The Instance Podcast

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This week on The Instance, we announce a big prize giveaway from Maphook!  Listen and participate to win!!

Big News Of The Week

Goody Sacks Are Sacks Of Good

We’re now less than two months away from the start of Blizzard’s nearly-annual blowout in Anaheim, and this week they revealed some of what attendees and purchasers of the television coverage of the event will be getting in their swagger bagger.

Everyone who attends this year’s BlizzCon or purchases the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will receive an exclusive set of murlocalyptic in-game items for World of Warcraft and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. World of Warcraft players will be joined by Deathy, a murloc companion decked out as Deathwing and doing his best to strike fear into the hearts of Azeroth’s crustacean population. You’ll also be able to display your tidal pride in StarCraft II with a Murloc Marine character portrait and a pair of deep-sea decals to emblazon on your units, each with a different terran, protoss, and zerg design.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Our Long International Nightmare Is Over

This week in a truly wonderful post, Zarhym said,

“With the release of the next beta patch, we plan to re-enable the ability for players to use third-party addons. Many of the core user interface features are now implemented in the beta test and functional, so we feel it’s a good time to open up the field for developing and testing UI modifications.”

Oh Thank Goodness

Sure, Lead Content Designer Mumper had previously said,

“note that all guild achievements start on Cataclysm launch, so anything you have now will not matter, it must be done with your guild after launch.”

But on Wednesday, responding to a question specifically about the guild achievement We Are Legendary (for constructing all the legendary items in the game), Mumper said,

“We are making a exception for this guild achievement. Any legendary items you have already earned will count.”

Sometimes, WoW Players Kick Butt In Real Life

This past week, we learned that professional mixed martial arts fighter Joe Lauzon is a World Of Warcraft player, and he even went so far as talking about the game in interviews leading up to his match with Gabe Ruediger at UFC 118 two days ago.

Rapid Fire R&S!

Coming in the imminent patch to the Cataclysm beta:

• Goblin Big-Wheel
• Dual Talent Specialization Cost Reduced to 100g
• More!

How did we miss this? Orange County Choppers Alliance and Horde bikes.

Blizzard Wants More Aussies And Kiwis In The Cataclsym Beta

There’s a Dr. Horrible stage show??

Town Cryer

Wherein we provide the best advice we can muster to you!

Drop Of The Week

Feed Your Eyes What You Fed Your Ears

We’ve tried to keep talk of our 200th episode last week to a minimum in this episode, but we just can’t hold back any more. It was so fun, and so much easier than we expected, and so gratifying. All we can do is thank you all. So what do we have for you this week? Some videos, that’s what.

Additional show content provided by Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz, James “Acuzod” Jefferies and the outstanding Instance Community.

Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and SquareSpace for sponsoring this episode.

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- The RSS Feed

The MP3 File

- The iTunes Subscription

The Zune Feed

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Big News Of The Week

Blizzard Is Flying High

With a little over two months to go until their celebration of all that is Blizzard, the makers of World Of Warcraft seem to have really hit their stride this week, with the future looking quite bright. At least, we think that’s the case. Maybe.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Saturday’s All Right For Fighting

OK, they weren’t fighting. Actually, it was just a friendly discussion. Saturday night, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street sparred with posters in the game DPS forum in a thread called “Dude, why my totem?”

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26435283536&sid=1

Rapid Fire R&S!

What more need be said? This week, we decided to hit several topics in this segment that are mostly unrelated, completely unfounded, and don’t need much discussion.

-Mini-deathwing!

-The Southern Barrens!

-Reforging is in the beta!

-The new beta patch notes are getting big. Really big. Still no addons, though.

-They’re still playing Warcraft III competitively for money!

Town Cryer

Can you decipher the mystery call of the week?

Drop Of The Week

Fight For Undercity!

This is the eleventh in our limited series, wherein we’re highlighting things for you to do in WoW that you might not ever get to do again after the Cataclysm.

We learned this week that the epic Battle Of Undercity questline so many players have yet to ever do… may be going away in Cataclysm. It appears that the mechanics of the event itself (as well as some of the lore logic) just make it impossible for Blizzard to carry it forward, so it may just disappear.

Additional show content provided by Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz, James “Acuzod” Jefferies and the outstanding Instance Community.

Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and SquareSpace for sponsoring this episode.

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- The RSS Feed

The MP3 File

- The iTunes Subscription

The Zune Feed

Tweet

The title of this post just stirs my soul.  If you’ve never encountered the form before, consider the legend that Ernest Hemingway wrote the shortest of stories thus:

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

Today we are giving away a number of keys to the WoW:Cataclysm beta to writers who submit the smartest, funniest, most moving and/or mind-bending six word short stories about WoW, The Instance, or something closely related to WoW or The Instance.  We have asked some really talented friends of the show, like Veronica Belmont, Tom Merritt, Brian Ibbott, and Len Peralta to assist in the judging.  Please post your entry as a comment in this blog.  Your entry should be exactly six words long, like this:

Actual trade in trade chat? Unlikely.

Multiple entries will disqualify the participant entirely, so take your time and think about your effort before you enter it.  Two of the best ten limericks (out of hundreds) entered in our limerick game were written by the same person.

Your entry must be an original work.  You might want to do a Google search on the phrase (in quotes) to make sure you’ve written something original.  This sort of thing – about WoW specifically – has been done on the Internet before.

You have 18 hours to submit your one entry to this contest as a comment on this post in The Instance blog.  The entries will be judged starting at 2PM EDT on Friday, August 6th.

Until the judging starts, we are not saying how many keys will be awarded to the best entries.  Let’s pull a Johnson and say it’s between 1 and 10.  Don’t be discouraged if you see a great entry already posted!  There might be another key available for yours!

Discussion here. Have fun!