Warcraft Experience

They recently were made aware that the original “2 day grinding guide” which has been posted for quite a while was actually part of a much larger grinding guide. And the poster was not the actual author. They’ve fixed the situtation and bring you Proxy’s Mage Grinding Guide. This is the full guide, and done quite well, thanks Proxy!

I found an article on XBox 360 News.com about rumors for upcoming games and such for the 360. Rumor 2 was this….

At next E3, MS will announce a parternship with Blizzard that will bring World of Warcraft exclusively to 360. The deal is done, and Blizzard is working on porting the game and a console control scheme. This game will also include a unannounced expansion that the PC gamers will have to wait about a month to get after we get this game. Only 360 gamers will be on specific 360 servers, the game will include voice chat, but it wouldn’t work with PC gamers.

Just a rumor? Or do Blizzard have something up their sleeve? Only time will tell….

Why is it if we have a form up time of 6:30 CST and a roll out - be there or be square and staring at the first mob - of 7 CST that we are always late? I mean hell we spent 15 minutes doing jack squat while people dueled each other outside of Onyxia’s cave. We still hadn’t been put in our groups (we were in the form up raid groups of all tanks here, mages here, etc.) so I couldn’t give out the buff cycles, and hell at that point I didn’t even have assist to give them out. I had to /w them out instead.

It’s no wonder it takes us forever to get something done. I know we are a “casual” group but WTF people. If we are formed up early, are full, then lets roll out and get this done. Making 38 other people stand around while you duel is stupid and a waste of time. I just find it odd is all.

Most of us are great at getting there for the form up time, the majority of us don’t hang out and expect a summons every time but when it comes to actually getting on with it we stand around like schmucks. Anyway I don’t get it and sorry for the rant.

Drops from last night:

[item]Deathbringer[/item] was won by Static in an upgrade roll with a 87. Carnilion won the [item]Netherwind Crown[/item] but when he found out Bolicious didn’t have a purple head piece he passed it onto him. Gwadraw won the [item]Nemesis Skullcap[/item] and the [item]Mature Black Dragon Sinew[/item] went to DE (but I don’t think it worked..not sure). Moonwinna won the [item]head of Onyxia[/item] with a 92 and I finally won the [item]Onyxia Hide Backpack[/item] with a 95. WOOOT! The [item]Ring of Binding[/item] went to a greed roll and Alahn won with a 53.

We tried to do BWL afterwards but with the server side lags (there were at least 250 people in there last night according to a /info on general chat) and not having some of our regular tanks we pulled the plug and bailed. A 20-man AQ group formed up but I went to watch TV instead.

WoWInsider has this interesting article on their site and it got me thinking. I have NO Nature Resist. Since I still spend time in MC and am actively working my way through BWL I’m not going to get the +15 NR to cloak (not to mention its 2 or 3 frickin nexus shards. talk about expensive)

For Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, fire resistance is of supreme importance. As a non-tank, I tend to hover in the 100-150 range throughout MC (depending on the fight, of course!) and in BWL there are fights that are a lot easier once you clear 250. And though that may sound like quite a lot of fire resist, there are numerous options for a new level 60 preparing to hit Molten Core for the first time - there’s an item or two in almost every instance that can help boost your FR. But as the gates of Ahn’Qiraj start to open, many players are finding gearing up for this challenge to be more trying. The name of the game here is nature resist - and that’s far more rare.

The majority of the nature resist gear in the game is found on the green dragons - four outdoor raid bosses that spawn, randomly, in one of four locations in Azeroth. While the easiest of the four might be killed with only twenty (or even fewer!) experienced players, an organized raid group - and thus, most likely, a large, organized guild - is a requirement. Players in smaller guilds, or guilds that can’t organize a full raid without notice when these bosses spawn, are getting locked out of nature resist that’s about to be a requirement for raid progression.

Now I know some of you are out there thinking that players without access to the dragons can go farm instances for their own nature resist gear, which may not be as good as the epic items these dragons drop, will still be enough to help them through AQ. However, that’s precisely the problem - after the green dragons, the next best options for NR are drops in Maraudon - where you may find greens and blues designed for players in the 45-50 range, but have suddenly become essential for new end-game content.

While players are already complaining about this issue, Blizzard has not commented or announced any planned improvements to NR itemization throughout the world. Only time will tell how important NR really is for success in AQ, and whether players without access to these dragons can compete with the rest.

Finalists Selected for the Blizzard Xfire World of Warcraft Movie Contest - Vote on your favorite now!

An astounding 120+ movies were created over a two month period for the Blizzard Xfire Movie Contest. The list has been narrowed down to 30 finalists who are competing for honors in eight categories. Over $10,000 worth of prizes will be awarded, making this the biggest machinima contest to date. We picked our favorites. Blizzard has picked theirs. Now it’s time to for you to pick yours! Vote for your favorite movies now and help determine who the winners are going to be.

Visit Xfire now to download the movies and place your votes.

In an effort to control realm population growth, Blizzard has implemented a character creation a management system.

We’ve implemented a new system that will disable character creation when a realm has a queue to better control realm populations. This system will disable character creation for accounts without characters on an individual realm when it has a queue. This will limit population growth on congested realms during peak hours and assist us in our efforts to provide a better overall gameplay experience for our players, especially those on high population realms.

Please note that players with existing characters on a queued realm will still be able to create characters, and during off hours when there is not a queue all players may create characters as normal.

Dave Child has been making handy cheat sheets for web developers and server monkeys for awhile now. This Valentine’s Day, he’s released a cheat sheet for World of Warcraft. It may not be useful to the hardcore gamer unless you are like me and can’t remember emotes and other fun stuff. Overall I think the newbs or casual WoW players would find it the most beneficial.

The cheat sheets released are: emotes, keyboard shortcuts, and /slash commands. Fun stuff all the way around.

WorldofWar reports that WoW is still on top of the PC Charts. Of course if they keep up their server laggings and end-game stupid collecting of coins, bijous, etc. I wonder how much longer they will reign supreme. I’m glad they are concentrating on giving me further stuff to do in the Burning Crusade addition but don’t bore me to tears and give me endless queues while I wait. Especially while happily taking my money every month and giving me horrible GMs to deal with.

Another week of NPD chart results reveals that WoW is still top of the PC charts for week ending 4th of February. There are some pretty big titles due in the next few weeks so it will be interesting to see if Blizzard can hold that top spot.

* 1. World of Warcraft (Blizzard)
* 2. Age of Empires III (Microsoft)
* 3. Civilization IV (2K Games)
* 4. F.E.A.R. (Vivendi Universal)
* 5. The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts)
* 6. Call of Duty 2 (Activision)
* 7. Battlefield 2 (Electronic Arts)
* 8. Zoo Tycoon 2 (Microsoft)
* 9. The Sims 2 Nightlife (Electronic Arts)
* 10. Guild Wars (NCsoft)