New cinematic trailer from the WoTLK beta, explaining how the Forsaken have spreaded a plague over the Lich King’s cottage on the countryside. I mean… around the Icecrown Citadel, home and fortress of the Lich King, that is.
The Forsaken, for all those of you who don’t know, are evil creatures. You can tell by the way they speak, dragging out every word from the deepest darkness. Or from a pulmonar disease, whatever comes first. Their aspect wouldn’t grant them a place in a beauty contest, so… they’re bad guys, indeed.
You can also see how powerful the Lich King is, but if you’re keen enough, there’s a key to kill him revealed on the trailer. You can’t defeat him with magic or weapons, but seemingly he’s afraid of green foggy stuff. So, if you manage to hire someone to fumigate in the king’s fortress, you just have to take the gear and run.
Yeah, Halloween is not going to get rid of night elves and orcs hanging around, this year. Brilliant stuff!!
Tauren Mask
If you’re a tauren, this may be your next purchase if you’ve got some bucks to spare. However, it should look fierce and aggresive… but it looks coward and scared instead. I think this one could have a better aspect if his eyes get slightly re-touched, for the sake of selling more of them, anyway.
Forsaken Kit
This one looks cooler: you become an actual creepy creature after being disguised with this. However, the package seems too little to contain every required aspect to come up with a complete transformation. The pic shows a very accurate change of that dude’s face. Anyone has tried it yet? If so, drop some lines about it, we want to know!!!
The Mighty Ears of a Night Elf (and some more)
Hell yeah!! Well, I don’t know if hell is a place for night elves. Let’s say… uhmmm… “Shiny forest of mighty creatures yeah!” instead. Better? Does it make any sense? Well… drop it, then. The ears of a night elf, now available.
The kit adds some makeup to help you become a real Night Elf. It’s not much but hey, it’s 12 bucks you’re investing here, you can’t expect Elune to pay you a visit. Although I would like to see that happening. Would she agree to make a lapdance? How much would it cost? Errr… I’m losing it.
World of Warcraft costumes, absolutely brilliant stuff for this Halloween!! For more, visit buycostumes.com and Apple’s Costumes.
New Northrend interactive map. Brilliant Stuff indeed.
We can check out the map and see flying points for both sides, level range for each zone and the exact location for instances. Pretty cool, uh?
If you want to see the interactiveness of this interactive map, just link here
Clearly, the Lich King inhabits into the Icecrown Citadel in Icecrown. You’ll observe that Naxxramas, one of the highest level instances in pre-BC, originally located in the Plaguelands, is now present in the new map. It is exciting to see again that instance.
However, the zone is marked as lvl 71-74, so we wonder if Naxxramas will be a low level instance. Truth is, it has been revealed that the original Naxxramas emplacement has been removed from the Plaguelands and the entire map of this old pre-BC region has changed as well in patch 3.0.
Wowhead.com has announced the official release date for the Lich King to arrive: November the 11th. We’ll have him with us this year, Wowhead claims that this has been confirmed by trustful Blizzard sources, although we’ve checked the official website of the game and there’s no date available yet.
However, this makes sense: Warhammer Online comes out this same week, so Blizzard will have 2 months to evaluate their counterstrike to ensure that no WoW player switches Azeroth for the darker world of Warhammer.
It certainly works on Blizzard’s interest to don’t give much time to Warhammer to collect up adepts, since some of those WoW players that are at leisure waiting for WoTLK to come out might be tempted to give Warhammer Online a try.
So, the mere announcement is a great counterattack against Mythic Entertainment.
Get ready because the King is almost here. Brilliant stuff!!!
Well, I know there’s info everywhere, but we had to add our two cents about the so-called first World of Warcraft real competitor: Warhammer Online. Brilliant stuff?
My first impression is that Warhammer seeks a more realistic representation of its world, graphics try to gain accuracy and detail, contrary to the cartoon-style that World of Warcraft uses. However, they don’t quite achieve to provide really polished graphics: buttons are too big and simplistic, character selection is a little bit messy and confuse in the beginning (for some reason, my character got out of the screen when I was choosing his physical appearance).
“Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer”
I heard that Warhammer Online was meant to be a revolution in mmorpg. I heard it wasn’t going to be just an alternative to WoW, that they were implementing a different way to play the game: it was going to be more PvP oriented, the factions will be in confrontation and there will be storylines created by the players themselves. However, I guess these were just rumors, or maybe they were just ideas that have changed over time, since it has taken so long to see this game come to life that everything might have changed from the original conception. Needless to say that I would have loved to see something very different in action, but time will tell.
From what I’ve seen and played, it all starts off as a Warhammer conception of the WoW type of game. Everything works quite accordingly to the classic WoW style: quests based on repetitive structures (kill certain amount of mobs, pick up certain number of objects…). There are elite mobs called “paladins”, you’ve got quest givers, trainers (although there is just one for all classes), and so on. Classes are different, but roles aren’t: tanks, melee dps, ranged dps, healers.
I’ve rolled a Chaos Magus, which is some sort of spellcaster ranged dps who travels in a flying shield. Have you ever read any Asterix comic book? The whole idea was taken from there:
Well, maybe it’s not exactly the same thing but… you get the point, right? Well, first thing I noticed is that spell effects are not so great. I started off with two spells, a tiny fireball and another one in which the flying shield bites your enemy in some sort of purple effect. The renders of those are a little bit disappointing, but hey, we are level 1, there must be something more to this game.
The first different thing is public quests. Public quests are played by any character in the area that has picked up that quest, consisting on different stages or phases. First one I did, I had to kill mobs: some kind of mobs in stage 1, some others in stage 2, and in stage 3 I had to kill some sort of boss. Number of kills were shared by all the players involved in that quest. When done, you’ve got a prompting screen that ranks the participants, and there’s a roll for some gear and goods as a reward.
“The Chaos Magus in action”
I also tried the PVP feature. This is very similar to battlegrounds in WoW: you enter in a PVP map and you have to capture some flags. Good vs. Evil. Since I joined when I was lvl 2, I did not much: even when my spells were put at lvl 8 in order to have some chance in the battle, I hadn’t acquired new spells from the trainer yet, so I just came out with the little fireball and the shield bite.
However, there’s the Realm vs. Realm feature that might help the game to deliver a different side of a mmorpg game.
In conclusion, my first experience with Warhammer leaves me with a numb sensation, I would need more to evaluate. It has disappointed me that it resembles this much to WoW, but I admit that it wasn’t easy to create something totally different from scratch. There are aspects that will improve when the game will be officially released, and I’m thinking about giving it a try while we wait for the Lich King…
Glyphs, special abilities given to our fellow friend the Death Knight, the first hero class in World Of Warcraft. We have had access to some of them. Take a look, brilliant stuff:
Glyph of Dark Command
What it is: Increases the chance for your Dark Command ability to work successfully by 8%, that means that you will improve your tanking skills. If you’re low on your hit rating, this is a nice glyph for you, big boy.
What we would like it to be: Your Dark Command has a 8% rate of turning any helmet or head protection that you wear into a raccoon with a pink hat. If it happens, the raccoon will perform a 4 hours long monologue about how hard it is for raccoons to play World of Warcraft with their paws, and claiming for raccoon-adapted keyboards. We don’t know for sure if it would do any good, but it will be enlightening no matter what.
“The Lich King is watching YOU! In blue-ray technology, apparently…”
Glyph of Blood Boil
What it is: Lowers the damage of your Blood Boil by 20% but causes it to slow affected targets for 5 sec. (Movement speed reduced by 30%.). Another tanking ability. Basically, we fail to see much advantage in using this glyph, since Blood Boil has lost its taunt effect and you just aggro by dealing damage. You can use other skills to take some benefit from speed reduction (i.e Desecration), so it pretty much sucks.
What we would like it to be: Increases your sex appeal by 20%. Technically, if you’ve got a high chance of attracting people, you can reach a critic strike that kills the monster you’re fighting. Chances are that you can’t be that sexy and you end up with one-eyed ogrish children calling you “daddy”.
Glyph of Chains of Ice
What it is: Your Chains of Ice causes 240 to 260 Frost damage in addition to its normal effect.
What we would like it to be: Death Knights are experts in making cocktails, especially mojitos and caipirinhas. This glyph increases their skills with an ice picker for 15 seconds, which covers the lap between a good cocktail and the beverage of your life.
Glyph of Icebound Fortitude
What it is: Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power. Another tanking ability, if you depend of your runic power’s cooldowns, having the ability is your main resource.
What we would like it to be: It makes appear your hamster, “Icebound”, who participates in the TNA wrestling competition dressed in a pink maillot. He will fight Tiger Mask there, and if succeeds, he will face my personal hero for the last couple of months: Curry Man. This won’t help your Death Knight much, but it will be freakin’ awesome.
“TNA’s Tiger Mask & Curry Man in action”
Glyph of Death Grip
What it is: Increases the cooldown of Death Grip by 10 sec but stuns targets for 1 sec. Pretty self-descriptive, right?
What we would like it to be: After activating this glyph, the Death Knight starts off a Necr0 Tr00 death metal band named “Death Grip” in which he sings backing vocals and plays the banjo. Your hamster “Icebound” will play drums, and the raccoon will do some guitars. They cover Garth Brooks’ classic anthems like “Ain’t Goin’ Down (Til’ We Find a Better Healer)”, “Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a BG” or the hit parade “When the Wipe Rolls”.
Glyph of Death and Decay
What it is: Your Death and Decay spell deals 10% additional damage but the cooldown is increased by 10 sec.
What we would like it to be: It would be awesome to have this glyph as a combination for the “Death Grip” glyph. When used, this glyph adds a 30% of aggresiveness to “Death Grip”, and deliver some killing black metal stuff to his fans. Garth Brooks style, of course. When having the glyph in countdown, you’ll be able to meet some fans in the backstage and sign some vinyl versions of your recordings.
Glyph of Raise Dead
What it is: Increases your Ghoul’s total Strength by 10%.
What we would like it to be: The third combo point for “Death Grip”. This glyph allows the user to summon Milli Vanilli to sing in the band, hereby the name of the glyph: raise dead. After having a band fronted by Milli Vanilli, a Death Knight playing the banjo, a raccoon playing guitars, and a hamster playing drums… you can retire.
Have you ever wondered about your character’s way of dancing? Have you asked your psychiatrist how come Michael Jackson has copied your night elf dancing style? This is brilliant stuff, you’re about to find out:
Truth is, the music sucks. But it is very illustrative, isn’t it?
Mages are to fantasy what porn actresses are to the movie industry: if they aren’t there, you feel like there’s something missing. Brilliant stuff.
Mages and wizards are powerful characters that bend magic to their own will, and they are usually involved in every fairy tale. Except maybe in Red Riding Hood, and good Lord, that story is lame. In fact, if there was a wizard in that story, he would have called social services: Red Riding Hood’s mom sends his daughter into the forest to visit grandma, who happens to live alone in a poorly protected cottage stalked by wolves. Red Riding Hood’s mom was either a lousy mom or a serial killer planning on getting rid of her family.
“Polymorphing might be painful, click on the image to save the sheep!!”
There are different kind of mages. World of Warcraft makes us believe that mages are just spellcasters who happen to make things explode and transform other people in sheeps (see the image above). For some inexplicable reason, they are really bad businessmen. Otherwise, they would be opening restaurants all over Azeroth, which would prove effective with their ability to create food and drink out of nowhere.
But the concept of mages wasn’t always lied to sheep abuse and miracles in multiplying food and drink. In the beginning, wizards had quite a defined line to construct their personalities: they controlled arcane forces, they wore a hat ending in a peak, and long robes. Mystic and enigmatically, they spent most of their time poking their nose into big dusty books and their social life sucks. Nowadays they are called “nerds”.
“See? Nerds. No doubt.”
This was pretty clear to everyone until Harry Potter got in the way, changing reality and piña coladas as we knew them, probably created as a subversive influence to change the nerdy image we had about magic men (NOTE: Magic men are not men with huge reproductive capabilities).
Harry Potter was a nerd AND a mage, which semantically managed to separate both concepts as different definitions. In a way, it is the same phenomenon that we can observe in politics: they claim to have principles and make politics at the same time, which is an inherent contradiction by itself.
There are many important wizards in our collective imaginary: Tolkien’s Gandalf set an important figure in Lord Of The Rings. Merlin is a milestone in Arthurian Legends. Raistlin Majere in the Dragonlance series. Medivh in World of Warcraft.
But there is a character that brings the iconic essence of magicians back to life: Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind. He is a wiZZard, according to his hat, and believes in pre-emtive karma, as in his karma ensures that bad things will happen to him no matter how brilliant his future might seem. Dramatic and outrageously funny, this is really brilliant stuff.
Have you ever wondered what are the main treats of the Lich King? Or any other dark lord for that matter? Let’s analyze this. Dark lords, brilliant stuff.
The Lord of Darkness of any evil organization lives in some sort of fortress, each one being named slightly different in order to avoid mistakes with the local mailing services. Subscriptions to “Evil’s Digest” or “Evil Today” could get lost. However, as a general rule, dark lords tend to get pretty pissed off if their monthly subscription to “Playboy, you little rascal of malevolent genius” gets lost.
Being the peak of an evil hierarchy often grants some title of nobility, as such “king”, “lord”, “prince” or any other of the likes. If they have no access to a title of nobility, the evil leader will adopt a nickname in the form of punch line, probably to seed fear in the hearts of villagers and keep tax inspectors away. Some examples might be “prince malchezaar” or “Lich King” for those who managed to get into nobility, and “Gruul the Dragonslayer”, Illidan “The Betrayer”. We’re investigating “Burger King” to find out about his specific field of evilness.
(If you ever forget their official name, you can stick to standards: “great lord of darkness” or “your evil majesty” will do fine)
Evil leaders must hire high amounts of stunt men to be randomly killed before getting to real threats. This is a follow up of the classic Star Trek’s technique of adding some non-regular actors to get killed in action during the exploration of some new planet. If you see yourself regularly patrolling some door in a fortress, start to get suspicious.
Dark lords are goths. They wear black clothes and skulls hanging from any part of their bodies. The more skulls, the merrier. They look very haggard and emaciated. Either they have severe nutritional problems or they are goths. I swear. However, we have failed to prove if they have trouble to distinguish between male and female when picking out sexual partners. Goths, no doubt.
A prince of darkness must stick to evilness under any circumstance. He also must aim to theatrical performance, such as malevolent laugh, catchy and repetitive sentences to settle your evil philosophy. Examples:
“you are not prepaaaaareeed!” (Illidan Stormrage)
“Resistance is futile” (The Borg Community, it’s basically their way of communicating)
“This is gonna be legen… wait for it… DARY!” (Bartney Stinson)
Scheduled sacrifices to set an example of your cruelty and tyranny would be great. Add some chaos scattered all over the mess and you’ve got the exact amount of evilness to become a great Dark Lord.
(NOTE: Chuck Norris follows no rules, he is a dark lord no matter what)
