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Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

What do Santa's elves do after their Christmas duties are done for the year? Ride around on a motorcycle and pick up gnomish babes, that's what. What did you expect them to do with the naughty list? Shred it? These particular elves are also known as dualboxing tauren (?) hunters (!?!) Sys and Tem of Stormrage, photographed on their wild joyride by Chao.

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 aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com 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. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Around Azeroth: Satan's little helpers originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Items, Raiding

In the latest PTR build, updated tonight, the Emblem of Valor quartermaster will sell you Emblems of Valor (the 25-man raid, ilvl 213 emblems) for the price of ten Emblems of Heroism (10-man/ilvl 200). This is something we talked about way back last summer, when they introduced the idea of having multiple levels of badges; this way, 10-man raiders can eventually get the 25-man gear, it just takes a very long time. One EoV can not be traded back for ten EoHs, by the way.

I do think that exchange rate might be a bit high. The cheapest items (rings and cloaks) cost 25 EoVs, which would be 250 EoHs if you paid for it entirely that way. That's (just under) 16 weeks of full Naxxramas clears. If you've been clearing Naxxramas for 16 weeks, you're probably pretty bored of it and ready to move on to Ulduar (which will hopefully be released by then), at which point any EoH-EoV trade-up is meaningless, because you're not getting EoHs anymore.

Continue reading EoHs exchangeable for EoVs at 10:1 on the PTR

EoHs exchangeable for EoVs at 10:1 on the PTR originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Polls, Breakfast topics, Classes

Once upon a time, way back in vanilla WoW, it was common knowledge that rogues and hunters were the most common classes. Raids would regularly refuse to take more of them, and it was almost assumed that all hunters were noobs. Well, at least on my realm, half of that is true: hunters are still extremely popular. However, there's hardly a rogue to be found; it seems that druids (of all classes) have taken their place. My guild, for instance, has zero level 80 rogues.

Druids were once one of the least played classes, but I see them all over the place now. I also see quite a few death knights, of course, and more shamans than I would expect (given that I play Alliance). I've also never been able to swing a stick on my realm without hitting a paladin. Warlocks are probably the next rarest class I see, after rogues. I'm aware that this varies realm-to-realm, though - what's the least popular class on your realm, according to your experience?

View Poll

Breakfast Topic: Unpopular classes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cheats, News items, PvP, Arena

Bornakk just posted an important announcement for all arena participants:

There is now a time limit of 45 minutes for all arenas. If neither team has achieved a victory, both teams will lose 16 arena rating points.

This is posted in the general discussion forums, and we can safely assume that this change is active on live realms.

Bornakk goes on further to say that matches that go on for 45 minutes are currently showing up as a draw and not displaying a loss of arena points. However, the point loss still happens. This means that you can apparently see it when you look at your honor page and you'll notice that your rating has gone down by 16 points

We've covered some very long arena matches in the past. A 13 hour match between a Druid/Warrior and Warlock/Paladin, won by the Warlock/Paladin, and a 10 hour arena match (the classes were not reported on).

Continue reading 45 minute time limit for all arena matches

45 minute time limit for all arena matches originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding, Bosses, Buffs

Matticus also has a guest blogger on his site (I posted about Phaelia's guest blogger earlier today), and he's got a great post up too, about healing meters and why they just aren't helpful to anyone. Damage meters are well known to be disliked by many players -- while they can often show some DPSers where they fit in the general rankings, they're usually still not a great indicator of performance (and when DPS gets really involved in beating the meters, then things go bad quickly).

But healing meters are even worse. Given all of the crazy mechanics in the game (from armor and self-heals to situational abilities and AoE heals), they are very rarely (if ever) a valid interpretation of who's doing the healing and whether they're doing it right or wrong. And as guest blogger Ulkesshern says, more healing doesn't make a better healer anyway -- overhealing and spamming big heals do not mean you're a good healer, though they may get you higher on the healing meters.

There is one good word for healing meters, and that's to give the healer an ego boost after you show off the DPS meters at the end of the instance (usually they're on the bottom of DPS, and so when you switch over to healing, they're happy to be back on top again). But Ulkesshern makes a good point: for anything worth tabulating or tracking, healing meters are not to be trusted or followed.

Why healing meters suck originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Bugs

Now this is a fun bug. Between patch 2.4.3 and patch 3.0.3 (which was the big pre-Wrath patch), the talent trees for all classes changed a lot. Among other things, this involved removing some talents. And apparently, when these talents were removed from the game, some players there were specced into them got to keep them, even though all their other talents were reset. The affected talents were as follows:

• Warlock: Improved Lash of Pain
• Warlock: Fel Stamina
• Shaman: Totemic Mastery
• Shaman: Improved Lightning Shield (Rank 3)
• Paladin: Precision
• Rogue: Fist Weapon Specialization
• Priest: Shadow Focus (Ranks 4 and 5)

So if you think you've been critting more than you should with fist weapons, or your succubus has been Lash of Paining more than seems right, that's probably why. This bug has now been hot-fixed out, and players will no longer gain benefits from these talents.

[Thanks, Kvothe]

"Ghost talents" hotfixed originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hunter, Items, (Hunter) Big Red Kitty

Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

The Oracles have some nice stuff for hunters, the least of which is a pretty trinket, the Oracle Talisman of Ablution. But there's more to the Oralces than loot and a cool hipster named Lafoo. (Don't mention Moodle to us; he's a cad and very ungentlemanly.)

You are invited to download the full-sized version (82MB) of this movie here.

As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

BigRedKitty: Crocolisks? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Realm Status, News items

Maaven posted a short time ago that the 3.0.8 Public Test Realm (PTR) servers are being taken offline for an update tonight. There is no ETA when the PTRs will be back up.

There was a recent update to the PTR patch notes, and there has been a lot of activity on the PTR forums from the blues. It should be noted that Ghostcrawler once again today reiterated that dual spec will not be unveiled in 3.0.8.

There's a few of us here that will be up tonight, so check back and see what the new build brings. I'm placing my gold on more clam updates.

New PTR build incoming originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Realm News, Bugs

Although I haven't experienced it so much myself recently (fingers crossed), many players have been complaining about high latency both in Northrend and in the various Northrend raids (especially the Heroic versions). I have had Grizzly Hills especially (for some reason) get so bad with the lag spikes that I just logged off for an hour, but that was back in the first few weeks of Wrath.

Apparently, the outdoor Northrend lag has been caused by Wintergrasp battles. There is a "server-side fix" (which I read as hot fix) in testing on internal realms at Blizzard, and Eyonix tells us that they hope to be able to patch up the live realms "in the near future" (which I hope is sooner than "Soon[TM]").

As for Naxxramas, we are informed that there are optimizations in the pipe for it, and that those will be coming in 3.0.8 (which I personally predict for next Tuesday). These optimizations will, allegedly, help both latency and disconnects. Are disconnects a big problem in Naxx? I'm not sure I've seen any.

Latency fixes coming for Northrend, Naxx originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Factions, Wrath of the Lich King

When you log in the day after patch 3.0.8 goes live, odds are that if you've hit 80, you'll be picking up a relatively free achievement. Winds of the North is an achievement that's been more or less impossible to get since Wrath was released -- it requires you to get Exalted with all three of the "starter" reputations for your faction, depending on whether you're Horde or Alliance. But while it's relatively easy to get Exalted with the overall reputaiton for your faction (Horde Expedition or Alliance Vanguard), it's very tough to get Exalted with the reputations within that faction (Explorer's League, Valiance Expedition, Frostborn and the Silver Covenant for the Alliance, and Hand of Vengeance, Taunka, Warsong Offensive and the Sunreavers for the Horde -- whew). There are almost no daily quests for any of those factions, and even just doing all of the quests is designed to get you Exalted with the major faction, not the minor ones.

Patch 3.0.8 will fix this, and only require you to get Exalted with the overall faction. Which you probably already are, since if you don't wear a Champion tabard during the endgame instances, you'll instead earn rep with the starter reputation for your faction. (Not to mention that even before you get there, the mini-factions all add up to the major faction, so if you get Revered with two of the mini-factions, you'll be Exalted with the overall faction.) Got all that? In short, Blizzard built an achievement into the game without realizing how hard it really was to get. And in the next patch, they're going to change it so that even if you haven't been paying attentention, you've probably already gotten it. So enjoy the free points.

Winds of the North achievement getting fixed originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There was a ton of free transfers announced last night, hopefully some of this will have the effect of freeing up the long queues we've become used to lately.

In addition to the normal transfers, a large block of PvE servers have the option to get a free transfer to a new realm, Garrosh.

Garrosh is a PvE EST based US realm. It's been placed in the Emberstorm battlegroup.

Blizzard's announcement lists next Wednesday, January 14th, at 6:00 p.m. PST as the cutoff date for the transfers. However they will close the transfers early if they meet their internal quotas. Transfer early and transfer often. You can begin the transfers via your account management page at worldofwarcraft.com.

The complete list of eligible transfer realms after the break

Continue reading Free transfers and a new US realm

Free transfers and a new US realm originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Talents, (Shaman) Totem Talk

The most recent patch notes for the PTR are among us. As promised, quite a few changes for shamans, especially elemental shamans, are included in this patch. First off, let's look at the specific changes to shamans.

Shaman

• Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
  
• Healing Way: Now only one application is required to reach full benefit. No longer stacks.
  
• Improved Water Shield: Lesser Healing Wave now has a reduced chance to trigger this talent.
  
• Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.
  
• Mental Quickness and Static Shock have switched positions in the talent tree.
  
• Mental Quickness: Reduces the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power.
  
• Searing Totem (Rank 4) now does the proper damage for its rank.
  
• Tremor Totem's duration has been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.

The changes to Fire Nova and Magma Totem are aimed at shaman AoE issues: it seems the Blizzard designers are really set on shaman AoE coming from totems or Chain Lightning. While I'm still not sold on losing either Flametongue or Totem of Wrath just to do some AoE, hopefully the removal of threat on these totems will help.

The Imp WS change keeps you from using up a charge on a relatively low mana cost LHW, which I can see even if I won't be happy if I have no mana left and am using LHW because it's the only healing spell I have the mana for. The change to Healing Way is probably due to the fact that a lot of resto shamans don't bother to take it anymore since they have a more varied spell rotation with Riptide and Chain Heal still the standouts. I honestly don't know if this change will really accomplish much: it may encourage people to put a Healing Wave into the rotation just to keep the buff up, but if you're doing 90% of your healing with riptide and CH anyway, you may just not bother and keep not spending the talent points on it.

Continue reading Totem Talk: 3.0.8, The Rise of Shamanism

Totem Talk: 3.0.8, The Rise of Shamanism originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Night Elves, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, NPCs, Buffs

Phaelia's got a guest blogger over at Resto4Life who's extolling the many virtues of Shadowmeld, definitely one of the more OP of the racial bonuses after the big change with the Wrath release. Previously, the spell could only be used out of combat, which made it very useful for, umm... hiding while AFK? But with the change of letting you use it in combat as a temporary threat wipe, the skill really opened up to be extremely useful for all sorts of things. If you're a Night Elf and you don't have Shadowmeld on your action bars, it's time to put it back.

Flipping on Shadowmeld has its disadvantages (almost any action takes you out of stealth and puts you back into combat), but if you need to duck out of combat for a quick drink or a quick change of gear, you can do it. And it can easily buy you some extra time to summon a mount or get away from trouble if you happen to be in PvP outside. And while it's not quite as powerful as Vanish, you can even use it in the Arenas to drop out of combat (hidden, as when you start drinking you'll lose your stealth), and grab a few seconds of drinking before you get brought back into the fight.

None of these uses are exactly gamebreaking -- the Shadowmeld action is pretty fragile, so you're going to have to be fast if you want to put that second or half second of dropping out of combat to good use. But when time is short and you've got to use every little ability you have, it's important to have Shadowmeld around. Ducking out of combat for just a moment might be just the boost you need.

The many uses of Shadowmeld originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items, Making money, Wrath of the Lich King

What's going on at Activision-Blizzard? Yesterday, their stock fell back down to the lowest its been since November of 2006. Even coming off of huge sales last year (they run the Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and obviously Blizzard's World of Warcraft franchises, all of which had banner years in 2008), the stock price fell 6.5% yesterday, compared to a high in the last year of $19.28.

It's not Wrath -- the game's been selling like gold encrusted hotcakes since launch. There could be an upcoming shakeup in Activision's leadership (is Bobby K on his way out?), or it could just be that as well as Activision did this past year, the rough economy is hitting them hard, too.

At any rate, this will likely be just a bump in the road -- Activision is poised to become (if they haven't already) the biggest publisher in the game, and as you can see from this graph on their website, the stock is already back up above $9. We don't know what the reason is for this quick drop, but everything else we've seen points to a bright future for Activision-Blizzard.

Activision-Blizzard stock falls originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fishing, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Lore, RP, Wrath of the Lich King

I have a few alts on Sisters of Elune and occasionally browse their realm forums for news. I'm glad I did last night, because I ran across a thread that was surprisingly absorbing. You may remember a few articles we ran way back during Wrath's beta about the Dalaran fountain and the coins you can fish up there. They're brilliant, albeit tiny, little insights into the lore concerning classic characters in Warcraft, and incidentally they're also the subject of their own achievement.

The forum thread in question is about the coins your character would toss into the wishing fountain during or after their tenure in Wrath. Sisters of Elune is an RP realm, so naturally people came up with a lot of funny, poignant, and elegantly minimalist coins that reflected their character's history or possible future. The whole thread's great, but I particularly liked these:

Continue reading The wishing fountain

The wishing fountain originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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