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I have not been able to get much info on what happens to your equipment when you die. Do you drop anything... a misc item, a bag, armor, etc. When are the items lootable by other players I know, simple question, just wondering.

First and foremost, items can never be lost. Period. (thus far at least). It makes no difference if you are player killed or ripped apart by an ogre, your character's body cannot be looted for spare parts. Your items and bags stay with you though thick and thin unless you give them to another player, complete a quest (and therefore give up a quest item), destroy the item, sell the item, use the item, or (like all good warriors) eat the item!

I've seen a few posts on the officials where people complain about Druids being very weak and not worth playing. However, these posts assume that people are in the game and know what the poster is talking about. Is anyone here playing a Druid, and could they please go into more depth about what exactly is "wrong" with the class now

Zul'Gurub

Molten Core
Major Bosses
About WoW @ 60

The main complaint has been that they are the least able to solo, and the easiest opponent in PVP. Their ability to shape shift into a greater adversary like a bear can even the odds, but even with the armor bonus the Druid is still wearing cloth and swinging with a limited arsenal of melee weapons. Now that Two-handed axes have been removed from the Druid's available weapon choices their possible DPS drops significantly.

If they choose to stay in humanoid form the Druid has a wide variety of attacks and heals, but they are much more of a support class than any other casting class is. Mages, Priests and Warlocks will destroy a Druid every time. Entangling roots is no use against these ranged opponents unless you plan to just run away. All have bolt type attack spells, but the Mages are 10 times as deadly. All have self buffs and some sort of defensive spell, but the Priest's ability to put a damage shield (blade turn bubble) up will quickly frustrate a Druid. All have some sort of "oh-crap!" ability to get them out of sticky situations, but while Priests have mind control, Mages have sheep form, and Warlocks have health/mana stones and pets to fight while they run, a Druid's only option is shifting to travel form and running like hell.

VS a melee opponent, Druids will have to play the endurance game. At nearly half the hit points of a Warrior, Druids can't stand toe-to-toe with them for any amount of time. Rogues will be slightly less resistant to a Druid's attacks, but in the end if they successfully get one stun move off on your Druid, you will lose 70% of your health in a matter of seconds. Paladins can do just about the same damage as a Druid in bear form, but a Paladin doesn't have to shape shift to heal himself, and can outlast a Druid any day. Remember, players can still attack you and cast spells when rooted, so there's no way for a Druid to hope to prevent his opponent from healing themselves without a lucky stun from a bear form attack.

What are the starting attributes for each race I assume by now they have to be nailed down reasonably well.

Posted this earlier to the home page. You can now checkout all of the starting stats for all races. Start here at our Class home, or at our Class Chart

http://wow.stratics.com/content/statistics/classes/
http://wow.stratics.com/content/statistics/classes/classchart.php

Well been in the last few nights playing the game. So far I love it. But I have one question. How are looting rights determined. Is it by most damage First Strike The same question for Kills. When I have been doing the quest, Frost Trolls for an example, I never could get a Kill count to start my quest. Not untill I joined a group did I start gain counts. Curious as to what it takes for both.

Looting is determined by the group leader. He can right click on his portrait and click Free for All, Round Robin or Loot Master. It is defaulted to Round Robin, so each group member would get their share. If you pickup a class specific item that might benefit someone else you should share it, but its up to you. With the combination of items that bind when you pick them up it is important to make a clear statement about what the looting rules will be if you expect to get rare drops. In an instanced zone there are almost always rare drops for one group mate or another, and if you aren't careful you might accidentally loot that uber shield your warrior friend wanted. Blizzard has recently added a confirmation dialog to warn you before you loot a "Binds when picked up" item, so you can Decline if you would like to offer it to the group.

It can be a good idea when farming big time loot like this to let the group leader be the loot master, and allow them to collect all loot. You'll still get your share of cash, you can divide up the linen and wool later, and all of the rare drops will be safe from any noob group mates you might have brought along. At the end, any rare items that were not "Binds when picked up" can then be distributed by the loot master.

I, and I'm sure others, want to know how smooth this game runs. One of the best way to figure that out is to know how many frames per second it's running. So is there a frames per second counter in the game
If so what configuration of computer do you have, CPU, Memory, and Video Card and how many frames per second are you getting with that configuration What are your video settings at resolution, Anti-Aliasing, Ansio-Filtering, shadows, etc. Is the game capped at a max number of frames per second like SWG is capped at 30 FPS Is the frame rate your getting good enough for smooth play Does the frame rate drop with a lot of other players around and or many game effects such as explosions and smoke

Due to RL, I have hardly any chance to play these days. But I was running the game with the highest settings on resolution 1024x768 and was getting FPS40-60

My rig is:

AMD64 3000
512 MB DDR RAM
GeForce4 TI4200 128 MB

The rest is bla bla, internet connection is a 3 mbit/sec line. So as you can see the game is certainly not capped at 30 FPS, that would really suck imo.

Yes there is a FPS counter in the game, No I never turned it on.

My rig is an Athlon Sempron 2800+
An ATI Radeon 9500 Pro 128 Meg (faster than the 9600s Also Overclocked from 275/270 core/memory to 325/310)
768 Megs of PC3200

The game plays ultra smooth at 1280x1024 Resolution With all the Stress Test options turned on.

Originally I was having trouble with the game, it was thrashing my hard drive a lot and performing really really badly. That's why I added an extra 256 Megs of Ram (originally had 512). First I lowered my AGP aperture to 64(started out 128) but that only helped a little bit, second I realized that agp fast writes were disabled for some reason on my motherboard and switched windows over to use the same size virtual memory all the time, but again only helped a bit. Switching to OpenGL again helped a little bit before I added in the extra Ram. But After having the extra ram available DirectX seemed to run smoother than OpenGL did.

Are there lakes and streams in the game If so can you swim across them Can you go underwater If you can swim, when you have the view go below the surface of the water does the water go away and make it look like your flying in the air like in SWG How does the water look Good Bad Is there a setting to turn the water effects up and down If so is there a great change between the two

Are there lakes and streams in the game
Yes
If so can you swim across them
Yes, but sometimes you get eaten by angry mobs...
Can you go underwater
Yes. The undeads can even stay underwater for as long as they want to, though all other races must breath from time to time. Potions or spells may be used to help with breathing underwater as well.
If you can swim, when you have the view go below the surface of the water does the water go away and make it look like your flying in the air like in SWG
No, bugs like these do not exist in WoW (at least I have not seen it)
How does the water look Good Bad
Very realistic, except I'd like to see some waves - I guess that's the next challenge, because so far I think Blizzard has done a great job with the water in wow (as well as the ambient sounds of the world).
Is there a setting to turn the water effects up and down
Yes.
If so is there a great change between the two
If your video card supports it the game takes advantage of it. The water has a glistening effect now, so it sort of sparkles in different places. It is much more picturesque, but overall it fits the cartoony theme and is not quite as realistic looking as DAOCs. It is however much more fun to swim in than DAOC.

Additionally the turbidity of the water (cleanliness/clarity but god turbidity is a good nerdy word) is variable in WoW. Some water is pristine and clear, other water is green and slimy looking other water is really murky and you can't see very far.

Okay, I hate publicly asking n00b questions, but I'm stuck and its not on the Stratics site or any other site, nor is it even on the main WoW site. For the life of me I can't figure out how to use a leather-working kit in making armor. How do you add it in there

You don't add it into a recipe. An armor kit is made via the leather-working skin (be it light medium or heavy depending upon the hide being used). Once you have made the armor kit, right click it and then select the item that you want imbued with the +8 +16 +24 armor (doesn't have to be leather at all). This works on all types of armor cloth-plate. Just to mention, they do NOT stack with enchants, unfortunately.

Is there an elite version of each kind of pet

Short answer: Yes, there are elite pets.

Longer answer:
yes, *most* basic pet models are available in an Elite Form. Bears, Wolves, Raptors, Boars, Spiders. Also I have heard that there are/were tamable turtles and zebras, both of which definatly have elite forms available, but I don't know if they were tamable or not. But of course not everything is tamable, such as kodos for instance. There is a good thread on the official hunter forums with a listing of animals that are an aren't tamable at all as well as some listings of elite mobs. However, the more important answer to the question posed is that with the latest patch, elite pets no longer do any more damage than a normal pet. In other words effectively rendering the point of whether your pet is elite or not moot. To quote the patch notes from September 18th.
Hunters:
Pets have increased stats, damage, and armor.
Tamed elite mobs no longer deal extra damage.
Pets now properly scale to appropriate sizes.
Creatures in the world know a few new pet abilities. You can learn them by taming certain beasts and letting them use such abilities. Once you learn them, you can teach them to other pets.
Concussive Shot duration has been increased.
Beast Taming has been renamed to Tame Beast.
Feed Pet is now an ability, not a spell.

I have noticed that many animals have a "skinnable" flag next to them. It looks like most classes can learn this skill. My questions are:
1. Who is the skinning trainer to begin this skill for a dwarf
2. Do you have to have a skinning knife on your person to skin
3. What types of items do you get for this skill
4. Anyone have guides/info about this and other skills

Dwarfs can find a skinning trainer in Ironforge, their capital city. There are other trainers around the dwarf/ gnome area but not sure where.

You have to both train skinning and have a skinning knife in your inventory to skin. Much like mining where you must have the mining skill as well as a pick.

Using this skill on a dead animal allows you to rip leather from their carcass. At low levels you tear off light leather and medium leather and sometimes some ruined hides. Tailors, Smiths and Engineers all need some leather goods at some point, but mostly leather workers. At higher levels you get the best leather, which is of course more rare and expensive.

Skinning is a great skill to pick-up as a low level. This will be 1 of your 2 professions and you can make a good amount of money faster than you would have normally at such low levels by selling your leather to other players. You can always drop it later if you want, but it is a great companion for Tailoring.

And one of our testers writes:
I love skinning, all ya got to do is walk around the low level areas and there are dead beasts all over the place ready for you to skin them. I can easily pick up 50 leather in about 20 minutes(just guessing of course).

The items you will get are dependent upon the level of the carcass you are skinning. Leather is the most common item to receive; hide being more uncommon, Hides are used less frequently in recipes, especially those that aren't leather-working. Occasionally you will only receive ruined leather (at any level) but those can be upgraded to light, which can be upgraded to medium, etc, etc. Approximately it goes like this 1-18 Light 19-29 medium 30-40 Heavy, 40-50 Thick, 50+ Rugged

It makes seeing the bars very difficult. I have looked at all the key commands and can not see where it gets changed. I have no idea how I did it in the first place.

Go into your display options and uncheck in the box that says "Status Bar Text". Haven't tried this but I got the info from the official site. Hope this helps.

I found this info on WoW-europe.com: "Spirit also increases your chance to ¡®Proc¡¯ with weapons." I wonder what 'Proc' is, because i have no idea.

Proc is an ability that has a chance to "cast" upon hitting. If you have played Diablo 2, you will remember items with "(X)% chance to cast lvl (Y) (spell) on hit." These abilities are "Procs."

One aspect of MMORPGs that I really like is the way you can customize your look. That's one of the reasons that I loved City of Heroes (the initial customization) and why I hated it (you could never change you look after creation; i.e. weapons, armor, etc...)! I've been playing Everquest 2 for a while now and I'm starting to lose interest because my character has looked the same for the last 10 levels. Every time I buy new armor or get a new weapon, it looks so similar to the last it's like I haven't changed a thing.

Someone told me to give WoW a try, but I don't want my character to stagnate. Especially if I'm paying $15.00 a month to play. I'm not saying this is THE most important part of gameplay, but it is one of the most enjoyable for me. I like to have a visual representation of the progress that I've made. EQ2 boasted a customization engine that could make truly "unique" characters. However, when I play, I see a bunch of half-elves that look exactly like me. Can anyone tell me what the character, armor, and weapon visuals are like in WoW Is there a robust character creation system Does armor change dramatically as you buy new items Do you look unique Or is everyone going to look the exactly same from level 1 to level 20+

Yes to all of the above... (actually I should probably explain that... lol) Pretty much everything that you can put on your character (helmets, boots, chest plate, etc) will appear on you're character in the game, making you look super cool! (this as well of course as the initial character customization that you can do when you create the character) Some things, such as bracers and rings and the such do not appear on the character, but they're really to small to make much difference anyway...

So I'm a Lv 17 Dwarf from Ironforge right, and I want to get to Stormwind, but I can't go through the badlands without leveling up a lot. Is there an easier way to get there from Ironforge Or rather, what's the absolute easiest way to get there

Yup! In Ironforge (the Gnome section) there is an underground tram that runs right into the Dwarven district of Stormwind.... best part is that it's free!

Where can I get a sack

There are a number of ways in which a character can obtain a sack
A) Buying
-There are a number of merchants around the world that sell bags... These however are usually overpriced (1g for an 8 slot is average)
-Players who have taken on the art of tailoring can create bags in a variety of sizes and colour

B) Hunting
-There are a number of creatures that drop bags, however it seems random and scarce that this happens... Kill lots of humanoids and see if one comes up

C) Creating your own
-As stated above tailors can create their own bags with the right skill and equipment. This is probably the cheapest and easiest way in the long term to ensure you have the bags you need


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