The Instance #207: Deathwing is from New York

Big News Of The Week

Blizzcon All Over Your Face!!

Unless you were under a rock the last few days, you know exactly what we and everyone else are talking about right now – Blizzcon. No other individual game company has the uniform fanbase to justify something like this. It’s Blizzard’s big show, it’s the fourth year that they’ve put on Blizzcon, and this one was the biggest they’ve ever produced.

Linkage:

The fan art and movie contest winners, links to replays from the Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 tournaments, and because we know you’re going to ask if we don’t, links to all three of the winning original songs.

Song – “The Queen of Blades” by Saher Behrooznia

Song – “Requiem for Arthas” by Hao-Wei Huang

Song – “For the Swarm” by Nicholas Stephen Tomassetti

Rapid Fire Rumors And Scuttlebutt!

We have a new Worgen cinematic!

We have a new login screen!

For that matter, we haven’t talked about the new Cataclysm commercial, yet.

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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More Roleplaying for Worgen

RoleCraft this week will again take a look at the worgen in the light of roleplaying, sort of a follow up to the Roleplaying for Worgen article from a couple weeks ago.

Worgen RP, in some ways, is related to druid RP, in respects that both are shape-shifters. The one unique difference that sets them apart is the knowledge that druids know they have the ability to shape-shift, while I believe it will be absolutely possible to roleplay a worgen who has no idea that they can, too.

Let’s look at it from the view of there being three parts to roleplaying a worgen: their human form, the moment of transformation, and their beast form.
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A new Instance print available on the store!

Illustrated by Scott, this print features your two favorite hosts riding atop their very own mammoth, spreading the good podcasting word far and wide, in what looks to be Duratar. (Gotta get those low levelers while they’re still young, right?)

It comes in either a 12×18 inch or 20×30 inch high quality print, signed by the artist, and shipped anywhere in the world. To order yours, click HERE!

The Instance gets its app groove on!

Well, for you iPhone / iPod users anyway. (Working on a plan for Android as well) But if you are an iOS user, then BOOM! We have an app for you. Huge thanks goes to Nicole Spag for all her help in getting this out for us. It includes news feeds from the site, episodes you can play right in the app, twitter feeds, forum sections, and MUCH more. Great way to take The Instance with you.

Head on over to iTunes and grab the app! It’s free!

WoW RP Resources 1

Since moving RoleCraft over here from the WarCry Network, the column has picked up quite a few new readers. The fact is, it’s no small amount of work to keep an online column going for three years, as RoleCraft has, and I thank all my fellow roleplayers for their continued interest!

Sadly, looking in on other WoW RP-focused websites, I see that many of my favorites are no longer around. With the Cataclysm just over the horizon, and for the sake of both old and new readers here, I’ll link to some of the best websites that still live. These are the ones I feel are worthy of weekly and daily viewing, depending on your own degree of roleplaying.
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The Instance #206 – Shadow Word: Deathspam Is A Cooked Food

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Big News Of The Week

Cataclysm Starts At Home.

With all the finesse of a bull in a china shop, version 4.0.1 of World Of Warcraft crept into live use yesterday, bringing about changes to many of the underlying systems of the game, weighing in at more than 20 gigabytes, and giving us the beginning of the end of the World!… of Warcraft. Or at least, the beginning of a new beginning.

December 7th! It’s official!

Blizzard announced last week that the the expansion will be yours to purchase on the first Tuesday of December, ending speculation. At least, ending that sort of speculation.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

You’re A PVP God!

Right out of the gate last night, players were stunned to find how different some specs seemed to be. Today, none other than Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street posted a message entitled “Class Balance As Of Oct. 13th, 2010”, in which he stated the following:

“Please excuse the brevity. 1) We think Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution dps is too low and we will be buffing them.

2) We think mage dps is too high, especially Fire, and will be nerfing it.

3) We think Shadow priest dps is too high, but that’s largely a result of Shadow Word: Death spam, which is tough on healers. We’ll be fixing that.

4) We think Destro warlock dps is too high, but that’s largely a result of Searing Pain spam, which is tough on tanks. We’ll be fixing that.

5) As we suspected, PvP dps is just too high given that the health pools of Cataclysm haven’t kicked in yet. While competitive PvP is over for the moment, we still want the environment to feel better so we will be buffing resilience. This change might be reverted at level 85.

There will probably be more changes after another night of raiding and BGs. Many of the bug fixes we have made today will affect dps as well. Stay tuned. “

We Broke World Of Warcraft. Sorry About That.

A week ago today, Blizzard dropped a dirty bomb on WoW communities like ours with the announcement that in Cataclysm, the game just couldn’t handle very large guilds, and installing a 600-guild-member cap on guilds.

Town Cryer

Allz callz.

Drop Of The Week

You Have Alts, We Have Answers

With version 4.0.1 of WoW upon us, many players are experiencing something they’ve not dealt with in a long time. Perhaps since they loaded Wrath Of The Lich King. How to assign talent points to your spec. Or specs. For those players with a half-dozen alts, it’s daunting, to say the least.

You need links:

The WoWhead Talent Calculator

The Elitist Jerks Forums

WoWPopular.com

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.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

- The RSS Feed

The MP3 File

- The iTunes Subscription

The Zune Feed

Roleplaying for Worgen

My current favored race to roleplay is the Undead, with the elves coming in a close second. However, I have a distinct feeling they might both be knocked down a notch when I get into the worgen. Of all the races so far, the opportunity to create and get into a worgen’s mind has me more enthralled than I’ve ever been when compared to roleplaying the other WoW races. If you’re feeling the same way, or if not, please read on while I share some worgen RP concepts I have prowling around in my head.
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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Video and Art Contests


Have you heard about these? No? Well let Blizzard do the talking!

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm looms on the horizon, and with it come unimaginable calamities that will shatter the very surface of Azeroth. To prove that it’s not all doom and gloom, we’re proud to announce a couple of contests that are sure to brighten things up. If video is your weapon of choice or you’re a talented machinima artist, then our Cataclysm YouTube Video Contest might be your path to glory. If those newfangled moving pictures aren’t your thing, you can still dazzle, inform, and amuse by entering a memorable image in the Cataclysm Print Ad Contest. Good luck!

They are really excited to see what people come up with, and if I know The Instance listeners, I know one thing for sure: You guys LOVE contests! Head over to the official link here! The Youtube Video Contest. The Cataclysm Print Ad Contest.

Win A Real Tankard ‘O Terror From Taverncraft And The Instance!

To celebrate the end of another fantastic Brewfest in-game, we’re giving away two real steins from the folks at Taverncraft.

To win, all you need do is post your suggestion for a new in-game drink that you think Blizzard should add to Brewfest before the 2011 edition.  We’re going to pick the six suggestions that we think are the most characteristic, or funny, or deserving of being put into WoW next year, and from those six, a random roll will determine two winners!

Please enter your one suggestion for a new drink for Brewfest as a comment here before midnight PDT on Friday, Oct. 8, 2010.