official World of Warcraft

[GNRambo]

When patch 3.0 is coming out of the shop? Does anybody know?

Also, as a seconday skill I went for Fishing, because I heard that the tamed pet will need to be fed.

Background downloading has started for me so it should be really soon..

Going to face Hex Lord in ZA tonight with the guild for the first time. I've run it in PUG groups before. Any advice? Whats the best way to get everyone's shadow resistance up?

I faced hex lord yesterday, he was down to 21% before we wiped and the raid was called. I really wanted that feral drood staff as well :pinch: :cry:

[the evn show]

The problem at the moment is, and imo will be ultimately the end of WoW, is the ease with which people can get high end gear now.

As someone that had the most psedo status to lose: that's not a big deal at all. I don't raid to have better gear than world + dog and that's an attitude that's shared by every other end-game raider* I've spoken to about the changes to TBC. I'm not speaking for everyone, but if "We raid for fat loot" is a predominate feeling among end-game* raiders then I'd like to see a source for that.

There are a few Sunwell-geared characters that post in this thread, I hope they'll add their oppinion about why they raid.

There is no incentive anymore to raid. If you want good gear raiding is not the only way to go. This is a double-edged knife though.

For what it's worth: I think that's a good thing. My friends that have absolutely no interest in raiding have fun with their arena teams. I'm glad they aren't required to spend time doing stuff they don't enjoy to be better at the stuff they do. Likewise, I'm glad that PVP weapons are rating restricted because it reduces the preasure to do spend time in battlegrounds & arena (something I don't like) to get gear to be more competitive at stuff I do enjoy.

But in the end what keeps a game alive are the end-game raiders. When they stop finding members or when the game is getting at the point where raiding has no point anymore people will start looking elsewhere.

As long as raiding is fun, raiders will do it. I disagree that end-game raiding is what keeps the game running. What purpose do I serve that makes my $15/month more valuable than a casual player that still doesn't have a level 70 character? If anything I'm more likely to play more than a typical player (Blizzard estimates an average player is 8 hours/week according to their lawsuit against the makers of Glider, I average around 12-14 hours /played each week and the high-end guilds on my server typically have 20+ hour /week raid schedules).

I consume more server time, development resources, etc. and pay the same as the typical player. End-game raiders are a financial liability.

Less than 1% of people will the play in the majority of Sunwell. All of the resources that went in to creating that zone are 'wasted'. We know large group PVE takes vast amounts of resources to create (on the order of months or years), and even "old" end game content like vashj and kael will only be seen by <10% of people who raid. That effort would probably be spent pleasing the majority of their subscribers, but I'm glad they don't. In the grand scope: if every guild with a sunwell kill vanished today, they'd still have 10 million active accounts and hardly anybody would notice.

Sunwell can be seen as a bridge between BC and the new content. People were getting bored and started to complain about the lack of content after BT. So they came up with the Sunwell story and added the zone and the 2 instances, that's also why Mu'ru and Kil'Jaeden are so hard. They are supposed to keep people busy until WoTLK. They will probably be nerfed after the expansion is released.

The first 3 bosses in Sunwell will be drastically Nerfed by the removal of the Sunwell Raidiance buff in patch 3.0. The DPS checks should become substantially easier to beat due to the net buff many classes are recieving in that patch as well. Without having done Sunwell with the new patch I don't want to talk about the severity of the nerf, but it does look like it'll be significant.

A M'uru wipe is often a matter of 5-10 seconds: gaining 2,000 raid DPS converts that fight from "just barely wiping" (as we do) to "passing with plenty of time to spare". The changes to avoidance would likely allow us to drop down to 5 or 6 healers for Brutallus and the extra DPS will likely have us killing him in a little over 4-minutes. To compare: our first kill came exactly 1 second before his 6-minute enrage after a few wipes at 1% and we regularly kill him now in a little more than 5-minutes.

Sunwell was announced as a raid to follow BT before patch 2.1 in a developer QA. The Sunwell Island was on the map long before TBC was in beta. Sunwell wasn't an afterthought, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was released later than originally planned. I suspect it was either delayed to shorten the gap between "new content" expansion, or that they expected to launch it sooner than they did and give us more time to work at it but the instance was delayed for some reason.

As for the difficulty: It's the end of PVE, it's supposed to be challenging. If M'uru and Kil'Jaeden were as pathetically easy as Illidan and Council I'd have been extremely disappointed.

* Whenever I say "end-game raider" I mean people at the end of the game: People that shard Sunwell loot and use the tokens to get the PVP off-set pieces. It's the extreme top end because that's what Sunwell is intended for.

[Got3n]

woohoooo beta invite!!!!!

[Prosidius]

If anyone is on the server Lightning Blade US PvP you have a new friend. :) Transfered my main there and a few other guildies going there as well.

[game_over]

I started playing this for the first time last night took around 12 hours for it to download, install and download millions of patches, seems worth it though.... i dont really know what i'm doing yet.... i killed a few wolves and had an explore?

where do you go to do the quests n stuff?

[draakhs]

I agree with the most part you say The Evn Show.

But still I saw it happen in EQ. When most of the raiders left for WoW the game was really dead in the water. Guilds broke apart (Including the one I was in), end-game raiding dropped to a minimum. Afterwards Sony was able to keep the damages to a minimum but it was already too late.

Don't get me wrong, my problem is not with the availability of PvP gear or easy obtainable gear, my problem is with the fact Blizzard does not take a stand. They try to do everything at once.

PvP in WoW is horribly unbalanced. instead of taking that on they kept pushing out arena seasons and BG gear. I annoys me to see everyone in the same gear when I am in Shattrath, everyone and his dog is wearing S2 - S4. It's become rare when I see a tank for instance with onslaught on him.

Before BC our guild was at Naxxramas level making us 3rd guild on our server Horde side. Most of us raided for fun, I wanted to see the bosses but also 50% of our raidbase did it for gear. So when it became obvious gear was going to be outdated in BC those 50% stopped coming to raids and we started having problems. This will slowly happen if they keep going along this road.

There is just not enough of a high-end playerbase to dedicate themselves to a guild just to see and do the end-game. 75% of the playerbase play for gear and is happy to have S2 or T4 and nothing else. This is what scares me because it gets more and more obvious when you run around.

Hence also the general chat messages saying doing KZ/Gruul/ZA etc must be good geared. People want to get gear fast and if possible with as little effort as possible, they don't care what the content or the story behind the instance is.

Some guilds are pleading for members and are having trouble finding them.

I started playing this for the first time last night took around 12 hours for it to download, install and download millions of patches, seems worth it though.... i dont really know what i'm doing yet.... i killed a few wolves and had an explore?

where do you go to do the quests n stuff?

Follow the questline in your starting area. They will lead you to the closest city and from there on you slowly start going to farther away zones etc...

Have fun :)

[»X«]

I think WoW is slowly loosing its appeal for me. All this talk of raiding. I?ve never been in one, so I have to rely on pre level 60 content to keep me amused.

There are plenty of quests, but all the low end instances are in low demand. I remember finally getting one of my chars to level 60. Excited to finally join in the fun of BRD or NAXX etc.

But alas, soon as TBC was released no one cared and ive still yet to experience any decent instances.

I do enjoy playing WoW but I feel its interest slowly disappearing in me. I very much doubt I will renew the monthly contract.

[Emorex]

Don't you have TBC? Try doing all the quests in Outland, that will keep you busy for at least 2weeks to a month. After that, you can do regular instances + heroics + PvP. You really need TBC to enjoy the game, you can't stick in Azeroth forever, people leave that area right away.

[game_over]

are there any essential addons or downloads for first time players?

[Emorex]

are there any essential addons or downloads for first time players?

Honestly, I would say no. Don't get anything when you play the game for the first time. As you level up you may find you want some addons other people have, but they just overcomplicate things and you can just enjoy the game for what it is. This time of innocence only lasts for so long and you don't want to make it shorter than what it already is :p

[SMELTN]

Honestly, I would say no. Don't get anything when you play the game for the first time. As you level up you may find you want some addons other people have, but they just overcomplicate things and you can just enjoy the game for what it is. This time of innocence only lasts for so long and you don't want to make it shorter than what it already is :p

Agreed. Please don't download any addon's if its your first time playing.. Once you really get the hang of the game (after level 20 at least) :p then you can talk about downloading stuff.

[obiwong]

are there any essential addons or downloads for first time players?

quick loot (Y)

lol

make your life easier

[Sethos]

quick loot (Y)

lol

make your life easier

Why not just disable Shift + Right-Click looting in the settings, then all you have to do is right-click to loot everything. Having to click on what you wanna loot is annoying.

[GNRambo]

are there any essential addons or downloads for first time players?

Quest helper

[obiwong]

Why not just disable Shift + Right-Click looting in the settings, then all you have to do is right-click to loot everything. Having to click on what you wanna loot is annoying.

that works too

just typically i only care about looting whatever it is i'm farming or just the gold off the mob

don't care for all that gray crap that drops :p

[»X«]

Don't you have TBC? Try doing all the quests in Outland, that will keep you busy for at least 2weeks to a month. After that, you can do regular instances + heroics + PvP. You really need TBC to enjoy the game, you can't stick in Azeroth forever, people leave that area right away.

To start with I would say no. Its a whole new avenue. True, addons are amazing to get the job done. I cannot go back to WoW without them. But I managed to get to level 30 before I even knew what one was. So I think you will be ok.

Quest helper

Nah. Carbonite quest is much better. At least they actually have pictures and a proper description of what it actually is.

[Got3n]

that works too

just typically i only care about looting whatever it is i'm farming or just the gold off the mob

don't care for all that gray crap that drops :p

Believe it or not, the gray drops add up to lots of gold.

[Kanoxia]

Yup, especially the grey crystals that drop from mobs in Netherstorm, a stack of those vendors for over 2G iirc

[Shadrack]

I use to not like the grey drops either because i sucked at inventory management. They'd pile up and it would be somewhat of a chore to clean them out (either throw away or sell them). I found an awesome addon called ArkInventory that has changed that. That addon is exactly what I needed. I'm going to have a hard time w/o it when 3.0 comes out. Hopefully an update will come out soon.

[gigapixels Veteran]

So after a few nights of working on my UI it's finally in good enough shape to show off. I'm sure there are a few things here and there I'll change, but this is pretty much going to be the end result:

If anybody wants any specifics, let me know :)

Everything is an Ace addon except QuestHelper and SmartBuff because there are (in my opinion) no good replacements for those that are Ace addons.

[Slane]

First night of Kael attempts, and I think we did pretty good. Each attempt was good progress. Going into Phase 3 we had all but two weapons down (Warp Slicer was at 10% and shield was 40%) and going into Phase 4, had Thaldrad (gaze guy), all weapons dead, with Capirene (fire bitch) at 30% and Sanguire at like 10%. Decided to cancel tommorow's BT run to go at him again, think i'm going to suggest a different kill order for weapons. Currently we got the MT (kael tank) picking up Axe, all Ranged on it. Feral druid picking up the mace, all melee on it. Pally tank grabbing everything else, with me holding Warp Slicer, and keeping Staff (shield bash) in the concentrate, once Axe is down, all range starts AoEing with melee focusing on staff and infitiny blade. Then it's melee on Warp Slicer and ranged on shield, assuming we have time.

[I am Redbeard]

Think of /gquiting my current guild who is working on Kalecgos for my guild who I made it half way through BT with, who is now struggling on t5 stuff.

I think I can add to the guild more than my current one.

[»X«]

So after a few nights of working on my UI it's finally in good enough shape to show off. I'm sure there are a few things here and there I'll change, but this is pretty much going to be the end result:

If anybody wants any specifics, let me know :)

Everything is an Ace addon except QuestHelper and SmartBuff because there are (in my opinion) no good replacements for those that are Ace addons.

Reckon you could be so kind and package that up for me? ;)

Looks awesome.

[SMELTN]

Reckon you could be so kind and package that up for me? ;)

Looks awesome.

agreed I wouldn't mind trying that out.

[the evn show]

and going into Phase 4, had Thaldrad (gaze guy), all weapons dead, with Capirene (fire bitch) at 30% and Sanguire at like 10%. Decided to cancel tommorow's BT run to go at him again, think i'm going to suggest a different kill order for weapons. Currently we got the MT (kael tank) picking up Axe, all Ranged on it. Feral druid picking up the mace, all melee on it.

We used:

Hunter on Bow

Prot warrior on axe

DPS warrior on Staff + shaman healer

MT grabbing mace

The rest can be picked up by whatever your you have, just make sure to make sure that your add tanks have weapons that die first. Bow was pull back right, axe to back left, everything else piles up infront of kael. Our thinking was:

• The bow isn't a big deal but killing it gives your other tanks time to build threat so it dies first
  
• Your warlock tank needs the staff ASAP because she has the farthest distance to run, it's second
  
• Your warlock healer has the second farthest distance to go and must have the mace next, third to die
  
• Freeing up your MT to get on his add is a high priority so killing the mace will free him
  
• No more wasted GCDs on interrupts now
  
• Mind controls don't happen until P4 but the damage buff from the dagger is useful killing adds, it's next
  
• The other weapons aren't super important so you can let them sit on 'useless' tanks (ie: people that don't have an add in Phase 4).
  
• Axe+sword are next priority for melee/ranged
  
• The shield is useless until P4 and once it's dead somebody can just run it over to your MT. DOTs should easily kill this during P3
  
• If you're way ahead of the timer, your warlock tank+healer can each grab a dagger.
  

Looking at our first kill shot: we had 3 "prot" tanks (druid,warrior, paladin), 7 healers (2 druid, 1 priest, 2 shaman, 2 paladins), and 6 AOE (4 warlocks, 2 mages).

Any weapons still alive can be ignored going into phase 3 to kill Thaladred, once he dies you finish off the weapons.

Killing Capernian is almost optional - a competent healer and warlock can 2-man her for the entire fight provided they both picked up daggers to break phase 4 mind controls on one another. That warlock/healer aren't super important for phase 4/5 so making sure to get Telonicus and Saquinar dead first is more important.

He's still a fun fight so hopefully you'll get him soon. Too bad you probably won't be going back to farm him: unlike most of BT he doesn't get boring for a long time.

Edited September 13, 2008 by the evn show