Category Archives: I like shinies

Another Dog for your Kennel

For an early Monday morning post, there’s good news for all you WoW playing dog lovers out there:

Noticed those new mastiff hounds strolling around Gilneas or Western Plaguelands? Sad that you aren’t a hunter to tame one of them?

Well, you still get to have one of your own now by re-visiting good old Scarlet Monastery! Blizzard have changed the (rather boring) model of one of their old drops in there, namely Dog Whistle dropped by Houndmaster Loksey in the Library Wing. Nicer still: they’ve changed this item from a 3 charge use to a permanent trinket!

Naturally, all us (slightly loony) pet and bauble collectors need to have this – and your Perky Pug will be happy to get a big buddy to play with!

Cat person or not, these two (make that three if you’re actually a hunter) really look adorable together!

Shattering shinies: minipets and games

‘Tis the end of the world as we know it. And I must say, I like how the new one looks and sounds (you should really turn the ingame music on!).
I started my journey through WoW 4.0.3a in Stormwind, to check out what Deathwing (and Blizzard) did to my hometown and my beloved Elwynn Forest. Lo and behold, there’s flightpaths in abundance now and all the worldmap’s parchments have been revamped and look a lot funkier than before. Such is the beauty of not playing or following any betas – everything is new and shiny!

Which brought me to the most important question pretty soon: where are all the shinies? What to do until December 7th besides farming future reputations?

1) First stop: Plants vs Zombies 
Quest Reward: Brazie’s Sunflower (it sings!)

After satiating my initial impulse to explore maps and get new flightpaths, I headed straight to Hillsbrad Foothills to test myself in the newly featured PvZ mini-game Blizzard installed just south of Dalaran’s Crater.
The quests toward beating the final boss are progressing from easy to more difficult and there’s explanations on the way teaching you about each ability.
The last two quests can be somewhat of a challenge until you’re used to what all the actions do and how to manage your resources. In case you’re struggling on the later parts (2 massive waves of zombies and Warden Stillwater), a few tips that helped me beat this:

  • Stall your very first packs of mobs for as long as you can with rocknuts, to plant sunflowers and gather sun power. You can stall just one zombie for a very long time, refreshing walls before and behind him (they also attack walls that are refreshed right on top / behind them) until you’re good to proceed. You want to have 9-10 up sunflowers towards the end.
  • Reserve your two left-most rows for sunflowers, go for at least 2 rows of spitters and/or freezyas in your midfield. Keep more rocknuts and tentacles up front.
  •  Use rocknuts frequently to hold up as many lines as possible until you’ve properly arranged your midfield.
    1. Keep them busy
    2. Build up your rows

    2) Two’s company: Darkshore 
    Quest Reward: Withers (it shrinks!)

    Like for other newbie-areas, Darkshore has had new lowbie questlines installed. In case you’re wondering why you should bother with these at lvl 80, there’s another shiny new mini-pet to be picked up here, after finishing a quest called Remembrance of Auberdine. To get the show started, you want to pick up the following two quests in Darkshore and follow things from there until you get you get to the final stage:

    These first two quests will take you through a series of about ten more steps before you are able to pick up the final quest in Darkshore. There is no need to complete other quests from the area (like the one to kill 50 murlocs). The approximate time to complete all quests at lvl 80 is 60-90 minutes, depending on rush hour.

    Tip: Turn your low level quests tracker on.



    3) Three’s a crowd: Eastern Plaguelands
    Quest Reward: Mr. Grubbs (ewww!)

    Fiona is a worgen lady stationed at the western entrance to Eastern Plaguelands (a new neutral flightpath can be found there too) with her caravan. She will initially present you with two quests which will result in a few follow-ups of their own before returning you to her. After completion, you will be able to interact with her caravan and receive Fiona’s Lucky Charm (there is no need to complete Fiona’s further quests).

    Her lucky buff lasts for as long as you stay inside the zone and enables you to loot hidden stashes randomly from any EPL mobs which have a chance to drop Mr. Grubbs – similar to the Disgusting Oozeling grind but not nearly as bad (AoE is your friend!). Funny enough, it was Garginox (lvl 45 elite) in the Noxious Glade that finally dropped this for me. Didn’t you always wish for one of those carrion grubs in miniature form?

    4) Fourth of a quartet: Burning Steppes
    Quest Reward: Tiny Flamefly (bzzz!)

    While warcraftpets hasn’t added this pet to their data bank yet as I’m writing this post, the tiny flamefly can be picked up over at Burning Steppes, by completing a quest called Seven!Yup!.

    To get there you will have to complete a longer series of quests similar to the chain in Darkshore which are started by Mouton Flamestar and John J. Keeshan in western BS at Flamestar Post (a new flightpath is available). Continue from there and you will eventually be awarded your new companion.

    The approximate time to complete all quests at lvl 80 is 60-90 minutes, depending on rush hour.

    5) More shinies: Azshara 
    Quest Reward: Faded Wizard Hat (horde only?)

    A little disappointing, this seems to be the reward to a horde only quest so far.
    The quest you are looking to complete to receive this fun item is called Farewell, Minnow in Azshara. Once more this is the final reward to a long series of quests, started by Teemo at Bilgewater Harbor.

    Similar to the Orb of Deception, the Faded Wizard Hat will allow you to randomly transform into different races which lasts for 30 minutes. I’m wondering if there’s ever going to be an alliance equivalent to this?

    …Just when I thought the wait until Cataclysm was gonna be boring! Anything I’ve missed?
    Have fun with these quests and rewards everybody! =)

    So long Arthas and thanks for all the fish!

    Its’ time. I’ve been wanting to write a “Goodbye Wrath of the Lich King”– post for a while, but I always felt it was too soon to look back on the past 2 years, drawing a final line and remembering the best moments. But Cataclysm is due in less than a month now, we’re defending our hometowns against the rift invaders, eagerly awaiting the Shattering. It’s time to let go of the past.

    Wrath of the Lich King felt like a drag these very last months which is probably a mixture of different things: the changes in accessibility and loot this expansion, but also the fact that Blizzard’s latest installment lasted a lot longer than The Burning Crusade and didn’t have the novelty factor of vanilla WoW (which actually lasted a bit longer). Nevertheless WotLK was a great expansion, I absolutely loved Northrend and I will take a lot of fond memories with me over into Cataclysm. A few things are worth remembering before all else –

    1) My WotLK Top 3 features:

    • WotLK quests

      Wrath of the Lich King’s quest design was worlds apart from everything we’d seen before. Blizzard put a huge effort into creating quests that were more diverse, fun and engaging, trying to get away from the past’s standard fetch&delivery or escort quests. From flying a helicopter dropping bombs on your targets, to fighting your own doppelganger on 1vs1, collecting bat guano (while swearing like a lumberjack) to jumping on flying dragons around the Temple of Storms, WotLK delivered long and memorable questlines full of fun moments. Kudos to Blizzard for making such an effort this time around!

      • The maps of Northrend

      I’m sucker for northern themes in MMOs; you can make me very happy with dark, misty woods and snowy mountains. The Northrend maps were beautiful, some of them accompanied by the sweetest tunes ever in WoW! Thank you so much for Stormpeaks (norse mythology ftw!) and Grizzly Hills above all else, I’ve spent countless hours exploring them and enjoying their atmosphere!

      • Dualspecs

      Finally this came true! For so long players that respec on a daily base had to endure the superfluous procedure of respeccing at their class trainers, filling in the talent points every single time (without an addon at least) and there was really nothing to it but a timesink (and 50g are not that much of a penalty these days). Dualspecs have made the life of so many raiders and PVPers so much easier and added a lot more flexibility in general to the game. Cheers!

      2) Personal Top 3 WotLK moments:

      • Sartharion 25man 3D and the Twilight Drake

      Above all else and every kill Adrenaline have added to their progress list in this expansion, our legendary Sarth 3D kill will stand out forever. Not only was defeating this boss (pre-nerf) our greatest achievement and struggle since…..well, Archimonde or something,  but on this hard-earned night of all nights I actually rolled a /98 on our very first Twilight Drake. I had never won any special mount or similar in WoW before that, my bad luck with rolls has been the butt of jokes many times.

      So, when Stumps asked the exhilarated raid to roll for the first drake, I didn’t even bother to check my roll! I certainly didn’t expect to win – “Me? Y’er having a laugh!” Only when the first “omg GZ!” whispers came rolling in did I realize what had happened and it made our achievement (and killshot!) so much sweeter for this priest. 🙂

      That’s me, me, me up there! ^^
      • Adrenaline’s 1st and 2nd anniversary events

      I’ve been very deeply involved in the planning and execution of our guild’s 1st and 2nd Anniversary events which have been some of the best, most fun times I have ever had in WoW. Already the planning phases were a blast for somebody with too much creative energy (and sadistic tendencies =p) like myself, and seeing all of that hard work come to live later and your guildmates competing against each other while you’re dying of laughter on ventrilo – truly epic!! We’ve raised the bar quite high and I’m a little scared of our guild’s expectations for year 3 – I’m sure we’ll come up with something though.

      For anyone interested in details on said events, I have a few links to share:
      Larísa’s first and second review, Adrenaline @WoW Insider, an interview @Gamerfill.com , my personal event album (anniversary 1), my WoW quiz (anniversary 2).

      • The Lich King’s demise on 25man

      Killing Arthas felt great, and not only because he annoyed the shit out of us in the Culling of Stratholme so many times. Killing the big bad endboss of the expansion marks the end of an era. All in all we didn’t struggle at this boss the way we struggled on others before, but he certainly gave us a run for the money. The title is epic and I loved the kill-cinematic (which would’ve been even more awesome had I not misclicked the damn fountain in Dalaran some time before we killed him /gah!).

      To me, as to so many other players, Arthas was always that distant endboss figure at the horizon of World of Warcraft: the last hurdle, the end of the main story. Whatever follows after him in Cataclysm is an “extra” in my world (“what, I am STILL playing this game??”)

      So long Wrath of the Lich King, I knew ye well!
      So long Dalaran, you won’t be missed!
      (I will miss Sheddle tho!)
      So long Sindragosa, I still hate your guts (and icetombs)!
      So long minefield in Stormpeaks, it was good fun!

      So long Arthas! The Lich King is dead, all hail Deathwing!

      World of Warcraft secrets: revisited

      Some time ago I wrote an article on one of Dalaran’s best-kept secrets and was surprised and happy to get so many reactions from people telling me that they had never known about this. On top of that I was made aware of other similar secrets inside the game that I hadn’t discovered yet myself – once more a big thanks to those that left a comment or sent an Email!

      I love the small and silly things in WoW so much that it inspired me to suggest the topic over at Blog Azeroth as they were desperate for more suggestions at the time – if you ever have a topic to share yourself, go and give them a hand.
      Several WoW bloggers joined in the secret hunt and came up with great articles of their own. Once more I found that I hadn’t discovered nearly all the fun things hidden in WoW! Did you know that Dalaran does not only hold one, but actually three great secrets of this kind and that all of them are brought to you by a gnome?

      Well, I do now! And if you’re curious to find out yourself, have a look at the full list of contributed WoW secrets published on Twisted Nether Blogcast! I’ve been wanting to get back to these for a while, well rather late than never.

      For completeness sake I’d also like to mention two more contributions that didn’t join the shared topic but added a WoW secret of their own, either on their blog or as commenter on Raging Monkeys:

      In case you’re a little bored with WoW at the moment, these might keep you entertained for a while! I can’t wait to discover the secrets hidden in the upcoming expansion – “WoW secrets, Cataclysm edition” coming soon!

      Boundless inspiration

      Derived from good old latin, the word inspiration goes back on the verb inspirare which means “to breathe / blow into” or “infuse”. So if a person is being inspired, he is actually that: being “breathed into”, being animated by some greater spirit, idea or being (whatever you prefer to call it) to do certain things. It’s a beautiful allegory on man’s creativity. Using thousands of words every day, or a million in my case, we often don’t realize the deeper meaning and origin of the words we use.

      Of all the games I’ve played in my life, I’ve never encountered any that has inspired so many people around the globe so greatly to all sorts of works of their own, like World of Warcraft has. WoW does obviously have a far greater player base than any other online game, but the impact it’s having in the creative field is quite remarkable and a testimony to the coherence of the fantastic world Blizzard created. The results of WoW’s inspirational potential are nothing short of baffling at times.
      The most well-known examples are obviously the masses of people out there writing about WoW, the fanfiction and fanart created, the stunning machinima, the fun community events and regular contests run by Blizzard on their official page; I wonder if there’s going to be more WoW Halloween Pumpkins again this year.

      As this is a perfect Frivolous Friday topic, I do want to share the following 3 remarkable examples of fired imagination with the rest of you. I’ve only recently come across them myself – what do you know! The inspiration people can get from WoW knows no limits!

      If you’re desperately bored of the game at the moment, it’s time to check this page out. It’s basically Origami for WoW and some of the paper models are just baffling! There’s also a lot of plans available for download, so grab your scissors and glue and get started!

      I love cooking and browsing food blogs – well, here’s your dedicated WoW cooking site! The folks over at Nourish got plenty of Azerothian recipes ready for you to test your culinary skills on, nomnom!

      It’s no big secret that I love the shinies and I’ve always wondered a little about the lack of WoW merchandise, especially in this particular bracket – after all, which self-respecting WoW priest wouldn’t love to have a silver Benediction necklace dangling from their neck?
      In any case, there’s some remarkable craftsmanship to be found on that page, so whether you’re into jewelry or not, it’s worth checking out!

      So many ideas, so little time – enjoy your weekend everybody and stay inspired!
      Also, if you feel particularly loaded on ideas, head over to Deuwowlity and help Gronthe out with suggestions, because he’s planning a WoW musical!

      World of Warcraft secrets: Dalaran’s sparkle

      “This topic is dedicated to all the special and secret NPCs in WoW, out there serving tirelessly, overlooked and undiscovered.”

      There is not a lot that is secret in the World of Warcraft and it’s always made me a little sad. This world we play in is vastly explored, analyzed, documented and datamined all over internet websites and communities. I’ve never played any MMO where such myriads of information were available on every aspect imaginable. This is obviously what you’ll get with an MMO that’s played by ~10mio people, but it’s not just that: World of Warcraft is a very functional, pragmatic game and there’s not an awful lot of superfluous or “useless” content, certainly not on the cosmetic side of things. But some of the best things in life are just that: useless. Or I actually prefer the term “pointless”. Many pastimes and hobbies that we pursue are merely for our own fun and entertainment. WoW is such a pastime too.

      Yet, the truth is that inside the game precious little is actually pointless or surprising: most maps for example feature all the necessary posts to make the player’s leveling progression as smooth as possible: You have your inns, your vendors, flightmasters and questgivers stationed at strategic points. Most of them do nothing but repeat generic lines as you click them to open their service windows. The same goes for buildings and shops in cities and really pretty much every other site. This is what we’re used to and we don’t even examine all the NPCs around us closely as we enter a new zone or questgiver camp. And why would we? It’s not gonna be any different from the last 100 times, right?

      We can rely on Blizzard to tell us if there’s really anything “special” going on: if an NPC does anything extraordinary, there will be clues and signs to make us aware of it. If there are important places we should go to, we can be sure a series of quests will take us there. It is hard to miss much in the World of Warcraft. Blizzard takes care of that.

      I know this is the nature of games that have been played to death and WoW does actually a pretty good job at things like Easter Eggs or non-generic zone design. But for most parts the game is very predictable, with little randomness. Somehow I miss that there’s not more pointless things that are spread far and wide over the world for no good reason, maybe only to be found by those that seek them out.
      Why was there never a single questgiver stationed on any of the flying islands in Nagrand? Why is the Darkmoon Fair such a complete letdown when people long for minigames in WoW for years? Why is there nothing going on anywhere under the ocean? Only a few things I’ve wondered about in the past.

      Dalaran’s secret

      This is why Dalaran is special. Now you see, I don’t like Dalaran, I’m actually with Stumps in this. Nonetheless I will always have one pleasant memory attached to Dalaran forever and that is the memory of one little gnome, one humble, unremarkable NPC that was special. Maybe you know about him, maybe you don’t. I have talked to many that haven’t and that’s why I think he is worth an hommage at this point: I am speaking of Sheddle Glossgleam.

      Sheddle Glossgleam is located on the second level of the Threads of Fate cloth armor shop in Dalaran. He is your standard low-profile vendor NPC, selling shoes for emblems of valor without much decorum. If you click him, he’ll open the usual vendor window accompanied by a generic service line. And that’s it.

      Almost. There is also the chair. There are chairs all over the city, you say? That’s true, but then they ain’t quite like Sheddle’s chair!

      Once you sit down on the chair beside Sheddle, he will walk over to you and polish your shoes, applying a cosmetic sparkle-buff to them that lasts for 60minutes! I don’t know how many times I have visited him just to get my shoes polished before a raid or how many times I got someone whispering me “where can I get that boot enchant?”. In fact “shiny shoes!” has become somewhat of a running line in my guild. Yes I love you, Sheddle Glossgleam!!!
      Not just shiny shoes

      You see, my friends have laughed at me for this in the past, but the fact that I’m a female who likes to get her shoes sparkled up is only 50% of why I love this NPC. What I really love about this silly trifle is that it’s actually something special and unexpected. If you never bother to sit down on chairs in WoW and don’t chance on this information randomly on a website, chances are you will never know about the little gnome in Dalaran. There is no exclamation mark over Sheddle’s head, there is no other NPC sending you on a quest to get your shoes polished. Sheddle won’t tell you about it either. There is no hint whatsoever inside the game about what’s gonna happen if you sit down on that chair!

      Sheddle Glossgleam is a little secret. He is a surprise. One of those utterly pointless yet delightful things in a game that is usually so eager to inform you about everything. Dalaran sparkles a little more because of him.

      Who else is out there?

      I’m glad I discovered Sheddle because that experience suddenly made me a lot more aware of the world and NPCs around me. They came alive again, like they hadn’t for a long time. I started to wonder “what else might there be that I have overlooked in the past? What other NPCs are there, only sharing their secrets with those that seek to find them?” I sat on every other chair in Dalaran just to make sure.

      So where are they?? What special places in WoW have you found that are hiding away secretly to be discovered by those with open eyes and inquisitive minds? Which NPCs have I overlooked on my speedy journeys and never known for their silly, unexpected services? I’d really love to know.

      What’s your favored loot distribution?

      Gear and tier sets especially, are a big deal in World of Warcraft. We’ve seen Blizzard continuously reform their loot system for raiding sets since vanilla WoW, sometimes with better or worse outcome. I always found the tier distribution a fairly tricky topic, with potential for juicy drama.

      Cataclysm will once more reform the way players gain their tiers and apparently Blizzard aims for more identification again whereby certain items are clearly associated with boss loot tables. They also want epic gear to be “truly epic” again. Whatever that means.

      But if we were the ones to call the shots, what system would you personally opt for? This is what we’ve had in the past:

      1. Bosses drop slot-specific tier items randomly for every class: this is more or less what we had in Vanilla WoW whereby a certain boss drops the tier legs for every class randomly. If you got no use for the item, it gets sharded.

        2.  

      2. Bosses drop slot-specific tokens randomly for every loot-group: representative of TBC, Lady Vashj would for example drop the head-slot T5 token randomly for loot-group A, B or C. No more shards, instead more gear for off-specs in the raid.

        3.  

      3. Bosses drop tokens that are neither slot-specific, nor class/loot-group specific: this was done via trophies for T9 in the Trial of the Crusader (Coliseum) raid instance in WotLK.

        4.  

      4. Bosses drop non-slot-specific tokens randomly for every loot-group: a mixture of the two previous loot distributions which we have seen in Ice Crown Citadel in WotLK.

      Me, I have mixed feelings about it. I would definitely never ever want to see loot-groups again because that particular system is a real can of worms. My own guild was stuck with some really foul loot-luck in the priest/paladin/warlock loot-group for several weeks in the past, while at the same time the “pink-whites” (as I call the priest loot-group) made up more than half of our most active raiders roster at that time.
      It does not only get very tense during raids when mages and DKs (who in our guild were more or less alone in their group) start collecting off-spec tiers while your 10+ pink-whites in the raid still sit on 1 tier each, but it hits guilds the wrong way as a whole. Especially nowadays when Blizzard themselves want guilds to bring the player instead of the class and we got all sorts of very different raid setups in every guild; we were often very low on druids, shammies, warlocks and rogues for example, with sometimes three times as many priests and paladins to make up for it.

      Your most active raiders might belong to the unlucky (or simply over-sized) loot-group and there’s nothing you can do to gear them up, while the rest is forced to collect offspec-gear because you can’t shard tokens. At the same time you will have to deal with the inflation of DKP for those that cannot bid even if they’d really love to.
      And personally, as a very active priest healer, I was rather frustrated that I paid 200 DKP for a T8 token that went for 15 DKP in other groups, because this forced me to save on other slots like rings, trinkets etc. where I couldn’t compete against those anymore that got their tiers so cheap. All you can do in such a situation is to say “sod tiers, I’ll get everything else first and the tiers last”, but that is only so much fun.

      I actually loved Trial of the (Grand) Crusader exactly for this reason: finally all raiders had an equal chance on tier loot and the distribution was very mixed and even, even if the most active raiders might finish a little sooner (and there’s really nothing wrong with that). There was no tension anymore and we could actually focus on other things rather than rolling our eyes in advance over what the boss might drop.

      The only thing I missed about the trophies was that a certain item could not be associated with a respective bosskill no more: I like the fact that gear tells a story. I’d like to see some of the raider’s or raidguild’s achievements or their current state of progression on the player. I think we lose a bit of content-depth without this. So ideally, I’d like the opposite of what was done in ICC: slot-specific tokens yes, class/loot-group specific no. You can still associate the item with a boss if it goes into a defined slot.

      Do I think tokens as a whole are a good idea? I can see why you would dislike them: how “realistic” (fantasy-speaking) is it that a mob carries generic raider-tokens around, rather than just gear? Not very much. Gear has the one advantage that you can produce shards for the guildbank if nobody needs the item. Tokens have the advantage that your raiders can gear up their secondary spec (depending on how you handle this, but there’s little point in trashing tokens).

      There’s certainly pros&cons to every loot system, and I guess some of us would even love to see something entirely different for WoW. I’ve never been invested in endgame raiding à la WoW in other MMOs, so I can’t draw comparisons there, but I’m sure there’s some interesting, different concepts around.

      What is your favored loot distribution? And do you see an issue in tokens and badges?

        All rise to the Arisen dance!

        In case you don’t know who the Arisen are, they’re possibly the greatest race ever to star in an MMO. They’re part of the evil or empire faction in Allods Online, a very polished free MMO I have briefly reviewed in my previous article this week. Now while I don’t play Allods actively, I am utterly in love with the superior air and style of this undead cyborg race –  if you got nothing else to play sometime and are up to dabble with a free game, they’re one good reason to look into Allods!

        But this post isn’t about promoting free MMOs: it’s actually about dancing. That’s right, dancing!!

        I’ve always loved fan-made MMO dance videos, I am that silly! They’re just another proof of how inspiring games can be to those that love them – whether you blog, write fanfics, draw fanart or make awesome fraps videos, you’re being creative (and it’s actually not so easy to make a good dance video where everything fits!). There’s a few fun WoW dancing videos on youtube which I’m sure most have seen by now.

        But I bet you haven’t seen the Arisen do Daftpunk yet, have ya?! Well here’s two clips nobody should miss:

        I don’t know if it’s my love for the race or the fact that the creator chose one of my favourite Daftpunk songs to go with it, but I love this video!

        • Arisen Rave  (I’m not much for techno, but it really fits here!)
        *dance dance*

        WoW priest outfits!

        [For an overview of collectable WoW hats, check my World of Warcraft Hats guide.]

        I am a gear collector and very happy with the way most outfits are designed in World of Warcraft. It is not the first time that I play a healer in an MMO and I think our gear is great – I’ve never had much reason to complain. Aside of warlocks, priests have definitely gotten the most love when it comes to Tier sets in WoW, reaching its peak in TBC with the godlike T5 and T6, which are still the most often depicted priest sets in WoW fanart. I have never played another game where the healer archetype is presented with such variety in armor.

        I admit that when I was leveling up in vanilla, there was some gear that didn’t look very flattering, but that was the case for everybody: colors were horrendously shrill and mismatched overall. Some of the robes looked just abysmal on males especially. If I think vanilla outfits, the first picture that comes to mind is the male mages in their flamboyant pink or blue robes, quirky crimson felt hat, green satin shoulders and yellow belts. Bless vanilla – the era of circus clowns!

        But I never really had to deal with gear that I hated or felt exposed or plain silly in – there are a few more sexy outfits in WoW but I can’t say that I was ever forced to wear anything skimpy as a female priest. Even if you faced wearing one of those eyeroll-worthy “heavy armor bikinis” like some mail- and plate-wearers did, you could still combine them with one of the numerous shirts in the game.

        I am used to the way females are often dressed in asian MMOs, and also some western games (the attire female fighters get to wear in some beat’em ups is ridiculous), so I give kudos to Blizzard for giving their players so many gear choices. Their female models are a lot more realistic in terms of body proportions too: the human female for example has an average womanly shape, neither skinny nor big and the curves aren’t unnaturally emphasized either. I would certainly welcome more customization in WoW to actually let you shape your own shape and height similar to Age of Conan, but overall Blizzard has done a good job to present their female race models with a variety of body types. They even implemented an ‘old granny face’ for most, which isn’t something you find easily in other MMOs.

        So let’s have a look at priest outfits!

        All of the following images are taken from my personal screenshot archives. I’ve documented my entire WoW history rather consistently which is handy for this overview. Let’s have a look at the way priest outfits are designed and also change over the course of the years in WoW! I have to say, looking back on some of the sets below, my wish for a cosmetic gear feature in WoW becomes even more fervent – it’s such a shame we’ll never get to use some of these models again unless we switch gear back and forth manually all the time.

        Priest outfits in vanilla WoW

        An assortment of priest outfits representative for this era (note that not all of them are priest-exclusive), number indications in the notes as seen from left to right:

        Vanilla was rather down to earth when it comes to gear sets and tiers. A lot of the robes and vests acquired while leveling were old fashioned and the very first class sets looked very ceremonial and formal (3rd and 6th image). The names were rather silly too. There was some very shrill ‘disco gear’ around and only a few okay-looking greens and blues, like the runecloth set (7th image). Tiers started to get more interesting and daring between BWL and original Naxx. I still think Transcendence / T2 is the nicest set of this era. Another favourite of mine is the necro-knight’s garb (5th image). Non-tier shoulder pieces were abysmal all across.

        The Burning, steaming hot, Crusade!

        TBC was awesome for priests: after a very boring dungeon set 3 (2nd image) and a totally EUGH T4, Blizzard presented us with the possibly greatest tiers in the game: T5 and T6. The wings and halo-hood have become a priest trademark –  even though I prefer the awesome looking fresco shoulders of T6 personally. The pic in the middle shows a mixture of T5 robes and T6 shoulders and hood model which is my all-time favourite priest outfit in the game. Get a staff of immaculate recovery with that and you got epic win!
        Sunwell featured a very nice non-tier set as well – if only I had the shoulders to go with that (7th image)! Speaking of which, there’s an increased effort to make shoulders and headpieces look more interesting.

        Priests in Wrath of the Lich King

        Looking through this last assortment of WotLK outfits, I feel somewhat reconciled with this expansion. My general impression was that we didn’t get much tier love in this era, partly also because everyone looks the same nowadays. Blizzard have gotten really cheap in their efforts to create unique class gear and we’ve certainly seen the worst PVP sets up to date (3rd and 6th image).
        I also felt that this expansion was hideous for headgear – with the exception of T8: I actually love that white set with the ‘rogue-ish’ headpiece and glowing eyes (middle pic)! All in all we didn’t actually do so bad, textures and effects got more elaborate and there was a lot less mix’n mismatch than in WoW 1.0 or 2.0 due to the recycling of so many armor models. I really hope we see unique sets again in Catacylsm though!

        My tops & flops

        • Top 3 best priest outfits in the game: T5, T6, T8
        • Top 3 worst priest outfits in the game: T1, Dungeon set 3, T4 

        So what’s your favourite gear era in WoW? Oh, and if you’re a priest, you should visit World of Matticus and let him know your wishes for our Tier 11!

          For Keep’s Sake!

          Over at Blog Azeroth, Feral Tree suggested a topic that is so perfect for me, I couldn’t resist to join in: “WoW mementos, things you’ve kept over time.”

          Oh my…those that know me, have rolled their eyes at me over how bad my bank is crammed with all sorts of useless clutter, old gear, dresses and random goofy things. I can’t part with at least half of them and I actually believe that bag space is something that happens to other people.

          For one thing I am a bit of a loot-paranoid: whenever I get special items (like the goblin rocket helmet) or for example a new trinket, I will keep the old one because I might NEED THIS AGAIN FOR SOMETHING! It happened to me once or twice in the past that I dumped an item I had a use for later (and a totally game-altering one too) and ever since I choose safe over sorry. I wonder if that’s just me or whether other players have this eerie feeling about dumping gear too..

          Then there’s my outfit spleen: I have kept almost all my old tiers and PVP sets, I’ve also kept my old trinkets from MC, Onyxia, BWL…At some point I decided that “staves are really cool!”, so I started keeping all my staves. And then there is of course an endless number of special dresses, from holidays, vendors, or drops, stuff like the jungle hat and my ‘blue collection’ which is essentially…..blue dresses only (I like the color blue, can you tell?). Of course I don’t manage all this on my main, I have a mule with my own guild bank full of stuff – she keeps extra minipets too, in case my own run away.

          So it’s not exactly easy for me to pick my mementos – but I won’t post an endless list of random items here. To be fair, most of these things I keep because I am a maniac shinies collector and not so much because they’re keepsakes. So what I will do is list the Top 5 items that I kept for their meaning rather than just looks.

          1) Benediction

          Thats right, Benediction is the ultimate priest keepsake. Nothing says “I kept your asses alive in vanilla” the way this staff does. I earned this the hard way, raiding and waiting patiently for weeks (and patience really ain’t my thing) until I finally got Major Domo’s eye for my priest quest. And I did it the first time around too, all by myself, thank you very much! /flex

          If there’s a thing like a vanilla-epeen, I think I have just found mine.

          In any case, a priest trashing her/his Benediction is unthinkable, disgraceful, blasphemous! You will probably never get another weapon that’s transformable like this one either! There was only two of them and one required you to be a hunter (eugh). 

          2) Devout Set

          Not officially a Tier and not really nice looking, I kept this oogly lilac set because it was the first priest set in the game and also, it took me longer to complete than any Tier set ever after. I think all that went through the same grind for the 8-piece Dungeon sets know the feeling. I don’t remember how many Scholomance runs it took me just to get the crown – one can only take so many “school is in session!” before your sanity’s self-protection kicks in.

          3) Gavel of Infinite Wisdom

          I tell you why I kept this mace of infinite suck – so that it would always remember who its master is! I GRINDED you, you utter piece of shit, that’s right!! /hysteric laughter

          There are not many rep grinds in WoW that come close to the drudgery and torture of getting Cenarion Circle to exalted back in the days. I haven’t done the insanity achievement, so for me this was the single most horrible, tedious and mind-altering thing I ever did in this game. I’d redo all my WotLK rep grinds in a heartbeat instead of this.

          For one thing I really hated the insect theme of Silithus and the AQs. Farming in the hives drove me mad – getting lost in Hive Ashi anyone? I spent tons of cash on the AH to buy twilight texts or armor just to speed things up A LITTLE. I summoned more of those stupid lord things together with an equally driven guildie than warlocks can say “succubus”! There was nights when I actually dreamt a giant wasp was chasing after me through endless gooey tunnels.

          I will keep this weapon of doom forevermore, like the trophy head of my worst enemy. Also, it was better than Benediction which is kinda outrageous!

          4) Grayson’s Torch

          LOL I really still have this torch. It was a reward from a lvl 20 quest at Westfall lighthouse and I loved the blazing graphics of it. I have an awesome screenie of standing over Westfall beach overlooking the sea while the torchlight is illuminating the night around us. /emo
          What makes this memory even more special is that 1 minute after I took that same screenshot, we were ganked like the utter noobs we were by a group of equally low level hordes because we didn’t know what ‘PVP flagged’ was at the time. Oh, teh memories!

          5) Big stick

          The Big Stick was given to me for an Xmas present by a guildie and co-healer last year. I dont know if I got it in reference to my healing team often calling me the ‘lady with the whip’ or maybe because I’m a teacher (same thing?) or whether he was trying to tell me something quite different, but it made me laugh all the same when I found it in the mail. I used it in this picture here that I created for our 2nd anniversary’s quiz page.

          True memories

          These are mementos I will always keep. Most dresses and baubles can be replaced if needed,  but these items really can’t. It’s not so much about the item but the story behind getting it.

          Maybe it sounds weird to some people but I feel about these items the way I feel about the screenshots in my WoW folder: as if they were real things and real photographs. I think they are too – after all I was there.

          And with this I end my contribution to this lovely topic with some very old screenies of mine, because a picture (or two) says more than a thousand words:

          1 Minute to go,
          enjoy it while it lasts!
          /sigh