Posts with tag shadowpriest.com

It was the end of an era when the community-defining website Shadowpriest.com slipped from the hands of a priest/player and began a long, frustrating slide into what eventually became a barren landscape plagued with invasive ads and bereft of updates and regular moderation. It was a sad state of affairs for a website that had once shone as a gathering place and focal point for WoW shadow priests.

Then in late August, long-time shadow priest Veiled stepped through the shadows, purchased the site, and transferred the community to a new and growing home at HowToPriest.com. "I can promise you that H2P won't be sold to the highest bidder," she wrote in an impassioned message to former community members. "I won't litter it top to bottom in ads. I will do everything in my power, even if it means spending my own money, to keep H2P alive, thriving, and happy for as long as I possibly can."

Dispersing the cold hand of commercialism, Shadowpriest.com lives on in spirit via HowToPriest.com, where Veiled and a collective of priest fans labor to provide a resource and community center for not only regathering shadow priests but priests of all specs.

WoW Insider: What an unexpected return for this community resource! Can you give us a look behind the scenes, Veiled, and explain how the changes came about? How did you make this happen?

Veiled: Originally, the site was created by Nikitabanana back in 2006. Back then, it was ad-free and it was just a wonderful and thriving community. Here's the history as I know it: Nikitabanana eventually switched to holy paladin and sold the site (in 2007) to Bryghtpath. The company was passionate about the game and actually played a shadow priest, so it wasn't too bad. They had made promises of how things would be run (such as no ads or any monetization goals). Those promises were eventually broken as the site became more popular and more expensive to keep online.

Want to hear something frightening? There will be no more class forums. Nethaera announced it a bit earlier on the official forums, and I'm still not sure what to think. They're breaking down the class forums and replacing them with role forums: Tanking, Healing, and Damage Dealing. For those players that have been afraid they're homogenizing classes a little too much, this really isn't helping.

Personally, I think this is a horrible move. The official class forums were bad enough, and now they've thrust all of the classes together. Have you seen those really cruel, gross videos where they put two scary looking bugs together in a glass cage and let them kill each other, and they'll do it every single time just because it's in their nature to defend themselves? This is the WoW forum equivalent of it. This is going to be a disaster. The walls are going to be painted with blood.

Shadow Priests have been eagerly anticipating some love in the Wrath Beta for a long time now, and we've finally received some feedback beyond a pat on the head and a "hold on a bit." Koraa has just posted some great news in a thread started by the ShadowPriest.com community.

While it won't fix all things, it's definitely a start, and a good one: Mind Flay's coefficient will be raised by roughly 30% "to start," and it will gain the ability to crit. Yes, that's right. The coefficient will be de-gutted, and it will benefit from crit. After months of nothing, this is like a ray of sunshine from the heavens. Koraa also mentions that they'll be looking at the rest of the Shadow tree, but states that most people agree the tree itself is fine, the issue is the Shadow spells themselves, which I will more or less agree with. While some new spells would be nice, the class is plenty functional with what they have assuming the numbers will be tuned properly, and our gear matches up with that.

Hopefully we'll be seeing the new and improved Mind Flay in the next beta build, but it may take a little longer than that since it will be a complete rebuild of the spell. As soon as it's in, I'll be back here raving about it, I promise.

The single most informative resource out there for Shadow Priests, shadowpriest.com, has recently undergone a makeover! They've launched a custom theme tailored to their logo's color scheme, and a few new features have come with it. In addition to the awesome new look, they've added a couple of (unobtrusive) RSS feeds to the sidebar. LightNatured (their sister site for healers) is one of them, and WoW Insider is another! That's always a good thing, eh?

I'm sure I've said it a few times since I've joined the WoW Insider team, but if you're a Shadow Priest and don't stop in at ShadowPriest.com once in awhile, you're doing yourself a disservice. Even the bleedingest of bleeding edge players have room for improvement and can learn new things once in awhile. ShadowPriest.com goes well alongside Elitist Jerks for all of your gear, strategy and theorycrafting needs. Especially with all of the discussion that will inevitably crop up when the Wrath Beta rolls around, you definitely owe it to yourself to take a look.

[ Thanks, Matt! ]