Welcome to another edition of The Overpull, this time for the week known as inches before the holiday rush. Then youre supposed to make some kind of joke about gaining weight, but I dont eat a lot in the holidays. I mean, after all, if everyone is busy achievement farming then who is going to run your quests to bring you worm meat and bear pelts? Huh? Well, I agree, thats not funny, but anyway lets continue.
In lengthy discussions with The Overpull over pumpkin pie yes, indeed, pumpkin pie, the Overpull has decided to cut funding to the weekly musing and shorten its length. In turn, the lore corner moves up and takes over all of the extra funding (34 cents) and is 4% more special this week. Hooray, Im glad to have negotiated this with THE OVERPULL and now bring you this weeks news, comic, and more.
Heres the lineup this week
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An interview over at WarCry establishes that Arenas were a mistake. Yes, of course they were a mistake. Theyre an excellent concept, but like Ive written before, theyre not anything to do with pro gaming. Furthermore, it seems Blizzards plan with a new MMO is to 1-up their own game before anyone else does. Thats an interesting concept. Well see how all of that plays out.
BlizzCon in Las Vegas? Well, the majority of sites jumped on the listing at the Las Vegas Convention Centers website for BlizzCon 10 in Las Vegas. It seems that the story is quite interesting, because the site showed it as a confirmed booking. The Internet exploded at the idea that BlizzCon would be in Las Vegas (because Las Vegas is cool and pretty cheap right now). So, Blizzard starts going dont make travel plans and the Internet soldiers gear up in their suits of armor, cheetos, and smartphones and begin pushing everything and everyone about it.
Finally, the LVCC claims that they had an inquiry from Blizzard and reserved the dates to entice them to come. A mix-up got it set as a confirmed booking, which has been fixed, so there arent any plans right now for BlizzCon at the LVCC.
Now, the big problem is the Anaheim Convention Center right now is pretty much too small to hold BlizzCon anymore and to have Blizzard capable of handing out enough tickets to please a small base of the community. As a reminder, tickets sell out WITHIN MINUTES and last year the fire department closed off the entrance during Ozzys concert for having too many people in. Thats with renting out MOST of the convention center too.
So, while you shouldnt make plans to go to Las Vegas, you may not want to make plans to go to Anaheim either, because it might not be happening there.
MOHAWK GRENADES. PLEASE, Im tired of hearing about them. Theyre in the starting zones! It says so on the website. They're like the new Mankirk's wife, almost. Its a marketing ploy too, because you know people want to play a game where they can throw grenades and give people a Mohawk. Big deal if you ask me, but if you want em theyre outside the various starting zones.
In other news, The Guild, you know that loveable web series is finally doing something to fight back against the evil Axis of Evil or whatever theyre called. Zork has taken over as the guild leader again which ends the awkward leadership of Codex. Hooray, I suppose.
People are getting angry that their WoW magazine subscriptions have yet to arrive. Theyre still on time for late 2009, so they should be arriving at some point. I find the price tag a little bit too much for my budget, but for those of you who have ordered dont give up hope yet.
Rawr got updated, for you theorycrafters out there.
Raid for the Cure, ran by Big Bear Butts, was a huge success. You can read more about it over at BBB, but the turnout was awesome.
Mrgl-Mrgl apparntly broke due to so much traffic, you know the WoW only search engine.
That wraps up the WoW news this week. Yep, not much going on. The community is in a lull waiting on 3.3 to hit and the rest of the news is
the PTR!
Welp this week was pretty crazy. So heres the facts.
The new 5mans in heroic give ilvl 232 drops (or basically Ulduar loot) with all of the popular raider items now in the welfare system. Grim Toll? Who needs it when you can get a better version in the 5 man.
The regular 5mans give ilvl 219 loot and will probably be easy to run over and over again. There are three of them, so youll probably just rotate through the three until one drops something that everyone needs. This pretty much makes all other normal instances, even regular ToC, pretty stupid to even run.
Queldelar is in, its ilvl 251, and pretty good for melee DPS, spell casters, and healers. There are even two-handed versions for feral Druids and Death Knights. Hooray! No tank version though
because I guess this is the DPS/heal version and not a tank version of the weapon? Who knows.
Emblem of Frost loot is in too. New idols/relics/etc. are insane, new trinkets look good, and Im not even going to talk about the gear. Mostly because I cant theorycraft fast enough to figure out whats good and whats not, but it has all been ilvl 264 so it has to be somewhere between decent to OMG good.
SPOILER ALERT: Arthass voice has been ripped from the PTR. He talks A LOT during the Shadowmourn quest line or whatever. No final fight voice has been added
. yet.
Thats about it for the PTR this week.
It looks like the comic may or may not be a series as it seems Holycow, the Tauren Priest (I've yet to figure this one out) is now worried that Edwryd is about to get himself in more trouble. I find the background rather amusing, myself.
Key Board Tips? - A thread discussing keybindings and more. Having trouble with your keybindings? This is the thread for you.
Picking subjects for the Lore Corner is hard, because I have a wizards hat (well, a witch hat but I glued on some handmade stars with glitter on them so its OK) that I shove various subjects written on folded up sheets of paper into. When I pull out one of the pieces of paper its often filled with Mario & Luigi or Master Chef. I dont know how Master Chief became the Master Chef, but I do imagine hed make a fine cook.
So instead Ill use my amazing ability to come up with the first thing that pops up in my mind. Which this week is: Anubarak
See, I love Kelthuzad, because this is YET ANOTHER story that ties in with ol KT. Think about it. Whiny emo Blood Elves? BAM KT WAS THERE. Arthas feeling down? BOOM KT. Leveling up OH THERE IS KT. Visiting Dalaran? LITTLE KT IS HERE TO SAY HI. Anyway, Anubarak was introduced in Warcraft III and is a pretty cool bug guy.
So you know Azjol-Nerub right? The place that was supposed to be a big city and a really cool instance/possible raid/involve Muradins expedition still surviving within it? Well, it didnt have any of that, but one instance is super short and the other one is so/so. Alright so thats the spider kingdom. Its a kingdom for those weird spider things. I think they mutate to become the bugs that were in AQ40, but well get into that some day later.
Alright so during the War of the Spider, when that crazy Orc Nerzhul was in charge, they came in and destroyed the spider kingdom since they needed more troops for the scourge army. Anubarak got smashed up, died, and was rezd as a servant of the Lich King. So, he was a spiderlord before, now hes an undead spiderlord, which makes him a Crypt Lord. Spider logic, shesh.
So with great power comes great responsibility. His first mission was to lead Kelthuzad to Icecrown where he could start his legendary journey to be reborn every other patch. He did that, as we all know. I can only imagine Kelthuzad dying a few times on the way there and Anubarak sighing as he has to rez him AGAIN.
Next time he does the same thing, again, because hes basically like the butler in Icecrown Citadel. So Arthas goes BACK to Northrend after running away from the Forsaken and to meet the call of the Lich King. Well my heroes Illidan and Prince Kaelthas were there with a MASSIVE army of Blood Elves and Naga. I dont count Lady Vashj because shes lame and annoying. So figuring out how to deal with it, they decide to take a shortcut through Azjol-nerub, Anubs old home.
Now, I would imagine a spider city thats been purged of spiders beforehand would just have a few spiders in it. Naw. Its full of a lot of living spiders and DWARVES. See, the Dwarves that came with Muradin kinda got stuck in Northrend and were in this spider place guarding this terrible horrible thing or something. That campaign mission was confusing.
Well, Anub & Arthas rush through Azjol-Nerub where you find the Faceless Ones and then a Forgotten One who looks like an Old God. Faceless Ones, we now know, are basically the pawns of Yogg-Saron. They make it through that and an earthquake hits, because that kind of thing just has to happen in a story like this.
Anub, being the lord of digging, digs his way back to Arthas and then they high five one another like bros do when they see one another again while downing some Azerothian natty ice. They go up to the surface where Illidan and crew waits, but Illidan is really good at beer pong and Arthas is pretty drunk on Lich King power by this point. Anub helps fight them off and eventually becomes the butler in Icecrown again.
From that point, you see him again twice more. He goes back to Azjol-Nerub and redecorates it in the name of the Scourge. The few spider people that arent evil (how are spider people NOT evil) ask you to be like Spiderman and kill him for him. Well, Spiderman wouldnt kill anyone, but Im not sure if spider people can read since they are, well spiders.
You go in, kill him in a laughably short instance. Then in Trial of the Crusader you see him again, this time as lot tougher, unless youre on normal mode in which case hes about as laughably easy as he was in the 5man. Arthas is really smart, because he is getting rid of all the easy bosses before Icecrown. That or hes just really stupid and has no clue how to wipe a raid.
That, my friend, is the story of why spiders are icky. The end.
This weeks question is: Where do you want BlizzCon to be?
I used to live in Georgia, so I wouldnt mind it being in Atlanta since it would have been a half hour drive instead of a long flight and a longer drive to the hotel. Now that I dont live in Georgia, I do think Las Vegas would be an awesome venue. The biggest concern though, is that whatever the locale, it has to kind of be kid friendly since there are a lot of younger (under 21) people attending the event. Im sure that Las Vegas has enough sin within it that itd be a tough sale to send the younger kids that way.
Other locations I wouldnt mind would be, well, anything other than New York. I get scared enough navigating the highways in California. I wouldnt want to dare trying to go anywhere in New York.
You know what would be awesome? Texas. Now, I know, Texas is hot and has a lot of stigma from being Texas. However, its easy to get to from the West and East coast and Im sure there are structures there big enough to hold in the entire collection of Blizzard fans. Better yet, if it was an outdoor venue. Sure itd smell bad (BlizzCon surprisingly enough never smelled bad to me) from the heat and sweat but Im sure they could pack in twice or three times the numbers easily.
What do you think? Where would you like to see BlizzCon?
Answer the question in our forums!
Thats the weekly musing this week and concludes The Overpull. Stay tuned next week for more awesome news, funny stories, lore, and questions rolled together in your ultimate WoW newsletter.
-David "Xerin" Piner
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