Big News Of The Week

3.2 Goes Live On The Public Test Realms

And just look at all this new stuff! Right now as we speak, players are fighting in Isle Of Conquest on the public test realms for victories that will be… well, wiped away just before the patch goes live to the rest of us. But it looks like they’re having a lot of fun, and this week was replete with updates to our understanding of the forthcoming Call Of The Crusade:
-A new VoA boss coming – Koralon the Flame Watcher.
-There’s a new 5-man dungeon: Trial of the Champion, and it looks like it’s going to have a completely different set of bosses for the two factions.
-It basically looks like the bosses that the alliance will fight are the horde champions, and vice versa.
-There’s a new holiday in there! Pilgrim’s Bounty looks to be a Thanksgiving-style holiday, from what’s been seen in the PTR code.
-Looks like a new title – “Pilgrim” and a new pet. A turkey, of course.

If you’ve not yet seen Blizzard’s sneak peek at Crusader’s Coliseum, the new end-game raid dungeon coming in WoW 3.2, click on the link earlier in this sentence!

Video Games Live!
They’ve been putting on concerts of game music for years, and you may have had a chance to see them perform at BlizzCon in the past. Their upcoming show in Houston with the Houston Symphony on July 18 has been expanded to an all-day celebration called Gamer MusiCON 09 that will feature a separate concert of music from Blizzard Entertainment games to kick off the afternoon in addition to the regular Video Games Live! performance in the evening. The festival also includes an interactive panel and Q&A session with Blizzard Entertainment music composers and an on-stage costume contest. For more information on Gamer MusiCON 09, or to purchase tickets visit this website.

Don’t Overlook The Death Knight Q&A
As we anticipated last week, the Blizzard Community Development team is continuing with their series of articles where major designers answer questions about parts of the game. This week, Blizzard posted the Death Knight Q&A with Ghostcrawler.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

To PvP Or Not To PvP

That is the question… of The Midsummer Fire Festival. A regular controversy erupted with yearly precision again this year as players all over the world positioned themselves in wait next to the holiday fires, PvP gear equipped and finger on the trigger. But we’ve seen a fair amount of backlash against PvPing during the Fire Festival in places and ways that are specifically impossible the rest of the year.

What Else Could Proc?
We’re carrying on a discussion here that started with the news piece from our last episode about changes to the Chef’s Hat coming in 3.2. We got an e-mail from TheLittleOne on Smolderthorn that just crystallized the possibilities. TheLittleOne wrote: “I just listened to your comments regarding the Chef’s Hat which has prompted this thought. How about if the Chef’s Hat had the ability to ‘proc’?” Indeed.

Town Cryer

Halfhand from Blackrock wrote:

I play a newish lvl 80 Death Knight. I didn’t do BG’s, or much PVP at all, but worked hard to level up. As such, my gear is a bit lackluster and my stats are a bit low. My problem is I need to get into heroic raids to get better gear, but I can’t get into heroic riads because my gear is so poor. Same goes for guilds. I can’t seem to find a guild large enough to do raids that might help me get gear, because it seems all of the larger guilds want me to be geared already. I am willing to suffer noob abuse in a guild, and spend hours helping low lvl’s in the guild advance as a team player, but can’t find a guild that is, well, as GREAT as yours sounds! Any suggestions?

Drop Of The Week

A Pet Or Two For Your FigurePrint

FigurePrints took a big step toward bringing WoW completely out of your PC and on to your desk this week with the release of FigurePets – small models of non-combat pets from World Of Warcraft that you can put around the FigurePrint of your character. FigurePets™ are limited edition FigurePrints® depicting the in-game companion pets from World of Warcraft®. They are produced using the same high tech process as FigurePrints and are released in limited edition sets, three pets at a time. Once the sale period expires for a pet, that pet in that pose will never be manufactured again. This means these pets should become as rare and valuable as the rarest pets in the World of Warcraft. If you order now your account will be credited with a 10% discount on your next purchase of a regularly priced FigurePrints statue.
Series 1 Full Set $74.85 (68,85 €) Individual Price: $29.95 (27,95 €)

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, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.

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Big News Of The Week

They’re Not Changing The Game At All

Just kidding! Blizzard has announced sweeping changes, particularly to the endgame play in World Of Warcraft this week. The Big News Of The Week, however, is an unprecedented access to difficult endgame dungeons via gear, coming in patch 3.2.

• All of the instances that are currently dropping Emblems of Heroism or Valor will drop Emblems of Conquest instead after 3.2.
• The new dungeon, Crusaders’ Coliseum, will drop the new Emblem Of Triumph in both its’ 10 and 25 player versions.
• Here’s the surprise: The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.

There are tons of changes coming in 3.2, according to these preliminary patch notes.  Here are a few that caught our attention:

• The local Postal Service has grown tired of walking so far each day to collect mail and have decided to install a large number of new mailboxes to Stormwind, Undercity, Darnassus and Orgrimmar.
• Tauren now have the option of changing skin tone by visiting the barber shop.
• Chef’s Hat is now superior quality and allows the chef to cook faster.
• In Alchemy, all stackable potions now stack to 20. Praise the maker!!

Don’t Forget The Midsummer Fire Festival!

Not that it will be easy to miss – the yearly two-week long event starts on Sunday, that’s June 21st, and this year it’s an expanded event with a full plate of achievements and torch-juggling fun. Or frustration, depending on your point of view.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Are We Really Going To Get To Turn Off XP?

We spotted it in the 3.2 Patch Notes for the Public Test Realms, a change coming to the game that would allow you to pay 10 gold and disable xp gains for your character in all parts of the game. It’s a sharp turn for several types of players, as Blizzard CM Nethaera pointed out in a post on the official forums yesterday.

Town Cryer

Christopher L writes: I disagree with some of the statements you made about recount in your 149th episode of The Instance podcast. The enrage timers in Ulduar are strict, and if someone isn’t doing enough damage, they’re holding the group back and no one is going to gear up if bosses can’t be downed. Recount is a tool that can be used by the raid leader to identify players that are not yet ready for tier 8 content, and need to go back to tier 7 content to further gear up.

Sam S. writes: I am a long time listener of your show. I always here all these great things that wow has to offer at end game. Whenever I play, I can never get my character to the level cap 80. I hesitantly decided to test and try a powerleveling service. Well, to say the least, i got mega boned. The service is now 2 weeks late, (which is a total time of 3 weeks that i cant play) and blizzard has temporarily banned my account for a total of 96 hours because of this powerleveling company. I am most definantly regretting this decision. I just want to play again. Please urge others that it is not worth the power leveled character.

Drop Of The Week

Interviews Everywhere

Yesterday, the Blizzard Community Development team published two big interviews in a Q&A style – one with Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street on the mage class, and the other with WoW Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton, where they discussed the future of World of Warcraft Battlegrounds, including the upcoming epic siege-style Battleground, Isle of Conquest. This follows the first class Q&A with Ghostcrawler that we saw a couple of weeks ago. Of course, we’ve got links to them for you in our show notes, but the point here is that Blizzard is turning up the volume in bridging the gap between the developers and the rest of us.
There are way too many points and details for us to have talked about these on the show, and we expect more of them to come along soon, so check them out!

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, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.

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Big News Of The Week

Your Travel Plans Have Been Changed

Blizzard CM Zarhym surprised most of us this week with the unexpected announcement that there sill be big changes to the timing and cost of increasing your movement speed in World Of Warcraft. First, he posted the following:

In the next major content patch, we intend to adjust mount requirements to further improve the leveling experience in World of Warcraft. In addition, cast times for summoning all mounts will be reduced to 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds. The following is a breakdown of the upcoming cost and level requirement changes we are making for each riding skill.

And followed it with new waypoints for every part of the level progression. It was a lot to take in.

There was immediate uproar, as usual, and complaints everywhere from Blizzardville to the Instance forums that World Of Warcraft would be ruined, never to be playable or good again. Blizzard responded to this within a few hours with the folllowing,

The game has gotten quite a bit longer, and allowing players to get from A to B faster only very minimally decreases difficulty; more so, it decreases time spent traveling. We don’t want to discourage players from trying out the game if they have not yet, and we especially don’t want to discourage existing players from trying out new characters because the leveling process from 1-80 seems too daunting after flying around Northrend grabbing purples for a while. Whether you leveled your first character from 1-60 within a month of the game’s release when the leveling curve was less forgiving, and mounts seemed like a distant dream, or you leveled a character from 1-80 in the last month with mounts a little sooner, and experience gains a little accelerated from 1-70, no one’s game play experience and fun — the reason most people would play video games in their spare time in the first place — is at all cheapened.

But wait! There’s more! There’s going to be a New Zeppelin between Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar. Finally. And new portals to THE portal are coming. The Dark Portal, that is. They’ll be in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, leading directly to the Stair of Destiny at the Dark Portal. No more need to haul yourself out there at level 58. Just take a portal instead!

Did You Think We Were Done With News This Week?

Amidst all the excitement about mount changes, an announcement by Naethera was largely overlooked by the community: Blizzard has posted a look at the upcoming Sixth instanced battleground in World Of Warcraft, Isle Of Conquest. We’ve got just a couple of thoughts on that.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

The Realms Are All A-Twitter

It came to our attention this week that many of the most popular realms in World of Warcraft are Twittering. Twittering their status as up or down, Twittering the approximate size of their population… You can pretty much Google search any realm name on the site twitter.com, and find yours being updated. If you don’t, we’ve noticed new ones coming around regularly. The realm we’re currently playing on, Earthen Ring, is currently UP, with a population of HIGH.  John West, the guy who operates that feed, wrote us today, and he said the following

I’m already tracking the info for all US and EU realms, but the bots only post on Twitter about the realms that people have requested. A quick message to @jwest23 will get my attention and I’ll get the bots squawking about it ASAP. I’ll be putting up feeds for Argent Dawn US and Sisters of Elune US over the weekend as requested by @LouGagliardi last night.

Those Mountain Dew Battle-Bots

Are coming to a mailbox near you! The much sought-after in-game non-combat pet started arriving in-game this week.  If you’ve missed out on Mountain Dew prizes so far, just go here to get started.

Your Brewfest Mount May Be Easier

At least, that’s what we infer from a post Bornakk made on the worldofwarcraft.com forums this week. He didn’t really give us any details, but it is clear that Blizzard wants to do *something* to stave off the yearly boo-hoo-fest that Brewfest has become, with regard to players’ hopes of obtaining the often unique mounts that come with the event.

Town Cryer

Vincent E. writes:
Noticed a lot of recount hate in the past few months of shows and I would just like to stand in defense of this mod that many an end game raider would be hopelessly lost without.  The way i play my World of Warcraft consists of one rule: If I am not top DPS, there is something wrong, and I need to fix it.

Drop Of The Week

How You Doin?

We saw this posted by Lisa Poisso on WoWInsider this week, and it’s too good to not talk about. It’s a blog for gamers by gamers who care about what shape you’re in as you sit there and play World Of Warcraft and inFamous and Peggle and eat Pringles all day. You know the shape we’re talking about – it’s the shape of a fat butt. Over at ShrinkGeek.com, the geek posters are delivering a daily helping of get yourself fit for the love of all that is holy before you die at the age of 37 in a pile of dirty underwear directly to your RSS feed.

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, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and Godaddy for sponsoring this episode.

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Big News Of The Week

Ensidia Claims World First Algalon Kill

A guild on the EU Magtheridon realm that makes a point of trying to be the first in the world to take down the hardest bosses in the game has done it again. Ensidia killed Algalon, the bonus boss on 25-man Ulduar this week, and is credibly the first raiding team in the world to do so.

Blizzard Druid Skins Change Update

If you haven’t seen them, picture here and a clarification – you will be picking a single color that determines all of your form looks.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

A New Statement In The Speculation On Future Costs

Blizzard didn’t do much at E3 this year, which is no surprise to anyone who has ever heard of a little meet-up they host called BlizzCon. E3 still happened, however, and Activision found the time right to have a video game press conference on Sunday evening, the day before the usual kickoff of E3 by Microsoft. The press was joined by Activision’s Bobby Kotick and Mike Griffith, and Blizzard’s President Mike Morhaime. After an hour of talk about Modern Warfare, Blur and the Hero games (Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, etc.), they put Morhaime on center stage, and we learned some very interesting tidbits.

Have You Ever Wondered Where All That Money For Gold Is Going?

According to PRWeb, a large goldseller – that we didn’t name on the show – announced this week that they had reached an agreement with an up and coming, well, adult film actress to tattoo their URL on a certain region of her body that is, well, quite endowed. We’re not going to name the starlet, either, but you can probably find the story if you look.

Town Cryer

Jack Of Love from the Crushridge realm writes:
I’ve been playing WoW since ’05. I have recently decided to create a new character. My brother has a level 80 Hunter, and I’m looking for a class to compliment. What class bests compliments a hunter, so we can PvP & PvE together?

Lanesh of the Broadly Offensive guild on Quel’Thalas writes:
I’m starting to level up a Warlock on the Demonology path, and was wondering if you know of any recommendations of Glyphs I should look out for to compliment the chosen path, or would I be better finding Glyphs to balance areas that are not enhanced by Demonology? Is there perhaps a site which gives suggestions choosing Glyphs?

We like the WoW Glyph Calculator at WoWdb.com

Drop Of The Week

The Bosstiary

They say that curiosity killed the cat, but sometimes curiosity can pay off in gold and loot. Countless adventurers have given their lives to seek out more information on the dangers that lurk within the treacherous dungeons of Azeroth. They have set their sights on Ulduar, and have not only provided a map of this titan stronghold, but have also delved into the history of each of the bosses within, producing a quick and easy reference for each. If you’ve ever been curious as to the lore behind the faces that thwart your dreams of fame and fortune, look no further than Blizzard’s newest site addition, the Bosstiary.

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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