Posts with tag how-to

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; email lisa@wow.com with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

The pre-expansion lull is the perfect time to pour your enthusiasm for the World of Warcraft into more creative outlets. Your stable of characters may be perfectly outfitted to face the coming Cataclysm -- but what about the person behind the keyboard? Is the entrance to your lair clearly marked? Are your earrings up to snuff? Would Thrall approve of the place you lay your head at night? Check out our how-to gallery of do-it-yourself WoW crafts below; just follow the blue text links under each photo to find simple instructions for making your own version of each craft.



World of WarCrafts is always looking for more how-to's on WoW-themed arts and crafts of every stripe. Send photos, descriptions and instructions of your not-for-profit creations to lisa@wow.com.

---

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by emailing lisa@wow.com with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

---

One of my favorite WoW blogs, HoTs and DoTs, has a great post up about Dungeon Groups 101 -- the very basics of running instances. You may think that there's nothing more basic to the game than getting in an instance with four people and taking down a few bosses and trash, but you'd be surprised. Even in a social game like this, one of the first hurdles newbies have to deal with is joining a group to play together. They worry that they'll do things wrong and that other people will make fun of what they're wearing or playing, and that worry keeps them from enjoying my absolute favorite part of the game.

Cassandri's writeup is an excellent read for anyone who feels that way (and feel free to pass on this post to any friends or relatives you know who've been too leery to join an instance yet). She does do some basic knowledge stuff in there, just hints on the classes and what they can all do -- and our WoW Rookie posts will help out with that stuff too -- but more importantly, she says what lots of new players need to hear: that messing up in an instance isn't that big a deal, and that playing together with others (which is the reason why we're all playing an MMO rather than a single player game in the first place) is more than worth getting past any anxiety around joining a group. I've read a lot of comments like the one Cassandri quotes in her post, too, and I'm here to tell you: if you haven't run an instance yet, it's time to stop worrying about what it'll be like and give it a try.

I know -- most of you will hear the word "chatlinks" and think of horrible times in Trade channel where people are spamming the names of abilities and items in different ways, from nonsense to offensive. But chatlinking is a skill that isn't talked about much, and there definitely are place where it's useful (telling guild members about an item that might help them, or linking an enchant to show what mats it needs). So, encouraged by this thread over on Epic Advice, let's run through a few of the ways you can put links to items in the chat channel.

I haven't played a tank in a while, so I haven't had to mess with stats at endgame for a long time. Though my paladin is slowly getting there, so this little macro over at Honor's Code might come in handy. Parry and dodge are very similar abilities -- both of them help you to completely avoid damage from bosses as a tank. But they do have a very few important differences (Parry speeds up your next attack swing, and is affected by diminishing returns at higher levels of the stat), so when you're gearing up at endgame, you want to make sure to balance them out in the right way.

We can't believe it either – Turpster has been let loose on WoW.com to bring you videos from in and around the World of Warcraft! You've heard him on the WoW Insider Show, and now see him on TurpsterVision right here on WoW.com.

Here at WoW.com we give away TCG loot all the time and TurpsterVision should be no different. If you've always wanted to smash an ogre till his sweet delectable guts scatter all over the floor then today might just be your lucky day! Today you get the chance to win one of the new Fields of Honor loot codes by just leaving a comment to this week's TurpsterVision (Being a limey Brit this is open to EU only as the codes apparently only work over here...sorry)!

Read on below the break for more information on how to win your very own Fields of Honor loot and for an image which is NSFW. That's right ladies, I've whacked it out due to popular demand and snapped off a few shots of my massive beast. (If that doesn't intrigue you into clicking then I don't know what will!)

After yet another Cracked Egg with nothing but a Cobra Hatchling in it, and the bigtime raiding proto-drakes constantly getting dropped out of the game, there's really only one other option: the Red Proto-drake, a reward for the Glory of the Hero meta-achievement. It's not easy: you've got to not only beat all of the heroics in the game, but all of the hard mode achievements for each of them. Guides like our OverAchievers can help, and a really great group to go along with helps more, but some of the achievements are so tough they need extra attention.

The Oculus' achievement, however, is one that needs an even closer look. And 4 Haelz kindly provides exactly that, with an in-depth guide to toppling two achievements in one, both the Emerald and Ruby Void, by doing the boss with five Amber drakes. The Amber drakes are usually meant as DPS, which makes this fight extra tough: you can't take much damage at all, because you can't get any damage back without healers. So what it requires, instead, is communication and coordination. Basically, you use the drakes' Time Stop ability to slow the fight down, and then try to do some coordinated kiting while DPSing like mad, all the time hoping that you can bring him down before he takes one of you out.

As Bell says, once you get the idea (and have wiped a few times -- you should probably be riding the drakes naked, since not only does your gear not affect their performance, but it'll save you repair costs), the fight's not actually that hard to pull off, but it's the learning that's going to hurt.

The Wordy Warrior covers a well-traveled subject in an interesting way in her latest post. We've already talked in-depth about how to get into a good raiding guild (and we've even covered some amazing guild applications), but straight from the trenches of guild leadership, Ariedan sends an open letter to anyone applying to her guild with, some might say, the wrong attitude.

Here's the thing: especially if you're applying to a progression guild, odds are that they don't need you. They're progressing just fine, and bringing you in just opens the door for more drama. It's a risk, and it's your job to convince them to take that risk, hopefully for the benefit of both. So if you show up to an application and don't take it seriously, and flip out when they question your background, and expect them to take you on without any proof you'd be valuable to them, don't be surprised when they laugh you right out of their forums.

We're probably preaching to the choir here -- if you're reading this site, you probably already have at least one clue, and are either in a guild you like that is not a raiding guild, or are in a progression guild that you got into because you were able to justify that risk. But if you're still having trouble figuring out how to get where you want to be, take WW's advice to heart: it's on you to justify your entry to the guild, it's not on them to put up with you.

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.

You've always wanted to be the eye of the storm: a World of Warcraft tank. You're working your way up toward level 80, quest by quest and zone by zone. Maybe you've consulted a leveling guide and done some research around the internet, and you're sporting a shiny, efficient leveling spec. Or maybe you're taking things more casually, experimenting with different specs and abilities on your own and devoting most of your energy to soaking up the sights and the lore, meeting new friends and settling into your first guild.

Either way, you're beginning to feel the first tendrils of apprehension curling around your ankles. You haven't been able to get many instance groups to knock the shine off that new armor. Heck, maybe you're not even tanking-specced yet at all. What's going to happen when you hit 80? Everyone's going to expect you to know the pointy end of the sword from what's under that fluffy tail you feel inclined to tuck beneath you ... What can you bring to the table with absolutely (gulp) zero experience?

If you're a raiding healer, chances are you use or at least have heard of Grid, the popular raid frame mod. It makes the essential task of staring at health bars significantly easier. However, Grid is a darn complicated mod. So complicated, in fact, that Llyra over at Healing Way has written a blog post all about how to configure it.

I've been using Grid for years, ever since Molten Core (in fact, one of my first posts on WoW Insider was about Grid), and I still learned things from this article. The way Grid composites information onto its little squares is not intuitively obvious, so it's probably worth taking a look just for that. There is also a video on how to configure the mod, which might give you a hint just how complex it can get. The post ends with a list of some useful plug-ins for Grid; I fully agree with the author that GridStatusThreat, which shows which raid members have aggro, is a must-have (although I can't find a working link to it at the moment – is it included with Grid these days?).

Gamespy has an interview up with Jame of Jame's famous leveling guides, which are the how-to of choice if all you want from your character is to get to 80 as fast as possible. I have to admit that I've never used them -- while I do use Questhelper quite a bit (which takes lots of the guesswork out of where to go next), I also like exploring on my own pace, and Jame's guides turn Azeroth into a list of to-dos rather than an actual game. Still, they do work -- if you're leveling an alt or just don't care about the content, following the guides to the letter works fast.

Jame says his wife was the major driving force behind the site -- she needed help leveling, and he found that he had most of the major steps memorized. His site is run completely off of advertising, which he says keeps him from competing with other leveling guides that you must pay for to use. He's also working on an addon, and he says that it actually works faster than Questhelper, so that should be something to see.

Finally, he says he's working on putting together guides for other games -- "Diablo III, Starcraft II, and other MMOs" all get mentioned, so if you've already been following Jame's advice, you might be following it for a while longer. Good to get a little insight and background into the man behind the gold standard for leveling guides.

I have to say, it takes a lot for you commenters to hurt me, but I was a little hurt that no one, as far as I've seen, has noticed that you're all Ogres now. Our own Zach Yonzon created some fun little Ogre art, and all of our default commenter icons (if you haven't yet changed yours by clicking on your name after commenting and logging into Blogsmith) are now grinning cartoon Ogres. I thought people would be shocked when we first put the change in about a month ago (we also considered turning everyone into Murlocs and/or Peons), but it doesn't seem like anyone noticed at all.

Hopefully you have noticed now that we've pointed it out, and if you'd rather not be an Ogre, I'll remind you that there are plenty of Warcraft icons out there -- we've posted some from LJ before, and now Sarah has posted another set of holiday-related icons to choose from. Of course there are the official icons, and we've even got our own gallery of commenter icons for you to look over, not to mention that you can always take a screenshot in the game and upload a 64x64 crop of that as your own icon.

As I said, if you want to change yours, just click on your name after you make a comment, and then you can login on that page with the password you normally use as a "Returning Member" in our comments (and yes we know the system is lame -- if you have issues, usually the best thing to do is to leave a comment as a "New Reader" again, and use a new email address if you haven't ever gotten the email that gets sent to you). Maybe you all just like being Ogres, but if you want to show a little personality with your icon in our comments section, feel free.

(Dell is holding a machinima contest, which we'll discuss shortly. They asked me to write a tutorial to help new machinimators get their start.)

Every day, I feature a video by some brave soul that dived in head first into the world of machinima. For those that aren't familiar with the term, it stands for machine and cinema. The literal definition is movies made in a 3D gaming platform. Using this basic guide, as well as the other tutorials and resources available to you, you'll be creating your first project in no time!

Here is what you'll need if you want to make a machinima for free:

• WeGame camera - A free capturing program
• GIMP - A free image editing program
• Audacity - A free audio editing program
• Windows Movie Maker/iMovie - Free video editing programs that should have come with your appropriate system

[Thanks for originally suggesting this, Bryan!]

Read on for optional and advanced tools, plus additional resources ...

From our mini-guide to starting your own WoW blog, we spawned more in-depth posts for each step. Now that you know a bit more about finding a blog host, determining your goals, figuring out your slant, and becoming part of the WoW blog community, it's time for you to hop on your keyboard and get to work! Okay, wait. I don't mean for it to sound like a job (even though for some of us, it is). I mean, don't be afraid to just start writing! No reason to fear the blank screen, my friend. Here are a few tips to get you steaming up to at least your high school 30 words-per-minute mark.