Big News Of The Week

Cataclysm Decisions Are Being Made

That’s not exactly a big secret. Of course Blizzard is working feverishly on the nuts and bolts of the forthcoming third expansion to World Of Warcraft, and regularly making decisions that will affect your entire experience, post-Cataclysm. Nonetheless, our old buddy Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street hit the forums this week to talk a little bit about what’s going on behind their usually closed doors. Specifically, he felt like talking about talents trees.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Battlecry Mosaic Unlocks A Piece Of Music

For the first time since Blizzard started their Battlecry Mosaic project as part of their epic 5th Anniversary celebration, a checkpoint in the progress of revealing the mosaic has unlocked music! It’s an original piece called Invincible, and it is really good.  Also, who was Invincible?

Dude, You’re Getting A Buff

Blizzard CM Zarhym dropped the buff bomb on us this week, with the announcement that the next minor patch is going to bring some substantial changes to your tier 10 set pieces. It’s a big post that starts like this: “We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they’re provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces. Similar items crafted or purchased with Emblems of Frost will continue to be very good and will compare favorably to all but the Heroic difficulty boss loot, so you shouldn’t despair if you recently acquired any of those.”

Still No Season 8

At least, that’s what Bornakk said this week, like this:

Information in the next minor content patch is needed to start it and the patch is not out yet.

But We Have All The Armor Sets

That’s right, Blizzard unveiled your Arena Season 8 armor set models this week. And they look… dark.

Town Cryer

William M. writes: I was wondering what you gues thought the best way to break the news to a friend that the guild he raids with is not for you. My good friend recently pulled me into his hardcore raiding guild and the pressure inside the guild is getting to me. Raiders are called names in vent, people are mocked if not specced right and it just feels stressful in general. I would like to leave the guild for a more relaxed enviornment but I dont know how to tell my friend that the people he plays with are jerks.

Drop Of The Week

Filling Those Sockets Is Easy

Yes, we’ve talked about it before, but not enough. It’s the answer to the question “how do I figure out which gem I should buy to put in these empty sockets?” The more you play WoW, the more you obtain gear that comes with holes, and WoW-Gem.com is the place to go. It’s called the WoW Gem Finder, and some players are wary of browsing to it because it sounds like a shady site. Trust us, it is simple, and elegant, and powerful. At WoW-gem.com, you just check off boxes indicating your needs, such as “I’m looking for a yellow gem that has +spell power on it” and BOOP! Your options are listed. And sortable.

Contest!

James Whitehead is back with his second edition of World Of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Addons, and it’s got a really cool cover. The cover art on this huge tome was created by our very own Scott Johnson! We’ve got one of these to give away, Scott is going to sign it before shipping it to our winner.  Listen to win!

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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Big News Of The Week

Blood Queen Lana’thel Is Kind Of Spiky

The fabled third wing of Icecrown Citadel – called The Crimson Hall – opened for business this week, bringing the current in-game story back around to focus on the San’layn, those crazy vampire blood elves we’ve been taking out all over Northrend for over a year now, with a culminating encounter with their Queen.  She’s got wings!

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

The Developer Chat Delivered

Just after we recorded the last episode of The Instance, Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack and Greg Street answered a bunch of your questions on Twitter. This was the 2nd gathering of such things by them on Twitter, and has been called by many a WoW-blogger far superior to the first…

-Q. If damage and healing is too much per health ratio, then why don’t you have battlegrounds/arenas give a -30% damage/healing debuff?
A. We have been talking about solutions like that. It might feel a bit awkward, but it might also solve the problem and maybe it’s okay in the last season before an expansion to experiment a little bit.

-Q. When we reach level 58 in Cataclysm on Azeroth do we need to go to Outlands or can we continue leveling in Azeroth?
A. You eventually need to do the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content. Azeroth will have a break in content between 60 and 80.

-Q. For those of us who collect tabards and armor sets, do you see a way for us to store and not use our very limited inventory?
A. Yes. We’d like to store them the same way you do titles. In general, we don’t want to punish the packrats out there who just like to collect stuff.

-Q. What will Cataclysm have to offer for solo players?
A. Cataclysm has a ton of new quests both in the new zones and in old familiar areas. There will be just a ton to do. Also if you’re a completionist casual type, one word: Archaeology.

-Q. Can we expect a Canadian style pet for the Olympics this year?
A. I will put in a request today for an epic moose mount, not sure if it will make it in though.

-Q. What’s up with the pineapple wallpaper in Gadgetzan?
A. You will soon see in Cataclysm that goblins have a somewhat inscrutable sense of taste. They also like tropical drinks.

Town Cryer

Meroluk the troll hunter from the Cenarion Circle realm writes: The new LFG tool came at an almost perfect time for me seeing as your first random of the day rewards you with 2 emblems of triumph. By the time I make 80 I should have a small stash saved and was wondering what pieces should be my first purchases with the emblems to get me ready for entry level raiding?

Grandpa of the Anvilmar server and of the Deep Threat guild writes: I was wondering what your views on names were. Do you think names should always be serious or are funny names fine too.

Aesliip of Anvilmar writes: I am greatly interested in the lore of warcraft, and being a writer and a lover of good stories, I am wondering if there any good fan fiction sites out there that I can check out and participate in.

Check these out!

Warcraft stories at Fan Fiction.net
WoWWiki’s list of WoW stories
Even more over at GamerTales

Drop Of The Week

You Aren’t Ignoring People Enough

But it’s not your fault. You’re hindered a bit by limitations in-game on how many people you can ignore, and the LFG tool has introduced you to a whole new world of outlaws that you’d like to never meet again. What to do? The answer is Infinite Ignore.

And a big tip of our hat to J. Davidson, who clued us in to the wonders of Infinite Ignore this week.

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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Big News Of The Week

Class Balance Concerns Are Back With A Vengence

Remember those heady days of controversy in WoW, way back in 2005 when warlocks could single-handedly take out entire parties of other players in PvP, and feral druids and paladins were laughed out of town? Well, a sense of nostalgia for class imbalance controversy has overtaken the entire World of Warcraft recently, and this last week saw an eruption in unusually high volume to the shouting. What’s all the shouting about?

Here’s the pre-nerf/buff chart of DPS ranges we discussed in this segment:

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Blizzard Returns With Dev Twitter Chat Part 2: The Reckoning

J. Allen Brack and Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street face the World of Warcraft again this evening on Twitter. Since we’re recording a few hours before their public chat – it’s happening today, Friday, January 15, at 5:00 p.m. PST – we could only speculate.  Here is a link to the archived chat.

Mandatory Authentication Feels Kinda Funny

Nick Kolan over at IGN ran an article last week that began with this quote:

Rumors spread on Friday of Blizzard Entertainment’s plans to make their authenticators mandatory, in an apparent attempt to stem the plague of compromised accounts that have Blizzard’s customer service backlogged for days. As of yet there has been no confirmation of the legitimacy of these rumors, but if true, it may prove to be a larger hurdle than most people think.”

The rumor was indeed widespread, and talk of mandatory multi-factor security for WoW was all the rage over this past weekend.

Town Cryer

Links to Everyquest and Lightheaded mods here.

Lau D. writes:

Just wondering your take on this. I am in a great guild and I love it. I do not use add-ons because I don’t want to deal with the risk of using them or the unpleasantness that can result from trying to get an issue resolved with the game because an Add on messed something up. I don’t think there is anything wrong with playing the game as it was made, but it has come up in my guild that some members feel that certain mods and ventrillo should be a requirement for raiding. While I love vent and I understand why people would want mods, I don’t feel this should be the case. It seems wrong to me to require ppl to use add ons. It should be a personal choice, they are suppliments to the game, not part of it. How do you guys feel about this? I know you use a ton so I thought it would be interesting to know.

Drop Of The Week

Poseurs In The Armory!

Blizzard updated the WoW Armory this week with some features that you may want to look into. Specifically, there is now an interactive 3D model viewer built into the WoW Armory. You can see any character in the gear he or she was wearing at logout, complete with correct face, hairstyle and colorings, and get this – you can pose your own character however you like for others to see. The new features include the ability to cycle through animations for your character and see her doing what she does in game, and thoughtfully includes embed code so you can take your character elsewhere on the web!

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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Big News Of The Week

Game Of The Decade

That’s right, the voters and editors of Gamasutra ran down the top 12 games of the decade that just ended with a surprising, or not really all that surprising result – World of Warcraft was the #1 game of the decade. They quoted Mario Garcia from Mercury Steam, who said

Reasons? Effectiveness of his design, huge infrastructure, big money spent, number of players, net hours of play, mixed demographics, social influence. Also, for me raised serious questions about the responsibility of developers in how his games affect people’s life and the ethics of using game design technics to keep players spending time in the game. I feel this is going to be a big deal in the coming decades.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Arena Season 7 To End January 19

Finally. According to our most favorite-named Blizzard community manager Bornakk,

We are currently planning to end Arena Season 7 as early as January 19. At that point we will go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It’s very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific titles and/or Relentless Gladiator’s Frostwyrm to refrain from transferring their character to another realm until after Arena Season 7 ends. The following Arena Season will not begin for at least one week after the current season ends. During this time between seasons, all rated matches will be turned off and only skirmishes will be available. When Arena Season 8 begins, all team ratings, personal rating, and arena points will be wiped, but matchmaking rating and honor points will remain.

Throwing Money At The Oculus Problem

And there is, indeed, an Oculus problem. Blizzard community manager Zarhym admitted as much before maintenance this week, saying:

To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option. In light of this change, the Reins of the Azure Drake will now have a chance of dropping in both 10- and 25-player versions of The Eye of Eternity.

Town Cryer

Sylem writes: I am still leveling my character but i realize on your show you often talk about downloadable content for wow that changes the interface among other things to help you play the game. I have none of these things and i wonder if i need them to fully enjoy the game? If so, which ones are vital.

Addons For Dummies here.

Simon B. asked: I recently heard something about a fourth boss in VoA which i really just dissmissed until i looked into my Wintergrasp achievements and found a achevement for this fourth boss i was wondering why i havent seen anything about this from blizzard.

Answer here, sort of.

Drop Of The Week

They Actually Gave Prizes For Food!

Blizzard announced the winners of their Holiday Cooking Contest on Dec. 23, so you might have missed it, especially if your wife was going into labor at about that time. The winner was “Horde Night Before Winter Veil” by Curt Rapala from Northlake, IL.  It consisted of 100% edible, half chocolate/half yellow sheet cake frosted and covered in fondant blanket, Figurines and decorations sculpted in gum paste and fondant, Headboard and bedposts in gingerbread and candy cane, and a Tree made of frosted rice cereal treats decorated with candy. But that doesn’t spoil the page that we’ve got linked for you in the show notes. Blizzard posted the other nine of their 10 finalists with pictures and descriptions.

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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