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Every Monday evening, WoW Insider brings you a long list of WoW podcasts that were published the week (and weekend) before. If you don’t see your favorite podcast listed, just let us know in the comments. Be sure to leave a link to it, and we’ll pick it up next week. All podcasts and content belong to their owners. WoW Insider is not responsible for what you hear, and some of the content may not be safe for work.

• All Things Azeroth Shadormi, Aspect of Bacon
• The Instance Wrath of the Triple Rainbow
• Rawrcast Pre-Cataclysm Drip
• Twisted Nether Blogcast Stealthy Angel

Continue reading Weekly Podcast Roundup: Nov. 8-14, 2010

Cataclysm is fast approaching, and Blizzard is offering seven days of free play to lapsed subscriptions in preparation for the upcoming expansion. Players who have quit the game are being offered this seven-day promotion via email, and although it hasn’t been mentioned on the official site, the email and the promotion are both completely legit. The full text of the email is as follows: Claim your 7 free days of game time!

The earth-shattering rage of Deathwing will soon be released upon the lands of Azeroth. Return to the battlefields with 7 days of FREE game time! Simply click below to claim your time and prepare for Cataclysm … but act fast, as this offer will expire on Dec 1st, 2010.

Prepare for Cataclysm[TM], the next expansion to World of Warcraft(R), whose features include:

Two New Playable Races – Adventure as one of two new races: the feral worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.

Classic Zones Remade – Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth – Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before!

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Lylirra posted:

Throughout the years, World of Warcraft players have opened up their hearts to the community and shared with us their inspirational stories of romances found, friendships built , and hardships overcome.

With Pilgrim’s Bounty just on the horizon, we’ve selected three uplifting stories to share, submitted for your reading pleasure. These are personal accounts from your fellow World of Warcraft enthusiasts that touch upon the importance of family, love, and laughter and remind us that there’s so much in our lives for which we should be thankful.

A Family That Plays Together…

I am a 50-year-old grandmother living in Kentucky. I have two grown sons; my youngest lives in Florida and my oldest lives in Georgia with my grandson. My youngest and I have always been close — he’s the “mama’s boy”. My oldest and I, however, had not been very close for a very long time.

On a few occasions, either when I went to visit him or when he’d come to visit me, I observed my oldest son playing World of Warcraft. It looked interesting, so I’d ask questions.

In January 2010, he asked me if I’d like to learn to play. Since I’m on a fixed disability income, he said More >

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways … back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless, but they were also men.

All right, sit down lassies — aye, and you lads, too — and get yerself something warm to drink. Or maybe do that the other way around. It’s time you had some more learning about what life was like back in my day.

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about Ghostcrawler lately. For those who don’t know who Ghostcrawler is — or the big GC, as we call him — he’s the man behind every blue post that you care about. He’s one of nine grand masters in a secret cabal of masterminds exerting global influence over developed populations in an attempt to uncover ancient artifacts that could lead to the apotheosis of mankind. But for his day job, he’s the lead systems designer for WoW; More >

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader’s Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Welcome to the third and final column exploring the various pros and cons of raid size in WoW’s upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Before we talk about the final category, let’s recap.

In part 1, I examined the various gameplay considerations that come along with the different sizes.

Gameplay

• We can only speculate about relative difficulty.
• 10-man raids offer fewer options for dealing with specific boss abilities and/or adds.
• Position-based abilities are easier to deal with in 10s.
• Player deaths are not as crippling in 25-mans.
• It’s easier to cover for someone else’s mistake with 25 players.

In part 2, I talked about the logistics involved in running each size and the rewards you can obtain from them.

Logistics

• A 25-man raid requires an intense recruiting effort.
• “Cat herding” is flat-out easier in 10-man raids.
• More raiders mean more attendance issues and technical issues.
• Subbing is easier in a larger raid.
• Scheduling difficulties are easier to manage with more players.
• Loot is easier to distribute in 10-man.

Continue reading Officers’ Quarters: The great raid-size debate, part 3

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