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Breakfast Topic: What sort of zone would you create for WoW?

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I recently wrote a Breakfast Topic about your WoW Zone, where I asked you about your playing space. As I keep saying, I read all the comments on Breakfast Topics I write, and this time, one caught my eye in my eternal search for more Breakfast Topics.

Commenter Mix had assumed from that BT's title that it would be about what WoW zone you would craft in the game if you had a free rein to do whatever you liked. What a great question! Mix reckoned a zone that would be "an addition to the Goblin Starting Area or the Darkmoon Faire ... a rickety run down amusement park taken over by Gnolls or Troggs or Undead ..."

This sounds fantastic. I love the dark, eerie feel of the Darkmoon Faire -- in fact, I find myself far more drawn to shady, spooky zones than to happy, sunny ones like the plains of Mulgore. After massive overexposure to Firelands, I'm really not down with fiery zones, and I find forested zones a bit dull. The creeping blackness of the Sha in the Mists beta looks great, though; I like its incongruity in the lush world of Pandaria.

I also love snowy zones -- I like how your tracks remain in the snow -- so I reckon I'd want to create something like Darkshire but in a snowy area, with dark, greenish-blue tones and ghostly figures in a frozen world. It would be like Narnia might look if the Ice Queen had her wicked way!

What about you? If you could create a WoW zone from scratch, what would you make? The sky's the limit, and it definitely doesn't have to be inspired by existing zones. Go wild!

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

An introduction to the Diablo 3 economy for WoW players

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Are you a WoW economy titan, or do you simply dabble? Either way, you'll be in for a treat in Diablo III. Blizzard has created a virtual economy that mirrors WoW's in many ways, giving you the ability to gain (or lose!) a fortune. Before you dive in and lose your virtual shirt, though, it wouldn't hurt to review some of the basics.
Gold is king

As in WoW, the primary resource that makes the world go 'round is gold. There's no silver or copper here, though; it's gold all the way down, and lots of it. If you're still in the WoW mindset of "Gee, a couple of thousand gold is a lot of money," then you'll want to recalibrate. You can expect to have several thousand gold by the end of the first Act. Your primary source for gold will be drops. Monsters, chests, objects -- most everything drops gold, and the amount increases as you progress through the game.

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Diablo Moviewatch: Diablo III: Wrath

Work warning: Pretty violent video.

Well, if I didn't know that Diablo III released today, the empty halls of the WoW Insider headquarters would certainly tell me. It's like a ghost town around here. I've not been able to play yet, but that's OK. I've got this incredibly awesome animated short feature to get me by.

Diablo III: Wrath was revealed for the community about a week ago. If you're just now getting your hands on the Diablo universe for the first time, this video gives you a great sense of the mythos. The animation is fantastic and gorgeous. I could almost wish for this to be an ongoing series.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Mists of Pandaria Beta: Spirit gear is coming back in fashion

It's been known for a while that spirit gear isn't on the list for the most part right now for players leveling in Mists. DPS cloth abounds, and the idea the designers have is that you can just reforge the DPS gear into healer gear easily enough (or at least reforge it so that it's passable as healer gear).

In part, this concept comes from the new rewards system, where you don't see all the gear rewards the quest giver offers but rather only the ones that are specific to you. As a solution to this, Blizzard provides green gear vendors that distribute off-spec gear.

However, Ghostcrawler announced today that Blizzard's going to offer more spirit gear again via quest rewards. This is in part due to the constructive (read: non-trolling) feedback it's received on the issue.

Ghostcrawler
After reading more of this feedback and looking at the zones, we're concerned that there aren't enough quest rewards with Spirit on them. We are leaning towards offering more, as choices, so that players who feel like their Spirit is low can choose to have more.


So rejoice, healers! Getting geared up will be a bit easier for you now.

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Improved digsites in Mists of Pandaria archaeology

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When I hit the new skill cap in archaeology on beta and achieved Zen Master, someone in my beta guild remarked that 600 skill points in archaeology sounded painful. But it's not -- it's actually better! Archaeology got some buffs in Mists of Pandaria.

There are only two new races to worry about, the pandaren and the mogu, and you get nothing but these two on the continent of Pandaria. As usual, players get four random digsites across the entire continent, though it's currently bugging out to three or even two sites only. But Pandaria is so huge, you say. We're restricted to no flying until 90. How can it not be painful?

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Filed under: Archaeology, Mists of Pandaria

Mists of Pandaria says bye-bye to cookie-cutter builds

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I had no idea that talents existed in vanilla WoW. I wasn't really stupid -- I just didn't know what talents were or that they were something I should be getting. I expect they were detailed somewhere in the instruction booklet that I didn't bother reading before I started running around Azeroth. I was finally clued in to their existence around level 40 or so on my first character, when a friend asked what spec I was putting points into. My blank "... points?" response garnered an immediate lesson on talent trees.

Talents received a massive overhaul between Wrath and Cataclysm, one that saw a vast majority of talents culled and the trees themselves shortened considerably. It took a little time to get used to the changes, but in the end, the changing of talents wasn't really as huge a deal as I thought it'd be. Choosing talents on a character is still just as easy as it used to be. Don't worry so much about what you pick while you're leveling, and when you reach 85, you'll find plenty of sites online that will tell you the best stuff to grab at max level and why.

Which is sort of the problem, isn't it?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Lichborne: Death knights remain in holding pattern in Mists of Pandaria beta

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

When one takes a two-week vacation, one generally looks forward to things having changed, even slightly, when one returns. This is especially sure when speaking of the Mists of Pandaria beta test. Strangely, that hasn't been exactly the case for death knights. There have been changes, certainly, but not as drastic as we might have hoped -- and not as well-explained, either.

Today, we'll take a look at a few of the more important changes and what they imply for our class. In addition, we'll see what Ghostcrawler did and didn't say about death knights in a recent post.

Plague Leech and disease issues

There've been a few changes to death knights, but the most interesting one comes with Plague Leech. This first-tier talent, which replaces Vile Spew, will allow you to generate a death rune by canceling the diseases from your target.

The nice thing about this skill is that it gives us another much-needed Blood Tap replacement now that Blood Tap itself has been turned into a somewhat more restricted talent. The bad thing about this skill is that it's probably going to become mandatory for min-maxing DPS death knights. If your diseases are about to expire anyway and you can eat them for an extra death rune, it's hard to see how that won't become a DPS increase. Once we all reach level 90 and the math has been sufficiently mathed, it seems relatively obvious that Plague Leech will be considered mandatory by the hardcore PvE community, for better or for worse.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne, Mists of Pandaria

Two Bosses Enter: Season 4 preview

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In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title.

Two Bosses Enter's season finale was a big win for dungeon boss design, with End Time's Murozond beating out the rest of the Hour of Twilight 5-man instance bosses and even some of the Dragon Soul raid bosses, thanks to the Raid Finder. The WoW Insider community connected with an all-around fun fight that wasn't as punishing as some of the other fights in the 5-man heroic tier but made for epic moments and an important climactic battle. Murozond and his unique mechanic will have a lot to say going forward with encounter design, I would imagine, as this whole set of 5-mans has been remarkably successful, for the most part. Sorry, Arcurion.

Now that we've got season 3 tucked away, it's time to ponder the future, looking forward toward a brighter and more peaceful tomorrow. Sadly, that tomorrow isn't looking so bright or peaceful, with the Horde and the Alliance preparing to descend upon the lost continent of Pandaria, bitter rivalries and hatreds newly reignited. With war comes heroes from every faction, giving us plenty of cannon fodder for Two Bosses Enter.

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Filed under: Two Bosses Enter, Mists of Pandaria

Spiritual Guidance: Lightwell, Lightspring, and the latest on priest healing in Mists

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Well, we got it. I never thought I'd see the day, but we finally got the Trial of the Crusader Lightwell that shoots heals at allied players instead of requiring them to click. Holy priests will gain access to the new Lightwell, called Lightspring, using a glyph of the same name. Before you get too excited, however, I should mention that there is a catch. Apparently, automatic Lightwells don't heal for nearly as much as a manual ones do, so depending on the fight and your raid members' ability to use the Lightwell in the first place, you may choose to skip the Glyph of Lightspring now and again.

Good ol' Derevka has already written up a thorough first look at Lightspring in which he points out many of the spell's limitations. In the post, he points out that Lightspring only heals targets at less than 50% of their health, and it has a 5-second cooldown between heals to prevent it from being used as a raid cooldown. To read the rest of Derevka's write-up and see his comparisons on the numerical output of the two spells, head over to Tales of a Priest.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

The Queue: AFK evil

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

I'm going to be raiding tonight, but during the rest of the day (after my work is done, of course), I'll finally be enjoying Diablo 3.

Pretty much AFK, evil.

And if you're looking for something not evil, go check out WoW Insider Editor-in-Chief Alex Ziebart's AMAA (Ask Me Almost Anything) on /r/wow today.

Kikiswingset asked:

My raid leader demands that if you want to raid, you must have played a healer up to lvl 60 and show him that you understand how tirage priority works, but also to foster an appreciation forthe difficulty of healing "fire squatters". If you had to pick, which role/class/spec should everyone play before they start raiding?

Welp, "fire squatter" is now my favorite term, ever.

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Filed under: The Queue

Around Azeroth

Around Azeroth

Featured Galleries

It came from the Blog: Hallow's End 2011
It came from the Blog: Pilgrim's Bounty 2011
Mat's Birthday Wish
WoW Tier 13 Armor Sets
Death Knight Tier 13 and Retrospective
BlizzCon 2011 Floor Show
BlizzCon 2011 Costumes
BlizzCon 2011: Dungeons and Raids Panel
BlizzCon 2011 Class Talents Gallery

 

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