway, but in the end he gave a hell of a lot more good faith than he got in return.

The "poor victimized Forsaken" act is just more Horde propaganda bullshit. Sylvanas didn't try to reunite with her surviving people and get cruelly rejected, she murdered an Alliance commander to seize a former Alliance capital, declared herself Queen, made a fucking demon lord her second in command, and started cranking out her own version of the Scourge plague.

Gee, how could anyone mistake THAT for something besides good intentions?

EDIT:  And for all the supposed intolerance on the part of the Alliance, there have been a steady stream of death knights picking up letters of recommendation from Tirion, being accepted back by the King, and running merrily through the streets of Stormwind with their pet ghouls in tow. Of course, they asked nicely instead of killing Alliance military personnel and declaring their own kingdom. Go figure.

They also welcome the Draenei, who at first glance appeared to be demons associated with the Legion. The Draenei also asked nicely and did not slaughter the first alliance members it came across.

What about the Tauren?

As I understood it, Varimathras agreed to serve Sylvanas and the Forsaken in return for her sparing his life. Always wondered about that and his betrayal was never a surprise.

However, he's dead now. It is a sore point but could have been worse. We could have had a dragon running our city.

This. This is a good thing. It's the best idea you've come up with. Then, after we've slaughtered the elves, we can roast gnomes on an open fire, get drunk and sing songs. Sounds like a party to me!

The Tauren have nothing even faintly objectionable in their history, but then their history prior to meeting the Horde doesn't amount to much. On the whole, if they were to just run around their grasslands on the other side of the ocean and talk nature with the elves, no one would have any problem with them. As it is, they're helping the orcs, so the Alliance doesn't really have much choice in how to treat them.

Dragons < asshats than Demons.  Yes, even the Black Dragonflight.


Yeah, and they're only doing that out of a debit of honor since Thrall saved Cairn's ass from being wiped-out by the Centaurs.   Tauren are wookiees with a bad life debit.

Technically, all of the 'night elf' forests belong to the Horde anyway - they're just being occupied by a peasant rebellion. Or did you forget that the (fucked over repeated by the Alliance to this very day) blood elves are the direct descendents of the rightful ruling classes of the Kaldorei?

That's right - the night elves should be bowing to the blood elves, not spitting on them!

(And that's not even going into the NE hypocrisy about magic at the moment).  :grin:

Technically, the ruling class would be the Naga and their Queen Aszhara.

Just Sayin.  :oh_i_see:

Night elves are just mutant trolls anyways.....

They've never actually confirmed/denied that officially, I'm hoping they do eventually.

I wouldn't consider bouncing as an evolution.

I have no further need to debate you silly Horde monkies and your nonsense about ten thousand year old elf politics. You are clearly the villains. Sorry. Thank the Light that we finally have a sensible king that sees through your laughable facade of peacefulness.

 :drill:

Evolution doesn't really explain gaining immortality by growing a really large tree either.....unless it wasn't really a tree but an herb, and constant exposure just made them think they were immortal.  :why_so_serious:

Garithos was more than a jerk.  Given the chance, he would have left all non human members of the alliance perish. Or did you forget he ordered all of his troops pull out when the undead attacked and left Kael fend for himself?  He's the very reason Kael joined with Illdian and ultimately the Burning Legion.  As for Sylvanas, seriously, what did you expect her to do?  Garithos wasn't the shining model of trust, and more than likely, he would have betrayed any peace deal and wiped out the Forsaken the first chance he got.  Garithos was evil, plain and simple.  Given that, what else could Sylvanas have done?  She wasn't perfect, but neither was the Alliance commander in charge.  Had the alliance been took of its blinders and seen the bigger picture, things wouldn't be like they are now.  As it stands, the Alliance is solely responsible for the was with the new Horde because attitudes like that of King Douchebag prevent anyone from doing anything remotely positive.  At least Jaina had some fucking common sense.

They evolved from Trolls to Kaldorei long before the existence of Nordrassil.  It was exposure to the first Well of Eternity that raised them up from the more primitive Trolls.  While it's true that Nordrassil was the source of Night Elf immortality, the giant tree was able to bestow that gift because of the blessing it received from Nozdormu.  That's the entire reason why the oh so foolish Fandral Staghelm planted Teldrassil: to try to preserve the Night Elves (read: his own) immortality.  But while Teldrassil is physically even mightier than Nordrassil, it didn't receive the great bronze dragon's blessing so the Night Elves are still mortal.  As an aside, not all Night Elves subscribe to Fandral's world view, as there is a brewing schism between his followers and those of the more reasonable Tyrande Whisperwind.

Tyrande is an idiot. I'd throw in with Archdruid Staghelm, personally.

They bring the burgers.

Actually I have no problem with them, however they do assist their Horde bretheren when I'm peacefully passing through to spread a bit of wild herb around.  Do they want the Barren's healed or not?

Staghelm is a giant ass that needs repeated kicking.  Tyrande is a blind fool.  Not much of a choice, but since Staghelm needs a good kicking, I wont be siding with him.

You want to know how big of a jackass Fandral is?  The reason the bronze dragons wouldn't bless Teldrassil is because the future archdruid personally managed to offend Anachronos 1,000 years ago at the end of the War of the Shifting Sands, when he had begged the dragons to help the Night Elves push the Qiraji back into Silithus and entrap them behind the Scarab Wall.  Anachronos handed Fandral the Scepter of the Shifting Sands should mortals ever need to pass through the magical barrier, and here's the druid's reaction:


Yeah, I bet that didn't come back to bite you on the ass, eh Staghelm?

Refrain from having him murdered in cold blood. Leave Lordaeron and try to find the remaining high elves.
Murder him anyway. Then run away and try to find the remaining high elves.
Detain him. Remain in Lordaeron until making peaceful contact with a more reasonable officer of the Alliance.

Pretty much ANYTHING besides, again, slaughtering the only Alliance commander around in cold blood, seizing the former capital of Lordaeron and declaring herself Queen, making a fucking member of the Burning Legion her second, and starting work on her own version of the Scourge plague. What else could she possibly do to say "Fuck you!" to everyone more emphatically?

It's not like there's some tragic story of how she tried to reconcile with the Alliance, or the remnants of high elf society, or whatever, only to be cruelly rejected. She got released from the Lich King's control and it was pretty much "Fuck all y'all, I'm gonna be QUEEN OF THE UNDEAD! MUAHAHAHAHA!" from the word go.

But here we go with the Horde-apologist nonsense where executing an Alliance official because you would rather not live up to the bargain you made with him can be brushed off with "Well he was a bad person, and might have betrayed us if we hadn't done it to him first!" Meanwhile the Alliance is supposed to put aside even the most outrageous provocation in order to reach out in peace to a bunch of undead who've done absolutely nothing to indicate that they're even interested.

By the way, I want you to consider the logical ramifications of "It was okay to break a deal and murder the guy, because he didn't seem very trustworthy!" when it comes to how trustworthy YOU seem and how people deal with YOU in the future.

Staghelm is nearly my favorite NPC in the whole game  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

You and Sjofn know he hates beer, yes?  He wants Brewfest banned.  He can't be trusted. :grin:

See, you can kick and perhaps he would eventually have the light go on and do the right thing (being an ass the entire time I'm sure, but that's totally part of his charm!). Tyrande being an idiot is not as easily fixed. I'd rather side with a crabbypants that has a bad temper because his son was killed horribly fighting bugs than some moron that thinks "I'm sure thousands of years of being imprisoned has mellowed Illidan out!"


EDIT: ALSO, the tauren kill the shit out of dwarves whenever they have a chance for digging on their sacred ground. That is almost always covering titan stuff. Titans who MADE earthen who turned INTO dwarves. I think the ground is sacred for dwarves too.  :oh_i_see:

I highly doubt the Blood Elves would have had anything to do with the Forsaken.

Right, any other Alliance commander would have done the same thing.  The only one who might have had any sense was Jaina.

Pretty much ANYTHING besides, again, slaughtering the only Alliance commander around in cold blood, seizing the former capital of Lordaeron and declaring herself Queen, making a fucking member of the Burning Legion her second, and starting work on her own version of the Scourge plague. What else could she possibly do to say "Fuck you!" to everyone more emphatically?

It's not like there's some tragic story of how she tried to reconcile with the Alliance, or the remnants of high elf society, or whatever, only to be cruelly rejected. She got released from the Lich King's control and it was pretty much "Fuck all y'all, I'm gonna be QUEEN OF THE UNDEAD! MUAHAHAHAHA!" from the word go.


Do you remember what Garithos's class was?  "Dark Knight"  Given his dealings with the Blood Elves and his contempt for all non-humans,  I'd say the idea he'd betray and kill Sylvanas was a given.  He'd have let them get only so far away before he ordered his tropps to slaughter them.


Easy now, I thought this argument was in character, from the perspective of a Forsaken apologist.  It should not reflect on how I would actually react in the given situation.

Staghelm just doesn't have time for you bugging him about stupid shit, he's a BIG PICTURE kind of guy.

Except for when they joined the same faction and installed a teleporter between their two capitals, right? Anyway there are still high elves. Not many, but they are not extinct.


So you're convinced that the majority of the Alliance was guaranteed to be hostile, to the point that there was no chance of finding any Alliance official outside of your precious Horde-loving Jaina willing to given them a chance. Thus murdering them in cold blood was acceptable, and peaceful coexistence likely impossible. But it's the Alliance that wouldn't give peace a chance. Right. I would once more like to point out the huge number of ex-Scourge, in the form of death knights, peacefully sitting around in Stormwind at this very moment. Woops, there goes the Forsaken myth of Alliance intolerance.


We can only speculate, given that Sylvanas was happy to murder him on the spot, but who says he even had sufficient force to do any of that? She could have done anything with him, since he was separated from his men. Hell, she could have simply gone ahead and killed him, but made up a story about how the Legion got him, and then attempted to make peace. That would be duplicitious, but would show at least some interest in reconciliation. Instead it was "We will find our own path in this world, Dreadlord, and slaughter anyone who stands in our way!" She had dubbed herself "forsaken" before having any contact with anyone in the Alliance besides someone whom SHE betrayed and killed.

The Forsaken made absolutely zero effort to ever indicate that they had the slightest interest in cooperation with the Alliance. None. Ever. At all. (Though they did plenty to seem separatist and hostile.) The idea that they were rejected by the cruel Alliance that forsook them is an utter and complete fabrication. They never even tried. The undead who did eventually try were, in fact, accepted back into the Alliance.


I am in character. Prithee, what be a "character class" Forsaken scum?

Well, bearing in mind that the 'Alliance' actually sat around and did sweet Fanny Adams while two of its founder members got ploughed under by the Scourge is a pretty good sign that the the 'Alliance' didn't give a fuck about them back when they were still alive. As an army of undead rebels?

Yeah.

'Alliance' is in quotes for two reasons:
1) The actual Alliance died when Stormwind decided it'd rather sit on its hands and watch the kingdoms that had previously saved their sorry arses die slowly than help.
2) The original Alliance was "The Alliance of Lordaeron" and was built around the core of the Kingdom of Lordaeron (and their fellow northern kingdoms), the elves of Quel'thalas and the dwarves of Ironforge. In case you hadn't noticed, two of those listed are now part of the Horde. In fact, the new Alliance is basically one-seventh of the Human kingdoms originally involved, the dwarves, and a bunch of mutant trolls and demons.

What about the gnomes?

Quel'thalas had withdrawn from the Alliance after the Second War in a snit over the burning of some of their forests by the Horde, and without regard for the fact that Lordaeron had sacrificed hundreds of it's own men in their defense. But naturally, it's the fault of the Alliance that the high elves shrugged off all of their allies, ended up in another war, and got crushed. Right. Is there any stupid thing you people have ever done that isn't somehow our fault?

By the way, have you ever looked at a map? Even the high elves didn't know that Arthas was coming for them until he was practically on their doorstep. How exactly are armies from Stormwind and Ironforge supposed to deploy to the northern continent, cross the plaguelands, and intercept the Scourge in time to accomplish anything, even if they began moving the instant the high elves realized they were under attack? As for Lordaeron, don't make me laugh. They went from apparent victory thanks to their heroic prince to utter ruin at the hands of their traitor prince before anyone knew what the hell was happening.

So basically we've gone from "The mean Alliance wouldn't accept us peacefully!" all the way to "Well we didn't actually try to make any sort of peace, but that's okay because they're all mean, as can clearly be seen by them not being able to save us from our own fuck ups." Pathetic.

This sort of sad-assed bellyaching is what the Horde is reduced to?

I've always wondered this. 

Also, how do the goblins fit in?

Gnomes are mutant, genocidal freaks. We'd all be better off if they were removed from the face of the planet. But first things first, use them as fodder against the bigger problem, The Scourge.

Goblins are mercs out for gold. They have no allegiance to anyone. No, this doesn't explain why they blew themselves to kingdom come willingly for the Horde for 2 wars before deciding to play both ends against the middle.

The Horde was willing to pay at the time, probably by bothering to inquire.  It's good business to have two equally powerful forces duking it out, so think of it as an investment in the future as well.

Now?  Things are good.  Let the gold flow.

Gnomes aren't genocidal unless "wiping yourselves out by accident" counts.

I remember reading an explanation about the goblins' Horde-centric involvement in the earlier wars by pointing out it was only one of the seven trade princes of Undermine that had his personal forces throw their lot in with the Horde.  Can't recall exactly where that came from though.

Although that doesn't explain them blowing themselves up, which seems massively out of character for goblins.  Of course, dwarves were doing the same thing too with their dwarven demolition teams.  I think the most logical assumption is that they didn't intentionally blow themselves up and they got out of the way as much as they could, but the game simply wasn't going to be bothered to show the unarmed remnants of a sapper/demo team that had expended their explosives.

Never met a gnome that didn't try to kill me. Ever.
Gnomes are the only alliance class that can only kill, never heal.

Ha, good point about the gnomes not being able to heal at all, ever.

I wish there were gnome shamans, for no good reason. I just think it would be funny. <3

Can you imagine the comedy of 2 man gnome shaman teams playing hide and seek with their totems in arena?

Goblins as a playable race would be worth my 15 bucks a month.

At this point, nothing in the game is, so I cancelled.

This was pretty much the reason I tried out WAR. Having to play as a huntard or healbitch wasn't fun though. A goblin rogue would be so awesome.

I want to play a goblin girl so bad. :(

I thought I was alone in wanting to play a goblin.

With my horde characters I always joked I was putting Grizzlin's kids through school.  I used her as my exclusive auctioneer in Ogrimar (until they moved her to Everlook) because goblins are just that awesome.

"Well hello there!"

Goblins are awesome.  I hope the next expansion makes them a race that can be picked on either side, what with them being neutral and all.  PC goblins can just be considered the ones that allied with one of the two sides.

Goblins should get +10% to all vendor sales as their racial. That would be sweet.

The goblins in Storm Peaks blow themselves up. The powder kegs are strapped right on to them, it is definitely not a drop-it-and-run setup.

I can't help giving them a /pat whenever one of them helps me out.

I highly doubt the Blood Elves would have had anything to do with the Forsaken.

Whose to say that some Forsaken aren't actually dead elves?

The Plague itself is very specific to humans only, or at least, the original Plague of the Third War was.  It would kill many things, twist a lot of life, but only humans would be slain and raised automatically by the plague as the undead.  Other races had to be specifically handled in one manner or another.

Among the Forsaken, we know there are Banshees, and it's reasonably likely there's a few other elves or other races that were reanimated, but those are undoubtedly a rather small minority.  So yeah, some Forsaken are dead elves, but very few indeed.

The bitch in charge is a dead elf!

Sylvanas is more like a death knight than a banshee*.  She was killed and put indo a state of undeath by Arthas, but she kept her consciousness and will.  Arthas viewed it as punishment.  She couldn't resist doing what he told her to do, but she was aware of everything that had happened and what she was doing.  That backfired on Arthas when his grip on her weakened and she was able to break free of his control.

Yes in WC when she was killed, she became a banshee, but later on, se somehow got her body back.

Well, she found A body....poor nelf sylvy.

She got a helf body in WotLK.

We know the bigoted evil Alliance would never accept one of those.  :awesome_for_real:

Where's that from?  I was under the impression that it was a fairly broad agent, since the Scourge had used it to take over Northrend (deploying it against Nerubians, Trolls, et cetera).

DK's lorewise seem more like conscripted mercenaries than members of either side, sort of like goblins in that regard.

We all had to get notes from Tirion, too. And King Cockmonger totally threatened to kill me, but wanted to see wtf I was doing just all walking into SW like I owned the place. Also, I was threatened with lynching and shit.

Honestly, I wish they had done more with that. "Look, look, Tirion wrote a letter of recommendation!" shouldn't be enough to go from GET A ROPE to "So we're cool, now, right?"

There should still be sneering and the occasional thrown apple.  Greatly reduce the frequency to get it from becoming Billy stole my dolly levels of annoying, but remind the player their kind isn't completely welcome.

And have the freqency go down as my rep changes. Also, I should've started at neutral instead of friendly. I know King Chucklehead yelled, "Bitches, be cool!" but that still shouldn't make them be all OMG BE MY FRIEND OKAY.

Hey, your totally underestimating how awesome Tirion is! If Tirion says your cool, your cool.  8-)

Can't remember the source precisely, it may have been one of the RPG books or some other source.  I don't think I'm wrong, but I could be.  Originally he conjured the plague through direct power against the human settlements in Northrend, and possibly against some of the ice trolls, but as I remember reading it, only humans automatically come back as undead.  He also used his powerful mind control against anyone nearby, an aspect that's been played down and basically ignored in WoW (perhaps it was tied to the frozen throne itself, as it was supposed to be the crystal that expanded his psychic power, so by taking Arthas' body he lost the massive psionic ability).  The plague will kill pretty much anything, but then you have to spend direct effort raising them.  The nerubians were immune to both the plague and the Lich King's mind control, and had to be killed by direct means.  They were then raised through direct power into undeath.

The Frozen Throne didn't augment his power.  It contained him because he had become just as powerful, if not more, that Kil'Jaedan.  Once he fused with Arthas, he basically became a god.

While it's not specifically stated, the phrasing of the sentence has clear implications that the "ice" had something to do with the expansion of his psionic power, while simultaneously limiting him in other ways.  It's also reasonably logical; crystal is often associated with the increase of certain types of magical or psionic power in particular, and it came from the Nether itself, which is of course steeped in magical power.  Furthermore, if he retained the same level of psionic power as previously, he would reasonably be expected to be capable of controlling the vast majority of the forces of both Alliance and Horde that have landed in Northrend through it, or at least to be able to shift the allegiance of large units at any given moment, thus making it impossible to mount a coordinated war effort of any sort.

Actually, I think you're misreading that statement.  I've never read that to say his consciousness was expanded due to the crystal, more that his consciousness was being expanded due to the fact that he was becoming the Lich King.  Also, while the Lich King is probably the single most powerful entity on the face of Azeroth, his ability to directly control entities is limited to the undead and the creatures with weak will.  Most of the life forms he enslaved in Northrend are fairiy primitive creatures.   If he could just enslave people, there would have no reason to kill the Nerubians in the first place, he could have just taken them over.    It's been shown that any creature with significant will can break free of his grasp, that was demonstrated in WC3 when Sylvanas betrayed Arthas. 

That's another good example of the Alliance being the bad guys. Alliance version: "I should kill you where you stand". Horde version: "A death knight? Hmm...interesting"

When the heir to the throne kills his father, unleashes a undead and demonic horde on your people, and the proceeds to become one of the most powerful entities on that planet bent on wiping you out... I think you'd be a *teensy* bit suspicious if someone who looks like his minion shows up on your door.

Except Stormwind spent most all of the third war hiding behind their stolen walls and hoping that someone else would stop the Scourge.  :grin:

You need to do more nerd lore'ing.

We've gone from "The Alliance are evil mean bigots who turned on their old friends when they became undead!" to "Well the Alliance are evil mean bigots and I bet they would have turned on them if they weren't betrayed first!" all the way down to "Well the Alliance briefly talked kinda mean to a legion of undead death knights shortly before accepting them into their ranks!" so I'm not sure what else is left to nerd-debate.

Jaina, hot or not?

Not. /topic.

Was Thrall faking that fight? He did have a full mana bar when it was interrupted....  :oh_i_see:

Totally. There was a point to be made in a "hate leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to getting really pissed off and punching walls" kinda way.  Plus Saurfang would have waded in with a "Demon blood is bad, mmmkay!" lesson of his own and he would have totally bitchslapped wotshisname given half a chance.

Dude, saurfang is going to whoop some ass in icecrown, mark my words you don't mess with a redneck orc like him.

Not fighting properly leads to losing power, losing power leads to the hotheaded new boss running the Horde off a cliff. What was Thrall going to do if the Scourge hadn't interrupted the duel?

NS and smack faces. Duh  :awesome_for_real:

IMO they're setting Garrosh up to pick up Frostmourne after the Arthas kill and go bad.

Thrall only fought hellscream to test the boys conviction, it wasn't a battle to see who was right. Thrall could have punked him easily but he held back(duh) what I got out of the fight that thrall was hesitant to go to northrend since the undead were more or less not an orc issue and doing so would tax rescources heavily. In comes along hellscream saying he can lead it and thrall pretty much says "ok boy, prove it" and they duke it out but it was hardly a challenge of power, just a test of strength to lead.

After the whole quest line about Arthas' heart was unsatisfactorily resolved, I began to think that we'll see little "Matthias Lehner" again in Icecrown and Arthas won't wind-up dead. Time will tell.

Gonna necro this thread to babble about lore since that's what it had mostly turned into last time it was active.

So I just now finally got around to watching the Ulduar trailer. I still don't like his anime hair, but I think I love Varian Wrynn now. It was just so satisfying to hear someone deliver the usual "We need to work TOGETHARRR!" speech that crops up whenever anything threatening happens, only to have him go "You know what? Blow me!"

And here's hoping Hellscream Jr. puts Thrall out of his misery soon and leads the Horde back to being malicious badasses instead of whiny hypocritical saps.

If they could both cut down Jaina and Thrall at the same time, it would make my fucking day. Both of them don't get it. At all. We're worried about an old god locked away in some remote mountain? Really? I think we've dealt with these fuckers before and it didn't go well for Mr. Tentacles.

The harbinger of Cthulhu is srs bzns.

What's sad about Yoggy there, is he is in the wrong place.


We were supposed to kill him down in AzjolNerbubiantown, which was supposed to be it's own leveling zone and dungeon/raid hub.

That would have made about a BILLION times more sense.

Yeah, especially with that mind-bender guy in OK.

Cut for time etc, so we weep instead.


Really, it's interesting/sad how much 'lore' gets mangled due to the reality of having to actually release stuff.

Yeah, and I gotta tell you, I was just waiting for some long tiresome "Alliance and Horde work together with lots of mistrust" retread storyline. Instead Varian just goes "Oh blow it out your ass, I hope the Dire Threat of the Week fucking eats the lot of you!" and ports out. I loved it.

Hate to double post, but I've been looking and apparently that new Arthas novel confirms that Sylvanas wants to wipe out humanity as well as the Scourge with their plague and is down with the whole "Death to the living!" thing. Putress cut loose at the wrong time and under the wrong authority, but any lingering claims of the Forsaken not being total psycho villains (silly as those claims were) have gone out the window.

Hellscream can choke on a dick.  First time you meet him, you're running around Nagarand saving his ass from every damn thing, and he's sitting back at camp going "YOU ALL SUCK, YOUR EFFORTS ARE WORTHLESS, ALL IS FUTILE BECAUSE MY MUMMY IS SICK" and Thrall has to jog all the way from Orgrimaar to Garadar to slap him back into line.

And then you get to Northrend, and he's all "You reek of... fear.  You won't last long."  The fuck?  In between the time you saw me last (remember, when I was saving your ass) and the present, I pretty much busied myself kicking the shit out of the top ranking porkchops of the Burning Legion, you douche.  I'm not going to get all fucking trembly at some clockwork gnomes or whatever.  And his brilliant tactical strategy is "WE ARE HORDE, WE NEED NO TACTICS, RAARGH, WE WILL SMASH EVERYTHINGAAAAAAAARGHAGHblgraaaand by 'we' I obviously mean 'you' because my ass is not leaving this fortress."

Fuck Hellscream.

Ahm, Garrosh did that first?

Also, both were manhandled by the mage in the purple armor.

Seconded. Fuck hellscream and the worg he rode in on, he can suck my forsaken balls.








Death to the living.

Hellscream and Wrynn are both caricatures these days.  It's the only way they could get the story to make some semblance of sense and have the Alliance and Horde fight each other when they keep also introducing these massive 'bigger than both of you put together' threats.  Continuing to throw in all these uber-threats that eclipse Horde vs. Alliance make it necessary to also throw in caricatures like Varian and Garrosh to keep the conflict alive.

Otherwise, even after the Wrathgate, the logical thing for Alliance to do would have been to stop working directly with the Horde, but maintain their distance and non-agression in order to not be forced to fight a multi-front war.

Remember the good old days where they didn't force us to all co-exist in the same 100x100 yard area as the capital city? You know, when the factions actually had cities and shit? Those were nice.

Nostalgia: it's crazy.

So you prefer Dalaran to the IF days?

At least only one faction was fucking up the works then.

The only thing I dislike about both factions being in Dalaran, is the fact it's Dalaran.

"Hi we are clearly an Alliance faction, and the Horde spends an odd 20-30 levels in direct conflict with us, but it's cool, come right on in greenies!"

Then get ganked from behind while the Horde has a big chuckle over it. Broken front.

Overall I love this expansion.

The Nordic theme with the northern climate is so "cool" :P

I found this far more immersive than the landscape of BC.

Some of the phasing used with quests is wonderful.  Fun stuff.

I do miss more intricate 5 man runs and harder fights.

This, however, is actually my least favorite part.  They've basically said, forget the idea of a persistent world, in favor of everyone getting to experience story line quests.  I guess that sounds good on paper, but to have people be able to be, not only in different places in the world, but in different times essentially, based on what quests you've finished, annoys me to no end.  I mean, I've long ago realized that WoW is just a well executed series of minigames, and that I need to stop wishing for a PW game from them, but it still irks me on some level.   Its also annoying when I'm leveling an alt with full rested and doing a lot of dungeon runs, and I don't do a ton of quests, which means I'm stuck out of phase will most of my guild.

There's really only one or two places where you'll ever be 'out of phase' with people. To me though this doesn't detract from the idea of a persistant world at all. Let's say for instance they didn't do instancing and just made it like other games where instead they just put a key on the ebon hold so you had to do all those quests to get the key instead of helping take over the hold yourself.

Which option is more epic and adventerous? People see phasing as some sort of alternate reality when all it is, is a new take on gating content.  If you want to argue that is breaks immersion, how immersion breaking is 39 of my friends able to walk into a giant cave with a black dragon inside but I can't, just because I don't have an amulet to pass the invisible magic barrier?

I think phasing for the most part is really great so long as it's doable solo or the group parts don't require you all be on the same step.

The lore still seems straight forward enough to me. I fucking hate Wrynn's design though.

WotLK's biggest fault so far to me is that it has some fucking amazing setpieces that it uses...once, then you get back to fetching shit. The Arthas questline in Icecrown turned me 180 from being bored with the quest design in Wrath.

From my experience, this is how it was implemented.  I really don't get the complaints against it at all.  The only time you need to group for the quests in the phased quests is on bosses that are persistent for everyone.  Just group up and do them.  Phasing doesn't get in the way of it at all.

I'll stick this question here.

I have my hunter/priest dual box up to 34ish right now but I'm thinking ahead about leveling my priest solo from 60-80.  I havn't leveled a priest since 2.0 and I'm curious to know if shadow is still hands down the best leveling spec?  Can dsc or holy offer the same leveling speed and efficiency?  Only reason that I ask is that I'd like to avoid shadow since I've done it before, but I'll take efficiency just to get into the expansion content faster.

Bonus question:
I'm leveling up a hunter with my priest and I havn't played a hunter since sometime in vanilla WOW.  Got my gorilla pet.  Whats a good pet talent path for him?  I'm basically doing armor/speed then thunderstomp when I get there for AOE tanking.  I'm assuming thats the way to do it but looking for affirmation.

A disc/holy build w/reflective shield and the smite damage bonus stuff in holy is not too terrible.  I leveled with it on my priest solo 60-70 (low 60s was actually MORE dps than shadow, which kinda blew my mind).  It was pretty lazy; shield, holy fire, shadow word pain if you feel saucy, smite until monster dies on your shield.

As I got up to 70, shadow started to improve in comparison, but I wanted just one sort of do-it-all build, so I stuck with it.  

I switched to shadow for like 70-72, and it was noticeably faster at that point.  So you probably will want to switch eventually, unless you're more patient than me.  (At 72 I picked up a hunter partner and just went to holy/eat bon-bons.)

Shadow really starts pulling ahead once you fill out the talent tree. That said, as holy I was bombing around from 70-73 pulling massive packs and AoEing them down with holy nova.

Sounds good.  Now I just have to make money for mounts, dual talent spec, and everything else.  I'm pretty poor.

I'm not looking forward to attempting to make gold for all of this.

Hit 60.
Grind Herb/Mining to 300
Hit 70 (herbing and mining on the way)
Hit 80 (herbing and mining on the way)

Quests alone from 60-80 should net me... 4-5k gold maybe?  Hopefully?  Selling everything else should get me halfway to epic flyer/talent spec.

Herbing/mining is incredibly annoying to have. You can't track both. Might want to pair one of them with skinning.

Of course, if you get both up, it makes picking an actual profession that much easier.  (Protip: any mining based profession is very costly to raise (well, engineering isn't so bad) even with mining providing most of the mats.

I've done mining/herbing on almost every toon except the last one I had where I attempted to get JC up and gave up in the late 200's.  I don't have to much of an issue with it.  You can get addon databases with all the placements anyway.

Haven't played since about the time Black Temple was released, think I'm going to give the WolTK trial a go next week when I have off work and see what kind of changes I've been missing.  (and hopefully not get addicted to raiding 40hours a week again in the process)

I resubbed about 2 months ago.  The leveling content is very nice the first time, and decent the second time (and I wasn't inspired enough to go for number 3).  The classes have been someone homogonized in terms of utility, so that specific class make up is less important in group situations.  Dual spec is very nice for flexibility, though less important if you are a "pure" class, like Warlock, Mage or Rogue.  The non-raid end game content is pretty solid, but it won't last you real long.  I've got my druid totally decked out in best in slot gear for every slot for pre-raid gear, and my mage is well on his way.   I'm actually thinking abotu cancelling again just because the endgame is extremely repetitive, and since I am in a raiding guild but not raiding anymore because I burnt out last time I played and have no interest in going through that process again I'm generally not even doing that repetition with people i know anymore.

Anyway, its definitely worth getting and playing for a bit, but I will say that it probably won't keep you intersted past a month or two unless you 1) raid 2) alt like a mofo, or 3) are an achievement whore.   If you do one of those 3 things,  you'll fall right back into playing a ton, even after you've maxed out one of your characters.

I'd agree completely with everything Malakili said there but I'd add that if you limit yourself to 1 or 2 hours a day then the burn-out is a lot less likely to hit. I know that may sound obvious but the design of the game makes it very easy to find you've played for 4+ hours without noticing and that way lies boredom fast.

I'm lucky, I have a built-in physical "stop playing now!" pain clock which limits me to an hour at a time and it's great. It's just enough time to feel like I've got somewhere but it leaves me wanting more.

Another thing I can recommend is finding a friend who also wants to play and doing RAF with them. I've done that with my brother and 1-60 with new characters was fun and super fast and now we can go hit an old-world instance once a week or so with one of my 80s for shits'n'giggles. They're lots of fun (mostly, stay out of Maraudon ffs!) and fast without all the time wasted putting a group together.  :awesome_for_real:

How good/bad is the 70-80 grind?  Remember this is from someone who hasn't seen a single thing in WotLK at all.  Probably be doing it on my paladin.

I'm sure I'll roll up a Death Knight at some point as well since it's something else I haven't tried.

*edit* Wait..WoW has achievements now?  :uhrr:

Just did it on my Shaman, it's really not too bad. You'll never run out of quests and there's multiple zones for each level bracket so you can move around to get a change of scenery. If you can get instance runs on rested xp, and do the instance quests you'll go faster; but you don't have to rely on instance runs to level. It's definitely better than 1-58 or 58-68.

You'll also make a ton of gold. I made enough going from 70-80 to buy flying, a mount and cold-weather flying at 77; then I made another 1K going from 77-80 which went on dual-spec.

Its not bad at all.  There are 2 choices for which zone you can start in Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord.  You can easily go from 70-72 in just one of them, but  I suggest going doing all of one of them and some of another, so that you hit 73 at least before going to the next zone (Dragon blight).   You can hit 80 fairly easily without going to the last zone (Ice Crown), which you should try to do, so you can get boat loads of gold for doing all the quests there at 80.

Death Knight is also fun (their starting zone is very excellent, so its worth making one just for that if nothing else).   They significantly eased the 60-70 grind, as well, so that'll be a lot less of an issue if you want to level your Death Knight up.  (I just made one last week, and leveled from 58-63 - just in Hellfire Peninsula).

Yes, there are achievements now.  I don't particularly care for achievements, though some people really go all out for them.  If I happen to be in a position to go for one, I generally will, but I don't go out of my way.  They have achievements for everything from "Become a grand master in a profession" (which you'll probably hit straight away if you train as soon as you get to Northrend) to "Complete Naxxramas with only 20 people or less in the raid" (instead of the normal 25). 

If their are fishing achievements I'm hooked.  Like 18 time STV Extravaganza champion, turns out people start getting upset when you keep winning it and then disenchanting your reward in front of them.  :awesome_for_real:

*edit* Found one of my old pre-BC sigs!

(http://webpages.charter.net/thrawn/photohostings/WorldofWarcraft/FishingBanner9.jpg)

It's a pity you won't be able to re-sub because I have to kill you now.

Achivements are also the primary way raiding guild are ranked. You have all sorts of ranking sites that use the achievements to track progress and completion of hard modes (all hard mode bosses have separate achievements)

For example, wowrankings, guildox, there are probably a hundred different websites.

You'll be one of those people standing around the fountain in Dalaran fishing up coins.

Anyway, here is a list:

http://www.wowhead.com/?achievements=171

Redirecting from the WoW movie thread.


Oh man CONCENTRATION CAMPS! We all know those MUST be evil! It's just like the Holocaust! That is, if the jews and gypsies were a bunch of hulking seven-foot tall monster aliens from another dimension who attempted global genocide so as to facilitate world conquest by demons from hell. And if the nazis didn't go out of their way to kill them. Then they would be exactly the same. Yep.

Get the fuck out of here. A bunch of four-hundred pound screaming quasi-satanic lunatics boil out of an interdimensional portal, attempt to destroy the world, manage to butcher entire kingdoms, and you're going to act all butthurt because the inhabitants of said world decided to lock them all up rather than just kill them? Please.


That last WoW novel has Sylvanas looking on delighted as a forsaken prisoner (whom she suspects is actually innocent) is put to grusome death before her to test their new plague. She then muses to herself about how great it will be to wipe out the humans. I can dig up the relevant quotes if you really want to be a cock about it. No, they're not the fucking good guys.

Meanwhile the orcs have been attacking the night elves in Ashenvale for years in an attempt to steal their natural resources, all while loudly screaming that they're the only ones with the sense to see the need for peace. (Oh yeah, they're also allied with someone who wants to wipe out humanity.) By any rational standard the Alliance should have declared war long ago. The tauren and trolls no one gives a shit about outside of the fact that they're allied with the orcs.


What are you, twelve?

They're all murderous barbarians.  So we should help them wipe each other out, as long as it's profitable.

I got what you need.

We got the best deals anywhere!

I'd off the Goblins first.  :awesome_for_real:

Fucking mercs.

The last WoW novel?  What, do you also have night elf jammies?  Yes, by all means, dig up some quotes from your Alliance propaganda books.

As for the orcs, it's well  known they were under a bloodlust spell.  The orcs are a noble race.  I can admit that the Forsaken can be pretty nasty, but no one leaves the Scourge unscathed.  See Death Knights.  Both actively fight the Scourge.

You can rant and rave all you want, the lore clearly shows the Horde are the good guys.  Read the quest lore from the game, not some hack's novel.

Hey, I don't care whether the Alliance is guilty of bad stuff against the Horde. All I care about is that they're a bunch of cutesy cockgobblers or pansy-ass whitebread double-talkers. You can be Jesus Fucking Christ and Gandhi rolled into one, but nothing can make up for being a gnome.

Either that, or I've done this before. (Hint: See the other 6 pages of this thread.) Also, the YOUR A NERD LOL attack doesn't work very well coming from someone who's willing to explode in defense of "Our lord Thrall!" when the Horde is impugned during a movie discussion.


I think you mean "official Blizzard product" and here you go, from page 202 (http://books.google.com/books?id=o0B_lzv2SOEC&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=At+last,+Arthas,+you+will+pay+for+what+you+have+done.+The+humans+who+spawned+such+as+you+shall+be+slaughtered.+Your+scourge+shall+be+stopped+in+their+tracks&source=bl&ots=2Q0PQJIBJP&sig=74wTG_cU_rCmzk4ast-MQAbZAgY&hl=en&ei=FXdqSrTlDI_WtgOWzMiWBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1).


Sadly the bit where they actually off both a human and a probably-innocent Forsaken in order to make good and sure that it works on both the living and the undead isn't part of the preview, but I doubt you're going to seriously suggest that both I and WoW Insider (http://www.wow.com/2009/04/26/varian-wrynn-is-right-part-ii/) are just making it up.


"Yes we willingly drank the blood of a demon so that we could become a powerful army of devil-worshiping maniacs and destroy your world, but shit! It seemed like a good idea at the time! Now that you've narrowly beaten us we've realized that it was a bad thing to do. Really, you can trust us. We totally regret it. So if you could just let us run free... What do you mean you're going to lock us up? THAT'S THE MOST EVIL THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE! CLEARLY YOU ARE THE MONSTERS HERE!"


You mean quest lore like The Elixir of Pain (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest:Elixir_of_Pain)?


Hey, that's a ranking member of the Forsaken talking about wiping out the living in a quest that's been there since day one. It's almost like the Forsaken have always been monsters bent on genocide and arguments to the contrary are just fanboy bullshit. Funny that. Then there are the RPG supplements which explicitly state that the Forsaken want to wipe out the living, list Sylvanas as being of evil alignment, yadda yadda yadda.

Then there's the whole Ashenvale thing nobody ever goes near because it's not even a "technically this isn't our land but nobody else lives here" grey area like Alterac Valley. It's just a straight up case of attacking Alliance members to steal their natural resources.

The lore to me always painted both the Horde and Alliance as flawed good guys, but good guys none the less. Well, minus the forsaken but I think they were sorta shoehorned in as a horde race.

WotLK pitting the two against eachother is one of the better moves they've done since the faction warfare didn't really make a whole lot of sense after all of the cooperation from late Vanilla WoW to BC.

"Okay, let's all work together like a real team to defeat this old god, then let's work together to save the Sunwell...but uh, while we're fighting this life and death battle for the fate of the world together we'll still skirmish pointlessly over Warsong Gulch."

If killing massive numbers of people and fauna and stealing their stuff make them evil, then neither Alliance and Horde, player or NPC, have anything to be proud of.

I'd also like to point out that the YOUR A NERD LOL attack doesn't work on me because after "Tanks versus Mechs" everyone already knows I'm a fucking supernerd.  :grin:

I just consider you a "competitive fanfic writer", which puts you into some odd nerd-geek subclass.  At least you're not using your powers for greater evils, like Draco-Harry love scenes.

Personally I think making the Forsaken THAT evil is the biggest lore mistake they've made, even moreso than spacegoat death knights on motorcycles. It completely undercuts Thrall's peacenik routine and makes him look like either a hypocrite or a naive dipshit. Then if that's not enough, anymore they have him constantly standing in the corner muttering "I say, how very rude!" like fucking C3PO while Garrosh runs around like the bad guy in a wrestling match, more or less calling Thrall a faggot to his face while headbutting people at random.

But it is what it is. When legions of hulking bloodthirsty interdimensional lunatics try to conquer the world for their demonic masters and almost succeed, it doesn't make you a monster to go "Whoa, we're locking you guys up and keeping a real close eye on you!" On the other hand "MUAHAHA, LET'S KILL EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WITH BIOWEAPONS!" probably does.

Don't look at me, I didn't write it.

Also, if the two sides are morally equal it's because they're both evil. I mean let's conduct a little thought experiment, shall we? Take all of the "savage" punching-bag races like gnolls, murlocs, and kobolds. Replace them with equally savage humans. Change nothing about their actual behavior. While you're at it, put some women and children in their villages just to be realistic.

Suddenly leveling through Wetlands or something becomes the most horrifying game this side of the Columbine RPG. WoW is basically a game about sacking the villages of less-developed peoples.

(Ok, the Columbine RPG was more stupid than horrifying, but you get my point.)

Now, of course there would be lots of balance/gameplay headaches, but as a roleplayer, I always wanted a neutral faction. Tauren and Night Elves are now on opposite fences only because of some of their alliances, but if you read the lore Taurens always had the utmost respect for NEs, and in part that's highlighted by the Cenarious Circle stuff. Heck, put Goblins in there as well and we're done.

I think the idea of things like Murlocs et al is that they're actually threats to civilization.  Gnolls and things are supposed to be ripping apart humans, ravaging villages, kidnapping children, that kind of thing.  They just don't do that in WoW because it's not something that works in the game, so they come across as these benign creatures who are just getting the crap kicked out of them by marauding adventurers.

They should have just kept the racial divisions from War3, both the NE's and Forsaken were kinda shoehorned into their respective sides for WoW. Which basically sums up the base issue for all Warcraft 'lore', it's completely secondary to gameplay. Which is great for the actual game no doubt, but sucks for the world/story.


Of course, the game would likely still be in Beta if they had to make content for four separate factions.

 :why_so_serious: :awesome_for_real: :why_so_serious: :awesome_for_real: :why_so_serious: :awesome_for_real: :why_so_serious:

I went and browsed quests on wowwiki for a few minutes. While many kill quests are a response to some provocation, a typical Alliance player will also be asked to exterminate sentient beings because...

* ...they burn too much firewood.
* ...they eat too much fish.
* ...they're living too close by.
* ...they sometimes keep horses that stray their way.
* ...they probably didn't kill our courier, but it's a good place to start looking.
* ...they taste delicious. Seriously. Apparently murlocs are good eating.

Given that we're talking about hostilities between a bunch of scattered tribes in shitty tents and a technologically advanced continent-spanning superpower that views their lives as having zero value and will kill them for literally anything (even food) it's hard for me to view the gnolls/murlocs/whatever as being particularly villainous even when they're described as having raided a caravan or some such.

I mean I'm not saying it was a good thing when a tribe of indians would scalp a bunch of white settlers 150 years ago or whatever either, but you can sorta understand where they were coming from.

Yeah, I really wished WoW had real factions.  I'd be out there making friends with all the 'savage' tribes.  Most of the attitudes all around annoy me.

Trolls and Draenei are the only ones that don't make me hate my own race if playing one.  The latter because they try even if it's lawful cheesy, the former because they're tribal and own up to not always being good as a whole.

For those of us who are totally ignorant of all things lore, this is part of the game's silly charm.

Warcraft RPGs had steam tanks, mortar artillery and helicopters.

I want to be a goblin and ride a motorcycle.  It's not too much to ask is it?

You really are good at this, you know.  I learn more about WoW lore from reading your posts than quests in the game. 

What's wrong with the tauren?

Sorry, forgot them 'cause I'm tired and knew I was leaving someone out but couldn't remember.  They mostly keep to themselves, and they've got members going around trying to heal the lands.  Lots of respect for the Tauren, too.

If the WoW factions were anything remotely real, most of the truly competent in any race would have split a long time ago. There should be a faction called Not Mentally Defective that doesn't want anything to do with any of the Horde or Alliance hijinks.

Yeah, because the reality is full of examples such as that.

Well, first of all, they're not just like humans but with funny colored skin, or something.  They're actual savage races.  They're halfway between people and animals.  While that's all pretty nasty stuff to do to people, it's not really that remarkable to do it to animals.  If a pack of dogs kill off your horses or something, you don't send out a team of diplomats to negotiate a peaceful resolution or whatever; it's not something that dogs can adhere to.  Likewise, with a few exceptions (like the Winterfin Murlocs), it doesn't seem to be something that would really work with Gnolls or anything.  And despite their shitty camps and crude weapons, they are a threat to the more civilized races.  Murlocs showed up in the Eastern Kingdoms just a few years ago, and they already control massive swaths of the coastline, and a huge percentage of the rivers and lakes.  They rip up armed Alliance patrols, sink their ships, and attack their trade caravans.  Gnolls have been in conflict with Humans for generations, but despite Humans being geared with Phat Epicz, the Gnolls still control massive tracts of land.

Second of all, I don't know that they're really races you'd want to coexist with.  You're already frothing at the Horde being allied with the Forsaken; imagine if they were also allied with Baby-eating Gnolls and Alliance soldier murdering Murlocs and what have you.  If they are sentient races, then they have to contend with the consequences of their actions, and the things they're doing would be considered acts of war.  You decide to run down Mankirk's Wife, you'd either better apologize reeeeeeally well, or expect to wake up to a ring of angry Orcs.

If they're animals, they need to be culled for the safety of the civilized races.  If they're sentient peoples, they are routinely committing acts of war against the Horde and Alliance.  Either way, it's not like you're tromping into the gumdrop forest to gun down the noble indigenous peoples of the world.

Same was said of black people once.

And of mexicans.



This thread is going places.

What exactly defines a "savage" race when plenty of presumably "civilized" races have hooves/horns/tails, place zero value on the lives of said savages, kill them wantonly at the slightest provocation, and even consider some of them good for the soup pot?

Please don't give me anything about the inherently violent and warlike nature of the savage races. Not when the Infinite Dragonflight wanted to prevent the Horde from coming to Azeroth in the first place (http://www.wowwiki.com/Opening_the_Dark_Portal), knowing that without a common enemy the "civilized" Alliance races would all turn upon and destroy one another.

Some way of communication/organization with other races would be the base minimum, I'd say.  A lot of Troll subraces skirt the edge of this distinction.  You can't really make a treaty with Gnolls or Kobolds, though, it's just not something they really "get"  as far as I've seen them portrayed.  The Darkspear might be just as big dicks to the Alliance, but you can at least know that they understand ideas like treaties and political repercussions vis-a-vis the eating of diplomats.

It's largely a fairly superfluous distinction, anyway.  Regardless of their level of sophistication, these aren't races that can peacefully coexist with the Alliance or the Horde (or most other races, for that matter) as I see it.  There are races and tribes out there which are fairly primitive but which are not rabidly genocidal; the Sporeloks spring to mind.  The problem with Murlocs and such is that they just run around killing your shit as their sort of default mode, and diplomacy doesn't seem to work with them, so you're left with the option to either use force or do nothing while they eat you.

I don't really think you can apply 21st century morals to WoW.  I am more reminded of primitive tribes that are always on the brink of extinction or at least massive disruption.  It might not be right to slaughter those murlocs, but if it's us or them, there isn't much choice.

I do like that they made every faction have some fatal flaw and some possible redemption.  Night elves are arrogant but full of respect for nature.  Forsaken are pretty much pure evil, but given what the went through, who can blame them.  Orcs and are trolls the noble savages.  Humans get a pass because they look like us, but if you played WC3 you can see how some are racist as fuck and arrogant to boot.  See for example Van Cleef.  I could go on.

Man, you all are total racists.

Just because some race or the other has a reputation or history of doing x, y or z doesn't mean that every member of that race exhibits those characteristics! I have several taurens that don't give a steaming shit about "healing the land" or all that hippy bullshit and just want lots of gold for themselves. Undead can be romantic, humans aren't all arrogant wankers and not all goblins are avaricious!

Stereotypes are bad, ok?  :why_so_serious:

There are also plenty of gnolls in the employ of humans and goblins.

Has anyone ever tried negotiating with a kobold?  Bring a box of candles with flint and tinder and I bet you've got a friend.

Yeah, I somehow doubt that goblins would bother keeping them around if they just went "Woof?" and ate someone everytime you tried to make a deal with them.

But don't take candle! 

"Me smash! You die!"

Sounds like a good start to a fruitful negotiaton.

Ogres aren't really even up for debate, given that there's been a (horde) player-friendly village of them with a flightpoint and everything forever.

There's a couple of friendly ones in Goblin towns as well.  Ratchet and Mudsprocket.

Me too. Everyone says "Take skinning instead!" but I run gathermate, put a toggle for tracking herbs/ore on a macro, and it hardly bothers me at all.

I don't know why but this made me laugh.

Also: how can you all quote goblins and not cite their best line, 'what can I do ya for?'

On a different note, I've been fooling around with a 70 warlock I had parked. Specced him full destro with improved imp, grabbed soul leech and replenishment, glyphs of conflag and immolate, and went to town. Had about 800 spell dmg self buffed.

Cast order is immo=>conf=>chaosbolt=> incinerate. Normal mobs die in 3 casts, 4 tops. Melee mobs  usually don't even get to me before they die. If fighting mobs under my level, the lock crits so damn much that I actually have to wait around for the CD on conflag and chaos bolt. Performance in instances is often limited to the tank's ability to generate threat, and, due to the glyph of conflag, pvp viability is pretty damn good. Even managed to fry a few 80's in world pvp, most of them affliction/demo warlocks.

Unfortunately, you simply can't match afflic's grinding speed. It's one mob at a time all the way. Since soul leech gives you a very respectable amount of health, you very seldomly need to stop=>LT=>bandage.

Fun to fool around. Managed to get from 70 to 75 during the weekend. Would suggest giving a run if you've a warlock parked. Sure as hell is nowhere as boring as playing a demo lock.

Go Immo, Bolt, Confl, instead so you can blow people up in BGs.

Confl first for the snare and for the cast time reduction on the others.

100% to 0% =  :awesome_for_real:

It's also tough to heal through.

I find demonology to be purely fucking psychotic at 70.  1.6 second cast Soulfire without a shard cost is sexy.

Destro warlocks have that. It's called chaos bolt.  :awesome_for_real:

Damn you Blizzard!  Why couldn't Destro locks have been decent back when I had one?  It is totally their fault I got drunk one night and deleted him  :why_so_serious:

Wait, what?  Did you miss out on the SM/Ruin + negative resists thing?

You could also probably get him back, Blizzard is pretty good about that sort.

Affliction lock rocks.  No downtime and survivability is very very high.  I press 4 buttons and the mob is dead in a few seconds.  Mage does the same but the mage has to sit down after a few kills, the lock just LT's and goes for the next victim.  Destro is hella fun, Chaos Bolt ftw, but for me there was a bit of downtime.  Haven't tried Demon in a long while.

You were doing it wrong.

Gave afflic the spin.

Fuck.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
At first I was worried because "they took my siphon life, maaan", so one less dps spell. First mob, haunt=> corr=> coa, second mob UA=>corr=>coa, third Haunt => corr =>coa, etc, just moving forward like an engine of doting destruction. Managed to nab 7 mobs and then had to stop to loot, since there no more mobs near enough. Ending at near full health and mana all the time.

Thanks to the awesomeness of dual spec, I don't think I've ever had this much fun on a lock. If I wanna go instancing I just switch to destro and break out 1.8k dps (hey, that's pretty damn good at 75 with quest gear :( ), and if I'm leveling, just go back to afflic. Makes me think that Blizzard should just give dual spec for free at 40.

Heh, might have to try out destro for some laughs.  Sounds like it plays like a more bursty version of my elemental shaman.  I'm mainly affliction with demo as a secondary.  I found it useful for soloing the elites in Nagrand and Netherstorm that tended to hit too hard to drain tank (TBC elites tend to be CC immune).

For the ones in nagrand a common trick was to rent an elite felguard from the forge camps. Warning: do not try this against the son of gruul. He'll eat the felguard, and then he'll eat you  :oh_i_see:
---

WHO THE FUCK DECIDED TO GIVE DRUIDS BERSERK?

My hero, that's who.

Hey, I'd be fine with berserk in bear form, but in cat? A FEAR-IMMUNE ROGUE? Fuuuuck. Only warlocks and.... shamans don't have a way to escape from fear now.

Tremor totem.  :awesome_for_real:

Did they make that thing worth a damn too? Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Also, locks get devour magic with the felpup. I want a bubble.

Voidwalker can give you a bubble.  Not as good as a Paladin's though, of course.

Don't worry.  With my crappy playstyle gear my cat wailing on you would have about as much effect as it does on the screen door when it wants in.

VW? For grinding and peeveepee? Seriously? GTFO.
That damn blueberry couldn't even tank Ursius, he is pathetic if untalented.
Pretty good for gathering those trolls near the ruin for molotovs, though.

You said you wanted a bubble.  You have a bubble.  It's not my problem you don't like how to got your bubble.  :grin:

Fine. I want a block too. I wanna become encased in a block of shadow, protecting me from all physical attacks and spells for 10 sec, but during that time I cannot attack, move or cast spells. Also causes Shadowthermia, preventing me from recasting Shadow Block for 30 sec.

Do it. Do it nao.

I've 8.3k HP.

The same thing happens when you go up against undead rogues (roughly 95.783% of the ganker population), fyi. Though at least you can root them with {nether|frost}weave nets after they use their two fear breaks...  :awesome_for_real:

If you are 75 and only have 8.3K HP you're going to be fodder for anyone, a bubble isn't going to help that. You'll have a lot more HP at 80, don't worry.

Oh, I'm well aware of that, but by then I'll have lost my excuse to cry. Optimal grinding gear does not come without some degree of sacrifice. I'm fine with that.

I still want shadow block, though.  :awesome_for_real:

I used to use one as SL/SL on occasion in BG's if the other team was stacked pretty heavily to rogues.  It used to be pretty handy against ye olde Cheap Shot -> CloS that fuckstupids would blow on the first warlock in sight, if you timed the bubble just before he finished beating your ass down but not before it absoirbed some damage through SL, giving you time to coil/fear dot up and pop fel domination for another link + bubble.

Abso-fucking-lutely useless against nearly everything else though.

Resubbed and apparently I forgot everything about how to play my death knight.  :awesome_for_real:


Any suggestions where I would find some reliable info ? Or at least a working rotation, I somehow broke my macros  :ye_gods:

edit: Frost spec, shows how much I forgot. This (http://wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVZG0xxAbckf0Vostc) is my spec atm.

Pick your poison. (http://elitistjerks.com/f72/)

This one (http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t59946-frozen_blows_frost_dps_updated_06_11_09_a/) for frost.

Any thoughts on what would be a good DK tanking spec for heroics after 3.2? Will the old 5+5+5+56 still do ok?

I ask because my DK is inching through the mid-70s now and I'm finding it enormous fun to play, but I do kinda button mash.... when you've got your own personal resto druid following you everywhere you're pretty much invincible anyway  :grin:

Heavy blood is pretty much the best way to do it. Frost is now a crappy duel-wield-orientated tree, and unholy's AOE (and bone armour) got nerfed into the ground. So yeah, you'll want 61/5/5 or something close to it.

Suspected that was the case with Frost and am trying to hurry up to 80 before the AOE nerf hits. Yeah, I've got a tree, but I can currently pull 20 mobs and kill them in about the same time as 3 single pulls. Could probably cope with more but I haven't yet found anywhere where I can pull more than that...

Where the hell are you finding a mob density heavy enough to pull 20 mobs at once?

Frost is nice if you play with AE heavy groups.  Get a glyph of howling blast, run towards group of mobs, spam howling blast-boil blood-boil blood, and your group can now AE all they want without agro. I don't even use death and decay half the time anymore. They can also start AEing as soon as they want (which is OMGMOBKILLIT soon usually).

The only places I found to reliably pull that many at once were the vultures in Hellfire Peninsula. With 2 chars I can pull quite a lot in most places (Grizzly Hills is good at the moment) but rarely as many as 20, at least not regularly.

I didn't mean to imply that was how I was levelling, just that I can survive if it happens  :awesome_for_real:

As someone that has spent the past few years being a Blizzard hater, I must openly confess something.  I think that WotLK, while not perfect, may be as good as a fantasy, diku-based MMO can get.  They really pulled out the stops making this expansion and I'm impressed.  The quests are varied and often filled with humor and the terrain remains beautiful while taking it easy on my video card. 

Now I need to find 4 people willing to drag my ass through the 5-man content.  I'm still a dungeon noob after playing this game for years.

Go DPS if you're actually clueless. One newb DPS in a group isn't a big deal, but with a newb tank or healer it can get ugly.

In my experience, healing isn't too big a deal, either, unless noob here is meaning something like "horribly, horribly undergeared."  Most fights you're doing basically the same stuff as the DPS (except you're making bars go up instead of down).  And healers can get in to dungeon groups way faster (on my server, at least).

I used to heal you guys on my shaman, remember? 

I may level a healer to play the endgame and started a priet, but soloing really sucks ass.  I'm also hesitant to join a guild as most people make me want to stab myself in the ear.  Maybe I'll make a druid. 

Some of the dungeons in WoTLK can be pretty technical to heal; although a lot of this varies by class. Doing Gun'Drak as an undergeared priest is hellish I recall.

Mostly, that is very dependent on the gear/skill level of the tank. The one fight that blows to heal basically no matter what is the snake guy.

The venomancers on Anub'arak were nasty too on release.

Druid is a lot of fun to heal with in my opinion, with the added bonuses of a) flight form being hax and b) being able to respec and basically do any role you're in the mood for. Druids are awesome.

Especially with a priest.

A couple other trouble spots in heroics for very fresh healers:

- The big T-Rex in Drak'Tharon, unless you have tremor totem
- The defend-Brann-from-hordes-of-dudes endurance fight in Halls of Stone
- The end guy in Old Kingdom (not hard for newly dinged healers to OOM and get ganked during insanity)
- The confessor in the new heroic

Just about everything else can be mitigated by tactics or a good tank or whatever.

Loken was hard if you try to kite him. Now that everybody has enough HP to eat 1.5-2 novas anyway and DPS to zerg him down he's pretty cake. King Dred was never really hard for me as a priest, you can use fear ward to live through the first fear+slash, and cooldowns will get you through the rest. I miagine Keristrasza is decidedly unpleasant for new paladin healers, and doing a timed CoS run in quest gear and such (with pretty poor mp5) is hard. Although now I can do the whole timed run without needing to drink.

I've played me elemental shaman through most heroics now, and there aren't any fights which challenge any DPS really. I guess I should respec to enhance and feel the pain of being melee though.

Heroic King Dred is easy if your tank is hugely overgeared for the instance and can break fear and you're a druid healer that put all your HoTs on him right before the fear.  :awesome_for_real:

Or have your friends bring their pvp trinkets.
Given how easy the next fights are, they might as well pop Icebound Fortitude and Unbreakable Armor, or whatever's  the equivalent for warr and bear.

More or less, although as always with any new mechanic, they overused vehicles in the expansion.

I remember doing the king dread acchieve back in the good old days of only having a few heroics and maybe 1 or 2 naxx runs behind you.  Standard method then was to have 2 tanks, and have one of them taunt the boss with a cooldown popped when he emoted his one high damage attack, to sponge it, since you knew it was coming.

I realize it's 'lol heroics', but I still think King Dred needs a nerf.  He just hits way too hard compared to every other heroic boss in the game.

He gives you plenty of warning when he's about to hit hard. He's probably got the highest single-target DPS of any boss, although many others have higher overall DPS through AoE abilities. Its a fight which requires you to pre-empt his damage.

Which would be fine, if he didn't have an AoE fear cast on a moderately short interval in a part of the dungeon with potential for major LoS issues.  Not to mention his calling for help and bringing one of the raptors into the fight.   :uhrr:   :ye_gods:

If they wanted to stick a super high single target dps boss somewhere, optional boss in DTK is as good a place as any, but the fear seems like overkill.  You'd expect something like that from a gimmicky boss with weak damage not a boss with tank/healer gear check levels of damage who also summons an add.

Don't priests have a buff that gives fear protection or doesn't that work against this guy.  If that's the case, just buff the tank and fear becomes a non-issue, right? 



Edit: I apologize for my ignorance, but I know nothing about the bosses in this game. 

Fear on the tank isn't really an issue.  It's fear on the healer that's the biggest issue.  It's really not that hard to break fears though, especially if your healer is a Human.  Last night our DPS was so good Dred only got off one fear anyway.

Not all healers are human/undead and not all healing classes have effective tools against fear.

Fear ward from priests is a 1 target 1 fear prevention that has a 3 min cooldown, Dred will AoE fear every 20-30 seconds.

The fight can be trivialized by good dps or tank/healer gear just like any other, but in normal mode at the appropriate level or in heroic with entry level 80 gear it is pretty brutal.

He has 3 special attacks that he can and will use in rapid succession causing massive damage to the tank.  (Strong bleed that can only be removed by healing the tank to full, major armor reduction, strong special attack)  He gives a warning before using them in succession but even then I have seen a tank with low avoidance and/or bad luck get gibbed on several occasions.

Throw in the fear and a nearby raptor and it's very easy for comedic levels of fail to occur.   :why_so_serious:

The following are the typical Dred wipe scenarios:

1.  Undergeared tank or healer, bad timing/luck, tank gets gibbed.

2. Healer gets feared, tank dies.

3. Tank is feared and runs out of the Healer's LoS, tank dies.

4. Tank fails to pick up the raptor add (could be bad tank, feared, or just out of position after a fear), raptor eats healer, everyone dies.

Imo the extra level of difficulty added by the fear would only be waranted if he were the final boss of the instance and even then I'd think a more open area to fight in would be in order.  The instance would probably be better if he were the final boss considering how much of a pushover the actual final boss is.

Isn't Dred optional?

Dwarves can stoneform that bleed off.  :heart:

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that the difficulty/reward ratio for that fight is probably one of the worst in WoTLK, especially considering you can basically faceroll Tharonja (sp?) the very next boss for epics.   :grin:

Also, if you're doing a heroic you'll typically not want to pass up the badge.

And easy?   :oh_i_see:   I've only ever wiped on him trying for the achievement.  DTK just always seemed like a complete walkover.

Well, nothing in heroics is really super duper hard; Dred is just hard relative to other heroic stuff if you're at the right gear level etc etc etc.

Yeah, I've done DTK on normal with my characters as they level just as many times as I have at 80 on heroic with full epics.

The normal runs with pugs and the few times on heroic with mostly fresh lvl 80's is all it takes to see the dark side of any WoTLK 5 man.    :angryfist:

Quit playing much EvE and been playing more WoW...realized I'm just playing WoW the same way I played EvE anyways, as a market player.  :uhrr:  Currently have over 800 auctions up on my bank alt.  :awesome_for_real:

It really does get into your blood.

Yep, I can't stop playing the market either.  It's just hard to turn down the 300g-1500g per day profit on glyphs.  I keep thinking the market will drop off but nope, people keep buying the same old stuff.

I was a bit shocked myself how well glyphs sell, I assumed they wouldn't be huge items as I assumed most people buy them once, and thats its.  Don't ever have to replace them as gear gets upgraded like gems and enchants do.

The one time I tried selling glyphs I put up a bunch of that were part of typical endgame and leveling builds.  I under priced everyone by a lot.  I ended up with almost all of my auctions coming back unsold.  :oh_i_see:

I've stopped playing the market since initially making a lot of cash on epic gems. I can't seem to get into it the way I was able to play the market in EQ. 

People respec a lot, even with dual specs.

I really enjoyed my first time through Northrend.  The second time through, I started to notice some flow issues.  And subsequent efforts have exacerbated issues.  I find I don't enjoy the 70-80 trip anywhere near as much as I liked and still like 60-70.  70-80 has turned into get Northrend greens, then BG my way to 80 with occasional stops to work on weapon skills.

I never have found the bread crumb quests out of Borean Tundra.  And the Howling Fjord bread crumb to Dragonblight almost immediately directs you to Grizzly Hills.  Instead of moving you out into Dragonblight.  Also, there is a whole bunch of back and forth to completely exhaust quest hubs.  I find I kind of enjoyed the planning that you had to do with BC quests.  You would get a whole bunch and then have to think about the most efficient means of getting them done.  Northrend is completely on rails for the most part.  There are not all that many choices.  You get a couple of quests in the same spot, do them, come back, get a couple more for the same spot, come back and then go somewhere else.  Nothing to do with thinking.

Additionally, the initial inaccesibility of Dalaran is a real problem.  I find I keep my hearth in Shat for the first couple of levels, but then I need to take the interminable boats each level.  In Outland, its fairly trivial to head right to Shattrath and get all of the intervening FPs to ease travel.  Getting a Dalaran chain is comparatively impossible prior to the quest.  I always forget about that little port building that you see once and then never visit again.  What is the point behind that obscure floating purple triangle?  Is there a reason it could not be in a more accessible place?  Or at least have its own FP?  

I believe some of my problems stem from the fact that I really don't like the idea that they take away your flying mount for 7 levels just to give it back after an arbitrary money sink.  Its part of the reason I always disliked the original flying mount.  It was a step backwards from an epic ride for no apparent reason.  The new upgraded speed is very nice though.  I will still probably farm for cash on later alts, but it won't be the compulsion it was.  

I agree with much of what you have stated.

I would think that Blizzard would have also learned from the lessons of the past.  I'm getting too many quests that are "go to point X and return to me" followed by "go back to point x and kill y mobs" only to be completed by "go back to point x and kill boss z".  Can't they just give me one quest to do all three things and be done with it?  I don't mind doing the trivial tasks, but get pissed when I have to travel back and forth as a tiem sink when it's pointless to do so.  This is the primary reason that I quit LotRO.  Too much FedEx.

I'm leveling an alt right now and find that I'm dreading the 60-80 game.  I did 60-70 on 4 toons and the thought of doing zangarmarsh and Netherstorm again makes me weep. 

The end of the Taunka quests has you moving into Dragonblight, which after a couple quests at a refugee camp puts you at Agmar's hammer.  The Walrus dude quest lines end with you going to their port in Dragonblight.  Of course, you might be Aliance which throws my help out the window : :grin:

The day they put the flying changes in, I just flew to Dalaran.  Stop by that Vanguard place before the Wrathgate and you're good for a direct line to your questing.  For Howling Fjord, I just logged on another character, wrote down the flight path,  and stopped by each spot.  Went rather fast with epic flying.

On my third time through Northrend, I've just hit level 78. I still have about 80% of Icecrown/Zul'Drak (just getting Ebon Blade faction), 50% of Dragonblight, all of Grizzly Hills/Storm Peaks, and about 20% of Sholozar/Fjord left to do.  Most stuff I've skipped is because I know it's annoying or it has no applicable faction.  I love Storm Peaks, but I'm a scribe so there's no rush.   Working on 100% rested EXP with the heirloom shoulders has helped me be picky about what I do.

One thing I have noticed is the small pathing/geometry bugs that pop up over time with leveling content and are never fixed.  Never encountered these in the past, but my last time leveling up there were just a number of spots where mobs would evade, reset, or just get stuck under the world.  Somewhat annoying.

First of all, I don't understand the logic of undercutting everyone by a lot.  That's just shooting yourself in the foot along with the other sellers.  People will by the cheapest one regardless, even if it's just undercut by one copper.  Secondly, Auctioneer Advanced is absolutely essential if you want to seriously play the market.  Otherwise the micro-management and clicking will drive you nuts.

There are certainly days when sales are a bit down, but you can always bet on business being ludicrous other times to make up for it.  With glyphs for example, after patch days are crazy as are most weekends to a lesser degree.  The absolute best time to make money though is right after an expansion.  When everyone else is busy leveling, the ones that hang back on the AH can make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money.

I'm impatient, there's your logic  :awesome_for_real: I'm on a lower pop, underachieving server, so the market is pretty terrible.  The prices on everything seem to start very high and in a few days they're way down as everyone is busy frantically undercutting everyone else.  A gem that starts the week at 80-100g is ending the week at 30. 

Also, the professional farmers have an absolutely huge impact on our server.  That's not a huge factor for me, since I don't sell ore/herbs.

I still have done moderately well by my own standards.  4 characters have epic flying and I've got a 10k cushion.  I just know I can do a lot better if I try.  Is Auctineer a bit less bloated and buggy now?  It always seemed like overkill and the second I installed it, the amount of UI errors would start to pile on.

I do not understand the AH anymore.  I don't buy mats.  I just buy green gear to supplement holes.  Anything with a vaguely appropriate suffix is over 100g.  Always.  From lvl 5 gear to level 70.  All over 100.  I can kind of understand the targeted twink gear at 19.  Somewhat less understandable is the 29 stuff.  But 150 gold for an "of the Champion" lvl 63 green?  Its not for enchanting mats.  There are tons of "of the boar" and similiar useless suffixes up for 2-10g per piece.  And do not get me started on the crafted plate gear.  I have been staring at 6 full sets of adamantite plate on the AH for two weeks now with a buyout over 100g per piece.  Maybe the guy is selling it and just makes sure to always have six sets up, but really who is going to pay that for stuff that gets leveled out of in days for the most part?

People leveling alts.

I'm sure the situation varies greatly between servers and since mine has a rather high pop I wouldn't know the strategy on yours.

Auctioneer (Advanced) still has a few bugs but overall it's a very tight add-on.  It took me a bit of fiddling to get it setup at first but now it automates the whole process of putting all of the glyphs in my bags on the AH with an undercut of a few copper.  

The trick is deciding which glyphs are yielding the most at any given time and taking notes.  I started off going by the suggested glyph lists for different talent builds on wowwiki but that doesn't necessarily give a good indicator of what will sell the best and for the most at any given time.  It's weird what people buy sometimes.  And yes, even on my server undercutting can drive some glyphs into the ground but usually they'll reset to a higher price in a few days.

There is one (1) reason to do so -- baiting one of the other sellers into buying it to remove it from the listings.  

Say you have some crappily-itemized purple BoE from Naxx that some yahoos always list at 3000g, but no one ever buys because, frankly, it sucks in comparison to some regular ToC drop.   You go and list that sucker for a LOT less and if you're lucky, one of the aforementioned yahoos will panic and buy it, thinking they can resell it later after their precious jewel sells for 3000g.  Ka-ching!

But yeah, people who undercut by whole golds or more on high-volume stuff are just weird.

I just sold my Scout's Shirt (free with any new Dranaei character) for 10g.

The auction house is not for understanding, only exploiting.

Playing the auction house is just as much about trying to play the other people that are playing the auction house.  :awesome_for_real:

Totally.  Around January or February of this year there was a major glyph war on my server.  I think we all had each other on friends list to see when a competitor logged on to re-undercut their glyphs (I know I did).  These days I just operate in bulk and put a handful of every friggin glyph that even remotely sells up.  In 12 to 24 hours that will net an acceptable amount of gold without worrying about the competition.

Trade wars between retards causing major undercuts is a good way to stock up on items with a deflated price.  Which can then be exploited when the market regains equilibrium.

I do this all the time. 

1) Money in MMO's is meaningless.  I can always get more.  Making a lot of money by playing economics on the AH means nothing to me for this reason. 

2) I want my money now.  If I can make 20g now vs 25g later, I'll take the 20g.  If that means someone else makes a profit buying and selling my sales, well... more power to them.  I don't care. 

Two reasons:

1) If you know you're fighting someone who'll undercut you immediately, you can drop the price low, have them undercut, remove your items, and buy theirs out to relist at a higher price.  The drawback is once you've done this, they may have more of the item to list up, so do this at your own peril.  For instance, I make Eternal Belt Buckles at a cost of 22g or thereabouts.  I notice I have a chronic undercutter (I friend the person to ensure they're still online).  I list one or two of the item at 23g.  If they sell, no loss.  If they don't the undercutter lists, I remove my items, buy his, and relist one or two at my normal price. (to see if he has more)  If nothing happens, I list around 6-7, as anymore is a flood and generally will be undercut before it gets sold.

2) Makes your price look better.  Same item as before.  Normal market price is 50g, with one guy listing at that.  If I want to unload quick, I'd drop down to around 42g.  Generally I'll getting single buyer buying multiples as they feel I'm giving a deal because they see the higher price.  My items tend to go quicker, and I'm still making 20g profit.   20g profit x 5 items over 30 minutes is better than 28g profit x 5 items over 2 hours.  It's a hedge really.

And I've found people dislike the 1c undercut.  Some really feel it's a dick move and will buy the high item just to spite you.  They don't seem to have the same rage at a flat percent undercut of the lowest price.

I'd wager that 49 out of 50 people sort by price and pick the cheapest item without ever thinking twice about a 1c undercut.

I'd peg it around 8 out of 10, and I want the money of those extra 2 as well.

I'm guilty of this. :awesome_for_real:

All that market psycology works. I'm mystified but shit priced at 9.99 sells better than 10g.

I'm also on the "don't care about massing huge amounts of gold" bandwagon. I sell shit though since I'm the guild banker. I don't have any personal use for gold.

I guess that's it for me.  It takes about 1-2 months of play (including the 1-80 trip) to have everything in game that you need.  Money becomes meaningless afterwards unless you are an alt-a-holic. 

You need quite a lot of money if you're raiding or pvping enough to get a constant flow of gear upgrades, mostly for gems and enchants. A single runed cardinal ruby usually runs at 250g+ on Doomhammer, with that and enchants a progressing character can easily spend several hundred gold a week between upgrades and repairs.

Cash at this point for me is only good for two things: riding for alts and power leveling tradeskills.  I've pretty much got that covered for my future goblin hunter.  :grin:

A lot of it really depends on the type of item you are selling.  Again using glyphs as an example, the herbs needed to make them are dirt cheap and so the profit margin is extremely high per glyph.  I stock up on Northrend herbs usually once a week when I find them for around 4 gold a stack.  Since the resulting inks can be traded for any other kind of ink, input costs always remain rock bottom.  Yeah I may miss a sale or two every now and then due to someone thinking I'm a dick for the 1c undercut, but volume sales win big time.

Given the option, I'd rather be sitting on a nice pile of money in case I want to buy some dual specs, epic flyers, or grind some tradeskills up on alts.  I'm far too lazy to actually gather resources myself.   :awesome_for_real:

You're getting ahead in the Glyph market on volume sales.  I'm a Jewelcrafter/Blacksmith. (Dragon's Eye + Sockets! = WIN)  My input costs are significantly higher.

But I'm at around 35K, with numerous epic flyers bought for my alts and my girlfriend, so I'm not doing too bad.

Even with my plethora of alts, I'm usually not wanting for anything.  I needed help with level 60 riding before the changes, but would have stuck with my 60% mount had Mattemo not given me enough to cover most of it.  I'll easily have the 1k for cold-weather flying when I hit that in six levels.

I rarely buy anything off the AH.  I sell a little if I think it's something that would be a waste.  Otherwise I vendor everything.

(http://thatswhatshesaid.today.com/files/2009/04/aug-10-crying-child.jpg)

Quest greens are useless and the numbers of BoE greens I get are fairly minimal.  Since I return to a place with an auction house maybe once a level, it's just not worth the hassle.

I'm with Lantyssa.  I vendor almost everything.  Money is stupid easy to get when I want it.  I prefer to spend 99% of my online time killing mobs or other players.  The only things I do to waste time is fish or cook along with the occasional trade skill.  All for selfish reasons.   

You could always mail it to an alt you have at a city with an AH.  Or mail them to someone who can DE them.  :wink:

Yah, I love having a character that can crush greens.  Unfortunately I chew through infinite dust like it's candy.

Those level 40-70 dusts are going for a ton of money.  I'm embarrassed to say what I spent recently grinding up enchanting on an alt.

Fiiiiine.  I'll mail them and we can split any profit, since I do still need some gold and I'm terrible at asking for assistance and hand-outs.  I'll also be bugging you for enchants once I get level 80 gear. :-P

Crisis averted?  Can people stop recoiling in horror?

(http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/invasion2.jpg)

Geezus.  I'm going to get hate tells when I log in tonight.  Wonder if I'll even have a guild anymore.  :cry2:

Come join me.  We'll get along famously!

Heh.  I'm not starting on yet another server.  (Plus I enjoy their company in gchat.  [Maybe in instances soon, too!])

I doubt they'll throw me out.  Tease me mercilessly, certainly, but they'll use any excuse for that anyways. ;D

I'd go there, but I doubt they'd tolerate an impatient old man. 

You've described roughly a 3rd of the guild.

You have an 80. The 1k for the cold weather flying book is the best 1k you ever spend for that alt.   Granted, this wasn't possible until recently, but that's why I no longer level-up alts until things ease out.   I learned after BC that things will get easier for alts as time goes on.  This has proved exponentially so in LK.

We have some impatient old ladies too.

OK one.

Me. :(

We've had to pause a raid because one of our guys had to literally chase the kids of his lawn.

If a green can't be mailed (soul bound quest rewards) then I vendor it ;-)  I always DE everything else.  I don't even bother with the AH as it is so hit and miss with greens and blues (although people still pay stupid money for the BoE blues from Scholo and Strat).  Now ore and herbs, I made about 1700G just leveling my DK's gathering skills up and I'm only at 325 in each.

At a guess, I'd say the median age is near 30.

I was mostly going on about DEing greens.  Lots of money in Enchanting mats, plus, you'l probably need them yourself.

Sooo... I'm bumping this back up because I have resubbed to check out Cataclysm. I have no high level chars and am probably going to start a new char from scratch.

Biggest thing I'm wondering about is if there is any "must have" addons. I'm most going to be going it alone, with the odd PUG to do lower level instances so I definitely won't need anything complicated.

tips? tricks? dire warnings?

Well, when I started Cat, I decided to redo my UI and just do what's needed to level.

Needed (for me):
Shadowed Unit Frames - really simple, clean unit frames.  Easy to set up.  I just don't like the default positioning or look of Blizzard unit frames.
Dominos - Button bars.  Any button bar mod would likely do. I like Dominos.  Never had any problems with it.
Bagnon - Turns your bag into on giant bag.  Lets you see combined cash among all characters.  It's a must have for me now.
CooldownCount - Just adds cooldown timers to your buttons.

Optional:
Quartz - replacement cast bar.  I just like the look better.
MSBT - Mik scrolling battle text.  Default scrolling battle text from Blizzard would just be fine.

If I was running a healer or doing dungeons where I'm trying to optimize my DPS, I might add a few things like:
Some sort of buff bar replacement as the default positioning from Blizzard is a bit hard to read.  Likely Satrina's Buff Frames (bitch to set up).
Something to better track my procs and debuffs on mobs. Like ClassTimer and/or NeedToKnow.
Something like Recount to track my DPS.
Grid + Clique for a good healing UI.

But as I'm not really doing anything competitive, I'd be just fine with a unit frame mod, a bar mod, a bag mod and a cooldown mod for my button bar.  

Omen, if you're DPS or Tanking (can set it to turn on only when in a group to save space)
Auctioneer, if you sell stuff regularly.
DBM for friendly pointers in dungeons.

The base UI has gotten really really good over the years so you could easily play with very few.  I'd only list six as essential, and even then only for certain classes:

• A new cast bar: Quartz (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx).  The only one I consider truly essential if you're playing a caster.  The default cast bar is dreadful.  I just use it for that and leave the buff tracking stuff to other mods.
• A damage meter: Recount (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recount.aspx) or Skada (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12499-SkadaDamageMeter.html).  A damage meter is often used to just poorly flex someone's epeen, but it's still damn useful and not at all a part of the base UI.  Recount's more all-in-one and a bit more user-friendly while Skada lets you axe the bits you aren't using to save resources.  I just use Recount because I have for ages.
• A cooldown timer for your action bars: OmniCC (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info4836-OmniCC.html).  I don't find the default cooldown model terribly useful, especially for long cooldowns so this adds numbers and is quite customizable.
• A thing that makes your buttons red when you're out of range: tullaRange (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info15636-tullaRange.html).  Something that most people forget about if they're using a bar mod as that usually handles this sort of thing already.
• A coordinates mod: TomTom (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7032-TomTom.html).  The only non-combat one here, but you're going to get directions sometimes in map coordinates and you'll need this.
• WitchHunt (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8513-WitchHunt.html).  I play on a PvP server and would cry my head off if this ever broke.  Lets you know when an enemy gains buffs or starts casting and what not.  Very customizable and unobtrusive when you don't need it and absolutely essential when you do.

I use a ton of other mods, either to collect information or just display it differently, but those are the only ones that I'd really be at a loss without.  (Well, life without Altoholic (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8533-Altoholic.html) would be a giant pain in the ass, but I played LOTRO without it :awesome_for_real:.)

If you're not a tank or healer you probably don't NEED any.

With a large monitor (not sure this caveat even matters), it's very difficult to train my eye to keep track of the action and look in the upper level hand corner to view my  hp and mana/focus/energy.

Everything else for me is just ease of use improvements.  I don't like being annoyed with a UI when I'm playing a game and this is very easy to remedy in WoW.  So why not do it and save the sanctimonious, luddite groanings for another time?

Quartz is nigh essential for anyone with a cast bar because of the latency display, imo. Beyond that I only use informational mods at this point, the default UI has picked up almost everything I used mods for other than stuff like recount. I do still use Omen rather than the default threat stuff which is a little opaque.

We'll see, maybe I'll go back to using Grid once I start raiding again, I haven't had a chance to really kick the tires on the new default raid frames.

You can set them as your party frames as well if you're running dungeons and the like.  If I could get the debuff's spell icon over the frame instead of their little type icons I'd have dumped Grid right there.  We'll see how useful they are come raids compared to Grid with GridStatusRaidDebuff, as I really am not using any of Grid's other whiz-bang-type features since 4.0.

The most important stuff imo (and my choices for each) is a bar mod (Dominos), a buff monitor (Raven), and unit frames (Shadowed Unit Frames). Unit frames to get your health/mana out of the corner and near the middle of the screen where they belong, buff monitor because the default for that just isn't very good, and bars just because I'm picky about my bars I guess.

Actually if you're playing a character with any sort of heal or cleanse, then unit frames and Clique. I find it way easier to use mouseovers for any sort of friendly action, even if I'm soloing.

For levelling a noob you probably don't need anything unless you plan on healing instances then you might find a raid frame mod useful.  Key binds to the default UI is perfectly fine for solo levelling.

I had to do a fresh install for Cataclysm and significantly wound bak my add on usage. 

I recently moved to Gnosis as a cast bar replacement.  Basically the same as Quartz but also indicates ticks for channelled spells (although Quartz may have this now too).

I use Vuhdo for group and raid frames for healing although have used grid in the past.  The new raid UI is huuuuuge even at it's small scale so you need some replacement.  Vuhdo has some neat-o features (like icons for individual debuffs, hot timer bars, and huge amount of customisation) but it's options pages can be very very hard to use (and change every major upgrade).  You can also overcook it and get info overload by having too much going on (as I found out in my first 10 man Sindy fight and first 25 man raid).

For Crafting I use Lil-sparky's Workshop to integrate auctioneer data into my ATSW crafting addon.  Now my crafting list shows the AH costs of raw mats and highest resale value (including AH, DE and vendor) of each item.  Very good for finding the lowest cost of skilling up or identifying arbitrage opportunities.

How about you wash the fucking sand out of your vagina, Suzy? That NEED was capitalized to distinguish it from what you might WANT. But thanks for the mini-rant about how you're too super-pro to put up with having a health bar in the corner of the screen like in every video game ever made.

(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=4630;type=avatar)

(http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/doom2shoot2.jpg)

(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=4630;type=avatar)

 :heart:
Health in the top corner but cooldowns at the bottom is like the worst UI decision ever.

As long as we're having this discussion again, does anybody know of any addons that will magically make tanking suck less (yes, I have Omen)? In particular I would really like it if something would yell at me when my threat lead becomes greater than my target's remaining health. Enough that I'm considering trying to hack it together myself if I have to.

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking for, but I have found the mody, Tidy Plates to be handy while tanking.  It adds a little bar nested over the name plate health bar which signals threat.

I don't know about the threat lead versus health bit, but personally I use tidypanels (I think that's what they're called?) set to tank mode for threat information, and only have Omen open for actual tps numbers. The base UI is really nice about displaying threat these days.

As for UI positioning, I put things I need to know in the middle of my screen, and added a few proc warnings to powerauras (because while I LOVE the version that comes with 4.x, it doesn't do a few things I need, like when rune tap procs from low health and I should probably hit that button now instead of burning the rune).

I think I have like, 3 cast bars displayed at various points to make sure I don't miss a cast, though. One in the middle, one by the unit frame, and one as part of the floating health bars. Look, I want to know if that bastard is casting something, okay?

TukUI is the one, true UI mod. If you're using anything else, you're doing it wrong.
HTH.

I dunno man, that stuff is spread out across the entire bottom of the screen. Current ammo on the far left, total ammo on the far right? Health and armor on opposite sides, separated by multiple elements? You'd shave a few picoseconds off your reaction time if you used my Doom add-on.


 :why_so_serious:

1/10.

Good touch covering up the action too.  You really seem to have a sound grasp of the argument presented here.

Looks like every raider's screen I've ever seen posted. :-P

Maybe the healers.  They just stare at their toes and hit buttons.

There's also a tendency to only repost the really horrid ones. Browsing through the EJ interface forum comes up with a lot of stuff that looks more or less like this:


The common theme is that for the most part, people DON'T pile everything right in the center on top of the action.  But hey hyperbole is fun. :oh_i_see:

My heal frames can take up the majority of my UI, though my actual character is always clear (so I see if I'm standing in fire)

My DK tanking UI only has the power auras stuff and engraved running rune cooldowns in the center of my vision, because why the fuck are the up in the top left.


edit: I really like that bar mod, Ing. What is that?

TukUI looks nice, but some things cant be changed really, and thats a deal breaker for me.

I tried making a neat custom UI with Bartender and Pittbull, but in the end I found I just didnt like it, or I had lots of little problems, like with vehicles and stuff. So now I use the base UI with a few mods to make it a little better, like MoveAnything, castbars, omnicc and a few others.

Hell if I know, I just picked one of the recent UI posts there more or less at random: http://elitistjerks.com/f32/t23417-share_your_interface_read_first_post_no_really_read/p64/#post1788272

The base UI is shockingly nice, as I found out when none of my mods worked in 4.0. Bartender seems to work for everything, though it's snap to grid feature is.. irritating.

edit: I can't find my TBC era shaman UI anymore. It was horrifying before the new totem system plus raid frames (and bonus guild in jokes!)

I think any UI is going to look dreadful with 40+ health bars on it.  I'm not really sure how I managed to stay out of fires when I was running at a slightly lower res with a much smaller monitor.  My UI isn't anything to write home about, but it keeps the center clear and works on all my many alts without any finagling.


As for the bars in Ingmar's picture, the buttons themselves look like ButtonFacade Sleek (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/buttonfacade_sleek.aspx) + Your Favorite Bar AddOn (that supports ButtonFacade (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12097-ButtonFacade.html))

Edit: From the link it's:

kgPanels (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9518-kgPanels.html) for the pink (well, ClassColor more likely) boxes and such.
Dominos (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/dominos.aspx) + ButtonFacade (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12097-ButtonFacade.html) + ButtonFacade: Renaitre (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info15923) for the bars.
PitBull (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pitbull4.aspx) for the unit frames.

The rest is just customizing the other mods around it (Chinchilla, Recount, Omen, etc.).

This is what I'm using at the moment.. so exciting.  :awesome_for_real:

Spoilered for hugeness.

How can you see past those giant unit frames blocking everything?