The Cataclysm has destroyed much of the face of Azeroth, but for us roleplayers, it’s seen as more of a blessing in disguise. The old lands and many of the ways we can roleplay in them have been renewed. Beyond that, the Cataclysm also brought us a new area to explore; Vashj’ir, a region almost entirely underwater. Let’s dive in and ponder the roleplaying that can be found and made here! Continue reading
Monthly Archives: January 2011
The Instance #216 – Beard Balancing
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Big News Of The Week
- You’re still talking about Ghostcrawler’s essay on heroics from 19 days ago. That’s right, it’s been almost three weeks since he posted it.
- You’re talking about Archaeology and random number generator.
- You’re *still* talking about goblins and worgen, and which you like more, and why you dislike one or the other.
- And more.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
Archaeology Might Make You Some Money
In the forthcoming patch 4.0.6, it looks like Blizzard is increasing the vendor sale value of pretty much everything you create with Archaeology. In some cases, we’re hearing about value increases of 20 times the current, and in some cases, up to 80 or 100 times current values!
The Tol Barad Tidbits Keep On Comin’
Blizzard added something very interesting to the latest patch notes on this forthcoming bundle of joy. Specifically, attacking forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control 2 keeps, and defending forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control all 3 keeps. Double rainbow all the way across the sky! What does this mean?
Rapidfire Rumors and Scuttlebutt
Blizzard opened the “Raid and Guild Leadership” forum yesterday.
Blizzard is giving away two iPads every month in 2011.
Check out the art gallery: In particular, dig into that painting of Kil’Jaeden. It’s huge!
Town Cryer
Kiplen from the Altar of Storms realm writes: I am just recently returned to Warcraft after a hiatus of a year and a half. I had a lvl 55 dwarf hunter before and never got a chance to experience any endgame raiding or anything. My question is about macro’s. What are they and how can you create them without any real understanding of programming?
Drop Of The Week
Tanks For Dummies
What to do when you’re prepared to tank, and don’t know how to get started? We’ve gotten loads of e-mails the last couple of weeks like the following one: Sorlin said “I’ve done my research and now the only thing I have left to do is customize my UI. What mods should I get, what websites should I visit or what general things (like a threat bar) should I have to make me a better Tank.”
- -First of all, we want to address the tank’s big needs from his or her UI. You need to immediately target any of the mobs you’re fighting, be warned when you lose aggro, see what debuffs are on the target, what defensive cooldowns are have available, active, or on cooldown, and their remaining time, know information about the current boss, and review your group’s performance during and after a fight.
- Here are the mods that you want to acquire and master to accomplish all that: Tidyplates, PowerAuras, Deadly Boss Mods, and Recount. Perhaps Skada, if you don’t like Recount.
- Our buddy Ravanna showed us this macro:
/cast [mod:alt] Heroic Leap; [mod:ctrl] Intervene; [mod:shift] Intercept; Charge
- Many more essential tank macros here.
- Finally, you need websites with resources for your tanking needs. You need to devour Tankspot, and the Elitist Jerks forum that is specific for your class: Elitist Jerks Druid Tanks, Elitist Jerks Death Knight Tanks, Elitist Jerks Paladin Tanks, Elitist Jerks Warrior Tanks.
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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Lunar Festival Roleplay
The yearly Lunar Festival began yesterday (Jan 23), and will last until Feb 12. The Festival opens a wide variety of roleplaying opportunities, along with perhaps the most peaceful area in all of Azeroth to RP at. Here are some ideas on how to make the best use of the Lunar Festival and Moonglade for some outstanding RP sessions.
Players with druid characters, and characters with strong ties to the Cenarion Circle, are most likely to be in the RP spotlight during the Festival’s three week run. The Cenarion Circle uses this festival to send characters all over Azeroth to extend due honor to the elders of all races. For druids and other like-minded classes, paying homage to their elders is a sign and show of respect, and of great importance to their order. Continue reading
The Instance #215 – Patchy Patch McPatch Patch
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Big News Of The Week
Let’s Patch This Sucker!
We got a heap ‘o trouble this week with new notes on patch 4.0.6, which Blizzard is deploying on the public test realm immediately, and looks to be going live quickly. It’s a big cleanup to non-critical parts of the game, for the most part, since they’ve been hotfixing the more important stuff on the fly for weeks, but 4.0.6 does have a lot of wondrous parts, which we will dispense with here.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
Lylirra Is Doing The Poll
Over at worldofwarcraft.com, there is a poll that asks the following question, “For those of you who have had the opportunity to play through the new high-level zones, which one was your favorite, and why?” It has only been up for about 18 hours, as we record this, and already the winning zone has a huge lead.
The Cataclysm Soundtrack LP is now in iTunes.
Town Cryer
Justin N. writes: Is there a resource that details what items are available for guild rep levels? So far the guild vendor just had the BOA cloaks, and I know if you get exalted you get the faction mount, but is there a place to see these in game?
Yes, probably. Don’t forget to hit “J” in game and look around that window!
Drop Of The Week
An Answering Machine For Your Dude
Over on Curseforge, a mod writer named Submann came up with a great idea – use a simple little mod to record whispers you get when you’re AFK, and then automatically play them for you when you return. Is that cool…. or 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, GoDaddy, and TypeFrag for sponsoring this episode.
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Crafty Roleplaying
Crafting has been on my mind a lot lately, particularly while gaming in Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve been doing some comparisons of those two games to WoW’s crafting professions, and have come up with some ideas for WoW roleplayers regarding titles.
Looking at the in game Achievements menu in WoW, I noticed there are not that many titles to be granted for stellar crafting performances. LOTRO has an abundance of these, along with a much better crafting system overall, in my opinion. WoW also is lacking when it comes to rewarding players with fame and notoriety based solely off their work in professions and skills. Taking some inspiration from LOTRO’s crafting titles, I want to share some ways for WoW roleplayers to improvise and adapt the available professions in a better RP fashion.
The Instance #214 – Blackrock Whatever It’s Called
New show up! Full notes coming soon! Enjoy!
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- The RSS Feed
The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription
The Zune Feed
The official Frogpants IRC channel
We’ve gone ahead and setup an official IRC channel for the network, and that includes all the shows, sites, comics, communities, etc. Please feel free to check it out and use it often! Lots of great people to hang with. Here are the details:
For those wanting to use an propper IRC client to connect: (ie Mirc, X-Chat Aqua, etc)
Host: irc.thinstack.net
Channel: #frogpants (type /join #frogpants)
For those who prefer to use the web client, it is now embedded below the video stream here:
CLICK HERE!
Not familiar with IRC? Here is some good info. Hope to see you there!
The Instance #213 – Teddy Roosevelt Was An Orc
Big News Of The Week
It’s Like 2010, Only You Add 1 To The End
Happy New Year! There is nothing quite like the changing of the date to make us take stock of what has happened in the game, the community, and for Blizzard over the last 12 months. And there’s nothing like a new year’s arrival to make us want to look forward and try to understand what’s coming. We’re going to do this in 13 parts.
Rumors And Scuttlebutt
So What Do We Think Is Coming in 2011?
Let’s make some educated guesses, and then do our best to distance ourselves from them as the year goes on:
Town Cryer
Medasin from Shadowmoon writes: I went to my local best buy to look at external hard drives on which I could keep the bulk of the Warcraft content on and in turn freeing my computer of so much space. Well to my dismay when I asked a “Geek Squad” team member about doing this, they said I was mistaken that I could not play any large game which required installation using an external hard drive. He said I could only play small flash games off of them. Would you mind clarifying if this is indeed possible and how it can be done?
Jason W. writes: We have six tiers in our guild structure. In order to advance to the second rank, and gain access to higher slots in guild bank you have to have and authenticator. Most members think that reasonable, but we had one guildie leave the guild when they read that rule saying we were paranoid and that they were not going to spend more money to play a game they already spend money on to play. Are we justified in asking that your account be authenticated in order to keep from the guild bank being attacked?
Rumors & Scuttlebutt
He Still Can’t Decide Between Betty And Veronica
By far the most common question we’ve seen over the last month is this one: “What’s that Archaeology mod called?” We’ll we’ve got it for you right here, and also in our show notes. It’s called Archy.
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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- The RSS Feed
The MP3 File
- The iTunes Subscription
The Zune Feed
2011: The Year of the Roleplayer
Yes, roleplayers, many, many years from now, you’ll look back on this article and proudly proclaim, “I saw it here first.” RoleCraft has declared 2011 to be the Year of the Roleplayer!
Why the declaration? Because I am noticing an overall resurgence in the art of roleplaying, and not only amongst the MMORPG genre. I follow much of the news and media concerning MMORPGs, and there I am seeing a refreshing trend towards making games with a great story, as they should all be made, that I think will naturally lead to more roleplayers and roleplaying. Lastly, I see old and new roleplayers alike who are dedicated to fostering the trade in their favorite games, very often in the face of non-roleplayers’ animosity. Continue reading
Why you should follow @instanceshow on Twitter
Well, here’s one good reason why:
