Roleplaying Your Role

Just about every time I peruse an RP-focused forum, I see at least one post from someone new to MMORPG roleplaying, asking for advice on how to get started. Since it’s such a basic and fundamental question, I like to revisit it every now and then, trying to look at it from new angles, and maybe discovering something I’ve not thought of.

That’s the case with this week’s edition of RoleCraft. Once again, thanks to Dungeons & Dragons (and my players!) for helping me to see this question in a new light, at least for me. This has lead me to how roleplayers may start their RP characters in a very simple way: by roleplaying their roles. Continue reading

#219 – The Instance: The Savage Lava Dong

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Big News of the Week
4.1 PTR patch notes hit. The world takes pause! Were you just sitting around waiting to find out what the near future held for you in World of Warcraft? Has RIFT distracted your gase just long enough to make you worry about the future of azeroth? Already world firsted everything and need something new to chew on? Wait no longer…the PTR has you back. Link.

The Big Stuff
“All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.”

Work has begun on a new Looking for Guild system. Further details will be provided when we are ready for feedback.

Spells bound to a key now start to be cast when the button is pressed down by default, instead of waiting for the key to go up. This is an option that can be turned off in the Interface menu under Combat. Mouse clicking has not changed and operates on mouse click up.

The new Rag. Legs?
We talk a bunch about whether or not we like the new look.

The Gurubashi Tribe Persists
Originally a 20-player dungeon released in patch 1.7, Zul’Gurub will once again open its gates, featuring updated lore, all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot! Zul’Gurub is now a level-85 five-player Heroic difficulty dungeon. To provide a new tier above the current Cataclysm dungeons, players can expect to find epic-quality item level 353 loot. The minimum average item level to enter this Heroic dungeon is 346.

The Return of Zul’Aman
“Ever a player favorite, the level-70 ten-player dungeon of Zul’Aman is being reintroduced as a level-85 Heroic five-player dungeon. Zul’Aman will join Zul’Gurub in a new Dungeon Finder tier of Heroic dungeons, providing epic-quality item level 353 loot. The minimum average item level to enter this Heroic dungeon is also 346. While Zul’Aman will be more of a throwback to the original dungeon featuring many of the same encounters, players can expect to find some updated gameplay mechanics, as well as new environment textures and lighting.

You may be wondering about the unique mounts that were once contained therein. We’re pleased to announce that new versions of the rare raptor, tiger, and bear mounts will be available, while the old versions of these mounts will remain unique to those who already have them. We’ll reveal more about how these updated mounts can be obtained in the future.”

The patch is bring some additional achievements! “Along with a host of new pets and mounts, in patch 4.1, two new pet collecting achievements will be coming: Petting Zoo, for collecting 100 pets, and Menagerie, for collecting 125 pets. No new pets announced but that always comes.

Achievement for learning the Vial of the Sands mount, a new achievement called Cataclysmically Delicious for dining on 100 different kinds of food, and a new drinking achievement called Drown Your Sorrows for drinking 50 different types of beverages. A new achievement called Thirty Tabards, which you complete upon equipping 30 unique tabards. Other various achievements tied to the new dungeon redos, etc.”

New pets and mounts a comin!
“Landro’s Lichling (most likely from the TCG)
Nightsaber Cub
Wintersaber Cub
Panther Cub

New mounts include the following:
Armored Razzashi Raptor
Beryl Fire Hawk
Crimson Fire Hawk
Flameward Hippogryph
Savage Raptor
Swift Zulian Panther.”

Rumors & Scuttlebut
Hunters can now tame a Hydra! Maybe. At least we have a hint that there is one coming, according to WoWinsider. Account-wide achievements not quite ready for primetime:
As blizzard Blue, Wryxian tells it, Blizzard is not quite ready to pull the lever on this much requested next step in WoW achievments. He says as much in his latest blue post on the official forums:

“We do like the idea of account-wide achievements and it is something we have liked for a while. However we don’t currently have the tech to be able to implement them as we’d like to, and probably won’t have that for quite some time.

Account-wide professions or reputations are not something that is currently on our to-do list. If we were to think about that kind of thing, we’d have to carefully consider such a change as it has potential to heavily favour those of us who enjoy playing multiple alts. People who prefer just playing one character might not really see that as fair.” LINK! Plus your live calls, and twitter responses to what the hardest thing in the game is right now.

Drop of the Week
MMO Champion has the skinny on Battlegrounds, and who wins! Wether you swing allliance or horde, you might be interested in seeing how the battle ground stats play out of the past year or so. You may or may not be surprised to see that the wind blows in the hordes favor…by a lot.

People often wonder what the Horde/Alliance win ratio in battlegrounds are, Blizzard never gave away those % but the question can be answered by scanning a lot of characters on the Armory and compiling their battlegrounds wins statistics.

Thanks to Doghouse Systems, Typefrag, GoDaddy (codes WOW1 WOW2 WOW3) and the incredible Instance community!

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#218 – The Instance: Lady Asswhisperer

Big News of the Week
You can be exalted…just like grandpa used to.
“After a player-base melt down of catalclysmic proportions over the last couple of weeks, Blizzard has decided to back down from their decision to devalue the Exalted Title. Bashiok tells the tale…

“”Recently we changed ‘the Exalted’ title to require 50 exalted titles up from 40, which meant those that had achieved it were now asked to get 10 more reputations to gain the title back. We felt this kept the title as a difficult reward given the additional reputations introduced with Cataclysm, and also avoided the problem of achievement inflation as the game continues to grow, devaluing the reward.” Read it all right here.

Times, they are a changing…in raiding.
“4.0.6 brought all sorts of goodies to the table last week, ranging from the usual bug fixes, dungeon tweaks, and gear tuning. But we don’t care so much about that stuff.

The patch drove into town with all kinds of class and spec tweaks, we just couldn’t look away. So without further ado, lets peal back the onion and see what’s inside! The new king of the DPS hill is… Shadow Priests. Read the rest here.

We read a bunch of your tweets about what you dislike the most about 4.0.6.

WoW and SC theme park happening in China, without Blizzard involvement
Just when you thought you might never see a theme park based on the imaginative IP’s of Blizzard Entertainment, along comes the worlds second largest economy to save the day, and pirate everything! China is building a Blizzard Theme Park! SHHHH! Don’t tell Morhiem! Here and here.

Rumors & Scuttlebut
The Hotfixes are a comin. Community Manager Bashiok piped up in the forums and gave us the skinny on a few of the upcoming hotfixes to the world of the warcraft: Get the good word here.

Is 2011 the year of Diablo III?
Our opinions on whether or not we get this game before 2011 is over, and why.

Drop of the Week
How are your Deeps? Look it up! Stateofdps is just about the best place to find out how your damage is doing among the classes, and how that might have changed from patch to patch.

Bonus Drop
Macro Explain-O-Matic – From James

Thanks to Doghouse Systems, Typefrag, GoDaddy (codes WOW1 WOW2 WOW3) and the incredible Instance community!

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TavernWatch – Looking for Roleplay

Greetings, roleplayers! Back again with another TavernWatch edition, where I warily delve into that vast expanse of scorn and detritus known as the WoW Forums in order to bring to you the shining bits of posted RP gold that may be found within. This edition covers some very worthy Looking for Roleplayers posts, not all of them residing in the World’s End Tavern section.

I have a few RP characters that have been resting comfortably on their realms, waiting for me to pick up and continue their stories. Two of them I’m ready to get back into playing, one on Moon Guard (Alliance), and the other on The Venture Company (Horde). So I got to looking for roleplayers and RP guilds on the forums, making a list of those that looked most interesting. I now share that list with you. Hopefully this saves you the time and hassle of finding some quality RP for your characters, as well. Continue reading

Love, Warcraft Style

Love is in the air! Love is everywhere! All you need is love! Yes, it’s that time of the year, when lovers and ERPers abound in WoW. During the Love Is In the Air festival is also a time I generally stay far away from the populated areas of Azeroth. I currently don’t have any WoW characters roleplaying the part of a significant other, and can honestly say I never have. So, my RP knowledge about such is rather blank.

Not to say I’m against Love, oh no. I think it should be celebrated at all times, and in true form. However, all I can muster for you roleplayers today is to share some WoW machina that honors Love and shows how it can be portrayed in game. So, let me step out of the way and direct your attention to these videos!

[WoW Music Video]- Love Story

World of Warcraft- Here Without You

Code Monkey

You Belong To Me: A World of Warcraft Love Story

Lady Marmalade ( World of Warcraft )

World of Warcraft – A Hero’s Love

The Guild – Do You Wanna Date My Avatar (WoW Music Video)

Feel free to share your amorous RP ideas with RoleCraft readers! Send them to the RoleCraft on Twitter feed or on the official RoleCraft Facebook group page. Until next week, role on!

The Instance #217 – Now I’ve Gotta Go…

Join us for Randy’s last episode on The Instance. A very different episode, this. We hope you enjoy this fun look back, and forward.

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Win Five Wow TCG Codes From The Instance Right Now!

We’re about two hours away from recording The Instance #217, making this the perfect time to give away some codes!

One person is going to get codes for Tiny, the Footsteps of Illidan, Slashdance, a Sandbox Tiger, and the Path of Cenarius in the next few minutes right here.

Just post a comment on this blog post that contains a question for the show.  You can ask anything you like.  We’re going to pull one question and add it to the many we’ve already compiled for this episode, and the person who submitted it will get the codes!

Episode #217 To Record Live On Saturday at 9AM PST!

Please join us on the Frogpants Studios livestream at 9AM PST / Noon EST on Saturday, February 12 for The Instance #217!

It’s going to be a different episode of The Instance, as we find ways to bid Randy farewell, talk about WoW and Blizzard’s 20th anniversary, and give away a lot of prizes!

That’s right, starting right now and continuing until midnight on Saturday, we’re giving away 40 codes for in-game loot from the WoW TCG.  We’re going to give them away in groups of 3-5, and we’re going to give them to random commentors in this blog and on Facebook, people who follow us on Twitter (Instanceshow, Extralife, Randydeluxe), posters in our forums, and some who join us live for this episode!  Keep your eyes peeled, your ears open and your noses to the ground!

UI for Roleplayers

WoW’s user interface is a well-crafted piece of work, no doubt. Without any modifications, everything a player needs to be aware of to relate to the game world is right there in the heads-up display. The built in options allow for the HUD to be personalized to a great degree, so players can manipulate what interface items show to their liking. Continue reading