World of Warcraft questions

The Game Room
861

The percentage of players who did Sunwell was not particularly high… BUT that is not a good indicator of the percentage of players likely to do Icecrown Citadel. Raiding, and getting to the point of being “ready” to raid are much more accessible in WotLK than in prior expansions. Learn the best rotations for your class, do a few heroics, get some crafted and quest gear, read up on the encounters, you’re ready for Naxx. There are plenty of guilds doing Naxx, and likely will continue to be for some time; the learning curve on some encounters is steep (check out the “Safety Dance” portion of the Heigan fight), but it isn’t as hard to get geared up and “ready” for raids as it was pre-WotLK.

In terms of time investment, even casual guilds are clearing most of Naxx in a single night now. Learning takes a little longer; figure 4-6 hours a couple nights per week for your current raid content, depending on your guild. As your team gets better and learns the encounters, it takes less time. Most guilds will have a raid schedule and expect raiders to be online and available to raid specific nights; more casual guilds won’t have strict requirements, but they won’t progress very quickly, either. If you’re really interested in raiding, figure out if you want to raid casually or “hardcore” and research guilds on your server. If you just want to get your feet wet, you could try pickup raids, just be aware they may be painful experiences just like instance pickups. If you PvP at all, when you hit 80 try Wintergrasp and join an Archavon pickup after your faction wins the battle - it’s a great entry-level raid, very easy boss, with some nice rewards, and will help give you an idea of what it’s like to work with a larger group.

As for pre-WotLK raids… eh, some people do them for laughs or achievements, but don’t expect to find a group of people running Molten Core at level 60 or Karazhan at level 70 for experience or loot.

862

Can you solo old-world (pre-BC) raid dungeons at 70? 80?

863

Raiding has gotten more accessible since WotLK came out. Blizzard made it easier on purpose, at least at the earlier levels, to make it more accessible to more people. Once you get your main to 80 you’ve got a very good chance of seeing Naxxramas if you want to go–it’s easily PUGgable (well, relatively easily).

As a contrast, the introductory raid for Burning Crusade, Karazhan, was by comparison quite difficult. It had a long quest chain merely to get the key to enter (and everybody had to have a key, not just one raid member), and the bosses were very tough. Many guilds never got past the first boss before giving up. As time went on it got easier as they nerfed it, but it was hard to start with. Same with the 25-man BC raids - Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon’s Lair, The Eye, Serpentshrine Cavern, Hyjal Summit, and the Black Temple. The latter three required “attunement” (again, completing long quest chains–you have to get through The Eye and Serpentshrine in order to get attuned for HS and BT…and this was by no means trivial.) Most guilds never saw the inside of Hyjal and BT until they removed the attunements.

Sunwell…that was another story. Insanely hard by comparison even to Black Temple. Blizzard received many complaints about the fact that only a very small percentage of guilds (somewhere in the low single digits IIRC) managed to complete it, and even after they nerfed it, the later bosses were no cakewalk.

The raid content in WotLK is Blizzard’s response to the complaints that earlier content was too hard and inaccessible. Supposedly Ulduar, the next big raid instance, is going to be a lot harder, and I know that a lot of “serious” raiders (myself included) hope this is true. It doesn’t really feel like an accomplishment if everybody can do it. No offense intended to casual raiders, but there needs to be a challenge to keep the hardcores interested too.

864

Some people can, yes, depending on the dungeon. 80s can’t solo 70 raid content, but I’ve heard of Karazhan being done by either 2 or 3 well geared 80s.

My own guild has 80s who’ve soloed Onyxia and Molten Core. Not sure about the rest of the 60 raids.

865

Eh. Something for everyone, I guess. Just the thought of having to grind away learning painstakingly precise strategies night after night after night is enough to make me want to quit playing the game. Not to mention my basic misanthropy…I hate people. I hate grouping. Frankly, if I could flip a switch in my Options panel that would make the game a single-player (with commensurate challenge changes) except for towns, I would.

866

Actually, no dungeons needed, either. (If by dungeons you mean “instances”.) I don’t think anyone can actually solo their way all the way to loremaster of northrend… some of the five-man level 80 quests are probably not doable without at least a pick-up group, and you have to do at least 4-5 group quests in Icecrown to get to the end. I also doubt the arena chain in Zul’Drak is soloable even by a well-geared level 80.

867

Well. I have no interest in putting in the kind of concentrated time to do a lot of raiding, but I’ll be pretty disappointed if only the uber raiding guilds get to put Arthas’ head on a spike.

868

There’s about 10-12 extra quests in each Northrend zone AFAICT; doesn’t seem to be true of Outland (though I had all but one of those already when they added achievements, and the one I didn’t I was missing 2 and could only find 3 more). Most of the zones are completely soloable. In fact, I soloed everything up to Storm Peaks and Ice Crown, only grouping for quests where we were competing for spawns. Both Storm Peaks and Ice Crown have lots of party quests that are part of long chains, but even many of them are also solable. I did every quest in Storm Peaks and Ice Crown that recommended 3 people solo, and did many of the 5-man ones solo, but at least some of the Ice Crown ones weren’t soloable either because they just hit too hard, weren’t kitable, had too many adds, or just had more health than I could burn and heal myself through. FTR, I did the Zul’Drak arena line in a group as soon as I could, but I’ve gone back later and soloed some of the mobs: “Hey can you help me?” “Sure” “Okay I’ll summon… oh crap, AFK quick” “umm…” FTR, I’m a Holy Priest.

So, yeah, you can do MOST of Loremaster solo, especially the Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom ones, but you will almost certainly need a group for at least some quests in Ice Crown and Storm Peaks.

869

Actually, I like the way they used to do it, and I hope they continue: when a new raid instance came out, it was very difficult to complete. Most required attunement, and the mobs and boss encounters were very hard without a lot of effort, gearing, and dedication. This lasted for awhile (anywhere from a few months to a year), at which point Blizzard nerfed the instance somewhat (either indirectly by making better gear available more easily, like purchasable with badges, or directly by decreasing the mobs’ health and cutting back on their more dangerous abilities and/or removing the attunements). This way, the uber guilds get the satisfaction of downing the content early when it’s still difficult (and getting the bragging rights that come with the cool purple pixels earlier) while still giving casual guilds and solid PUGs the chance to see all of the game’s content. I think that’s the fairest way for everybody.

870

Seems to vary by zone - there were a bunch of extras in borean tundra and a few extras in dragonspite, but none at all in howling fjords or zul’drak.

I actually don’t remember a single group quest in storm peaks (or sholazar), after a fair number of them in each of the earlier zones. But then Icecrown has tons of them.

871

There were definitely extra in both HF and ZD. IIRC, I think I found 8 extra in HF, and around 8-10 extra in ZD. Then again, I play alliance; perhaps there’s fewer if you play Horde? I’m too lazy to actually go count the difference on wowhead since that requires more effort than just scanning the quest list.

The only one I can remember in SP is Sirana Iceshriek and, on a quick wowhead search, it seems like that was the only one. There is a group quest in SB as well, but I don’t think it counts against the achievement since it’s the Daily associated with choosing whether you want to side with the Frenzyheart or the Oracles. Either way, both are solable.

872

Oh yeah, I remember that one. There was a bunch of alliance guys there doing it and they were nice enough to hang around and help me finish it myself.

873

I’m iffy on this one. I thought the Karazhan quest line was poorly done because it required a lot of work to get done. We’d go through the effort of getting someone attuned, and when someone new came, rather than just having them tag along on a run to get some gear, we’d have to go through the effort of getting them attuned again.

The TK attunement was annoying too because a number of people didn’t finish all of their quests; they got to 80, ran instances, did heroics, went to Karazhan, and when then we were held back because people had to go back, do their quests, then go clear the heroics again.

I was much better with the Hyjal attunement though because it was something the raid did, and didn’t require people doing questlines and doing heroic runs. That is, I think raid progression should be the measuring stick for attunements, not quests. The real problem was, if guilds that had long since given up on SSC and TK recruited a member that wasn’t attuned, they’d have to waste a bunch of time clearing those instances in, pay another guild to let him tag along just for the attunement, or turn down a potentially good player because they didn’t have the time to do it.

I think the way they did it with Malygos is a good step in the right direction. It requires that the guild has a certain amount of progression, but the problem is, what if the few people who have the quest item can’t make it or quickly jump ship? For instance, in our raid, the quest item from Sapphiron went to the raid leader, and while he was there that week for Malygos, he was sick the next week and didn’t make it, had we not gotten a second person attuned in between or had he gotten sick a few days earlier, we might have been SOL. I think a better way to have handled it would have either been to attune everyone and only require that one be in the raid, much like how Karazhan ended up.

Though, really, beyond a certain point, I’m not really sure what good attunements do. They made sense for Hyjal and Black Temple because the early bosses were deliberately easy to act as a reward for beating Vashj and Kael and help fill in gear, where a guild could (and did, after the attunements were removed) use that loot to help them beat bosses in earlier instances. I really think a better way would just be to make attunements unnecessary. Add a gear-check boss early in the instance, or just make the encounters at least as hard as the last boss in the previous instance so you’re not doing content out of order to intentionally over-gear earlier content that you couldn’t do at the intended gear that’s available.

That is, I think Sunwell is a good example of what I mean (with the exception of the ability to farm the trash with Kara-gear). If your guild wasn’t able to clear Black Temple and Hyjal, I seriously doubt you could kill Kalecgos, and you almost certainly wouldn’t have had the gear to kill Brutallus.

874

I have a question. I normally avoid PvP, including world PvP, because I basically suck at it. But I need 9 quests to get the Hellfire Peninsula loremaster quest and it looks like a lot of those are PvP. How do you capture the towers if your faction already has all 3 of them? Are you just shit out of luck until the other faction captures them back?

875

Yep. But it doesn’t usually take long.

876

Both the Kalimdor and EK continents require doing instances to complete their Loremaster requirements. I did all the non-instance quests while I was leveling, but that still wasn’t enough to get the achievements. About 70 quests or so short. I mostly solo and so skipped all the instance quests, but all the level-60 non-raid instances should be soloable by a level 80. Once I hit 80 I’ll go back to the old world to finish them, then an instance run or two in Outland to finish Netherstorm (I’ll be mad if I have to choose between Aldor/Scryer to finish it), and then do the last ten zones of Northrend. If all goes well I’ll get the Loremaster title in the summer.

877

You don’t have to do the PvP quests to get Hellfire loremaster. A couple often overlooked quest givers are the goblin at the mine northwest of Thrallmar, and the two goblins at the zeppelin crash southeast of Honour Hold. Make sure you’ve done those as well as the quests at the Cenarion Outpost near the entrance to Zangarmarsh.

878

So my paladin was up in the Ruins of Alterac yesterday and I found an odd glitch/bug. Ogres would appear/spawn, and then blink out of existence. If I happened to run through the space where they had been, my portrait would indicate that I was “in combat”, but nothing would be hitting me.

Also, I was rather baffled to find a lone goblin alchemy supplies vendor hanging out on top of a wall in there. Why? What is he doing there? Who at Blizzard thought that was a logical place for an alchemy supplies vendor? :dubious:

I’ve been submitting numerous “bug reports” on the appropriate Blizzard forum, too. Not actual “bugs” (though I should probably submit the one in my first paragraph), but rather grammar/spelling/word usage corrections. I’ll be reading quest text and I keep finding places where they’ve used the wrong word. I mean, that kind of thing just makes Blizzard look bad and doesn’t help the semi-literate majority of young players. Most recent example: On page 8 of chapter 3 of Green Hills of Stranglethorn is the following sentence: “Barnil clamored back down the hill and rejoined the party.” Methinks that should be “clambered”. Other examples include Gwynneth Bly’Leggonde, who hands out the quests involving large sea creatures washed up on the beach near Auberdine: “We are making great strives …” (correction: strides, not strives) and Rwag, the rogue trainer in the Valley of Trials, says at one point, “Now that you know where I’m holding up …” (correction: “holing up”, not “holding up”). A couple knuckleheads on the Blizzard forums actually argued with me about that, claiming that “holding up” and “holing up” mean exactly the same thing. I wanted to answer them with “Read a book!”, but instead I elected to get all educational on their azzes and explain my reasoning. I’ll be interested to see if these things get corrected.

I had a “LOL” moment when I wandered into Itharius’ Cave in the Swamp of Sorrows and asked Itharius, “What’s an elf like you doing in a cave like this?” and got this answer. In other words, “I’m here solely to talk to people engaged in a specific quest, and were you on that quest you would know why I’m here and wouldn’t need to ask.” :stuck_out_tongue: Sadly, neither of my main characters (one Alliance, one Horde) have any such quest.

ETA: The award for “Best Pet Name” goes to … one of my Alliance guildies spotted a character with a two-headed hound pet named “Ex-Wife” :smiley:

879

I did all those, and still needed the “capture three PvP buildings” quest to get the achievement. Luckily, at least on my server, that one’s relatively easy to do without fighting anyone, depending on how crowded the zone is when you try it.

880

Thank you for your answer, I should have said so earlier.