• WoW: Fan Puzzle Challenges Your Knowledge of the Lore
• WoW: Red Rider Air-Rifle is 2009's Holiday Present
• Champions' Carnival Coverage
• Scourge Invade the World of Warcraft TCG

Welcome
to The
Overpull, Ten Ton Hammer's weekly newsletter that discusses all things
WoW. Want to get it in your inbox each week? Click here to subscribe.

WARNING! GET YOUR HOLIDAY ACHIEVEMENT SOON! Winter Veil is ending. Beep beep! Be sure to snag it.

"Become a Premium Member for LIFE for $29.95*! Regular price - $99.95. Get beta keys, exclusive content, contest advantages and much more. For life. Offer expires January 3, 2010, so act now. (*Price of $29.95 is only available to existing premium members. New subscribers can take advantage of the offer for $49.95)"

Oh, hey that deal is ending in just FIVE days or something like that. Hurry up and take advantage of it before it flies off.

• WoW: Death Knight Equipment Guide
• WoW: How to play a Retribution Paladin
• Behind the Curtains - The Story Behind Popular WoW Memes
• WoW: Ashen Verdict Reputation Guide
• WoW: Mage Equipment Guide
• WoW: Halls of Reflection Video Walkthrough

Blues Clues

• GHOSTCRAWLER talks defense, again, and again this week - " Without a defense stat there should not be a huge gear requirement to tank 5-player dungeons. It would be ideal if say an Arms warrior could go Defensive Stance, maybe use a shield, and be able to fill the tank role in any normal dungeon or even the easier heroics. "

The holidays will be coming to a close with the new year (along with Winter Veil), but don’t disparage. Right after that we’ll get the second wing of Icecrown and another year full of World of Warcraft goodies. Keep that cheer flowing as we move into the next year.

The Overpull this week is ready and waiting.  .

Here’s the lineup this week

• What’s the Buzz
• It Happened in /trade
• TTH WoW Forum Spotlight
• The Weekly Musing
• Loremaster's Corner
• This Week's Forum Post
  Come join us for discussion this week on the forums!

Welcome back to another week of me trying to come up with news for the holiday week. Most WoW sites this week are running non-news stories because there is nothing to talk about. Most raiding guilds got their raiding done early in the week, Blizzard’s offices are closed, and even the official forums have slowed down a bit. Winter Veil released the BB Gun that you can use to “pelt” your enemies, but it only has 200 charges and once you use it up then you can’t use it anymore. I think Engineering should have gotten the ability to recharge it, or something.

Oh, someone has found some mystery monsters that are causing random "earthquakes" throughout the world. Some players think they're going crazy, but it's just some kind of prelude to Cataclysm! We haven't even downed the Lich King yet and took his purps and Deathwing is rumbling. Yay.

In other news, well, there is no news. Oh boy, what will I do? I conferred with The Overpull on what we should do. The Overpull said to talk some more about the dungeon finder tool and get it all out of our systems, even if the topic is played out by now. So, let’s talk about the dungeon finding tool AND DRAMA.

I really love the Dungeon Finder, but I have been really stressed out by some of the groups I’ve gotten. The stress is quite a bit more than the groups I got from spamming /trade, because at least then if someone joins your group with obscenely low health or mana then you could easily just uninvite them. With the Dungeon Finder you’re basically shoved into a group with these players and forced to suffer the consequences of it.

Now, first let me preface this, half the time if the group is killing things I don’t care about carrying someone through. I’d prefer not to, for many reasons that I’ll cover below, but I honestly don’t feel it necessary to bicker in party chat, vote to kick, or anything else because someone is doing a grand total of 800 DPS (what my level 70 can easily do). At the same time, it’s easy to understand the frustrations of some players who see it as an insult that they’ve gone out and gotten at least a little bit of gear before running heroics and now have to carry people far lazier than themselves.

This is playing out so much that there is literally a line drawn in the dirt. One side says that it’s insufferable to tolerate leeches and that they should be identified with addons, tagged as bad players, and then kicked out of all subsequent groups. Not to mention that many of those same people find great joy in humiliating them with verbal abuse in the game. The other side attempts to preach tolerance and promotes education and understanding.

Personally, I don’t find myself in either camp. I’m not annoyed to such great lengths that I’m going to pull the car over and start screaming at the children. At the same time, I don’t want to promote the idea that you can, in quest blues, join random heroics and do absolutely no DPS while everyone else works hard on pulling the group through the instance. There is a reason for this.

That reason is very, very, simple. If you argue and bicker about someone in the group then the group is going to slow to a crawl even more. Then you have to vote to kick, which you’re already halfway through the instance, and then you have to wait for a replacement or 4 man the instance. I’m not saying that we should allow people to exploit us, but I do think that by the point you find out someone is really poorly geared then you’re probably at the point that it’s just too much additional work to bother. I do take it on myself to talk to people in tells and tell them about how having better gear would make their heroic experience a lot more enjoyable, though, after the instance is finished.

On the other side, you can easily gear yourself out in ilvl 200-213s within no time by normal instances. Regular ToC and The Frozen Halls provide massive amounts of gear and can be run back to back. My healing offset that only had a random assortment of 232s from ToC 25 was easily filled out and heroic ready after 2 hours of farming those instances. The Dungeon Finder tool makes finding groups nearly instant and the challenge is almost non-existent even for the poorly geared. Since, after all that is what normals are for. There isn’t an excuse to be in terrible gear during a heroic.

So that’s my thoughts on the subject. Feel free to talk in our forum thread. This rant isn’t stopping here, though.

There is one time I approve of being a “bad” person in WoW. That is if a group you are in is constantly throwing itself against the wall and making no progress within an instance. I feel that if you’ve exhausted every possibly way to make the  instance a fast and enjoyable one and you’re not having fun then it’s appropriate to excuse yourself from the group and take a brief break from the game. Now you may say to me that it’s unfair to leave and that leavers are terrible people. I say to you that WoW is about having fun and if you’re not having fun in a sensible way (especially if you don’t have an hour and a half to run a heroic) then excusing yourself is sensible.

I don’t think excusing yourself because the instance is The Occulus is. The place has been nerfed and you can only wipe IF and this is a BIG IF you don’t clear above the second dragon boss guy. He’ll call the dragons that are flying above him down which will overwhelm you fast if they’re not cleared out. Be proactive about making your run a success and ram yourself into the dragons to get your group into clearing them. The rest of it is easy, at least now that dragons have way more health and everything else has way less.

If you’re in greens on your offset and the dungeon tool has deemed it appropriate to let you in heroics because your main may be properly geared then please, heed my advice above. I’ve seen a tank whose last words were “Hi guys this is my first time tanking!” who then went straight to a trash pull and instantly died. Don’t try to cheat the wait times, DPS may have 3x the waiting time than tanks and healers but if you can’t tank or heal don’t queue. That’s another time it’s appropriate to leave, when the tank or healer can’t do their jobs and won’t voluntarily excuse themselves.

Other than that, the tool is the best thing ever. I’m just hoping that the rash of addons that act like DoTA banlists don’t start interfering with keeping the runs quick, efficient, and fun.

Ah well, join us next week when we hopefully have something newsworthy to talk about instead of the dungeon finder! Because it’s an old subject and will probably become like Chuck Norris by next April.

Hey, what's this, it's a comic about Winter Veil.

Did you know if you switch the e with v it becomes Winter Evil. Man, I'm on a roll today.

I added an s to the end so it was plural, because there are multiple people he was addressing, even though the actual quote is kid, but I'm sure you've heard it enough in trade chat.

Moments of Epic Noobness

This is a fun thread that could use some more love.

DRAGONS

Let’s talk about them.

We’ll, there is a lot to talk about. That’s like saying let’s talk about Human history starting at the War of the Ancients where Rhonin was teaching magic to Illidan. Instead, let’s just talk about the basic lore around them. We may go into stories about each flight later!

So, dragons. I’m not sure if dragons were here BEFORE the Titans or if they were created by the titans. It’s never really said, I don’t think. If you look at proto-dragons and then look at dragons you can see how proto-dragons are kind of like a mix between a reptile/dinosaur and a dragon. They may be what the titans crafted the dragons out of. Say they took a devilsaurs (which proto-dragons look like) and added wings to them and made AWESOME FLYING DINOSAURS WHO SHOOT LASERS OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS. Anyway, there are five dragon aspects that the Titans gave some of their power to in order to protect Azeroth and there are five main colors.

There are five colors of dragons (there were more at one time but there isn’t any more) and those five colors were given amazing powers by the Titans. The colors were Black for Earth, Blue for Magic, Bronze for Time, Green for Nature, and Red for Life.  These colors could also just be organized into: Black for EVIL, Blue for CRAZY, Bronze for CREEPY, Green for HIPPY, and Red for I AM BETTER THAN YOU.

Black Dragons are evil, because they are colored black. Deathwing, the star of the upcoming expansion, is their leader. He’s very evil, because he stole the Dragon Soul and then ran off with it. The reason why they’re evil is because black is an evil color in fantasy games (and vampires, because vampires always wear black capes with red silk linings don’t ask me how I know this) even though the lore says they’re the protectors of the earth and stuff like that. Pshaw. They’re just evil.

Blue Dragons are crazy, because they’re magical and powerful and colored the same as ICE MAGIC which is what Kel’Thuzad uses and KEL’THUZAD IS CRAZY. Ok, I joke. Blue Dragons are mostly insane because Malygos and the blue flight got their butts kicked by Deathwing and Malygos went into seclusion. There, he stayed for a bit until the Second War where he went to get the Dragon Soul with the other dragons and then some Netherdrakes came back to Azeroth and somehow made Malygos regain some sanity. Then, his first logical course of action was to purge Azeroth of anyone who is using magic without his consent. He dies to groups of poorly geared purp seekers plus a handful of random red dragon mounts. The expansion where he could shine, Cataclysm, will sadly not see him until they retcon his death or pull something like HO HO DRAGONS CAN BE REBORN.

Bronze Dragons are creepy, because their lore is kind of like deus ex machina. Their aspect, Nozdoromu knows when he will die so he’s basically immortal until that point and they can go back and alter time. They’re the excuse for the Caverns of Time and some of the Silithus content that will no doubt be revamped in Cataclysm. Bronze Dragons ALSO REALLY LOVE LORE. THEY LOVE IT SO MUCH THAT THE CULLING OF STRATHOLME RUBS IT IN YOUR FACE EVERY TIME.

Red Dragons are better than you are because they’re the dragon nobility and just have really bad attitudes. Red is also a chaotic and fiery color so they have to be like their color too. Alexstrasza, the red dragon aspect, also looks really pretty and everyone who is pretty is really powerful. They’re kind of good dragons though, even if they are better than you are, and Alexstrasza has done some nice things before. She also was the one who planted Nordassil.

Green Dragons are hippies, because they’re related to druids. Ysera is in the game asleep in her dragonshrine. That is the same dragonshrine where the undead can’t enter and it’s like a nice pretty little forest just because. Unlike the red dragonshrine that’s pretty much on fire and being destroyed by Arthas. Anyway, she’s kind of creepy in that she can enter dreams and stuff. She’s in the Emerald Dream or Nightmare, whichever you want to call it right now.

The dragons are pretty much the titan appointed guardians of Azeroth, but their power is kind of strange. I spoke in the last Overpull about power levels. Well, dragons have a small slice of the titans power granted to them and should stand stronger than everything else in Azeroth. The Lich King, however, is clearly more powerful than the dragons are which makes sense; the Burning Legion is freaking scared of the guy (even if he just likes to stand around and make fun of you). Yet you kill Malygos with a handful of red dragons. Deathwing, a corrupted dragon (by the old gods and not demons) is way more powerful than anything else you’ve fought so far (even if he’s been defeated a lot). Alexstrasza is also apparently really powerful and Kalecgos is there in the sunwell when ‘ol Kil’jaeden pops up and helps fight him off. He’s also a boss with just 2 million health and does only 5k damage with his normal melee against a level 70!

Then again, I think it can be demonstrated that levels aren’t an exact measure of power once you get past level 60.

Ah well, we’ll save my rant about how Malygos’s death in WotLK was a waste for a later date and some more fun filled dragon facts. Like, he should have died going all crazy like on Deathwing who drove him mad in the first place.

LET'S TALK DRAGONS ON THE FORUM THREAD!

Did you find TBC to be a fulfilling expansion?

I’m playing another alt through Outland and I had to quit it for a month, even though I was making half a level or so in an hour or two. The grind there just feels terrible. I don’t know if I’m spoiled on Northrend now, but I remember before Northrend where it only felt good because it was a better alternative to old world. Looking at it now, it’s the same quests that old world offered. The only difference is that the quests are concentrated and linear instead of all over the place.

The instances are a major pain. I was running lowbies through on my main and Sethekk Halls presented a challenge. Not for me, no, but the lowbies. A bird would swoop down and strike someone and they’d either die or be close to it. I remember running it on my Hunter back in the day on heroic. I think I ran it only a couple of times because of how long it took, how much CC you had to use, and the overall pain of going through heroics.

WotLK may be spoiling my memories, but I remember TBC as being nothing but battlegrounds, doing Mechanar daily (and maybe Botanica), and then doing the daily quests as they got introduced. Really, that’s what most of TBC was to me. Oh, Karazhan and Zul’aman. I will admit, I wasn’t a hardcore raider back then, but no one I knew was either. It was a pointless endeavor when PvP gear and badge gear was “good enough”.

I really find WotLK to be the best expansion ever and it’s just so much better than TBC. I’ve leveled three characters through Northrend and now I’m about to take a forth through and I never complain. I’m always happy. The XP is fast, the quests are easy and fun, and it’s an enjoyable experience. Heroics take 20-30 minutes to do each and give a lot of badges (even more now!) plus there is a really good reason to do at least one every day.

I guess for its day, TBC was awesome coming from old world. It was a lot prettier, heroics were fun (the rep grind WAS NOT) although tedious when there were only a few worth doing, and the battlegrounds were nice to do. It was a marked improvement over the original game, but it wasn’t nearly as much of an improvement as WotLK was.

Ah well, what’s your opinion? Do you think TBC was awesome or do you find it as painful to level through now as I do?

-David "Xerin" Piner