World of Warcraft

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  Project Lore: Five dudes. Four cameras. One World of Warcraft.

• A Tribute to Addons: SexyMap

  Heartbourne

  20 Nov 2009 | 7:22 am

  A Tribute to Addons is a column featuring new, cool, or useful addons. Send a tweet to @Projectlore with your suggestions, or leave a comment. Blue Rune Circles in SexyMap I’ve been getting lots of questions asking me about my mini-map addon that I use in my videos. Its called SexyMap, and its fast become a staple of my interface. Sexymap may look like it would take a lot of system resources, but it uses spell effects through the in-game engine to achieve its fancy graphics. This gives it a lot of built-in options that have a very low overhead. I’ve been using the default preset…

• Patch 3.3 Not Live for “1 Month +”

  Heartbourne

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:03 pm

  There is a strange blue post that our commenter Vexklythor tipped us off to that implies that patch 3.3 will not be live until late December at the earliest. The post was in response to a forum post about the recent background downloader performing very poorly. Quote: We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we’re not really worried about your speed. This revelation comes as I was working on a post predicting the release of patch 3.3 in the coming weeks because of the background downloader…

• The Balancing Act: Splitting Your Time With Alts

  iTZKooPA

  19 Nov 2009 | 3:54 pm

  Do Some Internet Sleuthing. Forget about other video games, I find it difficult enough to split my play time across multiple characters.  Despite my best efforts, that is exactly what I have been doing lately.  Over the past month I have put serious time in to not two, but three alternates avatars and my trusty bank alt.  Solidsamm hasn’t missed a beat, as he continues to raise his average ilvl at an alarming rate (for me).  I’ve only been able to manage the juggling act thanks to careful planning, tunnel vision, and of course, an understanding girlfriend. Solidsamm is doing…

• Patch 3.3: Frost Wyrm Mount Incoming

  pixiestixy

  19 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

  Dedicated Icecrown Citadel Raiders in the upcoming Patch 3.3 will have a new, glorious armored Frost Wyrm mount to work toward. Blizzard blue poster Ancilorn over on the European forums confirmed Wednesday that the armored Frost Wyrm mount previously data-mined at MMO-Champion will indeed be the next hot raiding reward. Here’s exactly what was posted: There will be a Frostwyrms up for grabs for Icecrown raiders, achievable in a similar way to previous rewards such as the Ulduar proto-drake. Not a very long description, but certainly enough to get me even more excited for the upcoming…

• 3.3: Background Downloading Has Begun

  Amatera

  18 Nov 2009 | 7:39 pm

  Oh Blizzard, you’re so sneaky! With a notice surreptitiously tucked away at the bottom of the launcher, and a download utility that chugs away at forthcoming patches minimized on your taskbar, you wouldn’t even realize you were downloading anything at all unless you were looking for it! But if you’ve used your World of Warcraft client today, chances are you’ve already got pieces of 3.3 on your hard drive. Exciting, isn’t it?! The pre-patching process allows Blizzard to push information such as texture and environment data (in other words, stuff that…

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  WoW.com

• The Queue: But I'm not an alien!

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

  Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Guys, you're driving me crazy here. As part of my spiritual promotion to Junior Queue Guy I pick up The Queue on Fridays now and that means I scour Thursday's Queue for questions to answer. You'd think, with one hundred comments on yesterday's post, that there'd be something juicy in there, but you guys are on some kind of vision quest here because you keep asking questions that are impossible to answer! I don't know if…

• Insider Trader: Icecrown gold rush

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

  Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products. With the battle against the Lich King looming closer and closer on the horizon, the crafty craftperson is already getting ready to pepper the local auction house with crafted items. Guilds will need to slap on crafted items to quickly round out behind-the-gear-curve raid members, and the auction house will be the first place they turn to do that. The gear you build and prepare now will be quickly sold when it's time to fight Arthas. More importantly, though, raiders are going to see a whole new tier…

• The Stonewall Family is October's Guild of the Month

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  Our November Guild of the Month contest is still ongoing, but today is the day we unveil October's winner. But before I do that, I want to tell all of the entrants that you shouldn't get discouraged. We get a lot of great entries every month, and if you didn't win in October, enter for November! If you don't win in November, stay vigilant and enter in December. This contest isn't going away. October's winner, The Stonewall Family, is walking away with a $100 gift certificate from Swagdog, where you can pick up all sorts of custom guild apparel. Rather than trying to tell you about them…

• Patch 3.3 PTR: New Kirin Tor Rings on their way

  20 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am

  Ah, Kirin Tor rings. We've come to rely on these old standbys as gear that'll always be there for us. Especially if "we" are elemental shamans. But what's going on with them in Patch 3.3? Surprising no one, Bornakk confirmed recently that there's a new set of Kirin Tor rings on the way for those with lots of disposable income in Patch 3.3. With an item level of 251, they're a significant upgrade to the 226 ring you upgraded back when Ulduar came out. You should expect the upgrade process to cost about as much as the last one -- that is, 1000 gold pre-faction discount. Good to see that they're…

• WoW Moviewatch: Castle In The Sky

  20 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  Castle in the Sky by Zimtower is a short, sweet and beautiful music video. It's somewhat referencing Dalaran as a castle in the sky, but is really more focused on the idea of a "happy place" where each person can revisit their own childhood. And yes, that's totally a reappearance from the fun gnome from Cloud 9. It's a pretty short video, so I wouldn't recommend trying to read too much into it. However, Zimtower has done an amazing job animating his gnomes so that they actually line up against the song's lyrics. The video is beautiful, with a whimsical color palette that serves to…

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  TankingTips.com

• The Mail Bag: Beasts, Sets, Expertise and not getting to do Naxx

  Veneretio

  17 Nov 2009 | 1:21 pm

  With another podcast comes another influx of questions worthy of answering so here’s some of the more interesting ones with my responses. I’ve edited some a little bit just in case those asking the questions wanted to be anonymous. Mail #1: Beasts Hey Vene, i’m currently tanking Beasts in ToGC25 and was wondering if you have some advice.. The Raid Leader is drooling at the chance to get a pally tank to replace me and i don’t want that to happen.. This is since Gormok does a good amount of damage to a tank with 50k+ buffed health and ~27-29k armor. I was wondering if…

• Podcast #8: That’s the game you’re tanking

  Veneretio

  11 Nov 2009 | 11:08 am

  Topics: The Best Trinkets Why do I have so little hit? Healers and You!

• The ability I’m still not fast enough with

  Veneretio

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:07 pm

  I died yesterday, again. Who did I die to? The Yeti. Why’d I die? That’s probably a little tough to see. That’s my hotkey for Shield Wall. When the Yeti hit the wall, I couldn’t hit it fast enough. I recognized a while ago that I wasn’t fast enough on my Shield Walls so I mapped it to that. The muscle memory isn’t there yet though. Next week though, next week it will be. But, it’s not my fault! Now you can play the blame game all you want after you’re all dead about how so-and-so shouldn’t have got hit by the Yeti, but in the end,…

• Chill of the Throne

  Veneretio

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:58 am

  Our Blizzard overlords have decreed the following: For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

• Back to Basics: I’m 80, now what?

  Veneretio

  24 Oct 2009 | 10:53 pm

  I’ve noticed a trend of amongst people that shoot me their armory profiles. I’m always answering the exact same questions over and over again. Now I’m more than happy to do this, but for the sake of saving you guys and gals some time, here’s my answers without you having to ask! How’s my spec? 15/3/53 is the current all-inclusive spec, I recommend. It’s high damage/threat, but also makes room for 2 minute Shield Wall. The major glyphs that best compliment this spec are Blocking, Devastate and Shield Wall. The minor ones are Bloodrage, Thunderclap and…

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  pwnwear

• Recent GC post on tank balance

  Gravity

  20 Nov 2009 | 6:52 am

  Quite a lot of discussion on tank balance, not just pwnwear, wow.com had a (good) post on effective health and also Ghostcrawler’s posted on it. Here’s an extract from GC, but he said a lot more, worth checking the source too. On Sartharion +3, cutting-edge guilds who normally tank with a warrior would (perhaps somewhat begrudgingly) use a DK to tank instead because the benefit was so massive. The same thing happened on Vezax where good guilds replaced their warrior tanks with DKs. Death knights were overpowered at the time. We are not seeing the kind of massive swapping one class…

• Number of tanks required, a game design issue

  Gravity

  19 Nov 2009 | 8:04 am

  Yesterdays post asking ‘whether DKs are being benched’ appears to have two root causes: tank class mechanics which make a given tank the preference on certain categories of encounter encounter design which requires a raid comp of usually two tanks but sometimes three. If you haven’t looked over the discussion, it’s a good read; and Honor’s comment could have been a post in its own right. Encounters which favour one tank over another DKs did have their time in the limelight with Sarth3D, where the (now defunct) Unholy-Vot3W spec reigned supreme. That spec has…

• Are DK tanks being benched?

  Gravity

  18 Nov 2009 | 11:24 am

  I hear anecdotal evidence of DK tanks being benched so that our tanking brethren do the business instead. Whilst promoting the rawr:tankDK article in official wow forums, I read a thread there asking “where did all the DK tanks go?” (being the official forums I would normally immediately disregard everything as drivel)… but remembered long-time reader Kenshi commenting he’s now 3rd tank (he’s in a progression guild). He’d shown a picture from guildies too. They’d read the “warriors are swiss army, DKs are from lego” post and thought…

• Mobile readers

  Gravity

  18 Nov 2009 | 4:48 am

  If you read pwnwear from a mobile device, you will like the new system I’ve implemented which renders it into a simpler and much faster site. There’s a slight bug for some devices which means the home page doesn’t show up in the mobilePress way. Other pages within it detect the browser device and render as it should. To get around this on your phone, bookmark and navigate to this url instead: http://pwnwear.com/?mobile or link Another way to read this and other death knight sites is to use the RSS feed for this collected.at page, which includes pwnwear and other authors too.

• Rawr.TankDK: guest post from the lead developer

  Gravity

  17 Nov 2009 | 1:19 am

  I’m really delighted to have this guest post! Enjoy. – Gravity Rawr.TankDK Hello, I’m Shazear the current contributing developer for the Tank DK module in Rawr. For those who don’t know, Rawr is a 3rd party tool to help evaluate gear for your PvE endgame WoW character. It does not have a direct in-game corresponding addon, but rather can import characters from the Character Profiler addon or via WoW Armory. Each module does its own evaluation of your character appropriate by class/role, so most gear-evaluation bugs are unique for the module, e.g.: between DPS and Tank DK.

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  World of Matticus

• Warning: Jade Tiger Pet a Scam

  Matticus

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:51 am

  If you get this in your email, don’t follow through on it. These fakes are getting better and better. Note: You can usually tell by the “To” field. This one wasn’t sent to my registered WoW email address. ***SECURITY FOOTER*** :: Thanks for reading a post from World of Matticus! "You miss 100% of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky This post sponsored by Byte Me Gaming.Warning: Jade Tiger Pet a Scam

• A PUG’s Doom Knell: Link Achiev Or No Inv

  Mimetir

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  This PUG will self destruct in five seconds. The first whiff of a short, lit fuse? A group leader spamming the beastly phrase “link achiev or no inv”. I believe it’s a doom knell for any PUG. It makes Dalaran and trade chat more dangerous places for a group than a fire breathing dragon with left-side whelps. Perhaps you’ve not heard the phrase. It’s often used as a recruitment method by PUG leaders.  They are demanding that potential group members whisper them with a link to their completed achievement for the relevant instance. It does seem to have benefits for…

• Help Simone: Heroic Northrend Beasts

  Matticus

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  Meet Simone. She’s the new healing lead and she needs your help. None of the other healers wanted the job of organizing and assigning healing. The raid leader doesn’t understand enough about healing to confidently handle it himself. Simone has decided to take initiative and do it. But she needs your help! Scenario: Heroic Northrend Beasts 25 Tanks: Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight Healers: 2 Resto Shamans, 1 Holy Paladin, 1 Discipline Priest, 2 Resto Druid (1 optimized for tank healing, 1 optimized for raid healing) What you know Terrence has given Simone the tank assignments. On…

• Reader Survey – How Can we Improve Our Blog?

  Matticus

  18 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

  Most of the time, when I ask for feedback, I usually have a chat with my fellow blog contributors on the staff. Occasionally, I’ll get some thoughts and opinions via the contact form. But here’s where I made the fatal mistake. There’s one important person that I failed to consult. You. You’re the readers. You’re the ones that subscribe. You’re the ones that re-tweet posts. You’re the ones that come back here everyday. So in an effort to continue making this blog useful and valuable, I’m opening up the post for your ideas on how we can improve. Some questions to think about…

• Leading The Lodur Way

  Lodur

  18 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  This comes as a request on twitter from @Furiey. They asked me to write a post about my particular style of leadership and thus today’s post is born! There are many different ways to lead I’ll discuss some of the more common ones and then talk about my own style. The most common styles of leadership you’ll find in MMO’s are as follows: Democratic leadership Bureaucratic leadership Charismatic leadership People-Oriented leadership Laissez-faire leadership Democratic Leadership The democratic leadership style is also called the participative style as it encourages…

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  Gray Matter

• Blue Post: ICC Raid Access and Progression

  18 Nov 2009 | 10:31 am

  Blizzard dropped a bit of a bomb shell today when they detailed some of their plans for ICC. You can find the post here. In this post, I will comment on what I think are the highlights.GatesIcecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live.The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters.

• Disclaimer: The Ad.

  17 Nov 2009 | 11:36 am

  Some of you may have noticed that I put an ad for the Zygor Leveling guide on my blog. Given the recent posts by Gevlon and Tobold regarding gold guides and Affiliate marketing, I wanted to take a moment to comment on the ad.In the past two years, I have been asked several times to place ads on my site for various products. I was even one of the many blogs offered a free copy of Dragon Age: Origins to review it. Most of the offers came from gold sellers, power levelers, and account sellers. I had a couple of offers from gold guide sellers, but the strangest offer I got was from a prominent…

• Moonkin Basics: Stats

  16 Nov 2009 | 11:23 am

  This is my second post in my Moonkin Basics series. In this series I hope to address a lot of the basic questions asked by people that are new to raiding as a balance druid. For additional reading, please refer to the Moonkin Think Tank and the Moonkin StickyIf you're anything like me you don't pay a whole lot of attention to stats as you level. Sure, we make some basic choices like favoring Spell Power over the other stats, but you don't really worry about the Hit cap or if Haste is better then Crit. When you're leveling getting into the details on stats doesn't really matter because your…

• Tier 10 Set Stats

  12 Nov 2009 | 6:38 am

  Apparently there was a new PTR patch pushed out yesterday, and MMO-Champion had been hard at work squeezing all of the goodness out of it for us to read. The big thing that was added was quite a bit of loot from from the 5-man, the raids, and the Tier loot.My first reaction:WOW!!!!Here are the links to the ilvl 251 and ilvl 264 gear.Before you get really excited, I want to make one disclaimer. Data mined info is Data mined. It is not currently in game. It has not been confirmed by Blizzard. It is quite possible that these were released in error and will be changed in future PTR releases.That…

• A Look at Pushback Resistance

  9 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  In my recent Moonkin Basics post regarding Talents I made the following comment:Resto Tier 1 - Currently, there isn't a lot of debate about this tier of the tree, but that may change at some point. Improved Mark of the Wild and Furor are currently favored because they provide a little extra DPS and regen. However, it is really pretty minor. In a heavy damage situation pushback resistance can be a big DPS boost. Since most guilds have Imp MotW covered by a Resto or Feral Druid, don't be surprised if you see many Moonkin taking points out of Imp MotW or Furor to put a few in Nature's Focus, if…

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  Kinless Chronicles

• Gear Score, Schmear Score. But, wait…

  Kinless

  18 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am

  So there I was.  Looking for the eight remaining burning embers I needed to complete the latest Wintergrasp Daily.  We’d already lost, so I figured everyone Horde was going to be gathered outside of the Vault looking for invites.  Or shopping, or hearthing.  You know, what winners do. But the embers were all ashes and there were bones scattered here and there.  I was alone except for just 2 other green names.  I don’t leave the raid so we can continue to share our efforts.  Turns out there must be multiple raids, because we were basically soloing.  One guy’s kill…

• Grind & Craft, now PvP.

  Kinless

  17 Nov 2009 | 10:59 am

  I’ve got five level 80 characters.  Four of them are Crusaders.  I don’t have the time, or inclination anymore, to get the fifth to Crusader, or anyone else in the “up and coming” ranks either.  The fifth started the process, but given he’s my oldest character, and his reputation with the cities is the worst (friendly, honored) I thought “No way.” My Orc Warrior’s crafted, let me see, four full sets of Savage Saronite Plate armor.  One for himself, two for our Horde Deathknights, and one for my Paladin.  He’s crafted 3…

• What I take away from the Pardo interview

  Kinless

  16 Nov 2009 | 9:45 am

  What happens when a hardcore guildmaster of hardcore raiders designs a game: World of This Prologue You come from a humble background and are brought to the big city to prepare yourself for the war you’ve only heard about. Chapter 1 Level yourself from 1 to Level Cap.  And be quick about it.  You, slacker, are holding up your friends. Chapter 2 Raid the latest and greatest.  If you managed to keep up with your “friends.” Chapter 3 Loot! Epilogue There is no happy ending.  That loot is only there to get the next loot which is only there to get the next loot which is…

• New Pet, $10.00. Psycho Tendency Assuaged, Priceless.

  Kinless

  11 Nov 2009 | 7:59 am

  I saw this freakish little scene up by the tournament: Druid in Tree Form, just standing there. (I was killing Cultists.) It was not. It was just standing there. Seems they had gotten a new pet, the Lil K.T.. And they took it to the penguins to watch it kill them. Two of them where enjoying the scene when I took the screen shot.    

• Dragon Age: Origins

  Kinless

  9 Nov 2009 | 9:35 am

  First off, we weren’t going to get this game.  I wasn’t totally thrilled with the trailers I’d seen (I thought the graphics looked dated).  The wife was thinking between WoW, Lotro, occasionally Warhammer, when would she get a chance to play?  And it’s $50.00. But there we were, in Best Buy, and thinking (Logitech G35 headset already under one arm), “Eh, why not.  It’s supposed to be pretty good.” And I’ve got to say, YOW!  It’s really much, much better than I was expecting.  The graphics are over the top really, really nice.  The…

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  Progressive WoW

• Yes I'm still playing

  16 Nov 2009 | 8:56 am

  It's been a looooong time since my last update, and I don't expect to be posting regularly anytime soon, but I've made some good progress recently despite my lack of time to play.I've been pushing Keldreth to get up to level 80, and she's 79 right now. I expect she will be 80 by the end of the week. Going through Northrend as a hunter is very different than with my other characters. I can solo almost any elite quest, the regular mobs are never a problem and there is hardly any downtime. This makes for faster XP gain because I pretty much don't have to sneak by any enemies.Right now I have…

• What have I been up to?

  23 Jun 2009 | 1:10 pm

  Yes I know it's been a long time. I expect lots of the people who used to read this have since given up and moved on to blogs that actually update. I'm not sure if I'm coming back, but it's been a long time since the last update and I feel like I should get you up to speed with what I've been doing this whole time.First and foremost, Vonari is level 80. Actually she's been there for a while now, and fully decked out in the crafted PvP set that she made for herself. I got a chance to run some BG's with her, and it was really fun. My friend brought his paladin and kept me alive while I burned…

• Leave of absence

  25 Feb 2009 | 3:20 pm

  I know it's been a while since my last update, and that's because I always update from work. That being said, I got laid off last week and as such I haven't been at work to update. You'd think that means I would have more time to blog, but I guess I like to do other things online when I have full internet access.Anyway, I probably won't be updating for a while, at least as long as I'm unemployed, so check out my blogroll for some other great blogs, assuming you don't read those ones already.And if anybody lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and knows of any civil engineering jobs, feel free…

• Slow week

  19 Feb 2009 | 11:19 am

  It's not so much that I haven't had time to play this week, it's just that I've had other things to do with the free time I would normally use to play WoW. I don't think it's burnout, just different priorities at the moment, but this weekend might see a change in that.I never realized how many different TV shows I watch during the week, and they aren't really shows I can just half pay attention to while playing WoW, I need to focused or I won't know what's going on. Part of it is that last year we had the writer's strike and lots of shows either had short seasons or didn't even air.Luckily…

• Weekend Progress

  17 Feb 2009 | 2:18 pm

  I'm making my way further into the Howling Fjord, and so far I haven't had any trouble completing the quests there, even soloing some group quests. I'm now on the last quest hub, at least as far as I remember, and should be moving back to Borean Tundra very soon, where I'll hopefully blow through quickly and be able to move on to new places.Somehow soloing has been really easy for me on Vonari, but it wasn't always that way. Up until Northrend I pretty much had to skip every group quest unless I had somebody to help me. There were a few I could solo, but mostly I got past those through luck…

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  Spicytuna

• PTR Patch 3.3 Testing: Glyph of Eternal Water

  Tuna

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:53 am

  One of the biggest change for all Frost Mages from the upcoming Patch 3.3, is the addition of a Glyph which will make our Water Elemental become a permanent pet. That is the Glyph of Eternal Water. Art by: John Avon I’ve been very interested in this Glyph ever since it was announced, but never got a chance to play with it on the Public Test Realms. The Glyph wasn’t available yet, or wasn’t working correctly- until now. I’ve already talked about my initial impressions of a Permanent Water Elemental HERE. Now I will talk about my hands-on play testing of the Glyph on the…

• PTR Patch 3.3 Testing: 20k Deep Freezes

  Tuna

  26 Oct 2009 | 2:32 am

  Copied my Mage over to the Public Test Realm, and also copied some pre-made Mages over as well. Holy Crap! 20,000 damage Deep Freezes! That is only self buffed too! If you just add another 13% Damage increase from only Curse of Elements, you’re looking at 22.6k Deep Freeze! The character I used was the pre-made Mage, who had 5/5 Heroic Tier 9, and had all the right gems and enchants. He had 2788 Spell Power, 29.73% Critical Strike Rating, and 500 Haste Rating. That was including [Flask of the Frost Wyrm]. The DPS I was able to produce on Dr. Boom from full health to death? 4002 DPS.

• PTR Patch 3.3 – Deep Freeze on Bosses

  Tuna

  21 Oct 2009 | 12:24 pm

  The PTR Patch Notes have been updated once again on the WoW website with a few new changes to the upcoming patches. You can view the the full patch notes here. The only reason you are here reading however, is because of the new change to Deep Freeze. The new change to Deep Freeze is: Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns. A PvE buff to a Spell that doesn’t effect the PvP aspect of it! Good job Blizzard! We have yet to see what this “large amount of damage” is, but it is nice to see that Blizzard is trying to work…

• Early Birthday Gift

  Tuna

  20 Oct 2009 | 9:22 pm

  With my Birthday coming just around the corner (the 22nd), it looks like I’ve been given an early Birthday presents- and this was given to me by the Headless Horseman. Thanks Mr. Headless Horseman! I finally got my [Sinister Squashling] pet to drop, and completed my “Hallowed Be Thy Name” achievement. Also with that achievement out of the way, I completed the “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” achievement, which then rewarded me with my Violet Proto-Drake! Even though it says the mount is a “Very Fast” mount, it is actually 310% Flying Speed-…

• Hallow’s End: Good Luck on the Mount!

  Tuna

  18 Oct 2009 | 5:17 am

  I was lucky enough to grab mine last year, and [The Horseman's Reins] is still my all-time favorite mount. Good luck to you if you are going after it this Hallow’s End. As for me, I am still missing one thing to get the required achievement from the Hallow’s End event. I still need my [Sinister Squashling] for the “Hallowed Be Thy Name” achievement. Once I get that, then finally, I will have the “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” achievement. And with that, I will get my first 310% Speed Flying Mount: [Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake]. Hopefully…

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  The Hunter's Mark

• Hunter Gear for Leveling (41-50)

  Lassirra

  18 Nov 2009 | 7:20 am

  Having gotten a few other posts I’ve been meaning to do out of the way, we can now return to our leveling gear series! I can sense your excitement permeating every pore of your body. Now that you’ve made the jump into the 40s, it’s time to start phasing out those Leather pieces and replacing them with Mail items. Just remember: don’t sacrifice stats just to go up an armor class. If you’re wearing a Leather item that has better stats on it, don’t feel obligated to upgrade to Mail just because it’s Mail. Better Mail pieces will come along soon enough,…

• The Isle of Conquest

  Lassirra

  16 Nov 2009 | 8:41 am

  I spent some time this weekend running battlegrounds for honor on my paladin to get her some PvP healing gear, and while I was running around healing anything that moved (or groaned, I guess) one thing became abundantly clear to me: there are a lot of players that have no clue what to do in the Isle of Conquest battleground or what the objectives even are. So today (to make up for yet another PSA) I’d like to talk a little bit about the Isle of Conquest and what you should know when you zone in. Overview First, what’s the point of this battleground? To put things in perspective,…

• THM Newsletter and Monthly Screenshot Contest

  Lassirra

  16 Nov 2009 | 7:13 am

  Yes, another PSA. I know, I know, you’re silently hating me right now. I promise, it will be over soon and we can get back to the good stuff. Last week, I mentioned the possibility that we would be releasing a monthly newsletter and began working on a first draft of the first issue. Well, I was sufficiently pleased with the first draft, and so it’s official–THM will now have a monthly newsletter available in addition to the content we publish here on the site. Today’s post will go over some of the details. Issue #001 The THM Newsletter will be released on a monthly…

• Hunter Trinkets in Wrath

  Lassirra

  13 Nov 2009 | 4:32 am

  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…

• Hunter 5-Man Loot from the PTR 3.3

  Lassirra

  12 Nov 2009 | 4:02 am

  I had every intention of continuing on with our Hunter Gear for Leveling series today, I really did. But then I took my weekly (or thereabouts) jaunt over to MMO-Champion to see what was up, and came across something that I actually got excited about: the new 5-man in Icecrown. Or, more specifically, the loot from the new 5-man in Icecrown. So instead, today we’re going to talk about the new loot being seen on the PTR for the upcoming Patch 3.3. I’m sure I’m not the only one that was excited when Blizzard decided to introduce epic pieces to the normal 5-man loot tables.

• 
  Blessing of Kings

• Dragon Age: First Impressions

  Rohan

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:13 am

  In the end Rocket XL did send me a copy of Dragon Age: Origins, which I received last Thursday. I've played a little bit, but I haven't got very far, so this is more first impressions than an overall review. For reference, the farthest I've gotten is just past Lothering, before the main game opens up.Origin StoriesI've done the City Elf , Mage, and Human Noble origin stories so far. The Mage and City Elf stories were really good. The Human Noble story was decent, but extremely predictable.World BuildingI love the world Bioware has created. They've done an outstanding job.I love the way elven…

• Random Comment about Ret Fixes

  Rohan

  17 Nov 2009 | 6:19 pm

  Courtesy of Icechicken of <Forgotten Crusaders>, Korialstrasz, in a discussion about new change to Deadly poison to stop Rogues from using weapon switching mods:Ret gets neat fixes all the time, it's just that all those fixes are nerfs so you don't think they are very creative at all.Made me laugh, in any case.Really disappointed to see the DI change reverted. Currently, DI is a liability on any serious content, because Bloodlust/Heroism is so important.Edit: DI changed to "This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect…

• Ad Infinitum Recruiting

  Rohan

  8 Nov 2009 | 7:13 pm

  My guild is recruiting again. We could use a few more good people. We're on the North America Lethon server, which is a medium-sized PvP server.We raid (25-mans) 3 days a week: Wednesday, Sunday, Monday from 7-11pm Pacific Standard Time.We have 4/5 Grand Crusader, and 5/9 Ulduar Hard Modes. We use DKP, with regular Auction-style bidding. We're reasonably competent, and expect people come prepared and use food and flasks.Website: ai-lethon.comAnyways, this sounds like a guild you'd be interested in, please check out our website. Or feel free to ask questions in comments to this thread.

• Micro-Transactions

  Rohan

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:29 pm

  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.I suppose this attitude is…

• Dragon Age Review

  Rohan

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:14 am

  This isn't actually a review of Dragon Age. But I do have a decent Google ranking, so it would amuse me if this ranked high up in the search results.On Sep 21, I received the following email:I’m working alongside Electronic Arts on the release of Dragon Age: Origins across multiple platforms, including Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, and PC. We thought you might be interested in receiving game related assets and a review copy.... It would be great if you could share your initial impressions of the game with your readers prior to the release date on 11/3. If you’d be interested in…

• 
  Mystic Chicanery

• Pugnacious Pally

  Nibuca

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:34 pm

  I’ve decided to play and gear up my Paladin a bit. Don’t be alarmed.. my first love is all things Warlockery.. but sometimes the group just needs a healer.. and I feel bad having one.. but not having her properly geared. Wednesday night I shuffled her gear around and made sure I had as many of the BOE/Badge purchasable gear upgrades (gemmed and enchanted) as I could. Mostly Tatia’s in Naxx-10 gear with a smattering of other gear. Last night I logged in with the intention of running the heroic daily.. and maybe a H-ToC if I could get one in. After a few minutes of asking in…

• Rawr! I’m a tank!

  Nibuca

  19 Nov 2009 | 1:24 pm

  At the moment (patch 3.2.2) Deep Destruction is the acknowledged “best” Warlock DPS spec. I know this, you know this, we all get it. I’ve got it as my off-spec but haven’t seen the uber numbers with it so I continue to play as Affliction**. A few days ago I wandered over to EJ with the intention of double checking my off-spec rotation and point allocation. While wandering the forum I found this lovely thread theorycrafting the “best spec” for patch 3.3. I was thrilled to find that deep affliction with felpuppy (my favorite setup) is currently mathified to…

• Through a keyhole darkly

  Nibuca

  18 Nov 2009 | 9:22 am

  While listening to Rawrcast I heard Stomp say that she’s “grinding exalted with the running circles in Dalaran boss”. I’m aware of that boss. I know of people who do that.. they hang out in Dalaran waiting for someone to pick them up from LFG so they can “have fun”. Later in the show Hafrot mentioned that he’s grinding Rep with Zandalar.. and Stomp responded that she “didn’t have time for that”. Wait a minute. Step back. Stomp’s running circles in Dalaran.. and doesn’t have time for other rep grinding. Really?

• Getting in touch with my inner druid

  Nibuca

  17 Nov 2009 | 10:54 am

  My baby druid is now level 56. I keep hoping the more I play her that I’ll come up with a compelling reason to level her. I think at this point I’m leveling her because I want to fly like a birdie.. and because I’m fascinated by the -idea- of a druid. I like the concept of changing my physical shape to fit the circumstances. I like being a white/pink kitty. I love popping into cheetah form to sprint that last couple of feet to catch the boat. Even the evil demon seal form is useful at time. BUT I don’t enjoy druid combat. Because I’m leveling I’ve…

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-15

  Nibuca

  15 Nov 2009 | 12:15 am

  Sad to report I found another reason to use WowJackass.com. RL Ninja'd tailoring patterns from PUG. # RT @AzerothUnited Hearts, Hands and Voices Kickoff Podcast! http://bit.ly/2UEoWP # Hmm Green Hills of Strangle bag sell for 20-50s on Ally AH.. and 1.5-2g on Goblin AH. Wonder if it'd be worthwhile to "flip" them. # Goblin to baby mage: Heya, go kill me some water elementals who are totally immune to frost spells. (cackle) Baby Mage: Go get stuffed! # /grumble all of baby mage's quests are orange/red. Not sure where to go. LVL 36 #iblamesyrana # I wanted to goto a…

• 
  Kill Ten Rats

• Selling Powers

  Zubon

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm

  Returning to last week’s big theme of item shops, City of Heroes shipped Super Booster IV: Martial Arts last week (discussion thread). In addition to emotes and costume pieces, it includes a power (like the other Boosters): Ninja Run power: Dash through the city with the agility of a ninja! The Ninja Run power is a travel power enabled through the purchase of Super Booster IV: Martial Arts and is available for use at level 4. Use Ninja Run to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies as you increase your run speed and leaping abilities, and the best part? It doesn’t use one of…

• Breaking From the Collective Tempo

  Ravious

  19 Nov 2009 | 4:43 am

  Borderlands has two speeds of play, much like its ancestor Diablo II:  paced and rushed.  When I play alone, I am going at my own speed.  It might be a slow safe sniper battle or a quick chest run in one of the Havens, but if a pseudo-scientist looked at some waves or something, I feel that there would be an alignment.  A pacing tempo, if you will.  When I play with others, even close friends, not only does the tempo markedly increase but the speed of play is not always in alignment with the me.  Frenetic is a good word for this in its most emotional definition. I don’t like that…

• How to Write Patch Notes

  Zubon

  18 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm

  Reading the latest League of Legends patch notes, I noticed this format: Tantrum Damage modified from 115/130/145/160/175 to 100/120/140/160/180 Curse of the Sad Mummy Duration reduced from 3 to 2.5 Notice the “from” and “to” with exact numbers. It does not say, “Tantrum Damage modified. Curse of the Sad Mummy Duration reduced.” This is especially important for test notes, as you want people to test if the numbers actually come out that way, especially since some of the notes are correcting ability numbers or text so that they match (ditto for graphic…

• Easy with the talky, guys

  Julian

  18 Nov 2009 | 6:06 am

  Introduced my wife to Dragon Age: Origins last night. Here I was hoping for something that would impress Ms. “I’ve got books by Tennessee Williams and Dylan Thomas in my collection and you don’t”, but it didn’t go so well. She really disliked the talking intermissions. Or rather, she disliked how frequent and long they were. Also disliked the interaction via multiple possible answers, I imagine because she couldn’t completely gauge the result of the choices before selecting a response. And I can’t say I blame her too much. On the length issue, I mean.

• Random Variation

  Zubon

  17 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm

  Given a large number of trials, any random series will produce a large number of perverse-looking short streaks. If 100 people flip a coin 5 times, you should expect 6 of them to get the same result on every flip, but it will look strange to those 6 people. One-in-a-million chances happen all the time in a world of seven billion people. If millions of WoW players attack 100 times a day each, that is a lot of chances for long streaks of misses (and longer strings of hits). More recently for me, it took two weeks to complete the Chasing Marcia achievement because one of the daily quests just…

• 
  Tank like a girl

• Radio Silence

  Kadomi

  17 Nov 2009 | 8:12 am

  It’s been a couple weeks since I last posted, time flies, I know. I am at a very difficult point of time in my WoW lifespan: the time of no goals. This is a first in my WoW time. I have played since March 2005, as Kadomi since April 2006 and yet, there’s always been something to keep me going, always something to do. Right now? Not so much. My main has all professions at 450. No option of acquiring epic plans through any means. All Northrend reps are at Exalted, the only exception being Frenzyheart, only at Revered. I should maybe finish that up for the Mercenary achievement. I am…

• Addon Corner: Tekkub attack!

  Kadomi

  27 Oct 2009 | 4:57 am

  It’s been forever since I posted about my UI, which I am still as passionate about as ever. I recently got the info that people miss my addon spotlights, so today I bring you an addon feature. To make it even more special, I won’t talk about one addon, I will talk about many! Consider this post an ode to Tekkub, one of the most prolific addon authors out there. All of Tekkub’s addons have the same premise: brief, efficient code. None of them do anything super-flashy, but they will all not tax any resources and are fantastic at what they do. I will only post about those…

• Level: the interview

  Kadomi

  26 Oct 2009 | 3:38 am

  As I mentioned a while back, I was interviewed via e-mail for an article in the Swedish magazine Level, about my guild. Daughters of the Horde and its Alliance counterpart Daughters OfThe Alliance on US-Bronzebeard are as far as I know the two largest girls-only guilds in the world. I have been an officer in DotH since 2006, and was interviewed as representative of DotH. How did the idea of an all female guild emerge? Why just girls? Tell me about the background. Daughters of the Horde was born in the Livejournal community wow_ladies. This is currently the biggest WoW community in LJ, with…

• This and that

  Kadomi

  22 Oct 2009 | 8:41 am

  It’s been a while since I have done…story time! The mindless rambling of stuff that I have been doing day to day in WoW and which I used to post on Mondays. However, between the Sunday raiding and having to be at work at 7 am, I just have to squeeze it in this late in the week. So what have I been up to? Not much, and yet at the same time a lot! First off, my shameful leveling project. It should be a testament to the ease of leveling in general, but in particular hunters when I can proclaim that my hunter just hit 70. I rolled her in the first week of August, and give her a…

• TPS revisited

  Kadomi

  13 Oct 2009 | 5:00 am

  Here we are, in 3.2.2, the next big content patch is on the horizon, and I have wanted to talk about the changes that 3.2 brought to prot warriors for ages. I just never got around to writing it. What’s changed? Devastate has, that’s what. Previously basically the support ability that let you stack 5 Sunders with a threat bonus, Devastate is now almost back to the role it had in TBC. It’s made a huge comeback in our rotations when its weapon damage was increased to 60% plus an additional bonus damage of 20% per stack of Sunder Armor. This makes Devastate one of the top 3…

• 
  Phantomella's Place

• And the rest...

  17 Nov 2009 | 12:43 am

  Gratz to warlock Knickerthief and priestess Phantovesta who both just dinged 40, gaining their faster mounts and, in 'vesta's case, shadowform. 'Vesta celebrated with a Darkmoon Special Reserve when she got to Darnassus, KT by, er, relieving a lot of the Ironforge NPCs of their undies... All the Runetotem family are now at level 40 or higher :D

• 'dreya go boom...

  13 Nov 2009 | 5:09 am

  Gratz to the druidic Phantodreya who hit level 40 earlier today, gaining moonkin form and her fast saber :) So what was the first thing she did when she morphed to a moonkin? Yup, she /danced. I'm so proud :D

• Be afraid. Be very afraid...

  11 Nov 2009 | 12:18 am

  Who is that gnome-sized figure in plate armour astride a swift white mechanostrider? Yes, just in case the presence of Meaniewiggles didn't give it away, it's my fellow warrior Gothfan who just dinged 40! Gratz, GF :D

• And the rest of them...

  9 Nov 2009 | 12:38 pm

  Priest Phantovesta, druid Phantodreya and warlock Knickerthief have all followed Gothfan and dinged 39 over the last 24 hours; gratz to them :) Phantowyn, meanwhile, picked up the achievement for 100 Dalaran cooking awards today; she says the cooking dailies are much easier for a herbalist who can track the mushrooms, carrots or herbs needed for some of them.I spent the other evening in SW, and who's come back to Azeroth? Fob! Welcome back, Fobby, and gz on hitting 80 :D (The pumpkin head sitting next to him was an AFK Alec)

• Awww!

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:02 am

  Hey, everybody, Downhere again! There are two pets available now in the Blizzard Store for £9 (or €10) each - Lil' K.T., a mini Lich who laughs evilly and hurls an occasional lightning bolt, and the Pandaren Monk, who returns your /bows to you, and runs through some Pandaren kung fu moves (if you've seen Kung Fu Panda you'll get the idea) if he gets bored. He's very cute, and we all have pet Pandaren now (they're account-bound) :)[Additionally, half the cost of the Pandaren monk will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, who were behind one of the most heartwarming WoW stories, until the…

• 
  Stropp's World

• Blog Discovery Channel – Two Good Reads

  Stropp

  20 Nov 2009 | 5:46 am

  A couple of new blogs have popped up on my radar over the last few weeks that have provided some insightful discussion into the topic of games, gaming, and game design. These are quality blogs that I’d like to give a shout out too. First up, I saw a post by Wolfshead recommending a blog called, That’s A Terrible Idea. It’s written by a couple of self-confessed amateur game designers, Evizaer and Motstandet and covers the area of game design focusing on MMO design. These guys have put up a number of thought provoking posts on the subject of game design, and while I…

• What Conan Wants, Conan Gets

  Stropp

  15 Nov 2009 | 5:07 am

  If Conan wanted me back in the game, he has his wish, to a certain extent anyway. I decided on Saturday afternoon to accede to the wishes of the muscle-bound warrior king and took Funcom up on their offer of two free weeks. After all, I didn’t really want 6′6″ of angry muscle smashing down my door and screaming, “Get to da CHOPPA! Da CHOPPAAA!” (Sorry wrong movie.) Doors aren’t cheap to fix you know, let alone the hassle of getting a locksmith on the weekend. I did however decide against actually subscribing for any of the payment plans. I’m currently…

• Modern Warfare 2

  Stropp

  14 Nov 2009 | 3:10 am

  Wow! That exclamation isn’t because I’ve played it and have been thoroughly impressed, it’s because I’ve seen the sales figures for the first 24 hours, and then the price of the game on Steam. In the first 24 hours MW2 sold over 4 million copies. The price for the game on Steam is $89.99. That would make it (if the price is the same in stores) the most expensive software only game (in US dollars) that I’ve seen. I think there was something called Armored Fist (or the like) that sold for $250ish with a big chunky hardware controller, but as far as I’m aware…

• Conan Wants Me Back

  Stropp

  11 Nov 2009 | 6:19 pm

  Like a few other bloggers today, this morning I received an email from Funcom offering a bunch of benefits to encourage me to resubscribe to Age of Conan. These range from some free time to give the game another go, to a beta spot in The Secret World in exchange for a three month subscription. For longer subscriptions there are also additional benefits. Quite honestly, I find myself a little tempted by this offer. Even the concept of paying for a guaranteed place in the TSW beta doesn’t bother me all that much, after all if it helps what is looking like a very interesting game make…

• EA Layoffs – Piracy Is Not To Blame

  Stropp

  10 Nov 2009 | 3:39 am

  Tobold has just posted a thought for today: That the EA Layoffs are due to the piracy of their games. Now first of all, after re-reading, I’m not sure if he’s being serious or just being a tad sarcastic. For the purpose of this post, I’ll assume he’s being serious when he says: “What did people think would happen to a company making bad games and being constantly robbed, in the middle of an economic crisis? If you wanted to save an EA programmer’s job, all you had to do was buy some EA games legitimately” in response to the amount of…

• 
  World of Warcraft

• Pandaren WoW pet now sold out in the US?

  Glenn M.

  11 Nov 2009 | 10:59 am

  Just a week after the in-game pets for World of Warcraft were announced, one of the two variations has apparently been sold out, just goes to show how...

• World of Warcraft Patch 3.2.2a now live

  Ryan F.

  28 Sep 2009 | 7:43 am

  It hasn't even been a full week since patch 3.2.2 for World of Warcraft came out, so now we're looking at a follow-up to make sure the game still ru...

• BlizzCon 2009: 20,000 tickets sold out in eight minutes

  Glenn M.

  6 Aug 2009 | 6:20 pm

  If you're still stewing in your seat thinking about attending BlizzCon 2009, you're too late. Don't worry too much, though, you're not the only one....

• Major farming: World of Warcraft sells 8.6 million in the US

  Glenn M.

  29 Jul 2009 | 12:30 pm

  WoW is wow. Since its release back in November 24th, World of Warcraft has farmed its way to 8.6 million copies sold in US retail alone, with 800,00...

• Toast to the Lich King - Rise of the Lick King Stein Collection

  Glenn M.

  1 Jul 2009 | 4:48 pm

  Ever wonder what the World of Warcraft characters do in them taverns? While it really doesn't take much out of the imagination, the Death Knights an...

• 
  Honor's Code

• No Arthas Until 2010

  Honors Code

  20 Nov 2009 | 6:12 am

  Greg Street, the mild mannered developer who has a secret identity as The GhostCralwer, recently did an interview with MMOZine. It's a pretty good read but there was a major clue as to the timing of IceCrown release and bosses.MMOZine: Will all the bosses in Icecrown Citadel be made available immediately or are you going to stagger them, as you did in Sunwell Plateau?GS:Well we've not announced when it's coming out yet but we don't want to throw players against challenging raid content right over the holidays, so we're trying to avoid that a little bit.That would seem to indicate that we…

• Five Bullets in Your Six Shooter

  Honors Code

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:50 am

  The Devs have released news on how Ice Crown content will be gated for release. After using gating in Trial of the Crusader, it comes as little surprise to me that the Developers have chosen to gate IceCrown.Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates…

• Gold and Leveling Guides

  Honors Code

  17 Nov 2009 | 8:56 am

  The Blogsphere is experiencing its own bit of drama right now with 3 well read, heavy trafficked bloggers putting their Two Copper. It started with everyone’s favorite Goblin, Gevlon of Greedy Goblin, posting about email conversations between himself and Marko of My Two Copper. Both of these guys run blogs dedicated to making lots and lots of gold in World of Warcraft, and Marko was trying to get Gevlon to advertise for a Gold Guide that Marko made and is trying to sell. Gevlon called on none other than Tobold as a witness to verify certain parts of his account. Tobold was kind enough to…

• Keep Your Old Gear

  Honors Code

  16 Nov 2009 | 1:16 pm

  Currently we are up to Twins in Trial of the Grand Crusader. I have a feeling we’ll get those two down easier than Faction Champions. After that, it’s time for Anub’arak! My job will change dramatically. On normal, I tank the big ole bug and Boston (DK) wrangles the Adds. He acknowledged later that I probably should have been on Adds originally, but it’s Normal mode and really didn’t matter. When we face Anub’arak on Heroic, I’ll be on the Adds. Why are Paladins and Warriors fantastic Add Tanks on Anub’arak? The Adds have this lovely little debuff called Expose Weakness which…

• Frosty Gear in 3.3

  Honors Code

  16 Nov 2009 | 12:53 pm

  In past patches, I’ve only given a cursory glance at new gear as it’s discovered on the PTR and reported on sites like MMO-Champion. I figured that A, the gear could change and 2, Petrus on Maintankadin would update his gear list and I’d check it out then. With Ice Crown, I’ve decided to take a more proactive approach. I’ve looked at all the gear coming out and I’m looking to answer some basic questions. Is there anything in the new Ice Crown 5 mans, Normal or Heroic, I need. Are there any slots where my current strong gear, like my 245 Bracers and Helm might be superior to…

• 
  2 and 2 half-paws.

• I'm not organized.

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:07 am

  Coming back from Basic I thought it would be really easy when I got home because I was used to waking up early and I had so much more energy from being in much better shape.All the married people with kids who are reading this... check that again: I thought it would be -easy- to come home to my wife and two year old and 3 month old and fall into a nice routine where everything was organized.So now that that has failed to happen I'm stuck trying to get something that works. I've thrown off my wife's organization and I've utterly failed to bring anything to the table. Well, she carries the kids…

• On clothing.

  19 Nov 2009 | 3:27 pm

  Thanks to dubiously awesome hunter sources:Wulfa go to: http://www.wow.com/2009/07/08/hunter-gear-for-the-level-80-beginning-raider/Whee. One more item off my list of things to do for Wulfa now that I'm back.

• So he had 24 hours.

  17 Nov 2009 | 3:23 pm

  And hasn't posted anything so...I'm one uping him.Ishvi(who is fully retired from WoW).Ishvi asked someone.Someone said yes.So yeah.If you know him via other means.... you should congrats him.(my mother fussily pointed out he's only had 22 hours to spread the news)

• Slightly Distressed

  17 Nov 2009 | 5:03 am

  So Damm came home late Thursday night. It was and is wonderful. Both Miniorc and Orclette seemed to bond right away and last night I caught him fussing over Miniorc's cold head (I don't know if anyone but a mother would understand but it was really endearing to me). As for myself ... I think I learned a lot during his absence: mainly how to be independent. I lived with my parents until I got married and then lived with Damm. And during his training not only was I by myself but I was the sole caretaker of not one but two kids. Hooah (or however you spell that. I still can't say it right)! I be…

• Healing is easy I think.

  15 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pm

  It is so easy to top the healing charts in battlegrounds. This tells me that I'm effectively the only one healing. Because I'm not good at this and I'm always at the top(3 of 3 battlegrounds).Just got done with AV. Someone capped? a FW? and this led to the game taking forever? I dunno. We were up 430 to about 100. We won 202 to 0. The last bit from 430 to 202 was a long long stretch of me running into this tower thing.... healing for long times... then getting wiped out by a sea of red. I'd ask what to do to keep myself alive more but.. when you suddenly have 8 curses and 4 of whatever the DK…

• 
  Misery - a shadow priest blog

• RIP SW:P

  Merlot

  16 Nov 2009 | 3:15 am

  In a recent test realm build shadow word: pain vanished from the tooltip for shadowform, removing it from the list of shadow priest dots that benefit from haste. I didn't jump on it at the time, although with hindsight the writing was clearly on the wall for shadow word: pain. This weekend, a blue post confirmed the change and explained why: We removed shadow word: pain from scaling with haste because we thought shadow dps was too high with all three dots hasted. There is a bug where you can get big sw:p dots and keep them rolling at that magnitude forever since the spell gets constantly…

• Goddess

  Merlot

  13 Nov 2009 | 4:13 am

  Queen Lana'thel. She's a blood elf. And a queen. And a vampire. Sorry, vampyr. Have you seen her abilities? Vampiric bite, essence of the vampyr queen, shroud of sorrow. You might as well add "immune to shadow priests", we're all going to be too busy gasping in awe and reverence. Do you think it's possible to defect to the Scourge? Does Arthas accept living recruits?

• LF tank, last spot

  Merlot

  9 Nov 2009 | 6:05 am

  The perennial tank shortage has struck Darkspear again. Pugging heroics is torture, even for the daily. And what fills me with dread is the thought of competing not only with my server for a suitable meat shield, but the entire battlegroup. Because that's the worrying prospect facing us in the next patch when Blizzard introduces the new grouping tool. It sounds fantastic on paper, and wow.com has certainly spared no expense in singing its praises. Group with anyone, get transported automatically to the instance, and pick up a bunch of special rewards in the process. But look at the facts:…

• Tales from the test realm #14

  Merlot

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:33 am

  KT: FOOLS, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE COME HERE. NOW YOU WILL D... You there priest, what is that? Priest: Hmm? Oh, you mean Lil KT, he's my new pet. KT: Pet? It's a... mini... me.... Warlock: Haha, "groovy baby"! KT: SILENCE MINION! Where did this abomination come from? Warlock: What did he call me? He did not just call me that. KT: Oh sorry, I thought it was the imp talking. Warlock: Can we burn him now already? KT: WAIT. Priest: I bought him, innit. Those Kirin Tor dudes are breedin em like puppies. KT: ... Warlock: Prepare to die, lich bitch... KT: Lich bitch? — Priest, how much did you pay…

• Consolidating healing buffs

  Merlot

  28 Oct 2009 | 7:01 am

  So as we've seen, if the current PTR iteration of vampiric embrace makes it to live, the spell will become a 30-minute self buff, providing its health regeneration effect to our party passively. It's a nice change given the sad state of neglect the spell has fallen into in recent patches, and means it's much more likely to find some use in future raids. But it's not going to fix the spell's two biggest problems — the party-only restriction and the minimal amount of health returned. One way to put vampiric embrace firmly back at the core of shadow priest design is to push its effect raid…

• 
  Tobold's MMORPG Blog

• Phishing alert: Jade Tiger e-mails

  Tobold

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:09 pm

  Please be warned that today somebody swamped the internet with an extremely well made phishing mail, which looks very much like a genuine mail from Blizzard, and promises you a Jade Tiger in-game pet if you just fill out a survey. Of course to do so you'll have to type your Battle.net login and password on the fake website us.blizzard-survey.com. And the next time you log in after that, instead of finding a Jade Tiger, you'll find your characters naked and all your gold and possessions gone.Braving the dark corners of the internet I gave a fake userid and password to the phishing website,…

• Dragon Age: Origins - Review

  Tobold

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:30 pm

  FTC disclaimer: I do have a material relationship with EA Bioware insofar as they did send me a free review copy of Dragon Age: Origins. Nevertheless the copy of the game that I actually played was a “Digital Deluxe” version bought via a Steam pre-order, thus including all existing additional downloadable content. I'd claim my opinion isn't influenced by a second free copy, but I'm disclosing this information so you can decide that for yourself.This review of Dragon Age: Origins will include several comparisons of DAO to MMORPGs in general, and specifically World of Warcraft. That might…

• Thought for the day: Persistence

  Tobold

  18 Nov 2009 | 11:36 pm

  It is claimed that a MMORPG is fundamentally different from a single-player RPG in that the MMO game has a persistent world: When you log off, the world continues to exist and things happen while you are away. In a single-player game the world freezes when you save it, and starts exactly there when you load that game. But is that really true? When you log back into a MMORPG, has the world really changed in your absence? Or isn't the change limited to other players having gained a level while you were gone, and the content of the auction house having changed?In the current common model of…

• Mirkwood vs. Cataclysm

  Tobold

  17 Nov 2009 | 11:21 pm

  Technically I am subscribed to both Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft, only that the LotRO subscription is the "lifetime" deal. So I should be playing both games, and I should be equally interested in both both upcoming expansions, LotRO's Siege of Mirkwood coming out in two weeks, and WoW's Cataclysm coming out next year. But in reality I'm highly excited about Cataclysm, while Mirkwood leaves me cold.Now you could think that this is because I'm actively playing WoW, but haven't played LotRO at all this year. But there is more to it than that. Imagine my situation was reversed,…

• Do not buy gold guides!

  Tobold

  17 Nov 2009 | 7:11 am

  Earlier this year a fellow blogger named Markco asked me to have a look at his WoW economics blog, and whether I would allow him to do a guest post on this blog. I had a look at his blog, which looked interesting enough, and allowed his guest post, which created a lot of traffic on his blog. Once he was well established and got lots of visitors, Markco transformed his blog: It was now not only offering WoW economics advice, but was also selling Markco's gold guide. Markco then repeatedly pestered me to promote his gold guide, promising I would make a lot of money. I refused. I do consider…

• 
  Aspect of the Hare

• Pike’s Got Mail!

  Pike

  18 Nov 2009 | 2:29 pm

  If I have an Achilles’ heel when it comes to blogging, it’s answering e-mail. I stink at it. First of all, I get a lot of it. Secondly, I often read it via my cellphone at work. Then I compose a long, grandiose reply in my head. Thirdly, when I get home from work, half the time I can’t remember if I actually answered a certain e-mail or if I just… well, composed a long, grandiose reply in my head. Then when I go to find said e-mail in my inbox, it’s squeezed in between blog comment notifications and all sorts of non-blog-related e-mail and the like. So then all…

• My Bank Alt is a Bat

  Pike

  16 Nov 2009 | 2:12 pm

  Yup. She is also having a fantastic day, and she smells divine! What about YOURS?

• Of Healer Guilt and DPS Envy

  Pike

  14 Nov 2009 | 7:14 am

  Back when hunters were my only endgame characters, I would get super jealous of those healers and tanks who could seemingly daintily dip a toe into LFG and be in a group seconds later, while I still sat waiting… waiting… waiting… I saw being a healer or tank as being like the Beatles or Elvis as people flung themselves onto their car. Everyone wants you. Everyone loves you. You are needed. And ya know what? Having an 80 healer has largely proven to nail that point home. On my druid I get invites for PuG heroics in a matter of seconds, most days. But there is another side to…

• Ever Wonder What It Would Be Like to Live in Northrend?

  Pike

  12 Nov 2009 | 4:25 pm

  Today was my day off. I was going to go do errands and grocery shopping and stuff, but then I looked out my window and saw this: I know it’s hard to believe, but under that big pile of snow? That would be my car. AKA “Epic Geekmobile” (the upgrade from my last car, the normal “Geekmobile”, may it rest in pieces), AKA “Nautilus“. So I promptly changed my mind about the errands business and decided to stay home. I’ve got oatmeal and ramen and Transformers fruit snacks and Dr. Pepper; I can hold out a bit. Then I remembered I have to go to work at…

• No need to fear, Underbog is here!

  Pike

  12 Nov 2009 | 8:30 am

  So, ladies and gentlemen. Underbog. Let’s talk about it. Superfun Coilfang instance for level 63ish. Was great fun as a heroic back-in-the-day. Is still great fun as a level 63ish instance now. And guys, if you’re like me, and a.) dailies got old and b.) playing the Auction House isn’t really your thing, then Underbog is the instance for you. Here’s why: Half of the mobs are skinnable. They give you Knothide Leather. Which you can sell. The other half of the mobs are herb-able. Half of the time they give you junk, but there’s a ton of Ancient Lichen laying around…

• 
  WoW Vault - The Ultimate Resource

• New Fan Art - Shadow Priest

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:53 pm

  As a part of our Anniversary Celebration month we're spotlighting player FanArt! Check out this linkink Shadow Priest.Shadow PriestDo you have...

• Pilgrim's Bounty

  20 Nov 2009 | 10:34 am

  From World of Warcraft.comCome celebrate Pilgrim's Bounty with us! It's a time for reflecting on your journeys and good fortune, sharing...

• Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression

  18 Nov 2009 | 10:06 am

  Slorkuz has just released an official and somewhat lengthly statment about Icecrown Raid Progression.Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing...

• New Poll - How long have you played WoW?

  18 Nov 2009 | 8:57 am

  Now that World of Warcraft has been out for nearly 5 years and has grown to incredible sizes, we at WoWVault decided it was time to find out how long...

• Hogger Hunting Day!

  18 Nov 2009 | 8:50 am

  This month, in addition to all the other things going on at WoWVault we want to celebrate with one more event! HOGGER HUNTING! What better way to...

• 
  World of Warcast: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• Episode 94, Nov. 19, 2009

  10 Nov 2009 | 5:58 pm

  Azerothunited.com Alachia vs. the RNG Boss Blizzard sells vanity pets Patch 3.3 WoW banned in China Printwarcraft.com is live Twitter podcast list This week in WoW This week's PFQ

• Episode 93, Nov. 2, 2009

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:09 pm

  Where has Starman gone? Trial of the Crusader's gear discrepency Flickr group Warcraft and Windows 7 WoW's astounding numbers Flickr daily challenge Warcast on Google Wave This week's PFQ

• Hallow's End 2009 Minicast, Oct. 19, 2009

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:20 pm

  Hallow's End 2009 Minicast

• Episode 92, Sep. 21, 2009

  21 Sep 2009 | 6:44 pm

  Authenticator problems Apprecitating WoW by seeing other games Old Azeroth screenshot project What defines 'hardcore'? Pirate Day! Twitter responses "Daily" Challenge New Warcast Facebook group Figureprints Price Drop Print Warcraft

• Brewfest Minicast, Sep. 20, 2009

  20 Sep 2009 | 9:30 am

  Brewfest 2009

• 
  I Sheep Things...

• Stret ching Out the Dis cus sion.

  Rhii

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:35 am

  I don’t like social networking. This may sounds silly coming out of the mouth of a blogger, though I’m hardly the diehard post-a-day variety. But it’s true, I don’t like social networking. I let my Facebook sit inactive for months (as Adreanna can tell you, it gets a little heated on there at times, what with all my friends wondering whether or not I’ve died). I feel like there’s something very low energy and very low effort about Facebook, while at the same time being very invasive. And it creates an obligation of return. So what Facebook does to my…

• Mutiny on the Bloodtide…

  Rhii

  15 Nov 2009 | 12:48 pm

  Our guild is under new leadership. We’d been under a lot of strain to start moving the guild forward. The most progressed members were quitting in favor of finding raiding guilds, and we were getting less and less ready to start making progress of our own. We’d gone beyond stagnating to sliding backwards. People were discontent and there was open fighting in guild chat. Some key members and an officer quit because of the quarrel. People were getting kicked, and friendships (including one of mine) were irreparably destroyed. Basically, things were going downhill FAST, and the guild…

• WoW and the Long-Distance Relationship

  Rhii

  11 Nov 2009 | 11:44 am

  Nael and I live in different states.  We always have, throughout the whole course of our relationship. When we met, I lived in southern Maine and he lived in Massachusetts. It was a fairly long drive, but not horribly inconvenient for weekend visits etc. After a month or two, he moved back to his original home state in the midwest, and two months later, I relocated for school. We’re currently both living in the Midwest, but about five hours apart. We manage to scrape a couple of weekends a month together, but we have yet to spend more than three or four consecutive days in the same…

• Quick One

  Rhii

  10 Nov 2009 | 7:43 am

  Just a quick one, I’m sure the people that really know what’s going on will be all over this in a few hours like small children on a bowl of M&Ms, but the most recent PTR patch notes include this nugget: Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others. It’s fair, I think, though still a “band-aid” fix. It balances the concerns that led to the LOH nerf in the first place with the very legitimate complaints that paladins had about it. And it goes a long way to restoring…

• Building a Better Guild

  Rhii

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:04 pm

  My guild now has close to thirty 80s. I am raring to get into some raids… seriously, Naxx10 should not be out of reach for us at this point. We have three mainspec tanks with good enough gear to get moving on things, supposedly we have three mainspec healers (though one of them is not very good, and one might as well be imaginary for all I’ve seen her online) and a whole busload of dps. But what’s happening is this: any player with the requisite experience for raid leading is already PuGging it every week. Our GM is, how shall we say it, flaky? and won’t schedule…

• 
  Too Many Annas

• Thursday Already?

  Anna

  19 Nov 2009 | 8:57 am

  I’m experiencing the “busy warp” time phenomenon, whereby the busier you are, the more you don’t realize that time is passing. Normally, my mornings involve sitting down with some tea and writing a blog post.  This week, they’ve involved tea and two fiction stories, a NaNo, some character stuff for an upcoming D&D game, and realizing that we had nothing left in the house to eat. Oops. Time is weird. Anyhow – cool things are working, and big scary things, but overall the RP is chugging along and I hope to have some fic for you either today or…

• Turning a Chat Log into a Story

  Anna

  16 Nov 2009 | 9:28 am

  Running an addon that logs chat conversations is a huge boon to roleplayers, especially if you want to refer back to them for later or out-of-game writing. I use the addon WoWScribe, which lets you choose what chats you want to follow – for me, I am always logging /say, /yell, /whisper, /guild, and our in character and out of character chats. It saves the logs as .txt files in your WoW directory, and is really quite simple to run. But when you go into your logs folder and open the chatlog, what you get is something like this: 11/15 23:38:46.890  Arrens says: Do tell Ms. Mathers I send her…

• Recommended Read: Consequences

  Anna

  12 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pm

  In relation to what’s been mentioned here, Bricu over at WTT:RP has some excellent thoughts on what’s been going on, particularly what’s happening between him and Aely. I wanted to hilight this because of some of the RP things that it illustrates. First – the conflict is between Bricu and Aely. It’s not between me and Bricu’s Player. And while I didn’t give him a lot of warning about what was coming when she exploded at him, he knew she was upset and was planning to confront him, and he and I were both OK with that.  If he’d told me to hold her…

• Aftermath

  Anna

  11 Nov 2009 | 12:53 pm

  Last night was… well, pretty intense. There was a lot of great RP, and there will likely be even more great RP as we deal with the aftermath of it all. The short version? [The evening culminated] in a raid by the Stormwind Guard, two near-arrests, three strained marriages, a couple of damaged friendships, and one of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins telling another of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins to go fuck themselves, while the third of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins stood there and shook her head in disbelief. There’s probably going to be an…

• Guest Post: Paying the Fiddler

  Anna

  10 Nov 2009 | 4:21 pm

  This is by the estimable Tarquin ap Danwryith – who posted it today on the Wildfire Riders boards. It’s an excellent example of interacting with Lore characters without turning them into something they’re not.  It’s also a very cool way of looking at the Wildfire Riders and how they interact with Old Town – the part of Stormwind that they both haunt and are fiercely proud of. Many of the Riders actually live or rent apartments there. In short, it’s awesome, and I hope you all enjoy it. Edgar Pomeroy rested his back against the long-dead king who gave…

• 
  Armaggedon's coming

• Resto Shaman, Where For Art Thou?

  gnomeaggedon

  19 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  The question was asked on Twisted Nether Blogcast the other day Where are the Resto Shaman Blogs? Ok, that wasn’t the question, but for once I was “there” so I am just quoting based on my short term memory. My immediate response was to reel of a series of blogs that deal to some extent or another with Resto Shaman. You can find them on my ReadByGnome page as well as listed out below, but still it raised an interesting thought. Priest blogs… Dime a dozen Tree Blogs… Just waiting for the forest fire to thin them out… Pally Blogs… Boring… Well how…

• Now We’re Talking: DPS

  gnomeaggedon

  18 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Now we’re talking! I am being appreciated for what I am, who I am… DPS! Sure it took a Shadow Priest to acknowldge me, but Gnomeaggedon has a lot to say on this subject, so thanks for the invite Cassandri, let me begin. Whoah there little Gnome! What make you think Cass was talking about you? Ummm Mage = DPS in it’s purest sense, so of course she is talking about me. Pffft you think you can heal, but I can’t DPS? Step aside little Gnome before a cloven hoof tattoos your bald spot! Cassandri brings us up to speed: In truth I don’t think about DPS much when I’m…

• Work Blog Police Getting You Down?

  gnomeaggedon

  18 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  This is a post in many parts, most of them not mine, but let me get straight to the cookies and cocoa, because I know you want to comment but the blog police (as opposed to the Blizzard police) are bringing you down man. Aunty TJ mentioned a little Firefox Plugin… ONE THAT LET’S YOU COMMENT DIRECTLY FROM YOUR FEEDREADER! You back yet? Got it installed? Good back on track... The way I think of TJ Aunty TJ, Temerity Jane to many, TJ to most and I’m sure quite a lot more names to a few. I think of her as Aunty TJ. Not the kind of Aunty that you hide from under your bed when she…

• Two Parts Fail, One Part Win

  gnomeaggedon

  17 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  He was the king of the Huntards. The kind of Hunter that makes even Huntards cringe. Then there were the WSG flag carriers that were too 1337 to carry the flag. Then there was the gift I received on the last day of my holiday. King of the Huntards I was in AB when I got a whisper asking me to heal HCoS. Actually, there was no whisper, just a blind invite. I had to decline multiple times before I got a break in the action (also known as death) to whisper him. I told him I was in AB thus couldn’t join him. His response… An invite. Unfortunately (on so many levels) the AB was a quick…

• Squidly’s Tips: How to use LFG

  gnomeaggedon

  16 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  Invite people! I’ve been pugging a lot. I mean everything. Sometimes I’m not even in LFG and someone plucks me out of nowhere to heal. Sometimes I start joining myself up to LFG and I am grabbed before I even complete my selection. Sometimes I join LFG and… Nothing. Hours can go by with no bites on my instance fishing line. Lately I have found myself starting groups just because, well the reason I joined LFG was I want to run an instance, so spending even 10 minutes fishing in Dalaran is a waste of my limited time. So here’s some tips for getting a group together. Join…

• 
  Automagica!

• UI Blueprint

  29 Oct 2009 | 8:48 pm

  What better way to pass the time during a boring meeting? So I sketched up what I'm thinking of doing for my fresh UI which I will setup this weekend.Yeah I know I'm a talented artist innit! Why on earth do I work in IT? Who can say.And there it is. Only took me a few minutes too! Amazing, I know.I'm aware that all this probably only makes sense to me at this point, so here is a bit of a description of each UI element, starting top left and working my way clockwise around the screen.Naturally posts shall be forthcoming with actual screen shots of the actual UI when I actually set it up....

• Two's company

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:41 pm

  I've never had an arena team hold together for more than a few weeks, and never had any kind of success in arena, ever.There was this one warrior I played some games with back in season 4 or something, but neither of us were particularly adept at the whole arena-ing thing, which is almost another game altogether when compared to battlegrounds, and has nothing whatsoever in common with the raiding thing, let alone the kill ten rats kthx thing. I do remember having fun on those rare occasions when we won matches, and always intended to get back into it 'one day'...I've also never been in a pvp…

• Zupa still doesn't quest...

  6 Oct 2009 | 5:17 am

  It's been a long time since I played my mage with any kind of conviction. However, in the past week or so that has changed, and I am definitely back in mage town!It had been a while, it's true.... and there was some housekeeping to do. So I dusted off my gear, fixed my specs, and got stuck into some serious battle ground farming. After all, since 3.2 had saved me from the quest monster, I was free to PvP my way through those last 8 levels to 80... right? After all I still can't bring myself to quest.At first it was a little bit annoying, seeing my frostbolts sail past my target, heading over…

• From Blue to Bad to Red...

  5 Oct 2009 | 6:40 pm

  This is a mage blog, with a side of DK to be sure, but that was just a passing fad, and so I never blogged that much about it.In fact, playing the DK is one of the major reasons this blog has been so... stagnant lately. It's a mage blog and if I'm not playing a mage, I don't have a hell of a lot of mage stuff to blog about!However, some interesting shit has gone down recently, and I guess there's a story in it so here it comes.So I had a mini-holiday over the weekend, actually spent the time on a boat...which was awesome and a first time for me. Came home and decided to get my nerd on for a…

• Hardmode VoA - PuG Stylez

  14 Jul 2009 | 1:01 am

  You know how sometimes you pull off something amazing, and there is nobody there to say 'well done?' Nobody to at least verify that what you just did was, in fact, awesome? Poor little ego starving for attention, but no dice?Well last night, I was of the awesome. All by myself. Nobody saw.What's the bloody point of being awesome when there's nobody around to even notice?! Thanks for coming ego, but you could have stayed home, nothing to see here. Move along.So... what is this awesomeness of which I speak?Well, once upon a time, on a server far far away, It had been a dark and stormy night of…

• 
  The Pink Pigtail Inn

• The game in the game

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:28 am

  It took me a couple of years of WoW playing before I realized that there was a game in the game. The battle for the top positions of the damage meter.For a very long time I was a naïve young (ahem) lady. My focus was always to get the boss down and I couldn’t care less about who did most or less damage as long as this happened. I also thought this was the case for everyone else. But little by little I’ve realized that many players do care about those meters, even though very few would admit it openly. And yes, even Larísa cares.Staying alertNow, just to make it clear: Reporting the…

• How limited attempts risk to make raiding more dull

  18 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  "OMFG not again!!! Larísa is about to complain about something she's seen in WoW or in the community! She's obviously on the verge of a burnout, she' hates the game, she should leave any day soon now."I can picture the comments as I'm writing this post. Just in order to show you that I'm basically still a merry gnome and that I'm not trying to mutate into a pigtailed version of TotalBiscuit, I'll start by mentioning some of the good or at least OK stuff about the mechanisms of Icecrown.(If you don't know TotalBiscuit, he's the host of a brilliant podcast called Blue Plz! -, where he in an…

• No, Mr T, this is not my game

  17 Nov 2009 | 4:13 pm

  I watched it. Once. Twice. I watched it three times and still I couldn't connect to it. On the contrary, it distanced me from the game and made me wonder if WoW really is the game of my heart. The only conclusion I can draw from it is that something must have gone seriously wrong with the new marketing video for WoW.I guess I'm seeing this from a strictly European point of view. But since it's posted on the European fan site as well as on the US, I must assume that it isn't intended for US citizens only. However that was how a guildie of mine explained it to me when I confessed that I've…

• The most annoying loot in WoW

  16 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Hands on heart, have many of you do regularly trash things that could be sold to a vendor or posted at AH?I do. All the time.I'm lucky that there's some magic device in Azeroth which makes the litter you throw out of your bag invisible. If it wasn't for that one, there would be an embarrassing trail of trash appearing behind me. You could follow my wonderings as easily as If I had been Theseus in the labyrinth, tossing out a string not to get lost. In real life I'm just the opposite, almost obsessed not to litter the ground with anything. Not even a chewing gum or a match will be put anywhere…

• Tickled Pink: Your First Instance

  13 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

  WoW.com has a neat little piece which links this to post giving advice to new players about running their first instance. What was your first instance or dungeon run like in Warcraft. Were you tickled pink?ElniaMy first instance run featured me creeping alone though Black Fathoms Deep as a prowling cat trying to figure out what this instance stuff was all about anyway. I was truly intimidated as I knew nothing about tank or healer or DPS. I didn't even know what one did in an instance. I actually went through there twice because the first time I missed the instance entirely. There's a…

• 
  Starnaglethron

• Mage DPS: It’s The Journey, Not The Destination

  Drev

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:10 am

  Ever since I’ve been a fan of the fantasy genre, I’ve been drawn to the wizard/sorcerer/mage character type. The idea of hurling balls of burning fire at my enemies, tearing open holes in the space-time continuum to travel hundreds of leagues in a matter of a few steps, or repelling everything from rain to falling arrows with an unnoticeable shield of magic has always been attractive to me. When I was first exposed to MMORPGs with the game Everquest, my first character was a wizard. To make a long story short, Everquest kind of soured me on playing magic-based classes in games. I…

• Bug: Can’t Socket BoP Items on Trade Timer

  Drev

  25 Sep 2009 | 7:18 am

  Thank you for contacting us about the inability to socket a gem into a Bind on Pickup item. We discovered the two-hour trade window is preventing the gems from being socketed, but if you wait, the issue will resolve itself. Please note the timer will count down only when the character is logged into the game. You may also enchant the item to instantly remove the timer and bind the item to your character. Your patience while we resolve this matter is greatly appreciated. I first encountered this little bug the other night when I won a pair of [The Obliterator Greaves] from Heroic Violet Hold.

• Ding

  Drev

  10 Sep 2009 | 11:30 pm

• Engineering Mount – Flying Machine

  Drev

  10 Sep 2009 | 8:32 am

  Quite some time ago, I had an add-on that would scan the Auction House and show me items that were being sold for a much lower price than what it usually went for. While playing the Auction House thusly, I came across three [Flying Machine Controls] for very cheap. I don’t remember exactly how much, since it was a long time ago. I snatched them up and put two back on the Auction House. I ended up selling them for something like a 500% profit. The third one I kept for my Gnome Mage, who just happened to be an engineer. At that time, however, you needed to be level 70 to fly, so I just…

• Done Holding Myself Back

  Drev

  9 Sep 2009 | 1:30 pm

  Last night I went to the Trial of Champions (regular) with some guild mates. It was my first time there, and I had fun; though I’ll need some more practice with the jousting. I came away with my first two epic pieces of equipment: [Breastplate of the Imperial Joust] and [Legguards of Abandoned Fealty] Since getting into the higher levels, I’ve been doing more instances and even got into the Alterac Valley battleground a few times. I’m starting to do dailies. I’m thinking about what gear I want to get down the line, instead of whatever happens along. I’m starting…

• 
  Leafshine: Lust for Flower

• The Decline (and Fall) of Icecrown Citadel

  Adam

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:12 am

  So maybe now instead of abandoning an instance before its finished with the only hope being to go back and outlevel it in the next expansion, maybe my scrub guild will actually clear something for a change. via anothernightelf.blogspot.com Life in Azeroth on the news that the Icecrown Citadel raid will get progressively easier, with more attempts allowable per week and growing buffs for the party. And I suspect that's exactly the reason Blizzards has done this. It's a better solution, to me, that the wholesale nerfing of the BC raids we saw at patch 3.0. But I bet there will still be howls of…

• What Blizz Wants To Give Raiders - And What It Doesn't

  Adam

  19 Nov 2009 | 5:27 am

  If you weren't a designer, but a hardcore WoW raider, do you think you would think the game was too "casual" these days? Quite possibly. I have this theory that, when you're a really elite hardcore gamer, what you really want - what drives you - is that sense of competition; really having that gap between you and the less skilled, and more casual. That's what drives you, and that's not different no matter what game you're playing: WoW, Counterstrike, Warcraft III, games like that. You strive to make the gap as big as possible.So I certainly think that there is that sense that "Hey, I remember…

• New, Free Blog Platform

  Adam

  18 Nov 2009 | 4:54 pm

  Ooh, this looks interesting: As part of our ongoing rollout of the NEW TypePad we are pleased to announce new social blogging features and the launch of TypePad Micro: a completely free level of TypePad focused on easy sharing of text, photos, and videos. A new form of blogging is emerging — somewhere between the status updates of Facebook and Twitter and the full-length posts of classic blogs — focused on being easy, fun, and connected. Think of this middle category as a bridge between blogs and social networks, tapping into the connectedness of networks with the freedom, control, and…

• Just Another Night In Azeroth

  Adam

  18 Nov 2009 | 4:33 pm

  A lill' bit of fishing:  A little bit of lootin': And a little bit of travellin': Still having fun!

• WoW Playstyles in the Wrath Age

  Adam

  16 Nov 2009 | 6:15 am

  I failed.  I 100% absolutely failed. You see, with my post about the difficulty of WoW for the average player, I was trying to stay away from the raiding debate, and look at things from a whole-WoW perspective. But, unfortunately, people saw it as being about them and their playstyle, and that was not my intention at all. Lissanna was clearly quite upset about it, and posted this as the intro to her follow-up post: Okay, so I got frustrated at poor leafshine’s post today. Why? Well, because she says that the pace of the game is just right – and that the average player is happy just doing…

• 
  Zug Gaming

• Paladin Focus Macro Guide

  When you’re playing a paladin, you may not have as much of a need for focus macros as on your other characters, but a few focus macros will certainly help out, especially if you’re in a DPS role.  Paladin focus macros are also very helpful for crowd control. If you are ...

• Hunter Focus Macro Guide

  Macros may seen confusing and not worth your time, but each kind of character has certain strengths which can be highlighted even more by using macros.  Hunters, especially, can benefit from using focus macros.  For a hunter, focus macros can mean the difference between life and death, especially for the ...

• WoW Gold Making Tips – Profession Guide Tactics

  One of the fastest ways to multiply how much WoW gold you make is to “profession” your items.  Basically this means to put items through certain professions to make them worth more gold.  It’s always a good idea to set up some profession guide tactics when you decide which professions ...

• WoW Gold Making Tips – Limited and Rare Items Tactics

  One of the most untapped resources for making WoW gold is the limited supply items.  These are items available at vendors, but there’s only a limited supply of them.  This is one of my favorite WoW gold making tips.  Setting up a limited and rare item tactic is simple when ...

• WoW Gold Tips – Grinding Strategy Guide

  One way to make a lot of WoW gold quickly is through the dreadful “g” word.  Many players see grinding as a dreadful, arduous task, but in actuality, grinding is a major key to making a lot of WoW gold.  The way to make grinding not seem so tedious is ...

• 
  Warcraft Econ

• Patch 3.3 Preparation Part II

  Warcraftecon

  10 Nov 2009 | 8:35 am

  Finally a new official gold sink in patch 3.3, in the form of a new 24-slot bag sold by Haris Pilton. This is only 2 extra slots in comparison to [Glacial Bag]. [Portable Hole] – 3000g (Haris Pilton located in Shattrath City) More mini-pets are added to the Breanni NPC in Dalaran. Calico Cat – 50g Albino Snake – 50g [Arctic Fur]can now be purchased from Braeg Stoutbeard in Dalaran for 10x [Heavy Borean Leather]. This will tie both prices together as in 40g for furs will mean leather will go for 4g each. However what will most likely happen is that prices for [Heavy Borean…

• Hall of Fame: Sovash of Korgath-US

  Warcraftecon

  8 Nov 2009 | 8:35 am

  Please tell us a little about yourself and your gaming experience. I’m Sovash of Korgath-US, on the Alliance side. I’ve played a LOT of Red Alert 2, Supreme Commander, Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2 and Final Fantasy games. I’ve competed in 1v1 / 2v2 Red Alert 2 (and Yuri’s Revenge) tournaments in Toronto back in the day, but never quite got past the semi-finals. World of Warcraft is my first ever MMO game, and I’ve been playing it since December of 2007. I started going for the gold cap seriously at some point in July of 2009, and achieved it about a week before…

• Hall of Fame: Laike of Kel’Thuzad-US

  Warcraftecon

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:35 am

  Please tell us a little about yourself and your gaming experience. I’m Laike (screen name) and I play on Horde side Kel’Thuzad US. I’ve been gaming for as long as I remember. I’m mainly an FPS player, but some how I fell in love with WoW, so 3 and a half years later, I’m still trapped in Azeroth. Do you raid or PvP most? Both? How do you enjoy the game? I raid twice a week for 4 hours a raid with my guild. I used to PVP a lot in battlegrounds, but frankly I’m not a huge fan anymore. I can’t shake the feeling of “I could be playing [FPS of the…

• Guest Post: Gold Dragon Kill Points {GDKP} Raiding

  Warcraftecon

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:35 am

  Author: Zerohour A post was made on Elitist Jerks this past month discussing GDKP raids, which is essentially raiding as a 10 or 25 man group and instead of using /roll or DKP, you use gold as the currency to purchase the items available for looting.  You can read the entire story here:  http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t77416-gdkp_run_discussion_spread_your_server/   The idea behind this form of raiding is to bring several different types of players together: Those that have the gear but need the gold Those that lack the gear but have the gold Those that have the gear and gold but just want to…

• Patch 3.3 Preparation Part I

  Warcraftecon

  30 Oct 2009 | 9:35 am

    So now that we had some time for us to gather up patch 3.3 and PTR information, here is a compilation of econ related changes: New Dungeon System In the upcoming content patch there are many new additions and improvements. Perhaps one of the largest changes is the introduction of the new dungeon system. This new system will be available for all dungeons. A “Dungeons” button will replace the Looking For Group feature currently available in-game, and provides additional benefits to those who use it. (Source) Join as a Group or Solo Cross-Realm Instances/Grouping Instance Teleporting…

• 
  Less QQ More PewPew

• Dragon Age Origins Review

  blogqqpewpew@gmail.com (Drotara)

  12 Nov 2009 | 7:32 am

  Considering Dragon Age has pretty much dominated my past week I thought appropriate to write up my final thoughts about. As of last night I finally finished my first play-through of the game. I took my sweet time and unlock all kinds of achievements in my travels. Apparently I cannot link to my online profile however since it seems to require validation. Oh well. So where to begin. I really enjoyed the story and world that Bioware has crafted. Sure, it had its “here comes the ultimate world ending evil, save everyone”, but it included a lot of other story elements as well. Solving…

• 2v2 doesn’t matter anymore . . .

  blogqqpewpew@gmail.com (Drotara)

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:19 pm

  But that didn’t stop Freshmaker and my Death Knight from throwing down for the sake of picking up rated gear. While we are only rocking at 1827, we kid of stopped pushing for rating once we hit 1800. But a lot can be learned from Arena. Some bloggers you may or may not be familiar with are terribly anti-PvP in this game. Which to me seems silly. I don’t roleplay at all, but if I did I imagine my characters would probably be something along this chain of thinking: Drotara the Hunter: For the Warchief. And by Warchief, I mean Thrall. I have a plethora of tabards to choose from but I…

• League of Legends. Yes, yes it is DotA.

  blogqqpewpew@gmail.com (Drotara)

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:54 am

  And it has an awesome acronym. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. I only recently noticed that it was in open beta due to the gigantic ad plastered on Wowhead the other night. And being as much a fan of DotA as the next person I was more than willing to try it out. In case you aren’t familiar with League of Legends, essentially the guy who made DotA got hired to make it into a stand-alone game. During some interviews he mentioned there were things that he wanted to do that he just couldn’t do solely with triggers and scripting inside Warcraft 3. My Summoner…

• Revisiting my Macros

  blogqqpewpew@gmail.com (Drotara)

  16 Oct 2009 | 2:18 pm

  Over the course of the past few months my macros have changed and evolved so I thought I would do a quick updated post about the ones I am using, across multiple characters. Almost All-In-One Aspects: Press whatever button you bind it to (I use ‘H’) and it casts Aspect of the Dragonhawk. Shift-Keybind casts Aspect of the Viper, and Ctrl-Keybind casts Aspect of the Cheetah. You could also add in Alt or something for Pack or Nature if you wanted. Since Aspects are on their own separate GCD, I added in the line to cast Trueshot Aura if it’s not turned on already (since I have…

• Ain’t found a way to kill me yet.

  blogqqpewpew@gmail.com (Drotara)

  14 Oct 2009 | 10:46 am

  I am alive and kicking. Don’t let the lack of updates fool you. And just because the posts have been slow coming doesn’t mean I haven’t continued taking names. Currently I am not in a “raiding guild” since I am teaching classes as an adjunct faculty member at a local community college. It ties up my evenings a couple nights a week. But considering that Illidan is now the number one PvE-progressed server in the United States, finding groups isn’t exactly difficult. As you can see over on my Armory that my gear is nothing to scoff at. Although my gemming is…

• 
  The Troll Hunter

• /spit happens

  Greetings from da' Troll hunter and the end of a great week! As you can see the blog has undergone a huge transformation over the past few days and I think it looks a little better to.  My daughter picked the new design, so be nice with your comments please. So ...

• Da Troll Hunter Be AFK

  Greetings on a not-so-long maintenance day. Just a real quick note to let you all know that I'll be experimenting today with a new blog theme along with upgrading to WordPress 2.8.6, so the blog might look extremely weird for a while until I get the changes made to da troll's ...

• Knowing the Game Lingo Mon! (Updated)

  Greetings! Many, many posts back I published a list of a lot of the most commonly used terms or lingo that you might see while playing Warcraft. Since then I've gotten quite a few emails requesting that I put the list up again with some new updates. So for those ...

• Meanwhile on the way around the Basin

  Greetins' to joo's on a fine Friday morning! Da' Troll Hunter be having a very strange tale to be telling joo's today, so joo be listening closely! The funniest thing happened to me this morning at 3:45 a.m. in the Sholazar Basin.  It was almost as funny as me a few ...

• 
  Me and My Ghoul

• The Life of Grim

  Grimtorn

  18 Nov 2009 | 8:30 am

  It’s been several weeks (again) since I’ve made a post of significant substance that related to WoW and/or Death Knights. And while I’d love to be able to say that’s because I was too busy raiding, or beefing up the roster of my guild….no, not so much. I’m not going to get into what happened with the guild here, but we’ll suffice it to say that my expectations apparently didn’t match the reality of the situation. Raiding wise, Grim has been invited to Coliseum twice…once in a 10 man group with the guild of a former guildmate….the…

• The Cow and Dragon Age Origins

  Grimtorn

  1 Nov 2009 | 4:35 pm

  For the last month or so, I’ve been getting e-mails about the upcoming BioWare game, Dragon Age: Origins. I’ve been resisting checking them out further because the files I would have needed to download weren’t virus checked. But after seeing a DAO commercial today, I decided to take that chance, and now I’m wishing I had from the getgo. The game description, as it was sent to me said… Dragon Age: Origins is the spiritual successor to BioWare’s critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate, featuring deep character customization and role-playing, morally…

• In Which the Cow Updates

  Grimtorn

  24 Oct 2009 | 8:30 am

  It’s been a month or so since I’ve posted last, with the promise of change in the air, a promise of more information on my guild decision. I did indeed make that decision … and that decision was to form a guild with several friends. Vindicated is the name, and eventually, we will be raiding on our own. Right now, we’ve been teaming up with Heddamazra’s guild, godlike. We’ve taken Onyxia down several times in 10 man mode, and have Ulduar on the schedule. The main issue we have at this point is a limited pool of people on TS. As a smaller server (and an RP…

• Change is in the air

  Grimtorn

  17 Sep 2009 | 8:00 am

  It’s been a few weeks since I wrote last, and unless you’ve been following the comments in the previous post, you may not be aware that I left my former guild. Since that time, I’ve been floating around as a “free agent”, running heroics with various guilds and trying them out. Periodically I’ve pulled in Risk and others, but by and large, it’s been me doing that testing. Coming very soon though, there’ll be no more testing. Decisions have been made, and very soon, there’ll be a new guild being discussed in this space. Stay tuned. Post…

• When “Progression” Stops Progressing

  Grimtorn

  23 Aug 2009 | 10:30 am

  Those who read this site with any degree of regularity will be aware that a large portion of my WoW existence revolves around raiding on Grim. Or, perhaps better stated, it did. To explain… My guild lacks the necessary members (at least in terms of those who consistently sign up) to do 25 man content. Thus, we are primarily a 10-man guild, and for quite a stretch, we were one of the better 10 man guilds on the reams. While I wouldn’t classify us as hardcore (screaming, rigid execution, etc)…we’re not casual either. We are definitely progression, but to progress, you…

• 
  Spooncraft

• Left 4 Dead 2 Review

  Spooner

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:58 am

  I reviewed Left 4 Dead 2 and put the video up on the internet, by all means give it a watch and leave some feedback. I’d rate the game as a definite buy if you like FPS games and happen to enjoy zombies in any capacity. There are other shooters out there now that are competitive [...]

• Starcraft 2 New Media Blowout!

  Spooner

  19 Nov 2009 | 8:45 am

  Blizzard has officially updated the Starcraft 2 homepage and they have some very nice content over there. They’ve added a bunch of new videos, stories, pictures, features, all in preparation for the Beta I reckon. New Artwork New Screenshots New Hero – Tychus Findlay Hero – Zeratul (Redone) Hero – Jim Raynor (Redone) Legacy of War – Multiplayer Preview The new Zerg [...]

• Milking the Lich King

  Spooner

  18 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm

  That title sounds pretty fucking gross, but then again I’m sure there’s a fanboy or girl out there fantasizing about having frostbite on their hoo-hoo. This post is actually about a big statement released by Blizzard with all the details for how the Icecrown raid progression is going to work. The short version: You won’t [...]

• What I’ve learned from: Everquest – Part 1

  J.A. Laraque

  17 Nov 2009 | 4:51 pm

  It may be just a game, but one can learn many things from playing alone and with others. This series explores some of the more popular games and what I have learned from them. We invite you to share what you have learned from these games and ideas for future, What I’ve learned from, articles. Setting [...]

• Something you’ll never have: Shadowmourne

  Spooner

  17 Nov 2009 | 2:03 pm

  In keeping up with news and shit and items I’ll probably never see in my lifetime, Blizzard has released a little diddy on the latest and possibly last Legendary item for Wrath of the Lich King. I first saw this legendary hunter weapon (joke) at Blizzcon earlier this year (2009) and since then have been wondering [...]

• 
  Naissa's Rage

• I’m here … Sort of.

  Naissa

  1 Nov 2009 | 8:38 pm

  You may have noticed I've been absent for a little while. I was out of town recently (Mostly business) and just got back and settled in. My WoW account has been inactive since I ran out of free game time. Not because I can't afford it or anything, but just because I haven't really felt like playing for awhile. I figured I would miss it after being away from the game for awhile, but I really didn't, and I don't really feel like renewing. I'll probably skip the icecrown patch and we'll see what happens when we get closer to Cataclysm. I'll renew for the 2 holiday events that I missed this year…

• My thoughts on Battle.net.

  Naissa

  13 Oct 2009 | 9:09 am

  As noted a couple posts back I'm not actively playing WoW atm due to all sorts of factors, but I have been looking at the WoW news when I've had a chance and I've noticed the Battle.net thing. I made the tragic mistake of posting something on a forum (Not the official forums even) containing my thoughts on the subject. I mentioned it on Twitter and got a more positive response and now I'm going to post my thoughts here, because that's kind of what this space is for.

• AFK IRL Post #1: Tank Enchants.

  Naissa

  27 Sep 2009 | 1:05 am

  It's probably not a good idea to do a post where I touch on something controversial while I'm away on a trip and can't really respond to comments/questions/concerns, but since when do I do things like a normal person? If you're a non-DK tank you've probably thought about tanking weapon enchants and how we don't really have anything great. In Vanilla WoW a lot of people used Crusader or +15 agi (If memory serves) and in the first part of Burning Crusade almost all raid tanks used Mongoose. When Executioner was released a lot of tanks switched to that, myself included, because back then we…

• AFK IRL BBS (Again)

  Naissa

  23 Sep 2009 | 3:57 pm

  My WoW account expires in a couple of days. Just in time for me to (hopefully) get my Brewfest meta achievement done. Life is pretty chaotic at the moment, but not in a bad way or anything. I've got a lot of things going on, like moving all of my earthly possessions from one place to another. It doesn't really leave much time for WoW, and leaves even less time for blogging. I'll probably be back once everything settles down and I'm able to actually play WoW again beyond just logging in and maybe doing the daily heroic or a daily quest or three. At some point near the end of next month I may…

• Guest Raiding: Mimiron.

  Naissa

  20 Sep 2009 | 5:09 pm

  Before I get to Mimiron I want to get something else out of the way. It's something I saw in trade chat. Ok, firstly, if someone isn't smart enough to invite you to a group, no shit you're not going to tank for them. So durrrrrrrrrrr. Now, with that out of the way, back to our guest raiding post. When I got home this afternoon I ventured back into Ulduar with a group of people that are cooler than a polar bear's toenails. (And that's pretty cool folks.) We started out by ganking Razorscale who gets the "Easiest Boss Ever" award, which is pretty impressive when there are bosses like Sartharian…

• 
  Loregy.com

• Cataclysm Dungeon – Grimtotem?

  Cocles

  18 Nov 2009 | 7:07 am

  So WoW.com recently posted an article regarding the photograph of a map taken some time around BlizzCon.  Now sure, this is old news.  And while WoW.com admits they somehow missed the map when it was first circulated, I in turn missed something myself: There’s a dungeon now in Thousand Needles. Why is this especially interesting? Because there is really only one thing of interest in Thousand Needles that could survive a major flood, and be dungeon-worthy… the Grimtotem clan.It has been a long standing complaint among players (especially Horde) that there has never been a…

• Bolvar Fordragon’s Return?

  Cocles

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:05 pm

  SPOILERS ABOUND. Granted, most of this is speculation, but hey.  You’ve been warned. So this model popped up on the PTR’s last week and a debate began raging over whether or not it was Bolvar. Enough time has passed.  It’s time to weigh in. Yes.  It’s Bolvar.  In fact it’s so painfully obvious that it’s Bolvar, only someone heavily in denial could claim its not. The belt and boots match, it’s obviously an altered human.  But that’s all nitpicky. Here’s the real logic behind why this is definitely Bolvar (and what that means). In the…

• The Next Lich King

  Cocles

  12 Oct 2009 | 10:19 am

  So a few hours ago WorldofRaids.com posted an article speculating who the next “Lich King” would be. We’ve asked this question ourselves, and even hinted our thoughts, but we’ve never actually given an answer. As it currently stands, the “Lich King” is entirely Arthas with the Ner’zhul half either dead or completely dominated by Arthas. Suffice to say, we believe Ner’zhul still exists and will be freed when the Arthas half of the “Lich King” is killed. So the heart of the question is, “Who will Ner’zhul pick next?”…

• Garrosh: Future Raid Boss

  Cocles

  7 Oct 2009 | 9:26 am

  In storytelling, there is an element known as the midpoint.  Simply put, it’s the middle of your story. And what does it do?  Generally speaking, the exact opposite of your climax.  In other words, if your story ends with the hero beating the bad guy, then at the midpoint your hero is going to somehow lose. So… why is this relevant? Go back to right before WotLK was released, during the “Zombie Invasion”. One of the key points during that world event was when we actually got to see Thrall and Garrosh step into the arena and fight it out.  Virtually all of us were…

• Maelstrom or Emerald Dream? Neither!

  Cocles

  22 Sep 2009 | 2:21 am

  As we’ve discussed in the past, WoW’s Expansions follow themes. Burning Crusade’s theme was Outland.  The two new races were strongly tied to it. The premiere event was the opening of the Dark Portal.    The creative seed everything grew from, was Outland (especially the setting). With Wrath of the Lich King, its theme was  the Scourge.  The premiere event was the Scourge invasion.  Northrend was/is infested with them.  The new class was tied to them.  Once again, a creative seed. Last week someone complained to me that Cataclysm had an incredibly weak theme. …

• 
  Huntsman's Lodge

• I Was Not Prepared

  Garwulf

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:02 pm

  While trying to update the site yesterday, I started getting these horrendously long loading times, then time-outs, and finally error messages when attempting to navigate anywhere within the site. I'm accustomed to short periods of downtime due to high server loads, Apache reboots, and what not, but then this started to get a little too excessive for my liking. I started firing support tickets over to the server admins to get this whole thing sorted out. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to access the back end to reply to the previous day's comments. After several minutes I finally manage to get…

• Epic Ammo Coming in 3.3

  Garwulf

  19 Nov 2009 | 2:26 am

  A new item of interest to Hunters was included in MMO Champion's data mining report yesterday. Hunters will once again have access to epic ammo. It seems that there will be 2 plans for craftable ammo that will be available to engineers once they reach honored reputation with The Ashen Verdict. The plans are for: Iceblade Arrow and Shatter Round. The Ashen Verdict is the alliance between the Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade. I'd imagine slaying beasties, demons and the like in Icecrown Citadel will get you on their good side. There are a couple of interesting notes about this new…

• Hunter Power Auras

  Garwulf

  17 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pm

  The most common question I've received thus far concerning my UI is, "wtf is that starfire-looking buff smack in the middle of the screen, and more importantly, how do I get rid of it..?" If the one in question is the aura displayed above, then that would be the one which tells me when I'm not in Aspect of the Dragonhawk. Since I'm in that aspect 99% of the time, I rarely ever see it. For those of you that have downloaded my UI and wish to remove that one, just bring up the Power Auras config screen by typing in /powa. Click on the Dragonhawk icon and then ctrl-click on the Delete key.

• Another Reason I Went Back to Beast Mastery for PvP

  Garwulf

  17 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am

  Bleh... no way am I going to roll with that as a pet. Spider is one of the few pet types I've never used. For one, they used to suck up until Blizzard gave them their Web ability. Second, they just never remotely appealed to me as far as looks are concerned. Also, my wife's not afraid of too much, but one thing that freaks her out more than almost anything are Black Widows. I'm sure she'd just love having me show up with my new creepy companion when helping her out with a group quest in Icecrown. Anyway, when I was playing around with MM for a bit in arena, I decided to say screw it... I'm…

• Here’s the Deal

  Garwulf

  16 Nov 2009 | 8:42 pm

  I began this post earlier today, but then life intervened as it often does, and the post sat unfinished. During the several hours that passed from when I left my desk until now, I'd considered letting it disappear into the abyss and go unpublished. In fact, this is something I've done quite a few times over the past year. There have been at least a dozen posts with anywhere from 1K-3K words that I could not bring myself to hit the publish button on. Why, you ask..? 9 times out of 10 is because I believe the tone is too negative for my tastes. I find there are too many people online as it is…

• 
  The Ebon Hold

• XP SP3, Vista, and Windows 7 Latency Fix for World of Warcraft and other games.

  24 Oct 2009 | 8:57 pm

  If you're having issues with latency with Windows 7, Vista, and I believe XP SP3 there is a fix.  I live 25 miles from the WoW Dallas Datacenter and my latency on my Mac was always below 10ms, after switching to Windows 7 RC (Building something more po...

• 3.3 on PTR DK Patch Notes

  2 Oct 2009 | 7:41 am

  Runeforging    * Rune of the Nerubian Carapace - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that increases Defense by 25 and total Stamina by 2%. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.Blood    * Strangulate additional...

• Patch Notes 3.2 7.13/2009

  13 Jul 2009 | 11:21 am

  Death Knights         Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.Blood Plague: Damage done increased by 15%.Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on th...

• Do not forget the Mt Dew Contest

  7 Jul 2009 | 4:27 pm

  I need some dew![img]http://a405.g.akamai.net/f/405/11649/1h/pepsicoinc.download.ak...

• PTR Notes for 3.2 Nerfs Galore

  19 Jun 2009 | 7:25 am

  Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% in...

• 
  Sideshow & Syrana

• Friday Funnies: How To Become A Famous Blogger

  Syrana

  20 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  This cartoon is by Dave Walker.

• Entering the Dragon Age

  Syrana

  19 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Blood doesn't scare me. After hearing several people comment and rave about how great Dragon Age: Origins has been, Sideshow and I had to check it out.  We seem to be one of the few blogs that weren’t offered a review copy, but that’s ok.  It was totally worth the cost for us.  Sideshow and I watched some videos and such, and it just looked awesome.  We decided to buy the PC version through Steam.  That seems to have been an excellent choice for us.  (For those interested, they have a demo for character creation.) I started playing it about a week and a half ago. …

• Crazy Pet Lady

  Syrana

  18 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Yes, people are still talking about it and being very passionate about their view points.  Yes, I realize this post may appear late in the game, but I had one major reason for postponing it – hoping some of the hype would die down a bit.  I mean, I love having discussions with you, dear readers, but during the heat of big news… trolls tend to come out of the woodwork.  They tromp through everywhere, leaving signs of foulness in their wake, never to look back. Don’t get me wrong, you can disagree with me all you want – but there is still a level of respect that I…

• Silvermoon Secrets (RP)

  Syrana

  17 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Part 37) For the complete list of this series, please go here. Aly perched on a stool at the bar in Murder Row.  After ordering  a drink, she pulled out the portrait and set it on the bar.  Her mind wandered back to the conversation she had with Matron Ophalia the other day. “Does this woman look familiar to you, Matron?” “Looking for a lost family member, I see?” “Yes, yes.  I have not seen her in many, many years.  After going so long without hearing from her, I thought it would be best to come searching for her.” “I have seen her, at least as a child.” The barkeep…

• The Many Faces of Syrana – An Update

  Syrana

  16 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Oh hi there! What? Oh yes, I know there’s been nothing new ’round here for a few days. You see, sometimes I get a bit distracted…especially by new games.  But not just by any ol’ new game – good new games.  Unlike Sideshow, I don’t really suffer from game ADD.  Instead, I tend to get hyperfocused on one thing at a time.  That’s why my playtime may seem to be monopolized by one particular game for a stretch of time then shift to another.  After the newness wears off, I tend to fall back into a more “normal” multi-game rotation of…

• 
  I am a Paladin

• Dueling Etiquette

  HP

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:30 am

  I remember my first duel. I was leveling in STV near Grom'gol and I came up against another player, who was ~2 levels higher than me. I don't remember their class. There was no greeting or emote, just a duel window popping up suddenly while I was questing.I was curious to see how duels worked so I nervously clicked the "accept" button. I really wanted to win my first duel but to my chagrin, I was losing. At this point, I already knew that even with my HP low, being oom was a bigger concern. I used my mana pot to try to regain some precious mana but too late, I was dead before I could heal…

• Random Update Again

  HP

  18 Nov 2009 | 10:10 am

  I've been doing lots of arena and raiding. Insanity for 10 man heroic still eludes me for whatever reason. Our guild in 25 man raids is slowly making progress in 25 man heroic Anub'arak. As of last night, our best attempt had him at 22% health and we have been much more consistent about reaching phase 3 so he is close to dying! We also reached Anub'arak with 49 attempts left which will help give us the extra time to learn.Funny thing is that on our server, no guild has downed him yet. I have never been part of a server first so it would be nice if we did it but there have been other guilds…

• Female PVPers

  HP

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:24 am

  So if you can't tell from my little teaser photo that I posted at the end of my previous post, I've started PVPing or more specifically, doing arenas. I arena with my boyfriend just like I raid with him. We do 3s with a very good friend of ours that has been with us for a long time in WoW (he transferred with us, twice!).Repost of my sneak peek =PAnyway, to prepare for my foray into arena, I started reading up Arena junkies and I found blogs focused on PVP and arena. More specifically, I started reading World of Ming.In time, reading current entries and archived entries, I realized that World…

• Iamapaladin's Purpose and Gearing Philosophy

  HP

  1 Nov 2009 | 3:17 pm

  I apologize for the very, very long hiatus. BTW, Happy belated Halloween!When I first started this blog, I sincerely meant to blog in it weekly because I hated not having anything to read from my favorite blogs. Yet as time went by, my posts became more and more sporadic. Sometimes I would post a lot and then I would stop posting at all and repeat this again.I don't know how many readers I have following me but this isn't fair to you guys. With that said, I am not shutting down my blog but I guess I want to clarify the purpose of this blog's existence.I didn't really mean for this blog to be…

• Mages Love Pallies and How to Die in Onyxia

  HP

  23 Sep 2009 | 8:01 am

  ...Or more specifically, how to make an Arcane Mage love you =)Due to the buffs to Arcane in 3.2.2, my boyfriend went back Arcane as he had always been in love with that particular tree.We've managed to rise high enough in the guild standings that we are regular raid members and I have the good fortune to raid consistently with him.Basically, Sacred Shield + Incanter's Absorption is an absolute wet dream for him. I'm not one of the higher SP paladins in my guild (23-2600 SP depending on trinkets) and as 1 of 3 holy paladins in raid, I can toss SS on my honey guilt free!So for any paladins…

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  Nihilum

• Blue Posts, IgroMir

  20 Nov 2009 | 6:07 am

  IgroMirBlizzard attended IgroMir recently, and finally put up an official recap.Rated battlegrounds will be an alternative way to get Arena points. Each week, there will be a featured battleground, helping concentrate queues and keeping the rated battleground experience exciting and different from week to week.If you win a game in a rated battleground you will gain rating, however your mileage may vary depending on the BG. Each victory in a rated BG will also give you Arena points.Among the possible rewards, the most exciting will be the return of the classic honor titles like Grand Marshal…

• Blue Posts

  18 Nov 2009 | 2:07 pm

  Background DownloaderThe Background Downloader is now live, a mirror of the first part is up on Megaupload for enUS. It goes in C:\World of Warcraft\Updates\wow-3.2.2-to-3.3.0-enUS-Win-patch\Blue PostsLegendary Weapon Preview: ShadowmourneAs the Lich King continues his dark work inside the halls of Icecrown Citadel, the warriors and smiths of the Ashen Verdict scramble to forge a weapon capable of defeating the Scourge. To aid the Verdict in its cause, you'll need to follow in Arthas's footsteps, gambling with your very soul to gather the materials that will create the legendary axe…

• PTR Build 10835

  17 Nov 2009 | 3:32 pm

  Talent Calculators updated.Achievements updated.AchievementsDon't Look Up - Clear the hallway before Scourgelord Tyrannus in The Pit of Saron on Heroic Difficulty without anyone taking icicle damage on the first try. Now requires it on the first try.Looking For Multitudes - Use the Dungeon tool to finish random heroic dungeons until you have grouped with 100 random players total. Reward: Perky Pug. Now rewards the pet.Class ChangesHunter Changes MarksmanshipConcussive Barrage - Your successful Chimera Shot and Multi-Shot attacks have a chance to Daze the target for 4 sec. Changed from Auto…

• Blue Posts

  17 Nov 2009 | 9:56 am

  WoW InterviewAnother Five Years of Warcraft interview, this time from WarCry.We wanted WoW to be a Blizzard quality game, with the Blizzard polish, and the Blizzard experience. We wanted to get away from the psychology in the gamer world, which was "Oh, it's an MMO, it's always gonna be buggy and problematic for a while."We gave very simple choices, and there wasn't any of this "Is my guy five pounds overweight? Are his eyes sea blue or sky blue?" Don't get me wrong, that sort of thing is cool, but we made a very simple UI and character creator, and that's one of the main things that helped…

• Blue Posts

  16 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am

  ArmoryI have added another report to the Armory Scanner, you can find it here. It may be down later this week when I am adding more information to it, just try again later!Blue PostsMr. T's Night Elf Mohawk Returns"You gotta choice, Jack. You can watch Mr. T's new TV commercial…or you can HURT." Mr. T, outraged that any fools would doubt his hacking skills, has returned to World of Warcraft to show off his latest invention in a series of nationally televised ads. Watch them here first at Blizzard's YouTube channel(http://www.youtube.com/worldofwarcraft) or click to Learn more (…

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  MMOcker.com

• /random: Red Shirts

  Lumio

  18 Nov 2009 | 3:30 pm

  The New Star Trek MMO may have some risky character customization options… Enjoy!

• Magik Shoppe Halloween

  Rygar

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:30 pm

  Happy Halloween from Magik Shoppe and everyone at MMOcker.com! (click to enlarge)

• Magik Shoppe: Draft 5

  Rygar

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  The company SnowStorm brokers a compromise with the war protesters.

• Magik Shoppe: Draft 4

  Rygar

  22 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  Adam finds he has more support in his cause than he thought he had before.

• Magik Shoppe: Draft 3

  Rygar

  20 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  While in the can, Adam makes a friend.

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  We Fly Spitfires - MMORPG Blog

• The RMT Industry - What I’ve Learnt

  Gordon

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:47 pm

  Last year I briefly worked as a designer and developer for a Norwegian company that built and sold power plant management software. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the industry (I’m sure most of you follow it with deep fascination), when the majority of power companies were privatised in the 1980s, a whole new sub-industry was inadvertently created. Instead of the state owning, running and maintaining a power plant, now they were available for sale to the highest bidder. What this also created was effectively a stock market of power. Power can now be bought and sold back…

• Code of Everand - UK Government MMOG

  Gordon

  19 Nov 2009 | 1:49 pm

  A friend of mine on Facebook told me about Code of Everand, a new massively multiplayer online game developed by the UK government’s Department for Transport (DfT) designed to help children, aged between 9 and 13, gain essential skills for staying safe on the roads. Finally, the government safety MMO we’ve all been waiting for! Code of Everland I haven’t played it yet but Code of Everand looks pretty interesting (well, if you’re a kid or have particular problems in crossing roads… and no, jaywalking isn’t illegal in the UK which explains why something like…

• Have You Ever Bought Gold?

  Gordon

  18 Nov 2009 | 12:26 pm

  After the great response (thanks to everyone for all of the fascinating and insightful comments) to my article comparing buying gold in MMORPGs to sex in the Victorian era, I thought it might be interesting to put up a poll, asking the dreaded question directly. I toyed with the idea of actually coming out and asking it or not as it’s a pretty taboo subject. However, after some of the very candid and interesting comments I received on my previous post, I figured I may as well do it. Although I doubt I will get enough results to make the figures themselves mean much in the grand scheme…

• Buying Gold Is Like Sex In The Victorian Era

  Gordon

  16 Nov 2009 | 12:16 pm

  The Victorians were not only famous for their prudish views on the fine art of reproduction but also, according to many sources, equally famous for their hypocritical acts of sexuality and plain kinkiness that went on behind closed doors. Sex in the Victorian era was a true example of maintaining an outer standard and saying one thing in public but then doing completely the reverse in private. It’s a fascinating contradiction and the inspiration for such great books as Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (that’s another famous Scot you can add to your list along with…

• Head Starts On Expansions?

  Gordon

  14 Nov 2009 | 12:14 pm

  A couple of days ago I received an email from SOE promoting the new Everquest 2 expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, which is due out in February. To be honest, I’m not that excited about the expansion because it’s just another top heavy add-on that increases the level cap and adds a bunch of new high-level content. For some reason I’ve always been a bit against continual “vertical” expansion as I think it starts to water down the gaming experience. It doesn’t do anything to attract new players, only caters to the existing player base, makes it harder for new…

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  HoTs & DoTs

• Why is Hardcore Such a Dirty Word?

  Lathere

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:07 pm

  A new definition for hardcore: the swift pursuit and killing of dragons Apparently it’s a big no-no to use words like “hardcore” or “casual” when blogging. Readers and bloggers alike seem to get so caught up over these labels that they completely disregard the actual argument! The term “hardcore” has become a dirty word. No one wants to be labeled as a hard core player; in fact everyone will do what they can to twist the meaning of casual just to make sure that they seem to fit into this category and no one could ever accuse them of being a hardcore player.

• The DoTs in HoTs & DoTs

  Cassandri

  17 Nov 2009 | 5:27 am

  Cassandri in Shadowform. Feels right. In truth I don’t think about DPS much when I’m writing for Hots & Dots. I’m much more philosophical about healing, PVP and people, probably because I don’t really understand any them at all. That’s what I tend to write about. A Q&A for DPS (unnamed) was started by Death Goddess. I thought it was a great idea and it was very sensible of Death Goddess to let the temperamental healers and tanks have their moment in the spotlight first. I refuse to subscribe to a blog written by a Death Knight so I had no idea that this…

• Battleground Independence

  Cassandri

  15 Nov 2009 | 5:14 pm

  A tower is left undefended by the enemy. I can do nothing. I’m going through a phase of Battleground discontent. Playing Discipline is fun. But I’m certainly not a one-man-killing-machine. More and more often I watch my map, stuck “defending” a node on my own. Of course, I can’t really defend it on my own, I can only hope to scare off attackers who assume that my back is being guarded by a stealthed Rogue. And I watch as a single Alliance mounts up and takes to the road picking off unsuspecting passerbys. You know the type. I’ve started to think of them as…

• The New Hybrid: Resto/Resto

  Lathere

  12 Nov 2009 | 10:50 pm

  Primary spec? Resto. Secondary spec? Ummm... When Blizzard announced Dual Specialization I was ecstatic. Anyone who played a healer during the Burning Crusade will remember how frustrating it was to quest or farm materials without any assistance from a friend or guildy. Rolling +healing stats into +spellpower helped us deal some damage but not it’s just not the same as a proper DPS build. The day Dual Specs were released I hopped on and paid my 1000g so that I could turn Lath into a chook with the click of a button. I was well prepared, and had a decent Balance gear set just waiting in…

• Spinning Emblems into Gold

  Cassandri

  11 Nov 2009 | 3:28 pm

  Yum. Epic Gems. A friend of mine is in the process of gearing up a new level 80 character. So what does that mean? Yep. Lots and lots of heroics. I don’t need gear from heroics for Cassandri. That doesn’t, however, mean that heroics are a complete waste of my time. I’m bringing in quite a bit of gold from looting, disenchanting mats, stacks of Frostweave Cloth and even the occasional Book of Glyph Mastery. It also helps that I quite enjoy running them. I’m also accumulating a lot of Emblems of Conquest. I’m guessing approximately 6 per hour (I know it took us 25…

• 
  WoWGrrl's World

• The Part Of Raiding About Self-Defense

  Valdesta

  11 Nov 2009 | 7:41 am

  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. Self-Defense In Raiding, Defined When I first think about self-defense in a raiding context, "staying alive" is what comes to mind. Raiders Gather for their ToTC Raids You know, simple things like not standing in the fire, or in the roof cave in, or in the big circle that Hodir's about to drop a big ice shard onto. Those are dynamics that are also in…

• Cranking The Shaman Up To 80

  Valdesta

  7 Nov 2009 | 7:11 am

  My Resto/Elemental (dual spec) Shaman has been lounging around in Dalaran in the low 70s for far too long, I've decided. Not that I want to raid with her or anything much (although I have some friends brand new to raiding that I could join on this toon with, for sure), but just that I want to get her to 80 and have that part be done with. I want to have her be one of the ones ready at the gate for the release of Cataclysm and its new 80-85 instances. And who knows, she could be my next "main" raiding toon - depending on what the team I'm in currently values the most at the time. Bear Won't…

• Raid Bonding Agent: Chasing Achievements

  Valdesta

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  My guild is one of those 25 player raid guilds who are still working on our first boss kill in Heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader. It's a BIG leap to go from "Normal" 25-player ToTC to "Heroic 25-player ToTC, and we've steadily been chipping away at the gearing requirements and raid attendance requirements, getting closer and closer to victory. We've gotten to phase three of Heroic Northrend Beasts (25) quite a few times, but with our limited raiding schedule (three nights per week) and some troubles with Farm night vs Progression night attendance, we've done a bunch of recruiting over the…

• My Circle of Healers Contribution

  Valdesta

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:26 am

  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. Flaming Toilet Seat heads towards Priest What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Shrimproll, Discipline Priest 57/14/0. What is your primary group healing environment?

• One Key Way I’m Profiting From The Darkmoon Faire

  Valdesta

  16 Oct 2009 | 5:38 am

  My DK By The Darkmoon Faire Flag Edit: Thanks to WoW Insider for liking what I wrote about and linking here from your own post about the Darkmoon Faire! The Darkmoon Faire was recently in town, and I took solid advantage of its presence for the first time in many months. I parked a toon by my favorite vendors and periodically checked their wares, purchasing various things as they became available. Over the week that the Faire was up in Mulgore, I noticed there were a few other "vendor campers" that returned on a regular basis - but only three or four of us at the most. Everyone sat there…