Posts with tag wow-official-forums

Over at the official forums Community Manager Nethaera has a bit of an unusual question for everyone: do you dream of electric sheep? Well, okay, it's not exactly that question. She wants to know what unusual or unique items you hoard, keep, or carry and the reason why. Do you hang onto Pamela Redpath's tea for courage when you face the undead? Do you keep Archmage Vargoth's Staff for some company on those long, Netherstorm nights? Or is it a practical item that you prefer - a repair bot or the Direbrew Remote for when you simply must have some of that Dark Iron brew?

This question is actually a tough one for me to answer. Not because I don't have an answer but because I have entirely too many answers. My bags and bank are stuffed full of random items that I refuse to get rid of, even now-useless stuff like Shard of the Fallen Star. I guess if I had to choose, I'd say it'd be a tie for two: my Orb of Deception and Orb of the Sin'dorei. I love turning my night elf into an undead or blood elf, respectively, though unfortunately the Orb of Deception requires being equipped in a trinket slot to work, so it's not very practical for raiding. The Orb of the Sin'dorei you can just click to use. True story: once upon a time back in Wrath I was hanging out, transformed into a blood elf, at the Ulduar summoning stone helping bring my guildmates to the raid. Another Alliance player walked up and /spit on me. When I whispered him with a frowny face emote, he freaked out and thought I was a hacker. Helpful tip, my friend: a blood elf in full tier 7 druid gear is not actually a blood elf! Also, you shouldn't /spit on people, it's really rude!

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Yeah, here at the WoW.com high-rise, we were all a little surprised by the announcement of the Pet Store and its microtransactionalized non-combat pets -- but seriously, it's not that big a deal, people. Hitch your bandwagons to that slippery slope fallacy all you want, but pets offer no plausible in-game advantage. The whole experience is roughly equivalent to buying a TCG pet off of eBay, just slightly more convenient and reasonably easier to live with.

Anyway, of course the forums are mad about it, or at least the incredibly vocal minority on the forums is. And they've made post after post about how the Pet Store has completely ruined WoW. Well, official forums MVP Palehoof has a rebuttal, and it's the largest green wall this side of Fenway Park.

If you want a rundown of just how many times WoW has been "ruined" by an addition, deletion, or alteration to the game, you can read Palehoof's post on the official forums.

The possibility of changing your character's race was indicated at BlizzCon 2009, during one of the panels. But then the news about it really got hot when Faction changes were officially announced, because eagle-eyed players noticed the following damning question in the new program's FAQs: Can I use this service to change race on my existing faction? The answer was confirmation enough for most folks: No. We will be releasing a Race change service in the near future for this purpose.

But, this wouldn't be the first time a bit of miscommunication or other confusion has occurred. The final confirmation of upcoming race changes came today, confirmed by Neth again in an official forum thread. All she was actually doing there was referencing the original thread about Faction changes, which had already said Race changes were coming. The announcement even showed up on the official Warcraft Twitter account. So this isn't exactly a brand new thing. Still, it's nice to have it confirmed all over again.

Race changes, of course, subtly differ from Faction changes because you'll still stay Alliance if you're Alliance, or Horde if you're Horde. Race changes might be performed for aesthetic reasons -- you might just prefer the look of a sexy little gnome. Still, I bet most Race changes will be to get access to "better" racials. Especially if racials do get revamped in Cataclysm, a lot of players will see the grass a little greener on the other side. Every Man For Himself, anyone?

We've learned that new forum icons are available today for level 80 players. Not that anyone is level 80 yet, and not that you can actually post in the forums. But they're there and we have compiled them into a gallery for your easy viewing pleasure.

I like the Alliance ones the best. Some of the Horde ones seem rather underwhelming.

The forums recently underwent an upgrade to Wrath of the Lich King graphics, and are now all nice and icy blue. The zombies even invaded the forums for a brief time, but it seem they have been driven back.

Nethaera just laid the hammer down folks. All of the Blizzard forums have been locked. This means you will not be able to post on them at all. It looks like they will remain locked for the remainder of the day. Quite ungood for those of us that like to use them productively.

They've done this so the community manager can communicate with the community better. They need to get information out quickly, and cannot have the forum system overloaded and explode as it did last night.

This is not the first time we've seen them lock the forums in the past twenty four hours, although I do hope it is the last time.

On a brighter side of things, our comments are not locked! And we don't really subscribe to the 1984 doctrine. Newspeak here I come!

Taking a gander at the official forums tonight will reveal something magically spooky.

All the blue posters have been turned into glowing jack-o-lanterns, and all of us normal folks have turned into undead zombies.

The conspiracy theorist in me suggests that this is a clue to the next stage of the zombie invasion. Tomorrow we'll all log on and have a strange urge for brains and only brains. Lots and lots of juicy... yummy... braaains. Insert Homer Simpson drool here.

Of course this could just be another fancy bit for Halloween, but who knows....

There is no indication how long this will last, and also there's no word if there'll be new Wrath of the Lich King avatars after this is done as there were when the Burning Crusade was released.