Posts with tag featured

It's been a while since we've heard from Boar Thrills. Just in time for the Mt. Everest of WoW, Wowcrendor aims his careful camera firmly at wild yetis and freezing snow in Orc vs Wild: Kun-Lai Summit.

While I know it's intended to parody, Orc vs Wild is always a fun view of the game. It's an interesting, microscopic view of Azeroth's climates and its inhabitants, with just enough humor to keep the whole thing amusing. And, hey, who wants to miss any opportunity to say luckydoo out loud?

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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• All Things Azeroth All Runes Must Go
• Hunting Party Podcast Episode 167
• The Instance Hot Trash
• Legendary Blizz Lies!

The other day Olivia asked if you cheated on your faction, and we found a bunch of you were two-timing the Alliance (which I mean, is totally understandable, since that one GM you spoke to seven years ago said lok'tar at the end of the conversation, clearly showing the horde bias Blizzard has) (p.s., that GM was Mike Sacco), (p.p.s., plot twist: it was really Zarhym). This got me thinking, if everyone is jumping ship to the other faction once in a while, what about another game?

For me WoW is always there, but I often do find myself grabbing the latest attempt at an MMO, or the newest RPG, FPS, or 4X strategy game (I hear that StarDrive is fun, planning on grabbing that soon). These other games keep me entertained through for a month or two, but I always, without fail, end up going back to WoW. And it's not that I stop playing WoW while these other games are going on either, I just won't be as dedicated to it as I am normally.

Other games are a necessary component of any gamer's life cycle, especially as it relates to playing a game like WoW long term. There's a lot of major effort we have to put into WoW in order to play it like many of us do, and just like everything else in life, a change of scenery is good for the soul. We are, after all, closely related to the nomadic roaming tribes of prehistory, not too far removed in actuality. Our genetics is not to stay at one place, with one thing, too long -- just as we roamed the plains, so too must we roam the games.

But we always return to that special spot, that special place we've marked as home -- the inn off the bank in Stormwind for me. It'll be there when I log in for five minutes tomorrow to check my AH dealings, and it'll be there when I raid full time again over the summer months.

There are a lot of other games I play than WoW, a lot of times I'm sneaking around behind it's back. But what about you, do you cheat on WoW?

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Life happens; we all get that. But should your life be happening to the 24 other people in your raid group? We (and your 24 raidmates) think not. After all, if you're here to play World of Warcraft, why do you keep going AFK?

The need for and the etiquette of going away from the keyboard (AFK) was stronger in WoW's earlier days. During classic WoW, 5-manning places like Blackrock Depths was an all-night affair. Players were more forgiving of a quick dash to the bathroom, and groups doing longer content tended to schedule natural breaks along the way. Today's WoW is a much more terse affair. Scenarios, group instances, and raids are likely to be over long before your bladder is. It's not so difficult to simply plan ahead or wait for a group to come to a natural conclusion.

Yet people don't always do that. Like That Guy who's always texting and checking his Twitter feed instead of looking you in the eye during a conversation, That Guy in game is likely to wander AFK just when you need him the most. Tuning out the people you're with, online or off, simply is not socially acceptable behavior. (You've heard what they're calling those tuned-out types who'll be wearing Google Glass, right? It's not a complimentary term.)

The best way to handle going AFK is to avoid it in the first place. For the rest of those moments when something comes while you're grouping that's beyond your control, let's look at the best ways of managing the interruption and getting you back into the game.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Guild rosters inevitably become bloated over time. They fill up with inactive players or throwaway alts that current members haven't dusted off for years. This week, a guild leader asks when is the right time to remove characters from the roster -- and whether we should even do it at all.

I run a casual guild. One of my officers puts it thus, "We're a raiding guild that acts casual." We have a decent roster and a great group of people, but we also have a lot of people who join, show up for awhile and then disappear. Some come back in six months and some, I have no idea if they are coming back or if they are gone for good.

I like my roster to reflect an active guild, which we are. My membership officer sent me a roster list and I'm in the process of going through it for names that haven't been played in over 6 months. We've been doing a purge like this for the last 3 years and, every time, there's always some consternation about removing names from the roster.

Submitter Korranne of Azeroth Social Society on Alterac Mountains (US-A) tries to be a responsible battle pet owner. She makes sure that they get a varied diet by feeding them the flesh of their defeated enemies, She even spays and neuters them so that she doesn't open up her bag one day to discover a nightsaber/slimeling mixed breed begging for the end of its miserable existence. Occasionally, Korranne will take one of her favorite pets on a special trip to broaden its horizons. This picture shows her Pandaren Fire Spirit enjoying its vacation to Vashj'ir. Laws of physics be damned!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wonders how many logs would a warlock log if a warlock could log logs?

Occasionally I get a request to look through someone's raid log on World of Logs for warlock improvement. Sometimes it's for a guild applicant and sometimes it's for another tweeter. A thing I've thought about doing for a long time is a World of Logs 101 on warlocks -- both for warlock players and for non-warlock raid leaders.

I'm starting with the bare basics: how to tell warlocks apart on a World of Logs parse and exploring the DPS rankings. (It's actually not that difficult anymore!)

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Prince Anduin Llane Wrynn is the sole heir to Stormwind's throne. Named after Varian's father, the beloved King Llane, and the hero of all heroes, Anduin Lothar, he's got two major figures to live up to. Yet rather than turn down the path of Lothar's heroics, he seems to be gravitating towards the direction that King Llane ultimately followed: A beloved leader, one who treated all in his kingdom with kindness and respect, up to and including Garona -- a member of the Old Horde who by all rights, despite her background as a half-breed, was still the face of the enemy.

And in the end, that spelled King Llane's undoing. His trust was his weakness, and it resulted in his assassination. King Llane died in part because of the machinations of the Shadow Council, but in even larger part because he simply didn't exercise caution like he should. King Llane's death is a cautionary tale that his son Varian took to heart -- but Varian's son is a different story altogether. Anduin Wrynn presents a peculiar puzzle that has yet to be fully explained.

Today's Know Your Lore is a Tinfoil Hat edition, meaning the following is a look into what has gone before with pure speculation on what is to come as a result. These speculations are merely theories and shouldn't be taken as fact or official lore.

PvP Power change intentional. Reduce gear gap. Reduce bursty damage/healing gameplay. Reduce power of sockets.

- Holinka (@holinka) April 27, 2013

Holinka makes some excellent points. This is a great way to reduce the power of sockets, and to bring down the burst which has caused such problems this season, as well as taking healing down in proportion. So what's all the fuss about? Well, players are worried that, with the resilience changes, this will make PvE gear a more equal or even superior choice for PvE come patch 5.3. And it's a reasonable concern. While it's great that PvE gear will be viable for PvP, PvP gear should still be the out-and-out best.

I discussed the comparisons between various levels of PvE gear and PvP gear in an earlier article, but this change may well alter these numbers. Both Cynwise and Eldacar, PvP maths masters, are looking at the numbers, so we'll have to wait and see the result. Preliminary reports from ArenaJunkies look good, still asserting that PvP Power is strong enough to beat PvE gear. Also, I can't help thinking that Holinka and his team have considered this issue. To repeat my earlier message, don't panic!

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Do you want to capture flags, invade cities, attack towers, and dominate the enemy for your faction? Do you dream of riding your War Bear with pride? We'll steer you to victory with secrets of Battlegrounds and Arena, prepping you with proven addons and keybindings that win! Send questions or comments to olivia@wowinsider.com.

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

Or maybe he was a dragon-man. Or maybe he was just a dragon.

Hans-HenrikHagsted asked:

Are there any limits on the amount of virtual Blizzcon tickets they'll sell? I plan on buying virtual access when it is available. Perhaps sometime in the future I'll be able to afford the trip from Denmark to Anaheim, but not this year...

Nope, there's no limit on virtual tickets as far as we're aware. There were over a million people who bought them in 2011.

Sunday Morning Funnies is your weekly list of WoW-related web comics.

Each week on SMF, we're highlighting a regularly updating comic from our list. This week, we're focusing on Guilded Age:

Guilded Age is inspired by WoW, and much more loosely based on Azeroth than most of the other comics on the list. It is written by T. Campbell and Phil Kahn and illustrated by John and Jason Waltrip. It is heavily story-based and features beautiful artwork.

It takes place on the continent of Arkerra. The Kingdom of Gastonia and the World's Rebellion (dubbed "The Savage Races") are at war. Gastonia hires a select group of adventurers (the "Peace-Makers") for diplomatic and reconnaissance missions, as well as criminal investigations.

Meanwhile, on Earth, a man is CEO of a major corporation. He devotes himself to working on a virtual world that he insists is real; he claims to have bridged Earth and another realm.

Read all about the characters or learn more about the crew behind the scenes.

Guilded Age updates every weekday.

"After years of playing and raiding since Molten Core, I've decided to quit WoW," writes submitter Shaqanna of Nemesis on Eldre'Thalas (US-A). "The stress and madness of doing dailies has driven me to despair. So I sought my end in the first place I tasted true victory, the depths of Molten Core. Since my end was dishonorable, I'll probably end up in the 10th layer of hell, where everything is fire ... and dailies. Hopefully Shaq will at least spend her final eternity being serenaded by her favorite memento, Sylvanas' Music Box."

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

So this week we had the big Dev Q&A, and there were some things in there that got me thinking.

From the Q&A

Dread: Why do Warriors (Arms & Fury) still have moves that require Shields, and thus, macros? You think a master of arms or a raging berserker could hit a fire ball back like a baseball. (Link could do it!)

Ghostcrawler: Shields are cool. We'd like to do more with them, for paladins and shaman too. We agree that macros aren't an awesome way to handle shields. We'd rather do more with the base UI. Imagine you had a shield slot on your character pane even if you didn't have it "out" at the moment. Something along those lines.

source

The specific moves that require a shield for arms and fury warriors are abilities like Shield Wall and Spell Reflection. (Mass Spell Reflection does not require a shield.) The idea of a 'Shield Slot' rather than using shields as offhand items fascinates me, especially if it led to the possibility of protection warriors using a two-handed weapon and a shield to tank with (as many have asked for, since the old spear and shield was a big part of historical warfare).

This led me to wonder: what would my dream additions be to the warrior class? What do I want to see make it into the class' toolkit for the future?