Posts with tag ulduar

Ready Check: Tonight we're gonna raid like it's 2009, pt III

by Michael Gray Jan 1st 2010 at 8:00PM

If you're a little confused about why this week's Ready Check: Tonight we're gonna raid like it's 2009 begins with part three, then you probably didn't catch last week's riveting parts one and two! Go check them out, and come back as we continue our epic journey through raiding in 2009.

We talked first about a handful of new concepts that would change the way Blizzard designed raids. Achievements provided the hardcore raider a little something extra to which they could strive. At the same time, "bring the player" and "accessibility" were the two overwhelming thoughts that would drive the first instances like Naxxramas. With that in mind, we did a quick reminder about those vestige raids of 2008, Obsidian Sanctum, Naxxramas, and Eye of Eternity.

Now that we have that firm grounding in the past, take a look behind the jump. We'll start out this week's review of 2009 with Ulduar.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ready Check (Raiding)

Raid Rx: 2009 Boss healing awards

by Matt Low Dec 31st 2009 at 2:00PM

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.

Welcome to the 2009 healing awards where we look back on some of the craziest healing encounters introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. Which fights frustrated healers the most? Which ones involved a ridiculous amount of healing? Which boss went directly against our role as healers? The judging panel should have consisted entirely of gnomes, but Wilfred Fizzlebang was unable to make it at the last minute and I was asked to step in at the last minute to help finalize the results.

Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)

WoW.com's top ten stories of 2009, part 2

by Mike Schramm Dec 18th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Instances, Raiding, Bosses, BlizzCon, Wrath of the Lich King

WoW.com's top ten stories of 2009, part 3

by Mike Schramm Dec 18th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Patches, Fan stuff, Blizzard, PvP, Expansions, Raiding, Lore, Leveling, BlizzCon, Cataclysm

WoW.com's top ten stories of 2009, part 4

by Mike Schramm Dec 18th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Patches, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, Bosses, Wrath of the Lich King

Guildwatch: We're over applications, too

by Mike Schramm Dec 16th 2009 at 3:00PM

The image above is a little tough to read, but you can probably get the gist: someone posts on the forums that secretly, he's been taking things from the guild bank and selling them off on the AH to make money for himself. He posts on his alt, supposedly, but whoops: he leaves his forum signature up. And the very next post is someone from the guild saying he's been caught red-handed, with a gkick imminent. Moral? Steal if you want, we guess, but never, ever tell. Or at least don't use your forum sig when posting on your alt.

Much more drama, downed, and recruiting news in this week's Guildwatch, which starts right after the break. We are super low in the buffer for tips, so please be sure to let us know about your guild's action in Icecrown, any recruiting you're doing, or any drama you see on the forums by sending us a quick email at guildwatch@wow.com. Thanks! Enjoy this week's column.

Filed under: Ranking, Guilds, Instances, Humor, Raiding, Guildwatch, Bosses

Recent in-game fixes for 12/14/2009

by Daniel Whitcomb Dec 14th 2009 at 11:33PM

Bornakk has just posted a new round of in-game hot fixes, some bug fixes, some actual quick balancing fixes. They include some relief for Affliction Warlocks after that last hotfix nerf, as well as a nerf to 10-man Lord Marrowgar. For a complete list of hotfixes, check after the break.

Filed under: Druid, Warlock, Patches, Bugs, Odds and ends, News items, Death Knight

WoW Moviewatch: Ulduar: In the Mountains

by Michael Gray Dec 8th 2009 at 12:00PM

While many might say that Ulduar was a difficult, frustrating raid (that as then rendered useless by TotC), one thing is certain about it. Ulduar inspired people. The number of music tracks, videos, and movies inspired by Ulduar blows away any memory of Naxxramas.

Realityshock created Ulduar: In The Mountains as a tribute to the immense amount of work and effort that went into creating the raid.The video is also dedicated to those brave raiders who spent hours pushing their way through the instance, working to see all the art that Blizzard had created for us.

I still enjoy these raid summary videos, since they help convey a sense of what new folks might have missed. Nice job, Realityshock.

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 e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Moviewatch

The Lore of Patch 3.3

by Adam Holisky Dec 8th 2009 at 11:00AM

In many ways Wrath of the Lich King can be considered the logical conclusion of one of WarCraft's major story lines. Arthas, the evil sovereign of the scourge, will meet his doom in Icecrown Citadel. Each Wrath patch up until now has lead to this defining moment -- the face off between Arthas and the players representing the next generation of heroes of Azeroth. Who will win? What happens after Arthas is defeated? Is Arthas defeated?

These questions lend themselves to a spectacular conclusion to a great tale. In The Lore of Patch 3.3, Michael Sacco, Alex Ziebart, and I will take a look at all the various plots, characters, and environments that lead up to this grand confrontation with the Lich King.

You'll want to know this story. You'll want to know this lore.

For when you finally face off against the wielder of the Frostmourne, you'll know why you're going toe-to-toe against him, and why your fate can make or break the very face of Azeroth.

This article, while containing essential lore, also contains heavy spoilers. Do not proceed if that bothers you.

Filed under: Patches, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King

The Queue: Introductions

by Alex Ziebart Dec 3rd 2009 at 4:00PM

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Good afternoon, everyone! As you can see above, I'm pretty much at a loss as to what to write as the intro today. When you write one of these things every other day for, oh... eternity, it gets pretty hard. So I'll pass the intro on to our Editor in Chief today.

Elizabeth Harper wrote...

Welcome back to the Queue, in which Alex is too lazy to write his own intro. So today we've decided to crowdsource it and take one random word from each member of the WoW.com team.

Those currently online managed to assemble the phrase, "Delicious pants ibuprofen." Now, on with The Queue.

Mordockk asked...

"Do you gain Ashen Verdict Rep from the 10man instance as well as the 25? Any daily quests associated with it?"

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 2

by Allison Robert Nov 27th 2009 at 4:00PM

Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the issue of effective health in more depth.

We've discussed in the previous column why effective health is important; here, we're going to discuss why it's not as important as you might think if you had nothing beyond the collective opinion of the Tanking forum to go on. While this has something to do with the mob mentality of the forums themselves, it has more to do with how the concept of effective health isn't usually placed in context. Tank death on hard modes is quickly attributed to EH discrepancies, with rather less discussion on encounter mechanics, inappropriate gear, or that great but frequently unacknowledged bugaboo -- player error. It is for this that I say effective health needs to die.

What is effective health?

I neglected to put some hard numbers on this in the last article, but calculating base effective health is actually pretty simple. It's your health as modified by the damage you'll take after armor contribution (AC), or Health / (1 - AC%).

A 50,000 health tank with 25% armor contribution has 66,666.67 effective health (50,000 / 0.75).

A 50,000 health tank with 50% armor contribution has 100,000 effective health (50,000 / 0.5).

A 50,000 health tank with 75% armor contribution (the maximum functional AC) has 200,000 effective health (50,000 / .25).

Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, Features, Raiding, Classes, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Cory Stockton breaks down the process of making an instance

by Mike Schramm Nov 26th 2009 at 2:00PM

Blizzard has done a lot of press regarding the fifth anniversary of the game (and there's probably more to come), but Curse has done one of the more interesting pieces so far. Instead of just chatting with Cory Stockton about his experiences, they had him sit down and explain just how Blizzard puts an instance together. They specifically talked about Ulduar, but the process Stockton reveals works for all of the instances Blizzard has created for the game.

A few interesting things -- they "block out" the instances first, create lower-res versions of them to play around in and create the mechanics for the fights. They also do some boss testing outside of the environments -- Razorscale, specifically, says Stockton, was actually tested down in the Stranglethorn Arena. Finally, once the encounter team works out the basics of the encounters, the art and item teams move in, and create art and loot, sometimes with the two of them collaborating (the art team will make a cool item for a boss, and then the item team, with the help of Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, will give the item stats and balance). Interesting just how collaborative the whole process is -- even the Ironbound Proto-drake mount came from the team seeing Razorscale and wanting to put him in mount form. It's nice and all hearing Blizzard remember the Fry's launch, but it's nicer getting an inside look at their process.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, How-tos, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding

Guildwatch: "these guilds in which this game is revolved around"

by Mike Schramm Nov 18th 2009 at 5:00PM

There's a distinct lack of crazy drama on the servers lately, and I think it's not necessarily because the raids are easy (guilds are still hitting hardcore achievements as they should be), but just that there's no guildbreaker raids out there right now. If you can beat ToC, you beat it, and if you can't, you can go back and do Ulduar and heroics, gear yourself up, and move on. I will say this: it seems much easier for a guildleader to avoid drama and issues later in the expansion cycle, when gear is plentiful, rather than right away.

That said, there's still lots of good drama, downed, and recruiting news in this week's Guildwatch. Click on to read more, and don't forget to send us your tips (especially drama) via email at guildwatch@wow.com.

Filed under: Fan stuff, Guilds, Odds and ends, Guildwatch

Guildwatch: The waiting game

by Mike Schramm Nov 11th 2009 at 7:00PM

More and more guilds are becoming just like Zen, above -- they're downing Anub in Trial of the Crusader, and then wondering just what's next? The answer, of course, is Icecrown, but even our best estimates have that release a month away still. Not that anyone's blaming Blizzard yet -- quite a few guilds are still working on hard modes, and more people are worried just what'll happen after Icecrown (though I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard still has a few cards up their sleeve for that one). But still, at this point, guilds are reaching their limits, and we're starting to see the calm before the storm of raiding in patch 3.3.

That doesn't mean Guildwatch isn't busy -- we've got the usual downed, drama, and recruiting notices from around the realms. And if your guild is still active, be sure to tell us about it: send a tip to guildwatch@wow.com, and you'll see it here in the future. Read on for more.

Filed under: Fan stuff, Guilds, Odds and ends, Instances, Raiding, Guildwatch, Factions

Spiritual Guidance: The Val'anyr effect

by Matt Low Nov 10th 2009 at 9:00AM

Every week (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW.

Over the past weekend, I've managed to accomplish three fairly important goals.

Watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Watch Princess Bride
Get Val'anyr crafted

It took me nearly 7 months from my first fragment drop until the death of Yogg-Saron with 3 keepers up before I finally managed to forge one of these maces. It's a good thing since I'll be able to wield Val'anyr against heroic Val'kyr Twins and against the armies of Arthas in Icecrown. Val'anyr grants a buff called Blessing of Ancient Kings. It's a 15 second long buff where your healing spells drop a shield that absorb damage equal to 15% of the amount healed. And yes, the shield does stack up to 20000 damage absorbed.

Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

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