Posted on December 21st, 2009 by admin
Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. “You have found your way here, because you are among the few gifted with true vision in a world cursed with blindness! You can see through the fog that hangs over this world like a shroud and grasp where true power lies!” ~ Lady Deathwhisper
This week we delve into Icecrown Citadel and see what these new bosses are all about. We face a bag of bones that won’t sit still, a somewhat effeminate version of Kel’Thuzad, a lift boss that is actually supposed to kill you and an orc-gone-bad. All in a day’s work for your warlock on the go.
Lord Marrowgar
Time to dance with the bone lord. There are a couple things to avoid here. First is the boss himself when he spins around and drunkenly staggers all round the room. He moves pretty quickly so there’s actually little chance of avoiding him completely but it’s not a bad idea to try and minimize the damage you take from him. This
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on December 17th, 2009 by admin
Blizzard released a rather cryptic statement this morning concerning the offensive and defensive mechanics of Wintergrasp. Their entire statement is after the break, but it essentially comes down to the fact that there are some realms where one faction controls Wintergrasp nearly the entire time, and Blizzard has now shed some light on mechanics in place to correct this.
The faction hording of Wintergrasp happens particularly often on unbalanced realms. Because the faction imbalance can be so extreme in some cases, the smaller population faction has virtually no chance at winning back the Wintergrasp fortress and obtaining the heirlooms and PvP items, nor any chance at accessing the VoA bosses. This can cause frustration on the part of players in the smaller faction.
In this mechanic, which we presume is live, Wintergrasp zone mechanics will make it easier for the offense to gain access to siege vehicles if the opposing faction holds Wintergrasp more often. Blizzard is not
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on December 14th, 2009 by admin
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com’s arena column.
Listening Music: The cutest kid you’ve ever seen covering Jason Mraz. Blood Sport normally features the musical works of professionals. For this little guy, we have to make an exception. My favorite part is right before the first verse. I love the intense scrunched face and little head nod. I dare you to find anything even half as cute. That video of a tickled kitten has nothing on this.
Last Week: part one of our beginner’s arena guide. First, we fielded a possible complaint about catering to casuals. After that, we talked a little bit about some of the best ways to gear up: finding an arena team, doing battlegrounds, and running Vault
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on December 10th, 2009 by admin
People who were worried that creating Shadowmourne, the legendary two-handed axe, would be double the grind that Val’anyr was might want to relax a little, as the official WoW Armory just clued us in as to where and how often the Shadowfrost Shards necessary to craft it drop.
As per the quest The Splintered Throne, you’re required to collect 60 of the little buggers, and from the site, it appears that they’re around a 25-50% drop rate off of all bosses except Arthas in the 25-man version of Icecrown Citadel on normal mode and a 50-100% chance off of the Heroic versions of the same bosses.
All in all, not bad. It’ll still be a, well, legendary process to get your axe crafted, but at least you won’t need to suffer through awful drop rates to make it happen.
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on December 7th, 2009 by admin
If the quest for bigger and better loot leaves you craving still more, maybe you need a guild that takes things to the next level: a shot at WoW loot you can wear in real life, too. Enter The Swag Dogs, a brand new guild created by our friends at SwagDog. The Blizzard-approved apparel specialists have created a family-friendly guild where players can make new friends, get in on raiding groups on the ground floor — oh, and get a shot at free WoW swag and BlizzCon tickets.
You’ll recognize SwagDog as the folks behind those sweet guild tabard-style T-shirts you’ve seen on recent posts here at WoW.com, including our recent WoW 5th anniversary T-shirt giveaway. The SwagDog crew are pretty good people. They sponsor our WoW.com Guild of the Month contest, giving out a $100 SwagDog gift certificate to the winning guild every month.
When we heard SwagDog was forming an in-game guild, we smelled a marketing rat — but as it turns out, there’s no pressure to buy.
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on November 30th, 2009 by admin
Former World of Warcraft distributor in China The9 recently reported on their third quarter revenues which showed a massive 94% drop Year Over Year. Their revenues were posted at $3.7 million, a significant drop from their second quarter earnings which was pegged at $42.2 million (while they still held the license). Last year, The9 reported earnings of $59.8 million.
Although The 9 downplays the loss, pointing to notable growth in their other licenses, such as FIFA Online 2 and Granado Espada, the impact of losing the publishing rights to Blizzard’s phenomenal MMOG was more than apparent. World of Warcraft has a tumultuous history in China, with The9 losing the rights to rival Netease back in June, with rumors swirling about the change as early as April of this year.
World of Warcraft is currently in the middle of a power struggle between two Chinese government agencies, resulting in the suspension of the game. Players in mainland China have reportedly not had access to the
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on November 26th, 2009 by admin
Yes indeed, this Friday is none other than Black Friday, which means the deals will be aplenty, the crowds will be horrendous, and the holiday money drain will begin (of course, you could go with Buy Nothing Day, but that seems a little too grinchy to me — why not go ahead and buy while the buying’s good?). Fortunately, there are a few WoW deals floating around out there, in case you need to pick up a copy of the game for a loved one (or that Recruit-a-friend account you’ve been planning to make).
The regular WoW vanilla game (useful for leveling to 60, but if you want to go past that, you’ll have to buy the expansions) is on sale in a few places for super cheap — the Ladies of Leet saw it at Best Buy for just five bucks, and Gamestop’s matching that price. Gamestop also will have the Battle Chest (with WoW and BC and a few other goodies) for $19.99, and Newegg has the same price if you don’t want to fight the crowds. Unfortunately,
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by admin
We had a great show this past week — Michael Sacco jumped in via dialup from his country home to join Turpster and I to talk about the most popular stories in World of Warcraft over the past seven days. We talked about Mr. T and his mohawk grenade, how the new tier 10 system will work in patch 3.3, the beautiful axe that is Shadowmourne, and what it means for weapons coming in Cataclysm.
Plus, we answered your emails (including wishing one of our listeners a happy birthday), and we even played two operatic intros by our new friend Ethan B. I don’t know anything about opera, but seems to me that dude has quite the vocal chords on him. And finally, we talked about our bid for the Podcast Awards — we’re asking you to vote for us every day until the end of the month. If we win, we’ll not only give away the SleepPhones prize to one lucky listener, but we’ll record a Warcraft bedtime story for them (and all of you others via mp3 download). Please vote!
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on November 19th, 2009 by admin
Wrath is almost all wrapped up, and while we didn’t know much about it before the expansion, we’ve all certainly experienced the token system that Blizzard implemented as they went along, where early instances drop one kind of badge/token, and then the newer instances offer up new tokens, which can then be exchanged back for the older ones and their rewards. Now that we see the big picture at the end of the expansion, it’s pretty ingenious, actually, and it even allows Blizzard to beef up other parts of the game, as they did with the rewards in the new Dungeon system.
Not that he needs to, but Bornakk steps up on the forums to justify exactly this kind of tiered system. Players complain that Ulduar is “useless” now that you can obtain its badges from lots of different places, but Bornakk says this system is definitely preferable to what Blizzard did in vanilla and BC, which was requiring new raiders to run through all of the old content before seeing
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »
Posted on November 16th, 2009 by admin
A few readers have sent us notes asking what happened to their World of Warcraft: The Magazine subscription, and so here’s a quick followup to the magazine you might not have heard about since BlizzCon. As far as we know, it’s still on track for release in “late 2009″ — the website went live a while back, and they’re updating on Twitter. The first issue should almost be done, and it’s supposed to have a feature on the WoW TCG, something about Inscription, and memories of the game for the 5th anniversary, as well as lots of other stuff, we’re sure.
Additionally, even if you haven’t ordered a subscription yet (I haven’t, actually, but I meant to), there will be previews of the issue online at some point. Or, on the other hand, if you’re tired of waiting, you can contact them with support help and questions via email as well. But as far as we’ve heard, it’s still coming before the end of the year, so keep an
Filed under: World of Warcraft | No Comments »