youtube.com/watch?v=iP0ZFuIW3TQ

Nicely done.

www.thottbot.com/beta?i=10532

www.wowtcgdb.com/carddetail.aspx?id=386

www.wowinsider.com/2006/10/19/the-final-word-on-priest-racial-abilities/

At last we have full disclosure on the racial abilities for Blood Elf and Draenei priests come the expansion — or at least unconfirmed rumor from beta testers on the World of Raids forums. I am somewhat disappointed, though, having hoped the addition of new priest-available races would give Blizzard an opportunity to equalize the racial abilities across the factions — as currently the Dwarf’s Fear Ward ability makes some difficult raid encounters much simpler. So when it was announced that priests would have one old and one new racial ability, I had hoped to see a horde priest with Fear Ward. But instead, Blood Elves will receive Touch of Weakness (not a bad self-buff for soloing or PvPing) and the Draenei will receive Fear Ward (no explanation required). Well, perhaps we’ll see fewer raid encounters in the future in which fear plays a large part.

Update: Eyonix responds to the issue of racial abilities by saying (among other things), “there will be new ways (for both factions) to remove and/or prevent fear in the Burning Crusade. So, in short — lay down that crutch, you don’t need it anymore.”

www.warcraftauctionhouse.com/

Thottbot, profiles, dkp… now the live AH data itself is on the Internet? Nothing like rocking a cancelled account and being able to poke fun at people’s listing behaviors from afar. I checked a few things, but probably won’t launch this page again for a long time.

Update @ 4:03 PM:

After living in denial for more than a year like some meth addict, Blizzard finally raises the white flag and puts in a LFG system. Bravo comes to mind, but it’s not as good as it could have been. Forcing players to seek on whatever class they are currently on is lame. Let players select which character they want to seek with, either via custom drop downs, or a drop down of their alts (to prevent fakers).

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=32190255&sid=1

Druid:

Feral Combat

* Feral Instinct - Reduced to 3 ranks, 5/10/15%.
* Thick Hide - Reduced to 3 ranks, 4/7/10%.
* Nurturing Instinct - Reduced to 2 ranks, 50/100%.
* Survival of the Fittest - Reduced to 3 ranks, same 1/2/3% improvements.

Balance
* (NEW) Focused Starlight - “Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 2/4%.”
* Improved Thorns - Renamed “Brambles”, now increases damage from Entangling Roots as well.
* Omen of Clarity - Swapped with Insect Swarm, prerequisite from Natural Weapons removed.
* Improved Wrath - Renamed “Starlight Wrath”, reduces cast time of Wrath and Starfire by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 sec.
* Improved Starfire - Reduced to 3 ranks, no longer reduces cast time of Starfire, just has the 5/10/15% stun chance.
* Natural Shapeshifter - Moved to Restoration tree, where Improved Enrage was.

Restoration
* Improved Healing Touch - Renamed “Naturalist”, in addition to the cast time reduction of Healing Touch it also increases all physical damage by 2/4/6/8/10%. Essentially, we folded Natural Weapons into it.
* Natural Weapons - Removed.
* Improved Enrage - Removed.
* Reflection - Renamed “Intensity”, mana regen in combat as it did in addition to causing Enrage ability to instantly generate 4/7/10 rage.
* Natural Perfection - Changed to “Your critical strike chance with all spells is increased by 1/2/3% and melee and ranged critical strikes against you cause 4/7/10% less damage.”

nogg-aholic.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-wow-is-bad-game-reason-8.html

Randomly found this blog entry after trying to find some BC alpha screens that some guy supposedly posted with his character name in the shots. This link is not about BC alpha however, these are comparisons between WoW alpha/release and the game in its more modern times. It is designed as proof of why their content updates are slow and inadequate, but that’s not why I’m posting, nor do I really agree with the author. His other reasons for why WoW is a bad game are weak as well. WoW is a bad game in ways, but if you are going to attack it, please do so properly.

www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/townhall/collectors.html

* World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade on both CD and DVD (DVD is nice, but not really needed)
* World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Behind-the-Scenes DVD (main reason to buy it, but now we have YouTube, hmmm…)
* The Art of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Hardcover Art Book (Would be funnier if they tried to include the old art book)
* Exclusive In-Game Pet: Netherwhelp (I hate flying pets)
* Two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game Starter Packs, plus Exclusive Cards (stones throw from D&D and cosplay, gg)
* Map of Outland Mouse Pad (will probably look cheesy and have an unworthy surface feel)
* World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Soundtrack CD (WoW music cannot be considered a soundtrack, pump up that 0:17 Magmadar Cavern track!!!)

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=31183777&sid=1

From the FoH forums:

Q u o t e:
The consumable use in Naxx is probably more out of hand than alot of people think, Not to mention repairs. The guilds that are just starting Naxx or are not able to clear all four wings probably are not getting hit hard. Once you start clearing all four wings this is where you really get hit the worst. Our clear for this week so far is looking like this.

Lastnights Kills: Instructor -> Gothik -> 4H -> Anub -> Noth -> Heigan.
2 Titans (20g 1BL/30G 30grom/10g 10eel our server per titan) + 85gold in repairs for myself.
Tonight: Loatheb -> Patch -> Grob -> Gluth -> Thad -> Widow -> Maex
1 Titan + 30 gold in repairs (guessing from past weeks)
Thursday: Sapphiron -> Kel
2-3 Titan + 50-100 gold in repairs
Friday-Saturday: MC/BWL for noobs gold
Monday-Tuesday: Kill any bosses we get behind on (Sapp-Kel most likely)

This weeks lowball spendature = 465 gold to clear nax up to kel

Last week I used 100 gold alone on the 4h kill for repairs. Now there’s plenty of people who are going to say your guild must suck if your spending 100g on 4h. But I’d argue that anyone who’s killed them knows all about the random issues there. Id say if void zones got fixed you’ll look at about 3 shots to kill them on a bad night. As it stands you’re looking at anywhere from 3-20 runs and getting lucky rolls on all the randoms. We had tanks die to invis voids no less than 10 times last night on our kill. We had triple taunt resists probably 2 times and a few which may or may not have contributed to a wipe.

My friday night will consist of me doing bwl runs for noobs on our server to buy gear this will net me 50-200 gold. Saturday I will have to do a MC noob run to net me 50-150 gold. Saturday-Sunday I will be forced to farm for juju/firewater/mongoose/critstones/sta food/str food. Any additional time will be spent farming texts to sell. I’d be interested to hear from other guilds who are at least up to 4h/sapph/kel on their gold uses and mat useage over a weeks time. Honestly at this point you have to work to raid. I’m a herbalist and its simply more effective for me to do mc/bwl/text farming than it is to get the herbs myself because of perma camp farmers. Some pots are ok, creating content around having to use pots is just unacceptable. I’d rather have herb/alch removed from the game.

Is there not a problem here?

Well I count one problem. You. Your guild. Your complaint. Your attitude. The WoW end game. Blizzard. The playing cards that come in the BC collector’s edition. That’s 7 problems, but the most serious ones in that list involve you or any other player complaining about having to use consumables to raid the creeps that Blizzard is serving up.

Anything that makes raiding harder I will stand behind to the end. Peen guilds deserve no reward for raiding other than the gear, which is 99.9999% why they log on in the first place (the ironic thing is that the gear in turn yields many other rewards, so bvvvvp). Players should not come out monetarily ahead after a week of solid raiding, nor should they be able to just log in and get items. If you want to sit at the adult table, you need to pony up for your own box of wine.