Hey all, its patch day again!

Now before you go running screaming into the night and threatening to cancel your account, lets note that its just a minor patch – but it brings some nice changes.

Big General Changes:

• The long awaited equipment manager has made it live.
• Gear now scales SotA and Wintergrasp vehicles.
• Wintergrasp quests are now weekly instead of daily.

A few class tweaks and bug fixes in the full notes included after the jump.

General

• When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

• Equipment Manager
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Bug Fixes

• Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
• Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.

• Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.

• Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
• Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
• Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.

• Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.

• Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
• Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.

• Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.

• Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Tailoring

• Ulduar
  • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
  • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
  • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

So there I am, sitting in stormwind, watching the hustle-and-bustle of the trade district all around me, when it pops into my chat window.

“I nedz 10g can i has plz thx” (actual spelling, yes.)

Now being the kind and compassionate light-following paladin that I am, I decided to engage our poor illiterate friend. Join me after the jump so you don’t be this guy.

[Me] “I’m sorry, what?”
[Poorboy] “nedz 10g”
[Me] “For what?”
[Poorboy] (After a 2 minute silence) “train”
[Me] “Training at level 5 does not cost 10g. Maybe, maybe 50s.”
[Poorboy] “I nedz can i has”
[Me] “Im going to ask you a question.”
[Poorboy] “k”
[Me] “What are your professions?”
[PB] “First aid mining”
[Me] “Ok, what you are going to want to do is march into that forest over there, and start mining copper. It should fetch you about 3g/stack on the AH.”
[PB] “whats ah”
[Me] “Auction House”
[PB] “k”
[Me] “Good luck.”
[PB] “can i has 5 g plz”
/ignore Poorboy

Well, I tried. OK, so it wasn’t an actual conversation, but it was based on a real one, with that same spelling and line of questioning. There was a guildie (we can just can just call him poorboy for now) who would ask – everyday- to borrow 3g. And everyday, I would get into the same line of questioning and conversation, like clockwork.

So I’ve decided, in an effort to stop these people, to help you crit your wallet as a low level character.

Questing

Now, while I shouldn’t have to say this… questing is a huge source of money, gear, rep and xp.
Its kind of a one-stop shop for everything you need while leveling, and there are so many quests to do.
Poorboy would often reply that he did not want to quest, because it was too hard.
So lets assume that you, like poorboy, cannot stand questing.
Since questing is such a great rewarder of all things, you are leaving yourself at a great disadvantage by not doing it.
But, you can use your professions to help make up that money.

Killing Humanoids

Killing things is one of those nice by-products of questing, and killing humanoids will net you a modest income. They drop money, cloth (which always sells in the auction house), grey trash (vendor it for more money) and greens/blues (Do not vendor these – put them in the auction house or disenchant.) See the Auction House topic further down.

Professions

Your character has the ability to learn two primary professions and unlimited (well up to three because there are only three) secondary professions. Some are better for money-making than others. You see, the professions themselves, they generate income. Its complex. (100 internets to anyone who gets the joke.)

Primary professions

There are eight primary professions to choose from and they are split into two seperate types: Gathering and Crafting.
Repeat the following after me:

• Gathering skills will give me money now and later. Income is steady and mostly reliable.
• Crafting skills will give me a good amount of money later, but will be a money sink early on. Income is great for higher levels, but can be sporatic.
• Crafting skills will allow me to enhance my own character and my friends.

Did you get that? If your goal is simply steady money – pick two gathering professions. If your goal is to enhance your own character – I highly suggest taking one gathering profession and one crafting of your choice (They all have their own benefits). Try to choose a gathering skills that funds your crafting skill to soften the blow.

• Mining (Gather)

  • Mining is a great gathering profession, as ore and bars are always needed by blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting.
  • Copper is easy to gather as a low level character and will give you about 3-5g a stack.
  • Always sell the ore, rather than the bars. It gets a higher price due to it being used by more professions in that form.
  • When you hit 450 – you can smelt titansteel once a day for a decent fee.
  • Each “level” of Mining gives you a passive 3/5/7/10/30/50 stamina. (Toughness)

• Skinning (Gather)
  

  • You see that beast you just killed? Skin it. Extra income. The easiest of the gathering professions.
  • Skinning produces leather, which is used for leatherworking and occasionally tailoring, blacksmithing and jewelcrafting.
  • You get good xp while farming due to the fact that your gathering requires you to kill things.
  • Each “level” of skinning gives you a passive +3/6/9/20/32 critical strike rating. (Master of Anatomy)

Herbalism (Gather)

• Enjoy the scenery as you walk through picking flowers.
• Herbs are used in alchemy, inscription and occasionally enchanting.
• Glyphs are big business right now, and potions are always in demand. (Glyph business will eventually taper off, but should still be steady income)
• Free heal over time spell, regardless of class. Lifeblood (Rank 1)

Thats all for right now. Join me for part 2 in a few days when we will discuss how to make money using crafting skills.

We have come to the start of a new era in the World of Warcraft. With the implementation of Dual Talent Specialisation, everyone can do everything that their class was made for. Mages can go down the Frost tree for some PvP, leave the Battleground, hit a button and be ready for raiding Ulduar, Frostfire build and all. Paladins can switch from healing to tanking in five seconds. Warriors can either be useful and do what they were intended for, or DPS instead. But in all of this wonder and diversity, there is a very, very serious problem lurking in the background, just waiting to destroy that decent PuG run you’ve been enjoying.

“It’s for my other spec.”

With every player and their dog running around with two specs on hand, the question of loot has become even more problematic. For instance, my Priest has Shadow for levelling, and Discipline for instances. Discipline calls for crit and intellect, mainly. Shadow calls for spirit, and a hell of a lot of it, as does Holy I believe. Already, I have an issue. I have two specs, and they require two different types of gear. Technically speaking I require two different sets of gear, and so I could say that I need every piece of cloth that drops in a given run.

I don’t need to tell you that that is unacceptable. It astounds me that some people believe that just because they’ve spent 1000 gold voluntarily, that they deserve twice as much loot as everyone else. There are people already saying that they intend to need on anything that drops that fits their two specs. Why stop there? 50 gold is all it costs to respec one of their specs again, so why not need on everything? My Paladin can tank, heal and dps. So, by the reasoning of others, I should get first choice of cloth, leather, mail and plate, regardless of the stats on them. I should also be allowed to need on every weapon I can use.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Well, I’m afraid to say I can see this sort of behaviour becoming standard practice for some.

With this in mind, I think its worth drawing up rules when you go into groups. I was discussing this issue with Grim as we slaughtered our way through Grizzly Hills yesterday, and we both came to the same conclusion:

You need on the spec you’re using now. If something you need drops, and it’s for your other spec, you get second choice. If no-one else needs it, you can take it. That has been standard practice for us, and no doubt millions of other players for years. Attitudes shouldn’t change; unless stated otherwise, your “other” spec is your offspec. At the moment, I need on gear that’s relevant for my levelling spec. Tanks we’ve run with have needed on gear for their tank spec.

Don’t let other people who have a fale sense of entitlement take more than their fair share.  You wouldn’t have let them do it before, don’t let them do it now. Nothing has changed.

So its easter time again…no wait, that already happened. Ok, so its delayed Noble garden time! We can’t be mad about the delay since it brought with it this wonderful new (occasionally buggy) patch. Of course like all holidays, blizzard has blessed us with yet another title to wear proudly over our heads, “The Noble”, and this time they have given us seven days to do it instead of one!  I got it an hour ago so join me after the break for a breakdown of what you need to do.

Quests:

There are only three quests available for this holiday and they are both pretty easy. Head on over to your favorite level five starting zone and pick up A Tisket, a Tasket, a Noblegarden Basket (A/H) and The Great Egg Hunt (A/H) – from the Noblegarden npcs in the area.

The Great Egg Hunt:

This quest is easy provided you can find the eggs before someone else grabs them. You need to turn in 20x Brightly Colored Shell Fragment, which is a 100% drop rate from Brightly Colored Eggs. Simple enough if you can manage to get to the eggs.

The eggs also have a pretty constant droprate of Noblegarden Chocolates
which are used for

• Buying Noblegarden items (see table at bottom)
• 25% of your level stamina/spirit buff.
• Chocolate Lover and Chocoholic achievements (see achievements section)

The eggs also have a chance to drop any of the items that you can buy from the Noblegarden vendor (including the Spring Rabbit’s Foot pet).

So just go out and start collecting those eggs to complete both quests and possibly get the items you need for other achievements.

Note: Eggs are being heavily camped the first few days, so you may not have much luck getting to them. Keep trying and don’t get discouraged when you get spit on and slapped by campers. There is no such thing as “their spot” and “their eggs”, so don’t let them stop you from trying to get eggs.

The Achievements:

The following are required for the Noble Gardener meta-achievement (which is now required for What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.

I Found One!

Very, very easy. Just loot an egg from the ground.

Noble Garden

Buy a Noblegarden Egg from the Noblegarden vendor and place it anywhere in stormwind – another easy achievement thats only going to set you back five pieces of chocolate.

Chocolate Lover

Eat 25 pieces of chocolate. Piece of cake. (I think 1 piece of cake is equal to 25 chocolates?)

Chocoholic

Eat 100 pieces of chocolate. This just became a child’s fantasy. Easy enough, provided you can find enough eggs to get 100 pieces of chocolate to eat.

Blushing Bride

Hopefully you have been lucky in your egg looting and have yourself a White Tuxedo Shirt and Black Tuxedo Pants, maybe even a Elegant Dress. (if you haven’t you can always buy the tuxedo pieces at 25 chocolates each and the dress at 50 (or pay the insane auction house fees if your really unlucky)).

But anyway, put on your tuxedo, kiss someone wearing a dress and there you go! None of these cloth pieces are Bind-on-pickup so you may want to trade them around with your friends to easily get the achievement.

Desert Rose

Again, maybe you have been lucky and got the Spring Robes from an egg. Or maybe you did what I did and bought them for 50 chocolates. Either way – Put your

Spring Robes on and head out to anywhere in the following locations and use them to plant a flower in:

• Badlands
• Desolace
• Silithus
• Tanaris
• Thousand Needles

Easy, but slightly time consuming flying around.

Hard Boiled

If you completed The Great Egg Hunt you should have a Blossoming Branch in your bags. The best way to do this is with a partner, once you both have your Blossoming Branch. Head out to UnGoro Crater (You can take the portal to Caverns of Time from Dalaran or Shattrath if you are a high enough level.)

and ride down to the hot springs. Once there – transform each other into a rabbit and sit in the water (not swimming) for a minute until you lay an egg.

Note: If you dont have a friend to do this with, you can simply portal to CoT and run over. Mounting and flying will break the shapeshift but portals and hearths will not.

Shake Your Bunny-Maker

Now this one is tough. You have to obtain some Spring Flowers and use them on a female of every race.  Keep in mind how often you see dwarf, tauren or orc females, as opposed to night elves, blood elves and humans. This probably took the longest time – partly because of the 5 minute cooldown on the flowers, and partly because of the rarity of orc, tauren and dwarf females on my server. What I did, being alliance, was mount up and ride over to Razorthorn Hill, where there were tons of horde looting eggs. Make sure if you do this you are careful not to flag as pvp and to appear as non-threatening as possible, I put on the tuxedo pants and shirt, removed all other armor, and equipped only my flowers, just to let them know I had no intentions of harming anyone. Well after about an hour of waiting and flowering and running, I had all the horde I needed. Ironforge is a good place to find dwarf women, stand by the mailbox and soon enough, one should come by. Oh and prepare to get spit upon and threatened while you stand outside razorthorn. A lot of getting spit on this holiday.

Spring Fling

At the steep price of 100 chocolates you had better hope you get lucky and find a Spring Rabbit’s Foot in one of those eggs. This will give you the Spring Rabbit pet which, when you summon, will proceed to get busy with the nearest Spring Rabbit it can find. Your goal is to let it do this in each of the areas that contain eggs (Kharanos, Dolanaar, Azure Watch & Elywnn Forest). Hooray for rabbit STDs.

Do all of these and you will have your new title!

The following are not required for the meta-achievement but are still nice to have:

(Note: Buying these items will not give you the achievement, you have to loot them from an egg.)

Dressed For The Occasion

Loot an Elegant Dress. You will get it if luck is on your side.

Sunday’s Finest

Loot White Tuxedo Shirt and Black Tuxedo Pants from an egg. Same as above – its all luck.

What you can buy from the vendor

• Noblegarden Egg – 5 chocolates and used for the Noble Garden achievement. (This you can place, then loot.)
• Blossoming Branch – 10 chocolates – Turns your party members into rabbits. (You get one for free by completing the daily quest The Great Egg Hunt.
• Spring Flowers – 50 chocolates – Used to give players bunny ears. Used for Shake Your Bunny-Maker.
• Spring Robes – 50 chocolates – Used to plant a rose for Desert Rose.
• White Tuxedo Shirt and Black Tuxedo Pants – 25 chocolates each – A nice tuxedo set to be used while getting the Blushing Bride achievement. Also great for RP.
• Elegant Dress – 50 chocolates – A very bright pink dress. Also used in the Blushing Bride achievement, and great for RP.
• Spring Circlet – 50 chocolates – Get your very own bunny ears! No use in the holiday, these are just for fun.
• Spring Rabbit’s Foot – 100 chocolates – Used in the Spring Fling achievement, it summons the Spring Rabbit pet.
• Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit – 100 chocolates – This is for mages only, so be nice to that mage near you desperately trying to get eggs, they have even more to save their chocolates for.

Well thats it! Enjoy your Noblegarden celebrations and check back later this week for an article on Children’s Week (which starts Sunday).

Its hardly surprising given the fact Wrath sold more than 2.8 million copies in the first 24 hours of going on sale.  Breaking the all time PC sales record.

“We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,”

Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard.

Not only is Wrath selling well (since its launch the player base has increased by 4 million!), but in the US the Battle Chest versions of WoW are enjoying increased sales also.  This is a fantastic time to be playing WoW and from what I can tell the player base will only continue to grow.

I must say, my stance on heroics right now is one of slight resentment. Although that’s probably because I’m only really interested in running one because it drops a great item that will help me in my quest to become hit capped before my guild starts raiding in January. The particular item in question is Mark of the War Prisoner and it drops from Cyanigosa, the last boss in Violet Hold heroic. This is a great little trinket to have, and it’s very valuable for only a blue item, and very diserable for any caster. So far my quest in the acquisition of this trinket has been nothing short of a nightmare. What annoys me about Violet Hold is that you don’t know what 2 bosses you’ll face before you reach Cyanigosa, and if you wipe, you have to start all over again. That means doing each boss again, but not getting any new drops or badges, although you do get rep (woopdy doo).

I think I’ve faced all of the bosses by now and I must say that I’ve had the worst experiences with Zuramat the Obliterater (the void guy) and Xevozz (the ethereal). Both can be pretty tough bosses, and the harder they are, the more chance you’ll have at wiping, and the less you’ll be motivated to try again. As soon as you start the event to kick off mob spawns, you get saved to the instance. One time I joined a pug for it and someone had already been saved to it because they started the event but didn’t go past the 3rd mob pack. And it was a very good geared group that wouldn’t have had any problems in my opinion. But everyone ended up getting saved to it and couldn’t do anything. The toon responsible wasn’t aware of how you get saved to the instance and I must say, neither was I. So that was rather unfortunate and didn’t ‘arf annoy me.

Read on!

Still, I like to remain positive and try to maintain that it’ll always be something on my to do list until I obtain it. Because today I finally completed my Loremaster of Northrend achievement with the help of 3 guildies which I’m incredibly grateful for. I still have a couple of normal quests to do and then I’ll be all done with Northrend quests. In 1 month of Wrath’s release. I guess I must be hardcore. But what a ride, the zones are great, Icecrown and Storm Peaks in particular are spectacular in their design and some of the quests are superb in their dynamic and originality. This phasing technology is really clever and seemless in how it works, but a problem I had with it was when it came to completing these last few group quests in Icecrown. The phasing technology means that only players who are on or who have completed the quests can actually see you and the mobs when in the same vicinity. Which made it quite difficult to find people who were also on the quests.

Back to heroics. Loken. I believe Blizzard said he’s the hardest heroic boss there is. I beg to differ. Depending on your tactic I think he’s actually very easy. Whenever I’ve run him, my group will just stay huddled around his feet and take the AoE blast. This basically makes it a dps race, kill him before too many die from continuous AoE blasts. I think once you get 3 or 4 blasts, you’re going to run into problems. But personally I’m somewhat fed up of that place, the trash leading up to Loken hasn’t been very kind to me in the past and I ran it several times to help a paladin get the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver which does look pretty badass.

But what I do think is the hardest boss encounter, in my experience, is the first boss in Azjol-Nerub. I don’t know what it is with that boss, if it’s bugged perhaps, but it just seems like there are so many things that can go wrong. And I’m not really talking about abilities the mobs do, I’m talking about things which will seem to pull the boss or other packs before you intend to. Of the many times I’ve run it, things seem to be going as smooth as they can, and then suddenly, another pack or the boss will just waltz over to you, for no reason at all. The individual packs themselves can sometimes be quite tough but if you’re on the ball you can get through it, you just need to watch out for each other. But sometimes I’m just left completely confused as to what caused the extra packs to come running at me and my group. I’ve generally just tried to do it through gritted teeth. The last boss is a lot of fun however.

What are your experiences? What boss (or bosses) have you found particularly challenging? I have a feeling that most people have a pretty easy time with Azjol-Nerub and Violet Hold – sods law strikes again.

Anyway, as we we’re flying around, dodging the Proto Drakes and taking detours into massive holes in the ground with impressive sounding names, it struck me that possibly my favourite part of the expansion is the amazing scenery in Northrend, and the immersion you feel when running through it.

Going through Outland, there are some fairly impressive sights to behold. The edge of the world, for instance. The Bone Wastes. The Violet Tower. Hell, in the old world there are some pretty good tourist attractions as well. Orgrimmar looks incredible the first time you see it, as does Thunderbluff. But the problem I had with Azeroth and Outland was the static feel of things. There were plenty of views, and plently of activity, but no life.

Running through Grizzly Hills, I saw bears catching fish in their mouths. Wolves attack stags. Mustangs gallop across fields. All of it adds up to the point where you’re going through a patch of woodland and thinking “hey, this is pretty real. I feel like I’m actually here”. And that is the best thing about this expansion for me. Blizzard have a job ahead of them to beat the aesthetic of Wrath. I’m going to be very disappointed if the first thing I see in the next expansion isn’t as stunning as the great lift in Howling Fjord.

Although… has anyone else noticed how Mordor-ey Icecrown looks? It’s not a bad thing, Mordor looked awesome after all. It’ll be disappointing if I find out I can just walk into Icecrown though.

But today, we will be dealing with the Death Knight start area and the quest line there. So, hit the link if you need a reminder, and move on if you havn’t experienced it yet and don’t want it to be spoiled.

The quest line starts when you log in as a fresh faced Death Knight Initiate. No fancy sword, no amazing armour, just some robes, a waxy complexion and an old blade that you pick up off the floor, just about. The start quests are your basic storytelling/teaching deal. Pick up sword, learn to rune forge, fight fellow initiate and so on. The real joy starts when you fly down to Deaths Breach, and get sent on a killing spree through Havenshire, killing soldiers and citizens, collecting arrows, and in my favourite part, stealing horses.  Its fairly chilling when you Death Grip a fleeing woman back to you, hear her shout “Please don’t! I’ve got two children!” and proceed to stab her anyway.

As the story progresses you’re sent to perform more dubious tasks for the Lich King, who by the way, is constantly whispering at you and watching your every move. Clearly, the guy has no sense of personal space. Anyway, things start to turn around when you’re told to kill a prisoner in Avalon… it’s an old friend of yours, and boy is he unhappy to see you. He tells you how you were once a great hero, protecting the innocen, fighting for good and so on. At this point, despite my enjoyment of the role of a totally heartless thug, I actually felt a little guilty. Part way through his speech though, your superior wants to know what’s taking so long, so you have to kill the poor guy. This I did not like. I was most tempted to go and beat my superior into the floor, but of course you can’t. This is pretty much where you start thinking… hey, I don’t want to be evil. It’s not nice.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be for long. For soon after this event you’re sent over to Light’s Hope Chapel. Here, 300 (I see what you did there, Blizzard) Argent defenders are waiting for you and Darion Mograine, as you attack the Chapel in an attempt to wipe out the resistance.  You get creamed. Absolutely thrashed. Tirion Fordring is not a happy fella, and seems to be wiping out Scourge troops left right and centre. Eventually you’re beaten, and forced to kneel to Fordring. At this point, the Lich King appears, somewhat unhappy that you caved. Fordring asks him what the deal is, why he sent his own troops to die. His own troops being Mograine, and YOU. The King replies that we’re essentially worthless and our sacrifice means nothing. Mograine, annoyed by this, tries to deck him, but the King is having none of it. Mograine’s father appears, and Mograine gets upset and his inner child goes off to have a renunion. Fordring has had enough of the King standing there oozing cold and evil, and jumps him. The Lich King can’t beat him, and legs it.

So it pretty much turns out that you go back to good side because 1) The Lich King was using you and didn’t really love you at all, and 2) He’s a total pushover. Seriously, get him on some Holy Ground and the lad’s got nothing. Nothing!

If you havn’t made a Death Knight yet, go and do it, for the starter quests alone. That quest line is contender #1, as it’s awesome, funny, and really good lore wise.

Keep an eye for the next column, for it features a quest line so epic I required a change of clothes at the end of it.