Monthly Archives: May 2009

We saw Origano‘s first machinima offering back in February, when he debuted with The Achiever – Rapid Defense. The video was interesting, but plagued with some soundtrack issues. However, it looks like he took that criticism to heart and is now back with the second installment, The Achiever – The Duelist. The premise is the same. The main character (self-titled as Origano) is competing in a gameshow called the Achiever. This time, however, the Tauren protagonist has to win a duel. He starts out demanding equal opponents, and proceeds to have trouble with the arrangement. I don’t want to give the story away, but it’s a pretty nice progression of events. I think Origano is really showing promise with his story arrangements, though it could probably move at a little faster pace. Origano’s got some really good gags in here. The whole turtle lineup is pretty funny, and I love the shout out to those annoying toy trains. I think Origano’s really starting to get his legs under him, and we should watch him closely to see how he grows as an artist.

Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. This week, we examine the relationship between tank and healer. More importantly, we look at the raid saving cooldowns that can mean the difference between a boss kill and a wipe. I read a post last week on the Orly Factor. It was about communicating with healers. Now if you visit the blog, the first thing you’ll discover is that it’s a Warrior tanking blog! But Matt! Why on earth are you reading a tanking blog? Have you forsaken us? No, I have not. I’ve always been first and foremost a healer. However, this does not mean I do not pay attention to tanks. The relationship between tank and healer is a harmonious one. A tank places their lives in the arms of their healers. Healers have to pray to Elune (or whichever deity you happen to follow) that their tanks are exceptional at pissing off mobs. Two way communication between tank and healer is a must. If not cultivated or exercised properly, your team will face difficulties down the road. There is one particular topic I want to zero in

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products. In the World of Warcraft, there are three types of craftspeople: those that gather, those that enhance, and those that create gear. They are not mutually exclusive. For example, Scribes can create off-hand weaponry in addition to glyphs and wow goldJewelcrafters can prospect gems from raw materials. Gathering professions are known to be money-makers, and in addition, when asked, many players will also list the enhancement professions as well: Inscription, although it is currently suffering from a lack of demand created by the introduction of dual-specs with patch 3.1. Jewelcrafting is on the list, not because of its ability to create gear such as rings, but mainly because of the Prospecting and gems, cut or raw. Enchanting is often stated, not only because of the enchants that can be created and even auctioned, but also because of the Disenchanting ability. To balance this out, one would assume that the gear-crafting professions of Leatherworking, Tailoring and Blacksmithing must be incredibly useful, if not lucrative. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. This week, Insider Trader will be discussing the state of these professions. For a similar

We’ve had clean and easy rolling restarts on Tuesday mornings more often lately, but this week we won’t be so lucky.. The servers will be going down for maintenance at 5:00 AM PDT and are estimated to be back online at 11:00am PDT. Will servers be back up on time this week? Maybe, maybe not! We can certainly hope so. As usual, if anything unexpected unfolds throughout the maintenance period tomorrow, we’ll be here to let you know what we know, which might not be much more than you know but you never know, you know?

Spellpower maces and wands and bows are cute and all. But sometimes you just want a big sword. Name: Armageddon (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger) Type: Epic Two-hand Sword Damage/Speed: 554-831 / 3.40 (203.7 DPS) Attributes: First, just look at that thing. This is clearly a sword that, when swung in an arcward manner, brings all sorts of death and destruction. +101 Strength, and +108 Stamina, which is (definitely not the first weapon ever, but) the first weapon I’ve seen that has two triple-digit buffs. Gallery: Phat Loot Phriday Improves crit strike rating by 58, and haste rating by 100 This weapon is for anyone who wants to do melee damage (and even for you Death Knights with your crazy two-hand tanking) and can wield a giant two-hander. Warriors especially. And speaking of Warriors, the sword isn’t unique at all. So yes, if you have specced Titan’s Grip, you can dual wield two of these things at the same time. Nuts? Yes. But wait until you see a Gnome do it. How to Get It: Drops from the chest of the Four Horseman in Heroic Naxxramas. So yes, you’ll have to go to the endgame to pick this one up. But the good news is that now’s the time to do it — Naxx is being farmed more than pumpkin patches in mid-October, so

I had a really bad Battlegrounds run today. About three hours of various Battlegrounds without winning a single one. There are days like this, when I think to myself that the Alliance have it so much better. I mean, it’s a miracle on our Battlegroup when the Horde wins Alterac Valley. On the other hand, I know that in some Battlegroups, the Horde probably lord it over. I have to admit there are days when we go on long winning streaks (except in Alterac…). That said, there’s always that speck of envy. Well, in the case of myself and the Alliance, it’s less envy than it is consternation. For the longest time, my wife envied the Alliance for the Sprite Darter Hatchling, but that’s going to get straightened out soon enough. We also used to whine how the Alliance got the Winterspring Frostsabers, while the Horde never quite got the Venomhide Ravasaurs (we still might, though!). A lot of little things make us think that Blizzard favors one faction over the other. This seems to be true of other classes, as well. No matter what happens, for some reason, there’s always something that other classes have that the class you play doesn’t. I know I’ll always whine about a Death Knight’s 1 second GCD in PvP. Among

Germany is reeling from a shooting rampage committed by a 17-year-old, and as happens in many of these situations, politicians are looking for answers to why a young man would do this to his community. One of the answers they’ve found so far is videogames. While we don’t actually know if the young man played games or not (or what he played), Germany’s Minister for Social Affairs Mechthild Ross-Luttmann is calling for a few games, World of Warcraft among them, to be moved up from an age 12+ rating to an adults-only classification. The tie between the shooter and WoW is slim. But a new study over there says that 50,000 to 60,000 minors could be classified as addicted to videogames. And the combination of the two events is causing Ross-Luttman to call for stronger ratings on “addictive” games like World of Warcraft. It’s also interesting to note that in the US, the game is rated T by the ESRB, which actually calls for children 13 and up to play it, one year older than the German standard. But of course there are two conclusions here. First, every parent needs to take responsibility for what their younger children do: if these kids are addicted, parents need to step in and make sure things get straightened out. As a former

This may seem obvious considering how many changes are coming with patch 3.1, but we’ve been asked the question enough that I’m glad to finally see a confirmation on it: Yes, characters of every class will have their talent points refunded when patch 3.1 hits, Ghostcrawler says. Reading further into his comments, however, it looks like the amount of changes happening to the talent trees may not be the reason for the free respecs, but rather the result of it. The free respec actually seems to be something that was necessary when implementing Dual Specs, and they went ahead and did some extra fixing and cleaning because of that. That sort of makes sense, in the past it seems like they’ve mostly tried to target a few classes at a time rather than making heavy changes to all of them all at once. Patch 3.1 has hefty changes for every single class, and I don’t remember very many content patches that had such widespread class changes. One way or another we would all need to respec after dual specs went in, so they saw an opportunity to make some additional changes and they took it. I’m okay with that.

Tonight from 4:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. PDT / 9:30 p.m. EDT the Blizzard developers will be on the PTR facing off against players in Battlegrounds and in Arenas. The developer’s home will be Alliance on Broxigar (PvE), however the Patch 3.1.2 PTR servers are all linked together for PvP Arenas and Battlegrounds, so you’ll be able to face them no matter where you are. We’ve previously covered some of these events, and you can see results in our gallery below. There is no word if the infamous Ghostcrawler will be making an appearance. But I suggest all you disgruntled <insert your class here> show up and hope for the best. After all, he promised you a pony and you didn’t get it.