Seriously though, as if we needed a way to blend any more addictive things together, now we have TweetCraft, an add-on for World of Warcraft that allows you to keep on top of your Twitter feed while you’re in-game. This way you don’t have to tab-out to update your feed, and you don’t have to take a time-out from raiding to check up on how your friends are doing. This way while everyone is taking a bio break or arguing over loot, you can open up TweetCraft and tell your followers exactly how funny the whole debacle really is.

At the same time, I see how this could be usef legitimately; the folks at WoW.com are known to raid and give away loot card codes and such while they’re raiding - this could make it even easier to interact with people over Twitter while in-game.

That being said, I think that’s about where the legitimacy stops - just like the Peggle add-on, this is pretty much another great way to keep people in-game longer and give people a way to get their fix for one service while getting their fix for another. Now you don’t have to wait until you’re on a gryphon or a wind rider to tab out and read what everyone’s said while you were questing!

0

More hunter-specific news, but I think it’s a big change to the Armory: now when you view a hunter’s talents and glyphs you’ll also see the specs of their pets. The hunter’s active pet is shown right next to the character’s talents, and you can pull down a drop-down menu to see any of their stabled pets as well. You can see mine in the image above (click to embiggen), or you can head over and see my humble main on the armory here.

It’s a pretty neat addition to the armory, and it definitely saves hunters from having to log in to the game to talk to other people about their pets. It also allows you to play a bit more with your pets’ talent builds by exporting them and then importing them into talent calculators, and I’m absolutely sure that sites like TalentChic and GlyphChic will eventually pick up on this change and start scrubbing the Armory for pet specs as well - it’ll be even easier in the future to make sure you can compare your pet’s spec with your friends and other players. Thanks to Aspect of the Hare for breaking the news!

0

Along with the wealth of changes coming in patch 3.2, one of them stood out for me, since my main is a hunter and spirit beasts are near and dear to my heart. I first learned about Skoll, the new wolf spirit beast, from Mania’s Arcania, who posted a fantastic video of someone who actually tamed him and is running around on the PTR with him.

He’s a gorgeous blue worg, with lightning crackling around his body, and he gets all of the skills that other spirit beasts get, including spirit strike and prowl. I’m hoping that when he goes live he’ll still be a Wolf, meaning he’ll get ferocious howl and other wolf-specific traits (not to mention their DPS) in addition to spirit strike - that might be enough to make me switch back to beast mastery now and again.

0

WoW Faction Patches

This week brought some pretty significant changes to World of Warcraft: Blizzard has announced that Alliance players looking to switch to Horde and Horde players looking to join their Alliance friends will be able to soon…for a fee, of course. Currently players can choose to change their character’s gender or race - Blizzard says that soon you’ll be able to go from Horde to Alliance as well.

There are a lot of questions left around this announcement - word came out that it’ll eventually be possible, but it hasn’t been confirmed exactly how the changes will take place, how it will cost, or what will happen to faction-sepcific mounts, reputation, and gear.

Additionally, the biggest debate going around right now is whether race limitations will essentially go away and we’ll see humans walking around Orgrimmar and Blood Elves wandering Darnassus. Over at WoW.com, there’s a whole post about this: it would seem that it’s easiest for Blizzard to allow players to keep their races and their faction specific rewards and simply change their allegiances and rep, but I think it’s far more likely that Blizzard will choose certain races that are the compliment to each other, and players of once race will have to choose the complimentary race. (Draenei to Blood Elf, Human to Orc, Night Elf to Troll, for example) That way, Blizzard will have a direct method to map reputation, titles, achievements, mounts, and items.

At the same time, Blizzard could allow you to choose the race you’d rather play, as long as you can retain your class, and let the rest be damned. They could even just kill all of your old faction rep and force you to rep grind with your new faction. Anything’s possible, and we won’t know until more details emerge. Stay tuned!

What do you think will happen when Blizzard makes faction changes live? How much do you think it will cost? Let us know in the comments.

0

It’s no secret that the Midsummer Fire Festival is my favorite in-game holiday. There’s something about celebrating the solstice, the beginning of summer, and well…fire, that makes me incredibly happy. Traveling from bonfire to bonfire, stamping out the opposing faction’s fires and lighting up my own - it’s a lot of world-traveling fun. The trick though is that every year you wind up traveling the Azerothian globe for hours looking for flames, and it can be even worse if they’ve been moved from the previous year.

This year, with the launch of Wrath, introduces a number of Northrend fires as well, and a number of dungeon fires that will likely be difficult to get to. So who do you turn to when you need all the best information about the Fire Festival?

WoWGrrl, of course! (PS - follow her exploits on Twitter at @wowgrrl - folks like me whose guilds are too small for endgame raiding can only live vicariously through her adventures!) She posted her Midsummer Festival Guide and Bonfire Locations yesterday, and it’s been my resource for where to go and how to get everything done - she has all the links to the necessary pages in one place for easy bookmarking! The tip on earning extra experience doesn’t hurt either.

0

To be fair, there’s a huge World of Warcraft community over at Twitter that I’m just scratching the surface of (although anyone’s welcome to follow me at @halophoenix for a mix of personal notes, WoW news, and other articles I write and inane thoughts I have) but it’s rich, full of interesting people, interesting people who are in character, and overall interesting characters. I ran down some of those folks in my post: Get Your WoW On…At Twitter!.

At the same time, what if you want to let your characters completely speak for themselves in a community that you already know will be receptive to their updates? Where do you go where the people there would actually be interested to read what your character is doing at any given moment? wowTwitter, of course, a spinoff service that looks and feels like Twitter, it’s just World of Warcraft themed!

When you sign up, you add your characters, and you can post at any time in the voice of your characters. Some people use it for RP, others just use it as a World of Warcraft centered Twitter, where everyone talks WoW pretty much all the time. Personally, I think the WoW community at Twitter is really rich, but if you’re looking for a community that’s maybe a little more receptive and easier to get into, or even someplace you might want to do a little RP, check out wowTwitter; it might be perfect for you.

0

Remember when the minimum level for the first land mount went from 40 to 30 and everyone who had slogged to 40 and ground gold to pay for it were all mad? Yeah well, that’s coming all over again.

Blizzard has announced some pretty significant mount changes coming “soon,” which means essentially we have no idea when those changes are coming, but when they do, they’ll make all the difference to those folks who are leveling alts and want the experience of grinding 1-70 a little easier to deal with. Faster speeds, lower costs, easier training, and lower minimum levels await you, thanks to the word that Zarhym let loose in the official forums:

In the next major content patch, we intend to adjust mount requirements to further improve the leveling experience in World of Warcraft. In addition, cast times for summoning all ground mounts will be reduced to 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds. The following is a breakdown of the upcoming cost and level requirement changes we are making for each riding skill.

* Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

o 60% land mount speed
o Requires level 20
o Cost: 4 gold
o Mount cost: 1 gold
o Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

* Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

o 100% land mount speed
o Requires level 40
o Cost: 50 gold
o Mount cost: 10 gold
o Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

* Expert Riding (Skill 225)

o 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
o Requires level 60
o Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply: Honor Hold [Alliance]; Thrallmar [Horde])
o Mount Cost: 50 gold
o Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

* Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

o 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
o Requires level 70
o Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply: Honor Hold or Valiance Expedition [Alliance]; Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive [Horde])
o Mount Cost: 100 gold

Now when Zarhym says “next major content patch,” a good assumption is that he means it’s coming in patch 3.2, currently in development but not yet on the PTRs. Or perhaps since 3.2 is in development already it’s actually coming in 3.3. Who knows, but I’m sure we’ll get clarification on this in the near future.

And of course, along with mount changes, druid forms and other class abilities that allow for faster travel speed will also have to be modified to keep the playing field level:

Movement Speed Training By Class

* Druid

o Travel Form: Requires level 16
o Flight Form: Requires level 60 (150% flight speed)
o Swift Flight Form: Requires level 70

* Hunter

o Aspect of the Cheetah: Requires level 16

* Shaman

o Ghost Wolf: Requires level 16

* Paladin

o Warhorse: Requires level 20
o Charger: Requires level 40

* Warlock

o Felsteed: Requires level 20
o Dreadsteed: Requires level 40

My alts are jumping for joy right now.

0

The folks over at WoW.com (formerly WoW Insider) thought this was incredibly corny, and yeah, they’re right - it’s terrible. But that doesn’t make it any less awesome!

Seriously, this is terrible, but I mean, how cool is it that even in the real world, even in a grocery store, and even when there are very pretty women involved, the Alliance and the Horde just can’t get along? Man, if this is how bad that whole factional divide is, Arthas has us proper screwed.

In other news though, the commercial is pretty damned funny. One question though: why didn’t the Horde woman turn into oh…a female Orc? I mean, I know the answer to that - they’re recreating the battle from the original WoW opening cinematic using the original box characters everyone would recognize, but still. Not only is she Horde, an Orc, but she’s also transgendered?

That’s okay though - we love both lovely ladies anyway. Who wants to bet on whether either of them actually play WoW?

0

If you’re not following @Greyseer, the author of Lorecrafted on Twitter, you’re missing out! Between him and @Cadistra (the author and artist of World of Warcraft, Eh?), and of course the indomitable @YoggSaron himself, it makes for incredibly entertaining days watching their interactions.

But now thanks to some sketches by Cadistra and Greyseer’s mad plush-making and sewing skills, we have the Cuddle Me Yoggy, a lovingly made hand-crafted plush Yogg-Saron, perfect for bedtime cuddles!

I watched while Greyseer worked on the little guy all day, stabbing himself with a needle and everything. The cloth looks cuddly and soft, and he comes complete with plush tentacles and five little eye-maws to complete the look. I mean seriously - who could be afraid of that? He’s adorable! Just wait until he eats your guild - you still won’t be able to stay mad at him.

0

Over at the venerable WoW Insider, Senior Editor Mike Schramm stirred up quite a controversy by pointing out something that’s been rumbling in the WoW community for a while now: should Blizzard get rid of/bolster and rework Vanilla WoW?

Now by “Vanilla WoW,” we mean all of the original level 1-60 content that launched with the game. You remember that stuff, don’t you? Onxyia and her whelps, Tier 1 gear, Deadmines and the Defias, Tauren fighting the Centaur in Mulgore, and of course, who can forget Barrens chat?

Silliness aside, there are two very diametrically opposed camps here; some people out there want Blizzard to open “Vanilla Servers,” where the level cap is still 60 and all of the content ends with the content released before Burning Crusade - a place where people can still wrap themselves in the original content without the treadmill rush to level to 70 and then 80, rushing through Outlands and then Northrend. On the other side of the argument are the people who want to essentially sunset 1-60 entirely, and make all characters like Death Knights: as long as you have an 80 somewhere you can roll a new character starting at level 55 anywhere. Some of those people even say you can limit it to a server - if you have an 80 on that server, you should be able to start any class at 55 on that server.

I can see both sides of this debate: there are those of us looking to gear, level, and armor up to assist our guilds with raids and instances, and for those of us who are looking to do that the original content from 1-60 is little more than a path to that, and at worst it’s an obstacle in the way there. At the same time, for those of us who really enjoy the original old world content for its rich story, lore, interesting NPCs and gameplay, the thought of removing it or otherwise toning it down or isolating it from the higher-level game content is abhorrent.

Read more

0

Argent Tournament. Naxxramas. Ulduar. Obsidian Sanctum. Arenas. Children’s Week. Noblegarden. Dailies for every class. Rep grinds for just about every faction. Achievements. There’s tons - TONS more to do in the World of Warcraft now than there has ever been before. Even back in the days of Burning Crusade there were plenty to do, but not quite as much as we have now.

Between grinding out rep for the multitude of Northrend factions, staying on top of our regular achievements like Loremaster and Explorer, reaching for character titles, and achievement/annual events on a multi-monthly basis, there’s tons to do, whether you’re a casual player or a hardcore raider. The din from casual players has died down now that there are easily more dailies to do in the world than you have slots for, and there are events like the Argent Tournament to do that can be done alone or in smal groups. Hardcore raiders are barely out of three-drake OS and now there’s Ulduar to brave - a dungeon so freaking hard that it very well may break you and your guild.

I’ve felt the pressure myself, honestly: between doing the Noblegarden quests, raiding Naxx and trying to progress into Ulduar every week, trying to improve my rep with the factions that still have gear upgrades for me, and still trying to be generally social and help out people in my guild and other friends, and then still trying to level a few alts, there’s simply too much to do in the time that I have to play WoW. It’s at the point where - if it wasn’t like this before - there’s definitely enough in the game to keep someone playing as if it were a full time job!

Personally, I’ve been trying to make progress on a couple of alts but haven’t managed to because of the world events and achievements that I try to participate in on my main. At the same time, even my casual guild (we only raid once or twice a week) is feeling the pressure to progress into the newest content while simultaneously helping each other out with the world and holiday events.

Am I the only person who feels this way? How is everyone else doing with all of the content additions, new achievements, events, and other things to do? Are all of your skills maxed out? Do you have any professions you’ve been meaning to level? Any areas in which you just never got around to questing? Does it get a little overwhelming for you too, or are you pretty solid — or at worst, bored?

1

Ah, gold. The main reason I hear from some of my guildmates that they haven’t picked up dual-specs? It costs 1000g. The main reason our my pally friend is tired of respecing between healing and tanking? Gold. Everyone needs it, not all of us have a good, solid way of getting it.

Have you ever wondered how people seem to play the auction house to make money? Have you ever wondered how you can take the economy on your server and turn it into a moneymaking machine without putting so much time into it that you’re distracted from actually playing the game? So have I! Which is why this post, Gold Making Tips from a WoW Millionaire over at WoW Economist piqued my interest.

In the first video, our tutor manages to make 1000g in 4 hours of /played time:

The post goes on into another video that outlines the narrator’s typical day of milking the auction house for all it’s worth - the best part is that this strategy doesn’t particularly rely on being brutal against other players and devastating the server economy in order to make a few extra copper - it’s just playing off the need for certain items and the willingness of many players to simply overpay for something because they want it. All of the videos are created by the writer of WoW Auction Mastery, where more videos and tutorials are promised soon.

0

What do you do when you’re at the office or it’s Tuesday during server maintenance or you’re somewhere else where you have a computer but you can’t play World of Warcraft? Sure you could always do some work, surf the rest of the intarwebs, or write your own World of Warcraft themed blog, but if you wanted to do that you wouldn’t be here, would you?

If you’re like me, you still enjoy reading about WoW, even if you can’t play. If you’re still like me, you probably have a Twitter account you use to stay in touch with friends, family, maybe even your guildmates or fellow players. That’s where you can stop being like me. Seriously, it’s getting creepy.

In any event, if you’re on Twitter, there are enough WoW bloggers, personalities, Webcomic artists, and character journals to keep your Twitter feed rocking all day, and in many cases, all night. Of course, there’s always me: @halophoenix, but there are people out there who talk about WoW in their Twitter feeds a lot more than I do! Some examples? Want to hurry up and start following people? Let me oblige with a few picks:

@WoWInsider - the venerable WoW Insider blog has a presence on Twitter, and it’s more than just recycled RSS content from the blog’s front page. The authors and editors regularly give away TCG codes via Twitter, host polls, link to really interesting posts, and interact with their readers. If you’re a WoW fan, they’re a must-follow.

@mikeschramm - if you’re a fan of WoW Insider and listen to the WoW Insider Show, you’ll know the venerable Mike Schramm, Senior Editor at WoW Insider. He’s charismatic, funny, knows how to keep a podcast rolling forward without letting the guests rathole into ridiculous (but still funny) topics, and he has his own Twitter account.

@the_t - Ah, The T - Turpster! The hilarious voice on the WoW Insider Show but also known from the WoW Radio days and host of his own show at Massively, Turpster never fails to bring the funny, even on Twitter.

@Stompalina - Stompalina taught me everything I know about being a druid, and that’s not saying a lot because I don’t play one. But she makes me want to pick one up! She owns the blog Rawr Bitch Rawr, and hosts the Rawrcast show, and is always fun to read.

@holydueg - I found the good Mr. Dueg thanks to a WoW Insider rush of people they suggested following. You might be tempted to think his blog, Holy Dueg! might be entirely a priest’s blog, but if you thought that you’d be horribly wrong. Dueg has some incredible columns under his belt, including a recent one on whether or not Ulduar will flat out break your guild. Is your motley crew up to the task of taming Ulduar? Possibly not, and it’s worth reading why.

@AllThingsAz - If you listen to the All Things Azeroth podcast, now’s your chance to interact with the crew on Twitter! They’re incredibly responsive to the community, and accept show ideas and topics from their Twitter followers.

@brigwyn - Now we’re talking. I’m a hunter, so I’m biased, but Brigwyn runs The Hunter’s Lodge, a resource I’ve used for hunter tips and tricks more than once. From shot macros to pet suggestions to build advice, it’s all there.

@cadistra - Cadistra is the author and artist behind the WoW-themed webcomic WoW, eh? which I enjoyed long before I found her on Twitter. She doesn’t exclusively post about World of Warcraft, but if you love the comic and want to know how it’s coming, following her is the only way to know. Plus she posts sketches and other artwork that she’s working on.

@greyseer - If you’re a lore fiend, Greyseer, owner of Lorecrafted, is someone worth following. He’s incredibly responsive to the community, and has no problems getting into the nitty gritty of dispelling all of your altruistic notions about the Alliance or the bad-guy image of the Horde.

So all of these people are lovely and informative, but they’re twice as entertaining when you toss some character journals into the mix. For example:

@yoggsaron - the cuddliest old god ever! Seriously, before 3.1 came out, you should have read how much he was obsessing over his puppy who ran away (who goes by the name Brann, re-watch the beginning of the 3.1 trailer if you’re not sure where that came from!), and who’s now currently rolling about as a little Yogg-Saron plushie, impressing all the ladies, specifically Cadistra.

@cthun - C’thun hasn’t been as chatty as he used to be, but when he does speak, it’s hilarious. He’s evil, he’s sarcastic, and man is he willing to call out his little brother (Yogg-Saron) when he gets the urge.

@regent_lord - What’s going on in the shining spires of Silvermoon City? Regent Lord is busily tweeting, apparently. The character journal of Lor’themar Theron.

@warchief_thrall - The orc, the myth, the legend. The best part? The person behind this character journal has Thrall down pat. Seriously.

@archimonde - Apparently Twitter is full of character journals of some of Azeroth’s most evil characters. Didn’t we kill this guy? Regardless, he’s alive and kicking and posting his thoughts, apparently.

Admittedly there’s a kind of an insular, self-cannibalizing community among the character journals and some of the other folks above that’s hard to break into if you’re on the outside or not a character yourself, but the interaction is fun to watch at the very least, and that’s the nature of Twitter, I think.

At the very least though, you can brighten up your Twitter feed with a few dozen posts daily from people who are as avid World of Warcraft fans as you are! So, I’m sure I missed people, so if you have any character journals that you own or follow, or find yourself posting or reading tons of WoW-related material on Twitter, let me know!

0

A little while ago, I polled my friends at Twitter (you can follow me at @halophoenix, by the way) to find out what the WoW players I know think are the easiest classes to level.

Old wisdom has always been that hunters and warlocks are the easiest to level because you almost had a second character there to help you in the form of a hunter’s pet or a warlock’s summon. I’ve played both classes and found them pretty easy to level, but my main is a hunter and the lock I play is pretty small, so I was curious what other people thought.

Are Death Knights the automatic winner because they start at 55, and the biggest help to leveling is getting rid of those 55 levels to grind? At the same time, retribution paladins have gotten a lot of dps love lately - are they easier to level? I’m playing a ret pally alt right now and she seems to blow through levels faster than I can get her gear for them. What about warriors? Has the nerf stick hit them so hard no one plays them anymore? And what happened to all of the rogues?

Well, the Twitterati came through in a big way. While no one really agreed on a specific class that’s definitely the easiest to level, some trends appeared. There was “easy classes” to level, and there were “unrewarding and completely too difficult” classes to level.

Among the winners? Shadow priests, retribution paladins (as expected), hunters of all specs (also expected), and one passionate vote for warlocks even though they had their hayday a few patches ago and no one seems to play them much anymore. My good friends @nanceinsnow and @transrelativity both weighed in in support of shdow priests, locks, and of course, hunters. (although nance’s dps output is making me want to change specs from BM to survival…) The trend seems to be that dps classes are the easiest, which makes sense - they’re designed for damage output, which makes questing and grinding that much faster. The only class to buck the trend were death knights (suggested by my guildmate Yoshi, who tanks with a 2-hander with style), which were easy not just because of their massive DPS but also because they start at 55, and sure enough - skipping 55 levels makes a difference.

Among the losers? Restoration druids, protection warriors and paladins, and elemental shaman. (unless you’re a multi-boxer and have enough of them to one-shot elites 5 levels above you!) The trend there isn’t so clear. I can understand why prot-spec’d anyone would be difficult to level: you’re specced for damage absorption, not output. Resto druids I can understand too - healing classes are designed for, well, healing. Elemental shamans I was confused by though.

One stand-out though: a good friend in my guild, @tongarityphoon pointed out that she thought holy priests were the easiest to level. I boggled; holy priests? Cloth-wearing healers? Easy to level? How could that possibly be? She insisted; it was the easiest class to level she’d ever played. I’m still skeptical: I might have to roll one to find out.

So what about you? What classes have you played that you found particularly easy to level? Does it matter where in the cycle of patches from launch it was? Rogues and enhancement shaman were in vogue about a year ago, as were warlocks; everyone was playing them. Then along came the nerf train and the new expansion and it seems like everyone who played a rogue now plays a death knight. Additionally, you can’t find someone to pick up all the caster plate that drops in Naxx to save your life.

Maybe it’s a function of which class is on top at the moment, but some classes are consistently easy to grind. Let us know your picks in the comments!

2

One of my favorite sites, TalentChic, has been updated with talent and spec changes for 3.1!

There are significant changes to everyone’s talent trees this week after the patch, and some of you will find you have fewer points to spend, and others of you will find that you have more to spend, but with time you’ll be able to see at TalentChic what everyone’s speccing towards. Since TalentChic pulls its data from The Armory, it’ll probably be a few days before the site is a definitive resource again since everyone has to go and respec, but once it’s done a few more updates, you’ll be able to use it the way you used to!

Additionally, TalentChic has a new counterpart: GlyphChic, to help you determine whether you’re using the right glyphs for your spec. You can browse both sites by class and spec, and the most popular glyphs and specs will be shown at the top - mind you, they may not be the BEST, or even the RIGHT ones for you, just the most popular. So remember to take both sites with a grain of salt, and use them to help you make your decisions, not make them for you. Enjoy!

0