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Old News from January 2011
News - January 31st 2011 - PayPal's Got Blizzard's Back We now have a dozen levels under our guild's belt. That gets us the second rank of Mr. Popularity. Now we get 10% extra rep when killing monsters and completing quests that provide reputation. Pretty nice, especially if you're a human. A few more official 4.0.6 patch notes showed up. There's almost no chance of the patch going live tomorrow, but next week is looking like more of a possibility. And Blizzard made another strike at gold sellers by getting PayPal to back them up. Blizzard complained to PayPal who then sent notices to particular gold sellers that Blizzard had targeted, stating that if the gold selling activities continued they would lose their ability to use PayPal as a payment option. While there will never be an end to gold selling this is a nice thing to see happen. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 28th 2011 - Adopt A Core Hound, Win An iPad Another 4.0.6 PTR build was applied but only a handful of changes were made, which is making the patch's release look like it'll be pretty soon. Here are the changes that were datamined. And Blizzard has started a Core Hound Pup Adoption Campaign. In an effort to _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 27th 2011 - Just A Few Hotfixes Not much for today besides a group of hotfixes. And even then it's not much to cheer about. Ah well, more news tomorrow. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 26th 2011 - Fluxuating Archaeology Prices Remember those sell price changes that were being made to the Archaeology vendor trash? Well Blizzard's gone and changed them again. The nicely priced Word of Empress Zoe is now worth 375 down from 1,000, but they've bumped up the values of all the other stuff by considerable amounts to make up for it. Now the smallest amount you'll get for any of the garbage is 1 gold. So it's still worth hanging on to some of that stuff until the patch. Thanks to another build on the 4.0.6 PTR we've got another set of datamined info to look at. And MMO-Champion has finally started to differentiate what patch info they provide is offical and what is datamined so I'll be able to let you all know the difference too. And if you're flying around gathering up coins from all the Elders during the Lunar Festival you may want to be aware of something. Blizzard has mentioned that the rep with the six capital cities that you gain from collecting each coin is capped at 5999/6000, so 1 point away from being Honored with the cities. So keep that in mind. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 25th 2011 - Ganker's Kit Of Ganking We've got an official 4.0.6 patch update to look over today. Some of this info was datamined earlier but this is the official inclusion of the changes into the patch. For those leveling alts you'll be glad to see that you will no longer have to discover the portal to a Cataclysm instance before you can queue up for it (which was a really stupid idea anyways). Overall the number of changes seems to be slowing down so we'll probably see this patch go live within the next month. Someone who apparently enjoys being a rogue in PvP has thrown together a rather nice forum post collecting the various items in the game that can help rogues be even more devious. But even if you're not a rogue there are still a number of tips listed that can help other classes, and even some that will help you get back at those sneaky rogues. And here's a short comic about how your view of playing MMOs changes over time, and it couldn't be any more true. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 24th 2011 - Archaeology Will Be Worth More Guild level 11, that's what we are. And that brings us the perk Mobile Banking. This added an ability to our spellbook, under the Guild tab on the right side, that creates a Guild Chest that gives access to the guild bank. The chest sticks around for 5 minutes and has a 1 hour cooldown, but the cooldown is NOT shared among the guild, each person has their own 1 hour cooldown for it. It turns out that a few of the Elders for the Lunar Festival did in fact get moved due to the Cataclysm, but not that many. I haven't found a full, updated list yet, but with a little searching around (or asking in a zone's general chat) you should have no trouble finding them A while back we saw that Blizzard plans to increase the value of the vendor trash that you get from Archaeology, and now we get to take a look at just how much they're increasing the values. For some of the trash it's A LOT. In one case an item's value is going from 10g up to 1,000g. So pay attention to what you piece together from Archaeology and make some room to hold on to a few things until 4.0.6 comes out. And in response to many comments on the guild rep system Blizzard is currently making plans to rehash it a little. They're not saying yet what the changes will be, but nothing is going to be implemented until at least the next content patch at the earliest. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 21st 2011 - We're Under Attack! Lunar Festival 2011 begins this Sunday. This is the holiday that involves a ton of traveling as you hunt down and honor the 75 various Elders scattered throughout the world. It's not known yet if the locations of any of the Elders has changed due to the Cataclysm, but just in case they haven't here's a real nice guide to help you through the world event. And don't be in a big hurry since this event lasts for 3 weeks. 4.0.6 is going to be adding two new vendors that will sell certain trade goods in exchange for Honor and Justice Points. The prices are a tad high, but they're intended to be a way to dump your JP and HP once you get to the point where there's nothing else for you to buy with them. Also note that some of the goods are bought in stacks so those high prices aren't quite as bad. And for those who are curious, the Satchel of Freshly-Picked Herbs contains 20 random Cataclysm herbs. Unknown to most of you our forums have been under attack lately. Some bots have been spamming our forum registration in the hopes that they'll get access and likely start spamming the crap out of our boards. Kadarin has tracked the IPs and most are coming from Russia and the UK. Damn, dirty foreigners. Since the number of fake sign-ups hasn't been decreasing Kadarin has disabled the sign-up function for our forums. So if anyone in the guild actually does need to sign up for access to the forums please have them contact Kadarin so he can temporarily turn the feature back on. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 20th 2011 - Preparing For Our Future Raiding More 4.0.6 changes to look over. We've got a bunch of datamined info as well as a little bit of official new info. As you can see Blizzard's still hard at working making a ton of changes to the game. While we haven't set an actual date for when we're going to start raiding again I can tell you that it'll probably be in the near future. This means learning a bunch of new strategies. Nightbloom has posted a number of video strategies on our forums (listed under Raid Discussions > Cataclysm Raiding) and another tool that can be looked into us using is this web-based utility called Boss Blueprint. It has images of the rooms the bosses are fought in and gives you a number of icons, arrows, and other markers that you can place on that image to create a diagram of the strategy you're going to use. You can then share that compiled image with others. While it won't make or break a successful strategy it can still be a pretty useful visual aid. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 19th 2011 - Field Trip To Crazy Critter Land Blizzard's been applying hotfixes to the game and not informing us what fixes were being made. They've finally come forward with a batch of new hotfix notes, many of which have already been put into the game over the course of the past 10 days. And I'm about to send you on a little field trip, but don't worry, it'll be worth it. You see, there's a little plateau tucked away in the far northwest corner of Mulgore. And on this plateau live a bunch of rabbits, prairie dogs, and mice critters. What's so special about that? Well, these critters tend to grow a bit larger and put on some weird accessories. The rabbits carry around axes in their mouths. The prairie dogs put on pit helmets and wield daggers. The mice put on skull masks and dual-wield shotguns and even go around killing the other normal-sized critters. This may sound like crazy talk, but the video in the link above shows what I'm talking about. I even took a trip out there myself to verify that it wasn't a hoax and I can assure you that it's real and these crazy critter things happen there. Someone at Blizzard has an odd sense of humor. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 18th 2011 - Our Good Guild Progression We managed to ding guild level 10! Woot! This gives us two things: the guild perk Chug-A-Lug which increases the duration of flasks obtained from guild cauldrons by 50%. This means for non-Alchemists those flasks will last for 90 minutes. However there's a bug that makes it so that the buff for Alchemists also lasts for 90 minutes, even though when they drink their own, non-cauldron flasks those last for 2 hours. Hopefully this will be fixed. Level 10 also unlocks the ability to buy BoA heirloom cloaks that give an extra 5% xp gain when worn. They're a little pricey at 1,200 gold each, but it's a nice little extra boost for your alts and they also work from levels 80-85 which the Wrath heirlooms don't do. But that's not all. We also FINALLY managed to find and kill an Orc Mage which was the final requirement for us getting Orc Slayer which itself was the final requirement for us getting Horde Slayer which unlocked the ability to buy a Guild Page vanity pet. This guy carries around a banner with our guild crest on it and also acts as a guild reward vendor so you won't have to go back to Stormwind to buy any future unlocked guild rewards. I suppose you could also use him as an easy-access vendor to empty out your bags, but keep in mind that the little guy does have an 8-hour cooldown. And I'm sure that many of you are as irritated as I am about the fact that there is a weekly cap on gaining guild reputation. We're not alone. So Blizzard has come forward to explain their philosophy on why there is a cap and why the guild leader and long-term members don't start at a higher reputation. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 17th 2011 - Just A Few Patch Notes Today's news pretty much just involves a new update to the 4.0.6 patch notes. These updates are starting to get smaller which means Blizzard will hopefully get their ducks in a row soon and get this patch finished. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 14th 2011 - Many Orcs! Handle It! Let's start the weekend with some fun stuff. First is a video review of Cataclysm from the folks at Zero Punctuation. While the review can be seen as brutally honest at times the resulting video is rather funny. Another video, this time showing what it looks like when 1,000 (reportedly) level 1 Orcs battle it out in the Gurubashi Arena. I'm not so sure that there's actually 1,000 Orcs there, and the level 85 that showed up kind of ruined the event, but it's still a rather impressive gathering. If you're ever uncertain about what tactics you're supposed to be using while in an instance just take a gander at this handy flowchart and you'll be playing like a pro in no time. And one final note: Happy Birthday to Chas (aka Domi)! ;) _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 13th 2011 - Obliterating BC Well last night was rather entertaining. We started off innocently enough with a trip to Sunwell Plateau. However we rolled through that place like a freight train and cleared it in 40 minutes. That was a bit anti-climactic so we kept on going with other BC raids. By the end of the night, in less than 3 hours, we managed to blast our way through Sunwell Plateau, Magtheridon's Lair, Gruul's Lair, The Eye, SSC, and the Black Temple. The only BC raid we didn't get to was Mt. Hyjal, but we'll probably hit that soon. Still, that was quite an adventure for one evening and we got many guild achievements for it. And we've got yet another addition/update to the 4.0.6 patch notes. Of special interest are the changes to group % for 5-mans in regards to getting guild achievements and a directly related change to gained guild XP. And on a personal rant there are even more horrible nerfs to Druids all thanks to the imbalances of PvP. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 12th 2011 - 4.0.6 Is Getting Puffier We dinged guild level 9 and for that we get the second rank of Reinforce. So now your gear's durability will drop only 8% when you die instead of the original 10%. Still a decent savings over time. There are two sizable batches of 4.0.6 patch notes to look over. There's a lot being changed so take your time and look it over. It's looking like this next patch is going to be quite large. Last night we finished clearing out Ulduar, even going so far as taking out Algalon (who was surprisingly much easier to kill than Yogg-Saron). I bring this up because tonight we're going to Sunwell Plateau and if we get a few more people to go along we'll get another guild achievement. So come join in the fun, and maybe even take a few minutes to get acquainted with the boss fights, even though we'll probably faceroll our way through it. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 11th 2011 - Baby Steps In Tol Barad Now this is more like it. Let's get to some news. The first is a post from Blizzard highlighting the problems that currently exist with Tol Barad, their design intentions and philosophy for the battleground, and some potential fixes that may be in store for Tol Barad in the near future. It's somewhat dodgy and only really mentions a single possible idea for fixing it which may or may not make TB worth doing if you're on the attacking side, but at least it's a start. And WoWInsider has a post breaking down and explaining each item in Blizzard's post. What's the fastest selling PC game of all time? Cataclysm, duh. Blizzard has sold 4.7 million copies of it in its first month. It's good to see WoW continuing to break records. The 4.0.6 patch notes we looked over last week was only the tip of the iceburg. Apparently there are even more class changes in the works for each class in 4.0.6 and here are some of those for Shaman and Warlocks _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 10th 2011 - Hear Them Crickets? Grrrrr! No news makes Lishtaar bear ANGRY! But seriously, there's nothing really worthwhile to mention from over the weekend. Which is surprising. And of course now that I'm complaining about it it means we'll probably get a ton of new things tomorrow... /fingers crossed _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 7th 2011 - Looking At Patch 4.0.6 Today we've got a bunch of 4.0.6 PTR patch notes to look over, but before I go into that I need to mention something that I forgot yesterday. We finally got the guild achievement A Class Act which unlocked the ability to buy the Shroud of Cooperation. It's a really long cooldown, but it can come in handy. And we also got the Guild Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achievement which unlocked the ability to buy the Standard of Unity. Now on to the patch notes. We've got a main group of notes, a set of updates to those notes, and just for good measure we've also got a set of hotfixes to go through as well. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 6th 2011 - Glug! Blizzard is making some major changes to the requirements for the guild achievements Mix Master and Better Leveling Through Chemistry. They grossly underestimated how many flasks people would be making and so they're reducing the requirements from 10,000 flasks to 1,000 for Mix Master and from 25,000 flasks to 3,000 for Better Leveling Through Chemistry. Now it will be many, many times easier to get these two achievements and to start making cauldrons for raids. But that's not all. They're also increasing the number of flasks that come out of big cauldrons from 17 to 20. Plus they're increasing the duration that a cauldron will stay available once you set it out from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. And of course what kind of day would it be without a nice set of hotfixes to keep you warm this winter. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 5th 2011 - Hastily Hearthing Back Home We fell a bit short of yesterday's daily guild xp cap so we didn't end up getting to guild level 8 until this morning. But level 8 did bring us a very handy perk, the one I've most been looking forward to getting, Hasty Hearth. Now our hearthstones have only a 15 minute cooldown! Pretty sweet. Keep in mind that this only applies to hearthstones and items that share cooldowns with hearthstones, so other items like the Dalaran rings or the Argent Tournament tabard still have their regular cooldowns. Hard to believe that we used to have to wait a full hour between hearths. There's a new free update to the WoW Mobile Armory. It brings with it support for Cataclysm including new items, the new races, and new race/class combos. An updated look to match the new WoW community site. And various UI improvements, including enhanced readability and streamlined character switching. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 4th 2011 - I Guess It's Back To Being Horde Barad Now that Blizzard is back from their holiday break it's about time they got back to hotfixing. Among those hotfixes you may notice that they are once again changing the amount of Honor Points you get from an attacking victory in Tol Barad. Just about a week ago they upped the amount from 180 to 1,800 in an attempt to reward those who pull off a miracle and successfully attack and gain control of the BG. Instead what it resulted in was an agreement on just about every server (including ours) to trade wins each time as it was much more advantageous to get 1,800 Honor Points every 4 hours instead of a mere 180 Honor Points every 2 hours. Now they're reducing a win from 1,800 down to 360 which has pretty much put a stop to all win-trading and once again the Horde are going to control Tol Barad 95% of the time on our server. And of course none of this would've been necessary at all if they would just fix the BG itself because it is SERIOUSLY lopsided and nearly impossible for the attackers to win. _________________________________________________________________________ News - January 3rd 2011 - Sharpen Those Shovels We dinged guild level 7 over the weekend! This brought with it the first rank of the perk Reinforce which reduces the durability loss your gear gets hit with when you die. Now the durability values will go down 9% instead of the usual 10%. That may not sound like much but it will add up, especially once we start the wipe-fests, I mean raiding. Another guide that was entered into MMO-Champion's contest is this one on the new secondary profession Archaeology. If you haven't taken up the addiction to dirt digging yet this is a good guide to start with. Most of it's stuff you can find elsewhere on the net or discover for yourself, but this puts a lot of that info together in a nice package. And to go along with both this archaeology guide and the archaeology comic that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago here's another comic, only this one seems to give a much more accurate representation of the new profession. |
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