World of Warcraft

In an effort to continue to improve their beta testing abilities, Blizzard’s new program to test their latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, involves having to opt in to the Beta rather than being randomly selected. Here’s a full summary below:

“Today we opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, which gives players a chance to win an invitation to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King beta. For The Burning Crusade beta, we randomly invited players from the entire World of Warcraft community. With the Opt-In, our goal is to strengthen the beta-testing process by inviting only those players who have expressed active interest in participating.

Keep in mind that opting in doesn’t guarantee you’ll be selected for the beta. And players who’ve previously been promised beta access through a promotion or contest (such as by purchasing the Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition notebook) don’t need to worry — you’ll still be entered into the beta automatically when the time comes.”

This means that in order to test out the Beta, you’ll need to head over (right now!) and sign up via the link provided. I expected a flashy page with a bunch of WOTLK doodads and imagery, but instead the process is very straightforward. Just follow the link, login, and voila, you’re in. Of course this doesn’t mean you’re in the Beta, just that you are eligible if Blizzard decides you are worthy. Make sure you get the following message to confirm your acceptance:

“You have successfully opted in for a chance to participate in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. In the event that your account is selected, you will be sent an email with further instructions. Good luck!”

Good luck, indeed.
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If you’re like me, the prospect of leveling a brand new character can be somewhat daunting. After all there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into bringing your newly formed character up through the ranks into a full fledged level 70 hero. At times it seems like it may not even be worth it drag on toward end-game. Fear not, friends, below are some interface addons that can help you level your character faster and more efficiently..here we go!

There’s undoubtedly more addons available, but those are two of my particular favorites and help ease the sometime tedious nature of getting your latest alt to 70. Some say that this takes away from the adventurous nature of questing, running from place to place without any real direction. I believe there’s something to be said for this, but after the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time through, you probably aren’t really doing the quests for questing sake, but would like to get your character up to snuff. Good luck!

Having a priest horde-side and loving it, I’m always curious to see what bad things players have to say about the class. I tend to be a “glass is half full” kinda guy, so class shortcomings are often a source of entertainment for me. If someone says “X specs sucks and can’t raid” I will go out of my way to spec say, discipline, and take it in to see how it holds up. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I run through and say “well it worked..but yes, not exactly optimal.” Improvements can and should be suggested to help developer’s understand class issues. What issues do players bring to the table for priests? Let’s see…

There you have it, from my own priest’s view as well as a variety of responses on the class feedback thread. Priests do need a bit of love and have a few glaring issues (holy talents!) but all in all they are still a total blast to play. Maybe if I was a min-max kind of player I wouldn’t like them so much…good thing I’m not.

Here we are at Monday again, and I’ve been giving the idea of addons some thought, as well as the players who consider said addons a requirement for grouping. Personally there are a certain amount of UI addons I can tolerate before it looks like someone threw up customization allover my interface. I try to keep things functional but minimal, even though I have a few that I “need” to do anything on a regular basis. What are the addons that I use? Here’s my top 3 (though more are active at any given time).

Gatherer is a handy little addon that tracks node locations and marks them for you conveniently on your map. It also syncs up with other guildmates who use it, and will send you locations of nodes that your friends get as well! This means that anytime you need to go around looking for herbs, mines, etc. you can bring up your trusty map of resources and pick out the most herb-heavy location you can get your hands on. If you have any gathering professions, this is a must-have.

Some players consider managing your threat a somewhat tricky business. With no real idea of where you are in comparison to your tank (or if you are the tank!) it can be tough. Omen attempts to bridge this gap by showing a little meter that compares your threat to the main tank’s. It’s not perfect or exact, but it will warn you (with creepy flashes and noise) if you’re pushing the aggro ceiling. Very handy!

I’ll be honest: I LOVE trinkets. I picked engineering for my main before goggles and flying machines simply because I loved the idea of having combat pets like dragonlings follow me around. So to go along with my trinkets, I needed an easy way to put up a trinket rotation and activation. Trinketmenu allows you to setup a list of trinkets that will automatically swap in and out based on available cooldowns as well as easily keybinding your trinket slots. Just awesome.

Auction House Arbitrage is one of those things that everyone claims is the easiest thing ever. Seriously, go over to the forums and mention it, and you’re practically guaranteed to get “I made XXXXX gold doing arbitrage, people are stupid” or some variation of that. It’s not quite as easy as some say, but it is true that anyone and everyone is capable of doing some gaming on the auction house in some scale. I don’t get too involved with it, but occasionally I’ll see an opportunity and go for it. Which brings us to my first point…

All in all auction house arbitrage can be fun and profitable, if done the right way. Good luck!

As an avid engineer, I tend to bristle a bit when I hear players complain about the lack of marketable materials we can make. After all, most engineering devices require being an engineer to use, so why would anyone buy one when they can make it themselves? To that I usually say that the craft isn’t about money, it’s about fun! But for those who still insist that any trade should be able to make money, I have my fallback point, the mote extractor. Obtained through an easy quest in Zangarmarsh (Telredor for alliance), this extractor is one of the greatest gifts to engineering ever conceived. You’ll be able to zoom through a variety of outland zones and suck out motes from clouds that you pass by. Depending on the type of cloud a different mote will pop out. Since primals are ALWAYS in demand on the auction house (except for earth, but we don’t bother with earth, anyway), you can make damn good money collecting motes. Here’s the skinny:

All in all I’d say if you dedicate yourself to it you can make good money hunting down motes with your extractor. If you happen to be a miner (most engineers are) then an added bonus is any veins you’ll find along the way. Being an engineer may not be the most profitable profession ever, but is the most flashy (flash bombs, that is)!