Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Astela on Maelstrom sent us this shot of the floor in Morogrim Tidewalker's room in Serpentshrine Cavern. It took me a second to see it, but right there in the designs on the floor, you can see a Panda, calling card of one Samwise Didier, one of Blizzard's lead developers (and lead singer of L70ETC).
He's also the creators of the fan favorite Azerothian race we haven't seen in Azeroth yet, the Pandaren (I'm a little disappointed that they didn't show up during Brewfest, actually). Obviously, this is just a hidden Easter Egg done by one of the artists, right? Clearly, this isn't proof that the Pandaren helped build the Coilfang Reservoir or anything like that. Right?
I love finding resources like this list of Shaman tricks on the EU forums. It's little tips like these that separate the good players from the great players. You know the players I'm talking about. They're the ones who make you want to roll one of their class because they're doing such a great job. Yeah, I think they all posted on this thread.
The post is divided into three sections: general, PvP and PvE. The PvE section is further divided by raid zone. And it never hurts to show off how good you are at playing your class during a raid.
Recently we asked about your favorite raid boss encounter. The Old God of Ahn'Qiraj, C'thun, came out the clear favorite. But player Drekx asked on the official forums: what raid boss resulted in your guild disbanding? C'thun's name came up again. As did Kael'Thas, Lady Vashj and, old school, Vael. Even Bornakk chimed in with the Twin Emperors
But my question to you is not what raid boss shattered your guild, but why? Bad leadership? Too many new raiders at the time? Pressure of a difficult encounter caused old tensions to flare? What's the real reason your guild dissolved after being unable to defeat a difficult encounter?
Entering into the world of raiding, eh? Now that you'vegottenready, it's time to get you familiar with some of the concepts you might encounter during the raid. You may remember some of these terms from the instance runs you have participated in, and some may be new to you.
Personally I like to live my life by the words of Sir Francis Bacon: Knowledge is Power. In raiding, knowing what people are talking about can mean the difference between looking like a newbie or looking like a quick learner. For this reason we've but together a lexicon of raiding lingo for those of you who are looking to get into raiding.
First let's go over a couple basic abbreviations you'll encounter in raid chat.Each of these stands for an important raiding concept, so it's essential that you familiarize yourself with them.
I've never been in a guild where we've finished all the content in the game, but I've definitely seen a difference between raiding farmed content and raiding progression. When you're working on farmed content, things are very, very different from a progression raid-- the mood is lighter, things move more smoothly, more mistakes are made (and it matters less), and there's a little less leading and a little more joking. Not that farming content is more or less fun than raiding progression, but it's a very different feel-- last night I ran Karazhan with my guild for the first time (they're farming it now), and things were very, very different from those raiding days back when we were struggling through Moroes and scared that the Wizard of Oz event might come up in Opera because we didn't have the DPS we needed.
But what if you're recruiting for farmed content? Sara is facing exactly that situation, and she wonders if her guild will be able to find good people now that they're about to finish off all the content in the game. They're expecting loss and attrition (because some people only like to raid progress, and have no interest in farming content beyond their own needs), and trying to bring new people into a guild that's already done everything. Will they only be able to find folks in it for their own loot, or will they bring interested, knowledgeable raiders willing to do the work for the rewards?
Hopefully they'll be able to weed out the "omglootz" people from the casual raiders and the other folks interested in seeing the endgame content. There's no question that running farmed content is not nearly as demanding (and that's why some people don't like it as much) as progressing a raid, but that doesn't mean that anyone wants to take on a raid full of loot whores only bent on scoring their next Epic.
Who are these poor souls who lead our guilds, who gladly (in most cases) take on what is definitely a part time job (if not full time) in order to outfit 25 people with epic gear and provide an online social outlet? Who are these folks, that they bend over backwards to make everyone they've /ginvited happy and sometimes get so stressed that they, for lack of a better term, flip out and /gdisband? We don't know where you guildleaders get your drive from, but from signing the charter to /gkicking everyone and ninja-ing the guild bank, we salute you.
Time once again for Guildwatch, your weekly look at drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. As always, your tips fuel this space-- send them (anonymous or otherwise) to wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Click the link below to see today's GW.
Two Priest bloggers took him up on the challenge as well. The Egotistical Priest has written up a list of not only consumables every healer should bring to a raid, but also what permanent enchants every raiding healer should have. Priestly Endeavors also generated a healer consumable raid list, but also adds in a list for shadow priests raiding.
Those were the only lists I could find. If you know of any other class-specific raid consumable lists floating out there on the Internet, list them below.
If you're the type of player who finds cauldrons useful, then you probably already know about them – and if you have no idea what they're for, you probably have no use for them. But Insider Trader is the Martha Stewart of WoW Insider – we happen to think that any tool that helps other players take responsibility for their vitals is, as Martha would say, a Good Thing. So let's talk about the so-called pot o' pots.
Cauldrons are the alchemical, resistance-pot equivalent of a warlock's soulwell. The alchemist creates a bubbling cauldron that other raid members can click on to receive a major resistance potion from one of the various schools of magic – there are cauldrons for each type of magic except for Holy. Cauldrons can turn out 25 potions over a five-minute duration, a decided improvement over creating, carrying and handing out that many individual pots (and quite a bit cheaper than making even less than half the number of normal major protection pots).
Read more about cauldrons, as well as a handy tip about how to use multiple healthstones (yes, that's more than one at a time), after the jump.
You want a bow that will make people sit up and say "whoah?" You want a bow with a neat mana proc? You want a bow that requires a really, really good PvE guild to get? Here you go.
Name: Black Bow of the Betrayer Type: Epic Ranged Bow (where are the Legendary Ranged weapons, by the way?) Damage/Speed: 201-374 / 3.00 (95.8 DPS) Abilities:
Increases attack power by 26, always very nice
On Equip: Succesful melee or ranged attacks will grant 8 mana and if possible drain 8 mana from the target. That's incredible-- it's basically 40-45 mana per five seconds, which allows any Hunter to keep up their DPS for almost twice as long as normal.
And if you want even more mana, there is a set of mail gloves created by Blacksmiths (dropped by Moam in AQ, I believe) called Black Grasp of the Destroyer that have the exact same proc. And while I haven't tried it out in game, I'm told that the effects of both stack. So with both the gloves and the bow, you'll never need mana again!
If only Shamans could equip bows...
How to Get It: Such a bow isn't going to be easy to get, and as the name might have already told you, this drops from the Betrayer himself, Illidan Stormrage, at the end of the Black Temple. There is a good argument made that if you're a Hunter able to get to Illidan, you probably aren't going to be worrying about mana problems anymore anyway. But to the victors go the spoils, so kill Illidan, be a Hunter (the mana proc on the weapon makes it just for you animal lovers), and win the roll and the bow is yours. The rest of the world gets to stare in awe at how frighteningly pointy this baby looks.
Getting Rid of It: As far as I can possibly tell, no one has. But maybe there's a guild out there who has Illidan on farm, and just doesn't need it any more. In that case, it's the usual Void Crystal, or 10g 82s 33c if sold to a vendor.
Yesterday we talked about various loot-distribution systems. This prompted Suvega to write in and show us the DKP system he uses as guildmaster for his guild (Anarchy on Archimonde). I think it's very clever, so I'd like to tell you all about it. My own guild uses a standard zero-sum DKP, which I've been happy with so far, but I think this might be better.
DKP is awarded to each member as follows:
One point for showing up on time
One point per boss kill (one more point if the boss goes down on the first try of the night)
One point for staying to the end of the raid
Triple points are earned if this is a "learning raid" on which many wipes will probably occur
Each item has a fixed price (generally between 25 and 35 DKP). When an item drops, everyone who wants it whispers "bid" to the loot distributor (who I think is the GM, but it wouldn't have to be). The person who has the most DKP wins the item, and the item's price is deducted from her DKP.
So what do you do when Nightbane is giving your guild a nightmare? My personal preference is to tackle some content you can handle, whether that be running through the old world raids just for fun, or, more likely, trying to take down some of the overworld bosses. Of course, if you're stuck on Midnight and Attumen, there's not much more raid content to go back to seriously. But if you're having trouble on a boss that early, odds are you need better gear anyway -- wipe on Attumen a few times, and then split the raid into groups and go run some heroics. Always have an extra option planned for your raids, too, because there's no need to bang your head on a boss you can't beat -- even if you just wipe on Gruul once, you've gotten that experience. Then take your raid back to Karazhan for more practice and more gear. Eventually you'll hit a point where people want to keep trying (because you'll be so close), and then guild progression is on.
But while that's a solid tactic, it's not the only one -- I've seen guild leaders run social activities, declare "bounties" on bosses or instances, and even offer to pay repairs just to try a raid boss out for a night. How do you bring a guild that's lost its game back into the raiding gauntlet?
Hardcore Casual has a short but interesting piece up comparing EVE's loot system to that of WoW and EQ. WoW uses what's called a fixed loot table system, which means that everything you kill in game has a set list of loot that drops from it, in varying degrees. If you kill Illidan, you know exactly what he might drop, even if you don't know exactly which piece on that list will drop. But EVE Online apparently uses a much more random loot system-- when you loot, you might get anything.
A better comparison (especially for Blizzard fans) might be Diablo, where almost anything can drop almost anywhere. The problem with a random loot system like this, however, is exactly what I ran into in Titan Quest (a pretty darn good Diablo clone): halfway through the game, a great item will randomly drop, and you'll get a thrill from getting a sweet weapon. However, because you randomly hit it big, you'll have the problem of nothing better ever dropping again, and the game is pretty much over. Diablo fixed this by having separate areas to go through (and I believe TQ got patched in the expansion to fix this a little bit). But in WoW, you don't have that problem-- every new instance you go into will have better gear than the one before it, guaranteed. You can look it up on WoW Wiki, or look at the loot lists, and know exactly what's there.
In fact, some say WoW's loot tables are too random-- I always see Paladin loot drop whenever there's no Paladin in the group. But it does take a little bit of fun out of the game world when everyone is huddled around the Curator saying "cmon staff, cmon staff, cmon staff!" Giving us a boss or two where the loot is totally and completely random (out of almost any item in the game) could actually be fun.
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
"Dear BRK, my guild of the past eighteen months is basically evaporating. So many people have left we've dropped below the critical mass necessary to do anything. We can't even put together a five-man instance run without a week and a half of chaotic scheduling. And this happened just as I hit 70. So at the point in the game where the focus really shifts over from solo content to multi-player content, I find myself effectively without a group.
"Last night I had a long whisper conversation with a recruitment officer for a larger, more active guild, and she basically handed me an open invitation. But I don't know whether I should take it because this guild is focused on raiding. Since I essentially soloed my way to 70, I barely even know what raiding is.
"I'm not a total noob; I understand my class fairly well, I can manage my pet, we make a good team. But the two of us have very little group experience. We've only been in three instances in a year and a half of playing the game! I don't want to join a hot new guild only to embarrass myself and frustrate my teammates with my ignorance. Where should I go, or what should I do, to learn the basics of how the multiplayer parts of the game work?
"Is there some quick get-up-to-speed briefing online that will at least let me get the vocabulary down, so I don't have to say stupid things like 'What's Kara?' and 'What does attunement mean?' -- Name withheld by request --"
What is Karazhan?
Karazhan is a 10-person instance where your guild goes to beat thirteen bosses and have loot drop that nobody in your raid can use. Basically, Karazhan is a place enchanters go to level their sharding skills.
But what is a hunter's job in this place? Why are we there and what do we do? How about we go through the bosses one at a time and talk briefly about what you can expect your role to be.
This shall be quick and dirty. We expect the comments to overflow with recommendations to help provide more details.
I've been toying with the idea of putting together my own Kara raid, so when I saw the World of Matticussuggestions for loot distribution I read through them with eager interest. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of DKP, or Dragon Kill Points (a phrase harkening back to the days of Everquest), essentially every person attending the raid gets points based upon what bosses they participate in downing. Each DKP system is very different, from the basic to the complicated, and some are so complex that they require mods to organize.
In the raid I was most recently in, they used zero-sum DKP, supposedly designed to keep people from hording the points, but it ended up being much like what they seemed to be trying to avoid, at least from what I saw. Matticus suggests that we modify the DKP systems, blend them together, and add a very important element: attendance. I also like his ideas on incentives for the spending of DKP, with discounts given for item pieces that are below the guild's current raid progression. It's an idea that allows the newer members of the raid to build their sets without having to wait the long period it normally requires to build up sufficient points.
I'm still not sure how I would feel about Matticus' idea of a guild hierarchy, where certain classes get items first, but I suppose that is mostly because I play a mage. I do, however, see the value in building up the gear of those that are most central to the raid's success, so I guess I see his point after all. Personally, I think his ideas on DKP are sound enough to try. Whether or not they can be implemented by a brand new raid leader remains to be seen.
Guild drama is a lot like falling in love. It's the most cliche thing in the world-- everyone's been through it before, usually more than once. But when it happens to you, it seems like there's nothing more important. When you're the one cursing out your guildleader on Vent for giving the loot to his friend instead of the person who rolled 100 on it (you), you feel like you're the only person this has ever happened to in this way.
And that's why I love writing Guildwatch, your weekly look at drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. We can't cover everything, but we can absolutely cover everything you send to us-- tips go to wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Hit the link below to see who fell not in love, but out of their guild this week.
I love finding resources like this 
Yesterday we talked about various ![[Lady Vashj]](https://web.archive.org/web/20071012120611im_/http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.wowinsider.com/media/2007/10/vashj_wow_225.jpg)
Hardcore Casual has 
