Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

While some players are hailing the Icecrown Citadel "tugboat" buff (Strength of Wrynn/Hellscream's Warsong) as a great equalizer that will open up endgame content to the player base at large, others have spotted holes in its implementation. The most common complaint is that doing the encounters the hard way yields no bonus at all: no achievement, no title, no recognition.

Mennoknight: The issue ... is that there is nothing showing if they did it the hard way. Most people take kill shots with the UI hidden, so the buff will not show.

Our group wanted to do it "the hard way" because we could. But the more you look at it, there is no reason NOT to keep the buff. There is no in-game tracking of it, and while you could technically take a screenshot of every boss kill without it, who's to say you won't go and kill everything with it one week and then kill the next week (with much better gear and perfected kill strats) without the buff? (5% doesn't matter, but this will become easier in later weeks.)

Additionally, none of the other groups are trading in the buff, and we decided as a realm not to count it in the progression threads, so there is very little reason not to change it. This could be EASILY solved by a simple track (feat of str, no points) with something along the lines of "Achieve your first kill of Marrowgar without using the Strength of Wrynn" (because other kills don't count past the first). Just something in game to track the kill, so you don't have to jump through hoops to get it tracked. You don't need to give better loot, more badges or anything. Just the simple tracking would be enough to get groups like mine to run without the buff.

More reader perspectives on the Wrynn/Warsong buff, after the break.

Gizen: I do not believe you'll be able to choose the strength of your buff, no. Blizzard hasn't said anything one way or another, but judging by how it currently works, it looks like it's either full strength or not at all. This seems especially stupid when you consider that some people are hypothesizing that the DPS requirement for the Lich King on heroic difficulty is too high to be doable without at least the 5% buff, so slower guilds will essentially be forced to fight him with a 30% boost and will never even get the option of fighting him the hard way.

Has your ICC raid been taking advantage of the buff? How do you feel about it -- do you feel a little disappointed, as if you're "cheating," or do you think the buff is a welcome way to open up more content to more players?
Accomplished Angler

It was a great week for crowdsourcing at WoW.com this week. At press time for this post, readers of WoW Rookie had contributed nearly 300 comments towards translating common PUG terminology. Meanwhile, over at The Overachiever, Azeroth's fishers were sharing their secrets on cross-faction fishing.

Ravdoss: "For Alliance, fishing in Orgrimmar is more troublesome. The two pools of water in Orgrimmar are in the Valley of Spirits and the Valley of Honor." It is, especially if you have no stealth ability to get to those fishing spots. A few things I've done to minimize being seen: fishing by the late of night when most foes are fast asleep; Noggenfogger Elixir for the shrink-dink 10-minute effect (plan on buying more than a few in Gadgetzan); cast from a seated position (it works just as well as standing); turn OFF the title to your name, because nothing sticks out more than some huge honking title with your name on one end.

There's little coverage to be had, and I won't give up my choice spots (just in case any Horde happen to be reading.) ;) Happy fishing!

artifex: Don't forget you can tag along with a For The Alliance raiding party. They provide great ironic cover for the Diplomat. Have yet to get Old Crafty, however. :(

Henrah: You can also fish whilst lying down. Just type /lie and then fish away. This works great behind the rocks under the fountain.
Key raiding skill: Creative use of your abilities

If Residue Rendezvous has been giving your ICC raid fits, try these reader suggestions.

Wallert: A little creativity can go along way. Our guild's not so hardcore; we have Festergut on farm but rarely beat the enrage by more than 20 seconds, so a couple of deaths usually means a wipe. We got the weekly to get the debuff off both him and Rotface. We killed Rotface first since he gives us more trouble, downing him after a few wipes. We're having major lag issues, but make our way over to Fester. It goes bad and we lose 3 people to Pungent Blight, causing a wipe. After the groans die down, I ask everyone to check their quest logs -- everyone completed. Demonic Circle outside the door. :)

125 frost badges for the guild made me very popular that night. Of course, being a evil lock, I was just trying to dodge repair bills, but I managed to convince them I'd ran away for the good of the guild. ^^

Andy_C: If this works as you suggest, you're a friggin legend! I guess there's nothing stopping a lock from porting out intentionally after getting the debuff to ensure the quest is completed (usually guaranteeing a wipe, but that might be worth it)? Or am I missing something?

On that note, would a pally bubble or DI do the same thing?

crschmidt: DI/Ice Block/etc. remove debuffs. Feign Death and Evasion both work. I would not be surprised to see these things fixed in 3.3.3 to require you to actually defeat the boss with the debuff or something, but there's been no notice of that yet.

vazhkatsi: Note that we did this a week ago, and you should definitely do it in this order. We had a 10-man with 3 horrible DPS but no hope of replacing them. So we did this so we could do the quest without finishing the bosses off. However, I had a huge repair from us failing 7 times 'cause we either died too fast to get a spore and he ran through the door to swat me, or on Rotface I got an ooze as I was running away.
Goon Squad downs Tirion Fordring

Goon Squad: harmless annoyance or dirty, rotten scoundrels?

Throckmorton: When I first started playing World of Warcraft back in 2006, I was on Mal'Ganis as Alliance. It was pretty bad. Horde on that realm outnumbered us 3 to 1 and consistently I would be ganked, the mailbox would be covered in Goon Squad alts, the flightmaster in Ironforge would be dead, et cetera. But the fact is, even though I was one of the people who they (and guilds like them) were being "cruel" to, I really didn't mind. It gave me something to do for an hour and took my mind off the monotony of leveling. It was funny. I realize where you are coming from, and it's great you are sticking up for these people (I realm transferred during BC), but it's really not that bad. People need to relax about WoW; it's not like your character is going to lose all his stuff and you have to start from square one. He will still be there when you log back on.

Brett: "Emergent gameplay"? Is that what we're calling weapons-grade jackassery these days? I can't get as exercised about this particular example as the crap these douche nozzles pull in the non-instanced world -- hey, if you want to screw your own raid, feel free. But this isn't some phenomenon that demands a newfangled descriptor from "scientists": it's nothing more complicated than online vandalism by egomaniacal children (in maturity level, if not in age). If these guys weren't playing WoW, they'd be measuring their e-peens by writing malware or hacking web sites. They're a boil on the ass of the user base.

How's your own ass feeling after reading about the Goon Squad's antics?
Reasons to play Cataclysm that make you not want to play?

The lore fanatics were out in force after PC Gamer magazine divulged more details coming in the Cataclysm expansion. Garrosh? Cairne? Everybody has an opinion. Meanwhile, others raised distrustful grumbling about the effects they fear the changes will have on game play.

Radiophonic: So tired of seeing my talent trees "retooled" -- please, just give us a break. I think the only Mastery System here is players' ability to adapt to irritating changes made by game developers.

RobynM: Surprisingly, a lot of this put a damper on my enthusiasm for Cataclysm.

• Number 20 is worrying if they install reputations for Worgen and Goblins, depending on how their starter areas are built. If they're on an inaccessible phase, like the DK starter zone, that'll deprive everyone working on the updated versions of Ambassador of the Alliance/Horde of a significant source of rep.
• Numbers 27 and 30 are troubling. Yeah, they're laden with dramatic conflict, but I'm not sure the devs realize just how unpopular Hellscream is already. Trust me, there's going to be a lot of unforeseen consequences that the devs are going to have to deal with.
• Numbers 31 and 46, particularly in conjunction, are going to make significant portions of the player base -very- unhappy. From the looks of them, it appears that one of the potentially few areas that could be solo-friendly is a PVP zone. Not everyone raids, and even fewer want to be ganked while they're questing, which is why they're not on PVP servers to begin with.
• A particular comment in regard to 46 -- they put the very best sources of a number of high-end resources in Wintergrasp and it still didn't become, by their own admission, the World PVP hub they were hoping for. Maybe that's a clue.
• As for 31, I'm just going to ahead and say it. I'm not thrilled that we're only getting five levels so that the devs could concentrate on yet another huge pile of content I'm never gonna see.

The WoW.com Weird E-mail of the Week

Name: [Redacted]
URL: Medical Alert Systems
Subject:

Will WOW work with medical alert systems. I would like a straight honest answer to this. No double talk. I have just signed up with WOW. I am interested in your reply. Also you could possibly have a new customer. I have no idea what you want (yes-*no) by "remember your info?"

Honestly, if you're looking for a medical alert system, we recommend VuhDo or Grid. We also suspect that you might want to look into beefing up your log-in practices, including checking into an authenticator. Safety first!

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