Pet Aggro and Tanking

In Pet Tanking news, I have good news and bad news: The good news is that a Tenacity Pet can do some pretty serious tanking. The bad news is that the aggro of some families is still very dicey, and you’ll have to work extra hard to keep from pulling aggro off of them. Whether this changes at 80, I can’t say for sure, but for now, given a normal growl and damage rotation, I find myself having to throttle my DPS to make sure my pet Boar can keep the attention of the stuff we’re fighting.

Of course, it is, once again, possible to use a few handy macros and a bit of planning to get around that. Misdirection’s cooldown is up pretty swiftly nowadays, which gives you a good excuse to use it. Creating a specialized Misdirection Macro focus on your pet can do wonders for letting your pet keep the monster’s attention. Here’s an example:

/target (your pet’s name)
/cast Misdirection
/targetlasttarget

This will quickly target your pet, give it Misdirection, then switch back to your original target so you can start unloading the threat immediately. Of course, you can streamline the process quite a bit more. Here’s a more involved macro from WoWWiki:
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His last two points are probably more solid, though — he says that unlike Lord of the Rings, which the Warcraft movie is often compared to, most people (even players of the games who skip cutscenes) would walk in having no idea what the story was about, which means the story would have to be dumbed down or just be a confusing mess. And finally, we can’t really argue with the last point: since that first piece of concept art, we haven’t heard a peep out of Legendary or Blizzard about what’s happening, so maybe the flick’s not getting made anyway.

And by the end of the piece, we’ve got to agree with Kevin: even if a big-budget worldwide movie release didn’t get made, we’d much rather have a high-quality DVD of Blizzard’s cinematics anyway (or maybe even a feature-length put together by the same department — they do awesome work). The odds are against a live-action Warcraft movie already, it seems — maybe it would be a better idea for Blizzard to just release something themselves.Our good friend Kevin Kelly (who writes for Joystiq) has apparently turned traitor — over at the Spout blog, he’s written up four reasons why they shouldn’t bother making a Warcraft movie at all. His arguments go from shaky to solid — he first claims that movies made from videogames just don’t work anyway, In response, I’d submit to you Doom, and — oh wait. Never mind. His second reason is that they just wouldn’t make enough money, even if every Warcraft player bought a ticket, but I don’t know if I’d worry about that: Transformers made money, and that movie was a high-budget pile of junk.

We don’t know exactly when this stuff is all ending — it might be soon, or it might run right up to the Wrath release, but either way, now is probably the time to play it safe and pick up your runes. Look on your map for the purple skulls when they spawn and make a beeline for the zone when you see them, keep an eye around the zone as you fly in where the necro might be, and with most people already having nabbed all the runes they need, the pickings are probably about as good as they’re going to get. You’ll have a tougher time nabbing the rare spawns that drop the legs and the chest, but if you just want to nab some runes for the various Argent Dawn rewards, it’ll go fast.

No matter what you call those big floating pyramids above Azeroth, right now is the right time to chase them down and kill the Scourge hanging around beneath them. If you don’t have epic gloves or shoulders on right now, odds are that you could use the upgrades from the Argent Dawn, and while the necropoli were completely camped early on in the event, things have died down a bit now, especially in the off-prime hours. I was able to pick up my 30 runes earlier this week, and when I got lucky on a leggings drop (I love that my Hunter is in a mail kilt-y thing now), I picked up two nice new epics, a cool tabard and an achievement.

How to Get It: Here’s another reason why the Reaper was such a big deal — not only was it the best weapon to have for any class that wielded two-hand melee and counted on Attack Power, but it was craftable and BoE, so pretty much anyone who wanted one could get one. The plans drop from Bannok Grimaxe, a rare spawn found in Lower Blackrock Spire, which is actually an instance that’s getting some traffic nowadays with not one but two vanity pets and an achievement in there. You can probably solo to him without too much trouble, but the drop is the problem — it’s only around 6%, so you’ve got to be lucky.

But maybe you can find a Blacksmith with the plans already — in that case, you’ll need 20 Arcanite Bars, six Enchanted Leathers (made by an Enchanter from a Rugged Leather and a Lesser Eternal Essence), and two Dense Grinding Stones. Not a tall order, actually (yet another reason why this weapon was so popular). Melt it all together, and voila, you’ve got a classic weapon. Won’t do much good these days, as mechanics and upgrades have rendered the once great Reaper into a not very attractive blue. But don’t tell any grizzled old Warriors that — they’ll make you remember the old days whether you like it or not.

Name: Arcanite Reaper (Wowhead, Thottbot, Wowwiki)
Type: Rare (yes, it’s not even Epic) Two-Hand Axe
Damage/Speed: 153-256/3.80 (53.8 DPS)
Abilities:

• +13 Stamina (this was before resilience was introduced to the game), +62 Attack Power (which is still substantial, but back then was phenomenal)
• And the main reason the Reaper was so nuts was because of it’s slow attack, but high damage. Back in the day, before things got all normalized, Mortal Strike was the shiznit. It was an instant attack based on weapon damage, and since this weapon’s damage was so high, pushed forward by the Attack Power bonus, Warriors basically owned PvP back around early level 60 times. In fact, you might even be able to trace the current population of Warriors back to this weapon alone, and for that reason, it’s earned not only a place in Warriors’ hearts, but in Blizzard’s culture as well.
• I should also mention Shaman and Windfury weapon here, because back before all the changes were made to Windfury, and even before Shammies could dual wield, one Shaman with Windfury and this weapon could one-shot almost anyone. Nowadays, everything’s mitigated, with nerfs and resilience and all the changes to endgame and Arena PvP. But back then, the Arcanite Reaper ruled the roost.
• Which explains why it’s everywhere — the Arcanite Ripper is a direct rip, if you will, off the old weapon, and brought many a tear to a Warrior’s eye when it returned to the game as a guitar. The skin has also been reused a few times, as with the Spinal Reaper. And in the next expansion, there’ll be an heirloom item bound to account called the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper, so all of your two-handed melee characters can relive the old days as they level up.
• Oh, and take a close look at that summoned Felguard running towards you while the Warlock’s DoTs are ripping you apart — he’s carrying an old Arcanite Reaper as well.

The polling stats at the end are a little silly because the numbers most certainly wouldn’t come out that way on a larger scale survey, but that’s alright, it’s not meant to be super accurate. It’s just a silly little thing, and I chuckled at the commentary from the people they spoke to on both sides of the fence. Deep political commentary? No. Mildly entertaining? Yes! And I admit, I smirked at the mention of Mike Gravel.

From comedians Rich Kuras and Sandeep Parikh (who you know best from The Guild, most likely) comes a look at the United States presidential election through the eyes of Azeroth. If all of the 11 million active World of Warcraft subscriptions were US citizens, Azeroth would be the 8th largest state in the union. Rich Kuras looks to find out whether Azeroth would be a red or a blue state. I think the last thing any of us want is political fisticuffs, so just take this video as the light political humor that it is and don’t read too much into it.

Semana De Los Muertos:  Fight off evil ghosts and demons who are trying to take over the New World from October 28th to November 5th. Players can enter various portals in different parts of the New World and defend their families against these undead villains.
Spooky Halloween Quest: Join the Land of the Dead from October 28th November to 4th and embark on a spooky Halloween quest! Befriend a ghost and slay pumpkins to earn chilling rewards.

 Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager said “We have been working hard to create a ‘The Lords of the Rings’ experience like no other.” He added, “And we are excited to finally confirm the launch of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Star Wars Battlefront fans alike.” The developer of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest delayed to January 9, 2009 internationally and January 13, 2009 in the US. No reason was released officially.

Tradeskills and Crafting

In this update, there is a slight change to the tradeskills.But this is only the beginning, it will be improved further in the future.

About the crafting, new type of armor and weapons, called “Base”, “Culture” and “City” was added in to this update. This gives smiths a lot more to craft and the recipes for these items also include new resources that alchemists, skinners, weavers and woodcutters will have to provide, so working together with other player crafters and gatherers will become both encouraged and necessary. Resource drop-rates also have changed alot. The alchemy profession is getting a significant overhaul by having their number of recipes reduced and also making less resources necessary.

In the PVP consequence system, players who kill other weak and innocent players will be punished and get a criminal status and accumulate murder points, after accumulate enough murder points, you will be flagged as a murderer, basically making you an outcast of society. Murderers will be attacked by city guards and will be unable to trade with normal vendors. And murderers have to seek out renegade vendors on the fringes of society. You can absolve yourself of murder points by waiting it out as it fades over time and earning regular experience and performing redemption quests. Other players will want to hunt murderers down as killing a murderer increases PvP experience gained by one hundred percent!

Combat system

Players were allowed to break stuns, fears, roots, snares and charms when they have lost a certain amount of health. They have made the combos have fewer steps. when you miss with your directional combo strikes, and the penalty will increase with the number of missed strikes.

culture armor

Culture armor is a new type of armor in this update.  24 recipes in this update were released, each recipe making three pieces of armor in a set. Each class will get one culture armor set they can use, and everything is based on various Hyborian cultures. All culture armor is intended for high-level players, and in terms of stats they fall somewhere between dungeon-dropped blues and same-level epics. Culture armor will have to be crafted by players, and the recipes are dropped by boss mobs. And more culture armor will be added in the future.

Attendees will have the opportunity to purchase the standard edition of the game as well as the limited Collector’s Edition, which contains The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King hardback book; Frosty, an exclusive in-game frost wyrm pet; a behind-the-scenes DVD; the official soundtrack containing 21 tracks; an exclusive mouse pad displaying a map of the newly opened continent of Northrend; and two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game starter decks with two exclusive cards available only in the Collector’s Edition.

Blizzard Entertainment in France announced midnight store openings across Europe for the launch of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.  It has announceed a series of coming events. At midnight on the 13th of November, 2008, key retailers will open to players who want to be the first to purchase and play the next installment in the World of Warcraft series.

In UK, the launch event will take place at HMV in London at 150 Oxford Street, London, W1D 1DJ, with doors opening at 00:01 on the night of the 12th/13th. As well as being among the first to acquire the expansion, attendees will have an opportunity to meet with COO Paul Sams and associate producer Lee Sparks, who will be present to welcome players and sign their copies. Similar launch events will be held internationally in North America, Taipei, and Seoul. Full details on the specific locations and plans for each of these events can be found at www.wow-europe.com/midnight.

Update - 1:45PM EDT: The Realm Population Bonus only applies to North American Core Ruleset servers at this time. Players on select servers can transfer their characters via the Mythic Account Center.

Warhammer Online has announced that players can make free character transfers from servers to help balance the population on each server.  The following information you need to pay attention to.

When the service is enabled in the coming days, players will see a Character Transfer button below “Activate a Key” and “Validate your Email Address.” Players should take it serious to make a decision on transfering your character. You need to read all of the information very carefully.