Hope you yanks had a good weekend. I was trying to get my Rogue to level 70 on Monday so I could get some arena points before reset so that's why this one is late.

Also, this week is really slow for news.

PvP Season 2 beginning on June 12th

Yay I get my drake in two weeks. Also, new Arena and epic Honour gear so us dirty PvPers can get even better epics at a fraction of the time investment of raiders.

• EJ Discussion Thread

Nihilum, and some other guys, go on a PvE rampage

So they've killed the first three bosses of Black Temple (Naj'entus, Supremus, Teron Gorefiend...us) and also the first three bosses of Hyjal. The Black Temple kills and Prince Kael'thas were world firsts. The Hyjal first kills were done by Forte and Curse.

I find it greatly amusing that Hyjal is almost cleared in the first week of the patch. I guess we'll be expecting a new expansion for the holiday season?

• Nihilum website
• World of Raids main page - Because there are way too many posts to individually link to.

Blizzard does not care about black people gold farmers

peons4hire got sued, so a whole bunch of other companies are taking their place. For some reason I don't think this really got us anywhere. It's not like gold is that hard to get nowadays anyhow.

• EJ Discussion Thread

I hate slow news weeks

I have 25 gold that says we'll see epic-quality normal honor weapons on the 12th.

I have 50 gold that the season 1 Gladiator Items show up as honor purchasable on the 12th.

I think everyone is overreacting about 4 Hyjal bosses being dead already. Curse gets the only kill on the 4th boss, and Nihilum and Curse get kills on the 3rd. Seeing as these two guilds had GM-free kills of half of Black Temple and these everything pre-Archimonde in Hyjal, it's probably a little premature to write Hyjal off as easy and assume the content won't last very long. I think they may have gone a little overkill on PTR testing this go around. They should probably have just spawned the bosses and made sure abilities worked and deathtouched them or despawned them, instead of having Curse and Nihilum go in there and work on them constantly like they did. Then again, I don't know if I'd prefer *almost* perfectly tuned bosses and more 'fair' progression, or perfectly tuned bosses and 2-3 guilds that Blizzard should really pay to be their official testers farming the instances before anyone else even darkens the door of the instances.

Based on everything that has been said for the past several months about how bad SSC and TK were due to lack of testing, how Gruul and Mag were mistuned etc., I think it is safe to say having vastly better tuned encounters at the expense of Nihilium getting Tier 6 early is worth it. Especially now that PvP Gear is better for PvP then PvE gear, there is no disadvantage to the guilds that are a tier behind Nihilium, since content is instanced.

Basically the early TBC content was tuned for the very best, using full consumables etc, with the same 25 every night, while there are 5-10 guilds that can do that, most can't and don't really want to, and as a result just said "no thanks" to a lot of the raid instances pre-2.1. Now that they retuned the encounters and the future ones... yeah they are easy for a guild like Nihilium, but for the rest of us... not so much. I would rather have content that is doable with practice, proper execution and reasonable consumables then have it tuned to be a challenge for 5-10 guilds and impossible for the other 100,000 guilds out there.

All-in-all I would rather have a realistic shot at clearing BT before the expansion, then have Blizzard cock-block the instance to keep everyone closer together... will Curse/Nihilium/D&T clear BT by the end of summer... probably... will more then 2-3 guilds on most servers clear it before the fall... probably not.

I wasn't advocating a situation like TK/SSC, that was a terrible mistake by Blizzard. I was just pondering the usefulness of guilds farming bosses unassisted in BT/Hyjal versus GMs spawning bosses in various phases and despawning/deathtouching them when these abilities are determined to work properly. I'm not really complaining that they're far ahead, not at all. It just seems odd to me that Blizzard would allow every aspect of about 70% of their new fights to be public before release. No, I'm not saying they should test them all in house, but it seems like there would have to be ways to have content tested publicly while still playing it close to the chest...

What's the worst thing that'll happen? Nihilum kills Illidian in July, gets bored and quits in September? The gaming universe isn't going to come to an end over that, for sure.

But then what would Teza post about all day? (BTW, does anyone find it hilarious that she calls herself a "WoW Reporter"?)

I thought it was a guy.

???

It's approximately as funny as how serious Ming is on his blog. Every time I venture by there I find myself saying "WTF, Ming?!?" after one his elaborate/bizarre/preposterous analogies.

As far as BT/Hyjal go, I'm happy to see that the encounters are tuned and that the best raiding groups in the world are taking down the encounters. That gives me hope that I may someday see that content without spending 40 hours a week raiding to do it.

I felt special for having to google that name.

I have to echo your "WTF, Ming?!?" after going and looking. That man is out of his mind.

No its the emo chick with the "rogues do it from behind" shirt on. She has the image up all over the site.

Edit - This one.

I think that might just be a stolen image used as an avatar. I for one would be pretty surprised if that were actually Teza.

It is definitely a guy. With issues.


Edit: @ EEJ: Oh and I am glad to see Vulgate found a home on your team there. Also has Condor grown up yet?

The chick is a guy? I don't think that is what you were saying, but I'll buy anything from a webcam at that angle.

Internet, I've learned!

The fast progress may actually be some indication that they really do think they'll be pushing out another expansion in January or thereabouts. I mean Illidan is the last boss of the TBC and I bet he'll be dead in a few months (or impossible due to lack of testing and be dead once he is fixed) by the upper echelon, with middle tier guilds maybe having a shot at it by Xmas.

I don't think there is any way they can maintain hardcore raider instance for much more than 6 months with the available content at the moment.

Well, they're really gotten the game to a place where it can be very episodic now, which is extremely expansion friendly. They have the caverns of time, and the dark portals - which go to hundreds of different possible worlds, not to mention the emerald dream.

The trouble, I think, is really going to come with the need to create more and more villains for us to kill. We've taken out most of the bad guys at this point, so it will be curious to see where things go from here, and even if they're planning a warcraft 4, or are simply going to abandon the IP and let the MMO go wild with it. I could see them going to Starcraft 2 and then a Starcraft MMO to cover the next 10 years before they'd need to touch the warcraft world.

Blizzard shouldn't and probably won't lose any sleep if the rate at which they produce content isn't good enough for the top handful of guilds.

It is a sign that they expect expansion 2 in January '08, though.

Also, if you think about it, the arena season setup is based that way too. Arena Season 1, February-May, equivalent to tier 4. Arena Season 2, June-September, equivalent to tier 5. Arena Season 3, October-January, equivalent to tier 6. Unless they plan on varying season lengths by more than a month, ending arena season 1 within the next fortnight indicates a probable January or February '08 release.

Maybe one last content patch in August or so for Zul'Aman, one more burst of casual content, and one last round of re-tuning heading into Arena Season 3?

I just wonder how far out they can extend the Warcraft universe. I could see one more expansion to kill Arthas, but from there out, I only really see maybe a big Dragons of Azeroth expansion left over from there dealing with Deathwing.

Wasn't the Emerald Dream supposed to be the next expansion? I guess the new mount would be a purple elephant.

Deathwing/black dragonflight

Arthas/return of Kel'Thuzad/Scourge.

Naga in the Maelstrom.

Kil'jaeden/zillions of remaining Burning Legion lackeys.

Sargeras.

Trolls.

Each other (the idea of Horde and Alliance getting similar/identical instances, one where Horde fights Alliance and the other where Alliance fights Horde, must have occurred to them...).


Or by location:

Northrend.

Demon worlds.

Anything through CoT within reason.

Grim Batol

Gilneas/Kul Tiras.

Uldum.

Undermine.

Maelstrom.

Emerald Dream.

Present-day Hyjal.

Underside of Karazhan.


To say nothing of returns to old locations and old bosses. Or just stuff they plop down out of nowhere, which they do every so often (hi C'Thun!).

Maybe after another 3 expansions they might start to run low, but to be honest I don't want to still be here having this discussion after another 3 expansions. It's already scary to think I've played this game for 2.5 years