For this episode of The Instance, we’re joined by CNet’s Tom Merritt. You can find all of Tom’s webexploits at his website here.

Big News Of The Week

Surprise! It’s The Argent Tournament!

Blizzard waited until right before the 3.1 public test realms went live this week to drop a big announcement on us – the next patch will not only contain new raids, nerfs, buffs, new quests, dual-specs and A NEW CAR!!!… just kidding about that last one… 3.1 will not only be a big content patch, but it’s also coming with a one-time event to top all. We hope. That is, if you have a character above, say, level 77. It’s The Argent Tournament, and we’ve got a first look what this in-game event has in store.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Blizzard Announces Sim-Theme Park Game

Err, contest. It’s a contest! Nethaera announced it on the official forums a couple of days ago, and her post went like this: “What would you do if you could design the Blizzard Entertainment theme park of your dreams? Here’s your chance to show us! We’re inviting you to illustrate your own original Blizzard Entertainment theme park, complete with rides and attractions based on the Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft universes. The most creative and fantastic designs will receive prizes including StarCraft II beta keys, a chance to have their entry displayed at BlizzCon 2009, and more.” For more information, head to the contest page or read the official rules.

How To Get The Armored Murloc

Last week on The Instance, we talked about the start of the 2009 open Arena Tournament, and mentioned that one thing that got everyone listening – loot. On Tuesday, Blizzard CM Aratil made a post in the WoW forums clarifying several points about the Arena tournament. Simply put, folks, you should be participating in PvP madness.

We Said We Were Going To Talk About It

We’ve gotten quite a few follow-up inquiries from listeners about our promise to discuss the WoWMatrix controversy. Many of them have been bitter complaints from small-ish mod writers who feel that WoWMatrix is a great killjoy in the WoW modding community. Many have been odes to joy from WoWMatrix users who couldn’t imagine playing without the utility. Do we have a solution? Maybe.

Town Cryer

Matt C. writes:

I am a level 48 Hunter from the Nazgrel server, and I am wondering how can i know whether I’m doing good DPS or not.

Drop Of The Week

A Heaping Of DPS On Your Plate

It’s the DPS Plate blog, and it caught our eye when Scott was looking for some opinion on the Recount mod.  The post of interest is called “Ten Commandments for All DPS“, and it’s very useful.

Additional show content provided by Mean Gene, Patrick from France, Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz and the outstanding Instance Community.

Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.

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- The iTunes Subscription

Big News Of The Week

Jeff Kaplan Is Movin’ On Up

Already in the big leagues, Blizzard announced that former World Of Warcraft Game Director Jeff Kaplan has been promoted to lead the team that is developing the secret “next-gen MMO” that Blizzard has been talking about not talking about for the last year and a half. The announcement came, surprisingly, as a post in the World Of Warcraft forums from Tigole himself.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Love Is Sort Of Up In The Air

As we record, the Love Is In The Air event just finished a few hours ago in World Of Warcraft, and players have just finished, or failed to finish, all of the new achievements that make up the Fool For Love meta-achievement, and earn the “The Love Fool” title. This is the first Holiday Event in WoW that has caused abject complaining and downright unhappiness in player communities.

More Info On Two Spec Mechanics Coming, Eventually

The community face of Blizzard, Naethera, posted an interview she did with Ghostcrawler, AKA Blizzard Senior Designer Greg Street a couple of days ago, on the subject of two-speccing coming to WoW. We’ve got a link to the entire article in the show notes, but there were a few highlights that we just have to touch on here.

Murloc Hides Are About To Get Thicker

The 2009 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is nearly here. Starting tomorrow (February 17, 2009), players will be able to sign up to compete in this year’s exciting competition. The tournament will feature an online qualifier played on our special tournament realms. Top teams will proceed to their respective regional finals and compete for a chance to reach the global world championship – with cash prizes totaling over $200,000.
These realms have been outfitted with level 80 character templates and the latest epic gear from Wrath of the Lich King. As an added bonus, there are exclusive rewards that players can earn by participating in the tournament, including an Armored Murloc in-game pet. Top teams will also contend for a chance to achieve the “Vanquisher” title for their live characters.

Town Cryer

Matt A. writes:
Hey Scott and Randy was wondering if there was anyway I could be on the show with you guys sometime and just talk warcraft.

Ryan P. writes:
If you could live in any one zone in WOW which would it be? As for me it was The Highlands for a long time but after BC I would have to say Nagrand would be it. I love the rolling hills and green grass.

Jason W. writes:
I am a little concerned about the “macro of the week” given on this podcast. Was it a joke and it gets you just to beg for gold or is it an actual macro to get gold in some “secret” fashion?
If it is truly a way to get gold, will it get you banned if you use it?

Drop Of The Week

Those Wildstorm Wallpapers

Blizzard posted the tenth Wallpaper image from Wildstorm this week – and it’s now a long enough series of imagery for your desktop or screensaver that we have to insist that you go have a look. The series of images are more than an advertisement for the WoW monthly comic book, they’re a showcase of the art that Wildstorm has been putting on that series’ covers for the last few months. Between December and January, the series went from cover art by Samwise Didier and Ludo Lullabi to work that is now being done by Jon Buran and Tony Washington, and it’s a change in style, but not a dropoff in quality.

Additional show content provided by Mean Gene, Patrick from France, Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz and the outstanding Instance Community.

Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.

- The RSS Feed
- The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription

This week, The Instance is finally joined by our friend Scott Kurtz. You can find Scott Kurtz’s PVP Online webcomic here, his Twitter feed here, and a picture of a duck here.

Big News Of The Week

The Lunar Festival Comes But Once A Year

Every year, the druids of Moonglade hold a celebration of their city’s great triumph over an ancient evil. During the Lunar Festival, citizens of Azeroth have the opportunity to honor their elders, share magnificent feasts, dress up in beautiful garments – and for the first time, earn achievements specifically created for the holiday. This event began on Saturday, January 24, and lasts long enough for us to pick it apart.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Warhammer To Come Out With Live Expansion

According to an interview Massively.com has with Mythic executive producer Jeff Hickman, Warhammer Online will receive a series of patches over the next few months that they don’t want to call “patches”, per se. Hickman would like to call them a “live expansion”. In the hopes of distancing themselves from all the online games out there that “patch” their product, Mythic has once again blatantly branded something mundane as though it is truly original.

Guess Who’s Coming To DPS…er?

Blizzard CM Ghostcrawler has been omnipresent on the official forums lately, and his latest post as we start to record is a good one. “As far as melee dps goes, we think rogues, cats and Arms warriors are all a little low. We haven’t announced specific changes yet but they are coming.”

First WoW Came For All Your Free Time

Now WoW is coming for your soul. A University of Colorado grad student named Theo Zijderveld decided to make it his master’s thesis that…well, let’s just let Theo speak for himself. “World Of Warcraft can be so absorbing that the physical becomes unimportant.” Zijderveld touched of a storm of discussion this week with his “Cyberpilgrims” paper, subtitled “The Construction Of Spiritual Identity In Cyberspace”. It’s 72 pages long, and focuses on World Of Warcraft, among other games, to make the case that our religion is, well, going to Azeroth.

Town Cryer

All calls this week. Next week, dozens of e-mails. Dozens, I tell you!

Drop Of The Week

Another Dimension Coming To The Armory

3DArmory.com hit the scene this week with a slick flash-based rendering of your character, WoW Armory style. This site says it’s in beta, but they could also safely call it alpha, but that doesn’t matter! They’re on Facebook, so you can take the 3D model of your character with her current gear right into Facebook, and more.

Additional show content provided by Mean Gene, Patrick from France, Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz and the outstanding Instance Community.

Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.

- The RSS Feed
- The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription