Well it’s been another busy month with the class changes that were announced for Cataclysm! Not to mention some new items added to the Blizzard store that has some in a tizzy. I’ll have this news plus some sillies and my thoughts on two of the class changes below!

In the News

The big news in the past few days has been the release of the Celestial Steed and Lil XT in the Blizzard online store. And it’s a bit of an understatement to say that both were a hit. From what I’ve seen though I think the mounts may have sold more, and that only means that Blizzard will be happy about their profits for this month. Not to mention I think that they are for sure going to stick with having these micro transactions for the game. And with a mount as detailed as the Celestial Steed it makes me wonder about future mounts that they may release. I have not personally purchased the mount or the pet, but I have a few friends who have and they have no regrets about purchasing them!

As I’ve mentioned previously, Blizzard has been releasing more info about some of the pre-Cataclysm events like the taking back of Gnomeregan and Echo Isles. They’ve also been updating the Cataclysm website with info on the city of Vashj’ir and Mount Hyjal. Both will be accessable in Cataclysm and from the screen shots they’ve put up look pretty cool. Vashj’ir will have interesting mechanics for players as we’ll be exploring the area underwater and there will be some new underwater mechanics to the game. Both locations look like they’ll be great places to level and explore, and I’m very intrigued to see how underwater play is going to work and pan out.

It was also announced that Recruit a Friend will have a new reward coming soon: the X-53 Touring Rocket. This mount will replace the current Zhevra mount. Bashiok did say that the change would come in “just a few days” but last I checked the Recruit a Friend page it was still listed as the Zhevra. The good news is that if you do have any un-redeemed codes from RaF you will be able to use them to claim the rocket once it goes live.

And for TCG fans, Cryptozoic (new new publishers for the TCG) announced a new Wrathgate expansion that will drop May 25th. The expansion will allow players to recruit important figures from the Argent Crusade like Tirion Fordring to fight with them as well as new crafting materials for armor for heroes to use. This also means that there will be some new loot cards: Landro’s Gift, Statue Generator, and Blazing Hippogryph. I’m usure what the first two may be, but we now know where that fiery hippogryph mount will come from!

Last State of Azeroth I talked about the new Stormrage book. Well I now have my review of the book up for you to check out! It has some interesting stuff in it, but it wasn’t as strong as a book as I’d have hoped. It did however make me more excited for the new novel (novels?) coming out this fall that will deal with pre-Cataclysm events!

Cataclysm Class Changes

Many people were waiting this past week or so to read up on all of the class changes that will be taking effect in Cataclysm. There is some rejoicing, some skepticism and some unhappy players out there with these changes. Unfortunately as I have not been able to play all of the classes in the game, I don’t want to try and do an analysis for the classes I’m not familiar with. I will however link you to all of the blue posts for the changes, and I will touch on the two classes I am most familiar with: Hunters and Death Knights.

Links to the class changes: Priest, Warlock, Warrior, Hunter, Druid, Death Knight, Paladin, Shaman, Mage, Rogue

To start with I’m going to talk Hunters. My main is a Hunter, and when I heard at Blizzcon ’09 that we would no longer have to use Mana I was excited! Having to deal with mana regen is annoying and unless I have an addon installed, I tend to forget when to switch back from Aspect of the Viper back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk. But after reading the class changes for Hunters I’m now slightly worried about the new Focus system. Mainly the fact that hunters Focus regen is only 6 per second. Rogues get 10 Energy per second regen, why is it so low for Hunters? Granted Steady and Cobra shot will regen 9 Focus per shot which ups the regen to approximately 12/second, I’m still a bit nervous about the change. I think I’ll just have to get hands on with the new system before I can really make a decision on how I feel. For all I know it could actually play fine.

I am happy about the removal of ammunition from the game, though I’m sure that the people who make ammunition aren’t too happy about loosing out on making some gold. I do hope that the stats of the weapons will be changed accordingly in order to offset the change. Another great change that I cannot wait for is the active and stored pet system. You will be able to have three active pets that you can switch between when out of combat and a “large number” of stored pets that you will have to go back to a Stable Master in order to exchange. The new abilities for hunters aren’t as exciting to me, but I do like Camouflage for use during PvP. Not sure if it would find too much use in PvE but I could be wrong.

Next up for me are Death Knights. The big news that came out of this is Blizzard designating Blood as the official tanking spec. Personally I’m glad that they designated a specific tree for tanking as since Wrath hit I’ve seen so many different tanking specs from each tree, and even differing opinions from players about what specific build is best and what build they personally preferred. Even with finding a DPS spec was a bit of a hassle depending on where you looked or who you asked.

Blizzard has also said that they plan on retuning the Rune system that DKs work with:

The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra “storage”), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

Now I’m still not sure on how I like the Runic system, but depending on how these changes work it may help out with those who complain about how horrible the system is. Another good change is the new ability Outbreak which will instantly infect a target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague with no rune cost. This is good for when you have to re-apply a disease after it’s been cleansed. Dark Simulacrum, which applies a debuff that allows the Death Knight to copy the opponent’s next spell cast and throw it back at them. It will only work with spells that can already be reflected, and I think adds a neat new strike. Since I mainly DPS with my Death Knight I will be intrigued to see what new builds come out, and hope that Unholy stays as a viable spec. What can I say, I love having a zombie pet!

I am working on a Mage and a Druid, and from what I’ve read of the new changes it looks pretty good, but I haven’t leveled either high enough to do many Battlegrounds or raid, so I’d rather wait to comment once I’ve got more of a feel for them.

Developer Chat

The developer chat happened this past Friday, and it was pretty interesting. We got some more info on Cataclysm as well as some more explaining on specific class mechanics. MMO-Champion has it all arranged nicely by category and class so I highly recommend checking it out over there if you missed it.

Old screenshot using the default UI

One of the good things I saw in the dev chat was them talking about re-doing the default UI.

We would like to update the default Blizzard UI. It has some fatal flaws, such as not being able to show buffs and debuffs simultaneously. We probably won’t ever go as crazy as some of the mods out there just because they provide a ton of customization, which is one of the things players like about them. We do think players deserve a raid UI that is fully functional for those players who just don’t like to install a lot of mods. We hope to get this change in for Cataclysm, but we’re changing the UI for the spell book, talent pane, professions window, character stats, guild, friends and probably a dozen things I’m forgetting, so it’s just a matter of how much time we have.

They also confirmed that crowd control will be making a return in dungeons and raids. They shall also continue to have a separate heroic difficulty for raids for those serious raiders who are looking for a challenge. And for those classes who use idols and relics, there will be changes made to that system to make them more agnostic. “In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized.” I think it’ll also help when someone who may be new to their class is trying to figure out what relic they should equip based on what proc or stats it may have.

The last change that was mentioned I think is great news is that the Druid tree of life model is getting a new model! The only hint given to us from the chat was “think Ancients of War.”

All in all it gave us some good info and may have clarified some of the changes coming to the various classes. I look forward to when they have the next one!

Comic Relief

I also come with some more silly things! One of the first is an animated GIF I saw posted on WoW.com. It parodies those new Old Spice commercials, and I must say is a rather convincing guild advertisement.

Next up is a great little comic by Noxychu at Wowhead. It talks about all of the whining about Blizzard selling mounts, as well as the joy that many are getting. The full comic is here and there are also some fun wallpapers if you’d like a new desktop.

Next up in case you missed them are the April Fools pranks that Blizzard “announced.” My favorite was definitely the Equipment Equivalence Number they mentioned would be in WoW. And Tidy Plates seemed to like it enough that he created an addon that makes it an in-game reality! Granted it may not be with all of the features Blizzard listed, you can at least have a visual representation of how awesome your gear is compared to others. You can download it from WoWInterface here, and be warned this does require you to also have the GearScore addon.

Call to readers!

If you have any tips, tricks, news or funnies you would like to send in to be included in the next State of Azeroth please send an email to steph@gamingangels.com!

This is Steph signing off until next month. Glory to the Alliance and Lok’tar Ogar to my horde brethren!

Thanks to Necrotic Designs for the awesome banner!

It’s cool to see books coming out for another MMO on the market besides World of Warcraft. I’m a firm believer that these can enhance the gameplay for those who love the games for their stories. It will be interesting to check out this book and to see where it leads to in the future!

Patch 3.3.3
All kinds of news has been filtering out with the upcoming release of Patch 3.3.3 (the background downloaded has been enabled!) and there are some interesting things coming in the next patch. As always MMO Champion has dug up some interesting things from the test realms. And of course you can find the latest test realm patch notes here.

I’ll start off with some of the more fun and frivolous additions with new mounts and pets that will be coming in the next patch. The more flashy of the new mounts is the Celestial Steed, a flying and land mount that looks like a constellation. There’s a video of the steed in action here, and I have to say seeing it in action makes it a lot cooler than just seeing the screenshot. Sadly I haven’t seen where players can get this mount from, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be tied to an achievement, maybe for raiding? In any case it’d make a great addition to anyone who loves collecting mounts. To also go along with the celestial steed is a Celestial Dragon pet. There is also a new two-seat rocket mount that was discovered that there isn’t any info on where or how we’ll be able to get it. Hopefully we’ll get some details soon! There also may be a new pet to buy from the Blizzard store. MMO Champion found the model for Lil XT and based on the similar name with Lil KT they speculate, and I’d agree, that this may be a new pet that players can purchase from the store. We’ll just have to wait and see on more info! And last but not least are two more mounts, the Blazing Hippogryph and the Woolly White Rhino, which were supposed to be TCG rewards, but due to the recent split from UpperDeck, this could change.

There are also going to be some changes coming to battlegrounds in the next patch. First off, marks are going to be cut from the game completely. One of the more exciting things for me because of this is not having to continue to grind for the marks for the mounts. They will now be available for 50,000 honor points per mount. And not to worry about any marks you have! You’ll be able to exchange them for a Commendation of Service, which will grant you 185 honor. The Call to Arms quests will also be no more, and will be replaced with a new interface that will list which battleground is the current Call to Arms. Along with this, the first random battleground that you do will give you the same rewards as the Call to Arms, and each subsequent  BG will net you about 15 Honorable Kills worth of points. You can choose to either do the Call to Arms or a random battleground to get the higher amount of points, but once you’ve done one of these the amount will be lowered. (Check out the nice screencap from MMOChampion) Personally I like this change and I think that it’ll bring some more people into doing the randoms at least. It’s been a hit for the dungeons, so I’m sure it’ll go fine for PvPers.

One last kind of small patch 3.3.3 update that I’m looking forward to is the change to the frost orbs that drop at the end of random heroics. I’m sure there have been some of you who have experienced everyone rolling greed (as what seems to be the expected norm) only to have the last person roll need and run off with a free orb. Frustrating yes? Well Blizzard seems to share the frustration as they’ve decided that frost orbs will now have an automatic greed roll for all! Seems fair enough to me though I’m sure there may be some complaints.

Patch 3.3.5

Yes I have an item for 3.3.5, and no I’m not sure what’s happening in 3.3.4 (DEHTA protests?). Zarhym announced the Ruby Sanctum back near the end of February and him saying that it “could quite possibly be the very beginning of Deathwing’s plan to dismantle the Wyrmrest Accord from within.” makes it seem pretty dire:

A powerful war party of the Black Dragonflight, led by the fearsome Twilight dragon, Halion, have launched an assault upon the Ruby Sanctum beneath Wyrmrest Temple. By destroying the sanctum, the Black Dragonflight look to crush those that would stand in the way of their master’s reemergence into Azeroth and to ultimately shatter the Wyrmrest Accord – the sacred bond that unites the dragonflights.

The battle that is to come will surely deal a crippling blow to the Red Dragonflight, however, it is up to you to stop this unprecedented offensive and defend the Ruby Sanctum. First you must face the assault of Halion’s servants, Saviana Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn, and General Zarithrian, before squaring off against Halion the Twilight Destroyer, a new and deadly force in this realm.

The Ruby Sanctum will feature 10- and 25-player content, Heroic difficulties and all-new rewards! Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to its release.

It sounds interesting and another way that Blizz seems to be ushering in the Cataclysm. MMO Champion has also dug up sound clips and screen shots of the new instance.

Cataclysm

There has been some big news items for Cataclysm in the past month, some of which could still be considered part of the rumor mill as they haven’t been confirmed (or denied) by Blizzard. In the latest issue of PC Gamer UK, there is a large article about “50 reasons to play Cataclysm” which is a lot of stuff that we’ve at least read on various sites even before Blizzcon ’09. So two things, the first of which I’m quoting from MMOChampion: “Note #1 Important – The guys from PC Gamer were kind enough to give me a few more information on that. The article is NOT officially endorsed by Blizzard and is mostly the result of their own work, that means that a small part of speculation is involved.” And second, this part will be spoiler heavy so scroll down a bit until I give the “all clear.”

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As we’ve heard Thrall will be leaving his position as warchief of the horde to be a guardian of Tirisfal, however this isn’t as permanent sounding as it first sounded. According to this list, Thrall will just be leaving Garrosh “in charge” which does not make him warchief, but will still allow him to declare war on the Alliance and anything else he sees fit. He will be throwing out the Forsaken and Blood Elves from Orgrimmar for his own reasons. And Garrosh will also declare Cairne Bloodhoof a traitor and will execute him. Not too happy about this as I do like Cairne, but according to MMOChampion who got a hold of this issue, they say that the “seeming demise” may be linked to the revitalization of Desolace. So maybe Cairne is able to escape the fate that Garrosh would want for him and live in exile? I guess we’ll just find out when the expansion hits. There is also some talk about Deepholme and how there will likely be a battle between the Alliance and Horde in there that will involve large ships like we’ve already seen in Icecrown. On a final fun note, with the Archaeology profession, we will be seeing Harrison Jones in game, who will have a link to this profession.

</spoilers>

In other big news we received details about the mastery system and stat changes that will be released in the expansion. We’ve known about the stat changes since Blizzcon, but Eyonix made a nicely detailed post (linked above) that goes deeper in explaining their reasons for making the change and what will be affected. I think that the stat changes are a good thing since I also felt that the system was a bit too clunky, and I think that the changes will help newcomers to the game understand what they need more easily. To go along with the stat changes, I also like the proposed mastery system which will be refreshing the talent tree system. Eyonix was a busy dragon and gave us a good preview of this as well:

Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree — meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.

One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “…and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Master of Deception (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.

Again this change makes sense to me, though I am a bit interested to see how some aspects are handled with different talent trees and what players find becomes a good spec for raiding or PvP. I know as a hunter I’ll be interested to see what they do to all three of the trees and to see what may wind up being the spec (or specs?) du jour. At least there’s dual specs so I can try out a couple of different ones. Eyonix later made some clarifications to the system where he discusses a bit about hybrids and how the points spent in each tree will determine what spec you are. He also says that they plan on making Death Knights less dependent on GCD and rune cool-downs, which has piqued my interests as I love playing my DK but the cool-downs and runic system can get a bit annoying. Unfortunately not much else was said on that front and it looks like we’ll have to wait to hear more info.

But all of this news coming out makes me hopeful that maybe we’ll be hearing about a beta soon! If not the beta maybe more info on the in-game events that Blizz has planned leading up to Cataclysm. Pretty sure it’s going to be massive, and I’m pretty excited for it!

In the News

In general WoW news, the 5 year anniversary mosaic has been finished! The call for entries for the BattleCry were answered and has given us quite the image to behold. I’ve always been a fan of these photo mosaics, and with 20,000 images combined plus some beautiful artwork it makes for an impressive piece. Along with the release of the mosaic, Blizzard has put up the artwork that was the base for it in various computer wallpaper sizes (even for you dual monitor people) plus mobile devices! It is a shame that the art gets cropped so you loose Sylvanas, Tyrande, Lor’themar Theron and High Tinker Mekkatorque, but my droid still got a new wallpaper.

There is also an interview on G4 with lead producer J. Allen Brack where the discussion of bringing WoW to console systems is discussed. Good points are brought up regarding the memory space needed for the game itself (which right now is around 15GB) to the control schemes being developed for keyboard gaming, so it’s no surprise that Brack said this: “I think it’s unlikely that WoW comes to the consoles. It is something that we talk about on a pretty regular basis, but someone is going to figure out how to make an MMO on a console and they’re going to be wildly successful. I have no doubt about that.” Personally I don’t know if I’d want to play WoW on a console unless I could plug in my keyboard and mouse to my Xbox. A controller based control system could work in the future, but I would still be skeptical.

Massively also put up an interesting article about the threat of Farmville to WoW. Granted there has been a lot of discussion after Activision-Blizzard’s annual 10k report came out about the status of WoW remaining in the forefront of MMO gaming. Now I do think that maybe Blizz needs to look at adapting to the new market, but I don’t necessarily think that casual games like Farmville will spell doom for them. It may just be the inspiration that they need to think up things like maybe a different membership model.

And if you haven’t picked it up yet, the latest WoW novel, Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak is now out! I haven’t had a chance to grab it yet but I’ll have it soon. Stormrage continues the story of the Emerald Dream where the Green Dragonflight is continuing to battle against the Nightmare threatening to take over the dream. Many dragons have been consumed by the Nightmare, emerging from the dream broken in mind and body, and it may be that Malfurion has succumbed to the Nightmare as well. The book sounds pretty intense and I look forward to reading it!

Collector’s Corner

I decided to start a new section for news about the figure series as well as any interesting collectibles that Blizzard announces. And of course I’m first going to discuss the two new plushies! Blizz released a Wind Rider Cub and Gryphon Hatchling who come with bonus in-game vanity pets. Plus when “RIDICULOUSLY CUTE!” is in the product description you just can’t pass that up. Each costs $25 and makes a great gift or addition to your WoW collection. And even though I’m more of an Alliance at heart, the Wind Rider cub is much cuter than the Gryphon.

For the action figure fans, I’ve got some news as well! If you didn’t get the chance to read my coverage of Toy Fair 2010, I mentioned that I was able to check out the upcoming figure series from DC. Series 6, which includes Sylvanas, Magni Bronzebeard and Gibzz Sparklighter, the goblin tinker. It was also recently announced that series 7 is now available for pre-order and will include Judge Malthred, Garona & Garm Whitefang. These figures are set to be released in October. Having seen all of these figures up close I have to say that they look amazing and are very well sculpted and painted. There is also the deluxe figure series, which will have the third released in October that includes Garrosh and Taz’Dingo (a troll hunter). The names are a bit odd, and as I’ve seen some people point out they couldn’t have been more obvious with the naming of the worgen, I still like them for what they are and plan on getting a few of them for my collection. I also was able to see a figure that DC Unlimited plans to release of the Lich King in the deluxe series and I’m pretty excited about that one!

Comic Relief

Another new section I decided to institute is some comic relief, as WoW is not always serious business. Below is a list of some fun things I’ve come across lately that were pretty amusing.

• Ctrl+Alt+Del did a fun comic regarding the ever debated topic of Gear Score.
• The fine folks at Master of Warcraft sat down and decoded the binary codes from the punch cards in Gnomeregan. Apparently Blizz loves subliminal messages…
• On the news that the gnomes may be going back to Gnomeregan in the future, there has been a new site that’s popped up that has some amusing graphics, poetry and tidbits all related to gnomes (they actually tipped me off to the binary translations): The Gnomeregan Offensive. I recommend checking it out and hope that they continue with the updates!

Call to readers!

If you have any tips, tricks, news or funnies you would like to send in to be included in the next State of Azeroth please send an email to steph@gamingangels.com!

This is Steph signing off until next month. Glory to the Alliance and Lok’tar Ogar to my horde brethren!

Thanks to Necrotic Designs for the awesome banner! Rawr!

Last night, Sony Online Entertainment hosted a virtual tour of some environments in its latest EverQuest II expansion, Sentinel’s Fate. I took the chance to take about a zillion screenshots of that (I apologize ahead of time for the quality, but the guy hosting had to turn his graphics down a fair bit for the stream). I put those in a slideshow with another zillion official Sony screenshots in the slideshow below. But now, a little more information about what I saw.

The Sentinel expansion features a higher level cap (90), new overland zones (The Sundered Frontier and Stonebrunt Highlands), 12 new dungeons, 400 new quests (you will supposedly be able to have multiple active quests), five new Heritage Quests, more 2x and 4x raid zones, 2,000 new weapons/armor/items, alternate advancement abilities, and hundreds of new creatures.

On our tour, we saw parts of a brand-new zone where you basically play a giant game of Clue. You see a dead NPC and clues that lead to the murderer. Find the murderer, win fantastic cash and prizes! What kinds of cash and prizes? Well…

“I can’t reveal the rewards for completing the dungeon yet. But they’re bound to be awesome,” said EverQuest II Community Relations Manager Christine “Kiara” Renzetti. “Once you complete the zone, the next time you come back to do it again, the killer will be a different person and the object and location as well.” So it sounds like you can do this as often as you want.

In addition, a storyline some players didn’t like is on its way out. “A lot of folks just don’t like the Void storyline and are tired of it after The Shadow Odyssey. This expansion wraps it up and we’ll be moving to another story in the next one,” Renzetti told me.

This expansion is for characters who are level 80+, but if you’re intrigued, there’s no reason to be apprehensive about starting a new game in the EverQuest world. “There is a TON of content for those just starting out and so much to see and do on the way that I always advise people to take their time and experience the game to the fullest. The newest newbie zones are indeed very user friendly. Our game has a lower learning curve to start than many games I’ve played.” So go ahead and give it a shot!

Since Christine’s had a good amount of time to play, I decided to ask a tough question or two. What is she most looking forward to in the official release? What do seasoned EverQuest players have to look forward to?

“I can’t really pick a favorite thing for myself. I love the art in this expansion. It’s absolutely stunning. I can’t wait to get into The Hole (lots of nostalgia from EQ!) and I am eager to play in the Erudin Library and solve the mystery. I’m also very excited that we’re introducing Battlegrounds!”

The Sentinel’s Fate expansion will have two release dates: Pick up a physical copy on February 16th, or (if you can wait that long), the digital download will be available February 23rd. Do you think you read that wrong? You didn’t. If you buy the physical copy, you get a full week of extra time. The expansion has an MSRP of $39.99 and the same $14.99 monthly subscription fee.

Patch 3.3

Before the holidays, we were treated with the final big patch to Wrath of the Lich King, Patch 3.3, that allowed us into Icecrown Citadel so that we can finally get our hands on Arthas. This patch was highly anticipated and so far seems to have delivered with regards to the major points. I thoroughly enjoy the three new 5-man dungeons that you can battle through. I think that it was a neat idea to have these dungeons that not only expand on the story, but they also drop some fairly decent loot. I think my favorite of the three is Halls of Reflection, even though it can be a pain to get past Falric and Marwyn without an experienced group and good strategy. Now I’ve only experienced this as Alliance and fighting with Jaina, but from what I’ve heard battling with Sylvanas is also quite the treat. Though I can’t forgive Blizzard for changing her voice. I really hate the new voice.

And of course there are the new 10 and 25 man Icecrown Citadel raid instances. Blizzard is rolling out this final raid section by section with only The Lower Spire and Plagueworks available for players to fight through. There is also the big gunship battle that you participate in where you have to fight against the opposite faction to reach the top of Icecrown citadel before the other faction does. As someone who’s more of a casual player I’m unfortunately not up on my gear as I should be to make it to ICC, however I’m working hard on it and should be able to make it eventually! I’ll probably be happier to wait because then I can play more wings of the citadel instead of waiting for the next ones to be unlocked.

There is also a new faction that players can earn rep with that rewards players with new recipes and rings. The Ashen Verdict was created with an agreement between Tirion Fordring and Darion Mograine where the Argent Crusade and the Knights of the Ebon Blade have set aside their differences during the attack on Icecrown Citadel until the Lich King is defeated. Players can earn rep with them by killing trash mobs and bosses in the citadel. MMOChampion has a great listing of all of the reputation rewards here!

The other new thing that is probably my favorite is the Dungeon Finder system. Not only can you queue your level 80 characters to run heroics and raids, but even your lower level characters can queue up for low level dungeons. Running your first random heroic of the day will net you two Emblems of Frost and some gold. After that you receive Emblems of Triumph. For running a random pre-Wrath dungeon you will receive a spoils bag that will include level-appropriate rewards. Running either of the daily random dungeons is a great way to get some good loot, save up for tier gear and even pass the time while farming materials or reputation. I tend to wait in the queue for DPS and work on my Wintersaber reputation. And for my low level mage the dungeons are a great way to get a good amount of XP and level up!

As always, the latest patch notes can be found here.

In the News

There have been a couple of interesting news items in the past month or so that have caught my attention. The first one being Blizzard helping cops track down a drug dealer via WoW. Police in Howard County, Indiana were on the hunt for Alfred Hightower, a suspected drug dealer who had a warrant for his arrest out since 2007. In their investigation, the police discovered that Hightower played WoW (or as they were initially told “some warlock and witches’ game”). When petitioned, Blizzard did get back to the police with information that included Hightower’s IP address, account information and history, billing address and online screen name and preferred server. Penny Arcade even did a great comic regarding the incident.

Another news story that popped up and had me laughing was regarding a man who was told by his wife that it was his Orc statue or him. Now as discovered by one of the members of Fark.com this wasn’t just any orc, this is Thrall from Warcraft III who is also unfortunately out of stock for those interested. So Robert Cushnie was forced to give away Thrall to someone else. “She said there wasn’t any room for him in our life. I’ve had him for six years but Dee means more to me, so he had to go.”At least it looks like he went to a good home.

In-Game Action

It was noticed in the past month that there have been some strange earthquakes rocking the major faction cities. This led to some remembering mobs from the PTR that were seen called Shakers. In the live game now they’re of course invisible, but they are most likely the harbingers of Deathwing coming back to Azeroth. Blue poster Wryxian was seen commenting on posts in the forums with cryptic answers my favorite being the following:

It was just you. Seriously, earthquakes leading up to some kind of cataclysm? I lol’d.

*the earth shakes a bit* o.O

Now it’s always good to try and not read too far in-between the lines with blue posts, but I think that this probably the beginnings of the pre-Cataclysm events since Blizzard isn’t denying what’s going on. The one funny aspect is that these quakes also happen in Dalaran, as yanno, floating cities high up in the sky can feel such things.
Rumor Mill

In breaking rumor news, WoW.com posted that their sources have said that the Friends and Family alpha for Cataclysm will begin on January 12th. This news came about when the wowleak Twitter account posted the image of a Cataclysm disc to their feed, which has since been said to be a fake. WoW.com is still sticking to the story that the alpha will occur on the 12th.

Call to readers!

If you have any tips, tricks, news or funnies you would like to send in to be included in the next State of Azeroth please send an email to steph@gamingangels.com! I’m also looking for any girls who are guild masters of an all female guild or members of an all female guild to do an interview with! If interested you can contact me at the above email address as well.

This is Steph signing off until next month. Glory to the Alliance and Lok’tar Ogar to my horde brethren!

Thanks to Necrotic Designs for the awesome banner!

Funcom has launched over five free updates to ‘Age of Conan’ since its launch in 2008. These updates have added new world regions, dungeons, features and technology enhancements. Through the free updates players have been able to explore legendary locations such as Ymir’s Pass and Tarantia Commons, not to mention dungeons such as Xibaluku, The Amphitheatre and The Iron Tower. Funcom also introduced a new item and RPG system, new PvP features.

“Everyone on the team is very proud of how ‘Age of Conan’ has grown and matured since launch,” says Game Director and Executive Producer Craig Morrison. “One of the great joys of working on a massively multiplayer online game is being able to add new content and new features even after launch and by working closely with our community of players we have been able to do exactly that.”

For more information you can visit www.ageofconan.com. There’s also a free trial available for ‘Age of Conan’ for brand new players.

The trailer for Dominon is pretty rad. I’m all for epic space battles and this does not disappoint! I’m sure that many fans, and newcomers will enjoy the trailer and new expansion. Check out the full trailer below!

StealthySlyth wrote a great birthday tribute about World of Warcraft. Blizzard is also celebrating with a launch of a anniversary celebration site.

On the site they’ll have interviews, video feature and a place to send your picture with your battlecrest. Just make sure you’re screaming “For the Horde” or “For the Alliance”.

Also Blizzard is offering all gamers that logs into the game between now and Sunday, December 6 at 11:59 p.m. (realm time) will receive their very own Onyxian Whelpling non-combat pet, along with a special message from the development team. So make sure you do that before time runs out.

The LOTRO Lifetime Membership is now available for $199.

Any current or former player who renews or upgrades their subscription to any multi-month plan by October 31st gets the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion for FREE!

All players can pre-order the new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack which contains 2 character slots and one shared storage slot that allows players to share items with all of their characters on the same server for $19.99 and get the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides 8% speed boost and the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount for FREE!

Starting today, existing Lifetime Members who pre-order the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack get the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion plus two in-game items (Harbinger’s Cloak which provides an 8% speed boost and a new mount) for FREE!

These are some great offers, and make use of them quickly as these are only for a limited time! More information can be found at the LOTRO official site here.