Worldwide Invitational - PvP, Arenas & Instances

The Worldwide Invitational continued be to a source of information on Wrath of the Litch King with further discussion panels regarding PvP, Arenas and Instances.

• There will be two new arenas, one set in the sewers of Dalaran and one in Orgrimmar. It appears that they will include random environmental elements such as pillars that appear out of the group and pipes spewing sewage. These are still in early development stages, but at this stage I’m not feeling optimistic, missing that kill with a shadow word death because a pillar suddenly between me and my opponent sounds very frustrating.
• Lake Wintergrasp is set to be a huge sprawling battleground with siege engines, destructible bridges and building and aerial combat. This zone will either be excellent fun or a huge failure. The biggest worry is for players on realms with a significant imbalance between factions; constantly fighting on the loosing side of a 10 to 1 battle would not be good.
• The new battleground with be an attack and defend style game, you will spend half the game on each side. It will include siege engines and destructable environments.
• Neither heroic dungeons nor the first raid in Wrath, Naxxramas, will require attunement of any kind. It will be up to player to determine for themselves whether they are up to a heroic.
• Dungeons should be less linear.

Nothing here is ground breaking but it is nice to hear some official news. Two new arenas will be a nice change and play testing/tweaking should iron out any issues. The PvP zone has amazing potential as long as people can be encouraged to participate. No attunement is a nice benefit, getting attunement for Karazhan on your third 70 is a mega pain in the backside. Finally Wow Insider has an excellent article showing pictures of some of the siege engines and new arenas, check it out here.

Read Full Article

Worldwide Invitation - Litch King Information

The Wordwide invitational was held over the weekend and several announcements were made. The headline was, Diablo III with the slowly evolving splash page on World of Warcraft revealed to be culminating to this.

A lot of other news has also been announced/confirmed. This includes:

• Titan's Grip Confirmed, warriors will be dual wielding two handed weapons.
• Mages should see an increase in their overall damage to make up for no longer being "the CC class"
• Hunter's pets will undergo a large revamp with the introduction of pet talent trees.
• Death Knights will start in a new zone near to the other Plaguelands.
• Shaman will get a CC ability (turning people into frogs)and their totems will effect the whole raid not just one group
• Druids will be able to entangling root people indoors.
• Warlocks will be able to transform into demons
• A lot of new spells and abilities, too many for to list.

It is excellent to hear some solid information regarding Litch King, I can't wait to try Iroanrm with a couple of nice hefty axes! There is more to come with all this based only on the first day, I understand PvP and arena discussion is still to come.

If you want a run down of the infro class by class check out the Wow Insider index post.

Read Full Article

New Security Measure Announced

Blizzard have announced a new security measure for your World of Warcraft account. You will be able to buy a key fob size electronic device that generates a six digit pin number on the press of a button. Called an authenticator this device will cost $6.50 US and can be linked to one or more accounts. The authentication codes generated by this device are account specific, can only be used once and only functions for a limited time. This technology is similar to that provided by banks (a banking example device can be seen in the picture to the right) to secure online banking and will significantly decrease the chance of having your account stolen or hacked into and is a great step to providing players with a secure playing environment. Participation in this addition security measure is voluntary but I will be participating, $6.50 is a small price to pay to save yourself from the horror of login in to find yourself poor and naked.

You can view the official Blizzard press release here or have a look at the FAQ page on the device here.

Image from http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com

Read Full Article

Smooth Sailing - Some General News

Another successful night in Karazhan, for the Children of Stormwind, taking down The Curator and everything before in a bit over two hours. Only one wipe on Nightbane and the death of only a few DPS just goes to show we basically have the place on farm especially when we only take one group. We even survived when at one stage a few (read 8) extra elites got pulled. I guess you were just testing if Sando and I were on our toes.

Lots of guild members were visiting the PvP vendors last night picking up some new gear with their saved honour and arena points now that season four has hit. It is prime time to be an enchanter this week with a lot of people wanting to enchant their latest acquisitions (can anyone do Soulfrost for Squiggle’s new mace?).

Although we are constantly getting new members we have said farewell a few people recently. With no new content on the cards until Litch King I believe we are hitting the slump period before the expansions release. Once the Fire Festival is over and arena season four settles in I expect quite a few people will stop playing or at least cut back their play time a fair bit. It doesn’t help that as a guild we are still stuck between Karazhan and twenty five man raids with too many for one and not quite enough for the other.

The next few months is a great time to get some new things happening in the guild. Perhaps we can set up some premade battle ground groups and attempting some old school raids such as Molten Core and Onyxia.

Read Full Article

One Perfect Day

Sometimes everything clicks in wow and you get all the things you want in one shot. In this case two excellent events made me a very happy player last night. Firstly I got home to find my latest ebay purchase in my mail box making Ironarm the proud owner of A Paper Airplane Kit. I then jumped into Slave pens to have another few goes of Ahune and behold, the Scythe dropped on the fifth attempt. On top of that we then progressed to steam roll him in Heroic mode.



Once you sort everything out the Ahune encounter really isn’t that hard. You defiantly need some good area of effect classes to handle the mini elementals (warlocks are excellent); you need to keep away from the big elemental as he has a damaging aura and watch out for the frost spikes which come out of the ground. We didn’t have really high DPS but we did have an awesome healer and tank. Some players are of the opinion that a paladin tank is your best option but we found that a Druid tank worked really well. He could tank the large elemental in his damage gear then when it was dead could clean up elementals and help on the frozen core.


The Frost Sycthe isn’t the most amazing weapon stat wise but it looks awesome, and has a use effect which makes it snow over your character. I read a blog entry

Read Full Article

Blizzard Crits the WotLK Alpha Wiki with a C&D

I have posted several articles on leaked Wrath of the Litch King alpha information originating from the WotLK Alpha Wiki. However it appears that Blizzard have hit them with a Cease & Desist order. Apparently this relates to several things including the use of the work "Official", not having copy write lines on all pages and the use of leaked screen shots. For the moment this means no more easily accessible leaked alpha information.

The wotlk alpha wiki team appear to want to continue with their site but I guess that would be dependent on Blizzard. I'm not an expert on American law but I believe they have this thing called "freedom of speech" and I am sure people will try to apply it here.

If Blizzard want to avoid this sort of thing happening again they could do two things. Firstly if they don't want information leaked, keep testing internal or at least limited to a selection of secure sites. Second increase the rate at which they release information about Litch King, the measly one new race every few weeks isn't really enough.

Read Full Article

Midsummer Fire Festival

Tomorrow heralds the beginning of the Midsummer Fire Festival. This event is intended to celebrate the hottest month of the year (based on the northern hemisphere). There have been some great changes this year including new items to purchase with your burning blossoms and quests (including some daily ones) to get your hands on the blossoms. In addition there will be a summonable boss, similar to the Headless Horseman, who will drop epic loot. The level of difficulty has increased with Ahune, the Frost Lord residing in the Slave Pens as opposed to the somewhat easy Scarlet Monastery.

Blizzard have updated the info page for the festival so you can view more information about the quests there or you can check out the wow wiki page.

One particular item the Frost Lord drops, Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, is on Squiggle's must have list. Sure it’s not the greatest shadow priest weapon but it looks awesome. I shouldn't forget he also drops a non combat pet. The festival will run for about two weeks so we can expect a lot of people “LFG Heroic Slave Pens”. Also keep your eyes out for the Brazier of Dancing Flames, at a pricey 350 blossoms there wont be a lot of this unique and fun item.

Read Full Article

Patch 2.4.3 - The begining of Litch King

The first signs of Wrath of the Litch King have emerged in Stormwind where construction of a harbor has begun. Hopefully this is only the start of changes to the world building up to the expansions release. Although not a role player I do like a good story.

Here are some pictures of the construction, if you want to see what the final harbor might look like check out this photobucket album.

Pictures from MMO Champion

Read Full Article

Patch 2.4.3 - Notable Points

Patch notes for 2.4.3 are now out! You can view the full patch notes here. If however you can’t be bothered reading six pages of notes I have summarised some of the more notable points.

• Players will be able to get their mount at level 30 either via the riding trainer (for 35g) or the class trainer in the case of warlocks or paladins.
• Haris Pilton in Worlds End Tavern will be selling bags and jewelery, including a 22 slot bag.
• A new non combat pet for players exalted with the Sha'tari Skyguard, Nether Ray Fr.
• Some Blood Elf flight masters will now use Dragon Hawks instead of bats.
• Some changes to the rogue talent Cheat Death meaning they wont be almost impossible to kill anymore.
  
• The cool down on alcoholic drinks has been reduced to 1 second. “I’ll drink to that!”
• Tailors received some love with a 28 slot herb bag pattern becoming available from the Sporeggar along with a couple of other patterns available for sale in Tanaris.
• An alarm clock and stop watch has been added.
• The help interface is to be drastically simplified you will no longer be required to choose a category before opening a ticket.
• The warlock spell Curse of Shadow will no be incorporated into Curse of the Elements.
• Many small changes have been implemented into Magister’s Terrace reducing damage from several mobs and bosses.
• Three new TCG loot items from the Hunt for Illidan expansion pack, check out the preview here.
  

As per usual there is a whole assortment of bug fixes and minor changes being put in place as well. I wonder if they will fix the sound effect for Bloodrage?

Read Full Article

The Inscription Profession

Something we haven't heard much about yet is the inscription profession that will be introduced in Wrath of the Litch King. This completely new profession will allow you to augment your spells and abilities and assist you with some more cosmetic issues. In essence inscriptions are enchants for your sells and abilities. The inscription profession will create Glyphs of which each player can have six. These glyphs will reside in each players spell book under a new tab. Glyphs will come in two categories, major of which you will have four and minor of which you will have two.

Major glyphs will allows you to alter your spells and abilities for example increase the crit chance of an Backstab or add a small dot component to a spell. Minor glyphs will provide more cosmetic improvements for example removing the need for a spell reagent.

The materials needed to make these glyphs is also a bit of a gray area. Apparently one of the inscriptions recipes seen so far uses Peacebloom leading to a conclusion it might be herbalism based. I would maintain that this is still speculation though.

I find this new profession intriguing and will continue to try and provide more information about it.

This information is based on the Wowwiki article, forum blue post, the Wotlk Alpha site and an Euro Gamer article. Image from The Ancient Egypt Site.

Read Full Article

UBRS - Another Old World Boss Down

Tonight we downed another old world boss, General Drakkisath. This was another run with Bohni and Jyade with both getting another level. However more importantly we are fleshing out Children of Stormwind's list of raid boss kills. Next stop Onyixia, Black Wing Lair and Molten Core.


On a side note, we got to see where the famous Leroy Jenkins video was filmed.

Read Full Article

Unifided Spell Power and other changes

It appears that the introduction of Unified Spellpower and the consolidation of other stats is going to happen in Wrath of the Litch King. This idea appears to have been brought to the fore thanks to a blue post who talked about introducing a system where by healing and damage were based off one stat (Unified Spellpower). Various talents and mechanics would ensure that healing and damage continued at the same rate but that healers would have an overall increase in DPS. Along with this it appears that critical strike rating and hit rating will will be consolidated so apply to both physical abilities and spells. Shaman and Paladins with both receive noticeable benefits from shared physical and spell hit and crit.

About now is when people start complaining, "great now the dps will ninja my robe" or "great huntards will roll on my shaman mail". This is not entirly true, sure it will mean more people can roll on items but it also means there are more items for you to roll on. Unified Spellpower/hit/crit are not the only statistics either. No Warlock worth his salt is going to roll on an item with mp5. It will however require that players are a bit more careful and considerate of other when rolling on items and perhaps guild without DKP systems firm up their looting rules.

Further reading on this topic can be found at Wotlk Alpha Wiki, MMO Champion, Wow Insider 13th June and Wow Insider 9th June.

Read Full Article

When we were first starting Karazhan I remember Stragoth saying “One day I would like to see our guild clear this in one night”. At that stage we were struggling to get Attumen and Moroes down in one night, so clearing the whole place in just over four hours last night is another milestone for the Children of Stormwind. It wasn’t an overgeared group, in fact a couple of the players had never been to the second half of Karazhan. On top of that I don’t think we were going at full speed, we did stop several times to explain encounters and Skyer and I could still save time by improving our chain pulling.

It was also the last time Alassiel/Airora will get to come to Karazhan for a while. She is starting a new job so attending raids is going to be tricky. I hope you enjoyed your last one for a while and no sorry I am not multi boxing and playing your character through Karazhan as well.

There may have been a previous occasion when Karazhan was cleared in one night but I haven’t heard about it so sorry if that’s the case.

Read Full Article

Season 4 Announced

This morning Eyonix announced the end of the third arena season. The forth season (Brutal) will begin on the 24th of June, two weeks from today. This means that Season two items will be purchasable for honor, ratings will be reset to 1500 and the Brutal items will become available. We should also see some more Armoured Nether Drakes flying around as the top teams get their rewards.

A week ago I was planning on grabbing Squiggle a nice season one mace with my honor points. Boy am I glad I waited! I guess that also means I am going to spend two weeks farming my but off for honor so I can get a full(ish) Season two set or armour. On the down side the first few weeks of season four are going to tough, with everyone’s rating reset we will be fighting all sorts of tough teams.

Image thanks to http://www.dl.ket.org

Read Full Article

The Sure Made them Huge - Blackrock Depths

You may have read my post a short while ago about lending a hand to a couple of friends who play with us but are still leveling their first characters. Well in an effort to speed up the process and so we could see another instance we hadn't been too Alassiel and I took them through Blackrock Depths.



This was another epic run lasting over four hours. Blizzard sure did make instances huge in the old days. We cleared the whole place (some of it twice thanks to respawns) getting every boss. Jyade, Bohni and Gordon all managed to complete some red quests, get some neat loot and watch Alassiel and I do plenty of killing.

Having spent most of my time in Outlands instances I really enjoyed a change of scenery. Pre Burning Crusade instances feel a lot more fantasy orientated a theme which, if rumor is correct, will continue in Northrend. Although I like the concept of having guns and steam powered machines it is nice to get back to the steel, fireball and dungeon stuff from which fantasy is made.


Us level 70s even managed to complete our attunement for Molten Core. So perhaps we can get a group going and take out Ragnaros and eventually get a hold of Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Read Full Article

Gnome Fight Night

The Children of Stormwind's birthday celebrations concluded on Monday night with Gnome Fight night. Around thirty members congregated on the bridge in Ironforge to begin this bizarre spectacle. Much dancing, chasing, following and foolishness ensued before the masses moved out the front to fight it out.


No scores were kept for the many battles but the gates of Ironforge were awash with running gnomes and dueling flags. Everyone looks the part in their Tuxedos thanks to some serious cloth farming and Squiggle's skill with tailoring.


Rules:
1. First rule of CoS Fight Club is "Dont talk about Fight Club!"
2. Second rule of Cos Fight Club is "Dont talk about Fight Club!"
3. If it is your first night of Fight Club you must fight
4. Fight Club participants must not be higher than level 1
5. Fight Club participants must all be wearing tuxedo clothing sets (purely for visual effect)
6. Fight Club participants should all be gnomes.
7. There are no weapons or buffs permitted in Fight Club it is fist fight duels only
8. Fight Club participants should all be gnomes
9. Fight Club will meet at IF bank on fight nights
10. Fight Club is for fun and designed to give members and specators a laugh as creepy little gnomes fight to the death.


Finally congratulations everyone for two years of the Children of Stormwind! Stragoth you have done an amazing job keeping this guild together through the highs and the lows. I look forward to planning celebrations next year in Northrend.

Read Full Article

Gruul's Lair - The Begining

As part of our continuing the Children of Stormwind birthday celebrations, we had our first guild 25 player raid on Sunday night, our target was Gruul's Lair. There has been much discussion about starting larger raids as we have enough players so it was excellent to see 25 people giving it a shot.


High King Maulgar went down on the second attempt once we had sorted out the pull. Gruul the Dragon Killer proved more of a challenge. After many attempts and a lot of deaths (especially for poor Ironarm) we gave up.

However two healers and a tank are now sporting tier four shoulders thanks to HKM and plenty of people got to experience some thing new that they probably thought they would never get to try.

Following is a list of everyone who attended:
Iwannakillu
Primevilfury
Skyer
Steroidboy
Sellia
Alassiel
Foruce
Lililithelle
Mariandrah
Polymorf
Raynor
Sandee
Swaggy
Caldin
Paf
Elfarol
Ironarm
Mudoken
Numinor
Sando
Stragoth
Dracca
Phro
Wiste
Westrage
Tarnwho
Latheta

Thankyou everyone and lets give it another go in a month or so.

Read Full Article

Taerar and Orgrimmar

As part of our two year birthday celebrations the Children of Stormwind took part in two more events. We took on the world dragon boss Taerar and raided various horde locations including Orgrimmar.


Taerar proved to be quite easy going down with very few deaths on the first attempt. Bohni made out quite well winning two very nice and very useful items as he is still in his 50s. In fact he got his first epic Acid Inscribed Greaves. Other items won went to level 70 characters who will hopefully not just sell them.


From there most of the raid turned south to Grom'gol Base Camp in Stranglethorn Vale. The horde camp was quickly cleared and we boarded the zeppelin. After a short detour we arrived in Durotar and headed to Orgrimmar. From here it got messy, the gates of Orgrimmar were awash with level 70 horde dueling and standing around. They quickly turned to killing us. We did take a few out but were outnumbered and our walk from the grave yard was a lot longer than there's. That pretty much spelled the end of the raid with a couple heading onto Cross Roads and Thousand Needles but most logging off or starting other things.

I did manage to do some sneaking and get inside Orgrimmar; did you know that when you are in horde cities you can see and use the trade chat channel?

Read Full Article

New Tabard

As part of our two year birthday celebrations we have a new tabard. Personally i am very happy with the change, blue will go with a lot more peoples outfits and the simple design is easy to see and recognise.

More events are planned for the rest of the long weekend.

Read Full Article

Happy Birthday CoS

On the forth of June two years ago Children of Stormwind was born. Congratulations on making it this far!

Celebrations will be undertaken over the weekend and include Fight Night, PvP raiding and an attempt at Gruul's Lair.

Read Full Article

WotLK Preorder Now

I popped into my local EB Games over the weekend and was confronted by a quite large Wrath of the Litch King pre-order poster. If you are after a collector's edition then get into your games store ASAP as the collector's editions are generally offered to those at the top of the pre-order list. The store I visited had sixty people on their list and expected to get thirty to forty Collector's editions!

I had to travel out of the state that day so I think I may have missed out.

Read Full Article

Dwarven Farm in Arathi Highlands

After exploring the Ironforge Airfield I decided to go and have a look at another unknown area. This one is on the far eastern coast of the Arathi Highlands. It appears to be a dwarven farm judging from the buildings.


The only occupants are two dwarves, one asleep and one wandering around near the stable, cats and a lot of rats. The rat population is quite hight I would have counted at least ten or so. Not that the cats are doing anything about it.


Unlike the Ironforge Airfield it is hard to see why this area exists. It doesn't lie under any flight path I have been on and getting there involves a long swim. There are only three reasons I can think of. Either it is there as a location for role playing it has some significance to a developer or it was never intended for anything. Oh well it was fun to look at anyway.

Note you can click in images to view larger versions.

Read Full Article

The Art of Wow Pt1

There is a lot of amazing artwork based on the World of Warcraft. This ranges from comics, to drawings and paintings and digital work. I am aiming to showcase a couple of artworks each month. This month I have chosen two one by Monica Langloi and the other by Aislinana. Click the images to view a larger version.

Go Fish by Monica Langlois (Shibouki)



This has been on of my favorites for a long time, when I first found it on the Blizzard fan art website I printed it out nice and big an stuck it up in my Dilbert style cubicle. It's a great artwork technically with a cute "story" behind it.

Sadly I wasn't able to find too many details on the artist.


Fellina - Hope Springs Eternal by Aislinana



Created using a screen shot edited in Photoshop this artwork has a great mood to it. In a recent interview with Wow Insider the artists mentions they are a bit of a role player and the theme behind this image clearly demonstrates this.

Aislinana is not a professional artists but has many years of experience with photo editing software. They are in a Black Temple raiding guild also spending time in the arenas and leveling alts.

Read Full Article

Lending a hand

A couple of friends who live with Elfarol started playing a while back, Alassiel, Elfarol and I all agreed we would create characters and level with them. Well while Alassiel and my characters are still in their 20s Jyade, Bohni and Gordon (Elfarol's Mage) are not in their low 50s. Feeling guilty Alassiel an I thought we would take them all through an instance eventually deciding on Stratholme.


Before the Burning Crusade expansion Stratholme was one of the top five man instances. What with Ironarm not reaching 60 until well into Burning Crusade I have never played many of the "old school" instances Stratholme included.


For Jyade, Bohni and Gordon it was a great way to get experience with the hardest thing being not to run too close to anything which might want to kill you. All up we spent four hours there killing all of the bosses and getting a level or two of experience for all three.

Baron Rivendare

Balnazzar

Much loot was to be had which everyone walking away with something shiny. Alassiel got the Piccolo of the Flaming Fire and I picked up the Cannonball Runner along with a big pile of Holy Water to help in the Nightbane encounter.


All up it was a very fun trip!

Note you can click images to see a larger version

Read Full Article