Results tagged “Wrath of the Lich King” from From the Abbey to Outlands

You know, it is really, really hard sometimes being right. Less than two months from the release date of Wrath of the Lich King, and what do I see while perusing the forums? My first seen thread about... Tada! 'Whaa, whaa, there's nothing to do'. Of course the person is posting on a level 5 anony-troll(who is literally a troll, nice touch), but it has still happened. Of course this is likely just a troll being, well, a troll, and this may not speak to the thoughts of the entire raiding community, but this is not the first time I have heard the points Iys makes.

1) Raiding is too easy - from the ready at 80 Naxx 10 man, to the Sanctum and even Malygos himself, all of which was done by Ensidia within days of Wrath's release, the raiding community is calling it simplified and crying to the heavens that Blizzard made it all so easy that the lowliest of folks in casual guilds can no become battle hardened raiders. Well, folks, guess what? Your 5% of 11 million do not a player base make, at least not a player base of this here game. Sure, you might make the headlines, but you don't make the game. The first time 90% of the folks who got into Sunwell saw it was after the 3.0.2 patch when the raid bosses were nerfed and we were all super powerful. No, I have no math on this, only the observation of the many bloggers and podcasters I follow.

2) This is the end of it, The game is done - We know there are at least 2, and more likely 3 additional 10/25 person raid dungeons left in the works. Blizzard has already said Ulduar and the 3.1 patch has been done since Wrath, if not since before Blizzcon. We know Icecrown is coming in 3.3, and we heard rumor that 3.2 will also bring us a new raid dungeon, though we could just as likely see a new Magister's Terrace level of 5 man along the way too. The content is not 'done' and will not be done. You might be done gobbling it up and feeling a bit of the indigestion from pushing yourself to hit 80 and get those kills, but there's a bunch of us back here that are still waiting in the wings for that content to be at our level.

3) In BC Blizz did better, they are slipping - No, not slipping, realizing. They are becoming consumer aware. Casual Day is approaching. The humans are taking over. They will wipe out the (raiding) machines. Bad parody of Terminator aside(I shouldn't have just watched 4 episodes straight of SCC), Blizzard is realizing their customer base isn't the people bashed their head against the Mu'ru wall, but the players who rejoiced when they finally got Kara cleared in one hard fought night, who were ecstatic when the Burning Crusade attunements were dropped, who pushed to clear Zul'Aman once for a Bear mount, and who happily passed a Warglaive to the next guildie cause it was better for them.

So Blizzard, the raiders, or at least some of them, have spoken. They have rung the bell, they have challenged you to pistols at dawn. Will you sacrifice the 95% and toughen up your game so that only the truly elite can see the end game, or will you be kind to your majority who say nothing because the end game is just right for them, and who will just go do something else and give up the Tier Gear dream if you make it all unobtainable? We await your answer...

Now that we are almost all traveling through Northrend, and we are well into our new year, I thought it night be a good time to look back on the war that was TBC. There were many fronts I that war, from the Naaru versus the Legion, to Scryers versus Aldor, even spreading to Alliance versus Horde. So who 'won' the war? Did the Naaru succeed in defeating the Burning Legion? Sure they had some victories, but as I flew through Hellfire the other day, I still saw plenty of demons, however Shattrath City also still stands, so the
Legion was not victorious in anything more notable than staying alive either.

The Scryers and Aldor began Burning Crusade as bitter hated enemies. Venturing into an opposition area was grounds to get booted from the city at best, get quickly killed at worst. While the forces came to work together over time, eventually joining forces under the banner of the Shattered Sun Offensive, venturing to Scyers Tier as an Aldor still gets the adventurer an unpleasant result. I am not sure what I would put this battle as, since it is neither won nor lost.

Now for the old standards, Alliance v. Horde. The two factions had more battle fronts in TBC than ever before. Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar, Nagrand. More than half the zones of Outlands had a Horde v. Alliance fight, and while my realm most often had Alliance controlling the majority of those zones, Other realms cannot say the same. Again, we cannot declare a winner or loser in this particular battle.

So Aldor, Scryers, Naaru, Legion, SSO, Horde and Alliance. None of these groups 'won' the second expansion's content. I guess we need to look elsewhere for a winner. Firstly I think the players won the expansion. We got a lot of awesome content, some great new skills, and two years of amazing game play. We learned to fly, met the Draenei and Blood Elves, and found the end of the epic Sunwell storyline. Second, of course Blizzard won in TBC. From the first 24 hours of TBC, Blizz had a winner, setting records and learning from many design mistakes. What do you think? Who do you think won in the Burning Crusade era of WoW?

First up, this is not a rumor or even stated as possible by Blizzard. I do want to suggest this, though. The Collector's Edition of the game and expansions have not been cheap, ranging from $80 to $150 dependent on where and when you ordered it and the willingness of the vendor to gouge their customers. While you do get a fair bit, without a doubt, there is more Blizzard could do to reward players for their continuing loyalty, and their patronage in the face of the often high prices of the boxes. Some of the things Blizz could offer for loyal CE buyers are clips from Blizzcon, exclusive wallpaper, or ongoing flavor items in game. I will be talking more about this on today's AzPodMo, so do watch out for that episode!

When Wrath came out, as I have chronicled before, I did a lot of different things. I rolled Connroe, my Death Knight, and worked him through the starting experience, then power leveled his Inscription to 360 or so. I worked on Medros, then Arita, and then Telaan, with a bit of time on Ameland to work on his skinning. In fact the only played toon I have done nothing on in the 9 days since Wrath is my lowbie hunter, whose enchanting I would like to get up so that I can DE all the greens I am making to progress my various skills.

The problem is that while I am 71 on 3 our of 4 prior 70s, I know people with less free time than I have who have gone from 65 to 75 in the same time. I have spent so much time repeating the same quests, the same areas, the same actions that I have slowed my own progress. Therefore I have decided to focus on Medros, much like I did in the early days of Burning Crusade, as my first and primary toon to level, and will level him up to 74. I will then decide if I want to level him to 77 or 80, or swap to Arita for some leveling. After both are up where I want, I will work on Telaan, as two Ret Paladins back to back would be really hard to do. I will still do the proper dailies on all three, but when it comes to questing Medros will be number one. What lessons have the first 10 days or so of Wrath taught you?

The news we have all been waiting for since the high that came from the launch of Wrath finally began to subside has finally arrived. Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to World of Warcraft, the most popular MMO in history, broke all previous sales records for a PC game, previously set by it's predecessor Burning Crusade, as they sold 2.8 million copies of the game in the first 24 hours of sales. I was recently talking to one of the few MMO players I know who did not get hooked on the WoW crack, and the one point about the superiority of WoW over EQ2 that he could not argue was the sheer subscriber count.

His beloved EQ2 could never even hope to rival the numbers that WoW had done, even since day 1, and between the number of players who returned from AoC and WAR, and the second expansion breaking records set by only the expansion before, the combined effect pretty much seals the fact that World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO in history.

I am even willing to admit I was wrong in my prediction that the problems with Wrath that Blizzard themselves admitted would not be fixed by the release date would hurt the subscriber and sales numbers for Wrath and the game overall. Blizzard announced a few weeks before Wrath that the subscriber count was at 11 million, up from the previous 10.7 million milestone, and the announcement I mentioned before about the droves of players who said they were leaving for AoC and WAR coming back, nearly 70% in one case. What do you think the future of WoW holds? 12 Million players worldwide? Do you think we will see 15 million? Let me know your predictions for the future of WoW in the comments!

As I write this it is just over 48 hours since I installed Wrath of the Lich King and boy have I been busy! As I mentioned in a recent All Things Azeroth, I started off by making my Death Knight named Connroe, then I completed my daily plan. This plan was given to me by Makea of Murloc Queen and went like this: clear out quest log completely, travel around Outlands getting all of the daily quests you can, then log out on the Isle of Quel'danas and wait for Wrath launch. After Wrath is installed, turn the Isle dailies, then return to Shattrath to turn in dailies there. Once Done there, I flew out to the Netherwing Ledge and turned about 10 dailies there to complete the daily quest plan.

I did a full 25 dailies on two of my 70s, and the rough numbers from those dailies was roughly 300k XP and about 150g. The one mistake I made was on making the fishing daily as one, and it gives no XP or gold, just the bag. On my Druid I did 16 dailies, netting about 200k XP and about 100g. I personally feel that since I would have spent time in game anyway, and am not hurting for gold, that this was all a very good way to spend a few days ore Wrath. Once I finished the daily turn ins, I took all my 70s to Northrend and trained them in all of their professions, costing roughly 300g for two primary and all three secondary skills. Once they were all at inns, getting rested XP, I logged back to my Death Knight and got him through the first phase of the starting experience.

On day 2 I began to work on Connroe right out of the gate, thoroughly enjoying doing the experience when it counted. I quickly made it through the experience and stayed in Stormwind at the end to begin making use of the 1500 herbs I had stocked up to level Inscription. Right now Connroe is *350* and am waiting to hit 60 or so in order to train up to Grand Master. Connroe is also right now at 150 in Blacksmithing, though I may take a break from leveling that for a bit due to the large number of new Death Knight miners in the game, including some guildies. The last thing that I have spent time doing, or I guess lucked into, was that I got all 5 toons(Medros, Ameland, Arita, Telaan, and Connroe) hearthstoned in Dalaran. I knew it would take a couple days for Argent Dawn to see a nice number of 74 Mages, and I found one in Stormwind who was willing to portal all of them to Dalaran for a generous tip. The Mages I saw in /2 were talking 100-200g per portal the night before, and I was not willing to throw my gold away like that.

As for today, I intend to finish getting all my 70s the Borean - Howling - Dalaran Flight Path connections(all Tuskarr villages, Dalaran, and the alliance settlements) in order to facilitate easy travel through the first 3 zones of Northrend. Then, I think I am going to let Connroe rest a bit, and work on getting Medros to level 74, the point where he would have gotten the ability to go to Dalaran anyway. So, how have you spent your first 48 Wrath filled hours? Are you, like the SK Gaming/Nihilum mega guild, trying to get into raiding and clear Wrath on 25 man? Or are you just relaxing and leveling comfortably?

I have mentioned excitedly before what my plans were for the Wrath Launch events, which was to go to the local EB Games and wait eagerly for my Collector's Edition which I had paid for, $10 more than what I was told at pre order, the Saturday before. The 5 hours at work that night were agonizing, as I could mentally count down the hours in my head. At precisely 9 pm I left work, though I spent a bit of time recruiting a new player to WoW, and headed out. I stopped at home, trying to get my podcast and blog up, and then headed out to walk the 4 blocks to the store.

When I walked up, there was 2 empty fold up chairs, and two guys sitting in their van out front of the store. I proceeded to move to the far side of them from the door, and the wait began. The minutes ticked by, and the line began to grow. By ones and twos the line eventually grew into 50 or more people, all enjoying the weather to get Wrath of the Lich King. Ner'zhul, Malygos, Draenor, Exodar; all these realms were mentioned for those in line close to me. Staff began to show up, and the numbers inside the store increased slowly.

As midnight grew closer we watched as they rolled up posters(giveaways) and chatted comfortably behind the glass. When midnight rolled around we all waited eagerly. As 12:05 came and went, we all grew impatient. 12:10 and people were getting mad since the 'staff' inside were clearly just chatting and stuff, not doing actual work. These folks stood around in a nice warm store and we shivered in the winter weather. Finally at 12:15 a staff member came and opened the door, advising us they couldn't start taking orders yet, cause their system wouldn't let them, but we could at least get in. We rushed in, the first 5 or 6 people, and were told to stay back from the registers.

Then aggravation turned to anger. The 'staff', or at least 5 of them, stepped up to the counter to pay for their own copies of the Wrath Collector's Edition. I watched, surprise on my face, as the realization that these were not staff, but friends of the staff, who got to bypass the line and get up first, and get out first, with their Collector's Editions. It made me wonder if these folks had to do anything by the 'rules' at that store. Once they were done, I stepped up and presented my receipt, knowing I would just sign a paper and walk out. The first sign of trouble was 'ok, so I am sorry to say but...'

That ended with the fact that, after raising the price on my 1 week before, they had raised it again. 'We only found it out a few seconds ago when our machines started taking orders' the staff member who originally took my $5 pre order back in September and who lamented then that the $70 price tag was pretty high. Interesting, I thought, that the registers were not live when we got in, and they didn't need to tell their friends that when they paid for their copies. What do I think? I think they knew, and tried to do a slow progression rise of the price, but I paid mine out too soon to launch, and that made me notice more.

I got mad, and asked them what they were doing, and after a few minutes the guy who took my 'final' payment a few days before looked at me and said, essentially, that's the price, if you don't like it, leave. I looked at him with anger, and told them that I would not be canceling my preorder yet. I stepped out of line, trying to think of who I could call at 12:20 AM to bring me $12, finding no one who was up, when one of those close to me in line, a guy by the name of Brian(server currently unknown) came back into the store and offered to use the last few bucks he had on his debit card to help me pay off my Collector's Edition.

I got my game, then I got his name and number, and have now made arrangements to pay him back. I came home, and recorded the Unboxing video you have likely seen if you read my blog, and began to install my game. The reactions and thoughts to my podcast rant have been overwhelmingly on my side. I thank everyone for their words of support. So where do I go from here? Well, once this is up, I will spend Monday ensuring that EB Games know of this bad PR, and that I will never be shopping at their places again. I have a new place to buy my Game Cards, and will happily give a more honest, upfront, less greedy, and more professional company. I hope that some, if not many of you all do the same. If this company is willing to screw people, then get mad when they react badly, being rude and unprofessional, well, then they don't deserve the business of any gamers who value these things. What do you all think?

This is a link to my Wrath CE unboxing. It's my first try at this king of video, hell any kind of video, so be kind!

I know, I know, I promised that tonight there would be a live All Things Azeroth recording, and while it likely won't go out as a podcast item, there will be an event tonight on Stickam. I will be doing unboxing, first showing you all my original Collector's Edition for the game's launch, then my Wrath Collector's Edition. These will likely go live about 12:30 or so CST, and last about 15-20 minutes. If I can do it, I will put the video out on YouTube or something, so that you who cannot make it due to purchase lines and stuff can still see the glory of the CE. Graece may be there as a watcher, though her eagerness to get into the game will be hard to beat. So come on, join me tonight, and we'll all revel in the CE together!

I was working last night when the Lich King began his attacks on Orgrimmar and then Stormwind, but his attacks were still underway when I got home to try to record All Things Azeroth. Once that fell through, I headed into game and took a look for myself. I was very happy with the event, though wish it had gone longer. What was especially nice, for someone who is concerned a lot with the impact of epic world events on lower level characters, was that lower levels who ventured to the docks were not attacked by all the aggresive mobs that were out.

As an end to the Burning Crusade era of World of Warcraft, I couldn't ask for a better, more epic experience, and it might not even be over yet. Right now the servers are still down, a mail bug that occured on maintenance and vanished all of our mail(the work of the LichKing no doubt), but when they come back up, who knows what might be happening. Will the event have progressed? Or will repeated attacks on major cities be the end of the Burning Crusade era of this game we all love. Farewell, Lord Illidan. We were not prepared when we flooded through the portal, but we leave to face new challenges, new enemies, new adventures. /salute

I have asked before about preparation and plans surrounding Wrath before, but I thought it might be a good time to check in again, since when I asked before we were a long way off from Wrath's launch, coming in three days. So the first part was asking what you will be doing in the last 24 hours before Wrath launches? Will you be trying to get a few last items sold on the AH? Will you be grinding out some rep? Doing a few dailies whole they still return gold? Working to get your professions up to 350 in order to bring your skills up to where they start in Wrath? Respeccing or regemming to more leveling friendly specs or stats. Or maybe you just plan to farm for lowbies or your planned Death Knight? Me, I have plans to increase my xp gain right away on install.

Now to after the expansion hits. What are your plans for after the expansion goes live? Will you choose to be a servant of the Lich King? Will you hop a ride north and begin taking our fight to that very King? If so, will you be hitting up Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord? Going to Northrend to learn new levels of gathering skills, but going to Outlands to get skill ups? Working on Outlands or Azeroth to do old stuff to scour lag? Or are you pretty new to WoW, or too low, for Wrath to really matter to your game play? I also wonder how many just won't be getting the expansion, and instead will spend the day of and those after the expansion just reveling in how quickly Outlands cleared out? I will take all my 70s to Northrend for training but at least my Druid will keep farming Outlands for herbs to level alchemy and inscription.

Yesterday I talked a little about when to buy WoW's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and went over some memories of two years ago, as well as the logic of those who will buy it now, soon, and later. Today I ask you where you plan to buy it. Do you have a Preorder? Will you go to a store and hope for the best? Will the freebies decide your loyalty, or will it be the place you get all your games from? Are you one of those who ordered online, and who awaits, eagerly, the knock from the UPS or FedEx guy with your peanut filled package of evil?

WoW Insider had been keeping their reader's eyes out for specials and freebies for Wrath's launch, which were very prevalent for Burning Crusade, but seems to come up sadly short. We have Best Buy, Future Shop, as well as a few foreign sellers with deals that have a mix of value, from the barely a deal, to a complete steal. Word has come that Amazon is selling the Collector's Edition again, this time at the harsh price of almost double the original price. I guess we can only be thankful that they are doing the gouging now, instead of in six months like they did for the original Collector's Edition. So, my beloved readers, where will you be going to buy Wrath from, and when?

I have talked to a lot of folks, guild members, bloggers, fans of the podcast and blog, and I have gotten a variety of answers to this question, and to be honest it surprised me. Perhaps it was my inexperience shining through, but when Burning Crusade his, 22 months ago, it felt like the collective of WoW players were bristling with excitement over the expansion. People eagerly warmed the gate area, slaughtering demons en masse, and waiting anxiously for the portal to be accessible, waiting to pass through it's swirl into the world many of us has seen only in screen shots and YouTube leaks.

I was there, on that dais, 22 months ago, when the first Netherwhelp appeared alongside it's proud new owner. A guildmate had gotten his Collector's Edition, so many of us int he Shadow Walkers, occupying a reserved corner of the platform, sat and watched, admiring the sweet looking pet. Then, his excitement getting the better of him, the netherwhelp departed, following it's owner, as he ventured to the portal and through it. "HOLY SHIT!" were the next words he uttered in guild chat, as he eyed the world on the other side. All of us, each just as envious as the next, sat there for the next hour as first one by one, then ten by ten, and then in waves the players of Argent Dawn US passed through the Dark Portal.

If I were to compare the excitement, the eagerness, and the atmosphere of that launch, on that cold, snowy night in January, to the times now, as we approach the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, I can only call this muted. Yes, there are midnight launches. Yes, there are parties planned the world over. But somehow, this time, it all seems less of a fervor. The bloggers are excited, but even a few of them have said they aren't getting Wrath on the 13th. Some will go on the weekend, some in a week, and yet others say they are going to be buying it in weeks or months.

Will every one of those people hold off? No, of course not. They will see their friends, and their guildmates going on those boats and those zepplins to Northrend. They will see the loot from Utgarde, and Nexus, and drool. They will use the dressing room to see how uber that Death Knight gear would look on them. But some will resist. Some will continue their resolve to hold back. I know I won't, and don't plan to. I intend to leave work at 9 pm, and take the next bus to the EB Games, preorder receipt in hand. I intend to hustle my ass along the no doubt ice filled sidewalks those 4 blocks to my home. I will turn the camera on, and begin to record the unboxing of my Collector's Edition. How about you?

I was surfing around a few minutes ago and found a thread posted in the US forums by the Blizz rep Crygil, stating the beta realms were down as of 12 am PST. While it is true that beta realms have been literally deserted since 3.0.2 hit, I am very surprised that they brought the beta realms down so far in advance of the expansion launch. I am both surprised and saddened that there was no final event, like both of the prior betas. Vanilla WoW and TBC betas both had huge end of beta events! Deciding to test the waters, since it was about 3:15 CST(1:15 AM PST) I quickly updated the last beta patch and tried to login.

That was the point when I got the screenshot the to the right, a final farewell to the beta realms. While the beta realms are not yet down completely, I trust the blue in that they will have the realms down, but it saddens me that they could not take the Wrath beta out with their traditional, and beloved bang. No raid bosses in Shatt, not Lich King in Dalaran, no Magtheridon in Dun Morough. Just... *poof*. /mourn You will be missed, Wrath Beta Realms!

[Update: Apparently the 10 PM posting last night was meant to say that beta realms will be going down at 11:59 on the 4th, not 12:01 on the 4th, so they are still up as of 12:30 CST, but alas nothing notable going on, other than people spending all their gold on stupid stuff.]

Wrath is approaching quickly, and the plans that many bloggers, sites, even Blizzard themselves are arranging for the launch night have begun solidifying into events. While Blizzard is planning many events, from Austin to Anaheim, San Francisco to New York, the more numerous events are from bloggers like Mania and BRK in Florida, Mike Schramm of WoW Insider will be partying it up in Chicago, and my own live podcast after the launch.

I have pointed out on the show a couple weeks now that my co host and I, Graece, will be doing a live recording of All Things Azeroth as each of us installs our copies of the expansion. The show, as always, will be live on Stickam, and should go live about 12:30 am Central time. I will have the channel live early, likely when I leave for the line, so if you hop in and see Graece chatting up, say hello. I will be getting my copy from the EB Games on Empress and Ellice in Winnipeg, so if you can make it out, I hope you'll come up and say hello to me. It's only 13 days to go now, and the excitement is building!

On another note, the new episode of All Things Azeroth, Episode 59, is out. Enjoy!

Sorry for the tardiness on this post, but yesterday was a big recording day for me, getting some All Things Azeroth episodes pre recorded for the upcoming NaPodPoMo, and just ran out of time before bed that would allow me to write this post. If you'll recall the last couple of posts I have showed you the mods that went bad, the new mods I found to fill the roles I needed, and today I am going to go over the mods that, like a rock, stayed by my side like a good friend.

I wouldn't say WIM was a rock, more a strong tree, but still it's there, and it does work well enough. It feels like it's lost some of it's features, like tab to move to the next window, but for now it's working enough to be useful. One mod that remained strong, though feeling incomplete, is Titan Panel. Like it's bar based competitor, FuBar, Titan Panel allows mod authors to write plugins for it, and that is there I have found Titan falling short. Many of the plugins I most cherished have not been updated, and therefore do not work as well as I would like.

I was pretty sure when I saw Ark Inventory available for use in the beta, I would be able to upgrade to it when the patch hit, and I was dead on. The patch showed that AI was fully functional and ready to go on patch day, and I rejoiced in the knowledge I would have that small piece of comfort. Auctioneer is another one that works, though I have not spent much time in the auction house to do testing to ensure all of it's features are where they should be in the mix.

When it comes to raiding, Deadly Boss Mods was a mod I knew would need to be done, because many raid groups count on it to be polished and working or wipes can, and often do ensue. Thankfully DBM didn't even hiccup in the face of 3.0.2, in fact it did better than expected in game queues for boss events like the rain in Zul'aman. Omen, likewise, is essential to any good raider and was updated, with a new parchment look, for the patch, and hasn't showed a bit of hesitancy since. In fact, I like the new config interface better, as it clearly shows me how to change that horrid 'you're getting aggro' sound off.

Chatter is working, though it was copied from the old install, so I can't say it's a rock, since it hasn't stayed strong, just stayed functional. The quest log combo of DoubleWide and Lightheaded were updated within a few days, allowing for useful and happy questing throughout my WoW time. Pally Power is working nicely, though I am still grasping how it works and how to customize it properly. I am using AlphaMap again, which is a cute little map mod that shows on mouse over the current zone's map. Minimap Button Frame is also working, thought here is not a lot to the mod other than clearing up the minimap from the clutter of buttons that seemingly every mod tosses up there.

Gatherer was a mod that many in my guild were worried might not be fixed for the patch, and while it was not on day of, a couple days later it was updated and working, once again recording herbs and mineral spawns found in my travels. Lastly Statusbars, a mod I find essential for keeping my eyes on the action instead of wandering to the edges of my screen, was updated quickly, cleanly, and without any problems. I am loving the ability it gives me to see what's going on in front of me, and know if I need to run, heal, bubble, or push my DPS to the max in a fight if it is close.

That's about it. There was a couple of new mods I forgot to mention yesterday, like Class Bars v3, The Collector, and Mapster. The first I find invaluable to my play style, giving me more of my bars with which I can use for more critical abilities. The second helped with the pet and mount achievements by easily showing you what you do not yet have. the last is a replacement for the MetaMap mod, which I always found hogged my resources more than I liked. And there we have it, my mods in a nutshell. Below you can see a peak at my UI.

I wrote yesterday about the mods I sadly had to abandon from my post 3.0.2 world, well today I will talk about the mods that I have found since patch day and have fallen in mod-whore love with. Enjoy this list, and look forward tomorrow to the next in my impromptu series on mods; the mods which never went bad.

As I mentioned yesterday, Skillet is my new mod for crafting my items, be they gems, armor, or potions. Combine that mod, which allows me to search and craft based on a number of parameters, with TradeTabs, which puts a tab for every crafting profession that you know. This is a really simply, very useful way to keep all of my professions easily accessible and usable. I do not know if either of these are, or need to be updated for Inscription, however comments are down below if you want to test them out.

I fell in love, or back in love with TrainerSkills in the beta. I used to use this, or a mod like this, ages ago. It basically tells you when you can learn something and what that is. Whether it be a new class skill on ding, or a new profession item on reaching a certain point, these things are all clearly pointed out to you in the chat window of your choice. A long lost mod, come back and just as awesome as before!

Since I am trying to avoid the crutch of CT Mod, I have been forced to go elsewhere for a few things I loved about the package. TipTop takes care of the tooltip placement problem, though it admittedly took a bit to get the tooltip right where I like it, which is to say center of my screen right below TitanPanel. oRA2 is a mod recommended by a guildie as we prepared for a post 3.0.2 raid, and realized that CTRA had been abandoned. I replaced the bar mods part of CT Mod, which was always more broken than fixed, with Dominos, though I have a Druid in Cat while Prowling bug I had to fix. Lastly I have not yet found a fix for the mail mod, but I am working on it and have a few leads.

The last batch of mods I have come across is the Achievement mods. Overachiever is a nice mod that helps me track where I am on an achievement, and it also changes exploration tracking based on zones and the /love you've given, or need to give to critters all over the world. AchievementSS is a cool mod which takes a screenshot whenever you complete and achievement, no matter where you are. Lastly, we have Urban Achiever, which is accessed by /ua and allows you to search for any achievement, text for an achievement, or criteria in order to find an achievement.

So there you have it. A few of the neat new mods I have found in this, the post 3.0.2 mod world. Like I said before, check back for the strong and true mods that never, or barely faltered for me when modpocalypse hit. [Update: Dominos not only allowed me to turn off the bar changing in prowl mode, but also turn off the moonkin bar change! I have more bars now!]

I want to preface this with the disclaimer that what I am about to mention is beta info, and may not actually go live. It also may not reflect the state of Ret when the 3.0.3 patch goes live. That said, these are my opinions, and I stand by them.

So a new beta build was pushed up to the beta realms tonight, 9138, and the expected nerfs to Paladins have come in, and they are hurting. Let me point out that the changes that Blizzard said were coming for Retribution Paladins was intended to impact on their performance in PvP, as everything was said to be fine in PvE. Right. Divine Storm is now physical. Yup, PvP. Armor now takes some of the oomph of the spell when used in PvP. Seals and Judgements are down, in fact there is almost all 'down from' numbers on the MMO Champion site when going through the ret spells.

Judgement of the Wise now grants the paladin 15% of his base mana. (Down from 33%)

Wait! What?!? This isn't a strictly PvP thing. This is almost more a PvE thing, cause you generally won't last long enough, if you are going to run out of mana, if you don't have time to drink. This is almost entirely a PvE nerf, and one I can't say I like too much. This hits both my Paladins right in the mana bar, something that Ret has always had issues with before. Based on my math, Med has a mana pool right now of 5658, and the JotW gives back 975. In the current iteration, that same proc would give me less than 500. 443-444 mana, to be exact at a 15% broken down from 33%. Blizz, my friends, I understood the PvP, but this? This is a snuck in ninja to what was supposed to be the solution to the mana problem.