DeathKnight.info

TweetCraft: Azeroth and Twitter Collide

Kenzi — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:55:22 PDT

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year or live a very sheltered life, you will certainly know what Twitteris, and the fact that you are on this website is a good clue that you know that World of Warcraft is. Well now you can have the best of both of those worlds with a new in-game Twitter client called TweetCraft! Here are some of the clients features and a fancey video:

Send/receive Tweets in-game (Immediate sending reloads your UI)
Queue Tweets to send when it’s more convenient for you
Upload in-game screenshots using TwitPic
AutoTweet when you log in, enter an instance or get an achievement
Extensible so that AddOn authors can register messages or events to AutoTweet

You can download the addon HERE and start Tweeting your WoW heart out.

Do you Twitter? Feel free to leave your @username in the comments so you can get connected with other WoW Tweeps. (mine is @KnucklesUnited)

Like a story on the site and want to share it? Hit the Tweet button at the top of each page!

Gravity’s Guide to Using Tank Points

WoW Themed Mountain Dew Does Not Suck, The Commercial Does

Raegwyn Solos Full Karazhan, Several WotLK Heroic Bosses

Kenzi — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:16:40 PDT

I’ve been watching darkkiller5000’s (Raegwyn Zuluhed EU) videos for a while now and decided that his amazing achievements needed some front page love. Below are two of his videos that show him clearing a full Kara runn as well as soloing a few WotLK heroic bosses. Enjoy watching? Head over to his YouTube page and subscribe, I’m sure he’ll be giving us more.

Under Developement: The Crusaders’ Coliseum

PvPer Inside the Isle of Conquest PTR (part 2)

Dahnek — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:00:49 PDT

This week we take a look at another objective in the Ilse of Conquest. This one is often overlooked in favor of the Workshop and the Hangar. An unfortunate choice, as this objective offers some interesting play-style alternatives. The node I’m speaking of is the Docks.

The Docks at first glance is very underwhelming; consisting of a single ship (wtb use to these) and the flag just sitting there in the open. Heading over to the Docks I noticed little opposition for the most part. Most players view the Hangar as THE game winner and focus on it from the start. My heart sank as I hit the flag with no trouble.

At least the view was nice.

Once the alert went out some of the enemy stragglers came over for a tumble, but it didn’t have the gritty determination of a Hangar blitz. They were easily dealt with and in short time (still too short. lets get these cap times up. Not as high as AV caps. Maybe a minute.) Once the Docks belonged to us, one of our ships arrived (still no use) and our vehicles spawned. Herein lies the cool factor of the Docks. The Workshop supplies the usual seige engines we are used to, ala’ Wintergrasp and in a smaller regard, Strand of the Ancients. The Docks however offer a usual skin with a new mechanic (in regards to PvP) and a brand new toy; the Glaive Thrower.

Sweet merciful crap. It’s an elven batmobile.

The Glaive Thrower moves at a decent clip and unleashes large shuriken death at everything in front of it. It reloads at a very good speed (better then cannons) and does signifigant damage. Keep walls and turrets suffer enough damage to make this a viable seige weapon, and enemies on foot will certainly feel it. As of current PTR build the glaives do about 9k dmg to a running target, but I expect this lowered somewhat since it is easier to target then a cannon. The Glaive Thrower is also a great anti-seige weapon, and it’s not too far a distance back to your own Keep to take out attackers with it. Herein lies one of the best uses for them.

Glaive Throwers isn’t the only new toy at our disposal or the only reason to grab the Docks. There is another tool we are familiar with, but with a PvE-like twist.

What an original look. *cough*

Yes, a catapult. But this is different in the sense that it has ZERO damaging abilities. It does fire, but it fires YOU. I learned this the hard way when I fired myself into a wall like a fly hitting a windshield. The Dock catapult has two abilities at it’s disposal. One is a damage-absorbing shield, used to get the vehicle where it needs to go. The other is the firing mechanic, which is exactly like the one used in the Flame Leviathan fight in Ulduar. Don’t hope for a nifty grappling hook to pop out, insuring your safety if you are in the general area. Nono. You need to be very accurate. I fired myself several times right over the Keep walls and right into the courtyard where mass chaos was ensueing. Unfortunately it’s a rough landing I wouldn’t recommend unless you have a quick heal (I used Vampiric Blood+Imp Rune tap) or a parachute cloak at your disposal.

So I hear you? “Dahnek, what in the sam-hell is the use of this suicide machine?” The answer I found is keeping your seige vehicles safe and allow them to focus on walls by carefully firing yourself ONTO the towers that house the defensive turrets, where you can shut them down for a time. It takes practice to get the arc right but is very satisfying to pull it off.

That’s it for this addition folks. Check back next week for the next node on the list. In the mean time, happy killing!

PvPer Inside the Isle of Conquest PTR

The Isle of Conquest Preview

Isle of Conquest Q&A and Pictures!

New Faction Change Q&A

Kenzi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:35:48 PDT

Some blue news to update the recently announced faction change service:

Nethaera
We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

Updated 7/1
Due to the many questions that have come up with the announcement of this new service, we wanted to take the time to answer the ones we can at this point in time.

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.

Q. How much will it cost?
A. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.

Q. Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.

Q. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

Q. How often can you change your faction?
A. We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.

Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.

Faction Changes Coming to World of Warcraft

Cross-Language Battlegroups Coming This Week

Mount Changes Coming With 3.2, Huge Changes

GameStar.de Interview with Tom Chilton

Kenzi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:51:44 PDT

GameStar.de snagged an interview with Game Director Tom Chilton at the Warcraft Regional Finals in Cologne. Unless you can speak German it would be a good idea to skip to the 3 minute mark to see the interview (in English). In it, Chilton talks about player housing, content coming at a rapid pace, game balance, and the Warcraft Movie.

(Thanks Goodwin)

Cross-Language Battlegroups Coming This Week

The DK Wall Has Been Updated

Kenzi — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:47:03 PDT

Just added 12 new submissions to The DK Wall bringing our total to just over 200. Feel free to send me a pic of your DK via the contact page. You can see our wall HERE or browse through the embed below.

Blue Stuff, DK Wall Updated, Future News

The DKosphere: It’s Been a While

More 3.2 Info: New Druid Form Art [updated]

Faction Changes Coming to World of Warcraft

Kenzi — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:37:40 PDT

Nethaera just dropped a bomb shell on the official forums with the announcement that a faction changing service is in the works and soon be available.

New Faction Change Q&A

Cross-Language Battlegroups Coming This Week

Mount Changes Coming With 3.2, Huge Changes

PvPer Inside the Isle of Conquest PTR

Dahnek — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:20:24 PDT

For those of you who weren’t around when I blogged about my PvP experiences in the Beta testing of Wrath, allow me to recap my initial feelings of Wintergrasp.

I need to address Wintergrasp.

Upon first hearing of the area I fantasized about toons drop podding from escort flyers, Keeps ablaze and all sorts of PvP goodness.

Again, Blizzard took my expectations and shattered them. Badly

The zone has no sense of realism. Instead of feeling like you are attacking a mighty keep, you feel like you’re knocking down or simply removing lego walls from a four year old’s plaything. There is no sense of organic PvP to be had, nor tactics other then a massive zergfest. Everything rings with whimsy and, honestly, can’t be taken really seriously. The idea was solid, but the execution was sloppy. Truely Blizz can learn from their newfound rivals over at EA Mythic.

Well it certainly seems Blizzard has finally learned from its mistakes in some ways, as I am proud to report that, while a BG in the strictest sense (WTB server specific IoC) is truely a paradise for PvPers looking for depth with their mayhem. The whole zone is ripe with gritty detail and realism and tactics have to be considered if victory is to be yours. The nodes are far removed from their AB and AV cousins; they are not simple “grab flag and WOO more numbers on scoreboard” affairs. While there are a few (and honestly those feel like cop outs) the majority of the landmarks to be captured serve specific abilities that actually enhance gameplay and deepen the sense of realism.

In the first part of this article I’ll be highlighting on of these nodes; The Hanger.

The Hanger Bay tends to be the primary target of choice for the Horde, while the Alliance tend to focus on the Docks (more on the Docks later). As a member of the Horde I followed suit and traversed the winding paths through the mountains, killing those Alliance I saw in the area who aimed to take our goal as well. Once we arrived the flag was a hot-zone of activity, as both forces battled for the prize. After beating of the initial surge and detaining those who would interrupt our flag grabber (the change to our CoI is barely noticable folks. No worries.), it was only a small time before we held the zone. Too short in my humble opinion. I’d like to see the flag-capture time increased, as resources like these are worth fight long and hard for.

Once the area fell firmly into our hands, several portals generated that led to the ships we could now access. I foolishly expected something along the line of Goblin Zepplins as our transports. Maybe if I looked up far into the heavens the sight I witnessed upon taking the portal wouldn’t have knocked me on my ass.

Now those are gunships.

There is no hijacking these, as these gunships fly way above the battlefield. Only way the Alliance can access their ship is to capture the node themselves, and I’d love to see something implimented before 3.2 goes live that utilizes the catapult technology to create exciting ship-to-ship fights. Perhaps implement that the Catapults do not spawn until both factions have had a chance to board their ships, to prevent campers and keep the fights exciting.

The Gunships fly on “tracks”, meaning they have a set flight path. These flight paths cover the Hanger itself(allowing for ranged defense of the node) to the enemies Fortress. At any time during this trip you can man cannons and unleash hell on the terrain below; perhaps focusing on the enemies still inside the fortress or the walls to assist in the seige going on below.

Guns are not the only tools we have available to us while having access to the Hangar. No no. We also have ourselves, as everyone aboard the ship has a parachute equiped for death-defying jumps into enemy territory. Attacking a fortress this way can be a risky proposition, especially if you are lacking the ground assault, as no doubt there will be defenders waiting with hungry weapons below. I’m pleased to say there is no bugginess to be found in the parachute system; meaning you won’t need to concern yourself with the WG bug of it not triggering.

Once inside the fortress the choice is yours; assist the ground forces by grabbing the enemy supplies of Saronite Charges to damage the exterior walls, or run rampant over the defenders.

All in all, the BG is shaping up nicely. It truely feels like an evolution in Battlegrounds; far removed from the flavorless BG’s of yesterday, and does not suffer from the problems that have plagued Wintergrasp since introduction. At a later date I’ll cover all the other nodes, in an attempt to prepare those of you who aren’t taking part in the PTR.

More to come

PvPer Inside the Isle of Conquest PTR (part 2)

Isle of Conquest Q&A and Pictures!

The Isle of Conquest Preview

Death Knight Q&A with Ghostcrawler

Kenzi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:02:57 PDT

There has been an ongoing Q&A session in the forums in regards to class questions. Today the DK session was released, its’s long so get ready for a wall of text.

Ghostcrawler
Today we continue our class QandA series with Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and the development team, in which we’re taking a look at each class and answering some of the top questions brought forward by their communities. Next up, we take a look at the most asked questions from the death knight class and find out more about the design philosophy behind the first Hero class, the expectations for the class, and what may lie in store for it in the future.

Death Knight QandA with the Voice of the Class Design Team, Ghostcrawler

Community Team: We’d like to start things off by asking a question that players often ask in regard to the very purpose of each class. Death knights are the newest class in the game, the first Hero class, and the only class to be added since the original launch.

Q: Where do death knights fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward?

Ghostcrawler: Death knights are the only current Hero class, which means they are supposed to be the best class in the game.

No, no, I mean that death knights are an anti-magic tank, which means you bring them out for fights like Hydross and curb them for Patchwerk.

I jest again, but my point is that we introduced a new class to a game that didn’t really have a niche that needed to be filled. The closest to a gap that existed was that we wanted to have more tanks available, especially for pick-up groups. But adding the dual-spec feature as well as improving some of the limitations of the existing classes has helped to fill that hole as well. Yet we did want to introduce a new class. World of Warcraft has been going on for several years now, and we thought it was time to shake things up a bit. We succeeded. Perhaps too well.

Players are obviously enjoying death knights for tanking, dps, or PvP and we’d like to think there is more going on there than just power. Some players really enjoy the rune and runic power mechanic, and I think it’s fair to say that the class requires a good amount of skill to play really well. Between Death Runes and all the various cooldowns, there are a lot of opportunities to play less optimally and push the wrong button. We’ve asked ourselves several times if the death knight is overly complicated — perhaps you could accomplish 90% of the design with a 3 rune system instead of a 6 rune system — but we aren’t changing it to that large a degree soon.

In terms of 3.2, we want to chill out the death knight AE damage and defensive cooldowns a little. It’s fine for a melee class to have strong area-effect, but they shouldn’t be so much better than warriors, rogues, and Enhancement shamans. One culprit here is Unholy Blight, which we are considering changing to be more single-target in nature. We are also likely to split Desecration into two abilities: a PvP-oriented snare and a PvE-oriented self damage buff. We are considering shifting some of the damage from Scourge Strike and Frost Strike into Blood Strike, which still hits for fairly paltry amounts for Frost and Unholy. We’ll talk about some additional changes below.

Q: What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes?

Ghostcrawler: Their resource system is very unique. It is impossible for death knights to ever run out of resources. Any kind of benefit that makes rune-based abilities cheaper or finish their cooldowns faster are generally useless to a death knight. In fact, the whole rotation risked being very regular and even boring until we came up with a strong role for the Death Runes.

The death knight can do excellent melee damage, but also better ranged damage than most melee classes, and all three specs deal a large amount of non-physical damage.

Death knights also have a lot of abilities with medium-length cooldowns. This means they can be used multiple times per fight, but aren’t always there exactly when needed. A lot of the skill involved in playing a death knight, whether for PvP, tanking, or doing raid dps, involves using these at the right time.

Death knights also hybridize into a lot of different directions. What I mean is that they have surprisingly high area damage for a predominantly melee class. They have a pet. They have interrupts, (reverse) gap-closers, and strong snares. They are very well-rounded, which has been the cause of many of the balance problems we’ve had with them in PvP.

Death knights don’t have a dedicated tanking tree. Blood, Frost or Unholy death knight tanks are all viable, and each one can be slightly more useful depending on the boss encounter.

And then there is the obvious: they start at high level, showered in blue gear and even a mount. They have some of the best quests in the entire game in their start zone, and their identity is stitched heavily into the story of Northrend and the Lich King specifically.

Community Team: One question in particular that relates to one of the earliest designs of the Death Knight class and has been burning on the minds and tongues of every death knight for quite awhile now.

Q: How do we feel about the current viability of dual-wielding? Are there plans to improve it or have it fit a specific role for the class?

Ghostcrawler: This is a controversial topic because we realize some players just aren’t interested in dual-wielding (or seeing any death knights even do it), while others love the faster strikes that come with it. Our design has always been that dual-wielding should be an option, but that also means that it can’t take over, as it often does for classes in which we provide the option.

Part of our goal with the death knight was not to have a tanking or PvP tree, and we feel we’ve been pretty successful with that. However, adding dual-wield to that matrix just gives us an impossible task, because then you need to have the Blood dual-wield tank spec and the Frost two-hander PvP spec and so on.

What we are going to do with dual-wield in 3.2 is just provide the Frost tree with the talents necessary to prop-up dual wielding, including a new talent that lets Frost Strike, Death Strike, Obliterate etc. hit with both weapons. This will likely mean that Blood and Unholy dual-wield specs just won’t work anymore. It also carries the risk that all Frost death knights feel like they have to go dual-wield. This latter part isn’t necessarily a goal, but could be the outcome. We think in this case our only option is to remove some player choice in order to provide a real choice in other areas.

Community Team: The Blood tree has been quite popular lately, but the players have been actively discussing the 51-point talent, Dancing Rune Weapon, lately. Even with the glyph for it, Dancing Rune Weapon only lasts through about one rotation of abilities while the Unholy 51-point talent, Summon Gargoyle, lasts much longer.

Q: Do we have plans for any changes or improvements to Dancing Rune Weapon?

Ghostcrawler: We tried to make Dancing Rune Weapon and Gargoyle unique, but I think it has ended up causing more problems than anything. I think it’s likely you’ll just see both abilities as flat runic power costs that summon a creature for a flat period of time. This will let us balance the numbers appropriately.

Community Team: Due to their effectiveness while tanking, death knights saw a rapid popularity growth as tanks which caused the reduction of the armor bonus of Frost Presence in patch 3.1.3. Some players are afraid this will push them out of being an option as a main tank as they felt they were when originally implemented.

Q: What are our current thoughts on the status of death knight tanks and do we have plans for further changes?

Ghostcrawler: Almost all of the top raiding guilds considered the death knight to be overpowered as a tank and the only real option for many of the Ulduar hard modes. While the community isn’t always right about everything, they are right a lot, and in this case we think the evidence is overwhelming. We wanted to make the cooldowns the unique part of death knight tanking, and we haven’t given up on that design, but it has also turned out that having lots of powerful cooldowns is just an extremely potent way to tank. Many of the Naxx and Ulduar bosses were dangerous from predictable blasts of damage on cooldowns longer than the death knight ones. Plus the cooldowns could be used to survive just a bit longer. When the other tanks could survive two hits, the death knight could survive three. It’s entirely possible you’ll see Icebound Fortitude on a two-minute timer in the 3.2 patch. I want to reiterate though that our vision hasn’t changed — we still want death knights to be able to tank every encounter. Rather than posting in the forums that you are now doomed and will have to reroll, help us get the death knights in a place where they are an attractive option but not the clear best option on most fights.

Community Team: There have been some complaints among the death knight community about stats on armor pieces, especially set pieces, not benefiting the talent spec that they want to play as much as another talent spec.

Q: Are we satisfied with stats such as Armor Penetration, Haste, and Hit having very different values depending on which talent spec a death knight is using?

Ghostcrawler: No. We don’t want to create multiple types of death knight armor, other than tanking and damage dealing. We already support like 19 different types of tier pieces because for example all of the mail users want slightly different stats. It is a problem that, say, Blood wants armor penetration and Unholy does not. But our answer to that problem is going to be to make all specs regard the stats more similarly, not to provide lots of different armor choices. It’s already hard enough to get a boss to drop what you want.

Community Team: With the recent implementation of the dual-spec feature, players have greatly enjoyed the flexibility of having two specs to switch between depending on what they are currently playing. But this feature has also lead to number of extra requests from players to make things easier for them when transitioning.

Q: Would it be possible to save runeforge enchants to primary and secondary talent specializations or add rune forges to more convenience places than Acherus?

Ghostcrawler: Considering the huge benefits that the runeforge enchants already offer the death knight, it’s hard to argue that they need to be even more convenient. A paladin who swaps from a Retribution build to a Protection build can’t even use the same weapon, let alone have an enchant change out as well. We don’t save gems and enchants as part of the dual-spec feature. The expectation generally is that you have multiple sets of gear.

Community Team: Anticipation is considered a more attractive talent than Frigid Dreadplate because dodge can trigger Rune Strike. Players feel this is a little confusing because Frigid Dreadplate is way more down in the talent tree.

Q: Are there plans to change or improve the Frigid Deadplate talent?

Ghostcrawler: We don’t necessarily consider the deepest talents in a tree to be the best ones. Generally when we push talents deep, it’s because they are of limited interest to other specs or else so powerful that we want to keep them away from other specs. Frigid Dreadplate is a great tanking talent since it adds avoidance. I can’t imagine a death knight tank actually skipping out on Anticipation, so it doesn’t bother us that the Anticipation talent is considered better. That said, we think avoidance is likely too high on all tanking classes, so we aren’t likely to buff Frigid Dreadplate.

Community Team: Death Knights think that only a few players choose Will of the Necropolis because of the proc condition, internal cooldown, and so forth.

Q: Is there any plan to improve Will of the Necropolis?

Ghostcrawler: There was a brief window where this talent was totally overpowered because it just added so much opportunity for a death knight getting beat on to survive. It’s possible we over-nerfed it, but you have to be careful with talents like this. As soon as it slides from “only a few choose to take it” to “most choose to take it” then there’s another talent that is being skipped over.

Community Team: This brings us into some PvP-focused topics. One particular spell that was brought up a lot is Mind Freeze and the ‘delays’ in it taking effect on the target which often causes the interrupt to appear on a combat log but not actually stop the spell.

Q: Is this a bug or something in particular we are investigating?

Ghostcrawler: It is an ongoing research item. We have never been able to duplicate the situation that the players describe, that sometimes it has a delay that other interrupts do not. It is set up similarly to other abilities. However in a game as complex as World of Warcraft, we have learned not to dismiss the possible weird situations that a particular ability can get into. You have to take the combat log with a slight grain of salt — this is a client-server game, and sometimes the two can disagree on when an event occurred. The server thinks the spell went off, while the client thinks you got the interrupt off in time. The server usually wins.

Community Team: A good number of non-death knight players are concerned regarding the healing capability of death knights, especially in the PvP setting, where they can often survive for extended periods of time with no healer and still do lots of damage.

Q: Do we have plans to change any of the death knight’s self-healing abilities?

Ghostcrawler: The healing is one of the core mechanics of the class, and one of the things that helps them feel distinct from warriors. It’s the reason there is a Blood tree and Blood Runes. We have no immediate plans to change anything here. If death knights continue to be good at PvP even after some of the defensive nerfs, we’d likely look at say Chains of Ice, the interrupts or the amount of non-physical damage they can do.

Community Team: To finish off this QandA, let’s blast through the last set of questions:

Q: Would you consider adding a Mortal Strike-like ability to death knights in the future?

Ghostcrawler: There are two answers to this question. The first is do we think the death knight needs any additional tool for PvP? The answer to that is definitely not. Death knights have been really well represented, if not overpowered, in PvP. The second part of the question is more philosophical though, which is whether or not Mortal Strike is mandatory in PvP. You can currently argue it isn’t because there are teams that feature Retribution paladins or Unholy death knights (or both) that do just fine. However, it is an issue that rises up every few months or so: whether every damage class needs some option of bringing the “mortal” debuff, or at what point we just make it a passive aura upon stepping into PvP.

Q: Will Chains of Ice ever be subject to diminishing returns?

Ghostcrawler: If we need it. It’s not in the plan. Snares don’t currently have diminishing returns, and Chains is limited based on the availability of Frost Runes. It is a possible concern that between Chains of Ice, Death Grip, and the ghoul stun that a death knight can lock someone down for a long time.

Q: Will ghouls ever get their voices back?

Ghostcrawler: We have a long-term plan to add the ghoul voices back. We pulled them because they were using the vendor voices, which sounded weird when your ghoul would ask you to buy or trade. We just need to get some audio made without the vendor text. It’s in the plan, but not super high priority.

3.2 Death Knight Changes

Death Strike Ner…er Hot Fixed

3.1.1 Death Knight Changes, Death Strike Changed Again

Under Developement: The Crusaders’ Coliseum

Kenzi Runetotem — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:32:20 PDT

The under developement page was updated today to give a glimpse at The Crusaders’ Coliseum and (some) of the bosses.

The Crusaders’ Coliseum

The time to strike at the heart of the Scourge is drawing close. Clouds blanket the skies of Azeroth and heroes gather beneath battle-worn banners in preparation for the coming storm. They say that even the darkest cloud has a silver lining. It is this hope that drives the men and women of the Argent Crusade: hope that the Light will see them through these trying times, hope that good will triumph over evil, hope that a hero blessed by the Light will come forth to put an end to the Lich King’s dark reign.

So the Argent Crusade has sent out the call, a call to arms for all heroes far and wide, to meet at the very doorstep of the Lich King’s domain and to prove their might in a tournament the likes of which Azeroth has never seen. Of course, a tournament such as this needs a fitting stage. A place where potential candidates are tested to the limits of exhaustion. A place where heroes… become champions. A place called the Crusaders’ Coliseum.

Prove Your Might

The Crusaders’ Coliseum, a new raid set to open its doors once World of Warcraft’s next content patch is released, will see you and your friends facing off against a series of increasingly challenging bosses, terrible monsters the Argent Crusade brought in from all over Northrend. Although the challenge is great, you will find that the prizes the Argent Crusade has to offer will make it all well worth your while.

The setup for the Crusaders’ Coliseum is surprisingly straightforward. If you are familiar with the Ring of Blood quest line, you already have a vague idea of how the Crusaders’ Coliseum plays out in principle. After you and your friends enter the coliseum, you will face the first of several bosses; once you’ve defeated a boss, you will move on to the next one. You must master the encounters one by one, until you finally face the raid’s final challenge. Sound simple? That’s because there is a twist.

In the “Heroic” version of the Crusaders’ Coliseum, you and your raid only have a limited number of attempts for each raid lockout period, and each time your raid wipes, one of your attempts will be used up. To embark on the epic Trial of the Grand Crusader, you must first prove your worth by clearing the 10 or 25 player version of the Crusaders’ Coliseum’s normal mode. After you have dealt the killing blow to the coliseum’s final heroic mode boss will you be able to collect the Crusaders’ Tribute, and the fewer attempts you needed to complete the Trial of the Grand Crusader, the better your reward will be.

Meet (some of) the Bosses

Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations, each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team.

Beasts: Your first challenge will pit you against a group of terrifying beasts the Argent Crusade captured in Northrend, including (but not limited to) a magnataur and not one, but two jormungar wyrms.

Scourge: Some call the lieutenants of the Lich King fearsome creatures made of pure nightmare, which is doubtlessly a fitting description. How the Argent Crusade managed to capture these fiends remains a mystery; what’s less mystifying is your fate should you fail to overcome this challenge.

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