Posts with tag featured

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

It's good to be Horde. All over the world of Azeroth, the Horde is conquering new territory, claiming new land and expanding far, far beyond the few holdings it had in vanilla World of Warcraft. Back then, the Horde merely eked out an existence, defending small outposts where it could. Sylvanas and her Forsaken stayed by and large in Tirisfal Glades, with a tiny outpost in Silverpine and a slightly larger one in Hillsbrad Foothills. The tauren stayed largely confined to Mulgore, with a few settlements to the south and southeast. The trolls took refuge in Orgrimmar, with no real land to call their own save one tiny village on the coast and another small outpost in Stranglethorn Vale.

Now, the Horde is branching out in a major way. Sylvanas has dominated the forests of Silverpine and the rolling farmlands of Hillsbrad and is working her way east through the Western Plaguelands. The trolls have taken back the Echo Isles, and the orcs of Orgimmar are claiming new land to the north and the east, moving in a tidal wave of barbaric conquering. The Horde is flush with the glorious victories in Northrend, eagerly seeking more territory. In Cataclysm, it's very, very good to be Horde.

Or so popular opinion states.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

Damn, dude, twins? My wizard knows how to party.

HobMeadows asked:

What would be the fastest, most efficient way for a solo guildmaster to level their guild from 1 to 2? Does anyone have experience with this and if so, what was your process?

I'm almost at 2 full bars (out of 5), and inviting a bunch of people to my guild is not a fair option because I'll be moving off of my server literally within moments of hitting level 2. I've heard battlegrounds are a fast, efficient method, but can anyone make some suggestions?

Provided you're level-capped, quests and dailies are your best bet to make it there as fast as possible. High-level BGs give good rep, but questing is more efficient. Cap out your daily quest turn-ins every day, and you should be at level 2 before you know it.

Sunday Morning Funnies is your weekly list of WoW-related web comics.

This week, we've got comics about the upcoming expansion, Mists of Pandaria, as well as a couple of comics about Blizzard's latest release, Diablo III, that weren't to be missed from your usual favorites.

Know of a WoW-related comic that recently updated after a hiatus that isn't on this list or a new one that has never been featured? Let me know in the comments section!

• Looking for Group #565 and #566
• Guilded Age Chapter 16 Page 19, 20, 21, 22
• From Draenor With Love The Lord of Terror
• Away From Reality Resting the Wyrm and Implausible Denial

OK, I'll admit this looks like it's about to become a gruesome reminder for Azerothian parents to always secure the door to your hovel when leaving for a day's adventuring. But in fact, this vicious tiger is simply a Pandarian social worker, here to remove an innocent baby tauren from its hookah- and hooch-contaminated home and reassign it to some loving adoptive NPCs who actually spend some time at home. (Thanks to Tillamooke of The Kalimdor Inquisition on Maelstrom [US-H] for the screenshot!)

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Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

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I wasn't sold on the Bilgewater Goblins initially. When they and the worgen were announced in the run-up to Cataclysm, I had to wonder if there was any compelling reason to play what felt like a green gnome over a badass werewolf. (Yes, I was young and foolish in those days.) That changed quickly when I hit the beta and found them to be a hopelessly endearing race despite (or perhaps because of) their fairly amoral approach to life. I loved the little details in their towns, from the empty Chinese take-out boxes scattered around their inns to the little dinghies that fly underpants in place of flags.

Credit where credit's due -- most of this is the work of the Blizzard props team. These folks are also the reasons that Gilneas is so magnificently creepy, with its creaky windows, flapping sheets, and papers drifting across lonely towns. What little details do you particularly enjoy about the race you play as a main?

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're going to jump into the not-so-distant future -- specifically, the day we hit level 87 in Mists of Pandaria. We're going to need 1% of our base mana, some plutonium, and 1.21 gigawatts, and we're going to need to be moving at 88 miles per hour.

Mages are getting a fair number of new or reworked spells and talents in Mists of Pandaria, but arguably the most intriguing of the bunch is Alter Time. Continuing along with the time -manipulation theme already established by spells like Time Warp, upcoming talents like Temporal Shield, and the time chicken tier 13 armor set, Alter Time allows us to transport our mages back in time to the ancient era of six seconds ago.

It's an incredibly interesting mechanic that works in practice about how I expected it to in theory, which is both good and bad.

That's the sound that a resplendent chest makes when you open it in Diablo III. Seriously. Think about it.

BKellyCS asked:

I was discussing with some guildies this evening the "key points" in WoWs history (like personally feeling that Ulduar was the closest to raiding perfection with a variety of bosses, events, lore, layout, the hard mode switches etc) - what personally do you think the biggest opportunity Blizzard can take forward from Cataclysm is? What 'thing' do you think worked really well and reckon we'll see more of? What do you reckon they've learnt the most from and will endeavour to improve/never-EVER-let-that-happen-again?

You really have to feel sorry for the denizens of Hellfire Peninsula. They have to live in possibly the most hated zone in the game, the first expansion zone, the one that everyone has already slogged through five times and where most adventurers can recite the quest text by heart. And whenever something new and interesting comes on through -- like, say, a spin-kicking, bipedal panda -- they don't even have a chance to ask questions before the newcomer kills them, skins them and moves on. (Thanks to Nganga of Pact of War on Silver Hand [US-H] for the screenshot.)

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Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

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I was taking my main through the new set of Northern Barrens quests recently when I found myself running across rare spawn mobs a lot. This in itself isn't all that surprising; you'll run across rare spawns pretty commonly whenever zones aren't occupied by eager levelers. I saw Elder Mystic Razorsnout, Swiftmane, and for the first time ever, Humar the Pridelord. Humar is well known as a popular hunter pet, and until Wrath, he was the only black lion in the game.

And that got me to thinking: What is the game's most famous rare spawn? If I had to settle on one, my vote would be the Time-Lost Proto Drake, which has driven legions of players to the nuthouse in an endless struggle to find it, let alone kill it. Close behind would probably be Loque'nahak, another famous hunter pet. Curiously, it feels like most of the game's really well-known rare mobs are actually fairly recent additions to the game, although people who played during classic WoW might disagree.

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Don't Make Me Get My Main by Legs and Cranius won first prize in the BlizzCon 2009 machinima contest. It's hard to believe that was nearly three years ago; time flies when you're ganking newbs, I guess.

With Mists of Pandaria looming around the corner like a Defias thug with bad intentions, it's time for us all to remember: That newb you gank today could actually be a PvP superstar. Choose your targets wisely.

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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.

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Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

One of the highest-profile disputes in the gaming industry has come to a settlement agreement. Blizzard has agreed that it will back off from Valve's use of the DOTA trademark for commercial use, while Blizzard retains noncommercial use of the term for modders, map creators, and the community revolving around the game. In addition to the commercial/non-commercial separation, Blizzard has officially changed the name of its upcoming Blizzard DOTA to Blizzard All-Stars, so expect a new branding push soon. At the end of the day, I am still bewildered as to why we're fighting over DOTA, an acronym and phrase that comes packed with baggage and various connotations.

Back in 2010, Rob Pardo told Eurogamer essentially that trademarking DOTA was a slap in the face to the community that created the genre, and for a company that built a great deal of its success on mods, it seemed genuinely out of place for Valve. While everything is always about money, sometimes things are about money just a little less. With its own products announced using the DOTA name and former-DOTA developers having joined S2 Games and Riot Games to create Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends respectively, the MOBA genre is healthy.

Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

As the Mists of Pandaria beta rolls along (lots of monks are on the beta -- it's a joke about rolling), almost all of the zones are open to testing and nearing the level cap. Soon, very soon, Blizzard will flip that switch and we will be able to enable addons and it will be glorious. Until then, there are many questions about the current version of World of Warcraft (Cataclysm) that many people would like to have answered.

If you've got a question, answer, addon recommendation, complaint, invoice, or other correspondence, you should email Addon Spotlight's amazing author Mathew McCurley at mat@wowinsider.com. Through that email, you will reach me and my eyes. Let's get going.

In honor of Diablo, (H)el(l)ephant

Our first email comes from reader Jmaximus, who sounds like a totally badass paladin on the Thunderhorn server. Any name with Maximus in it is going to intimidate me to some degree. Anyway, Jmaximus has an addon recommendation for the lot of you, so thank him, because this one is pretty cool. Elephant!

When last we left our heroes, they'd hopped in a motorcycle to ride into the sunset -- and take a boat to Pandaria. However, they lack a map and live in a microcosm that represents the overall Blizzard community, so they cannot simply walk into Pandaria. Also, click click click click click click click click ...

"I didn't think Panda-land would be so dark," Throgg commented. His eyes narrowed beneath the ridged line of his immense brow. "I don't mean young person and black jeans dark. I mean like actually hard to see. Did we take the wrong boat?"

The pair walked along a curved, narrow path. Oddly, each side of the path was closed off with walls and vines. They couldn't travel far from the walkway. "Still can't get the bike started. We're hoofing it."

Throgg pursed his lips as he look around. Suddenly, he unlatched the enormous battle-axe from his back and shouted. "To arms! Undead ahead, and they're attacking!"

Lolegolas let loose a battle cry and reached for his bow. With a practiced growl, he grasped where it should have been and pulled out a Simple Hand Crossbow. The blood elf pulled up short immediately. "Wait, what in Metzen's name is this?"

The orc cocked his head to the side. "They make crossbows that small? When did you get that?"

"Is it just me, or do those undead look funny?" Lolegolas said.

"We're not in Pandaria," Throgg said. "We really need to go back the way we came."

Lolegolas sighed as he turned around, ignoring the undead behind them. "This is great. We're losing an entire week to this nonsense."

Throgg blinked as they returned to the boat. "Uh. Where's Spot?"

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Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com.

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