Diablo 3 it is

I'm sure it's old news for the most of you by now, but indeed Diablo 3 was the "special" announcement on Blizzard's World Wide Invitational. I doubt I need to tell you all the features myself as blizzard is quite capable of doing that themselves, so be sure to check out the 20 minute gameplay video, it will make you smile. Also see the FAQ.

Hello my friend, stay a while and... Now is not the time Cain. (/snicker)

Only 5 classes. Witch doctor and barbarian make two. And you can select male or female now, which is a great feature. I'd guess the sorcerer and amazon are likely to make their return again. Melee, Ranged and Caster were the primary classes in Diablo 1 and also present in Diablo 2. Druids in D2 sucked, the necromancer was fun but rather weak and the assassin sucked badly as well. So what would the fifth class be. Paladins again, or something new? Time will tell I guess. How about an evoker? Changeling? Maybe druids will be back after all.


Beginnings

Diablo, it didn't even have a number back then, was the first pc based RPG that I've played. The atmosphere when you entered the cathedral the very first time is something you'll never forget. Dark, creepy, mysterious. It set an amazing theme straight from the beginning of the game. I think I was still using a 33k6 modem back then.

Diablo 2 was released, obviously I got it, and the expansion pack as well. The game was good, and enjoyable, the atmosphere was there, but much different from it's prequel. Diablo was supposed to be a dungeon game yet D2 took place mostly in grassy fields, deserts, and forest jungles it just wasn't the same.
With new times came new internet, an unlimited and fast DSL connection. This opened up Battle.net, a free multiplayer network by blizzard and all that came with it.

Diablo 3 had better have an awesome atmosphere. (Which it does seem to)
Diablo 3 had better not have me running across deserts again.
Diablo 3 had better still be "random". Because random is good, it gives replay value.


Hacks and cheats

Battle.net, while good in concept fails horribly due to the pathetic community of players that it houses. Scammers, ninja looters, hackers and more. Item duping, item hacks, fake items, there just wasn't really an end to it. And there wasn't anything that blizzard was doing about it. Why would they? You pay a one time fee for the game, and they give you the option to play the game across battle.net which is about where most support ends.

Diablo 1 had town kill PK, open PK, item dupes without needing software.
Diablo 2 had less hacks and software exploits, but dupes and hacked items were plenty around. Stone of Jordan anyone?
I'm sure Diablo 3 will be a great game, but since the game will allow single player mode, offline play, and open battle.net it's only a matter of time before every cheat that was available in Diablo 2 will find it's way into Diablo 3.

If blizzard wants to score big with Diablo 3, they'd have to set up an active subscription and GM system much like they have done in World of Warcraft. I don't mind paying some extra cash every month, if this means my game remains free of hacks, scammers and exploits.

I never gotten any of my accounts hacked, many people I then knew did though. This was a big failure in battle.net though understandable since it's hard to keep track of your friends otherwise. They sure tried though, I've logged on at times only to see a big red warning from battle.net : "108 failed log in attempts since you last logged on". It feels special. I wonder if the Blizzard anthenticator will be useable for your Diablo 3 accounts?

Diablo 3 had better have cheat prevention.
Diablo 3 had better not have me whispering people based on their account name. A special whisper alias would be much better.


Trade me this

You got an item and apparently it's valuable.
How would you get some good value for it? Battle.net has a trade channel, oh jolly oh em gee. Is that it? Sadly, yes. A trade channel where about 200 people (if not more) are trying to spam (every single freaking 1-2 seconds) their wares for the lowest price, because obviously their stuff is the cheapest, best, non hacked item that you could possibly find. How much does your item cost? Only 40 duped Stones of Jordan good sir. /sigh

Alright, so you sell some stuff, got 20 SoJ on one of your half a dozen mule characters. Perhaps you even had two or three accounts. (Or 11, like me...) and you found what seems like a good deal. Somebody selling a lightning enchanted charm. (1-24 lightning damage 1 bag slot, if you don't know what I'm talking about, just go with it ok?) Or perhaps a grandfather (large unique gold colored sword). So you agree to meet the guy in a private game, he opens up the trade window and puts the item in there. You check it, and indeed it's the item. He moves the item around a bit (this is because of a certain hack which allowed players to put a "fake" item image into the trade screen), and at the last moment switches the item with a different low value one that looks exactly the same and presses 'ok'.

You got scammed.

It's better than it was in Diablo 1 at least, there wasn't even a trade screen then. Just drop the item on the ground and hope the other player doesn't have a town-hack and can teleport or something. Which is one reason why I never really traded much, too much risk. I just made more accounts and stored anything and everything I ran into that was somewhat interesting. I had some friends that were the same, and we traded mostly among each other.

Diablo 3 had better have an auction house.
Diablo 3 had better have a damn big bank storage space for all my crap.


Free for all looting

When I quit playing Diablo 2, I moved to Ultima Online, and after that to WoW. The biggest single most wonderful difference you'll notice when you move to WoW, is the loot system. No longer do you need to look around for a dozen minutes with your mouse in search for a ring which you're absolutely sure you heard fall somewhere like in Diablo 1. And no longer do you need to install click mods, roll a melee class to always be close to the boss when it dies, or pray your connection doesn't lag out when items start dropping. Indeed, in Diablo 2 when a boss dies he drops all his stuff on the ground around his corpse. Whites, grays, greens, blues, oranges, purples and artifacts. Everything ready for the taking for all the greedy piece of shit teenagers who populate battle.net.

The World of Warcraft group loot: need / Greed and master loot systems are great. Sure you can get people to roll need if they don't need something. But that's easily remedied with public shame or guilds. The free for all loot system from diablo however, is one of the main reasons I'm not looking forward to playing on battle.net again.

Diablo 3 had better have a group loot option.


Death penalty

In Diablo 1, if you died all your gear would fall to the ground. Good luck getting it back. That game was hardcore. Frustrating, but fun. It also gave a whole new dimension to player killing.
In Diablo 2, if you died, you spawned in town and had to run back to your corpse. Only your first corpse had all your stuff. If you got back a little, but died again on the way there, you were screwed. If you logged out your corpse would be just outside town though.
In Diablo 3, well, we can speculate but hopefully they will implement a "ghost" feature like world of warcraft has. It's for the best.

Diablo 3 had better not have me fighting to reach my corpse.
Diablo 3 had better not have lightning enchanted multishot creatures.. (Seriously)


A new game

But still, one shall need to try it. Bring some world of warcraft buddies along, start a guild, play with friends, slay big demons, complete nightmare and hardcore mode. Ya know, for good old times' sake. Meanwhile Blizzard has learned a lot from D1, D2 and several years of World of Warcraft. Hopefully these new findings will help them make Diablo 3 a truly enjoyable game instead of the piss hole they turned D2 into. Just look at the recently created Diablo 3 forum and tell me what you see. A pitiful heap of annoying 12 year olds screaming at each other, /shudder. If D3's online component were subscription based like WoW is, this disgusting cesspool would decrease dramatically.

Speaking of guilds, at the release of D2 we were promised there would be guild halls and everything at some point. Perhaps they will be implemented into D3 properly? Would be nice.


So, will you be getting Diablo 3? There's a poll on the right.

Ice and Blood

It's high time we produce an update for the gold making posts, the ones currently up there are already a few months old and the game does not stand still.

For reference : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

The latest Midsummer festival has proven a good source of income during the weekend, but seriously, flying around for 4 hours and only having 600g to show for it "is" sort of weak.

Since the thread on the EJ Forums has gotten locked by a bored moderator, we'll have to come up with a new way to discuss options to enrich oneself. Any suggestions on innovative, quick and easy (or even complex) ways to make gold are welcome.


Blizzard

Blizzard seems to enjoy mind fucking teasing it's fanbase, and is currently doing so in the form of a wall of ice on their Website. The wall image is replaced every day to reveal a little bit more. Supposedly it'll show the full image on saturday when WWI starts. Maybe the WotLK release date, maybe Diablo 3, maybe something else entirely! We'll find out when the time is right i guess.

You can see all the images and speculation in this Gigantic thread on MMOC.

They added references to diablo, wotlk, and starcraft 2. What new things will be revealed tomorrow morning? We shall see.


Illidan

Meanwhile we've killed illidan 3x now, sadly the 100% glaive droprate didn't hold true a third time. So we're on 66% now. Hopefully we can get it to 75% this week instead of 50%.


Comic

I'm helping This comic improve the translation of the wording somewhat. It's interesting, if you like blood and gore that is. Mind that the translation improvements might not be up and running yet, but you'll understand when you see it.


Blog Visitors

According to histats we just reached another milestone. 100K Visitors, and 200K Page views since starting. /cheer onward to the next milestone.


PS: Today's blog post may contain some spelling errors, google's spellchecker is acting wonky tonight.

Fire is Hot !!

It's time for the midsummer fire festival, which runs from June 21 - July 4 both in Azeroth and Outland. I'm sure you've seen the rewards vendor, and wondered what them blue things do? Worry no longer. The Captured Flame is the same as last year, the Brazier of Dancing Flames is pretty cool though. It dances, and reacts to some emotes. Somebody uploaded a youtube vid of it if you're still curious. Fire is pretty hot indeed.

To get the rewards you need Burning Blossoms. Which can be obtained trough a number of quests, some daily quests in your city or diminishing the bonfires of your opposing faction.

Keep in mind each bonfire can only be extinguished once a year.

Wowwiki's info on the item is rather limited, so I figured I'd make a post for the regular blog readers. OK, maybe more for myself since I couldn't be arsed to sort trough the thing manually, and wanted an alphabetic list, but the other option sounds nicer don't you think? Hopefully you find this list useful.


Some credits go the comments section on wowhead for the original (poorly sorted list) of Burning Blossoms.


City Fires

Opposing faction gives an item for 25 tokens, own faction doesn't seem to work other than daily quests. H = Horde, A = Alliance, but I figure you're smart enough to understand that.

A - Ironforge - Hall of Explorers.

A - Darnassus - Rut'theran Village (not in Darnassus City itself)

A - Stormwind - North-Northeast of the "Magic Quarter", diagonally opposite the Stockade

A - Exodar - The Crystall Hall.

H - Silvermoon City - Southern Corner of "Court of the Sun"

H - Undercity - On the surface level, just on your left as you enter the ruins of Lordaeron

H - Orgrimmar - Valley of Wisdom, South/East Corner

H - Thunder Bluff - Spirit Rise, Western Side


Bonfires

Own faction awards 5, opposing faction awards 10.
Thlop on the Official forums also posted a nice map, as seen on the right.

On top of 5-10 Burning Blossoms, you also receive up to 5g 95s - 11g 99s at level 70 (or XP if not maxed yet)

Kalimdor

A - Ashenvale - Southern Exit. from Astranaar, just over the bridge

H - Ashenvale - South/West of Splintertree Post. (near the guard tower)

A - Azuremyst Isle - Due south. of the small lake situated west of Azure Watch, along the road.

A - Bloodmyst Isle - South along the road. from Blood Watch.

H - Desolace - Just South. of Shadowprey Village, at it's entrance

H - Durotar - Just South. of Razor Hill

A - Darkshore - South of Auberdine., near the shoreline.

A - Desolace - South and slightly west. of the path leading out of Nijel's Point

A - Dustmallow Marsh - Outside Theramore keep., on the road leading north west.

H - Dustmallow Marsh - Just North. (or "behind") Brackenwall Village

A - Feralas - Northern Shoreline. of Feathermoon keep, just west of the pier

H - Feralas - The Western Road. out of Camp Mojache

H - Mulgore - Near the fork in the road outside Bloodhoof Village

A - Silithus - East of Cenarion Hold, on the north side of the road

H - Silithus - West of Cenarion Hold.

H - Stonetalon Mountains - East of Sun Rock Retreat (near the main road)

H - The Barrens - Near Crossroads.

H - Thousand Needles - Southwestern Corner of Freewind Post, on the Canyon Floor, or if you prefer, the "ramp entrance" to Freewind Post.

A - Tanaris - Right near the Alliance Flight Master, just south of Gadgetzan

H - Tanaris - Near the Horde Gadgetzan Flight Master

A - Teldrassil - South of the road leading West out of Dolanaar

A - Winterspring - North of the Everlook Alliance Flight Master

H - Winterspring - Just north of the Horde Everlook Flight Master


Eastern Kingdoms

A - Arathi Highlands - Eastern Side of Refuge Point (bit vague on this one, memory is fuzzy)

H - Arathi Highlands - Just South of Hammerfall

H - Badlands - South of the Kargath Guard Tower

A - Blasted Lands - East out of Nethergarde Keep

A - Burning Steppes - North West outside of Morgan's Vigil, near the road leading to Redridge

H - Burning Steppes - Southwest of Flame Crest (Yes, apparently Flame Crest is a "town")

A - Duskwood - South of Darkshire, just near the outlying farmhouse, and the path leading to the cemetery.

A - Dun Morogh - Nothern Area of Kharanos

A - Elwynn Forest - Just north of Goldshire

H - Eversong Woods - Just east of the North Sanctum

H - Ghostlands - Off the road north outside Tranquillen

A - Hillsbrad Foothills - North of Southshore, on the western side of the road.

H - Hillsbrad Foothills - South-West outside of Tarren Mill

A - Hinterlands - Southern Area of Aerie Peak, basically due south of the well

H - Hinterlands - Outside of Revantusk Village

A - Loch Modan - North of Thelsamar, on the eastern side of the road

A - Redridge Mountains - On the Southern side of Lake Everstill, south of Lakeshire and West of the Lakeshire Flight Master

H - Swamp of Sorrows - Just North of Stonard

H - Silverpine Forest - East outside the Sepulcher.

A - Stranglethorn Vale - On the southeastern shoreline outside of booty bay, near the horde bonfire.

H - Stranglethorn Vale - On the southeastern shoreline outside Booty Bay, opposite the Alliance one.

H - Tirisfal Glades - West outside Brill.

A - Westfall - On the Fork of the Road at Sentinel Hill, about 10 yards from the Flight Master

A - Wetlands - North leading out of Menethil Harbour, next to the Road

A - Western Plaguelands - Situated alongside the road in far South WPL, just outside the small Alliance/Argent Dawn Encampment


Outland

A - Blade's Edge Mountain - Just East of Sylvanaar, close to the bridge

H - Blade's Edge Mountains - Just South and Slightly East out of Thunderlord Stronghold

A - Hellfire Peninsula - East of Honor Hold, situated fairly close to the outlying east tower

H - Hellfire Peninsula - South and East out of Thrallmar

A - Nagrand - Western side of the bridge leading west out of Telaar

H - Nagrand - Slightly West of Garadar

A - Netherstorm - Just north of Area 52

H - Netherstorm - Just South of Area 52

A - Shadowmoon Valley - Adjacent to the north entrance to Wildhammer Stronghold, nestled between the Hold and a small hut.

H - Shadowmoon Valley - Eastern Entrance out of Shadowmoon Village, across the small bridge

A - Terokkar Forest - Just Southwest of Allerian Stronghold

H - Terrokar Forest - North East entrance out of stonebreaker Hold

A - Zangarmarsh - South of Telredor, between the main path and the small pathway leading to the Telredor Lift.

H - Zangarmarsh - Zabrajin, towards the horde scout


Quests

You'll notice a few NPCs in shat, org or uc, etc that give you a quest to direct you to the fire masters. Each of these 2 quests give 1 blossom. Once there you get a few more quests :

Torch Tossing : 5
Torch Catching : 5
More Torch Tossing (daily) : 5
More Torch Catching (daily) : 5
Incense for the Festival Scorchlings : 1

PS : Torch catching SUCKS BADLY!! Don't try to do this quest when it's crowded near the bonfire.

Also a chain which sends you to the Zoram Strand in Ashenvale. Starting with :

Unusual Activity : 5

An Innocent Disguise : 5

Inform the Elder

After this he'll give you two quests, Striking Back (Daily) which will be a different quest based on your level, and awards 10 blossoms. And Ahune the Frost Lord which will allow you to summon the boss on Slave Pens normal mode. (Heroic needs no quest)

Lord Ahune will drop a Shard of Ahune when killed, the item is lootable by everyone in the party. The boss can be summoned once a day by each player, he only drops the quest item once a year though. As by default, you can only kill him once a day on heroic mode.


Lord Ahune

Lord Ahune can drop some ilvl 110 epic items. Mostly cloaks on normal, necklaces and cloaks on heroic. Deathfrost enchant drops both on normal and heroic, as does the pet.

The boss is fairly straightforward, like most seasonal bosses. It's a two phase fight, and he will continue to switch between these two phases until death. Clear the mob packs as you enter, left and right of the cave passage, and the bogstroks near the water. Make sure you stay on the left as the boss does have some knockback attacks.

Summon the boss by clicking the left pillar of ice and he will spawn on the right side a bit further into the cave. Phase one starts and the boss will summon a constant stream of mobs. Tank the large earth elemental and finish it off fast. Don't bother doing much DPS on the boss in this phase as he only receives about 25% of the normal value. Do not melee him, as he'll knock you back, and deal about 3-4K frost damage. The boss is immune to frost.

After about a minute he'll "retreat" and his frozen core is revealed. You now have about 30 seconds to DPS him down. If you don't have full T6 and crazy DPS you will probably need to repeat this process once or twice.

I'm not sure what blizzard's exact intention was with the fight, but we've had the boss bug out on us in two different ways: We killed him when he was in phase 1 again after submerging, and dropped no loot for us. When we started the fight again afterwards, he would submerge but not reveal his core, thus we could not DPS him in phase 2. Make sure you reset the instance after each kill, just so you're warned.

Some juice

I did a little update to yesterday's post, check it out.


Blizzard Legal

Blizzard's legal department is not afraid of wiggling it's finger in your direction. As such wotlkwiki.info found out last night. You can read the following statement on their website :


19 Jun 2008, 15:38 GMT+02

Well, this morning all Admins received a PM from the Wikidot admin telling us that they had an email from an intellectual properties firm to take action if some rules were not followed. The email stated several things on what we did wrong.

1. Our wiki was called "Official WotLK Alpha Wiki" which is not allowed since we aren't endorsed by Blizzard.

2. We didn't have copyright and trademarks on all the Blizzard stuff, so we had to add a copyright line to the main pages.

3. We had to remove all "over-the-line" content, including the leaked alpha screenshots/data we published earlier today/yesterday.

So, we would like to keep the wiki online, and that's why we removed/changed some content.

Thanks for you continuous support to he wiki, and we will remain online as long as we follow these rules


A shame really, they did have a nice collection of images. I'd guess that mainly the "official wotlk alpha wiki" text was what set blizzard off. Never call yourself official if you aren't. And obviously always add a copyright notice (As most wow blogs will also be wise to do).

Lucky for you however, there's a few alternatives!

DeathKnight.info, quite a good and popular site.

wrath.wikidot, fairly bare bones currently, but they got some good links. Also their classes don't work...

wowexplored, has some nice pictures you probably haven't seen before.

Sp00nCraft, gives regular updates of the alpha and current patches.

Se7en Samurai, shows numerous videos of the alpha content.

Neogaf forums, still has a nice thread with regular updates.


Poll

I asked last month, are you Going to make a Death Knight? Well, it seems most people are. Not surprising really. I'll be making one myself as well.

Hells YEAH !! - 125 (48%)

I might try it. - 89 (34%)

Probably not. - 22 (8%)

No effin way! - 14 (5%)

Still unsure. - 10 (3%)

As i close one poll, i'll have to add a new one (agree?). I hereby declare that the next poll shall be: What part of WotLK are you most looking forward to? I'm also adding an "other" option, kindly leave a comment if you select this choice. The poll will be multiple choice this time.


Ads

I'm sure some people are far from interested in the ad system, but it's irking me with confusion really. As I've said a few times in the past, adsense was starting to annoy me, so I ditched it for the time being. A wise decision so far as PW's value is quite acceptable at the moment.

What gets me wondering however, is how on earth it's possible that people are willing to pay 0.07$-0.20$ a day for a wide banner at the bottom of this page, and even 0.01-0.02$ for a "tiny" buttom next to that banner, 0.04-0.06$ for a 125x125 box on the side (which is a fairly good spot), but only 0.03$ for the "very visible" big button at the topright. Seriously, it's weird, but who am I to judge human behaviour that differs from my own. *cough*.

At any rate, I guess there just aren't that many people with odd sized adverts available. I may try and setup a 2x125x125 box in the top right spot for a while and see whether that would make any difference in peformance. I'm curious, and like to experiment as you may have guessed. As such I will.

Because I can.

Also, there's a topic on Blog Azeroth about using adverts which some WoW blog owners may be interested in looking at sometime. You'll need to register on their forum to see it though.

Currently we're pulling around 0.24$ per day on PW. Interestingly websiteoutlook has quoted us at 20.86$ a day for advertisement, and 15227.80$ Net value. Say WHAT? Quite inaccurate undoubtedly. Obviously I'd love to hear who they think would pay as much as 10-20$ a day for adverts on any kind of wow blog. I highly doubt even BRK pulls that sort of revenue from their gold guide adverts, and they got a good bit more readers than this blog has at the moment. /snif


Coming soon(tm)

The "professions for raiders" post is about half way finished. Stay tuned! It will be posted soon, maybe, almost, quite likely, within the next week, this month, this year. Well, soon at any rate. As I said it's almost finished. No, I said it was halfway finished.

Just add the RSS feed to your bookmarks, you'll be the first to see when it's here.
Which is soon, obviously.

WotLK Itemization

The first couple of lvl 71-75 items are available for sight seeing in the WotLK alpha. Some have found their way to the DeathKnight.info forums.

Let's assume for a moment that WotLK itemisation increases at the same rate as TBC items. If the "Drakonid Arm Blade" is an entry level blue, then we'd be able to make a few interesting predictions out of this. Keep in mind I'm just making a speculation here, the actual items may be a lot better or worse once the beta is released. Just take it with a grain of salt for now.


Comparison Values

Lvl 61 TBC Blue : Fist of Reckoning (ilvl 88) 54.1 DPS

Lvl 70 TBC Blue : Latro's Dancing Blade (ilvl 115) 71.7 DPS

Lvl 70 TBC Epic : Vindicator's Brand (ilvl 100) 81.2 DPS

Lvl 70 TBC Epic : Spiteblade (ilvl 115) 87.6 DPS

Lvl 70 TBC Epic : Crux of the Apocalypse (ilvl 164) 114.2 DPS

If you compare the previous items, you'll see that we went from 54.1 to 71.7 DPS for standard grade blues, a difference of 17.6 DPS. If you then were to take this item (Drakonid Arm Blade) and were to add 17.6 DPS to that you'd come to a value of 119,5 DPS for level 80 blues. That is, assuming weapon scaling will work the same way in WotLK as it did in TBC.

Currently the highest ilvl epics in game provide 114.2 DPS. If you compare that to the entry level epics from karazhan, you'll notice a difference of : 114.2 - 87.6 = 26,6 DPS between the highest and lower end epic weapons from raiding.

The DPS difference from entry level blues to epics currently is : 87.6 - 71.7 = 15,9 DPS


Prediction Values

Based on the above numbers, one would expect the following level 80 item values :

Lvl 71 Low level WotLK blue : 101.9 DPS

Lvl 80 Entry level blues : 101.9 + 17.6 = 119,5 DPS

Lvl 80 World drop / vendor epics : 119,5 + 9,5 = 129 DPS

Lvl 80 Naxxramas / entry level raid epics : 129 + 6.4 = 119.5 + 15.9 = 135,4 DPS

Lvl 80 Endgame epics : 135,4 + 26,6 = 162 DPS

That's just for 1-handed melee DPS weapons though. 2-handers shouldn't be too hard to figure out if you consider 70.3 as a starting point. Armor would be a different matter entirely.

Still, it's fun to speculate. What do you think?


Small update

Lvl 60 TBC Blue Footman's Longsword (ilvl 85) 52.9 DPS

Lvl 61 TBC Blue Fist of Reckoning (ilvl 88) 54.1 DPS

A difference of 1.2 DPS and 3 ilvl.

Lvl 70 Low level WotLK blue : 99.6 DPS

Lvl 71 Low level WotLK blue : 101.9 DPS

A difference of 2.3 DPS. ilvl unknown.

It would appear that we may end up with a good bit more DPS than 162 per hand. Nothing is for certain yet though.

Frustrations

I told Examino yesterday that I'd do some venting today, so here we go.

Frustrations, annoyances, grief, emotions and all the usual riff raff you really don't want to deal with during raid time. It distracts from the ultimate goal you're trying to achieve that night.

Yet ultimately you'll end up having to deal with some kid who's got his panties in a bunch and intends to take it out on the rest of the raid, or worse, attempts to involve others into the whole "I'm right and he's wrong" argument. It won't occur every night, it might not even occur once a week, but once every while every guild will have one of those bad nights where you just wipe all night long on a boss that you've been farming for weeks.

Why? No reason really, a few people in the raid with a beer too many, one trialist too many, people getting themselves killed, DPS not waiting for tank aggro, hunters forgetting misdirects, healer distracted by people crying for heals on TeamSpeak or just random bad luck. There's plenty of things that can simply work against you in such ways that you'll spend all night biting nails or wanting to bash in somebody's skull in frustration.

But, it happens. And other than sucking it up, there really isn't much you can do about it.


Top most annoying things

Let's do a Top-X of most annoying things during raid time.

Constant disconnects by a crucial player. Generally one of the main tanks.

Loot whores screaming about unfair distribution. Seriously, shut the fuck up, it'll drop again next week.

Repeated overaggro by the same DPS players.

Players asking for a summon in raid chat. Whisper a warlock damnit.

Some player ninja pulling and causing a wipe. (Bonus points if the ninja puller manages to stay alive himself)

Asking for a heal over teamspeak, constantly and every single time your health drops below 90%

Buffers, slacking. Having to tell them, every single wipe to buff up fast.

Players asking buffers for specific buffs, while those are obviously still busy buffing. Have some patience, or whisper them instead.

Dead players, not running and demanding a rez so they can go afk and watch porn.

Going afk during a boss fight without letting others know, receive a Battlerez and not accept it.

Going afk a few seconds before a ready check.

Strange afk times. Also known as "brb 2 minutes" (or muffin time in our guild) only to come back 15-20 minutes later.

That guy who doesn't know how to use "push to talk" on teamspeak and is constantly causing feedback.

Players wanting to kill boss X before boss Y and whine about it because they need loot.

Long discussions over whisper during boss combat. Then be outraged because you get no response within a minute.

People not understanding, or bothering to listen to tactics.

Players who don't understand that fire is in fact hot.

Casuals going "ding" in guild chat. Or anyone for that matter.

Slackers who show up 5-10 minutes after the usual raid start time, then demand an invite because they were "on time".

Raid members putting other players on ignore. How stupid can you get really.

Drunk or sick during raid, and irrational behavior. While it's of course very honorable that you're still willing to raid when you're not fit to, sometimes it's best to just go to bed early so you'll be good and fit the next day.

Players bringing their "real life" issues into the raid. If I ever care to find out why little timmy his poop is black instead of brown, I'll be the first to ask you. No really...

Emo players, whether they go "emo" because we're doing wipes for 2 hours, or because loot distribution isn't handled the way they like it.

Players crying about their repair cost. If you wipe a lot, obviously you'll have repairs, just deal with it.

Players who forget to equip resistance gear for relevant fights.

Shamans without ankhs.

Druids without acorns to battle rez.

Warlocks who show up for raids without soul shards.

Players who find out during raid time that some of their addons aren't working.

Players using wireless to connect to their internet router.

Players using wireless mouse / keyboard running out of battery power mid-raid.

Can you think up some other interesting annoyances or general slack? Leave a comment.


Drama

Leaving the guild if you don't really mean it. /joke Fake drama, drama because it's fun, or to create drama where there was none before. Or as in the previous section, creating drama over loot that you wouldn't have gotten anyway. Some players think it's fun to break up guilds and will go trough any lengths to start a fight or even a fake fight between two friends to see the reaction of the guild. Just, don't

Seriously though, if for whatever reason you have some actual drama or disagreements in your guild, or perhaps you just aren't getting invited to raids as much as you'd like. Leaving the guild with a spontaneous /gquit is the LAST thing you should do. It looks bad on your guild resume. Any new guild you apply with half a brain will check back your credentials and guild history. If you're known as a hothead or unstable player who /gquit over a minor issue is a lot less likely to be recruited. And if you think going back to your previous guild is a good idea after applying elsewhere.... don't bother.

We've had some bad luck with tanks in the past ourselves, some got bored with the game, some felt they didn't get invited enough, some cry about loot distribution. Most of the reasons were quite simply bullshit, some were valid but could easily have been avoided if you simply talk to your officers instead of stewing in your own pool of private emo misery. Those of you who read this, I know who you are, and you know how I think about it. Grow some fucking spine and quit being a damn baby, you're in a mature guild, act like it.

A raid consists of 25 people in TBC, keeping 24 players waiting for a single one who gets his or her panties in a bunch is rude, selfish and simply bloody annoying. Is it really too much to ask to save your drama issues at least until the raid is finished?

What is it about tanks though? it's almost like the class _attracts_ drama. On top of that it's the one that causes the most issues to the raid balance. If you lose a dps, you just replace him or her. If you lose a healer, you recruit a new one. If you lose a tank, you're fucked for several weeks unless you steal a tank from a different guild. The gear dependency is so damn big that it's a huge problem to the guild anytime you lose a tank. And we lost quite a lot in the year and a half that we've been progressing trough TBC. We could probably have been halfway trough sunwell by now if not for those drama queens.

We struggle, but we manage. Illidan has been killed twice now, and we're considering going easy on Hyjal for a while so we can put some raid time into the Sunwell. We'll have an interesting time ahead of us. If you wish to join the party, you know where to find us.


Illidan is a nice guy! (No really!)

So i mentioned earlier, that our guild has killed illidan, and he was kind enough to give us a MH glaive. This sunday we downed him again, and guess what? The OH dropped!
Two Kills, 100% droprate. Keep em coming big boy!


WotLK still going strong

Rogue talents

In case you haven't seen the new Rogue and Shaman talents and abilities made available in the latest alpha yet, be sure to check out the classes on wikidot. They've also got a summary page for all classes including Rogues and Shamans to fill your need for information.

War tools is also getting regular trees posted. Good luck finding a relevant one though as all of them are player made.


More stuff

Deathknight.info posted plate dungeon-3 shoulders and helmet screens.

And, new emotes are being added in WotLK. It's a minor feature but a great boon to role players I'm sure. It's a huge list so check dk.info for the full feature. Here's a summary though:

/serious /goodluck /blame (Our guild will be using this one a lot !) /blank /brandish /breath /disagree /doubt /embarrass /encourage /enemy /eyebrow /toast /fail /highfive /absent /arm /awe /backpack /badfeeling /challenge /chug /ding (So sad) /facepalm /faint /go /going /glower /headache /hiccup /hiss /holdhand /hurry /idea /jealous /luck /map /mercy /mutter /nervous /offer /pet /pinch /proud /promise /pulse /punch /pout /regret /revenge /rolleyes /ruffle /sad /scoff /scold /scowl /search /shakefist /shifty /shudder /signal /silence /sing /smack /sneak /sneeze /snort /squeal /stopattack /suspicious /think /truce /twiddle /warn /snap /charm /coverears /crossarms /look /object /sweat


Ads

I'm quite positive about Project Wonderful so far. Ad values fluctuate, but are still above adsense's productivity even on the lower days. I can recommend any blogger curious about it to just give it a try sometime. You can use it next to adsense if you wish.

It's customizeable, you have control over the adverts, customer support is easy to reach and responds fast, you can draw 10$ at a time straight into your paypal instead of having to wait for 100$ to accumulate (if ever) and dealing with all sort of complex tax issues. It's a big improvement.

PS : LICD is awesome, go check it out.
PS2 : Don't forget Firefox download day. Yeah it's a silly idea, but still worth mentioning.

New Alpha Build - Rogue Talents

A new WotLK alpha build has been released and it finally includes the rogue and shaman talents.
Also see this and this post on deathknight.info

The new spell list posted on Neograf. Some of these are "highly" questionable however. Such as a "face slap" which stuns forum posters.... Decide for yourself.
There are some new and interesting deathknight, shaman, rogue abilities, and random bits in between though.


The Interesting stuff

No guarantees that all these spells / abilities will be for rogues, but damn nice if they are.

Fan of Knifes : Instantly throw both weapons at all targets within $a1 yards, causing $s1% weapon damage.

Sap changed : (Rank 4) Only works on Humanoids, Beasts, Demons and Dragonkin. Instead of just humanoids.

Cut to the Chase : (Rank 1-5 Talent) : Your Eviscerate and Envenom critical strikes have a $h% chance to refresh your Slice and Dice duration to its 5 combo point maximum

Deadly Brew : (Rank 1-2 Talent) "When you apply Instant, Wounding or Mind-Numbing poison to a target, you have a $h% chance to apply a second poison

Camouflage : You Camouflage, causing you to blend in with your surroundings. Instantly removes all physical and spell debuffs, and you fade into an improved invisibility state. Camouflage will break after the you deal damage. Lasts $d.

Some possible changes to mace and fist specialisation:

Mace - Has a $s2% chance to increase your melee haste by 10% for 15 sec.

Fist - Attacks from your fist weapons have a $s3% chance to reduce the armor of your target by 20% for 6 sec.


Flying mounts

Flying mounts will be useable in Outland and Northrend (but we knew this already) :

Example : Spell 51960 : Summon Frostwyrm Summons and dismisses a rideable frostwyrm mount. This is a very fast mount. This mount can only be summoned in Outland and Northrend.

Headless Horseman's Flying Mount : Summons and dismisses a rideable Headless Horseman's Mount. Looks like the headless horseman is going to drop a slightly different mount next year.

And the much discussed riding crop enchant :

Spell 51320 : Riding Crop (Test Version) Permanently enchant a mount to increase its mounted speed by $s1%. You may only enchant mounts in your own inventory, and enchanting your mount will cause it to become soulbound. Single use.


Resto shamans

Resto shamans finally would get a weapon temp enchant that's useful to them.

Spell 51730 : Earthliving Weapon Rank 1 Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by $51940$s2 and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additional $51940s1 over $51940d. Lasts 30 minutes.


Latency reduction trick

I haven't been able to personally verify this one yet (though I certainly intend to), but this video was on our guild forums. Supposedly it details a small change you could enter in your Windows-XP registry that would lower your ms (latency) by a fair margin. This video seems to relate to the same thing, but claims to do more.

Give it a try i suppose, if it doesn't work you can always revert it later.
Keep in mind this is for Windows-XP only.

WotLK and illidan

Illidan?

What about Illidan you may ask, well, WE KILLED THE BASTARD !! Hah !! We got a video as well, which will be uploaded sometime later.

And, he was kind enough to drop a Warglaive on our first kill.


Trainer skills in WotLK

There's a pretty long post on the neograf forums which lists most of the new spell and ability ranks for hunters, druids, mages, paladins. And even other classes such as priests, rogues, shamans, warlocks and warriors. As you'll quickly see there are quite a few skills still missing.

Rogues

Sinister Strike: rank 11: 150 additional damage.

Sinister Strike: rank 12: 180 additional damage.

Backstab rank 11: 150% weapon damage plus 255.

Hemorrhage rank 5: 110% weapon, increases physical damage dealt on target by 75.

Mutilate rank 5: 153 additional damage.

Mutilate rank 6: 181 additional damage.

Eviscerate rank 11: 1 point 405 to 613 damage, 2 points 706 to 914 damage, 3 points 1007 to 1215 damage, 4 points 1308 to 1516 damage, 5 points 1609 to 1817 damage

Eviscerate rank 12: 1 point 497 to 751 damage, 2 points 867 to 1121 damage, 3 points 1237 to 1491 damage, 4 points 1607 to 1861 damage, 5 points 1977 to 2231 damage

Expose Armor rank 7: 560 armor per combo point.

Rupture rank 8: 1 point 324 damage over 8 secs, 2 points 460 damage over 10 secs, 3 points 618 damage over 12 secs, 4 points 798 damage over 14 secs, 5 points 1000 damage over 16 secs.

Deadly Throw rank 2: 1 point 223 to 245 damage, 2 points 365 to 387 damage, 3 points 507 to 529 damage, 4 points 649 to 671 damage, 5 points 791 to 813 damage.

Deadly Throw rank 3: 1 point 350 to 386 damage, 2 points 574 to 610 damage, 3 points 798 to 834 damage, 4 points 1022 to 1058 damage, 5 points 1246 to 1282 damage.

Garrote rank 9: 1092 damage over 18 sec.

Garrote rank 10: 1290 damage over 18 sec.

Ambush rank 8: 275% weapon damage plus 335.


Healing gear getting changed

Some interesting info from blizzard :

Tom Chilton (Kalgan) Wrote : We’re also going to be doing away with spell-damage only type gear. We’ll be moving to a system that, as part of your talents, will let players convert healing into spell-damage and vice-versa as part of their talents. That way they can use the exact same gear, but their talents just adapt what it does.”

More info on this at Deathknight.info.

Before you cry foul and scream that means mages will be rolling on your healing gear and priests on your warlock gear. Yeah they will. Also, spell damage based classes such as the above ones will have some of their talents and/or spells changed to reflect these changes. Meaning the holy priest tree for example will have a talent which converts x% of your spell damage into +Healing. So in the end you should remain pretty much at the same level as before.

There's also a shaman rumor that you'll be able to cast totems while silenced due to them being moved to the physical school.


Professions

Blizzard is planning some odd things for skinning, herbalism and mining.

Miner's Revenge (Rank 1) - Mining Pick - Hurls your pick axe at the target, inflicted 45 to 55 physical damage, ignoring any armor. 30 yard range, 5 minute cooldown.

Scalp (Rank 1) - Skinning Knife - Attempts to skin the target alive, causing them to bleed for 72 damage over 6 sec.

Could be quite useful for paladins (who have no real ranged attacks of their own, other than by talents) to pick up mining . Hopefully there are multiple levels of these skills, 50 damage is sort of poor even though it's free damage.


Inscription

Spell description for Inscription refers to it as "magical writings".

The following spells exist with no further decription : Silver Quill (Likely a tool needed like enchanter rods), Scroll of Stamina (Scrolls as expected), Scroll of Intellect, Scroll of Spirit, Earthen Ink (Another tool used?) , Silver Ink, Ivory Ink, Random Card: Rogues, Scroll of Recall.

Ability - Milling: Crush 5 herbs to create paste for inks. This will destroy the herbs in the process.

Demonic runes - Permanently enchant your fireball spells to inflict up to 50 additional fire damage.

Recipes:

Runeword of Minor Magic - Inscribe a runeword of minor magic onto a piece of chest armor to increase spell damage from magical spells and effects by up to 3 for 1 hour.


Also in the expansion

At least four new mounts : Frost Wyrm, Great Brewfest Kodo, Black Warp Stalker, Swift Zhevra

Frost wyrms will look much like the current nether drake, just frosty ;)

Brewfest kodos will be available to both factions.

The Zhevra is indeed a zebra type mount which you can see in the barrens.

Not sure what to think of the Warp stalkers, they seem rather small for a mount.

Also, several new images uploaded to Wikidot yesterday, and today.


Adverts

I signed up for Project Wonderful as a google alternative. Surprisingly you can also use both at the same time if you wished. Much like Entrecard is doing at the moment. PW uses a form of auctioning instead of pay per click or pay per subscription. Could be interesting to see how that works out. Won't know till you try at any rate.


Layout

I'm aware that the "li" html tag may look nice on the blog, it seems to cause odd jumps in some RSS readers. I'll have to look it up in the CSS some time.

Of Ghouls and Ghosts

WotLK Alpha data is far from exhausted, as people are constantly digging around in the client files and finding new models and screens to show you. And I know you love it. So here's some more.

Deathknight.info is showing off some screens about the Hairdresser (Ignore the horrible spelling error there), Stormwind harbor, Ebon hold and it's dock.

More Wrath of the Lich King info from the Neograf forums.


New item enchants

All of these including the other armor kits say: "Can only be used on armor in your possession, and attaching the armor kit causes the item to become soulbound." Looks like blizzard is putting an end to further freebies for twinks. Good thing really, you really don't want twinks with 3K health at level 19... Twink upgrades do need to stop somewhere.


Leg Armor

Tree levels of new leg armor. Unsure whether these are uncommon, rare and epic. But chances are big that they are.

Jormungar Leg Armor - Increase Stamina by 45 and Agility by 15.

Jormungar Leg Chitin - Increase Stamina by 50 and Agility by 18.

Dragonscale Leg Armor - Increase Stamina by 72 and Agility by 35.

Nerubian Leg Armor - Increase attack power by 60 and critical strike rating by 15.

Nerubian Leg Chitin - Increase attack power by 70 and critical strike rating by 18.

Protoscale Leg Armor - Increase attack power by 100 and critical strike rating by 36.


Armor Kits

These can be applied to : Head / Chest / Shoulders / Legs / Hands / Feet.

Borean Armor Kit - Increases Stamina by 12.

Heavy Borean Armor Kit - Increases Stamina by 15.


New drums

Drums are once again going to play a large part in end game content. If you weren't sure yet whether you should start stocking up on leather, here's a bit of info to push you over the edge. No haste drums that work on both casters and melee yet it seems, but keep your fingers crossed, it may come yet.

Drums can be used while shapeshifted.

Drums of Dark War - Increases attack power by 75 and spell damage by 44 on nearby party members. Lasts 30 sec.

Drums of Precision - Increases hit rating by 95 on nearby party members. Lasts 30 sec.

Drums of Great Battle - Increases movement speed by 15% and haste rating by 95 on nearby party members. Lasts 30 sec.

Drums of Major Restoration - Restores 144*5 health and mana to nearby party members over 15 sec.

I'll make a post later about why you'd want leatherworking on most of your raiders. Just tag the RSS and keep an eye on updates.


Deathknight Tier 7 or 8

Again it's speculation whether this is Tier 7, Tier 8, or just another dungeon set. All i know is that this looks pretty damn sweet! Also see the earlier linked possible Tier 7 for Deathknights and warriors. But the warrior set could be the Deathknight set, and the DK set could be the warrior set. Time will tell.




Deathknight - Ghoul abilities

Explode - Explode self, destroying the ghoul and causing 500 shadow damage to all nearby enemies.

Infect - Inflicts 51 - 52 nature damage to an enemy every 3 seconds.

Huddle - Go into a defensive crouch, reducing damage dealt and taken by melee attacks, ranged attacks and spells by 50% for 10 seconds.

Gnaw - Chew a limb off the target, stunning for 3 seconds and dealing 90 - 110 damage.

Leap - Leap through the shadows and reappear behind your enemy.

Claw - Claw the enemy causing 14 additional damage.

Thrash - A physical attack, injuring a single foe for 110 damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell of that school from being cast for 5 seconds.

Looks like ghouls will have some interesting utility. Including spell interruption, stuns, some tanking capability and even AoE! You can expect their damage to increase with attack power. It's a mini rogue in a box, and if one dies you can always raise another corpse to replace your pet ghoul.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind that all info is from alpha, and thus subject to change before final release.

Adsense limitations

Well, it's finally come to that point where you hit a virtual barrier. I'm talking about adsense.

Google's adsense has a block list which supports only 200 entries. They call it the "competitive ad filter". Only 200 entries, and there's over 1000 active goldsellers. That is, indeed, a dilemma. There are a number of easy ways for google to fix that (allow wild cards, or word filters) but they just won't listen. Up to now i've just focused on the ones that have shown up on the blog and i've been adding them to the list since the day the blog got a decent number of visitors, but with the recent influx of adverts from .cn domains, that tactic just won't cut it anymore.

So there's a few options. Kill the text ads and switch to pure image ads. Ignore the goldseller ads or find another advertiser altogether. A side problem is that the "search" box also uses google adverts. I would also have to kill the search box. This should not be a big issue though as in the topleft corner of the blog there's a search box for just this blog. Not many use the search box anyway, right?

You can see part of the block list on Blog Azeroth or nogold.org. It's not updated in a while since I sort of can't log in to BA right now... >_>

I guess it'll need some thoughts. Feel free to drop a comment with suggestions if you have any. For now I'll leave it while i consider the options.

Yes, I hate gold sellers.

Update: Just noticed 3 new goldsellers. Text ads removed, search box removed (use the blogger one in the topleft). Going to experiment with alternataives for a few days.

New deathknight screens

As expected Wikidot has gotten quite popular in the last week and is pulling in more and more visitors wanting to learn about the expansion. Be sure to check out their image section. Most of the alpha data is known by now, but once an update is released you'll undoubtedly find out here.

Also for your viewing pleasure, from : Deathknight.info


Tier armor

Looking back at the earlier post about tier 7, there seems to be a surplus of plate/leather type models. Meaning some of the models could be related a fourth dungeon set rather than Tier 7.



DK only runesword



Deathcharger mount

These are summoned by a spell available only to deathknights. At level 60 you can do a quest to obtain the epic version.



Entrecard

It seems there was an electrical fire in the Houston data center. This affects all servers related to ThePlanet, Entrecard, the histats counter and more. In total about 3000 servers are unavailable for the duration, but most servers should be brought back online today.

See the details here.

June 1st

It's a new month, which means the Consortium is giving out gems again! Another advantage of having 5 characters above lvl 65.

The guild has got Illidan to 23%, but sadly with vacation periods starting here 'n there it's been difficult to get 4x25 raids the last few weeks. Progress is slower than we'd like. Phase 2 is mostly going fine, the main issue is ensuring people spread out enough in the next phase.

I've also been slowly working on that druid I mentioned earlier, currently at lvl 31. An extra character above 65 will ensure the Consortium give me even more free gems ;) But mainly it should give me more options regarding professions. I still intend to make a leatherworker sometime.


Poll

As it appears most of you don't mind or even enjoy the polls, these shall continue!

Yeah! - 62 (60%)

Whatever... - 30 (29%)

No - 11 (10%)

The new question shall be. (Insert drumroll here) When do you think WotLK will be released?