My character Azakia has now reached the heady heights of level 69, this after much training and doing quests. I am already a third of the way to my ultimate goal, the top level 70, also alot of guild members are not far behind me. I reckon it will take me a few more days to get to this level and then I can concentrate on getting enough gold to get my flying mount.
It is reported that a character has sold recently on World of Warcraft for some $9500. This character had a very rare weapon called Twin Blades of Azzinoth and is apparently 1 of only 2 characters to have this. It is also reported that Blizzard, the company that runs World of Warcraft, is not very happy with this and may have now banned the account as it goes against their policy.
Filed under: Fan stuff, Lore, RP
Player and RP enthusiast Saphrona of the Shadow Council server has compiled all the known information about pirates in Azeroth. Most of the information comes from the WoW pen and paper roleplaying game. Blizzard lore guru Chris Metzen has approved all the lore added to the game by the PnP books, so it’s as good as gold.
Saphrona has dug up some interesting facts, such as there are more pirate organizations in the game than just the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Roaming the high (and low) seas of Azeroth are:
Also, the Bloodsail Buccaneers are using engineering to secretly construct a submarine fleet and the leader of the Bloodsails believes so strongly in human supremacy of the high seas, that he refused to aid the Alliance in the Third War. Scurvy dog, indeed.
For your pirate lore overview, check out Saphrona’s full article on the official forums.
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Filed under: Hunter, Bosses, Big Red Kitty
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
In the lovely dawn of the Burning Crusade era, before the bugs were patched, the mobs scaled-down, and the promise of ten more talent points gnawed on our brains like termites in a house made of sticks, there were some wonderful situations that required skill, patience, tenacity, and guile.
They needed, in a word, a hunter.
And you and your hunter brethren were there to fill the void, to complete the circle, to provide the key ingredients toward making those impossible dreams come true. It was glorious, it was awe-inspiring, it was waves of gratitude from the massive collection of the lesser classes crashing over the Internet and into your headphones inspiring you to greatness. You were giddy. You were excited. You were quasi-but-not-really god-like.
And then Blizz nerfed it all to Sporeggar and back again. Typical.
But the echos of past glory still exists. For many of us, those memories are fresh and intoxicating. For others, they are a myth and only spoken of in hushed tones and in quiet, dark places where we meet to plot our return to prominence.
Let’s bring our pain and suffering into the light. Let’s remember what has happened and what has been and talk about it openly and with pride. BRK teaches young hunters to hone skills that are not needed in today’s game because the day may come when our talents are once again critical to our guild’s success.
Do you remember when they were?
We used to Kite. Nowhere was kiting more necessary than Upper Blackrock Spire. To the many of you who never got to run this instance in its heyday, you’ll find it hard to believe how often one would see in general chat channels,
“need hunter for UBRS, have 9/10 and gtg”
Yes, we were needed and needed big-time. General Drakkisath, the final boss of UBRS, was important back then as he dropped every class’s Dungeon Set One chest armor. This was not a difficult fight as long as the raid had a hunter who could Kite.
The setup of the General Drakkisath fight was thus: Drak was flanked on each side by an elite, making it a three-mob-pull. The fight strategy was for one of the adds to be crowd controlled, either by off-tanking or other means, and Drak to be Kited away from the fight until the other two elites were killed. And what a Kiting effort it was.
Drak was fast but not as fast as a hunter with Aspect of the Cheetah. The key was to Kite Drak as far away from the add-fight as possible. This was accomplished by getting a massive initial aggro with an Aimed Shot, followed with a Serpent Sting so that every tick of the sting kept him aggro’d on you. The hunter then ran out of the room, across a bridge, and then had to pop Drak with another shot, preferably another Serpent Sting, to keep him on your tail. Drak would be kited into the ZOMG Five-Mob-Pull room, (where many a raid suffered hideous deaths,) and then the hunter would make a choice of where to take him.
If your party was sufficiently geared and had the DPS, we would take Drak into The Beast’s room. This was an easier kite in that one was less likely to get lost or lose aggro, but the leap over the fire was tricky. If you hit the fire with Aspect of the Cheetah active, you’d be stunned, Drak would catch you, end of Kite. But timed properly, the fire-leap was the last hard part of the Kite and the hunter would run waaay back into the darkness that was The Beast’s starting area. Once at the back of this “room”, (it wasn’t really a room, it was more just an undesigned area that had no floors or walls or ceilings but was perfectly safe once The Beast had been dispatched), the hunter would Feign Death and fall off of Drak’s threat list. Then Drak would usually aggro on the healer back at his starting room and make a bee-line for her.
For raids that required more time to kill the adds, the hunter could Kite Drak all the way to Rend Blackhand’s chamber. This was much more fun as one had to make turns and twists and not get lost while Kiting this massive dragon throughout the instance. Eventually making it to Rend’s room, the hunter would run to the very back corner, let Drak get right up on his grill, and drop FD at the last possible second. Again, Drak would aggro the healer and boogie back to the rest of the raid, the hunter on his heels to help take him down.
“Drak incoming, aggro’d on Priest!” we’d call out over vent. The tank would stand and wait for Drak as he and the hunter raced back to the raid. The tank would grab aggro, the raid would burn Drak down, someone’s chest armor would drop which would most likely to be sharded as shaman-gear would drop for alliance raids and paladin-loot for horde.
Regardless of the crappy gear, another superlative Kiting was cheered. Hunter reputations were made and destroyed on this boss. Lists were kept, names were recorded.
“Yeah I’ve seen him Kite Drak before. He’s good.”
“No way. He got caught on the bridge and wiped the raid last week. Find someone else.”
The culmination of BRK’s Hunter Class was a successful Drak Kite. One didn’t graduate without this critical component of our class’s arsenal firmly established in front of the guild.
(Furthermore, Kiting-skill was the test for the Epic Hunter Quest and the Rhok’delar bow. We won’t go into this specific subject here; it’s deserving of its own column.)
Hunters would Kite things just for the thrill of it. Have you seen the movies of a hunter kiting Stitches to Goldshire? Or how about the pre-Burning Crusade Doom Lord Kazzak burning Stormwind to the ground? Yes, that was a hunter who kited that 40-man raid boss into the city.
Hunter-skill was Necessary back then. But where is our Necessity now?
Arcatraz is a difficult instance for the unprepared and inexperienced. However it used to be much worse than it is now. After Wrath-Scryer Soccothrates and Dalliah the Doomsayer are dispatched, a party runs up the curved stairs, across a transparent bridge, and encounters an elite mechanical trash mob. He’s tough to be sure, but your party has downed a couple of these already and he isn’t anything new.
But there used to be two of them here, and what was the only class that could crowd-control one of them? A hunter and his Freezing Trap. Without a hunter, it was a total pain to get past this point. Tank and off-tanking was required and a healer would get taxed close to or even beyond her limits trying to keep them both alive while the two remaining DPSers would slowly burn down the mechanicals one at a time.
“need hunter for arc, have tank and healer and gtg”
Wasn’t that great? The first Outland faction with whom we reach exalted was Sha’tar because we ran this instance so frequently. It wasn’t a Drak Kite or anything else wildly spectacular, but it was a Hunter Instance because of this single two-mob pull.
And Blizz nerfed it, removing a mechanical. No hunter needed anymore.
Mechanar is a harder instance than Arcatraz, in our esteemed opinion. Especially the tunnel leading to Pathaleon the Calculator. But the part of this instance most people have difficulty with is the second boss, Nethermancer Sepethrea. And even she’s not the Big Problem, it’s her {bleep}{bleep}mother{bleeping} fire elemental adds that are the party-killers. A total pain in the @ss, this chick is.
Enter the Hunter. When we first thought of doing this boss after Pathaleon — Kiting her butt down his tunnel, fighting her in the last room of the instance — and seeing this strategy work beautifully, we were positive Blizz had introduced this fight in remembrance of the Great Drak Kite from UBRS. Her adds were so slow and she herself so easy to kill that the elementals would disintegrate before they completed their trek across the tunnel. Having a hunter for Serpentia was a godsend and made her destruction the easiest part of the whole bloody instance.
“need hunter for mech, have tank and healer and gtg”
And we rocked that instance over and over again, introducing people to the Serpenthia Kite and telling anybody who would listen that this fight had a History. What you just witnessed, we’d announce, is a quasi-reenactment of the Great Drak Kite hunters had to perfect in order for guilds to get their Dungeon Set One chest armor! Pride, my hunter-friends. We kited that beyotch and people got their crummy shards — her loot-list is pretty sad — just like in the UBRS heyday.
And Blizz nerfed it, making Sepethrea Unkiteable. No hunter needed anymore. She’s bound to her stupid room with her stupid elementals and her stupid loot-list.
WTF, over?
So what’s left now. Shadow Lab? Our pet can tank Murmur but that’s not a class-skill we can teach or really brag about. Steamvaults? Nothing. Karazhan? Nada. Misdirection is great but there’s no real skill involved with it.
There’s nothing left for us. Blizz has nerfed our usefulness, our “We Need a Hunter” moments. There are no more “need hunter” posts in the general chats anymore.
We are diminished.
But there is Hope. The new expansion is on the horizon and with it new instances and bosses. Perhaps, if we are both polite and boisterous, Blizz will recognize that we’ve continued to train our Kiting skills, that we haven’t forgotten the Old Ways or the hunters that have come before us. Bring Drak Back! we could proselytize. Perhaps we shall be rewarded for our perseverance with a mob that cries out , “Hunter Needed”.
And a decent loot-list wouldn’t be bad, either.
Daniel Howell continues his quest to be introduced as an NPC in Nagrand and be the starting point for the new Epic Hunter Quest as the hunter-pet duo extraordinaire known to lore as BigRedKitty. More of his theorycrafting and slanderous belittling of the lesser classes can be found at bigredkitty.blogspot.com.
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Filed under: Fan stuff, Factions, RP
What pirate faction, you say? The Bloodsail Buccaneers of Booty Bay have their own limited faction gains and rewards. Killing goblins and doing the few available quests will get you a pirate outfit, but not much else.
Player Bloodysaber of the Uldum server would like to see more. He’d like to see it so much, he wrote up an entire faction design document for Blizzard to follow. This document not only including quests, NPCs and faction rewards, but also new pirate gear with stats, a pirate title and a pirate town in the form of a boat parked off shore with vendors, flight masters, engineer trainers and quest givers.
If you’re in the pirate mood today, head over to his thread and give him your support.
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Filed under: Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Humor, Screenshots
A couple of sight gags have popped up on the forums over the past few days, and all of them are pretty darn funny.
First off, Mankrik (the character, not the NPC) recently raised a ticket with the GM about an Environmental problem. No, not glitching graphics or missing shaders– he was worried about tuna overfishing, specifically in the Barrens. A GM even answered him, though he said it’s nothing to worry about. Conspiracy? Click the picture above to see the whole, hilarious thing (and thanks to Zeph for sending this one along to us).
And after the jump, a couple of different players used WoW as a canvas to paint their favorite new game, Bioshock. It’s my favorite shooter/RPG/Objectivist commentary on the 360– at least until Halo 3 comes out. Click the link below to see some Big Daddies and Little Sisters, WoW-style.
These first two are done by Happycat of Destromath (or at least they were posted to the forums by her– let us know if they’re not hers), and they are terrific. You must click the pics to see the big versions– the bottom one is my new wallpaper.
And inspired (I guess) by Happycat’s work, Naile made this one in what looks like WoW Modelviewer. Also very cool, click to see big.
Nice job all! And if you think you can make some cool WoW art like this, don’t forget that tomorrow is the deadline for the WoW Insider fan art contest– send us some!
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Podcasts, Fan stuff, Instances, Humor
You may have already heard this one, but I figured it would be a good thing to post on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Our friends over at WoW Radio recently dropped a new track from Captain Dan, “rising star in the field of Pirate Hip-Hop,” called “Deadmines Battle.” You can listen to it over on their website– it features some trippy beats, a little Casio jamming, and rhymes all about everyone’s favorite pirate instance. My favorite part of the song, just like the instance, is Mr. Smite, of course.
WoW Radio also says Captain Dan’s new album hits today (it’s called Rime of the Hip-Hop Mariners, which I, being a Coleridge fan, find very funny)– there’s more tunes and information about that over on their Myspace page.
Avast ye maties, thar be some good rapping off starboard side! Now get back to yer deck-scrubbing, ye scurvy dogs, afore I keelhaul the lot of ya! Yarrrrrr!
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Filed under: Machinima, Humor, WoW Moviewatch
Shiver me timbers! I was shocked t’ the very boney t’ find not one, but two WoW themed pirate videos t’ enjoy this fine day. I could not decide which one t’ show and which t’ force t’ walk the plank. Then it hit me like a cannonball t’ the hull! I could show both. N’ ye scurvy layabouts can decide which one is the greatest treasure t’ be had.
First, the scallywag Tauren above yodels a toon so lovely, it could make Davey Jones crack a smile. Ye can view the next contender after the jump!
This longer song n’ dance has a cast large enough t’ board the Queen’s own ship!
So what’ll it be, me mateys? Which fine performance gets a seat next to the Cap’n and which will be sleepin’ wit’ de fishies?
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Filed under: How-tos, Odds and ends, Humor, RP
For those of you who haven’t farmed Bloodsail Buccaneer faction for their Buccaneer’s Uniform, Bloodsail Admiral’s Hat and Blood Parrott, WoW Insider has a quick list of easily obtainable pirate costumage:
For your shirt, hit up your local guild tailor for the simple to make a Black or White Swashbuckler’s Shirt. A good alternative for the ladies who desire the busty wench look is the Azure Silk Vest.
Throw on some Azure Silk Pants and fish up some Buccaneer’s Boots from Stormwind Canals for the Alliance or Wailing Caverns for Horde (or the AH.) Then head to the Deadmines and knock off a few Defias until one drops a Defias Rapier and Parrot. Or, you can fly down to Stranglethorn Vale and buy one of two parrots from Nark in Booty Bay.
Finally, for your head, farm 6 Long Elegant Feathers in Feralas from Frayfeather Hippogryphs for a tailored Admiral’s Hat or you can settle for a quick and easy Silk Headband, made from simple materials.
Or you can avoid all that shopping and just hit yourself with a spare Hallowed Wand - Pirate from last year’s Halloween Event.
Now, your ready to hit the high seas!
EDIT: I missed the easiest costume of all: eating Savory Deviate Delight will transfrom you into a scurvy blight on the high seas (or a ninja). I guess I’ll be the one walking the plank this day!
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Filed under: Odds and ends, NPCs, Forums
A post I saw while crawling the forums during one of my ‘no sleep’ periods has me wondering the same thing the original poster is: where in the Outland are Turalyon and Alleria? We were told prior to The Burning Crusade’s launch that we would discover the fate of the Alliance Expedition, but while we’ve found out about Danath (running Honor Hold), Khadgar (communing with A’dal in Shattrah) and Kurdran (he’s running the Wildhammer Stronghold in Shadowmoon Valley) we’ve yet to see more of the fate of the two last members than the surprising fact that they have a son who is now grown up enough to wear Pally Tier 2. I wonder if anyone has told the Horde that Sylvanas is an auntie? (And man, I don’t even want to think about the kind of gifts Auntie Sylvanas would give.)
Personally, although I can hardly pretend to be the lore expert around here (we all know who that is) I’m enough of a mark for the lore that I want to see what happened to the guy who picked up Lothar’s fallen sword and kicked Doomhammer’s ass up and down Blackrock Mountain. (My tauren would just like to tell me to stuff it here.) Not to mention all the possible drama of a Windrunner family reunion. Are there any in-game clues to where these two ended up? Does anyone think we’ll find out more when the Sunwell Plateau goes live, or are we going to have to wait for Wrath of the Lich King, or maybe even beyond that?
Edited to add: I forgot to mentioin that, despite the Allerian Srronghold bearing her name and having several high elves manning it, Alleria is not to be found there.
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