Next expansion "Wrath of the Lich King?"

It's four days to Blizzcon, and Boubouille, long-time source of quality information, thinks he knows what the next expansion is going to be called: Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously this supports previous information pointing to a Northrend-themed expansion, as Northrend is home to Arthas, the Lich King himself. The original post on the MMO-Champion forums claiming this to be the expansion name also asserts that there will be a new class: Death Knight! This seems to be less substantiated, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be true. Rumors aside, we'll almost certainly know for sure in just a few days. Are you excited? I am.

As far as the Death Knight rumor goes, the WoWWiki page lends a bit of support: apparently, Death Knight (as well as Necromancer) were originally planned to be classes in WoW, but didn't make it to release. Furthermore, there exists a green called Triumphant Shield of Shadow Wrath, which is confusing as no shield-using classes (Warrior, Paladin, Shaman) can use Shadow magic. This could just be an oversight in the random-enchant-generating code, but it could also be a hint at a Shadow-wielding, shield-using class...

Update: Over at MMO-Champion, they suggest that this is accurate because the link www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/ leads to a "forbidden" error, whereas accessing any other non-existent page on the site will give you a "not found" error. Continue to enjoy your rumormongering, everyone!

Update 2: Again from MMO-Champion, the title World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was found on the web site of Usk.de, which is apparently the German equivalent of our ESRB (i.e. the agency that assigns content ratings to games). It seems to have a "12" rating; although I don't speak German, I assume that means "suitable for 12 and up."

(by:wowinsider)
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Yet another massive social problem somehow blamed on WoW

What does the Australian media have against World of Warcraft? First, they profile two people who have "had their lives ruined" by WoW. Now we have this wonderful article on terrorism by Natalie O'Brien in the Australian, which includes this paragraph: "Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments. Zuccato told an Australian Security Industry Association conference in Sydney that people intent on evil no longer had to travel to the target they wanted to attack to carry out reconnaissance. He said they could use virtual worlds to create an exact replica and rehearse an entire attack online, including monitoring the response and ramifications."

Uh ... okay. I have no idea how that would come close to happening with WoW. I can see how something like that would work with Halo or America's Army. But WoW doesn't allow you to generate your own content like Oblivion or such, so you couldn't create a functional model of a city or other terrorist target. We don't have weaponry that is "identical to real-world armaments", unless you count the bombs you can drop on Halaa.

The fine people of the WoW General Forum have picked this one up, suggesting that you wait for five sunders before assassinating a political leader and make sure to take the portal to Washington, DC. What do you think of this article?

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Grats to the winner of our Spectral Tiger Mount

We have to give a big shout out of "Grats!" to Keane, commenter #2329 and random winner of our ginormous Spectral Tiger Mount contest. We sincerely thank all 5920 of you who entered (!), but we only had one mount to give away, and Keane (above) got it. He says he can't run through Ironforge now without getting bombarded by "OMG WHERE U GET THAT" whispers. I have to say: even I'm jealous. Looks awesome.

Thanks again to all the folks at Upper Deck for helping us out with the mount-- don't forget that the actual STM card is a loot card in the new Fires of Outland booster packs, which release on August 22nd, but which you'll be able to get your hands on at the sneak preview tourneys, held all over the country August 11-12th. And of course we'll have more contests coming soon, so keep watching.

Grats to Keane, you lucky, lucky, Spectral Tiger-riding commenter, you.

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Xfire and WoW Insider, live from the BlizzCon floor

Our BlizzCon coverage continues all this week-- we're sending our staff out to Anaheim (I'll be out there on Tuesday laying all the groundwork), culminating in the second BlizzCon event on Friday and Saturday. So whether you're going or not, stay tuned to WoW Insider all week for breaking news, liveblogging events, and pictures, video, and tons of coverage from Blizzard's big get-together.

And don't forget that all of our coverage is being co-presented with Xfire. In addition to their BlizzCon info page, they've also set up a special "blizzcon2007" account, and both Xfire and WoW Insider staff members will be blogging there during the event. Also, if you have an Xfire account, be sure to add "blizzcon2007" to your Friends-- that way, you'll be able to get invites to Xfire chats later this week coming directly from the BlizzCon exhibit hall. And if you don't have an Xfire account, then get one for free!

So this is it. It's time to hear about Zul'Aman and the next expansion. It's time to see Starcraft II playable and in action. And maybe it's time to hear about that third game Blizzard is working on? At BlizzCon, you never know. Stay tuned to both WoW Insider and Xfire to find out.

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Around Azeroth: How do you drive this thing?

Reader Scroto of Illidan sends in this amusing image. I imagine the Gryphon Masters in the major Alliance cities don't look kindly upon Furbolg seeking transportation -- thus this screenshot shows an attempt at do-it-yourself Gryphon riding (or perhaps Gryphon-jacking). Do these things come with an instruction manual?

Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.

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Gamers on the street: Patch 2.2 & VOIP

In Gamers on the Street, Krystalle Voecks will be creating characters and joining random US servers in an attempt to find out what the everyday Gamer thinks about different things going on in and around the World of Warcraft. With research in hand, she'll report back here on Thursdays, to share the word from the front lines.

With all the excitement about the PTRs and pre-made characters, I thought it would be interesting to ask people what they thought about some of the upcoming changes that Blizzard is adding into WoW in patch 2.2. Interestingly enough, the majority of people that I asked admitted that they didn't even bother reading the patch notes until they were released as live. Many said this was because of changes happening so fast that it wasn't worth tracking until it was finished. Others had only heard about the frenzy to get on the PTRs, and maybe of a couple of things in the works. But after a bit of searching, I managed to get two people who were willing to take time out of their busy schedules and give me their thoughts on their "best and worst" in the upcoming patch, as well as their thoughts on Voice Over IP (VOIP) that Blizzard is building into the game and hopes to make available soon.

In pursuit of the word from the everyday gamer, I signed into one of the oldest servers in the game: Lothar. It was originally brought online when the game was released, and has seen open transfers off the realm due to over-population. According to Warcraft Realms' Census information, Lothar houses a good-sized population of roughly 23 thousand players. The server heavily favors the Alliance, with an average of 2.8 Alliance players for every Horde player.

I managed to get a few words with Angelsil, Level 70 Human Mage of the guild . When asked, Angelsil told me that she was one of the continuing Frost Mage devotees, unable to part with her beloved Ice Block in the new fiery game. When she's not blowing through Kara with her guildmates, she says she enjoys putting Ice Lances in Gruul for fun and profit. She also has a Warlock and a Priest at endgame, although those are Horde side.

WoW Insider: So what is it that you are really looking forward to in patch 2.2?

Angelsil: There is supposed to be more loot for the Violet Eye faction, which is good. It seems that right now there are kinda crappy rewards for farming Karazhan rep-wise.

WI: I love my ring, but I'd love to see more too. What's the absolute worst thing in patch 2.2 that you've seen as yet?

Angelsil: I still think that resilience is a complete waste on PvE characters [compared to other stats], as clothies shouldn't be getting hit in raids. But it seems we're going to be forced to take it on some gear. Blizzard seems to be giving it up to PvP again at the cost of PvE raiding.

WI: What do you think of the upcoming in-game Voice Over IP (VOIP) that Blizzard has planned?

Angelsil: I think it's a brilliant idea! PUGs have long suffered from a lack of easy communication. Admittedly, I don't think it will replace private VOIP, but I do think it will become commonplace in PUGs and BGs where previously we only had typed chat.


The next person I caught up with was the L70 Orc Rogue, Biata from the guild . Biata is a combat dagger specced Rogue, who says she's in a medium sized guild. Her guild has cleared Kara, and is currently working on Gruul's Lair. When she's not raiding, she says she can be found killing Ogres in Outland as revenge against the ones in Dire Maul that killed her many, many times.

WoW Insider: So what are you really looking forward to in patch 2.2?

Biata: The thing I'm looking forward to most in the patch is the AQ 40 enchants that are being added to Outland factions for purchase since my guild doesn't do the instance anymore. (she is an enchanter)

WI: What's the absolute worst thing in patch 2.2 that you've seen as yet?

Biata: The only thing that I'm not looking forward to in the patch is the reputation grind to exalted for the enchanting patterns. I just get bored with the grind sometimes.

WI: I can relate to you there. And finally, what do you think of the upcoming in-game VOIP that is planned?

Biata: I'm still up in the air about the proposed VOIP. It could either be a positive or negative change depending on exactly how it works. If there is a way to make it guild, group, or raid specific then I feel the implementation could be wonderful. If not, then things have the potential for going in a less enjoyable direction. As to guilds not having their own Team Server/Ventrillo servers... Again I think it will depend on what the options are for its use.

While resilience on cloth doesn't affect me, I can totally agree with some of the rest. As I'm also an enchanter, making the old enchants available is nice. The only real problem I see is that now there's pretty well very little to no reason to ever go back and even bother with that content. (Not that there are queues of people waiting to get into AQ) What are some of your best and worst of the upcoming patch 2.2? How about VOIP?

Also, if you're interested in potentially being interviewed for Gamers on the Street, send a mail to gamersonthestreet@gmail.com, with your character name and server. You might just get a visit from a low-level character asking if you'd like to give your thoughts on what's going on in World of Warcraft!

(by:wowinsider)
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Fishing and fun (or the lack thereof)

Fishing is probably the strangest implementation of activity in WoW-- there's really nothing like it (well, except everything-- it's basically clicking in a certain place at a certain time, and when aren't you doing that in this game?). But for all its boring qualities, players are still fascinated with it. Blizzard has hit on that weird balance of positive reinforcement-- it's boring, but gives just enough reward to keep you doing it.

And so it's not surprising that, once again, players are asking for fishing to be made "more fun." What that means, no one is really sure-- they could add better rewards, or make it a less boring minigame, or just make it require less attention (all other professions don't require any attention to be paid).

Lo and behold, Drysc actually acknowledges that there's something wrong with fishing-- something that has to do with the unquantifiable quantity known as "fun." But what it is, even Blizzard doesn't seem to know-- they added nodes to fishing to join a bit of exploration with it, but once you've found a node, it's just back to that same old clicking. Drysc suggests that real fishing is just as boring for some people, and that's why not everyone likes fishing in WoW, either.

My personal preference would be to put more into the fishing minigame-- catch different fish at different times of the day, or use different lures to attract various catches. Either that or make the skill involved something other than "waiting"-- maybe a meter where you have to click when the bar reaches a certain point. There's lots of reasons to fish, and that's why people still do it. But there's no question that sitting there waiting for the bobber to bounce needs more cowbell fun.

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The least visited instance... and why

Overpowered on the forums wonders what the least popular instance is, and I'd say his guess of Blackfathom Deeps is probably pretty close-- it's a long run away for pretty much everyone but Night Elves, and at 25-30, there's so many more quests and things to do that BFD usually gets passed up. The other good guesses, I'd say, are the "old" late game instances like Naxx and LBRS. Unfortunately, while Blizzard tells us all about the most popular stuff in the game, they are pretty mum on what players don't like, for obvious reasons.

So how do you make an instance that makes players want to visit? Relmstein walks us through his idea of what makes a perfect instance ambiance: music, visuals, interactive features (the Chess Event is one of my favorite dungeon features, although almost all the dungeon dialogue "cut scenes" are fun for me), and memorable boss encounters.

But then again, BFD seems to have all of them-- it's a very pretty dungeon (I especially like the temple at the end), and while it might be a little short on interactive features, I really like the lore and the unleashing of the monster at the end. The last ingredient, I think, to a good dungeon, is just a storyline that drives you there. I'm sure Scarlet Monastery (except the Graveyard), and Deadmines are definitely among the most popular instances, and both of those have huge amounts of lore and mystery to make them interesting. Maybe if more players realized that Aku'mai was actually a pet of the Old Gods (or, you know, if there was a quest to kill him that explained that), BFD would see more traffic.

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PTR Notes: Kill command bugged

This is a weird, weird bug. Over on the PTRs, Tig has found that every time he tells his pet to drop the Kill Command, the mob attacked also executes the spell on its target. For example, if Tig is shooting a murloc, and his pet Ganjii is in melee with that murloc, Ganjii's Kill Command will attack the murloc, and then the murloc will somehow also drop a Kill Command attack on its target (in this case Ganjii).

That's a big bug, because if you move it to, say, a boss, a Hunter could drop the Kill Command on the boss while the main tank's health is low, which would cause the boss to instantly attack the main tank, in effect wiping the raid. Not cool.

Hortus wonders if it's just against specific mobs, but that's the last we hear of Blue-- there's no confirmation that it's a known bug and that they're planning a fix. Of course, it is the test realm, so let's not get too excited-- chances are that by the time this big patch reaches the live servers, this won't still be happening. But if you happen to be hitting the Kill Command with your pet on the test realms, watch out for that extra attack.

Thanks, Colin!
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Ho Ha Dodge Turn Parry Block Spin

Daffy and his buck and a quarter quarter staff may be able to parry and block, but should mobs in WoW be able to block without shields or parry without weapons? According to Blizzard, yes. CM Drysc spins it this way:

Consistency of base mitigation abilities for mobs allows for a consistency of combat, while still allowing interesting and engaging offensive abilities, differentiating defensive abilities, and various mob characteristic design. It's a bread and butter ground work that keeps mobs consistent in their ability to mitigate damage from all players. It can definitely create some weird situations where a grub really shouldn't be able to parry, but it can.

Drysc goes on to suggest imagining that the grub quickly spins a silk sword to parry your attack. Similarly he suggests that moths parry with their "Fel Proboscis".

So, it seems we should expect all mobs to be able to parry and block us while we fight them and to daze us while we run away, regardless of their species or appendages. It's a suspension of disbelief thing. We are supposed to rationalize or ignore how these creatures are doing these things and concentrate on the fun aspects of the game. Immersion into Azeroth suffers from balancing the gameplay experience.

I would like to see more customization of the enemies we fight -- less consistency of the mobs and more classic RPG battle rules, like skeletons being susceptible to blunt weapons and bleeding attacks not working on creatures without blood. On the other hand, I've had more fun playing WoW for a longer time than any other MMO. Perhaps it is just the classic geek conflict: purist vs. fanboy (or fangirl in my case).

Does the fact that grubs can parry bother you? Would you prefer less consistency and more believability? Do you think Daffy is better as Robin Hood or Friar Duck?

(by:wowinsider)
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Know Your Lore: Aegwynn

Azeroth isn't an easy place to live. Aside from those damn immortal night elves, most of the characters we know and love today weren't around for most of Warcraft history. Thrall? Born after the First War. Jaina? Barely middle-aged. Arthas? Is he even old enough to rent a car?

But on today's Know Your Lore, we have a lore figure who's lived for well over a millenium. She's seen it all and done most of it, despite being a mere human woman. So put your hands together for the second-to-last Guardian of Tirisfal, Magna Aegwynn!

Who: Magna Aegwynn, Guardian of Tirisfal.

What: Human Guardian.

History: Once upon a time, a council of mages met in the woods of Tirisfal to figure out a way to keep the Burning Crusade away from Azeroth. The mages decided to imbue one protector, or Guardian, with the magical powers of the Sunwell and charge them to secretly fight the Legion. The mages empowered the Guardian through a long ritual which caused them to lose part of their power. Once a Guardian was created, he would be the only Guardian until his death, or until the mages completed a long ritual to strip the Guardian of his power and create a new one. The Guardian would be given the title of Magna and a room in the Violet Citadel.

This system worked well until the time of Magna Scavell. Scavell was an aging Guardian who took in five apprentices, all of whom wished to succeed him as Guardian. Four of the students were men and one was a woman, Aegwynn. While the male students made fun of Aegwynn, claiming that women weren't good at magic, Aegwynn studied hard and eventually learned to read the Meitre Scrolls, the spells of long-dead Highborne wizards, which few could comprehend. Because of this, the Council of Tirisfal chose Aegwynn to be the next Guardian and transferred the power from Scavell to Aegwynn through their ritual.

Aegwynn started fighting the Legion on Azeroth immediately after receiving her powers. She quickly banished Zmodlor, a demon that possessed schoolchildren, even though the Council chided her for her rash actions. She told them that she intended to take a more proactive approach to fighting demons. As she spent more and more time hunting down demons, she grew to question the orders of the Council, believing them to be stodgy and set in their ways.

Five hundred years after becoming the Guardian, Aegwynn went to the continent of Northrend to fight a group of powerful demons. The demons had tracked down one of the last surviving dragonflights and were draining them of their magic. Together with the dragons, Aegwynn defeated the demons. But as they were celebrating their victory, the avatar of the fallen Titan Sargeras appeared and told Aegwynn that the world would soon bow before the Legion, bla bla bla, generic villain speech. (Sargeras is the official Big Bad of the Warcraft universe, the source of the Burning Legion and everything else bad that's ever happened. We'll get to him later, trust me.)

Aegwynn figured, hey, I'm supposed to fight the Burning Legion, so why not take the chance and try to take out their leader if I can? She readied herself and threw every power she had at the corrupted Titan, and he died easily. No, Aegwynn! Haven't you ever been a video game character before? The last boss ALWAYS has more than one phase! But Aegwynn was proud and reckless, and she thought she'd beaten Sargeras once and for all. She dragged his body to an undersea tomb and sealed him away. Unfortunately for her, Sargeras had transferred his spirit to her body at the time of her death. He wasn't able to use her himself, though. He'd need a new body to fully possess ...

Aegwynn kept fighting the remaining demons for the next seven hundred years. But after twelve hundred years of being the Guardian, her biological clock was beginning to wind down, and she knew someone else would have to take her place soon. But instead of letting the Council choose her successor, she decided to take matters into her own hands and have a kid. After considering several candidates, she chose Nielas Aran, the court wizard of Stormwind, as her lover. Aran was crushed when he learned that Aegwynn wasn't in love with him, but had just used him as her baby daddy to screw with the Council. Aegwynn kind of felt guilty about this, so when her son, Medivh, was born, she locked the powers of Tirisfal inside him and left him to be raised by Aran. Then she went off to do ... stuff. The lore doesn't say. I like to think that she spent a lot of time celebrating her newfound freedom, kind of like a thousand-year-old Lindsay Lohan on a bender.

When Medivh hit puberty, his powers went wild, killing Aran and sending the boy into a coma. Medivh awoke later with all the powers of the Guardian, but unbeknownst to Aegwynn, the spirit of Sargeras hiding inside his mother had been transferred to his body and had also awakened at puberty. I don't even want to think about the biology of how that all happened. Anyway, Medivh acted like a nice wizard and Guardian while secretly plotting with the orcs to open the Dark Portal. It gets complicated, and we covered a lot of it in Know Your Lore: Medivh.

Basically, Aegwynn overheard Medivh plotting with demons and confronted him about it. When he refused to change his ways, she fought him and was easily defeated. Medivh drained away all her remaining power. Then Medivh/Sargeras decided to give her the What My Evil Plot Is speech, and told her that when she had defeated Sargeras, he had transferred his spirit into her body and then to Medivh, and now THE WORLD WAS DOOMED ETC. Medivh then made the classic villain mistake of allowing his prisoner to get away after the What My Evil Plot Is speech.

Aegwynn ran to the court of King Llane of Stormwind, Medivh's childhood friend. She told them of what she had heard, and Llane began to develop a plan to fight Medivh. Aegwynn, however, wanted no part in her son's death. She teleported herself to the continent of Kalimdor and built herself a nice home by the shores of Ratchet, to await her own death. But Medivh had not taken the entirety of her power. She was still unable to age at a normal human rate, and she had just enough magic left to create a scrying well to look in on her son. When she saw Khadgar and Lothar kill Medivh, her heart broke. Even with her meager magic, she devised a plan to bring her son back to life. After twenty-one years of saving up her power, she brought Medivh back, without the evil spirit of Sargeras. He decided to atone for his evil deeds by traveling around and giving annoying cryptic warnings to racial leaders about how they must band together against the Legion.

This next part comes from the novel "Cycle of Hatred." Aegwynn again tried to retire to a normal, quiet life, but was located by the mage Jaina Proudmoore. Jaina wanted Aegwynn's help to relocate some Thunder Lizards. Relocate Thunder Lizards? Dude, that's the weakest possible excuse for barging in on an old lady's privacy. Jaina's subservience got on Aegwynn's nerves, which is unfortunate, because after relocating the Thunder Lizards they both got magically sealed in Aegwynn's house.

It turns out that Zmodlor, the very first demon Aegwynn ever defeated, had been resurrected by dreadlords and had concocted a plan to reform the Burning Blade cult. Zmodlor recruited advisors from Thrall and Jaina's inner circle into the cult in an attempt to force the humans and the orcs into a war. Jaina, Aegwynn, and Jaina's colonel Lorena confronted the demon, but Jaina was taken out of the fight by the Burning Blade warlocks. In a last attempt to defeat the demon, Aegwynn infused Jaina with her own life force, and Zmodlor was banished.

Where she is now: Aegwynn almost died after giving her life force to Jaina, but she survived due to the few powers she retained from her Guardianship. She accepted the position of advisor to Jaina, but insisted that her identity remain secret to keep people, demons, and the Burning Legion from bothering her. There are two women in Dustwallow Marsh that players have thought to be Aegwynn in disguise: the hermit questgiver Tabetha and Jaina's elf companion Pained. However, she's not necessarily in the game right now.

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Around Azeroth: Looking over Thousand Needles

Reader Xylar of Tichondrius sent in this lovely shot taken of the sun setting over Thousand needles from the Horde outpost of Freewind Post. (And I really feel for those of you out there who play Alliance but have never played Horde -- this particular Horde-only location gives quite a view.)

Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.

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Beware of video scams

I'm sure you've read before about watching out for all sorts of scams -- after all, your World of Warcraft account information is valuable stuff, and plenty of thieves out there would be happy to get their hands on it. The latest technique of account theft that I've noticed is all over YouTube, in many videos offering to teach you how to hack World of Warcraft accounts for fun and profit. All of these videos suggest that Blizzard has some sort of account retrieval service that can be accessed by e-mailing a random address (often at Gmail or Hotmail) with your account name and password as well as the name of the account you wish to access. Then, the videos claim, all you have to do is wait for Blizzard to mail you the password of the target account!

Of course, the entire thing is a scam. The people posting these videos just want to take your password and run. So be warned, everyone -- don't fall pray to greed, and don't give your password out to anyone, regardless of what they might promise you in return.

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Breakfast Topic: Outland or Azeroth?

There are those who claim that since the release of The Burning Crusade, the game has been ruined. Outland quest rewards are too powerful, rendering most Azerothian goods obsolete and making much previous raiding experience pointless. And addition of Paladins to the Horde and Shamans to the Alliance ruined any unique sense of play that came from one side or the other. Such players claim that The Burning Crusade ruined the entire game. On the other hand, there are plenty of players who say that doing any pre-BC content now (i.e. leveling a new alt) is simply painful, because of fewer quests per zone, more travelling per quest, and generally slow and inefficient leveling. These people say some time needs to be spent on pre-BC content to bring it up to par with the different style of BC zones. And this morning I'm asking what you think. Has The Burning Crusade spoiled or perfected World of Warcraft? Is Outland superior to Azeroth or vice versa?

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Waiting to reroll

While I'm referencing threads on the European forums, this situation is no less common on US realms. Some players out in the World of Warcraft are simply chronic rerollers. They love the environment of a new realm -- a fresh economy, plenty of other people to level up with, and that thrilling race to level 70. And since Blizzard hasn't released any new realms (for players on US or EU realms) since the release of The Burning Crusade in January, players of this sort are really getting a bit antsy.

Blizzard, for its part, is holding to its stance that they'll release new realms when overall population requires it -- but until then, the best you're going to get is low population recommended realms. Vaneras thoroughly explains the situation for us: the fact that people enjoy playing on brand new realms just isn't a compelling reason for Blizzard to create new realms when existing realms have plenty of room to grow.

But what's the solution? Vaneras tell us that merging existing low-population servers in order to be able to open new realms isn't going to happen. (And I can understand why -- merging realms and then rolling out new realms is a lot of work by Blizzard's tech team, and essentially serves no purpose.) Vaneras suggests that you could get yourself organized and ready for new guilds on new realms, but that's probably little comfort. Some posters suggest a rerollers' realm of sorts -- a realm that resets every few months to offer players wanting an authentic rerolling experience a chance to race to 70 on a regular basis, without the need for any new realms. But what do you think? Do we need new realms? Is the fun of playing on a new realm enough of a reason for Blizzard to regularly deploy them -- even if they'll wind up ghost towns down the road, when players abandon them for other fresh realms?

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Enter to win a Spectral Tiger Mount from WoW Insider!

I think this is the most awesome thing we've ever given away. WoW Insider and Upper Deck have hooked up to provide you with the friggin' coolest ground mount in game: The Spectral Tiger Mount. It's one of the three loot cards from the WoW TCG just announced for the new Fires of Outland booster decks (coming to a store near you on August 22nd). Usually it's only available from the special foil card in these decks, but this time, you can win a code for it just by leaving a comment on this post. Yup, put a comment on this post in the next 48 hours (the loot is so good we had to go twice the normal contest length), so before Friday, July 27, at 7pm EST-- and please use an email that you check often, so we can get back to you when you win!-- and one person from the comments will be randomly selected to win a code that gives them this mount on the in game character of their choice!

Just a note: in game, you will need to pay the regular mount gold and have the skill for it, just like any other mount (you can buy it either regular or epic, 10g or 100g). But that's a small price to pay to be riding around on a rare mount from a loot card that isn't even available in stores yet. And if you don't win the mount in this contest, don't worry, because you will have a chance to get it by checking out the Fires of Outland sneak preview tournament, run by Upper Deck all around the country, and happening August 11-12.

So put down a comment and hope for the mount. Oh, and one more thing-- while most of our contests are US only, this one works on both US and EU realms, so for this one, you're in, you crazy EU players! We love you too! Good luck!

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Embed your Armory info

Ever looked at your Armory page and thought "this is nice, but I wish I could put it on another web page"? Well, now you can! MMO Guildsites has created a widget that can be embedded anywhere you like (guild rosters, maybe?), and consists of an iframe linking to a script that runs on their servers (so you don't need any server-side script support on your own site). The output is rather pretty, as you can see at right; in fact, I like it better than the actual Armory in many ways.

It does have a few shortcomings -- you can't see how much +damage you have in various schools, for instance -- but I still like it as a way to put live Armory data anywhere you want it. (It can show PvP data too, by the way, but I turned mine off for the screenshot since my numbers are downright shameful.) If you're interested, click over to their site, put in your server and character name, and it'll generate a preview and HTML for you to paste wherever you want it.

(by:wowinsider)
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WarCry on Zul'Aman and "logical loot"

The Zul'Aman preview information just doesn't stop. WarCry has a fairly in-depth rundown of the place which contains the following information of note that I haven't seen elsewhere:

Largely or entirely outdoors
Each of the first four bosses should take 45 minutes to an hour to complete, making the raid very modular in terms of time -- spend an hour, down a boss, stop for the night if you want. This makes casual raiding much more of a possibility.

The last two bosses, the Witch Doctor and Zul'Jin, have to be done at once, though.
No associated faction; instead, faster boss kills will yield better rewards. "Blizzard fully expects this to become a competitive sport."
In non-Zul'Aman-related news, there has been a loot table design decision over in Irvine:

We were also told about a philosophical change at Blizzard, namely logical loot. Previously, the loot tables were somewhat random. They're not going back and fixing years of content, but now, players can expect creatures to drop things that one would expect. If that bad guy is holding a big, shiny axe, then odds are his loot is a big shiny axe.

This is pretty interesting. There have been some steps in that direction from the very beginning, with animal-type mobs carrying body-part vendor trash instead of coins, for instance, but I'm glad to see more attempts to make the game world coherent.

(by:wowinsider)
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Warcraft novel author Richard A. Knaak will be at Blizzcon

Blizzplanet got word from Richard A. Knaak himself that he's going to be at Blizzcon next weekend. Knaak, you may know, is the author of the War of the Ancients series of Warcraft books, as well as the author of other Sci Fi and Fantasy books, including a few books set in the Diablo universe.

He'll be hanging at the Tokyopop and Pocket Star books booth showing off their Warcraft Manga book, the Sunwell Trilogy, as well as promoting the upcoming release of the reprint compliation of the WotA trilogy. Knaak's blog also says he's going to be at Comicon this week, if you're in San Diego for that one, and has another interesting little tidbit: apparently the first book of the Sunwell Trilogy has been picked up as an SAT study book. So you can read about Warcraft and study for the SAT at the same time.

Anyway, no word on whether Knaak will be actually signing or not, but he seems like a nice enough guy, and will probably be happy to discuss any of the ins and outs of Warcraft lore with you. And if you are going to Blizzcon, don't forget-- we'll be happy to discuss them with you too!

Thanks, Chadwick!

(by:wowinsider)
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BigRedKitty: What Kind of Hunter Are You?

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.

Just this week, after having some fun in an Alterac Valley battleground, we exited the battlemaster room in Ironforge and were quietly chillin' beside the canker sore in the floor -- you know, that red-hot pile of rocks that has poked up through the ground and become an OSHA-nightmare for King Bronzebeard. Dang thing isn't even roped off or a sign posted or anything. You're trying to buy some Roasted Quail from the wandering meat merchant and BAM you're taking damage. You ever wonder why there aren't any goblins in Ironforge? They'd set up a fly-by-night legal firm and try to get a class-action suit filed with everybody who has been burned by that lava-mound as litigants, that's why.

Bronzebeard may not be able to keep track of his daughter or keep the boiling lava from running every which way, but the man's no fool.

So we were chatting with the guildies and making life miserable for a few of our friends when a little level fifteen dwarf hunter comes running up to us.

"WHOA! That's the meanest-looking Hobbes I've ever seen! HAHAHA!"

Our level-70 haughtiness kicks in immediately, natch, and we pop Bestial Wrath.

"No, this is the meanest Hobbes you've ever seen," we state smugly. The guy actually backed up; he had never seen an enraged pet before, we believe, and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. So of course we smash Eyes of the Beast and start chasing him around while yelling,

"Come back here, morsel! Little dwarves make great Snausages! Yum!"

And as the entire military wing of Ironforge begins to watch, applaud, laugh and cheer, he assimilates the idea that no harm is going to come to him. Bestial Wrath fades, Hobbes returns to our side and our new friend asks,

"That was incredible! What spell was that! Can I do that too?"

"Well, not for a few levels, but let's see your pet and we'll tell you how he'll look when you finally get to try it."

"I don't have a pet."

...

"You don't have a pet?"

"No. I don't know where to buy one."

...

What would you do in this situation, hmm? Laugh, cry, perhaps give him a /wetwilly emote? Before you answer, and before we tell you what we did, let's take a trip back in time and see how many head-smackingly stupid things we did as we learned how to play a hunter.


How many of you lost your first pet because you didn't feed him? Raise your hands and be honest. BRK is part of that population, you bet. Totally gone, just disappeared he did. We found the quest-giver, tamed a bear and thought that was it. Never gave a thought as to why said bear had a little unhappy face, but in the middle of a Frostmane Troll quest, he just -- poof! -- disappeared. We had no clue until we asked an more senior hunter what we could have possibly done to offend our little bear. Feed your pet, what a novel concept.

"My bear won't tank anything!" I wailed in guild chat. I'd had the bear for three levels and I was basically fighting the same way I had back in the dwarf/gnome kiddie-pool starting area, with the exception of sending my pet to attack first. But the bear couldn't keep mobs away from me; I was always pulling them and having to break out my axe and chop the dang things down.

"You've got Growl on, right?" An experienced hunter replied.

"Growl? What the bloody heck is that?"

And thus we were introduced to the concept of a pet trainer, quite bluntly, as he laughed himself silly while telling us what to do. We found the pet trainer, trained the highest level of Growl we could, made notes of all the other spells our pet would be able to learn and at what level. No more being a doofus for us!

Deadmines, our first instance at level 18. Googlybear was primed and ready, we had our ammo and we wanted to look good. We were with another hunter, a night elf, we want to say he was level 20. He asked us,

"Hey! Did you get Bite 3 in Loch Modan yet? I'm going there after this instance to train it up."

"Bite 3? What's that? We have Bite already."

"Dude, there are different levels of Bite, you know that, right?"

"Levels? Like Growl?"

So after we fished Deadmines, we followed the night elf to Loch Modan and trained Bite 3. To this day we don't have Bite 2 in our spellbook, and if it hadn't been for that night elf, we might not have Bite 3 through 9.

Skip forward a bunch of levels to somewhere in our 40s when we got a rare world drop, a blue polearm that we had seen in the Auction House for more gold than we ever thought we'd have. Our leatherworking was going nicely so of course we had bubkis for cash. Equipping our fancy-dancy melee weapon, we set off for our first Big Enchant. We knew our guild enchanter a little and hoped she'd hook us up.

"Do you have the time, and perhaps the mats, for a weapon enchant?"

"Sure!" she said, "What are you looking for?"

"Fiery Weapon!"

And she slapped it on us nice and quick, and that polearm glowed like all those others we had seen. It was purty, it was. And it added fire damage to our bullets, too! Dang we looked good.

And as we stood at the entrance to the Stormwind bank admiring our handiwork and bravado, another hunter, a level 60, whispered us,

"Why did you just get Fiery put on your weapon? You know it only procs when it's used in melee, right?"

"Say what? Melee only?"

"That's right. It adds damage to your melee attacks, not ranged. Did you think you were getting Fiery Bullets? Get an agility enchant on that if you can."

Of course we thought we were getting Fiery Bullets! Actually, we still want them.

But anyway, we wanted an agility enchant now, but of course we couldn't afford it as our leatherworking was consuming all our gold. So for the next five levels, we ran around Azeroth advertising our supreme hunter-idiocy with Fiery on our polearm.

Level 55, baby, and Lower Blackrock Spire was on the agenda. Our first 10-man raid and we wanted to impress. We took Googlybear and followed everybody into Blackrock Mountain, up the chain, under the rock, and jumped onto the balcony the first time. Nice! We get assembled and set off killing the trash in the lobby. Up the stairs on the right and we jump down.

And Googlybear comes running through the little tunnel on the left, bringing five or six elite mobs with him. We wipe in spectacular fashion.

"WHICH HUNTER DIDN'T PUT AWAY HIS PET BEFORE JUMPING DOWN!" the raid leader bellowed.

Well there was only one hunter in the raid, so it was pretty bloody obvious who hadn't put away their pet, wasn't it. Of course, nobody had told us that we were supposed to put Googlybear away; we had never been to LBRS before and had no idea that he'd take a path infested with elites when we jumped down. But we looked pretty incompetent anyway.

We hit the big time at level 60 with our first Molten Core raid. We were totally ready to blow the doors of the damage meters. Yes, our guild was sending 10 people to fill out this other guild's 40-man roster, but we were the Hunter Class Officer and the total schiznit. We had mastered Upper Blackrock Spire and a couple of bosses in Zul'Gurub. Our confidence was high, our gear pretty spiffy with five pieces of Beaststalker gear, and our Flawless Arcanite Rifle was the envy of many. On the first pulls we were right up there with some warlocks in topping the damage meters, so we were patting ourselves on the back pretty frequently.

After taking down the first Core Hound, the raid moved forward. We were concentrating on the tank and mastering our new CT Raid addon when we saw the raid leader's text blast on our screen,

"We're not going ANYWHERE until someone loots that damn dog! I've said it three times now, so whoever you are, loot it NOW!"

Loot the dog? What? Where? Oh look at that, it's sparkly. So we looted the dog. Oh! and we can skin it too. Don't know why it's such a big deal to loot a...

"YOU SKIN THAT DOG YOU'RE OUTTA THE RAID!"

OMG what did we do now? It's skinnable, I'll get a little leather. You want the leather for yourself, fine. Sheesh.

And then we saw the Core Leather get looted. Ohh... so that's where that stuff comes from. No wonder we got slapped; that stuff's expensive.

We downed Lucifron and made our way to Magmadar. We had just received Tranquilizing Shot from Lucifron and were pretty happy that we got a drop on our first run. It was soon explained to us that we needed Tranq Shot to keep Magmadar from gaining Frenzy. OK, we can do that. We put Tranq Shot on our action bar and declared ourselves Ready to Go.

The fight began and we immediately smacked Magmadar with Tranq Shot. Good Work! He won't Frenzy now. About a minute later, his horns turn red and the tank starts taking a serious beating.

"TRANQ SHOT NOW!" the raid leader frantically screams. But we can't as it's cooldown isn't up. We wipe, and hard. And we learn that a 40-man wipe is pretty impressive, especially for a hunter who has Feigned Death and gets to watch the whole thing unfold infront of him.

So there we are, sitting in Ironforge, with this level 15 hunter who has no pet. And we remember how we started out, from losing our first pet to personally, although unintentionally, wiping an entire 40-man Molten Core raid. And we smiled.

"Come with me," we said to the little hunter. "I can show you how to get your pet."

"Really! That would rock!"

So out the gates we ran and headed toward Kharanos and the hunter-pet quest-giver, a level 15 hunter and his level 70 guide whom he didn't know five minutes ago. Now of course we didn't tell him how to do the hunter quests, but at least we set him on the right path.

We wonder if he got a bear.

Daniel Howell continues his quest to ensure every hunter has a happy pet as the hunter-pet duo extraordinaire known to lore as BigRedKitty. More of his theorycrafting and slanderous belittling of the lesser classes can be found at bigredkitty.blogspot.com.

[Fan art by Moony]

(by:wowinsider)
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A spec guide for classes that aren't yours

Nowadays, you lucky kids have the Armory, and you can, on demand, look up the point-by-point spec of any player in the game. You can see who's Fire, who's Affliction, and who's Resto at a moment's notice, and gone are the days where you had to guess what spec a player was from the spells they cast.

Or are they? I'd hazard a guess that most players don't have the Armory on quick dial, and yet all players still encounter different specs of classes every single time they play. In an Arathi Basin, by the time you've looked up the other guy's spec on the Armory, the game is over.

So it's still valuable to know specs just by glancing at the spells players are casting, and this is a guide to help you do that. Want to know at a glance whether your main tank laying down Mortal Strike is really specced Protection as he says, or if he's got a few extra points in Arms than he should have? Want to know if that Warlock who sent a Felguard after you in the battlegrounds is specced Demonology or Destruction?

I've put together a handy guide to spotting specs of classes that aren't yours-- there are a few telltale spells in each class that will giveaway a player's spec at a glance, and save you the momentary trouble of having to punch their name into the Armory. I've also given you a short brief on what each spec can and can't do for you (so you're not asking priests in Shadowform to buff you with Divine Spirit). To check it out, hit the link below.

Before we begin, a quick note, because I know someone will say it. Yes, I know these are not all the specs in the game. Yes, I know these are broad, sweeping generalizations, and that not all Ret Paladins are retnoobs, and Balance Druids can, on occasion, heal. Remember, these are specs for classes that aren't yours-- pretend you're in a battleground, and an player has just run past you. This is a guide to give you a quick insight on just what spec that player might be, and how you can get help from or hurt them. Yes, these are broad generalizations and people choose to play their class for all kinds of reasons, but any Mage that Iceblocks does have a lot of points in Frost, and any Paladin that Crusader Strikes has most of their points in Retribution. That kind of identification is what we're talking about here.


Warrior Specs


Fury
How to Spot: Most likely dual-wielding and in Berserk stance. Also keep an eye out for Rampage, an ability that pops up after they hit a crit-- it increases their attack power for 30 seconds, and is stackable up to five times.
They Can: Do damage, and lots of it. Fury warriors are almost like Rogues in plate.
They Can't: Tank as well as a Protection warrior. And as a healer myself, don't ever let a warrior, of any spec, tank while dual-wielding.

Arms
How to Spot: Mortal Strike is the big one-- it's an ability they can put on a target that causes all healing done to that target to drop by half. Arms warriors also get specializations for two-handed weapons, so if you see a warrior running around cutting people apart in PvP with a Cloud-style megasword, you're probably looking at an Arms warrior.
They Can: PvP, and well. That Mortal Strike is a killer, and combined with Improved Rend and Deep Wounds, they are the kings of scary status effects.
They Can't: Hit a lot. With a two-hander, it's all about power, not speed. But when they do hit, they hit like a truck.

Protection (a.k.a Prot)
How to Spot: They're usually wearing a shield and tanking-- Prot warriors can take damage, but they're not so much at dishing it out. Concussion Blow (or "conc blow") is another tell-- a 20 point talent that stuns for 5 seconds, and is perfect for stopping a mob headed for the clothies in its tracks.
They Can: Tank! Prot warriors are the best tanks in the game.
They Can't: Do much else. They're big on creating threat and controlling mobs, not doing damage, so prot warriors usually have a tough time soloing, and they stay away from (or just respec-- it's easier) for PvP.


Druid Specs


Feral
How to Spot: If they're in Bear or Cat form when they cast Faerie Fire on you, they're Feral. Leader of the Pack is another tell (and a great buff to have-- it ups your critical chance, and Improved LotP now gives a chance to heal when you crit).
They Can: Tank, more than respectfully. In cat form they can churn out the damage now, too-- Mangle, the 41-point talent, is a scary little ability that can rip you apart.
They Can't: Heal as well as other Druids. Feral druids tend to spec deep into Feral-- they play the class so they can be an animal, rather than a Tauren or a Night Elf, so you'll rarely see them out of animal form.

Balance (a.k.a. Doomkin)
How to Spot: They're in Moonkin form, and shooting lasers (a.k.a. Starfire) like mad. Unlike Cat and Bear forms (which all Druids can do), only Balance Druids can be Moonkin.
They Can: Spurt out damage like nobody's business. Moonkin, formerly called oomkin for the fact that they burn through mana, are now called Doomkin and can top damage meters in both PvP and PvE.
They Can't: Heal in Moonkin form. While Moonkin form does give them a nice armor boost (not enough to tank, but enough to stay alive when they pull aggro), in Moonkin form they can only cast Balance spells.

Restoration (a.k.a. Resto)
How to Spot: Tree of Life (Treeform) is the most obvious, since it's a 41-point talent in this tree-- in that form, the Druid can only cast mostly healing spells, and they get a bonus to the healing and the mana cost. Omen of Clarity is another Resto talent, though not as deep-- it's a buff you'll see Druids put on themselves.
They Can: Heal, baby, heal. They can also do that funny dance.
They Can't: They can actually do Druid stuff just like other Druids (no Moonkin, obviously), just not as well.


Hunter Specs


Beast Mastery (a.k.a BM)
How to Spot: Their pet is gigantic and red. This is a result of Bestial Wrath, a talent that temp buffs their pet when used. You'll also see a Ferocious Inspiration buff show up on you when grouped with them-- it ups your damage when the pet scores a crit.
They Can: Kill stuff with their pet-- a BM Hunter's pet is a killing machine, not least because of Intimidation, a talent that allows the pet to actually stun its target for a few seconds. They can also solo like no one else-- a BM Hunter might be the best solo class in the game.
They Can't: Raid quite as well as other Hunters-- since most of their strength is in the pet, and their pet doesn't do well under AoE (which lots of raid bosses use), they're at a disadvantage in groups.

Marksmanship
How to Spot: Trueshot Aura is the best tell-- it's a groupwide buff that ups your Attack Power. Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot (man I hate Scatter Shot-- it disorients you for a few seconds) are also Marks Hunters only.
They Can: Break out the ranged DPS. Unlike BM Hunters, their power is in their ranged attacks, which makes this a nice class for PvP, although abilities like Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot work well in raiding situations also.
They Can't: Do much to you if you close into their dead zone or melee range. They can shoot you down, but if you survive their barrage, their bag of tricks consists of trapping you until they can get to range again.

Survival
How to Spot: Survival is probably the most unpopular Hunter spec, since it has lots of melee-related abilities (and it's for a class you'd be crazy to melee with). Still, since the expansion, Survival has gained a lot of ground in raiding, especially with Expose Weakness, a shot that increases attack power against the target for the whole raid.
They Can: Do crowd control. Nobody does Hunter CC better than Survival Hunters, since their traps all get boosts.
They Can't: Do any of the other cool stuff that Hunters can do-- frankly, the Survival tree needs work.


Mage Specs


Arcane
How to Spot: As one of my guildies put it, Mages are very patriotic-- their hands are either red, white, or blue. Arcane-specced mages' hands are usually flaring white, as they often cast Arcane Missiles. Slow is the highest talent in this tree, but you hardly ever see that cast-- most Mages, even if they spec Fire or Frost, will go up to 21 points in this tree just to get Presence of Mind (POM), which makes the next spell cast an instant. Pyroblast is actually a Fire talent, but lots of Mages love to cast it with POM, so if you see a big fireball coming at you instantly, you're looking at a half-Arcane, half-Fire mage.
They Can: Conserve mana. Arcane mages have the best mana usage rate out of all three trees.
They Can't: Blow stuff up like Fire mages. Arcane mages are the nerds of the mage community-- they get nice bonuses, but they aren't as flashy as the other specs.

Fire
How to Spot: They are blowing you up. Pyroblast, Blast Wave, Scorch, Dragon's Breath and Combustion are all Fire Mage talents, so if you get hit with any of those, you're looking at a Fire mage.
They Can: DPS like a mofo. Mages spec for Fire to do damage, and they don't care who knows it.
They Can't: Control their threat. Fire mages like to pull aggro in raids, and their talents (especially Dragon's Breath, with its Disorient factor) are a little more suited for PvP. It's not that a good Fire mage can't control threat well, it's that most of these guys are pyromaniacs, and they can't really be bothered.

Frost
How to Spot: They're Iceblocking-- that's a 21-point talent in this tree. Frost mages also love Blizzard, as it not only does damage, but provides all kinds of nasty status effects to their targets. And if you ever see a mage with a Water Elemental, you're looking at a Mage heavily specced Frost.
They Can: AoE-- their CC bonuses make them perfect for handling all sorts of mobs in large numbers. They're also good raiders, as the threat problems that Fire mages suffer from are easily handled by Iceblock.
They Can't: Make things go boom like Fire mages can. Frost mages can do terrific DPS, but a great Fire mage will always beat a great Frost mage with the same gear.


Paladin Specs


Holy
How to Spot: They're not fighting. It sounds silly, but Holy Paladins are the best healers in the game, and so even though they're wearing plate, they're at the back of the raid tossing heals and blessings.
They Can: Heal, and conserve mana like nobody's business. Holy Pallies don't have anything really flashy that's just theirs (those blessings are available to all Pallies). But they can heal a whole instance without ever dropping below half mana.
They Can't: Dish out damage. They're there to keep you up, not kill stuff.

Protection
How to Spot: Avenger's Shield is a big one-- if you see a Paladin throwing a shield at someone that bounces around, they're probably heavily Protection. Blessing of Kings (that tasty buff that gives you +10% to all stats) is also in this tree, but not that far down.
They Can: Supposedly tank, but in my humble opinion, a Paladin tanking is a lot like that fight your friends got in last night at the bar-- it's fun to hear about afterwards, but you're kind of glad you weren't there.
They Can't: On the other hand, they do everything else just fine. Healing isn't as good as Holy, but it's respectable.

Retribution (a.k.a. Retnoob, DPSadin)
How to Spot: Ah, the Retribution Paladin-- what you get when you cross a class meant to be defensive with a player who wants to do damage. These guys are out there carrying around two handers, and Crusader Striking the heck out of anything they see. If you're in a group with one, you might see Seal of Command on them, and the Sanctity Aura on yourself.
They Can: Do enough DPS to take out half the defenders in AB, bubble, heal themselves up, and then take out the other half.
They Can't: Heal anyone but themselves while bubbled. I'm sure some Ret Paladins remember that they're given a few healing spells, but the majority of them try to hit stuff as fast and hard as possible.


Priest Specs


Discipline (a.k.a. Disc)
How to Spot: They're usually healing the Main Tank-- with Power Infusion, improved Divine Spirit, and a reflective Power Word: Shield, raiding Priests usually have a few points in the Disc tree.
They Can: Be a terrific support class, as well as buff themselves bigtime. Mana conservation is also a big plus for this spec-- these guys can pour out heals forever, but they're not as big as the Holy Priests.
They Can't: Do the big heals-- their healing just doesn't get as big a bonus as..

Holy
How to Spot: LOLightwell, so called because Blizzard's big idea (to let Priests create an altar of healing) never really panned out to their expectations. Holy Nova is also a holy talent, but the big tell here is that Holy Priests don't really die-- they just turn into a big ghost and keep on healing.
They Can: Heal, so much so that they pull aggro. Why else would they have a spell that buffs them only after they die?
They Can't: Lay out the DPS like...

Shadow
How to Spot: They're in Shadowform, which makes them all dark and buffed, but unable to cast any Holy spells. Also, they've got two spells that raids just love: Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch. One gives back health for Shadow damage, and the other returns mana. For this reason, not only are Shadow priests some face-melting mofos, but raids love them for DPS, too.
They Can: MELT UR FACE!
They Can't: Heal. Well, they can (a good Shadow Priest can put on healing gear and heal a regular instance), but I wouldn't want one mainhealing a Heroic.


Rogue Specs


Rogues, unlike almost all other classes (although Priests can do this to an extent), are not actually defined by their talent trees-- most of the Rogue builds out there actually cross over more than one talent tree. Here are four of the most common.

Combat
How to Spot: They're not wielding a dagger (although there is a Combat Daggers variant of this build). Rogues get special skills that require a dagger, and some Rogues eschew those skills for more steady damage (rather than burst damage). Another indicator is Blade Flurry, and Adrenaline Rush, if you can spot it through all that stabbing is another tell.
They Can: Fight you a lot, and raid. Stealth isn't as important to these guys-- pushing out constant damage is.
They Can't: Do any of the really nasty Rogue things-- no Backstab, and no Ambush.

Mutilate
How to Spot: So named because of the 41-point talent in the Assassination tree, these Rogues are probably best suited for soloing. They're big fans of poisons, and are extra good at laying down combo points and dropping finishing moves.
They Can: Poison you, and then use the poisons on you for all kinds of nasty things.
They Can't: Move away from one target for too long-- these guys are great at killing one thing slowly.

Stunlock
How to Spot: Heard that stealth sound in PvP, and then find yourself incapacitated while a Rogue tears you apart? You're the victim of a Stunlock rogue, who combine the Assassination and Subtlety trees to Ambush a foe, rack up tons of combo points, Vanish, Cheap Shot, hit Preparation, and then Vanish again. If a skilled Stunlock Rogue gets his hands on you without you knowing, you're dead.
They Can: Do everything twice-- Seal Fate, from the Assassination tree, gives them 2x the combo points, and Preparation wipes all their cooldowns and lets them ambush you yet again.
They Can't: Handle more than one foe-- Stunlockers tend to be PvP, and will Vanish rather than face multiple foes.

Shadowstep
How to Spot: So named for the talent in the bottom of the Subtlety tree, these Rogues are masters of stealth, and consequently PvP. This is a tough one to spot, because the big feature of it is Shadowstep, which the Rogue can use to automatically appear behind a target while stealthed, but because the Rogue is stealthed, you won't always be sure what happened. None of the other talents associated with this build are really obvious (Hemo and Premeditation are high enough on the tree to be parts of a combo build), so it's probably best spotted by what it's not than what it is-- if the Rogue you're fighting uses daggers, but doesn't use Cold Blood or Mutilate, you're probably fighting a Subtlety Rogue. How interesting that a talent build built around Stealth is hard to recognize.
They Can: Sneak up on you, and finish you before you know it. They're also good survivors-- able to dodge some AoE, and they have an annoying Cheat Death talent that allows them to duck any attack that would otherwise kill them.
They Can't: Fight multiple enemies for very long. Leather armor on a melee class means Rogues rely on stealth and deception, not strength and stamina.


Shaman Specs


Elemental
How to Spot: Totem of Wrath is the big one-- it's a totem that gives a crit buff, and can only be laid by Ele Shamans. Shamans who get the Clearcasting buff also have a few points in Elemental, if not all the way down.
They Can: Break out the spellcasting DPS, and churn out lightning bolts like nobody's business.
They Can't: Get hit in the face. Even though they still wear mail, Elemental Shamans are casters, not melee fighters like..

Enhancement
How to Spot: They're carrying two weapons, as Dual Wield was given to Enhancement Shamans in 2.1. They also drop a debuff called Stormstrike periodically on mobs, and if you're in a party with a Shaman who periodically gives you a buff called Unleashed Rage, it's coming from their Elemental tree.
They Can: Melee it up. Much like Retribution Paladins, this is the offensive side of the hybrid class.
They Can't: Heal or cast spells. Enhancement Shamans wear agility gear, not spell damage gear. They'd look at you funny if you asked them what their Lightning Bolt spell crit at, because they barely use it, except maybe to pull.

Restoration (a.k.a. Resto)
How to Spot: They cast Earth Shield on you-- it's the closest thing Shamans have to a heal over time, and only Resto Shamans have it. They also get a nifty Mana Tide totem, which OOM casters love in the middle of a raid.
They Can: Do huge heals, although their mana pool suffers a bit more than Holy Paladins or Holy Priests. They can also put the Ancestral Healing buff on you after one of their heals crits, which ups your armor immensely.
They Can't: Get hit, and while a resto Shaman with spell damage gear on can churn out DPS, it won't be near as much as an Elemental Shaman.


Warlock Specs


Affliction
How to Spot: They're casting Siphon Life, which sucks life from the target to the caster. Curse of Exhaustion is another Affliction-only spell.
They Can: DoT it up and let it go-- Affliction casters throw down DoTs and lay down the fear as much as possible, waiting for the Damage Over Time spells to do away with their targets' health.
They Can't: Count on their pets, except to pull mana off of them.

Demonology
How to Spot: This one's hugely popular, because the top talent in this tree gives you the Felguard (and we've all seen those, right?). This tree also features Soul Link, which is when you hit the Warlock, and, to your consternation, only their pet feels it.
They Can: Solo, and drive you nuts with that Felguard.
They Can't: Break out the DPS as well when their pet's not around.

Destruction
How to Spot: Hellfire is a favorite of these guys, as it grants a chance to stun when it hits, but Confraglate is probably the easiest tell-- once a target has been Immolated, they can throw down a spell that consumes the DoT for burst damage.
They Can: Do burst damage-- these guys don't wait for DoTs, they'd rather crush you right away.
They Can't: Pull out a Felguard, but who cares when you're doing those crazy Shadowbolts?

(by:wowinsider)
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Encrypted Text: How to lrn2raid

You've made a rogue, leveled it to 70, and have managed to finagle yourself a rogue spot in a raiding guild, which in itself may have required bribes/blackmail/sexual favors. Now you're standing in front of Kara, Gruul's Lair or SSC, and you suddenly realize: I have no clue what I am doing.

Like every other class, the rogue raid game at 70 is dramatically different from how you played when leveling. You can't expect to jump right into the raid and top the damage meters. Young padawan, you must learn to raid. And we are here to help.

1. Come prepared. Yeah, showing up at the right place at the right time is a big part of raiding, but there's a lot more to being ready to raid than just being physically present. First of all, read up on the strategy for the boss you're facing. Asking "What does this boss do?", or worse, not asking and wiping the raid, is a good way to ensure you'll never be back in that instance. Take five minutes before the raid and check out Bosskillers or WoWWiki.

Another aspect of coming prepared is bringing consumables. For rogues, this means poisons/sharpening stones, battle elixirs, and healing potions at a minimum. You want to always keep a stack of Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Anesthetic Poison on you at all times, and I also bring all the other poisons in case the enemies are vulnerable to them. Good battle elixirs include Fel Strength Elixir, Onslaught Elixir and Elixir of Major Agility. I also bring Elixir of Major Fortitude, Insane Strength Potion and Haste Potion.

Your raid will also want you to download certain mods. Some form of boss mod and threatmeter is pretty much essential to fights nowadays -- I use Deadly and KTM, respectively, but there are many choices. Damage meters can be good if you want to compare your performance to other rogues, but can become the bane of raid groups if you get the "I'm topping the damage meters! I'm topping the damage meters!" attitude. There are a number of rogue-specific addons as well. Three worth mentioning are Slicer, which provides a visual timer for your Slice and Dice, PoisonPouch, which makes buying and applying poisons easy, and StunWatch, which can help you time your stuns on trash.

And finally, make sure you're personally prepared for the raid. Eat if you're hungry, drink if you're thirsty, finish your work or homework, close the naked picture website. I like to concentrate on the raid (and alt-tab out during breaks to read forums) -- however, the top rogue in my guild raids on speed and techno music and does great. Whatever enables you to have fun and do your best.

2. Get a decent raiding spec. "Decent raiding specs" include combat swords/fists/maces, combat daggers, and (against non-poison-immune bosses) mutilate. Generally, anything deep in the subtlety tree is not going to be great for raiding, although there are still some diehard hemo spec players. Combat is best for sustained DPS, as it benefits the most from gear upgrades and can also function as a pretty good PVP spec. Mutilate can work well if you have the gear for it, as mutilate crits can be sky-high, but the spec hits the dust when the boss is immune to poison.

Currently, combat swords is considered to be the build with the maximum potential DPS, but the combat swords playstyle isn't for everyone. I'm 15-41-5 combat daggers using the spec above, and I love my sustained damage, energy regen, and ability to hit Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry for those all-out-burn-down fights. If you have a spec idea, feel free to post it on the rogue forums and ask them for comments.

3. Know that you can do more than just damage. Specifically, you can stun, interrupt and poison. Stuns are invaluable when fighting hard-hitting trash mobs. Stunning trash can help keep your healers' mana up and your tanks alive. However, most tanks want to get a couple whacks in on the mob before you Cheap Shot it, unless you are utterly confident that you can either burn it down before it gets out of stunlock or tank it yourself. But if you have, say, an undergeared tank getting smacked for one-fourth of his health each time by a Kara mob, you might just want to step in and save the day. Stunlocking is easiest with a mutilate build, but even combat types can help out with the stuns if you have enough combo points at an opportune moment.

Interrupting spells is another important part of a rogue's job. A lot of trash mobs and even a few bosses (Shade of Aran, Magtheridon's channelers) have spells that need to be interrupted. Know when you're facing one of these mobs and put Kick on an easily-accessible hotkey. Many of these mobs cast spells quicker than your Kick cooldown will be up, so discuss who's going to stop what spells with your local other rogue/warrior/shaman. You don't want to kick a shadowbolt and then be caught with your pants down when the mob decides it's time to heal.

Poisons ... well, poisons serve many functions for a rogue. Instant Poison and Anesthetic Poison do direct damage. The latter should be used on aggro-sensitive fights, since its damage doesn't cause threat. Deadly Poison causes damage over time and stacks up to 5 times, and can be a nice way to keep dealing damage during any phase where you can't directly attack the mob. Crippling Poison slows the mob, which is excellent in PVP but doesn't often come in handy on boss fights. Mind-numbing Poison, which can slow the enemy's casting time by 60 percent, and Wound Poison, which can do damage and reduce healing effects on the enemy, are both excellent in certain situations -- however, most bosses are immune to these poisons. When they're not, though, the poisons do a great job. The channelers on Magtheridon are good examples of where to use these poisons.

4. Know where to be. You want to be behind your opponent at all times. If you're doing your damage through Backstab and Mutilate, the reason's pretty clear -- you can't use these abilities from the front. But even if you're swords, maces or fists, you should be behind the mob for a couple of reasons. First off, a lot of bosses cleave these days, and cleaves tend to be 180 degrees in front of the mob. Staying in the back will keep you from getting one-shotted by a nasty cleave. Secondly, mobs can parry attacks made from the front, but not from behind, so positioning yourself at the rear will increase your white damage. And finally, on most fights, it's easier for all the melee to stay together. That way, you can get chain healed and holy novaed, and if you notice all the other melee running away, it's a good sign that you should run away too.

Speaking of running away, most boss fights require some of that these days. The time of Ebonroc and Ragnaros is long past, and your bosses are likely to run around, AOE, or knock you into walls. Your boss mods should tell you when the boss is set to use certain abilities, so make sure which abilities require you to run (whirlwinds!), which require you to avoid other people (shatter!) and which require you to not move or your raid leader will hunt you down and kill you (flame wreath!)

5. Figure out the right finishing moves. You're going to be using Sinister Strike/Backstab/Mutilate most of the time, but there's still the question of what to do with your combo points. Out in the wilds of Azeroth, you probably spent them on Kidney Shots or Eviscerates, neither of which is ideal in a raiding environment. The most important thing for finishing moves is to always have Slice and Dice up. By increasing your attack speed, it increases your white damage and adds more to your DPS than any other finishing move. Each raiding spec -- combat swords/maces/fists, combat daggers, and mutilate -- has its own finisher rotations. The consensus seems to be:

Combat swords: 2pt Slice and Dice, 5 pt Rupture, repeat. If you have the two-piece Tier 4 bonus, do 1 pt Snd/5 pt Rupture. (In general, Rupture does more damage than Eviscerate.)

Combat daggers: 3 pt Slice and Dice, 5 pt Slice and Dice, 5 pt Rupture, repeat.

Mutilate: Depends, since the combo point generation is so much faster than combat. Always keep up Slice and Dice. If you have Vile Poisons and a stack of 5 Deadly Poisons on the target, Envenom can do quite a bit of damage since it ignores armor, although this is still up for debate. Spearmint of Gilneas suggests "Garrote, Mutilate, SnD if it was a crit, Mutilate again then SnD if it wasnt, Mutilate, Rupture if I'm at 4 points (probably not), Mutilate again then Rupture if not. Rinse and repeat." Mutilating again when you're at four combo points is a waste of one or two combo points.

6. Above all, learn. Learn from your class leader. Learn from the other rogues in your guild. Learn from rogues in rival guilds. Learn from the Armory. Learn from the forums. Learn from Shadowpanther's gear chart. If your DPS is lacking, ask what you can do to improve before someone tells you you need to improve. If someone does tell you you need to improve, listen to what they say.

What other advice would you give to raiding rogues?

(by:wowinsider)
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Around Azeroth: Words never spoken by a Dwarf.

Beware of booze in Terokkar Forest. If you happen to get yourself smashed while in Stonebreaker Hold or Allerian Stronghold, you just might start seeing things, as demonstrated above, by test-Dwarf Flaym of Thrall. (And you do need to see the image full-size to properly appreciate it, so click for a larger version!)


Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.

(by:wowinsider)
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Reminder! Caption This contest ends tonight!

Just a friendly reminder to all of you out there in case you happened to miss our Caption This contest announcement on Monday -- you've still got time to win! To enter, all you have to do is go to our official contest post and submit a caption for the above screenshot before 11:59 PM EST tonight. And if our readers pick you as one of their favorite captions, you could walk away with a 60-day gamecard (for first place) or an IM IN UR BLANK t-shirt from ThinkGeek (for second place).

So what are you waiting for? Take a look at our official contest rules and then get to captioning!
(by:wowinsider)
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Breakfast Topic: Beyond good and evil.

It seems to be common assumption that as far as good and evil goes within the World of Warcraft, the Alliance are the good guys and the Horde are the bad guys. And when I first started playing the game, I bought that concept and rolled Alliance, wanting to be a "good guy." But after spending many subsequent levels playing on the Horde side of things, I have to wonder -- are the Alliance really good? Are the Horde really evil? Sure, I can buy that some Horde races are pretty much evil (both Blood Elves and Undead come to mind immediately) and that some Alliance races are sickeningly good (Draenei, anyone?), but after spending some time on both sides, I'm just not convinced that either side is all good or all bad. But this morning, I'm asking you -- are the Alliance the good guys and the Horde the bad guys in this game?

(by:wowinsider)
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The Light and How to Swing It: Shockadins!

I am very interested in trying out the Shockadin spec when I get my pally to 70 and I've been trying to find info on this particular spec. Ten Ton Hammer has an excellent Paladin Guide, but doesn't list the Shockadin as a sub guide. The stickied Paladin Guide on the official forums has a lot of information of varied accuracy, but also doesn't have a Shockadin section. I'm pretty much having to scrounge for bits of information here and there, so I thought I'd publish my findings in this week's column.

The Shockadin is mostly a PVP spec, though some claim to be able to heal in raids just fine as long as they change their gear. This is what is so intriguing to me: that the DPS is supposed to be similar or better than a Retribution Pally, but that you still have plenty of Holy for healing. The gear for DPS needs to be high +Spell Damage -- mostly you are looking for caster gear. Some will settle for mail gear intended for Shamans for the casting bonuses. Just as Moonkin will wear a combination of leather and cloth to boost their spell damage, the Shockadin must balance spell damage gear from all armor categories with enough AP to survive.

Everyone seems to agree that the Shockadin spec is 40/0/21, though there are slight variations on how those points are spent. Pictured above is a very common Shockadin spec. Breaking it down according to talent:

Retribution Tree

Benediction (5 points): Mana efficiency is extremely important to the Shockadin. This talent reduces the Mana cost of Judgement and Seal spells by 15%.

Improved Judgement (2 points): Captain Obvious says faster casting = more DPS. This reduces the Cooldown time of Judgement by 2 seconds.

Improved Seal of the Crusader: Some put 3 points into this talent to increase the Holy damage of Judgement of the Crusader by 5%, though others will put 3 points in Parry to increase survivability.

Conviction (5 points): Increases critical strike chance with melee by 5%.

Seal of Command (1 point): Though I have seen Shockadin builds without it, it seems to me that the Judgement of this seal is a big plus for increasing DPS. The Seal of Command gives a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to 70% of normal weapon damage and when trained to maximum, the Judgement deals 228 to 252 damage (456 to 504 to a stunned or incapacitated foe).

Eye for an Eye (2 points): Spell criticals cause 30% of the damage taken to also be taken by the caster.

Crusade (2 points): Increases damage caused against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals by 2%. This can be increased by spending one talent point, if not spending it on Seal of command or elsewhere.

Sanctity Aura (1 point): This is required for the Shockadin as it increases Holy damage done by 10% for the Pally as well as all party members within 30 yards. It used to also increase Healing, but unfortunately, not anymore.

Holy Tree

Holy Shock (1 point): This is the most important talent, as it gives Shockadins their name. It is an instant cast, 20 yard range spell that can be trained up 5 ranks and causes up to 574 Damage or Healing. No matter what talent choices you make before this, you must take the path to Holy Shock.

Holy Guidance (5 points): This is the second most important talent as it increases all spell damage and healing by 35% of total Intellect.

Choose whatever talents you wish to get to the above two talents, but here are some suggestions:

Divine Intellect (5 points): Holy Guidance will be much more effective with this talent choice as it increases total Intellect by 10%.

Illumination (5 points) and Divine Favor (1 point): These are both prerequisites for taking Holy Shock. They also reduce mana and increase criticals which benefit the Shockadin greatly.

Holy Power (5 points): As the critical effect chance of all Holy spells are increased by 5%, this is a great way to spend 5 talent points.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2 points): As a caster, no matter how well armored, Blessing of Wisdom should be the blessing of choice and the Improved talent increases the effect by 20%.

In the forums, Doru (a level 70 Warrior who also has a 70 Ret Pally) defines the Shockadin as follows:

A shockadin, by definition, is a melee class that has become a caster that stands 40 yds back spamming heals and moves in 20 yds every 15 seconds to hit with a bolt of shock. This completely shocks the enemy as surely there must be some mistake that a character wearing 12000 armor is standing 40 yds away.

Another good source for a discussion of the Shockadin is Sylvina's blog. Sylvina is a WoW Insider reader and a Belfadin. Jeffpally has a video of a PVP Shockadin, which is mostly made up of using Holy Shock and Hammer of Wrath repeatedly.

Is being a Shockadin as fun as it sounds? Has anyone had any trouble with a Shockadin speced pally healing in groups or raids?

Robin Torres is raising a couple of Blood Elf Paladins of her very own on two different servers, because one just isn't enough. In her search for knowledge about her new favorite class, Robin interviews more experienced paladins. If you want to be one of those paladins, please email Robin.Torres AT weblogsinc DOT com for a possible future column.

(by:wowinsider)
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