Brains?

Well, no more brains, the event is over, a cure was found, the infection will no longer spread. A shame really, even with all the stupid crying and cursing from people who just haven't got a clue on how to entertain themselves if they got itching powder in their panties,,, it was fun. You weren't safe anywhere, even Shattrath City. Heck, "especially not" in Shattrath. Lets just say it was very entertaining. Who knows when / if / ever we'll be able to do this again. Sure it's annoying if your battlemaster, banker or flightmaster is dead just when you were planning to use it. But seriously, 90 seconds isn't that long to wait for a respawn. You can still get brains to still your hunger, but it won't ever be the same for a while. I suspect many will have a more lingering thought on where to go afk now. Will a zombie bite me here? What was that sound? Headless Aside zombies, it's halloween. With the violet proto-drake (310% speed) looming large in everyone's mind we've gone around and gathered some people together, brought a warlock and about 10-12 alts and did some repeated headless horseman pounding. The end result was quite funny. Sadly a number of corpses did despawn, but everyone got their heads and pets in the end. Not a single mount sadly... Bucket Could somebody please tell that bloody walrus that I found the bucket? I've been using it to collect all the QQ tears of nerfed retribution paladins and AFK players that I've zombiefied or killed at the bank, flightmaster, etc. Even managed to put out some fires with it in brill, imagine that. Poll end What sort of music do you listen to when playing wow? It appears rock is quite popular among the readers. The default ingame music is used still more than I thought it would be. Trance scores high, along with players multitasking wow + TV. Rythm n bass, classic and modern are low low down the bottom as I figured they would be. Who seriously listens to classical music while you're pounding in heads in PvP, or getting shafted by a big dragon? o_O

Rock - 55 (50%)

Ingame music - 35 (32%)

None / Other - 28 (25%)

Trance - 20 (18%)

TV - 18 (16%)

Radio - 10 (9%)

House - 8 (7%)

Dance - 7 (6%)

Classic - 3 (2%)

R 'n B - 3 (2%)

Modern - 2 (1%) New poll is up. Brains?

Inscription 1-350 Guide

By the time you're reading this you've probably already got Inscription maxed. But perhaps not, and there's always alts. Pictures are coming, as are itemlinks, but I didn't want to withhold this post from you much longer than needed. So enjoy what's here so far. Both my mage and druid had 375 mining skill, and since scribes can create some nice bind on pickup offhands I figured it'd be a good idea to make my mage a scribe as well. So, he dropped mining and got to work. There's a whee whole bunch of inscription guides out there already, but most of them seem to be copying each other. Then again, the skill remains the same and levels rather predictably no matter how you look at it, it's just a matter of putting the wording differently. I'll list some you can read at the bottom of the page. The first thing you'll learn when you take on Inscription is: * Milling. This is used much in the same way as jewelcrafters use prospecting. It destroys 5 herbs and gives you some common and rare pigments in return. * Ivory Ink. The basis for your low level skills. * Scroll of Spirit * Scroll of Intellect * Scroll of Stamina Need herbs? Scroll down to the bottom for the herb routes. Trainers Orgrimmar, Undercity, Thunderbluff, Stormwind, Ironforge, etc etc. All the mrjor cities have a trainer. Not shattrath though. Just go to UC or SW and ask a guard for the exact location. The outland trainer can be found in Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Skill 1-75 Rank-1 Herbs : Peacebloom, Silverleaf, Earthroot Herbs milled : 360. You only "need" about 120-130, but read on. Pigments received : 156 Alabaster Pigment Skill level 1-35 An average of 2 pigments per herb. Cheap as hell though. Create 18 Ivory ink, this should put you to ~17-18 skill. Next, use those 18 Ivory ink in combination with 18 Light parchment and create Scroll of stamina, intellect or spirit. This should put you straight to 35-36 skill. Skill level 35-75 If you accidently made some extra Ivory ink, just make some more scrolls as they shouldn't turn green until 40. Next, make all the moonglow ink you can. Since at 75 you'll get the skill called "Minor Inscription Research". You'll be using that skill once every ~20 hours to learn new minor glyphs. I converted all the pigments I milled into Moonglow ink. If you're in a hurry to raise your skill to 75, you can make armor vellum up to 75 easily. This will require an estimate of 20-22 of your precious moonglow ink however. (I had 60 to spare) Once you've converted all the Alabaster pigments into moonglow ink you'll be sitting at around 72-73 skill. Just make 2-3 armor vellum to get to 75. Skill level 75-100 Rank-2 Herbs : Briarthorn, Bruiseweed, Mageroyal, Stranglekelp, Swiftthistle Herbs milled : 80 Pigments received : 40 Dusky pigment, 9 Verdant pigment Skill level 75-80 Once you hit 75, start off the first point to 76 by diong "Minor Inscription Research". Next, you can still make armor vellum which should be good up to 87, but you don't want to waste any Moonglow ink if you can help it. The research doesn't turn yellow until 125, but due to the long cooldown you'd be testing your own patience quite a bit. If you're a brother or sister of ebenezer scrooge though, don't let me stop you. Current skill: 76 Make 20 Midnight ink. If you're lucky you get to 80 skill now, otherwise just create an extra 1-2 armor vellum, they're cheap. 80-85 Grab 5 more Light parchment, talk to the trainer, and you'll receive your first few glyphs to make. The best thing to do here is to make 1-2 of each of them so you have more chance to sell some of these. Don't worry too much about making a profit, it all depends on your market. 85-90 Under the assumtion that you managed to score some verdant pigment earlier, be sure to make as many of the Hunter's Ink as you can. It turns green at 90, so it probably won't carry you much further than that. If you didn't then don't worry, just make some more of the same glyphs. 90-100 Now that you're at 90, learn some new glyphs (again), and you'll notice the materials are still the same. Blizzard didn't really bother to make these glyphs too varied it seems. But that's not our current concern. Grab another 10 Light parchment and make a mix of 10 of the glyphs you just learned. You should be 100 without any trouble. Skill level 100-150 Rank-3 Herbs : Grave Moss, Kingsblood, Liferoot, Wild Steelbloom. Herbs milled : 180 Pigments received : 102 Golden Pigment, 17 Burnt Pigment Now things will start picking up a bit faster. In cost that is. 100-105 Make Lion's Ink out of the Golden Pigments since you'll need these later. I made only 15 here initially as I ran out of herbs to do more, but farmed some more later and created the rest. 105-115 Maul, Hammer of Justice, and Ice armor are still yellow and only cost one midnight ink and one light parchment. I still had a load of rank-2 herbs (mageroyal etc) so went ahead and grinded those into another : 15 Dusky pigment, 4 verdant pigment. I converted the verdant pigment into hunter's ink for later use. And made another 6 glyphs of the ones just mentioned. This should save some higher end herbs later. Funny enough, I had "yet more" herbs able to produce dusky pigment. No point in wasting good materials right? The Mysterious Tarot, which requires one Hunter's Ink and a Midnight Ink each will get you from 110 to 125. It really depends how many Verdant pigment you managed to convert earlier. Let's assume you have enough materials for 10. Alternatively it would take about 9 of the following glyphs : Psychic scream and Lightning shield to get those 5 skill points to 115. And for another alternative, you could make glyphs of Eviscerate, Fade, Fire Nova Totem, Health Funnel, Holy Light and Rending to go from 105-115 instead. This would cost you 10 Lion's ink and some Common Parchment. Which equares to a few silver in paper and 20 Golden Pigment. (About 40 milled herbs) But, as you'll find when raising Inscription, more than one road leads from Rome. 115-120 I farmed herbs this week and used "Minor Inscription Research" meanwhile to get from 115-120. Saves me some lion's ink. You probably are eager to continue however, and thus will be spending 5 Lion's ink to make one of the following Glyphs: * Glyph of Arcane Missiles * Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey * Glyph of Healing Touch Each should cost you no more than one ink and a common parchment. Els Professions has a pretty nice list in that regard. Alternatively, you should still have those "Hunter's Ink" that was mentioned before. These, in combination with a Midnight ink will get you from 110-125 with ease before turning yellow and won't turn green until 137. Be sure to use these before then as they really haven't got much other purpose. For the sake of this guide we'll assume you got 5 ready. 120-125 Mysterious Tarot. These will produce the cards : Ace / Two / Three of Rogues. These can be turned in later for junk greens of little concern. I had enough ink (20) to easily get to 137 from here on, but we'll assume you don't. 125-140 Dawnstar ink. Not amazingly useful for anything other than more tarot cards, but if you have "Burnt Pigments" (and I know you do) then making these should be able to provide you with another 5 skill points. If you don't get to 130 on these, just make a few "Glyph of Fear". 130-135 : Glyph of Blink x5 135-140 : Glyph of Lay on Hands x5 140-150 Strange Tarot. Assuming you've been able to get at least 20 dawnstar ink, these are the best way to level. Keep in mind you'll also need 1 Lion's ink per card. So 10 in total. After that the skill will turn yellow and though it'll probably still provide you with skill after, it's probably easier to switch to the next type of herb. These are useable until they turn green at 162. If you don't have that many, you can always make one of these glyphs to get from 140-145 first. * Glyph of Imp * Glyph of Lightning Bolt * Glyph of Sunder Armor Skill 150-200 Rank-4 Herbs : Goldthorn, Fadeleaf, khadgar's whisper, wintersbite. Herbs milled : 200 Pigments received : 113 Emerald Pigment, 16 Indigo Pigment Things should be looking pretty much the same from this point on. Make 5 glyphs, visit the trainer, make 5 glyphs, visit the trainer, make inks as soon as you can, finish up with some rare inks before they no longer give skill. As such, I'm going to start compressing the self explanatory bits a little. 150-175 Making Jadefire Ink should be able to get you to 154-155. You'll need about 55 in total. You can finish off with a "Glyph of Multi-Shot" if it didn't. 155-160 : Glyph of Evocation x5 160-165 : Glyph of Renew x5 165-170 : Glyph of Shadow Bolt x5 170-175 : Glyph of Overpower x5, or Scroll of Strength III 175-190 Royal ink. It's always a bit tricky to get skill with green recipes, but you should be able to get at least 2-3 skill points this way. Afterwards, "make Scroll of Agility III" until 183 skill. It'll turn yellow at 180 but should provide you with a few more skill points midway. And, followed by two "Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain" to reach skill 185. 185-190 : Glyph of Frost Shock x5 190-200 Arcane Tarots depending how many Royal Ink you got. If you got enough to make 8, then make 2x Glyph of Revenge first, so the 8 tarots should put you on 200. If you got 7, then make 3 glyphs first. Skill 200-250 Rank-5 Herbs : Arthas' Tears, Blindweed, Firebloom, Ghost Mushroom, Gromsblood, Purple Lotus, Sungrass Herbs milled : 200 Pigments received : 102 Violet Pigment, 16 Ruby Pigment 200-225 Start by converting your Violet pigments into Celestial Ink. This should get you to 205 without too much effort. If for whatever reason you didn't just make some extra "Armor Vellum II". 205-210 : Armor Vellum II x5 210-215 : Glyph of Sinister Strike x5. These will sell like hot-cakes so if you have plenty of materials feel free to make some extra of these while they're yellow. 215-220 : Glyph of Healing Stream Totem x5 220-225 : Glyph of Barbaric Insults x5 225-230 Fiery Ink. I had 16 Pigments, so ended up with 16 inks. You're quite likely to reach 230 with just making these inks, but if for whatever reason you can't, just create some "Scroll of Agility IV" until you do. 230-235 : Glyph of Dispel Magic x5 235-23x : Depending how many Fiery Ink you got make a few : Glyph of Slice and Dice. They sell easily and are good profit. 235-250 Time to make use of those Fiery ink. "Weapon Vellum II" 14-15x depending how many inks you managed to get. The weapon vellum recipe will turn green at 255 skill, so even if you got more than 15 you "could" in theory still make a few extra. Heck, if you still have 20+ Celestial ink and don't feel like saving them you could simply start off with making some Glyphs of slice and dice before making the armor vellum. Good profit in those. However, you will get free skill points from the next ink, so don't go above 250 skill just yet. Skill 250-300 Rank-6 Herbs : Dreamfoil, Golden Sansam, Icecap, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom. Herbs milled : 150 Pigments received : 73 Silvery Pigment, 6 Sapphire Pigment 250-275 Start off with the obvious. Make Shimmering Ink from the Silvery Pigments and you should be at 255 skill. If not, you can make a "Scroll of Stamina V" to get there. I started off with 36 inks. 255-260 : Scroll of Spirit V x5 260-265 : Glyph of Shred x5 265-270 : Glyph of Bone Shield x5 270-275 : Glyph of Frost Strike x5 275-285 Ink of the Sky, make all you can, for some reason this one starts at orange and continues to do so for a while. I only had 6, so 6 skill points. 281-285 : Glyph of mana gem x4 285-288 : Glyph of Execution x3 288-290 : Glyph of Sprint x2 (Or just 2 more Execution) That's all you'll be using the Pre-TBC herbs for. You can thank your kind trainer from Undercity or wherever and it's time to head to Outland. Head for a trip to the nearest bank and grab some herbs along. Skill 290-350 Rank-7 Herbs (Outland) : Ancient Lichen, Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle, Netherbloom, Nightmare Vine, Ragveil, Terocone. Herbs milled : 290 Pigments received : 145 Nether Pigment, 18 Ebon Pigment. A bit more than needed, but you'll be using these to get to 375 eventually. 290-300 Give a friendly Scribe about 50 herbs and ask him to make you 10 Ethereal ink then return the remaining pigments. (I've included these into milled herbs total) I doubt it's intended by blizzard but You'll find the Master Inscription trainer in either the Tower above Thrallmar right next to the enchanting trainer, or if you're Alliance you can find one at the mage tower in Honor Hold. 290-295 : Scroll of Stamina VI x5 295-300 : Scroll of Spirit VI x5 300-325 Ethereal ink, you'll be making a good lot so should have no problem reaching 305. 305-310 : Glyph of Feint x5 310-315 : Glyph of Rune Tap x5 315-320 : Glyph of Rapid Fire x5 320-325 : Glyph of Sweeping Strikes x5 325-350 Darkflame Ink. I made 16 here, and managed to get to 329. You might not have as much Ebon pigment. Create 1-2x Glyph of Mage armor to get to 330. 330-335 : Glyph of Windfury Weapon x5 335-340 : Glyph of Arcane Power x5 340-345 : Glyph of Death Strike x5 345-350 : Glyph of Whirlwind x5 Skill 350 OK, you're 350, now what? Well, you can make all the known patterns in the game as of 3.0.2. More will be added by blizzard at a later time, and though you can get your skill up to 360 or theoretically even 375, there's just not any point in doing so until WotLK is actually released and you can visit the new trainers in Northrend. Herb routes Lets assume you have a 375+ herbalist already, preferably a druid (flight form rocks for farming herbs). Be sure to install the following addons: * Routes. This will draw a route on your map with the shortest path to all the herbs in the zone. Can be filtered and customized fully. * Gathermate. This is your basic gathering database. * Mapster. This will allow you to customize the routes more easily, get it. Rank-1 herbs : Inscription 1-75 Peacebloom, Silverleaf, and Earthroot Durotar, or just about any other level 5-10 zone. Rank-2 herbs : Inscription 75-100 Briarthorn, Bruiseweed, Mageroyal, Stranglekelp, Swiftthistle The barrens. You really don't want to be anywhere else for collecting these. Rank-3 herbs : Inscription 100-150 Grave Moss, Kingsblood, Liferoot, Wild Steelbloom. Stranglethorn Vale contains Kingsblood, Liferoot, Wild Steelbloom and an abundance of Rank-4 herbs which you'll also need later. Rank-4 herbs : Inscription 150-200 Goldthorn, Fadeleaf, khadgar's whisper, wintersbite. Stranglethorn Vale, you really wouldn't want to be anywhere else. You'll not receive any Wintersbite there but the other herbs are available in abundance. Rank-5 herbs : Inscription 200-250 Arthas' Tears, Blindweed, Firebloom, Ghost Mushroom, Gromsblood, Purple Lotus, Sungrass Firebloom and purple lotus spawn in good numbers in Tanaris, which is right next to Un'goro where you'll find Rank 6 herbs. Gromsblood could be farmed in the blasted lands and Felwood is also a good alternative as you'll find severa; Rank-6 Herbs there. Rank-6 herbs : Inscription 250-300 Dreamfoil, Golden Sansam, Icecap, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom. You'll receive a good number of Dreamfoil and Golden Sansam while farming Rank-7 herbs in Hellfire peninsula, however if you want to speed things up a bit then un'goro is a pretty good place to be. Rank-7 herbs : Inscription 300-350+ Ancient Lichen, Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle, Netherbloom, Nightmare Vine, Ragveil, Terocone. More Guides Inscription: * Wowwiki - Inscription * Els Professions * Inscription guide * Wow professions

Braaaaains

There's a Zombie infestation / Scourge plague spreading across the lands currently. Be sure to join in and eat some brains ;) Also, there's some information on 3.0.3 which may be of interest to some rogues. Fan of knifes "might" be put on a 10 second cooldown instead of 30. If we're lucky. exposed Blizzard is also still very much delusional as to the workings of expose armor.... Yes it's a great buff, but no we're not going to use it much. 5 combo points guys, "5" combo points. Combine that with the option to put talent points in it to increase the duration and you're still looking at a shit ability. Here's what I want to see: * Expose Weakness * Cost : 20 energy * Stacks up to 5 times No cooldown, no finisher, no combo points needed, nothing. Just put it on par with sunder armor, and make it into an equal ability. STOP WASTING OUR COMBO POINTS! It really can't be that hard to realize. We'll gladly provide the raid with a buff if there's no warrior. But using that ability as a finisher is a no-go. You can even add an "improved" talent for it into one of the talent trees (subtlety perhaps?) that provides us with an instant attack that increases the stack of expose armor. Just like Devastate. Ok, I know it's totally un-original but it'd work just perfectly. Lightning Reflexes The ball's still out, and there's nobody wanting to replace it. Indeed, still no word on what the replacement talent will be. So for the meantime we're stuck with a junk talent in a tree that's currently weaker than assassination. And Blizzard is very much aware of it. They just don't have an idea how to fix it yet. So here's a thought: * Lightning reflexes, now : 5/5 gives 5% dodge. * Lightning reflexes, maybe? : 3/3 gives 6% haste. Works great with sword specialization and gives the combat tree the much needed DPS boost compared to assassination. They could even just nerf assassination, but somehow I doubt that's on the menu. It's not like there's not already plenty of talent points to spend on the 4th tier. Perhaps move it to the third tier so we don't have to waste a point into Endurance for the +2% stamina. Or add something else on the 7th tier so we don't have to waste yet another fluff point. Or tier 9, it's not like unfair advantage is going to be any kind of advantage for raiders. And then I haven't even started on the pitiful junk talent that's called "killing spree". Why is it bad? It disables your autoattacks. My weapons, hasted and affected by Slice and Dice were already hitting the target quite rapidly. (2.0 and 0.5) 2 Minute cooldown? I believe the actual end result is less than a 0.5% increase in your total overall DPS. That's just sad. Look at the hunter talent for exotic pets. A pet is about 30% of a hunter's total DPS, and exotic pets are meant to do about 10% more than a regular pet's dps. So you're looking at a rough estimate of 3% DPS increase. Nothing wrong with that, but it does put the rogue 51 pt talent to shame. Now if you'll excuse me. I have some towns to infect. /BrAaAaAaaAAaaaiiinsss Update: As there's a lot of zombie hate and lovin' going around, phase 2 has started and there's a useful thread on the wow forums to provide you with some more zombie information. In short, quit crying about getting killed go find more zombies and organize yourself better. Deathcharger's Reigns droprate increased from 1-5000 to 1-100. If you're hard set on getting one, it should be a lot easier now.

A quicky on 3.0.3

Patch 3.0.3 is currently on the test servers as you can see here as well. Some of the main highlights include : * RET PALADINS ARE GETTING NERFED!!!! HA!! That is all... Well, no. There's more, but that one line just made my day. :P Rogue Glyphs Some new, some old, some changed.

Vigor. A major glyph that gives you 10 max energy. It's quite nice for grinding and pvp.

Rupture, got nerfed a little. Instead of 5 sec it's now 4 sec.

Sinister strike, got a 10% buff and is now 50% chance to add a combo point on crit.

Shiv, has been removed. Probably because blizzard found out that shiv rogues were doing more DPS than plain combat rogues. About 200 DPS worth. Playstyle not intended, glyph removed. Boo.

Sprint, now gives an extra 30% speed at the cost of 5 sec duration less. Instead of the old -60 sec cooldown. Sprint is now a 3 min cd on it's own already, so you're fine. Not only did the shiv glyph get removed, they nerfed combat potency as well.

Combat Potency now proc from your off-hand melee autoattacks. (Old - off-hand melee attacks) Druids and Inscription I got my druid to 70, and finally managed to get his epic flight form today. He's been running around the barrens, stonetalon and stranglethorn picking up herbs to raise his skill and indirectly raising my mage's Inscription. I'm working on the inscription "guide" as he goes up. At around 115 skill now. You'll need to have a bit of patience for that one.

3.0 and your addons

Egads, the addon list is flooded with red, and my interface is a loading horror. It was to be expected of course, but to make matters worse, the WoW Ace team has discontinued their WinAceUpdater. See their announcement here. It was announced a long time hence already, but It's still a bastard trick to do it on patch day. It's understandable to some degree though, several million people were using the tool, and the cost of keeping the servers up and running during heavy load (such as patch days) was no longer being balanced by the meagre income from the advertisements. Some of you may know, they've been working with the curse team for a good while already, mainly being helped with bandwidth. But, as of this week there's no way back to the old WAU. Instead you'll now receive an error in your WAU client and log files that will inform you to go and visit this link and download the Curse Client. There's plenty of people who will, I'm sure. But personally I really can't be bothered with curse. Aside the fact that I've once again forgotten my username and password on that site.... The site layout is horrible beyond belief. I could list a number of things that could be improved, but I'd just be helping them in the end. The older layout from a year or 2 was better, get a clue guys, and kill the need to do "everything". Focus on WoW. On top of that... The curse client needs you to log in. Didn't I just say I forgot my username and password? Of course I could recover them, easily enough, but why on earth do you persist in having people log in to update something as simplistic as addons? It wasn't needed before, it should certainly not be needed today. Salvation Fear not, as there are alternatives. Or at least one so far that I could find. The program goes by the name of WoW Matrix and supports over 1500 individual addons, including most of the ones that the old WAU used to support. Isn't that great? It even supports Vista (ugh /spit), which is something the curse client doesn't. I've managed to install it and update most of the addons I got running. A few things came to my attention.

Ace 2 is going away, all hail Ace 3

Bartender 3 doesn't work anymore, all hail Bartender 4! Even though it took me the better part of the evening to re-configure. /sigh

Prat 2 no longer functions, all hail Prat 3!

Onebag, Onebank, Fizzwidget's disenchant predictor and several others don't work yet, but the addon creators will fix these soon (tm) / hopefully. Plenty of addon updates will be coming to your wow client the next few weeks surely. What will you be using to get them? Manually update 100+ addons? HAH! I think not.

Don't freak out!

Your mount isn't gone, but until this bug is fixed you won't be able to use it either. The reason to this, appears to be a rather odd interface bug in the new mount system. It's apparently a "view issue" only, but you'll want to be careful either way. If you've already clicked your mounts to add them to the new interface, just relog to get an updated list, press Shift+P to view your mount tab and don't freak out if it's still empty. The issue will hopefully be fixed soon (tm). Blue posts Blue posts: here. Greetings all — We are fully aware of the situation regarding a number of players not seeing their newly learned Mount and Vanity Pet “spells” and are currently monitoring the issue. This appears to simply be a display issue and it is likely that it will resolve itself in a matter of hours; please be prepared for realm restarts to address any possible issues. We ask that you wait approximately 24 hours to see if the issue corrects itself before submitting an in-game petition regarding the matter. If after that time you are still unable to use your mount or vanity pet, please submit a petition and our staff will investigate the issue for you. Updates regarding the matter will be provided as necessary. -- As I mentioned in the original post, this issue appears to be a simple display issue where the character has actually learned the ability, but it is not showing in the Pet/Mount tab. Again, please give things some time to settle, and if you still do not have the Mount and/or Pet in the appropriate tab, please contact our in-game support staff and we'll investigate the issue for you. Please allow approximately 24 hours to pass to see if the issue alleviates itself for you. In short, don't get a heart attack just yet.

Patch 3.0.2 released!

14 Oct for the USA, 15 Oct for Euro. MMOC has a nice post with most of the details. C-c-c-changes Lots of changes since it's the pre-wotlk patch.

Inscription is available and can be trained up to 375

Achievements added.

Glyph slots open. You'll have access to 2 major and 3 minor Glyphs at level 70. Be sure to find a friendly neighbourhood Scribe to make you some candy! For a lists of known glyphs you can look at that same post on MMOC.

Two new arenas. Orgrimmar and Dalaran. No new battlegrounds yet.

Barbershops, stormwind harbor, new flight towers outside UC and Orgrimmar, caverns of time layout changed.

Tier 4-5 titles can no longer be obtained, as is the ability to get the Zul'Aman bear. Naxxramas is removed, as is the option to complete the legendary Atiesh quest chain.

Improved shadows engine. Can take up quite a bit of processor speed though.

Bag space! Minipets, mounts, and tokens of any and all kinds have gotten absorbed into the User Interface.

Debuff stacking changed, lots of buffs now affecting the entire raid, spell damage and healing merged, as are crit, hit and most haste effects. And more, so much more. Lots of class changes, most of which you should have already seen by now. Alt-o-rama My druid finally made it to 70, and is currently working on the swift flying form chain. Part 15 of the chain now. It's been well interesting so far, but way too much flying about. He's got mining and skinning maxed at the moment, but with WotLK being practically "here", it's time for him to drop skinning and pick up herbalism. For a while at any rate. My mage is currently the only other character of mine with a mining pick, and then there's my hunter who's running about with a skinning knife and a leatherworker's needle. Plus three more level 70s with maxed professions. Choices need to be made as there's a new profession available. Inscription. Likely I'll drop mining on the mage and pick up inscription since the profession can create BoP caster offhands aside the other stuff. Drop skinning on the druid since my hunter already has that as well and he's a leatherworker anyway. Skinning is nice while levelling, but after that it becomes fairly redundant. I'll keep most professions on my main the way they are (engineer, enchanter) until level 80 probably, as the total number of changes to professions do not appear to be finished yet. You'll recall there were some stat bonusses to be had specifically for each profession. Such as sockets for blacksmiths, ring enchants for enchanters, gems for jewelcrafters, glove and boot enchants for engineers, shoulder enchant and possibly an extra glyph slot for scribes, wrist enchant and drums for leatherworkers, and finally a cloak enchant for tailors. *phew* At any rate, we'll see where that goes. Inscription leveling guide. I'd have done it today, but you're going to have to wait a bit longer for this one. I'll definitely get around to it soon though, as I plan to make use of it myself as well ;) If anyone has links to share, feel free to drop them in the comments box as I'm keeping an eye on that one. Patch mirrors Since the patch is a whooping ~900-1600 MB (for the EU anyway), you'll probably want to be using some form of mirror to download the thing. Thanks to a frequently updated page on WoW Wiki which I've helped start, you should have no trouble finding the exact mirror you're looking for. In case wowwiki is overloaded though... which does happen so and then. You can always have a poke at a.wirebrain instead.

Blizzcon

The Wizard class (a pure caster as predicted) has been revealed for diablo 3. As well as a cinematic trailer. Be sure to check it out, nice special effects ;) A report of Day 1 of (3?) of Blizzcon 2008 is viewable at MMOC. Displaying the contents of this year's goodie bag (an inflatable frostmourne,, seriously..), which among things contains the code for the blizzard bear. Which is basically a rideable polar bear with a signpost on it's back. I could repost more of that, but MMOC is basically where you'll be able to find most of the Blizzcon information. Not much point in simply reprocessing the same thing is there? Lots of screenshots as well. Hopefully a few more juicy bits will be arriving in the next days of Blizzcon. Rogue updates? Not a huge lot of amazing interest going on in the rogue wotlk area the last few days. Which is obviously... well, I'm sure you can imagine how the rogue class thinks about the lack of attention. Flight The cold weather flying quest is being removed before release. Instead you'll probably pay 1.000 gold or something along those lines for the privilege. It's a shame really, the quest looked to be quite interesting. Content updates Patch 3.0.2 is the first you'll see, hopefully this very tuesday / wednesday. 3.0.3 will come soon after and will update some of the achievement tracking for the Temple of AQ and c'thun loot. In 3.1 things will get interesting as it's already DONE according to blizzard. This patch will bring us Ulduar. 3.2 "when it's done" will add another 10+25 man raid instance, yet to be announced. And finally 3.3 which is at some point in the far away future of mid 2009 will bring us the Icecrown Citadel as well as a continuation on the Ashbringer storyline. I'm sure that'll please some of the lore geeks among you. Personally I'm just thinking "big orange two hander", but hey, nobody is perfect right? Linky Linky If you hadn't noticed yourself by now, I'll just take the liberty to alert you to the AddThis buttons in the topright area where the RSS feed links are located. I figure these would make it easier to add the link to whichever RSS reader you use. The regular feedburner link is still there as well, so no harm there. Poll Another poll has reached it's (nearly) ending date. Which raid dungeons do you hope to finish before 3.0.2 begins? Or, have you finished so far? And, the results are in, fairly predictable even:

Karazhan - 316 (91%)

Gruul's Lair - 279 (80%)

Magtheridon - 261 (75%)

Zul'Aman - 224 (64%)

Serpent Shrine - 171 (49%)

The Eye - 159 (45%)

Hyjal - 148 (42%)

Black Temple - 126 (36%)

Sunwell - 43 (12%) The earlier poll is still open, be sure to add your mark. I suppose a new question needs to be added as well. *ponders* Alright here's one, which playstyle do you enjoy the most? Melee / DPS / Ranged / Healer / Tank? Multiple choice is available.

Back in town

Home at last. Three days of Barcelona with sun, warm weather (22-24 degrees C), luxury food, lack of sleep and lovely interesting sights along the way. Only to come back home, step out of the airport and be greeted by darkness, cold weather (11-12 degrees C) and of all things RAIN. How's that for a home coming eh? Good news Blizzard is cashing in, from a lawsuit filed against the creators of a well known bot program. World of Warcraft creator Blizzard looks set to get $6m (£3.36m) from the makers of a software 'bot'. - read it all. Beta stuff Not a huge lot that wasn't already posted earlier. Blade twisting daze duration increased to 8 seconds (up from 4). That's about it for rogues... Sad I know. Lightning reflexes and relentless strikes are still not on an acceptable level yet. Also, Enveloping Shadows now reduces the damage taken by area of effect attacks by 10/20/30%. (Up from 5/10/15%) Does anyone actually use that talent though? For other classes, such as druids and warriors taunt got an increased range (now 20 instead of 5) which is rather interesting, for ranged dps players. You just know in your bones that Blizzard will find a way to change this into a new boss tactic though. Fear it.

Beta build combat love

Blizzard is making (sort of) good on their word, and have improved combat a little. The latest build 9014 gives us the following, minor, changes. As always, there's more than just rogue changes, so be sure to read the full post either on MMOC or WoR. Whichever one takes your preference. Models Two pics on MMOC show the new models for Alextrasza and Varimathras. You'll see Alextrasza looks much like Sylvanas who got changed in build 8982. Rogue changes Assassination

Focused Attacks now gives 2 energy regardless of the rank. Combat

Vitality increases your Energy regeneration rate by 8/16/25%. (Up from 3/6/10%) - That's pretty damn good! 12.5 energy per sec.

Blade Twisting changed to : Increases the damage dealt by Sinister Strike and Backstab by 5/10%, and your damaging melee attacks have a 10% chance to Daze the target for 4 sec.

Aggression has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4. Now increases the damage done by Sinister Strike, Backstab, and Eviscerate abilities by 3/6/9/12/15%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%) A build like this here tree would thus be a logical conclusion for any combat rogue at level 80. We're still spending 4 talent points in fluff talents that I'd rather not. Not to mention wasting 4 talent points extra in a talent which previously only cost us "1" talent point. Yes I'm talking about Relentless Strikes... Now, if for whatever reason the subtlety tree got something "useful" at the second tier, or perhaps opportunity was changed to affect sinister strike and hemo as well, then maybe a build like this wouldn't seem quite so questionable. (A total of 9 fluff points across the trees) If you're more into mutilate then a build like this seems the most likely solution. Honor, to reset or not to reset As it seems, they're NOT resetting it now. Seriously guys... make up your bloody mind. We had hoped that the introduction of some new Honor rewards in the upcoming patch would give players a great opportunity to spend any of their remaining Honor. However, many players would still be surprised by an Honor and token reset as it isn’t something we’ve done in the past. As such, we've decided to not reset Honor or tokens upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. Players who save their Honor will be able to spend it on level 80 rewards, although those rewards will be significantly more expensive than their level 70 counterparts. You could have easily fixed this by simply adding a new type of honor and new marks at level 80. Now we're scared into spending the stuff early, and sure enough suddenly it's not getting reset. Ah well, at least some of us got some new mounts out of this :P