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Each week, Robin Torres contributes Azeroth Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with WoW.
This week, I'm answering an email from Sylvanra:
Dear Robin,
How do I tell my friends about WoW? It isn't a common topic of conversation, but when it does come up I usually get a little negative attention for playing, then the conversation goes on. Because of this, I kind of play it down, but I answer questions about my hobby truthfully, I certainly don't want to jeopardize my real life relationships! But I would like to somehow let them know more about WoW and why I play, without getting the negative attention I have gotten in the past. I love my friends to death, but we certainly don't agree on how we spend our free time!
-Sylvanra
Dear Sylvanra,
I'm very open about my WoW habit. I wore my Wrath of the Lich King t-shirt to Disneyland this past weekend, which got me accosted by a young kid outside of the Snow White ride who wanted to make a character on my server so he could chat with me more there. A Disney castmember even interrupted his safety spiel to shout out his love for the game when he saw what I was wearing. It's obvious that there are a lot of WoW-lovers out there who are dying to talk about it. But there are also a lot of WoW players who prefer to keep their hobby on the down-low, including one or two of my friends who thought that wearing a Blizzard t-shirt to Disney was just a bit too fangirl.
I don't know if Blizzard is paying for product placement or if shows are trying to reap South Park-like rewards for WoW-related episodes, but mainstream mentions of WoW help those of us with friends who give us grief for our hobby. Not that we should be embarrassed about spending our leisure time in Azeroth, but I agree with you that some friendships are worth keeping even if they don't understand your choice of recreation.
Epic Dolls recently gave a woman's perspective to the Ten Ton Hammer article on women in raiding. Essentially the original article brought up some extremely valid points about females in the raiding sphere, and Leala took the time to respond to some of the statements made in the article, explaining them from a female point of view.
What I love about this is the fact that what we have here is an intelligent dialog. In no way is the Epic Dolls response claiming that Ten Ton "doesn't understand us" and that they write "biased work because they hate women," both of which are common misconceptions on either side of the gaming gender divide. Leala first begins by explaining that the article on Ten Ton was well written and interesting, and then proceeds to respond to some issues brought up in the article.
Episode 9 of the WoW Insider Show is not to be missed. What? You missed it? Fear not, for it is now available for download and streaming on WoW Radio. This week, we have the return of Turpster along with yours truly and our in-house illustrator extraordinaire, Arturis.
I get the feeling that I am missing something. All around me my friends and guild mates are raking in the cash, sporting multiple epic flying mounts and I sit idly by on my little Snowy Gryphon wondering where I am going wrong. I know of people on my server and others that are walking around with 10k + gold in their pockets (and boy they must jingle a lot) and I am at a loss.
Knowing that I have a marvelous resource out there in you readers, I figured it was time to ask the experts. How do I make mad cash? Some suggest doing daily quests, and valiantly I tried that, getting about 800g before alts claimed a good chunk of it for gear and training. I know I should ignore alts if I want to raise cash, but at least one of them is a pet project that I can't give up simply because of money. I have also been told that working the AH is a great way to make cash, and when I tried to manipulate the market I ended up losing 200g to AH fees and barely any sales were made. That just doesn't seem to be a good use of resources to me.
I ask this question of everyone I know that has managed to get an epic mount, and the answers are so varied I know not what path to take. It appears that within this game as in the real world, in order to make money you have to already have some. Unfortunately, all my previous rainy day funds were spent on building my gear and enchanting it for raiding. Where does that leave me? Not broke, but so far from epic flight training I wonder if I will be ready for the next riding tier when WotLK is released. What do you suggest? What are the best ways to rake in the dough?
About a week and a half ago, the halls of Scarlet Monastery were packed with more players than they've seen in a long time. Corpses of Horde, Alliance and unwitting Scarlet Crusaders littered the floor when Hallow's End hit the servers and plate-wearers world wide began their obsessive quest to nab the Horseman's Helm.
Of course, the warriors and paladins aren't alone in their enthusiasm. Since there are a variety of goodies that can be acquired, it wasn't difficult to find groups to challenge the Horseman the first few days of the event. As players have collected the items they were hoping to get or simply got bored of the encounter, it's become more difficult to find a group to take down the cackling loot piñata.
With the real life holiday of Halloween marking the end of its Azerothian counterpart on Wednesday, time is running out to summon the Horseman. Hopefully more people will be online and willing to get a couple more shots at the helm/pet/ring they've been salivating over.
Personally, it took me over thirty-five attempts to get the Helm for my warrior, and I have guild mates that are still trying to get the Sinister Squashling. While the drop rates are certainly random, in my experience, these two items are both the most sought after and the least common. While I'd love to get the pet for one of my characters, the grind for the helm was enough for this year.
Have you achieved your Hallow's End goals? What are you still hoping to get accomplished?
Kraylessa is, I'd guess, an anomaly-- she lives in the United States, but has actually obtained an EU copy of the game and rerolled on EU servers. She says she loves it-- her nationality is a topic of conversation, no one's been xenophobic, and while the lag isn't great, it's just about as bad as it was when she played cross-continent servers (she's living on the East Coast).
I'm not sure how well I'd do playing on an EU realm-- while I'm sure the people are great (hi, EU readers!), it seems like I'd have even less chances to raid (with my schedule being so off), and as ocannie points out in the comments over on Kraylessa's post, customer service would be an interesting experience if anything ever went wrong. It would definitely be interesting to see the cultural differences, however, and it would make it a completely different game to be "the outsider" in Azeroth. Right now, the vast majority of my guildies are American (and quite a few of them are from St. Louis, my hometown), and it would definitely be a different experience to play entirely with people from the other side of the world.
Have any of you played on realms in a different country before? Did it make Azeroth a lot more like actually visiting another place, or weren't there too many differences? Would you recommend it or not? I don't know if I'm curious enough to try it now (since I'm good and situated on a server where I am now), but if I had the chance to start a new game on another region's servers, I might give it a shot.
Patch 2.3: the patch that just keeps on alternately disappointing and bringing joy to the player community. Apparently, the staggering 4000 honor that had been previously reported to be the reward of the new daily battleground quest was a typo, of the "extra zero" variety. The correct reward is 400 honor, still up from its original value of 200:
It's off by a factor of 10. Battleground Daily quest bonus honor is supposed to be equivalent to 20 player kills at your level, ie 400 honor at level 70. (Drysc)
The new Priest talent Focused Will, reported yesterday, is going to be redesigned, so don't bother commenting on it in its current state. This is a good thing, because as far as I know no-one really liked the talent they proposed that much.
We wanted you to know that we're going to be redesigning the new discipline talent, focused will, so please hold off on providing further feedback on the ability until the new version is announced and/or it's pushed to the public test realms. The goal of the talent will still focus on survivability. (Eyonix)
The intention of this talent is provide an alternative to the holy talent, blessed resilience, so the priest who desires a talent of this nature has more than one option, adding more flexibility to the talent choices they make leading up to either. (Eyonix)
And finally, the changed-up Shaman Elemental tree is under much scrutiny from the dev team at the moment: Though not the best thread to plug this into give what was provided, I'd like to state that we are looking into this [Elemental] quite extensively at the moment. (Eyonix)
We didn't have anyone on hand to head out to the WoW TCG Darkmoon Faire in Philly this past weekend (although I was able to make the Chicago stop earlier this year), but worry not if you didn't make it, because the web guys over at Upper Deck's official site did a bang up job of covering all the activities over the weekend. From player tournaments to all the different decks that were played with, they've got the whole thing online, top to bottom. This was apparently the first event where the Fires of Outland set was playable, so they have a good piece up about that. And they even showed off some new cards, including a Dreamstate card from the March of the Legion set due in November.
Upper Deck has also posted a preview of the cards coming in the special Feast of Winter's Veil giftset, and it is kind of funny to see that the (once-)dreaded AV snowball has received a card of its own. And Mistletoe is in the game as well, taking two player heroes out of their turns for a little "let it snow" action (while giving them both a new card to play with). Fun stuff from the TCG, whether you're a diehard collector or not.
A few posts hit the forums today discussing the upcoming changeover between season two and season three. Although it has not been announced exactly when season three will start, it will, apparently, be sometime around the release of patch 2.3 (which makes sense, given the PvP item changes we've beenseeing on the PTR):
Season 3 should start around the same time as patch 2.3 is released, but please keep in mind that season 3 may not start on the same date the patch is launched.
We have said that were planning to give a two weeks notice on the start of season 3, which still holds true. If there are any changes on this plan, we will let you know. (Vaneras)
The interesting thing here is that they say season three will be roughly simultaneous with patch 2.3, and they will give two weeks notice before the start of season three. Does this mean we'll have two weeks notice before 2.3 is released? One can only hope, although it is historically improbable for Blizzard to give a patch ETA that's more than a few days away.
Just about a month and a half after they first got access to the Burning Crusade, a Chinese guild has downed Illidan Stormrage over the weekend. World of Raids has more, including the fact that it only took 52 days total, and that a Gnome Rogue picked up the offhand. As many are noting, lots of players are still dressed up in Tier 3 gear, which means they just barrelled right through SSC and TK up into the Black Temple.
Incgamers has an interesting point, however-- Chinese players, getting BC so late, supposedly had the benefit of all the nerfs and tweaks that Blizzard added to all the encounters since it first was released here. From Vashj's bugginess to the attunement removal, it could be argued (I'll leave this one up to you guys) that China is playing a much easier Outland endgame.
At any rate, downing Illidan is always an achievement, no matter what game you're playing. Grats to The Seven in China-- now here's hoping they go back and actually try enjoying that raid content!
The first poll on the official WoW forums was mentioned on WoW Insider when it was posted a few weeks ago, but since then a few more polls have been created. While one of them is obviously just for fun, the other two are more interesting.
Admittedly, I'm pretty much a noob to the arena. Like many other players, I mostly just get my ten matches a week to scrape up enough points for some welfare epics. Probably due to this fact, I dislike the Blade's Edge arena. The ramps, pillars, ropes and bridge create a lot of variables during an already hectic fight which can lead to panic, confusion and ultimately an inglorious defeat. Even more inglorious than normal, that is. Also, this arena in particular makes it more difficult for stealthy types (my 2v2 team is composed of a rogue and druid) to get the drop on their foes because the narrow catwalk makes a convenient place for an opposing team to make a stand with their AoE and stealth detection. What are your thoughts on the poll? Do they match the results?
Psylah sent us this great pic of her in her "Big Bad Wolf" costume (complete with little pig) and suggested that for Hallow's End this year, we do an ingame costume contest. We couldn't agree more, and so we're proud to introduce the WoW Insider Hallow's End costume contest. Just cook up a great ingame costume (could be something from real-life, your take on a Warcraft NPC, or anything you can think of) before this Friday, November 2nd, and send a .jpg screenshot of it to us at wowinsidercontests@gmail.com (with your full name, age, email address, and street address) Then, the WoW Insider staff will judge the entries based on 1/3 Originality, 1/3 Creativity, and 1/3 Costume Accuracy, and we'll declare a winner after that.
And what might you win for creating the best in-game costume? Glad you asked! WoW Insider has teamed up with the crafty (literally-- she makes crafts) Manaprincess to bring you a trick-or-treat bag featuring some of her favorite handmade crafts. The winner will get:
And because it's Hallow's End, we'll even throw in a Jinx Warcraft t-shirt, and a 30 day gift card! Tastier than candy, and more useful, too!
Here's the fine print: all entries must be in by 3pm on November 2nd, 2007, and all entrants must be US residents 18 years of age or older (sorry EU folks, but we've got to mail the package to you). Just send your entry (a jpg screenshot of an ingame costume you've put together) to wowinsidercontests@gmail.com, along with your full name, age, email address, and street address. Have fun putting your costume together, and good luck!
Nerrisa brings up an interesting idea on the forums that I hadn't considered before-- what if we all got to choose a third profession when we reach level 80? For some, handling two professions is more than enough, but there are also plenty of people who could definitely benefit from a third. And although the professions are paired off pretty well (Alchemy and Herbalism, Leatherworking and Skinning), there are definitely some trios that would work well also-- Enchanting goes great with anything, and Mining, Blacksmithing and Engineering would be a great combo, too, for power players who've reached 80 and are looking for lots more to do.
Of course, Bornakk says no to the idea (actually, as Incgamers points out, he really says there are "no unannounced plans" for it to happen, which is quite a few qualifiers for him), so it's unlikely that we'll have an extra profession slot to face Arthas with. But don't forget that we will have a new profession, Inscription, and if Blizzard adds many more professions, maybe we will need a third slot to keep them all straight. I'd love for my characters to learn more, I'm just not sure if I'd have the diligence to get them all to 375-- I'm having enough trouble with two as it is.
After my paladin hit 70 a few weeks ago, I felt kind of ... empty. I wasn't raiding due to scheduling, I'm terrible at PVP, and I had little desire to run instance after instance getting my pally better healing gear. Then a real-life friend who lives far away suggested that I roll a character or two on his new server, Medivh. And thus, I created three new characters, one for every class I've never played (undead warrior, blood elf priest, and troll shaman.)
I'm having fun figuring out the specs and professions of my new, nearly-naked lowbies. But it's been so long since I began a serious character on a new server, I'm getting bombarded by all the issues that face new players. I don't have any bag space, or money for that matter -- I can barely afford my skills and food. Walking places seems ridiculously slow, I have no higher-level friends to run me through instances, and my new abilities are confusing and numerous.
All of this makes me wonder if for the majority of the population, rerolling (defined as starting from scratch on a server where you have no characters) is worth it. Most of us have relatively wealthy 70s, strong guild and friend connections, and an overall sense of history on a single server. If our servers are our homes, then rerolling is leaving your money and possessions behind to move to a new city where you don't even have an apartment yet.
What problems have you found when rerolling? When you reroll, do you generally abandon your character before going to Outland, or do you keep pushing on to midlevel? All in all, is rerolling worth the strife, or do you prefer to stick on one server?
Baron Soosdon's latest Unlimited Escapism, Vol 0 was a whopping 13:37 long. It's non-narrative style wasn't to everyone's taste. Those who didn't watch through the whole piece may have missed the real star of the show: a female gnome, rendered in 3-D guns ablazing.
Fear not. The Baron has pulled out just that section and cut it together into one, short :42 piece. Behold Petite Nikita in all her compact, but lethal glory.
Oh yes, as with most Baron Soosdon's movies, I recommend the high quality Stage6 Stream over the YouTube embedded link above. Much of the pleasure of watching the Baron's movies comes from appreciating the visual style. Previously on Moviewatch....
Epic Dolls
About a week and a half ago, the halls of Scarlet Monastery were packed with more players than they've seen in a long time. Corpses of Horde, Alliance and unwitting Scarlet Crusaders littered the floor when 
Kraylessa is, I'd guess, an anomaly-- she lives in the United States, but has actually obtained an EU copy of the game and 
A few posts hit the forums today discussing the upcoming changeover between season two and season three. Although it has not been announced exactly when season three will start, it will, apparently, be sometime around the release of 
The first poll on the official WoW forums was 
Nerrisa 
