Big News Of The Week

I Just Called

In what certainly puts this last week among the least exciting we’ve ever had in terms of WoW news, Blizzard released the Battle.net Dial-In Authenticator.

If you sign up for the Battle.net Dial-in Authenticator, you will be asked to make a toll-free phone call from a specific phone of your choosing to authorize unusual login attempts with the associated Battle.net account. Please note that you will only be asked to make this phone call when something about your login attempt appears out of the ordinary. For example, if you were to log in from a location from which you do not typically play, you may be asked to call in and provide your selected PIN and a unique, single-use security code before access to the account will be granted.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Lookin’ At Tier 11!

We got a look at what appears to be Blizzard’s final pass at the forthcoming Tier 11 gear sets this week.

Boys – Girls

(Hat tip to MMO Champion)

For The Last Time, Yes. We Think.

For over a year, you’ve written us and asked us questions about race or class availability in Cataclysm. Questions like,

“Will my heirloom gear work on my goblin?” or

“Can I use refer-a-friend with a new Worgen on December 8th?” or

“Will they let me race change to one of those new races immediately?”

This week Blizzard reiterated that the answer is yes. To all of those.  In a post on the new community site, Blizzard specifically outlined that last question, saying,

“Paid faction and race changes will be available immediately once Cataclysm is released. Realm First achievements for leveling any class to 85 will be available in Cataclysm. However there will be no Realm First achievements associated with leveling characters of a specific race.”

Rapid Fire Rumors And Scuttlebutt!

Troll Druids Will Have Their Own Flight Form.

Blizzard Put Up Screenshots of ‘Lil Ragnaros and Moonkin Hatchling, Coming Soon to the Blizzard Store.

Taverncraft Has A New Murloc Stein.

Town Cryer

Brent B. writes: I am for the horde, but my wife plays alliance. What should we do?

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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Big News Of The Week

The WoW Community Gets A Brand New Bag

Of course, ‘round these parts, we call that a sack. A whole new sack of goodies went live this week for all you World Of Warcraft players who also want to interact with one another and with Blizzard on the web. The new WoW Community site is on Battle Net, and it is slick and pretty. Just like Ghostcrawler.

Links! Website Bug Reports Here.  Website Feature Requests Here.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Region-wide Battlegroup Matching

Blizzard announced this week that they are in the process of rolling out a change to the game that is so technically broad, we wouldn’t have believed it possible before 4.0. It isn’t a surprise, since it was quite specifically proposed by Blizzard previously, but they’ve proposed many things that never quite came to pass.

Catching Up With Mr. Brower

As we teased in our last episode, Randy’s longest interview at Blizzcon this year was too long to include in episode #207. In fact, it was too long to record in only one part! So right here for you this week, we have both parts of this fun interview of Russell Brower, recorded on Oct. 23rd.

Rapid Fire Rumors And Scuttlebutt!

Say goodbye to WoWiki, sort of.

We’ve talked about this a bit: You can now download Cataclysm and install it entirely before Dec. 7.

Town Cryer

All calls this week.

Drop Of The Week

The End Is Nigh!

This special feature on The Instance is re-born!! As you know, all Summer this year we presented suggestions and challenges to you, the WoW enthusiast, that we thought you might enjoy or simply miss having gotten done once the next expansion wipes a lot from the game. This week, we’re looking forward to Cataclysm, and with exactly one month to go, there are things afoot in the game that are so timely that you should go experience them, now!

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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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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.

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Big News Of The Week

We Have A Release Date. You Have A Different One.

Discussion of the release date of the imminent Cataclysm expansion to World Of Warcraft peaked this week as several game vendors, mostly Amazon, decided to start putting exact dates on their offerings – seemingly without any firm input from Blizzard.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Your Raid Lockout Has Been Doing Yoga

Yesterday, Blizzard CM Bashiok dropped a huge wall of text on us regarding changes to how raid lockouts work in the game – changes that are coming in version 4.0.1 to the live game in the next couple of weeks or so. Bashiok started with this:

“Almost six months ago we announced that Cataclysm raids were being redesigned to make both raid sizes the same difficulty, drop the same quality of loot, and exist in the same lockout. This evolution in raid philosophy is built on the belief that you should not have to complete the same raiding content twice in a week to maximize your character’s progression. With the release of the 4.0.1 patch, the new Flexible Raid Lock system will debut in Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum.”

Rapid Fire Rumors And Scuttlebutt!

• The Dalaran and Shattrath city portals to other cities are definitely going away in Cataclysm.
• Blizzard is doing guild wipes in the beta.

Town Cryer

Mike C. writes: I’ve been listening to your guys’ show since about episode 180-something. About half way through episode 204 I wanted to express how it’s the first time I’ve been disappointed by your show. I’d heard you guys mention the show Firefly a few times and it peaked my interest in that show, you guys inspired me to go out and buy the complete series, including Serenity. As of this writing, I’ve watched about half of the episodes of the show, and have yet to watch Serenity. I was greatly disappointed when you dropped a huge spoiler about Serenity on my head without warning. Next time you get me into a great show don’t RUIN it for me… Please?

Drop Of The Week

Get Thee To An Arena-ry!!

And in this case, you don’t have until Cataclsym. You basically have about two weeks. A post on the WoW forums from Zarhym this week:

“We are currently planning to end Arena Season 8 as early as October 12. 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 the Relentless Gladiator’s Frostwyrm to refrain from transferring their character to another realm until after Arena Season 8 ends.”

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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Big News Of The Week

This Chat Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Hundred Of Us

This week, Blizzard changed the landscape for MMO players of several varieties – again. With very little warning that something of this sort was coming, they announced big updates to the WoW mobile armory.  Nethaera said,

“Coming soon in an update to the Mobile Armory app available in the iTunes App Store and Android Market, this new feature will allow all World of Warcraft Remote subscribers the ability to chat with their guildies right from their mobile device. Access to the guild chat feature is included for no extra charge in the $2.99 World of Warcraft Remote Auction House premium monthly subscription. In addition, soon after the launch of the mobile version we’re planning on adding the ability for premium subscribers to use Guild Chat through any browser on the Armory website.

Guild Chat will allow you to chat with your guildmates via Guild Chat, Officer Chat, and Whispers.

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

QQ: A Dramatization

We have a little fun with what Ghostcrawler said.

Rapid Fire Rumors And Scuttlebutt!

New Tinkertown and The Fight for Gnomeregan!

Heroic dungeons are now available in the beta!

The Early Stages Of Pre-Cataclysm Events Have Begun on the PTRs!

It’s Brewfest!! But you already knew that, right?

Town Cryer

Finrodel from the Argent Dawn server writes: Diablo 3!! Are you guys still excited for it? Or do you think that it will linger in Cataclysm’s shadow?

El Ciego on Muradin writes: I don’t know if my priest will be at lvl 80 by the launch of the pre-cata event. Do you think this will greatly limit my participation in the event to come?

Drop Of The Week

Kill! Or Be Killed! Try To Enjoy It!

The Cataclysm expansion brings along with it an overhaul to PvP in many ways, and none are so unpredictable as rated battlegrounds, which is to say – it is very hard to imagine what the PvP landscape will feel like in six months. We all may be looking back on this time, and the last few years, and reminiscing.

Well you can’t reminisce if you haven’t done stuff! So stop being gruff, get off your duff and kill some…. people. Hit the battlegrounds and kill faster, pussycat!

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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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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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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