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I was in Gamestop over the weekend browsing to pass the time while my wife and mother were off on a shopping expedition when I noticed something curious on the tiny three foot section of shelving they’d relegated all the PC games to. A printed and bound World of Warcraft strategy guide. Sitting there in book form.

I couldn’t resist having a look at this strange creature. It looked like it came out around the same time as Wrath of the Lich, so it at least had a small advantage over the last Warcraft strategy guide that I saw in Gamestop a few years before that covered information from the original Warcraft launch when Burning Crusade had been on the shelves for a few months. But anyone who has played Warcraft for any amount of time could tell you that this guide was going to be next to worthless for anyone who was looking to get into the game in a Patch 3.3.3 world.

I really have to applaud the huge balls that it takes for the publisher to put out such a blatant cash grab. And I sit in stunned and horrified admiration of Gamestop, a company that will truly stop at nothing to squeeze any penny out of its customers no matter how far they have to bend said customer over their counter to make that sale.

I can just imagine some gamer’s grandmother or significant other going into Gamestop to try and get something that their gamer SO would like, and don’t they spend a lot of time playing that Warcraft thingy on the computer? Or a new gamer who wants to try out this World of Warcraft thing that they’ve heard all of their friends talking about. They walk in, see this guide, and think that their prayers have been answered, only to be disappointed when it turns out that they’ve bought the gaming equivalent of a phonebook.

So please, don’t let your friends buy these books. Here’s a list of sites that you should go to that provide information in real time about the game that is far more comprehensive than any strategy guide author could ever hope to be.

1. WoW Head
2. Thottbot
3. WoWWiki
4. WoW Insider

Remember, friends don’t let friends buy useless strategy guides.

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I’m guessing there are a lot of people out there who are finding the same deal I did with the Asus G72 laptop for sale over at Best Buy and wondering how it performs. Ever since I put that post up I’ve had people coming to the site looking for reviews.

I’m not going to get too far into technical details here. Suffice it to say that the Nvidia GX 260M that the G72 sports is more than enough to beat World of Warcraft into the ground. Here’s a sampling of average FPS that I’ve been getting. This is far from scientific, consisting more of me glancing at the performance tab from time to time.

All of these were done with everything turned up to the maximum. I didn’t use any of the built-in overclocking functions on the laptop either. Obviously you’ll get a performance increase if you turn a few things down, but the G72 does such a good job of rendering on Ultra that there’s really no need.

• Dalaran: 20FPS on initial load. ~40-50FPS any other time.
• Wintergrasp: 40-60FPS. Tends to drop down to 20ish right at the end of a WG battle, but that’s server lag and not something the laptop can fix.
• Alterac Valley: ~50FPS constant.
• Vanilla WoW: 60+ constant.
• Burning Crusade: 60+ constant.
• Lich King: 60+ constant.

I will give the caveat that I haven’t run any dungeons since getting the new computer. I’ve always been more of a PvPer. But given the performance in lagtastic areas like Wintergrasp I have no doubt that it should be able to handle the newer 25-man content without any trouble.

Hope that helps everyone who is looking for more information on the G72!

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Note: If you’re coming to this page looking for information about the performance of the G72 in World of Warcraft then this second post dealing with that in particular might be of interest.

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the passing of my old Dell Inspiron laptop that I purchased back in 2007 to get me through grad school. The little guy still works fine for the most part aside from taking a little longer to load now than he did back when he was new, but the old adage of “Groves giveth and Gates taketh away” continues to affect the computer market.

The main problem was the graphics card. The little 128MB workhorse that came with my Inspiron was more than enough to play World of Warcraft, the only game I was playing at the time, but in the two and a half intervening years I’ve gone from being able to run WoW on maximum settings to barely ticking by with everything turned down. I’ve also been wanting to try out Star Trek Online and the graphics card was the one weak link when I ran a stress test to see if my old computer could handle it.

After a bit of searching and consulting with my brother (who spends far more time researching graphics cards than I would ever care to) I decided on an Asus G72 from Best Buy. The price was just right at $999. The G72 only has a dual core processor, but it’s a high end dual core with a screaming clock speed. Right now it seems that few games and programs are designed to utilize dual core let alone quad core, and I think that at this point it’s still a better choice to get a faster clock speed on a dual core than to saddle yourself with a slower clock speed and smaller front side bus on an equivalent quad.

And the graphics card, the GX260M, is a kickass little card for what I paid for the system. I could go on about onboard memory, clock speed, and all that technical stuff, but at the end of the day I’m able to run Warcraft and Star Trek Online at 1600×900 resolution with all of the settings turned up to the maximum and a steady 50-60FPS in heavily populated areas and battlegrounds.

Being able to see Dalaran from atop Icecrown Citadel is something I was never able to do on my old machine, and looking to the other side of Arathi Basin and seeing the fighting clearly on that side isn’t something that I’ve seen since my old desktop gaming machine went belly up a couple years back.

So now that I have a laptop capable of handline Star Trek Online you can expect some coverage of that game to go along with the World of Warcraft coverage that you already enjoy. But more on that in another post dedicated to the game.

And in the meantime, if you’re looking for a decent gaming laptop for the price then the G72 is a nice little deal right now. I get the impression that Best Buy might be lowering the price to clear it out and make way for a new quad-core model, but I haven’t found anything concrete on that. Either way, it’s still an excellent little gaming machine for that price.

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1. Shard in Cata: “They are all for damage.”

Ghostcrawler says: A more accurate quote probably would have been “They are all for combat.”

We are still working out what exactly you can blow a shard on. Some of the in combat but not damage abilities, such as the Fel Dom example from Blizzcon, are still on the table.

2. 3.3 Scourge Strike was a failure.

Ghostcrawler says: We don’t like melee strikes hitting for straight magical damage. We went through a lot of similar balance issues when Ret hit for so much Holy damage and to a lesser extent with Frost DKs.

I agree we have some confusing tooltips, but I don’t agree that Scourge Strike is one of them. It’s a weapon attack that hits for physical damage. If there are diseases on the target, it adds some Shadow damage too. Doesn’t seem that complicated.

And if you want to read a longer explanation click through here for a post where Ghostcrawler elaborates more.

3. Is threat fun?

If threat wasn’t a factor then it would make tanking boring. If they buffed AoE tanking then it would also be no fun. Basically Ghostcrawler thinks that tanks are good where they are and that threat isn’t much of an issue with most tanks. If you want to get in on the discussion then click through.

4. Cataclysm Stat & System Changes

Remember all those stat changes they’ve been promising in time for Cataclysm? Well they’ve finally released specifics. Click through to have a read!

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1. Please increase Baron Rivendares mount drop

This isn’t going to happen. And why would you want a boring old ground mount when Cataclysm is going to open up the old world to flyers?

2. Have you ever let someone die in WoW?

This is an interesting question. The blue in this case has let someone get to low health to  get a point across but never let them die. I’ve been known to let DPS die if they’re repeatedly pulling aggro in a fight. I find that sometimes it’s just easier to complete a fight without worrying about healing bad DPS. Most times the rest of the group is good enough that four manning something isn’t a big deal. I’ve never done much in the way of raiding, though, and it’s likely a whole different mechanic when you’re in a 10-man or a 25-man.

3. Not understanding the Cata goals and idea

This is a continuation of a thread that I covered in the last edition of the Morning Blues. There’s a lot going on in this one, so I’m just going to give quick summaries that you can click through and read if you’d like.

1. Ghostcrawler discusses overgeared guilds zerging endgame content and complaining about difficulty.
2. Ghostcrawler discusses shortfalls of the Arena in BC and how it’s been adjusted since.
3. Ghostcrawler on rated battlegrounds and the difference between Arena and raiding.
4. Ghostcrawler on player frustration leading to a lingering dislike of the Arena.
5. Blizzard isn’t getting many complaints about the new PvE system aside from PvPers who feel they have to gear up via Dungeon Finder.
6. On the challenge level of 5-mans vs. 25-man raids.
7. On the difficulty level of various end-of-expansion raids.
8. Ghostcrawler on rated battlegrounds, PvE progression, and the role of PvP gear in PvE.

4. 2010 Blizzcon?

Anything that you’ve heard about Blizzcon isn’t true. Blizzard will announce it when they’re ready.

5. Epic Flying — Is it still useful these days?

I always buy epic flying for my characters as soon as they hit 70 and are able to get it. But I have a lot more money floating around my account than most people seem to have. I still think that the difference between regular end epic flying is like night and day even with the speed increases, and it made leveling my priest a breeze.

6. BC = Burning Legion, Wotlk= Scourge, Cata=

You heard it here first folks:

Bornakk says: The ultimate enemy who can never truly be defeated… murlocs.

I, for one, welcome our new Murloc overlords. Mrrrglegrrrrgle!

7. TBC, WOTLK, Origional Realms

Not happening. Stop asking.

8. WSG experts: we want your tactics!

An interesting and potentially educational thread if you’re interested in battlegrounds at all.

9. #BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 2/26

A transcript of the developer chat they had on Twitter last Friday. Click through and give it a read!

10. Why nerf Battleground xp?

Battleground experience isn’t being nerfed. The amount of honor gained from battleground kills is being doubled and the amount of experience is being cut by 50%. If you passed elementary math then you’ll realize that this results in no net change whatsoever in the amount of experience gained. Blizz doesn’t want to double experience and honor.

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If you’re from an RP realm then this is going to be effin’ hilarious. If you’re not from an RP realm but have ever had to endure the ridiculous opening in Culling then it will merely be hilarious.

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1. 24/02 Forum Watch

Nothing in the way of news here, but this is a nice little collection of interesting forum threads from the past week over on the WoW Europe English forums.

2. when is cataclysm coming in stores

Vaneras clears this one up:

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Q u o t e:
“Soon”.

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Lawyered
http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon

On a more serious note; we haven’t yet provided a release date for Cataclysm, although we have said that we would like to get it released this year if possible.

Don’t worry though, an announcement will be made once a release date has been set

3. Old Vurtne Movies…

Again, nothing in the way of news with this post. It’s just an interesting series of PvP videos from vanilla WoW and moving into Burning Crusade from one of the better PvPers on the European servers. They were good enough to ride a wave of nostalgia to the top of the forums in a blue sticky.

4. Why do threads get locked without any reason?

I didn’t bother to read most of this thread as it seems to be a lot of QQ about drop rates. The important part is that Ujumqin steps in to reiterate that “Random is Random” and that the loot tables don’t owe players anything. Occasionally a person is just going to be unlucky when it comes to drops, and they’ll just have to deal with it.

5. Patch 3.3.3 PTR Bug Compendium

This thread isn’t the only location for bug reports, by far, but Blizz is trying out having people post bugs they find in one thread rather than creating individual threads for everything. So if you’re testing out 3.3.3 and you find a bug or you’re just interested in seeing what’s going on over there then this is the thread to check first.

6. Blizzard Games on Show at CeBIT

This is another post over in the European forums linking to an international gaming competition taking place in Germany over the weekend. They’ll have live streaming video of all of the events with English commentary in the World 3v3 Arena Tournament.

7. DK PVP – Constructive Ideas

This might mean something if you play a Death Knight. It’s all gibberish to me.

Ghostcrawler says:

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Q u o t e:
I’ve also heard mixed reviews on if Virulence even functions properly against Cleansing Totem…

Does anyone know for sure?

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This is an enduring myth, but from all the testing we’ve ever done, Virulence works against totems.

8. Just plain lazy

Eyonix on his expectations from a tank:

I’m sorry but I have certain expectations of a pug tank. If you guys can’t absorb damage without requiring heals, or allow me and the rest of the group to auto-follow you while we watch TV, then I’m sorry but I just don’t have that kind of time to waste.

9. 3.3.3 Mage Changes

This might mean something if you’re a mage. Again, never played the class so it means nothing to me.

Ghostcrawler says: The Combustion change was to let its cooldown line up better with e.g. trinket cooldowns. It just felt awkward at 3 min.

The Fireball glyph change was because some Fire mages were getting such absurdly high crit rates that even more crit wasn’t attractive. We weren’t trying to make this particular glyph ridiculously powerful.

The actual dps increases are something more like adding Pyroblast to Torment the Weak and Empowered Fire. That may have missed the most recent patch notes.

I would also expect Arcane damage to fall overall with the Incanter’s Absorption change. (Torment is also gratuitously overpowered, but that would be too big a change for now.) That should get Fire a lot closer to Arcane. Getting Frost up there too is harder, but we’re still trying.

[Also agree with the comment that too much "I feel ignored!!!" risks spoiling a good thread.]

10. Role of Disc priest???? Is there one?

Ghostcrawler says: They are awesome and in some cases borderline overpowered.

11. @people saying “priests are fine”

Now this is a thread I can get behind, being about Priests and all. Click through and give it a read to see Ghostcrawler doling out advice on how he plays his Priest.

12. Neth just jumped ship!

Expect to see Blizzard blue posters working on games other than World of Warcraft as they merge everything into Battle.net and expand their mighty empire.

13. [Bug] Connecting/WoW Accounts – BLUE PLEASE!

This one is of interest if you’re using the PTR:

Dresorull says: There is currently a bug in the build that the PTR is being updated to that is causing this issue. This issue should be resolved in the next PTR build, but for the time being there is no work around available. If you have multiple Wow game accounts attached to a single Battle.net account, you will not be able to log into the PTR until the next PTR update.

We’re aware that this temporarily blocks some people from accessing the PTR. Please understand that we’re working on getting this resolved in an upcoming PTR patch.

14. PTR Maintenance 2-24-2010

The PTR is currently down for maintenance, probably to fix the issue in #13. No word on how long the repairs will take.

15. Class change service

This ain’t happening. For now. To those who say it will never happen I simply point to the variety of paid services that we all thought would “never happen” back in vanilla WoW and BC.

16. Natures Grasp Question

Per Ghostcrawler, Natures Grasp will be getting a buff here soon. Click through to the post for specifics.

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1. Mages and their food.

The OP wants to know why mages aren’t more like their real life counterparts given their relatively sedentary lifestyle of sitting back and hitting things from a distance. That coupled with their constant diet of fatty conjured foods should equal a class of overweight spellcasters even if you take all of the running around they do into account, right?

Ancilorn says: They eat alot, but remember, anything they ate of a conjured nature would disappear from their digestive tracts once they logged out for 15+ minutes.

Now that’s what I call a clever diet.

2. Too many emblems?

The OP wants to know why there are so many emblem conversions for older sets of gear. Blizzard keeps them there so that people who haven’t played in awhile but have a crapload of emblems stacked up don’t get upset if they do decide to spend some of their old cash.

3. 9 Ocu afks in a row

The short version: much QQ about Oculus.

The long version: The OP is upset because he got tossed into Oculus 9 times in a row and had to /afk out of them each time instead of taking the 20-30 minutes required to finish the damned dungeon. He is now convinced that there is some sort of vast Blizzard conspiracy to force him to run the same dungeon.

The blue lets out the tantalizing tidbit that the dungeon system isn’t entirely random. But it’s also not designed to divine which dungeon a player hates the most and then repeatedly assign them to that dungeon. Sometimes you get a run of bad luck when dealing with random chance. Anyone who regularly invests in the lottery or tried to get a Big Love Rocket has had an object lesson in probability’s capricious whims.

4. Armor pen in Cataclysm

The OP wants to know if his gear is going to be rendered useless with some of the stat changes and consolidations in Cataclysm. Ghostcrawler assures him that they are going to try and balance out stats for old gear so that it isn’t rendered instantly obsolete, and promises a longer post on exactly what they’re doing and how.

5. Do tanks need resilience?

OP wants to know if resilience affects a chance to get critted in PvE. Word from on high is that it can work to prevent crit, but that it’s a poor substitute for raising Defense. So only rely on +Resilience gear as a placeholder for +Defense gear if you don’t have immediate access to the latter for some reason. Also, +Resilience does nothing to help bear tanks.

6. Design a Cataclysm Battleground

Just what it says on the label. Click over to see some ideas and (if you play WoW Europe) to participate in the discussion!

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We’re getting ready for another content patch in everyone’s favorite real life replacement. That’s right folks, the PTR is waking from its long slumber after being repeatedly run into the ground by everyone working to test the Icecrown Citadel experience just in time for a minor content patch that introduces some major changes in the game as the dev team starts clearing the path for everyone’s favorite apocalyptic dragon in Cataclysm.

“But Andrew,” you might be asking yourself right now, “what do these new patch notes offer for me?” And I’m glad you asked that completely genuine rhetorical question, because I’m about to summarize the shit out of these patch notes for you so that you don’t have to waste your valuable screwing-around-at-work time reading through all of the upcoming changes to your evening part-time job just so you can see if they finally fixed your totally underpowered Death Knight.

Do you like PvP? Well then you might be interested in some of the sweeping changes they’re making to the system to make way for yet another revamped honor system in Cataclysm. Honestly, if I had a thousand gold for every time they threw out one PvP system and grafted on another then I’d have more cash than a gold farmer who’s been chugging Red Bull for the past week.

1. The honor given per kill has been increased by 100%. Experience gained from honor kills has been reduced by 50%. If you did well in math back in school then you’ll already know that this means the amount of XP per honorable kill is staying the same.
2. Oh, and they’re also nerfing the honor you get from Wintergrasp by 50%.
3. So basically after all of that adjusting there’s a net gain of 0 honor for serious PvPers. Go Blizzard.
4. They’re adding a new Battleground Finder that will work the same way as the current Dungeon Finder. Daily BG quests will be removed and replaced with rewards for completing Random Battlegrounds similar to the rewards given for the current Random Dungeon system.
5. Battleground Marks of Honor are going away for good.
6. The sliding scale of advantage in Wintergrasp is being changed so that whichever faction has lost two consecutive games in a row is going to get a bigger buff to help them retake the place.

Do you like dungeons? Well Blizzard is giving you some love too. Like you thought they wouldn’t. Everyone knows that Blizzard loves their PvE players and that us PvPers are the redheaded stepchildren they love to ignore.

1. You can skip the Culling of Strat introduction provided you’ve done the dungeon and seen it at least once before. Thank FSM for that change.
2. The Dungeon Finder Deserter debuff has been increased to 30 minutes from 15 minutes. So no dropping from bad groups without harsh consequences.
3. Anyone in a party can requeue their group now.
4. Players must now provide a reason for kicking someone from a random dungeon group.
5. Players have to use the dungeon finder to access world bosses from now on.
6. Parties will now always be arranged as Tank>Healer>DPS>DPS>DPS in the party unit frames.
7. Players will now be given a reason why they can’t Need on an item in dungeons.

That covers all of the major news coming through in 3.3.3 so far. As always I’ll be keeping an eye on things and adding updates either in the Morning Blues report or in its own post if the news is big enough to warrant it. The complete patch notes are available for your reading pleasure after the cut.

continue reading…

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1. [GUIDE] Cataclysm Info! – UPDATE – 21/02/10

This is an excellent post that was stickied by a blue over in the WoW Europe forums that consolidates everything that we know so far about Cataclysm. Worth a read if you don’t know much about the new expansion, but beware spoilers.

2. Please do not ruin this

Ghostcrawler says: It’s not an issue of players behaving themselves so that they can have nice things. It’s a *good* thing for the game, when players figure out ways to break classes or abilities so that we can fix them.

3. How’d this game go from Wailing Caverns to…

The OP went back and ran one of the older dungeons for the first time and wondered why Blizzard got away from the old sprawling dungeon design. Anyone who played in vanilla WoW remembers spending hours trying to clear long dungeons. The old design is a stark contrast to the more compact experience offered in today’s dungeons.

The word from on high in this post is that Blizzard has no plans to revisit that old sprawling dungeon design mainly because most people didn’t have time to sink hours into a leveling dungeon. I can definitely understand the sentiment. In the context of Warcraft’s launch these long dungeons made sense. Leveling to 60 was the endgame back then. Blizzard expected most players to spend at least a few months working their way to the level cap and there wasn’t much in the way of level 60 content at the time.

Now that the endgame is firmly established and all about people getting newer shinier pieces of gear so they can tackle more and more difficult challenges in Icecrown or the Arena it makes sense to make it easier for people to get that gear and progress. Some hardcore raiders seem to remember the days of endless 40-man raids with fondness, but I think those types are either masochists or looking back on the old game with rose-colored glasses. Long dungeons might look pretty, but they sucked in terms of a game experience.

4. Plush pets…Really Blizzard?

There are no plans at this time to separate the real-world plush pets from their in-game counterparts. Welcome to the brave new world of Blizzard Webkinz.

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