The Instance Podcast

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Tokyo knows how to throw an AIE meetup!

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Scott

These guys know how to rock the joint, and they definitely know who to Obey and when. Looks like a blast! Wish we could have all been there! Check out all the pics here. (Thanks Derek!)

Role-playing Brewfest

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Jim Moreno

It’s that fantastic time of the year again, when drunken revelry abounds throughout the World of Warcraft with Brewfest, the annual celebration and consumption of all things fermented. Brewfest offers some unique and fun role-playing occasions for those who so choose, and can give role-playing characters with serious story lines a chance to cut loose and relax for a time. Read on for some basic tips on role-playing through Brewfest!
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The Instance #203 – We Named The Dwarf Indiana

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Randydeluxe

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Big News Of The Week

Get Your Money For Nothing, Almost

This week, Community Manager Bashiok dropped a piece of news on us about what Blizzard intends to do with currency in World Of Warcraft. It sounds fully thought-out, so we’re going to go with the notion that Blizzard intends to put these changes in place as stated. And here is what he stated:

“Emblems of Triumph and Emblems of Frost will be converted into Justice Points. All PvE emblems and badges below Frost and Triumph will be converted into gold. This even includes legacy badges, like Badges of Justice. (Then,) any bosses a player defeats that are level-appropriate to them will award them with the new Justice Points. Similarly, any items that previously cost emblems or badges of any type will now cost Justice Points instead. “

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Dig Deeper! Deeper!

Blizzard decided it was high time to lay out every bit of explanation they could come up with on the subject of the forthcoming profession called Archaeology. In a massive post, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street said,

“It has been informative to watch players learn to swim by drowning, but we thought it was time to offer a little more direction.”

Rapid Fire Rumors And Scuttlebutt!

AQ20 will henceforth be a 10-man raid.
The next patches have been clarified: The world will not be changing in patch 4.0.1. World changes will be in patch 4.0.3 shortly before Cataclysm launch.
The expansion itself will then provide players with access to the new races, new zones, level 85 cap, flight in Azeroth, Archaeology, etc.
Honor titles are back! Finally!!

Town Cryer

Squirrel Rampage on Argent Dawn writes: With the new guild achievements would it be a good idea to look for a PvP guild now or should I wait till the release?

Drop Of The Week

Hit The Start Button!

Yes, this is the thirteenth special drop of the week – wherein we are highlighting things you can do in WoW before Cataclysm, that you might not get to do after Azeroth is torn asunder.

This week’s suggestion to all of you WoW players out there might come as a bit of a surprise. The good news is, it is something everyone who subscribes to the game can do, right now. Simply put, make a list of every race in the game. Now cross off the ones that you clearly recall having leveled from 1 to 20. Now, go level up characters for those other races!

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

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

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RoleCraft Joins FrogPants Studios, Returns to WoW RP!

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Jim Moreno

Greetings, roleplayers!

RoleCraft is making yet another new start today, with two announcements. One, RoleCraft is now another obedient slave to Scott Johnson’s web enterprise. Yes, RoleCraft has joined the FrogPants Studios network! Second, RoleCraft will be returning to where it began, refocusing the roleplaying content to the World of Warcraft.

Since 2007, RoleCraft has been graciously published at The WarCry Network. Over the course of this year, I’ve been closely watching what my long time web friend Scott has been doing at and with FrogPants, and I felt it offered a more suitable home for RoleCraft to grow and strengthen its’ outreach and influence to roleplayers. I petitioned Scott to see if he would be interested in hosting the column, he agreed, and here we are. Da Wichdocta be tankin’ ya, Gerp mon!

It’s an exciting time in WoW right now, with the impending Cataclysm approaching. Next to the initial release of WoW, this is perhaps the greatest RP event to happen, and RoleCraft is here to help WoW roleplayers craft the best RP experiences they can in game.

So, if you fancy yourself a roleplayer in WoW, or if you are interested in learning more about it, then tune in here on Mondays for weekly tips and tricks and tools of the RP trade. You may also follow RoleCraft on Twitter, and by joining the RoleCraft Facebook Group. Feel free to email your own thoughts and ideas about WoW roleplaying to RoleCraft at gmail dot com, or simply here in the Comments section.

I’m really looking forward to serving my fellow WoW roleplayers specifically once again, including my AIE guildmates (holla!). To the regular readers of the RoleCraft column, thank you for sticking with it. I aim to continue sharing with you fresh RP ideas, as you all share with me the same. To the new readers, I hope you find RoleCraft a welcome addition to your WoW roleplaying repertoire, and share the column with all your roleplaying friends in game.

Until next week, role on!

The Instance #202 – Your Dog Thinks You Taste Like Twitter

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Randydeluxe

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Big News Of The Week

The Doldrums Are Neither Dole, Nor Drums

As we’ve seen with every expansion to World Of Warcraft, going back four years to the days before The Burning Crusade was released, player interest in the game has been diminishing noticeably in the weeks and months of anticipation of a completely new game and a different paradigm for play. Simply put, WoW suffers a lame duck time when the majority of players feel that they either have nothing new and grand to accomplish in the game, or feel that what’s coming with the expansion makes anything they might do in the game today valueless.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Please Keep Your Complaints To 140 Characters Or Less

Blizzard has a Customer Service Twitter feed now!

Matthew C. writes: After a recent server change and a 100 point latency difference I went to wowwiki and learned the data center locations had all moved in the last 2 months. Assumably during the 24 maint periods.

Rapid Fire R&S!

Signups for the Blizzcon contests are now ongoing.

Town Cryer

Jay writes: 2 days ago, I won a Cataclysm beta key. I installed (now twice), patched and everything looked good, but when I tried to log in, I got the “Cannot Connect, Try Again Later” message. I can’t post on the forum because I never got to make a beta character. What I’m wondering is if you have to have an active WoW account in order to log into the beta even if you win a key.

Drop Of The Week

Get Your Number 2 On!

Believe it or not, this is the twelfth special drop of the week – wherein we are highlighting things you can do in WoW before Cataclysm, that you might not get to do after Azeroth is torn asunder.

The so-called Dungeon Set of gear was also referred to as Tier Zero back in the day, and it was special because it was a full set of epics that you could obtain without having to take down 40-man bosses. If this is news to you, you might be surprised to learn that it can be upgraded!

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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Blizzard Wants More Aussies And Kiwis In The Cataclsym Beta

“Obey Henry” plushy on auction for charity!

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Scott

Created by Amy Pineault, by hand, this one of a kind Obey Henry Plushy is now up on eBay. All proceeds from the final auction price will go to help the Women’s Homeless Shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Some of you might remember an auction held last year that benefited the same organization. The nice thing about this piece is Amy has signed it as well! It’s incredibly well made, and really nails the feel of Gerp’s favorite pet in WoW. Head on over and bid today!

iTunes And The Instance

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Randydeluxe

Today, The Instance cracked the overall top 100 audio podcasts in iTunes again. That’s so nice, and we feel very fortunate to have the best audience in the world! Thank you so much for your support.

We’ve gotten several messages over the last day asking us how to follow along with our exploration of iTunes new Ping service. The answer simple: Scott is here, and Randy is here. At this time, we’re trying out different privacy settings, so please don’t be surprised if one or both of us are not in the same state of privacy in the near future.

Did you know that we’re looking for interesting 5-star reviews from listeners in non-US iTunes stores? Let’s take that to the next level, and give away some keys to the WoW:Cataclysm beta!! On The Instance #202, we’re going to to give shoutouts to 5-star reviewers from stores outside the US store. To win a beta key, send a screenshot of a fun or interesting 5-star review that you’ve seen recently in your non-US iTunes Instance page. E-mail that screenshot to theinstance@gmail.com. We’ll give a beta key to the submitters of the shots we refer to on The Instance #202. You have about three days.

Have fun!

The Instance #201 – Mixed Martial Sippy Cup Parasailin’

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Randydeluxe

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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.

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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