Barrier may not be coming

I may prefer Shadow as my Priest's primary spec, but the Discipline tree has also made a special little place for itself in my heart. When I need a change of pace, playing Discipline is really enjoyable. I probably pay attention to changes to the Discipline tree almost as close as the Shadow tree for that reason. Even if I don't play it a lot, I love it. When they announced a new spell coming for the spec, Power Word: Barrier, I geeked out over it just as much as Matticus, our resident Discipline Fanatic.

Unfortunately, Power Word: Barrier has yet to make an appearance on the PTR, and it turns out that we may not see it at all. It's still a possibility, but that's the extent of it. I can sort of see why they would hold off on it, or even change their mind about it. Discipline has gone through a lot of changes in patch 3.1, most of it a really big numbers game. Discipline is a great tree, and while most players might not 'get' the damage mitigation/prevention thing, it's a really powerful mechanic and probably one they need to be careful with.


The combat effect of too much absorption is important to consider of course, but, I can see how it would even have a psychological effect on players. If a Discipline Priest's absorption became too powerful and it seemed like nobody was really taking damage, wouldn't things seem really, really easy? Even if the Discipline Priest was working their tails off? Malygos's Vortex is certainly not dangerous anymore once the raid has enough HP to live through it, but what if a Priest just popped Power Word: Barrier during it? You wouldn't take any damage at all.

There's something to be said about the psychological side of raiding, and I think that plays a role here. If someone sees they didn't take any damage, they're going to think things are too easy. If they're taking massive amounts of damage and someone is healing them through it, they'll be impressed. That was a lot of damage, and that Healer was on top of things! The Discipline Priest could do the same thing via absorption, but people wouldn't be as impressed. Their health bar wouldn't be bouncing wildly, they just wouldn't be getting hurt at all.

I certainly hope that we see the spell in patch 3.1, but I don't think I would be heart broken if we didn't. It would be nice to have an answer to the Holy Priest's Circle of Healing, but that in itself is a whole new can of worms. If we have Circle of Absorption, does that have a negative impact of Circle of Healing? We'll see how this all plays out eventually, I suppose

WoW: Figureprints in the EU

Our buddies over at Figureprints, the company that makes custom 3D printed sculptures of your WoW characters, have expanded their business yet again -- this time, they're opening the doors to you EU players. Ed Fries, who we have spoken with twice now, says that they are finally ready to expand overseas, and EU players can now order their own custom figurines through the website.

There is a small catch, however -- at this point, while there is no lottery as far as we know, they are charging European customers €129.95, which ends up being about $166, or about $30 more than the US price of $129.95. And obviously shipping overseas from the company's HQ here in America probably won't be too cheap either, and shipping is extra no matter where you're buying the figures from. It looks like Figureprints just figured they'd charge "129.95" to both sides of the world, but thanks to the exchange rate, EU folks are actually paying more.

But then again, we're guessing that people who have been waiting for their chance in the EU to pick one of these up will probably go for the higher price anyway. Figureprints started out a little rough with their limited production capabilities, and a few early bumps in quality, but lately it seems like they're rolling along better than ever.

Statistically speaking

I'm listening to a playlist full of old NES chiptunes as I write this, Zanac, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Crystalis, Shatterhand, Tecmo Super Bowl, Legacy of the Wizard--just some awesome old stuff, some of which comes from composers who went on to become even more awesome. I love the game music from that era; I find it absolutely amazing what those guys could make that tiny sound chip do. And yes, I am a massive and unrepentant dork. Why do I bring this up? I have the playlist on shuffle, and the overworld theme from Dragon Warrior just played, and it got me thinking about this week's subject: stats.

Dragon Warrior was my first role-playing game. It was my first exposure to such concepts as experience points, and leveling up, and hit points. Stats in games of that era were pretty simple. You had strength, which affected how hard you hit things, and agility, which...made you more agile? Who knew? That was about it. Hit points measured how many whacks you could take before you died, and magic points ran out as you used spells. There wasn't a whole lot to it.

When I first started playing WoW, knowing which statistics were important to my Mage and which weren't was comparatively simple too. As you leveled, you looked for intellect and spirit. At max level, you learned the value of a few other stats, like spell crit, spell damage, and spell hit rating. Generally, if it said "spell" in front of it, your Mage wanted it. Now, though, we have so many different stats--one covering every aspect of every spell we cast, and so many different ways to customize the amounts of each that your Mage's gear has--that it can be quite daunting trying to decide which ones to prioritize. Follow me through the break where we'll discuss the various caster stats and the relative value of each to our class.

I'll be listing stats in ascending order of relative value from a pure DPS perspective. You may dispute the placement of certain stats in the list, and that's fine. Depending on your talent spec and play-style, different stats may be more important to you than they are to me.

One stat that I won't be putting in the list is stamina. You'll find it on most of your gear, but it's of universal importance, regardless of class. If you happen to be a PvP Mage, you'll want more of it than a raiding Mage would. Same goes for all non-caster-specific stats.

• Spell Penetration

This is a stat that reduces your target's spell resistances. It is often confused with hit rating, but they operate on totally different mechanics. Hit rating increases a Mage's chance to hit with spells, whereas this penetration reduces your enemies chance to resist or partially resist your spells. They may sound similar, but really aren't. Hit is far, far more valuable to Mages than spell penetration is, and it isn't even close.

Since it only works on enemies that actually have resistances, spell penetration is generally only valuable at all in PvP, and then only marginally so. It certainly isn't a bad stat to have, and if you're going to do a lot of PvP, you may want to pick up a bit of it. each point of spell penetration negates one point of an opponent's resistance to the type of spell you have hit him with, so you don't generally need much. Quite simply, there are other, better stats out there. A lot of them.

• Spirit

Spirit controls the rate at which your Mage regenerates health and mana while not casting. It is beholden to the 5-second rule, which dictates that you must not cast anything for five full seconds before spirit-based mana regen kicks in. The more you have of it, the faster you'll regenerate mana when not casting. The regen gained from spirit is due to be nerfed by 40% across the board in patch 3.1.

There are those of you out there who will undoubtedly argue with me over the value of spirit to Mages. You're wrong. It's cool, being wrong is pretty common. I could link back to several of my previous columns as prime examples, but won't.

Spirit sucks for Mages. The reason for this is simple: we're always casting. Unless we've been silenced or otherwise CCed, the encounter forces us to move around for an extended period of time, or we have run out of mana entirely, there should never be a five second period of time in which we aren't casting something. There are talents that allow for a portion of our spirit-based regen to continue even while casting. Mage Armor does this as well, but the amount regained doesn't make this stat worth stacking by any stretch of the imagination.

Having said all of that, this attribute isn't entirely worthless. It does help to reduce downtime while questing and leveling, and mana regen, in any fashion, is handy to have for any caster. The problem is that you simply can't justify taking it over any of the other caster stats. Due simply to Blizzard's itemization tendencies in this expansion, your gear is going to have some spirit on it as you progress through the end-game, but what you get from it is really all you need, and probably a good deal more.

Of course, as we talked aout two weeks ago, there has also been talk about "making spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all Mages" in that same patch. Who knows? Maybe Blizzard will firgure out a way to teach an old stat some new tricks, and render the above four paragraphs completely moot. It wouldn't be the first time I've written something that became outdated pretty much as I typed it, and it certainly won't be the last.

• Critical Strike Rating

This goes pretty much hand in hand with Haste rating, which we'll talk about in a moment. The two are pretty much equal in value to Mages, so just consider them listed side-by-side here.

Crit rating increases your chance of getting a critical strike from all of your attacks. It takes approximately 46 points of crit rating to increase your crit chance by 1% at level 80. Critical strikes are important to every Mage, but most specs will gain crit percentage far more reliably from talents than they will from stacking crit rating. There's no denying that this stat is an important DPS stat, but it simply isn't as valuable per point as straight spellpower.

None of this is to say that you should avoid crit rating, of course. Every Mage loves it when those big fat numbers pop up above the heads of their enemies. It just isn't something you should gem or enchant for over more valuable stats like hit rating and spellpower.

• Haste Rating

This stat does two things for Mages. First, it reduces the cast time of spells, meaning you can cast more spells in less time. Second, it reduces the global cooldown on spellcasts. This means there is no effective cap for haste rating. You can stack as much as you want, and your spellcasting will get a little faster with each point.

Now, this sounds better in theory than it actually is. The major problem with haste rating is that you have to get a ridiculous amount of it in order for it to have a really significant impact. It's a good stat to have, for certain, but you don't want to depend on it as a DPS-increaser over more directly valuable attributes like spellpower and hit. To illustrate:

It takes about 33 points of haste rating to reduce your casting time by 1% at level 80. This means that in order to reduce your 3 second Frostfire Bolt spell by a half-second, increasing your DPS by approximately 16% (I'm rounding judiciously here), you'd need to stack 528 points of haste rating, give or take. If my math is wrong (and there's a pretty good chance it is), feel free to let me know. And that's assuming your mana pool could take the strain of casting all of those extra Frostfire Bolts over the course of a long fight. Your DPS isn't increasing if you can't cast.

Again, this is a valuable stat, but isn't as worthwhile to stack as other stats are.

• Intellect

Intellect affects several things. It directly increases your mana pool, your crit percentage, and your mana regen due to spirit. Each point of intellect adds 15 mana points to your max. Every 167 (again, rounding) points of intellect you have increases your crit chance by 1%. I won't list the formula for how it affects spirit regen here, simply because too many decimal points in one place make my brain sieze up, but suffice it to say that the increase is minor, and we've already been over how lame I think spirit is.

The upshot of all of that is intellect is pretty nifty. It can be ranked right with crit and haste for most Mages, but is significantly better than those two stats for Arcane Mages, assuming they've put talent points into Arcane Mind and/or Mind Mastery. Every Mage needs intellect, simply because every Mage needs a mana pool, but again, you don't really need to stack this stat too much. Chances are you'll have plenty of it from gear and your own signature buff already.

Edit: After reading the comments below, I want to clarify this stat's placement in the list, just so that there is no confusion. The list is of the relative value of each stat to Mages, not necessarily the order in which you should be gemming/enchanting your gear, and I'm sorry if I have led anybody astray. Intellect is an incredibly valuable stat for Mages, but you should not be gemming/enchanting for it. Blizzard has ensured that you will have plenty of it just by wearing the cloth gear found at end-game. If you're reading this list with an eye toward choosing which gems or enchants to pick up for your gear, just know that you should be prioritizing crit/haste over intellect, simply because you already have enough intellect on your gear. Unless you're wearing something crazy.

• Hit Rating

Now, before you come after me with torches and pitchforks, know that the only reason I list this below spellpower is that it has a cap. Once you've reached that cap, it ceases to be important. This is a stat that you need until you have enough, then you don't need it any more at all. That may sound obvious and redundant, but...well, okay, it totally is.

Hit Rating increases your chance to hit enemies. It is the most direct way to increase DPS until you cap it, since a miss results in zero damage. Wow, I'm really working the "duh" statements today, right? I'm like the Madden of Mage columnists. I'm about two sentences away from saying something like "whichever team can score the most points is gonna win this game," or "Brett Favre is good because he can throw the ball, he knows the game of football, and he can pass the football."

At level 80, it takes 26.232 points of hit rating to increase your chance to hit with spells by 1%. The magic number you want to reach is 17%, which requires 446 points of hit rating. You won't actually need that much, though. Talents can gain you 3%. If there's a Draenei in your group, you gain 1% from his aura. Various raid buffs can grant you an additional 3%.

For a Mage with a normal talent setup and a normal raid group, you'll likely need a maximum of about 288 hit rating total from gear, gems, enchants, and food buffs. Once you've gotten there, you're done with hit rating and can stack for what is the single most valuable DPS stat for Mages:

• Spellpower

Spellpower directly increases the damage done by your spells. Each spell in your arsenal has a spell damage coefficient attached to it. Some spells have a 100% spell coefficient, others (usually the shorter their cast-time, the less they have) have more or less. What does that mean? Well, take Fireball, for example. It has a 100% coefficient, meaning that if you have 2,000 spellpower, your Fireball will benefit from 100% of that extra damage, meaning in turn that each time you cast Fireball, it will do an additional 2,000 points of damage as a direct result of your spellpower. I know, clear as mud, right? Fire Blast has a 42.86% coefficient, which means it will only benefit from about 857 of that 2,000 spellpower. Pyroblast has a 115% coefficient, so it will gain 2300 extra points of damage from that 2,000. Yes, I'm trying to set a record for "most times the word 'coefficient' can be used in one paragraph." The guys from Guiness are here with me right now, documenting my efforts.

Point-for-point, this is the single most beneficial stat for Mages. If you are interested in increasing your single-target DPS, you should be stacking it at every opportunity. Other stats are good too, but spellpower trumps them all once hit is capped. This is why the spellpower coefficient stealth-nerf to Arcane Barrage sucks so bad.

In closing, let me say that, though it pains me to do so, I will not be saying anything mean about Warlocks this week, or even advocating violence against them. I do this out of deference to our new Warlock columnist, Nick Whelan. He's an incredible writer, and I'm glad to have him aboard (our new Hunter writer, Jessics Klein, is certainly no slouch, herself). But next week, it's totally on. Shocking, unprovoked class-bigotry ahoy!

Now if you'll excuse, me, the first level music from The Adventures of Bayou Billy just started, and I need to go revel in its complete awesomeness.

How to avoid automatic subscription renewal

As most of us know, WoW credit card subscription plans in the US and Europe are auto-renewing. If I sign up for one month at $14.99, as soon as that month is up, Blizzard immediately re-bills my credit card and signs me up for another month. This is problematic for some people, who may want to switch to a game card at the end of the month, or who simply might not want their cards to be automatically billed.
Fortunately, there's an easy solution: cancel your account. Yep, just push that big red button (well, actually, it's a smallish grey button, but you get the idea). You'll still get to play until the time you've paid for runs out. And since Blizzard retains your character and account info indefinitely, you don't have to worry about your characters getting deleted. At the end of the time you've paid for, when you try to log in, you'll get a notice that your pre-paid time has been used up, at which point you can go on the web site and add whatever payment method you like.

I've used this method many times myself. It's only a few extra clicks, and if you want to have more control over how you get billed, it's definitely worth considering, even if it does make the peons cry.

Larger default backpack "very possible" in the future

Just about everyone playing World of Warcraft will be happy to hear this news: Eyonix says that it's 'very possible' that we'll be able to get our hands on a bigger backpack at some point in the future. Though the cynic in me says that 'very possible it'll happen eventually' is just a more positive way of saying 'we have no plans for that at this time,' I'll force myself to stay optimistic on this one.

I've sort of grown out of whining about the little itty bitty default backpack simply because it's been there forever, but I'll be absolutely stoked if they ever let it scale or let you replace it with a bigger bag. Eyonix says that we should be proud of our trusty 16 slot, and I suppose that's sort of true. It's been with me through Molten Core and Ahn'Qiraj, through Naxxramas and the Black Temple and all of that jazz, but to be honest? It's getting kind of gross. It has developed a stench. I think it's been coated in slime and ichor a few too many times. If I could finally toss it out, that would be just great.

This is your brain on PvP

Ars Technica has news of a new study that isn't directly World of Warcraft-related, but that does have some pretty obvious applications in Azeroth. By studying the way we play when we believe we're competing against a human and a computer opponent (PvP vs. PvE, in WoW terms), scientists have determined that different parts of the brain are more active when we think we're playing against a human opponent. They call this extra activity "mind-reading," but it's not that supernatural: when we think we're playing a human, we try to put ourselves in their place, and think what they're thinking.

It gets deeper: they even throw gender into the mix, and discovered that male brains seem to be working harder to do this kind of "mind-reading" of the other side. Their conclusion says that that's because women are naturally more empathetic, and thus don't have to work as hard to figure out what another person is thinking. That seems a little general -- it could also mean that the males care more about competition, and thus are working harder to "mind-read," or it could even just be a wrinkle of the way this data was gathered. More research is probably needed on that one -- if women are so great at figuring out their opponents, why aren't we seeing all-female teams winning Arena tournaments?

It would be interesting to know, too, whether there's increased activity in other areas, say pattern recognition or cause-effect centers of the brain, when we're playing against opponents that we know are computers. But this does tell us that there are definitely different skillsets at work when playing PvP or PvE, and why some people might very clearly enjoy one over the other.

Warriors: A Lament For Arms

Hi, I'm Matthew Rossi, your host for The Care and Feeding of Warriors. Unfortunately for my plans to talk about Hit/Expertise for DPS warriors this week Blizzard went and dropped a huge mess of news on upcoming changes to every class in patch 3.1, including warriors. I analyzed the changes yesterday and I was more or less positive when I did so. After all, this is hardly all the changes incoming (they even say things like We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam) so obviously not everything is finalized yet.

But in the cold light of day, I'm frustrated. Fair warning: this is not going to be a fair and balanced overview piece. This is an opinion, an editorial, of the way Blizzard keeps underestimating what the warrior class needs. Why is arms still broken in PvE months after the beta? Why is one of the biggest changes to warriors in this patch a change to the shielding mechanic we can't even choose to apply to ourselves?



It's no secret that last year, I was one of the few people willing to be lambasted for calling attention to prot warrior liabilities. I got hammered for this, and I won't pretend it didn't irritate me, because all I ever wanted was to see protection spec get the buffs it needed to make sure it kept up with other tanks as viable. A lot of what prot saw happen in patch 3.0 was nearly perfect in my eyes. Vastly improved DPS, real AoE tanking options, a significant overhaul to how threat works, faster cooldowns. Prot got significantly loved, it's true.

The recent change to Sunder Armor isn't a panic moment for protection yet. As far as I can tell, it's not very significant at all. It's not game breaking or unfair, it's simply vastly annoying. It's irritating to me to see proection get such a minor and PvP oriented reduction and the idea that it might in any way hurt protection in PvE content infuriates me. Prot doesn't need any downsides to PvE right now. While we still don't know how the four tanking classes will shake out once we move out of Naxxramas and into Ulduar, the way things stand right now in tanking all tanks kind of feel unfinished and the last thing I as a warrior enthusiast want to see is any reason, however small, for a raid leader to decide to bring a tank who can generate AoE threat faster than a warrior (as an example) since there's no down side or lost utility to her raid when she does so.

However, as annoyed as I am on behalf of prot for a change that hasn't even been demonstrated yet, I'm positively livid for arms. It's been months. Beast Mastery hunters get nerfed too much and everyone explodes in protest, meanwhile arms warriors have just been quietly sitting there waiting for their DPS to catch up since the release of the expansion. Throughout beta, throughout release and leveling, and throughout endgame raiding we've all said the same things over and over and over again and there have been vague promises made and then patches come and go and arms is still not doing enough DPS. Now, I know this kind of thing is hard, I'm not advocating that we form a Transylvanian Housewarming commitee here and go all torches and pitchforks, but it is maddening to keep seeing the same issues beset the spec over and over again.

I haven't even started in on PvP because we all know I'm not really into it. Sure, Id did it on my tauren because for some weird reason when I'm playing the tauren I could kill things better (I don't pretend to understand it, maybe it was the racial health modifier or maybe I have a mental block) but the very fact that people who made their names as PvP warriors are now playing death knights just feels like I got hit in the back of the head with a hammer when I think about it. And man, why wouldn't you? You'd have to be very dedicated, very talented and perhaps very masochistic (I know there are still PvP warriors out there, so if you guys want to come and explain what the attraction is, I would love to hear from you) Protection spec is the only one I can think of that has the stuns and movement and silences necessary to get much of anything done in PvP nowadays.

Ironically, I play a raiding fury warrior. We're actually doing pretty well. Deep Wounds hotfix lowered our DPS some, but I'm used to that kind of thing. I wish I knew which classes warriors were allowed to exceed in DPS. It's not warlocks, mages, rogues, hunters, ret paladins, feral druids, moonkin druids, death knights (who are also tank/DPS), shadow priests, elemental shamans or enhancement shamans. These kinds of discussions always exhaust me and I leave them to others. Fury right now, I'm pretty happy with the spec, so I sit paradoxically like an old man yelling at kids to get off other people's lawns, basically. If nothing major happens for fury, we'll still be in good shape, we'll probably just drop in relative DPS position as other classes get buffed. And frankly if the baseline reduction to mob armor comes in (Creature armor has been globally reduced) then both rogues and fury warriors will see a DPS increase.

So basically I'm saying this: get to work on some concrete buffs for arms warriors, please. No more vague promises. No more awesome changes. You're making huge changes like removing consumable ammo from the game, do something for arms spec. It has all the components for an excellent DPS spec, the procs are fun and require real skill to manage, the changes to stance penalties you promised are a good step for it in PvP, now get crazy and give them something. I know you're looking at overpower and slam for them, but can I please recommend another look at Bladestorm? The damage itself is fine, but consider relaxing some of the penalties on the ability. Let people intercept when using it, or do more than autoattack? Something?

Well, I'm done with my impression of an Old Testament figure if said figure played WoW instead of, well, tending to the spiritual welfare of an entire people. Next week, the interrupted Hit/Expertise post.

Things that don't annoy me

About half a year ago I wrote the article "Things that annoy me." However, I'm in a good mood tonight:

1. The music in Storm Peaks and Howling Fjord, particularly the choral portion of the former. Spooky and haunting and ethereally on edge, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had just glimpsed a large angry dinosaur through the window.

2. The leather boots available at exalted with the Argent Crusade. Yes, the stats are great, but it's how they look on Tauren that really vaults them into the realm of unbridled win. For all I know, the graphic on female Tauren is a serious bug that programmers are working frantically to correct, but I think that boots on a cow look awesome.

3. Dalaran when it's not crawling with people.

4. Which is to say never.

5. Pretty much everything that High Overlord Saurfang says, does, thinks, or writes for the entirety of the Horde's Wrath storyline.

6. Getting achievements without realizing they existed in the first place: "Shatter Resistant? What the %#*& is a brittle golem?"

7. Icecrown. Pick a quest, any quest, and you can't go wrong.

8. The fact that a legion of murderous Death Knights offers healing gear.

9. The Frenzyheart/Oracle dynamic in Sholazar Basin. The whole notion of cute and fuzzy animals at each others' throats is equal parts amusing and disturbing, like blundering into a genocidal conflict between Kewpie dolls and plush toys.

10. Despite the fact that I have now killed more red dragons by accident than most major lore figures have done on purpose, NPC's just keep giving me new ones.

11. Finally seeing my first female Dwarf Rogue the other day. Forget rare mounts or legendary weapons; roll a female Dwarf Rogue and people will stop in their tracks.

12. Logging on and seeing the tail end of a conversation in guild chat that finished with "A shallow grave is a bad grave."

13. The fact that Ghostcrawler hasn't cracked yet and started programming horrible ingame crab-related deaths for the idiots harassing him on the forums.

14. The fact that Ghostcrawler might crack and start programming horrible ingame crab-related deaths for the idiots harassing him on the forums.

15. The phrase "crab-related deaths."

16. Druid Tier 6. By God, that set was beautiful.

17. Having an out-of-combat resurrection spell as a Druid, and not having to PvP anymore to stay defense-capped as a bear tank. I hate PvP, and having to do it in order to PvE effectively was hell.

18. I may not miss PvP, but I will always treasure the time I got trounced by a pigtailed female Gnome Warrior in full Season 3. Say what you will about the frustration factor, but it's a weird honor to die to massively underplayed race/class comb0.

19. That time I pugged with a Shaman who had /y FOR FRODO! macro'd to Bloodlust.

20. What erupted in Trade chat the day someone typed the line "WTB [Black Pearl]."

21. Vaneras having to suggest that likening the CM's to Hitler and Stalin may not be a historically valid comparison.

22. The macro that my guild leader has ready for every occasion wherein a new player insists on a strategy formulated under another raid leader: /g Listen, I don't care what your old guild did/ /g Your old guild sucked/ /g That's why you're in my guild.

23. (This space reserved for the eventual fight with Arthas, which is going to be totally awesome and kick all kinds of ass, especially because I already have Jaina's coin in my pack).

24. Drinking Pungent Seal Whey and not stopping to think about it anymore.

25. The skies and scenery of Northrend. This never gets old.

A pessimistic reminder about patch notes

There's a lot of speculation that 3.0.8 will drop tomorrow. We've got our sources that say it looks good for a release tomorrow, there have been some blue posts about it, and MMO-Champion is contending it's as good as confirmed (90% chance Boubouille says).

However with the impending patch there is a very important reminder to be made: not everything we see in patch notes is correct. It's bold because it's important.

Take a trip back to the 3.0.2 patch notes.

On the 3.0.2 PTR we saw a plethora of changes to all the classes and items, tons and tons and tons. More than we had ever seen. However when the official patch notes were released, things were amiss. Many of the changes we saw on the PTR did not make it into the live patch.


People screamed up and down that sites like WoW Insider, World of Raids, and MMO-Champion posted the wrong notes. There were even accusations that Blizzard posted the wrong notes on their site. Such was not the case. The notes were right and Blizzard just decided not to include all the changes immediately. Instead they decided to roll out changes in an incremental manner.

So tonight and tomorrow, if 3.0.8 does indeed get released, remind yourself for a moment to read over everything and carefully look for everything you were expecting. If you don't see something, then chances are it didn't make it into the final release of the patch.

Be pessimistic about the changes, and keep a watchful eye on what you see as breaking news across all your WoW information sources.

Survey reveals what twinks are all about

This is interesting -- our friend Drayner over at Twinkinfo.com recently took a survey of his site's readers, and after picking up almost 1,000 replies, he's posted the results. They show a little bit of insight into the kind of person that plays a twink (a character maxed out at a certain level before 80, usually to run around in PvP battlegrounds). Specifically, they're male, under 21, play for 21-30 hours a week, think their gear rates a 5 out of 5, and are probably level 19 and in Warsong Gulch capturing flags. I'm not sure if that's suprising or not, but those are pretty safe majority votes, even given the smaller sample size of the poll.

Twink players are also more likely to not have more than one account, which kind of makes sense -- they only need one account and just have lots of characters on them. 66% of twinks are actually in twink guilds, and most have at least more than one twink to play around with. Hunters and Rogues top the class choices (though not with a clear majority at all). And perhaps most interesting, over 50% of twinks say Blizzard is serving them just fine -- they're not ignoring them, and they're not giving them any more love than other players. Still, as Drayner pointed out to us, about 36% of twinks said they'd leave the game if Blizzard shut them down with an additional 30% saying Maybe, so Blizzard does have a little incentive there to keep twinking happening.

Quite interesting -- twinks might be one of the only groups of players who are completely fine with how they're being handled in game. 2.3 obviously gave them lots of new items to play with, and while there is some frustration from other players, Blizzard has made it so easy to level that if you don't want to play with the twinks at 19, you can move on pretty quickly.

10 things I learned from a destitute alt on an RP realm

I have a few alts on an RP realm that I visit from time to time, and I remember thinking to myself at one point: "These characters are a bunch of deadbeats." I'd gotten too used to the alts on my main realm being a bunch of pampered brats, spoiled rotten by the presence of a hardworking main, so financial discipline had grown to be a thing of the past.

Not so on another realm where you don't have a main, and I realized that unless I went back to a few monetary basics, my alts would wind up dancing naked on mailboxes in pursuit of gold. This is a fine tactic with a long and storied history, but when your most promising alt is a level 16 Undead Mage, you're up the proverbial creek. No one wants to see a rotting, naked corpse.

So I started not being a deadbeat, and it was with surprise and delight that I logged on to find the little tyke sitting on a pretty respectable pile of gold by level 21 -- as in, he can afford to pay for his level 30 mount and training several times over, and still have enough left over to train himself all the way to 45 even if he doesn't make another penny.

I should note that this assumes: a). You don't have a ton of time to spend on alts, b). You also don't have the gold pool necessary to play the AH like a tycoon, and c).You want to make a decent amount of money without having to turn it into an overriding concern.

1. Sell absolutely everything.

You really never know what people are looking to buy at any given moment. Raptor eggs? Lion meat? Wool cloth (a surprisingly lucrative item, for whatever reason)? Solid stone? Volatile rum? A wealthy player who's spent a lot of time at 70-80 with months of dailies won't bat an eye at shelling out a few gold for these items; the convenience of grabbing them off the AH vastly outweighs the lengthy trips they'd need to make otherwise. And with so many people leveling Death Knights, there's a huge market for low-level profession materials, especially Cooking.

If it's gray, vendor it. Everything else, sock it in your bags and hit the AH. You probably won't make a huge profit on each white item, but the little stuff starts to add up.

2. Know the server.

How large is the raiding pool? Is there an active RP community? Did a lot of people wind up rerolling Death Knights, or leveling them seriously? Are people willing to spend a lot of gold on items for Achievements?

All of these affect what your server's common market is going to be like. Raiders spend a lot of gold on consumables and/or materials (which you really won't be able to do anything about before Northrend, but it's incentive to keep going). RP servers tend to create a better market for event-centric items like fireworks or things like Dalaran Wizard's Robes. Large groups of leveling Death Knights gobble up runecloth to improve reputation with home factions and go through a ton of profession materials.

3. There's still no substitute for two gathering professions -- and if you're serious about it, use a mod like Gatherer.

When you're starting on a new realm with no resources beyond a strong work ethic, the amount of gold you'll have at your disposal is likely to be minimal, and not enough to allow you to use Auctioneer to buy low and sell high. With time and some effort you'll reach that point, but in the meantime, don't cripple your cash flow by taking anything other than Skinning, Mining, or Herbalism as professions.

4. Mining is probably the most lucrative gathering profession, but herbalism is starting to catch up. Skinning makes the least gold-per-unit of all three gathering professions (at least in the early levels), but it has the advantage of being a high-volume business with minimal time investment.

Herbalism feeds Alchemy and Inscription now, but Mining still feeds Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewelcrafting. The financial gulf between them is considerably smaller than it was during BC, but mining probably still retains the edge as the most lucrative gathering profession overall. With that said, it's also more competitive than herbalism, especially as you near the later levels. If you're on a very crowded server, keep that in mind.

Skinning is by far the easiest and least time-consuming profession to level. You'll generally make less selling leather and hides than you will selling herbs and ore (at least in early levels), but you won't have to go out of your way to get them either. If you take herbalism and mining, you'll also have to spend a lot of time flipping between two tracking modes to see what's available in your area. If you want to make money while devoting as little time to it as possible, skinning's the way to go.

5. Cut down on the inconvenience factor of having to make several trips to the AH during a play session by leveling in an area where the major city's flight path and economic resources (bank, auction NPC's, mailboxes) are in close proximity. Or, if you do have a dedicated auction alt (and you probably should), make sure you stick them in this city.

Thunder Bluff is by far the best overall with respect to flight-path proximity to auction NPC's, the bank, and a mailbox. It also gets bonus points for having a forge literally in front of auction NPC's if you're a miner and selling bars is more lucrative than selling raw ore. Undercity, Ironforge, Stormwind, and Orgrimmar are all OK (unless you have to smelt, in which case UC, Org, and Stormwind are all a much bigger hassle than Ironforge) but generally more convenient if you're already got a bank alt parked there.

Silvermoon and the Exodar are both lousy places to do business, especially if you're flying or running into the city to get auctions done. They're OK for bank alts, but in general you're still better off putting that alt elsewhere.

6. Don't be in too much of a hurry to level.

With the boost to leveling speed as of patch 3.0.2, clocking off the levels isn't anywhere near as time-consuming as it used to be. This is good in some ways -- spending less time leveling a character is great, and an ideal situation for someone who already has a toon at 80 -- but it has the secondary effect of being harder on a new player or a reroll who finds the game's most pressing expenses -- principally mounts -- coming earlier and faster than they used to.

It's not a race. There is no law in the game dictating that you must have a mount by the prescribed time. Take time out to gather, or grind on mobs that have a chance to drop something fun or lucrative (especially dragon whelps that drop pets or, say, Barrens mobs that have a chance to drop Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight), or even just fish. Spending more time per zone doing fun quests and enjoying the lore just increases the chance that you'll get a valuable green or blue drop anyway. Turn money-making into a game within the game itself.

7. One of the most salient differences between the RL economy and WoW's: inflation is your friend.

The reason for this is that most ingame costs are static. Sharp arrows will always cost the same amount, reagents will always cost the same amount, food will always cost the same amount, and the only thing that affects them is your reputation with the faction of the NPC seller. The same is true of ground mounts in classic WoW. A server's inflation increases the amount of gold you can make off of the AH, but your daily living expenses will always stay the same.

8. Cannibalize otherwise useless characters that you know you're not going to level.

Even a fairly low-level character can be broken down into a few gold if you're desperate for money and you know perfectly well you're not going to wind up leveling it. If you've got a character below level 20 that you really don't need, sell off their assets and gear and mail the proceeds to the toon you really want to level. If they're above 20, they'll usually wind up being worth more money, but be very cautious before you write off a toon in which you've invested more time. It sucks to have to come back and re-level a class that you've realized you do want to play, especially when certain classes are more time-consuming to level than others.

9. On that note, cannibalizing a Death Knight is a surprisingly lucrative racket.

Pretty soon you'll be able to level a Death Knight on any server as long as you've got a level 55 character somewhere. Death Knights typically finish their starting area with around 30-40g, which is a nice chunk of change for a low-level alt. As an added bonus, leveling a Death Knight from 55 to 58 is fast, easy, and a lot of fun. I really don't suggest chain-leveling and then deleting Death Knights just for the money -- your gold per hour is likely to be considerably less than it would be if you just kept leveling the needy alt in question to more lucrative gathering materials, and this is a great way to make Death Knights boring fast -- but as a one-time thing it won't hurt.

10. Not all pre-60 greens are created equal.

Of the Eagle, Of the Bear, Of the Tiger, Of the Falcon, and Of the Monkey = Sells, and typically sells well.

Of the Owl, Of the Boar, and Of the Wolf = Sometimes sells, and usually for less than the first three.

Of the Whale = Just vendor the damn thing.

I've run across a surprising number of people who just vendor greens no matter what kind they are. Certain ones have stats that are very desirable to leveling characters trying to cover gaps left by spotty quest rewards. Don't toss away a potential 4-5g thinking that all greens are trash!

When questing is the reward

I've never been a big fan of quests. I've always done them as a means to an end, whether to level up or to earn a bit of Gold. My questing rate dropped considerably once I hit Level 80, with the only quests I did consisting mostly of Wintergrasp dailies and about a week's worth of Ebon Blade dailies in Icecrown to raise my reputation. But the truth is, quests in Wrath of the Lich King have been downright phenomenal. They are well-designed, fun to do, and -- if you actually stop to read the quest text (something I'm often guilty of skipping) -- wonderfully written and filled with story.

I finally got off my lazy butt to do the long Sons of Hodir quest chain, a "necessary evil" to raise reputation with what Alex has dubbed one of the most important factions in Wrath. There was little urgency for me to do the chain, considering I was satisfied with the Wintergrasp shoulder enchants even though they wasted points on Resilience. On the other hand, it became increasingly frustrating for me not to be able to assist my wife whenever her character (often) became the target of merciless gankage. You see, like many parts of Northrend, the Storm Peaks zones where you do Sons of Hodir quests are phased. I simply wanted to get to the point where we would be in the same phased stage, so using Alex's handy guide to the Sons of Hodir quest chain, I set off on what was a surprisingly good and fun adventure.

I really should have been prepared for it, considering I had completed the mind-blowing Dragonblight chain leading to Angrathar the Wrath Gate and The Battle for the Undercity. One of the most amazing experiences I had playing the game has come from something as simple as opening up the Shadow Vault in Icecrown and all the quests leading to Tirion Fordring's gambit. Quests in Wrath of the Lich King have evolved from the days FedEx and Kill X or Get Y Drop, Blizzard has used all the toys in their toolbox to make some of the most creative and engaging quests ever.

Part of me wishes that The Drakkensryd quest were some sort of daily. It's just crazy fun. Jumping from proto drake to proto drake and killing another rider while in mid-air? Simply breathtaking. The lore is great, too, and the story of Thorim, his friendship with the giants, and the betrayal of his brother -- all inspired by the Norse mythology we all know Chris Metzen loves so much -- is a good read and is fun to follow. So even though I did the Sons of Hodir chain out of mere necessity, it turned out to be a truly rewarding experience simply because it's just so much fun.

That's the thing. Questing in Wrath is incredibly rewarding, not necessarily through items or Gold (although the money's pretty good, too), but because the playing experience is completely worth it. The variety of quests in Wrath of the Lich King is wide and there seems to be something for everyone. A lot of the 'vehicle'-type quests offer a different experience, some of my favorites involving the use of a Lithe Stalker in Icecrown to start fights or drag gift bombs. The King of the Mountain quest in Ymirheim takes no more than a few minutes but is just silly fun, specially if you bump into a member of the opposing faction and you knock each other off the mountain with rockets.

Part of what makes Wrath one of the most fun games I've ever played is the quality of the game experience, particularly with the new quests. There's every indication that this trend will continue, it's simply a question of how far Blizzard can push the envelope with quest design. And while I appreciate all the decent item rewards and free-flowing Gold, the sheer fun of every quest in Northrend has been its own reward for me.

Returning to WoW as a casual

John writes in on a topic that I think a lot of people can relate to. Wrath of the Lich King brought you back to the game, but now what?

Hi Robin,

I'm really enjoying your column and wanted to give you an idea for a future article. Right now I'm a casual gamer who's on the fence about coming back to WoW thanks to WotLK. I quit WoW soon after the last expansion because I was tired of the constant raid grind, gear treadmill, and a PVP system that only rewarded people with 40+ hours to play a week (the dreaded honor/rank system). And this was back at a time when I wasn't a dad or was doing my career grind. So long story short, I have no idea where to start as a casual

I would love to see a "New Year's" article discussing how to start over in WoW for a returning casual player. Or starting WoW for the first time for that matter.

Anyhow, keep up the good work. Your articles have helped ensure me that I will no longer be treated like a second-class citizen in WOW for not being a hardcore player. Which is very cool.



Fellow Casuality John

Well, it's a little after New Year's, but we're still in January, so I think that's close enough. Wrath of the Lich King is definitely worth coming back for, even if you don't have a level 68+ to experience the Northrend content. But if you do, it's doubly so. The Achievements are a blast and make leveling up to the new content more fun. Also, leveling is speedier and there are even new quests in the old world to make it seem like less of a grind. It's apropos that so many people are coming back from the "dead" now that we have Death Knights -- you may be just as disoriented as the newly revived minions of the Lich King. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your return to Azeroth:

Get guilded with veterans

If you were in a guild before you left, try to return to it (if it still exists) when you get back -- even if it was a raiding guild. I am in a guild that raids every night, even though I don't (it helps that I'm married to the guild leader) and we've had a lot of returning players. Many raiding guilds will let you return to the guild even if you are casual now, just to have familiar friends back in the fold. Regardless of the kind of guild, you should try to get in with people who have been playing while you're gone. You're going to have questions that they can easily answer.

You may need to change servers

Guilds transfer, friends re-roll and queues lengthen -- whatever the reason, your old realm may no longer be the best fit for you. The best thing to do is find a server with friends with similar schedules and transfer your characters there or re-roll. Or you could find fellow WoW players from another community in which you participate. For example, Ravelry (a wonderful online knit and crochet community) has both Alliance and Horde guilds as well as a list of all the realms fellow knitters play on (you have to belong to Ravelry in order to see that link). If you must go it alone, I recommend a medium population PvE server (check at peak times for queues). PvP can really take up a lot of your play time while you are trying to quest (though that's where I play). You don't want too low of a population because that affects the economy. Even if you won't be raiding, you want to be able to sell your wares to those wealthy hardcore types.

Make a Death Knight

Go ahead and jump on the bandwagon -- there's a reason (or 7) everyone is doing it. They are fun and easy and a great way to ease back into the game. After Patch 3.0.8, you will be able to make a DK on any realm if you have a level 55 on at least one realm. If you have friends on a realm that you don't want to or can't transfer to, you can catch up to them very quickly on a DK.

Make alts

Classes have changed. Your warlock may not be as much fun and your paladin is probably not as boring. Your main may no longer be the class you have the most fun playing. Of course, I'm an altaholic, so I'm enabling here, but I do think that you shouldn't spend time struggling on a class that isn't as much fun as another one that has been newly tweaked to be more for your playstyle.

Re-evaluate and update your professions

Inscription is new and the rest have been improved, particularly the gathering professions. If you stay with what you already have, go see your trainer to get up to date. Oh, and beware of sticker shock. If your professions were maxed in Burning Crusade, you can update them all in the starting cities in Northrend, but it costs hundreds of gold. Don't sweat it if you don't have enough to do it right away, gold is easy to get these days and you'll be caught up in no time.

Schedule

In order for casual players to get the most out of their playtime, it really is best to schedule out blocks of playtime that allow you to balance the rest of your life and coordinate with your family. You will find yourself having longer, uninterrupted sessions if your scheduled playtime is considerate to (and approved by) your significant other, children or parents for those who are still living at home.

Northrend is awesome

If you do have a level 68+, even if you don't end up staying on that realm or with that character, you are going to want to experience the Northrend content as soon as possible. There are new and varied quest types, the lore is rich and compelling and the scenery is breathtaking. And don't avoid instances as you level up. They now take less than an hour, making it feasible even for casuals to find a group and complete.

Read in your spare time

We have a couple of series of articles that may answer most of your questions. The Queue answers reader questions and WoW Rookie covers the basics, which is good as a refresher, even if you didn't used to be a rookie. Also, take a look through the class columns listed on the menu on the lefthand side to catch up on the latest for your favorite class(es).

It may take you a while to get back into the groove. Your first few play sessions may be nonproductive and even a bit frustrating. But if you stick with it, I think you'll find that the game has never been better -- particularly for casuals.

A WoW economics course proposal

If you're like me, you're ... well, you're probably incredibly handsome and charming. But you're also probably interested in WoW's economy, given that it's the biggest and most involved metagame in WoW and a fascinating microcosm of a free-market economy.

I personally think that the how and why of WoW's economy is worth a deep look, and it appears there are a lot of people who agree with me--even some academics. It might even be worth just as much as any other book-learnin'.

At least, that's the basis of David Friedman's World of Warcraft economics course proposal. Friedman is an academic economist from San Jose, CA who's assembled this article as a think-tank for what a WoW economics course would entail if you had to fill it with a semester's worth of content. There's a lot of neat stuff in here, talking about relative prices of ore based on character level and rarity of ore and supply/demand, but he also asks for your input as to possible course material, which I'm sure you could gladly provide in the comments section of his page.

Good idea with sound academic basis, or another in the long list of high falootin' academia's attempts to justify playing WoW on the government's dime? WE REPORT. YOU DECIDE.

We love Food Network edition

Or, perhaps, we'd love to slaughter the Food Network. In World of Warcraft, of course. This week when I asked what everyone was up to, Daniel Howell (whom you may also know as BigRedKitty) graced us with one of his infamous top ten lists:

BRK's Top Ten Things to Do in WoW This Weekend

10. Install IE 6 on a 80386 PC so I too can complain about the menus on WoW Insider.
9. Claim I'm raising money for a very reputable charity, then /ninja everything and boogie to Monte Carlos.
8. Show up buzzed to the maxx from Jolt Cola for the WoW Insider podcast, then fake a French accent and ridicule England until Turpster explodes in a profanity-laced tirade.
7. Write an interview with the farmer who leveled Mike's hunter. "You should see his bags, BRK! Nothing but flowers, rum, and non-combat cat-pets. My boss said, 'Level that toon, but then delete it from our database. Eww.'"
6. Do a video reminiscent of "The Super Fans" from SNL, but all of us are hunters. "Daaaaaa huntahs!"

More silliness and WRUP for the rest of the team after the break!

5. Announce that in patch 3.0.8, the new 51st talent point in the warrior protection tree is going to be Avenger. An Avenger Warrior's shield will act like a totem and give off an aura when equipped, as well as making the shield pulse-n-glow with power.
4. Write a story about how Ghostcrawler is quitting Blizzard and starting to write for WoW Insider, then do a post as Ghostcrawler, demanding the Blizzard update their website showing I've left their company.
3. Create a guild called The Shard Squad. We run raids and make movies of us disenchanting every piece of gear we find, teasing the people watching the video with taunts and cackles.
2. BRK Worldwide Amalgamated Productions presents "Cooking with BRK!" Forty-five 10-minute movies of BRK standing in front of a fire in Icecrown, making feasts and mammoth bites. The Food Network has already bought all syndication rights, and Bobby Flay is rolling a Troll Warrior for his own show.
1. Prepare to re-spec Survivalist next Tuesday. SmallBlueKitteh... /sniff

What a weekend! This of course launched into a lively discussion about whether Bobby Flay would play on a PvP server, whether he or Alton Brown would win in a fight, what classes the rest of the Food Network team would play, and all manner of related silliness. Oh, right, and the rest of the team is playing WoW... at least for the most part.

Adam Holisky: Instead of playing my characters I'll be sitting down with the girlfriend, per the advice of our readers in a breakfast topic this week, and introducing her to the world that is Warcraft. We've been together for six years, so hopefully she won't be running for the hills when she finds out that I can give an hour lecture on the complexities of Protection Warriors.
Alex Ziebart: I'm sort of skimping on WoW this week because a buddy hooked me up with Left 4 Dead. Those zombies are way scarier than the Scourge, sorry.
Allison Robert: In all likelihood I'll be spending this weekend trying to figure out why I cannot stay connected to the game in a raid. :( I think God is having a bit of ironic fun at my expense since volunteering to write Ready Check for January.
Amanda Miller: I will be rescuing my Death Knight from being stuck at level 70 in the Taunka-le Village. Sunday, I'll be finishing up this week's Naxx run with the last two bosses, as well as Obsidian Sanctum. Hopefully, I'll squeeze in some herb farming.
Christian Belt: I'm spending the weekend in the manner in which I firmly believe everyone should: anxiously engaged in the mindless slaughter of the Alliance. I will kill them on the beaches of Strand of the Ancients. I will kill them on the icy slopes of Wintergrasp. I will kill them beneath the blazing sun of Tanaris, and under the red glow of Hellfire Peninsula's many moons. Unless they are Death Knights. Death Knights are scary.
Dan O'Halloran: Just made 77 and trained in Cold Weather Flying so much of this weekend will be spent flying over various parts of Northrend to finishing off Wrath exploration achievements and maxxing out my mining skill. Also plan to powerlevel Cooking and explore the Wrath Cooking achievements.
Eliah Hecht: Death Kniiiiiiiiiight.
Elizabeth Harper: It's a raid weekend! 10-man Obsidian Sanctum, 10-man Naxxramas, and old world fun in Ahn'Qiraj.
Krystalle Voecks: I have a friend who just came in on a 10-day trial under Recruit-a-Friend, so I expect we'll be tearing around the Eastern Kingdom on a couple of undead characters at some point. Beyond that, I'll be finishing out the achievements for Fallout 3, playing some more FusionFall, and getting ready to head back to college Monday.
Lisa Poisso: Less WoW, more sleep! Too many late-night heroics this past week -- by Thursday night, I was so pooped that I had to go to bed by 9 p.m. :(
Matt Low: Going to head into a cleared OS 25 and start doing some planning for the OS 3 drake attempt.
Matt Rossi: We finished Maly off early so working on 3 drake Sarth 10 and 25.
Michael Gray: Takin' mah first crack at Naxx 25 with my intrepid, lovable Guild. I'll be wearing pants for it, this time.
Mike Schramm: Running Heroics, finishing up quests in Icecrown. If I'm lucky I'll finally get in on a Naxx PUG.
Robin Torres: More leveling of the Mage and the DK and maybe the other DK and possibly the Druid and why am I looking at my Priest again? Hi! I'm Robin and I'm an altaholic.
Zach Yonzon: Figuring out where to spend his Honor points and grumbling at the fact that the cap still hasn't been raised beyond 75,000 despite Honor being e-z mode at Level 80.

So, now that you know what we're up to, what are you playing this weekend?

Ulduar and Blizzard's "hard modes"

We're only a day into 2009, and we've already got an update on one of our predictions. Vaneras has appeared on the EU forums talking about Ulduar's difficulty level and he says that yes, it will make a PTR appearance, and yes, it will be hard, but probably not in the way that we'd expect. He says that Blizzard is pleased with the way the "Sartharion with no drakes" worked, so they're planning to expand on that idea in the upcoming raids, by including more "hard modes" and more achievements, with "an increase of reward level if successful."

So the odds are that we'll still see Ulduar's normal mode downed within days if not minutes on the live realms -- it won't actually be "hard" in the sense that the guilds with high level gear won't be able to plow right through it. But there will likely be multiple challenges within that are very hard, and achievements that will likely reward special gear or titles that will take guilds a while to do. This probably won't satisfy most of the really hardcore raiders, but we've been over this one -- Blizzard would rather have the majority of the playerbase play these raids, and since challenges and achievements don't take as much development time, that's what the minority of really hardcore players will get.

Of course, as with everything, we'll have to see how it works out -- Blizzard is clearly trying to make sure everyone coming to these raids finds what they're looking for in terms of a challenge. Ulduar itself might not be as hard as we predicted, but if Blizzard really ramps up the "hard modes" within the instance, it could be a while before we see anyone able to topple all of the challenges in there.

What I did at the holiday party

For many people around the world, today is a sacred, holy day. For others, it's the day that we begin composing letters of apology for our behavior at the office Christmas party. The guild on Thorium Brotherhood seems to tend towards the latter: if Lythic's screenshot is any indication, they may still be passed out at the Stormwind pub.

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 aroundazeroth@wowinsider.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, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Merry Christmas, everybody!

All I want for Winter Veil

Merry Christmas Happy Winter Veil, everyone! In this season of giving, it's probably appropriate to ask everyone what their wish is for the season and, heck, the next year. To keep things in line, we'll ask for what everyone is wishing for in the game so there probably won't be any wishes for World Peace (although Dalaran and Shattrath pretty much killed all that inter-faction hate). I know my brother-in-law is wishing to get the Merrymaker Achievement as his first step towards the Violet Proto-drake. As much as I love it, I'd like to see Wintergrasp get some improvements soon, with more incentive to actually play it aside from being insanely fun.

What about you guys? Anything you're wishing for or wished for that you already got? Phat loot? Achievements? Acceptance into that high-end raiding guild you've been working on for months? What's the sweetest in-game thing you want for Winter Veil? We can't guarantee you'll get it, but here at WoW Insider, we're certainly wishing you the best!

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Review

It was released to much hype and long lines, but does World of Warcraft 's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, live up to the hype? Hasani Davis gives us his impressions of this new, expanded version of Azeroth.Now that we have had a month to play it, let's sit down and talk about The Burning Crusade. First off, I must come out and say it was good to have a renewed interest in World of Warcraft. I have continued to play the game. After all, I am a gamer and always have to play something. It's just that things can get stale and the game play of the old Warcraft world wasn't something to get fanatical about. As a gamer, that's what I want in my games. I want it to have that lasting impression on me which turns me into a fanatic. Don't take it out of context, and think lunatic, but just a fanatic. I want to be at work wondering about new ways to smite my foes and then get home and be happy that I am playing something worthwhile, not just be playing to feed the need for gaming.So Burning Crusade came out, just in case you all didn't know. To me, it is a chance for Blizzard to start the whole game over again and take it in a new direction. With a level cap raised to 70, new instances, and a host of new items, there is plenty of room and opportunity to re-balance the game and take it to a new level. The question is; has Blizzard delivered on the two year wait that WoW players have had on an expansion?One friend put it best; the new races are fun from levels 1-10, and then you get to hit The Barrens again. That was where the fun factor wore off.All that being said, WoW remains the top of the heap as far as MMOs. The question still remains that with their out of date graphics and run of the mill game mechanics, will WoW be able to compete with the upcoming crop of MMOs that are offering lots of changes to the genre.
Graphics
First off, there is no new graphic engine, no revisions to textures to help with loading or lag. No skin upgrades for old and new models, but at least we have chipsets for the new areas. BC gives us 40 new monster models and many more changes/upgrades to old monsters in the new world.When you first zone through the Dark Portal, the gateway that takes you to Outland, you are thrust right into the battlefront against the Burning Legion. You are able to witness a battle going on against major Pit Lords and their minions with loads of spell effects and attacks going off all at once. It's a great scene, but it's still nothing new added to the game. Our first review of the noted a graphics rating of 8.5, but you also have to take into account what was out at the time. With a release is 2004 and coming after fossils like EverQuest and Asheron's Call, the crisp Saturday morning cartoon graphics Warcraft presented where very much merited. But now, at the dawn of third generation MMOs and looking at games like Guild Wars, Eve Online and the upcoming Two Worlds, the bar is raised and the score drops to reflect it.I have to give a score of a 4 on graphical advancement because other than a few new monster skins and very vanilla animations for new spells there is nothing new or better added graphically to the expansion. The score is saved however by 1 or 2 rather nice looking raid bosses.A score of five is earned for the player skins and animations. As stated before, everything is still the same quality and art with no real advancement. Other games of this generation have jumped much further forward. In short, WoW and TBC look like a rather ordinary game from the 1999-2004 era and not like a cutting edge next generation game designed by a multi-million dollar company.
Fun
Adventure? Crafting? Killing? Gathering? Well anything you want to do short of ascending to become a major deity is attainable and made into a cute fun filled package with this expansion. They have added new crafting, new gathering, funny quests with high adventure, and lots of rewarding items and abilities along your trip to level 70. Don't get me wrong, grinding still exists, but the fun factor and entertainment of the game is elevated with this expansion. Not only is there a lot of content, but the lateral and side games and quests you can do for fun will keep even the most hardcore gamer satisfied for the next year and perhaps beyond. To put it simply, this is the most fun game you can pick up on the market.
Sound
The sounds are standard with no real upgrades to voiceovers. Spells, abilities, and most importantly the musical score are pretty much the same. Also, there is still no sign of battle music. The game sounds have improved more than the graphics have, but still are pale compared to scores from both past and present games. One time I entered the brand new arena and marveled at the concept of players killing each other like gladiators. Then I was let down as the background music from the old battlegrounds began to play. Its okay, but not enough to get me psyched about game play. Unlike fixing aging graphics, a musical score and sound effects can be instantly fixed with about one or two patches.
Value
My wallet is not mad at me, a 40 dollar expansion that gives me hundreds of hours of not only game time but fun. The large amount of quests and content will make playing another class to the end game fun. New and alternate paths can be taken to reach leveling goals. It is nice that you can level two characters from 60-70 and actually not do the same quest.
Performance / Lag
It's a double bladed sword. There is no real lag or performance problem. However, the graphics and music aren't up to a level where you should have lag. With regular maintenance patches the lag is minimal.
Role Play
Role play? What role play? The game is Warcraft, you play either Horde or Alliance and you are locked in a war to destroy the other faction. The feeling is ruined with neutral towns and no real incentive to attack and start a war against the other faction. If someone wants to make the point that in the Burning Crusade the fight is against the Burning Legion and not against each other, this facade is broken once you leave the first town of Outland. Past level 61 you won't get the feeling that you are banding together to stop ANYTHING. While questing and adventure are both fun, little is done to immerse you into the feeling that is Warcraft.
Community
This goes rather hand in hand with the role-playing. Servers are very large and unless you have someone on your friends list, you can go weeks without seeing them. With plenty of instancing and grinding for gear you are constantly shut off from other people not inside your party or guild. Every class and just about every spec can solo so there is no pressing need to form friendships or interact with others in your zone or area. There is no real alliance feature so there is no formal way to form an alliance with other guilds. The community is much segmented and I am afraid will always stay that way.
Customer Service
Let's face it, this really shouldn't effect the game. I have little to no contact with Blizzard Customer Service, but you can often see people using exploits with no real noticeable action taken at the moment it happens. With a customer base of eight million, the service certainly has its ups and downs.
Final Thoughts
In closing, the scores I gave are very standard but the most important score which is Fun is dominant. Warcraft is the most popular MMORPG in the industry and has made the jump into pop-culture. The total score is a seven if you are looking at it as a model of total package compared to what other games are doing. I still believe the most important score is Fun which certainly remains in World of Warcraft.

WOW: A look of Black Temple

Blizzard revealed the upcoming raid dungeon ¨C The Black Temple for World of Warcraft. Have a look!
Originally founded as a Draenei temple, this plot has been conquered and despoiled many times throughout the history of Outland, removing any spiritual grace it may have once held. The Black Temple has been the stage of the Orc Horde?s blood curse, a fortress for the then-mortal Ner?zhul, and a prime staging ground for the Burning Legion?s campaign of destruction.. Most recently, it has been claimed as home by Illidan, where he and his minions make their bid for power over the remnants of the shattered planet. Now, it is up to you to face the malefic forces of Illidan and his minions in hopes of freeing Outland from chaos and tyranny.
Black Temple is a 25-person raid dungeon located in Shadowmoon Valley.
Explore an ancient site steeped in Warcraft lore Gain access to more than a hundred new rare and epic items, including tier-6 armor sets Choose your path through a nonlinear level-70 raid dungeon, as you make your way to... Face Illidan himself!