This plate by Alice, via We Know.

It looks like this weekend Blizzard went on another broad sweeping account closure fest but perhaps they are now reaching a bit too far? According to this penalty level diagram there are several different forms of punishment you can receive if you are found to be breaking the rules which in and of itself makes a lot of sense. Mess up, get a warning. Break a bit of a bigger rule get suspended. All the way up to having your account canceled. According to this page account closure is “very rare” but since it has happened to more than one person I know on Eitrigg in the past few days, I’m wondering if they are just skipping the other levels and jumping right to that. The people I know were not involved with any kind of hacking or exploits, and in these cases the problem seem to sit firmly in this rule:

This category applies to players who have:

* Accessed an account reported as compromised and are not the registered user of said account.
* Knowingly or unknowingly received items/gold from a compromised account.

If a player is found to have participated in one of these acts, he/she may:

* Have the transferred items/gold removed from the account.
* Receive an account penalty up to and including account closure if the registered user of the account perpetrated the compromise.

Emphasis mine. So are you following this? If you receive something in game from another player, without any knowledge of who that player is or what they are doing you can have your account completely shut down without a single warning. Ever buy anything listed on the trade channel rather than in the AH? Seems like that is enough for a cancellation at this point. This seems extremely heavy handed to me.

It has been a little over a month since the release of Burning Crusade. Were you one the few who took that week off work and lived on Red Bull and Dominos to be the first on your server to level to 70, or did you take your time and enjoy the scenery while leveling?

For me I was right about in the middle leveling speed. I had my late nights on the weekends and some weeknights especially while I was nearing the 70 mark, but I tried not to let if affect my day schedule. I hit 70 two weeks after the release. I was thrilled at first, but now I wish that I would have spent a few more days working the faction reputation while leveling. My faction from Cenarion Expedition and Honor Hold is still a mere friendly, while my Aldor and Lower City (to name a few) are at least at revered. I will eventually have to go back to lower level factions and get at least revered to get all my heroic keys.
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The good thing that happened this weekend was that I had a second character hit 70, and my main got attuned for Karazhan. The bad thing that happened was that guild drama is escalating, and this morning I removed all of my alts from the guild, including the level 70 hunter. (I left the lock.)

I’m reading about a lot of guilds who are going through the same issues; everyone from Tobold to wow_ladies are posting the same things.

Pre-TBC, I wrote about the changes to guilds build around raiding 40-man instances that TBC was likely to cause. And you know what? I was wrong, and I was right. Guilds are imploding, but it seems to be for a reason that I never anticipated: previously supportive guilds dividing out into haves and have-nots, per Tobold’s post.
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Official Notes Here

Looks like druids got hit pretty hard. What do you think?

Druids

* When the duration of “Cyclone” ends, area buffs such as “Leader of the Pack”, “Tree of Life”, and “Moonkin” will now be correctly resumed.
* “Bear Form” now grants 25% increased stamina instead of 25% increased health.
* “Dire Bear Form” now grants 25% increased stamina instead of 25% increased health. In addition, the armor bonus has been reduced from 450% to 400%.
* The multiplier on base weapon damage for “Mangle (Bear)” ability has been changed from 130% to 100%. In addition, the bonus damage has been reduced by the same ratio.
* “Savage Fury” no longer affects “Mangle (Bear)”.
* “Savage Fury” no longer applies to “Maul” or “Swipe”.
* The critical damage bonus on “Predatory Instincts” reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10%.
* “Improved Leader of the Pack” can no longer get critical heals.
* The armor bonus from “Moonkin Form” has been increased from 360% to 400% (to match Dire Bear Form).
* The rage normalization equation has been adjusted to grant more rage.
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Well, we now have some job boards here on Metroblogging Azeroth. Since they are all of 10 minutes old they are totally empty so they won’t be of any use to people looking for a job, but if you have a WoW related (or any kind of gaming) position available you can post it there and folks can check it out. That way you can more more cash to cover your monthly WoW fees.

You get it while you’re questing. You get it in Ironforge and in Orgrimmar.

You get it whether or not you’re Aldor or Scryer, you get it in the mail, you get it in whispers and general chat.

Now, you can get it on your very own instant messenger!

Smooch says (8:58 AM):
hi?

kullender says (8:59 AM):
hi

Smooch says (8:59 AM):
who’s this?

kullender says (8:59 AM):
This is a company serving for WOW players. Now we are looking for some cooperators in game. There is a world of good for our cooperators. do you have any interest in it?

Smooch says (8:59 AM):
i’m not sure what you mean

kullender says (8:59 AM):
We lvl for players and also,rent their accont if they have an idle account with a lvl60 char even naked.

Smooch says (8:59 AM):
…

kullender says (9:00 AM):
?

This person added me via MSN Messenger, which happens occasionally as I have my contact information on my website. After I allowed them to see my online status, we had the above conversation. The email address for ‘kullender’ is ipgfeedback5@hotmail.com — not sure who that is, but I’d love to know how they knew to IM me.

Anyone else gotten any ‘outside the box’ WoW spam?

I had to sit through (an admittedly brief) download just for that? I have enough problems with patch downloaders and patches themselves eating up drive space without them releasing patches for bugs one at a time.

There’s a pretty crazy story on iPhone World claiming to have confirmation that the iPhone will run WoW. No, like, for realz. From the story:

…Imagine playing WOW on them using the touch screen interface. Think of the impact its going to have on the handheld game market and Apple’s revenue.”

I tried to get more on WOW but all I could get was “Steve goes big and WOW is as big as they come when it comes to on-line games.”

…

…was told that WOW on the iPhone worked with both WiFi and EDGE (without simultaneous phone use) and full multi-tasking with 3G in the future. New iPod will utilize WiFi.

I saw this story over on WoW Insider where they are a little skeptical. I’m a LOT skeptical, and in fact am calling BS on the whole thing. I know people with Mac laptops that can’t run WoW, no way this thing will be able to. As awesome as it would be, I just can’t see it happening. And the touch screen controls would SUCK for playing WoW. You’d need some kind of bluetooth keyboard, and if you have that why not just use a laptop? That said, what would be awesome would be if some elements were accessible, perhaps you couldn’t fight mobs or PvP, but checking mail, auction house, or working on trade skills seems a little more doable. I guess we’ll have to wait and see but my guess is no way.

The story from Chaucer’s “the Canterbury Tales” was enacted within Wow for an english class. The Pardoner’s Tale is the story of three men who set out to kill death itself, but stumble onto a small fortune. They then fight over the fortune and betray each other.

(Found at the great WoW Insider.)