A recent post at Hots&Dots caught my eye – it concerned stat weighting for Shadowpriests. In this post, Cassandri explains why we prefer Spellpower over Haste, Haste over Crit and Crit over Spirit. This post is very informative, but I feel that there is a slight nuance that needs to be made on the difference of Haste vs. Crit, and how these two stats relate.

Note that this is a post concerning how I value these stats, and my personal opinion. There’s a slight bit of math inside, but don’t expect an outcome of “Always do X”.

Happy Three Years Troll Hunter

There was a birthday celebration yesterday, but not mine nor my daughter’s – the Troll Hunter blog turned 3! I cannot believe it’s been that long – so many posts, rantings and photos… Not to mention the wonderful people I’ve met, virtually or personally, because of the blog. The comments and …

Am I the only one to catch this Patch 3.3.3 change?

Now I’ve been waiting for a while hoping that a certain someone would’ve already posted about this on a couple of places.  Well, I only saw a passing mention of it over on TribunalX. (Great catch man!) Otherwise, I haven’t seen it mentioned.  (Talk about trying to ignore one’s biasness against the possibility of change, eh?  Really though, why hasn’t this been shouted from the rooftops of hunterdom!!)

(Update note: Nochecazador from Of Marks and Beast had a mention that I missed. Thanks Noche!)

See, earlier this month Ghostcrawler made a simple post clarifying the Patch 3.3.3. Ferocious Inspiration buff.

The Hunter Hall of Fame

Many of you have probably noticed, we’re a big fan of experimentation here. We’re continually trying out new features here on the site in an attempt to provide more value to our readers and engagement with the community. Some of those experiments work out, some of them don’t, and that’s okay. The important part (to us, anyway) is that we make the attempt. The concept of featuring guest posts on Saturdays flopped big time (we didn’t get a single nibble aside from the couple folks we keep in contact with for guest posts already), so we’ve decided to try something a bit different: The Hunter Hall of Fame.

There are a lot of Hunters out there that love to collect pets, Spirit Beasts in particular. Well, we’ve decided to give folks a chance to have their moment in the spotlight. If you’re one of those Hunters that loves to collect Spirit Beasts, listen up. Moving forward, every Sunday we’d like to feature a Hunter out there that has been officially inducted into the Hunter Hall of Fame by taming every Spirit Beast in the game.

Elder Jen’s tips for funding your leveling experience

I don’t care much about the Lunar Festival (visited all the elders once, never again!), but Khi had a good idea: we bloggers can act like elders for a few days and bestow our knowledge on the noobs. (I use noob as an endearing term, not as in “OMFG u noob GTFO”).

My first brilliant idea was to write about general stuff for new players, but that’s been done already and I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I died a lot in my low levels, so I’m probably not the best example.

Then I wanted to write about acronyms… but it was pointed out to me that it’s been done, and much better than I could ever manage. See wowwiki and this WoW forums thread for a long, long list.

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.

Stargate in World of Warcraft.

There is a Stargate in my World of Warcraft game.

I ran across what appeared to be a Stargate in the area of Duskwood in World of Warcraft yesterday. I did not attempt to pass through it to find myself in Egypt land or some other planet, but I thought this find was interesting. I waited a bit to see if anyone was going to pass through, but then I got bored, so I left.

ClanBase – The Warcraft Retrospective – Thursday 21 January

Part 1 – Tales of War of The Warcraft Retrospective which takes you through the early years of pc playing and Warcraft. A fantastic walk-through on how it all started – and how it all came about.

WoWFlix: Don’t Trust a Rogue

Help! My account has been hacked!

There are so many scams going around like the Catclysm Alpha invite and the WoW Armory phishing site, that people’s accounts are getting stolen more than ever. With all of the work that Blizzard has to do to keep up with the problem, it’s no wonder they are offering the fast solution of care packages. We’ve talked about how to avoid scams as well as how to protect yourself. Here is a guide as to what to do if your account gets stolen.

Progression does not mean left behind

After another very fun guild meeting with taking down 25 man OS right after, a group of us started trying to shape our new 10 man group. The next day people logging on see a raid forming and start feeling automatically left behind.

Our guild has 3 speeds of players.

Serious raiders that like to get content done but don’t want to deal with the annoyance of a “hardcore raiding guild” that will mistreat their members at the first mistake or kick them out for a no show.

I needs moar badges

If I haven’t said it before I’m saying it now: I’m a slacker. I need many more frost badges but keep forgetting to run the random daily (or just don’t have the time). My guild just started poking our collective 10 heads into ICC but so far no luck at all.

Social Network and Forums Quick Fix

If either sites are not working, try these steps below while the DNS updates. Most problems are on the client/user side.

Achievements? I got da Achievements Mon!

Greetins’ Mon! How all joo’s be doing dis’ fine week? Joo be’s enjoying da new raiding system and all dat fancy new gear dat joo can be a getting? Dis Troll Hunter be lovin’ it mon and be styling now in all his t-9 and t-10 gear. Dem groups for de’ most part have turned out pretty good so far, wit’ just a few bad ones, but dem’ be few and far between, so I be very happy wit’ da new system and da sweet gear rewards!

Hunter 101: Punching through Armor Penetration

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 get a lot of emails from people asking my thoughts on Armor Penetration.  I usually say the same thing over and over again.  It’s worthwhile and for high level Marksmanship hunters it makes sense to stack it for the DPS advantage.

That being said, Armor Penetration is probably one of the hardest stats for hunters to understand

In Which Lass Pisses and Moans

There’s going to be nothing of educational value in this post, so most of you will probably skip it. And I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest. This is going to be precisely the type of post that, if it were written by anyone else and appeared in my feed reader, I would “Mark as Read” without a second thought. Most of you will no doubt do the same. For those of you who do actually read this post, my apologies.

Nature vs nurture?

It never occured to me that healers are usually played by girls. I was DPS for 2+ years and most of the girls I knew back then also played DPS. I avoided healing, actually, it felt like way too much responsability for a noob like me. And then… in a moment of boredom I rolled a baby druid and discovered that healing is fun and rewarding, and that I actually like the responsability.

Macro tutorial: Minimizing actionbar space

So we all have too many buttons right?
Imagine a world where 1 action bar button could do 2 things.

Well it’s actually relatively simple!

So… Why didn’t I get a raid invite?

As a raid leader, part of my job is to choose who comes on a raid and who sits in Dalaran waiting in the random heroic PuG queue.

At first glance, this sounds like a glamorous job that everyone should aspire to in the game of WoW. I almost always get to go on the raid. I can choose who comes and who stays. I have control. What’s not to like?

How to Spell Noob

6 days of healing with Rank 1 Earth Shield and Riptide…

PvP as an Enhancement Shaman

I enjoy PvP and make a habit to pay attention to other classes abilities in battlegrounds. It’s always nice being able to counter whatever they dish out. I guess PvP is the closest I’ll come to “FPS’ in World of Warcraft so you’ll see my playing Battlegrounds a lot. The past few weeks I’ve been checking out more Enhancement Shaman videos and so I decided to include one of my favorites above.

Jet Plane

In a few minutes I leave for the frozen North. My daughter asked if I’ll be at the Antarctic…. nope, only Fairbanks, although I guess it’s pretty close! ;P

Crowd Control

A lot of people feel that Crowd Control should be more prominent. You should have to Polymorph more, or Banish, or even Sap. I am not entirely sure I agree with this. I’m not sure I disagree with it either. I remember the days of Sapping or Sheeping, and they were kind of cool.

However, when I think of Crowd Control, I think of those demons in Tempest Keep. The ones with the Buzzsaws of Doom. You may remember them. If you failed to CC them, they started launching buzzsaws at the raid, doing massive damage before you could get them locked down again. Even the gap between Banishes was dangerous. Kind of honestly, I would rather not see trash like that again.

Countering a Misconception

On our Festergut 25 attempt this past Monday, I was blessed with being placed in the melee group. This meant I didn’t get the barfs and could stand still and DPS the boss except when I was gifted with a spore I had to run to a ranged team. My DPS increased by 1300-1500 thanks to this placement And as expected, there was at least one public case of ruffled feathers over this placement.

LFD System Potential Impact On How We Used To Make Friends.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’ve had reasons to think about it for various reasons or just thinking about things and remembering how it used to be before the new LFD System as well as back in tBC. Just my belief that the new LFD System has had a impact on how many people on their own realms make new friends and will continue to make new friends as well. A bit likely that more people will become strangers on their own servers or already are.

Maybe its just me and my observation but I’m wondering if other players have noticed it as well who actually used the system allot now as well as before in the old system. I also kinda believe that the new LFD System is also a bit antisocial or fosters more antisocial behavior which also impacts making new friends. For a person on their own realm doing LFD System content due to cross server members there is not much chance of making friends and not much chance of doing much communications either when in group.

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)

Breakfast Topic: What are you doing to protect your account?

While it is certainly nothing new, it seems that you can’t spit without hitting someone who has, or has had, a compromised account. These WoW account predators are getting more clever by the day, with using everything from keyloggers, sham contests, betas and security checks, to even grabbing an account and immediately attaching an authenticator to it.

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

It’s the dead of January, and my usually decently warm spot in the world on the eastern coast of the U.S. is downright frigid. Even my friends in Florida have been seeing wintry temperatures below freezing. It’s days like today that I’m happy to escape to Azeroth.

…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!?

THL Podcast Ep. 19: The Boys are back in town and decide to have a 3-way

Welcome Back to The Hunting Lodge Podcast! That’s right! The Boys are back in town! Brigwyn and Daewin are back together again after the holiday break.  We hope you’re not like Dae recovering from some bug, but are in good health, and full of vim and vigor as we kick of a new season and new year!

And guess what! We had a very special guest host joining us.  So if we seem even more distracted than usual, well you can blame the fact we had a lady with us.  Yep, hard to believe I know but Dae and I cleaned up the Lodge.  Threw all of the dirty clothes in the closet, and shoved the games under the bed.  Okay, maybe we didn’t go through that much hassle, but I did put on a clean shirt and made sure Daewin did also.

How to manage a full-time job and WoW in 4 easy steps

Two weeks ago I started a new job. Not a big deal… except it’s my first 9 to 5 (6, actually) job, and that’s been messing with my WoW schedule.

Until now, all my jobs had been very flexible – I regularly played in the morning and then worked from noon until raid time. This had a few very obvious advantages: farming when no one was online, less lag in Dalaran and so on. And, of course, much more time to play.

Get your motor runnin’…

You may remember in my 2010 looking forward post one of my achievements was the to get the lovely mechano-hog. Luckily last night I turned badass… I even had a full set of leathers! (arf arf)

World of Warcraft: Armory Updated; Second Dev Chat Tomorrow

The WoW Armory has received a pretty significant update today. The Armory now features a 3D model viewer, replete with robust features such as a fullscreen mode with quality options, background selection, and the ability to view your character performing a variety of emotes and animations. Your interactive character model can even be embedded on your favorite social networking site or guild site forums!

Bad Attitude is Bad

Three new folks later in our Halls of Stone run and I had to laugh.

The first person left because they were called to dinner.  Apparently by Mommy.  After needing for an off-spec item, purple no less.  Not before posting the one fight where they happened to top the damage output list.  (I didn’t want to embarass sonny by posting the overall damange report for the instance.)  So off went sonny boy, to eat dinner.

Beast Mastery PvP Spec Redux

So last you heard from me, I was getting ready to try out a Core Hound for use in arena. To bring some of you up to speed, my only arena team this past season has been a 2v2 with a Ret Paladin. I like 2v2 because it only requires one other person, and in my case, I don’t need to rely upon a healer. I’ve never had very good luck with 3v3 either due to schedule conflicts or just not being able to find the right people.

Learning the Wrong Lesson

The first third of Pit of Saron: 5v2

I think my tank in yesterday’s Heroic Pit of Saron let me die on purpose to teach me a lesson. And this tank wasn’t completely in the wrong. If rule number one of DPSing is: Manage Your Threat, I was failing.

Disclaimer: Cassandri is a Shadow Priest. I will do, to the best of my ability, what Shadow Priests do best in any given situation. I should also point out that I will focus fire a few select mobs even if the group is too busy AoEing. Because, well, kill the dangerous one first, hey?

Food update

I realized this weekend that my long-ago comments on consumeables were lacking.

Kibler’s Bits are a cheap, easy way to buff your ghoul as an unholy DK. Your pet gets 20 strength and 20 stamina. On most servers you can find the buzzard meat for 20-50 silver, or if you’re bored you can farm them up easily in Hellfire Peninsula without competition.

On the other hand, min/maxers should know that Spiced Mammoth Treats are in fact, better. It gives your ghoul an extra 10 strength and 10 stamina. They also cost more, with mammoth meat being a northrend meat and is used in some decent raid foods, particularly by non-fishermen/cooks – and a northrend reagent (Northern Spices). It may run you any where from 1-3.5g depending on your server.

Should Tanks and Healers Get the Biggest Rewards?

Gordon, from We Fly Spitfires, recently wrote a controversial guest post on World of Matticus, Tanks and Healers Should Get The Biggest Rewards.

I think a lot of the controversy comes there are several issues entangled together in this piece. If we unravel the issues, I think a clearer picture emerges.

Gordon says:

Tanks and healers are the most important classes for any group…These are the two most important classes that exist in any MMORPG. But the DPS? They’re just meat in the room.

This statement is true for certain levels of play, but completely and utterly false at different levels. At the lowest levels of skill–for example, normal dungeons, easy heroics, Naxxramas–yes, the tanks and healers are the most important. A solid tank and healer can carry the DPS to victory. A bad tank or healer will probably wipe the raid.

On Shimmering Druid Wings

My baby horde druid is now in Northrend, and having attained level 71, has her pretty epic flight form. This shot, however, is from right after she got her plain old regular flight form, at level 60, in Hellfire Peninsula, but I love this Christmas Eve shot for the gorgeous sky.

I’m no fan of HFP due to many bitter memories of quests that took hours and respawns that randomly went from taking forever to all popping at once on top of you back in the early days of BC.

Icicle DPS Tanking Toy

World of Warcraft story goes viral

When Howard County Sheriff’s Department deputy Matt Roberson told the Perspective how he tracked down a man wanted on drug charges through the immensely popular online game World of Warcraft, it sounded like the kind of story the Internet would love. But it surprised just about everyone by going viral.

The story, “Long arm of law reaches into World of Warcraft,” published in the Dec. 30 edition, quickly became the most-read article in the paper’s 20-year history. Perspective digital media manager Tim?Turner said he thought it might find an audience online. It certainly brought enormous traffic to the paper’s Web site.

Spider-Man 4 canceled; Warcraft movie soon?

Sam Raimi will no longer be directing Spider-Man 4, and neither will anyone else for that matter. Sony Pictures announced today that they are canning the current Spider-Man franchise and will be rebooting it in the summer of 2012 with an entirely new director, cast, and crew.

Chinese World Of Warcraft Saga Drawing To A Close | Edge Online

Chinese World Of Warcraft operator NetEase is expected to be fined by government agencies for “gross violations” of regulations, but will be allowed to keep running the popular online game.

As reported earlier this week, Chinese regulators the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) and the Ministry of Culture (MOC) appear to have reached an agreement over the rules NetEase must abide by if it is to continue to operate World Of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft, your boss and succeeding at work

For a lot of people, politics, corporate strategy and philosophy are the sort of topics that lead to thoughts of using a cheese-grater on an inner thigh. If you’re a cubicle jockey in an office, or someone questioning their existence in the meatspace, then WoW may be able to help. When I say help, I don’t mean in the ‘yep I’ll call in sick and play WoW for three days straight to show those idiots’ sort of way. I’m talking about the real-world opportunities that WoW can provide you as far as leadership development, strategic thinking, political nous or plain old perspective on the important things in life.

Man Arrested For World of Warcraft Fraud

Clearwater’s Christopher H. Bouffard is in some trouble. The authorities allege the 23 year-old committed fraud by selling World of Warcraft characters online, and then not delivering the promised Night Elves and/or gnomes. He’s being charged with scheming to defraud and two counts of grand theft.

World Of Warcraft – Armory Gets Update

If you’re stuck at work, unable to play WoW, you might want to waste some time playing with the new Armory. The Armory now features a 3D model viewer of your character in all your gear, complete with options for displaying a variety of emotes and animations. You can set your default pose (and even background screen) by logging into the game.

2009 & The Year That Was

Yeah better later than never. Seems kinda late to be writing about reflection of things looking back at 2009 and how I played WoW. My holidays were just busy, I happened to have worked through all the holidays while most people enjoyed the time off from school and work. Writing a review of 2009 in WoW wasn’t exactly close to top of my list of things to do. Sleeping during my short days off was just a bit better choice.

Resource Theory

There are a few main types of resources that drive class abilities in most MMOs. This is a categorization of the ones I’ve seen.

1. Net-Loss Resource

This is a resource which, at the end of the encounter, is lower than it starts. The classic example of this is mana. Classes with mana start at full, and spend it as the fight progresses.

One of the advantages and disadvantages of mana is that all abilities are available right at the start. As well, there is no innate restriction to using any sequence of abilities, until the entire resource is exhausted. This can cause burst damage in PvP, but it does grant the character maximum flexibility to deal with whatever situation may arise.

Putricide nerf incoming?

Sadly, I’m almost certain the answer is yes.

On the three servers I have level 80 raiding toons, no guild has killed Putricide on 25-man.

My guild has expended our 10 attempts without getting into phase three. We’re a pretty good group. We had no problem with the ugly brothers. At least a few guildies had attempts/kills of Putricide on PTR. We’re not world-class, perhaps, but overall, we’re a solid bunch. We did make solid progress in learning the fight and got deeper and deeper into it with most of our tries.

Do you focus on your professions while leveling a toon?

When it comes to my professions, within the World of Warcraft, at times I’m all over the place. At times I don’t level them until I’m close to 80. Additionally, when starting toons on a new server they rarely keep the same professions they initially chose.

But that’s all about to change…
This past weekend I decided to create another toon. However with my little Shaman it’s different. I decided to create another toon. Since I already had ten on the Bronzeberd server I had to let one of my bankers go. My Shaman filled in the #10 slot. I’ve always liked Shamans, played around with them for a little bit Alliance side, but well the Draenei Shammies didn’t do it for me. This past weekend I created an Orc. No surprise there, I love their lore, and my favorite toon to play within WoW are female orcs. Not to mention my favorite in-game buddy (Teddee) raids (and joins my toons on in-game adventures) with his Shaman. He’s amazing, so I sort of blame him for making me wont to create a Shammie. Better to blame him, than to simply admit I’m an altoholic, right? My Shaman is a enchnater and a skinner.

It’s Epic on the Inside

Electromagnetic Gigaflux Reactivator: more Epic than actual Epics

The last couple of weeks have been lazy summer holidays for me. During this time I probably should have been PUGing ICC 25 and 10s on Lathere and making sure I logged in to complete the daily heroic each day. I instead decided to be a bad little tree and not worry about my Emblems of Frost and did what I felt like doing: unwinding with some solo game play and leveling.

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.

My previous entry was about all the awesome things that the new cross-realm LFG tool has brought to us as Heroic-rompers and Leveling Lowbies.

This entry is more about the things that I lament about the new LFG tool.

Upcoming class and item balance changes

There has been a lot of good discussion lately concerning various aspects of the DPS status quo. Some classes are putting out too much compared to their cloth counterparts, and others have suddenly found themselves too powerful in certain areas of the game. Blizzard recognizes this, and this evening the Lead System Designer, Ghostcrawler, came out and enumerated a few things Blizzard believes are true.

Blizzard giving serious consideration to mandatory authenticators

WoW.com has learned through trusted sources close to the situation that Blizzard is giving serious consideration to making authenticators mandatory on all accounts. According to our sources, while this policy has not been implemented yet and the details are not finalized, it is a virtually forgone conclusion that it will happen.

Breakfast Topic: Effective Communication

One of the good things about running more PuG’s than ever before is that it’s forced me to learn how to communicate what I intend on a pull to a group of people I don’t really know. This, in turn, has made me better at communicating with my guildies and friends when we raid, in part because now I’m finally thinking about how to express what I intend to do in a more organized way.

The BoondockSaints

I don’t think that when we started this guild we realized that we were actually going to progress as much as we have. We have grown in numbers but still have the same family feel we did when it was just a dozen of us. As a guild we have gone six bosses deep into Ulduar and could probably come close to clearing it with the new gear we are all getting. Some of us have finished ToC and even getting into ICC raids. As a guild we are killing trash to get rep and a good number of us have the free rings from there.

The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide – The Best Guide For Players With High IQ

The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide makes some unusual claims. For a start it claims to be a market driven guide. Warcraft’s markets are pretty tight. The methods of buying and selling are much regimented. We were keen to find out exactly what this claim actually meant. It claims to…

“Be written by people who understand the Warcraft economy!”

Turning over an old leaf

Yesterday while I was at work towards the end of the day I was reading Zan’s blog and it got me thinking. In my little guild I’m comfortable. I’m the master of all the classes I play and there is no one above me… or at least that’s how I feel. I’ve talked before about how being challenged and grouping in pugs is a good way to improving as a player. Well I came to realize that I’m not really following my own advice. Sure I run with a semi pug raid every week… but with the classes I bring I’m generally on top. Again, no real room to grow.

Bloodlust/Heroism Could Become Drum Buff

It’s one of those signature Shammy abilities that sets them apart from all other classes and makes them, for some, an essential party member of any raid group: Bloodlust / Heroism. But a lesser version of the ability could soon become available through leatherworking drums, according to Blizz posters Eyonix and the fabled Ghostcrawler.

WoWFlix: Avatar Trailer

I went and saw Avatar over the holidays with my in-laws, and got thoroughly sucked in to the stunning visuals of the film and the fantasy storyline. I didn’t think much about it during the movie, but afterward my father-in-law, who had seen me playing WoW while visiting, commented that it could have been taken straight from the game. Chinese player WenYe Shang attempts to prove just that with his video that echoes an extended Avatar trailer, but with visuals from WoW.

Icecrown Citadel: Festergut

Short guide to the Festergut encounter, one of three bosses in the second wing of Icecrown Citadel. Song is Coloris by SHE. … festergut guide how to icecrown citadel world of warcraft shaman raid

Pugs with Wolves – a best seller

Alright, so it’s not. Well, it might be if the book would not be comprised of 30-second sketches with uneducated, new, illiterate, abusive or downright clownesque characters. Time to share a few tidbits of fun and agony I have come across while pugging random classic dungeons on my little healadin:

Razorfen Downs – the neverending tank

Brushing through unending tangles of thorns, murderous pigs and heaps of mud, our tank pulled us through – literally. He did not speak, did not wait, did not buff, did not discuss tactics. He ran through all the mobs, kept aggro and pulled the next group right as the last mob died. When we got to the timed boss (an event following a captured mage leading to an altar) he started the event as the rest of the group came rushing into the room. Pigs spawned immediately. After three minutes of waves of adds, I was out of mana and people started to die. I bandaged who I could, then proceeded to be clobbered by a particularly vicious specimen of pigman.

Shine Up Your Boomkin!

CURRENT FOR PATCH 3.3!

Here’s a complete Gemming and Enchanting Guide for Balance Druids in WoTLK World of Warcraft.

This guide includes two sets of gem/enchant suggestions: One for the beginner and another for “pro” raiders

BONUS: Complete Materials Lists + helpful suggestions to help you reduce your raid gear-enhancing costs!

EVERY BALANCE DRUID RAIDER NEEDS THIS GUIDE!

Blizzard: Run Oculus, win fabulous prizes

Despite the nerfs in Patch 3.3, it’s pretty obvious that whole lot of people still hate Oculus, enough so that they immediately bail when it comes up as a random dungeon. Apparently, it’s a substantial number of people doing this, enough that Blizzard’s taken notice and taken action.

But they’re not removing it from the system. Instead, they’re incentivizing it — or, if you prefer to be a bit more pessimistic, turning final boss Eregos into a loot pinata in the most direct way possible.

Gank Fest

Our WoW time lately has been very hecktic trying to raid casually while we wait for the latest patch which will drop today. Most of us have been working on our alts so we have more 80s that can be easily geared just by grinding heroics, and with the promise of shinny new gear even farming ulduar. Before we get there we get to actually level those toons. My priest is almost capped on both inscriptions and alchemy now and is sitting at 69 at the moment. I will have some time off during December so it might be time to get him to 70 and have some fun healing.

Big update and Halls of SUCKSTOBEAWARRIOR

First I want to apologize for my lack of posts lately. See I love blogging… but I love WoW more then blogging. So when I get home and sit at my computer I want to play more then blog. Before 3.3 it wasn’t such a huge deal… but now? I have SOOO much I want to do that finding time to actually blog is a bit hard.

Videos

Visit Zygor

Why Do You Pull So Fast?

A nice and simple question and a fairly lengthy new thread I saw and read on my Blue Tracker asked by Skeletorrior on the WoW Forums: Why do Tanks Pull So Fast? The reason It caught my attention again was more so because just a few days ago I had a chat discussion with a few guildies that brought up the question in guild chat. More so especially since Patch 3.3 with the new LFG system and with many of them now running allot of random heroics.

Wherefore Art Thou

As you all know (hopefully), I am still playing WoW, but my playing time has dropped significantly. I recently got my 5th toon to 80 but just can’t bring myself to work on #6.. It’s not even very interesting working through the quests my Paladin still has to do at level 80 now. He could use the gear upgrade, but I keep wondering if I shouldn’t just try to do Heroic runs (of course, his tanking sucks, so I have to go as DPS.. so it takes forever to get a group in the random). So.. I have mainly been logging in to raid. We’re getting the first wing down in 10 and 25 man now without much trouble. Ready to move on this week. Woot!

What to Wear: Frost Emblem Gear for Shadow Priests

Patch 3.3 brought with it a new top-end emblem (Emblem of Frost), and a nice assortment of gear to fill in some lingering holes or help with the never-ending hit-swap dance. Personally, for now, I am hanging on to my badges to see how my luck fares in our ICC 10 runs, and how our progress goes in ICC 25. I’m not at all tempted to purchase my first few pieces of tier gear. Overall, other than the shoulders, it’s looking like it’s not worth wearing until you have the 4-piece bonus, or have been able to upgrade pieces via the marks that drop off each wing’s final boss. So, after giving it a couple more weeks, I’ll decide if I want to take the plunge and upgrade my less than 245 iLvl pieces, or wait until I have the 300-something badges for 4 pieces of tier gear.

Disenchanting Option

The new disenchanting option in the default loot systems is interesting. Coriel is an enchanter, so it’s always available whenever I do a random heroic.

In general, I like the option when doing random heroics. It’s very convenient, and it saves me the trouble of handing out shards at the end. I’m somewhat sympathetic to those enchanters who feel it has taken away the profitability of enchanting, as they’re probably correct. But I don’t really look at professions as a means to make money, so more convenience for me is more important.

Gunship: a DPS DK Perspective

Time to talk about that fun fun fight known as the Gunship!
On normal 10- and 25-man mode, this fight is extremely easy for most raid groups. There is some execution required though, and lazy play can still result in a wipe.

Make sure you have your rocket equipped, especially if you switch specs. I’ve seen too many players not be able to cross to the other ship because they forgot. Now might be a good time to remind you to always ensure you have a presence selected – when you switch specs it disables any presences.

…… but with all the new gearing options available with ICC now being opened (partially) to players, one might find themselves a bit confused/overwhelmed with what options in gearing they have to maximize their rogue DPS potential.

Peaking Into IceCrown Citadel

I did on my Shadow Priest. Damn then Giants hit hard as hell and can rip a group to shreds triggering them silent alarms. Almost friendly with the Ashen Verdict. Well I know I can do at least 3k+ dps easily at least depending on available buffs so far in my fully Epic geared one week old new 80.

Buddhist’s Final Video: Fare-well and Best-of mashup by mortalseraphim

And Then There Were 5

Finally.. Finally.. Finally.. What I never thought would happen.. Happened.. Of course, I am talking about Furis, my Paladin, hitting level 80. I’ve been leveling him up for a while in the off-raid times and such. When he hit 79 I finally actually believed that he would make it to 80 some day (maybe even before Cataclysm). Last night, he/we did it. I finished up in Zul’Drak. I was just starting up quests there and turned in one last one to the Ebon Blade there and Kaboom.. Or was it more like a Ding.. Hmm. Ding probably..

Handling the Primordial Saronite

If you haven’t already made your way into Icecrown Citadel and checked out the quartermaster, you may not be aware that unlike ToC and Ulduar 25-mans, wherein many yummy crafting patterns fell from the bosses, you will be needing to purchase your 3.3 epic crafting patterns. Specifically, you will need to have appropriate reputation levels (honored for one pair, revered for another pair or patterns) plus a primordial saronite to purchase each pattern.

On a personal note

You haven’t seen much of my primary focus topic here recently – raiding as a dps DK – because I still haven’t found a long term home for raiding. Sorry!

Blizzard Helps Cops Track Down WoW Fan, Suspected Drug Dealer

Wanted on drug dealing charges, Alfred Hightower skipped the country after a warrant was issued for his arrest. But he didn’t stop playing World of Warcraft and that’s how police caught him.

The Howard County Sheriff’s Department in Indiana discovered that Hightower, was a big fan of some “warlock and witches game”, eventually piecing together that it was World of Warcraft.

16-year-old boy found

The 16-year-old Barrie boy who was believed to have run away with a 42-year-old Texas woman he met online has been found at a shopping mall in Orillia, according to the boy’s family.

Druid: Testing out the Balance tree

With my latest Druid it was always my plan to check out the Balance tree however I didn’t have any intentions of taking that leap until I hit level 70.

One blogger changed that…
Kaozz of EtcMMO recently popped by my virtual home. Since I like to follow the few visitors that pop by my place I returned the favor and fell in love with Kaozz’s writing style.

2009 Wrap Up, The Pink Pigtail Inn List

And the prize for 2009 Best Gold Sink goes to…

Larissa over at Pink Pigtail Inn has started a 2009 awards show! I am so excited by this its like Azeroth has it’s own Oscars and:

The category winners will get fame and honour, a special seat at The Pink Pigtail Inn and a virtual toast.

Oooh, how exciting does that sound? Anyway as I love to ramble I found it too hard to give succinct nominations via a comment on her blog, and instead decided to post it as a blog of my own. So below are the Hots & Dots nominations for 2009:

BM PvP Guide – Part One: Talents and Glyphs

Welcome to part one of my Beast Mastery Hunter PvP guide! My goal with this series of posts is to help you better understand the spec, and to provide you with the necessary tools and information to enable you to have success as a Beast Mastery PvPer.

One bridge too far

I pity the fool… who thought that was actually a good idea. Now let me start by saying I don’t have any issues with Mr.T.
In fact when I was 8 years old I watched A-team on a regular basis and remember enjoying it quite a bit; But when it comes to MMORPGs

Yes, I was away on Vacation. No, that’s not really why the blog wasn’t updated.. .. But I have a post ! Right now!

One of the things that has re-emerged with the ICC raid is the need for CC on the Saurfang fight in the first wing. The “dogs” you have to deal with are not supposed to touch anyone in the raid so they need to be CCed while they are burned down.

WoW Schools Releases Reaching Gold Cap Course for WoW Players

WoW Schools, an organization dedicated to educating players to play World of Warcraft better has released its first Reaching Gold Cap Course.

Stephenson, MI (PRWEB) December 31, 2009 — On January 5, 2010 WoW Schools is releasing a highly anticipated Reaching Gold Cap Course that teaches players how to reach the infamous World of Warcraft gold cap. The course is compromised of strategic lessons that provide players with the knowledge they need to make intelligent in game decisions to maximize gold.

Barrie teen missing after meeting woman online

A missing 16-year-old from Barrie — who apparently took off with a 42-year-old Texas woman who came to visit him after the two met online playing World of Warcraft — has been found.

Andrew Kane left his home Wednesday morning and had not been seen until he was found at a Galaxy Theatre in Orillia. The woman, Lauri Price, was located along with him.

Introduction Guide to World of Warcraft Part 1. Starting out.

New to the World of Warcraft or considering trying it? Hopefully, this will help you to get started in the game. It can be overwhelming at first. PART 2(sorta) www.youtube.com

World of Warcraft Mods: Are They Worth the Compromise?

If you are new to the game of World of Warcraft, you are probably getting used to a lot of the basic terminology that is used. One of the terms that many players look into is mods. There are a large number of World of Warcraft mods that are available to players around the world. Popular websites like Curse host a number of these modifications. However, it is important to understand that Blizzard Entertainment did not create these mods, nor do they condone the use of these modifications.

World of Warcraft storms into journalism with free preview of …

There is no doubt about it that World of Warcraft has become so much more than just a game. For over 11 million people, it’s part of their culture. Many MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online) games have tried to reach the same dizzying heights from other fantasy RPGs (Role Playing Games) such as Warhammer Online to space-shooters including Star Wars Galaxies and Tabula Rasa. None have prevailed so far.

Hmm, okay.

Well, yesterday I put a post up and a couple of back-dated sales pages for a couple of the guides I’ve released recently, and then I must have done something else because my blog then spun out of control and I got my hosting account suspended for using too many CPU resources and probably crashing one of their Database servers.

Oops.

The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day five

Only five days left to WoW.com’s 12 Days of Winter Veil contests. Today we are giving away two BlizzCon 2009 goodie bags, including all original contents. Winners will recieve, among other things, a code for Grunty The Murloc Marine in-game pet, the Noobz Raynor action figure and an official BlizCon 2009 authenticator. You can view the full contents of the goody bag in the gallery below.

Brigwyn the Hunter answers the meme challenge

I typically avoid doing memes like the plague. It seems that just as you get one finished, you end up being tagged by another one.

But when I found out that Nochecazador from Of Marks and Beasts had tagged me for this one, I couldn’t resist. It’s questions actually made me think a bit more. Heck, it almost felt like a mini-interview, and you guys know how I love interviews. Anyways, here it goes.

If You Could Run THM For a Day

I asked this question on Twitter a while back, but didn’t get much feedback (aside from a couple nice back-pats that, while appreciated, didn’t tell me much). I realize that’s likely my own fault. While our Twitter account does have a respectable following, it’s certainly not where our primary audience hangs out. (And you’re totally missing out on some completely random gems there, people. Hint, hint.) Anyway, I thought I’d throw the question out there again to see what I get back.

Lord Marrowgar De-Boned by Red Devils!

Uh-rah! The Red Devils have downed the first boss in the new raid instance; The Ice Crown Citadel! Lord Marrowgar is a four-headed, bony freak standing guard just past the entrance to the Citadel. Clearing trash just to reach him is a major pain, but Marrowgar himself spawns no adds.

We have to do it every day.

After our walk today, in a matter of fact tone, I mention to my lovely wife: “You know. We have to do it every day.”

She thought that was funny.

And into Sethekk Halls we went. Again.

As it turned out, this very day was to be our last day.

Yay!

Not all that much going on in the WoW front (other than my paladin dinging 79 a few days ago). Waiting for 3.3, which is supposed (unofficially) to come out next Tuesday.. But, that’s not what this post is about.. This post is about my new computer.. Well, new computer to be. You see, for the holidays I ordered myself the parts to make a semi-decent rig. Nothing “SPECTACULAR”, but pretty good all the same. Definitely an upgrade over what I have already…

Patch 3.3 First Impressions

Awesome! Fast, reasonably balanced groups. A good variety of instances. I’ve even used it for low-level groups with alts (did Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Depths, Scarlet Monastery Graveyard, and Regular Old Kingdom) and everything worked pretty well.

Regular heroics are nice, but the low level dungeons are what interest me the most. I’ve always liked doing those dungeons with a level appropriate group, but it used to be so hard to form a group. Now hopefully, it will be much easier.

World of Warcraft / Quiz School

Questions: 10 | Attempts: 1. Created By wowabug 5 mins ago. This quiz is of World of Warcraft all expansions up to Wrath of the Lich King. Some words may be misspell t. Your Name ». Question Excerpt From World of Warcraft …

World Of Warcraft: Cheating Issues | Gaming Bomb.com

Have you ever thought of how effective World of Warcraft cheating is? World of Warcraft became a real revolution in the gaming world. It has been proved to be the most sensational and awesome role-playing game in the world since the …

Assembling a raiding Beast Master

Hello readers and happy holidays! I hope you are all having a relaxing break, and don’t have a multitude of ruffians that are in your charge for the next week or so until their mothers come back and claim them. Obnoxious, rowdy ruffians who continuously want to play Pokémon with you and will not leave you alone for even a moment’s reprieve… But anyway, on to Beast Mastery!

Nobody comments when you’re on top

The new Looking for Dungeon tool has been working really very well. I’m using it to get level up some while I save the quests to do with my wife.

Some things I’ve noticed:

1) Most all the Tanks I’ve run with in these random instance have been Paladins. I’ve had one Warrior tanking, and one Druid tanking (and we finished both instances as well.) But, for the most part, it’s been Paladins tanking. They have the perhaps unique ability to allow DPS to be as messy, sloppy, over-aggroing as they want.

I signed up for World of Warcraft just for the free week they offered. I played a couple of times, said hello to my old characters, started a new one, realized I had both no idea how to play and no particular reason to do so, …

World of Warcraft: The Magazine needs a new Editor-in-chief

A few of our readers (thanks, guys!) spotted this posting popping up on the various job boards recently — Future US, the company publishing the World of Warcraft magazine that’s due out any day now, is apparently seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Say what? They haven’t even released the first issue yet, and they’re already seeking a new head honcho? We did a little poking around, and it’s true — Dan Amrich, the man who originally held the position, has moved off already to another gig with Activision (though it seems coincidental that he’s going to work for Blizzard’s parent company), and Future is stuck seeking a new EIC even before issue one releases.

Quiz: World of Warcraft Lore Quiz

How much do you know about World of Warcraft? Do you read quest stuff? None does! But at least you know a few of the story. And tonight, you’re gonna know how much you know of the lore of WoW. Shall we?

The Ultimate World Of Warcraft Quest Hints Information » Gadget …

The task of searching for World of Warcraft quest hints on the Online can be a overwhelming task as there are so a lot of websites and articles regarding the subject. They are all providing information at you concerning how best to take part in World of Warcraft and what the best quest guidelines and hints are. This is not as plain as it appears because every one of these information and thoughts show personal knowledge and every one has his particular set of skills.

Post-workout, Curry basked in the naked glow of her own body and played World of Warcraft before tweeting a naked pic of herself of her page. …

The Part Of Raiding About Self-Defense

Raiding is a fun and interesting part of World of Warcraft.

Not only is it more chaotically challenging than regular leveling content or 5-player dungeon content, but it more solidly introduces the concept of teamwork within the game setting.

How World of Warcraft Have Becomed this Unstoppable Addictive Game …

World of Warcraft is by far the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Game game ever created. Millions log in every day to quest in the gigantic world of Azeroth to slay dragons, other epic foes, and possibly most importantly, each other. What makes these games so compelling?

World Of Warcraft – What Exactly It Is? | Hot Astronomy

One of the most popular and used games of the present time is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game named the World of Warcraft. Whenever you log in the game you will see that thousands of WoW player from all over the world are in the game and it is not important whether you log in in daytime or in the night, situation is the same – thousands of people are still there, playing their favorite game. The Warcraft servers are situated in all corners of the globe – from Japan to the USA. The task which are fulfilled by these people at any time are mining, grinding, selling. All these gamers are connected by one and the same goal – to earn as much as possible and to level up as fast as they can. Passing of another level can take from several hours to several days. Leveling in WoW is a very long-lasting process. Some people spend months in front of their monitors trying to reach 60thlevel, some need weeks to do the same. You cannot wait to get to the level 60 fast if you can spare just a couple of hours a day. If you want to level up your character faster than in several months, you have to spend much time playing World of Warcraft. Do more quests, kill rivals, visit Auction house more often in order to get more scores. If you decided to succeed in the World of Warcraft, you have to know more about quests. Quests are tasks that you receive from a WoW character, which is not a real gaming person.

World Of Warcraft : Some Aspects Of Gaming To Bear In Mind As A Beginner

As someone who is just starting out playing World of Warcraft, you may find yourself becoming frustrated or disenchanted due to the steep, difficult initial learning curve that the game presents you with.

you need to recollect that everyone has to start at level one ; naturally it can be useful to be conscious of a few tips to help get you going. Learning to invest and get the best items will certainly save you both gold and time, making World of Warcraft not only simpler to understand but more pleasurable to play also.

In some ways, popular social games like Mafia Wars and Sorority Life are already massively-multiplayer online (MMO) games—they’re played online, there are millions of people playing, and players need to work together to get ahead. But people hungry for high-quality, World of Warcraft-style games on their phones and social networks currently have limited options. Companies like ngmoco and Playdom are working to change that, and so is a new startup called Good Game Productions.

Geek Job Alert — Editor-in-Chief of World of Warcraft Magazine

If you’ve been sitting at home trying to find a way to pay bills while not missing your scheduled raids into the Vault of Archavon, then Future U.S. and Blizzard Entertainment have come through for you.

Taiwanese Man ‘Finishes’ World of WarCraft

The World of WarCraft features nearly a thousand achievements, and to this point, nobody has managed to collect them all. But one player has at least come very, very close (via Computer and Video Games).

A Taiwanese man has reportedly completed all 986 of the game’s achievements. He’s shown Azeroth’s critters how much he loves them (To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life), equipped an epic item every available slot (Epic), and slain 15 turkeys in three minutes (Friend or Fowl?)

Warcraft is on Facebook

Warcraft We are selecting our favorite BattleCry submissions to share with the Warcraft Facebook community. Check out our latest fan and employee submissions, as well as exclusive unlocked content! Your BattleCry submissions will unlock additional art pieces as we continue constructing the mosaic.

Designers reveal their favorite memories as World of Warcraft turns five

World of Warcraft turned five last week.

By way of comparison, heroin is 135, cocaine is 154 and we’ve been making alcoholic beverages for 9,000 years. I would put the debut of World of Warcraft on par with these events, comparable to when the first caveman fermented the first grape.

My Circle of Healers Contribution

I haven’t written for a while, I apologize! The Muse went on vacation and instead the Work-a-holic moved in for a while and I’ve been cranking out behind-the-scenes work.

I’m always on Twitter, tho, so if you want to follow my adventures there or send me a message, that’s the best place

Now, on to the show!

I was inspired by Divine Aegis, who in turn was inspired by World of Matticus and Miss Medicina.

Free 7 days of game time for select unsubscribed players

Blizzard is offering, via email, select inactive accounts the chance to return to the game with free seven days worth of game time. These emails are what appears to be a special unannounced promotion for those that have left Azeroth, coinciding with the five year anniversary of WoW.

We can confirm these emails are legitimate, the links and headers all point back to blizzard.com servers. And indeed a blue over in the Customer Service forums has more or less confirmed that it’s legit.

The Heart and Souls of Icecrown Citadel

With the final battle against the Lich King just on the horizon, Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg Street discuss what awaits players inside Icecrown Citadel and offer a glimpse at the design process behind Wrath of the Lich King’s ultimate raid and dungeon encounters.

What were you looking forward to most about developing Icecrown Citadel?

Cory: I think the most exciting thing about developing Icecrown Citadel was just knowing that we were working on the final chapter of the Northrend expansion, and that we’d really be able to give players that ultimate sense of completion of the storyline. Arthas is a huge character in Warcraft lore, so we took a lot of pride in making this the best experience we possibly could.

World of Warcraft’s 5th Anniversary, Pilgrim’s Bounty

The 5th anniversary and Pilgrim’s Bounty are now both underway so be sure to log on to participate and get your companion pets! Between the two you can get an Onyxian Whelpling and a Plump Turkey, both of which count towards Lil’ Game Hunter.

When is good, good enough?

I have been really struggling with the question of “When is good, good enough?” when playing WoW.

For example, when do you have enough gold in the game?  Is it when you’ve hit the gold cap on your character?  Is it when you’ve earned The Bread Winner achievement?  But that’s just gold, there’s other areas that have seem to have gotten a bit out of hand.

Hunter Trinkets in Wrath

We get a lot of questions and search engine traffic regarding Hunter trinkets, so it’s about time we updated an older post on the same subject. Trinkets can be some of the hardest items to find and upgrade, particularly while leveling. This is something every class struggles with at every stage of the game, so today we’re going to talk about trinkets in Wrath that you’ll want to keep an eye out for.

Note: I’ve deliberately left faction-specific trinkets off this list to avoid confusion and help keep things brief. The list below is organized by item level, lowest to highest. Trinkets from the PTR Patch 3.3 are not included in this list.

So I totally bought the new vanity pets being sold online at the Blizzard Store. I bought Lil’ K.T. for myself and the Pandaren Monk for my girlfriend. It was an instant purchase and no-brainer for me since we’re two avid companion pet collectors and, honestly, the price wasn’t outrageous enough to deter me.

Sidetracked : DA

I got a little sidetracked this last week with Dragon Age: Origins. Very awesome single-player RPG from Bioware. If you like those things (and if you liked Baldur’s Gate 1/2) then you should try it out. I have been enjoying it immensely (might be a review coming up if/when I finish it).

Myth Busted: Fast Weapon Upgrades

That’s right folks, you heard it here first, speed is what matters, slow speed weapons.

If you follow Elitist Jerks threads then there’s absolutely no question whatsoever that slow/slow is the way to go for Enhance. But let’s face it, not everyone reads EJ, not everyone stays up with the latest theorycrafting, and not everyone knows what’s best for their class.

Micro-Transactions

Blizzard has officially launched a micro-transaction shop for WoW, directly selling non-combat pets for real money. I am rather disappointed in them.

I don’t really like micro-transactions. Maybe it’s naive, but I prefer to have a very simple relationship with game companies. They make a good game, I give them money for that game, and they use that money to make more good games. They don’t try to play tricks, to nickel-and-dime their costumers, to expend effort on “capturing consumer surplus”. I’d rather they spend their time and effort on making better games.

Musings on Modern WoW Life…

Ok, I know, I know… this blog has been comatose for weeks. It’s not that the Red Devils haven’t done anything; it’s just that we haven’t done anything new. Well, ok – we did clear the newly updated Onyxia, but I can’t say it was much of a challenge for us.

At this point we are able to clear Vault, Onyxia and ToC all in one night, which kinda’ leaves us with little else to shoot for on our other raiding nights. As a result, we are once again plagued with a lack of raiders logging in! A few of our more “hard core” members would like to fully clear Ulduar through Algalon, but now that the instance is considered outdated by many, we can’t get enough players together to make a serious attempt.

The Antechamber of Ulduar: Auriaya

We’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of looking at class mechanics or specs, we’re going to look at  Ulduar. As you all probably know, Ulduar is similar to Naxx in the way that it is divided into four sections. This section is called The Antechamber of Ulduar and comes after you break into Ulduar. We’re going to be taking a look at the bosses within the Antechamber of Ulduar who are blocking your way to the Keepers of Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on Auriaya.

I was intrigued back when the new queue system for Wintergrasp was announced because I thought it might give the Horde on my server at least a puncher’s chance against our better geared and better organized Alliance enemies. Unfortunately, the exact opposite has taken place and our control of the zone has become an even rarer occurrence than before the queue was implemented.

Rogue T10 Set Bonus

The rogue T10 set bonus have been revealed thanks to some happy data-mining gnomes. First things first, let’s give the standard disclaimer here that this are from the PTR and may change slightly of completely.

With that out of the way, let me just say:
OMG OMG OMG GIMME GIMME GIMME I WANTZ IT!

Spell Haste: Bad for the Game?

Spell Haste is an interesting stat in theory. It reduces the cast time of your spells, and is supposed to be a double-edged sword, increasing the Damage-Per-Second of your spells, but also increasing the Cost-Per-Second. However, for a variety of reasons, I think having Spell Haste on gear has actually weakened the game in several respects.

PTR Maintenance, 3.3 Patch Notes Updated

The PTRs are down for maintenance to update to a new build of 3.3. In addition to this, the 3.3 patch notes have been updated with quite a bit of new information, so I’ve posted the notes in full for a refresher.

We finally did it! Well, we didn’t clear the place, but we finally got down the first 2 bosses in ToGC 10.  Yeah, Heroic ToC! Northrend Beasts finally gave it up to us (that was such a pain).  It’s really important that nobody dies and everyone is paying attention at all times. Nothing I was interested in dropped from him though (all plate, boo!).

Where the 4-in-1 Experiment Breaks Down, Part 1

When Blizzard released Trial of the Crusader they said this 4-in-1 setup (10, 10-heroic, 25, 25-heroic) was a new idea and something they are going to experiment with to see how it works. I’m glad they are trying new things and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in an MMO, it keeps the game fresh and pushes the genre forward. However this 4-in-1 experiment is fundamentally flawed as it recreates the a major design flaw in The Burning Crusade. In this multi-part article I posit what that problem is, why it is a problem, and a suggestion for the future.

Our guild, Unorthodox, has been around since the launch of BC. I joined them a few months in, while they were still working their way through Karazhan in two groups. Like all guilds then the biggest hurdle was making the leap from two teams of 10 to one team of 25. The Kara-to-Gruul’s leap was the biggest chasm in the game. If your guild couldn’t make the leap to Gruul’s you faced having your members poached by guilds that already had, thus furthering the divide between the 10s and the 25s. And unlike WotLK, there was no 10-man progression beyond Kara in the Burning Crusade. If you weren’t ready to tackle Gruul’s Lair after facing (not just) Malchezaar (alone but the legions he commands) then you were facing losing your raiders (and potentially the legions they command).

So You Want to Role-Play a Hunter

Whether you’re just starting a new character or you’re looking to enjoy a different style of game-play, getting into role-playing can seem a bit overwhelming at first. There are tons of possibilities for character development, back story, personality and social interaction. There are also tons of “rules” or bits of RP etiquette that you may be completely ignorant of. I’m no role-play expert, but I do like to dabble now and then. If you really want to dig into the world of role-play, there’s a plethora of amazing blogs to help you out with that (and I’ll link them at the end of this post). Today, I’m simply going to share some food for thought for those of you looking to role-play a Hunter.

Breakfast Topic: What Tropes does your character embody?

Ok, I’m going to make sort of a pretty geeky confession here: I have been known to read TV Tropes. In fact, I have been known to waste hours that could have been better spent writing (or raiding) reading TV Tropes.

I’ve been taking Fizz along on Daily Heroic runs.. Are my friends just dragging him through.. Um.. yeah.. Do I feel bad about it? Sure. But, I’m hoping that the main thing wrong with his DPS is gear (it could be me, but I am not willing to agree to that yet.. ). From what I hear, the fastest way to gear up is to do the daily heroic and run heroics in general. Now, getting them to run him through many heroics a day isn’t going to happen, so I stick to the daily. It is going to take forever.

Shamans Go Nova in 3.3

The initial patch notes for Patch 3.3 are out and are strangely almost all changes to starting new characters and the first 15 levels. However there is one bomb in the patch notes… a Shaman bomb!

Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

Empirically Measuring Class DPS

I saw a really interesting discussion on EJ about those Top 50 DPS class leaderboards. The argument is that, because the leaderboards take the top 50 parses, the class with high variance–perhaps due to a high crit rate–in their DPS end up higher on the boards than classes with low variance.

For example, if you took two classes that did 5000 DPS, one with a 50% crit rating, and the other with a 20% crit rating. If each class did 100 fights, and you picked the Top 20 fights, the class with the 50% crit rating is going to be on the top. This is because the Top 20 fights are fights with a greater than average critical strike rate, inflating the damage done.

The Hunting Lodge Podcast: Episode 7 – Naked Harpooning or Patch 3.3 and Other News

Hey gang! This is Episode 7 of The Hunting Lodge Podcast!

I have to warn you, this one is going to be a long one.  Not so much because we really wanted it to be that long.  More for the fact that we just had too much fun!  I really hope you’ll enjoy the fun with us.

So here is a heartfelt and sincere thank you for making this a blast to do each and every week.

3.3 Class Descriptions, Blue Posts

Quick note before getting into today’s news. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve sent a PM to several hundred of you to get feedback on a project we’ve been working on. If you’ve been active in the guild recruitment forum (your thread has had activity in the last week or so) then check your inbox.

For those of you that didn’t receive a PM, I’ll leave you with this teaser image and you can PM me if you want to know more.

Glory Of The Hero

Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve been devoting almost all of my playing time towards finishing up the rather daunting, to me at least, Glory of the Hero achievement. I’m proud to say that as of last week I wrapped up the last few required achievements needed and now I’m flying around on the fancy Red Proto-Drake you see above.

I wanted to write a short post about the individual achievements we struggled with the most so that anyone else thinking about taking a run at this has a basic idea of the challenges ahead of them.

Collecting Bear gear as a Cat

So you have been doing the kitty thing and since your focus is DPS you don’t have the DKP to pick up the best tanking gear for the off chance you are needed to fill that role one night. So what is a poor kitty to do to make sure he/she is geared as well as possible to pick up a nights tanking duty. Here is my list of possible gear to get without sacrificing anything on the kitty side. Please note I am paying no attention to Heroic 25 versions, just know they are the same name of what I listed but have better stats. I also make no effort to post both the Alliance and Horde names.

Class Channels

There is one feature of Aion that WoW should absolutely steal: class channels.

In Aion, one of the automatic channels you join is dedicated to your class. All Clerics are in the same Cleric channel, all Templars in the Templar channel, etc. I find that these channels are invaluable.

Class channels provide a new or inexperienced player with immediate access to the wisdom of higher-level players of the same class. I’ve seen discussions on how to gem, advice on which path to take, and general all-around help.

Anub’arak Down… Colliseum Cleared!

The Red Devils finally managed to scrape together a raid group and down the last boss for their first full clear of the Colliseum! And let me tell you, it was brutal! We had to pug the last few spots to get started. Even then we didn’t enter the instance until 8:00 and our normal raid time is 7:00! As expected, the pugees didn’t stick around very long. Fortunately they did stay long enough for more Red Devils to log in and we were able to replace them with guildies when they began to mysteriously DC after wipes. That was when we started making some real progress. Bottom line – I’m glad we filled with pugs rather than call off the raid. It worked out this time!

Our very first Onyxia-25 run and the Raging Deathbringer dropped. I wasn’t sure about this weapon so I waited for it to go to rolls thinking that if I won I’d run some sims with it. And I won. I can’t seem to win a Kodo mount on my Druid… but I can win what looks like a crappy axe. But hey I put the axe to work for the greater good of all Enhance-kind.

After 16:25 minutes of swinging on the boss level target dummy in Darnassus I got 33 procs. That comes out to a 2 PPM. The Shadow Bolt damage did not scale with spell power because the average damage was 1724, which is on the high end of the 1458-1874 range, but by no means amplified by spell power.

The Hunting Lodge Podcast Episode 6 – Nekkid Dorgans or What’s up with all the Blizzard Hate?

Welcome to Episode 6! That’s right we’ve made it through 1/2 a dozen shows and not showing any signs of slowing down.  As a matter of fact, thanks to all of you listeners we just keep growing and growing.

So here is a heartfelt and sincere thank you for making this a blast to do each and every week.

Now on with the show notes!

Alterac Valley Changes, Recent In-Game Fixes, Blue Posts

Clarifications on Changes to Alterac Valley

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

With the launch of patch 3.2.2 today there have been some changes to the Alterac Valley battleground and we wanted to clarify what exactly has been done.

BlizzCon 2009 Tournament Videos and Replays

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And you thought travel changes were done

You guys are correct, we reduced the expert riding skill price in 3.2.2 to 225g. We also changed the faction discounts for the riding skill vendors in Honor Hold and Thrallmar to use Stormwind and Orgrimmar faction.

Breakfast Topic: Worgen and Goblin dances

Reader Andy sent us a good topic to talk about this morning: dances for the new Cataclysm races. Every time we’ve sat down to play the new expansion, we’ve punched in the /dance and /silly emotes, and we haven’t seen a single thing implemented for Worgen or Goblin males or females, so as far as we know, it’s completely up in the air on what dances they’ll choose for each one. You have to think that Blizzard has some idea already (or maybe they’ll just be included in those long awaited dance studios), but we haven’t seen it, so what do you think?

We’ve got a lot of work to do now that 3.2.2 is out. Here are the six things you need to do when the servers come back up online.

1. Add Flame Shock to your rotation
2. Glyph for Flame Shock
3. Buy the Totem of Quaking Earth
4. Kill Onyxia
5. Lower your ArP weighting
6. Be prepared for PvP changes

Let’s go over each of these in turn.

1 & 2 – Flame Shock

Flame Shock used to last 12 seconds, the glyph would stretch it out an additional 6 seconds, and being a DoT it couldn’t crit. This was enough to keep it out of our rotation and off our minds.

Now:

Flame Shock: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.

and

Glyph of Flame Shock: Redesigned. This glyph now makes Flame Shock periodic damage able to be critical strikes.

Make this an 18 second DoT that can CRIT! The new optimal rotation is FS -> ES -> ES -> ES, making for a 3:1 ES to FS. The new optimal rotation is FS -> ES -> ES, making for a 2:1 ES to FS. Or to simplify things, just cast FS when it’s not up. This does add another layer of complexity to our already complex optimal rotation, but such is the way of Enhancement. (see comments below for macro ideas)

The end of a jouney…

For months I’ve been getting burnt of the game (booooooooring~), a couple of weeks ago I took a slight break of the game to see if it helped, but I can’t say I was missing it. So, effective today, my account has been cancelled.

I would have probably cancelled earlier, but I was waiting to finish the Brewfest event since it was the only one that I had missing for the Violet Proto-Drake.

Brigwyn Invades the Hunting Party Podcast

Name Bytor’s new Spirit Beast contest!

If you send me an email with your idea of the perfect name for Bytore’s of Snowdog’s Blog new Skoll Spirit Beast to thlpodcast@brigwyn.com. The one that Bytore selects will recieve their choice of a BlizzCon 2009 magnet or Authenticator. (Unless you live outside the US or Canada and then we will make other arrangements)

News and Information

• Reason for kiling the Arena 2v2 teams
• Will we ever see raids like it again?
• No Attunment for Onyxia
• Ghostcrawler addresses questions about Hunter Mechanics
  

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download forbidden kingdom the divx

Topics of the week

• Gear levels and raiding: When are you ready? and What’s an upgrade?
  Daewin and Brig discuss people ignoring upgrades for the sake of a specific iLevel and how it impacts your raid.
• Does it really matter when you started playing?
  We talk about how the game has changed and if it really matters if you were around during the original release or just started 6 months ago!

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Unreleased Cataclysm Trailer

Prepare yourselves for a leaked trailer that was never shown at BlizzCon! Credit goes to Crendor for “discovering” this.

3.2.2 Mount Changes

Quote from: Mumper (Source)

You guys are correct, we reduced the expert riding skill price in 3.2.2 to 225g. We also changed the faction discounts for the riding skill vendors in Honor Hold and Thrallmar to use Stormwind and Orgrimmar faction.

There are a couple reasons we made this change. First off, we wanted expert riding to be available to more people at level 60. 600g just did not seem like a reasonable expectation for most level 60 players to have when they roll into Hellfire Peninsula. Especially after purchasing your level 60 skills. The second change, regarding the factions just made a lot more sense this way since you will not have any Thrallmar or Honor Hold faction when you enter Hellfire.

3.2.2 is here!

Patch notes for 3.2.2 are here! You can manually grab it at FilePlanet.

World of Warcraft Patch 3.2.2

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The Brood Mother Returns
After years of lurking in her lair battling the many brave adventurers who travelled from afar to challenge her, Onyxia returns stronger than before to commemorate World of Warcraft’s five-year anniversary.

* Onyxia has been scaled to offer new challenges to level 80 players and is now available for testing in 10- and 25-player modes.
* Adjusted for modern raiding, but with the fundamental experience of fighting the Brood Mother still in effect, including the horrors of her Deep Breaths!
* Onyxia will now drop level 80 item versions of some classic loot items from the level 60 encounter.
* Brood of Onyxia, a very rare 310%-speed mount modeled after Onyxia herself will be available for the luckiest of challengers.

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Ready Check: Onyxia

Hi howdy and hello, everyone. I’m Matthew Rossi, famous for being tail whipped into the cave on our first Onyxia 10 attempt yesterday. Twice. Despite having been a veteran of the original raid, which means I’ve heard this kind of ranting many, many times. What I’m getting at is, there are certain things you do not do in a successful Onyxia kill (then and now) and if you go in cocky, thinking that you’re mister fancy pants Conquerer of Ulduar, then she’s going to embarrass you. If, on the other hand, you just go in and kill her, it’s much less embarrassing all told. As long as you keep her mechanics in mind, she’s not a terribly complicated or hard fight, but she’s been updated and tuned fairly well for an 80 raid.

So Brewfest is here, the quests are quite fun.

Honestly this is my first year doing brewfest, I never understood why it was such a popular “thing”. However, I have done as much as I can possibly could with the limited time I have had lately. I do find it to be my favorite … um … (why can I not think of the word for this thing)… O right lol …. my favorite WoW holiday (thats the word, you know that really common word that anyone with 20 plus IQ should be able to remember) … yeah.

Earth, Wind & Fire World First by Stars

Congratulations to Stars of TW-Crystalpine Stinger on their world first completion of Earth, Wind & Fire (25 player) by defeating Archavon the Stone Watcher, Emalon the Storm Watcher and Koralon the Flame Watcher within 60 seconds of each other.

Patch 3.2.2: Heirlooms to grant XP bonus in Battlegrounds

One of the more confusing and misunderstood aspects of the Heirloom XP bonus and leveling system that has been going around lately has been their application in PvP Battlegrounds. Some people say that the 20% combined XP increase from the chest and shoulders applies, some say it doesn’t. Lots of smart folks provide answers, but until now there really hasn’t been an answer on the part of Blizzard — who has the final and authoritative say on everything.

Ahoy mateys! In celebration of ye olde Talk Like A Pirate Day 2009 I’ve some pointers for ye bilge rats out there. Ye want to party like a pirate on TLAPD? Then ye need te dust off ye Shaman and sharpen ye Enhancement axes.

First Mate Stoneybaby presents ye 8  Reasons (Enhancement) Shamans  make the best pirates:

Faction Change Available In Europe

The Faction Change service is now available for European players.

Ancilorn (Source)

The new World of Warcraft Faction Change service is now live in Europe. As we mentioned previously, [http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9895129741&sid=1] we’ve been in the process of developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance for a fee. After purchasing a Faction Change for a character, a player can choose any race of the opposite faction that is compatible with the character’s class. Please note that all achievements and quest lines relating to the Argent Tournament are reset when a character uses the Faction Change service.

Brewmaster Guide Update

Print News | Category: World of Warcraft News – Wrath of the Lich King – Achievements
Brewfest be startin’ next high tide’ an’ we`ve recently updated our Brewmaster achievement guide! ‘t seems that Kisirani has confirmed that th’ Wolpertinger quest be makin’ a comeaft this voyage! This quest be introduced in Brewfest ’07 but had been removed in Brewfest `08 due t’ bugginess. Check ou’ th’ guide wi’ ’tis shiny new updates here!

Maintenance for Tuesday, September 22nd already announced

Yeah, believe it or not, unlike last week, when Blizzard didn’t confirm the lack of maintenance until somewhere close to midnight pacific time, this week we already have confirmation. There will be extended maintenance from 3 AM to 11 AM pacific this Tuesday.

Deathknight Level 70 Tanking Gear Set

Level 70 DK Tank

My DK has got it goin’ on!

She hit level 70 and swapped into the Cobalt gear set that’s craftable by Blacksmiths in their early Northrend professions levels:

[Cobalt Helm]
[Cobalt Shoulders]
[Cobalt Chestpiece]
[Cobalt Bracers]
[Cobalt Boots]
[Cobalt Legplates]
[Cobalt Belt]
[Cobalt Gauntlets]

Then, after affixing Armor Kits and various enchants with the Outland and early Northrend materials I had laying around in this Enchanter’s bank, I headed to the Auction House and picked myself up a few [Eternal Belt Buckle]s and a [Solid Chalcedony] to fill this current belt’s gem slot as created by the belt buckle.

I’ve been really busy gearing up my Priest the last few weeks and, friends, let me stress that if you aren’t running Regular Trial of the Champion several times a day you are missing out. This instance is far and away the simplest and fastest way to level your alts with more than respectable gear.

When I made the switch from my Hunter to my Priest I was rolling deep with Hateful PvP gear. I managed to heal a few Heroics with that Hateful gear but things were sketchy at best. Luckily, the awesome guild I joined was more than willing to run Regular ToC on a loop for me over the course of several days.

The Armor Penetration Nerf

I would like to begin today with a little history lesson.

BOOOO…no one likes history, just tell us what we need to know.

Relax, it’s going to be quick. Remember in BC and (for the most part) before patch 3.1? I know it was awhile ago but think hard. Remember when Armor Penetration (ArPen) was…awful? Seriously, ArPen was arguably the worse stat in the entire game and you might as well have avoided it like the plague (save for Grim Toll which actually gave enough of it to make up for it’s general weakness as a stat).

You’re boring me buddy. So ArPen used to be bad, I remember, what’s your point?

My point, my patient-deprived, figment of my imagination, is that in patch 3.1 ArPen received a significant buff: A 25% increase in the effectiveness of ArPen.

The Hunting Lodge Podcast: Episode 4 – My Soundcard tried to eat my podcast

And thank you gang for joining us for Episode 4 of The Hunting Lodge Podcast!

NOTE: Before we get into the show notes we just wanted to apologize for the sound quality this week.  We finally figured out that our sound issues are related to an old machine and sound card.  We replaced both of them for next weeks cast.  So we’re sorry for the quality this week, but really feel next week will be much, much improved.- Brigwyn and Daewin

Now on with the show notes!

This week was a full week and we had all kinds of interesting things to talk about.

Player Spotlight: Maalakai of Premonition

Maalakai is considered by many in the WoW community as one of the best PVE warlocks in the game.  He’s the warlock officer in <Premonition>, the top-ranked U.S. guild and has been a part of numerous world-first boss kills and 17 U.S. firsts.

He’s the first in our new regular feature on top players in the game. Mouse over Maalakai’s armory link to see some of the firsts he’s been a part of.

So you’ve just recently hit 80 and your unsure where you should get gear upgrades.

You don’t have enough time to run Heroics back to back andget locked out. If this sounds like you, then Patch 3.2 brought us a great new instance that is chock full of free (kinda) iLvL200 epics! A lot of them are great upgrades for a new 80 or if you already have some gear! Now lets get into the nitty gritty of the instance.

Adventures of Puff & Lilpuff – Episode 8

This actually came out about a week ago, but I posted episode 7 when it came out, so I wanted to make sure everyone knew that episode 8 of Adventures of Puff & Lilpuff is now out. This is an audio-only comedy brought to you by the folks at Myndflame, creators of Illegal Danish.

Warcraft: Legends 5 in Stores Now

The final installment in TOKYOPOP’s bestselling Warcraft anthology series is in stores now. Discover stories like “A Cleansing Fire”, the dreaded Headless Horseman’s origin, or “First Guardian”, the story of one of ancient Azeroth’s most powerful secrets.

Issues with Mobile Authenticator get it pulled from the App Store

Blizzard’s mobile authenticator updated recently, and as soon as it did, we started getting tips on the tipline saying there was a major issue. Apparently the update reset the code associated with your authenticator, which meant that if you applied the authenticator update (and had the authenticator connected to your account), there was no way to actually get a code to login to your account. In short, if you apply the mobile authenticator update, you won’t be able to log in to your account until you take the authenticator off completely (I’d assume you can then reinstall and reuse the authenticator, though people will probably be a little more trigger-shy about that one). There are instructions for how to do all of this over on the forums.

Restocking The Leveling Toons

Shaman in Underbog

I’m a big fan of dungeon runs on leveling characters, and within the dungeon runs, I’m a big fan of having enough reagents to last through 3-4 runs.

Why? So I can be lazy, and not restock after every run! And, so if I get into a really good group and we get a lot done together then I don’t run out of reagents partway through, either.

This entry talks about all the various ways I look at my leveling toons in terms of being able to tweak out just a little bit more improvement beyond my casting rotation or playstyle.

I’m on this melee kick. Go figure, huh? I just took my Druid Feral, I started a DK (sitting at 57 current though), and most recently I started a DPS Warrior alt. I decided to do some powerleveling on the Warrior so I picked up the heirloom shoulders, chest, 2h axe, and gun. The 0nly thing I’m missing for BoA gear is the trinket, but I needed to spend Emblems on full epic gems at the same time too, so no trinket. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BigHitBox/~3/UeXndkRyL4k/

So there I was sitting in Heroic Drak’Thorn Keep waiting for our tank to get back from whatever it was that he was doing. In instances like this I usually take the opportunity to inspect the players I’m with. I notice that on recount I’m second in DPS to the mage, which is odd, but hey I got some sweet upgrades over the weekend. But the hunter we have with us should be out DPSing me or at least be a lot closer than the 700 DPS to 1000 DPS I’m ahead of him. So I open the inspect window and start looking at gear. Mostly purples which is nice. Looking further however I see that it’s all PvP gear with resilience on it. I’m leveling a hunter so don’t know everything that I should, but I do know PvP gear is not good and a turtle for a pet is not good as well. So I whisper him. http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/09/04/guest-post-hunters-most-misunderstood-class/

World First – A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity by Refuge

Congratulations to Refuge of EU-Aegwynn on their world first completion of the 10-player achievement A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity. The achievement requires you to use items of a quality below 25-player Crusaders’ Coliseum, which means you’ll only be able to use items either from 10-player normal and heroic Crusaders’ Coliseum, or lower. http://www.worldofraids.com/news/848.html

Fan Art Contest
The official BlizzCon Fan Art Contest is back for 2009 and we’re looking for talented artists to once more put their imagination to work on creating Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo universe-inspired pieces of art. http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon/contests/

Playing my Troll Mage and leveling characters has reminded me of an interesting thing that comes up in PUGs sometimes.

That is, when the Tank is going at a fast enough pace and the group is taking on enough mobs at one time that someone in the team eventually says one word over the party line:

“mana”

This, of course, means that the person who said the word NEEDS mana, but the unstated part is that they also expect the group to stop and wait for them.

But the question is: Should the party REALLY stop and wait for them? Or does it really matter? http://wowgrrl.com/2009/09/01/dungeon-tip-if-youre-dps-nobody-cares-about-your-mana/

In EMS, we like to call people who ride motorcycles without helmets future organ donors. Unfortunately, most classes in WoW can’t wear plate helms, and cloth makes for poor protection no matter how well enchanted it is. Noamsie of <True Justice> on Aggramar-EU has decided not to postpone the inevitable, and is riding her Mekgineer’s Chopper straight off a cliff and into oblivion. You can’t get to heaven on roller skates, but I guess a winged motorcycle can ride you right into the clouds. http://www.wow.com/2009/09/05/around-azeroth-the-lost-and-the-damned/

As a well-geared level 80 OP Enhancement Shaman (L80OPES?) I must say this encounter was ridiculously easy. I spent most of the encounter running around wondering what I needed to do next. There was one dicey moment when my health was dropping rapidly only to realize I was standing in the deep breath, a problem quickly remedied by the age-old raid strategy known as “move out of the fire dumbass.” Tricky, that Onyxia, tricky. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BigHitBox/~3/NIKX3g4D8Qs/

I’m going to write bout the upcoming changes for Hunters in Cataclysm.  First and at the forefront all Hunter changes will be the removal of our Hunter mana bar and the inclusion of a focus based system for all Hunters.  This change will forever remove our mana bar, need for mana increasing gear and greatly challenge the way we have done all our work on rotations and effiecency. http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/09/02/upcoming-hunter-changes/

PTR Build 10392

This seems to be a somewhat small build; changes noticed so far are listed below. One thing you’ll noticed is that the “Purified” shards are now from 10-player Onyxia while the “Shiny” shards are from 25-player. http://www.worldofraids.com/news/835.html

The new World of Warcraft Faction Change service is now live. As we mentioned previously, we’ve been in the process of developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance for a fee. After purchasing a Faction Change for a character, a player can choose any race of the opposite faction that is compatible with the character’s class. For more information on the Faction Change service, please read the FAQ, or visit the Faction Change page to get started. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/##090102

I know all you horde out there were just dying to join the Alliance. Well now you can! Faction Transfers are now available. This service will come with fee of US $30.00 per character. To change your character’s faction go to the Faction Transfer page under Account Management.

Have questions about it? Read Blizzard’s Faction Transfer FAQ! http://wowvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=54230

Slaytanic pointed out to us yesterday that Atraira has released the first installment of the new movie titled Ulduar: Defiance. The video is an interesting, cinematic look at the boss fights in Ulduar. Atraira, of course, is the machinimator who created the WoW video for Lonely Island’s Boombox. We were pretty excited about the trailer, so it was awesome to see the movie make a release. http://www.wow.com/2009/09/03/wow-moviewatch-ulduar-defiance/

Just weeks after gushing about the new Hunter loot I had acquired I’ve decided to put that character on the back burner and switch to my Priest full-time.

The Reasons

This happened for two specific reasons. Number one, I was just tired of playing a pure DPS class. At some point you reach a level of gear and proficiency with your rotation that things just become kind of boring. In the last few weeks, when playing my Hunter, each instance run has kind of felt like the same old thing run after run. I felt like a switch was necessary to maintain my interest in the game.

Number two, I joined a really cool guild that gives me opportunity to heal some Heroics from time-to-time. As the Priest, I can go Holy to heal or Shadow to DPS so there’s a variety there that I just didn’t get with the Hunter. http://www.alteracvolley.com/ive-retired-from-the-hunter-pew-pew/

So we had previously left off with my WoW career right as I had gotten hooked.

Mage

My first “main” was a mage, it was really all I played. Leveled him all the way to lvl 62 (back when 70 was the cap). I mean the first and still primary “glass cannon”. Enough CC to almost never be touched, but if enemy’s breach that security there is enough BURST to burn them down. However, if not done quickly enough death will arrive shortly.
Mind you this was my first toon ever, so here I am leveling all my professions (secondary and primary), running EVERY single dungeon that I can (sometimes multiple times), and just wasting tons of time taking forever to level. The whole time I think I am going as fast as I can.
Needless to say I was moving, and incredibly broke. I took my longest break from WoW, approximately 6-7 months. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BigHitBox/~3/wFTysQV_OXE/

Balancing Healing In Progressing Raid Teams

I remember in the few weeks before Ulduar came out, how our guild faced a healer retention challenge.

You see, after months of farming Naxx25/OS25/EOE25/VoA25, our team got pretty well geared. Most of us were filling out to the Best In Slot standard, and a LOT of purples got sharded because nobody needed a lot of what dropped anymore. http://wowgrrl.com/2009/08/30/the-natural-waxing-and-waning-of-healing-teams/

Want to listen to the music of World of Warcraft without actually playing the game? It’s possible — anyee has posted a quick how-to over on the WoW Livejournal. The music is sitting on your computer in MPQ files, which are a proprietary Blizzard archiving format for their games. But there are a number of MPQ extractors and editors out there (the two recommended are MPQ Extractor for the Mac and MPQ Editor for Windows), so download one of those, use it to break open the MPQ you’re looking for, and then find the music you want in that folder. Extract it out, and voila, you’ve got Warcraft music to listen to whenever you want.  http://www.wow.com/2009/08/29/music-from-the-mpqs/

Blizzard at Gamescom Recap!

Gilneas and Lost Isles Maps

The maps were originally published by WoW Todo, an official Spanish fansite. They were likely taken from hands-on time at BlizzCon. The Lost Isles map is the first island you start on as a goblin, which we gave our impressions of here. You can check out our worgen impressions as well.

Leveling in Alterac Valley

Note 1: This is an edit, as reference, I just made 77-78 entirely in just 4 hours (maybe 4h 10m) by just doing AVs and a couple of quests (maybe like 3-5 fast quests, can’t remember exactly).

As some might have read already in one of my previous posts, I’ve started leveling a horde alt in the same server I got my alliance characters. As I’m writing, my horde DK is already 77, and Alterac Valley has probably provided a decent chunk of all the experience I’ve needed so far.

Catacl-Enhanced

I know that stoney has already written a summary of Cataclysmic changes, I’m not trying to steal his thunder. As he has stated I am just here to put my spin on things.

Basically what I am trying to say is that stoney is like Dr. Dre, you know he comes in and puts the best possible spin on things, and just does a great job. And I am like … like … Keven Federline (sp?) where I come in and just hack it up for comedic pleasure.

Regardless, I am putting my thoughts on shamanism, enhancement and other small details about the next Xpac

Why your (race) can’t be a (class)

Kisirani is tearing it up on the forums recently — ever since she dropped that Tauren Paladins would be called Sunwalkers, she has kicked off a round of speculation and excitement about all of the new race/class combinations soon to be available to us in Cataclysm. But the number one question on everyone’s lips seems to be: “If (race) can be a (class), why can’t my (race) be a (class)?”

Among all the amazing stuff that came out of BlizzCon—though I must admit I spent most of my surfing time looking at WoW.com’s costume pics because theirs seem to focus on the sexy female outfits….

Ahem. Yes the news at Blizzcon. I pulled out three very interesting snippets for the future of us Enhancement Shamans in the far-off Cataclysm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BigHitBox/~3/6xDmodUh85U/

We just started our raid group to be able to raid tonight, and some people noticed that the instances that we got locked yesterday, for some reason, got reset today.

So we aren’t sure if we should re-clear the place, because Blizzard might just consider it as an exploit and mass ban?

Here are a couple of screenshots from Ulduar (25M) and Trial of the Crusader (25M), the initial stuff is there (as reference) and the window about the Raid ID is there.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/frostbolt/~3/K_fpGUztKGM/

That’s right folks, the Twisted Nether Blogcast folks have asked me to come back.   This time I’ll be joining Brajana of Mend Pet of and Hydra of Almost Evil. We’re going to discuss all the changes that happened at BlizzCon.

Just to make it easy for you.

What: Twisted Nether Blogcast, BlizzCon Roundtable Discusssion

http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/08/27/brigwyn-on-the-twisted-nether-blogcast-blizzcon-roundtable/

Since the beginning of the game players have wondered what was behind that huge wall in Silverpine Forest; what was the fate of the denizens of Gilneas? Now with the announcement of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we finally know, and I was able to spend some time with the followers of Genn Greymane at BlizzCon.

Never Cry Werewolf

Your roots as a worgen actually start during the leveling experience. At level 1, you’re a normal human citizen of Gilneas. However, at some point during your adventure to level 6 you become stricken by the worgen curse and fight to find a cure to retain at least some vestige of humanity. While you’re questing through this experience there are constant earthquakes shaking the earth beneath you; caused by the cataclysm which has sundered most of Azeroth.

http://www.worldofraids.com/news/820.html

Everyone has something to say about everything that happened at Blizzcon. The most exciting buzz has been going around about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Kat Weight gives us, here at WoWVault, her thoughts on the Cataclysm announcement from Blizzcon.

Ever since the data-mining of two specific Halloween masks, the Worgen and Goblin, there was speculation that they would be the new playable races. Even with the trademark information being discovered and talk of a new expansion, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, there were people saying it was coincidence. Still, everyone knew it wasn’t long until the world would find out just what Blizzard had been up to…

http://wowvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=54101

So Cataclysm is coming and Kisirani is already working on an in-game launch event. It’s gotta mean something right? Now don’t get me wrong, even with my self-confessed zombiephobia, I loved last November’s zombie invasion (though, at times, it got really frustrating). So now Kisirani is officially hard at work planning a new event to herald the beginning of an Azerothian cataclysm, I can’t help but wonder what she has up her sleeves for us.

Is anyone else excited? I certainly am and it gives us something to focus on during the inevitable wait. To be fair, at least Cataclysm‘s not scheduled for 2012! We don’t have that long to wait, we could be rolling Worgen and Goblins in just under/over a year’s time. That just about makes it bearable. But it also leaves us with time to think about what Blizzard will do to introduce players to this brave new world.

Hit the jump to find out what we think could well happen prior to the launch of Cataclysm.

http://www.wow.com/2009/08/27/what-does-blizzard-have-planned-for-a-cataclysm-in-game-launch-e/

After many starts and stops we have finally gotten a stream out and available.   We’re still working on getting it iTunes ready (hopefully soon) but in the meantime you can download right here! (link)

http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/08/25/the-hunting-lodge-podcast-episode-1-chasing-squirrels-and-talking-blizzcon/

3.2.2 PTR – Build 10357
This news will be constantly updated with new things and changes.

3.2.2 PTR Patch Notes Update
Below are the changes to the 3.2.2 PTR patch notes. Any notes that have been edited from the previous version will have the edit in red.

http://www.worldofraids.com/news/819.html

World of Warcraft Cataclysm FAQ

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/faq/

It was a hectic two days at this year’s BlizzCon with lots of revelations, some good, others awesome. Destruction is coming to Azeroth with the return of Deathwing, changing the face of the planet forever. While we won’t see the game until 2010, the world will change entirely and cities will be revamped in order to enable them to be made flyable. However, there are several very important locations currently in-game (for the most part) which are going to be very important to the coming Cataclysm.

http://www.wow.com/2009/08/25/the-wow-tourists-guide-to-important-cataclysm-locations/

For the yearly subscription price of $39.95 USD, readers will receive four issues of the ad-free WoW magazine, including concept art, hints and sneak peeks at upcoming content patches and expansions, interviews with developers, strategies for raid and dungeon encounters, and more “insider and player perspectives”. The issues are stated to be more than 140 pages long and glossy as heck.

World of Warcraft: The Magazine, coming soon

Blizzcon.com has been updated with the Schedule of events and a map showing where everything will be located!

Blizzcon Sched, Map, & Goody Bag

We’ll be releasing a minor bug fix patch to version 3.2.0a. This sort of patch is very small in size, and we use them to fix specific issues that can’t be hot-fixed. Issues addressed with this patch:

• Fixed an exploit players were using with / commands
• Fixed a performance issue with players logging into the game
• Fixed an issue with Mac clients freezing near water
• Fixed a crash Mac clients were experiencing with shadows on Fixed Function cards
• Fixed an art issue with Frey Hard Mode where the light beams were visually too hard to see
• Fixed an issue with Loaner mounts requiring Cold Weather Flying

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.2.0a

3.2 Patch Notes Updated, Blue Posts
http://www.worldofraids.com/news/761.html

BlizzCon 2009 Internet Stream Rebroadcasts Planned
http://blizzcon.rayv.com/

Patch 3.2 Tuesday? Maybe!
http://wowvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=53669

The Daily Quest: Booze and bacon
http://www.wow.com/2009/07/29/the-daily-quest-booze-and-bacon/

A Letter To The Lazy PUG Member
http://wowgrrl.com/2009/07/29/a-letter-to-the-lazy-pug-member/

New screenshot gallery of Wintergrasp: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/gallery-wintergrasp.html

The paid character transfer service has been reduced from 30 to 3 days. http://wowvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=53547

Don’t forget Daniel’s ever helpful morning posts at WoW.com. http://www.wow.com/2009/07/21/tuesday-morning-post-howling-at-the-maintenance-edition/

Go give WoWGrrl some Digg love! http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Hunter_WoTLK_Raiding_Consumables_Guide_WoWGrrl_com

Last week, our very own Michael Sacco broke the news that raid lockouts will be extendable after Patch 3.2. Reading through forum comments about this exciting new feature, I found the varied reactions quite amusing. http://www.wow.com/2009/07/06/officers-quarters-managing-your-lockouts/