Updates might get a little crazy over the week-end as I push the final bits of content to get ready for the release of Cataclysm. Hopefully, I won't crash the site or kill a moderator, but if it happen I'm sure the guy who will replace me after I get fired will be as nice as I am.

Cataclysm Dungeons Pages Updated
I finally updated most of the Cataclysm dungeons pages to let you prepare before the release! If everything goes as planned, I'll probably have some extra time for the Deadmines/SFK pages and we might have a couple of strategy guides, maybe. Thanks to Marlamin and Simca for their precious help on these pages.






Leaders of the Alliance and Horde Part 1 - Garrosh
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
King Varian Wrynn, Queen Sylvanas Windrunner, King Genn Greymane, and Trade Prince Gallywix—these are just a few of the leaders who continue to shape Azeroth's destiny. They are the embodiments of their races' strongest traits... and at times their greatest failings. In the coming months, Blizzard Entertainment will be releasing short stories that will peer into the hearts of these legendary heroes and offer insight into what new trials might lie ahead as they lead their people in a world forever changed by the Cataclysm.

The first story of this series, "Heart of War," offers a glimpse into the experiences that have shaped Garrosh into the leader he is today: his heroic exploits in Northrend; his uncertainty as he arrived in the imposing Horde capital of Orgrimmar; and most importantly, his friendship with his mentor, the warchief he would eventually replace, Thrall. This tale was written by Sarah Pine, the winner of Blizzard Entertainment's 2009 Global Writing Contest.

Brady Games Cataclysm Strategy Guide
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Whether you're a first-time player or a Molten Core veteran, Brady Games' official World of Warcraft: Cataclysm strategy guide has something for everyone. The guide weighs in at nearly 500 pages and dives into the areas you want to know about most. It covers the playable worgen and goblin races and their starting zones, as well as detailed information on Azeroth's shattered landscape and all the new quests. You'll also find a thorough guide to the new level 80-85 content.

The Brady Games World of Warcraft: Cataclysm strategy guide will be available on December 7 at retailers that sell World of Warcraft strategy guides and at the Blizzard Store.

The Daily Blink - Solliden Farmstead
The Solliden Farmstead is hiring apparently! (From The Daily Blink, yeah, turns out I like these guys!)

This article was originally published in forum thread: Cataclysm Dungeons Pages, Blue Posts, The Daily Blink started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 67 Comments
  1. Shinayne's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Knirps View Post
    I lol'd HARD at the Brady Games thing. I remember when I used to play FFXI and we got the guide for that... It's just so...misguided. Pun not intended.
    Seriously, Brady Games has long been notorious in the console gaming community for shitty guides with tons of errors, not to mention cheap bindings so the damn things fall apart after even the lightest use. My absolute "favorite" Brady Games guide was that FF9 debacle where they half-assed the entire thing and made you go to the website for all the actual info (a website that was notoriously buggy with a ton of security issues). I did a happy dance when I found out S-E went with a different company for the FF13 guide. I also love the Vagrant Story guide where they fucked up on the room names on the maps and completely hosed the drop tables and the metallurgy on the gear crafting chart. LOL at anyone buying Brady Games anything.

    Also who are these people that buy strategy guides for MMOs? You might as well just flush money down the toilet for all the good it'll do you. The only possible use I could see for them is buying them for the maps, which is the only use I ever had for the guides that came in my WoW battle chest when I bought it many moons ago. Stuff changes too much in MMOs for print guides to be relevant for long.
  1. mmoc82eb47c46c's Avatar
    Thank you guys for adding the daily blink, brings happiness and lots of laughters
  1. CarnatiaSpiritfield's Avatar
    Random Question: Buying the expansion, do we get free wow time with purchasing it?

    And thank you for the updates! And I like that one job poster lol funny.
  1. Cuppy's Avatar
    Haha, the vortex pinnacle asaad fight.
    Check the video from 1:40 and forward, have a laugh. Good compilation/info thingy!
  1. mmoc7578a14c40's Avatar
    The Yogscast put up their Halls of Origination videos this evening, to go along with the other videos - click here for the starting video - the rest are in the playlist and annotations!
  1. merex760's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by CarnatiaSpiritfield View Post
    Random Question: Buying the expansion, do we get free wow time with purchasing it?

    And thank you for the updates! And I like that one job poster lol funny.
    Free time is only for new accounts. So no.
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    It has been said by others before but I feel it bears repeating again: Do not buy any Brady Games guides. They are shoddy pieces of work at best, a swindle at worst.

    Thanks for adding The Daily Blink, Bibi!
  1. stonhinge's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Denied78 View Post
    So.. .. 7 new dungeons? as opposed to wraths release of 12 and BC's 13?

    I guess 9 if you include rehashed SFK and DM.

    Am I missing something?

    7 dungeons comming from 12-13 on previous expansions seem kinda weak. Quality over quantity maybe.. but rather have both.
    Keep in mind there's only 5 levels this time. We had 10 levels last 2 expansions, so 7 for 5 levels isn't too shabby. Add in the bonus 2 heroics, and that gives 9 heroics - not too far off from WotLK's 12. There's also the same (or more, haven't counted) number of rep factions as WotLK, so there's heroic level gear available from them as well (at exalted, but it's still there).

    They also redid all of Azeroth, and had to readjust some of the lower level dungeons. And there's nothing keeping them from adding in more "rehashed" heroics in a content patch.

    Like I've been telling some of my friends, especially the few who haven't played since 4.0.1 patch - this is probably as close to WoW 2 that we'll see. You just get to keep your existing characters for the "new" game. Anyone who's rolled an alt since the Shattering might feel the same way as well.
  1. snuzzle's Avatar
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
    his friendship with his mentor, the warchief he would eventually replace, Thrall.
    His what with Thrall?

    Granted, I haven't read this latest fic yet (about to) but... are we talking about the same characters here? Because I never once got the impression that Thrall and Garrosh were anything close to friends. Even distant friends.

    Thrall was Garrosh's mentor, sure, I'll buy that. Comrades-in-arms, yeah definitely. But apart from that, I really only ever got the impression that try as they might they both just couldn't STAND each other. Their ideas and ideals are simply too different. Especially in the Ulduar trailer, they both have looks of barely contained hatred towards each other. Frankly, I can't see how Blizzard could turn the story elsewise without some heavy retconning.

    But we'll see. No matter how they try to play Garrosh up to be the hero and make us like him now (lol at their terrible attempts in Stonetalon and with Sylvanas) the guy just gets under my skin.
  1. Pisholina's Avatar
    I loled at the "/t Solliden" paper at the bottom of the daily blink.
  1. Denied78's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by stonhinge View Post
    Keep in mind there's only 5 levels this time. We had 10 levels last 2 expansions, so 7 for 5 levels isn't too shabby. Add in the bonus 2 heroics, and that gives 9 heroics - not too far off from WotLK's 12. There's also the same (or more, haven't counted) number of rep factions as WotLK, so there's heroic level gear available from them as well (at exalted, but it's still there).

    They also redid all of Azeroth, and had to readjust some of the lower level dungeons. And there's nothing keeping them from adding in more "rehashed" heroics in a content patch.

    Like I've been telling some of my friends, especially the few who haven't played since 4.0.1 patch - this is probably as close to WoW 2 that we'll see. You just get to keep your existing characters for the "new" game. Anyone who's rolled an alt since the Shattering might feel the same way as well.
    Yeah I understand there is only the 5 levels. However, in BC there was 7 non-heroic dungeons on release alone for level 70's. That's for level cap.
    And Wotlk had 4 on release that was for 78-80

    So yes, there is less content in this xpac, from the blueposts stating that it would take the same amount of time to level from 80-85 as it did from 70-80, I guess I was hoping for a little more content.

    BC was really awsome regarding the amount of dungeons at level cap. Wrath was a bit weaker, but decent till everything turned aoe. I know it's not as much an aoe fest in cata while everyone is in blues, so we'll have to see about that.

    But staying on topic, It's just my opinion that they cheezed it a bit compared to the other 2 xpacs regarding instances. oh well. let's see how it turns out (wasn't in ptr/beta)
  1. mmoc26481ad533's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Failmuffins View Post
    Some of these heroic boss fights look more like raid bosses.

    I'm going to be grouping with friends, pugs will be terrible.
    At first maybe, but it seems to me that many of "oh this is Cataclysm, things will be different this time around, not a walk in the park like Wrath" are much the same as the "oh this is Wrath, things will be different this time around, not a walk in the park like BC"-comments that preceded Wrath. Since Blizzard took the more casual route (which I applaud by the way), heroic dungeons seem to have the role of gearing people up for raids to allow late-comers to catch up to the rest of their guilds.

    Or in other words, they are (or will be) balanced around being beatable by PUG's - simply because if they're too hard, it will be an insurmountable task to catch up using the LFG tool, rendering it pretty useless - and in turn making it the gearing-up for raids a guild endeavour instead of something you can do on your own. I'm not saying it will be faceroll-easy, but unless you're new to WoW, it won't be much of a challenge either, simply because the difficulty-level has to be set low enough to enable PUG's to beat it too. And we all know that if a PUG can beat it, it's facerollable with a competent guild-group :-)
  1. DarkBlade6's Avatar
    really intersting that most cata heroic 5man encounter seems to be harder than 10/12 h 25man icc
  1. Exclusive's Avatar
    Is it just me or is the link in the blue post to the Garrosh story broken?
  1. mmoc26481ad533's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mnm View Post
    really intersting that most cata heroic 5man encounter seems to be harder than 10/12 h 25man icc
    There may be several reasons for this. First of all it's beta, and they're not finalized yet, which means level of difficulty will most likely be altered. Secondly, most HC attempts I've seen has been with PUG's of members just barely meeting the minimum gear requirements for the instance (I haven't searched recently, so I may be off on this item). Third, tactics for the encounters are not widely known (though available), which may also affect performance.
  1. Puntar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by stonhinge View Post
    Keep in mind there's only 5 levels this time. We had 10 levels last 2 expansions, so 7 for 5 levels isn't too shabby. Add in the bonus 2 heroics, and that gives 9 heroics - not too far off from WotLK's 12. There's also the same (or more, haven't counted) number of rep factions as WotLK, so there's heroic level gear available from them as well (at exalted, but it's still there).

    They also redid all of Azeroth, and had to readjust some of the lower level dungeons. And there's nothing keeping them from adding in more "rehashed" heroics in a content patch.

    Like I've been telling some of my friends, especially the few who haven't played since 4.0.1 patch - this is probably as close to WoW 2 that we'll see. You just get to keep your existing characters for the "new" game. Anyone who's rolled an alt since the Shattering might feel the same way as well.
    No they didn't!

    Dreanie's and BE's starting areas are left untouched in both aspects. Quests and area changes. Both of these zones are still classified as BC content, which in my opinion has been (is) just a stupid decision.

    Would be really that hard to incorporate both o these zones into "vanilla" game, yet player would still need the BC expansion to actually choose BE or Dreanie race?
  1. DentalFlaw's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Denied78 View Post
    7 dungeons comming from 12-13 on previous expansions seem kinda weak. Quality over quantity maybe.. but rather have both.
    I would rather have fewer good dungeons at the start, then more 5 mans with each new patch to go along with the new raids and PvP seasons.

    3.1... don't remember, don't think we got anything though.
    3.2... ToC5
    3.3... FoS, PoS, and HoR.

    I would rather take a few of those 5 mans and spread them out, so for example, start with 7, and get 3-4 more with each 4.x patch. I don't always have time to spend in game to stay on top of the raid curve, and those 5 mans are great for giving me new content that I can consume in the limited time I have. I just hated running e.g. ToC5 over and over and that being the only new thing at the time.

    Edit: I grammar goodly!
  1. Evenios's Avatar
    the Cataclysm guide is a joke for level 80+ players and even for new players for the Wargen/Goblin it only covers the very FIRST zone for them it does not cover the lost isles or the Gilneaes landscape outside of "just the city".

    they filled 100+ pages of the guide with all of the zone maps but they should have saved it for the altas coming out in Jan. as they are not full paged and just gives basic info they could have used those pages to add more detail for level 80+ players of the new zones and maybe maps and tips and listing the bosses of the new dungeons too

    This guide is useful maybe for new players to WoW but for anyone else this is not really worth it unless you just like to collect Wow books (i do :-p) so i would just save your money and use one of the wow wikis :-p
  1. Falcio's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Puntar View Post
    No they didn't!

    Dreanie's and BE's starting areas are left untouched in both aspects. Quests and area changes. Both of these zones are still classified as BC content, which in my opinion has been (is) just a stupid decision.

    Would be really that hard to incorporate both o these zones into "vanilla" game, yet player would still need the BC expansion to actually choose BE or Dreanie race?
    So that'd be about 80% of the zones remade. Actually, not even that. Of the ones split in two and such, you end up with over 90% of the 1-60 content redone.

    They said they're willing to take a look at TBC content later on, but the fact that it was closer to a pleasing questing experience than pre-Cata Azeroth at least lets them postpone the changes for now. Until then, 1-10 goes fast enough for the Belfs and Draenei that they can immediately head off to Silverpine and Darkshore respectively.
  1. mmoc572c543a31's Avatar
    The EU clock is wrong? It says 16 hours 30 min currently, which would mean eu servers come up at 03:00 PM CET monday, when they actually come online 00:00 AM CET Tuesday?

    Correct time should be same as US, as in 25 hours 30min from now.

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