World of Warcraft

So I logged on for about a half hour last night (I recently got a number of books for Christmas, which cuts into WoW time!), and was headed to do my dailies for my elusive epic flying mount. I usually get there by hitting up my engineered teleporter to Toshley’s Station.

When I got there, thanks to the new basic UI changes implemented by Blizzard, I noticed a number of “!” in the area. Apparently, there were a number of quests I never got around to accomplishing when leveling. It should be noted that I’ve never really accepted the concept of “grinding” an in MMO. Grinding (the act of repeatedly killing the same monster or doing the same task over and over and over ad nauseum for long periods of time) has a negative connotation because it isn’t fun..and I play games to have fun! As such, rather than head over to do my dailies, I decided to opt for a change of pace and picked up the remaining quests in the area.

Shockingly, not only did these long forgotten quests pay just as much (some more) than my dailies, but they also rewarded me with valuable green quest items that could be sold to vendors for even more profit! Elated, I went on to finish every quest there was in Toshley’s Station. Tonight I hope to head to Shadowmoon Valley, where I have never taken my mage before even though he is now 70.

As always do what works for you. It’s easy to get caught up in the timesink aspect of MMO games, but remember if you’re in it for the phat lewtz, you’re really just spending time not having fun for shiny pixels so you can…continue to not have fun? MMORPGS have evolved quite a bit from the days of games like Everquest (I’ll leave UO out of that category, that was a blast!), and you don’t have to grind/raid/pvp/farm if you don’t enjoy doing so, progress your character at your own pace and have fun while doing it? Otherwise the only thing waiting for you at the end of the road is burnout, not an enjoyable experience you can joke with your friends (who play!) about.

Be sure to go and get your Christmas presents under Father Winter’s tree before they vanish until next year! There is always some great trinkets/toys to be had each year, and this year will be no different. I can’t believe it’s midweek already, but you know what that means…time for a midweek video!

Considering the New Year is typically a time to look back on what we’ve accomplished/failed to accomplish in the past year..I thought it would be appropriate to have a purposely dated video. This one actually got me into playing my mage more extensively.

If you’ve ever played a casting cloth class in warcraft, you have undoubtedly heard cracks about how much of a sissy you were for wearing a dress (It’s a robe!). This video puts these sentiments into a rather catchy song. Some of the damage numbers he puts out clearly give away just how old the video is, but most players who’ve seen it consider it a classic.

So throw on your dress, melt some faces, and enjoy the new year!

Throughout your various adventures in Outland and Azeroth, you will likely find yourself strapped for gold from time to time. After all you need to fix your armor, occasionally buy some potions, grab those primals for your new crafted set, or most expensive of all, buy an epic flying mount. Traditionally the best way to get gold was simply kill as many monsters as you possibly could. Unfortunately this become boring rather quickly, as the monsters typically don’t pose much of a threat. Grinding out gold for hours is not my idea of fun either, but there are some better ways for you to earn your loot!

1. Transmutes If you are an alchemist or tailor, you can convert items into rare materials such as primal mights or moon/shadowcloth. There’s a 1-3 day cooldown each time you do this, and so these items are rather rare. People will often pay you to do a transmute/make cloth for them, or you can just make it yourself and then sell it on the auction house for a profit (from my personal experience, primal earth to water sells the best transmute wise)

2. Daily Quests There are a whole slew of daily quests available to players that allow you to bring in a significant amount of goal once a day. If you’re looking for a change of pace, PvP daily quests were recently added. A battleground is chosen at random each day, and after a victory you can turn the quest in for additional honor and about 12 gold. It’s important to note that this is also the only daily quest you can do before level 70, so take advantage at the lower levels as well! Other dailies you can do on your own involve bombing runs, demon banishing, and more are all available from 2 main factions: Ogri’lah and the Sha’tari Skyguard. Both of the starting quests for these dailies can be found in the city of Shattrath. In the same city, if group play is more your style, there are daily dungeon quests for both heroic and non-heroic instances. Just look for some ethereals in the lower part of the city!

3. Auction House Arbitrage Day to day prices of various products like potions, cloth, and leather fluctuate from day to day. If you are vigilant you can find these selling at a discount, you can corner the market and sell them for a profit. I make a good amount of money doing this each week. A good rule of thumb is that prices are typically cheaper Friday night, when everyone comes home from work/school and puts their items up for sale. Keep an eye out, there’s a gold mine to be had!

Have any additions or comments? Feel free to drop me a line.

After hilarious commercials with Mr. T and William Shatner, Blizzard continues it’s “what’s your game?” campaign with Verne Troyer. If you’re not familiar with who he is, pick up a copy of the 2nd Austin Powers movie, where he plays “mini-me.” In line with his natural shortness and gnome-like looks, Verne does in fact play a gnome mage.

Having a gnome mage of my own, I have a soft spot for this particular commercial. After all, who doesn’t like being a mini master of the arcane? I think the music was particularly fitting for the hard-hitting, fast paced playstyle associated with the class. They are called glass cannons for a reason, after all. Interested? Here you go!

Care to take a guess as to who they’ll bring on next? My vote is an attractive female actress of some kind. There have been numerous threads on who the next actor/actress might be, and it’s certainly a fun subject to speculate on.

Advertising a MMO game is highly unusual, and really goes to show the power and influence that Warcraft has had on the genre. Whether it will ever be outshined or replaced in full is something to take note of, considering the lackluster release of other games like Lord of the Rings Online and Warhammer Online being delayed and taken out of beta for a re-work of the game’s PvP mechanics. Time will tell of course, but I’d wager that Warcraft will be the dominating MMO game for some time. Have any suggestions on who will be the next contender? Feel free to drop me a line, I always love checking out what’s new and upcoming!

New Holiday quests/items are now in game, as well as all the old ones! If you enjoy the holiday spirit, there’s plenty of content to go around. Save reindeer, defeat the greench, and get some presents! Here’s a breakdown of the new content from Blizzard:

“It’s that time of the year again! All across Azeroth and Outland, festive decorations adorn towns and cities as the Horde and the Alliance begin their annual celebration of the Feast of Winter Veil. Join in the festivities and experience some brand-new Winter Veil content this year, such as…

* New holiday themed cooking, tailoring, and leatherworking recipes
* A new mechanotoy present under tree on the 25th - the Clockwork Rocket Bot
* Outland bosses that drop festive red and green winter hats matching the tailoring and leatherworking clothes
* Improved Fresh and Preserved Holly that now also works on flying mounts, transforming them into flying reindeer”

Nitpicky for details? You can get the entire breakdown here.
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So I got caught up in searching for holiday wow information yesterday. But fear not, I’ve brought you a clever video that takes from the ever-popular trailer for the movie 300, and replaces the Spartans with some warcraft flavor. That flavor being wrath-spamming moonkins!

I thought the video was well done myself. I was surprised that they managed to make the trailer look so fluid, as the moonkin don’t look that out of place.

Enjoy!

Throughout the year, Blizzard implements a wide number of in-game holiday events. From Hallow’s eve to Orphan week to the Summer Festival and Brewfest, there is almost always something going on during any season. As we close in on the winter months, one of the more entertaining holiday events is the Feast of Winter Veil.

Here’s the skinny from the official site:

The Feast of Winter Veil is upon us, and Greatfather Winter is busy spreading holiday cheer in major cites across the land! Here are a few holiday treats players can now experience in-game:

* The Jinglepocket Goblins have set up their seasonal fare shops in major cities. Adventurers can purchase many holiday favorites - including Greatfather’s Winter ale, candy canes, gingerbread cookie recipes, and mistletoe.
* All the cheer-spreading is making Greatfather Winter hungry, and he is looking for adventurers to get him his daily fix of milk and cookies.
* Smokeywood Pastures needs a few brave adventurers to investigate the disappearance of a shipment of holiday goods traveling though Alterac.
* Unconfirmed reports say that consuming eggnog during a snowball fight can have some chilling results.

It’s important to note that some of this may be rather outdated, as each year new questlines and rewards are added to the existing event. As such, your best bet is to go check out the new events once they are in-game. Whether you’ll be packing snowballs, drinking eggnog, riding reindeer or hanging out under the mistletoe, be sure to get out there and enjoy the holiday fun!

For full details, be sure to take a look at the WoW Wiki here.

-Xias

In an obvious bid to help ailing low-population servers where one faction has more or less wiped out the other, with not enough new players to help fill the gaps, Blizzard has opened up free character transfers to some of these servers. Whether it will solve the problem or not is anyones’ guess, but it certainly will help!

Is your server on the list? Only one way to find out:

Source Group A
Burning Blade
Warsong**
Laughing Skull
Arthas

Destination Realm A
Jaedenar

Source Group B
Spinebreaker
Mug’thol
Mal’Ganis
Tichondrius

Destination Realm B
Nazjatar

Source Group C
Sargeras
Dragonmaw
Bonechewer
Illidan

Destination Realm C
Maiev

These transfers are open until the 13th, so if you’re going to go through with the transfer, better take advantage soon before it’s too late!

There seems to be widespread speculation about the recent drop in tank availability. If you’re not familiar with the term, tanks are members of the party that will keep a monster’s attention on themselves so that you can blow them up/stab them to death without getting pummeled. Typically tanks are warriors, paladins, and druids (apparently warlocks can tank instances they outgear by a large margin).

Unfortunately there seems to be a shortage of tanks in warcraft these days. The reasoning? You could point to a whole slew of reasons why someone would not want to tank. It’s a lot of responsibility, and even if it isn’t your fault, you’ll often be blamed by rogues, mages etc. who go all out too early and pull aggro off of you, resulting in their untimely death. You need to be alert and on your toes at all times, making sure sheeped/sapped mobs don’t break loose and make a B-line for the healer. You are the shield of everyone in the group, and like it or not.

A lot of people prefer the more relaxed, less stressful role of being a damage-dealer. After all your only job is to do damage, and if something bad happens? Must’ve been the tank. The addition of arenas and increased number of battlegrounds gear available has led many warriors to pick up a 2-hander and rip other players a new one rather than tank on the PvE (player vs environment side).

As such, tanks are currently in high demand, and if you want to never be short a group, roll one! I’m currently leveling up my first tanking class, and thus far it has been a total blast (paladin). With a few exceptions, most people appreciate a good tank, and it’s one of the last slots to be filled in your typical pickup group.

So throw on a shield, get out there, and do some serious taunting.

To help lighten things up during the sometimes grueling middle of the week, I’ve decided to present for our readers and bring to you some great videos I’ve collected involving World of Warcraft. Some of these are machinimas, others are PvP videos, and still others do not fall into one category or the other.

So with this in mind, I’d like to show you one of my favorite videos of all time, called Return. It also happened to be the winner of the Blizzcon movie contest.

According to various news sites and warcraft’s main page as well, Vivendi Games (which Blizzard is a part of) will be taking a controlling stake in fellow gaming company Activision. What does this mean for you as a player? What exactly will change? Not very much, if the site FAQ is to be believed, here are some excerpts from that faq, which can be found here.

Q: How will this impact Blizzard’s games?
A: This will not impact Blizzard’s games. We remain committed to providing the same high-quality game content and support that we always have. Development on Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft II, as well as on our unannounced games, is continuing as normal.

Q: Will there be any management changes at Blizzard as a result of this deal?
A: No, there won’t be any management changes at Blizzard as a result of the combination.

Q: Will there be any visible differences in Blizzard’s logo or packaging/marketing materials as a result of this deal?
A: No, there won’t be any changes to our company name, logo, packaging/marketing materials, or anything else along those lines.

As you can see not much is going to be impacted in terms of day to day management of Blizzard’s game portfolio, World of Warcraft included. Still, it’s best to stay in the loop on this type of information, as company mergers have a tendency to create unforeseen consequences in the games they make (ie. The Command and Conquer series after Westwood was bought by EA).