Posts with tag best-of-wow-insider

Zaronis: Doesn't anyone else have a problem with enslaving a sentient creature to fight to the death for your own amusement?
MarioLanza: Nope.
Zapwidget: I only fight till they pass out.

Ah, December. Tons of holiday-related silliness, and (for some reason) a lot of point-counterpoint articles and patch 5.2 news. This has been a fun month.

To everyone who's been reading WoW Insider this year, whether you're new to us or a longtime fan, thank you! Happy New Year, all! Stay safe today, and let's have a good 2013!

AiunTanks: I spent all my time in Pandaria looking for a way to murder Anduin Wrynn.
Kennyj116: He becomes "more powerful than you could ever imagine."
AiunTanks: And run the risk of him becoming as useful as Obi-wan was in the movies? I think I'll take that chance.

November was possibly the most introspective month of a very introspective year. We'd had enough experience in Mists of Pandaria to sit back, take stock of what was working and what didn't seem to be, and start digging into the latter. Primarily, that meant LFR and the nigh-endless series of dailies.

But that didn't mean people weren't enjoying the expansion. Judging from the explosion of blog posts, commentary, and machinima hitting the airwaves in November, they were enjoying it a lot.

dngreene: Man, when Blizzard wants to get players out into the world, they get players out into the world ... or else.
atanae: Meanwhile, four stalwart players who have no lives are killing boars ...
shrikesnest: Yes, WoW got hacked, and that sucks. I wish it didn't happen. But I can at least take some consolation in the fact that this is the funniest comment thread on WoW Insider in a long time.
PhilDGiles: Does anybody think "SPARE US GOD" might fall into that same list of infamous WoW quotes as "LEEEEEROY JENKINS" now?

In this month, everybody died. Then they rezzed and kept playing. October 2012 was pretty lockstep with the pattern we've already seen in major patch or expansion releases, which is that staffers largely abandon whatever editorials they were working on in favor of, uh, playing the game.

As you might expect, lots of great news this month, and an unbroken string of comments and pokes at the wonderful random stuff that kept popping out of Pandaria.

Mists of Pandaria was released on the 25th, and everything about September is just an embarrassment of riches. Once again, opinions and editorials suffered a little bit as we turned our attention to other stuff, but this is easily among the most action-packed months I've ever had to summarize.

bengeibe: As a fan of metal, I can't fathom what could possibly be offputting about the imagery in this video. All I see is pure awesome.
AleisterHyde: As not a fan of metal, my ears hurt.

Another busy, busy month. June 2012 was equal parts restrospective work on what Cataclysm had brought to the table, and looking ahead to Mists of Pandaria to see what would change.

This was also a period when real-life concerns intruded on the game world in a fairly unpleasant manner. You'll see what I mean past the cut.

May saw Diablo 3's release on the 15th, the Avengers, a sudden exodus of staffers from their posts, and another avalanche of Mists of Pandaria beta news as the editors dragged people back with a slew of threats and bribes.

The female pandaren dance was also revealed to be the Caramelldansen. Alex posted this. The video in that article's been taken down, so I've helpfully embedded an alternative above.

Ellyndia: Whenever I need to do something that might be scary or a little intimidating, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and say to myself: "Time's up, let's do this." I have gotten a job using this method.
jazz.panther: My success with that method is only about 33.33% ... repeating of course.

Mass Effect 3 was released on the 6th, which was just enough time for people to finish it and be really pissed off in time for the Mists of Pandaria beta, which hit on the 21st. Not surprisingly, beta coverage absolutely dominated everything else we did in this month. Rather than overload readers with an endless parade of it, I've tried to centralize our MoP coverage in our omnibus guide.

Marthazon: World of Warcraft is sort of like the French Foreign Legion of games when it comes to age. As long as you can do your part, it's rare for someone to ask "How old are you?"

For anyone out there who's new to the site, at the end of every year we run a retrospective series examining the last 12 months and the articles that best captured the zeitgeist of the player community. You'll find one of these published every day through the end of 2012, assuming we don't all vanish into the nether on Dec. 21 (which I am inclined to doubt, as bills are due and nobody's that lucky).

2012 felt like a very introspective year for the game. Between the lack of a 2012 BlizzCon, Cataclysm's winding down, and the 9-month wait for Mists of Pandaria, players used the extra time to argue and probe into systems that most needed improvement. January was no exception, and this was a very chatty month for our staffers.

Bearheals: (on archaeology) The smallest distance between two points is a bunch of erratic zigzags.

After patch 4.3 went live in late November, class columnists and commenters busied themselves with the new 5-mans and Dragon Soul raid. I think it's safe to say that Raid Finder problems have dominated December commentary. Players loved it as a feature, but they hated the various cheats that guilds used to get themselves to a four-piece tier bonus as quickly as possible, and they especially hated the outbreak of loot greed. More on this past the cut.

That wraps up our look back at 2011, and I'm looking forward to a bright, happy, and hopefully less trees-falling-on-my-house-filled 2012, even if the world is apparently scheduled to come to a crashing halt next December. Happy New Year, everyone, and if you're out partying tonight, stay safe.

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! It's almost time to throw your old 2011 Justin Bieber calendar in the trash and hang your new 2012 Justin Bieber calendar.

No doubt, 2011 has been a heck of a year so far -- we were introduced to Mists of Pandaria, we killed Deathwing with 24 complete and total strangers, we BlizzConned, and we visited parallel universes. There's been a lot of really awesome stuff going down, and at WoW Insider, we've been in a reminiscing mood.

But don't let us have all the fun. We want to know what your favorite World of Warcraft moment was this past year. Was it the time your guild finally downed heroic Ragnaros? Was it the time you scored that Cho'gall kill with only one person left standing? The moment you hit the 999,999 gold cap? Or was it something more personal -- say, that moment your boyfriend shared news of your wedding proposal via a popular World of Warcraft website?

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@Druidis4fite The AH Fee structure is a regressive tax on the poor. #OccupyGregStreet
@Warcraft This movement doesn't seem to have a clear message. -- CM Lylirra

As with all BlizzCon-related months, October was jam-packed and probably the busiest month of 2011 for the site.

However, this bit of news belongs in a special category all its own: Hello and Goodbye. Dan O'Halloran, our fearless editor-in-chief and a mysterious figure who communicated largely through a series of lolcats, left to head up Tecca, and Alex Ziebart took the reins. Goodbye, farewell, and amen, Dan. By the way, the image you see above is Fox's response to Dan's email earlier this year about restarting the About the Bloggers series.

Curulan: Pigeon raid boss. I love it. GET ON THIS, BLIZZARD.

September was pretty much all patch 4.3, all the time. The PTR didn't actually go live until close to the end of the month, but we definitely made up for lost time when it did. Transmogrification thoughts still dominated the site's more idle discussion -- who doesn't love cool-looking gear? -- but art-related talk kicked into high gear once everyone saw the visual proc off the new rogue legendary. That would go on to provide one of December's better jokes.

Candida: Knitting Grandmas would be an awesome guild name.

Money, money, money, money. Money! August saw an avalanche of money and gold-related discussion as Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would feature a real-money Auction House. Oh, and Blizzard registered Mists of Pandaria as a trademark, spurring an endless series of fights on what the hell was going on with that. And then it announced transmogrification and void storage, and we all forgot about pandas for a bit in the interest of farming old raids for some sweet-looking gear.

And holy mother of God, Drama Mamas was on a roll this month.

Rekon13: To make you look at other gearing options, we've decided to remove other gearing options.

July was a very busy month for the site. Patch 4.2 hit in late June and with it, the Molten Front, Firelands, and a slew of mechanics and policy changes for the game. The latter is something you'll see pop up in our news coverage quite a bit -- but for my money, the best news item from July 2011 concerned a theme park in China that was just too troublesome to license.

Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate! June 2011 was a pretty patch-oriented month. 4.2 was still on the PTR, and we slowly wound our way through the content there, writing as we went. As with patch 4.1, it was a late entrant in the month it debuted, so you'll see most of our commentary from the live servers in July.