Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

I had to edit this week's letter for length, but it's still a long one so that you can get the whole story.

Howdy Drama Mamas,

[...]

To begin with, I'm a male deaf gamer. I've been very blessed with great support systems in all areas of my life and have made friends both on and offline who have been extremely supportive of everything that I do. But I'll also be the first to tell you that I'm not perfect but I do try to avoid drama where I can.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas

For most of my WoW career, my main character and first love was a druid. I particularly liked the balance spec even when it wasn't fashionable to do so. I still like my druid, but she is not even close to my favorite character. I've leveled paladins and mages, priests and shamans. I've toyed with hunters and warlocks. But the class that I love the best now is most definitely the monk.

I haven't felt this way towards a class in a game since my bard in Everquest. Well, that's true for fantasy characters. I also adore my operative in Star Wars: The Old Republic. But for World of Warcraft, my true love is the monk. I played with the brewmaster a bit, but while I like the spec, I'm not overly fond of tanking, so it's not quite for me. It's easier to do solo questing and dailies on my windwalker so that is the spec I play the most, but my favorite is the mistweaver. I enjoy the different healing mechanics of the monk and I feel I do a good job with them.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Last week's Community Blog Topic was whether or not servers should be merged to alleviate the problem with low population servers. With the announcement that Virtual Realms will be tested on the patch 5.4 PTR, this subject became very timely, if not a little belated. Blizzard's answer to whether or not servers should be merged seems to be yes ... kinda. Rather than merging servers into several bigger servers, Virtual Realms will cluster several separate realms together into one big meta server with a shared AH and the ability to join guilds and groups cross realm. I assume that like servers will be put together, just like CRZ, so that PVE and PVP players won't be mixed.

If Virtual Realms make it to the live realms and work, it seems like an excellent solution to the problem of dead and imbalanced servers. But how will it be implemented? And what if Virtual Realms don't work? Should servers be merged?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

We recently asked, "What are you embarrassed that you didn't know?" Some of the same answers kept popping up and I learned a couple of other things to be embarrassed about.

1. You can put any color gem in any color socket. Matching colors is only if you're going for a socket bonus.
2. To move up and down while flying, you can can press the spacebar for up and the X key for down.
3. Holding down the Del key while flying will make your flying mount do a loop de loop.
4. Shift-click on mail to have all of the enclosed items go into your inventory.
5. There is a search bar at the top of your main backpack and your bank that searches all your bags.

Did you know all of these things? I had no clue about the loop de loop myself. What fun!

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Reader Morncreek just recently informed me in the comments of the results of last week's Community Blog Topic that heirlooms were cross-faction as long as the characters are on the same server. Mind blown. This may be common knowledge, but I had absolutely no clue. You can't send cash or even just text, but you can send any Bind on Account item. In my defense, all of my Alliance characters are on different servers from my Horde characters, but still.

In another case of embarrassing ignorance, it took a couple of years for me to discover that you could eat food and drink drinks at the same time. Though I've played since open beta, it wasn't until the tooltip started showing up on loading screens that I found that out. Yay tooltips!

What about you? Did you know about BoA items being cross-faction, but not cross-server? Is there anything in WoW that you've discovered over your playtime that made you facepalm? Fess up!

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

The last Community Blog Topic discussed what features we wish WoW had. Many people had wishes that would be solutions for the current low population server problem. Mine was to have one free character transfer per month. Others suggested that realms be merged and there was also much talk about making WoW one giant server.

Many pointed out that my idea of free transfers would help people leave low pop realms, but everyone might move to the same popular realms that already have queues. Leaving it up to each individual player might be too haphazard a way to handle it. But there is a certain appeal to letting people chose where they want to move their characters. Perhaps the highest population servers would not be available for free transfers.

What about merging servers? One of the main problems is perception. If Blizzard decides to save low pop servers by merging them, they will be admitting two things: that Cross Realm Zones aren't working for what they're trying to do and that subscriptions are so low they have to adjust the realms accordingly. Merging servers would definitely hype up "the sky is falling" mentality.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Last week, we asked, "What 3 features do you wish WoW had?" Quite a few people answered, many with more than three features. For myself, I suggested cross-realm mail, one free server transfer a month, and story questlines for each class. Here's the breakdown of the responses.

Level scaling

Since reading everyone else's ideas, I'd like to boot cross-realm mail out of my top three list and instead replace it with level scaling so that players of disparate levels can play together. Jojo over at Admiring Azeroth would also like to see level scaling be used so that players could return to lower level zones and complete the content with an appropriate amount of challenge. Feckless Leader's Ross has this to say about what scaling down would have to offer the max-level player:

Quest rewards can always contain gold, and perhaps scaled-down players would also earn the currency of the day, or be able to champion faction rep will questing with your friend. Of course this would work for low-level dungeons, too.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Blizzard Entertainment announced today that they will have a presence at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. They'll have a booth on the show floor where some of their writers and artists will be signing and they'll also be showing off some of the new products being introduced this year. New to this year are exclusive SDCC items that they will be selling at their booth.

Blizzard will be releasing their schedule and the product list ahead of time -- details coming soon. It is likely that their newly released Art of Blizzard Entertainment book will be there to be purchased and signed. Though if you want to purchase it ahead of time or aren't going to the Comic-Con, Amazon has a great deal on it right now.

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Filed under: Blizzard, News items

Two new gear vendors were added in Patch 5.3 that sell ilevel 232 gear so that you can immediately do the Blackrock Cavern and Throne of Tides dungeons upon reaching level 80. The ilevel requirement for both dungeons is 226 which is greater than the questing and dungeon gear from Wrath of the Lich King. Before the patch, if you were leveling up via dungeons, you had to stop and quest for a bit at level 80 in order to get the ilevel of gear required to continue running instances.

Quartermaster Iris Moondreamer at the Nordrassil Inn in Hyjal sells full sets of gear for each class. In Vash'jir, Erunak Stonespeaker saves you from drowning and then sells the same gear as Iris. The beginning quest reward gear in Cataclysm is ilevel 272, so questing for a while will get you better equipment, but these new vendors help close the gear gap.

Note: If you are choosing to buy your gear from Erunak, make sure to do so before completing the quest chain that gets you out of the sunken ship. as he stops being a vendor in the next phase.

I had missed this detail in the patch notes so it was a pleasant surprise when questing in Hyjal on a mage that had leveled the previous 20 levels via pet battles and archaeology. Though the gear gap isn't as large between the older expansions, I'd still like to see more supply vendors like these and the ones in Pandaria as you level up, particularly if you are doing so in a non-traditional way.

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Filed under: News items

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

The above video has nothing to do with this week's topic. I just like it. Anyway, this week we have two letters again, both about raid teams. Lisa and I disagree on the second letter, which is always fun.

Dear Drama Mamas,

I have a problem with my guild that I was hoping I could get some insight on.

[...]

My guild is a casual guild with one core 10-man raid group. They have been having issues with attendance with one of their dps and one frustrated afternoon asked me to step in. At first I was asked to be a substitute but as time went on it became apparent that their dps was not going to return. When I started I was poorly geared but with a little hard work, some enchants and gems, and reforging I was able to greatly improve not only my gear but my dps. I was thrilled and can honestly say very happy with the way things were going.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas