Posts with tag official-site

Your Garrison mainly comprises buildings and the Followers who inhabit them. As your Garrison grows, so will your options and opportunities to use these assets to your advantage on Draenor. The Followers that populate your Garrison will grow in number and power, and what they can do for you depends which buildings you choose to construct in your base.

So if you're interested in how this new feature so central to the Warlords of Draenor experience is going to play out, head on over to the official site right now and take a gander at the write-up.

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Friday afternoon Community Manager Zarhym took to the official WoW forums to let us all know that Blizzard will be removing some of the lesser-used features they track on the official website. The reasoning behind the decision is that these particular features are laborious to maintain, their pages are not well-trafficked, and you can either look up the same information in-game, or there exist fansites that track the same things just as well as the official site. The following pages have been put on the chopping block:

• Pets & Mounts Gallery
• Factions
• Professions
• Guild Perks and Rewards sections
• Character Pets & Mounts
• Character Hunter Pets
• Character Professions
• Character Reputation

The full blue post is after the break.

Making sure to keep things up to date as we rush towards patch 5.4, the official site has not remained idle. If you're interested in the lore of the game and what's been going on, there's now three new features to take a look at. There's this synopsis of Patch 5.2's Thunder King storyline, which gives players an outline of why the Horde and Alliance forces are taking part in the operation. Then there's a round up of patch 5.3, explaining the Darkspear Rebellion and the Alliance's intelligence operations in Durotar.

Finally, if you're interested in the lore, there's this new character page which gives you a brief rundown of the various figures of import. Especially nice is that each individual's page has links to related characters and content that can tell you more about them. So head on over to the official site and take a look.

Now, a wave of identical blue posts has hit every section of the WoW forums with the following message:

Bashiok -- Forums Going Read-Only

This Wednesday, November 17 these forums will be put into a read-only state. At that time we'll be inviting all posters to fully migrate to the new World of Warcraft community site and forums.

http://www.battle.net/wow

These forums will remain read-only until the end of the month, after which they and all of their posts will be removed ... forever! If you have any posts, information, stickies, etc. that you'd like to keep you'll want to have finished saving it before then.

We've all enjoyed the past few years on these forums, and look forward to creating many more with you on the new community site. See you there!

source

So that's it! We won't be able to post in the official forums anymore after Wednesday, Nov. 17, and we have until the end of November to save anything on the official forums we want to keep or remember!

I don't think this page is necessarily new, but I haven't seen it before, and I think it's a great idea. Over on the official WoW Europe site, they've started tracking player-run and community events on their Community Events page. Slorkuz is even posting on the forums when specific community events are coming up, including their latest, an in-game beauty contest called "Miss Undercity" happening on the EU Darkmoon Faire realm this weekend. I think that's great -- these are completely unofficial player-run events, but Blizzard is still helping spread the word about them on an official page.

In fact, I wish they had something like that on the US page -- if there is one in there, I don't see it linked in the "Community" section as it should be. As an example (and a reminder), Sleeper Cartel is hosting that Dead Man's Party this coming Saturday evening on Perenolde. It would be great for Blizzard to give a little extra official punch (and maybe even some pie) to these player-planned parties.

Blizzard asked for real-life stories from players a little while ago, and now they've posted a pretty big collection of them over on the official site (this page was around last year, but they've added many stories since then). As Bornakk says, these are personal accounts from players of how playing the game with others has helped them grow relationships in real-life. I'm not sure what exactly the point of posting these is (maybe Blizzard wants to stave off some of that negative media reporting about the game and addiction to it), but then again, if you dive into a few of these, you can see that they don't really need a point -- they're really interesting (and in some cases pretty heartwarming) stories about how players are using this game to enrich real-life relationships.

They're still accepting more stories as well, so if you've got a good tale of some WoW-sharing in real-life, hit them up over on the submission page and put yours in the mix. Hopefully Blizzard will figure out a way to get these out into the real world -- harsh stories about addiction are so easy for the media to jump on, but great stories like these are the real reasons we all play this game.

Following the announcement of the new WoW expansion, Cataclysm, at the BlizzCon 2009 Opening Ceremony, Blizzard has just launched the official Cataclysm website.

The site currently features story and art for the Goblin and Worgen races, as well as information on their starting areas, a FAQ, and the official trailer.

The art is absolutely beautiful! More details as we get them, but go check out the site now! The WoW preview panel is coming up shortly and we'll keep you updated.

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.

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.

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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!

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I spent my Saturday out at Gen Con in Indianapolis, and while I did hunt down some of the World of Warcraft action there, there was just too much going on to pay attention to the 2009 North American Continental Championships for the WoW minis and TCGs, which took place right there in the TCG hall. Fortunately, the official site covered it all, so if you're a fan of the trading card game and want to know who the best current players in North America are, there you go.

On the TCG side, Corey Burkhart took the top spot by playing a Troll Shaman deck for the win. In the minis competition, Michael Allen picked up the big prize. The official site has lots more information, including rundowns of each match, standings for each round, and even a Facebook album full of photos.

The winners picked up thousands of dollars in prizes (including a 17" MacBook Pro and a 30" Apple monitor for Corey), and all of these guys will all compete in the World Championships, to be held in Austin, Texas this October (that prize goes up to a whopping $100,000 overall, so the stakes can get big). Congratulations to all the winners -- sounds like it was a rousing event there in Indy, and Upper Deck is probably on their way as we speak off to meet with us later this week at BlizzCon.

This got somewhat lost in the news shuffle over the holiday weekend, but Blizzard has posted another issue of their extremely irregular Gadgetzan Times fan-fic-oriented newsletter, for the first time since May 2008. This time around it consists of two pieces of short-form fan fiction, an amusing "classifieds" section, and a slightly half-hearted crossword about the dungeons of WoW.

It's an interesting thing for Blizzard themselves to come out with, as it has been from the start. I really like the idea -- characters from Azeroth report on events in and around their world -- but it could use a little more polish and effort, not to mention a more regular timetable. On the other hand, they're still publishing more regularly than my Illusionary Tactics column. Maybe I should not call this particular kettle black.

Anyway, it's certainly a decent diversion for a few minutes if you're stuck at work or bored at home, so go ahead and check it out.

Although this comes a little late for a few players, not everybody is raiding Ulduar yet, and those that are haven't necessarily cleared it. To help appease your curiosity about what creatures lurk within the latest raid, or if you simply want to know a bit about the background of the guys that have been handing you purples recently, check out Blizzard's latest web feature, the Bosstiary.

It's an interactive map of Ulduar (same graphics as the in-game map), and if you click on any of the boss icons, it pops up a little paragraph about the boss. For instance, did you know that Auriaya is Ulduar's archivist? Makes sense - librarians love cats. Also, apparently Kologarn was created by Ignis. I guess Iggy must have been a big Monty Python fan.

I think this is a neat way to learn a little more about the story behind the bosses. I hope they continue doing this for raids to come.

The official World of Warcraft community site has added a couple more galleries of the cool Wrath of the Lich King mounts for those of you who love a little eye candy now and then. You might recall that they posted a gallery of the Hog/Chopper mounts last week or so, and this week they've continued that trend with a gallery for Flying Carpets and a gallery for Proto-Drakes.

Neither of these two galleries have anything nearly as cool as the two Tauren in silly hats and lumberjack shirts contained within the Motorcycle gallery, but there's still some neat pictures. The one above is one of my personal favorites. They're kissing or possibly trying to eat eachother! How sweet! I'm also a big fan of the flying carpet that's either shooting or absorbing purple lightning bolts. You'll need to go to the official site to see that one, I'm afraid.

Bornakk has fessed up to Blizzard's little slip yesterday of letting gold buying ads sneak onto the official forums. As expected, he says it was a complete mistake, and that Blizzard is taking steps to keep it from happening. I'm surprised this isn't the action Blizzard took from the beginning -- when the ads first showed up yesterday, Blizzard's forum moderators were deleting (and presumably banning) anyone who mentioned the ads. But almost all of Blizzard's fansites (and even WoW Insider) have had problems with gold ads appearing in advertising content outside our control, so it doesn't seem like Blizzard need worry about it. Sure, it was a mistake, and sure, it was hilarious, but there was no reason to hide the fact that it had happened -- especially since there were screenshots aplenty right away.

However, Blizzard apparently still hasn't learned their lesson: they've now also got external advertisements being served right on the game's front page. These ads are served up by the same company responsible for the ads on the forums, and thus clearly they have the same possible problems -- if one gold ad can appear, more can as well. And while the ad that appeared on the forums was not harmful (other than the fact that it linked to a website that offered a service that would get you banned from the game), anytime you're bringing outside content to your own site, you run that risk. Blizzard has decided to monetize their presence on the web, but it's costing their customers a little bit of security as well.

Remember a little while back, when someone accidentally added the Death Knight to the Classes page on the official site? Now the DK class description page is there, although it seems that this too is probably an accident (the DK entry is still gone from the Classes page). As expected, it contains nothing in the way of new information, aside from a fetching misspelling of "Alternative" and a frankly terrifying picture of what looks like a Dwarf Rogue (obviously faked; everyone knows there's no such thing).

Still nothing mentioned in "standard bars" about runes or runic power. Also the "Allowable Weapons" (listed as Axes, Defenses, Polearms, Swords, Two-Handed Axes, Two-Handed Swords) still doesn't match up with what we expected (one- and two-handed Axes, Swords, and Maces are what we've been told before). And Blizz doesn't usually call it "Plate Mail;" typically it's just "Plate." Anyway, I vote "slip-up" on this one as well – anyone want to take bets on how long it'll stay up?

[Thanks, Hasseo]

Ooh, someone on the Blizzard web team is going to get in trouble. I took the above screenshot straight from the official Classes page, and obviously it wasn't ready to be published quite yet (click for a slightly bigger version). But can we actually glean anything new from the Death Knight text? (The "Find out more about death knights" link returns to a 404, so no help there.)

No. There is absolutely no new information here. There are some obvious mistakes though:

• Type: should probably be "Tank and melee DPS" or some such (so should Warriors, come to think of it).
  
• Available weapons: as far as we know, DKs won't be able to use daggers, fist weapons, staves, or polearms. I guess that may have changed, but I'm just not seeing "rune staff."
• Standard Bars: no mention of runes or runic power.

And it's pretty amusing that they clearly made the Death Knight section by copying and editing the Warrior section (which is how these inaccuracies crept in there). Anyway, I take this as a sign that development on Wrath is moving forward and the beta is approaching (after all, the alpha is over).

[Thanks to Fennrahn and Iggo]