Filed under: Polls, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Blizzard, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King

Ethic at Kill Ten Rats has a post up about something that a lot of you have probably been through: more and more I’m hearing about people returning to the game. I’ve been playing ever since I signed up a few years ago, but that’s really only because I’m writing about it — I’m pretty ADD when it comes to games, so left on my own, I probably would have walked away from WoW a long time ago. But Blizzard is really good at bringing players back by tweaking the game in exactly the way they woud like. I feel like if I had left, I would have definitely come back in for a while, if not with Burning Crusade than definitely with Wrath.

Of course, Ethic’s issues aren’t really with deciding to return or not: he’s having more issues actually trying to get his old accounts back. There’s a laundry list of rules and limits to contend with, between dealing with having or not having the expansions, the limits on the Scroll of Resurrection program and the trial accounts, and dodging all of Blizzard’s various limits on how to start and use new accounts to the game. Man — if I had left and was planning on coming back, and I read Ethic’s post, I might not even bother.

But quite a few people have come back, and I’d guess that even though there are confusing things about trying to find your way back into the game, a good number of you have done it. I’d like to know, so here’s a poll: how many of you have left and come back, and how many times?

View Poll

Returning to Azeroth the long way around originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hunter, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Classes, Wrath of the Lich King, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Welcome to Scattered Shots. I am Eddie “Brigwyn” Carrington from The Hunting Lodge and I’ll be your tour guide each Thursday as we explore what makes our Hunters tick and how we can make them better.

Man, this has been a busy week for us Hunters or what? With each passing day it is becoming more and more evident that Patch 3.2 is on its way. Of course we have to remember that “on its way” to Blizzard could mean anything tomorrow to a few months. With that in mind, it is probably a good idea to take another deeper look at the proposed Patch 3.2 Hunter changes and see how they might impact both the PvE and PvP game.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: A deeper look into the Patch 3.2 Hunter changes

Scattered Shots: A deeper look into the Patch 3.2 Hunter changes originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Warrior, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King

What to say about patch 3.2 so far? One of the dangers of writing about the PTR in general is the possibility that, as you are typing out what you want to say, a brand new PTR patch is dropping. To some degree this would be a welcome circumstance even though it would erase what I’m writing about now, because the current PTR has nothing for warriors.

Well, okay, not nothing. They buffed Armored to the Teeth slightly. On the PTR it grants 1/2/3 AP per 108 armor, as opposed to on live, where it takes 180 armor for that same benefit. Why 108? Maybe because it was easy to swap the 8 and the 0. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. The amount of AP you get from the talent isn’t tremendous, but anything’s better than nothing I suppose.

Also, the block value changes are in (I tested them out yesterday), and, well, they fail even as a band aid fix to the problem of block performance: sure, you deal more threat to trash pulls and take less damage from them, but as far as bosses are concerned, block is still lackluster as a ‘oh I don’t want to die‘ stat. You can now block up to between 3 and 4k of a 22 to 25k hit, I’m not exactly breaking out the party hats. Especially when you’d have to stack the heck out of the stat to get even that much out of it.

And man, as nice as the T9 tanking set is in terms of pure stats and bonuses, you will not want to give up that T8 4 piece set bonus with the straight up 20% magic damage reduction for it. 10 seconds of 20% magic damage reduction? You simply can’t undersell how awesome that is for tanking big spike damage bosses in Wrath raids. It’s pretty much the only thing that keeps warrior tanks viable against DK’s and druid tanks for those fights.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Patch 3.2 wish list

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Patch 3.2 wish list originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Events, Odds and ends, News items, Lore, NPCs, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

Bornakk hinted about this awhile back and we knew what the reward pets were going to be but when this years Children’s Week came and went with no new content, a lot of players were a tad disappointed. Well now that the PTR is up in order to test patch 3.2, testers can find the Northrend incarnation of Children’s Week in full swing and that means lots of shiny new quests.

The new quests see you taking around a Wolvar orphan named Kekek or little Roo of the Oracles to meet certain famous people or visit various landmarks in Northend like Wrymrest Temple, Vordrassil, Dalaran and the Bronze Dragonshrine.

You then have to take them to a toy shop in Dalaran and buy them each a gift. If you’ve ever done the classic or Outland Children’s Week quests then you’ll know the drill and it still looks like a lot of fun. Check out our gallery below to find out more about what the quests involve.

Patch 3.2 PTR: New Children’s Week quests revealed originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Instances, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Europe

Yay for more Argent Coliseum news! Our European brethren get the lowdown on the Argent Coliseum with a brand new under development page highlighting what is to come from this patch 3.2 raid and dungeon instance. As we were already given to believe, it’s similar to the Ring of Blood/Amphitheater of Anguish questlines from BC and WotLK. Also, in order to access the ‘hard mode’ 10 and 25 man heroic versions of the raids, you apparently first have to defeat the normal mode version.

• In the “Heroic” version of the Crusaders’ Coliseum, you and your raid only have a limited number of attempts for each raid lockout period, and each time your raid wipes, one of your attempts will be used up. To embark on the epic Trial of the Grand Crusader, you must first prove your worth by clearing either the 10 or 25 player version of the Crusaders’ Coliseum’s normal mode. After you have dealt the killing blow to the coliseum’s final heroic mode boss will you be able to collect the Crusaders’ Tribute, and the fewer attempts you needed to complete the Trial of the Grand Crusader, the better your reward will be.

They go on to list the kinds of fights you’ll encounter in general terms: while we don’t really get any names, we’re told the general breakdown will be beasts like magnataurs and jormungar wyrms and poweful Scourge minions of the Lich King. “How the Argent Crusade managed to capture these fiends remains a mystery; what’s less mystifying is your fate should you fail to overcome this challenge.” I have to admit, I’m very curious about the lore behind these encounters.

If you’re looking for more details, scoot on over to the under development section and take a look. You can also take a look at the accompanying screenshot of the Argent Coliseum.

Patch 3.2 Argent Coliseum details originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Talents, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Wrath of the Lich King

Patch 3.2 has been announced, and shamans saw some changes. That’s the short version.

Well, we’ve had the big patch notes bomb dropped on us, and they weren’t kidding about changing restoration around, were they? Of course, if you’re an orc shaman, you also got expertise with fist weapons added on to your racial, which is pretty neat all told. We also finally saw the debut of the new totem interface, which I can’t say enough good things about. The ability not only to drop up to four totems in one GCD but to have up to three customizable sets of four totems for different uses (I plan on making a set just for when there’s no DK’s around and I can finally use Strength of Earth totem instead of freaking Stoneskin) just made the clouds part and a host of glorious angels descend upon me. Turns out they wanted some money, but still, for a moment it was pretty keen.

Before we get rolling, though, I want to remind people: I want your horde screenshots! Otherwise this column is just going to be goat-men from the Twisting Nether, and I know you don’t want that. I personally don’t care, but you guys get so upset, and while that orc racial does make leveling my orc shaman appealing, I don’t really think I have the time.

I should probably also mention that rogues got axes in an attempt to give the design team more freedom to actually put some axes into the content. (Yay for one 1h DPS axe in all of Naxxramas, EoE, the Obsidian Sanctum and Ulduar!) I can only look forward to the host of axes in Argent Coliseum that are too fast for shamans to use effectively. On the up side, goodbye, totem stomper macros! We hate you!

Continue reading Totem Talk: Patch 3.2 PTR

Totem Talk: Patch 3.2 PTR originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Breakfast topics, Expansions, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King

I’ve been killing Sarth for months and, oddly I still enjoy it. Sans the last half an hour which normally involves bickering and the following question: ‘What’s a raid roll?’ repeated ad infinitum. However each time I enter the Chamber of Aspects, I find my eyes drawn to the other still-sealed portals and wonder when they will open. It’s clear the Dragonflight portion of Wrath lore is still incomplete and I live in hope these new raids might be tied into patch 3.3 or even the new expansion.

So tell me readers, when do you think Blizzard will start opening the other Sanctums? What kind of raids would you like to see for each flight? Do you think it might tie into the whole Infinite Dragonflight questline or be something to do with the Lich King? What are your thoughts, constant readers?

Breakfast Topic: When are we going to see the rest of the Chamber of Aspects? originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Expansions, The Burning Crusade, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King

I promise we’ll get back to our Ulduar guide for tanks and DPS warriors next week. For this week, however, since we’re midway through the sixth month of 2009 and we’ve seen patches up to 3.1 released (and we’re waiting on 3.2) I thought it would be a good idea to go back and cover some of the things a leveling warrior might want discussed. We get emails from all kinds of warriors, and so it’s only fair to cover the concerns of warriors who aren’t raiding Ulduar but rather just setting foot off of the dock in Howling Fjord.

Before we get started, though, the upcoming Patch 3.2 changes for Warriors in their current entirety: Armored to the Teeth: This talent now provides 1/2/3 attack power per 108 armor, up from per 180 armor. Try not to get too excited, people.

First off, I’m often asked about stats for up-and-coming warriors. We have covered some of these before back in the beta, but the beta was a year ago now and things have been changed and polished. First off, I’m going to link all the posts of interest to a leveling warrior and discuss how they may have changed, and then I’ll try and cover some more general advice.

• Building Up To It covers some target numbers and stats to focus on. I should note that this was written before the changes to Armor Penetration made it much, much better as a DPS stat for warriors: the more ArP you have, the better it is as a DPS stat until you have enough ArP to reduce target armor by 100%.
• We covered Hit and Expertise in two posts, one for DPS warriors and one for Tanks. The tanking post is still accurate as of 3.1, but the talent changes to Arms and Fury mean that there is currently no talent that reduces chance to dodge for Fury Warriors and Arms has both Strength of Arms for passive expertise and Weapon Mastery.
• We discussed the dangers of overstacking a stat to the exclusion of other, also necessary stats.
• Finally, we covered gearing up in a four part post just before Wrath launched Parts one, two, three and four were all published before Wrath itself had actually come out, but they’re still reasonably accurate to help your warrior get from 70 to 80, We covered weapons between 70 and 80 too.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Leveling Warrior in Wrath

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Leveling Warrior in Wrath originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Raiding, Phat Loot Phriday, Bosses, Galleries, Wrath of the Lich King

We haven’t done a dagger in a while, if my memory serves. Plus, this one is made of stars.

Name: Fang of Oblivion (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)
Type: Epic Unique One-hand Dagger
Damage/Speed: 271-407 / 1.80 (188.3 DPS)
Attributes:

• +47 Agility, +54 Stamina, and a Yellow Socket, which will probably let you add to crit, hit or haste, depending on what you need more of, with a +4 Agility socket bonus.
• +1869 Feral attack power, so you can do more damage in your new kitty form.

Continue reading Phat Loot Phriday: Fang of Oblivion

Phat Loot Phriday: Fang of Oblivion originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Virtual selves, Blizzard, Breakfast topics, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums

One of the things which captivated me when I first started playing WoW were the whispered myths surrounding GMs. Being that this was my first proper foray into the magical and mysterious world of online gaming I had no real idea of what exactly their strange beings where except that they were uber-powerful and acted as both peacekeepers on the forums and tech support in-game.

Over the years, I’ve submitted my fair share of tickets. Indeed once during the Wrath beta I and a bunch of other hapless explorers got trapped under Dalaran bank and I had to ask a GM to teleport them out (being a druid I just teleported to Moonglade — after twenty minutes of waiting for my hearthstone to cooldown and them remembering I had an escape route). However in all my dealings with them in-game I’ve never actually met a GM in-game (on the other hand I’ve met a bunch in real life). So I want to know, readers, have you ever seen a GM with your own (virtual) eyes? Did they appear to you in that robe get up seen in the manual or as something a little more scary? Come on and spill the beans, I want to hear about all your fascinating GM encounters!

Breakfast Topic: Have you ever actually met a GM in-game? originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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