Cataclysm

I have deliberately been holding back on writing too much about this particular title, with the reason being I hate hype and it does not feel all that relevant at the moment. However, after some exhaustive deliberation, figured was time to put some of my thoughts more firmly down. All and all, like everyone, I am very excited about this expansion.

However, my main excitement is because the expansion has the mandate to fix some of the big issues that World of Warcraft currently has. Of course we have all sorts of cool updates coming, like new races, professions, level cap, etc. but still for me, the other changes, specifically to older content, are more important.

First and foremost, Azeroth, the old zones of vanilla WoW are getting a thorough make over. Why is this such good news? Because the old content is hopelessly out of date. There is no saving it and is one of the most painful things to play through. Sadly, it still represents of 48% of the game's content. Not to mention, simply the content that we spend most of our time leveling through.

Dungeons design, quest organization, gear drops are all things that continue to plague this part of the content, making it unappealing and dry. So much has changed and Blizzard's design team itself has grown since those times that makes looking at Northrend and vanilla like day and night. But no more. We are getting two new races, starting to zones, new zones, and the old areas are updated. Awesome, is what I say.

Second most wanted on my list is a revamp of the character stats, a subject that keeps hindering the game a lot. Simply put, it is just too complicated. Aside from hardcore players, most do not know, or even want to spend hours calculating. Yes, looking at new gear, checking and planning how to get the best results has its appeal and is part of the fun but also distracts you from the game itself.

Especially, when you have to judge items on the fly, with less time to make up your mind than you would reserve for peeing. This is immanent on a lot of raid loot, where e.g. a weapon might drop, that has a lot less attack power than your current weapon, but than again it has useful stats like expertise and armor penetration on it, so is it actually better or not?

This is all going to get streamlined in Cataclysm and I for one, will be happy to see them go.

Spell Power: Will be removed and instead, intellect will provide both mana and SP at the same time. Just makes you wonder why the game did not work this way to begin with.

MP5: Will also be removed and replaced by spirit. To compensate, healers will also gain a meditation-like ability to help them regain mana more efficiently.

Armor Penetration: Aye, this one is on the boot-list and I am happy to see it go. Looking at the ArP history, it either never worked, was over-powered, or just downright confusing. Rest in peace.

Defense: Is going to be replaced by talents that provide tanks with the uncrittable status. It, essentially, is not a confusing stat, up until you begin to wonder how much benefit you are truly getting from stacking more than the necessary cap limit. All around better though, will make gearing for tanking a lot easier.

Attack Power: The same way as SP, this is going to be removed and replaced by agility and strength, for leather/mail and plate wearers respectively.

In general, more weight is shifting to emphasize the importance of the basic stats, like intellect, strength, etc. While currently, the two different groups of stats are locked in a struggle for dominance. It will be clearer and simpler in my opinion. A much desired change.

There are a myriad of changes to the game in cataclysm. Too many to be listed here. For more information, I would starts with the official site, and work your way through wow.com and the mmo-champion.

Preparing for PvP

This morning I finally wrote and posted my humble review on PvP Leveling in World of Warcraft; a very viable and interesting way to level a character. I have personally had a lot of fun tackling horde, stealing flags, and laying waste blizzard and fireball. However, I believe my success so far has been largely thanks to the preparation I did before hand, or during my pvp career.

Here are some very simple steps I suggest everyone considers for themselves, when making the decision to level using battlegrounds.

Heirlooms

I cannot stress it enough, how important these are for you. When you level mostly using battlegrounds, you will be short on both gold and gear from instances. Sure, you can run a few instances on the side, but it will not make up for the difference much. Heirlooms act as blues of their equivalent level and improve the same time your level increases, so they will always be up to date.

There are enough heirlooms available to give any class you choose, a weapon, two trinkets, and two pieces of armor. In order of priority, the items go armor, weapon, and trinkets. The armor is first because each gives a 10% increase to all experience gained from quests and the killing of a target or monster that yields honor. In case you are wondering, they stack.

In patch 3.3, we hear from wow.com that there might be new heirlooms available, for data mining has shown that there is an item or spell that provides a 5% experience increase; A little extra XP bonus.

The weapon is important, for obvious reasons, as they are often the most important and sought after items that relate to your dps. Some classes can choose from different weapons even, as is the case of the rogue, depending if you are going for combat or assassination specs.

In my case, I chose the following for my mage;

Tattered Dreadmist Robe

Exquisite Sunderseer Mantle

Grand Staff of Jordan

Discerning Eye of the Beast

Inherited Insignia of the Alliance

Notice the fact that three of the listed items are pvp in nature. They are available, not from the Dalaran heirloom vendor, but from within the Wintergrasp fortress, for pvp badges. The rest of the slots for my gear, I mostly buy from the AH or get a high level to quickly run me through a low level instance.

If there is one item I suggest everyone buys, it is the last, pvp trinket that frees you from movement impairing effects. It is an absolute must have for every pvp player and will save you from a whole bunch of grief, since playing pvp is half struggle for control and it is achieved through stuns, roots, etc.

Professions

Every player should level his or her First-Aid skill, as high as their current level allows. It is true, you can buy bandages but for me, it is essential that I can create them myself. There is never a shortage of cloth at the AH, and if you level like most do, with quests on the side of BGs, you will also gather some yourself.

As items, bandages are a lifesaver in any battleground match, particularly when short on healers (and you always will be); head to head matches often leave, even if you survive, starving for health, and though you are still standing, the next opponent only needs one arrow or spell, or stinking breath, to put you down.

There are a variety of professions that can be useful to you, particularly crafting professions that allow you to easily put together the best craftable items, to supplement your heirloom gear. However, I decided to choose herbalism and alchemy.

Healing and mana potions, the first more than the second, are crucial for me. The two professions allow me to both gather and prepare my own potions, as well as gain Lifeblood. It has saved me more than once when out running the horde, their flag in hand.

Class Capabilities

It is very important to learn and understand the capabilities of your class. Particularly how they play in pvp, since when going head to head with other players, the game changes drastically. Few, if any of the skills you had in pve, will apply on battlegrounds. Some abilities are only useful in pvp situations learning what your class can do is the only way to shine.

Also do not let anyone gouge you into picking some select, so called "best" classes. Personally, I enjoy playing less obvious choices and it bores me to tears when I check the match roster and realize five from ten in the enemy team are rogues or hunters. Particularly on certain levels, like the 10-19 branch is infested with players of those classes, since they are the obvious, strongest contestants.

For my mage, I was told to be a poor choice for battlegrounds and that I will be ganked by rogues and warriors of lower level than I am. However, so far, I find rogues less imbalanced and more just annoying, who are incapable of anything else except stealth, backstab, and try kill you before the stun wears off.

If it doesn't, or if I can reveal the rogue with an aoe, the rogue better pray for quick reinforcements before he becomes a jar on my mantle piece.

The Battlegrounds

Just like knowing your class, knowing the terrain and purpose of the battlegrounds you play is equally important. It is not a rare sight, to see people wonder aimlessly on arathi basin, not fully understanding how the battleground works, or know the best ways to infiltrate the enemy base in warsong gulch.

Game Mates

Finding people to play battlegrounds with can cut a lot of frustrations from the road ahead. Pugs by nature are chaotic and usually only go with the one tactics; which is to say, they don't have any. Basically, just zerg the enemies, while trying to accomplish the battleground objectives. After you take part in a match, with clear strategies and roles, you realize how much of success depends on people who are willing to communicate and evolve strategies.

And even if you cannot find any pvp guilds to join, just grouping with a friend or two takes you a long way.

PvP Leveling

Everybody knows me as not the best friend of PvP, nor the best skilled in its arts even. However, since battlegrounds now award its participants with experience, since patch 3.2, I simultaneously the subject merited investigation. Naturally, in my typical nature I was not going to with any easy class, e.g. hunters and rogues, like say 90% of the pvp populations. Instead I finally adopted a mage character.

True to my assumption, mages are rare, at least on most low level battlegrounds, which makes playing them all the more interesting. Particularly facing less experienced players, who are used to ganking other rogues and shamans, a mage produces a lot of pleasure when you can kite a pack of hordies around in a circle, literally forever.

Many people think mages are far from the best class for battlegrounds and it is true that the class is far from being dominant, the same way that hunters and rogues are. But where we lack the raw power of a hunter, mages make up in finesse and control, and that is where the class truly shines; sheep, frost nova, frostbolt, to name a few are some of the mage's best tools.

So what is the verdict; is fighting on battlegrounds a viable leveling method? I believe it is. As a show case, I give my gnome mage, now a level 29 fire and frost hybrid. The moment I hit level 10, I started pvping and refused questing in all forms until two days and 24 levels laters. For a leveling pace, that is not bad at all.

The experience is gained, as per quote from Blizzard "for completing objectives and actions that yield honor (honorable kills not included)." This makes it all very straight forward. Think capturing flags on Warsong Gulch, conquering contested points of resources on Arathi Basin, and so on. So, of course, the side that wins, gains the most experience as well.

However, there is a catch to leveling on battlegrounds, which is true to all team efforts; you can only do as good as your team as a whole. So whether you like it or not, your success is in the hands of your teammates. In fact, now since twinks have been pushed to their separate battlegrounds, away from us casual folk, the encounters consist of a wide variety of people, of all levels and experience.

Also, if you do as I did, leveled using only battlegrounds, be prepared for heavy-handed ganking on the lower tiers of your level bracket. The horde, and without a doubt the alliance as well, enjoy nothing more than jumping on a level 11 or 14 just for the fun of it. They will, in fact go through lengthy trouble to kill you.

Personally, I spent over five minutes, running across the field of Warsong Gulch twice, from my base, to their base, away from the base, zig zagging tree trunks and stomps, while three horde players chased on my heels. Quite ridiculous actually, which was made only more hilarious when I lead them straight into an armada of blood-thirsty allies.

But still, if surrounded by reasonably skilled players, not outnumbered or -geared by higher level players, leveling with battlegrounds can be efficient and a whole lot of fun. However, if this has peaked your interest, I suggest you come prepared. There is much you can personally do, to optimize your game play. After all, the same rules apply to battlegrounds, as apply to raiding; you are not alone, you are part of a team, and if you stink, the rest of your comrades will also pay for it.

Since this post will already be quite long, I will leave some of the means I used to prepare, for my next blog post. So stay tuned.

Managing the Priest

I have been writing a whole ton of posts, recently about death knights and tanking, so I decided to take a trip down a different road this morning. Most of you have probably noticed that my priest has been leveling up some and he has indeed been the focus of most of my gaming for the past week. The reason was simple, I had just finished the Tribute to Skill achievement and consciously decided to take a break for something totally different.

And what could be more different than playing a healer? A total opposite to what I usually play, however something I have always, as a tank, felt close to; a bond if you will, between those whom I keep safe and whom struggle and do their very best to not let me be squashed. Aye, never an easy task, but we make due ;)

Achn is actually a character that I have, since inception, been leveling with a partner, my real life partner in fact. Anyone who has not tried it, have my recommendation, for it is a match made in heaven. Her human paladin tanks for me, while I heal and dps for her. I started out all out in holy spec, for I wanted to get to know the class from a healer's point of view. But now, after we have crossed the level 60 threshold, I have moved to two specs; shadow and disc.

I use the shadow spec for our quest marathons, for it is a minor inconvenience for me to occasionally heal her, while doing extra dps to get the mobs down quicker. When going to instances, like the Hellfire Citadel dungeons that we have recently been nearly farming for gear (I know, it is not sexy to care about gear when leveling, but bite me), I will of course go disc.

Why the change from holy to disc? My own personal choice tbh, but I did not very much enjoy the constant threat of ooming as holy. Also, after simply trying disc, with my mana problem removed, I fell in love just the style in which we heal. However, juggling these specs and getting some real healing experience as a level 59 in Hellfire Ramparts, I began to question some of the addons I was using, or rather, the lack of proper ones.

First of all, a proper cast bar. There is no question about it and the only viable option I managed to find was Quartz. There is almost no contest; Quartz is highly configurable and has the most efficient features.

The second a must have addon is ForteXorcist. This is a massive addon, centering around the idea of micro managing all the small whistles that most classes have. These include shards and healthstones for warlocks, cooldowns, spell timers, messages, and so on. The list is almost endless and configuring this mammoth can easily seem daunting. However, it is a lot less complicated than it seems and it truly is invaluable.

The main feature I use for my priest, is the spell timers. I could not possibly live without them, especially in shadow spec, which relies on the exact management of dots on the target to produce quality dps. Xorcist shows me all the spells I have cast on the target, in easy to read rundown bars, with timers.

For my discipline spec, I use the spell timers to keep an eye on my Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul debuff. Before you say that I can also manage the same by watching the debuff frame, yes, I know and that is what I did before. However, at least in my minimalist UI, the frame is tiny and watching the debuff tick around clock-wise is not very optimal.

Third, but not least, is a reliable way to track your Prayer of Mending. This is actually something I have yet to test, for I will not be able to learn the spell itself until level 68. However, it is something to think and prepare for. One options that I have heard a lot of good about is PoM Tracker; I love the simplicity and that it will be yet one more feature on my screen that will not take a lot of space. Also, what I read is that is a lot more reliable than many of its competitors. For one, it does not get confused by multiple prayers.

That is all for the moment. I would consider the three above mentioned addons crucial to any priest and high recommend you have a look at them, if you have not yet done so.

Good luck and enjoy.

Into the Abyss

The first time when I entered and played through this instance, it was not only normal difficulty but also had many of the mechanics hardly in use. This was true particularly with the boss fights, which lead me personally without a sense of satisfaction. The instance is well designed, atmospheric and just beautiful to look at. The same is true for the Forge of Souls.

However, I a much better sense of the mechanics this time around and I even had the sense to grab a couple of screenshots. The nice thing about it is that, unlike so many other instances, Pit of Saron is not linear. You can go about killing the first two bosses whichever you want first, as well as free 20 slaves from wherever pleases you.

At the moment there are more slaves in the pit than you need to be able to save, so you are free to take your pick about your route and targets. The first boss, Forgemaster Garfrost is simple enough. As his health drops, he will stun you party and jump between his forges where he takes out a new weapon every time.

The only tricky bit of the fight are the adds around Garfrost's forge. Neither the boss or the adds can be pulled separately, so you have to quickly burn the adds down so you are not overwhelmed. Other than that the fight is still extremely simple; just tank and spank him.

Next up is the leper gnome on his private hunchback minion; Krick and Ick. I was happily surprised, particularly by this encounter because the first time around it was almost like fighting trash. Krick will drop poison buddles much like Grobbulus and needs to be kited. And by kiting I really mean it because the little twat is obsessed by his buddles.

He will also occasionally chase on your party members, when he uses an ability called Pursuit. I am unsure what else they can do at that point, except just run like the wind. It was not an issue for us, for we were insanely over geared for the encounter, but I can see it particularly nasty for low-gear level 80s.

Additionally, he will occasionally go through cycles of using poison nova and small arcane bombs around his immediately surrounding. He does not need to be tank during the bombs so both the tank and melee can, and should, freely circle around him and avoid the purple domes. The poison nova is a fairly high damage, so like during overloads on both the Iron Council and Mimiron, the party should get out of range.

The next part is definitely my favorite, as you must run through a gauntlet of undead, including a tunnel that is currently collapsing. Remember Hodir and the falling ice? Same deal, except you will tank trash and must keep moving at all times. Any tank who loves mobility and AOE tanking, this is the place for you.

The last boss has not changed much since my last visit. Tank him approx. where he lands but mindful of the frostbolts that his mount drops on your party. They fall fairly randomly and easily freeze you where you are standing. The good news is that the person who gets hit is marked by a hunter's mark, so you always know who it is.

Other abilities that he has include Forceful Smash and Overlord's Brand. The first is just a very strong hit that your tank has to soak. It hits for about 15k on heroic, so your party healer can keep the tank topped up, it should be a small problem but can be an issue if the healer gets frozen for instance.

If healing is scarce, the tank can always use a cooldown to help out. The brand is more annoying, as when it hits a dps player, all the damage produced by that person is diverted to the tank. If the target is a healer, all healing is directed to the Tyrannus.

All and all, the instance is only getting better as the PTR goes on and I think we can see the entirety come together as a very nice and coherent dungeon. If you are interested to see some video feed of the dungeon, I came across a good quality look at youtube.

Pit of Saron + Forgemaster Garfrost

Enjoy.

Death Knight Tier 10 Review

Odds are I was the only person in the world who was clinging to the hope that we would not have to joggle yet another set of tier gear. Small hope I agree, but I believe justified because as a progression raider most of your game actually revolves around those blasted pieces and not sooner than you actually have managed to gather a set, you are already shopping for a new one next week.

But enough ranting and lets have a look what nice things we are getting this week.

The new death knight art actually looks very nice this time around. Tier 9 was fine but seemed a bit too contained, too neat and polished for someone who is essentially a warrior with a permanent bad temper. The new look is a return to tier 8; death motifs and rustic. Definitely a nice job by the designer.

The tier bonuses look slightly more dubious. Since I a tank night and day, I always look at those set bonuses first and I am getting mixed feelings this time:

2P Bonus: Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.

4P Bonus: When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 seconds.

As always, the first set bonus is a threat amplifier but I am worried that the target this time is Death And Decay. True, it is my default opener to any fight, so a good choice, but the problem is integrating it neatly into your rotation. You will of course try to recast it during an encounter but odds are you will not be able to, at least not as often as you would prefer because it actually takes three different runes to use and getting all three refreshed at the same time is not an easy feat.

Also for highly mobile bosses e.g. Hodir, Ignis, and Dreadscale it is particularly difficult because you are then stuck tanking the boss within the confines of the spell.

The second set bonus does make me raise my eyebrows equally. Is this meant as an extra tank cooldown? Seems improbable because blood tap already plays a pivotal role as part of my normal rotation to get extra hits out on the boss. To be forced to save it as a damage mitigator seems out of this world to me.

I am thinking it might provide a nice respite to heavy damage during a fight though. Remember damage of Ulduar hard modes or ToTGC bosses like Gormak and Anub'arak? Using blood tap like I do, whenever possible to make use of a death rune will provide some amount of mitigation just randomly during a fight, and if available, as an emergency cooldown but there is a downside also; random damage mitigation means spiky damage and we all know how healers hate spiky damage.

Sure, you can use Ora2 to announce cooldowns and that way healers can know when you're using it but to me spells hard times for healers though.

Shadowmourne

I consider myself fairly up to date on what goes on in the World of Warcraft workshop and was, among, without a doubt, millions who were reading the news from last Blizzcon, as they were flooding the internet. Yet I still completely missed news of this new legendary weapon. For me, it came completely out of the blue as I stumbled upon it by just sheer accident.

So what is this sword exactly? Information is very scarce at the moment. No stats have been released yet but we do know that it is a two-hander axe, aimed at melee classes. This means primarily warriors, paladins, and death knights (both dps and tanks). While it could possibly be wielded by other classes, Ghostcrawler has iterated (source) that the stats will favor the above classes.

It will be available in the Icecrown Citadel, the same way that Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings was available from Ulduar. Myself, I wonder about the name of the weapon. It sustains a striking resemblance to the Lich King's signature weapon, Frostmourne. I hope there is some rational lore attached to the name, for otherwise it is an uncomfortable recycling of ideas. By all means, I am thrilled that there is a legendary melee weapon coming out, as the last one was clearly a caster weapon, but will feel like a slight cheat if it is just a makeshift version of the real thing.

Some people point out strongly that the legendary weapon from Icecrown Citadel should have been Frostmourne itself, but I strongly disagree, as do most who care at least a tiny bit about the game's lore aspects. To allow it to be fallen into player hands would mean that it would have to be defined into logical parameters would only demean and weaken it, reducing it to "just another legendary" since it obviously could not corrupt the player character the same way it was responsible for creating the most iconic villain in the game.

No, no, no I say. Frostmourne is unique because it is undefined and its powers a mystery to us. It belongs in the possession of the Lich King, where it maintains its power and provides us with an unforgettable gaming experience.

Sigils

Since this is a subject I have personally struggled a lot; which is the best sigil for each spec, I decided to put it up here. Sigils are essentially to death knight what totems and librams are to shamans and paladins, and it is not always so straight forward to pick the right one. Each tier set has been, so far, accompanied by a couple of new sigils and the variation of their abilities makes them difficult to interpret.

Like so many things, these are issues that some of us gladly leave to those with math degrees and generally too much time on their hands, to calculate proc rates, rotations, and overall output. The only good news is that both dps and tanks generally use the same sigils. This is due to the fact that death knights generate aggro through dps output. So basically what you have is a bunch of threat amplifiers, like Death and Decay and Frost Presence, and then the rest is up to your dps.

Frost has it the easiest, alas the best sigil for them is still the Sigil of Awareness. This can be bought cheap with emblems of conquest from your local Dalaran vendor. Since the patch 3.2.2, both blood and unholy now use the Sigil of Virulence, which basically acts like a miniature version of the Darkmoon Card: Greatness, procing your strength by 200 with a very high up time (estimated 80%).

The downside is that the Sigil of Virulence costs 25 emblems of triumph, so it can take many daily heroic quests for you to get it. However, Sigil of Vengeful Heart is still a very good spaceholder until you get virulence. It is sold by the conquest vendor as well, for 19 emblems, and of course it also has a chance to drop from 25-man XT-002 Deconstructor.

Tribute to Skill

There are moments when you are allowed to feel good about yourself and this is definitely one of mine; having completed the Tribute to Skill achievement on 10-man totgc instance this evening, with an awesome crew. It was particularly satisfying after having endlessly farmed both 10- and 25-man normal modes with little to no challenge of feeling of accomplishment.

Grand crusader however, was quite a struggle. The encounters we found the hardest were the Faction Champions and Anub'arak. The first severely more than the last, where the champions just simply kept wiping the floor with us. Anub'arak proved mainly a performance challenge, as it has a lot more in-built difficulty than the normal modes.

Firstly, you only have six grounds of frost to use, the burrowers now cast Shadow Strike that needs to be interrupted, and the damage is a lot more severe. The two primary obstacles are performing successful interrupts and keeping them from burrowing. We used a shaman, though a rogue would probably be a lot more optimal, with a focus kick macro as the adds and boss are tanked side by side.

It also comes to a bit of luck, when Anub'arak himself burrows, the OT will most likely still have two adds on his hands. Because the proximity to the boss, the spikes will probably hit the ice he is standing, breaking it, possibly even killing the OT if he is not maxed out. The OT must vacate the patch of ice before the spikes hit it and kite the adds to a new one without letting them burrow themselves. Since this ability is on a timer, it is has a lot to do with luck.

However, if you can master these two aspects, the fight should go through fairly easily. The only crunch is when phase 3 starts and the OT is not only taking the constant aoe damage from the boss but also melee hits from the adds.

But the fight is well worth it, even if you have to struggle. I had the luck of getting Lothar's Edge, hitch hiking my stats up a notch once more. So for now, I could not be happier but am already looking for the next peak to climb.

Return of the PTR

If you are anything like me, you have been following the 3.3 patch news with great anticipation and interest, as they have began to flood through from wow.com and mmo-champion - people hard at work data mining and exploring what is currently available in the test realms.

So far, the most interesting news have come from both Blizzard themselves, in the form a Frozen Halls info page, and mmo-champion data miners, whom have been able to discover some very interesting updates. The first and foremost of course, is the Icecrown Citadel. Anyone who has flown around it a few times realized a long time ago that it will be very expansive. The structure alone is impressive and massive.

So far we know that the citadel with not only host the new raid, with the Lich King as the final boss, but will also contain a new dungeon, with both normal and heroic version, and a total of three different wings; in order the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection. You must complete them in sequence to gain access to the last one and contain a lot of interesting new aspects.

So naturally when I saw people on general channel, looking for likeminded adventurers and explorers I just had to jump at the chance. We entered the Pit of Saron, whether or not because they had already done the first wing or if it was the only one currently enabled, I cannot say. But the first time stepping inside the citadel was very exciting. Essentially, we have two objectives; free as many slaves as possible and also kill the bosses.

The second boss Ick, which after falling to us gave up a startling revelation, Frostmourne currently resides alone, in the Halls of Reflection. Whether it will be just an event or possible a boss encounter, remains to be seen but opens the possibility that the way to defeat the Lich King is by taking away his most dangerous weapon.

Like all dungeons, normal and heroic alike, tanking the instance was heavy on the aoe side. You can switch to blood on bosses if you prefer but all and all, was a very standard issue tankwise. The bosses themselves do a lot of burst damage and had very little actual technicalities to overcome. Tyrannus at the very end had some twists to provide, but seems we encounter either a bug or another disabled feature, because once we quickly downed him, the first was suddenly over.

Why is this odd? Because Tyrannus first presents himself on the back of a frostwyrm and on such an occasion, you would expect to fight both the two-legged and four-legged counterparts. Our encounter however started with Tyrannus coming down and ended when he fell.

We had no luck investigating any possible loot because nothing was dropped, but odds are high this will change quickly, once the loot tables are finished and enabled. Mmo-champions did report an interesting set of new daily quests though, or rather, weekly quests. I managed to confirm them with the usual daily quest giver. Exactly like the old Wintergrasp quests, these can be completed only once a week, but instead provide x10 Emblems of Frost.

Also, instead of heroics, the quests are completed in raid instances. These range from Naxxramas to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader. Basically just like the previous heroic dailies, you have to kill a boss to complete the quest. I could not locate a vendor that currently accepts the new emblems but I am prepared to speculate they have to do with new gear. A new set of tier gear?

Personally, I am voting against a new tier set. It takes our all the fun out of, the otherwise exciting gear, when you have to struggle to change it every damn patch. But time will tell. For now, will continue to follow the blogsphere and explore the PTR. Will keep my readers informed.

How to win PvP

I did not link this video originally when I first saw it but now, looking back, I just have to. It is the most accurate and hilarious representation PvP in World of Warcraft I have ever seen. Definitely worth watching. Enjoy.

Good Will

During my every morning routine visit to wow.com, something oddly unconventional caught my eye; Doing something nice for other players. Makes you think back and just how rare this sort of thing is in the modern World of Warcraft. Aye, it is not as bad as it first seems, but the simple truth is that large portion of players find it stimulating to jerk off at other people, safe behind the impenetrable shield of anonymity.

What is worse, it is everywhere; both general and trade channels, battlegrounds, raids, guilds, and even random people you meet outside an instance. The recent moments, for me personally was when I was waiting for a friend of mine to come out Caverns of Time, standing outside the instance where a friendly level 80 warlock threw "noob" at me for being below level 60.

Any of my readers happen to be working on a doctorate for psychology? I am pretty sure this sort of gratification disorder, the need to jump on other people for no good reason, other than that their moms held them too tight or not tight enough would just fascinate you shrink types.

But of course, after some reflection, we can gladly conclude that while their numbers are high, they do not make up the whole of the gamer population. There are lots of friendly and decent people around. True, I have to say that although I hold myself to this group, I do not practice the kind of open charity as the person described in the news post.

The reason for that is that while those of us, who enjoy helping others, do not do it very often or to total strangers only out of the goodness in our hearts, is that most newbies are not nearly as grateful for the help you offer. Several exemplary cases come to mind, one being that after you do help out, maybe pull extra mats from your bank and make some toys for someone, they tend to get too used to it.

The end result is that they continue to whisper you for more help; can you help me with this quest, where can I find A or C, and if you can loan them some more gold for a new piece of armor. That is just not right and incredibly infuriating. Another winning case is when you polite tell someone you cannot take them to your pug because of their shabby gear.

Aye, it does suck to be turned down but all willingness to give you tips and hints where to get better upgrades wash away when you start throwing "fuck you" and "shit yourself" at me for trying to help you. We have all been there, in that position. The difference is, we worked hard and got out of it, without the need for drama.

Some part of the problem itself, I believe is inherent in the game itself and what it represents. A common problem with kids these days is that they spend so much time online and in the virtual world that they totally lack social skills. They do not know how to communicate with the common bloke and the game itself promotes an environment where they do not even have to.

This is the big reason why I refuse to give into using much of the WoW slang that exists in the game, because it was invented by socially awkward 14 year olds. I choose to hold on to my persona and will not sink into the pit hole of lame idiots who hardly know how to spell xenophobe.