Monthly Archives: April 2009

We here at WoW Insider see every day just how many great artists are out there in the World of Warcraft community. We’ve interviewed them, we’ve written about them, and now we want to know if you’re one of them so we can give you some sweet prizes. We have in our hands four prizes from SteelSeries to award the best and most creative artists in our audience. All that you need to do to enter is make us a piece of fanart. Draw (or paint or whatever it is you do) a picture of how you imagine the WoW Insider crew would look in the World of Warcraft. One of us, two of us, many of us, whatever you like. You don’t get pictures of us to work off of, just let your imagination do as it will. Are we heroes fighting epic battles? Are we just lowly Stormwind commoners? Are we cute little beasts going on zany adventures? You have from this very moment (Noon of April 7th) until 11:59 PM Eastern on April 20th to send your submission to wowinsidercontests@gmail.com for a chance to win one of the following prizes from SteelSeries: Grand Prize: World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse First Prize: Limited Edition WotLK Zboard Second Prize: Limited Edition WotLK Zboard Keyset Third Prize: Limited Edition WotLK QcK Gaming Surface Submissions will be judged

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. With Ulduar proving to be more difficult than Naxx, raid leaders wow goldare focusing more and more on performance issues. Raids are finding out that they can’t just carry their weakest players through this ancient Titan stronghold the way they could through Kel’Thuzad’s floating magical loot pinata. One raid leader in particular has a performance issue with a bit of a twist: The problem player is the wife of one of his best raiders. I warn people that this is a long e-mail, but it is well written and the details are important to what follows. TLDR version is after the break! Hello, Scott I am an officer in my guild and a raid leader for a semi-casual raid (non-Heroic). I am facing a problem that seems perhaps not too uncommon for this type of environment, but it is one I do not know how to fix. One of the best raiders in our guild has ended up in my raid. I’m very lucky to have him as he is a great guy and fits well with our group, but unfortunately he came with a problem: his wife. Despite having no raiding experience, I agreed to let her join us in the raid. I was hesitant, but I figured that she would pick up

In a world where the battle between the Horde and the Alliance is fought out in grueling games of Capture the Flag and King of the Hill, the AFKPlayers are back with a believable and entertaining new battleground. Check out their new machinima, Major League Azeroth. This new video by the Taiwanese AFKPlayers manages to tie in both tongue-in-cheek comedy and some fun shots of the mysterious new raid instance, Ulduar. Brann Bronzebeard makes a guest appearance during the film, and ultimately is responsible for the game’s outcome. Part of what I love so much about MLA is the firm understanding AFKPlayers show about the WoW community zeitgeist. Cracks and references about King Wrynn mirror things I’ve said in my own Guild chat. When a Death Knight steps up to bat, the authors issue subtle nods to things we all think about the new class. Even without subtitles, though, “Major League Azeroth” is fun to watch. It’s got a clean, crisp animation style which makes the action easy to understand. The scenery is very well composed, and the character models are built without distracting elements. The AFKPlayers have stuck to their basic storytelling roots here, and let us enjoy their dialogue, plot, and raw comedy. Be sure to check out

So here’s the deal. We’ve been told we have more Argent Tournament content coming, that’s a given. As late as a couple days ago, Blues were telling us, for example, that we’ll definitely see more ways to earn Champion’s Seals. In short, come 3.2, it seems more than likely that we can expect the Goblins to be done building that coliseum, and the next phase of the tourney to be underway. So the question is, what exactly will we see? I can’t help but hope to see the return of the old factional armor. I’ve complained about this before, but I miss the distinctive look of many of the old faction-specific PvP armor sets, especially for plate wearers. It offered a distinct fashion and way to show off your factional loyalties if faction-based RP or Battlegrounding was your pleasure. Sure, it technically still exists in the level 60 gear, but that’s level 60, and I’m pretty sure my Death Knight can’t get a set at all. So I’m saying I want them to at least bring back the helm and shoulders, so that we can wear something distinctive that shows our factional loyalty without being near useless in an actual battle. Just because my Death Knight is an undead abomination doesn’t mean he’s not a

And now, for something completely different, check out Yumfries’s Sisqo + WoW = The Gnome song. I was tipped off to this video by Selserene, and I’m really quite glad for it. This video is a lot of fun, and it has more than a few “laugh out loud” moments. The lyrics to the song are hilarious. I think the poetry touches an inner gnome in all of us. Who hasn’t watched a Shetland Rogue get their groove on, and thought, “I like it when the gnomes go boing boing boing”? Yumfries was clearly aiming at comedy with his parody, and he did so in a light-hearted, harm-free way. I prefer wow goldparody that isn’t mocking or belittling, and Yumfries isn’t out to make fun of anyone in particular. He’s just poking fun at the whole too-seriousness in all of us. The video itself is pretty funny, too. Behold the glorious battle between Gnome and Draenei. I have it on good authority from D.E.H.T.A. that no actual stags were hurt in the filming of this video. Like the lyrics, I’m pretty sure Yumfries was just out to have a good time with his animation. It held my attention and made me giggle. The movie has a couple cut scenes with additional jokes and skits, so it’s got a little something extra for those

Ever since Wrath of the Lich King was in beta, my least favorite daily quest was The Alchemist’s Apprentice from Zul’Drak, part of Troll Patrol. I could zoom through all of the other Troll Patrol quests without any stalling or hesitation, but this one would hold me up forever with its stupid Seasoned Cider Sliders and Muddy Mire Maggots. It never kept me long enough for me to fail the Troll Patrol timer, but it kept me long enough to be an extreme annoyance. At this point I’ve memorized where all of the weird little ingredients are in Finklestein’s lab, but now that I’ve started reading Flame Shock, a Shaman blog, I realize how silly I’ve been. I don’t use a lot of mods, so I never think to look for mods for very small, very specific things like a single quest, but it turns out I really should have, just like when most everyone was using Ogri’Lazy and I was still typing “blue red red red green red yellow” in /say to myself. The blogger behind Flame Shock lists two different addons that are worth checking out for this quest: EasySerum and a much less elegantly named “Finklestein daily serum quest helper.” Flame Shock has pictures of both in action, with EasySerum listing the location of

Azeroth must have some incredibly complicated weather patterns. How else would we get the stark contrasts found between neighboring zones? Feralas, a forested land, is found between the dull deserts of Desolace and Thousand Needles. The tropical lushness of Stranglethorn Vale doesn’t seem to have spread to the neighboring fields of Westfall. And what possible justification is there for Dun Morogh, a snowy southern zone surrounded entirely by temperate plains and heat-induced blast craters? Unless it’s just nuclear fallout from Gnomeregan. Nécrótíc of <J N R V> onShadowsong has taken a picture of one of the few zone climate changes with a real explanation behind it; the beautiful jungle of Sholazar is out of place with neighboring Borean Tundra because it was used as a testing ground for the Titans. Deus ex machina? You decide. Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@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

Jeff Kaplan has said some interesting things at this year’s GDC (expect a full account from us soon). One of them concerned a new technology that debuted in Wrath of the Lich King which I, for one, had not heard of before: progressive drop rates for quest items. Pre-Wrath, if you’re on a collection quest, whatever you’re trying to collect will drop at a constant rate (35% was apparently the standard). Overall, this averages to a predictable amount of kills per quest. But probability being the way it is, it was altogether possible to have terrible luck and have to kill 100 foozles to get your four gizmos, or to have great luck and get your gizmos in only four kills. It was the bad streaks that the devs were particularly concerned about, as those are very memorable and never fun. In Wrath, according to Kaplan, drop rates for quest items are progressive – the more foozles you kill, the higher chance each one has to drop a gizmo. The standard quest item drop rate has been raised to 45%, and each kill you make raises that drop rate by some amount. Kaplan said that it can eventually reach 100%, at which point every kill would drop your item. This puts a hard cap on just how frustrating a collection quest can be. Seems like a smart idea to

As planned, Medievaldragon hosted a live chat with author Christie Golden last night, and even if you didn’t tune in, you can see the transcript right over on WorldofWar right now. It’s a very interesting read, especially if you’re into the lore of the book and these characters — Golden talks about how she built up Arthas’ life and relationships, and turned him from the Human prince he started out as into the (her word) “monster” he is today. And she mentions a few fun tidbits about her influence on the game — she created the Taretha character in the Old Hillsbrad instance, and there’s an NPC in the Plaguelands that bears a striking resemblance. There’s also something in the Balnir Farm that she suggested they put in. You’ll have to go and see for yourself what that might be. And even if you’re not interested in the book and the lore, we get another little pull on the line in reference to Gilneas — when Golden is asked what’s going on at the Greymane wall, she says that she “really can’t comment as to that.” One more little breadcrumb in the trail leading us to either the next big content patch or the next expansion. Definitely give the chat a look if

  Each week Arcane Brilliance thinks about its career as a Mage. It considers which profession to pursue, and polishes up its résumé:Previous job-titles: Sweet DPS, Table-whore, Sheep-botJob skills: Can blow stuff up good. Able to conjure 400 strudels per minute (depending on lag). Can teleport. Hates Warlocks... Now that the PTR class changes for patch 3.1 seem to have died down a bit, we can finally talk about other things. I asked last week for topic suggestions, and you guys responded in typically spectacular fashion. That’s one of the best parts about writing a column for Mages: my readership is made up of freaking Mages. I can always count on you guys to be smart and insightful…as well as complete nutjobs. Suggestions ranged from relatively normal (PvP tactics), to angry and bitter (One guy is switching his main to a Death Knight because Mages apparently suck now), to mean (I should rename the column from “Arcane Brilliance” to “QQ”), to clever (the most effective places to AoE farm, since, you know, we are the kings of AoE), to disturbing (Top 10 ways to cook and serve Warlock on a budget). Okay, so I made the last one up. Several of you thought a column on profession choices for Mages would be a good idea. So,

I’ll let our submitter tell the story of his motorized misadventure in his own words (slightly edited for prettier formatting): “G.O.S.H. means Gnomish Original Safety Handbrake. But Neknuba from <Legends of Azeroth> on Anachronos-EU (alt of Jubinibu) found inside that acronym something more. Got Often Scorched Hairs? No? You know, Gnome Occassionally Sabotages Himself. Why? Well, Glitch Oddly Stays Hidden on Gear Outta Second Hand and that means Giddiness Obviously Sometimes Happens. Gosh! Get Out’n Survive Heights!!!!” Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing  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.