For one night the war is forgotten, and the Horde can act like civilized people. We can celebrate our victories, and mourn our very many losses.

I attended with Whitman, and the students and faculty of Silvermoon University. There was storytelling, drunkeness, a scavenger hunt, and a play performed by the drama club that was a satire of the rise and fall of Sylvanas Windrunner. It was, of course, a comedy.

The trees have started changing color and their leaves have begun dropping to earth. A chill wind blows in the evenings. The farmers in Westfall and Arathi are finishing up their harvest seasons, whcih must mean tt’s time for Halloween in Azeroth again.

(The always excellent WoW Insider has a great round-up of the quests, but what is it actually like? To me, that is what MetBlogs is about: what is it really like to be there?)

During this holiday season the Horde cities are full of adventurers running around with pumpkins on their heads trying to sell brooms. Wisps and bats, pirates and ninjas run past on all sides. The zeppelin looks like a menagerie of terror. Blind party invites are flying, and if you accept you could find yourself turned into any sort of monstrosity. Pumpkins dot the doorsteps of every house, and huge barrels of apples lay prepped for bobbing.

Outside Undercity stands an enormous Wicker Man–no word on if uptight policemen fill his belly–and surrounding the Wicker Man are dozens of heavily armed sellswords waiting for Alliance scum to ride by. The ground is sticky with blood.

The Headless Horsemen shouts and rides across the sky, burning the towns of Brill, Razor Hill and Farstrider Square. Helpful adventurers carrying buckets run around dousing every flame as soon as possibe. The level of civic involvement would bring a tear to my eye if only they weren’t being paid so well to do it.

The Scarlet Monastery has become an abbattoir. A palace of bone and ash and corpse. You cannot see the flagstones for all the skeletons of dead Alliance. This is as it should be. But Alliance should be wary and be prepared. My guild–the Holy Hammer–spent all evening conjuring up the Horseman and slaughtering him over and over, making him pay for burning our innocent hamlets.

I have not yet made the trip to South Shore to play my pranks, but I expect it will be not unlike running headfirst into a meat-grinder over and over again.

That’s why when you do actually find a guild that is into RP you make note of them. And when you find a guild that does it with as much style and humor and intelligence as Silvermoon University on Twisting Nether does, well that’s when you submit an application.

Silvermoon University is a Horde-side roleplaying guild that takes on the role of an actual university. New members are termed Freshmen, while the guild leadership are faculty. They have field trips to Alliance territory or into instances. Members of the drama department write actual plays, and then perform them complete with costumes and extras.

The website though is what entirely sold me on the guild. The flawless presentation. The conceit of the University being carried through so far as to have a yearbook with quotes and trivia featuring the guildmembers. It’s pretty much perfect.

Many players are unable to acquire the quests, especially “Pink Elekks On Parade.” While many other players are unable to repel the Dark Iron Dwarf attack. Sigh. Blizzard, why must you always break my orcish heart?

I completed the Wolpertinger quest and have a new ass-ugly pet, and completed the run into BRD for the off-hand stein of unlimited booze. Nice. Wish I had one of those for reals. But I’m finding the lag crushingly bad in the racing quests. It takes me a solid two minutes just to get to the Goblin with the kegs, even with pushing my poor ram all the way into the red and hitting both apple barrels.

People who want that six hundred ticket ram mount are going to need to be very lucky, persistent and have a better computer than I to get it.

Every where I turn, friends who had dropped their WoW accounts like they were hot have been signing on for more questing, more rep grinds and more alt-a-holism. While at the same time, hardcore raiders seem to be dropping out from burnout. My old guild has lost several die-hard 24-7 WoW-heads in the last month. What’s going on?

Is the dim Autumnal lighttriggering something deep and mysterious in our limbic systems? Wolves grow their winter coats. Trees’ leaves put on a show for the tourists. Cider mills open for business. And old players return to WoW.

What’s driving this? Is it all of the Wrath of the Lich King press, or the promise of soloable epics from Ogri’La?

What’s your guess, dear readers?

Here’s a snippet:

There’s two catches though: 1) specializing in a Hero Class is like specializing in a profession - you’re stuck with it forever, and 2) you won?t immediately have access to all hero skills. Think of it as starting a new class - you start off with a couple of base abilities, you get a few more from class quests, and the rest come from your class trainer. The same applies to hero classes; picking a Hero Class will start you off with two new hero skills, and the rest will come from hero class training (called “hero talents”) and hero quests. Here’s the interesting part: hero talents uses Hero Points, rather than currency or regular talent points. Blizzard hasn’t finalized how Hero Points will be earned, but they will most likely be obtained through a combination of experience/honor, and unique items that give you one or more hero points when used. Most likely those items will be given as both quest rewards, and drops off legendary mobs like Illidan and outdoor raid bosses (emphasizing the “heroism”).

It sounds like it will lock you into one role pretty hard and also perpetuate the boring (to me at leats) Raid-or-Die paradigm. Yay? Click through to see the big list of what spec becomes which Hero class.

Click here for my profile.

The Armory lists every character and shows their equipped gear, profession evls, guild and guild roster. It shows your reputations with every faction, your talent build, your skills and your PvP record. It shows everything about you, except maybe what’s in your bags.

The first and most obvious question is: why? Services that do this have been around from the start (RPQoutfitter, for example) but they have all been opt-in services. Blizzard gives us no choice. We can’t opt-out of this. Everyone now knows that I have been ignoring my Sporeggar rep and that my gear is pretty crappy.

I expect the forum trolls to start using Armory to attack anyone they disagree with any second now.

How do you feel about this? Excited? Annoyed? Couldn’t care less?

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.

Here are the full notes:

General

* Some logic was fixed in the “Natural Remedies” quest so that Pathaleon the Calculator’s Image will always spawn during the ritual.
* Goliathon and his shardlings can no longer be pulled to nearby areas that have guards.
* More fixes implemented in the “It’s a Fel Reaver, But With Heart” quest to keep the Scrapped Fel Reaver from breaking.
* The Orb of the Blackwhelp and Hallowed Wands can no longer be used in combat, and the transformation will be canceled if the player receives damage.
* The Scrap Reaver in Netherstorm repairs reduced from 10,000 health to 8,500 health over 10 seconds.
* Battle of the Crimson Watch
o Illidari Mind Breaker has been weakened.
o Illidari Highlords can now be CC’ed but not Charmed.

PvP

* Arenas
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Slicer” has been increased to 2625 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Quickblade” has been decreased to 1125 arena points and changed to offhand only.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Cleaver” has been increased to 2625 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Hacker” has been decreased to 1125 arena points and changed to offhand only.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Pummeler” has been increased to 2625 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Bonecracker” has been decreased to 1125 arena points and changed to offhand only.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Right Ripper” has been increased to 2625 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Left Ripper” has been decreased to 1125 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Shanker” has been increased to 2625 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Shiv” has been decreased to 1125 arena points and changed to offhand only.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s War Edge” has been decreased to 1000 arena points and the speed changed to 1.9.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Spellblade” has been increased to 3150 arena points.
o The cost of the “Touch of Defeat” has been decreased to 1000 arena points.
o The cost of the “Gladiator’s Endgame” has been decreased to 1125 arena points.
o The cost of the “Idol of Tenacity” has been decreased to 1000 arena points.
o The cost of the “Libram of Justice” has been decreased to 1000 arena points.
o The cost of the “totem of the Third Wind” has been decreased to 1000 arena points.

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.

Paladins

* The slowing affect from “Avenger’s Shield” is now considered a snare, so snare removal and immunity affects will now work on it.

Priests

* The base healing percent from “Vampiric Embrace” has been reduced to 15% from 20%. In addition, this ability can no longer get critical heals.
* “Silent Resolve” no longer reduces threat generated by Shadow spells.
* Prayer of Mending now has a 20 second cooldown.
* If a targeted enemy has a magic effect granting immunity to spell or physical damage, “Mass Dispel” will now always pick that effect as its target.

Shaman

* The clearcasting effect from “Elemental Focus” now triggers on all spell critical strikes, rather than a chance on any spell hit.
* The shaman will no longer generate additional threat when “Unleashed Rage” triggers.
* The free Lightning spell cast from “Lightning Overload” will now cause reduced threat.
* “Stoneclaw Totem” now has a 50% chance to stun attackers for 3 sec. when struck.

Warlock

* “Demonic Tactics” now grants increased critical strike chance to you and your demon pet, instead of increased damage.

Warriors

* The rage normalization equation has been adjusted to grant more rage. The typical warrior should see an increase of 15% to 20% in their rage generation.
* All warriors had their critical strike chance adjusted upward slightly (about 1%).
* “Thunder Clap” is now useable in Defensive Stance. In addition, the tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it causes additional threat.
* The cooldown on “Victory Rush” has been removed, and it can now be used up to 20 seconds after killing an enemy.
* “Unbridled Wrath” has been modified so that rather than a fixed chance to grant rage, it has an increased chance when using slower weapons.

Items

* The threat generated from the spell effect on “Thunderfury” has been substantially reduced.
* The bonus to “Swipe” from the “Idol of Brutality” has been reduced from 50 to 10.
* “Alchemist’s Stone” will no longer increase healing and mana gained from items which are not potions.
* The cost of sockets in high end items has been adjusted slightly, the result is that most high end epic items should see an increase in stats.
* Corrected many items that had incorrect stat values assigned to them.
* The rewards from the “Fel Embers” quest are now superior items as intended.
* Reduced the damage dealt by “The Lightning Capacitor”.
* Corrected the level requirement of the “Fist of Reckoning”.
* “Necklace of Trophies” has been corrected to increase Hit Rating instead of Hit Avoidance.
* “Burnoose of Shifting Ages” can now be disenchanted.
* “Nethershrike” now has the proper sell value and can be disenchanted.
* Corrected the level of “Marksman’s Bow” to be in line with other epic reputation rewards.
* The “Marksman’s Bow” now has the proper damage range.
* “Hourglass of the Unraveller” will now properly increase ranged attack power.
* Corrected the socket bonus for “Soul-Collar of the Incarnate”.
* Corrected a typo in the set bonus of “Warbringer Armor”.
* “Ruby Slippers” now properly have a cast time.
* Corrected the min use level of “Terokk’s Shadowstaff”.
* “Warpscale Leggings” have had their Crit Rating updated to the intended Dodge Rating.
* “Warmaul Slayer’s Band” no longer has critical strike rating. However, its agility and attack power have been increased.
* “Ancient Draenei War Talisman” now shares a cooldown with all trinkets that temporarily increase damage done.
* “Ancient Draenei Arcane Relic” shares a cooldown with all trinkets that temporarily increase damage done.
* “Aldor Guardian Rifle” now has a range correctly set on it.
* The effect on “Void Star Talisman” was incorrectly set to On Use. It is now set to On Equip.
* The critical strike rating on “Cilice of Suffering” has been changed to spell critical strike rating.
* The cooldown for “Glimmering Mithril Insignia” has been increased from 10 minutes to 20 minutes.
* The slowing affect from the “Mug ‘O Hurt” is now considered a snare, so snare removal and immunity affects will now work on it.

Raids and Dungeons

* Creatures in Tempest Keep:Botanica, Tempest Keep: Mechanar, and Tempest Keep:Arcatraz no longer respawn as rapidly.
* Shadow Labyrinth
o Reduced the chance of a Cabal Assassin ambush.
* Shattered Halls
o Removed a problematic chest.
o The “Resist Shadow” spell cast by Shadowmoon Acolyte’s in Shattered Halls will now be removed if a player leaves the zone.
* Serpentshrine Cavern
o Boss creatures have received additional tuning and polish.
* Arcatraz
o Warder and Defender Corpses are now immune to spell effects that could cause the Protean Spawn to not spawn.
o Protean Spawn now deal less damage.
* Tempest Keep Mechanar
o Mechanar Drillers, Wreckers, and Crushers in Tempest Keep: The Mechanar may no longer be enslaved when in Heroic mode.
* Caverns of Time
o Captain Skarloc in Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde is no longer susceptible to disarm, and does not slow down when wounded.
o A defeat in the Caverns of Time: Opening of the Dark Portal instance will no longer despawn unlooted bosses with loot.
o Occasionally after players are defeated in the Caverns of Time: Opening of the Dark Portal encounter on Heroic difficulty, the placeholder versions of the bosses that appear in future attempts that day would not spawn. The proper placeholders will now spawn instead of Rift Lords and Rift Keepers.
o Boss creatures in Caverns of Time: Opening of the Dark Portal will now dispel all nearby Time Keepers instead of one at a time.
* Karazhan
o Maiden of Virtue’s “Holy Wrath” has been slightly retuned to try and allow additional melee attackers to be used against her.
o Maiden of Virtue’s “Holy Fire” has been adjusted to prevent a possible range exploit.
o Maiden of Virtue will no longer “Holy Fire” players under the effect of “Repentance”.
o Midnight is no longer susceptible to Bleed effects, since he’s a skeletal horse.
o Nightbane’s Restless Skeletons are now immune to non-holy magical damage.
o Restless Skeletons no longer have immolation.
o Nightbane’s Bone Shard Spray can no longer be interrupted by using an immunity effect.
o Some minor issues with the Library Tomes have been corrected.

Bug Fixes

* Fixed the credits to display properly.

(Found at the great WoW Insider.)

Strapped for cash? need to buy epic flying mount? Want to make 1000g in 2 hours?

2 hours of farming yeilded 840g

The method relies upon crafters needing lots of the new primal essences for many decent high-level craftables, and is pretty ingenious. There is a very strong demand for these right now as everyone is rushing to skill up their professions. I can see the price dropping somewhat if everyone begins doing it, but the primal essences have a low deposit amount on the auction house, which makes them well-suited to waiting for a high buyout.

I may consider doing this once I run out of quests, if I’m still shy of the 5k I need for my epic flying mount.