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Age of Conan has been rapidly changing over the past several months and a lot of that change can be attributed to Game Director Craig Morrison. Having taken the helm post-launch, his time with…

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For the most part, the Age of Conan server merges were met with enthusiasm and relief as those of us in game watch the populations thrive once again.

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Gemcrafting in Age of Conan is the cheapest and easiest way to customize your gear in game but what gems do you choose?

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Ten Ton Hammer’s series on crafting in Age of Conan comes to a close but not without getting in one last page packed full of good info!

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Gems, gems, and more gems. Age of Conan is packed full of these wonderful little items that make our weapons and armor uniquely suited to each of our needs.

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Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures is working on its new update on the Test server and it will include new content and a load of fixes when it goes live.

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We have provided you with countless Age of Conan recipe lists, walked you through getting started in crafting, and now we lead you through the daunting world of resource gathering!

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Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures has finally gotten the long awaited DirectX 10 feature on the Test servers. This new system should improve graphics and shadows throughout Hyboria.

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 The newest issue features a fanfic story, “Tales from Azeroth,” along with another called “Chronicle of War.” The “Classifieds Ads” are just a stab at humor, and you can actually download the “July Crossword” as a PDF file and fill it out yourself. If you’re a fanfic author, Blizzard is always accepting submissions for the newsletter (and with all the budding writers out there in the role-playing forums, it raises the question as to why it takes so long for these issues to come out). Check out this link to submit your work on the official website.

The interview is divided into two parts; since the patch 3.2 “first section” is a bit dated now, you might get more enjoyment out of the “Part Two” interview, in which Chilton looks into his crystal ball and predicts where WoW is headed. It’s a pretty extensive interview; even though it’s a couple months old, it’s still a relevant and interesting read.

Chilton talks about the new zones in Azeroth we still have yet to see, the philosophy behind introducing new classes and races (he mentions how Blizzard considered a “drakonid” race) and expansions after Wrath of the Lich King. He also mentions the ways in which the MMO industry has evolved, and how the new free-to-play and micro-transaction models might influence Blizzard (and even WoW) in the future.

You can discuss the mounts in pets in this thread started in our general forum.

• The current season’s weapons won’t be available for purchase
• The current season’s shoulder armor won’t be available for purchase
• You won’t qualify for the Gladiator title or rewards unless you earn the rating in 3v3 or 5v5

You can discuss these changes in this thread in our general forum.

Perhaps as proof that you’ll never be able to please everyone, two distinct camps have popped up; those who love it and think the new pace is what it should have been all along, and those who feel that all this content is just too much, coming too fast. At risk of starting a flame war, I think it’s a really interesting topic to consider. World of Warcraft is the world’s most popular MMORPG, and Blizzard earned part of its rock-solid reputation by giving fans consistency throughout the past four years. Drastic changes to such core paradigms aren’t something we’d expect from Blizzard (whether it’s for better or worse). What’s the bigger picture? What can we predict by examining some of these new trends? More importantly, how will it affect you as a customer?

One year ago this summer, players were about six months away from Wrath of the Lich King’s release. But even back then, some people were starting to wonder if the time between expansions thus far was going to be the norm. After WOW first launched it took around two years for The Burning Crusade to get into players’ hands. When we finally had a definite release date for Wrath of the Lich King, we were able to get our first glimpse at an “average” timetable for expansions; one every two years (give or take a couple months). It raised the question, “Will every expansion take two years to be developed and released?” A lot of players thought that two years was just too long, especially when you consider that WoW may have already reached its half-life.

Blizzard has always had an unspoken policy of being a little more tight-lipped than other publishers. Some game companies tend to be a little more forthcoming with their customers about release schedules, so speculation isn’t necessary. But it seems like customer speculation is something Blizzard revels in. It either uses it to its advantage in building hype for a game or expansion, or the company just doesn’t need to have an open-door policy because it will sell anything it releases. To its credit, Blizzard’s games are of a high-enough quality that you can buy one and know it will be good, whether you’ve heard anything about it or not.

Still, two years is an awfully long time to wait for future WoW expansions, especially when you’re paying $15 per month for an aging game. After the Black Temple was released in TBC, we had to wait months before we got a new content patch. Players were so burned out on the previous endgame stuff that they tore Sunwell Plateau apart like ravenous wolves, devouring it almost too quickly to even taste it. After a couple months, most of the high-end raiding guilds were farming it, and the zone’s daily quests turned into your obligatory 100-gold-per-day withdrawal.

Things looked bleak as players were forced to wonder if six- to 12-month gaps between new content patches and two years between new expansions were going to be the norm. But then Wrath of the Lich King launched in November, offering hundreds of hours of new content, and most players forgot about the issue for the time-being. It wasn’t until just recently that people started talking about it again—but this time, the arguing point turned out to be the complete opposite of what it was earlier.

Blizzard admittedly designed the endgame content in Wrath of the Lich King to be more accessible and easier to complete. Despite the fact that many players—hardcore and casual alike—had Naxxramas on farm by the time patch 3.1 was released, some of them began feeling pressured when they realized that the smaller “down-time” between WotLK and 3.1 might not have been a one-time fluke. In response to someone predicting that we wouldn’t see content patch 3.2 until later this year, and Icecrown until next spring, Blizzard rep Zarhym said in the official forums, “Would it help if I told you your presumed time lines are way too inflated?”

We’re probably just a month or so away from seeing patch 3.2 released, with 3.3 hot on its heels shortly after. I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard announces the next expansion at BlizzCon in August, and we end up receiving it by this time next year. On top of all that, Blizzard has been releasing update patches and hotfixes like crazy; much faster than we’ve ever seen before. And perhaps, most unusual of all is that we’re not left to nearly as much speculation as we were in the past. Mostly through its official forums, Blizzard has made a noticeable effort to respond to its player’s questions and needs, and even getting those issues worked out in live patches within just a couple months.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s not the kind of thing we’re used to seeing in WoW. Instead of players being worried that we’re not getting new content fast enough, they’re wondering if we’re getting it too fast. Despite the ease with which many raiding guilds cleared Naxx, Sartharion and Malygos, there are quite a few casual players who still hadn’t even cleared Naxx by the time Ulduar came out. That curve will undoubtedly widen from Ulduar to Crusaders’ Coliseum when 3.2 goes live. To help alleviate that problem though, Blizzard will be changing the token rewards in all Northrend dungeons. We’ll now be able to get “Emblems of Conquest” in all the Heroic dungeons; and the upcoming “Emblem of Triumph” tokens will be given out as a reward for the Heroic Daily Dungeon quest, as well as both 10 and 25-man versions of Crusaders Coliseum.

That itself is a hot topic of debate among players right now, but I won’t stray down that path. The point is that not only is Blizzard giving us more content at a faster pace, it’s making that endgame content more accessible than it has ever been. It might be difficult to imagine how that could be a bad thing when you’re paying a monthly subscription for the game. I’m in that camp myself; I’ve always felt that the faster we get new content, the better. But some people feel like it’s coming too fast and they’re not being given enough time to complete it all at a reasonable pace. Casual players say they don’t have enough time to catch up with the rest of their guild, because they’re still working on getting through the previous content when the new patch comes out. Some hardcore players worry that Blizzard is homogenizing the endgame and making it irrelevant too quickly.

Personally, I think both are pretty weak arguments. But I can see where some of these issues are coming from, especially when the community isn’t accustomed to this new and faster release paradigm. I think it’s more important to read between the lines and ask why Blizzard making these changes, and why it’s making them now as opposed to a year or two ago.

To figure that out, we have to look at World of Warcraft in relation to the rest of the MMO industry today. Even though Blizzard has a choke-hold on the majority of the MMORPG market, it still has to remain constantly devoted to customer retention. In comparison to modern MMOs and PC games, WoW has aged pretty dang well, but it’s not the same game it was four years ago. Its liver spots are beginning to show, and you can hear it wheeze after every other stride. “PC gaming years” are kind of like “dog years” in the sense that one year (or even a few months) can account for vast changes in graphical standards and game innovation.

As time goes by, Blizzard has to be more vigilant, to keep its customers content. The days of a class balance problem or gameplay bug taking six months to fix are long gone. Hotfixes are coming in so fast that casual players might not have even noticed a substantial gameplay bug (like the recent “flame wall bug” in Obsidian Sanctum) because it was patched within a week or two.  As the uncontrollable, out-of-game reasons to quit WoW grow larger, Blizzard has to keep the in-game reasons that it can control to a bare minimum.

The increased feedback we’ve been seeing from developers and reps in the official forums is also a clear indicator of its need to stay relevant. In an editorial I wrote last month about Blizzard not showing up at E3, I wondered if the company was so content with its hold on the market that it’s just resting on its laurels. It wasn’t until just recently that I could say with any certainty that Blizzard can’t just rest on the fruits of its labor anymore. The developers and executives at Blizzard have always proved to be forward-thinkers, and this new change in content delivery and customer interaction illustrates that. They might not be losing customers and starting to feel the heat just yet; but they can see what’s over the horizon and they’re not wasting any time preparing for the upcoming battle.

If you’re the kind of fan who will stay with WoW no matter what—regardless of other MMOs on the market—this is even better news for you. It means that, for the time being (at least until Blizzard’s next MMO is released), the developers are still striving to approach new game content proactively. Regardless of whether you think these new trends are a good or bad, it hopefully exemplifies that Blizzard will continue treating World of Warcraft as a brand-new MMO until the day it finally ends, whether that’s two years or a decade from now.

Blizzard has created an under development page for the Tier 9 class sets that will be released in patch 3.2. You can currently check out the Alliance Mage (above), Priest and Warlock sets, as well as the Horde Hunter and Shaman sets.

So what do you think of the designs?

Ghostcrawler also says the team thinks Warlock pets are too fragile now, so they’ll be adding resilience to pets to “fix it right.” You can read the full Q&A below and discuss it in this thread in our Warlock forum.

Warlock Q&A with Ghostcrawler and the World of Warcraft Community Team

Community Team: We’d like start this Q&A off by asking a question that players of all classes often ask in regard to the very purpose of their class. In this case, we’re looking specifically at the warlock.

Q. Where do warlocks fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do we see them going from this point forward?

A.The warlock is a caster — a ranged damage dealer. They can fill only one role, which makes them a “pure” class as opposed to a hybrid. Warlocks have a reputation for trafficking with darkness, and their spells and abilities reflect this — demons, curses, drains, fears. All warlocks rely on damage-over-time spells and demonic pets to some extent. The Affliction tree focuses on damage-over-time spells, curses, and shadow magic in general. The Demonology tree emphasizes the damage and abilities done by demons. The Destruction tree gives up a little of both to become a little bit more like a mage with direct damage and fire magic. Overall, the vision is for warlocks to feel less fragile than mages. They have historically had higher health pools and easier to sustain mana, but fewer emergency escapes. Keeping the mage and warlock feeling distinct is a big challenge. They fill a similar role and share similar gear so sometimes even the profiles of their character art look similar.

Going forward, we want to try and make the warlock experience more different from the mage. Our new plans for Soul Shards will help here. We want to make them a core mechanic instead of a minor feature that can be neglected at best and feels tedious at worst.

We’re happy with the relative damage done by Affliction and Destruction. Depending on which Lich King patch you look at one or the other are slightly on top, but they’re close. Demonology still seems to lag a little behind. We think there is still room for a strong Felguard build in there. It might be that the pets still require too much management or it could just be that the rotation isn’t as interesting as the ones Affliction or Destruction use right now. Demonology suffers from a little bit of the same problem as the Beastmaster hunter, which is when the pet is such a big part of your damage you are crippled in moments when the pet is killed or ineffectual.

Except for a brief moment early in Lich King, warlocks have been under-represented in PvP and we want to see more of them. We don’t want to get there through fear bombs, though. In fact, we think the damage locks can do is in a pretty good place. The problem is survivability, especially when stunned. Now some of the 3.2 changes are going to chill out damage across the board and we are increasing the survivability of pets in PvP. Both of those changes should help warlocks, who historically have been a little better in endurance fights than quick scrums. If those changes aren’t enough, we’re prepared to make additional ones.

Lich King made the warlock pets more interesting but we think there is still a lot of opportunity here. Some of the pets have abilities that just don’t get much use (Imp Fire Shield anyone?) while other pets could benefit from a couple more abilities. The voidwalker for example does all of his damage through just a simple autoattack. While we are slightly positioning the imp as a Destruction pet and the felhound as an Affliction pet, we think we can make the choice of what demon to use at a particular time more interesting. The succubus has too narrow a niche, and the voidwalker is still used mostly as a level-up pet.

Q. What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes?

A.Demons are a big one. Warlocks are a pet class, but they gain more of their own power from their pets and can make their pets do more than say a hunter or death knight. The way they do damage is different from a mage because a lot of their damage, even for Destruction, comes from damage-over-time spells instead. Warlocks bring some utility that doesn’t strictly increase raid damage, so we feel like it’s fine to keep those abilities unique to the lock — things like summoning and health stones. But again, we think the real way to keep warlocks from feeling like mages with pets is to do more with the Soul Shard mechanic.

Q. Soul Shards is subject that has been a constant amongst warlock players since the launch of the game. While we’ve made some minor improvements over time, players still find Soul Shards to be an annoyance. Are there any plans in motion to make further improvements to the warlock Soul Shard system?

A.Yes. As we have hinted on occasion, we have a revamp of the entire system in the works. This is a big change, beyond the scope of the 3.2 patch, but we are confident — CONFIDENT — that the new system will be something warlocks finally enjoy. (I’m sure I will never, ever regret saying that.) We hope to be able to talk more about it at BlizzCon, but the basic idea is that shards provide a combat boost when needed without becoming a resource that needs to be farmed. Currently too many of the shard abilities are maintenance-like things such as demons and stones. Blowing a shard should be a big deal — an exciting moment. We want to make shards fun and remove the hassle, but we want to make them a core part of the warlock experience and not a marginalized feature.

Q. Most DPS classes can spend three (or less) talent points to decrease their threat by 30%, while warlocks must spend four talent points in two different trees to gain a 10% drop in threat. What are our thoughts on this, and why the discrepancy?

A.There are a couple of situations like this in the warlock tree. The essential problem is we want locks to be able to go down their different trees. When you have something important like threat-reduction or range, it either needs to go very high in the trees where everyone can reach it, or you need to have duplicate talents that essentially accomplish the same thing. The problem with the latter approach is that confusing things can happen when you get both talents — either they stack (which is too powerful) or they don’t stack (which can be confusing or make talent builds difficult). The way we have tried to solve the latter problem is having some talents affect Fire / Destro and some affect Shadow / Affliction. Of course the problem with that approach is that warlocks use both kinds of damage spells. We recognize that we need to solve this problem, but sliding a lot of talents around is not the right way to do it, and also beyond the scope of 3.2. See below for a partial solution for the threat problem though.

Q. As a follow-up to the last question, would we consider giving warlocks a better “aggro dump” ability? Currently, their one “aggro dump,” Soulshatter, has a long cooldown and costs a reagent.

A.We are going to lower the cooldown of Soulshatter to three minutes. We don’t think the shard cost is a big expense in PvE situations. Threat-dump abilities are tricky to balance. We don’t want these spells to feel rotational — you aren’t supposed to do say Curse of Agony, Immolate, Soulshatter, Curse of Agony, Immolate, Soulshatter. They are there for emergencies.

Q. In PvP, warlocks feel at a disadvantage against melee classes (and hunters), particularly rogues. What are our thoughts in this, and are there any plans to provide warlocks with a little more help in this area? Additionally, players have often suggested allowing Demonic Circle to be usable while stunned, is this something we’d consider?

A.The reason we don’t like making Demonic Circle usable while stunned is that changes the ability from a remote evacuation into a stun-breaker. Our concern is locks would never use it except for the stun removal, which makes the spell a lot less cool. Circle is definitely one of those abilities that requires a lot of finesse. Clever locks can do amazing things with it and beginner locks might not get as much benefit out of it. It’s probably also fair to say that stuns (especially chained ones) have become too important in PvP, especially now that we have toned down the impact of some of the other forms of crowd control.

Q. Pet survivability is something that comes up often. Do we see this as a concern, and if so are there any plans to increase warlock pet survivability and/or consider decreasing the warlock’s dependency on pets in PvP?

A.It is a concern. We never wanted it to feel like it was stupid to attack the pet — like they were so unkillable that you just have to endure damage from the pet while you chase down the lock. You have to remember that locks were once really dangerous in PvP (this was back when we added resilience for DoTs) and so everyone was nervous about making their pets too powerful. It’s just incredibly frustrating to be on the other end of that and finally get a pet down only to have to then face the warlock. However times have changed and we think pets are too fragile now. We tried buffing their health a few times, but we think it’s finally time to add resilience to pets and fix it right.

Q. Continuing off of the previous question, are we happy with pet scaling currently? One constant request by warlocks in PvP, is to allow scaling for resilience. Would we consider making this change?

A.Yes, pets are never going to scale correctly as long as there are some stats that affect the master but not the pet. If the lock gains crit and haste, the demons don’t benefit as much as if the lock had gained spellpower. This is a problem. We need to make pets just scale with all stats. Technically, this is not a “flip the switch” kind of change. It’s complicated so it’s going to take some time to do right. We’ll get resilience and spell pen done first.

Q. Many warlocks often find it difficult to resummon or switch pets, especially when compared to other pet classes. Fel Domination with Master Summoner is nice for those who have the talents, but still somewhat problematic due to the long cooldown of Fel Domination.

A. As you probably know by now, we are dramatically lowering the cooldown on Fel Domination.

Q. Talents that increase the range for spells is often a point of concern, particularly for PvE-focused warlocks due to the warlock’s mixture of using both Affliction and Destruction abilities. Is it possible that warlocks can be given a merged range talent in a low tier of either tree?

A.This is the same problem I mentioned above. Moving the talent up higher is one solution, but it would have to be very high and whatever talents are there now would have to come down. This then becomes a pretty significant re-architecture of the talent tree. It is something we want to address, but probably isn’t a 3.2 change.

Q. Do we have plans to add a little more burst potential to the Affliction tree?

A.Yes, and Haunt is probably the right place to do it. Haunt is one of the few Affliction spells that can’t reach the 200% crit level, so we are going to make that change through Pandemic.

Q. The spell Hellfire is one that warlocks rarely use, due to that fact it’s channeled, generates a great deal of threat, and has self-damaging properties. What are our thoughts on how this spell currently functions, and what might we consider changing in the future?

A.We’d agree that the “interesting tradeoff” isn’t that interesting, and in fact it’s hard to find niches for so many different AE spells. Long-term this might be the kind of spell that gets cut.

Q. A common concern that comes up regarding warlock players is in regards to their minor glyphs. While they understand that these glyphs aren’t meant to be game-changing, many of the minor glyphs focus on improving spells that aren’t really used at all, such as Eye of Kilrogg. Would we consider looking at the minor glyphs available for warlocks and possibly making some improvements?

A.We can look at the minor glyphs. We are more concerned at the moment with making sure the major glyphs are interesting without being overpowered.

Q. Green fire for spells has been something that’s often requested by warlocks. Would we consider adding this into the game, possibly in the form of a minor glyph so that we’re not forcing it on players who may not desire their fire spells to be green?

A.We wouldn’t do it through a minor glyph. Originally, we were going to make the minor glyphs mostly cosmetic like this, but as we evolved the glyph feature we found that some spells just didn’t make sense to have a major glyph, so these became minors. We definitely understand some (many? all?) warlocks would love to have green fire and we’ll try and find a cool way to deliver on this. At this point, we’d probably rather do it with a flashy new spell rather than just change up an existing one, but we’ll have to see. As with the new druid forms, after waiting so long, we’d want to do it right.

Q. Would we consider adding a warlock-specific flying mount? Warlocks have promised to never complain again should such a feature be added. Okay, not really…

A.I think it fits the warlock kit pretty well to have some kind of crazy flying demon. We don’t have any art for such a creature yet, but we’ll keep it in mind. You’d have to go back to Dire Maul to get it. Okay, not really…

Q. Are there any plans to allow warlocks to slightly customize or change the appearance of their pets?

A.This is something we are discussing. There are several voidwalker and imp models we could use pretty easily and it might be nice to add more felhounds and succubi. This isn’t a high priority, but something we would like to eventually get around to improving. We are discussing whether this is simply just random variation (like the names) or whether it becomes an even bigger feature.

Bornakk said the instance capacity limit was only supposed to be a short-term solution, and emphasized “this issue currently a top priority for us, and we are working on resolving it as quickly as possible.” You can read the full post below.

We are aware of the concerns regarding situations where players are unable to zone into an instance due to an instance limit being hit, which results in a message stating that additional instances cannot be launched. This limit was implemented as a short-term solution to preserve the gameplay for players who are already in an instance and to prevent numerous issues that can happen when too many instances are active at the same time, but we are currently working on better solutions to ensure that players can get into instances when they want to.

As one of the solutions to this situation, we are in the process of modifying our hardware setup to allow for more instances to be active without negatively impacting the performance of these instances. Once this hardware reconfiguration is complete, we expect to see a noticeable reduction in the number of players hitting the instance limit. However, this improvement to the hardware is a complicated and delicate process that will also require extensive testing before it can be fully implemented, so it may be some time before the updates can be completed. We would like to assure you that this issue currently a top priority for us, and we are working on resolving it as quickly as possible.

Further information and updates regarding this will be provided as we make progress in this process. Thank you for your patience during this time.

MMOsite even took photos inside the office of Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime and caught a glimpse of the StarCraft II development room. Check out their article to view 16 pages of pictures from the tour.

Ghostcrawler also said they might consider adding more special effects to Shadow Priest DoT spells and discussed why there won’t be a new 51-point talent added. “We want the 51-pointers to be very attractive, but not necessarily the most powerful talent in the tree,” he said.

You can read the full Q&A below.

Alright. Shadow priests feel ignored. I get it. Hopefully answering this won’t get used against us the way some shadow priests were using the fact that I answered some mage questions.

I’m also suspicious that mere answers will not be sufficient unless they include “so we will buff you,” but we’ll see.

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Q u o t e:
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 in pve? I once saw a blue saying that they didn’t want anyone filling that niche!

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You’re a dps class that focuses on dots and “stealing energy” from opponents. I’ll write a prettier version for the official Q&A. Shadow priests can do single target damage and now in LK can do AE damage as well.

 

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Q u o t e:
PVP: As you all may know Priest are the only class with TWO healing trees. Did you want our dps tree to also have a strong healing component through Vampric Embrace? I often hear shadow priest refered to as the Pre-BC caster tank, are there any intentions of turning shadows priest back into this role anytime soon?

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Yes on the VE part. “Caster tank” as a role is a little risky. It basically means that melee have to close the gap to finally do damage to you, yet once they do… they still have trouble hurting you. I know that makes you want to say “But melee are crushing us right now!” That might be a problem, but doesn’t mean the right answer is to have non-fragile casters. You are probably tougher than mages, and still have decent escape mechanisms with Dispersion and fears.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 2: Was mind flay always intended to be our “filler,” damage spell instead of a nuke or was it ment to be a mainly pvp spell? If it wasn’t are you intending to give us a nuke? I ask because to my understanding shadow priest scale very poorly with haste which brings me to my next question.

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We don’t really design every caster around nukes. That’s kind of a mage deal where they emphasize one main spell. We want the other casters to feel differently, to have rotations. Mind Flay is part of that.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 3: Does blizzard intend to make haste effect dots? As you all may know this would help with some scaling issues and I don’t see why they couldn’t do this, they already did it with crits!

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It’s something we’re talking about. Haste is a problematic stat for a number of reasons. It isn’t always good for example if you don’t have enough room in your rotation to fit another spell. It isn’t good if you’re GCD capped. Now, it’s okay — in fact preferable — that stats aren’t equal for everyone. We like that not all casters would look at say a ring with haste, crit and spirit the same way.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 4: Does blizzard think that dispel protection is a problem for dot heavy casters? If you do what are you planning to do to fix this? If you don’t why not? I understand that vampiric touch has a penalty for being removed but I just don’t feel like it is strong enough or even compares to it’s much stronger version unstable affliction.

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We think the whole dispel protection game needs to be overhauled. Buffs should be valued for their buffs, not for whether or not they can protect other buffs. We need to change this whole system to something more sane. Whether or not you have a dispel, and whether or not your target is vulnerable to it has just become way too important. You are right that the VT penalty is so low as to be silly, and that’s something we would like to boost for 3.2.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 5: Alot of players feel as though replenishment should belong solely to shadow priest, we understand that you would like to “bring the player not the class,” but honestly could you say that having a unique class/spec ability is such a bad thing?

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Yes, it’s a bad thing. It’s good if you’re a shadow priest wanting a raid slot. It’s bad if you’re the druid or warrior who can’t come because the raid leader feels like they must bring the shadow priest in order to raid. We want the challenge to be the encounters, not the logistics of building the group.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 6: It takes shadow priest significantly longer to set up our damage than other classes. Would it be in your intentions to add an initial damage component to vampiric touch and make it instant cast to help alleviate some of the wait-time for damage?

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I think there is something to the set-up-your-damage issue, but at the same time, dots also have a lot of benefits over direct damage spells. We would not want any spell that Shadow priests felt like they could just cast instead of doing their rotation, and if the instant-damage spell was weaker than the rotation, it would likely see only situational use (though maybe that’s a fine niche).

 

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Q u o t e:
Questions 7:Are you planning on implementing a snare/root for shadow priest? Shadow Priest is currently the only caster that has no snare/root abilities. These types of abilities are essential when we are not able to tank damage and wear cloth.

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We don’t want to give every mechanic to every class if we can help it. Just above you asked if it was a bad thing to have some unique mechanics. Saying no isn’t the same as saying everyone can have some mechanics. We intend for the Shadow CC to be things like Psychic Horror and Silence, and to a much lesser extent, Mind Control.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 8: Shadow priest are always triggering our global cooldown but have no way to make it shorter. Are you planning to implement maybe a talent to reduce our global cooldown?

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We wouldn’t do it through a talent, but we might let haste do it. Remember, the global is there for a reason. Having too many abilities short-circuit it will ultimately have consequences.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 9: : As you may know shadow priest have a fair amount of mobility issues, are you planning on adding a short immunity to snares after fade is used? ( Improved Fade ofcourse.)

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No. We would be more likely to nerf snares. We don’t want to have an arms race of snares, then snare immunity, then the snare that can’t be made immune, and so on.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 10: Are you planning to add Body and Soul to the shadow tree?

---

No.

 

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Q u o t e:
Question 11: The fear/blind DR has severely destroyed a lot of synergy shadowpriest and rogues shared, are you planning to revert this change next season?

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No. The game needs more DR on crowd control, not less. Using your crowd control at the right time is awesome. Chaining different forms of CC together to keep an enemy from ever being able to move is a lot less fun.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 12: Dispersion a lot of people feel the abilities strength does not merit it as a 51 point talent, are there any plans to move this to a lower tier in the shadow tree? Will there be any plans to remove the silence effect it applies in the future?

---

We don’t want to remove the silence for the reason we’ve never wanted to remove it — we want Dispersion as an escape mechanism, not an offensive cooldown. We might lower Dispersion’s cooldown though. We want it to do it’s job, not get marginalized in the tree.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 13: Was the disarm on Psychic horror intended to occur after the “horror,” or during? Is there any intention of removing the travel time on Psychic Horror, If not will you add an animation?

---

What do you mean by animation? To the projectile or the target? The disarm was intended to occur during the horror.

---

Q u o t e:
Question 14: Psychic Scream is a very powerful spell for getting attackers off of you, but there are various ways to counter it. Would it be reasonable to add a penalty for removing this spell early, maybe a 2 second stun or a snare.

---

We do the dot / hot penalties because its a weakness of dots. We’re not crazy about going down the road of making all CC have a kiss / curse element with its removal.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 15: Most damage over time spells just tick with no special effect with an exception to a few.
In order to help us damage better could we get more “effects” on our damage over time spells such as ticking hard initially and damage slowly wearing off.

---

This might be something we’d consider. I understand the concern.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 16: From my understanding there is a cooldown on Devouring Plague to keep us from putting it on multiple targets. Couldn’t you just make Devouring Plague only usable on 1 target at a time and remove the cooldown?

---

Yes. I’m not sure many players would consider that a buff though.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 17: Mind Control although this is a fun spell it isn’t very useful in pvp situations because it leaves your character immobile for however long and randomly breaks. Could mind control make the controlled target your pet but movable by using the same mechanic used to place a death and decay?

---

We might do something like that for pets in general. Mind Control however is a really powerful ability. Not only does it prevent the target from doing anything, it also lets you use their abilities against their allies. It’s going to be hard for us to remove too many downsides from the effect.

 

---

Q u o t e:
Question 18: Are you planning on giving spriest a new 51 point talent?

---

No. We want the 51-pointers to be very attractive, but not necessarily the most powerful talent in the tree. A great number, if not a majority, of Shadow priests have Dispersion so it’s hard to argue it isn’t attractive. I understand some players want the 51 to be a big damage spell for damage-dealing specs, but that just isn’t always what we think the tree needs. I’m not saying we are going to take the talent trees to 61 or 71 points soon, but if we did, just think of the expectation. Does the 71 pointer need to blow all of the previous talents out of the water? Do deeper talents need to become more powerful at the same time the character gets more of them? That leads to a lot of power inflation. We think talents probably account for too much of a character’s power already.

WoWPals.net

Personally, I think WoW already covers the bases of a social network (though in the past I’ve said I would like to have the option to see more about players than the characters, and these sites can certainly fill that need), so all of these end up being either extraneous — do I really need another Twitter just for my characters? — or just plain unnecessary: maybe I don’t want my friends to know exactly what I did in game last night.

So no, I personally haven’t been sold on any of these sites yet (though I do like reading through the player blogs here on WoW.com, and I’m not just saying that because I work here). I’m active ingame, and I’m active on various social networks, and keeping the two separate is fine by me. But if you are looking for even more ways to find new friends in World of Warcraft, maybe you can meet some new pals with WoWPals, too.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends

WoWPals helps you find more friends in Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Since today’s first question in Maelstrom-themed, we’ve decided today’s edition of The Queue was a good time to link the supposed leaked trailer of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, to be announced at BlizzCon ‘09. We haven’t embedded the video to try and dodge waking up to a DMCA tomorrow, so just check it out on YouTube. We’ll let Google deal with the mess, eh?

Revan asked…

“What instances would you suggest for a Maelstrom expansion?”

All of the things you suggested yesterday would work pretty well. Nazjatar and the Tomb of Sargeras would definitely be raid zones in a future expansion. I suspect we would also have a hella fun time in The Eye of the Maelstrom, which is the center of the whole storm there. Maybe we’d even visit Mak’aru, which is where all the gross crab people live. It probably wouldn’t be a raid, but I could see a 5-man there. That is, if we don’t ally with the gross crabfolk. Did I mention they’re gross? Gross. I’d also lay down money that we’ll get an Onyxia/Gruul/Malygos-style raid with a sea monster of some sort. The Lurker Below v2.0, now with eye lasers?

Continue reading The Queue: Full of it

Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

The Queue: Full of it originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Big Hit Box covers the Best In Slot Emblem Gear in Patch 3.2 for the Enhancement Shaman.
• Twisted Nether Blogcast episode 51 is up and ready for listening.
• Lorecrafted has a good bit of speculation on the possibility of WoW: Cataclysm.
• BlizzPlanet is getting in on the Cataclysm speculation, too. A new playable race?

Filed under: The Daily Quest

The Daily Quest: Cata-what? originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Note that I say “could be tamed,” not “can”: apparently Blizzard has hotfixed the NPC so that he can no longer be tamed, stating that they never intended players to have a humanoid pet. Players who have already tamed Garwal will find that they have no talents or abilities for him, nor can they feed or buff him rendering him effectively useless except as a vanity pet. I would expect him to be removed even as a vanity pet soon.

Filed under: Hunter, News items

Worgen Garwal hotfixed, now untamable originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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World of Warcraft has been around for a while now, and the game has changed significantly. Back in the day, way back in the day, things were so different you probably wouldn’t recognize it. A couple times a week WoW.com will look back at old patches, lamenting on what once was.

Welcome to the first post in our Patches of Yesteryear series. We’re going to take a look at old patch notes (listed after the break) and point out some of the ridiculous, and not so ridiculous changes that have gone through the game the past five years.

To start off with, let’s look at Patch 0.6. This patch was released on April 13th, 2004. That’s about seven months before WoW hit the retail shelves and became a hit. This beta version of WoW had a few important parts of the game that began their life in this patch:

• Scarlet Monastery, the level 30 dungeons near the Undercity
• Blackfathom Deeps, the cave maze dungeon out in Kalimdor
• Druids became available for play
• You had five states of rested that affected the gain of your experience gains: well rested, rested, normal, fatigued, and exhausted

Continue reading The Patches of Yesteryear: Patch 0.6

Filed under: Druid, Mage, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Odds and ends, Leveling

The Patches of Yesteryear: Patch 0.6 originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard’s gaming extravaganza.

Even if you are taking my advice and training your feet and legs for BlizzCon, you are still going to need good shoes for all of those lines. The Anaheim Convention Center floor is hard and unforgiving, so your shoes will need to provide the appropriate cushion and support to make up for it. In many conventions, companies will put carpet with extra padding in their booths so that people will stand there longer for demos of their products and services. Unless something has changed this year, there is no padding — no respite for the feet unless you go outside and find a patch of grass.

Continue reading Preparing for BlizzCon: You need good shoes

Filed under: Events, BlizzCon

Preparing for BlizzCon: You need good shoes originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Patch 3.2 is out on the PTR, and every day seems to bring new surprises. From raid lockouts to tier gear and heirloom pieces.

For Patch 3.2 we’ve been steadily updating WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2. with everything we’ve written about the Patch 3.2 PTR. Included in there are links to the latest patch notes, class changes and analysis, and tons of galleries of the new gear and quests.

Check out the guide and all its updates for Patch 3.2 goodness!

Filed under: Patches, Guides

WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2 Updated originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the Death Knight Q&A. To be fair, this is primarily because most of the things covered were already in the 3.2 patch notes, and the rest was pretty common sense stuff. However, one little comment by Ghostcrawler did catch my attention: His praise of Death Runes.

This caught me more than a bit by surprise, since, if anything, the Death Knight changes in Patch 3.2 seem tailor made to discourage the use of Death Runes, at least for Frost and Unholy.

Between the damage buff to Blood Strike and diseases, and the nerf to Scourge Strike, we have a pretty good chance of seeing people move away from using Death Runes. The major reason to use Blood Strike in both trees right now is to create Death Runes so you can use higher damage abilities on your next refresh cycle. If Blood Strike becomes the higher damage ability, it’s not worth it to use the Death Runes on something else. There’s a off-chance, I suppose, that you might want the Death Runes handy for an emergency use of Ghoul Frenzy, in theory, but that chance is so slim that no-one’s going to want to waste the talent points in Reaping, at the very least.

Continue reading Lichborne: The Future of Death Runes in Patch 3.2

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Talents, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Lichborne: The Future of Death Runes in Patch 3.2 originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At any rate, the video work in this piece is pretty good. It’s got a good variety of action and models, all which come together in proper harmony with the song. I’ve not seen anything by ViKarious before, so this was a pretty good break onto the scene for them.

My only complaint, of course, is the return of Auto-Tune. I’ve always enjoy Sharm’s singing, and think she could be fairly talented. Like I said when Why I Raid? was released, I guess auto-tune could be being used for artistic reasons, but it’s just not necessary. The voice work is great without it.

Edit: There’s a rumor this may be a parody of the Destiny’s Child song, Say My Name.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Moviewatch

WoW Moviewatch: Take My Quest originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Cower in fear, puny mortals! Maintenance time is upon you!”

Maintenance time ho! Yes Europe, it’s nearly the middle of the week again. I’m honestly not sure how that happened but once more unto the breach. Unfortunately the downtime is a little longer than normal this week, hence poor Serisa quaking in fear in the picture above. Blizzard has announced that all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 1:00pm (CEST) tomorrow.

So, that makes a good few hours in which to kick your heels. Kind of annoying but it’s a necessary evil. Once more coming to our rescue, Daniel W. has got a nice round up with a heavy focus on the cataclysmic news from last week. Cataclysmic, get it? Anyway, last week was quite news intensive and if you start to get withdrawal, what about hitting the PTR for a bit and trying out all the juicy Patch 3.2 goodness.

Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Expansions, Europe

European weekly maintenance: 8th July 2009 originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So how to get it right? TLaG suggests this post from TankingTips, which hints at using the mouse instead of the keyboard to target (you can choose friendly targets easier that way), but doesn’t offer any real suggestions of how to make the switch. Moving the camera back is one, getting your positioning right is probably another. And learning to use focus and macro targets is probably the best tip you can have: anything that’s more specific or direct than either Tab or click targeting is probably better. Addons like Promixo will help in the Arenas as well.

No one’s perfect, and no one way to do things is perfect either — depending on your situation, Tab targeting might be better. But it’s important to have as many tools as possible, so if you, like me, find yourself depending on the Tab key more often than not, it might be time to mix up your toolbag a bit.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Blizzard, PvP, Raiding, Hardware

The sin of Tab targeting originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Westfall Brigade might need more constructive ways to occupy their time. When Jaeren of <I Shoulda Been Horde> on Rexxar pulled Vengeful Bambina over to their camp, the Brigade went to town on the poor deer, who just stood there while the guards hacked away in a futile effort to kill the immortal fawn. See, the Horde doesn’t have these kinds of problems. At least, not since the Royal Apothecary Society deployed their Chronic Wasting Disease catapults.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Around Azeroth: Overkill originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sometimes you’d like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	Being a WoW fan doesn’t mean you’re an MMO fan Syncaine posted an interesting article on his blog discussing why he thinks there hasn’t been much uptake in the majority of MMOs released since World of Warcraft. Basically, he believes that just because you enjoy playing WoW, it doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy other MMOs.
	EverQuest’s 51/50 server “Mayong” is live Earlier in the week, EverQuest’s new 51/50 server “Mayong” went live. Pretty much anyone that played EQ around launch will recognize the name as that of the infamous vampire Mayong Mistmoore, a character that was sometimes played by GMs and devs for live events way back in the day. For those not familiar with the special rules of this server type, it’s fairly simple: 51 is your starting level, and 50 is the number of AAs you automatically receive upon making a character.
	Redefining MMOs: Terminology As we look back at the past several years of the MMO scene, we see a genre that has gone through significant evolutionary leaps. With those pioneering days of text MUDs and blocky graphics behind us, today we enjoy professionally developed games with impressive development teams and massive budgets behind them. The genre’s depths have been thoroughly explored and we’ve even categorised the features we’ve come to love and expect from our favourite online retreats. Every part of the genre, from the types of gameplay available to the terminology we use, has been routinely evolving and redefining itself over time.
	Massively’s DDO Unlimited developer tour Love can sometimes be a fickle thing, but I’m pretty sure that I love what Turbine has done with the DDO Store in Dungeons and Dragons Online Unlimited. I’ll admit that initially I was a little concerned with the concept of an in-game store, but after playing with it at bit and asking some questions my fears have pretty much melted away.

Continue reading MMO Roundup: Last week on Massively

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features

MMO Roundup: Last week on Massively originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AddOns are great. We all use them and they enhance game play. Indeed as we’ve seen from sites like Curse there’s a thriving trade. The thing is a lot of newer MMOs, most notably Aion, have everything that AddOns provide and a bit more built in. While Blizzard is starting to cotton on with the introduction of their own threat meter and quest tracker, there’s still a long way to go. Perhaps the most notable change in this direction is the promise of a somewhat basic quest helper in 3.2. Now I’ve been using the actual QuestHelper for quite a long time (indeed it’s one of my essential AddOns) and from what I’ve seen of Blizzard’s version, they have a long way to go.

But, it’s a start. In the past year Blizzard seem to have finally realised that their player base like the perks of AddOns and the way they enhance the game, but not the frequent updating which is required with every major patch. So readers, what are your thoughts on the whole Blizzard/AddOn thing? Do you think they are just taking the best ideas and adapting the most popular AddOns into their own versions? Do you prefer using AddOns like Omen and QuestHelper? Do you see yourself using them for a long time yet? What would you like to see AddOn-esque feature would you like Blizzard to implement next?

Filed under: Blizzard, AddOns, Breakfast topics, Instances, Quests, Raiding, Leveling

Breakfast Topic: Do you wish we didn’t have to use AddOns? originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The big news, of course, is the Cataclysm. Blizzard went on a trademark registering spree around this word, which has everyone abuzz with speculation. Are we seeing the name of the new, maelstrom-related expansion? Or is this another secret project, perhaps even that new top secret MMO? Only time will tell, but it’s fun to guess anyway. Once you’re done being all atwitter over that little bit of gossip, here’s some more stuff to read until your server comes up:

Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Cataclysmic Edition

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, Odds and ends, News items

Tuesday Morning Post: Cataclysmic Edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Which is why I was surprised to read this post over on Mystic Chicanery. They argue that the Caverns of Time are actually the most “real” of all the instances in the game. If we go into Utgarde Pinnacle, for example, and murder King Ymiron, there’s no reason why he should be in there again the next time we head in. And yet he is — we can go in and murder him time and time again, doing the same thing, and getting loot every single time. But in CoT, there’s a logical explanation for why the instances are always the same: to the people we’re encountering in the instances, it’s the first time we’ve met them. From the outside world, the CoT instances may seem strange (the first time I was in Durnholde, we wiped with Thrall, and I jokingly checked with my guild to see if Thrall was still standing in Orgrimmar, alive and well — he was), but inside the continuity of those instances, they work.

Of course, we do still get different loot from it every time, as the MC post notices. But it is quite a thought: even though the Caverns of Time instances are the ones in the game that seem to least need us messing around in there, they also might just be the most logical.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, Lore, Bosses

The (lack of) reality in the Caverns of Time originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The second part of the interview is more general — he talks a little bit about the next expansion (with the same speculation we’ve already heard: Gilneas, the Maelstrom, the Emerald Dream), and says that designing a race is tougher on artists, but designing a class is tougher on designers. He admits that because we had a new class in Wrath, it’s unlikely we’ll see another class so soon in the next expansion, but “not impossible” of course. And he does note that Blizzard tries to “pre-seed” the races before they use them as playable races, so if they are adding in races, chances are we’ve already seen them (which, you may note, wasn’t strictly true with the Draenei in BC). Finally, he talks about the future of Blizzard’s MMO in general, and says it’s still wide open to them: they plan for the game to last for years, and what they do between now and then, whether that be more expansions, microtransactions, or even a free-to-play model, will have to depend on what they want to do at the time.

Very interesting interview. Chilton doesn’t really reveal anything, but you do get the sense that save for a very skeleton plan of one or two years in the future, Blizzard is really playing it fast and loose with World of Warcraft. Even he admits that the game may look very different, depending on how things go, in another four years from now.

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Events, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items, Instances, Expansions, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Battlegrounds

Tom Chilton talks about 3.2 and the future of World of Warcraft originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Of course, there’s every chance that Blizzard will simply disable current heirlooms for characters past level 80, to prevent precisely this behavior. They’ve done level-based nerfing before, with items like the Riding Crop and enchants like Crusader.

The whole fate of heirlooms in the next expansion seems pretty nebulous to me, actually; will we need to go back and farm Emblems of Conquest at level 90 to gear up our alts? It’s too early to tell. For now I would hold on to any extra badges you might have, but when the next expansion nears, you may be able to make good use of them.

Filed under: Items, Expansions, Leveling

Heirlooms for your main originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you do, just hang on — the donation drive lasts through the 31st of this month, so Brajana has some time to get everything together, and even if you donate now, you’ll still be entered for sure. It’s always awesome to see the WoW community put its size and power to good use, and this is definitely a worthy cause to support.

Filed under: Fan stuff, Contests, Making money

Mend Pet sponsors an SPCA charity donation drive originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

This queue is certified Panadaran free.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Today’s reading music The Crossroads by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Every time I’m in the Crossroads I think of that song.

Yokumgang asked…

“Why can’t we bandage while bleeding?“

Continue reading The Queue: Crossroads

Filed under: Warlock, Instances, Raiding, The Queue

The Queue: Crossroads originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Getting started can be the most difficult step for WoW newbies and WoW “WarCrafters” alike. Showing your artwork to other people – or even having the gumption to create any in the first place – can be intimidating stuff. Discovering someone who’s willing to show you how it’s done or even share his creative process represents a major inspirational coup. Swedish WoW player Jonas at wowatar.com is one of those creative wellsprings. He’s created a small drawing site filled with WoW-related nuggets that inspire, instruct and delight.

Continue reading World of WarCrafts: Wowatar fills in the lines

Filed under: Fan stuff, Features, World of WarCrafts

World of WarCrafts: Wowatar fills in the lines originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This got somewhat lost in the news shuffle over the holiday weekend, but Blizzard has posted another issue of their extremely irregular Gadgetzan Times fan-fic-oriented newsletter, for the first time since May 2008. This time around it consists of two pieces of short-form fan fiction, an amusing “classifieds” section, and a slightly half-hearted crossword about the dungeons of WoW.

It’s an interesting thing for Blizzard themselves to come out with, as it has been from the start. I really like the idea — characters from Azeroth report on events in and around their world — but it could use a little more polish and effort, not to mention a more regular timetable. On the other hand, they’re still publishing more regularly than my Illusionary Tactics column. Maybe I should not call this particular kettle black.

Anyway, it’s certainly a decent diversion for a few minutes if you’re stuck at work or bored at home, so go ahead and check it out.

Filed under: Virtual selves, Blizzard

Blizz publishes new Gadgetzan Times originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The other night I was chatting to a friend of mine on Skype and she casually mentioned — because she knows I play WoW – that she was about to roll a character (Elfly) for the first time. Elfly had had an account for a while but had never been able to try it out while at university and now she has the whole summer stretching out in front of her. Yes, I suspect you know where this going, especially when she twittered a few hours later expressing her new-found love for Azeroth.

But there’s a catch. Like me, Elfly is disabled. I’m a VIP (disabled shorthand for visually impaired person) and she’s (in her own words) a blindy (shorthand for, well, a blind person). This means we play with our noses touching the screen and get lost. A lot. To give you an example for what the world (in-game or real) is like for me, nip to your nearest Azerothian tavern and quaff flagons of mead until you get completely smashed and the screen goes all blurry, alternatively just click here. Anyway, between the pair of us, we’re so blind that we both think Blizzard should insert white canes and guide dogs in patch 3.3’s game files. Though, given the game setting, maybe that should be an ornate white staff of sightlessness and a guide wolf?

Continue reading Visually impaired players: The unseen inhabitants of Azeroth

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Blizzard, AddOns, Features

Visually impaired players: The unseen inhabitants of Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whew! If it sounds like a full show, that’s because it was. It even went on longer than usual, so you can enjoy the extra-long WoW Insider Show at any of the links below (including clicking on the iTunes link to subscribe directly there). We won’t be back next Saturday — instead, we’re setting up for a special Thursday evening show this week at 6pm Eastern, so those of you who can’t make it on Saturdays can instead tune in on Thursday night to chat and listen live with us on the Ustream page.

Enjoy this past weekend’s show, and we’ll see you on Thursday.

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Podcasts, Podcasting, Virtual selves, Humor, Raiding, Making money, WoW Insider Show

WoW Insider Show Episode 97: Chasing silhouettes originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s become almost a cilche that when you see a machinima trailer, you must take it with a healthy grain of skepticism. Very commonly, the exciting movie that’s been promised by the trailer will never actually come to fruition. Dtbn has bucked that trend, however, with the release of The Avenger.

The visuals in the movie are outstanding. I think Dtbn has really done an amazing job in instilling the in-game models with life and activity. The fight scenes are surprisingly complex, and the mis en scene is compelling. There’s a few places where there’s a bit more repetition than I’d like, for example when the Vrykul keep getting cut in half. However, I chalked that up to the main character’s favorite move being “Blazing Vrykul Bifurcation Attack!” Really, Dtbn has created popcorn-munching, fun-to-watch action here.

Some of the storytelling in the movie felt like it could use some refinement. The main character is meant to be empathetic, but I’m not sure we ever really got to root for her in a clear, unmuddled way. She seems to miraculously come by “better” equipment, without much explnation of why or how. The gnome necromancer’s role is never really explained. Dtbn says that his storytelling skills aren’t the best, but I can definitely see how he’s growing as an author. I think the next movie will be a lot tighter with its characters.

Click here to see it for yourself.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Moviewatch

WoW Moviewatch: The Avenger originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes

Last week, our very own Michael Sacco broke the news that raid lockouts will be extendable after Patch 3.2. Reading through forum comments about this exciting new feature, I found the varied reactions quite amusing.

Hardcore raiders seem to think that Blizzard is catering to casuals with this change. They think you should have to earn your kills by reclearing bosses if you can’t make it all the way through a raid zone in one week. On the other hand, casual players seem to think that Blizzard is catering to the hardcore, since it’s so much easier now to work on hard modes and other achievements without the threat of a looming reset. Casuals need as much loot as possible, they say, so why would they ever want to extend a lockout?

Despite the hardcore/casual debate reaching a new all-time low, the good news is that, in a sense, they’re both right. Blizzard is catering to all of us. Regardless of playstyle or progression, all guilds will benefit from having this option.

However, there are decisions and tradeoffs to be made. Let’s examine this new feature in more detail.

Continue reading Officers’ Quarters: Managing your lockouts

Filed under: Guilds, (Guild Leadership) Officers’ Quarters

Officers’ Quarters: Managing your lockouts originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Around Azeroth: 1500 thread count sheets originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That hot time of the year, the Midsummer Fire Festival, has now ended. Once again the denizens of Azeroth go about their humdrum lives without any brilliant fires and spirited naked flame-ladies dancing to and fro on the bridges of Ironforge. Life is boring. The Ice Stone Has Melted.

But alas, not for I and my tabard! After a good half day of solid grinding I trekked my Paladin throughout the dunes of Kalimdor and the lush forests of the Eastern Kingdom, extinguishing the flames of the bastard Horde and honoring those of the blessed Alliance. All was done well, so say we all.

It didn’t take long though for me to realize that I didn’t want to do this on more than my main. However I found myself exerting as much discipline as possible to finish the dailies every day on my dual boxing Recruit a Friend alts, pulling in about 50% of a level each day just from the daily quests alone. It was quite a nice XP bump.

All in all I accomplished with the Fire Festival I wanted to, and it wasn’t too bad of a time. Although I can definitely wait a year to extinguish another flame.

Did you accomplish everything you wanted to with the Fire Festival? Are you satisfied?

View Poll

Filed under: Polls, Analysis / Opinion, Events, Achievements

Did you finish the Fire Festival? originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Living in Europe and playing WoW has one major perk over the US, thousands of players from a dozen countries get to play together. Of course we have realms specifically for people who speak Russian or French or English but it’s quite common to find people who don’t speak one of the major EU tongues on an English realm. For example, my guild’s Assistant GM is French and he effectively learnt English by playing WoW.

When I joined my current guild I suddenly found out about this hidden multi-cultural and multi-lingual side to the game and as a result three of my best in-game friends are from Norway, Russia and the Netherlands. All have fantastic English skills but it’s still common for them to go back to their native languages in group chat or over voice. They know I can’t understand them but that doesn’t stop me being able to guess what they’re saying. Indeed the language barrier exists but it doesn’t hamper the game one bit.

So I wonder, readers, do you regularly play with people from around the world? Have you learnt another language or improved your linguistic skills using the game? Do you play on a realm which doesn’t speak your mother tongue? Do you enjoy playing with people from other cultures and countries? Has it inspired you to take up learning a second or third language?

Filed under: Guilds, Blizzard, Breakfast topics, Quests, Raiding, Forums, Europe

Breakfast Topic: Does WoW help you learn a foreign language? originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some readers will undoubtedly consider a discussion of Alizee and the female Night Elf dance to be beating a dead horse – but that’s not actually the topic that the title of this week’s [1.Local] is referring to. The dead ponies come later. (Didn’t Mama always tell you to save the sweet treats for last? Mmmm, crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle …) This week, we start out with one lucky reader’s story of the Night Elf dance — wedding style.

Mike: My wife (who plays Warcraft quite a bit) learned this dance (the one in the video) so she could dance like this at our wedding. So we gave Alizee’s music to the DJ, had him play it, and she danced like a Night Elf in front of everyone she’s ever known. The neat part was that all her friends liked the dance style, so she was out there on the dance floor teaching all these other women how to dance like Alizee. My friends (who also play Warcraft) and I stood watching with our jaws on the floor. If you think one chick is hot while dancing like this, you should see five or six …

DM7000: You’re a lucky man …

Tirrimas: Where would you like your Internet sent?

Mickthathick: Pics plx!

Sounds like a celebration to remember. Come on, Mike, we’re all friends here – pics, please? Tips line, Attention: [1.Local] …

Continue reading [1.Local]: The dead ponies edition

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Features, Humor, [1.Local]

[1.Local]: The dead ponies edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

Ickmon from Executus is a 2200+ ranked Priest, working in both the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets. The changes to Arena rating requirements, Resilience, and balance in patch 3.2, however, could mean a lot of big changes for Arena players like Ickmon. Despite the uncertainty of change, though, this Priest isn’t particularly worried about the changes — he thinks that things will be fine, and the new Resilience benefit might be a good thing.

We were able to spend some time talking with Ickmon about his team, playstyle, and those 3.2 changes. Check out what he had to say behind the cut.

Continue reading The Colosseum: Ickmon of Executus

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Colosseum

The Colosseum: Ickmon of Executus originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All the World’s a Stage brings you the latest ideas and suggestions about roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.

One of the greatest problems people have with roleplaying in WoW is that the game has a tendency to spread people out all over Azeroth working towards disparate goals, and that makes it hard to sustain a roleplaying environment. Roleplayers can gather together in a meeting place of some sort in order to roleplay, but doing this every time isn’t feasible — inevitably, we want to go questing, get loot, and actually play the game too, all in different places.

So the majority of roleplayers join roleplaying guilds of one sort or another, and use the regular guild chat channel as their default in-character roleplaying channel which people can participate in no matter what they’re doing in the rest of the world. Most guilds tend to imagine that their hearthstones (or some imaginary gnomish device) can act as walkie-talkies of sorts and allow everyone to communicate over great distances, no matter where they are.

Today, however, I will share with you some of the ways this solution falls short, and take a look at a better way to make roleplaying work in a guild, no matter what level you are or what you want to do with your game time. This idea can seem strange at first, but in the end it can provide many roleplaying opportunities — allowing you to alternately build your RP stories, build up your character’s levels, gold, or gear, or do all of these at the same time.

Continue reading All the World’s a Stage: The guild hall

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Social Conventions, Virtual selves, Guilds, Lore, RP, (Roleplaying) All the World’s a Stage

All the World’s a Stage: The guild hall originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk is our weekly look at all things shaman. Matthew Rossi would like to remind any readers with screenshots of their Horde shamans to email them to matthew.rossi@wow.com and not put them in the comments, where he is likely to forget they exist. In addition to being extremely hairy, he is somewhat ponderous in his recall.

The past couple of weeks have been exciting with Q&A’s to analyze and PTR changes to consider. It’s been easy for me to forget that I left our round-up of mail drops in Uldar half-way through the 25 man items. One of the things I forgot to gripe about as much as I really should have last time we discussed Ulduar mail is the complete and utter lack of mail boots for elemental shamans in the instance. As of the last time I checked, there are three pairs of boots in Ulduar 25: two enhancement, (yes yes, I suppose hunters might use them too) and one mostly suited to restoration shamans. And I covered all three pairs of boots last time anyway.

Let’s get right to the heart of it, shall we?

Continue reading Totem Talk: Ulduar non-set mail, part 3

Filed under: Shaman, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Guides, (Shaman) Totem Talk

Totem Talk: Ulduar non-set mail, part 3 originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Heresy! A Veronica Mars quote rather than Firefly. Eh, who cares, it’s a holiday weekend, so we’re wild and crazy. We’re continuing our march through Glory of the Hero, and today we’re going to tackle the first of Wrath’s “halls,” the Halls of Lightning. Before we do, here’s a round-up of what we’ve done previously in the OverAchiever: GotH series:

• Part I: Ahn’kahet
  
• Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme
• Part III: Drak’Tharon Keep
• Part IV: Gun’drak

HALLS OF LIGHTNING

Lightning Struck

As long as your tank and healer aren’t in greens, this isn’t an overly difficult achievement. Bjarngrim and his adds path around a series of 3 platforms and will pause at each, gaining a Temporary Electrical Charge that increases their damage. You simply need to pull Bjarngrim while he still has this buff. During the fight you can force him to lose it by killing his adds, and if you’re still gearing up, that’s a more reasonable option than trying to survive the damage. The abilities of note here are Mortal Strike, which is a fairly nasty hit in the range of 15-16K, and Whirlwind, which can two-shot melee DPS.

Continue reading The OverAchiever: Attack of the Glory of the Hero

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, How-tos, Features, Bosses, Guides, Achievements, The Overachiever

The OverAchiever: Attack of the Glory of the Hero originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The latest installment of Walhtor of The Underbog’s “Series of Embarassingly Avoidable Deaths” is available for purchase. Entitled Drowning in Shallow Water, it features Walhtor’s bloated, humiliated corpse drifting pathetically under the waves. It joins previous offerings Fell Off Teldrassil While Auto-Running, Accidentally Right-Clicked the Horde Flight Master, and Went AFK in Contested Territory and Was Slowly Beaten to Death by a Level 15.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Around Azeroth: The fine art of self-ownage originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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