Breakfast Topic: What makes you love your favorite battleground?
Alterac Valley sets my towers aflame. I fell in love with AV during classic WoW , in those sprawling, drawn-out matches that spun out over a day or longer. With a big map and plenty of time, you can savor the micro-encounters that make up a true battle — that exquisitely frozen moment when you come face to face with an opponent behind a bunker, the off-objective chase that neither of you will give up, the “happy” grudges that leave you seeking out the same opponent the moment you respawn. I gulp down that stuff like water. Objective-driven play has its appeal, but it’s the serendipitous moment of connection with the enemy that really turns my flag. I have a friend who adores siege weaponry. For him, PvP queuing means a beeline for Wintergrasp, Strand of the Ancients, or Isle of Conquest. That’s fine. While he’s staying busy with catapults and cannon, I’ll be slowly throttling some newly met nemesis in the somber shadows behind the keep. What do you enjoy most about your favorite battleground? Is it something that’s there by design, or is it some player dynamic or bit of byplay that fires you up? Filed under: Breakfast Topics Breakfast Topic: What makes you love your favorite battleground? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 16 May 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Your PvP Questions: Spell announcers, MMR and patch 5.3
It’s been a little while since I last did a PvP mailbag, and the emails have been piling up! So, if you have PvP questions, do drop me a line, I will do my best to respond to them, possibly in columns such as this one, or if I can fire off a quick email I will. Do note that I’m far from a PvP specialist in all the classes in WoW , and PvP questions which are class-specific would probably be better directed to the relevant class columnist. Janrana wrote: Hi Olivia, since reading about it a while back in one of your columns I’ve been a big fan of SpellAlerter, but it doesn’t seem to have had any updates in a long while and is a bit broken for me. It doesn’t seem to have all the spells any more and it also causes some errors to appear when it’s on. Do you know of any alternative? As it happens, I do! First and foremost SpellAlerter is alive and well… ish. It was updated for patch 5.1 , but hasn’t had any further updates since then. It still works at least fairly well, but I wouldn’t rely on it completely. At least, it still allows you to set up custom alerts, so if there are spells it’s missing you can add them in. Continue reading Your PvP Questions: Spell announcers, MMR and patch 5.3 Filed under: PvP , Blood Sport (Arena PvP) Your PvP Questions: Spell announcers, MMR and patch 5.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 15 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Gold Capped: Never scan the Auction House again
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped , in which Basil ” Euripides ” Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil’s gold making podcast, Call To Auction , and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Have you ever scanned the Auction House with TradeSkillMaster (the best auction management addon, well worth the trouble of learning ) and not gotten a complete scan? Maybe you see an error message and your crafting window starts displaying unknown materials prices, even though you can see the prices right front of you when you search? This is a bug that affects anyone on a realm with a lot of auctions (more than 42554, according to the TSM error message). In essence, the GetAll scan that’s used to grab a dump of the AH in a few seconds can be incomplete if there are a lot of auctions. As far as I know, the traditional scans are immune to this, but they take a lot more time; like 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Even if the scans work perfectly on your realm, scanning is still an extra step that you have to do every time you want to update the prices before you queue up your crafting list. Luckily, there’s a way you can get up to date price information without ever having to scan the AH again. Continue reading Gold Capped: Never scan the Auction House again Filed under: Economy , Add-Ons , Gold Capped , Mists of Pandaria Gold Capped: Never scan the Auction House again originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 15 May 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Should you play a druid in WoW?
Just getting started in World of Warcraft and not sure what you want to do? Or maybe you’ve been playing for a while but aren’t sure which class you like best. We’re here to help by taking a look at what each class can do and leading you to the right one. Today, we’re talking druids . Druids harness the powers of nature to help their friends or harm their foes. They wield can wield magic to harm like a mage or heal like a priest and can shapeshift into animal forms to dive into melee fighting. Like the monk and paladin, druids are a hybrid class that can fill any role in the game they wish: if you play a druid, you have the flexibility to do whatever you please. But are you up to the task of wielding the raw elemental power of nature? We’ll take a look at just what druids can do and try to decide if it’s the right class for you. Continue reading Should you play a druid in WoW? Filed under: Druid , WoW Rookie Should you play a druid in WoW? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Encrypted Text: Five macros every rogue should know
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination , combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you’d like to see covered here. Macros are designed to allow a player to combine commands and modifiers (targeting, non-GCD abilities) with regular abilities in a quick and efficient manner. Macros can’t make decisions for you. There is no macro that will automatically switch between Mutilate and Dispatch for you on the fly. There is no macro that will use Revealing Strike when it fades and Sinister Strike otherwise. Macros aren’t intelligent – they have to be told what to do. Pure classes tend to have fewer abilities than hybrids, and after the merging of spells like Envenom and Eviscerate, our action bars are sparse. The average raiding rogue might only need a dozen or so abilities per encounter, and that’s including defensive cooldowns. A typical assassination rotation consists of Mutilate or Dispatch, Rupture and Envenom, and a few Feints or Cloaks per fight. Rogue macros tend to focus less on day-to-day rotation assistance and more on strategic abilities and cooldowns . Continue reading Encrypted Text: Five macros every rogue should know Filed under: Rogue , (Rogue) Encrypted Text Encrypted Text: Five macros every rogue should know originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 15 May 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
The Queue: Looking to the future
Welcome back to The Queue , the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft . Alex Ziebart will be your host today. In yesterday’s edition of The Queue, there seemed to be more questions about the next expansion than the current one. Since the next expansion hasn’t even been announced yet, there isn’t much we can do with those, but we sure can try. Joey4 asked: weapon models to me seem to go by expansion theme, wrath had a dark cold look especially on greens and mists had the Asian theme, do you think we will see awesome looking models again like BC xpac had in the next xpac? Continue reading The Queue: Looking to the future Filed under: The Queue The Queue: Looking to the future originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 15 May 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Around Azeroth: Champagne supernova
Deepholm is the rare zone where you can’t hit an invisible ceiling on your flying mount and fall to your death. But somehow N
Know Your Lore: Of Wolves and Mages
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You’re playing the game, you’re fighting the bosses, you know the how — but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. You probably don’t know who Ur was, and even if you do, you don’t know much about him because there’s not much to know. We know the following – Ur was a mage who lived in Dalaran before the coming of the Scourge to the Eastern Kingdoms, who apparently died during the invasion Arthas led to retrieve the Book of Medivh so that Kel’Thuzad could use it to summon Archimonde the Defiler. It’s possible that Ur, being a remarkably skilled and knowledgeable wizard, was one of the three archmages slain by Arthas while maintaining auras that protected Dalaran from the undead. What’s interesting about Ur isn’t what he himself actually did, however, but what was done with the work he left behind. Ur was the author of two tomes (that we know of), The Book of Ur and Ur’s Treatise on Shadow Magic . Ur’s knowledge of other planes of existence was significant, if faulty – while in practical terms his understanding was great enough that it was possible for Archmage Arugal of Silverpine to use the Book of Ur to summon worgen forth from their prison in the Emerald Dream, it’s notable that Ur didn’t actually understand what the worgen really were, or what druid magic was – he simply saw the worgen as monsters from another world. Still, without Ur, it is unlikely that Arugal would have been able to bring forth the worgen he did. Amazingly, despite knowing nothing of druidism and only having a hazy understanding of the worgen origin Ur’s research allowed Arugal to pull Alpha Prime and other ancient members of the Druids of the Scythe to Azeroth. Considering it was Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage who placed Ralaar Fangfire and the other druids who’d helped create the Scythe of Elune under Daral’nir (the great tree in the Emerald Dream for which Tal’Doren is a mirror) in the first place, the fact that Arugal managed to draw them forth is astonishing. Yet manage it he did, with Ur’s book. Continue reading Know Your Lore: Of Wolves and Mages Filed under: Analysis / Opinion , Lore , Know your Lore Know Your Lore: Of Wolves and Mages originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 15 May 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
