Posts with tag calendar

WoW Insider has received notifications to our tip line, as well as noted a particular problem coming up on the forums. The gold seller spam invitations in our calendars appear to have returned. They were gone, as a forum thread notes, for some time, almost 2 years, and all of a sudden they have returned.

There seems to have been a breakthrough among the gold sellers, allowing their bots to once again spam players' calendars with events advertizing their ill-gotten wares. We're not exactly sure just how they're doing it, but MVP Shammoz and Community Manager Eldtyara have been hard at work notifying the devs of the issue, as well as digging up a couple of solutions.

The first solution, as confirmed by Shammoz, is, rather than right-clicking the event and picking Ignore from the drop down menu, typing /ignore into chat. This appears to remove all the invitations from your calendar, rather than just the one you right-clicked on.

The other option is to run a script, which several players have asserted has solved the problem, as can be seen in the forum thread which shares it. Running a script simply involves pasting it into your chat and hitting enter, and the script itself is below:

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Guild events outside of the usual raiding and PvP activities can help break up the monotony and get people excited about their guild. This week's email comes from an "event officer" who wants to know, how do you get people to show up?

I am an officer in my guild, and we have been re-evaluating our roles. I am considering becoming the Social Event Coordinator, and I am looking for some advice to get things started. ... My ideas include scheduling nights to do scenarios/dungeons for achievements, old school raids, and probably a pet battle league once people aren't as focused on gearing up for raids.

My questions are:
Do you have any suggestions on how to communicate to guildies that aren't around much that these events are being planned?
Do you have suggestions on how to determine interest before scheduling?
Do you have suggestions on how to encourage participation?
Do you have other event ideas that have worked for you?

Patch 5.0.4 introduced a new battleground schedule in which there is always a Call to Arms battleground instead of weekends only. The Call to Arms changes every Tuesday and Friday, so that players can earn bonus honor every day of the week.

You may ask, "But, Robin, why aren't all the dates covered in that calendar over there? [points to the right sidebar]" Well, I'll tell you. The new Mists of Pandaria battlegrounds have already been scheduled on the in-game calendar, even though they won't be introduced until September 25.

We are currently showing only the BGs that can be played right now, but we are also showing when the Temple of Kotmogu and the Silvershard Mines will be the Call to Arms BGs after launch.

You can always verify the current schedule by viewing the in-game calendar. Just make sure the Battleground Call to Arms filter is selected from the filters dropdown menu at the top right of the calendar.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week: Shackleford.

Sometimes when I am out looking for new addons for the Spotlight, I find an author rather than any one addon. Many addon authors are not one-timers -- they've got a few addons under their belts because they either love the work or just can't get enough out of punishing themselves. Suffice to say, we are very appreciative of their work, and really, where would we be without them?

Today's Addon Spotlight focuses on two cool utilities from Shackleford, addon author to the stars (maybe). I am a big fan of little utilities, since most of these little wonders sit idly by, performing their functions with nary a whisper or whimper. Things just happen. If you don't already know them, may I introduce CalendarHUD and WeaponUP.

The in-game calendar has been updated with battleground information in preparation for Cataclysm. The following events have been added:

• Rated battlegrounds The 10v10 rated battleground will be switching weeks with the 15v15 rated battleground on a Tuesday-to-Monday schedule.
• Call to Arms All Call to Arms weekends have been moved around to accommodate the two new battlegrounds.
• The Battle for Gilneas The first Call to Arms weekend for this 10v10 BG begins on Dec. 17.
• Twin Peaks The Call to Arms begins Dec. 24 for this capture the flag 10v10 BG.

We've updated our calendar on the right sidebar to reflect the new schedule.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction and more. Sample the whole spectrum on WoW.com's Arts and Crafts in WoW page.

Artist Christina Marie's WoW-themed work is nothing if not saturated -- saturated with color, saturated with game references, saturated with humor. It's the kind of stuff you can toss onto your desktop and then promptly lose vast chunks of time peering and snorting in bemused delight at the details scattered across these works. (Because I whipped up the Christina Marie art gallery, below, in just minutes. Without any linking or idle chatter in the WoW.com newsroom. You believe that, right? Right?) Her talent for twisting elements together (elements of art, elements of the game ... you name it) earned her a nod from Blizzard itself with inclusion in its 2011 holiday fan art calendar (as was our own Kelly Aarons). World of WarCrafts visited with Christina Marie to find out where the deluge of color and inspiration comes from.

Blizzard has added some nice new features to the World of Warcraft Armory, including a few players have been asking for in the past. The most exciting change is something that doesn't seem to be working quite correctly yet -- they're including a Flash-based model viewer for characters that will let you see what a toon looks like without ever logging into the game. So says their updates page, but as of this writing, the whole system is going up and down, and we couldn't get it to work correctly on any of our PCs. Should be done soon, though.

Other updates include character activity feeds -- there are now RSS buttons all over your profile that will let you track achievements, items, and other specific character information via RSS. And Blizzard has also built in calendar feeds that will let you output guild and player calendars to Outlook, Google Calendar, or other calendar applications. That means your out-of-game calendars will update automatically if your raidleader happens to change up the raiding schedule. And finally, character profiles have been redesigned and streamlined -- they look a little different with all of these new features. The date on all of these changes actually says January 1, 2010, so Blizzard may have implemented them a little early, but sooner or later we'll see these welcome changes all active on the Armory.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Update: The Armory is offline for maintenance now. These changes were seen in action, so they're real, but as we say above, they're officially dated for January 1st. So they may not be in effect just yet.

Surprise! It's December already, which means the winter holidays are just around the corner. According to Blizzard's calendar, Winter's Veil will be upon us in just two short weeks, and if patch 3.3 does drop next week as expected, it'll seem even shorter than that (I'm sure that the new Dungeon Finder system will make the time fly by for most of us). So before Greatfather Winter actually appears in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, the Godmother has the right idea: it's time to ask GFW what you want for Winter's Veil. He's delievered some nice ingame presents before, and this year should be no exception.

Personally, 3.3 will grant most of my Warcraft-related wishes, so I'll just wish for world peace. Oh, and 5000g for my newly 80 paladin's epic flying. Actually, I need a chopper, too, so world peace, 5000g for the epic flying, and another few thousand for the chopper mats. Oh, and I need gear to run heroics, so the peace thing, lots of money, and good gear. Wait -- I'll need a good flying mount, too. So let's say Rusted Proto-drake, epic gear, and lots and lots of money. Actually, it's Warcraft, so just forget the peace thing -- I'll just take the money and purples, thanks.

But that's just me and Steve Martin. What would you like to get from Greatfather Winter this year?

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

Maraudon or Blackrock Depths, anybody? Instances are your opportunity to meet and work as a team with other players in the World of Warcraft. You'll combat pack after pack of minions and defeat unique, memorable bosses on your way to some of the most enjoyable play in the game. Instances, also often known as dungeons, offer your group (and later, your raid) your own personal copy of a dungeon. No players other than your own group members are able to enter an instance with you. Instances provide some of the most rewarding and well designed content, challenges and loot possible for your character.

The teamwork and cooperative effort required to down the elite mobs and tricky bosses within an instance require a new level of teamwork from your rookie character. We've touched on the basics of finding your niche within a group. Today, let's cover the mechanics of managing instances – becoming "saved" to an instance, resetting them, understanding respawn and more. (One note: this week, we'll discuss five-man instances designed for single groups along the path to level 80, not raid instances requiring 10 or more players to complete. We'll introduce raid instance concepts for fresh level 80 players next week.)

Reader Bob sent us a neat little tool a while back that will help you get your guild's calendar off of The Armory and on to another calendar program, like Google Calendar or iCal. This little script he built (which unfortunately will probably get beat up as soon as this post goes live, so give it a break if it's down) will give you a link for your guild's calendar, which you can then take over to Google Calendar (in the Other Calendars box, click Add, and then "Add by URL") or any other calendar service that accepts ICS data by URL, and put all of your guild's raids and events right into the calendar app that you actually use every day.

However, there are a few hitches. Because the information you need lies on the Armory, you'll have to enter a Battle.net password into your calendar app to access that (which as Bob says, should be fine, but if you don't trust it, don't do it). Also, Blizzard is apparently not that happy with people accessing this data on the Armory either -- they've removed links to scripts like this off of the forums before. It's probably not a bannable offense (they probably just don't want tons of calendar queries into the Armory's servers), but if you try to connect this stuff together, you'll do it at your own risk.

Still, it's a shame Blizzard isn't more open with this guild data -- it would be extremely useful to easily export guild information out to an .ICS file or even an RSS feed (for bank and join/quit info). We're not sure what all of their concerns are, but given that the info is already updated on the Armory, there has to be a way to more easily get it out of there and into more places where we can use it.

Thanks to the astute eyes of reader Jadissa, we can report that Noblegarden is no longer present on the in-game calendar. This is likely a clear indicator that the in-game world event is getting pushed back. Based on what we know already (that it will be part of other achievements), it should not be assumed that the event was removed.

We've spoke about the upcoming changes to Noblegarden before: it might get delayed, and it will be part of the overall world event achievement What a Long, Strange Trip.

There has been no indication from Blizzard when exactly it will start up, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it go live towards the end of the month. We'll have to wait and see when this start date is, and we'll be sure to announce it here on WoW Insider as soon as we know.

This is not an April Fools joke.

There's always something going on in the World of Warcraft, and the month of February is no exception. We've got the Lunar Festival in full swing, Love is in the Air on the horizon, and a Chris Metzen signing out in New York.

Take a look after the break for our complete rundown of all the February events. And remember to check your in-game calendar to see what times these events begin on your sever, and then compensate for the time zone you live in.

Of course throughout all this month we'll keep you abreast on the latest news!

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

The title above is only half-joking. Patch 3.0.8 didn't supply any real content which is what we're all waiting for, but at this point rolling out patch 3.1 too quickly would be a disaster. I think game quality is worse now than it was before 3.0.8, so I'd much rather see things working smoothly again before they throw patch 3.1 at us. Of course, I'm also pretty bored with Wrath already, so...

Zoidberg asked...

So, what do we know about 3.1? What do we know about dual spec? Anything about Ulduar? Anything about DK nerfs? Warlock buffs? Will I get any Silver Covenant rep?

Mania has released the 2009 Petopia calendar, featuring 12 beautiful images of some of the best pets in the game -- pretty much the perfect gift for the Hunter in your life. The pictures were put together by Aaron Perez, and each one was commissioned by Mania herself, so the calendar features all pets picked by her, including many of the new pet types: there's my current pet, a Rhino, in there for December and of course the Spirit Beast makes an appearance as well. It's available right now over on her Cafepress page for $19.99.

Which may seem a little expensive, but Mania breaks the price down on her site: of the $20, a full $15 goes right back to Cafepress for printing costs and their profit. And of the $5 she gets, Mania sends it back to the artist for his work, so she doesn't even really expect to break even. Which is too bad -- there's certainly interest in these, I think, and it would be nice if we could set it up so the money goes somewhere besides Cafepress (but of course, then Mania would have to find a different printer and a different way to sell it, and who knows how much that all costs).

At any rate, it'll definitely turn out to be a nice calendar, so if you know any pet tamers who need help keeping track of the date, there's your holiday gift.