Month: October 2008

Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater

Stalked a rogue but couldn’t keep her
So he put her in a pumpkin shell
Until she shadowstepped her way out, garotted him, glassed him with a broken beer bottle for good measure, camped him until he logged out and posted a message on the realm forums about what a pervert he was. Peter had to transfer off and eventually rerolled a female gnome.

(Thanks to Kajirae of <Ultima> on Ysera for this shot from Toshley’s Station!)

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing [email protected] 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. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Mounts

As I mentioned earlier, my server Silver Hand was down Saturday night. All night. I gave up trying around midnight. Friday night, when I was actually able to log on, the Heroic Instance servers went down catching many in my group in a neverending loading screen that forced them to restart the game only to find their toons were not logged out, blocking them from getting back in. Other reports have been pouring in, not only of servers down, but entire Battlegroups, laggy geographical regions and in one case, the disappearance of all of Outland itself.

On top of that, strange bugs have been appearing in the game such as zone-wide Wrath buffs appearing in Shadowfang Keep and Northrend lockboxes dropping off of Karazhan mobs. On the Silvermoon realm, the raid instances crashed. When the GMs reset them all they inadvertantly closed the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj as well. A packrat on the server named Dinosaur claims he had a Scepter of the Shifting Sands squirrled away in his bank and he was able to use it to bang the AQ gong to get the Scarab Lord title and claim the Scarab mount.

Speaking of mounts, how many of our trusty steeds and non-combat pets were eaten by the servers when we tried to utilize the new storage options implented in Patch 3.0.2. Many players have been petitioning to get those back. Today, Blizzard confirmed what we had been hearing in our tip line: missing mounts and pets are being mailed to characters who lost them. The process isn’t complete, but it’s happening. They also recommended going to any Stable Master (ask a Hunter) to claim any pets or mounts you deleted yourself before the patch.

In the same thread, class balance was addressed as well. It boils down to yes, some classes are OP and others are out of whack. Suck it up til Wrath hits and it will all smooth out. I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to my OP Boomkin now. If my server is up.

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Filed under: Breakfast topics

I hate to be blunt about it, but I’ve heard quite a few WoW friends tell me that the rampant server crashes that have cropped up since Patch 3.0.2 have driven them to other MMO’s until Blizzard fixes the problem. Many other games are offering Halloween/Fall Festival type activities including City of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online and EverQuest 2 and many of us have played those titles (and still do!)

Are you waiting it out, slogging through or heeding the siren call of other online games?

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

This week on All the World’s a Stage, Michael Gray fills in to talk about how you can use Hallow’s End specifically for your character. David Bower will be back next week to tackle “So you want to be a Blood Elf.”

Maybe more than any other Azeroth holiday, Hallow’s End celebrates a significant event in the history of our characters. According to the offical community site, Hallow’s End is Azeroth’s celebration of the Forsaken‘s break from the Scourge. (Personally, this makes me even more happy that we got the new model for Sylvanas in the recent content patch.)

The story of how the Forsaken broke free is certainly significant. But the fact alone that both the Horde and Alliance do celebrate this break is even more meaningful. Let’s take a look at some of the impacts it can have for classes and races … behind the cut.

Continue reading All the World’s a Stage: Hallow’s End and you

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Filed under: Patches, Talents

Since the patch hit, we’ve been flooded with requests for cookie-cutter builds for various classes, specs, and roles. We’re working on it, but our bloggers only have so many hours in the day (if only haste rating worked in real life). However, I do have a new site to tell you about that might help with these types of questions. TalentChic is a web site that aims to determine what the most popular talent builds are for all nine classes, and it’s very well made, in my opinion.

The site makes use of Armory data, so it stays relatively up-to-date. Builds are organized by class and by primary tree, and you can also filter for playstyle (Raid/PvP for instance). Playstyle is determined by what kind of gear the player was raiding when their data was cached, so it’s not foolproof (a raider could have been wearing their PvP gear and thus counted as PvP), but it’s about as good as can be done with Armory data.

As far as the information displayed goes, it seems reasonable to me. I’m a little surprised that Combat is still so dominant with Rogues, given that I’ve heard Mutilate got significantly buffed. And I’m very surprised that 0/61/0 is the most popular Holy Priest build; I haven’t seen people talk about that one very much, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be without Meditation. It does drop to only second most popular if I look at raiding Holy Priests. Are your own talent builds popular? Does TalentChic give you any ideas on how to spec?

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Filed under: Alchemy, Patches, Buffs

The Gathering Professions got some undocumented love in Patch 3.0.2. But what about the Crafting Professions? If you scour the patch notes, the only thing you find about professions is a brief note about Inscription being in game and how it affects enchanting. Unlike last year, there was no Professions panel at BlizzCon 2008 and they only briefly mentioned professions in the Q&A session.

After much research, the only new ability I was able to find that is similar to what the gathering professions got is Mixology, which Alchemists can train at the Master Alchemy Trainer in either Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Our Alex Ziebart and friends tested it out in the beta and determined an approximate 25% bonus when drinking flasks and elixirs. It’s a nice little bonus and I’m happy to have it, I just wish the patch notes had told me it was in the Echoes of Doom patch rather than having to find out from a helpful commenter.

Are the other crafting professions getting abilities in Wrath? The Q&A panel said they were going to make sure all professions were valuable in the endgame. Does that mean more Mixology and Lifeblood-like abilities or other self-only benefits? What abilities do you think the other crafting professions should get?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Ask A Lore Nerd

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we’ll try to answer it in a future edition.

After a brief BlizzCon-inspired hiatus, Ask a Lore Nerd is back! Let’s get started with Grimgore‘s question…

I was wondering if there was anything in the lore that implies that demonic blood could empower any races other than orcs? And if not, what is it about orcs that makes them so susceptible to demonic taint? Does that imply some sort of common ancestry?

Right in World of Warcraft we see other races being empowered with demonic energy/blood. It’s not just Orcs. Satyrs were once Night Elves (or Highborne, or Kaldorei), and I’m sure you’ve seen what happens to Blood Elves when they drink in the demon juice. The horned, winged elves you see in Magisters’ Terrace, Sunwell Plateau, and the Throne of Kil’jaeden. They’re not all specifically caused by drinking demon blood, but it’s the same idea, really.

Continue reading Ask a Lore Nerd: The Burning Legion and equal opportunity corruption

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