As you may have read in the latest patch notes, Blizzard has gone ahead and given players the option to integrate the Quest Log and World Map into one big, conglomerated objective-tracking monstrosity! People will wail and people will moan that they’re, once again, making the game too easy, but then those same people will turn around and log-in to their characters with add-ons like Quest Helper long-since loaded up. And that’s pretty much what this is, minus some of the more esoteric functionality. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you. Personally, I…
World of Warcraft
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Project Lore: Five dudes. Four cameras. One World of Warcraft.
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New Map/Quest Interface Tour [Video]
6 Nov 2009 | 6:13 pm -
3.3: More Official Tier 10 Previews
6 Nov 2009 | 5:02 pmTwo new entries have been added to Blizzard’s Official Tier 10 armor previews: the Paladin and Priest. Though you’ve likely seen them before, these two sets can now be considered “complete” and in their final forms. Even after much controversy, they remain roughly the same as they did when data-miners first pulled them out of the patch files, but let’s have a quick evaluation of them anyway: Paladin - As usual, I think this Tier 10 set looks better than the majority of the community seems to. The open-helmet design with glowing skull looks boss and the erupting… -
PTR 3.3: Patch Notes Update, New Map/Quest System Implemented
6 Nov 2009 | 4:40 pmNew build, new stuff! Two things of especially interesting note this time around: if you’re still running Naxxramas these days, then it’s about to get a little bit easier. Are you tired of having to run through the entire dungeon just to unlock the fight with Sapphiron? Well, fret no longer! Blizzard has heard your cries! Instead of having to defeat the end-bosses of every wing, you can now teleport directly to the Frostwyrm’s chilly chamber. Oddly, the notes don’t say if this also unblocks the way to Kel’Thuzad (though it’s presumed that it does, after you… -
PTR 3.3: Raid Test Schedule 11/6-11/7
6 Nov 2009 | 3:35 pmThough it’s come rather late in the week, it looks like there will be some Icecrown Citadel raid testing this week, after all! As of this posting, EU realms have already run their first of the set, having taken another crack at Lady Deathwhisper. Though this isn’t a new fight, US players haven’t had the pleasure of fighting the vile lich (lichess?). Here’s what everyone can look forward to this weekend: Valithria Dreamwalker, tested again on US servers. “We are scheduling raid tests in Icecrown Citadel for November 6-7. The schedule is as follows: US Servers… -
Old School: Dungeon Quest Design
6 Nov 2009 | 12:16 pmI have been spending a substantial amount of time leveling a new toon since BlizzCon 2009’s Cataclysm announcements. Like many players, I want to experience the aspects of vanilla WoW before they disappear into the digital abyss (maybe then Blizzard will setup a vanilla server cluster?). And no, I am not running the 1-60 gauntlet alone, but with a group of five other players. Amazingly, we’ve actually managed to stay within a few levels of each other. We’ve noticed a ton of major differences from v1.0 to patch 3.2.2 during our trek to level 22, the Christmas tree…
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WoW.com
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Patch 3.3: Haris Pilton's got a brand new bag
6 Nov 2009 | 10:15 pmIt was only a matter of time before Blizzard gave us another pre-expansion gold sink, and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Haris Pilton, Shattrath socialite, has once again started selling her limited-edition accessories, and this time she's expanded her line with the Portable Hole, a 24-slot BOE bag. The bag is currently available on the Patch 3.3 PTR, and given the official WoW Twitter account's tweet earlier in the evening about it, it looks to be here to stay once the patch hits. Of course, the reason question isn't who's going to buy these -- anybody who's already bought a mammoth and a… -
The argument for paladin stances
6 Nov 2009 | 7:00 pmRighteous Defense lays out an intriguing argument for an idea that I still personally can't get behind: paladin stances. The recent changes around patch 3.3 have shined a light on paladin versatility, and basically, paladins are forced to pay the hybrid tax three times over -- because they can do it all without limiting themselves, they can't do anything as well as other classes. So RD makes the suggestion: instead of letting paladins have all of their spells under any aura, it's time to narrow things down a bit. Devotion Aura becomes tanking stance, gets Righteous Fury's threat bonus added… -
Scientists study how the brain thinks about virtual avatars
6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pmThis is fascinating stuff to think about over the weekend -- New Scientist has an article (sent to us by quite a few readers -- thanks!) about how we perceive our virtual selves in video games like World of Warcraft. A group of scientists at Dartmouth University hooked a few WoW players up to an MRI recently, and they found that when asked to describe themselves and their virtual avatars, the same areas of the brain activated -- areas normally suited to "self-reflection and judgement." In other words, you think about your avatar the same way you think about yourself. They found nearly no… -
Drama Mamas: Couples counseling
6 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pmDodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com. Usually couples counseling is for the problems that come with being a couple, not dealing with them. But this week we encounter two situations that involve drama caused… -
The Daily Quest: No more helm polishing
6 Nov 2009 | 4:30 pmWe here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The 65th episode of the Twisted Nether Blogcast is available for download. We've all heard of Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs, but have you heard of Deus Vox Encounters? Too Many Annas teaches the new roleplayer how to initiate RP with others. Mortigan the Lock has written a resignation letter to the Sons of Hodir. The Stoppable Force asks a question. What racials would you like to see your race get in Cataclysm? Click here to submit a link to TDQ Filed…
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TankingTips.com
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The ability I’m still not fast enough with
6 Nov 2009 | 4:07 pmI 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
30 Oct 2009 | 11:58 amOur 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?
24 Oct 2009 | 10:53 pmI’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… -
DPS > TPS. Why nothing and something has changed.
20 Oct 2009 | 12:33 pmWarTotem’s DPS/TPS spreadsheet has been receiving some attention as of late leading to some interesting advice and getting some tanks to start testing that advice. As I commented on Kadomi’s post, I was skeptical. I’m not anymore. What did I do? I just used the spreadsheet. I got the same information. However, I interpreted the results differently. Yes, Devastate is a lot better than Revenge, Concussion Blow and Shockwave for threat. But. Devastate is not better than Revenge, Concussion Blow and Shockwave for damage. If. You have 2 points in Improved Revenge. Put 2 points in… -
The Road to Content: Reputation vs Gear vs Experience
13 Oct 2009 | 3:08 pmOkay, so you’re tired of where you are. In fact, you’re already tired of where you are and you haven’t even got there yet. You know that the next guild you’re going to is just a stepping stone to the one after that. You’re looking for bigger things and you can already feel the time slipping away. Cataclysm is almost here, after all. I don’t agree with this mindset, but I know that some of you are going to feel this way. It’s difficult for those of us in established guilds to empathize with those not. I’d be lying if during my journey to where I…
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pwnwear
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New sidebar navigation
6 Nov 2009 | 8:45 amI hope finding articles is a lot easier with this new sidebar navigation system I’ve put in. Let me know. I think it might be a bit in-your-face orange, there’s a grey theme too.I also tidied up my categories a bit so there won’t be duplicate content in two Tanking subcategories; though a tank article might also appear in a Raid or Leadership category.Find by theme now, tooLastly, got a new ‘find by theme/ tag’ option in the menu bar. Not sure which tags to include there yet, I’ve got a few like avoidance and cataclysm.Other bloggers might be curious, the… -
Keybinding, do it
6 Nov 2009 | 1:06 amA lot has been written about why you should not keyboard turn (it’s too slow), and that you should keybind. I wrote about how PvP improves your raiding too. I’m going to skip that preamble and just talk briefly about keybinds.Yesterday the little survey I did on myself included a snippet which Perditio commented on, saying he had the same binds! Spooky because they’re not the most obvious ones.MovementI move with ESDF. If you are still on WASD I recommend you spend the next month getting your muscle memory into ESDF instead; you gain QAZ as keybind options.Take your time… -
The ‘How do I tank’ survey
5 Nov 2009 | 2:38 pmThere’s a game bloggers play where you pass an idea or question from one to another.Normally, I don’t follow along because I’m stubbornly independent and don’t like being part of a crowd. These ‘memes’ can be very self-serving group-hug techniques used to brown-nose.This one however is pretty cool because it’s all about tanking!I see Honors, Wrathy and Renaissance have written up their answers, and Kadomi tweeted she’d do one too. Hinen did one for dps (which I actually read, unlike the healer meme; I skipped them all). I see that Divine Plea… -
What is the frost, unholy or blood rotation?
5 Nov 2009 | 8:43 amI get a lot of questions like “what’s the rotation for that spec?” Rotation is like Death Knight basics, and since I write on more advanced tanking questions, it’s not content I usually include. Besides, a DK should think in terms of priorities and not rotations. More on that distinction later.But then I started writing this, and realised… there’s some of subtlety here. I’ve played a DK since they WotLK was released, so it’s second-nature, but if you are new to the class there might be some crucial info in this post.So, here are the answers… -
Loot, progress and other good reads
5 Nov 2009 | 2:42 amA few really top-notch articles over the last few days, and one I just published on dk.info from a new contributor there.I’m an admin and moderator at deathknight.info, and have recently started looking for contributors to its blog. I’d like it to be a community voice for DKs. One of those new authors, Draxxiss, wrote a superb debut on loot.I do take guest authors at pwnwear too if you’re more biased to tanking and leadership.Gold DKP: loot runs where you bid in-game gold for an item that drops, then pay for it. The gold gathered through the raid is then shared with the…
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World of Matticus
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Running a Raid: 10 Golden Rules (part 1)
6 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amSo you want to be a raid leader? Well, you gotta ask yourself one question. Do I feel… Ready? I don’t know everything about raid leading by a long shot but I thought I’d share some of my musings on the hows and whys of this arcane practice. Many players are shouting out on trade but it’s not to bawl their profession at passing trade watchers or haggle over the price of Poached Sunscale Salmon. Much of the cacophony in the traders’ market seems to be about recruiting to groups; quite often to PUGs, so much so that the LFG channel is making a permanent return. That… -
Ask Lodur!
5 Nov 2009 | 1:22 pmIt’s been a while since we’ve had enough questions for me to do this but today happens to be one of the days I DO have enough! For those of you who don’t know about this I take questions over Twitter you can find me at the LodurZJ user name or you can use the hash tag #asklodur. Ask lodur is where I take the serious and the silly questions from our readers and give them an answer. Think of it as a Dear Abbey WoM style So without further ado, here’s today’s Ask Lodur! Dear Lodur, Will the new pet store cause the fall of WoW civilization as several… -
It’s My Party and I’ll Spec How I Want To!
5 Nov 2009 | 8:27 amYou’re the one who sits in front of your computer. You’re the one who has to look at the back of your toon’s head all night (or day). You’re the one who has to put the gold into gems, enchants, and glyphs. You’re the one doing the necessary rep grinds. Most importantly, you’re the one paying $15 each month to play the game you enjoy. Hence, you’re entitled to play how you want to play, right? Keep in mind that it doesn’t mean people are always going to want to play alongside you. If you’re a chain-pulling DPS Death Knight, it… -
It’s a Pet Store not a Gear Store
4 Nov 2009 | 2:43 pmBlizzard’s opened up the virtual pet store where you can purchase the first of several pets to come. I don’t actually know this, but I’m fairly certain we’ll be seeing more purchasable pets later. What’s the big deal? In a nutshell, the micro-transaction MMO model involves consumers paying for certain items. I have a friend of mine who plays Maple Story and I routinely tease her about buying a wedding dress for 5 bucks or other stuff only for it to disappear about 3 months. Gear has an expiry date it seems. The Korean “free” MMOs employ this model very well. I’ve briefly… -
Exclusive Shaman Tier 10 Preview!!!!!!!!
4 Nov 2009 | 8:28 amSo I’m sure many of you are on the edge of your seats, wondering with baited breath what our armor is going to look like. Well I have exciting news for you!! Here at WoM we have the exclusive on the new armor graphics for the tier 10 shaman set Are you ready? Truly? Honestly? Are you sure? It’s pretty epic! Here it comes! CARDBOARD SAMURAI!!!!! Made you look! Honestly there still is no news on the tier 10 armor set models for Shaman and it’s a little disheartening. We’ve seen the sets for everyone else (good or bad) but not for ours. What could be taking so long? Maybe…
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Gray Matter
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Blizzard Hates Moonkin
5 Nov 2009 | 6:03 pmClearly, Blizzard hates Moonkin. -
Ulduar Meta: Complete
2 Nov 2009 | 10:09 pmI know that it's not quite as significant as if we had done it before ToC was released. I know that the gear we've obtained from ToC has made the achievements easier to some extend. However, I am still very proud and happy that it is now complete.The fact of the matter is that Yogg +1 is not an easy fight. Neither is Firefighter, Freya +3 and several other Ulduar hard modes. For most guilds these are not fights that you can walk in and watch them fall down. Completing this acheivement was the result of a lot of hard work and trying to squeeze Ulduar time into our ToC schedule.Grats to… -
Moonkin Basics: Talents
2 Nov 2009 | 7:30 amI'm starting a new series called Moonkin Basics. The purposes of these posts will be to answer the basic questions a new raider or offspec raider would ask. My intention is to keep them up to date as things change in the game and have links to them on the right side of my blog. Obviously, most of what I say in these posts will be common knowledge to experienced Moonkin raiders. Please feel free to comment if you have a difference of opinion.To some extent these posts are inspired by or stolen from Hamlet's Moonkin guide in the Elitist Jerk's Think Tank (link). It is the best "How-to-Moonkin"… -
Blue Post: Need Before Greed and Other Things
29 Oct 2009 | 6:52 amThis slipped my radar at first, but thanks to Lissanna's excellent post on Restokin.com it came to my attention.The Blue Posts: The Need Before Greed loot system will be the unalterable default looting system for pick-up groups in the Dungeon System and has been updated.Need Before Greed will now recognize gear appropriate for a class in three ways: the class must be able to equip the item, pure melee will be unable to roll on spell power items, and classes are limited to their dominant armor type (ex. paladins for plate). All items will still be available via Greed rolls as well as the new… -
Moonkin Tools: SimCraft
28 Oct 2009 | 5:55 amSimulationCraftWhat: SimCraft is a simulation based executable program. I think it was orignally created by Dedmonwakeen on the EJ forums and is not a dedicated Moonkin tool. It currently supports most of the classes in game and Starfox is the current Moonkin developer for the project.Where: The project's home is in Google Code which you can find here. This is where you would find the downloads, source code, and issue logs. Most of the discussion regarding SimCraft can be found on the EJ forums. The general discussion can be found here. The druid specific discussion can be found here.How to…
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Kinless Chronicles
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Ahead by a Century
3 Nov 2009 | 9:29 amAhead by a Century I don’t know why exactly, but I love this song by the Tragically Hip, a Canadian group. I first heard them, this song, listening to Iceberg on Sirius radio. After seeing the cool video on YouTube I was wondering if I’d like the rest of their music as much. (Oddly, sadly, no. Ahead by a Century remains the singular favorite of mine of theirs.) “Ahead By A Century” First we’d climb a tree and maybe then we’d talk Or sit silently and listen to our thoughts With illusions of someday casting a golden light No dress rehearsal, this is… -
Hunka hunka burning sameness
27 Oct 2009 | 1:12 pmIf Elvis were talking about burning love, you’d be thinking “Wow, he’s talking about something remarkable. Something worth singing about. Something he thinks we’d all be interested in knowing about.” Ooh-hoo-hoo, I feel my temp’rature rising Help me I’m flamin’, I must be a hundred and nine Burnin’, burnin’, burnin’ and nothing can cool me, yeh I just might turn to smoke but I feel fine Wow, Dude. Something’s rocking his world. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about something remarkably average. -
Paladin Flexibility
20 Oct 2009 | 9:38 amSo there I was. To catch you up briefly, Msaker, by Orc Warrior, used up a lot of good crafting mats to equip my Human Paladin in some decent (non-raider, non-instancing) gear. Tempered Saronite Helm and Boots for tanking, and Spiked Saronite Helm and Boots for DPSing. (I.e. the iLevel 200 stuff.) My hunter used up the last 4 Arctic Furs in all of existence (Dear World, Please forgive me.) to make the Nerubhide and Icestriker cloaks for him. And the Orc also made the Human his Titansteel Destroyer and Titansteel Shieldwall. And working on the tournament I picked up the Teldrassil… -
A Fool and his Durability…
15 Oct 2009 | 8:51 amI don’t know why this thought occurred to me, but it did, and it was “A fool and his durability are soon parted.” I was thinking that when I got invited to a Chillmaw/Commanders group. I was the 3rd person to the group. And with me they were ready to go. “They” being a Ret Pally and a Priest. And the Ret Pally wasn’t putting a shield on and switching specs to Prot. Meaning I wasn’t going to cat this one, but bear it. And I’d just, moments before accepting the invite, been fooling around with my action bars. And while Chillmaw was hammering me I was wondering where… -
It’s me, not you. Not really. It’s you.
11 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pmI was doing quests in Storm Peaks. Again. The intro to the Sons of Hodir quests and I was doing some running around for Thorim. Once upon a time, that is to say the first three times I did these quests for him, Thorim was an icier Vrykul. Now, the fourth time running into him, he’s a Titan just like his brother Loken always was. It’s funny, and good, how often and how much Blizzard subtly messes around with the world improving it, adjusting it, fixing it. The guards around towns usually always sport something different in their gear sets. Anyway, Thorim used to look mad, or…
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Spicytuna
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PTR Patch 3.3 Testing: Glyph of Eternal Water
30 Oct 2009 | 2:53 amOne 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
26 Oct 2009 | 2:32 amCopied 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
21 Oct 2009 | 12:24 pmThe 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
20 Oct 2009 | 9:22 pmWith 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!
18 Oct 2009 | 5:17 amI 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
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Hunter Gear for Leveling (31-40)
4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 amAs you move up in levels, you’ll have more talent choices available to you and all new instances and items to choose from. Our previous two articles discussed gear for levels 10-20 and 21-30. Today, we’ll talk about items for levels 31-40. These are the last levels you’ll be seeking primarily Leather items, since you’ll be training in Mail armor at level 40 and you can start phasing remaining Leather pieces out. Level 31-40 Armor Branded Leather Bracers – These bracers drop from High Inquisitor Fairbanks in the Scarlet Monastery (Cathedral). Shadowskin Gloves… -
Hunter Gear for Leveling (21-30)
31 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amContinuing from our previous post covering levels 10-20, we’ll be taking a look at more leveling gear for you to keep an eye out for. Again, there are way too many items in game for me to list them all, but I’ll try to cover the particularly appealing pieces that you should go after. Level 21 – 30 Armor Barbaric Bracers – These are made by Leatherworkers and can easily be picked up on the Auction House if you can’t craft them yourself. The materials are relatively easy to pick up as farmers level, so they should be moderately priced. Moss Cinch – One thing… -
Hunter Gear for Leveling (10-20)
30 Oct 2009 | 12:42 pmAs you quest, you’re bound to pick up some fairly decent greens that will see you through, but you’re probably wondering if there are any special quests you should be doing or particular instance bosses you should be slapping around to get yourself some blue pieces that will improve your performance. Because there are so many items in the game, it’s impossible to list them all here, but I’ll make an attempt to list a variety of particularly attractive items for you to go after. Level 10-20 Armor Black Wolf Bracers – These bracers drop from Fenrus the Devourer in… -
You May Lynch Me Now
29 Oct 2009 | 8:03 amThat’s right. The most notoriously “I’m Not Nor Shall I Ever Be Beast Mastery” Hunter on the planet not only went Beast Mastery last night, but also promptly tamed Loque’nahak. It took me a couple hours of circling around Scholazar Basin to find him, but find him I did. And then I tamed him. Oh yes, I tamed him. Which gives me every right to actually wear the shirt I designed. I named him Khaan, and took him for a test drive on the mammoths in Scholazar (figured it wouldn’t hurt to see how he did while farming for buff food–big fan of two birds with… -
Hunter Talents for Leveling
28 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amWhether you’re a new player to the game or a player rolling a Hunter alt for the first time, you no doubt have some questions about possible leveling builds and which specs will perform the best. The short answer is that you can easily specialize in any of the three talent trees and be successful. As a pure-DPS class, we have the advantage of being able to use any spec we want to level and the results will be largely the same. Of course, certain configurations will be more efficient than others, but you won’t be penalized much for opting for a spec that you find more enjoyable.
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Blessing of Kings
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Micro-Transactions
5 Nov 2009 | 8:29 pmBlizzard 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
4 Nov 2009 | 9:14 amThis 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… -
Thoughts on Avoidance
1 Nov 2009 | 11:18 pmThe big news in the tanking community is that Blizzard is re-introducing Sunwell Radiance for Patch 3.3. Chill of the Throne will reduce Dodge by 20% everywhere in Icecrown Citadel. I thought I'd take this opportunity to put down a few general thoughts on Avoidance.In my view, when Avoidance hits 50%+, healing gets weird. Basically, the next attack is more likely to miss than actually connect. So it becomes very hard to predict how damage will be dealt, which is the essence of good healing. You start healing very generally, aiming at the worst case scenarios. The tank's actual health doesn't… -
Valithria Dreamwalker
30 Oct 2009 | 10:56 pmWarning: This post contains spoilers for Icecrown Citadel.Blizzard did PTR testing for Valithria Dreamwalker today. It looks like a hilariously awesome fight. Here is MMO-Champion's post discussing her.Valithria is a friendly green dragon captured by the Scourge. She starts at 50% and must be healed to 100%. Meanwhile, waves of Scourge are attacking, and must be held off by the rest of the raid.This sounds like quite an interesting fight, and I am greatly looking forward to it.It will be interesting to see what classes evolve to be the chosen healers for it. The easy assumption is to say… -
Torchlight Review
29 Oct 2009 | 10:31 pmTorchlight is Diablo. With a dog.Now, Diablo was a great game, so there's nothing wrong with that. And the dog is pretty crazy. He can carry loot back to town and sell it for you, making him more useful than 99% of all videogame AI henchmen.I'm not really sure what else to say. Torchlight is fun and polished, with nice cartoon-ish graphics. There are three classes, and each class has three trees, allowing each class to be played in a different manner. For example, the Inquisitor can be ranged weapons, assassin-style melee, or traps. The trees aren't formal trees, as you don't have to put…
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Mystic Chicanery
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“Carry Me!!!”
4 Nov 2009 | 12:19 pmMeet Bob. Bob has a new toon who just turned 80. Bob’s new toon is wearing a smattering of greens and level 74 gear. To Bob it seems silly to enchant/gem his crappy green gear. Bob is in a social casual guild. Bob’s guild is currently raiding ToC and making progress through Ulduar. Bob wants to raid ToC and make progress through Ulduar. Bob’s guild puts its raids on the calendar with open signups. Bob signs up for these raids. Bob knows that he’ll quickly get gear upgrades out of ToC and Ulduar and raiding is really easy. So Bob just kind of coasts along on the runs. -
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-01
1 Nov 2009 | 1:15 amI LOL'd RT @TwistedNether: #TNTCast "A LETTER OF RESIGNATION TO THE SONS OF HODIR" (via Mortigan the Lock) http://bit.ly/hodir-resignation # So my baby mage is named "Possibly".. would it be bad to name my baby shaman "Probably"? # Hot Damn! RT @Warcraft: World of Warcraft Paid Race Change is now live! Check it out! #WoW #Warcraft http://bit.ly/1QsebH # MUTEX sux. # Anyone having a spare Wave invite? I'm still one of the unwashed masses.. and feeling neglected. # Bay Bridge closed "indefinately"… kill me now. # Coming 12/18: Kickass Avatar… -
Home is where you set your Hearthstone
29 Oct 2009 | 8:59 amMy hearth is set in Dalaran. The Legermain Inn to be precise. I found that the “alliance-side” inn was just too busy. A quick survey of my guildies shows that they hearth in Dalaran so they can be close to all of the Northrend instances and to the city portals in case they need to go to somewhere in the old world. So.. consider the implications of this change (from the 3.3 Patch notes): Instance Teleporting When you use the dungeon tool to find a dungeon, you’ll get ported to the inside of the dungeon, much like the current Battleground system. When you leave the instance, you… -
Immutables
27 Oct 2009 | 3:34 pmWell, it’s official, Paid Race Change is now live. At this point, the only immutable choice at the time of character creation is Class. Everything else can be changed/fiddled/fixed. Fundamentally I’m ok with that. I’m not planning to take advantage of the service. If I had my way Draenei would be able to be Warlocks, but as it is, they can’t.. and the only other choice (human) doesn’t thrill me. Human females jump funny (they levitate.. and then at the last possible moment they curl their leg up under them) and they run funny (really~!!! sometimes they… -
Addon: CLSaver
26 Oct 2009 | 9:47 amCLSaver (short for Combat Log Saver) toggles your /combatlog on/off as you enter/leave raid instances. You could totally do it manually.. but if you’re like me.. you’d forget. CLSaver does it automatically. /combatlog save all of the entries in your Combat Log into a file in your WoW Logs directory. This file can be uploaded to online WoW parsers (WWS, World Of Logs) or manually parsed (yuck) to find out information about the combat. Example WWS report: http://wowwebstats.com/llv3lh6katatm Example WoL report of the same fight: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/lsev94zve8eg3hn8/ In…
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Kill Ten Rats
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Comment Spotlight
6 Nov 2009 | 8:48 amSometimes when you receive a comment, there are so many things you want to say that you cannot say any. You can do little but regard it with wonder. As with a poem or a koan, the discussion would be far longer than the original. Rather than leave the lantern beneath a bushel, in the spirit of Warrior Wisdom Fridays, we present the pronouncement of jon: RMT proponents are so amusingly shallow emotionally (hence easily manipulated by game devs). You people deserve to be parted with your money. The “directs your efforts away from the unemployed” quote illustrates the mindset of RMT… -
Blame November Rain
6 Nov 2009 | 4:52 amThis week has been really “blah” all around. There have been some exciting things. Like a possible new boss battle in Guild Wars. The Volume 1, epic quests becoming soloable in Lord of the Rings Online. And of course, the Evil Empire’s RMT sale of drunk panda pets. It’s all great, I guess. I would probably care more if it had not rained the past two weekends. Mostly I have been plugging away at Borderlands. I gave up on multiplayer. Yes, I have tried every suggestion (GameRanger, Hamachi, port opening, etc.), and 90% of the time the system refuses. … -
Re-Quest
6 Nov 2009 | 4:31 amMy buddy invites me to his Ventrilo server, so we can chat while we are in our respective games. He is running his five-man dailies in WoW, I am starting a second playthrough in Borderlands. “So, what’s this ‘playthrough’ BS? Does anything change, or do you just do the same boring-ass quests over again? Who wants to do that?” “Aren’t you playing WoW right now?” : Zubon -
We Are All RMTers
4 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pmMany developers have recognized that “play as much as you like” is leaving money on the table, while “pay as much as you like” directs your efforts away from the unemployed and towards capturing as much consumer surplus as possible. WoW quietly became a came with a cash shop, only the cash shop offered account/character services rather than the usual cosmetic items, bonus xp, and sometime uber loot. WoW has officially started its cash shop. The Lord of the Rings Online™ has started with the adventure pack, DDO is now a F2P (free to pay, free to play) game, but I… -
Custom Design
4 Nov 2009 | 9:01 pmThe following is a guest post by Moormur. Greetings, readers! My name is Moormur. Some of you may know me from LOTROCast or the Galactic Holofeed, podcasts I co-host both with a very able crew. I am also an avid reader of all the stuff here at Kill Ten Rats. I refrain from posting commentary on my podcast websites for whatever reason, so I have asked Ethic here at Kill Ten Rats if he didn’t mind a guest column. I’ve been thinking lately of a trend of sorts in the MMO developing community…player designed content. I’m not talking about sandbox MMOs…those are really a topic for another…
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Tank like a girl
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Addon Corner: Tekkub attack!
27 Oct 2009 | 4:57 amIt’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
26 Oct 2009 | 3:38 amAs 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
22 Oct 2009 | 8:41 amIt’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
13 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amHere 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… -
And we did move on
12 Oct 2009 | 2:45 amYesterday was raid day. We were in the middle of our first real Trial of the Crusader since all bosses were released when our hunter says ‘Hey Kadomi, you’re on WoW Insider!’ I quickly had to check on that and indeed, there it was, discussing the post I made last week of when it’s okay to move to the next raiding tier. Hi wow.com visitors! As you can tell, I made the decision to schedule a Trial of the Crusader raid just to see how we would do. We had been there before when only Beasts and Jaraxxus were available, and we had struggled with the Beasts quite a bit. But…
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Phantomella's Place
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Awww!
5 Nov 2009 | 8:02 amHey, 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… -
Something ain't right...
4 Nov 2009 | 2:11 pmI know the Phantos are not big on questing, we're grinders at heart. But it's as if one of us is on more than a quest, he's on a mission (and now level 39); or maybe he's trying to impress a certain death knight? [*blush* -GF]: -
And where Gothfan goes...
2 Nov 2009 | 9:32 am... Phantodreya is never far behind, having dinged 38 last night, now being just a couple of levels away from getting Moonkin form. Gratz to her. Of the levelling Phantos this means that shaman Phantojinn is still ahead on 44, while the quartet of Gothfan (arms warrior), Phantovesta (priest), Knickerthief (warlock) and Phantodreya (druid) are all on 38 and camped out in the Mudsprocket inn... and Axle reckons he has problems with a single ogre in his tavern... -
November's wallpaper
31 Oct 2009 | 6:46 pmNow available with the rest of the wallpapers, and here :)Yeehaa!November 2009 -
Ding!
31 Oct 2009 | 4:27 pmYes, the handsomest Gnelf on Azeroth [You're the *only* Gnelf, GF... -mella] dinged 38 earlier tonight and is also now honored with Darnassus!
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Stropp's World
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NaNoWriMo
6 Nov 2009 | 10:44 pmFor the last couple of years I’ve intended to get involved in the NaNoWriMo event and spend November writing 50 to 60 thousand words on a subject of my choice — fictional of course, and probably SciFi or Fantasy. Every year something has come up to thwart that intention. And this year ain’t no different. The contract I’m working was extended yet again at the end of September, not for one month as I expected, but for two. I was kinda hoping it was going to finish at October’s end to give me a chance to get involved in NaNoWriMo. I did consider attempting a story… -
Can Bioware Tell A Story, Or What?
5 Nov 2009 | 6:30 pmAfter going through the preload decrypting and installation process on Thursday evening my time (which took longer than I’d hoped unfortunately) I fired up Dragon Age: Origins, created my first character and started playing. I didn’t create a Bioware social network account yet, nor have I registered the game. I really just wanted to hop in and get playing. That was probably a good move since I’ve since heard that Bioware experienced the release day blues with their site, and players have had a tough time getting it all to work properly. I’ll probably do that tonight,… -
About That WoW Killer
4 Nov 2009 | 5:48 amThere’s something that the big AAA MMORPG developers seem to be missing in their search for the Holy Grail of that World of Warcraft Killer. The bar has been raised. It doesn’t matter if World of Warcraft started life with more than a few bugs and far less content than it has now. Your game has to have at least as much content as WoW does now. And it has to be at least as stable. It doesn’t matter if World of Warcraft wasn’t as polished upon release as it is now. Your game has to have at least as much polish as WoW. (That means no graphical glitches, spelling mistakes,… -
WoW Trouble In Little China
4 Nov 2009 | 1:47 amBlizzard is certainly having a rough time lately with the operation of World of Warcraft in China. The transfer of the licence to a new operator didn’t go smoothly at all. The transfer of what must have been many terabytes of data kept Chinese players from the game for a long time. It must have seemed like an eternity for dedicated World of Warcraft players. The servers haven’t really been back in operation for long, and there is another problem. A bunfight between the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has broken out and World of… -
Asheron’s Call October 2009 Event Release Notes
3 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pmI don’t usually make a habit of posting release or patch notes for the games I play. For the most part these tend to be fairly widely reported if the game is popular. But on this occasion I think there’s merit in reporting the release notes for the tenth anniversary of Asheron’s Call. It’s worth noting that the monthly events are one of the things that are unique to Asheron’s Call. No other MMORPG releases new content along with updates to the storyline each and every month. Sure a lot of games patch monthly, or even weekly in some cases, but new content? That…
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Honor's Code
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Trial fo the Crusader 25
6 Nov 2009 | 1:27 pmWe combined our 10 mans once again and attacked the 25 man version of Trial of the Crusader. The difficulty difference between 10 and 25 gets debated often and with great passion. I’m going to do my best to lay out my position as a 10 man Raider. I’m also (again to the best of my limited ability) going to try to understand the position of the 25 man raider. Let me tell you where I’m coming from, my context if you will. Devolve is made up of two 10 man raid teams. The teams are not set in stone but pretty much the same people run together. Occasionally we’ll have some overlap,… -
Circle of Tanks
5 Nov 2009 | 5:15 amCircle of Healers was the brain child of Miss Medicina. You can find the rest of the responses from other bloggers here too. One of my readers, Danny, had an interesting thought after having seen Circle of Healers.Danny tells me: "Honors, I think it would be a good idea to switch it up for a tank. Kind of in the same way Amber changed up Mortigan's Wipe list. It could be fun. I would fill this out myself but I don't have a blog."Ah, but I do.What is the name, class, and spec of your primary Tank?Honorshammer, Paladin, 0/53/18What is your primary group Tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5… -
Other Shoe Falls on Lay On Hands
4 Nov 2009 | 6:22 amWell we knew something was coming with Lay on Hands and now we know how it will change.Lay on Hands is now affected by Forbearance and can now be cast on self again - Heals a friendly target for an amount equal to the Paladin's maximum health and restores 1950 of their mana. Once healed, the target cannot be targeted by Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Hand of Protection, or Lay on Hands again for 2 min.So the Developers solution was to add our old friend Forbearance.So my question is, why doesn't it also apply to Shieldwall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin?Basically the tooltip should say… -
Sidhe Devils Raid For The Cure
3 Nov 2009 | 5:26 amWay to go, Bear!Blogger Big Bear Butt and his guild Sidhe Devils are doing something really cool that I must share with my readership. (It still humbles me greatly thinking I have a 'readership').One of their guildies has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. To show their love and support for their member they are organizing an ingame event.So today, I turn over HonorsCode to the BigBear:On their server Kael’thas (US), they are organizing a united cross-faction walk across Azeroth will be held on Saturday, November 14th, starting at 2:00 PM Central Time (Kael’thas-US server time). Members… -
Solve the Avoidance Problem, Eliminate Tank Gear
2 Nov 2009 | 6:04 amI got this idea after reading Blessing of Kings excellent post on Chill of the Throne (aka Icewell Radiance).Basically the best way for Blizzard to address the high avoidance problem is to remove Plate Tank gear in the next expansion, and put all Tanks in the same position of sharing DPS gear that Druids find themselves in today.The first steps towards this have already been taken by Blizzard's announcement at Blizzcon that Defense is going away in Cataclysm. All Tanks will have a Survival of the Fittest type talent that makes you uncrittable. So already we won't see any Plate in Cataclysm…
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3.25 Orcs
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New Year's Reminiscence
6 Nov 2009 | 6:43 amIt's not even December but already I'm summing up this past year. Last night my opinion was this:2009 STUNK!But that's because I woke up FREEZING and achy which are symptoms of the flu. I was not happy. And taking a nice hot shower at 2 a.m. with two young ones is not fun. It did, however, raise my temperature and now I feel like I'm running a fever.Before 2009 I got sick maybe once a year. Usually it was a doozy of a sickness. But again, just once a year. This year I got sick with upset stomach/flu in January, February, and March. And then the whole pregnancy thing. I know it's not a… -
Update Day
2 Nov 2009 | 6:35 amThe cousin who was ill is on the upswing I think. His parents are on their way down to see him/talk to doctors and all that good stuff.Damm passed his PT test :D He was on Cloud 9 this morning when he called me (really early in the morning). Everything is set for him to graduate now.The Orclette is scared of Land Before Time. I figured "Sharptooth" might be a bit scary but I wanted to see her reaction:"Momma it scary. Turn it off. We don't watch it!"I'm stepping up my efforts to filter what she watches. But when you consider Bambi to be a lovely kid's film and forget that there is a tragic… -
My cousin.
31 Oct 2009 | 10:25 amI have a cousin I'm fairly close to who currently has 'Toxic Shock Syndrome' or TSS. He is extremely ill and despite being an overly outgoing person is now turning down hospital visits because he simply isn't up to talking with people. Any and all prayers would be greatly appreciated. The good news is: He is not in the ICU (which means that multiple organs have not failed- probably no organs have failed); he's in a big hospital which is better for someone who has this sort of thing and lots of people are praying. -
Hmm more thoughts.
29 Oct 2009 | 4:11 pmThe dental stuff has gone much better than expected. I got a tooth pulled today and two fillings and was given an appointment for Tuesday to get the final three fillings. I was expecting to get two fillings, get told I had to do a root canal(three appointments all told for just that) and having to spend about 1-2 weeks showing up at 7:30 for "on call" to try and get in when someone didn't show to their appointment. This is obviously much better.PT... well I was on track kinda but haven't gotten any today or most of yesterday. Can't do PT again until after tomorrow because dentist is afraid I… -
News from the me.
28 Oct 2009 | 12:45 pmSo I'm proceeding decently on the PT front. My PT test is on Monday the 9th of November. I graduate the following day and HOPEFULLY go home. Any and all prayers are welcome.The end of the training is so much better as Sgt's are finally starting to treat us like well... people. So if my classmates don't manage to screw it up for us by abusing this treatment life should be pretty chill until the end of training. (And if I do get held over for Dental or PT then I don't have to deal with the Sgt's so much as just constantly be working to get those two things fixed).Hmm... its $30 to change…
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Misery - a shadow priest blog
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Tales from the test realm #14
6 Nov 2009 | 2:33 amKT: 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
28 Oct 2009 | 7:01 amSo 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… -
The coma issue
20 Oct 2009 | 6:38 amYou have to make some of assumptions when you start a blog. One is that there are a couple of people out there, in the ether, who are interested in what you have to say. The other is that they will occasionally, by hook or crook, find their way to your blog to read it. This poses a problem when you come to write about something that the entire world already knows and is weeks ahead of you on — like patch 3.3. But I'm not one to let a little problem like lack of readers get in the way of a good post. So, to all my visitors who have recently emerged from long-term comas, wipe the sleep… -
Bad timing
18 Oct 2009 | 3:37 amIf you are ever bored enough or autistic enough to read through every post on this blog (and I wouldn't recommend it) you'll notice a patter emerging. All announcements of any significance pertaining to shadow priests happen while I'm NOT HERE. Case in point. It's like those corny living statues that appear wherever tourists congregate - they only move when you turn your back. So anyway, I take one tiny little holiday and all this stuff happens. Stuff I need to read more about before I decide to jump up and down and make whooping noises. But in my head I am already practicing the snoopy… -
Do not adjust your sets
2 Oct 2009 | 4:52 amI'm very sorry I've been a bit of an absent landlord of late. I've had a perfect storm of attrocities in real life and online to battle with, including, but not limited to: Packing for a two-week holiday to Florida for which I leave in NINETEEN hours (pending) Attempting to loose two stone in a month to avoid looking like Mr Tickle on said holiday (FAIL) Trying to finish all my work so that I don't spend entire holiday remembering things I didn't do (ongoing) Tidying desk area so I don't return to alien landscape of deadly bacterial cultures (this will almost certainly be a fail) Finishing…
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Tobold's MMORPG Blog
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Some random WoW pet store thoughts
5 Nov 2009 | 11:33 pmI'm not buying either of the two pets on offer. I expect them to be fun for about 5 minutes, and most of that fun you can experience by watching somebody else's pet, and save your money.The $5 to charity deal (limited time offer, and only valid for one of the two pets) is a scam. If you disagree, I have an offer for you: Send me $10, and I promise to send $5 of it to charity.Blizzard used to be one of the few game companies with a basic understanding of exchange rates. Playing WoW in Europe is more expensive than in the US, but not by a stupid factor of 1.5 from an $1 = €1 calculation used… -
Dragon Age: Murphy's Law
5 Nov 2009 | 9:30 pmIn an extremely predictable sequence of events dictated by Murphy's Law, I first bought Dragon Age: Origins via Steam, and promptly got an e-mail from EA's marketing people saying that they decided to send me a review copy after all, and that it's in the mail. In hindsight of course I should have waited, but at least by buying the game a few hours before it came out I got some pre-purchase bonus in-game items.Well, I started playing, and did both a dwarf commoner warrior, and an elf mage, playing them until their stories converge. First impression is that the mage is overpowered, having… -
Blizzard introduces microtransactions
4 Nov 2009 | 9:43 pmA lot of people have previously argued that while Blizzard will take extra money from you for services like server moves or race changes, they aren't selling you any virtual items for real money. That isn't true any more. Via MMO-Champion and WoW.com comes the news that Blizzard now officially launched a microtransaction shop for their game, the Pet Store. For $10 you will be able to buy an in-game pet for World of Warcraft.Right now there are only 2 of them available, a pandaren monk and a miniature Kel’Thuzad. Others will undoubtedly follow. Then maybe other fluff items (armor dyes would… -
Dragon Age: Absence
4 Nov 2009 | 7:54 amSo Dragon Age: Origins is all over the internet today, having been released in the USA yesterday. Europe only gets the game this Friday, which is one reason why I'm not yet playing it. The other reason is more complicated:Since some time somebody working for a public relations agency emloyed by EA to promote Dragon Age: Origins sends me regular e-mails with news about the game, and links to where I can download publicity materials. And they offered me a review copy of Dragon Age: Origins weeks ago, asking me to preferably write a review before the release date. That review copy never arrived. -
Thought for the day: Ignorance
3 Nov 2009 | 9:52 pmHow come that every time an outage of Blizzard's servers in mainland China is reported, some people reply with comments about the effect that has on Chinese gold farmers? Isn't it blindingly obvious that if you wanted to shut out gold farmers of whatever nationality, you'd need to close down the US/Euro servers, not the Chinese ones? How do people imagine that gold is transferred from Chinese servers to US/Euro buyers?Tobold's MMORPG Blog
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Aspect of the Hare
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TreeStory: Contest Winner!
6 Nov 2009 | 8:04 amThe winner of the “400,000 Site Views” contest was Bloedhoorn, a tauren resto/kitty druid. This sort of presented a unique challenge to me because it meant I could write a story where druids were the focus, which I hadn’t done before. Anyways, as the character was being described to me, I was informed that Bloedhoorn spent a lot of time in tree form jumping around, dancing, and waving, which “comes naturally to being a Tree.” I really liked that last comment so much that I tried to see if I could base a whole story off of it. I also tried to incorporate… -
Not Bad… for a Human
4 Nov 2009 | 7:37 pmSo it’s “Aliens” quote day, so sue me. (Best Movie Ever by the way.) ANYWAYS! For those who missed it, this blog has been infected with a nasty little bug the past few days, so I nuked the site from orbit to try to kill it. Backed up my posts/comments/images, deleted everything, and spent the last six hours trying to bring this back online again after some issues. Everything, for the most part, should be back– obviously some of the stuff on the sidebar and some theme stuff needs to be fixed, and images are in the middle of being uploaded and probably won’t finish… -
We're Gonna Take Off And Nuke the Entire Site from Orbit
4 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pmIt’s the only way to be sure. So, soldiers, here’s the scoop. I thought I got rid of the nasty bug causing site redirect issues and the like last time, but apparently I’ve yet to root out the Queen Alien, so the issues have returned. I spent some time searching around but to no avail, and since I don’t want to waste my time on this crap when I’ve got stories to write and pictures to draw and WoW to play, (to paraphrase a wise man, “I’ve had it with these motherfrackin’ snakes on this motherfrackin’ plane”) I’m gonna attempt… -
Okay, Really Quickly Here
4 Nov 2009 | 4:42 amPlease tell me I’m not the only one having really awesome “Milo & Otis” flashbacks: (Thanks for the pic, MMO-Champion!) I say we pair it up with the Cornish Rex. Sooo cute x_x (And really, it’s about time we had a proper dog minipet, and not just a mini-worg.) (Yes, this is a filler post. Yes, I apologize. I’ll try to have something slightly more interesting up shortly!) -
So, Do I Have a Bullseye On My Head, Or What?
2 Nov 2009 | 5:59 pmI am somewhat embarrassed to admit this but it must be done, because this blog is about honesty: it appears as though my site has been compromised. Again. As such, I must extend my deepest apologies to anyone who has heard weird music on my site the past few days, been redirected to spam sites, been lambasted with popups, had their Antivirus tell them terrible things about me, etc. Now not everyone appears to have had this problem with my site– I think Adblock Plus kept a lot of the gunk out– but I know many people did, and since I have, from Day One, maintained a strict “NO…
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WoW Vault - The Ultimate Resource
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Jacon's Corner of Thought: The Cataclysm
6 Nov 2009 | 10:31 amJaconKin, a columnist here at WoW Vault, is back to bring us his thoughts on some of the Cataclysm announcements that happened at BlizzCon in... -
Pets and the Boy Who Cried Wolf
6 Nov 2009 | 8:13 amThere's a lot of hubbub going on about Blizzard's jump into the microtransation world when they announced they were going to sell in game... -
This Week's Tweets
6 Nov 2009 | 8:04 amThis weeks worth of compiled interesting tidbits and spotlights coming from Warcraft on Twitter!TweetsCurrently we are looking into making all meeting... -
Paladin & Priest Armor Previews
6 Nov 2009 | 7:29 amNethaera announced the Paladin & Priest Tier previews are now available.As the threats within Icecrown Citadel continue to take shape, so do... -
Priest FanArt
6 Nov 2009 | 7:17 amAs a part of our WoW Anniversary Celebration month we're spotlighting player FanArt! Check out this pencil sketch of a human priest in the...
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World of Warcast: A World of Warcraft Podcast
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Episode 93, Nov. 2, 2009
2 Nov 2009 | 5:09 pmWhere 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 pmHallow's End 2009 Minicast -
Episode 92, Sep. 21, 2009
21 Sep 2009 | 6:44 pmAuthenticator 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 amBrewfest 2009 -
Episode 91, Aug 31, 2009
31 Aug 2009 | 5:24 pmDifferent attitude towards welfare epics? How interested are you in the Arthas questline? World Of Warcraft Magazine Ask us questions using Twitter Pre-Cataclysm Boulderfist Photo Tour Alachia's Old Azeroth flickr group Should you donate for mo
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I Sheep Things...
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Building a Better Guild
3 Nov 2009 | 1:04 pmMy 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… -
In Celebration of my Second 80
30 Oct 2009 | 10:35 amIn celebration of Myrhani’s 79th and final (for now) ding, I’ve decided this post will be all about me. Ohhhhh wait, all my posts are all about me. Oh well, in celebration of Myrhani’s 79th and final (for now) ding, this post will be in the Grand Tradition of Posts that are All About Me. I decided to steal the most excellent Miss Medicina’s non-meme questionnaire. Which I also read about on Tamarind, Oriniwen, and Kyrilean’s blogs. Since I’ve been a healer for such a short time, nobody’s likely to tag me so I tag me! Besides, it’s not a meme, I… -
Myrhani the Hallowed
27 Oct 2009 | 4:14 pmAurdon and Adreanna and Naelian and me have been farming the Horseman. We’ve been farming him like it’s a second job. Actually, it’s been pretty fun… And after a week of constant tries, she finally got it. The Hallowed Helm. The final element. Hallowed means holified... how appropriate. And the most exciting bit is that both Nael and Adreanna have gotten the horseman’s mount! So far no horsies forthcoming for Aurdon and me… we’ll keep trying though. -
A Fail told by an Idiot, full of Fail and more Fail, signifying FAIL.
26 Oct 2009 | 11:55 amI had a bad time the other day in TOC. Maybe other healers have had the experience of everything just going down the drain when you have no idea how or why. It’s supremely frustrating! Nothing makes you feel more like a fail healer than watching your tank wilt and die over and over again, and not knowing what is going wrong. Here’s what happened: Myself and Naelian went to TOC the other night to farm. Myrhani was 78 at the time, but I’d been healing regular TOC without issue for a level and a half, and it had become very very routine. I’d never had a wipe while… -
GEEEE QUIT!
22 Oct 2009 | 7:30 amSo I got a tell the other night from one of the guilds I recently applied to. They turned me down at the time of the application because they had filled the position but apparently things didn’t work out. This = win. I have been on a downward slope with my guild for longer then I care to remember but I don’t think it was until Ulduar that I really started to notice being passed over for raid invites. On the day ToC was released I was passed over yet again and that broke the camels back for awhile. I had had it with clique groups where not all members of the guild are considered…
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Too Many Annas
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Epic Thankyous
4 Nov 2009 | 10:40 amGetting to host the Longest Night party last week was pretty epic. It was a memorable event, and one that both I and my character will not soon forget. I’m quite pleased with myself, to be honest, with how well that went and all the awesome IC things that happened. Thanks are due to: Aleros, for volunteering to be the zombie pinata (and then getting largely ignored all night) Shaurria, for helping me get all of the candy and cupcakes to the people that needed them. Norvallen, for being our icy, only mostly-dead bartender. Bricu, for giving an awesome tale of zombies in the stockade. -
Two Things to Read Today
4 Nov 2009 | 8:59 amFirst: Honor’s Code discussing the tanking implications for Lay on Hands now having Forbearance. As a Holy Paladin who is normally the main healer of our Prot Paladin tank (who also happens to be my husband) this change basically takes Lay on Hands out of the Holy Paladin’s toolbox for tank healing on a lot of fights. Any fight where a tank is going to need a Hand of Protection (Heroic Northrend Beasts?) or where there is any sort of major damage cooldown where they will want to be using Divine Shield now is Lay on Hands free. Mostly because LoH is something you pop in an OH SHIT… -
Initiating RP
3 Nov 2009 | 9:13 amSo you have an awesome character, and you’re in some channels (or just in general chat) trying to find RP. How do you go about getting started? How do you let other people know you want to play too? First – don’t ask OOC. Saying in a channel “hey does anyone want to RP with me?” isn’t going to get you the response you want. (This is especially true of general chat.) It doesn’t tell people what’s going on, and most of the time when other characters are online, they have things that they’re trying to get done. Saying “I wanna RP, who wants to come play!” is the equivalent… -
Something Bigger than a Game
2 Nov 2009 | 9:53 amIf you’ve not yet seen it, go check out Big Bear Butt’s – World of Warcraft Raid for the Cure. Coming together to support a member of the WoW community – always a good thing in my book. I won’t be able to be there, due to prior commitments, but there will be a little elf named OneAnna there in spirit. /hug! ***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***Something Bigger than a Game -
In-Game Costume Ideas
2 Nov 2009 | 8:40 amLast night the Riders had an informal Hallow’s Eve party out in the graveyard behind Karazhan. It was spooky, appropriately ghost-ridden, and the perfect place to hang out. We were all required to go in costume. As was to be expected with this bunch, some of the costumes were awesome. Most of the following were actually at the party. It was brilliant, and everyone had a good laugh. Farmer - this one’s pretty easy. A workman’s shirt, some blue or brown pants, brown boots, and any beat-up looking hat. Bonus points for a Farmer’s Broom or a Shovel. (This was…
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Armaggedon's coming
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Two Things…
5 Nov 2009 | 7:00 pmNumber 1: Hearts, Hands & Voices Number 2: World of Warcraft Raid for the Cure! I’m going to try and be there… but I can’t represent as Gnomeaggedon! Someone already has that name… So I will be there as Squidly’s Mate. Gnomer and Out! http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/06/two-things/ Posted in Blogs Tagged: Blogs -
Yes I am…
5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmYou’re Gnomeaggedon? Yes I am! After close enough to an hour of trying to get Squidly’s 1st Headless Horseman group together I managed to get a DK that could tank if need be and he had a couple of level 80 mates. They were still en-route so I asked whether the group wanted me to get my Mage for an extra summon after this group was finished. Everyone agreed it was a good idea, in fact nearly everyone else had extra toons they could grab too. So I said… OK, brb, relogging on Gnomeaggedon You’re Gnomeaggedon? I had one of those blogger moments… Is this a… -
GoogledGnome #69: Did Someone Really Search For That?
4 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pmOK, so this is GoogledGnome #69 (well 70 if we consider the one that I threw a completely different numbering system on), so I shouldn’t be amazed really… but hey, I am sweet and innocent, occasionally naive. “huntard” +signs You need sign posts… they are generally pretty obvious! Even though I am an ex-hunter, from way back in Vanilla, I am a Mage come Shaman these days and it would be entirely inappropriate of me to spell out the ways that Hunters prove that they are Huntards… I’ll leave that to the Hunter Bloggers.. let’s face it, they will… -
Rogues and Hunters need Mages because…
4 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmContinuing my series on why other classes need Mages, I look at two of the other pure DPS classes today. Meters Why bother reaching for the heights of Damage meter pwnage if you don’t have competition. Mages provide that competition, big time. More often than not if you are looking at the top 3 positions in a damage meter they will be filled by Hunters, Rogues and Mages. The question is, which of us will be No. 1? Trading threat Threat is bad… Trading threat is good, especially between ranged toons. Playing a bit of mob ping pong is great fun. Your threat too high, vanish, feign… -
Just Add Water
3 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmThe world was saved. Druids free to save the Barrens – check Hydras converted to single headed lizards – check. Forsaken dominance of the Razormane stopped – check. Trolls slaughtered by the dozen – check hehehehe The Baron unseated from his mount and Arthas’ shame cleansed – check The world was saved… Or was it? Gnomeaggedon rested at the Argent Dawn campsite. The gryphon ride from Lights Hope Chapel hadn’t filled him with the usual joy at taking wing. So he dismounted before reaching Ironforge, he needed some time to gather his thoughts.
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Automagica!
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UI Blueprint
29 Oct 2009 | 8:48 pmWhat 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 pmI'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 amIt'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 pmThis 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 amYou 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…
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The Pink Pigtail Inn
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Shop Smart, RMT Pet Shop…Smart?
5 Nov 2009 | 4:37 pmAghast. That’s the precise word to describe my reaction to Blizzard’s introduction of real money transactions to the game. Aghast.Old timers will know why I am aghast but if you are new or just don’t recall go back and read this post wherein I stated my belief that the foundation for Warcraft greatness was the fact that it did not have real money transactions in the game. Pets as Status SymbolsOne of the major issues I have with real money transactions is that they are classist. They create a distinction between the haves and the have nots that is based upon a person’s out-of-game… -
A different perspective on WoW charity
5 Nov 2009 | 12:43 amThis post is probably going to be a little bit controversial. I tell you right from the beginning, so it won't come as a shock to you. Not Very Controversial, but controversial enough to make a few of the readers annoyed or at least a little bit disappointed, since they don't share my views. But I wan't honesty in my inn. I won't settle with anything else.I'm going to talk about charity.Once again there are a couple of fundraising events going on in the blogosphere. Wow-insider says it’s "because of the time of the year", but to be honest, I think there’s some stuff like this going on… -
Goodbye world!
3 Nov 2009 | 11:20 pmAnd so began the evacuation of Azeroth.With Cataclysm still months away, Blizzard has already started to take measures to make sure that we stop patrolling the world. Our heroes are to take shelter in the major cities, leaving the poor civilians on their own. The new instant teleporting to instances incoming in the next patch is a step in this direction. It motivates us to turn our backs to whatever is happening outside the walls and instance portals, leaving free room for demons and other creatures to take over and destroy everything in their way. A Cataclysm requires a deserted world. From… -
Tell and Show
2 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmGod spoke and it came to be. This reality is at the heart of Catholic self-identity. As a people of God we are first and foremost a people of the word.The Story of the DesignThe order of events in the introductory sentence is worth highlighting. The first thing we learn in Genesis is that speaking; talking…vocalization…is contemporaneous with creation. The Lord said let there be light and there was light. He then looked upon the light and saw that it was good. God does not engage in an act of show and tell; he tells and shows.The concept that creation springs from the voice runs… -
A peek into the process of game designing
1 Nov 2009 | 4:26 pmIf you grew up in the 70s in Sweden, you were pretty much starved for fun TV programs.Disney cartoons were broadcasted for ONE hour at Christmas Eve every year. The rest of the year we had to do with "shows", where hippie dressed grown-ups showed us how we should make our own toys from cloth and wood, alternatively ran incomprehensible animated doll movies from Rumania. No, I'm not exaggerating.However, out among all those terrible programs that were supposed to be educating, but were plain boring, there actually was one kind which I never could have enough of: the inside peeks from different…
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Starnaglethron
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Mage DPS: It’s The Journey, Not The Destination
27 Oct 2009 | 9:10 amEver 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
25 Sep 2009 | 7:18 amThank 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
10 Sep 2009 | 11:30 pm -
Engineering Mount – Flying Machine
10 Sep 2009 | 8:32 amQuite 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
9 Sep 2009 | 1:30 pmLast 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…
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Leafshine: Lust for Flower
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It's My Birthday Hat
6 Nov 2009 | 1:34 amIt's my birthday!And I got a morning coffee achievement to celebrate: But, as that's the worst Achievement sceenshot EVAR, here's a better one of the culinary Leaf: I can now cook… slightly faster.Woo!(By a strange coincidence, my good lady wife has actually bought me some real-world kitchen stuff for my birthday.) -
Back in the Forest
5 Nov 2009 | 9:23 amOh, hey, The Forest Cat is posting again.I love that blog. Captures the sheer fun and joy of the game so very well. -
Paid Pets: Pandaren Monk
5 Nov 2009 | 1:09 amSo, Blizzard surprised us all yesterday by opening up in-game pets for sale on the Blizzard store. One of them, the Pandaren Monk, is linked to charity, in that Blizz gives 50% of the proceeds of his sale to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. (I'll address my thoughts on paid pets being a good or bad thing in another post.) Here's the little fella in action: I bought him partly out of curiosity, partly out of my duty as a half-assed blogger to investigate in a half-assed way, and partly because some of the money goes to charity. But mostly because Pandaren are just cool. The process is very… -
Bird on a Rock
25 Oct 2009 | 11:09 amThis is a blog post with an intended readership of one: Andromache.This is my proof that I was on the summoning stone, not in it: See? Comfy place for a bit of druid roosting…Told you this was only interesting to one person. :) -
Stop Yelling!
24 Oct 2009 | 12:05 pmBleedin' Dwarves. Do they really need to yell out that I've just finished a quest about 60 levels too low for me? I mean really. If working on Loremaster wasn't enough of a test of perseverance as it is, having uppity stumpies telling the world of your low-level victory seems, well, just sarcastic, frankly. And how come so few of the boars in Loch Modan have intestines, huh? How do they digest? Answer me that.Dwarf lands are strange.
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Zug Gaming
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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 ... -
WoW Gold Making Tips – Daily Quests Strategy
If you want to make enough WoW gold to buy everything you need for all your characters, you’ll have to do daily quests at some point. Doing dailies is simply one of the fastest and best ways to farm WoW gold. Having a daily quests strategy will really bump up ... -
Best Gold Making Add-ons
There are so many aspects to playing WoW, that you really need to use several add-ons to help you make WoW gold. Doing WoW gold farming will only get you so far without add-ons. All of the best gold making add-ons will help you lay out the best WoW gold ...
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Warcraft Econ
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Hall of Fame: Laike of Kel’Thuzad-US
6 Nov 2009 | 8:35 amPlease 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
4 Nov 2009 | 8:35 amAuthor: 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
30 Oct 2009 | 9:35 amSo 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 Smarter… -
Hall of Fame: Coire of Arathor-EU
29 Oct 2009 | 9:35 amThe Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame is a column featuring the few elite players that have hit the World of Warcraft gold cap of 214,748 gold 36 silver 46 copper. We have with us , Coire of Arathor-EU, who will be sharing their stories with us today. Please tell us a little about yourself and your gaming experience. Hi there! I’m Coire and I play on the server Arathor EU. I started playing WoW in May 05 and haven’t had a break since then. I started off on Horde, initially on the server Skullcrusher, but soon after my whole guild transferred to Balnazzar, where I’ve had my perhaps… -
Prospecting Spreadsheet Update in Progress
29 Oct 2009 | 9:35 amA message from the author of the Titanium/Saronite/Cobalt Prospecting Spreadsheet: Alright everyone – the p/w for the form is “Rockfleece” From what i hear the dust rates have been increased by ~1 across the board, so just change the following: Under the reference tab: C4 WAS 1.5 – Change to 2.5 C13 WAS 3.5 Change to 4.5 I will submit an updated version when i get a chance. Download: Prospecting Spreadsheet (.xls) – DOWNLOAD *Not Updated
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Less QQ More PewPew
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2v2 doesn’t matter anymore . . .
5 Nov 2009 | 2:19 pmBut 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.
30 Oct 2009 | 1:54 amAnd 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
16 Oct 2009 | 2:18 pmOver 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.
14 Oct 2009 | 10:46 amI 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… -
Dragon Age Origins Stuff
7 Oct 2009 | 9:56 amSo I’ve been getting some press content in my email lately about Dragon Age Origins. I feel all important and stuff. And I keep no secret that I am a Bioware fan. I loved KOTOR. I’ve played through Mass Effect 5 times now, finishing my 6th to unclock a couple more achievements. I love their games. I think they do a phenomenal job. And from what I have seen, Dragon Age is really shaping up to be amazing. I love fantasy games over science-fiction games in general just because I enjoy that type of content more. But as I stated, I did play Mass Effect almost 6 times now. Sten Rage-…
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The Troll Hunter
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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 ... -
50,000 Honorable Kills = I Have Way Too Much Time!
Greetings on this bright and sunny hump day! Well at least it is here anyway. I kind of took a WoW hiatus the last week of October to be able to spend some more time with my daughter and to finally get all my leaves raked and when I returned ... -
To RP or not RP? That is the question.
Greetings and a happy November! This month's first post leaves me a little torn on the subject of role playing (RP) on my current server because honestly it's just not there anymore. So the question is do I just delete my FlagRSP addon and just start to focus more on ...
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Me and My Ghoul
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The Cow and Dragon Age Origins
1 Nov 2009 | 4:35 pmFor 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
24 Oct 2009 | 8:30 amIt’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
17 Sep 2009 | 8:00 amIt’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
23 Aug 2009 | 10:30 amThose 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… -
3.2 Unholy DPS = No Scourge Strike?
1 Aug 2009 | 8:45 amFor anyone who has played an Unholy DPS DK since Wrath came out, the concept of an Unholy build that didn’t include Scourge Strike, seems like insanity. SS is supposed to be our bread and butter, the attack that the bulk of our rotations are based around. But in 3.2, the best Unholy DPS specs may not include Scourge Strike at all. Chew on that for a moment. Research and number crunching on EJ suggests that the best builds in 3.2 will look something like this, where the main attack is Obliterate – a talent that the average Unholy DK rarely if ever uses due to its stripping of…
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Spooncraft
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The Aion bots that inspire us!
6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pmWell you know it’s a lot of fun (or so I hear) to take a rift and find where a bunch of enemy player bots are out grinding and just sit there doing the server a service. I couldn’t tell you from my own perspective as every rift I’ve ever tried to enter was complete [...] -
World of Warcraft hits more problems in China
6 Nov 2009 | 1:37 pmIt seems that WoW is constantly teetering on the razor’s edge in China, what with their silly ass-backwards censorship policies and such. I’m pretty sure if not for the massive gold spam ads on my site, it too would be blocked. Maybe if I post more gratuitous porn and extremely bloody violence I’ll make the [...] -
For the Lore Double-header (Ep. 006-007)
6 Nov 2009 | 6:22 amI really need to stop being so fucking lazy. Well maybe it’s not so much lazy as it is distracted, I swear it’s like a shiny tit will fly by and cause me to completely forget what it was I was - Right so where was I? Yes, ok so that little show I kept telling [...] -
WoW’s Fifth Anniversary Sweepstakes
5 Nov 2009 | 8:51 amFive years of WoW. After at least a few more months I’ll come back to Azeroth but for now, any longer and the whole world would have been reduced to ash under my immense burnout. That doesn’t mean I’m not following the game like a madman still, just not spending every waking moment on it [...] -
Blizzard launches In-Game Special Pet Store
5 Nov 2009 | 7:59 amYou know, the more I thought about it the more I was totally ok with this idea. I mean honestly we have to face facts here that Blizzard has taken the MMORPG genre and with their one game have completely reinvented the market. I’d easily make the comparison between Warcraft and Starwars. You have two [...]
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Naissa's Rage
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I’m here … Sort of.
1 Nov 2009 | 8:38 pmYou 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.
13 Oct 2009 | 9:09 amAs 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.
27 Sep 2009 | 1:05 amIt'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)
23 Sep 2009 | 3:57 pmMy 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.
20 Sep 2009 | 5:09 pmBefore 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…
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Loregy.com
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Bolvar Fordragon’s Return?
26 Oct 2009 | 7:05 pmSPOILERS 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
12 Oct 2009 | 10:19 amSo 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
7 Oct 2009 | 9:26 amIn 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!
22 Sep 2009 | 2:21 amAs 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. … -
Cataclysm Release Date Leaked?
24 Aug 2009 | 2:24 pmWe’ve had our “Are we reading too much into this?” radar cranked up to ten with this, and the consensus is, “We’re not…” Did Tom Chilton make a slip of the tongue and give us additional insight as to when Blizzard’s target release date lies for WoW: Cataclysm? We think he did. Read on… At this point, Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard, has already confirmed that the target release date is set for 2010 (as we figured). However, during the first seminar, which was a discussion of Cataclysm, Tom Chilton mentioned something else. While…
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Huntsman's Lodge
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Hell Hath Frozen Over
6 Nov 2009 | 7:57 pmI've managed to level another class to 80. Thank goodness for BoA items. As BRK would have put it, I managed to level a Death Knigget to 80. ...and you know what, they're pretty f**king fun to play. Of course, what imbalanced "hero class" wouldn't be fun to play. I'm still learning the DK resource system, but already I can confirm they require a lot less keybinds than Hunters. Some of you are like... yea, neat Gar... bring on the UI post. Reason this is important is... leveling the DK was the impetus I needed to finish the UI. Related posts:Lots HappeningDeath Knights -
My User Interface
6 Nov 2009 | 4:20 pmI forget... are you people still interested in this? Let me know, because I was thinking about putting a post together that features all of my addons, along with maybe making a downloadable zip file of my UI compilation. If you guys aren't into it, that's cool too. Just let me know... *winks slyly* Related posts:New Hunter Forum and User RegistrationLots HappeningThe Garwulf UI -
Hunter Mentoring
2 Nov 2009 | 11:43 amLast week it occurred to me that I don't have any all-encompassing build guides for raiding Hunters anywhere on the site. After helping three of our guild's newer Hunters over the past two weeks with respecs, re-glyphs, and suggestions, I realized I'd probably save myself a lot of in-game time by having some guides on here that I could send them to. Plus, that way I could also share my tips and recommendations for anyone else who cares to know. It's a win-win situation if you ask me. The latest Hunterlings who'd sought my tutelage have all reported moderate to massive gains in their DPS. The… -
[2] [Garwulf]: WTB More Hours in a Day
29 Oct 2009 | 10:27 amSo many topics and so little time... I have loads of ideas for posts, but I just haven't had as much time lately to blog. The few extra hours per week that I normally would spend blogging are now being spent in-game. Our guild's been trying hard to progress through the Trial of the Crusader, and since I'm among the top DPS in the guild, I've felt compelled to lend a hand. Good news is, we not only managed to down Anub'arak this past Sunday in TotC 25 man, but we also came out of the gates very strong this week by one shotting the first four bosses in there. It was getting late and we started… -
New Spirit Beast Bear in Grizzly Hills
28 Oct 2009 | 7:24 pmIt seems as if my prediction was accurate. The new "Spectral Bear" model is in fact the next Spirit Beast and will be introduced in Patch 3.3. "Arcturis" is a neutral level 74 Elite Spirit Beast that can be found on the Patch 3.3 PTR in Grizzly Hills. So far the only known spawn location is just north of Amberpine Lodge. Head over to Mania's site to view the original post from the Hunter who first discovered this new Spirit Beast on the PTR. Related posts:New Spirit Beast in Patch 3.3?Introducing… Gondria, The New Spirit BeastHalfway there, and on to Grizzly Hills
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The Ebon Hold
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XP SP3, Vista, and Windows 7 Latency Fix for World of Warcraft and other games.
24 Oct 2009 | 8:57 pmIf 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 amRuneforging * 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 amDeath 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 pmI 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 amDue 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...
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Sideshow & Syrana
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A Change of Seasons
6 Nov 2009 | 12:41 pmI thought I’d give an update on my gaming and an overview of my play-style. Sideshow is currently at 80 and has been there for many months now. In all honesty, he’s probably as far as he needs to be. He has a few Naxx pieces, some PvP pieces, etc. I have no interest in getting him fully top-tier geared. That’s not how I play. I drop in to enjoy my free time with whatever I feel like doing at the time. I usually do a few dailies, hit up a few battlegrounds, and maybe run some stuff with guildies. I may start PuGing more when the dungeon changes come out in 3.3. It’s not… -
Friday Funnies: Know Your Audience
6 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amSometimes those pesky macros go into the wrong channel…which requires me to be a smartass. -
TLC Thursday: Links, Links, Everywhere Links
5 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amToday’s TLC Thursday is brought to you by some random starred items in my Google Reader… again. This first link is a non-WoW blog, but I found this post amusing about the overkill of trendy idioms over at DelSquacho. Scratch that, this isn’t a blog link, it’s a blonk. In this day and age, often do you actually talk on the phone anymore. Have you ever thought of what a phone conversation might be like if you had to call a guildmate only armed with their game name? Fulguralis shares a humorous tale of having to do such a thing. I’d like to welcome Mortigan… -
Veteran Rewards? Yes Please!
4 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amToday is the first day that Aion players can redeem veteran rewards. Last week NCsoft revealed their plans for veteran rewards. Starting today, accounts that have been active for at least a month will be able to redeem them. Although things could still change, at this time, they are planning to have rewards for each active month – up to 6 months. What kinds of goodies shall we see? Titles, cube expansion, exclusive emotes, rez stones, experience amulets, and better wings. Best part? You can redeem them for any/all of your characters as long as your account has been active long… -
November Is A Busy, Busy Month
3 Nov 2009 | 5:33 pmayumi @ Flickr Some of you may have noticed there wasn’t an RP segment posted for today. My brain needed a rest and Monday evening was spent veggin’ out in front of the television catching up on some CSI episodes. I don’t know about all of you, but for me, November got here too fast… and it (as well as December) are going to fly by quickly. As the holidays get closer, there is a ton of family gatherings, shopping, snow, decorating, etc. to be done. It also tends to be a very busy time for my job because this time of year is also relapse season and my clients tend…
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Sheep Blink Invis
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Warcraft, The Movie (as cast by me)
20 Oct 2009 | 10:57 amLet’s be honest, more often than not movies based on video games haven’t done that well (Bloodrayne anyone?). Now there are clear exceptions like the Resident Evil series of which the 4th movie in the series is scheduled to be out next year (yay – I’m a huge Milla fan!!). And I’ll admit, as cheesy as some people thought it [...]Copyright © 2009 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. (Digital Fingerprint: 8a2c25a725d1897162538f78263dc673 (74.125.44.136) ) -
In retrospect
1 Oct 2009 | 10:51 amTalk about a busy last week or so. 3.2.2 was certainly not the largest patch we’ve seen, not by any means. Days of previous patches I’ve had trouble logging in and some serious lag issues, but that was usually the extent of patch day craziness. With this latest patch, I had crazy problems logging in and [...]Copyright © 2009 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. (Digital Fingerprint: 8a2c25a725d1897162538f78263dc673 (74.125.44.136) ) -
New Patch and Old Friends
22 Sep 2009 | 11:25 amOnyxia is back! With 3.2.2 upon us, it is of utmost importance that we pay homage to the most uber of all Warcraft related videos. A classic in its own right, let us take a moment: It is still absolutely hilarious after all this time and I honestly cannot get enough of it. And yes it’s true, [...]Copyright © 2009 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. (Digital Fingerprint: 8a2c25a725d1897162538f78263dc673 (74.125.44.136) ) -
Summer wrap-up
8 Sep 2009 | 1:39 pmSo I am actually really enjoying playing my horde toons and especially enjoy my Paladin. So she’s level 68 (last night it took me 2 hours to do 2.5 bars to level. I was caught up watching The Rachel Zoe Project. Yes. I said it. The Rachel Zoe Project.) Anyways, I’m dual spec’d Holy/Prot (I’m [...]Copyright © 2009 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. (Digital Fingerprint: 8a2c25a725d1897162538f78263dc673 (74.125.44.136) )
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I am a Paladin
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Female PVPers
5 Nov 2009 | 9:24 amSo 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
1 Nov 2009 | 3:17 pmI 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
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… -
Epeen in WoW
19 Sep 2009 | 8:22 pmNothing like a particularly grating incident to fuel the writing juices.Ever since transferring over to my current server, I haven't regretted it as it is just a much more "happening" server, Horde wise. My old server really had people that were big assholes with the egos to match, though skill levels may actually not compare.Today, I met my first douchebag.I do not have screen shots or anything as I was pulled quickly into a Vault run right during the incident.So there I was, minding my own business in front of the Dalaran Horde bank. How many of you just like to idle in front of banks? =PI… -
Writer's Block
13 Sep 2009 | 9:52 pmEven though it seems like I am overdue for a post (and I am), it is not for lack of trying. I have a couple of random, unfinished posts in my archive that I am stuck on because I got bored midway writing - you know that's a bad sign - or I felt it to be a pointless post. I'm churning out drivel!So, I thought why not cop out and open questions for my readers about anything they would like to know excluding questions that would expose my identity of course. =)I'll see if any questions I get require their own separate posts or if I should combine all the answers into 1 long FAQ post.Go ahead and…
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Nihilum
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PTR Build 10772
5 Nov 2009 | 6:39 pmBattle.NetIt appears the Battle.net site has been updated with a new login background, login process (not much change easily seen), and all the old account management pages are now more integrated into Battle.Net.BoA ItemsPopulation IssueIf you're able to patiently wait for patch 3.3 you will probably be rewarded with the very thing you're requesting. That's right, we aim to implement the ability to exchange bind-on-account items between your Horde and Alliance characters in patch 3.3. Of course, as with anything not yet live (and even things that are) this is subject to change, but it… -
Blue Posts
5 Nov 2009 | 6:33 pmInfernal cooldown lolWe didn't like the way Affliction played. There were players who liked having so many dots and players who didn't. It certainly wasn't the case that whoever QQ'd the most won (and I suspect it was the pro dot crowd who QQ'd the most). We wanted to make Affliction more about the Shadow spells and Destruction more about the Fire spells. We wanted each to have a core group of spells upon which they focused. That is happening now and I believe both specs are fun to play.The John Madden thing for Feral is not an excuse to let their dps be high. The actual point is that there… -
Blue Posts
4 Nov 2009 | 8:01 amArmory ParsingAs of this morning the database is at 383,000 characters with a queue of over 45,000! This includes people from almost 19,000 guilds! We now have 62 realms listed, but several only have characters for one faction, or only a few characters on a faction. This may be due to the crawler not getting to their realm yet, or they may have been a bad seed.You can see the list of realms here and you can add characters to the queue here. If you happen to have a server with php, curl, and a few GB of spare badnwdith, you can help speed up parsing by mirroring requests for us. Send us an… -
PTR Build 10747
3 Nov 2009 | 3:24 pm3.3 SoundsI put most of the 3.3 sounds in a file for you to download, you can choose from various hosts here or here (sometimes faster).Thanks to Leviathon at EJ for transcribing the below files.Soundfile for the start of the Deathbringer fight:Horde:Deathbringer: Join me father, join me and we will crush this world in the name of the Scourge. For the glory of the Lich King!Deathbringer: Stubborn and old. What chance do you have? I am stronger and more powerful than you ever were.Deathbringer: Pathetic old orc. Come then heroes, come and face the MIGHT of the Scourge!Alliance:Deathbringer:… -
Blue Posts, Popular Titles, G4 Interview
1 Nov 2009 | 12:47 pmPopular TitlesI have put together a list of the most popular titles, you can find it here. It is cached weekly, or on cache clears, as the percentages do not change often. The database is currently at 333,000 characters and growing. We can't keep it growing without your help, so head over to the realm list and help fill out empty or missing realms!G4 InterviewG4 has done a 5 years of WoW interview with several of the present and past devs, head over to their site to watch them.WoW ChinaIt looks like they are in trouble again, which will cause even more delay in WotLK.General Adminitration of…
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MMOcker.com
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Magik Shoppe Halloween
29 Oct 2009 | 12:30 pmHappy Halloween from Magik Shoppe and everyone at MMOcker.com! (click to enlarge) -
Magik Shoppe: Draft 5
27 Oct 2009 | 7:00 amThe company SnowStorm brokers a compromise with the war protesters. -
Magik Shoppe: Draft 4
22 Oct 2009 | 7:00 amAdam finds he has more support in his cause than he thought he had before. -
Magik Shoppe: Draft 3
20 Oct 2009 | 7:00 amWhile in the can, Adam makes a friend. -
Magik Shoppe: Draft 2
13 Oct 2009 | 7:00 amAdam desperately searches for some way to dodge the draft.
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We Fly Spitfires - MMORPG Blog
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WoW Pet Costs More Than My Monthly Subscription
5 Nov 2009 | 1:05 pmOf course the big news today was that Blizzard have entered the micro-transaction scene and are now selling in-game pets, bound to your account, via their online store. Can’t say I’m really surprised as Blizzard have been slowly introducing more and more paid services over the years and I feel like it was only a matter of time before they started selling in-game items. Expect more fluff and vanity items and probably even exp potions in the months to come. I can’t say that I’m particularly bothered about the introduction of purchasable pets although I have to say that… -
What Is “MMO”?
4 Nov 2009 | 1:16 pmThe original term, as far as I know it, was MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It spawned when the concept of the RPG game was taken live across the Internet and introduced to hundreds of thousands of players in a simultaneous world (I don’t know how the term MUD fits into this or even if had anything to do with the term MMORPG so feel free to shed some light on it if you know). Since then people have often shortened the term to simply MMO and used it to define RGP style games like World of Warcraft and Everquest. The term has also been prefixed onto other classic… -
Leaving Behind Your Buddies
3 Nov 2009 | 12:38 pmOne of the toughest things about the MMORPG genre is that it’s not always possible to take your friends with you when you change game. People tend to find a MMO they enjoy and play it over long periods of time (months, if not years) and that’s great for forming strong bonds and friendships but it does mean that if you want to try something new, you can often find yourself standing on a fresh new world, knowing no one, whilst all of your old buddies are still playing your previous game. And that sucks. Maybe it says a lot about the transient nature of our online friendships (and… -
A Year Of World of Warcraft
2 Nov 2009 | 1:47 pmAlthough I participated in the World of Warcraft beta and even imported the USA version of the game before it was released here in Europe, I got stuck into Everquest 2 instead and didn’t properly start playing WoW until the end of October 2008, just over a year ago. In my year of Warcraft I haven’t accomplished as much as many other players - I haven’t hit level 80 yet and I haven’t done any raiding - but instead I’ve played it in a very casual style and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think WoW has been the right game for me at the right time. Previously my MMORPG… -
Torchlight Thoughts
1 Nov 2009 | 6:23 amLast Tuesday I purchased and downloaded Torchlight and I figured I may as well share my initial thoughts and impressions about it with everyone. Yeah, I know that every other blogger on the planet is doing exactly the same thing but, well, um, yeah. Can’t really think of anything to say about that except that maybe this post will show you glimmers of fetal wit that impress you more As I said before, Torchlight is basically Diablo. So close to it, in fact, it’s uncanny. Everything from the get-go screams Diablo and I’m convinced they even re-used some of the same sound…
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HoTs & DoTs
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Increase Your Sex Appeal with a Blood Elf Mask
6 Nov 2009 | 4:15 amPretending to be a blood elf is the next best thing to... actually being a blood elf. Everyone knows that Blood Elves are the “sexy” race. Which race was picked to most closely resemble Britney Spears? That’s right. A Blood Elf female. Even Blizzard’s Faction Change advertising carries the slogan “Because I would rather be a Blood Elf”. What more proof do you need? Meet my favourite dysfunctional couple in World of Warcraft. He’s a robe-wearing pirate. She’s… got a crappy plane. An unusual match perhaps. But “Silvermoon” Harry… -
Hacked.
4 Nov 2009 | 8:16 amI still have all my gear. That's the main thing, right? My World of Warcraft account was hacked last night at 5 minutes to midnight. I know exactly when it happened because I was online. On Wednesday I raided with my guild as per usual. We called things a bit early and I was grateful, I’d been experiencing, as had most of our raid, pretty miserable latency on and off throughout the night. I’d also disconnected at least 4 times, 3 of those times during our battle against Onyxia. Usually I’d log off and eat dinner at the end of raid. But not this time. I got talked into… -
One for the Horses: A Trifecta
2 Nov 2009 | 7:30 pmIt’s Melbourne Cup day today! I’ve got about 30 minutes then I’m going to go put on a party dress and eat cheese and fruit while I watch the race. So, in the spirit of Melbourne Cup, and horse racing in general, lets talk about World of Wacraft horses. Ok, “mounts”. Whatever. Here are, in my opinion, the three coolest horses in World of Warcraft. 3. Swift Alliance Steed Swift Alliance Steed - So blue, so Alliance! Isn’t he pretty? I think I could almost look as good as a Paladin riding around on a mount like this. The reason I like Swifty so much is because… -
Sliding Doors
1 Nov 2009 | 5:51 pmDo you ever wonder what might have been? Vok, who plays on the same realm as us, ranted about Priests in his Healing Q&A. Obviously he’s played with some terrible Priests this expansion, none of which, it seems, can remember to click Fortitude. Or perhaps none that can afford candles. But Vok doesn’t realise how close he came to raiding with me. When Lathere and I needed a new guild at the start of Wrath we came as a linked pair. A buy one, get one free type deal (I think Lath was the one they were buying and I was the freebie). We joined a raiding guild called Defiance… -
Tag, You’re It! The Healer Cypher
30 Oct 2009 | 5:27 amToo many Resto Druids? Never! If healers were cool enough to be rappers I’m pretty sure this would be called a Cypher. As healers are really more full of bunnies, rainbows, candy and all that, somehow I think a Healing Webring is a much more fitting name! So the healing community of bloggers are calling out one another to fill in this questionnaire which is definitely not a meme. And because Tamarind asked, and I love reading his highly entertaining posts, how could I possibly deny him a response? The full list which is being labeled the Circle of Healers can be found here. Vok,…
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WoWGrrl's World
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Raid Bonding Agent: Chasing Achievements
5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amMy 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
3 Nov 2009 | 5:26 amI 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
16 Oct 2009 | 5:38 amMy 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… -
Where To Get The Achievement: Going Down?
14 Oct 2009 | 6:47 amI have no fear of falling - it's the sudden stop at the end that worries me. I'm sure I'm not the first person to make this statement, so if you'd like, you can associate the above quote to "Unknown", or "Anonymous". Whatever happens, it's the truth, no matter who first assembled the words in that particular order. Falling In Game? Commonplace One thing that is markedly different in how I operate In Real Life and how I operate In-Game comes in the form of how I travel from place to place. In Real Life, I'm no longer light and nimble like the 10 year old who loved to climb stacks of 2-by-4s… -
Flying Through The Lowbie Levels With BoA Gear
12 Oct 2009 | 7:41 amI have to say, I'm loving this Bind on Account gear that has been released into the game with this expansion pack. Not only is it ugly as anything I've ever seen before in some cases (and yes, that's of value to me), but it goes a long, long way towards reducing the pain of hunting out gear upgrades every 10 levels like I used to do. I know it's been out a while, but the fact that the weapon, both trinkets, plus the chest and shoulder pieces that I slapped on this character before she hit level 20 will last me all the way to level 80, and possibly even 85 when Cataclysm comes out. That's a…
