World of Warcraft Blog

The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com.

We’re always tickled when we run across a player who’s found a new way to play the game. Check out the progress, then, of young Femortality on US Blade’s Edge. The wee level 1 blood elf hunter is so young that she doesn’t even merit an Armory listing, yet she’s already earned a whopping 1,500 achievement points. The offspring of experienced player Nylou, Femortality has permanently blocked her XP while she slaves away over her hot achievements.

Femortality’s fervor was forged on a now-deleted character that she once hoped would become the lowest level character to hold the title The Explorer. “Once I got my title, I felt the thrill of doing something hard at an extremely low level, and it (was) addictive,” Femortality admits. “So I decided to move on and get any achievement I can get without leveling up. I don’t know how many achievements I can get in total. I do know that I want them all and that over 2,000 are possible. I am sure this character will never, ever level up.” This may be the strangest toast ever, but … Here’s to never hearing that glorious ding!

There’s bigger (much bigger) news in the progression category this week, as <Paragon> pops off a world-first hard-mode Lich King kill in 10-man mode. Let’s crack open The Classifieds …

Around the World of Warcraft

Discount for standup comedy If you happen to be in the San Francisco, California, area this weekend, stop by Castagnola’s at Fisherman’s Wharf to see fellow WoW player and standup comedian Jeff Reitman (featured last year in our 15 Minutes of Fame). Jeff will be performing his nerd comedy show, known as Cross Platform Comedy, this Saturday night (March 6) — and we’ve got a special deal on tickets for WoW.com readers. Hit the ticket link and enter code 4THEWOW for an extra dollar off your ticket.

Happy fourth anniversary to The Risen of US Thorium Brotherhood-H. (And kudos, guys, on an enjoyable video that captures the essence of what looks like a fun group of players!)

Celebrating their own three-year milestone is Divine Alliance (US Mok’Nathal-A). The group is holding a Kara Karma Klear and other special events this week and would like to extend its appreciation to the allied guilds and players who form their extended family. Grats, DA!

Raiding progression

The big news this week is <Paragon>’s (EU Lightning’s Blade) kill of the Lich King in 10-man hard mode. They managed this world first with the 5% Icecrown Citadel raid buffs in action. The buff, which boosts player performance and opens up the field for guilds that are still struggling for a foothold in the ice, will undoubtedly push the progression categories forward exponentially. This may be one of the last weeks that a handful or so of guilds hold down top spots in each category.

• 25-man Progression The three guilds listed at the head of the world’s raiding progression have merely shuffled their order this week. They’re joined by 15 other guilds who’ve also snagged 44 points.
• 25-man Achievements <Wraith> maintains its position at the top of the world’s ICC-25 achievers. Behind them this week are <undisputeD> and <Gentlemens Club>.
• 10-man Progression The floodgates have officially opened, with the number of guilds who are working on the very end of ICC-10 flowing off the Top 100 page. <Paragon> takes top honors with the world’s first hard-mode Lich King.
• 10-man Achievements Top honors this week go to <noxa>, <Nero> and <Gong Show>, the only three guilds to have earned 1,435 achievement points.
• 10-man Strict Progression It’s a four-way tie for top honors in 10-man strict progression this week.
• 10-man Strict Achievements Pulling ahead of the pack with 1,350 achievement points are the hardworking <From Chaos> and <Vox Immortalis>.

Recruiting

The ICC recruiting rush seems to have died down now that Icecrown’s been out long enough for most guilds to map out their goals and the appropriate paths to reach them. All our recruiting requests this week take aim squarely at Icecrown 25-mans.

• <Knights Templar> US Boulderfist-A is recruiting a boomkin and a shadowpriest.
• <Aegis Doxa> (link not working, hopefully up by the time this post goes live) of US Elune-A is looking for all classes. (They’re currently 7/12 in ICC-10 and 4/12 in ICC-25 via weekly PUG).
• <Skull Then X> (US Draka-A) seeks more for raids on Su-M-Th from 6:45-10 p.m. server (CST). Loot is distributed by EPGP in 25-man raids and by rolling in 10-man. DPS requirement: 7k DPS on Festergut.
• <Intrigue> (US Garona-A) seeks a feral druid, demo or destro warlock, ret or prot pally and a shaman, priest and hunter for raiding from 10 p.m.-1 a.m. server time.

Random Acts of Uberness

Hephaestus, US Khadgar-A “In this age of the endless PUG, I know I’m not the only one whose eyes have glazed over at the sight of yet another instance loading screen. We’ve all tried different things to lighten up the humdrum of running the same instance for the hundredth time. A common tactic is to run the instance as fast as one can, as if in an attempt to make the pain go away as quickly as possible. Other games include running an instance while wielding a fishing pole (intentionally or unintentionally) or while wearing a Lovely Black Dress.

“But my favorite to date happened this last week when I zoned into heroic Halls of Lightning. I paused to glance over my party members and was immediately blinded by a glare of pure gold light, unlike anything I’d seen since my vanilla days. When I inspected the human-sized pillar of brilliance, I discovered that he was our tank … and he was wearing the entire Lawbringer set — all eight pieces of the paladin’s Tier 1. As a healer, I was flabbergasted … and excited! Unfortunately (or fortunately, as my common sense has since won out), Hephaestus then commented that while he could tank in that gear, it would hurt like hell, so he switched back to the mind-numbingly dull Northrend colors that we are so used to. But the damage was done — he had our undivided attention, and for the rest of the run, he proved himself to be a very skilled tank who wasn’t afraid to take a few risks while pushing our group only as far as our gear and skill could take us. I tip my Velen’s Cowl of Conquest to you, Hephaestus, and I hope to be able to heal for you again!” (Keleili, US Khadgar-A)

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The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on player and community news, guild recruiting, progression rankings and more. Have news, guild event screenshots or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. (If you’re recruiting or seeking contacts from other players, please include your guild’s web site address.)

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We’ve been getting quite a few submissions from the Sindragosa fight lately. In this submission, priest Tenbones and shaman Trof of <The Kabal> on Hellscream were trapped in close quarters during an Ice Tomb. Tensions rose between the two healers, and they ended up beating each other into insensibility with their staves while the tank spammed a “heal me” macro.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

Gallery: Around Azeroth

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Last week’s trivia challenge produced several great answers, although no one guessed what I had been thinking about; My Pet Monster! Still, that was only worth bonus points. Thanks to shadowQQ for guessing Bull from Where the Wild Things Are, and Correlation and Undra for guessing Sully from Monsters, Inc.

The other bonus trivia question was of the “one of these things is not like the other” type, and Noekh was the winner; all of the items were something that Canada is known for. Cartmensfoe also gets points for noticing that everything included in the list was edible. Apologies for forgetting to exclude the elephant shrews wearing berets with the ascots and toast. That probably confused a few people.

As for your virtual and imaginary prizes, you have all earned robots that know how to do laundry (although they are known for their laziness), bottles of detangling spray that are rumored to bring good luck when used, magical and unpredictable pink highlighters, and a lifetime supply of butterscotch-flavored gum that will help you see the future.

Before you head off to read this week’s selection, I’ll outline this week’s challenge. It isn’t trivia this time, but rather, an exercise in critical thinking. I want you to identify something in one of the comics that other people might not have identified. This could be something controversial, an obscure reference or homage, an artistic detail, and anything else you might want to talk about.

• New! Fall of the Lich King from GG-Guys.
• The Warcraft Hero in Elderly Love. Also, Journey to Stormwind.
• Battlemasters: A Little Perspective and The Only Way Out. *Bonus! The Battlemasters is giving away an Authenticator this week!
• NoObz: Good Old Days.
• Away From Reality: Of the four new comics introduced last week, this one seemed to catch the most attention in the comments. Check out the latest, Its bark is worse than its bite. If you haven’t read the last few, then read Wagging the dog first.
• Beyond the Tree: A Matter of Guilt and Crosscaves.
• Coffin Comics: Teabaggin’. I have to admit that I enjoy this one.
• Daily Quests: The Evolution of Void Zones. I love this one! Very clever, and the facial expressions in the middle panel are particularly entertaining.
• Complex Actions: The Golden Rule for Rogues.
• Slash AFK: Ice-Ice Baby. I also do not recommend doing this to a bear IRL.
• K’s Grab Bag: No Discrimination.
• NPC: Buzz Off. I think I could actually use a tool like that. Bink Kinks – on second thought? Maybe not. Reinstatement.
• Torment of the Week: Copout. Yeah, it’s more filler (although the first one from this comic), but I like to post it. It’s way more fun than no updates at all!
• LFG #335 and #336.
• Byron, the Tauren Rogue!
• WoW, eh: Me Want Free Gift With Purchase.
• Equinox and the Crime Cartel.
• Dark Legacy Comics: Cut Scene.
• The Daily Blink: If Blizzard Developed Real Life. I especially like the first and last ones. Vault Leasing and Rotisserie.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Wrath of the LoL King.
• Tales From the Crossroads: Money for Nothin’?
• Teh Gladiators: Their Fates Intertwined.
• By Way of Booty Bay: Raaaage. Adding this in for fun. I can never tell if there’s anything new because of the way it is organized, but I was checking it out while making the rounds.

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It’s been a pretty alright time to be a lore nerd the past few days. Not only have we had some intriguing spoilers about the new goings on with the gnomes and the trolls, but we’ve had a look at the Ruby Sanctum, and with it had some hints of whats to come with the Cataclysm. Of course, at the same time, there’s frustrations as well. Having had a chance to peek at Stormrage, I can tell you I’m not completely thrilled with the way they chose to advance certain portions of the lore there. I generally give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on lore and retcons, but there’s some stuff in there I just did not like.

That brings me to a thought. Let’s say Chris “God” Metzen comes up to you on the street. He doesn’t need a reason, he’s Chris Metzen. He’s awesome. And he says to you, he says, “Hey, I heard you like WoW lore. So I’m going to let you make a choice. You take any existing lore thread, and you tell me how to change. I can retcon whatever you want, or I can just make it go forward any way you want. You name it, I’ll do it.”

This is actually a pretty tough choice, but I’ll throw one idea out of the mix (for me at least) right away. The Draenei retcon? I can live with it. It’s not the worse retcon ever, and it can be hand waved away if you decide Kil’jaedan and Archimonde and their followers were already corrupt when Sargeras recruited them.

For me, what I’d really like to see is an embracing by the Horde of orcish culture and heroes before the Burning Legion corrupted them. One of the things that’s always bothered me about Thrall is that while he says he speaks for peace, he honors the leaders of the wars against the Alliance. He wears the armor of the one of the greatest generals of those wars, and wields the hammer that killed Anduin Lothar, the greatest and most noble hero the Alliance has ever known. How can you truly say you want peace when you do that? I want Thrall to throw the Doomhammer into the Maelstrom and take off the armor. I can’t believe all the oral and written tradition of the orcs is gone. Surely he can find some more ancient line of Warchiefs, Warchiefs who ruled over a more peaceful, shamanistic society, who lead the Horde only in noble wars. That is what I want to see, because that is what I believe the Horde truly needs to heal. They’re too caught up in the darkest parts of their past as long as they continue to honor people like Ogrim Doomhammer and Kargath Bladefist. All that does is get them more Garroshes.

What about you? Where would you take one of WoW’s lore story lines?

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So, as you might guess, knowing my previous background, I read WoW-related forums a lot. Old habits die hard, strapping young talbuks need to read a lot, and given that my career path is in Community at game companies, it pays to know what game communities (all of them) are saying. I obviously tend to gravitate toward games and topics that hold my interest (game design, indie games) or games for which I have a particular fondness (sup Aquaria, luv u baby gurl; yo Cave Story, holla back), but I’ll read pretty much anything about a game as long as I can follow it.

And I’m gonna be straight with you, WoW community. You guys are incredibly fickle when it comes to lore, and it breaks my two-sizes-too-big heart to read your ramblings about how Blizzard “doesn’t care” about it.

I examined the sitch in detail and I’m ready for you to apologize and mend the error of your ways once you’ve perused my summary of why you mean well, wrong though you are, when you use the phrase “lorelol”. I’ve made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear–I’ve prepared a lecture.
There is a hard-and-fast rule, and while you may not specifically fall under this umbrella, it’s safe to say that many of the players you play with do and it accurately describes WoW’s community on the whole:

WoW players are passionate about lore.

Passion is a really powerful thing. There’s a reason why single people say they want passion in their lives, and also a reason that the phrase “crime of passion” exists. Passion is usually the driving force of fandom, and it shows every day in the WoW community–arts and crafts, forum posts, spreadsheets, even complaints are all based on passion for the game, a desire to see it grow and thrive and, most of all, exist. The developers have stated a few times that the reason why they tend not to get upset over angry forum posts or player opinions is that they know that they stem from a desire to make the game better. Even if your action is angry or misguided, the heart of it is likely pure.

There are topics that tend to bring out the most frenzied side of WoW fandom–role-playing, for example, or game mechanics and class balance, but we’re here to talk about the L-word.

WoW is gifted with a rich and expansive lore and it’s understandable that people would be eager to embrace or defend it, as even those who complain about its changes are doing. I’m right there with you, in fact! I spend a lot of time reading and discussing it with goons (definitely consider platinum membership, it’s worth the cost) and a phrase I read far too much there is “lorelol,” or the phrase that really grinds my gears, “Blizzard doesn’t care about lore.” They’re everywhere, too–infecting forum posts and reasonable discussion all the time. Lest you think I’m embellishing, it really is as serious a problem as I say it is. Where did this perspective come from, though?

It turns out that these phrases really only came into existence after information about Burning Crusade started trickling out. The two main culprits?

• Blood Elf paladins.
• Draenei, period.

You can argue that Draenei were a sort of left-field choice for the Alliance–Chris Metzen has even said that they’re a little out there, and he made ‘em up–but they’re a good fit for the Alliance and that’s what counts. It’s not as if they had no lore previous to BC (though the WC3 Draenei were Lost Ones), and anyone who complains about them coming to Azeroth in their own special interdimensional way clearly are forgetting about a certain other race of space shaman that came to Azeroth through a Stargate.

What matters is their fit in their faction. They fill the “exotic” role that’s sorely missing in a faction whose most exotic race is another kind of elf, and they’re big! Those Alliance players who wanted a large male character who didn’t have a hare lip were in luck.

For the paladins, at least, the complaints felt sort of ridiculous, especially (though how could anyone have known at the time of release) given the neatly wrapped-up Blood Knights storyline that played out with the birth of the Shattered Sun Offensive. It’s not really as ridiculous, though, once you examine what paladins meant to the game and get into the head of the community. Let’s do just that.

Prior to Burning Crusade, the paladin was a shining example of the Alliance, a symbol of what the Horde would never have–purity of heart, a second plate class and, most importantly, the bubble. When it was announced that paladins would be coming to the Horde and shaman would be coming to the Alliance, it was an all-out identity crisis. What would tell the factions apart, people mused? Why don’t we all just drop our Arcanite Reapers, hold hands, and go on a man-date with our green-skinned buddies? WORLD OF PEACECRAFT, ANYONE? And what’s this business about taking the Light by force? Lorelol?

Of course the point that they were missing amidst the gnashing of teeth and empty threats of recurring subscription cancellation was that this was a necessary change for the game’s growth. And that’s what the lorelolers either don’t know, don’t understand, or refuse to accept:

Gameplay dictates lore and not the other way around.

Yes, there are a few exceptions to this rule, but there are also a ton of proofs of it. Gutterspeak is a great example–why don’t citizens of Lordaeron, though deceased, speak Common? Because it’s important to gameplay that they don’t. And the reason for the shaman/paladin change was to prevent parallelism and analogous changes every time a nerf or buff was made to one side or the other.

I try not to blame people for ignorance, purposeful or not, of this fact, because it’s really a design thing and not everyone is interested in that. But! It still has to be said.

Post-BC and now, during Wrath, we come upon a whole new series of complaints, of lorelols, of not-caring-about-lores. They cry out to uncaring ears, prostrate, WHY ARE YOU MAKING US KILL THESE LORE CHARACTERS, BLIZZ?!

There was a lot of this when people found out you could kill Kael, or Vashj, or even Zul’Jin. (I need to take a moment to clarify that Zul’Jin was a coward who deserted the Horde at the first sign of trouble and ran away with his tail between his legs, and that Zul’Jin is a title of honor in the Troll language, thus the “For Zul’Jin!” battlecry of the Darkspears, but this is really unrelated to the current discussion.) They were and are upset that former heroes or at the very least honorable characters are being turned into bosses. This is not an unreasonable stance, but one must eventually let go of it or risk wishing the game to stagnate, as I’ll describe in a moment.

Here are three truisms about WoW lore and how players relate to it, my final lecture and plea to lorelolers.

1. There is a finite, and ergo limited, number of established characters in pre-WoW Warcraft lore.

This is a pretty basic idea. There are only so many “old” characters that can be used in lore progression before, eventually, new characters start taking up the torch.

2. Misguided lore nerds complain when anything unrelated to or deviating from WC1-3 lore is introduced to the game.

Yes, there are large and vocal segments of the playerbase who hate “new” lore. Burning Crusade is a prime example of this. Any bit of BC that didn’t deal with established characters (Illidan, Vashj, Kael) was ill-received by a portion of lore purists because it “had no bearing on the lore as a whole”. “WHY ARE WE TAKING A SPACE VACATION?” Who cared about Auchindoun (though this is a valid complaint)? And what was their favorite dungeon? Of course–the one that had us replaying WC3 moments.

Bear in mind that these aren’t bad things in themselves–it’s great to have respect for established lore, and it’s even better to see that lore fleshed out, but sometimes they can’t even deal with that. These are the very same people who confuse the term “character progression” for “character remains exactly the same each and every time they appear in the game, in behavior, appearance, and motivation”. They have an impossible desire for WoW to expand only within their own ill-conceived constraints, not realizing that they’re dooming the game to eventually deforming and collapsing in on itself like a souflée in a bottle.

And that’s why they have such an issue with the next truism.

3. Players need bad guys.

A game like WoW cannot progress or provide new content without bigger and bigger bads. However, this creates a conflict with the hardcore lore nerds–players that want new content, players that don’t want established characters making a 180 and becoming big bads, players that don’t care about newly-introduced big bads. It’s impossible to cater to this demographic.

If this demographic is you, the only way to avoid another few years of hemming and hawing about how Blizzard is “ruining the lore” is by realizing that Warcraft, and especially World of Warcraft, is a living, breathing organism that requires progression, expansion, and periodic outright change of existing lore to serve gameplay purposes. This will not change. Don’t act as if a fallen hero is a new concept to Warcraft, games, or even literature as a whole. Save yourself from expecting Blizzard to create lore just for you within impossible bounds. Embrace and experience lore expansions or additions, and know that every time something gets added or changes, it’s because Blizzard loves its game, loves its lore, and truly loves creating the best experience for you, whether you’re fickle and misguided or not.

Goodnight, and good luck.

Knowledge is power, so arm yourself to the teeth by reading up on all the latest lore discussion in Alex Ziebart’s Know Your Lore and Ask a Lore Nerd. And read your quest text, dangit!

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Relative to the recent discussion about two well-known characters in the Warcraft universe battling it out, Kobrakaii asks on the forums who the strongest being in the entire Warcraft Universe is.

There’s lots of Warlock jokes (my favorite is the thought that the first Warlock with a 41-point Demonology talent will be the most powerful in the known Azeroth universe), “any pally for 8 seconds,” the expected suggestion of Arthas the Lich King, and even a mention of High Overlord Saurfang (who, with that link, might replace Captain Placeholder as my new favorite NPC). In the end, the debate basically comes down between Sargeras on the bad side (he’s a fallen Titan who’s become the main villain in Warcraft lore) and Elune on the good side– even though her identity in Azeroth as the “God” of the Night Elves isn’t quite clear even inside the Blizzard offices. Sargeras, however, is currently trapped in an “unbeing” state, so the title probably goes to the Titans, a group of beings who oversee the Universe (and eat old gods like C’thun for lunch– the Master’s Glaive in Darkshore is a remnant of the Titans’ power).

Of course, as Drysc points out later in the thread, Chris Metzen is really the most powerful being in the Warcraft universe. Way to ruin the fun, Drysc.

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Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak has made USA Today’s Top 150 Best Selling Books list, coming in at #126 of the best selling books based on sales through February 28, 2010. Apparently the ebook community is embracing the new story as well: Stormrage hit #8 on the best seller list for ebooks from BooksOnBoard.

The latest offering in the World of Warcraft line of novels, Stormrage continues the story of events that the green dragonflight have been dealing with since World of Warcraft’s launch: Nightmares have invaded the Emerald Dream, Malfurion Stormrage is nowhere to be seen, the Dragons of Nightmare are busting out of portals, and it looks like the whole of the Emerald Dream is in danger of permanent corruption. With Stormrage, we finally get to see what’s been brewing for five years now — no wonder it’s popular!

You can pick up a copy of Stormrage at the Blizzard Store for yourself. Check out our full review of the novel, and our refresher course on the history of Malfurion Stormrage.

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Cecil Vortex has a long interview up with none other than Azeroth’s rockstar mastermind, Chris Metzen. He actually describes himself as a “world creator,” and that’s about right — he’s the guy (along with everyone else at Blizzard, obviously) who’s come up with the entire universe that the World of Warcraft exists in — from Orcs to Dwarves to Titans and Old Gods, Metzen is the guy who dreamed it.

And for a guy who’s created everything in this gigantic universe, he’s remarkably “geeked” about it — he still talks like he’s a guy sitting at his basement table creating D&D quests (which, don’t lie now, we’ve all done at one point or another). The second part of the interview is even more interesting — Metzen talks about his creative process and just how much of a group process it is at Blizzard. Since they’re all in the target audience, every group member censors each other and pushes each other to bigger and better heights of storytelling.

Metzen also mentions a non-Blizzard project called Soldier: 76, about a guy making his way through a second American Civil War. It came out a while ago, apparently, but would definitely be interesting to see what Metzen does outside of Blizzard continuity. And as if there was any doubt that Metzen was a rock star, he ends the interview exactly the way you’d expect a creative superstar to end it: when “you’ve tapped into something beyond the individual,” then “it’s off to the races.”

[Via Blizzplanet]

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Welcome back to Know Your Lore, WoW.com’s column about the story behind the game we all play.

We talked last week about Quel’Delar, a sword of emerging lore, and the week before that we covered Darion Mograine, a pivotal figure to Death Knights and part of the reason we’re fighting in Northrend. This week, however, we’re kicking our look at the lore of Wrath of the Lich King in the caboose with a look at possibly the most reviled orc to ever live. Sure, he probably wasn’t the most evil orc ever (Gul’dan wins that one in a walk, boy howdy) but for sheer staying power and for having a role in the genocide of the orcs against the draenei, the sundering of Draenor into Outland, and for being the first Lich King, you really have to hand it to Ner’zhul. Here’s an orc who manages to pop up a lot in the lore.

If you did the Howling Fjord quests for the Alliance and made the mistake of walking too close to a certain King of the Liches (and other undead things) he delivers a line of dialog that perfectly explains why we’re talking about Ner’zhul today. Before Arthas, there was Ner’zhul. Like Arthas, Ner’zhul wanted to save his people, to be a hero, to be respected and powerful. Like Arthas, Ner’zhul lost sight of the truth as he sought to achieve his goals. Unlike Arthas, however, Ner’zhul turned his face away from ultimate evil once he recognized it for what it was… but too late, far too late, and found himself damned for his hubris, forced to watch his apprentice do every evil thing he himself had refused to do.

It was the first prison for Ner’zhul, but it would not be the last.

Ner’zhul was a respected figure among the orcs of Draenor, who lived in nomadic tribes and had no central controlling power. Chieftain of the Shadowmoon Clan and an Elder Shaman (even revered older shamans like Mother Kashur respected him for his wisdom and knowledge of the spirits) but the respect of his people and their general acknowledging of him as pre-eminent among shamans wasn’t enough for Ner’zhul. The fact that, in a people who were each loyal to clan or tribe first and their race second he was almost so revered that he could command clans not his own wasn’t enough for him. It can be said honestly that Ner’zhul was deceived. And indeed, when dealing with an entity actually called ‘The Deceiver’ it’s understandable. Kil’jaeden used the enormous power imparted to him by Sargeras himself as well as his own millennia of experience to mislead the elder shaman. The Deceiver had tracked Velen to Draenor and in so doing had observed the orcs (as well as had them observed by other agents) and saw in them good raw material. For as much as the orcs were a nomadic, shamanistic people, they were also a race capable of great savagery and violence, and as capable of being twisted and corrupted as any other species the Legion had encountered in their endless crusade through the nether.

Seeking to give Velen no warning this time, Kil’jaeden first took the form of Ner’zhul’s deceased wife Rulkan (a spirit the elder shaman was accustomed to seeing in visitation) and then appeared in a form that was suitably impressive to convince the orc shaman that the draenei were plotting to enslave… or even worse… the native orcs of Draenor. That draenei magics (already seen as strange and incomprehensible by the orcs who witnessed them) would be used against them. Playing on Ner’zhul’s vanity and need for overt power and position to match his unstated role. Kil’jaeden convinced Ner’zhul to whip the orcs into a frenzy and lead them in warfare against the draenei… a war the orcs were winning when Ner’zhul started to have doubts about the whole thing. Not as simple as Kil’jaeden had believed, Ner’zhul had noticed odd inconsistencies… how like a draenei the supposed mouth of the orc ancestors himself looked, for instance, and how much he hated Velen of the draenei, a level of personal hate that seemed incompatible with a divine spirit. Ner’zhul was many things… power hungry, vain, and overly susceptible to flattery, yes, all these… but he surely wasn’t a fool. Troubled, he traveled to Oshu’gun to consult the spirits of the orc ancestors directly.

Here he learned that his wife’s spirit had not been speaking to him of the draenei’s treachery, that the ancestors did not endorse the war against their admittedly strange but never hostile neighbors, and that Ner’zhul himself, the elder shaman of his people, had completely failed in his duty to them. Shocked, horrified, and at his core sickened (while he felt no particular love for the draenei, his own people were indeed dear to him, and being informed of his own monumental failure was enough to shock him into action) he swore to turn his people away from their genocidal course before it was too late. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t been careful enough and his apprentice Gul’dan had overheard the entire conversation.

Both Ner’zhul and Gul’dan shared a love for power, but where Ner’zhul craved acceptance and needed to believe in his own righteousness, Gul’dan was completely devoid of any such illusions about himself. Ner’zhul cared about the orcs, and was infuriated that Kil’jaeden had misled and lied to him, while Gul’dan cared about himself and immediately went to the dark entity and proposed that Ner’zhul’s usefulness to the demon was at an end, while Gul’dan would serve as a much more useful servant and lead the nascent Horde in exactly the direction Kil’jaeden the ‘Great One’ wanted it to. Ner’zhul’s ‘rebellion‘ was dead before he even got a chance to implement it, as the spirits of nature and the ancestors had already abandoned him, and the demonic power of Kil’jaeden was taken away from him. Impotent and helpless, left by those that had once been his allies and the source of his power and wisdom, the former elder shaman was left alive by his former apprentice to watch the rise of the Horde.

Honestly, to some degree the ancestor spirits are responsible here. Was Ner’zhul wrong in what he’d done? Yes, absolutely. But when he came seeking answers, confused and wanting to do the right thing, they chose to abandon him totally instead of helping him redress his error. They left him alone and powerless in the hands of his enemies and his betraying student. They did nothing to help him as he was forced to serve as a hollow rubber stamp of approval to the Shadow Council and Gul’dan. It’s impressive that Ner’zhul even managed to warn the Frostwolves (and it’s interesting that Drek’Thar, today one of Thrall’s closest advisors and the one who brought him to shamanism was fully misled by Kil’jaeden posing as Mother Kashur but was forgiven for directly using the warlock magics while Ner’zhul, who turned away and tried to stop what he’d helped bring about was never so forgiven) not to drink the blood of Mannoroth.

Until the death of Gul’dan and the fall of the Old Horde at Blackrock Spire, Ner’zhul passes here into quiescence. When the Alliance forces destroy the Black Portal, Ner’zhul is one of the orcs nearly slain by the blast. He spends two years holed up with his Shadowmoon Clan (following the departure of the Old Horde and Gul’dan’s death, Ner’zhul was once again the leader of the Shadowmoon) until one of Gul’dan’s warlock apprentices and first Death Knight Teron Gorefiend comes to see him. This moment, where Gorefiend convinces Ner’zhul to assist him in the creation of more portals in order to find new, more easily conquered worlds, is pivotal for many reasons.

Ner’zhul had grown death obsessed over the years of his ‘imprisonment’ at the mercies of Gul’dan and the Shadow Council, and while he hated and loathed Gorefiend as a lackey of Gul’dan’s and a former warlock, the Death Knight’s strange undead state impressed him. For whatever reasons… the chance to do something again rather than exist as a puppet ignored by both the ancestors and elements and mocked and reviled by the demonic forces that he’d helped unleash, or perhaps a desire for revenge on a world that he felt abandoned by… Ner’zhul told the Death Knight to assemble artifacts of power.

One of those artifacts was the skull of his former apprentice, Gul’dan, which I still think he only had Gorefiend fetch so he could look at it and laugh. I mean, a lot. I expect there were entire afternoons spent sitting on the edge of whatever latrine the Shadowmoon used, giggling incoherently while looking at Gul’dan’s bony pate. Maybe he’d pick it up (possibly not wiping as thoroughly as he could) and hold it in front of himself and snicker right into the empty eye sockets. Perhaps not, but man, I would have.

We could belabor Gorefiend’s exploits to assemble said artifacts but what ultimately happened is this: Gorefiend succeeded through sheer, unholy badassery. Ner’zhul used the artifacts to harness Draenor’s latent energies and in so doing opened not one, but a series of portals. The sense of reconnecting to forces greater than himself drove Ner’zhul (who had spent years at this point a helpless wreck of an orc, cast out by both his shamanic spirits and the demons) totally into power madness. Declaring himself the Horde entire, Ner’zhul ordered those that had helped with the ritual to either leave Draenor through one of the portals or to die, and stepped through himself, unleashing magical forces in the process that turned a formerly lush planet into the place we all spent 10 levels thinking “wow, this place is a dump’.

It turned out that for all his ‘muhahahaha, I am the power‘ spiel that Ner’zhul had merely exchanged one kind of prison for another. On the other side of the portal waited Kil’jaeden, and the de facto Lord of the Burning Legion was anything but gentle with his former servant. He slowly tore Ner’zhul’s body apart until the orc agreed to serve the Legion again, and used his spirit as the core of a malevolent entity fused to ancient armor and a potent runeblade called Frostmourne, and so Ner’zhul the elder shaman of the Shadowmoon Clan of Draenor became the first Lich King and was hurled bodily into Azeroth to accomplish with his new power what his former student had failed to do.

The story of Warcraft III is the story of Ner’zhul finding and corrupting a new apprentice, ultimately. It’s the elder shaman, his former benevolent aspects snuffed out, his hubris and power lust turned into a frozen force so potent even the demons couldn’t control it, seeking out a kindred spirit and using him to first free him from the Legion’s control, and eventually from the prison of bodiless ice he was locked into. In the end, however, he may yet again have chosen his apprentice poorly, as Arthas appears to have not only torn out his own humanity but to have consumed every last vestige of the elder shaman in the process.

It’s impossible to say how much of Ner’zhul was left from Kil’jaeden’s torture even before he merged with, became a presence within and ultimately was consumed by Arthas Menethil. Did the Lich King choose to make Arthas the first of the new Death Knights because of memories of Teron Gorefiend? (And thus, did he ultimately end up stealing Gul’dan’s idea?) How much of the Lich KIng was Ner’zhul in the first place, and how much of him is left now?

It’s hard to say, but I’ll always remember that last chuckle before the Lich King killed me in Howling Fjord.

“Shamanism has brought you here…its scent permeates the air. I was once a shaman.“

Ner’zhul is dead, yes, devoured by the entity that calls itself king of the liches. But Ner’zhul can never really die. There could be no Lich King without Ner’zhul. Skull faced orc visionary, madman, prophet, tool of cosmic evil, helpless witness to his own failure, destroyer of worlds, frozen king of death, there have been many faces to the elder shaman. It was Ner’zhul who broke Arthas Menethil, Ner’zhul who slipped Kil’jaeden’s leash and handed to the mortal races the hints they needed to destroy Archimonde. I, for one, think there’s more of Ner’zhul left inside that armor than we realize.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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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.

In Azeroth’s history, there’s a distinct path that dragon evolution follows. First, there are the proto-drakes of Northrend. From these drakes came the other drakes of lower Azeroth, and the five flights that were developed to watch over the world; red, blue, green, bronze and black. The more the game is played out and the longer the story runs, the more we learn about the dragons — why they’re around, what their purpose is on Azeroth. Today, we’re going to focus on one of the new flights of dragons, one that didn’t see its creation on Azeroth, and instead finds its origins on the planet of Draenor: The Netherwing.

The genesis of the Netherwing is an odd story, some of which was explained in the article covering the Black Dragonflight last week. Deathwing the Destroyer, the by-now insane leader of the black flight had made a deal with Teron Gorefiend shortly after the orcs were defeated in the Second War. Gorefiend had been ordered by Ner’zhul to go to Azeroth and retrieve several artifacts of power that Ner’zhul needed to open dimensional gateways to other worlds. By doing this, Ner’zhul hoped to escape Draenor, and the influence of the Burning Legion, for good — and take his people to another land in which they could begin to rebuild after the staggering losses from the wars, and the orcs corruption.

The gist of Deathwing’s deal was this — Deathwing and his black drakes would help Gorefiend find the artifacts he was looking for. In exchange, Deathwing wanted access to the Dark Portal so that he, some of his drakes, and some cargo he had could be transported to Draenor. They would continue assisting the orcs on the other side of the portal as long as the orcs left the drakes, and the cargo, alone. While Gorefiend wasn’t sure he trusted Deathwing’s motives entirely, the addition of drakes to their fighting forces would make things much, much easier — and so he agreed.

The items that Deathwing wanted transported, of course, were dragon eggs — eggs that Deathwing had gathered for the express purpose of breeding his own flight of dragons that would bow to none other but him. Why Draenor? Well, why settle for one world when you can have two of them? Deathwing wanted total domination over Azeroth, and domination over Draenor as well was just icing on the cake. And so Deathwing, his troops and his cargo traveled through the Dark Portal and into Draenor, where they met with Ner’zhul. Deathwing asked Ner’zhul for one more thing – the Skull of Gul’dan, a powerful magical artifact. While Ner’zhul didn’t really want to part with it, he didn’t exactly need it anymore, and so he handed it over. Deathwing left some of his troops behind with the orcs, and took the large chunk of his forces to Blade’s Edge, along with the eggs.

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have it so easy. Alliance forces led by Turalyon had also crossed through the Dark Portal. They’d discovered Ner’zhul’s plot to cross over to other worlds, and intended to stop it, as well as retrieving the artifacts Ner’zhul had stolen. The other thing the Alliance needed was the Skull of Gul’dan, in order to close the Dark Portal once and for all, and so Turalyon, the mage Khadgar, and the elven ranger Alleria Windrunner headed out to find the thing, soon coming across Blade’s Edge and discovering the hiding place of the black flight, and the eggs.

Along with the eggs and the dragons was a new race of creatures called the Gronn. Led by Gruul, the gronn were annoyed (to say the very least) at the black dragon’s intrusion. Together with the Alliance, they began to destroy the black dragon eggs that had been carefully stashed away — and earned the ire of Deathwing in the process. Deathwing and Khadgar faced off, and Deathwing fled, dropping the Skull in the process.

Except that Turalyon and his army had destroyed most of the black dragon eggs, but not all of them. Some were left behind, scattered here and there — certainly nowhere near enough for the great flight that Deathwing had envisioned, but still, plenty remained. The Alliance, despite their best efforts were not able to stop Ner’zhul from opening the portals, and he and what little forces he had fled through the nearest one. Deathwing too, fled through a portal back to Azeroth, not really wanting to stick around and see what happened next.

Draenor could not handle the stress of Ner’zhul’s spellcasting. The portals he created literally ripped the world apart, the land itself stressed beyond all reckoning and began splitting into pieces. The black dragon eggs that were left behind were exposed to the energies of the Twisting Nether itself. Pure unbridled energy surged through the eggs, altering and changing the whelps contained within into new creatures, heretofore unseen anywhere — nether dragons. All existing nether dragons were originally of Deathwing’s brood, scattered to the Twisting Nether and left on their own.

The first appearance of the nether dragons was early, early on, way back in Warcraft III: TFT. In the Blood Elf campaign, players help Illidan on Draenor, closing the many portals that Ner’zhul had opened, as Magtheridon was summoning demons and other creatures through them to assist him in his takeover of Draenor — now called Outland. While most of these portals summoned the standard felhounds and demon lords players are accustomed to seeing, there were also these odd little dragons called Nether Drakes that spewed forth from the portals to make a nuisance of themselves.

The nether dragons are unlike any other dragon out there — partially corporeal and partially ethereal, their bodies are composed of energies from the Twisting Nether, glowing with an odd translucency. Allied with no one, they considered themselves a kind of orphan — after all, their father had abandoned them as soon as the situation looked dire. It’s been stated they live primarily in the Twisting Nether itself — which would explain why they were coming through Magtheridon’s portals… sort of. They aren’t demonic in origin — they were simply black dragons that had the unfortunate experience of being radiated with the energies of the Twisting Nether before they were even really born.

Regardless, it wouldn’t be the last time players saw the nether dragons. In the Burning Crusade expansion, players were introduced to the Netherwing dragonflight, a group of nether dragons that made their home on the broken remains of Draenor. The Netherwing were scattered all over Outland, but primarily made their home in Shadowmoon Valley.

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Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil “Euripides” Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the hunting party podcast, and the call to auction podcast.

Auctioneer is a wonderful addon I’ve mentioned a few times already, and today we’re going to talk about how to use it to sell your goods efficiently. First up, go download and install it. Now, when you open the auction house, you will see a different interface. We’ll be going over a bunch of other useful functionality this has in another post, but today, we’re focusing on selling. Do a quick scan by clicking on the fast forward arrow:

You should make a point of scanning the AH this way as often as possible, but generally not more than a few times a day. I do it every two days, or whenever I need the data. This allows auctioneer to learn what items are worth in your economy, by keeping track of the listing price over time.

Selling with appraiser

You have two primary types of selling– one where you are selling a lot of a single item, and one where you are selling a few of many types of items. In the both cases, you’ll want to use the appraiser tool. Click the appraiser tab on the bottom of the AH window, and note that everything you can sell is listed to the left, and your competition is in the middle. Click the refresh button to update your scan data for just this item.

Now, the best practices for selling many types of items is to sell them in multiple types of stacks. Appraiser has a slider for stack size, and you can either enter in your own unit price manually, or use a default pricing scheme. Pricing schemes are interesting little buggers, but you are generally safe with leaving it set to “market”. If you manually change your price, this will automatically change to “fixed”. In case you’re wondering, putting it at “market” assigns a value based on the historic price data you have for this. Personally, I tend to either undercut heavily, or if there’s little stock or competition, overprice. Rarely in-between.

Note the check box for “enable price matching”- we’ll go over configuring this in a sec, but be aware that this will try to undercut you competitors.

Selling automatically

In appraiser, you also have the ability to automatically post a bunch of different types items. It takes a bit of setting up, but once you do it once, you can log in and post all your tagged auto-post items automatically with a single click. First, we need to configure our undercut settings. To set it up so you undercut everything by 10.5% when you check “enable price matching”, click the “configure” button at the top, and you will find the appraiser settings. You can leave these mostly default, however I like to change the bid percent to 0%, so it always prices bid and buyout the same.

Now click on the “match modules” category, then on “Undercut”. This page is where we specify the default undercutting behavior.

The most important part of this is the undercut percent — you could alternately choose to undercut by a certain fixed value (like, say, one copper). Also important are the sliders just above that. The first one is how far below market price undercut will function, and the second one is how much it will mark up above market value if you have no competition. I find 100% and 75% suit my needs.

The way you see it set up here, whenever that box is checked, it will always undercut the lowest auction by 10.5%, and if I have no competition, will add a 75% markup over my pricing scheme (fixed or market, depending on the product).

Now that we have our undercutting configured, select each item on the left you want to automate, and check the “enable batch posting” box. Set the quantity and stack size for each one (ideally this will not change), and then check “enable price matching”. Now we need price data. If your scan is still fresh, you can just skip this step, but if you only want to scan the items in your bag, alt-click the “Batch post” button. This will refresh the data for any item you’ve flagged for batch posting. Once your data is good, you batch post everything you marked in the first step by ctrl-alt-shift-clicking the same button.

Reinventing the … what?

Auctioneer’s batch posting is an extremely powerful tool that lets you participate in way more markets than if you had to do everything manually. This function is also performed very well by other addons like QuickAuctions 3, however I’ll detail this in another post. The reason I still use Auctioneer for many non-glyph markets that require batch posting is that Auctioneer doesn’t need to have a custom fallback price for each and every product you sell. The price matching function will default back to a value based on market price.

For example: it’s fine in the glyph market to have all of your glyphs fall back to, say, 40g if you have no competition. If you’re dealing in raw gems, however, you’d have to go and manually manage the fallback price for all your gem categories: rare, epic, and uncommon for each type of ore you prospect.

Nothing’s perfect

One notable missing feature in Auctioneer is the ability to mass-cancel auctions. I have a quick and dirty solution for this (of course): a couple of little scripts:

This one cancels all auctions by name:

/run local i=1;local n=1;while n ~= nil do n=GetAuctionItemInfo("owner",i);if n~=nil and strfind(n,"^Scroll") then CancelAuction(i) end i=i+1 end

I simply change “^Scroll” to whatever it is I need to cancel. Here’s another one you can use to cancel based on time left:

/script local o="owner" p=GetNumAuctionItems(o) i=p while (i>0) do local _,_,c,_,_,_,_,_,_,b,_,_=GetAuctionItemInfo(o,i) t=GetAuctionItemTimeLeft(o,i) if((c>0)and(b==0)and(t<2))then CancelAuction(i) end i=i-1 end

This will cancel any auctions that say have a short (“30m”) or medium (“2h”) time left. You can simply change the section where it says “t<2″ to suit your needs. “t==3″ will cancel all auctions with a long (“2h-12h”) time left, but leave all the short, medium, and very long auctions (t==4) alone.

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Being an auctioneer is like being able to print money. Or gold, as it were. Wait, that doesn’t make sense… you can print on gold, but you can’t print gold. That would be closer to transmutation? I can transmute titanium, but that’s only worth it if the price of saronite is low enough to justify the time spent making it. I need some sort of analogy here. Whatever, I’ll figure it out later. Making gold? Every week, Gold Capped will teach you the tricks of the trade. From setting up your auction addons and user interface, to cross faction arbitrage, to learning how to use your tradeskills.

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Today’s submitter, Sölöman of Misha, might want to consider that he’s ’solo’ because his name makes it freaking impossible for anyone to invite him to a group. Anyway, solo-dude (not typing those alt-codes again) decided to take a spin around the Borean Tundra to celebrate his new epic flying skill. But lag conspired against him, making his Bronze Drake disappear and sending him into a swim-flying pattern around Warsong Hold.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

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Welcome to another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to assert the following:

• Fact: Mages are the sparkliest class in the game.
• Fact: Sparkles are awesome.
• Fact: Warlocks have poor personal hygiene and generally smell funny.

None of these assertions can be disputed.

Hey, mages! Let’s have an argument.

Well… maybe not so much an argument per se, because no matter how you slice it, an equally geared frost mage is going to do less overall DPS than a fire or arcane mage… but we’ll definitely be having a discussion.

Here’s a general format for how this discussion will take place:

1. I will present my reasons why raiding as a frost mage is viable.
2. You will then tell me why I am wrong.

You may be asking yourself: Christian, what has provoked this sudden defense of frost magery? You play an arcane mage! Also, where are your pants?

To your first question, I would say, “yes, you’re right. But in preparation for writing my forthcoming Frost 101 column, I have been toying with a secondary frost spec, and finding it a great deal of fun.” To your second question, about the whereabouts of my trousers, I would say stop watching my webcam. Really, you knew what you were getting into when you clicked that link.

For the first time in a very long time, recent patches have brought significant upgrades to the raiding viability of the frost mage. Since the first raid breached the door of Karazhan way back in early 2007, frost mages have found themselves overshadowed by other specs in terms of damage output, and each successive raid, patch, and expansion found them falling farther and farther behind their mage brethren. It wasn’t long before frost became known as the PvP tree, and rightly so, because frost mages were best at that aspect of the game, but simply could not compete on the PvE side of things.

This is still, for all intents and purposes, the case. For over three years, bringing a frost mage into progressive raid content was a fairly taboo prospect. But things are changing:

• Water elementals became permanent with the application of a glyph.
• Deep Freeze was given a massive damage component versus raid bosses.

And forthcoming patches continue the trend:

• Frostbolt’s spellpower scaling is being increased.
• Brain Freeze will trigger a Frostfire Bolt as well.

Clearly Blizzard is making an effort here, but though frost is closer than it has been in a very long time to the other specs in terms of raw DPS numbers, it’s going to lag behind. In raid content, where DPS is king, what incentive is there to bring a spec that does less damage than another spec?

And thus the argument will always go. Spec A does (x) DPS. Spec B does (x-1) DPS. Take spec A.

So why bring a frost mage when you can bring an arcane or fire mage? (And my apologies to frostfire mages. Blizzard stopped supporting that spec pretty much the moment they introduced it.)

Reason the first: The DPS gap is closing.

It’s still there, certainly, but it’s much, much smaller than it has been. The above-mentioned changes have made the gap small enough that now the choice to bring a frost mage no longer hampers your raid’s DPS. Arcane and fire still rank higher, but frost is now, for the first time since the end of vanilla WoW, in the mix. The most recent PTR changes promise to make the situation even better.

A straight-up damage buff to frost’s primary nuke, Frostbolt, is a fantastic place to start. And by incorporating the occasional Brain Freeze-triggered Frostfire Bolt into the rotation (a vast improvement over Fireball for frost mages), the situation becomes even better. Now if only we could find a way to get Ice Lance involved somehow…

I realize that saying frost isn’t as bad it used to be isn’t much of an argument, but I’ve never been a big fan of the whole min-max mentality. From a hard numbers perspective, arcane is currently the DPS king. Frost is not. This is true. But we’re at the point now, where frost has drawn close enough that the choice is simply no longer black-and-white. The bottom line is this: Given the choice between a decent arcane mage and an excellent frost mage, I’d now take the excellent frost mage without hesitation. Previously, the conversation had to go something like this:

Raid organizer #1: Well, we have a mage spot open. We can bring Jim, or Dave.

Raid organizer #2: Let’s see…Jim has threat management problems. He tends to stand in things that kill him. Also, he’s a racist.

Raid organizer #1: Yeah, but Dave’s a frost mage!

Now, you take Dave. It isn’t even a question. The gap is too small to worry over numbers. There are a lot of quality frost mages out there. They know their class. They understand their roles. And now, your guild can use them. You can bring the best mages you have, not just the ones who went to Elitist Jerks and copy-pasted whatever the “optimal” spec happened to be that day.

Reason the second: Survivability

The very thing that makes frost such an attractive PvP choice is also of underrated value in a raiding environment. Frost’s ability to throw up a quick Ice Barrier in between themselves and a massive incoming blast of splash damage often spells the difference between a live DPS and a dead one. Or how about the ability to throw up two consecutive Ice Blocks, removing debuffs and avoiding death twice in a short amount of time? Which would you rather have in your raid group? The arcane mage who bites it 20 seconds into an encounter, or the frost mage who has the tools to survive?

There are a great number of encounters where the simple ability to keep the DPS alive for a few more seconds can spell the difference between a wipe and victory. It’s always a good thing when your DPS can find ways to keep themselves alive. It takes a bit of pressure off your healers, and allows your DPS to stay higher, longer.

Reason the third: AOE

It isn’t going to be useful in every encounter, but an AOE snare is going to be fairly awesome in some of them. Frost mages have excellent AOE capabilities, making them fantastic to have around for trash pulls, and the CC/AOE potential of Improved Blizzard could prove very, very valuable in certain boss encounters.

Reason the fourth: Kiting

Frost mages might be the best dedicated kiters in the game, pound for pound (with Glyph of Frostbolt removed, of course). Put a frost mage on Darnavan during the Lady Deathwhisper encounter and watch him complete the quest for you. Any melee class that’s ever been led around by the nose in PvP by a frost mage can attest to the fact that when it comes to kiting, frost is unparalleled. Any encounter that calls for a dedicated kiter is made tremendously easier when a skilled frost mage is involved.

Reason the fifth: Threat management

Frost mages have low threat for one reason: a significant percentage of their threat is being generated by their pet. Their ability to manage threat is significantly better than that of fire or arcane mages, who must rely upon talents to lower all-around threat. This means more time spent putting out DPS, and less spent doing things like casting Invisibility or Ice Block.

Reason the sixth: Shut up.

Seriously, I’ll bring my frost mage because I like my frost mage, so cram it. How’s that for having a discussion?

Frost is fun, pure and simple. And with the DPS gap closing so swiftly, it’s just not absolute anymore that an arcane mage will be better. If I’m a frost mage, and I’m good at my class, you want me in your raid.

Also, no mage is better at killing warlocks than those of the frosty variety. That counts for something.

So, Frost mages, are you finding spots in your guild’s progression raids? Or are they still taking Jim and his racism?

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Every week Arcane Brilliance teleports you inside the wonderful world of mages and then hurls a Fireball in your face. Check out our recent look at how much I hate damage meters, or our lengthy series of mage leveling guides. Until next week, keep the Mage-train a-rollin’.

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Editor’s Note: There was a scheduling error that originally published this post at 2pm EST Friday March 5th, 2010. We’ve corrected the error and re-published this edition of Arcane Brilliance at it’s usual Saturday time. It’s all the fault of those Warlocks, true story.

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Every week, we broadcast live from several places worldwide (several rooms, anyway) to present you with the WoW Insider Show podcast — an hour’s worth of WoW community discussion, covering everything from the week’s top stories here on WoW.com to emails from our readers to what’s been going on with our particular characters in Azeroth.

Along with your hosts, WoW.com editor Michael Sacco and contributing editor Matthew Rossi, we also feature rotating guest hosts, whether regular WoW.com contributors or personalities from other sites.

Today’s WoW Insider Show features:

• Guest host: UI/addon columnist Mat McCurley
• Stat and mechanic changes for Cataclysm
• New stuff in the Patch 3.3.3 PTR files
• Reader emails
• And more!

Want to participate? Join in the conversation in the chat channel on our Ustream site while the show’s broadcasting! Want to have your question read on the air? Drop us a line any time at theshow@wow.com!

Just want to listen? Follow the jump.

Live TV by Ustream

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In a very short answer, the devs confirmed in the recent Twitter developer chat that the new race and class combinations will not go live until Cataclysm itself goes live. In a way, this isn’t too much a surprise. Despite some rumors to the contrary, we didn’t get death knights until the first day of Wrath, and we had to wait for Burning Crusade to play draenei and blood elves. So with that in mind, it makes sense that we have to wait until the last possible moment for yet another new breed of player characters.

That said, it is probably true that the new race/class combinations are a bit different from the examples above. After all, they simply take existing races and existing classes and put them together, so it might seem that it wouldn’t be too hard to just turn them on.

But at the same time, Blizzard is focused on upgrading and integrating the new player experience with Cataclysm, which means revamping or adjusting starter zones and streamlining quests and mechanics for low levels. With that in mind, what better way to kick the whole thing off than with a new set of playable characters at the start of Cataclysm? They’re also obviously tying in at least some of the new class/race combinations with Cataclysm lore, such as night elf mages and tauren paladins.

Whatever the reason, you’ll definitely have to wait a while longer to level that dwarven shaman you’ve always wanted, and you may be a few weeks late to the end game because of it. Then again, if we’re lucky, it won’t take them too long to unlock race changing for the new combos.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com’s Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW’s third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it’s all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

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Several people have told us via our feedback page that they have received theirWorld of Warcraft Official Magazine in the mail. Last month, we got to see the preview and now many subscribers already have them in hand.

The WoW Magazine is a quarterly publication that is available via subscription only. U.S. subscriptions begin at $39.95 for a year and subscriptions are available to other countries at different rates. Our tipsters have described the magazine as having a graphic novel feel to them.

Did you subscribe to the magazine? If so, have you received your copy? We would love to read your reviews in the comments if you have.

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In the most recent bout of data mining the PTR patch (specifically build 11623), the fine folks at MMO-Champion discovered more changes and clarifications to how warrior abilities will work. Keeping in mind again that this is the PTR and you never know how things are going to change, here are the specifics.

Protection

• Revenge damage has been slightly lowered, it now deals [ 31% of AP + 1636 ] to [ 31% of AP + 1998 ] damage at max rank. Down from [ 31% of AP + 2181 ] to [ 31% of AP + 2665 ] damage.
• Improved Revenge now Increases damage of your Revenge ability by 30/60% (up from 10/20%) and causes Revenge to strike an additional target for 50% damage.
• Vitality now increases your total Strength by 2/4/6%, Stamina by 3/6/9% and your Expertise by 2/4/6.(On live, this is Strength and Stamina by 2/4/6% and Expertise by 2/4/6.)

Arms

• Trauma now lasts 1 min, up from 15 sec.

The Trauma change is probably one for convenience, as it can be hard in a high mobility fight (like, say, running out of a Defile) to keep Trauma up and this way you’ll have more leeway to keep those bleeds ticking at max efficiency while still getting out of bombs or fissures or what have you. Vitality is pretty much exactly as it was the last time we talked about it.

As for Revenge, the baseline ability is being adjusted slightly downward from our original exciting 3.3.3 revelation. But Improved Revenge is being hugely buffed. Hugely. When we first heard the news that Revenge would be getting some improvements, we speculated in the comments that perhaps they’d throw some AoE viability in there, and now they have done exactly that. By baking it into the talent instead of the baseline ability (and by removing the stun from Imp Revenge, it appears) you cut back on prot warrior stuns in PvP while giving a strong new reason to pick up Imp Revenge for more damage and more AoE threat. It’s a pretty solid change for a tanking prot warrior.

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…Mass Effect Online? World of Grim Fandango? So why aren’t we? Well, just for a start, they don’t exist. And, while we can daydream up our favorite games in newer, better formats, what we’re playing this weekend has to stay within the realm of reality. So what is the WoW.com team playing this weekend? And what’s their I-wish-I-could-play MMO? Well, you’re simply going to have to keep reading to find out. (And if you don’t care about what we’re doing? Well, you can always tell us what you’re doing.)

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Running a few raids with my hunter. If any IP were to become an MMO, I’d have to root for Dune. I think one day we’ll see it, and when we do hopefully it’ll be done right without the common failings of modern single-serving MMOs. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
• Alex Ziebart (@AlexZiebart): My answer to both of these questions is Mass Effect. I am starting to realize my answer to every question ever is going to be Mass Effect.
• Allison Robert (@AllisonRobert): Heading deeper into heroic ICC-10 with my Sunday 10-man team, and finishing off the Elders for Horde reputation. As for other properties that would make good MMO’s, I confess I have no idea, but I sure would like to see a sequel or update to the old LucasArts adventure games Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango.
• Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey): Cursing the existing of WCIII. The sweet, addictive existence of it. …and finishing off the night elf campaign. Also working on and hopefully dropped Sindragosa on Sunday, and of course, writing! Oh man. Okay, let’s see. A Discworld MMO. A Dragonriders of Pern MMO. A Star Trek MM…oh wait. (…it better be good, that’s all I’m sayin about that.) Oh oh oh — and a Monkey Island MMO. Because you fight like a dairy farmer.
• Amy Schley (@wowlawbringer): Saturday: The Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, followed by adult beverages. I would love to see Weber’s Honorverse or Pratchett’s Discworld as MMOs.
• Basil Berntsen (@outdps): This weekend I’m going to catch up on the ridiculous amount of crafting I have been too busy to do. I totally second a Chrono Trigger MMO!
• Christian Belt (@ihatewarlocks): I will be playing the game where I go to work, then I come home and sleep, then I go to work again, then I come home and sleep. It’s super fun, except for the part where it sucks your will to live until you pray for the sweet embrace of death to free you from your life of endless drudgery. Oh, and I might fit in some time for leveling my baby warrior. I’d kill to see an MMO set in the world of Krynn, the setting for the old Dragonlance books. I desperately, desperately want to roll a Kender thief.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Going to be making some gold by selling Ulduar achievements, and playing some more of the StarCraft 2 beta. I’m with Adam, I always thought a Dune MMO would rule. You could have a lot of different roles and a lot of depth to the game, with an economy system similar to how EVE works yet with more than just “fly your spaceship around and mine rocks.”
• Dan O’Halloran: LotRO Volume III Book 1 epic quest line as well as finally being able to solo the rest of the Volume I epic quest line. Still playing Plants vs Zombies on the iPhone and just downloaded Final Fantasy I (yes, the very first one) app as well. MMO world I’d love to see? Oh frell, I’d have have to say Farscape!
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): I’ll be working on my Sentinel Paragon playthrough of Mass Effect 2, and maybe doing some more Loremaster work on my death knight. As you might have guessed, I would kill for a Mass Effect MMO. BioWare is wasting their talent on Star Wars. Wasting I tell you!
• Dawn Moore (@wowdawn): When I’m not writing I’ll be venturing into Heroes of Newerth for the first time. I would like to see a Chrono Trigger or Eberron MMO.
• Elizabeth Harper (@faience): Taking a break from my third playthrough of Mass Effect 2 to try another BioWare game: Dragon Age. As for an MMO, I just have to jump on the bandwagon and say Mass Effect.
• Elizabeth Wachowski (@leeatwaterlives): I’m at work this weekend, so I’ll probably be playing Torchlight on the laptop and Final Fantasy VI on the DS.
• Eliah Hecht (@eliah): I’m buying Dragon Age as soon as I get home tonight, so I suspect there will be quite a lot of that. For MMO, I’m going to say either Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo or Dance Dance Revolution.
• Fox Van Allen (@foxvanallen): My weekly ten-man raid cleared up through Dreamwalker, so we’re going for Sindragosa and the Lich King this Saturday — wish us luck. Aside from that, there will be drinking with the new roommate, shoddy attempts at Mario Karting, and plenty of trashy movies via Netflix. As for the MMO question… Wild Arms. It was a way underrated series that was loads of fun (at least the early games were). And it didn’t even make me feel like a dirty steampunk’r. It’d be a fun universe to quest in.
• Gregg Reece: My plans are up in the air. I might be going to get a used piano tomorrow if I can find people to help me load it onto and off of the truck. Also, my pregnant wife was due this past Tuesday, so we’re currently on baby watch in the event she goes into labor. If all else fails, I’ll be raiding ICC on Sunday.
• Joe Perez (@Lodurzj): Spending time getting ready for Putricide 25 take-down Monday and breaking out the Ghostbusters game for another play through while trying to perfect my Terran build in SC2. I would love to see the Dresden Files done as an MMO. It is an interesting world from Jim Butcher that I think would make for a great game
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Comics, and enjoying my Elder title. Saving up for my last piece of T9. As for a new MMO idea, I’m with Lisa — A World of Darkness MMO? Yes please!
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): Dungeon diving with my husband on a new set of characters. We’re doing the Loremaster and Explorer achievements as we go, so it’s very slow and methodical and relaxed and silly. As for what IP I wish were an MMO, I’m still waiting on a White Wolf MMO.
• Matt Low (@matticus): Approaching the Lich King finally. Might do a few hard modes in older instances for kicks. But those will come after tomorrow’s Magic: the Gathering tournament during the day (really showing off my geekiness now with that admission :\). Those of you curious, I’ll be running UW control. As for what IP I’d like to see converted to an MMO, it’d have to be my beloved Stargate franchise. They cancelled the MMO and I was looking quite forward to playing as SG-87 team leader (or something).
• Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo): Busy busy weekend. I’ll be playing Dragon Age since I haven’t gotten through it yet. I’d love to see a Mass Effect MMO, of course.
• Matthew Rossi (@matthewwrossi): Gonna spend some time focusing on my shaman. I think. I think the Black Company series would make an interesting dark and gritty MMO. Merc companies instead of guilds, and getting paid to do the things you do instead of just doing them. I’d also like White Wolf to get off their collective butts and license Exalted, as an MMO where I start at first level as a reincarnated demigod with a nine and a half foot long sword and several moves that can kill 20 people at once would really work for me.
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Playing the new Borderlands DLC, working on design docs, writing. I’d like to play a Lovecraftian MMO, which is why I’m awaiting The Secret World with some trepidation.
  
• Rich Maloy (@stoneybaby): My cousin is coming into town from PSU for her spring break so we’ll be doing lots of touristy stuff, eating and drinking well. I’d like to see Codex Alera (Jim Butcher) turned into an MMO.
• Zach Yonzon (@Battlemasters): An important basketball game on Saturday morning to kick off the weekend, followed by leveling my original toon, a rogue who has been languishing on our first server (writing this week’s The Art of War(craft) made me long for my roguish days of yore). Either to level seriously or familiarize myself for a future goblin character. While watching Tim Burton’s take on Lewis Carroll’s world last night, the very thoughts that were running through my head were, “this would make one hell of a trippy MMO!” After all, we’re all mad here, aren’t we? Addendum: It turns out the copyright to Lewis Carroll’s works including John Tenniel’s illustrations have all lapsed. So hey… enterprising programmers, there’s an idea.

And so now, dear readers, it’s your turn — what are you up to in game (any game) this weekend? And if you want to jump in on the larger conversation, what world out there do you wish were an MMO?

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Here at WoW.com we’re on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow!

Not sure what flowcharts have to do with World of Warcraft? Well, in truth, very little… unless they’re World of Warcraft flowcharts, of course. I Like Bubbles’ Flowchart Friday inspired me to hunt around for more WoW-related flowcharts — to the conclusion that there aren’t anywhere near enough of the helpful things. So I did what I always do in such situations: I asked the WoW.com team to contribute their flowcharts to the effort. I’ll leave you, however, to judge the results.

• We’ll start off with I Like Bubbles regular flowcharting efforts. Here’s how to upgrade your holydin’s gear, leveling as a herbalist, and a Venn diagram (which is not technically a flowchart, but close enough) that explains PUGs.
• Then there’s the classic simplified cat DPS flowchart.
• A dizzying mutilate rogue flowchart.
• Basil offers an explanation of how to make money on the auction house using inscription.
• Joe explains the rules of VoA drops with another Venn diagram.
• Brian explains hunter vs. rogue mechanics.
• Michael explains how to raid, how to figure out night elves, and when you should RP in support tickets.

Okay, I admit, we may be having too much fun here.

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Once WoW’s most disparaged profession, Fishing has experienced a resurgence in Wrath — and it may get even better in Cataclysm, with developers studying fishing from other games like Animal Crossing in order to make it more fun. As far as I’m concerned, as long as they cook up another distraction like the Dalaran fountain in Cataclysm, I’ll be happy.

As with everything else concerning fishing in WoW, El’x Extreme Anglin’ is your best buddy and a fantastic source of information on where to find fish, drop rates, information on pool spawns, and Fishing achievements.

Accomplished Angler is a very work- and time-intensive meta-achievement, so I’ve taken the liberty of splitting this guide up. The first set of achievements you’ll need:

Grand Master Fisherman

Sorry, folks, there’s no real way to shorten this one; you’ve just got to keep fishing. One of the nice things about the profession is that you can level it anywhere — the only penalty to leveling it in an area with higher “fishing skill” than you currently have is the amount of junk you’ll catch versus actual fish. But on your way to Grand Master, you’ll have put a lot of work in towards:

1000 Fish

No way to cheese this one either, but fortunately it counts objects as fish too. If you’re starting from scratch, the best way to do it might be to combine 1000 Fish with the following achievement, angling for a fish from a low-level area:

One That Didn’t Get Away

Regrettably, this achievement is wholly a matter of luck — or, more commonly, agonized grinding. All of the fish listed for the achievement have very, very low drop rates (think 0.1% or less — about what you would expect while grinding one of the whelpling pets), and it’s not unusual for players to spend hours trying to land a single catch. To put this in perspective, I’ve caught well in excess of 3,000 items right now trying to get both the Dark Herring and the Sea Turtle and have nothing to show for it. That’s why, if you’re starting to level Fishing from scratch, I recommend combining this achievement with the leveling process. You only need to catch one of the following for the achievement, and they can be found in the following locations:

• 103 Pound Mightfish: Any part of the ocean in Azshara.
• 15 Pound Mud Snapper: This can be found in any of the ponds located in level 5-10 areas — Stillwhisper Pond in Eversong, Crystal Lake next to Goldshire, and Stonebull Lake surrounding Bloodhoof Village. If it’s an inland pool of water in any of the starting towns, you’ll have a shot at catching it there.
• 22 Pound Lobster: Bay of Storms in Azshara — so, yes, you do have a shot at catching either this or the 103 Pound Mightfish if you fish in Azshara.
• 29 Pound Salmon: This can be caught in inland pools of water located in level 50-60 areas (e.g. Winterspring, Eastern Plaguelands).
• 32 Pound Catfish: This can be caught from any inland pool in 10-20 areas or dungeons like Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines.
• 52 Pound Redgill: Anywhere you can catch ordinary Redgill.
• 68 Pound Grouper: Anywhere you can catch ordinary Grouper.
• Dark Herring: The fact that this can be used as a weapon cracks me up. You can fish it up from Fangtooth Herring schools in Howling Fjord, or any inland waters in Grizzly Hills.
• Rockhide Strongfish: Can be caught (very rarely) from Tastyfish schools during the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza each Sunday.
• Steelscale Crushfish: The ocean in Hillsbrad Foothills.

So which one is the easiest or fastest to catch? Frankly, none of them, but commenters at El’s are agreed that, if you want to get two achievements in one go, fishing for a Dark Herring from the Howling Fjord pools is probably your best bet for the following reasons:

1. You can sell the Fangtooth Herrings: This is more lucrative if you’re a chef and can cook Spicy Fried Herring.
2. You can sell the Pygmy Suckerfish: Alchemists use these to make Pygmy Oil, which is both a reagent for several recipes and a fun little item on its own.
3. Fishing from pools gives you a shot at the Sea Turtle mount: And, of course, the Turtles All the Way Down achievement, although it’s not part of the “Salty” meta.

If you’re leveling Fishing from scratch, you might want to pick a low-level area and just go to town on the waters there. Stonebull Lake next to Bloodhoof Village is probably your best bet, as you can catch both the 15 Pound Mud Snapper and the 32 Pound Catfish there.

The Fishing Diplomat

Ugh. It was once possible for Alliance to coast through this achievement by fishing in a phased version of Orgrimmar during the Fate, Up Against Your Will quest in the aftermath of the Wrath Gate battle. Blizzard eighty-sixed that at some point in 2009, so now both Alliance and Horde will need to scurry into the enemy cities to yank a fish out of the waters.

Horde has this a lot easier than their Alliance counterparts, because fishing in Stormwind’s harbor counts. Swim up along the coast until you’re in Stormwind territory, hop a nearby rock (or use an Elixir of Water Walking), cast, yank a fish out — and there’s your achievement.

For Alliance, fishing in Orgrimmar is more troublesome. The two pools of water in Orgrimmar are in the Valley of Spirits and the Valley of Honor. If all you’re after is just that one fish as quickly as possible, your best bet is to ride through the western entrance into the city to the Valley of Spirits and yank a quick fish from the water there. Bear in mind that Horde players port into Orgrimmar from the troll huts in the southeastern end of the Valley, so your timing here may suck for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

Fish Don’t Leave Footprints

This one should happen quickly enough once you start fishing from pools anywhere out in the world; the Weather-Beaten Journal that teaches you how to Find Fish drops from crates fished up from “schools” of fish or (more commonly) wreckage pools. You won’t find any of these pools in capital cities or 5-10 zones, but you will start seeing them pop up in world zones after that.

You can and should combine the above achievement with –

The Scavenger

The crates that drop the Journal teaching the Find Fish school are much more likely to drop from the wreckage pools you’ll need for this achievement than an ordinary school of fish. As a gloss on where you can find the following pools:

• Bloodsail Wreckage: Hunt along the southern and eastern coast in Stranglethorn Vale.
• Floating Wreckage: Hunt along the coastlines in Feralas, Azshara, and Tanaris.
• Schooner Wreckage: Hunt along the coastlines in the Hillsbrad Foothills, Wetlands, and the Stonetalon Mountains. “But there aren’t any coasts in Stonetalon,” you point out. So how’d Schooner Wreckage get there? The world may never know. Just check the central pond and the stream running through the Venture Company’s logging operation.
• Steam Pump Flotsam: This one’s easy — all of the Steam Pump Flotsam schools spawn around the lakes in Zangarmarsh.
• Waterlogged Wreckage: The Stranglethorn Vale river, Faldir’s Cove in the Arathi Highlands, the eastern coast of Dustwallow Marsh, Desolace, and the coast of Lordamere Lake in the Alterac Mountains.

Working on achievements? The Overachiever is here to help! We’ve covered everything from Glory of the Hero and Insane in the Membrane to Master of Alterac Valley and Lil’ Game Hunter, and you can count on us to guide you through holidays and Azeroth’s special events.

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