The Instance #187 – Bag Passion
Big News Of The Week
Cataclysm Details Are In Full Effect
In what can only be perceived as a sign that the beta is imminent, Blizzard dropped a veritable ton of information on us this week regarding the forthcoming third expansion to World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm. We got raiding news, PvP news, new art to look at, and all sorts of new controversies to traverse.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
Simplifying The Badges System Is Complicated
Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok broke the ice on possible changes coming to the game in Cataclysm with regard to those bits of currency you earn when you defeat dungeon bosses or win battlegrounds. In the first part of his post on the forums, Bashiok said:
Our primary goal when approaching badges in Cataclysm is to address a lot of the confusion that comes with these currency systems. To that end we’re changing badges to a more straightforward point system, similar to the ones we’ve used for a while for Arenas and Battlegrounds.
Bashiok noted that your path to obtaining PvP gear may change pretty dramatically in Cataclysm, saying:
The Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will be sharing this same point type. Because of that, it will in fact be possible to get the best PvP items without setting foot in Arena; however, more powerful armor and weapons will of course require more Conquest points, so players who win their matches more often will still gear up faster. We’re removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they’re definitely removed for weapons.
This wasn’t enough, and Blizzard Community Manager Bornakk followed up with another post clarifying the situation about weapons:
There will be two tiers of PvP weapons in Cataclysm. The lower tier weapons will correspond in quality to items found in the latest raid tier on normal difficulty and cost only Conquest Points. The higher tier weapons will correspond in quality to items found in the latest raid tier on Heroic difficulty and will have a minimum personal rating requirement in addition to costing Conquest Points. All of the highest-stat PvP armor, including shoulder and head pieces, will cost only Conquest Points and have no rating requirements.
Town Cryer
Jeff H. writes: Besides the barrens and thousands needles, where will be the best places to take pictures before Cataclysm?
Drop Of The Week
Making Pets Easier
This one starts with an e-mail from Russell E., who wrote:
Is there an addon out there that will randomly select a Non Combat Pet for me? How about the same for my mounts?
Why yes there are, Russell, and we’ve got just the suggestion for you and every player in the game.
MiniPet is our favorite mod for summoning a random pet with one key click. It does more than that. But you don’t need a mod. You just need this macro:
/run CallCompanion(“CRITTER”,random(GetNumCompanions(“CRITTER”)))
GoGoMount is our favorite mod for mounting on one key click. It picks the best mount for the situation you’re in, every time.
Additional show content provided by Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz, James “Acuzod” Jefferies and the outstanding Instance Community.
Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and SquareSpace for sponsoring this episode.
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that was an awesome show, good job.
Reggie was amazing. He needs to be on every show going forward.
What song did you guys use right before town cryer?
Scott,
I’m the same as far as achievements. I think the reason I can’t get into the achievements is that there is no middle ground with these achievements. They are either super boring or fiendishly difficult. There is no middle ground. For example, during Noble garden, you sit in one freaking place right clicking on egg spawns! Or you have to take a toon into a Eye of the storm and capture a flag – I run a mage so you can imagint the agony! And to make things worse there is time contraint! Also in the boring side is the traveling tour quests, whcih for my mage is pretty easy, but on other toons its a bit harder.
awesome show guys
and thanx for reading out my email
gogomount is awesome and ty for the macro
keep up the work cya sunday
Great episode guys, but i really wish you could have read my e-mail and gave my friend Dalton a shout out for his Birthday tomorrow that would have just made his like year. Maybe next time…..
Keep up the great work though guys we love your show =]
Woot! Was just logging into WoW and right on the front page news screen: Starcraft II in Stores 7/27/10.
Hey guys great show! Love the gogomount addon! great pick.
I was wondering during this show, remembering the “hand job” incident, does anyone from your church listen to this show? Would you be embarrassed if they did? I mean with the penis and vagina jokes in this show alone… Just curious, let us know in next week’s show! – the drama of wow vs church.
Well, good on ya and For The Horde!
-Micah
Great episode, for critter autosummoning I would recommend critter caller, it auto summons your pets but allows you to plug in the percent likelyhood of it to appear which is nice because I am the king of person that indulges in vainity pets like lil xt kt and the pandaren monk and when I was about level 50 my hunter(which I abandoned for my dk that I LOVE) I spent all the gold I had saved on the dalaran bear. Ps I have not purchased a celestial steed (;
You know how sometimes you have a best buddy but you know it would be disaster if you ever had him as a housemate? Well sometimes you have a really good friend but he shouldn’t be on your podcast. Sorry Reggie! Seriously – he had nothing interesting to contribute and barely seemed capable of participating in the conversation. I’m sure he’s a really great guy though.
A great show! Tops out all my other podcasts. Particularly loved the Murloc song – brought back lots of memories of the Muppets. Any chance of getting a link to a download? And for that matter, a link for the other WoW-related songs that you have featured.
As always a really great show. I listen on my way to work and get a lot out of it. Keep up the good work
I completely understand the need to complete some of these world event achievements. School of Hard Knocks is the last one I need for my protodrake and I spent several hours in the BG’s on Sunday trying to get any of the 4 BG’s taken care of. It seemed that the other faction wasn’t caring too much about it and was just there for the fight.
There was some griping I read during the fights that the regular pvpers hated these holiday achievements because most people get the achievement and then AFK. Yes, I am there for the achievement but I’ll continue the fight to the end because I like getting the honor as well for various items.
And I will have my protodrake by the end of this holiday… I cannot wait for another year to get this done.
I also would love to know the name of the song before Town Cryer
Loved the show, loved Reggie. He was incredibly fun! I like him as an occasional sideshow- like a less informative Patrick and a more American version of Turpster. I like.
reggie was awsome for the time he was on. i your random trains of thought some how reminded me of this bumper sticker i saw the other day. it said, horn broken watch for finger.
love the show cant wait till next week.
Dang where do you get all these awesome songs you play at the end? If there was an album with the Murloc Selection and other such songs, I’d buy it without a second thought.
Reggie made this episode amazingly hilarious.
And the drop of the week this week; so much easier than old macros I’ve been using that list all of my mounts and pets.
Keep up the good work guys!
Yeeah, and ya don’t stop, cuz it’s a 187 on an undercover gob(lin)
Sorry, couldn’t help it. Grats on 187.
Amazing Show!!!!!! When are you two going to make your own WOW song? Like “Highway to Hellfire” or something?
You mentioned about taking it to the next step with the lore but personally for me I never pay attention to the lore. Its kinda like lookin’ at someone else’s vacation pictures. Meh, you look so you don’t appear rude but really don’t care.
Love the show, but that Murloc song at the end was just awesome. Had me singing along at work, luckily no one could hear me cause I was trying to be soft.
Love your show! I’ve only started listening to this recently, and I am addicted!
You guys are fun to listen to.
Keep up the good work!
Hey guys, I nejoy the show and am in the midst of listening to this latest one, but had to take break to vent a little…
Of the 6 or 7 podcasts that I listen to all but one has expressed their disapproval of or flat out QQed about the new lockout sharing process, except one and that one would be the main one I would expect to hear it on. But they all also used to complain about how it sucked to do TOC 10, then 25 and some throw in a TOGC 10, so they were seeing the same content 3 times a week and it bored them.
Then came ICC and they made it so you couldn’t do both regular and heroic on separate lockouts, but could do 10 and 25… and people still complained that it was redundant. Now Blizzard is making it so that the 25 man guilds can’t go farm out 10 and learn the fights to zoom the world first, they will have to make a very conscious decision before gearing in 25s and then going for a 10 world first, people SHOULD get less burnt out on content if they aren’t feeling forced to run the same thing in 10 AND 25 each week, just to stay current with gear needs. Sure this is geared more towards the casual as WOW has done this expansion (at least the second half of it), but when they have to listen to all of the whiners QQ about how burnt out they are on content because they were all running the same dungeon so many times every week, this seems like a natural solution.
I also like that this will likely give true 10 man raiders a chance to get that world/realm first rather than having it stripped by some split-up 25 team that out gear the run. Some people just simply enjoy 10 more, but do 25s because they feel they have to, in order to stay close to competitive.
Hearing everyone say 25s are going to die seems silly to me as well. If they really make 10s as hard as 25s, people will still want 25s for a better shot at loot and because it gives more leniency for error. I understand that in 25s the bosses hit harder and fights have more mechanics, but there is a lot more room for error than a 10. Up the difficulty on 10s and I think you will see more drive to run 25s. As for my loot argument, they are going to give the same loot, but more in 25s. Even if the ratio is the same (2 items in 10 and 5 in 25s or 1 loot to every 5 people) there is a much better chance that 3 items or 2 items per boss could drop for a class. chances of both items dropping for the same class in 10s would be lower. I have been in lots of VOA runs where everything on a 25 run is for one class (ok maybe the spell leather said rogue on it, but really…), I’ve had it happen much less frequently on 10. But if you compare the numbers of items dropping, then it seems more beneficial and likely to get something out of 25. Even if you have a couple of the same class/role.
And I kind of agree with Total Biscuit, in that if 25s die, then they never should have been around anyway. 25 pugs may die, but 25 guild runs should not. If guilds are only running 25s for loot and they feel they should branch off to run 10s for same level loot, then why would anyone even care if 25s die?
Also I have not heard anyone even consider the idea of this lessening burnout. Isn’t it possible that this could cause people to take a bit longer to get clear a dungeon when they aren’t getting loads of gear from 10 and 25 and thus not giving a little bit longer shelf life to that dungeon? If I hadn’t started out running 10 and 25 ICC as soon as I could find a group, I might care about getting into a group now. But as it is I can only PUG (or abandon my real life friends and family for a raiding guild, and this game isn’t worth it to me.. I still managed to get about a 5.7k gear score by mid-marchonly running PUGs and was in the top 40 geared resto druids on a high pop server during TOC times) and PUGs just can’t clear stuff. I will welcome the sharing of a lockout and equal level loot.
I have no common forum to voice my annoyance with this, but I was listening to The Instance today and felt obligated to throw my rant up here, to vent if nothing else. (This site, and only this site of the many Scott has, is about the only wow related anything the Air Force doesn’t block from the base I work on.) Thanks for providing a place I could voice my opinion and keep up the great work on the shows. I like hearing at least one family friendly podast amongst the many I use to pass the time at work.
Hey guys, love the show hope it continues for as long as wow servers are up.
Here’s something noticed and perhaps you could bring it up on the show. The Orcs from warcraft share an aweful lot of simularities with the Klingons from Star Trek. From the new ogrimmar screens in cata the architecture is really starting to look like the klingon stuff from DS9, with the horde banner everywhere during wartimes. Not to mention both have the warcry Victory! Orcish = “Lok’tar!” Klingon = “Qapla”
Love the show guys! Gotta love those badgers!
What’s the music in the middle of the podcast ?
Hey another note for anyone interested in trying the RAF setup. The cost is actually more like $45-50, though you get the free month so $25-$30 after you take out the $15 for that month.
You have to pay for the full version of the game, which is $20, then 2 months on top of that. I find 60 day game cards on ebay for $22-26 pretty regularly. So the original cost Randy had was more accurate, but not for the same math reasons he had.
Also, if you have someone genuinely interested in joining, GameStop has had the WOW Battle Chest on sale for $20 a bt lately. So they would get 30 day play time, Vanilla and TBC for $20. It would save them $25 -$30 on the TBC upgrade.
shit-on-a-stick-with-cheese!!! LOVE me some Reggie! Y’all are just gonna have to become a trio now, you know that, right?
And you could sell little Reggie dolls that, when you pull the string in his back, says, “I’m just here for color, that’s all!”
‘scuse me whilst I go fan myself . . .
–Moonn from the Shandris server
I have an issue with GoGoMount in that I can’t get it to remember my preferred mounts, so I end up on ugly gryphons that I bought just for the achievement rather than my ROFLcopter or my hippogriffs (both absolutely perfect for a gnome, in face I think anything larger would break a hippogriff’s back). Maybe I’m not doing the settings right.
One other thing: I MUST have the link to “Why are there not many songs about murlocs?”. When I search for “Songs about Murlocs” all I get is “I am Murloc” (Also awesome, but don’t be fooled by the fake video with the wrong music on YouTube.)
What’s the name song in the middle of the show please.
It was very nice.
Thanks!
I was completely aboard the Reggie-train (well, not in THAT way, but you know) until he said his bit about killing the Defias Traitor at the end of that horrifically long Westfall escort quest. I don’t even care if that’s a joke – you are dead to me, Reggie!
Re Email about wife leaving guild: Turns out she LOVED the gift you gave her and found her own place in the game. What’s so wrong with that? Unless she puts you on her ignore list, you should be proud of having a wife who wants to take Arthas down instead of dancing naked on mailboxes and making bags. (growls at Reggie)
Arathor was the original empire of the united humans.
Stromgarde was the capital. ‘Strom’ not ‘Storm’
As people went off to found their own nations, the kingdom became known as Stromgarde, basically a small Spartan-like state holding the line against the trolls.
Tol Barad can be found on wowwiki as it comes from the strategy games.
As far as the castle architecture, I’m not sure what else they could do….different colored castles? I guess we could use some ivy. Humans are plain and boring, other than mage towers.
if you’ve been doing nothing in Sholazar I believe you get a choice between the Frenzyheart and the Oracle.
I tried to do Noblegarden and couldn’t find any eggs. Gave up, better things to do.
Randy don’t violate your protodrake
and i still have to ask, where the freak is my two seater flying carpet? so I can sing that song from Aladdin?
I approve of the rocket by the way.
I’ll quit posting now, if you guys haven’t noticed I type comments as I listen.
Thanks again for an awesome show
Are you still giving away the Pony Mount, I would love one as a Mother’s Day Gift 
Keep up the great work guys, I love listening to you!
Great show guys.
Thank you!
Love the show guys. Reggie made for a good change of pace (not that the pace was a problem before
I am a Mormon Bishop and I play a healer named Bishyp. I would LOVE a Celestial Steed for him.
WWWWWOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
Great show guys! Thanks for the tips of the pet/mount mods! I’ve been using a different macro that was severly limiting on the number of mounts/pets I coudl use and it was often hard to select which woudl make the top selection. I’m downloadign the news ones right now adn can’t wait to test them out! Thanks for the research!
-Naia of the guild on Suramar
**
-Naia of the guild Brazen on Suramar
Hey! Regarding the random mounts and random pets; the addon “RandomCompanion” does the same as both of the ones you mentioned. It also picks the best possible mount for any situation (flying when flying, grounded when grounded, turtle when in water, etc). Also, it allows you to pick your favorites and weigh mounts differently so that one or more might be picked more often (or not at all).
First of all, congrats on getting Maui’s violet protodrake last week.
Second, if I ever decide to do this achievement again on any of my other toons I will have to make sure that I get the School of Hardknocks achievement done during the week instead of the weekend. I made the mistake of trying to complete the AV portion this past weekend. Little did I know that AV was the battleground holiday weekend. EotS was the easiest of the four in my opinion.
I’ve been using Pokedex, which is another good addon that takes care of random mount/pet/title stuff, along with the smart mount summoning in Dalaran and ranking of individual pets/mounts. So for example if you have a magic carpet and a gryphon mount you can rate your magic carpet as 9 out of 10 and 90% of the time you’d summon that one if you’re in a flyable area.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE… The name and band of the song at the middle of the podcast, just before “Town Cryer”… Seems that Scott is not reading this comments, so if anyone knows wich song it is… please please tell. Love it!