July 2008 Archives

The story you are about to read comes in five parts. The story is that of my upcoming Death Knight, Connroe Isen. You will see familiar people in this story, and I hope to see some of you in game to Role Play with my Death Knight when the expansion launches.

Name: Connroe Isen
Race: Human
Story: Older brother to Medros Isen, Connroe was not as devout or blessed as his younger brother Medros. After Medros was old enough to take care of himself, he tried to join the ranks of the Paladins, but his faith was weak and he quickly left training at the new Stormwind training grounds of the Silver Hand. This came after mere months of not being able to summon forth the healing power of the light to heal even a small injured rabbit. Proving adequate with a blade, Connroe joined the military of Stormwind, helping to protect the city during the rebuilding of the kingdom.

Finding that the glorified guard duty over an energized and rejoicing populace of hardworking people was too boring for him, and having missed the war his father died fighting in, Connroe traveled north to the kingdom of Lordaeron to seek a position with the internment camps, hoping that guarding the greatly feared orcs would give him some excitement.

Connroe was quickly pulled into the ranks of the soldiers going to Durnholde Keep to defend it against the now growing new horde, as its leader felt an attack against the center of the internment structure was imminent. The troops began the trek from the capital city of the Alliance, Lordaeron, and arrived to find Durnholde intact, but with a growing sense of fear amongst its defenders.

Soldiers spoke of recent attacks that had been anticipated against several camps, one of which had relative success. The master's aide had escaped the battle, telling of the loss of one of the orc's leaders, but the camp was still crushed by the orcs and the majority of the protectors killed or badly wounded. Whispers among the men told of an orc known to the master of the Keep named Thrall, who now led this new horde. Attack was assured now, they said.

No more than two days later the preparations were called to a halt by the sounding of loud drums echoing through the hills. The battle would go badly, which Connroe knew when he saw the mass of green skin advancing on Durnholde, but still he did not back down. This was the battle he had wanted for so long. Then the head sailed over the heads of the Alliance soldiers, landing at the feet of the orcish leader. The reaction of the lead orc, the one called Thrall who had been asking for negotiations and talks, told Connroe this had just gone from bad to horrendous.

When the ground began to shake, and the walls began to fall, Connroe knew he had picked the wrong battle, but surprisingly he survived the fight. The orc he faced with gave him chance after chance to give up before he was killed, and in the end he gave up, knowing if he killed this Orc, there would be more to come, and no matter how good he was with his sword, he would not be able to take them all. He was no Lothar.

When Uther and his Paladins, including Prince Arthas, heir to the throne of Lordaeron showed up, the young prince was tasked with healing the wounded, while Uther handled the more critical cases. It was then that Arthas and Connroe met for the first time as Arthas reached him after walking a long line of soldiers, who he offered his comfort and healing powers to in succession. When he reached Connroe, he began small talk by him asking how he got wounded while tending to his wounds.

Seeing the Prince as his way to advance, Connroe tried to be both brave and friendly with the Paladin Prince, succeeding at both. As Uther and his paladins left, Connroe saw Arthas talking heatedly with Uther while he tried to look like his attention was elsewhere. Connroe had to feign surprise and conceal his joy at being called over by the Paladin Lord Uther, who told him that when he was healed and able to travel, he was to make haste to the capital of the Alliance.

I am pretty sure, if you listen back, I ranted pretty hard when the 2.1 Alchemy changes came into the game. As an alchemist, the changes to elixirs meant that the profit of a large part of the profession was pretty much gone. Yes, we still had potions, but the resistance potions were nerfed to the point that almost no one needs them, not when you now have 5-10 minute fights and 2 minute long cooldown resistance potions.

Well, guess what. The current beta build shows that I will even more adamantly refuse to do any alchemy for money, and alchemy for toons will be pretty much non existant. My Alchemist, unless they nerf that too, will be a transmute bot. Oh, wait. He already is. The only times I log my Alchy is to do his daily transmute, and that too will be a lot less important as Wrath gets close and the demand for those primals becomes a thing of the past.

As it is right now I am slowly liquidating my gem stocks on Telaan, not gathering herbs unless I need it, and preparing to sell off any but the most high end mats that can be used for those first few late 300s skill points. Now, in Wrath, I will pretty much farm only what I need for my toons, and that's about it. I do, though, have a couple related points to make. First, what happens when you get 2-3 mobs on you? You get that debuff on you after the first potion, and can't use another until you are out of combat. This is a player killer in the wild.

The other point I wanted to make was in response to Alex Ziebart, who wrote the post about this new beta 'feature'. I think Alex is right about one thing. Much like the elixir and Resistance Pot changes, this change screams 'raiders' louder than a Kazzak kill message. I wonder, honestly, how much further Blizzard will kill Alchemy in the name of the raiding game. Also, maybe Alex's realm has a rich AH for flasks, but I know my own Argent Dawn doesn't have anything near 100g flasks, or I would have made them all the way to a 4th epic mounted alt.

What do you think about these changes to Alchemy? Is this profession the new Engineering of the current and future versions of WoW? Do things like Alchemist stones make the profession more worthwhile to train up in? 

Last night the beta realm got a new patch, which brought in a few of the discussed features, and a couple we hadn't heard about before. One of the features it showed was the new section of the interface for your mounts and vanity pets/companions in Wrath of the Lich King. It looks cool, though WoW Insider is reporting that... well.. you can't actually use mounts in the current iteration, which might make testing Wrath a little slower than expected.

Another interesting addition this patch is a build in Calendaring application. Coming with in game events already listed on the calendar, the Calendar tool is no doubt meant to be more usable and useful than the current solution, Group Calendar. Implementation in guild and so on has not yet been tested, to see how it would work as a in game events calendar, but I for one am excited to see Blizzard bring this in and thereby fixing the previously mentioned mod's problem in one fell swoop.

Glowing eyed Death Knights and Calendar tool aside, one thing I was really intrigued to see was a third tab in the Mount area, Pet. No, these aren't your Non Combat Pets, those are Companions. While some will choose to not speculate, I am under no such restrictions. While this could be merely an extension of the current Pet tab, and the toon we see int he screen shot is a Warlock, I would love it if they extended the Pet page we see in game now with a more expanded one, and possibly removed the need for Stables all together. Even if this was limited to 5 slots, it would be enough for most current hunters to be satisfied that we could fill the roles we want.

Oh, and money sinks? Look below for the newest one from the Beta.

You may recall I did a talent overview of the Balance tree when the pre beta talent trees were published after the Worldwide Invitational. Well, now that Beta has arrived, bringing with it both Hunter and Paladin talents, I am here to give you my perspective on the new form of Retribution in the current Beta build. After I give you the highlights from the Ret tree, I will go over a few general changes and improvements to the Paladin class. Here is my prospective talent tree, and my current tree.

Let me first say, I am really excited about staying Ret all the way to 80 and into whatever end game I decide to play in. While both Holy and Protection will be getting some amazing changes, making them more versatile than their base abilities, I honestly believe the Retribution tree is getting the biggest, and best changes. Will it change how people see us? Unlikely, but it will be a start. Now, to the talents:

Heart of the Crusader - Ranks: 3 - In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1/2/3%. Opinion: As seemingly the only Paladin in the world who uses Seal of the Crusader, I will miss that ability, but I will like the fact this ability might make me that little bit more desirable to raids.

Sanctified Retribution - Ranks: 1 - Damage caused by targets affected by Retribution Aura is increased by 2%. - Opinion: This stacked with the removal of Sanctity Aura will make the Retribution Aura an actually desired aura for (now) the entire Raid. I know I will be changing my macro from Sanctity(yes, another 'rarely used' one that I use all the time) to Retribution.

Sheath of Light - Ranks: 3 - Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 20/40/60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds. - Opinion: With Blizzard's change from the Burning Crusade widespread stat list, to the more general ones coming in Wrath, this is both expected and welcome. As a Paladin who, while Blizzard has talked about switching Ret itemization to more warrior based, knows that Alliance Paladins still use a lot of spells and go through a lot of mana, I look forward to this talent which will still help me out.

Sanctified Seals - Ranks: 3 - Increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100% - Opinion: Another +crit talent is always nice, and while I do not think that in PvE I was in great risk of having my seals dispelled, I will take that as an added buff in case I am ever PvPing.

Sanctified Wrath - Ranks: 2 - Increases the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath by 25/50%, reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 30/60 secs and while affected by Avenging Wrath 25/50% of all damage caused bypasses damage reduction effects. - Opinion: So at top rank Hammer of Wrath does about 700, which is not much even on crit, especially when you can usually only cast it once per mob, but I'll take it. The bigger thing for me is the Avenging Wrath buffs. 1 minute chopped off that spell, plus it's already dropped forebearance, and adding the damage bypass... that will make Avenging Wrath a must use spell in any fight.

Swift Retribution - Ranks: 3 - Your Retribution Aura also increases casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 1/2/3% - Opinion: Yet another buff to Retribution Aura. Anyone noticing a theme here?

The Art of War - Ranks: 3 - Your damaging Crusader Strikes have a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Judgement spell to cause double damage. - Opinion: Watching for the buff will be important, because this would be one of those 'OMG, go for broke' level of buffs.

Righteous Vengeance - Ranks: 5 - Increases critical damage bonus of all attacks by 3/6/9/12/15%. - Opinion: Retribution Paladins = God Mode, crit style

Divine Storm - Ranks: 1 - An instant weapon attack that causes Holy damage to up to 4 enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totalling 20% of the damage caused. - Opinion: Great for solo, decent for party. I imagine the animation will be bloody fantastic!

General Abilities:

-The change from Blessings to Hands on some of the 'off blessings' of current game is great, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
-Aura's being raid wide will be awesome, and will allow for a more overall coverage of aura's in a multi Paladin group
-Lay on Hands will be nice to see the changes, but I want to know how much mana it will now drain and how much health it will heal.
-Repentance will be nice, though I can honestly say I do not recall ever using it before. I will have to check it out, cause I clearly forgot this ability previously.
-Righteous Fury now doing 90% more threat on holy damage will be awesome for those non Prot who need to off tank in a run.
-Enlightened Judgements is a talent I wish was in Ret, as the improved distance was, I am told, in Ret pre TBC.
-DI and and LoH having lowered cooldowns of 20 minutes will be awesome.
-Holy Wrath being instant cast and does a stun? Finally!


Overall I am really enjoying the look of the Retribution tree in the Wrath Beta, and really enjoying the overall Paladin based improvements. I have concerns about mana pools, because Ret Paladins still need to cast a lot of spells and I am not seeing a lot so far to change that. Still, this is leaps and bounds better than currently in the game, though, of course, anything said here can and very well may change between now and Launch Day of Wrath of the Lich King. 

As the Wrath beta has been open for.. umm.. more than 5 minutes, the internet is littered with screen shots and galleries from the places of the next world. I would like to share with you all a few of my favorites.

We have seen a lot of reactions to the impending release of the second expansion to our favorite addiction, World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. I wanted to go into the two 'extremes' when it comes to the end game pre Wrath. The two extremes I am seeing pretty nicely equate to feast or famine.

Feast - Let's get as much done as we can before Wrath comes and we move onto the new content. These are typically those not at, or not satisfied with their place in the conclusion of the Burning Crusade end game. Maybe they just started 25 mans, or maybe they are hammering their heads on BT, Hyjal, or a fight in Sunwell. Either way these people are ramping up to get as far progressed into the end game as they possibly can before Wrath hits. These people are the ones likely to be raiding even the week before Wrath if it will get them one more kill under their belts.

Famine - There's nothing to do. I'm bored. I'm going to play something else while I wait. These are those who either feel they have 'been there, done that, got the tabard', or they are giving up with the thought that all their gear will be sharded a few days or hours into Northrend and it is utterly useless to even try to go any further in the present end game. These people have usually gone off to play other games or another faction. They, and their raid groups, often suffer from this in huge ways, especially if a majority are in the Feast category.

The differences could also be the half empty/half full comparison. Is the glass half full(more to do) or half empty(no use wasting time)? Personally, I am a half full when it comes to the game, though I would love to be about 1/4 full, like if, say, I got into the beta. That would give me a chance to report on and test out the Wrath content and get a better feel for the specs of the Death Knight in the expansion, which no video can do well enough to make me decide which spec I want to play.

So far the info I am seeing, from Lume and from DeathKnight.info, has me really excited. I am, as some of you know, a huge Tirion Fordring fan, and lore fanatic, so added Ashbringer and Tirion story is just...amazing! I am not pushing for more raiding than those I play with are up for as a group, but we would like to see more, to see some progression, so that it is not such a big jump in activity once the expansion hits. What is your end game like? Are you striving to do better, to do more? Have you left WoW for the mistress of AoC? What are your goals before Wrath hits?

First they brought us Dailies. Then they increased the number from 10 to 25. Now Blizzard is showing us a strong desire to take money out of the game before the next expansion hits. Blizzard promised previously that they would be bringing in ways to drain money from the economy, and we recently got some good examples of these types of money sinks.

The big money sinks before have been in the form of mounts and crafting items. We have seen titles, expensive items, and other vanity items. Now we see the ultimate waste of pixels in the game, Haris Pilton, will begin selling items that only she and Grifftah could sell, except hers are as over priced as one would expect of an NPC who is a play on Paris Hilton. With some players in the game reportedly hitting the gold cap, it is not in the least bit surprising to see Blizzard near desperate to siphon gold out of the server economies in order to bring them into more reasonable levels.

So, my fellow player, my fellow 70s, what are you planning to spend your riches on? Do you have any riches? Have you spent all you had down to the last copper on an alt or your professions? Does raiding or PvP take all of your money for consumables? I am personally saving my gold at this point. We have no idea what the costs will be for the Death Knight epic mount quest, but if it is anything close to the Paladin one, 500-750g is about the amount that I need to save up.

Add to this the need for a slow mount at 70, and hopefully an epic bird for both my Hunter and Death Knight, and you begin to see that I have no need for money sinks or useless junk to waste my money on. I don't need or want, nor have any desire to buy a 22 slot bag for 1200g, slippers, jewelery, or other crap for thousands of my hard earned gold. I am willing to work a day or two to get a title for my untitled alts. I am willing to work hard to get my crafting up to the ranks they deserve to be at. I am not willing to work hard to waste it on crap from a hussy like Haris Pilton!

I have mentioned a few times that I have now four level 70 characters. There is one thing I have noticed in the leveling from 58-60 all the way up to 70. Medros and Arita almost leveled together. Due to the simultaneous leveling, it was really difficult to learn much toon to toon, and therefore the streamlining to improve leveling was non existent. The only improvements where in the 'where's this mob' type of improvements.

With Ameland, my now 70 Hunter, I learned a lot. I knew about the BoE items that could be used to gain rep quickly, and therefore rep was very easy to gain. Unidentified Plant Parts, Pair of Ivory Tusks, Oshu'Gun Crystal Fragment, and more were farmed up by my two 70s for easy gaining of rep. With those controllable rep grinds out of the way, I began to level my Hunter to 70 and did so relatively quickly. Unfortunately I pretty much seem to have stopped there, having done relatively little with my hunter other than a few rep dailies.

Not that I have worked my second Paladin up to level 70, I have applied all of the lessons I learned from the first 3 70s to this one. I was gathering and buying Plant Parts as soon as I hit Outlands. I arranged runs through Ramparts, Blood Furnace, and Underbog early in those zones. I had enough Tusks to get to friendly with the Consortium and even gift a few to an up and coming guild mate. I fully quested in Zangar in order to maximize the gain from the Nagrand quests, and whenever I fly through Nagrand I help out with the Ring of Bloods.

I have waited to do any warbead turn in's until I was done with all of the Netherstorm quests in Netherstorm. I maximized the leveling I did in each zone to ensure I made a full 2 levels per zone including any instances I did. I will point out that even with the massive rep from the Midsummer Fire Festival, I was on the last quests out of Evergrove before I dinged 70. I did all of my SSO dailies on every day I could, and when time allowed I added to my balance by doing the quests in Netherstorm.

Before I was even done in Netherstorm, though after I hit exalted with SSO, I got enough gold saved up for an epic bird and training, which made the last part of the zone go much, much faster. At roughly 500g per landmass in Netherstorm, it was not difficult at all to work my way toward 5000 without even touching the quests in Shadowmoon.

After 4 times running this progression,  I am finally confident that I have maximized the time and resources it takes to hit 70 in the most efficient manner. This, as I am sure some of you realize, is a very important thing looking ahead. With the maximized leveling I have perfected, and the level 55 starting point of the Death Knight, I am fairly sure I can hit 70 on my Death Knight within a few days of the expansion's release. The only big question that remains, though, is whether I will have a chance to master the 70-80 progression.

How are you preparing your skills and resources to maximize the events that follow the launch of Wrath of the Lich King? 

I was listening to a fellow WoW podcast, and I heard an interesting working of words most of us in WoW use a fair bit. The person was stating that theirs is a Guild that raids, not a raiding guild. I found this a very interesting perspective to apply to the big questions of end game. My guild, the Shadow Walkers, is much like this, but we do much, much more than raid. We RP, PvP, and just play together in the game. We are at minimum a guild that raids.

I guess the best thing to do in this conversation would be to define the two forms of the guilds that have a raid component. The first, and far more popular term is Raiding Guild. the way I see a raiding guild is a guild with a mandatory raiding requirement. An example of this could be 'you must raid 4 nights a week. Another could be 'You must raid at least 1 raid a week'. You will note I have put both of these, minimal requirements and mid to hardcore requirements, in the same category. I feel strongly that if your guild had a raid requirement, it is not a guild that raids, but a Raiding Guild.

Another characteristic found commonly in Raiding Guild is that they define themselves by a series of letters and numbers. 'SSC 4/6, TK 3/4, BT 3/9'. While a PvP guild might rank themselves by a different set of numbers, such as '4 x 5v5 2100+', the numbers that the Raiding Guild use are more widely acknowledged as the marker for end game content. My guild? 0/6, 0/4, 0/9. I will not say I am happy that we haven't progressed to that, but I am happy we haven't pushed ourselves into the realm of a Raiding Guild where those numbers make or break us.

while I will not attribute this to *every* Raiding guild, the lack of recruiting morals definitely seems to pervade the raiding structure on my realm. Raiding Guilds do not hesitate to poach, bribe, trick and even swindle players into joining them, even if the player will likely not see beyond farm content for weeks. My guild, with myself as the recruitment lead, has very strict rules on how and under what circumstances we will accept a player. for instance, a player needs to be leaving their guild for decent reasons, and be gone from it for at least 24 hours before we will accept them.

Now to the guild that raids. The guild that raids schedules raids for a few nights a week, and encourages sign up. They will do their best to help those who want to raid with gear, be it in gear selection, questing, or in dungeon crawls for gearing up. unlike a raiding guild, who will often demand their players spend hours on a boss until it is mastered, the guild that raids will devour a place like Karazhan where, once you pass Curator, you can go one of 3 or 4 directions. Wipe a couple times on Shade? Try your hand at Illhoof, or Nightbane, or Chess. Chess is always a good, easy round of loot.

Now that I have defined for you how I see these two different combination's of guilds and raids, I am curious of a few things. First, do you agree? Do you have stuff to add or detract from my points? Where would your guild fall in these categories, or would they be something completely different? Do you aspire to those letters and numbers? Different ones? Would you accept the invitation of a raid guild to leave your guild to join their raid team? Let me know what you think!

Take note that these are alpha talents and changes. These may and likely will change in some way between now and the live release of Wrath of the Lich King, release date unknown. Today we will look at Druids, a class I play. We will look at my other two classes, Paladins and Hunters, when they are alpha released.

Druids. Bear Butt. Boom Turkey. These are two of the common nicknames we have received in the community. Well, soon, that bear butt will look different, though we know not how. Also, we will also get a new Dire Cat, which will also look different from the non Dire appearance. We don't know what either of these will look like, nor what will make the new form so 'Dire', but I am sure most druids are excited about cross spec forms coming. This does not, though, affect the discussion I will make here. Perhaps Aly over at Bitter Roots will blog other trees(pun intended) but I will be talking balance in this post.

There are some really interesting changes coming to the Balance tree, and some even more interesting new talents coming. While there are no small number of things to mention on each side, I will go into the changes to see what points should be used on day 1 of patch 3.0, even before the expansion is launched. Before that, though, here is a link to my planned talent usage. Oh, and here is the talent build I currently use on my Druid, Arita.

Old Becomes New
Brambles - Currently: Increases damage caused by your Thorns and Entangling Roots spells by 25/50/75%. Alpha: Damage from your Thorns, Entangling Roots and attacks from your Treants increased by 25/50/75%, and damage from your Thorns and Treants have a 15% chance to daze the target for 3 sec. Thoughts: The addition of treants and the stun make this a great talent to spec in to, and with the drop of 3 trees, and 30 seconds per cast, you are nearly guaranteed to have that proc at least once.

Nature's Reach - Currently: Increases the range of your balance spells and Faerie Fire(Feral) ability by 10/20%. Alpha: Increases the range of your balance spells and Faerie Fire(Feral) ability by 10/20%, and reduces the threat generated by your Balance spells by 30%. Thoughts: Long overdue threat reduction for Moonkin druids, though for those who are used to being the aggro magnet that stands between a wayward mob and the healers, this could be a problem.

Lunar Guidance - Currently: Increases your spell damage and healing by 8/16/25% of your total Intellect. Alpha: Increases your spell damage and healing by 4/8/12% of your total Intellect. Thoughts: Unnecessary nerf to damage, though hopefully we will see some other stuff or changes coming to make up for this.

Dreamstate - Currently: Placed next to Moonkin Form on tier 7. Alpha: Placed next to Moonfury on Tier 6. Thoughts: Good spell, available earlier in the tree and allowing for earlier mana regen boost. Good change for leveling turkeys.

New Hotness
Improved Moonkin Form - Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 10 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every few seconds. Tier 7. Thoughts: This will officially make Moonkins the must-have-in-my-group part of a raid set up when working out the casters, both healers and dps.

Owlkin Frenzy - Attacks done to you while in Moonkin form have a 5/10/15% chance to cause you to go into a Frenzy, increasing your damage by 10%  and causes you to be immune to pushback while casting balance spells. Lasts 10 seconds. Tier 8. Thoughts: This will make for a very interesting time soloing on my turkey, that's for sure-

Eclipse - When you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing the damage done by Wrath by 10%. When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing the damage done by Starfire by 10%. Effect lasts 30 seconds and has a 2 min cooldown. Tier 9. Thoughts: Might be a good spell if you opened with Starfire until this procced, then switched to Wrath once the mob was coming at you, or used Wrath on a boss to minimize threat and then near death you used Starfire for the big numbers. Should be fun!

Typhoon - You summon a violent Typhoon that does 530 Nature damage when in contact with hostile targets, knocking them back 5 yards. 20 second cooldown. Tier 9. Thoughts: I assume this is an AoE, though unsure if it will be above the turkey by nature or if it will give a location choice like Hurricane. As it has a range, I assume it is like Hurricane, but that could, incredibly, mean it would be a 20 yard from the caster circle effect, which would be.... wow!

Gale Winds - Increases damage done by your Hurricane and Typhoon spells by 25/50%, and increases the range of Cyclone by 10/20%. Tier 9. Thoughts: Many folks were already angry in PvP about the current yardage of Cyclone, and this will only make that worse. The first part will be nice, especially if there are fights like the worms in Kara or Magister's Terrace in the expansion. 50% more damage on lightning bolts that, by the end, already leave the targets within a moonfire of death? Hell yes I'll take it!

Nature's Fury - Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the target by 2%. Lasts 12 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. Tier 10. Thoughts: I like the 100%. All I would need to do is keep casting Wrath throughout the fight and the debuff would never die. Arcane Missiles, and I suspect some Shammy spells, would benefit from this.

Starfall - You summon a flurry of stars from the sky on all targets within 30 yard of the caster, each doing 500 to 580 Arcane damage, and an additional 170 arcane to all nearby targets within 5 years. Maximum 20 stars. Lasts 10 seconds. Tier 11(Final point). Thoughts: Whoa. We saw this in Warcraft 3 from Tyrande(interestingly a priestess) and it looked awesome. It sounds like this would not be a Volley like AoE, but more like the stars will fall on hostile targets only, not just randomly. Also, the nearby targets bit is a little confusing. It is like if you have like 5 or so targets all grouped within 5 yards, coming at you, it will not only do initial damage to each, but proximity to each other damage? I want to see this!

As you can tell, I have a... few opinions on this specific tree. As you will also notice, there is some changes over in the Resto tree. I have currently 13 points, and that will be lowered to 2. Not only because Improved Mark is changing to 2 points from 5, but I also don't think that the other spells will be that big of a deal in this current tree. I'll spend 2 over there, and save the other 11 for some of the changed, and more of the awesome new stuff coming in Wrath of the Lich King. Stay tuned, eventually, for the Paladin and Hunter tree reviews.  

I have noticed a high occurrence of flash ads on sites lately. These are not unusual, in their essence. The problem with flash ads is that either by limitations of code or intentional omission, they often do not display a URL. When these appear on game sites, especially ones which are a haven for WoW players like DeathKnight.info, I grow incredibly concerned about my security. Until I have an Authenticator in my hands, I will remain very cautious of my security.

Right now I surf on my laptop and game on my desktop, still being incredibly careful what I download and where I surf to. You never know if a trojan will know to look for zip files or other known packaging used in the Mod community. I do not know if the URL issue is a coded one or a Flash based flaw, but I refuse to risk myself and my account on the chance of a cool product or game that is marketed to people like me.

Add to this the chance of so far unknown holes in Flash or other multimedia ad methods, the prevalence of gold farming, leveling guide, and power leveling ads on any site that has Warcraft or MMO in it's keywords, and you really become concerned about clicking much of any link on the sites you visit online.

I wonder, though, a I paranoid? I know a lot of folks thing that all these big security measures that even the less secure take are too much, and I go much further in my own technology. Would you go so far as to refuse to click any Flash based links? Would you take security measures like weekly trojan searches, multi PC use, and other such measures? Or are you one of the many that thinks a decent browser and some addons for it is enough?

No, it is not Starcraft 2. Not Diablo 3 either, though both would be very worthy of pre order if they were able to be. No, in this I refer to Wrath of the Lich King. I was planning, originally, to wait until the CE was announced, but I decided, since I was near EB and had $5, I would pop in and get my name in for the next expansion. I also talked game with a fellow WoW fan, a woman no less, and we exchanged theories on the expansion, Blizzcon, and more.

While I was there I also clarified the process and speed I would need to use to get my name in for a CE of the Wrath of the Lich King when it is announced, though I will be checking every couple of weeks for any updates. I didn't catch the name of the attractive young lady behind the counter, but I think we could have possibly come up with what might be the utter pinnacle of WoW content progression.

First, they need to get a beta out. Soon. No, not Soon™ as per the forums. Second, they need to sell tickets soon for Blizzcon. At the same time, they would announce that Wrath went gold, somewhere in the time frame of late August. They would then announce that the release date for Wrath would be October 10, 2008. Yes, the first day of Blizzcon, or even the 11th, so it could be a perfect midnight launch. Then, either at the opening ceremony, or at the closing, Mike Morhaim would announce the next expansion. Well, what do ya think?

Yesterday I posted a thread about the Blizzard Authenticator being sold out on the General forums, and the thread got to 3 pages before Blizzard put their own sticky about the topic, and even addressed the US only concerns I have previously expressed. The thread, though, was dominated by one clear message which I found both foolhardy and completely misinformed. Add to that a healthy dose of 'WTF' factor, and you begin to see a really disturbing picture of the WoW community.

The first bit that really annoyed me was from Celada of Lothar. 

Its a false sense of security... Nothing beat knowledge and a litle bit of common sense. You can about 100% protect yourself with

Firefox
-addons
--FlashBlock
--Adblock Plus
--Noscript

Celeda, you talk about a false sense of security? Tell me the FCC and many other government agencies from around the world have a false sense of security in this form of multi layer authentication. You have a false sense of security if you think that such measures have any form of security to them. With new bugs and holes being found all the time, all it takes is a single day of being unpatched for your computer to be infected with a keylogger. How many mod sites have found trojans in their code? Almost all of them, and everyone has them as trusted.

Next up we have Celeda's response to my points about a true false sense of security coming from Firefox:

Ive been playing this game since beta never once been keylogged
Cause im not stupid enough to click any links i dont know

Blizz can sell false sense of security all day, that cant sell common sense and they cannot cure stupid

Just because you have not, does not mean you will not. Past actions do not dictate future results, especially with the rising value of WoW account info ont he black market.

Now to this gem from Kybeorie of Baelgun

Clue:

Someone has a trojan on your computer.
You have the authenticator.
They can't login to your wow account, but they are STILL LOGGING YOUR KEYS. The difference is that now you don't know it, because your wow account is ok. So you go merrily about your business, while your mother is now sending some money "you need to borrow", because you said so in an email, to some address far away

All due respect, Kybeorie, if you are using those Firefox addons as your only protection from trojans and keyloggers, you deserve to be scammed. Also, if your mother can't pick up a phone and check with you to make sure a sudden 'I need money' email is real, well, then your mom needs some lessons in common sense, cause I know my mom is smart enough to actually talk to me when I ask to borrow money.

In the end, this is not the be all and end all of protection, but it is not a false sense of security. This is a very secure additional form of security for your WoW account. If you feel your Firefox plus addons method of security is fine, great. It just means that when Blizzard does start shipping these to Canada, I won't have to wait in line behind you to get mine. I, though, will be very comfortable paying a lowly $7 USD for this increased measure of security.

According to the writer of the isheepthings blog, the Blizzard Authenticator, after about two and a half days on sale, is listed on the Blizzard store as sold out. This all happened with no Canadian being able to order one themselves unless they had a US shipping address. There are those who advise that Canadians go and order from the European store, but to my knowledge the Authenticator was never available from there, only showing Sold Out for the entire duration.

[Update: Blizzard has now posted both about the sell out and the lack of availability to Canadians. Thank you Blizzard for answering the questions I and others had.]