Archive for January, 2010

A month after patch 3.3 and Icecrown Citadel dropped, Lume the Mad weighs in on its raid content with mixed feelings. Icecrown’s story, art, music, and general encounter design are all fantastic, he observes, but Blizzard’s approach to “gating” content is having an ugly effect on raids. When you’ve only got 10-15 shots at killing specific bosses, small issues rarely stay that way for long. “I have to pressure people with lag to sit so as not to potentially lose a shot at killing the boss,” he writes. “And when someone makes the most innocent of mistakes, people get pissed off. It’s not fun for them. And it’s not fun for me as a result.”

That’s the part of the gating system — “Raiders (having) the fear of God struck into them for wiping just once,” as Lume puts it — of which I’m not overly fond myself. A key raider lagging or disconnecting can result in a wipe on much of this content, and more particularly on the two bosses (Putricide and Lana’thel) for whom limited attempts currently exist. Both command very high DPS requirements, so even if you can easily afford the loss of a laggy DPS or two More >

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to’s, visit WoW.com’s WoW Rookie Guide.

Construction continues inside the WoW Rookie Guide, where we’ve put together a corner especially for those of you who are just hitting level 80 for the first time. We’ve already got a few of our favorite resources listed there. This week, we’re adding something new and convenient for you right here. Every week (look for us on Thursdays), WoW Rookie will round up the week’s best posts from other WoW.com columnists and features that touch on the basics of endgame play. From polishing your character to playing in PUGs to breaking into the raiding game, we’ll help you spot the week’s best advice for newer players (even if it snuck in under the radar within the class column of a class you don’t play).

This week’s selection is fairly bursting at the seams, so we’ve tucked the entire kit and caboodle after the break. (Oh, one more thing before we get to the fresh 80s stuff. Did you catch WoW, Casually’s guide to leveling by grouping in instances?) Next More >

The saga of Malfurion Stomrage continues in the latest book Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak. Today our friends at Simon and Schuster write in to let us know that the collector’s edition is now on sale for us all, in a limited edition of 5000 copies.

From the jacket:

Recently the Emerald Nightmare, an area of corruption within the Emerald Dream, began growing in size, transforming the Dream into a realm of unimaginable horror. Green dragons have been unexpectedly caught up in the Nightmare, emerging from it with shattered minds and twisted bodies. Druids who have entered the darkening Dream lately have found it difficult — sometimes even impossible — to escape.

Nor are these the Nightmare’s only victims: more and more people are being affected. Even Malfurion Stormrage, first and foremost of the druids on Azeroth, may have fallen victim to this growing threat. As uncontrollable nightmares spread across the world, a desperate quest begins to find and free the archdruid.

The collector’s edition costs $32 and will ship the week of March 8th, 2010; whereas the normal editions of Stormrage release on February 23rd, 2010.

Stay tuned to WoW.com in the coming weeks when we’ll have early reviews of the book for you, More >