We have a bit of a conversation about music and sound, and what that has meant to the game of WoW over the years.

Big News of the Week
Norway Terrorist Says World Of Warcraft And Modern Warfare 2 Helped Train Him. “I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else,”… “Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike.” We discuss this thing at length.

Blizzcon community site for this year is OUT! “We’ve just opened up a brand-new BlizzCon community site for you to find all of the latest BlizzCon news, discussions, and more. Make yourself at home on the new community forums, check out the latest BlizzCon updates, and share news items via Twitter, Facebook, and more. As we get closer to the show, the new BlizzCon site will be your headquarters for panel schedules, lists of activities to look for at the convention, tournament updates, and lots more, so be sure to check in often.”

Paragon releases heroic Ragnaros 25-man kill video, and we have a link to prove it.

Rumors & Scuttlebut
Battle.net Authenticator Changes. “We understand the concern many players have with the recent Battle.net authenticator changes. To that end, we’re exploring the idea of adding an “Opt Out” option within Battle.net Account Management, which would then force the prompt for an authenticator code whenever you log into World of Warcraft.

To be clear, we have gone to great lengths to ensure Battle.net accounts and authenticators provide players with a high level of security. Maintaining a safe and secure Blizzard gameplay environment remains a top priority for us.

[...] We’ve been discussing the best way to implement new options for this feature since the moment it was announced. We don’t yet have additional details about exactly how we might implement the feature, or whether it’s something you’ll need to opt out of by default, or opt into by default.”

“Diablo 3 Beta coming “soon”. Three reasons to believe that we will have a beta VERY soon: 1. Activision Earning Call – During the latest conference call, Activision announced that the beta would start during Q3 2011, that’s between July 1st and September 30th. 2. Press Tour – A Diablo 3 press tour is scheduled for Diablo fansites on August 1st, this is pretty much what happened with Cataclysm with the Press Tour happening 2 weeks before the start of beta. 3. Box Art.

Drop of the Week
The new “Healbot” iOS app helps healers practice healing when they are NOT in game. This game is based on the mechanics of the Healbot mod in WoW. You keep your dungeon party alive while they attack a boss monster by casting various healing spells. You have several healing spells available in various speeds & sizes.

Special thanks to our sponsors this week: Squarespace (use code WOW6), Audible.com, Doghouse Systems, Rage Quit Relief, and Typefrag.com.

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– The MP3 File
– The RSS Feed
– The iTunes Subscription
– The Zune Feed
– The Frogpants Ultra Feed (iTunes)

We start off this week talking about our first personal forays into Firelands, and what came of that little experiment.

Big News of the Week
Blizzard responds to Swifty ban incident. As you might have heard, Razer WoW gamer Swifty, along with numerous other players, were banned due to server disruption violations during one of Swifty’s live streams that crashed a server. While Swifty acknowledged that he never intended to crash the server, Bashiok responded to the bans by stating that even if no one intended to crash servers or disrupt gameplay, the emote spamming and influx of players brought down many servers. We’re dedicated to providing a fun, stable, reliable gameplay environment for our players.

World of Warcraft coming to Brazil in 2011. At an exclusive press event at the Museu da Casa Brasileira in São Paulotoday, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced that a fully localized Brazilian Portuguese version of its critically acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft®, will be released in Brazil later this year. Brazilian Portuguese will be the ninth officially supported language for World of Warcraft worldwide, and the third supported language in Latin America, complementing the existing English and Spanish versions. An official Brazilian Portuguese World of Warcraft community website will also be available at launch. In addition, players in Brazil will have access to customer service for the game in Brazilian Portuguese.

World of Warcraft Mobile Armory for Android™ Now Available.

Rumors & Scuttlebut
New Battlegrounds…it’s complicated. We’d like to. We certainly haven’t forgotten about the PvP community at all and we do a lot of PvP oriented behind the scenes work right now. While not very much of that effort is channeled into creating new maps at the moment, we would definitely like to increase the variety of Battleground and Arena maps that are available in the future. That’s where things get sticky, though. One might think that creating a Battleground is a pretty simple process (they look simple, right?), but it’s not.

Part of the reason is that Battlegrounds are like ducks. A duck looks like it effortlessly glides across the water, but their little feet are actually working madly beneath the surface to make it happen. Battlegrounds are the same way. They may look simple — even static — to a casual observer, but in reality there’s an incredible number of very complicated processes going on behind the scenes. Part of the reason for this is due to a lot of technical hurdles that need to be jumped to make them perform as seamlessly as they do, battle after battle. As a result, it’s actually extremely difficult to design Battlegrounds, partially due to the technical limitations that are currently in place.

WoWArmory Facebook Application Closing. So there’s that.

Drop of the Week
Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects: Written by New York Times bestselling author Christie Golden, the new novel Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects follows the former War Chief of the Horde as he struggles with the ongoing repercussions of the Cataclysm.

When Azeroth was young, the noble titans appointed the five great dragonflights to safeguard the budding world. Each of the flights’ leaders was imbued with a portion of the titans’ vast cosmic powers. Together, these majestic Dragon Aspects committed themselves to thwarting any force that threatened the safety of the World of Warcraft.

Over ten thousand years ago, a betrayal by the maddened black Dragon Aspect, Deathwing, shattered the strength and unity of the dragonflights. His most recent assault on Azeroth—the Cataclysm—has left the world in turmoil. At the Maelstrom, the center of Azeroth’s instability, former Horde warchief Thrall and other accomplished shaman struggle to keep the world from tearing apart in the wake of Deathwing’s attack. Yet a battle also rages within Thrall regarding his new life in the shamanic Earthen Ring, hampering his normally unparalleled abilities.

Unable to focus on his duties, Thrall undertakes a seemingly menial task from an unexpected source: the mysterious green Dragon Aspect, Ysera. This humble endeavor soon becomes a journey spanning the lands of Azeroth and the timeways of history itself, bringing Thrall into contact with ancient dragonflights. Divided by conflict and mistrust, these dragons have become easy prey to a horrific new weapon unleashed by Deathwing’s servants . . . a living nightmare engineered to exterminate Azeroth’s winged guardians.

Of even greater concern is a bleak and terrifying possible future glimpsed by Ysera: the Hour of Twilight. Before this apocalyptic vision comes to pass, Thrall must purge his own doubts in order to discover his purpose in the world and aid Azeroth’s dragonflights as they face the Twilight of the Aspects.

Special thanks to our sponsors this week: Squarespace (use code WOW6), Audible.com, Doghouse Systems, and Typefrag.com.

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– The MP3 File
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– The Frogpants Ultra Feed (iTunes)

We kick things off with a small discussion regarding EA, PopCap, and how it somehow effects wow. You’ll have to listen to find out.

Big News of the Week
Real ID Group testing is now UP! “When delving into the depths of Azeroth’s darkest dungeons, it always helps to have some friends at your side… now you’re able to issue a call to arms no matter what realm they play on. We’re pleased to announce the new Real ID Party feature is now available for testing! This new feature will allow World of Warcraft players to invite their real-life Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon. We talk about it in full.

Season 10 transition gets some relief after all.

Rumors & Scuttlebut
Ask The Devs 11 Healing Answers Coming TODAY! like, right now probably. More next week. And, attle.net Mobile Authenticator for Windows® Phone 7 Devices.

New Official Website Feature – Companions and Mounts. A visit to your character profile will reveal a new heading entitled “Companions & Mounts.” There you’ll find a complete list of in-game pets and mounts that your character can discover throughout Azeroth (and beyond). The list is conveniently divided between those that your character has already collected, and those that you have yet to find.

Drop of the Week
15 Minutes of Fame: Holding fast to Azeroth through the journey of Alzheimer’s – by Lisa Poisso. Bill Craig is doing it right. The 61-year-old WoW player has suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease for half a dozen years now, winding his way through Azeroth for about half that time. He’s ridden a bicycle all the way from Carrollton, Texas, to Carrollton, Georgia, to raise money and awareness for animal welfare — not once but twice.

He’s a Vietnam vet. He serves as an advocate with the Alzheimer’s Association, having recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., with his wife to meet with legislators about bills impacting Alzheimer’s. Bill’s contributions and commitment to his community and country are impressive for any seasoned professional, let alone someone living with a disease that monkeywrenches a person’s thinking, memory and behavior.

Special thanks to our sponsors this week: Squarespace (use code WOW6), Audible.com, Doghouse Systems, and Typefrag.com.

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– The MP3 File
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– The iTunes Subscription
– The Zune Feed
– The Frogpants Ultra Feed (iTunes)

Yep, it’s our big 4.1 chatter episode, and boy is there a lot of it. Let’s get started.

Big News of the Week
4.2 happened! What do you think of this thing?
- questing content: thoughts
- Some are saying way too fast already…server firsts and clears coming way too fast.
- nerfs to existing content: How nerfy is it?
- How awesome is the move your character around”" on the login screen feature?

What GameSpy says about the patch: “Patch 4.2 isn’t bad, but — much like Rift’s recent patch — it’s a little too focused on the raiding side. And while I initially praised the return of old foes from World of Warcraft’s past, I’m starting to wish for something genuinely different. Cataclysm is starting to remind me of decent college writing assignments that I touched up and recycled for the school newspaper while I devoted the rest of my time to a larger project. Give us another world or a while new continent again, Blizzard. Give us something we’ve never seen before.”

20 levels free, and free upgrade to The Burning Crusade! Posted by Bashiok: Haven’t yet ventured beyond the Dark Portal? Beginning today, June 28, players will be able to get both the original World of Warcraft and the game’s first expansion set, The Burning Crusade, for only $19.99 as part of the new digital Battle Chest now available in the online Blizzard Store.

In addition, anyone who owns the original World of Warcraft, regardless of when they purchased the game, will automatically be able to access all of the content and features from The Burning Crusade expansion at no additional cost. It’s time to set forth from Azeroth, adventurer — Outland awaits! Furthermore: The restrictions should still all be in place. Trial accounts simply no longer expire.

Blizzard explains, apologizes for PVP Season 10 gear debacle. Conquest points were accidentally down-converted to honor points a week early, with the excess irreversibly converted to gold. Blizzard launched a new tier of ilevel 371 Season 10 gear on Tuesday without warning, just a week after making ilevel 365 Season 9 gear available for purchase with honor…had a lot of players incensed. Blizzard both acknowledged the problem and addressed it, but if you were effected, you remain effected.

Rumors & Scuttlebut
Legendary Staff / Dragonwrath Tarecgosa’s Rest – Mount. During one of the latest update to the official armory site, the page of Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest has been updated to include a new spell: Tarecgosa’s Visage. It looks like the Legendary Staff also comes with a built-in mount now, Blizzard was pretty sneaky about it but it looks like we’ll see the mount model on live servers after all.

WoW Expansion “Vengeance of the Void” Rumor is a fake. People are starting to get crazy on forums about a rumor started on a well known hacking/cheating site that we won’t mention here, you all know which one it is anyway. The information started hitting a couple of news sites because, well, I guess any attention is good and double checking sources is hard (because you might want to do that considering what the original source is) but I’d rather kill the rumor before people start being very annoying about it. Why would you believe me more than someone else? Good thing. Well, this document is a pretty obvious fake anyway (especially with stuff like “”neglected Shadow Priest class”" in official documents) and Blizzard just doesn’t draft that kind of stuff 3 months before the event before they send it to the entire company. Btw, internal documents would never say “”Activision Blizzard”", unless they’re scheduled for public release. The address isn’t even Blizzard’s, it’s the Activision Blizzard HQ. You don’t send that kind of mail to two companies 3 months before the Blizzcon just for fun. I mean, seriously guys, Blizzard isn’t stupid when it comes to leaks, they don’t just take the risk of doing that stuff so early.

Dude plays full body WoW with a Kinect hack.

Drop of the Week
AH Spy! AHSpy is an awesome new tool that let’s you see World of Warcraft auctions and item pricing information in real time. Not only is AHSpy incredibly easy to use, it will also allow you to see the value of any actionable item in the last 30 days in any realm/faction. You will also be able to see the auction history of any seller. And because we get our data directly from Battle.Net and not from user uploads, we know that our stats are as exact as they can be.

Special thanks to our sponsors this week: Squarespace (use code WOW6), Audible.com, Doghouse Systems, and Typefrag.com.

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– The MP3 File
– The RSS Feed
– The iTunes Subscription
– The Zune Feed
– The Frogpants Ultra Feed (iTunes)