Hello,

We will be upgrading one of our primary web servers this weekend and this will require some limited downtime. This maintenance is scheduled to begin early on Saturday, November 4th, 2006. We will do our best to keep the downtime to a minimum.

This upgrade is intended to improve stability, performance and security for our primary web server.

Since we have received many questions about the pre
expansion patch, we want to alleviate this confusion once and for
all:

We plan to release a content patch before the end of the year.

This patch will include the new Honor system and talents, among
other things (additional details to come).

This patch will likely not be tagged as 1.13, however, we have not
yet revealed a version # or patch name. Please be patient, as these
details will also be available soon.

This patch was originally slated to release just before the game
launched, however, due to the delay a larger gap exists between the
two.

We do not provide release dates for patch content, as it's
disappointing to many when unforeseen problems prevent us from
delivering. Again, we do plan to release sometime before the year
ends

Do you remember the first time you set foot in Orgrimmar and saw the watch fires burning on the parapets? What about the first time you saw the hot molten iron flowing beneath the catwalks of the city of Ironforge or gazed at the towering statues of the heroes of the Alliance in Stormwind? It has been two years since players first entered the world of Azeroth to forge such memories, and to celebrate the second anniversary of the launch of World of Warcraft, we will be awarding prizes to our loyal players over the next five weeks!

Taken from the WoW official site:

The World of Warcraft forums will be taken down on Tuesday, October 31 at 3:00 AM PST. This maintenance will allow us to provide important performance enhancements to the associated database. We anticipate approximately six hours of downtime. Your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated.

The Tabula Rasa Stratics team is pleased to present our first annual Halloween “Trick or Treat” feature. Within you will find seven exclusive articles you won’t find anywhere else (some for good reason). Just remember that on All Hallows' Eve things are not always as they appear...

The beta client was patched today, here are the notes on patch 2.0.0.6046.

General

• Many creatures have had their textures and portraits added.


• Many items have had their textures added.


• Players will now receive an error message when trying to summon a non-party member with a meeting stone.


• Added more Draenei and Blood Elf emote sounds.


• Doom Lord Kazzak has been itemized.

PvP

• Battlegrounds


• The maximum level cap on most Alterac Valley, Scourge Invasion, and other miscellaneous quests will now be accessible for level 61+ players.


• The amount of honor points gained are now consistent between the combat log and scoreboard when completing objectives in battlegrounds.


• The floating combat text should no longer overlap during heavy combat.


• Guards will now properly respawn when a faction has taken over Halaa base.

Shaman

• The "Frostbrand Weapon" (rank 6) is now available from trainers.

Warlocks

• Auras from pets will now be removed when a new pet is summoned.


• The spell "Soul Fire"(rank 4) is now available from trainers.


• The spell "Curse of Weakness" (rank 8) is now available from trainers.


• Pets will now despawn properly when an Infernal is summoned.


• The spell "Drain Soul" will no longer continue to channel after a target is dead.


• Casting the spell "Dark Pact" immediately after combat will no longer put you back into combat mode.


• Casting "Health Funnel" on a target while already channeling "Health Funnel" will no longer cancel future castings of the spell on that target.[/lli]
  
• The talent "Shadow Embrace" will now be removed properly when the debuff has finished its duration.

User Interface

• The checking of options in the rarity dropdown menu in the Auction House UI is now working properly.


• The Shift option has been removed as an option for the Self-Cast Key due to a conflict with mouse clicks.


• The Shift+B shortcut is now working properly with the bank’s new bag slot.


• Players will now be able to disable abilities from showing in the combat text.


• The Looking For Group channel has been removed with the implementation of the LFG system.

Bugs

• Female Naga will no longer crash the client when clicked on.


• Corrected some graphical errors with the LFG system menus.


• Hunter pets should now properly receive the benefit of "Nature’s Ally" after a hunter dies and resurrects.


• The Paladin spell "Flash of Light" is now working properly.


• Fixed several quest reputation rewards to reflect the proper faction.


• Fixed an error with the lower Falcon Watch Orb of Translocation that was causing it not to teleport player correctly.


• Fixed several quest item errors causing players to be unable to loot.


• Fixed an error where players were losing rested experience upon logging out.


• Fixed several holes that were causing players to fall through the world.


• Fixed an issue where the entrance door to the cage event in Hellfire Blood Furnace would not stay closed after the cage event had ended.


• The Deeprun Tram should no longer disappear part way along its route.


• Fixed some graphical errors with the Draenei female.


• Fixed an error where players were receiving double the resilience rating from armor.


• Fixed an issue where performing guild actions would cause a player to crash.


• Players will no longer get stuck in the jump animation when casting an instant spell at the same time.


• Players will no longer remain slowed when riding a Gryphon after having a slow spell cast or ability applied to them

 

Here on the WoW official forums, Drysc explained why players must call Bizzard in order to change their account's email address.

It's so that in the event your account is compromised you would still be able to request a new password and regain access. If we did not require verification over the phone to change the e-mail address the perpetrator would be able to lock you out quite easily. It is an inconvenience, but one that we know helps aid users in any unfortunate circumstances.

 

Over here on the WoW beta forums, Tigole explained why you can not get into Skettis with TBC beta and what players with flying mounts will be able to do when TBC is released.

Skettis is intended to be bonus content for those who obtain their flying mounts. We wanted flying mounts to be more than just a mode of transportation. They also unlock content. Skettis and Tempest Keep are just two examples of this.

Skettis is not currently populated in the Beta. We're still working on finishing out Blade's Edge Mountains and Shadowmoon Valley before moving on to the Flying Mount areas.

Drysc confirmed here on the WoW official boards that Blizzard will release a content patch before the expansion is released.

It was discussed in limited amounts last week, and has at least been hinted at here and there. We will be releasing a content patch before the release of the expansion which will include many of the 'game-wide' features that are not specific to Outland, the new dungeons or zones, or level 70 restricted content (aka the stuff everyone is getting anyway). An exact list has yet to be revealed as we're still working to see what exactly can be included, but all of the class/talent changes are confirmed, as well as the new honor system.

Yet another review is out on TBC, this time by WorthPlaying.com.

Here is a snippet of the article:

How can I possibly write up a preview of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion that won’t just be a cookie-cutter regurgitation of fact-sheet bullets? Well, the ugly truth is… I can’t. Not really. As a result, I’m not even going to try. All you get today are my personal impressions, loaded as they are with bias and subjective opinion. Be forewarned, dear reader, that what you are about to absorb is drenched in love for the Horde and more than a little fanboy gushing.

So what does the title mean? What is the “Burning Crusade”, exactly? Well if you’re at all in the know as regards the mythology and lore of the Warcraft universe, you know that a pretty colicky gang of demons has been doing it’s, uhh, “damnedest” to invade the more or less nonchalant world known as Azeroth. They’ve done some pretty underhanded things during this process, including (but not limited to) enslaving an entire species through infected blood. They keep getting smacked down at the zero hour, but you have to hand it to the infernal pests; they’re nothing if not dogged in their determination. This expansion details yet another attempt on the demons’ behalf to vent their feelings of angst and ennui on Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Also there are new Elves and European space aliens.

To read the entire review, click here. 

Taking part in dungeon raids can be an adventure and a challenge. Raid dungeons take careful planning, coordination, knowledge, capable leaders, and skilled participants to conquer them. We have created this primer based on community feedback to provide players with some tips on how to best organize and run a successful raid.

Selecting a Raid Leader

The raid leader can influence everything in the guild from recruiting, to guild gathering (herbs/mining/recipes), to global guild plans.

Capable raid leaders are highly knowledgeable about the game's mechanics, dungeon layouts, and the specifics of each class's role in a raid setting. Having this knowledge helps them to be effective at managing and organizing players of each class. It's important that they are capable problem solvers, should any disagreements arise between raid members. Leaders should be able to remain calm when things go wrong and encourage raiders to continue to overcome their obstacles.

It can be beneficial to designate several qualified people as raid leaders in the guild. This can help divide up the workload one may face when taking on the large responsibility of being a raid leader. Having multiple raid leaders is also helpful during times when a key leader isn't able to log into the game. Alternate leaders can then step into the role and ease any anxieties that a group might feel due to absence of their normal raid leader.

Wesley Yin-Poole from Pro-G has put up his first impression of the TBC beta.

Here is a snippet of his article:

First things first, you'll want to jump on the nearest gryphon and head straight to the Blasted Lands. It's there that you'll find the newly activated Dark Portal - your one-way ticket to the shattered wastes of Outland.

Us game journalists are often guilty of over-exuberance, using tired and well-worn phrases like "jaw-dropping" and "stunning" to describe games that perhaps don't deserve it. But I can categorically deny that the following sentence contains any hype: as soon as you emerge on the other side of the Dark Portal, your jaw will drop with such ferocity that it'll knock the keys out of your keyboard.

You're spat out onto the front lines of a quite spectacular battle between the demons of the Burning Legion and the combined forces of the Alliance and the Horde. At the base of the Stair of Destiny, overlooked by the imposing giant portal, a hundred NPCs are desperately trying to fend off a gargantuan Pit Commander, a bulging winged demon with tusks and a huge sword, and his equally impressive side kicks - Wrath Masters, Infernal Siegebreakers and Fel Soldiers. Burning magical energy of all colours zips across the screen from the fingertips of Stormwind mages. The sound of Darkspear Troll Axes and Darnassian Archer arrows sinking into demon flesh is drowned out by the screams of dying Orgrimmar Grunts. It's the kind of scene you'd expect to see depicted alongside the word: "chaos" in the Oxford English Dictionary. And yes, it's absolutely stunning.

 

Xfire has announced the winners of their Summer Movie Contest. To see the list of winners and to congratulate them, head on over to Xfire today!

Congratulations to everyone!

We just received word of a new WoW search engine "Wowder.com".

Here are the details:

Wowder.Com is proud to announce the debut of a brand-spankin'-new Custom Search Engine for World of Warcraft players.

Wowder, part of the Google Co-op Beta program, focuses the immense power of Google Search on combing WoW sites for the information you need and serving it up faster than ever.

Quests, news, monsters, items, strategy guides, maps, walkthroughs.  Wowder searches all your favorite WoW sites and gives you what you need while eliminating what you don't.

Wowder.com: World of Warcraft Community Search

Got a WoW website?  Wowder will help it perform better by sending viewers straight to your content.  Wowder relieves your hardware of the intensive burden of in-site searches and transfers that burden to Google's server farm.

Try it today at www.wowder.com!

Warcraft Weekly is up! Here is what has been discussed this week.

We invite everyone to take a moment and relax by reading through the latest edition of Warcraft Weekly, as it provides direct links to threads created and responded to by the World of Warcraft community team. This weekly news archive is a great source of information and a wonderful alternative for those who wish to stay current on all the latest and greatest topics but don't necessarily have time to sift through the forums each day.

Concerning the Release of the Burning Crusade -

1http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38244050&sid=

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38234046&postId=381406508&sid=1#60

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38233956&postId=381406539&sid=1#51

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38233956&postId=381406569&sid=1#62

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38233956&postId=381406597&sid=1#71

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38234046&postId=381406634&sid=1#99

Combat Ratings: Level 70 Conversions -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=36573662&postId=365403658&sid=1#0

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=36573662&postId=365403667&sid=1#112

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=36573662&postId=365403668&sid=1#116

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=36573662&postId=365403669&sid=1#119

Change to Coefficient Bonuses on Spells -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38173821&sid=1

Dial-Up Connection in the Burning Crusade -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=35885100&postId=360903639&sid=1#261

BlizzCon Murloc Redemptions -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=36573664&sid=1

New Interface Preview: Looking for Group -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=35214998&sid=1

Rage Normalization -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=34926496&postId=360903634&sid=1#125

Specific Feedback on Totem of Wrath -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=37185281&postId=390807346&sid=1#145

Changes to the Blood Elf Model -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=37185748&postId=388203884&

This weekend GameSpot is holding a TBC Beta marathon. If you are a subscriber you can log on and watch them play TBC.

What: GameSpot's Live Gameplay Marathon - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
When: Saturday, October 28 at 11 a.m. PDT
Where: Right here on this page
Who: GameSpot's Justin Calvert, Greg Kasavin, Bethany Massimilla,
and You!
How: You need to be a GameSpot subscriber to watch the broadcast. Registered users may watch a five-minute preview.

Our own Edward the Less has written a fantastic article on his first impressions of the Burning Crusade beta.  Here is a snippet of his article:

I will first start with the Blood Elves. I started a Blood Elf female Warlock and will make one when the expansion is released unlike 75% of people who will make a Blood Elf Paladin. Yes I have seen many many many Blood Elf Paladins in the Beta so far.

The starting area is nicely spread out with several areas to kill quest mobs instead of one area or two small areas like in the old starter areas. There are a few new mobs but many are just old ones with new skins.

As you go from the starting level 1-5 area you will have an almost overload of quests. There is no shortage of quests and this goes double as you go into the level 10-20 zone Ghostwood.

Ghostwood is, I think, the best zone in the game. It looks like Duskwood or Felwood on crack. The mobs in this zone are a tad hard for their level but they might be tweaked down a bit before the game is released.

 

To read the entire article visit our Burning Crusade Expansion page. Don't forget to keep checking back as well for updates! 

Here Nethaera announced an exciting new feature for TBC!

We're pleased to announce that the Burning Crusade expansion will come fully loaded with an all new in-game knowledge base. This easy-to-use information resource will contain extensive details pertaining to all areas of World of Warcraft. We'd like your help in testing out this knowledge base, which can be accessed by clicking on the "Help Request" option (red question mark) located near the "Main Menu" button.

Be sure to submit any bugs that you come across, as well as suggestions that you believe might be useful by using the in-game bug/suggestion option (blue "B" icon) located near the mini-map on the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Happy testing! 

Nethaera posted the patchnotes for TBC beta patch 2.0.0.6046 here.

Are you curious about World of Warcraft? Would you like to experience it but aren’t certain you’re ready to make the commitment that a subscription entails?

If so, then you may be interested in learning more about our free trial offers. At this time, you can visit our Teaser website to learn more about World of Warcraft and see interviews with actual players. At this site, you can also get a free trial key that will allow you to create an account and play World of Warcraft for ten days at no cost. You can also download the World of Warcraft game client from this site to play.

If you do not wish to download the game client from our Teaser site, you can visit your local gaming shop and pick up a trial version of World of Warcraft for 2€. This trial version includes a DVD with the game client on it, as well as a trial key that will allow you to create an account and play for free for fourteen days.

If you are interested in learning more about what awaits you in World of Warcraft, take a moment to look through our Game Guide. .


(All prices quoted include VAT).

I would like to just start a thread in which posters can take the time to break down both what changes they like and what changes they don't and explain them. There are many different conversations going on in which it seems there is a lot of back and forth disagreement on what people feel is good or working and that which is not. If I could get people to post in one thread, I would appreciate it.

Please try to keep your feedback constructive and if possible break it down into bullet points when you can.

Please keep in mind that we are still in testing and will continue to adjust spells and abilities as testing progresses. It's easy to see something as a nerf when it is added in as a very strong power and then scaled back. Please remember that we are very dedicated to not only enhancing all of the classes but also balancing them as a part of the larger picture. There will be well liked changes and not so well liked changes as we go along. Your feedback is important to us in both cases.

We are currently in the process of heavy DPS testing with all classes in a wide variety of combat types, situations, gear, and spec to ensure they fall in-line with what we expect of each class and where we want each class to be on the DPS scale. As we progress with the DPS testing there will be changes made that will help adjust classes to where we want them to be, and you may see improvements or nerfs that seem a bit odd. At the very least we want to express that we're making these adjustments due to involved DPS tests and the changes being made are a direct result of our findings.

The expansion gives us an amazing opportunity to balance all of the classes in one big release, and we're going to be refining each class until release to make sure we're making good use of it.

Since this came up in another thread, the suggestion was made to ask everyone (Well, everyone who will be level 60 when TBC comes):
When TBC comes out and the level 60 bar is raised, do you want to have rested XP or not? And why (not)?

Eyonix made the following announcement here about the official forums.

In order to alleviate the load that our web database has been experiencing as of late, we will be migrating the forums to a separate database tomorrow beginning at 10:00 AM PDT. This maintenance is scheduled to last for approximately eight hours, during which time the forums will be completely unavailable. When this maintenance concludes, both the forums and website should run much more smoothly and remain significantly more stable.

Your patience and understanding in this matter are greatly appreciated. 

It’s finally here! The WoW TCG is now out! Did you get your pack(s)? No? Don't you want to get your unique in-game World of Warcraft item(s)? Well what are you waiting for head on over to Upperdeck and order your's today!

WoW Stratics is proud go give you a new holiday questing guide entitled "Hallow's End 2006 Walkthrough (Alliance)" by Toque.

This is a great guide for anyone wanting to get the best out of Hallow's End which is going on until November 1^st. 

This will also be permanently located in our GUIDE section, which is accessible on the left side menu.

~ Enjoy! 

We would like to remind players to regularly ensure that their account information is up to date and accurate; we use the contact information that is stored in your account information in order to contact you in case of a notice or announcement.

We have recently added some new updates to the talent calculator for Shaman.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/bc-shaman/talents.html

Shaman Enhancement Tree

• Parry - Renamed Spirit Weapons. Now "Gives a chance to parry enemy melee attacks and reduces the threat generated by your melee attacks by 15%."
  
• Mental Quickness - Moved to Unleashed Rage position.
  
• Unleashed Rage - Moved to Dual Wield Specialization position.
  
• Dual Wield Specialization - Moved to Mental Quickness position, reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% hit chance. Still requires Dual Wield.
  

Shaman Elemental Tree

• Totem of Wrath - Now "...increases the chance to hit and critically hit with spells by 3% to all..."
  
• Elemental Precision - Now "Increases your chance to hit with Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 1/2/3% and reduces the threat caused by Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 4/7/10%."
  

*For those having difficulties viewing the page we suggest closing your browsers, deleting all temporary internet files/cache and then reloading the page. This is often required when a talent calculator is updated.

The battlegroups are now titled with game-related terms instead of numbers, to help provide a more natural name for each group of linked realms. These names will be used now, and in the future when referring to each battlegroup, so we recommend looking up your new battlegroup name for future reference. You can see the new names by visiting the Battlegroups page.

Many gamers out there who are interested in breaking into the game industry should take a look at the numerous positions currently available here at Blizzard. We're looking for talented and passionate individuals to fill roles in many of our departments. Every open position we have is listed on our Jobs page. Jump over to the page now to see if there's something listed that looks like a good match for you, and don't hesitate to apply if so. Be sure to check back regularly for new openings, too!

Drysc posted the following on the WoW official forums:

In the Burning Crusade, we’ve decided to make a fundamental change to the way spells calculate the bonus they receive from +healing and +spell damage effects and items. This is because we have seen a growing trend in using “downranking” and large amounts of +healing items, which we feel negatively impacts game balance. Downranking involves high-level players using lower level spell ranks and +healing gear to conserve mana, but maintain a high rate of healing done. Through this method, it has become possible in the live game for healing characters to heal large amounts of damage indefinitely without running out of mana. To maintain progression of use through spell ranks, we are changing how lower ranked spells relate to characters of higher level.

Spells will now receive a smaller bonus from +healing and +spell damage based on a comparison of the level at which the spell was learned and the caster’s current level. Take the Priest spell Heal 2 as an example:

The spell is learned at level 22, and the base points for healing on the spell keep increasing until level 27. So, level 27 is considered the spell’s max level in our calculation.

This system gives an additional 6 levels of slack before applying any penalty to casting Heal 2; so, players up to level 33 can cast it with no penalty.

In this example, we will use level 34 (one level past the cast level of the spell) as a starting point.

The bonus from +healing is multiplied by this ratio:

          ((spell level)+6)/(player level)

That means the level 34 player only gets 97% of the normal bonus from +healing items when casting Heal 2. A level 60 player would only get 55% of the bonus, while a level 70 would get 47%.

The exact same system will also apply to damage spells. However, as healing classes tend to use downranking more often than others, healers are likely to see more effect from this change than other classes. As a general rule, players will be able to use the top 2 or 3 ranks of each spell before receiving any penalty. All of the existing ratios for the +healing and +spell damage bonuses on spells are also still in effect; so spells with a short casting time will continue to receive a smaller bonus than spells with a longer casting time. Spells learned below level 20 will still receive substantially smaller bonuses.

Gamespot reports that for the week of October 8^th-14^th, World of Warcraft is the #1 game.

When Buena Vista Games announced that it was releasing a PC game based on Desperate Housewives, the title instantly became the subject of widespread derision. However, according to the latest list of top-selling PC games, the publisher may be having the last laugh. According to industry research firm The NPD Group, Desperate Housewives was the sixth most popular PC game in the US during the week of October 8-14, besting both Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (seventh) and Age Of Empires III (ninth).

Desperate Housewives wasn't the only new game on the chart. The top debut of the week was the Dark Crusade expansion pack for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. The M-rated add-on, which will be apparently be the first of several expansions for the THQ game, debuted in second place, just behind perennial favorite World of Warcraft. Once again, Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game was the top title in the land, its sales still robust despite being nearly two years on the market.

WOW wasn't the only returnee in the PC top 10 during the week. The Sims 2 Glamour Life Stuff expansion pack landed in third, ahead of Company Of Heroes (fourth) and the original Sims 2 (fifth). Thanks to a reduced average retail price of $15, Quake 4 reentered the chart in 10th place, below newcomer Reel Deal Slots Mystic Forest (eighth).

Falling out of the chart this week were Caesar IV, SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition, Guild Wars Factions, Cars: Radiator Springs Adventure, and Warcraft III: Battlechest.

Taken from the WoW European site:

Now is your chance to become a member of Blizzard. Our Game Masters are looking for talented individuals with excellent teamwork skills to expand our Game Master Teams. Join Blizzard now and use your unique skills to help us make a great game even better! You can learn more about working at Blizzard and can also have a small glimpse at life on GM Island by visiting our Recruitment section.

Over here on the WoW official forums, a few "blues" commented on what they do to keep the game fun.

Nethaera: *Suicide into enemy players to see how many I can kill or maim before I'm killed.
*Ride through the zones on my mount instead of flying.
*Take time to fish and talk to people and random objects to freak people out.

 

Coreiel:  - Roleplay

What do you do? 

Here on the WoW official forums, Tseric posted the Paladin, Warlock and Mage talent updates.

In our continuing development of the Burning Crusade, we once again have made some adjustments to class talents. Stay tuned for further changes and announcements.

Paladin

• Vengeance - Increases damage by 2/4/6/8/10%, reduced from 3/6/9/12/15%
  
• Crusader Strike - Cooldown increased to 10 sec., from 6 sec. Should now have new icon.
  

Mage

• Molten Fury - Rank 3 removed. Ranks 1 and 2 unchanged.
  
• Elemental Precision - Changed to "Reduces the mana cost and chance targets resist your Frost and Fire spells by 1/2/3%."
  
• Empowered Fireball - Reduced to 3% per rank from 4%
  

Warlock

• Unholy Power - Reverted to "Increases the damage done by your Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, and Felguard's melee attacks by 4/8/12/16/20%." It no longer increases Shadow and Fire damage.
  
• Incinerate - Swapped icons with Burnout.

The Warcraft Insider was recently released, take a look at what was inside!

We recently sent out the latest edition of the World of Warcraft Insider, Blizzard’s email newsletter with the most up-to-date, behind-the-scenes information about upcoming content for World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

In issue #10, we explore the mysterious streets of Silvermoon City, and we take a look at how the game designers put together the blood elves' capital. You might also want to check out the never-before-seen screenshots, maps, and concept art inside the article! The Insider also sat down with the items and professions design team to talk about what the upcoming expansion will have in store for the professions of World of Warcraft. You can read the article here, as well as catch a glimpse of some of the cool new items that you will be able to create in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. 

If you aren’t already a subscriber and you want to get inside info on World of Warcraft and early access to exclusive previews and cool promotions, then click here to subscribe to the World of Warcraft Insider.

As many players have noticed, we have made a slight change to the male Blood Elf character models. In response to concerns that the Blood Elf male appeared to be too feminine, and after reviewing the model from a visual and conceptual standpoint, the decision was made to increase the body mass to give them a more substantial, masculine feel. It was also important that as members of the Horde that the Blood Elves gave the impression of strength and a more menacing presence.

Please be aware that all beta content is still subject to testing and can change at any time.

IRVINE, Calif. -- Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback.

Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

Posted here by Nethaera:

The following realms will be taken down tonight at 3:00 AM PDT for extended maintenance, and are expected to be made available at 11:00 AM PDT, Tuesday October 24.

Garona
Alleria
Hellscream
Blackhand
Whisperwind
Cho'gall
Illidan
Stormreaver
Gul'dan
Kael'thas
Alexstrasza
Kirin Tor
Balnazzar
Destromath
Gorgonnash
Dethecus
Spinebreaker
Moonrunner
Sargeras
Kalecgos
Ursin
Dark Iron
Greymane
WildHammer
Detheroc
Staghelm
Emerald Dream
Maelstrom
Twisting Nether
Azshara
Agamaggan
Lightninghoof
Malfurion

Stratics Exclusive: Thrones of Chaos Interview

Thrones of Chaos is upping the ante in player versus player MMO's. Their guild system is hard core with bounty hunting and city capturing. Enjoy finishing moves that other games lack. Find out more about this aggressive MMO in our exclusive interview with Adam McCall.

From the official WoW website:

Here is the next honorable mention from this month's comic contest submissions. Remember, the contest will go on all year long, so don't miss your chance to win a Blizzard Edition iPod Nano. Keep those comics coming! Check out today's honorable mention from Bludlemon <Doomed Kitties>.

 

Gamespot reported that World of Warcraft  hit #1 again for October 1st - 7th.

On Wednesday October 4, World of Warcraft was further cemented into the pop-culture zeitgeist, courtesy of an episode of South Park. The Comedy Central cartoon featured a storyline that involved the show's four heroes--Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny--getting addicted to the massively multiplayer role-playing game, which left each a pimply, portly mess. Ironically, the merciless parody was done with the full participation of WOW developer-publisher Blizzard Entertainment, which helped South Park's creators create entire in-game machinima sequences.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the week of October 1-7 also saw WOW at the top of the US PC game charts, nearly two years after it first hit the market. It was the second week in a row the title was in first place after it was briefly displaced by Company of Heroes. THQ's acclaimed World War II real-time strategy game hasn't fallen far, though--it finished in second place for the second week running.

As far as debuts go, the week saw only one all-new game crack the top 10--Vivendi Games' Caesar IV. The game was the first installment in the historic city-building simulation series since 1998's Caesar III, and it received the same level of decent critical praise as its forebears.

As for the rest of the list, it was many of the same faces, such as The Sims 2: Glamour Life Stuff (third), The Sims 2 (fourth), Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (sixth), SimCity 4 Deluxe (seventh), and Cars Radiator Springs Adventures (ninth). Gone from the list were Star Wars: Empire at War and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, replaced by the aforementioned Caesar IV and returnees Guild Wars Factions (eighth) and Warcraft III Battlechest (10th).

General

• Added a Horde Graveyard to southern Hellfire Peninsula
  
• Added a new flight path to Swamprat Post in Zangarmarsh.
  
• Added meeting stones to the new dungeons.
  
• Added a new Alliance base and flight path to Hellfire Peninsula.
  
• Non-expansion guards now give directions to expansion Shaman and Paladin trainers.
  
• The Giants in Outland are now properly itemized.
  
• Various Exodar NPCs have been properly flagged for PvP.
  
• Draenei shaman totems have been updated.
  

PvP

• Battlegrounds
  
• Added new quests in Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch for level 60+
  characters.
  
• The mini map will no longer switch off and on when events occur in
  the battlegrounds.
  

• Arenas
  
• Arena games will no longer end as soon as they start.
  

User Interface

• Players will now receive a timeout message when a group leader switches their instance preference.
  
• Corrected some graphical errors with the LFG system menus.
  
• Players on your ignore list will no longer be automatically added to a group when using the LFG system.
  
• The Hunter ability Mend Pet icon will now turn red when you are out of range of your pet.
  
• The Burning Crusade background art when selecting a realm will no longer glow as brightly with the full-screen glow effect on.
  

Bugs

• Fixed several creatures and NPCs that were falling through the ground.
  
• Undercity is no longer missing the doors on the elevators.
  
• Fixed several building mouse-over tooltips.
  
• Captain Bok’ar’s Furious Rage will now stun himself rather than his target.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused temporary enchants to not work with macros.
  
• Fixed an issue that cause Draenei mailboxes to be useable by the Horde.
  
• Fixed several quest rewards that were unable to be disenchanted or sold to vendors.
  
• Fixed a problem that caused players to get disconnected from the server upon accepting certain quests.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the breath bar to sometimes remain on screen after resurrection.
  
• Fixed an issue where players leaving a group that was created by the LFG matchmaking system or leaving the group queue were unable to use the LFG system again.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the LFG icon to not display correctly.
  

Richard A. Knaak will be discussing details of Diablo: The Sin War, book one: Birthright and possibly talk about his new warcraft book after the diablo trilogy.

Monday, October 23 2pm PST
5pm EST or 11pm GMT+1(France zone)

Server: irc.wowirc.com
Channel: #wowradio

Player Comment: Isnt BC supposed to have a new one? I try to view it on the main menu, but It plays the old one.

Nethaera : There will be one we just haven't made it available as of yet. Don't you like surprises? ;)

Posted here on the WoW official forums by Tseric:

We had originally announced a reduction in the paid character transfer cooldown from six months to one month. However, based on public feedback and additional internal discussion, we've decided to change the cooldown period from one month to three months. We wanted to make this change to address player concerns that a one-month transfer cooldown would make it more likely that players or entire guilds would hop from realm to realm, and possibly result in more gold being transferred between realms as well.

We feel that the three-month timer provides a good balance between having a sufficient buffer between transfers, while still giving more flexibility to players who wish to move characters, as compared to the original six-month cooldown.

Players who transferred characters three months ago or more can now transfer them again through the Account Management page. As always, thanks very much for your feedback!

We have just updated our Burning Crusade Beta section. More screen shots, movies and reviews have been added so you can see what this expansion is all about!  You can also read about Vikings of Midgard and Mister McFeely's first impressions of the Burning Crusade Beta!

Head on over to our BURNING CRUSADE BETA to see it all!  Remember to check back often for updates!

Don't forget that we also have a YouTube page where all of our movies are listed for your viewing pleasure!

Enjoy!

By clicking to the above link you will be directed to our very own YouTube.com account where we will periodically post some World of Warcraft videos we have made (right now they're all Burning Crusade related!).

We invite you to join us on YouTube, add us as a friend of subscriber, comment and rate our videos, and well, watch our videos!

Here's one of the latest videos we have recently uploaded that shows all of the male Blood Elf jokes, enjoy!

The View From the Top is what it is entitled and it's about a guy who had climbed all the way to the top of a very popular raiding guild and how much time he had spent on it had affected his life.

I remember clearly after fumbling around life for a few weeks that I dragged myself into the bathroom to get ready for work. I was tired because I was up until close to 2 AM raiding. Every week I read though email or I would run into one of my "real" friends and I'd hear "Andy, what's up, I haven't seen you in a while." I looked in the mirror and in a cinemaesque turn of events and a biblical moment of clarity, told myself "I haven't seen me in a while either."

This topic has seemed to become my monthly psychiatric column so to speak, it started with the lady who made the hospital to treat video game addicts, to the news story about the kid who was addicted to WoW, now it's this guy. I have to say I've done some deep thinking on this subject and wanted to share my thoughts and then see what the community thinks (so please make sure to post in our forums!).

Blizzard can not be blamed or held responsible for making people addicted to World of Warcraft much the same way alcohol companies shouldn't be blamed for alcoholics. Their products might be addictive, but not in the sense of the ways drugs, nicotine, or caffeine are where there's actual physical draws and withdraws associated with it.

World of Warcraft can be used as a way for someone to escape from the realities of the real world and give someone a sense of happiness, a sense of belonging, perhaps a sense of coping... much the same reasons why an alcoholic drinks. The problem isn't the game, but rather the individual themself. The individual is likely unhappy for a reason and instead of accepting this fact and lacking motivation to fix it, they take the easy way out and sit in front of the computer for that instant gratification. The problem with doing this is they completely ignore their problem, and it gets worse and worse in the long term. Soon your significant other might leave you or your grades might drop or you lose your job.

If you know an individual that you see is too far into a game, or anything similar for that matter, sit down and talk to them and see what's going on. People can be addicted to ANYTHING that gives them instant gratification. This whole story hits home to me. My father passed away exactly one year ago today because of addiction. He was an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and a chain smoker. He overcame the first two by facing the real problem (himself) and fixing it. In the process of this he became a great father. However, he was never able to kick the smoking problem, and lung cancer at the age of 60 is what ultimately killed him.

I'm sure playing World of Warcraft isn't going to kill someone, but you could be surprised at how many lives are potentially ruined by those who take it too far. Moderation in playing could be a very good thing. So remember, when playing, and you see a guild mate or a friend who you think has taken things a little far that their life has been affected... let them know how much you care and listen to them. Tell them to take a step back from the game and take a good view from the top.

Are your shoes worn thin from traveling from town to town? Is your voice hoarse and sore from speaking with citizens across Azeroth? Have a knack for putting pen to paper and writing an excellent story? Then perhaps WoW Stratics News Page is the place where you can not only show off your talent but also help bring the community together with interesting, exciting stories and news items.

WoW Stratics is currently looking for active, talented citizens of Azeroth to add to our team of WoW Stratics reporters.

As a volunteer you are required to:

* Be a competent writer.
* Be an active, knowledgeable member of the Azeroth community.
* Be willing to attend events and quests, interview VIPs, report news of interest to the community.
* Be able to dedicate a minimum of six hours per week to writing and/or posting news items.
* Make regular posts onto the News page.
* Accept occasional article assignments from your News Manager.
* Have a familiarity with basic HTML.
* Be pro-active.

Does the above describe you? Then what are you waiting for??? Apply... right now... do not hesitate!
Simply fill out this brief application! 

Please make sure to include your:
1. Real name.
2. Contact e-mail address.
3. ICQ, AIM, MSN number (if applicable).
4. Stratics username and WoW character name (this must be the character name you will be reporting with).

Also, please
5. Rate your HTML knowledge from 1-10, where 1 is poor and 10 is phenomenal.
6. Answer this: Why do you wish to be a reporter for WoW Stratics?
8. Send us any questions you have on the position or responsibilities!

Good luck to all applicants!

Just announced the WoW TCG ‘Onyxia’s Lair’ Raid Deck is now available to Pre-Order for $29.99.

Don't forget that Hallow's End starts today! By helping out the orphans you can get rewards that range from candy to masks. For complete details visit Blizzard's Hallow's End page.

Avast ye mateys! If ye like pirates and treasure, sea battles and distant lands, ye should take a gander at Voyage Century Online. Visit the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Buy low and sell high to make ye wealthier than a merchantman. If these tales catch your fancy, be sure to check out our exclusive preivew.

Player Question : Does anyone know if the expansion will be Macintosh compatible?

 Nethaera: Yes. :)

In addition to our scheduled realm maintenance tomorrow, Wednesday, 18th October, the realms listed below will be undergoing extended maintenance as part of our ongoing hardware upgrades.
We expect a total down time of 36 hours.
This maintenance will start at 05:00 on Wednesday morning and is scheduled to finish at 17:00 CEST on Thursday, October 19th.

The affected realms are:
English:
Balnazzar
Bloodfeather
Darksorrow
Defias Brotherhood
Earthen Ring
Frostwhisper
Genjuros
Haomarush
Hellscream
Laughing Skull
Lightning's Blade
Magtheridon
Neptulon
Nordrassil
Quel'Thalas
Ragnaros
Ravencrest
Runetotem
Shadow Moon
Shadowsong
Shattered Hand
Silvermoon
Skullcrusher
Spinebreaker
Stormrage
Stormreaver
Stormscale
Sylvanas
Terenas
The Maelstrom
The Venture Co.
Thunderhorn
Turalyon
Twisting Nether
Vashj
German:
Aegwynn
Alexstrasza
Alleria
Aman'Thul
Antonidas
Anub'arak
Baelgun
Blackhand
Das Syndikat
Der Rat von Dalaran
Destromath
Die Silberne Hand
Dun Morogh
Eredar
Frostmourne
Frostwolf
Gorgonnash
Gul'dan
Kel'Thuzad
Kil'Jaeden
Krag'jin
Kult der Verdammten
Madmortem
Malfurion
Mal'Ganis
Mannoroth
Nathrezim
Nera'thor
Nozdormu
Onyxia
Perenolde
Proudmoore
Sen'jin
Terrordar
Theradras
Wrathbringer
Zirkel des Cenarius
Zuluhed
French:
Conseil des Ombres
Drek'Thar
Khaz Modan
Les Sentinelles
Rashgarroth
Throk'Feroth
Varimathras

We’ve made some additional changes to the talent calculators today. In addition to changing many of the icons, we’ve also made the following changes:

Druid:

Feral Combat

Feral Instinct - Reduced to 3 ranks, 5/10/15%.

Thick Hide - Reduced to 3 ranks, 4/7/10%.

Nurturing Instinct - Reduced to 2 ranks, 50/100%.

Survival of the Fittest - Reduced to 3 ranks, same 1/2/3% improvements.


Balance

(NEW) Focused Starlight - “Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 2/4%.”

Improved Thorns - Renamed "Brambles", now increases damage from Entangling Roots as well.

Omen of Clarity - Swapped with Insect Swarm, prerequisite from Natural Weapons removed.

Improved Wrath - Renamed "Starlight Wrath", reduces cast time of Wrath and Starfire by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 sec.

Improved Starfire - Reduced to 3 ranks, no longer reduces cast time of Starfire, just has the 5/10/15% stun chance.

Natural Shapeshifter - Moved to Restoration tree, where Improved Enrage was.


Restoration

Improved Healing Touch - Renamed "Naturalist", in addition to the cast time reduction of Healing Touch it also increases all physical damage by 2/4/6/8/10%. Essentially, we folded Natural Weapons into it.

Natural Weapons - Removed.

Improved Enrage - Removed.

Reflection - Renamed "Intensity", mana regen in combat as it did in addition to causing Enrage ability to instantly generate 4/7/10 rage.

Natural Perfection - Changed to "Your critical strike chance with all spells is increased by 1/2/3% and melee and ranged critical strikes against you cause 4/7/10% less damage."


Paladin:

Retribution

Divine Purpose - Now 3 ranks for 4/7/10%.

Sanctified Crusader - Moved to one column to the left of Repentance. Now 3 ranks for increase of 1/2/3%.

(NEW) Crusader Strike - “An instant strike that causes weapon damage plus 40% of your Holy spell damage and refreshes all Judgements on the target.”


Protection

Redoubt - "Successful melee..." changed to "Damaging melee..."

Reckoning - Changed to: "Gives you a 2/4/6/8/10% chance after being hit by any damaging attack that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack."


Holy

Blessed Life - Now 3 ranks for 4/7/10% chance.


Warrior:

Arms

Weapon Mastery - Increased disarm resistance to 50/100%.


Check back soon for further updates.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/burningcrusade/townhall/talents-and-spells.html

Some players have been experiencing issues trying to use the Paid Character Transfer service.

When the PCT process is initiated by a player, their bank is notified and the payment amount is placed in 'reserve'. This temporarily places the money outside of their bank account, looking like a payment has been made but in fact no transfer is completed until final validation is given.

On this occasion, a technical issue generated an error message which prevented players from completing the PCT process and validating the payment.

On pinpointing the problem we turned off the PCT process and cancelled the payment requests.

Almost all payment requests have now been cancelled and the reservations are in the process of being released by the banks.

We continue to work on this process and will provide further updates as soon as possible. Meanwhile the PCT service will remain closed until further notice.

We sincerely apologise for this situation.

Part of being in a stalwart band of adventurers is assembling that stalwart band in the first place. In the upcoming expansion, a new tool for finding a group will be available: our new Looking For Group interface!

Click here to see an overview of this new interface, including details on a few of the new ways to locate companions to share your adventures with.

We are very much aware of the fact that at the moment the Paid Character Transfer (PCT) is not functioning as it should for some players. It is apparent that some characters are still in queue and waiting to be transferred to their destination realms.

We are still looking into this complex issue and would ask those players who have been waiting longer than 5 days for their character(s) to be moved, to please contact our Billing department.
Contact information can be found on this page:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/support/accountbilling.html

We are sorry for the inconvenience this might have caused you and hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Update 11/10
The PCT is closed until further notice. We're working diligently on restoring the service as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Since players who attended BlizzCon, but do not have a US WoW account cannot use their Beta keys with European accounts, we have decided to offer you the option to redeem those keys and receive European ones in stead.

To do this, please send a short email (in English) to wowbcbilling@blizzard.com; of course a brief explanation would help.

Please make sure the topic of your email reads “BlizzCon key for EU”, this will make it easier to pick out your emails.

Also please note that you will not get a reply to the email you send. Things will get sorted out and there should be a one time mailing of all keys, soon.

To all other players, unless you have a BlizzCon Beta key do NOT contact this email address, this will only cause undue, extra work.

WoW Stratics brings you a few videos of the Burning Crusade Beta! We captured the character selection screen, so you can decide a head of time what type of build you will have for your Blood Elf/Draenei. See all your choices! Also we have the new jumps and of course each character's dance! 

Head on over to our Burning Crusade Beta Coverage section to view all of our information! Don't forget to check back, because we have more to add!

We do give queue priority to paying customers which can result in trial players being shifted to the back of the queue. If you're just looking to get an idea of what the game is like I would highly recommend creating a character on a different realm and going about it that way. You may also want to try a different race or faction just to get a feel for other perspectives.

We invite everyone to take a moment and relax by reading through the latest edition of Warcraft Weekly, as it provides direct links to threads created and responded to by the World of Warcraft community team. This weekly news archive is a great source of information and a wonderful alternative for those who wish to stay current on all the latest and greatest topics but don't necessarily have time to sift through the forums each day.

Arena Information -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32318443&postId=320875867&sid=1#288

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32318443&postId=320875794&sid=1#286

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32318443&postId=320875320&sid=1#277

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32318443&postId=320875312&sid=1#276

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32318443&postId=320875228&sid=1#273

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=28463872&postId=284511063&sid=1#25

Abandoning Quests -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32274156&postId=329003290&sid=1#5

Dark Portal Event Concerns -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=30074700&postId=302903057&sid=1#10

New Realms -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=31145056&sid=1

World of Warcraft Accounts Closed Worldwide -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32190243&sid=1

Underwater Combat -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32274766&postId=321321507&sid=1#4

Might of the Scourge -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32335097&postId=321322800&sid=1#0

Shaman Weapon Buffs When Dual-Wielding -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32339462&postId=321183613&sid=1#4

Character Progression Discussion -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32110079&postId=321181761&sid=1#96

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32110079&postId=321182138&sid=1#137

Meeting Stones? -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=31184772&postId=309423296&sid=1#1

Leveling Curve in X-pac -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=31004637&postId=309422187&sid=1#8

Stamina and Item Budgets -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=31183882&postId=309812300&sid=1#4

World of Warcraft has gone beyond beasthood recently into some sort of rampaging game deity bent on world domination. While we predicted that the game would do well and probably surpass other MMOs based on license alone we never expected the amazing amount of success the game has brought to Blizzard. In those in-between times when they're trying to find new places to stash all of the money overflowing from their Scrooge McDuck sized money vault, they've been developing an expansion pack called Burning Crusade. That burning sensation comes with two new races, the Blood Elves and Dranei, a bunch of new zones including a bunch of them on the other side of the Dark Portal made famous by the early real-time strategy games that started the franchise. Closed beta for the expansion has begun and we were compelled to once again don the mantle of addiction and wander into Azeroth to first check out the new beginning areas for the two new races. We'll be wandering into the high-level content beyond the Dark Portal in the future to give some impressions there as well.

The Blood Elves and Dranei have decidedly different fictional backgrounds. The Blood Elves first appeared in Warcraft III when the Scourge rampaged across Azeroth and destroyed the Elven homelands including the city of Silvermoon. The few surviving elves banded together and made a stand against the undead controlled by the fallen Death Knight Arthas and have managed to carve a little spot on the continent of Lordaeron away from the Scourge for their very own. They're retaken the Sunspire and much of Silvermoon City. As part of the early adventuring as a Blood Elf, players will help their kin continue the quest to clense the rest of the city from undead and their own Wretched brethren.

If it wasn't clear before that Blizzard has an eye for what we consider to be an important artistic aspect of visuals it will be to everyone that steps onto Sunstrider Isle for the first time. It's a bright and cheery landscape occasionally scarred by the blight of the Scourge. It's a perfect contrast to the dark measures the Blood Elves have taken to retain the use of magic. Contrast is a device used often in the Blood Elf lands with the clash of light orange and yellows and dark blues and purples that underscores the dramatic nature of the Elf re-emergence into the world as something more sinister than they were before.

We have just started to gather all our Burning Crusade beta information together for you. To start you out though, here are some screenshots we gathered  in order to give you a taste of what you can experience with the Burning Crusade.   This is just the beginning though, so make sure you check back often!

All our beta information will be permanently located in our Burning Crusade Beta Coverage section.  

Voodoo Extreme has posted their "Best Selling PC Titles of September" and again World of Warcraft hit #1!

World Of Warcraft is the best selling PC title of September:

1) World Of Warcraft - Vivendi
2) The Sims 2 Glamour Life Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts
3) Company Of Heroes (DVD-ROM) - THQ
4) The Sims 2 - Electronic Arts
5) Civilization IV - 2K Games
6) Age Of Empires III - Microsoft
7) Guild Wars Factions - NCsoft
8) Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 2K Games
9) Warcraft III Battle Chest - Vivendi
10) Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy - LucasArts
11) Madden NFL 2007 - Electronic Arts
12) Company Of Heroes Collector's Edition - THQ
13) Battlefield 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
14) The Sims 2 Open For Business Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts
15) The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts
16) The Sims Complete Collection - Electronic Arts
17) Star Wars: Empire At War - LucasArts
18) Guild Wars - NCsoft
19) Call Of Duty 2 - Activision
20) Paws & Claws Pet Vet - Valusoft (THQ)
39) Company of Heroes (CD-ROM)

Since the Shaman can Dual Wield in The Burning Crusade, how does this affect their weapon buff powers? Here's the answer from Eyonix:

You will be able to use weapon buffs for each equipped weapon when dual-wielding. When you first buff a weapon, the effect will apply to the main-hand while the second buff will apply to the off-hand. If you reapply the same weapon buff that's already on two weapons, it will replace the buff with the lowest duration remaining. If you buff two weapons with the same weapon buff ability, such as Windfury and then decide that you'd like to replace one with a Rockbiter effect, you'll have a mouse-over option that will allow you to select which hand you wish to buff.

Click here for the full thread.

Druids rejoice for Nethaera has posted more Burning Crusade talent changes for you guys. Enjoy!

Feral Combat

Feral Instinct - Reduced to 3 ranks, 5/10/15%.

Thick Hide - Reduced to 3 ranks, 4/7/10%.

Nurturing Instinct - Reduced to 2 ranks, 50/100%.

Survival of the Fittest - Reduced to 3 ranks, same 1/2/3% improvements.

Balance

(NEW) Focused Starlight - “Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 2/4%.”

Improved Thorns - Renamed "Brambles", now increases damage from Entangling Roots as well.

Omen of Clarity - Swapped with Insect Swarm, prerequisite from Natural Weapons removed.

Improved Wrath - Renamed "Starlight Wrath", reduces cast time of Wrath and Starfire by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 sec.

Improved Starfire - Reduced to 3 ranks, no longer reduces cast time of Starfire, just has the 5/10/15% stun chance.

Natural Shapeshifter - Moved to Restoration tree, where Improved Enrage was.

Restoration

Improved Healing Touch - Renamed "Naturalist", in addition to the cast time reduction of Healing Touch it also increases all physical damage by 2/4/6/8/10%. Essentially, we folded Natural Weapons into it.

Natural Weapons - Removed.

Improved Enrage - Removed.

Reflection - Renamed "Intensity", mana regen in combat as it did in addition to causing Enrage ability to instantly generate 4/7/10 rage.

Natural Perfection - Changed to "Your critical strike chance with all spells is increased by 1/2/3% and melee and ranged critical strikes against you cause 4/7/10% less damage."

Click here for the full thread.

It's real. From the World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Closed Beta.

Paid character transfer hasn't worked for the last 8 days, but it was only today Blizzard pulled the page. Blizzard, aware of serious issue, warns not to keep on trying to finalize the transfer, as it would always fail but would charge your account for each failed attempt. Dozens of people complain that their bank accounts have been drained..

Priest Class - Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions and Even More Frequently Given Answers:

What...
Have you checked the other stickies yet?

How does Imp Shadow Word: Pain talent work?
[spellDamage + spellPowerBonuses]/6 = tick damage
tick damage * 8 = new total damage
Basically, take your current tick value and add two more ticks. The talent does not lower DPS on the spell, but adds duration to it and, therefore, additional ticks. This increases the mana efficiency and overall damage of the spell.

How do I get Benediction?
Step 1: Go to Molten Core and kill Majordomo. Eye of Divinity is a 50% drop rate from his chest.
Step 2: Kill scads of Heredrine Slayers and Heredrine Initiates in Winterspring (Darkwhisper Gorge) for The Eye of Shadow.
Step 3: Put on the EoD, go to the path just west of Stratholme's main door (the one between the gate and Terrorweb Tunnel with no mobs) and find the quest giver. She's invisible if you don't have the eye on.
Step 4: Save 50 peasants before 15 die or you die. Skeletal Archers shoot arrows at them and can't be touched. Melee come up and bash them (and you) and can be dealt with by Oil of Immolation (purchasable, craftable through Alchemy). Melee Skellies have 100 hp. Finally, diseases afflict the peasants as they leave. Cure those. Spawns are at the cave and they walk to the light. Get a million buffs before you go in or you'll have problems. AI, Mark, a 15 minute wisdom (if the paladin leaves immediately after buffing), either the +stam or +int buff from Blasted Lands, etc. I had stacked my stamina up to 4.5k and mana pool to 6.8k for the encounter with foods, potions, etc., and did it with no meditation and a gimp holy nova.

Step 5: Right click your recently attained Splinter of Nordrassil and put on your big shiny bullseye staff.

What enchant for Benediction?
Easy answer: +55 healing or +30 spell damage
Long answer: +22 int is a substandard enchant (it's not worth a max rank flash heal in mana), while +20 spirit is better put on a second staff, like Will of Arlokk, that you swap to. Benediction has a boatload of +healing, so it's best to augment that feature, especially since you can swap weapons in combat. If you plan to swap to Anathema for PvP or solo, the +22 int enchant is a slight bit better, but I wouldn't compromise your healing for it. +30 spell damage now affects healing, which is brutally overpowered in a way, giving priests good reason to swap between Benediction and Anathema without being overly worried about effectiveness for either role.

Shadow vs. Holy in damage specs?
Easy Answer: Shadow
Long Answer: Sustained damage and PvP favor Shadow heavily. Holy is solid burst when properly geared, but is less efficient and more difficult to properly gear. Holy also does not benefit raids in the same ways that Shadow does. Use Holy if you plan on speccing to a combo healing/damage build, whereas Shadow is superior for damage.

Rate my spec
Easy Answer: No
Long Answer: It's better to ask about specific talents than to ask about an entire build about 80% of the time. If you have to ask about your build, it's most likely not going to work well. If all else fails, get onto the test realms and try it out without spending 50g per respec.

FoW vs SG?
Easy Answer: PvE: SG. PvP: FoW.
Long Answer: FoW scales better the more +damage you have on your gear. However, SG has a consistency factor that makes it a powerhouse for PvE grinding. If you're not relying on burst for your PvE damage, SG is better.

SH vs MS?
The more I understand the issue, the more up in the air this seems. SH is applied before +healing from gear, so it only modifies the base amounts of the heals. For Flash, it's about 90 hp/cast for max rank. MS is applied off the top of your mana pool, which, depending on your gearing, could be anywhere between 600 and 900 mana gained, roughly. That 600-900 is worth a few more seconds of regen while casting (mp/5, meditation, and 3 pc trans), which makes the amount of mana a significant bit more. Generally, ask yourself this: Does SH allow me to downrank my heals? If not, did I need the extra healing power to keep up with incoming damage on tanks? If neither, then maybe MS is your answer. SH is generally considered the preferable talent, so treat it as such.

Are priests fun?
Easy Answer: Yes, but masochistic.
Long Answer: Depending on what you're expecting, they can be. If you play a priest with the intent to tank, you'll obviously get laughed at until the next 40 priest instance raid comes around. If you want to heal people, you got it. If you want to nuke the crap out of people, you got it about 40% of the time (100% solo, 20% groups). AoE? We have one of those and it's kinda fun. Control of other players' welfare? Yep (I have a god complex sometimes). If you don't like those things, particularly the notion of ever healing, don't pick priest as your class. It's like picking a warrior and expecting to NEVER be asked to tank.

What race...?
Easy Answer: Dwarf, Human or Undead
Long Answer: If you pick anything other than Dwarf, Human or Undead for a priest, you're opting out of the best racials available. You'd better enjoy the ass you're staring at if you're doing that to yourself. I continue to do so. Trolls and Night Elves are sex appeal.

Priests are for healing only!
In some other games, yes. In World of Warcraft, priests are also for PWNING. Until high end raiding, it's usually beneficial for the priest to be casting occasional nukes or dots amongst heals in order to speed the kill rate, which reduces runtime and the likelihood of player deaths. Additionally, any high end raid without a shadow priest is essentially gimping their warlocks.

How do I beat [x] class in duels?
Easy Answer: Kill them before they kill you.
Long Answer: Strategies very significantly within a single class, based largely on spec. In the end, the only general advice we can give here is to heal early, dispel both yourself and them, and try to think about what they're doing with each move. Obviously, beating a rogue stunlock is pretty difficult if you walk into it with 2.5k hp, healing gear, and no shield up. If you're dueling, you want a higher HP total, all of your buffs up (including Shield and Renew) as much as possible, and you want to negate the enemy's strategy before enacting your own.
__________________________________________________

Gear
MP/5 vs Spirit
This is a complicated subject, but the basic rundown is this:
If you are inside the 5 second rule (i5sr) the majority of the time, then MP/5 is a good stat for you. Since spirit, at best, regens at 30% of the normal rate while casting (with Meditation and 3/8 transcendence), spirit's returns aren't near as high as mp/5 while chain casting.

If you are able to get out of the 5 second rule (o5sr), then you are going to benefit more from spirit than mp/5. Since Spirit regens at a rate of ([spirit/4]+13) mana per tick o5sr, it goes at a much faster rate when not casting.

In general, the rough numbers are:
o5sr: 1 mp/5 = 1.66 spirit
i5sr, 15% regen while casting: 1 mp/5 = 10 spirit
i5sr, 30% regen while casting: 1 mp/5 = 5 spirit

On most gear, if choosing between spirit stat and mp/5, the ratio is approximately 4 spirit per mp/5 on equal level and quality items.

Int vs. Regen vs. +healing
Int is good for short fights in which you have little chance to regen o5sr. This is a preferrable stat in pre-raid instances (Ragefire Chasm through Blackrock Spire).

Regen is best used during longer fights. Examples of this are Onyxia, Nefarian and Chromaggus, where the fight takes more than 5 minutes and will require multiple "med" periods.

+healing is best for mid-long fights or burst healing fights, depending on which spell ranks you use. +healing is often bundled with Regen gear to allow the priest to sit out for a while, then be very effective, then sit out again in a rotation style. If you're in a longer fight, +healing can use lower ranks of the spells to conserve mana. In a burst fight, top rank spells can be used to keep the tanks alive.

The best builds out there incorporate more than one of these gearing options. A balance of stats will allow the priest to perform many different jobs very effectively.

Different weapons?
Keep multiple weapons. At the raid level, keeping Benediction with +55 healing, Will of Arlokk with +20 Spirit, and Staff of Dominance with +22 int will give you many, many options in regards to each situation, as well as giving you all of the positives of each stat focus. Starting with SoD will give a higher mana pool to start. Once that mana is depleted, swapping to Benediction for heavy +healing can keep you healing efficiently until you're LOM, when you swap to your regen Arlokk staff.

Damage Gearing
In general, +damage is the best option for DPS builds. Crit has mediocre returns without it and much of Shadow, our primary damage tree, can't crit. Scholomance and Undead Stratholme (Baron runs) both carry a wide selection of spell damage and shadow damage gear pieces. BRS carries a small selection of +damage. DM carries a LOT of damage and crit gear. Be aware that warlocks, mages, and druids may get annoyed at the "healbot" taking damage gear.

ZOMG! EPIX!
We know that T1 and T2 epic sets do not have any great deal of solo play capacity. Transcendence and Prophecy are both healing sets. Prophecy focuses on mp/5 and the augmentation of Flash Heal, whereas Transcendence focuses on +healing and Greater Heal. Benediction is a healing staff, whereas its counterpart, Anathema, is a shadow damage staff. Given that the T1 and T2 sets are "by raiding for raiding", it makes sense that they are devoted to healing, which is the primary role of most priests in raids

Community:
1. What is the proc rate/chance to proc of Seal of Vengeance?

2. Does Judgement of Vengeance use melee or spell crit rate?

3. Can Seal of Blood's Holy damage crit? If so, does it use melee or spell crit rate? Can Judgement of Blood crit? If so, melee or spell crit rate?

4. The Paladin class was balanced around DS, as said previously by members of the design team. Is AW the answer to DS being dispellable by MD, or was it really that you thought it would be overpowered in Arena combat?

5. Will Judgement of Wisdom and Light be recieving +damage&healing coefficients?

6. Spell-lock has always been the most serious issue for Paladins as the class is defined by having a single school. Is there a chance we'll be seeing any more additional abilities added which will function outside of spell-lock?

7. Purge/Dispell has also been a serious issue for members of this class, is there a chance we'll see any more increased defense against these spells aside from Stoicism? One of my favorite suggestions by another player was to allow Eye for an Eye to silence the caster for a short period of time.

8. Often posted on the board is that Sanctified Crusader is not worthy of a 41 point ability. Obviously you feel differently, but perhaps you can give us a greater understanding of how critical strike mechanics will work (in terms of crit rating) to allow us to reassess our feelings on the talent?

9. Will Dwarves ever get real animations? I mean really, throw them a bone, especially Dwarf Female Paladins...

10. Will Paladins be recieving racial spells similar to Priests?

11. I'm sure many future Blood Knights would like to know if there will be an equivalent to Verigan's Fist for them when they reach level 20. So?

12. Gnome Paladins? You know you want them.

13. Being more serious, now that both Shaman and Paladins are on each side, we've seen the two classes (thankfullly) diverge a bit. However, will we be seeing the Paladin class becoming more closely linked to the Warrior class?

14. From Flibble: Sanctified Crusader reads "all attacks," does this mean spells, ranged, and melee attacks or only a subset of these three?

15. What are the chances that we'll get a small mechanics change: that debuff Judgements (JoW, JoL, JotC, JoJ) will be refreshed not only by melee attacks but also DD Judgements?

16. Can you explain in a little more detail the mechanics of Crusader Strike? Is it physical damage, holy damage, a bit of both?

Kalgan:

1. 20 procs per min

2. Spell crit.

3. Yes, SoB $ JoB can crit using melee crit.

4. AW is simply designed to give you more flexibility, and would have been made regardless of the dispel change. However, the MD change gives us more freedom to add controlable damage like Crusader Strike.

5. No, we feel they're strong enough as-is.

6. You mean like Crusader Strike? ;]

7. The balance on this one is always going to be on a razor's edge. Push Stoicism a little too far, and the dispels suddenly feel underpowered. No plans to change this just yet, but always evaluating.

8. Agreed and solved (hopefully not over-solved at that). ;]

9. Hrm, I'll bring that up with the animators.

10. No. With the paladin we decided to focus more on adding a little distinction between Alliance/Horde paladins rather than introduce the kind of balance dangers we've seen in the priest racials.

11. We hope so.

12. Afraid not. :P

13. With respect to tanking, definitely. We do expect warriors to be able to output a meaningfully higher amount of dps though (as they're the "tank/dps" hybrid and paladins are the "healer/tank" hybrids... but please don't infer anything from the order those were listed in).

14. Yes, it includes all types of crit.

15. Not planning on it atm, but won't rule it out.

16. It's 100% physical damage.

While you can be on one team of each type, at the end of each week you'll only gain points from the team that earned the most points that week.
However, note that given equal rating, 5v5 teams earn more points per week than 3v3, which earn more than 2v2.

To clarify with an example:
- Let's say you're on three teams (one of each format).
- Let's say that at the end of the week, each of the teams you're on ends at a 1500 rating.
- Assume that you were an active player on each team (played in at least 30% of the team's battles)

Results at the end of the week:
- Each active player on the 5v5 team would be eligible to gain 408 arena points
- Each active player on the 3v3 team would be eligible to gain 244 arena points
- Each active player on the 2v2 team would be eligible to gain 163 arena points

So, you'd gain 408 points that week.

Note: in the example we provided above the 1500 refers to the team's rating. The number of points an active player gets from a team is derived from the rating value plotted on a logistic curve.

Also, one of the points we were trying to illustrate above is that active players on that 5v5 team will gain 408 points each. This is the case regardless of whether there are 10 total active players on that team (the max possible), or merely 5 active players (the practical min).

We don't want to "split" points among active players, as that would encourage you to not have alternates on the team, and we don't want to pressure you to minmax the system by always having the min number of players for a team.

Update

Bear in mind that the arena point return for your team's rating ins't linear. So to throw out another example...
- Each active player on a 5v5 team with a 1500 rating would receive 408 arena points at the end of the week.
- Each active player on a 3v3 team with a 2000 rating would receive 632 arena points at the end of the week (as compared to 244 at a 1500 rating).

That being said, we are deliberately trying to encourage the most competitive players to participate in the 5v5 battles, as we feel considerably more comfortable with the potential class balance in this environment. 2v2 has far more potential for certain class combinations to be heavily favored, and as such we're being conservative about how strongly we reward the smaller format sizes.

Your team only needs to fight 10 battles per week to be eligible for points. You can fight more if you so choose. However, due to the way the rating system works (and the way points are derived from rating), teams with high ratings are (in theory) increasingly likely to play only the minimum required number of battles.

In our continued efforts to combat cheating in World of Warcraft, more than 76,000 accounts were closed and 11 million gold was removed from the game economies in Europe, Korea, and the US in the month of September. The closed accounts were associated with activities that violate World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, such as using third-party programs that allow cheating, and farming gold and items. These types of activities can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our Game Masters in game or emailed to our Hacks Team by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction to the Game Master team using the In-Game Help Request.

All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.
As always, thank you for your continued support, and best of luck with your continued adventures in Azeroth!

We’ve made some additional changes to the talent calculators today. In addition to changing many of the icons, we’ve also made the following changes:

(Hunter) Aimed Shot - Rank 7 not listed, 370 mana, 870 damage.
(Druid) Leader of the Pack - Increases crit % by 5, increased from 3.
(Druid) Moonkin Form - Increases spell crit % by 5, increased from 3.

Check back soon for further updates.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/townhall/talents-and-spells.html

*For those having difficulties viewing the page we suggest closing your browsers, deleting all temporary internet files/cache and then reloading the page. This is often required when a talent calculator is updated.

4th Annual Pumpkin-Carving Contest Announced
In a longstanding Blizzard tradition, this year we are proud to announce our fourth annual pumpkin-carving contest. The most creative, original, and well-designed pumpkins will be awarded with glittering prizes. If you want to check out some past pumpkin-carving contest winners, you can see them here: [2003], [ 2004], [ 2005].
Go here to enter the 2006 World of Warcraft Pumpkin Contest.

Costume Contest Announced
If pumpkin-carving isn't your preferred art form, perhaps our costume contest might suit you better. We have had very fun and successful costume contests in 2004 and again at BlizzCon in 2005, and we're excited to offer this contest again this year. We'll be giving prizes to the best Blizzard-themed costumes from the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo game universes. Time to get out those scissors!
Go here to enter the World of Warcraft Costume Contest.

You can view the videos by downloading XFire and watching them on the WoW Movie Channel. When you're finished viewing them you can go to the XFire forums and vote for your favorites.

Good luck to those who are entered!

So whats it like being undead? Well if you were thinking of cashing in your life insurance forget it, no policy covers acts of necromancy and you can forget about having a good hair day. On the plus side you hardly need air so you can dive deep underwater and being a member of The Forsaken you have the Will of The Forsaken that makes you immune to fear, sleep, and charm effects. You can also eat dead bodies to regenerate any wounds you may have.

This handy dandy handbook for the undead folk walks you through the quests you will find in their beginning area in the Trisfal Glade. If you have always wanted to be undead but never had the courage to do so, this would be a great guide to read to get you started.

So make sure you check out The Handbook for the Recently Deceased today!

Nielsen Interactive just released a study on gamers in the US. There’s a lot of interesting tidbits, nicely summarized by Next Generation here, and quite a few surprises. Who knew “active gamers” spent on average $16 a week on games, or that an estimated 117 million Americans fit in that category? (Over a third of the country, nearly as many who voted in the last general election.)

One cluster of data in particular stands out and hits you in the face: While the ratio of men to women in the overall gaming universe is 2 to 1, an astounding 64% of online gamers are women.

Which begs an immediate question: if there are so many women playing games online, why aren’t they playing MMOs?

Because the thing is, for the most part, they aren’t. Last year, Stanford’s Nick Yee ran some of the results of his Daedalus Project4, easily the most rigorous survey of MMO behavior and demographics thus far, and they point to a dearth of women in online roleplaying games. In World of Warcraft, by far the largest MMO, 84% of players are men, 16% are women. (According to Yee’s figures, 35% of the in-game avatars are female, meaning roughly half are actually guys engaged in gender-bending.)

So lining up Yee’s figures with Nielsen’s, we’re talking tens of millions of women who do enjoy online games, but for one reason or another, are mostly passing on MMOs.

The consensus is that online, women tend to play casual, Java and Flash-powered web games like Bejeweled6, generally passing on download-install-and-play “hardcore” online world games like WoW. That’s true to a certain extent, but it needn’t be like this. At the risk of seeming like an evangelist, in the demographics of Second Life8, 43% of the user population are women, and also tend to be the more active players, and the most socially influential. Second Life may be an anomalous case, but it does suggest a larger point: when speaking of the big publishers and developers, the game industry as a whole is underserving a vast market. Numerous theories abound for why this is– women are turned off by the busty babe avatars that MMOs usually force them choose, women don’t like violent gameplay, and so on– but on the whole, the culprit they all finger is the industry’s male-dominated culture, and a near-complete indifference to what people who aren’t like them want. (Or as I once quoted a British game designer at an MMO developer roundtable, “Will all the women in the room please stand up? It’s white males, all wearing glasses! Look at us!”)

Putting the politics of this aside, the economic reality cannot be more devasating: there are tens of millions of women who play casual and largely free web-based games, who might be playing subscription-based, pay-as-you-go MMOs, but don’t. That’s billions of dollars in potential revenue lost.

Please join us on Thursday, October 26th, for a House of Commons with the developers of EverQuest II at 4:30 PM Pacific / 7:30 PM Eastern in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC.

You can connect to one of our IRC servers through the use of your favorite IRC client, such as mIRC, ircle, xchat, or whichever you prefer. Connect to irc.stratics.com port 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

• stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Colorado
• irc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germany
• stratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlanta
• irc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado

You may also connect through our handy Java link which may be found right here. You must have Java installed to use this which can be downloaded from the Java homepage.

This particular chat will be solely related to the Echoes of Faydwer Expansion, expected for release in early to mid November 2006. No other topics will be discussed.

We hope to see you there!

The rush of taking down the repugnant Alliance in World of Warcraft is something hard to replicate. Knitting a sweater really doesn't cut it in contrast to discovering a lone Paladin out of mana in Stranglethorn Vale, separated from his group. The joy of unleashing the glorious Frost Shock/Earthbind Totem combo and asking your party, "Where is his god now?" as you laugh about the recently departed; it's almost too much fun. Could you imagine trying to recapture that action and transform it into a completely different medium? How hard would that be?

To find out, I spoke to two men, Brian Kibler and Danny Mandell. They're the Lead Developer and Lead Designer (respectively) of the group responsible for distilling all of WoW into a collectible card game (CCG). The game, called the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, is being published by Upper Deck and aims to bring the persistent, massively-multiplayer experience of WoW offline, pitting two friends against each other in heated battles. Of course, you don't just sit down one day and say, "Hey, let's make a card game of this really successful MMOG." It requires a lot of work.

According to Kibler, the hardest part is figuring out "how you make a game of a game. One of the pitfalls is trying to include too much of the game. If you do that, it's gonna fail. You could imagine that you start the game at level one and you're fighting mobs and your opponents, but the problem is if you go really wide, it's hard to go deep, and then it's hard for a lot of new players to process. … You want it to be accessible."

Mandell added, "We want to make sure you can play your character that you have in the game."

It has been five months since South Park went on hiatus, and it looks like the time off made all the difference in the world. Returning for their fall premiere with the strongest episode of the season (so far), "Make Love, Not Warcraft" wasn't just a parody of the MMORPG craze, but also an ode to those who have given their life over to their online avatar.



Expertly using actual graphics from the game, this episode combines the computer-generated cardboard figures with computer-generated WoW characters. This seamless combination plays out much like the anime parody from the episode "Good Times With Weapons," and that is a good thing. Knowing their audience and material completely, "Make Love, Not Warcraft" gets to the bottom of what it takes to be a great MMORPG player: having no life. We're not saying that playing the game is bad, but just as much as the episode shows the fun and popularity of the game; it also shows the addictive nature of this virtual adventure. Across the episode the boys become acne-ridden and morbidly obese in their quest to take out the best player in Azeroth. Will MMORPG fans get angry at this less than flattering depiction? Yeah, but we would be disappointed in South Park if they didn't cross the line

The Azeroth population is increasing steadily, and to accommodate this growth we have opened a new realm: Alonsus! This is a normal / PvE realm named after Alonsus Faol, archbishop and reformer of the Brotherhood of Northshire, who helped to raise enough money to rebuild Stormwind. The realm will not receive any migration prior to being open for Paid Character Transfer when it’s 6 months old. See you on Azeroth!

I suppose it doesn't help that I'm known as "the gamer" in the little office I work at, but I work with a bunch of people who have never even played a computer game before or even knew what "World of Warcraft" was. Yes folks, there are people out there like that!

The general consensus though is that episode was extremely funny, not only to us WoW geeks, but to the general populace as well that have never even seen the game before.

If you happened to miss last night's episode, never fear! Comedy Central will run it again at these times:
10:00 PM - Thursday
12:30 AM - Friday
12:00 AM - Saturday
11:00 PM - Sunday
2:00 AM - Monday

If you don't catch it on those time slots it will be available to buy and download on iTunes for $1.99 on Monday.

Quoted from the article:

Games don't cause violence, "news" reports like this cause violence.

Culled from Australian news program "A Current Affair," this sensationalist news report has it all: demonizing language, foreboding music, a weeping, broken mother, and a teenager's den that looks like a crack house. Watching it, one cannot help but hate this awful, awful pandemic known as World of Warcraft, or "WoW" as it's known by the criminals who play it.

A month or two ago I had posted another article about a lady who was opening up a hospital for people who had gaming addictions, in it she claimed (with no evidence) that 40% of WoW players were addicted. In this newscast you can tell they use her "findings" as they claim the same number.

During that article though I had told people that the best way to handle "addiction" is to simply make sure you take moderation on things in life, much the same way you would if you were really into sports or watching soap operas. But what irritates me the most about this news article is the mother who just sits back and whines about her kid.

Here's an idea lady: Be A Parent. Sell the computer, turn off the internet, do SOMETHING other than whine in front of a TV camera. If you're THAT worried about your kid, do something about it that's constructive. That's what's wrong with society today, it's not video games, it's lazy parents like these allowing video games to raise their children.

Well, there's my two cents for the day, I'm sure you'll hear me rant and rave more in the future as more of these kinds of stories pop up.

If you agree or disagree with me, feel free to post your thoughts on our forums. I hope to see you there!

We're happy to announce that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will ship in standard as well as Collector's Edition packages. The Collector's Edition will come in a special box that contains many exclusive extras to enhance your adventure into Outland. For more information about what awaits players in the Collector's Edition, check out our

Make Love, Not Warcraft

Original air Date: 2006-10-04

The boys dedicate their lives to defeating a mad gamer and saving the World of Warcraft.

For those that didn't notice the date on the announcement, that means that show is on TODAY (Wednesday, October 4), so make sure to check out your local listings for Comedy Central ASAP!

ToonTown!

Have you always wanted to play with those Acme cartoon toys?Or maybe you wanted a great laugh like Goofy, and just didn'tknow where to go? What about riding around in those cool carsthat have their own personalities?

Well, welcome to Toon Town! The game that gives you gags tocarry around - including cupcakes to throw at the evil Cogs whoare invading the area. Work with others to defeat the evil robotsin their buildings to earn more laughs! The inhabitants of ToonTown are in no mood for serious play, and the Cogs are soon torealize this as you fire away at them with your flower Squirtgags!

Here at Stratics Central, we are making it our business tokeep you informed on the hottest games out there. We are workinghard to bring the information to you so that you, the MMORPGcommunity, can get the latest news on the titles available in theindustry today.

To that end, we would like to introduce to you ToonTown Stratics!

Toon Town is a cartoon-style adventure developed by Disney forkids and families, with the singular goal of saving the worldfrom humorless robots who want to make a dark, grey metropolis ofToon Town! In this title, your adventures revolve around gaining"laffs" and gags to defeat the evil Cogs. There isquesting and tasks to be completed, and some can be done withfriends, but there is also playtime for your toon! Just visit theGoofy Speedway and build your very own racing kart! It's true...you get to play in high-speed car races with your very owncartoon karts!

We are pleased to bring you Toon TownStratics, providing you with the latest news and reviews onthe game, all of the information on game updates, as well as anarea to discuss your whacky and crazy cartoon adventures! Join usat Toon Town Stratics today!

It's not just like this at Wal-Mart though, it seems the retail price for World of Warcraft has recently dropped to the $20 mark, paving the way for the exapnsion release.

After looking at various resources such as Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, Gamespot, etc. It seems everyone has a November release tag for The Burning Crusade.

If you’re like me and you enjoy that distinctive aroma of charbroiled Bane, you’ll love this exclusive preview! This massive 62MB video will put you right in the thick of battle as our fellow AFS soldiers fight for their lives against some of the worst the Bane has to offer.

Get it HERE!!!

It doesn’t stop there though, with the addition of “TR TV” we’ll be seeing many more videos in the near future. Stick with Stratics and we’ll keep you posted on all you need to know.

A user created video on GameTrailers apparently reveals environments and mobs from the Burning Crusade's Outlands. The video explains that the footage was captured by placing the Burning Crusade code onto a private server. There are no NPCs or other bells and whistles in the video because it's not on a Blizzard server.

The latest patch for World of Warcraft, version 1.12.1, offers owners of PPC Macs an optional feature which may smooth out frame rates. A developer post on Blizzard's forums explains how to make the change, which requires use of the Terminal to create a preferences file.

Many in the forum are reporting huge improvements in framerates. Here's a step by step run down of the process:

A. copy the three lines of text below onto your clipboard (select then hit Command-C). The first line is the "cat" command, the last line has the "4" on it.

cat > ~/Library/Preferences/com.blizzard.Internal.prefs
#Current User\Internal\VBBMODE
4

B. open Terminal.app (in Applications/Utilities) and it should provide you with a UNIX command prompt. What we're going to do is paste the text in above, which will ask the command line to create a file in your preferences directory named "com.blizzard.Internal.prefs", and will inject the two lines of text after it into that file. We're asking WoW to use "vertex buffer broker mode 4" which is the new code for PowerPC systems.
C. Paste the copied text into Terminal. (Command V).
D. Now hit Control-D (not Command-D). Control-D concludes the command we started in step C and closes the file.

E. All done ! Start WoW and see how it runs.

Considered to be in "beta form," the graphics tweak is not recommended for Intel Mac owners, and is targeted at PPC Macs with more than 512 MB of Ram installed.

More information can be found in this forum post.

WoW Forums: PPC OpenGL Tweak

"Everything in life is a learning process, and we have learned a lot from every in-game event we have done as to how they can be improved. I am not going to give anything away, but the player 'clumping' that you have concerns with is something we're specifically attempting to avoid. The re-opening of the dark portal is an event that will change Azeroth, as we currently know it, and it's only fitting that the tremble of such an event is felt throughout the world. It's still likely that players will group up at the portal, but the event we're planning won't encourage it as the AQ event did."

You can read the entire FAQ by visiting the Upper Deck WoW TCG site but I think the most interesting bit of this is the fact you can gain a turtle mount useable at all levels.

On Friday September 29th we experienced a networking issue at one of our World of Warcraft sites resulting in several realms going offline around 07:30am CEST. After extensive troubleshooting together with our ISP we located and corrected the problem, and after thorough testing the realms were brought back up at 11:30pm CEST.

Due to the extensive downtime each player with an active account on the following affected realms will receive 1 day game time credit:

Aman'Thul, Anub'arak, Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Conseil des Ombres, Darksorrow, Das Syndikat, Defias Brotherhood, Der Rat von Dalaran, Drek'Thar, Dun Morogh, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarush, Hellscream, Khaz Modan, Krag'jin, Kult der Verdammten, Laughing Skull, Les Sentinelles, Lightning’s Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nera'thor, Nordrassil, Onyxia, Quel’Thalas, Ragnaros, Rashgarroth, Sen'jin, Sylvanas, Terrordar, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Theradras, Throk'Feroth, Twisting Nether, Varimathras, Vashj, Wrathbringer