I assumed the changes would be minor, like more dust coming from every disenchantment, but the MMO-Champion forums has compiled a list that surprises me quite a bit. It actually is a pretty sweeping change, reducing the material costs of a whole load of enchantments. Dust isn’t the only thing targeted, they use less materials across the board.

In some cases, the material costs are halved, or more than halved. It’s definitely not a small little change to Enchanting, waiting until the patch to enchant your gear will save you hundreds of gold. If you want to play it safe or are just curious, MMO-Champion has the full list for your perusal.

by Mike Schramm

Nov 7th, 2008

Zombies taking over Blizzard’s offices now? Yesterday, as we uploaded our redesign, we joked that Zombies had attacked our site, but now it appears that the main World of Warcraft page is completely and totally down. We got a tip earlier today that part of the site had gone down, but now it appears the whole thing is out.

Maybe a redesign inc there, too? Maybe it’s down because of the realm issues we saw this morning? Or maybe it’s just out for regular maintenance? Forums are still up and running just fine. We’ll keep an eye on it.

Phase 3 of the 2008 Arena Tournament has begun. According to the official site, teams are now “locked down” and no more registrations for this phase are being accepted:

Registration for the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament’s first qualification round is now closed and Phase 3 of the tournament has begun. Participants have been battling it out on the tournament realms for the past two weeks while fine-tuning their team composition and strategies. Phase 3 of the tournament includes a lockdown of the teams that will be jockeying for position to compete in the regional finals. To track the progress of your team and the competition as a whole, please visit the World of Warcraft Armory. For more information on the tournament, please visit our Arena Tournament information page. Good luck to all competitors!

Any bets? Let us know who you think will capture the gold in this round.

The mod I’m about to talk about isn’t some essential combat mod. It doesn’t vastly change how you play the game. It won’t help you in the arena or in raid dungeons, or even RP. What will it do? It will make your minimap look totally sweet.

From one of the original authors of Omen and the maker of Chatter (among other things) comes the simply (and appropriately) named SexyMap. Using spell effects already in the game files (I believe the default uses Hand of Freedom as the outside ring and Hand of Salvation on the inside), SexyMap makes your map look… sexy. It’s difficult to see just how awesome it is from pictures, but I don’t have video handy, unfortunately. What you can’t see there is the two rings are animated, one moving clockwise and the other counter-clockwise.

It’s extremely customizable as well. There are a few different preset borders, with the default being by far the coolest, and with each of them you can alter the colors via the built-in addon menu to fit whatever you’d like. Do you have a green-themed UI? Make it green. Do you want it to match your class? Go ahead. Zach Yonzon, one of our local Paladins, decided to turn his yellow to make it more Paladin-esque. Holy maps!

For comedy, here’s the default borders but in pink.

As I mentioned, there are a few other preset borders, but they’re not quite as cool looking, in my opinion. All of them are just as customizable though, and if you know what you’re doing when it comes to digging through the game textures and the like, you can create some new borders yourself. I’m no good at that, so I’ll just show you another preset!

That, too, can be turned whatever color you want. Blue or pink or green or whatever. One thing you probably notice in these screenshots is that all of the ‘extra’ stuff from the minimap is gone. The time is gone, the calendar is gone, the location bar is gone, all of it. It’s not gone, it’s faded, which you can turn on or off in the addon settings. When you hover over the map, all of it comes back.

So things can fade away when you don’t need them. If you want them to do so. If you don’t, just turn that feature off. If you leave it on, now and then you might run into other addon buttons that won’t fade away, and I don’t think there’s much that you can do about it. SexyMap will try to fade those out, but if the other addons won’t let it do that, then that’s just how it goes, unfortunately. The problem isn’t terribly widespread that I’ve seen, it’s only been a select few so far.

Beyond that, this mod lets you do the usual minimap things: Move it around, suppress certain elements, and move nearby elements such as the default quest and achievements trackers so you can put them in more convenient places if you’d rather have your map where they are.

I think that’s all there is to say about SexyMap, and really all that needs to be said. It’s a fairly simple and straightforward mod if you just want your map to look pretty. It gets a little more complicated the more you want to customize it. Changing colors is easy, pulling new textures out to make a complete new border is more complicated.

Easiest way to get this addon is via Curse, and it’s a fairly new mod so if you run into any bugs or errors, make sure you report it!

If you want to look at the other preset borders before you download the mod, I’ve put together a little gallery displaying each. I slapped it right in the middle of my screen using the most basic, default UI possible so you can get some idea of how much screen space it will use up in your UI. Enjoy!

Oh yes, Arthas was very strong. But in brute strength alone. It was proven, namely by his own eventual downfall, that he could be manipulated and out-maneuvered easily by playing to his weaknesses; his own fear and arrogance. It could stand to reason that despite the Lich King being so drastically weakened by Illidan’s attack, that he used that very attack as a means of getting what he always wanted–a new host. I took the last cinematic in TFT as Arthas mulling over all of his failures as a Paladin, a Prince, and a human being, and looking upon the choice he made, perhaps decided there was no point in even fighting. Perhaps, that Ner’zhul silenced the memories and funneled his fleeting need for purpose into, “Hey, can I use your skull for a bedroom? kthx”

But maybe I’m just giving Arthas too much credit. I still prefer Arthas’ voice for the role, and given that the Lich King VA is almost purely Ner’zhul at this point, it makes me wonder why Arthas voiced over that trailer to begin with. From a lore/theorycraft standpoint, it only reinforces the notion that when Ner’zhul and Arthas ‘merged’, Ner’zhul more or less forcibly shoved Arthas into the proverbial basement, if Arthas as a personality and/or being still even exists.

On another note, I do believe that Tharassian (or whatever his name is) is actually the same VA as Arthas. And if it’s not him, it sounds damn close. Especially his one pissed off saying. “You’re going to find it very hard to speak…without a head!”

Yeah. I could totally hear Arthas saying that.

I tried the hair cut system in Undercity last weeks. When I first tried it, I laughed out loud at how silly I looked with those silly haircuts they offered us for testing the new Barber shop.

I mean, in my mind it was SO obvious that those haircuts are not the actual real ones we will get in the live servers once the patch and the expansion go out. They are so ugly, so “roughly” designed, that they cant be the official ones they were working on in the last months. They look like if someone said “Oh, we forgot the haircuts!! Fast, let just dump something here…”

So, like I said, I didnt even let a coments about the haircuts since they were, so obviously in my mind, not the real ones to comes in the Live server….

But…. I just want to be sure here… I am right, right? They are not for real? I mean, we will not have a Death Knight with amazing spell effects and some haircuts anyone with no knowledge could create using the Paint program in Windows?

Right? 

I believe that any inventory system that encourages mules to exist for any reason has a problem with the fundamental design.

Inventory has gotten a good face lift, but theres still more to be done to make mules completely vanish.

So - what would you propose as a solution?

Having higher stack numbers on items such as cloth, ore, bars of metal, gems…?

Less suits of armor for specific occasions - like having one chromatic resistance set instead of a full set of frost resist armor, arcane resist armor, fire resist armor, nature resist armor, shadow resist armor…

Perhaps having consumables stack higher? Or a specific belt type of structure that holds a certain amount of potion stacks, like in Diablo 2?

Maybe having an area like the keyring for trinkets? As it stands, each trinket in your inventory takes up the same amount of space as Jihn’Rokh, The Great Apocalypse, which seems silly. Possibly extend the idea to rings and amulets/necklaces as well?

Maybe a method to burn tradegoods that often end up on mules, other than the auction house - turning in stacks of things for reputation, badges, rewards, etc, not unlike the AQ40 war effort?

now, ill be the first to say, this is one aspect i was never good at in the game. i didnt instance much, i didnt have the best gear, right now im working off of some pvp tier 1 set and some pve stuff. ive spent the first few days running around northrend checking out the lay of the land, screen shotting the hell out of the place, yada yada, so i didnt take the time to level. but is it just me, or is it a pain in the royal keister (sp?) to get to 71? maybe im just out of the leveling groove, maybe its me, maybe i dont have the attention span to actually focus on leveling, maybe its my spec/class, but ive noticed its a tad

now, i dont wanna hear how youve managed to get to 77 in 5 hours because youve spent 24/7 on the damn game, and i dont care that you hit 77 on your deathknight in a week, and i dont care that your t6 warrior/hunter/paladin/whatever hit 77 in less than a day, or that your merciless gladiator rogue hit 77 and got some pvp in, no, dont care. i wont even look at yer post. i wanna hear about the guys that actually HAVE troubles/suggestions/ideas.

Okay, do you guys know the strategy for this boss? No? Okay. Well, what’s the ugliest thing you can think of? No, not a male draenei in a dress. Very funny, Kirby. It’s this dude — a huge, smelly pit lord. Strutting around with some huge blades attached to his arms, like we all don’t know what he’s compensating for. And those armored codpieces? I mean, please. Those only belong at the Met. Hey … why are you all looking behind me and readying your fireballs? (Thanks to Natasi of <Pantheon> on Steamwheedle Cartel for the pic!)

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing  with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards.

Welcome back to The Care and Feeding of Warriors. The carnage you see above you is the entire Scarlet Monastery Cathedral (and all the mobs before it, too!) except for the ones who died before we got this far. (I stole this idea shamelessly from a commenter named Brian Arnold.The video he linked is pretty much exactly how it went down for me.) Damage Shield, you complete me. Well, you and Shockwave, and the new limitless target Thunder Clap. This is my build: I skipped over Anticipation because, while an excellent talent, I want to be hit instead of dodged. I’ll pick it back up again once we start leveling. A couple of fun screenshots from my character panel:

This is my admittedly gimmicky shield block value set. Pretty much every piece on it has block or str, I hover at around 16000 health in it. What I find really fun (and what allowed me to pull the entire Cath as well as both bosses onto myself) was this next trick. Nothing up my sleeve but Shield Block.

Yes, for ten seconds, you can have double your normal block value and block every single attack that will possibly land. (Well, not magic, but that’s why Blizzard made Spell Reflection.) Now, while this is fun for ridiculous trash pulls in underlevel instances, it’s what it says for raids that’s important. Shield Block is now an excellent spike damage reduction tool. If your health is low and you want to give your healers some help, you pop Shield Block and for ten seconds, if a hit doesn’t do around 2k damage, you don’t take any damage. Meanwhile, with damage shield up, whatever is hitting you will be taking around 400 damage for its trouble. This means that on trash pulls, Shield Block has become a threat generation tool. Just think about the Shield Slam crits with Critical Block.

“Let me introduce you to my shield.” Wha-BANG!

There’s so much to talk about in the wake of Echoes of Doom that I find myself unsure where to go. Clearly, we need to cover glyphs. I still want to discuss gear in Wrath, as we were interrupted in the middle of that. We’ve covered talents pretty exhaustively over the past week (to the point where my poor tired brain simply can’t bear another discussion of them to be honest) but there’s more that can be said.

For some reason, playing the same changes on live that I’d experience in the beta somehow makes them seem more real, if for no other reason than I’m doing raids with a raid leader dual wielding two handers while the warlock tries to tank things in demon form and I’m holding groups of adds onto myself with a charge - TC- Shockwave rotation, Divine Storm is going off everywhere around us… we took a group into MC to help a friend tame a Core Hound and next thing we knew 10 of us were standing over Ragnaros’ dead body. We had to rotate people in just to put out the runes for us because we’d cleared the entire instance but the quintessences we’d brought weren’t off cooldown yet. Now, it’s MC, and ten of us could have done it easily before the patch. But before the patch, no one could have said “Okay, Matt, you tank Garr’s adds here.” A follow-up in Zul’Aman only served to confirm my suspicion, as I simply allowed the hatchers to pop an entire side at a time and tanked all the spawns. It still required some work, but can you imagine a warrior holding that many dragonhawks? It’s quite possible now.

Okay, let’s talk glyphs. I’m currently using the Glyph of Resonating Power and Glyph of Sunder Armor (I will replace the Sunder Armor glyph with the Glyph of Revenge as soon as I find one, or level an inscription alt and make one) as my major glyphs, and the Glyph of Thunder Clap and Glyph of Mocking Blow as my minor ones. I wish I’d found the Revenge one, as the idea of rage-free Heroic Strikes while tanking makes me all kinds of excited. Once I get my third glyph slot at 80 I’d definitely consider the Glyph of Heroic Strike to go with the Glyph of Revenge for a potent one-two combo: not only would HS not cost any rage, but as many posters point out, thanks to Incite my HS would then have a good chance to generate rage for me. It might be worth dumping the Resonating Power to go for this combo now, once I have the Revenge glyph.

For my tauren, who is Titan’s Grip specced (man, you guys who think I’m crazy for having four warriors at 70, let me tell you, it’s awesome not having to blow 50g every time I’m curious about a spec, and it only cost me, what, days of gameplay? Okay, the 50g would be easier, and I’m crazy) I went with the Glyph of Bloodthirst and the Glyph of Whirlwind for major glyphs. I’m frankly not terribly happy with the BT glyph, it’s a good ability for soloing and I’ll probably want it back when we’re leveling to 80 but right now the Heroic Strike glyph would probably be better. I’ve actually switched in and out several minor glyphs (my horde guild has several Inscription makers furiously scribbling away) and right now I’m sitting with Glyph of Battle, Glyph of Bloodrage and Glyph of Enduring Victory. I don’t really like the Enduring Victory one all that much (I should, shouldn’t I? I know it’s not awesome for bosses but for trash waves Victory Rush comes up a lot. It just feels unimpressive to me, and both the Battle and Bloodrage ones seem better. I could be crazy here.)

For arms, which my draenei is undoubtedly going to be (he’s moving into full-time PvP, so that I don’t have to respec or even switch specs when that becomes available) I’m very interested in the Glyph of Execution to make Sudden Death even better than it already is (and it’s already very, very good). I’m going to avoid the Glyph of Mortal Strike for arms PvP, but for PvE it should be a good potential choice. 10% more damage is 10% more damage, after all. The Glyph of Overpower is another contender if you’re already relying heavily on Overpower for a Taste for Blood oriented build, although if you’re melee DPS in PvE you should be behind the mob, where it doesn’t get parries. For PvP, it might give opposing warriors or ret pallies a reason to regret speccing Deflection. You might be better off going with the Glyph of Rending if you’re relying on Taste for Blood, though. I expect I’ll be spending a lot of time switching glyphs around trying to find the optimal ones for PvP. I figure I’ll be respeccing a lot anyway, so might as well. Heck, for PvE arms the Glyph of Sweeping Strikes is very hot, and you can’t really say anything bad about more rage for PvP. Supposedly the Glyph of Whirlwind works with Bladestorm, too. A lot of choices here.

I’m still playing with glyphs myself, so any neat discoveries you’ve made of awesome glyph combos would be greatly appreciated. Right now, I’m delerious with glee over protection, loving fury, and am discovering that arms is a lot better than I thought it was going to be. (You can become an overpower and execute popping machine with the right talents and glyphs, it’s insane) What about you guys? Happy or unhappy?

I really want to get back to the Wrath gearing discussion, prot in PvP (let me just say that Shockwave and Spell Reflection can really annoy people trying to cap a flag) and how DPS warriors have changed, so I have no idea how next week will look. If you want to see one of those topics, or to suggest one I’ve missed, please do.