Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on Lady Gaga Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Gaga Moviewatch: Johnny Weir performs Poker Face originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Anasterian realm (but players on Broxigar can participate too by queueing for randoms)
• 3-11-2010, 4:00 PM PST
• Queue for a random battleground
• The Blizz staff will be in the guild 'Blizzard' Horde-side, and the guild 'Blizzard QA' Alliance-side.

Filed under: Events, Blizzard, PvP

PvP with Blizzard QA tomorrow originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• ICC is designed such that the final boss in each section is harder than the rest of the section (Putricide, Blood Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King).
• The ICC zone-wide buff "won't come in until at least a month after the Lich King has been released," which means we could see it soon, since the Lich King fight opened up February 2nd (although the devs mentioned in the Twitter chat that it's not quite time for the buff yet). It will improve "roughly once a month," and the buff will affect health, damage, and healing (much like the Luck of the Draw buff from random dungeon groups).
• They thought the Illidan encounter in Black Temple, back in BC, was a bit anti-climactic, so they wanted to make sure the end of the Lich King was "super special."
• In answer to "what next after I clear ICC:" ICC hard modes, and to a lesser extent the Ruby Sanctum, which is coming in a future patch. Ruby Sanctum will hold "roughly Lich King level gear," as has been mentioned elsewhere.

Filed under: Blizzard, Interviews

BlizzCast Episode #13 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Guilds, News items, Raiding

Ensidia temporarily banned for exploits originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Daelo and Ghostcrawler discuss the Lich King

Filed under: Interviews, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Daelo and Ghostcrawler discuss the Lich King originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Rumors, Warcraft Movie

Raimi tackling another movie before Warcraft originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Raiding

Icecrown Citadel raid weeklies activated originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Raiding

Lich King's loot table revealed originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• A player who mainly runs heroics will quickly amass many Emblems of Triumph, thereby becoming easily overgeared for all but the most challenging heroics (i.e. Halls of Reflection). This makes them much less fun.
• Raid-oriented players who are running heroics just for the two Emblems of Frost at the end are not very fun to run with.

Continue reading Have emblems ruined heroics? (Hint: no)

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Have emblems ruined heroics? (Hint: no) originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• It's a bit scary that it asks you to log in with your Battle.net account, but if you look at the URL of the popup window it is in fact from us.battle.net, one of the legitimate domains. Still, I'm not sure it's good training for users for Blizzard to ask us to log in within random popups.
• The login form does not ask for your authenticator.
• It doesn't tell you this in the brief description, but you choose up to five characters for the app to report to your followers. It doesn't just indiscriminately report the progress of your latest bank alt.
• By default, it publishes updates on your characters to your Facebook feed, but that box is easily unchecked (fortunately).
• It also by default posts to your feed that you've installed the app, which is something I can't forgive a Facebook (or Twitter) developer for. If I really want to tell all my friends I'm using your app, I'll tell them. Don't do it for me. At least this too is an option that can be unchecked.

Gallery: Armory Facebook app

Filed under: Blizzard

Blizzard launches Facebook Armory app originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Blizzard shines the spotlight on account security

Filed under: Blizzard, Account Security

Blizzard shines the spotlight on account security originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Things I like about it:

• It's pretty fast. It doesn't lock up for seconds at a time, and it doesn't max out my CPU.
• It works well with links on the Curse site to install addons; it also makes it pretty easy to get new addons from within the updater.
• It's easy to update all your addons; one click does it.
• The changelog for a new version is pretty easy to bring up, in case you're wondering whether to update.

Continue reading Curse Client for Mac v4 reviewed

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons

Curse Client for Mac v4 reviewed originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the wake of yesterday's rumor that the Cataclysm Friends and Family alpha will be starting this Tuesday, January 12, we should expect an increase in scammers trying to get your account details by offering phony alpha invites. We saw a lot of these for both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King as well, and some of them were very well crafted.

At this phase of Cataclysm's development, though, it will be comparatively easy to keep yourself safe. Since this is a friends and family alpha, if you don't have friends or family that work at Blizzard, you will not get an invite. Therefore, anyone offering you one is trying to pull a scam. Basically, everyone who's going to be getting legitimate access to the alpha should know who they are already. Everyone else, sit tight and stay tuned to WoW.com for the latest on WoW's next chapter.

Filed under: Expansions, Account Security, Cataclysm

You are not invited to the Cataclysm alpha originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There is some confusion as to whether/how the Dungeon Finder matches characters according to internal gear score. To the best of my knowledge, it actually attempt to create a discrepancy between characters' gear, so that you're likely to wind up with a few heavily geared members 'carrying' lesser-geared members. This is directly contrary to a claim I've seen circulating that the system attempts to match internal gear scores.

If the system doesn't attempt to create disparate groups, it should, and if it does, I'm glad it does. It may be disheartening to see someone in your group in full blues or maybe even a couple greens, instead of the now-familiar suit o' purples, but as some commenters pointed out in my post on Dungeon Finder bingo, we all started out in blues and greens at 80 (with the possible exception of some crafted gear and BoEs), and heroics were designed to be run with that gear. Where are the epics supposed to come from, for a pre-raid character?

Furthermore, a less-geared character might actually need some of the gear that drops in the ilvl 200 heroics (i.e. everything except CC, FoS, PoS, and HoR), which is a nice change of pace from the usual shardfest. It may take you a few extra minutes to farm your emblems, but PuGs are about more than just you: they're about a group of people coming together to help each other out, and enjoy a dungeon.

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Instances

The Dungeon Finder and gear disparity originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tinwhisker sent us this link to a set of entertaining PUG bingo cards on the official forums, made by Cruce of Scarlet Crusade. While I'm not sure I would actually have gotten bingo on any single run, some of the squares have certainly happened in many of my runs:

• A pure DPS class doing triple digit DPS (especially Death Knights; sorry to all the good DKs out there).
• RankWatch. Almost every run.
• Three or more members are "the Patient." I guess it's nice to show that they have some PuG experience, but that just makes egregious failures that much more disappointing.
• Someone starts on a mob the tank hasn't even hit yet. More often than not.
• Melee DPS attacking from the front. It's really not that hard, folks.

One thing I'd add to the list is people protesting that they don't take the game that seriously when you give them advice, like that they might want to put up diseases before using other strikes on their DK. You don't have to break out the spreadsheets, but there's a certain minimum effort to not be letting everyone else in your group down.

What do you guys think of this bingo set? Going to print out a few sheets to keep you entertained during those long, cold dungeon runs? Are there any squares you'd add?

Filed under: Instances

Dungeon Finder bingo originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wowhead has given us a few new features for holiday presents. The navigation tabs have been tweaked to showcase some of the features and pages they've been adding recently. There's also a super-cute wallpaper by Noxychu, featuring cartoon avatars of various Wowhead employees.

More interesting, however, is the Completion Tracker, which works with their profiler and client to track your characters' endless quest to 100%. Areas tracked include quests, mounts, pets, and recipes. It's still in beta, but it seems to be working fairly well. It also lets you exclude categories that you may not be working on.

The other feature that Wowhead added is one that I'm honestly not a fan of - the little "share" button at the bottom of blog posts. I know we have it on Wow.com as well, but I still think it would be better not to have it; people are perfectly competent to submit links to Digg or Facebook or whatever without you encouraging them to do it. That's just a personal opinion, though.

Filed under: News items, Quests

Completion tracker and more from Wowhead originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here's a question that occurred to me while I was walking home from the subway recently: What's the average winning roll in a five-man group, assuming everyone rolls? That is, if you randomly chose five numbers between one and 100, what is the expected value of the highest one?

I know a bit of statistics, but I really don't know how to begin getting at that one. However, I do know how to write a script that will calculate the answer. (Yes, these numbers are only pseudorandom, but I did some limited testing with real random numbers (from random.org) and the results were the same. Besides, I'm pretty sure Ruby's Mersenne twister pseudorandom generator is good enough for testing distributions like this.) The average winning roll out of a group of five people is 82.8 83.8 83.3 (tested over many, many repetitions). Now can any mathemagicians tell me why?

The graph above, in case it isn't clear, is average winning roll on the y-axis vs number of people rolling on the x-axis, tested over 100,000 trials for each group (the relatively small sample size is why the first point is not right at 50, and probably why the curve is a little wobbly).

Continue reading Math problem: Average winning roll

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Instances

Math problem: Average winning roll originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like many of you, I've been spending the last few days happily hitting up the new dungeon finder over and over again. The rewards are pretty amazing for the time involved, and the whole system is usually pretty painless. I've picked up a few tips and tricks along the way, on top of what was covered in Saturday's post by Mike Schramm, and here's what I have to share.

• If your dungeon pops and then gives you the dreaded "additional instances cannot be launched," you can try again by simply selecting "teleport to dungeon" from the DF menu on your minimap (the eye icon).
• If you have a full group (of guildies, say) and want to do a particular instance, you can use the DF to queue up for just that instance, and thereby gain the ability to teleport straight there. Sure beats flying.

Continue reading More dungeon finder tips

Filed under: Patches, Instances

More dungeon finder tips originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Author Gronzig emailed us a note about this new addon of his called RankWatch, which serves a simple purpose: it alerts you if anyone is using downranked spells. I'm sure we've all seen the player who forgets to train, put on their bars, or update their macros with new ranks of important spells. Heck, I was using rank two of Binding Heal well into Naxxramas, since I had it bound directly to a key with Dominos.

If anyone in your party or raid uses a rank lower than the maximum for their level, RankWatch will tell then about it in a whisper. The only exception is for Life Tap, which warlocks will often use rank one of to proc effects without taking much of a health hit. Back in the day, healers would commonly downrank heals as a mana-saving measure (if I recall correctly, Heal rank four was a staple in classic raiding), but this strategy is long-gone (since patch 3.0.2), because downranked spells now cost the same amount mana as top-rank spells (or more).

Configuration options include turing off the auto-whisper and ignoring certain players, which are both vital for a potentially-annoying mod like this. Overall RankWatch looks like a useful little tool, if only so I no longer have to worry about checking up on myself.

Download RankWach at Curse

Filed under: Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight

Addon Spotlight: RankWatch originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A tipster named James sent us a pointer to store.wowhead.com a little while ago, and as a few people have noticed since, the Wowhead store is now open for business! Here's what they're selling:

• Official Wowhead merchandise (a t-shirt, a hoodie, and a mousepad, so far - does anyone still use mousepads?)
• WoW paraphernalia, like those steins, and some LapWorks and Steelseries hardware products.
• Some random gaming hardware that seems to have nothing to do with WoW, like Guitar Hero for PS2, and Xbox 360 accessories. It is at a discount, though, so that's cool.
• The Burning Crusade collector's edition. I guess they had some extra copies [now seems to be sold out].

One interesting feature of the store is "reward points." Every item you can buy gets you a certain number of reward points; the amount loosely correlates with price, but I couldn't determine a direct correspondence from one to the other. Basically they idea is: buy stuff, earn points, spend points on rewards. So far the rewards consist of the original WoW and the various Wowhead merchandise, and the points add up fast - as the site points out, a $30 Xbox controller nets you enough points for a copy of WoW, and almost enough for a t-shirt.

For the technically inclined, I inquired about the underlying technology of the shop. The front-end work is all in-house, and so should hold true to the beautiful Wowhead aesthetic, but the e-commerce engine is the popular open-source platform Magento.

Filed under: News items

Wowhead store now open for business originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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View Poll

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Hardware

Breakfast Topic: How many of you play on a Mac? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what's going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there's even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements:

• Categorization by item level, with breakdowns for the five levels of items that are coming at us (219, 232, 251, 264, and 277).
• You can now filter the new items and search within them.
• Items are also sortable.

And this isn't a new feature, but it bears mentioning, at least if you're a major news geek like me: you can get an RSS feed of the new items added to the Wowhead database. If you wanted to you could probably hook this up to Twitter, or put it on your blog, or whatever.

Anyway, if you want to know what items are coming at us along with Icecrown Citadel, I think there's no better place to be. What items are you most excited about?

Filed under: Patches, Items

Wowhead's new item page now even newer originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Simulators for WoW are nothing new -- Rawr, for instance, has been around for years, and is steadily snowballing into a one-stop shop for simulating all classes (it's not there yet, but I still love it). In case you're scratching your head at this point, a simulator is like a spreadsheet, but much smarter -- instead of using some general approximations to calculate how your gear is going to change your DPS, it basically goes ahead and plays a model version of the game for you. Edit: apparently Rawr is not a simulator -- it uses formulas that come up with the same answer every time, much like spreadsheets. We still love it anyway.

What is new about the simulator I want to talk about today, which seems to be entitled "Mr. Robot," is that it runs on the web, in Microsoft's Silverlight framework (Silverlight seems to have come about because someone at MS saw Flash and decided they wanted one too). This means it's cross-platform and there's nothing to install (well, except Silverlight, but you may have that already). They're only doing sims for Death Knights right now, but the team says more classes are coming (I hear Warlock is next, but don't quote me).

Continue reading Ask Mr. Robot

Filed under: Classes, Death Knight

Ask Mr. Robot originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now this is neat: brand-new totem artwork has been spotted on the patch 3.3 PTR for troll shamans by extremely excited tipster Zjin. Previously, all Horde shamans shared a totem design, and draenei got their own space-themed totems when they were added. The new troll ones look appropriately voodoo, I think.

There are now at least three designs for the four different horde races; I wouldn't be surprised if orcs turned out to have their own as well. The current Horde totems fit tauren best of all the races. Once we here at WoW.com start making our way onto the PTRs, we'll bring you any more information we can find on possible new totems for the various races. In the mean time, I'll be in my bunk, doing designs for dwarf totems in my head.

Update: yep, there are new Dwarf and Orc totems too.

Filed under: Trolls, Shaman, Patches

Patch 3.3 PTR: New totems for trolls originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The patch 3.3 PTR is up (as you must have noticed if you're reading the same site I'm writing on), and among other things, it contains a battery of crafted gear that confers nature resistance for users of the various armor classes. There's leg and foot wear for all armor types, in various versions where appropriate (like DPS/tanking/spell for plate).

This is a pretty good sign that we're going to want/need nature resist somewhere in Icecrown Citadel. The mats list is another hint in that direction, calling as it does for Icecrown Thing of Crafting Things [PH]. It's a good thing they put "PH" there, or I might not have known the name was a placeholder.

But seriously folks, get ready to craft another set of resistance gear. I'm not particularly jazzed about this myself - I mostly raid as a druid these days, and we have little enough bag space as it is - but I guess it's one way to make sure players don't consume the content too quickly (if they have to stock up on Things of Crafting Things from earlier bosses first). Still seems like a silly hoop to make us jump through.

Filed under: Patches, Items, Raiding

Patch 3.3 PTR: Craftable nature resist gear originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All you need to do to win is leave a comment on their Facebook thread saying what your favorite Blizzard game is, and why. This means you will need a Facebook account, and you also need to become a "fan" of Razer first from their profile page. The winner will be randomly chosen on Monday, so you have until then to get in there.

Filed under: Contests, BlizzCon, Hardware

Razer is giving away a sweet Asus rig originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading BlizzCon 2009: Dance and soundalike contest videos

Filed under: Contests, BlizzCon

BlizzCon 2009: Dance and soundalike contest videos originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

Filed under: Contests, BlizzCon

BlizzCon 2009: Costume contest video originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• They didn't give any new classes to Draenei because there are too many of the space goats already.
• There's a chance that Hunter Aspects will go away entirely.
• New tidbit on Archaeology: putting pieces of artifacts together sends you to "face some sort of challenge" out in the world.
• They like the way fishing works in Animal Crossing, and might look to that for inspiration on how to rework the process.

And here are the good parts from the Q&A:

Continue reading BlizzCon 2009: Class panel #2, the good parts version

Filed under: Fishing, Draenei, Classes, BlizzCon, Cataclysm, Archaeology

BlizzCon 2009: Class panel #2, the good parts version originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• At maximum level, you choose to align yourself with a given Titan cult - i.e., you choose a specific path.
• The paths are not class- or role-specific. Players will have to figure out for themselves what path they want to take.
• Turning in artifacts found with Archeology (the new secondary profession) will cause you to progress along your chosen path.
• The main rewards are Ancient Glyphs (not part of the Inscription profession). At each rank in your Path you have two to three choices of Glyphs.
• Some examples of Ancient Glyphs are:
  • Bleed reduction
  • Bandage improvement
  • Increased damage following a crit
• More Glyphs will probably come after launch.
• Everyone is going to eventually be able to get all the glyphs for their path, and it will not be grindy (i.e. not like Sons of Hodir).

I'm looking forward to learning more about this as Cataclysm comes towards beta and release. I'm especially excited that they're focusing on making it not feel grindy, because that's a definite risk for a system like this.

BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

Filed under: BlizzCon, Cataclysm, Archaeology

BlizzCon 2009: Path of the Titans explained originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Attack Power on gear is gone. Instead, some classes will get 2 AP from each point of Agi (Rogues, Hunters, Shamans, Druids), and other classes (presumably Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights) will get 2 AP per point of Strength. Side effect: no more plate wearers stealing your gear
• Spell Power is gone. It comes from Int now.
• MP5 is gone. Spirit is the mana regen stat, and all classes that need it will get some form of Meditation. (Hunters, never fear - you don't use mana any more. More on this in a separate post.)
• Armor Penetration is gone. That one was just confusing.
• Defense is gone. Tanks are now defense-capped from talents, like Druid tanks.
• Haste now increases your rate of resource regeneration (mana, energy, rage, runes, focus).
• Block Value is gone, but blocks now mitigate a percentage of damage.
• Stamina is going to be more equal across different armor types - no more "plate HP envy."

Whew, those are some massive changes. I'm very much in favor of this sort of streamlining; the number of stats in game was getting a bit silly. This back-to-basics approach is refreshing. It's going to take some balancing, sure, but I think it's the right way to go.

Filed under: Items, BlizzCon, Cataclysm

BlizzCon 2009: Stats vastly simplified originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Cataclysm cinematic, as first shown this afternoon at the BlizzCon 2009 opening ceremonies, is pretty darn epic (as all of Blizz's cinematics have been, really). If you haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet, fear not - there are options. You can watch it embedded above in this post, or you can head on over to Blizzard's official site and watch it streaming or download a high-quality version.

And you definitely should watch it if you haven't yet. There's a ton of good information right here on WoW.com, but a video is worth quite a lot of words. There's even a gnome in this one! (A priest, near the end.) Not to mention goblins, which I hear are the new gnomes. I am incredibly excited.

BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

Filed under: Machinima, BlizzCon, Cataclysm

BlizzCon 2009: The Cataclysm trailer originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Development on Cataclysm was started before Wrath of the Lich King was done.
• Deathwing is the main boss of Cataclysm, as Arthas was for Wrath.
• You will not be able to go back to the old world content at all post-Cataclysm.
• Faction transfer will let you choose any race that can play your class.
• Archaeology is a secondary skill, like cooking, so anyone can get it. It ties in very closely with Path of the Titans, the new advancement system. It's all about traveling through Azeroth finding ancient artifacts, with a mini-game to decipher what the artifact is, and then you get rewards for it. Rewards will include profession recipes, items, and money, and the big reward will be new glyph slots for Path of the Titans (hopefully more on this later).
• The Worgen will have their own district in Stormwind.

Odds and ends, sure, but some darn interesting ones.

Filed under: BlizzCon, Cataclysm

BlizzCon 2009: Q&A with Cory Stockton originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Barrens is split in two. Darkshore is flooded.
• New zones: Uldum, Grim Batol, the Sunken City of Vashj'ir.
• "More raid content" than previous expansions
• A new "Wintergrasp-like zone" called Tol Barad
• Archaeology, the new secondary profession, lets you "unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards"
• The new starting zones will be heavily phased, and will be similar to the DK starting zones
• Azshara is now a low-level Horde zone connected directly to Orgrimar
• Azeroth will be changed whether you buy the expansion or not

I'm psyched. I'm sure we'll learn more about all of these details as Blizzcon goes by, so keep it locked on WoW.com. In fact, check out the live blog of the Cataclysm panel going on right now for more info. I'm especially curious about Archaology, and about whether they can keep their promise to have more raid content.

Check out the entire FAQ after the break!

BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

Continue reading Blizzcon 2009: Official Cataclysm FAQ

Filed under: BlizzCon, Cataclysm

Blizzcon 2009: Official Cataclysm FAQ originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A friendly tipster has let us know that currently on the official WoW site, the map of Azeroth is listed as "really outdated" (see screenshot above). This is the clickable map that gives information about each zone. The Outland and Northrend maps are still up, but the Azeroth map is down.

Hm...a portent of Cataclysmic events, anyone? This is an entertaining little leak from the Blizzard web team. I'm sure we'll get the full story in a few hours from our Anaheim ground team, but for now, this is a subtle hint at what might go down in the next chapter of WoW history, and where.

BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

Filed under: Expansions, Cataclysm

Azeroth map "outdated" on official site originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Patch 3.2 is here today, and it comes with a new raid (with four separate lockouts), a new 5-man dungeon, a new battleground, a bunch of new dailies, reduced mount prices, a streamlined emblem system, and new Druid forms, not to mention the usual list of class balance changes.

So what are you going to do first?

As for myself, the very first thing I will do will probably be to play with the new Druid forms; they're fun, and will require a trip to the barber shop to play around with.

After that, I'll be hitting up the 5-man. There's a certain trinket in the normal mode of that that I have my eye on, and I might just chain-run the place with some guildies until I get it.

WoW's Patch 3.2 ushers in the Crusaders' Coliseum, the Isle of Conquest, flying mounts at 60, and much more. WoW.com has all the patch information your Worgen obsessed mind can handle in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2!

Filed under: Patches, Breakfast Topics

Breakfast Topic: What's the first thing you'll do in Patch 3.2? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Rogues are for DPS. Historically, they have been "selfish" - little group utility. Right now they have better utility and synergy.
• They've always been strong in PvP, because of stealth, stun, and burst.
• The devs are happy with the way the combo point/finisher system is working right now.
• A proposed solution for Vanish! "...Vanish puts you in stealth for 1 second minimum no matter what else happens."
• Hunger for Blood is meant to boost PvE damage without doing much for PvP, and as such it works, but is boring. Changes are in store for the long run. They want it to be more reactive, and also put it back into PvP.
• They would like to make Subtlety competitive in PvE, but if they make it too good players will all switch to it because of the utility. Long-term, some Sub utility might become core, or some damage from other trees might become core so the choice is utility vs utility (not utility vs damage).
• Rogues underperform in dungeons, as a consequence of scaling so well in raids. If you're not doing good DPS in raids, "the problem exists between the chair and the keyboard."
• Rogues are too survivable when they can use all their tricks on one target, and too squishy when they can't. Long-term, they want to move some survivability to passive abilities.
• Combat Daggers is dead because Blizzard thinks that it was clunky and unfun.
• Don't expect more class-specific content any time soon - they would like to do it, but it's low on the priority list.

The full Q&A from Ghostcrawler and friends is below.

Continue reading Class Q&A: Rogue

Filed under: Rogue

Class Q&A: Rogue originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's entirely possible that my French is failing me (it's been a while since I studied it, and it might be getting rusty), but as far as I can make out, this blue post on the French customer support forums claims that patch 3.2 is coming "next Wednesday."

This is in the course of answering a routine question about where to get patch files and so forth - a surprising place for a patch release date confirmation, but I'll take my info where I can get it.

I'm not sure whether "next Wednesday" ("mercredi prochain" in the French) means August 5 (in which case the North American realms would get the patch tomorrow), or whether it means August 12 (in which case we'd get it the 11th), but I'd lean towards the former. So get your ducks in a row, faithful readers, and get ready for the Call of the Crusade.

[Thanks, Slainte]

Filed under: Patches, Europe

Patch 3.2 confirmed for this week on the French forums? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aguilar (who?) has made a blue post letting us know that they're going to start another round of collecting such data "in the very near future." If you're not on a Battle.net account yet, you'll see that message about non-personal information. Battle.net users, however, won't see the message, but they will be sending info up the line.

Yet another in a long line of injustices for us B.net account holders: no flickering message! I demand a free month of WoW in compensation.

Filed under: Odds and ends

Blizzard is spying on you again originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier today we went over some of the options for attending BlizzCon when you can't actually attend BlizzCon. Mainly this consists of the DirecTV-sponsered stream, which is $40 pay-per-view both on DirecTV and over the Internet (even if you're not a DirecTV customer). The BlizzCon tournaments will also be streamed for free.

Here's an additional perk on the Internet stream: if you can't be at your computer right when the events start, you can see it on-demand during and after the show (the Blizzard folks are calling it "rebroadcasting"). This might also be handy if (as a purely hypothetical example) someone needed to review footage to confirm the details of a breaking story for a certain blog that is going to have all the BlizzCon details as they happen.

In fact, ideally, they'd give us full DVR-like capabilities on the broadcast, although I recognize that there's a level of technology required to support that. Still, it would be nice.

Filed under: BlizzCon

On-demand BlizzCon streaming will be available originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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