Blizzard put up a preview of a couple of Tier 9 sets over at the Under Development section of the official website, and they look pretty interesting. As previously suspected, the Tier 9 armor sets seem to share visual characteristics with the same armor class. In the examples that Blizzard shows, the Horde Shaman and Hunter -- both mail-wearers -- are similar in appearance. Two other examples are the Alliance Priest and Warlock, cloth-wearing classes, who look largely similar.
The good news with these faction-specific armor is that the design team has put a decent effort into making the sets somewhat distinguishable from one another. For example, the Horde Shaman's shoulders are reminiscent of the Earthfury Epaulets from Molten Core, distinct from the chitinous design of the Horde Hunter. The Alliance Priest and Warlock designs are a lot closer to each other, however. But don't take my word for it... head over to the Under Development page and check out the previews for yourself. I'm pretty stoked and can't wait to see the rest of the sets!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
Queue, queue, queue. Everyone must be really excited for the eventual 3.3 patch, because we've got a ton of questions about Arthas and Icecrown today. What the heck, guys! BUT YEA, I SHALL ANSWER THINE PLEAS.
m_rydelis asked: I have a question here, so as I remember from Warcraft TFT, Lich King was left to freeze on Frozen Throne, and in WotLK cinematic we see him on it, so did it just melt down, or something happend, because there is no such thing as Warcraft as Frozen throne now.
Icecrown Citadel was built over the Frozen Throne, and Arthas has apparently done a lot of construction on Icecrown Glacier since TFT and especially since the opening cinematic. The Frozen Throne likely still remains inside of the fully-constructed Icecrown Citadel, but we'll definitely see when 3.3 launches.
Cyrus asked: Do we even know if there's going to be a 3.4? Has Blizzard announced it, or are people assuming it just based on the number of content patches in BC? Maybe progression will just go OS, Naxx, EoE, Ulduar, Argent Coliseum and Icecrown.
The plan is for there not to be a 3.4. Blizzard has stated time and time again that the plan is for Arthas to be the final boss of the Wrath cycle and for Icecrown Citadel to be the final content patch of the Wrath cycle. The next expansion should be approaching much sooner than the wait between vanilla and BC (and BC and Wrath) as well, so this timeline could work out fine provided that the 4.0 train keeps rolling as it should. Blizzcon should clue us in as to how things are progressing in that regard, so keep your eyes open.
The Eastern Kingdoms were flamed and we had fun doing it. Our It came from the Blog event last Saturday was actually two events: an all levels event followed by a mounted/flightpathed event. Many players took my advice and created Death Knights, giving the lowbies plenty of protection for the run through dangerous territories. Mike Schramm, Allison Robert and Daniel Whitcomb all joined in on the fun.
The lowbie event honored all of the flames from Falconwing Square to Hammerfall, with a couple of desecrations on the side. The mounted event took to the flightpaths and completed the Flame Keeper of Eastern Kingdoms achievement. I also got the unofficial achievement for running into every fence along the way. Running + typing = hard.
A pictorial journal of our fun is in the gallery below. And I used the wow.com addon to upload my activity for the event. I wish I had used the in-game blog feature to annotate it, but I will next time. If you use the addon to upload your It came from the Blog activity, it will show up in the guild log as well.
DeathKnight.info continues exploring every corner of the Isle of Conquest on the PTR. This time we see the glory of the human catapault. I hope you like slamming face first into stone walls a few dozen times!
I want an Orc. More specifically, I want my Blood Elf Death Knight to become an Orc. I know, I should've chosen the right race to begin with, but he's now Level 80 and it's too late. I don't want a pretty boy Death Knight, which was obviously a bad idea to begin with considering they infest Dalaran and the rest of Azeroth like metrosexual cockroaches, but I made a mistake and I regret it. I seriously want to change my character's race. I'd consider rerolling, but it's a Death Knight.
Paid character customization is nice and all, but it won't let me change my race. At first I was fine with it because I thought it would create all sorts of problems from quests to factions to racial mounts... but then Blizzard drops a bombshell of an announcement: faction changes are coming to Azeroth! Implicitly, this meant being able to change races, too. Nethaera squashes that idea with a resounding 'No'. Players could only change to the opposing faction's race, which is weird. No, really, it's weird. I mean, I'll be able to transform my Horde Blood Elf Death Knight into an Alliance Draenei but I can't make him an Orc? Why not?
And of course it's a wiki, so even if it's not on that list, you can add it. But it is cool to have all of those resources in one place -- we mention them, obviously, when there are updates to share, but if you don't bookmark them when you hear about them, they might have fallen off your radar. There are so many great and well-designed tools out there for players to use that something like this, tracking them all, is great to have.
Free character migration is available from July 1st till the 7th which gives you a week to decide if you make the move or stay put. As usual, Blizzard could well end the migration when their desired faction balance on each realm is achieved.
So who can move and where? If you're Alliance and currently playing on the European realms Burning Legion, Grim Batol, Ravencrest, Sylvanas and Silvermoon (PvE) you can move to the Horde-heavy servers of Magtheridon and Vek'nilash. Meanwhile if you're Horde, and on Al'Akir, Kazzak, Magtheridon and Stormscale, you have the option of transferring to the Alliance-dominated realms of Burning Blade, Neptulon, Tarren Mill and Trollbane.
Each week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors looks at the warrior class, the dizzying highs, the devastating lows, and the agony and ecstasy of plate wearing, rage using toons everywhere in Azeroth, Outland and Northrend. Matthew Rossi is our slightly demented, hirsute guide to all things warrior. We're not kidding, the guy's really hairy. Like a sasquatch, really.
Okay, first off, a confession: I'm cheating on my fury spec.
I have been since the option to have dual talent specialization came out, actually. See, I tanked all through original WoW and The Burning Crusade (to be fair, I tanked as an arms or fury warrior because I could in MC and BWL) and so I figured, what the heck, I'll go prot for my offspec and tank some heroics. After an initial hiccough where I actually specced arms for some fights and fury for others, I settled back into a standard prot build for tanking heroics for friends. Then summer hit, and we all know what happens in summer: people suddenly want to go outside and froilic in the sunshine and you're sitting there waiting to raid with 22 people and no tanks. So what do you do?
Well, you strap on all that offspec tanking gear you collected 'just in case' and you tank Ulduar, that's what you do. Over the past couple of weeks I've tanked more than I've been DPS That's not the problem, however. It's not that I've been tanking that has me bothered... it's that I liked it. A lot.
I've read comments here, over on the Official Forums, and other Hunter blogs and forums saying how Blizzard is forcing Hunters to spec either as Survival or Marksmanship. I always find this a hard argument to support, especially since it is Blizzard that has continued to give us three different talent trees that we can spec into. But as always, there seems to be a preferred talent spec.
To me the blame isn't Blizzard but us Hunters always looking to squeeze out every ounce of DPS out of our class and remain on top of the damage meters. (Go ahead let the flames begin, but hopefully you'll give me a chance here.) We go out of our way looking, experimenting, and testing different build combinations to find the one magic build that gives us top DPS. Once we have found that, we tend to forget that we really can play all three builds. No, they all won't perform the same. And if you are in a progressive, hardcore, min/max raiding guild, well then stick with the spec-du-jour. But if you are like the majority of the players out there, you probably want to play something that better fits your play style. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it has to fit just right.
So let's look at the different Talent Trees, discuss a bit about what makes each one tick. Then look at the currently recommended builds and shot rotations for each spec.
Blizzard just released their Warlock Q&A with Ghostcrawler and pals. This follows in the series of many others, which you can find in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.
Some of the highlights of this Q&A session include:
Blizzard is considering giving different models to Warlock pets.
Blizzard wants to make the Warlock experience more different from that of a Mage.
Affliction and Destruction are doing good damage, Demonology is lagging behind.
Warlocks are underrepresented in PvP currently, this needs to be fixed.
Basic idea for the new Soul Shard system: Soul Shards will provide a combat (damage) boost, but should not be something Locks need to farm. This change will be beyond Patch 3.2., with more information ideally at BlizzCon 2009. A new Soul Should system sure would be a Cataclysmic event, right?
Soulshatter cooldown is going to be lowered to 3 minutes.
Shadow Priests have been up in arms all over the official forums recently, and it seems to have reached a bit of a breaking point. Rather than waiting for the official Priest Q&A in the developers' Q&A series, Ghostcrawler chimed into an unofficial Q&A thread to give some insight. Since it's unofficial, the questions asked are very direct and specific, aimed at the posters in that thread rather than the playerbase as a whole. Still, the tone is mostly the same: Don't expect major announcements while reading the thread, it's more a discussion on class direction and philosophy rather than patch news. That being said, there is some good news in the whole thing. Some bad news, too.
I strongly recommend reading the whole thing on the official forums, but I'm going to pull out some bits and pieces here.
The first big thing that jumped out to me was in response to a question regarding Haste and DoTs. Have they considered DoTs scaling with Haste? Ghostcrawler says... yes! It's something they're apparently actively discussing. That doesn't guarantee we'll see it, but the fact that they're talking about it is promising.
Shadowline1990 took pieces of the in-game animations and voiceovers, and tried to make it into a more compelling cinematic experience. Shadowline1990 isn't the first person to do this with the Death Knight storyline, though, and he's very upfront to say he gives credit to Invisusira for having given the story this treatment first.
I'm not sure if Shadowline1990 knocked A Death Knight's tale out of the park the same way he did The Culling of Stratholme. While I think he did a (generally) good job with it, it didn't scream to me the same way Culling did. The video is attractive and well pieced together. The final product feels a little too-full. It seemed to drag on a little bit, but some of that is caused by the slower cadence of the voice acting.
In other great news, Shadowline1990 reports that his follow-up to Culling of Stratholme piece is nearly done. So, ultimately, there's a lot of good news to be had from him right now.
That loophole is the fact that their law has no jurisdiction over foreign transactions. While it absolutely can put a stop to these transactions on Chinese soil using Chinese servers and Chinese currency, Chinese goldfarmers can still happily (well, probably not happily) scrounge up gold on American realms and sell it to American players. Most likely, this new law won't have an impact on the gold selling industry whatsoever. The people being impacted are those crafting their games on a model of microtransactions rather than a subscription model. Developers, not gold farmers, will be harmed by this. A game like Free Realms is no longer a feasible option in China.
Matt took this screenshot while leveling a tauren alt through Mulgore. I'm not sure if this is a bug or just a good angle, but it looks completely natural, as if the shadows themselves were encroaching on Thunder Bluff, feeding off the essence of all that is good and pure until the residents are nothing but shades of their former selves. Forgive me: I'm in a horror-movie mood ever since discovering that this abomination is apparently inhabiting the sewers under my favorite restaurant. (Warning! Link is not for those with weak stomachs or people who have recently played Dead Space and still have nightmares about amorphous blobs coming out of walls!)
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.
BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard's gaming extravaganza.
The last time I went to BlizzCon was two years ago and I was woefully unprepared. I regretted multiple times that I didn't have some form of business card with me. But this year I am ready if Tommy Tallarico approaches the WoW.com writers again asking for cards. Squeeeeeeee!
It was particularly silly of me to not bring any sort of card, considering I went there to work. But even if you are only going to play, a minicard or the like is a very good idea. I used moo.com because they have a good reputation and a nice interface with flickr.
Blizzard can pull off some real surprises sometimes. This whole thing about Paid Faction Changes came totally from left field, and even though we know players have been asking for it I don't think any of us really expected that it would happen. For the precognitive among us, did you think they'd do it this way, though? For one thing, was the demand for such a service so huge that Blizzard opted to devote precious developer time to making it happen? It's definitely not an easy thing to pull off.
Despite Blizzard answering some concerns about the future service, there are still more questions relating to Achievements, quests, reputation, and more. What happens to faction-specific mounts? Lore nerds are boggled by the story behind a possible change -- can everything really be explained by some Goblin invention? That seems like such a cop-out, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be better (and cooler) to implement a long and epic quest chain to change factions? Sure it would be confusing to see Orcs hoisting the Alliance banner or Humans yelling 'For the Horde!', but wouldn't it be easier to implement?
Lore-wise, it makes more sense, too. It's not uncommon to see particular races switch allegiance. It's much stranger to transmogrify from, say, a Troll to a Gnome. What are your thoughts on this planned service? Are you happy to have it as a paid option, which would be quick and painless (although your wallet may say otherwise) or would you prefer a long-winded in-game quest chain? Maybe you have some ideas on how it could work. Sound off!
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.
The time is nigh. You've brought down the hellish tank called Flame Leviathan, released Razorscale from unimagine torment, and put down Ignis the Furnace Master. With fire in your bellies and laughter in your voice, you've shuddered and deconstructed the Deconstructor. You've right clicked the teleportation widget, and have brought yourself to the Antechamber of Ulduar.
We'll be talking, in this installment of Ready Check, about:
The first trash mobs in this area aren't too bad. You can have a Warlock banish the elemental, which might save your tank a little angst. When you see the big guys (Rune Etched Sentries), you might want to brush up a bit of coordination. The big guys place fire runes on the ground. In the grand tradition of raids everywhere, don't stand in the runes' circles or you'll die. The big guys also jump around, so this is a "cuddle" fight -- if everyone's standing on top of the tank, you'll have a little easier time of it.
I actually like to go up the stairs right away, and go face down . . .
Perhaps the biggest news in the past week -- aside from 'Cataclysm', that is -- hasn't been Patch 3.2 itself but a service Blizzard has apparently been working on for some time. Paid faction changes. We received quite a number of tips about it and even saw our story make a cameo on Attack of the Show. Players have been asking for something like this for a while, and there have been incidents of entire guilds rerolling from scratch to defect.
Of course, with the shocking news comes a lot of questions, so Nethaera hops on over to the forums and answered a few concerns that players had. The biggest bummer for me was that I couldn't change race within my own faction! So... let me get this straight... I can change faction and become a totally different race but I can't swap my Blood Elf Death Knight into an Orc? Blasphemy! Unfortunately Blizzard doesn't think choice of race isn't something you can regret unlike faction choice. Anyway, more answers after the jump...
Blogatelle signs off One more major WoW-related blog has closed its doors. Too Many Annas, among others, notes that Blogatelle has called it quits, saying that Sean and Jess over there both feel they've come to the point where they've run out of things to say. While the blog itself is definitely a nice achievement -- it was an excellent blog centered on roleplaying (we've mentioned it before here on the site as an excellent resource for RPers) -- they will unfortunately leave a number of series behind, including the Katafray project, which followed a roleplaying Paladin up through the levels in Azeroth. As Anna says, they definitely deserve a hat tip, both for giving the RP community a solid and steady blogging voice, and for being accessible enough to bring in new RPers.
This closing follows the shuttering of a few other WoW blogs lately, most famously those of BRK and Resto4Life. You might say three is a trend, sure, but on the other hand, we've seen a lot of blogs and podcasts grow as well lately. Four years in, there are going to be all kinds of people in the community, in all kinds of places regarding their interest to the game. Anyone who sees a few bloggers step away to do other things and cites it as a sign that the game is on its last legs needs to keep looking. We're sorry to lose some popular bloggers, but it sure looks from here like the community is stronger than ever.
It's July 1st, which means you can head out to Nagrand and pick up your free gems the nearest mailbox and pick up this month's brew, assuming you have a Brew of the Month membership! This month we have the Stranglethorn Brew, which is certainly more interesting than the various "teehee you farted/burped/barfed/burped again" brews. Upon drinking the Stranglethorn Brew, you get a buff called Jungle Madness! Exclamation point included. It causes your character to hallucinate for awhile, and be attacked by spectral Jungle Gnomes. If you don't have a Brew of the Month membership, you can watch a video from Wowhead poster VBub that shows the brew in action at the end of this post. Just click the 'read more' link at the bottom.
Assuming they don't change the brews for next year, our beertastic journey will be coming to an end pretty soon. There's only one brew left that we haven't seen, which is the Draenic Pale Ale. After that, we're back to the Binary Brew unless they decide to put out a whole new batch of 12 brews, and I somehow doubt that will happen. Is anybody else hoping the Draenic Pale Ale is truly epic, considering it marks the entire year we've been drinking these crazy things?
Welcome back to 
A few folks over at the Twisted Nether Wiki have done a great thing and 
Good news, Europe is once again feeling some 
Welcome to 
One more major WoW-related blog has closed its doors. 