Random Ravings of Warcraft

Blizz images and legendaries

2009-07-11T20:21:00.006+02:00

Some awesome pictures of one of Blizzards's buildings joystiq.

Some impressive shots over at that site, showing the belly of one of Blizzard's buildings. Not to mention the awesome orc outside there.

There's also a couple more pictures over at tweakers, but that's in dutch so you'll need to fill in that URL into google translate.

Legendary

You're no doubt aware of the latest legendary called Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings. With it's ilvl 239. Whether by design, or "design" after voracious whining on the forums that the item's isn't good enough anymore in patch 3.2 when all the items will be ilvl 245 and 252... No way to tell. Either way mmoc lists that the item will be upgraded to a better lifetime with the coming patches and has been upgraded to ilvl 245. Something that's never been done to legendaries in the past. Thunderfury or Sulfuras just to name a few weren't upgraded when BWL was released, or TAQ, or Naxx 1.x. Neither were the Warglaives when the sunwell was released.

Strange things.

Banner

Somnio on the MMOC forums has started a thread offering his photoshop skillz. The queue already seems to be bigger than he can handle as more and more people join in and scream for more. He's put together some interesting stuff however, even a banner for this very blog! You can see it here (for the time being).

I'll put it into the overhead space later, need to tweak the file size a bit still. Google doesn't like me using too much bandwidth xD

Another interesting issue, is that pages.google.com is aparently going to be moved to yourname.googlepage.com I'm not sure how this will affect some of the images I'm using in the long term, but for now they seem fine. Just keep an eye on this...

Tier 9 and another comic!

2009-07-04T11:20:00.009+02:00

Quite an image heavy post today. Just a warning.

Tier 9

MMOC (and blizz) have posted some previews of the suspected Tier 9 gear which will be introduced with patch 3.2.

Unlike previous patches, the new tier will have special graphics for the Horde and Alliance. Unlike previous patches, this does mean some classes will have mostly re-colored versions of the other classes... See blizzard's under dev page.

They do look "gladiatorial" though :P

But for total effort, instead of making Tier 9 x 10 classes. They are making Tier 9 x 2 factions x 4 armor classes = 8 sets (20 recolors though, which are generally zero effort). So, in total Blizzard needs to design two armor sets less. Smart guys, saving effort.

Alliance (Warlock)

Alliance (Priest)

Alliance (Mage)

Horde (Shaman)

Horde (Hunter)

Horde Rogue / Horde Druid, Alliance Deathknight / Paladin / Warrior images here. Mostly recolors this patch it seems.

Random Ravings of a Madman - Page 2

(See the comic page on Drunk Duck for mirror.)
Art by ipoppet at Deviant Art.

China bans... Gold farming?!

2009-06-30T13:27:00.004+02:00

No, it's not April 1st, and you're not dreaming. You might be high, I don't know what you do in your spare time, but yes you read the post title correctly.

The chinese government has put a nation-wide ban on the act of buying any virtual items or currencies with real money. Thus, nobody in China is allowed to buy gold in World of warcraft. Virtual money may only be used to buy other virtual items.

In Quote:

China has unveiled the first official rule on the use of virtual currency in the trade of real goods and services to limit its possible impact on the real financial system.

The government also spelled out the definition of "virtual currency" for the first time, which includes prepaid cards of cyber-games, according to a joint circular from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Commerce Friday.

"The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services." it said.

Under the new rules, using virtual money for gambling will be punished by public security authorities, and minors may not buy virtual money.

The Ministry of Culture also vowed to step up supervision on money laundering via virtual credits and other illegal online activities.

The statement said Tencent had strongly opposed the underground trading of virtual money, which could enable online theft and fraud. The company would work with the authorities to combat online crimes, according to the statement.

World first?

To my knowledge, China has put down a world first with this act. Not only properly defining the difference of virtual goods and services, but also banning the transactions between real and virtual goods.

Their actual reasons? Control most likely. Though it seems a very strange move from my point of view. The country is receiving REAL money (albeit trough virtual banks transactions and credit cards) for virtual goods and services such as World of Warcraft gold and powerleveling. It is GREAT news for all us players without a doubt, but it boggles the mind why (which is presumed to be) the most dictatorial and keen to censor and block, government in the world would put such an act forward. Surely they know that "they" are the prime benefactor here? Well, if you read the declaration you'll see it's about a lot more than just WoW gold, but still.

We all know the whole "chinese gold farmer" term, how that works in practice is slightly different from the most common conception however.

See:
* Close touch with a gold farmer. Describes how one would work for 14 hours a day and earn 100-200 Yuan a month. FYI 1 yuan = 0.104 Euros (or 0.146 $). So he was making around 10-20 euros a month, for 14 hours of work a day.
* Ludens - Gold Farmers. Which further describes the human side of the "job".

Commonly these chinese youths would be forking for far less than minimal wage. (As the above comic video tells you jokingly, for less than 10 cents per hour) They'd transfer their farmed gold to a company commonly based in the USA or simply residing in china itself, who would then store and sell the gold to American, European, Australian and commonly Chinese customers for huge profit.

Such sweatshops, and endless goldspam, account hacking so they can be stripped of their value should hopefully notice a drastic reduction due to this new Chinese Law. But I don't expect them to disappear completely. As long as there are idiots willing to pay real cash for virtual gold there will always be someone willing to farm it for you. Maybe no longer from china, but there's always Nigeria.

Poll end

One poll down: "Do you agree with the JC Nerf?".
Seems the crowd is rather divided about Blizzard's choice to change the dragon's eyes from being prismatic, to only a single color.

* Yes - 40 (48%)
* No - 32 (38%)
* I'd have done it different - 11 (13%)

Somewhat lacking in votes people!
And a new one up: "Have you ever bought gold?"
Go on, be honest.

Epic Gems

2009-06-26T20:39:00.008+02:00

One gem no more

It's all over the news, BBC, NBC, CNN, your local radio, the lot.
If you haven't heard of it yet, you might want to consider coming from under your rock.

This morning, Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958) has died from an overdose.
He was 50 years old.

Image source: last.fm

I'll not bore you with the obscure and not so pretty details of his past, the many facial surgeries, his troubled youth, or his recent financial issues. I'm sure you've read or heard all about it on other sites by now. Just let me say this. The man was EPIC. (Legendary even)

Today's blog post is dedicated to his memory.
Never forget.

Epic gems in 3.2

As you may have already learned, patch 3.2 will bring everyone epic gems, readily available. Rare gems give +16 stats, Epic gems provide you with +20.

The new gems are:
* Purple: Dreadstone
* Blue: Majestic Zircon
* Green: Eye of Zul
* Yellow: King's Amber
* Orange: Ametrine
* Red: Cardinal Ruby

Gem sources:
* Transmutation. As above.
* Honor points. 10.000 honor per uncut gem.
* Prospecting Titanium Ore. Pretty random, low chance.
* Badges. 15 badges give one uncut gem.

Patterns to cut the gems into a usable form cost 5 Jewelcrafter's tokens each. Or, a bunch of honor, or stonekeeper's shards for the PvP equivalents.

So, what does this mean for your profession bonuses?
I mean, blacksmithing has two sockets right? So, they'd be getting 2x +20 stats.

Well, Blizzard has come up with a solution to that "issue" by giving all the other professions a slight boost in their special perks as well. As was described a few days back. As it turns out however, Jewelcrafting is stil set to remain Unique(3), and the dragon's eyes will give no less than 14 stats more than epic gems. This means, indeed, that Jewelcrafters will be receiving +42 stats in total. Compared to most / all other professions who will be receiving +40 to all stats, that's a whole "2" stats more!

Now, you and me will recall that Blizzard nerfed Jewelcrafting because "too many people were using it", simply because it was the most rewarding profession out there. And it seems, this will still remain the case.

Of course, it would EASILY be fixed by simply changing the Dragon's Eyes to be either Unique(2) or Unique(4), and have them in turn provide 40 or 30 stats total. You'd end up with a neat and perfectly balanced +40 stats for the profession perk. Just like all other professions. Who knows how Blizzard thinks though, but some of the developers need to get a checkup. Idiots.

And then I haven't even started on the ridiculously (underpowered) benefit of having Engineering instead of any of the other primary professions...

Newbie guide to starting BvS

2009-06-21T14:13:00.000+02:00

BvS, or Billy vs Snakeman is an online text based browser game that I've mentioned before, and am actually still playing. It's a funny time waster that (unlike most time wasters) doesn't actually cost "that" much time.

This post is a total and blatantly obvious recruitment post. But seriously, give it a try. The worst that could happen is that you wasted some time reading all this ;)

Background

The game is loosely based on a large variety of known and vaguely familiar Anime series. Naruto (Check that amv) being one of the primary ones. Bleach, Death Note, .//Hack, Gundam, Code Geass, Lucky Star, and quite a few more. It's a huge anime parody!

The game was launched around October, 2007. New features have been added every few months since. Arena, Monochrome academy, The wasteland and more. As of recently .//Hack r00t and Zombies were added as well. You'll see soon enough at any rate.

Beginnings

Start off by following this link. You should be taken to a page that looks much like below.

You can't fail this part really. Just click the giant "click here to sign up" button and you've already completed half the sign up process.

Now you'll see a screen where you can select a basic avatar, username, pass, email and security code. As well as yours truly as your benevolent referrer. It says the email is optional, but it's not really. I've never in the many months that I've been signed up received any kind of newsletter of spam, but you can always uses your secondary email if you're feeling twitchy about it.

Type in your Ninja's name and hit Make Character and you're ready to go. You'll get a basic info screen informing you of your very first team mate. From here on forth you'll quickly notice the game isn't to be taken too serious, as you'll be kicking others in the junk, eating pie, killing zombie ninjas, sneaking around and all sorts of things. In text form obviously.

Preparations

You'll quickly arrive at your primary screen.
Notice you've got mail! This will direct you to a more expansive explanation of the current game mechanics and details of all stats, leveling, trade, items and pretty much all you need to know for the first season.

You start off as level 6! Not level one like most RPGs. Your total "level" is basically a combination of your three primary stats: Gen, Nin, Tai. The game is based on a rolling system for missions. For example a mission could be 7D 2S. This means you need to roll two times 7 or higher to succeed at a mission. Your basic roll has a range of 1-10, and your levels determine how many dice you roll. So initiall, you'd be rolling only two dice. (My own character is rolling 50 dice with a 30 range or so, you'll get stronger quite quickly) There's also another stat called Strength which you'll receive in due time. Strength basically increases the lower roll. So a 1-10 base range +1 strength would result in a 2-10 roll. (It's actually slightly better than that, but I'll not confuse you too much for now)

At the bottom of the page you'll see a "BvS Video Challenge" which will provide you with 30 bonus stamina every day, as well as a lottery ticket which can be turned in at the party house (Gambling hall). Secondly, there's the plain "Bonus Stamina Box" which will give you another 40 stamina as well as an extra 100 stamina every 7 consecutive days that you use this.

Now, stamina is the primary limiting factor of how many actions your character can do in a single day. You start off with 200 as you just saw, but this number quickly increases trough bonus stamina, village bonuses (We'll get to that in a few), item bonuses, team bonuses and potions. Speaking of potions, check out the "One-Use Items" box on your main screen. Select the Bitter Medicine and select Use Item to get another 40 stamina for today. You have two, so you can use another tomorrow. (Appetite is a limiting factor in food consumption)

Now, missions cost 10 stamina, quests cost 10 stamina per step, some village actions cost 10-20 stamina, and there's a lot of other things you can spend stamina on. Don't worry there's plenty to discover. And the main reason for this small guide is the fact that a LOT of people are either overwhelmed by the game, or don't bother trying with it after the first day. But, you have to keep in mind this is something you play for 10-30 or so minutes in a given day.

Another preparation, is to join a village. I recommend looking trough the "top villages" list and joining one with a decent number of upgrades in it. 120+ or more. But for now you can always just click the village button at the top of your screen and simply choose to "Jump Into a Village". This means you can skip the village application process, but you'll generally end up in a small village which is poorly developed. For this basic guide I wandered my testing character into Eldarado Village. Sorry guys, you can kick my little nublet later.

If you're lucky, your village will have a dumpster in the storehouse filled with crap to help new and aspiring ninjas just like you! Look for an item called Medicinal Herbs, it's a pretty common item which, if not found in the dumpster you should be able to request of your village's storehouse manager. The reason you want to get this item is because it allows you to get an amazingly valuable ally called Stalker girl. Don't bother doing that quest until you're level 4 in Tai though, most likely you'll fail otherwise.

Another item to look for is the Shogi Piece, this opens another quest, but you should probably not attempt it until you're level 5-6 in Nin.

Starting up

Now that you've taken care of the day's preparation, and perhaps read some info in the FAQ page you're ready to actually get started. And we'll start by doing some missions. The first goal is to just get 6000 JXP, which you can then use to buy some skills you'll need to complete the first of a three day quest called Three Day Tour, Tour Day Two and Tour Day Three. As you can expect, it'll take three days to complete all of those.

Lets start off by making our life a bit easier, as level 2 is "really" poor.
Luckily, as a starting genin you start off with 15000 JXP for free! Click the Jutsu menu in the top and learn the following skills off flipper: Clone jutsu (+1 levels, thats awesome for now) as well as Disguise Jutsu, which you'll need to pass the first quest.

Now, click Quests in the top menu and start Three Day Tour.
* Pack your bags: Use clone jutsu here, the roll requires 3D3S. If at first you don't succeed just try again.
* The next step asks if you're in a village, which you totally should be!
* You've completed a village action. /facepalm, totally forgot about that one. Click village in the top menu (Don't worry you can continue your quest without starting over) Then scroll down a little and look for the Patrol option. It costs some stamina, but not that much. Some (big) villages even have special upgrades installed which GIVE you stamina when you patrol. Click quests in the top menu and continue to the next step.
* Sneaking Out: Use disguise jutsu to beat this 10D10S challenge. Automatic win!

You'll gain your very first permanent item! A banana sticker +1 Gen level.
It also informs you to return tomorrow for the next part of the quest.

Notice your "Chakra: 140/200" Chakra is your Ninja Mana, it is used whenever you use special skills to aid you in a rolling challenge and can be restored by paying 10 stamina. Or 5 if you have certain items to help you in that.

Missions

You are still only level 6 at this time, so it's time to put some time into changing that. Once you reach level 12 you can become a Chunin rank ninja, which will provide you with a new mission type, and give you more stamina and appetite on a daily basis.

The base ranks are: Genin, Chunin, Sp.Jonin, Jonin, Sannin, r00t. Ranks are obtained trough quests when you are the appropriate level.

So anyway, click the missions button in the top menu.

The number of options you have right now seems rather small, but as you increase in rank a lot more mission types will open to you. C-Rank, B-Rank, A-Rank, AA-Rank, S-Rank, Burgerninja, Reaper, Wasteland, Outskirts, Monochrome. And you'll be able to pick a specific stat to focus on if you wish.

Let's start with D-Rank for now.

The first mission my nublet got served was a D6S1 mission, fairly easy and shouldn't require any chakra use to complete.
He rolled 8 and 5, meaning the mission was a success!
He also found an ally called Lil' Whitey.

Missions are fairly random, and you will probably not get the same mission, you will get your extra ally quite rapidly though. Lets start with putting Lil' Whitey into the party. This is easily done by clicking the team menu at the top of the screen, and selecting the ninjas you wish into your party. It guides itself really. Lil' whitey gives +1 tai strength and +1 tai levels! Which so happens to be exactly what I need to have a realistic chance at getting Stalker Girl, as mentioned earlier.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves though.

The second mission I got was:
* Taijutsu - Eat your Ninja Rations : D5S2
Since your Tai skill is likely still only 2, this means you have about a 50% chance of success. You can greatly improve this by using Clone Jutsu to get +1 levels.

You see, it's pretty straightforward at this point.

Next I got:
* Ninjutsu - Tree Climbing Training : D7S1
Totally failed that one. Sadly.

Such is the way of things as a low level player.
Do a lot of D-Rank missions until you run out of stamina for today.
Don't be afraid to charge chakra using stamina. It's often better to spend the little extra and succeed at a mission, rather than fail the next three.

Keep an eye out in specific for the following missions, as you'll need these allies during the day two part of the tour quest.

Emosuke:
* Hidden at Hiding in Smoke.
* Hidden at Ninja Leaping Practice.
* Hidden at Practice Hand Symbols.

Pinky:
* Hidden at Babysit the Ninja Academy.
* Hidden at Feel The Flow.
* Hidden at Hiding!

Billy:
* Check Out a Ninja Centerfold.
* Missing Pet Tora.
* Sneak out of Detention.

Eventually you'll have enough AP gained to level in one of your three main stats. This will significantly make your D-Rank missions in that stat easier.

Tour Day Two

The second day.
A typical Billy day ends at around 12.15 - 12.20 CET (gmt+1), this is called the Dayroll. After the dayroll you'll be given fresh stamina, appetite and village bonuses. It depends how many upgrades your village has, hence it's a good idea to jump into a large village. (I can't really repeat that enough I guess) The only disadvantage of joining a large village is that you'll have a larger mission-ryo tax rate. In my opinion however, the bonuses and extra features you get are well worth it.

To start off, you'll want to get your daily bonus stamina, and do your village patrol task. You get more stamina, thus can do more actions and grow a stronger ninja! Don't forget to eat your second bitter medicine as well, as it's useless later.

The first step of tour day two requires you to help your village out again, which you just did, right?
* Next, you're asked whether you've obtained Billy, Pinky, and Emosuke. These three important allies, and if you didn't manage to get all three yesterday you'll have to continue doing regular missions until you get them. They don't have to be in your party though.
* The third part of the second day quest requires you to gain knowledge of special teams. These give you additional bonuses on top of the stats the allies give on their own. One such team is Billy + Flipper. Go to the teams menu, then select those two to be able to continue the quest.
* The final part of day two requires that you've gotten your daily bonus stamina. Easy enough.

As a reward, he tears off your banana sticker and replaces it with a rainbow sticker. +1 Gen and Nin Levels.

Spend whatever stamina you have left gaining additional levels.
You'll also open up a bloodline quest at level 9, this allows you to get special powers relating to that bloodline, and is a requirement to being able to finish the chunin quest which opens up at level 12. You can skip to the bottom and do initiate that quest before day three, but getting the bonus item first really helps.

If you didn't manage to get lucky enough to find all the 3 required allies, not to fear (it happens) you can continue the quest the next day.

Bloodlines

Choosing a bloodline is permanent, but each time you loop into a new season you can pick a different one. So you won't be stuck with it forever.
Your choices are:
* RedEye: +7% XP bonus per rank.
* WhiteEye: +1 levels per rank.
* Legacy: +15 bonus stamina per rank.

There are more benefits to your bloodlines, but you'll find those out later.

As a new season 1 genin, I can highly recommend taking up WhiteEye as this gives you +1 levels each time you increase in ninja rank. Meaning all rolling challenges are immediately a LOT easier.

Tour Day Three

The third day of the newbie quest, and likely your last day as a lowly Genin. Be sure to get your daily stamina bonus, and help your village by patrolling. This day it's not a requirement of the quest, but it's a good idea to make it into a habit.

Subsequently, the third day is also rather short. It introduces you to a rolling challenge of D4S15. Unlike regular mission challenges a pure rolling challenge remembers the number of successes you've had so far, and reduces the S* by your number of previous successes. So, simply roll the dice and beat the mission. As a reward you'll lose your rainbow sticker and it gets replaced by the: Monster Mask (+1 Levels, +10 Stamina per day)!

The Chunin Exam

All Ninja must eventually prove their worth to their superiors, and so do you. Once you've reached level 12 (which you should have by now) you'll gain access to the quest Chunin Exam.

1. Cost to Attempt Test: 250-500 Ryo.
2. You are given ten multiple-choice questions.
3. You need a score of 3 to pass.
4. If you are caught cheating, you get a two-point penalty.
5. If you are caught cheating five times, you automatically fail.
6. Don't do what that OTHER guy did and just sit through the whole test - that doesn't work anymore.
7. Even if all of the answers look the same, there's still only one correct one.

This is quite easy, and you shouldn't need more than two attempts to complete the first part of the exam. Simply guess randomly "but write down the ones you got correctly". If for whatever reason you didn't manage to guess at least 3 answers correctly, you can simply do the test again and guess different ones. Just be sure to re-use the correct ones. In later seasons you'll need more correct answers, and the same technique works to pass the test.

A WINNER IS YOU! You and your partner party hard! Congratulations!

A new quest will be available once you passed the test.

Forest of Death

* Get Back a Scroll: A simple D5S2 challenge.
* Sneak past an ambush: A D7S2 challenge.
* The second scroll: A D6S3 challenge.
* Last Dash: A D5S4 challenge. Due to needing 4 successes you'll probably want to use Clone Jutsu here.

After that four-part quest another (final) quest opens up.

Final Fight

This tests:
* Whether you have at least 6 allies in total, shouldn't be too hard.
* Learned 8 jutsu, simply buy all the remaining ones from flipper and one other for 10.000 xp. I can recommend Emosuke's fireball jutsu as you'll need that one later.
* You've beaten 40 or more D-Rank missions. If you haven't done so yet you'll need to go back to completing some more. Don't forget you can get your daily bonus stamina to help in this.
* And lastly, whether you've got at least one basic bloodline. Which you did at level 9.

You are now Chunin rank.
You now get 180 Stamina per day, can get your picture taken in the shop, can have three total teammates, and have tons of other things unlocked!
You can also go on C-rank missions, and on top of all that, K-Dog walks up and joins you!

The C-rank missions will allow you to level up some of your allies to lvl 2, they give more XP and more Ryo. Keep at it until one of your stats reaches 12 and you'll unlock the next exam.

So, get started if you hadn't already.

Midsummer mess up

2009-06-21T11:32:00.014+02:00

Last year I posted a guide for the midsummer festival here. It's still there, but there were no achievements then.

Now, there are. And, as it turns out, you need two very annoying achievements in order to complete what most of us started and as good as finished last year.

Torch juggler requires you to buy 40 torches off one of the vendors in your capital cities. Orgrimmar for example. 5 torches cost 5 blossoms. So you need 40 in total for that.

Pole Dancer is a bit more tricky. You need Vestment of summer, Sandals of Summer, Mantle of the fire festival. A grand total of 400 blossoms required!?
Lets calculate that... There are "15" days that the fire festival is active. Only 14 where your blossoms stay active however. The Only way to get more blossoms if you've already ALL the desecrations and honoring the flames last year.... Are "two" daily quests. But, that's not all! Those two daily quests only award 5 blossoms each. Meaning, 10 blossoms per day, for 14 days long = "at most" 140 blossoms.

The only salvation is that the torches aren't soulbound, so you can grab those with an alt and save your main 40 blossoms.

So, bear with me here, but... if you need 100+100+200 = 400 blossoms for the outfits.
And you can get 10*14 = 140 blossoms at most. Then, no matter what you do this year you will be 260 blossoms short of being able to complete the achievement.

Blizzard messed up.

Lets all cry on the forums and let them know, or something.
Obviously the "honor the flame" quests should have reset this year, but for whatever reason it seems they did not.

Small update

Looks like there's 120 blossoms to be had in Northrend (Credit to Morendhil at wowhead)

Honoring your own faction's fire gives +5, the opposing faction gives +10.
Thus 8x5 + 8x10 = 120 total. Sadly, that means we are still 120 short of completing the achievements.

Dragonblight H: Agmar's Hammer 39,48
Dragonblight A: Wintergarde Keep 75,44
Borean Tundra H: Bor'gorok Outpost 51,12
Borean Tundra A: Fizzcrank Airstrip 55,20
Sholazar Basin H: River's Heart 47,62
Sholazar Basin A: River's Heart 48,66
Storm Peaks H: K3 40,86
Storm Peaks A: K3 42,87
Zul'Drak H: Argent Stand 43,71
Zul'Drak A: Argent Stand 41,61
Grizzly Hills H: Conquest Hold 19,62
Grizzly Hills A: Amberpine Lodge 34,61
Howling Fjord H: Camp Winterhoof 48,13
Howling Fjord A: Fort Wildervar 58,16
Crystalsong Forest H: Sunreaver's Command 80,53
Crystalsong Forest A: Windrunner's Overlook 78,75

Note on buying the garments

Keep in mind that as of 3.1.2 or thereabouts, you can sell back items to vendors for 30 minutes and get a full refund. Thus "once" the issue is fixed, and you got your 400 blossoms, you can buy the garments and do the pole dance then sell back the garments to get your blossoms back. After this you can buy the spirit and anything else you wish to spend the tokens on.

ETA on Fix

There is no ETA, however the bug has been acknowledged and will be fixed asap.
Info thanks to Grimlor from MMOC.

Also for now, the new BC faction cities: Silvermoon and the Draenei Landing have "apparently" reset. Which makes an additional +15 blossoms.

Update2: It's been Hotfixed! However as a result, anyone who was halfway done with the achievements will have to do them again, from scratch. Ick. Not a very clean fix, but at least we can get the marks now.

Gamespy hosting, shutting down

2009-06-19T15:15:00.005+02:00

Economic recession, whatever.
It's just a word, and it's being repeated enough to scare some people.

At any rate, IGN / Gamespy is shutting down ALL of it's free hosting.
No idea what will happen to the comic: Flintlocke or Flint vs the horde. Or any of the planethalflife, planetquake etc subhosted sites. Or that dead site of mine for halflife crosshairs...

Time will tell.
How does ANY of this affect you, readers? Not so much really, but I felt like sharing ;)

Here's the mail most of the account holders have received, myself included:

Dear whoever,

This is just a follow up/final reminder after our first communication to you on 26th-27th May that we are shutting down the IGN Hosting Services and to remind you that if you haven’t already, you need to migrate your files and database by 11.59 PM, 31st August 2009 (the “Cut-Off Date”), otherwise you will no longer have access or right to access or use any aspect of your site that IGN was hosting and IGN will have the right to delete and remove from our servers all aspects of your site. As set out in our Hosting Terms of Service, this is our second and final notice to you before we shut the IGN Hosting Services down.

(A) Shutting Down of IGN Hosting

After years of quality free hosting for gaming sites, we have decided to discontinue our free hosting services. We know that this will come as a shock and a disappointment to you; in this e-mail we will explain why this decision was made, when the shutdown will occur, and what the next steps are for the many hosted site owners who will be affected.

The primary reason for the discontinuation of the free hosting is one of compatibility. At IGN, we are in the process of moving to a new data centre, and a number of our operations are incompatible with it, including the free hosting service. At this time we regretfully are not in a position to carry out the additional work needed to make the hosting service compatible.

We are all extremely grateful for you having chosen us as your site's host, and as such want to do all that we can to make your transition to a new hosting provider as easy and seamless as possible. We will maintain the hosting service, with full technical support, up until the Cut Off Date (11.59 PM, 31st August 2009), giving you a further two months or so in order to organize a migration. Please note however that the Cut-Off Date is hard and fast - there will be no extension of the service after this date and backups of your databases and content etc. will not be maintained. Anything that you want to keep MUST be downloaded to your computer before the Cut-Off Date. Please note: if you don’t migrate your files and database by the Cut-Off Date, you will no longer have access or right to access or use any aspect of your site that IGN was hosting and IGN will have the right to delete and remove from our servers all aspects of your site. For more information, please see Section 21 of our Hosting Terms of Service.

To summarize:

The Hosting Services will end on 11.59 PM, August 31st, 2009.

No backups or snapshots will be maintained after that date (download everything you wish to keep). You will no longer have access to your site or any aspects of it (content, assets, files etc.) after that date and we will remove/delete all such files from our servers.

There is a number of alternative free webhosts you could investigate here: http://hosting.ign.com/faq.php.

FAQs and guidance for migrating sites is available here: http://hosting.ign.com/faq.php.

We are keen to help your migration go as smoothly as possible; contact us if you require any further information in connection with you site migration at: techsupport@gamespynetwork.com.

File hosting at FilePlanet and Direct2Drive referral schemes may continue (with the latter including a 8% commission bonus).

Again, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for contributing to the world's greatest network of independently owned gaming sites, and wish you all the best of luck should your site(s) continue at another host. Please, contact us (techsupport@gamespynetwork.com) if you have any questions in connection with the migration of your site.

Nothing less than a pain in the sitting meat.

So, if you haven't already downloaded ALL of Flintlocke before, you might want to consider doing it soon! Though, since the comic is technically an article of gamespy itself it should be safe in theory.

The thing that annoys me the most of gamespy affiliated sites?
That damn interstitial fullscreen advertisement that blocks your screen anytime you visit a page. Plus, gamespy has gotten slow as a slug on sea salt. Can't say I'll miss the hosting, but still hope most of PHL and alike will remain. They do have their uses.

Anyone remember Quake 2 - Nighthunters?
Awesome mod. Lots of fun.

More 3.2 news, PTR active

2009-06-18T20:47:00.010+02:00

3.2 seems to be speeding up suddenly. PTR patch notes! The Big and complete list can be found at MMOC, WoR, WR and a some other sites. But those won't have all the comments attached to it that you're used to from seeing on this blog!

Some of the highlights

Instances

* Crusaders' Coliseum. A new 25, 10 and 5 man instance. Inside are 5 bosses.
* The Nexus: The Oculus and The Eye of Eternity: All mounted drakes used in these instances now scale with item level just like the vehicles in Ulduar.
* Isle of Conquest. A new 40 vs 40 siege style PvP battleground.
* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism. - Well crud, that really dumbs down the value of those badges.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable. - Le sigh.

Rogues

* Rogues get to use AXES!, no it's no joke. We actually get to use AXES!
* Sword spec is renamed to hack 'n slash and also applies to axes.
* Sadly there are no axes worth noting available for rogues yet. Seriously, it's been something rogues have been asking for since Molten core and BWL, but then they finally add it,,... and there's no Axes worth using.
* Axe Specialization (Orc): The weapon bonus from this effect now applies to fist weapons in addition to axes. Don't you just wish you had rolled an Orc instead of a damn Undead or Troll now eh?

Other Classes

* New druid art for cat and bear forms has been added. And they look damn awesome!

Some other 3.2 related stuff

Mount changes, as stated last week. Level 20 players can now learn 60% riding speed, and level 60 players can learn the flying mount skill.

Cooking: Chef's Hat is now superior quality and allows the chef to cook faster. Totally worth it!

Also, of note

XP gain in battlegrounds coming in 3.2

You'll only gain XP from "actions" such as capping a flag, not killing other players.
* Also, you can disable this feature if you wish your character to remain at a certain twink level. (Insert boos and hisses here)
* That same feature also applies to your regular PvE experience gaining (Insert spitting and yelling here)

It's good that blizzard is implementing a small bonus for low level pvp, but quite sad that they don't want to flush out the twink playstyle.

Last, but certainly not least

Epic Gems!

Jewelcrafters get the recipes in all the usual ways: Buy with honor points, Jewelcrafting tokens, and all the usual ways. Also, you can get epic gems by prospecting titanium ore. I suggest you start hoarding that junk, because prices will skyrocket within minutes of this news, if it hasn't already. Alchemists can also make them, emblems of heroism can buy them (25 or 50 instead of 10 badges at a guess) and they're a rare drop from the icy prism.

Wait, epic gems?! Freely available for all to use?
Doesn't that mean that your "oh so precious" Jewelcrafting skill will be worthless after the recent nerf? No, as predicted not quite. I love it when I'm right, seriously, makes me feel like Nostradamus himself or something.

Here's what's going to happen:

* Blacksmithing: No change. Just buy two new shiny epic gems for your two bonus sockets and you'll have +40 stats.
* Enchanting: Values on Northrend ring enchants increased. 2x +20 stats instead of +16 stats. Nice, no need to learn new enchants it seems.
* Alchemy: The Mixology benefits from Northrend elixirs and flasks have been increased. Likely to give you +80 Attack power on a flask of Endless Rage. And equivalend +40 stat values on other flasks for all classes.
* Inscription: Existing master inscriptions increased. From 32 stat bonus equivalent over the sons of hodir ones to 40.
* Jewelcrafting: Dragons eyes improved. It'll remain to be seen whether you get +39 or +42 stats total, since "40/3" doesn't really come out with a nice round number. So, instead of Unique(3) I suspect they'll become Unique(4) and be made into 30 stats per gem for a total of +40 stats like all other professions.
* Leatherworking: Fur lining values increased, from 32 to 40 stats.
* Mining: Toughness rank 6 provides more stamina now.
* Skinning: Anatomy now provides 40 crit rating instead of 32.
* Herbalism: Increased healing from Lifeblood Rank 6, it also scales with your max hp somewhat. Whether that's worth 40 stats, not unless you PvP a lot I guess.
* Tailoring: Embroideries improved. You still won't get 40 stats worth out of it, but at least you don't get nailed as bad as engineering. Feel free to cry on the forums about this fact, since blizzard does not care. Likely they feed on your tears as much as Algalon does.
* Engineering: Gets fucking shafted as usual. Well, pretty much. Increased benefits from Hyperspeed Accelerators, Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket and Reticulated Armor Webbing glove modifications. "Hopefully" these will properly account to +40 stats, but if you've been engineer as long as my primary character has... yeah... don't get your hopes up.

While talking about engineering anyhow... This one's pretty cool:
* Spynocular belt enchantment changed to a Brassbolt Rebreather, allowing engineers to breathe underwater. Shame I didn't need that.

On with the nerfs

2009-06-13T12:43:00.004+02:00

As it seems the majority of the player base is starting to reach Yogg Saron, the QQ on the official forums is probably increasing, and as a result the nerfing. Nerfing? Well, 're-balancing' and 'fixes' could be another wording for it.

Some fixes as of 11 July:

* The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Death Ray no longer hits players who are under the effect of Malady of the Mind, Guardians of Yogg-Saron no longer use Dominate Mind, the spawn rate of Guardians of Yogg-Saron is more forgiving, and these Guardians will no longer spawn if a player that is protected by Hodir’s Flash Freeze hits an Ominous Cloud.
* In the opening sequence of Ulduar you can now see Liquid Pyrite from farther away.
* The Flame Leviathan encounter has received the following changes: the bonus health Flame Leviathan receives per tower has been reduced, the ejection height from Flame Leviathan has been reduced, the snare effect of the Tower of Frost has been removed, and the cannons on Demolishers and Siege Enginers should now break Flash Frozen vehicles in 1 shot.
* The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: the health of the heart has been slightly reduced in heroic difficulty and the rate at which Gravity Lapse and Searing Light are cast has been reduced.

Mounts for lvl 20?

On another note, mount level restrictions have been changed again. First you could get a 60% mount at level 40, then it became 30. And you've guessed it, in patch 3.2 the restriction will be set to 20. Level 20 twinks and alts with a 60% speed mount. Should make things very interesting. Mounts only cost 1g each now, so even high level players who haven't already stacked their stables yet will be pleased to know this achievement will now be significantly cheaper to reach!

Further details include:
* Epic lvl 60 mount was obtainable at lvl 50 or 55 before, but can now be obtained at level 40 and costs 50g to learn, 10g for the mount.
* Rare lvl 70 mount is now 150% flight speed - up from 60% - and the flying skill can be learned at level 60.

Paladin and warlock mounts will follow the same level restrictions.
Shaman and druid shapeshift as well as hunter aspect will be trainable at level 16 instead of 20 or 30.

The Epic (280-310) flying speed skill remains at level 70.
Good news for those still making alts at least :P

Behold internets!

2009-06-06T23:29:00.010+02:00

It's a comic!
And not just any comic either. It's the comic this blog was named after.

Long story really, I've had an idea lying around for a comic for ages but never really had time (or skill) to put it into something that would be cool enough to share. Still don't really. However, someone way more skilled in drawing, inking, and well, pretty much everything that makes a comic decided the idea was interesting enough to make it "real"! It's not a warcraft comic, but that shouldn't deter you from reading it.

Random Ravings of a Madman

(Click for larger version - yes, I know better image hosting is needed.
See the mirror on Drunk Duck if imageshack breaks down due to bandwidth usage.)

So if you guys enjoy the comic, she "might" be persuaded to draw more in the future.
You can find more of her art here at Deviant Art.

Drop a comment and let us know what you think!

We got a forum

2009-06-04T00:08:00.008+02:00

No need for a huge post about this (heading for bed anyhow), but I just opened up a forum. Could be useful in the long run. It'll need a better theme, and a lot of settings. And I'm not even sure whether it's properly sending account activation emails ^,^

So, if anyone wants to give it a try for me, would be nice.

Note, for ease of access I also added a link to the forum in the navigation bar here.

Edit 2: New forum link instead of the one posted earlier. It'll have some small google ads later, but honestly this was the best I could find for now. If the forums prove popular enough I can sort out a paid version later. For now, this will do. Go register and voice your opinion! I know, empty forums are scary 'n all.

Druid forms soon(tm)

2009-05-30T21:19:00.017+02:00

So, there isn't really anything amazingly interesting going on lately. Unless you're a druid. If you've seen the post on MMOC you know what I'm talking about. New Night Elf bear forms, and Tauren bear forms.

Edit - New tauren cats: linky.
Edit2 - New night elf cats: linky2.

Upon closer inspection vs the old bear you'll notice the following changes:
* Sideburns more obviously visible.
* More teeth! No kidding.
* Four nails per clas instead of three.
* Facial hair combed.
* Snarl more smooth.
* Eyebrows!
* Ears modified, tauren get an earring.
* Claws have more polygons (vertexes, triangles, you get the idea)
* Butt is more rounded.
* Texture is less affected by software blurring. (probably a higher resolution)
* Tattoos are more pronounced, different colors and part of the texture itself rather than just a cheap paint job. (its very detailed check it out)
* The Night elf faces look less like a giant bat, and more like an actual bear.
* Eyes look better. Night Elves got a glow.
* Wristband and Necklace.
* Fur line / ridge on the back is more detailed.
* Tauren horns have gotten a different angle.

Small things, but a lot better model.
I can't quite see the actual structural changes on some of the more important areas, but, allow me to show you how ridiculously BAD the current models are. And seriously they are HORRIFYINGLY BAD. Caps is intentional.

Blizzard has admitted these are some of the oldest models in the game, and as stated "badly in need" of an update. Sadly the image at the top of this post probably won't be considered..

Let's look at the bear

Angular and creepy from above. The side isn't too bad at least.

But, for our star of today... the cat.

Cat form

This one scares me the most and keeps me awake at night.
How on earth can whoever put this together live with himself?!

This is what happens when you try to /sit

Oh god, that looks totally wrong, disjointed, painful even.
What on earth is the bottom half of my cat made of?!

Now lets see what happens when that disjointed "move" is completed.

What happened here?
Our sleek cat is no longer so sleek, but shaped like an hourglass with vertexes protruding from odd angles. He has no butt whatsoever. (Whereas the bear has too much /wink)

Hopefully the model update will be implemented soon. But I'm guessing it's scheduled to go live in 3.2.. so that'll be a few months yet.

Wintergrasp

Finally, a quick tip for Wintergrasp. Or venting frustration if you will.

First of all, you can hit two walls at the same time as long as you position your vehicle at the joint between those two walls. Kindly DO so! In short, don't stand in the middle of a wall, stand between two walls and you'll hit both, do double as much damage etc. Please only use this if you are a horde ;) In the below screenshots that would be directly "under" the enemy turret. Not only are you immune to damage from that turret, you'll hit two walls at the same time.

Demolishers

Secondly, Demolishers are awesome for breaking the final door. Don't be an idiot and rush there if you are riding one, you'll just give the other team an easy kill.

Position your vehicle like this:

Or this:

And, as you can see in the screenshot, you'll be able to damage the door just fine without having to get too close and get zerged to death. I've destroyed many a door in this manner.

Another trick with the Demolisher, is to position yourself behind a wall that is 50% broken down. Why? Because with a little maneuvering you can shoot "over" it, and not be seen by the enemy. Meaning you can keep shooting at that damn door for a longer period of time. It's hard to see from this map, but should give you an idea:

Finally, although you can easily nuke down turrets from outside the base it's very easy to simply "fly" into the enemy base after the battle has started and kill them from the inside. Or simply log on with a stealth character after the battle has already started. There's an awesome and completely covered spot where you can safely log in/out inside the base. Near the left wall of the eastern workshop inside the base.

Use this info well.

JC Nerfed, 3.2 incoming

2009-05-23T12:04:00.004+02:00

Jewelcrafting was simply the best profession to have statwise, but it's getting nerfed soon. See here, here and here.

So, as I've previously shown in a comparison. Even without factoring in the blue socket / meta gem bonus, Jewelcrafting is worth "33" stat points while most other professions are worth 32 or thereabouts. Meaning it's still the best choice out there, but a lot less than it used to be. We'll have to see how it holds out in the future when we get more access to +20 stat gems. Blacksmithing is on safe grounds either way.

While it was a valid change (from my point of view), much mindless crying did ensue.

3.2 Call of the Crusade

3.2 will have a new instance, Crusaders' Coliseum: In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the Coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside.

What exactly this will entail remains to be seen. I doubt it'll be a very big instance, but perhaps blizzard will surprise us.

Further changes

Thorns and retribution aura have been changed.

Base damage halved.

Both Thorns and Ret Aura scale with spellpower, which is not in abundance on tanks. On the other hand, on level 80 classes with spell power they could hit an attacker for 1000 or more damage per hit of just passive damage that doesn't even requrie a button press. That's pretty generous.

New zeppelin between Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff

Simply put, every single city aside from Thunder Bluff is connected by a boat or zeppelin. Thunder Bluff has been unique since the latest expansion in that it still requires a run. No, it is not as difficult a run as the old Menethil jog, but it still requires a lengthy trip through over-level, hostile territory for an individual newly made who wants to make use of the facilities in Thunder Bluff.

This is good news for all new low level hordies :)

Poll ends

Closing it a few days early, it's been active long enough :P

Did you activate Dual Spec? (Pick 2)

* DPS - 65 (45%)
* Healing - 36 (25%)
* Didn't activate it yet. - 32 (22%)
* I want tri-spec T_T - 29 (20%)
* Tanking - 28 (19%)
* PvP - 24 (16%)
* Two almost identical specs. - 20 (13%)
* Hybrid - 4 (2%)

DPS and Healing seems to be fairly in the lead. Somewhat expected I think.

New poll question! : Do you agree with the JC Nerf?

Why Nigeria?

2009-05-16T14:30:00.017+02:00

Seriously, why is nigeria such a scammer / spammer paradise? What is so special about that "one" country that the most notorious (and biggest F A I L) scammers originate from there? I honestly have no clue, but, allow me to relate a recent occurrence to you.

So, around the 2nd of January I got my new Dell PC delivered. Dell had a special action running that you got a "free" (yeah right) pocket cam along with it. (See picture on the right) Current market value around 80-100 euros. However... they sent me the pink one. Of all things! Why pink?! Retarded, but anyway...

So, after a while I decided to stick the thing on this country's equivalent of ebay. No bids, no interest. The camera is, to this day still in it's box, unopened. If anyone wants it, let me know and I can give you a sweet price for it. Now, I tried to put it on that site again a few days ago and suddenly it got a bid! 200 euros! o_O

Remember, If something seems too good to be true, it generally is. And such proved to be the case here as well. What sort of moron would honestly bid 200e on something worth 60-80e anyway? Smelling a fail I decided to accept his offer and see what he'd do, whether he'd actually try to scam me, or send money and then revert the offer. You'll have to be a pretty damn good scammer to outwit me. Turns out, you'd have to be an even bigger fail than this scammer to fall for a retarded trick like this.

There you have it, fail from the very first mail. I honestly doubt this guy is a professional scammer due to his lacking english. But I figured what the heck, let's throw the guy a bone and see his reaction. I told him the item was pristine as stated in the auction, without telling him the price again. Any proper bidder would have known what he bid, but this guy obviously goes around all day placing fake bids so it'd only logical his memory won't be too amazing regarding his own actions.

There you have it, suddenly he's offering 400 + 50 in shipping to send the item to Nigeria. Whatever happened to that original 200? If for whatever reason you weren't expecting a scam by this point, the fact that he wants it mailed to Nigeria should set off a hundred alarm bells in your head. He's also asking for my phone number, which I'm obviously NOT going to give him. Trying to see how much I can get him to offer, I tell him to pay for insurance 50e (heck, as long as we're throwing around fictional numbers anyway)

There you have it, his address, or his friend's address. I don't know. If any of you are ever going to Nigeria, please pay the guy a visit and let him know your feelings about people who try to pull jokes like this. At the same time, I got these two mails on my other email:

So, there we have it. A fake Paypal notification with a warning that the payment won't show up until I send him the item. 1/10 for effort since the originating address isn't even actually paypal. And, having logged in my paypal address from the regular bookmark shows that indeed there's no payment at all.

The first mail at least looks "somewhat" like he copy pasted it from an actual paypal mail. The second one, omg. He's just not even trying. I underlined in red the biggest mistakes.

I pity the fools stupid enough to fall for this kind of obvious scam. Aside that, he mailed the "same" thing to my hotmail address. Paypal doesn't even KNOW I have a hotmail. It's rather obvious he's trying to get me to send the item ASAP, and offering a load of money to get people to ignore the mistakes. Also, if you look up clerk.com that site doesn't even exist.

By this point I was getting rather tired of the guy, and decided to let him know he had to pay 19% tax for shipping electronics across another country. As the FAIL scammer he was, he agreed easily.

And he messed up again, sending the paypal notification to my hotmail rather than the email address attached to my paypal account. /fail

I had seen enough by then, and forwarded the entire email conversation to yahoo and paypal.

Thus ends this story.

For now.

Achievement spam

2009-05-10T11:12:00.010+02:00

There we go, Crusader zurgat!
Total number of points not doing too badly either, but there's people "out there" with over 9000 points already. Sick!

So, argent tournament rep farm done. Next on the list is farming badges for the pets.
Any alliance want to swap some of theirs for horde pets?

WoW Matrix away

WoW Matrix was the unofficial followup for WoW Ace Updater, and I've gladly used it for as long as it was working. Described here. But it seems all good and even not-so-good things must come to an end. While the tool did "work", the way in which it did this was heavily frowned upon by the sites that hosted the actual addons. WoW Matrix is leeching their bandwidth after all.

As of recently however, WoW UI as well as Curse have been blocking WoW Matrix, and in effect it's been rendered mostly useless. You can still download it from here if you're curious about it, but it won't do much anymore.

MMOUI - Minion

Introducing MMO UI - Minion. Bit of a weird name, but you'll get used to it eventually. The guys (and girls) from over at WoW Interface saw the need for a better addon updating system and got to work on a proper replacement for the Wow Ace Updater (WAU). They named it the MMOUI Minion. It's nicely described on the WoWHead blog already, but I'll toss you some info on it as well.

* It will work on Windows, Mac and Linux. Unlike the piece of shit from Curse.
* Beta testing is slated to begin the 17'th of May 2009. Keep an eye out, as that's in 7 days already. Unless of course they pull a "when it's done" trick like blizzard has a tendency.
* There is an option for you to have it auto-update your AddOns for you. Unlike that piece of shit from Curse which only offers such a feature for people who PAY for it. And even then, it probably won't work if they do.
* There are some advertisements shown in the tool, not unexpected. But, you can remove those if you get the paid version. Unlike that piece of shit from curse however, the free version is fully functional.
* The tool will have modules / API / customizable functions and a lot more available for it.

So far it sounds a lot better than that PIECE OF SHIT FROM CURSE, so I'll definitely give it a spin later on. Also, in case you're wondering why I'm so negative about curse... Well, the damn thing doesn't work, is putting all the regular features that you'd expect from an updater into the paid only version, requires you to log in to their pissant slow site, and that is, if it even bloody loads at all!

So, boycott that junk and send your praises over to the folk from WoW Interface. /cheer!

Making a Warcraft Comic in 12 easy steps

Cru, from the Cru the dwarf comic has recently uploaded a very useful tutorial for those among you who may wish to make their own web comic.

Cru teaches U 2 Comic.
* Page 1, Page 2, Page 3.
* Page 4, Page 5, Page 6.
* Page 7, Page 8, Page 9.
* Page 10, Page 11.

Step 12 would obviously be, get started already!

Arthas book

Personally, I'm about 50% done on reading the novel about Arthas. So far it's pretty interesting and it's giving some interesting background information about Jaina and Arthas.

It's a quick read, but I find that the background info about most characters isn't really "that" detailed. It's to be expected in a way, but still a shame. The writer put together an interesting story, but is very limited in freedom due to blizzard's censoring. This ensures the book is (probably) accurate in terms of lollore, but means the story will be pretty meaningless and confusing to anyone other than World of Warcraft players.

Eggy Death

I ran into these little guys on deviant art. So funny!

See the artist's page here.

Awesome Game

Not sure if I ever linked you this game called GemCraft (chapter 1) before, but there's now a "prequel" available called Gemcraft Chapter 0. It's basically the followup of chapter 1, but with a "LOT" more options, replay value, etc. Try it out sometime.

Blog update

2009-05-02T14:43:00.008+02:00

/wipes forehead.
That was a bit of work, but you can't put it off forever.
I've been planning to re-sort the label system for a long time now, and well, the longer you wait the more work it becomes. I merged them down from 54 to only 30. Quite an improvement.

Now, with less labels, it'll be easier to find "related" posts, and gives me an excuses to put that top menu up there ^ to some better use. The labels section has been rewritten in the html. This way the whole label list that was previously in the rightmost column could be removed.

This is what's left:

And, has been implemented into the top menu bar.

# 2.3.x (7)
# 2.4.x (17)
# Advertisements (12)
# blizzard (18)
# blog (46)
# classes (30)
# Contests (4)
# DPS and Character improvement (14)
# Dungeons and Raids (37)
# Farming + Gathering (8)
# Fun and Comics (30)
# Guest posts (3)
# Guides (29)
# guild (18)
# Interface and Addons (5)
# Items and Gear (23)
# links (42)
# Making Gold (13)
# Miscellaneous (3)
# Other Games (7)
# Patches (18)
# poll (30)
# Professions (27)
# ptr (14)
# pvp (11)
# Quests and Achievements (13)
# Rogues and Stealth (33)
# Talents and Skills (12)
# Technology and Media (30)
# The Real World (16)
# theorycraft (16)
# wotlk (61)

As a result, I've got some room available to use for other stuff. So, we'll be having a look at the Palace in the Sky group. It's a group that was initially founded with web comics in mind. They 'pool' a group of advert boxes into one account, and use that to advertise the list of links rather than individual pages. The end result is that hopefully more people will come and visit the site :)

Argent Crusade

So, that aside. How are you doing on the argent tournament? Blizzard added a whole range of new mounts (that don't look all that much different from existing ones) here, as well as a good six new titles to earn. I'm on 3/5 of the exalted city achievements so far. It's pretty easy, but does take some time and daily quests to get trough.

In case you're having trouble doing the champion fights, keep this in mind:
* Get the shield up to 3/3 before starting.
* Stay close
* Melee, strafe away, throw, get close, melee, strafe away, throw, get close, and repeat until target is dead.
* Refresh the shield if the opponent gets a lucky / lag shot.

Never use the "charge" attack, the opponent will just do the same. Following that tactic you will generally finish with 80-90% of your health left in tact, and 30-40 seconds on your shield.

Happy hunting!

3.1 Inscription Glyphs

2009-04-30T11:57:00.008+02:00

Short informative post, mostly because I needed the info myself ;)
Copy, paste, and give it back to the community.

If you're having trouble finding the new glyphs, most of the new ones added in 3.1 are are randomly learned from the Book of Glyph Mastery, which happens to be an annoying world drop. And as with most new things, being sold for absolutely retarded prices on the auction house. Give it time though, it'll go down in value soon enough.

The envenom glyph was removed just after release sadly.

Deathknight
* [Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon]
* [Glyph of Howling Blast]
* [Glyph of Hungering Cold]
* [Glyph of Unholy Blight]

Warrior
* [Glyph of Bladestorm]
* [Glyph of Enraged Regeneration]
* [Glyph of Shield Wall]
* [Glyph of Shockwave]
* [Glyph of Spell Reflection]
* [Glyph of Vigilance]

Druid
* [Glyph of Barkskin]
* [Glyph of Berserk]
* [Glyph of Nourish]
* [Glyph of Savage Roar]
* [Glyph of Survival Instincts]
* [Glyph of Wild Growth]

Warlock
* [Glyph of Chaos Bolt]
* [Glyph of Demonic Circle]
* [Glyph of Haunt]
* [Glyph of Life Tap]
* [Glyph of Metamorphosis]
* [Glyph of Shadowflame]
* [Glyph of Soul Link]

Shaman
* [Glyph of Feral Spirit]
* [Glyph of Hex]
* [Glyph of Riptide]
* [Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem]
* [Glyph of Thunder]

Rogue
* [Glyph of Cloak of Shadows]
* [Glyph of Envenom]
* [Glyph of Fan of Knives]
* [Glyph of Hunger for Blood]
* [Glyph of Killing Spree]
* [Glyph of Shadow Dance]
* [Glyph of Tricks of the Trade]

Priest
* [Glyph of Dispersion]
* [Glyph of Guardian Spirit]
* [Glyph of Hymn of Hope]
* [Glyph of Mind Sear]
* [Glyph of Penance]

Paladin
* [Glyph of Beacon of Light]
* [Glyph of Divine Plea]
* [Glyph of Divine Storm]
* [Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous]
* [Glyph of Holy Shock]
* [Glyph of Salvation]
* [Glyph of Shield of Righteousness]

Mage
* [Glyph of Arcane Barrage]
* [Glyph of Deep Freeze]
* [Glyph of Ice Barrier]
* [Glyph of Living Bomb]
* [Glyph of Mirror Image]

Hunter
* [Glyph of Chimera Shot]
* [Glyph of Explosive Shot]
* [Glyph of Explosive Trap]
* [Glyph of Kill Shot]
* [Glyph of Raptor Strike]

For more information on each glyph see: WoWWiki.

Arthas contest closed

2009-04-24T19:59:00.004+02:00

And now as promised, the winning numbers for the Arthas contest:

* 4 : Huggles
* 33 : Jawn
* 47 : Michael
* 49 : Azande
* 59 : Bluestitches

Grats to all the winners. You'll be receiving an e-mail shortly with further information. I put together a quick 10 man group of Rampage officers + raiders as witnesses for the official roll. Number 33 actually came up twice! But, it wouldn't be fair to the others to send one person two copies ;)

Arthas contest coming to a close

2009-04-23T20:01:00.006+02:00

This is your final reminder for the contest. As well as a pre-notification of the numbers for all those who entered, so you know what the numbers are, and so I can't cheat you by changing your number later :P

I got my book in the mail today, so I can at least verify that the delivery service works quite fine ^_^

Remember, you can still add yourself in, but time IS very much running out. Five numbers will be drawn from the final list tomorrow. Those will receive their free copy "soon" (tm)!

Your lottery numbers so far:

1. Robert
2. Jordan
3. Eggcellent
4. Huggles
5. chad
6. André johansson
7. wesley
8. Atyan
9. shalafi
10. rwciii/at/charterdotnet
11. Samuel
12. Einh
13. Zek
14. ciddxx
15. Wolfmarine
16. Benjamin
17. pjmac459
18. Scott
19. Xenthressa
20. Pinto-Gricko
21. Cocopuff
22. Johan
23. Asrial
24. Sleeky
25. Elwin
26. 0g
27. Arapoon
28. Steve
29. Edson
30. Azezeal
31. Danny
32. Boozsha
33. Jawn
34. Arnout van der Vorst
35. Saithir
36. Exanimo
37. Vilija
38. Raymond Phoenix (email unknown)
39. Sikker
40. James
41. Matthew
42. George
43. Brian and Darcy
44. Kahi
45. Cru
46. FrostMist
47. Michael
48. Rakhman
49. azande
50. secretagentcat
51. Doodle
52. Faith Eshelman
53. Khassad
54. ElvenAvenger
55. tiggs4e
56. Draco
57. Hungry
58. Trustyn
59. bluestitches
60. Erik Mannfelt
61. Azshira
62. alloxa
63. Yoine
64. Vincent
65. Fizziksman

3.1.1 + Hotfixes - Ulduar Balanced (Nerfed)

2009-04-21T09:04:00.012+02:00

Blue post today. Ulduar has received some more hotfixes. Also see WoW Insider's page for a full listing of the accumulated fixes to Ulduar.

Most of these changes are hotfixed into live servers as of the 20'th of April 2009, the rest will become in effect as of today's client patch.

* The Saronite Animus in the heroic General Vezax encounter has had its health increased.
* The Mimiron hard mode has received the following changes: increased damage from Flames, increased damage from Frost Bomb (in heroic), increased damage from Water Spray, and increased the health bonus he receives from Emergency Mode.
* For the trash mobs leading to Mimiron: the damage from a Clockwork Sapper’s Energy Sap ability has been decreased, the Energy Sap no longer drains mana, and the health of Boomer XP-500 has been decreased.
* General Vezax’s abilities, Mark of the Faceless and Shadow Crash, may hit players in melee range depending on the situation and player setup.
* Players should no longer be able to quench the Unquenchable Flames debuff from a Molten Colossus by using spells like Cloak of Shadows or Divine Protection. The Molten damage from when Iron Constructs turn molten has been reduced, the ground damage from Scorch has been reduced, and the total health of Ignis himself has been reduced. (I noticed this yesterday evening....)
* For Ignis the Furnace master, Strength of the Creator will now only affect physical damage and he will have to wait for a short time to charge after casting Flame Jets. (Great change!)
* All of the additional creatures spawned during the XT-002 Deconstructor encounter can now be snared in either difficulty.
* It will be slightly more difficult to skip Tympanic Tantrum on XT-002 Deconstructor. (Meaning, you can't DPS her so hard that it's not cast at all between phases)
* For the Hodir encounter, the damage from Champion of Hodir’s Freezing Breath has been reduced, the haste effect from Starlight has been decreased, and the timer for the hard mode has been decreased.
* For the Thorim encounter, the Runic Colossus should stop channeling Runic Smash once engaged in combat, the Dark Rune Champion should no longer whirlwind after being disarmed, and the Runic Colossus should no longer melee when it charges.
* The Iron Council encounter has received the following changes: the amount healed through Electric Charge has been increased, the timer to Berserk has been increased, the range of Overload has been decreased, the Lightning Elementals are no longer immune to nature damage, Stormcaller Brundir's melee damage has been decreased (in normal mode), and increased Runemaster Molgeim's damage.
* The Kologarn encounter has received the following changes: the speed of the Eyebeam has been decreased, the amount of damaged required to break a player from Stone Grip has been decreased, and slightly decreased the amount of damage done by Stone Grip.
* Some changes we have made to the trash mobs in the Antechamber (the area near Iron Council) are: the Devastating Leap from the Chamber Overseer is now a Stun Mechanic, Champer Overseers should no longer be immune to disarm, standing on the Flaming Rune should no longer proc Runic Explosion, Iron Menders should be immune to charm, Charged Dwarves should be immune to charm, the damage from Ball Lightning cast by Lightning Charged Iron Dwarves has been decreased in heroic difficulty, and the damage of Runed Flame Jets have been decreased.
* The Auriaya encounter has received the following changes: Sanctum Sentries should no longer spawn while Auriaya is in combat and lowered the damage of Savage Pounce.
* The Mimiron encounter has received the following changes: the damage of Proximity Mines has been decreased, Proximity Mines should no longer explode and damage players after they explode and disappear, the initial cooldown of Shock Blast in phase 4 has been altered so it shouldn't be cast the same time as Laser Barrage in this phase, the casting time of Self Repair has been increased, and the health and damage of Assault Bots has been decreased in heroic mode.
* Emalon should no longer use any of his special abilities for a short time after casting Overcharge.
* The time between Mole Machines spawning in the Razorscale encounter has been slightly increased.

And some more unofficial

From: MMOC

Ulduar

* Ignis (10) - Scorch now inflicts 3770 to 4230 damage. (Down from 4713 to 5287)
* Ignis (25) - Scorch now inflicts 6032 to 6768 damage. (Down from 7540 to 8460)
* Thorim (25) - Lightning Charge now inflicts 17344 to 20156 damage. (Up from 13875 to 16125)
* Thorim (25) - Chain Lightning now inflicts 4625 to 5375 damage. (Up from 3700 to 4300)

Ulduar Hard Modes

* Flame Leviathan - Tower of Frost now increases health by 50%. (Up from 25%)
* Flame Leviathan - Tower of Storms now increases health by 50%. (Up from 25%)
* Flame Leviathan - Tower of Flames now increases health by 50%. (Up from 25%)
* Thorim - Sif's Frostbolt Volley now inflicts 11250 to 13750 damage. (Up from 9000 to 11000)
* Thorim - Sif's Frost Nova now inflicts 14138 to 15862 damage. (Up from 9425 to 10575)
* XT-002 Deconstructor - Heartbreak now increases damage by 35% (Up from 30%) and health by 45% (Up from 40%)

Talents and Classes

All talents will be wiped yet again. Free respecs for everyone!

Some class changes :

* Warlock: Fel Synergy now give you a 50/100% chance to heal your pet for 15% (down from 50/30%) of the amount of spell damage done by you.
* Deathknight: Death Strike will now heal the Death Knight for 5% of his or her maximum health per disease on the target, up to a maximum of 15%.
* Deathknight: Anti-Magic Shell now absorbs magical damage up to a maximum of 50% of the Death Knight's health. (Down from 100%)

Ulduar

2009-04-20T13:37:00.009+02:00

It's just a short post. Guild progress!

Flame Leviathan - 25 man

Razorscale - 25 man

XT002-Deconstructor - 25 man

Rampage (EU, Aszune)
PS: We're looking for Tanks / Ranged DPS.

Ulduar on live

2009-04-18T14:26:00.004+02:00

Book Update

Not much of an update so much as a reminder, the Arthas - Rise of the Lich King Contest is still active until the 24th of April. If you haven't already added in your comment, don't forget to do so. There's 5 books being given away on RRVS, so you've got about 5 days left to enter yourself into the drawing.

Big Bear Butt recently had a similar giveaway, but that one already ended yesterday.

Ulduar

Another week passed by, and Ulduar has been open for a few days now. Looks like several crazy no-lifes have already cleared the non hard mode bosses, so they'll be stuck picking their nose until next week before being able to start the hard modes. There's little doubt they won't be able to manage that though...

Blizzard writes:
Yes it is being cleared, but so far by guilds like Ensidia, Vodka and Premonition. Those are some of the best of the best, and none of them managed it in a three hour run. They will however get to the point where they can farm it, and so will you.
Hard modes are a different story.

Hotfixes

Ulduar was totally not rushed out, totally not bugged in any way, and all fights were perfectly balanced!

Can you smell the sarcasm yet?

Since the release a few days ago, there have been a large number of hotfixes implemented.

* Several changes to the Razorscale encounter have been made including the range and damage of the Dark Rune Watcher’s Chain Lightning being reduced, and the radius of Razorscale’s Devouring Flame being slightly reduced.
* To increase the challenge, Hodir’s hard mode should need to be completed faster than before and the bonus of the Moonlight buff that NPCs provide to players should be decreased.
* The damage done by Thorim and Sif in hard mode has been increased in multiple ways.
* Freya has had her health and damage increased in hard mode in multiple ways.
* The Ignis the Furnace encounter has received several changes. To make his individual hits less devastating, we reduced his overall melee damage by about 15% but he swings faster now. In normal mode we increased the cooldown of Activate Construct from 30 to 40 seconds. We also decreased the damage of the Scorch ground effect by 20% on both difficulties.
* XT-002 Deconstructor’s health and damage has been slightly increased in hard mode.
* XT-002 Deconstructor will no longer cast Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb while channeling Tympanic Tantrum.
* For the trash leading up to Ignis the Furnace Master, the Magma Rager’s Superheated Winds have had their speed reduced. The normal mode Molten Colossus have had the cooldown of Pyroblast increased.
* The trash mobs leading to Mimiron can now see through stealth/invisible, no more sneaking past.
* In the General Vezax encounter on hard mode, the Saronite Animus’s Profound Darkness will now hit harder.
* Ignis the Furnace Master should no longer melee players he is grabbing.
* We have altered XT-002 Deconstructor's heart aggro radius down to 60 yards so players will no longer get stuck in combat when at the entrance to his room.
* The trash mobs before XT-002 Deconstructor have temporarily been disabled. These mobs will return in the future after we have resolve the issue with them being linked.
* Shattering a Construct during the Ignis the Furnace Master encounter will now decrease the number of Strength of the Creator stack buffs he has by one.

You would think bugs like these would be discovered pretty easily on the PTR, and subsequently fixed. Or is the PTR only there to allow hardcore guilds to train themselves for the encounters and get a "OMG FIRST!". Sure seems like it at times. But heck, the sooner that stuff is fixed, the less likely we'll have to deal with the bugs ourselves :P

Poll End

One poll closes, one poll starts.

Have you cleared all 3.09 content?:
* Naxx Cleared - 113 (66%)
* Malygos Dead - 94 (55%)
* Sartharion Dead - 113 (66%)
* And bored as hell... - 99 (58%)
* Still plenty to do! - 57 (33%)

Not much comment needed on that one I'd think. About half of you cleared everything, was bored, yet had plenty to do.

Another poll regarding Dual Spec is up. Be sure to add your voice in.

3.1 Ulduar Released!

2009-04-14T20:15:00.002+02:00

That's right 3.1 is here!
USA today, EU tomorrow.

Be sure to read the full patch notes on MMOC.

Patch mirrors can be found here as usual.

The patch is HUGE, and you've already been given the highlights some weeks ago.
So, I'll give you a few rogue snippets before I log off and jump in front of the TV for tonight while the patch is downloading. (Matrix 3 is on, and I haven't seen that one yet! /gasp)

Rogue

* Deadly Poison: The amount of damage this poison generates from the rogue’s attack power has been increased from 8% per application to 12%.
* Deadly Throw: Missile speed increased.
* Instant Poison: Redesigned to have its chance to be applied based on the speed of the weapon (frequency-based).
* Shiv: This ability can no longer generate a critical strike, and the poisons it applies cannot be critical strikes either.
* Tricks of the Trade: Will now begin following the first damaging attack.
* Wound Poison: Redesigned to have its chance to be applied based on the speed of the weapon (frequency-based).

Assassination

* Hunger For Blood: No longer stacks. Damage bonus changed to 15% for a single application. Requires a bleed effect active on the rogue’s target. No longer removes bleeds from the rogue. Now costs 15 energy and lasts for 60 seconds.
* Master Poisoner: Now also increases the bonus to apply Deadly Poison when Envenom is used by an additional 15/30/45%.

Combat

* Adrenaline Rush cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.
* Killing Spree: Now also increases all damage done by the rogue while active by 20%.
* Savage Combat improved to 2/4% increased damage against poisoned targets.
* Lightning Reflexes reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% dodge and 4/7/10% melee haste.

Subtlety

* Shadow Dance now opens a new action bar when used.

Rogue Glyphs

* Glyph of Adrenaline Rush: Now increases duration by 5 seconds.
* Glyph of Backstab: Now increases remaining duration on Rupture by 2 seconds each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 seconds.
* Glyph of Cloak of Shadows: While Cloak of Shadows is active, you take 40% less physical damage.
* Glyph of Crippling Poison: Poison chance bonus increased to 20%.
* Glyph of Deadly Throw: Increases the movement reduction by 10%.
* Glyph of Fan of Knives: Increases the damage done by Fan of Knives by 20%.
* Glyph of Hunger for Blood: Increases the bonus damage from Hunger for Blood by 3%.
* Glyph of Killing Spree: Reduces the cooldown on Killing Spree by 45 seconds.
* Glyph of Mutilate: Reduces the cost of Mutilate by 5 energy.
* Glyph of Pick Lock: Now reduces cast time by 100%.
* Glyph of Sap: Increases duration by 20 seconds.
* Glyph of Shadow Dance: Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 4 seconds.
* Glyph of Sprint: No longer reduces the duration.
* Glyph of Tricks of the Trade: Your Tricks of the Trade grants an additional 10% bonus damage to your target.

Arthas - Rise of the Lich King Contest!

2009-04-09T20:56:00.014+02:00

A contest?!
We've never done one of those before have we?

No, don't think we have.
But yes, a contest.

Whatsortofcontestwilltherebeprizes?!

Calm down, calm down. YES there are prizes! Not a lot, but still, it's something you'll be sure to enjoy, and the effort you need to do for it is very very small indeed. I seriously hope the blog holds out under the load, we've had the CSS mess up before in the past after all...

So, let's get to the point shall we?
Rather than go on and on about what you have to do etc, we'll get right to the sweet bit. The prizes.

Prizes!

I've been allowed to give away no less than "5" books. For free. No purchase required (Though I'm sure Blizzard won't complain if you do) and no strings (That I know of) attached. What book? Well, this book obviously. Arthas - Rise of the Lich King. I haven't read it yet myself, might later.

So, what do you have to do to get one?

Nothing too special. All you really got to do is reply to this blog post. You'll want to make sure to leave some contact information in your reply though, so an email address is recommended. However, you don't really want to have your main wow email address up and visible on a wow related site either. (Goldsellers have a nasty habbit of prowling these) So, alternatively you can just leave a comment here with a unique identifier and/or name, or first part of your email address. Then, send your contact info to me at "bbr_tki(a.t)hotmail.com". Translate the (a.t) into a proper AT symbol.

Then, out of all those who replied (I'm not expecting huge numbers, but still, it's free loot) I'll randomly pick 5. Now you may be wondering, how on earth will I pick 5 people out of 10-15 posts? Quite simple. I'll simply do a /roll ingame, while there's a whole raid there to witness it. Or if not a whole raid on that day, then at least several officers from Rampage.

Note, there's no point posting more than once, only your first "valid" post counts. Also don't bother making alternative accounts, and don't bother posting anonymously. I'd like this to be as fair as possible for everyone, hence anonymous posting can't be allowed, or you'd be able to post a reply more than once. I'm sure you all understand. It's still not fool-proof, but as close as I can get it.

Other than that, there's no real rules. Sure I could ask some silly, ridiculously easy question and have you post an answer to that question, but that would likely just discourage people from participating. The "contest" starts today, and ends the 24'th of April 2009. Any posts beyond that date are disqualified.

After that, I'll do the /roll thing, announce which numbers "won", then pass on your e-mail address to the person that'll send you your free copy of the book.

That sounds pretty straightforward right?
Well, tell your friends 'n such.

Sponsor

The books are being made available by Simon and schuster, who also have an small quote from the book available for viewing.

Chapter 4 - Book excerpt

"As you can see, Your Highness," said Lieutenant General Aedelas Blackmoore, "the taxes have been put to good use. Every precaution has been taken in the operation of this facility. In fact, security is so tight we've been able to stage gladiatorial combat here."

"So I've heard," said Arthas, as he walked with the commander of the internment camps on a tour of the grounds. Durnholde, not an internment camp itself, but the nerve center of all of the others, was huge, and indeed had almost a festival air about it. It was a crisp but bright autumn day, and the breeze caused the blue and white banners that flew over the keep to snap energetically. The wind stirred Blackmoore's long raven hair and tugged at Arthas's cloak as they strolled along the ramparts.

"And so you shall also see," Blackmoore promised, giving his prince an ingratiating grin.

It had been Arthas's idea for a surprise inspection. Terenas had praised Arthas for his initiative and compassion. "It's only right, Father," Arthas had said, and by and large he meant it, although his primary reason for the suggestion was to satisfy his curiosity about the pet orc the lieutenant general kept. "We should make sure the money is going into the camps and not Blackmoore's pocket. We can ascertain if he is taking proper care of the gladiatorial participants -- and also, make sure he is not walking the path of his father."

Blackmoore's father, General Aedelyn Blackmoore, had been a notorious traitor, tried and convicted of selling state secrets. While his crimes had taken place long ago, when his son had been but a child, the stain had dogged Aedelas throughout his military career. It was only his record of victory in battles, and particular ferocity in fighting the orcs, that had enabled the current Blackmoore to rise in the ranks. Still, Arthas could detect the smell of liquor on the man's breath, even at this hour of the morning. He suspected that particular piece of information would not be news to Terenas, but he'd make sure he told his father anyway.

Arthas looked down, feigning interest in watching the dozens of guards who stood at rigid attention. He wondered if they were that attentive when their future king wasn't watching them.

"I look forward to the bout today," he said. "Will I be able to watch your Thrall in action? I've heard quite a bit about him."

Blackmoore grinned, his neatly trimmed goatee parting to reveal white teeth. "He was not scheduled to fight today, but for you, Your Highness, I shall pair him up against the worthiest foes available."

Two hours later, the tour was complete, and Arthas shared a delicious meal with Blackmoore and a younger man named Lord Karramyn Langston, whom Blackmoore introduced as "my protégé." Arthas took an instinctive dislike to Langston, noting the man's soft hands and languid demeanor. At least Blackmoore had fought in battle for his title; this boy -- Arthas thought of him as a boy, although in truth Langston was older than Arthas's seventeen years -- had been handed everything on a platter.

Well, so have I, he thought, but he also knew what sacrifices a king would be expected to make. Langston looked like he'd never denied himself a thing in his life. Nor did he deny himself now, helping himself to the choicest cuts of meat, the most lavish pastries, and more than one glass of wine to wash it down with. Blackmoore, in contrast, ate sparingly, though he had more alcohol than Langston.

Arthas's dislike of the pair was completed when their serving girl entered and Blackmoore reached to touch her in a proprietary manner. The girl, golden-haired and simply clad, with a face that needed no artifice to be beautiful, smiled as if she enjoyed it, but Arthas caught a quick flash of unhappiness in her blue eyes.

"This is Taretha Foxton," Blackmoore said, one hand still caressing the girl's arm as she gathered the plates. "Daughter of my personal servant, Tammis, whom I'm sure you'll see later."

Arthas gave the girl his most winning smile. She reminded him a bit of Jaina -- her hair brightened by the sun, her skin tanned. She returned the smile fleetingly, then demurely looked away as she gathered the plates, dropping a quick curtsey before leaving.

"You'll have one like that soon enough, lad," Blackmoore said, laughing. It took Arthas a second to grasp the meaning and then he blinked, startled. The two men laughed harder, and Blackmoore raised his goblet in a toast.

"To fair-haired girls," he said, in a purring voice. Arthas looked back at Taretha, thought of Jaina, and forced himself to raise his glass.

An hour later Arthas had forgotten all about Taretha Foxton and his indignation on her behalf. His voice was raw from screaming, his hands hurt from clapping, and he was having the time of his life.

At first, he'd felt a little uncomfortable. The first few combatants in the ring were simple beasts pitted against one another, fighting to the death for no reason other than the enjoyment of the onlookers. "How are they treated prior to this?" Arthas had asked. He was fond of animals; it unsettled him to see them used so.

Langston had opened his mouth, but Blackmoore shushed him with a quick gesture. He had smiled, leaning back in his chaise lounge and snagging a bunch of grapes. "Well of course we want them at their fighting peak," he said. "So they are captured and treated quite well. And as you can see, the bouts go quickly. If an animal survives and is not able to continue fighting again, we put him down at once, mercifully."

Arthas hoped the man was not lying to him. A sick feeling in his gut told him Blackmoore probably was, but he ignored it. The feeling vanished when the fighting involved men against the beasts. As he watched, riveted, Blackmoore said, "The men are paid well. They in fact become minor celebrities."

Not the orc, though. And Arthas knew it, and approved. That's what he was waiting for -- the chance to see Blackmoore's pet orc, found as an infant and raised to be a fighter in these rings, in combat.

He was not disappointed. Apparently, everything up until now had been a warm-up for the crowd. When the doors creaked open and a huge green shape strode forward, everyone stood, roaring. Somehow Arthas found himself among them.

Thrall was enormous, appearing even larger because he was obviously so much healthier and alert than the other specimens Arthas had seen in the camps. He wore little armor and no helm, and green skin stretched tightly over powerful muscle. Too, he stood straighter than others. The cheering was deafening, and Thrall walked a circle around the ring, lifting his fists, turning his ugly face up to be showered with rose petals usually reserved for holidays.

"I taught him to do that," Blackmoore said with pride. "It's an odd thing, really. The crowd cheers for him, yet they come hoping every time he'll get beaten."

"Has he ever lost a bout?"

"Never, Your Highness. Nor will he. Yet people keep hoping, and the money keeps flowing."

Arthas eyed him. "As long as the royal coffers see their proper percentage of your earnings, Lieutenant General, you'll be permitted to continue the games." He turned again to the orc, watching him as he completed his circuit. "He...is completely under control, isn't he?"

"Absolutely," Blackmoore said immediately. "He was raised by humans and taught to fear and respect us."

As if he had heard the comment, though he could not possibly have done so over the thundering cries of the crowd, Thrall turned to where Arthas, Blackmoore, and Langston sat watching. He thumped his chest in a salute and then bowed deeply.

"You see? Utterly my creature," Blackmoore purred. He rose and lifted a flag, waving it, and across the ring a solidly built red-haired man waved another flag. Thrall turned toward the door, gripping the massive battle axe that was his weapon in this bout.

The guards began to raise the door, and before it had even opened fully, a bear the size of Invincible surged forward. Its hackles had risen and it barreled straight for Thrall as if it had been launched from a cannon, its snarl audible even over the roar of the crowd.

Thrall held his ground, stepping aside at the absolute last minute and bringing the huge axe around as if it weighed nothing at all. It tore a great rent in the bear's side, and the animal roared in maddened pain, whirling and sending blood spattering. Again, the orc stood his ground, resting on the balls of his bare feet until he moved with a speed that belied his size. He met the bear head-on, shouting taunts in a guttural voice in perfect Common, and brought the axe crunching down. The bear's head was nearly severed from its neck, but it kept running for a few moments before toppling into a quivering heap.

Thrall threw back his head and cried out his victory. The crowd went mad. Arthas stared.

There wasn't a scratch on the orc, and as far as Arthas could tell, the brute wasn't even particularly winded.

"That's just the opener," Blackmoore said, smiling at Arthas's reaction. "Next will be three humans attacking him. He's also hampered by the fact that he's not to kill them, just defeat them. More a strategic battle than one of brute force, but I confess, there's something about watching him decapitate a bear in a single blow that always makes me proud."

Three human gladiators, all large, powerfully muscled men, entered the arena and saluted their opponent and the crowd. Arthas watched as Thrall sized them up and wondered just how smart it was of Blackmoore to make his pet orc so damn good at fighting. If Thrall ever escaped, he could teach those skills to other orcs.

It was possible, despite the increased security. After all, if Orgrim Doomhammer could escape from the Undercity, in the very heart of the palace, Thrall could escape from Durnholde.

For the full excerpt (Weird word don't you think?) visit their site.

If you're not feeling lucky, then you can always simply pre-order it.

Final word

So, in summary. The contest runs from today (9th april) until the 24th of april. Winners will be randomly picked among those who reply to those post. Be sure to give me a way to contact you, or you won't be getting a free book obvously. Don't cut it too close, I'm living on Central European Time after all.

You can bribe me, but in the end it's all up to the RNG gods whether you're the lucky number. Be sure to sacrifice some goats or sheep before the 24th.

Note of warning: Anonymous posts are disqualified from entering. Make sure you use your Google / Blogger / OpenID to comment! Registration is painless and takes 1-2 minutes at most.

Disclaimer: I'm not personally sending the books, so don't hold it against me if shipping messes up.

Community service day

2009-04-06T22:09:00.004+02:00

Also known as Discover that WoW blog!

It's been a good long while since I've done one of these, but hey, blog crosslinking is part of the game and everyone does it so and then. It allows you (the reader) to discover other blogs and share information. It's also a good way to get other blogs to link to your own blog (/poke, hint, hint) and get more readers for your blog in the long run.

Either way, today I'll start with some of the blogs that I've noticed were already linking here, so as to be fair and give them a head start. Sometime later (soon - tm) I'll make a followup with new and little known blogs that you might or might not enjoy reading as well.

Linkage!

In no particular order.

* Italian wow, has been linking to us for a while trough a recent update feed.
* Beyond the tree, by Nhani. Be sure to check this one out, it's a good comic and offers regular WoW wallpapers.
* WoW Fail blog, random funnies for a good laugh. Link exchange always pays off ^_^
* Epic Dwarven Blogger, beard and all included. Frequent updates from the hairy front!
* Forever a Noob, but still pro enough to link to us :P
* Egotistical Priest, of priestly stuff and much more.
* Lienna's Log, was gone for a while, but seems to be back to updating again.
* Less QQ, more pewpew, words you'll undoubtedly hear more often.
* The Good, The Bad and the Downright Evil, rogues, warlocks and paladins!
* Kestrel's aerie, a long time favorite.
* Where's my frisbee? I don't know either tbh. The dog ate it!
* Occeta alt aholic, there's no such thing as "enough" alts.
* Pugnacious Priest, wonders how many wipes it takes to be a learning experience.
* Twisted Nether, a WoW blogcast. They're in your internethers casting your blogs!
* Liming in WoW, has nothing to do with lemons. But "hanging out" mon.
* Secret Agent Cat, stealthed and in your backpack sniffing for secrets!

Also, this little game is kind of weird.
Click, try, smash up my avatar to bloody bits. Vent some agression.