ZAM’s World of Warcraft Stein-a-Week Series

Every gamer loves his canned and bottled beverages. Whether its Mountain Dew or Jack Daniel’s, we’ve never met someone that has a penchant for gaming who avoided processed drinks. Still, every gamer has his or her own drink of choice and sometimes that drink of choice isn’t exactly the most… shall we say “dwarven”… of beverage selections. Believe it or not, we do have individuals on our staff that love to play through their favorite MMO with a nice cup of hot cocoa in hand.

The World of Warcraft Gamer’s Guide to Being Seriously Casually Hardcore

Hi, I’m Brandon here with MMOMFG.com.  You might remember me from insightful articles such as: “Aion: Steaming Pile of Crap,” and “Koreans: What’s with those guys anyway?”  It’s been a while since I’ve posted an article here thanks to a confluence of real life events which left me with little time to game and thus little to contribute to the world of video game journalism.  However, the siren song of Icecrown Citadel has lured me back into the World of Warcraft with its alluring promises of forbidden pixilated pleasures.  Oh Dark Mother, once again I suckle at your electronic teat!

A Look at World of Warcraft: The Magazine

We’ve gotten our hands on the first issue of World of Warcraft: The Magazine and are ready to share our thoughts. It comes out a steep $40 a year for four issues, or ten bucks an issue. Is it worth that kind of money? Who exactly would find it interesting? Find out here at Ten Ton Hammer as David “Xerin” Piner delves into the magazine to see if it’s worth your cold hard cash.

Why Rogues Rock.

Ok, so my last post was about one specific reason why it sucks to play a rogue.

Article - Nerfing Assassination Rogues – An Overheard Conversation

While there are several reasons why playing a roguish character is infuriating, (we ALL remember how crappy VANISH use to be)… I thought, “you know what, I shouldn’t be so freaking negative all the time!  How about a post the focuses on the POSITIVE reasons to choose rogues?”

OK! Here goes!

The Lost Skill and Art of Target Crowd Control (CC)

Trials and Tribulations

We couldn’t get enough alts together (odd, eh?) to do the Alt ICC10 run last night, so instead we headed into ToGC10 (non-alt style).. I brought my Hunter with my new bow (I got that from ICC10). We one-shot all the bosses until the last. Unfortunately we were unable (in the time allotted) to get him down. During one try though, we got him all the way to around 170k before we wiped. It was really sad. It was also sad that we had all but the last boss down without deaths and were, seemingly, close to the achievement..

Friday Five: 5 Raiding Lessons to Remember in ICC

1. If a mob does a knockback, keep your back to a wall.
2. If you forgot a mob does a knockback and you ass pull another group of mobs, let everyone know on vent immediately. Most importantly, don’t keep quiet about it, and don’t keep ass pulling.
3. Don’t stand in the red/green crap on the ground. If you can’t see the crap on the ground, turn up your spell detail settings.
4. If you lag too much to do your job when your settings are high enough to show you the crap on the ground, consider not signing up for 25-mans until you can optimize your computer to do so. First try turning off add-ons or background applications while you raid (including the wireless connection on your XBox.)
5. When a role or raid leader says everyone needs to focus on target X, this means you. I don’t care who you think you are, mister hot shot DPS. You do realize recount shows us when you don’t change to the Beasts o Saurfang, right? Or when you spent all your time DPSing Lady Deathwhisper? And when the raid that always 1-shots a boss wipes due to adds staying up too long thanks to a couple DPS who felt like they were too good to switch targets, folks will know why. Don’t make me pull my THIS MEANS YOU %t macro back out….

Crowd Control and Tank Threat

In a comment to the last post, Jeremy offers another suggestion for promoting Crowd Control:
Another alternative is to make it difficult or impossible for a single tank to hold threat on all mobs simultaneously.

Back in the good (bad?) old days of vanilla WoW, when warriors were basically the only tanks and had very few AoE threat-generating abilities, you *had* to CC because the tank simply couldn’t hold all of those mobs at once.

Winter Wonderland

I’ve learned how to walk in the -10F weather by now – it’s really not too bad actually. The snow and ice are generally quite crunchy and make sounds like broken glass with every step. I’ve gotten better at ducking my chin deep into my coat and breathing through my mouth. But woe is me when I forget and breathe through my exposed nose! It’s quite a sensation for the cold weather noob to have one’s nostrils insta-freeze.

Warcraft film in ‘script phase’

Looking forward to a film of a game in which you hit numbers out if wild boars? The incoming World of Warcraft film is well underway as exec producer Robert Tapert confirms it’s in the “outline/story/script phase.”

“It’s in development,” said Tapert in an interview with iF Magazine. “We’re in the outline/story/script phase,” he went on to confirm.

asdf

What we know about the Warcraft movie

Last week, we reported that the Warcraft movie may be on its way. Previously there had been speculation that the film’s development would be pushed back, since director Sam Raimi was tied up by problems with Spider-Man 4. Raimi then unexpectedly walked away from Spider-Man 4, citing creative reasons, and it suddenly looked hopeful that he might soon be turning his attention to the Warcraft film.

Blizzard: Shipping Unfinished Games “Devastates” Developers

Blizzard CFO Paul Sams thinks that releasing an unfinished product is one of the worst things that can happen to a developer, as it undermines all of the work that has gone into the game.

It can be hard work, being a game developer. The hours are long and the work demanding, but surely it’s all worth it to see your game in the hands of people who adore it, right? That depends on how it was released, says Paul Sams, Chief Financial Officer of popular PC developer Blizzard – was it released because it was finished, or was it pushed out the door at the demand of the publisher? There is nothing more devastating to a hard-working and passionate development team than to see their game released before it was ready.

Jens Pulver: World of Warcraft maniac

So I woke up this morning and logged straight into World of Warcraft, as I do every morning except Tuesdays, what with the stupid “realm maintenance” nonsense. I sold a couple of Netherweave Bags. I logged off, and soon after began another day of CrunchGear. Meanwhile, Jens Pulver, who was the UFC’s first 155-pound champion, was doing the same thing. Well, except for the CrunchGear part—he was training for a fight.

Reports: Bethesda is working on a “World of Warcraft-like” MMO

The Bethesda v. Interplay case centers on a dispute about a Fallout massively multiplayer online game license, but court documents suggest there may be an Elder Scrolls MMO in the works as well.

Websites Duck and Cover and VG247 both report today that court documents in the Bethesda v. Interplay case reveal the existence of a “World of Warcraft” type MMO in development at Bethesda. The sites were tipped off to the game’s existence when Bethesda moved to redact its testimony to hide a “secret” project. So far, nobody has been able to obtain the complete 218 page transcript of the court case either in its original or redacted form. The deadline to file for redaction passed yesterday.

How Does World Of Warcraft Threaten The Porn Industry?

According to an article by The Daily Beast’s Richard Abowitz, online games like World of Warcraft are one of the top five reasons porn-for-profit is dying, and it all comes down to staying power. Most of the reasons presented in the article make perfect sense. Fans paying more for sex with porn stars than film companies, piracy, and the lack of the taboo that was once associated with porn are all valid reasons the industry is losing steam, but online gaming? According to porn starlet Belladonna’s husband Aiden, online games are serious competition

Warcraft Econ Social Networking Site LIVE!

Everything is finally LIVE! The social networking, forums, community blog, and more!

http://www.warcraftecon.com (update: site is down for some reason, working on a fix)

and

http://www.warcraftecon.com/forums

To kick start everything, we have our first interview of a Warcraft Millionaire, who has achieved 1,000,000 gold! You can read the blog entry over at the new site. Also for those that want a new rank and title (gold capped, millionaire, other contributors to the Warcraft Econ network), there’s a thread on how to request it.

WoW Update 12/18/09

I feel like I haven’t been here updating things much. I didn’t get to play much WoW last week either. Nor did I get much Emblem of Frost as a result as well, I just didn’t have that much time to log in while I was busy working all last week at nights. But played a bit on the weekend, and weekend kinda just ended but I can barely remember what I did as well. duh!!

As for my Protection Paladin and gear well I don’t really need anything from Heroics or Emblem of Triumph gear. I pretty much have all the pieces I really need and pretty much did that for the most part all in the first week that I really started playing my Paladin again. I got most of all the emblem gear I need all in one week just running allot of LFD. So pretty much looking forward to raiding for upgrades and just for the fun of raiding and seeing the new content.

Have You Hugged Your Pug Today?

Ok, I have 5 … 5!!! Level 80s.. Two of them are what I would consider “well geared” for current Raid content. One is “decently geared” for older raid content (maybe ToC?) and two others are poorly geared or any raid but they can do alright in heroics.

New Armory is Full of Fun Toys

Like this imbeddable 3-D representation of your character. What’s not to love about this? I can blow kisses on my shadow priest all day long. Alas, I can’t figure out how to shrink this enough to cram it into a sidebar here on the site, or else I would.

This was the most immediately visible of the changes they released to the armory this past week. One  of the other fun toys that I may try to incorporate here is a customizable RSS feed of up to five of your characters’ recent activities. You can show their recent achievements, boss kills, and gear upgrades. The gear upgrades and achievements allow you some fine tuning so you can show only epic gear obtained for instance, and show only specific categories of achievements.

Limited Attempts on Putricide

I really like the limited attempts model on Professor Putricide. For those who are unaware, Putricide is the last boss in the Plague Wing of Icecrown Citadel. You get 10 attempts on Putricide each week, after which you cannot engage him in combat any more.

I like the 10-attempt limit. It’s a good number, large enough so that it gives you room to maneuver, but small enough that it really restricts you and causes a good stratification among the guilds. The 50-attempt limit in Trial of the Grand Crusader was way too many. Many weeks, we never even used up all 50. In contrast, only 10 attempts makes it feel like you need to make each attempt count, while still giving you time to talk things over.

A Worthy Opponent

I’m pleased to see that Blizzard has not nerfed Putricide yet as I predicted.

On the other hand, they’ve made it known that their way of allowing ‘everyone’ to see the content is to do something better: buff us. For years, Blizzard has nerfed bosses days or weeks or months into progression to allow the non-world-class the opportunity to kill the big bad bosses they took the time to create for us. This time around, we’re apparently scheduled to get the assistance of the Ashen Verdict who will provide assistance in taking down bosses as the weeks go by.

Will Raimi direct World of Warcraft?

The news that Sam Raimi was off Spider-Man 4 has lead to plenty of speculation that his next project will be World of Warcraft. …

Updated World of Warcraft Armory

Blizzard has recently updated the World of Warcraft Armory, which for those of you who don’t know, is a site where you can search for specific players, arena teams, etc. The updated WoW Armory has a few new features.

Video – WoW addiction #1

World of Warcraft music video – turn on the ignition

Warcraft boss talks LOTR influence

Blizzard’s creative boss has said that World Of Warcraft shares much of its ‘DNA’ with Lord Of the Rings and ‘other Tolkien fantasy’.

When PC Gamer asked VP of creative development at Blizzard, Chris Metzen, what he thought people connected to in WoW, he answered:

Activision CEO Kotick Felt $7 Million Was Too Much For Blizzard in ’95

Considering that Bobby Kotick and Activision acquired Blizzard and parent company Vivendi for nearly $19 billion just over a year ago, it seems more than safe to say that Activision felt that Blizzard was a very valuable asset. But Kotick, Activision’s CEO, didn’t always feel that way about the Warcraft developer — back in 1995, he was taken aback when he heard that the company was being acquired for $7 million, even going so far as to call the deal “insane.”

Stupid question regarding Warcraft Fandom….

Long story short:  I write fanfic, generally of the slash variety.  Slash is generally male/male, so, yeah, you do the math.  I have a friend whose birthday is coming up and he’d like me to write him a slash story.

About Warcraft characters. Not necessarily characters that are already in the game, but, yeah.

World of Warcraft Recruitment: How to Get Good Results

Recruitment is one of the most important duties of guild leaders or officers. At the same time it is also an area where a lot of guilds go wrong. Often guilds go about the task of recruitment the wrong way. Or you might have thought that recruitment is something that happens automatically and suddenly find yourself out of active members. In this guide we will look at the most important aspects to consider when recruiting for a guild. How do you properly advertise your guild? How do you get good results?

WoW Armory Model View Updated

Your character view in the WoW Armory now has a 3D Model view with some cool script animations and model pose view. You can now play around with it as well as custom set model pose how others see your armory on looking you up. Some other neat features and such as RSS character feed update.

Lowbie Tank Tales: Authority

One of the interesting things about tanking is how the rest of the group automatically defers to you.

I’ve ran Gnomeregan a fair bit, and now know the easiest way to get to the boss with a minimum of fuss.¹ When I’m on my tank, the group falls in behind me and we move through the instance smoothly.

No more sleepless nights

Or perhaps should I say, “many more Insomnia nights!”
I’m a lucky guy.

It was a little time in coming, but I did resolve the guild situation and am happily settling in with Insomnia (see, I even updated my ‘about the author’ from looking for guild to in the guild Insomnia.

Already, I’ve made good progress in my New Wow’s Resolutions. I’m in a 10-man group that’s well-established and should be able to make good progress through Icecrown. I want my Starcaller title, and that may some time in coming, but I did get to complete the Yogg-Saron fight, leaving only Algalon and Heroic Anub’arak as uncompleted fights pre-Icecrown. I picked up Festergut’s acidic blood and should get Rotface’s tonight as well. leaving me just a few primordial saronite short of Shadow’s Edge. Yes, that’s a long way from Shadowmourne (expecially as a nub in my current guild) but it’s progress!

Tanks: How to Make Your Random Healer Love You

Unfortunately this is totally fake. Click to see what actually happened.

You use the Dungeon Finder and are dropped into a random group. After you say “hello” in party chat, type this sentence word for word:

“Let me know when you’re ready, *insert character name*, and I’ll start pulling.”

Shamaticwow Running Dire Maul East World of Warcraft

Shamaticwow Running Dire Maul East World of Warcraft – Watch more amazing videos here

Reminder: The Crimson Halls open tomorrow

As you heard earlier today, tomorrow morning we’re being hit with a maintenance period from 3:00 AM PST until 11:00 AM PST. While we’re not expecting a patch tomorrow morning (that’s next week), tomorrow’s maintenance does herald the opening of another wing of Icecrown Citadel, the Crimson Halls, assuming all goes as planned.

WoW Moviewatch: Inventing Swear Words 4

Today’s WoW Moviewatch is a tiny indulgence for me. If you’ve not heard, I got married yesterday. (Yesterday as of the time this post was published.) I share everything in my life with my beloved bride, even WoW machinima. The videos created by the machinima community are wonderful things to watch as a couple. Like so many other things, however, she needed a gateway introduction to machinima. That intro came in the form of the Oxhorn Medley.

The High Inquisitor: Why Doesn’t Azeroth have Changing Seasons?

…But wait! The different zones of Azeroth remain basically the same year-round. Northrend is a chilly place no matter what time of year, seemingly stuck in a perpetual winter. And Durotar… well, have you ever seen snow there, or anywhere else that it doesn’t fall regularly?  What is going on with the seasons of Azeroth!?

Teaser IceCrown with millenium

Welcom to Flecha Técnica a Spanish Marksman hunter blog

Okay, so this post is going to be short and a bit strange. Seems I actually have some Spanish readers from time to time. I got linked over at Flecha Técnica, Nuevas (y viejas) noticas sobre cazadores (Arrow Technical, New (and old) notices about hunters).

The post that brought them to my attenton was Guía: Cazador Puntería, Parche 3.3.0 (Guide: Hunter Marksmanship, Patch 3.3.0)  has some pretty good information. I only skimmed through it but hope to read it in more detail

Alt / Casual gear list in 3.3 for Rogues

This is a simple list for Rogues on how not to raid in 3.3 but still enjoy the PvE experience and get some decent gear.  If like me you’re not a fan of raiding every single night or just like to relax a bit more (my guild luckily is very accomodating for this) then here’s a list of gear that you can get without popping your cash on flasks, pots and fish feasts.

Alone again, or

One of my favorite songs.  I first heard the Ufo version of it, “Alone again, or” back in college, one of my roommates had the lp, and I loved it.  I didn’t know at the time that it was apparently originally done by a group called Love in 1967.  The Calexico cover of it, video embedded above, is actually very good as well.

Breaking Down Gnomeregan

The Dormitory: One mailbox does not make a city.

… a menace rose up from the bowels of the earth and invaded Gnomergan… The surviving Gnomes fled to the safety of the Dwarven stronghold, Ironforge. There they remained devising strategies to retake their city.

If you’ve ever started a Gnome and listened to the voice over, you’ve probably wondered why a few of the elites in Ironforge just walk down the road and retake the goddamn city?

There must be some other reason why the Gnomes still choose to hang out in Tinker Town in Ironforge. I believe the reason is simple: They don’t really want it back. And why would they? The Domitory must be the most uninhabitable living quarters I’ve ever seen.

Can you heal lowbie instances as an Enhancement Shaman?

Healing Gnomergedan as an Enhancement Shaman

Since creating my Enhancment Shaman I’ve wondered if I could heal lowbie instances with her. I’ve played numerous healers within World of Warcraft. I really enjoy healing.

I had a good idea that she could based on the damage she’s seen other healers healing in the instances she’s been part of, but outside of healing when AOE damage got a little crazy my Enhancement Shaman never stepped into the healing role. That is until this morning

UI customization

I’ve played wow for over 3 years.
I’ve used any number of addons that make my wow and raiding experiences easier, more fun, and just plain higher quality.
I’ve never messed with the basic stock UI (user interface).
Until now.

In the past, I saw UIs that looked nice or organized things well, but I found it too much of a hassle to implement. Other addons could be dropped into the addon folder, but most UIs had to be added by also messing with other, scary folders like the wtf and settings folders…. don’t make me do it! In addition, for some reason I never found one that looked just perfect for me, just like poor Goldilocks.

More on Tanking and Healing

Gordon responds to the previous post:

Secondly, I’d like defined “harder” in this context. I think leveling a healer or a tank (with that spec) is tougher and more time consuming than leveling a DPS class. Yes, tanks could level as a DPS spec but then would suffer the consequences in their grouping ability and/or be forced to pay the 1,000g to allow for dual speccing. DPS classes don’t face this obstacole.

I disagree with this. First, you could always tank and heal normal instances regardless of what spec you have. The base class always includes the necessary tools to heal and tank. Back in 2008, I wrote a post about Retribution Tanking for WotLK normal dungeons. It’s really only when you hit end-game heroics and raids that you need to spec for your role.

Friday Five: 5 Things I’d Like to Accomplish Over This Long MLK Weekend

1. Determine which — if any — of the shiny new armory feeds I want to add to my blog template. 3-D SP model would be nice, yes?

Wrathy said It Best!

Wrathy has a really nice post up on his blog that I read much earlier in the morning while I was at work on The Power of Knowledge and I couldn’t agree more as well. I thought its a great post to not miss and link to if you never been over to his blog and you really should go there as well. He really writes good stuff and other bloggers who have more time do write stuff worth reading as well

Thanks!

A random hand-standing dead mob from ICC for your enjoyment.

Is Sam Raimi Directing Warcraft Next ComingSoonnet

Last July, Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures announced that Sam Raimi had signed on to direct a movie based on the award-winning Warcraft universe.

“At its core, ‘Warcraft’ is a fantastic, action-packed story. I am thrilled to work with such a dynamite production team to bring this project to the big screen,” Raimi said then.

In October, Raimi also revealed that Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot screenwriter Robert Rodat was writing the script for Warcraft.

World of Warcraft Arena Season 7 Finale

This is going to be exciting news to PvP players. The Arena Season 7 is reaching it’s end, which means Arena Season 8 will start somewhere at the end of January or the very beginning of February. Hurry up acquiring your gosu gear as fast as you can because those ratings and points won’t last long.

One week after the movie was reportedly delayed for months, Spider-Man 4 has now been postponed…forever. Sony Pictures has officially pulled the plug on the troubled production, instead opting to reboot the series a la Batman Begins. According to a press release from the company, the new film will be based on a script by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and will be set during Peter Parker’s high school days. It will not star Tobey Maguire, who has played Parker in the last three Spider-Man films.

Become Real Hero in Warcraft

Who doesn’t know the game World of Warcraft? This multiplayer online game which is launched by Blizzard entertainment has been replacing the previous famous online game and become the most played games among gamers. …

Is Using Winrar For Warcraft Considered Illegal? | GAMES ANSWERS

I’m a world of warcraft fan, but I don’t know much about this winrar thing i have.
a friend of mine sent it to me to download addons and quest trackers for the game. but i’ve been looking up stuff about third party programs, and how they’re a violation of the game. should i be getting this program the hell off of my computer? or is it different?

Machinima / The AV Chronicles: Volume 1 (World of Warcraft Gameplay/Commentary)

Let’s Fest! World of Warcraft – Teldrassil, Part 5

Armory gets updated with a model viewer

The World of Warcraft armory page has just been updated with new features and tools!

As stated on their updates page:

Every character profile now has a 3D model viewer that displays the character in his or her currently equipped gear, and accurately displays the character’s physical features, hairstyle, and helm/cloak display as they appear in-game. Mousing over the character model window brings up a control panel with the following controls:

Ding!

Hollogos hit 80 this weekend, and weird enough he actually did it in a Battle Ground. This is my second WoW toon to reach the current 80 cap, and the first one I did for myself rather than what was more needed. I have created and deleted about 6 characters now, I start playing them and the grind gets boring. I even got a DK somewhat leveled, but when we were able to create horde toons on the same server, I created a DK to help the lowbees run through stuff. Now that toon as well as the druid I created there sit idle. I seem to be a one toon a time kind of person and have not quite caught the altoholic addiction that McTeague is the worst sufferer of, but some of our other guildies are not far behind with 3 or more 80s.

Oh the weather outside is…getting better…

Brr! The last week or so has been unusually cold here in Memphis but it has started to warm back up to the usual level of cold by now, which most of us are grateful for. Still, I wish we’d had more snow, since all we got was a pathetic dusting one night…

Anyway, you’ll all be happy to note I finally took myself into ICC this last week, even if it was just for a quick rep run. However, my guild (I’ve switched to where a bunch of the people I knew were going, same server) has started running morning raids again so you can expect some glorious news of fantastic failures in the near future I hope!

Guilded review: one Week

In the past week since joining Serendipity I’ve been in several raids from Naxx 10/25 (our weekly quest), ToC 25, Ony 25 and Icc 10/25. In that time I’ve gotten way more loot then I feel I rightfully deserve. My warrior went from sitting at around 34k health unbuffed to now over 40k. Overall I’ve dropped about 1% avoidance but the tradeoff is more then worth it. Sadly I’m still sitting on 2 pieces that are ilvl 200. A tanking cloak from Naxx 10 which will be replaced soon with the emblem of frost cloak, and the crest of lorderon or whatever out of CoS heroic. I’ve had that goofy shield forever and will be glad to be rid of it though I’ll have to wait for the weekly reset for a shot a good replacement.

Goodies for Shades – ICC25

n the second part of our little list of droolworthy masterpieces and junk best avoided, time to look at the drops from the first two wings one 25man Icecrown Citadel.

Lord Marrowgar

Bone Sentinel’s Amulet – As with a lot of what Marrowgar drops, it’s a good mix between healer and DPS items. This one’s again mostly healer-oriented, but it has a very decent amount of Haste. It’s socket bonus isnt worth gemming anything but a Runed Cardinal Ruby, however.

Extra Extra! Mania Arania Forums are now WoW Petopia Community Forums

Mania has been working on a Top Secret (well not really that secret) project.  She announced in twitter a while ago she was looking at some new forums software.  Well now it seems we know why.   Mania has created the WoW Petopia Community Forums.

Hunters vs Rangers, WoW vs EQ2

On a lark, I spent some time playing EQ2 this weekend, more for just a change of scenery than anything else. I played the original EQ (though not for very long and not very seriously), dropped it like a bad habit when WoW came out, and never looked back. Well, this weekend my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take EQ2 for a test drive. I’d like to spend some time today talking about the different things I noticed between the two games.

Many badges

I raid mostly 10 man raids, I’m a competent raider who uses his brain and to some extent can compensate a little for others DPS. I’ve played my class since just after release.

For years now, every massively multiplayer online role-playing game to hit the market has had one overpowering foe to compete against. And while some claim to have put up a decent fight, none has the courage to proclaim itself victorious while fighting World of Warcraft. With a booming success on its own, the game received a steady flow of updates, patches and even large-scale expansions. The first one was the Burning Crusade, and no matter how well it was received, and it was greatly so, the second one, The Wrath of the Lich King, proved to be even more successful.

Man faces fraud charges over video game characters

The Associated Press

CLEARWATER, Fla. — A Clearwater man faces fraud charges after authorities say he agreed to sell World of Warcraft characters online but didn’t turn over the characters after he got the money.

Deputy Tracks Fugitive Through World of Warcraft – Lowering the Bar

Alfred Hightower had been on the run since 2007, when a warrant was issued for his arrest on drug-dealing charges.   Hightower was apparently from Kokomo, Indiana, but had fled to Canada.  His downfall, though, was that he spent a lot of time in World of Warcraft.

That was not a place he could hide from intrepid Howard County Sheriff’s Deputy Matt Roberson.  Roberson heard through the grapevine that Hightower was in Canada, and began gathering information about him to see if he could confirm that.  A source told him that Hightower regularly played an online game that the source described as “some warlock and witches game.”  That sounds like the source was maybe somebody’s grandma, but it didn’t take Roberson long to guess that this was probably World of Warcraft.

Warcraft Movie Could Happen Earlier Than Expected

Sony Pictures recently revealed that the company pulled the plug on the production of Spider-Man 4. Issuing a press release, Sony uncovered that the new film will be based on “a script by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and will be set during Peter Parker’s high school days.” Incidentally, word has it that it won’t star Tobey Maguire.

The Oculus

The number one Instance that most people always seem to drop one they see the loading screen on random heroics and drop group before they even get to the instance. Just amazing.

Just Call Me Sherman

I finally did it. My Paladin, Furis, finally tanked a lvl 80 heroic instance. Of course, he did it with an uber group that probably didn’t even need a tank (I’m not convinced I was really tanking.. I think the Rogue was..).. So, we did the daily heroic the other night and it was Old Kingdom. Granted also that I only had to tank 2 boss fights and one consisted of me running around away from the “copies” of us until someone else came to kill them.

How Patch 3.3 Helped me Get my Mojo Back

I was surprised that so many folks gave a big “Meh!” when 3.3 hit. Because it honestly gave me my mojo back in game. I went from being a wee bit bored to having more stuff I wanted to do than I could conceivably find time to complete.

Suddenly, I had reasons to run heroics on my shadow priest. 100 random peeps grouped with later and I took home an adorable PUG puppy plus a few achievements and a smattering of frost emblems to boot. We had a new raid instance to hack at, new screenshots to take and new patterns to look forward to.

LAS VEGAS – The 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show is chock-full of new accessories for one’s computer.  While many are re-hashes of older ideas, others are legitimately innovative and new.  Peregrin’s soon-to-be-released glove that allows users to program keystrokes directly into sensor areas of the glove falls into the latter category.

Though designed primarily for PC gamers, the glove isn’t solely for playing World of Warcraft.  “It’s also good to use with programs like [Adobe] Photoshop.” said PR rep Chris Heintz.

GurtGamer: Warcraft III

Warcraft III is a game released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2002, US release. This game is the third game in the Warcraft RTS series. This game was released before World of Warcraft and it’s an RTS with RPG influences, some examples of …

World of Warcraft Cataclysm Alpha Begins

The World of Warcraft Cataclysm Alpha Test Friends & Family leaked from a twitter source where there is a picture of DVD cover of Cataclysm Alpha Test, and the source says Alpha test begins the 12th january 2010.

World of Warcraft MLG Orlando Championship

Today marks the first ever MLG World of Warcraft AllStar Challenge The AllStar challenge is a double elimination best of seven format bracket where four …

World of Warcraft Warlock! Affliction, Destruction and Demonology!

In World of Warcraft, Warlocks are quite a bit different than others classes. Unlike the Mage, Warlocks have pets and have to focus on Stamina as well as Intellect. Unlike the Hunter, some of the Warlock’s pets use Mana, another uses rage and they’re demons. Warlocks boast some of the most powerful spells out of any class within World of Warcraft, but they can be mighty confusing if you aren’t sure how to play them. just like any class in WoW, Warlocks have to be played with a certain mentality in mind. If you’re Destruction, you’re playing with direct, blasting damage bolts into the targets eyes and/or skull. Affliction is all about precisely calculated damage over time, and Demonology is for the Warlock who wants to boost the power of their enslaved minions to do their bidding. Each specialization and build for World of Warcraft Warlocks has it’s place, and it’s important that you know how to use them.

TweetCraft: Twitter Client For World of Warcraft (WOW) Gamers

Want to tweet while playing the game World of Warcraft? TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for World of Warcraft which will keep you connected with Twitter while you enjoy the game.

World of Warcraft or WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment. With millions of monthly subscribers, World of Warcraft is one of the world’s largest and most popular MMORPG.

World of Warcraft: Rogues Taking it From Behind in Upcoming 3.3 Patch

Rogue players love to let us know that they “do it from behind,” but it looks like the tables have turned and they may be the ones bent over in an upcoming 3.3 patch set to address a number of balance issues.

Blizzard Blue poster “Ghostcrawler” has announced on the official World of Warcraft forums that Blizzard has acknowledged that Rogues do way too much damage and intend to nerf the maximum damage output of Assassination and Combat spec Rogues, though the latter spec will be affected to a lesser degree:

Q+A-What’s driving China’s latest Web crackdown

SHANGHAI, Jan 11 (Reuters) – China’s recent moves to tighten control of its online and mobile content industries have brought some uncertainty into the market but may not have a major immediate impact on the sector’s biggest players.

Analysts say the crackdown, which appears to be aimed at pornography and other controversial content, could however stunt the sector’s prospects in the long-term.

By 2012, China’s online game sector is estimated to have 230 million gamers compared with about 69 million currently, and rake in revenues of 73.1 billion yuan ($10.7 billion), Beijing-based research firm Analysys International said in December. The industry’s revenue was estimated at 26 billion yuan last year.

World Of Warcraft Series 4 Master Case Assortment

DC Unlimited is proud to present Series 4 of the WORLD OF WARCRAFT action figures, as well as the fourth Deluxe Collector Figure! With the first two series of DC Unlimited’s exclusive WORLD OF WARCRAFT action figures selling out in mere weeks, fans of the game have proven what must-have collectibles these are!

Ready Check: Gunship Battle

Easily one of the most creative and distinctive fights in Icecrown Citadel, the Gunship Battle is something many raiders have been looking forward to since BlizzCon 2009. As a little bonus, this fight is also the source of a certain cloak that’s white and longer than your average cloak.

Spiritual Guidance: Making an Insightful meta choice

Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance offers Holy and Discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

For my introductory article I dreamed of writing a stunning opener that would be attention grabbing and witty. After an hour of contemplating bad diamond clichés such as Earthsiege Diamonds are forever, or Lucifron and the Skyflare Diamonds (which really makes no sense), I decided I’m just going to come out and say it straight: I hate the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.

Slacker…

I feel like such a slacker–I have not yet stepped foot into Icecrown Citadel for raiding purposes. I have done the first 2 5-man instances, but not Halls of Reflection either, although I recall from testing that it gets pretty hairy at times. Crowd control…wait, what!?

WORLD OF WARCRAFT VS RUNESCAPE (2010) NON-BAISED

Wishful Thinking: Changes To The Auction House

I believe it’s safe to say that there are two things in World of Warcraft that everyone uses at some point in their heroic career, their inventory, and an auction house.  Whether it be the one in a capital city or Dalaran, you’ve likely perused the magical storage system for deals.  Materials for your professions, enchanting mats, gems (cut and uncut), gear and hawking your own wares are the reasons most players know the fastest way to their local auctioneer.  Even the most AH adverse player has likely spent hours scanning for this or that, with heavy users spending days of (often semi-afk) playtime.  Yet like our inventory system, the auction house, for all intents and purposes, hasn’t changed a lick since vanilla WoW.

Goodies for shades – ICC10

Now that the wings are being released in full swing (after a slight holiday delay) it is time to make a short list on the goodies that we can recover from the putrid corpses of our newest foes. This entry will focus on the items currently available from ICC10’s first two wings.

Being a BM Hunter is tougher today than MM in the past

I’m a bit concerned about something.  Maybe I’m alone or at the least in the minority. But I’m really getting concerned that there’s a bigger focus only on achieving the “Maximum DPS” than there is on playing the best you can and having fun.

Now, I’m not saying everyone has to be casual. And I’m not saying that being competitive is a bad thing.  What I AM saying is that there seems to be a polarization happening within the WoW Community that I haven’t seen since the days of Black Temple.

We’re not (all) that bad

After all the “OMG new LFG rocks!”, it’s time for everyone to get all angry and talk about how them hardcore raiders are ruining their dungeoning experience. To that I say: we’re not all that bad.

The small group of friends I run dungeons with is mostly comprised of progression raiders. We’re geared, we’ve run the instances countless times, we want to get them done and collect our badges. Hell, our alts are better geared than your main. But it’s OK though – we’re not expecting you to know all the bosses, put out 3k DPS, chain pull everything or heal 3 packs of trash. We have the advantage of experience, gold and friends.

Remarkable

I am finally done with desperately trying to sort out my heavily overflowing mailboxes and re-sorting most of the junk in my bags which I had left in a bit of a mess before I left on my holiday.

A mess, of course, I had to sort out eventually unless I wanted to see some of the stuff in there dissapear into the endless reaches of what must be a big magical whirlpool of stuff that is known as the WoW mailbox system.

2009 was quite a year for the World of Warcraft – the launch of Wrath of the Lich King was late 2008, and most of us spent the holidays and wee months of 2009 exploring Northrend, the announcement of the next expansion, Cataclysm, a host of incredible changes to the game, from the Dungeon Finder most recently to the ability to change your character’s race to the announcement of a Warcraft movie (and it’s director).

SteelSeries announces StarCraft 2 keyset, March of the Scourge mouse pad

SteelSeries continues to work that IP license with Blizzard by announcing two new products aimed directly at gamers: a Zboard StarCraft 2 keyset, and a World of Warcraft: March of the Scourge mouse pad. The Zboard keyset is a limited edition product, customized to make it easier to play the game and includes exclusive artwork. The keys are labeled with commands and shortcuts, allowing the player to pick up the game faster then someone using a normal keyboard. The keyset will MSRP for $24.99

MLG Orlando All-Star Melee

Today marks the first ever MLG World of Warcraft All-Star Challenge. Four teams from MLG 2009 season’s past embark on a new quest for prize money. $1,000 will be distributed amongst the one team that can overcome all the rest here as many different comps and specs will be in play. Look for some never before comp setups seen in LAN environments as well as some orchestrated chaos and communication. Many of the American and Korean players will be forced to try to communicate with in-game body language and skill set.

West Karana » World of Warcraft: I suck at this whole DPS thing.

Bhagpuss commented on my previous WoW article that he never really cared to know how much DPS he was doing in a group, and was just satisfied if the instance went well. I can kinda see his point. It’s a game, right? As long as you’re having fun, the game is doing its job.

That’s one way to look at it. I, though, was a rogue in EverQuest. EQ rogues have a lot more going for them than WoW rogues; there’s a lot of things they can do that make them highly valued for their unique capabilities. They share with WoW rogues, though, the ability to do more single target melee damage than any other class.

Ugly Brothers

I like to put up DK strats after several kills so my dps DK perspective will have to wait, but I wanted to at least post about last night’s visit to the hilarious plague wing.

Yes, it’s a good idea to visit youtube just to listen to the audio before the fight – otherwise you may completely screw up due to a laughing fit! The humor is of course crass at times, but some of the best boss audio anywhere comes from putricide as you are messing with his little buddies!
“Good news everyone!” heh.
After that you can view the strategies to figure out your approach to the bosses.

Elegant Design: Glyph of Life Tap (WoW)

Since a lot of the time I focus on things that I dislike in games, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some small elements that I consider examples of elegant design.

First up, [Glyph of Life Tap].

In the beginning, there was Life Tap. And the warlocks looked at it and saw that it was good.

ICC Lower Spire Cleared!

Tonight, our first night ever taking a look at Saurfang, and we downed him our third try. We had 101k raid DPS which is one of the best I’ve seen from our team. A nice quick raid giving me plenty of time to keep nursing the flu and go to bed early. I believe we are the 6th horde guild on our server (per WoW Progress and our realm forums) to clear this wing.

In Case You Missed This: Seals & Shield Cleaving

If your a Paladin in the Maintankadin community or one that frequently reads the forum over there and keep up to speed on the very latest things then your already most likely well aware of some recent change affecting Protection Paladins having to do with our Seals and Shields use. I’m just going to point you with a little bit of redirect link love to a few of our fellow Tankadins in the community that has already covered some aspect of these latest findings already and this is really worth reading.

Nerfing Assassination Rogues – An Overheard Conversation

Diary, things are a’changin!

The average Blizzard Forum Poster @ Rogues

As stated by numerous other bloggers and the amount of QQ I have seen on the official forums, ROGUE NERFS are back by popular demand, (demanded by other classes of course).  Rogues are OP!  Rogues do TOO much damage!  Rogues slap babies!  NERRRRRF em!

WoW: How do you take a break from high-end content?

Pouncealot the Flirtatious meets Artorius the Amiable

In the real world I love to explore, I’m the most comfortable being outside exploring nature then being cooped up inside my home. In fact, during the warmer months you can see me working on my MacBook Pro outside. So it comes as no surprise that I enjoy doing the same thing in-game.

Revisiting Razorfen Kraul

We’re not dual boxing. And we have different staffs.

Razorfen Kraul (RFK) is another one of those instances that I’ve hardly ever run while leveling up previous characters.

It’s located in the south-west corner of the Barrens in Horde territory. As an Alliance player you usually don’t come close to the Barrens until you head to Theramore sometime after level 30 to begin questing in Duskwallow Marsh. The road to the Barrens leads out from the west side of Duskwallow. RFK is almost too low an instance for earning experience by the time you reach it as Alliance.

Storming the Citadel

Our 10 man band of fearless adventurers went into ICC last night and downed Festergut. We had about 3 attempts on Rotface, getting him to about 50% after our best effort. We made pretty good progress though, and I see Rotface going down within about 3-4 more attempts. I love the trash on the way to those two bosses. Fun stuff and some good rep gains to boot.

Hunter 101: is a series posts on The Hunting Lodge for the Hunter that is just starting out or is now returning back to the class. Each week we will review how you can help improve your skill playing a Hunter in WoW. So grab a desk, class is about to start.

I’m starting to think that the new crop of hunters don’t truly appreciate their pet. This is really sad because even if you’re Marksmanship or Survival, you’re pet is free DPS. (Okay, maybe not entirely free, you still need to feed it sometimes.)

If you doubt me, when was the last time you heard anyone talking about pets? (Besides Mania of Mania’s Arcania and Petopia. See, I know that’s where you were going.)

Great Expectations: Hunter Raid Performance

While browsing the official forums this morning, I came across a very interesting thread discussing raid DPS and how the performance of the various top-DPS specs for each class compare across the first bosses of Icecrown Citadel and Trial of the Crusader (25-Man versions). The purpose of the compilation of this data was to illuminate the disparity between the performance of various classes in an attempt to identify weaknesses that Blizzard could potentially fix to bring about balance across the board.

Shiny hits 80

My happy WoW life will soon be disrupted by the real world: I start a new job next week. While it’s obviously a good thing, it will also bring something not-so-good – less sleep if I want to continue raiding and much less play time in general. With that in mind, I’ve taken advantage of my last days of freedom to accomplish as much as possible, and it’s been going well. Although I couldn’t finish 2009 with a ding, Shiny hit 80 in the evening of January 1st 2010, making her my 4th level 80 character. Not a bad start for a WoW year, I’d say.

UI Designing

Click the above image to see the full UI

Deathbringer Saurfang Brought to Justice!

Woohoo, 2010 opened with a big bang for the Red Devils as we easily put Deathbringer Saurfang down for the count! We started with our first attempt as we had before, tanking him on the portal and attempting to knock the bloodbeasts off the ledge. This time, the skybreaker had despawned leaving open space where it once stood and we were hopeful our knockbacks would push them into open air. This turned out not to be the case, and the beasts hit an invisible wall allowing them to return to battle.

Welcome to 2010

Welcome to 2010, I hope you had a pleasant holiday season and I’d like to welcome you back to what is undoubtedly going to be yet another exciting year of random oddball posts over here at noobding.

World of Warcraft: Forge of Souls Guide

Christmas came early for WoW players with the introduction of Icecrown Citadel’s new dungeons. And after the patch day blues which made many of us expose ourselves to sunlight, we have ourselves some new dungeons.

And these new dungeons hurt. Stay away from the Heroic versions if your group is still dressed in their Northrend green and blue suits.

The ICC 5-mans drop epic gear but the dungeons demand a lot more from the players unlike the Trial of the Champion. Everything hits hard, especially in the Halls of Reflection. And there’s no skipping this dungeon line until you’ve attuned yourself, starting from Dalaran.

Oculus Easier?

I’ve had the Oculus come up twice now since the cross-realm Pug-Fest began.

On the first visit our Healer was shot out of the sky by Dragons and dropped group. The Paladin dropped group. The Rogue said “Re-Queue” and then dropped group. As did the last of them. “What the hell.”

Last night was my 2nd visit. This is after the “changes” were made. One notable change with the “personal loot bag” you get.

Mammoth Meat

s always a good thing to farm when leveling a new pet. By the time my Lava Dog hits 80, I should have enough in the freezer to last me through ’til Cataclysm.

It’s a Train Wreck and I Can’t Look Away!

Leveling a Holy Paladin only using the Looking for Dungeon Tool

I’ve never done a blogroll spotlight before but this one had me so intrigued I felt it deserved a post of its own. Now for some twisted reason I very much enjoy reading other peoples experiences (especially when it goes oh so bad) in dungeons and raids and I have a feeling that quite a few Hots & Dots readers are partial to these stories as well.