Monthly Archives: May 2009

Rawrshach of <Shindu Belore> on Deathwing writes, “While trying to rid New Avalon of its Scarlet Crusade taint, Rawrshach finds himself surrounded by an unusually high concentration of ghouls. Not exactly his idea of a party, but when you’re an undead cow, you kind of have to take what you can get.” Come on now, tauren make the best death knights. Where do you think the concept of tainted beef comes from? *rimshot* Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Hey, remember back in vanilla WoW when warlocks were the most powerful, feared, and complained-about-on-the-forums of all the classes? Synar of <High Solstice> on Stormrage does, and he’s ready to bring happy days back again by taking out the warlock’s main archrival class and gear competitor. However, his attack on the mage trainers at the Wizard’s Sanctum does not appear to have had the desired effect. “Sadly, his show of protest went unnoticed and the Mages went along with their business of staring blankly into their bookshelves,” he wrote. Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or

World of Warcraft was almost universally praised by critics[51] upon release, following a period of high anticipation before launch.[54] Although the game follows a similar model to others in the genre[14] and was noted for having many familiar concepts from roleplaying games,[53] the new approaches to reduce pauses between game encounters was well liked.[22] A common example was the new approach to character death; in previous MMORPGs a player would suffer a high penalty for character death, while in WoW a player would be able to recover and start playing quickly.[14] Combat was another area where “downtime” or pauses between play were reduced. By allowing all character types to recover from damage taken, players could return to combat quickly.[22] It was felt that these changes in pacing would make the genre more accessible to casual players, who would be able to play for short periods and still achieve something,[22] while still having a depth of game that would attract players at all levels of interest in the genre.[24] The concept of a “rested bonus”, or increasing the rate at which a player’s character gains experience was also welcomed as a way for players to quickly catch up with their friends[14] Questing was described

As excited as the Chinese community may be with the imminence of Wrath of the Lich King — it was on the covers of most gaming magazines in the past months — WoW players in China are going to have to wait just a bit longer for the latest expansion. According to a report, World of Warcraft China distributor The9 plan to delay the release of the expansion until March or April after initial plans to launch on February 19. The delay would be due to a “policy supervision” and it’s likely that the launch will come after the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), both of which happen on the first week of March. The report also said that the game’s fame — as well as recent bad press about Blizzard — was also to blame, subjecting it to greater scrutiny. Some rumors state that The9 is delaying the release of the game in order to speed up negotiations with Blizzard, who wish to have more control over server groups and other issues. Both companies are also reportedly in disagreement over monetary issues, although The9 denied the news. The9 President Xiaowei Chen has stated in the past that the contract would be renewed in June.

After finishing off their “For the Alliance!” achievement, Xeptor of Area 52 and his comrades just couldn’t wait to show off their new bear mounts. So they had an engineer drop a MOLL-E right there in Silvermoon and clustered around the mailbox to pick up the bears for a triumphant ride out of the city. Unfortunately for us schadenfreude fans, while they were all sorting through their mailboxes and mount tabs, a Horde revenge raid completely failed to show up and massacre them. Sometimes life has no sense of dramatic timing. EDITED TO ADD: According to a raid member, the effort was led by Monkeyfoo of <Lost Soldiers of Darkness>, as well as a collection of PUG members. The member added that Monkeyfoo and LSOD pulled off “one of the better Alliance/Area 52 bear runs that I have seen,” adding that they patiently explained strategies and even let folks who couldn’t participate in killing Thrall due to the Wrathgate chain phasing stay in for the kill. Grats, guys! 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@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a

The Daily Quest continues to provide links to great WoW-related news around the Internets. World of Ming explores why Rogues are the least represented class in Season 5 PvP and what he did to try and ear a Top 100 ranking. Blizzard blues explain why there isn’t going to be an attunement quest for Patch 3.1′s Ulduar raid instance. Keybindings for Warriors are explored on the Darraxus blog. Also, keybindings for Paladins over at Out of Mana. Can WoW save the planet? Kotaku has a piece on an environmental scientist who believes he has a plan to do just that. A Druid competing in PvP is interviewed about his thoughts on where the class stands in this season. Blessing of Kings looks at the importance of Strength for Retribution Paladins and how to balance it with other stats. The Penance Priest blog has a sure fire method to heal raid members through Kel’Thuzad’s Frost Blast.

Apparently if you want to authenticate your game tonight, you’ll be out of luck. At least for the time being. Authentication? Logging in? Who needs that? There has been some conflicting information out there. According to Bornakk, all the issues have been resolved. However, according to Billtesdes the authentication issues are being investigated. Judging by the number of you sending in tips to WoW Insider, I’d say things are definitely broken at the moment. We’ll update this post when more information is available. Update: This issue is apparently fixed.

Ensidia, the European super-guild that resulted from the merger of SK-Gaming and Nihilum last year, has just made the world first kill of the 10-man version of Algalon, Ulduar’s true final boss. Algalon is only accessible after completing every other hard mode in Ulduar, and guilds are only given 60 minutes per week of attempts on him. 25-man Algalon has not yet been killed. For details on the loot, see Ensidia’s announcement; there’s some great stuff there. Mek, from Ensidia, had this to say about the fight: “It’s a pretty intense fight but not quite as hard as Blizzard made it out to be. The 1 hour timer is the real challenge since you must do a perfect attempt within it.” Of course, I think “not quite as hard” for Ensidia is probably a pretty good challenge for the rest of us mortals. Congratulations, Ensidia!

Reader Kongzai sent us a tip this morning that the recently revealed loot cards for the next TCG expansion Fields of Honor are available for testing on the PTR. He hotfotted it down to Booty Bay and reports that it is indeed possible to sample the latest loot using the same codes as in previous PTR tests. All you need to do is enter the following when prompted by Landro: 1111 for the Path of Cenarius 2222 for the Ogre Pinata 3333 for the Magic Rooster Egg (aka El Pollo Grande) Kongzai was also able to shed a little more information on the loot itself. He reports that Path of Cenarius is the common item, coming in stacks of 100 and lasts for five minutes. The Ogre Pinata is, as I predicted, BoP and thirty minute cooldown. He comes with 5000 HP and, when destroyed, leaves a stack of gumballs in his wake which grant a buff that makes you blow bubbles. Awesome. He also told us that El Pollo Grande costs 100g which is not a bad amount for such a cool mount. This news comes mere hours after Upper Deck posted a loot card preview on their official site featuring screens and the first video of the must-have chicken mount El Pollo Grande.

We were just talking about this on the podcast last night — Turpster’s tip a week or so ago was that going for the Crusader title in the Argent Tournament actually puts you at a disadvantage, because if you keep from turning in the last Valiant quest for the achievement, you don’t lock off having the ability to do both Valiant and Champion quests together, thus, as you can see in the thread, earning an extra 36 gold a day, which adds up to 1000g a month. After you earn the ability to represent every city, you can’t do the Valiant quests any more (instead, you have to earn city reputation through the Champion’s Writ, which costs you 10g from the opposite reward). In short, right now, if you’re leveling through the AT quests, stay away from the Crusader achievement until you have all of the city reputations covered, and all the gold you want. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Bornakk says that Blizzard probably will make a change here soon to smooth everything out. But how they’ll do that isn’t quite clear — they could leave the dailies (or some form of them) open even after you get the achievement, or they could beef up the achievement reward to make up for it. Not a hard

The current Achievement system is extensive, and growing. While many seem to exist just to give you a small pat on the back, others push you into new content, silly stunts, and wacky doings. Which achievement gives you the most pride? There’s a lively discussion on the forums about the matter, and we’d like to continue it here. It seems like a simple question, but when I began pondering my answer, I wasn’t sure what to choose. I’m proud that I have completed every meta achievement leading up to What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been, so far this year. I’m not sure if that should count yet, considering there are still plenty of chances to fumble the whole thing. I believe that I will settle on Twilight Assist. Sarth with a drake or more up is definitely the hardest content currently in the game. Although we haven’t managed two or three, I belong to a small, tight-knit raiding guild that started from the ground up. None of our players are recruited from elite guilds, and we don’t have 25-man gear. Getting this achievement was an awesome feeling. So I ask again, of which achievement are you most proud, and why is that the case? Was it the most fun or challenging? Was it because of a reward or title?

The login server has announced that Blizzard is aware of some authentication server problems going around tonight. It didn’t seem very widespread when the notice first went up, but we’ve been gradually getting more reports of it as the night has gone on. Oddly, I was able to log into WoW when the notice was first posted, but I can’t anymore. I wasn’t doing anything important, so I decided to check it out and sure thing, it was time for a ride on the failboat. I’m also stuck on a loading screen while trying to test out the Iron Council on the PTR, so I’m currently riding on a Cruise Failboat. How decadent! If we get any other updates before the authentication server starts working again, we’ll be sure to keep you all posted. Edit: Welp, it works again. Go forth and play! Edit: Welp, it (mostly) works again. Go forth and play (some of you)!