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Simulators for WoW are nothing new -- Rawr, for instance, has been around for years, and is steadily snowballing into a one-stop shop for simulating all classes (it's not there yet, but I still love it). In case you're scratching your head at this point, a simulator is like a spreadsheet, but much smarter -- instead of using some general approximations to calculate how your gear is going to change your DPS, it basically goes ahead and plays a model version of the game for you. Edit: apparently Rawr is not a simulator -- it uses formulas that come up with the same answer every time, much like spreadsheets. We still love it anyway.

What is new about the simulator I want to talk about today, which seems to be entitled "Mr. Robot," is that it runs on the web, in Microsoft's Silverlight framework (Silverlight seems to have come about because someone at MS saw Flash and decided they wanted one too). This means it's cross-platform and there's nothing to install (well, except Silverlight, but you may have that already). They're only doing sims for Death Knights right now, but the team says more classes are coming (I hear Warlock is next, but don't quote me).

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Filed under: Classes, Death Knight

Now this is neat: brand-new totem artwork has been spotted on the patch 3.3 PTR for troll shamans by extremely excited tipster Zjin. Previously, all Horde shamans shared a totem design, and draenei got their own space-themed totems when they were added. The new troll ones look appropriately voodoo, I think.

There are now at least three designs for the four different horde races; I wouldn't be surprised if orcs turned out to have their own as well. The current Horde totems fit tauren best of all the races. Once we here at WoW.com start making our way onto the PTRs, we'll bring you any more information we can find on possible new totems for the various races. In the mean time, I'll be in my bunk, doing designs for dwarf totems in my head.

Update: yep, there are new Dwarf and Orc totems too.

Filed under: Trolls, Shaman, Patches

The patch 3.3 PTR is up (as you must have noticed if you're reading the same site I'm writing on), and among other things, it contains a battery of crafted gear that confers nature resistance for users of the various armor classes. There's leg and foot wear for all armor types, in various versions where appropriate (like DPS/tanking/spell for plate).

This is a pretty good sign that we're going to want/need nature resist somewhere in Icecrown Citadel. The mats list is another hint in that direction, calling as it does for Icecrown Thing of Crafting Things [PH]. It's a good thing they put "PH" there, or I might not have known the name was a placeholder.

But seriously folks, get ready to craft another set of resistance gear. I'm not particularly jazzed about this myself - I mostly raid as a druid these days, and we have little enough bag space as it is - but I guess it's one way to make sure players don't consume the content too quickly (if they have to stock up on Things of Crafting Things from earlier bosses first). Still seems like a silly hoop to make us jump through.

Filed under: Patches, Items, Raiding

In case BlizzCon today isn't enough excitement for you, Razer, maker of fine gaming hardware of many kinds, is teaming up with Asus to give away a killer gaming computer. It's custom-painted with a ghost from Starcraft (anyone excited about SC2?), and it features some serious hardware. Intel i7 at 2.66 GHz, 9 GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX260 with 896 MB RAM, a 1 TB hard drive - it should run pretty much everything you want to throw at it. And it's so pretty! Of course, it comes with some Razer peripherals too.

All you need to do to win is leave a comment on their Facebook thread saying what your favorite Blizzard game is, and why. This means you will need a Facebook account, and you also need to become a "fan" of Razer first from their profile page. The winner will be randomly chosen on Monday, so you have until then to get in there.

Filed under: Contests, BlizzCon, Hardware

We brought you the video from the costume contest earlier tonight. Now, as requested, here are Turpster's videos of the dance contest (above), and the soundalike contest (after the cut). I have to say, I watched the soundalike contest live, and it was really weird. Some of those contestants are creepily accurate.

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Filed under: Contests, BlizzCon

Last night at BlizzCon featured the string of contests (costume, sound-alike, and dance), hosted by Jay Mohr. The costume contest was pretty spectacular at times, and I don't want to spoil it, but I was definitely rooting for the winner as soon as I saw him or her. Watch the contest above, and enjoy! It's times like this that make me realize what a wonderful community WoW has.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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Filed under: Contests, BlizzCon

The second and final class, item, and profession panel has concluded. Disappointingly, the presentation part of the panel was mainly a re-run of yesterday's, but the Q&A, of course, was all-new. There were even a few new tidbits in the presentation. Here are some parts of the presentation that are not repeats from yesterday:

• They didn't give any new classes to Draenei because there are too many of the space goats already.
• There's a chance that Hunter Aspects will go away entirely.
• New tidbit on Archaeology: putting pieces of artifacts together sends you to "face some sort of challenge" out in the world.
• They like the way fishing works in Animal Crossing, and might look to that for inspiration on how to rework the process.

And here are the good parts from the Q&A:

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Filed under: Fishing, Draenei, Classes, BlizzCon, Cataclysm, Archaeology

For my money, one of the most interesting Cataclysm features they've alluded to is Path of the Titans, another character advancement system at max level. Before the Systems panel today, we didn't have a lot of solid information on it. There are still questions to be answered, but here's how it appears to work so far:

• At maximum level, you choose to align yourself with a given Titan cult - i.e., you choose a specific path.
• The paths are not class- or role-specific. Players will have to figure out for themselves what path they want to take.
• Turning in artifacts found with Archeology (the new secondary profession) will cause you to progress along your chosen path.
• The main rewards are Ancient Glyphs (not part of the Inscription profession). At each rank in your Path you have two to three choices of Glyphs.
• Some examples of Ancient Glyphs are:
  • Bleed reduction
  • Bandage improvement
  • Increased damage following a crit
• More Glyphs will probably come after launch.
• Everyone is going to eventually be able to get all the glyphs for their path, and it will not be grindy (i.e. not like Sons of Hodir).

I'm looking forward to learning more about this as Cataclysm comes towards beta and release. I'm especially excited that they're focusing on making it not feel grindy, because that's a definite risk for a system like this.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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Filed under: BlizzCon, Cataclysm, Archaeology

It looks like Azeroth is not going to be the only aspect of WoW that's destroyed in Cataclysm. The developers just announced in the Class, Items, and Profession panel that half of WoW's stats are getting tossed out the window. Here's the breakdown:

• Attack Power on gear is gone. Instead, some classes will get 2 AP from each point of Agi (Rogues, Hunters, Shamans, Druids), and other classes (presumably Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights) will get 2 AP per point of Strength. Side effect: no more plate wearers stealing your gear
• Spell Power is gone. It comes from Int now.
• MP5 is gone. Spirit is the mana regen stat, and all classes that need it will get some form of Meditation. (Hunters, never fear - you don't use mana any more. More on this in a separate post.)
• Armor Penetration is gone. That one was just confusing.
• Defense is gone. Tanks are now defense-capped from talents, like Druid tanks.
• Haste now increases your rate of resource regeneration (mana, energy, rage, runes, focus).
• Block Value is gone, but blocks now mitigate a percentage of damage.
• Stamina is going to be more equal across different armor types - no more "plate HP envy."

Whew, those are some massive changes. I'm very much in favor of this sort of streamlining; the number of stats in game was getting a bit silly. This back-to-basics approach is refreshing. It's going to take some balancing, sure, but I think it's the right way to go.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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Filed under: Items, BlizzCon, Cataclysm

The Cataclysm cinematic, as first shown this afternoon at the BlizzCon 2009 opening ceremonies, is pretty darn epic (as all of Blizz's cinematics have been, really). If you haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet, fear not - there are options. You can watch it embedded above in this post, or you can head on over to Blizzard's official site and watch it streaming or download a high-quality version.

And you definitely should watch it if you haven't yet. There's a ton of good information right here on WoW.com, but a video is worth quite a lot of words. There's even a gnome in this one! (A priest, near the end.) Not to mention goblins, which I hear are the new gnomes. I am incredibly excited.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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Filed under: Machinima, BlizzCon, Cataclysm