Alex Ziebart
Milwaukee, WI - http://www.alexziebart.com/
When not writing for WoW Insider or his personal projects, Alex is most often found playing WoW Alliance-side on the Cenarion Circle server.
The Daily Quest: Ain't no silverback girl
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
- Fel Fire looks at Patch 3.2 from the perspective of a guild leader.
- DeathKnight.info continues exploring every corner of the Isle of Conquest on the PTR. This time we see the glory of the human catapault. I hope you like slamming face first into stone walls a few dozen times!
- Mystic Chicanery explains why she thinks the Caverns of Time are the most logical dungeons in WoW.
- Lorecrafted gives his take on patch 3.2's Tauren Druid revelations.
- Slow Wolf's next installment of their Creature Feature series is up, this time featuring the Gorilla.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Shadow Priest questions answered
I strongly recommend reading the whole thing on the official forums, but I'm going to pull out some bits and pieces here.
The first big thing that jumped out to me was in response to a question regarding Haste and DoTs. Have they considered DoTs scaling with Haste? Ghostcrawler says... yes! It's something they're apparently actively discussing. That doesn't guarantee we'll see it, but the fact that they're talking about it is promising.
Filed under: Priest, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
China's gold farming ban not really a ban
That loophole is the fact that their law has no jurisdiction over foreign transactions. While it absolutely can put a stop to these transactions on Chinese soil using Chinese servers and Chinese currency, Chinese goldfarmers can still happily (well, probably not happily) scrounge up gold on American realms and sell it to American players. Most likely, this new law won't have an impact on the gold selling industry whatsoever. The people being impacted are those crafting their games on a model of microtransactions rather than a subscription model. Developers, not gold farmers, will be harmed by this. A game like Free Realms is no longer a feasible option in China.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Economy
July's Brew of the Month: Stranglethorn Brew
It's July 1st, which means you can head out to Nagrand and pick up your free gems the nearest mailbox and pick up this month's brew, assuming you have a Brew of the Month membership! This month we have the Stranglethorn Brew, which is certainly more interesting than the various "teehee you farted/burped/barfed/burped again" brews. Upon drinking the Stranglethorn Brew, you get a buff called Jungle Madness! Exclamation point included. It causes your character to hallucinate for awhile, and be attacked by spectral Jungle Gnomes. If you don't have a Brew of the Month membership, you can watch a video from Wowhead poster VBub that shows the brew in action at the end of this post. Just click the 'read more' link at the bottom.
Assuming they don't change the brews for next year, our beertastic journey will be coming to an end pretty soon. There's only one brew left that we haven't seen, which is the Draenic Pale Ale. After that, we're back to the Binary Brew unless they decide to put out a whole new batch of 12 brews, and I somehow doubt that will happen. Is anybody else hoping the Draenic Pale Ale is truly epic, considering it marks the entire year we've been drinking these crazy things?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Events, Achievements
The Queue: You are slightly more prepared than you were
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
That's a trailer we haven't seen in awhile, huh? It's relevant today, I promise! Besides, a little nostalgia is always fun. If I have one grievance with Wrath of the Lich King's cinematic, it's that they didn't give us an incredibly corny catchphrase to spout for nearly two years.
Discolando asked...
"Is there any substance to the rumor I've recently read that patch 3.3 will contain another yet unknown raid instance, and patch 3.4 will contain Icecrown Citadel? It does seem more logical to 'finish' the expansion with the advertised antagonist instead of a deux ex machina like patch 2.4 gave us."
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue
The Daily Quest: Making your own items, Killing Spree, and more
- RP Made Simple takes a deep look at an up and coming RP mod, Gryphonheart Items, which allows you to create custom vanity/flavor items to trade and share with others using the addon.
- Alterac Volley has added another Daily Quest Guide to their site, this time tackling the Midsummer Fire Festival.
- World of Snarkcraft reviews Wowhead's new Profiler feature.
- Blessing of Kings breaks down the patch 3.2 emblem changes, and gives some thoughts of their own.
- Should Rogues pick up Killing Spree in their PvE raiding spec? Slice and Dice says yes!
- Elemental Shaman extraordinaire Binkenstein is hard at work rounding up all of the applicable patch 3.2 changes.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
The Queue: Goodnight, sweet prince
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.This weekend marked the end of an era, my friends. A champion (cheater) of the people (Gnomes) has fallen from grace (the thumbnails at the top of our site). The people (you guys) have shouted to the rooftops (our comments), "Down with oppression (martial arts techniques)! Down with corruption (GM lewts)!"
So it is done.
JustSaying asked...
"Can someone please change those 4 pictures near the top of WoW.com's page? I'm tired of seeing that stupid gnome head every time I come to this site."
Since you asked so nicely, Karatechop has been replaced.
Spidey asked...
"I've been leveling an alt (Troll Hunter) recently and decided to go mining/engineering, mostly for the bow/gun enchants and the like. I just leveled engineering to 200 and decided to go grab my Goblin Engineering membership. While doing the quest for membership I realized that the Alliance have Gnomes as a playable class, but how come the Horde doesn't have Goblins? In fact, Alliance has two "small people" races (Gnomes and Dwarves). Any chance the Horde will ever get Goblins or anything smaller than the Forsaken? I think Goblins would be cool, or dare I say, Murlocs as playable races."
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
The Daily Quest: Purple gems are delicious
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
- LostShard is at it again, getting his hands on everything there is to get on the PTR and filming it! Check out his YouTube channel to see most of the new pets and mounts in action.
- BlizzPlanet takes a critical look at the World of Warcraft comic's newest artist, Pop Mhan.
- It's Flowchart Friday once again over at I Like Bubbles, this week with a user submitted flowchart!
- Kaliope is busy as a bee, prospecting Titanium for epic gems on the PTR. Go see the results!
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Choose my Adventure: I'm on a mount
WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Help test the site's new features by participating in this event, casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and following his exploits on Alex Ziebart's WoW.com profile!
Another week, another level. Ten levels, actually. And I guess it's been a few weeks. It sounded cooler that first way though, didn't it? Anyway... Yes, Turpen has hit level 35. The last couple of weeks have been busy around the office due to patch 3.2, so I didn't get as much done between level 25 and 35 as I had between 15 and 25. I only squeezed one dungeon run in, but I did manage to do something else that was asked of me: Battlegrounds.
Yes, I did quite a bit of PvP this week on our Gnomelock, primarily in Warsong Gulch in the 20-29 bracket. I tried a round of Arathi Basin (which we won 2000-100) but very quickly decided never to do that battleground in that particular bracket ever again. Running around Arathi Basin without a mount is pretty much the worst thing ever. Patch 3.2 will change that I suppose, but it'll be far too late to be of any use to Turpen. My next alt, maybe!
Another week, another level. Ten levels, actually. And I guess it's been a few weeks. It sounded cooler that first way though, didn't it? Anyway... Yes, Turpen has hit level 35. The last couple of weeks have been busy around the office due to patch 3.2, so I didn't get as much done between level 25 and 35 as I had between 15 and 25. I only squeezed one dungeon run in, but I did manage to do something else that was asked of me: Battlegrounds.
Yes, I did quite a bit of PvP this week on our Gnomelock, primarily in Warsong Gulch in the 20-29 bracket. I tried a round of Arathi Basin (which we won 2000-100) but very quickly decided never to do that battleground in that particular bracket ever again. Running around Arathi Basin without a mount is pretty much the worst thing ever. Patch 3.2 will change that I suppose, but it'll be far too late to be of any use to Turpen. My next alt, maybe!
Filed under: Warlock, Analysis / Opinion, Leveling
The Queue: The holy cow it's a crab edition
Half of our questions today are actually about WoW.com rather than... you know, WoW itself. Which is odd, but am I going to complain? Not really! It means you guys care, and that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Well, I guess that could be food poisoning. My crab rangoons were a little odd last night. Oddly delicious.
Of course, if you don't really give a hoot about the inner workings of WoW.com and strictly want questions about the game, the other half of our questions cover that, so we have things for you, too. Read on!
brasilnut13 asked...
"Do you think Blizz will ever put class related titles in the game?"
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
