You know those discussions you have with friends or guildmates about PvP. The conversations were you tell a story about how you, and possibly some buddies, took on X amount of the opposing faction with only Y amount of help? You know the stories I am talking about. It’s the speech type, the ones you stop listening to instantly just so you can gather your thoughts to tell your own awesome story. Everyone has them, heck, everyone has dozens of them. They are the experiences in video games that we won’t forget until they are replaced by something that much cooler. …
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Project Lore: Five dudes. Four cameras. One World of Warcraft.
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Questing: Holding Your Own In Battle
3 Jul 2009 | 1:25 pm -
The Curious Case of High-End Raiding Guilds
3 Jul 2009 | 12:09 pmProfessional gamers. For all the sponsored tournaments, unwarranted merchandising, and red-eyed luminaries that now swarm around the nexus of competitive gaming, you’d think it would amount to more than a footnote in our sporting culture. Currently, they’re lucky to get a mention on ESPN 2, somewhere in-between Punkin Chunkin and the ailing World Poker Tour. That’s certainly not to knock the players themselves. I mean, what kid in the past two decades hasn’t dreamt of living out their years on a fat stack of cash earned from mastering the joystick? “The… -
The Next Expansion: Guild Progression
2 Jul 2009 | 2:49 pmBlizzCon is slowly creeping up on us, and this year most people expect the company’s big announcement to be World of Warcraft-based. With StarCraft 2 locked in for this year, and Diablo III looking like 2010, early 2011 is rip (if not late) for the third expansion to Azeroth. As it stands now, people are expecting The Maelstrom (not storm) or The Emerald Dream to be the focus of the next expansion (water mounts anyone?), but World of Warcraft needs more than epic lore to pull people in and retain the current amount of users. Like any good internet subscriber, I need to get my… -
Next Expansion: WoW Cataclysm?
2 Jul 2009 | 1:53 pmA series of trademark requests that Blizzard Entertainment recently filed may indicate the possible name and lore of the next World of Warcraft expansion. Wednesday, Tumblr blogger Supererogatory revealed that Blizzard is seeking trademarks that would include computer games, paper-based products and online games with the name “Cataclysm.” For all we know, that could be the name of Blizzard’s super-secret project under development, a new MMO or something else completely unrelated to WoW. But given the name’s relationship to the Maelstrom, some people (including myself)… -
Blizz Responds to Faction Change Questions
2 Jul 2009 | 12:44 pmWell folks, it looks like we have some, but definitely not all the answers regarding how the possibility of faction changes announced earlier this week could work. Wednesday, Blizzard blue poster Nethaera updated his original post on the subject with a few more details on the matter - probably because of the incredibly high number of questions (and complaints) that players posted. Several of the updated answers relate to questions regarding the race of characters who request a faction change. Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction? A.. No. Players will only be able…
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WoW.com
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WoW, Casually: Making the most of holidays
4 Jul 2009 | 2:00 pmRobin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.Holidays are for all players, of course, but I think they are particularly appropriate for players… -
Hunters discover "new" Worgen pet
4 Jul 2009 | 12:50 pmAs the holiday weekend rolled around, we started to get a number of tips that Hunters were successfully training themselves a...Worgen pet? Worgen?!? How was this level of cool allowed into the game without anyone knowing about it until now?Well, it turns out that the Worgen pet is in fact a very clever use of game mechanics somewhat akin to those used by Hunters in order to tame the (now sadly vanished) Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Garwal, a warg NPC in northern Howling Fjord who can turn into a Worgen as part of a questline (the link is the Horde version, but it's the same for both Horde and… -
Enter to win some loot cards from WoW.com and WoWTCG.com
4 Jul 2009 | 12:00 pmIs it just me, or have we had lots of EU-only contests lately? First, Lesley gives away some loot cards for the EU, and then Turpster gives away some more. This is July 4th, and it's about time we served the North American side of the globe! (Canada, we missed Canada Day, so we'll throw you in the mix, too). Courtesy of our good friends over at WoWTCGLoot.com (be sure to visit them if you need to know anything about the TCG Loot cards), let's give away some loot codes!We've got 10 in total that we'll give away to ten random commenters on this post before tomorrow night, Sunday July 5th, at… -
WoW Insider Show live on Ustream this afternoon
4 Jul 2009 | 10:00 amOver 200 years ago, our forefathers put forth a document that not only declared the Independence of one of the greatest nations in the world, but also sundered the connection between the old country of Great Britain and the new United States of America. Now, all this time later, Turpster and I do the WoW Insider Show together, and basically undo all that work those smart guys did way back when. This week we'll have an especially good one, as Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, and Michael "Belfaire" Sacco are all coming on the show all together. Just in case you thought they were all the same person… -
WRUP: WRUPing on the 4th of July
4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 amAnother week has come and gone again, leaving us stranded in yet another weekend (and a holiday weekend for many of us, at that). How are we ever going to kill the time until Monday? By spending some time in Azeroth! So what's everyone playing this weekend? The WoW.com team will get the conversation started, so to see what we're up to -- and tell us what you're up to! -- in game this weekend, read on!Continue reading WRUP: WRUPing on the 4th of JulyFiled under: Odds and endsWRUP: WRUPing on the 4th of July originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms…
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TankingTips.com
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Buffing Shield Wall: The Whole > The Parts
3 Jul 2009 | 7:16 amShield Wall is easily the most powerful Defensive cooldown in a Warrior’s arsenal. There are 2 ways to buff it: Glyph of Shield Wall Improved Disciplines Does only 40% make it bad? 3 minute mini-wall vs 5 minute big-wall. Hmm… meh. Is 1 minute less on shield wall good? …not really. A 3 minute, 40% Shield Wall isn’t really that amazing for a highly praised Major Glyph slot. A 4 minute, 60% Shield Wall isn’t really worth 2 talent points, at all. What about Together? Before: 5 minute cooldown, 60% reduction After: 2 minute cooldown, 40% reduction After sounds… -
Riddle me this: Who do you Vigilance?
28 Jun 2009 | 10:19 amVigilance has to be the ability I have grown the most to love of those given to us in Wrath of the Lich King. It was so looked down upon at the onset of the expansion, so shunned and yet, it’s turned out to be one of the most multi-functional abilities in our arsenal. There’s a Disney movie in there somewhere albeit probably one that’ll go straight to DVD, but a Disney movie nonetheless. Riddle Me This Most of the time, it’s fairly obvious that a DPSer should be Vigilanced or that a Tank should be either for the Threat reduction or for the Damage reduction. -
Is Resilience back?
23 Jun 2009 | 7:25 amIn the past, we’ve looked at the relationship between Defense and Resilience in order to cheat the Defensive minimum (currently 540 defense) however, this practice has largely fallen out of flavour as the accessibility of PvP oriented gear that’s superior to PvE oriented gear just isn’t unbalanced anymore. That doesn’t mean though that we should ignore the PvP enchants though… The Quest for even more Stamina A while back, we looked at Defense and how we could maximize our health when hovering around the 540 minimum, but what I missed was this enchant: 30 Stamina… -
The Thing I take for Granted the most…
15 Jun 2009 | 9:24 amI often chat with you, my readers, and I make this assumption. I assume you’re in a guild and amazingly, some of you aren’t. But then, it isn’t amazing now, is it? But, it sure feels that way If there’s one thing I take for granted, it’s being a part of a guild and not just being a part of one, but having this established place in that guild. In the end, finding your place matters more than just about any other aspect of tanking. It’s what makes you confident and what makes you confident is what makes you great. What is my Place? I’m the Raid leader… -
Back to Basics: Selecting Targets
11 Jun 2009 | 4:55 pmSelecting a target to tank is probably the skill most taken for granted when it comes to tanking yet, it’s one of the most notable differences between an average and a skilled player. There’s 4 ways to accomplish the task of targeting: Clicking on Targets Tabbing to Targets Using a Macro to Target Focus Targeting 1. Clicking on Targets If there’s one thing that I never fully appreciated as a clicker (someone who uses their mouse to click their abilities) in the past was the ability to select targets using my mouse. It’s simply something that’s not practical to do…
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World of Matticus
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Online Gaming Addiction Part 2 – Signs and Symptoms
3 Jul 2009 | 9:00 amThis is a guest post by Professor Beej. Part 2 of 3. In my last post, I chronicled my ongoing experiences with Online Gaming Addiction that have led me to the point where I am now—I’ve realized I am addicted, and I am trying to rid myself of the problem. Today, I intend to go through the signs that initially helped me realize that I was (and still am, but to a lesser extent) addicted to the hobby in which I have to this point invested eleven years of my life. If you think that you or someone you know might be addicted to online gaming, then ask the following questions. These are the… -
Online Gaming Addiction Part 1 – My Experience
2 Jul 2009 | 12:57 pmThis is a guest post by Professor Beej. This is part 1 of 3. I wrote an article a few years ago regarding my experience with online gaming addiction. Last month, I even posted that I had cancelled World of Warcraft yet again, and now I am backsliding again. My main problem is that I absolutely love any game that is massively multiplayer online (MMO), and I have since I was 15. These games give me a sense of growth and community that I adore. I just cannot find that in single-player games. The driving force in these games is a quantifiable increase in the power of your… -
On Exploits: A Philosophical Musing
30 Jun 2009 | 11:08 amThere’s been much talk lately, on WoM and elsewhere, of in-game “exploits” and their proper punishment. Most recently, Exodus has been censured with a 72-hour suspension for taking using Yogg’s mechanics to their advantage. A while back, Karatechop of Vek’nilash received a permanent ban for using the god-mode Martin Fury shirt. Even further in distant memory, Ensidia publicly admitted to using a buff from Freya trash to complete a “mathematically impossible” hard-mode Hodir. In this post I am going to muse about what is right, what is fair, and what… -
Monday Midnight Musings (Patch 3.2 and Exploits)
30 Jun 2009 | 2:07 amIt’s not often I do late night posts. They usually come out all funky and misunderstood or full of typos and other clerical errors. At the same time, the evening is when my mind is at it’s most active. This is going to be a fairly decent sized blog post about some big changes that have been announced. Yogg Saron Tonight we managed to kill Yogg-Saron on 25. It took us around 6 weeks (or about 12 hours total) to clock him out. Previous weeks involved the melee clicking and the ranged DPS still struggling or some melee players having portal difficulties and the ranged just killing tentacles… -
Faction Change Service Announced
29 Jun 2009 | 2:14 pmI normally don’t post news but I think this one merits something. I’m a bit stunned by this. Blue’s have announced that a faction switching service is in the works. It allows players to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. In other words, I can switch from Alliance to Horde and back. I wonder what a Dwarf would transform into. More ways to make money, I suppose. I’m almost certain this service is going to involve cash. Hands up anyone out there who would take advantage of this service. Why? Who wouldn’t?
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Gray Matter
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What is Blizzard Smoking?
30 Jun 2009 | 6:34 amIn my last post I talked a little about the new set bonuses. This was my reaction to the first 4T9 set bonus of 5% Crit chance to Starfire.I'm sure my first reaction was the same as most of yours when I saw the 4T9 set bonus. "That sucks." It's obviously worse then 4T7, and there is no way it can compete with 2T8 with the change to Eclipse. If this goes live no moonkin is going to wear 4 pieces of T9 gear.My second reaction was "This has to be a place holder." Its not uncommon for Blizzard to put old information in tooltips in early versions of the patches. You may remember that early… -
Patch 3.2: Tier Sets, Idols and Set Bonuses
24 Jun 2009 | 8:13 amSince the patch is now on the PTR more information is starting to come out regarding gear and such. You can find all of the items at World of Raids, and probably MMO-Champion. Here is my reaction.Idols:I feel a little psychic. In yesterday's post I said I wouldn't be surprised if there was a new idol and it turns out there is.[Idol of Lunar Fury] - Each time your Moonfire spell deals periodic damage you have a chance to gain 200 Critical Strike Rating for 12 seconds.My first impression is a positive one. It will be nice to have an idol that affects 90% of our rotation. Of course it all… -
Patch 3.2: The New Eclipse
23 Jun 2009 | 1:30 pmUpdate:Well don't I look like a psychic? There will be a new Idol with the release of 3.2. My first impression is that it looks good, but it really depends on the proc rate.The patch notes have been out for a couple of days now and the Moonkin community has had a chance to digest the changes. You may remember my first reaction was shock. I didn't expect there to be any significant Moonkin changes even though I knew we are currently a little under powered.Well, I'm still a little in shock and part of me can't wait for the changes. (The other part is worried that I won't be able to complete the… -
Patch Notes: 3.2 - The End of Lunar vs Solar
18 Jun 2009 | 11:57 amWe all knew that 3.2 is right around the corner. The amount of info coming out of Blizzard lately made that obvious, and I expected that the patch notes would be available soon. To be honest though, I wasn't that excited. Yes, I am interested in the new raid, but I'm so focused on Ulduar right now that its not a pressing concern. On top of that I had no expectation that Moonkins PvE would be changed. So I'm a little shocked buy some of the patch notes that came out today. Lets take a look.Eclipse:The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second. cooldowns. In… -
New 3.2 Info: Professions, Heirlooms, and Squires
17 Jun 2009 | 7:24 amIt is becoming clear that patch 3.2 is just a round the corner because the CM team is starting to release new information about the changes coming in the patch. I personally wouldn't be surprised if we saw patch notes released with in a week.Anyway, none of the changes announced so far are Moonkin specific, but there are some interesting changes that you may want to pay attention to.Professions:When the next major content patch launches we will be introducing epic quality gems and updating the perks for each profession.This is interesting for a couple of reasons. I've long speculated that…
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Kinless Chronicles
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The Last Straw – What it’ll be
2 Jul 2009 | 11:06 am…and it hasn’t happened yet. And, given the post below from a blue, it might not happen with Patch 3.2. What am I talking about? Faction changes, but not anarchy. Faction Change Service Update – July 1, 2009, 11:26 am Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction? A.. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction. Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to? A.. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human… -
Teach a toon to fish
1 Jul 2009 | 6:49 amGive a toon a fish, and he’ll sell it as vendor trash. Teach a toon to fish, well that’s a different story. Both World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online offer fishing. Mechanically, the operation is fairly similar in both games. In LotRO you click a button to cast. (The button is where you’ve put your “hobby” ability, and fishing is a hobby.) When you see that a fish has taken the bait, you click the same button to snag it and reel it in. It’s a pretty good graphic. There’s a string out to the bobber. When it lands, it lands with a… -
I’m conflicted. No, I’m in harmony.
29 Jun 2009 | 3:18 pmOh, come on. Enough already. Faction changes for a price now? WoW.com linked to this post by a Blizzard Blue. “… the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm.” Just wait. They’ll be offering Middle Earth Hobbits, Stygian Rangers, Greenskin Choppas, and a whole slew of other classes and races to play with their *NEXT* announcement. Say What? Somebody, for the love of Azeroth, call 911 and get the paramedics over to Irvine now! … -
Patch 3.2 will play for you.
23 Jun 2009 | 8:29 pmComing on the heals of the announcement that Patch 3.2 will show quest objectives on the world map, we’ll be hearing in the next announcement that Blizzard sanctioned bots are going to be introduced. Now that QuestHelper and Carbonite are relegated to the trashcans of countless desktops, replaced by an in-game feature duplicating them, players will also now be provided an in-game version of the glider bot. In the interests of getting every player into Ulduar, one need merely log on and activate their characters “glide mode,” in effect auto-piloting through the content all… -
3.2 = 3.1415926
18 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pmWhat the heck’s going on in Irvine? Have you seen all the changes coming with the 3.2 Patch? If you haven’t, if you’ve been living under a rock, say, or busy doing your dailies, fishing for Mr. Pinchy, whatever, go check out WoW.com’s coverage. Today we’re learning about substantial changes to Paladins. (Seal of Blood no good anymore. Not working as intended? Too harsh? Blood Elves came up with this masochism???) Then you’ve got new pets. A Winterspring type mount for the Horde (Ravasaurs). Argent Tournament mounts, something new for…
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Progressive WoW
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What have I been up to?
23 Jun 2009 | 1:10 pmYes I know it's been a long time. I expect lots of the people who used to read this have since given up and moved on to blogs that actually update. I'm not sure if I'm coming back, but it's been a long time since the last update and I feel like I should get you up to speed with what I've been doing this whole time.First and foremost, Vonari is level 80. Actually she's been there for a while now, and fully decked out in the crafted PvP set that she made for herself. I got a chance to run some BG's with her, and it was really fun. My friend brought his paladin and kept me alive while I burned… -
Leave of absence
25 Feb 2009 | 3:20 pmI know it's been a while since my last update, and that's because I always update from work. That being said, I got laid off last week and as such I haven't been at work to update. You'd think that means I would have more time to blog, but I guess I like to do other things online when I have full internet access.Anyway, I probably won't be updating for a while, at least as long as I'm unemployed, so check out my blogroll for some other great blogs, assuming you don't read those ones already.And if anybody lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and knows of any civil engineering jobs, feel free… -
Slow week
19 Feb 2009 | 11:19 amIt's not so much that I haven't had time to play this week, it's just that I've had other things to do with the free time I would normally use to play WoW. I don't think it's burnout, just different priorities at the moment, but this weekend might see a change in that.I never realized how many different TV shows I watch during the week, and they aren't really shows I can just half pay attention to while playing WoW, I need to focused or I won't know what's going on. Part of it is that last year we had the writer's strike and lots of shows either had short seasons or didn't even air.Luckily… -
Weekend Progress
17 Feb 2009 | 2:18 pmI'm making my way further into the Howling Fjord, and so far I haven't had any trouble completing the quests there, even soloing some group quests. I'm now on the last quest hub, at least as far as I remember, and should be moving back to Borean Tundra very soon, where I'll hopefully blow through quickly and be able to move on to new places.Somehow soloing has been really easy for me on Vonari, but it wasn't always that way. Up until Northrend I pretty much had to skip every group quest unless I had somebody to help me. There were a few I could solo, but mostly I got past those through luck… -
Still fun the second time
13 Feb 2009 | 9:51 amI was a little worried that running through the Howling Fjord quests for the second time would get a little boring, but so far it's still almost as fun as it was the first time through here on my druid.I'm getting close to hitting 71 on Vonari, and she has finished off the quests around Utgarde Keep and most of the stuff with the Vrykul towns up on the cliffs above. It's really helpful to have been through here before and I have a pretty good idea of what to do for the quests.Obviously I have to use some different strategies to complete certain quests, and that's probably one of the reasons…
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Spicytuna
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Sorry, Been Busy Lately
9 Jun 2009 | 10:53 amThis has probably been the longest break from posting on the site I’ve ever had. Don’t worry folks, I’m still alive- just been busy. Actually… busy AND lazy. I blame the nice weather we’ve been getting lately in the City of Brotherly Love. There have been many many times where at the end of the day, I would have some “post worthy” content, but I would stare over at my computer for a couple minutes and be like, “eehhhhh… I’ll do it tomorrow”. This pretty much happened daily for the past 2 weeks. Sorry folks, I didn’t just… -
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2
22 May 2009 | 2:21 amYay the 2nd season of one of my favorite Anime Series is now being aired! Also like the first season, the episodes will air in a different order then intended. At first I thought it was kind of weird how they did this, but when you rewatch the series again in the correct order, you pick up A LOT of stuff, and its like a whole different story. The first episode of season 2, is actually the 8th episode of the 14 episode season. I’m looking forward to watching the series this season, and can’t wait to rewatch it in the correct order… again. For those of you who haven’t… -
Frost Mage PvE: Kologarn
22 May 2009 | 1:41 amKologarn is considered sixth boss encounter in Ulduar, after you have defeated XT-002 Deconstructor, and gain access to the Antichamber. He is the only non-optional boss in the Antichamber because he guards the Shattered Walkway into central Ulduar where not only is he protecting the bridge, he is the bridge. He is a huge Titan boss, but you only fight his body from the torso, and up. Each of his arms are separate targets, and have their own health. Kologarn is often misquoted to be Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. His quotes are actually from the Black Knight from Monty Python and… -
Getting a Head Start in Wintergrasp
19 May 2009 | 2:57 amHere is a small trick to give you a head start in the battle for Wintergrasp. Not only can you just get one of the dailies out of the way, you can also be one of the first players to pilot a ground vehicle in battle. All you have to do is to fly into the Wintergrasp Zone before the battle begins. Anytime with less than 5 minutes til battle is a good time. Grab the dailies in the zone, and head towards one of the bridges towards the south towers. You will see a two Horde NPCs fighting two Alliance NPCs. Help your faction’s guard out and kill the opposing NPC. (No Mercy for the Merciless)… -
What NOT to do During the Iron Council
18 May 2009 | 9:18 pmA while back, I posted on what you’re not supposed to do during the Sunwell Plateau raids. Now there is another cause for concern, that needs to be address. This tip isn’t just limited to the Iron Council, but can extended to the entirety of Ulduar. Ulduar has been out for a couple of weeks now, and many of you have cleared it already, and are started to get bored of the encounters. Doing the bosses the regular way isn’t cutting it anymore, and the Hard Mode versions of the fight is- well, too hard and you don’t feel like wiping anymore. For those of you who feel this…
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The Hunter's Mark
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Hunting Party: Community Round-Up (July 3rd)
3 Jul 2009 | 10:27 amWith Patch 3.2 on the PTR and more folks working their way through currently available content on the live servers, great articles abound in the Hunter blogosphere. Today, I’d like to take some time to share with you all some a highlight reel of the articles published this week around the interwebs. Patch 3.2 /AFK AutoShot – Patch 3.2 Thoughts Opinion on heirloom items, experience in PvP (and battleground twinks), changes to the emblem system, and other Hunter changes coming up in the next patch. Mania’s Arcania – Another Day on the 3.2 PTR Observations straight from… -
The Antechamber of Ulduar: Kologarn
3 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amWe’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of looking at class mechanics or specs, we’re going to look at the latest raid available to you guys. Ulduar, as you all probably know, is similar to Naxx in the way that it is divided into four sections. This section is called The Antechamber of Ulduar and comes after you break into Ulduar. We’re going to be taking a look at the bosses within the Antechamber of Ulduar who are blocking your way to the Keepers of Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on Kologarn. Defeating Kologarn is the only way to move past the Shattered… -
The Antechamber of Ulduar: The Assembly of Iron
17 Jun 2009 | 8:56 amWe’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of looking at class mechanics or specs, we’re going to look at the latest raid available to you guys. Ulduar, as you all probably know, is similar to Naxx in the way that it is divided into four sections. This section is called The Antechamber of Ulduar and comes after you break into Ulduar. We’re going to be taking a look at the bosses within the Antechamber of Ulduar who are blocking your way to the Keepers of Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on The Assembly of Iron. The Assembly of Iron is a different fight from… -
The Siege of Ulduar: XT-002 Deconstructor Guide
12 Jun 2009 | 5:00 amWe’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of looking at class mechanics or specs, we’re going to look at the latest raid available to you guys. Ulduar, as you all probably know, is similar to Naxx in the way that it is divided into four sections. The initial section is called The Siege of Ulduar and is all about breaking into Ulduar where you’ll later face some familiar NPCs (if you’ve done some of the larger quest chains at least). Let’s take a deeper look into how exactly you break into Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on XT-002 Deconstructor. XT-002… -
The Siege of Ulduar: Ignis the Furnace Master Guide
10 Jun 2009 | 5:00 amWe’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of looking at class mechanics or specs, we’re going to look at the latest raid available to you guys. Ulduar, as you all probably know, is similar to Naxx in the way that it is divided into four sections. The initial section is called The Siege of Ulduar and is all about breaking into Ulduar where you’ll later face some familiar NPCs (if you’ve done some of the larger quest chains at least). Let’s take a deeper look into how exactly you break into Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on Ignis the Furnace Master. Ignis…
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Acid for Blood
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A Few Quick Thoughts on the Aion Beta
21 Jun 2009 | 10:36 pmThis weekend I popped into the Aion beta for the Asmodian weekend test. The previous weekend, you could play as an Elyos, but I'm not interested in playing that faction, so I when it came time for the Asmodian weekend, I was all in.Notable points: The character customisation options are plentiful. This is awesome. Aion is very, very pretty. This is also awesome. You're literally dropped into the game, which is disconcerting and doesn't help with immersion. I expect there to be some sort of opening with the full release. Because I didn't bother to read much of the lore (and I suppose this… -
So You Want to Follow Me on Twitter
13 Jun 2009 | 12:03 amI've created a page with information on what to expect when people follow me (or are considering following me) on Twitter. People are reaching my Twitter profile without necessarily having been long time blog readers or knowing me personally, so I thought it would be helpful to post this information somewhere.[Read] -
A Proper Start: Odin Sphere
10 Jun 2009 | 9:30 pmConsole RPGs. They are challenging for me! The menu systems that accompany many console RPGs, especially Japanese console RPGs are not easy for me to learn. They are often complex and provide far too much detailed information early on. They tend to overwhelm and discourage me when I start a new game. I did not grow up playing very many console RPGs or Japanese RPGs. I'm not used to all of the organisational conventions and menu navigation conventions that are common to this genre. However, many of those console RPGs are highly acclaimed by many people for the storytelling, so I try to play… -
Skype on the PSP
4 Jun 2009 | 8:13 pmWhen the PSP-3000 came out, touting a built-in microphone and Skype pre-installed as one of its features, many people, perhaps, thought that the inclusion of Skype was superfluous. I admit that it seemed a little random to include Skype on a portable games console.I've had the opportunity to use Skype on my PSP recently. My Asus EEE PC 901 inexplicably refused to connect to my wirless router, so I had to use an alternate portable method of making voice calls. It's a decent experience. Skype on the PSP very basic -- you can only do voice calls, no video or text chat, but it gets the job done. -
Demo: Lumines II
19 May 2009 | 8:24 pmRecently I've been playing the hell out of the Lumines II demo that came pre-installed on my Japanese PSP. The object of the game is to match the colours of the falling blocks to each other so they form four blocks. A line passes horizontally across the grid and makes all matched blocks disappear. The music changes depending on what you do in the game.Like most demos, the Lumines II demo is not exactly full-featured. This demo consists of just one stage, pictured above. In the demo version "Level 58" is labeled "Stage 1-1". Since I didn't have the slow progression of going from levels 1 -…
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Blessing of Kings
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The Emblem Debate
29 Jun 2009 | 12:47 amChangesBoth the 10 and 25-player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.The Heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism… -
3.2: Retribution Paladins
20 Jun 2009 | 10:01 pmChangesExorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism… -
3.2: Protection Paladins
20 Jun 2009 | 1:34 amChangesBlock Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield,… -
3.2: Holy Paladins
18 Jun 2009 | 10:43 pmTest Realm Patch notes are available. There's lots of changes, so I'll take them one section at a time.Sometimes I feel that no one at Blizzard plays a paladin. Then I see patch notes like these and I know that no one plays a paladin. These are the changes which effect Holy Paladins.ChangesMana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment… -
Ad Infinitum Recruiting
18 Jun 2009 | 2:13 pmI don't often do this, but summer is here, and my guild could use a few good recruits. I'll put up the blurb:<Ad Infinitum> was formed three years ago on the premise that raiding smart could be just as effective as raiding a six day a week schedule. We see end game content and do hard modes while maintaining a schedule that allows time to do other things. We manage this by coming to raids prepared and ready to accomplish our goals. Fundamentally, we believe the most efficient use of our precious time is to prepare for content through discussion and theorycrafting before we even enter a…
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Mystic Chicanery
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Guild First: Ignis 10
2 Jul 2009 | 1:19 pmWest Kingdom (and two members from our guild alliance with Art of War) went into Ulduar-10 and took down a new boss. Finally we downed Ignis. We were: Heimdal (Protection Paladin), Dudu (Protection Paladin), Muriden (AoW)(Resto Druid), Persephany (Priest), Paligor (Holy Paladin), Sibiy (SV Hunter), Odisia (Arcane Mage), Lilac (ME Affliction Warlock), Quall (AoW)(DPS DK), Drkrogue (Combat Rogue) We actually had a very good night. We did Flame Leviathan+2, Razorscale, XT-002, Ignis and then went on to also down Kologarn. Downing Ignis gave us the achievement for the wing. I believe on the fight… -
“Instance”
1 Jul 2009 | 3:52 pmI believe that the Cavern of Time instances are the most “believable” and require the least amount of suspended disbelief. If WoW was real (don’t laugh.. if you laugh I can’t make my point).. then when I went into Utgarde Keep first of all it should be empty because I already cleared it.. but let’s assume the mobs did a ghost run and rezz’d back at their bodies. So here they are hum-de-dum two guys standing at the entrance. The MINUTE I zoned in they should jump me. Seriously. I killed them last week.. and I’m just about to kill them again.. if they… -
Flame Leviathan and XT-002 Strategy Notes
1 Jul 2009 | 1:14 pmWe’re muddling our way through Ulduar. In the past few days I’ve seen the following bits of information that struck me. I wanted to note them here so I wouldn’t lose track of them. Flame Leviathan Gnometastic had an interesting post about Flame Leviathan. Take away points: - if you’re not a Demolishion Driver, your DPS is crap. Shoot down the Pyrite, keep oil on fire, and interrupt the flame vents. - If you are a Demolishion Driver, keep rolling pyrite on him. I think that we’re spending too much time trying to do vanilla DPS on the boss and not enough time… -
Baby hunter go “RAWR!!”
30 Jun 2009 | 12:40 pmAs mentioned, my “baby” hunter finally is of the level to hit Outlands. She has essentially skipped over most of the levels from 50-58 (speedy holiday leveling ftw) so she kind of whizzed right by 55 where she could have spec’d deep BM for the exotic pet. Last night fiancee suggested that he would be open to leveling 58-80 on his Pally with my Hunter. So this is the part where I admit that I know warlocks.. and hunters are not warlocks.. and I throw myself on the mercies of my readers (and Grimr) and ask: – Should she spec deep BM? Is there anything else in there… -
Think of the Role-players! THE ROLE-PLAYERS!!!
29 Jun 2009 | 3:17 pmKa-boooooom! Blizz blue announces they’re working way for you to change your faction (moment of stunned silence while we take it all in) So.. I -get- it from a “this is just a game” perspective and the “give the players what they want” perspective… but seriously.. the Roleplaying just hurts my head (and kinda makes me laugh). I’m here to help! In my first ever meta-roleplaying entry here you go: – Engineering Accident – Polymorph gone terribly terribly wrong – Teleporter Malfunctions – Secret Goblin Experiments Orc->Gnome…
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Kill Ten Rats
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Issue 15
3 Jul 2009 | 10:02 pmYou can start the new Strike Force with a team of 4. It may even be possible to complete it with that, if you have the right characters and no PUG members. It is not much fun, it is bugged, and it is not the kind of thing you can do with whatever random people who happen to recruit. This puts it with a small amount of the level 50 content, like the Statesman TF, Lord Recluse SF, and Hami. I’d say more, and there is more to the Issue, but I don’t care at this point. I’ll wait a little longer before uninstalling City of Heroes. The thread discussing it is interesting, if only… -
Lori Drew Dismissal
3 Jul 2009 | 9:21 amWhile it will not become final until filed next week, Lori Drew’s conviction has been dismissed. This is important to gamers and other online folk, because the government’s theory in the case was that any violation of Terms of Service should be viewed as the same offense as hacking (”unauthorized access”), and therefore a federal crime. This would be a fun way to get rid of certain people we don’t like, but is probably one of the less intelligent legal theories to come out of California recently. : Zubon -
On the W101 Update
2 Jul 2009 | 5:37 amI played a large amount Wizard 101, which was recently updated with the Grizzleheim update. Not only is there a new region, which branches the usual leveling path, but there are a whole slew of core mechanics that were just added. The first, and in my opinion biggest, core improvement is the Bazaar. The Bazaar acts as a trader depot where the NPC will buy just about every item (some have the “No Auction” tag) for gold, and if it has an item in stock it will sell it back. Guild Wars uses this type of NPC-controlled market for materials, for an example of another MMO that… -
More Meta
1 Jul 2009 | 10:02 pmUpgrade Complete just needs an RMT shop to finish it out. : Zubon -
Gated communities
30 Jun 2009 | 10:36 pmPeople complain a lot about the “gear gating” in Lotro. If you want to fight the new boss, you have to get the gear from the previous raids. We just want to experience the content, even if we can’t beat it with a PUG group. When I think of it, isn’t almost everything in an MMO gated in one way or another? You can’t do everything in the game right from the get-go. If you want to fight that boss at all, you’re going to need to level up. If you want to get access to the zone he’s in, you’re going to have to do the last quest in a chain of quests…
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Tank like a girl
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Blogroll Friday: Naissa’s Rage
3 Jul 2009 | 6:33 amMy blog recently had its first anniversary. Go me! However, it’s time to post more again, so I am trying to structure my post schedule a bit (again, I know). On Twitter, followfridays are quite common. People just tweet the names of people they deem worthy of following. I decided to do something similar in my blog, which also allows me the chance to actually clean up my blogroll. It also gives me a shot at testing ScribeFire, but that’s something else entirely. Blogrolls are a tricky thing. Blogs come, blogs go, and sometimes awesome blogs come and go and you miss them entirely. I… -
Champion times two
29 Jun 2009 | 8:17 amThis weekend I reached another personal milestone and earned myself the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. In our second Malygos raid, we managed to defeat the bastard in 9 painful tries. We had 3-4 tries where I learned how to tank phase 1, as it was my first time tanking it. It does take some time to get used to it, and I struggled through positioning and aggro management. It was the closest I ever felt to tanking a boss like Nightbane, where threat after the landing was a persistent issue. It was back this time. Eventually, phase 1 just clicked, we had the sparks in perfect control, I… -
Raid-tanking in WotLK
25 Jun 2009 | 3:47 pmI haven’t really done any meaty tank talk post for quite some time. Talldar summed it up nicely a while ago, though I don’t agree with all the points he’s making. It’s not so easy to write about tanking anymore. Tanking feels a lot easier than it did in TBC, at least in my playing field, heroics and 10-mans. Tanking mechanics are very simple. Once you understand the protection warrior priorities, there isn’t much room for fine-tuning. Use the correct priority, be smart about the cooldowns, maybe use smart macros like the Warbringer macro for one button… -
The Emblem Debate
19 Jun 2009 | 8:29 amI called it, didn’t I? Back in March, when Blizzard announced their 3-tiered Emblem plan for 3.1, I posted my critical view of their plan, and how it would kill heroics. Turns out I was right. Since my DK hit 80, I was able to get her into 3 PUGs. One was OS-25, the other two were H UK and H CoS. It seems easier to PUG 25-mans than to actually find groups for heroics. Thankfully, my guild is accomodating, and so I have been on quite a few heroic runs. Yet whenever I am on and park myself in LFG, nothing happens whatsoever. I click through LFM for all heroics, and there’s a… -
Ulduar Take 2
15 Jun 2009 | 11:20 amThree weeks ago, my guild had its first trip into Ulduar, as a farewell present to our raid officer who’s now in the frozen north until August. As I am in her footsteps now, I decided to return to Ulduar, after our failed attempt at killing Malygos two weeks ago. I didn’t really post about it, because phase 3 is full of fail. He’ll die soon enough. Last time, we managed to kill 3 bosses in Ulduar, Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and XT-002. Ignis was more than we could handle. But that was then, and this is now! Flame Loothiathan actually took us two tries, because the first try…
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Phantomella's Place
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Mad Dinger IV: This Time It's War(craft)
2 Jul 2009 | 5:44 pmGratz again to warrior Phantowyn, who just dinged 66... almost exactly two days after dinging 65 - and with minimal rest (she had none left when she dinged 65)... /sigh <'mella wanders off muttering about these young Phantos; in her day you were lucky if you dinged twice in a month...> -
She's a happy Phanto...
1 Jul 2009 | 5:23 amGratz to 'wyn who dinged 65 last night, and is now dual-wielding 2h-swords - Fel Iron Greatswords for now :)The fishing poll (no pun intended) results were: 45% "Love it!", 36% "It's OK, I guess", 2% "There's fishing?" and no votes for "Hate it!" or "No opinion." New poll soon. -
So now we know
30 Jun 2009 | 3:01 pmServer maintenance indeed... July's wallpaper is now available. :) -
Interesting reading...
30 Jun 2009 | 6:34 amChinese government to crack down on selling virtual items and gold for real money - BBC News OnlineOn a more humorous note, if you haven't seen the Mtn Dew WoW advert yet (there's an article about it in the news items on the right-hand column as I type, but it'll expire soon), the video is on YouTube. Not sure they got the Night Elf quite right, but it's still fun :) (Can't comment on Mtn1 Dew, it's not something I've ever partaken of.)1Last time I heard of it, it was "Mountain" Dew, but it seems that's too long a word these days. I blame text-messaging... ;) -
Another Phanto first (and a fourth)
29 Jun 2009 | 11:10 pmEarlier this evening I was sitting in the World's End Tavern in Shattrath having a quiet glass of water (cunningly disguised as an extra-large tankard of beer) and waiting for L70ETC to take to the stage when guildie Pantacruel asked if I'd join him and warrior Bruma from <Knights of Honor> in fighting Ahune, the fire festival boss in the Slave Pens. It took us three attempts - Panta and I are both retribution-specced paladins, so we shared the healing duties, but on our third attempt we were victorious! I got a [Tabard of Summer Flames] to prove it too :DSpeaking of tabards, it's big…
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The AT Wire
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My Response to Sessler’s Response to L4D 2 Critics
18 Jun 2009 | 11:19 amVia GamePolitics, I saw Adam Sessler’s response to the online petitioners of Left 4 Dead 2, Valve’s sequel to one of last year’s best games. Head there to watch his response. Here’s the GP excerpt of part of his response for the lazy: We’re going down that path again – this shocking, amazing sense of entitlement that always manifests itself in the gaming community… Valve does not have a habit of screwing people and if there was ever a developer out there I would just kind of give them the benefit of the doubt… They don’t owe you… -
ArmA II Videos Show Impressive Scale
12 Jun 2009 | 7:26 amSome great videos of ArmA II the sequel to the popular and very realistic, tactical FPS. Both videos will impress you, but in very different ways. The first shows off a huge air superiority fight, full of great explosions and crashes. The second lets you see a giant 1,000 vs. 1,000 battle from the perspective of a lonely soldier. Games like Call of Duty deliver an action-packed and cinema-like experience to the player. However, games like ArmA II deliver, while focusing more on the tactical aspects of shooters rather thant he action still manage to capture the excitement just as well. -
PC Review: The Sims 3
11 Jun 2009 | 11:40 pmIt’s super late and I’m really tired, so there won’t be any additional thoughts on this review until I’ve had some sleep. But, don’t let that stop you from reading my official review over at Cheat Code Central. I’ll update this with more on the flipside. -
Story-Driven MMOs: The Devolution of the Genre
9 Jun 2009 | 1:17 pmIf there is one thing I have believed since the time I first played an MMO, it is that story should not be the foundation of the genre. Now, before you start screaming about how story drives the progression of the game, let me clarify. I’m not talking about story in the general sense. Instead, I’m referring to story manufactured and presented by the developer of the MMO. A story that has already been fabricated, that is already set in stone, regardless of whether there are 2, 10, or 100 optional paths, is a foolish way to deliver an MMO experience. In fact, the only way… -
Exciting Video Game Job: Paper Shredder?
28 May 2009 | 5:22 pmThat’s right, according to GameJobs.com, a company in Omaha, Nebraska is seeking someone to fill their “Paper Shredder” position. Amazingly, the position is listed as NOT entry-level. Apparently, they are seeking paper shredders with at least 2 year’s experience. No learning on the job here. Here’s the job description: Employment Status: Part time of Full-time (35-40+ hours per week); Monday – Friday 9AM- 6PM Requirements: 16 years old or older $6.96 per hour Skills: We are looking for someone who is reliable, has good attendance, attention to detail, a…
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Stropp's World
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Cataclysmic
1 Jul 2009 | 8:03 pmReports abound that Blizzard has recently trademarked the word Cataclysm. This sounds more like the title given to an expansion than a full game, so the speculation that World of Warcraft’s next expansion will be titled Cataclysm, or possibly something along those lines. Let’s do a little more speculation about how the next expansion will shape up. The two main continents of Azeroth will be destroyed. That’s the cataclysmic event that the title portends. It won’t be a complete destruction, only the areas level 50 and below will be destroyed. It’s no secret that… -
China Bans Gold Farmers – Time For Care
29 Jun 2009 | 7:58 pmOr perhaps another, but much longer, title to this post could have been But Nothing Ever Happens In The Way You Expect… My first reaction to the news that the Chinese government has banned gold farming was that it was a huge step in the right direction. It won’t shut down the gold selling industry, but it will hurt this particular group of sociopaths who engage in shady and downright criminal behaviour at the expense of a whole range of other people. That’s a big woo hoo right there. But gold farmers have shown that they’re not above criminal practices to make their… -
Slouching Towards The Nanny-State
25 Jun 2009 | 8:39 pmWith apologies to Yeats. It’s been a bad news day today hasn’t it? There appears to be more to come for us Aussies. Nestled among the stories about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcet — my sympathies to their loved ones — is another about the Internet filter that our so-called democratic government wants to foist upon us. It looks like that they want to protect us now, aside from child pornography, from racy and unrated downloadable games that we can get from the internet. And since Australia does not have a 18+ rating for games, that means many of the unrated games… -
Jacobs Out, Mythic & Bioware To Merge – No Surprise Really
24 Jun 2009 | 7:17 pmThe MMORPG blogosphere is buzzing today. It’s been announced that not only is Mark Jacobs leaving EA-Mythic as of today, Mythic will also be merged with Bioware with the current Bioware heads (and founders) heading up the new structure with the Mythic business remaining intact but reporting to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. A few bloggers have expressed surprise at the announcment, with only Heartless_ saying I told you so and reminding us of the toxic effect that EA has on the game developers that it buys. Me. I’m not so surprised really. On both counts. Jacobs rapid departure,… -
Dungeons and Dragons Online – Another Choice
19 Jun 2009 | 7:05 pmDue to my recently required spendthriftiness I’ve found myself taking more notice when I see news of an upcoming free to play MMORPG pop up on the web. Even though the term, Free To Play, isn’t really true since most of these games strongly encourage the use of RMT to progress, there are substantial cost savings for someone like me who tends to switch games regularly. Instead of dropping $15 a month, every month, if there’s a need to pay to progress it’s a one off cost per character. So the announcement that Dungeons and Dragons Online is going to a free to play model…
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World of Warcraft
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Toast to the Lich King - Rise of the Lick King Stein Collection
1 Jul 2009 | 7:48 pmEver wonder what the World of Warcraft characters do in them taverns? While it really doesn't take much out of the imagination, the Death Knights and Night Elves love to knock back a few after a hard day of raiding and farming. Now you can go and share the toast with them with these limited edition Rise of the Lich King Steins.The Epic Collection currently come in three designs: Rise of the Lich King, Blood of the Horde, and Alliance United. Each coming with fine-grain stoneware with bas-relief sculpting, and a fancy sculpted pewter lid. Each stein from the Epic collection carries a heavy US… -
WoW Gold Pig giving away 500,000 gold in-game
9 Jun 2009 | 7:44 pmThis is the gold mine right here. Literally. The WoW Gold Pig blog is running a contest for 500,000 WoW Gold. We ve gotten wind of it, thanks to tips (and tweets) from the community, and so went further to fish out more info about it. Apparently, the contest goes like this: you register, you enter a name for their WoW Gold Pig Twitter mascot and, if your entry is chosen, you win 500,000 in-game gold for World of Warcraft. Easy as pie, yes?We got in touch with their representative Nick Gardner, and here's the lowdown on this contest.QJ: Hi Nick. First things first, who are you and what… -
World of Warcraft client patch 3.1.3 released
3 Jun 2009 | 11:35 amA new patch for Blizzard's ever popular MMO game World of Warcraft is now available. WoW Client Patch 3.1.3 is mostly a class balancing patch with some more bug fixes. Below are the list of changes.World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.1.3 Death Knights Frost Presence: Armor bonus is now 60 down from 80 . Druids Improved Barkskin: This talent now also grants 80/160 additional armor while in Travel Form or not shapeshifted.Improved Tree of Life: The armor bonus to Tree of Life Form from this talent has been reduced to 67/133/200 bonus armor. Hunters Hunter's Mark: The ranged attack power bonus from… -
World of Warcraft - Druids to get new looks
26 May 2009 | 7:26 pmAnyone who's ever spent countless hours playing World of Warcraft may have noted, at some point, that the druids weren't scoring pretty well in the look-o-meter. For that, the devs behind the MMO have decided to give the nasty buggers fresh new textures for two major forms - the cat and bear. There's gonna be five different designs for each of these forms for the Horde and the Alliance, so they really went mad with the druid updating.Night Elves have the option to change the car and the bear's look with a simple visit to the barber shop for a change of hair color. For the Tauren, it'll be a… -
Rumor: VolleeX engine to bring World of Warcraft into the iPhone?
25 Apr 2009 | 10:49 amWhen it comes to iPhones and World of Warcraft, this won't be the first video showing how the latter could run on the former, with most of them being empty claims and mere mock-ups. This time, however, things may be a little different. Thanks to Vollee and the VolleeX engine, a video demonstration was put up on YouTube with the massively popular MMORPG running on an iPhone. See for yourself.We first saw Vollee showing off that it could run Second Life on a mobile phone. In an interview with PocketGamer, Vollee head of business development Julian Corbett spoke about how the VolleeX engine…
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Honor's Code
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Using Recount As A Tank
3 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amOne of the mods that I sacrifice some some of my screen real estate for is Recount. So what’s a Tank doing staring at Recount? Well, I’m not raid leading so I’m not monitoring the DPS levels. It wouldn’t matter much anyway because the DPSers in my guild tend to be very good.I don’t have Recount opened to Damage Done or DPS. I have it opened to a page called Deaths. Recount will faithfully count up the number of times your raid team members have died. I’m usually up there, but sometimes an ambitious mage or rogue will lead the way.While it’s nice to know that I’ve now died 11… -
You Aren't What You Used To Be
1 Jul 2009 | 12:56 pmThere was a time in my Paladin's life when I could tell healers and DPS the World of Warcraft over, "As long as you stand in the Consecrate, you're safe." Other tanks learned that once a mob was in the Consecrate, they weren't pulling it off me without a taunt.That doesn't appear to be the case anymore. Mobs run right through my Consecrate and keep on trucking. I've lost mobs in AoE situations to Fan of Knives, and Death and Decay.The first time I really noticed it was during our Sarth 2D and 3D raids, when I was Whelp Tanking. Then I have especially noticed it in Ulduar on stuff like Hodir's… -
Spending Conquest Badges as a 10 Man Raider
30 Jun 2009 | 12:31 pmI hope no one has the delusion that just because I write a blog I have everything figured out. I don't. I read alot, but still struggle with decisions all the time. My current pondering is what to do with my Emblems of Conquest. As you may know, my guild raids 10 mans only. We've gotten some Conquest through Emalon PuGs, but the Alliance having Wintergrasp is a rare occasion on my server. Then you have to hope you luck into a decent PuG that can down him, even nerfed. Most of our Emblems of Conquest come through various Hard Modes we do. But sometimes we don't get the right people on for Hard… -
[Patch 3.2] Quick Thoughs on Changes in New Build
30 Jun 2009 | 7:23 amAD Changed on the PTRArdent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health or below is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.When I first heard the change, my initial reaction was ‘QQ got it nerfed’. But anyone who looked at the first pass of… -
Mergers and Acquisitions
29 Jun 2009 | 10:32 amI’ve written more about guilds on these pages than I ever intended to. I’ll be the first to admit that I guild hopped in Burning Crusade, chasing the Siren of Progression, but I abandoned that quest in Wrath and hoped to settle into a guild and really make it my home. Thus early in Wrath I returned to Mal Katai.Then in mid February, Mal Katai split. I had to figure out what to do. I hadn’t left the guild, the guild had left me.I was either going to go to SalVation, one of the guilds spawned from Mal Katai split, or I was going to go to Heroes Inc, which had been the guild I transferred…
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2.75 Orcs
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Vacation Commencement
3 Jul 2009 | 4:22 amOf course I couldn't sleep last night. As a result the Orclette didn't get a whole lot of sleep either. Maybe we'll both sleep in the car .... that would be wonderful. Mother-in-law will pick us up at 6 am, we'll drive to the east side of San Antonio. The next day we'll finish the drive to Houston. We're splitting it up because it's much safer for me that way :DAnyway, until we get to Houston I really don't have anything interesting to blog about. I need new material, which I'm sure I'll get once I'm around my brothers. And my slighty nutso but very cool mom, and my loquacious father who… -
Much Better
1 Jul 2009 | 6:03 amI spent 3 hours last night writing encouraging notes to some missionary peeps my mother-in-law knows. It wasn't just me, the whole bible study group was in on the project. But I was the fastest encouraging-note writer so guess who got to do a HUGE number of the things? Yeppers, that would be me. I have practice-years of being a youth group leader over the little highschoolers. I'd write notes every once in a while to encourage them. Nothing like a good laugh to cheer up the day.Or, as one person said, "Everyone should start the day with a smile and get it over with."And I'm in a better mood… -
30 Jun 2009 | 10:55 am
30 Jun 2009 | 10:55 amThis week has not been fun. I've been yelled at by a doctor and get to suffer through 2 doctor's appointments. Well, one is a 2-hour orientation. Which is supposed to be followed up by your first OB visit. When I told them I would be out of town for a bit the yelling started. I told them I was going no matter what they said and did I just need to show up at the hospital when labor started since it sounded like they didn't want to see me? I was assured that no, they want to see me before that and if I got back into town sooner to call them. I'm just concerned that the doctor will try to talk… -
Way too Exciting a Day
26 Jun 2009 | 6:39 amThursday was looking to be routine, dull, normal. After lunch I bundled the Orclette into my van and started towards the in-laws house. On the way I noticed some weird noise reverberations going on. So I start looking around to see what the cause of this noise might be.And the passenger side rear-window is completely gone.After inspection it looks like the window was not a victim of vandalism but it imploded.Apparently this is a common occurrence in NM.I HATE NEW MEXICO.Anyway, bro-in-law is taking it to the car dudes so they can tell me how much the window will cost to replace (it was… -
Eating Sprees
25 Jun 2009 | 6:08 amI was asked if the Orclette has started going on eating sprees. What's funny is that I was just contemplating writing a post, well, at least the first couple of paragraphs, on that very subject.I bought a family-sized box of Raisin Bran on Monday. I'm a stickler for serving sizes so when I say I only had 2-3 cups that's an accurate statement. My Orclette ate her way through the rest of the box by Wednesday night. I never give her big bowls, but she'll go through what I gave her and ask for more. I try to feed her other foods-stuff like strawberries, organic cheese, broccoli (accompanied by…
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Misery - a shadow priest blog
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Wetting my pants
2 Jul 2009 | 6:24 amThat was a rather lame allusion to rumours of the next expansion, not a confession of incontinence (I'm not ready to admit to that yet). It's a rather wonderful possibility that we will soon be heading to the Maelstrom to kill some naga, set the murlocs free, and face Azshara herself. We might finally get to visit the land of the goblins, and how cool would it be to get water mounts? Your very own dredger or muck crawler. Actually, if I was any more excited, I might really wee. -
Shadow priest Q&A
2 Jul 2009 | 5:53 amI've just noticed the shadow priest Q&A on mmo champion. It's not the official priest Q&A that we're all awaiting so eagerly, but there will inevitably be some overlaps. I'm not entirely delighted by everything I've read, but it's a start. What do you think? On first impression, I think many of these questions are rather poorly worded. With a few exceptions, Purplecadet has spotted a problem, decided on the cause and designed a solution before even asking the question - which is invariably, 'will you implement my solution?' It's a rather arrogant way to approach one of the game's designers,… -
They're doing WHAT?
30 Jun 2009 | 2:50 amA steam-powered auctioneer has been added to the Dalaran Like Clockwork engineering shop, allowing access to one's faction auction house. The steam-powered auctioneer was programmed with a superiority chip, and will only interact with grand master engineers. Forget that rogues can eat me in one faceroll, or that paladins can solo ANYTHING. This is the only thing worth fighting for in the whole of WoW. I want a dalaran auctioneer too, dammit! -
*Doilies sold separately
28 Jun 2009 | 8:14 amOnline game-playing grandparents are notoriously difficult to buy for. Thankfully, we can all now breathe a sigh of relief as Blizzard comes to the rescue with a new series of WoW pet figureines. You read that correctly. Meet Speedy, yours for only €27.95. Also available are Stinker and Rocket Bot. The set of three is a snip at €68.85. What do you think, is this Blizzard's attempt to crack the QVC market? -
Misery in mourning
26 Jun 2009 | 1:46 amI'm too emotional to write a proper post this morning. Yesterday the world lost a very great musician — and I had to learn about it in trade. In trade. There's no way to take that back. His passing will now forever be associated in my head with paedo jokes and bad spelling. I'm going to need a lot of therapy before I can ever listen to Ben again. In the meantime, if you're joining us for the first time from wow.com (thank you Mike Schramm!) I can only apologise for the hiatus and appeal for your help. Let me know what you'd like to see here in future and I'll get right on that just as soon…
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Tobold's MMORPG Blog
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Why RMT discussion must fail
3 Jul 2009 | 11:26 pm$1 is not worth the same thing to every person.That might seem counterintutitive, but the value of $1 isn't absolute, by itself it is just a worthless piece of green paper. The value of that 1 dollar is determined by what you are going to buy with it. And that is pretty much depending on how many other dollars you have. Common Sense Gamer is furious about a permanent horse in Runes of Magic costing $10. Then he gets even more furious when nobody agrees. But the point is that there is no absolute answer to the question of whether $10 for a virtual horse is too expensive or not.If you would… -
Fallout 3 on Steam
3 Jul 2009 | 9:44 pmI have an unopened box with the game Fallout 3 sitting on my shelf since it came out. For all I hear that is an excellent game, but I have too many other games to play, and not enough time, so I can't say from personal experience. Nevertheless I thought you might want to know that you can get Fallout 3 for half price on Steam this weekend. Nothing better to celebrate the 4th of July than battling in a postapocalyptic wasteland.Tobold's MMORPG Blog -
The illusion of impact
2 Jul 2009 | 9:30 pmThe discussion in the last open Sunday thread was about making MMOs more dynamic, less static, with the players having an impact on changes in the world. In the current situation, players feel more like stuck in Groundhog Day, with them evolving every day, but the world around them always remaining the same. Why is that so?The main reason why having a real impact on a virtual world is hard to implement is that it would affect other players. Imagine Hogger or Onyxia or Kel'Thuzad being permanently dead after the first players killed them, or mobs generally not respawning; after a few days the… -
Aion beta EU authentication server down
2 Jul 2009 | 1:11 pmSo my Aion beta experience got off to a bad start, the authentication server for Aion Europe broke down, not that this is unheard of when a beta launches. The authentication server being down also means I can't log into the Aion beta forums. So how do I know what's going on? Aion has their CMs on Twitter. I'm usually not a big Twitter fan, and deleted my account there, but telling people over Twitter about tech problems when players can't get that information from the game or the forums is just brilliant.Tobold's MMORPG Blog -
Are we still having fun?
2 Jul 2009 | 2:29 amWolfshead runs a blog on which the post range from brilliant but grumpy to just grumpy. His latest brilliant but grumpy post is about tackling player inertia, in which he takes the 2008 WoW zombie invasion event as example to demonstrate how much MMO players hate change and anything unpredictable.Over time we willingly trade the feeling of wonder and excitement for the security of the daily grind and the routine. We become like the cast of Cheers. We show up in our favorite MMOs each night, occupy our virtual bar stools and embrace the insanity of tedium and repetitiveness.This leads him to…
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Aspect of the Hare
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Hunter Pet Specs: Now On the Armory!
1 Jul 2009 | 8:12 pmEven better, you can choose which of your pets you are looking at. So you can see, for example, that Wash is spec’d for 20-point Beast Mastery goodness, whereas when I last left Perezvon, he was spec’d for Marksmanship pewpew. Pretty nifty, I think! ^_^ Feel free to visit my own Armory to try it out (and take a peek at my oh-so-versatile Cunning pets, who I also believe are spec’d 20- and 16-points respectively at the moment). -
Still Doing the LF Guild Dance
1 Jul 2009 | 9:19 amBeen feeling a bit lonely lately now that it’s been almost a month since I’ve been in a guild with my main character. I’m not entirely sure what I want to do about it though. All I ever see recruiting are either diehard raiding guilds, or “We are a new guild who will help you level and we have a tabard, PST!” I’m sorta looking for something inbetween, if that makes sense. Ironically, the guild that I ran Naxx with for a few months is now recruiting ranged DPS for Naxx25 and Ulduar10, which is, guess what, exactly where most of my gear upgrades are! A few of… -
Burnout? What’s That?
30 Jun 2009 | 12:34 pmIt’s really funny to me when I think back to just about a month or so ago when I was feeling sort of meh-ish with WoW, and then I compare that to right now where I feel like I can’t play enough. What was I thinking? I have to stuff to PuG and specs to play around with and old dungeons to solo on my hunter! I’ve got five-mans to heal and rep to grind on my druid*! I’ve got lowbie alts who have billions of levels just sitting in front of them, waiting to be claimed! I have raids to stealth through in the name of photo ops! On top of that, I am actually immensely excited… -
Blood Elves and Dragons and Kael’thas, Oh My!
28 Jun 2009 | 10:48 pmI never did Magisters’ Terrace at level 70. I’m not really sure why, other than I was holding out for a while to see if I could go with some of my guildies (we all thought doing a new instance for the first time together sounded awesome), but it never materialized, and then by the time I thought about going ahead and PuG’ing it I would’ve felt silly saying “So by the way, I know WotLK is coming out in a month or two but I haven’t done this instance yet…” So I never did it. There is one thing Kael’thas drops though that I really want: a… -
Turning Over a New Leaf
26 Jun 2009 | 10:32 pmI still have a rather distinct memory of when I decided to roll Tamaryn, though the “whys” have since largely been lost to the mists of time. I do remember saying in guild chat something akin to “I’m bored, I think I’m gonna roll a druid”, then making one and whispering an officer and being chucked a guild invite within ten seconds of my new character’s existence. I also remember a fellow guildie coming and making a druid alongside me. We did the starter quests together and were soon joined by this random naked hunter who kept challenging us to duels…
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WoW Vault - The Ultimate Resource
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Gadgetzan Times
3 Jul 2009 | 11:14 pmFresh off the presses is the latest edition of the Gadgetzan Times! Featuring unique stories for each language and all new content, the Gadgetzan... -
Tier 9 Preview
3 Jul 2009 | 11:12 pmBlizzard added a limited preview of the tier9 class sets that will be offered in patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade, and theyre doing things a little... -
Win A Trip To BlizzCon Costume Contest Winners!
2 Jul 2009 | 6:12 amWe are pleased to announce the winning entries to the Win A Trip To BlizzCon Costume Contest. Congratulations to the grand prize winner, S. Quindt,... -
WoW TCG: Fields of Honor Released!
2 Jul 2009 | 6:08 amFields of Honor, the latest expansion to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, has been released! With all new loot cards, hero cards, and resource... -
Laguna Art Museum Exhibit on World of Warcraft
2 Jul 2009 | 6:06 amThis summer, Laguna Art Museum and Blizzard Entertainment are proud to present WoW Emergent Media Phenomenon. This exhibit features art created by...
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World of Warcast: A World of Warcraft Podcast
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Episode 85, July 3, 2009
3 Jul 2009 | 11:23 amWorld Of Warcast's 4th anniversary show with Veronica Belmont and Scott Johnson -
Episode 84, June 23, 2009
23 Jun 2009 | 8:03 pmMidsummer Festival thoughts Thrall is Canadian, eh? Patch 3.2.0 Eye on Aion -
Midsummer Festival Mincast, June 21, 2009
21 Jun 2009 | 11:19 amMidsummer Festival -
Episode 83, June 10, 2009
10 Jun 2009 | 7:01 pmWe're not dead Loremaster preview News Mountain Dew Battle Bots. Hooray. New MMOs: Star Wars and Final Fantasy XIV Heirloom items, info and tips Mods of the cast: Gogo Mount, Gogo Pet -
Episode 82, May 10, 2009
10 May 2009 | 4:37 pmChildren's Week wrapup Ren's experiment update Starcraft II beta opt-in What makes a good MMO? Blizzcon tickets Martin Fury Old login screens? Should WoW allow all classes to start at 55?
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I Sheep Things...
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PvPainful
2 Jul 2009 | 11:28 amThis was originally a comment for Elleiras’s post on PvE to PvP transfers, but it got to be pretty long and crazy, so I decided to repost it here as its own topic. While I’m taking my short vacation with Rhii, I somehow didn’t feel like leveling a lowbie. So I decided to play around a bit more with my DK, Avaani, that I rolled on Aurdon and Adreanna’s server a while back. They play on a PvP server, and (as has come up in the recent past) I’ve only just begun to see the appeal of world PvP at all. They’ve told me repeatedly that the random killings and… -
I Don’t Want to Read about WoW Today
30 Jun 2009 | 11:08 amWith Rhii sitting at 78, so close to 80 I can taste it, I’m on the verge of deciding to hold back. To cool off. To take a break. To give her a rest. To drag my feet. I’m extremely torn about it. Here’s what happened. I started dating a WoW-player. Now Elleiras met her boyfriend in Underbog. They raid together, I believe. But not all WoW couples have to do things the same in game to get along okay outside it. Sideshow and Syrana seem to do well enough. Aurdon and Adreanna too. And Gevlon and his gf both play the game, though she quit raiding and he keeps it up. My significant… -
What Blizzard should do: A Donation of Netherweave
30 Jun 2009 | 9:16 amSome of Blizzard’s ideas in past have been pretty retarded like the removal of ghost wolf taming. Other things were great ideas, like Guild Banks. The rest of Blizzard’s ideas fall somewhere in between. One of those in between ideas was to allow us reputation gains for turning in lower level cloth. Each capitol city has a cloth NPC that will accpet donations. Usually you’ll find these guys by the tailoring trainers. They offer quests to turn in Wool, Silk, Mageweave, and Runecloth and finally repeated Runecloth donations for that cities reputation. Blizzard,… -
Ups and Downs
26 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pmCan’t even begin to describe how good it feels to be in Northrend and finally doing instances again. They are FAR and AWAY my favorite thing about WoW, and I have really been missing them for the last, oh, sixty some-odd levels. So this week, I finally got into LFG and did some PUGs, some good, some bad. I ran Nexus, uneventfully. Honestly can’t remember the names of any of the ppl in that group… nobody sucked, nobody was mind blowingly awesome either. I am trying to gauge my progress in DPS, so I was relieved to see I was a close second to our dps shammy. Not bad for a… -
I Guess a Girl Can Change…
24 Jun 2009 | 8:54 pmHuh. There's a killer in there after all? Better than I expected of me, honestly. But then again, I didn’t expect to be able to be “Flame Warden Rhii” either, and I pulled that off too! Post from: I Sheep Things...
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Banana Shoulders
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This is starting to get annoying…
3 Jul 2009 | 10:20 pmSo, on Monday I discovered that last week’s problem had recurred, even more virulently. Unfortunately, in fixing the site we’ve had to abandon the comments on the last two posts, for which I’m very sorry. I do have copies of everyone’s comments, via email notification, and can repost them (with attribution) if necessary. For the next little while I’ll be running with a default theme (*shudder*) and minimal plugins, in an attempt to eliminate possible vectors for the problem, so if you’re visiting rather than reading via RSS and the blog looks, uh,… -
Epic Gems and Jewelcrafting in 3.2
25 Jun 2009 | 12:36 pmLook, it’s a post! Yes, I know it’s not a pally post, but the 3.2-related stuff is still brewing. 4 July 09: Unfortunately this post has lost all its comments due to technical reasons. Patch 3.2 brings with it WotLK’s long-awaited epic gems. The item names have been known ever since they were datamined during the beta, but they’ve never been available until now. What Gems Are There? There are six new gems, of epic quality. Red: Cardinal Ruby Yellow: King’s Amber Blue: Majestic Zircon Orange: Ametrine Green: Eye of Zul Purple: Dreadstone What Cuts Are There? As… -
Apologies for the downtime!
22 Jun 2009 | 1:32 am4 July 09: Unfortunately this post has lost all its comments due to technical reasons. Further comments and reposts are welcome! Those of you who’ve tried to hit the site today would have noticed it was unavailable, and those of you who’ve subscribed by RSS recently would have noticed some rather unsightly (and thoroughly unauthorised) ads. Sorry for the break in transmission – I was in the middle of writing a post when a reader email (thankyou, Shasmo!) alerted me to the problem, and I realised that somehow the site had been compromised. I’ve spent all day with the… -
…Is This Thing On?
25 May 2009 | 4:20 pmMy sincere apologies for the protracted radio silence. A combination of health issues and RL issues conspired to shut me up for several weeks — and then I managed to totally bork my WP database such that I couldn’t make new posts. After some hammering (and some begging of help from an SQL-savvy friend) I think this should finally work again, although let’s face it – if it doesn’t, you won’t see this! Anyway: I have a lot of catching up to do, so meaty posts might be a little thin on the ground until I’m up to date again, but hello, and I’m back,… -
Choosing Your Attributes
9 Apr 2009 | 3:22 amHey folks, sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately — between family health woes and recovering from being sick myself, I haven’t had two brain cells to rub together! Things should be back to normal now, though. There are plenty of guides around – my own, and other people’s – that tell you what gear goals you should set, how you should gem, what consumables you should use. The big problem with most of these guides is that they don’t tell you why. They don’t make the relationships between healer stats clear, so people wind up following a set…
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Too Many Annas
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Writing Reminder
4 Jul 2009 | 5:54 amJust a reminder that there are THREE days left in the Midsummer Night’s RP Writing Contest! We’ll stop accepting entries when midnight ticks over from Monday to Tuesday, so get to writin’! (Also - hello and welcome to folks visiting from WoW.com!) ***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you*** Writing Reminder -
Five R’s of Character Revitalization
2 Jul 2009 | 8:28 amNot including the ones in the title. Anyway. There’s a saying about the 5 R’s of computer repair (retry, reboot, reinstall, reformat, return), and how if you’re having a problem with something, you try things in that order to get them working again. Sometimes, like computers, a character just quits working. You get tired, your friends quit the game, your character’s significant other rerolls the opposite faction and never logs in any more – there are LOTS of things that can take the spark out of roleplay and suck the life out of what used to be a fun, creative experience. So… -
Farewell to Blogatelle
30 Jun 2009 | 7:17 amAnother curtain call today for a great warcraft blog. Blogatelle has decided to close its doors, reducing the roleplaying blog list by one - and one that will be sorely missed. Sean and Jess had a great way of encouraging new RPers - particularly with their Katafray project and their faction/class weeks - and making old hat RPers think. I’ve enjoyed many discussions with Sean about various topics, some of which bled over into this blog or theirs, and my feed reader is definitely poorer for their absence. ‘Course, I’m not asking them to stay around - blogging is a lot of… -
Just Moved Monday
29 Jun 2009 | 8:15 amIt’s Monday again, and as is to be expected, there’s lots to do, so a quick bit of updating before another story post later today. Because Too Many Annas is now on a new server, it doesn’t remember if you’ve commented before. This means it’ll flag you for moderation, even if you’re a long time reader. Just be patient while the new server populates the commenter queue. (I moderate first comments because it catches a lot of spam that Akismet misses). I can finally use Windows Live Writer again! YAY This means more images in posts! Doing the Paladin Healing Hokey Pokey with… -
Same Bat Anna, New Bat Channel
28 Jun 2009 | 7:23 amSome of you may have noticed a bit of squirrely over the last 24 or so hours - but hopefully everything is resolved now. Why, you ask? Well, Too Many Annas is finally live on a brand new server, with huge thanks, cookies, web fame, and all that to a very good friend of mine, who took care of this when I have too much going on in my real life to deal with it. (It helps that he does this stuff for a living. :D) SO! Right now there may still be a tad bit of weirdness with the toomanyannas.com/blog extension - hopefully the redirects populate back to just plain old toomanyannas.com pretty…
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Part Time Druid
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Arms vs Fury and Arms Power Auras Export
9 Jun 2009 | 10:04 pmWarriors have 2 DPS specs. For a long time, though, people might argue they really didn’t. When asked what spec to use for raiding DPS in the past, the answer was always simple: Fury. Going with an Arms build was an easy way to open yourself up to brilliant insults in the vein of “L2P.” It was a cruel, cruel world for Arms warriors in PvE, forever relegated to the PvP spec. When Wrath hit, people who loved the Arms play style had high hopes for the spec. Fun new tools like Bladestorm and Sudden Death sounded like the perfect cure for a… -
Fury Warrior Power Auras Setup
26 May 2009 | 7:26 pmI love me some Power Auras. If you don’t know what Power Auras is, it’s a mod that helps you keep track of things like skills being available, various procs and whatnot. I picked up this mod awhile back, and finally have it set up to my liking. I figure it would help to share with my readers my exact setup, as it has the convenient ability to import and export settings. Hopefully this will give you that extra little edge. First, download the mod itself here. (I hate linking to Curse, but I just did!) Power Auras is one of those mods that is… -
The WoW End Game: Is it TOO Important?
18 May 2009 | 10:05 pmI’ve been feeling a tad bit nostalgic of late. I’m not sure what brought it on exactly. Maybe it’s that I’m tiring of Wrath a little sooner than I thought. It’s not that I don’t like what’s there, mind you, I think they did a great job, but on some level I feel like I’ve done it all before. Just in a different skin. By way of summary, my Warrior is now running in Ulduar 25 once a week, so far we’ve gotten down Levi (of course) and Razorscale. We are very close on the robot, we just need a couple of… -
Fury Warrior Nerf, Luck With the RNG, and 80 Number 3
12 May 2009 | 1:08 pmHello all. Lot’s of happenings in the world of PTD, I have some upgrade stories, new levels of uberness, and a bit of a rant about my 10% less cool Fury Warrior. Let’s get this started. The Great Fury Warrior Nerf of 3.1 Titan’s Grip was one of the first "new" talents that sounded really freaking cool. Be able to use TWO giant, badass 2-handers? Sign me up! Since it’s inception, though, it’s gone through a number of changes, tweaks, buffs and nerfs. Blizzard just doesn’t seem to have a clue how to balance the… -
The Curse Updater Officially SUCKS
5 May 2009 | 9:09 pmRarely am I forced to immediately post something, but Curse and their frigging “premium” service offering have forced my hand. I’ve been pissed since they blocked WoW Matrix. I understand they want their visitors and whatnot, but WoW Matrix was just flat out a better product. But, again, I understood their reasoning. So I did what they wanted. I grumbled a little bit, sure, but I started using the Curse client to download the brunt of my mods. Well, tonight I went to log on for an hour or so, and because it’s been a few days or so I…
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Armaggedon's coming
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Easing you way back into WoW
3 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pmIf you have ever been out of the game for any period of time you were most likely pulled up pretty short when you logged back in again. More likely than not you fired up the PC and WoW on a whim with the desire to have 10 minutes in game to see if the spark was still there (or had returned). Of course, rather than getting right into it, you had to sit through the patch downloads. If you were smart, you would have started the download just before you head to bed, but if you didn’t, you probably found yourself checking back in every 10 minutes to see that things had only progressed by… -
Ask da Nome a Kwestion or 20 Bhlogdey Kwestions (Part 2)
2 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pmThe last installment in the Ask da Nome a Kwestion or 20 Bhlogdey Kwestions special involves some heavy duty questions from the heavy duty Gnome Fire Mage follower (and Fire Mage himself), Prelimar and the heavy duty Locktess with the Mostess, Syrana. I will start of with Prelimar’s questions, then weave my way towards answering Syrana’s… assuming I have the energy… owwww, OK, I will find the energy…. Prelimar asks: Q) I’m a recently-minted 80, and I need to start getting geared for endgame stuff. Where do you recommend I go, and what sort of pieces should I… -
Show me some discipline and I’ll show you mine
2 Jul 2009 | 12:00 amI’m thinking this blog needs a bit of discipline. Someone to show wanton Gnomes like me the way things should be done. Someone that knows how to get your PuGs in order. Someone that will tell you what to do when you are facing down those bosses in Ulduar, VoA, the battlegrounds. Someone that isn’t me! Introducing Wonzy: Greetings Gnome Followers, I have been given the privilege and honor of guest blogging on everyone’s favorite gnome site. I represent Wonzy, an undead gnome who was twisted by dark magics into the appearance of a Forsaken human. Vowing to spend the rest… -
Mages/Gnomes suck/are the best because… Blogday special
1 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pmThe final category, but not the final post of, my blogday gifts was: Mages/Gnomes suck/are the best because… 30 words or less, why are we the best/worst? Mmmm why would we be the worst… Oh well, I am sure there are some smart Hordies out there with an opinion. The answers are all pretty definitive… only one that suggests Gnomes aren’t the best… but Rip can be forgiven, especially now I know he is a closet Fire Mage. Rip answers: Mages are the best because I said so. GnomeReponse: Couldn’t have said it better myself… I begin to wonder whether Rip and… -
I think you’ll be satisfied with the results
30 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmIt’s done Gnomeaggedon, and I think you’ll be satisfied with the results. If you aren’t into streams of achievement screenshots, then you may not want to read any further. If my post from yesterday about Achievement Envy rang some uncomfortable bells, likewise this isn’t the post for you. If however you want to live vicariously through my many minor triumphs, then read on. It all started on Thursday, yes some of my playtime envy has been sated, I have had some bonus time online. Hitting the Basin 1st order of the night was to catch me some fish down in Sholazar basin,…
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Automagica!
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Zupa on the PTR
30 Jun 2009 | 7:19 am... almost ...At first I thought "Oh how clever, it just downloads the changes and copies the rest of the content from your normal WoW install location"Now I think it's a good thing I never put a dent in my download allowance for the month... -
Magecraft!
9 Jun 2009 | 11:46 pmHello hello,quick FYI coz you need to know style post today,announcing... magecraft.org!Magecraft is to mages what plusheals is to healers. A forum that isn't the official wow forums (of suck) and is just for us mages!Once upon a time I started thinking about doing this myself, only I had plans for a plusdps.com forum for all DPS classes. I went as far as registering the domain name, had a think about the kind of work that would be required to make it successful and manage it, and then thought better of it.Good thing that Dan and the guys over at magecraft aren't slackers like me, and this… -
Let's get trivial
3 Jun 2009 | 4:37 pmA bit late, but better late than never, these are my answers to Justamom's sunday warcraft trivia 1. Razor Fen Downs (I'm sure I've done this but it was a long long time ago)2. Ahn' Quiriajilia 40 man. Not the ruins but the other one. (I don't think I've ever attempted to refer to this as anything BUT AQ40 before, so the spelling is beyond me.)3. rolling on the floor laughing my ass off (really who doesn't know this by now?)4. Shadow Fang Keep (reminds me of being a little itty bitty zombie back in vanilla)5. mana per 5 WTF? I got nothing!6. end user licence agreement (hands up who hasn't… -
Krizzlybear's Raidroll
2 Jun 2009 | 9:01 pmSometimes someone does something so awesome I have to link to it, on the off chance one of my readers hasn't seen it yet.Krizzlybear's Raidroll is one of those things, go read it immediately! -
Leeroy... and what to do about him?
1 Jun 2009 | 9:27 pmContinued from Zupa doesn't quest... Now me and this particular tank have known each other for a long time. We know each other well, both on a personal level and in game. We are both quite adequate tanks and both do respectable DPS. We tend to take it in turns or otherwise whoever has had the shittiest day gets to kick back and DPS while the other worries about tanking.It was my turn to tank. There was a eager beaver pally tank in the group but he was only level 74 so we shut him down. Hush noob - this is man's work style.Two speed runs of VH later, everyone is over it, I'm done tanking, the…
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The Pink Pigtail Inn
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Sad and frustrated
3 Jul 2009 | 6:46 amGoddamn it, why can’t I just play the game like everyone else? Why do I have to spend so insanely much time into troubleshooting my constantly cranky computer? Is this my destiny? Am I somehow cursed? Those thoughts are currently whirling in my head.I’m sorry to disappoint you if you were looking for a cheerful rant, giving you hope and energy to deal with your own challenges in WoW. In this post I’ll fail miserably to live up to the sweet link description that Hatch has given me on his blogroll “Larisa keeps me positive”. I hope you can forgive me. This isn’t exactly an ordinary… -
Are you feeling guilty for not doing dailies?
2 Jul 2009 | 4:00 pmFirst of all I want to state clearly that I don’t intend to name and shame anyone in this post. So please don’t take offence, Anea at Holy Discipline!I don’t want to point you out as particularly strange or stupid; it’s just that your post hit something within me that put me on fire. It’s not that I’m anywhere different or better than you are. Probably I’m without knowing about it just as guilty of this kind of behaviour as you, and that’s why I’m so touchy about it.What made me upsetPeople who haven’t read Anea’s post may wonder what’s up. What’s all this… -
Twisted again!
2 Jul 2009 | 1:23 amIt looks as if Larísa is about to be twisted again.This Friday, July 3, I’ve been invited to participate in a round table discussion at the Twisted Nether Blogcast Show, which will be sent in a live transmission.We’ll be discussing the noble art of class balancing, but also pondering upon the news about the upcoming 3.2 patch. This will indeed be an interesting exercise, since it’s normally not the kind of topics I think or rant very much about at the PPI.Hopefully I’ll have something to say about it anyway, and if not, you can at least enjoy the wisdom and wits of the other guests:… -
A flood of epics doesn’t make up for lack of content
1 Jul 2009 | 4:20 amI like sweets. Salt liquorice, chocolate, fudge, I’m all in for it – as long as there’s about a handful or two of it. Then I hit a wall and my pleasure is suddenly turned into nausea.I wonder if it isn’t a bit like that with epic loot. Don’t we eventually reach a point, when the abundance of it is about as sickening as spending too long time in a toy store and you desperately long for some fresh air?Badge changesI come to think of this as we’re approaching the 3.2 patch. The player community is eagerly waiting to see what Blizzard has in mind for us this time. It’s like an extra… -
Blizzard, won't you sell me a Honda Accord?
29 Jun 2009 | 5:09 pmThe auto business has been on my mind lately as I recently purchased a late model used car. As I buy a car once every ten years, I do a lot of research and prep work. Meanwhile, the news has been inundated with the latest gyration in GM and Chrysler’s decades long death throes, this time ensnaring US taxpayers. At first glance there doesn’t seem anything similar about making games and making cars; a look under the hood tells a different story.Detroit One way to categorize personalities is to use the product life-cycle. There are individuals who have a preference for creation, those who…
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Azeroth Now
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Micheal Jackson Dead
25 Jun 2009 | 3:36 pmMicheal Jackson, dead at Age 50 as The LA Times reports. Micheal Jackson died of a cardiac arrest and was unable to be brought back to life. The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Jackson has died at age 50 after being rushed to UCLA Medical Center. Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda told the newspaper that Jackson was not breathing when paramedics arrived at his home and CPR was performed. Please note, this is not a fake but this is history. Please share to everyone. Thank you. No related posts. -
WoW 3.1 Live
14 Apr 2009 | 9:38 amHold on to your mount because 3. is out today! Thats right, April the 14th WoW 3.1 went live! Wooot! Now what does that mean for you? Well it could mean a few things but that would take forever to go into detail about each class so I think I will touch on what will be happening for EVERYONE since 3.1 is out. Let us recap what is here now! WTF My Mount Can Swim?! Did anyone else see that? Yes, that is a common thought, you are not high and others can do this too as of 3.1. Congratulations! Now in instances: There are interactive maps! Since 3.1 was released, you can now see where you are… -
Best 19 Twink Gear for Each Class
1 Apr 2009 | 2:22 amThe best 19 twink gear is easily achieved for some but for most it proves to be difficult. We will show you the best 19 twink gear and how to get each piece of gear for every class. Also included, we will show the optimal enchants or enhancements that you put on your twinks gear in order to become the “perfect” twink. Let us begin… First let me introduce to you the unveiling of “part” of the Ultimate Twink Guide package that Azeroth Now will be releasing very shortly. This package will include everything from the perfect gear for every class (including Death… -
Hunter DPS : Enough is enough
30 Mar 2009 | 7:27 pmHunter DPS is way too out of control, back in pre-Burning Crusade and Burning Crusade everyone complained about the DPS output from Rogues and other classes that could melt your face, but seriously Blizzard look at the below video. Seriously, think about that. Whats up with our Rogue DPS? Gah! Related posts:Test Realm: Three Point Oh Point Eight A lot is going down in 3.0.8 or the big... -
Better Rogue Raid DPS
29 Mar 2009 | 8:55 pmLearn the best way to increase your Rogue Raid DPS and learn the best Rogue Raid DPS Cycles with the below content. Now let us continue with the DPS side of things. Gems: If you are trying to be a perfectionist in World of Warcraft and reach the top of the charts for being a Rogue then you need to know a few things. Right now it is next to impossible to be beat all other classes in DPS so do not get discouraged. Before you consider yourself to do lots of DPS in a raid you need to gear yourself for the raid. Make sure all sockets are gem’ed to meet the raid’s expectations. I will…
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Electronic Escape
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In which I ask your advice…
3 Jul 2009 | 7:49 amI went to Ulduar!! I know for some of you that’s no big deal, Ulduar is old news. For me, Ulduar is new as I’ve never stepped foot inside the dungeon until last night. Summer school being what it is, my WoW time is pretty darn minimal right now, but I happened to be online at raid time last night. We’ve been short on people this week thanks to the holiday, but they decided to brave Ulduar anyway and I got an invitation. I’m a casual, so if there had been enough raiders online, I’d not have been able to go. I had no idea what I was doing, Loveth was… -
I heart Battle-Bot
26 Jun 2009 | 6:42 amI was making the rounds, reading some Warcraft Blogs the other day when I started to notice all this stuff about the Battle Bot pet available through the Mt. Dew promotion. I had heard something was going on, that Mt. Dew was doing some sort of World of Warcraft thing, but I had no idea that it involved a pet until I stopped by Desdarii’s blog. Come to find out not only does it involve a pet… it involves a FREE pet! So, I hurried over to the Mt. Dew site, clicked the little pet icon, and got my pet. I did have a little mix up, I got the pet before realizing that I had to… -
I bring you an update!
23 Jun 2009 | 8:24 amWould you believe I’m still here! A lot has changed since last I wrote. My gosh, I can’t believe it’s been so long. I wish I could say that I never meant to neglect this blog, but that wouldn’t be completely true. It wasn’t intentional, but everything WoW related sort of fell by the wayside. I’m a college student and am trying to finish school, I should graduate in December. WoW has taken some serious turns for me. As a matter of fact, I recently canceled my account. I had resolved to quit playing as I have no time to play right now. My account…
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Starnaglethron
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Northrend’s Lack of Inter-Zone Fluidity
23 Jun 2009 | 7:32 amIs it just me, or do the quests in Northrend seem much more disjointed than in the Outlands and the Old World? In the original game and in Burning Crusade, as you worked your way through a zone’s quests and came to outgrow the zones, some of the last quests would take you to the next zone. They might be trivial little quests like, “We’re concerned about This and That; go talk to So-And-So over in the next zone and see What’s Up.” These quests wouldn’t be difficult at all, nor would you get a large reward or a lot of experience. But they served a very… -
Reaching For The Ceiling
29 Dec 2008 | 11:00 amFor about a month and a half now, since Wrath of the Lich King came out, I’ve focused 99% of my game time on leveling. I’ve been playing MMORPGs for about 8 years now1 and have never had a character at the maximum level. It took months after Burning Crusade was released to even get a character to 58 so that I could experience the Outlands. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, I was sitting at 65. With WotLK, however, that’s going to change. It’s already changed. Within a month of release, I took a Death Knight from 55 to 68. Now, not even 50 days after release,… -
It’s Like I’ve Been Here Before
15 Dec 2008 | 6:41 amDue to technical issues, I’m having to rebuild my blog again. Hopefully this will be the last time. I do have a cached copy of the blog, so it’s just a matter of copying and pasting the old posts back in. Which I’ll get around to one of these days. -
Death Knight – First Impressions
19 Nov 2008 | 7:37 amLast night I was able to give my Death Knight a real workout. I started off gathering quests in and around Thrallmar. As expected, they were pretty similar to the Alliance versions, but with slight modifications. For example, the Alliance quest Fel Orc Scavengers has you kill 20 Bonechewer Orcs, while the corresponding Horde quest Bonechewer Blood has you collect blood from the orcs. My minion and I headed out to finish up a couple of the quests I’d started the first night of my arrival in the Outlands. As I got into the swing of playing the class, the first thing I noticed was that my DPS… -
Introduction: Drev
18 Nov 2008 | 7:00 amThis is a very condensed biography of Drev – kind of my “go-to” character for anything fantasy. He’s usually the first character I make, my main character in stories, etc. Drev has already seen centuries of battle and strife, and has called many places – even worlds – his home. His first life as a Human Wizard in the (Everquest) world of Norrath was cut short when his naive arrogance took him into a fortress overrun by sarnaks. He drifted in the abyssal void for many years, and by the time he was pulled back to the material plane, he’d been driven mad by the vast…
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Three Druid Noob
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Northrend Faction's Gear Part Two
3 Jul 2009 | 10:05 pmIn part two of this guide I will continue to list all the factions and any Feral Gear available as a reward. As before, I will use Emmeralds Feral Druid List to compare the reward with available BOE Upgrades. I will try to include at least one Rare and one Epic item. Let's Continue where we left off.... The Kalu'ak Friendly Design: Seer's Dark Jade (Not Feral) Honored Whale-Skin Breastplate Tank: 33259.0 DPS: 270.5 Upgrades: Darkheart Chestguard Tank: 45762.8 DPS: 488.3 Polar Vest Tank: 50352.2 DPS: N/A Eviscerator's Chestguard Tank: 41685.9 DPS: 339.2 Design: Defender's Shadow Crystal (Not… -
Northrend Faction's Gear Part One
2 Jul 2009 | 10:35 pmIn my Quest to hit Northrend, it’s time to look at the items that can be obtained through Factions. Some of these items may be available immediately, although the good ones will require some Rep Grinding. To start out, I am going to list all the factions and any Feral Gear available as a reward. Upgrades? I will then use Emmeralds Feral Druid List to compare the reward with available BOE Upgrades. I will try to include at least one Rare and one Epic item. I am also listing JC items, just because I can. Let's Get Started. Argent Crusade. Honored Cloak of Holy Extermination Tank: 17819.0 DPS:… -
Action Bars Part Two
2 Jul 2009 | 4:41 pmIn Part 1 we looked at planning and initial setup of the Action Bars. We have covered the Caster form. Now it's time to look at the feral forms. Bear Form. My goal here is to fit all my Bear Form abilities into 10 action buttons. Bear Form is probably the easiest one to do as it has the least amount of abilities. Let’s go through them one at a time. Q. Taunts /cast [mod:shift] Challenging Roar; GrowlCast Growl or Challenging Roar with Shift. E. Berserk/Survival Instincts /cast [mod:shift] Survival Insticts; BerserkCast Berserk or Survival Instincts with Shift. MM. Bash Cast Bash. M3. Faerie… -
minipost
2 Jul 2009 | 1:32 pmGnomeaggedon has been invaded by Wonzy! Why not pop in and say "Hi"? Three Druid Noob -
Action Bars Part One
1 Jul 2009 | 10:02 pmThe next part of my setup planning is focused on the Action Bars. Since I will probably be using Taeo's UI my Action Bars will be using Bartender 4. Planning. I talked about planning your action bars in this article. Since I am not Multi-Boxing, I will be using my Merc Stealth Keyboard. I have chosen to compress as many abilities as I can into as few keys as possible. I will use four action bar pages(Caster, Bear, Cat and Stealth) as my Primary action bar and use a half of another action bar for my forms. I have chosen to use an action bar for Forms since I plan to Macro some Forms. Key…
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Leafshine: Lust for Flower
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Would Saying "It's Just A Game" Help?
24 Jun 2009 | 12:38 amA kid freaking out because his Mum cancelled his WoW account:I hope I would act better if my other half ever pulled the plug on me. :) -
The New "Supermarket" Arena
16 Jun 2009 | 10:57 pmThis is, in fact, deeply awesome:Pity that I live in the UK and can't buy the product. :) -
A Naxx WTF?
16 Jun 2009 | 8:21 amA guildie, and good buddy, is a bit of a server hopper. When our server, which is a quiet, RP backwater, can't provide the action he craves, he hops server for a while, and then comes back. His latest blog post contains something I find utterly inexplicable: a server where you need the Epic achievement before you can join Naxx 10-man pick up groups. WTF? You need to prove that the run is useless to you before you can join it?Can anyone from a non-backwater server explain? -
The Great Warcraft Ennui Escape Plan
16 Jun 2009 | 7:15 amLike 67.56983214%1 of the WoW blogosphere, I've been going through a period of WoW ennui right now - and I know exactly why. I've moved past the questing stage with Leafy and am now occupied solely with a combination of dailies, instancing, raiding and clearing out my remaining group quests. And, as happened in Burning Crusade, that leads to a touch of, well, boredom. I'm a narratively-driven gamer, and once you reach the end of the questing road, your narrative incentive goes. So, I find myself just a few Champion's Wotsits away from a nice Epic weapon, but unable to summon up the enthusiasm… -
New to The Blogroll: Weak and Zen
29 May 2009 | 1:02 amI've added a couple of new blogs to the ol'blogroll this morning.Rez the Weak posted one of the most interesting responses to my post on blogging basics. And I just love the interviews Xeonio is doing with fellow raiders. Fascinating reading.Also new is a Resto Druid (hurrah!) called Zaralin. And she got on there on the strength of this post. The image in there made me laugh out loud.Both come highly recommended.
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Zug Gaming
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2 Year Anniversary Celebration – MASSIVE Gold Guide Discount!
It's hard to believe it's been nearly 2 years here at ZugGaming and DominateWoWGold. It seems like just yesterday I was making my first blog posts complaining about how overpowered fury warriors were and theorycrafting the next best talent spec for rogues. The past 2 years have been a virtual ... -
Hunter Talent Builds
ZugGaming has a great and up to date Hunter talent builds for you. Hunters are a unique class because it is based around pet control and single target damage output. Hunter PvP Builds In pvp, hunters can either spec for burst or cc. Season 5 was filled with survival but now all ... -
Paladin Talent Builds
Here at ZugGaming we have a great set of Paladin Talent Builds. Paladins are a great class to play because all specs have lots of healing and are very viable for raiding. Most Paladin talent builds also give a lot of utility making the paladins a very useful class. Paladin PvP ... -
Warlock Talent Builds
Warlock talent builds are unique for pvp and pve. ZugGaming has a great guide to Warlock talent builds to keep you on your way. The success of a warlock in pvp depends a lot on his pet, while in pve it depends on dot timers and cast rotations. Warlock PvP Talent ... -
Warrior Talent Builds
ZugGaming has the best Warrior talent builds for you. All of Warriors talent specs are used in end game raiding and pvp. Although most warrior talent builds are pretty basic, make sure to check the spec for your weapon. Warrior PvP Talent Builds Unfortunately for Warriors, they are limited to specing arms ...
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Kree's Blog
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An End to an Era
30 Jun 2009 | 11:48 amAlmost 2 months ago was the last time I made any sort of post and it was about some drama. I came back today to look something up and noticed that I am still getting 30-40 hits a day and 110+ followers. Now I figure that most of these followers probably just haven't cleared out their readers of me yet and maybe a few actually were looking forward to hearing from me again. I asked my over 1,000 followers on Twitter if I should continue and I got one person responding telling me yes so I guess that really it's not something that is that sought after.My original reason for starting up this blog… -
TL;DR
6 May 2009 | 12:11 pmAs some of you know I have been in the process of a few things recently. I recently stepped down as GM of my guild, No Vacancy so I could talk some time to concentrate on my personal life. During the between my announcement and the time I had planned to sit down a few things happened which altered the way I approached things. 1)No one offered or even seemed interested in becoming the leader of No Vacancy (in fact the officers first comments was that NV was dead and none of them wanted the responsibility) and 2)I was offered a position to help form a new guild on another server.Over the course… -
Hey you! Looking for some info!
28 Apr 2009 | 2:38 pmI've seen a lot of people on today thanks to WoWInsider. I thought this was a good opportunity to try to catch some people to get some information from them for some research I am doing. If you are from one of the following servers I would love to chat with you. You can contact me via e-mail at Kreeoni (at) gmail (dot) com or on AIM under Kreeoni or on Twitter on Kreeoni.Servers I am looking for information are:Aggramar Alexstrasza Alleria Azjol-NerubDuskwoodExodar Khadgar Korialstrasz Llane Lothar Perenolde Rexxar RunetotemSen'jin Silvermoon Skywall Thunderhorn Uldaman… -
Be an Ensidia Player.
27 Apr 2009 | 12:34 pmThis weekend I was hanging out on Twitter and saw Ensidia post that they are recruiting. So I retweeted for them with the comment "too bad I'm not EU and a better player".So what does it take to be an Ensidia quality player?Let's take a look at their recruitment post.A couple of pointers and requirements that you need to read before you apply:We expect nothing but the highest performance from our players.Be prepared to play long hours in an environment that does not suffer poor players for very long.You need to be able to handle criticism and improve on any mistakes you make.A high standard… -
A Bad Judgement Call
24 Apr 2009 | 12:17 pmMany of you are familiar with my DKP posts from a few months back. In one I talked about the typical "pitfalls" that inherently come with them. I have also written about the use of DKP systems to help with policy enforcement. Well not too long ago we ran into an issue in No Vacancy involving a combination of these.We were working on Sartharion with three drakes up and were having issues with people frequently failing at fire walls and void zones. We had tried as many things as we could think of to get people to pay more attention and fix their mistakes, but nothing seemed to work. So one…
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Warcraft Econ
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Patch 3.2 Preparation: ilevel 245 Crafted Epics
29 Jun 2009 | 9:30 amThink of the new crafted items like the [Runed Orb] and their recipes of 3.2, except they are Chest/Bracers instead of Belt/Boots. The new orbs are called [Crusader Orb] and will most likely drop in the new 3.2 Crusader’s Coliseum 10/25 man raid and purchasable with [Emblem of Triumph]. These 18 new items are ilevel 245 epics and in contrast, Ulduar25 hard-modes drop ilevel 239 and [Runed Orb] recipes craft ilevel 226 items. The chest pieces require 8 orbs while the bracers use 4. There seems to be doubles of each item in the Wowhead.com database, this may be due to the faction… -
3.2 PTR Titanium Ore Prospecting Video and Results
26 Jun 2009 | 7:32 pmProspecting Data Updated: 39 Stacks - 780 Ore - 156 Prospects 39 Epic Gems 44 Rare Gems 239 Uncommon Gems 109 [Titanium Powder] = ~11 [Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token] + ~14.52g We are still in the process of transfering more ore to the PTR, so we will report results for a larger sample size soon. In the mean time, the largest sample prospected is by Ranjurm from the Elitist Jerks forums. They prospected 141 stacks of [Titanium Ore] or 564 total prospects and their results were: Epic Gems: 130 Rare Gems: 148 Uncommon: 846 Powder: 417 Chance per stack of ore: Epic: .92 Rare: 1.05… -
Patch 3.2 Preparation: Epic Gems & Dragon’s Eye Stats
25 Jun 2009 | 9:00 amThe 3.2 PTR recently went live and the epic gems we spoke of last week were indeed the ones that were introduced. As we mentioned before, these were in the game files since Wotlk Beta. There are a total of 72 different cuts: Red [Cardinal Ruby] 8 Cuts Blue [Majestic Zircon] 4 Cuts Yellow [King's Amber] 6 Cuts Purple [Dreadstone] 13 Cuts Green [Eye of Zul] 19 Cuts Orange [Flawless Amytrine] 22 Cuts Each of these 72 recipes can be bought from the Jewelcrafting trainer in Dalaran for 5 tokens each. So if you wanted every single new recipes, it will cost 360 tokens. However, to speed… -
Charcter Copy live but 3.2 PTR not live yet
22 Jun 2009 | 3:42 pmRegarding character copies, if you’ve copied already unfortunately no there’s no guarantee that the amount of copies will be reset when the PTR is up. It might be, but again I caution you to expect it not to be, to help trying to avoid disappointment. Veteran PTR testers have learned, sometimes through bad experience, to hold off until not only the PTR is live, but until other less cautious people have posted that they’ve had successful copies. (Source) Although patch 3.2 PTR is not live yet, the character copy is. Copying your characters or premades right now does not… -
Updated 3.2 Profession Patch Notes
18 Jun 2009 | 6:09 pmWow, 3.2 PTR patch notes has a lot of changes overall. Let’s give it some time for everyone to digest it all and wait for more information once the PTR goes live before we start preparing, stockpiling, or jump to conclusions. Like we said before, it is still very early and some of the changes may never make it to live servers. Yesterday we had some vague and general patch notes about professions, which as of today was slightly updated with more information. Yesturdays blue posts has been greyed out but left in for those that may have missed them: Professions Alchemy All stackable…
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Less QQ More PewPew
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Time for Vacation
25 Jun 2009 | 11:21 pmIn about 5 hours I will roll out of bed, my wife and I will go pick up 2 of our good friends and make the drive down to sunny California. Saturday we will spend the day on the beach celebrating my sister’s wedding and the following 5 days will be spent at Disneyland, Universal Studios, and the San Diego Wild Animal Park. 3 days at the wonderful world of Disney with the other two woven in between. One night we will head on over to Medieval Times to see if I am doing this whole Argent Tournament thing properly. Yes, we are just a couple of kids at heart. :) I will be gone till the 4th of… -
My Quick Thoughts on 3.2
22 Jun 2009 | 4:46 amWell it’s no secret that Blizzard has released tentative patch notes for 3.2. The patch is at least a couple months away in my opinion. Depending how fast Blizzard wants to move with new content you *might* see it in as little time as 4 weeks. But that would require the PTR going up very quickly. And truth be told, something about the patch notes just doesn’t have me very excited. Usually new content patches reignite my excitement with all the stuff that is to be added but right now it feels lacking. Just like the community predicted, Blizzard is adding in epic gems to the game. -
My Goal: 100k Gold
19 Jun 2009 | 1:12 amI have recently set a new goal for myself. I am aiming to hit 100,000 gold in 2 months time. Preferably shorter but I am trying to be a tad flexible when you consider a raiding schedule, real-life stuff, and what not. My Hunter is currently a Jewelcrafter and a Alchemist. Part of the profession choices were based around min/maxing my character and partly because I was tired of farming materials. Alchemy has proven to be a incredible money-maker on Illidan due to the sheer number of raiders among the population. I can easily list 2o-30 flasks of single type and have them sell within 12 hours. -
Survival versus MM: When I use what.
16 Jun 2009 | 1:32 amLet me preface this post with this comment: Both specs are putting up great numbers and there isn’t a dire need to be able to switch specs during Ulduar. Since I have not partaken in Arena lately both my specs are designed around raiding. My first spec is a Survival spec is a 0/15/56 build. This build was chosen after tinkering around with the spreadsheet for a little while. I went to Wowhead and clicked in a basic Survival spec, imported it to the spreadsheet and then modified talents until I found what was going to provide the highest DPS for my gear. My second spec is straight from… -
Are you ready to move on?
12 Jun 2009 | 1:55 amI thought about a lot of the ideas you guys gave me and I was going to cover them in this post, but after a discussion in guild chat, I thought this one might provide a little more discussions to get us through the weekend. We line up, getting ready to raid Crossroads during closed beta! Are you ready for another MMO? I’ve been playing WoW a long time. I’ve been lucky enough to be playing since closed beta and been able to experience pretty much everything Blizzard has put into this game. The screenshot to the left was a raid towards the end of one of the phases of closed beta. We…
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The Egotistical Priest
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Contest Closed!
3 Jul 2009 | 5:13 amThe contest is now CLOSED. It was supposed to be closed yesterday, but I got busy. That, and two more entries slipped under the wire, so I thought I’d give a leetle beet more time. But! That time has passed! I will be conferring with my esteemed colleagues to choose the winners. They will be posted here by the end of next week. Possibly before that, but I make no promises on that regard! Thanks HUGELY to everyone who entered - this is going to be a lot tougher to judge than I thought! -
TooManyAnnas Writing Contest
23 Jun 2009 | 7:13 amThere’s a writing contest up over at TooManyAnnas that some of you might be interested in. This has been a public service message. ~Ego -
Contest Ending Soon!
22 Jun 2009 | 11:39 amDon’t forget, the contest will officially close on July 1 - that’s next Wednesday! There’s still plenty of time to get an entry or two or three in before the time is up, but the contest will be closed, closed, closed for entries whenever I wake up and get around to it on Thursday morning. We’ve got a lot of awesome entries, but there’s always room for more! Check out the original post for details. ~Ego -
The Conclusion of Barnacles and Pineapples
18 May 2009 | 12:51 pmFor those who were following Tayt’s newest adventure, the end is available on my writing website. Enjoy! Barnacles and Pineapples Part 2 -
Hannelore is a meta achievement
14 May 2009 | 5:26 amIt’s been nearly a year, can you believe it? July 28, 2008, Hannelore made her debut post full of spite and almost-repressed hatred of all things Vonya. She tried, at first, to avoid just telling a lot of stories about bad pugs - even had a whole post devoted to how she would talk about good pugs and how to do it right. And then everything went wrong and she took up a few bad habits, and now she’s some mana crystal chomping addict with a thing for pain. Still, it’s been a success. Hannelore made it to outland, albeit months after everyone else left. She then made it into…
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The Troll Hunter
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Back to De Battlegrounds
Greetins' peoples, how joo all be doing today? Now no complaining about why I haven't been here writing mon, da summer break be having me doing all kinds of t'ings wit' my little trollette, so da troll hunter be sorta forgetting about da site. Any of joo be excited about da ... -
Champion of the Sen’Jin
Greetins' Mon! How joo's all be doing on dis fine day? The troll, well he be moving right along now wit' plenty of new stuff to be tellin' joo's about. I be seeing a lot of peoples lately say dat' dey' are getting bored with Azeroth and Northrend, but actually ... -
I Be Time-Lost Mon!
Greetin's Mon! How all of joo's be doing today? Sorry dat' I haven't been around here much lately but I be out working hard on achievements and my farming and I forget about joo's faithful peoples dat' be readin' my stories. I promise dat' I be gettin' better in de' ... -
Gondria Is Mine !!
[caption id="attachment_690" align="aligncenter" width="250" caption="We has A Spirit Beast!!"][/caption] Well I couldn't put it off any longer, with the new duel-spec system in place I went ahead and chose a 54/14/6 Beast Mastery build as my secondary and went off in search of the elusive new Spirit Beast named Gondria located ...
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Me and My Ghoul
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Grimtorn the Grim Reaper? Seriously?
3 Jul 2009 | 8:30 amThose who track my achievements may have noticed some interesting ones appeared in the last 24 hours. They’re interesting not because they’re particularly difficult to achieve, but because they’re PVP achievements – and those who’ve read me with any degree of regularity know how I feel about PVP. That said, as I raid on Grim, I’ve been collecting badges, these days mostly Valor. And since valor provides absolutely nothing of use for Grim’s DPS set, I usually use them to stock up on tanking items. Last night was no exception – I picked up a set… -
PTR is full of fail
30 Jun 2009 | 8:20 amI was hoping to be making a post updating you on my adventures in the PTR, on what the new ‘it’ spec will be, and how DKs will stack up on the DPS depth chart… I was hoping to show you the modeling for the T9 gear – Koltira’s Plate (Tank) and Koltira’s Battlegear (DPS). I was hoping to have SOMETHING to report at all. Instead, I have a whole lot of nothing. This is not for lack of effort. I log into the PTR almost daily, trying to see if things have been changed, fixed, etc. I’m still unable to learn unholy blight, which, as I understand it, is a… -
Aaaand…we’re in…
23 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pm…though not as “Grimtorn” as I would have preferred. Curse you, whoever it was that snagged my name! If you’re on the PTR and Horde-side, you can be on the lookout for “Grimmy”. I’ve already encountered one bug, that I’ve documented in the image on the right. I’m unable to test any unholy DPS spec at this point…because I can’t learn Unholy Blight! So I’ve been exploring the surroundings, seeing what I can find. I haven’t been able to see anything posted anywhere (read: EJ) about 3.2 viable specs, so what I’m… -
The picture that says…
23 Jun 2009 | 3:29 pm…one thousand words. Thanks to a late night (waiting for laundry to dry, of all things) … I saw a post last night on MMO Champion that character transfers were available on the PTR. So I transferred Grim on over, and as you can see in the image at the right, he has been successfully transferred. I was also having some issues with getting the PTR client to install/upgrade properly, but I think I have that resolved as well. As soon as I am able to log in (presuming that it happens before raid time [scheduled for 10:15 PM ET]), I’ll start experimenting, and seeing what I can… -
Nerf-bat, incoming
18 Jun 2009 | 1:42 pmBlizz finally put up the 3.2 PTR patch notes and it appears that DKs are getting beat upon soundly with the nerf bat. I suspect that this may well eliminate any possibility of me tanking again, but I digress…and I’ll save the QQ for another time… Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players. Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease. Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of…
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Spooncraft
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Tier 9 Armor Preview!
2 Jul 2009 | 7:35 pmStraight from Blizzard themselves, very nice looking T9 previews! For now all we have access too (in other words the only armor that Blizzard has finished 100% of the art for) are the Horde mail and Alliance cloth pieces. Alliance Mage Horde Hunter Alliance Priest Horde Shaman Alliance Warlock -
Official Warlock Developer Q&A
2 Jul 2009 | 11:57 amHere are some highlights from this Q&A: Warlock pets are getting new models. Blizzard doesn’t want the Warlock to be like Mages anymore so expect buffs to demonology. They’re revamping the entire soul shard system so that using soul shard abilities are big deals and the soul shards themselves becomes a core component of the class. Community Team: We’d [...] -
WoW Instance capactity changes coming…
2 Jul 2009 | 10:25 amI’ll give you the short version of the following blue post from Bornakk about the instance creation problems. They know its an issue and are changing their hardware to compensate for the problem and they say it will fix everything but it won’t be ready for a long time. The end. We are aware of the [...] -
Hey look! Its a Shadow Priest Q&A
2 Jul 2009 | 6:39 amHey kids! Here’s a shadow priest Q&A session on the forums! Waow weee wooo wowee kapow zip zop zoobity bop!!! Question 1: What does blizzard see as shadow priest roll in pvp or pve situations? PVE: I dont pve much but from my understanding there are aoe monsters is this the niche you intended them to fill [...] -
Dead Yogg-Saron’s one ugly motherfu-
1 Jul 2009 | 7:45 pmLadies and gentlemen may I have your attention please~ we have ourselves a dead Old God. The Old God of death himself, lies defeated in a lump of butt fucking ugly. There’s no other way to describe a dead Yoggy. My guild and I (Diversus) got a near flawless kill with no mind controls and no [...]
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Naissa's Rage
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The Cow has left the building.
3 Jul 2009 | 7:11 pmThis is it! This is my final blog post before I leave for my big trip! So I shall try to make it a good one to hold you over until Spokey starts writing guests posts which will hopefully hold you over until I get back. I did something a little different today. I went mount farming. I did Stratholme, and then I went and soloed Garr in molten core for thunderfury bindings. Died to Baron Geddon though.Went and did some looking into if it was even possible to solo Geddon and found something interesting. Apparently it IS possible if you use a hybrid Fury/Prot spec. Fury down to Blood Thirst and… -
Christopher Walken.
1 Jul 2009 | 12:09 pmWhat an odd title for a post, no? Well it's titled that because of the short story that I'm going to start this entry off with. Last night a friend of mine asked me if I would like to do VoA-25 with his guild. His guild is one of the top guilds on my server. Sure, why not? So I joined the group and got summoned there. The raid leader was someone that I know, or rather know of, but probably doesn't remember me. He's an enchanter that I gave a huge tip to for an enchant and then he freaked out because it was like 10x the usual tip that he got for that particular enchant. I'm convinced that he's… -
Whoa whoa whoa! Stop the presses!
29 Jun 2009 | 2:52 pmMy anger over the name calling and bickering about the silly emblem changes has just faded! Blizzard has completely blown my mind. NethaeraBlue Poster # 0 - Faction-Change Service in the Works - June 29, 2009, 1:58 pm We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an… -
We sure are a complainy lot aren’t we?
29 Jun 2009 | 12:48 pmSo the Emblem change is still going strong as far as the drama goes. It's an awful lot of drama over virtual barbies. And in the end that's exactly what we're playing with here. We grind, we raid, we farm to dress up virtual barbies with new clothes and accessories. Sorry you bunch of hardened gaming veterans, slayers of dragons, you're all playing with virtual barbies. That's what you're doing from the time you create a character until the time you stop playing. Virtual Barbie Dress-up with dragon-slaying minigames. That's it. That's all it is. The emblem change is coming, love it or hate… -
Vacation Thing.
27 Jun 2009 | 11:44 amIn the first week of July I'll be leaving to go on vacation. I've been really looking forward to it for the last few months. I plan to be gone for around 6 weeks but I could be back sooner or later than that. Don't worry though, I have no intention of leaving Naissa's Rage inactive for that long. I've got 1-2 more posts scheduled before I go and my dear friend SpokeyDokes (Hey I don't know, he picked his own name.) will be making some posts while I'm gone. He's a druid, and he's totally awesome at it, but he's also a pretty good warrior and a great raid leader (and super speedy master…
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Loregy.com
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Cataclysm: Maelstrom, Next Expansion?
4 Jul 2009 | 4:09 amSo just a few hours after I made my post about the test server leak, it was announced that Blizzard had acquired the trademark for “Cataclysm”. You can check out more of the details here. At first there was a bit of back and forth as to whether this news actually pertained to WoW’s next expansion, or if it could be one of our first solid bits of information regarding Blizzard’s next MMO. This all ended when it was further revealed (speculated?) that Blizzard had snagged the URL wowcataclysm.com from someone in Australia. The opinion here at Loregy? It’s… -
Maelstrom as the Next Expansion?
1 Jul 2009 | 1:19 amSo a few days ago there was an apparent leak at Blizzard as a server called “Maelstrom 3 Test” appeared on the test-server tab for a few moments. You can read more about it here. While this may seem inconsequential, remember that the initial WotLK leak was a “Northrend” directory (containing a few Howling Fjord trees) that was accidentally included within a Burning Crusade PTR installation. So what’s the consensus now? Emerald Dream? Maelstrom? With Emerald Dream, I think our most compelling evidence is the “Malfurion” novel due in 2010. With… -
Read This: Old Republic Interview
16 Jun 2009 | 11:06 amIf you’re into storytelling and game lore then I suggest keeping an eye on The Old Republic; this interview explains why. http://www.mmogamer.com/06/11/2009/a-new-hope-for-mmos Special thanks to the buddy of mine, who brought this article to my attention. Related PostsChris Metzen InterviewI stumbled upon an absolutely awesome interview of Chris Metzen the other day. This is a must read...Star Wars: The Old RepublicSo... yesterday Bioware officially announced their next MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is ...Chris Metzen InterviewThe second episode of Blizzard's official… -
Lore in Need: Feudal Japan
1 Jun 2009 | 8:32 amFor as popular as Samurais, Ninjas, and Japanese architecture are, it’s surprising there isn’t a mainstream MMO that makes full use of them. Unfortunately, virtually all fantasy MMO’s are stuck in some derivative of Middle Earth, a western style fantasy. Not that there’s anything wrong with Middle Earth, what we’re complaining about here is the lack of variety. WoW, WAR and D&D… all derivatives of Middle Earth. Obviously we’ll give LOTRO a pass. AoC takes place in a low fantasy version of ancient Rome, Egypt, and Germania. Once again,… -
The Best Fallout News in a Decade
16 May 2009 | 8:39 amI have to confess, this happens all too often. I’m reading, come upon some story, and think, “Hey! I should post that on Loregy!” Then I don’t, time passes, and I think, “Shoot, that article’s five days old now; I’d look like a doofus posting it now.” Well, that’s what’s happening here… Except, this news so damn good I don’t care if it was posted almost a month ago. Here it is in a nutshell… Obsidian Entertainment is developing the next Fallout game. Some of you might not realize what that means, so I’ll…
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Huntsman's Lodge
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What A Relief
4 Jul 2009 | 11:10 amLast night I did some reading on the internets about the Worgen that can be tamed. Since it was too late for me to try and set out on a quest chain, I figured I'd hit the sack and give it a go today. Needless to say, after arriving at the quest giver's location in Howling Fjord I quickly realized it was a Horde only quest. Although I was a little excited about the notion of having a Worgen for a pet, I was pretty relieved that I wasn't going to have to abandon my worm. Cornwallis will remain my PvP companion at least until I decide what to do about Skoll. I've been checking in periodically to… -
Recommended Reading
3 Jul 2009 | 8:02 pmWhile scanning the WoW headlines over at DailyRadar.com, I saw one that really caught my attention from World of Matticus. It was the second part in a two part series about MMO gaming addiction, particularly World of Warcraft. The post is entitled, "Online Gaming Addiction Part 2 - Signs and Symptoms". The story was written by guest poster Professor Beej, who happens to actually be a College Professor. Upon seeing the headline, I had immediately thought, "oh no... Matticus has gone BRK on us". Although quitting WoW isn't necessarily a bad thing, often times it is associated with a negative… -
Horde Hunter T9 Preview
3 Jul 2009 | 1:18 pmMMO-Champion posted a sneak peek at some more of the T9 armor sets coming in Patch 3.2, including the Horde version of the T9 Hunter set. PvE Hunter sets never seem to disappoint looks-wise. T9's no exception. Here's a preview: Official Blue Post: In patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade, players will be able to work toward the all-new tier-9 class sets by competing in the Crusaders' Coliseum. To keep with the themes of the Argent Tournament, players will notice this time around that the Horde and Alliance have unique looks to distinguish them apart. Visit MMO Champion to preview some of the other… -
I’m Pretty Good At Pushing Buttons
3 Jul 2009 | 2:32 amThis blog isn't about raiding and it certainly isn't about theorycrafting. What it is intended for is to share news, stories and advice about about a class I am passionate about, within a game I enjoy. However... just because I'm a freak for rare pets and choose to spend my time talking about taming Spirit Beasts as opposed to arguing about Armor Penetration vs. Attack Power, that doesn't mean I'm a lightweight when it comes to button pushing. No siree... I can push buttons with the best of 'em. I'm not a spreadsheet guy, nor am I a go-with-the-cookie-cutter-highest-dps-spec sort of Hunter. I… -
A Casual Raiding Guild
3 Jul 2009 | 12:09 amThat's what we refer to ourselves as anyway. At three years of age, our guild is officially one of, if not the oldest Alliance guilds on our server. Our premise has always been quality over quantity, which has perhaps stifled our progression a bit, yet on the other hand has strengthened our identity and increased our longevity. Although we're a "casual raiding guild" it doesn't necessarily mean we're a bunch of ninnies. We're 7 bosses deep in Ulduar and our progression team is definitely business. For us, the term "casual" means that we only raid 2-4 nights per week, and our raids are…
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The Ebon Hold
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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... -
Another DK tanking nerf
2 Jun 2009 | 10:19 amJune 2nd, 2009, minor patch day.Bonus armor from frost presence reduced to 60% from 80%. -
New 5 Man's in Upcoming Patches Confirmed.
22 Apr 2009 | 5:22 pmNew 5-player content is in the works for upcoming patches, including what can probably be compared to Magister's Terrace. We'll provide more information when we're ready to present previews of this content.Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.... -
Patch 3.1.1 Breaks Raise Dead
21 Apr 2009 | 9:23 pmNo word other than it's their highest priority to be fixed from blizzard. Seems zoning will fix the problem, but it comes back after you use it. -
3.1 Live This week
14 Apr 2009 | 10:33 amUpdate: Guildie just told me there's a post in the general forums stating servers should be up and playable by 5PM PDT.GeneralAnti-magic Shell: The amount of damage this ability can absorb is now limited to 100% of the death knight’s h...
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Sideshow & Syrana
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Sims Saturday: Syrana Glows…in the dark?
4 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amWelcome to the 2nd Sims Saturday. Last week we explored Sim Syrana’s traits and I justified them as being warlocky enough to represent WoW Syrana. But, I now have further evidence of Sim Syrana being truly evil. She glows. Red. In the dark. And apparently in the house too. The effect seems random. I have not discovered any sort of discernible pattern as to when it will appear. At first, I thought it was the result of a science experiment gone wrong within the house. But then, I connected it to Syrana’s evil trait and her evil criminal career. And not just her career,… -
Friday Funnies: Self-Diagnosis Time
3 Jul 2009 | 9:29 amSorry that this is going up a bit late today. I have off and forgot to schedule it last night… and just plain ignored my alarm clock this morning. (Why’d I even set it on a day off?!) I read this amusing post by Jonathan Kimak over on Cracked.com called 6 New Personality Disorders Caused by the Internet. I think I’ve seen examples of all 6 (we all know those kinda people), but the way he writes this list out is just hilarious. Here is one of my favorite parts and hopefully that will whet your appetite to go and peruse the rest! Regarding #3: Online Obsessive… -
TLC Thursday: Pre-Holiday Reading Goodness
2 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amAn interesting post by Elnia (the barkeep over at The Pink Pigtail Inn) comparing car and gaming business models. Gnomer of Armaggedon’s Coming shares a lil’ secret about in-game envy (and started the support group too, I think!) Blizzard’s garden is full of carrots. Both Darraxus the Warrior and Tobold discuss the dangling carrots within the game that keep players going, for better or worse. Anea of Holy Discipline shares her thoughts and frustration about grinding dailies…. and the guilt that sets in when you skip ‘em for a few days. Elleiras of Fel Fire… -
Soulbound, In Game and Out
1 Jul 2009 | 10:00 amDo you, Syrana, take Sideshow as your leveling partner, For richer for poorer, Through rez sickness and full hp, For epic or greens, Til death do you corpse run? I, Syrana, pledge my less than 3 to you, Sideshow, in game and out. Ok, so it didn’t really happen like that. But it would have been damn funny if it had (or sad…) I was inspired (for lack of a better term) to provide a Syranasponse* (Yes, a new word to describe responding to a topic in Syrana fashion. See the full definition at the end of this post.) to Rhii’s (of I Sheep Things) post about playing WoW as a… -
Word of the Month: DIAF
1 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amWhile Brajana at Mend Pet likes to help broaden our vocabulary with her WoW Word of the Week posts, we like to take a look each month at a little bit of gamer vernacular history. (We do enjoy her posts and if you haven’t checked them out yet, I suggest you do so!) Considering it is July… hot, fireworks, Midsummer Fire Festival… I figured DIAF would be an appropriate word (well, phrase really) to look at this month. (And yes, yes, I know I skipped June with the hiatus and all.) DIAF DIAF stands for Die In A Fire. When we throw insults at others we like it to be something…
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Double Bubble
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Important Battle.net Mobile Authenticator / iPhone OS 3.0 Notice
17 Jun 2009 | 6:49 amSometime later today, June 17, 2009, Apple will make available their OS 3.0 for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). In anticipation of this, Blizzard started sending out emails yesterday to Battle.net account holders regarding the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator and the new iPhone OS 3.0 software update. If you are planning on updating to the new OS 3.0 and are using the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, be sure to sync your iPhone with iTunes before doing so. This is important because with the installation of the new OS, all your apps and information are deleted and then restored by iTunes after the… -
iPhone App: WoW Companion
10 Jun 2009 | 2:49 pmThe WoW related iPhone / iPod Touch app called WoW Companion [iTunes link] has actually been available on the App Store for a while (a few weeks at least), but I'm just getting to write about it now. This little app is actually two apps in one, a command, macro, and emote reference, as well as an Arena calculator. It's being developed by Audacity Software Pte. Ltd. for the low, low price of free or should I really say ad-supported free. Yes, it's a free advertisement supported app, so there's small ads on each screen of the app. Here's the application description from the iTunes Store:… -
Ulduar Achievements Aplenty
9 Jun 2009 | 11:40 pmI've been pretty busy lately and haven't had much of a chance to play WoW except for a few dailies here and there. This past weekend however, I wasn't only able to play a little, I was finally able to raid Ulduar. I've only been in Ulduar once before when I PUG'd a Heroic Ulduar and downed Flame Leviathan a week ago, so I was anxious to get back in there and see more of it. Though I have a great time raiding, I haven't been able to raid with the guild since Ulduar was released. Schedules haven't worked out for me to raid consistently, but every now and then on our "off" days we'll have enough… -
iPhone App: ArenaPoints 1.1
29 May 2009 | 5:37 pmThere's a new update to the iPhone/Touch app, ArenaPoints [iTunes link]. This brings the current version to 1.1 and includes the following updates: GUI improvements "2on2" and other team sizes changed to the standard form "2v2" The app and UI was pretty simple and straightforward originally, so I'm not sure I can tell what "GUI improvements" were made. However, I may be responsible for the change from "2on2", "3on3", and "5on5" to "2v2", "3v3", and "5v5" respectively since I wrote the developer and mentioned that it would be more consistent with how they are in WoW. The developer said… -
iPhone App: WoWiQuest 1.1
29 May 2009 | 5:22 pmThere's been an update available on the iTunes App Store for the iPhone/Touch app called WoWiQuest [iTunes link] for a little while now, but I'm just getting to it today. If you'll recall from my rather lengthy review of it's initial release, it's a pretty feature rich application that the developer has listed for $4.99 (USD). The latest release brings it to version 1.1 and has some new features added to it. Here is what is in this new version: - Bug fixes. - NPCs, Items and Objects now list "Objective of" if available. - Items now list NPC/Object "Source" if available. - Database…
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Sheep Blink Invis
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/raid Casual Chatter
1 Jul 2009 | 4:56 pmThere are some pretty significant changes coming up with 3.2 and while what we have seen so far will change a bit before the final patch, the overall changes remain to be pretty significant. I’m not actually going to talk about the upcoming changes themselves. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the [...] -
Aye Aye!
25 Jun 2009 | 10:01 amduf9bme6aq I suppose I could write a post explaining, instead I’m just going to link this. Lazy? Maybe. Easy? Yes! Suffice it to say it’s part of my blog improvement to do list. Copyright © 2009 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. (Digital Fingerprint: 8a2c25a725d1897162538f78263dc673 (74.125.44.136) ) -
Smile daggone it.
24 Jun 2009 | 7:03 amWith all the seriousness abounding in blog posts everywhere, I figured it’s time for something a little light-hearted. I actually wrote these parodies a few weeks ago but just didn’t get around to posting them. I know not everyone is a fan of the “oldies but goodies” but it’s stuff I grew up listening to. I’ve linked [...] -
But Mom that’s so unfair!!
22 Jun 2009 | 3:22 pmHow do guild officers balance the guild, its reputation, and its members? Clearly a good leader will say “people first”. Even though we are in the virtual world, you still need good leaders and good managers (yes, there is a difference) for a guild to be successful. One of the roles of guild leadership is that [...]
