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Daniel Whitcomb

Richland, WA - http://

Daniel Whitcomb has been a player of MMORPGs for years. He currently writes the Death Knight column and general news articles for WoW.com.

Tuesday Morning Post: Identity Crisis Edition

by Daniel Whitcomb on Nov 3rd 2009 (5 days ago)

So race changes are finally live, and with that, you can change your characters in just about every way possible short of class. Different faction? Go for it. Different gender? Change your face? Change your name? It's all good. Heck, you can do it every three days now. It's suddenly like we're all these crazy mutable nameless faceless blobs changing at will and at random, until we're practically a sea of shapeless shapeshifters. Or not. After all, there's still the whole money charge and stuff.

Of course, that's not the only big news this week. Chill of the Throne, Icecrown's version of Sunwell Radiance, has been evoking a lot of discussion and a lot of unrest. Did Blizzard make the right choice in adding this much maligned dungeon-specific nerf back into the game? There's plenty of other issues as well, and as we have a nice 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime, you'll have plenty of time to catch up with it all. You can start with some of the links below:

Filed under: Realm Status, Odds and ends, News items

Lichborne: Elementary death knight macros

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 27th 2009 (12 days ago)

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the world of the death knight. Your host, Daniel Whitcomb, is enjoying the most wonderful time of the year, when a death knight can hang around in his natural habitat all day long without seeming creepy. Or no creepier than usual, at least.

As you approach the end game of WoW, one thing you may find out quickly is that the proper use of macros is a great way to take your game to the next level. Sometimes they streamline moves, other times they allow you to perform actions that would be otherwise impossible. Death knights are definitely no exception, and though we'd be here all week if I went through all the ins and out of macro theory, or even death knight macro theory, I figure right now is still a good time to get you started.

Let's look at a few basic essential macros for the various roles and trees of the class.

Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-tos, Instances, Raiding, Guides, Death Knight, Macro Anatomy, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Tuesday Morning Post: The long and short of it edition

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 27th 2009 (12 days ago)

I have to say, this is sort of interesting. Downtime today is only 7 AM to 9 AM pacific. 2 hours is slightly worse than plain old rolling restarts, to be sure, but it's better than normal maintenance, if a bit unusual. Of course, those of you who are still after those dumb toothpicks will have a few more hours to curse at Innkeepers for turning you into a ninja instead of giving you a dang sliver of wood so you can get a big purple dragon, so that's always a plus.

And of course, for that 2 hour period, you'll need some reading material, which is where we come in. Here's a list of some of the latest and greatest WoW.com news from the Patch 3.3 PTR and beyond:

Filed under: Realm Status, Odds and ends, News items

Patch 3.3 PTR: New tutorial system to be bigger, better

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 25th 2009 (14 days ago)

Patch 3.3 has had a lot of awesome small tweaks aimed at improving the starting experience for new characters and new players, likely in preparation for Cataclysm. In addition to streamlining the first few levels, Blizzard has added something else to the latest patch notes: A new tutorial system. According to the patch notes, the tutorial windows will now be larger and contain pictures and other visual cues to better direct new players where to go, what to do, or what buttons to press on the UI. In addition, new tips have been added, and other existing tips will appear at more opportune moments.

With this, we have yet another good example of Blizzard's preparations going into Cataclysm. Despite having somewhere north of 10 million players, they aren't resting on their laurels, but are adjusting their game to invite in even more players, making it easier for them to get into the game, and ushering in a new era of the newbie (in a good way) for the expansion.

Tuesday Morning Post: Icecrown and Hallow's End edition

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 20th 2009 (19 days ago)

Happy Tuesday morning and happy Hallow's End, everyone. That's right, WoW's coolest holiday's in full swing. Or is when the servers are up. If you're going after the Hallowed title, we have a Hallow's End achievement guide for you. If you're thinking of going after everyone's favorite cackling headless holiday boss, we have a guide to the new Headless Horseman loot. Of course, maybe you just want to do some good old fashioned trick or treating. We have something for that too.

Of course, while the revelry continues on live servers, the testing continues on the test servers, and there's been quite a bit of activity.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items

Patch 3.3 PTR: New UI function lists completed quests

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 19th 2009 (20 days ago)

Over on the WoW LJ community, poster Honem has pointed out something that made me sort of squeal with glee when I first read it: The latest PTR build includes a couple very interesting new functions, as reported by official forum MVP Iriel:

NEW - QueryQuestsCompleted() requests that the server send the client a list of completed quest ids. Once the list is received the QUEST_QUERY_COMPLETE event is fired. (There is a limit on how frequently this can be called)
NEW - tbl = GetQuestsCompleted([tbl]) populates a table (creating one if necessary) with the ids of completed quests.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Quests, Achievements

Patch 3.3 PTR: Arctic Fur is less annoying, vendor purchased

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 18th 2009 (21 days ago)

Here's a nice little find from official forums poster Whut of Cenarion Circle: Arctic Furs, those impossibly hard to farm rare skinning drops that are needed for everything from Leg Armor to Motorcycles, will be a lot easier to get in Patch 3.3. Namely, Braeg Stoutbeard, the recipe vendor outside of Legendary Leathers in Dalaran, is selling them for the low price of 10 Heavy Borean Leather on the PTR.

If you've been farming and selling Arctic Furs, I suppose you might be a bit bummed that your cash cow is going away, but for the most part I think most of us are pretty happy with it. For example, if you're like yours truly, you have a stack of 20 Frozen Orbs sitting in the bank just begging to be made into something useful if you could just skin more than 1 Arctic fur every couple months. Then again, at 60 total Borean Leathers before you can actually buy one, you'll still have to put in some overtime with the skinning knife.

Overall, though, this is one more nice little thing for professionals (and any tanks or physical DPS upgrading to tier 9 or tier 10 legs) to get excited about in Patch 3.3.

Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

Filed under: Skinning, Leatherworking, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items

Patch 3.3 PTR: The fate of Bolvar Fordragon

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 17th 2009 (22 days ago)

Before we go any further, I want to warn you now that there are massive spoilers behind this cut for the Icecrown raid dungeon, including the fight with the Lich King himself. Seriously, they are massive. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't click through to the rest of this article. I am warning you now. Just don't.

Filed under: Alliance, Human, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Instances, Raiding, Lore, Bosses, RP, NPCs, Rumors

Breakfast Topic: The Madness of Multiclassing

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 15th 2009 (24 days ago)

Oh yeah, I'm totally a multi-class battlemage. It's awesome.

So a reader recently asked us a question: Why doesn't WoW allow multiclassing? It's a staple of many a Pen and Paper roleplaying game, and certain MMOs, such as DDO Unlimited, do offer it as an option. Why not WoW, our read wished to know.

Honestly, it's all about balance. Games like Dungeons and Dragons are generally built from the ground up to support multiclassing. Each class has its synergies, and multiclassing its own rules, and there's a limited frame in which they work which works with the whole concept of multiclassing. With WoW, you have 10 separate classes so minutely balanced that even the slightest outside influence can shift the balance of power in class representation and role. With millions of players, each of them expecting to be able to fulfill a certain role and be competitive with everyone else, and each class balanced around a very specific set of skills and equipment, adding multiclassing to WoW would require such an extensive redesign that it would make Patch 4.0 look like a hot fix.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast topics, Classes

Tuesday Morning Post: Animal magnetism edition

by Daniel Whitcomb on Oct 13th 2009 (26 days ago)

So. Big news guys: The Three Worgen Moon Shirt is here. Seriously. The Shirt that will change your life, I kid you not. I ordered mine, and I have already sensed the presence of beautiful women gravitating toward the aura of self-assurance and wildness created around me by the very decision made to purchase the shirt.

Nah, but seriously. There's been stuff going on this weekend. Mostly, Patch 3.3's been going on, and we've had crack teams poring over the data files and running through the dungeons getting all the latest for you. For example, here's some video footage of some of the team running The Pit of Saron. Also, you're going to need to convert your account to Battle.net pretty soon now.

There's much more to peruse of course, so let's get to it. Here's a list of some of our best news and features from the past few days.

Filed under: Realm Status, Odds and ends, News items

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