If you have a difficult time explaining to your raid or your guild exactly how they should move and where they should stand in a given raid encounter, or if you have people in your raid or guild that are be far visual learners and just don’t seem to be getting the hang of what you’re saying, Boss Blueprint might be a handy tool to help you build those raid strategies and share them with your raid members before the encounter so there’s no confusion.

The site only has support at the moment for Blackwing Descent, Throne of the Four Winds, and Bastion of Twilight, and the boss encounters therein – it would be really useful if the tool added more encounters and raids, even older ones that some people still run as practice or for fun – but it makes sense that the most recent content would be of primary interest to the people using Boss Blueprint.

The app then lets you add raid icons, raid roles, and directional arrows and zones to the map to indicate where players with ranged DPS should stand, where the healers should be, and where the tanks should be in relation to the boss, and other mobs and elements of the encounter that players should be aware of are located. You can drop big red circles on the ground to indicate places where you shouldn’t stand, arrows to tell players where they should move, and more.

Once you’re all finished, you can save your blueprint and share it with your raid either by downloading the JPG and posting it somewhere yourself, or by embedding the blueprint in another Web site.

If you’re having a hard enough time getting used to all of the changes now that the shattering has taken place, and you’re looking out over a new Azeroth and wondering what the new zones have in store for you, this amazing annotated world map in YouTube form will help you explore the new world as it looks today.

The project is the baby of Jesse Cox and Pride, and together they walk you through the changed old world zones and show you how they look now, what you can expect to encounter when you head back to those zones, and what the leveling experience is like for you now.

To use it, just play the video above and click the continent you want to visit. Then click the annotation for the zone you can to see, and you’ll see a video walking you through that zone. It’s truly a master work, my hat is off to them. You can also head over to YouTube here to play the videos larger in their native habitat.

MMO Champion has unleashed the leak to end all leaks (until the next one, of course) from the Cataclysm Friends and Family Alpha: tons of maps, screenshots of various zones in multiple forms of completion, and tons upon tons of information about new zones, achievements, talents, and more.

There are tons of screenshots of nearly all of the new zones and instances taken from the alpha, and it’s worth noting that most of this stuff will change between now and the actual beta, much less between now and the actual launch, but regardless of who posted the information or whether it’s a carefully leaked foil from Blizzard, we get to reap the benefit! All of the details are at this post at MMO Champion, which is being constantly updated.

Ever curious how the World of Warcraft web-o-sphere (did I really just use that word?) looks in relation to one another? Nah, I didn’t either, but someone’s put a lot of time and energy into creating a very detailed map of the World of Warcraft virtual universe, and it’s worth taking a look. Of course the big names like WoWWiki, Thottbot, and WoWHead are listed, but what’s up with WoW Insider being the only blog listed in the blogosphere sea? No love for us? Ah well, we understand. It’s not like I didn’t see this first on WoW Insider, anyway. (Thanks!)

Anyway, the map of WoW virtual communities is pretty extensive, and is broken up into different geographic regions based on the types of groups that live there. For example, the “Evil East,” to the right of the map, includes the lands of pirate WoW servers, Gold farmers and sellers, and other unsavory characters. The “Superstar Guilds” like SK Gaming and Nihiluim live along the Cursed Sea, just north of the Blog-o-sphere. I’m very entertained by the L2P Isle, but I’ll freely admit to spending a lot of time over on the WoW Wiki island. They host the most informative luaus, I think.

Certainly not the first “let’s map the internet” meme, but certainly a funny attempt.

Embedded small here. Click to embiggen.

Take note of WoW’s placement, off to the right at the confluence of practicals (n00bs) and focus-on-web, amongst other MMOGs and Second Life. Far from focus-on-real-life and intellectuals, no offense taken here. ;-)

The whole thing is pretty tongue-in-cheek, but good for a laugh if you spend any time on the internet.

[Via Kottke]

Found here by Sabocat from We No