SPONSORED BY: Buff’D – Player Powered WoW News (Contest Info)

General News

- Cold Weather Flying for ALTS at 68.. Tome of Cold Weather Flying 1k level 80 buy .. BoA
- Peggle WoW Edition.. (out of game, wow themed peggle) – (link)
- Paladin Q&A? (link)

Hot Topics from the Nether!

From the TNTCast:
- How To Get Your Blog Crashed by WoW.Com – have good content, participate in the community, be a good bloggy neighbor
- Putting the Evil Back in Warlock from Saresa of Destructive Reach
- SlashRage ..for when bloggers need anonymity to vent.

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
- (shaman) Completely Elemental
- (druids) Druidic in Nature
- (shaman) Chain Heals
- (Rogues, RP) Of Blade and Flesh
- (Priests) The Noobie Priest
- (Shamans) Not that kind of Wang!
- (Hunter) iMDu
- (lore) Cataclysm’s Edge
- (BM Hunter) TribunalxHunter
- (roleplay) Alureith Silverbough
- (mmo genre) /gab
- (General) Hoggwarts in Azeroth http://www.hoggwardsinazeroth.com
- (bloggy resurrection (general)) The Azeroth Metblog

We’d like to encourage all of you to visit the TNB Wiki and be sure to be listed in the Big List of Blogs.

Next week…

No show next week. Come back the -following- week as we visit with Mike Schramm of Wow.com.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

One of the niftier features is its ability to hear your tweets if you tag them appropriately. You have to tell it what your account is, and then tag any tweets you want it to listen to with #wow and #1. They will appear in your timeline automatically. You can also create a note (like a blog post) and upload photos (screenshots, etc).

Tune in next week!

The resource site spotlight (aka wiki tiki utility posts) should happen every week, is written by Euripides from outdps.com, and endeavors to fill your favorites bar with an unmanageably large quantity of WOW resource sites. So much knowledge that it hurts. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

This week at Blog Azeroth we get all political!  Euripides of OutDPS muses upon the following point

The US hunting and gun lobby is quite powerful. The US Fish and Wildlife Service says 12.5 million people hunted (in real life) in the US in 2006. The number of WOW players has reached 11 million globally, over half of them US based.
Here’s my idea for a shared topic: How would our lives change if a lobby representing the interests of US WOW players had as much clout per capita as the hunting (and long gun) lobby?

Would President Obama have photo-ops with him rolling a Paladin? Raiding Naxx? Would politicians have to try to balance their message so they attract people who are partial to both Horde and Alliance?

Rising to the challenge is MomentEye from NoobSaysWoW, with a highly entertaining look at the possible strengths (and weakness!) of the WoW player base in the political scene.  I take a more… Warlocky view of the situation at Destructive Reach.

What do you think?  Could WoW players really influence global affairs?  Have your say by linking your post on the Blog Azeroth Forums, or suggest your own Shared Topic!

CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: Buff’D – Player Powered WoW News (Contest Info)

Round and Round and Round

We had a great discussion at the round table and had upwards of 50 people in the chat room. It was a lively and entertaining discussion.

Next week…

Next week we’ll have a Brajana from Mend Pet.

(Opening song "Monster Techno Blues" is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

1st: The Brothers Grinn
2nd: Belghast of Tales of the Aggronaut
3rd: Boize the Druid of Moonglade: We bring the boom

Thank you to everyone that submitted an entry! If you still want to do artwork for us, you are always welcome. Got a great idea for a tshirt design? For just some cool art we could use on the site or on a mug or somthing?  Submit it.. Nothing says we won’t find some cool swag to send you

UPDATE: TShirts are now available at our T-Shirt Store!

WINNER

front:

back:

• When is it?: This live show is scheduled for Thursday July 9th at 9:30pm PST (12:30 am EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

Why?

If you’re in a guild large enough that you never need to play with people from outside of it, and you know that everyone is geared and skilled enough for anything you’d ever want to do with them, then you would not need this site. If, however, you want to get some information about someone without knowing them, this site can help. Anyone can look someone up on the official armory, but the information you get there is very dry, and unless you know a lot about the class and spec of the person you’re looking into, you might not be able to parse out useful data (is he a hunter enchanting strength?).

Be.imba knows enough about every class and spec that it can tell you what enchants are acceptable, sometimes whether the spec is appropriate, and generally how good the player’s gear and setup are. It has limitations of course. The most serious is that it obviously can’t tell you how skilled a player is. Anyone will tell you that skill is the most important factor in an individual’s performance. I’ve seen well geared terrible players and terribly geared amazing players, and I’d happily group with the latter.

Also, it doesn’t always know whether a spec is correct, and whether the person is using their gem slots wisely. In addition, some people are capable of gaming the site to look better than they really are.

This said, it’s a valuable tool and another data point. Having a high imba score means that the person you’re looking at is more likely to be better geared than not, and this could mean that they’re the right person for your pug or guild.

How?

Be.imba.hu is easy to use. Enter the zone, realm, and character you want to search, and click “query report”. Note that you can switch to a cached version search if the armory is down.

You’ll be sent to the results page. I looked myself up to generate this, and please note that it can take a while. The top half of the page shows a summary of any issues the search finds. In my case, you can see that it suggests I upgrade my paltry +8 to stats to the much more powerful and awe-inspiring +10 to stats. You can also see that I run 3 hit rating below cap.

The second half of the page shows us my current and highest gear score (in case you caught me in pvp gear), as well as a handy dandy little graph that claims to be able to predict where I need my upgrades from and what content I can be expected to handle myself in. In my case, imba can’t tell you if I’ve specced properly because they don’t know about marks hunters to tell one way or another.

Now, as I said earlier, this report might only be telling you how much I paid for my account, and I might be the worst huntard you’ve ever had the misfortune to run with. Alas, there’s no database for suck. Yet. I’ll be the first to break the news when it’s released, don’t you worry

The resource site spotlight (aka wiki tiki utility posts) should happen every week, is written by Euripides from outdps.com, and endeavors to fill your favorites bar with an unmanageably large quantity of WOW resource sites. So much knowledge that it hurts. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Well, their loss. I will be writing guides to various tools contained in the Big List Of Warcraft Utility Sites using the name “Resource Site Spotlight”. These are supposed to be weekly, but I’m a hunter. You can count on me to stand in the fire and roll on rogue loot, but that’s about it.

Since I can remember, Blizzard has always inserted the odd pop culture reference or joke in either NPC names or achievements more recently, so I thought it might be interesting to discuss the effect of this stuff on the game.

Contributing to the discussion of all things funny, punny (or even sometimes dunny related) are the following

Gordon from We Fly Spitfires

MomentEye from Noob Says WoW

If you wish to make your own contribution to this topic, or have a topic of your own to suggest, visit the Blog Azeroth Forums!

WELCOME TO OUR NEW SPONSOR: Buff’D – Player Powered WoW News (Contest Info)

General News

- BoP Item trading (link)
- Blizzcon 2009 Live Stream (link)
- Death Knight Q&A: (link)

Hot Topics from the Nether!

- Epic Gems and Jewelcrafting in 3.2 from Siha at Banana Shoulders
- A Midsummer Night’s RP Writing Contest from Anna of Too Many Annas
- How Latency Affects [hunter] DPS by @swertel via The Hunting Lodge

Special Guest of the Week – Stompalina and Hafrot

From the Show

During the show Nib mentioned that Taurens get “Crazed monkey cat” form.. and everyone essentially looked at Nib like she’d grown another head. HA!!! see here: From WowInsider: “in patch 2.3, Blizzard has modified the tauren cat form’s face to look more like a lion and less like a monkey”

So there!

Warlock Resources:
Warlock’s Den
Raider101
Mystic Chicanery

Wordpress Wow Plugins:
Wow character display (separate page.. maybe sidebar?)
WoW Armory plugin (sidebar..)
WowHead Item Tooltips (just put some js in your site somewhere)..

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
- (guild leadership) No Drama is Good Drama
- (Mages) Arcane Envoy
- (druid) Rusled Leaves
- (off-specs) The Offspec Experiments
- (druid) Wild Growth
- (Gaming) A Gamer of Sorts
- (guild leadership and alts) Two Nation Army

We’d like to encourage all of you to visit the TNB Wiki and be sure to be listed in the Big List of Blogs.

Next week…

Next week we’ll have a Round Table with several past guests. Well be discussing 3.2, class balance and anything else that comes up!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

UPDATE: Joining us will be Patrick Beja, Big Bear Butt Blogger, Larísa of the Pink Pigtail Inn and Bre!!

• When is it?: This Euro-friendly show is scheduled for Friday, July 3rd at noon PST (3:00 pm EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

We are still looking for your questions for Stompalina. Please email info@twistednether.net or twitter @TwistedNether and get your questions asked in the show.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Friday, June 26th at 9:30 pm PST (12:30 am EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

We have all been there, whether it be on the dying side or the ‘watch what you are doing!’ side.  Void zones.  Fire walls.  Other massive blobs of certain doom that appear on the screen.  One thing that people always get irate about is people not watching their surroundings during raids, so it is a very popular topic that Lissanna from Restokin has suggested for this week.

As a raid healer, a common thing these days is trying to balance keeping everyone in your raid alive, while still being able to move when you need to (ie. having the right amount of situational awareness to your surroundings during raids).
I thought it would be neat to see how all the classes (even tanks and DPS) handle the multi-tasking that is required during raids. Do tanks and DPS sometimes have tunnel vision and forget to watch for the AOE effects or whatever they need to move out of? How do other healers deal with avoiding the tunnel vision problem?

Contributing to the anti-tunnel vision cause are the following

Shopshopshop from Runeforge Gossip

The Renaissance Man from Children of Wrath

Almaster of Lux Legis

Kahleena of Fel Deeds Awake!

Aeltyra of And Two Rogues

Euripides of OutDPS

Honorshammer of Honor’s Code

Molsan of MolsanMethod

Boize of Moonglade

Kae at Dreambound

Some really great contributions this week, with plenty of food for thought for those of us (not me, I swear!) who are a bit prone to, um… standing on the black puddles of doom.  Remember to keep the contributions coming!  Visit the BlogAzeroth forums to read past posts, make your own contributions and suggest your own topics!

General News

3.2 Patch notes

Mage Q&A: (link)

MidSummer Fire Festival has begun!

Molly is back with a new episode of Women of Warcraft Video podcast. Ep #51 is out. We look forward to many more to come!

Hot Topics from the Nether!

Tree Bark Jacket – Counter Rant: Not All Hardcore Raiders are a$$holes, you know – (counter to : Tired of the term Casual )
4Haelz – Loot Conscious or Loot Whoring

Quick notes:
Honor’s Code – Back To Basics: The 969 Paladin Threat Rotation
Gray Matter – 3.2 End of Lunar vs. Solar

Petaholics Anonymous

From Lady Jess:

Twisted Blog of the Week

From the Show

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
- (Ret Paladin) Failed to Bubble
- (warrior tank) Journeytank
- (guild website) Lux Legis
- (Shadow Priests) Don’t Flay me, Bro!
- (moonkin) Moonglade
- (dk/Paladin) Confused souls
- (paladin) Practical Paladin
- (druid) A Druid’s Evolution
- (LGBT) Gays on WoW

We’d like to encourage all of you to visit the TNB Wiki and be sure to be listed in the Big List of Blogs.

Next week…

Next week we’ll be chatting with Stompalina and Hafrot from Rawrcast.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

EDIT: Ok.. mabye Brunnhildar isn’t from Bugs Bunny.. But, you know.. it’s an interesting coincidence..

We are still looking for your questions for Veronica. Please email info@twistednether.net or twitter @TwistedNether and get your questions asked in the show.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, June 18th at 9:30 pm PST (12:30 am EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

General News

3.2:
- Mounts changes (link)
- Isle of conquest details (link)
- new portal and zeppelin path

- shaman Q&A (link)

Meta Gems

Wordpress 2.8 was released, some people having problems with widgets but mostly was a very smooth launch.

Hot Topics from the Nether! (TNTCast!)

Molson Method posted about Raid Organizers are Just as Important as Raid Leaders
Honors Code – Paladin Vocabulary, “Holy”
Mend Pet – Six Ways to Deal with Blogger Block

If you have a blog post or have read a blog post you think is especially ‘cast worthy please send it to info@twistednether.net or tweet it to @TwistedNether. Be sure to follow @TwistedNether to catch all the #TNTCasts that go out.

Petaholics Anonymous

From Lady Jess:

Twisted Blog of the Week

Cadistra from World of Warcraft, Eh?
-My ‘real’ work: I work for a startup company called Fit Brains (link). I’m the [concept] artist, character artist, animator, background artist, and..anything that doesn’t involve either design or 3D.

-Webcomics!
I’ve been reading some of these series for years, and some for only months. They all inspire me in different ways to not only be a better artist, but a better storyteller and comic writer:
-Awkward Zombie (link)
-LFG (link)
-Penny Arade (duh…^_~) (link)
-Dinosaur Comics (link)
-[The Adventures of] Dr. McNinja (link)
-DUMM Comics (link)
-Nedriod.com (link)
-Order of the Stick (link)
-Girly (link)
-Teh Gladiators (link)
…’Wasted Talent’ by Angela Melick. (link) I love the fact that she’s relevant local talent. =)

From the Show

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
- (random) My World on Warcraft
- (druid) Of Soil and Spirit
- (Leveling) Psynister’s Notebook (@psynister)
- (leadership) pwnwear
- (priest) Standing at the back in my sissy robe (brevity did not occur me at the time of making)
- (warlock) The Path to Destruction
- (druid) Tranquility Druid
- (achievements) Bahoom: the achievement whore

We’d like to encourage all of you to visit the TNB Wiki and be sure to be listed in the Big List of Blogs.

Next week…

Next week we’ll be chatting with Veronica Belmont of Techzilla, Qore and VeronicaBelmont.com.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

General News

Patch 3.1.3 went out to the live realms last tuesday (Jun 2) (patch notes)
Players on the realms that were down for super-extended maintenance, etc. Will be getting a free 24 hours of play time within the next 2 weeks.
iPhone/iTouch Authenticator app is now available in Europe

Mountain Dew Battle bots now available (http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/). Log on and get one! Seems like you -can- get it if you’re in the EU. Not sure if that’s a bug. You’ll need to log in and get fuel in order for your battle-bot to .. battle.

Meta Gems

June 10th, is the target date for the release of WordPress 2.8.

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

Hot Topics from the Nether!

We had alot of really good topics this week for TNTCast. If you have a post for the Twisted Nether Twittercast please email to info@twistednether.net or twitter to @TwistedNether” See recent posts to #TNTCast.

In the show we especially called out the following hot topics:
Restokin – Lissanna A look at the behavioural psychology of random loot
Sad note: Stop from the Stoppable Force is quitting wow and wow blogging booo…
No Stock UI – Parental Advisory

Twisted Guest of the Week – Honorshammer from Honor’s Code

Maintankadin read the stickies
969 pally tanking rotation
Blessing of Kings: No room for Johnny (discussion of Magic the Gathering player archetypes)

From the Show

We chatted about the Meetup at Blizzcon’09. We’d love to add you to the list.

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
- (druid) Go for the Eyes
- (varies) When Enraged
- (druid) I, Moonkin
- (mmorpg) We Fly Spitfires
- (druid) Druidic Muse
- (varies) Screenshots by Jezi
- (warrior) Aggro Junkie
- (shaman) Shaman noob
- (warlock) Fel Deeds Awake
- (paladin) A Bit of Lance
- (druid) The new HoTness (doodlebug, from Hots’n dots and Road to Blizzcon)
- (art) Art Azeroth
- (guild leadership) /officerchat
- (druid) HoTs Tree
- (druid) Limb from limb
- (hunter) Out of Ammo
- (paladin) Molsan Method
- (druid) Wild Growth

We’d like to encourage all of you to visit the TNB Wiki and be sure to be listed in the Big List of Blogs.

Next week…

Next week we’ll be chatting with Cadistra of World of Warcraft, eh?.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, Devin Anderson – The Pilot remixed, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was suggested by Nigiri from Adventures of a Priest 

Nigiri asks:

“I would love to read blogger’s thoughts on who they like to have heal them. Would you prefere a Holy priest of a Disc priest? A Holy pally or a Resto druid. Shammy maybe?
As a disc healer, I know how I feel about my healing. How do you feel about who’s healing you?

Sar’s edit: Additionally, it would be great to get some healer’s views of DPSers or Tanks (not that we don’t hear enough of it or anything!) That way everyone gets a chance to participate”

And this week’s contributors are!

• Aeltyr from And Two Rogues
• Misneach from Aggro Junkie
• Tigerfeet from Secret Agent Cat
• Spink from Welcome to Spinksville

Have a Shared Topic you would like to suggest?  Got something to contribute to an existing one?  Make sure you visit the Blog Azeroth forums!

We are still looking for your questions for Cadistra. Please email info@twistednether.net or twitter @TwistedNether and get your questions asked in the show.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, June 11th at 9:30 pm PST (12:30 am EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

We’ll be interviewing live so join us on our Live page. See you then!

Yes! You heard right. If you are reading this on a feed reader, you need to come check it out! Nibuca and I spent a bunch of time working on the site and this is what we came up with.  I hope you like it. Let us know! Any ideas or suggestions that would make it better? Leave comments on this post!

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was suggested by Spinks of Spinksville, and asks us to dig back to our school skills and deconstruct our favourite quest. 

"Go on, choose any quest from WoW and explain what it’s saying. You say you can see behind the curtain: show us. I want the art, not the craft."
So the topic is: talk about your favourite quest, questline, or zone and why you love it so much. Is it the theme? The way it eases characters from one hub to the next? The atmosphere? The cute? The story?”

Spinks wrote two posts addressing this (for extra credit!), and was originally inspired by this post from Massively.

And this week’s contributors are!

Belghast from Tales of the Aggronaut

Nigiri from Adventures of a Priest

Saresa from Destructive Reach

Have a Shared Topic you would like to suggest?  Got something to contribute to an existing one?  Make sure you visit the Blog Azeroth forums!

Next week’s Shared Topic is: Non Healer’s View of Healers (and vice versa!), suggested by Nigiri.

General News

The Ferraro Fiasco (link)
New Druid Cat and Bear Forms (link)
“is tree form fun?” (link to gc post)
Ghostcrawler on Pet scaling (link to Mania’s Arcania)
3.1.3 out (tuesday)
Blizzcon Tickets done.

Meta Gems and Hot Topics from the Nether!

What is the Twisted Nether Twittercast? (#TNTCast) We’re “adding value” to our twitter feed (@TwistedNether) by tweeting out links to interesting articles.
“I’ve found an interesting blog post, how do I get it listed in the #TNTCast?” Email us at tntcast@twistednether.net or tweet us @TwistedNether.

A new site called Nourish to your attention. It’s a little different in that it is a WoW Recipe Site.. No.. not like that.. REAL recipes..

Have to talk about the “right way to blog”
Matticus: The Purple Kodo: 13 Points of Blogging
Lassirra: 10 Reasons Why Your WoW Blog is Boring
Saresa: Open Letter To The Blogging Masses
Blog Azeroth: Discussion of what constitutes a good WoW Blog
many others…

Jess’s Pet segment.

Twisted Blog of the Week

From the Show

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:

- (paladin) Pally Tankadin
- (Priest) Adventures of a Priest
- (alts) tank, heal, dps – an altoholic at his best
- (Druid) The Druid Reliquary
- (Druid) Mark of the Wild
- (Hunter) OutDPS

We’d like to encourage all of you to visit the TNB Wiki and be sure to be listed in the Big List of Blogs.

Next week…

Next week we’ll be chatting with Honorshammer of Honor’s Code. Yeah for Pallies!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning)

We are still looking for your questions for Honor. Please email info@twistednether.net or twitter @TwistedNether and get your questions asked in the show.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, June 4th at 9:30 pm PST (12:30 am EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

Okay, so, I’ve got this idea. What if we combined Facebook’s recent activity feed, Twitter’s ability to tell anyone what you’re doing at any given time and list of followers, and your WoW characters? And then we made it all available in an addon that records all that stuff automatically?

Wait, what do you mean it’s already been done? Oh yeah, it has – it’s this week’s Wiki Tiki Utility, WoW.com Profiles!

Formerly known as WoW Insider, the new WoW.com brought with it an unexpected feature besides the usual rebranding and redesign – social networking! WoW.com Profiles are sort of like Twitter, Facebook, and a blog all wrapped up in one. You can sign up with your AIM or AOL username (WoW.com is owned by AOL, after all) and get started right away.

Taking full advantage of WoW.com Profiles also requires you to install their addon and associated application. These two work together – the addon collects data, keyed to a unique key in your profile settings, and the application parses them and turns them into activity posts. WoW.com has a pretty thorough guide to getting started!

Here’s a whirlwind tour of available features (and feel free to browse my profile while you’re at it):

• Feed Notes and In-Game Blog Posts: Available both outside the game (from the “Post a Feed Note” box on your profile) and inside it (using the /note command or the WoW.com Addon minimap button), this is basically Twitter for WoW, without the character limit. If you’re about to head out for a raid, want to share ongoing activity with your loyal profile followers, or simply want to say “urgh Death Knights are so OP why are we losing this AB????” then the Feed Notes are there for you! Feed Notes can also be filtered to show posts from your friends or your guild – how cool would it be to have your whole guild on here, chattering away even when you’re not inside the game?
• Blogging: That’s right, your WoW.com Profile can also double as your own blog! Granted, I haven’t done a whole ton of it (only a few posts here and there), but if you wanted a blog with basically zero setup, WoW.com Profiles has you covered. No RSS feeds for blogs yet, unfortunately, but keep in mind this is basically just an impressive first draft – that feature could always be coming down the road! The editor’s easy to use, and basically covers what you need – text formatting, pics, links, the foundations of an actual blog posting tool.
• Photo Gallery: Yep, you can add photos too! It’s got an upload limit of four at a time, and is what feels like the least stable part of the site at the moment (I got lots of out-of-memory errors trying to upload all four screenshots at once, and one of my screenshots seems to have a perpetually broken thumbnail), but it’s there and it’s at least mostly functional. It does automatically create a nice slideshow-type feature for you in your galleries.
• Followers: No social networking site would be complete without a list of people who think you’re actually interesting, and WoW.com Profiles are no different. Granted, I only managed to accrue 3 followers (one of whom was Alex Ziebart – hi Alex!), but if you wanted to, this could easily be your main “home” for WoW players!
• Individual Character Pages: While your profile does contain info about all your characters, it turns out each of your characters gets their own pages too! As you can see, my warrior’s been pretty busy.

There’s probably even more that I missed, but that’s probably enough to get you started with your WoW.com Profile. Go on over and check it our for yourself – and follow me. I totally need friends!

Mondays are Wiki Tiki Utility days here at TNB! Stop from The Stoppable Force highlights a resource from the Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of WoW Utilities, hopefully giving you a nice boost to your Intellect – or at least your skill at World of Warcraft. If you’ve got a utility you’d like to see listed on the wiki, or one you’d like to nominate for the Wiki Tiki Utility post, please send an email to stop AT twistednether DOT net with the subject “Wiki Tiki Utility”!

We have all heard of the term Huntard, and we all know what it means, and know one of them.  However, what about the people who do not ‘know how to play’ in the other classes?  What do they look like?  What do we call them?  How can we identify one of these players who is so heinously bad that we need to come up with a name especially for people like them?

Responding to the call this week were the following (with some excellent ideas of their own… except maybe for that last blogtard there on the list!)

Shopshopshop at Runeforge Gossip with ‘How Not to be a Fail Knight’

Nigiri at Adventures of a Priest with ‘I Feel like a Priestard’

Aeltyr at Runed Death with ‘Deathtard’

Myself at Destructive Reach with ‘Did You Just Spot that Locktard?’

Keep the Shared Topics coming folks!  Next week’s Shared Topic challenges you to deconstruct your favourite quest, and was suggested by Spinks of Spinksville.  If you have an idea for a Shared Topic, or wish to perhaps write about one on your blog, remember to visit the Blog Azeroth forums!

We are still looking for your questions for Anea. Please email info@twistednether.net or twitter @TwistedNether and get your questions asked in the show.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, May 28th at 9:30 pm PST (12:30 am EST). Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

General News

WowInsider is reborn as Wow.com a World of Warcraft news and social networking site. We’re not sure what to think. We’d love to read your thoughts on the forum ( http://blogazeroth.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1662)

WoW.Com announced two new twitter feeds, @WoWStatusUS and @WoWStatusEU . Subscribe to read about your realm’s status. Tsaavik created an RSS feed for the alert as well, if you’d rather use that.(???) And those aren’t the only way to track Blizzard’s realm status on Twitter — looks like @wowalerts has been in action for a little while, and @pikestaff pointed out @wowrealms . Wow is alive in well in the twitter-verse.

Patch 3.1.2 is now live. Check out the patch notes for more info.

Hunter Buff incoming. (link)

Mountain Dew pet (link)
FACEBOOK http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/wow/incoming_earn.php?e=502&url=facebook.com%2Fmountaindew
TWITTER http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/wow/incoming_earn.php?e=501&url=twitter.com/mtn_dew
MYSPACE http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/wow/incoming_earn.php?e=503&url=myspace.com/mountaindew
MOUNTAINDEW http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/wow/incoming_earn.php?e=201&url=mountaindew.com

Patch 3.2 announced. (link)

Meta Gems

Wordpress 2.8 beta 1 available. (link) (more info)

Hot Topics from the Nether!

Big Bear Butt: The grass is always greener (link)

Wowgrrl.com: Input on Raider consumables (link)

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest – Patrick Beja!

FrenchSpin (http://frenchspin.com)
The Instance (addons) – The biggest Wow show out there.
Azeroth.fr – Azeroth.fr is the premier World of Warcraft podcast in France. Monthly since 2006.
Le rendez-vous Tech – A tech news show for everyone. With guests from the french blogging and podcasting scene, Le rendez-vous Tech is as interesting as it is entertaining. We cover tech, gadgets, internet new
How I Wow – At the intersection of Wow and real life.
The Phileas Club – a monthly audio podcast about what happens in the world. Each month, we gather people from around the world, and ask them what has been making the news in their country, on both local and international fronts.
Noobz – Every wednesday a new comic strip about a gamer like you.
Totally unnamed movie show with Turpser (and others). Movielicious

From the Show

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
- (druid) Dreambound
- (warrior) Where’s Me Drink?
- (casual raiding/tanking) WoW Stuck
- (mage) Sheep Blink Invis
- (druid) Moonkin.info
- (various) Simply azeroth
- (Warrior) Wordy Warrior (moved)
- (Paladin) Sacred duty
- (PVE and RP) Troll Nation

Dominos, the addon Patrick can’t live without.

Nostromo, the accessory Nibs can’t live without.

Next week…

Next week the live show will be on it’s regular Thursday night. We’ll be chatting with Anea of Holy Discipline: Calamari Priestess Extraordinaire.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, additional song credits: Phonecasting – Foggy Monutain Morning, Joe Sibol – Hot Sexy Girls Instrumental, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

The first Shared Topic was suggested by Stabs of Death Knight Spree, and takes a look at the Consumer-Producer Paradigm and how this is demonstrated in WoW.  What is the Consumer-Producer Paradigm, you ask?  Well, to give you a brief taste…

“CPP (the Consumer-Producer Paradigm) is a new paradigm that views participants in a MMO as consumers or producers. It is actually more relevant and useful to see players in terms of whether they are consumers or producers than almost any of the preceding paradigms.”

Stabs goes on to explore this issue in great depth over a series of posts, but other bloggers have also made great contributions to the discussion!

Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn looks at this paradigm from her own perspective

Spinks at Spinksville offers an interesting and practical slant on this topic

The second Shared Topic was suggested by Xelaneo of Holy Fire Spec, and looks at guild exclusion policies.  Some guilds exclude people for various reasons (whether that be age, gender or anything else), and there is often a great deal of debate over these policies.

Trystyn at The Elitists had a look at his own guild’s policy on women in the guild.

Graylo at Grey Matter takes a realist’s approach to the issue.

As always, if you have a contribution to make to the Shared Topic, feel free to log on to the Blog Azeroth Forum.  Next week’s Shared Topic is ‘<insert class here>tards’, which is guaranteed to produce some interesting discussion.  If you have something to say about that topic, again, have a look at the Blog Azeroth Forum!

We are still looking for your questions for Patrick. Please email info@twistednether.net or twitter @TwistedNether and get your questions asked in the show.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Sunday, May 24th at 4:00 pm EST. Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

We can has aggro! Join Fim and Nib as we chat with Dezdemone from Will Tank for Healz about Wrath, Ulduar and guild leadership.

General News

Blizzcon ticket went up for sale!! and sold out in 30 mins (or 30 seconds depending on who you ask). More tickets will be on sale on 5/30. So if you didn’t get one in the initial sale, keep trying. Fim found “the magic link” that leads to tickets. So good luck! (link)

Meetup for Blizzcon! Fim and Nib will be there. Meetup will be at 9PM on Friday at the Tangerine. More information (and a map) to follow. Will you be there? Let us know!

PTR still had 3.1.2. We weren’t sure if it’d come out on Tuesday (today).. it did.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

(posted 4/28) ThinkTank: Glyphs are the new flask (link)
(posted 5/13) Alterac Volly: Wintergrasp Weeklies (link)

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Dezdemone!

Dezdemone from Will Tank for Healz gives us the lowdown on guild leadership tanking and healing in Wrath.

– Gamer Families
– Blogging vs guild leadership. Too much to do with too little time.
– Tanking vs healing. Where is your zen?
– Tanking is Girly!

From the Show

Blue says: “Warrior DPS is too low. We’re going to fix that.” (link)
New bloggers to welcome to the Netherhood:
- Runeforge Gossip
- Geekette
- Swings Both Ways
- That is Amazing (WOW)!
- From Holy 2 Shadow
- Slash Nerf
- Failed to Bubble
- 4theHorde (Sylus just now -finally- managed to go post on BA)

Next week…

Special live show!! We’ll be recording on Sunday at 4pm EST with Patrick Beja from the French Connection (among other things) joins us to rap about podcasting and how to get “celebrity” status in the Wow Community.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

A day late, but never a dollar short, the Wiki Tiki Utility has arrived to distract you from the fact that Fim’s still editing the podcast entertain, inform, and enlighten you. This week we’re focusing on a site that’s so easy to use that a caveman could use it (after, of course, he got over the shock of the modern era and stopped breaking everything in a panic). It’s also so fundamental that it kind of makes you wonder why it hadn’t been done already. And as you no doubt have already figured out, this week’s Wiki Tiki Utility is Pug Checker!

Brought to you by Nance of Alterac Volley, Pug Checker does one simple thing, and it does it well: plug in a server and a character name, and you’ll get back an easy-to-read, simple-to-understand overview of what 5-mans, 10-mans, and 25-mans a character has actually done. For example, here’s Pug Checker’s report on me. As you can see, I skipped a bunch of instances in normal mode (what can I say? I leveled without them), and haven’t completed anything in OS above OS+0.

Now, naturally, take these figures with a grain of salt (or as the site says, “don’t shoot the messenger”) – anything that draws on the Armory will occasionally have issues since the Armory itself has severe issues with kill counts, and Pug Checker is no exception. Using me again as a reference, I’ve supposedly killed the Prophet Tharon’ja in Drak’tharon Keep four times… yet have only been in the instance twice. Still, I’d say roughly 90% of the data there is reliable, so you can use Pug Checker to easily “screen a player, by entering their character name and server, before you invite them to join your group.”

One important thing to keep in mind is that there are some misconceptions around Pug Checker. This utility is not a measure of someone’s worth – i.e., if their screen is filled with red dots, it doesn’t make them a bad player! It does, however, indicate that maybe you should see if they need instructions on the fight. Maybe they’ve never been in that instance, maybe they’ve just been stuck with groups that couldn’t down a particular boss – whatever the case. Pug Checker is a tool to see who’s done what, not a way to see who’s good and who’s not.

So with that little caveat in mind, go forth, load up Pug Checker – and build yourself a good PUG!

Although this week it’s on a Tuesday, Mondays are normally Wiki Tiki Utility days here at TNB! Stop from The Stoppable Force highlights a resource from the Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of WoW Utilities, hopefully giving you a nice boost to your Intellect – or at least your skill at World of Warcraft. If you’ve got a utility you’d like to see listed on the wiki, or one you’d like to nominate for the Wiki Tiki Utility post, please send an email to stop AT twistednether DOT net with the subject “Wiki Tiki Utility”!

Lissanna has taken the blog world by storm. If you’ve done research about Restro droos or Boomkeks in the last three months (or even Ferlols!), odds are you’ve stumbled upon Lissanna’s site. Updated constantly, always informative, fresh and well-done, she’s a powerhouse of Druid information. Not only that, but she recently gained her own epic real life achievement of a Masters! She’s a student of developmental psychology, with a focus on brain development, and will also be going for the legendary achievement of Ph.D. Best of luck to her in those endeavors, and more power to her!

She’s been playing WoW for a while, since Druids used to be only healers, in fact, and has been through it all as a boom or tree, with some levelling of a personal feral and a conveniently feral boyfriend (his character, kids, get your minds out of the gutter!). She seems strickly Druid, a rarity in this day and age where everyone and their dog has eighty five alts and six still levelling.

This Druid blogger has a little something for everyone on her site. She’s written up a great piece on how to heal in 3.1, has a good levelling compendium for the baby Druid, and expresses her concern over Druid PvP survivability. When she’s not talking about Druids, however, there are great pieces that explore WoW’s community and how it’s not just a game, but something much more.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Lissanna!

Around Friday every week, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, May 14th at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Friday, May 15th) Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy. If you are having issues then go to the Ustream page.
• Some general ground rules:
  1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
  2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

Whereas Fim and Nibs are resolved to attend Blizzcon and wherefore it is found that they would prefer to not go naked, it is therefore resolved that there shall be TNB tshirts of immense beauty and identifiability! This TShirt having both an image and a saying in holding with the theme of the TNB.

All Submissions will be property of the Twisted Nether Blogcast, but.. We will give credit to the author, so make sure you give us your info including blog/website if you have one
No copyrighted material. This probably means ingame art too (although we’ll take submissions, they probably won’t win )

Prizes will be awarded in a purely subjective manner by Nibuca, Fimlys and possibly Bre..

Prizes are:
1st: 60 day WoW card [and your's will be the art we use for our blizzcon shirts that we will wear there],
2nd and 3rd: Chioce of loot cards that Fim happens to have lying around.. (slashdance, footsteps of illidan, pet biscuit)

Please get the word out about the contest! We want lots of submissions.
We’ll probably pick more than the winner to set up as shirts you can pick up from the shirt store!

Please.. don’t let Nib draw more stick figures. It won’t be pretty.

UPDATE: We have a deadline. Please have your submission (or an email indicating your intent on submitting) in to us no later than July 1st. We need time to judge and get the shirts made prior to Blizzcon.. Thank you!

• Please save your submission image as a .gif, .png or .jpg.
• We’d prefer if the image was <2MB.
• We’d prefer the “picture” only so that we can use it with several messages.
• Because we will be printing this in a large size we may end up asking for a higher resolution image.
• Send an email to info@twistednether.net with the subject “[TSHIRT CONTEST]“. You may either attach your images directly or include URLs to the images in the email.

If you have any questions or need further clarification please contact us at info@twistednether.net.

Again, apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Yours in all things noob, Saresa.

General News

Blizzcon ticket purchase details announced (link)
Meetup for Blizzcon.. Fim and Nib will probably/possibly be there.. More information to come.. Meetup will probably be Friday night at the Tangerine though.
PTR is up with 3.1.2 and patch notes have started to leak out.
Starcraft II beta opt in announced. (link)
UpperDeck announced next expansion of the WoW TCG. “Field of Heroes” will include chicken mount (!!!) and ogre pinata and “Path of Cenarius” which leaves flowers in your wake.
Ulduar gets nerfed.. and then nerfed some more. Blizz explains that raiding isn’t like it was in the old days. They want more people to see the content.
Lassira announces she’s leaving hunters (and WI) (link)
Nib rants about the Curse “premium” client.
Fim tries to sooth her by mentioning MMOUI (link)

Hot Topics from the Nether!

(posted on 5/5) Larísa asks about your “Gaming Zen Moments” (link)

(posted on 5/7) Matticus of World of Matticus updates his “state of the blog” address. (link)

(posted on 4/21) Penelope of Penelope’s Trunk lays it all out about blogging for profit. (link)

Two links from the Weblog Tools Collection about improving your WordPress blog:
– (posted on 5/9) Plugins to Spruce up your WordPres Based Website(link)
– (posted on 4/29) 9 Ways to make your WordPress blog “Smart” (link)

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Brigwyn!

– Child’s Play Auction
– Twitter
– Deleting max level toons

From the Show

It’s not too late! You can still help with the Child’s Play Charity. You can still donate and help. Please goto http://www.brigwyn.com/ and click the donate button in the sidebar and donate today!

Next week…

Finally!! A Tank! We’ll be visiting with Dezdemone from Will Tank for Healz.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

The road from 1 to 80 is a long one, and a lot of fond memories can come from that trip from the vanilla WoW lands all the way to the Lich King’s front door. But how best to chronicle it? Some of us start blogs, but if you want to specifically focus on your path, one unique way to do so is with this week’s Wiki Tiki Utility, Path of a Hero!

Path of a Hero is, at first blush, sort of like a blog. You have a journal in which you can keep entries (one is displayed at a time), you can add pictures, and so on. But PotH’s selling point is the timeline. When you make an entry in your journal, you also upload a shot of your character from the login screen. Path of a Hero then adds a snapshot of your armory stats, your Be Imba! gear score, and then arranges all of that into a timeline. The timeline is at the top of every character’s Path of a Hero page, and allows you to use a slider to view your progress from level 1 scrub to level 80 hardcore whatever-you-are. For some examples of good timelines, check out these Paths by Ryomou of The Scryers, Stoneybaby of Muradin, and Gloroth of Khaz’goroth.

If you’re searching for a way to better express your character’s journey and growth, maybe it’s time to take a look at Path of a Hero.

Mondays are Wiki Tiki Utility days here at TNB! Stop from The Stoppable Force highlights a resource from the Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of WoW Utilities, hopefully giving you a nice boost to your Intellect – or at least your skill at World of Warcraft. If you’ve got a utility you’d like to see listed on the wiki, or one you’d like to nominate for the Wiki Tiki Utility post, please send an email to stop AT twistednether DOT netwith the subject “Wiki Tiki Utility”!

Noticed that there was already a nice topic about defining ‘good player’ in WoW. However, now I’m seeing more and more trade channel, general channel and even LFG channel SHOUTS "LF good guild!", and the only thing I can do is I respond to that by "define good guild?".
Haven’t received a single answer, yet. Oh, sorry, the best one was: "to form an arena team".
So, what is a Good Guild from the standpoint of a player looking for guild OR from the standpoint of being in the guild?

A few bloggers have taken the challenge of defining what a ‘Good Guild’ is this week, with some very interesting and varied responses

Pixelated Executioner talks about the best way to find the answer to the question for yourself

T-Sonn at Melted Faces discusses her view of what is a ‘Good Guild’

Misneech at Aggro Junkie comments on how people look for a good guild and how this approach might be changed

Ruby at Rubymelon evaluates the things that are important in a guild and how to work out the value of these for yourself

At Destructive Reach I talk about what a good guild means, and how we identify a good guild.

If you have something to say on the matter, or an idea for a Shared Topic of your own, go to the Blog Azeroth forums and put up your ideas!

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, May 7th at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Friday, May 8th) Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream. See, totally easy.
• Some general ground rules:
1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

Repetitious redundancy is redundantly repetitive, but it’s true, the owners and operators of the blog Sideshow and Syrana are Sideshow, the Undead Rogue, and Syrana, the Blood Elf Warlock. They’re a husband and wife team who have been playing since pre-BC. Though Syrana’s first level 70 character was a hunter, the call of the dark side was just too strong. Playing with fel magic was just too addicting for this junky Blood Elf, and she’s been siphoning souls ever since. They’re both officers of the guild OI, and are casual players with some raiding mixed in.

Outside of the game world, Syrana works with people in need of alcohol and/or drug treatment services as a case manager. She’s even written about how WoW helps her with her rather complicated and exhaustive job. Sideshow, being rather mum about his own job, simply reports working as an IT guy, which I take to mean he is an undercover hacker for the secret services. Or something.

The blog is a great place to go for an eclectic mix of RP posts, entertainment, introspection and opinions. From cat-capers to breaking up with Archavon, Part 15 of weekly RP to exploring the (anti)feminism of WoW achievements, there’s plenty to read for all sorts. Definitely entertaining, always intriguing, it’s a blog not to be missed.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Sideshow and Syrana!

Every Friday (and sometimes other days if she needs to make up posts), Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

Don’t Panic!! We had 5 very special guests help us to hash out 3.1.1.1.1.1a. Listen as

The table goes round and round

• Ulduar: is it the new ZA?
• Talent changes: How is your class changed? Love it hate it.. want to reroll..
• Dual Spec: Have you done it.. have you noticed any changes around you because of it? Would you tri-spec?
• Argent Championship: love it… hate it.. want to make little baby champions with it?
• Noblegarden changes? holidays in general
• (can you really call fishing big?) Fishing: who has finally manged to level it? Is it better? “I leveled fishing when fishing was hard”.. is fishing the newest thing “nerfed for casuals”?
• …and much more!

Next week…

Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge and the Child’s Play Charity Auction. We’re on day 4 of the auction.. make sure you’ve bid or make a donation.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

Does this sound like you? “Oh man, do I want this helmet or that helmet? What’s my best bet for a ranged slot item? Where does that danged polearm even come from, anyway?!” Well, fellow WoW players (at least I hope you’re playing WoW… I don’t think you have a ranged slot in real life, though I could be wrong), there’s a site out there that can maybe help you.

Sure, there are addons you can get to emulate some features of today’s Wiki Tiki Utility, such as Pawn or RatingBuster, but not all of them offer the flexibility and power of Loot Rank!

Loot Rank, on first glance, might look like a few boxes and checkboxes… okay, a whole lot of boxes and checkboxes… but don’t be alarmed! This is simply your way of attaining maximum flexbility in assembling a veritable shopping list of phat lewtz (as you kids say these days). The folks behind Loot Rank have even gone the extra mile of creating class templates. What’s a class template? Well, rather than trying to figure out exact values for your class to make sure your loot ranking comes out perfect, the class templates provide a great starting place, filling in relevant values with appropriate weights, which you can tinker with from there instead of starting from scratch.

But what’s the point of all this flexibility? Simple, it’s right there in the name: Loot Ranking! Sometimes even after comprehensive tests on a dummy, pummeling a boss in an instance or raid, or comparing numbers and bits and bobs with an addon, it’s just not obvious whether item A is better than item B. Or maybe you’re heading into Ulduar for the first time, and want to know what items you should be looking for as definite upgrades! Loot Rank will help you decide.

So next time you set out to make your gear even better, don’t go without knowledge – let Loot Rank be your guide!

Mondays are Wiki Tiki Utility days here at TNB! Stop from The Stoppable Force highlights a resource from the Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of WoW Utilities, hopefully giving you a nice boost to your Intellect – or at least your skill at World of Warcraft. If you’ve got a utility you’d like to see listed on the wiki, or one you’d like to nominate for the Wiki Tiki Utility post, please send an email to stop AT twistednether DOT netwith the subject “Wiki Tiki Utility”!

It’s no secret that there’s going to be a legendary healing mace in Ulduar. The challenge for this topic is: How would you determine who gets this item? Be sure to indicate what loot system your guild currently uses in raids to distribute items as I think it’ll be particularly interesting to see how many people believe epics should be looted one way and legendaries another.

Several bloggers this week have heeded the call, with the following bloggers posting entries

Lissanna at Restokin 

“*starts singing* These purples do me no F*ing good, nothing like an orange legendary would. I smell a g-kick! I’m your basic druid looking for a guild… 55 purples good with any build!”

Belghast at Tales of the Aggronaut 

Honestly the issue of deciding who is going to get the Fragment of Val’anyr is something that somewhat “snuck up” on us and is fixing to “bite us in the butt”.  We stand on the precipice of our first Ulduar raid tonight, and the issue is still very much under discussion.  I feel confident that the officers will hash out something throughout the day and make our professional-esc decision before we start the invites tonight.

Garen and Andrea at Altoholics R Us

Generally you’d think that any lootable item would simply fall into your guild’s current loot system. However, this is not always true. Every now and again special circumstances are considered in a situation

Trustyn at The Elitists

There is a bit of a talk going around about the weapon of legendary proportions. A legendary healing mace is now possible through getting 30 fragments and doing a nice and long quest chain. As a fan of loot council I would start off with a much theorycrafting as possible.

There has also been some parallel discussion going on about which classes the weapon would be best suited for, with entries posted at Restokin and Nerf This Druid.

Got a great idea for a Shared Topic?  Have something of your own to contribute?  Head on over to the Blog Azeroth Forums, and have a look at the fantastic range of topics under discussion!

Join us, and some very special guests, LIVE for a Heptagonal (7-sided) table discussion about Life the Universe and patch 3.1.  This Twisted Nether Blogcast will be recorded live and you can participate! Join us as we talk with Hydrargyrum of Almost Evil,   Runyarusco of Unbearably Hot, Maerdred of Tree Bound Cat, Lassirra of The Hunter’s Mark, and Anna of Too Many Annas along with Nibuca and Fimlys for a rousing review of the highs and lows that are 3.1.

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, April 30th at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Friday, May 1st) Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? WE’RE TRYING SOMETHING NEW!!! DON’T PANIC!!! To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Live Show page to connect with the stream.  See, totally easy.
• Some general ground rules:
1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

General News

Nib fishes more. Giant rats all around.
Fim raids Ulduar.

Authenticators are still in the Blizz store. Go, be safe.
3.1.1 patch hit. Another free respec! (link to blue)
Arena Season 6 begins.. so go get your PVP on.
Noblegarden begins. Camp your eggs while they’re hot.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

(posted on 4/17) Stop of The Stoppable Force did a post just for me (Nibs) about how to have Windows automatically back up/archive your screenshots and your combat log. (link)

(posted on 4/13) Daniel (used to be BRK) of Brain Needs Space did a very nice write up about how to start/run a podcast.(link)

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Graylo!

-Math good!

From the show

Nibs ..um… raved about raider101.com. Rohan, from Blessing of Kings, started the Raider101 Wiki.

In Rohan’s words:
The important part is to keep things simple. The intended audience is not the people who can do 3000 DPS and are trying for 3500. The intended audience are the people struggling at 1000 DPS. After they master the basics, they can go to Elitist Jerks and delve into the deep theorycraft.

Graylo mentioned Themoonkinrepository.com and Lissanna’s blog restokin.com as other good Moonkin sites.

Fim mentioned the squawk and awe addon. Graylo has a recent post which includes more information about the state of the addon.

Link to Gnomeaggedon’s email. Message in a Mage Netherbottle

Next week…

3.1.1.1.1a Round Table! Life the Universe and Everything!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

El is a very crafty gnome – she’s your hook-up for all the basics, from how to get started with fishing to skill-training hotspots. Learn what the most stylin’ fishers are wearing this season, and find out what kind of achievements you can reel in! You can even toss a line out to your fellow anglers-in-training or more advanced fisherfolk at El’s Extreme Anglin’s forums.

Written in an easy-to-understand (and in-character!) style, El’s Extreme Anglin’ is a fantastic utility site for any WoW player looking to get started with the relaxing art of fishing. Crack open a metaphorical cold one, grab that trusty fishing pole, and go catch yourself a whopper – with help from El and her amazing pool of fishing know-how.

Wonder if I can fish up any more puns…

Mondays are Wiki Tiki Utility days here at TNB! Stop from The Stoppable Force highlights a resource from the Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of WoW Utilities, hopefully giving you a nice boost to your Intellect – or at least your skill at World of Warcraft. If you’ve got a utility you’d like to see listed on the wiki, or one you’d like to nominate for the Wiki Tiki Utility post, please send an email to stop AT twistednether DOT net with the subject “Wiki Tiki Utility”!

Theawakening, of course, would be a mage.  I’ll admit I found this a tad perplexing myself at first, so here are just a couple of the reasons he gave why

• Teleport to wherever you want. Want to sip on tea in England and by night be watching bull fights in Spain? Easy. Imagine being a business person! Expand your company, with ease.
• Conjuring your own food. When hungry, make yourself a little snack, right out of thin air. Also, through this ability, one might read a god status among men by conjuring food before impoverished countries.

Other bloggers who had a very different view of the topic include

T-Sonn at Melted Faces

Athryn from Athryn’s Tier

Ruby at Rubymelon

As always, if there is something you think would make a really great discussion point, go on over to the Blog Azeroth forum and share it.  Authors are encouraged to share their own views on the matter!

Be nice to Nib, she bites

I will still be around the interwebs and if any of you would like to contact me via email, feel free to drop me a line at Bre@twistednether.net

<3 to each and every one of you.. Thank you all for making this such a wonderful experience.

So long….and thanks for the fish!

Many hugs,
Bre

General News

Much 3.1 news and Bre says good-bye to TNB for a while. Nibuca is taking over the reins.  Watch out people, she is a lock and isn’t afraid of using DoTs!

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Brigwyn’s Children’s Week charity.
• Brajana from Mend Pet tells you how to love nature, then kill it.
• Stompalina contest on rawrcast with turpster.

And if you have missed them, here are a few posts from bloggers about 3.1:

• Mailbag: Moonkin Specs for 3.1

• Resto Druid Glyphs in 3.1

• Is Swiftmend Still Number One?

• State of the UI: April 2009

• How to be a Tree in 3.1

• On Dual Specs and the Tournament

• Resto Druid Specs and Glyphs in 3.1

• Suggested Healing Priest Specs, Glyphs, and Addons for 3.1

• 3.1 Death Knight Tank Spec

• More 3.1 Beast Mastery Dee Pee Ess Musings

• Derevka’s Survival Guide to 3.1 Release Day

• 3.1 Roundup: Specs, Weapons and WoW Matrix

• Patch 3.1 – 18 New Mounts!

• Patch 3.1: Priest and Professions

• Patch 3.1 spec for Shadow Priest

• The 3.1 Ret FAQ

• Emalon the Storm Watcher, Dual-spec’d Shaman, and Ulduar

• 3.1 and Me

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Llanion from Mad Cow Chronicles!

The effercent Llanion is as funny as he is informative.  Check out a bit of his about page:

Madness? Well… yes!

Welcome to Mooonfire, a blog for Druids Tauren folks who PVP who raid who cook who like fiction PEOPLE WHO CAN READ, OKAY?.

This blog really doesn’t have a theme beyond “Look at this, this is neat.” It’s gone from the original purpose of being “BigRedKitty for the Druid crowd” to “Wallpaper, cooking, fiction, ranting, PVP strategy, LinuxWoW guides…”

One thing still stands, though- the original line that was on this page fifteen months ago:

Herein are contained notes on quests, fights, add-ons, equations, and gnomes.

Oh, those deliciously-kickable gnomes.

Side note:

Phaedria, author of that amazing audio RP story entitled Inadra’s Tale we featured all the way back in episode 16 (check ep. show notes for links to audio) has started a blog!  Quick! All fans of kick ass stories and great RP, run not walk and add this girl to your feeder.

Next week…

We have Graylo from Gray Matter.  If you have questions for him, feel free to send them our way!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

• When is it?: The show is scheduled for Thursday, April 23th at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Friday, April 24th) Not sure what time that is for you? Use this handy-dandy time converter!
• Where do I go? To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Ustream show See, easy!
• Some general ground rules:

1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow! Hope to see you there!

This brand-new blog has exploded onto the blogging scene with attitude and knowledge, a great combination. The author, a warrior of great skill, lays the wit on thick for truly enjoyable reads that still do a great job putting forth important information. In real life, she hates onions. Not entirely sure why, as they have many layers and feel put-out by her ardent dismissal of their complexities, but she does. And she likes tacos! Everyone can agree that tacos are rad. She also works in a casino dealing cards when she’s not watching mobs smash their faces on her Wall of Terror.

Though she just started writing in April, her posts have been impressive and varied. From the “10 things” lists including how to make your raid leader love you or being a good officer, how to get through a trial period with a new guild, and musings on why she (you) still plays, there’s certainly something for anyone here, no matter what they’re looking for. And it’s presented in a well-written, clean format on a beautiful site, so it’s easy on the eyes and easy on the brain. Her voice is straight-forward and honest, with humor mixed in, so it’s easy to see why her blog is so popular already.

This blogger and her blog are going places, and I don’t just mean Ulduar. I imagine she’ll become a leading voice in the blogosphere in no time flat, if she isn’t already. So hop on over to her site and enjoy the ride!

Welcome to the blogosphere, Ariedan!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

Join us as we interview the BOB himself..Llanion from Mad Cow Chronicles

That’s great Bre, tell me when it is!

The show is scheduled for Friday, April 17th  at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Saturday, April 18th)

Not sure what time that is for you?  Use this handy-dandy time converter!

Where do I go?

To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Ustream show

See, easy!

Some general ground rules:

1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room.  We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can.  I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show.  We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in.  Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow!

Hope to see you there!

General News

Ok, so I fibbed. Ratters and Nib keelhaul’s this flubber nubber” and they’ve taken over. Listen in as they chat about stuff and.. things and prove that podcasting is harder than it looks. ARRR!

HOT TOPICS FROM THE NETHER

The patch.. WANT IT !!! WANT IT NOW!!! Ratters and Nibs discuss the Patch and why they think it’ll be here on 4/14 (or 4/21).

Also covered: “How to get more readers” on your blog.

This blogger is super fresh-and-new, having just started posting in March of this year (still has that new blog smell!). She has plenty of experience in the game, however, having played since shortly after the game was released. Originally a hunter, seeking refuge in her PvP druid brought her to shift forms rather than shoot bows, though she’s since received therapy to overcome her PvP nightmares. She’s an officer in her guild Monolith, that’s survived the test of time from AQ to present day. Now her guild is working on reaching Immortal, and “Salty” Beruthiel herself has admitted to being an achievement hound.

In real life, Beruthiel is an attorney, with a focus on calculations of some sort. This is coming through in her writing, and she’s doing very well with an entire tab dedicated to mana regeneration calculations. In only a little while she’s begun exploring addon setup and experimented with gear guides. For being such a fresh newcomer, she’s had a terrifically strong start. With her wide range of healer experience of different classes and specs, and her plethora of alts, the possibilities are endless. She’s told me her main focuses will be healing and raiding, and Druids with a dash of Paladin.

It’s impressive how strongly she’s started out, and it can only get better from here. It’s true, with Phaelia gone our blogosphere needs all the Druid resto help it can get, and Beruthiel is certainly stepping up to the plate with gusto.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Beruthiel!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

Even if you’re not a role-player, you may have noticed your toons having their own personalities and preferences. My dwarf hunter, for example, is one of those typical crazy engineers, won’t learn bow skill, and abandons pets that don’t match his armor. But, he has a cool roflcopter!

Trystan finds that his character has some rather exacting habits, but she is difficult to talk about personality wise.

If you think that your character has certain traits which you didn’t give them, or if you are just interested to see the Shared Topics, head on over to the Blog Azeroth Forums.  Remember, the Shared Topics are made even better by your participation!  Thankyou to all the bloggers who have a go at these topics each week.

I’ve had this question ringing in my head for a while now. As it seems, it has been a topic on the US Warcraft forums (which I didn’t know even existed before the WI article), and it even become a Breakfast Topic on WoW Insider some days ago, so I guess that I’m not the only one that had that idea. And I think that’s a really good question to ask. After all, we’re doing these achievements, and not all of these are even remotely hard to get. Still, I don’t think it’s easy to choose one of them, so how about three? Let’s try that! :]

This topic has drawn a huge response from the community, with many bloggers jumping on the bandwagon to ponder what their three favourite achievements are.

Trustyn from The Elitists explores this in a unique way, highlighting the difficulty of the meta achievements and the struggle involved.

Naissa from Naissa’s Rage talks about her three favourite achievements and why they appeal to her – not always what you would expect!

Skarrde from Tank 2 Heals shares the achievements that he is currently working on, and something he thinks should be an achievement.

Athryn from Athryn’s Tier discusses cutting back on the achievement grabbing, and what 3 (of many!) are the best ones of all.

It’s great to see the community embracing the Shared Topic, but it can not continue without your help!  if there is something you think would make a really great discussion point, go on over to the Blog Azeroth forum and share it.  Also, make sure you check the Shared Topic each week to see what’s happening.

Also, sorry about the sound quality this week. We were having some Mic clipping..

General News

Bre loving her new iphone, talking about BRK’s hiatus, more information on Battle.net and talk about a cool new blog, dedicated to add-ons called Nostock UI

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• What is “good enough?” Rohan from Blessing of Kings tries to answer that in his two part series.
• Bear talks about why he is not a “slacker” in response to Matt’s post on thresholds.
• Matt from World of Matticus talks about thresholds.
• And Siha from Banana Shoulder has an awesome guide how to be the Holiest Pally you can be.

Next Show: Friday, April 17th, 2009

Join us live Friday as we interview the famous “Bob” aka Llanion from Mad Cow Chronicles!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

We are going forth with our new format! Join us as we interview the wonderful Lassirra from The Hunter’s Mark.

That’s great Bre, stop selling the darn thing, and tell me when it is!

The show is scheduled for tonight, Friday, March 27th at 12:30 am EST

Okay that is a start, now where do I go?

To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Ustream show and use the password tnb73 (the password is caps sensitive. Only use lowercase)

See, easy!

Some general ground rules:

1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room. We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can. I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show. We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in. Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow!

Hope to see you there!

This guy does a lot. In asking him for some background information for this post, I received a decent shock at just how much this author has on his plate, and how much he is doing. Besides his blog (which I will get to officially in a moment), he has a podcast, youtube channel, is writing a book, collaborating on a comic book, and is going to university to be a teacher. And, of course, he plays WoW. Not only that, but he’s a “hardcore” raider, which implies his investment in the game is much more serious than many.

Trustyn has been playing since shortly after release in 2004, and has raided everything from Molten Core to the original Naxx to Sunwell to every WotLK heroic achievement but Immortal. Despite his title (and the title of his podcast, The Elitist), he’s actually against the stereotype of the “social outcast jerks” stereotype about hardcore raiders. He’s played a rogue, paladin, warrior and his current main is a shaman.

He talks about addons and preparations for finding a guild, as well as his own shot at love, and so many others. He’s been blogging since February, so he’s very new to the game, but it seems to be going swimmingly so far. He does his own podcast every week covering WoW news, and it’s worth checking out. I can’t wait to see where this blog goes next.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Trustyn!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

To quote Phaelia’s original post, the Blog Azeroth Shared Topic is a wonderful innovation of the Blog Azeroth Community for the following reasons:

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the idea of a “Shared Topic” it’s a pre-designated subject upon which writers are encouraged to post. All those individual posts are then collected into one place for easier access by all. It provides several benefits:

• Helps struggling bloggers overcome the occasional case of Writer’s Block (Blogger’s Block?)
• Increases exposure, especially for newer or less well known bloggers
• Further promotes a sense of community among blog authors

Each week on a Thursday I will post the current Shared Topic of the week, as well as some links to the responses so far. As the Shared Topic has only just officially re-started, this week does not have as much content. However,there is plenty of time to get on board for this week’s post.

This week’s Shared Topic is brought to us by Skarrde of Tank 2 Heals, and concerns the Addon Developer Strike. Bloggers are asked to discuss their opinion and perspective on the controversial change to Blizzard’s addon policy and the addon developer’s reaction. Here is some of what Skarrde had to say:

WoW Insider brought to my attention that Blizzard has changed their policy on addons. And while I would like to compliment them in a way on this I can also understand why authors would have a problem with it. I hate the idea of having to pay for addons and there are a few of them out there that have enhanced versions of their addon like Carbonite and Wowecon. I personally would never bother with getting the enhanced version but if they take the time to come up with these and then go to the trouble to market it, it is in a sense a sign of free enterprise.

Athryn from Athryn’s Tier has come back with a different perspective to most, shown in this extract.

I don’t think many people really understand the work that goes into writing a good mod, or even a small one. I watched my SO work for most of a weekend, just to create a simple mod that would summon a pet for me. Some of these authors have 2nd jobs that are basically dedicated to their mod.

This is a contentious and interesting development, and certainly something that many blog authors feel passionate about. If you would like to see how this Shared Topic is developing, or perhaps even would like to submit one of your own, visit the forum post at Blog Azeroth.

General News

What once was lost is now found…or Bre returned from the Nether. Popular theories as to why she missed the Friday live show are explored. More news about 3.1 and talks about battle.net

Hot Topics from the Nether!

Blizzard gives add-on developers a set of rules.

Phaelia is honored with a epic.

This Friday, March 27th, 2009

Join us live Friday as we do a do-over and are honored to have Lassirra from The Hunter’s Mark come on the show. Thank you to Lassirra for agreeing to participate in the madness for a second time.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

We hope you all can participate in helping our guests succeed in this! Don’t forget! Set your alarms!

( All of you who have been interviewed by us in the past are welcome to post this achievement proudly on your blog.. Since we just started the live interviews again, anyone who has been on the show is grandfathered in)

This four year veteran of World of Warcraft is ready to go, wielding some wicked horns, a solid shield and a fresh tanking sword, waiting to take the mob in the face so you can burn him down. When he’s not doing that, you can find him performing his duties as a husband and father, as well as a software QA tester. His guild, Noxilite, keeps him and his valuable wisdom at officer status, and his multi-guild raid, called Anvil Raid, hides behind him like the squishies they are.

Linedan was encouraged to start his blog by Annas over at Too Many Annas, and he began in December 2008. As the name of the blog suggests, he’s a tank at heart, and his main has been his Tauren Warrior for almost the entirety of his WoW career, ignoring his brief foray on a PvP server. He’s now on Feathermoon (RP), and his other interests come out on his blog, like roleplay and a fun sense of humor. He’s looking into how to level a Prot Warrior, ten levels at a time, as just an example of the information you can find on this well put together blog.

From patch notes, raids, gear and theorycrafting, Linedan’s got it, and will continue to provide it. He’ll even teach a prot warrior how to pad the damage meters. What’s not to like?

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Linedan!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

General News

Fim gets into 25 man Naxx and Bre falls in love with totems.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Bear tells us how you can make your alt uber.
• Zurgat from Random Ravings has good idea of what to do if you are just waiting for more content.
• Blog special, Social Networks by the blog mistress herself Lorelle explores social media and what it really means to bloggers and how to us it:

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Maerdred from Treebound Cat.!

Maer is a great writer, with a wonderful blog and a keen sense of humor…as so shown by his intro:

“Who are you? Who are you?

I am the walrus. Well, that’s not entirely True, but sometimes, I am. Sometimes I’m also a Panther, or a Lion, or a Cheetah, or an Owlbear, or a Bear Bear, or a Cowman, or a Night Elf. But most often I am a Tree. The two authors of Treebound cat are, in fact, Me. (Two authors?)((Yeah!))”

I mean, how can you resist!

Also, special thanks to all who attended our live interview! You guys are the best!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

It’s rare for me to find a blogger younger than myself, but Theawakening (or Tomas, as he is sometimes known) is just that at eighteen! However, this does not make his blog amateurish in the least, and his fiery personality shines through strongly. Currently he’s planning on going to school for a computer IT degree, and possibly teaching.

His blog, like many of the ones I’ve highlighted recently, got its start in December of last year; not only is Theawakening new to the blogging scene, he’s actually also an entirely new player! Since then, he’s written a ton about specs, lore and just, well, life as a mage! There are a lot of posts centered on lore, and he almost always ends his posts with a lore related quote or movie (and sometimes both). He’s all about the squishy casters, and claims “The only melee class I play is a Paladin, but he has a mana bar, so it’s ok.”

This mage has a fun-loving, sarcastic side with some playful deprecation of himself and all others, especially those “bullet sponges,” as he so affectionately terms melee classes. I for one am glad he can cry in good humor; we need something to keep those strudels moist!

As it seems I’ve probably incurred the wrath of all mages by suggesting that they cry (I hear water elementals are formed purely from the run-off of mage tears), I must depart. Quickly. I suggest you do, too, by visiting Theawakening’s blog! I know once the masses of frost-fire slingers have gotten tired of camping my blackened, pitiful body, I’m going to check out the post on the Ashbringer.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Tomas!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

When is it?

The show is scheduled for Friday, March 6th at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Saturday, March 7th )

Okay that is a start, now where do I go?

To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Ustream show and use the password tnb73 (the password is caps sensitive. Only use lowercase)

See, easy!

Some general ground rules:

1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room.  We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can.  I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show.  We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in.  Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow!

Hope to see you there!

A special goodbye for a special tree…

This is a special episode of Twisted Nether. As many of you already know, Phae from Resto4Life, will be closing her doors on March 19th. Tonight we want to honor and say good-bye to one of the most influential and well-known WoW bloggers, Phae has inspired many bloggers and with her grace and knowledge, not only helping solidify druids into a proud community but WoW bloggers in general. Whether through her extremely informative website, or her open and friendly discussions with her readers, Phae was not just another WoW blogger, she was a personification of the avatar she played. Intelligent, thoughtful and nurturing, Phae planted seeds within the druid community, uniting them first through the World Tree project, then extending her reach and calling all bloggers together under the Blog Azeroth tree. Providing not only a place for people to meet, but to exchange ideas, and helped, making all of us, druid or not, better.

With her wonderful spirit, Phae as touched all of us in one way or another.
We are so happy to have Phae with us for one last show, so please join us as we say good-bye.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

General News

We talk about some of the mana regen changes and Bre gets all crazy over totems.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Death of crappy podcasts Shawn Coons, one of hosts for How I WoW, writes a post regarding the state of podcasts and quality.
• SaladFork from Omen of Clarity gives some tips on how to make some serious cash.
  how to make money fast
• Lewis from Achtung Panzercow writes about makes a great tank.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Larisa from Pink Pigtail Inn! 

Larísa’s main is a gnome mage and lives at the Stormrage server (EU). I write mostly about my everyday life in Azeroth, raiding, motivation, magestuff and some general thoughts about the WoW community.

If you love thought provoking posts and cute gnomes, Larisa’s corner is the place for you!

Next week…

We have Maer from Treebound Cat.  If you have questions for him, feel free to send them our way!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

Rhidach’s blog is pretty new; he just started in December and his blog’s just started picking up speed. He’s a tanking paladin (often lovingly called “tankadins”), and, though his banner is a little misleading, he plays a Blood Elf on the Lightninghoof (US) server. His layout makes it look like his posts were pulled straight from the tankadin manual; appropriate considering his goals for the blog include making it a “repository of tankadin knowledge.”

His posts follow a fun mix of old school and new school raiding, with some mention of Onyxia with the more prevalent Naxxramas, Sartharion and Malygos information. He goes in-depth into patch notes and covers aspects of paladin theorycrafting with the hope of making it accessible to a larger audience (besides those silly number crunchers). He even teaches manners, something very helpful for those legions of uncouth shield bashers and face-tankers.

Rhidach is a 24-year-old Bostonian who’s been playing WoW for four years. He works as an editor in the publishing industry. He’s a prot-pally ‘til the day he dies (est. 2007), though his very first character was a (gasp!) troll hunter. I, personally, wish he was a cute dwarf, but only so he could tank my instances!

Welcome to the blogosphere, Rhidach!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

How you can participate!

Send us comments, letters or questions you would like us to ask Phae, but Friday , Feb 27th 10 pm EST.  Feel free to email them to info@twistednether.net

Thank you guys. Send those letters!

Thank you Phae, your Nourishment has flourished in more ways you will ever know.  You will be greatly missed!

General News

3.1 everywhere! We talk about the upcoming changes, the potential WoW Killer, why Bag of Candies are working as intended and of course, the Ice Stone has melted.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Lassirra from the Hunter’s Mark provides a great list of wow resources.
• Siha from Banana Shoulders offers a some insight on how the new emblems are going to work
• Anna from Too Many Annas shows how to keep all those alts in the money:
• Many many many sites and the days of the melting Ice Stone…a moment of silence.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Myze from Leader of the Pack!

Thanks to the videos of a crafty player by the name of Rubix, Myze has been in awe of Druids and their vast potential and OP-ness since before rolling one on Silver Hand. Two Druids later, Myze found his main, and enjoys pushing her buttons nearly every day. He also enjoys playing his Druid, also named Myze. Myze has had flirtations, and occasionally heated affairs, with other classes, but will always remain true in heart to the Druid. Myze is the fearless leader of Savant, at least while Berserk is up. He spends three nights a week in raids with this guild, and their exploits to date have included some hot group action with Sartharion, some cold group action with Sapphiron and some rather shocking group action with Malygos.

Next week… Well Really This Week.

We have Larisa from The Pink Pigtail Inn. If you have questions for her, feel free to send them our way!

Other Links:

Firelight from Retribution Paladin.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

Now, Liore’s actually been around since December, but that’s still pretty young, and she’s got a great blog going. It’s a priest blog, mainly, but not just any kind of priest! If you couldn’t tell by the title, Liore’s actually a raid leader, and she often talks a lot about that. Her “casualcore” guild has done a lot in the expansion, and her insights into raiding encounters, group interactions and guild planning are often from a unique, yet still entirely relevant perspective. She has healing posts for DPS, for goodness sake.

There’s not a lot of personal information on the site itself, so I was nosey and contacted her to see if she would give me any. Luckily, I didn’t even have to ask specifically! She informed me she’s a Technical Writer living in British Columbia and has been running her guild, Machiavellis Cat for over three and a half years! Her WoW career has endured a little longer than that, starting at four years ago. She’s also been a blogger for a long time; she’s been writing since 1999.

Liore really knows her stuff, too. She leveled Holy from her first level 10, so she has four years of experience behind what she says about priests. She only recently started experimenting with shadow form, however, and treats it like it has the possibility for an addiction. She’s witty, engaging to read and has an overall friendly tone to her blog, but she still means business.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Liore!

Every Friday, Bellwether from 4 Haelz is bringing you the Welcome Wagon, introducing new bloggers and great reads. If you know of a new blog to the scene or wish to get your name out there, please send an e-mail to 4haelz AT gmail DOT com with the subject line “Welcome Wagon.” She’ll do her best to highlight as many as possible!

If you have a new blog or know of a great new blog, send her an e-mail to 4haelz {at} gmail.com and she will be knocking on the door in no time flat!

We are very grateful to Bell for taking over this grueling activity and are really looking forward to the awesome blogs she finds. I’m not sure what day will be her regular day yet. It is possible it will still be Friday, but we’ll let you know as soon as we know.

Twisted Nether Round Table!

Enjoy this action packed show as we have Bear from Big Bear Butt, Kestrel from Kestrel’s Aerie’s, Stop from the Stoppable Force, Ratters from Need More Rage, and Vonya from Egotistical Priest

Thank you to our wonderful guests and to all our listeners who either stayed up REALLY late or woke up REALLY early to listen to the live show. You guys are all the best and make these shows the most fun

/hugs to all.

Next week…

We have Myze from Leader of the Pack. If you have questions for him, feel free to send them our way!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

General News

Bre gets hit with the raiding bug and Fim almost hits 80 for a third time!

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Bear needs your help!
• Larisa gives a great post on building sandcastles:
• Kestrel on bloggers helping bloggers
• Epic Dolls are looking for a new co-host.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Lady Jess!

Jess is a happy married mom of 2, a wow fiend, and a fantastic blogger covering not only the world of Azeroth but the wilds of Washington State as well. Go check out her site! Now!

This Friday!

We have a live round table!!! Don’t miss it! Details in this post.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

Other links:

Herculean Productions

Who is going to be on the show?

We have Kestrel from Kestrel’s Aerie’s, Stop from the Stoppable Force, Ratters from Need More Rage, Vonya from Egotistical Priest and a possible special guest!  Oh those hosts…what are their names…Bim and Fre?

That’s great Bre, stop selling the darn thing, and tell me when it is!

The show is scheduled for Friday, February 6th at 12:30 am EST (yes I know that technically makes its Saturday, Feb. 7rd)

Okay that is a start, now where do I go?

To participate on the live show, you will need to go to the TNB Ustream show and use the password tnb73 (the password is caps sensitive. Only use lowercase)

See, easy!

Some general ground rules:

1. Be nice. If you say very inappropriate things be aware you will be kicked from the room.  We are doing this to have a great time, come with a beer, come during a raid, come how you wish, just don’t come to cause trouble.
2. You may ask questions to the participants during the show, but we reserve the right to use them if and when we can.  I will be monitoring the chat room and if I can I will use the comments during the show.  We love that you are with us, but I will have to weave them in.  Even if it isn’t asked, we all appreciate your questions

Outside of that, we will love to have you join us and partake in an enlightening discussion that is sure to follow!  If you have questions or topics you would like us to discuss, please send them in!

Hope to see you there!

*Side note*

Fim and I are sorry for the audio quality during the interview. It was either crappy audio from me or everyone hearing the full blown drunken jam session going right outside my window. Crappy won.

General News

Bre starts on 25 mans. Fim gets his feathers on and we both talk about Patch 3.0.8

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Anna from Toomanyannas asks: What do you do with old characters when you don’t want them any more?
• Aurdon from Isheepthings ponders: Ever notice the green is the new gray? either it is vendor’ed or de’ed when was the last time you ever equipped a green as a drop?
• Dying for new vanity pets and don’t know how to get them. Lady Jess comes to your rescue with a guide.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-T-Sonn from Melted Faces!

Much locky, shadowy, and Death Knighty goodness to be had.

Next week…

We have Lady Jess from Lady Jess Casultree of War(craft). If you have questions for her, feel free to send them our way!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

General News

3.0.8, Naxx and Fim can fly like a bird!

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Nauloera from That Damn Role Player wrote a great post about how to deal with drama in RP setting. Drama in RP: How much is too much?
• If you are looking for a new wow podcast, check out Stompalia and Haf at Rawrbitchrawr, they have two episodes out. It is called the Rawrcast Show.
• Kyrilean from Casual Hardcore writes about Battered Guildie Syndrome: in response to Matt’s post.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Saresa from Destructive Reach

Witty and funny, Sar’s about page, says it all
“All she goes on about is her dreary real life, in some strange country named Australia – which probably doesn’t really exist – and she lies about her age! She says she’s 23… but in the game we know she’s STACKS older than that! Last time we looked she was 78! I know Human Females are vain, but eeeesh. Not to mention, she claims to be a teacher…. well, we taught her everything she knows. Once again, no credit given. When she DOES talk about WoW it’s all this boring natter about specs and damage and fire and clothing (typical female!) and guilds. Seriously. Who cares about the bozos she hangs out with?”

Story Time with TJ

TJ tells us how she joined a guild…

Next week…

We have T-sonn from Melting Faces. If you have questions for her, feel free to send them our way!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

General News

Son of Hodir dailies and the a great Heigan dance party!

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Stop from the stoppable force as a PSA announcement on what to do if your DK, raises you from the dead.
• Stompalina from rawrbitchrawr asks the question, do bloggers make better players?
• PTD looks at the philosophy of DKP systems
• Ferrero from Paladin Schmaladin gives one of the most painful pug stories ever.

Twisted Blog of the Week Married IRL

Cay aka Stephi and Fio aka Jason are the brains behind Married IRL. From their about page:

Jason and I are two run of the mill gamer geeks who happened to meet at the right time. Coincidentally, it was at a Live Action Role Playing game (LARP) back in ‘01. After a few years of courtship, and a fun proposal at the same game three years later, we’ve been happily married since 2005.

We both play tons of RPG’s, though Jas (Fio) has a bigger repertoire than I do. We play video games, both PC and console and our biggest habit at the moment is World of Warcraft.

We’re (practically) Co GM’s of Aetherial Circle on the Drenden server, an alliance guild that is considered one of a few very bloggy type guilds in the WoW-verse.

Orc News of the Week

Ratshag returns with another installment of get Orc News! Don’t miss it!

TNB Wants Your Moments

WoW moments that is!

We want you, our gentle listeners, to tell us your most “twisted” moment of 2008. A great save, a funny death, an awesome trick, that amazing gift, whatever your best moment is, share it with us! We want to know!

How to submit.

You can record your moment and send it to info @ twistednether.net

or

Call and leave us a voice mail at 206-203-4546!

Spread the word, write a post, sing a song and let’s ring in the new year with all the great memories of 2008!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed by Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

General News

QQing over Queues. Leveling and other joys.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

Pike has a great post on how to spec your pet.

Aurik asks, where did all the ferals go?

Bear offers some tips on professions and why you should pick one you like.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-The Egotistical Priest

From Ego’s about page:

In the blog world, I’m the Egotistical Priest (as you’ve probably already guessed, based on the blog name and url that got you here). I’ve been writing the Ego blog since June 11, 2007.

I wanted to present that information in an organized, useful, and at least mildly entertaining fashion, and I think I’ve succeeded in that.

I refuse to turn my blog into a money-making enterprise. I don’t have advertisements, nor do I get paid for writing. I aim to write a blog that I personally would find easy to visit and navigate, and I hate advertisement-strewn websites.

Check her out! You won’t be disappointed!

How to submit to the TNB Wiki:

Wanna submit a blog to the site?

Authors:

If you are an author of a blog and don’t see your site on the wiki, please let us know. Here are a couple steps you will need to take:

Step 1:

Send us an email with your blog’s information. We would like the following format to make it easier for us to include:

• Name of site:

• Name of Author:

• Focus of site: General, mage, hunter, etc. (Please pick one focus) If you aren’t sure what you are, email me at bre@twistednether.net and we can talk about it.

• URL of site:

• RSS feed URL:

Email that information to wiki@twistednether.net and subject as “TNB Wiki”. We will get to it as soon as well can .

Step 2:

Just like Wikipeda, we would like have some information on your site. When your site is added to the wiki, please create a username and edit your blog info. We are in the works of getting a template set up for bloggers. Meanwhile, Phae’s entry will give you an idea of what to write. If you aren’t sure, feel free to email me.

Reader:

Don’t see a blog on the wiki or a utility site? Let us know at wiki@twistednether.net, subject TNB Wiki. Please send us the url and we will take care of the rest.

Next week…

We have Cay and Fio from Married IRL. If you have questions for them, feel free to send them our way!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.comp>

We want you, our gentle listeners, to tell us your most “twisted” moment of 2008. A great save, a funny death, an awesome trick, that amazing gift, whatever your best moment is, share it with us! We want to know!

How to submit.

You can record your moment and send it to info @ twistednether.net

or

Call and leave us a voice mail at 206-203-4546!

Spread the word, write a post, sing a song and let’s ring in the new year with all the great memories of 2008!

General News

Bre gets a tan and Fim gets hooks on Rock Band.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

• Awesome WoW movie…full of ninjas, I mean, rogues :
  Percula made a movie called The Craft of War: BLIND
• Ila from Binary Colors stated what you feel when you see this video best.
• Help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) and maybe win free wow time!

Orc News of the Week

Ratters give us his views on the Argent Crusade and Ruby give us some enchanting tips!

Twisted Nether Blog of the Week: Hydra from Almost Evil.

Hydra started blogging on July 27, 2007. Originally the blog started at the website http://euphony.vox.com/ called “Liquid Silver”. In July 2008 the blog officially moved to http://almostevil.blogspot.com/ and renamed “Almost Evil”.

Blog posts consists on what is occurring in Hydra’s WoW time. Focus is raiding Warlock and adventures. Also has a high interest in creating twink characters in the lower battleground brackets. Additionally, tips to making gold to sustain raiding and twinking. Occasionally, there is a real life post.

Hydra plays on the US-Farstriders RP Realm.

Go and say “Hi”, you won’t regret it!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed by Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)