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.
Blizzard has introduced the first part of their new Macro Guide. This guide includes a basic description of what Macros are as well as how to create them.
They have also included some really good Macro references, such as the numbers that correspond to bag slots as well as the numeric values of inventory slots.
Though it is mostly a wall of text, they do list some helpful examples to illustrate the basic concepts. Here is their example for chaining together instant spells:
Do all of those "/stopcasting lines" seem a bit redundant considering they separate spells and items that are cast instantly? Well, Blizzard thinks so too and they will be unnecessary as of Patch 2.3. Not that /stopcasting will be defunct at that point -- it is still good to put at the beginning of a macro, so that you can cast a spell without getting an error if you are already casting another one.
While this guide won't replace more in-depth guides until they publish Part 2 with details on higher-level macro functions, it is still nice to have an official macro guide to turn to for basic macro creation.
Yozozo claims on the forums that he is able to complete 17 keg runs for the Alliance version of the There and Back again quest for Brewfest and is backed up by others who say they complete an average 15 keg runs per attempt. On the Horde side, 11 to 13 seems to be the average for the high achievers.
I've run the quest on both factions, and it does seem easier on the Alliance side even though the Horde version has more apple barrels. Is it shorter? Is there a better time bonus? Are the goblins wearing Dwarf masks a handicap? Or is it just perception?
I definitely think the Barker quests are easier on the Alliance side. The Ironforge course is in a complete circle without any backtracking and you can jump down the mountain a bit to cut the circuit short at the end. You have to backtrack a little in Orgrimmar and there is no shortcut to the Horde quest-givers.
What is your opinion? Is there an Alliance bias for the Brewfest quests or are the Horde just worse at motivating Rams?
Each week, Robin Torres contributes Azeroth Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with WoW.
Kids on the internet is (or at least should be) a pretty scary thing for parents. There are predators, perverts or people with questionable ideas that you just don't want to expose your children to. I find it odd, therefore, that so many parents let their elementary school age children play WoW unsupervised. They must see it as an electronic babysitter like television or single player video games rather than what it really is: having your child be babysat by 9 million potential weirdos. These children attempt to get much needed guidance and attention from whatever stranger happens to be nearby. But players don't know how old unknown, needy players are -- they just see them as a nuisance and verbally abuse them accordingly.
More than just exposing children to negative influences, these parents are missing out on a great opportunity to teach their children some very important life lessons. Children go to school to get educated, but they are supposed to learn their values at home. I believe that playing WoW with your children can be a great way to instill them with some very basic yet important values. My daughter is not even preschool age yet, but when she is ready, I plan to play WoW with her -- probably after playing Toontown and maybe CoH first(there's no death, just defeat). I will play MMOs with her because I've seen the result of parents actively playing MMOs with their children. For example, there was Bigmo.
Blue poster Vaneck announced on the European Forums that Alterac Valley would be undergoing some major gameplay changes in Patch 2.3.
In order to emphasize strategy more in AV, they are introducing the concept of "reinforcement count". Both teams will begin with a starting number of reinforcements which can be reduced in various amounts according to what is lost. A team loses when its reinforcement count is reduced to zero.
The death of Drek'Thar or Vanndar will still end the game, as all reinforcements will automatically be eliminated. Losing towers and Galvangar or Belinda will cause significant amounts of reinforcements to be lost. And staying alive will now be very important as player deaths will reduce the reinforcement count by one.
To quote Vaneck:
Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley.
The Barker quests for the Brewfest are fixed for almost everyone at this point. Unfortunately, some people are still unable to get credit when riding near flags and Blizzard is looking into it. Blizzard CM Drysc and Event Developer Kisirani have been giving updates for fixing the Bugfest.
If you are still having trouble with a Barker quest, here is some info for making sure it's not you:
You can only do one Barker quest a day. Double check your Daily Quest total in your Quest Log to make sure you haven't already completed it.
There are two competitors vying for your barking prowess, but once you work for one brewer, the other won't offer you the quest until the next day.
If you failed it, you can abandon the quest and try again.
You have to be on your Rental Ram when going past the flags or else you will not get credit. Once you get all four flags, however, you can use your mount to race back to the brewer.
One of the many exciting changes announced at BlizzCon was that free Spell Damage would be added to healing gear. The purpose of the change is to make it easier for healers to enjoy the solo PvE content in the uber gear they have picked up in groups and raids. Too many healers change to lesser geared alts after raids are over, for example, instead of being able to quest in their +Healing epics.
It was confirmed last week that the change will occur in Patch 2.3 and the extra Spell Damage will equal 1/3 of the +Healing stat on gear. So, for example, an item with +75 Healing will have +25 Spell Damage added to it without reducing any other stats.
Some confusion has occurred, however, about just how generous Blizzard was going to be with the free Spell Damage. Forum poster Bridge requested a link to prove that "this includes enchants, gems and set bonuses".
Most guilds don't have this problem, but if you have a guild with over 500 members, the guild UI reports incorrect information. The member status is no longer accurate with over 500 members and not all of the members appear on the roster.
Guilds are functionally limited to 500 members. There is no cap on the number of members in a guild so you can invite more than 500 but the UI will not support it.
This may change in the future but it is not considered a bug.
I briefly had a character on Dark Iron in the Knights of Arcadia, the first of the Penny Arcade guilds <insert fangirl noise here>. The UI issues over 500 members got so unwieldy that they split it into multiple guilds.
Do you think WoW should support the functionality of guilds over 500 members? Or do you think Blizzard's resources are better spent elsewhere?
Brewfest is currently live in Oceania and the U.S. and so far there have been some issues:
Brewfest didn't start on time.
The setup crew appeared when patch 2.2.2 went live, but the event didn't go live until midnight. Unfortunately for some servers, it didn't go live then as well. It seems that if your realm time is different from the timezone where the server resides, your Brewfest will go live according to the server location time and not the realm time. For example, U.S. East Coast servers that are located on the West Coast had their Brewfests begin at 3am.
It appears that quite a few of the hotfixes originally intended to go out with 2.2.2 were not applied properly as the patch went out with the maintenance today. Many of these hotfixes are now being pushed out.
You should now get 2 tickets for each keg you return for the keg delivery quest. "Bark for the Barleybrews!" quest reward should be 15 tickets. "There and Back Again" quest reward should be 10 tickets. "Pink Elekks on Parade" quest reward should be 40 tickets. You should be limited to 25 "keg protector" buffs.
Each week, Robin Torres contributes Azeroth Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with WoW.
Omigawd! I sound like such a twinkie on our WoW Insider Podcast. I'd like to blame playing dozens of levels as a female Night Elf with all that bouncing or blame my move to The Valley this year, but a good friend assures me I have always sounded like a twinkie, even though I'm not one, so it's ok. Regardless of my twinkie status, I had a great time with Mike and Turpster and we got to discuss all sorts of interesting stuff. And, when it comes right down to it, it's all about fun.
That's the reason why we play video games in general and WoW specifically: fun. Otherwise, why spend so much time immersing ourselves in Azeroth and Outland, if we aren't enjoying ourselves? I get the idea from the comments, forums, general chat, guild chat, etc. that there are a lot of people playing the game who are currently not having fun, however. I'm not talking about the restlessness most of us are feeling in the extra long gap between content patches. There are many vocal people who seem to be very unhappy, even with all of these fun changes coming up in the next few weeks -- or because of some of the changes. So, if you aren't having fun, why are you still playing WoW?
To celebrate the arrival of WoW's new integrated Voice Chat in Patch 2.2, Blizzard is giving away 40 Logitech Digital Precision PC gaming headsets a week for the next 5 weeks. The winners each week will be randomly selected according to how long they have had an active account. Those who have only been playing for 3 months can only win the first week. The final week is for players who have been active for 15 months or more.
How do I enter? Just keep your account active.
Who is eligible? US Citizens who don't live in states like New York and Florida where it is prohibited. There are other people who are ineligible, so please check the sweepstakes rules page.
How do I know if I've won? They'll choose your character with the most played time and list the character's name and server on the WoW main site. Then they will notify you by email within the next 5 days -- so make sure the email that you have listed in your account info is current. Will Voice Chat be enabled and working on my server by the time I'm eligible to win a headset? The first week ends October 6, so we all should have had Voice Chat enabled on our servers by that time. Theoretically.
The patch 2.3 lovefest continues with some PvP action, starting off with the Arena. Blue posters Drysc and Kalgan have released information about Season 3 and what changes will be for it in patch 2.3:
Season 3:
The Rating (not the points) required to purchase Season 3 weapons will be 1850.
The Rating required to purchase Season 3 shoulders will be 2000.
The Rating will not be required to wear the items, just to initially purchase them.
The Personal Rating will be used to purchase the items, not the team rating.
Griftah has now been exiled to the outskirts of Shattrath in Patch 2.2.
Players complained loudly on the forums after realizing they paid over 30 gold for an amulet that allowed them to resurrect when they died and were not mollified when informed that they should have shown a bit more caution before buying items from a character named after another word for con artist. Everyone (including me) assumed that Griftah was being exiled from Shattrath because of these complaints.
It's a shame you're unwilling to believe what is, in essence, the truth -- that Griftah has been a small foray in progressive content as we gauge certain things.
As is common with any major patch day, there are a few issues. Here are a few from the forums and what I've experienced:
Instance servers are crashing on many realms. From AV to Tempest Keep, players are having a hard time completing instances. Raiding is particularly hard hit. It's OK to delete the Auction Sale Pending notice from your mailbox. You will still get your cash when the new 1 hour delay is up. And, yes, everyone else seems to hate the new delay, too. Windows resolutions and UI Scaling have been tweaked. It's not your imagination and it also, according to Hortus, isn't a bug. Changing resolutions of the same aspect ratio will only give you a higher or lower image quality, but otherwise your view will not change. Windows are automatically resized to maintain aspect ratios and to reduce issues with stretching and distortion. If you aren't happy with the new size of your UI, turn on UI Scaling in the Video menu and adjust it accordingly.
Hopefully the instance servers will have been fixed by the time the patch is live in Europe. Sometimes it's better not being first.
Blizzard has added two new updates to the WoW Armory. One of them is the Search Engine plugin we talked about earlier, though it isn't just for Firefox -- it also includes IE 7 and Opera. They have a very simple installation for adding the Armory search plugin to your browser.
They have also added an Arena calculator which is actually three calculators in one. Choose one of the calculators to determine:
The number of arena points earned in a week
The average rating to get a desired arena reward
How long it will take to get that reward
If you have pinned your profile, the calculator will automatically fill up with your current arena statistics, as long as you aren't using the Opera or Safari browsers.
The Arena Calculator seems to be a good way to get the Season 2 gear before the Season 3 starts with its new rating restrictions for gear.
The Rebel Camp in northern Stranglethorn Vale will be getting a flight path in patch 2.3, according to Eyonix.
Blizzard has introduced the first part of their new 
Kids on the internet is (or at least should be) a pretty scary thing for parents. There are predators, perverts or 
One of the many exciting 
