Monthly Archives: July 2009

Rage is a problematic mechanic, and has been since its implementation. It can be a lot of fun, but it can also be frustrating, and it contributes to Warriors’ gear dependance. Blizzard is probably working on a way to redo rage entirely, but in the mean time, I’d like to highlight this suggestion for a rage revamp from Alveredus, a commenter on a recent post of mine. Here’s a quick rundown of Alveredus’s proposal: Rage increases over time by itself. The more rage you have, the lower your attack speed, but the higher your crit chance. When your rage is at maximum, you start losing resilience. Your abilities vent rage instead of costing rage – same thing really, but a different way of looking at it. I’m not certain about the specifics of it, but I like the general idea of rage being something you want to get rid of instead of something you want to spend. It makes sense: being in combat makes you angry; when angry, you may be less accurate, more vulnerable, or generally imbalanced. On the other hand, a system like this runs the risk of feeling like Rogue energy with a penalty. Rogues get their resource back at a constant rate and use it on abilities, but nothing bad happens to them when they cap their energy (aside from

We’re in the dog days of summer at this point — the sun is high and hot, the beaches and swimming pools are full, and if you’re a kid, the days are long and lazy. Which is probably why we’ve got all the kids in game lately — as donnyman notes, when school lets out and summer is underway, the population of Azeroth seems to get much bigger during the day. Some might say that’s a good thing: more people playing means more PuGs and more AH buying and selling, while others might say they don’t really want more of the younger audience in the game. I haven’t had too much experience with this lately, as most of my gametime is in the evenings and on weekends, so I already see most of the school folks as I play. But I do remember the yearly migration of kids to video games — I worked at Gamestop for about a year and a half after college, and sure enough, whenever school let out, we had more kids in the store talking about how they’d spent all day yesterday playing online. So is it a problem for you, or have you even noticed the influx of summer visitors at all? We have to be careful not to generalize here, as while some younger folks can cause issues (either by acting like kids, or just by filling up the

Sometimes, you come across something really special. I definitely think I’m MT Act I by Gforce resoundingly qualifies. The author apologizes on his WarcraftMovies.com page for a poor translation, but I had absolutely no problem with it at all. The subtitles sometimes were a little tough to read, but I’m not sure how much I needed the them in the first place. The video’s about ten minutes long, and I don’t feel like any of the time was wasted. The characterizations of the Horde races were brilliantly executed, and each class is distinct and well-represented in the eyes of a knowledgeable WoW player. (This actually leads to the only translation error I really noticed, since the subtitles call the Shaman a Druid.) The action is clean and simple. And, while I know I lose Man Points for saying this, it was absolutely adorable. The whole darn thing made me smile, and I was totally thrilled to see another take on World of Warcraft animation. Check it out and enjoy. I’m definitely curious to know your thoughts.

When talking to Editor-in-Chief Liz Harper this morning, I noticed something. A few of us here at WoW.com have sort of forgotten the P in WRUP. It’s supposed to be What Are You Playing, not What Are You Doing In Real Life (WRUDIRL). Reading through this week’s WRUP entries, I’m pretty sure Lesley isn’t buying a camera in Stormwind, Lisa isn’t vacationing in Nagrand, and I’m almost positive Matt Rossi isn’t visiting a botanical garden in WoW. It’s certainly possible, but unlikely. Honestly, it’s probably more interesting this way. So what are we doing? Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Working my Rogue to 70. Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): When I’m not trying to get things done around here? Gearing up my Alliance Death Knight while I can still use my Alliance resources, because I’ll be transforming him into a Horde character as soon as that becomes available. He’ll probably become a Blood Elf simply because Blizzard won’t let Trolls wear shoes. When I’m not doing that, I’ll probably try to spend some quality time with my personal blog. Chase Christian (@madsushi): My guild’s first Yogg-Saron attempts are this weekend, and he will die! Or whatever a God of Death does when

Good morning Europe. While many of you are stuck waiting for a large number of realms to finish a lengthy period of extended maintenance, it seems like the rest of us are going to have to wait a little bit longer to get back into Azeroth. Blizzard has announced that, as well as selected realms getting extended maintenance until 3:00pm CEST, all the non-affected realms will continue to be offline until 1:00pm CEST. These realms were originally supposed to go back online around 11:00am CEST. We’ll keep you up to date on more developments as they happen. Update: Blizzard have announced that the following realms will continue to be offline for maintenance until 5:00pm CEST: Auchindoun, Ghostlands, Hellfire, Karazhan, Nagrand, Shattered Halls, Sporeggar, The Sha’tar.

We’ve started getting a few emails regarding the authentication servers. Apparently there are issues again tonight! None of us on staff were actually running into any trouble, so we assumed it was just an anomaly until we saw this thread. From reading through it, it appears that the reason none of us on staff had problems was because we had all converted to Battle.net accounts, and this time around only those that haven’t converted are running into problems. Fancy that! Blizzard is aware of the problem, and seem to be actively investigating it. Keep an eye on the linked thread for updates, and if you want a quick fix to get on and play the game tonight… just convert to Battle.net and you’ll be on in no time. And for the record, when you write in about server outages? If we haven’t posted about something yet, it doesn’t help you to accuse us of being paid off by Blizzard. We can dream of a bright future where Blizzard showers us with money, but no, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s much more likely that we just don’t know.

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic. What’s with the curlicue dragon graphic wrapped around the portrait of that mob? Aren’t they usually gold? This one’s silver. Hmmm … And whoa, why does that Gnoll over there have a name? He’s got one of those gold dragon things, too. Do you think — CRUNCH! Special names, special graphics … Special attacks, special ZOMGWTFBBQ levels of health … It’s unobtrusive little details like these that might, just might, have something to do with the fact that you just got epicly pwned. Make no mistake: these are special mobs, the elites, nameds and rares of Azeroth and beyond. WoW Rookie would never allow you to wander about the wilderness unaware of the dangers that lurk. Let’s go over a few signs that suggest you may want to look before you leap. Named mobs Named mobs are just that: monsters that have names. Most of them play key roles in quests, and their names serve no more than to alert you that this is who you’ve been searching for. Others, though, may be rare or elite mobs that will clean your clock if you attack them before you’re

Note to all you Americanos out there — be careful with your Independence Day fireworks! Otherwise you’ll end up like Bilirubin of Daggerspine, disintegrated so thoroughly that the only thing left behind is your confused, jawless spirit, wondering what on earth just happened. Either that or you’ll survive to explain to me and the other EMTs why you thought it was a good idea to operate a homemade mortar launcher after drinking a twelve-pack of Coors Light. The disintegrating-into-dust option would probably be more pleasant. 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

This morning’s EU loot card giveaway had over 1500 entries! Not bad for the hottest day of the year and midweek! I’m quite impressed and there were some pretty funny comments in there as well. A lot of people want the giant, er, male rooster. Well we /rolled and came up with three lucky winners who will be receiving an email shortly. You might want to check out Turpster’s informative video post from this last night which walks you through how redeem loot cards as well as gratuiteous scenes of a giant chicken being ridden by a gnome. Definitely NSFW. So, without further a do, /drumroll. The lucky winners are: Max is the proud owner of the must-have chicken mount El Pollo Grande Chickyhines can now bash the Ogre Pinata to his heart’s content Maephisto has bagged the groovy Path of Cenarius Congratulations to all and thanks once again to Tom at Upper Deck International’s UK office.